Playing with the Grown-ups Page 13

  'Yes. I'm fine, thank you. I'm in the school play, and I have a friend called Honor Freeman whose house I'm ringing you from and she's in the school play too.'

  'That's marvellous news. How is everyone? Are you going to come and stay? I've forgotten what you like. You can bring your new friend.'

  'I can't because of my play rehearsals; but I promise I will soon. I'm a 32B bra size.'

  'Golly. Well, we have news, or Elsie does. Would you like to talk to her?'

  'Where's your mad mother?' Elsie said, coming on the line.

  'She's at home. She's not mad. What's your news?' Kitty felt wrong talking about her mother.

  'I'm moving to New York! I'm going to work as an assistant at Vogue.'

  'That's so unfair!' Kitty said. 'Now I'm back and you're leaving.'

  'You can't get rid of me. I'm your family,' Elsie said.

  'You're stuck with me for ever.'

  Kitty told her about school and the new house.

  'Well, it sounds moderately more sensible,' Elsie said. 'Come and stay with me in New York. Bestemama wants to say goodbye.'

  'Bestemama, in the school play a boy named Dylan O'Sullivan has to pinch my bum after my dance, because Matthew the drama teacher says it creates sexual tension.'

  'My goodness,'Bestemama said. 'What sort of play is this?'

  * * *

  'Why can't Dylan pinch Selena's arse?' Kitty complained to Honor, after rehearsal. 'She'd like it.'

  'Matthew thought it should be you, because you look innocent and like you mind.'

  'I do mind.'

  'It's only acting.' Honor could say that; she had a soaring solo and didn't have to wear a cheap fringed flapper dress.

  'I'm sorry about having to pinch your arse, yeah?' Dylan O'Sullivan stood by the bus stop, engulfed by his Chipie puffa jacket, the Dream Warriors pounding out from his Walkman.

  'It's OK. Well, it's not, but you know what I mean.' Kitty tried to scurry past.

  'Nah. I said to Matthew, it's DEMEANING to Kitty, yeah? But he won't listen, says it's method acting, innit? Poof. My mum thinks it's a disgrace.'

  'Does she?' Kitty couldn't imagine Dylan's mum.

  'Yeah. Cause she's an original feminist, innit? She was gonna complain to Richard.'

  Richard was their bearded headmaster, a peaceful man. He blushed when her mother came to parent-teacher evening and clutched his hand to emphasise her point.

  'Oh no. That would be really embarrassing. Let's not make a fuss.'

  She noticed in the gathering dusk that Dylan had really green eyes. Suddenly the thought of him not pinching her arse was sad.

  'It's only acting,' she said. 'Don't worry.'

  'You going to the tube?' Kitty nodded. 'I'll walk you there. By the way, I'm sorry I took the piss out of your jeans before.'

  'That's all right. They're longer now. I didn't know.' She smiled at him.

  They ran down the hill, and at some point their arms linked, and they talked so much he got on the tube with her all the way back to Clapham, and her mother sent him home to Kilburn in a radio taxi on the only account of Mr Fitzgerald's still active.

  'He seems like a nice Irish boy,' Nora said. 'With a lovely colour to him.'

  'He is, he makes supper for his granny every night. He said she's his feminine inspiration,' Kitty said. 'His dad is a lawyer from Tobago.'

  Kitty noticed her mother spending a lot of time on the phone and waiting anxiously by the fax machine. She thought more bills needed to be paid. But then the flowers started to arrive. Moyses Steven's vans double-parked outside the house as delivery men staggered in, orange trees dripping sweetly before them. The lovebirds came next, in an antique wicker cage, christened with obscure names from T. S. Eliot. Her mother was clearly bubbling to tell, but she pruned her orange trees and chattered to her lovebirds, murmuring into the phone long through the night, in a secret shorthand that was incomprehensible and flagrantly annoying.

  'Have you noticed anything about Mummy?' Kitty said to Nora.

  'No.' Crossing her arms, Nora shook her head.

  Kitty pressed her, but she was tight-lipped and unyielding.

  A telegram came. Her mother tore it open, greedy-fingered, the envelope turning to confetti in her white hands.

  'What does it say?' Kitty said. She decided that being proud was no way to get information.

