Man at the Helm (5 page)

Then the judges, Mrs Longlady, Mrs Worth from the toy and hardware shop, and Mrs Frink from the hunt, came along and looked thrice at Bo-Peep, smiled and asked if she’d helped her mum make the costume and if she’d lost her sheep. They walked straight past me. They didn’t look once, let alone thrice.

They didn’t smile or say what a clever idea. They didn’t ask if I’d made the costume myself. Neither did they look carefully at my clogs, on to which we’d stuck plastic coins, even though I waggled them a bit to draw attention to them. Partly they just didn’t like me – me being me and a member of a family with no man at the helm. But equally they hated decimalization and saw it as a nuisance foisted on them by London, a no-good, pointless change they’d never asked for. They were angry about the rounding-up of the ha’penny or the rounding-down of it. Shopkeepers like Mrs Worth felt the shopkeeper was losing out and wives like Mrs Longlady felt the housewife was being cheated. And there I was, the living personification of the thing. Bacofoil-covered.

They didn’t even look; they glanced, winced and moved straight on to Mowgli. Mrs Worth mistook him for an American swimmer called Mike and complained that there hadn’t been a single medal for Britain in the 1968 Olympic Games. Mowgli explained he was Mowgli and, looking thrice or more, the judges adored him, said how much they loved
The Jungle Book
and so on.

A mermaid in a bikini top won first prize. She had a padded tail, the flipper end being her out-turned feet. Her bikini top was two of those shell ashtrays that are thoughtfully placed in the waiting areas of takeaway restaurants and never quite come clean in the washing-up due to the ridges. Anyway, she won,
though I couldn’t see how it was timely. Still, the judges liked the bikini top and the clever use of a wheelchair borrowed from the Pines old people’s home.

Soon the younger class was all lined up on a platform, the committee thinking, rightly, that the audience particularly like to see the little ones in costume. Little Jack was King Farouk of Egypt, which wasn’t quite so timely and up-to-the-minute as Miss Decimal, Farouk having stopped reigning twenty years beforehand and gone into exile, but Little Jack had been given a fez by our much-travelled father. And on seeing the fez, the image of King Farouk popped into our mother’s head and she switched him from the planned John Lennon with the wire-rimmed specs to the well-known, albeit old and probably dead Egyptian king. Little Jack was fine about it. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a king?

Little Jack didn’t appreciate the close-up part of the thrice viewing and kept edging away from the judging trio until he fell off the platform and his fez rolled away in circles like a dropped toffee. And though Little Jack didn’t win his class, the judges didn’t totally ignore him either, especially after his tumble. They loved his little curled-up moustache and the fez (which everyone was captivated by) and they loved laughing at his foreignness of course. Plus he was little and a boy and so had that bit more going for him. In fact, the judges pulled him forward with another younger Bo-Peep and Jiminy Cricket (both in costumes hired from Pinocchio’s in Leicester) and for a moment it really looked as if Jack might get a rosette – the judges were pointing at him (him looking so podgy with his cushion tummy and regal with his recovered fez at a funny angle). Then, at the last minute, Mrs Longlady asked, ‘Are you King Hussein of Jordan?’ and Little Jack shook his head and the audience laughed and Mrs Longlady said, ‘Well, who are you, then? Could you tell us, please?’ and Little Jack stammered,
froze on the K and looked desperate, so I rushed forward in my crêpe dress and explained that he was actually King Farouk of Egypt, now deceased, and they laughed again.

With that information, the judges shooed Little Jack back into the line and beckoned forward Lady Godiva and she got the rosette for third place. They were most tickled (Mrs Longlady’s words) by the use of the real-live pony and the flesh-coloured body-stocking. And that was doubly galling because we’d said we should
not
involve our ponies, due to a family rule about not seeming ostentatious.

