13. Jun, 2021

'Poppy'

Jayne had always been a little in love with Patrick.  Perhaps, she thought, a few beers into the barbecue get together on a sunny afternoon, she still was.  She was watching him in action cooking at the barbecue from the garden chairs the rest of them were sitting in.  She hadn’t seen him properly for years, but now that Jayne and her husband Matthew had moved back to the home town because of their parents, in particular Matthew’s, becoming more frail, they had come across one another socially again.  Jayne and Patrick had been children next door to one another, and playmates when they were youngsters.  He had been a good looking boy - dark haired, sunny natured and independent.  He had to be, since he was a ‘latch key kid’ when he came home from school, even in infants class,  and often shared a sandwich with Jayne, courtesy of Jayne’s mother, on their front step.  Perhaps because of this, he seemed to grow up faster.  When he was seven, he gave her his teddy bear, because he said he was too old for one.

Jayne  had it safe even now,  in her parents’ house, in her old single wardrobe.  When Patrick was a teenager, off out on his scooter and later his motorbike with mates and girlfriends, while she was stuck inside with homework, she had still treasured the gift, probably long since forgotten by Patrick himself.  They were touching forty now.  Patrick had married in his twenties and his twelve year old eldest, a son, was assisting him in working competently at the barbecue food.  The boy, Brandon,  had a look of Patrick as Jayne first remembered him, the features still soft in boyhood.  Patrick also had two daughters, Savannah and Keira, the kind of names which Jayne would never have chosen herself.  An old memory returned from her girlhood, of imagining going out with Patrick, of being married to Patrick.  They would have a baby girl and she would be called Poppy.  She had not thought of it in years and found an unexpected sting in her eyes.

Jayne had gone away, first to college and then to teach primary.  There, she had met her own partner, Matthew.  Both with roots in the same home town, although they had not known each other in it, that was their first connection and now they had moved back here.  They had no family of their own yet.  They had always been agreed that they enjoyed their freedom, their school holidays away and that they had enough connections with children through their work.  ‘Maybe later’ had become probably a bit too late but as Matthew would say, ‘never say never’, although he never said ‘let’s do it this year’ either.

Jayne realised that Matthew was watching her watching Patrick and looked around the garden instead.  Patrick and his family now lived where his parents had done, his parents having house swapped to his first time buy terrace.  Jayne’s parents still lived in her old family home, and they were visiting for the day, invited for a summer barbecue party with ‘next door’.  Patrick’s garden now boasted a posh new shed and a hooded shelter under which a motorbike was being tinkered with for renovation.

“Oh, look!  You’ve still got your old motorbike, Patrick!” Jayne had exclaimed when they were escorted through, speaking with enough romantic excitement to make Matthew look at her in surprise, although Patrick only laughed.

“Yep.  My old BSA Norton – gold dust now, these, eh, Matthew?”  he answered, meeting Jayne’s husband for the first time.

Matthew, ostentatiously impractical and a reader, had not played along.

“Not my kind of thing – mate,” he said, adding the ‘mate’ after a slight pause.

Jayne cringed at the indirect put down, the ‘mate’ said as if to show some innate social difference.  She had told Matthew little or nothing about Patrick previously, but his jealousy radar had already picked up on something.

“No?  Oh, well.  Each to their own,” Patrick had shrugged comfortably.  “Now – let me get you a drink.  I’ve got some beers chilled if that’s o.k.?”

He had disappeared inside to get them, and Matthew murmured,

“Well, that went right over his head, didn’t it?” in one of the confidential asides to Jayne he liked to make.

“There’s nothing wrong with Patrick’s brain, Matthew.  He’s just got good manners,” she rebuked and so, from the moment they sat down, Matthew was already sulking and ready to spoil an occasion he had been reluctant to join.  

Barbecues were also ‘not his thing’, apparently, or so he had said when she had insisted her parents would be upset if they didn’t go along.  The truth was that Matthew resisted social outings and always had done.  She decided she would have to keep an eye on his intake of alcohol, because Matthew could get difficult in order to wind her up into feeling they ought to leave the party.  In younger days, there had been occasional fisticuffs with someone when they were out, which he always blamed on having spirits instead of sticking to beer, and since he was always calm enough at home when it was just the two of them, she believed him.  They had all had a few beers by now.  Jayne’s parents were in deckchairs next to Patrick’s, discussing the house swap done with Patrick and Sally some years ago now to the two up two down they had started off in.

