The Cat and the Lizard

By Judy Marks

Lisa is the mother of the bride. But a white wedding in England is
not what daughter Sophie has in mind, upsetting her prospective
mother-in-law and her stepfather Bill, Lisas husband, into the
bargain. Lisa prepares for the wedding in Alonysos, a beautiful little
Greek Island in the Aegean Sea. Bill has been made redundant, and
money is short, but Lisa wants to pull out all the stops to give Sophie
what she wants.

At last, after a disastrous but hilarious journey by plane, taxi, bus
and hydrofoil, Lisa and Bill, along with bride and groom, arrive on
the Island, followed by twelve friends and family ranging in age from
six months to sixty. The guests include Sophies brother and his wife
and her family, who have provided a beautiful villa. With different
backgrounds and points of view, all try to settle down to enjoy each
others company, from a gay couple to a homophobe. But sparks do
fly, particularly between Lisa and Bill.

Lisa feels misunderstood by her children and somewhat taken
advantage of . . . and she senses not all is right with Bill either. There
is something she is missing, but she cant quite put her finger on it.

She thinks about her life as she sits in the local taverna in the
sweltering sun, watching a cat play with a lizard. If the cat bites off
the tail, will it grow another one?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Mar 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481787000

Judy Marks

Judy Marks had a Chelsea childhood, a pupil at the French Lycee and went on to the Senior Royal Ballet School. She has lived all over the United Kingdom, from Devon where the second of her two children was born, to Aberdeen, where she worked for an oil-related magazine, having had several articles and stories published. After many years in local government attending to the needs of homeless households, she has now moved to Shropshire in semi-retirement, where she has trained as a counsellor.

Book preview

PART ONE

ENGLAND

CHAPTER ONE

What are you doing on 6.9.96?

This was the sort of question that made me think quickly and, as it turned out, accurately. The question was posed by Ian, who had then been living with my daughter Sophie and was known as my sin-in-law. I guessed it was about their wedding.

I think I’d better say ‘nothing’. Is it what I think?

Yes, replied Ian, but I’m not sure whether you realise where! Sophie and I plan to marry… in Greece, on Alonysos.

Oh my God! Oh, that sounds so romantic! Whilst I was waxing thus lyrical, my mind was racing. I had no holidays left; my annual leave had been arranged and so had my husband Bill’s. (A very boring arrangement actually—a swap of houses with a family from Scotland, some old neighbours of ours.) I thought on the hoof. I ought to be used to thinking on the hoof. I worked as a homelessness officer for the local council. I ought to be used to running and thinking at the same time. Equation: my only daughter’s wedding against a boring ten days in Scotland? No problem.

We will be there!

It was at that point that Bill threw a wobbly.

You can’t! he stormed. It’s all arranged. Shirley, Don, and the kids. Lisa, you can’t let them down!

Shirley, Don, and their children had been my next-door neighbours when I lived in Stonehaven, a fishing village fifteen miles south of Aberdeen. I had lived there for almost ten years after my second divorce. I had found me there—reinvented myself—I think they call it these days. I first met Bill there. Stonehaven had always had a special place for me. I had bathed Shirley’s babies there. Shirley, a good ten years younger than me, had had her fair share of ups and downs in her marital life, and I had always tried to be a good friend to her. Now her children wanted to come down for a holiday to sample the delights of southern hospitality. I could understand why Bill did not wish me to let them down.

We can compromise, I said, dancing around the pine table in the middle of the kitchen. We can arrange something. Shirley will understand.

Bill was adamant. Your daughter phones and expects everybody to drop everything. It is about time she realised that the world does not revolve around her!

My daughter? Ah, was this the problem? Was it because it was not our daughter? What if it had been his daughter? Would he have had a different reaction? Jean, I thought, was a waste of space, but Sophie? Bill was normally so fair and supportive that whenever he went over the top, I always felt the urge to giggle. This would normally end up with me drinking too much, playing loud music, and then shouting at him because I couldn’t see how to change the tape to CD.