It would have (might have) changed everything if Little Jack had won that yellow rosette. We might have felt differently about the village. I think we would. But he didn’t and we didn’t and we trudged home and I went upstairs and looked in the mirror and felt utterly bereft and humiliated. I didn’t dramatize it. I didn’t stamp on my fifty-pence piece or rip it to shreds. I was mature for my age: I made a cup of tea and said what bitches the judges were and Little Jack nodded.

Our mother was bitterly disappointed. I say bitterly because it goes so well with the word disappointed. In fact she was just a bit disappointed and annoyed and like me thought the judges were bitches, especially the way they snubbed me in my decimal outfit, it being such a timely idea.

My sister said we’d been fools to enter and that we’d both looked ridiculous and she’d been ashamed. I loved her then. I knew she’d always be honest with us and it was most reassuring, her scathing response being a silver lining of sorts.

Our mother’s play about the parade was the least entertaining she’d ever written.

Judge: So, what have you come as?

Adele: I’m the village.

Judge: But you look like a distressed high-court judge.

Adele: It’s my interpretation of the village.

Judge: Is the costume home-made and timely?

Adele: Yes, except for the periwig, which I borrowed.

Judge: Make sure to return it.

All that entering fancy dress parades had got us nowhere with our quest and nowhere else besides and we decided it was time to crack on. So we were discussing the Man List one day with some urgency – the relative merits of Bernard the chauffeur and Mr Oliphant the local farmer type (though not an actual farmer) – and racked our brains for more candidates – when our mother drifted into the kitchen in a caramel dress of an almost triangular shape that ended below the knee in a sharp point. She wore it with a metal belt and white sandals and looked like a slice of Portuguese pudding in two shades of sugary brown and a three-pronged fork on a thin white plate. We asked where she was going and she said she was going to see Dr Kaufmann again to get a prescription for a few pills to make her feel better, and strode off as quickly as the narrow skirt would allow.

A few pills to make her feel better: it sounded like such a brilliant idea that when she slammed the door behind her, I punched the air. It was a simple solution to all our problems (and so much easier than painting furniture or traipsing off to church once a week) and it meant we might not have to pull the next ideas out of our metaphorical sleeves.

My sister said we shouldn’t get carried away because even if the pills came up trumps we’d still desperately need a man at the helm in order to regain a few shreds of respect – however happy or normal our mother became.

‘We need a man, Lizzie, and until we find one, we’re as good as lepers,’ she said.

Little Jack pressed his face against the window. ‘Where’s Mum gone?’ he asked, and started banging on the window after her. She always forgot to tell him things, and so did we, and he was often left in the dark or banging on windows.

‘She’s just gone to get some pills from Dr Kaufmann,’ I said, ‘to make her feel better.’

And feeling a bit better ourselves we made a jug of Lemfizz – our special secret drink that used to be banned by Mrs Lunt for making a sticky mess and making us do sick burps, both of which she hated.

To show that I appreciated the limited expectation of the pills, I joined my sister in looking at the Man List and tried to think up new men for our soon-to-be-happier mother and, inspired by the Lemfizz, we suddenly remembered the idiotic little vicar whom our mother detested. Recalling the fine line between love and hate previously mentioned, we added him to the list of men and said he’d be next.

I must admit the idea of the pills made the Man List seem less important to me. I felt sure they were going to do us all a power of good and in spite of my sister’s words I thought we might not even need the list. I had one more attempt at coaxing my sister round to my view, but she gave me a look of disappointment and spoke to me gravely.

‘How many times do I have to tell you, Lizzie?’ she asked. ‘The pills are
not
a substitute.’

She looked hard at me for my response. ‘Right,’ I said, ‘but they should make her feel better, shouldn’t they?’

‘Yes, they should. But feeling better can become a problem in itself, feeling better can become
the
problem.’

‘But if they make her feel better … that’s good, isn’t it?’ I said, feeling a bit exasperated by the whole thing, to be honest.

‘They might make her feel
too
better,’ explained my sister, ‘so much better that she loses the will to even find a man. That’s why she’s going to need so much help from us.’

