Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
‘Could you please slow down a bit, Sally?’ Erika pants. ‘You’re
almost running.’
‘Aggie wants to eat cake with DeeDee on a lawn,’ I say a
gitatedly. ‘But DeeDee’s dead, and I haven’t the heart to tell her.’
‘
DeeDee’s
dead?’
Erika says. ‘You never told me that.’
‘It happened yesterday. An awful lot of things happened y
esterday.’ I see a bench by the pond and slump onto it exhaustedly.
‘She died yesterday?’ Erika sits down beside me.
‘Oh, no – no, I
heard
about it yesterday. Aunt Marie phoned to
say she’d died in Rio de Janeiro fifteen years ago.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Erika says. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I shouldn’t care, really. I never even met her.’ I stare at the ducks
diving in the pond. They look so cheerful and perky. ‘It’s just that Aggie is desperate to see DeeDee again. She keeps begging me to
find her. I don’t think she could deal with the news that DeeDee is
replenishing the soil somewhere in South America.’
‘That’s just her body,’ Erika says firmly. ‘The soul lives on. She
may even be listening to us right now. She’s… she’s probably smiling at you with great love and compassion.’
‘Look, Erika, you know my feelings on that stuff,’ I say
sharply. ‘When people die, that’s the end of it; that’s what I believe, anyway. But please don’t let’s talk about it now.’
Erika maintains a distinctly mutinous silence.
‘I hope I don’t start sobbing hysterically at Aggie’s funeral,’ I
mutter. ‘I didn’t cry at Grandma Tilly’s or Grandpa Bruno’s, but I
cried like an Oscar winner at Mary’s and at Brian’s.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you mention these people before,’ Erika says, somewhat puzzled.
‘They were distant cousins. Marie herded us all together to pay
our last respects.’
‘Good old Marie.’
‘Why are you calling her good old Marie?’ I demand. ‘She’s very bossy and opinionated.’
‘Yes, but she cares about you all, doesn’t she?’ Erika says, with
that awful fairness of hers. ‘In her own clumsy, weird way, she really does care.’
‘Yes, and sometimes I wish she didn’t,’ I snap. ‘Marie’s caring
is very uncomfortable. It’s only June, and I’m already worrying
about that stupid family gathering of hers in September. I feel it’s
some sort of deadline.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I feel like the whole thing with Diarmuid has to be sorted out
by August, so that I’ll know what to say to everyone.’
‘
About what?’
‘About why I left him, and why I went back – or…. or didn’t.
It has to sound like I thought it through.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Erika is attempting to make a daisy chain.
‘It’s not some sort of exam, is it?’
‘Yes, it is. That’s exactly what it is.’ I sigh forlornly. ‘We all sort
of check up on each other while we eat Marie’s soggy lemon
meringue pie. And all the younger cousins are so well adjusted.’ I am beginning to feel a mighty longing for a packet of crisps. ‘Not
one of them is a lesbian or divorced… not one of them even s
mokes.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Erika says. She now has a daisy chain on
her head. ‘I don’t believe they’re all perfect. They can’t be.’
‘DeeDee seems to have been my only weird relative,’ I say sadly. ‘I know I shouldn’t care what the others think, but I do.
They were all so thrilled when I married Diarmuid. They gave us
such nice presents.’
‘Let’s go to a café,’ Erika says. ‘Let’s go to a café and talk about
all this over custard-filled doughnuts.’
She starts to march determinedly in the direction of Grafton
Street and Bewley’s. I follow her dejectedly.
‘Chips,’ she says. ‘I need chips, too. I’m ravenous.’ When Erika
gets hungry, she needs to tuck in right there and then. Her daisy chain has fallen off; I pick it up and throw it onto the grass.
‘Maybe I should start some sort of evening course,’ I say, as we
pass Laura Ashley. A number of my female cousins turn up at
Marie’s get-togethers in Laura Ashley dresses. They look so fresh
and pretty, you expect to see morning dew on their tanned cheeks.
‘A lot of my cousins seem to be doing courses. I could talk about
that instead of about Diarmuid.’
‘What kind of course?’ Erika asks, sidestepping a trombone
player. The street seems to be full of people playing instruments
or plaiting things into people’s hair or selling
The Big Issue.
‘I don’t know – maybe something to do with psychology, or computers, or… or business management. It needs to be something impressive.’
‘You should only do a course if you want to,’ Erika says firmly.
Her nose is already twitching; we’re almost at Bewley’s, and she
can smell freshly ground coffee half a mile away. ‘And it should
be about something you actually find interesting.’ It’s good of her
to be encouraging; she has already witnessed my half-hearted attempts to learn pottery, yoga, furniture restoration and how to be a contented wife – not to mention the slightly demented time when I thought I might be a wind-surfer.
‘I slept with Diarmuid yesterday,’ I say, when we’ve got our food and found a table. The words lunge out of me.
She manages to stop stuffing chips into her mouth for a
moment and looks at me sympathetically. ‘Was it… all right?’
