Not What They Were Expecting
‘I’ve got tits!’ said Rebecca.
That was one of the main things she liked about talking to Sophie. She could say things like that without either of them batting an eyelid, whereas everyone else looked at her as if their sweet old nan had told a filthy joke, causing her to blush like a schoolgirl.
‘That can happen when you get hideously fat I hear,’ Sophie replied.
‘But that’s the thing! You wouldn’t notice the difference right now, weight-wise. I look exactly the same as I always do. Except I’ve got these breasts that have appeared out of nowhere.’
‘An instant boob job?’
‘Yep.’
‘Lucky bitch.’
‘It’s terrible really,’ Rebecca said. ‘People have been noticing them. It’s like being thirteen again, I’m walking everywhere with my arms folded across my chest trying to hide that they’re there.’
‘Would you like me to take you shopping for a training bra?’
‘Twice different guys in the office have asked if I’ve got a new outfit.’
‘Meaning, I hadn’t noticed them before.’
‘I know! I’ve seen them sneaking peeks as I walk past. This is entirely new for me.’
‘Well dear,’ said Sophie, ‘if you hadn’t been the only non-virgin in the country to insist that Wonderbra’s weren’t for you because they wouldn’t be as comfortable as your ratty old ones, you might have experienced this when you had a chance to do something with it.’
‘I think some of the older women in the office have noticed too and they’ve worked out what’s going on.’
‘Trust an embittered old hag to spot these things. Shouldn’t you tell someone before they sack you first to save on the maternity pay?’
‘They couldn’t do that could they?’ asked Rebecca. The silence at the other end of the line made her think it was the sort of thing Sophie might try and do.
‘I’m telling them next week, after the scan,’ Rebecca continued, ‘they’re always lovely about these things. At least, they always seem to be lovely.’
‘And so what else is new with you?’ Sophie asked. ‘Aside from that husband of yours being like a fumbling adolescent around your new jugs?’
Rebecca thought about mentioning that the whole issue of sex with James had got a bit cagey since the pregnancy was discovered. Sophie would be horrified and fascinated, but she didn’t want to confirm her friend’s suspicions of the horrors of family life too much. The stuff with her dad, Sophie would love too, and want all the gory details of. Rebecca would be able to say anything she wanted about it, without any judgements or repercussions from her friend, just her usual blunt ‘telling it like it is’ declarations getting to the heart of the matter. It might be helpful, ahead of the weekend’s Sunday lunch playing Happy Families. She could tell her everything she’d been bottling up for the last month.
‘No, that’s it. Nausea, knockers, not much else,’ she finally said.
The part of the conversation about her was now officially finished. Sophie could get on to the main purpose of her call, without fear of interruption.
‘Well, work has been hell for me. There’s this horrible sexual harassment case with my boss going through internal procedures at the moment. I mean really, it’s just a bit of fun, and if he doesn’t like it he shouldn’t dress like he does around the office. But of course, you can’t say that to them…’
With the careful precision of a bomb disposal expert who’s just had five pints, James guided his house key towards the front door lock. Just a couple of goes dinked the metal disc of the Yale lock before he heard the crunch of the key finding its home. He turned it 360 degrees for the first click, and again for the double lock, before gently leaning his frame against the door to ease it open silently. Inside he twisted the knob to retract the locking mechanism into the door as he closed it gently, and then slowly released it into the jamb before slipping down the snib with a muffled click. He worried that maybe coming into the house so quietly might actually be a bad idea – that Rebecca might get a fright if the first she heard of him coming in was when he got to the bed. She might confuse him with a silent cat burglar. Then he walked into the coat stand, kicked over her heeled boots, and sent two umbrellas clattering onto the wood floor.
‘Sorry! Sorry,’ he whispered as loudly as he could, ‘just me. I’ll get some water. Sorry!’
Navigating the kitchen, the stairs and a wee sitting down, James crept into bed next to his wife.
‘Good work, darling,’ she mumbled into her pillow, ‘if you hadn’t knocked over the plants, I’d have been worried you were a rapist.’
‘Thanks. It was umbrellas.’
‘Your knees are freezing.’
‘You’ll help me warm up,’ he said softly into her hair, snuggling into her back. A low guttural growl emerged as he slid his arm over her side and his hand found a home on her breast.