‘
Too
better?’

‘Yes,
too
better,
too
happy,
drugged
.’

‘I see,’ I said, though I couldn’t imagine why that would be a problem.

It sounded like happiness to me.

OK. I tried to put the pills right out of my mind and to stop being so optimistic. And when our mother returned from the doctor, having come home via Mr Blight the pharmacist, I didn’t even mention them, and when she put them on the sideboard I looked away and focused only on the Man List.

‘Why do you hate the vicar so much?’ I asked.

‘I don’t hate him,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he’s a perfectly good man if he’d just be himself and speak openly and stop being such a prat.’

I know she was only being nice about him because she was happy to have the pills all ready to go. Who knows, maybe she’d already taken one or two.

I wrote to the vicar with my sister’s blessing.

Dear Reverend Derek,

You may have noticed that I have not been attending church. The reason for this is that I’m questioning organized religion and can’t stand all the idiots in church. I still pray but privately in my nightie at bedtime.

Added to which, I’ve heard that due to my divorced status I need the Bishop’s permission to take communion and that has made me feel quite rejected. It’s imperative that I evaluate God in my life. If you have time one day, please could you drop
in to openly and naturally discuss the God and church aspect with me.

 

All good wishes,

Elizabeth Vogel

And delivered it by hand. The vicar knocked on the door the very next day and was invited in for a cup of coffee. He took it milky.

I saw this as a sign of his keenness on our mother, though my sister thought not. She explained that vicars always rush round to anyone showing even the slightest flicker of interest in God these days before they change their mind again. She, my sister, had begun to lose her faith around that time, having just reached the age of doubting everything. And according to her, half the world was teetering on the brink of disbelief because of the Beatles and the kind of pills our mother was taking.

Whatever the reason for his speedy response, the vicar appeared and, to our amazement, they seemed to have sex that very day. And from the noises the reverend made he either really liked it or it was physical agony. This began an affair that lasted thirteen days. He never stayed longer than an hour and always insisted on talking about spirituality and so forth and she’d always drift off during that part. We didn’t always see him because we might be at school, but I kept tabs on it via asking our mother plenty of questions.

‘Did that vicar come round?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long was he here?’

‘An hour-ish.’

‘That’s not long for discussing God.’

‘He’s got the rest of his flock to see to.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘God mostly.’

‘Was it nice, having him to visit?’

‘Not particularly.’

Soon the vicar’s wife called and she and our mother had a heated discussion which included the vicar’s wife saying, ‘Hang on just a minute,
you
invited
him
.’

To which our mother responded, ‘No, I did
not
.’

Which was both true and yet not true, and my sister and I saw the flaw in our system. We cringed and looked at each other, expecting the vicar’s wife to produce the letter I’d written to her husband, but she didn’t, which was a huge relief and we both thanked God.

And the vicar didn’t come round again. He’d been a waste of time and our mother hadn’t taken to him. But, we had to admit, there’d been no play-writing at all during the fortnight of sex with the reverend. A short act appeared afterwards, though.

Rev. Hope: Why do you want to pray alone and not with the rest of the flock?

Adele: The rest of the flock are idiots.

Rev. Hope: I know what you mean.

Adele: I prefer to speak to God alone, in private.

Rev. Hope: Perhaps we could pray together.

Adele: Will God mind?

Rev. Hope: I’m sure he looks away when necessary.

Xmas was a busy time in Flatstone and entailed much more than the advent candle and clove-studded oranges of previous years. Our school became a hive of Xmas industry. There was the constant rehearsing of the school nativity play (
Mary Had a Baby
). And Xmas decorations to be designed, created and displayed around school. Xmas presents to be made for much-loved mothers and hard-working fathers. Turkey and pudding to be eaten at the Xmas lunch, letters to be written to Father Xmas – who apparently had an elf waiting to take them to the village hall ready for him to read at the Xmas Fayre. And then the special Xmas assembly where the headmistress would remind us that Xmas was
not
about presents, turkey or Father Xmas, but about Jesus.

