‘Beltane? I thought that was last week.’
‘Only in the Anglo-Saxon calendar,’ reasoned his father earnestly. ‘When they invaded Wessex they tried to stamp out the Druidic religion by imposing their own Germanic names on the ancient Celtic festivals. So Beltane became May Day.’
‘Beltane will be a little late this year,’ his sister quipped, giving him a resigned smile. ‘Dad forgot to cover the bonfire and it rained.’
‘Better celebrate Beltane a couple of weeks late than have polythene stuffing up the ditches.’ His father started blustering. ‘Do you know how long it takes for polythene to biodegrade?’
The women finished their work in embarrassed silence. In the close air of the barn the general stench of goat was almost smothered by the rancid smell of fermenting milk. His mother lifted a plastic crate on to a stack already loaded on their lopsided cart. The crates contained cartons labelled: ‘Unpasteurised Organic Goat’s Milk from Sanctuary Farm, Somerset. Please dispose of this Container without harming Our Planet.’
‘Like the technology,’ he complimented his family, indicating the assembly of silver pipes and apparatus that spread over the bare earth floor randomly littered with old goat shit and broken flower pots.
His mother rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘They made us buy it, the drongos at Min of Ag. Or they were going to take away our licence. Bastards. What a rip-off.’
‘I’ve knackered my car,’ he told them, not wanting to get her started on one of her rants about the Ministry of Agriculture.
‘Cosmic! So have we,’ said his rather jovially, indicating the aged Land Rover propped against the old oak tree on its jack and a pile of firewood. The goat was now on top of the vehicle, poised on its hind legs, trying to reach the tree’s leaves. ‘I’m just about to see what I can do with it.’ As far as Des could make out, his father was proposing to weld a broken axle.
His parents looked more weather-beaten every time he saw them. Their bodies, bundled in thick clothing from the charity shop in the nearest town and tied around the vanished sites of their waists with short lengths of twine knotted together, grew thicker as their cheeks became more deeply lined. Each year their hair moved more towards salt than pepper and it curled wildly from their foreheads, tied down with headbands that his mother wove from the sheep’s wool that she collected from the hedgerows and coloured with herbal dyes. His sister looked nearly as old as their parents. She had some children, who were usually somewhere about the place, and a partner, who divided his time between this homestead and his own commune.
In addition to the goats, there were about three dogs, a family of feral cats, various poultry and a visiting population of convalescent wildlife foisted on the household by a neighbouring vet. The horse, a survivor of their original intention to work the land without machinery, completed the farm’s livestock. His mother coaxed it into its bridle and collar and they set off down the lane. As they approached the gate the goat saw its opportunity, leaped from the Land Rover and sprang in front of them to freedom.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ his mother advised. ‘It’s a billy, isn’t it? I expect it was one we liberated.’
‘Liberated?’
‘They’re no use, they don’t give milk. We might keep one for stud every now and then but the rest had to go to the abattoir. We couldn’t get our heads round it really. And we had to pay and they kept putting up the price. And then we’d have to sell the meat. So we liberate them now. It’s much nicer. They just run away and live wild.’
‘Oh.’ Des made a sincere effort not to sound judgemental, although he thought it was most likely that the neighbouring farmers, who were inclined to regard his parents as two-legged vermin, shot the liberated billy goats on sight and fed them to their dogs.
When they reached the car his mother looped a chain from the horse’s collar around the front bumper and suggested that he get in and steer while she led the horse forward. It began to rain, heavy drops thudding on the car roof. They had an argument while Des undid the chain and fixed it to a part of the car that he felt was more capable of bearing the full weight of the vehicle.
‘You always have to know best,’ his mother snapped.
‘It is my car,’ he insisted.
To his surprise, his mother leaned against the horse’s shoulder and burst into tears. As if in sympathy, the rain began pelting down in sheets from the blackened heavens.
‘Mum?’ Yelling into the tempest, he put his arms around her then remembered she did not like to be called by any variation on the word Mother. ‘Sarah? What is it? I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘It isn’t me,’ she shouted. ‘It’s your father. You’re breaking his heart.’
