It happened that the date that had been fixed for the next meeting was the day after Clifford’s operation. Alice wondered whether Mavis would be feeling up to it, and said so on the phone to Gabs.
“Poor Mavis. She’s bound to be worried. Do you think we ought to leave it for a few days?”
“Oh no. Let’s take her out and give her a good time,” said Gabs. “It’ll take her mind off things.”
“Do you think?” Alice wasn’t sure.
“Yes. Trust me, Alice. What Mavis needs is a bit of fun.”
“What kind of fun exactly?”
“How about a surprise?”
“I’m not sure.” Mavis had never seemed to Alice to be the kind of person to enjoy surprises, particularly if the surprises were organised by someone like Gabs.
“Okay. No surprise, then. But we could take her into town for a meal, and then do a bit of shopping,” Gabs said.
“Won’t the shops be shut?”
“They stay open late on Fridays.”
“But she mightn’t want to do any shopping!”
“Alice, I’m disappointed in you. Of course she’ll want to go shopping. Everyone loves shopping.”
Alice herself was not particularly fond of shopping. She had neither the time nor the spare cash to do the kind of recreational shopping people seemed to indulge in these days. She shopped for necessities. She suspected that Mavis might well feel the same way.
“And then there’s her mother,” Alice said. “We can’t really take her.”
“True.” Gabs considered for a moment. “I know. How about your Finn? Couldn’t he sit with her? He seems a capable sort of guy, and it wouldn’t involve much — just keeping an eye on Maudie and staying clear of that awful animal. Shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Alice tried to picture Finn supervising Maudie, plus plastic bag and feral cat. “I suppose it might work.”
“Of course it’ll work! I’ll put it to him if you like.”
“No, I’ll do it.” The less contact Finn had with Gabs, the better. “And then I’ll phone Mavis, shall I?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
When Alice phoned with their plan, Mavis sounded doubtful. “I’m not sure,” she said. “It rather depends on how the operation’s gone.”
“But you won’t know, will you?”
“I was trying to think of a way of finding out, but you’re probably right.”
“So it might be better to spend an evening with us rather than at home worrying. After all, there’s nothing you can do, is there? And at least you can talk to us.”
“Are you sure your son can manage?”
“He’ll be fine.” In fact, Alice wasn’t at all sure, but provided the cat was locked out and Maudie was locked in, there wasn’t much that could go wrong — nothing of a life-threatening nature, anyway. “We’ll call for you at six, shall we?”
On the appointed evening, Alice and Finn arrived promptly at Mavis’s house.
“This is so kind of you, Finn,” Mavis said.
“S’all right.” Finn had not been pleased with the arrangement and was in a thoroughly bad mood.
“Now, Mother should be all right. Just let her watch the television, but make sure she doesn’t wander.”
“Okay.”
“And the cat. I’ve put him out. Make sure he stays outside.”
“I quite like cats,” Finn said.
“You won’t like this one. He — he catches people.”
“Catches people?”
“He pounces. And he scratches and bites. If he miaows to be let in, take no notice.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, and don’t let Mother drink. She’ll probably ask for a glass of wine, but it’s not a good idea.”
Finn looked disappointed.
“I’ve put some cans of beer in the fridge. Do help yourself. But Mother had better stick to tea. I’ll show you where everything is.”
The three women met up in a burger bar. This had been Mavis’s idea; she’d never been to one before and said she’d like to try it. Alice had always disliked this kind of establishment — the food (damp little buns stuffed with grease and calories); the industrial-size cartons of cola; the spoilt, noisy children (Finn, in his time, had been as spoilt and noisy as any of them); and the mountains of cardboard and paper that accumulated as the meal progressed. But the idea of introducing Mavis to this palace of childhood pleasure was a novel one, and so she went along with it.
“Right. What’s the plan?” Alice asked, mesmerised by Gabs, who was consuming a towering mountain of food with apparent ease.
“Up to Mavis,” said Gabs through a mouthful of chips. “It’s her shout.”
“Mavis, what would you like to do next?”
Mavis was toying with the lone and tiny fragment of salad that had emerged from her burger, and looked anxious and unhappy.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t really think of anything at the moment. Except Clifford.”
“Of course you can’t,” said Gabs. “We need to phone the hospital.”
“But you can’t do that,” said Mavis. “You’re not allowed to unless you’re —”
“Next of kin?” Gabs grinned. “I know. I’ve had a next-of-kin-experience recently. But I have a plan. Do you know the number of the hospital?”
Mavis produced a piece of paper from her bag and handed it to Gabs. “I don’t think you ought to,” she said. “Really. It’s not allowed.”
