Mr Romance

by Mr Romance (retail) (epub)

  ‘There!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There. Bottom shelf. Next to the grapefruit juice.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She held the door open and bent forward to peer down among the cartons and bottles, bending neatly from the waist, feet together, legs very straight, but carelessly leaving her backside exposed.

  ‘Where?’ she complained. She couldn’t seem to find anything through the fog that billowed from the crowded shelves. She held one hand to her face and drew back a heavy silk curtain of hair. ‘It’s a mess!’

  Oh, but the sight of her bending blindly there, with her buttocks raised to the sun and her breasts dangled in frost, was a provocation past human endurance and sensing my chance, with the privy member in good repair, I darted forward and slipped my arms around her waist, skirting her belly, plunging my fingers into the whiskers between her thighs. For a moment we were blissfully engaged and then I found myself clinging, amidships, as she snorted and staggered and tried to throw me to the floor.

  ‘No!’ she roared. ‘No!’

  I was torn from my feet, tossed against the side of the fridge, knocked to the ground and trampled.

  ‘I can’t help it!’ I spluttered. ‘I love you… I love you…!’

  Dorothy toppled down on me and began to slap me about the face. ‘All men are liars!’ she shouted, grabbing my hair by the roots and trying to yank my head from my shoulders.

  What a woman! She had a scripture for every occasion. And she looked so fierce! Her teeth were clenched and her ears flushed scarlet with anger. In a desperate attempt to protect myself I grabbed her wrists and fought to hold her arms apart, making her breasts swing and slap above me.

  ‘It’s true!’ I protested, somehow scrambling to my knees. I was devoted. How could she doubt it? I was sick with love. I was crazy with passion and desire. Would I have taken such punishment if I’d been able to stop myself from falling victim to her charms?

  ‘You’re a child!’ she said, sulkily, abandoning the struggle. She went limp and sagged forward, her face falling against my neck.

  ‘I can’t help my heart,’ I said quietly. Slowly I loosened my grip on her wrists. She didn’t lash out again. Her hands flopped to the floor and she listed sideways, leaning her shoulder into my chest.

  ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked!’ she recited sadly. She raised one hand to the small of my back and sighed as she absently fingered my spine.

  Encouraged, I tried to return the embrace, slipping my hands around her flanks and pressing her softly into my arms. But man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward, and the moment she felt my furtive advance she prised herself free with a frantic kicking and slapping of feet that knocked her down and sent her sprawling into the open mouth of the fridge. She screeched against the shock of the ice and twisted about, frantically scratching among the shelves for some weapon to use against me.

  She made a grab at a big glass bottle of mayonnaise but thankfully missed her mark and scooped by mistake at a slice of leftover chocolate cake, sweeping it from its plate and punching it into my face. It smacked coldly against my cheek and slithered down as far as my jaw before breaking up in a mess of sticky, black crumbs that scattered themselves on my stomach and legs.

  Dorothy cursed and tried again. Now she pelted me with tomatoes and flogged me with wet sticks of celery.

  ‘Calm down!’ I gasped, raising my hands to protect my face. ‘You’ll do yourself a mischief!’ But this pleading served to excite her violence.

  ‘Committeth not thine iniquity lest calamity befall thee!’ she thundered. A ham bone slapped the side of my head. She thrashed me with heads of lettuce and pelted me with pellets of cheese while I coughed and sneezed and slithered around on my hands and knees.

  Exasperated, I threw myself upon her, hoping to engulf those flailing limbs, and managed to hook her by the armpits and pull her away from the fridge.

  ‘Leave me alone, you monster!’ She wriggled and kicked and threatened to scream but I dragged her over the treacherous floor and dumped her in the shadow of the kitchen table. She was furious. She jumped to her feet and glared down at me, bruised, bewildered, smeared with chocolate and gasping for breath.

  ‘I hope you burn in Hell!’ she hissed.

  I stood up, groaning, and wiped my face. Enough torment! I turned to hobble away when suddenly she grabbed my ears, jerked me forward and filled my mouth with a heart-stopping kiss. I struggled. She tightened her grip, clutching the back of my head in her hands, driving her tongue between my teeth. I stumbled, the air was singing, the world was dark and surging around me. She turned me about, without leaving my mouth, and pressed me down on the tabletop.

