The Boy Who Fell to Earth by Kathy Lette Page A

“
Mummy, when I grow up, I want to be a miserable misanthrope like you
.” ’
    ‘Being misanthropic and cynical is all a part of my mystique,’ I replied. Merlin was squatting in the grass, his face vivid with excitement. ‘
As if we were villains of necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and teachers, by spherical predominance
,’ he said, parroting Edmund in
King Lear
, with no real comprehension of the meaning of the words, which I knew, from my librarian mother, related to astrology.
Merlin
’s sign read ‘DO NOT DISTURB’, with Asperger’s in the ascendency. I touched his golden head and he beamed up at me. His smile was painful in its nakedness and I felt a stab of remorse at the thought of his sweet face becoming tutored in moroseness by my example.
    ‘You see why I’m worried, Mum?’ Phoebe threw up her hands in frustration before flouncing off to the kitchen for more alcoholic reinforcement. ‘This is why I made you come home from your medieval knot gardening,’ she called back over her shoulder.
    ‘Medieval knot gardening? … You know there’s a very fine line between a hobby and mental illness, Mother.’
    ‘Oh, sweet pea.’ My mother’s voice dropped an octave. She stood behind me and brushed my hair, the way she did when I was little, even though it was so much shorter now. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much as I should. Single-parenting has exhausted you. When Merlin says jump, you jump – and, as a result, you’ve now got a strained back and have to lie down with a toyboy for, oh, I’d suggest about a month or two.’ I couldn’t see her, but could hear the twinkle in her voice.
    ‘I think celibacy is the only dignified attitude for a career woman in her mid-thirties, don’t you?’ I said trenchantly, trying not to be depressed by the fact that my pensioner mother was obviously more sexually active than I.
    ‘Celibacy is not dignity, Lucy, dear. It’s lack of opportunity. You’re so famished for love, petal, that you’ll soon start sexually harassing yourself.’
    ‘So what if I do?’ I jibed. ‘Porn – so much cheaper than dating.’
    ‘But can a deluxe, top-of-the-range vibrator talk to you, cuddle you or change your flat tyres?’ my straight-talking mother asked plainly. ‘Sex is going to rear its ugly purple head at some time or other, darling.’
    I shuddered. ‘Do you know the best contraception for a woman my age? Nudity.’
    ‘Do you know the best way to avoid wrinkles? Take your glasses off,’ my mother touchéd.
    ‘I’m not like you, Mother. I can’t get naked in front of a stranger. I’ve become such a prude. Even when home alone I don’t walk around my bedroom naked.’
    She sighed. ‘Sometimes I think you’re adopted, Lucy, I really do. Orgasms are a minor pastime of mine I rate just before eating and drinking and waking up each morning,’ my bohemian mother espoused. ‘Your vagina has become the Howard Hughes of sexual organs. No visitors and never goes out. A little casual sex would do you the world of good …’
    ‘There’s nothing casual about casual sex, Mother. It’s incredibly stressful. You have to get your roots done, your facial hair tweezed … Casual sex? God! Nothing could be further from the truth. “Casual sex” is when you’re married and half-heartedly make love with the telly still on.’
    ‘Well, sweet pea, you simply must have sex soon before you sag. My skin has sagged so much my tattoos are no longer legible.’
    I swung around in my chair to eyeball her. ‘You have tattoos? When did you get a tattoo?’
    Mum ran a hand through her helmet of dyed red hair and waved away my query. ‘I went out to dinner with your father and his actress friends once and we spent the entire time establishing which of us had the perkiest breasts. Sadly, it turned out to be your father.’ My mother fired off a laugh of affection for her long-lost husband. It amazed me that he’d betrayed her and yet she