Young Wives' Tales Read online

  It was so silly and emotive of her to insist that Pete and I offering to pay school fees was ‘guilt money’. Nonsense. He just wants the best for them. I think at that point in the discussion she said something offensive about not wanting them to grow up to be pompous, social-climbing twits as most public schoolboys are. It doesn’t take a genius to guess who she was having a pop at when she said that. She said she believed the children would be just as well educated at the local state school and added that private education is a waste of money and only for parents who splash out cash as a substitute for time or emotion. Easy for her to say as she lives in Holland Park; of course the state schools are terrific there. Pete and I lived in Soho at the time, where education is considered an inconvenient interruption to a life of crime and vandalism. But somehow Rose got the upper hand. The way she told it made it appear virtuous to send your kids to state school and positively evil to educate independently. I feel so terribly out of sync. Spending on education used to be considered wise, a privilege yes, but not a source of shame. Certainly better than spending on handbags or curtains. Now the opposite is true.

  Of course I couldn’t send Auriol to a private school while Henry and Sebastian were attending the ‘lovely little state school, just around the corner’. If I’d done that I would have played directly into Rose’s hands. We’d never have heard the last of the disparity between the children. God, Rose is irritating.

  So, we had to move. Somehow Pete persuaded me that it would be a good idea to move nearer to Rose and the boys. ‘Much friendlier.’Again I’m not à la mode. I don’t want to be so very twenty-first-century about our irregular family. I’m actually happier with the role of wicked stepmother; at least one isn’t fettered with annoying expectations. We aren’t one great big happy family. He divorced her; that shows a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the relationship, wouldn’t you agree? I’m quite keen for us to settle into a state of active dislike bordering on loathsome anger. I don’t want to be one step away from polygamy, which is what staying pally with the ex amounts to.

  I’m not exactly sure how it happened; I was dealing with a big project in Hong Kong and by the time I got home Pete had made an offer on a house just round the corner from Rose’s, instructed a conveyancer and solicitor and all but booked the removal van. Good God, had the man lost his mind? No, I admit I hadn’t read his e-mails especially carefully; it was a very busy time. And yes, when I did check his messages I did find a series of increasingly frantic notes forwarding details of the house he’d found us and asking if I was happy for him to progress with buying it. OK, I confess, I might have vaguely mumbled that I agreed it would be sensible for Pete to live near the boys but I hadn’t meant it.

  I take comfort in the fact that the house he chose for us is enormous. Not quite as enormous as the one he and Rose used to own, but people forget, we do have two families to support now. So, once ensconced in Holland Park, there seemed no reasonable alternative – the children are all now at the same school. Mr Walker, the headmaster, was a poppet. He was eating out of my hand after just one meeting. Auriol leapfrogged the waiting list, even though strictly speaking we are a tiny bit outside the catchment area. Nothing untoward, we just evoked the sibling priority rule.

  In fact, Holland Park is quite fun. Not so desperately of the moment as Soho, where I lived as a bachelor girl, but I’ve done the late bars, twenty-four-hour shops and the minimalist home thing – it’s very over. Holland Park is unquestionably appropriate for this stage of my life. You can’t flick your hair without hitting an organic pâtisserie or a children’s yoga centre. And it is a total joy that Connie and Luke are just around the corner in Notting Hill. Despite my reputation as Ice Queen, even I admit that there’s nothing sweeter on this earth than watching Connie’s daughter, Fran, play with Auriol. Besides, Auriol does adore her big brothers; especially Sebastian, who looks most like his father – he grew out of his red-haired stage. Henry still has Rose’s colouring – summers are a curse for him.

  I just hope the school does the job. If not, I’ll have her out of there before the end of the academic year, but I can’t imagine I’ll have much to worry about; after all, Auriol’s genes are phenomenal – she’ll be straight As all the way. I wonder if she’ll be Mary or the Angel Gabriel in the school nativity? Mary doesn’t get to say much but she is on stage all the time. But the Angel Gabriel normally has a darling costume. I must give that some thought and then put my recommendation to Mr Walker.

  Right now I’d better go and buy those double espressos.

