by Dominic Luke
‘Oh!’ Now he came to think of it— ‘Ooh!’ –she had always been the one who’d— ‘Aah!’ – organized the games of mummies and daddies, too.
But this was a million times better than mummies and daddies. And that was no exaggeration.
His legs had turned to rubber. They began to give way. He grabbed hold of Cally, trying to stay on his feet, but she fell with him. They landed on something yielding and prickly. (What on earth was it? His brain groped.) Cally was with him, he had his arms round her, it had happened by magic. And oddly enough, even though she was on top of him, it felt as if a weight had been lifted. His heart was revving up in his chest like a souped-up engine, ready for anything. He felt different suddenly, like a whole new person – or should that be the real person, the real Dean Morley? Whatever was going on, it was obvious something had changed, because the old Dean – the hidebound Dean, the hopeless Dean – that Dean would never have allowed himself to fall headlong into such a hackneyed old cliché as to be rolling in the hay.
THIRTY-ONE
GWEN WAS HOOVERING the hallway when Richard let himself in.
She silenced the hoover. ‘Richard. What are you doing here?’
‘Been on nights. Can’t sleep. Thought I’d pay my favourite stepmother a visit.’
‘Tea?’ she suggested.
He nodded, yawning.
She made tea. They took it outside as it was such a nice morning, sat on the patio, the May sunshine bright and warm, the few clouds high and white (nothing like mashed potato). Basil’s garden, the work in progress in which progress was notably lacking, overlooked a patchwork of fields and a distant line of trees. Birdsong filled the air. The sound of the far-off motorway was a constant hum on the very edge of hearing.
Richard was yawning massively. It made one wonder how his jaw didn’t crack. That jaw, and his cheeks, were dark with a day’s growth of beard: like lichen, thought Gwen. One wanted to scrape it off. One wanted to comb his hair, trim his fingernails, polish him up. His trousers were filthy, could do with a wash. His boots – they had trampled dirt all through the house – were not much better. But it didn’t end there, she thought with a feeling of despair, her fingers itching as she looked around, seeing the patio that could do with hosing down and scrubbing, the plastic chairs in need of soap and water and a scourer, the sun showing up smudges on the windows. The old compulsion to clean was coming back, threatening to take over. How could she protect herself from it now that the Exhibition was over?
She curled her itching fingers round her cup of tea, trying to steady herself.
‘I’ve a—’ Richard began, then stopped to yawn. (She wished he’d cover his mouth when he did that. He had nice teeth, though: got them from his father.)
‘You’ve a what?’
‘A bone to pick with you. Telling Lydia about … you know.’
‘Ah.’
‘You needn’t get on your knees and beg. An abject apology will do.’
‘But I had no choice, Richard. Lydia was under the impression … she thought she was carrying your …’
‘Ironic, when you think about it. Do we know whose child it is? She wouldn’t tell me.’
‘Nor me. Terry claims responsibility, but …’ Gwen shuddered. She did not like to think about it. It was too messy. She liked things neat, uncluttered, ordinary. Husband, wife; son, daughter.
But what about a husband who ran off with a floozy? What about a wife who remarried and acquired a non-neat stepson? That was verging on the messy. No amount of hoovering would clear that up.
‘Terry.’ Richard, leaning over to put his cup on the ground, looked up at her with a grin. ‘One disapproves, does one?’
‘One minds one’s own business.’
‘One didn’t mind one’s own business in the matter of my procreative potential, or lack thereof.’
‘One has— I have explained about that.’
Another yawn displaced his grin. He stretched: arms, legs. ‘I don’t care. Tell who you like. Tell everyone.’
‘I’m not sure that your father …’ Gwen looked at him, shielding her eyes with her hand. ‘You have changed your tune.’
‘Yes, well, Lydia said …’ Richard began, then tailed off.
‘Hmm,’ said Gwen thoughtfully. ‘She does have that effect, doesn’t she.’
‘It was that painting,’ he said, sitting back, tilting his head, squinting up at the sun. ‘It made me feel … I don’t know … taller or something. I wanted people to know it was me.’
