Hot Breath

by Hot Breath (retail) (epub)

  I wondered how she could tell. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. Glynis Makepeace shot past us in full uniform, muttering something. ‘Don’t worry, she’s not exactly a pup, is she?’ The GM jogged by, breathing heavily. ‘I mean, she won’t go far.’

  Eric appeared, and I passed Tanya on to him. I walked on, past Declan’s shed, and between the dwarf apple trees to the parking lot. Anstey was perched on the bumper of the GM’s Roller, reading the Sun and smoking a panatella. At my approach he rose wearily to his feet.

  ‘Don’t disturb yourself,’ I said. ‘Have you had plenty to eat and drink?’

  ‘I have to watch my stomach, madam,’ replied Anstey. ‘Ulcers. I brought a nosebag.’

  I went between the massed ranks of cars to the blackthorn hedge which divided my garden from the neighbouring field and stood in the blackened gap created by Declan’s wasp activities to admire the view. The greenish-bronze corn trembled in the heat. The air was full of a hypnotic pulse of twittering birds and chirping crickets …

  But as I stood there, taking stock, I became conscious of another sound, regular and insistent, and near at hand. It was as though someone were banging the hedge with a carpet-beater, and emitting a faint grunt with the effort of each blow.

  I braced one foot against the bank and peered through the gap. Still I could see nothing, though the noise seemed to be getting louder and more rapid, reaching a crescendo. Braving thorns and spiky twigs I leaned even further forward, craning to right and left, and now I saw something. Unprepared as I was, I at first took it to be the fat, hairless muzzle of some quaint animal—a coypu, perhaps, or breed of fancy pig, with crenellated ears waggling back and forth. But this impression lasted for only a second, until I realised that what I was looking at was the back end of a copulating couple. The pig’s muzzle was a set of buttocks, and what I had taken for ears were the feet of whoever was underneath.

  Fascinated, I climbed right on to the bank to see who it was. When I did, I could only wonder why I had not guessed before. For there were Brenda Tunnel and Declan, going at it with a vigour that would not have disgraced the pistons of the Flying Scotsman in its heyday.

  ‘Cecil … oh, Cecil!’ gasped Brenda, grabbing handfuls of the O’Connell wire wool and pulling. ‘Don’t stop now! Cecil, you’re wonderful …!’ I retreated from the hedge and left them to their big finale. For the first time since my party had begun, a big silly grin spread over my face. Cecil, eh …?

  As I reached the apple trees Gareth appeared, with Sabina in tow. ‘Having fun, kids?’ I enquired affably. I was only glad he had escaped Vanessa’s attentions.

  ‘That funny waiter told me to tell you someone else has arrived,’ replied Gareth.

  ‘Oh really, thank you!’ I cried, and hastened back, via the ghost train to the front of the house. In the angle of the chimney breast I discovered the GM, tie loosened and vowels coarsening by the second, grappling with Akela.

  ‘Everybody all right?’ I said.

  ‘Great party, love …’ mumbled the GM soupily, keeping a detaining hand on Akela’s lanyard, ‘terrific grub … gorgeous girls … marvellous …’

  ‘There’s something going on by the gate,’ remarked Akela. She must have been enjoying herself, she was trying to get rid of me.

  What was going on was the Ghikasmobile, parked at a sharp angle with the front left-hand wheel on the pavement. Kostaki himself was standing in the road, holding the passenger door open.

  I lurched, beaming, to the gate. ‘Hallo!’ I cried. ‘At last!’

  ‘Don’t speak too soon,’ said Kostaki, whose face, I noticed, was the ghastly shade of hummus grey. ‘I’ve got something for you.’ There was a stifled commotion in the passenger seat and then someone got out.

  It was George. He had a large surgical dressing over his right eye.

  ‘Harriet,’ he said, with feeling. ‘Thank God. What the blazes is going on here?’

  ‘I’m having a party,’ I said, opening the gate and admitting the two of them. George and I exchanged kisses. ‘ Hallo, darling. What have you done to yourself?’

