Egg Dancing (20 page)

     It’s hardly surprising that Hazel is looking peaky these days. She’s demonstrating some fairly florid manifestations of acute mania, and is clearly in more of a sexual pickle than I’d thought. Thank goodness the crèche is reliable, because she most certainly isn’t. The other day I spotted no fewer than three paper-clips in her hair. Today I’d just started on the tiger-lilies in the greenhouse when she came rushing up screaming, dressed in her prostitute’s outfit. I hauled her off to Signora Pimento’s nest, which is near to completion, and poured half a hip-flask of brandy down her, which I’m afraid only aggravated the raving. I ransacked her handbag, and found a portable phone (which I pocketed) and her mysterious red pills, which I planted in the ‘miscellaneous medications’ bed. Then I sat on her. It was all I could think of to shut her up. She always had ‘lungs’. The shock of it seemed to send her into a coma (as you know I am a heavy woman), so I left her there with her silly suspenders showing and got on with the business in hand. The business in hand is two babies to be born – one here, one there. Both are imminent. And I have a plan.

     Hazel came to a few hours later, still raving about her bad luck with men. I tried explaining to her that it was worse than bad luck; it was choice. (Hundreds of hours of group therapy have left their mark.) You actively pick them, I was explaining. You’re obviously addicted, psychologically speaking, to a mean-spirited personality type who fails to meet the most fundamental requirements of interpersonal relationships. It’s clearly your father’s fault (that’s you, Brendan), and if you don’t come to terms with it – perform your own personal
Gestalt
– you’ll never be what I would term a complete human being. But she was in no mood for advice. In fact I’m not sure she heard a word I said, or recognised who I was. She was taking huge swigs of brandy. Her make-up was all smeared across her face and she reminded me of how she looked when I dressed her up once for a fancy-dress party as a child – a hobgoblin, I think – but the greasepaint melted and she came home frantic and screaming because all the other little girls were fairies and Snow White. I can see her now, shouting at me, stamping, stamping, stamping that wee foot, with its shiny wee party shoe with the wee buckle, saying, ‘I hate you, Mummy, you made me look ugly and everyone laughed at me!’ the tears skidding across the oil. Such a joke she looked, I couldn’t help laughing myself. I didn’t laugh at her now, though, lipstick all across her cheek, mascara smudged, because she’d done it herself this time. My conscience was clear.

     Then she clutched her knees to her chest in just the same way as Monica Fletcher does when she’s attention-seeking in Group, and rocked to and fro. She’d had this incredible dream, she said, all about being in Eden, an oasis of tropicana, where she was raped by an enormous snake.

     ‘It went right up through me and emerged via my throat,’ she groaned. ‘And a wodge of white gob splatted out.’

     Even her subconscious is a gutter. A pity Dr McAuley wasn’t there; it would have been right up her street.

     ‘Well, you got at least one aspect of it right,’ I told her; ‘you are in a sort of Eden.’

     She glanced around her, but didn’t seem to take it in. When I told her I had a master plan she just said I could do what the fuck I liked, whoever I was, she didn’t care, as long as I just fucked off. I learned a long time ago not to expect gratitude from the likes of my daughter. Fancy not recognising her own Ma. I left her choking over the bottle, looking like the whore she is.

     On the way to Group, I came face to face with our son-in-law Gregory carrying Billy on his shoulders. He told me he’d fetched Billy from the crèche and was taking him home for the weekend, with Hazel’s agreement via Dr Stern. He looked happy: his eyes were glazed, and I could smell whisky on his breath. He read my thoughts, and told me he’d just been enjoying a ‘quick aperitif’ with Dr Stern. Chatting, colleague to colleague. Man to man. His eyes were darting about madly, and he seemed desperate to say something that wouldn’t come out, but then it finally did.

     ‘Discussing Hazel, actually.’

     Surprise, surprise. If he jogs Billy up and down like that any more, I thought, the lad will vomit.

     ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t recognise her. She’s quite come apart at the seams.’

     ‘So Dr Stern tells me. I’m sorry it’s come to this.’

     ‘Like hell you are,’ I told him, and I gave him a look.

