Mr Romance

by Mr Romance (retail) (epub)

  13

  Dorothy Clark accepted my father’s invitation. She wrote to him on a single sheet of pale green paper, thanking him for his generous offer, inquiring after my mother’s health and expressing her firm intentions to stay for at least a month.

  ‘What did you say in your letter?’ mother demanded at breakfast.

  ‘I forget!’ father said quickly, sorting through the rest of the morning’s post and pretending to take an interest in a Reader’s Digest competition. Win a fortune. Trial subscription. Your name selected. No stamp required.

  ‘A few days!’ mother said, scowling at Dorothy’s peculiar, cramped handwriting. She sniffed the page and held it against the light. ‘You asked her to stay for a few days!’ She snatched up the envelope, prised it open and gave it a shake, searching for an explanation.

  ‘A few days. A few weeks. What’s the difference?’

  ‘The difference is perfectly obvious. We can’t afford it! We’re supposed to be renting the rooms, not giving them away.’

  ‘She never had much of an appetite,’ father argued. ‘She’s like Janet in that respect. And it’s a damned big house. We’ll still have plenty of rooms.’

  ‘Not to mention the extra expense of heat, hot water and laundry.’

  ‘We’ll manage.’

  ‘And how are we going to keep her amused?’ she said, returning the letter to its envelope and slapping it down on the table.

  ‘She can keep herself amused,’ father said mildly.

  ‘I don’t want any monkey business,’ mother warned him.

  Father didn’t flinch. He certainly didn’t look like a man who had once been led astray by a lean and lewd-limbed dancer. But appearances can be treacherous. I began to imagine Dorothy as a glittering chorus girl in spiky, high-heeled shoes and a sweeping head-dress of ostrich feathers.

  ‘She’ll be company for Marvel,’ he said simply, thumbing an opportunity to purchase a set of porcelain thimbles decorated with flags of all nations.

  ‘And what happens if they don’t take to each other?’ mother asked him. She had a knack of finding problems. ‘What happens if Mr Marvel doesn’t want to be bothered? You can’t force him to take an interest.’

  ‘Everyone loves Dorothy,’ father said absently, as he shuffled coupons for cut-price pizza, dog food, shampoo and life insurance.

  ‘Suppose,’ mother insisted.

  ‘Well, if she gets bored, Skipper can show her the sights,’ father said impatiently and shot me a glance that told me he’d take no arguments.

  Mother complained but she wasted no time in preparing the house for our visitor. We washed windows, scrubbed floors, waxed tables and beat the living daylights from curtains while father found excuses to keep himself locked in the cellar.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Mr Marvel demanded, finding himself trapped in a dust storm as we pummelled the front parlour cushions.

  ‘A family friend,’ mother warned him. ‘She might be staying for a few days. Do you like dancing?’

  ‘Is it required?’

  She stared at him for a moment and frowned. ‘No,’ she said, with a baffling innocence.

  We opened the big front bedroom called Belgium. I don’t remember why mother called it Belgium but I think it had something to do with the carpet. It was a large room with a fine carved mahogany bed, two old armchairs stuffed with horsehair and a massive wardrobe with fogged mirrors. There was a dressing table, a chest of drawers and a decorated folding screen. The wardrobe was filled with cobwebs and the dust had settled beneath the bed like a perfect patch of snow. We swept the room from floor to ceiling, bullied the mattress, flogged the chairs and squirted Springtime into the curtains. We fetched glass knick-knacks for the dressing table and a blue china vase for the chest of drawers.

  ‘It still smells strange in here,’ mother complained, wrinkling her nose. She stood in the centre of the room, clutching her Springtime like a can of Mace.

  ‘It’s the house,’ I said, wiping my face in my apron. ‘The whole house smells strange.’ A hundred years of soot and sorrow, wet foundations, blistered plaster, boiled bedding and kitchen smoke.

  ‘We need an onion,’ she concluded. ‘Go and fetch half an onion.’ She believed that onions had magic powers to soak up smells and disinfect the atmosphere.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ I was hot and tired and filthy. There were cobwebs under my collar and feathers sticking like darts in my hair.

  ‘We’ll hide it behind the wardrobe,’ she said, as if we were setting a garlic trap for an unsuspecting vampire.

