Out on a Limb (26 page)

Angel. Angel Gabriel. Archangel Gabriel. With his hair-back lit by the spots as he approaches the stage, he could almost cut the mustard, celestially speaking. Except not. He’s fully mortal. As I’ve had occasion to find out. Flustered at the thought even as I’m cross with myself for my pathetic inability to stop it happening in the first place, I fish in my bag for my car keys and then point to a couple of stands that are lying closest to me.

‘Right. These ready to go now, Jake?’

He looks up from where he’s unscrewing the bolts on the cymbals. ‘Yep. And you can take the snare too. And the toms.’

‘Okay,’ I say, picking up a couple of stands. ‘Why don’t you guys bring everything as far as the back door while I go and get the car. I’ll try to park it just outside so we don’t get everything soaked.’

‘Will do,’ says Jake brightly. He’s still running with perspiration. I remind myself not say anything mumsy about putting on his hoodie so he doesn’t catch a chill.

‘Shall I grab these, then?’ asks Gabriel, gesturing to the drums at the side of the stage.

‘Sure,’ I say levelly. ‘Thanks. You’re very kind.’

The rain is being kind too. It’s eased up, at any rate, and is now only visible as sparkles around the street lights and in the steady drip and gurgle from the gutters and drains.

I jog across to the car and drive it back to as near to the back entrance as I can. When I get out, I see Gabriel leave the step by the back door and lope across with a small tower of drums in his hand. He’s got the collar of his jacket pulled up around his ears, and he grimaces when he sees me.

It could be just because of the rain on his face, but I know better. It’s because he’s very much in I’d-rather-be-elsewhere mode. And he’s not the only one. My insides are churning. How unutterably tenacious this feeling has become. I really wish Lucy hadn’t suggested he help. I wish they’d just gone. He obviously wanted to.

Wants
to. I feel exactly as I did when I was almost fifteen, and had, in the woefully misjudged belief that he liked me as-a-person, let Owen from the lower sixth inside my bra while we stood outside some sorry school disco. Owen then went out with a girl from the fifth form and I was advised (by a well meaning bitch-friend called Emma) that his triumph – because triumph it had been, apparently – earned him the coveted title of Primus. For his enviable ability to heat up cold stuff. As in rather stiff, rather swotty, dreary lab-rat-type pupils. As in
me
. He never spoke to me again.

Still, now we’re here, and I’ll just have to lump it. Lump this whole sorry
dénouement
to our whole sorry moment. The whole sorry away-with-the-bloody-fairies encounter. Fifteen or forty. It still feels the same.

I haul open the boot to get the first of the kit in. ‘How’s your knee?’ I ask him, because I have to say something. I ask it in what I hope is a light-hearted and friendly manner, but his gruff answering ‘okay,’ is anything but.

He’s not looking at me either. I take the toms from off of the top of the snare so he can put the latter in the boot first. I feel mortified. Quite unable to think what to say. The silence lengthens. ‘Well, have you had any treatment for it?’ I ask eventually. ‘You know, done some physio? It’s –’

‘No,’ he says, cutting through my brisk attempts at small talk. He puts the snare in and carefully slides it to the back. Then he takes the toms from me again and bends down to put them in too. Then, less harshly now. ‘I haven’t had a chance.’

I’m conversing with his back now. ‘You didn’t need to do that,’ I say. ‘You know, cancel your appointment and everything.’

He rises again now and turns to face me. He’s looking at me properly for the first time at last. Which is no good thing for my health, I decide. Or his, clearly. He’s still frowning. Because I obviously remind him of his pre-nup transgression. His dalliance with the idea of succumbing to his loins and of having a quick bit on the side. The thought doesn’t do him justice, but I know that’s what he’s thinking. It’s so plain on his face. He shakes his head. ‘I think I did.’

I don’t know what to say to that. He’s probably right. Probably thinking he doesn’t want to upset me. Embarrass me. Which it would have, but even so, I really don’t want him to think that. I don’t want to be cast in the role he’s assigned for me. Don’t want to be the cause of his discomfort most of all. ‘Well,’ I scrabble together finally. Briskly. ‘Whatever. It’s up to you. But you shouldn’t just leave it.’

‘Look, Abbie, it’s fine now. Okay?’

I swallow the frost in his words and wish a freak tornado would happen along and spare me this torture. And him too. For torture it certainly seems to be. This is as ridiculous as it is painful. ‘Gabriel,’ I say, in as matter of fact and dignified a tone as I can muster. ‘You know, you really don’t need to be like this with me.’