‘How was Kam?’
‘Good, good. Seething slightly about everything as usual.’
‘Did you tell him?’
‘Yep.’
‘Was he excited?’
‘Oh y’know, he squealed, we hugged, we both cried. Guy stuff. How was your evening?’
‘Sophie.’
‘You tell her?’
‘Yep.’
‘Excited?’
‘Same reaction as Kam. Although she did also mention I’m stuck with you now I’ve ruined myself for other men.’
‘I did that to you a long time ago,’ he said, squashing his groin in closer to her bum.
‘Easy, tiger,’ she said. She knew that he knew that any time spent talking to Sophie was likely to get her a little…revved up. But she had just been in a lovely cosy snooze when he’d woken her with the constant tip-tapping of his key against the edges of the lock when he was trying unsuccessfully to hit the target to get the door open. That doesn’t bode well, she smiled to herself, as she backed further into him, her foot sneaking between his calves.
‘Everything all right in there?’ he asked as his hand trailed down from her breast, and over her belly. He wasn’t going to mention it at a time like this, but he was pretty sure Bompalomp was making his presence felt now on her lower half as well as on the top.
‘All good. Ben & Jerry’s with crumbled ginger nuts on top makes us both happy.’
‘You seem pretty awake now,’ he said, his hand travelling further down towards her thigh, ‘and sexily un-nauseous’.
‘What’s that?’ she asked as an insistent nudging presence reached her lower back.
‘Well, you know. I’m awake, you’re half-conscious, it’s been a while.’
‘You’re not too…?’
‘Worried about waking up Bomp? I was being silly. The blighter’s big enough to look after itself now. Isn’t it?’
‘I was going to say pissed.’
She turned around to face him, slipping her hand into the elastic of his underpants.
‘So all it takes for you to get over being a bit squeamish is four pints and a bit of male bonding?’ she said with a smile. ‘Wish I’d known earlier.’
‘Five pints actually. And some crisps. And Maryland Chicken from outside the station.’
He leant in and they kissed. He thought that he couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a proper snog. He couldn’t understand why they’d left it so long as he manoeuvred his hand around her pajama buttons.
Then he jerked his hips slightly as she snapped the waistband of his briefs back in place.
‘Go brush your teeth first,’ she said, and smiled as he hopped out of bed and across the cold floor to the bathroom, tail wagging ahead of him.
Chapter 9
‘Gay men are being prosecuted in a way that’s almost Victorian – no, worse than that, it’s positively Thatcherite,’ said Margaret.
‘I think the point is rather it’s not gay men, it’s just men,’ Howard replied. ‘Ordinary decent men. And it’s this post-New Labour Tory party that are kowtowing to the arse-backwards political correctness, which is getting us caught up in it.’
‘Funny you should mention the word Victorian,’ said Ben. ‘Of course it was the architecture of the public lavatory system they built, with typically twee facilities that looked like traditional countryside homes, that gives us the term cottages for public toilets. This evolved into the term still used today, although the internet is making it somewhat obsolete.’.
‘Kids were flashed all the time when you were at school, Becky,’ said Howard. ‘I didn’t see it doing you any harm. You had a shriek and a giggle and ran away from the funny little men. They’d be on the comedy shows all the time, being chased around the park.’
‘Not that your father is a flasher of course, Becky. He’s not a flasher, James,’ Penny chipped in.
‘I was wearing my mac on the night mind you. Maybe that’s it, they were prejudiced against my coat!’
‘With all this emphasis on family values that this throwback Prime Minister throws about to justify his raping of the social security system, ridiculous prosecutions such as this were just waiting to happen,’ said Margaret.
‘My Burberry is a victim of society!’
‘I think I’d like to make a really powerful sculpture piece on this,’ said Margaret.
‘It’s those Lib Dems probably, bit of power and they turn into complete Nazis. See it a lot at work. Never let your secretary take on the title of Office Manager is my advice, this sort of thing happens every time.’
‘“Tea rooms” was another term used by the gay community in the United States, meaning roughly the same thing. It’s interesting that they share a similar somewhat genteel quality.’
‘Would anyone like a cup of tea? Or a sandwich?’
