Wonderboy Read online

  The other wonderful thing about me is the fact that I get on with things and never moan. There isn’t a selfish bone in your body, Maureen once told me. She is unaware that my entire skeleton is constructed from compressed bad feelings. She hasn’t seen me doing the fingers behind Tod’s head or swearing into the air, making the dust particles dance as I play a phone message from Marcus (“Staying in town tonight, darling, absolutely shattered. Call me if you need anything”).

  “Tod, sweetheart,” Maureen says, gathering him on her knee, “what would you like to do while Mum and Dad are away?” Her elegant skirt is made from squares of purple and pewter-colored velvet. Her nails are filed to sharp points, and painted to match the purple bits.

  “Don’t know, Gran,” Tod says.

  “Shall we take you to Leeds Castle?” David suggests. David is my father-in-law. His unruly gray hair falls in springy waves, like Beethoven’s. He wears a spotted tie, the point of which is tucked into the waistband of his casual brick-colored trousers. Tod is so excited about Leeds Castle that he leaps off Maureen’s knee and twirls around the living room with his eyes shut.

  As usual, Maureen and David have brought us an assortment of household items that are surplus to their requirements. The battered cardboard box contains a wicker-edged tray depicting a map of America—each state is a different color—a stainless steel trough that Maureen tells me is a fish steamer, and a miniature Big Ben with a working clock. When relatives offload their possessions, they never give you the good stuff. I hang on to the hope that Maureen and David will pull up in a rented van into which they have loaded their oval mahogany dining table with the secret leaf in the middle.

  Tod fetches Mazes and Labyrinths from his bedroom and jabs the photo of Leeds Castle’s grounds. “The apparently simple design of this maze, “he pants,” is enhanced by a tunnel which leads to an underground grotto studded with shells.”

  “Gosh,” says Maureen, “your reading’s excellent, Tod.”

  “He knows it by heart,” Marcus says.

  He’s been packing his black zip-up overnight bag. I can’t understand why he’s bringing three paperbacks, plus the newspaper folded open at the crossword page.

  “Do you, Tod?” Maureen says. “You’re my special, clever boy.”

  I can’t understand why children’s literary habits are so different from those of an adult. We crave variety; kids want the same old blah-blah-hedge-maze-at-Hampton-Court, blahblah. I don’t tell Maureen that I’m tempted to hide the blasted book, like I did with Guess How Much I Love You.

  “How’s work these days?” David asks.

  “Good,” Marcus says, assuming that he means his work. “We’re opening another office south of the river.”

  “Are you?” I ask. “You never mentioned that.”

  Maureen flashes a quick smile and follows Tod upstairs to his room. I wish she wouldn’t, I haven’t checked that it’s in a respectable state. “You know Tod still has milk at bedtime,” I say, stalking them.

  “No problem,” Maureen says.

  “And he likes the landing light on, and you’ll find his socks in the top left drawer and his pants in the right.”

  “We’ll be fine. Please don’t worry.”

  “He’ll only wear inside-out socks because he hates feeling the seams. And if you hear noises in the attic, it’s only—”

  “Shouldn’t you be on your way?”

  I had anticipated a tearful parting—that my son would crumple at the sight of me with my coat on—but he doesn’t seem to have registered that I am in the room, let alone about to swish off to a five-star hotel sixty miles from home.

  On the windowsill, above the permanently locked cupboard, is Tod’s clipboard. The sheet of A4, gripped by the silver clip, is headed “What Joe Does.” Tod has written, Joe is bilding a treehows. He sors wood I am going to asc if I can go in it.

  “Tod,” I say.

  “What, Mum?”

  “Be good.”

  There’s no Danny the Champion of the World in the car and Marcus doesn’t feel like listening to music. He drives with his mouth tightly set and a glazed look in his tired-looking eyes.

  According to the page I ripped out of the magazine, the pool at Millington Park is tiled with tiny mirrors. I wonder how my plain black swimsuit, and lackluster body, will bear up in such grand surroundings, and whether I’ll be faced with millions of reflections of myself. Packing was tricky. I have lost the knack of preparing for an overnight stay that does not require the yellow binoculars, Mazes and Labyrinths and Dog. I bought a slinky, sapphire-colored dress from a small, dusty shop in Lexley, and only because the shop lady said, “You must have it. Any man would fall in love with you in this dress, my dear.”

