Narrow Minds (4 page)

As we walked through the gate, the chattering group dropped into silence and turned to stare. Determined to be sociable I nodded to them and chirped a cheery, ‘Good Morning.' There was no change of expression but as one they turned away, returning to the conversation they had been having before I arrived.

Each group of women I passed seemed to use their conversations as a barrier to keep the ‘off-comers' away, I chided myself that my paranoia was getting out of hand. Ignoring them all, I marched, with Sam, through the pre-school crowd and went to find his teacher. I sincerely hoped the kids were friendlier than their parents.

Back at the house it seemed very quiet and even larger than I feared. I wandered about, vaguely tidying, determined not to think or worry about the kids. Finally I settled down at the computer desperate to find a new boat, the quicker I found one, the quicker they could go back to their old schools and all would be well. It didn't surprise me when, after two solid hours of searching, I came up with no options at all.

When I went to pick the kids up that evening I was relieved that both seemed to have had a good day, Charlie, as she always does, had immediately made friends with a mixed group of young teenagers. She thought it unbelievably funny that they had trouble understanding her accent and had spent most of the day trying to convince them that she wasn't actually Canadian.

Back at the Primary School, I once again ran the gauntlet of the staring, silent mothers ignoring them as they paused in their muttered conversations to throw quick glances and snide looks my way. It wasn't my imagination, I was definitely getting the silent treatment. I waited, alone, for Sam to come out. Finally he arrived with another small boy in tow.

‘Hi, Mum,' he shouted breathlessly, ‘this is Aaron, can he come and play?'

I groaned silently to myself, I really didn't want to have to approach any of the women with the pony-tail face-lifts and ask if her son could come and play, I desperately tried to think of an excuse but before I could cudgel my cold brain into action Aaron rushed off.

‘Nan … NAN!' He shot over to an older woman, also standing alone, some distance away. ‘Can I go and play with Sam?'

I studied the small woman, she was well-dressed, not expensively, but sensibly for the sub-zero weather conditions. Strands of grey hair had escaped from under her warm blue hat and were blowing about her face; she had to flick them away as they crept behind her glasses. Aaron grabbed her heavily gloved hand and towed her over to us.

‘Hello,' she said and smiled at me, ‘I'm Mickey.'

Oh, that London accent, I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Hi, I'm Marie.' I hesitated, aware that we were getting stares from the mothers around us. ‘Sam and Aaron would like to play.' I paused and let the question hang.

‘Oh, that would be lovely.' Mickey laughed and taking off one of her sheepskin gloves she fumbled about in the pocket of her heavy blue and red ski jacket. ‘It's nice that Aaron's got a friend.'

Finally finding a piece of paper and a pen in her pocket, Mickey wrote down her telephone number and we arranged that Aaron would come after school that Friday and left it at that. I found myself quite looking forward to it, here was a woman who could give me some much-needed answers.

The Friday visit went pretty much as expected, I picked both of them up from school and the two small boys ran about the house, irritated Charlie, traumatised her rats (she said), bickered, fought, played computer games, argued about who won and generally enjoyed themselves hugely. By the time Mickey arrived they had decided that they were firm friends. Mickey seemed massively relieved and accepted a coffee.

‘Is it my imagination,' I said, handing her a biscuit, ‘or am I being shunned by the locals?'

Mickey looked surprised. ‘Well, you've only just arrived.'

I dunked a Hobnob into my coffee. ‘So?'

She laughed. ‘Marie, I've been up here five years and they still don't talk to me.'

‘Really?' She must be joking, please let her be joking.

‘Yep. I have a couple of people I talk to at school but really it is only one or two.' She smiled at me.

Oh great, I totted up in my head how many years Sam had left at primary school … three, three more years. I sighed, tomorrow I really needed to find a new boat, the women at Sam's old school were paragons of welcoming virtue compared to this lot.

Another four weeks meandered by and little by little Charlie and Sam settled into their new schools, making friends and generally enjoying life. Geoff was still having fun with his new job and as Christmas approached I began to worry that we were going to be stuck here for ever.

