A Certain Age: Twelve Monologues From the Classic Radio Series Read online

  Obviously I was disappointed. I’d had this romantic idea, see, that when we was way up in the blue sky and the fluffy clouds, like, perhaps me and David would finally just speak to each other about Kaff and everything. I’d forgotten it might be overcast and raining – which it was – and that there’d be other damp and steaming people in our capsule, in any case, some of them foreigners, jabbering away and misidentifying London landmarks through the murk, and that in any case I’d be mostly listening for the fatal snap of a cable, and trying to work out whether the drop would kill us first (before we drowned). And it never occurred to me, either, that David might be frightened. But he was, you know. I’m pretty sure he was. He went all white and sweaty and he wouldn’t look at me. I didn’t know what to do – it was so unlike him, he’s been so strong.

  “This is good, isn’t it, David?” I say, all nonchalant. “See that thing over there that those people just said was the Cenotaph? That’s Cleopatra’s Needle, point of fact.” He nods but doesn’t say anything, and keeps looking in the other direction. “Look, there’s Thames Street, where Mrs Watson lives,” I say. “Mm,” he says, with his eyes closed. He just won’t look at me; it’s horrible. So I try another tack, try talking about home instead, to take his mind off it. “David,” I say, “I found some old records in the living-room, do you think they could have been your mum’s, it’s just she never mentioned them.” And he looks up at me, almost fierce, and says, [he’s still upset by what David said] “Look, stop it, Dad.” Just like that. “Stop it, Dad.” Well, I’m hurt. I say, “What? Stop what?” And he says, “Stop worrying! Look, if people don’t tell you things, it’s only because they love you!” And I think, “Whoa!” I think, “Oh my God, David.” And I look out at the big rainy sky above the big rainy town and I think, well, that’s that for me and David, then. We’ve had it.

  [Cello]

  [Dead] I wish he’d stop. I do really.

  Scene Four: the cello is playing something mournful throughout the scene; as the scene progresses, we realise this is a good thing, but at first it is ambiguous. John is having another look at the records; he’s hurt

  [He flips] So these ARE Kaff’s records, then. I asked her sister and she told me. [Flip] Apparently, she loved them, but she used to hide them from me, you know, the usual thing: protect John by lying to him; protect John by excluding him; don’t tell him anything and then say it was love and concern what stopped you. I mean, if she was here, I’d have a right go at her. You know what she thought? Well, I reckon she thought if I heard these records, I’d get upset remembering my horrible old dad, and how he was so “cruel” to me when I wanted a cello. So she shared them with David instead, and the upshot is – and this is dead funny, this is – the upshot is he now plays “Air on a Bloody G String” all day and all night, so it didn’t work, Kaff, did it? It didn’t work in any case! That’s what you call irony, that is. Oh what a mess. Blimey, I’d of been able to cope with a bit of Paul Tortelier once in a while, Kaff. I’m just a bit of a worrier; I’m not a bloody psycho.

  It wasn’t easy, but I went and asked Mrs Watson what the hell was going on, like. I was sick of it. There’s this boy in the house, see, this lovely boy, and I’ve been loyally defending him against everyone, saying he’s doing brilliantly, coping brilliantly, handling it, but it turns out, I’m not being funny, I’ve only been doing that because I’m stupid. So I say, all right, Mrs Watson, you tell me. Here’s the theories so far. I produce this list. [Rustle of paper] They may entertain you in their diversity, if nothing else, I say. [Ahem] All right, David plays all the time because [reads]:

  One. He’s a nutter, like his dad – no, listen, I’m not being funny.

  Two. He’s communing in some morbid way with his dead mum.

  Three. [He likes this one] He’s successfully taking his mind off his dead mum by concentrating on practical matters such as bow technique.

  Four. [He hates this one] He’s being brave for his dad’s sake.

  And five – oh yeah, I threw this one in, for good measure – he just happens to really like the cello.

