Sisteria (9 page)

***

‘Ooh, I love the cracked paint effect,' Beverley said, walking into Rochelle's kitchen and admiring her newly decorated walls.

‘Yeah, I'm pleased with it,' Rochelle said. ‘I was going for the distressed look. Mind you, Mitchell's not so keen. He walks in last night, grimaces and says if you ask him it doesn't look so much distressed as bloody tormented. Still, what does he know about interior design? The man sells smoked salmon for a living... So, how was lunch?'

‘I'd forgotten you were seeing Naomi today. I only remembered when my taps began running with blood.'

‘God, you're worse than Melvin,' Beverley said, sighing. She pulled a chair from under the table and sat down. ‘Why won't either of you believe me when I say she's changed?'

‘'Cos she hasn't,' Rochelle said in a matter-of-fact tone as she poured boiling water into the cafetière. ‘Look, hardly a week goes by when Mitchell doesn't show me something in
Private Eye
about her. Apparently she struts round the Channel 6 offices like Machiavelli in drag, sacking people who look at her in the wrong tone of voice. They've got this brilliant cartoon of her with 666 tattooed across her head.'

She brought the cafetière and two mugs over to the table.

‘I know. I've seen it,' Beverley said, watching Rochelle push down the plunger. ‘It's horrible. But that's just the media being jealous and malicious. Look, maybe she was like that in the past, but the woman's in therapy, for Christ's sake...'

‘Is that what she told you? God, she's good. She's very good.' Rochelle began filling their mugs.

‘You're saying she's lying?'

‘OK... I could be wrong, but it sounds like part of some elaborate buttering-up exercise to me. She wants something from you, doesn't she? I can smell it. Come on, tell me I'm wrong.'

Beverley didn't say anything for a few moments. Then she took a deep breath.

‘OK, you're right. She does want something.'

‘I knew it,' Rochelle said triumphantly.

‘She's asked me to have a baby for her,' Beverley said softly, ‘… to be a surrogate mother.'

Rochelle almost choked on her coffee.

‘Come again.'

Beverley simply nodded.

‘Blimey,' Rochelle said, clearly at a loss for words.

‘That was pretty much my reaction.'

Rochelle sat thinking for a couple of moments.

‘Oh, right,' she said eventually, beginning to laugh as her thoughts took shape, ‘I get it. Heaven forbid La Gold should risk losing her figure getting pregnant. So she reckons she'll get good old Bev to get fat and have her stretch marks for her. I tell you, Bev, she only wants a child for spare parts in case she gets terminal one of these days.'

‘God, you'd smell flowers and ask where the coffin is,' Beverley said, starting to get irritated. ‘Look, I dashed over here as soon as I got back because you're my best friend, I'm shocked and confused and I needed to talk to somebody. But if you're just going to be cynical and make a joke of the whole thing, then...'

‘Oh God, Beverley, I'm sorry,' Rochelle said. ‘I didn't mean it. Honest. It's just that after everything you've told me about Naomi - about the way she's treated you and your mother - I find it hard to believe she's not out to get you in some way, that's all. Look, she's your sister. You know her better than I do. I'll take your word for it that she's undergone some kind of personality change.'

Beverley gave a half-smile.

‘So,' Rochelle said, ‘I take it she's been told she can't have children.'

‘Yes. She's living with some film director guy and they're desperate to start a family. She's offered me two hundred and fifty thousand pounds if I agree to have a baby for her.'

‘Christ, she doesn't mess about. So, what did you say?'

‘I said I'd think about it.'

‘And...'

‘And nothing. I've only been thinking for three hours.'

‘OK, so what are you thinking?' Rochelle stood up and fetched a plate of M&S Belgian biscuits from the worktop.

‘Well, for starters, I'm thinking another pregnancy would give me about as much pleasure as an all-over body wax. I'm forty-two years old, I've already spent eighteen months of my life up the duff, undergone two excruciatingly painful labours, the second of which was so traumatic the midwife needed gas and air.' She reached out and took a biscuit. ‘What's more, I now have a permanently leaking bladder, an episiotomy scar so hideous that by rights the obstetrician should be doing a five stretch, and veins in my legs which look like they once starred in a lump of Stilton. Then again, Naomi is my sister, she is desperate for a child and I can make that happen. Despite all the bad feeling there's been between us, I still care about her. I don't think a day went by during that five years when I didn't think about her and wonder how she was.'