  Then she pulled away and stood staring at me, thoughtful and frowning. Her eyes glittered and filled with tears. She might have skewered me with a knife. She might have attacked me with bacon scissors. The kitchen contained a thousand weapons of torture and mutilation. Peelers and scrapers. Clippers and corkscrews, I was too tired to care what would happen. I gave myself to her mercy. I lay there helpless on the scrubbed table, naked. dazed and breathing hard, with my arms hanging overboard and my engine of war standing painfully to attention.

  ‘Be not righteous over much…’ she whispered hoarsely. She climbed onto the table, squatting beside me like a car. ‘And be not over much wicked,’ she added, plucking my hand from her buttocks.

  I reached up and kissed her eyelids, her melting mouth, followed her lean and outstretched neck until I could feast on the fat of her breasts. She complained, pushed me down and then straddled me, supporting herself on her knees and elbows, dragging her nipples against my face. She moved back and forth, slowly, tenderly, gradually working…

  ‘Oh, my God!’ father shouted.

  Dorothy shrieked and sprang away, wrapping herself in her arms.

  I twisted my head and there he stood at the kitchen door, gawping, astonished, with a big claw hammer in his hand. He was dressed in his working clothes, with a shawl to protect his shoulders and the top of his head rammed hard into a dirty, knitted hat. I’d forgotten about him! He’d been working late in the cellar and must have fallen asleep at his bench. I hadn’t thought to check on him when I’d locked the house for the night. He’d been woken from an uncomfortable dream by the sound of intruders in the kitchen and scampered upstairs to investigate with a brainsmashing hammer in his fist.

  ‘It’s a mistake!’ I blustered.

  ‘What have you done?’ he bellowed. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Wait!’ I shouted, leaping from the tabletop and allowing myself to fall unhindered to the floor. ‘You’re wrong! It’s not what you’re thinking!’ I tried to crawl under the nearest chair.

  ‘You dirty devil!’ he thundered. His face was white. His jaw fell slack. He looked absolutely horrified, as if I’d been caught buggering a bevy of circus beasts.

  ‘Do you want some breakfast?’ I shouted.

  But he wasn’t listening. He was staring at Dorothy as she floated above me with her arms outstretched and her knees tucked beneath her chin. She was turning slowly head over heels as she drifted towards the smoke-stained ceiling. Her mouth sagged and her eyes were closed as if she were seized by a narcolepsy. Her hair unfurled and streamed like a flag.

  The shock of being caught rude and romping on the kitchen table must have triggered her sudden flight. She struck the ceiling with a thump, kicked out her legs and started drifting towards a cupboard. The edge of the cupboard struck her heel, making her turn about and collide with a stack of wooden shelves, sweeping out jugs and bowls and plates. The china came down in a great storm of splinters, crashing about our startled feet. Plates bounced and rolled into corners. A jug hit the stove and exploded. Father yelped and shouted for help.

  The noise woke up the house. Mother came running down with Janet and wrapped the wretched girl in her arms, covering her face with a towel to save her from lewd and disgusting sights. Mr Marvel appeared beside them, pale
but defiant, armed with a brass-knobbed walking stick, to gaze in frank astonishment at the flight of this curious angel. Nobody wanted to be apart from the miracle and finally even Senior Franklin came creeping from the rafters to stand like a ghost at the door, wrapped in his dead father’s dressing gown and nursing his precious pencil pot. It was terrible. And while Mr Romance shivered, abandoned in a corner, struggling to cover his shame with an apron, they stood there shouting, heads thrown back, staring amazed, as Dorothy flew in circles above them.

  37

  She didn’t stay for lunch. She had packed and left for the station before we’d had time to clean up the kitchen. Her departure was swift and silent. She left nothing behind but the smell of Pandemonium and a few stray Jesus comic books.

  We did our best to explain away her knack of defying gravity — except father who simply refused to believe his eyes and, despite the fact that he’d raised the alarm, could not be persuaded that he’d seen anything more than his only begotten son flagrante delicto on the table.

