Neurotica

by Sue Margolis

  As his mother floated closer, he could hear that she was actually saying, “Dan, I want us to speak.” In his sleep, Dan breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

  “Please, Dan, make contact.” She moaned a long, echoing moan. By now her naked, shriveled body was hovering just above his head. Then, like a genie being sucked into its bottle, she was whisked back towards the marble boiling fowl. In a second she had disappeared.

  Three days later Dan would phone Ada Bracegirdle, the well-known spiritual healer and medium from Dagenham.

  Brenda opened her mother's front door in Peckham, munching on an egg roll. She stood staring at Anna's white, mascara-streaked face and bright-pink suit covered in red stains.

  “Christ, Anna, you look like you've come straight from the JFK motorcade.”

  Anna pretended to ignore the remark. Blowing her nose noisily on a tissue, she pushed past Brenda, slumped into Brenda's mum's lounge and threw herself facedown on the leatherette settee.

  Brenda followed her into the room and switched off Trevor McDonald. “OK, I'm a perceptive woman,” she said. “There's definitely something up. What's 'appened? Don't tell me, you had a fight with Hermann Goering and he came at you with a ketchup bottle?”

  A muffled sob came from deep within a brushed-nylon cushion. “Anna, what is it?” Brenda demanded, the cheerful expression starting to leave her face. She sat down on the sofa next to her.

  “We didn't have a fight,” Anna said, sitting up. “We made love and it was absolutely wonderful, and then . . . and then Alex had a heart attack.”

  Brenda managed to look gobsmacked for about thirty seconds before resuming flippant mode.

  “Bet 'e had a smile on 'is face, though.”

  “Brenda, will you cut it out,” Anna hissed. “I thought he was going to die. Then, if that wasn't enough, while he was being examined at the hospital, I went to the coffee machine and some sixteen-stone yob who'd been stabbed in the arm came into casualty, passed out over me and bled onto my skirt.”

  “Christ, Anna, I'm so sorry.” Brenda cuddled Anna. Anna sniffed loudly and wiped her nose on Brenda's shoulder.

  “So, 'e's gonna make it then, Quasimodo?” asked Brenda.

  “I think so,” Anna said, pulling away. “I stayed at the hospital for a couple of hours and pretended I was his secretary. I spoke to the consultant and he said they would have to do a whole load of tests, but his first instinct was that the attack was fairly mild. . . . Didn't look mild to me, though. The paramedics gave him oxygen in the ambulance, but he kept turning blue. Brenda, I was so scared.”

  “What about his wife? Has anybody phoned her?”

  “I asked the sister on casualty to do it, but the answer machine was on. She came over to me twice to check I'd given her the right number. Apparently she kept getting this finger-picking music and a woman's voice singing “I Come from Alabama with My Banjo on My Knee.' . . . So it looks like Kimberley Tadlock exists after all. . . . Brenda, I could really do with a drink.”

  “You'll be lucky . . . you know my mum doesn't keep booze in the house. She's probably got some Emva Cream left over from Christmas, but I can't imagine you'd want that. How about I heat you up some Chinese?” She jerked her head towards the glass-topped coffee table. It was covered in a mess of dirty plates and virtually empty foil containers left over from the takeaway Brenda had ordered as a treat for her mum and the children.

  Anna shook her head, “Don't think I could keep it down,” then immediately changed her mind. “Oh, go on, then,” she said. “Maybe I could manage a couple of duck pancakes and a bit of sweet-and-sour pork.”

  “Stay there, I'll do it.” Carefully, Brenda separated the last two pancakes and laid them on an unused plate. Anna watched as she sprinkled the pancakes with bits of shredded cucumber and spring onion.

  “Listen, Brenda, there's something else I need to tell you, something Alex told me before he had the heart attack.”

  Brenda could sense the excitement in Anna's voice.

  She handed Anna the plate. “Sure you don't want me to heat it up?”

  Anna shook her head.

  “So what was it Alex told you?”

  Brenda listened wide-eyed and unblinking as Anna explained about Rachel Stern's cosmetic surgery. Anna lost count of how many times Brenda said, “Would you fucking Adam and Eve it?”

