Why did Baxter treat him so badly?
As soon as I’d recovered my health I began to keep her under close observation. It wasn’t easy because she forbade me to enter the house and I had to live in the summerhouse where Charlie would prepare my meals and sleep with me through those long bitter nights when she tossed him from the marriage bed. But a dog is not without cunning and I made myself a frequent yet invisible guest in that god-forsaken ideal home.
At first it seemed they wanted for nothing.
They had silver in the kitchen and marble in the bathroom. They had chickens in the freezer and a television in every room. They had all the trinkets and trash that are advertised as lending meaning to life. Baxter even had her own studio at the top of the house. It was larger and better equipped than Charlie’s room. But, like Charlie, she did not paint. Something had gone wrong with their lives. The passion and dedication, the enthusiasm they’d shared for the casual life of the artist, had gradually withered and died. They had everything they wanted but along the way they had lost all hope.
The chicken slaughterer was not to blame. He had done everything for the best and spared no expense in providing for their comfort. They were suffocated in comfort. And in the midst of this plenty they discovered a terrible emptiness.
Baxter looked at herself in the mirror and saw that, despite her Hot Bitch Rubber Harness, she was after all a butcher’s daughter and she would never be a high society prostitute nor a portrait painter to the rich and famous nor even a footnote in the modern art histories. And she began to resent Charlie for snatching her away from her art school dreams and locking her in this concrete castle.
Charlie, for his part, caught sight of his reflection and no longer recognised the man who stared back at him. He still thought of himself as an artist, believed that he had been born a painter, but he looked like a worn-out office clerk wearing a non-crease city suit and clutching his plastic attache case with combination locks. He was getting a little heavier, his hair was turning grey and he had a silver feather pinned to his lapel. He looked at his reflection and wept.
They were lost. They were somnambulists, moving from room to room in a trance. They struggled sometimes to shake themselves awake, fought and squabbled and threatened to leave; but they no longer had the strength to resist and would sink silently back into the depths of their poisoned sleep.
The world could come to an end without shaking them from their slumber. Indeed, the world was coming to an end and they watched it every night on TV. They saw the blood of the last elephant leaking into the African dust. They saw fire erupt in the last forests being cleared to make highways to nowhere. They saw oceans blazing with oil and beaches littered with the rotting corpses of unknown creatures from the deep. They saw men reduced to skeletons, crawling through fields of razor wire, scratching in vain for a few grains of rice. They saw monstrous worms with human heads slither from lakes of nuclear mud. They saw the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, howl in the straw of lambing sheds. And when they caught sight of these things they yawned, flicked channels and turned to the game shows.
41.
Baxter was the first to break the spell.
I’d been living in the pavilion for a month or more and had already mastered the art of breaking into the house. As soon as Charlie had gone to work I’d worm a path through the overgrown lawn, prise myself through an open window and spend the time watching Baxter from a dozen cracks and crevices.
She slept late and once she’d dragged herself from her bed, wandered the house in her dressing gown. She divided the lonely day between eating, sleeping and watching TV. Sometimes she ventured as far as the studio in the attic but these were rare visits and, once there, she did nothing more than stand at the window to stare at the lawn.
And then, one morning, there was a ring at the door. When Baxter went to answer it she found herself confronted by a huge grinning woman in a pair of canvas dungarees. This woman was built like a champion Turkish wrestler. She had a large loose mouth and dark protruding eyes. Her hair had been cropped to the scalp and her feet prised into a pair of shimmering snakeskin boots decorated with small brass bells.
‘What is it?’ Baxter snarled, scowling in angry disbelief at this pair of ridiculous ogre’s slippers. ‘If you’re selling God you’re wasting your time—we’re Orthodox Satanists.’
The woman gave a trumpet of laughter, threw her arms around Baxter and lifted her clean from the ground.
Baxter started to scream and must have felt her ribcage bend for she promptly wilted, hanging loose in the woman’s arms.
