‘Ah, that little blonde,’ cried Claude, ‘going with me to the chippie for those Chinese roll things … such a dear sweet thing. She thought I was a priest.’
Victorian Norman wriggled on his chair. He remembered the blonde with delight.
‘She got attacked the night of my father’s funeral,’ I said. I started to mention the fog but trailed off, because of Edward. I wasn’t sure whether he’d appreciate my being jokey about a funeral, about my Papa, about my little plantation weed with the cheekbones and the stained homburg hat.
Claude understood my problem. His head wagged, and a globule of red wine shook from his gold beard and stained the cloth. I had to look away. Julia put the kettle on. Edward looked embarrassed and lit another cigarette.
‘We’ll make a night of it,’ said Claude, looking at me.
‘If you don’t mind,’ said Edward, pushing back his chair and standing upright, ‘I’d like to spend the beginning of my birthday in bed.’
Not even Shebah laughed. We looked at him, and I said, ‘Of course,’ and he said good night politely to them all and bent his head to go through the low door into the shop.
‘I reckon,’ said Claude, ‘that one’s all right.’
I sat for five minutes feeling womanly and important, and smiling at everything, and when I left them to go upstairs Victorian Norman was standing at the sink with his arm round Julia. Shebah and Claude had their heads together in a parody of the rustic china lovers on the wall.
Edward was in bed, leaning on one elbow, watching me come through the door.
‘Happy birthday,’ I said.
‘I love you, I love you,’ he said.
‘Here’s your present,’ I said. ‘Change it if you don’t like it.’
I laid the striped shirt on the coverlet.
‘It’s just perfect,’ he said.
‘Many happy returns.’
‘I love you. Please, I love you,’ he told me.
I was worried in case his lighted cigarette burned the blankets while we kissed.
‘Let me go and do my teeth,’ I said.
I could hear the others talking and Shebah shouting downstairs as I washed. I didn’t know what to do. I kept remembering what Victorian Norman had said I must do, and I kept thinking I must do it, and yet I wished I could just tell the truth. There was an awful lot of hot water, but I felt Edward might be hurt if I took too much time washing, so I just rinsed my face and put some of Julia’s perfume behind my ears, and some on my stomach, and combed my hair. Then I went back and got into bed and Edward switched off the light. Once the light went out I felt as if I was wrapped in cotton wool and a million miles from anyone.
Edward touched my cheek gently. ‘It’s a lovely shirt. It really is a nice shirt. Thank you.’
My cheek clung to his shoulder, damp with heat. My eyes stared into the darkness.
‘Is it really your collar size, Edward?’ I asked.
His hand stroked my hair to ease my disappointment. ‘Well, not really,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t matter, really it doesn’t.’
‘You’re sure?’ I said.
‘We could frame it and put it on the mantelpiece,’ he suggested.
We laughed. He wrapped his arms about me, and I felt very cheerful. Surely he was implying that it would be our mantelpiece. I was so grateful I nearly told him about Billie, only I knew at the end it would have left me anxious for physical contact and Edward would have been withdrawn and miserable. And Victorian Norman had told me I mustn’t tell him, not ever, if I wished this time to be peaceful.
‘Why are you crying?’ Edward touched my eyelids with his fingers – which felt like paper and smelt of tobacco – and I said, ‘Because I’m happy.’ Which was the truth. I can’t help my ephemeral emotions. I decided long ago that it is my greatest weakness, this inability to sustain any sense of misery. I’m like the bubbles in a glass of fizzy lemonade. I keep rising to the top.
‘So am I. You make me happy,’ said Edward.
Outside the room a chorus began. ‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Edward …’
There was a great deal of laughing, of shuffling. Someone, Claude of course, began to turn the door handle. I laughed loudly to let them know that it was a great joke, spluttering my appreciation against Edward’s shoulder. Over the noise Julia said, ‘No, Claude, no’, and they moved away still singing, a little band of happy wanderers.
‘They do mean it kindly,’ I told the silent Edward in the darkness – though of course they didn’t, at least not Claude. Not unkindly either. It was just that they wanted to protect me, most of all from myself. Faintly I heard Shebah singing, ‘Let’s start all over again, let us be sweethearts once more.’ It’s one of her favourite songs. Usually she dances to it. At the last two lines she always gathers up her short skirts in her hands, lifts one plump shoulder and shouts, almost in tears, ‘Though the fault was mine, to forgive is divine …’ Then there’s a pause, a coquettish flutter of eyelashes, and a sideways canter into imaginary wings … ‘So let’s start all over again.’
