Goggle-eyes’ shoulders were heaving with laughter. Mum turned on him.
‘No, honestly,’ she insisted. ‘I’m serious. Why pretend any longer? What does it matter that we, the British public, once had a library system that was the envy of the world?’
She might have been on stage in the West End. Poor Goggle-eyes was wiping tears of laughter from his cheeks. I raised my eyes to heaven yet again.
Then Mum stuck out her hand dramatically.
‘Give me your library ticket. Go on. Hand it over.’
I shook my head and jumped back fast.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Hand it over. It’s confiscated.’
‘Oh, no, it isn’t!’ I said, pantomime-style.
‘Oh, yes, it is!’
‘Oh, no, it isn’t!’
All the time, keeping the table between us, I kept moving steadily and stealthily towards the back door. Mum suddenly made as if to chase me; and, making a huge effort, Gerald Faulkner managed to control his laughter long enough to catch her in his arms and hold her back, while I got safely through the door.
‘Bye-eee!’ I called, haring down the garden path.
I sang all the way to the library. I couldn’t help it. One or two people stared (I’m not the greatest singer in the world) but I didn’t care. I felt light and happy. It always cheers me up when Mum stops worrying about work, or the mortgage, or how we’re turning out, and just acts daft. And it seemed ages since we’d had a really silly scene like that, with her halfway serious and halfway fooling, and not caring for a moment how everything turned out.
And maybe it had helped, having Goggle-eyes there watching everything, laughing. Maybe Mum just felt far more cheerful when she had company. She and Dad used to muck about quite a bit before things went wrong. Maybe there were advantages to having someone else around the place.
I thought about it quite a lot while I was in the library. And then again when I walked home, the long way, and saw Jude hanging upside down from the park railings, her hair sweeping the grass. She’d taken to him, too, right from the start. She’d let him help her with her project on The Sea Shore, she ate his chocolates, and she sat on his knee through all the repeats of Blackadder. I’d watch her out of the corner of my eye, practically rolling off his lap onto the floor whenever something struck Goggle-eyes as particularly amusing. It didn’t seem to bother Jude that she was curled in the arms of the opposition, a die-hard, reds-under-the-beds deterrent-monger who actually believes that on the day nuclear weapons are dismantled in Britain, Russians will march in from Moscow, stamping the snow from the steppes off their feet.
And it didn’t seem to bother Mum either (though she at least did make the effort to point out to him that countries like Norway and Sweden and Austria are miles nearer Russia than we are, and don’t have nuclear weapons, and aren’t invaded).
Maybe I shouldn’t let it bother me.
I came home prepared to give it a real try. I know I did. I came home with feelings towards Gerald Faulkner that weren’t exactly warm, but they were neutral. He’d done me more than one good favour that day. He might not be well and truly tuned in to Small Planet Earth, but he did have his good points. How was I to know that, within seconds of my stepping in the house, he’d blow it? Stand there like the Grand Inquisitor, and send himself hurtling right back to the top of my hit list.
‘Let me get this straight.’ He rested both hands on the table, and leaned across. ‘Kitty has just dug those potatoes out of the ground for you.’
‘Correct,’ said Mum, tipping the sodden black lumps into the sink and turning the full force of the taps on them, to rinse off the soil.
‘And they’re from the vegetable plot at the bottom of the garden.’
‘The very same.’
‘Begun by her father, but now kept up by Kitty with a bit of help from Judith.’
‘Not much help,’ I reminded everyone. (Jude spends all her free time out on that park.)
Ignoring me, Prosecuting Counsel turned to Mum, his Star Witness.
‘And you buy all the seeds.’
‘Right.’
‘And the gardening tools.’
‘Everything,’ said Mum. ‘Trowels, beanpoles, fertilizers, netting, manure…’
‘And Kitty charges you for the potatoes!’
I stared.
‘What’s wrong with that?’
I was astonished, simply astonished. You’d think I was a bag-snatcher or something, the way he was looking at me, all shocked and disapproving.
‘I think it’s simply appalling,’ he replied.
For heaven’s sake.
‘Why?’ I argued. ‘I don’t like gardening. Neither does Mum. It’s a big chore. So now Dad’s gone, Mum pays me for the vegetables, to keep me going.’
‘What about you?’ he demanded. ‘Have you paid her yet for the lunch she cooked, the rugs she vacuumed and the bath she cleaned?’
Mum tried to stick up for me then.
‘But, Gerald. I’m her mother.’
‘You are her family,’ Goggle-eyes corrected. ‘And she is yours. You shouldn’t be paying for her cooperation. No one should have to bribe their close relations to pull their weight. It is disgusting.’
Mum made a face. I thought, at first, it was a mind-your-own-beeswax-Gerald sort of face at him. But then I realized, to my horror, it was a just-a-minute-while-I-think-about-this sort of face.
‘It certainly works, though,’ she told him after a moment. ‘Look how promptly Kitty brought in the potatoes.’
‘That’s not the point.’
Mum screwed up her face again. You couldn’t tell what she was thinking. It might have been That’s-what-you-think; but, there again, it might have been Maybe-you’re-right.
It was Maybe-you’re-right.
‘Maybe you’re right. I must say, I’ve never felt quite easy about it. I used to help my parents in the house, and they would never have dreamed of giving me money.’
‘I should think not. The whole idea is repellent.’
The very certainty with which he pontificated made Mum pitch in again on my side.
‘But, Gerald. It does seem fairer to pay Kitty something, now Judith’s big enough to do her share, yet never does.’
Goggle-eyes spread his hands.
‘Rosalind,’ he said, as if he were talking to a small child or an idiot. ‘If anything, you should be fining Judith till she does fair shares, not handing out great bribes to Kitty.’
‘Great bribes!’ I muttered. ‘Ten miserable pence a pound!’
He turned on me.
‘Oh, ho!’ he crowed. ‘Be warned, all mothers everywhere! Already she’s angling for a rise, our little potato entrepreneur!’
Mum laughed.
‘Oh, dear, Kitty. Looks like, if Gerald gets his way, you’ve had your chips!’
I suppose, looking back, she only intended it as some harmless little potato joke. But I must say I didn’t find it funny. I felt humiliated, standing there with muddy hands, while those two stood arm in arm beside the sink, grinning.
On any other day, I would have lost my temper. I would have forgotten my promise, and yelled at him to push off with his Goggle-eyes, stop sticking his nose into other people’s business, clear out, go home!