Not What They Were Expecting (8 page)

‘Good work, darling,’ she mumbled into her pillow, ‘if you hadn’t knocked over the plants, I’d have been worried you were a rapist.’

‘Thanks. It was umbrellas.’

‘Your knees are freezing.’

‘You’ll help me warm up,’ he said softly into her hair, snuggling into her back. A low guttural growl emerged as he slid his arm over her side and his hand found a home on her breast.

‘How was Kam?’

‘Good, good. Seething slightly about everything as usual.’

‘Did you tell him?’

‘Yep.’

‘Was he excited?’

‘Oh y’know, he squealed, we hugged, we both cried. Guy stuff. How was your evening?’

‘Sophie.’

‘You tell her?’

‘Yep.’

‘Excited?’

‘Same reaction as Kam. Although she did also mention I’m stuck with you now I’ve ruined myself for other men.’

‘I did that to you a long time ago,’ he said, squashing his groin in closer to her bum.

‘Easy, tiger,’ she said. She knew that he knew that any time spent talking to Sophie was likely to get her a little…revved up. But she had just been in a lovely cosy snooze when he’d woken her with the constant tip-tapping of his key against the edges of the lock when he was trying unsuccessfully to hit the target to get the door open. That doesn’t bode well, she smiled to herself, as she backed further into him, her foot sneaking between his calves.

‘Everything all right in there?’ he asked as his hand trailed down from her breast, and over her belly. He wasn’t going to mention it at a time like this, but he was pretty sure Bompalomp was making his presence felt now on her lower half as well as on the top.

‘All good. Ben & Jerry’s with crumbled ginger nuts on top makes us both happy.’

‘You seem pretty awake now,’ he said, his hand travelling further down towards her thigh, ‘and sexily un-nauseous’.

‘What’s that?’ she asked as an insistent nudging presence reached her lower back.

‘Well, you know. I’m awake, you’re half-conscious, it’s been a while.’

‘You’re not too…?’

‘Worried about waking up Bomp? I was being silly. The blighter’s big enough to look after itself now. Isn’t it?’

‘I was going to say pissed.’

She turned around to face him, slipping her hand into the elastic of his underpants.

‘So all it takes for you to get over being a bit squeamish is four pints and a bit of male bonding?’ she said with a smile. ‘Wish I’d known earlier.’

‘Five pints actually. And some crisps. And Maryland Chicken from outside the station.’

He leant in and they kissed. He thought that he couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a proper snog. He couldn’t understand why they’d left it so long as he manoeuvred his hand around her pajama buttons.

Then he jerked his hips slightly as she snapped the waistband of his briefs back in place.

‘Go brush your teeth first,’ she said, and smiled as he hopped out of bed and across the cold floor to the bathroom, tail wagging ahead of him.

Chapter 9

‘Gay men are being prosecuted in a way that’s almost Victorian – no, worse than that, it’s positively Thatcherite,’ said Margaret.

‘I think the point is rather it’s not gay men, it’s just men,’ Howard replied. ‘Ordinary decent men. And it’s this post-New Labour Tory party that are kowtowing to the arse-backwards political correctness, which is getting us caught up in it.’

‘Funny you should mention the word Victorian,’ said Ben. ‘Of course it was the architecture of the public lavatory system they built, with typically twee facilities that looked like traditional countryside homes, that gives us the term cottages for public toilets. This evolved into the term still used today, although the internet is making it somewhat obsolete.’.

‘Kids were flashed all the time when you were at school, Becky,’ said Howard. ‘I didn’t see it doing you any harm. You had a shriek and a giggle and ran away from the funny little men. They’d be on the comedy shows all the time, being chased around the park.’

‘Not that your father is a flasher of course, Becky. He’s not a flasher, James,’ Penny chipped in.

‘I was wearing my mac on the night mind you. Maybe that’s it, they were prejudiced against my coat!’

‘With all this emphasis on family values that this throwback Prime Minister throws about to justify his raping of the social security system, ridiculous prosecutions such as this were just waiting to happen,’ said Margaret.

‘My Burberry is a victim of society!’

‘I think I’d like to make a really powerful sculpture piece on this,’ said Margaret.

‘It’s those Lib Dems probably, bit of power and they turn into complete Nazis. See it a lot at work. Never let your secretary take on the title of Office Manager is my advice, this sort of thing happens every time.’

