Goggle-Eyes

2

Mum’s had boyfriends before, of course. Goggle-eyes wasn’t the first. For a long time it was Simon, who was tall and dark and a bit wet, and wore nice suits. I liked Simon. He was the only person in the world who could sit down and help Jude with her arithmetic homework without her ending up in floods of tears. ‘Now you have to go next door and borrow from Mr and Mrs Hundreds,’ he’d remind her, over and over again. ‘Don’t forget to pay back Mrs Tens.’ He never got ratty, like Mum and I do. He never abandoned her in the middle of a sum, saying, ‘I’m sure you’ve got it now.’ I used to sit the other side of the kitchen table, admiring his patience, with Floss tightly clenched between my knees so she couldn’t break away under the table and spread dribble and cat hairs over Simon’s nice suits. Floss is friendly and sweet but she’s terribly messy, and Simon works in a very posh bank.

Then Simon got the push, I’m not sure why, but I suspect he was too wet for Mum. She went a few months without anyone, and said she quite liked it, and wasn’t going to bother with fellows in future. ‘I’d rather stay home and watch telly,’ she said. Whenever she really needed a partner for something, she took a woman friend from work. And sometimes she borrowed Reinhardt from next door in return for their really long loan of our ladder.

Then, one day, she met Gerald Faulkner. Don’t ask me where and why and how. All I know is, one day my mother’s her normal, workaday Oh-God-I-hate-my-job-I’m-going-to-resign-what’s-on-telly self, and the next she’s some radiant, energetic fashion plate who doesn’t even hear when you tell her it’s the last episode of her favourite series, and she’s going through last year’s babysitter list like the Grim Reaper, winnowing out all the old biddies who’ve cracked and gone off to spend their last years with their daughters-in-law, and all the bright teenagers who made it to college.

‘I can’t find anyone for Friday night!’

‘Why don’t you stay home and watch Dynasty with us?’

She sweeps round, all fancy skirts and high heels and different eye make-up.

‘Oh, lovies! You watch it, and then you can tell me what happens.’

How old does she suddenly think we are? Three? And who was he, this man who had made all the difference? I’d heard his voice. He rang up early one evening before Mum even got home from work. I was the one who picked up the phone because Jude just ignores it whenever it rings. It could go on and on for hours, and she’d never bother to pick it up. She’s odd that way.

I lifted the receiver and sang out our number. There was a little silence, then a voice said,

‘Hello. Is that Kitty or Judith?’

‘Yes,’ I said. (Well, it was.)

There was another, infinitesimal pause. I got the feeling that, if he’d ever been introduced to me in person, he might have come out with something either funny or waspish. But all he actually said was,

‘This is Gerald Faulkner. Please tell your mother I managed to get tickets, and the film starts at eight.’

I said, ‘Oh.’ (I hadn’t realized she’d be going out again. I thought she was going to stay in and help with Jude’s cardboard Roman amphitheatre. We’d promised to knock up a few woolly ravenous beasts.)

‘Thank you,’ he said, and then, after a pause, ‘Goodbye.’

I didn’t say anything back, so after a couple more seconds of silence, he just hung up.

I went into the kitchen, where Jude was sitting with Floss in her arms.

‘That was him,’ I told her. ‘They’re going out again tonight. He called you Judith.’

She made a face but didn’t say anything; and two minutes later Mum came through the door, loaded with shopping and all bright-eyed.

‘Did anyone phone?’

She never comes in asking ‘Did anyone phone?’ If I tell her Granny’s rung, or Simon’s rung, or someone from the hospital office where she works wants a quick word with her, she only groans.

Jude gave me a look, as if to say: See? And I wished that I hadn’t picked up the phone in the first place. But a message is a message. So,

‘Mr Faulkner rang about some film,’ I told her. ‘I expect you forgot to tell him that you were stopping home tonight, to make Jude’s woolly ravenous beasts.’

She got the point.

‘Sweetheart!’ All guilt and glossy lipstick, she swooped down on Jude. ‘We’ll finish your amphitheatre tomorrow, I promise.’

‘Tonight’s the last possible night.’ I poured cold water on this plan of hers. ‘We already put this off twice, remember? She has to take the whole thing into school in the morning.’

Mum went out all the same at half-past seven. Jude didn’t seem to mind. And when I’d finished looking after the babysitter – making her coffee, fetching her reading glasses, finding the Radio Times – we all settled down to watch an old Carry On film and make woolly ravenous beasts, though Jude’s all turned out larger than hairy mammoths, and Mrs Harrison’s looked like dispirited sheep.