“It’s all we need,” Patrick’s mother was saying.  “And Patrick’s put us in a downstairs bathroom and loo.  We’ve got a little yard for flowerpots and it’s right near the shops for us.  Patrick and Sally needed the room here and the garden.  Good family houses, these.”

Jayne was aware of the grandchildren sized gap in her own parents’ lives and that, although no slight was intended, they would be likely to be feeling it.  She did herself right now, with that recollection of Poppy, the fantasy child, hovering when she was looking at Patrick and Sally, happy with their family.

“Oh, well, of course, we haven’t reached that stage yet.  And Jayne and Matthew have enjoyed such busy lives and great holidays abroad always with having such good teaching jobs.  We’re just happy to have them near again.  Matthew’s parents are older than we are you see, and he’s an only too like Jayne so... now his dad’s had a few falls, it’s good of them to come closer to home again.”

Jayne smiled to herself at this mild retaliation from her own mother, whose notions that Jayne and Matthew being teachers somehow imbued them with higher status were no more recognised or regarded by Patrick’s parents than any notice had been taken by Patrick of Matthew’s earlier retort.  They had always been content in each other’s family company and with the world they lived in themselves, having worked hard enough for it in younger days.  Jayne had always envied them for it, and their straightforward capacity for enjoying life without any intellectual pretensions.  She didn’t think Matthew’s made him happy, and they only embarrassed Jayne herself.  She looked across at Patrick again as he was calling over to them all,

“Right!  I think these are about ready!” flipping burgers while Brandon turned over hotdog frankfurters.  “Who wants to risk a homemade burger?”

“Is it a Patrick burger?” Jayne called across in a bright, congenial voice which made Mathew frown at the bottle of beer in her hand.

“Yes, better eat something.  You’re getting a bit frisky, aren’t you?” he murmured into her ear.

Jayne ignored him because Patrick had turned, smiling below his sunglasses at her to shout,

“Yes, it’s a Patrick burger!  All done by my own fair hands!”

“I’ll have one of those then!” Jayne responded at the same time as Sally said,

“Only thing he does like to cook!  Perfectly good at it too!”

“Yes, well, you and the girls like wussy veggie stuff,” responded Patrick in the same warm, bantering tone, which showed their relaxed intimacy together.

“Oh, god,” disparaged Matthew in Jayne’s ear.  “Chauvinistic cheffing.  What a joke.”

But Jayne continued to ignore him and, getting up, went over to the barbecue, ostensibly to say to Brandon,

“Mmm, those smell delicious.  Those frankfurters are lovely and brown.”

“Yep!  My right hand man,” declared Patrick.

Jayne could feel Matthew rolling his eyes behind her back.

“What would you like, Mum, Dad, Matthew?” she offered, to cover her approach and being near enough to Patrick to feel the heat of his arm next to hers.

“I’ll wait for the vegetarian course,”  Matthew called back.  “I thought we were both on that?”

“Not me!” said Jayne cheerfully.  “I’m flexitarian.”

“You mean you like to have a bit of what you fancy!”  Patrick teased her and Jayne blushed a little, her attraction to Patrick finding double meanings she doubted he intended, although she still hoped that Matthew hadn’t heard.  Turning to his guests, Patrick invited , “If you’re not completely vegan, Matthew, there’s cheese and onion quiche the girls and Sally made, and if you are, tons of chopped up greenery – all in the kitchen keeping cool.  Oh, and probably that chickpea muck.” 

“It’s hummus, dad!” chorused Savannah and Keira, clearly in answer to an old joke.

“Help yourself, folks!” said Patrick waving his barbecue fork at them.

People got up and moved about between kitchen, barbecue and chairs, Sally dishing up in the kitchen and Jayne staying to assist with putting burgers and hotdogs into buns with Patrick and Brandon.  When they sat down again everybody had moved around a little.  Patrick’s oldest girl, Savannah, was swinging her legs in a deckchair next to Matthew, showing him a book she liked.  This was because, as they were chatting and eating, Patrick had asked Matthew what he enjoyed doing and Jayne, annoyed by Matthew earlier, had jumped in, although she spoke with humour so as not to sound sharp.

