Getting It Right (19 page)

‘It was very nice of you to come. And I hope you find them all well at home, dear. And, next time you come, I’ll have the spare room all ready for you. Just give Gavin a call –
either here or at Mr Adrian’s. All the best.’

She followed them to the door, watched them down the path and waved frenziedly – Gavin knew she wanted to see them off before Mr Lamb emerged.

‘How do I get back on to the main road?’

He told her, and without a word she got into the car.

‘Have a good journey,’ he said awkwardly.

She smiled. ‘You mean “have a journey at all”,’ she said. ‘“Get the hell out”. Well, I am. Thanks for everything.’ She did not look at him while
she said this, but quite suddenly started the car and drove rather jerkily off down the road.

He stood for a few moments watching her – round a bend and out of sight. He felt awful. He’d managed to be both hard and feeble – it showed what a rotten character he had.
Anybody else would have risen
above
minding whether she upset his parents – well, him really, he was even hiding behind his parents. She’d done her best: she was a poor little
thing, probably quite ill, since she had just come out of hospital, and she hadn’t really eaten her breakfast at all. And he’d simply been grudging, ungenerous about the whole thing;
worrying about appearances, as usual, and not her feelings. He went on and on to himself about adventure – a fantasy life where wonderful things happened, and then when anything actually
happened
he behaved as though it was a disaster that had to be suppressed.

The trouble about real life, he reflected gloomily as he shaved, was that you didn’t seem to be able to choose what happened, but only how you responded to whatever it was. It turned you
into a kind of second-class power. You were allowed to make anything you liked of a job, but ten to one it would be a bad one in the first place. But how was he to know that poor little Minnie was
a bad job? The moment he called her Minnie, he felt pity and affection for her. Minnie! He wondered whether other people called her that. Then he realized that he had no way
at all
of
getting hold of her. So he couldn’t even say he was sorry if he’d been rough on her. This made him feel more to blame than ever, and he got ready to drive his parents to lunch with
Marge in a state of masochistic despair. He didn’t expect to
enjoy
it at all: it was, as usual, the least and easiest thing to do.

The drive to Marge’s did not improve Gavin’s state of mind. Mrs Lamb was too excited, and as the treat, so to speak, was now over, her regrets took the form of
strong criticism of Gavin for not warning her that her Ladyship was arriving, until after she had arrived, and of her husband for sticking to his ritual of the lavatory after breakfast no matter
what.

‘Anybody would think you was nothing but some sort of machine,’ she scolded, ‘and what was I to do once I realized you were in there, liable to come out at any moment with the
toilet flushing? I ask you!’ Mr Lamb, in the back of the car, murmured something harmlessly defensive, but this only made things what they usually became – worse – when he did
that.

‘And we all know you go in there just to read the Sports pages. It’s not as though you have a Call – it’s just habit.’

‘Oh, Mum! It all went off very well. She enjoyed herself.’

But this was no good either, for the simple reason that when she was upset she was always a move ahead of them on the wrong track.

‘There you go! Taking your father’s side!’

‘He wasn’t!’

‘Wasn’t what? Who wasn’t?’

‘Him,’ enunciated Mr Lamb with ominous clarity, a sure sign that he was heating up. ‘Gavin. He wasn’t taking my side. He was merely remarking.’

‘I don’t see what he has to do with it at all.
I
was just remarking that when you have people to stay –
whoever
they may be – you don’t go locking
yourself in the toilet the moment they want to say good-bye. It’s not done. People do not-usually-do-it,’ she finished.

There was a dank silence. Then she said: ‘But, if people want to be common, I suppose there’s no stopping them. Poor Lady Munday.’

Gavin said: ‘Actually, Mum, she’s not Lady Munday. She’s not married, so she must be Lady Minerva.’ This proved a happy deflection, and Gavin elaborated. Mrs Lamb, after
some gallantly casual rumination, decided that Lady Minerva must be the daughter of an Earl rather than a Duke! ‘Not that there’s any difference. Earls and Dukes, they’re all of a
piece, aren’t they? I must say, I was a bit surprised at her costume. I expect it’s a very different story when she’s at home. She never wore those clothes to the party, did
she?’

‘No, she didn’t.’

She turned to Mr Lamb in the back as a conciliatory gesture, but she turned the wrong way and simply came face to face with the bear in his lurex sunsuit who was lolling beside her husband . . .
‘I told you, he’s too big to wrap up,’ she cried. ‘You promised you’d bring back some of that polystyrene from the works.’