‘Not this again,’ muttered Des, feeling wretched. Rain was streaming down the back of his neck and funnelling down his backbone. His T-shirt was soaked.
‘Of course you have the right to live your own life,’ his mother wailed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. ‘You were brought up to believe in the beauty of individual freedom. He has tried to accept it, he really has. But he can’t help it.’
‘Neither can I,’ Des bawled in reply. The ditch was filling rapidly with muddy water. ‘I am the way I am, I can’t change. I don’t want to change, I’m happy.’
‘But what about us? Your father can’t see any justification for the way you live. It’s completely against his morality.’
‘I’m sorry, if I’ve hurt you, really I am. But it is my life, I have to make my own choices.’
‘You seem so different. We look at the pictures of you and Endie and we can’t see you any more. You’re so profit-oriented, such a bread-head. Like all you care about is your car and your clothes, you know. How can we feel proud of you, knowing what you’re doing in London?’
‘I know you don’t like me being an estate agent.’ Des made a supreme effort of tolerance and prayed that the car was still driveable and would take him back to the city in time to go out that evening and forget this nightmare. The ditch was gurgling and gushing; water swirled up to the sills of his car. ‘But it’s all I can do. You didn’t want me to get any exams …’
‘Indoctrination! Thought control! You learned things at home they’d never teach you in school.’
‘Yes I did,’ Des assured her, thinking of the night of the magic mushroom harvest when he was eight years old and had to call ambulances for eleven people before hitching a ride to school. ‘But I haven’t got any straight qualifications so I have to earn a living somehow. People do need places to live, you know.’
‘You were taught that property is theft,’ wailed his mother.
The horse sighed, straddled its back legs and pissed lengthily, adding its steaming puddle to the flood spreading over the road. Ditch water eddied into the back of the car. Des was soaked to the skin. He observed that his Diesel jeans were ripped and the goat had bitten a chunk out of his T-shirt. Both he and the car were covered in mud and would smell terrible when they were dry.
His mother was now going to guilt-trip him silently for hours and there would be lentil soup and goat’s cheese for lunch. He wanted a hot bath and a strawberry Martini. He had a song on the brain; a tape loop of it was running in his head: Beltane will be a little slow to start, a little slow reviving the music it made in my heart.
‘It’s eight o’clock, sweetheart.’ Felix prepared to get out of bed.
Georgie had rolled to the far edge of the mattress. Lying face-down, she was idly drawing patterns on the carpet with one finger.
‘I don’t like Mondays,’ she said. ‘I’m going to chuck a sickie’
‘You had a day off last week,’ he reminded her, heading for the bathroom.
‘That was for my father.’ Georgie waited for him to ask how her father was. Felix had been aware of his illness for more than three days and she was still waiting for the question. She had chosen to wait, rather than do what she usually did and run the basic emotional scenario past him so he knew that she expected him to respond. S
he was curious to know how long it would take before Felix picked up that she was feeling sad because her father was going to die. Her curiosity was not innocent. She was feeling some pain.
From the bathroom came the noise of Felix’s electric toothbrush. Then the noise of the shower. He reappeared in a bathrobe, scrubbing his hair with a towel. ‘Employers don’t like family problems,’ he pointed out. ‘Or illness. They like people they can trust.’
‘People without lives,’ Georgie agreed. ‘They like robots. Or zombies. And if you aren’t a zombie or a robot when you start work, they get you modified. They should hire your toothbrush, it would be kinder.’
‘That’s childish,’ he told her, pulling open his wardrobe and looking at his clothes. ‘You’re very highly paid. They have a right to expect a high level of commitment.’
‘So because you’re not very highly paid, the hospital shouldn’t expect a lot of commitment from you?’
‘It doesn’t work like that. You know it doesn’t. This isn’t like you, Georgina.’ He pulled out a new shirt and some trousers still in the dry cleaners’bag, then selected underwear from a drawer.