“Oh, Matthew just reads all the time,” she said.

“Like you, then,” Patrick responded, glancing at her.  “You always had your nose in a book as a kid.  Like our Savannah, here.  Sav, here’s someone you can talk to about books.”

Savannah, who seem to share her father’s extrovert and easy nature, was not slow to come forward and Matthew, Jayne could see, was flattered to have his opinion sought.  As an act of diplomacy, it could not have been bettered, and something in the way Patrick winked at her told Jayne that, really, he understood the dynamic perfectly well.  He just didn’t care about it.  Jayne was sitting next to Patrick himself, admiring the smooth tan which had always come to him so easily while she had always been freckled or sandy brown rather than sun kissed.  His hair was still thick and dark brown and, although his face was older and the features stronger, his build broadened out, he still stirred her heart the same as he had when he was a boy and later, when he had been riding out to adulthood on his motorbike while she was still an untried girl at home.

Even now, married as she was, in his and his family’s company she still felt it, her exclusion from a world she had envied growing up next door to it.  She saw them as sophisticated, people who had no doubts about the life they wanted, and which had always seemed to surround them so easily.  Her parents had pointed out her advantages in staying on at school to do her exams, while she had envied Patrick’s freedom and escape from its confines.  It surprised her that, being a teacher herself now, she could still feel the pull of it, wanting to belong to that happy seeming and adult circle.  Spurred on by all these sentiments and a kind of ache where Poppy had once existed as a possibility, in her own heart at least, she said to Patrick,

“Do you remember?  Playing out after school and weekend?”

“And holidays.  Of course I do.  All those sarnies when mum and dad were on shifts.  I must have cleaned your mum out of jam!”

Jayne laughed, enjoying his affectionate smile at the memory.

“You gave me your old teddy bear,” she reminded him.  “When you were seven.”

“Did I?” he asked.

“Yes.  He’s still here in my old room.  I’ll get him!”

On impulse, Jayne, buzzing with beer and sunshine, nipped out and round through her mum and dad’s open patio doors, visible from Patrick’s garden.  In her old room, she collected the bald snouted ted with his wobbly head held on by the little scarf she had once lovingly knitted for him and brought him back round. 

“Here he is!” she said, offering the toy to Patrick, who took it with a rather touched expression.

The bear looked strangely small now in his capable, mechanic’s hands.

“Old Fred!” he said, with fond amusement.  “I’d forgotten all about him.”

“I hadn’t,” said Jayne and something passed between them as they looked at one another, the spirit of old times flitting through their adult eyes.

“Well,” he said gently.  “That’s very sweet.  Isn’t it?”

It was the right expression for what they both felt just then, and they smiled at one another.

“What are you two talking about?” asked Matthew, appearing before them.  He was in tow with Savannah, who was taking him inside to show off the rest of her library.

“My old teddy bear, Fred here.  I can’t even remember who gave him to me!” said Patrick, laughing about it now, which wounded Jayne after their nostalgic moment about this private souvenir of their childhood.

“Aww – can I have him, Dad?” asked Patrick’s younger daughter, Keira, attracted by the conversation to come over and see the toy.

“Oh, I don’t know.  He’s a bit of a scruff, isn’t he?” said Patrick.  “I think mum would think he was too much of a dirty old thing for you to have.”

“No, he isn’t!” declared Jayne, stung that this treasure seemed despised by the once chivalrous boy who had given Fred to her, albeit because he didn’t want him anymore.

“Oh, really, Jayne!” scoffed Matthew.  “You’re such a baby about things!”

Now Matthew did meet Patrick’s eye, in man to man style mockery of Jayne’s childish emotion.  But Patrick looked back at him in an assessing way, and Jayne could see he sensed a cruelty towards her.

“Tell you what, Keira, love,” said Patrick, carefully addressing his daughter instead of the adults.  “He’s lived in Jayne’s mum’s house all these years, so I think old Fred’s used to it there.  Let’s ask Jayne to put him back.  Maybe you can visit him round Jayne’s mum’s?”

“All right,” said Keira, another sanguine little girl.  “I’ll bring my teddy round to see him too.”

