Fruitful Bodies

by Morag Joss

  On the fourth, yesterday, coming back from work at six o’clock, Hilary had heard the sound of weeping from behind her door. She would have left her to get on with it, but she might get a late arrival wanting the other room and what sort of advertisement for her establishment was that, the sound of sobbing from next door? Summoning the charm which was going to have to substitute for compassion, she had knocked quietly on the door and asked her if anything was the matter. Mrs Takahashi had apologised and bowed several times. Then a frown had crumpled her small face and she had struggled not to cry again. Hilary had hesitated. She would not venture any enquiry about the absent husband. She did not want to be told about the absent husband, to be thought of as a person who knew about breakups or breakdowns, as if it were written all over her face that she was some kind of expert. Ivan was fine now, that was what mattered, so she had simply said, ‘Good. Well. We’ll see you in the morning then. Eight o’clock for breakfast? Fine.’

  ‘Very private people, the Japanese,’ Ivan had said nonchalantly, when she had told him about it later at supper. ‘Saw her round the garden today, trying to chat to Leech. Obviously at a loose end.’

  ‘Can’t think what she made of Leech. Still, I feel sorry for her,’ Hilary had lied, as she rose to clear their plates. Really, she couldn’t wait for Sunday when Mrs Takahashi’s stay would be over. She had already decided that should she ask to stay longer she would say the room was already booked. But Ivan expected her to be caring about strangers in a baseless, general way and knowing this, she found that she could often sound as if she were. ‘Poor little thing,’ she had added, ruffling Ivan’s hair on her way to the sink.

  Ivan would be down in a minute. Hilary looked at her watch, sucked on the last half-inch of her cigarette and stubbed it out in the scooped-out tomato half on Mrs Takahashi’s plate. It was time. She opened the cupboard and rose up on tiptoe to check the test tube for its little blue ring. Which wasn’t there. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t there. A whole thirty minutes had gone by and the blue ring definitely wasn’t there. Hilary turned from the cupboard and found that in the few seconds during which her back had been turned, somebody had changed the set. The world had been transformed into a warm, generous place, full of people dear to her. Suddenly she knew herself to be warm and generous too, a woman so heaped with blessings that she could not begin to count them all: she was an artist whose fingers were aching to sculpt, the happy wife of darling, damaged Ivan who was going to be so happy now. And Stephen would be so happy too, the most wonderful, generous father-in-law in the world, a brilliant doctor and so much more, a true healer. She scraped the tomato ashtray into the bin along with the rest of the debris on the plate and chucked her cigarette packet in on top. She would give this place a really good going-over. She would redecorate in the autumn. Leech would have to go, of course, which in many ways would be a relief. Perhaps Mrs Takahashi would like an orange for breakfast, or she could try her on grapefruit, or melon, perhaps strawberries, even Ivan’s macrobiotic muesli. She must get the poor little woman to eat. She should perhaps switch to fruit herself, to prepare her body. Ivan would know what to do. She returned to the dining room.

  ‘More tea or toast?’ she offered. Just as she was about to make her offer of fruit tomorrow, she heard Ivan come into the kitchen. With a smile she cleared the last of the breakfast things away and returned. Ivan was getting himself a spoon, looking that sulky, little boy way he did in the mornings, an effect heightened by the checked blue shirt. Hilary dumped Mrs Takahashi’s dishes on the table and sat down out of his way and watched as he mixed flakes, grain and dried fruit from five plastic containers in a bowl, added live yogurt from the fridge and a sprinkling of wheatgerm. She had grown used to his tranquillized lack of excitement over things and she had almost stopped noticing how she mimicked his mood with a detached flatness of her own. Despite her elation she said, in a sleepy voice that seemed to her quite natural for the circumstances, ‘Pass us a banana, pet,’ and pushed her bacon-scented hair off her face. If she announced it calmly, it would simply add to his joy.

  Ivan was leaning against the sink eating his cereal, his long torso slightly, boyishly concave. He pushed himself on to his feet, took a banana from the bowl and tossed it to her.

  ‘Ivan?’