‘It’s Patch!’ roared the assailant, dropping Baxter to earth again. ‘Patch Armstrong. Don’t you remember? We were at art school together. I was the one who made all those terrible beer can sculptures. They threw me out when I tried to exhibit a giant painting I made from some really weird photographs we found in Posing Pouch Magazine!’
‘They threatened to call the vice squad,’ Baxter said, the memories swarming in her head.
‘And told me to see a doctor.’
‘Those photographs were very weird.’
‘My paintings were no bowls of roses.’
‘You were the skinny one called Spider!’
‘That’s me.’
Baxter stared at the swag-bellied stranger and the shock must have frozen her face because Patch felt obliged to offer some explanation as she squeezed her immensity through the door and went jangling in search of the kitchen.
There were many sound reasons for Patch Armstrong’s inflation. She argued that:
1) A woman’s body was a cinema screen upon which men were encouraged to project their sinister power fantasies and to sabotage this cinema screen was an act of political sabotage.
2) Men wanted women starved to skeletons because the fashion industry was a sado-masochistic conspiracy between (A) powerful but emotionally-retarded industrialists with the imaginations of child pornographers and (B) weak-minded women prepared to be reduced to prepubescent waifs in return for the favours of these snivelling jackals of capitalism.
3) A woman’s body, inflated to gigantic proportions, presented a challenge to all the traditional Judeo-Christian courtship rituals to which women had historically been expected to surrender and exposed men, for the first time, to the dangers imagined or otherwise, of physical and sexual abuse.
There were other reasons but Patch Armstrong was content to leave these verses unsung because she had found the fridge and was breaking into the salad box. She might look like a sixpenny side show but she was, she claimed, a ruthless freedom fighter, a dedicated killing machine.
She told Baxter about the fat women tribes of West Africa and the Earth Mother cults of the Caribbean and a lot of other stuff that Baxter didn’t really understand but it felt dangerous and exciting to have this woman in the house and she tried to encourage her to talk by sitting her down at the kitchen table and feeding her coffee and cake.
‘No coffee,’ Patch said, crunching on a celery stick. ‘I used to have a serious caffeine problem. Remember the coffee I drank at college? I must have been on a gallon a day. But I broke the habit. Who wants to be an addict? Do you have any natural orange juice?’
‘I’ve got some grapefruit juice,’ Baxter said, turning to search in the fridge and check the damage to her salad box.
‘Is it fresh-squeezed?’
‘Fresh-squeezed from sun-kissed whole fruit. Keep chilled. Consume within six weeks of purchase,’ Baxter said, frowning as she read the carton. She must have bought it months ago. She pinched open the wings and waved the carton under her nose.
‘Fine,’ Patch Armstrong said, stretching an arm. ‘Don’t bother finding a glass.’
‘Do you want some cake?’ Baxter asked, returning to the table and staring pessimistically at the glistening fruit cake she’d already unwrapped and arranged on a plate.
‘Ugh! I don’t know how you can eat that junk! It’s nothing but white flour, sugar syrups and twelve kinds of animal fat. Disgustin
g.’
‘I suppose it is rather rich,’ Baxter said, looking disappointed. She picked at the cake as she took it away and slipped a sultana into her mouth.
‘Rich? There’s enough cholesterol in a slice of that stuff to turn your blood into toffee.’ She threw back her head and took a long swig of grapefruit juice, squeezing the carton in her dimpled fist.
‘Do you want something else?’ Baxter said, sensing she should apologise for trying to poison her guest.
‘I’ll have another stick of celery, if you can spare it,’ Patch gasped, wiping the sides of her mouth with her thumb. ‘And maybe some toast and peanut butter? Do you have any whole-grain bread? You have to watch what you eat. Most of the food you buy these days is pure unadulterated toxic crap. It’s nothing but rat bait. I haven’t touched processed food in years.’
‘What do you eat?’ Baxter asked, staring in admiration at her visitor’s prize-winning paunch. Wet concrete and steel rivets. Broken lightbulbs and razor blades.