‘That painting has a lot to answer for.’
‘Is it true that it’s been destroyed?’
‘I’m afraid so, yes.’
‘And it was all down to Sandra, or so she says.’
‘Then you two are…?’
‘We have spoken.’
‘Oh good. I am glad.’
‘She told me in no uncertain terms what she thinks of me.’
‘Ah.’
‘I explained that Lydia was not to blame.’
‘Very … noble … of you.’ (Richard? Noble?)
‘It’s that painting. I have to live up to it now.’
‘Not everyone admired it. Imelda Darkley for one. She called Lydia a snake in the grass.’
‘How is dear old Lady Darkness? You have been crossed off her Christmas card list, I presume, since the iniquitous Exhibition?’
‘Well, no, as it happens, I haven’t.’ (Imelda Darkley had telephoned. ‘Gwen. So sorry you got mixed up in that farrago. They played on your good nature, I suppose. I don’t hold it against you, not in the least. However, I think we have heard the last of them now. As soon as this ridiculous and unnecessary election is over, we can start putting the village to rights.’)
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Richard, ‘that when you are on the parish council you will be aligning yourself with the forces of darkness?’
‘I will not be on the parish council. No one is going to vote for me.’ She lowered her hand, letting the sunlight dazzle her, the warmth of it caressing her skin. She wished the election was over, but at least there was not long to wait. After Thursday, she could start getting back to normal.
But what was normal? Cooking, cleaning, getting hysterical about dirt? Best not to think about it.
Gwen stirred. ‘More tea, Richard?’ But he had fallen asleep in the sunshine, slumped in his plastic chair, legs stretched out, his half-finished cup of tea on the patio beside him. Watching him sleep, Gwen was reminded that there had once been a time when he used to drive her up the wall. Taking her cue from Basil, she had treated him like an overgrown, unruly child. She had taken it for granted that he did not much like her, resented her taking his mother’s place, thought her dull and frumpy and out of touch. And then one day he had turned up out of the blue when she was up to her eyes in housework. She had been tearing her hair out, wishing him gone. ‘Richard, I have just hoovered in here, will you please take those boots— Don’t sit there with those dirty trousers— Must you wipe your nose on your—’ She had been so anxious about her newly cleaned sitting room that she hadn’t at first noticed the tears sliding down his cheeks.
Sitting on the patio in the May sunshine, Gwen could not help feeling a sense of achievement as she recalled that eventful visit, even if she had carried it off more by luck than judgment. Becoming aware that he was upset, she had been paralyzed with fear, not knowing what to do. The blatant tears, the runny nose, the way he was dribbling as he talked: he ought to have looked more childlike than ever, hunched up on the sofa, but that day he’d seemed more like a man, a stranger.
An undeveloped boy she could cope with. A sanitized husband was no threat. But a raw, undomesticated man! She had been so flustered that she barely recognized the sounds coming out of his mouth, had been unable to account for the word sample which had seemed to crop up again and again.
When finally it sank in, she had cowered in her chair, wanting to tidy it away, hoover it up, out of sight, out of mind. His illness should never be mentioned, must be left
in the past. But suddenly that day she found herself face to face with it. His samples, he had been telling her, were all gone. There had been some accident: a power cut, the freezers had broken down, she couldn’t remember now.
This is Basil’s territory, she had said to herself. I must delegate it to Basil.
But when she had ventured to say as much, Richard had become violently agitated.
‘You can’t … mustn’t … not Dad … I’ve only told you … there’s no one else … and … court cases, compensation claims … shit, fuck … please don’t … he’ll only think it’s my fault … the cancer was my fault too….’
One had said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Richard. Your father has never said anything of the sort. Of course he doesn’t think that way.’ But one had not exactly been able to convince oneself. Not that one had doubts about Basil’s paternal feelings; one simply never went near the subject of Basil’s feelings at all.
‘That boy is impossible!’ Basil complained, then and now. ‘He won’t let anyone do anything for him. He is stubborn.’
I wonder where he gets that from: those words had often been on the tip of one’s tongue but – wisely – one had never spoken them aloud.
