Take Mum Out

Chapter Five

‘Now, Alice, I’ve been thinking about your weight,’ my mother announces as the boys and I arrive on her doorstep next morning. It’s a thing with Mum – my appearance, I mean. Considering her fierce intelligence – until her recent retirement she was a university professor of Medieval Studies – she places an awful lot of emphasis on how people look. It’s probably why I’m wearing my favourite skirt and top, plus a cardi I absolutely love; cashmere, in a beautiful deep-raspberry shade, bought for my last birthday by Ingrid.

‘Have you, Mum? I’m kind of fine with the way I am,’ I say as the three of us follow her into her ancient, low-slung cottage. It stands alone, as if sulking, in the treeless landscape of the North Lanarkshire moorlands and seems to sag in the middle, as if someone has sat on it.

‘Well,’ she goes on, smoothing back her pewter-flecked hair which she wears in a long, low ponytail, ‘I just thought you might be interested in this diet I cut out for you. You know, if you wanted to lose a few pounds.’

Logan suppresses a snigger as we blink in the gloom of her kitchen.

‘What sort of diet is it?’ I ask pleasantly. The one where you exist on some terrible, fart-making soup? Or staple your mouth shut and eat nothing at all?

‘Oh, I’ve got it here somewhere …’ She frowns and starts flicking through mountains of ratty old paperwork on the gnarled oak table. We’ve been here for less than five minutes and already I can sense a vein throbbing violently in my forehead. It’s my fault; I should have spent the forty-minute drive mentally revving myself up into the sparkling game-show hostess persona that’s required on these occasions, instead of berating the boys for moaning about visiting Grandma. ‘It’s my Sunday,’ Logan kept lamenting, as if he’d been slaving away at the coalface all week. ‘I was gonna do stuff.’

‘I don’t mind going,’ Fergus conceded, ‘but we’re not staying long, are we? Like, we’re not gonna be there all day?’

And now it’s too late. I’m gritting my teeth in defensiveness, while trying to reassure myself that being a size twelve is actually fine, at my age – at any age, in fact. We’re hardly talking morbidly obese. But then, I have never matched up to Mum’s expectations of what a daughter should be. She couldn’t understand why I never gleaned the clutch of A grades that had come so easily to her; the fact that I enjoyed drawing, baking and simply playing as a child left her utterly baffled. I don’t blame her especially – she’s just made that way – and, thankfully, she’s a little warmer to her grandsons.

As Logan and Fergus install themselves on the scuffed leather sofa beneath the kitchen window, Mum continues her search for a snippet of paper which will save me from a gastric bypass operation. Newspapers are piled up on wonky wooden chairs, and bookshelves are crammed with formidable tomes, all dusty and sticky with kitchen grease in which evr’thing is spellte lyke this. Finding her library oddly fascinating, Fergus selects one from a shelf.

‘What does this mean, Grandma?’ he asks, proceeding to read in a grand, theatrical voice: ‘“Tehee, quod she and clapte the window to!”’

‘Hang on a minute, love,’ she says distractedly.

‘I think it means he’s telling her to shut the window,’ I venture.

‘But why?’

‘Um, maybe it’s draughty …’

‘Yeah, but what’s the “tehee” bit about?’ Fergus wants to know.

I glance at Mum in the hope that she’ll stop excavating the paperwork and answer him. ‘I think she’s laughing at someone,’ I say, bobbing down to help her gather up a heap of yellowing journals which have slid off the table in a dusty heap.

Fergus frowns. ‘Is it meant to be funny?’

‘What’s that, Fergus?’ my mother asks.

‘Mum was just translating something Medieval for us,’ Logan says with a smirk.

‘Was she?’ Mum chuckles. ‘Good luck with that, Alice. It’s not like you to take an interest in my library.’ I form a rictus grin. Mum is of the impression that I can barely manage to read anything more taxing than Grazia, which these days isn’t too far from the truth.

Having dumped the book on the table, Fergus pulls something from his jeans pocket. ‘Look, Grandma – I’ve got a translator.’

‘That’s nice,’ she says. ‘I’m glad you’re taking an interest in language, Fergus.’

‘Yes,’ I say quickly, ‘but it doesn’t speak Medieval. In fact it doesn’t make much sense at all. Please put it away, darling.’ Before it starts squawking about rape …

‘Ah – here it is, I knew I’d kept it safe for you.’ Mum brandishes a scrap of paper as if it’s a treasure hunt clue and presses it into my hand.

