Sunday Best

by Bernice Rubens

  Chapter Five

  Over the years, I have inevitably thought of my father whenever I have indulged in Sunday dressing. In the intention, the art itself, and the after-taste, thoughts of my father persist. And though such thoughts are a curse, my appetite for my hobby is overpowering, and I would not dream of forfeiting such pleasure even if it meant that I could discard my father from my mind. I knew as I left the headmaster’s study that my only escape route into peace of mind was through my wardrobe, and I hurried home, through the back lanes, avoiding the Johnson door. I tried to think of Parsons and what would happen to him. What was indefensible was not his perversion but his stupidity. At least I had involved no one else in my aberrations, and I had to fight down a strong feeling of self-righteousness. My father would have killed a man like Parsons. He had a pathological aversion to any trait in a man that could possibly be construed as womanish. Even gentleness did not become a man, a theory that all his life he managed to put into practice. I don’t want to think about him, but I cannot think of Parsons either, and as I quicken my pace towards my wardrobe, he voids my mind of all but himself; he pounds it as he pounded my chest as a child with a viciousness he hoped his paternity could confound. He tramples on my nerve-ends as he trampled those icy fields, pitch dark in the winter mornings, dragging me over the hard-frosted grass that pierced my toes with fire. ‘Come along then, breathe, breathe, open your lungs, man’, and he would pound my chest to bruise it open to the menacing fresh air. I don’t want to talk about him. It is too late now anyway. I am er-forty-two, and my teeth are panic-loose, and a man lies rotting in the earth. If now I were to tell you about my father, or even to tell me about my father, would my teeth tighten and that man resurrect? Would I have to cast off my wardrobe too in order to come to terms with him or must he remain the eternal discordant accompaniment of my only joy?

  A crude man, my father, a bitter man, a drunk with a loosened vulgar tongue. I hear his voice, his voice in my mother’s bedroom at the end of a drunken orgy. ‘Clap yer thighs shut, woman. Yer meat stinks.’ With a father like that, who needs literature. I hate him, I hate him, because in the end he forgave me. One day, I will have to tell you about him.

  I am weary of this confession, and find myself eager to get on with my story which would excuse me from further exposure. But I know it to be cheating. The real story is that which went before, the story that engendered this thin narrative line that I am trying to get away with. I remember how often in my childhood I wished him dead, and sometimes now I wish he had survived so that I could wish him dead again. But he cut off that hope for me by actually dying, and now I can only wish him to rot, a poor plea, for he will do that in any case, and without my participation. He is beyond my evil eye. I was more comfortable, I suppose, when he was alive.

  He would drag me over the fields – our home was isolated - our nearest neighbour, two miles away. Every morning, tho’ in the winter I thought it was still night, I had to shadow his demoniac stride across the fields, and all I had to look forward to was the cold shower on my return. ‘I’ll make a man of you,’ he shouted, and I thought for many years he was talking to himself. Until the first time he forced me under the cold shower, running back and forth from the garden with handfuls of snow to rub on my body. And when I shivered, he hit me, and said I was like a woman. It was then that I started to hate him.

  But I have spoken of him enough, and I feel no better for the telling. I know what I ought to tell you about my father, but that is the one thing I shall never tell you, at least not yet, so early on in my story, for it could prejudice you, and I have to be fair to myself. Perhaps when I am dying, I shall whisper it out, for it is a secret that would not lie easily in the grave. But should I shed it now, much else would peel off with it, including, heaven forfend, my Sunday clothes. So I’d sooner settle for the disease for the cure is too costly. Let him rot, my father. I shall try not to speak of him again.

  I was glad that my wife was out when I returned home. Although my study is absolutely private and it is on pain of death that she enters, I always feel more free when my wife is not at home. Her presence, no matter how muted, is an invasion, an onslaught on my train of thought. So I took my time with the dressing, talking to myself all the while, a practice I can indulge in only in private and when I feel free. What I say follows a repeated pattern, and it is a practice for perfection in women’s speech and mannerism, rather than the matter of their words. For women, as we know, are not given to intelligence and what they say is of secondary importance to their manner of speech. Or perhaps I should modify that a little. My wife, after all, is highly intelligent, but not intelligent enough to hide it. And there’s the rub and why I find it hard to call her by her name. But that’s not true. It is not her fault that I cannot name her. I dare not, for it would be an admission of the wrong I have done her.

