‘Molly, that’s enough. We’re not going to have this conversation in front of Brian. It’s rude. And it’s not something we can decide in two minutes.’
‘I’ll wait,’ says Brian. ‘I’ve got nothing to do this evening.’
But he goes, in the end, after a cup of tea and a fun-sized Mars Bar; I drive him back to his new home (or, rather, to the corner of the street—now that we are alone again, he has regained much of his old suspicion, and refuses to let me see where he lives).
‘Thank you,’ he says, as he is getting out of the car. ‘And you’ll tell me about the other thing tomorrow? Because if I’m going to move I’ll have to tell them here. And I’ve got to pack.’
‘Brian… You can’t come to live with us.’
‘I thought you were going to talk about it?’
‘We will, but I know what we’re going to decide.’
‘Oh.’
‘Are you disappointed?’
‘Yes. Very. I was really looking forward to it. I liked that programme, that teenager programme.’
‘You can get that on your TV.’
‘Can I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure? I’ve never seen it before.’
‘It’s on ITV, I think.’
‘Oh. Well. I don’t watch that one so much. What number’s that? On my remote thing?’
‘Three, I expect. It is on ours.’
‘That’s not so bad, then.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No. What about the chicken? Can I have some of that again?’
‘Of course you can. Every time we have roast chicken you can come round for supper.’
‘And you’re not saying that because you know you’ll never have it again? Because that’s what I’d say. To trick you.’
‘I’m not tricking you.’
‘OK then. Bye.’
And he wanders off down the street.
I have just invited one of my heartsink patients round to eat with us once every couple of weeks for ever. A few months ago this would have been a surefire indication of my own barminess, and yet now it signifies only a cold-hearted and pragmatic sanity. I feel like getting out of the car and dancing on the roof. Molly will take the news much harder than Brian, but then, that’s the thing with this brand of charity. It’s all about what it does for us, not for people like Brian.
Some of us—Tom has not yet moved from in front of the TV—are waiting for me when I get back.
‘We’re going to talk,’ says Molly seriously. ‘We’re going to talk about whether Brian is coming to live with us.’
‘OK.’ I sit down at the table. ‘Can I talk first?’
‘If you want.’
‘He’s not. And I’ve told him.’
‘That’s not fair!’
I am not going to say that life is unfair. I refuse.
‘I know. I’m sorry. I’ve promised him that he can have roast chicken with us the next time we have it.’
‘I bet you didn’t even mean that.’
‘I did mean it. I meant it with all my heart. But that’s as far as it goes. The outer limits of our hospitality.’
‘But you said…’
‘Molly. There was nothing to talk about. Brian couldn’t come to live here. He’s not our family.’
‘But he could be.’
‘No. He couldn’t.’ I look at David, who looks right back at me. He’s not about to help me out.
‘Molly, this is our family. You, me, Daddy, Tom. That’s it. Not GoodNews, not Brian, not Monkey, nobody else. Tough. There’s nothing you can do about it. These are the people we have to worry about first.’
‘Why?’ Finally, a contribution from my husband. Not a helpful contribution, but a contribution nevertheless.
‘Why? Why? David, we’re barely able to look after ourselves. We’re almost broke, partly because you refuse to work. Tom’s been stealing things from people at school…’ I can feel a hot torrent of words building up inside me, and could no more prevent this torrent from coming out of my mouth than I could stop myself from vomiting if I were ill. ‘Molly’s turning into a prig, I’ve had an affair…’
‘What’s a prig? What’s an affair?’
‘It means Mummy’s had a boyfriend,’ says Tom, without missing a second of the television programme he is watching.
‘You and I have been on the verge of divorce for months, although now we’ve made the decision to lock ourselves in and throw away the key, thus condemning each other to what might be a lifetime of frustration and mutual loathing. And you ask why we have to look after each other first? Because life’s fucking hard enough as it is, that’s why, and…’
‘Katie, stop. You’re upsetting the kids.’
‘Good. Maybe they should be upset. Maybe they shouldn’t go through life thinking that everything’s OK, everything’s great, everything’s so great, in fact, that it doesn’t matter who we give money to or who we take in, because it does matter. I wish it didn’t. I wish we were competent enough to handle lives other than our own, but we’re not. And I’ll tell you something for nothing. All my life I have wanted to help people. That’s why I wanted to be a doctor. And because of that I work ten-hour days and I get threatened by junkies and I constantly let people down because I promise them hospital appointments that never come and I give them drugs that never work. And having failed at that, I come home and fail at being a wife and a mother. Well, I haven’t got the energy to fail at anything else. And if that means that Brian goes on living in sheltered accommodation, or Monkey has to sleep rough, well, so be it. Too bad. If in twenty years’ time, we’re all still speaking, and Molly’s not an anorexic, and Tom’s not inside, and I’m not hooked on tranquillizers, and you’re not an alcoholic, and you and I are still together, well, that’ll be a bloody miracle in itself. I’m not asking for any more than that. And if on top of all that we manage to buy a few copies of the Big Issue, and take them to the recycling centre, then hurrah for us. Haven’t we done well? Hurrah for us. Hur-rah-for-us! Hur-rah-for-us. Come on! Join in!’
Nobody does.
It’s over, now. I’ve emptied the contents of my throat all over the family, and there’s nothing left.
‘You’re not really going to get divorced, are you?’ Molly asks. She’s crying, but then, that was the idea.
‘Not if you’re good,’ I tell her. It’s a terrible thing to say, I know that. But it’s weirdly appropriate too.
15
For the first time in months and months I have to go to a bookshop, to buy a birthday present for my father. I don’t know what to get him, and he doesn’t know what he wants, so I wander around aimlessly. I used to spend a lot of time in bookshops; I used to know what most of the books were, what they meant, but now I’m simply perplexed and vaguely panicky. I pick up a novel by a young woman writer and read the blurb: perhaps I would like this, I think. I was halfway through Captain Corelli’s Mandolin when I moved out of Janet’s, and even though no further progress has been made, there is a possibility that I may well wish to have another go at reading a novel some time in the new Millennium. But when I try to decide whether this might be the book for me, I realize that I no longer have the capability to do so. How am I supposed to know whether I would enjoy it or not? How does one tell? I would enjoy a shoulder massage. I would enjoy a week lying by a swimming pool in the sun, sleeping. I would enjoy a large gin and tonic, as long as I didn’t have to do anything after I had drunk it. I would enjoy some chocolate. But a book… This one is about a girl who, after being forced by political persecution to leave her African homeland, comes to live in Bromley, where she meets and falls in love with a young white racist skinhead ballet dancer. ‘It is as if Billy Elliott had mated with Wild Swans to produce Romeo and Juliet,’ says a review on the back. I put the book down again—not because it sounds like tosh, but because I have not been forced to leave my African homeland, and I do not live in Bromley. Really! Really and truly! That is the logic I use to help me make up my mind! This means, of course, that there is very little to separate me from Poppy, the family cat that was found in the road—although I have managed to remain three– rather than two-dimensional, and I still have my own viscera. Poppy liked being stroked, just as I enjoy shoulder massages; Poppy enjoyed fish, just as I enjoy chocolate. Poppy also loved sleeping in the sun, and she would have put this novel down if she had picked it up in a bookshop, for exactly the same reasons. I become so alarmed by the comparison that I buy the book immediately, even before I have found anything for Dad. I will not turn into a pet. I will not.