‘Thank you, Mum.’

‘Let me know how you get on …’

‘Of course I will.’ If I’m not too sodding fat to stagger to the telephone …

‘Anyway,’ she says, visibly relieved now, ‘I thought I’d do burgers for lunch, okay, boys? That’s what you like best, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, that’s great, Grandma,’ Fergus says dutifully. I drop my gaze to the diet. In fact, it isn’t newfangled; rather, it appears to have been snipped out of a Medieval copy of Woman’s Own.

Breakfast: half banana, black tea/coffee.

Lunch: One spoon cottage cheese, 4 Tuc biscuits.

Dinner: Tinned hot dog sausage (NO BREAD), unlimited green beans.

As Mum clatters around, managing to locate a frying pan in a jam-packed cupboard, I scrunch up the diet into a tight ball in my fist. I know I’m being churlish but I can’t help it.

‘I hear your father’s taking a holiday soon,’ Mum is telling me now. ‘An Easter holiday, like one a year isn’t good enough for him.’ She extracts a clear plastic carton of burgers from the fridge.

‘Really? I hadn’t heard. Where are they going?’

‘Penzance!’ she exclaims, in a voice more suited to ‘the Maldives’.

‘Well,’ I say carefully, ‘maybe you should have a holiday too. A change of scene might be good for you.’

She frowns, assessing my apparently ballooning figure. ‘Who would I go with?’

‘Mum, you have plenty of friends. I’m sure Penny or Joan would love to go away with you.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she says crossly.

A small silence descends as she lights the gas ring with a dented silver wand and sloshes yellow oil from a large unlabelled bottle into the pan.

‘When are we going home?’ Fergus mouths at me.

‘Never,’ I hiss, prompting him to mime a throat-cutting motion.

‘Please, Mum,’ he mouths back.

I shake my head and whisper, ‘You will die here.’

Mum turns back to us from the cooker. ‘I’m afraid I’m not doing chips, boys. Can’t be doing with all that fat.’

‘That’s fine, Grandma,’ Logan mutters.

‘Oh, I brought you these,’ I say in an overly perky voice, lifting the tin of meringues from my bag and removing the lid. ‘I’ve been testing new flavours. You can give me your verdict if you like.’

‘That’s kind of you,’ she says, wincing as if I might have expelled them out of my bottom.

‘I thought you might like the chocolate ones. I made them specially.’

She forces a tight smile. ‘So, as I was saying, it’s all right for your father and his fancy woman to swan off here, there and everywhere at the drop of a hat …’

‘Uh-huh,’ I murmur, unwilling to be drawn into a character assassination of Dad right now. Okay, he left Mum for another woman – Brenda McPhail who, with her reedy ex-husband, ran a dump of a pub on the moors called The Last Gasp (we are not talking gastro-pub, although they do stock a fine range of pork scratchings). Understandably, Mum was horrified; she’d had not an inkling that anything had been going on. In his holey sweaters and faded jumbo cords, Dad – an academic like Mum – hardly seemed capable of sparking a scandal among the sparse community in this blasted landscape. But eight months ago, he and Brenda hotfooted it to Devon, where they now keep chickens and goats. Although he’s rarely in touch, I can’t bring myself to hate him for it. After decades of Mum pointing out his failings, perhaps Brenda made him realise he didn’t have to live out the rest of his years feeling like a colossal disappointment after all.

Mum slices open four rolls on the cluttered worktop. ‘Can I help you with anything?’ I ask, conscious of hovering ineffectually.

‘No, it’s fine.’

A tense silence descends, and I glance at my boys, both of whom are slumped on the sofa as if awaiting an unpleasant medical procedure. At times like this, I’d give anything for a sibling to share some of this. As it is, I feel guilty if we don’t visit, and guilty when we do – for dragging my boys here and because, in truth, I’d dearly love to be somewhere else too. In fact, coming here is more guilt-making than staying at home.

Plus, I’m annoyed with myself for not having the gumption to say, Please stop badmouthing the boys’ granddad in front of them. It’s really not what we came here for.

‘Logan’s exams are coming up,’ I remark, sensing myself ageing rapidly, like a speeded-up film of the lifecycle of a rose. By the time we leave, I’ll be entirely withered.

‘I’m sure you’ll do well,’ Mum remarks. ‘You’ve always been a very bright boy.’