Looking at Richard sleeping on the patio, Gwen was at a loss to explain why he’d come to her that day. She remembered that he’d called her Mum, that it had slipped out more or less unnoticed. One had assumed at the time that one was merely a substitute for the dead parent Richard craved. Later, one had begun to wonder. From what one had gathered, Basil’s first wife had been neither wifely nor maternal. One had, since then, never really minded when Richard called one Mum, even if it seemed little more than a joke. One could hardly explain this to Basil, however – not unless one wanted to risk being termed silly or sentimental.
Thinking about that day now, it was the sense of achievement, warranted or not, that one remembered best – that warmed one just as surely as the May sunshine. Until that day, for instance, one had never in one’s whole life uttered the word sperm. One could recall a time when one hadn’t even known such a word existed – when one wouldn’t have wanted to know: a time when one was a dutiful, well-behaved little girl with pigtails and a brace on one’s teeth.
The problem is, thought Gwen, I am still that little girl. I still think of myself as having pigtails. I have never changed. I am like a butterfly that has never quite escaped its chrysalis. I am like a caterpillar ashamed of its wings.
At times, she felt as if something different was just round the corner. That day with Richard. Her painting. Taking Basil shopping. Standing up to Imelda Darkley in Waitrose. But nothing ever quite came of it. And now that the excitement of the Exhibition was over, all that she had left was the nasty little sequel of the parish council election in which she was sure to be humiliated in some way or other.
And so life returned to normal. One put away one’s paints. One would wash the patio, scrub the plastic chairs, clean the windows, go back to the endless grind of trying to make the house spic and span. Perhaps it was for the best. Probably it was for the best.
But, oh, if only…!
Silly woman that she was, she found herself dreaming of a different life. It was almost possible to do so with the sun shining and the birds singing and Richard sleeping peacefully in his chair. But on the edge of hearing the motorway droned on and on. It sounded to Gwen’s ear like nothing so much as an everlasting hoover.
THIRTY-TWO
LYDIA PAUSED IN what she was doing, cocked her head, listened. Silence. No Prize, of course – she didn’t expect to hear Prize anymore – but no ghost, either. Nothing. Just a strange fluttering sensation in her belly. The baby. An alien presence. Nothing to do with her. She had no feelings for it at all.
She looked down in the twilight of her room at the suitcase lying open on her bed, clothes piled higgledy-piggledy. The size of her task began to crush her. She had no choice but to leave, yet where could she go? And what about her furniture? She was so tired. Drained. All the life in her was being siphoned off by the baby. She was no longer in control even of her own body.
What a state to get into – and over something that had not actually happened.
Or had it?
She had been walking round the village to get a breath of air and clear her head, but without much success. It was odd how aimless walking seemed without a lead in your hand. She was starting to waddle, too. In the High Street, just past the church, she had met Mrs Pole coming the other way. Lydia had said ‘good evening’, because you had to be polite, you lived in a civilized country, there was no future in holding grudges. And then—
‘Why don’t you fuck off to the People’s Republic of China, you communist whore.’
Lydia had been stunned, had stopped dead, turned round on the narrow pavement. ‘Excuse me? What did you say?’
Mrs Pole had briefly looked back, dignified and frosty. ‘I didn’t say anything. Not a word. Do you really imagine I would want to talk to you!’ And she had gone on her way, disappeared into her cottage opposite the pub.
In the aftermath of this encounter, Lydia had rushed home, dragged the suitcase from under her bed, begun packing, but now she was beginning to wonder if the voice she had heard had been nothing but a hallucination. Was it really very likely that a woman such as Mrs Pole would use the word whore – let alone fuck?
But what did it matter if it had happened or not? The sentiment was there. The village was against her. She could imagine other frosty looks and muttered imprecations: poison pen letters, perhaps; bricks through her windows. She couldn’t face it. She refused to stay and be trampled into the dirt. It was bad enough having Lady Darkley and her coven haunt her dreams, circling in tall black hats like witches round a huge bonfire where her wonderful painting curled and blackened amid the flames.
