A Tiny Bit Marvellous (5 page)

Mo

Am exhausted. What a night. Was already feeling pretty rubbish on the tail end of this flu. Kids brought my pending files back, and I was able to work on those in bed for most of the evening although my head is still pounding. Husband made a spectacular hot toddy incorporating cloves and malt whisky, which did the trick and I was just nodding off … when Dora came in to start what has now become a regular occurrence, the nightly battle.

I think she is still feeling raw about what happened with the boyfriend at New Year, but that isn’t what she discusses. She opened this particular night’s hostilities with a rant about the need for even more highlights in her already utterly ruined hair and then she accused me of patronizing her by telling her the other day how beautiful I think she is.

‘You are such a wonk, Mum! I absolutely need those bloody highlights. They’re the only thing that take people’s eyes away from all the other stuff that’s so disgusting. Look at my legs, they’re gross! I’m just, like so revolting. I’m so fat. Look at my bloody hips. It’s like I’m wearing someone else’s hips on top of my own hips. And my arms! Oh my God they are so rank, they look like meat or something. And my feet. Just look. They’re not feet, they are like two slabs of trifle. Not trifle … I mean bloody cow’s guts … what’s it called? Offal! Two slabs of slimy offal. With nails. Urgh! If you can’t see how disgusting I am, you must be like, blind, deaf and dumb or something? And if you’re not any of those, you must have noticed what a deformed bloody wretch I am, so you are actually just a big fat liar to be telling me the opposite aren’t you?!’

Either way it was clearly my fault. I have made her feel worthless and ugly apparently. She flounced out when Husband shouted up that her fajitas were ready, and as she left the room, she threw one last mumbled insult over her shoulder – ‘You sicken me, you lying bitch.’ Nice.

Well, after taking a few moments to remind and reassure myself that these irrational verbal missiles are projections of her own insecurities and that she lightens herself by hurling them at me, and also that she cannot diminish me unless I allow her to, I took some deep breaths and managed to get off to sleep. I have no idea what time Husband crept into the bed, I just know he was there when I awoke suddenly at about 4am to hear Dora by the side of my bed sobbing, ‘Mummy, Mummy.’

I put the light on to discover her standing there, shaking and covered in prawn-inspired vomit. ‘I’ve been sick, Mummy!’ She was suddenly two years old and in a flash we were both back then, fifteen-odd years ago. Husband jumped out of bed and automatically went to clean up her room. I ran a bath with Matey bubbles in, undressed her, and put her in. I stroked her hair and sponged her back whilst her sobbing changed slowly to wailing then weeping then snivelling then occasional whimpering and eventually to quiet calm. I rinsed out the nightie, and marvelled at the phenomenal amount of small whole prawns that were amongst the carnage. Fucking prawns.

I dried her and we even managed to giggle when I covered her in talc with my fabulous big pink powder puff I had for Christmas from Husband. We giggled more when I put her in one of my old nighties. She looked so tiny in it. Husband brought sweet tea, and I tucked her back into her newly made bed and kissed her goodnight. So that relationship – the mother and toddler one – is still intact then … How interesting. And how lovely. Am now knackered.

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Dora

Was like, spewing up like a blue whale’s blow hole last night. Am staying in bed today. Dad called school and they said so long as I did some of my work at home, it would be all right and I won’t get too far behind. The only really big thing I have to do is compose a song for Music. Should be easy coz I like sing songs all the time. And, if The Saturdays can write a bloody song, I def can! It was supposed to have been done in stages last term, but I didn’t have time then. Now I’ve only got ’til next Friday to hand it in.

Think I’m going to write it about love or something and like about having a broken heart from being chucked or something. I would like really be able to connect with that. Maybe it would start like:

Oh baby I feel so sad

Oh baby you got me so mad

You gonna be sorry you let me go

No one else gonna love you so … good.

Then the chorus would be like

Love you so good, so good.

Love you so good … yeah.

Love you so very very good

Love you sooo good.

I could even put a little rap bit in, like Alesha Dixon does, like:

‘Tell me baby, tell me true – who de lickle gal wot did love you? She be me ’n’ I be gone. So you have to cry all night long. Come find me baby, in my lickle house. Come find me honey – cryin’ like a mouse. Mash it up!’

