The Generation Game (6 page)

Worry is taking its toll on Auntie Nina. She no longer looks the immaculate creature that first grasped my mother’s attention across a crowded playground. Even Mother sometimes fails to
coordinate her shoes and bags these days. They are worried about Lucas. He has a disease with a name that could’ve been made for him. He doesn’t have to go to school because he must go
to the hospital an awful lot where they give him medicine that makes him sick. ‘Go to bed,’Auntie Nina urges her son on their return. But he doesn’t want to miss his favourite
programmes so she lets him stay downstairs on the sofa, cocooned in a green blanket. Underneath the blanket I know he is as thin as our class stick insect, Graham. And he lies as still as Graham
does on his twig of privet so that every now and then I have to poke Lucas. Just to check.

Lucas has another trip to London to stay with his grandparents. This time they take him to the Tower of London and St Paul’s Cathedral and a Very Important Doctor in
Harley Street. Lucas is exhausted on his return and doesn’t even want to watch
The Monkees
with me. He takes to his bed for three (endless) days while I have to go to the shop with
Mother after school to give him some Peace and Quiet. I help Mr Bob Sugar with the stock-taking. He says I am a natural and I can feel my cheeks burning up just like Lucas’ do from time to
time.

Lucas starts wearing a hat. A Torquay United bobble hat. Blue and yellow like the Swedish flag (according to his Book of Flags). Lucas doesn’t like football but Mr Bob
Sugar says every Torquay boy must have one of these bobble hats. What about every Torquay girl? That’s what I want to know. But I don’t say anything. I know this isn’t about
me.

Lucas still hasn’t returned to school. ‘I want him to have Happy Times,’ I hear Auntie Nina tell Mother. ‘We’re going to have Days Out.’

After weeks of Days Out in the museums and castles and country houses of the West Country, Lucas begs to be allowed back to school.

‘But why?’ Auntie Nina protests.

‘Because I like school.’

Shock, horror. But it is true.

So Lucas goes back to school with special dispensation to wear his bobble hat, only – lucky Thing Two – he doesn’t have to do PE! Instead, while the rest of us strip to our
pants and vest, he goes into the class next door with his copy of
Stig of the Dump.

Lucas is happy. And that’s what counts.

I am not happy. We are not allowed to play in the Bone Yard anymore. And I don’t think this is because we come back caked in red mud which isn’t hygienic for Lucas
who has to keep very clean in case he catches Germs (little tiny alien life forms that no-one can see).

It is more than that. It has something to do with Albert Morris, the dead boy.

A strange man turns up on our doorstep. He is short for a man. Much shorter than Bob and Bernie but with a familiar look about him – pale skin and dark eyes. Mother
invites him in for a cup of tea and sits him down in the dining room. Auntie Nina is out at the chemist’s fetching a prescription.

‘Stop following me round like a seagull, Philippa,’ Mother snaps.

I follow her to the kitchen where she fills the kettle.

‘Who is that man?’

‘Mr Jones.’ She will not look at me.

‘Mr Jones?’

‘Yes. Mr Jones.’ She lights the gas stove and puts on the kettle before adding in a quiet voice, ‘Lucas’ father.’

‘Father?’

‘Yes, father,’ she whispers loudly, her green eyes flashing up at the ceiling above where we can hear Lucas’ mouse-steps patter across the floor boards, busy on his Secret
Project.

‘I don’t know what Nina will say,’ Helena adds, sparking up a cigarette at the back door.

And then I remember the Divorce. Lucas’ mother and father do not like each other anymore.

‘She won’t be very happy to see him, will she Mummy?’

‘No, Philippa,’ she says. ‘But the least I can do is make the poor man a cup of tea.’

While we wait for the kettle to boil, music floats in from the dining room. Mr Jones must be playing the piano. It is a tad off-key but you can tell he is a good musician. The tune is far more
sophisticated than Chopsticks which is as much as Lucas and I can manage. A little while later we also hear mouse-steps on the stairs. Mother quickly pours the tea and the cup rattles on the saucer
as she carries it through to Mr Jones, me at her (high) heels.

And there is Lucas. Standing by the piano, watching the man’s pale hands as they flutter over the black and white keys like a swarm of moths. The man doesn’t need to look at the
music or at the piano. He can play by heart, by touch. Instead he looks at Lucas.