‘I’m sorry about that. I didn’t understand there was a rush. Thought you were keeping him till Christmas.’

‘Christmas!’ she shrieked. ‘Now, do you think I’d be wearing my fingers to the bone trying to dress a bear with all that time ahead of me? It’s for Judy’s
birthday in case you’d forgotten.’

‘She’s a big girl for a bear,’ Mr Lamb remarked.

‘No, she’s not. It’s not a bear you take to bed with you. It’s a bear you keep sitting about. She can take it to her new home when she’s married.’

‘How old is she? Nine, isn’t it?’

‘She will be nine next Tuesday. And you ought to give her something, Gavin: you are her godfather, after all, not to speak of being her uncle.’

‘I’ll give her some cash.’ He remembered how very much better cash had been than most of the things they thought of to give him.

‘Please yourself.’ But she was deflected, not to say mollified.

Marge and Ken lived at Potters Bar in a very new house. They had started married life in a flat, but with the advent of Stephen and Judy they needed more room. Ken worked for a small electronics
firm: he was an engineer with political views of which Mr Lamb strongly disapproved. Marge had been a schoolteacher before she married; had given it up for five years after Stephen and then Judy
were born (during which time she had fostered several children), and now worked in a small unit that taught educationally sub-normal pupils. Gavin admired his sister; she also made him feel
inferior. She had such energy, and was so dedicated to helping other people; she felt, he thought, that everything was simple if only you went at it hard enough, whereas he felt that everything was
so difficult that he hardly dared to move in any direction.

Ken was polishing his car when they arrived and Stephen was helping him. They both stopped momentarily at the sight of the Lambs: then Ken said something to his son, and Stephen polished harder
than ever. Gavin had the impression that they had arrived too early – as they usually did. Mrs Lamb was so anxious that they should leave on time that they ended up by leaving long before
it.

‘Polishing your car, I see.’ Mr Lamb was not noted for the originality of his conversation.

‘That’s right . . . Stephen, say hullo to Fa-fa and Gran.’

‘Hullo, Fa-fa. Hullo, Gran.’ But he went on polishing.

‘Stephen!’

He stopped polishing and presented his sweaty little face with its beaky nose and bulging forehead to Mrs Lamb. He was a complete (though smaller) replica of his father, Gavin thought.

‘Hullo, Uncle Gavin.’

‘How are
you
?’

Stephen looked at him for a moment as though he was mad, and then answered: ‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t be cheeky, Stephen,’ said Mrs Lamb, but she hardly meant it.

‘You’ll find Marge in the house,’ said Ken encouragingly. He wanted to finish off the car.

The house smelled of roast pork and Marge, in a butcher’s apron, was in the kitchen emptying the washing-up machine. Judy, also in a butcher’s apron that reached her ankles, was
rolling a small piece of grey and disheartened-looking pastry.

‘I’m making pastry,’ she said immediately. ‘I’m making pastry for afters for lunch today . . . I’m making it as hard as I can.’

‘Hullo, Mum. Dad. Gavin. You’re looking smart.’ Marge straightened up from the machine, with a wire tray full of cutlery, to kiss her parents. She wore her hair in a pony-tail
like her daughter. Then she gave Gavin a little hug.

‘I’ll put those away for you,’ said Mrs Lamb who had taken off her outdoor coat in a twinkling.

‘No, Mum, you go into the lounge; there’s a nice fire and Ken’s put the sherry ready. And there’s a bottle of Bass for you, Dad.’

‘Mustn’t keep
that
waiting.’

‘Can I put lemon curd on it?’

‘I told you – it’s all gone. You’ll have to use the strawberry jam.’

‘No, I can’t! I can’t ever use that! You know what Stephen said!’

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it.’ Marge was hunting in the cupboard and now produced a pot of jam. ‘There you are.’

‘Accident jam! It’s made of people. I can’t possibly use it!’

‘No, Judy, that’s not a nice thing to say!’ Mrs Lamb’s reproofs were diluted by her doting, and her grandchildren never took them seriously.

‘There’s jam all over the road after a bad accident. That’s what he said. He said he’d seen it! He said— ’

‘Will you have marmalade then?’ Another pot was proffered.

