Parlour Games

by Mavis Cheek

  Mrs Green pauses to click the gate shut. Looking up she sniffs, once, and then moves off. Behind her she pulls her brown plastic shopping trolley like a tumbril. Over her shoulder, Sibylline in her chiffon pink, she says, ‘Well, then. Happy birthday. I’ll be in on Monday morning ...’ Her tone implies that she is unlikely to live so long. ‘Have a nice weekend ...’ And she trundles off.

  On the other side of the street the semi-retired judge (he who was so roughly awoken from his claret slumbers by alerted policemen some months before) looks upon this exodus with pleasant thoughts. A Bedford Park wife saying goodbye to her cleaner. What could be more fittingly composed than that? He has seen so much in his life that such things are necessary antidotes. He strolls off towards the delicatessen, for a few jolly words with the coloured folk who run it, and he feels at one with the world.

  ‘And goodbye to you,’ says Celia, closing the door in delight at being alone at last. The muddled thought that she need not have Mrs Green as a cleaner – a thought that quite often beats its feeble wings but gets nowhere – is quickly buried. People in Bedford Park have help – ergo – Celia has help. It is simply the way of the world.

  Twelve o’clock. Six more hours of absolute freedom before the children return. She gives a little crow and then passing the hall mirror she drags her mouth downwards, screws up her face and ties a tea-towel around her head. ‘I’m sure ...’ she says to the reflection. ‘Adult Games ... Dirty Devils ... Of course I can’t with my legs ... Parlour Games indeed! I know just what you mean by Parlour Games.’

  Despite laughing, Celia feels rather aroused at the thought – and the sheer wicked sexiness makes her long, suddenly, for Alex to be there. She has to go and beat up the egg whites to work it off, and while they are coming into nice airy peaks (perfect for the mousse) she thinks that perhaps it would be nice to play some games tonight. She hasn’t done it for ages – Alex finds them childish, which they are, which is exactly what she likes about them. She was taught to play such things by a Bloomsbury-set lady at the art gallery and found, surprisingly, that she was rather good at them – The Dictionary Game, Botticelli, and the wild thing called Flannel Doughnut. Yes – really – it would be nice to play something like that again. Even if Alex finds them untenable. She hums another Golden Oldie that was popular long before she met her husband.

  ‘It’s my party ...’ sings a lost popular vocalist called Lesley Gore. And Celia sings it too. If I want to play games then I will, she says to herself. After all, it really is my party. I’m sure ...

  This, then, is Celia, within the house within the place where she lives. Forty years old today and on the threshold of the next forty years which, if she thinks about them at all, she expects will be just as pleasing and unremarkable as those gone by. And the closest she has got to wickedness is the rum that will lace her chocolate mousse and a desire to play a few Parlour Games. Her contentment abounds.

  So – Happy Birthday Celia.

  2

  Alex was in the second bathroom and had just trodden on one of Henry’s more intricate Lego submarines. He swore so loudly that it echoed around the second floor of the house and could be heard, perfectly plainly, above the roar of the shower. Even the children, now tucked up in the attic rooms, heard it. Henry, attempting a reef knot with his pyjama cord for his mother’s delight the next morning, shouted to his sister in the adjacent room.

  ‘Did you hear Dad say Fuck?’ he called.

  ‘Yes,’ echoed Rebecca with relish. ‘It’s dirty, isn’t it? Very dirty ...?’ she added with hope.

  ‘It’s the worst thing,’ he shouted back. ‘It means hard willies.’

  ‘Great,’ said Rebecca. ‘What about bottoms? (Alas for the less specific female generic in vogue – boys have penises, girls have genital areas – Rebecca is vaguely aware of this lexical injustice already.)

  ‘No,’ says Henry with assurance. ‘It doesn’t mean them.’

  Rebecca puts her hand comfortingly in the place where her penis is not. At least something exists in its own right down there. She can feel that it does.

  ‘Will you go to sleep right now!’ yells Celia up the stairs. ‘It’s nearly half past seven. I don’t want to hear another word ...’

  ‘Bloody,’ says Henry under his sweaty duvet. (Poor Mrs Green – all her efforts undone.) ‘Shit. Sod. Bugger. Bums.’