  It felt like we’d only just come down from the excitement of our wedding when Marcus took me to Paris. We slept in an ornately carved bed and spent all morning kissing and listening to street noises. Eventually Marcus went out, to clear his hungover head, and was gone for ages. Finally he returned with complicated underwear that had to be put on in a certain order. You couldn’t, for instance, pull on the knickers before the suspender belt.

  The corset thing laced up, like a gigantic baseball boot, and was made from black velvet. It took me forty-five minutes to squash myself into it. After all that sweating and effort, I realized I’d put it on upside down. We brought home an abstract painting—creamy ovals, like eggs, hovering in a blue-gray sky—and the beginnings of our son.

  I wonder now what we’ll get up to in our room at Millington Park. Maybe I should have brought a book. Clearly, Marcus intends to do lots of reading. I have stopped trying to initiate sex because I hate the way he lifts my hand from his body, like he’s putting it away, tidying up.

  “Marcus,” I say, “what do you think about visiting my dad?”

  He clicks on the car radio. “In Majorca, you mean?”

  “We could go in the summer holidays, see Dad’s baby, meet Freda.”

  He frowns and says, “For how long?”

  “A week, couple of weeks maybe. We wouldn’t have to stay with them. We could rent an apartment.”

  “We can’t afford it.” He glances at the map on my lap. He has worked out the route but still requires me to check that all’s going according to plan. “Where do we turn off again?” he asks.

  “Steepden. Why can’t we afford it? I thought the company was doing well, with that second office you’re opening. You said we could buy a new kitchen.”

  “I thought you were going to paint the one we have.” He starts humming to himself, something like a children’s song.

  “Well, I want to go,” I say suddenly.

  “We had that week on the Isle of Wight, Ro.”

  “Three days,” I remind him.

  “I can’t take any more time off.”

  “You can’t afford the time or the money—” I clamp my mouth shut.

  Marcus takes the corner too fast as he turns sharply left, into the undulating wooded grounds of Millington Park, the perfect haven for lovers.

  I wonder how he will cope faced with me, close up, in a red and gold bedroom. Whether he’ll start reading straight away, in order to plough through three novels in twenty-four hours. Being positive about this, a Boxed Brainwave insists that a stay in a hotel—“pack your sauciest undies, plus scented massage oil”—is just the ticket to remind a couple why they liked each other in the first place.

  Our room has a deer head on the wall, and a massive TV. When Tod was younger, and we wound up at some National Trust property with antlered creatures’ heads gazing mournfully from the walls, he would demand, “I want to look round the back,” despite being assured that there wasn’t a back, to view the rest of the animal. The magazine was right about opulent decor, but it hadn’t mentioned deer heads. I cannot imagine guests even getting around to taking the lid off their massage oil, being eyeballed by a sorrowful-looking animal with frayed ears.

  Marcus switches on the TV. I play with the bathr
oom fittings and discover three buttons that offer a choice of scents for your shower. Lavender, sage or ocean. I must try it out, discover whether the fragrance comes out as a scented steam, or dribbles directly on to your head.

  In the mirror, I spy more new wrinkles. When I asked Marcus if he thought I was aging at a terrifying rate, he said, “We’re all looking older, Ro,” which hardly had me brimming with joie de vivre.

  Marcus has a shower, then I do—lavender-scented—and pull on my new dress.

  “Like it?” I ask.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Does that mean you don’t like it?”

  He sighs. “I said it’s fine. It’s a lovely color. Now let’s go down to dinner.”

  That dress shop lady told me a lie.

  The restaurant tables are laden with too many glasses, ranging from normal-size to vast globes that could accommodate fish. There are two other couples in the restaurant. Being so exposed makes you terribly aware of your eating face.

  “I called someone about the attic noises,” I blurt out.

  “What noises?”

