The Generation Game (32 page)

‘A quiet night in with a takeaway and a bottle of Sancerre, if Adrian’s got anything to do with it.’

She makes a funny sound at the mention of his name. She always makes this sound. A mixture of snort and tut that is quite clearly an expression of contempt for my other half.

‘Wouldn’t you like a party?’

‘I’d hate a party.’

‘But why, Philippa? Parties are lovely.’

‘No.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘All the obvious reasons and then several thousand more.’

I haven’t enjoyed a birthday party since I was ten and the toast of my school. I’d rather not think about my sixteenth (poor Diana, poor me, I knew it would all end in tears). And
now, at this stage of my life, I’d rather not highlight my embarrassing existence to everyone who knows me. I’d rather not be centre stage. That always ends badly.

Evelyn doesn’t push it. She finishes her skinny latte in silence, tidying the book mark rack, leaving me to finish sorting out the Crime 3 for 2s. And I presume that is the end of it. A
mushroom biryani and a bottle of expensive French wine will do me fine, thank you very much.

So what happens? Shock, horror, twist, Adrian gives me a top present, something I’ve been wanting for ages, an iPod. But that isn’t all. He goes out of his way to alert the nation to
my rite of passage and throws a party. Not a thrown-together Bob-style one, but a reasonably well-orchestrated surprise one. Only not as finely-tuned as it might’ve been which is why I turn
up at my fortieth wearing a chavvy tracksuit and dirty Reeboks. Well, how was I to know? He sends me off – unfairly or so I think – to go down to Oddbins for the wine and then on to
Bombay Delights to pick up the curry. He says he wants to tidy up and make the place look nice for me – which does strike me as strange but I don’t question it. I am happy to get out.
To have a bit of a walk. To clear my head at the thought of all those lost years.

By the time I arrive back at the house, a long evening of television viewing laid out before me, there they are, lined up in the hallway and on the stairs: everyone (bar Dr Cheryl) who was at
our nondescript wedding, some neighbours, plus a flock of estate agents, and – no-please-no – Toni.

‘Surprise!’ they chorus.

There is a delayed stunned silence as they take in my Reeboks and I take in their glamour before people return to the lounge armed with their glasses and nibbles, all except Toni, who remains in
my hallway, reflected in the mirror Adrian and I bought in Greenwich market in the days when we used to spend Sunday mornings together, instead of being separated by golf. Toni and her reflection
both look radiant in their matching expensive biased-cut long strappy dresses with immaculate accessories straight from the pages of Vogue. They are sipping Champagne and holding hands with two
beautiful African men called Adebayo.

I step in front of the mirror in an effort to break the illusion. I can only handle one Toni at a time (and even one is pushing it).

‘Hello, Toni,’ I say graciously.

‘Happy Birthday, Philippa,’ she says. ‘Hope you don’t mind me coming. Adrian thought it was time we made up.’

‘Did he?’

‘I see him all the time so it’s a bit weird I never see you.’

‘Well, that’s the Thames for you. It might as well be the Atlantic.’

Adebayo laughs politely and I like him for trying. But ‘like’ is not the feeling I have for Adrian who’s forced me into this situation. He knows I hate surprises, ever since
the one he sprung on me in Bernie’s soggy garden. The marry-me one that I was suckered into without thinking. The one that cut me off from Bob, (oh, Bob, where are you now?) and today
he’s invited Toni here. Ms Tip Taps herself. His ex, his business partner, his once-cohabitee. Toni, who runs the north London office, while he takes care of the south. Toni, who he sees all
the time, talks to everyday. Toni, who he is now riveted to, laughing way too loudly at her jokes, her witticisms that are far more sophisticated than anything that tumble out of my mouth. Toni,
who my husband is quite clearly comparing to me, looking with envy at the beautiful tall man at her side with the voice of a Shakespearian actor.

I make my excuses and move away from the clique. Someone shoves a glass of pink bubbly in my hand which I make short work of as I stand in the doorway of the lounge which is surprisingly full of
people who’ve made the effort to come to my party – only a few of whom are dear to me.

Over in the bay window that gives onto our leafy street sits Joe on our sofa, gorging on a slice of garlic bread and chatting to Rebecca while she breastfeeds their third baby, Gabriel. Joe
waves at me, a little ironic comrade salute, then shouts ‘Happy Birthday!’ a little too loudly, earning him a turn-to-stone look from Rebecca as Gabriel pops off the breast to search
for the source of his father’s heckling voice.