Yeah, think that would work. Might need more lyrics for a second and third verse maybe. Right good, I’ve done that so now I can read the new Heat Magazine and maybe watch Cash in the Attic. Dad is coming back from work at lunchtime to make me something and check on me coz Mum’s still ill in bed. Dad asked what I’d like for lunch. I said Pop Tarts. He said OK, but don’t tell Mum. He’s got to go and get some coz Mum won’t have them in the house coz they apparently immediately poison you on contact, with like their evil sugar substitutes or something. Dad will have to go to Tesco and smuggle them in. Is his work near a Tesco? Don’t know – no idea where he works. Think it’s somewhere on the other side of Reading or something? He does something with computers or something? Anyway, he will def find the Pop Tarts. No doubt about that. If Dad makes a promise, he keeps it. Lunchtime is 3 hrs and 55 mins away from now. Countdown to Pop Tart lift-off.

Actually, I might have some Jaffa Cakes to keep me going …

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Mo

Still bedridden. Too much thinking time. I am convinced I am now in the foothills of the menopause. The perimenopause. It’s a bit like being under starter’s orders – you know it’s all going to kick off any second now, but presently you are in limbo with just a few warning signs for company.

It’s not at all what I imagined. It’s mainly to do with my brain, my mind. I seem to be employing entirely different methods of processing information. Methods which allow for a small but perceptible amount of memory loss or a deal of confusion I’ve not experienced before. It’s like I’m making allowances for being a tiny bit slower. I know for instance that it’s slightly more difficult now to keep ten concurrent thought balls in the air. I can manage eight, but not ten any more.

Part of the problem, of course, is not wanting to admit it, especially at work. What would I say?

‘George, can I have a tiny word? Just to give you a quick heads-up that I’m simply not as clever or quick as I used to be, and I’m certain it’s going to get incrementally and significantly worse. OK?! Thanks.’

I am operating inside a kind of pink fog, which has blurred the edges of me. Ironically, it’s only now of course that I realize the edges are the bits of me I most like. That’s where the brittle and more dangerous verges of my mind-reef are, where I am most inexperienced and unbalanced. That’s where I experiment and where I am a teeny bit deranged, and a lot scared. I feel like the fog is urging me to go back on to the safer, sturdier centre of the reef where I am well supported by habit and familiarity.

The most alarming part is the dawning realization that perhaps I have reached my limits. Up ’til now I have never once questioned that I can push my own limitations, intellectually and even sometimes physically. Now, slowly, I think perhaps I have unknowingly reached and touched that perimeter and am never going to journey beyond it. Like those huge sharks in massive aquariums, constantly swimming about at the edge of the glass, seeing beyond, but not being able to go there. It’s a cruel trick of nature really. I’ve got the muscle, I am fortified by years of experience, I even have a chassis of sagacity, but the glass is too thick. That’s the head part. The body part is another whole story. Whereas the brain treacle has been a slow, gentle, even barely perceptible pouring in, the body change has happened with alarming speed. All on one day, in fact. Two Tuesdays ago.

I went to the mirror to put on my face. When I started to dab on my tinted moisturizer I realized that I didn’t entirely recognize the face staring back at me. There were enough vestiges of my familiar face to assure me it was actually me. But … what were these folds and crevasses and blotchy red veins and big open pores? Who did they belong to? I knew immediately who they belonged to – to Pamela. To my bloody mother. I had seen this Ordnance Survey map of a face before, many times, but never in the mirror. It’s not that I don’t like my mum’s face; it’s just that it belongs on her, not on me.

I turned the mirror round to the magnified side and experienced what can only be described as genuine horror. The kind of fright that makes you eat a tiny bit of your pants with your bum hole. What fresh hell was this?! So much has changed. All of it not at all as I imagined it would. I expected sag and wrinkles yes, but not in this formation. My features look as if they’ve been in a vice, clamped hard on to either cheek and squeezed tight then left overnight to set. So, most of the lines are deep rivulets going from the top to the bottom of my face. Eh?! Gulleys down the side of my nose and mouth and chin, crevasses on my forehead and, the strangest of all, huge vertical wrinkles on my eyelids from the brow to the lash. What?! I have never seen this before, on anyone’s face. It gives me the appearance of a corrugated roof. I am well designed to repel driving rain. No rain is ever going to enter my face, no sir. My facial downpipes and guttering will see to that.

I also seem to have grown extra eyelids. On top of my eyelids. Like molten lava skin has spilled down from my eyebrows and is now spreading out over my eyelashes, which can barely support the weight. Where has all this skin come from? Has it been hiding behind my hairline and ears waiting for my fifties to pounce? Well, hardly pounce, more like dribble. My face has surrendered. Two weeks ago it still had some fight in it, but now it wants a permanent rest. I can’t say I blame it. It really has had to work hard in the past, what with all the reactions and expressions and everything. Never mind the weather erosion.

So, my face is my mother’s.

