The Generation Game (31 page)

‘What?’

‘You and Adrian,’ he says.

I don’t answer.

‘He told me.’

‘He did what?’

‘He got drunk – just for a change – the night you’d finished with him. It all came out. I bloody punched him.’

I must look absolutely horrified because he says (facetiously): ‘Don’t worry. Toni doesn’t know. I never told her.’

I employ a cliché Miss Mothball would have been proud of: ‘I never meant it to happen.’ Then I add my own take on things. ‘Adrian was unhappy. We just sort of fell
together.’

‘And now?’

‘Now? It’s none of your bloody business now.’

‘She’s my sister.’

‘She’s an adult.’

‘I wish you’d bloody act like one,’ he says, a little too loudly for my liking, up on his feet now. ‘You’ve got to stop waiting for your mother to come back and
sort your mess of a life out. That’s down to you.’

A freaky echo of the words I said to his sister, sitting on the bed in Belsize Park. ‘You’re the only one who can do that.’

He is right. I am the only one.

Adrian chooses this point to come out into the garden and I am tempted to accept the cigar he is offering to me. I am tempted to do anything that will help me ignore what Justin – pacing
back and forth on the wet grass – has just said. About my mother. About Helena. So I look at Adrian and I dive straight in.

‘Justin was telling me to steer clear.’

Justin stops the pacing. Adrian eyeballs him. ‘Of what?’ he asks.

‘You.’

Adrian puffs on his own cigar, studying Justin through narrowed eyes, shaking his head.

‘Nice one,’ he says.

I am expecting a big confrontation right now, right here on Bernie’s lawn but Justin obviously thinks otherwise.

‘Do what you like,’ he says, chucking his cigar butt in the pond. ‘I’m going in.’

He turns away and there – tripping down the path towards this debacle – is Mel. He strides towards her, the wind rearranging his still-longish hair into strange and weird shapes that
gel alone can never do. Hair I once tangled my fingers in. Hair I’ll never touch or smell or feel ever again. That is all Mel’s privilege now.

‘Yeah, go to your girlfriend,’ I call after him – quite eloquently, I think, considering the circumstances.

‘Grow up, Philippa.’

Grow up.

I remember how I felt the first time he held me, when he was still T-J. My sixteenth birthday. I felt like a grown-up then, like I would never be the same again. And I don’t suppose I ever
was. But I was a silly child. And him? He was the grown-up. He was the one who should’ve known better.

Grow up.

But now it is Adrian who reaches for me in a script that could’ve been written by Miss Mothball or Wink’s beloved Danielle Steel:

He takes me in his arms, puts his lips to mine and kisses me as if his life depends on it. As if he will die without me. As if I am the only one that can save him. And it is so good to feel like
this. Like I have power at my fingertips. Knowledge in my heart and in my brain. The whole wide world at my feet. The rest of my life in front of me.

‘Marry me,’ Adrian says.

I can almost hear the birds breaking out in song, the harps plucked by tubby, rosy cheeked cherubs, the slushy muzak of an airport reunion at the end of a film. But the script is soon crossed
out and rewritten by Auntie Sheila who’s come out into the garden for her own slice of fresh air and oneness with Bernie’s memories. At the sight of such an unlikely and unexpected
coupling, she shrieks and flaps like a mother gull and launches herself from the back door. I can make out the immortal phrases
filthy harlot
and
disgusting slut
hurling over the
sodden lawn towards us.

And I know, without a doubt, that I’ve made a choice that will change things for good. That will test every single relationship I know.

‘Yes,’ I say, turning back to Adrian. ‘I will.’

(Oh dear.)

But there is one person I am most concerned for. And that, sadly, isn’t Toni, grieving for her father, but Bob who, when he lumbers behind Sheila across Bernie’s soggy garden, is
slow on the uptake. He looks at Sheila – still shrieking at us – in puzzlement. He looks at Adrian as if he hasn’t a clue who he can be. And he looks at me as if he thinks he
knows me but can’t quite place me. As if this is a case of mistaken identity. That I am still inside, rolling up my sleeves and lending a helping hand in Sheila’s kitchen, stabbing
cocktail sausages through the heart. But it is his heart I am piercing. His starter motor that will never work in quite the same way again.

‘What are you doing?’ he asks, dazed.

