Tales of the Mantequero

Chapter 4

Patsy was her youngest niece and her favourite, although she tried not to show it. She loved precocious children, and Patsy, at seven, had the vocabulary of an adult. Better than some adults she knew. Some of her students' parents could barely read and write, judging from the notes she received, and their level of conversation at Parent Teachers' evenings could be abysmal.

But Patsy was a delight. The week before the party, she had stayed with June for the weekend while her mother and father went for an anniversary break, and she and June had spent many happy hours playing Junior Scrabble. June had to hold back a little, but not as much as you might expect.

She was surprised and slightly worried when Patsy came up with FONDLE and BREASTS. "Where did you learn those words?"she asked.

Patsy put a U and an N in front of PROVOKED. "They were in the newspaper,"she said, without looking up from the board. "It was a story about a man on the council and a lady who wasn't his wife. I asked Mummy what 'breests' was, but she wouldn't tell me. I knew you would, though."

June laughed until the tears came to her eyes, and then she told her. "It's pronounced 'brests' and it's another word for a lady's chest."What a joy that child was!

The party, however, was a nightmare.

When June was a child, birthdays had been simple affairs. Her mother had baked a cake and made jelly and sandwiches, and invited all their cousins and any special friends of the birthday girl in question. There had been balloons and paper hats and a few small prizes, and they had played Hunt the Thimble and Pass the Parcel and Musical Chairs with Mother playing the piano. She remembered parties as being happy, rowdy occasions.

Admittedly somebody would probably be sick, usually Ellen, who tended to get over-excited. Occasionally there would be a small accident - someone would fall down the stairs or out of a tree, but no bones were ever broken. And at the end of the day the guests went home, and she and her sisters went happy to bed.

That wasn't good enough these days, apparently. No. It wasn't a proper party unless you held it at McDonald's or a theme park or hired a hall and caterers and an entertainer.

When June expressed doubts about this, her sisters looked at her as if she had suggested that the moon was made of green cheese.

"June,"Ellen said, in the kind of patient tone you use when addressing a rather stupid child, "children expect a proper party these days. You can't get away with the amateur productions we had as children. They expect a properly-organised party with proper entertainment and party bags and presents."

"Party bags?"June was out of her depth here.

"Each child,"May said, in exactly the same patronising tone as her sister, "Has to be given a party bag with sweets and small toys and party favours, like balloons and squeakers and streamers."

"And then, when they go home,"Rose added, "they each get a present."

"The guests get a present?"June was appalled. Her nephews and nieces already had far more toys each than she and her sisters had ever had between them. What was the point of filling people's houses with more and more plastic rubbish which would never be played with?

"And it has to be a nice present,"Mary said. "Nothing cheap and nasty."

June thought about the cheap and nasty presents she had received as a child. Paint by Numbers sets, cut-out dolls, jig-saw puzzles, and remembered how much she had loved them, especially the cut-out dolls. You could get them for sixpence a book from the market. And that was in old money - only two and a half pence in new money. She had played with them for hours on end, laying them out on the floor and dressing them in their paper clothes. She loved them.

She didn't think she had ever had a toy that she hadn't treasured and played with over and over again.

Patsy, however, had a bedroom full of My Little Pony sets. Dozens of them. June had never seen her play with any of them. It was obscene when there were children in the world dying for lack of food or clean water.

She was on the verge of saying so when Rose patted her on the arm and said kindly, "Of course, Sweetie, you couldn't be expected to know."

A white hot wave of anger threatened to engulf her, so intense that it robbed her of the power of speech. Of course she could be expected to know. She spent more time with Rose's kids than Rose did. This was nothing to do with what the children wanted and everything to do with her sisters keeping up with the Joneses. She was fed up with being treated like a half-wit because she didn't belong to their bloody Mother and Baby club. Everything her sisters said to her implied she was a failure just because she had not married some boring bloke and produced children that nobody could be bothered to spend any time with.

But before she had pulled herself together sufficiently to deliver the most stinging rebuff she had ever composed, her sister Ellen cut across her with an even deadlier remark.

"We've been thinking,"she said, "about Mother. She's getting more and more absent-minded. It's probably time you moved in with her."

June sank back on her chair, numb with horror. So that was it, then. This was their plan. She was to become full-time carer as well as convenient baby-sitter and general factotum. She was to spend the best years of her life cooking and cleaning for an old lady. And God knows what else. Good old June. She was hopeless, of course, fat and stupid, but she was always there when you needed her.