The sound of the doorbell made her jump. Who could it be at this hour? Was it starting already, the unrelenting persecution? Heart in her mouth, she crept towards the window, peered from one side, keeping out of sight. There was an unprepossessing figure on the doorstep. Pepper-and-salt pate, baggy anorak. Terry.
You are the most wonderful woman in the world.
She must have imagined that, too. The truth was, she was neither a communist whore nor a wonderful woman. She was nothing, nobody.
She flattened herself against the wall, waiting for him to go away.
‘Hello? Anybody in? Lydia?’ His voice came floating up the stairs.
Curses! He must have let himself in. Was nothing sacred? People were even invading her home now, her sanctum. She would have to go down and face him.
He was standing in the middle of the main room, looking round, indecision written all over his face.
‘What are you doing here, Terry?’
‘Oh, there you are. You made me jump.’
‘Well?’
‘I … er … came to see how … how you— Your door was wide open.’
‘Oh.’ She must have left it open when she came in from her walk. She had lost her grip: that was becoming increasingly obvious.
‘I was … er … worried,’ he continued. ‘Worried.’
‘You needn’t be. I don’t want fuss, I don’t want to be mollycoddled. I can do without charity and pity and people feeling sorry for me.’
‘That’s not how I—’
‘I just want to be left alone. I am not a whore, neither am I wonderful, I am just me.’
Even in the half-light she could see him blush at the word wonderful. He must have said those things. It hadn’t been her imagination. But he had mistaken her for someone else. He couldn’t mean what he said. He didn’t even know her. Perhaps, like so many men, he never looked beyond the end of his own nose, was only interested in himself. It must be that.
She gripped the back of the sofa, facing him across it. ‘I am old, nearly forty. I have grey hairs, wrinkles, I am past it—’ She stopped, caught her breath, felt in her belly the fluttering sensation again: movement. Not quite past it, then.
But the baby would finish her off, she was sure of that.
‘Forty?’ Terry was saying. ‘Forty’s nothing. Forty’s young.’
‘I am pregnant,’ she whispered. ‘A pariah.’
‘You are—’
‘Finished. Washed up.’
There was a pause. She could see his eyes glinting in the gloom. ‘My God, Lydia, what did Nigel do to you?’
‘Nigel?’ She licked her lips. The name seemed to leave a nasty taste on her tongue. Why was he talking about Nigel? He knew nothing about Nigel!
‘Yes, Nigel,’ he said, his voice suddenly tinged with the bombastic tone it acquired whenever he talked about the council, about Basil, about the ruling classes and the oppression of the poor. ‘Nigel,’ he repeated. ‘The man you never mention except flippantly, in passing, as if he was of no importance; the man who is always coming between us.’
‘Us?’
‘Yes, us. You must realize how much I—’
‘How much you…?’
‘Like … you.’
‘Yes.’ Of course she had realized. She wasn’t stupid. And Terry, although he did not exactly wear his heart on his sleeve (he wasn’t that sort; his sleeve was the sleeve of an anorak), had eyes that exposed him, eyes that followed you around, brown, watery eyes, legible and mournful.
Nigel’s eyes had been different. They had been blue and diamond hard.
‘I liked Nigel’s eyes,’ she said. ‘People often remarked on his eyes.’
‘His eyes?’ said Terry dubiously.
‘I put all my eggs in one basket. That is what people do when they are in … when they …’
‘Love,’ said Terry softly. ‘In love.’
‘Yes. That.’ She took a deep breath, steadying herself. ‘I should have read the signs.’ But I didn’t, she added silently. That is what’s so hard to take. That is why I feel ashamed. I was (am?) a clever, capable, independent woman, yet I let myself get trapped and I did nothing about it. If it had been someone else – some other woman – I would have been disdainful, disbelieving. Why didn’t she stand up for herself? Why didn’t she simply walk away? How could she be so gullible? She deserved to be a victim, for being so stupid! ‘Nigel was plausible. I believed in him. He made me laugh. He was charming, confident, virile: the complete man.’