Hot Breath

by Hot Breath (retail) (epub)

  ‘We haven’t got any,’ supplied Brett, since the Master, brow furrowed and tongue protruding, was lining up on the red.

  ‘Surely,’ I persisted, ‘you have some reading or something.’

  ‘Nope, we surely haven’t.’ Gareth, successful again, straightened up and chalked the tip of his cue with a practised air which froze my blood. Wasn’t the ability to play snooker the sign of a misspent youth? And here was my first-born, the fruit of my loins, perfecting his decadent arts right here in my kitchen.

  ‘Then we’ll find you some!’ I snapped. ‘Put this away now. And Brett, you ran along home.’

  ‘Come off it, Ma!’ complained Gareth, managing to be both hectoring and whiney at the same time, a talent peculiar to lads.

  ‘I will not. Goodbye, Brett. Gareth, go and read a book for an hour.’

  ‘Blimey Ma, who’ve you been drinking with?’ was his mordant retort.

  ‘Just get on with it.’

  He spotted a chink in my armour. ‘Give us a hand with the table, then, Brett’s gone.’

  I was ready for him. ‘Isn’t Damon here?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right, he can give you a hand before he goes. Beat it.’

  He went upstairs, his door closed, and the pounding of heavy metal shut me even more firmly out of the filial consciousness.

  Looking out into the hall, I saw the Hoover by the sitting room door, and heard voices murmuring faintly on the other side. Still in combative mood I marched across and went in.

  Damon and Clara were sitting on the floor near George’s expensive Japanese sound centre, with George’s equally expensive record and tape collection spread about them. Clara held a notebook and pencil. As I entered they both looked up with identical expressions of dumb insolence, though my daughter’s, from being habitual, was more complete.

  But it was Damon’s appearance which swept the suspicions clean out of my head and left me speechless. He had undergone a metamorphosis. Gone were the baggy tracksuit trousers and khaki pullover. His runtish form was now tricked out in a style known as ‘preppy’ and which can look quite fetching on hunky young Americans with big shoulders and perfect teeth. Damon wore a red checked shirt with a button down collar, a heather mixture tweed jacket (it was now June), beige twill trousers, red socks and white canvas shoes. In deference to these clothes he had also had a haircut, which was a pity because his glistening pompadour had been his finest feature and without it he seemed even slighter and more weaselly. I noticed for the first time his prominent ears. All the clothes were a shade too big. The overall effect was bizarre, and strangely menacing.

  ‘Damon?’

  He got up, while Clara busied herself gathering up the tapes and LPs.

  ‘Hallo there,’ he said. It was truly appalling.

  ‘What exactly are you doing?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Have you finished the house?’

  ‘I got to get in the kitchen.’

  ‘Don’t let me stop you.’ I held the door open for him. ‘And when you’ve done in there bang on Gareth’s door and help him put the snooker table away. Please.’

  ‘Will do.’ He made a forelock-touching gesture and skipped nervously past me.

  When he’d gone I pushed the door to and rounded on Clara.

  ‘Whatever were you doing?’ I asked. ‘He comes here to work for me, not to play records with you. I thought you hated him,’ I added uncharitably.

  She shrugged. ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘Never mind that. You make sure you put your father’s things back carefully. I’ve no intention of covering up for you if there’s any damage when he comes back!’

  ‘Okay, okay, no need to get your knickers in a knot.’

  ‘I’m not! And clean out those caveys, they’re beginning to smell.’

  ‘Sure …’

  She wafted past me and out into the yard. I wondered why the hell I couldn’t make the disparate elements of my life hang together and centre on me, as Bernice seemed to do with material at least as unpromising. Sweating with irritation I went into the kitchen and ignored Damon as I boiled the kettle and brewed tea, staring out of the window at Declan. Compared with those inside the house he seemed a paragon of straightforwardness and dependability. And had he not been the instrument of my first meeting with Dr Ghikas? For Declan’s tea I chose the mug bearing the legend ‘You’re just champion’ (it had a footballing connotation), and cut him a slice of the fudge cake I should normally have reserved for next of kin.

  ‘How is the hand, Declan?’ I enquired genially, as he balanced the mug on a fencepost and addressed himself to the cake.

