The carriage clock by the bed says twenty to nine. Beside me, Mama’s still asleep. She came to bed quite late last night, smelling of toothpaste and her new night cream. She used to always use Lancôme, but she’s had to stop buying it because it’s too expensive. I used to love it when they had promotions on and she’d bring back gift bags and let me have the freebies. Not that I’m really into make-up, but my friend Lola and I sometimes used to practise on each other. Lola’s so pretty she could be a model. She has the longest eyelashes of anyone I know; when I used to put her mascara on, her lashes looked fake, they were so long.
Lola could never be a scuba diver – she’s too vain. After my first training session in the pool, when I took my mask off, my face looked like the muzzle of some badly drawn cartoon character, and there was snot all round my nose. It’s called ‘diver’s face’ – it’s got to do with pressure on the sinuses underwater. Some people think that scuba diving is a glamorous sport, but it’s not. Other people think it’s a macho sport, but it’s not that either. How to describe it? It’s serene, like what it must be like to be in heaven, if such a place exists. Jacques Cousteau – who was one of the first divers to use scuba – got it right. He said that underwater, man becomes an archangel.
More than anything, I would love to be able to free dive: that’s when you go down with no bulky kit – no tank or BCD or regulator. It’s just you and your weight belt and super-long fins, totally streamlined. In Jamaica, our dive instructor’s son came on a dive with us once. He was a champion free diver – he could stay down for over six minutes. I’m not kidding! It was the most magical thing in the world to see him swim alongside us, untrammelled by gear, sleek as a seal or a dolphin – a proper mer-person! And then he’d swoop away, and you’d look up and see him hovering overhead – an angel without wings watching over you.
From outside the window, I hear the shrill tck tck tck alarm call of a wren. I wonder how my blue tits are getting on. I slide out of bed and move down the corridor towards the bathroom. I have to pass Granny’s open door – she hates to sleep with it closed – and I wonder if she’s awake or asleep. The curtains are still drawn, so I can’t see too well, but I finally decide her eyes are closed. That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s sleeping, though. Lotus says she spends most of the morning in bed, just lying there with her eyes closed. I suppose she might be remembering what it was like to be young and beautiful and surrounded by beaux.
Lotus wrote down instructions for Mama, to do with Granny’s routine, and stuck them on the fridge door with a magnet that says: You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps. Lotus’s routine goes like this: she brings Granny a bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes at around nine o’clock, and some tea and toast at ten. Then she leaves her to it until it’s time for her wash, just before lunch. After lunch, Granny either ‘watches’ telly, or listens to one of her crime story CDs. Then a cup of tea and a pancake or a biscuit around four. Then supper. Lotus said that the routine is really, really important because if it gets disrupted, so does Granny, and then all hell breaks loose. Bedtime is the last thing on the list. Lotus doesn’t read Granny a story: that was Mama’s idea. I think Mama might even enjoy that bit of her routine: it might remind her of how she used to read to me when I was a baby.
Lola had a baby brother. She told me that it must be dead boring being a baby, because all they do is eat and sleep and poo. But I disagree. When you are a baby, you’re learning all the time. I read somewhere that you learn more in your first year than in all the other years of your life put together, which means that being a baby must be way preferable to being a demented person who can learn nothing new. And when you think about it, all Granny does is eat, sleep and poo. Everything else is done for her.
What must it be like to be waited on hand and foot? Granny’s always had staff. Mama told me that a woman called Prudence used to come in every day to do her housework until the dementia started to kick in big-time, and then Prudence resigned from the job. Granny had become so overbearing that even Prudence, who was her devoted servant (I imagine her as being a bit like Dobby in Harry Potter), could no longer stick being treated like a house elf.
I stop looking at Granny and go on into the bathroom to see how my blue tits are coming along. There is a turd floating in the loo.
There doesn’t seem to be anything much happening in the nesting box beyond the window, but there, in the middle of the patio, are two white peacocks! Where did they come from? Is this a mirage? No, no mirage: they’re real, moving around regally, as if they own the joint. I’m going to check them out from the comfort of the sitting-room, where I can watch them through the glass door that opens onto the patio instead of poking my head over the bathroom windowsill.
