Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,56
told me that she’s hitching herself to a bloke over there. That she’s planning on stopping in Australia, that she’s never coming back. To England. To her home. To her family!” And, with that, my mother leaped up from the settee and made a hurried exit from the room.
We heard her as she scurried up the stairs, apparently making her way to the bathroom. Then we heard a loud scream and her thundering steps as she turned tail and ran downstairs again, this time moving so fast that it sounded as if she stumbled several times before finally making it to the ground floor.
“Ooh, heck,” Mabel said, rapidly firing up another cigarette before my mother burst into the room.
“Mabel!” My mother was white as a sheet, her eyes as wide as saucers.
“What, Ev?” Mabel asked, attempting to look coy. “Something wrong?”
“I found a naked man in your bathroom.”
Tracey and I turned to each other, hiding gleeful expressions behind our hands. A smile tugged at Mabel’s lips, but she managed to suppress it. “You did?” she asked with exaggerated innocence.
“Yes, I did.”
“Well, there’s some women might not consider that such a bad thing, you know.”
“How can you say that?” My mother was outraged, grinding her heels into Mabel’s green-and-orange carpet. “It’s … it’s … well, it’s disgusting.
He was standing right there. Not a stitch on him. Not a bloody stitch.”
“Yes, well,” Mabel said, hitching up the straps on her sundress and looking away from my mother. “That’ll be Frank.”
“Frank?”
Mabel nodded. “He was the bloke I went out with last night, the one I—”
“I always knew you had loose morals, our Mabel. But this …”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Ev, calm down.” Mabel rolled her eyes. “It’s not like you’ve not seen anything like that before. I mean, I’m sure Mike—”
“Don’t you bring my married life into this. At least I respect myself. At least I don’t cheapen myself like other members of this family. What with you frolicking with every bloke left, right, and center, and now my mother gallivanting around with some Australian gigolo.”
“Look, Ev, I know you’re upset that Mam’s getting married, that she’s staying in Australia—”
“That’s nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it at all. Suffice it to say, if you choose to have men wandering about your house in the altogether—well, that’s your affair. But I don’t have to stay here and put up with it. Come on, Mike, we’re leaving.”
“Leaving?” my father asked, looking up from the television with an expression so startled it was as if he’d abruptly been brought out of a trance.
“Yes, leaving. Come on, girls. Let’s go.”
“But we only just got here,” my father protested, giving my mother, then Mabel, then me a distressed look.
“And now it’s time to go,” my mother responded, already making her way out the living-room door.
“But the match isn’t over. Can’t we just stay for the end of the match?” He rose reluctantly from his seat, all the time gazing at the television screen, where the two wrestlers were now taking turns flinging each other from one side of the ring to the other, bouncing back and forth against the ropes. As they did so, each roared at the top of his lungs and shook his head like some kind of demented animal. “Hope we see you again soon, Mabel,” my father said when he had finally reached the door after backing his way out of the living room, eyes fixed on the hyperactive performance on the television. “You must come and pay us a visit.”
“Maybe. But I think I’ll wait until she’s calmed down a bit,” Mabel answered, indicating my mother, who was pacing back and forth across the front garden like an overwound toy soldier. “And, judging by the state she’s got herself in, that might be a while.”
CHAPTER NINE
I DIDN’T SEE MUCH OF TRACEY DURING THE NEXT FEW DAYS, TURNING her down several times when she telephoned and asked me to meet her in the village. I even said no when she suggested we spend the afternoon at her house, despite the opportunity this presented of basking in the comfortable normality of her household, and the thrill that came over me when I considered the possibility of seeing Amanda again. Even in the face of these temptations, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my mother alone. Immediately following our visit to Mabel’s, her mood had plummeted. She had taken to her bed and stayed there, refusing to rouse herself when I went into