He doesn’t answer. Just turns back then, to where the rest of the kit is beginning to pile up in the doorway. ‘Look,’ I say as I follow him. ‘You know, you don’t even need to
be
here. I’m perfectly capable of doing this myself. I’ve done it enough times before, believe me.
Really
. And you have to be somewhere, don’t you? I don’t want to hold you up.’

Jake’s just placed some more kit in the doorway, and I watch his retreating torso as he goes back inside for more. It’s pitch dark until we approach the building and then the security light blazes into being again. Just short of the doorway Gabriel stops and turns around.

‘I know that,’ he says, pushing up the sleeves of his jacket. The halogen lights up the golden fuzz on his forearms. ‘But I’m here now, aren’t I? Bass drum. Where does that need to go? Does it fit in the boot too? I’m not sure it’ll go.’

‘It…um. No, it doesn’t…it goes on the back seat.’ I feel so agitated now that I almost want to punch him. I cross my arms across my chest. ‘Gabriel,’ I say. ‘Will you please just stop this?’

He blinks at me. ‘Stop what?’

‘Being so bloody poker-faced, that’s what!’

We’re still standing in the halo, the back door to the club now sighing closed ahead of us. I can hear sounds of car doors slamming, engines firing, and bubbles of laughter, all mingling and floating as one back across the car park. His shoulders drop visibly. His breath makes a cloud in front of his face. He picks up the bass drum and as he leans to do so I breathe in the coconut.

He takes a breath too.

‘I knew this was a bad idea,’ he says finally, almost under his breath, to himself.

But as I hear it too, I feel I have every right to answer. I’m feeling crosser by the moment. ‘You’re telling me,’ I say, as I pick up the two remaining stands. ‘I’m beginning to feel like I’ve got a communicable disease.’

He frowns. ‘Oh, Abbie. It’s not that. It’s just…well…’ He glances back inside.

I follow his gaze. Oh, I
get
it. Of course.
Lucy’s
in there. ‘Gabriel, for God’s sake, stop looking at me like that! Just get over yourself will you? Is that what this is about? That you’re worried I’ll
tell
her?’ I glare at him. ‘I told you already. Don’t flatter yourself!’

H e starts back towards the car, shaking his head as he does so. Then he turns back to me suddenly and looks me square in the eye. A whole handful of seconds thump by before he speaks to me. ‘I’m not,’ he says quietly. ‘Believe me, I’m not. Don’t worry. You’ve made that abundantly clear.’

I don’t know how to respond because I’m not even sure which bit of my question he’s answering. Only that there is something in his expression that makes my heart thump all the more. But, tough. His precious ego is really the least of my worries. ‘Well, good,’ I say anyway. Firmly. Like I mean it. ‘And you really needn’t worry in any case.’ I spread my palms and dredge up an air of insouciance from somewhere. ‘I mean, it’s not as if we’re even likely to see each other again, is it?’

Ever
again, I think. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No. I suppose not.’

He walks on, then, holding the bass drum out in front of him. He could almost be a stray from a minstrel marching band. He’s certainly marching right now. I watch him get to the car, place the drum gently on the ground, then open the passenger door and manhandle it inside. The rain’s getting heavier again now. Visible even in the darkness. We need to get a move on. Quite apart from anything else, Jake has school in the morning. And I have work, and he has work, and mother has any number of social engagements to be ferried to, and normal service must resume next week. As it does every week. As it will every week after that. I grab the bag of cymbals and the bass pedal and follow him back to the car.

I let him take them all from me and slot them in turn into the well in front of the back seat. I can think of nothing else useful to say to him. Nor him me, it would seem. His jaw is now rigid as he goes back to the door and returns with the last of Jake’s kit. Two more drums and another stand, all of which he busies himself with fitting in as well, the rain rat-a-tatting onto the back of his jacket. It’s getting so heavy now it’s clumping his lashes. He straightens and runs the back of one hand across his brow. Then, just as I think he’s about to say something else, an explosion of noise pours out from behind us. I turn around. Jake and Tom, laughing, are emerging with Tom’s amp, Lucy Whittall and Tom’s father behind them.

Gabriel turns too, and lifts a hand in greeting.

‘Is that it, lads?’ he calls out to them. Jake lifts a thumb.

‘Well, goodbye, then,’ he says softly, closing the car door with a clunk. He leans forward, and brushes his lips against my cheek. ‘You have a nice life, Abbie, okay?’

Our eyes meet momentarily, sealing his words. Then we go and join the others, job done.

