Triumph

TRIUMPH

"Auntie Mags?"
"Yes, my love?"
"Mum says you're a triumph."
The charm bracelet clicks as Auntie Mags' hand hovers over the miracle
of engineering that is her hair. Long fingers curve delicately round
the tin of Maximum Hold Spray as dinner-plate glasses peer back at us
from the hall mirror.

A pleased, embarrased laugh. "Does she? You see, sisters can be nice
about each other." Her left eye flickers in an enlarged, satisfied
wink.

I open my mouth to stop what I know is coming next, but six-year-old
Ginny is too quick for me. Overheard words of uncertain meaning,
repeated with care and precision. A slight, concentrated frown, then a
look of delight and a rush of words as memory returns: "A triumph.
Of...hope over experience!"

Mags blots deep red lipstick with a man size tissue, and runs her
tongue over perfect plastic teeth. "Well, my ove, I shall take that as
a compliment. However it was meant."
With a last touch to the immovable hair, Mags steps back from the
mirror. The deep red lipstick smiles at both of us, and she chucks
Ginny under the chin. "Don't wait up!" she calls to Mum. "And don't
worry if you hear voices. I might bring someone back." She gives pert
nod in the direction of the kitchen.

Her high heels march expertly to the front door, she checks her handbag
for ther key, and then she's gone, a fragmented shape retreating on the
other side of bubbled glass.

"Squitbrains!" I yell at Ginny. "How could you say that?"
"Pissbreath!" she yells back. She's getting more sophisticated. "I'll
tell Mum!"

She runs past me, through the hall and into the kitchen. The windows
are just starting to steam up against the evening light, and Mum is
loading macaroni cheese onto the three plates lined up on the
worktop.
"Wash your hands," she says, without looking round.
Ginny opens her mouth to complain, and then remembers something far
more important than grassing me up. "Dad! Dad's ringing tonight!"
Mum glances at me, then looks away. "Wash your hands. Now."
"Dad's ringing tonight." Ginny sashays round the kitchen, spreading her
thin arms. Her gap toothed grin makes her almost endearing. "Daa-aad's
ring-ing tooo-nigh-ite..." She goes upstairs, still crooning.
"And you," says Mum. She dumps the saucepan in the sink. "Get a move
on, Vicky. It's getting cold."
"What excuse are you going to give her this time?" I ask.
Mum shrugs. "She turns the tap on and runs water into the saucepan,
hard. "Perhaps he'll ring."
I say a word which causes Mum to say, "Less of THAT, thank you,
Victoria Louise. Go and wash your hands. NOW."

We sit on Auntie Mags' gold Dralon settee, trays on hunched knees, eyes
filled with screen and ears filled with noise. Victoria Louise.
Virginia Frances. Names born of hope, and given in expectation of nice
dinner services, proper dining rooms and linen napkins. No
slight-second plates from RitePrice, bits of kitchen towel, and trays
on knees in front of 'Choose The Winner!'.

I wonder what Mum would call us now.

Later on, Mum dries Ginny's tears and talks to her about how Dad
must've had to work overtime again, couldn't manage to get away, he'll
ring and explain really soon.

I put Ginny to bed while Mum washes up and sorts Ginny's school stuff
ready for the morning.
"Want a story?"
"Tell me a story about the Old House, Vic. Where we used to
live."
I tell her a fairy tale, about the house, and the nice things we had,
and the happy times.
"And Daddy was there too?"
"Yes, he was." Just not that often.
"Not Auntie Mags, though."
"No. Not Auntie Mags."
"Vic?" Her eyes are like some nocturnal animal's, enormous and shining.
"Vic, why did Daddy go away? Was it because I was born?"
"No. Mum told you. He went because they had...problems."
"Prob-lems. Vic, what are prob-lems?"

When I go back downstairs I say that word again, and Mum doesn't even
flicker.

I'm in bed - we're all in bed - when Aunte Mags gets back from her
evening at the Westbridge Works Club. I listen, but there's no sound of
voices. No car revs up and then away, no footsteps fade into the night.
There's the boiling of the kettle, and the chink of a single cup and
saucer. And Mags' high, thin voice, oddly like Ginny's, half murmuring
a song. I hear her come out into the hall. The song stops, but I can
feel her there, standing in the hall by the mirror.

