by Barbara Else
‘Ruth,’ Bella says, ‘I didn’t know — according to Eliot, Barnaby had a vasectomy.’
Ruth’s tears drain like magic. Her jaw drops.
‘When he was with Louise,’ adds Bella.
‘He never told Walsh. Walsh would have told me like a shot.’ The shock ricochets around Ruth’s mind. ‘The bastard! Never told you. Never told us. If he were still alive, I’d rattle him till his teeth fell out. How could he?’
‘Anna …’ Bella says again.
‘Well, it’s nothing to do with —’ Ruth stops. This is a bizarre afternoon, an even more peculiar conversation.
Suddenly Bella checks her watch: she’s parchment pale. ‘When will he be gone?’ she whispers. ‘Truly gone?’
‘He?’ asks Ruth.
‘Ashes.’ Bella’s words are indistinct. ‘And his fillings.’ She begins to shudder, shudder, shudder.
Ruth grips Bella’s hand. Don’t they pick the fillings out, as well as larger chips of bone?
She doesn’t think it is the time to mention this — but what is going to happen to Barnaby’s ashes?
part two
the quick and the dead
chapter twelve
Bella wants to escape from water-logged Ruth, from Walsh and Eliot reliving their times past out by the sick camellia. Eliot might be disconcerted that she leaves without him, but Bella must be on her own. She phones a taxi.
Back at Eliot’s, Bella wanders through the living room, by the shelf with her Britannia metal teapot, his pair of tiny silver boots, his ebony giraffe. She slips her fingertips into the boots, shuffles them on the shelf a step or two, then opens the french door. She sits in Eliot’s little garden in the shade.
Even her bones seem to quiver. Grief or fury? Barnaby, whatever his reasons, misled her during all the years she wrestled with the should she, when, and if? It’s clear now why he performed his pocket tyrant act at that ghastly family dinner. Even Charlotte had been baffled at how abominable he was.
Bella ought to want revenge, somehow. No — he’d like that. He’d love to see he could still needle her, make her jump and hiss and bite. Therefore revenge would be a bad thing. Barnaby couldn’t abide not being noticed.
‘Yes, dear,’ Bella whispers in that tone that takes years to acquire: a background of resignation etched with the acid of understanding. The tone that got his goat. Bicker, needle, prod, myah, myah. Many marriages are based on mutual goat-getting. It is nasty human nature.
The sun trickles through the willow leaves like syrup.
Barnaby will have left a mess in the shop, that’s certain. Widows are left behind to tidy up the mess their men have made. Sometimes, widows are the mess their husbands have made — there’s one who needs to be cleared up sitting right here in the garden. If clearing up the mess can be termed vengeance, what the hell? All I said was that at last I longed to have a child. Let’s hear the truth, Bella cries inside. Let’s judge both the quick and the dead!
Bella lies on the grass in Eliot’s sun-filled garden. She tries to catalogue the three issues most affecting human nature. She’d like to list love in there somewhere, but it’s too difficult, too frightening. All she can be sure of at the moment is:
sleeping in a comfortable bed.
Poor Bella, with no Barnaby around to tear her hair at. But, in Jocasta’s mind, who is ever in the right? Who’s ever wrong?
Take one of Bella’s great-aunts, Eleanor, lovely as a rose when she was young. Bella used to prod the tale of Eleanor as if it were an animal that might wake up and nip her. Nobody in the family would discuss it. Barnaby loved the story too. He used to infuriate Bella’s sister by referring to it. Myah. Eleanor married Geoffrey, a rich old businessman in Horsham. Gradually he inclined towards religious things and Eleanor, as young wives do, grew bored. The curve of her sweet mouth made men hot beneath their high white collars, and Geoffrey ordered her to take a holiday. What an insult, don’t you think? Eleanor didn’t ask young men to pant for her. But she obeyed and visited a relative in Perpignon. A young uncle. A sort-of, distant uncle. Perpignon, where a Mediterranean breeze brushes your fair English cheekbones, is a long way from Horsham’s drizzling skies — and you’re furious with Geoffrey, grieving for the trust he’s stamped on with his heavy foot.
Raymond, the handsome uncle — the sort-of, distant uncle — wanted a mausoleum for his parents. Honour thy father and mother? If you’ve neglected them in life, by all means show contrition once they’ve carked it. But Geoffrey wouldn’t cough up a donation.