  [Paper folded up] Well, she’s dead angry, as it happens. She doesn’t like my list at all. She implies it’s none of the above, like, and things get a bit heated. “Do you actually listen to him playing?” she keeps saying. “Listen?” I say. [Scoffing] “Of course I listen. Not much option in a house that size. I’m just glad he didn’t choose the alpine horn, mate, that’s the only thing that could of made it worse.” “He wants you to hear him, John, THAT’S WHY HE PLAYS,” she says. And I say, [exasperated] “Look, I hear him all the time!” “No you don’t!” she says. “All right, John, what do you FEEL when you hear him playing?” “Oh, don’t you start!” I say, and I walk out.

  [Cello]

  And I come back here. I mean, what does she mean, LISTEN? I’m always listening to him. I wish he’d talk to me, that’s all, instead of sawing away at that big hollow box from dawn till dusk. They ask every time down at Grief HQ, “Have you talked to David yet? Have you cried yet? If you cry, John, perhaps you can both move forward.” And I say, [he knows he’s been wrong about this now, though] “For the last time, David’s all right, he don’t need to talk to me, if he did, he would.”

  [Cello]

  I’m worn out with it. It wears you out, loving people and losing them, and trying to judge what’s best for the survivors. I mean, I’m just a bloke, how am I supposed to know how to comfort a kid who’s lost his mum? He didn’t sleep, you know, all the time she was in that hospice. He didn’t eat. He clung to her at the end; poor Kaff, it must of been heart-breaking to see him like that, [it’s getting to him] like his whole little life was being snuffed out.

  [The cello swells]

  I’m doing my best, Kaff. I been trying so hard not to push him. And all this time – I’m so stupid. [Overwhelmed, starts to weep] All this time he’s been telling me how he feels, hasn’t he? In the music. He’s been telling me how he feels and I wasn’t even listening!

  [He opens the door and calls, in distress] David!

  [The cello stops]

  [Softly] Oh, David, David, I’m so sorry.

  The Daughter

  JUDY is clever, sharp, deeply defensive.

  Scene One: afternoon TV in background

  Dad keeps asking, “So who was it? Who was it, Judykins? Have you got a secret admirer?” So thank you, God, as Basil Fawlty used to say. Thank you SO much. I had just got back from my daily excursion to Mac Fisheries. I mean, I’m well aware it’s a Tesco Metro; I do know that. It’s just Daddy likes the old names – or perhaps he thinks I like the old names – anyway, it’s nobody’s business if we prefer to talk about James Walker’s and Lilly and Skinner’s. “Popping in to Timothy White’s for some more of your fly-away hair shampoo?” Daddy says. “You’ve got a boyfriend in there you’re not telling me about.” It’s nice to remember Timothy White’s. I don’t care what anyone else thinks. We don’t lead our lives for other people.

  So, I’d just got back from Mac Fisheries, you see, and I’d put the bags on the breakfast bar ready to make the usual Wednesday lunch – frozen beefburgers, mash, baked beans; we eat very sensibly, Daddy and I – when the telephone rang. I hate the phone, myself. We only keep it on because when I last inquired about disconnection – when I got that last nasty phone call from Roger – the GPO said they would be “obliged” to take away our smart Trimphone and couldn’t guarantee we’d get the same model again if we ever wanted to reconnect. “You won’t get one of these again, sweetheart, these went out with the ark,” the man joked, so I told him as far as I was concerned he could go out with the ark himself, and we’d keep the phone. Daddy wanted to keep it, I remember – not that he has anyone to call. We did his eightieth last month, and it was just us two. But he declared he’d pay the bill himself, and has done ever since. It comes in his name; I don’t even see it. It’s amazing the stubbornness of the old.

  And now it was ringing. Trilling. You might say warbling. We bot
h looked at it, and looked at each other, but in the end I answered. “Hello, this is St Margaret’s 2622.” “Judith!” said the person at the other end. I knew I shouldn’t have said yes. But I was so relieved it wasn’t him that I didn’t think. “Jude, it’s me!” this familiar voice said. “It’s Beverley! Remember? From Richmond High!”

