I snapped back, ‘I don’t need this kind of infamy. Christ, I’m amazed you think I do! Your attitude beggars belief. I can’t have wicked slurs like this printed and not deny them outright.’
What other angle could I take? If Graham found out that I had used this lie to seem more colourful in Martha’s eyes at a time when I felt her friendship was cooling…
But Hogg, cucumber cool, refused to be convinced and his worldly wife with the glittering black eyes agreed with him whole-heartedly. ‘These days it helps a celebrity to have a chequered past. Look at the rush to claim child abuse. Look at the glamour of a criminal background – nothing too offensive, of course. It’s what Joe Public demands of his heroes.’
‘Christ, that might well be, but there is a difference between child abuse and tottering about in stilettos with a skirt halfway up your arse, selling your body to Tom, Dick and Harry.’
‘But you didn’t do that – that’s what you’re saying. So the mystery remains unsolved. Who can tell if it’s true or not? You must admit, Jennie, it’s a far more romantic image than the blank persona of wife and mother.’
‘You might call prostitution romantic,’ I turned on Gloria and told her. ‘I see it as sad and pathetic.’
‘Not the way they’ve got it here. You come across as a real survivor, a vanquisher of the odds of life.’
Damn them both. This was unreal.
‘But who would have said these awful things?’ Graham was still in shock, stupefied. ‘Who’d be sick enough to go to the press with this sort of crap? And why would they print it without checking?’
Hogg was almost rubbing his hands. He clearly saw this as a golden day. ‘That feud you mentioned, the feud in the Close. Who’s to say one of those guys didn’t go to the papers with this load of garbage in order to make a few miserable bucks?’
‘That’s possible,’ Graham said with a groan, his normally neatly combed hair standing up in tangled disarray on his head. ‘So you’re standing there, honestly telling me that anyone with a grudge can say what they like and get it printed without any comebacks? Come on, get real! There’s got to be some research, there’s got to be some smattering of truth. In this case, it’s just a tissue of lies.’
‘Don’t deny. Don’t agree. Just give a few knowing smiles,’ advised Hogg. ‘Darling, you’re an artist and meant to have a tortured past. These little people have done you a favour. Be wise. Be grown up. Use it to your own advantage.’
‘I suppose it was a long time ago,’ I started mildly.
Graham exploded. ‘Jennie! What the hell are you saying? You can’t mean that.’
‘Graham, what else can we do? If we took it to court there’d be more publicity. It could drag on for months, there’d be more nasty lies, the children might be drawn into it…’
‘But, dammit, we can’t just let these people…’
‘Relax, darling,’ cooed Gloria, attempting to win Graham over with her perfect smile. She laid her jewelled hand on his arm. ‘Your wife is about to become a big name. Relax and enjoy.’
To Graham this reaction was anathema. He spluttered, ‘Enjoy it? The very idea…’
‘Graham,’ said Gloria gently, batting her long black eyelashes at him. ‘I do understand how you feel. After all, Jennie is your wife and it can’t make you feel good to know your wife was anyone’s for the price of a McDonald’s.’
‘No, no. You’ve got me wrong,’ he tried to explain, while I listened, burning with shame. ‘I wouldn’t care what Jennie was, that’s not the point. It’s the fact that these scumbags can get away with these lies, that’s what bugs me. And what if this kind of libel was used against you, you and Demetrius, how would you feel?’
‘If Jennie’s OK with it, what the heck?’
An aproned woman appeared in the doorway. ‘Dinner’s ready,’ said Gloria. So Hogg slipped an encouraging arm through mine.
I tried to find some calm place, but everything was chaos inside me. How could Martha have done this to me? As a punishment after the exhibition? Or was Sam the perpetrator of this great betrayal? Had she passed on this confidence in the way she had passed on so many others? I was cold inside, my tongue tasting the corrosive flavour of a real and deadly hatred. Had Martha always betrayed me, even when I’d thought her safe? For all I knew, the whole Close believed I’d been a whore and Graham a punter, and the only person to blame was myself.