  It was a good dressing day. My make-up was flawless. The Parsons affair and the Reverend’s veiled warning seemed trivial, and I blessed my escape route for giving me an inner peace. Other people find that peace in work; I like to think it is none the less valid if found in pleasure. I adjusted my wig, which today sat easily on my head, its fall of ringlets masking the tell-tale shoulder bone. I found myself moving towards the window, and was excited by my boldness. I had been tempted before, but fear had always overcome me. Because what I wanted more than anything else was to display myself and be taken for a woman. I even went so far as to raise the net curtain, and felt such a boundless physical joy inside me that it was almost unbearable. I saw people coming out of the Johnson house, mostly neighbours, and my wife amongst them. I dropped the curtain, and returned to my desk, savouring the after-taste of the joy that had come from self-display. And I knew that there was only one logical conclusion, that I must venture abroad and pass myself off amongst strangers as a woman. It had always been a secret wish of mine ever since I had started Sunday dressing, but until that moment, having availed myself of the window, I had been totally unaware of the delights that would ensue. Now the ambition to go abroad as a woman took a strong hold on me, and I knew that until I had done it, and done it again and again, and succeeded in my disguise, my life would be less than fulfilled. When I think of it now, it was a madness I suppose. I had enough trouble with Tommy Johnson and the Parsons affair, without laying myself open to greater risk, but the need to carry on an open disguise persisted and even the nagging thoughts of my father scarcely blunted the pleasure of my design.

  I heard my wife come in through the front door, and a little later up the stairs to my study. ‘George,’ she called, ‘are you ready for some tea?’

  I sensed a friendliness in her voice, and dressed as I was, found no difficulty in responding in the same tone. But as my voice left my mouth, I heard its womanly tones and inflexions. ‘Yes dear,’ it said, ‘I shall be down shortly. I must change my clothes.’ My voice, which is normally tenor, had reached contralto without strain, identifiable, as I liked to think, with an unmistakably seductive woman. I trembled for her reaction. It was not immediate, and I sensed that she was debating her acceptance or otherwise of my new role. Then after a while, ‘Don’t bother to change, Georgina,’ she said with a giggle. ‘We’ll have a hens’ tea-party. I’ll ring Mrs Bakewell to come over.’ And I heard her run down the stairs and the ping as she lifted the receiver.

  There’s no question about it. My wife is sick. My appetite for disguise slackened, and I felt a surging resentment towards my wife. By so readily accepting my little habits, and moreover, inviting the neighbours to share the fun, she had reduced my needs to a game. And what is more, a game I must play with her. I had no desire to appear before Mrs Bakewell and my wife as George Verrey Smith in disguise, as if it were a game of charades. I wanted to hoodwink everybody, strangers, as well as what was left of my own family, that I was indeed a woman, and an attractive woman at that. I took off my clothes, angry that I had to depend on my wife for a wardrobe, and resolved to syphon off from my next pay-packet suffic
ient to buy myself a complete set of attire of my own choosing. This resolve heartened me a little, as I changed into my school clothes, I tried to concentrate on where and what I should buy, trying to oust the creeping thoughts of my father. I heard the doorbell, and guessed that it was Mrs Bakewell who would lose no time in gathering any possible tit-bit of the Johnson affair. I wondered how she could face me after our last insulting encounter, and I thought of ordering my tea in my study. But I was anxious to discover any developments that had taken place next door, and whether, God help me, there was a whiff of Tommy’s story. My curiosity got the better of me, and as my wife saw me coming down the stairs, I could see her disappointment, as if I had let her down in front of her friends. But I had no intention of playing her personal freak, which is what she would have ultimately made me, that was available for display at her pleasure.