  I sat down. “It’s me! Bev!” she said again. Daddy was signalling at me, and I didn’t know what to do, so I put my head down and let my hair swing forward like a curtain right around me and the receiver – the way I used to let it fall round my rough book at school. It’s quite comforting to be able to do that. Daddy says they based the character in The Addams Family on me – the one that’s all hair and shuffles along like a walking haystack. Glad that I couldn’t see Daddy, I said quietly, “I’m afraid I can’t talk at the moment. Can I take your number?” “Oh,” she said. “Sorry, is this a bad time? Call me. I’m at the paper till about 1.30 on – got a pen? I’m on 0-2-0-7, blah, blah, blah; blah, blah, blah.” I don’t know what she said, I didn’t write it down, I just made uh-huh noises to make it sound as if I was. “Then my mobile is 0-7-7, blah, blah, and my home is 0-2-0-8, blah.” She seemed very proud of all these numbers. “Are you on e-mail?” she said. “No.” “Well, just in case, the address is Beverley, dot, Brayfield, dot, blah, dot, uk, dot, blah – at blah-blah.”

  The beefburgers weren’t quite right. The same box; but they didn’t taste the same. They think you’ll put up with that kind of thing, but I shall speak to Mr Thomas tomorrow. He might give me a voucher for Carnation milk or something. Bev sounded like she might ring again if I didn’t call her back, so when Daddy was having his afternoon nap with Godspell playing on the music centre (my choice; he prefers Radio Four), I quietly laid down the cryptic crossword we’d started, and unplugged the phone from the wall. I’d just worked out “Harassed nurse left with a sense of grievance” – something E, something E something T something something something – was “Resentful”. An anagram of “Nurse” and “Left”. Daddy and I enjoy our cryptics. Oddly enough, we can’t do the quick, easy, five-minute sort at all.

  I gave Daddy a little kiss on his bald head as I walked past, I can never resist it. [Sings, reedily] Day by day, to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly. [Stops singing] Bloody Beverley Brayfield. Rings up after all this time and sets me off remembering Roger, and sets Daddy off on admirers. Daddy still harks on about the man from the GPO, saying I only tried to get the telephone disconnected to get a man in the flat. And that was ten years ago. As for Mr Thomas’s vouchers – I certainly won’t mention them again to Daddy. “Vouchers, Judy? What’s he giving you vouchers for? What have you been up to behind the sausage counter?”

  Of course, when I knew Bev, when I did actually have admirers, Daddy used to guard my honour like a pitbull. I once had twelve people in my bedroom – four of them boys – sitting listening to a Monty Python record, and he made us all go outside because he imagined some sort of orgy would break out. It was just the way his mind worked. I didn’t even tell him about Roger; I knew he would be wanting to know, “Have you done it yet?” and not believing me when I said I didn’t want to.

  Back in the sixth form, Bev was my best friend ever. Sixth-form mavericks, we were. Young hippy-style renegades in flared loons and badly stitched cheesecloth. We got Miss Watson to read out that notice in assembly: “The Non-Conformist Society will meet at midnight in the cupboard in Room Nine.” That was us. Beverley and Judith. Bev and Jude. “Who was it on the phone, Judykins?” Daddy asked when he woke up. “Was it a secret ad—?” [interrupts] “It was Beverley Brayfield, Daddy,” I yelled from the kitchen. “The one who neglects her mother and hates all men but you in particular.” “Oh,” he said. “Did those beefburgers seem all right to you?” I said. But when I came in, I found him holding the dead receiver to his ear, looking puzzled.

  Scene Two: bathroom echoes, bath running

  Since Mag died, I like to feel I’ve made things nice for Daddy. Mag didn’t love him very much; just reminded him all the time what a big sacrifice she’d made bringing me up – when, after all, I was his “by-blow”. Do people say “by-blow” now? Mag certainly did. In fact, she rarely constructed a sentence without it. Having taken in his by-blow (me) she just reproached him about it; reproached him till there was no breath left in her body; reproached him till she died. Now there was a harassed nurse with a sense of grievance. “What about MY life?” she used to say. And if I said, “What life’s that then, Mag?” she’d bark, “Why do you always take HIS side?” No wonder Daddy worked such long hours running the sweet stall. He was a popular man; no one disliked Daddy except Mag. Mag was deranged. She accused him of seeing other women right up until the end. She said he saw prostitutes and everything. To listen to her, you’d think he had the sex drive of Frank Sinatra.

