Leather Wings (2 page)

On ‘Coronation Street’ Deirdre mouths fury at her teenage daughter, Audrey Roberts twists her face in silent comment. How would Esther appear to television viewers? How would they judge her from the safety of their living-rooms?

“Bed-time, Jania. No. Switch it off, Rex. Rex?” She notices Rex has gone to sleep. His top plate has slipped down so that
he has developed a horse’s mouth, and his breath whistles raggedly now that the TV sound is turned off.

Jania giggles.

In the little girl’s bedroom, Esther has to step carefully so as not to walk on the toy metropolis laid out between door and wardrobe, expanding daily. It was Esther’s fault in a way because it was she who gave Jania the chipped china teapot in the shape of a house with roof and chimney, which became the first dwelling in the village. The rest of it is a shanty town, cardboard city; the troll dolls, standing on sentry duty between egg carton cottages and Weetbix packet villas, are in Esther’s mind beggars, winos, whereas to Jania they are Mummies and Daddies, solid citizens.

“You knocked over Mr Debenham,” Jania accuses. “Now I’ll have to put him in the hospital.”

“Sorry. Where’s the hospital?”

“I’ll have to make one.” Esther handles the doll, a leather-jacketed red-head troll. “He looks okay to me.”

“It’s inside. He’s broken something inside him. I can fix it.”

“Oh, good.” Esther thanks God for fantasy. She reminds herself that Jania is missing her father, that arrogant moustached man whom poor Prue loved and whom Jania resembles. She thinks of Prue at this age and puts her lips to the child’s soft hair. Her own mother was usually too occupied to kiss her goodnight, but she had always made an important ritual of it with Prue.

“Sleep tight,” she commands. “No getting out of bed.”

“You shouted,” Jania says.

“Did I? When?”

“At quarter past four.”

“Pardon?” She is startled by this accuracy.

“That’s why I ran away.”

“I don’t remember shouting. What had you done?” She ransacks her memory without result.

“Don’t matter. You got me back.”

“I’m sorry if I shouted. Sometimes people do shout but they don’t mean anything by it. People get angry, it doesn’t mean they want to hurt you.”

“You said at dinner they do. Some people do hurt you. Villains.”

“I’m not a villain, Jania, I’m your grandmother.”

Jania gazes up at her, puts up a small hot hand and passes it over the woman’s face thoughtfully, like a blind person.

“What are you doing?”

“Just seeing if you’re a fake. What’s my favourite pudding?”

“Lemon sago.”

“That’s right. Okay, you can go. Night night.” She turns her face into the pillow with a small sigh.

Esther picks her way carefully down the main street of Jania’s city towards canned TV laughter in the lounge — too loud — Rex must be going deaf, on top of everything else. He is sitting there wide awake now with the remote control in his hand, like a gun, ready to shoot. Esther is not disarmed.

E
STHER ENTERTAINS THE
Rawleigh’s man in the kitchen. It had been Rex who answered the door as Esther was out the back, changing from her office shoes, but it is Esther now who handles the samples, matching them against the price list. She approves of Rawleigh’s, her mother swore by Rawleigh’s preparations right up until she died. In the Home she kept herrings in an old Rawleigh’s tin, Esther recalls now.

The man glances from time to time at Rex, who frowns into a newspaper, and turns back quickly to the woman and the little girl hugging a stained velvet cushion.

“What’s your name then? Ermyntrude? Goldilocks?”

Jania laughs.

“Don’t you have a name then? Mummy?” He addresses Esther.

“She’s my granddaughter. Jania. Say thank you, Jania.”

The man has produced a tiny pale-yellow rubber ball.

“Do you like it? It — what it does — well, it — it glows in the dark. You can take it to bed with you and it won’t get lost under the covers. It’ll call out to you: Here I am! Come and bounce me! That — that’s what it says.”

Jania puts down the cushion and holds on to the little rubber ball, squeezing and staring down at it in her hand.

“It feels funny.” She bounces it and loses it temporarily under the table.

— yes, it’s a very good product, there’s been a rush on it. It shouldn’t be much of a delay, a week or so. I’ll get the other stuff to you toot sweet.”