Handsome Raymond, darkly angered, plied Eleanor with fruit and wines, seductive potted ducklings. Revenge — but love as well, a bonus gift, two for the price of one. And Eleanor? A woman scorned in favour of things spiritual? The woman whose husband assumed she’d sleep with a dull young man in Horsham? We’re talking nasty human nature here. Mya-ah.
Geoffrey heard of the affair and in his rage tripped over a dog on the staircase. Goodbye, Geoffrey. Squashed dog as well. A most affronted dog, at the very least. And an extremely wealthy widow. But still no mausoleum. Once Raymond had Eleanor and her money, he forgot about his parents pretty quick.
Wicked uncle, merry widow. Even now the family purse their lips and try to cloak their envy. Gossip. Family gossip. Read between the bones. Does it matter, where the family members live? Is it more likely that we have adultery, revenge and pettiness in Perpignon or Paramata? Liverpool or Portland, Oregon? Human nature is the same, unfortunately — deliciously — wherever it sits down. Jocasta knows.
How did Bella reach this state? What happened the night that she marched out on Barnaby? Family dinners. Glory be. The bill of fare: as usual. A tough skin on a porridge of injured feelings stewed in a pot that’s never emptied so is never scoured clean. Private agendas served on rivalries since birth, and garnished with some never-healed scabs. That’s the way Jocasta understands it. Live and let live? To each their own? You’re joking.
Rain knocks against the window.
‘For heaven’s sake, Barnaby! You asked Eliot?’ Bella crumbles feta for the salad, rinses her hands and grabs a knife for the tomato.
‘He’s just back from more of his exploits. I thought you liked him.’ Barnaby plays with the expanding frog corkscrew. ‘Everybody knows he fancies you.’
‘Stop that and set an extra place. You know what Lydia will be like if things aren’t ready.’
Barnaby clatters the corkscrew on the bench. ‘I got an offer for the oak highchair.’
She swings around, a sudden feeling in her heart as if it’s ripping. ‘But I said this afternoon I wanted it!’
‘You should have put it in the workroom, then.’
Bella lays down the knife and lifts her hands to stroke his collarbones. ‘I suppose I sprung it on you. But you’ve always known one day I — we must talk properly. We’ve always avoided it somehow …’
Barnaby’s eyebrows are thunderous. If Bella didn’t know him well, she’d say he was afraid. His jaw is set, as it was this afternoon when she carried the wooden highchair to the counter.
‘I knew that bloody thing was a mistake,’ he’d said and jabbed his pocketknife into the desktop. ‘If you must have it, we can stick a pot plant in it.’
‘Don’t tease. Oh please, let’s try. It would be lovely if we used all antique baby furniture.’ Bella was serious but elated, longing to wipe mixed vegies off a baby’s hand, give it noodles it could stick its finger in. Her baby. Theirs. She was surrounded by a bubble of certainty — this was the right decision. It was amazing it had taken her so long!
The shop door opened and in came a woman carrying a small box.
‘Get on with something useful out the back,’ Barnaby growled to Bella.
‘Are you interested in Pratt jars?’ asked the woman.
Rain clashes on the kitchen window again. Bella’s trembling as she scoops the tomato into the salad and checks the clock. The carrot cake’s still in the oven, the cream-cheese icing’s to be made, but to hell with Lydi
a. Bella is so sure she wants a child she could make love on the kitchen floor. Instead she darts into the living room, rummages in the dresser till she finds the silver cradle. Barnaby comes in glowering as she puts it in the middle of the table. She knows it isn’t very good, she was still learning when she made it, but Charlotte said she ought to keep it for if they ever had a … It’s too precious even to think the word.
‘Ah, chrissake,’ Barnaby mutters. ‘Make another one and try to get it right. I could flog a good one for a couple of hundred, maybe.’
‘Barnaby —’
‘Will you shut up, woman!’
She stares at him, nonplussed. The doorbell rings and Barnaby answers. It’s Eliot. He enters, shaking off rain.
‘Are you sure this is all right? I told Barnaby I didn’t like being a last-minute invitee and you mightn’t like it either.’ Eliot hands a bottle of Glenlivet to Barnaby. He also has a bunch of spotted lilies.