  I went out to work at first myself, of course: got a nice job in Selfridges straight from school selling embroidery silks, fancy ribbons, rick-racks. They said I was a little over-qualified, with my A grades in French, Maths and English Literature, but I told them to disregard that. I was perfectly happy for rick-rack to be my life. I could call it rique-racque and apply calculus to the stock-take if they liked. They had no idea what I was talking about, but took me on. And I was very happy. But then, after about three years, they did the Great Haberdashery Consolidation and promoted me to executive luggage and I left, and I never went back to work again. I have to say they were surprised. Everyone was surprised. I was a bit surprised myself. But I just said it was only sensible to stay home. Mag was already ill; Daddy was sixty, but still worked from early in the morning till at least seven at night, long after the market closed at three. And of course there was the hair. Hair this long and fine takes three or four hours every morning to dry naturally. Ergo, you can’t really go to work.

  Scene Three

  There’s been knocking. It’s bound to be her. I’ve had the phone unplugged for two days now – although oddly, when I got home from shopping at midday, the jack seemed to have moved closer to the plug than I remembered it. Daddy shouldn’t be troubled with all this, I mean, he’s eighty. I do try to protect him from what goes on out there. So when the knocking started I said to Dad, sit still, do nothing. Whoever it is will go away. So we watched Watercolour Challenge with the sound down and whispered together, “Hannah Gordon’s holding up very well, isn’t she? Do you think she’s had a facelift?” – because you can’t say NOTHING when Water-colour Challenge is on; it’s just not humanly possible. In the end the knocking stopped, and the letterbox clanged. Beverley had put a note through, asking me to ring her. She adopted a very urgent tone; said she was worried about me. I think she should worry about herself; it’s not normal behaviour, what she’s doing. Hounding people in their own homes, when they just want to be left alone. Turning up to gloat about the life she’s made for herself in the big wide world.

  It was weird to think she was outside, right outside the door. As I said, it’s twenty years since the last time I saw her – on a day I have lots of reasons to remember. We had lunch to celebrate her rather mediocre English degree from York University and her new junior reporter job on a newspaper in Newcastle, meeting in Pizzaland in Oxford Street, where in those days they had alpine murals, pine benches, and waitresses got up like Heidi. It was one of those occasions when I was paying, but she condescended to me. We had a lot of those. Anyway, I remember Beverley said in a loud voice to expect inferior service from the Heidis “because we were both women” - a remark that made a deep impression, not just because she had to bring sex into everything, but because it was the first time I was ever referred to as a woman and I thought she was presumptuous to assume I wouldn’t mind. After all, I don’t much like it now, and back then I was only twenty-two.

  We had a couple of glasses of the house red and we talked about her. I’d intended to tell her I’d met this nice chap called Roger in fancy hosiery, and that I’d been offered a promotion, but I didn’t get a chance
. It turned out she’d had an abortion in her third year and had done her entire degree on women writers, as a sort of protest against – well, against common sense, obviously – and they’d had to reorganise the course to accommodate her. “I am in the vanguard,” she said. “Oh well, better than being in the guard’s van,” I quipped, rather amusingly. “I was quite famous for making a stand,” she said. “There was a piece about me in the Yorkshire Post.” Which, funnily enough, she happened to have with her, protected by a sheet of sticky-backed plastic. It was illustrated by a picture of her demonstrating outside an examination hall during the Shakespeare paper. “This examination discriminates against women,” it said, on her placard – or almost. “There’s only one ‘m’ in ‘discriminate’,” I said. Evidently she shouted things like “Scab!” and “Quisling!” at fellow female students going in, and was surprised when they had a party afterwards and didn’t invite her.

  I remember I said perhaps she should read some Shakespeare, she might enjoy it. Which I suppose was my mistake, because suddenly she was denouncing ME as a quisling and a scab. Out of the blue, I was a traitor in the gender war. “There’s a picket line in your own home, Jude. And through emotional debility you side with the bosses against Mag!” Well, I laughed, but she wouldn’t give it up. Emotional debility. Where did that come from? “Who are you reading at the moment?” she demanded. She seemed genuinely angry. As it happened, I was in the middle of an Agatha Christie binge, but I wasn’t going to tell her that, so I said “Milton”. “Ha!” she said. “Another man who tyrannised his females. Although at least he wasn’t sex mad like your dad.”