The headmistress was neurotic when it came to Jesus, especially at Xmas when she worried that he might be ignored or eclipsed by other nicer features of Xmas. So much so that she got the vicar in. Reverend Derek appeared one morning at school assembly and spoke to us on the subject. We sang ‘Away in a Manger’ quite vigorously and then the vicar produced a sign with the word ‘Xmas’ written across it in huge capital letters.

‘X,’ he said, ‘X-mas. How many of you write
Christ
-mas like this?’ he asked, smiling, tapping the word.

A good few children put their hand up. I didn’t put mine up, sensing a trick.

The vicar scanned the hall. His smile fell and his face turned stony. ‘More than half of you,’ he said.

He told us it was lazy and insulting. ‘Do you not see how lazy and insulting it is, just to avoid writing four letters?’

He didn’t know when it had started, but guessed it had come over from America, probably with rock ’n’ roll. Whatever, Xmas was creeping in more and more and becoming almost normal. He himself had received two or three Xmas cards with ‘Happy Xmas’ scrawled inside and it saddened him to think that people
he knew
would insult Christ like that.

‘Because, let’s think about this, children, when you write X-mas, what’s the word you’re not writing … hmm?’

He gazed around the hall. Only about two children had their hands up this time and the vicar pointed to a boy called Daniel.

‘You, what is it we’re not writing when we write X-mas?’

‘Christmas?’ said the boy. And everyone giggled.

‘Christ,’ said the vicar, ‘we’re not writing
Christ
.’

There was something quite infuriating about that vicar standing up on stage tricking us into admitting we wrote Xmas and then saying what a lazy and insulting thing it was, when, for some of us, it was simply a way of not having to worry about how to spell it – my friend Melody, for instance, was usually a good speller but she often forgot the h, and even Little Jack, who was ‘a precocious speller’ according to his teacher, often missed out the t. The problem was, it was a seasonal word and therefore we hadn’t had the all-year-round practice that you have with non-seasonal words such as Accommodation or Squirrel.

And there was that idiotic little vicar saying it was an insult to Jesus to write Xmas. I didn’t think it an insult, I thought it common sense and wondered why the vicar didn’t just talk about something ordinary like the miracle of his birth, instead of moaning about him being insulted in an abbreviation.

I have written Xmas ever since. And I try to never write the
word fully out. I even say Exmas. Not to insult Jesus, but in memory of that idiotic little vicar.

Xmas Xmas Xmas.

And if I’m honest, Father Xmas had become more important to me than Jesus by then. It had nothing to do with the writing of Xmas and even if I’d written it as
Christ
mas I’d still have been more interested in Father Xmas. The thing was, on Xmas Eve in 1968, when our parents were still married to each other and we lived in town, I’d heard him arrive in his sleigh on our rooftop.

A loud thump woke me as the sleigh landed and I heard the tinkle of sleigh bells as the reindeer tossed their impatient heads. And nothing since has quite matched the joy of hearing his boots clomping across the tiles to the chimney. I didn’t expect to
see
him, or even
want
to see him, but hearing him was the most magical thing. Thinking about it now, I suppose if I’d heard Jesus – as opposed to Father Xmas – arrive on or near my house, I’d have been quite excited too, but it wasn’t Jesus, it was Father Xmas and personal encounters are powerful things, as my sister knew from locking eyes with a policeman in a traffic jam and overly admiring the police for some while after.

The next morning (Xmas morning 1968) – sitting in our parents’ four-poster – I spoke about hearing the sleigh.

‘I heard Father Xmas land on the roof last night,’ I said, mainly to our mother.

‘You don’t look very happy about it,’ she said.

‘I’m just worried it’s the best thing that’ll ever happen to me,’ I said, ‘and now it’s happened.’

