Bells

by Jo Verity

  When he’d first begun Morris dancing, he’d been inhibited and self-conscious, unwilling to let himself go. It was as if John-the-dentist was struggling to restrain Jack-the-dancer. What with that and all the leaping and counting and remembering, an hour with the Wicker Men left him on his benders. Gradually he’d learned to respond directly to the ancient rhythms and no longer needed to route any of the steps or figures through his brain. He could, within half a dozen squeezes of the accordion, become no more than an amalgam of grunts and puffs and curses; salty snot; twirling ribbons and flying hankies; throbbing calves and aching thighs; stamping feet and tapping toes; sweat and farts and a washing-powder-scented shirt; blood, from a bitten tongue. All driven on by the mesmeric bells.

  Jack hadn’t done much exercise through the summer and he was relieved when, after ‘Trip and Go’, they took a break. Pulling up the front of his tee-shirt to mop his forehead, he went to the open door where he’d spotted Neil, hovering. ‘You found us okay.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Thanks for collecting Mum from the hospital.’

  ‘No worries.’

  ‘Come on over and meet the lads.’ Jack grimaced. ‘Lads’ was overstating it – he was the second youngest. He introduced Neil to the dozen or so panting men, and to Trevor and Malcolm, the musicians. ‘Neil, here, was at school with my younger son. Played in his band. He’s staying with us for a bit.’

  Stan called for order and dealt with the weekly business, coming, finally, to the matter of the autumn fixture-list. ‘You all got my email or, for those of you still in the stone-age, my note? As I mentioned, we’ve been invited to do a couple of half-hour sessions at the Llangwm Festival on the twenty-seventh. Are you all okay for that? Anyone not available?’

  Jack gulped from his bottle of mineral water, the tepid liquid doing nothing to refresh him, but the act of swallowing putting off the moment of decision. He’d Googled ‘Existentialism’ at lunchtime and scanned through a mere handful of the thousands of entries. ‘Man is totally free and entirely responsible for what he makes of himself. It is this freedom and responsibility that is the source of man’s dread.’ Sounded about right. Yes. From today he would throw his hat in the ring with the Existentialists. And what heady company. Jack Kerouac, Samuel Beckett and Dostoevsky were names that jumped out. On the Road. Crime and Punishment. Waiting for Godot. These men had tapped into his life before he’d even had chance to live it. He wasn’t sure about the Marquis de Sade, but it was possible the bloke had been misrepresented. Maybe he’d get a black polo-necked sweater at the weekend.

  ‘You’ll be there, Jack?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We were a bit ragged tonight but you got the gist of it?’ Jack asked as they drove home.

  ‘Yeah. Dead impressive. Kinda rough and ready but full of energy. The music’s something else. Cool.’

  It was unnerving to hear anything positive about his hobby and Jack wondered if Neil was being polite, but his open face dispelled all doubt about his sincerity. He chatted about the possibility of using the Morris tunes and rhythms in some sort of fusion music. ‘I don’t mean folk-rock. That’s been done before. I mean something totally new.’

  Jack wanted to be encouraging but he didn’t have much idea what Neil was talking about. ‘You’ll have to give me a demo when we get in.’

  Then, as they turned the corner and came within sight of home, Neil slapped the palms of his hands on his thighs. ‘Sorry. I clean forgot to tell you, Kingsley mailed a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Oops,’ Jack over-steered and the car tyre caught the kerbstone. ‘Was there any news?’ He tried to sound casual, as though Neil had forgotten to water a houseplant or turn the page of the calendar.

  Neil chewed his lip, ‘Let’s think.’ He counted the points off on his fingers. ‘He asked about Harry and Vi, of course. Wanted to know if I had a job yet. Asked if I was still in his room—’

  ‘He referred to it as “his room”?’ Jack interrupted. Might this indicate that he was planning to reclaim it one day? ‘Did he say where he was? What he was doing. Anything about who he was with?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I can’t really remember, sorry. Why don’t I log on when we get in, and you can check it out?’