Has my mother lain within me all the time? Has she nestled just under my skin, so close to the surface, that, as time has peeled off the layers she is more and more revealed, like a sphinx rising out of the sand? I don’t know how to feel about that. My life has been an exercise in exorcizing her from me. I have made every effort not to become her. She is a good person in so many ways, but I didn’t want to inherit her faults. I wanted to acknowledge and identify them, and then change. I wanted to move on and past her, to create my own person and my own place to be.

Some of the elements I wanted to alter aren’t even faults, they are facets of her nature that just irritate me; her endless tolerance, her passive acceptance, her attraction to tragedy and trauma and her seemingly endless ability to cope. It’s irrational and unpleasant of me to find all this annoying. But I do, and now I discover that she has been lurking, all these years, just inside me. She is physically arriving more and more every day, so is she eventually going to entirely body-snatch me? Character, personality, soul and spirit all consumed into one massive mother monster? A parasite of giant proportions who will eat me up, who has been eating me up all these years slowly and steadily without me knowing?

Oh God help me – I know what this bloody means! It means I am connected to her. Attached to her. Still. Whether I like it or not. I am tethered. But am I trapped? No, because that’s where my free will comes into play. Having her face growing on mine steadily as a mum-mask is one thing (and not such a terrible thing – her face is actually quite nice, very appealing, if ankle-deep vertical furrows are your thing) but I do not have to become her. I am an adult. Apparently. I can be whomsoever I wish, and I wish to be entirely me. So move over, Pamela, I’m coming through!

In the meantime I’m going to spend an exorbitant £80 on a miracle cream which I’m perfectly aware won’t work, to try and grout some of the deeper trenches in my poor cracking face. It will make me feel better to spend the money. At least that way I have actively taken a stand. After all, I’m worth it …

Oh Christ. Am I?!

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Oscar

I do not eat. I rarely sleep. I merely breathe. I do not live a life worth living. I am a husk of my former self. I must certainly fade to nothing within the month. All is storm and calamity within. I have yielded my heart. It is entirely yielded. Peek inside me and you will discover only a heart-shaped chasm, a place where a heart used to be. Mine is no longer at home. It abides within another. Another who has little or no idea that he has stolen it. A thief, an innocent thief. The thief of my affections. That wonder of wonders. That clever, darling, dazzling dear gentleman. Dare I name him? Dare I let my lips dance around his moniker? Oh I am a silly silly boy. Yes. I will. Dance, lips, dance.

Noel

There … there … and there. Noel, Noel, Noel. Oh, the giddy whirl of it. Noel. One has to form a kiss to say it. Noel. Oh, I detest every pointless waking moment where I am not saying it. Noel. There’s something of the rascal about it … Noel. And the angel, might I suggest? Noel. Let me die with his name on my lips and I will die happy. Noel. Perfect in every way. Noel, my dear Noel. It’s absurd to imagine a life without you, Noel. Oh, when one is so very in love, the rapture of it is unbearable. I am dying of you, Noel, I am in bliss with you. I love you, damn it. I love you!

A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Mo

Not feeling quite right yet, not 100% chipper, but cannot possibly remain one more day at home. By yesterday I had begun to loathe the fuggy ill smell of my sickly self and my bed. I’m convinced that after a week or so of bedridden festering, the bed itself catches the disease and ingests it into its very structure and fabric. If you don’t recover quickly and get up, the bed will take direct action and reinfect you back but ten times more virulently, as a punishment for being a pathetic wuss.

Anyway, I was up and out today. My legs were slightly surprised by the sudden and swift action required of them, bit creaky, but once in the car to work, all seemed usual. The same old journey, past the same old shops and school and cricket pitch and war memorial. I sometimes wonder if my eyes get bored flicking over exactly the same landmarks on this journey every samey day? I think I could do this journey with my eyes closed. I bet I could, I would feel the road, wouldn’t I? I would instinctively know when and how much to turn the wheel, to put my foot on the accelerator, to stop, to start again. Obviously the unpredictability of other cars might present a problem, or a rogue pedestrian maybe, but otherwise I’m pretty sure I could do it. Maybe early on a Sunday morning when no one else much was around? Would I have the courage to do it? Would I test myself like that? Would I behave so irresponsibly? It would be totally out of character. Would I just be too afraid – want to be safe? What would I choose to do if I wasn’t afraid? If I didn’t want to be safe or sensible? Yes, I would definitely do it then. Definitely …

But for now, here I was, driving to work like any other day. I was looking forward to catching up with my clients. Most of them cancelled last week when they discovered I was off. I know they need their therapy but I can’t help feeling a little bit pleased that they prefer to wait ’til I’m back. George has covered for me where necessary apparently and the intern has sat in. My intern, not his. Am glad about that. Really not sure what some of my teen boys would make of the extremely well-blessed and underdressed Veronica. How would they concentrate with those in the room? Awful thing is, I suspect she would relish the attention. I wish I could defend her right to present herself any way she chooses at work. I certainly would feel strongly about that in relation to myself, but how do you legislate for the irresponsible?