“You make a living out of this game, do you?” Rex asks. Is it scepticism or envy on his face? Is he thinking of taking up a similar occupation himself perhaps, selling small household supplies?

“I — yes, I do all right.”

The two men regard each other warily, like two dogs in a street. The conversation stops, jammed. The Rawleigh’s man looks half fearful of the older man and is the first to drop his gaze.

“Don’t bounce it near the stove,” Esther warns Jania over her shoulder, showing the salesman to the door. She smiles at him warmly in case he has felt the chill coming off Rex. Rex is in a bad mood today and letting the household know it. She doesn’t believe Rawleigh’s salesmen can be having an easier time of it than all these small businesses who are struggling to pay their rents. Some of their creams and cough sweets and essences are as good as you’ll get anywhere, but how many housewives do their shopping from home these days? And she feels for anyone with a speech impediment. She has reason to, although no one would guess Esther had ever had a problem of that kind, not now.

“She’ll break a few hearts, your wee daughter.”

“Granddaughter.”

“Oh, yes.” He laughs. “Grannies get younger every day if you ask me. I’m a — yes I’m a family man myself. She staying for the holidays, is she?”

“A bit longer than that actually.”

“Well, I don’t suppose you’re complaining. Did I leave — did I leave the receipt with you? That’s right. Yes.”

When he has gone Esther returns to reproach Rex for what has seemed like rudeness. Rudeness to door salesmen is on a par with rudeness to taxi drivers, waiters, the next best thing to racism. Unless, of course, you have a valid reason for complaint: bad service, shoddy goods. Esther can wave her hands about and raise her voice with the best of them when she knows she’s got a case.

Rex is outside in the garden, wielding secateurs at the fuchsia bush. He has dropped the newspaper untidily so that it forms a collapsed tent on the kitchen tiles. Considering it is Rex who is number one house cleaner since his retirement, he does very little to make his job easier. The balance has shifted a little since Jania entered the household and Esther shortened her work hours voluntarily. Rex had told her not to bother, he was there to mind the child all hours of the day, but Esther had felt it right that she be there at “home time”. She had put the same restrictions on herself for Prue, despising latch-key parents, and having said so too often to let herself become one of them. When her mother was away, “resting”, she had had to let herself into a silent house after school.

She hadn’t known Rex would resent her helpful presence at half past three; it was as if she threatened his authority in the house. He didn’t like her in his kitchen, turning down the gas under his vegetables when he forgot, clearing things off the table and setting up drawing utensils for Jania. It was ridiculous. She would have welcomed help in a similar situation, but instead he stages these occasional rebellions, leaving his mess on the benchtop deliberately, failing to put dishes in the machine. It depends on what sort of mood he is in, perhaps if his heart is worrying him, twingeing. He will never tell her unless it is a really bad pain. Then he uses his puffer. And what if he should have an attack while alone in the house with Jania? It is Esther’s duty to be there.

Jania is in the passageway, bouncing her glow-in-the-dark ball, with curtains drawn. When Esther steps into the darkness the small round glow zigzags up and down in front of her face.

“It works!”

Esther switches on the light. “Don’t you go knocking over my pot plants!”

“It feels funny. Like chewing gum. Feel.” She presses the ball into Esther’s palm. “It isn’t sticky though. See?”

Esther pulls a face of revulsion, making Jania laugh. “If he gives one of these to every little girl he must be doing all right for himself. Play with it in your room, all right?”

“No.”

“What do you mean — no? You’ll do as I say!” Esther is shocked over again by her grandchild’s defiance. She doesn’t remember Prue, the child’s mother, being so cheeky — can she have forgotten?

“I can’t play with it in there. It would be like a bomb. I’d have to build up my city again if there was a bomb. I want to play in here.” She stares at Esther, challenging her to understand, to be an understanding grandmother. Why can’t Esther keep her temper and understand? They confront each other wielding frowns for weapons.

“Oh — do what you like, just be careful, that’s all.” She opens the side door and calls out to Rex: “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right. You don’t have to shout.” He glances up at the nextdoor windows.

“What’s happening about dinner then?”

“I’ll be in in a sec.” He lunges with his clippers and lops off a large ragged branch, kicking it with unnecessary force against the fence. She isn’t the only bad tempered one in the house.