  ‘I can see that,’ he said. ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know. For fun,’ I said hollowly. I only wished I could be sure about that. George wore an immaculate pale grey suit with a white shirt (only slightly bloodstained) and a blue silk tie. Kostaki had on a white coat with a thermometer in the pocket and a pair of bermudas.

  ‘I’m very afraid,’ said Kostaki urbanely, taking charge as he had done in Fartenwald, in circumstances at least as bizarre as these, ‘that I backed out of my drive in rather a hurry and just clipped your husband’s hire car—’

  ‘It’s a ruddy write-off,’ said George.

  ‘—absolutely my fault and quite unforgivable,’ went on Kostaki smoothly. ‘No serious damage, but when I found out who George was I thought the least I could do was run him over here. We left the other car at the Rickyard.’

  ‘Thanks awfully,’ I said. I kissed George again, and realised I was inordinately pleased to see him. ‘Look, Constantine, do go and find a drink and something to eat, there are heaps of people you know …’

  ‘Right you are.’ Kostaki beat a retreat, coat flapping.

  I linked my arm through George’s and led him up the path. ‘Darling, I’m so sorry about all this. I wasn’t expecting you.’

  ‘I know. But Harriet, I just had to see you. I had to.’

  I was really touched. ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now you’re here.’

  ‘Yes.’ He glanced about jumpily. ‘ Look, could we go inside—somewhere quiet? I need to be alone with you. I’ve only got thirty-six hours.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Infected by his impatience I ushered him round to the french window and into the house, like a member of the Resistance with an English airman. Even so I heard a cry of ‘Is that George …?’ ring out above the babel, and knew that our precious moments of privacy would be numbered.

  I took him into the bedroom and we sat down on the edge of the bed. He passed his hand over his eyes. He really was in a state, poor love. All the same, I noticed what I’d been in danger of forgetting—that he was at least as tall as Kostaki, and had brown eyes, and was nicely tanned from the Arabian sun. With one big, built-in advantage. I was married to him.

  I leaned over and began loosening his tie. It was nice not to be jumped, for once. I was going to enjoy this.

  But he flinched as though I’d held a flick knife to his throat.

  ‘What are you dressed like that for?’

  I looked down at myself. ‘Oh, this … we’re all dressed as our jobs.’

  ‘When did you become a fairground palmist, then?’

  I laughed heartily, George not at all. ‘Look, Harriet …’

  ‘Yes?’ I smiled lovingly at him. ‘It is nice to see you.’

  ‘Is it? Yes.’

  ‘Yes. It is.’

  ‘The thing is …’ He laced his fingers together and squeezed them as if trying to wring water from his knuckles. ‘ I’ve been having an affair.’

  ‘You have?’ An affair? George? George had been having an affair? I felt hysteria rising in me like the semi-digested Spanish gigglewater which sloshed dangerously in my stomach.

  ‘Who with?’ I asked. I didn’t give a flying fart who with, I was just trying to re-group my stricken forces.

  ‘No one,’ replied George.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I mean, no one you would know. An older woman.’

  This struck me, in my debilitated state, as hilariously funny. George was middle-aged, for God’s sake! Who had he been poking, an octogenarian?

  ‘How much older?’

  ‘Well, a bit. But she doesn’t seem it,’ he added hurriedly, defending his taste in women.

  ‘Someone else’s wife?’ I asked hopefully. That at least would be a tick against my name in the Great Book of Life.

  ‘Certainly not,’ said George, rather more like his old self
. ‘A widow.’

  ‘But a merry one, obviously,’ I remarked bitterly.

  George blushed fierily. ‘I won’t hear a word against her,’ he said. ‘None of it was Anna’s fault, I was completely infatuated—’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I was. Completely.’

  ‘No, but who with? Anna?’

  ‘Yes. I think it’s over now, though. But it shook me, I can tell you.’

  I wondered if I told him everything, now, whether we might strike some kind of bargain. Or, alternatively, commit hara-kiri.

  ‘What did Anna make of it all?’ I asked, with genuine interest.

  ‘Oh, it was nothing much to her,’ said George, with uncharacteristic modesty. ‘She’s a woman of the world, marine archaeologist, a man in every port sort of thing …’ he sighed. ‘ It was just a fling. But I’m so terribly, terribly sorry. I came here to tell you that. The guilt’s been destroying me. Can you forgive me?’