Chapter 25

I
T
’
S HARD WORK
, refraining from crying. Hard on the throat, hard on the tear ducts, super hard on the nerves. And yet, somehow, by some miracle, I manage to do so. All the way back inside the club. All the way back outside again. Throughout the hearty farewells. The well dones, the see you laters, the mutual appreciation society back-slapping and the urging of the manager to come again, soon.

Even when the last image that is burned on my retina is of the two of them, her stooping to climb into the back of a taxi, his hand gently guiding, on the small of her back.

Once we get into the car, Jake, to my relief, is soon plugged once again into his iPod. Yet even that – grateful though I am for the absence of the need to make words – only adds further to my misery. It’s been thoroughly spoilt now, this precious red-letter evening. Invaded and soured by horrible emotions that, however intently I don’t want to be feeling them, I seem powerless to make go away.

When we finally get back, I have to park the car six houses down, ironically just behind Hugo’s Nissan, which sits, stubbornly still refusing to attract any buyers, under the horse chestnut outside the Thomases’ house. Mr Thomas doesn’t mind us like Mr Davidson minds us, because he’s six houses down, and also deaf.

I’m so preoccupied with my fragile state – my need for some sort of oblivion from my wretched post-morteming – that it’s only as I put my key in the lock that I realise something’s not right. Not because of anything immediately visible, but rather because the action’s accompanied by the sort of ear splitting squawk a cat tends to make when you inadvertently step on its tail.

Except I don’t have a cat.

Just a dog. I push the door open. There’s a thought, I think. Where
is
my dog? My dog who loves me. Who is
always
there to greet me. My mind moves seamlessly from thoughts of my heartache, to other, more insistent, less self-indulgent ones. Now I’m thinking Dee, who I left here three hours back, and, by logical extension, to Malcolm. To Malcolm, to Tim, to sharp kitchen implements, to cuckolded husbands and to murder most foul. Thus I step into the hall, expecting the worst. What I find, however, is no sign of either Dee or her belongings, but a woman of about sixty, in a peppermint-hued sweater and wearing glasses on a chain, emerging from my downstairs loo.

I say see, but in fact that’s a loose-ish description. For the hall seems to be wreathed in a soft autumnal mist.

A soft yet undeniably acrid autumnal mist. And there’s not been smog in Cardiff in decades. ‘Oh, hello!’ she says pleasantly, smoothing down her skirt front. ‘I’m Pamela. And you must be Abbie.’

At least I assume that’s what she’s attempting to convey, because what she actually says is ‘air hell air! M Pamla. Anchew musby Ab-hic.’ I pull the key from the door and put the cymbal bag down on the hall floor.

‘Er, yes,’ I say back, because what else is there to say? ‘Hello.’ I put the bass pedal beside it.

She sways minutely, then smiles, and then returns to the living room, shutting the door promptly behind her. Jake, by this time, is hard up behind me with his drum stands. I step aside to let him in.

‘Blimey, what a stink!’ is his considered opinion as he props the stands carefully up against the lower stairs. ‘Is someone having a party, or what?’

‘I’m not entirely sure,’ I say. I am now, if belatedly, gathering momentum. ‘But I certainly intend to find out.’

I am still, at this juncture, loosely working on the Malcolm/Dee/Tim bloody domestic conflict scenario and wondering where M Pamla slots into the equation. Is she Malcolm’s AA counsellor? Tim’s mother? What?
My
mother’s not in. My mother is at Wilfred’s. Because Brian’s had a flood. It’s all coming back. Wilfred was coming to pick her up. I remember.

Another gale of laughter blasts through from the living room. Seems I’ve remembered all wrong about that. Seems someone is indeed having a party.

And in my living room, too. ‘Ah,’ I say, opening the door again. ‘Hello.’ Heads turn. Hands flap. Greetings various are proffered. Cigars are wafted. Glasses are raised.

‘Hello, dear,’ says my mother, sitting regally at the head of what I suddenly realise is my kitchen table, clutching a small fan of playing cards in one hand and a half-finished sherry in the other. ‘I’ve had a few friends round. I do hope you don’t mind.’

‘Er, right,’ I say, through the noisome, head-level fug. ‘Fine. Um – right. Okay, then.’ I don’t know what else to say, to be honest. I look around. Still no dog. ‘Mum, where’s Spike?’

‘Oh, we had to pop him into the dining room, darling. Poor Brian’s allergic, you see.’

‘Just as well,’ I tell Spike, once I’ve released him from purdah. ‘You’d probably asphyxiate with that lot.’ They haven’t even bothered to take his bed in there for him. Just marooned him on the laminate. How cruel. I press my nose into his fur and let him rootle in my ear. ‘C’mon, honey. Let’s get you to bed.’

