Mischief

by Fay Weldon

  The whole top of the dresser fell forward to the ground. Porcelain shattered and earthenware powdered. He could hear the little pings of the Eucharist bell in the church next door, announcing the presence of God.

  He thought perhaps there was an earthquake, but the central light hung still and quiet. Upstairs heavy feet bumped to and fro, dragging, wrenching and banging. Outside the window the black trees rocked so fiercely that he thought he would be safer in than out. The gas taps of the cooker were on and he could smell gas, mixed with fumes from the coal fire where Deidre’s darning had been piled up and was now smouldering. He closed his eyes.

  He was not frightened. He knew that he saw and heard these things, but that they had no substance in the real world. They were a distortion of the facts, as water becomes wine in the Communion service, and bread becomes the flesh of the Saviour.

  When next he opened his eyes the dresser was restored, the socks still lay in the mending basket, the air was quiet.

  Sensory delusions, that was all, brought about by shock. But unpleasant, all the same. Deidre’s fault. David went upstairs to sleep but could not open the bedroom door. He thought perhaps Deidre had locked it behind her, out of spite. He was tired. He slept in the spare room, peacefully, without the irritant of Deidre’s warmth beside him.

  In the morning, however, he missed her, and as if in reply to his unspoken request she reappeared, in the kitchen, in time to make his breakfast tea. ‘I spent the night in the hospital,’ she said. ‘I went to casualty to have a stitch put in my finger, and I fainted, and they kept me in.’

  Her arm was in a sling.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You should have told me it was a bad cut and I’d have been more sympathetic. Where did you put the bedroom key?’

  ‘I haven’t got it,’ she said, and the teapot fell off the table and there were tea and tea leaves everywhere, and, one-armed, she bungled the business of wiping it up. He helped.

  ‘You shouldn’t put breakables and spillables on the edge of tables,’ he reproached her. ‘Then it wouldn’t happen.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘I’m sorry about what I may have said last night. Mumps are a sore point. I thought I would die from the itching, and my friends just laughed.’

  Itching? Mumps?

  ‘Mumps is the one where you come out in red spots and they tie your hands to stop you scratching?’

  ‘No. That’s chickenpox,’ she said.

  ‘Whatever it was, if you’re over fourteen you get it very badly indeed and it is humiliating to have your hands tied.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  He wrung out the dishcloth. The tap, she noticed, was not dripping. ‘I’m sorry about your things,’ she said. ‘I should have told you.’

  ‘Am I such a frightening person?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re only things,’ he said, to her astonishment. The house seemed to take a shift back into its ordinary perspective. She thought, that though childless, she could still live an interesting and useful life. Her friends with grown-up children, gone away, complained that it was as if their young had never been. The experience of childrearing was that, just that, no more, no less. An experience without much significance, presently over; as lately she had experienced the behaviour of the material world.

  David insisted that Deidre must surely have the bedroom key, and was annoyed when she failed to produce it. ‘Why would I lock you out of the bedroom?’ she asked.

  ‘Why would you do anything!’ he remarked dourly. His gratitude for her return was fading: his usual irritation with her was reasserting itself. She was grateful for familiar ways, and as usual animated by them.

  He went up the ladder to the bedroom window, and was outraged. ‘I’ve never seen a room in such a mess,’ he reported, from the top of the ladder, a figure in clerical black perched there like some white-ruffled crow. ‘How you did all that, even in a bad temper, I can’t imagine!’

  The heavy wardrobe was on its side, wedged against the door: the bed was upside down: the chairs and light bulb broken, and the bedclothes, tumbled and knotted, had the same stretched and strained appearance as David’s socks; and the carpet had been wrenched up, tossing furniture as it lifted, and wrung out like a dishcloth.

  When the wardrobe had been moved back into place, the door was indeed found to be locked, with the key on the inside of the door, but both preferred not to notice that.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Deidre, ‘I was upset about our having no children. That, and my time of life.’

  ‘All our times of life,’ he said. ‘And as to your having no children, if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s God’s.’

  Together they eased the carpet out of the window and down onto the lawn, and patiently and peaceably unwrung it. But the marks of the wringing stayed, straying for ever across the bedroom floor, to remind them of the dangers of, for him, petulance, and for her, the tendency to blame others for her own shortcomings.

