Chapter TWENTY-THREE
NOT LONG AFTER MABEL AND FRANK JOINED US TO WATCH COLUMBO, Frank started to make far more frequent visits to our house. Most of the time, he came without Mabel. Chugging up the driveway in the Tuggles delivery van, he often arrived just after I got home from school. The only positive thing about these visits was that he didn’t stay long. Instead, he and Ted would leave together, returning late when he dropped Ted at the end of our driveway and sped off down the road. Sometimes, when I heard the distinctive churn of Frank’s van as it approached in the evening, I’d peer out my bedroom window to watch Ted make his way up our path—now a smooth gray band of new concrete after my mother had replaced the old one. In the dark, I could see his silhouette and the glowing orange dot of his cigarette end sweeping back and forth from his mouth.
“Frank’s being ever so good to Ted,” Mabel said to my mother one Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks after Frank’s more frequent visits had commenced.
Mabel was standing on a chair in the kitchen while my mother, a handful of pins clenched between her lips, adjusted the hem of her wedding dress. The dress was hot-pink satin with a bell-shaped skirt, huge puffy sleeves, and a deeply plunging neckline—a feature that my mother and Mabel had argued about for weeks, with Mabel (unusually, as far as decisions for the wedding were concerned) finally winning out. Up on the chair like that, I thought Mabel looked more like an enormous cake decoration than a bride.
“I’m sure Ted doesn’t appreciate it, but Frank’s doing him a whopping big favor,” Mabel said.
“What do you mean, Auntie Mabel?” I asked. I was sitting at the table, leafing through the Littlewoods catalog. I’d been instructed by my mother to look at two pairs of shoes she’d circled, the ones she thought would go best with my bridesmaid’s dress. Both pairs were pink—one satin and pointy-toed, the other shiny plastic with a three-inch heel. I’d already decided that I’d rather walk barefoot on burning coals than wear either. “How’s Frank helping Uncle Ted?”
“He’s trying to help Ted get a job.”
“He is?” Somehow, I doubted this. After having had the opportunity to observe Ted for a couple of months now, I’d concluded that he would prefer to attend his own execution than engage in anything resembling legitimate work. And, after overhearing his surreptitious conversation in the hallway with Frank, I’d developed various theories about what sort of shady activity the two of them might be up to, finally concluding that Frank, worried about all the expense of the wedding, had engaged Ted in getting some of the supplies on the cheap. I wanted to confide my suspicions to Mabel, knowing that she’d be livid with Frank if this was, in fact, true. Maybe she’d even break off her relationship with him. But I wasn’t sure how my mother would take any blowup so close to the wedding, so I’d decided to keep my suspicions to myself. Still, I couldn’t help trying to sow a few seeds of doubt about Frank in Mabel’s mind. “How’s he helping Uncle Ted find a job?” I asked.
“Every day, after Frank’s finished at the Tuggles factory, he comes over here, picks Ted up, and takes him out to look for work. Bloody angel for doing it, you ask me.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Shouldn’t Uncle Ted be looking for a job during the day?”
“Frank says he’s trying to help Ted get a job working nights, says they need to go then so they can talk to the shift supervisors.”
“But I thought Ted said he didn’t want to work nights,” I said. “And Frank agreed. He said it would be too hard on a man Ted’s age.”
“Oh, I don’t know, darling,” Mabel said, wrinkling up her nose. “Anyway, whatever sort of work he’s helping Ted to look for, I’ve told Frank that he’s wasting his time. The day I see our Ted in a normal job will be the day that pigs get wings. And, once the wedding’s over, I’ve told Frank—” Mabel paused, looking excited, as if another thought had dawned on her. “Speaking of the wedding, Ev, I meant to tell you. I got a reply yesterday to the invitation I sent to Mam. And guess what—she says she’s going to come. She’s coming to the wedding, Ev.”
My mother stood up, spitting the pins from her mouth so that they spattered, like silver threads of spittle, down her dress to land on the linoleum with bright little pings. “Really? Mam’s coming here, all the way from Australia? She’s coming?” Her features simmered with excitement.
“Yep, she’s coming all right. Unfortunately, she says she was late making a booking and the only flight she could get is one that gets her into London the night before. So she won’t be able to get here until the actual day of the wedding. Still, she’ll be here.”
“That’s great, that’s brilliant,” my mother said, bouncing up and down on her heels, her face filled with the kind of delight she usually reserved for eating Mr. Kipling cakes. Within a couple of seconds, though, her expression changed. “She’s not bringing that bloody Australian gigolo with her, is she?”
Mabel looked sheepish. “Well, I think so. I mean, he is her fiancé. And I did include him in the invitation.” She winced in apparent anticipation of my mother’s reaction.
“You invited him?”