‘Thanks, Grandma,’ Logan mumbles.

‘You’ll be studying hard in the holidays, I’d imagine?’

‘Well, um, Dad’s taking us to the Highlands …’

‘But you’ll take all your books with you—’

‘Of course I will,’ he says quickly, flushing a little. I see a flicker of tension in his jaw, and am seized by an urge to hug him and say I’m so sorry it’s always like this, and I wish you had a storybook granny with an endless supply of cuddles and cakes and, actually, she does care about you. She just wants you and your brother to have successful lives, perhaps to compensate for me not having risen to the dizzy heights of academia … I start extracting plates from the cupboard and cutlery from the drawer, wondering if it would be so terrible to stop off to buy cigarettes on the way home, plus strong drink like vodka or gin.

‘How are you getting along at school, Fergus?’ Mum asks.

‘Great,’ he says brightly. ‘It’s loads better than primary school …’

‘Why’s that?’

‘’Cause we’re allowed to go up the street and get chips.’

She throws him a disappointed look, then turns to rip the cellophane lid off the carton of burgers, allowing a pungent odour to escape. Dear God, they stink. She’s planning to poison us all with rotten beef. Adopting the nonchalant air of someone planning to shoplift, I stroll around the kitchen table, bending to stroke Brian, her malevolent ginger tom, who hisses sharply from behind the propped-up ironing board. Working my way towards the cooker now, I casually peer into the pan where the slimy burgers have landed with feeble sizzle.

‘Um … are you sure they’re okay, Mum?’ I venture.

‘Of course they are. Why wouldn’t they be?’

‘Er, don’t you think they look a bit … peaky?’ What is wrong with me, an almost-forty-year-old woman, terrified of crossing my mother?

‘They’re fine,’ she declares as the remainder of our weekend flashes before me: of the boys puking copiously during the car journey home, culminating in twenty-four hours spent in bed. I can handle her cooking – I’ll stuff my burger in my shoe or something, as a sort of grease-soaked insole – but my boys won’t know unless I alert them. ‘I tried that diet myself,’ Mum informs me.

‘Did you? Well, you look great. Very trim.’ It’s true: she could spear someone’s eye out with those collarbones. Her moss-green scoop-necked sweater and dog-tooth-checked trousers are probably a size eight. Defeated now, I perch on the edge of the table and survey my poor sons who are about to ingest a swarm of seething bacteria. I’m their mother, for crying out loud; I can’t allow that to happen.

‘Don’t-eat-the-burgers,’ I mouth as Mum turns back to the stove.

‘Eh?’ Fergus says loudly.

‘The meat’s off. It’ll kill you.’

‘What?’ Logan barks as Mum heads for the fridge to rummage for her pre-war ketchup.

‘Don’t eat the meat!’ I mouth again, more forcefully this time.

‘Mum, what are you on about?’ Fergus asks.

I make a petrified face, indicating the pan on the hob, then poke two fingers into my mouth to mime vomiting. Logan bursts out laughing and Fergus stares at me uncomprehendingly.

‘She’s gone mental,’ he whispers to his big brother. ‘This is it – she’s finally flipped.’

Mum turns back to us, setting down the sauce bottle, then goes in search of the generic lime cordial that I suspect only sees daylight during our visits. While she checks several crammed cupboards, I glance around wildly, wondering how to alert my boys to their imminent fate. If only we had some kind of secret family code, like a series of coughs, or knew semaphore or Morse …

Pretending to study a newspaper from the pile, I squint at the fiendishly difficult, completed crossword. While Mum continues her search for the cordial, I snatch a pencil from an overstuffed jam jar on a shelf and quickly scribble in the margin: BURGERS BAD DO NOT EAT!!!

Logan frowns at my scrawling. ‘Shit,’ he breathes.

‘What’ll I do?’ Fergus whispers, dark eyes wide. This is the tricky bit. We can’t eat them, obviously, but nor am I keen on incurring Mum’s wrath. Would it be possible for us to somehow dispose of our burgers, perhaps by throwing them out of the window, if she happens to leave the table? Could I send her off on a fake errand – to find us a different kind of sauce, or a selection of fine pickles? No, she doesn’t exactly run around fetching things for people, and anyway, the small kitchen windows are all painted shut. Could we feed the burgers to Brian? I slide my gaze over to where he is eyeing us from his ironing board hidey-hole. No – that wouldn’t be fair. Even if he did manage to guzzle them, they might poison or even kill him, and I’d never forgive myself for that. We all take our seats at the table as Mum slides the burgers into four rolls.

