Flying Under Bridges (10 page)

Adam
whispered out of the side of his mouth to William, ‘Looking lovely as usual but
no idea.’ He turned to Mother and spoke rather too loudly, as if she were
slightly infirm. ‘You can’t be too careful, Lillian, you have no idea the
claims we get in from damage done by people hanging pictures incorrectly. I see
it all the time. Don’t worry, we’ll manage. Any chance of a drink?’

‘Of
course, Adam, of course.’ She went off to subdue drinks into appropriate
glasses. Adam took the painting from William. ‘Now, what have we got here?’

William
sucked in air through his teeth at the complexity of the job ahead. ‘Well, I
think you’re right about that hook for a start.’ He took the picture back from
Adam and weighed it in his hands. ‘That’s a number-one hook she’s got there. Can’t
carry this kind of weightage. You want at least a two or three hook if we’re
talking this kind of poundage per painting.’

Mother
returned with a tray of glasses and a warm bottle of Blue Nun. ‘Haven’t you
done it yet? It’s only the one picture. I do want it up before the lawyer gets
here.’

Adam
and William grinned to each other. ‘Only the one picture!’ exclaimed Adam. ‘Don’t
you worry your pretty little head. Be done in a jiffy.’

‘Well,
I want it just here.’ Mother pointed to a spot on the wall.

Adam
smiled. ‘Wish it were that simple, eh, William?’ William began tapping the wall
with both hands as if he suspected it might have TB. ‘Wish I had my pipe
detector. You seen those, Adam? Electronic device. Just sweep it across the
wall and beeper goes off if there’s any kind of pipe in the way.’

‘Marvellous.’
Adam held the painting up where it was to go and then put it down again. ‘Good
point, you know, about the pipes. I wonder if Lillian has any plans for the
house.’

‘Electrics
as well. It also does electrics. I think people don’t realise that forty-three
per cent of household fires start with people doing DIY through electrics.’

‘Perhaps
we’d better wait. Get that detector thing.’

‘Yes. I
usually carry it in the car. Can’t believe I didn’t bring it with me.’

Adam
put down the hammer and moved to pour them a drink. Pe Pe’s eggs were on full
alert.

‘No
alcohol, Willie!’ she called from the sitting room. ‘Remember your production!’

William
sighed and splashed soda in a glass noisily. He and Adam went out into the
garden. Adam seemed to have lost his limp. Eve knew she shouldn’t have done it,
but while they were gone she went and hung the picture where Mother wanted it. In
the middle of the wall above the sideboard. Pe Pe kept talking while Eve banged
in the picture hook and put up her father. He looked down at her from his new
vantage point. It was strange. Now he seemed to be smiling. Maybe it depended
on the angle. Eve wasn’t ready to have him look at her yet. It was too soon.
Still, it was better than what used to hang there. Mother had taken up oil
painting by numbers some years ago and had done a huge canvas of the Last
Supper. It was when she was going through her phase of first needing glasses
but refusing to wear them. Some of the numbers had gone a little awry.
Consequently, Jesus’s face was a slightly strange orange colour as if he’d come
direct from an all-night tanning parlour. All the apostles appeared to be
suffering from slight indigestion, which was not surprising as the food on the
mildly red table was primarily blue.

Eve put
the hammer away. Mother saw her do it but never said a word because Shirley
arrived. Shirley, Eve’s beauty, her triumph. Nineteen years of perfection. She
looked immaculate in a way that Eve had never quite managed. Neat skirt and
jacket with a delicate silk blouse. Her hair was cut into a shoulder-length bob
and hung exactly where she had commanded it. Shirley had taken a job at one of
the High Street building societies during her ‘gap’ year before university.
She was good and had taken to dressing with a kind of shop-front authority. Eve
and Shirley hugged the way Eve had always hugged her children. As if her life
depended on it. Shirley patted her on the back and moved away.

‘Hello,
Mummy. Hello, Nana.’ Mother and Shirley hugged the air around each other and
Shirley smiled again at Eve.