  ‘You changed,’ she said. ‘You didn’t have to bother.’

  ‘Thought I’d look decent for Mrs Bakewell,’ I said, greeting her as she came in through the hall. She had decided to sulk, and her greeting was coldly polite, and I felt it my duty to jolly up the tea-party. I had let my wife down. I had insulted Mrs Bakewell. It was up to me to make amends.

  ‘What’s the news next door, then?’ I asked as my wife poured tea. ‘Poor Mrs Johnson. It’s so young to be widowed.’ I tried to strike a balance between a sympathy that might have betrayed me and a callousness that might have seemed feigned in order to protect myself.

  ‘She doesn’t cry,’ my wife offered. ‘Not a tear. I find that hard to understand.’

  ‘I don’t think she realizes what’s happened to her. It was so sudden,’ Mrs Bakewell said meaningfully. ‘I mean, no one’s too sure how it all happened.’

  I felt her eyes on me. I dared not look at her, fearing that she had changed into Miss Price. ‘It was a heart-attack,’ I said, stirring my tea, tho’ I take no sugar. ‘That’s what Mrs Johnson surmised. You don’t suspect anything else?’ I said, daring to look at her.

  ‘Well,’ she said coolly, ‘it’ll all be sorted out at the postmortem.’ They both looked up at me quickly to catch my reaction. But a post-mortem on Mr Johnson was one of the few events of which I was not afraid. But I could not help but shiver at the recollection of my father’s autopsy, how I sat nervous in the ante-room with my mother, melting with my guilt, tho’ I knew that whatever they found in my father’s cranium, there would be no traces of trip-wire.

  ‘The funeral will be delayed then,’ I said. It was a logical reaction. I could be as bland as Miss Price if called upon. ‘Did you see Tommy?’ I threw it off as casually as I could.

  ‘He was behaving very strangely, I thought,’ my wife said, ‘almost as if he wanted to kill everybody there.’

  ‘And no doubt one who wasn’t,’ I thought. ‘Poor lad,’ I said. Nobody could suspect my sympathies in that direction. ‘I suppose they’ll have to sell the house,’ I said hopefully.

  ‘It’s not hers,’ Mrs Bakewell said. ‘It belongs to the insurance company he worked for, and I gather she can stay in it at the present low rental. Well, she’d be a fool to move, wouldn’t she? Where could she find a house for that money?’

  I tried to recall Mrs Johnson’s weeping breasts to give myself some joy of her staying. But I still thought of Australia as a better idea, and at a propitious moment, I would put it to her. ‘I don’t know,’ I said airily, ‘she’s young, attractive, a woman like that should start a new life, go somewhere new, Australia or somewhere, marry again. A boy needs a man’s hand.’ There was no harm, I thought, in enrolling my wife and Mrs Bakewell in my antipodean campaign.

  Neither reacted in the least to my suggestion, and their silence made me regret that I had put it forward.

  ‘There may be reasons that she has to stay here,’ said Mrs Bakewell, and I knew that she was looking at me. I had nothing to feel guilty about but I had been accused, albeit by a little boy, and every chance remark was construed as knowledge of my guilt. I knew I had to pull myself out of this incipient paranoia if I was to keep my head until it had all blown over. But how could it ever resolve itself? What would convince Tommy that I was not his father? If his mother succeeded in persuading him, he would have to face the fact that his mother had lied. And for what purpose? A row, a quarrel. What great dimensions had such a quarrel that it merited such an outsize lie? We could both deny it to the boy, gently and appeasingly, but what evidence would he ever have in his life that our story were true? I was sorry for him. He could not even hate his father as I did. He could not even wish his father dead, because he could never be sure if his father had anticipated him.

