Goodness (17 page)

I Think of Us Beginning Afresh

The most elementary secret to a successfully disguised arson is that the fire must have only one focal point. So far so good.

My mother is the first to arrive, bringing Frederick who she has been looking after for the day. She has construed her invitation, though this has never been asked, as a request for help and babysitting, and thus arrives early to give Shirley a hand with the food and with Hilary. Although she no doubt disapproves of the regiment of glinting bottles marshalled end to end of the sideboard, she is clearly glad that we are celebrating our tenth anniversary; no doubt she sees it as a kind of triumph over evil, a sign that our marriage is healthy again, and she mucks in, jollily washing saucepans.

Frederick, sensing excitement in the air, becomes a Japanese robot and struts about, hissing destructive laser sounds. He paces mechanically round and round Hilary who lies on her foam rubber mattress in the huge lounge now cleared for dancing. She wriggles wildly from side to side following the direction of his laser fire as best she can, her oddly flat face smiling blindly, unaware he is shooting her.

When she goes to bed, the foam mattress will go in the study room to make way for the dancing. I have already made sure that a huge pile of mags and newspapers are stacked on one of the armchairs.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I’ve been shitting a lot this afternoon, as was to be expected I’m afraid. Unpleasant, hot, acidic shits that leave your anus burning. I’ve got some good cream for it though. In the bathroom I run my fingers regretfully over silk-finish, coffee-coloured Italian tiles.
Opening the window I look out at a broad stretch of garden to the side of the house. A blackbird is hopping in the grass. There are roses. The air is sweet, soft. Toward the Heath, and this is always a symbol of joy for me, swallows are diving and wheeling in the warm twilight. Eating their prey alive of course. Though as a child I believed they just whirled about for fun.

Which reminds me, I must open the window in the study, make sure there’s some oxygen about. Some weeks ago, complaining of Hilary’s racket while I was debugging a program, I got Shirley to buy some strips of foam insulant to put round the door. No one will smell anything until it’s roaring.

Coming down the stairs, I let my feet feel the fibrous sponginess of expensive pile carpet. My hand lingers on the polished wooden banister. Illuminating the red and gold wallpaper up the hallway are two light fittings with elaborate Venetian glass which Shirley bought from a shop in Belgravia. It annoys me that Mother never expresses any real admiration for this house, anything beyond, ‘what big rooms, what a huge garden, it must be a nightmare keeping it tidy’, etc. etc. If she were to show any desire to come and live here, instead of endlessly singing the praises of her Cricklewood shoebox, I would be glad to have her. I’m not in the business of bearing grudges.

And in fact I meet my mother going back to the kitchen. We hug warmly.

Almost seven o’clock. The kitchen and breakfast room are lined with tables draped with white cloths and laden with the kind of goodies we certainly never ate in Park Royal. The floor in the breakfast room is a dark herringbone parquet with two small Persian rugs. In the kitchen we have pearl grey polished granite tiles (not as expensive as you’d think).

What a long way I’ve come. And not all thanks to Shirley either (it was me, for example, chose the Regency dresser she loves so much). What a long way, just to find ourselves imprisoned by the life sentence Hilary is.

Shirley pulls a child’s red plastic bowl from the fridge.

‘I’ll feed Hilary,’ I offer.

‘Oh thanks. I’ll just heat it up a minute.’

The electronic bleeping of the microwave.

I refuse to go to the john again. Just ignore it, clench.

‘Okay. Check it isn’t too hot.’

To start the thing I shall use a cigarette smoked almost to the stub. I shall place it down the side of what, according to a government warning pamphlet found in Central Finchley library, should be our most inflammable armchair where I will have spilt/poured a full tumbler of whisky just a few minutes before. The armchair I have forced half under my desk and on the surface of the desk is a nearly full ashtray which I will tip over the chair as soon as the flames begin. This will thus seem, I trust, to those who sift through the ashes, to have been the little mishap that set the whole thing going: a jacket flap, or dress catches that ashtray as someone leaves the room, they don’t wait to hear it fall and anyway it would be almost inaudible on the soft whisky-wet upholstery of the chair; in a few minutes the room is in flames.

I have made no attempt to salvage anything from this lovely little study room with its wood-panelled walls. Not my precious library of floppies with some of my best ideas for new software, not my IBM 8000 with expanded RAM. Not even our wedding photos in the bookcase. I feel quite glad to make these sacrifices, to lose things that are both valuable and precious. I think of us beginning afresh with the insurance money and a new house, and no Hilary. How free and happy we will be at last.