‘There’s one spare,’ she announces. ‘Who wants the extra?’

‘No thanks,’ the boys blurt out.

‘Aren’t you having one, Mum?’ I ask as she brings a small plate of crackers, and a slice of the industrial dyed orange cheese she allows herself as a treat, to the table.

‘Oh, I can’t be doing with all that rich food in the middle of the day.’

‘Um, I’m not that hungry either, Grandma,’ Logan says meekly. Poor boy, usually so full of swagger. In less than an hour he’s been reduced to a husk.

‘Come on, a growing lad like you needs to eat.’ She cuts a tiny triangle the size of a Trivial Pursuit piece from her cheese, and pops it into her mouth.

Fergus clears his throat. ‘I’ve been thinking of becoming vegetarian. Or even vegan and, you know, just eating plants.’

Mum laughs dryly. ‘Whatever for?’

‘Because I don’t think such a big proportion of the earth should be used for cows to graze on.’

‘Well, you can be vegan at home,’ Mum says, prompting him to throw me a stricken expression which says: HELP. As both boys nibble at the edges of their rolls, I pick up mine and give it a discreet sniff. It smells oddly sweet, and I picture Erica-the-Inspector’s face if she were to examine it.

‘Well, tuck in,’ Mum prompts us.

I pause, feeling her curranty eyes fixed upon me across the table, and aware of the boys throwing me panicky looks. I’ve always known what to do in a crisis; I’ve managed to eradicate verrucas, threadworms and nits, and didn’t even freak out when Fergus plucked King Nit from his head and made me watch it writhing on his history jotter. Yet now, when they depend on me to be quick-witted, I am useless. What kind of mother sits back while her children ingest rancid flesh? Then a small miracle happens. Having emerged from behind the ironing board, Brian prowls towards us across the kitchen. He gives each of us a sly look, then stops on the murky Aztec-patterned rug where his entire body appears to spasm. While I’ve never been one to derive pleasure from seeing an animal in distress, his actions – causing Mum to leap up and hurry towards him – give me just enough time to snatch all three of our burgers from their buns and ram them into the small side pockets of my cashmere cardigan.

‘Is he okay, Mum?’ I ask as Brian vomits and the boys convulse with silent mirth.

‘He’s been doing this a lot lately,’ she mutters, wiping up the small pool of puke with the cloth from the sink. ‘He’s been on a cheaper brand of food since your father left and it’s not agreeing with him.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’

‘I can’t afford his trout pâté any more,’ she adds.

I take a big bite of roll, hoping that any beef residue is minimal. ‘That’s a real pity.’

‘Poor Brian,’ Fergus adds for effect. ‘Maybe he should see a vet, Grandma.’

‘As if I can afford that,’ she exclaims, rinsing out the cloth at the sink while I give my cardi pockets a tentative pat. Grease is already seeping through the fine raspberry knit. I could grumble about this, and point out that it’s the only cashmere garment I’ve ever owned – but its ruination is a small price to pay for my boys’ wellbeing.

As I finish my bare roll, my mobile rings. ‘Excuse me a sec, Mum,’ I say quickly, marching to the back door and letting myself out into the scrubby back garden.

‘You okay to talk for a minute?’ Kirsty asks.

‘Yes, but I’m at Mum’s …’ I fill her in on the rank burger incident, knowing that Kirsty, who hasn’t eaten ‘anything with a face’ for twenty-five years, will be sufficiently appalled.

‘And your lovely cardi’s ruined?’ she laments. ‘That’s awful. Ugh. Anyway, this’ll cheer you up. I think I’ve found a man for you …’

‘Who is he?’ I glance at the row of industrial beige knickers wafting gently on Mum’s washing line.

‘His name’s Stephen and he’s our new dentist …’

‘A dentist,’ I repeat.

She laughs. ‘Keep an open mind. He’s brilliant with the kids – they actually look forward to going now. And I ran into him again at a birthday do Hamish was invited to. You know how most dads tend to hide away in corners at kids’ parties?’

‘Tom never went to any,’ I say with a snort. ‘It’s a miracle he actually showed up to Logan and Fergus’s.’