  ‘Can’t hear,’ says Rebecca, still holding on to herself, more sleepy than she wants to be since Hazel took them to the park for a picnic and they ran around a lot. Rebecca wants to stay awake so that she can come down in the middle of the dinner party. She likes the attention. And Henry can’t do it. He may have a penis but he can’t will himself to stay awake like his sister.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ calls Celia threateningly. She pounds a bare heel on to the first stair below their rooms. ‘Or I’ll be up ...’

  This unusual aggression silences them. Celia has other ideas about how she wants to spend the next thirty-five minutes and these do not embrace her children. She has heard about the duckpond, listened to their complaints about the food (Hazel’s idea of a picnic was rather bland apparently – even the crisps were plain), heard Henry play and Rebecca sing a song about dinosaurs, bathed them, read a story, tucked them up, untucked them because they forgot to clean their teeth, resettled them, had a short philosophical discussion about death (sparked off by her birthday), cooed in a motherly way – and that is now that. It is adult time now.

  ‘Do you hear me?’ she yells as a final threat.

  ‘What?’ calls Alex from the deluge in the bathroom. He emerges, dripping and only half showered, to see his wife, naked except for a pair of dazzling drop earrings of peacock blue (Adrian’s friend makes them), with one foot on the stairs, fire in her eyes, and her perfectly made-up face contorted with unusually vigorous anger. She has some strange new colour in her hair too – he decides to ignore this. The whole makes a very odd picture. He stares for half a second. For some reason she instantly looks down at his genitals and then up to his face, before saying very sweetly, ‘Not you. I was telling the children to be quiet.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Alex, surprised at the passionate tone of this simple activity. ‘Well do keep it down a bit. I’ve had a heavy day ...’

  Celia takes another quick look at his flaccid genitals, smiles encouragingly at him as he goes back to his shower, and returns to the bedroom. To wait. Ever since all that business with Mrs Green and the Parlour Games Celia has been thinking about sex – specifically, she has been looking forward to having one last bash before she is officially forty. Not that prissy well-married activity called making love either – a real hump, a quickie, like they used to do. A silly notion, maybe, but as she adds more mascara to her already raffish eyes she says to herself, Why not? Surely a woman is allowed to be a little foolish today of all days.

  Anyway, Alex certainly won’t refuse her so it won’t be a difficult whim to satisfy. That is, if he gets on with his shower. She looks at the clock: they will have to do it, murmur the how-was-it-for-yous for at least two minutes afterwards, stroke each other kindly – and then get dressed before the first guests arrive. Alex, she pleads inwardly, relinquish the shower-gel and turn off those taps, or there won’t be time for the après-sex. Which might have a terrible consequence on the whole dinner party.

  She hears the shower stop, hears her husband humming as he dries himself, hears the lock being opened, and out he comes.

  ‘Not dressed yet?’ he says with good humour. He crosses to the wardrobe and begins removing clothes from hangers. ‘We’ve got the Brandreth case by the way ... It’s official.’

  He whistles the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ which is not a promising start – the myth might have sexual connotations, the tune is pure music hall – Celia cannot see the state of his genitals because he has a towel draped around his waist. The prognosis, however, is not good, for there seems to be nothing rampant going on under the soft weave of the cotton. The clock says twenty-five to eight. Celia deci
des to go along with Alex’s little game and make the first move, so she takes a deep breath and lies back on the Victorian brass bed with its welcomingly soft duvet. This taking the initiative has always been slightly fraught in case he is veering towards the more proper side of his nature. Sometimes Alex can be a little shocked if she comes on too strong. She has to judge it just right. She decides to meet the situation half-way and drops the idea of woggling her private parts at him invitingly. Instead she lies, draped on the lacy cover, in the ‘Venus d’Urbino’ position. Someone once told her, possibly Susannah’s ex-beau, that the pose was a real turn on (this was in the days when you also tuned in and dropped out which seems to have gone from the vernacular nowadays): whoever it was said that Titian’s masterstroke of tucking his model’s hand into the recesses of her sex was half invitation, half protection and twice as erotic. Very well. With this in mind, and fingers tucked persuasively into crutch, she calls her husband softly.