It would be dangerous to be seen to have squirrelled things away.

Forcing the girl into her special high chair, always a struggle, I almost burst out laughing: ‘Too bad Grandad couldn’t be here,’ I shout to my mother as she clatters the vacuum cleaner back into the cupboard. ‘He’d have a heart attack seeing all that booze.’

Mother doesn’t like even the word, ‘booze’.

‘Poor old soul,’ she says. ‘If only he’d agree to have his teeth done it would be something.’

‘Might be worse when he bit the nurses though.’

Both he and Hilary bite the hands that feed them.

‘Poor old soul,’ Mother says again, as if this were some kind of incantation. She will not think badly. Often I feel I’ve had to do the job for both of us.

I stir the food in its microwave dish and blow on it. Hilary is held upright by two strong waist bands and two rigid, vertical cushions either side of her head. Her face is at the same level as mine as I sit to feed her and she opens her mouth in anticipation. A few of Shirley’s church friends have arrived, bringing more food, and somebody now puts Strauss’s waltzes on, very loud. Hilary is suddenly so excited she bangs down her wrist in the dish, splattering chunks of ham and spaghetti rings, laughing furiously. The kind of thing that usually has me cursing with frustration (my trousers are splattered). But I’m cool tonight. We’re on the home straight.

Then it vaguely occurs to me, is this what being mad is like? I aim a spoon into the glistening pink wetness of gums and lips. Her head waves perilously.

‘Would you like an aperitif, sir?’

It’s Shirley coming up behind me in excellent mood with a tray of chilled white wine.

It will look odd if I don’t act merry and do some drinking. The party was my idea, wasn’t it? Though I’ll have to keep a clear head. The most important thing to remember is, since Frederick is to be put to bed in the spare bedroom, I shall have to get up there pretty smartly. But in a way that is part of the plan. I am hardly likely to forget.

And no, I will not go to the bathroom again.

The Romantic Fort

I always find parties of this kind in friends’ houses somewhat dull. Okay, you have a lot to eat, a lot to drink, that can be nice, and maybe you manage to brush thighs, bump arses with some pretty women jiving about the furniture. But mostly you just find yourself sitting on the stairs with a plate of sausage rolls, trapped into conversations so irretrievably humdrum that even an argument with one’s wife would be exciting by comparison; this between getting up every couple of minutes to let somebody climb upstairs to the loo. At best you might find another man reasonably intelligent and sufficiently interested in your own line of business to share a bottle of whisky with till it’s time to go home.

Which is why we’ve never had a party before, I suppose. I remember Shirley was very eager to have a housewarming do years ago when we moved into the Hendon place. ‘Parties are for fun,’ she said. ‘You’re the one who’s always saying he wants to have a good time.’

And it’s true. Parties are for fun. But the only people who really seem to have any are the ones who break through all inhibitions and get into snogging and petting and even bonking people they’ve never met before. Those are the kind who have fun. And the fact is that much as I envy them, I would never be so much of a beast as to do stuff like that with my wife around, or even amongst people who know her. Often, I’m afraid, one must come to the conclusion that one’s inhibitions are the best part about one.

Other people are different of course. Some are quite shameless and have always done exactly what they want when they want. So it is that towards midnight, my chosen hour for
the sale of my soul, I will slip discreetly out into the hall away from the guests in lounge and breakfast room, down the passage, through the cloakroom to the study, a lighted cigarette between the fingers of one hand, a big tumbler of whisky in the other, only to find Gregory and Peggy sprawled across two armchairs, more or less humping each other.

Why didn’t I lock the door, for Christ’s sake?

It’s an odd party because we’ve invited such a mix of guests, many of whom we haven’t seen for so long we can barely remember what they look like. We sent out sixty odd invitations but have no idea how many people are actually going to come. Twenty? A hundred? The invitations said eight thirty, but by nine only Shirley’s friends from the choir have arrived, well-behaved, carefully-dressed people happy to drink a glass of white wine, eat snacks and speculate about their dictatorial organist/choirmaster’s private life. The women take it in turns to hold Hilary in their arms and say how well she is looking. One, in a strapless black velvet outfit, looks just the kind decked out for pleasure she won’t have. I can’t help noticing her thin knees and calves and thinking of Marilyn.

Peggy phones to say she’ll be late and can we put Frederick to bed or he’ll become a monster. ‘Grandma’ll read you a story,’ I tell him, thinking to kill two birds with one stone, have both of them out of the way. For Mother, after barely a glass of Soave, can be heard fervently praising the Lord in conversation with a plain weasily little man with his arm in a sling.