  He was in a good mood. In a bad one he might have ignored her altogether or just handed her the bunch. Encouraged, Hilary rose, crossed the room, took the cereal bowl and spoon out of his hands and put her arms round him. She whispered in his ear, ‘Ivan? I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby at last.’

  Ivan said nothing at first, but by the slight tightening of his hands on her shoulders, and his muffled gulping as he cried into her hair, she knew that he had heard. And was overwhelmed with delight.

  CHAPTER 6

  ANDREW STOPPED ON the pavement at the corner of Green Street and said, ‘I’m not sulking,’ in a voice that made it clear he was.

  Sara appeared not to hear. His eyes left her face and followed the direction in which she was looking. They both watched in silence as Joyce and Pretzel wandered ahead into the crowd in the sunshine. Both sides of Green Street in Bath were lined with trestle tables and awnings; plastic tables, chairs and umbrellas were arranged on the road down the middle and everywhere there were people, inordinate numbers of them in aprons selling and serving food and drink, and many more buying from the stalls, laughing in groups, sitting or standing with plates, glasses and carrier bags. Mingled with the scents of fresh fruits, wood smoke, garlic and grilling meat was an almost tangible layer of amused incredulity that this combination of sunshine, food and people was happening in England, and that was what gave the game away. In France, Italy or Spain it would happen every week and be called the market; in Bath it happened once a year on the last Saturday in July and was called the Bath International Taste Extravaganza, the BITE Festival.

  ‘Good. Glad to hear it,’ Sara murmured. It was a technique that worked with very small children, she believed, simply to swamp petulance with unironic good nature. It appalled her, if she thought about it, that she was using it on Andrew, so she refused to think about it.

  Amid the crowd Joyce remained distinctive, her pink suit and chiffon scarf standing out against the vest tops and shorts of other people. A child, stooping to pat Pretzel, was gently pulled away by its mother. As she ambled slowly from stall to stall down the street, her passage eased by the undeclared cordon sanitaire that surrounded her, Joyce remained separate and alone, although the shy smile and wave which she was now turning to send Sara and Andrew’s way suggested that she was not aware of this.

  ‘Wave. Wave back,’ Sara commanded. ‘Smile.’ Andrew obeyed, then turned to Sara. The smile died on his face as he saw that tears were running down her cheeks.

  ‘Darling,’ he began, taking her hand. ‘Darling, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Sara said. ‘I’m fine. It’s just so awful, seeing her like this. If you’d known how she used to be. We’ve got to do something.’

  Andrew sighed. ‘I know, but what?’ His years as a police officer had shown him more than he had cared to see about chronic alcoholics and he would have described his pessimism over Joyce’s chances of recovery as realistic. He also knew, after three years of loving the passionate, compassionate and downright bloody unreasonable optimism of Sara’s view of people, that she would consider his view offensively cynical. He sighed again.

  Sara was saying earnestly, ‘Look, I know she’s in a bad way, I know other people have probably tried. But don’t you see? She hasn’t sold her cello. She’s sold everything else, bit by bit, but not that. There must be something in that.’

  Andrew nodded. ‘I know, I know.’

  They had, since Thursday morning, been taking care of the now sober, wobbly, but far from contrite Joyce, and had pieced together her unedifying story. It followed the usual pattern: shortly after she had retired, and Joyce did not offer any reason why, the booze had begun to take over, bringing about th
e first of many losses, the respect of acquaintances and friends (‘Just because I took a wee hoot mid-morning, dear. Some folk are awful narrow-minded.’). Next to go was any interest in anything except the next drink and the gradual selling off of just about everything she owned. Joyce had pointed out that three bottles of vodka a day for ten days out of every month soon mounted up, and had gone on to blame the Chancellor of the Exchequer for scandalous excise duty. Then had come the day she first collapsed drunk in public, which she described with vague arm waving and a short discourse on deplorably uneven pavements, marking the loss of her shame at what she had become. When they had reached the end of her sparsely detailed story Sara and Andrew had been surprised by the amount of energy that Joyce held in reserve for her firm denial that she was afflicted by anything more than ‘a wee weakness’. Her friends had been faithless. She did not need to be saddled with owning a flat or furniture so why hang on to them. She tended to faint in the heat. A wee weakness, that was all.