“Why were you so ratty with the Rawleigh’s man?” she demands.

“Was I? No. I didn’t like him, did you? Uriah Heep. Smarmy.”

“He has to be nice, he’s a salesman. Jania’s very taken with that little ball.”

“Huh.”

“What’s that mean? I thought it was nice of him. The man obviously likes kids; he has kids of his own. He said.”

“I’m surprised to hear it.”

“Why?”

“Thought he’d be queer — that purple sweater.”

“Well, you got that wrong. Anyway I seem to remember you had a jersey just like it a few years back.”

“Nothing like it. Purple, but not like that.”

“I expect his wife knitted it for him. I don’t know, you never stop criticising people these days — we should get out more often. We don’t see enough people.”

“You do. You mean I don’t see people.”

“Well, you don’t.” She sighs. “Why do you always do that?
Bitch about something, then when I agree with you later on it’s all my fault. You were complaining only the other day the neighbours weren’t friendly.”

“All right, I admit it, I’m a pathetic old man.”

“If you say so.”

It is particularly since Rex’s illness that the guilt has become boringly noticeable and not just because he is at home all day, inconveniently occupying the house. Rex is a sad man and his sadness makes Esther sad — when it doesn’t make her crazy. She would hate to hurt Rex.

Just as there is no excuse for her attitude to Jania, there is no excuse either for her lack of love towards poor old Rex whom she married in love — she must have — thirty-six years ago, and who has committed no sin other than to have grown older. Like herself. She could never tell him about her infidelity, her faithlessness. His heart might stop. On the other hand, she can’t quite bring herself to give up Donald — and stop her own heart? She is used to Donald. Who knows, he might be part of what keeps her ticking, like a clock battery. She doesn’t believe this, not really, she isn’t a dependent woman, has always been her own person; and yet she doesn’t dare find out. Would Donald notice? They don’t do it so often these days, it’s mostly the talk, but how galling to have to wonder how long it might take him to notice if she were to absent herself from their intimacy.

The talking is important. In fact, what she likes about Donald is the pleasure he takes not just in her body but in her conversation. She enjoys the way he watches her mouth while she talks. “Now,” he will say greedily, arranging her opposite him like a tray of party nibbles. He prefers to get out of the car and walk to some place where they can do this, sit face to face. “Now. Now tell me about your awful life.” And she does, translating all kinds of boring domestic misery and office gossip into sentences that make him double up with joyful humour, make her double up as well, so that her life sieves down to just this, a series of comedy sketches. With Donald (not in the office, of course, but outside it) she sees herself quite differently, under strobe lighting, coloured, turning on a
revolving set, offering angles that are only optimistic. Or mostly. She doesn’t like to disappoint him with real problems, not outside of work, and rarely does. The sex is better after a good laugh.

And he does care about her. There are things he understands about Esther that Rex would never understand. Rex is too good. For one thing Donald is sympathetic about Jania, he doesn’t criticise Esther (as Rex does) for finding the child difficult.

“You’ve been dumped on,” he said when he heard she was being dispatched to them like a parcel.

Donald isn’t good with children himself, only consenting to know his own sons properly when they were old enough to be capable of decent intellectual discussion and a game of poker. She remembers his faint puzzlement, embarrassment even, on occasions when she became passionate about Prue, her own child. When the accident happened and Prue didn’t regain consciousness, Esther and Rex had flown straight over to Canada — the natural reaction, surely. But it had seemed to puzzle Donald; it couldn’t bring Prue back, he said, reminding her of how she had never liked her son-in-law (playing back some of her funny names for him) and pointing out that the three year old might be better off without a sobbing grandmother; she had her Dad and a perfectly good hospital staff caring for her, sympathetic and sane, which for the time being Esther was not. When Esther returned from this sad trip, Donald had avoided being on his own with her for weeks, unsure of how to behave in the face of grief. Yes, Donald isn’t without his failings, but on the plus side is his cheerful wickedness, his sense of humour, qualities missing in Rex. Rex’s heart, the doctor has explained to her. A bad heart is bad for the humour, can make a man morose. Rex has missed the message in his
Readers Digest
— “Laughter is the Best Medicine” — which he reads regularly and seriously enough.