  So I ran downstairs to fetch a peeled onion, which we wedged between the wall and the wardrobe. We found a bunch of faded crepe-paper flowers for the vase and filled the chairs with patchwork cushions.

  ‘What do you think?’ mother asked, when we had finished.

  ‘It’s good,’ I said. ‘It looks comfortable.’ I tried to picture the room at night; candles flicker, music murmurs, wardrobe spills her spangled costumes. Dorothy struts the carpet laughing, satin slippers, bracelets glitter, long hair tied with living rosebuds. Tap-tap. Room service. Silver tray. Champagne. Lobster. Compliments of the management.

  Mother shook her head and shivered. ‘There’s a nasty draught through that window frame,’ she said with satisfaction.

  14

  She arrived on the Saturday afternoon with a suitcase the size of a cabin trunk. She was taller than I’d expected and heavier and wore spectacles and a raincoat and sensible shoes and pink lipstick and her hair was dark and tied in a knot and she wasn’t the woman I’d seen in my dreams.

  She kissed father and squeezed mother but seemed confused when I was presented and did nothing more than shake my hand.

  ‘Skipper?’ she asked, suspiciously. ‘Is it really Skipper? I can’t believe it! My scallywag! Is it really you?’ Her fingers were cold and fleeting.

  ‘Skipper,’ I said, feeling foolish. We were standing in the hall, forming a circle around the suitcase, as if it were an object of worship.

  ‘You’ve grown,’ she said and blinked several times and looked disappointed, as if I’d failed her in some odd fashion.

  I couldn’t think of a sensible answer so I said nothing but shuffled my feet and grinned like a good-natured idiot. I was wearing a new haircut and my best shirt and the collar was squeezing my throat like a rope.

  ‘It must be ten years!’ father said after a while, and I fancied that he looked as disappointed as Dorothy, although he did his best to conceal it.

  ‘A long time,’ mother declared.

  ‘Ten years,’ Dorothy agreed.

  ‘And that’s a long time!’ father said.

  ‘Is it really ten years?’ I said, hoping to encourage them. They seemed to be short of conversation.

  Mother shrugged. Dorothy smiled. Father sighed and stared at the floor.

  A saucepan bubbled in the kitchen. Far away in the parlour we could hear the sounds of Senior Franklin rustling newspaper like a rodent building itself a nest. Somewhere a clock chimed the hour.

  Mother smiled. Dorothy sighed. Father shrugged and looked at the wall.

  ‘Well, you must be tired!’ mother said finally, breaking the silence. ‘Skipper will show you the room. There’ll be plenty of time to talk when you’ve rested.’

  ‘That’s the spirit!’ father said, clapping his hands. He bustled back to life and helped me to drag the suitcase as far as the staircase.

  ‘Follow me!’ I said.

  ‘Can you manage the weight of it?’ Dorothy asked doubtfully.

  ‘It’s nothing!’ I grunted. The suitcase was made from a dark blue leather secured with straps and bright metal buckles. It pulled my shoulders, wrenched my spine and twisted my stomach muscles.

  ‘The trick is to find the right balance…’ father shouted from the safety of the hall as he watched me haul the brute upstairs.

  I took Dorothy as far as Belgium, unlocked the door and dragged the suitcase into the room. ‘I hope you�
��ll be comfortable,’ I wheezed as I staggered free from my burden and fell thankfully into a chair.

  ‘It’s perfect!’ she said. She walked to the window and peeked through the curtains. She walked back across the room and peeped behind the folding screen. ‘It’s a lovely room.’ She took off her raincoat and placed it carefully on the bed. There were no spangles, no ostrich feathers. She was wearing wool from throat to ankle.

  ‘Tell me if there’s something you need,’ I said, standing up to make my escape. I felt nervous. I was anxious to be gone.

  ‘I can’t think of anything.’

  ‘I’d better get back to work,’ I said, bobbing like a bellboy.

  ‘Wait a moment!’ she said and knelt down to unlock the suitcase. ‘You’ve grown so tall, Skip! You’re quite the young man.’

  ‘I’m eighteen.’

