Mr Romance

by Mr Romance (retail) (epub)

  ‘Someone should do something,’ father said impatiently. He didn’t have time to become involved in another domestic quarrel. He wanted to eat and escape to the cellar.

  ‘She’s hardly touched her supper,’ mother grumbled, frowning at Janet’s abandoned plate. ‘Do you think we should save it?’

  ‘How should I know?’ father snapped, screwing his napkin into a ball and making it bounce across the table.

  Franklin looked uncomfortable and began to fidget in his chair. He was still angry but there was just a chance he’d soon feel guilty enough to submit an apology. I had to seize the advantage.

  ‘It’s a shame to waste it,’ mother continued stubbornly. ‘She didn’t eat enough to fill a sparrow.’

  ‘She obviously doesn’t want it,’ father said.

  ‘Do you think she’d like me to make her a tray?’ I said.

  ‘Mr Romance accepts the challenge!’ Franklin shouted sarcastically and forced a dumpling into his mouth. ‘Scuttle forth, my curious capon, whilst Love still beckons thee. There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman’s pulse.’

  ‘Perhaps she’ll want a sandwich,’ mother suggested.

  ‘I’ll go and find out,’ I said with a weary reluctance and shot from the room before Franklin changed his mind and stole my opportunity to have Janet weep on my shoulder.

  7

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Skipper!’ I called softly, as I stood at her door, trying to comb my hair with my hands. My heart was thumping so hard and fast I could feel the rushing of blood in my ears.

  ‘It’s not locked.’

  I hesitated, turned the handle and peeked into her room. It always seemed larger at night, perhaps because the curtains were closed and the lamps with their pleated paper shades, splashed light at the walls, dappled the rugs and pulled strange shadows from furniture, lending the room an unfamiliar geometry. I took a single step forward and glanced towards the dressing table where the mirror shone like a sunlit window into another, parallel world. Through this window I could see Janet, pale and slightly luminous, turning away from her wardrobe and walking towards the bed. She was barefoot. Her blouse was unbuttoned. She was tinkering with the clasp on her skirt.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. She seemed bewildered. Her eyes were pink, their lashes glued with melted mascara.

  ‘Do you need anything?’ I asked, closing the door and stepping deeper into the room.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘There’s nothing. I’m fine.’

  ‘I could bring you a tray,’ I said hopefully. ‘If you’re hungry. It’s no trouble to fix you a tray.’

  She shook her head and made some attempt to repair her blouse. Her hands were shaking. She fumbled blindly in search of the buttons. She was crying. Her mouth sagged open as if she were drowning.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ she snuffled. ‘I’m sorry!’ She sat down hard on the edge of the bed and covered her face in her hands, sucking and blowing between her fingers.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For making such a fool of myself!’ She yanked a Kleenex from the box on the bedside table and used it to wipe her eyes, pausing to gasp for breath before teasing the tissue into a spike and neatly drilling her nose.

  ‘I must have missed it,’ I said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You’re sweet!’ she sobbed, raising her head and forcing a smile. Her mouth looked swollen and petulant. She dragged her tumbled hair from her face, making her blouse pull away at her throat in a heart-stopping moment of carelessness that gave me a view of her collar-bone.

  ‘And Franklin’s a bully,’ I said, trying to steady myself by taking charge of the Kleenex box and sitting beside her on the bed.

  ‘No, he’s not really a bully,’ she gasped, plucking at tissues. ‘He just gets impatient because he’s so clever. Don’t you think he’s clever?’

  ‘A brain the size of Belgium,’ I said.

  ‘And elegant,’ she said, remembering her buttons. ‘You can tell that he’s special just by looking at him. Distinguished.’ Her flicking fingers worked to secure the front of her blouse, making me shrink with disappointment as if an unspoken trust had been broken.

  ‘I can’t say that I’ve noticed.’

  She didn’t care to be contradicted. ‘He’s distinguished. And he must think that I’m so stupid,’ she continued miserably. ‘Honestly! The things I say! I can’t help it. He must think I’m hopelessly ignorant.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ I protested. How I hated him! I wanted to snip off his thumbs with scissors. I wanted to tear out his tongue.