‘I’m on the Miracle Nature Diet™,’ Patch said slapping her gut. ‘Lentils and grains, leaf and root crops, yoghurt and honey, no meat, white fish, no eggs, herb tea, fruit juice, garlic oil capsules, royal jelly, morning primrose, mineral salts, ginseng root and pots of blackstrap molasses.’
‘You look good on it,’ Baxter said, as she set about making toast. It certainly didn’t allow her to starve. She could put a death lock on a mountain gorilla.
‘You should try it for a few weeks,’ Patch said. ‘Clean out your system. Save your life.’
While the big woman prattled and fondled her fat, I managed to work my way under the table and settled silently under her chair. Her snakeskin boots leaked the sour odours of closed rooms, laundry baskets, incontinent cats and all the other miserable stinks of her own crapaudiere.
Patch had called at the house to invite Baxter to submit a painting to the annual Women Against exhibition. These exhibitions were organised by a feminist group known as the Militant Mothers and Patch Armstrong was the leading light. The previous year they had mounted Women Against the Exploitation of Immigrant Mexican Textile Workers, which had not been a great success, and this year they hoped to broaden the appeal with Women Against the Horrors of War. Sixty women artists had been invited to contribute their work.
Patch Armstrong didn’t bother to ask Baxter if she had continued to paint after leaving art school. Such doubts hadn’t entered her head. Baxter Pangloss had been the star of the show. Patch took it for granted that the school’s most beautiful student would now be enjoying a dazzling international success. And Baxter felt so flattered to be asked to contribute to the Women Against exhibition that without a moment’s hesitation she boldly accepted the challenge.
‘Where are you holding the show?’
‘At the TWAT,’ Patch said. ‘The Women’s Art Theatre. It’s an old cinema we found near Russell Square.’
'When?’
‘You’ve only got seven weeks,’ Patch said, brushing down her dungarees and flicking toast crumbs into my ears.
Baxter looked doubtful. She didn’t know if she still had the knack and Patch expected a masterpiece delivered in less than two months.
‘I’m sorry,’ Patch said. ‘I know it doesn’t give you much time. I had trouble finding your address. But it’s going to be a tremendous show. We’ve got a women’s mime group who are going to perform a piece they’ve written about Japanese prisoner of war camps and I’m hanging a series of abstracts based on some aerial photographs taken after the bombing of Dresden and there’ll be a make-up artist who paints children to look like victims of chemical weapons and a woman who shaves her head and hobbles about naked pretending to be the survivor of the nuclear holocaust. She screams like a bitch and squirts blood from a rubber bottle. Tremendous. Will you do something?’
‘I don’t know. There’s so little time.’
‘It really would make such a difference.’
‘I’ll try,’ Baxter said.
Patch looked pleased. ‘Make it something really big,’ she said and snapped at another slice of toast with her horrible, bone-smashing teeth. ‘Don’t spare their feelings. We want to give them nightmares for weeks.’
So Baxter set to work planning her war memorial to honour the women and children who had fallen in the world’s great wars. It was hard for her to imagine the horror. She made countless sketches and studies but everything seemed to lack conviction. Her bombed landscapes looked like fruit puddings. Her dead looked like sunbathers basking in mud. Finally she abandoned her easel and settled on building a totem pole, strung with the broken bodies of babies. She was never a subtle woman.
She didn’t tell Charlie about Patch Armstrong. She didn’t tell him about the Women Against the Horrors of War exhibition. She was involved in her first important arts festival and she didn’t want to share the glory. It was none of his business. She’d squandered enough of her energy trying to encourage Charlie to paint and now it was time to rescue her own wasted talents.
He came home one evening to find her sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by dozens of Burpie™ dolls. These dolls were fat rubber babies that belched when you gave them a squeeze. They were sold with a range of cute Burpie™ wardrobes. Burpie goes to the Beach™. Burpies Birthday Barbecue™. Baxter was stripping her Burpie™ dolls and inserting meat skewers into their chests.
Charlie walked into the room, stared at the carnage all around him and dropped his attaché case to the floor. He was appalled. He must have thought that the queen of sleaze had finally lost her marbles. I pushed my head around the door and offered him some encouragement with a series of blood-freezing howls.