  Since the crisis with Harry, Jack hadn’t thought about Kingsley as much as he usually did. Neil’s being in touch with him had slipped to the back of his mind and, despite knowing about this for two weeks, he’d not, for reasons which he didn’t quite understand himself, got around to telling Fay. He was eager to see what was in this most recent communication, but he was going to have to make sure she was out of the way before he let Neil anywhere near the computer. ‘No rush. Tomorrow maybe. I’ve got a few things to see to, and I don’t want to be too late to bed.’

  ‘Course you don’t.’ Neil gave a knowing wink.

  Fay had planned to spend the evening with Neil, getting to grips with his CV and working out a strategy for his job search. Without any applications in the pipeline, he might still be with them at Christmas. She didn’t object to having him living with them for a while – on her terms and as her protégé – but he was getting disturbingly chummy with Jack and Vi. Before she had the opportunity to tell him what she had in mind, she heard him go out.

  She fixed a smile on her face and went into the living room. Her mother-in-law was reading the South Wales Echo, her lips framing the words as she struggled through the nightly quota of lurid headlines. ‘How was he this afternoon?’ Fay asked. Every day they went through the question and answer ritual. The facile conversation ritual. The ‘being nice to each other’ ritual. Rituals that saved them from having to make a legitimate connection – social washers to prevent them grinding against each other.

  ‘Not very special.’ Vi lowered the paper and looked at the clock, ‘Is that the time?’

  Yes, you stupid old woman, that’s the time. And why don’t you just tell me to fuck off, because all you want to do is get your head stuck in the television so you can be shocked by the sex and bad language in the sodding soaps. ‘Shall I put the TV on for you?’

  ‘If it’s no trouble.’

  How on earth could it be any trouble to walk four paces and push in a switch? ‘No, it’s no trouble.’ Why did they keep up this pathetic pretence? ‘If it’s okay with you, I’m going to make a phone call then do some marking.’

  ‘Carry on, dear. I’ll manage.’

  Manage what? Manage to breathe in and out. Manage not to urinate on the sofa? Manage to be incredibly boring. ‘Well, give me a shout if you need anything.’

  It was twenty-six hours since her last cigarette and, hoping to strengthen her resolve to quit, Fay retrieved the underwear from the linen basket where it had lain hidden since last night’s failure. She sat on the bed, fingering the dark red satin and wondering whether to try again. Jack should get home from Morris practice at about nine-thirty, grateful that he’d been allowed out for the evening and keen to please her. An image of Jack as he probably was at that very moment – hankies fluttering – loomed up and extinguished the flicker of interest that the underwear had rekindled. She wondered if a drink would help and, sneaking downstairs, she collected her bag of exercise books and a bottle of white wine, and returned to their bedroom. It was infuriating that she was forced to skulk around in her own home and she gulped down a glass of wine and half the next before she felt up to marking Year Nine’s evaluation of Cargoes.

  By nine o’clock, she’d covered thirty-one exercise books with scathing comments and finished the bottle of Pinot Grigio. Then, steadying herself on the bed-end, she stripped off and struggled into the painful bra and thong, concealing the scarlet scraps beneath her sensible bathrobe. It would be another half hour before Jack came home and she didn’t want to go downstairs and risk a conversation with Vi, especially now that her inhibitions had been slackened. She contemplated ringing Caitlin but wasn’t sure she was up to talking about her forthcoming trip to London. She tried Dylan’s number bu
t there was no reply and she couldn’t be bothered to compose a message. Anyway, she had nothing to say.

  Weariness and wooziness engulfed her and she slipped under the duvet. The bed was a boat, bobbing on a gentle swell. Where was she bound? Distant Ophir, perhaps. When Jack came home she’d ask him if he’d take her there for a holiday. Where was it anyway? She’d forgotten. India? Raj, the polite little Nottingham newsagent, with his gentle eyes and slender fingers, swam alongside the boat, smiling proudly at the prospect of having a doctor daughter.

  ‘You okay?’ Jack woke her. He sat on the side of the bed and, as he pulled off his tee-shirt, she smelled the not unpleasant tang of his sweat.

