The Clutter Corpse

by Simon Brett

  ‘Tomorrow evening?’ I echoed blankly.

  ‘Coming over here for supper.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Sorry, I …’

  ‘See how you feel.’

  ‘I’ll let you know. Is Philip with you yet?’

  ‘God, no. He was going to drive down this morning but had to rush into the hospital in the small hours. Patient with post-operative problems. Same old story.’

  ‘But you think he will be at the cottage tomorrow?’

  ‘Says he will be.’ I could hear her shrug down the phone. ‘Anyway, let me know if you hear anything, Ellen. Did the police say they’d need to talk to you again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If they do share any information with you …’

  ‘We are talking about the police here, Hilary,’ I said, ‘so how likely is that?’

  ‘Are you going to be around for lunch, Ben?’ I asked on the Sunday morning.

  I knew what the answer would be. It’s not that my son doesn’t like my mother, it’s just that every time they meet, he knows he faces interrogation. She wants to know every detail about what he’s doing now and what his plans are for the rest of his life. Also, whether he’s got a girlfriend. Inevitably, that takes him into areas he’d rather not discuss.

  ‘Actually, Ma, I’d thought of going for a long walk on the Downs.’

  I couldn’t argue with that. It was a fine April Sunday. He’d cycle up in the direction of Midhurst to get on to the South Downs Way. He might then walk two hours east, and two hours west, back to where he’d chained up his bike. My son is, physically, a very fit young man. And I’ve never doubted the therapeutic value of exercise.

  ‘What about food?’ I asked.

  ‘I have just had the hugest of All-Day Full Englishes.’ The residual smell and the pile of pans in the sink bore witness to the truth of his words.

  ‘Will you be gone before Jools and Fleur arrive?’ My mother always insisted on my calling her ‘Fleur’. I think it started out because she feared that being called ‘Mum’ or ‘Mummy’ in public might make her sound old. Now she thinks it makes us sound like friends, women who enjoy going out and doing girly things together. Which is a gross misreading of our relationship.

  ‘Probably,’ Ben replied. Then, automatically, ‘Give them my love.’

  It used to worry me that my son and daughter didn’t get on better, but recently I’ve become more philosophical about it. Shared DNA is no guarantee of mutual affection, and they can be civilized with each other when they do have to be together. But they are basically very different people.

  My firstborn has been tough, unsentimental and acquisitive from the moment of her arrival. I brought Juliet, as she was then, up to be independent, to believe there’s nothing a man could do that she couldn’t. But I do sometimes worry that I went too far. At what point does ‘being your own person’ become ‘being selfish’? My daughter’s independence has hardened into a carapace that seems to shield her permanently from the softer emotions. She knows what she wants and she goes out and gets it.

  In this respect, she is of course very like my mother. I have never questioned that Fleur Bonnier has a great deal of charm, but everything she does has to be about her. I know this, to my cost, from my upbringing. During my formative years, her acting career was blooming. That had been Fleur Bonnier’s time in the sun, a time which the rest of her working life has never quite replicated. But during those days of success, she was always on the way out: theatre in the evening, filming during the days. And I was always parked with a rolling repertory of nannies, au pairs, not very close schoolfriends and their mildly resentful parents.

  As a result, I have no recollection of a nurturing mother. Like Ashleigh, I suppose, though in totally different circumstances. And, I hope, with totally different outcomes. I tried very hard to learn to be nurturing with my two and, though I may have got close with Ben, I don’t think I really cracked it with Jools. But perhaps that’s partly to do with her personality.

  Anyway, Ben having very wisely defected, I was reconciled to it being three generations of women for Sunday lunch. At my place, of course. Though my mother is lavish with invitations to take people out for meals, she rarely invites them to her house. It’s not that she can’t cook. She honed her culinary skills for arranging tête-à-tête dinners with various men over the years, but that was just another weapon in her sexual armoury. She wouldn’t bother to deploy it just for family.

  And her relationship with her current husband, Kenneth, has got way beyond trying to impress in that way. Almost all their meals are eaten out.