‘Don’t like hot marmalade. How do they scrape it up, Mum? Off of the road, how do they?’

‘Off the, Judy – not off
of
.’

‘Fa-fa says off of. Sometimes he says eff off to be quicker.’

‘That’s enough, now.’

Mrs Lamb, who had met Marge’s eye, added: ‘Little girls don’t use the same language as men.’

‘Course they
do
or they couldn’t
talk
. Mum, could I have ketchup in it?’

‘Don’t be silly, Judy. You’ll use this nice jam, and if you don’t get it in the oven quickly, it won’t be done for lunch.’

Judy’s brilliant pink and beaky little face (
she
was like her father too) went scarlet. ‘You said if Stephen was allowed to wash the car,
I
could cook with you. You
said
it!’

Marge, who had spread the jam in the middle of the grey pastry and was now rolling it up, said: ‘And, next week, Stephen will be doing the cooking, and you shall clean the car with Dad.
Now wash your hands and take Uncle Gavin into the lounge for a drink.’

Gavin, who had been leaning mindlessly against the fridge during the pastry dialogue, came to with a start. He had been, as people who dislike abstraction would have said, ‘miles
away’. Actually it was not very many miles or even hours. He realized that he had been wondering about Joan. Presumably alone in that huge flat littered with all the ashtrays and chicken
bones and wilting flowers – or perhaps the Filipinos cleared everything up overnight? Then he had discovered that he was wondering whether it would be more lonely to wake up amid the refuse
of a party, or somewhere scoured clean of any signs of one. But probably if you were lonely you regarded your scene – whatever it was – as merely ironical emphasis: tidiness would mock
you, wreckage would underline it. She must be very lonely, or she wouldn’t have talked to him – of all people – like that. If the thought didn’t make him feel so frightened,
he would like to have seen her again.

‘Gav
in
!’

‘All right, Mum.’ He followed her obediently into the lounge, where his father was standing in front of one of the picture windows with a glass of beer, staring wistfully at the
blank television screen. These Sunday lunches oft en meant that he missed the football. ‘Here we are then,’ he said with an heroic attempt at sociability.

‘Like a drink, Mum?’

Mrs Lamb parked her glossy best handbag on the glass-topped coffee table and looked proudly at the cocktail cabinet.

‘A very small ver
mooth
,’ she said, as usual. Gavin smiled to himself as he poured his mother’s drink, not forgetting the maraschino cherry from the Heinz jar and the
wooden stick with which to spear it. One of Mrs Lamb’s greatest pleasures in life was these regular encounters with her daughter’s luxurious and elegant way of going on. A drinks
cabinet, drinks before meals in small glasses, was to her living proof of her Marge having bettered herself; having, as her mother would most innocently have put it, taken advantage of her
advantages; that who had given her, but Mrs Lamb?

‘Here you are, Mum.’

‘I’ll have a cigarette with it.’ She settled on to the hairy, tweed-covered settee, crossed her sharp little ankles and opened her handbag.

There were sounds of altercation in the kitchen followed by the fleeting sight of Judy running stampingly upstairs. Mr Lamb took his pipe out of his mouth and said, ‘Temper.’

‘None of your business,’ retorted Mrs Lamb sharply, so he put his pipe back in his mouth.

Marge came in: she still wore her butcher’s apron over what Gavin recognized as her Sunday winter dress – cream-coloured jersey with a cowl neck . . . ‘Everybody got
drinks?’ she asked. ‘Gav – what about you?’

‘Let me do you first.’

‘I’ll have a sherry. She’s lost her plate: she will take it out for meals, and then she never knows where she’s put it . . . Whatever’s happened to Stephen and Ken?
They’ve been out with that car for hours.’

She was restless, like her mother, but in a more sophisticated manner. Gavin saw her eyes run over the room to make sure nothing was out of place, but on the other hand there were things in it
that
could
be; the Sunday papers neatly ranged on the table by the other picture window – as they might be in a dentist’s waiting room; her sewing, which hung in a Greek bag
from the arm of her rocking chair; the plant-watering can by the Magicoal in the fireplace. She took the drink Gavin proffered and sat on the arm of the settee the other end from her mother. She
had good legs and always wore rather daring stockings – webbed, or striped, or dotted – today they were sheer and dark brown. ‘We can’t have lunch yet,’ she said,
‘we’re waiting for Muriel.’ She avoided Gavin’s eye as she said this.