‘“Tea rooms” was another term used by the gay community in the United States, meaning roughly the same thing. It’s interesting that they share a similar somewhat genteel quality.’

‘Would anyone like a cup of tea? Or a sandwich?’

Rebecca and James sat leaning into each other in the middle of the overstuffed sofa in her parents’ living room, watching the grown-ups talk at them; Howard, in one of the big leather armchairs with Penny perched anxiously on the arm rest, Margaret sat across from him on the matching one, and Ben by the window gazing through the net curtains.

‘We’ve just finished dinner, Mum,’ said Rebecca.

‘A piece of cake then? A biscuit?’

‘Don’t think I could even manage that, Penny,’ said James. ‘Overdone it on the Wellington again. It was delicious.’

‘Not generally believed to be named after the warmongering duke, despite public perceptions,’ murmured Ben from the window. ‘It’s a name that really only appeared in the sixties, and was obviously embraced by the social-climbing middle classes for their dinner parties where they wouldn’t want to serve anything too “continental”.’

If James could have reached his dad to kick him in the shins, he would have done.

‘It was fabulous, Penny. A classic,’ he said instead.

‘The secret’s wrapping the beef in a pancake. I saw it on
Saturday Kitchen
.’

The room went quiet again.

‘So you’ll run an interview in the paper next week then? Respected businessman slandered in police sting,’ said Howard. ‘Hey, maybe PC sting? Police being politically correct and all that?’

‘Tory chief a victim of institutional homophobia,’ said Margaret.

‘These days I’m just an ordinary party member. But I suppose Chief’s a fair description for a headline – they do still look to me to advise on the big stuff. Although I don’t think it’s right I’m a victim…’

‘Top Tory fights prosecution persecution,’ mused Ben.

‘Hey, he’s a smart cookie that husband of yours isn’t he? Wasted on the local rag, he could get a job at the
Mail
, you know.’

‘He knows people at the
Guardian
, I keep telling him to call.’

‘He’d run rings around them at the old Grauniad. Say, Lord Beaverbrook, can I offer you a post-prandial cigar?’

‘Oh. I’ve got my own blend thank you,’ said Ben tapping the tobacco tin in his shirt pocket. ‘I prefer the lighter –’

‘What kind are they?’ Margaret interrupted.

‘Montecristos, I believe,’ said Howard.

‘Cuban?’

‘Of course!
Viva la revolución!
’

‘I’ll have one with you, Howard. Of all the forms for tobacco, cigars are the least dangerous, personally and environmentally.’

‘Is that so? I’ll get you one, rolled on the thighs of some big hairy old communist.’

‘Of course access to them is still often restricted to men in this fragile phallocentric society.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll make it a large one. You’re all right there, Penny? You wouldn’t want one of these filthy things…’

‘I’ll just get the dishwasher loaded.’

‘You know,’ said Ben, ‘the idea of rolling cigars on thighs is something of a myth but does have a basis in cultural…’

The last of the parents filed out of the room, leaving Rebecca and James alone with just the Sunday concert on Classic FM to break the silence.

‘What,’ asked James, ‘the fuck. Was that?’

They hadn’t been told his parents would be joining them for lunch. Presumably because her parents had known there was no way they would have shown up if they did, thought Rebecca. Actually, that wasn’t true, she realised. She and James would have been there early, making a concerted effort to ensure the two sets of parents had no opportunity to talk to each other about anything, especially politics after what had happened the last time.

‘Can’t quite believe Mum tried to discuss spring fashions with your mum.’

‘That was a lecture of sweatshops waiting to happen…’

‘What was that joke Dad tried to tell? Where you needed to have worked out the punchline was an anagram of botulism?’

‘I don’t know what was more painful, the silence or the polite laughing. He didn’t seem to notice, though. Naturally.’

‘And it was great being held up like a specimen. The future of humanity, right here under my jumper.’

‘And urgh! The childhood anecdotes.’

‘Actually that bit was quite funny,’ said Rebecca.

‘I didn’t see you laughing when Howard mentioned how you used to do an all-out ballet performance whenever anyone visited the house. Including the guy who was just there to read the meter.’

‘Shut it, bedwetter.’