By the time I get back into the kitchen my mother is in there. With the person called Brian, and an empty glass bowl. Which she is currently filling with crisps.

‘Ah, Mum,’ I say as lightly as I can. ‘What’s going on?’

She shrugs. ‘I told you. I’ve had a few friends round.’

No. Wrong answer. Not had.
Have
. I look at my watch. ‘Well, fine,’ I say, continuing, as I must, in the polite and measured tones of a person for whom, irritatingly, there is a stray Brian present in the equation, denying me the opportunity to rant in my own kitchen. As they’re denying me the opportunity to
sit
in my own kitchen. ‘But it’s almost eleven-thirty and it’s Sunday night. I have work in the morning, Jake has school in the morning. So do you think you could start to wrap things up reasonably soon?’

Which I think, even as I’m saying it, is pretty damned
reasonable
of me. In fact, were my arms long enough I’d be patting myself on the back.

Just as Brian is patting my mother on the back now. I wonder if Brian is shaping up to become the next Hugo. But then I recall that he’s already married to someone. Isn’t everyone
always
already married to someone? Or, and how it’s hurting now, if not, then about to be. Which is almost just as bad.

No. It’s worse. In any case, the substance of her answering ‘Oh, don’t worry about us. You get off to bed and leave us to it. We won’t disturb you,’ is somewhat diluted by another bone-shaking shriek from the living room, and I wonder if Macbeth’s going to join us as well. I feel suddenly angry. Proper throwing things angry. The sort of angry that cannot be easily discharged. The sort of angry my mother used to be with me on the rare – oh so rare – occasions when I got home late.

‘Well, I’d be grateful if you’d try to keep it down, please,’ I say levelly, gathering mugs from the drainer. ‘Jake’s got school, as I said. And please, Mum, would you at least open a window or two?’

They leave the kitchen with their crisps just as Jake himself enters. His reflection’s in the window. His tall shaggy silhouette approaching my smaller one. And I feel myself welling up all over again. ‘All inside,’ he says. ‘Give us the keys and I’ll lock the car up.’

‘Thanks, darling,’ I say, ferreting in my bag for them and wiping my eyes on the back of my hand. ‘You know, you guys were brilliant tonight. Absolutely brilliant. I’m so proud of you, you know that?’

He takes the keys from me, grinning sheepishly. ‘Yeah, whatever, Mum,’ he says. Then he looks at me harder. ‘Mum, what are you
like
? You’re not supposed to cry when you’re
happy
!’

‘Oh, don’t mind me. You know what I’m like. I’m just…oh, Come over here and let me give you a hug.’

Which he submits to. His hair smells all sweaty and boyish.

‘Tea and toast?’ I say.

‘Nah,’ he says. ‘You’re alright, Mum.’ Then he grins. ‘I’m going to go to bed, if that’s okay with you. Way too many wrinklies down here.’

I kiss him a reluctant goodnight, and am just thinking I ought to call Dee and see how she is, when Mr Davidson appears in the doorway. A wrinkly in waiting. He’s making good progress.

‘Er,’ he says. ‘Hello. Um… d’you have a cloth?’

* * *

‘Ah, Abbie, dear!’ booms Celeste as I follow him back into the living room. ‘Are you going to come and join us? I think there’s some champagne left. Can I pour you a glass?’

‘Er…no, thanks,’ I tell her. ‘I’m going to have a bath and get to bed. Busy day. Busy night.’

‘Of course! How’d it go, lovely?’

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Just fine.’

Till right about now, that is. There’s a stain the size of a dinner plate beside the leg of the table. Red wine, by the look of it. Fabulous. On my white wine-coloured carpet. A stupid choice in the first place, all things considered. But it was on special offer. I liked it. I thought it would look chic.

Mr Davidson’s knees click as he gropes down to try and mop it. The Pamla woman proffers a handful of pink tissues. Okay, I tell myself. Nothing to stress about. It’s just a carpet. An old carpet. An inexpensive carpet. A stain on a ropey old inexpensive carpet is no way – no
way
, Abbie – the end of the world.

It’s just that everything feels like the end of the world right now. ‘Salt,’ someone’s saying. ‘You need salt to soak it up. Leave it a while and it’ll hoover up a dream. Kitchen, Di? Shall I go? What cupboard is it in?’

Then the someone, who could possibly be Wilfred – how would I know? – pushes his own chair back to go run his errand. And in doing so, manages to knock over the dish of nibbles at his elbow, sending peanuts and cashews and silverskin onions to go forth and populate the further reaches of the room.

