‘Guess what,’ she said. ‘Jane’s been telling me about that Gary, over there. Your workmate.’
‘Don’t talk to me about him. He can’t stuff a cushion to save his life.’ But these days Frank seemed edgy whenever Gary was mentioned.
Jane was mouthing at Fran: Don’t tell him about it. She would be embarrassed having to explain the wanking stuff to Frank.
Fran smirked. ‘Someone saw him in the bus shelter last night, caught with his pants down and playing with himself.’
‘Oh?’ He opened his can over the sink, catching his finger in the ring-pull. Beer gurgled over the draining board and he struggled to stop it. Cursing, Fran got up to help and he watched her try to save his drink. Frank rubbed the bruised knuckle on his sun-reddened belly. All the fuss diverted him from thinking about Gary.
Changing the subject, Jane said, ‘I got chatted up by that nice bus driver.’
Mopping up, Fran turned. ‘The one with the jet-black hair?’
‘Mm. He kept grinning and asking about my day.’
‘He’s lovely.’
‘I know.’
Minutes earlier Jane had been welling up with the excitement. Now it came to describing her experience she had run out of things to say. She put this down to Frank’s presence, nursing his wounded can of beer.
Both he and Fran were looking at her expectantly. She listened to the shrill cries from the paddling pool. There wasn’t much else to say. ‘A really lovely bloke.’ The juicy details suddenly eluded her, like the water running off Peter’s bare limbs as he staggered into the darkened kitchen.
‘Mam, I need a wee.’
‘At this rate,’ Fran said, ‘you’ll soon get him a new dad. Getting chatted up on buses.’
Jane picked up the clinging child. ‘I’d better stick to the bus stops. There’s more action there.’
‘Ah, well,’ Frank gurgled and, with one of his flashes of coherence, said, ‘What you miss on the buses you pick up on the stops.’
‘No thanks,’ Jane said frostily. Just as she had when Frank had offered her a lend of his dirty videos, if she was feeling frustrated. Jane didn’t mind a joke with Fran, but not him.
She said her goodbyes and went. Early today, thought Fran. It was only four.
Jane arrived home wondering where on earth she would find a Real Ghostbusters toilet with ectoplasm.
At least Christmas was still a way off. These were the dog days of summer. There was still time to look. But that very night the weather changed. Jane watched it from her window. Dawn drew up dreary and wet. It was autumn, right in time for the kids going back to school.
TWO
Nowadays Peter was well-behaved. There was never any trouble when she took him to playschool. Jane had cured him of his tantrums and tears just in time for the start of the autumn term. As she said goodbye this morning, at the doorway of the wooden community shack, he just took a deep breath and turned away, hoping to find someone to play with.
She did worry about hitting him, sometimes. She spoke to her mam about it, to see what she thought. It was hard. Perhaps Peter’s dad would have known how to control him. Perhaps a man’s influence about the place would have lessened the load. She didn’t know.
Her mam hadn’t been very helpful. ‘Men can’t discipline children. They get it all wrong. Your father was hopeless too. No, it’s all left up to us, Jane.’
As a rule Jane’s mam, Rose, didn’t hold with men. Yet in recent years a string of variously debilitated lovers had passed through her life on crutches, in slings, eye patches and wheelchairs. She called them her ‘charity work’. ‘What I’m really looking for,’ Rose would say, ‘is a dwarf. A really little man would be just smashing.’
‘You’ve had a dwarf,’ Jane would snap. ‘Mr Flowers was a dwarf.’
‘Not small enough. I mean a really little man. About six inches tall, that I can carry around in my handbag.’
And Jane would look worriedly at her mother. Her mother would be doing the ironing, in thoughtful, heavy strokes. Rose took ironing in from people who were too busy to do it themselves. Jane wondered if her customers would be so keen, if they saw Rose spitting on her iron, smearing it steamily into cloth. That morning, though, Jane was perched at the breakfast bar, fretting about Peter.
‘Sometimes he’s lucky he’s not dead.’
Rose continued ironing. She managed to look glamorous doing even that. A photo of her stooped seductively over the board had appeared in the local paper. She had taken out an ad and business was booming. The kitchen and downstairs hall were tangled with clean bedding and shirts, bluey whiteness everywhere.
‘I have to lock him in his room, just to stop me belting seven shades of shit out of him.’
Rose clucked. ‘I thought you said he was going to playschool nicely now?’
‘He is. It’s when he’s home. Just me and him.’
‘And you think you’re taking things out on him?’
Jane began to say ‘yes’, then stopped. ‘Taking what out on him?’
‘Your frustrations.’ Rose raised an eyebrow at her. Jane clinked cup to saucer.
‘I don’t have any frustrations.’ She fetched her coat from a pile of sheets. ‘And I don’t need anything else in my life.’ She was meeting Fran in town and was going to be late. ‘And neither does Peter. Just sometimes, it gets a bit much. That’s all.’
‘Hm.’ Her mother hefted a neat pile of shirts. ‘I’ve only done one arm on each of these. You’ve made me lose concentration.’ Ten crumpled arms hung down the side of the otherwise immaculate set. ‘By the way, Jane, have I told you about Ethan yet?’
Jane was shuffling through linen to the back door. ‘Yes, old Ethan with the wooden leg.’ Jane remembered the whole story. Rose never spared her the grisly details. Some old bloke keeping her mother waiting in bed, ready for him, while he screwed his wooden leg off. Sometimes Jane wished her mam was more of a