  Presently the Ming vase was mended, not by Deidre but by experts. He sold it and they installed central heating and had a wall knocked out there, a window put in here, and the washer on the kitchen tap mended, and the dry rot removed so that the sink drawer smelled like any other, and the broken floorboard beneath the dresser replaced. The acoustics in the kitchen changed, so that Deidre could no longer hear David’s services as she sat by the fire, so she attended church rather more often; and David, she soon noticed, dressed up as God rather less, and diverted his congregation’s attention away from himself and more towards the altar.

  1978

  Weekend

  By seven-thirty they were ready to go. Martha had everything packed into the car and the three children appropriately dressed and in the back seat, complete with educational games and wholewheat biscuits. When everything was ready in the car Martin would switch off the television, come downstairs, lock up the house, front and back, and take the wheel.

  Weekend! Only two hours’ drive down to the cottage on Friday evenings: three hours’ drive back on Sunday nights. The pleasures of greenery and guests in between. They reckoned themselves fortunate, how fortunate!

  On Fridays Martha would get home on the bus at six-twelve and prepare tea and sandwiches for the family: then she would strip four beds and put the sheets and quilt covers in the washing machine for Monday: take the country bedding from the airing basket, plus the books and the games, plus the weekend food – acquired at intervals throughout the week, to lessen the load – plus her own folder of work from the office, plus Martin’s drawing materials (she was a market researcher in an advertising agency, he a freelance designer) plus hairbrushes, jeans, spare T-shirts, Jolyon’s antibiotics (he suffered from sore throats), Jenny’s recorder, Jasper’s cassette player and so on – ah, the so on! – and would pack them all, skilfully and quickly, into the boot. Very little could be left in the cottage during the week. (‘An open invitation to burglars’: Martin) Then Martha would run round the house tidying and wiping, doing this and that, finding the cat at one neighbour’s and delivering it to another, while the others ate their tea; and would usually, proudly, have everything finished by the time they had eaten their fill. Martin would just catch the BBC2 news, while Martha cleared away the tea table, and the children tossed up for the best positions in the car. ‘Martha,’ said Martin, tonight, ‘you ought to get Mrs Hodder to do more. She takes advantage of you.’

  Mrs Hodder came in twice a week to clean. She was over seventy. She charged two pounds an hour. Martha paid her out of her own wages: well, the running of the house was Martha’s concern. If Martha chose to go out to work – as was her perfect right, Martin allowed, even though it wasn’t the best thing for the children, but that must be Martha’s moral responsibility – Martha must surely pay her domestic stand-in. An evident truth, heard loud and clear and frequent in Martin’s mouth and Martha’s heart.

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ said Martha. She did not want to argue. Martin had had a long
hard week, and now had to drive. Martha couldn’t. Martha’s licence had been suspended four months back for drunken driving. Everyone agreed that the suspension was unfair: Martha seldom drank to excess: she was for one thing usually too busy pouring drinks for other people or washing other people’s glasses to get much inside herself. But Martin had taken her out to dinner on her birthday, as was his custom, and exhaustion and excitement mixed had made her imprudent, and before she knew where she was, why there she was, in the dock, with a distorted lamppost to pay for and a new bonnet for the car and six months’ suspension.

  So now Martin had to drive her car down to the cottage, and he was always tired on Fridays, and hot and sleepy on Sundays, and every rattle and clank and bump in the engine she felt to be somehow her fault.

  Martin had a little sports car for London and work: it could nip in and out of the traffic nicely: Martha’s was an old estate car, with room for the children, picnic baskets, bedding, food, games, plants, drink, portable television and all the things required by the middle classes for weekends in the country. It lumbered rather than zipped and made Martin angry. He seldom spoke a harsh word, but Martha, after the fashion of wives, could detect his mood from what he did not say rather than what he did, and from the tilt of his head, and the way his crinkly, merry eyes seemed crinklier and merrier still – and of course from the way he addressed Martha’s car.