  'The Magician's in town,' her mother incanted, stroking the paper.

  'What does it mean?'

  'It means he's here.'

  'Who's he? Barry?'

  'God no!' her mother said. 'Jenkins. Jenkins is here.'

  'Who's Jenkins and why is he a magician?' Kitty asked.

  Her mother smirked.

  'Because he can do magic,' she said.

  'God, you're so disgusting. I don't want to know about your sex life. Yuck.'

  'No, he does proper magic. Tricks and things. That's not what he does for a living though. He's a composer.' She said this rather grandly.

  'Mum, have you noticed a theme in your choice of men?'

  'I happen to like sparky people, that's all. Magic has nothing to do with anything.'

  'Well, when did you meet him, and why don't I know about him?' Kitty felt affronted.

  'I haven't seen him since I was a teenager; he was the first man I kissed,' Marina said.

  'No, he wasn't. The first man you kissed was the doctor's son.'

  'He was a boy. Do you want to hear or not?'

  The story of Jenkins was long and complicated and seemed to involve a lot of wives and children. Kitty pointed this out.

  'That's all incidental,' her mother said airily. Jenkins kissed her when she was fifteen, at a party where Princess Margaret wore red shoes, and danced (quite well) with Omar Sharif to a song by the Kinks.

  'Get to the point,' Kitty said.

  'I'm setting the scene, Kitty. The details are important.'

  As she spoke her mother's face was lit with colour and memory. Kitty saw the party, the long curved mahogany staircase, the dress like a cobweb, Jenkins asking her mother to dance, and kissing her long and hard, until she was dizzy with kissing and felt as though she were a complicated coat, whose buttons he had mastered, and hung up finally with great care.

  'Yes and then we went and sat down and he introduced me to his wife.'

  'Oh no he didn't!' Kitty said, like the pantomime child she longed to be.

  'Oh yes he did,' her mother replied.

  Jenkins was staying at the Athenaeum on Piccadilly. They were going to have lunch.

  'Why don't you run in and get him?'

  Her mother double-parked her Beetle outside and was putting on lip gloss, oblivious to the furious honking that she was incurring.

  'I'm not going to know him,' Kitty said.

  'Yes, you will. He'll be the most ravishing man in the lobby. Anyway he'll know you. Go on.'

  She couldn't see anyone remotely ravishing in the lobby. It was full of overfed tourists. She wondered what to do. A tiny, wild-haired man came up to her and clapped her on the back causing Kitty to scream in terror.

  She glared at him.

  'Yes?' she said imperiously, thinking he might assume she was a lady of the night hanging around in the lobby.

  'You're a bit of a chip off the old block, my darling!' he boomed, kissing her firmly on both cheeks.

  'Jenkins?' she said, incredulous.

  'Indeed, indeed. Sorry to startle you, Magpie. You look so like your mummy.'

  No one but her mother called her Magpie, yet she didn't mind. She loved him immediately. He wore a shell suit, and the pouches under his eyes would have housed a baby wallaby, but he reeked of fun.

  He grabbed her arm.

  'Let's get some nosh,' he said.

  Within five minutes Jenkins had possessed the hearts of everyone in the car. Sam, Violet and Kitty sat, sardines in the back, hanging on his every word.

  'Is that old man your father?' Sam whispered.

  'No, he's Mummy's boyfriend. M
y father's dead, remember?'

  'Oh yeah. We got Torty when he died.'

  As he talked, the hands of Jenkins danced. They fox-trotted across the table, one moment reaching up to stroke her mother's ear, tenderly, the next wandering off on a tangent about his politics, stabbing at the air like a pickpocket's knife.

  With his hands, Jenkins conjured up the faces and sizes of his four sons, who lived with their mother on a horse farm in Montana. Each boy was a different inflection, a story untold, until, crafted through his father's fingers, he was real, as real as if he were sitting right there with them in the steamy womb of the Italian restaurant.

  The oldest, Tex, could tame and ride a wild horse bareback, and every animal he met was putty in his hands. Kitty immediately wanted to meet this Tex and have his babies.

  The little one, Otis, was a small tender gesture, painted as shy, with glasses and a love of books.

