While my father’s career seemed to have stalled permanently, Frances’ parents were in the grip of change. Lexi had been promoted to something called a team leader. This meant more work and more money – money which didn’t somehow translate into new carpets or wallpaper, or the sort of things that windfalls in our house would provide. Lexi did buy an antique chaise longue for the sitting room, which looked rather odd alongside the gas fire and dralon sofa, and she would recline there with slices of cucumber over her eyes after a hard day of drafting reports or analysing survey results. Unfortunately this new acquisition soon became a favoured perch for Growth, and before long the elegant yellow brocade was covered for its own protection with a hairy dog-blanket. Mr Radley by contrast had taken another step down the ladder of commercial success. He had walked out of the lobby attendant’s job after a minor disagreement with the hotel manager. This was not, apparently, the first time he had left a job in such circumstances.
‘The trouble with Dad is that he’s got lots of principles,’ Frances explained. ‘And he’s always resigning on one or other of them.’ It was a Saturday morning and we were sitting at Lexi’s dressing table trying on her make-up. ‘He even resigned as caretaker of this private girls’ school in Hampstead, and that was his favourite job of all. Or was he sacked from that one? I can’t remember.’ She applied a plummy lipstick with an unsteady hand and pouted at herself in the mirror.
‘What does he do now?’ I asked, unaware that Mr Radley had come into the room behind us.
‘He’s a sort of night watchman.’
‘What does he watch?’ I was craning towards my reflection, dragging a blunt eyeliner pencil under one eye to leave a thick broken line when I saw him in the mirror and started, jabbing myself.
‘The clock mostly,’ he said as I swung round, one eye streaming. ‘Now would you two trollops kindly clear off out of here so I can get some sleep.’
Back in Frances’ room we looked at our painted faces and giggled. I had two flaming bars of orange blusher on my cheeks and one bloodshot eye ringed with black. Frances had silver shadow up to her eyebrows and a wobbly clown’s mouth. There was already a difference between us, though. I still looked like a girl trying on her mother’s make-up; she looked like a genuine slattern.
Frances was rapidly becoming aware of her attractiveness to boys. At thirteen she already looked fifteen. This was partly on account of her figure. Although not especially tall, she was what my mother called, with a slight pursing of the lips, ‘well-developed’. She didn’t have that give-away skinniness which made my legs look the same width all the way down, like stilts. And she didn’t hunch her shoulders, in order to try and make herself invisible, but walked upright, confidently, chest out. It wasn’t just her appearance, though. Frances seemed to send out powerful signals, like radio waves, without even realising it. Whenever we went out together men on building sites or in passing lorries would whistle and leer, and she would yell ‘wanker’ furiously back at them before turning away with a smirk. It never happened to me when I was alone. She also had a knack of falling into conversation with strange men. There were always a few lads at the school bus-stop with whom she would exchange ongoing banter, and if some new arrival should present himself she had a way of raising her voice so that it became clear that her conversation, even with me, was a performance for his benefit. I found myself falling back on my ‘frozen peas’ mantra all too often in those days.
From time to time Frances would arrange an assignation with one of the better looking of the bus-stop lotharios. The venue was usually a steamed up café in the shopping precinct with ripped vinyl seats and tomato-shaped ketchup dispensers on the tables, and a tea urn kept at a rolling boil all day. I would be dragged along on these occasions – rather like the second at a duel, and with similarly low hopes of a pleasant outcome. The boy in question might have brought his deputy along, too, and we would sit in a booth over our cups of scummy tea, while Frances and Baz or Gaz or Jez stirred pepper into the sugar bowl or picked the clots of ketchup from the spout of the plastic tomato and flirted with each other by the time-honoured method of trading insults and declarations of mutual contempt.
Her latest infatuation, however, was with a friend of Rad’s called Nicky, who was about six foot four, with curly hair, pebble glasses and acne. It must have been his fear of her that she found attractive. Rad didn’t often bring friends back home because most of them lived in North London, nearer his school, but Nicky seemed prepared to make the long journey to the southern suburbs and was soon a regular visitor to the house. Indeed Lexi soon adopted him as a sort of handyman. He was forever being called upon to fetch things down from the topmost shelves, open or close high windows, rescue spiders from the picture rails and scrump inaccessible apples from Fish and Chips’s overhanging tree. He was even more afraid of Lexi than he was of Frances, so raised no objection. On his introduction to the Radleys he inadvertently precipitated a scene.
Unusually the whole family was together: the central heating had packed up and we were all in the sitting room with the gas fire full on. Even Auntie Mim had come down and was sitting on the couch in a blanket.
Lexi was looking through her address book. ‘Who do we know who can fix a boiler?’ she was saying. There was no question of their resorting to hired labour – petty maintenance jobs were invariably foisted on to friends, or friends of friends, or acquaintances of friends if necessary. I wasn’t sure quite what reciprocal services were offered. Perhaps Mr Radley offered to paint them nude. ‘I was talking to someone only the other day who knew someone who’d put in his own central heating. Who was it? Damn.’
‘Your father’s not a plumber is he, Nicky?’ said Mr Radley.
‘No, he’s an obstetrician.’
‘Hmm, we don’t have much call for one of those any more,’ said Mr Radley. ‘A vet – yes.’
‘My mother’s a solicitor,’ Nicky added helpfully.
‘Solicitor,’ said Lexi. ‘Let me write that down – I don’t think we’ve got one of those.’
‘And Blush’s father teaches Latin, so he’s no use,’ said Mr Radley.
‘Nicky Rupp – Obs and Solic,’ said Lexi, writing.
‘I don’t suppose he went into it with the aim of being useful to you,’ said Rad, coming to my father’s defence.
‘As if you’re so useful,’ Frances added.
‘Well, that’s true enough,’ Mr Radley admitted good-humouredly.
‘I’ve got an uncle who knows a bit about cars,’ Nicky put in quickly. He was not yet used to the terms of disrespect which flowed freely between father and children.
‘Oh fantastic,’ said Lexi. ‘Does he live near?’
‘Harrogate. And it’s more vintage cars.’
‘Well, for God’s sake don’t let Rad near any of them.’ Ignoring agonised signals from his son he went on, ‘He nearly killed me in France, swerving to avoid a dead hedgehog.’ This statement was received with a moment’s frosty silence. Mr Radley coloured slightly. Rad looked at the floor.
‘Are you saying you let Rad drive in France?’ Lexi said in a voice that was pure poison.
‘Oh bugger!’ said Mr Radley.
‘Well done, Dad,’ said Rad bitterly.
‘You let him drive on French roads, under-age, with no licence, uninsured? How could you be so irresponsible? What if he’d killed someone?’
‘He nearly killed me,’ Mr Radley said, aggrieved. There is no indignation like that of the justly accused.
Nicky and I exchanged a look of confederacy. ‘Our families are not like this,’ it said.
‘It was only a one-off,’ said Rad. ‘And it was safer than letting Dad drive in the condition he was in.’
At the mention of this condition of Mr Radley Lexi’s anger seemed to give way to extreme weariness and without a word she got up and walked out of the room. Nicky and I made our excuses and left soon afterwards.