And there we stand, Helena and I, in the doorway, watching this tableau: Mr Jones studying his son; Lucas studying his father’s hands. They don’t even notice we are there.

My throat hurts so much because I am trying not to cry. I am trying hard to be cheerful because I know that is what I must do, though I can’t stop myself from saying: ‘Don’t
take him away.’

But I don’t know who it is I am pleading with.

After his second cup of tea, Mr Jones says he must go. He is staying at the Imperial but will call back again in the morning as he wants a Word with Nina before he catches the
Paddington train. (I think that Word is most probably ‘Lucas’.) Lucas begs him for one more tune on the piano but he never gets the chance; none of us have heard the front door. None of
us have noticed Auntie Nina come in the dining room to find us huddled round the piano.

‘Lucas. Go to your room,’ she says, taking us back to the days when he had the energy to be naughty.

‘Yes, come along, children,’ Helena says, all Joyce Grenfell. And she wafts us out of the room, like a bad smell, closing the door behind her. They might be solid Victorian doors in
this house, but we can still make out the drama unfolding in the dining room beyond.

Auntie Nina: How did you find us?

Mr Jones: Your parents thought I should know what’s been going on.

Auntie Nina (repetitively): My parents? What’s been going on?

Mr Jones (simply): Lucas.

After that, we don’t hear anymore as we are shunted upstairs where Helena manages to get us into our pyjamas and supervise teeth-brushing. She smokes out of the bathroom window while Lucas
and I sit at the top of the stairs waiting for his parents to emerge from the dining room.

Five minutes later the door opens and Mr Jones follows the woman he used to love into the hallway. He looks up briefly and smiles at his son, a pixie in a bobble hat, and in that moment I see an
expression of longing never to be forgotten.

The next morning is Saturday. Mother goes to the shop and Lucas and I wait for Mr Jones to turn up. But he doesn’t.

‘He must’ve been called back urgently to work,’ says Auntie Nina.

‘What does he do?’ I ask to fill an awkward (and dangerously deep) gap.

‘He’s a dentist.’

I imagine all those teeth in London waiting for Mr Jones’ return and am unsure why they can’t wait until the weekend is over. (I haven’t even had a wobbly tooth yet, let alone
tooth ache so can’t possibly appreciate the severity of a dental emergency.)

When it is clear that Mr Jones is not coming back, Lucas goes to his room to continue work on the Project. Auntie
Nina skewers a family of snails before pruning the buddleia (poor butterflies – they will be homeless next summer). I wonder if all families are like mine. But only briefly, as I know they
aren’t. I have seen the books to prove it. I’ve even read some of them, thanks to Lucas.

Lucas stops going to school. I have to survive on my own again. There is no-one to save me a place in the dinner hall. I have no-one to save a place for on the carpet. But at
least no-one calls me Fatty now. Maybe this is because Miss Pitchfork has told them to be kind to me. Or maybe they’ve noticed that I am not actually fat anymore.

Lucas goes to hospital. I am allowed to visit him tucked away in a corner of the ward with strict instructions not to get him excited – though I don’t see how I can
possibly get him excited in such a dreary place. The only difference between this and the other wards are the tiles on the walls, depicting nursery rhymes. Above Lucas’ over-sized metal bed
– where Auntie Nina has tied a Torquay United scarf knitted by Bob’s neighbour – stands Dick Whittington on his way to London fully expecting to find the streets paved with gold
(rather than dog mess).

It is a bit like my first day at school. All the other children are being fussed over by their tearful mothers; I feel completely lost. While Auntie Nina talks to the doctor, I sit with Lucas.
His eyes are closed but I know they are as dark as can be under those duck egg lids.

‘Will you finish my Project,’ he asks, his eyes still tight shut.

‘Yes, Lucas,’ I promise solemnly, feeling the burden of the world on my shoulders.

He opens his eyes briefly and smiles a smile that scorches my heart. Is this what they mean by heartburn?

‘Thank you, Philippa,’ he says.

I have no idea what the Project is as I have been banned from Lucas’ room ever since he embarked upon it. I only hope that I am capable of finishing it. Lucas is the cleverest boy in all
the world and I am just Stupid Philippa in the Slow Readers (though at least I’m not Stupid Fat Philippa anymore).