  Her mother looked over at Jenkins proudly, like he was something amazing she had found, and brought to the classroom for show and tell.

  Jenkins didn't talk about the mother of his boys, but alluded to the fact she had American Indian blood. This made her supremely glamorous in Kitty's head, a tough, fearless Bukowski beauty, presiding over her pride-of-lionheart boys.

  Jenkins wanted to know what each of them wanted to be when they were older.

  'Bus driver,' Sam said.

  'A sensei.' Violet had recently discovered a passion for karate.

  'Admirable strong professions, both.' Jenkins gave them a nod of approval, under which they glowed.

  'And you, Miss Kitty, what will you be?'

  'A writer and perhaps a contessa.'

  Jenkins looked grave.

  'Where will you live in your titled splendour?'

  'Oh I should think in Venice, in a decaying palazzo with a melancholic count.'

  'Why is the count melancholic?' her mother asked.

  'He just would be. Family curse, dark past, I don't know.'

  'What about Count Dracula?' said Sam. 'Then Kitty would be a vampire, which would be quite interesting.'

  'I'm in love with your children and I'm in love with you,' she heard Jenkins say to her mother.

  'When will you come back?'

  'I just need to sort a few things out. I will be back as soon as it is humanly possible. I don't think I could survive without your face for many weeks.'

  'You managed to before.' Her mother looked down sadly.

  'Jenkins, can we come and see you in Montana?' Violet pulled at his hand.

  'Princess Violetta, I shall bring Montana to you.'

  'How can you do that?' Sam gave him a doubtful look.

  'My dear boy, I am a magician. I can do anything.'

  They all believed him.

  The flow of faxes was a gushing river, the flowers coming three times a week, like clockwork. Nora became very tight with the Moyses Steven delivery men, and often returning from school Kitty found them having a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive, telling Nora dirty jokes.

  In these months her mother painted her best work. Bleak landscapes that went on and on, with glimmers of light if you looked hard enough. In her self-portraits she could have been three different women at the same time. There was a soft ripeness that replaced her girlish lines.

  When Jenkins rang, he always spoke to Kitty after her. They had inside jokes, words, nicknames. It was as though he had been ready-made for them.

  Kitty told Honor about him, and his sons, and the thick of passion that swam through the house, causing each of them to be dizzy and restless.

  'You speak like it's a story. Something from a novel.' Honor folded wax paper carefully around what was left of her brown bread and avocado sandwich.

  'It is though. It's the most romantic thing I've ever heard. They found one another again, after years of being with the wrong people. They are each other's one.'

  Honor and Kitty spent many hours talking about the ONE.

  Dylan O'Sullivan could be the one in a few years; he has potential,' Kitty said.

  Honor shook her head sagely.

  'Dylan O'Sullivan needs to grow. He's too short to be the one. The one has to be at least four inches taller than you.'

  'Jenkins is moving in with us!' Sam opened the front door before Kitty got her key in; his face was a huge smile. 'Mum's gone to pick him up from the airport. He's moving in with all his clothes and everything! A truck will come and bring it all after he gets here.'

  She kissed Sam with smacking noises all over his little neck.

  'It's going to be so brilliant. Get off me, disgusting, it's going to be so brilliant. He'll teach me magic and we'll go to the park and the fair and he can pick us up from school. . .'

  '. . . and what about his work? When will he work?'

  Sam gave her an indignant look.

  'He's going to have a something beginning with S which means a holiday. I heard Mummy tell Nora.'

  Jenkins directed a group of baffled removal men, wearing her mother's pink towelling dressing gown and no slippers on the street, to the astonishment of Sarah-in-Poona's neighbours, whose curtains twitched with excitement. In his hand he held a large Bloody Mary. He had thin bandy legs like a malnourished child.

  Kitty had been given the day off school to help unpack. Nora was not happy. Jenkins tried to dance down the street with her whilst she was clutching a bust of Mozart's head.

  ' "Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars . . ."' Jenkins sang.

  'Are you moving in or not, Mr Jenkins?' Nora said icily.

  'I'm just trying to have fun whilst I move,' said Jenkins, chastened, and he sang with less volume for a bit.

  Her mother whistled and shone, and embraced Jenkins every ten minutes.