‘Well, Stephen was great,’ she declares, ‘getting stuck in with the games, being the wolf in What’s the Time, Mr Wolf? and helping the kids to build a fire at the bottom of the garden. He had them all toasting marshmallows …’

‘Wow,’ I breathe, unable to decide whether this is a hugely attractive quality, or smacks of over-zealous and eager to please. Perhaps I’m just not used to party-fabulous dads.

‘His daughter Molly’s around eight,’ Kirsty goes on. ‘She’s in Hamish’s class. He’s a single dad, has been for years as far as I can make out …’

‘And you’re sure he wants to meet someone?’

‘Oh yes. We got chatting and I told him all about you. What else? Um, he’s tall, slim, fairish hair, greenish eyes … he’s just nice, you know? Good-looking but not intimidatingly so.’ She pauses. ‘I did warn him that you’re a pusher of meringues and he seemed fine with that.’

I laugh, my spirits rising as I fish the burgers from my pockets and fling them one by one, like miniature frisbees, over the drystone wall.

‘Okay,’ I say, ‘but can we leave it until the boys are away on their jaunt with Tom? I feel bad, expecting Logan to look after Fergus all the time.’

‘Yes, like, about once a month,’ she says, not unkindly.

I bite my lip. ‘It’ll just be simpler that way.’ This isn’t entirely true; after amuse-bouche night, I need time to rev myself back up into a dating frame of mind.

By the time I’m back inside, Mum has produced a collection of illustrations showing Scotland in the Middle Ages. The scene – of the boys dutifully studying the creased, fly-speckled pictures that she’s spread out on the table to show them – twists my heart.

‘That’s amazing, Gran,’ Logan says gamely.

‘Yeah, they’re really cool,’ Fergus adds, stifling a yawn.

She turns to him and smiles. ‘Before you go, let me have a look at that translator of yours.’ He hands it to her and, while she takes the thing to pieces and prods at its innards, I select a leather-bound book from a shelf and flip it open at a random page:

With hym ther was his sone, a yong squier

A lovyere and a lusty bacheler …

A lusty bachelor! Could a child-friendly dentist fit into this category? We all wait patiently as Mum fiddles about with the gadget’s innards, then finally puts it back together. ‘There,’ she says, handing it to Fergus.

‘Is it fixed?’ he gasps.

‘Yes, just needed resetting. Go on, ask it a question.’

He turns to me, perhaps fearful of what it might say.

‘Er … “Where is the station?”’ I ask nervously. He taps some buttons. Où est la gare? it chirps.

‘Wow, Grandma.’ Fergus grins. ‘That’s amazing. You’re so clever.’

‘It really wasn’t difficult,’ she blusters, as if unaccustomed to praise. We say our goodbyes then, all heading outside where I give her a hug; it’s like trying to cuddle an icicle. She is a little more receptive to Logan and Fergus’s hugs, and doesn’t appear to notice their eagerness to jump into the car.

Before I climb in, perhaps in an attempt to spark a glimmer of warmth between us, I add, ‘Oh, I meant to tell you, Mum – that was Kirsty who called earlier. She’s setting me up on a blind date.’

‘Really?’ Mum fixes me with small pale grey eyes. ‘Who with?’

‘Some dentist guy.’

‘A dentist,’ she repeats, clearly impressed. ‘Ooh, you’ll be glad I gave you that diet then.’ So what’s she implying now? That I have fat teeth?

Chapter Six

‘That was so embarrassing,’ Logan declares as we pull away. ‘Never put me in a situation like that again, Mum. Can’t believe you did that to me.’

Like I flaunted the use-by date on those burgers!

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I stopped you being poisoned, all right? I might’ve even saved your life. And I ruined my best cardi.’

‘That’s disgusting,’ Fergus crows from the back seat, ‘putting cooked food in your pockets. You’d go mad if we did that.’

Jesus Christ. We reach the main road and I speed up, the cigarette and gin scenario becoming more appealing by the minute.

‘There wasn’t an awful lot of choice, Fergus. Anyway, I think you had the right idea. Next time we go, I’ll tell her we’ve gone vegetarian …’

‘You mean we’re going again?’ Logan whines.

‘Well, at some point, yes. I mean, that wasn’t the last time you’ll ever see Grandma.’

‘No, I know that,’ he says gruffly.

‘And she loves our visits,’ I add. ‘Being around such vibrant young people brings sunshine and sparkle into her life.’