‘Yes.’ I take a large bite of doughnut. ‘It was just fine. It’s the
least I can do for him.’ Then I add quickly, ‘It’s not as if it’s a chore. I do sort of enjoy it.’
‘Only sort of?’ Erika fixes me with her soft hazel eyes. Her curly blonde hair is tumbling around her shoulders today. She usually ties it back.
I gulp my Earl Grey. ‘I know it sounds ridiculous, Erika, but those mice really affected our sex life. It’s never been quite the same since. Diarmuid is a really good lover, but… but I really began to think he cared more about them than about me.’
‘Oh, poor Sally!’ Erika must be really interested: she has forgotten about her sausage.
‘He spent hours with them in the spare room. He even had names for some of them – Snowy and Babs and Frank. Those were his favourites. He used to talk to them a lot.’
‘About what?’ Erika is clearly fascinated. She has even stopped
looking around for the nearest bottle of tomato ketchup.
‘About all sorts of things,’ I say. ‘One night I heard him say,
“So, Snowy, how was your day? Life’s a funny old business, isn’t it? Come here and let Uncle Diarmuid give you a nice cuddle.” He
hadn’t even asked me what my day was like; he’d just said, “Hi,
Sally, I’m home,” and bounded upstairs.’
‘God,’ Erika sighs.
‘Babs was the shyest. Sometimes I heard Diarmuid telling her
that she was a really beautiful mouse and needed to realise it. He
used to tell her she had the cutest little pink nose in the world. He
never said anything like that to me.’
Erika kindly doesn’t point out that perhaps I wouldn’t have been too pleased to be told I had a cute little pink nose. ‘Men!’
she says grimly. ‘Bloody men. I don’t know why we put up with
them.’ I know she isn’t including Alex in this generalisation.
‘The only proper conversation I ever had with his mother was
about Diarmuid’s love of animals,’ I say. ‘She told me he’s always
had a pet. Then she said she used to think Diarmuid loved
animals more than people, until he met Becky.’
‘Bloody Becky!’ Erika almost snarls. ‘That mother of his sounds like a right old walrus.’
I feel like defending walruses, but I polish off my doughnut
instead. As I start to fiddle with some grains of sugar on the table,
I decide not to mention that Diarmuid may have lied to me about
his whereabouts last night. It would mean explaining about Nathaniel, and I don’t know what I’d say.
‘At least you’re having sex,’ Erika comments. ‘I’ve almost
forgotten how it’s done. Alex and I don’t even kiss properly. It’s like we’re relatives.’ She sighs dramatically and crams the last of
the chips into her mouth.
‘But I thought you said…’
‘Yes, I know, I said he was going to leave his wife – or
wanted
to. But he’s just bought a tent. They’re all going camping next week.’
‘
Well, that’s hardly a renewal of their vows, is it?’
‘I don’t think you could camp with someone you didn’t at least like,’ Erika says. ‘All that rain and discomfort, and boiling kettles
over sodden wood, and… going into those shops and buying those
awful fiddly special saucepans.’
This is, of course, not the time to mention that some people actually
like
camping. ‘They’re probably doing it for the kids,’ I
say. ‘Kids love camping.’ Alex has two children, a boy and a girl.
‘Anyway, while he’s away you can get on with the cats.’
‘No one wants my cats,’ Erika says. ‘Only my friends buy them, and they all have them now.’
‘That’s not true! It’s just about finding the right market.’ I
wonder if I can sneak yet another mention of Erika’s cats into my
interior decoration column. I add cheerfully, ‘I need another of your cats, anyway.’
‘Why?’ Erika’s eyes brighten, just slightly.
‘For Fiona. I want a cat to celebrate her new baby, when she eventually has it.’
‘What kind of cat?’ Erika looks distinctly happier.
‘A baby cat… a kitten. I’ll leave the details up to you.’
‘I’d better wait until she has the baby,’ Erika says, getting quite
e
xcited. ‘I’ll need to know whether it’s a boy or a girl cat.’
‘
Yes… yes, of course. She’ll be thrilled.’
‘Did I tell you I’ve started doing massage to make a bit of extra
money?’ Erika asks, as she swigs down the last of her coffee. ‘I only do it occasionally. The staff at International Holdings get very tense sometimes.’
I gawp at her.
‘I put up a little flier in the canteen, next to the poster that says
“Come Swim with Dolphins”.’
‘What does the flier say?’ I ask carefully. It would be just like
Erika to end up with a bunch of massage clients who got the wrong idea entirely.
‘Don’t worry,’ she laughs. ‘I’ve made it clear I’m not offering
sexual relief or whatever they call it. It’s purely therapeutic. Lionel was my first client.’
‘Lionel… he’s the shy one who gets all embarrassed when he
asks you to type letters, isn’t he?’ I ask hopefully.
‘Yes. He only let me at his feet, but I’m hoping to get to his
back any day now, after his head. I’ll get him to strip off
gradually.’
A man at a nearby table looks over at us with undisguised interest.
‘Where do you do this?’
‘In my flat.’
Oh, God,
I think.
I hope these people don’t start asking her to spank their bottoms or…
I silently begin to list some other sexual
deviations I might mention to her.