‘What are you doing?’ he shouted. ‘Jesus Christ, Baxter, what are you doing?’
Baxter looked startled, as if she’d been found in the arms of some muscle-bound lover. ‘I’m working,’ she said as she skewered another of her doomed rubber babies.
‘But what is it?’
‘Skewered babies.’
‘Why?’
‘They represent slaughtered innocence,’ Baxter said, as if this were a perfectly sound explanation. ‘I should have thought it was obvious.’
Charlie had no time to pursue his interrogation because, at that moment, Baxter caught sight of me trying to hide between his legs.
‘Keep that animal away from the table Charlie!’ she shouted in alarm. ‘I’m warning you—if it upsets my work I’ll wring its neck!’
‘He’s only a little dog,’ Charlie said, as if he were talking to a frightened child. ‘He won’t hurt you. He wants to be friends. He won’t do any harm in the house—his manners are perfect.’
‘Get out!’ she screamed.
It’s dangerous to argue with a woman brandishing a bundle of meat skewers. So Charlie found something to cook for supper and hurried down to the summerhouse with his faithful companion at his heels. When we ventured back to the house the mutilated Burpies were gone and Baxter was locked in the attic.
42.
‘Oh, that’s typical!’ Geraldine said, rudely interrupting Einstein’s trance. ‘She sends Charlie out to work for her father and then settles down to a life of leisure. Why didn’t you complain? You were the man of the house. Why didn’t you stay home and paint? She was nothing special, despite all her airs and graces. Some of those drawings she made were disgusting!’
‘It was just a dream,’ Charlie said sadly. ‘I knew, by that time, I was never going to be an artist. The world is made of men learning to live apart from their dreams.’
‘Art is the desire to be different. The desire to be elsewhere,’ Einstein murmured and farted.
‘What?’
‘Nietzsche,’ Einstein said, looking surprised.
‘You really are a very peculiar dog,’ Charlie said.
‘You should have talked to that nice Mr Harry,’ the ghost sighed. ‘I liked him. He wanted to help you.’
There was nothing much left of her now but a shadow floating against the ceiling. S
he drifted as far as the window and turned, kicking out her feet and swimming towards the opposite wall.
‘I missed Harry,’ Charlie said. ‘I can’t deny it. And he tried hard enough to make contact. He didn’t hold any grudges. But I stayed away from him because I knew that he’d upset Baxter. Whenever he phoned she would always complain and want to pick a fight.’
'Jealous!’ Geraldine said.
‘He wanted to make her acquaintance,’ Charlie said. ‘And a few weeks after we were married he came down to visit the house. It wasn’t easy for him. But he came bearing gifts—flowers, champagne and a bottle of perfume.’
‘A bottle of perfume!’ Geraldine said. ‘He knew his manners. Lovely. A proper gentleman.’
‘No,’ Charlie said. ‘He bought the perfume in the market. The trader was an old friend who mixed all sorts of fake French perfumes in the back of an East End warehouse and sold them in fancy bottles with badly printed labels. He’d been doing it for years.’
‘Did Harry know the perfume was fake?’
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘But it didn’t make any difference to him. He loved fakes. His freaks were fakes. He was proud of them. He couldn’t see anything wrong with it.’
‘It’s the thought that counts,’ Geraldine said.
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s the thought that counts and the trader thought that Harry was setting out on some romantic episode and he liked Fat Harry and wanted to help him so he slipped him his largest bottle of Domination—a full pint measure—with a free gift hidden inside the box.’
‘What happened?’ Einstein asked.
‘Baxter was impressed. She loved the flowers and adored the champagne and then she opened the perfume and found her mystery gift.’
‘What was it?’
‘A pair of lacy black rayon panties embroidered with scarlet valentine hearts.’
‘Good grief!’ Einstein whistled.
‘Baxter was furious. She thought that Harry wanted her to wear them. She thought that I had told him about the Hot Bitch Rubber Harness. She thought we had planned it together.’
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