  Mother blamed Dorothy for everything that had happened, convinced that we’d been attacked by ghosts summoned through the power of prayer, and a flight around the kitchen cupboards was suitable punishment for meddling in the spirit world. For a long time afterwards she expressed the desire to have the house vacuum-cleaned by a team of psychic investigators.

  Janet held me entirely responsible and seemed to think that I’d waited until she had reached the kitchen before I’d exposed myself.

  ‘He exposed himself!’ she kept complaining. ‘He deliberately exposed himself!’ She said it so often over the course of the next few days that it was difficult to know if she expressed disgust or delight.

  Franklin was fully prepared to believe that he’d witnessed the work of angels. But his head was already stuffed with griffin, goblin and cockatrice. A floating woman left him unimpressed and he saw no cause for comment.

  It was Marvel, alone, who offered his sympathies. While I shuffled around the house in disgrace, shunned by polite society, he did his best to befriend me. He couldn’t explain Dorothy’s powers of levitation, but was glad enough to have seen her only public performance. He would close his eyes and grin whenever he thought of her hanging suspended on sunlight. He was more impressed by her physical charms than her supernatural abilities.

  ‘She was a big, fine, handsome woman!’ he sighed, when we discussed the incident. ‘Who would have guessed she was such a fine figure of a woman!’ He wagged his head and smiled. Having seen her in full flight, it was plain that he now had his own regrets about spurning her early advances.

  ‘I didn’t mean any harm,’ I said, anxious to secure my position of injured innocence. We were hidden away in China while, downstairs, they scoured the kitchen table and flooded the floor with buckets of bleach.

  ‘No harm done,’ Marvel assured me, from the comfort of his old armchair. ‘She came off the ceiling neat enough.’

  ‘How did she do it?’

  ‘Who knows!’ he said. ‘I can’t begin to fathom it. What was happening at the time?’

  ‘I think it was a test of faith.’

  ‘She was testing your faith by floating naked around the kitchen?’ he asked, and his eyes shone again at the thought of it.

  ‘She has very modern views,’ I said, as I hobbled up and down the room. My knees were bruised and one of my elbows looked angry and swollen. During the scuffles my neck had been scratched from shoulder to shoulder.

  ‘And did she succeed?’ He couldn’t resist the question. ‘How did she manage to test your faith by hanging from the ceiling?’

  ‘No. You don’t understand. She thought I’d been sent to test her faith. She called it a scheme of divine inspiration. And now I’m feeling guilty,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have taken advantage.’

  ‘Don’t take it so hard.’

  ‘I feel wicked.’

  ‘It was only a game of saints and sinners.’

  ‘And I’m the sinner.’

  ‘You should never play with saints, no matter how tempting the challenge. They mark the cards. They load the dice. They always have angels for referees.’

  ‘But if the saints always win the game, why should anyone play with them? Who wants to take a thrashing?’

  ‘Well, it depends very much on the game and what the saints can find as reward. They like to offer some very big prizes. Freedom. Understanding. Opportunity. Clemency. Love…’

  ‘It was love,’ I said. ‘It was love…’

  He smiled and shrugged and watched me pacing the carpet. ‘If it’s any comfort,’ he said, ‘she must have taken a fancy to you.’

  ‘Is that what it means?’

  ‘Certainly. She wouldn’t have taken that much trouble if she hadn’t found you attractive. You’re the perfect victim. Simple. Trusting. Anxious to please. The trick was to make you carry the weight of responsibility.’

  ‘Well, if she liked me, she didn’t make it very obvious!’ I complained, sitting gently down on the bed and nursing my injured elbow.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘She cursed me with the botch of Egypt.’

  ‘Nasty.’

  ‘And the itch and the scab and the emerods.’

  ‘The emerods?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He puffed out his cheeks in a little pantomime of distress, as if the mere mention of emerods were enough to provoke their pain and discomfort. ‘Do you think we’ll ever see her again?’ he said presently.

  ‘Doubtful,’ I said.

  ‘Pity,’ he said.

