In-Laws and Outlaws Read online

I bridled, internally at least, at the injustice of Marjorie’s statement. I hadn’t asked anyone else to do what I wanted, I’d simply refused the offer of a quarter of a caramel cheesecake because I was full and because it sounded revolting, but I had made no mention of this second reason. Neither had I demanded that everyone else follow suit.

  “I’m going to show Eve the garden, OK Mum?” Gideon came to my rescue. I was only too eager to leave the room without a backward glance, but I couldn’t help noticing the look of disdain on Marjorie’s face as she took in the napkin I had flung untidily on to the table. Everyone else had folded theirs neatly. That is it, I thought, she hates me.

  “So what do you think of them?” Gideon asked once we were safely in the garden and out of earshot. If I had, even for a moment, considered being truthful his next question would have stymied the impulse. “Mum’s great, isn’t she?”

  No, I wanted to reply, she’s a bitch of the first order. “Well,” I replied, “she’s certainly a character.”

  “She can be a bit tricky but she has a lot to put up with.” Gideon continued. “Dad’s not the easiest of men to live with and sometimes it gets the better of her. That’s why I left you two alone together, to give you a chance to get to know each other without Dad being there.”

  Thanks a bunch, I didn’t say. Nor did I add that neither of Gideon’s parents had struck me as particularly easy people but from what I had observed it looked as if it was Malcolm rather than Marjorie who had the most to put up with. But Gideon clearly knew them far better than I did so I felt that I should, for the moment at least, accept his assessment of the situation. “She’s a pussycat really,” he went on, “she just doesn’t know much about you yet.” Pussycat my arse. Unless of course she was like my Aunt Audrey’s cat, Tassita, a truly despicable creature that had hated everyone, including my aunt. I had only known Gideon for a few months but until today he had struck me as a very perceptive man. We had shared long conversations in which he had illustrated that he understood a great deal about the human condition, which as a professor of psychology he jolly well should, but now I wasn’t so sure. How could he believe that the woman I had just met was a pussycat? We had, by now, wandered over to stand under a small apple tree to shelter from the drizzle that had been gently but persistently falling all day.

  “I should probably have offered to help with the washing up.” I said, reaching up to pull an apple from the branch above my head.

  “Oh no, she wouldn’t have liked that at all!” Gideon sounded quite horrified. “She’s what you might call house-proud,” he continued. “She likes everything to be done her way. Did you see that rug in the hall?”

  “The one with the tassels all around the edge?” I asked. See it? I had almost tripped over it in my haste to escape the dining room.

  “Mum has a rake she uses to keep the tassels straight. I’m telling you, she wouldn’t thank you for helping in the kitchen.” Gideon laughed at what he saw as his mother’s little foible. I, on the other hand, found the idea of raking rug tassels extremely sinister. It’s the kind of thing that I’m pretty sure serial killers do. If asked my opinion in respect of people who rake rug tassels it would be to treat them with the utmost caution.

  “So,” I said, returning to the subject at hand, “the problem is that she doesn’t know much about me?”

  “Yes,” Gideon replied, “that is correct.”

  “So, what does she know about me?” I asked. “What have you told her?”

  “That you’re a friend of mine.”

  “Is that it?” I was a little taken aback.

  “Yes.” Gideon, like so many of his sex, while useful in all sorts ways can, I’m afraid, be utterly hopeless in others.

  “So she has no idea that we are a couple?” I exclaimed. “She has no idea that you won’t let me put my shoes in your wardrobe when I come over due to your seemingly limitless pairs of nearly identical boots taking up all the available space?”

  “The thing is you should never wear the same pair of boots two days in a row so it’s always best to . . .” he began.

  “Not really the point I’m making right now.” I interrupted the boot story, which I had now heard at least four times, in an attempt to get things back on track. “She doesn’t know that we’re a couple?”