It is about time someone taught her a lesson, he continued.

A lesson? A lesson about what? Oh God, Sophie, what have you started this time? What’s he on about? I finally mumbled something about him not understanding the closeness of my family.

This topic had always tended to be a bit of a battleground. It was a touchy subject because Sophie, her brother Stephen, and I had always remained close. Maybe they wouldn’t agree, but I felt close to them anyway. It was not my fault that Bill had such an awkward daughter. Sophie, Stephen, and I got on or argued, but we never lost touch with each other’s feelings. They both liked Bill, and they thought he was good for me. When he got drunk (and what true Scotsman doesn’t?), he would always say he wished they were his children. That is more than I could say for Jean! I wanted to welcome her into the family, but she didn’t want to know, and now she doesn’t want to know her dad either. Bill always said he would have made a far better father for my kids than Rupert, my first husband. We rarely spoke of my middle husband John. He neither fathered a child nor left a legacy. His bigamy had merely left a sour taste in my mouth. Actually, it was rather a waste of a good few years of my life.

I felt safe with Bill. He was a kind and considerate man who worked as a quantity surveyor. He confessed to me, though, that he didn’t really like his chosen career. His mother, I gathered, had chosen it for him. He had really wanted to be an architect, but his mother had refused to let him go to art college because he might have to mix with all the bearded weirdoes. So he fell into the job. I had no idea whether he was actually any good at it, as he was rather an artistic dreamer. He seemed to lack drive or ambition and was content just to be. Not like me, who always wanted to start new schemes and to plan new and exciting things.

Tonight Bill was not being kind or considerate.

If you go, he shouted from the kitchen sink, flushing out the last of the washing up water so that it landed with a great whoosh over the draining board, then you go on your own!

I dissolved, quite naturally, into the expected flood of tears. I stared into the night, my face streaming. I hugged the cat, who clearly did not wish to be part of this domestic squabble and wriggled out of my arms. My daughter or my husband? How many other women nearing fifty have had to make this decision?

I decided that I could never have another daughter. I had already had three husbands. I would never be able to see my daughter married for the first time ever again.

I swanned off to bed, full of deep hurt, umbrage, and white wine.

When I got up the next morning, I hoped I would feel better, but I didn’t. We drove to work along the M4 in virtual silence. I was going to work with a heavy heart. Looming in front of me was a huge 1970s hexagonal structure, where I spent my days trying to help people who found themselves homeless. The building sucked me in at 8.30 a.m. I always felt it sucked all of us in, only to spew us out again around 5 p.m. This feeling had something to do with the noise the air conditioning made like a huge vacuum cleaner. Inside it was open-plan and noisy, and that air conditioning spread germs around with alarming efficiency.

This morning I was not feeling very sympathetic to those who were threatened with homelessness. I plodded through my case notes in a perfunctory fashion. I sat at my desk, hoping that smelly old Silvy would not appear again. I had some anti-Silvy spray in my desk drawer—Je Reviens, it was called. (Oh, I did hope that she would not!)

I had once thoroughly upset myself trying to get the old tramp sectioned. The whole of the housing department had tried to help her. Every type of accommodation had been offered to her, but she had turned them all down. It was difficult to know why she kept coming back. She was clearly vulnerable as defined in the homelessness legislation. She slept in shop doorways all through the rain and the snow. One day, we thought, she would be found dead in front of Marks and Spencer’s doorway. Because I thought she was endangering her own life, I finally called the police. Two great burly policemen duly arrived and chased this poor, frail, old creature round the reception area, her shrieking, their stumbling over chairs, astonished clients looking on, and resentful fellow officers helping in order to arrest this woman. They finally took her to the police station to get her assessed by a doctor. I had hoped that they would put her into a hospital and care for her, to clean her and feed her up a bit. No such luck. It was pronounced that she was eccentric but not sectionable. This left me with mixed feelings. Perhaps there was an element of passing the buck. I hated having to interview her with my paperwork held tactfully in front of my nose. She was a constant reminder of how society failed those who refused to fit in. Because I found her so repellent, I was determined to overcome my guilt and help her, but I never quite managed it. Practical experience had now taught me that for the past three years she had had a lot of people running after her, always to no avail. There is nothing we can do for her, I would tell a shocked newcomer, so then it became their turn. For the greater good was the Council’s policy, and this poor old girl was just a waste of time.