‘I don’t want Grandma to read a story. I want to stay downstairs. Five minutes, Uncle George.’

‘Your mummy said bed.’

‘Then you read, Uncle, I want you to read.’

He says this because he thinks I’ll refuse. He’s a sharp little lad with whom I feel a certain affinity. But as it happens I’m quite glad to be out of the fray for a while.

I take him upstairs, make him clean his teeth and sort through the kiddies’ books people have occasionally given
us, not realising Hilary will never be able to understand them. What would he like? Tom Thumb? He says the giant scares him. Eating the children. But it’s only stalling. Nothing would scare Frederick. I tell him it’s only pretend, there are no giants, nobody eats children. But I agree to dig out the Ugly Duckling instead. Where unfortunately, I reflect as I read, it is the welcome transformation that doesn’t convince.

I kiss my nephew goodnight. Having got the door closed, I take the opportunity to change my soiled trousers and, before going downstairs again, size myself up in our wardrobe mirror. Five-ten. Blond. Pale-skinned, straight-nosed, clear eyes. Perhaps a little serious-looking, but certainly nothing loony about me. In the end, if I have to insist before a court of law on any one thing, it will be my complete normality, my modernity. Show me, I’ll say to the jury, just one, just one part of my overall vision which is out of line with the dominant social philosophy in England today. I bet you can’t. I just bet. But watching myself in the mirror I can see the tension about teeth and jaws. I have big jaw muscles.

Hearing noises at the top of the stairs I walk down the long landing to the other bathroom where Mother is struggling to change a particularly dirty nappy before putting Hilary to bed. I take over, for the girl’s heavy and helpless and needs washing. I work quickly and efficiently and, though I say it myself, gently. Hilary always rouses a quite terrible gentleness in me. I wipe carefully inside the folds of skin around the pale warm split bun of her crotch. And talc generously.

At a certain point, my mother touches my shoulder and smiles at me with a bright winsome look. ‘I think you’re magnificent with the girl.’ For some reason she says it in a whisper. Then in her normal voice. ‘I’ll put her to bed now. You go down and talk to your guests. It’s your party.’

This is a little annoying because I had meant to give Hilary a very heavy dose of Calpol to make sure she won’t wake and attract attention during the evening. As Mother walks off with the girl along the landing, she is already humming
mournful hymn tunes which she presumably imagines are soporific. And indeed they are.

Downstairs I pin a little notice to the first column of the bannister. ‘Use downstairs loo: don’t want to wake kids.’ I hesitate, then decide to accept one last call to the bathroom.

Finally towards ten, everybody arrives more or less at once. Squash partners from my Hammersmith club, a few blokes from karate classes, couples we met on the maternity course and perhaps went out with once, or used to meet for a drink sometimes, at least until Hilary was born. Mark and Sylvia, our old neighbours from Finchley. People from work. People from school where Shirley taught – her ex amongst them? Stout Ian Perkins has a lecherous look to him, trailing a petite wife with pink rabbitty little mouth and pursed lips. And now there’s a faint aroma of dope in the air? Who? Can I allow that? If the police should come before I start the fire? Calm down please. It would be madness to make a fuss. Probably I’m just imagining it.

Mrs Harcourt arrives, bringing a sprightly older man with middle European accent who seems determined to make a fool of himself telling jokes and drinking heavily. He is tall, but lean, over-dressed in a dinner jacket that doesn’t quite fit. Obviously out for a good time. Mrs Harcourt introduces him, with no comment, as her dear friend Jack. She is looking younger and happier than the last time I saw her, in an elaborate taffeta dress with sparkling butterfly brooch and pearl necklace. I’m surprised to notice she hasn’t brought her camera. Our tenth anniversary will pass unrecorded.

Gregory turns up with a girl I’ve never seen before, a thin-lipped, depressed looking lass with a sudden false smile of greeting that heaves up the downturned corners of the mouth. Tight jeans and ample curves up top tell all though. She moves with a soft predatory pad in expensive running shoes.

‘Divorced, old man,’ he explains. It’s at least two years since I saw him. The girl is leaning over the table for food and he is watching her arse. So am I for that matter. He chuckles:
‘Just got too much. And boring into the bargain. You know, marriage, always the same. We both wanted out.’

As I open the door for someone else, Charles and Peggy can be heard arguing quite violently as they approach down our lovely, tree-waving street. They are calling each other names. Sometimes I wonder if Shirley and I aren’t the only couple in the world guarding the romantic fort of first marriage.