  “Not exactly. When I split up with Nicole Mum said it would be good for me to have some time to myself and she was quite excited at the idea that she and I could spend more time together. I didn’t like to upset her.” Nicole had been Gideon’s partner when he had met me, so that had meant curtains for Nicole (or at least for her relationship with Gideon, I didn’t kill her). “I just thought it was a better strategy,” Gideon continued, “to let Mum get to know you and like you before I told her about us.” Gideon shrugged as if all this was perfectly normal. If there had been a klaxon of some sort in the garden designed to warn of imminent danger it would undoubtedly have gone off at this point. The garden, however, contained no such a device and I had, by this point, grown pretty fond of Gideon so there’s every chance I wouldn’t have heeded it anyway.

  “Really?” I said. “So you lie to your mother to make your life easier? That’s appalling.” I often lie to make my life easier, but that doesn’t mean that I condone lying in others. I had by now separated the apple from its branch (they had been quite reluctant to part but I had persisted) and was about to sink my teeth into it.

  “Best not do that, they’re really sharp, and Mum doesn’t like her fruit being messed with, not by strange women anyway.” Gideon nudged me affectionately. He is not a man given to effusive apologies but I think he realised that I was feeling a little uncomfortable with the situation he had put me in. Here I was thinking that I was being introduced to his parents as his new partner, while they thought that I was simply a friend. “I will tell her, I promise. But not this afternoon, I’ll call her in the week and have a chat. It’ll be fine. Let’s go in, I think she’s got Dad making coffee.”

  “I don’t drink coffee in the afternoon,” I said, slightly sulkily.

  “Well,” said Gideon, taking hold of both my shoulders so that I had to turn and face him, “you better had today or we’ll all have to go without. And I like caramel cheesecake.”

  “Really?” I said again.

  “Yes, really. Now let’s go in, it’s getting chilly out here.”

  Once inside I had to sit, or rather perch, on the edge of Marjorie’s very uncomfortable and overstuffed sofa for what seemed like an age before Malcolm came in bearing a tray on which were placed four tiny cups of coffee. He had been banging and crashing around in the kitchen for much longer than seemed entirely necessary for the task in hand while a coffee machine intermittently made loud hissing and sploshing noises. He was now looking remarkably pleased with himself for a man who had simply made a hot beverage.

  “I couldn’t find any cake.” he said as he crossed the room, slopping much of the coffee that it had taken him so long to make into the saucers as he did so.

  “That’s because there isn’t any.” Marjorie snapped back.

  “Oh,” said Malcolm, looking somewhat downcast. He perked up, however, as he looked down lovingly at the coffee he had just made.

  “Nothing like a good cup of coffee,” he announced, setting the tray down and handing each of us a cup. And, to use a well-worn joke, it was nothing like a good cup of coffee, being both tasteless and lukewarm. Marjorie clearly thought it was acceptable though, and it seemed to loosen her up somewhat.

  “You know,” she began, looking straight at me, the hint of a smile playing around her lips, “I’m very good with accents and I can hear yours quite clearly. I have a very good ear.”

  I looked at her, bemused. I had lived in Norwich between the ages of six and sixteen but had not developed even so much as a hint of a Norfolk accent, so I really had no idea what she was talking about.

  “I’m sorry?” I looked to Gideon for some clarification.

  “What do you mean Mum?�
�� he said. “What accent?”

  “A northern accent of course!” Marjorie exclaimed. “You said Eve was from Blackpool and I was just saying that she doesn’t have a very strong accent but with my ear I can pick it up.”

  “But I’m not from Blackpool,” I blurted out, “I’m from . . .” where was I from? Not Norwich, not really. If I was from anywhere I supposed I was from London as I had been born there and lived more of my life there than anywhere else, “ . . . here. I’ve lived in London virtually all my life. I have been to Blackpool but I can’t imagine that I picked up much of an accent in a weekend.” I must confess I laughed at this point, but as soon as I did I felt that it was the wrong thing to have done.

  “Gideon never said she was from Blackpool,” Malcolm said, smiling at me. It was the first time I had seen him smile properly and it transformed his face. He actually looked quite friendly, and I could see the resemblance between him and his son which up till then had been obscured by Malcolm’s scowl. “Eve hasn’t got even the merest trace of a northern accent,” Malcolm continued. “Gideon said that they met in Blackpool. It’s not the same thing as coming from Blackpool, not the same thing at all. I think you must be mistaken Marjorie.” Gideon and I hadn’t exactly met in Blackpool but it had been at a conference held there that we had, so to speak, cemented our relationship.