They make a funny noise, peacocks. It’s spooky – a bit like a baby crying. As I watch them grubbing around between cracks in the crazy paving for worms, I hear sounds coming through the serving hatch that opens into the kitchen. Mama must be getting Granny’s breakfast.
She is. I blow her a kiss, and she smiles.
Mama has sliced strawberries to put on top of Granny’s Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. It’s the end of the packet, and she’s emptying the flakes into a bowl with a picture of a robin on it. Something tells me it’s a bad idea to give Granny Crunchy Nut Cornflakes dregs, but I know my mother hates to waste anything. She adds the strawberries, and then a little cream, and then I see her take a deep breath as she steels herself for the wake-up call.
‘Good morning, Eleanor!’ she says, breezing into Granny’s bedroom and setting the bowl down on the table. It’s one of those tables that have ‘L’ shaped legs, so that you can slide them in under the bed. Mama does this, and then she moves to the window and pulls back the curtains. ‘It’s a beautiful day! The weather forecast was right, for a change!’
‘Who’s that?’
‘It’s Tess, Eleanor. I’m looking after you while Lotus is away. She’s gone to Malaysia because her daughter’s getting married.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Shall I hoosh you up?’
‘I can hoosh myself up.’ Granny makes an ineffectual hooshing movement, and Mama takes advantage of this to slide another pillow behind her back. Granny’s lolling over the tabletop now, reaching for something. Her teeth. She slides them in, and then picks up her spoon and starts to eat the cornflakes. I knew Mama should have opened a fresh packet. Granny’s expression changes from one of resigned routine to one of thunderous outrage. ‘They taste of dust!’ she fumes. ‘Dust!’
I almost expect her to add: ‘Dust – I tell you! Dust!’ but she doesn’t. She just throws the spoon across the room. Mama bends down and picks it up, and I see her flinch, as if she’s half-expecting Granny to hurl the bowl after the spoon.
‘Dust!’ says Granny again.
‘Oh, dear,’ says Mama, with remarkable sangfroid. ‘I’d better fetch you a fresh bowl, then, hadn’t I?’ She picks up the bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and leaves the room. Her back is very rigid.
Sangfroid means ‘cool’ – the literal translation is ‘cold blood’. I suspect that Mama’s going to need intravenous anti-freeze if she’s going to get through the next twenty days. I will her not to lose her temper, I will her to stay strong.
Granny lies back against the pillows, looking as if she’s wearing a death mask. ‘Dust,’ she says again. ‘This room is dusty.’
Actually, it isn’t. Lotus obviously did a big cleaning job before she got sprung.
‘And it’s very messy,’ continues Granny. ‘Why are your clothes strewn all over the place?’
For a moment I wonder if she’s talking to me, but she’s given no indication that she’s seen me. And there are no clothes strewn over the bedroom floor. What’s she talking about?
‘Well, Maurice?’ says Granny, in a peremptory voice. ‘Do you expect me to pick up after you? I must say that I have no intention of doing so. I did not marry you to be your servant, and if you think I did, then you have another think coming. You must put your own clothes away. What? I beg your pardon? Then we are clearly going to have a row. My mother told me that I must never tidy up anyone’s mess other than my own. You make your bed, you must lie in it. I am going to report you to her. I am going to pick up the phone to Mother right now and tell her to come over here. I might even get into the car and drive myself to her house. Yes. That is exactly what I am going to do. I am going to drive to Mother’s. And when I come back, I want every trace of your clothing hung back in the wardrobe. Is that loud and clear?’
Mama is standing in the doorway, holding a fresh bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. She is looking at Granny with an expression that is half-apprehensive, half-fascinated. She takes a step into the room, and Granny says: ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Tess, Eleanor, with a fresh bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes for you.’ Mama sets the bowl on the bedside table, then takes a step backwards. ‘Would you like to listen to the radio?’ she asks. She switches on the old-fashioned transistor by the bed and didgeridoo music floats out. It’s spookily lovely, but Granny clearly doesn’t think so.
‘You call that listening to the radio?’ she says scathingly. Mama bites back a remark and flicks the off switch. Then she leaves the room without a backward glance and goes into the kitchen. I go with her.
‘She was talking to Maurice. Oh, help me, Katia. She was talking to her dead husband. Oh – where’s the phone, where’s the phone, where’s the phone?’