‘The vision of you running at the poor bastard, who didn’t know he was supposed to catch you as part of the routine…’

‘Are you worried about that? Is it making you feel anxious? Would you feel better if we got a rubberised undersheet for tonight?’

‘Leave it, twinkle-toes,’ he said in his gruffest
Sweeney
voice.

‘It was a sweet story, that’s all. And now I know why you’re always so keen to keep on top of the laundry.’

Hearing about an entirely forgotten spate of bedwetting when he was six, and not really coping with a shift from living in France to Germany, had been surprising, thought James. But not as surprising as hearing Margaret and Howard rallying behind the same side of one cause. Well, near enough the same side. Margaret must have let Howard get away with declarations that ‘queers’ could do what they wanted with their private lives because she assumed he was reclaiming the term, while when she mentioned ‘your community’ Howard must have assumed she was talking about Neighbourhood Watch and the golf club, rather than a group running the gamut from TV queens to muscle Marys.

‘Your dad and my mum. There may’ve been weirder coalitions, but I can’t think of any,’ he said.

‘I don’t know what the hell he’s doing,’ Rebecca sighed. ‘I don’t think Dad even knows what politically correct means, he just uses it for anything lefties do that he disagrees with. I mean arresting people in toilets was always more of a Tory thing wasn’t it?’

‘Still, there’s always a chance it’ll break down any minute. All it needs is a casual statement on the world as it is from one of them and boom, the truce is off, back in your respective trenches.’

‘What was it last time? Dad and his “say what you like about apartheid, but…” speech?’

‘I thought it was Margaret and her “she’s not your partner she’s your indentured slave” routine,’ said James.

‘Mum…’

There was a clatter from the kitchen as an overly-full tray of dirty pans grudgingly slid into the dishwasher.

‘I should go and give her a hand…’ Rebecca said.

‘I’ll come too.’

‘You stay there, it’ll be a chance for us to have a chat. You could go and join the grown-ups.’

‘Pff, I think I’ll just sit here gently rocking for a while instead. Thanks for the thought though, Becky.’

She gave him an evil stare for using her hated family nickname.

‘I am so putting your little finger in a glass of lukewarm water while you’re asleep tonight.’

Chapter 10

As Rebecca entered the kitchen, Penny had her back to her at the sink, her shoulders heaving. Rebecca had frozen on the spot not knowing whether to go to her mum and give her a hug, or back away and leave her to her tears in private. Then she heard the splash and the clang of the roasting tin as she manoeuvred it in the water to open a new line of attack on grafted-on vegetables and realised it was scrubbing rather than blubbing causing it.

‘Need a hand?’

‘Oh hi, darling, just getting these out of the way while everyone’s busy. Can I get you anything?’ asked Penny.

‘I’m fine.’

‘James need anything? A beer?’

‘He’ll be fine.’

Penny went back to her pan. As far as Rebecca could see it was clean enough, but her mum was attacking it again with a little green scrubber. She thought it might have been a sign of stress, but acknowledged that it was just as likely the reason all her mum’s kitchenware was spotless after years, and theirs looked like it had been bought fire-damaged.

‘Are you OK, Mum?’ she asked.

‘Me, I’m absolutely fine. Lunch went quite well I thought. Never quite sure what to cook for Margaret and Ben. I thought about a curry, but it didn’t seem right on a Sunday afternoon.’

‘It was delicious,’ Rebecca said.

‘It must have been three years since we saw them last. Margaret’s looking very well. She was saying she’s going to be sixty this year. You’d never think it to look at her, and not a spot of make-up. And good for her for still wearing mini-skirts. I wouldn’t dare these days…’

‘You look great,’ Rebecca said.

‘Thanks darling, and you too. Still feeling tired?’

‘It’s getting better. And no real sickness to speak of either. You’d hardly think there was anything wrong with me…’

‘I remember with your brother, my morning sickness didn’t really start until the second trimester, so you might not be out of the woods yet. Awful it was, like an alarm clock. Every time I started getting sick it was time for your father to get up. Then I’d be fine again in the day and then I’d feel a bit queasy when it was time for
Nationwide
.’

Always about you, Rebecca thought to herself, her inner teenager bristling.

‘Any signs you need a new wardrobe yet?’ asked Penny ‘As soon as you do we’ll go out and get some new things. Nothing too pregnanty just yet. We could invite Margaret if you’d like.’