Rebecca and James sat leaning into each other in the middle of the overstuffed sofa in her parents’ living room, watching the grown-ups talk at them; Howard, in one of the big leather armchairs with Penny perched anxiously on the arm rest, Margaret sat across from him on the matching one, and Ben by the window gazing through the net curtains.
‘We’ve just finished dinner, Mum,’ said Rebecca.
‘A piece of cake then? A biscuit?’
‘Don’t think I could even manage that, Penny,’ said James. ‘Overdone it on the Wellington again. It was delicious.’
‘Not generally believed to be named after the warmongering duke, despite public perceptions,’ murmured Ben from the window. ‘It’s a name that really only appeared in the sixties, and was obviously embraced by the social-climbing middle classes for their dinner parties where they wouldn’t want to serve anything too “continental”.’
If James could have reached his dad to kick him in the shins, he would have done.
‘It was fabulous, Penny. A classic,’ he said instead.
‘The secret’s wrapping the beef in a pancake. I saw it on Saturday Kitchen.’
The room went quiet again.
‘So you’ll run an interview in the paper next week then? Respected businessman slandered in police sting,’ said Howard. ‘Hey, maybe PC sting? Police being politically correct and all that?’
‘Tory chief a victim of institutional homophobia,’ said Margaret.
‘These days I’m just an ordinary party member. But I suppose Chief’s a fair description for a headline – they do still look to me to advise on the big stuff. Although I don’t think it’s right I’m a victim…’
‘Top Tory fights prosecution persecution,’ mused Ben.
‘Hey, he’s a smart cookie that husband of yours isn’t he? Wasted on the local rag, he could get a job at the Mail, you know.’
‘He knows people at the Guardian, I keep telling him to call.’
‘He’d run rings around them at the old Grauniad. Say, Lord Beaverbrook, can I offer you a post-prandial cigar?’
‘Oh. I’ve got my own blend thank you,’ said Ben tapping the tobacco tin in his shirt pocket. ‘I prefer the lighter –’
‘What kind are they?’ Margaret interrupted.
‘Montecristos, I believe,’ said Howard.
‘Cuban?’
‘Of course! Viva la revolución!’
‘I’ll have one with you, Howard. Of all the forms for tobacco, cigars are the least dangerous, personally and environmentally.’
‘Is that so? I’ll get you one, rolled on the thighs of some big hairy old communist.’
‘Of course access to them is still often restricted to men in this fragile phallocentric society.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll make it a large one. You’re all right there, Penny? You wouldn’t want one of these filthy things…’
‘I’ll just get the dishwasher loaded.’
‘You know,’ said Ben, ‘the idea of rolling cigars on thighs is something of a myth but does have a basis in cultural…’
The last of the parents filed out of the room, leaving Rebecca and James alone with just the Sunday concert on Classic FM to break the silence.
‘What,’ asked James, ‘the fuck. Was that?’
They hadn’t been told his parents would be joining them for lunch. Presumably because her parents had known there was no way they would have shown up if they did, thought Rebecca. Actually, that wasn’t true, she realised. She and James would have been there early, making a concerted effort to ensure the two sets of parents had no opportunity to talk to each other about anything, especially politics after what had happened the last time.
‘Can’t quite believe Mum tried to discuss spring fashions with your mum.’
‘That was a lecture of sweatshops waiting to happen…’
‘What was that joke Dad tried to tell? Where you needed to have worked out the punchline was an anagram of botulism?’
‘I don’t know what was more painful, the silence or the polite laughing. He didn’t seem to notice, though. Naturally.’
‘And it was great being held up like a specimen. The future of humanity, right here under my jumper.’
‘And urgh! The childhood anecdotes.’
‘Actually that bit was quite funny,’ said Rebecca.
‘I didn’t see you laughing when Howard mentioned how you used to do an all-out ballet performance whenever anyone visited the house. Including the guy who was just there to read the meter.’
‘Shut it, bedwetter.’
‘The vision of you running at the poor bastard, who didn’t know he was supposed to catch you as part of the routine…’
‘Are you worried about that? Is it making you feel anxious? Would you feel better if we got a rubberised undersheet for tonight?’
‘Leave it, twinkle-toes,’ he said in his gruffest Sweeney voice.
‘It was a sweet story, that’s all. And now I know why you’re always so keen to keep on top of the laundry.’
