A Rival Creation

by Marika Cobbold

  Victoria stood up too. ‘I’m sure Evelyn would like to be left in peace. Anyway, you know the cats give me the sneezes.’

  Oscar turned round to look at her. ‘All right,’ he said slowly, ‘I’ll take you home first, then I’ll come back and spend the night here.’

  Liberty smiled a large smile right round the table. ‘I’ll stay,’ she offered, making another and, she hoped, more successful attempt to ease the tension. ‘It’s so easy for me, being next door. It’ll only take me a minute to get my stuff. I’d like to stay. To be honest, I sometimes get a bit lonely at week-ends.’

  ‘Thank you, Liberty,’ Evelyn said from the doorway. ‘You run along home Oscar. I’ll be fine here with Liberty.’

  Oscar opened his mouth to speak but then, obviously thinking the better of it, he just nodded. At the front door he said to Liberty, ‘I’ll go with you to get your things, Victoria won’t mind waiting.’ Victoria gave a small smile and said of course not.

  ‘You’re a very nice person, Liberty,’ he said, as he dropped her off back at Evelyn’s front door. He bent down and kissed her lightly on the cheek, right on the scar. It must have felt like kissing an alligator, Liberty thought as she watched him join Victoria who was waiting in the car. She closed the door behind him, double locking and fastening the chain.

  ‘I can’t stand the woman.’ Evelyn had come downstairs again. ‘That cutesy little-girl act fools no-one.’

  ‘It must have fooled Oscar,’ Liberty said, adding quickly, ‘She’s very nice, though. You know, she comes to my classes sometimes. She’s always very sweet.’

  ‘She is nothing of the sort and you know it. Why do you always have to be so damned nice about everything?’ Evelyn pottered into the kitchen.

  Sitting down at the kitchen table, Liberty said, ‘I’m glad you’ve noticed my increasing goodness. I was afraid no-one would.’

  Evelyn sighed and fixed her with those blue eyes so like her nephew’s. ‘Dare I ask why you are trying to be especially nice?’

  Liberty pulled an apologetic face. ‘I’ve been giving these things a lot of thought, and I’ve come to realize that whether I do what is right or what is wrong, is one of the few decisions that are truly mine. Even just being mildly pleasant can be a struggle for me, but at least it’s wholly in my power to succeed. Of course you have to separate being actively good from instinct. I mean, like most mothers I would gladly give my life for Johnny, but I don’t stand around patting myself on the back for that. It’s no more than, say, a mother hyena would do for her offspring. But being nice to Victoria, now that goes against all my instincts, so if I succeed I have shown I have some control, and that I’m just not some pre-programmed thing toddling along my pre-ordained path.’

  ‘I like hyenas,’ Evelyn said companionably. ‘They get a bad press, but they’re quite nice little things once you get to know them.’

  ‘Are they really?’

  Evelyn nodded.

  Liberty smiled at her. ‘Would you like some more warm milk?’

  ‘Please.’

  The milk heated slowly on the red-hot spiral cooker plate, and while she waited Liberty said, ‘I’m very fond of animals and all that, and I’d like to think I respect their rights, but Evelyn, doesn’t it worry you that you are one?’ Seeing Evelyn’s expression of polite surprise, she added quickly, ‘Of course I don’t mean you in particular, but all of us.’

  ‘I like it,’ Evelyn said. ‘Puts things in perspective when you know you’re just a link in the evolutionary chain.’

  Liberty sighed. ‘I wish I could see it that way, but it makes me feel that life is even more random and pointless. I’ve decided that if I have to be an animal, at least I’ll be an animal with a difference. That’s why I’ve been brushing up on my Latin and Greek; a knowledge of the classics instantly gets you one-up on the average chimpanzee. And that’s why it’s so important to have a good soul, not just a quiver of nerve ends and electrical impulses, but a nice big soul that gets even bigger with exercise. Being nice about Victoria is tremendous exercise.’

  ‘And there, in one small sentence, you fail.’ Evelyn grinned at her. ‘Anyway, what makes you so sure hyenas don’t have souls?’

  ‘I’m not,’ Liberty said. ‘It’s just a suspicion.’