Gabs looked at her pityingly. “Do you want to know how your Clifford is?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, then, leave it to me.”
“But it’s so noisy in here!”
“Never mind that. Hospitals are used to noise. What’s his surname, by the way?”
“Watts.”
After an inordinately long wait, in the course of which Gabs seemed to have had a virtual tour of the hospital, she apparently found someone to talk to.
“Hallo? Oh, I wonder whether you can help me. My name is Charlene Watts, and I’m phoning from Australia. I believe you have my brother — Clifford Watts — with you, and I was wondering how he’s doing.” There was a pause. “Yes, I know I should ring his wife, but she’s not at home at the moment. And as you must understand, I’m awfully anxious about him. We’re not on the phone here in the outback, and I’ve had to walk miles in the dark to a phone box. Yes. Yes, thank you. I’ll hang on a minute.” Gabs grinned at the others, giving them a thumbs up. “Hallo? Is he? Oh, that’s wonderful news. Thank you so much. No, I won’t phone again. I just wanted to make sure he was all right. And do excuse the noise. The wombats are mating. Goodbye.”
“It’s not night-time in Australia,” said Alice, impressed not only at the string of lies, but also at the distinct Australian twang Gabs had conjured up for the occasion. “And I believe most Australians have telephones.”
“Never mind that. I had to think of something.” Gabs turned to Mavis. “He’s comfortable, apparently. The op went well, and his progress is ‘satisfactory’. He’ll be transferred to a ward tomorrow.”
“Oh, thank you. Thank you!” And Mavis burst into tears. “I didn’t think I was that worried about him,” she said as the other two escorted her out into the shopping mall. “I kept telling myself he’d be fine, and that anyway, there was nothing I could do, but that only made it worse.” She wiped her eyes. “But he’ll be awfully cross.”
“Awfully cross with who?”
“With me. He’ll guess that it was me, won’t he?”
“But it wasn’t!” Gabs said. “That’s the whole point. You can say with your hand on your heart that you never phoned the hospital.”
“And Clifford does have a sister,” said Mavis. “I think she lives in Barking.”
“There you are then. Barking, Australia — does it really matter? He’ll be pleased that she phoned.”
“But Charlene…”
“Sorry. It was all I could think of. I always fancied being a Charlene.”
“And what exactly is a wombat?” Alice asked.
“I’ve no idea. Now —” Gabs took each of the others by an arm — “what we need is a spot of retail therapy. How about it, Mavis?”
“Oh, I’m not sure…”
“Alice?”
“Why not?” said Alice, who could see the mood of the evening rapidly degenerating unless someone rescued it. “I for one need some new jeans.”
“Jeans!” Gabs clapped her hands. “Mavis, have you ever worn jeans?”
“Goodness, no.”
“High time you did, then. And you’ve got the right figure.”
“Have I?”
“Sure.” Gabs hesitated for a moment. “I know. We’ll all buy new jeans. I could do with some as well.”
“But —” Mavis looked appalled.
“No buts. Just try some on, and you’ll see.”
“But Clifford… whatever will he say?”
“Never mind Clifford. Just for this evening, you’re going to please yourself.”
The jeans project turned out to be surprisingly successful. After several false starts, Mavis, reluctant and fearful and still fretting about what Clifford would say (by this stage, Gabs felt that if she ever had the misfortune to meet Clifford, she might well be tempted to strangle him, heart condition notwithstanding), had been persuaded into a traditional but unassuming dark denim pair, and had had to admit that they were very comfortable and she could wear them for “messing around”. Gabs couldn’t imagine Mavis messing around in anything, but getting her into the jeans at all had been a triumph, so she didn’t enquire further. She and Alice had both found what they wanted, and when they emerged from the gloomy and very noisy cavern where they had made their purchases, Gabs suggested that what they all needed was ice cream.
“My mum always took me for ice cream after we’d been shopping for shoes,” Gabs said. “She said buying shoes was so boring that we needed a reward. I always wanted bright red shoes, or patent ones, but I wasn’t allowed them because of school.”
“Well, you’ve certainly made up for it now,” Alice remarked as Gabs teetered along on her impossibly high heels.
“Haven’t I just? Now, about this ice cream.”
“Oh, I don’t think I could, after all that food,” Mavis said.
“Then you can have a coffee. Come along, girls.”
Over their ice creams (even Mavis succumbed to a small vanilla), Gabs told them about her abortive attempt to be Father Augustine’s next of kin.
“Well, you managed pretty well tonight,” Alice said. “Couldn’t you have used similar tactics?”