Leaning against the mantelpiece are the flock of estate agents who’ve taken off their ties in an effort to appear casual though I can tell by the veins throbbing in their temples that they
are still at work in spirit. Once upon a time Toni would have been over there with them, joining in, but right now she and Adebayo brush past me through the doorway and move elegantly into our
lounge where they stand together, up close and personal, on our very expensive Persian rug, talking intimately – something I haven’t done with anyone in a very long time.

Further along, next to the gate-legged table that has been opened up to accommodate all the bring-a-bottles, stands Evelyn and Judith who’ve added their homemade blackberry wine to the
collection, potent wine which has somehow found its way into my glass and will soon be hurtling through my bloodstream, searching out my brain cells and destroying them one by one.

Evelyn and Judith have been trapped against the gate-legged table by an earnest neighbour who is lecturing them on the kindest way to deter the slugs from decimating their crops. If Auntie Nina
was
compos mentis
she could tell them that there is one sure fire way of killing slugs and that is with a pair of kitchen scissors. But Auntie Nina is down the other end of the room, sitting
at the piano playing Gershwin with the gusto, if not the finesse, of Liberace.

I decide that unless I want to join Auntie Nina for a duet I should fill my stomach with some food and that is when I come across Adrian, leaning against the Aga (mark two), a bottle of Evelyn
and Judith’s witch’s brew in his hand, deep in thought.

He looks up as I come in, takes a glug from the bottle.

‘Happy birthday,’ he says, filling my glass from the same bottle he’s just drunk from and which he is now lifting in a toast. ‘Cheers.’

‘Bottoms up,’ I mumble in return, wishing my bottom felt more pert in this baggy tracksuit.

‘Shall I get changed?’ I ask him.

‘Don’t be daft,’ he says. ‘This is you, Phil.’ He indicates my scruffydom. ‘Why make yourself look all fancy when you’re not? Everyone likes you just
the way you are.’

I ignore the Billy Joel (no change in his musical taste) and decide now is as good a time as any to take up smoking and grab a Camel off Auntie Nina who’s wandered into the kitchen with a
half-drunk bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream in her hand. And it is barely ten past eight. Auntie Nina hands me her silver lighter and Adrian watches me in amazement as I have a coughing fit,
though he doesn’t say a word; he doesn’t get a chance. For once Adrian has met his match in Auntie Nina who’s sat me down at the table.

‘What a shame Helena isn’t here,’ she muses. She is about to say something else as she looks at Adrian but then her words get lost in a haze of smoke and nostalgia (a dangerous
pair).

‘Isn’t it,’ I agree though I know the one person Auntie Nina wants to be here, can never be. For he is still a speck of stardust floating around waiting for his mother to join
him one of these days – which won’t be too long judging by the way she is knocking them back.

‘I must circulate,’ Adrian announces. Then he leaves us to it.

Auntie Nina takes my hand in earnest. We are alone at last with our favourite ghost. But we don’t really make the best of it. Instead, Auntie Nina decides to commune with him by putting
her head on the table. I manage to extricate my hand, enabling me to stuff my face with Pringles whilst finishing off Auntie Nina’s cancer stick.

Then I remember the iPod in my pocket and plug in my earphones. During
Dancing Queen
, I feel my mobile vibrate; a text message from Dr. Cheryl wishing me Many Happy Rtns which seems
doubtful from where I’m sitting. I light up another of Auntie Nina’s cigarettes and lose myself in
Super Trouper
. After a while, through the smoke screen, a face materialises,
one I’m not expecting to see. An uninvited guest.

‘Happy Birthday, Phil,’ the guest mouths, a man who’s celebrated his own special birthday not so long ago (half a century!). I haven’t seen him in ages, not since
Bernie’s funeral, though I often lie in bed upstairs at night, staring at the pattern in our handmade curtains, remembering a note squeezed into my hand in his sister’s bijou bathroom
across town. The best night of my life that led, a few months later, to the worst. The Cavalier holding the oxygen mask to my face. The squeaky trolley. The splatter of sick on a lino floor.

‘Alright, Justin,’ I say, taking out the earphones. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘I don’t suppose you were,’ he says cryptically, taking in Auntie Nina slumped at the table, the cigarette stub that I post into an empty can of Stella, the shiny new iPod.
‘I came all the same.’

He delves in his big dispatch rider type bag and pulls out a brown paper package, tied up with string.

‘For you,’ he says.

