Ghosts in the Morning (13 page)

‘
Calm down, Graham, son, calm down. W
ell, in the words of the late, great Marvin Gaye,
I heard it through the grapevine
,’ Matt s
ung the phrase
, and
continued to
hum the
tune
.

‘Found it!’ Debbie screeched. ‘Oh, what a silly wally I am
!
it was in my coat pocket
all along
.’
She giggled again and t
hen she started to join in with the tune, but she was singing the words to the song
rather than humming
, and then Katherine and Lindy joined in, and soon they were all singing the song
at the tops of their drunken slurry voices,
Graham too.

The
guests
left still singing
as they walked down the drive towards their taxi
, and the door slammed on its knackered hinges, and I went straight to bed.

Chapter
8

‘
Andy, it’s me. What are you doing tonight?
’

‘I, um, I , um, hi Anita, I um, I don’t know, why, what –’ I glanced at the bedside clock, rubbing my eyes. I must have overslept, I was
usually awake early, perhaps a little too much wine...

‘Good, so you’ve nothing planned. Right, we’re going out.’

‘What, I, well, no I hadn’t planned to, look I’m just awake, I’m
-
’

‘I’ve got a taxi booked for seven, so I’ll pick you up on the way at about quarter past.’

‘What?
On the way...
I mean, on the way to where?’

‘To town, Andy, obviously. You know, we mentioned it at lunch the other day, said we’d have a night out together. It’ll do you good.’

‘But, but – ’

‘Righto, must dash, I’ve got to pop in to town and get my hair done, maybe get a new frock. I’ll see you later, make sure you get yourself tarted up, Andy, us girls are on the pull
tonight
. Well, I am, anyway,’ Anita laughed, then the phone went dead.

In the bathroom mirror I frowned at the face staring back at me. I looked old.
I f
elt old. The puffy pillows beneath my eyes were ringed with thick, grey circles of smudge. I looked like a ghost
, looked like I was from the grave. Ghosts in the morning
; that’s what I used to call the working mothers that I saw every morning when my boys were young
and I was dropping them off at nursery
. The mothers
that had
the children
of two and three years-old - the
tantrum years
. Y
ou could see the stress, the lack of sleep,
the pressure of keeping a marriage together,
etched into the faces
of those mothers
as they fought to keep their kids calm
while they waved goodbye. Y
ou could almost hear their
thoughts –
‘
please God, please don’t let him scream now, please, I have to get to work’ –
as they dashed back to their cars to fight their way through the traffic to their jobs. They would smile and wave to their little ones, desperate to keep the facade, desperate to display to the world that everything was fine, but the surface w
as thin, translucent. They were functioning on a physical level only, going through the motions, but they were too tired, too numb
. Now they were just shadows of the bright young things they used to be
. Ghost
s
.

I
didn’t have to rush off from the nursery,
I
didn’t have to
rush off
to a job. Graham’s wage was enough
, kept us comfortable. Sure, t
he kids were still stressful
, but I had the luxury of time, I could stay that little bit longer to reassure them if they were upset. As the kids got older, and the nursery journey morphed into the
school run, you could see the transformation
in the mothers. Older now, yes, but they had
changed, they
looked less
tired
now. N
ow
,
they were just busy. Impatient.
I saw their children doing everything they could to distance themselves from
their mothers
, trying to look cool in front of their mates,
like they weren’t bothered,
and I wanted to shake them, to tell them how lucky they were that their Mums were picking them up.

I
never had that. Primary school was a five minute walk from home, and
Mum was happy for me to do this on my own ever since I could remember.
W
hen it came to secondary school, I was on the bus
, Mum always said that she couldn’t understand the point of kids being taken to school by their parents –
‘these kids are so pampered these days, no wonder the little buggers don’t know how to look after themselves’.
But w
hen I went to the home, it was worse.
Most of the girls in the home went to the school that was
nearby, just
a short walk away
. Not me, though;
Social Services
in their infinite wisdom
felt that it would be more disruptive for me to change schools. My school was
definitely
too far away to walk
to
,
but the problem was that Jersey’s patchy school bus service didn’t cover the area near the home.

So
, each morning,
I was dropped off
outside school
in the minibus that belonged to the care home. It had the name of the home emblazoned down each side of the minibus.
The caretaker, Mick,
would drive me right to the school gate, leering at me with his good eye. I often wondered
how he was
allowed to drive
considering he had
a glass eye, but nobody ever said anything
, and he never crashed
.
When we pulled up, I
used to try and sneak out of the minibus,
and then walk away to distance myself from it, pretend I had just walked up to the gate,
but after a while I gave up. All of my classmates knew where I lived, I heard the names they called me, the whispers
about the care-home girl. S
ometimes they didn’t
even
bother whispering, sometimes they
just
shouted
names
at me
, and sometimes they hit me. Eventually,
with a little guidance from Anita, I le
arned to hit back.

