Poppy Day (12 page)

Poppy smiled to see the tongues of the blue rinse brigade wagging as they tried to figure out why she was being met from work by a soldier that wasn’t her husband. Rob hovered on the pavement, waiting for Poppy to finish. He could hold his own on the battlefield, was trained in jungle warfare and knew how to handle attack from bullets and artillery. But he was reluctant to enter the realm of the middle-aged and elderly, where the weapons of choice were perm curlers, gossip and scalding tea.

Poppy shrugged her arms into her cardigan and left without saying a word. She decided to keep them guessing for a bit longer. The nosy old cows.

‘How are you today, Poppy?’

‘You always ask me that, Rob; it’s the first thing you say.’

‘Do I? Yes I guess I do, and do you know why?’

Poppy shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Because I’m worried about you and when I go to bed at night, I wonder if you are OK.’

‘Do you and Moira talk about me?’ It intrigued her to think that these people, who knew so little about her, would chat about her life and situation. She found it strangely interfering, yet also quite comforting.

‘Yes we do.’

‘What does she think about all of this?’

‘Moira thinks that you are very brave and strong to be coping in the way that you are. She’s sad that someone of your age has to go through this at all. Things like this were always her worst nightmare when I was on tour and she is very grateful that it was just a horrible idea. She never had to live through it like you.’

‘What do you think, Rob?’

‘I think I agree with her, Poppy.’

‘That’s because she’s your wife. Legally you have to agree with her!’

Rob laughed, ‘You know it.’

‘I’m off to see my nan. You can walk me there if you like, or do you want to go and get a coffee?’

‘I’m OK walking and talking if you are?’

‘I think I can manage that. So, what’s happening?’

‘Well, no real change I’m afraid. Major Helm would like to come and see you tomorrow. I said I would arrange a time, if that’s all right.’

‘Why does he want to see me? Does he have news?’ Poppy couldn’t keep the excitement from her voice.

‘Not so much news as an update and, before you ask, no, I don’t know what he wants to discuss.’

‘I didn’t warm to him when I met him last time.’

‘You don’t say?’ Rob’s smile was wide.

‘Was it obvious?’

‘Not to him I don’t think, so don’t worry.’

‘I don’t know what it is about him, the way he spoke to me, as though he was really superior. I hate that.’

Rob was silent, but she could tell by his expression that he wanted to agree with her, even if it was just a little bit.

‘Tomorrow will be fine, Rob. I’ll be at the flat at lunchtime if that’s any good.’

‘Yup, that’s great. If there is anything to tell you before then, I’ll give you a shout.’

It was only a short walk; they quickly arrived outside The Unpopulars.

‘Here we are.’

‘Right then, Poppy, I’ll say goodnight. Will you be all right getting back on your own?’

This made Poppy laugh; he was referring to the streets where she had lived her whole life, where she had wandered solo since the age of six. ‘I think I’ll be fine.’

He nodded and strode off towards the tube.

Poppy walked up the path and knocked on the front door. Mr Veerswamy met her in the hallway. ‘Ah good evening, Poppy!’

‘Good evening, Mr Veerswamy. How are you?’

‘Very good, Poppy, very good. Miss Dorothy will be pleased to see you as usual! I have some small news; Mrs Veerswamy and I are going overseas next week, so we won’t be around for a while.’

‘Ooh how lovely! Are you going somewhere nice? Not another one of your cruises?’

‘No! No such luck, but yes, somewhere very nice. We are going home to Pakistan to bring back my daughter’s husband. He is living in Peshawar and when we come back there will be the biggest wedding a father can give his daughter, she will bankrupt me for sure!’ Mr Veerswamy threw his hands above his head; it was his favourite joke, to talk about his impending poverty while jangling the keys to his enormous Mercedes, as his Rolex glinted on his wrist. ‘I am sure it is the same with your daddy, Poppy! I bet he spoils you rotten!’

Poppy didn’t have the heart or the desire to tell him that she had never met her daddy, much less be spoilt by him. ‘Yes, Mr Veerswamy, that’s me, a right little daddy’s girl!’

‘I knew it, Poppy! I knew it. I can tell.’

Poppy thought about his trip. She pictured the globe on the shelf in the geography room at school and could visualise the region of Pakistan he would be visiting. The Veerswamys would be a mere mountain range away from Afghanistan. Her heart lurched inside her ribcage. Why did everyone travel apart from her? It was that luck thing again.