“Didn’t work,” Gabs said. “They weren’t having any of it. Anyway, he’s much better now, apparently, and out of the hospital. Someone told Steph at church. It was a burst appendix. Poor love,” she said dreamily, toying with a spoonful of crushed nuts. “I hate the idea of him going through all that on his own.”
“But I’m sure he won’t have been on his own,” Alice said. “He must have family, and friends. And Father Whatsit.”
“Father Pat? He’s not the kind of person you need when you’re ill,” Gabs said. “He’s always put me in mind of the Grim Reaper.”
“Well, hasn’t he got parents?”
“Oh, parents!” scoffed Gabs. “Not the same, is it? And certainly not if they’re anything like my dad.”
“What about God?” Mavis said. “Presumably he believes in God, so that must be a comfort.”
“God,” said Gabs, “is all very well. But sometimes you need something more.”
“So, what are you going to do now?” Alice asked.
“I shall go and see him,” Gabs said.
“Is that a good idea?”
“Probably not, but that’s never stopped me before.”
“How d’you know he’ll be there?”
“I know he’s been to a kind of retreat place to recuperate for a week, and now he’s back at the presbytery but not allowed to work yet. Father Pat will be out a lot of the time, so he’ll be on his own. The housekeeper has Wednesdays off, so it will have to be a Wednesday.” Gabs spared a fleeting thought for Gerald, who had a preference for Wednesdays, but Gerald would have to wait. She’d let him do his ‘Best in Show at Crufts’ thing to compensate. Gerald would like that.
“You’ve certainly done your homework,” Alice said.
“Yep. This is a golden opportunity. Mightn’t happen again for ages. I can’t afford to miss it, can I?”
“What exactly are you going to do when you visit him?” Mavis asked.
“Ah.” Gabs spooned up the last of her ice cream. “I’ll just have to play it by ear, won’t I?”
“How romantic,” murmured Alice.
“Would you really — I mean, how far would you go?” Mavis asked.
“As far as possible. Believe me, Mavis, having waited so long, I’d be mad not to, wouldn’t I? But I should be so lucky.”
“If you really loved him, would you be doing this at all?” Alice asked.
“I could say the same thing to you.”
“True. But Jay doesn’t have a vocation, does he?”
“Maybe not. But having you around isn’t in his best interests with a baby on the way, is it?”
“As I’ve said before, I didn’t go out of my way to seduce Jay. It just happened.”
“Nothing,” said Gabs, “just happens. You make it happen.” She decided to change the subject. “How’s his baby coming along?”
“It’s a girl.”
“Oh dear.”
“Oh dear indeed.”
“Makes it more real, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Before, it was just a — well, just an idea, I suppose. Now it — she — is a person.”
“With a pink nursery?”
“How did you guess!”
“I hated pink when I was a kid,” said Gabs. “My mum made me wear pink all the time when I was little, and all I wanted to do was wear shorts and climb trees.”
“You don’t look the tree-climbing sort,” said Alice.
“Oh, I can climb trees all right. I just don’t choose to do it anymore. No. Steph was the girly one. I was the tomboy. From tomboy to tart in such a short time,” she mused. “I wonder how it happened.”
“I thought you didn’t like calling yourself — that,” said Mavis, who still found the word difficult to say.
“I’m among friends, aren’t I?” Gabs grinned. She would never have dreamed that she would become friends with people like Alice and Mavis, and yet it seemed to have happened almost without her noticing.
“We’re an odd trio, aren’t we?” said Alice, apparently thinking along the same lines. “I wonder whether we’ll stay in touch after — well, after whatever it is we’re trying to achieve has happened.”
“You mean, after we’ve all returned to the bosom of the church and a state of grace?” said Gabs, who, for her own part, couldn’t imagine anything less likely to happen.
“I never was a Catholic,” Alice said. “Remember? I just came along to the meeting to write that article.”
“Did you? Write the article, I mean?” Gabs asked.
“No.” Alice laughed. “It was all a bit too near the bone.”
“So, if you’re not Catholic, what are you?”
“Oh, wishy-washy C of E, I suppose. Like most people.”
“I always fancied being C of E,” Gabs said. “It seems you can do what you like, and still say you belong to a church. No rules. No guilt.”
“Well, you can always join,” Alice said. “I’m sure they’d be delighted to have you.”
“And that’s why I never could.”
“Like that guy who said he could never join a club that would have him as a member?”
“Exactly. Besides, it may be easy to join your church, but it’s bloody impossible to leave mine. Ask any Catholic. We all want a priest on our deathbed. Confession, last rites, the works. So we have to hang on in there.”