Then I went off to bed. I’d had enough. But it was hard to sleep, and I was on my way back from my third trip to the bathroom when I heard Mum push open the front door shortly before eleven.

I leaned against the banisters, and watched her clinking about in her purse.

‘Three and a half hours?’ she said to Mrs Harrison, who was already struggling into her coat.

‘That’s right, dear,’ said Mrs Harrison. ‘Have you had a nice evening out with your young man?’

‘Young man!’ Mum snorted with amusement. ‘Mrs Harrison, Gerald is over fifty.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Mrs Harrison, holding Mum’s shoulder to steady herself as she stepped into her wellies. ‘You know what they say. Better an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave!’

Mum was still giggling when she shut the door. I thought about slipping downstairs and surprising her. She could tell me about the film while we turned off the lights and unplugged the telly and put the milk bottles out on the step. But something about the smile on her face put me off, and I went quietly back to bed instead.

Over fifty!

Old enough to be a grandfather. Maybe he had false teeth and sagging skin, and tufts of grey hair sticking out of his ears.

Next morning when I came downstairs, I asked her, ‘When are we going to meet this Gerald Faulkner, then?’

I was convinced she’d be so embarrassed about him she’d drop the teapot on the spot, scalding poor Floss, and stare at me, wild-eyed. Instead she said,

‘How about tomorrow? He’s coming round here anyway, to pick me up.’

‘I won’t be here,’ I said promptly. ‘Tomorrow is Thursday, and I have a meeting.’

So did she. She’s our group treasurer, in fact. And she’s usually even more fanatical about Thursday meetings than I am. I thought she’d at least blush, letting her private life come before what she always claims is our civic duty; but she just said, ‘Oh, is it Thursday tomorrow?’ and flipped the toast under the grill.

‘Well?’ I asked. ‘Will you be coming to the meeting with me, or going out with him?’

She didn’t take it like the challenge I meant it to be. She had a little think, and then she said,

‘Oh, I think it might be a little late to tell him I’m backing out of our arrangement.’ And then she added brightly, as if I’d be pleased and relieved to hear it: ‘But you’ll still have time to meet him before you go off.’

‘That’ll be nice.’

The coldness of my response intimidated her, I know. She tried to change the subject.

‘How did you get along with the amphitheatre?’ she asked.

‘Splendid,’ I told her between gritted teeth. ‘Mind you, the gladiator is a wreck. His face has shrivelled and his legs are wobbly, and that carpet fluff we stuck on for his hair keeps falling out. I tell you, he looks over fifty.’

The toast was blackening under the grill, but she eyed me very steadily indeed.

‘I hope you’re going to be polite on Thursday,’ she said.

*

I know a storm warning when I hear one. On Thursday I was determined to make sure that there’d be nothing in the bad manners line that she could pin on me. When he rang the doorbell I made as if I simply hadn’t heard, so it was Jude who reached the door to let him in, while I stood in the shadow at the bottom of the stairs.

He stepped inside. He was Mum’s height, a little tubby, and he had silvery hair. His suit was nowhere near as smart as any of Simon’s. There again, he wasn’t a posh banker, though he did have the most enormous box of chocolates tucked under one arm.

He shifted the chocolates, and shook hands.

‘Judith,’ he said. ‘Right?’

She nodded. I sidled out of the shadow.

‘And Kitty.’

He smiled, and kept his hand stuck out for a moment, but I pretended that I hadn’t noticed it. And after one of those infinitesimal little pauses of his, he handed the huge box of chocolates to Jude.

They were those rich, dark, expensive, chocolate-coated cream mints. I’ve had a passion for them all my life. The box was three layers deep at the very least. I saw Jude’s eyes widen to saucers.

‘Are these for Mum?’ she asked.

‘No. They’re for you.’

He could have meant either you, or you two. It wasn’t clear. As he spoke, he was looking at Jude, but he did glance at me briefly. It was terribly clever. It meant that when I didn’t pile straight in with Jude, thanking him lavishly, he wasn’t in the slightest embarrassed. He didn’t have to be, you see. He might not have meant to include me at all.

‘I’ll tell Mum.’

Jude rushed upstairs, clutching her booty to her chest, and Gerald Faulkner and I were left alone in the hall. I thought I’d discomfit him with my silence, but no, not at all. He simply swivelled away as though he wanted to inspect the pictures on the wall, and peered closely at a photo of me as a toddler.

‘What a face!’ he said admiringly. (I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that.) ‘It looks as if it might be you.’

Really cunning, right? He doesn’t actually ask if it’s me, and then he can’t look silly if I don’t answer.