‘I don’t feel like me,’ she hinted.
‘If you’re having motivation issues, you should handle them.’ This instruction was issued from inside his shirt as he was pulling it over his head. Felix was unstoppable when he felt that his security was threatened.
‘They told me my father was going to die. Two years, tops; that’s what the consultant said.’
Felix’s head emerged indignantly from the shirt and he flicked the soft collar into its place. ‘And you’re reacting by withdrawal? You always do that, you know. Any little stress and you just throw in your cards and resign. You put the pillow over your head and hope it will all go away. That’s not the right way to deal with life. It doesn’t solve any problems.’
Georgie discovered that she really despised the way he stepped into his trousers. First one leg, then the other. Always the same. It was gross. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said sarcastically. ‘All these years I’ve been doing life wrong. Thank you so much for showing me that. I really didn’t know. I didn’t even realise that my father dying was a problem. Of course, it makes it much worse that I love him and he’s always been there for me. How could I have messed up like that?’
‘This isn’t about your father,’ Felix informed her. Her sarcasm had floated over his head. Georgie thought that the way he buckled his belt was just repulsive. ‘It’s about your mother. Everything about you is to do with your mother abandoning you. I can’t believe you’re still in denial about it. You’re nearly thirty, you should get a grip.’
‘OK. I’ll work on that,’ she assured him. Again her irony missed by a mile. It was as if he was operating inside some force-field that repelled all criticism.
‘Enjoy your day,’ he advised her, bending down to give her a dry kiss. ‘If you insist on putting your whole career on the line, it might as well be worth it.’
When she was alone, Georgie got up and wandered around the flat, breathing the untainted air. To some degree, Felix was right. She was in cocoon mode, she didn’t even want to get dressed. From the Brazilian café she ordered in a large filter coffee with cinnamon toast. When she had finished that, she ran a deep bath and wallowed in it for half an hour, reading some ridiculous book she’d bought at the airport in Chicago and had to hide from Felix’s scorn ever since. Her toenails needed painting. She violated his hi-fi and found a classical music station. Thinking of Chicago, she decided to e-mail some old friends and sat down at the computer.
The receipts were on the keyboard. The large bill from the boutique, with the details hand-written in lime green ink and the small credit card slip with Felix’s signature etched with the same pen. ‘1 pr pink strap Joan & David sandals, size 6.’ The price was impressive. The date was Saturday. The credit card slip even noted the time, 11.37 a.m. Joan & David size 6 was just about big enough for Flora. She had dear little feet.
So that was why he was acting weird. More weird than usual. Or perhaps, in her vulnerable condition, Felix just seemed to her to be weirder than he normally was. Something was different, that was certain. Georgie was accustomed to Felix being mentally absent for much of the time. She had always assumed that he was preoccupied with his work, and resisted her unworthy instinct to feel hurt. Since her father, since Friday, she had sensed a change. He had been getting to her. Was it him? Was it her? Was it fallout from the Heartswap foolishness? Whatever the reason, it was nothing to get out of proportion.
The morning had been lazed away most effectively. It was nearly one o’clock, the hour of the clinic lunch break.
‘Darling, I’m sorry I was so ratty this morning,’ she told him on the phone. ‘You’re right, I’m having to deal with all kinds of stuff that I don’t want to know about. Forgive me for stressing you out at the start of the week like that. I will get a grip on it, I promise.’
‘OK.’ He sounded bewildered, as well he might. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Just catching up,’ she reassured him. ‘Filing our receipts, great world-changing stuff like that.’
‘Oh.’ Now he was disappointed. Well, Georgie said to herself, how about that? He actually wanted me to find that bill. Men are such martyrs to their guilt.
‘Flora,’ she giggled into the inevitable voicemail. ‘I hope those sandals give you blisters.’
‘I’m looking for a woman with a metallic blue Audi coupé,’ Dillon told the man who was the brother of a mate of the man he had met in the J Bar a couple of days earlier.
‘Aren’t we all?’ the man said, winking at him.