‘And there's also the question of the money,' Rochelle said.

‘I know,' Beverley said, munching on her biscuit. ‘All the way home on the Tube I did my best to keep the money outside the question. I mean, if I did agree to have Naomi's baby I'd want to do it for love, not simply for financial gain. But I kept coming back to it. Over and over again. Just think what Melvin and I could do with two hundred and fifty grand. We could pay off all our debts, have a holiday, buy a new car. He could set himself up in a new business - I know he could be a success, Rochelle, I just know it. You remember me telling you how Tower of Bagel was his idea all those years ago - and now that's more successful than McDonald's. It just has to be something that excites him and is light years away from dishing out Senacot and elasticated stockings to old ladies in Buckhurst Hill.'

‘You think he might be up for the surrogacy deal, then?'

‘Mel? I dunno. He might be tempted by the money, but then again, the thought of his wife carrying another man's child...'

‘God, if Mitchell thought I was doing that, he'd go berserk. You know how jealous he is. The au pair had to chaperone me when I went to see Braveheart. Runs in the family. He gets it from his grandfather. When his grandmother was on her deathbed she told him she'd been unfaithful during their marriage. He leaned over her and said, “I know. That's why I poisoned you.”'

Beverley started to laugh.

‘At least that's something I wouldn't have to worry about with Mel. I mean, he may be a bit of a dope where the business is concerned, but I couldn't imagine him becoming unhinged.' She paused and took a mouthful of her coffee.

‘But even if Melvin's OK with the surrogacy,' she went on, ‘the fact is, Naomi's asking me to carry a baby, a baby which would be biologically mine, and then give it up. I just don't know if I'm up to that... and what about this Tom Jago bloke? I don't know him from Adam. He may be some hotshot film director, but that doesn't mean he'll be a good father... then there's you trying to convince me Naomi isn't to be trusted... God, I'm so confused, Rochelle.'

‘So, now you agree that maybe she isn't to be trusted?'

Beverley shrugged. ‘Yes. No. Who knows? What should I do, Rochelle? Tell me. What would you do?'

Rochelle stood up, walked round the table, put her arm round Beverley and kissed the top of her head.

‘I don't know, Bev,' she said gently, ‘I just don't know.'

***

Beverley decided to walk home because she wanted more time to think. She'd told the children she might be late because she was having lunch with a girlfriend and might go for a wander down Oxford Street afterwards.

As she passed the identikit detached houses with their hideous loft extensions and paved front gardens, Naomi's words kept flying round her head. ‘Please, Bev, please be the one to give me that chance.'

Naomi - hard-bitten, self-sufficient Naomi - was reaching out to her in a way she had never done before.

Beverley had never stopped loving her sister, but as she walked home in the rain she found herself actually starting to like her. By now she had put her suspicions about Naomi to one side. If her sister did have some self-seeking agenda cleverly hidden, which she wouldn't discover until it was too late, for the life of her she couldn't imagine what it could be.

Surely, she thought, didn't every woman deserve the chance to become a mother? Maybe women like her and Naomi, who had been brought up without proper parental love, deserved it even more. The love of a child, like the love of a caring, tender parent, is unconditional. A child would love Naomi in a way she'd never known before, in a way that no lover or husband, however adoring, could. A tiny, dependent being would make her feel truly valued, give her a sense of self-worth that no amount of fame, money or professional accolades could provide.

Perhaps Beverley was soft. But that was hardly surprising since she'd mothered Naomi almost since she was born. She knew she still had days and days more thinking to do, but she suspected that in the end she wouldn't be able to refuse her little sister the help she was asking for.