Sometime later, she comes silently upstairs.

Two weeks later it's Ginny's birthday. Mum and Mags have bought her a
pink bike fromt he shop round the corner, and I've bought her a white
basket for the front and a pink seat for her dolls to go on the back.
Mum painted the bike up; it looks almost new, and Mr Rourke at the shop
let us have the basket and seat reduced, all in.

Ginny can't remember having her birthday on a Saturday before. She's
awake with the birds,and crosses our joint bedroom floor to prod me,
even though I'm snoring for England.
"Vicky, it's my birthday!"

I squint at her over the duvet. She has hair like straw, the texture,
not the colour. Skinny legs and narrow feet poke from under her
nightie. Those night-animal eyes, toobig for the scrawny, pale face.
"Vic, I'm SEVEN."
I hold out my arms and she snuggles in, giggling. "I can't BELIEVE I'm
really SEVEN. Can you believe I'm really seven? Next year I'll be
eight, and this year I'm SEVEN."
"And thirty years from now you'll look like Mags."
"What?" She's momentarily distracted by the thought. "WILL I?"
"No, I shouldn't think so. What the hell time is it, anyway?"
"I don't want to look like Mags," she says, emphatically. "I wonder
what time Dad will ring."

Ginny is pleased with her bike, and pleased with the pink pedal pushers
and glittery crop top Granny Bell has sent her, and the Barbie
rucksack, flask and sandwich box Auntie Jill, Mum's other sister, has
sent. She's pleased at going bowling, pleased at going to McDonald's,
and plesed at being allowed to watch whatever video she wants before
she goes to bed. She's pleased with it all, but she keeps looking at
the phone.

The next day she asks Mum to wash the crop top and pedal pushers after
their trip to Mcdonald's, so they'll be allready to put straight on
when Dad comes round.

That night, when Ginny and I are in bed, Mum and Mags have a row.
"If you don't wash them, Jeannie, I will. You can't do that to the
child."
"And just what is all this nonsense doing to her? All this pretending,
pretending he's going to ring. Pretending that if he does ring, he
won't be pissed out of his head. Pretending that he actually gives a
damn..." Mum stops, in the way she does when she doesn't cry. When she
presses her lips together and looks away, at the wall, or the ceiling,
or the floor, anywhere but at you.
Eventually she says, "You should know better Mags. You of all people
should know better."
"But not Ginny. She's too young to know better. Time enough, Jeannie.
Time enough for her to lose the spark. Don't worry. You'll have another
Vicky before you know it."

In the darkness, I can hear Ginny's breathing, the rhythmic, harsh
breath of deep sleep. Whispering, I tell her the story again. The fairy
tale, about the Old House, when Dad was there. I breathe it into the
dark, for my little sister, who can't hear.

Next Saturday, there's yet more excitement. Mags has been invited to a
wedding. Well, to the Evening Reception. Her friend Rose's son, who is
now junior management at the Westbridge Works, is getting married. Mags
has bought a 'stylish evening outfit' from the catalogue: dress, shoes,
bag, a little jacket, the works. She's also bought a polished wooden
fruit bowl as a present. It was on the list, but Mags is a bit
doubtful. "It's very plain. Doesn't look much. For what it cost."

Up in her bedroom, we watch Mags preparing the ground for the evening
outfit. Mum teases her about Mitch, Rose's brother, who is coming over
from Australia for the wedding. Years ago, before both were married and
widowed; before Mitch took his wife to Australia and Uncle Neville took
Auntie Mags 'for a real ride - mainly up to Casualty and back'; years
ago, there was Mags and Mitch, and hopes. Even expectations.

Mags brushes Mum aside, half laughing, half cross. The evening outfit
is in deep blue satin effect. It fits closely, sheathing Mags' spare
figure, the hem just touching her knee. Her legs taper elegantly to the
trim matching courts. The strap of the matching bags hangs loosely
round her wrist, adorned this time with a broad silver bangle, engraved
with rosebuds. Mum shakes her head, looking exasperated. The bangle is
also engraved on the inside: 'To my princess, now and forever,
Neville'.