Hearing about an entirely forgotten spate of bedwetting when he was six, and not really coping with a shift from living in France to Germany, had been surprising, thought James. But not as surprising as hearing Margaret and Howard rallying behind the same side of one cause. Well, near enough the same side. Margaret must have let Howard get away with declarations that ‘queers’ could do what they wanted with their private lives because she assumed he was reclaiming the term, while when she mentioned ‘your community’ Howard must have assumed she was talking about Neighbourhood Watch and the golf club, rather than a group running the gamut from TV queens to muscle Marys.
‘Your dad and my mum. There may’ve been weirder coalitions, but I can’t think of any,’ he said.
‘I don’t know what the hell he’s doing,’ Rebecca sighed. ‘I don’t think Dad even knows what politically correct means, he just uses it for anything lefties do that he disagrees with. I mean arresting people in toilets was always more of a Tory thing wasn’t it?’
‘Still, there’s always a chance it’ll break down any minute. All it needs is a casual statement on the world as it is from one of them and boom, the truce is off, back in your respective trenches.’
‘What was it last time? Dad and his “say what you like about apartheid, but…” speech?’
‘I thought it was Margaret and her “she’s not your partner she’s your indentured slave” routine,’ said James.
‘Mum…’
There was a clatter from the kitchen as an overly-full tray of dirty pans grudgingly slid into the dishwasher.
‘I should go and give her a hand…’ Rebecca said.
‘I’ll come too.’
‘You stay there, it’ll be a chance for us to have a chat. You could go and join the grown-ups.’
‘Pff, I think I’ll just sit here gently rocking for a while instead. Thanks for the thought though, Becky.’
She gave him an evil stare for using her hated family nickname.
‘I am so putting your little finger in a glass of lukewarm water while you’re asleep tonight.’
Chapter 10
As Rebecca entered the kitchen, Penny had her back to her at the sink, her shoulders heaving. Rebecca had frozen on the spot not knowing whether to go to her mum and give her a hug, or back away and leave her to her tears in private. Then she heard the splash and the clang of the roasting tin as she manoeuvred it in the water to open a new line of attack on grafted-on vegetables and realised it was scrubbing rather than blubbing causing it.
‘Need a hand?’
‘Oh hi, darling, just getting these out of the way while everyone’s busy. Can I get you anything?’ asked Penny.
‘I’m fine.’
‘James need anything? A beer?’
‘He’ll be fine.’
Penny went back to her pan. As far as Rebecca could see it was clean enough, but her mum was attacking it again with a little green scrubber. She thought it might have been a sign of stress, but acknowledged that it was just as likely the reason all her mum’s kitchenware was spotless after years, and theirs looked like it had been bought fire-damaged.
‘Are you OK, Mum?’ she asked.
‘Me, I’m absolutely fine. Lunch went quite well I thought. Never quite sure what to cook for Margaret and Ben. I thought about a curry, but it didn’t seem right on a Sunday afternoon.’
‘It was delicious,’ Rebecca said.
‘It must have been three years since we saw them last. Margaret’s looking very well. She was saying she’s going to be sixty this year. You’d never think it to look at her, and not a spot of make-up. And good for her for still wearing mini-skirts. I wouldn’t dare these days…’
‘You look great,’ Rebecca said.
‘Thanks darling, and you too. Still feeling tired?’
‘It’s getting better. And no real sickness to speak of either. You’d hardly think there was anything wrong with me…’
‘I remember with your brother, my morning sickness didn’t really start until the second trimester, so you might not be out of the woods yet. Awful it was, like an alarm clock. Every time I started getting sick it was time for your father to get up. Then I’d be fine again in the day and then I’d feel a bit queasy when it was time for Nationwide.’
Always about you, Rebecca thought to herself, her inner teenager bristling.
‘Any signs you need a new wardrobe yet?’ asked Penny ‘As soon as you do we’ll go out and get some new things. Nothing too pregnanty just yet. We could invite Margaret if you’d like.’
Rebecca scrunched up her face, her nose an accordion of wrinkles.
‘Perhaps just you and your old mum then,’ said Penny, ‘halfway through a pregnancy might not be the time to be trying the boob-tube look.’