  I had an idea I’d written the lines for this encounter in one of my earlier books.

  ‘We’ve been through a lot,’ I said, quite untruthfully. ‘Why throw it all away at this stage? Things may not be the same, but perhaps that doesn’t matter. We have a good marriage, and that counts for something, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Harriet,’ said George solemnly. ‘ I don’t deserve you.’

  That much at least was true.

  We went down into the garden and George got a hero’s welcome. It was a funny thing, but he’d behaved at least as badly as me, and flown hundreds of miles in order to tell me so. So why did he look like a new man? I was quite sure if I’d gone all the way to Riyadh to apprise him of my doings I should still have been stretched face down on the carpet licking his handmade shoes and sobbing for forgiveness. All the same, he had arrived at the optimum moment. I would try to forgive him his little fling with Anna Ghikas, especially in view of what I was keeping back. And his protracted convalescence from guilt would ensure that he was unreceptive to rumours about me.

  Yes, it had all worked out for the best. Then why did I feel so bloody? Some kind of cockney rock was pounding over the loudspeakers. Barty and Dilly were doing the twist. Akela and the GM were imbuing the palais glide with their own brand of sullen fire. Bernice and Mike were … well, Bernice and Mike were going it a bit, quite frankly. They were actually locked in one another’s arms without even the shallowest pretence at dancing. Bernice’s abundant flesh bulged through the interstices in her crochet dress, giving her a quilted appearance. The daintily scalloped hem was rising ever higher over her generous thighs.

  ‘Mike?’

  It was Linda, tall, neat and every inch the high-powered woman executive, in a Thatcher-blue suit and stilettos. Mike looked round at her with the slow, relaxed affability of the inordinately well-refreshed.

  ‘Yes, dear?’ Two words that have launched a thousand marital blaggings.

  ‘I just wanted to tell you you’re a conceited, pusillanimous, two-faced, double-dyed shit,’ said Linda. And pushed the two of them into the pond.

  I turned away. I was absolutely beyond surprise. The faces of Attwood & Co were gathered at the kitchen window, with eyes like saucers. Just by the french window Spot was wolfing down petits bateaux de fromage from a willow-pattern serving dish. So at least he was back, and the police had not called. I summoned him, retrieved the cord and tied it to his collar.

  ‘Come on, boy,’ I said, ‘let’s go for a little walk.’

  On the way I looked in on the barn, having it in mind to extend cordial thanks to Damon and Clara for their efficient and blameless contribution to the day’s proceedings.

  The two of them were sitting on the floor, holding hands.

  ‘Hallo, Mummy,’ said Clara. It was the first time in months she’d actually sounded like a child. ‘What I really want to do is leave school and go on the road with Damon and the disco.’

  Damon struggled to his feet, perhaps less out of deference to me than to relieve the all-too-obvious congestion in his black trousering.

  ‘She’s a great kid,’ he opined loftily.

  I think that was what really got to me. Great kid? My beautiful, intelligent, haughty, horse-mastering daughter—a great kid?

  ‘Damon,’ I said, advancing like some avenging phantom into the barn, ‘ Damon, you have abused your position in my employ. You’re fired.’

  ‘It’s cool,’ he replied without rancour. ‘I was leaving anyway.’

  I rounded on Clara. ‘ Clara!’ I snapped—and then the wind went right out of my sails. How on earth could I come the heavy parent when the whole property was overrun with drunken adults whose thoughts alone, never mind whose deeds, would make anything contemplated by Damon and Clara look like a brownies’ picnic?

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ I finished tamely. And then added: ‘ Your father’s back, why don’t you go and say hallo to him?’

  ‘Daddy, ace!’ shouted Clara. Fleetingly, Damon and I were united in our sense of rejection. Then I swept out.

  I went along to Stu’s field, and stood in the shade by the gate, calling her by name. I didn’t like her much, but there is something soothingly consistent and detached about animals, removed as they are from the vagaries of passion and of conscience.