Just then Floss padded in through the front door, and started rubbing up against his trouser legs as if she’d known and loved him all her life. He stopped to pet her. ‘Puss, puss, puss.’ I thought now he’d be bound to try and get me to speak. It’s hard to fondle someone else’s cat in front of them, and not ask its name. But Gerald Faulkner’s made of sterner stuff than that.

‘Up you come, Buster,’ he said, scooping Floss up in his arms. ‘Who’s a nice Kitty?’

I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, either. I was still trying to work it out (and Floss was still purring shamelessly) when Jude came thundering downstairs.

‘Mum says to help yourself to a drink, and she’ll be down in a minute.’

‘Right-ho.’

He tipped the enraptured Floss into Jude’s arms, and ambled past me with a nod. I realized that he must have been in our house at least once before. How else would he know which door led into the kitchen? Jude padded after him like a pet dog, and I was forced to lean back against the door frame so I didn’t look ridiculous, standing there doggedly staring the other way.

He stood at one end of the cabinets and opened the first two doors, looked in, then closed them. He moved along and did the same again, and again. I said nothing, just leaned against the door frame and watched. But Jude caught on before he’d gone very much further.

‘Do you want glasses? They’re in here.’

And she rushed about, finding him the only sharp knife, and a lemon, and groping about on the floor for a couple of ice-cubes that slithered off the table. The two of them kept up a steady chat about nothing at all – how quickly bottled drinks lose their fizz, how long it takes for water to freeze in an ice tray. I was astonished. Jude’s not a talker, on the whole. It’s like the business of the telephone. She can go hours without bothering. But here she was, burbling away merrily to this perfect stranger.

He only spoke to me directly once. He’d just pushed my school bag further along the table to keep it safe from a small puddle of melted ice. The bag was open and my books were showing – not just France Aujourd’hui and Modern Mathematics, but also the things I’m reading on the bus and at bedtime: A Thousand Worst Jokes and that thriller Coma, about a hospital where the anaesthesia goes haywire.

He tapped the jacket of Coma with his knuckle.

‘Is this a book about punctuation?’ he asked me. ‘Because, if it is, the author can’t spell.’

I couldn’t resist.

‘A pity the other book isn’t A Thousand and One Worst Jokes,’ I snapped. ‘You could have offered them yours.’

There. I had spoken to him. I had done my bit. So I turned on my heel and walked out of the kitchen.

Mum was halfway down the stairs, wearing a frilly blouse and smart velvet trousers. I glowered at her and, misunderstanding, she said:

‘Listen, I’m really sorry about missing the meeting tonight.’

‘Missing the meeting?’

This was him. He had sneaked up behind me with the tray. On it four glasses fizzed, tinkling with ice, and I could smell the tang of lemons.

Mum took the glass he offered her, and smiled at him.

‘Kitty and I always go together on Thursdays,’ she explained. ‘She’s a bit cross because, now I’m not coming, she’ll have to take the bus.’

I hate it when people just assume they know the reasons for everything. I don’t mind taking the bus. I never have. I like Mum to come because our car ride together to the meeting is about the only time – the only time – I’m sure I’ve got her on my own. That’s one of the worst things about Dad moving away to Berwick upon Tweed. Jude and I hardly ever get to be alone with him or with Mum. We’re either both with the one or we’re both with the other. And they can’t split themselves in two, so one of us can have a private chat down the back garden while the other is pouring out her heart on the sofa.

I was about to say ‘I am not cross’ when Gerald Faulkner touched my elbow with his, proffering his tray.

‘Here,’ he said, nodding at the closest glass. ‘That one’s yours.’

Without thinking, I lifted the drink off the tray. I could have kicked myself. In spite of all the effort he’d put in to making them, I had intended to refuse mine. But at least I could still refuse to say thank you. Unfortunately, just as Mum opened her mouth to prompt me, he waved his hand as if to cut off all the profuse and gracious thanks on which he was sure I was going to embark any second, and said, as if I were eighteen, or something:

‘I didn’t put any alcohol in yours because I didn’t know if you liked the taste.’

That threw Mum. She doesn’t like anyone even to suggest within ten miles of my hearing that, one day, I might be old enough to go to a pub without being sent home to bed by the landlord. For someone to imply, even if only out of tact and politeness, that I might be on the verge of growing out of fizzy lemonade, well, that was more than she could handle. Changing the subject as fast as she could, she plucked at the frilly blouse and the velvet trousers, and asked us both:

‘Are these all right?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They’re all right.’ (I was still mad.)

She turned to him.

‘Gerald?’