‘Adrian’s asked me to marry him,’ I announce to the gradually assembled guests which includes the panel beater from Dudley and (oh-please-no) Toni who is unable to speak or
object or even cry but who manages to conjure up a look that could be sold on the black market and then wallops Adrian so hard in the face that his feet skid beneath him, toppling him to the ground
where he lies quite still, just his eyes blinking.

‘Get out,’ Bob whispers, standing over him. ‘Pick yourself up and get out.’

Adrian picks himself up, with what little dignity he can gather off the soggy grass, and takes my hand, not even bothering to wipe the mud from his Paul Smith suit.

Bob finally turns his attention to me, remembering who I am at last.

‘Of all the people in London, why did you have to choose Toni’s husband?’

‘He’s not her husband.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes, it does. He wants to marry me. I’m sorry about Toni, but he doesn’t love her.’

‘I’m sorry too, Philippa. Sorry you don’t know how to do the right thing.’

‘Maybe if I’d had a proper mum and dad then I would know. As it is I have to make my own decisions. And I’ve decided I want a proper family of my own. I want a proper life. I
want Adrian.’

‘He can’t have children. Has he told you that?’

‘I don’t want children. Why the hell would I want children with the upbringing I’ve had.’

I might just as well have punched him in the face. And actually, I feel like punching him in the face.

‘If you go with him,’ he says, ‘I’ll never speak to you again.’

So what do I do?

I don’t punch him in the face. I go.

I walk away, my hand in Adrian’s hand, being led up the garden path and out of my old life for what might possibly be for good.

Six weeks later I marry Adrian in Southwark register office. He is wearing something casual. I am in a dress, both of us out of our comfort zones. We say our vows in front of a
paltry show of friends and family (those of them who’d come). Someone takes a photo on one of those new digital cameras and shows it to me on the little screen. There we all are, a raggedy
collection:

Joe with his arm around the Blair Babe (Rebecca), now his wife and mother to a bundle of blue crushed to her voluminous breast.

Cheryl, who’s been good enough to drop her dying patients in Bristol and come to London for the day.

Adrian’s best man and brother, John, a city banker with novelty tie and matching waistcoat.

Adrian’s mum, Pamela, who hates me at first sight. (‘I was switched at birth,’ says Adrian. ‘There’s no other possible explanation.’)

Adrian’s school friend, Will, who’s quite clearly always lived in my husband’s shadow (I know the feeling).

Evelyn and Judith, wearing matching trouser suits like they are part of some religious cult.

And – who-would’ve-thought-it-after-all-these-years – Auntie Nina.

‘I heard on the grapevine,’ she says, sailing in on a wave of Chanel No. 5, dressed to put me completely to shame.

I am not entirely sure what grapevine this could be though I have my suspicions. At least there is someone to witness my marriage. Someone who knew me when I was a child. Someone who could
possibly be proud and shed a tear.

It is only later – in the Crown and Greyhound – that she hands me the card, after several double gin and oranges.

It is from Helena who, of course, is the root of the grapevine planted across the ocean.

Congratulations! It says on the front. You did it!

Well, yes, I certainly have done it though I am not absolutely sure I should be congratulated for it.

And inside, in her finest schoolgirl handwriting, a somewhat cryptic message that I could choose to listen to or ignore:

Don’t worry what
people think. Follow your heart.

I am not convinced that Helena should be the one to give out advice of that nature. But I do know about broken hearts and dodgy hearts, so I am not really sure I should trust my own to be
working properly.

Too late now. I’ve got myself hitched to Adrian: an adulterer, a golfer, an estate agent, an ex-druggie, a poser and the man I think I am in love with. Whatever being in love means.

‘Helena might’ve ventured across the pond if she hadn’t been so ill,’ Auntie Nina says.

‘Ill?’

‘Bronchitis,’ she explains with a sigh and a tut. ‘She should really stop smoking.’ And with that, Auntie Nina extracts a Camel from her very expensive leather handbag
and lights up in the manner of a star of the silver screen.