  ‘Well it certainly wasn’t his soul Oscar listened to when he married that girl, nor his brain.’

  ‘When I was a rather plain little girl being told that I shouldn’t worry, the boys would get to like me for my jolly personality, I used to pray for someone to want me just for my body. I especially wanted enormous breasts,’ Liberty added dreamily. She placed the mug of milk in front of Evelyn, having first tested the temperature with the knuckle of her little finger. She did it automatically with milk.

  ‘What happened to all that soul?’

  Liberty sat down, perching on the edge of her chair. ‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of a soul then, I needed breasts first.’ She looked hard at Evelyn’s pinched face. ‘Why don’t you let me take that upstairs for you?’ She nodded towards the mug. ‘You must be exhausted.’ She gave Evelyn her hand and helped her from her chair. ‘Tomorrow we’ll start sorting out your papers and things in the workshop.’

  ‘Large breasts are a nuisance, take it from me,’ Evelyn said. ‘Get in the way in the garden.’

  Liberty’s eyes were drawn to Evelyn’s ample bosom wrapped in tartan wool and she smiled. But as she walked upstairs she noticed the small bandaged hand trembling as it clasped the banister, and she grew serious. She kissed Evelyn goodnight at the top of the stairs and then wandered down again, checking all the doors and windows. Back in the hall she stopped, staring into the darkness and thinking how nice it would be to see the twinkling of street lights. If the council did not put some up soon, she would bung a couple in herself: one each for her and Evelyn. With a little shiver, she drew the curtains. If the fire was not an accident, a childish prank gone wrong, Evelyn would need more protection than a mere street lamp.

  Thirteen

  ‘Look at that. I told you she was mad.’ Andrew Sanderson waved the Tribune at his wife across the kitchen table. They were having supper, cottage pie and garden peas, and the sight of Evelyn posing in front of the damaged building, hair singed and her bandaged hands aloft as she clutched at what looked like a fish tank, made Nancy choke on her mashed potato. ‘Not while we’re eating please, Andrew.’

  ‘Still, the old bat’s got guts, I’ll say that.’ Andrew held out his plate for more. ‘It’ll certainly make good copy for that American television writer.’ He drew a caption in the air. ‘“Crazy English Woman Risks Life to Rescue Seed Tray.”’ He chuckled as he put his full plate back on the table.

  ‘I don’t see what all the fuss is about,’ Nancy said. ‘It was the tiniest fire. Trust Evelyn to get her face in the paper over something like that.’

  ‘Well, the whole incident might serve to quieten her down. I hope it does, or next time someone might be tempted to put a rocket up a more sensitive part than her workshop.’ Andrew’s face turned brick red as he laughed out loud at his own joke.

  ‘Don’t be coarse, Andrew,’ Nancy said, but with none of her usual playfulness as she stood up to clear the plates.

  ‘Hang on, I haven’t finished my food.’

  ‘Well then it’s about time you did. I don’t want to stand around all night doing those dishes. I don’t suppose you remember, but I’ve got a meeting of the trustees of the village hall tonight and an early session in court tomorrow.’ She pulled the plate away, leaving him gaping over the last mouthful, fork in hand.

  As she cleared the table Nancy looked critically at her husband. He wasn’t, in his middle years, much like the demigod on whose altar Nancy had felt any woman would gladly worship. His complexion was not fresh, it was brick red, and his neck, which once had looked touching, fragile almost, was thick, as he leant over the table. And why did he care so much for his own opinion and so little for hers? Nancy stared at Andrew. Was this how others saw him? Al
l those friends who never seemed to envy Nancy the way she felt they ought to. Friends who had never cared over-much for Andrew’s opinions, and whose eyes had begun to wander as he gave them his views on the state of the nation’s defence or the handling of the economy or the mounting price of diesel. Friends she had thought foolish and undeserving and who kept making little remarks like, ‘Why don’t you let him get his own lunch for once, it wouldn’t hurt him,’ or, ‘He does like the sound of his own voice, doesn’t he?’

  She filled the sink with hot water, adding a dash of Fairy Liquid, and stood watching the bubbles form and grow like her anger. She shook herself, but the feeling didn’t go, it got worse, bubbling up her chest and into her head, making it fuzzy, itchy inside, as if her brain were wrapped in an angora rug.