“Fair enough,” said Patrick. “It was very kind of Jayne to bring him out to show us but now he can go back where he belongs.  After all, it was you I gave him to, Jayne.  I’m sure Jayne will keep an eye on him for us, Keira, when she visits her mum and dad.”

“Of course I will!” said Jayne, taking the worn plush teddy bear back and going to replace him on the top of her cupboard.

It would be nice to imagine that there was another message Patrick was giving her, she thought, not in any very distinct way about what it might mean for anybody but taken back into her childhood and adolescence by the circumstances.  The wardrobe door was open with its full length mirror on one door and she glanced in it after putting Fred back inside, her younger self looking back and pretending, in dress up, to be married to Patrick, a dolly from her pram being the imaginary Poppy.  A sense of longing really swept over her, that she did want a baby after all and what if it was too late now?  The beers, the sunshine, the reminder of how happy other families had always seemed to be compared to hers or her own marriage, even though she could not put her finger on why, crystallised into that. 

It would never have occurred to any of them to put things off until they might be too late in pursuit of other fulfilments, she felt, but equally, it did not mean they had not missed out on things in life, either, because of that.  She gave herself a mental shake, just as Matthew appeared in the room beside her, agitated and saying,

“Sober up and stop making a fool of yourself!  Flirting like that with the man next door!” with some contempt.

“I grew up with him,” said Jayne.  “We played as kids is all.  You’re imagining things.”

“Well, I’d better be!” said Matthew, stropping about because he was now quite drunk too, but he hadn’t missed much.  “If you really wanted to play ‘Happy Families’ you should have told me in the first place.”

“It wasn’t what you wanted.”

“It wasn’t what you said you wanted.”

In both cases, it was true, and they got stuck there at the usual impasse, backing off before there was a row because they had to go back to the barbecue party.  Something had changed though, in the atmosphere, when they returned.  Sally had something behind her eyes when she looked at Jayne which told her that she would never be allowed to make herself too welcome in her house.  Patrick was now busy cutting the grass ‘while the sun’s out’ he waved across at them when they came to sit down again.  The children had gone off playing to the park with Brandon in charge, not prevented from going by Patrick or Sally out of politeness to their company.  Jayne’s parents were standing talking to Sally, clearly getting ready to go back home.  Sally was looking hard at Jayne over their shoulders.

“Charming!” observed Matthew.  “This is nice.  Guests left to ourselves.”

He spoke rudely and Patrick, who had stopped mowing for a minute, heard him.

“Just old neighbours having a get together,” he said.  “We don’t stand on ceremony here, you know.  We’re all easy company.”

“Oh, I’m sure!” sneered Matthew.

“Matt!” exclaimed Jayne in an embarrassed yelp.  “I think maybe we should be going?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” said Matthew, still rudely. 

“No rush,” said Patrick but not pressing them to remain, although he added, “You’re welcome any time,” while avoiding Jayne’s eyes, perhaps conscious of his own wife’s upon them all.

Jayne was glad he had said it, feeling again her attraction towards him, but there was nothing in Patrick’s kindly expression to suggest that he shared it as an adult now, any more than he had done as a teenager heading out into his own grown up life.  Matthew and Jayne left to return to their new place, a small house too, but which would be big enough, if there ever was a baby, to have one growing up in it with them.  They were barely speaking on the way home but after a social event, this was often the case.  Perhaps she would visit her parents alone next time, Jayne thought rebelliously. 

The dream child Poppy flitted briefly through her thoughts again during the evening but the immediacy of it was fading and, as she looked at Matthew, pointedly reading and keeping himself to himself, she doubted that it would ever really happen or, if it did, it not ever having been what Matthew wanted, that they would stay together.  She had always chosen that first, their relationship, perhaps until now.  Time would tell, she thought, but by tacit agreement they were already trying, and perhaps it wasn’t, after all, too late.  She found herself laughing suddenly at the thought of what Matthew would think of calling his child ‘Poppy’ and he looked up and smiled at her, only having waited for a moment of reconciliation to put whatever was wrong with the day behind them.

“Let’s go up,” he suggested.  “Maybe an early night is what we both need?”

“Maybe it is,” Jayne agreed and, hand in hand, they went upstairs together, leaving the unsaid things safely unsaid between them, as they always did.