     This was followed by what he would term ‘an embarrassing pause’, in which he joggled my poor grandson some more. Billy just sat there like Buddha and listened with his big eyes, serious, thinking: This is my dad, come to see me.

     ‘Bye-bye, my poppet,’ I told him.

     I’m not much of a kisser, but I took his tiny hand in mine and gave it a squeeze. And I thought: Have a lovely weekend with the King and his new Queen, Ruby Gonzalez, MD., Ph.D., greedy eater of lemon soufflé, and usurper of my daughter’s throne. And watch out for her, Billy boy. Her belly is a poisoned chalice.

     ‘Cheerio, Moira,’ said my gynaecologist son-in-law, and swung off with Billy in the direction of the car-park.

     It’s a Pay and Display.

     Yours sincerely,

   
Moira Sugden

Manxheath Institute for the Morally Deranged,

Tuesday

Dear departed,

     Spring is in the air and the greenhouse is a triumph: termites burrowing, bulbs shooting up, chrysalises cracking open, hormones whizzing about. My miscellaneous medications bed is inching into bloom; the Valium turns out to have pinky-green leaves and a fluffy puce flower that resembles cotton. I plan to send a photograph to that terrible gardening programme where the earth is never dirty; they have a competition. After a shaky start with germination, which I put down to the type of capsule, the Largactil is now in bud, and promises to be a flamboyant, cabaret sort of flower. I had high hopes of my Lithium, but it has let me down; it’s hairy and covered in a black insect called bloat-fly. Hazel’s so-called vitamins were equally disappointing. I put them out of their misery.

     As if I didn’t already have enough on my plate with the greenhouse and Hazel, things have been coming to a head
vis-à-vis
Isabella’s birthing arrangements. Yesterday morning I was preparing a huge nest of ferns, exotic herbs and jungle moss for her labour when suddenly I heard a cry and saw her outside, capsizing. It was almost in slow motion. I hadn’t realised how many petticoats were involved. I rushed out and heaved her up to a sitting position; luckily she’d fallen on a heap of peat. Peat is always useful. She sat and groaned for a while, then lay down again. It was then that I spotted what the problem was: her belly was churning in a frenzy. The wretched baby was writhing about like she’d swallowed a boa constrictor.

     ‘Monster, monster,’ she was crying. It was piteous.

     ‘You’re going to have a good old rest, Signora P,’ I told her. ‘That baby’s more than your match.’

     I took her inside and we had a cup of tea in the Day Room. Her abdomen was still in revolt, but the fit was over. I told her about the nest; it was going to be a secret but she was in such a state about the lack of facilities in Manxheath that I had to break the good news to her. Then I stormed into Dr Stern’s pretentious office. He looked shocked. Like so many men, he shies away from confrontation.

     ‘What the hell d’you think you’re up to?’
j’accuse.

     ‘Did you
make
an appointment to see me, Moira?’

     ‘Mrs Sugden, to you,’ I tell him. ‘I’m a so-called client, aren’t I? I’m here on an urgent matter.’

     I saw him press his buzzer to summon a nurse, so I did my best to spit it all out before I got dragged off.

     ‘The way you’re dealing with Isabella’s pregnancy is a fiasco,’ I told him. ‘You and your staff are in a state of chronic denial. I know the line you’re taking: the baby is a schizoid fantasy – official. Am I right or am I right? You seem to have been losing your grip on reality lately, if I may say so. Dating back to when my daughter Hazel started to pester you, I’d say. I used to revere you, Doctor, but you’ve let me down. Will the dirty nappies be a fantasy, too? Do we have to come and hang them up here in your office? Do you want ocular proof?’

     ‘Mrs Sugden. I think you’re forgetting your
contract
here. We supply you with care on condition that you, the
client
, as you so rightly say  – ’ He broke off, seeing the door open. ‘Ah, art therapy calls. See you at our next
scheduled
session.’

     I feel another effigy coming on. When I reported the gist of things to Isabella, she just smiled. She doesn’t get worked up about these staff like I do. She’s fifty-five, and she’s had a hard life, starting with a thing her Uncle Paolo did to her in a laundry-room in Turin. She says ‘experience has taught her’. Either that or she’s finally lost her Marbellas, bless her. I put her to bed with the panda hot-water bottle she’s so devoted to, and tucked her in like a wee girl. (Wee, my arse.)