  He will, needless to say, not be with us for Sunday lunch. Sundays for him mean golf. So do Saturdays. And weekdays he’s at the office. I sometimes wonder why he bothered to get married. He and Fleur hardly see each other. Which is maybe the best way of maintaining a relationship with my mother.

  Over lunch – pork, crackling, all the trimmings; I do a pretty good roast – Jools actually raised the subject of Kenneth’s absences. When they talk together, my daughter and mother go into a sort of arch, teasing manner, which I find infuriating. And which they both know I find infuriating.

  ‘So, Fleur …’ Jools too has always been encouraged to use the first name. Same thing as with me, emphasizing the suggestion that they’re girlfriends rather than granddaughter and grandmother. And obscuring the detail that they’re more than fifty years apart in age. ‘Is Kenneth making his usual escape from you down at the golf club? I’m surprised you’re happy to let him out of your sight for so long. I’m sure there are lots of lascivious lady golfers down there, flaunting their putters at him.’

  Fleur grinned complacently. Her make-up was, as ever, perfect. Even after a few glasses of wine – and she’d had three before we sat down – there was never the tiniest smudge to her lipstick. ‘I have complete confidence in Kenneth. He knows there’s nothing out there that he can’t get better at home. He’ll always be back at bedtime.’ My mother rolled her eyes knowingly. ‘You know what men are like.’

  She was well aware that I found this acutely embarrassing. Historically, particularly in the post-Freudian world, children never really want to be reminded that their parents have any form of sex life, and in most families the subject is just gracefully avoided. Not with Fleur Bonnier, though. I suppose her sex appeal was always one of her selling points as an actress, and so she had reasons to focus the public eye on it. But to keep bringing it up when she was in her seventies, and to her family was … well …

  Jools of course found it hysterical. Her response was to say, ‘Go for it, Fleur!’ and ask for more details. Knowing precisely how uncomfortable that was for me.

  Jools’s words prompted a predictable cycle of innuendo about her grandmother’s relationship with Kenneth. ‘He tells me a lot of his mates down the golf club are on the Viagra these days. I blame the wives. Kenneth’s never had any difficulty in that department. You know, if there were more women in the world like me, the makers of Viagra would go out of business!’

  It was a typical Fleur Bonnier remark – slightly naughty, slightly self-aggrandizing, and totally exasperating for her daughter.

  Long experience had taught me that responding to that kind of provocation would only make things worse, so I concentrated on my pork and apple sauce. Fleur turned her attention to her granddaughter. ‘And what about the Jools Curtis sex life? Any handsome young bucks on the scene?’

  I was quite interested to hear if Fleur could elicit a more detailed response on the subject than I ever could. But all we got was: ‘None I’d tell you about.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Fleur coquettishly. ‘Afraid of me muscling in?’

  Jools had the nerve to find this funny. Or was she just doing so to annoy me?

  Fleur recognized that she was not going to get any further with her granddaughter on the subject of sex, so changed direction. ‘And work? How’s that going along?’

  ‘Good.’

  Fleur appraised the garment Jools was wearin
g. A calf-length jumpsuit in shocking pink, decorated with large white spots. ‘One of your free samples, is it?’

  ‘Dahling, I only wear free samples.’ Jools said the line in a fairly accurate impersonation of her grandmother.

  Fleur was delighted. ‘So sensible, dahling,’ she responded. ‘Clothes have a definite sell-by date. I think it’s like that thing about guests and fish: they smell after three days. Clothes get a bit tired when you wear them more than three times.’

  ‘More than once, I find, dahling,’ said Jools, still over-dramatizing.

  She works for an online fashion magazine, which is her perfect job. From very early on, Jools always loved clothes – but never loved them for long. Her threshold of sartorial boredom was very low. She always wanted something new. This was the source of the many rows we had, particularly during her teenage years. She seemed unable to take on board the fact that I couldn’t afford to keep replacing her wardrobe while it was still full of wearable stuff. I also disapproved – and she knew I disapproved – of treating clothes as disposable artefacts.

