Tea and Crumpet

Good Breeding by JL Merrow-2

Giles had always known he was adopted—Mummy and Daddy were both tall, fair-haired and on the willowy side, whereas it had been obvious from an early age that Giles was destined for a life of standing on tiptoe to reach the highest shelves and shaving every half-hour if he wanted to avoid five o’clock shadow. But it hadn’t been until he’d reached adulthood that he’d really thought about contacting his birth mother.

His college room-mate Oz, who was staying with Giles for a few weeks over the summer, had been all for it. He’d said family was very important, which now Giles came to think about it was a bit ironic, coming from a man who never seemed to want to talk about his own family.

Mummy and Daddy hadn’t tried to discourage him, although Mummy had said a few strange things about not judging books by covers, and it taking all sorts to make a world. Giles had only listened with half an ear. Obviously it took all sorts to make a world—somebody had to clean the streets and empty the dustbins, after all. Blood, however, would out; Giles just knew his mother would turn out to be as refined as he was. Anything else was unthinkable. Pulling himself together, Giles rapped firmly on the door, and held his breath.

The door was opened by a bleached blonde in leggings and a saggy boob tube that showed an unhealthy amount of orange flesh. A cigarette dangled from her mouth, held loosely between yellowed teeth. Still, Giles supposed charitably, living in Putney his mother probably couldn’t afford anyone more respectable as a cleaner.

“Oh, er, hello?” he said politely. “I’m looking for Angela Mills. I’m Giles Frobisher.” He was just about to add, “Is your employer in?” when the cigarette fell to the doormat, unheeded, and claggily mascara’d eyes widened in surprise.

“OhmiGAWD it’s little Wayne!” a raucous voiced croaked, harpy-like. “You ’ear me, you useless lot? My Wayne’s here! Come in, love, come in, and give your mum a kiss!”

To his horror, Giles found himself grabbed by mahogany coloured talons and yanked into an embrace liberally fragranced with eau de ashtray. “Um. I. Um,” he said intelligently, trying to stamp out the smouldering doormat before they both went up in flames. Then the true horror of his situation struck him. “Wayne?” he squeaked.

Her face split into a fond smile. She had lip-liner tattooed on in a wonky line, Giles noticed mechanically. “That’s what I called you, love. They went and changed your name when you was adopted, but you’ll always be my little Wayne to me. I can’t believe you’re ’ere! Come in, and meet the family.”

She led him through a narrow hallway strewn with cheap, down-at-heel shoes and flyers from local takeaways, and into a sitting room so small Giles’s claustrophobia began to set in. “Oy! You lot, this is my Wayne. He’s come to visit, so you can get off your bleedin’ arses and say hello, all right?”

Three pairs of eyes stared at Giles, while, he couldn’t help but notice, three bottoms of robust size resolutely failed to remove themselves from seats. “Oh. Er, nice to meet you all,” Giles said, giving them all a little wave.

“This is your brother, Darren,” his—Giles winced at the thought—mother said proudly.

Giles stared at the badly shaven ape that confronted him from an armchair, its hands twitching as if they needed but an ounce of provocation to turn into fists. He essayed a weak smile. The ape snarled back, and pulled up the cuff of its jogging bottoms to scratch at the skin around its electronic tagging device.

“And this is Shardonnée—crack us a bottle open, will you, Shards? This calls for a celebration, this does.” A slutty-looking teen in a mini-skirt that showed off her cellulite heaved herself off the sofa and slunk off to a well-stocked bar. She glared at Giles as she unscrewed a bottle of Aldi’s finest.

“Not that one, love! Tastes like horse piss, that does.” The lady of the house rolled her eyes at Giles. “Open the decent stuff—you know, the one what Aunty Sharon got us when she was seeing that bloke at the offie. That’s it, love. Now, Wayne, love, d’you want to call me Mum, or Angie?”

“Angie’s fine,” Giles assured her, probably a bit too quick for politeness.

She didn’t seem to notice, turning to a rotund man who sat in the other armchair, beer can in hand. His bleary gaze flickered towards Giles and then, having clearly found him wanting, returned to the television. “And this useless layabout is my so-called better half—come on, Pete, shift yer lazy carcass and say hello to your son-in-law!”

“Hrnn,” the man grunted, his eyes not moving from the World Cup match on the television.

“Er, step-son, I think?” Giles put in.

“Gawd, don’t he talk posh?” Angie cackled. “You’d never of taken ’im for no son of mine, would you? I bet you’ve been to university and everything.”

“Er, yes. Oxford, actually. I mean, I’m still there. Or will be, once the holidays are over. I’m reading history.”

Pete grunted. The ape gave Giles a snarl as if to say that history students were its favourite snack. Shardonnée sneered, and handed him a tumbler of wine.

“Bloody hell, clever and all,” Angie said admiringly. “I bet you’ll get some high-powered job in the City when you’re done—be able to keep your old mum in her old age, won’t you?” She cackled, her bony elbow making a passable attempt to puncture one of Giles’s lungs. “Now, you sit down, love, and you can tell us all about you.” Parking her saddlebagged hips on the end of the sofa, she patted the cushion between her and the football-loving Neanderthal.

“I’m gay,” Giles said desperately, hoping she’d prove to be a bigot and would sling him out.