  It had happened when she was a little girl, suddenly and without warning. Nancy’s little moods, her parents had called them, but Nancy knew she had frightened her fluffy bunny of a mother. Like the time when she had insisted Nancy wore her plaid wool skirt to a party when Nancy had set her heart on going in her best summer frock with tiny sprigs of yellow flowers all over the brushed cotton. ‘Nancy you just can’t and that’s that,’ her mother had said with unusual firmness. Then at the sight of what she called, ‘that look’, she had added, ‘It’s not just that it’s wrong for the season. Look at you, a great big girl trying to squeeze yourself into a pretty little dress like that. Your friends will laugh at you.’ Vicious, fluffy white bunny. Nancy had glared her mother from the room. There had been the most tremendous fuss later when Nancy’s mother discovered her silk frock, the one she had saved two years’ worth of coupons for, draped across her bed like a huge doily; there was not a foot of that silk that did not have a perfect little circle or triangle cut through it.

  Nancy plunged the plates into the hot washing-up water until they were covered with white froth, then she began scrubbing at them with the nylon brush, its bristles splayed and grubby like an old toothbrush. By the time the dishes were sitting draining on the sink, she was able to turn round and offer Andrew coffee in an almost normal voice.

  Ten minutes later she set off for the vicarage, where the evening’s meeting was being held. As she drove the short distance along the dark main street, she still felt out of sorts, disconnected, as if she were a dinghy drifting further and further from its moorings. Relax, she told herself, you’re not yourself tonight, it’ll pass. She relaxed her grip on the steering wheel, and the single diamond in her engagement ring flashed in the lights of a passing car. She had wept when Andrew first put that on her finger.

  She began harnessing pretty images to her mind. Like a doubting nun surrounding herself with the trappings of her faith – bible, crucifix, rosary, a hairshirt maybe – she called up the memory of Andrew on the rugby field, the day of their engagement, scoring a try. She remembered how, as he passed her on the way to the dressing-room, sweaty and exhilarated, he had grabbed her round the waist in front of everyone and kissed her. She thought of his distress when their first child died within hours of being born. Like whispers from the devil, Andrew’s words as good as blaming Nancy for the child’s deformed head and weak heart pushed into her memory, but she whacked them off again with the picture of Andrew on their wedding day. Nervous, grinning, handsome, marrying her, plain awkward Nancy Roberts, and making love to her that night, his hands wandering across her body as if it were a journey worth making. ‘Darling Andrew.’ Hot and flushed, she smiled to herself as she parked the little Fiat in the vicarage drive. ‘Darling Andrew, I do love you so.’ She climbed out of the car, taking a couple of deep breaths and smoothing down her check wool skirt before ringing the doorbell.

  As she stepped inside the narrow hall she was met by a strong smell of frying onions and some spices she recognized but could not put a name to. ‘I didn’t know you were a cook Ted,’ she said, looking towards the closed kitchen door.

  Ted, receiving in his clerical shirt sleeves and with a tea towel slung across his shoulder, hustled her through into the sitting-room, saying he’d always had an interest in ethnic food. ‘You’re the first to arrive, but the others should be along any minute. If you’ll excuse me for a moment,’ Ted pushed a chair towards her and disappeared from the room.

  ‘Our local magistrate and busybody,’ Ted smiled at Veena, who was clearing away the last of the supper dishes. ‘We need to stay well clear of her.’ As she reached for the last of the dirty plates on the table, he put his hand lightly on hers. ‘Better leave that. She could hear.’

  Veena looked up at him and he pulled his hand away as if stung. ‘Right then,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Now you’re sure you are going to be all right, stuck in here all evening?’

  Veena smiled at him. ‘Of course I am. Thanks for getting all these,’ she nodded towards the heap of magazines that lay in front of her on the table: Company, Just Seventeen, Hello and Bella.

  Ted had felt a right fool going into Smith’s in Fairfield for them, but he had been touched when Veena explained to him that they had been the favourite reading of her English pen pal.