  So, her current job suits Jools perfectly. An endless round of catwalk shows and label launches … and enough freebies for her never to wear the same clothes twice.

  ‘Well, at least you’ve made an effort,’ said Fleur, pointedly, to Jools. My mother was elegant, as ever, in grey linen. She’s one of those women who doesn’t have any everyday clothes. She is always dressed up. And, I have to admit, she always looks damned good.

  Her last sentence was of course another gibe at me, one of those produced so frequently that I had long ago given up dignifying them with any reaction. The (not very subtle) subtext was: At least you and I, Jools, have made an effort. Unlike your mother.

  Spending my week in Pacific Blue SpaceWoman livery, all I want to do at weekends is slob around in jeans and a T-shirt. Fleur doesn’t understand this – or claims not to understand it. She doesn’t possess a pair of jeans and, if she had a T-shirt, it would be called a ‘top’, have a designer label and cost fifty times more than the kind of T-shirts I buy. I let the remark pass unchallenged.

  But Fleur hasn’t yet completed her cycle of aggravation. ‘I always think Sunday lunch should be an occasion. A family occasion.’

  This is straying on to dangerous ground. Given the list of partners with whom, over the years, my mother has shared Sunday lunches, she is in no position to extol the virtues of family occasions.

  But then, for different reasons, neither am I.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Fleur, pressing in the point of another needle, ‘how’s the cleaning business going?’

  Though entirely predictable, this is a more difficult subject for me to curb a reaction to. It’s been a matter for contention since I first started SpaceWoman. Though I’ve described to her many times exactly what it is that I do, she still insists on describing it as ‘cleaning’. She even takes pleasure in introducing me to her new friends with the throwaway line, ‘This is my daughter Ellen. She’s a cleaner.’

  Why my mother has to snipe away at me all the time, I don’t know. My knowledge of psychology suggests that it must arise from an insecurity of her own. Because of some deep-seated paranoia, she feels the need constantly to assert her superiority over me. Which is strange, because I have never been competitive with her in the areas of life about which she cares. I’ve no desire to act. I’ve no desire to be fatally attractive to men. And I’ve never possessed either talent.

  Funny, I reckon I’m pretty good at working out the psychology of my clients. Nearer to home, it seems, I just can’t hack it.

  Anyway, I manage to suppress the burning instinct to snap back and tell her I have plenty of work. The question was only asked to rile me. She’s not interested in the answer.

  The rest of lunch is spent in Fleur asking Jools about the fashion shows she’s recently attended and trying to cap each tale of glamour with some recollection from her own glittering past. I have little to contribute to the conversation.

  Besides, I’m preoccupied. I can’t switch off the recurrent image of what I’d seen in the sitting room of a cluttered flat on the Hargood Estate in Portsmouth.

  I don’t think it would ever occur to either Fleur or Jools to offer to help tidying up after Sunday lunch – or any other meal, come to that. Jools did a bit round the house as a teenager, but always with much reproachful sighing. Now she’s always busy, busy, having to rush off and catch a train back to London. Can’t stay too long in a place like Chichester, can’t risk getting infected by the torpor of the provinces.

  Fleur agrees with her whenever the subject comes up. ‘Of course, I’m basically a London person,’ she says. ‘Wasn’t it Oscar Wilde who described the country as “a kind of healthy grave”?’

  ‘No,’ I said the first few times she came out with this. ‘It was the Rev. Sydney Smith.’ Now I don’t bother. My mother’s conversation is studded with cherished misquotations.

  Nor do I bother pointing out that her current comfortable circumstances are solely attributable to the fact that her husband Kenneth’s lucrative solicitor’s practice is based in Chichester. ‘London person’ she may be, but her income derives from the provinces, and the ‘London’ aspect of her personality is now restricted to shopping raids on Harrods with Kenneth’s gold card.

  I had just got the kitchen back to my standard of cleanliness (a slightly higher level than that aspired to by either of my children) and made myself another cup of coffee. What with changing the sheets and getting lunch ready, I hadn’t had time to look at the paper.

