Sophie Jenkins - A Random Act of Kindness

‘I saw an interesting woman today. You’d have liked her,’ I say to my mother. ‘She was wearing Chanel.’

‘You sold her Chanel?’ My mother brightens, visibly impressed. ‘Is she anyone we’d know?’

She’s got the wrong end of the stick, but I don’t want to ruin it, so I smile brightly. ‘I’m afraid I can’t say. Client confidentiality. Can I refresh your glass?’

Vodka, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, celery salt, fresh celery. Glasses refreshed, I sit down again on the red footstool and the hit of my drink is so strong that for a moment I have the horrible feeling I’m going to topple off it.

‘Is she a television personality?’ my mother persists eagerly, hankering after the days when she, too, was a name and hung out with the stars.

I smile enigmatically, not wanting to ruin it for her.

‘I can guess who it is,’ she says smugly, mollified by her own imagination.

The doorbell rings. In my semi-drunk state it doesn’t sound like the doorbell. It sounds like an alarm, harsh and urgent and motivating, and the three of us are galvanised out of our alcohol-numbed torpor into action, struggling to our feet in uncomprehending panic.

‘Who is it?’ my mother asks, keeping her voice low as if we’re in hiding.

I open the door and it’s my upstairs neighbour, Lucy. She comes in full of drunken merriment. ‘Hey! I saw your light on and I—’ She suddenly notices my parents. ‘Oh, hello!’

I can guess what my mother is thinking behind her frozen face. She hates people who drop in unexpectedly. She thinks it’s the height of rudeness.

‘Bloody Mary?’ I ask Lucy.

‘Ooh, yes. Is this a party?’

Lucy’s got curly blonde hair and the kind of cheerful superficiality that actors are good at during those times when they’re not talking about a new role. They take acting seriously, but they treat life with a very light touch, which is a welcome relief if you belong to my family. Lucy’s wearing a black unstructured asymmetric dress with a lot of zips. Comme des Garçons. I know because I sold it to her. She’s playing Lady Macbeth at The Gatehouse and she still has her stage make-up on. She’s electrified with post-performance adrenaline.

Lucy’s ambition is to direct. She’s been in all the best crime dramas: Scott & Bailey , Silent Witness , Endeavour , Shetland . Whenever she’s in something, she invites me upstairs so we can watch it together on her flatscreen TV and she points out the flaws in the acting, things that I’d never have noticed – like when someone fluffs a line, or winces before the knife’s been raised, or fails to respond to the scene.

And that’s the way she’s looking at me now, slightly critically, as if I’m not playing the part of host very well, so I introduce her to my parents and while I mix another jug of Bloody Marys she fills us in on how the night has gone. The theatre was packed. There had been a heckler. The audience was so caught up that at the end there was a long, thick silence after Malcolm’s closing lines.

‘Malcolm McDowell?’ my mother asks hopefully, ready to claim acquaintance because he bought her a drink once.

‘ Malcolm . Duncan’s son,’ Lucy says. ‘“This dead butcher and his fiend-like queen”.’

My mother’s disappointed. ‘A dead butcher?’ she echoes, confused.

‘He’s talking about Macbeth ! The fiend-like queen – that’s me. And they’re holding up Macbeth’s head and this orange light comes over them – it’s like an Isis video. Cheers!’

Lucy brings a whole new element to the night. There are some things that my parents will only say to me, which shows some kind of loyalty, I suppose, so the conversation stops being personal. Lucy sits on the footstool and I sit on the Barcelona chair while my parents loll on the sofa. We’ve reached the hazy stage of drunkenness where words become particularly meaningful.

Lucy’s still talking about the play and her excitement about the concept of the ‘Pahr off sgestion’.

We’re momentarily perplexed but rooting for the concept anyway. ‘Par? Path?’ I prompt helpfully.

She takes a couple of shots at it.

‘Parf – parf –.’ She takes another sip of the drink to clear her head and leans forward. ‘Power of suggestion,’ she says, exaggerating the words at us as if we’re deaf. ‘The three Weird Sisters, psychics as we call them, I play second psychic as well … anyway, the thing is, they put the idea into Macbeth’s head. They plant it there. Hadn’t occurred to him to become the Thane of Cawdor before then but he thought, you know what? I can do that. See what I mean? It’s dark, right?’

‘Aha! Brainwashing,’ my father says.

‘Not brainwashing.’

‘Visualisation,’ I say.

‘You see?’ Lucy asks happily.

‘They didn’t read the future, they just gave him a goal to aim for,’ my father says.

‘Yes!’

My mother’s face turns my way. ‘What are your goals, Fern?’

‘To make a success of my business.’

She remains unimpressed. ‘That’s it ?’

‘Well,’ I shrug, ‘the Thane of Cawdor thing’s already gone.’

My mother hates flippancy. ‘She had so much promise,’ she says, turning to Lucy for support. ‘She’s thrown it all away. She needs to do more with her life.’

‘Why does she?’ Lucy asks. ‘She’s got a nice life. You’ve got a nice life, Fern, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’ I want to hug her.

My mother says icily, ‘She’s got a market stall.’

Cheerfully unaware, Lucy replies, ‘I know. Great, isn’t it? There was a waiting list and everything! She was really lucky to get it, weren’t you, Fern?’

My mother’s not used to people disagreeing with her. She glares at Lucy from the depths of her narrow eye sockets. When Lucy remains oblivious to the silent death stare, my mother stands up and announces coldly, ‘I’m going to bed.’

Retires: hurt.

‘Goodnight,’ we say in unison.

As she stands, the fur on her cape quivers as if it’s alive – and about to throttle her .

The thought comes into my head with no particular emotion or malice.

My mother goes through the door that leads to the bathroom and bedroom and closes it quite firmly.

‘Was it something I said?’ Lucy asks, surprised.

My father looks at his watch. ‘My word! It is getting awfully late. It’s almost midnight.’ He puts his glass down and stands up.

I stand up, too, and he gives me a hug, a proper hug, and for a moment I feel his soft, shaved cheek against mine.

He says goodnight to Lucy and follows my mother to bed.

‘Insane!’ Lucy whispers thrillingly, widening her eyes at me after he’s gone. ‘Are they always like this?’

I think about it. ‘Actually, yeah.’

‘What has she got against market stalls?’

I shrug and try to laugh it off. ‘She was hoping I’d be a model, like her. And then, as I’m only five foot five, she was happy to settle for me being a fashion designer.’

‘Oh, I get it. You’re not living up to her motherly expectations. “What are your goals, Fern?”’ Lucy says, in an accurate imitation, and adds in her ordinary voice, ‘And that whole Malcolm McDowell thing – what was that all about?’

‘She met him when he was in Caligula ,’ I say gloomily. ‘But nothing came of it. That’s my mother. Always hoping for the best and always disappointed.’

We stare at each other for a moment and then for no reason at all, we suddenly start to laugh, muffling it with our fists on our mouths.

‘And the dead butcher bit. Did she think Macbeth actually was a butcher?’