  Sara would have backed off at that point. Andrew had not.

  ‘You call it what you like, and I’ll call it a serious drink problem. And I want to make something clear. While you are a guest in Sara’s house, you do not drink a drop, here or anywhere outside. Understood?’

  Joyce had merely given him a huffy scowl. ‘Who’s he again, dear?’ she had demanded, turning to Sara.

  ‘Because if you do,’ Andrew continued, ‘I am going to make it my business to throw you out. I will not have Sara’s kindness abused. Is that clear?’

  Joyce had changed tack and assumed a ruffled, regal grace. ‘I hope I know my manners,’ she said. ‘I would never let it be said that I outstayed my welcome.’

  That seemed to amount to an uneasy agreement to Andrew’s terms. Sara had looked pleased, as if a problem had been solved. Andrew had kept to himself the knowledge that it was a painless promise for Joyce to make at the end of a binge when her body would need time to recover before it could tolerate another drink. Before it would crave another.

  He squeezed Sara’s hand. ‘No, she hasn’t sold her cello,’ he conceded, silently adding ‘yet’. ‘Of course we’ll help her. I’m sorry. I’m just disappointed. We were going to have the day together on our own, that’s all, and instead we’ve been clothes shopping for’—he substituted a fucking hopeless, drunk down-and-out for—‘a long-lost cello teacher who’s down on her luck. But it’s fine,’ he added hastily. ‘She’s not just your problem, don’t forget.’

  But it was Sara’s house where Joyce was now staying, not theirs. He tried to think this without bitterness, but the fact that they still lived much of the time in separate houses reared up in his mind daily as an obstacle to complete happiness with Sara. He had bought a crummy little flat after his divorce from Valerie, which he was meant to be doing up (he had not lifted a paintbrush) while Sara still had Medlar Cottage, which was easily big enough for them both, as she pointed out, and utterly beautiful, which she didn’t have to. But he had found he could not quite move in. Sara had bought the place with Matteo, and although he had died before he had spent any amount of time in it, it felt like someone else’s territory.

  ‘I know, but we could tackle the problem better if you moved in properly. Sell the flat,’ Sara said.

  They had had this conversation many times. Andrew paused, trying to find a variation in the script.

  ‘Darling, I don’t think Medlar Cottage would be right. Matteo—’

  ‘Why do you have to be such a tomcat about it? Matteo didn’t spray the place, you know.’

  ‘It’s not just that. I think I’d feel—well, swamped. After all it’s not my house, it’s yours. I can’t explain it very well—’

  ‘Oh? Swamped? By me, I suppose? Well, thank you. I’m not a black widow, you know. Do you have to be such a gorilla about territory? I don’t see—’

  ‘Darling—’ Andrew cupped his hands round Sara’s face and kissed her to shut her up. ‘Cut the zoology. It isn’t helping.’

  They walked on, knowing they would return to the subject. They caught up with Joyce at the Fish Market stall. A family of Japanese was crowding round, amused by the sight of sushi in an English food market.

  ‘Awful lot of tourists, aren’t there?’ Joyce said loudly, exempting herself from the category. ‘They’re everywhere.’ As Sara and Andrew exchanged a look of longsuffering over her head, the family moved on.

  ‘See that? What a price for kippers!’ she cried, embarrassing Andrew into buying some. ‘A kipper gives me awful heartburn,’ Joyce confided in her loud voice as Andrew took his change, ‘but the dog likes a head. Don’t you, Pretzel?’

  Sara smiled appeasingly at the stallholder and led Joyce gently by the elbow towards a table in front of the pub across the street, a suspiciously refurbished place now called the Snake and Ladder.

  ‘Now—lunch. Are you hungry, Joyce?’ Andrew asked, without a trace in his voice of anything other than generous good humour. He helped her into her chair and sat next to her. Sara, having wound Pretzel’s lead round the table leg and encouraged him to lie in the shade underneath, took the other seat, kissing Andrew lightly on the head as she sat down, not just for his kindness but for concealing the effort of it. She took up the menu, whimsically decorated with snakes and ladders.