“Just in case?” said Alice.
“Definitely just in case.”
“Groucho Marx,” said Mavis, who had been rather quiet during this exchange.
“What?” Gabs asked.
“He was the man who said he’d never want to belong to a club that would have him in it.”
“Well, good for Groucho Marx. Sounds like just my kind of guy. I’ll join his club anytime.”
“Groucho Marx,” said Mavis, “is dead.”
Mavis was having a rather difficult evening.
For a start, there was Clifford’s operation, and now that she didn’t have to worry about him quite so much (although she suspected that “comfortable” was a one-size-fits-all word relied upon by hospitals for anyone who was still breathing), she was still concerned about him. She was also anxious about the repercussions that might result from Gabs’ phone call. It had been kindly meant, and Mavis was very relieved that Clifford had pulled through his operation, but he could be very suspicious, and he would certainly know that she had been involved in that phone call.
The burger had been disappointing. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but this most certainly wasn’t it. The greasy food, the cheery bad manners of the clientele, and the noise had all conspired to convince Mavis that this would be the last time she patronised such an establishment. The other two had seemed quite happy — they were probably used to this kind of thing — but Mavis, who rarely ate out, decided that she much preferred to eat at home.
And then there were the jeans. The others had been so complimentary that she hadn’t liked to say how she felt, but secretly Mavis wasn’t at all sure about them. Certainly they fitted her well enough, and they were fairly harmless, but she felt that if she wore them, she would be pretending to be someone else; it would be like dressing up. She had always suspected that she didn’t have what it took to be a jeans person, and now she was quite certain. There were some things she just couldn’t do, like paint her toenails or wear her sunglasses on her head (Mavis had tried this once in a rare attempt to be cool, but the sunglasses kept slipping off, and so she’d had to give up).
She had also disliked the whole changing room experience. For a start, the unforgiving lighting and the wall-to-wall mirrors presented to Mavis images of her body that she had rarely seen before, thus damaging what little confidence she had. Those bulges round her middle, that little roll of flesh under her bra, those dimpled thighs… did she really look like that? She had always considered herself to be quite slim, but apparently she had been living under a delusion.
In addition to this, she was unaccustomed to sharing her nakedness — in this case, semi-nakedness — with anyone except Clifford, and she had found the presence of Gabs and Alice discomfiting. She hadn’t expected them to join her when she was trying on the clothes, and had been very conscious of her ancient and rather shapeless bra and what she had once heard described as “bucket knickers”. These had been in stark contrast to Alice’s skimpy briefs and the strange, stringy little garment worn by Gabs (Mavis had decided that she would rather go without knickers altogether than wear anything like that).
Finally, there were the two “tops” Gabs had insisted on choosing to go with the jeans.
“But I’ve got plenty of — tops,” Mavis had said, thinking of her drawers full of blouses and cardigans. She would never have referred to them as tops, but she supposed that was what they were.
“Not the right kind to go with jeans,” Gabs had said, picking out a black T-shirt with an indecipherable logo on the front. “Try this.”
“Isn’t it a bit young?” Mavis had asked, hoping the logo wasn’t something rude.
“T-shirts suit everyone,” said Gabs.
In the end, she had settled for two fairly inconspicuous garments: a T-shirt with a picture of a butterfly, and another with the bewildering letters FCUK on the front. Mavis had no idea what the letters stood for, but they seemed harmless enough. She had ignored Gabs’ obvious amusement, since she was rapidly learning that Gabs was very easily amused.
In spite of all these difficulties, sitting eating her ice cream, listening to the other two chatting away, Mavis was grateful for their friendship. Shopping with friends might not have been a comfortable experience, but it had been a novel one (Mavis had never shopped with friends before), and she felt that, changing rooms notwithstanding, it was something she wouldn’t mind repeating. Normally she shopped on her own, buying most of her clothes in Marks and Spencer (as often as not, not even bothering to try them on first), with no one to suggest or criticise. Occasionally she would take Maudie with her, but her mother was an unreliable companion. She would wander off when Mavis’s back was turned, or unwittingly indulge in a spot of shoplifting. On more than one occasion, Mavis had had to return items she had found secreted about Maudie’s person, with explanations and apologies, and it was not something she enjoyed having to do. Maudie’s departing wits had taken with them many of the boundaries that govern normal behaviour, and if she saw something she liked, then she would simply help herself. Mavis never ceased to be amazed at the ease with which her mother managed to get away with these small thefts — on one occasion, Maudie had walked out of a shop carrying a large and very heavy brass ornament — and had come to the conclusion that the life of a shoplifter was a great deal easier than she would have imagined.