They smiled at each other conspiratorially. ‘My young mum, you mean,’ said Rebecca, feeling a little guilty for her earlier unsaid tantrum. She slid up onto a stool on the breakfast bar and started poking through the contents of the fruit bowl. ‘Are you OK with Dad taking all his dirty laundry out in public?’ she asked without looking up.
There was a blast of water as Penny turned on the tap to fill the kettle.
‘Well, he hasn’t done anything wrong, so he has to get that message across in whatever way he can.’
‘But it must be so humiliating for you,’ Rebecca said, her glance switching back and forth between her mother and a satsuma she was kneading between her fingers. ‘He asked you about it first didn’t he?’
‘Now don’t be like that, Becky, we’re just doing the right thing. And yes. Of course I knew. He mentioned he was thinking of writing a letter to the paper.’
‘A letter to the editor he said? I’m guessing he glossed over his hopes for front-page headlines. Typical. Next thing you know he’ll be dragging you into it – standing next to him in press photos. The loyal wifey standing by her husband.’
Penny paused as she considered her collection of teapots.
‘There’s someone from the Focus coming around tomorrow lunchtime.’
‘Mu-um!’
‘Then that’ll be it, Becky, I promise. He’ll have had his say.’
‘And the police will just go away because he’s got his picture in the press?’
‘Maybe they’ll let him off with a warning.’
‘They tried to do that already.’
‘But that was on their terms, he’ll feel better if he’s in charge of the situation. You know him, he just needs to find a way to feel in control.’
The kettle boiled. Penny warmed the chosen teapot, and reached for the teabags from the porcelain jar proclaiming TEA. Rebecca lifted her hand to her face and was momentarily distracted by the waft of citrus from her fingers; the surface of the satsuma in her other hand was pocked all over by her having absently stabbed it with her thumbnail.
‘You don’t think he did it do you?’ she asked.
‘Becky!’
‘I’m just saying… Soon as it hits the papers, it’ll be “no smoke without fire”.’
‘This is just one of those unfortunate accidents. It’s a misunderstanding, and you know your father’s sense of injustice. He can be very compassionate. He’d be just as cross if it had happened to James, or anybody…’
‘But James wouldn’t be…’ Rebecca stopped the thought before it got any further. That James wouldn’t be loitering in public lavatories because he isn’t…
Penny plucked two clean, matching mugs from the cupboard and gave each one a splash of milk.
‘James has been very good actually,’ Penny continued. ‘He’s been very supportive. Your father was saying he’ll make a very good dad, was even wondering again if he might want to join the company at some point, now he’s going to be a family man.’
‘He’s been talking to James?’
‘Oh you know – not talking. Texting, emailing. Can’t keep your father away from the computer…’
‘He didn’t set this up, did he? With his dad?’
‘That was all your father’s idea. He’s just been bouncing ideas for the wider campaign off him, and you know, probably every other project he’s in the middle of at the moment.’
Rattled, Rebecca stood up. Her husband hadn’t said a word about this. But she didn’t know what to do next. Go and see James? Find out what on earth he’d been doing? What did she mean, there was ‘a wider campaign’? Angry thoughts flashed through her head like a faulty fluorescent light. No one was telling her anything. These ridiculous things were going on in her own family and no one was telling her. They were treating her like…they were treating her like they did her mother. She was about to let rip, and James was going to get the brunt of it, when Margaret came back into the house followed by the men, Howard barking away. Rebecca couldn’t do it in front of her.
‘Tea’s just made,’ said Penny brightly.
‘Would you have any filter coffee?’ asked Margaret.
‘I’ll get the caffetiere,’ said Penny.
James ambled into the kitchen from the living room, alerted to the bustle and voices coming back inside.
‘Finished your plans for world domination, guys?’ he asked.
‘Bloody freezing out there!’ said Howard. ‘Old Fidel had the right idea, he didn’t have to put up with blinking weather like this.’
‘We were just discussing the horror of becoming grandparents,’ said Margaret with an exaggerated grin, used only on the rare occasions when she wasn’t taking herself too seriously. ‘Thrown on the scrapheap of Western culture’s disposable youth culture.’
‘Totally irrelevant, we’ll be,’ chuckled Howard. ‘Maggie was saying we should move to India and we’d be ruling the roost.’
James stood behind Rebecca. She was ignoring him, but not in a way that would make it obvious to their parents in the room. Or even to him.