  ‘I’m fine. Just a bit tired.’ She raised herself up on one elbow and the bathrobe fell open to reveal the scanty bra. ‘Good practice?’

  ‘Mmmm. Neil turned up. I think he was quite impressed.’ He pointed to her chest. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Oh, that.’ The wine had sapped her energy, mental and physical, but she was incredibly relaxed. ‘D’you like it?’ From here on it was up to him.

  28

  Fay seemed to require something from him, mumbling and pulling at her dressing gown, but he made soothing noises and stroked her cheek, as if he were calming a fretful child, and she was asleep in no time.

  He couldn’t decide whether he was more shocked by her bizarre underwear or her drunkenness. She’d always enjoyed a glass of wine with a meal, but was very sniffy about anyone who drank with the intention of getting drunk, which, as the empty bottle next to the bed appeared to indicate, had been what she set out do this evening. As for underwear, her criteria were rigid – it should always be clean, could be attractive but it had to be functional. It was there to support, pull in, cover up. The red things – they could hardly be termed ‘bra and pants’ – failed on all counts.

  Occasionally, when the kids were young, she used to go to things called ‘Tupperware Parties’, explaining that it was really an excuse for women to get away from the children for an hour or two. He’d read an article quite recently which said that saucy underwear and sex toys had taken over from plastic food containers, and that ‘Anne Saunders Parties’ – was that it? – were all the rage. The red things must have come from somewhere like that. Could Fay and her teacher friends have been whiling away long summer afternoons at risqué get-togethers, giggling and swapping lewd stories? She had changed her hairstyle and bought some rather odd skirts, but that was very different from tonight’s lap-dancing kit.

  When he could avoid it no longer, he addressed the most damning evidence – her incredible performance in that very room. He was still sore from, and embarrassed by, what had taken place. If he’d become an Existentialist more or less overnight, was it possible that Fay had turned into a nymphomaniac?

  He longed for a brother or a friend to talk to. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to lift the phone this minute and tell this person, this man friend, that Fay was having a breakdown of some kind, acting out a fantasy that she was a hooker. That his father was most likely dying and all he was worried about was what would happen to his mother. That it was five years since he’d seen his son, his son, and it was more than he could bear, sometimes. But, the worst thing by far was that he was bored with his job and bored with himself.

  He used to have friends – mates, pals, chums. They tended to be other dads, whom he got to know through school functions. For a while he’d been the treasurer of the PTA and had helped run the under-tens soccer team, but once the kids progressed to secondary school that had all faded away. If he were truthful, those men were acquaintances not friends and, left without the children to focus on, they discussed cars or rugby or DIY projects. No. He wouldn’t have entrusted any of them with his problems.

  It was easy for women. They went through life gathering friends, hugging and doing that fake kissing thing, giggling and gossiping. It was okay for them to cry and they were allowed to have tantrums. It was obvious why there weren’t too many female Existentialists on the list – women could gather together at Anne Saunders parties and spill all their troubles out in a flurry of underwear and chocolate dildoes, for fuck’s sake.

  ‘Soddit.’ Jack scrunched up his sweaty clothes and threw them in the direction of the bathroom door. The rhythmic snoring coming from under the duvet convinced him that Fay was out for the count, so he pulled his pyjamas and dressing gown on and went in search of Neil.‘Got a minute?’ Jack found Neil in the kitchen, making a pot of tea for himself and Vi.

  ‘Sure. I’ll just take Vi her tea and digestives.’

  ‘I thought we could have a look at that email from Kingsley.’

  When Neil returned from his errand, Jack hovered behind him whilst he accessed his mailbox.

  ‘Here we go. Sent the day before yesterday.’ He moved aside for Jack to get a better look at the screen.

  Hey, Neil.

  How goes it? What’s the latest on Grandad? Hope my folks aren’t giving you too much grief. Are you letting the side down and keeping my room tidy? What news on the job search? Tell you what, get a decent band together and I might be tempted.

  See ya. K

  Jack read and re-read the careless message.