  I sat in my favourite armchair in the kitchen, just where it catches the afternoon sun, and picked up The Observer.

  Before I could open it, the phone rang.

  Hilary. ‘Just wanted to say – wonder of wonders – Philip is actually here. He’d love to see you, if you did care to drop over …’

  I was divided. Half of me just wanted to stay at home with the paper, maybe indulge in a slight doze. The other half was worried, after recent traumas, about the idea of being on my own. I knew how quickly bad thoughts could fester in solitude.

  That half won. ‘What time would suit?’ I asked.

  ‘When you like. Philip and I had a light brunch, so we’ll be eating early.’

  ‘I’ll see you in as long as it takes,’ I said.

  FIVE

  Philip Boredean had aged well. His black hair had grizzled to a kind of gunmetal colour, and he didn’t carry much more weight than when I first met him. Though he was rarely seen in leisurewear, he carried if off with some style. The polo shirt and jeans were artistically faded and his dark blue deck shoes, worn sockless, looked as they might at some point have made contact with a deck.

  He greeted me at the gate of the cottage’s front garden, having just risen from a metal table where he and Hilary had been catching the last rays of the sun. There was a bottle of rosé lolling in an ice bucket. Glasses, bowls of olives, crackers, hummus and tzatziki decorated the surface in a random way that could have been posed for a colour supplement photograph.

  As always, he enveloped me in a huge hug. As always, I felt nothing more than comfort in the contact. The fact that we had once been lovers had left no mark on my physical memory. It had been a long time ago – nearly thirty years, for God’s sake – and, in retrospect, not that important. We had both moved on, I’m sure, to more fulfilling sexual experiences. I certainly had. I just felt pleased that things had worked out for Philip with Hilary. Both had travelled a fairly bumpy relationship road before finding each other.

  She had risen more slowly from the garden table and we exchanged ‘mwa mwa’ kisses on each cheek, a silly habit we’d got into over the years. Although there are no complications of a romantic nature between the three of us, Hilary always behaves slightly differently when Philip is present. It’s particularly noticeable in West Wittering. Nothing major; she’s just more watchful, as if perhaps she’s afraid he’ll get bored and rush off any minute back to London and the welcoming dema
nds of work.

  I was immediately offered a drink. I said I’d have some of the rosé. Fortunately, in spite of my mother’s importuning, I hadn’t had anything at lunchtime. One small glass, I reckoned, wouldn’t trouble the breathalyser. It was a pity. My emotional state would have been much improved by getting mildly drunk with friends, but SpaceWoman was too important for me to take the risk.

  ‘Gather from Hil you’ve had a nasty experience,’ said Philip.

  ‘Yes. Bit of a downer,’ I agreed.

  ‘Very bad luck.’

  ‘Just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘Usually down here, the person who finds the body is someone walking a dog,’ Philip observed.

  ‘In London it’s a jogger,’ Hilary contributed.

  ‘Yes, well, in this case, I’m afraid it was me.’

  ‘Gather it was in the course of one of your decluttering jobs …?’ said Philip.

  I read from the semaphore of Hilary’s eyebrows that her husband knew no more about the situation than that. He was unaware his wife had any connection with the Ogdens. I indicated to her that I’d taken the point on board. How much she told him about her job was between the two of them. Maybe, I wondered, they had made a pact early in their marriage that neither of them would bring work home. That might have been a mercy for Hilary. From the time we were together I remembered that, on the subject of medicine, Philip could bore for England.

  I confirmed to him that I had found the corpse in the course of my work.

  ‘And I gather from the papers that it’s thought to be murder.’

  ‘So it seems, yes.’

  ‘Always depresses me a bit when I hear of a murder. I suppose it’s because I spend my time trying to extend life, and there are people out there trying to cut it short.’ He contrived not to sound pious as he said this, just frustrated. ‘Had a case a couple of weeks back of a kid who’d been stabbed in the street. Some gang thing, I think, this dreadful knife culture. We couldn’t save him,’ he concluded ruefully.