  I watched Marjorie closely waiting to see how she would react. I was worried that my lack of a northern accent would make her dislike me even more than she already seemed to. I felt that by not being from Blackpool she might feel that I had, in some way, humiliated her.

  “Oh, silly me,” said Marjorie, smiling broadly for the first time that day. “I must, as you say Malcolm, have been mistaken.” I think I might have actually let out an audible sigh of relief. Perhaps all was not lost and I could make Gideon’s mother like me. I certainly hoped I could as it would make life so much easier. I have come up against mothers before and, in my experience, getting on the right side of them is, if not exactly crucial, then very much to be desired.

  CHAPTER 2

  My experience of families has been quite varied but it has rarely been satisfactory. My own little nuclear unit came to an abrupt end when I was six and for reasons I have never fully fathomed I went to live with my Aunt Audrey in the aforementioned Norwich. Despite being a social worker specialising in child care Audrey was spectacularly ill equipped to act in loco parentis. The principal recollection I have of her home was how it was both silent and extremely noisy at the same time. It lacked any of the sounds I associated with family life (laughter, conversation, singing, crying, arguing) but this absence was filled with the sounds of inanimate objects coming into contact with each other in a way that seemed to indicate that they were not well suited to share a house. It was, most certainly, a cacophonous metaphor for the relationship between my aunt and me.

  Audrey had lived in a tiny terraced house that comprised two small rooms downstairs with a kitchen and bathroom tacked on the back, and two equally teeny tiny bedrooms upstairs. There were no carpets or rugs anywhere. Downstairs the floors were stone and upstairs there were bare floorboards. Every time either Audrey or I moved around the house, or moved anything within it, the sound would ricochet around the small space. To add to this soundscape Audrey was a big fan of pottery. Every meal was accompanied by the scraping of cutlery on earthenware crockery. All of this would have been bad enough, but Audrey seemed unaware that her interior design choices when combined with a child would militate against the quietude she professed to need so that she could, as she frequently reminded me, think. I was forever being admonished to be quiet, but however hard I tried I could not interact with Audrey’s home (I never once thought of it as my home) without noisily drawing attention to myself. The situation was made worse by the fact that the bedrooms were interconnected, making it necessary to go through the back bedroom to get to the one at the front. Audrey, because of her need for quiet, insisted on sleeping in the back one, away from the road (which was, as it happens, very quiet). Whenever I needed the loo in the night, which I often did largely because of the fear engendered by worrying about how much noise I would make should I need to go, I had to pass through Audrey’s bedroom. I quickly learnt every creak and squeak of the journey and would freeze, like a rabbit confronted by a fox, at every sound to assure myself that Audrey was still asleep and not about to bellow at me. Descending a wooden staircase can still fill me with the unreasonable fear that I am about to be shouted at, as well as a vague desire to pee. This makes it all sound very grim, and in many ways it was but, on the upside, Audrey did leave me alone a lot.

  Family life with Aunt Audrey having been so very far from what I assume is the norm one of my chief ambitions in life has been to create a secure, happy, and settled home life for myself. I have always been open to ideas about what that family might comprise. I am not in the least hung up on the notion of a nuclear family, so long it’s secure, happy, and settled that’ll do me. By the time I met Gideon I think it’s fair to say that I had not been as successful as I might have hoped when lying in my bed as a child fervently wishing for a family (and a pony, which didn’t turn out very well either) very different to the one of which I was notionally a part. Having said that, it isn’t entirely true to say that I completely lack family, I do have a younger brother, Dominic, but sometimes (quite often in fact) I wish I didn’t.