Chapter 7

‘I don't care three ha'pence how popular you have been with the public until now, m'dear,' he continued. The atmosphere at Naomi's lunchtime meeting with the newly appointed head of Channel 6 was becoming distinctly uneasy. Eric Rowe took some more Sweet Briar from the leather pouch on his desk and began tamping it down into his pipe. ‘The fact of the matter is, you have overstepped the mark and gone beyond the bounds of good taste. I will brook no more of this tripe, this disgusting sensationalism.' He sounded like an avuncular vicar driven to the brink after discovering his curate with his hand up a choirboy.

‘We don't want people to have to watch your gratuitous rubbish any more, to see mad women who let their babies drown in the bath or bump off their husbands with frozen turkeys, to mention just two of your recent capers. You will with immediate effect concentrate on decent, popular issues. Such as, ooh, I don't know... petrol prices. Now there's a topic every member of the public cares about. Then there's all the racket we get on our beaches and streets these days from those wretched gateau-blasters. And holes in the road - that's another thing...'

By now Naomi was hyperventilating with rage. Instead of bestowing upon her the fawning obeisance she had come to expect from all members of the Channel 6 staff, including chief executives, Eric Rowe had dared, as he had at their first meeting ten days ago, to address her like some errant researcher. As the room began to spin, Naomi dug her nails into the arms of the leather chair, partly to stop herself fainting and partly to stop herself getting up and beating Eric Rowe to within an inch of his pointless life.

While Eric wittered on about ‘good clean fun' and the ‘splendid' idea he'd had for a sponsored London-to-Brighton supermarket trolley race, Naomi stared at the man in utter disbelief, taking in the pipe, the check Viyella shirt, the sandwich-filled Tupperware container sitting on top of the filing cabinet. She was in no doubt. There was a definite niff of pilchard in the air.

Like most people at Channel 6, Naomi blamed Eric Rowe's appointment on Tony Blair. Eric was part of the Real People Initiative promised by the Prime Minister in a throwaway comment he had made on
Newsnight
where he was being interviewed about the first two years of the Labour government. He was getting into his stride about how he wanted government to reflect the concerns of ordinary people when he appeared to pluck the idea from the air: ‘You see, I feel very strongly,' he waxed, ‘that we must breathe some fresh air into such areas as public transport, the Health Service and even your own sphere, Jeremy, of broadcasting. And I'm convinced that the way forward is to bring in people who are completely fresh to these fields and to, er, put them into positions of really quite considerable power within these organisations.'

‘Prime Minister,' Jeremy Paxman butted in, ‘come on, you can't seriously be suggesting that you could take a... I don't know, a dinner lady or a farmer from the West Country and just say, here you are, here's Railtrack, or the BBC, now go off and run it.'

‘Well, now you mention it, Jeremy, I think it's a terrific idea... I mean, take broadcasting... programmes like this are for dinner ladies and farmers from the West Country. So we say, let's find a farmer in the West Country and offer him the chance to... to stamp his input into the heart of the industry. I think people are fed up with having their thinking dictated by trendy, wealthy people from London who eat at smart restaurants and have houses in Tuscany.'

‘You mean people like yourself, Prime Minister?' Jeremy Paxman shot back at him.

The Prime Minister ignored Paxman and carried on, making the policy up as he went along, an evangelical gleam in his eye. The Real People Initiative - the RPI - had been born.

***

Eric Rowe, who until then had farmed eight hundred acres in the Quantocks, been a stalwart of the Somerset Rotary, but lost a fortune in the BSE crisis, was one of the first real people to apply for a job under the RPI scheme. The day Eric Rowe replaced Alan Yentob as the director of Channel 6, the Prime Minister and the Culture Secretary Chris Smith were there to wish him well. His official unveiling to the hundred or so reporters and photographers gathered in the lobby was performed to Jarvis Cocker singing ‘Common People'.

When reporters asked him for his thoughts on the state of British television he drew deeply on his pipe and said, ‘Well, boys, to tell you the truth, I rarely watch the thing, but my wife Audrey is quite keen on the nature programmes and the
Antiques Roadshow
.' With the enthusiastic backing of both the right-wing press and the government, it was no surprise that he felt able to treat even the great Naomi Gold (whom he had never even heard of before taking up his post) as nothing more than a particularly obstreperous mare.