  3

  Monday 4 September

  John

  Bloody hell – is the Queen in town or something? What’s with the traffic round here? I understood from Craig that his school was a sleepy, leafy bit of snooty Holland Park. I finally find a space to park about half a mile from the school and ditch my Z4 series BMW. As I get out of the car, I can’t help but caress her wing. She’s a beauty. I’d marry her if she had tits. What a ride. I soon ascertain that the gridlock is caused by frantic mothers who drive four-by-fours; I’ve heard about these women. You know, on the radio some DJ is always taking a pop at this weird breed that drive a four-by-four but loathe the sight of mud and break out in a rash if they leave a London postcode. I’d thought they were an urban myth, not unlike everyone believing they are four snogs away from their fantasy celebrity snog. Turns out they are not just an urban myth, crap to chatter about to fill the airwaves, they do exist. For the record, crap filling the airwaves is fine by me. I’m a simple guy. I accept that crap fillers are a big part of what life’s about.

  I watch these demon mothers aggressively out-stare one another. They mouth ‘fuck you’through the window at drivers who nick their parking space and when they get out of their tanks they smile and wave at each other and start to chat about daytime TV. Unbelievable. What a laugh.

  I immediately scan the crowd of women clustering at the school gate. Disappointingly, there is a dearth of scrummy mummies. I watch Desperate Housewives; I was expecting a plethora of women needing a decent and immediate seeing to. Women who were going to throw their knickers at me as though I was Tom Jones, just as soon as I threw a smile at them. I look round; nothing doing. All these women look like mothers. Unsurprising really, as they all are mothers and we are stood at the school gate waiting for their bratty offspring to appear to prove the point. I just thought, hoped maybe, for something a bit more…well, Kate Moss is a mum, isn’t she? And Liz Hurley and that Kate whatsherface, the actress. I’d do any of them. You can’t blame a man for hoping.

  I push against the mass of kids charging out of school; I feel like a fish swimming against the tide. Their little squirming bodies create quite a formidable force. I’m not often near kids. My sister has a couple of them – girls – and they are cute enough. They are related to me, right, can’t be a bad start in life. When I see them at Christmas, birthdays and other family events they seem good enough, bit spoilt, bit demanding, not my scene but OK on balance.

  They weren’t at the last family do as it was my uncle Ronny’s funeral. My sister’s gone all middle-class and wouldn’t dream of bringing the kids to the wake in case she caused some deep-seated psychological issue which might manifest itself in years to come. Imagine, the girls might break down and weep uncontrollably whenever they were faced with a glass of sherry or an egg sandwich with its crust cut off, or some such bollocks. I reminded her that when we were kids, from what I can remember, we were at a wake just about every month and it hasn’t done us any harm. I haven’t got an overly pronounced morbid streak. They know how to do a good funeral in Liverpool, some of the best parties of my childhood. Still, I don’t blame my sis too much. Clawing for middle-class respectability is an arduous job. One slip and years of ballet classes and brown-bread-eating are undone in an instant. Besides, I’m not above a bit of reinvention myself. I like the possibilities it offers.

  It strikes me that an enormous huddle of kids, like this lot, creates an enormous amount
of noise (which is to be expected) and an odd smell (which takes me by surprise). It’s not an absolutely gut-churning pig of a smell, like nappies or vomit. Christ, I’ve got a whiff of those kid offences against mankind just walking down the high street. There should be a law against it. What is it with these mothers? Do they lose their sense of smell along with their sense of style when they have a sprog? Mother Nature needs to revisit the blueprint. But these kids coming out of school don’t smell of vomit, crap or even pee; they smell of dust, mud, powder paint and kid sweat. This would be foul except they also smell of freedom, which makes the rest of it vaguely acceptable. You can smell the autumn wind in their hair.