  When Anna had finished, Brenda chuckled, put her hand into one of the takeaway containers, pulled out a cold, sticky sweet-and-sour pork ball and raised it like a glass. “Right, then, here's to old Hermann living to tell the tale.” She popped the pork ball into her mouth.

  They sat in silence for a few moments while Anna polished off the food. Finally Brenda asked her if she was up to coping with another bit of news.

  “Fuck it,” Anna shrieked. “Lavender's sold her story?”

  “No, not yet.” Brenda stretched out on the floor and propped her head up on her hand. She told Anna that she'd been back to the Holland Park house to collect her mail and found two extremely abusive and threatening letters from Lavender as well as a dozen or so similar messages on the answer phone.

  “In the letters—I've given them to my solicitor—she calls me every sodding name under the sun—“baggage' was her favorite—and promises it will be a matter of days before her story appears in the papers and my business is finished.”

  “Christ,” Anna exclaimed. “Why haven't you got up off your arse and phoned the cow to let her know what we've got on her?”

  Brenda smiled.

  “ 'Cos I thought this might be more fun.” She pulled a piece of paper from her jeans pocket. “I tore it out of this month's Country Life.” She handed the paper to Anna.

  It was an advertisement inviting women to come on a one-day course to learn how to become the Perfect Company Wife.

  Anna scanned it and then began reading it aloud in a mocking, high-pitched upper-class voice:

  “ ‘Are you desperate to get it right, anxious for your husband's praise, but uncertain about what to wear for that all-important company dinner? Are you hopeless at making conversation with your husband's colleagues? Does organizing a cocktail party for twenty high-powered executives fill you with dread? If you are committed to becoming the consummate corporate consort, but need some help to achieve your goal, then this course is for you.' Brenda, what is all this crap?”

  “Look at the name of the woman organizing the course.”

  Anna read the name. It was Lavender Hardacre.

  “Can you believe the woman's cheek?” Brenda said indignantly. “Spends 'er entire marriage cheating on 'er husband and then has the aw-bleedin'-dacity to lecture women on how to be perfect wives.”

  Anna stared hard at Brenda. Brenda turned away, unable to meet her eyes.

  “Tell me you haven't,” Anna growled. “Brenda, please, tell me you haven't. Please tell me you haven't enrolled us on this course. If you want to go and have some fun confronting Lavender Hardacre, then go. Don't drag me into it. No. The answer is no.”

  Brenda gave her a pleading look.

  Amile or so from the Hardacres' pile, Lovegrove Hall, Brenda slowed down to read a signpost and then turned towards Anna, who was retracting the aerial of her mobile phone.

  “So, when did you say they're letting Alex out?” she asked.

  “In two or three days, so long as he gets the all-clear,” Anna replied. “The consultant saw him yesterday. He's really pleased with his progress. Poor jerk's got about ten different drugs to take and has been told to drastically alter his diet. Plus he's got to take things really easy for a while.”

  “So that puts the mockers on any more shagging, then?”

  “For the time being, I guess. To be quite honest, I don't give a stuff about the sex, I'm just grateful he's alive and I won't have to live out the rest of my life thinking I was responsible for killing him.” She put her mobile in her handbag and reached for the road map, which was on the dashboard.

  “I think that's the entrance up ahead,
” she said, looking up from the map, moving her head towards the windshield and squinting. Brenda braked, gently for a change, and turned in through the huge black iron gates. Leading up to the house was a long gravel drive with trees on either side. Like folk dancers, the trees had joined hands with their branches and formed an arch, so that the drive became the floor of a long, dark tunnel. Through the gaps in the trees Anna and Brenda glimpsed what looked like hundreds of acres of Hardacre parkland.

  Brenda drew up a few yards from the front door, alongside a selection of Mercedes estates, Volvos and Jeep Cherokees. She pulled on the hand brake.

  “S'pose this is what you call unmock-Tudor,” she said, unwinding her window, sticking her head out and eyeing the huge five-hundred-year-old house with its black beams and red herringbone brickwork.