  ‘Sounds okay, doesn’t he?’ Neil smiled encouragingly.

  ‘Yes.’ What did Neil understand about the agonies of parenthood? ‘What does he mean about a band?’

  ‘He’s taking the piss. He wouldn’t come all the way from Oz to play in a band, would he?’

  Neil wished him goodnight and went upstairs. As the computer was on, Jack checked their email. Alongside the usual offers of downloads and upgrades there was unopened mail from Kingsley. It had been sitting there for several days – probably sent at the same time as the one to Neil. Up until now, such rare communications from their son had sent him rushing off to find Fay because it was unthinkable to access the precious information without her being there to see it. This evening, he scarcely hesitated before double clicking.

  Hi, Mum and Dad.

  Thanks for the newsy mails. It’s not easy to pick them up where I am at the moment. So old Dylan went through with it and I’ve got a sister-in-law. You don’t say anything about her so I assume you don’t like her much. Hope Grandad’s going on OK. Can’t imagine Mum and Granny under the same roof.

  There doesn’t seem much point in sending twice while Neil’s there with you.

  Say hi to everyone. K.

  Naturally Kingsley had worked out that Neil would be sharing his mail with them, but the implied decision to keep in touch with an acquaintance, rather than his parents, was hard to take. This mail told them nothing about what he was doing or his whereabouts. He was twenty-three now, for heaven’s sake, wasn’t it time he got over this teenage petulance? Whatever he felt they’d done to him, however they’d hurt him, he’d made them pay. They fuck you up, your mum and dad – fair enough, the man was right, but that was how it was and every parent, including him and Fay, was someone’s fucked up child.

  As well as making him angry, their son’s email presented another problem. If Fay saw it, it would come out that he’d kept silent about Neil’s contact with Kingsley. He read the mail again, twice, and deleted it.

  He was checking that he’d locked the front door, when he realised that his mother was still watching television. During the fortnight she’d been with them, he hadn’t spent a lot of time with her. There were the usual excuses – work, hospital visiting, household jobs – but it was primarily because it was impossible to have an honest conversation with her when Fay was present, conscious, as he was, of the antipathy the two women had for each other. It was as if each of them was checking to see where his loyalty lay, in a kind of if-you’re-not-for-me-you’re-against-me assessment. When he was alone with his mother, he avoided talking about the future and its unpleasant certainties – ill-health, decline and death. The past was no better – a minefield, strewn with inaccurate recollections and explosive resentments. And the present had become an obstacle cour
se of barriers to clamber under, over or around.

  Penitent for his shortcomings, he went in to the sitting room only to find Vi, wedged in the far corner of the sofa, head dropped forward, dead to the world in front of the weather forecast. He could see that she wasn’t dead because, now and again, the hand resting in her lap, twitched as though she were a life-sized marionette and the puppeteer was yanking the string. How was it that, when human beings passed a certain age – say sixty-five or seventy – they lost any vestige of individuality and morphed into generic cartoon characters? Time and again, he’d noticed this. He’d look up and greet the next patient coming in to the surgery with a ‘Hello, Mrs. Jones,’ when it wasn’t Mrs Jones at all, but Mrs Williams. They all looked the same. Specs went on, noses drooped, hair whitened and thinned, flesh sagged and wrinkled. And they did themselves no favours when they adopted the uniform of the living dead – beige, cream, brown. Blokes were even more difficult to tell apart.

  ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ Vi asserted, floundering amongst the soft upholstery.

  ‘Just resting your eyes?'

  ‘Well I was.’ She nodded towards the television. ‘I don’t know why they can’t tell us something cheerful. Terrorists. Strikes. And now we’re all going to die of bird ’flu.’ She pronounced it fl-yew – and glue was gl-yew and blue was bl-yew. Fay had once tried to put her straight, annunciating the words slowly and clearly– Gloo. Floo. Bloo. – as if she were speaking to a small child or a deaf person. He’d had to keep a straight face when his mother had responded – Gl-yew. Fl-yew. Bl-yew.