“I had to invite him, Evelyn,” Mabel said, lifting and then dropping her shoulders in such a dramatic shrug that the billowy satin dress rustled as if it, like Mabel, were letting out an exasperated sigh. “You never know, maybe you’ll like him once you meet him.”
“Right,” my mother said, crouching toward the floor as she began to search for the pins she’d spat out. “I’d say that’s about as likely as Frank getting our Ted a job.”
AS APRIL TURNED to May and the wedding came closer, the pace of activity in our house rose to a previously unknown level of frenzy, which, given my mother’s history of frenetic focus, was really quite breathtaking. During the final fortnight before the ceremony, I got the impression that she never really slept. She was working on the wedding when I went to bed and she was working on it every morning when I got up, and it became increasingly common for her to wake me with some noise or disturbance during the night.
Even my father, who was usually pleased when my mother was engaged in some new all-consuming project, was concerned at the ceaseless pace with which she continued to work. “Don’t you think you should take a day off, Evelyn?” he asked her one Sunday afternoon as she sat at her sewing machine in the kitchen, her foot pushed down on the pedal as if she were a racing-car driver in the final stretch. I was standing at the counter, making myself some toast and jam for an afternoon snack. I cringed as my father shouted from the doorway over at my mother. But he had to yell; otherwise she would never have heard him above the roar of the sewing machine’s motor.
“Take a day off?” my mother yelled back, pausing to straighten out the rose-patterned material she’d been pushing under the flash of the sewing-machine needle. “I haven’t got time to take a day off. I’ve got to get these tablecloths finished. And then I’ve got the place mats and serviettes to make. Then there’s the decorations to buy, and the booze to order. I haven’t even got around to finishing the menu. And, of course, I’m going to have to fit in some time to make the wedding cake.”
“But do you have to do it all, Evelyn?” my father said, recoiling as my mother pressed her foot down and the sewing machine roared again. “I mean, can’t we just order the food and the cake? Can’t we get some help from somebody else?” He was shouting at the top of his voice, trying to make himself heard above the sewing machine’s harrowing bawl.
“Somebody else?” My mother lifted her foot from the pedal again and the machine stopped. “Somebody else?” Her voice was high, far more ear-piercing than the sewing machine. “What do you mean, get somebody else?”
As she yelled, I noticed how disheveled she appeared. Her clothes were unwashed, food-splattered and rumpled, her hair stood out in matted greasy lumps. But it was her expression that disturbed me most. Her face was pale and drawn and, except for the dark shadows beneath her eyes, almost without color, while her eyes seemed immensely big and bright. They were filled with such a ferocious energy that, as I regarded her, she made me think of a trapped animal, desperate and possessed by fear.
“I was only trying to help, Ev,” my father said, putting his hands out in front of him as if he were trying to stave my mother off.
“Help? Help?” she shrieked. “Do I look like I need bloody help? Are you saying I can’t manage this on my own?”
“No, but …” My father had started to back away toward the door. I was planning on following him just as soon as I’d finished spreading the jam on my toast.
“Well, then, leave me to get on with this!” she screamed, slamming a fist down on the kitchen table then springing to her feet. “Unless you want me to end up in bloody Delapole again.”
At this, my father flinched and staggered backward, dazed, like a man who had just taken a blow to the chest.
I looked at him, at the overwhelming weariness in his face. Then I looked at my mother, at the way her eyes blazed like tiny infernos, as if there was a fire raging in her head.
“Get out!” my mother yelled. “Both of you!”
“Come on, love,” my father said to me softly. “Let’s go see if there’s anything on the telly and get out of your mother’s way.”
I WAS WORRIED about my mother, but I was also worried about myself. At least when I’d been writing my letters to Amanda they’d offered me a place I could go to when everything else seemed so awful.
I hadn’t even been able to sneak anything interesting from the mobile library to distract me while my mother had been visiting it regularly herself. She and the librarian spent ages at the little checkout desk chatting about weddings, gardening tips, and the terrible state of the world, and since the slush pile was right there, behind the librarian, it was far more difficult to grab something from that stack without being seen. In the final weeks leading up to the wedding, however, my mother stopped visiting the little van, declaring that she now knew everything she needed to know about planning a wedding and, once Mabel and Frank’s ceremony was over, she planned to write a book about it herself.
Once I was able to steal more interesting titles from the slush pile again, my life became a little more bearable. A week before the wedding, I saw a book there that I absolutely had to have. I had been pretending to browse and had pulled down a couple of random books before approaching the checkout desk to get a closer look at the slush pile when I saw there, at the very top of the forbidden volumes, a book with the title Modern Homosexuality, in bold red letters along its spine. I felt a bolt of burning interest surge through me, and as the librarian lifted her date stamp to check out the titles I had taken from the children’s shelves I knew that I had to get my hands on that book.
“Erm, excuse me,” I said, coughing.
“Yes?”
“I was wondering if you have any books by Beatrix Potter. I couldn’t see anything on the shelf.”
