Hey Yeah Right Get a Life Read online

  She sipped and grimaced and watched the snail’s progress of the combine harvester on the adjacent cliff. There was a splash as someone jumped into the pool, and a flapping over wasps and a dragging round of high chairs to plastic tables, and howls, hoots, groaning and broken-hearted sobbing, the steady cacophony which underscores family life en masse. At least sitting here alone she had been noticing the individual elements of the composition, she realised with surprise and some pleasure. When she was with her brood she noticed nothing of the outside world, they drank up all her powers of observation.

  Here they came now, off the crazy golf course, tearstained, drooping, scowling. Here comes the big bore, and here come the three little bores. Stifle your yawns. Smile. On holiday Max became a confederate, saying things like ‘They never stop’ and ‘That child is a cannibal.’ Their constant crystalline quacking, demanding a response, returning indefatigable and gnat-like, drove him mad. There must be something better than this squabbly nuclear family unit, she thought, these awful hobbling five- and six-legged races all around her.

  She could see they were fighting. She saw Martin hit Robin, and Robin clout him back. It was like being on holiday with Punch and Judy – lots of biffing and shrieking and fights over sausages. What a lumpen, moping, tearful, spiritless mummy she had become, packing and unpacking for everybody endlessly, sighing. Better sigh, though, than do as she’d done earlier that day, on the beach when, exasperated by their demands, on and on, all afternoon, she’d stood up and held out her hands to them.

  ‘Here, have some fingers,’ she’d snarled, pretending to snap them off one by one. ‘Have a leg. Have an ear. Nice?’ And they had laughed uproariously, jumping on her and pinning her to the rug, sawing at her limbs, tugging her ears, uprooting her fingers and toes. Such a figure she cut on the beach these days, slumped round-shouldered in the middle of the family encampment of towels, impatience on a monument growling at the sea. Or was it Mother Courage of the sand dunes, the slack-muscled white body hidden under various cover-ups, headgear, dark glasses, crouched amidst the contents of her cart, the buckets, wasp spray, suncream, foreign legion hats with neck-protective flaps, plastic football, beach cricket kit, gaggle of plastic jelly sandals, spare dry swimsuits, emergency pants. If she lumbered off for a paddle all hell broke loose.

  ‘Did you have a nice time?’ she said weakly as they reached her table.

  Martin was shrieking about some injustice, his father’s face was black as thunder. Robin sprinted to her lap, then Maxine and Martin jumped on her jealously, staking their claim like settlers in some virgin colony.

  ‘She’s not your long-lost uncle, your mother,’ said Max, unable to get near her. ‘You only saw her half an hour ago.’

  Things got worse before they got better. There was a terrible scene later on. It was in the large room by the bar, the Family Room, where at six o’clock a holiday student surf fanatic led all the young children in a song and dance session while their parents sagged against the walls and watched.

  And a little bit of this

  And a little bit of that

  And shake your bum

  Just like your mum

  sang the children, roaring with laughter as they mimed the actions. After this, glassy lollipops were handed out, and then the surfer started to organise a conga. The children lined up, each holding the waist of the one in front, many of them with the lollipops still in their mouths, sticks stuck outwards.

  ‘That’s dangerous,’ mumured Dorrie. ‘If they fell,’ and she and other mothers discreetly coaxed the sweets from the mouths of their nearest offspring with earnest promises that these would be returned immediately the dance had finished. Then she glanced across the room and saw Martin in the line, lollipop stick clamped between his teeth. Max just beyond him, sipping from his first bottle of beer, caught her eye; she, without thinking as hard as she might have done, indicated to him the lollipop peril, miming and pointing.

  The conga had started, the music was blasting out, and yet when Max wrenched the stick from between Martin’s clenched teeth the boy’s screams were louder even than the very loudly amplified Birdy song. Martin broke out of the line and fought his father for the lollipop. Max, looking furious, teeth bared inside his dark beard, was a figure both ridiculous and distressing, like a giant Captain Haddock wrestling with an hysterical diminutive Tintin. Their battle carried on out in the hall, where Max dragged Martin just as the conga was weaving past, with screaming and shouting and terrible fury between them. They were hating each other.