‘Eric,' Naomi said as her breathing finally returned to normal and the room stopped spinning, ‘if our relationship is to be an amicable one... indeed if I am to remain at Channel 6, you have to get one thing absolutely straight. I will not be spoken to like some...'

‘You see, m'dear,' he said, ignoring her and picking up a pile of papers from his desk and waving them in front of him, ‘there is also the somewhat pressing matter of chitties...'

‘Chitties,' she repeated flatly.

‘Yes. Or in your case a very distinct absence of them. You see, not to put too fine a point on it, I've been getting complaints from Ee-laine, the canteen manager. As you well know, each senior member of staff is allowed to offer guests free refreshments - to wit a maximum of sixteen cups of tea and eight slices of cherry Genoa each month. The problem is that the canteen ladies have been watching you claiming your allowance without signing for it.'

Naomi could take no more.

‘For fuck's sake, man,' she yelled, standing up and leaning over his desk, ‘in case it has escaped your addled compost heap of a brain, you mangleworzled inbred bumpkin,
Naomi!
is the Channel 6 flagship programme. Haven't you looked at the ratings? Every sodding show you put out is losing viewers, except one. Mine. Without me this fucking station is kaput, Eric. Kaput. Do you hear me? Now, you have two choices. You either give me the respect and recognition I deserve, or I walk.'

Eric Rowe leaned back in his chair and drew on his pipe.

‘The door is open,' he said softly. ‘You see, I have looked at the ratings. In fact I have the latest ones right here.' He slid a sheet of paper across the desk towards her. She snatched it.

‘As you can see,' he went on, ‘they're not just slightly down on the previous month - they are considerably down.'

‘It's a statistical glitch,' she snapped, ‘nothing more. They'll be up again. It happens every summer when people go on holiday.'

‘Maybe,' he said, ‘but it's my considered opinion - as well as my wife Audrey's, I should add - that the public is beginning to come round to our way of thinking. They've had enough of this prurient rubbish and they're voting with their off buttons. I know you'd have found out about the viewing figures eventually, but I didn't want to upset you by mentioning it today because we do still value your contribution here at Channel 6. But your extreme rudeness and arrogance has left me with no option. Now then, let me give you what I think our American cousins refer to as the “bottom line”. Quite simply, you either take my recommendations on board - or you leave.'

‘OK, I'll leave,' she said. ‘You know as well as I do that I could walk into a job at the BBC tomorrow.'

‘You may... on the other hand, I think it's fair to say that the days of overpaid announcers like yourself are over. There's a lady traffic warden called Betty who already has a big following on Border Television and has been given her own show - on the BBC, as it happens. In fact I think it's scheduled to go out at the same time as your little programme. Do you know what they are paying her? I'll tell you what they're paying her. Two hundred a week. That's right. Just about your weekly expenses claim for taxis.'

Naomi plonked herself back on to her chair, defeat etched into her face.

‘That's better,' Rowe continued. ‘Now then, I suggest you go back to your office and think yourself lucky that you're still earning what you are in a profoundly changing industry.' He then brought out a matchbox from his pocket, struck a light, lowered it into the tobacco and began taking short, rapid puffs on his pipe.

‘Sheep worrying,' he said finally, ‘there's another major issue for you. Or senior citizens. Intrepid OAPs, battling grannies - that's the ticket. Blow me down, they're coming thick and fast now. D'you know, I can see we're going to get along...'

As he chuckled to himself, a stream of pipe smoke escaped from the side of his mouth and wafted towards Naomi. She coughed and waved her arm vigorously from side to side as she became trapped inside the fug.

Immediately after slamming Eric Rowe's door behind her, Naomi charged up to the canteen, barged her way to the front of the queue, and demanded a triple-decker Bacon Bastard. ‘With extra Bastard,' she snapped.

***

The woman in the long mauve cardigan and woolly hat picked up the ringing telephone. Before she had a chance to say hello, the sobbing, hiccoughing lass on the end of the line began gabbling about her gigantic nose and how she thought no boy was ever going to fancy her and that she was certain she would remain a virgin for the rest of her life. The girl had barely got into her stride when the woman let out an elongated sigh.