I don’t have much time to prepare for my task. Two days later, Auntie Nina comes home from the hospital and heads straight into the garden where she hurls an old chair at
the baby gulls and then massacres the forsythia hedge that will never bloom again. Helena watches from the back door, smoking cigarette after cigarette. In the end she can stand it no more. She
goes to her friend and gently prises the shears from her hand. Then she wraps her arms around her in the evening sun, trying to offer what comfort she can, knowing it is futile. Auntie Nina’s
tears will never stop.

Lucas – the boy I was going to marry, my best friend, my Thing Two – has gone. He is not mislaid, or even lost. He is as dead as Albert Morris.

Fran is back, banging on again about you being underweight even though you were well over-cooked and should have put in an appearance last week. I was surprised myself when I
caught sight of you, when I held your little damp body in my arms. I’d been sure you were going to be a nine-pounder. My skin was stretched so tight, you could’ve seen your reflection
in it if you’d been on the other side. But you turned up looking like a doll. The sort of baby Amanda Denning would have. The sort of baby Helena must’ve been expecting when she got
lumbered with me.

But here I am, mother to a petit little thing.

Fran doesn’t want you to stay petit. She is concerned about your latching on. It seems you’re a little off centre and that’s why it feels like you were born with a set of teeth
already in place. She squeezes and manipulates my breasts as if they are made of Miss Pitchfork’s play dough, desperately trying to get more of them into your tiny mouth but you have lost
interest, your little body twitching as you drift back towards sleep.

“We may need to take you down to the ward after all,” Fran says.

“I thought I was going home.”

“It’s probably best you stay in overnight. Just so we can make sure the feeding’s up and running.”

“Oh.”

Fran scribbles in my stack of notes.

“When’s the doctor coming?”

“He’s doing the rounds as we speak,” Fran pats me sympathetically on the shoulder as she notices the tears spring to my eyes.

“He has a right to be told,” she says.

“The doctor?”

“Your husband.”

“I thought you said he was letting me down.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think of him,” she says. “It doesn’t change what’s right.”

It is quite clear that there’s no arguing with Fran when she sets her mind to something and I’m far too tired to argue. You have to be on the ball to argue with her. She’s just
like Lucas in that way.

My Lucas.

And then she’s gone, leaving the smell of latex gloves behind her.

And we’re on our own.

It is a very hot day. Holiday-makers flood to the seafront and the beach armed with rubber rings and parasols. Mother and I, on the other hand, have something less frivolous to
do.

I was supposed to spend the afternoon at the newsagents but in the end it is decided I should be allowed to go with the grownups. Bob shuts up shop and comes along too, with his neighbour, Mrs
Gracie, the one who made Lucas’ scarf. It is quite a gathering in the end, but not a nice end, a fair end.

They say things are never black and white but on this day, as we shuffle into the cool church, they quite clearly are. The flowers in St Bartholomew’s are all white: in the porch, at the
end of each pew, at the front where the vicar appears like a magician in his long dress and sombre face amid a puff of smoke. In contrast, everyone is wearing black: black suits, black skirts,
black jackets. And all the ladies have black hats. Auntie Nina has a smart pill box with a veil. Mother has a wide-brimmed hat like Audrey Hepburn in the film where she wants diamonds and sings a
song on her window ledge. Mrs Gracie is weighted down by an old lady straw hat, a sprig of berries attached to the side with a lethal-looking pin. I am wearing a floppy woolly beret that makes my
head itchy the way it did when I had head lice one time (another reason not to get too close to Christopher Bennett).

I am put between Mother and Bob. Mrs Gracie sits on the end so she can stick her gammy leg out into the aisle. Auntie Nina is sitting with her mother and father in the pew in front of us,
staring at the little box where her son is hidden. I keep expecting him to lift off the lid, like he is the magician’s assistant, spilling the white roses onto the flagstones in a theatrical
gesture. To sit up and shout: ‘All scream for ice cream!’ But Lucas is quiet and still and dead.

We sing a song I know from school, one of our assembly hymns called ‘Abide with me’. Bob has a good voice, clear and loud and unembarrassed, in a way his normal, everyday voice can
never hope to be. Mrs Gracie sings like all old ladies – a high warble that suggests a bygone era: the War, gas masks, men in uniform on trains smoking roll-ups and the white cliffs of Dover
(which are hard to imagine, ours being so red).