  ‘He makes me feel stupid!’ she snorted. ‘I hate myself. I’m so stupid and plain and ordinary.’

  ‘You’re not ordinary!’ I said fiercely.

  ‘I’m stupid!’ she insisted, beating her knees with her fists.

  ‘He tries to make everyone feel stupid,’ I said. ‘You should be flattered. It probably means that he likes you.’

  ‘Do you really think he likes me?’ She stared at me with brilliant eyes, squinting with concentration, as if I could soothe her misery, brew love potions, cast spells, heal the sick and raise the dead from their graves.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged and felt hopeless. ‘He doesn’t seem to like anyone very much.’

  ‘Whenever I try to talk to him I get tongue-tied,’ she explained. ‘It’s horrible. I always make such a mess of it. I can feel him looking and laughing at me.’ She had stopped sobbing and seemed now to be quite exhausted, like a small child after a tantrum. She yawned. She swung her legs from the floor and made herself comfortable on the bed, leaning into a pile of pillows. ‘I was thinking of taking extra night classes. Do you think it might help?’

  ‘It depends,’ I said doubtfully. She already took Yoga and Needlecraft, Basketwork and Pottery.

  ‘I might try Conversation. I could learn to become more interesting by improving my conversation.’

  ‘They have night classes for that?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They teach you to express yourself in a variety of popular situations. It lends you greater confidence.’

  ‘Perhaps you should try a different approach,’ I suggested.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  I didn’t have the faintest idea but I wanted to keep her attention. ‘Well, the next time he starts to make fun of you, try breaking his jaw,’ I suggested. ‘That should wipe the grin from his face. Spit in his food. Throw something at him. A little violence works wonders.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that!’

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ I said, reaching across the bed to return the Kleenex box to the table and endeavouring to work a little closer to the object of my desire without giving her cause for alarm. But I was clumsy and brushed her naked foot with my hand. She fanned her toes in surprise.

  ‘You’re so funny,’ she murmured, sinking deeper into the pillows.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘When you’re serious.’

  ‘I don’t like to see you hurt, it upsets me.’

  ‘He doesn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘How is your mother?’ I said, hoping to steer the conversation away from the merits of Senior Franklin. Janet’s mother enjoyed robust bad health and wrote regular letters describing the progress of her many and complex ailments, the opinions of various doctors and the names of the drugs and therapies prescribed.

  ‘Liver and lumbago. Panic attacks. Dizzy spells. Tired scalp. Bad feet. Legs like balloons,’ she said, reciting from memory.

  ‘Is that serious?’

  ‘The doctor said if they get any worse, he’s going to have to drain them.’

  ‘I hope you’ll send her my regards.’

  ‘You’re sweet!’ she said again and smiled, lifting and smoothing her skirt to give me a brief but spectacular view along the wonderful length of her legs, as if she wanted to demonstrate that her own fair limbs were in the very pink of condition.

  ‘Would you like me to bring you some ice cream?’ I managed
to croak as I blinked my stolen glimpse of her thighs deeper into my eyes. I couldn’t breathe! I was paralysed with danger. ‘Chocolate and Vanilla Fudge. Strawberry Blonde. Mango and Coconut Surprise.’

  ‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘But it makes me fat.’

  ‘You could risk it,’ I said, in a feeble attempt at flattery. You could risk a little ice cream. Surrender yourself and close your eyes as I feed you sips of scented snow. Abandon yourself and give me the night to stuff your mouth with flakes of ice and melt your frosted lips with kisses.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘It’s early.’

  ‘I think I’ll get into bed with my book.’

  ‘I can’t tempt you?’

  ‘No.’ She picked Ronald the Rabbit from her harem of stuffed toy animals and smothered him between her breasts. Oh, lucky rabbit! His ears stood up on his head like exclamation marks.

  ‘Anything,’ I insisted. ‘I’ll get you anything.’ A loaded revolver. Baskets of kittens. Diamonds as big as potatoes.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, goodnight,’ I said reluctantly, as I threatened to remove myself from the scant rewards of her bed. I sighed and slapped my knees and stared at the floor.