Edward stubbed out his cigarette and I muttered ‘Happy birthday’ into his ear, kissing his face all over, until he buried me under love, and I went willingly enough, knowing how important it was to the future.
From a distance I heard Norman’s laugh as he went into the bathroom. I said into the darkness, ‘I do love you, you know.’
And Edward replied, ‘Then it’s all right, it’s all right, love.’
I felt calm and a bit bumptious and I had to turn away from him lest I cling to him and spoil everything. And what would I do then, poor thing, poor thing.
Being calm was like looking at an aerial landscape – very silent, with a network of little roads and hedges and rivers, and trees bunched like fists and saddles of pines flung over hills, and small stone walls separating handkerchief fields – everything little and geometrical and in each square groups of people moving: parents and relations and the hotel waiter, and Shebah and Victorian Norman, and Billie in a matchbox car and, alone near a river, myself, looking up with pebble eyes. It was so ordered and on such a graspable scale that I felt that the pattern of my life wasn’t so complicated after all. All I had to do was to step over into another field and somebody would hold my hand.
In the next room I could hear Shebah still singing. Very carefully I moved out of one side of the visitors’ bed, and stood listening to make sure Edward was asleep. I went to the bathroom to comb my hair. I put up a hand and pulled the light cord. There was me in the mirror opposite, round-shouldered and hook-nosed, and Victorian Norman and Julia in an embrace. Norman’s laugh billowed out and Julia moved her hands blindly across the wash basin, reaching for her glasses. Almost at once Claude came into the bathroom. He reached out and held me against his shirt front. ‘Nice time, dear one,’ he said, and smiled fondly while his blue eyes took in Julia’s pink face. Two buttons were undone at the neck of her cream blouse. ‘Good God, girl,’ he said, very quietly, and I knew exactly what he meant and nothing was solved after all.
After a time one has to pretend that certain things matter in order to appear normal – it’s all so feeble. Julia was upset, I could tell. She followed Claude worriedly out of the doorway. I combed my hair, and Victorian Norman went on rubbing at the toothpaste stains on the glass, shrugging his shoulders up and down to compose himself. I didn’t speak, knowing how he hates immediate discussion and that his mind would be full of thoughts of what he would have done and what he might have done if he hadn’t been interrupted. He started to whistle, very shrilly, the tune of ‘Sussex-by-the-Sea’. Then we went into the living-room, and he stroked my bottom just as we entered. I leaped almost on top of Shebah, who stood, still singing, braceleted arms stretched out to an invisible audience near the gramophone. She stopped in the middle of a note, and said, ‘Oh darling’, sadly, and entreatingly, as if she thought I shouldn’t be there. Claude gave me a drink and a ciggie and I sat with my feet curled up
under my pink striped nightgown. Because of Billie I’ll never willingly show my ankles again.
‘What’s happened, darling?’ demanded Shebah. ‘Are you all right, darling?’
There we sat all together – Julia was in the bedroom repairing her lipstick – graduates of the University of Life, three of us immoral, cynical and lost, and Shebah, the music-hall nun, mad for half a lifetime, emitting signals of sensitivity. Victorian Norman was listening respectfully to Claude, who was talking about his departed Sarah. ‘There was real glory, man,’ he repeated, ‘real glory.’ Claude and I smiled at each other across the room as Shebah moved between us and stood peering down at me in the lap of the velvet chair.
‘It’s no good, darling,’ she said, ‘you can’t deceive me.’ Her eyes, bulging like marbles, searched my face for some sign of distress, some explanation as to why I had left my bridal bed. Her fat hand came down with a shiver of bangles, to test whether my forehead were hot to the touch.
‘I’m all right, Shebah,’ I said. ‘Edward fell asleep, and I thought I would like a cigarette.’