“Oh, are you, love? Never mind. Our Darren here’s a kleptomaniac—least, that’s what he always tells the judge!” She laughed raucously. The ape wheezed. Shardonnée sneered.

“Hrrn,” grunted Pete.

“Now, I ’spect you want to know about your old man, don’t you, Wayne, love?”

“Er…”

“I met him on Mykonos. Went on one of them Club 18-30 holidays with your Auntie Sharon—you’ll love her, Wayne, she’s a right laugh. He used to work at this bar on the beach. Dead handsome, he was—you look just like him, love. He used to give me free drinks, he did.”

Shardonnée cackled in an uncanny imitation of her mother. “Wanted to get his end away, din’t he? God, Mum, didn’t you know anything when you was my age?”

“And his name?” Giles asked hurriedly.

“Now, what the bleedin’ ’ell was it? Stavros? It’ll come to me, I know it will.” Angie pursed her lips. Her lipstick bled up into her wrinkles in a fine illustration of capillary action. “Well, it wasn’t Davros, I know that. Sorry, love, it was a long time ago.”

“And she was pissed off her head,” Shardonnée muttered.

“I got some pictures, though,” Angie said brightly. “Where’d I put them pictures, Shards?”

Shardonnée sneered and shrugged, her top falling off one shoulder to display a greying bra strap. Angie tottered on high-heeled fluffy diamante slippers to a stack of magazines. Sifting through several trees-worth of Take a Break and The Sun (the latter all folded to page three, so Giles was treated to a rapid succession of naked breasts of varying size from “obviously fake” to “frankly ridiculous”) she eventually unearthed a photo album bound in cracked PVC. Sitting next to Giles on the sofa, she opened it up.

“Here we are. That’s me…” She pointed to a rather pretty-looking girl in a bikini. “And that, love, is your old man.” With a sinking feeling, Giles stared at proof positive that this wasn’t all some nightmarish mistake. The young man in the picture looked exactly like him. Same curly dark hair, same broad shoulders, same hirsute chest that had been a source of acute embarrassment since Giles was fourteen. “I do love a man with a decent chest on him.” Angie grinned, and dug Giles in the ribs with that razor-sharp elbow of hers. “And see? I wasn’t bad looking in my day, neither.”

“I think you’ve hardly changed a bit,” Giles said gallantly.

“Get on with you! Ooh, you’re a one!” Angie squealed, while Shards made throwing-up noises, and Pete grunted “Hrrn, hrrn,” which Giles took to be his version of laughter.

“Now, you tell me all about them posh lot what adopted you.”

Giles sighed, and started to tell her about Mummy and Daddy.

This was going to be a long visit.

* * * *

Much, much later, having only escaped by promising to come back soon, Giles sat on the steps of his parents’—his adoptive parents’—conservatory. He had a large glass of single malt whisky in his hand and was staring into the pitch dark garden beyond.

Oz sat next to him, chugging down his third bottle of Insanely Bad Elf. He’d been a bit quiet since Giles had got back.

“I always wondered, you know?” Giles said, gesticulating with the Edinburgh crystal in the vague direction of the water feature. “What sort of people my parents were. Were they romantic, idealistic? Or hard-working, salt-of-the-earth types? And now I know.” He paused dramatically. “I’m the son of a chav. A stiletto-wearing, chardonnay-swilling, chain-smoking, perma-tanned chav. And a Greek waiter whose name she can’t quite recall.” He hung his head in despair.

Oz nodded, patting him on the shoulder sympathetically, if a bit unsteadily. “Cheer up. It could have been worse.”

Giles looked up, incredulous. “How? Just how, precisely?”

Oz glared at him. “Well, she could have been a raging snob like her son, for starters! Bloody hell, Giles, have you listened to yourself? This is your mother you’re talking about! Have some respect!”

“What, I’m supposed to respect her for being careless about contraception?” Giles’s sneer turned abruptly into a grimace of pain. “Ow! That hurt!”

“It was bloody well meant to. That poor woman spent nine months carrying you in her womb, then endured hours of agony just so she could push your ungrateful self out into the world! If she could hear you now, I bet she’d wish she’d never bothered—just gone the easy route and flushed you down the toilet at six weeks gone!”

Giles shuddered. “You don’t mean that, do you?”

Oz waved his glass, and Giles ducked to avoid a nasty contusion. “Well, yes. There she was, still in her teens, pregnant and alone. I bet nine girls out of ten would have been down the abortion clinic straight away. And for God’s sake, she welcomed you into her home! Killed the fatted calf, so to speak—”

“That’d be Darren,” Giles muttered.

“—and gave you a mother’s blessing. A lot of women would have just slammed the door on you;”

“You never mentioned she might do that this morning!”

“—would’ve been embarrassed to see you standing there on the door step. A reminder of past mistakes and all that.”

“All right, all right. Point taken.” Giles looked gloomily at a moth that had landed in his whisky. It flapped pathetically a few times in the amber liquid then seemed to give up the fight. He fished it out and tried to blow on it gently with the vague idea of drying it out, but a slight misjudgement resulted in it flying from his fingers and disappearing in the darkness. Not, unfortunately, of its own volition.

Giles raised his glass and drank a solemn toast to its passing. Then he gagged, realising he was drinking something the horrid little insect had very likely peed in.