  ‘Goodnight, Skipper.’

  ‘Shoes!’ It was an inspiration. Rise and shine! I might still indulge my fantasies by stealing a souvenir. ‘Do you want me to take your shoes?’ I pleaded. ‘Those ankle boots need some attention.’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Skipper.’

  I stood up and sighed and dragged myself slowly across the room. I wanted her to block my retreat, cling to my neck and pelt me with kisses. I wanted something to melt her heart. I wanted some help from Katie Pphart. I wanted it to be different. But I gained the door without a fight and gently closed it behind me.

  8

  When supper had been cleared away I spent the rest of the evening in the back parlour, watching the wrestling with mother. We settled down with a box of cheese crackers and shouted at Keiji Muto, aka the Great Muta, as he battered the daylights from Thunder Lyger for the Junior Heavyweight Championship before a crowd of 60,000 screaming spectators in the Tokyo Dome. Mother barked and tossed crackers at the referee. She loved Japanese wrestling and Thunder Lyger, with his fountain of hair, spectacular horns and strange gauze goggles, was a particular favourite. She didn’t mention Franklin’s bad behaviour. The incident at supper had already been forgotten. It wasn’t unusual. We had learned to accept Franklin’s influence over the house in the manner we accepted the weather — there were squalls followed by calms, storms followed by frosts, and nothing could change it.

  It was a good match. The Great Muta nearly took the belt in the first few minutes with a snap suplex converted into a scorpion death lock but Thunder Lyger turned the match by throwing his opponent clean through the ropes in a punishing counter-attack. Muta struck the steel barrier, scattering photographers, and Lyger chased him down to shovel him back into the ring.

  ‘That nailed him!’ mother shouted with satisfaction as the Great Muta was abruptly cartvvheeled and his head driven into the canvas.

  Muta looked bad. He must have been injured. His mouth foamed, his mad eyes were fixed and staring, one leg seemed broken and twisted beneath him. The referee hurried forward and gave him a kick with the tip of a patent leather shoe. Muta didn’t move. The referee trod on his fingers. Nothing happened. The referee shook his head. It was finished.

  Thunder Lyger turned in triumph and threw up his arms to salute the crowd. But in the blink of an eye, in the push of a heartbeat, the Great Muta sprang back to life, restored by some miracle into a demon and seized Thunder Lyger by the throat, spun on his heel and gave him a mule kick that sent him sprawling.

  ‘Hit him with your handbag!’ mother spluttered, firing cracker crumbs down the front of her cardigan.

  Lyger went down but came up again. Muta hacked and chopped and battered him into the ropes. And then, when all seemed hopeless, when it was certain that the belt had been lost, Lyger lashed out like a cobra, pinned his opponent and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. One. Two. Three.

  We went to bed some time after midnight. We called father from the cellar and mother took him upstairs.

  ‘What’s the time?’ he demanded, wrenching away his spectacles and peering blindly at his wrists.

  ‘It’s time you spent an evening with your family,’ she said.

  I checked the locks, switched out the lights and went to my room. The smallest and ugliest room in the house. The furniture I’d been given might have been chosen especially to trigger depression or violent despair. A second-hand wardrobe made from some kind of particleboard, painted brown to imitate wood and fitted with broken red plastic handles. A blue vinyl chair with tubular legs in a clumsy, old-fashioned space-age design. A cracked wall mirror in pokerwork frame, a grey metal bedside cabinet and a murky lamp in a pink paisley shade with badly scorched nylon tassels. If mother had bothered to name this room she might have called it the Orphanage.

  I quickly undressed and climbed into bed. But I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake and stared at the dark. I remembered my conversation with Janet, sitting beside her on the bed as she showed me her legs and fondled her rabbit. The thought excited and troubled me.

  She threw back her lovely head and tossed her abundance of flaming gold hair in a gesture of angry defiance as she turned once more with glittering eyes to confront the tall, big-fisted young man who was standing silently over the bed.