No, today Silvy was just not welcome.

My boss Karen sensed something was wrong. She was a dear, sensitive creature. She reminded me of a little bird with her slim legs, her little body, and her bright eyes. She was my age, and we often had a good laugh together. Sometimes the tension in the homelessness department became so tense that the only way forward was to laugh. We agreed that we should have lunch together and I would off load my troubles to her about the big black cloud that was hanging over my head—Sophie versus Bill.

We sat outside the Theatre Bar of the Hexagon under a sun umbrella. It was a perfect summer day, the sun shone brilliantly, and it was wonderfully hot. It did not reflect how I was feeling, which seemed to make things worse somehow, as if the day was mocking me. I told her my tale of woe and found my eyes filling with tears. She held my hand. I gulped some wine.

"Lisa, what do you want to happen? asked Karen, with the emphasis on the you".

I sat. I thought.

I want… I would like…

Go on.

I would like to go to my daughter’s wedding, on Bill’s arm.

Right! Go for that. Now, if he still refuses?

I do not think that my being there or not being there will stop Ian and Sophie getting married, and I do feel that my own marriage is more important to me than being a guest at theirs, so perhaps I shouldn’t go, but…

But you would never forgive Bill. Karen finished it for me.

No, I wouldn’t! I spoke vehemently and also far too loudly. Several people turned round to stare. They saw two women, pretending not to be middle-aged. Karen, a boy-like figure with dark curly hair, her head close together with my shoulder-length blond hair and dark glasses—somewhat curvaceous I think would be an apt description—holding hands and slurping wine. What a picture! I managed a sort of tearful giggle.

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Bill sat in his rather staid oak panelled office surrounded by paperwork, plans, and files, staring at the telephone. He knew his days were numbered at this job. Things had changed so much.

When he had first met Lisa in Aberdeen slightly less than ten years earlier, she had been working for a magazine, rushing all over the city, and she seemed to know so many people. Lisa had introduced him to a world he had never known. She was such an exciting person, quite a high-flyer, attending an oil function here, an opening ceremony there, and of course he accompanied her to these events. She was earning twice as much as he had been, and how he had admired her! Then he lost his job, the magazine was taken over, and she lost hers too. They made a decision to move down south.

Now he was playing the traditional role, the main bread winner. Lisa had changed. Now she seemed to be more socially aware and was attending college. Though she said she envied him for his qualifications and wished she was a professional like him, now all her energies went into helping the under-privileged. He could feel it all closing in on him.

He perhaps had one hope of saving the situation—his cousin in Canada. And now this fucking wedding!

He went to the door. Was there anybody in the corridor? No. On impulse, he grabbed the phone and dialled Canada. He heard that soft Canadian accent again. It was warm and soothing.

So, you’re coming over soon, she said. I shall really look forward to that.

They talked about the wedding.

Of course you must go. After all, it’s family.

CHAPTER TWO

That afternoon Bill phoned.

I’ve been finding out about flights to Greece.

I was cross! All that emotion, all the earth-shattering sacrifice that I was about to make—those martyr-like gestures, all gone, irrelevant, spent! I met myself coming back; so pleased I was by his change of heart.

Oh! was all I could muster.

You don’t sound very pleased.

Oh, you silly man. Of course I was pleased.

No, I mean yes, I am. I’m just a bit surprised.

Oh, darling, I’m sorry, but you know me. I just erupted. Of course we’ll go to Sophie’s wedding somehow.

Quickly I rearranged my leave with Karen, and Bill did some negotiating on his end.