Mags has been taking note of a fashion magazine she read at the
hairdressers. There is less Maximum Hold than usual, and she has a
lighter, bronzey shade of lipstick. The effect is good, but unsettling.
Mags is pretty.

She poses in front of her dressing table. We are all there: me, Ginny,
Mum, an audience confronted by a performance it wasn't expecting.
"Well?" she demands. She is smiling, but her eyes plead with us.
Ginny's voice rings out. "You look sexy, Auntie Mags!"
The laughter breaks the spell, though it hurts Ginny's feelings, and
she has to be reassured that she has said exactly the right thing, and
we are laughting at me because I nearly fell off Auntie Mags'
bed.

Downstairs, Mags has a last look in the hall mirror as the taxi
arrives. She picks up her matching jacket, folds it neatly over her
arm, winks at us all, and rustles out of the front door and down the
path.
"A triumph," murmurs Mum, shaking her head. "A bloody triumph."

Ginny reminds us that she too has been invited to a party, the
following weekend, She seems worried at the idea of wearing her new
crop top and pedal pushers until Mum promises her that they will be
washed, straight after the party, and all ready for whenever they're
needed.

Mum puts her to bed tonight. I stand at the bottom of the stairs,
listening to her softly sing Ginny a lullaby. Mum's voice is rarely
soft these days. Not like in the Old House, in the fairy tale I tell
Ginny.

After Ginny is in bed, Mum and I sit on the gold settee, watching
TV.
Mum smiles. "Didn't Mags look good?"
"Yes. Yes, she did."
"She never gives up, that one."
I think of Mags in her evening outfit, with shining eyes and a flush
pink on her cheek.
"What do you believe in, Mum?"
"Not bloody miracles, that's for sure."
There is no flush on Mum's cheek. Her skin is pale and puffy and there
are dark rings under her eyes. Even when she smiles, the little crease
in her forehead never really goes. The light that I can still remember
seeing in her eyes is long gone. I wonder if Ginny has ever seen
it.
"She's stopped asking when Dad will ring." We both know I'm not talking
about Mags.
"Yes, well," says Mum. "We all have to grow up, eventually."
"I thought maybe Ginny would be another Mags," I say. "A triumph of
hope over experience."
"God, I hope not," says Mum, suddenly. "Hope is one thing, Vic. Blind
stupidity's quite another. You have to recognise whenit's timne to let
go," she says. "Otherwise you will end up like Mags, wearing a bangle
given you by some bloke who spent one half of his time sending you
roses and singing you songs, and the other half of it thumping the
bloody life out of you. Oh and by the way, there's no such thing as
Santa Claus, either."
We sit there. We don't cry. I wonder if Ginny has ever seen Mum cry. Or
me, for that matter. I wonder if Ginny has learned not to cry.
"Time for bed, Vic. Just put these cups in the sink for me, will
you?"

In the kitchen, Ginny's drawings grin lopsidedly from the back of the
door. 'For mum dad vicky auntie mags'...I turn on the tap and watch
water splash into the cups.

I hear the phone ring.

No, no, it'll be Mags. Probably forgotten her purse.

It's still ringing. She's not answering it.

We did live in the Old House. It wasn't all a fairy tale.

Pretending that if he does ring, he won't be pissed out of his
head.

I take a step, towards the door. I want to cry. I want to pick up the
phone. I don't want to be sure, deep down inside, how it will turn
out.

I want to be Ginny. Or Mags.

But I'm not.

The phone stops. In the lounge, the television continues,
uninterrupted. I walk back to the sink and run some more, unnecessary
water into the taps.

Mum is at the kitchen door. "Haven't you finished those yet, Vic? It's
getting late."

I know, if I look, that she'll be staring at the wall. At the ceiling.
At the floor.

I turn off the tap. My lips are pressed together, and I turn to stare
out of the window.

I am fourteen years old, and a triumph of experience over hope.