Inside, when I eventually manage to untie the knot, is a
Blue Peter
annual. A vintage one, 1971. Unfortunately Auntie Nina decides this is the moment to pull herself together, and sits
back up, breathing rather heavily. She spots the annual and immediately thinks of her lost boy with his messy hair and his voice that cried out across Torquay and, so it would seem, from the Other
Side.

‘Lucas,’ she whispers, trance-like. ‘This is from Lucas.’ She grips Justin’s arm and says, ‘Oh, thank you. Thank you for bringing this. Do you have any other
messages?’

I look at Justin, willing him on.

‘Ye-es,’ he stalls.

I kick him.

He goes on. ‘He told me to tell you… he misses you.’ (At this point Auntie Nina starts to wail at the thought of her small boy hopelessly calling out for her in the dead of
night.)

I will him on some more, kicking him a little harder.

‘And he says… not to worry about him. He’s fine.’

‘Thank God,’ she says. ‘Thank God.’And she leaves the room with a fresh glass of sherry and a serene smile on her painted lips.

‘That was nice,’ I say when I hear the piano cranking up again in the distance.

‘What? Fooling a drunk woman her dead son’s just contacted her from beyond the grave?’

‘Don’t say it like that. You put her mind at rest. Gave her a little nugget of peace.’

‘Maybe,’ he says, helping himself to some killer wine (which is definitely not for wimps). ‘What about you? Have you found peace?’ He asks this like he really wants to
know the answer.

‘Not especially. Have you?’

‘Not especially.’

He takes the tube of Pringles off me and shoves a stack of them in his big gob, washing down the remains with more blackberry wine. Then he says it: ‘Have you heard from Bob?’

‘Not a word,’ I say, slightly taken aback that he should bring this up now, but still… the sound of his name… ‘How is he?’

‘Why are you asking me?’

‘Your mum’s no doubt got her claws into him.’

‘He’s not exactly resisting.’

‘Maybe not. But the whole of my life all I can remember is your mum chasing my… Bob. He’s given up the fight.’

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he sighs, slumping back into the chair. ‘Dad’s dead.’

‘I know, I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘Your dad, you know, being dead.’

A small smile works its way around his lips at my discomfort.

‘I liked him, alright?’

‘Did you?’ he asks, surprised.

‘He had his moments.’

‘I must’ve missed them,’ he says, tipping the last of the crisps into his mouth. ‘I don’t feel a lot when I think of him. I don’t feel like I’ve lost
much at all.’

‘You should try being me. I’ve lost pretty much everyone along the way.’

‘You’ve picked up your fair share too.’

‘Adrian? Is that how you see it?’

‘It doesn’t matter how I see it. It’s how you see it.’

‘I wish I’d never set foot in that garden that day. Never sat under that tree. Never said yes to… all this.’ I sweep my arm vaguely around me, taking in the Aga, the
table, the Dualit toaster, the cupboards full of Champagne flutes and Dartington glass. ‘I wish I’d stayed in your mother’s kitchen doing the dishes.’

That’s when he looks at me, straight-faced. Not a smile, not a sneer, not a hint of desperation but something else, something I can’t put my finger on.

‘Give us your iPod,’ he demands. And then he extracts something else from his bag. ‘You probably need some proper music on there but this’ll have to do. It is a Monkees
CD. The Best of.’ He proceeds to move over to my PC on the desk in the corner of the room and burn it or something onto my iPod. Just like that. Then he plugs the earphones back into my ears
and I get a blast of
Daydream Believer
which he lets me sing along to for longer than is polite.

‘Fancy some fresh air?’ he asks eventually, when he can stand no more.

And I can’t help but remember the time his sister dragged me away from Bob in the shop, down to the harbour, where we sat on a wet bench and she asked me to come to London. Little did she
know what would happen there.

‘Yeah, let’s get out of here.’

And I walk out the kitchen door, into the muggy July evening, Justin right behind me, a long way from that garden of our childhood where we played ponies and bad guitar-based rock. From the
bottom of this garden, we look back at the house where I live with Adrian, the man I took from his sister. We can make out the shapes of the party guests within, moving in the twilight. Shadow
puppets acting out their feelings: joy, celebration, drunkenness, lust, loss and love. The last thing I glimpse before I lead Justin down the garden path of our secluded garden towards the summer
house is my husband, upstairs in our bedroom, drawing the curtains whose pattern still eludes me. I spent the whole of the first summer in that room, after work, stripping off layers of wallpaper,
relining and painting. I did it all on my own. Now he is there without me, his familiar shape bending towards a woman. A woman he’s never stopped loving. Two shadow puppets acting out their
own play of betrayal.