When Julia came back into the room, with adjusted hair and freshly painted mouth, Shebah concentrated on her. She stood, hand on hip, talking to Julia, glancing at me from time to time, her rubber lips stretching and spitting out sounds, looking like some welfare worker explaining the blanket situation to her second-in-command. I might have been an evacuee waiting to be billeted. With all the drinking and smoking I felt a bit hysterical, so I shut my eyes tight, and there was an image of Billie’s check coat. It was as if a hand had suddenly caught my heart and squeezed it. I dug my teeth into my lip and asked myself over and over, ‘Who are you? What’s your name? Don’t lie. What’s the full name?’ … until gradually the squeezing stopped and little by little my heart filled out again. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant. There was a kind of pained elation I wanted to share, so I opened my eyes, but neither Claude nor Victorian Norman was in the room and Shebah, who anyway only responds when grief is secretive, had her back to me. After a while I went down the wooden stairs, under the flying angel at prayer, and through the shop to the backyard scented with leaves. Broken statues lay in the grass. It was too cold to go very far. Anyway, I wanted to be noticed. I’m useless when I’m not noticed.
I sat down at a wrought-iron table and heard a funny noise like someone pumping up a tyre. It was Claude, stripped to the waist, wielding a spray filled with insecticide. ‘I reckon the thing to do is submit,’ he said.
‘There’s not much else I can do,’ I agreed. I didn’t really know what he meant, but that’s not important with Claude. ‘Have you managed to have a talk with him yet?’ I asked. ‘Have you told him nice things about me?’
‘Wait and see,’ he said. He sent another cloud of spray into the night air before coming to sit on the wooden bench by the table. A moth, feeble in a ray of light from the upper windows of the house, fluttered above our heads.
‘It won’t be great glory, my love,’ said Claude insanely, rubbing a fold of skin pouched from the barrel of his ribs. ‘However, it will be a solution.’ He raised his eyes to the windows above and informed me, ‘Edward has just gone from bed to bog for the third time.’
‘I’ll go up presently,’ I said.
‘I should,’ he replied.
His fingers lay motionless across my feet. I leaned my jaw against my knees and sniffed my own musk smell. It’s odd how other people’s smells are awful and your own’s all right. Unless you really like someone.
It was nice sitting there, but something was wrong. There was a feeling of strain at the roof of my mouth, as if I’d started to yawn but forgotten to complete the act. When I looked at the wistaria with its twisted stem clinging to the centre wall of the house, leaves shifted – and there was Billie’s coat again, made out of fingers of light, black and white, with three round moving buttons. I can’t actually see the coat if I try to imagine it, but it’s always there when I don’t expect it. The coat isn’t a noun, it’s almost a verb. It’s I coat and You coat, though it’s difficult to explain, most of all to myself. Fortunately I’m so superficial by nature that in time I expect I’ll stop thinking about it.
I didn’t sleep very well. Nor, I believe, did Edward. Several times I awoke and he wasn’t there.
Victorian Norman slept on the sofa in the living-room. When I saw him this morning, he was still asleep. A dog, the one with the white face, was sharing his bed. On the threshold of Shebah’s room I stepped over a scrap of orange scarf and trod on something sharp, like glass. Shebah was stretched on a camp bed, the black circumference of her beret showing above an army blanket, her grey pigtail sticking out like a skein of wool. She was groaning softly. Suddenly she cried out, ‘What shall I do?’
‘What’s up, my dove?’ I asked.
She said in desperate tones, ‘Oh darling, the damage I’ve done,’ and wailed again, this time weakly.
I was trying to fathom it out when Claude came in carrying tea on a tin tray. He sat heavily on the side of the camp bed.
‘What’s the matter with Shebah?’ I whispered, and he replied in that firm voice he uses when something is wrong but he intends to minimise it, ‘Oh, we had a little accident. Nothing too bad, my love. Tea, Shebah?’ He pushed the buttocks of the moaning Shebah, who heaved suddenly and tragically from beneath her army blanket, head of fire like John the Baptist, eyes rolling. Sobs shook the room. I made out the words, ‘So sorry … so valuable … it’s no use, darling … nothing is of any use … all life is a cheat … the prizes given at the children’s party …’ and then her head ducked again and only the woolly tail of hair was exposed to view.
‘We had just a little too much wine and a little too much starting all over again,’ Claude said. ‘She fell into the glass cabinet by the fireplace and there was a little broken glass.’
‘All those china things,’ I said. My mouth stayed open. After all, Shebah was my friend, my liability.