Every day I checked for new boats and fretted when each one I found was turned down for some reason or another by Geoff. When I mentioned that I had found one, the kids would groan and state emphatically that there was no way they were moving back onto a boat. They liked life here, they liked the huge television, the really fast internet connection, having a huge bedroom and a big bath was something they'd never been able to enjoy on our old boat. I began to realise with a sinking feeling that it was only me that was still yearning for the past.

Christmas was quite a rowdy affair. Our oldest, Amelia, and her boyfriend Huw arrived on Christmas Eve with presents and washing. I noticed that they no longer seemed to be ‘love's young dream'. Although there were lots of comments and jokes about getting married, Amelia seemed to snap at Huw every time she spoke to him. He didn't bother to talk to her at all and just spent the time moaning about her to anyone that would listen. I mentioned to Geoff that I wouldn't really want to bet on another year for them.

Amelia has a knack for finding the present that causes Chaos and Disorder to state that she is the best sister in the world and me to threaten her with dismemberment. Last year, for Sam, it had been drumsticks that made drum sounds when you tapped them on anything, this year it was a computer game: World of Warcraft. For some time now, Charlie and Sam had been asking for this but it was an online game that had a monthly fee. We certainly hadn't had the bandwidth to play it on the boat but here it was possible and Amelia had purchased the disk, one month's subscription, and had presented it as a fait accompli before I could scream my objections.

Huw spent a couple of hours on the computer with Geoff, setting it up and explaining how it all worked. My heart sank as I saw Geoff's eyes light up, he really is still a student at heart. He had spent most of his university years playing Dragons and Dungeons and each Saturday had run about in the woods with a rubber sword doing something called LARP. This was the best game in the world to him, a complete land populated by real people from all over the world playing out their fantasies of being an elf or an evil wheelbarrow, or something similar.

However, when it was all working he handed the computer over to the kids and let them enter this massive fantasy world, become mad characters and go off on bizarre quests. It was sure to become an instant hit and I was determined that time limits should be set from the word go. My heart sank as once again I knew I was going to have to be the demon that said ‘no'.

In an attempt to keep Sam in bed beyond four o'clock on Christmas morning, I had decreed that everybody was to have a stocking and that included me! So at three o'clock I was creeping around putting stockings at the end of everyone's bed, and I was looking forward to the next morning, hoping that Geoff would have purchased me a stocking full of ‘stuff'. He had been dropping heavy hints for about a fortnight that I was going to love my ‘unusual' gifts and I had to admit to being a little excited.

After the stocking delivery I snuggled back into bed and thought about the previous Christmas, we had been so broke but we'd still had a good time and I dropped back to sleep with happy memories of
Happy Go Lucky
resplendently decked out in cheap Christmas lights that had turned the surrounding mist into an ever changing coloured haze.

Sam managed six o'clock this year and, on awaking to a loud set of giggles that emanated from his room, I rolled over with a hopeful smile at my husband. He gave me a quick kiss then, reaching under the bed, he pulled out a multi-coloured stocking bulging with exciting lumps and bumps, I really couldn't resist a juvenile squeal.

‘Now, then,' Geoff said, holding the stocking out of the reach of my grasping hands, ‘have you been a good little girl?'

I laughed and put on a terrible lisp, ‘Oh, yeth Thanta, I've been ever tho good, I haven't pulled any of my friendth pigtails, I haven't painted any petth pink and I haven't put gravy into your wellieth.' I batted my eyelashes at him. ‘Ever tho, ever tho, good.'

Geoff laughed and handed the stocking to me. Having finally got it in my hands I reached over and pulled his stocking from where I had hidden it in the bedside cabinet. I dumped it unceremoniously on his lap causing a slight wince. ‘Happy Christmas, you open yours first, I want to savour mine.'

His first and best stocking present was a new watch, completely waterproof, it had all sorts of functions and was very swish. The previous year I had managed to throw him overboard while trying to get a new bath on to the boat. His old watch never actually stopped working but there was a huge blob of condensation across the glass that we never got rid of, I really felt I owed him a new one.