As a child, Poppy knew that it didn’t matter how strongly you yearned to be like the posh girls whose mums were never fat, were rarely tattooed and whose dads dropped them off in flash cars. The girls with shiny, blond hair and straight white teeth, who would go to university to become all the things that Poppy could only dream of. Why? Because that is just the way it is. Think of it as luck, or lack of luck, or bad luck or unlucky. It was luck who you were born to and the place you were born in.

The shiny blonde girls at school were lucky. They would marry the super smart or really gorgeous boys because they all belonged to the same secret club. It’s a club that Poppy could never join because she had been brought up in the flats. She had never been abroad, said ‘me nan’ instead of ‘my granny’, ‘afters’ instead of ‘pudding’, ‘lounge’ instead of ‘sitting room’ and ‘settee’ instead of ‘sofa’. There were a million other examples. She watched QVC not the BBC. She went ‘up the dogs’ instead of ‘to the races’. None of her class mates had been called Phoebe and she wouldn’t think twice about wearing her slippers up the Spar. Her dream home consisted of a picture she had seen in a catalogue of a shiny, faux leather, brown sofa with two fluffy cushions, a cream rug on a laminate floor and a large vase with twigs artfully poking out of the top. She never ate sushi,
preferring
a nice Chinese takeaway which she and Martin would eat on their laps whilst watching soaps. It was like having
working-class
Tourette’s, a reflex she couldn’t escape, hide from or even disguise. She gave herself away every time she opened her mouth and Poppy opened her mouth a lot.

These are just a few of the many reasons that would deny Poppy entry. Her teeth weren’t that straight or white. She didn’t look or sound right, and her family were representative of those you found on cheaply produced TV shows. The ones where the impoverished go to not only wash their dirty laundry in public, but to iron, fold and put it away as well. That meant no entry, barred for life. Did she mind? Only sometimes.

Poppy remembered one of the wealthy girls in her class, Harriet, who sent a postcard to her class from the south of France. Their teacher read the card out. It was full of the usual uninteresting facts; the villa was nice, the weather hot and Harriet had tried frogs’ legs. Poppy and her classmates had been indifferent; Harriet’s experiences were so remote from their lives and concerns that they may as well have been
snippets
from a story book.

Poppy cared less than most about the random bits of
information
that were being shared, or the fact that Harriet and her family jetted off to places that she could only locate on a globe with no hope of ever visiting. What she could do, however, and what she wanted to do was hold that postcard. Towards the end of the lesson, tiptoeing up to Miss West’s desk, she asked in a small voice if she could hold the card; it took all of her courage. Miss West understood; she smiled as she reached into the drawer. Handing over the rectangular card, she spoke in an equally small voice, ‘You can keep it, Poppy.’ She briefly raised her
eyebrows
. It was their secret. Poppy suspected that she was just as uninterested in Harriet’s antics as they were; she was a lovely teacher and knew that life was pretty tough for most of her class. She was kind and never patronising. Poppy liked her a lot. Miss West was one of the few people in her life that told her she was smart, that she could do and be whatever she wanted to, and that the only thing that would hold her back was her lack of confidence. Ha! That and the fact that she was tethered to her family by an invisible thread woven from guilt and duty.

Poppy kept that card for years. In fact, it’s probably still lurking in a drawer somewhere. She would often hold it, looking at the picture on the front of a very straight avenue lined with tall trees and vineyards on either side. The postmark read ‘SAINTES’. She looked it up in the geography book in school and learnt that it was near Cognac, where the drink came from. This was all fairly interesting to her, but the biggest fascination was that this actual piece of paper had travelled from that faraway city and ended up in her hands; amazing! When she was a little girl and her whole world comprised of three streets, it was truly incredible.

Poppy wanted to ask Mr Veerswamy to go over the
mountain
, to get close to Martin and give him a message. Could he please tell her husband she loved and missed him, that she wasn’t complete without him and she wanted him to come home? Poppy swallowed to flush the hard ball of tears that had gathered at the back of her throat. She stared at Mr Veerswamy’s shiny shoes, blinking hard; she counted the tiny perforated holes that formed a pattern around the toes. It was a
diversionary
technique that she used to distract her emotions. ‘Have a lovely trip, Mr Veerswamy.’

