Nomance (6 page)

‘No, no, please, carry
on,’ Carla urged.

‘You see, it’s an
immemorial habit with me. I caught myself taking them out in
Fortnam and Mason’s
last week. There’d have been a riot if
I’d actually lit up. But it’s just automatic with me, that’s
all.’

‘But please, go ahead.
No one else is here and you’re my . . . most valued customer.’

‘
Am
I, dear?
Well,’ Shelly hesitated for a moment and removed the carton once
again. ‘Thank you very much. Just lately you’re made to feel such a
leper if you smoke. Do you smoke, by the way?’

‘Yes,’ Carla said,
though she had never smoked in her life, such was her eagerness to
please.

Shelly offered her a
cigarette and Carla took one. She’d smoke the whole packet to get
Shelly signed up to her funeral programme. ‘Some people say you
shouldn’t when you’re pregnant,’ Shelly observed, lighting Carla’s
cigarette before her own.

‘Oh, it’s just once in
a while. And it’s my belief is a ciggie now and then is miles
better at calming your nerves than sedatives, and definitely safer.
I don’t care what the doctors say, smoking does wonders for me. So
long as the cigarettes are not too mild.’

Shelly liked this. ‘I
think a pregnant woman has an instinct for what’s good for her, and
these are made with the very best Turkish tobacco, you know. The
kind I smoked to calm my own nerves while I was carrying Stewart,
my first son.’

There followed a brief
interlude in which the pair indulged in smoking mannerisms peculiar
to themselves. Shelly exhaled mean, thin clouds, as perhaps might
have issued from the chimney of a death-camp incinerator, while
Carla puffed away like a Wild West steam engine.

‘All pregnant women
smoked when I was young,’ Shelly declared with satisfaction.

Carla considered this
statement. ‘You know, nobody mentions that anymore. And yet,
they’re still going on about Thalidomide. Just shows, doesn’t
it?’

‘Yes, yes, that’s
right, my dear,’ Shelly agreed warmly. ‘Now while I don’t know
anyone who ever suffered because their mother smoked, with
thalidomide the first person I always think of is my cleaning lady
. . . ’

Shelly, as it turned
out, had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the frightful effects
of thalidomide. And too, the frightful effects of arterial
sclerosis, emphysema, cancer and gas gangrene. What’s more she
could reel off the names of her contemporaries, and household
staff, who had died of them. The grand prize went to Uncle Cecil –
killed off by lung cancer, even though he had never smoked a
cigarette in his life. Which just went to prove what Shelly had
always suspected – that all these things came and went in fashions,
like the length of women’s skirts. Apropos of which she now
recalled with great fondness her friend at school, Lydia. She
observed, ‘But isn’t it so odd, dear, how one simply never sess
club feet anymore?’

Carla tutted and shook
her head, ‘So many things are changing for the worse.’

‘Very true! For a start
this area of London is awash with drugs these days. They’re all
taking them, pregnant or not. I dread to think what horrors pop out
in maternity clinics. Things that make club feet look like buck
teeth, I imagine.’

‘You’re telling it the
way it is, Shell,’ Carla declared. ‘And yet, between you and me, a
couple of club feet would be a godsend,’ she rubbed her belly. ‘His
little kicks are really sharp.’

‘My dear,’ Shelly said
with a smile, ‘the kicks are nothing. You wait for the birth.’

‘Well of course that’s
when a little pointy head comes into its own.’

‘You may well be lucky,
Carla, you may well be lucky.’

‘Have you ever heard of
little pointy heads?’

‘Dear, nowadays little
pointy heads are the only staff I can get.’

This was the moment
that Gwynne and his crew lumbered in through the shop door.

Carla was set to step
from behind the counter and save Shelly, who looked tiny compared
to the gangly, loose-limbed youths. However, Shelly showed no fear.
She smiled at Carla with a twinkle in her eye, ‘And talk of the
devil.’

‘Carla, the back door’s
bolted,’ Gwynne complained, leading the rest of the crew through
the counter door and into the house behind.

Carla was too affronted
to answer. She could only glare.