He put his head on one side. ‘They’re lovely,’ he said. ‘Absolutely smashing. You look tremendous. But won’t you spoil me a little? Wear the blue suit with those tiny wooden toggle fasteners, the black diamond stockings and the shiny bow shoes.’

I stared. I absolutely stared. Was he some wardrobe pervert, or something? Dad lived with her for years, and he could no more have described any of her clothes like that than flown up in the air. In fact, I don’t think Dad even noticed what Mum wore. Obviously if she came down the stairs all tarted up to go out somewhere special, he’d say, ‘Oh, you look very nice.’ But ask her to go back up and change into something he liked even better? You have to be joking.

And her? Blush and shrug, and turn round to trot obediently back upstairs to change, holding her glass high? Was this my mum?

‘Lucky for you this is Request Night,’ she chirruped down from the landing.

No. This was not my mum. I was still staring after the apparition in horror when Gerald Faulkner slid one arm round Jude and one round me, and steered us both into the living room.

I shook him off. He moved away and sat on the sofa. Jude made one of her nests in the beanbag. I stood and scowled.

‘So,’ he said. ‘You’re all mixed up in it as well.’

Though I had no idea what he was talking about, I got the feeling he was speaking to me.

‘Mixed up in what?’

‘You know,’ he said, grinning. ‘The Woolly Hat Brigade. Close Down the Power Stations. Ban the Bomb.’

Fine, I thought. Lovely. Jolly nice for me. My mum’s busy upstairs turning herself into some simpering Barbie-doll for the sort of man she’d usually take a ten-mile hike to avoid, and I’m stuck downstairs with the political Neanderthal.

‘I’m in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, yes.’

Tones of voice don’t come much more frosty than mine was, I can tell you. But he didn’t even seem to notice. He was bent on telling me what he thought.

‘Nuclear power’s been invented now,’ he said. ‘You can’t just pretend that it hasn’t. You can’t disinvent it.’

‘You can’t disinvent thumb screws either,’ I snapped. ‘Or gas chambers. But you can dismantle them. And you should.’

He spread his hands.

‘But why? Nuclear weapons are our best defence.’

‘They’re no defence at all,’ I said. ‘Bombs that poison the planet you live on can’t defend you. You can’t use them. It would just be suicide.’

Now he was leaning forward and beaming at me. You could tell he was really getting into the discussion.

‘But you won’t ever have to use them,’ he argued. ‘Just having them around has kept the peace in Europe for forty years.’

There’s no point in trying to win someone round once they’ve made up their mind to think something different. All that happens is that you get frustrated and annoyed, and they get to practise their cruddy old arguments. And it’s a cosmic waste of time. I’ve spent hours arguing with stubborn old geezers in the street, while dozens of potential sympathizers strolled past and never even got to see the collecting can I might have been rattling under their noses. But I get so exasperated I can’t keep my mouth shut.

‘Some people have smoked high tar cigarettes for forty years too, and not got lung cancer,’ I said. ‘But they might get it next week. Or the week after. Something’s bound to go wrong some day, isn’t it? What sort of peace do you call that?’

‘Good enough for someone like me,’ he said shortly. And he turned to Jude, safely sunk in her beanbag stuffing chocolate mints, as if to say: This conversation is over.

I should have left it there, I know I should. But I was annoyed. I hate it when people insist on wrangling with you about something, then try to stop as soon as they see the arguments are no longer going all their way.

‘Good enough for someone like you?’ I repeated. ‘Maybe you mean someone as old as you? But it’s a bit selfish not to be bothered about what might happen to the planet just because you won’t be on it much longer.’

Two spots of pink were rising on his cheeks. I could tell I was really getting to him now.

‘You probably forget,’ he said coldly. ‘Someone as old as me remembers another time. A time when bombs weren’t so terrible as they are now, so countries didn’t have to be so careful not to start huge international wars. A time when in almost every city in Europe, orphans were picking their way through piles of stinking, smoking rubbish!’

Jude lifted her head and stared. Gerald Faulkner went scarlet. I think it suddenly occurred to him he’d got in pretty murky waters for what was supposed to be just a friendly first meeting.

I said:

‘Don’t look so worried, Jude. Mr Faulkner probably didn’t have too bad a time in the war. He probably spent it safe in some air-raid shelter.’

‘I lost my father in it. Will that do?’ he snapped.

I should have felt awful, I know I should. I should have been truly ashamed and embarrassed. But somehow I wasn’t. I felt angry and cheated, as if he’d somehow conjured a rabbit out of a hat to end the argument unfairly on his side. I couldn’t speak to him. I couldn’t say sorry. I just stared down at my feet and started to trace some complicated pattern with my shoe on the carpet. And it was Jude who whispered,

‘How old were you?’