  ‘You should leave this instant!’ she commanded but Mr Romance shook his head with a devilish chuckle. How handsome he looked in the candlelight! He was lean yet perfectly muscular with a dark and fascinating smile. Until that moment she had thought him to be a child but now she felt herself blush like a peach as she watched him unbutton his uniform.

  ‘Can’t you see that I’m bulging for you!’ he murmured hoarsely. ‘I’m straining like a gallant stallion!’

  Finally I switched on the bedside lamp, leaned overboard, poked my fingers under an edge of frayed carpet between the wall and the bed and recovered my copy of Frolicking Fatties. But nothing could bring me comfort and even the sight of pot-bellied Lottie Pout, with her slaphappy smile and elastic nipples, failed to work its nocturnal magic. Frolicking Fatties had provided me with many faithful companions during the long, cold nights of winter. Whenever I couldn’t sleep I would hook out the magazine and let myself loose in its gallery of readers’ wives.

  I loved this exotic bestiary of fat housewives on parade in corners of suburban living rooms. The pictures were dark and badly composed and always included the furniture — a bag of knitting in a small armchair, a lava lamp on a chest of drawers, a paper lampshade in the ceiling, shoes and underwear spilled on the floor. The dimpled divas strutted on shag pile, hoicked up their skirts and pushed out their buttocks like cheerful African gods. They had snagged stockings and crooked smiles and bellies the size of prize-winning pumpkins. Yet they were nothing compared to the gatefold where Lottie Pout waited to pounce in her creaking, pink satin waspie. Lottie Pout was a porker! The sight of her always worked on me like a rush of opium. The symptoms were agitation and fever, followed by blissful narcolepsy. But tonight she failed to take effect as I fingered my bone of contention. Janet had immunised me against lewd Lottie’s charm and although I tried to picture Janet — greatly engorged and thoroughly brazen — turning her into a frolicking fatty proved beyond my imagination.

  I was struggling to return the magazine to its hiding place when I heard the floorboards creaking near the bedroom door. I froze in alarm, hanging upside down with my arm trapped beneath the bed. There was someone prowling on the landing. There was someone skulking outside my door. I let myself slide from the mattress, plunged across the room in search of my dressing gown and squandered precious moments cramming my feet into shoes.

  When I pulled open the bedroom door I found Mr Marvel, shivering i
n his pyjamas, with a blue plastic flashlight in his hand. He seemed as shocked to meet me on the stairs as I had been to find him there. He fell against the wall and clutched his chest in distress.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I whispered, raising a hand to protect my face from the flashlight.

  ‘Intruders!’ he gasped, rolling from the wall and trying to catch his breath. His face was mottled and bleary with sleep.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Downstairs!’ he whispered. ‘They’re downstairs. I do believe they’ve found their way into the kitchen.’

  ‘But I’ve locked the house.’

  ‘No matter! Bolts and chains mean nothing to these devils!’ he said, wagging his head.

  ‘Who?’ I demanded. The house was large and draughty but the doors had been carved from seasoned oak and most of the windows were sealed by an elephant skin of enamel paint. We were so secure we would die in our beds if the house caught fire. There was no escape. It was guaranteed. And no one could force a lock or smash a window without making such a noise it would wake the neighbourhood. But Marvel could not be mollified.

  ‘Listen!’ he shuddered, waving his flashlight at the ceiling. The pale light fluttered, caught by a cobweb.

  I cocked my head and listened. There was silence. Even on quiet nights in this house you could hear the sound of the sea in the traffic, aircraft rising and sinking above you, distant voices, the mumbling of pipes and ticking of timbers. Silence, when it falls in the city, is so rare and unfamiliar that it seems to have a sound of its own.

  ‘Did you hear it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have something to call a weapon?’ he asked suddenly, glancing over my dressing gown in the hope that I might be concealing a bayonet or ammunition belt.

  I shook my head and tightened the knot on the dressing gown cord. Nothing came to mind short of rolling a truncheon from Frolicking Fatties. The knives and scissors were in the kitchen.

  ‘Sticks! We’ll find sticks in the umbrella stand!’ he said. He scampered away, hunchbacked and dangerous, ran downstairs and tiptoed across the hall where he pulled a metal-tipped walking cane from the armoury.