It took him about twenty minutes to open all his presents (I did feel that he was being deliberately slow) apart from the new watch there were CDs, books, a new computer game, socks, a tangerine and some nuts (just to keep it traditional). His big present, a mega tester, was downstairs under the tree. I had no idea what it did, something electrical but it had lights and made pinging noises and had had to be sort of tuned or something so it had come with a technical certificate of calibration, it looked ever so professional. I knew he had been coveting one of these things for months so I was definitely going to get brownie points.

Finally getting to open my first present I was a little disappointed to note that the box, once the wrapping was off, came from a well-known but not very exclusive jewellery shop. I didn't really wear jewellery and had a horrible vision of a huge pair of cheap gold earrings. I tentatively opened the box and winced when Geoff let out a roar of laughter. It was a lump of coal.

‘I thought you said you'd been good?' Geoff guffawed.

I burst out laughing. ‘Oh, very funny, maybe I haven't been as good as I thought.'

I picked up the next present, it was a small box of chocolates from Hotel Chocolat, very nice, just the thing to eat before breakfast and certainly the thing to eat before the kids saw them. I opened the box and frowned. Geoff had carefully taken out all the chocolates and replaced them with little pieces of coal. I smiled with a bit of an effort as I listened to my terribly happy husband snigger and giggle.

I reached for the next present. One was funny, two was amusing, surely he wouldn't push his luck that far and go for three would he? Oh surely not.

Oh yes he would, and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth. By the time I reached the last three lumps at the bottom of the stocking I had completely lost my sense of humour. Geoff wasn't laughing any more either; obviously the look on my face had told him that this had gone well beyond a joke.

I emptied the last of the ‘presents' out onto the bed and gave him a hard stare. ‘Should I even bother opening them?'

He gave me a sickly smile and shook his head. ‘I thought it would be funny.' He ran a hand over his head and gave me a rueful look. ‘You know? Bad girl gets a stocking full of coal.' He sighed. 'The girls at the office said you would find one or two funny but any more than that and I was going to find myself spending Christmas in the car while wearing my turkey dinner.'

‘You should have taken their advice.' I pursed my lips at him. ‘You have once chance and about thirty seconds to make it up to me.'

Geoff looked horrified and scrabbled about under the bed coming up with a little plastic bag.

‘What's that?' I weighed the bag cautiously in my hand.

‘It's the chocolates out of that box, I saved them.' He ripped open the little plastic bag and grabbing one popped it into my mouth, then grinned hopefully at me and said, ‘Your real present's downstairs.'

I couldn't be angry at him, he looked so forlorn. ‘Exactly how long did it take you to wrap up all this coal?' I pointed to the pile of coal resting in my lap, carelessly dropping black dust all over our blue chequered duvet.

‘About three hours.' He shook his head. ‘It seemed like such a good idea at the time.'

The thunder of feet interrupted us. Sam burst into the bedroom waving a DVD. ‘Look, look I got the new SpongeBob film, can we go and watch it?'

Charlie, following hot on the heels of her brother, sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘Thanks for the pressies.' She grinned. ‘I especially liked the tiny bottle of Irish Cream.'

‘Hmmm,' I sighed, ‘I take it that's already gone, has it?'

She nodded. ‘And the chocolates, and the orange,' she paused, ‘in fact I feel a bit sick.' She frowned as she caught sight of the bed covered in coal. ‘What's that?'

‘Your mother hasn't been very good this year,' Geoff muttered, obviously determined to keep the joke going.

Charlie gaped at the bed. ‘Oh, you didn't …?' she stepped around me and picked up one of the unopened presents. ‘Not every one … surely.'

I scowled as Sam finally caught on to the joke and howled with laughter (obviously the same puerile jokes tickle both father and son).

Geoff, faced with frowns from both me and Charlie shook his head. ‘Yes, I know, it was a bad idea.' He climbed out of bed and reached for his jeans. ‘Let's go and find Mum a real present shall we?' He scuttled out of the room with Sam following hot on his heels.