  ‘Come along, you old banger you! Can’t you do better than that? You’re too old, that’s your trouble. Stop complaining. Always complaining, it’s only a hill. You’re too wide about the hips. You’ll never get through there.’

  Martha worried about her age, her tendency to complain, and the width of her hips. She took the remarks personally. Was she right to do so? The children noticed nothing: it was just funny lively laughing Daddy being witty about Mummy’s car. Mummy, done for drunken driving. Mummy, with the roots of melancholy somewhere deep beneath the bustling, busy, everyday self. Busy: ah so busy!

  Martin would only laugh if she said anything about the way he spoke to her car and warn her against paranoia. ‘Don’t get like your mother, darling.’ Martha’s mother had, towards the end, thought that people were plotting against her. Martha’s mother had led a secluded, suspicious life, and made Martha’s childhood a chilly and a lonely time. Life now, by comparison, was wonderful for Martha. People, children, houses, conversations, food, drink, theatres – even, now, a career. Martin standing between her and the hostility of the world – popular, easy, funny Martin, beckoning the rest of the world into earshot.

  Ah, she was grateful: little earnest Martha, with her shy ways and her penchant for passing boring exams – how her life had blossomed out! Three children too – Jasper, Jenny and Jolyon – all with Martin’s broad brow and open looks, and the confidence born of her love and care, and the work she had put into them since the dawning of their days.

  Martin drives. Martha, for once, drowses.

  The right food, the right words, the right play. Doctors for the tonsils: dentists for the molars. Confiscate guns: censor television: encourage creativity. Paints and paper to hand: books on the shelves: meetings with teachers. Music teachers. Dancing lessons. Parties. Friends to tea. School plays. Open days. Junior orchestra.

  Martha is jolted awake. Traffic lights. Martin doesn’t like Martha to sleep while he drives.

  Clothes. Oh, clothes! Can’t wear this: must wear that. Dress shops. Piles of clothes in corners: duly washed, but waiting to be ironed, waiting to be put away.

  Get the piles off the floor, into the laundry baskets. Martin doesn’t like a mess.

  Creativity arises out of order, not chaos. Five years off work while the children were small: back to work with seniority lost. What, did you think something was for nothing? If you have children, mother, that is your reward. It lies not in the world.

  Have you taken enough food? Always hard to judge.

  Food. Oh, food! Shop in the lunch hour. Lug it all home. Cook for the freezer on Wednesday evenings while Martin is at his car maintenance evening class, and isn’t there to notice you being unrestful. Martin likes you to sit down in the evenings. Fruit, meat, vegetables, flour for home-made bread. Well, shop bread is full of pollutants. Frozen food, even your own, loses flavour. Martin often remarks on it. Condiments. Everyone loves mango chutney. But the expense!

  London Airport to the left. Look, look, children! Concorde? No, idiot, of course it isn’t Concorde.

  Ah, to be all things to all people: children, husband, employer, friends! It can be done: yes, it can: super woman. Drink. Home-made wine. Why not? Elderberries grown thick and rich in London: and at least you know what’s in it. Store it in high cupboards: lots of room: up and down the step-ladder. Careful! Don’t slip. Don’t break anything.

  No such thing as an accident. Accidents are Freudian slips: they are wilful, bad-tempered things.

  Martin can’t bear bad temper. Martin likes slim ladies. Diet. Martin rather likes his secretary. Diet. Martin admires slim legs and big bosoms. How to achieve them both? Impossible. But try, oh try, to be what you ought to be, not what you are. Inside and out.

  Martin brings back flowers and chocolates: whisks Martha off for holiday weekends. Wonderful! The best husband in the world: look into his crinkly, merry, gentle eyes; see it there. So the mouth slopes away into something of a pout. Never mind. Gaze into the eyes. Love. It must be love. You married him. You. Surely you deserve true love?

  Salisbury Plain. Stonehenge. Look, children, look! Mother, we’ve seen Stonehenge a hundred times. Go back to sleep.

  Cook! Ah cook. People love to come to Martin and Martha’s dinners. Work it out in your head in the lunch hour. If you get in at six-twelve, you can seal the meat while you beat the egg white while you feed the cat while you lay the table while you string the beans while you set out the cheese, goat’s cheese, Martin loves goat’s cheese, Martha tries to like goat’s cheese – oh, bed, sleep, peace, quiet.