‘No, Eliot, stay. You are a life-line.’ Even she can hear how odd she sounds.
Eliot leans down with old-fashioned courtesy and hands the flowers to her. ‘Bella — are you all right?’
Barnaby scowls at her trousers: grey linen, baggy bottom. ‘She’s going up to change.’
‘They’re my elephant pants,’ says Bella.
Eliot chuckles. It’s a warm and comforting sound. A laugh breaks from her in return.
‘Fuck.’ Barnaby cracks the foil around the top of the Glenlivet. ‘Want one? I do, it’s a bitch of a day. You should thank your lucky stars that you’re divorced.’
Eliot thrusts his hands deep in his pockets: he looks ungainly, like a boy.
‘Have you heard from your sons lately?’ Bella asks.
Barnaby shoves between them and hauls a canvas up from behind the sofa. ‘Bella’s eager to have her work on show tonight. We’ll have this out.’
‘No!’ Bella tries to grab it, but he holds it out of reach.
‘Is it really yours?’ asks Eliot. ‘It’s good.’
‘Right now,’ she says, ‘I’d prefer crayon drawings done at kindergarten and pinned to the fridge with magnets.’
Eliot, hands deeper in his pockets, glances at Barnaby. Barnaby jams the painting on the mantelpiece.
‘Barnaby, get it out of sight before Lydia gets here. Please make him do it, Eliot. And please, Barnaby, watch the carrot cake.’ Bella escapes. ‘Damn, damn,’ she whispers, running up the stairs.
She scrubs her face and is standing in front of the wardrobe in her undies when the doorbell rings. Downstairs, she hears Lydia and Charlotte shaking their umbrellas and Charlotte exclaiming over Eliot. ‘What a surprise. How’s your mother? I hope she is relishing her widowhood, like me.’
‘I take my old school cap when I visit her,’ rumbles Eliot. ‘There’s a better chance she’ll recognise me then.’
‘So sad,’ cries Charlotte.
‘She has long conversations with me about hiding contraband from badgers,’ Eliot says. ‘It’s not as crazy as you think.’
Perhaps the evening won’t be altogether dire, thinks Bella. Eliot’s always so tranquil, next to Barnaby. If he fancies her, as Barnaby says, then he’s never offensive. There’s something sad sometimes, in the way he looks at her — they’ll see more of him now he’s home permanently, has bought a little house, found contract work. That will be nice. She quickly pulls a top over her head.
‘Oven timer!’ Charlotte calls.
‘I’ll get it.’ Barnaby’s voice.
Bella goes back down in black trousers and the tunic top, not bothering with make-up — there’ll be no shortage because Lydia will have used enough for a chorus line. She slips into the room and says hello: the painting’s out of sight, thank God. Thank Eliot, more like.
Charlotte, settled in the best armchair, is remembering times past. ‘When Barnaby got into the communion wine,’ she says. ‘You boys were what, thirteen? You giggled all through the sermon. A pair of angels in lace collars with the temperaments of fiends. The archdeacon was beside himself. Hello, Bella.’
Lydia doesn’t turn around. ‘Dad wasn’t archdeacon then. He nearly missed out because of your continuing bad behaviour.’
‘So proud of being archdeacon, when in fact they’re ten a penny.’ Charlotte sighs. ‘That embarrassing business with the new vestments.’
‘Mother!’ says Lydia.
Barnaby laughs. ‘Old bugger! Demanded fifty pounds from all the family to pay for the damned frock. Aunt Fee was daft enough to cough up. He spilled whisky down the embroidery the first time he wore it.’ With apparent idleness he reaches behind the lamp table and pulls the painting out again.
Lydia still hasn’t looked at Bella but she sees the painting at once. ‘What’s that! Mmph.’ It’s a most dismissive mmph. Lydia clearly doesn’t expect a proper reply.
Bella has never understood Lydia’s loathing of her. It is something that simply exists, a gift from all the bad fairies. Sisters-in-law are like warts, says Ruth to Bella: you simply have to live with them unless you can afford to have them surgically removed.
Bella picks up Eliot’s flowers again. She also takes the canvas from Barnaby, who chuckles; goes through the kitchen and slings it into the back porch. It really isn’t very good. She hopes the rain will wreck it overnight.