  We sat together and felt forlorn. Life without Dorothy suddenly seemed a dismal prospect. Her relentless good humour and her absolute certainty that she held the keys to Heaven’s gate had filled the house with a sweet confusion. She had teased and threatened, seduced and scolded in equal measure. We felt lost without her disapproval.

  ‘Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much…’ I declared wistfully. ‘Luke something something.’

  Marvel gave me a worried glance, as if he feared I might break into song and lead him through Ancient & Modern.

  ‘I’ve an idea!’ he said suddenly. ‘Why don’t you come to lunch tomorrow?’

  ‘Lunch?’ He ate so seldom and with such a lack of enthusiasm that it was hard for me to imagine him out in the world with a napkin tucked beneath his chin and a knife and fork in his hands.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ The invitation puzzled me. If my calculations were correct it should have been the day he slipped away to confront his tormentors. What had happened to change the arrangement? ‘Will there be others?’ I asked him suspiciously.

  ‘No.’ He sounded surprised, cocked his head and frowned. ‘I trust we’ll be dining alone.’

  I hesitated. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think I should stay and work. I’m supposed to be on kitchen duty.’ Washing and boiling. Scratching and scrubbing. There would be no end to it. I’d be sentenced to months of drudgery before my trespasses were forgotten.

  ‘I leave it to you,’ he said, with a little wave of his hand. ‘Entirely your decision. But I thought you might appreciate escaping the present circumstance…’

  ‘I suppose I could spare a few hours.’

  ‘That’s the spirit!’ he grinned. ‘You need a rest. Your nerves are shreds. And I’d be glad of your company. I find myself obliged to dine at the Snooty Artichoke…’

  38

  Marvel polished his cracked, brown brogues and wore his best waistcoat for the occasion. We took the bus to the outskirts of North Street Market and then walked the length of Trinidad Square until we had reached the restaurant quarter. The Snooty Artichoke was small and expensive, set apart from the street by a cordon of dusty, potted palms. Marvel looked distinctly nervous as we approached and paused to check his buttons before he pulled on the heavy steel door.

  We found ourselves trapped in a narrow chamber, lit by a beam of silver light, where
the major-domo stood at a lectern guarding an open, leather-bound ledger. He was dressed in black with a blue carnation for decoration. He was tall and thin as a cut-throat razor, his skin deathly pale and his dark hair slapped and slicked into shape. He raised his head to the draught from the street and stared at us in surprise. The door gave a hiss and clicked smartly shut at our heels.

  There was silence.

  Marvel opened his mouth to speak but no sound came from his throat. He looked so scared that I thought, for a moment, he might turn tail and take flight.

  ‘Marvel,’ Marvel said, at last. ‘A table for two.’

  The major-domo flinched as if he’d been goosed, jerked back his head and looked at the ceiling. Then he sighed deeply, raised a bony finger and dragged his fingernail down the open page of the ledger. He studied the page for a long time. He consulted the watch on his wrist. He stared at the ledger again. Finally, and with great reluctance, he stepped from behind the lectern, adjusted his shoulders, puffed out his chest and walked us through to the dining room where he offered the comforts of a small table obscured from the general view by a clump of exotic shrubbery.

  ‘Une table pour deux, monsieur,’ he said. He thrust a menu into my hand, tossed his head and minced away.

  ‘Thank you,’ Marvel whispered and smiled meekly.

  The Snooty Artichoke had been planted to look like an overblown garden. There were flame nettles and creeping figs and ferns of every description. Ivy struggled across the ceiling and hung in festoons above the tables. A salvaged wood-nymph, carved from stone, her face half-eaten by frost and rain, stood on a pedestal in one corner. The walls were darkly varnished and masked with antique trelliswork decorated at intervals by autographed pictures of actors and politicians, as if their endorsement of the food made it fit for human consumption.

  I sat in silence and stared at the table. I had never encountered such rich surroundings. There were damask napkins the size of bath towels, folded into the shapes of swans. There were orchids floating in black, glass bowls. The silver flashed. The crystal sparkled and shimmered with rainbows. The menu was written in brown ink on parchment, bound in morocco with a scarlet silk cord.