Gwynne was followed by
a tall, dark-haired girl with a tough swagger. She gave Carla a
quick on/off smile as she slipped by. Behind her was a lanky,
dangerous looking lad whose simian features blazed with silent
hilarity. After that . . . but it was too awful. As the last
specimen vanished into the hallway that led into the house,
chimpanzeeing as he went. Carla opened her eyes to check that
Shelly was still alive.

‘My word, are you
having a party?’ Shelly exclaimed, seemingly unaware of Carla’s
distress. If anything, the crowd of thugs appeared to have thrilled
her. ‘Or should I say – a rave?’

‘That was my brother
and his friends.’

‘Oh, the one you’re
going to do a really good funeral for?’

‘If all goes well.’

‘Lets hope. But this
talk of raves had reminded me why I’ve dropped by, dear. I think
some daffs to brighten the dining room. We’re throwing a dinner
party next Friday.’

‘Lovely.’ Clara gave
her a bright smile.
Well
, she reflected,
a dinner party’s
no funeral – but it’s better than nothing
.

Once Shelly had
departed, with a promise to visit again soon (oh, these old crones
were so sweet! It was more than some of her younger customers could
do to mumble ta ta), Carla stalked back into the house and found
the pack of jackanapes debouched in the kitchen.

‘This is Charmaine,’
Gwynne declared with that unmistakable proprietorial air which
indicated to Carla that he had found some idiot to call a
girlfriend. They shook hands. Charmaine’s eyes never left Carla’s
gravid stomach.

‘Pleased to meet you,’
she said in a neutral tone.

Gwynne ran through the
rest by name and they yipped their indecipherable greetings against
a background noise of suppressed snickering – none of it quite
suppressed enough. And how tall they all were! The most disturbing
of these lofty clowns was Jake, with little round eyes and a fixed
expression of ape-like hilarity.

Carla unbolted the back
door with as much significance as she could muster. ‘I forgot to
tell Kitty not to bolt the back door.’ As well as having to repeat
to the girl every day what she must do, one also had to tell her
what not to do. Still, despite the inconvenience, she could not
bring herself to condemn Kitty for being a moron. The benefits were
just too numerous.

‘Okay, when we go,
we’ll go out the back,’ Gwynne said.

Carla slunk off back to
the shop.

This afternoon turned
out to be one of those afternoons when not a single soul drifted in
– not even to browse. Once in a while, her customers would gang up
like this to demonstrate that they didn’t need her. Even the street
outside seemed deserted.

The last three hours
passed in a torment of loneliness and Carla closed the shop with
piercing sense of failure. Once again,
Romance
had proved
itself to be the ultimate dead end, and once again the realised her
only hope was to sell up and get into a different line of business.
With any luck in a different city.

She went into the house
and got a nasty surprise. Gwynne and his crowd were still in the
kitchen. They were spread out, relaxed and engaged in conversation.
The repartee crisscrossed the room like a rubber ball, one that
kept whizzing just past the back of her head.

‘Could you go into the
living room so I can get my tea?’ She snapped, expending the last
of her self confidence. Running
Romance
was a severe drain
on one’s self confidence at the best of times, and today had been
more demanding than usual.

Charmaine scowled,
‘Yeah, we’re in the way, Gwynne,’ she scolded. ‘Why don’t you
think?’

Gwynne thought, albeit
reluctantly. ‘Um, lets go in the front then.’

This was a short-term
solution, of course. Carla now could cook her evening meal in
peace, but she could not go into the living room to eat it without
being made to feel even more isolated and useless than she did in
her shop.

She plodded up to her
bedroom and turned her radio on. But this didn’t help. Every little
noise that Gwynne’s gang made downstairs, not to say every big
noise, found its way up to her and her nerves. Possessing ears
turned into a physical liability.

When the yobbos trooped
out, an hour or so later, she exclaimed with relief. Then, after a
dignified interval – twenty seconds – she left her room with the
intention of taking a no nonsense stand with Gwynne on the matter
of this gross intrusion into her privacy. Being pregnant would add
much weight to her argument. For a start, she could tell him that
his gang of hooligans had almost given her a miscarriage. Didn’t he
realise she would never balance the shop’s books next year unless
she went the full term?