She begins to fill a vase for the lilies; there is a smell of burning. The timer’s been turned off, but not the oven — the cake’s still in there, charring round the edge, flat in the middle. Eliot comes in carrying his empty whisky glass. He looks puzzled when he sees her with the cake. Bella could write on it with icing: calamity now, and offer it to the City Gallery as a comment on the state of modern marriage. It’s better than the painting, anyway.
‘Barnaby’s a thorough prat tonight,’ says Eliot. ‘What’s up?’
Bella shakes her head to show she isn’t worried. She scoops cream cheese into the blender, squeezes lemon juice, adds icing sugar and a nip of cinnamon. Eliot takes the cake out of the pan and has it on a platter. He saws the black edge off with the grapefruit knife.
‘You probably need more whisky,’ Bella says.
‘I’ll go easy.’
There’s an observant look about him. Dangerous stuff, when you feel a man is watching out for you. Even if it’s bogus caution, it’s seductive — but Eliot doesn’t look bogus; he’s Barnaby’s oldest friend and she ought not to be having these sensations, which are only gratitude, when she has to dish up veal casserole and green beans to the sibling rival and the adorable and histrionic mother.
There is plenty of room for the food on the dining table — the silver cradle’s disappeared. Bella tries to catch Barnaby’s eye but he’s playing innocent mischief. Smile, Bella tells herself; keep smiling, be a joy germ (another good expression of her mother’s), serve the casserole and hope it damn well chokes him.
‘I’ve decided I can’t eat mushrooms,’ Barnaby proclaims as soon as his plate is in front of him.
‘Are you trying to poison your husband?’ Lydia asks in mock amusement.
Happy families, snap snap snap. A hole in the conversation.
‘It would be nice if the kids had come tonight,’ Bella says to fill it.
‘Oh for God’s sake!’ Barnaby groans.
‘But you’re both so wonderful with Lydia’s children,’ says Charlotte, widening her eyes in an I-want-to-be-a-granny-again stare.
‘Bella, bring that second bottle from the fridge!’ Barnaby orders.
Eliot pushes his chair back, but Bella pats the air so he sits down. In the kitchen, she presses her hands to her eyes for a moment, reminds herself to smile, and fetches the wine.
‘James has a dangling earring.’ Charlotte’s platter is so empty she might have licked it. ‘He said he was the toad with a jewel in his head. And you made it for him, Bella? I could have fainted.’
‘Bella’s work’s not that bad, Mother.’ Lydia has made a joke. How jolly.
‘And Ralph?’ asks Eliot of Lydia. ‘How’s Ralph?�
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Bella attends more closely to her forkful of beans. Lydia’s husband took off to Queensland eighteen months ago with an assistant from a second-hand book shop. Perhaps he couldn’t face more of these family dinners.
‘With luck, he’s lost a leg to crocodiles.’ Lydia lets out a juicy laugh and spears an olive. ‘So much for the undying love we promised.’
‘I always thought true love was born out of mutual desperation,’ Eliot says.
Bella lifts her head and looks at him. He’s looking back at her. There’s a moment of strange silence.
‘Get it right.’ Barnaby empties his wine glass and slams it on the table. ‘Desperation’s born of marriage.’
‘More for me, thank you,’ says Charlotte. ‘Though I shouldn’t, it’s more than my usual.’
‘You always have more than your usual these days,’ mutters Lydia.
‘When Barnaby’s like this, I need it,’ replies Charlotte, helping herself.
Barnaby rubs his hands together. ‘All right, we’ll be jovial for you, Mother. Fill up. The burnt offering is next.’
Eat your mushrooms, Bella thinks.
‘There’s a lot you haven’t caught up on, Eliot. Ralph’s the least of it.’ Lydia takes more salad. The crystal bowl chimes like the bell for a boxing round. ‘I write for Art Sphere now. I’ve just published an article on fakes.’
‘My sister, the expert on fakes!’ Barnaby is a host of cabaret.
Charlotte reaches for the wine again. ‘Little birds in the nest agree. Take a lesson from Bella, you two.’
‘Only fools are taken in by imitation,’ Lydia says.
Bella clenches her hands on her lap to keep them still.