  I excused myself from the tea-table. I had once again to be alone, not with my Sundays, because my father was part of that deal, and I was too disturbed by Tommy’s dilemma to confuse myself with my own depression. I reached my study and locked the door. I seriously toyed with the idea of admitting young Tom’s paternity, and wondered whether he would grieve less if told of Mr Johnson’s deception. I tried to imagine how I would feel if my father were suddenly discovered to be somebody quite other than the one I knew, and whether I would still be plagued with those leprous thoughts that battened on my mind. I realized that whatever Tommy chose to accept, he was in a state of bereavement, and that only time, if he could give time, time, would lessen his grief. I picked up my wig where I had thrown it on to the divan, and twirled it around my finger, and I wished my father alive, so that I could wish him dead again.

  Chapter Six

  My father was a butcher. He was born in a butcher’s shop of a long-suffering mother, who helped her husband with the mince and easy cuts. My grandfather rushed her to the back of the shop, and finished off the delivery as he might have degutted a chicken. My father smelt of meat from his birth, and died with the smell still upon him. His six weeks’ stay in hospital had kept him from sight of a carcass, but he departed to his Maker as high as he had arrived. I suppose a birth amongst offal must tamper somewhat with one’s psyche, but I would not hate my father any the less if I understood him. People have been born in worse places than a butcher’s shop, and have died mourned by their sons. In any case, the smell of one’s father, whether of offal or aftershave, is the smell of neither of those sources, but the simple smell of fatherhood, and all else being equal, I might have loved my father whatever his effluvium.

  When I was born, my father was already pushing forty, and was still known as the butcher’s boy. I suppose it must have humiliated him, and I must make allowances for that too. When I was four, as my father had been born in that shop, so my grandfather died, full of blood and bread as he cleavered his last chop. My father laid him out in the back room out of sight of the customers and returned to the shop to close what were now his own shutters. I do not remember my grandfather, and so I have no recollection of my father except in the role of boss-man. But I do remember that we moved house and that the move took place shortly after my grandfather died. The move was in fact into his house, large dark quarters sprawling in the middle of a field some miles out of the town. It was too big for us, as it had been too big for him, ill-fashioned for economy. Most of the rooms would one day come in handy, but they never did but to pepper my childhood with cobwebs and ghosts. It would have been a relief to escape to the fields had they not been my father’s punishing grounds, and I saw them only as ice-cold confessionals open only on the bleak mornings of winter. I would no more have dreamt of playing there, winter or summer, than I would of shooting dice in the Tabernacle. So my bolt-hole was the attic room, where I slept and had nightmares of showering in icicles, my testicles solidified to stalactites. I was never, never, never warm, not even when my mother held me close after my father’s programme to make a man of me. For she, poor soul, was too timid to show herself on my side, and as she held me, I felt the cold of her fear. And whenever I wished him dead, which was often, it was on her behalf as well as on my own. I knew nothing then of the relationship between my mother and my father. I learned later that sh
e had much to tremble for on her own account, but as a small boy, I felt fear and cold as my sole right.

  When I reached my tenth birthday, my bed-time was advanced, and I was up and having supper as my father came home from the shop. Often he was late and my mother would keep me up with her for company, and I knew, when we heard his key in the door, for her sake, to make myself scarce. But sometimes, he would come in through the back door, straight into the kitchen where we were sitting. He would be staggering, knocking himself on the sink-unit, against the stove. ‘Off to bed with you,’ he hiccuped, and I weaved sharply out of his way to the door. But he was still shouting ‘Off to bed with you,’ when I was already in my room and I could only surmise that the order referred to my mother. And shortly afterwards, I would hear her occasional slipper on the stair, muffled by my father’s heavy boots. What went on in their bedroom I could only conclude was punishment. I could hear my father’s heavy breathing and it reminded me of the way he panted when he pounded my chest those cold mornings in the fields. I wondered whether he was making a man out of my mother too. I cried for her, knowing that if this were his cause, she had a lot further to go than I. Again I wished him dead, and I wondered, probably for the first time, why I did not kill him. But having entertained such a thought, I could not get it off my mind. I never considered the means of his dispatch. I was satisfied solely with the intent. Little boys have gone to sleep on stranger thoughts and I offer no apology. Nowadays, my last wakeful thoughts are less murderous, and I must confess, too guiltless to induce sleep. In my eleventh year, I slept like a log.