This stinging question
was not going to be answered as soon as she might have wished.

Gwynne had left with
his new friends and the house was empty.

And that’s how it
stayed as the evening turned to night. The silence became
oppressive. Carla discovered the peace and quiet of the house was
only agreeable to her when she shared her solitude with Gwynne.

Her heart grew more and
more heavy, like that old sorry blanket on the washing line,
suspended now in a persistent drizzle.

She decided to turn in
early for the lack of anything else to do. Once she had changed,
she found she had a headache coming one, so she went downstairs to
the kitchen, where the medicines were kept in one of the cupboards.
As she opened this, she saw the plastic bottle of pills she had
been prescribed for her stomach cramps. The invasion of Gywnne’s
friends had made her forget to take one that lunchtime. She picked
it up and found there were two left. She had been sure there had
been only one. Well, she’d still need to get more tomorrow. She
swallowed one and then took an aspirin and went to bed.

Yet, no matter how hard
she tried, she could not sleep. It was as if she were being forced
to stay wide awake and listen for her brother’s return. The bed
clothes cloyed around her and every position felt awkward. When it
got to the small hours, molten tears burned her eyes as her very
faith was tested. Yes, even her dream of selling
Romance
and
escaping London forever seemed like it could never come true.

All at once it was
morning.

Somehow she had slept.
The unbearable ache of loneliness had faded somewhat. It revived a
little when she discovered Gwynne had still not come home, but by
then she believed in her dream again, and what’s more, it was
better than ever. Because now, when she did sell
Romance
,
she would refuse to take Gwynne with her.

Making him homeless
would just about get her even.

After breakfast, Carla
went through into the shop and let Kitty in. She gave her today’s
instructions and stood watching while the huge girl began to fill
the water buckets.

A moment later, Carla
blurted out, ‘So, how are you today, Kitty?’

Kitty couldn’t deal
with the question at the same time as her hands were occupied. She
put the bucket down and stared at Carla. How was Kitty? The
question seemed to trouble her on some profound level. Carla helped
her out by giving her a choice of two answers. ‘Well, do you feel
good, or do you feel bad?

Kitty gave Carla a
crafty look. ‘I don’t know.’

After a moment, Carla
said, ‘Like I told you, Kitty, only fill the buckets up three
quarters. I don’t want your mother round here again complaining
you’ve got a strain.’

She stumped back into
the kitchen and was still there by lunch time, when Gwynne showed
up.

‘Starving,’ he
said.

She watched him as he
prepared his dinner, a wistful smile on his face as he cranked open
a can of beans. His good humour put her in a state of some
perplexity. She wanted to have a good go at him, but she needed him
to be sullen to get started, and Gwynne wasn’t being sullen for the
first time in nineteen years. Such was the cursed power of
love.

She had no choice but
to pick an argument.

This was going to be a
strange new experience for her. By and large arguments with Gwynne
occurred spontaneously and Carla couldn’t help feeling
self-conscious as she kicked off with a complaint – for the lack of
anything else to kick off with.

‘You and your lot made
a racket yesterday,’ she sounded like she was arraigning him in
court. ‘You know I have to rest up. I’m pregnant, remember.’

Not looking at her,
Gwynne nodded and stirred his beans in a saucepan on the stove.
‘Yeah, I do remember,’ he said, ‘but yesterday I forgot and I’m
dead sorry about that, Carly. Somebody said they wanted to see this
shop my older sister ran all by herself and I never thought. But I
give you my word it won’t happen again.’ He was serious when he
said this. Then he was laughing. ‘For a start off, Charmaine
doesn’t like flowers. They give her a reaction, like hay fever.
Worse than hay fever, though. She gets a rash, see.’

‘That’s a shame,’ Carla
said. ‘But there must be an injection that would help.’

Gwynne seemed to
appreciate the thought.

‘That’s what I said,
but Charmaine told me she takes too many drugs as it is. Anyway,
she’s got her own place near Hounslow. She’s said I should move in
with her so I could get away from the flower dust too. And I
thought,
why not?
So I’ve told her I’ll give it a go –
starting next week.’