  To my surprise Stu hurtled towards me with her ears pressed back as if planning to jump into my arms like a horse in a cartoon. Almost immediately I saw why, for behind her galloped her field-companions, geldings both, nostrils like blast furnaces, poor old tools at the ready, the equine embodiment of the aphorism that it is better to travel hopefully … Stu was in season.

  She galloped almost to the fence, then sensed that she was being cornered, snapped at me, wheeled about at her hapless suitors and pursued them with a piercing whinny of outrage to the far corner of the field. The entire incident had taken about thirty seconds. I sighed wearily. Was I actually the only creature in the entire parish of Basset Magna who was not getting, or planning soon to get, their end away?

  ‘Oh, Harriet!’

  No, there was at least one other. I brightened. It was Tanya Lowe, on her way home, with the redoubtable Sukey waddling on her chain.

  ‘Lovely party,’ she called. ‘Made a really nice change.’

  Knowing what I did of the goings-on chez Lowe, I did not doubt it.

  ‘Glad you liked it, Tanya,’ I said. ‘And I see you found Sukey.’

  ‘Yes, silly old thing,’ said Tanya affectionately. ‘It’s up the kennel for her now, I reckon she’s coming on heat. Cheerio, Harriet.’

  ‘ ’Bye, Tanya,’ I said.

  Spot and I watched her go. Spot sat still, eyes half-closed, tongue lolling, ears at half mast. I should have known that look. Sukey had a bright pink backside. We could expect a litter of little Spookys.

  Back at the house the pond incident had resulted in a hasty regrouping of forces. Everyone was busily trying to demonstrate that whatever they personally had been up to, it had only been a manifestation of the party spirit and definitely not to be taken seriously.

  It was too late for Mike and Bernice, though, who were standing on the lawn like a couple of mud wrestlers while Nita and Baba mopped them with paper napkins. Marilyn, for reasons of her own, was kneeling with her head over the pond. Linda was weeping in George’s arms, and George was looking over her head at Arundel, listening attentively to whatever Arundel was saying. His look of rapt concentration led me to believe that whatever it was, it concerned him directly.

  Something told me that the study was the only place to go. After all, TRT and its forebears might soon be my last and only toe-hold on the slippery slope of self-regard.

  I opened the door to find Kostaki and Vanessa there before me, standing and gazing down at the tripewriter like a young married couple admiring their first-born.

  ‘Hallo there,’ said Kostaki. ‘Just popped up to do some work?’

  He couldn’t fool me. I recognised the voice which, like the conjurer’s free hand, distracts attention from the one being re
moved from a lady’s underwear. But I was much too tired to play games.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Harriet, my love,’ gushed Vanessa, ‘ I was just looking for the upstairs loo and I stumbled on your den. And you’ve finished!’

  ‘Only the first draft,’ I said discouragingly.

  ‘Never mind, just the same—what a lovely surprise!’

  There was an awkward silence. But not for long. Kostaki took the thermometer from his pocket, studied it, and pronounced: ‘A hundred and four. I badly need fluids. Excuse me, ladies.’ Gone, and never called me lover …

  ‘Isn’t he a scream?’ said Vanessa. I stared at her cloddishly. She adjusted her expression to one of serious sensitivity. ‘But Harriet, your last few paragraphs, they are so moving. I was just saying to Kostaki—’

  ‘Vanessa,’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Take this,’ I said, removing the final page of TRT from the tripewriter, putting it with the rest, and handing her the whole lot. ‘Take this moving story of pride and passion. Find the room you were looking for. And shove the whole turgid lot up your arse.’

  To be fair, she went chalk white, before emitting a hyenaish laugh and diving for the door just as George appeared there with a face like Mr Barrett of Wimpole Street.

  ‘Oh Harriet—!’ she screeched. ‘ You’re marvellous. George, your wife is absolutely marvellous!’

  ‘So they tell me,’ said my husband.

  Copyright

  First published in 1985 by Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd

  This edition published 2014 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.co.uk/bello

  ISBN 978-1-4472-8982-1 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-8980-7 HB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-8981-4 PB

  Copyright © Sarah Harrison, 1985

  The right of Sarah Harrison to be identified as the