As Good As It Gets?. Fiona Gibson
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I am woken at 7.27 next morning by the whine of a lawnmower. Must be Tricia next door, making a point about how grass should be immaculately shorn, and that her neighbours – especially us, the Bristows at number 27 – are letting the area down. Ours is more your abundant, bursting-with-blooms kind of garden, and all the more beautiful for it.
By late May, as everything started to grow like crazy, Tricia blinked at our explosion of flowers and remarked, ‘Startling colour combo, in my opinion! But each to their own …’ Damn cheek. In fact, I far prefer Will’s approach. Tricia and Gerald’s petunias and marigolds have been planted at regular intervals (10 cm), and their lawn – a perfect rectangle with edges neatly clipped – looks like an IKEA rug.
I slip out of bed, peer through the window and see that it’s not Tricia who’s toiling away out there, but Will. Immediately, it’s apparent that this isn’t just ordinary grass cutting. It’s sulky-mowing, undertaken to make a point. On and on he goes, striding back and forth without pausing to pick up stones or admire his blooms, as he usually does. Our ancient petrol mower drones away like a vexed insect.
It doesn’t seem a terribly birthdayish thing to do. Maybe he’s miffed because I didn’t hear him get up, and have therefore failed to festoon him with gifts and birthday kisses. Unlikely, though. Will isn’t the kind of man who expects – or even enjoys – a fuss being made. It’s more probable that he’s making a point about something. Yes, that’s it: the energetic mowing is probably due to being railroaded yesterday into agreeing to visit the model agency. Or maybe it’s not that. Perhaps he’s reached the tipping point of his gardening, foraging, cake-baking life, and this is his final attack on our little plot before he starts a new job. Maybe he has a new job, and is planning to surprise me. How ironic that would be, after his mother going on about the prison service and police force last night.
I pull on my dressing gown and venture out onto the landing. ‘Rosie?’ I call through her closed bedroom door.
Silence.
‘Ro, are you awake?’ I push it open, momentarily calmed by a lingering scent. Although strewn with knickers and tights and Kit Kat wrappers, her room at least smells good, unlike the rest of the house. With its hint of vanilla candles and jasmine body spray, it has a sweet, heady atmosphere all of its own.
She emits a low moan from her bed. ‘What time is it?’
‘It’s Dad’s birthday, that’s what time it is. Did you manage to get anything together?’
‘Ohhhh … I forgot.’
‘Didn’t you make him a card?’
Her sleepy face emerges from the duvet. ‘No, sorry. Haven’t you got something in reserve?’
I hear Will coming in from the garden and pottering about downstairs. ‘What d’you mean, in reserve?’
‘Like, in your gift drawer or something?’ Ah, the magic, bottomless gift drawer: a treasure trove of stale lavender hand lotions and long-forgotten boxes of Milk Tray, no doubt fuzzed with white bloom.
‘No, Rosie, I don’t.’
‘But you always have something …’
‘Well, yes, there’s that brown satin nightie Auntie Sally gave me last Christmas but I’m not sure Dad’ll go for that.’ Sally is Will’s younger sister, and adored by their mother, despite deigning to visit roughly three times a year; she only lives in the Cotswolds, for goodness’ sake. ‘Anyway, he won’t expect a present. Just a card’ll do fine …’
‘Could you sneak out and buy one for me?’ She picks a fleck of sleep from her left eye.
‘No,’ I retort. ‘Why should it be my job? Come on – you need to do something.’ She closes her eyes again as if exhausted by our brief exchange. Sometimes I’m driven to distraction by the inertness of teenagers. As a child, Rosie would be up with the lark, poking at my face as I lay in bed, demanding to finger paint or lash a pile of sticks together with rope to make a raft, which she would then proceed to ‘sail’ across our garden. These days, if it weren’t for school, she would spend her days cocooned in duvet, jabbing at her phone or flipping idly through a book.
I turn to leave, stepping over a scattering of nail polishes and battered old shoes, and enter Ollie’s room, which smells of stale bedding and socks. It’s crammed with the artefacts he’s collected over the years (prime exhibits include a preserved crocodile head, donated by Liza when she’d been to the Natural History Museum in New York, and an abandoned wasps’ nest we found in the attic). ‘Wake up, Ollie,’ I command, looming over him. ‘It’s Dad’s birthday.’
‘Oh, er, yeah …’
‘You need to draw him a card. Quick! Come on, get up. Where are your pens?’
‘Mum.’ Ollie sits up slowly. ‘He doesn’t care about stuff like that.’
Actually, this year, I think he will. He needs to know we love him, that he still has a role here beyond chief gardener and cook, and that today of all days is about him. Of course, I don’t tell Ollie that. ‘I just think he’ll appreciate it if you make an effort, love.’
‘But I’m no good at drawing.’ His hair is jutting up at all angles and there’s a pillow crease on his cheek.
‘You are, but it doesn’t matter. Just find some card and write happy birthday in wiggly type.’
He snorts. ‘That’s not very original.’
‘Well, I’ll leave you to think of something better. I’m off for a shower.’
I sluice myself quickly and, when I emerge, I spot two bras drying on the radiator. Rosie’s is a wisp of duck-egg blue Top Shop lace. Mine is the sturdy black contraption for hoisting porpoises. Maybe I should start jogging, like Tricia does – run off some of those Archie’s Hand-Cooked Potato Chips I keep ramming into my face. Maybe then Will would be more inclined to ravage me on a Sunday morning instead of attacking the lawn.
With this thought in mind, I shun my usual weekend attire of old jeans and a T-shirt and wriggle into my favourite dress: black with spriggy red flowers, figure-hugging but stretchy and therefore pretty forgiving. Rather than creating the singular kochwurst-boob, it cleverly creates just enough cleavage without triggering bilious looks from the kids. Effortlessly foxy is the look I’m aiming for, not desperate middle-aged woman who hasn’t had sex for fourteen weeks. Then – although I only wear make-up for work these days – I apply a quick slick of BB cream, some mascara and a dab of sheer, berry-coloured lipstick.
‘Shall I run out and buy him a box of After Eights?’ Ollie asks, ambling into my bedroom.
‘Um, no.’
‘Why not?’
‘He hates them.’
Ollie frowns. ‘Celebrations then?’
‘No, darling, he’d rather have nothing than a box of panic-bought chocolates from Londis—’
‘Why?’ He looks baffled.
I consider how to explain this. ‘It’s not really about the thing, Ollie. It’s about the planning and thought that’s gone into it – the effort.’
‘It’d be quite an effort to go out to the shop,’ he reasons, ‘when really, I’d rather stay here.’
‘Oh, come on, Ollie. You know what I mean. Presents do matter, you know.’
He exhales through his nostrils. ‘What did Dad get you last birthday?’
‘Er …’ I clear my throat. ‘We decided not to do presents last year. We had the house repointed instead.’ And now I’m recalling Tricia,