  I push past the kids and walk into the school, which seems very different and yet exactly the same as the school I went to three decades ago. My local primary school was a 70s prefab concrete box. This school is ancient by comparison, purpose built in 1908, according to the engraving above the doors. The school has separate entrances for boys and girls and real wood floors and all that. My school had parquet flooring in the hall and lino in the classrooms, which, I dare say, was considered the utmost in modernity at the time. We had blackboards and noticeboards, now they have whiteboards and overhead projectors. I peer into the classrooms and note that the minute chairs and desks are the same, as is the scuzzy carpet in the corner of the room where fidgety bums are forced to rest for the duration of Once Upon A Time until Happily Ever After. The crap we feed the youth of today, eh?

  I wander along the corridors, hoping to stumble upon the headmaster’s office, when I’m accosted by some middle-aged woman who bossily demands to know why I’m in the school and who I am. It takes short seconds to completely charm her. I explain that I’m Craig Walker’s best friend.

  ‘Mr Walker, the headmaster?’she asks.

  ‘He may be Mr Walker, the headmaster, to you, Miss –’I pause.

  ‘Mrs actually, Mrs Foster.’She simpers as she says that. I look incredulous and mutter something about all the most beautiful women always being snapped up first. I pretend that I’m musing to myself but of course I ensure I’m plainly audible. To get this straight, I have absolutely no intentions on the very plain Mrs Foster but I can’t resist flirting with her. I find women so easy to please that I feel it’s almost my duty to do so. God knows there isn’t one of them, however ugly, that can’t be flattered and convinced that they are God’s gift to mankind. And they say men are arrogant.

  ‘He might be Mr Walker to you but he’ll always be Wheelie Walker to me. It’s a little-known fact, but your Mr Walker was the king of the chopper on our estate; when we were lads Wheelie Walker was a wonder.’

  It never harms to big-up your mates; women like that too, they see it as magnanimous. In fact Craig was known as Weedie Walker or Weeie Walker and he was scared shitless of riding his chopper, climbing trees, being in bat and just about all other boys-own stuff. But no one is going to look good if I say as much. Christ, I don’t want Mrs Foster to think I hung out with saps.

  ‘His is the first door on the left after you walk through the assembly hall. If you get as far as the music room you’ve gone too far. Do come and find me if you get lost or if there’s anything else I can do for you.’

  She smiles bashfully. This isn’t a come-on. I know that women like Mrs Foster (over thirty-five, never been especially hot, hard-working hubby, who she’s grateful to and for) are not the type to proposition strange men found wandering through the school corridors, even if they make especially nice comments about the artistic integrity of the Year 2 wall frieze: subject, autumn. She just wants to help me in some innocuous way, if at all possible, because she likes me. Women do.

  As I open the door to Craig’s office I’m overwhelmed by an enormous jumble of papers and books. His jacket is hung on a hook behind the door and it actually has cord patches on the elbows. It’s so funny that everyone has their little affectations, even those who you’d believe to be above (or below) such things. I mean, what is old Weedie Walker trying to say? He’s not some don floating around the lofty spires in Oxford, is he? He’s a headmaster at a local primary school.

  Craig’s work environment could not be more dissimilar to my own. His little, cramped, dusty, academic office is diametrically opposed to my spacious, dynamic, bright-young-thing environment. There are wall-to-wall books and files which are occasionally interrupted by a photo of some class or other, lots of identikit kids grinning manically for the camera. His large desk looks like it’s been purchased from one of those pointless little magazines that you find stuffed in the back of the Sunday newspapers. I wonder if it came with a pack of video covers that are supposed to look like great classic novels. You can’t see much of the offensive fake leather anyway, as the desk is covered with papers, pens, pencils, stamps, elastic bands, paperclips, pencil sharpeners, etc. Hasn’t the man heard of the digital age?

  In my management consultancy firm no one has a set desk, or even a drawer, let alone an entire office. That sort of ownership is regarded as stultifying; we hot-desk. Which means we are forced to carry our laptops, mobiles and BlackBerrys around with us as though they were second skin. The idea is when you arrive at work each morning you enter the reception (acres of granite and glass) and are checked in to an available desk. The hope is to stop cliques forming, to encourage integration of staff and the dissimilation of new ideas and some other bollocks – I forget. To be honest it’s a bit of a pain in the arse. There comes a time, in every man’s life, when the need to lay his hat somewhere becomes paramount. I have to admit, Weedie Walker’s office, for all the chaos, has a certain charm.