The food they served was magnificent. Like something you see in the supplements.
The wine flowed and I shivered.
A distinguished man in spite of his shape, Hogg’s deep drawl was authoritative and I watched how his heavy gold watch glowed on his hairy wrist. In the prismatic light shed by the chandeliers, this bald-headed connoisseur shone – he hypnotized us with his stories of places he’d been and people he’d met. Behind his glasses, his eyes were sea-green. And then he turned his attention on me. ‘You rarely see such illusive longings expressed so clearly in a work of art. Some of your sculptures are quite exquisite, they mesmerize with their primitive truths. They moved many people at the exhibition and I feel privileged to have found you.’
And so he went on… and on… and on…
Tipsy already, I drank more of the heady red wine and wondered drunkenly about changing idols. Could I transfer to someone else? Images came together and dissolved as they do on the edge of sleep and gradually I felt some life returning. The numbness that blocked me was penetrated as I sat there watching and listening to the man, my thoughts disturbed and yet letting in some new delight. If I could surrender to love again, to that awful aching, yearning fantasy… If I could break free from this stony prison and come out into the menacing light…
But Hogg?
Did the subject really matter?
The disorder inside me felt like an earthquake.
Could I actually choose my supreme being?
Was it really as simple as that?
I tried my utmost to plunge again – for the sake of my art, for the sake of my soul… I did admire this incredible man who had talked with kings and walked with knaves. My knuckles were white against the cloth as I tried to transfer my passion, so that I could get back to my studio where so much work was waiting to be done.
Martha was gone. She would not come back.
Perhaps I could work for this man’s approval. Perhaps he could love me if he knew how I felt…
This was how I found my strength. I had done it before. I could do it again.
THIRTY-FOUR
Martha
THIS WAS HOW I FOUND my strength. I had done it before. I could do it again.
If only Sam would let me.
When he told me about his outrageous plan I knew he’d gone raving mad. ‘What? Did I hear you right? Ask the Gordons for money, after what you did? After going to the press behind my back and annihilating that family in public – quite apart from the fact that we and the rest of them smoked the Gordons out of the Close? I don’t recognize you any more, Sam. You’re turning into something unnatural, they talk about people like you in the Bible.’
He poured another Scotch, his third, quite unfazed by my disgust. ‘A loan, that’s all I’m asking. Just enough to tide us over…’
‘Till when? When will we be able to pay back a loan? And why the hell would the Gordons consider giving us one in the first place? Us of all people?’
‘Because she’s completely obsessed by you, because she’s sworn to be your slave until the day she dies.’ He sounded so bitter. ‘And all that crap.’
I hadn’t told Sam that I’d been to Jennie’s exhibition. I hadn’t told anyone how she snubbed me. When it came to the Gordons he was irrational. Sam, more than any of us, appeared to miss their presence next door, as a hunter might curse the escape of his prey, and this aspect of Sam made me shiver. They’d gone. It was time to move forward. Morosely he watched the new people move in, a couple called Watson with three young boys.
When I got home from work I asked him, ‘Have you spok
en to our new neighbours yet?’ I hardly had time to take off my coat before starting on the backlog of work: the day’s washing-up, peeling the spuds, sorting out the coloureds for the machine.
‘This time we will not get involved. This time we will leave well alone.’
I was only asking.
‘Any luck?’ It was a regular question.
He stared at me under folding brows. ‘What the hell d’you think? Of course I’ve had no sodding luck and there’s no need to rub it in with such glee the minute you get home.’
‘Sam, I’m so sorry.’
He snorted. ‘Your ignorant brand of optimism I can live without right now.’
‘We can’t both wander around depressed. This’ll pass…’
‘Shut up, Martha, for God’s sake, shut up. You’d have done better to cultivate the lovely Jennie Gordon when you had the chance. She would have made damn sure you were looked after in the manner to which you are accustomed. And how you must be regretting that now.’
I didn’t answer. I carried on clearing up the kitchen. I’d never known Sam sound jealous before – in our relationship that was my prerogative – and for him to be jealous of another woman, when he knew the circumstances perfectly well, was mean as well as callous.