‘Nose, schmoze. You think you've got problems. That's nothing. Let me tell you about the aggravation I got with my grandson. He doesn't call, he doesn't visit... so, what's your name, darling?'

‘Natalie,' the girl said through another hiccough. There was a pause. ‘Hang on,' she said, sniffing, ‘I thought this was meant to be a student counselling service. You're supposed to be listening to my problems...'

‘No, darling, this is the Sidney and Bessie Hamburger Jewish Day Centre. I was on my way to the dining room and as I was passing by the office I heard the phone going.'

‘Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. I dialled the wrong number...'

‘No, no, darling, wait - don't hang up. My grandson - to tell you the truth, he's not such an oil painting. He's got bat ears. Listen, he's got big ears, you've got a big nose. You're a perfect match...'

Finally realizing the line had gone dead, Millie Resnick, eighty-three years young next week, as she delighted in telling the staff at the centre several times a day, shrugged, shuffled across the office and continued on her way.

‘Smells like some kind of fried fish.' The voice came from behind her. She turned round to see her friend Queenie Gold. Millie sniffed the air, nodded her agreement and waited for her chum to draw level.

‘All my married life,' Queenie said as they walked down the corridor, ‘I stood and fried fish... every Friday night without fail. On these ankles... you wonder why they look like tree trunks.' The need to out-Jewish-mother her friends at the day centre constantly forced Queenie to re-invent her past. ‘And in forty years I never smelled anything like this. I can't put my finger on it, but something's not right. I tell you, Millie, this new catering manager they just took on, I don't like the look of him. In my view, you can never trust a man with too much hair. It's all over him, sprouting through his shirt front, out of his nose, his ears. I ask you, who ever heard of a man with a handlebar eyebrow?'

The two women reached the door - Queenie limping a little more than usual because her hip had been playing her up. They paused at the notice board to look at the hand-written lunch menu. Millie couldn't make it out because of her cataracts, so Queenie read it aloud. The shaky mix of swirly upper-and lower-case letters surrounded by incompetent felt-tip drawings of fish, shells and nets proclaimed fried fillet of plaice, chips and peas followed by fresh fruit salad.

‘Fresh, my backside,' Queenie spat, as they joined the lunch queue. ‘The only thing fresh about that fruit salad is the crook who opened the tin.'

The general crashing and clanking of pots and pans on the opposite side of the serving hatch was accompanied by Martin Posner, the newly installed catering-manager-cum-chef, belting out ‘My Way' as he lowered baskets of battered fish into the huge stainless-steel deep fryer.

Directing the men and women in wheelchairs or with walking frames to the head of the queue was Lorraine Feld, the famously jolly fifty-something day centre manager. With her caring expression and her pale pink sweatshirt with a huge teddy bear motif, she looked like an ever-so-slightly twee hybrid of a social worker, a lower-middle-class Lady Bountiful and an angel.

Queenie and Millie sat themselves down at one of the Formica-topped tables, next to their friend Lenny Shupak. Queenie liked Lenny not simply because he was a widower - there were umpteen of those at the centre - but because he was still on the ball and he hadn't let himself go to pot. He wore his shirts with the cuffs rakishly folded back two or three turns, and droopy gold-rimmed glasses which had been vaguely trendy in the seventies and which Queenie still regarded as the height of fashion. He was also one of the few men at the day centre who didn't have a niff of stale wee about him.

Lenny had only been coming to the centre for a few months. He'd lived all his life in Leeds, and after his wife died had moved down to London to be near his daughter. Nobody ever used Lenny's proper surname. To everybody at the day centre he was always known as Lenny Leeds.

‘Beef dripping,' Lenny said, filling his lungs with air and grimacing. ‘I'd know that smell anywhere. Every chip shop in the north uses it for frying. People up there like the taste. But the point is, it's far cheaper than oil... and it sure as hell ain't kosher.'

‘I knew it.' Queenie thumped the table with her palm. ‘I knew it didn't smell right. The fact is, the food's been bloody awful since Posner took over. Bits of scraggy, tasteless old meat. Fruit that's either tinned or half rotten. And the only green we get is in the bread.'