“Couldn’t see anything on the shelf?” The librarian looked at me, aghast. “Of course, we have books by Beatrix Potter.”
“Well, I couldn’t see anything and I thought—”
“Here, let me show you,” she said, dropping her date stamp and marching over to the children’s shelves.
While she began pulling out various volumes of Beatrix Potter stories, I reached behind the counter and grabbed the book that I wanted. By the time the librarian returned with copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, and The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck, I had Modern Homosexuality securely stuffed under my anorak. As soon as I got to the house, I ran upstairs into my bedroom, sat down on my bed, opened the book, buried my face in its pages, and started to read.
I’d never even seen a book before with the word “homosexuality” in its title and, now that I had, I was expecting it to offer definitive answers to all my tormenting questions, all those questions I had about what my feelings for Amanda actually meant. What I was really hoping for was something along the lines of the quizzes in Woman’s Weekly. “Is your husband lying to you? Are you a good communicator? What’s your personality type? Answer the questions below, rate your answers, and find out!” I wanted to write down my answers to the pertinent questions, run down a list at the bottom of the page, and discover what I really was. All A’s: Yes, you’re definitely a homosexual and there’s nothing you can do about it. B’s: Probably, but there’s still time to change. C’s: Probably not, it’s just a phase you’re going through and you’ll get over it soon. D’s: Definitely not, stop worrying and get on with your life!
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be that simple. First, the book was written in dense, unfamiliar jargon. Second, for the first two chapters it talked almost exclusively about rats, which I didn’t find at all relevant to my quandary. And third, when it did finally get to talking about humans, it was all about men, something that left me wondering if women could actually be homosexual at all or if it was something that manifested only in the male of the species. Despite those housewives in the problem pages, perhaps I was a terrible oddity after all.
It was probably because I was so absorbed in the book that I didn’t hear a vehicle pull up outside the house. It was also why I didn’t hear the front door open, the footsteps on the stairs and along the hallway, and probably why I didn’t hear someone turn the knob on the door of my room.
“Modern Homosexuality, eh? I tell you, times have certainly changed since I was a lad.”
I looked up to see Frank standing in the open doorway. “It’s for homework,” I blurted, dropping the book into my lap.
“That right?” he asked, a grin blooming across his bony face.
“Yes.” My voice sounded far away. My heart was hammering in my chest.
“So you’re not one of them queers, then?”
I shook my head. This time, I found I couldn’t even speak.
“Good job, that. Because, you know, there really is nothing more terrible for a parent to find out than their kid’s a pervert. If I ever found out either of my little ones was queer—well, I think I’d rather kill ’em. I know it sounds harsh, but really, it’s a parent’s worst nightmare, that is. And your mam, her being so fragile, I can’t imagine she’d take news like that very well at all.”
I tried to meet his eyes, but I couldn’t. Instead, I looked down at the dense text in the pages of the book.
“So,” Frank said, “you seen your uncle Ted? I came up here looking for him. He’s supposed to be out job hunting with me.”
“He’s sleeping,” I said.
Frank laughed. “Should do well on the night shift, Ted, don’t you think? I mean, he certainly has no trouble sleeping during the day.”
“You’re not helping him get a job, are you?” I had closed the book and pushed it away from me, to the far side of my bed. Somehow, distancing myself from it like that gave me courage and allowed the anger I felt at Frank to flare alive. “You’re doing something else. Something you shouldn’t. Something Mabel wouldn’t like.”
Frank’s features became stiff. He took a couple more steps into my room. “It’s none of your bloody business what Ted and me are doing, you hear me? None of your business at all. And if you say one word to upset Mabel, one bloody word, I’ll make you sorry.” He let his eyes flicker down to my feet and then he slid them slowly over my body until they finally rested on my face. “More sorry than you have ever been. Understand me?”
“Yes,” I replied quietly.
“Good. Glad to hear it. Now, why don’t you get back to your reading? You looked real wrapped up in it before I disturbed you.” He nodded at the book. “A shame you’ve gone and lost your place.”
As soon as I heard Frank and Ted leave the house and drive toward the road, I dived into my wardrobe and retrieved the biscuit tin I’d hidden there. Again, I considered burning the letters, but again I just couldn’t bring myself to destroy them. I also knew that I couldn’t keep them there at the bottom of my wardrobe any longer. Frank was an ever more frequent visitor now. If he wandered into my bedroom when I wasn’t there, I wouldn’t put it past him to rifle through my things. I didn’t want him to find the whiskey or the pills that I’d put in my laundry basket, of course, but if he did I could live with the consequences of that. What I wouldn’t be able to live through, however, was his reading my letters. I had to prevent that happening at all costs. So I went downstairs and retrieved a large brown paper bag from the kitchen and placed all of my letters inside. Then I stuffed the bag into my school satchel, determined that, from now on, I would keep it with me at all times.