occasionally sniggering, when Sasha from Fashion comes over and they head off for a smoke. At 12.30 he leaves for a lunch in Covent Garden with some PRs.
I go out to the sandwich bar and buy a roll with some Parma ham, and I’m eating it at my desk, out of a shiny packet of greaseproof paper, flicking through the
Guardian
, when Mary stops by my desk again. She puts down a proof copy. It’s the new Sunil Ranjan. ‘Does this interest you?’ she asks.
I say I’ve read one or two of his other novels.
‘Oh, good, good,’ she says. ‘Six hundred words, a week on Thursday? I was going to get Oliver to do it, but – well, you know.’
I make a discreet, understanding noise, and she pats my shoulder and moves off.
Interesting
, I think, picking up my sandwich again.
Very interesting
.
‘So!’ says my mother brightly. She’s sitting bolt upright on the tightly upholstered button-back chair, holding a teacup and a petticoat tail, doing her best to look entirely at ease. I’ve been in the house for only ten minutes, and we have already exhausted the drive, the dreadful traffic around Ipswich and the weather. ‘How is London? Busy, is it?’
Like so many of my mother’s questions, this one anticipates one particular answer, in which she will take only the most limited interest. Conversation with my mother rarely goes anywhere unexpected. She has a horror of the unexpected and her entire life is structured to keep it at bay.
‘Pretty busy, yes,’ I say, taking a sip of tea. We look together at the shrubs thrashing around beyond the patio doors. My mother considers herself green-fingered, which simply means she subscribes to a lot of gardening magazines and pays a man to mow the lawn in the summer. She calls him ‘the gardener’. My dad does all the legwork – digging in the compost, pruning, planting bulbs – under her instruction.
It’s a very tasteful sort of garden. There’s very little colour or scent in it – my mother thinks most flowers are vulgar, and she has a deep-seated fear of vulgarity, as if it might suddenly overpower her in a dark alley – but plenty of texture and shapes. At this time of year, as the dusk consolidates, it looks drearier than usual.
‘Your father should be back any minute,’ my mother says, taking another tiny bite of biscuit and dusting an invisible shower of crumbs off her skirt. At the far end of the house, the dog barks manically.
‘How is the dog?’ I say. The dog is called Margot, after the ballerina. She’s a Jack Russell, enormously fat and badly behaved. My parents have always had dogs, but by the timethey got Margot they’d run out of energy and never found the time to train her properly, so she has to be shut up in the sunroom, like the first Mrs Rochester, whenever anyone visits.
‘Getting on,’ says my mother, adjusting the knife-pleat in her skirt. ‘Poor old thing.’
‘Maybe I’ll take her for a walk later,’ I suggest, as I always do, for my own amusement. ‘She could do with it, I expect. Take her over the common, down to the reservoir?’
‘Oh, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ says my mother, as I knew she would, as if I have suggested something terrifically reckless. ‘Poor old Margot, she gets ever so out of breath nowadays.’
I know the reason why Margot never goes for walks, and it isn’t because of her old age, or her inability to behave herself on the lead, or anything like that. My mother has always been most comfortable on her own territory. Nowadays even minor local expeditions (trips to the seafront with Hester’s children, or the Pearsons’ Boxing Day drinks) make her jittery. She’d never admit it, of course. So there’s always a reason why she can’t come or must leave early, and usually it’s something to do with mass catering. ‘I’ve got to put the potatoes in,’ she’ll say with a tiny smile of martyrdom. ‘See you back at the house!’
I finish my tea and as soon as I’ve put the cup back on its
I go out to the sandwich bar and buy a roll with some Parma ham, and I’m eating it at my desk, out of a shiny packet of greaseproof paper, flicking through the
Guardian
, when Mary stops by my desk again. She puts down a proof copy. It’s the new Sunil Ranjan. ‘Does this interest you?’ she asks.
I say I’ve read one or two of his other novels.
‘Oh, good, good,’ she says. ‘Six hundred words, a week on Thursday? I was going to get Oliver to do it, but – well, you know.’
I make a discreet, understanding noise, and she pats my shoulder and moves off.
Interesting
, I think, picking up my sandwich again.
Very interesting
.
‘So!’ says my mother brightly. She’s sitting bolt upright on the tightly upholstered button-back chair, holding a teacup and a petticoat tail, doing her best to look entirely at ease. I’ve been in the house for only ten minutes, and we have already exhausted the drive, the dreadful traffic around Ipswich and the weather. ‘How is London? Busy, is it?’
Like so many of my mother’s questions, this one anticipates one particular answer, in which she will take only the most limited interest. Conversation with my mother rarely goes anywhere unexpected. She has a horror of the unexpected and her entire life is structured to keep it at bay.
‘Pretty busy, yes,’ I say, taking a sip of tea. We look together at the shrubs thrashing around beyond the patio doors. My mother considers herself green-fingered, which simply means she subscribes to a lot of gardening magazines and pays a man to mow the lawn in the summer. She calls him ‘the gardener’. My dad does all the legwork – digging in the compost, pruning, planting bulbs – under her instruction.
It’s a very tasteful sort of garden. There’s very little colour or scent in it – my mother thinks most flowers are vulgar, and she has a deep-seated fear of vulgarity, as if it might suddenly overpower her in a dark alley – but plenty of texture and shapes. At this time of year, as the dusk consolidates, it looks drearier than usual.
‘Your father should be back any minute,’ my mother says, taking another tiny bite of biscuit and dusting an invisible shower of crumbs off her skirt. At the far end of the house, the dog barks manically.
‘How is the dog?’ I say. The dog is called Margot, after the ballerina. She’s a Jack Russell, enormously fat and badly behaved. My parents have always had dogs, but by the timethey got Margot they’d run out of energy and never found the time to train her properly, so she has to be shut up in the sunroom, like the first Mrs Rochester, whenever anyone visits.
‘Getting on,’ says my mother, adjusting the knife-pleat in her skirt. ‘Poor old thing.’
‘Maybe I’ll take her for a walk later,’ I suggest, as I always do, for my own amusement. ‘She could do with it, I expect. Take her over the common, down to the reservoir?’
‘Oh, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ says my mother, as I knew she would, as if I have suggested something terrifically reckless. ‘Poor old Margot, she gets ever so out of breath nowadays.’
I know the reason why Margot never goes for walks, and it isn’t because of her old age, or her inability to behave herself on the lead, or anything like that. My mother has always been most comfortable on her own territory. Nowadays even minor local expeditions (trips to the seafront with Hester’s children, or the Pearsons’ Boxing Day drinks) make her jittery. She’d never admit it, of course. So there’s always a reason why she can’t come or must leave early, and usually it’s something to do with mass catering. ‘I’ve got to put the potatoes in,’ she’ll say with a tiny smile of martyrdom. ‘See you back at the house!’
I finish my tea and as soon as I’ve put the cup back on its
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