54
‘What are you wearing? For the fête?’ Lorraine asked Roisin.
Roisin, by way of answer when she was eating a piece of toast and reading the morning papers, simply lifted her leg in black polka-dot tights, in the style of a dog cocking it over undergrowth.
‘Oh NO! Rosie! That’s rank madness! You look like one of the teenagers who drink scrumpy by the post office.’
Matt barked with laughter and Roisin flicked the Vs at him.
‘You must wear a dress!’
‘This is a dress,’ Roisin said, motioning towards her cord pinafore.
‘It’s like a school uniform dress. It’s a sturdy bag. Borrow one of mine,’ Lorraine said.
‘Ugh, no! It’s a charity fete, not Strictly Come Dancing,’ Roisin said, the sort of idle parent-baiting that qualified as a leisure activity.
‘Charming,’ Lorraine said, as if she’d not criticised Roisin’s clothing.
Since being home, Roisin had unintentionally sartorially reverted to her early twenties: stretchy dark cotton dresses with spaghetti straps, sturdy lace-up boots, flannel shirts thrown over the top. Hair up, in a bundle. Grungey, in essence. She was still wearing plenty of make-up, so she didn’t think her mother had much to complain about.
Lorraine’s strenuous efforts to maintain her glamour and beauty were to be admired, yet Roisin wondered if her mother would ever allow herself to be old, one day. If she even wanted to. Whether there was an off ramp, in the business of being pleasing to the male gaze.
For her fortieth birthday, Lorraine wore a bottle-green fishtail velvet gown with raspberry tulle trim, exploding in a waterfall at mid-calf height, which was so tight she had to be fastened into it with a glue gun. She’d sang The Supremes’ ‘Baby Love’ down a microphone to Roisin’s father in a packed room at The Stanneylands in Wilmslow. Her parents still had status, the good sort, at the time. Teenage Roisin had been two parts mortification to one part awe.
‘I’ll be changing, to be clear,’ Matt said, by the door in a t-shirt and shorts, off for his morning run round the village. Webberley was not blessed with a gym.
‘You’ll look fine,’ Lorraine said.
‘Oh, indeed. Male privilege,’ Roisin said.
After Matt had left, Lorraine said, ‘Spoke to your brother last night.’
‘Ah, right.’ There was an evident and to this statement that Roisin ignored.
‘I told him you and Matt were helping me out.’
‘OK.’
‘Ryan said to be … cautious. He’s worried in case Matt gets his feet under the table and suggests taking over a portion of the pub. I told him not to worry, but …’
‘What do you mean? Take over how?’
‘As in, suggests co-ownership with me. Legally.’
‘What?!’ Roisin said, outraged. Old furies came rushing in, like opening a submerged car window under water. ‘Are you on drugs? Matt’s doing you a huge favour by working for peanuts – he’s not after anything!’
‘Calm down! You know Ryan – he’s a long way away, and he’s being overcautious.’
‘He’s a selfish shit, worrying about his inheritance and wrapping it up in concern for you, more like.’
‘You always leap to the worst possible conclusion.’
‘Sorry, what is the good conclusion in, “Perhaps Roisin’s friend is conniving to defraud you”?’
‘He was merely asking whether Matt had longer-term intentions regarding The Mall!’
‘Why on earth would anyone see this bang average place and think “hoh, a goldmine”? It’s been a millstone round your neck for years.’ Roisin was being insulting and didn’t care.
‘Yes, but Ryan doesn’t know Matt and doesn’t know how nice he is. He heard a man was sorting everything out and he wanted to be sure I kept control of the pub. He was protecting my interests. That was all.’
‘You always do this. Whatever Ryan does, you turn it into virtue. If Ryan had genuine concerns about Matt, why not bring them to me? You know, the person who knows Matt and vouched for him?’
‘I’m sure he would if you ever called him, Roisin! You don’t exactly make yourself available to your family.’
‘IS THIS NOT AVAILABLE?!’ Roisin bellowed, flailing her arms to indicate her presence in front of her mother.
‘Honestly, if I’d known you’d fly off the handle, I’d not have said anything …’
‘No good turn goes unpunished, eh? Slagging my friends off as potential thieves is next level. As if I’d put you at risk! Did he even address that part?’
Lorraine didn’t answer, and was making an I will have to suffer my daughter’s terrible temper as best I can long-suffering face, arms crossed and eyes to ceiling.
‘Also, Matt’s been given his job back. He’s employed. He could simply enjoy his break before he starts again; instead, he’s putting in hours here.’
‘Knock knock! Bit of pre-match nerves, is it? Haha!’
Terence let himself in, arms full of cellophane packets of catering pack floured baps.
Roisin was too annoyed to feel embarrassed and said, ‘Something like that. I’ll leave you to talk through the plans with Terry. Give me a shout when McKenzie, aka The Talented Mr Ripley, wants to start decorating the garden and stealing fivers from the till.’
‘What’s up with her?’ she heard Terry say, and her mother replied in a stage-whisper, ‘It’s Ladies Day At Ascot on the calendar today, if you know what I mean. Pay it no heed.’
Roisin stomped upstairs, lay on her bed – unseeing eyes boring into the drum-shaped lampshade – and boiled on what had been said. She considered firing off a what did you say that for, please? at Ryan, yet dismissed it within seconds. She knew exactly what she’d get back: a bloodless, curt dismissal. I simply wasn’t clear what his interest in The Mallory might be followed by a how are you? which wasn’t a how are you as much as it was a that’s as much time as I’m giving your tantrum.
Fallings-out weren’t best conducted on encrypted messaging platforms, across oceans, anyway.
Thing was, it wasn’t Ryan she was angry with, not really. Yes, he could be an arsehole, but she knew that. A 3,500-miles-away arsehole.
It was her mother she was mad at. Matt’s natural brightness and Lorraine’s current reliance on their help had made her forget what she was really like, why she gave her mum a wide berth most of the time.
Lorraine took what she needed, then took some more, yet when Roisin needed some giving back – like, say, her mother putting Ryan politely in his place when he was undermining his sister – Lorraine went AWOL, playacted dumb. Support was something she sought but never bestowed.
Why even tell Roisin that Matt had been misspoken? Because Ryan was always higher in the pecking order. Even as Matt and her daughter saved her fête and saved her face, Lorraine couldn’t resist subtly reasserting that her son was CEO of the company. That his was the five-star standard of care. She rewarded words and took actions for granted.
Four years after her dad died, her mother was seeing a man with terrible moccasin shoes called Gary, who drove an uninsured car and flirted with Roisin. Roisin knew Gary had very bad word of mouth among the womenfolk of Webberley, and that sort of grapevine was rarely wrong.
She tried to get her mother to see sense. Ryan told Lorraine she should do whatever made her happy. He resisted Roisin’s entreaties to raise doubts, though she knew he had them. Ryan never made an intervention that could cost him popularity or even minor difficulty. Lorraine became engaged to Gary. She then discovered he was already married and had a petty criminal record.
Both of her offspring were at university, yet Roisin was required – with the emotional equivalent of a gun at her temple – to miss nearly two months of her course to come home and nurse her mother through a mini-breakdown and keep the pub running.
Her mother’s legend recorded that her recovery was magicked into being the day that Ryan had scraped enough from his student budget to send her an incredible bouquet. She still repeated the emetic message on the card about how his mother was a queen who deserved nothing less than a king.
Moccasins Gary had been expunged from the record, and Lorraine instead recalled only that Roisin was so much of a daddy’s girl, she’d scared Lorraine’s suitors away.