  ‘Then you must promise me to read some of my favourite books,’ he had said to her. ‘Your English is well up to it.’ In fact, he thought, her English was remarkably good. She was obviously intelligent, already knowledgeable on current affairs and politics, although, he had noticed, strangely awkward when it came to even the most basic household chores. She had become quite agitated at first when he had asked her to cook a traditional meal from her home region. Her older sister, it turned out, had jealously guarded her position as lady of the house after their mother died, hardly allowing her younger sister inside the kitchen. So Ted cooked for them both, and he had put a lot of effort into tonight’s meal, prepared from a recipe he had cut from a newspaper. ‘Does it taste like home?’ he had asked and she, with her mouth full, had nodded and smiled.

  ‘You have fun then, with your magazines,’ Ted said a little awkwardly, before disappearing into the sitting-room.

  By eight the other two trustees had arrived. Ted tried to look relaxed, crossing and uncrossing his legs as he leant back in the hard chair. The woollen upholstery scratched right through his thin polyester trousers as Derek Campbell read out the list of events that had been held in the village hall since their last meeting back in July. Now and then, through the drone of voices, Ted thought he could hear Veena moving round the kitchen; he even imagined he heard her turn the pages of one of those ridiculous magazines, and he looked sharply at the others. But they carried on, seemingly having heard nothing.

  ‘Let me make the coffee tonight,’ Nancy offered half-way through the meeting.

  He had forgotten to offer them coffee. They expected coffee, with biscuits. He shot out of the chair. ‘I’ll go, I’m sorry, so engrossed…’ Ted hurried from the room.

  Veena seemed not to have moved from her place at the kitchen table, and she barely lifted her head from the magazine. ‘Coffee. They all want coffee,’ Ted muttered.

  By ten o’clock the meeting was over, with a formal proposal for the next one to be held at the same place three months hence.

  ‘Now let me help with those,’ Nancy was up and gathering the cups and saucers before Ted had time to stop her. ‘We can’t go on meeting at the vicarage if we can’t do our little bit. And I’ll bring the biscuits next time.’ Nancy headed for the door with the tray.

  ‘No, wait!’ Ted leapt in front of her blocking her way. Nancy took a step back, her lips opening up into a cyclamen O.

  ‘What I mean is, there’s no need.’ Ted bared his teeth in a smile. ‘Here let me.’ He snatched the tray from Nancy. ‘Now where did you leave your coats?’ He felt their eyes on him as he bumbled round the narrow hall, the cups on the tray rattling with every step.

  ‘Well ’bye then, Vicar,’ Derek Campbell said as he, Nancy Sanderson and Ron Brown formed a mini stampede to get out of the front door and into the clear, sane air.

  As the front door closed, Ted leant against it wi
th his full weight, half expecting it to spring open and Nancy Sanderson to bob up like the indestructible monster in a horror film. He stayed with his back against the door for a good five minutes and then, when his pulse rate had returned to normal, he put the tray down on the hall table and locked the door, before going into the kitchen.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Veena asked, with one eye still on the story she was reading.

  ‘Yes, yes fine.’ Ted decided not to let on how close they’d been to discovery. The poor girl had been through enough. There was no need to alarm her. In fact, Ted thought, as he watched her tuck into another chocolate chip cookie from the blue-and-white Paddington Bear biscuit tin in front of her, Veena was remarkably stable for someone with her appalling history. Naturally she did not like to dwell on her past. Even now, weeks after she first arrived on his doorstep, he knew precious little of what suffering had led her to leave her home and family to try her luck as an illegal immigrant in Britain. When he asked her, her face closed and she changed the subject. Ted gazed across the room at her as he plunged the cups and saucers in the basin. She was putting on weight, he was sure of it. Her face was rounder for a start, and he had noticed that she undid the top button of her jeans when she sat down. He smiled delightedly as the girl helped herself to yet another biscuit. Chocolate chip and those little round things with a dollop of jam in the middle were her favourites. She could demolish a whole packet at a time. He dried the cups one by one before switching the kettle back on. ‘Tea?’

  Veena stretched and yawned. ‘I think I’ll go out for a bit.’

  Ted turned to her, frowning. ‘Again? What do you do on these night walks? I’ve told you, even Tollymead isn’t safe for a young girl on her own. We’ve got our own dangers here in Britain you know. Violence and poverty are not confined to—’