How Maudie would have enjoyed this evening! The burger, the ice cream, all the noise and the people — in fact, all the things Mavis had found difficult — would have been right up her mother’s street. Maudie had always been a sociable person, who loved shopping and parties and what Gabs would have called “having a laugh”. Mavis herself had taken after her shy, taciturn father. Even after all these years, she still missed him.
“I think it’s time I was getting back,” she said now. “Mother’s usually in bed by now.”
“Me too,” said Alice. “Finn has lots of homework this weekend, and I’ve got some work to do.”
“Righto,” said Gabs, gathering up her parcels (how had she managed to buy so much in such a relatively short time? Mavis wondered). “Let’s go.”
“You didn’t really like the jeans, did you?” Alice said to Mavis when they were alone in Alice’s car.
“Well…”
“Oh, come on, Mavis! You don’t have to be polite. I could see you weren’t happy with them. But give them a try. They really do suit you, you know. And before you say it, you don’t have to wear them for Clifford. Wear them for yourself. You might even come to like them.”
As they drew up outside Mavis’s house, Finn met them at the gate.
“I can’t wake Maudie up,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Alice asked.
“Well, I went to make her a cup of tea, and when I got back she was asleep, and I can’t wake her up.”
“She tends to drop off,” Mavis said. “She gets very tired about now.”
But when they went into the living room, it was obvious that something was wrong. Certainly Maudie was in her chair and she appeared to be sleeping, but her body was bent at an awkward angle, one arm hung loosely over the arm of her chair, and a ribbon of spittle hung from her open mouth.
“Oh, God!” Mavis ran over to her. “Mother? Mother! Wake up! Can you hear me? Wake up!” She shook Maudie’s shoulders. “Come on, Mother. Please!”
“What’s the matter with her?” Finn asked. “She’s been fine all evening.”
“Finn, dial for an ambulance,” Alice said.
“But —”
“Do it now.”
Finn left the room, and Alice joined Mavis at Maudie’s side. “What do you think?” she asked. “Has this ever happened before?”
“No. Never. Oh, God! I should never have gone out. I should never have left her! Come on, Mother. Please wake up!”
“Mavis, whatever this is, it wasn’t your fault. It was going to happen whether you were here or not.”
“She’s not — dead, is she?” Finn asked, coming back into the room.
“No. Of course she’s not dead,” Alice said.
“Was it — was it something I did?”
“Of course not. I’m sure she’ll be fine. Did you phone for the ambulance?”
“It’s on its way.”
“Then go and make a cup of tea for Mavis. She looks as though she could do with one.”
Mavis was stooping over Maudie, half holding her in her arms, weeping into her mother’s faded blue cardigan. She remembered her last words to her before she left: “You’ll be fine with Finn. You know Finn, don’t you? I’ll be back soon.” But she hadn’t been back soon. She’d been away for hours. And now Maudie had had this — this whatever it was, and she hadn’t been there. She had always promised herself that if anything happened to Maudie, she would be there.
“Why did I leave her? Oh why did I leave her?” she wept.
“You left her because you were having an evening out with friends,” Alice said. “You’re a marvellous daughter to her, but you can’t be with her every minute of every day. After all, you leave her to go to work, don’t you?”
“That’s different.”
“Why? Why is it different?”
“I have to go to work.”
“Well, sometimes you have to go out, too. To give yourself a break,” Alice said. “Now try not to worry. She’s breathing, she’s got a good strong pulse, and the medics will be here any minute. Drink your tea. You’re going to need it. You may be in for a long night.”
“You’ve been so kind,” Mavis sobbed. “So kind. Both of you.”
“That,” said Alice, “is what friends are for.”
The ambulance arrived, and the ambulance men were kind and efficient and reassuring. They told Mavis that it looked like a stroke, and yes, of course she could come in the ambulance with Maudie.
“We’ll follow in the car,” Alice told her.
“Are you sure?” Mavis said. “It seems an awful lot to ask.”
“You didn’t ask, and yes, of course I’m sure. You need someone around. For you.”
“But your work…”
“Never mind my work. This is more important.”
“What about the cat? Oh dear. I’d completely forgotten about poor Pussolini.”
“If ever an animal was capable of looking after itself,” said Alice, “it’s that one. Now, let’s get going.”
It was only when they reached the hospital that Mavis realised, with some surprise, that for the best part of an hour, she hadn’t given so much as a thought to Clifford and his operation.