Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,12
cushions, and I found myself thinking how nice it would be to rest my head there. “Everybody gets married in the end,” she concluded.
“Uncle Ted’s not married,” I countered.
“Yes, well,” Mabel said, pulling out another cigarette and tapping the end on the table. “There’s not a woman on the planet stupid enough to marry our Ted.”
Ted was Mabel and my mother’s older brother. He didn’t come to see us much, but when he did he always made an impression. Reeking of hair oil and Brut, he smoked even more than Mabel, swore incessantly, and always showed up bearing lavish or rather odd gifts. My mother said he would have visited us more often if he didn’t spend so much of his time in prison.
“Yes,” my mother said. “Never been anything but bloody trouble, our Ted. You’re right about that, Mabel, you definitely are. I mean, you’d think he’d have learned his lesson by now. Almost forty-three and still messing around like a big kid.”
“Well, he never was the brightest spark, was he?” Mabel put her cigarette to her mouth and raised her eyes to the ceiling.
Every time he got out, Ted was soon involved in what even I could see were not the most intelligent of crimes. Once, he was caught breaking into what turned out to be the local chief constable’s house, tripping an alarm that connected right to the police station. Another time, he was arrested for passing forged pound notes that, according to my father, looked more like Monopoly money than the real thing. Most recently, he’d been sent away for “receiving stolen property” after he was caught trying to sell a vanload of illicitly acquired vacuum cleaners door to door in a rather upscale suburb of York. As a petty criminal, poor Ted was working at a considerable disadvantage, since he had deception written all over his boyish features. People didn’t believe him even when he was telling the truth, which he swore he sometimes did.
“I hate to think of him in there, I really do,” my mother said, pursing her lips and shaking her head drearily. “I mean, it must be terrible to be locked up all the time like that.”
“You ask me, he must like it. Otherwise he wouldn’t keep going back, now, would he?” Mabel said.
“I know, but it must be terrible. It makes me really upset at times to think about him, it does.”
“Look,” Mabel said sharply, “don’t you go getting yourself all in a tizzy about our Ted. He can look after himself. It’s you I’m worried about right now. Come on, how about it? Come over to my house on Saturday night. I know you’d have a good time. I’ve got some lovely stuff, Ev. You’d be amazed what they can do with plastic these days.”
“No, no, you’re all right, Mabel,” my mother said, listlessly shaking her head. “I just don’t think I’m much company. I’ll be better off staying home and getting ready for the move.”
Mabel reached across the table to pat my mother’s hand. “What you need is to get yourself out of yourself. Have a bit of fun. I mean, it can’t have been much of a picnic after … well, when you were away.”
My mother shrugged and pulled a tight-lipped smile. “No, but I’m back now, aren’t I?” Her voice fell dim and flat.
“Yes, yes you are,” Mabel said. “And that’s why you should come over on Saturday. We’ll have some laughs. No blokes, just us girls together for a change.”
“Can I come?” I chirped. I pictured myself sitting among a group of big-boned, ample-bosomed women just like Mabel, their wide arms jiggling as they lifted their cigarettes to their puckered lips. They’d swig mouthfuls of copper-colored sweet sherry and laugh from their bellies as they told dirty jokes. The idea seemed so comforting, like being wrapped in blankets on a cold winter night.
Mabel ignored me and continued. “You should come, Ev. You won’t have much of a chance of that once you’ve flitted, now will you? You’re going to be a bit out of touch out there. I mean, it’s a good forty-five minutes on the bus. And fares aren’t exactly cheap these days.”
“Can I go to the party?” I asked again, afraid of what lay ahead of us and wondering if I’d ever see Auntie Mabel again. As far as I knew, aside from her annual trips with her bingo club to see the Blackpool Illuminations, she never ventured outside Hull.