‘I will, Poppy Day. See you when I get back.’ He nodded to indicate conversation over.

Poppy trod the corridor until she reached Dorothea, sitting silently in her room. The telly was off which was most unusual.

‘Hello there. You all right, Nan?’

She looked up quickly. It took a fraction of a second to
recognise
her granddaughter, the biggest indicator that she was tired. It intrigued Poppy, the things that bothered her nan, the moments when she was completely lucid and the things that slipped through her net of reality. There seemed to be little
justification
for her various fixations.

Standing proudly on the bedside table was a picture of her and Wally on their wedding day. Poppy could see by the set of Wally’s face and measured stance that his nature did not creep up on him over the years. He was a misery guts at twenty-three and a misery guts at seventy-three, just older. It was a black and white photo, but her nan’s mouth and eyes had been crudely painted in crimson and turquoise, making it look more Andy Warhol than Uncle Harold’s Kodak. Sometimes Poppy pointed to it. ‘Who’s this, Nan?’

‘Oh that’s a very pretty lady!’

This made Poppy smile because she was right, it was a very pretty lady and one that bore no resemblance to the woman slumped in front of her, whose features hung, having slipped from their anchor points. It made Poppy sad that Dorothea didn’t remember, but worse still was when she did remember and Poppy glimpsed her sorrow.

On these occasions, she clutched her granddaughter’s hand in desperation. ‘How did I end up here, Poppy Day? Where did everyone go?’

Poppy would blot the tears that ran unchecked down her face, and stroke the crêpe-like skin on the back of her hand. ‘I don’t know, Nan. I don’t know what happened.’ That was the truth. Poppy never lied to her, never would.

Dorothea’s face was crumpled in agitation. ‘Yes, Poppy Day, I’m fine, just having a bit of a think.’

‘Oh right. What are you thinking about?’

‘I’m sitting here thinking about that other baby.’

‘What other baby, Nan?’

‘The baby that our Joan had before she had you, the one she put up for adoption. I’ve been thinking that if she hadn’t, then I would have two grandchildren, wouldn’t I? I’d still have my Poppy Day, but there would be one a year older an’ all.’

Poppy was stunned. It was the first time she had heard the idea of another baby. It might have been one of her nan’s stories; the fusion of an articulate tongue and a slippery grip on reality meant this baby could be dismissed as easily as her claim on Joan Collins’ parentage. No doubt that is what most would think, but Poppy knew differently. Dorothea’s eyes were the biggest clue to her state of mind, often appearing glazed or unfocused when she was uttering fancies. Tonight, however, they were sharp and clear; her mind, despite her fatigue, was not only present but ordered.

Dorothea continued, ‘I guess he is out there somewhere, isn’t he? I wonder what he is doing right now. Do you think he could be close by?’

‘I guess so, Nan.’

‘I mean just because your mother didn’t want him, doesn’t mean that I didn’t. He went to a good family. I know she made sure of that. I’ve got a funny feeling he’s not far away, Poppy Day. Imagine that, he might be living right around the corner. You might see him every day and you wouldn’t even know it!’

‘What was his name, Nan?’

‘Whose name?’

‘The other baby.’

‘What other baby, Poppy Day?’

‘The baby Mum gave away for adoption? The baby we were talking about.’

‘Poppy Day you do talk some rot. Our Joan only ever had you. You were the apple of her eye! She worshipped you.’

This made Poppy smile; the lie, the deceit, the puréeing of the truth to make it a bit more palatable. She imagined the
conversation
that her nan and Mr Veerswamy might have about her: ‘She’s the apple of her mother’s eye, how she worships her!’ He would chip in with, ‘Yes but still a daddy’s girl!’ They would laugh at the cherished existence that was the life of Poppy Day. The much-loved daughter adored by her doting mother and spoilt by her attentive father, what a lucky, lucky girl.

Poppy’s tiredness hit her like a wave. It was a new feeling to be mentally tired. Her body had hours of life left in it, but her mind was fuzzy, confused and switching off after too much thinking.

‘As long as you are OK, Nan, I’m going to push off. I’ve had a really long day. I’ll see you tomorrow. Shall I bring you
something
nice to eat; is there anything that you fancy?’