  ‘Alex?’

  He has his back to her and is staring into the mirror examining a couple of spots on his chin. By now he has on his underpants and his socks – an unfortunate combination.

  ‘Alex?’ she calls again, not quite so softly.

  He seems to refocus on the real world and begins arranging his thin, sandy-coloured hair very delicately with a brush.

  ‘Yes,’ he says to his reflection as he slips on his shirt, ‘the whole of the Brandreth case. Of course we were right to insist. No point in having half a dozen different fingers in the pie. Mmm darling?’

  Already, having buttoned the shirt, he is scrutinising the spots on his chin again and running the palm of his hand very lightly over his head as if checking the density of what grows there. He then runs his hand over his paunch. Celia is about to croon, ‘Look at me ...’ or something similar, when he continues, ‘And we ran rings round that female from the other chambers. It was last month’s little conference that finally did it, I think. She had to back down on everything.’ He pauses, flicking his fingertips through his sparse quiff. ‘Well – almost everything – she congratulated me afterwards and –’ he stops, catching sight of Celia’s over his shoulder’s reflection in the mirror, and he looks at his watch which he has been strapping to his wrist as he speaks. ‘... Shouldn’t you be getting dressed or something?’

  ‘Come and kiss me,’ she says provocatively.

  It is now eighteen minutes to eight. It will have to be a really quick one after all and they will just have to risk the lack of after-care. Alex approaches the bed, pulling his trousers from the hanger on the way. He then leans over, kisses Celia’s forehead, and puts on his trousers.

  ‘Buck up,’ he says, and she hears the final flourish of his fly zip.

  He is back at the mirror, peering at himself again. Perhaps, thinks Celia, puzzled, this is what life is going to be like now that she is forty. Perhaps life really does begin anew. Certainly Alex’s behaviour is new – both his apparent lack of interest in her body and his apparent gain of interest in his own. Maybe this relates to her coming of age, maybe he feels time’s wingless chariot all over again now that she has joined him in the middle ground? Whatever the reason Celia is not yet ready to cede the battle. She makes one more attempt, emboldened by a sudden deep desire that contracts her womb. She wants him, and she wants him to want her. She rolls off the bed and stands behind this fully-dressed husband of hers; she puts her hands on his shoulders and presses herself into his back. It is twelve minutes to eight but she no longer cares – the peal of the doorbell when it comes will never be as important as this urgent need for intimacy now. He makes a playful swing backwards with his hand and smacks her bare bottom. It makes quite a crack. It is certainly not a tender gesture – more jolly than anything else. It is also body language for ‘let me go’, which she does.

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Get dressed now. Let’s see the birthday girl in all her finery.’

  ‘I am in all my finery,’ she says quietly.

  If he notices the involuntary pathos of the remark he does not acknowledge it. He merely taps her bottom again, kisses her nose (that part which least needs it, she thinks, en passant) and leaves the room. He walks upstairs on tiptoe and she hears the floorboards creak first in Henry’s room, then in Rebecca’s. After a minute he reappears, popping his head round the bedroom door.

  ‘All asleep, even Becky ... Christ Almighty Celia! Are you going to your birthday party in your birthday suit or what?’ He laughs at the witticism and looks boyish, and this time the lurch of emotion is not in her womb but in her heart. She smiles at him, shakes her head and turns to the wardrobe. Alex wolf-whistles but is already beginning to descend the stairs.

  ‘Hurry up,’ he calls softly, ‘and we can have a quiet drink together before anyone arrives. I want to tell you about the case.’