‘Perhaps I should have flogged that to the papers.’
If he only knew what he sounded like. This wasn’t the Sam I had fallen in love with and stayed true to for all these years. I tried to feel pity instead of anger. ‘Well, you failed to destroy Jennie with your first crude efforts. Since your little contribution, interest in her has reached dizzy heights. She’s had the wit to ride over that whole seedy episode, so any lesbian connection would no doubt only add more mystique to her image. Do what you like, Sam. I don’t give a toss.’
‘Dyke,’ said Sam with a tipsy slur. ‘That vamp tried to wreck my marriage.’
And so he would rant and rave, unable to leave old wounds alone; he was irritated by that itchy scab which got worse as he worried and scratched at it. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she did try, but she didn’t succeed, did she? We’re together in spite of Jennie. So why the hell don’t you leave it alone?’
Last night we watched our former neighbour on a late-night chat show with Melvyn Bragg. I imagine all our neighbours watched and I wondered if their reactions were mine, bowed by the weight of a terrible guilt? Did they worry like I did that Jennie might launch into a story that would ruin us all? Bring the wrath of God down on us? Sam watched, slumped forward, drinking in every word. And whenever Jennie spoke, he muttered, ‘Stupid cow,’ while all I could do was marvel at her new-found self-confidence. Seeing her there, holding her own among all those experienced media people, it was hard to remember the Jennie I knew.
She looked so good, so astonishingly composed.
She handled all this far better than I could.
‘Bitch – she even sounds like you,’ said Sam.
In this vengeful mood he had insisted that we drive past her house to see what it was like. Naturally I was reluctant, especially with the kids in the car. What was his morbid fascination? But maybe if Sam saw where the Gordons lived, he might finally manage to let them go.
‘Christ,’ said Sam when we drew up. ‘She’s rolling.’
I just prayed that no-one would see us. This was the worst kind of envious snooping – how ghastly if Jennie were to come out. ‘It’s probably not all her money,’ I said, mainly to calm him down. ‘Graham’s got a management job, hasn’t he?’
Too late – I’d said it. A direct comparison between Graham’s success and my husband’s abject failure. Sam sulked all the way home and Scarlett went on about the field at the back. ‘And it’s got stables,’ she informed us. ‘Someone from her school told Daisy Masters. I bet she’ll be given a pony. Poppy always gets what she wants.’
‘But that would be nice for her, wouldn’t it?’
‘She’s too wimpy to be able to ride.’
‘Why couldn’t we go in and see them?’ Lawrence asked, confused. ‘I bet Josh’s got some wicked computer games.’
‘Shut up, Lawrence, we don’t like them. Haven’t you worked that out by now, cretin?’ said Scarlett.
‘So why did we bother to come here?’ asked Lawrence, who seemed to miss the Gordons in his own quiet way as much as Sam did.
I wasn’t allowed to forget the Gordons.
It was just as difficult at work, now that we had a local personality made good. The handouts and press releases flowed in: Jennie in America, Jennie in Germany, Jennie at the Getty museum, or in the Hepworth garden in Cornwall. At all times she was accompanied by that weird, bald American guy called Hogg. Perhaps he was coaching her with her public speaking and image, maybe he was choosing her wardrobe, because how else would she have the nous to cope with all this?
And I wondered how poor Graham was managing, left out in the cold at home.
The insurance was paying our mortgage, but only for six months. Sam was on benefit. We sold the jeep and my second-hand banger. Mark and Emma invited us to Betws-y-Coed again, but Sam said he’d feel bad comparing his situation with their privileged lifestyle, fast cars and lobsters. I know they were hurt when we turned them down.
A holiday abroad was out of the question.
We’d drawn apart from the neighbours soon after the Gordons left. It worked out as I suspected it would; suddenly our main connection was severed and everyone felt embarrassed when the last removal van left the Close. We had all behaved appallingly badly and we were sheepish around one another. It felt like the end of an era.