  ‘There’s grilled tuna or curried prawns on ciabatta, or gazpacho,’ she told them, translating the witless themed offerings of python steaks, hot little vipers, and chilled snake soup. ‘Or lasagne and chips.’ Joyce’s lips had almost disappeared in a grimace of uncertainty.

  ‘I expect they could do something plainer for you,’ Andrew ventured. ‘An omelette, maybe, or soup?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not a big eater.’ Joyce managed a brave smile of apology, as if her wrecked stomach lining, still stinging after the ten-day vodka binge, were a mark of gentility. She leaned closer. ‘But I’ve a sweet tooth. Would they have ice cream? Pretzel likes a wafer.’

  ‘I’m sure they will,’ Andrew said, beckoning the waitress. ‘And what to drink? Mineral water, in this weather, yes?’ Everyone seemed to understand that it was a rhetorical question.

  After they had ordered, an atmosphere of waiting for something settled a little sadly over them. Joyce peered round as if in search of something to talk about and took in the covered alley that ran down one side of the pub and connected Green Street and New Bond Street. Halfway down the alley was a side entrance to the pub, with a sign reading Lounge & Toilets. She rose from her seat, whispering to Sara, ‘Just away to spend a penny, dear,’ and had disappeared before Sara could reply.

  Andrew and Sara sat on in silence for a few moments. ‘Well, she did at least go to where the loos are. Not straight through the front entrance to the bar. Should I go after her?’ Sara asked eventually.

  ‘And do what? Stand over her while she pees to make sure she doesn’t slip off to buy a drink? And suppose you stop her this time?’

  ‘She does want to stop, though. She’s as good as said so.’

  ‘Ah yes, so she has. After she’s swallowed so much booze she doesn’t know what to do first—throw up or pass out.’

  Sara gave an exasperated sigh. ‘She needs help. And she didn’t sell her cello.’

  Andrew took her hand. ‘We’ll try to help. But don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work.’

  ‘All right. But she still hasn’t really explained why. I mean, if we knew why. Why would she suddenly start—’

  She was interrupted by sudden high-pitched screaming from inside the pub. All movement in the street, except for heads turning in the direction of the noise, ceased for a moment. Andrew had already jumped up and was making straight for the side entrance. As she followed him Sara was aware of others behind her, also running.

  The darkness in the narrow alley after the bright sunshine stopped her dead. Just inside the entrance of the pub Andrew turned to face her, blocking her way, talking over her head and demanding that the alley be cleared. Already people were backing up behind Sara;
she could feel their breath, sweat and warmth as she was jostled forward. Beyond Andrew, Sara could see a young waitress, standing distraught but holding on, absurdly, to a tall glass of ice cream in one hand and a bowl of chips in the other, her deafening screams reverberating off the walls of the small space. Andrew turned back and stepped forward towards the girl. Sara followed. Deftly he relieved her of the ice cream and chips, turned back and handed them to Sara. One look from his eyes prevented her from demanding what the hell she was supposed to do with them. Andrew now had the girl by the wrists and he pulled her gently towards the entrance, turning once more to insist that the way be cleared. Her screams subsided as Andrew’s voice, steady and gentle, told her she was coming outside and that everything would be fine in a minute. As they edged past, Sara stood transfixed, staring from them to the chips and to the ice cream in her hands, while the knot of people crowding the passage behind her melted out back in to the alley. Andrew turned to her and demanded, over his shoulder, ‘Get her out. She’s down there at the end.’

  Sara made her way down the corridor. A door on the right led to the bar and lounge. An arrow on the wall above the word TOILETS directed her further down. At the end of the corridor was a door, facing back down to the entrance and marked PRIVATE. It was open, and a group of apron-clad young men stood some distance back in the kitchen, looking too stunned to venture into the doorway. Along with the smell of frying wafting from the kitchen came the thump of an inane and very loud radio.