Nancy's Mother
NANCY'S MOTHER
First published 'Uneasy Reading' 1998
As I watched a tomcat on the whisker’s edge of pouncing at an unsuspecting blackbird, I suddenly remembered Nancy’s mother.
Nancy told me that her mother was dead - “Gone with the angels” being her childlike way of putting it. This reminded me of when a much-loved pet cat was squashed under my father’s car and my own mother told me that “Tuppence had gone to Cat’s Heaven.” If Tuppence had died peacefully in its sleep, such a notion would certainly have rung true - I could have imagined those gentle white shimmering, wing-folded figures stroking it and then feeding it heavenly cat’s meat from white, round lipped bowls. But, doing this to a squashed cat? Tuppence having become a lump of red and black meat, plastered to the ground, the ministering angels would need to spoon God’s milk into its many moons. No, never that!
So, as I said, Nancy (who, in the parlance of the times, was the bird I fancied at the youth club) informed me that her mum had “Gone with the angels.” I had the fleeting vision of Nancy’s mother, purring gently at the gates of Heaven, meowing piteous complaints about being referred to simply as ‘she’ or ‘her’ rather that by a more polite name such as Prudence.
Prudence happened to be her mother’s real Christian name, so Nancy told me. in her customary fashion of allowing nobody but nobody, to interrupt her flow of conversation. Yet, despite it all, Nancy was indeed an angel herself.
I can recall sitting close to her in the shadow of a huge JukeBox, which on Wednesdays was on ‘free go’ all evening. Thus, it was difficult to talk (and listen) above the sounds of ‘Diamonds’ by Jet Harris and Tony Meehan, or ‘The Locomotion’ by Little Eva, or ‘Sherry’ by the Four Seasons or...
But GONE with the angels? Was that what Nancy had said about her mother? I abruptly thought of Nancy’s Mother partaking in carnal knowledge with those silent sheet-hooded Guardians of God. It was only later, when I studied Comparative Religions at University, that I realised this was not possible, for somewhere in the Gospels it is said that angels were fundamentally lacking gender.
The white monks and even whiter nuns of my dreams slowly drifted off into the wings… and I grew older.
Nancy married Justin, whom we used to call Pimple in the Lower Sixth, because of his blackheads. I was best man at the wedding: the next best thing to marrying Nancy, I suppose, being privy to all the arrangements. My surprise was unbounded, however, when Pimple told me that Nancy’s Mother was coming to the wedding, due to arrive from exotic foreign parts that very day.
“But Nancy told me she died yonks ago!”
I couldn’t hear his reply for he scooted off on further pre-marital duties - evidently a busy life being a pukka Bridegroom.
On the wedding day, I was in my best possible bib and tucker. As a student at the time, I couldn’t afford much, so I made do with my late Father’s old de-mob suit. I was thankful my dad and I ended up the same size.
Imagine my discomfort when I arrived at the church, only to find all the other menfolk in dress suits - no doubt hired for the occasion. Pimple had forgotten to tell me. Or had told me, perhaps, in the pub, under cover of the JukeBox. Pimple himself slanted at the front, shuffling the top hat from hand to hand, sniffing intermittently at the carnation in his lapel. I leaned beside him, blushing proudly, for I guessed as many eyes were upon me as upon anybody else. I smiled courageously at him as I went to check the whereabouts of the ring in my father’s side pocket. Damn! My father’s holes were still there. I rummaged around in the lining, laughably expecting to find a live grenade or something ...
The organ took sway, filling the high church with its own ageless music. That sort of music would never be out-dated, I unaccountably mused, trying to ignore my own desperation. I looked towards the opposite pews. Towering proudly was a white lady, sporting a spectacular headpiece of creamy-white feathers and wrapped in billowing frothy gauze. She cranked her neck in my direction, as if she knew I knew she was indeed Nancy’s Mother. Her tweezered upper lip twitched. Her silky smile became a red gash.
I finally recalled where I had put the wedding ring - on my own ring finger for safekeeping! Despite my undying love for Nancy, I could only feel even more undyingly glad about my escape (by a narrow fingernail) from that giant white butterfly-net of a harping mother-in-law.
I had mixed feelings when Pimple was soon granted the pleasure of going with the angels himself. These angels scraped his face with sharp-edged spoons and gouged him with tweezers and tugged out his eyelashes one by one and skewered the core of his carbuncles and winkled out the wriggly black things from his pores and plucked him and strummed him all over.
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