  Sex! Ah sex. Orgasm, please. Martin requires it. Well, so do you. And you don’t want his secretary providing a passion you neglected to develop. Do you? Quick, quick, the cosmic bond. Love. Married love.

  Secretary! Probably a vulgar suspicion: nothing more. Probably a fit of paranoia, à la mother, now dead and gone. At peace.

  R.I.P.

  Chilly, lonely mother, following her suspicions where they led.

  Nearly there, children. Nearly in paradise, nearly at the cottage. Have another biscuit.

  Real roses round the door.

  Roses. Prune, weed, spray, feed, pick. Avoid thorns. One of Martin’s few harsh words.

  ‘Martha, you can’t not want roses! What kind of person am I married to? An anti-rose personality?’

  Green grass. Oh, God, grass. Grass must be mown. Restful lawns, daisies bobbing, buttercups glowing. Roses and grass and books. Books.

  Please, Martin, do we have to have the two hundred books, mostly twenties’ first editions, bought at Christie’s book sale on one of your afternoons off? Books need dusting.

  Roars of laughter from Martin, Jasper, Jenny and Jolyon. Mummy says we shouldn’t have the books: books need dusting!

  Roses, green grass, books and peace.

  Martha woke up with a start when they got to the cottage, and gave a little shriek which made them all laugh. Mummy’s waking shriek, they called it.

  Then there was the car to unpack and the beds to make up, and the electricity to connect, and the supper to make, and the cobwebs to remove, while Martin made the fire. Then supper – pork chops in sweet and sour sauce (‘Pork is such a dull meat if you don’t cook it properly’: Martin), green salad from the garden, or such green salad as the rabbits had left. (‘Martha, did you really net them properly? Be honest, now!’: Martin) and sauté potatoes. Mash is so stodgy and ordinary, and instant mash unthinkable. The children studied the night sky with the aid of their star map. Wonderful, rewarding children!

  Then clear up the supper: set the dough to prove for the brea
d: Martin already in bed: exhausted by the drive and lighting the fire. (‘Martha, we really ought to get the logs stacked properly. Get the children to do it, will you?’: Martin) Sweep and tidy: get the TV aerial right. Turn up Jasper’s jeans where he has trodden the hem undone. (‘He can’t go around like that, Martha. Not even Jasper’: Martin)

  Midnight. Good night. Weekend guests arriving in the morning. Seven for lunch and dinner on Saturday. Seven for Sunday breakfast, nine for Sunday lunch. (‘Don’t fuss, darling. You always make such a fuss’: Martin) Oh, God, forgotten the garlic squeezer. That means ten minutes with the back of a spoon and salt. Well, who wants lumps of garlic? No one. Not Martin’s guests. Martin said so. Sleep.

  Colin and Katie. Colin is Martin’s oldest friend. Katie is his new young wife. Janet, Colin’s other, earlier wife, was Martha’s friend. Janet was rather like Martha, quieter and duller than her husband. A nag and a drag, Martin rather thought, and said, and of course she’d let herself go, everyone agreed. No one exactly excused Colin for walking out, but you could see the temptation.

  Katie versus Janet.

  Katie was languid, beautiful and elegant. She drawled when she spoke. Her hands were expressive: her feet were little and female. She had no children.

  Janet plodded round on very flat, rather large feet. There was something wrong with them. They turned out slightly when she walked. She had two children. She was, frankly, boring. But Martha liked her: when Janet came down to the cottage she would wash up. Not in the way that most guests washed up – washing dutifully and setting everything out on the draining board, but actually drying and putting away too. And Janet would wash the bath and get the children all sat down, with chairs for everyone, even the littlest, and keep them quiet and satisfied so the grown-ups – well, the men – could get on with their conversation and their jokes and their love of country weekends, while Janet stared into space, as if grateful for the rest, quite happy.

  Janet would garden, too. Weed the strawberries, while the men went for their walk; her great feet standing firm and square and sometimes crushing a plant or so, but never mind, oh never mind. Lovely Janet; who understood.