‘that would fill in my days.’ He said he couldn’t afford it. She said she didn’t think money ought to stop people living, actually living: making their lives little when they could be big. But if she couldn’t have another baby the newsagent on the corner wanted someone in the mornings. She said Ken could look after Apricot because he was at home when she was out.
‘I’d be asleep,’ Ken said. ‘I don’t think I’m the kind of man who ought to have a working wife.’
Wendy said, ‘You wouldn’t be, because you never actually married me. We were going to once but when it came to it you didn’t have the money for the licence. You said you’d spent it on a new banjo.’
Ken said, ‘I had to have a new banjo. Some fool backed over mine in a car park. It was a wonderful instrument. I’ll never get another one like it.’
She said, ‘More fool you for leaving it in a car park,’ and little Apricot said, ‘Yes, that’s right, Mum. That’s what I think!’
Ken said, ‘I had to put it down while I put the amp into the van. I forgot it. By the time I went back for it, it was too late. If you’d come out on the gig with me you could have held it for me. But you’re not interested in my work at all. All you want to do is sit home and drink gin.’
‘I have Apricot to look after,’ said Wendy. ‘You forget that. You forget everything important, that’s the trouble with you.’ She’d put her finger on it. Sometimes it takes people years.
‘Well,’ said Ken, ‘don’t expect me to look after Apricot while you’re at work. I’m a musician, not a father.’
‘Oh well,’ said Wendy, ‘that’s that,’ and poured herself some sherry.
Rhoda said when she came to tea at the weekend, ‘You only remember what you want to remember, Ken; serve you right. How many gigs have you missed in the last few months?’
‘Only one,’ said Ken, ‘and that wasn’t because I forgot it: it was because they’d given me bad directions.’ But he smiled sheepishly and cheered up. Rhoda always cheered him up.
Rhoda said, ‘What’s that you’re pouring into your cup, Wendy?’
‘Whisky,’ said Wendy.
‘You have a real drink problem there,’ said Rhoda.
Wendy sat at home and polished her nails. She listened to the Beatles on the radio; it could only be to annoy Ken. He was out every night and most weekends and if he wasn’t out he was asleep.
She told Deval the newsagent all about her problem. His wife had died suddenly a couple of years back. He needed cheering up too.
Dev said to Wendy, ‘You don’t need Ken, he’ll never amount to anything: he treats you like shit: what you need is a man like me,’ and Wendy believed him.
‘Can I bring Apricot with me?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Dev, ‘a woman shouldn’t start a new relationship with a child hanging around. It isn’t fair to the child.’
‘I expect you’re right,’ said Wendy, and left Apricot with Ken.
Rhoda said to Ken, ‘If you ask me, the girl’s in love with love, not Dev, and she’ll come back. She was like this as a little girl. Looking after stray kittens and then getting bored.’
Ken took Apricot with him on gigs for a time and quite enjoyed it, but found getting her to school and organizing her clothes and meals onerous. When Wendy’s father died of lung cancer, he asked Rhoda to move in and presently got it together to marry her, thus putting a stop to Wendy’s sudden plan to abandon Dev and move back in with Ken.
‘She’s just jealous,’ said Rhoda, comfortably. ‘Take no notice. Older women with younger men never goes down well, except with the parties involved.’
Wendy and Dev presently parted; Wendy, who by then had a real drink problem, was hired to do a milk delivery round which took her to her own doorstep, and daily contact with Apricot, until Ken put a stop to it. If Rhoda put out a note for half-cream milk, Wendy would deliver full-cream. Ken complained to her employers, and she was put on another round, but kept forgetting the orders and was presently let go.
And that was how, in a gradual and non-sensational manner, Apricot’s mother became her sister, and her grandmother her mother. Her father at least remained her father.
Valerie leaps to conclusions
THERE IS NO GETTING away from it. A study of life, death and marriage certificates show Apricot