  Dorrie edged up to them, horror-struck, and the next thing was that Max was shouting at her. All right, it was their first day, they were all tired from the journey, but this was dreadful. The other parents, following the conga, filtered past interestedly watching this scene.

  ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t,’ said Dorrie several times, but softly. The other two children joined them, sobbing.

  At last she got them all past reception and up the stairs.

  ‘I don’t like you, Daddy,’ wailed Martin through tears.

  ‘I know you don’t, Martin,’ huffed Max, storming off ahead.

  Really, he was very like Martin, or Martin was very like him – both prone to explosions of aggressive self-defensiveness – although of course Martin was six, whereas Max was forty. Because Max did this, she had to do the opposite in order to redress the balance, even though doing so made her look weak and ineffective. He sometimes pointed this out, her apparent ineffectiveness. But what would he rather? That she scream at them like a fishwife? Hit them? Vent her temper or ignore them, like a man? Let them get hurt? Let them eat rubbish? Let them watch junk? Just try doing it all the time before you criticise, not only for a few hours or days, she reflected, as she reined herself in and wiped tears from blubbing faces and assisted with the comprehensive nose-blowing that was needed in the wake of such a storm.

  At least he didn’t hit them when he lost his temper. She had a friend whose husband did, and then justified it with talk of them having to learn, which she, Dorrie, could not have borne. She really would much rather be on her own with them, it was much easier like that. Like a skilful stage manager she had learned how to create times of sweetness and light with the three of them; she could now coax and balance the various jostling elements into some sort of precarious harmony. It was an art, like feeding and building a good log fire, an achievement. Then in Max would clump, straightways seizing the bellows or the poker, and the whole lot would collapse in ruins.

  ‘I’ll get them to bed, Max,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go for a swim or something.’

  ‘I’ll wait for you in the bar,’ he said frostily. ‘Remember they stop serving dinner at eight.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t forget to turn the listening service on.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I know when I’m not wanted.’

  She choked down her reply, and gently closed the door behind him.

  ‘Now then,’ she said, smiling at their doleful tear-smeared faces. ‘What’s up? You look as though you’ve swallowed a jellyfish!’

  They looked at her, goggling with relief, and laughed uncertainly.

  ‘Two jellyfish!’ she said, with vaudeville mirth. They laughed harder.

  ‘And an octopus!’ she added.

  They fell on the floor, they were laughing so hard.

  The second day was an improvement on the first, although, as Dorrie said to herself, that would not have been difficult. They turned away from the glare of the packed beach towards leafy broken shade, walking inland along a lane whose hedges were candy-striped with pink and white bindweed. A large dragonfly with marcasite body and pearlised wings appeared in the air before them and stopped them in their tracks. Then they struck off across a path through fields where sudden clouds of midges swept by without touching them. When they reached a stream overarched by hawthorn trees the children clamoured to take off their sandals and dip their feet in the water.

  ‘This
is the place for our picnic,’ said Dorrie, who had brought supplies along in a rucksack, and now set about distributing sandwiches and fruit and bottles of water.

  ‘We can’t walk across the strand today,’ said Max, consulting his copy of the Tide Tables as he munched away at a ham roll. ‘Low tide was earlier this morning, then not again till nine tonight. Fat lot of good that is. But tomorrow looks possible.’

  He had heard about an island not far from here which, once a day, for a short time only, became part of the mainland. When the tide was out you could walk across the strand to the island and visit the ancient cell of the hermit who had lived centuries before in the heart of its little woods.

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be any logic to it,’ said Dorrie, looking over his shoulder at the week’s chart. ‘No pattern to the tides, no gradual waxing and waning as with the moon. I thought the tides were supposed to be governed by the moon, but they’re all over the place.’

  The children sat by them, each with a bag of crisps, nibbling away busily like rodents.