‘It’s not what you think. It’s business.’ God, I sound pathetic, Dillon told himself.
‘Of course it is.’ The man winked again. He was undersized all round, short, thin and small-featured. Only his teeth were large, and they seemed about to crowd each other out of his undershot jaw. His leather jacket had more presence than he had but it looked too large for him and flapped from the shoulders.
‘Your brother’s friend said …’
‘We have the exclusive dealership in London. There’s a waiting list for ’em. So we keep the book. With the names in. Names of people who’re waiting.’
‘So her name might be in the book?’
‘Her name, her address and her phone number.’ The man winked again, then half-turned away from Dillon and looked out over the river. They were drinking in some faux-naval place on the South Bank that was done up with fluttering yacht pennants, white rope knots displayed in mahogany-veneer frames and a gratuitous quantity of brass fittings.
The man turned back to him. ‘So what are you? City bonus type?’
‘You could say that.’
‘Wondrous with wonga, eh?’
‘I guess.’
‘You in a hurry for this?’
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of her for days. She’s disconnected her mobile and I haven’t got an address.’
The narrow eyes appraised him expertly. ‘I’d have to do it after the boss went home. Have to change my plans for the evening.’
‘That would be extremely kind.’
‘Extremely dodgy, more like. I’m not supposed to mess around with his paperwork. It’s confidential.’
Dillon nodded his appreciation and tried to make the job seem less demanding. ‘It’s this year’s registration.’
‘It would have to be. This year’s car, innit? But this year is almost over as far as the motor trade goes. This year’s reg could be any time in the past ten months.’
Dillon ceased to struggle and waited to hear the price.
‘A monkey’d do it. Half a ton,’ the man said. ‘And half up front.’
Important not to agree too fast, in case the man deduced that he could have asked more and therefore started to resent the whole deal. Dillon drained his glass before he said, ‘OK. Don’t go away.’
He walked around the corner to an ATM machine, withdrew £250 and returne
d with a spring in his steps.
‘Cheers,’ the man said, stowing the notes in the inner pocket of his jacket. ‘A bit of a babe, is she?’
‘Yes she is,’ Dillon told him, thinking of how the blue of the car picked up the grey of her eyes, and the extraordinarily lovely movement she made when she put her arm on the window sill. ‘She’s a sculptor,’ he continued in self-justification. ‘I want to commission something from her.’
‘She should be pleased to hear from you, then,’ the man observed with a smirk. Something pinched and bitter had come into his face. He was fishing for information so that he could have more grounds for envy. While he was finishing his drink Dillon thought about offering him another. It would be courteous but it would commit him to spending more time with someone who wanted to be able to resent him mainly for knowing a woman with a new Audi coupé. There would be no point in explaining that he had just lost his job, that his girlfriend was turning moody, his flat was a rat-hole and he had no friends. In this man’s eyes he was guilty of being an overprivileged arsehole and nothing would change that.
Dillon had become accustomed to being envied. There was nothing rational about it. Kids at school who had slagged him off for doing his homework then envied his exam results. People at university whose goal was to get wasted whenever possible envied him his degree. His father envied him because his mother was proud of him. All those goons at Direct Warranty had envied him because he was Donna’s golden boy. Even Donna had envied him when he pulled the Marmeduke Whiskers project out of the hat; any demonstration of creativity made her jealous. As if the Whiskers project was the Sistine Chapel.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he told the man, implying that a deal was a deal, a drink was a drink and real men were always moving on. ‘I’ll give you a phone tonight, yeah?’
Driving towards his home was difficult. He did not want to get there. A single day spent alone in the place had been a revelation. It was a pit, a tip, a hole. He hated it. Walking up the stairs was going to be like walking into hell. The stain on the bathroom wall oppressed him every time he saw it. The kitchen was like the cave of some loathsome mythical monster waiting to choke him with its poisonous breath. The living room was a wasteland. The bedroom was a swamp of despair ready to engulf him. Extraordinary that he had needed Flora to rescue him from the place. She would probably say she had put him in touch with his feelings about it.
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