  “The scratchings. The man said it’s probably mice or birds. He says nests are a problem. They can be swarming with bugs, up to four thousand larvae in one nest, he said.”

  An underworked waitress refills our glasses. I wish she wouldn’t do that. Marcus’s was barely touched, mine drained. Having your glass refilled emphasizes what a glugger you are.

  “He’s coming on Monday,” I continue, “to find out what’s going on.”

  Marcus has stopped listening. I can tell when his hearing mechanism has been switched off, because his eyes film over and his jaw slackens. My pâté is an unappealing pinky gray. I know, that’s what pâté is supposed to look like. Now it’s ruining any beneficial effects from my lavender shower, and I can’t figure out why I ordered it.

  As we struggle through our main courses I notice how smart Marcus looks in his light blue shirt, with his hair freshly cropped. He’s too clean for a dirty weekend, and not drinking enough.

  After dinner, in the bar, I force more wine on him. I can’t face our room, with that big telly and deer head. Two girls in beaded tops are chain smoking and bragging that they never eat carbohydrates after eleven a.m. One of the girls adds that it’s the only way to remain a size eight. “If I’d discovered this earlier,” she says, “I’d never have eaten bread in my life.”

  The barmaid is dismantling a PC and stabbing its insides with a tiny screwdriver. The thin girls have stopped talking. They keep glancing at Marcus. He smiles, and they beam back at him, two teasing, glossy red mouths.

  Marcus lies back on the red satin bedspread and flicks on the TV with the remote. A boy of around Tod’s age is playing the clarinet with grim concentration. At this point, according to Boxed Brainwaves, I should be rubbing oil all over myself, like I’m a jammed-up engine part, and slipping into my finery. As I’ve already tried the shower, I run a bath, adding milk-and-honey lotion from a complimentary bottle with a gold top.

  If you want to know something, just ask. Sarah, a word, said in his sleep. Well, I say things in my sleep. One morning Marcus told me I’d lurched upright during the night and shouted “Raisin.” It didn’t mean anything.

  I keep topping up the bath with hot water. The clarinet has been replaced by a cello, probably being energetically sawed by a three-year-old protégé. I wonder what Marcus is doing. Rereading the Stalingrad book? Or watching those young musicians and wishing his own son displayed such virtuosity? He didn’t watch TV in Paris. We were newer then. We didn’t have an attic, a utility room or Sarah with her wretched professionally plucked eyebrows.

  When I climb out of this bath, I will light the candles I brought, turn off the cellist and ask Marcus why this isn’t like Paris.

  “Ro?” he calls. “What are you doing in there?”

  “Still in the bath—won’t be long.”

  “You’ve been over an hour. Are you okay?”

  Sarah, just a name. She could be anybody. In Coffee & Books is a health section where we keep parenting manuals and a small selection of baby name books. I looked up Tod; it means “fox.” I liked that—none of your fiery-warrior nonsense. Ro, or rather my full name, Rowena, means “white mane.” I chose to interpret this as a streamlined and utterly elegant creature, rather than one destined to go gray prematurely.

  I step out of the bath, pull on a Millington Park bathrobe and find Marcus asleep, fully clothed on red satin, a breakfast order form resting in a loosely coiled hand.

  I looked up Sarah in that baby name book. It means princess. Sometimes I feel that life is snorting right in my face.

  chapter 15

  We’re All Right

  Mum and Dad went away Gran and Grandad lookd after me. I playd in Joe’s garden he is bilding a wild garden he is going to paint picturs of it at difrint times of day even at nite. I went in the tree-hows. Grandad cudent get up the ladda.

  “Tod? Tod! I want to speak to you.” I am yelling out of his bedroom window, to the front garden where he is feebly batting the Swingball.

  “What?” he shouts back.

  “I didn’t say you could go in Joe’s garden by yourself.”

  “I wasn’t by myself, I was with—”

  “We hardly know him, Tod.”

  Across the road, Joe emerges from the tree house and jumps down to the grass.

  “Don’t you like Joe?” Tod yells up.

  “It’s not that. It’s just—”

  Joe sees me and waves.

  “Can’t hear you,” Tod mutters.