  Wagner continues to float up from below. Celia plonks herself down on the bed, more like a doll with its strings cut than a Titian now, and begins to put on her tights. These are black and seamed, with little diamanté motifs at each ankle. They mock her with their tartiness since she now feels as vulnerable as a stripper who has removed everything as alluringly as possible only to find that no one has bothered to look. Not for the first time is Celia feeling vulnerable over sexual matters. It is this thing that Alex has got about her being both Madonna of his children and Overt Floozy at the same time. If only he would sort it out in his own mind she would know where she was. It gets increasingly confusing. Especially when he switches back from latter to former without telling Celia. Not so long ago she overdid it – well, how was she to know? – by breaking what turned out to be a post-coital fatherly reverie and grabbing his balls (she winces at the memory) and suggesting in the voice of one accustomed to the Reeperbahn that so far as she and her organs were concerned, the night was still young. But his horrified response had been as nothing to Celia’s astonishment when she saw the look of fastidious recoil on his face. Could this be the same man who had introduced Dirty Harry into the proceedings some weeks previously? Apparently it could. Such was her embarrassment following that incident that she has been pretty circumspect since then. And much more modest, which seems to suit him. But it is a thin line to tread between giving off an aura of allure while remaining sleepily and delicately willing. Maybe Alex’s lessening of interest during the past few weeks is not entirely due to the pressures of his job. Maybe it has also got something to do with her not – quite – getting the balance right. If only France had not been such a travesty, if only Dirty Harry hadn’t been quite so rough – if only, if only ... but there we are. If she thinks back, which she does now, right from the very beginning, when they had the uncontrollable hots for each other, Alex had liked to be ringmaster – and so, like a new-born baby, Celia had unlearned what she already knew, and let Alex teach her all over again. Then it had been a harmless little deceit, a little game of which only she was privy to the rules. Now it seems entrenched. The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ mocks her up the stairs. Her little desire should not, surely, have become so complicated? This is all rather like walking on eggshells and for the life of her she cannot understand why. Nevertheless she will tiptoe. It would be foolish to do anything else tonight. She will get him later. There is always the adult sanctuary and the brandy glass to see to that.

  So, instead of pirouetting down the stairs and demanding satisfaction in as seductive a way as she can manage, Celia sits on her bed, straightening her tights and having a little cry as she does so. But only a little one. It will be a stiff-upper-Bedford-Park-lip and down the stairs to greet the guests in a moment. Like her sisters-in-wifedom everywhere, she is not one to rock the boat with her private griefs if she can possibly control them. And especially not on her birthday and with a houseful of guests. Anyway, she begins to smile through the dampness, and then to giggle again, for she recalls the picture of Alex in his socks and Y-fronts. You had to love him really, for all his foibles.

  After this thought, and by the time she has popped on her lac
y blouse with the daring décolletage, she feels better. And once the tight-waisted (slightly more than last time? Perhaps ...) aquamarine skirt is zipped up and the velvet band fastened around her neck, she is happily humming to herself. She gives her hair a final brush, is pleased with the effect of the peacock highlight and how it accentuates her earrings and her skirt, and by the time she descends the stairs she is chuckling at her silliness. She thinks it would be a poor princess who, transformed by her beautiful trappings, remained miserable. Even if the princess didn’t quite manage to make her prince come across. The thought of Alex in the role of Frog Prince is so funny that she guffaws as she enters the conservatory. He, waiting, well-cooled bottle in hand, notices.

  ‘You look lovely,’ he says, popping the cork. ‘What’s so funny?’

  She decides that on the whole she had better not mention the Frog Prince. His sense of humour is not what it used to be since the children arrived and his professional responsibilities burgeoned, and she has learned to go for tact rather than comedy. She once made the mistake of saying that it would be fun to make love to him in his wig – a passing remark that he took very ill indeed. She subsequently learned that this is a common fantasy among the wives of professionals hereabouts and is received with similar husbandly disapproval. Her friend who is married to a photographer often dreams of him advancing towards her wearing only a zoom lens, and the osteo’s wife sometimes indulges in the thought of coupling in his consulting room with him wearing only his white coat. Hazel says, wryly, that John has no recognisable tools of the trade for her to fantasise about unless it were a set square – and as for her sister, well, it is somehow inconceivable that she would show enough levity to request Dave to come at her sporting a blow torch ...

  ‘Well?’ he says, with just the faintest frisson of irritability, for she is still smiling broadly in a far-off land. ‘What is so funny?’

  ‘Me – at forty,’ she says quickly, and mollified he hands her a bubbling glass and bends to kiss her ear lobe.