‘I’ve
bought Father a present… for his promotion.’ She went out into the garden to
find Adam. Eve could see him opening his gift and smiling. She stood watching
through the plate-glass window in the dining room. Adam’s promotion. It was a
funny idea. He’d got a promotion for selling insurance policies. He had scared
enough people into paying money so they could be less scared. What if you die?
What if you can’t work? What if your house burns down? What if you get a
terminal illness? What if your wife does, or your kids or your dog? Insurance
for everything and anything that could happen.

Eve had
never had a promotion. Not for doing anything. She had spent twenty-five years
administering not just food but nutrients, not just comfort but bonding,
encouraging social skills, teaching everything from speech and table manners to
road sense and human relationships. That’s what Martha told her. Eve hadn’t
realised. She had probably even got better at it as she got older but no one
ever gave Eve a promotion. No one ever said, ‘Have a raise in salary, Eve. You’ve
earned it. Here, have a new plaque with your name and title on it for your
kitchen door.’ She did it because it was her job. She did it because somebody
had to. Because she was … what was it? The angel in the house. Eve could see
herself reflected in the window. Her floating image seemed to be wherever she
looked — in foil, in a mirror, in the window. She had not seen herself for a
long time and now suddenly she was everywhere.

Pe Pe
had taken little breath in her conversational monologue, so Eve felt obliged to
go back and listen. Mother still had the toy box and the old doll’s house that
Father had made in the sitting room. Perhaps she thought some of the family
still needed occupying. Eve picked up a ‘Swimming Barbie’. It was a curious
doll. Eve had forgotten about her and her athletic ability. Barbie hadn’t lost
her touch. Her arms were still able to swivel round her head in a frightening
manner. Eve tried to imagine her as a real woman. She had read somewhere that Barbie’s
breasts were supposed to be the ideal female shape but she didn’t seem right.
Eve held out the doll and looked at her. If Barbie were a real woman, Eve
reckoned she would be six foot tall with size one feet. All her perfect breasts
would do was make her unable to stand up in even a mild breeze. Wheelchair
Barbie.

There
was a lot of Barbie in Pe Pe — stupid name, same hair origin, bouncy flesh
tone. Eve wondered what Pe Pe’s breasts were like. Perfect, no doubt, like the
rest of her. Germaine Greer says there are different types of breast, but
really the ideal is that they are exactly the same size. Eve couldn’t remember
ideal for who. Pe Pe’s looked the same — they were both huge. Desmond Morris
said that women developed breasts so men would have sex with them from the
front. Nothing to do with feeding then. Pe Pe’s certainly suggested sex from
the front. In fact they suggested sex with everyone on the front. Pe Pe talked
about sperm and babies but Eve wanted to say to her, ‘How do you get so fit and
still have such big breasts?’

They
were remarkable endowments. Give her a black eye if she ever took up golf. Eve
wondered which shape they were: the fried-egg shape (broad spreading base with
nipple held close to underlying muscle), the sweet-potato shape (narrow based
and comparatively long) or the standard shape — which is apparently rare —
perfectly hemispherical with nipple exactly at the centre point. Adam wouldn’t
mind any of them. He always used to say he was a ‘breast man’, like it was a
cut of roast. He loved that wet T-shirt competition at the club, but not
breastfeeding. Not in public.

‘I read
somewhere that there is a tribe in New Guinea who use tight girdles on men as
well as women so that the men have hourglass curves too.

‘What?’
Eve realised that Pe Pe was staring at her. ‘What are you talking about, Eve?’

‘New
Guinea,’ managed Eve, surprised to find that she had spoken out loud. ‘I should
like to go there. Actually, I should like to go anywhere.’

Pe Pe
went out to the garden. Perhaps she wanted to make sure William was still
making sperm on his day off. Perhaps she too thought Eve was mad. It was funny
William and Pe Pe not being able to make a baby. They were so good at
everything else. Such a Martini couple. Mrs Harris at Number 28 had five children
and she and Mr Harris didn’t even speak most of the time. Apparently the last
was an accident, which always struck Eve as an odd expression. She wondered
what it meant. Perhaps Mrs Harris had fallen off a kitchen stool and on to her
husband’s penis when he happened past? She wondered why people had sex when
they were not even getting on. Adam and she hardly had it when they were
thrilled to bits with each other.