  “I said, hadn’t you better come in now? It’s going to start raining any second.”

  He stares up at a searing blue sky. Joe starts laughing. I bang Tod’s bedroom window shut.

  Pest Controller wears a dark green shirt and a lighter green tie. He has manicured nails and glossy black shoes that squeak as he walks. There is nothing about his appearance to suggest that he has anything to do with the extermination of vermin.

  Tod is at Harry’s for tea today. I was amazed when Tina invited him. “Harry thinks Tod’s very funny,” she said, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

  I reminded Tod several times that Tina would be picking him up from school, and also that he shouldn’t have played in Joe’s garden with Gran and Grandad. Yes, it was kind of Joe to help Maureen up the rope ladder—she’d been determined, apparently—but he must never do that again, and he’d better not mention it to Dad.

  Although I’m concerned that Tina might try to trim Tod’s eyebrow with her hairdressing scissors, I am relieved that he’s not here. Pest Controller’s talk of rodent behavior would undoubtedly trigger bad dreams. “Noticed any evidence of rats?” he asks, pacing the edge of our front garden and shouting the last word so all of Chetsley learns of our rodent problem.

  “Of course not,” I retort. “How would they get into the attic?”

  “Rats can climb gutters. You’re close to the common—isn’t there a stream down there? Look, here are signs of a run.” He indicates a flattened strip in the unkempt section of lawn that Marcus missed with Carl’s mower.

  “And this pigeon,” he continues, indicating the torn remains of a bird I have failed to remove from our property. “A rat could have done this. Have you noticed anything nibbled or chewed in the house?”

  “No, nothing.” I’m starting to wonder if we really like Gorby Cottage or should move to a smart, modern place like Lucille and Carl’s, with an automatic garage door and no infestations. There are too many creatures living here: Dalmatian fish, rats, maybe some Anobium punctatum that Mr. Leech failed to blast with his spray. I wish now that I hadn’t asked Pest Controller to come. Until he started on about rats, I had viewed our attic inhabitants as noisy but ultimately untroublesome guests. It’s not as if they require clean linen or create extra washing up.

  At least he arrived in an ordinary Fiat Punto and not a van marked Vermin Extermination.

  He is heading upstairs
now, to the loft, which he accesses via our stepladder. His tie dangles through the hatch as he pokes his head down, reporting, “There are droppings, but they look pretty ancient. Your loft’s too awkward a shape for me to check all the crannies.”

  He clambers down, brushes thick dust from his trousers and checks the bedrooms. In Tod’s room he rattles the door of the cupboard under the window. “Can you open this?” he asks.

  “Sorry, no. We can’t find the key.”

  “I’ll take another look at your garden,” he says.

  At the back of the house, he steps daintily past the open-topped vat of horse manure Carl asked the chef at the Poacher’s to drop round for us. We must dig the manure into our compost to accelerate decomposition; that is, when we have compost to dig it into. Carl is such a believer in the nourishing power of manure that he has been known to wander the streets of Chetsley, shoveling deposits into a carrier bag.

  Pest Controller and I trudge round the garden. Across the road, Joe is in the tree house, or I assume he’s there because there’s hammering going on, then some sawing.

  “Does that thing look safe to you?” the man asks.

  “What thing?”

  “That eyesore in the tree. I wouldn’t want that if I lived here. You could take steps, if it was bothering you.”

  “It’s not bothering me at all.”

  “I wouldn’t like it. You could say it’s causing a visual disturbance. And that lawn must be at least a foot high. Your mice could be coming from there.”

  “I thought you said it was rats.”

  Just then, a bird flies to the eaves and disappears into our roof space. We have a bird, not rats; a timid, brownish thing, whose most dastardly act is to poop on your windscreen.

  “Birds are trouble,” the man warns, tweaking the end of his tie. “They bring bird mites, carpet beetles, biting insects.” He stares at Tod’s Swingball on the lawn. “They bite children,” he adds. “Their droppings eat into your masonry.”

  He offers to return with a colleague, block up holes in the eaves and do his utmost to remove the nest. Joe’s hammering stops and he steps onto the platform that juts out from the tree house.