     Yours in all sincerity,

   
Moira
.

Wednesday

Brendan:

     Your daughter Hazel is indeed in a serious emotional mess: the alarm bells started ringing when I found a bill for £340-worth of ‘
soins intensifs
’ in her coat pocket, which can only mean trouble. I phoned Linda at the Butter Mountain immediately and told her to avoid anything that smacked of sexual intercourse if she could.

     ‘Keep your boyfriend’s appetities at bay,’ I recommended. ‘It’s the recipe for marriage.’ The man in question seems decent enough, though as an under-manager at British Telecom’s Swakely Gap office he hoes a tedious row in life.

     ‘Don’t worry,’ she told me, ‘I’m a born-again Christian now and I’ve imposed a sex embargo.’

     Duncan apparently accepted it with alacrity, so obviously they’re on a good wavelength.

     ‘Why get yourself born again when you’re so bitter about the first time around?’ I queried, but she said a man called Mr Foley wanted her on the other line and he took precedence.

     By coincidence, I bumped into Duncan shortly afterwards. He was in the Day Room, trying to fraternise with his brother, but Keith was ignoring him as usual, and doing
The Times
crossword. Duncan told me he’s been mooning about in bookshops a lot lately, now that Linda’s got religion, and BT has put him on compulsory flexi-time.

     ‘More fool Linda, and more fool BT,’ I told him supportively. Apropos the book world, of which I know a thing or two, I was about to share with him some of the fruits of my Strathclyde Municipal Library, Inverness Mobile Book Centre, and Gridiron City Library experience when Keith came and shoved the crossword under my nose, pointing to a clue underlined in red.
A toad-in-the-hole of the Vanities, sixteen letters.

     ‘Codswallop,’ I told him.

     And I meant it. Crosswords are a tragic waste of time for someone of his abilities. The thing about Keith is that he really needs to be stimulated on the highest philosophical level, or he fritters away his time on silly brain-teasers. Which is why his whole life has become a displacement activity. Others of us set ourselves complex questions in Manxheath. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I reckon we ended up here for asking them out loud in the first place. Society has a history of punishing the bearers of bad news. The ones who apply the tin-opener to the can of worms. I tried to transmit this idea to Duncan but it was like talking to the wall. He’d become obsessed with the sandwich machine being on the blink ‘for the umpteenth time’.

     ‘OK, if you’d prefer a conversation on a more practical level,’ I told him, ‘you can give us a hand getting in a few baby supplies.’

     He finally agreed to buy a second-hand pram for Signora Pimento ‘as a present from the Sugden family’. It was the idea of being part of the family that persuaded him; he’s obviously quite hung up on Linda, sex embargo or no. I even told him he could have the pram back when Isabella had finished with it, as he and Linda might find a use for it once they were married.

     ‘She’s pushing forty,’ I reminded him, ‘and her biological alarm clock has been ringing loud and clear for some time. I could do with some more grandchildren, since it transpires that Billy’s not exactly normal.’

     ‘I’ll take that as a sign of approval, if I may, Mrs Sugden,’ he said.

     It was a rash assumption to make, but I didn’t say so, as there were other things on the shopping list – namely nappies, baby clothes, Q-tips, etc.

     ‘Hang on,’ said Duncan as I checked off the list of essentials from Dr Rosemary Pithkin’s Baby Bible. I could tell that all this was beginning to try his patience. ‘I thought this was supposed to be a phantom pregnancy,’ he said.

     And do you know what I replied, quick as a flash?

     ‘Well, there’s just the Ghost of a chance it isn’t!’

     When he’d gone I wrote a letter to Linda outlining my grand plan and asking for a decent book on aquatic horticulture.

     I added a PS: ‘Probably better the man from Swakely Gap than no man at all.’ I underlined the ‘probably’. But he must be doing her some good; she’s stopped wearing clothes from Oxfam, and a weird light has begun to shine in her eyes.