We don’t have a honeymoon as Adrian and I haven’t made the most sensible financial move in marrying each other. He has to get used to living south of the river, in
my tiny flat, with no money for a cleaner, no tube station for miles. But in time East Dulwich will grow on him – even if I don’t. In time he will set up a sister office on Lordship
Lane as it makes sense to keep the business going, leaving Toni to run Belsize Park. But I will not leave Evelyn or the books because at least I know I can spend my days surrounded by other worlds,
other people. I can be anyone. Go anywhere. And I can have as many happy endings as I want.

For now I have Adrian to myself. In the evenings when he eventually gets home. At night, when he reaches out for me in what I can only describe as desperation. For a little
while. But for some reason, when I am in the flat alone, it isn’t Adrian I pine for. It is everyone but him.

On January 4th, I am home early from work and I switch on the television. It is
Blue Peter
. They are digging up the time capsule, John, Peter and Valerie. The contents are all mouldy and
disgusting and I have a moment of panic thinking about Lucas’ chocolate tin buried in Bob’s backyard. I know I can’t dig it up. I am not allowed back there. I don’t have a
child of my own. And that might never happen, with Adrian’s track record. Which leads me back to Justin, the father of my child that never quite made it. The tiny baby that was in a rush. Too
early. And that is when I know I’ve made a mistake. A big mistake.

Oh sod it.

A big mistake. Are you a mistake? Never, ever. I will treasure you always. Cherish you every moment. The most precious gift I have ever had. More than Lucas, more than Bob,
more than Wink or Joe or Miss Parry.

Talk of the special baby unit has stopped. It’s completely full up with babies more poorly than you. (Poor things.) Though you, a special baby, are being closely observed. But they are
pleased. Really pleased that finally you’ve got to grips with this feeding and there’s no stopping you. With every breath you take, you get stronger and I get more confident that you
will do this. We will do this.

Five years later, I am still married, still virtually-motherless and still not a mother myself, although I have – in the manner of Miss Parry, my Tudor queen –
taken on two long-haired cats (Lesley and Valerie) that spend their days lounging around our messy
four-bedroomed-Victorian-semi-in-tree-lined-street-with-access-to-local-amenities-and-secluded-garden, leaving a trail of fur that make my husband sneeze. (At least that’s what he blames the
runny nose on.)

My family is very small at this moment in time. There is no point wishing for a child; that chance came and went over half my life ago. Since we walked out of that winter garden, Adrian and I,
we’ve never bothered with birth control, no point given his track record. Even after several hundred half-hearted chances, not one of his lazy sperm has bothered to get up and go. I sometimes
believe that is why I settled for Adrian, knowing I’d probably never have children. Knowing I’d be a useless mother, having been abandoned by my own.

Our childlessness must at least be some consolation for Toni who is forty-six and still searching the world over for a baby – only now she has someone committed to undertake this quest by
her side: Sheila. Toni doesn’t need a man apparently, not having re-discovered her mother (oh dear, it’s Tip Taps all over again). I am not actually persuaded I need a man either, my
old pal Celibacy looking so appealing right now. And if I do need a man, in all probability, it isn’t this one.

Summertime. I am no longer put to bed in the middle of the afternoon, left behind bars to listen to the wood pigeons and the herring gulls. I am nearly forty-years-old. Forty!
What have I got to show for those four decades? A ridiculously expensive house that I ‘share’ with my hardly-ever-at-home workaholic husband, two lazy fluff-balls, a friend who has
increasingly less time for me, and a job where I spend my days buried in different worlds to the one I unfortunately inhabit.

I have more than many, but I don’t have what I thought I would have at this stage in my life. It isn’t the things I’ve never possessed that worry me – a high IQ,
celebrity, breathtaking beauty, power, wisdom and brains – but the things I once had: a small boy with a big voice and duck egg skin, a cat with tiger stripes, a girl with cherry lip gloss
from Solihull, a boy called Raymond from Preston, a grumpy old woman in a wheelchair, a newsagent called Mr Bob Sugar, a mother who loved me, a father in darkest Peru, a small bundle of life
spinning around inside me. The people I’ve lost along the way. I’d hoped to find at least some of them again. Even one of them would’ve done.

‘How are you intending to mark your birthday?’ Evelyn enquires one morning. It is quiet in the shop and I’ve been out choosing lattes and pastries. Not easy as so many cafes
and delis have sprung up within spitting distance (Adrian was right about it being an up-and-coming area. It has most definitely arrived, along with every type of coffee you can think of).
‘Anything special?’