Our FOR SALE sign looked as rooted as the standard roses in the front garden and the riotous hydrangea. Because Sam was showing our – viewers round I was not surprised there were no takers – he was surly and resentful and showed it. The fact that we had been forced to move he blamed on Jennie Gordon.
He’d blown the whole episode right out of proportion to disguise his own sense of failure. Nothing was his fault, but some of it was mine.
So when he suggested asking them for a loan, it seemed he believed that they owed him.
‘If you can’t do it, then I bloody will,’ he told me bluntly. ‘Maybe that cow wants reminding of a few sordid incidents she might have forgotten.’
I lit a fag. My hands were shaking. ‘Blackmail, is it?’ I had to ask.
‘No, not quite blackmail.’
‘As near as dammit. Money for silence. Sam, what you’re saying, it’s loathsome.’
He sounded so bloodcurdlingly hostile, and in this mood there was no humouring him. ‘Graham deserves to know what went on. We ought to have come clean at the time.’
‘Oh? To what end? Graham is a dear, sweet, boring man, but he adores Jennie. And nothing but terrible pain could come from him finding out.’
‘He needn’t find out if Jennie pays up.’
I got up, making out I was searching for an ashtray, but really giving myself the time to sum up just what Sam was getting at. ‘Are you suggesting that I go to her house and threaten her, like some low-life mobster?’
‘Why not? I doubt you would need to threaten her. She’d give up her life if you asked her. You only have to smile nicely.’
‘You’re sick.’
‘I could have sued her, you know, she slandered me and Tina. We could have got her back then, cleaned her out.’
I said, ‘I doubt that.’
‘Martha, you’re wrong.’
‘You would have needed to prove financial loss…’
‘Fuck you.’ When Sam stood up heavily, he wobbled. His voice was thick with drink, or was it anger? He was wagging a stupid finger at me, but I felt he would rather have used his fist. ‘Whose bloody side are you on? Don’t you start lecturing me, just because no-one will pay me a sodding wage while you—’
‘Don’t!’ I said. ‘Oh don’t.’ I went towards him, held him in my arms, and I felt the shudder where the sobs should have been. ‘Don’t make out I’m against you just because of a lousy job. Things can o
nly get better. We’ll find somewhere else to live, you’ll see, and before you know it, it’s Sod’s Law, you’ll be on your way up that old ladder again.’
‘No, Martha. Not this time.’ His voice was drowsy, so tired of it all. ‘That’s not the way, not these days. Education, hard work, shit.’ His breath was boozily warm on my ear as he whispered furiously, ‘It’s not like that now. If you don’t want to go fucking under, you’ve got to grab any chance by the bollocks and squeeze till you get what you damn well want.’
‘No, Sam.’ I helped him drop back into the chair, his weight on me felt so heavy.
‘Money,’ he moaned hopelessly. ‘Fucking, bleeding money. You’ve got to have it… you’ve got to get it… whatever it takes you’ve got to…’
Sam didn’t know that I had appealed to my father for help, seeing how desperate we were. I hated doing it. Debt was something my parents had never experienced and would not understand. According to them, it was simply a question of living within your means. Accounts at a few reputable stores were the only debts my mother ran up and they were paid off every month.
‘A few thousand, darling, that’s all I’ve got free.’
I tried desperately to make Dad understand.
‘Our money is tied up in long-term securities, Martha, sweetie,’ he said.
‘Couldn’t you, for my sake, get some out?’
I might as well have asked him to kill.
‘No question, Martha, we’d lose too much. It’s long-term planning that’s all-important.’ And that staid remark suggested to me that we should have been more circumspect and not gone around spending more than we earned.
‘What about a small mortgage?’ I begged him. ‘Couldn’t you and Mum take one out?’ They’d gone on safari last year, and this year they’d already booked for Alaska. Their house was stuffed with priceless antiques. They might not approve whole-heartedly of Sam – flippant, too arrogant, they’d warned years ago – but they needn’t take it out on me. ‘Just to tide us over this difficult patch?’
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