It’s on its recharger, in the hatch between kitchen and sitting-room. But there’s something else there, too. It’s a spider. It’s the biggest, blackest spider I’ve ever seen, and Mama’s seen it too.
‘Oh, crap, oh, crap. Oh – how do I get rid of it?’ she says in a panicky voice.
Mama never kills spiders. The first time she read Charlotte’s Web to me I made her vow that she would never kill one, ever. We even have a device on a stick at home that allows you to capture insects like spiders and bumble bees at a remove, so that you can set them free in the garden. But this is like a CGI spider from a horror film that would eat Charlotte as a snack. I nod solemnly, granting Mama permission to exterminate. Her breathing is ragged as she rummages in the cupboard beneath the sink. She emerges with a can of fly spray.
‘Oh god oh god oh god.’
Wresting off the cap, Mama stretches out an arm, aims the can at the spider, pushes down on the nozzle – and suddenly the creature is covered in toxic white foam. It goes into a spasm, springs to the rear of the hatch, shudders once or twice . . . and then goes still.
Mama sets down the fly spray, then leans up against the louvred doors that separate the kitchen from the breakfast room. Her breathing is rapid and shallow: if you saw her in a film you might think that she has just committed a murder. Which she has, in a way. I don’t think she’s killed anything in her life, apart from flies. And the other thing is that she knows it is very bad luck to kill a spider. Mama allows herself time to calm down, and once her breathing’s got back to normal, she reaches for the phone.
No! It lives! The bugger makes a kind of bouncy movement and Mama shrieks and lunges for the fly spray with her free hand, dousing the insect as if it’s on fire and she’s trying to put it out. The spider goes apeshit – like an ink doodle in motion – and then it falls over the edge of the hatch into the recycling bin.
‘Oh god oh god oh god.’
Mama hits autodial as she speeds through the breakfast room, heading for the front door. Dad picks up on the third ring. By now she’s out in the garden and speakerphone is in competition with birdsong.
‘Hi. It’s Tess calling from the house of horrors,’ she says.
‘What’s happened?’
‘The Crunchy Nut Cornflakes tasted of dust. She tried to brain me with a spoon. She’s giving out yards to your dead father for not hanging his clothes back in the wardrobe. She’s threatening to drive to her mother’s house. And I’ve just had a close encounter with an arachnid that even her beloved David Attenborough would find repellent.’
‘So it’s a case of business as usual, yes?’
‘I guess you could say that.’
‘How are things in the hygiene department?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Has she been to the loo?’
‘Definitely.’
‘OK.’ Dad gives a sigh. He’s thinking. He always sighs when he’s thinking hard. ‘Leave her alone for an hour. Plug yourself into your iPod and get out your yoga mat.’
Mama does yoga every morning: she’s very, very bendy. When Mama told Dad that bendy people tend to live longer, he laughed and said in that case Granny was the exception that proved the rule. I don’t think Granny ever took any form of exercise after she hit middle age. Not even in the form of housework, since she had Dobby to do it for her.
‘There’s no way I’m plugging myself into my iPod while I’m living in this house,’ says Mama.
‘But you love your iPod.’
‘I know. But I’ll need to keep my wits about me in case your mother sneaks up and starts firing missiles at me. I’ll head out for a run after I’ve brought her some tea and toast.’ Mama shoots a glance at her watch. It’s a Patek Philippe that Dad got her one Christmas before the Young Turks came to power. ‘I’ll go and do that now – she’ll have finished her cornflakes.’
‘Wait. I’ve a good one for you.’
Mama smiles. ‘Bring it.’
‘An old man hobbles up to an ice-cream van and orders a cone. “Crushed nuts, granddad?” asks the ice-cream man. “No,” replies the old man. “Rheumatism.”’
‘Bye, Donn!’ Mama switches off the phone with a laugh, just as a white peacock rounds the corner of the Gingerbread House. ‘Look, Katia! A white peacock! Are they supposed to be lucky, or unlucky?’
I shrug. Lola’s mum once told me that keeping peacock feathers in the house was bad luck, but I don’t know about peacocks outside. I suppose people wouldn’t keep them if they were unlucky.
Mama goes back into the house. ‘Time for tea, said Zebedee,’ she says.