Oh, shut up, Mo, and listen to your bitter self. What about if she just is sexy, full stop? Does that mean she should be banned from this profession, then? No. Of course not, but I can’t help feeling she is inappropriate, however clever she might be, because she makes a conscious choice to use her potent female sexual power in all interaction she has with men or boys. She has obviously never learned to do otherwise.

We used to call it ‘DWB’ at uni. ‘Different With Boys’. We applied it to women who betray their entire gender by constantly operating in a submissive, teasing, coquettish manner, setting us all back by decades. Those signals which are all wrong for this particular workplace. For any workplace actually – unless it’s a lap-dancing club. Please, Veronica, do me a favour, and don’t teach these young men to only interact with you on such a frivolous level. Please display your cleverness, cover your baps up and save the faux milkmaid act for the bedroom where you can fake it as much as you need. (Personally, I think that’s the prime place you shouldn’t fake it, but … each to their own.) At least don’t play those tricks at work with chaps that you are well aware can’t resist it. Be classier than that. Don’t give sceptical professionals like me, and especially the men, reason to dismiss you as lightweight. As a fluttering, flittery thing. As a kitten. As weak. As insignificant. Instead, use your considerable invaluable intellect and leave us in no doubt you are formidable, that you are of consequence. Oh – why does it bother me so much?! Maybe instead of ranting about her, I need to just get on with my job and leave Veronica to her methods. Just not with my patients, thanks.

I was greeted by Lisa who unless I am much mistaken (inconceivable), is gruffer than ever. ‘Mornin’.’ Gruffier than a Gruffalo who’s been on a gruff-refreshment course. It’s not the ideal first impression of a child welfare clinic, to be frank. It is the ideal demeanour for a fearless survivalist explorer. She is looking more and more like the unfortunate love child of Bear Grylls and Ray Mears. A union that doesn’t bear imagining … the sheer khaki overload! Bit by bit, she is adopting her eco gear as normal workaday wear, and because I have been off for a week, it’s crept up to quite a commitment at a staggering rate. Today, she was wearing combat trousers, hiking boots and a short-sleeved beige shirt. She looked like a keen junior staff member at a safari park. Nothing about her says ‘I’m the receptionist – welcome – how can I help you?’ Everything about her says ‘If you provoke me in any way, I will attack you with my alarming teeth and I will eat you.’ So, we have a killer on the front desk and a strumpet in the therapy suite. Here come the girls …

My office was much as I had left it, save some extra folders on the desk and 126 emails awaiting my attention. George popped in and hugged me to welcome me back.

‘Ah, the divine Mrs Battle returns to order our chaos and shine her light in all our dark and naughty places! Welcome back, Mo, you old slapper. Missed you bigtime.’

He was sporting a floral Paul Smith shirt that I’ve seen him wear before, but only when he needs to impress. Veronica is obviously receiving some quality impressing.

She swanned by and gave me a little wave. ‘Hi, Maureen, gorgeous to see you!’ She was wearing a turquoise low-cut Indian smock-top with sequins sewn into the cleavage, and white trousers. Perhaps she believes we are about to launch our practice as a Mediterranean cruise? Enough. Shush. Back in the knife drawer, Mrs Sharp.

George invited me into his office for a catch-up meeting with the interns in attendance, before the first appointment. I took my pad and walked down the hall. I love my pad. Well, I love the leather holder – it’s so battered now, it’s seen nearly thirty years of frontline use. Husband gave it to me as a passing-my-degree present. It sits perfectly on my lap, holds the pad in place and has a holder for my pen. It shields the paper from the patient’s gaze but isn’t unfriendly. It’s worn and weathered, like a trusted friend – to me and to the patients.

George was sat at his desk and we sat in the armchairs – me, the turquoise tartlet and Noel, my new shadow. He seems perfectly pleasant, not too cocky but nicely confident. I like New Zealanders; they have a freshness about them. Dora told me he looked like Crocodile Dundee. Not at all. He looks more like a serious cricketer. He is tall and lean like they are, with an easy manner. He seems respectful. Yes, I think we’ll get on fine, and after all, it’s only for a year. He will only annoy me if he is too needy or intrusive or arrogant. I have my Maginot line of mental fortifications at the ready, should I need to raise them. Thus far, no need. Mercifully.

A Tiny Bit Marvellous