  ‘I’d forgotten. How the time hurries past. And I used to play with you in the bath.’ She unbuckled the straps, snapped open the locks and retrieved a brown paper packet from the neatly folded jackets and skirts. ‘I’ve brought you something,’ she said, looking up at me with one of her bright, pink smiles.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, taking the gift in both hands. It was limp and flat and smelt a little of lavender.

  ‘Comic books,’ she declared, removing the element of surprise. ‘You always seemed to like them.’

  ‘I used to have quite a collection,’ I said. Superman. Batman. Green Lantern. Cat Woman. A complete set of Valiant Vigour. A first edition Captain Thunder. It was true. Hundreds of precious, dog-eared comics stored in a box beneath my bed. I’d thrown them away, along with my cardboard X-ray specs and my membership to the Junior Space Commando Club, when a friend at school had changed my life by lending me his Skirt Lifter annual.

  ‘I remembered,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I think you’ll be pleased,’ she said confidently. ‘They feature the world’s favourite superhero.’

  I didn’t ask questions. I hurried away to my room, sprawled on the bed and tried to make sense of this strange encounter. Where was the laughing, lewd-limbed dancer? Where was the woman who loved to make mischief? Ten years was a long time but I didn’t believe it could do so much damage. It wasn’t until I’d taken the trouble to unwrap my gift that the terrible truth was exposed.

  They were large-format comic books, harshly coloured and printed on cheap, hairy paper. They had titles like Jesus & the Titan of Doom and Jesus Conquers the Universe. A banner on each cover promised that every page was packed with thrills and adventures. Jesus looked a lot like Cary Grant, with broad shoulders and quizzical eyebrows. He marched from one adventure to another wearing smart red orthopaedic sandals and seemed to employ his own beam of sunlight to pick him out in the crowd. But it wasn’t hard to pick him from the multitude — he was the one with the piercing blue eyes who spoke entirely in proverbs. He was quite a character! He was always healing the sick or raising the dead and he’d walk a mile to stroke a leper. He didn’t cruise through the stratosphere, bite through iron bars with his teeth or cripple rampaging robot armies. But you can’t have everything and Dorothy seemed to worship him.

  So here was the answer to the riddle! Dorothy was transformed. She had found faith. She was a new woman. She had burned her dancing shoes and joined the new crusade for Jesus. I flicked the pages and made an effort to read the captions — in case she was tempted to ask me questions — and then ran downstairs to help in the kitchen.

  ‘Is she happy with the room?’ father asked when he saw me again. He was standing at the kitchen table with his hand up an oven-ready turkey. The bird was the size of a small child. He was cramming it with chestnut stuffing, scooping the sludge from a glass dish and forcing it home with his fist.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  ‘Is she coming down?’

  ‘She’ll want to rest and unpack,’ mother reminded him.

  ‘She must be tired,’ father agreed. ‘But you wait until this evening. You wait. You’re going to love it. She’s a scream.’

  ‘She seemed surprised by the way you’ve sprouted,’ mother said as I washed my hands at the sink.

  ‘She thought I was eight years old.’

  ‘It’s that stupid haircut,’ she said. She was sitting at the table, scrubbing vegetables in a bowl. She grinned as she shaved a whiskery carrot.

  ‘You were eight years old,’ father said, rushing to Dorothy’s defence. ‘The last time she saw you. Eight years old with a passion for collecting button badges and fivepenny conjuring tricks.’

  ‘She gave me some comic books,’ I said.

  ‘What sort of comic books?’ father asked. He pulled his fist from the bird and smacked a gobbet of unwanted stuffing against the side of the dish.

  ‘The life and times of Jesus in colour,’ I said, fetching a saucepan for the carrots. ‘Pages packed with thrills and adventures.’

  ‘What’s he talking about?’ father demanded, wiping his hands in his apron. He picked up the corpse and cradled it in his arms, testing its weight and surreptitiously squeezing its thighs before placing it to rest in a buckled roasting tray.

  ‘Don’t ask me!’ mother said cheerfully, chopping carrots into my saucepan. ‘And stop fiddling with that turkey.’

  ‘Jesus & the Titans of Darkness!’ I shouted. ‘Jesus Conquers the Universe! Heed your heart and follow the Shepherd. Give your money away to strangers.’