I sat on the toilet and sighed at Anita’s assumption that I would go out with her tonight. Then I saw the spot of blood in the toilet. Great, my period had started too, no wonder I was feeling a little miserable. Perhaps I should go out with Anita, try and cheer myself up...or maybe I could just sit on the sofa, cuddle a bottle of wine and watch whatever talent show was on.

In the kitchen I rubbed my eyes as the strong coffee brought me back to life.  I drummed my fingers absent-mindedly on the table. I missed cigarettes.
I h
adn’t smoked
for
years, but I still
felt that familiar craving whenever I had a cup of coffee
.
Felt it too w
ith wine,
if I were honest
. Perhaps I should start smoking again, perhaps it would help keep my weight down, but I knew if I started again I would never stop, and I didn’t want to be a smoker, I didn’t want to be beholden to those little sticks again
, and I didn’t much like the smell of stale smoke on clothes these days
.

‘What the hell, maybe I will go out with Anita tonight,’ I said to myself, out loud. I spoke to myself out loud
quite often
these days, it seemed.
‘Yes, fuck it, I will
go out!’ I shouted at the empty kitchen.

It felt good to roar.
I was still angry about the previ
ous night’s dinner party. I was still angry with Graham, too, and I was glad he was
out, I didn’t want to see his
stupid,
doleful face right then
. He had gone to the gym
, probably, he did that sometimes after a heavy night’s drinking.
As if he could undo the damage by jogging on a treadmill for sixty minutes. It never did any good, never made any difference, his pot belly never shrank
. I
n fact he was probably putting himself more at risk of a heart attack. You saw it all the time - fat, middle-
aged
men popping their clogs
at the gym or
o
n the squash court because they still thought they had “
it
”, still thought they were eighteen, their little brains in denial
at
the physical realit
ies facing them in the mirror each day
.

‘Who were you shouting at?’ Graham was stood there, sweat circles under his arms and under his man boobs.

‘Er, no-one.’ I hadn’t heard him come in. I stared at his face. ‘What’s that on your lip?’

He touched the thin strip of downy hair on his top lip.
‘That, um, it
’
s a moustache. Well, the beginnings of one, anyway. It’s for Movember, a load of us guys
at work
are doing it
this year
. You know, Movember, it’s a
charity event, it’s to raise awareness
of prostrate cancer
– ’

‘I’ve heard of it, Graham,
I know what it is,
I’m not stupid,’ I snapped.
‘And it’s prostate cancer, not
prostrate
,’ I added, coldly.

‘Well, I’m just saying
, there’s no need to bite my bloody head off
– ’
             

I turned my back and poured some more coffee. Movember – that meant there would be men all over the place growing moustaches, all thinking that it was somehow funny, that looking stupid was some sort of post-modernist ironic joke, whatever that meant.

‘I hate moustaches,’ I muttered but Graham had already headed upstairs for a shower.
             

***

‘I have to be honest, I wasn’t sure if you were going to come tonight, Andy.’
Anita’s voice was slightly slurred, this
being the
third bar we’d been to.

‘Why, what do you mean?’

‘I just know how it is with some of my married friends
. You know,
not easy to get a night out,
what with all the married
commitments
, child commitments
and all that.’

‘When have I ever let you down, Anita?’

‘I wasn’t saying that, Andy, don’t be so touchy.
Blimey, y
ou really
have
changed, haven’t you
?
You seem
a lot more
spikey
than your old self.
’

‘I’m sorry, Anita, I didn’t mean to snap at you, I just – ’

‘Hey, Andy,
calm down, don’t worry.
I’ve told you before,
you don’t need to
apologise to me. I like this new Andy,
I really do, it was about time
you
stuck up for yourself a bit more, it’s good that you see
m to have grown
a pair of
balls. Metaphorically speaking, of course.’ Anita nodded towards the bar
where a tall, blond guy in a well-cut suit was sipping a pint.
‘
I tell you what though,
I
certainly
wouldn’t mind getting a hold of
his balls.’ She laughed
,
a deep, throaty chuckle
booming across the table
.

I pointed at Anita’s glass
. ‘Another
glass of
wine?’
I had to shout a little, the music in the wine bar had just been turned up a notch.

‘Yes, um, hold on, no, no.’ Anita spread her arms expansively. I noticed a hint of bingo wing wobble on her ebony-tanned arms
. Only a little, though, just the merest suggestion that age was beginning to exert its inexorable authority. Anita
was in good shape, and she had dressed well too
, sexy but not tarty
; a clingy silver frock that fell just above her knees,
hinting at the shapely thighs above.
The dress
had
tasteful black stripes accentuating the curves of her waist,
and
plung
ed
invitingly to her admirably pert cleavage. My
designer
dress -
deep burgundy red,
extra
large size – clung in all the wrong places. I felt overdressed,
it seemed
like I’d made too much effort
, I hadn’t known what to wear
. I was out of touch, I didn’t go out much to pubs, wine bars or clubs these days. I
wanted to be small underneath the gaudy wine bar lights, but I
felt like a hippo with make-up.