  “Christ knows what it's worth,” Anna said, leaning across Brenda to get a better look and counting the first-floor mullioned windows. “Must have at least ten bedrooms.” She imagined there being a huge oak four-poster in one of them, with Elizabeth and Essex carved on either side of the headboard and a furry nosegay hanging from the middle. Brenda turned off the ignition and adjusted the curly red wig she'd insisted on wearing.

  “I want Lavender to find out who I am, but not until I'm ready. . . . You don't think she'll recognize me, do you? I mean, my face is pretty well known.”

  “Brenda, she won't have the foggiest,” Anna reassured her. “Just remember, don't go losing your temper with the woman. She'll only call the police and it'll be all over the papers in a matter of hours.”

  “I'm not going to lose my temper.” Brenda grinned, reaching onto the backseat for her bag.

  “When I nail the fucking tart's 'ead to the floor, I shall make sure I'm perfectly calm.”

  They walked up to the front of the house and bashed the heavy iron door knocker. They could hear footsteps and loud barking coming from inside the house.

  “Christ!” Anna whispered. “I take it you gave Lavender a false name.”

  “Oh, God, yes. I'm Begonia Cockington. You're you.”

  Before Anna could gasp at the ridiculousness of Brenda's choice of pseudonym, a beaming Lavender Hardacre opened the front door.

  In their discussions about her, Anna and Brenda had decided she would be tall, glamorous and haughty. The woman who greeted them was short, tending towards plump, with Angela Rippon eyebrows and thinning, overlacquered blond hair. She was wearing a chain-store calf-length navy pleated skirt and a matching short boxy jacket. She looked red and flustered as she struggled to keep her grip on the collar of an overexcited liver-colored Labrador.

  “Oh, how lovely. You must be Anna and Begonia,” she gushed breathlessly. “You're the last of my ladies to arrive. Do come in, do come in.” Her voice was plummy and jolly. There appeared to be nothing remotely haughty about her.

  Her entire body listing to one side as she continued to do battle with the Labrador, Lavender held open the door.

  As Brenda stepped forward, her arm extended to shake hands, the dog finally broke away from its mistress's grip and leaped up at Brenda, leaving muddy paw prints over her skirt.

  “Oh, dear, I'm most dreadfully sorry,” Lavender said, clearly distressed. “Your poor skirt . . . Ochre, bad girl. Get down.” She managed to grab the dog's collar and pull her off. Brenda flicked the mud with her hand and said not to worry, but Lavender had already turned her back on the two women and was dragging the dog, its claws scraping, along the parquet floor.

  “Do excuse me,” she said, turning her head back towards them. “Be with you in a jiffy. I must get rid of this frightful hound.” She left Anna and Brenda standing in the oak-paneled hall beside a wooden hat stand. There must have been three or four different items of headgear on each hook. Anna counted several deerstalkers and velvet hard hats, a couple of Panamas, an ancient cricket cap and a couple of floppy tweedy things covered in brightly colored fishing flies. She turned to Brenda.

  “Why is it,” she said in a whisper, “the British upper classes can't perform any activity without wearing a bloody hat?”

  “Dunno, s'pose they're just copying the royals. . . . I bet Lavender's got one she wears on the can. . . . What d'you make of her?”

  “She's got a voice that sounds like it's spent its life organizing village gymkhanas, but apart from that, I think she seems really nice. I can't believe this is the woman who's been threatening you.”

  “Course it's 'er,” Brenda shot back, her voice loud and indignant. “She's just a bleeding two-faced cow, that's all.”

  Suddenly hearing Lavender's footsteps, they wheeled round. She was coming towards them almost at a trot, still flushed and beaming.

  “Now then, I'm certain you must be in dire need of some refreshment. I'll go into the kitchen and rustle up some more coffee. All my other ladies are in the drawing room.” She indicated an open door on the right. “Do go in and say hello.” With that she turned her back on them once again and continued down the hall.

  A dozen or so women, mostly in their thirties, were standing round the sunny, comfortable room braying at one another and drinking coffee from translucent china. There were a number of Hermés scarves and umpteen strings of pearls. One woman stood out from the rest because she was wearing expensive black Lycra trousers, a Moschino belt and Chanel earrings, but it turned out her name was Cheryl, which explained it.