I decide that in the interests of the NHS budget (it’s not cheap, calling doctors out to section people on a Sunday), that I will – that I must – simply take myself upstairs. If I stay down here a moment more I might feel the need to kill someone. Ms Garland in the Kitchen with the Kenwood Chef most probably. Wouldn’t want to add to the stain count in the lounge.

‘Please don’t worry,’ I entreat them, as nicely as I can. ‘I can sort things in the morning. Good night all,’ with which I exit the room.

I hover a few seconds in front of the hall mirror, seeing terrifying traces of the woman I’m becoming. Which is the kind of woman that old ladies would cross the street to avoid. My hair, which up to now, I haven’t given much thought to, has danced its merry rain dance and now looks like linguini. I have gobs of mascara in twin stripes across my eyelids, and a cherry tomato for a nose. I have the face of a woman whose heart has been broken and who finds herself all out of plasters.

My ears are still intact, though, about which I have mixed feelings. Because just as I stand and address the sorry state of my visage, Celeste’s words come floating forth to greet me from the lounge. That’s the thing with being merry. No volume control.

‘She okay, Di? Your Abbie? She seems a bit raddled. D’you think we ought to call it a night?’

There’s a pause and a grunt – Mr Davidson rising? – then my own dear mother’s voice wafts out, load and oh-so very clear.

I can’t
see
her roll her eyes, but I know that’s what she’s doing.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I hear her say. ‘Ongoing mid-life crisis situation, that’s all.’ She’s lowered her voice now, but not quite sufficiently. Not if I edge a bit closer to the door. ‘Man problems,’ she adds. ‘Take no notice.’

Take no notice. Yup, she’s right. That’s me, that is. The sort of person whose occasional vagaries of temperament are of so little importance, of so little note that, just like warts and growing pains, they are best dealt with by taking no notice.

I remain in the hallway for a further half minute. Fashioning a scene in which I burst into the living room, brandishing something – the bread knife? The kettle? A brace of Jake’s cymbals? – with which I hysterically commence the dispatching of her houseguests, like a serial killer on speed.

Except I’m not the serial-killing type. I’m the go off and absolutely seethe instead type. So, seethe duly building, I trudge up the stairs. I shall call Dee, whose safety is still a cause for some concern, and then, assuming she’s okay, I shall seethe in the bath.

And she is, as it turns out. Tucked up in bed with Tim. And going to worry about tomorrow, tomorrow, she tells me, before instructing me to get to bed myself. Which takes a bit of the edge off my fury. How ridiculous to get in such a state about my mother when real problems,
bad
ones, feel so very close to home.

And, of course, there’s nothing like a long hot bath to soothe away your cares. Or so the ads would imply. Or so my own bloody mother would imply, as it happens. Nineteen seventy-six, or thereabouts. An ad for some bath foam or other that smelt of eggs.

But despite my hopeful mindset, some cares are too entrenched to be amenable to soothing, whatever the unguents and potions in which you’re sloshing around. Because though the protracted contemplation of one’s navel can often be relied upon to banish the day’s tensions, the contemplation of one’s previously unacknowledged status as someone who is apparently gripped in the charmless embrace of a middle years crisis situation is not. But perhaps there’s a kernel of truth in what she said.
Am
I having a mid-life crisis after all? Could that be it? After all, presumably one doesn’t
know
that one is having a mid-life crisis until such time as some well-meaning person points it out for you, does one? And unless you’ve had a mid-life crisis of your own, you’re probably not in the best position to recognise the symptoms, are you?

I spend forty-five minutes in the bath, wallowing, a further two in Jake’s bedroom, stroking his sleeping cheek, and a good fifteen sitting on my dressing-table stool, frowning, and wondering quite how I have become the sort of woman who needs it pointing out – and by
him,
and in so breathtakingly patronising a way – that she should go off and Have A Nice Life.

None of which, bar stroking my son’s cheek (without which morphia I would be catatonic by now), serves to make me feel any less incendiary about it. And specifically (and in tandem with feeling so bloody strung-out about Gabriel), incendiary about my Dear Mother. Thus when I do finally venture downstairs – a good fifteen minutes after the last shrieking harpy and phlegmatic old codger has departed (and yes, I do include Mr Davidson in that – though am obviously cheered by the new balance of relations as a consequence of the wine stain debacle) – and find the spiny anthill that is my mother’s bottom glaring defiantly up at me from the living room carpet, it is all I can do not to pull back my best foot and then propel her, with force, into the grate.