  ‘Mending.’

  ‘Lawn looks nice.’

  ‘ ’Twould look better if you got yourselves a decent mower, so it would,’ he asserted, spraying me with a shower of dark crumbs like John Innes potting soil. ‘These fiddly diddly tings is okay for a postage stamp, but they’re not man enough for a roddy great patch like this of yours.’

  Accustomed as I was to the general tenor of Declan’s conversation, I knew better than to judge his remarks by content. It was quantity that counted, and by this criterion he was being outstandingly sociable.

  ‘Perhaps when my next book comes out,’ I said gaily, ‘we’ll get you one of those super ones you sit on and drive around.’

  Declan granted. ‘It pays to get a decent mower, so it does.’

  ‘Of course. Well—’ I pressed my palms together and smiled warmly at him. ‘ Keep up the good work. I have to slip out for a few minutes, but the children are in.’

  ‘The boy plays a helluva lot of billiards,’ said Declan disapprovingly.

  ‘He’s doing his homework now,’ I countered. ‘And Clara’s cleaning out her guinea pigs.’

  ‘Not before time.’ He handed me his empty plate. ‘Have you seen the other feller?’

  ‘No—that is, who?’

  ‘The little feller, the one does your work for yer.’

  ‘Damon.’

  ‘That’s the feller!’ Declan rolled his eyes. ‘ Mother of God, what a sight.’

  ‘He’s smartened himself up,’ I said, doing it to annoy.

  ‘Is that what you call it? Lord bless and save us, what a figure of fun.’

  I looked at Declan. His squat figure was dressed in a pair of dungarees with only one strap; a ragged Fair Isle pullover, gigantic oiled-wool socks, presumably to protect his feet from the soaring summer temperatures; and the sort of boots which could have housed the old woman with too many children. All in all he looked like someone in a glass house who’d just heaved a ruddy great rock through the window.

  He gave me back the tea-mug. ‘You watch that girl of yours,’ he said darkly. ‘ He thinks he’s Jesus Christ Almighty in them ridiculous togs.’

  I took the plate and mug back to the kitchen, which now glistened wetly in the wake of Damon’s ministrations with squeezy mop and cloth. He was buckling on his crash helmet in the doorway. The snooker table had been put away.

  ‘See you tomorrow then,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ I stared at him, trying to read his expression, or better still his thoughts. But his narrow face peered out from the encircling helmet like a rodent’s from its hole, and I could deduce nothing from its look of beady-eyed vacuity.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I suggested, ‘it would be better if you didn’t wear those smart new things to work. I’d hate them to get spoilt.’

  ‘Keen, eh?’ He looked down at himself. ‘ Don’t worry.’

  And with this futile advice, he left.

  I fed Fluffy and Spot, told the children I was going out for five minutes, and headed up the road in the direction of the Tunnels’. This seemed an eminently appropriate moment, with maternal feeling at an all-time low, to ask Brenda if she would put the children up while I attended the Buchfest. I knew at once that all was not well at ‘Trevenda’ when I saw the heirs to the Tunnel empire loitering in the front garden. Even more than most modern children, Jason, Nigel and
Michelle looked ill at ease in the great outdoors. Now they stood in the centre of Trevor’s York stone patio like three threatening, outsize garden gnomes, androgynous in jeans, trainers and navy body-warmers.

  ‘Hallo, Jason,’ I said, addressing myself to the eldest one, who attended the comprehensive with Gareth. ‘ Is your mum in?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Was I mistaken, or did a sly look pass between the three of them?

  ‘Go round the back,’ suggested Michelle, all helpfulness, ‘she’s in the kitchen.’

  I went down the path at the side of Trevenda, and through the high wooden door which admitted me to the rear of the house. I soon realised my mistake, but the knowledge that the three young Tunnels would be smirkingly awaiting my return caused me to hold my ground.

  Brenda was in the kitchen all right, but she was not alone. Trevor was there too, and they were engaged in a row of operatic proportions. Or at least Brenda was, blackguarding her husband con spirito, against a background of stupendous hangings and clashings.