  While Brenda wandered round the room examining the portraits of grim-faced Hardacre ancestors and looking down her nose at Lavender's floral linen loose covers and needlepoint cushions, Anna went over and introduced herself to a group of three women who seemed to be getting fiercely competitive about their respective husbands' company perks.

  The husband of a woman in Armani jeans and a navy blazer appeared to have the edge. She broke off briefly from telling the other two women how many pairs of Gucci mules she packed for her holiday at the company villa on Mustique to find out what Anna's husband did for a living. Deeply unimpressed that Dan was a newspaper executive, they turned away from her and the blazer reclaimed center stage.

  “So, when we got back from the Caribbean and the company delivered a Mercedes in the wrong color, I insisted that Jeremy fax the MD, ASAP. Jeremy protested and said he didn't want to bother him, and anyway, the MD had abandoned ship for three weeks and gone off to an interim target forecast conference in Kansas City. In the end I thought, to hell with it, and I faxed him myself. And do you know what? There was an olive-green Mercedes sitting in our drive at eight o'clock the next morning. I tell you, darlings”—she lowered her voice as a preface to the indispensable counsel which was to follow—“strictly entre nous, it definitely pays to let the MD squeeze your breast at the Christmas bash.”

  The other women guffawed. Just then Anna noticed Lavender come into the room carrying a tray. She made her way towards the group. Smiling and saying thank you, Anna took the two cups and saucers off the tray.

  “Right, as everybody's here,” Lavender said heartily, “I think it's just about time to bully off.”

  She stood in front of the inglenook fireplace, gave a dainty clap of her hands and raised her voice to a polite rallying cry.

  “Do, please, gather round, ladies. . . . Squat wherever you can. That's it. Budge up . . . room for a little 'un there, I think. And there are a couple of ancient pouffes down here if anybody fancies them. . . . Good-o . . . Right, first of all I would like to welcome you all on to the How to Be the Perfect Company Wife course. . . .”

  The women took notebooks from their handbags. Anna and Brenda sat next to each other on a sofa, sipping their coffee. Lavender cleared her throat and announced that the first part of her lecture was entitled “Company Don'ts for the Company Do.” Everybody chortled. The woman on the other side of Anna wrote down the title in what looked like her best handwriting and underlined it with a Perspex ruler.

  “When it comes to making conversation at that all-important company dinner,” Lavender began, “the perfect company consort doesn
't ever talk about herself. It is vital that she is an excellent listener. She must be endlessly fascinated not only by the intimate details of her husband's career, but also by those of his colleagues.”

  The women scribbled. Lavender followed this advice with instructions on the appropriate dress for the annual company jaunt to Glyndebourne, an excellent tip about using salt to remove menstrual flow from a white cocktail frock and the importance of keeping a hostess book when entertaining company executives and their wives. “In it you must write down the names of your guests and the date they came to dinner, what you cooked, what you wore. By keeping a record you will never cook the same thing twice for the same people, or, heaven forbid, commit the ultimate social faux pas of letting them see you in the same dress.”

  She then went on to explain how the perfect company wife is always prepared for the unexpected and has no problem knocking up a quick suprême de volaille and a dozen meringue swans covered in spun sugar and floating on a sea of chocolate cream when hubby phones from the station at seven o'clock and announces he's bringing home nine Japanese for dinner.

  At that point one woman put up her hand to ask if, once she had served dinner to her husband and his colleagues, it was her place to stay and eat with them. Lavender frowned slightly as she paused to consider her reply.

  “Christ,” Brenda muttered to Anna, “some of this lot are seriously off their hostess carts. They'd need years of assertiveness training just to become doormats.”

  Having considered her response to the woman's question, Lavender started to speak.

  “Not an easy one, this, but I think one's best bet under these circumstances would be to retire discreetly to the kitchen and catch up with some of those annoying odd jobs one never seems to have time for—like cleaning out the lint filter on the tumble dryer or relining the cutlery drawer with sticky-backed paper.”