  A few days after meeting the ‘amazing’ Marjorie I was back at my old flat, where I had gone to pick up my few remaining belongings. I hadn’t specifically told Gideon that I was moving into his flat at this point but I was sure I would be able to work out the finer details when the time came and so had pushed ahead with the move regardless. It was just as I opened the front door that my phone rang. Dropping my keys on the hall table I scrabbled to retrieve it from my bag. I didn’t get to it in time but could see that I had missed a call from Dominic.

  “Hi Sis,” said the voice mail he had left for me, “I really need to talk to you. Something’s happened and I need your help.” My heart sank, which I know it shouldn’t on hearing from one’s brother, but Dominic only ever seems to call me when he wants ‘something’ or ‘something’ has happened. This might lead one to conclude that I don’t hear from him very often but this is not, unfortunately, the case.

  “So what’s happened?” I asked when I finally spoke to Dominic a few hours later. He had, as per usual, turned his phone off almost as soon as he left the message for me, or had put it on silent, or forgotten that he had called me and was ignoring my incoming calls, or was trying to avoid someone else and was inadvertently ignoring me at the same time. Any of these scenarios was equally likely and all had occurred in the past. I could have done without talking to my brother that day as I had had a rather unpleasant conversation with my now ex landlady (and flatmate) just after I got his message. I had given her my notice with immediate effect and she had been rather difficult about returning my deposit as the washing machine had just broken and she wanted me to contribute to its repair. I didn’t think I should have to contribute as I hadn’t used it in months, having been using Gideon’s. She also said that I would have to continue paying rent until she could find a new lodger, which I felt was wholly unreasonable. I told her that a death in the family necessitated my abrupt departure but she was unswayed by my loss. I had been quite upset by her behaviour as we had always got on quite well, and if I had just lost a family member I would have found her attitude very hurtful indeed. It seemed a shame that several years of harmonious co habitation should end on such a duff note. It was just my bad luck, I suppose, that I had to deal with Dominic and an unreasonable landlady all in the same day.

  “Why do you always think something has happened?” Dominic demanded to know. Because you said so in your voicemail was the obvious answer but there was no point in saying it. “Can’t I call my sister just to talk?” Yes, Dominic, you can, I also didn’t say, but you never do. “So how are things with you?” he asked. I knew he didn’t
care how things were with me but I was going to tell him anyway.

  “Really good actually. Gideon has asked me to move in.” I was keen to share the good news that, on hearing I had been evicted by my unreasonable landlady with immediate effect, Gideon had offered me a home seeing as, in his words, “you practically live with me anyway”, but that was as far as I got.

  “Yeah, great. Anyway, you will not believe what that . . . what Sophie has done now . . .” Sophie had been the love of my brother’s life for a short time ten years previously. Had it ended there she would no doubt be a mere footnote in my brother’s truly epic list of ex-lovers (he’s not particular good looking but he has a boyish charm that infuriates me but which brings out the mothering instinct in far too many women). That Sophie still got airtime was due to a split condom (I know it’s not romantic and is definitely too much information, but such is the miracle of life) which resulted in Pixie, my niece and only other extant relative.

  While I had been brought up by our father’s sister, the aforementioned Audrey, Dominic had been farmed out to our mother’s brother and his wife (they are still alive as far as I know but have, for reasons Dominic has never explained, cut off all contact with him, and never really had any with me), and we rarely saw each other until our late teens. When we reconnected I had been keen to develop a relationship with my estranged brother. This was, I felt, my chance to develop a truly satisfying familial relationship. Fat chance.

  “She won’t let me see Pixie.” Dominic continued.

  “Oh,” I replied, as non-committally as I could. Dominic and Sophie had split up before Pixie was born, but they had been using the poor child as a proxy for their animosity towards each other ever since.

  “What did you do?” I asked, although I knew I shouldn’t have said it even before the words were out, but it was a natural assumption to make. Sophie may not be perfect but she does (pretty much) always put Pixie first. Dominic, on the other hand, seems far more concerned with asserting his rights as a father than with his daughter’s well-being. On more than one occasion I have met up with the pair of them, father and daughter, and he has all but ignored Pixie in order to give me a blow by blow account of how hard he had to fight to get access to a child in whom he seems to have no interest.