coconut.
Sheridan stared at his face in the mirror. The greying occipital strip of his hair was fluffed out on one side and pressed flat on the other. It looked daft. So he ruffled out the flat bits to match and thought with a grin that if he was ever invited to a fancy dress party he’d style his hair in this way and go as Saturn.
He wiped his hair back down into its rightful place and sneered at his officious appearance. If he was being honest, which he rarely was about his hair, he bloody detested it. Of course, he’d taken his father’s baldness for granted. It had never occurred to him that it might mean that each of his hairs also possessed the genetic instructions of a lemming. Initially it began to go at the front. Then a circle, that seemed to expand by the month, developed in the middle. And throughout his late teens his hair continued this patterned exeunt with all the precision of a syncopated swimming troupe. When Jennifer had met him, she’d said that he was twenty-one going on fifty. His suicidal hair doubtlessly contributed to this impression.
1969, Sheridan figured, was not a good year to be bald. Indeed he held this to be largely responsible for his denial of free love and virtually everything else that was on offer at the time. Too young to bop and too hairless to turn on, tune in and drop out, he wondered whether he hadn’t perhaps inadvertently traded his youth for a head start in business. Indeed at twenty-one he was the advertisement manager for a successful pharmaceutical weekly in one of the fastest growing publishing firms in London.
His procurement of a wife was also a rather unglamorous, inadvertent, and he supposed, businesslike affair.
At the time he was living at home with his mother in Edingley. This however was not through choice. It was a matter of obligation. And sharing a flat in Pimlico or Bayswater with other young business lights would have to wait until his mother’s concatenation of motley ailments finally reached some sort of consensus. To this day, the guilt of half wishing his poor mother dead could deal Sheridan an upper-cut.
Each evening the dread of entering the oppressive, rancorous house would virtually push him to tears. Of course, he loved his mother comprehensively and would never have suggested a home – still, walking through the doorway and merely bidding her good evening was doing something terrible to him. Something that he didn’t, and still couldn’t, understand. Something physical. Something that he had no say over. Yet it was something indubitably wrong and selfish. Something, he was in no doubt, that had much to do with his father who, at times, seemed able to defy the grave and take up disdainful residence on Sheridan’s shoulders.
‘I must say, I was expecting someone somewhat older.’ These were the first words Sheridan Entwhistle spoke to his future bride.
Jennifer did not mince her words. She said that she considered twenty-six quite old enough, thank you. Moreover, she told him with evident antipathy, if she was to spend her days in this house nursing Mrs Entwhistle then there would have to be some changes. She had a point. The furniture was millimetre thick in dust, the kitchen floor was adhesive with grime and the washing-up was done on a need-to-use basis. Indeed, even Mrs Entwhistle herself would have profited from a good old-fashioned scrub.
She asked Sheridan how often he bathed his mother and he looked horrified. Bath his own mother! It was beyond contemplation. Removing her coat and getting to work in the kitchen, she informed Sheridan that if his mother was going to remain here, he’d need to face a few home truths. The woman was a virtual cripple and should have had a wheelchair long ago. Sheridan would have to arrange for the door frames to be widened. He would also need to invest in some nappies and plastic undergarments.
In fact, Jennifer did everything short of accuse Sheridan of criminal neglect. Why weren’t there hand rails on the bath and grip mats in the bathroom? Why didn’t she have access to the central heating controls? Did he really think she was capable of using the telephone dial in an emergency? The kettle was far too heavy. Why hadn’t the gas cooker been fitted with an automatic ignition? What if she dropped a match? Indeed, Jennifer had to wonder about Mrs Entwhistle’s GP. Why hadn’t he mentioned any of this? As she lived and breathed, the man needed reporting.
Sheridan Entwhistle was not impressed with Jennifer. And when she left later that afternoon, he suggested to his mother that they look for someone else. Someone with a little more experience, someone less bossy by half. But his mother disagreed. She liked Jennifer and considered her ideal for the job. Besides it would be her not him who would be in Jennifer’s company for the better part of the day. Sheridan wondered what could have possibly passed between them in the bathroom to give his mother such a distorted view of the virago nurse.
The changes Jennifer bought to the Entwhistle household were shocking and immediate. Inside a week, she had not only altered the look and fetor of the place, she seemed to have succeeded in dissipating its burdensome ambience. The rooms appeared bigger, lighter and his mother genuinely happier. But what really swung things was when Jennifer greeted his arrival home with a cup of tea and ginger biscuits.
In the beginning the conversation between them was restricted to short reports about Mrs Entwhistle’s wellbeing and planning the various alterations the house needed to undergo. In the weeks that followed, however, their chat grew to encompass Sheridan’s job and Jennifer’s past. Jennifer, like Sheridan, was Croydon-spawned, and, like him, she intended to leave – eventually. Like most things of any cop, the swinging sixties seemed to have bypassed Croydon altogether. She also told Sheridan that she never planned to have a baby because she’d seen, smelled and, worst of all, listened to childbirth first hand. He shared the sentiment, but for the reason that he’d had enough of people being dependent on him for one lifetime.
It was Mrs Entwhistle who noticed that Jennifer was leaving later and later and that she’d taken to wearing small amounts of make-up. She also noticed a general reduction in the irritability – at a push, desperation – that had characterized her son during recent months. Sheridan assured her that it was to do with his work and made excuses to prune short the evening conversations with the nurse.
Then his mother did something quite extraordinary.
One tea-quaffing evening in late summer, Mrs Entwhistle silenced the conversation with a slap to the arm of her chair. Then she launched into a speech. She began by explaining that perhaps she had a tendency at times to take them both for granted but in the last few months they really had shown her extraordinary kindness. The point being they were young and shouldn’t spend their lives doting over a housebound old woman. She slid out an envelope from the side of her armchair. Sheridan shuddered. He figured the dote must have applied to enter a home. But he was wrong. The envelope contained two tickets for a Bach concert at the Fairfield Hall that Saturday night.
Simultaneously, they reddened. What could have possibly prompted this powerless bag of smiles into becoming a shameless meddler? And how in hell’s name had she managed to get hold of the tickets? They would go, now? she asked. They looked at each other and shrugged. Jennifer was the first to smile and nod. Then Sheridan smiled and it was settled.
As she was leaving he told her how awfully sorry and ashamed he was, he couldn’t think what had possessed his mother to do such a thing. She said, rubbish, it was very thoughtful of her and she’d be happy to go if, of course, he would. He smiled and said, ‘Well, let’s call it a date then.’
As she shimmied into her overcoat he noticed the small rise of her breast in the stiff, white blouse. It was peculiar, he’d never considered Jennifer in this way before.
When Sheridan re-entered the house, he asked his mother exactly how she’d managed to procure the tickets. ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out,’ she told him. Later, when he learned the truth, Sheridan Entwhistle would feel rather idiotic about things. But for the time he merely smiled, content to put it down to the strangeness and unpredictability of female-kind.