‘No,’ said Claude. ‘Only one or two things, and one was something I’d mended before anyway, so not to worry.’ He poured out the tea. ‘How did it go, the birthday night?’ he asked.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘What about Julia?’
He shrugged. ‘All right too.’
We fell silent, just looking at each other. The point about me and Claude is that having talked so much in the past we no longer need to say anything.
Shebah stopped crying. One eye, lit with a fearful glint of mock repentance, blinked over the hem of the sheet. Claude shouted, ‘That’s better, me dear, have a cup of tea,’ and he put the mug by her side and went out into the living-room.
‘Darling,’ said Shebah, in a stage whisper that could be heard in the next room and the one beyond, ‘it’s dreadful, it’s just dreadful. I tripped on the rug last night and fell against Claude’s cabinet with all those beautiful pieces inside, and the glass broke and several things fell against each other and got chipped, and Julia said “Oh Christ”, and you know how charming she is, and Claude never said a word, he just went on talking to Norman, and I felt terrible. I tried to see what damage I’d done and Claude bellowed across at me “Leave it, Shebah”, very fierce, and Julia was then quite nice to me, but I felt like dying. I wish I’d never come.’ She gave a loud hysterical laugh and I said, ‘Oh, it’s all right, love, everything’s insured,’ and again she laughed, more her old self, and stuffed one hand into her mouth to smother the hilarity that was shaking the bed.
I went into the living-room to see just how bad the damage was. Apart from a star-shaped hole in the front of the cabinet and some small pieces of glass that lay in the pile of the carpet, there was nothing.
I looked to see whether Edward was awake. The tea-bearing Claude was there also, sitting sideways on the nuptial bed, holding Edward by one arm. For my benefit Claude said loudly, ‘Stick to her, there’s great glory,’ and Edward smiled a little uneasily and held the sheet against his vast unclothed shoulders with fingers stained brown with nicotine.
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br /> ‘Hallo, Edward,’ I said, and Claude went out with his tray, this time looking for Victorian Norman.
I told Edward about Shebah, and he looked concerned. There was a little silence, until he said, ‘A lot of things happened last night.’ I suppose he meant us. I do love Edward – or will do soon.
When I was getting my clothes on he stared at my stomach. I don’t know why. I nearly said something like ‘Do you realise I may very well be pregnant after last night’s carry-on?’ – only I couldn’t say it because I didn’t know how he’d react. He was looking thoughtful. When I patted my tummy it was quite flat really. We went downstairs and through the shop and out into the back garden among the statues, and the sun was shining. We kissed beneath the trees. There was dew on the grass beyond the courtyard, and a bird sang on two notes.
‘Coooeeee, darling,’ called Shebah. She sounded quite cheerful. Then suddenly I heard a gun being fired and, following the bright ping of sound, maniacal laughter. Claude was in the open window of the living-room, an air rifle tucked into his shoulder, sunlight spilling off its metal barrel. He was leaning far out, one eye screwed up as he took aim.
A low moan rose from the grass a yard away from where we stood, and there lay Shebah, a fallen black crow, lying with powdered cheeks crushing the daisies. No one moved. Then there was another shot, and Victorian Norman ran over the grass towards us, hissing ‘Lie down, the bugger’s gone mad.’ Obediently we fell down. Norman was laughing, and sweat was running down the side of his nose.
Then came Julia’s voice, impatient: ‘But Claude, they’re all out there in the garden.’
Claude shouted innocently, with just the right shade of concern, ‘Nobody hit, eh, man?’
At which Edward jumped to his feet and called back loudly, ‘Yes, you’ve shot Shebah.’
Shebah was lying on her side, one Edwardian leg bent at the knee, the fingers of her right hand stretched starwise. I knelt unbelievingly, and one eye snapped open and fixed me with a look of hatred. ‘The dirty rotten Jew-baiter,’ she said, and quickly struggled to cover her exposed knee. When we got her upright and dusted the soil off her and poured the thimbleful of whisky between her sullen lips, she was beginning to enjoy herself. The damage was superficial after all. A pellet had merely hit one of the statues by the fence and ricocheted without much force on to Shebah’s ankle. It hadn’t lodged in the flesh, merely struck and trickled into the grass.
A Weekend with Claude Page 4