  I peeked timorously round the corner and in at the window. Interestingly, Brenda, for all her superior fire-power, both verbal and physical, and her new-found emancipation courtesy of the Wagon, was washing up, while Trevor stood just behind her right shoulder looking hangdog. The crashing emanated from the sink, where Brenda’s Winter Wonderland dinner service was standing up manfully to the most vile mistreatment. Brenda herself was puffing and tossing her head like a Suffolk Punch.

  ‘I’ll do as I like!’ she shrieked, making the draining board quake beneath a vast, fluted flan dish. ‘I don’t just exist through you, I’m an individual, with an individual’s rights and preferences! So sod you, Trevor Tunnel, you’re not telling me what to do!’

  Indeed he wasn’t. I had rarely seen even the lugubrious Trevor looking so cast down.

  ‘Cool it, Bren,’ he advised forlornly, but his wife chose this moment to vent her feelings by lifting a sauceboat—of the old-fashioned kind, with drip-saucer attached—and hurling it through the window above the sink and into the garden. It missed my profile by centimetres and ploughed lip first into the polyanthus.

  ‘Oh God, oh God!’ wailed Brenda. ‘God help me!’ I really admired her brio. ‘Call yourself a man?’ she enquired rhetorically of the hapless Trevor. ‘You’re no good to me, and you never will be!’

  A door slammed and a quick peek through the shattered window revealed that she had left the room. That left only Trevor, who would certainly not be in the market for acting as messenger to his wife.

  But as I turned to go I was caught in a pincer movement. Trevor emerged from the back door to retrieve the sauceboat, and Jason opened the passage door behind me.

  ‘Find her, did you?’ asked Jason.

  I blushed fierily, for after all he knew how long I’d been there; It must be perfectly plain to him that I’d been no more than a common voyeur and eavesdropper.

  ‘Er—’

  But Trevor saved my embarrassment by being a thousand times more discomfited than me. Standing there with the muddy sauceboat held in both hands he at once launched into a torrent of self-excuse.

  ‘Oh—Harriet—so sorry—what can I do for you? Just took the afternoon off to be with the wife for a change, you know … she’s a bit overwrought—I’m really sorry you had to hang about like this—’

  Jason sniggered and pushed past me.

  ‘Take a cup of tea to your mother, Jason,’ ordered Trevor.

  I began to back up the passage.

  ‘Please don’t give it another thought,’ I yelped, ‘I only dropped in for a chat with Brenda, another time’ll do. I can see it’s a bad moment—’ I suddenly thought of something which might cheer him up. ‘I spoke to Dr Ghikas, by the way, and I think he may be willing to help out with the Toms—’

  ‘Trev-argh!’ bellowed Brenda from an upstairs window. Trevor glanced up fearfully.

  ‘I’d better go,’ he quavered.

  ‘And me. ’Byee.’

  As I scuttled away, past the sniggering Nigel and Michelle, I heard Brenda scream: ‘Don’t you call me overwrought, you slimey turd!’ and there was another explosive crash as she heaved a second missile—a teasmade, perhaps, or digital clock-radio—through the bedroom window. And this time it was Trevor who called on his Maker.

  Chapter Eight

  A few days before the dinner party I received a royalty cheque from Era Books, and bought myself a dress, and Declan a motor mower of the sort advertised on television, which is said to cause the neighbours agonies of envy as they watch the manicured green tramlines unrolling behind it.

  ‘What’s that for?’ asked Clara when she saw the dress. She had been uncharacteristically amiable since last Thursday when I’d caught her with Damon, so it was clear she had something to hide. On the Friday they’d ignored each other completely which, far from allaying my fears, made me even more suspicious. Just the same, it was pleasant to have Clara so amicable, whatever the reason.

  ‘I’ve got people to dinner this Saturday,’ I said, ‘ remember? You’re going to the roller rink with the Langleys, it’s Sabina’s birthday.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘Mrs Langley said you could spend the night.’

  She shook her head. ‘No thanks. They’ve got a smelly toddler.’

  ‘Dominic’s a dear little boy,’ I said, perjuring myself.

  ‘He pongs and he comes into Sabina’s room in the mornings and gets into bed with me.’

  ‘Tell him to get into bed with Sabina. Come on, darling, you go to the Langleys, it’ll be much more fun than here, with the place full of grown-ups.’