  ‘There is a pattern, though,’ said Max. ‘When there’s a new moon or an old moon, the tides are at their highest and also at their lowest. It’s all very extreme at those times of the month, when the earth, moon and sun are directly in line.’

  Martin, having finished his own bag of crisps, was now busily capturing ants from the grass and dropping them into his sister’s bag.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ said Dorrie.

  ‘And when the moon’s at right angles to the sun, that’s when you get neap tides,’ continued Max. ‘Less extreme, less dramatic. What the hell’s the matter now.’

  Maxine had been trying to pull her bag of crisps away from Martin, who had suddenly let go, with the result that Maxine’s crisps had flown into the air and over the grass, where Martin was now rolling on them and crushing them into salty fragments.

  ‘Stop it!’ called Dorrie.

  ‘Get up this minute!’ shouted Max.

  ‘Why should I, it’s a free country,’ gabbled Martin, rolling back and forth, enjoying the noise and drama.

  ‘My crisps!’ sobbed Maxine. ‘They’re all squashed!’

  ‘What’s your problem,’ said Martin with spiteful pleasure, getting up as his father approached, and brushing yellow crumbs from his shorts. ‘You threw them away, so that means you didn’t want them.’

  ‘I didn’t throw them away!’ screamed Maxine.

  ‘Liar, I saw you,’ goaded Martin. ‘I saw you throw them in the air. Little liar.’

  Maxine howled, scarlet in the face, struggling with her mother, who was trying to hold her, while Martin ran off out of range, dancing on the spot and fleering and taunting.

  ‘Why is he such a poisonous little tick?’ said Max, though without his usual fury.

  On their way back to the hotel they passed a camp-site, and stopped by the gate to read its painted sign.

  ‘Families and mixed couples only,’ Maxine read aloud. ‘What does that mean, Mum? What are mixed couples? Mum? Mum?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Dorrie. She was reminded of her parents’ description of looking for somewhere to rent when they first came to London, with the signs up in the windows reading ‘No Blacks, No Irish’ and her father with his Dublin accent having to keep quiet for a change and let her mother do the talking.

  ‘Why do you suppose they want mixed couples only?’ she murmured to Max. ‘Why would they worry about gayness?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that,’ said Max. ‘I think it’s more to put off the eighteen-thirty element; you know, bikers and boozers and gangs getting into fights.’

  ‘You twenty years ago,’ said Dorrie.

  ‘Martin in ten years’ time,’ said Max.

  ‘What’s a couple?’ persisted Maxine. ‘What’s a couple, Dad?’

  ‘A couple here means a man and a woman,’ said Max.

  ‘Oo--a--ooh!’ exclaimed Martin, giving Maxine a lewd nudge in the ribs and rolling his eyes.

  ‘A husband and wife,’ said Dorrie deflatingly.

  ‘So a couple’s like a family?’ said Maxine.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dorrie.

  ‘No,’ said Max. ‘A couple is not like a family. That’s far too easy, just two people. It doesn’t qualify.’

  Dorrie was laughing now, and put her arms round his waist, her head in his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair. The three children stood round looking at them with big smug smiles, beaming with satisfaction.

  ‘Come in for a hug,’ said Dorrie, holding out her arm to them, and they all five stood rocking by the side of the road locked into an untidy, squawking clump.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ said Max, gazing at her that evening across the mackerel pâté and the bud vase holding the miniature yellow carnations. ‘You’ve caught the sun. It suits you.’

  ‘It was a good walk today,’ said Dorrie, suddenly shy.

  ‘They’re lovely but they’re very tiring,’ said Max, draining his glass of beer. ‘Exhausting. You should be more selfish.’

  How can I, thought Dorrie, until you are less so? It’s a seesaw. But she kept quiet. He went on to talk about the timberyard, how it was doing all right but they couldn’t afford to rest on their laurels with all these small businesses going down all round them.

  ‘We’re a team,’ declared Max, grandiose, pouring another glass for them both.