  ‘He’s as daft as a brush!’ father snorted. ‘I think I preferred him when he was eight years old. At least we had sensible conversations.’

  ‘Ignore him,’ mother said. ‘And use the oven gloves.’

  They were proving deaf to my warnings. I was casting my seed upon stony ground. I stayed in the kitchen for the rest of the afternoon, washing pans and boiling down giblets for gravy. It was going to be a difficult evening.

  15

  When supper was served, Dorothy made her entrance wearing a white cotton dress printed with bluebells. It was high at the neck, pinched at the waist and the skirt was packed with petticoats. She had been transformed. She was Debbie Reynolds! She was Doris Day! She looked so robust and healthy you really thought she might kick off her shoes and start to dance on the carpet. Father took her arm, led her into the dining room and presented her to the company. Franklin whinnied and flared his nostrils, Janet blushed and Mr Marvel, with his fear of strangers, looked so alarmed that we feared he might panic, leap from his chair and damage himself as he tried to escape. But she smiled a pink smile as she sat down beside him and patted his hand and stared serenely into his eyes until he grew calm, his jaw fell slack and he seemed quite mesmerised.

  Mother kept a watch on them as she scampered up and down with mustard pots and jugs of gravy. Father, at the top of the table, stood behind the turkey with a carving knife in his hand. He was already grinning, anticipating the moment when Dorothy would pull some prank to send us spinning in fits of laughter. Always when you least expected. What a performer! She was a scream.

  It was a good supper. The plates were loaded with turkey and stuffing. There were roast potatoes with wedges of parsnip, sugar-glazed carrots and baby sprouts. There was gravy the colour of creosote and wrinkled rashers of salty bacon. There was ginger pudding to follow with four different kinds of ice cream. There was fruit and a very doubtful cheese.

  ‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen!’ Dorothy said loudly, beaming at the assembly.

  Father gave a great bark of laughter but choked it down when he sensed that nobody shared the joke and pretended to have a coughing attack.

  ‘Where’s your napkin?’ mother said sharply.

  Father slapped open his napkin and used it to cover his confusion.

  ‘And what do you do for a living, Mr Marvel?’ Dorothy inquired. She didn’t seem in the least concerned by father’s unfortunate outburst.

  ‘Oh, this and that,’ Marvel mumbled. ‘This and that.’ He was bent over his plate, nibbling
at crumbs of potato. He paused and raised his head, as if he were going to speak again, and then decided against it.

  ‘How fascinating!’ Dorothy crooned.

  ‘And may we beg leave to inquire how you spend your time, madam?’ Franklin demanded, taking command of the conversation.

  ‘I live in the Lord,’ Dorothy said with a bright pink smile.

  ‘Where’s that?’ Janet whispered, leaning hard against me. It was a rare and precious moment. I should have buried my face in her hair and babbled sweet nothings into her ear. It was a gilt-edged invitation. The perfect opportunity. But I couldn’t answer. I was busy staring at Franklin who had dropped his knife and fork and was clutching his throat in a gesture of horror.

  ‘No! Say ’tis not true! A student of cant and comstockery? And yet so fresh and comely! A dabbler in bibliomancy? An unreconstructed triskaidekaphobe?’ He shook his head and shuddered. ‘I would I had not asked the question. I would it were bedtime, Hal, and all well. Curiosis fabricavit inferos!’ he added mournfully.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ father demanded. He didn’t have the faintest idea what Franklin was talking about, but bitter experience had taught him that these sudden outbursts meant trouble.

  Marvel growled and glared across the table. He gestured at Franklin with his knife but he couldn’t find the words he wanted.

  ‘Do I take it, Mr Franklin, that you don’t yet share the good faith?’ Dorothy inquired.

  ‘I don’t bother God, madam, and I find that He seldom bothers me!’ he shouted, dramatically. He seemed so pleased with this remark that he grinned and filled his mouth with turkey.

  ‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,’ Dorothy insisted. ‘You may not believe in the Lord but, rest assured, He believes in you!’

  This news seemed to bring no immediate comfort to Franklin. ‘If He cared at all for my welfare, madam, I would not be afflicted with scrivener’s palsy! A condition I’ve suffered with some forbearance since my earliest days at Oxford. English. Honours. First class.’