  I could see her weighing up the pros and cons of further argument. The cons won, which made me even more certain she was up to something.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Put the dress on, let’s have a dekko.’

  It was purple silk, short and loose with elbow-length sleeves and a deep V-neck. At Boutique Meridiana in Basset Regis I had really fancied my chances in it. Eager to show my daughter that there was life in the old bitch yet I pulled off my balding Levis and Barford Athletic Club T-shirt and slipped the purple silk over my head.

  We were both standing plumb in front of the wardrobe mirror, and were able to see simultaneously what kind of figure I cut, and it was not encouraging. I removed my blue towelling socks but that just revealed the ghostly pallor of my feet and ankles on the end of my well-weathered jogger’s legs.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I said.

  Clara tweaked at my wild hair. ‘ Get yourself a perm.’

  ‘I don’t want a flaming perm!’

  ‘Okay, okay. Anyway, it’ll be all right on the night. With a few bits and pieces.’

  ‘Hm. Like a carthorse in brasses.’

  ‘It’s a trif colour.’

  I wasn’t born yesterday, I knew what she meant. I dragged off the dress and stuffed it back in the wardrobe, desperately trying to remember why I’d bought it in the first place. I had wanted something different, something brilliant and dashing that Constantine Ghikas would remember. The girl in Boutique Meridiana had draped beads round my neck and a green cummerbund round my middle and pronounced me a knock-out. Well, I would do the same, dammit. With the cunning accessorising so warmly advocated by the women’s magazines (and, on this occasion, by Clara), I would be a knock-out once again. Perhaps.

  Despondently, I stared out of the window. A child on a pony rode by and I watched listlessly. Oh, to be eleven again. But as the pony’s rolling, rotund backside disappeared round the bend in the road the scales fell from my eyes. I turned, but Clara had gone.

  ‘Clara! Cla-ra!’

  ‘That’s my name …’ Her voice came faintly from her room. I stamped through, still in my underwear, knocked as the caring parent should, but walked in without waiting to be asked. She was lying on her bed pasting fresh cuttings into her Badness album.

  ‘Clara—I’ve just seen another child riding Stu. It looked like Sabina.’


  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Oh—you know about it, do you? Is she competent? I didn’t even know she rode.’

  Clara shrugged. ‘She told me—’

  ‘Does her mother know she’s out on your pony, alone?’

  ‘I dunno. That’s her problem.’

  ‘It’s not at all a good idea to let Stu out unaccompanied like that. She’s not a beginner’s pony, she has a very hard mouth—what if something happened? No more lending, is that clear?’

  ‘Don’t fuss, Mummy, and anyway I haven’t—’ She stopped so abruptly and expressionlessly that for a moment I thought I’d imagined she was going to add something.

  ‘Haven’t what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Haven’t what?’

  ‘I haven’t lent her. I’ve hired her.’

  ‘Clara!’ I experienced both shock and admiration in roughly equal measures. ‘You can’t do that!’

  ‘Well, I have.’

  ‘Don’t be pert with me, young lady!’ I threatened, towering over her. ‘What on earth would Mrs Langley say if she knew?’

  ‘She doesn’t know. I mean she knows Sabina’s riding, but she doesn’t know she’s paying.’

  ‘How much are you charging, for goodness’ sake?’

  ‘Seventy-five pence an hour. It’s great value.’

  I sensed a shift in emphasis to throw me off the scent. ‘It must stop now, do you understand? Now this minute! What do you need the money for anyway?’

  ‘I’m saving up.’

  ‘For what? A racehorse?’

  She hesitated. ‘Some equipment.’

  ‘You’ll have a rise in pocket money in September, wait till then. In the meantime there are some jobs you could do for me which I’ll pay you for. But for God’s sake stop hiring out that pony! Get over to the field now and tell Sabina. And you can tell her you’ll stay on Saturday, while you’re about it.’

  She got up off the bed and went. I followed her on to the landing, but the sound of Gareth and his cronies coming in at the back door reminded me I was in bra and pants and I retreated into the bedroom.

  I’d only just scrambled back into jeans and T-shirt when Gareth walked in, with Brett Troye in close attendance.