I was much happier after that. My customer care was back in full swing. I listened to a seventeen-year-old whose boyfriend was in prison and whose mother had chucked her out, not because she was pregnant but because her boyfriend was black. I found her some hostel accommodation. This was swiftly followed up by a telephone call from Mama, who complained that she wouldn’t put a pig in that room—it had no carpet in it. Situation normal!

Bill met me from work as usual, and I was really happy to see him. We always travelled together now, because we couldn’t afford two cars. The journey home to Newbury took just over half an hour. Bill apologised again. I didn’t really want him to. I just wanted to forget all about last night. I just wanted to plan where and when.

We talked all the way home. Often I felt so tired on the way home that I would have a doze, but not tonight! Bill became more and more animated and threatened to wear his kilt. We both laughed. Not that he didn’t look good in it! I had bought him the kilt for his wedding present, and he wore it on the day.

He looked gorgeous—tall and slim, with greying hair, high cheek bones, a sensitive mouth, and grey-green eyes, but with a silly little nose that gave his face a youthful look. He was a bit plumper now, and his hair was greyer and a little thinner, but we weren’t supposed to talk about that. He had been a great athlete in his youth, especially sprinting and playing hockey. In later years, however, he had been barely able to walk owing to arthritic hips. Fortunately, both had now been successfully operated upon, and he was still getting used to his second new hip. I had threatened to give him three birthdays a year now, one for him in February when he was born, and then one for each hip. (How do you give a hip a surprise birthday party? Do you let the other hip in on the plans?) I had given Bill a surprise party on his fiftieth birthday, and he had loved it! I wondered what he would do for mine.

We arrived home and fed the cats, Basil, Sybil, and her enormous son Ginge. Basil and his nephew (or so we hoped) were great friends. Sybil was disdainful of both—mere males!

I prepared a meal of jacket potatoes and chicken in a mushroom sauce. I loved cooking! Cooking was being creative and also giving, I loved giving and creating. The latter most of my family would agree with!

The little kitchen was now calm. It was a very cosy, country sort of kitchen, which fitted well into the 1960s-style box we had bought. We had purchased said property some six years earlier when, because of the collapse of the oil industry in Aberdeen in the late eighties, both Bill and I had lost our jobs. Ironically, my first husband Rupert, who lived in Reading, had brought about our move. I was still on fairly good terms with Rupert, mainly because of our children. I had never been able to understand why divorced couples made life even worse for their children by being openly hostile. Rupert had been a no-good, alcoholic, unfaithful husband and a fair-weather father. He was charming and amusing but totally selfish. He was great fun to be with, as long as you didn’t rely on anything he promised.

What on earth are you two doing in Aberdeen when there is so much work to do down south, especially for qualified quantity surveyors?

I had replied with something like Put your money where your mouth is! So he had duly sent up the yellow pages for the area, and Bill had got a job. Hence the move! I was never quite sure how I ended up working for a housing authority, as I had been the advertising manager for an oil magazine in Aberdeen. But no matter—I had never felt dedicated to selling advertising to rich oil companies anyway, I had done it tongue in cheek, always feeling that there was so much more to life. Now, thanks to Bill’s income, I was no longer solely responsible for the household finances, and I felt as though my work was really worthwhile.

We decided that we would move into a little modern box as a stop-gap measure and then move after a year or two. Since then, of course, the bottom had dropped out of the housing market, and the building industry was dire owing to the recession. Bill had been made redundant again and had been lucky to find another job.

So here we were still in our little modern house. Two bedrooms and a minuscule bathroom upstairs, which was so small that if Bill was in the bath and I bent over the washbasin to clean my teeth, he was often presented with my bum in his face and had been known to take a bite of it!

Downstairs there was an entrance porch leading into an open-plan sitting room with open—tread stairs. There was a separate dining room-cum-study, occupied by copious books cassettes and CDs; Bill loved his music, especially opera. At the back of the house was my special pleasure,