  'Where's the pub?' Jenkins asked after supper.

  'What, my darling?'

  'Where's the nearest pub? I need my drink.'

  Her mother made her worried face.

  'I don't know; I've never been. Do you know, Kitty?'

  'Why would I know where the pub is? We can go and find one.'

  'Yes, of course we can, we'll find one, I'm sure. Isn't there one on Lavender Hill?'

  'Yes, I think so,' Kitty said.

  They set off in the dark, and they passed by many pubs.

  'Not old-fashioned enough,' Jenkins said. 'Not good enough to be my local.'

  'What about this one?' Her mother pointed. 'This one looks nice and jolly.'

  'No.'Jenkins shook his white head darkly. 'No it doesn't.'

  After two hours the mood in the car had shifted. Every pub within a two-mile radius had been deemed unsuitable. Her mother's hands tensed on the wheel of the car, and she bit her lip.

  'There's one!' Kitty called, her voice sounding shrill.

  'Look, that one is exactly as you described,Jenkins, exactly.'

  'Fine.' He looked straight ahead, and it was difficult to work out what he was thinking, which frightened her.

  'A pint of Guinness, my good man, with a chaser of brandy.'Jenkins was jovial again, and he looked as though he was born to drink in the pub Kitty had found.

  She ordered a Diet Coke, and her mother had a gin and tonic. Now he was happily ensconced in the pub, things went back to how they were supposed to be. Kitty breathed out. Jenkins became expansive and rubbed the small of her mother's back with the hand that did not have a drink in it. Her mother began to unfurl. Affection and jokes puffed her up, until her eyes were half moons of pleasure.

  Jenkins drank five pints of Guinness that needed seven shots of brandy to chase it on its way. The bell rang for closing time, and Jenkins looked sad.

  'The loneliest sound in the world, that is.'

  As they left, her mother gently leading him like a stubborn sheep, he sang a raspy rendition of 'Eleanor Rigby', which made Kitty's bones ache with a hopeful sort of sadness.

  The hands did not dance with life in the morning. They did a jerky puppet dance, like Baron Samadhi come to commune with the dead. Qui
ver and shake. His coffee cup rattled, a little typhoon contained in ceramic.

  Kitty saw her mother get a miniature bottle of whisky from the fridge, and pour it neatly and without words into his coffee. The skin under her eyes looked like a child had squashed a lilac crayon there.

  He reached up and kissed her mother's nose.

  'Thanks, Fred,' he said.

  Kitty studiously ignored the moment, Jenkins reading the paper, her mother stirring porridge. She picked up her backpack.

  'I'm going to be late for school,' she said.

  'Bye, darling! Have a lovely day!' her mother called.

  'Knock 'em dead, tiger,' Jenkins growled, saluting her.

  The first phone call Kitty got on her own phone line was from Dylan O'Sullivan. The phone was an old-fashioned one, where you dialled the numbers with your fingers. Her phone number ended 0070. Sam called it her Bond line.

  'Kitty, you're so posh, innit? One phone not enough in your house?'

  'My mum said that teenagers use the phone all the time and she didn't want to vie for the phone with me. Which is a bunch of crap because I'm not on the phone that much. Did you ring me to insult me?' Kitty pursed her lips, but inside she was happy.

  'Nah, I just rang you to say all right.'

  'All right, Dylan?'

  'Yeah, I'm all right,' he said.

  Sam and Violet built sandcastles, the sky overhead close and grey with rain unshed. Their fingers were blue, but they worked tirelessly under Nora's supervision. They were building a citadel, with pebble walls.

  Her mother and Jenkins were sitting on the beach, deep in conversation.

  'Do you think they ever get bored of each other?' Rosaria said, watching them closely from the bench she and Kitty had chosen.

  'They don't seem to. They find each other really amusing.'

  It was Easter. Her mother decided that they should get the sea air. She and Jenkins said Torquay would be a 'jaunt'. Kitty wanted to go to Cap Ferrat, and wear a dress of broderie anglaise, whatever that was. Violet and Sam didn't care as long as there was sand and buckets and spades. Kitty insisted that Rosaria come, because sometimes her mother and Jenkins left her out.