‘It won’t be the best thing, I promise,’ she said.

‘But what could be better?’ I asked.

And our biological father came in and plonked a red and
white box on the bed. And before we could begin unwrapping it, a puppy popped its head out (it was Debbie) and I suppose that should have been better and it was, in a way, but also it wasn’t.

That year, our first Xmas in the village, there was a bit of controversy about who should be Father Xmas at the Xmas Fayre. For the previous two years it had been Mr Longlady, the beekeeping accountant, him having stepped in for Mr Lomax, the Liberal candidate, who’d been incapacitated with an ailment that meant he couldn’t sit on a church hall chair for sufficiently long to enact the role. But now, this year, Mr Lomax was ready to resume the position and had agreed a comeback with the vicar and negotiated a better chair.

My family didn’t feel like attending the village Xmas Fayre and queuing for an orange from the Liberal candidate, partly because he’d seen an excerpt of our mother’s play and partly because we had vivid memories of the glorious grotto at Fenwick’s of Leicester from our time of being town-dwellers. Fenwick’s being marvellous at Xmas. Mainly because of the amazing window displays and evocative Xmas music floating around. Also, the opportunity to try out eau de cologne and see the neatly folded woollen scarves on the way through to Santa. And then it actually being the real thing – as opposed to the Liberal candidate with a sore throat in a beard.

So, after a family conflab, we decided to go to Fenwick’s instead, even though that would mean a thirty-mile round trip, a long wait in the queue and various spontaneous things our mother might suddenly do. What we hadn’t bargained for was that our mother would drive into the street where we used to live and park just across from the arched gates of our old house. But she did. And we saw the Xmas tree in the obvious position
in the glorious bay window, twinkling. And Mrs Vanderbus’s tree in a similarly pretty window twinkling back at it.

She switched off the ignition and, realizing we’d be there a while, I let myself look up to the roof where Father Xmas must have parked his sleigh, just above my room – my ex-room – some years before. And stupidly I tried to relive it. I’d made a rule when it first happened not to relive it too often so as not to wear out the feeling, but, looking up from the car window that evening, I found I had just about worn it out.

‘Do you remember living here?’ our mother asked us, staring ahead and exhaling smoke through her nostrils. I had my first experience of wanting to be sarcastic, but said instead, ‘Yes, do you?’ and she took that to be sarcastic anyway and gave me a look.

‘Do let’s call on Mrs Vanderbus,’ my sister said.

‘And the Millwards,’ I added.

But our mother couldn’t face it. She wasn’t happy enough – they’d see that she was so much less now. Less of a person than she’d been when we’d lived here and we’d had pleasant folk all around us. Town folk who didn’t mind everything so terribly and who had faults of their own.

And Mrs Vanderbus, being Dutch, would be honest and unafraid and say, ‘Eleezabet, what have you done to yourself? You’re so thin, so tired, oh my Got, you must get away from that evil willage.’ And so forth. And the lovely Millwards would say, ‘You look splendid, Elizabeth, the country air must be doing you a power of good.’ And that would be worse.

‘Do you remember I heard Father Xmas land on the roof?’ I said, laughing.

‘Oh yes,’ said our mother, ‘but it was just the aerial had fallen down and was blowing around.’

‘Yeah,’ said my sister.

‘I know,’ I said, but I hadn’t known.

In Fenwick’s later, our mother left us in the queue for Father Xmas and went to do some shopping, and when we got close to the end of the line I felt I couldn’t go in and I let my sister and Jack go in without me. It wasn’t the real Father Xmas – I knew there was no such person, I’d known for a while. Just as I’d known that the best, most exciting thing ever to happen hadn’t actually happened – I’d just imagined it and clung on.

I sat on a toadstool at the door to the grotto and enjoyed the thought of the TV aerial blowing about on the roof. The new meaning to the old memory. And then, thinking I had about five minutes, I went to look at some gloves.