Martha
was late as usual and arrived at the same time as the solicitor. He was a young
man, maybe twenty-five, very smart and sleek. A dark, three-piece suit, but
very modern and a careful haircut. Eve knew Mother would like him because he
looked like a missionary. In fact, when Eve opened the front door, she half
suspected he’d come round to sell copies of the
Watchtower
and tell them
why Jesus ought to come into their lives.

He put
down his briefcase, smiled at Eve and seemed to set his eyes to twinkle as he
put out his hand. ‘John Antrobus. Hogart, Hoddle and Hooper.’

Eve
smiled. Wasn’t that nice? Hogart, Hoddle and Hooper. All the Hs at law school
must have got on. She managed to keep the thought to herself.

‘You
must be the granddaughter,’ he said, twinkling away.

Eve
giggled. She hated herself but she giggled. ‘No, the daughter.’

‘Good
heavens,’ he breathed.

Eve and
John shook hands and he gently placed his other hand on top of the handshake as
if to confirm the whole thing. It was May when their hands bonded. Before
Christmas he’d be dead and Eve would have killed him.

But
that day Eve was polite. Middle-aged, middle class, polite. ‘My daughter’s
going to be a solicitor. She’s going to university in September. We’re just
waiting to hear which one.’

Eve’s
younger sister, Martha, stood impatiently behind John Antrobus as she waited to
come in. Martha was uninterested in him. She was wearing a selection of clothes
that were fighting a heavy rearguard action against becoming an ensemble
outfit. Large swathes of natural fibres suggested Eve’s sister had dressed
while fleeing a burning building. She also wore a turban for reasons Eve never
fathomed. They were not a turban sort of family. Not in Edenford, but then
Martha had not been around for some time. She taught women’s studies at a
university in Bangkok and had only come home for the dealing out of her father’s
spoils. She was staying at the University Women’s Club in London and was
impatient to get back there. She did not understand her family and, to be fair,
they did not understand her. Martha’s only concession to them all was that she
had brought a gift of a pineapple, two melons and a lemon.

‘I
thought fruit would be good,’ Martha said, when John finally stopped twinkling
and stepped into the house. The kitchen door flew open and Mother appeared
wiping her hands on a tea towel.

‘Oh,
Martha, sweet of you but I’ve got fruit. The one thing we didn’t need.’

Eve
smiled. Everyone except Martha smiled, as if the whole fruit thing was just
fine.

‘Christ!’
said Martha, and stomped off with her pineapple to get a drink.

Mother
was mortified. ‘So unnecessary. I’m so sorry.’

Eve
made the remaining introductions. ‘Mother, this is Mr Antrobus from the
solicitors.’

He
shook Mother gravely by the hand. ‘I know it’s a difficult time, but may I say
you are an inspiration to us all.’ Mother nearly fell on the floor with
delight. She preened as he moved on. ‘Perhaps we had better get started,’ he
said, getting more sonorous by the minute.

‘Oh no.
Lunch. We must have lunch,’ insisted Mother.

‘I
couldn’t, really.’ Mr Antrobus held up his briefcase. ‘You see, it’s a little
awkward. Perhaps not as straightforward—’

There
was no arguing with Mother. ‘Nonsense. Lunch!’

The
Great Provider called everyone in and the men did lots of handshaking with the
man from the law. Martha sat smoking at the table until Mother began
unnecessary coughing. Mother brought in an unnecessary damp cloth and put it
beside her plate. She lived in mortal fear of spillage, hence the large plastic
tablecloth, just in case.

Adam
and William sat in the carvers at either end of the table while the rest of the
family gathered at the sides. Mother went back for something. She always went
back for something. She sat and stood so many times during a meal that as a
child Eve had felt confident someone had placed a small electric charge in her seat.
She was an age in the kitchen so Eve went to see if she could help. Mother was
wrapping the remains of the hors d’oeuvres in cling film, struggling to get
three leftover olives neatly contained. Eve knew better than to interrupt. She
watched her mother wrap the three olives as if the family’s future sustenance
depended on them.