‘About your age,’ he said.

Her eyes widened, but she didn’t speak. He didn’t seem to have anything more to say, either. So we just waited in silence, avoiding one another’s eyes, till Mum came clattering down the stairs.

She threw the door open.

‘Ta-ra!’

I expect she assumed the silence that greeted her was caused by her dramatic entrance. She certainly didn’t appear to sense anything was wrong. She stepped in, swirled round twice in front of us, then made straight for the mirror, muttering,

‘I think I’ve done up all these little toggles wrong.’

She looked terrific, honestly she did. I never would have thought that if she put together all the things he’d suggested, she’d end up looking as good as she did. And she was clearly pretty impressed as well.

‘You’re a genius, Gerald,’ she told him, leaning forward to see where she’d gone wrong fastening the toggles. ‘You ought to close down that printing business of yours, and take up dress designing instead.’

‘You’re looking lovely, Rosalind,’ he told her.

Rosalind! Nobody calls her Rosalind. I haven’t heard my mum called Rosalind since Granny stayed here on election night and caught her swearing at some man on the telly. Rosalind! I hate it when perfect strangers stroll in, quite uninvited, and don’t even bother to find out what other people call themselves.

‘Mum’s called Rosie,’ I told Gerald Faulkner. ‘And Judith is Jude.’

It was the first time I’d spoken since our spat about bombs. I said it pleasantly enough, since Mum was in the room to hear. And I thought he’d at least be grateful for the information. But, guess what.

‘Oh, I can’t possibly call your mother Rosie,’ he said. ‘She’s already Rosalind to me.’ Then he leaned towards the beanbag Jude was nesting in, and, without even asking, used a fingertip to flip a peppermint cream out of its hole. It spun high in the air, and he caught it between two fingers like a party trick, making Jude giggle. ‘And I can’t call your sister “Jude” either. Judith is such a lovely name. I couldn’t bring myself to shorten it.’

He smiled. Mum, if she saw the reflection of his expression in the mirror, might have believed that he was just being pleasant. But I was pretty sure that I could hear a message underneath: And if you had any fine feelings, you couldn’t either.

I turned my face away. Mum was up on her toes now, practically climbing in the mirror in her attempt to see the toggles more clearly. Her skirt rose up, revealing a couple more inches of black diamond stockings. I looked back hastily.

And, sure enough, there he was goggling at her. When Granny catches anyone staring, she says to them tartly: ‘Had your eyeful yet?’ But Mum’s forbidden Jude and me to say that any more, and I’d already been warned about being polite. So I just scowled at him so hard you’d think his eyeballs might have shrivelled up and dropped right out of his face.

But he just kept on goggling, while Mum stepped back, satisfied with the toggles at last, and took one more look at the rest of herself in the mirror.

Her face fell. She’s like me – no good at convincing herself for more than a couple of minutes that she looks all right. She plucked at the blue suit where it clung to her hips.

‘Oh, dear,’ she sighed. ‘I tell you, I’m dead fed up with my body.’

‘Give it to me, then.’

That’s what he said. I heard him. Mum said – no, Mum insisted afterwards that it was just a silly joke, it meant nothing, and I should never have made that dreadful fuss, or yelled ‘Goggle-eyes!’ at him like that, and slammed out of the door to rush off to the meeting. She said it absolutely ruined their evening. She said the restaurant he’d booked cost the earth, and everything they ate ended up tasting like carpet. He kept on blaming himself, and she was absolutely miserable. She said if I ever, ever behaved as badly as that again, I’d be more sorry than I could imagine.

I said that I was sorry anyway. I told her I hadn’t really meant any of the terrible things I said, but I was just a bit upset about her going out so much that week, and not helping with Jude’s amphitheatre like she promised, and missing the meeting. I said I wouldn’t ever call him Goggle-eyes again, or lose my temper, and I wasn’t sure why I’d been so cross with him anyway. He was quite nice really, I said. I didn’t mind him. In fact, when the row was finally over, and she’d put her arms around me, and I was blowing my nose over and over, and trying to stop crying, I even told her that I quite liked him really.

‘And did you?’ Helen leaned forward eagerly. In the small cupboard the shadows swayed, as footfalls on the staircase overhead rocked the dim light. ‘Did you quite like him really?’

‘Like him?’ I laughed. ‘You have to be joking. I wasn’t too keen on him from the start, I admit. But after that row –’ I thought back, surprised to remember so very vividly everything I felt. ‘After that horrible, horrible row with Mum, I absolutely hated him.’