  ‘Ye-es,’ said Dorrie. ‘But it’s a bit unbalanced, don’t you think, the teamwork, at the moment?’

  ‘Are you saying I don’t work hard enough?’ demanded Max.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Dorrie. ‘You work too hard. Don’t be silly. No, I meant, you do all the work that gets somewhere and gives you something to show for the effort and pulls in money, but the work I do doesn’t seem to get anywhere, it doesn’t show, it somehow doesn’t count even though it needs doing of course.’

  ‘I don’t see what you’re driving at,’ said Max, starting to look less cheerful.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dorrie. ‘At the moment I feel sub. Sub something.’

  ‘Suburban?’ suggested Max.

  ‘Subordinate?’ said Dorrie. ‘No.’

  ‘Submerged, then. How about submerged.’

  ‘That’s nearer. Still not quite . . . I know! Subdued. Though submerged is growing on me. Submerged is accurate too. That time at Marks, all my twenties, half my thirties, it’s like a dream. I’ve almost forgotten what it used to be like.’

  And she tried to explain to Max her feeling about this encroaching blandness, adaptability, passivity, the need for one of them at least to embrace these qualities, even if this made them shudder, if the family was going to work.

  ‘We all have to knuckle down,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later.’

  ‘It’s just it seems, some of us more than others.’

  ‘If we want to join in at all,’ opined Max. ‘Life. It’s called growing up.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel like growing up,’ she muttered from her side of the fence. Rather it felt like being freeze-dried and vacuum-packed. Knuckled down was putting it mildly.

  ‘Well, as I said, whatever you’re feeling like, you’re looking well,’ said Max; and that made them both feel better.

  ‘Lovely, in fact,’ he added, leaning across to touch her face meaningly.

  After dinner, sitting in the Family Room drinking coffee, they found themselves drawn into a quiz game provided by the hotel as the adult equivalent of the children’s conga. The quizmaster was a sparky woman in an emerald green jacket and pleats. She split them into groups and bossed them through an unnecessary microphone.

  ‘What’s the other name for kiwifruit?’ she demanded, and echoes bounced off the ceiling. The groups whispered and giggled and scribbled on their scoresheets.

  ‘What flag is all one colour?’ she asked. ‘Here’s a clue, somewhere not very nice. Ooh, I hope no one from there is in this room!’

  ‘Birmingham?’ suggested Max.

  ‘Very fu
nny, the bearded gentleman,’ said the woman. ‘Now we’re out of Miscellaneous and onto the Human Body. Let’s see how much you all know about the body, you jolly well should considering your age. And the one who’s paying for the holiday will certainly be hoping to know a bit more about the human body of the opposite sex or else they’ll have wasted their money, won’t they?’

  Dorrie’s mouth fell open, she nearly dropped her drink, but nobody else batted an eyelid.

  ‘And we’ve quite enough children here thank you very much while we’re on the subject so let’s hope you all know what you’re up to,’ continued the woman, arching a roguish eyebrow. ‘Right. Now. Where are the cervical nerves?’

  ‘And where’s your sense of humour?’ Max whispered into Dorrie’s ear, observing her gape rudely at the woman.

  In bed that night surrounded by their sleeping children, they held each other and started to kiss with increasing warmth. He grabbed shamelessly between her legs, her body answered with an enthusiastic twist, a backward arch, and soon he was inside her. There must be no noise, and she had pulled the sheet up to their necks. Within a couple of minutes they were both almost there, together, when there came a noise from Martin’s bed.

  ‘Mum,’ he said sleepily, and flicked his lamp on. ‘Mum, I’m thirsty.’

  Max froze where he was and dropped his head and swore beneath his breath. Martin got out of bed and padded over towards them.

  ‘Did you hear me, Mum?’ he asked crossly. ‘I want some water. Now.’

  Dorrie was aware of her hot red face looking up from under Max’s, and heard herself say, ‘In a minute, dear. Go back to bed now, there’s a good boy.’ Martin paused to stare at them, then stumbled over back towards his bed.