  ‘Mate!’

  I stand with my arms wide open, an enthusiastic grin bursting off my face. Craig looks up from the papers he’s marking and smiles at me. At first he’s unsure, a little shy, and then a big grin cracks across his face. His grin is actually very cool, and he looks much less of a nerd when he’s smiling.

  Craig stands up, walks towards me and holds out his hand for me to shake. I pump it and pull him into a hug. Thing is, Weedie or Weeie he may have been, but he was my mate. Still is. He’s a good bloke. Better than me, which I don’t have a problem with. Nearly everyone I know is more principled than me but I take comfort in the fact that few of them are as happy as I am. The two facts are related.

  It’s been about six months since Craig and I last saw one another. This in boy world causes no problem at all. If two girlies who’d been mates since primary school hadn’t seen each other in six months, I swear to you, there would be grief, guilt and recriminations by the bucketful. Both would feel neglected or insulted. It must be crap being a girl, with all that emotional stuff all the time. Whereas being a guy is great. More pay, same work, no childbirth, no glass ceilings, no desire to write thank-you notes. Ace.

  ‘Nice office, mate. But serious lack of totty mummy at the school gate. That’s all I came down here for.’

  ‘John, if you were expecting totty mummy you should have been pals with a guy who is headmaster at one of the chi-chi schools in Chelsea or somewhere, ideally a fee-paying school. Those mothers tend to have time and money enough to keep up appearances. Largely, here, we specialize in being bothered about the children, and I find the mothers are more concerned about their kids’wardrobe and grades than their own wardrobe and calorie intake,’says Craig primly.

  I wait until the lecture is over and comment, ‘Big career black hole, mate. I mean, you’re a single man. You should have gone in for the job at the private school if that’s the case and you’d have a chance at poking the odd nanny then. I bet that lot,’I nod through his window towards the school gate, ‘are all working hubby to an early grave and yet still can’t afford a nanny. Disappointing though. I’d thought there would be a few women worth a once over. They can’t all be lazy cows.’

  ‘John, please.’Craig pulls his lower lip into this funny straight line when he’s offended or upset. He is easy to read and even easier to wind up. ‘I don’t think it’s right to think of my pupils’
mothers in those terms.’

  ‘No wonder you’re still single,’I mutter. ‘They are women, mate. How else are you going to think of them? Unless you don’t think of them at all. You bender.’

  Craig isn’t homosexual, but as heterosexual mates we are duty bound to accuse each other of dirt-digging on a reasonably frequent basis. At least that’s the code I play by.

  Craig sighs heavily. I’ve been a disappointment to him for so long now; you’d think he’d accept it. But he’s a teacher, right? He always believes I could try harder. Perhaps I’d improve if only I wanted it badly enough. I’m not a total womanizer. Actually, I am. But I do think of other things and can hold conversations about other things. It’s just that we fall into these roles, right, when we are together. Craig is the straight one and I’m the laugh, the lad. He was a virgin until he was twenty-one. Twenty-one. Fuck, man, can you believe it? And we went to a school where some girls would shag you for a bag of chips and a croggy home. Still, Craig never saw opportunity, even when it hammered really loudly on the door, which is why our respective roles were written long ago.

  ‘Come on, Sir. Get your coat. There are pubs serving bitter at this very moment. We have an obligation.’

  I let Craig lead me to his local watering-hole, which is a shabby pub not old enough to be charming, not new enough to be trendy. It’s OK. I don’t mind. I didn’t expect him to pick one of the millions of cool bars in Notting Hill, even though there’s wall-to-wall totty in most of those places. While I have a radar for that sort of thing, Craig is oblivious, possibly even repelled. But this pub serves draught and so serves its purpose. Normally when we meet up Craig comes into town and I choose the venue. This works because I work significantly longer hours than he does (I spit when I think of his holidays, but then he probably spits when he thinks of my pay packet), plus, our mate in common, the third side to our triangle of trust and all that, Tom, works at Wapping so it makes sense to meet in town. But tonight Tom isn’t meeting up with us, although he is the reason we have to get together.