Mum’s the Word. Kate Lawson
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me – no sympathy, no hugs or I’ll cry.’
‘God, what a complete bastard,’ snapped Nina. ‘I mean, I could never really see what it was you saw in him myself, but – you know.’
Susie sniffed and nodded. ‘I know.’
Good friends might disapprove of your choice in shoes, handbags or men but they would defend to the death your right to have them.
Nina shook her head. ‘And just when it was going so well. Is it too soon for details or would you like to get it off your chest, bearing in mind we’ve got a life class in ten minutes and Electric Mickey will be arriving any minute now?’
‘He wants a baby.’
Nina’s expression crumpled like damp origami. ‘What? Who wants a baby?’
‘Electric Mickey; who the hell do you think I mean?’
‘Not Robert? Oh please, please tell me you’re joking,’ she hissed, eyes so wide now that she looked as if she had been electrocuted.
‘Yes, of course Robert.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Nina paused, features folding and refolding as she considered the prospect. ‘A baby. Jesus. Really? Who would have thought it? Bloody hell. Broody. With those ears.’
Ears? Susie stared at her. How come she had never noticed Robert’s ears? ‘Presumably you got them to put the suit and the hat on lay away?’ asked Susie.
Nina nodded. ‘Uh-huh. Till the end of the week. I mean it could have been an autumn wedding – or the Caribbean. That hat would never have travelled.’
‘There you go then,’ said Susie with forced good humour. ‘Problem solved. Oh, and by the way, Alice is having a baby apparently. I’m going to be a granny in January.’
‘Sweet Jesus, it’s been one hell of a weekend,’ said Nina, slumping back into the armchair, exhausted by all the facial contortions.
At which point Electric Mickey ambled in through the double doors carrying a basket of organic carrots, the tab end of what looked and smelt suspiciously like a joint clenched between his last remaining teeth.
‘Yo,’ he said, setting the basket down between them. ‘Y’okay?’
No changing room or false modesty about Electric Mickey: the second that the basket was down on the bench he started getting his kit off, which, despite appearances, although well worn was also well washed.
Naked as a jaybird, save for his sandals – broad-fitting with a therapeutic footbed – Mickey neatly folded everything – faded cotton dungarees and a spotless white tee shirt, not being a man who had embraced layering or underwear as a concept – in beside the carrots and said, ‘So where do you want me today then, ladies?’ without a trace of salaciousness.
Susie smiled up at him, wishing as always that she had stood up as soon as he came in: the view from the armchair was not one that she would have cared to share with many.
‘Well, we were thinking classic Roman today,’ said Nina, getting to her feet. ‘I’ve got you a nice pillar and a plinth set up over here by the gas heater.’
Electric Mickey was in his late fifties, former sailor, reformed alcoholic and ex-electrician with an exquisitely broken nose, skin the colour of good coffee, and with one of the most beautifully defined bone structure and musculatures that Susie had ever seen. His whole body was lean, wonderfully proportioned, with great definition and muscles as taut as knotted string from working dawn to dusk in the little market garden that he shared with his wife, Jolie. He was a mature masterpiece of the human form, which was why Susie booked him over and over again to pose for her classes to prove that you didn’t have to be eighteen to be beautiful.
His broad chest was covered with a sprinkling of white wiry hair, which travelled down in a fine line over his solar plexus and belly to regions further south, thickening as it did to a dense pelt framing his wedding tackle in a ruff as lush as the coat of a well-fed polar bear.
By contrast, the top of Mickey’s skull was completely bald and shiny, despite him having a thick beard and a great curtain of white hair sprouting from below the bulge of his not inconsiderable cranium, cut pudding-basin style, by Jolie, to shoulder length. Occasionally there were a couple of fine plaits in it, once in a while a bright twisted thread or piece of ribbon, which he seemed totally oblivious to – but today there was only hair. Electric Mickey was a great natural landscape of textures, surfaces, colours and shades for the students, and a joy to draw.
‘Fancy a coffee, do you?’ asked Nina, indicating her mug.
‘Not for me, thank you, Neen, don’t want to be dashing off to the loo every five minutes. Carrots if you want them,’ he said, nodding towards the basket. ‘Should be some Swiss chard next week. Now, what are we today? Toga on? Toga off?’
Susie smiled. ‘Off would be great. You’re a bit early though. The students won’t be back till two. Do you want to slip a robe on so’s you don’t get cold?’
‘Don’t mind if I do. I’ve just dropped my granddaughter off at nursery,’ he said, by way of explanation, taking the blue towelling bathrobe Nina offered him. ‘She wanted to get there early today; they’ve got their teddy bears’ picnic this afternoon. She’s got a new dress and we had to fill the van up with all her bears and then me and Jolie did little sandwiches and carrot cake.’ He smiled fondly. ‘She’s so excited.’
Susie sighed. Mickey, with his Father Christmas good looks, was the stuff of which proper grandparents were made.
Her own mum and dad had been perfect for the job too. Had they ever doubted they were ready? Susie’s mum had always seemed to know the right thing to do or say, although she had died when Alice and Jack were little, and Susie’s dad was forever patiently heading off to the shed to mend Jack’s punctures or his pedal car, chivvied on by Susie’s mum – they were made to be grandparents. Susie looked up and caught her reflection in a window and for a split second saw her mum’s features in her own. Surely Susie wasn’t quite there yet? Surely there had to have been some kind of mistake?
‘We were thinking Classic Roman – one of the senate staring out helplessly as the Carthaginians sack Rome,’ Nina was saying. ‘I had one of the girls in floristry whip you up a set of laurels.’ She rummaged around in one of the cupboards. ‘Here we are,’ she said, handing him a leafy crown which he cheerfully plonked on his head. As he took to the dais the first of the students started to trickle back in and set up their easels around him.
‘Actually, I think you’ll find it was the other way round, the Romans sacked Carthage,’ said Mickey, settling himself into position to get the feel of the pose. ‘It was the Barbarians who sacked Rome – the Vandals and the Visigoths and the Gauls, I think.’ He lifted one arm towards the pillar, eyes fixed into the middle distance; a vision in his faded Marks and Sparks dressing gown and matching laurels.
‘So, how did your weekend go?’ he asked Susie, getting himself comfy. ‘Neen was telling me all about it on Friday. Did he go down on one knee? Jolie’s been looking for a reason to get all dolled-up; she’s seen this really great frock in a shop in town – it’s cream and blue with all these tiny little pearl buttons down the front.’
Susie didn’t look but she guessed he was miming. Hopefully Jolie had got hers on lay away as well.
It was late afternoon when Susie finally arrived home. She banged the back door open with her hip and dropped a pile of shopping bags onto the kitchen table. From his basket by the Aga, Milo opened one rheumy eye, decided that on balance she was probably not a burglar, and settled back down to sleep.
‘Hi honey, I’m home,’ Susie called out in her best soap-opera Americana, before plugging in the kettle. ‘How’s it going, Jack? I’ve bought all your favourite comfort food.’
‘Mashed potato with onion gravy, a decent steak and a good bottle of Merlot?’
Susie swung