Parlour Games

by Mavis Cheek

  Mrs Green, suddenly sprightly again, takes a step back, pulls her mackintosh tight around her chest and says, ‘Where is Mrs Crossland?’ The man leaps to his feet. He begins to say that she is away and that he is a friend of hers and he moves towards Mrs Green. That lady, quite understandably, feels terrified and she screams. She has not screamed for many years, not since her husband put on a gorilla mask to come home from a darts’ match and she opened the door to him. It comes out, amazing in its strength, and the man at the washing machine is galvanised. He thrusts his hand into his inner jacket pocket and takes out his wallet (of what else, under stress, can a businessman think?) and he offers her money to be quiet.

  ‘It is a little joke,’ he says. ‘I’m playing a little joke. Here – take five pounds …’

  But Mrs Green is not the chambermaid at the Queen’s Brough Hotel.

  Whatever is happening she will make full occasion of it.

  She runs out into the street, still screaming, followed closely by Tom.

  Early morning in Bedford Park has never seen the like. Dormant households rise up. The Neighbourhood Watch is at hand (though not, as those who argue against such vigilante institutions will say, the police: why keep a dog and bark yourself?). Tom is brought down in a flying tackle by the man from next door who has just escaped the breakfast chaos of his house for the peace and quiet of a day in the City. He sits on Tom’s chest, making any explanation impossible, and squashes Tom’s nose with his briefcase very inventively. The judge, from over the road, looks out through his bedroom curtains on another day, and wonders, as he struggles into his trousers, if this is yet another mistake made by over-zealous Watchers. They are turning, he surmises, the whole of a decent neighbourhood into a burlesque: he will have no part in it. He decides it has to be a mistake and removes himself from the window while he does up his flies in case any alert Mrs Green should see him and draw the wrong conclusion from that, too. Even the status of judge is no longer sacrosanct. In this day and age, it seems, you can only avoid serious prosecution if you are something to do with the Stock Exchange or the Royal Family and while he agrees wholeheartedly with the latter, with the former he is at odds: the whole tribe seems to him to be an unpleasant little group of opportunists. The law and his judgements are not what they were. Perhaps he ought to retire fully? He looks out of the window again and shakes his head at the mayhem.

  Mrs Green, thrilled and defiant, stands quivering above the two struggling men on the pavement, and screams and screams and screams. If only the intruder had been felled on Celia’s front path it would have really brought them Crosslands into disrepute. Ah well, you can’t have everything. Mrs Green screams louder.

  Susie is in the shower when the telephone rings. The Philippino housekeeper is in the garden cutting roses. Celia, ready for the day in the jeans and sweatshirt that were to have been her apparel as she strode the Wiltshire hills as a happily married woman, lets it ring a couple of times before putting Country Life down and answering it.

  It is Tom.

  ‘Darling Tom,’ she says, trying out her new role as lover. Her voice is dark and rich as velvet and cream.

  Tom’s voice is higher than usual and irritated. ‘Celia,’ he says, ‘will you please speak to this policeman and tell him that I am a friend of yours.’

  ‘Of course,’ she says huskily, before realising what he has said and squeaking, ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I am at the police station,’ he says. ‘And they want an explanation.’

  ‘Why me?’ she asks, not unreasonably.

  ‘Because they think I am a burglar or some damn thing.’

  ‘Why will my telling them we are friends help?’

  ‘Don’t be so fucking obtuse, woman!’

  ‘Tom!’ she says, hurt by his tone and still very much confused.

  Realising that he must adopt a more conciliatory approach he says, ‘Celia. Dear Celia ...’

  That is better. She can respond to that.

  ‘The thing is ...’ Pause. How to couch it? ‘The thing is that I went to your house to Look At The Washing Machine.’

  (Here the two police officers exchange glances.)

  ‘... And your fucking cleaner found me there.’

  Oh God, thinks Celia.

  Mrs Green, who has been enjoying the hot sweet tea and the kindly treatment of the officers, forgets her role as poor wronged old woman (which, indeed, she is) and rises up off the bench, cup rattling, saying, ‘Don’t you swear about me, you bugger.’

  Celia hears this.

  Celia feels just about able to talk to a policeman but not, she shudders, not to her cleaner ... and certainly not in these circumstances ...

  ‘Celia?’ Tom pleads.

  And then a wonderful thing happens.

  Celia finds that all the pain and humiliation she has experienced during the past thirty-six hours rises to the surface and she is soothed by a sudden decision to take control of her life, to take control, at any rate, of her cleaner. She has seen her husband enfolding another woman in his arms, she has been lied to by the person with whom she thought she shared the most intimate truths. After all that it seems absurd to remain amenable to anyone. Why should she be conciliatory? Why should she try to make everybody else’s life as smooth as possible? WHAT ABOUT ME? She thinks sternly, WHAT ABOUT ME? – What is the ire of that old sourpuss after a revelation like that? It is as nothing ...

  ‘Let me speak to Mrs Green, please Tom,’ she commands, her voice quite unrecognisable in its proximity to well-honed steel.

  Even Tom, despite the vulnerability of his position, is impressed. Wordlessly he holds out the receiver to the bridling individual.

  Mrs Green, preening herself as she comes to the telephone, takes it and says down the mouthpiece, quavering, complaining, ‘Oh dear, oh dear, Mrs Crossland. I have had a shock.’

  And Mrs Crossland says, ‘Yes, yes,’ very snappishly. ‘Well, perhaps when you have recovered from all this silly muddle’ (she says silly muddle so that it implies Mrs Green is entirely to blame) ‘you will go back to the house and begin what you came for.’

  Now she understands the Raj from within. To speak thus is indeed sweet satisfaction.

  She hears her cleaner take a sharp breath. Mrs Green begins, ‘Oh, I don’t know about that – it has shook me dreadful ...’ And she makes a noise as if she has been winded.

  Momentarily she falters, but, conjuring up the image of Alex and the be-pastelled Her, Celia is soon back on course. ‘My dear woman,’ she says. ‘Pull yourself together. There is really no need to make mountains out of molehills.’ (Mrs Green’s favourite pastime actually.) ‘Hallo. Hallo. Are you there?’

  Mrs Green, somewhat confounded, nods.

  Celia takes the silence as acquiescence and continues. ‘This is what I want you to do: give the children’s rooms a thorough going over, while they are away – do the windows and the skirtings – all that kind of thing. You should have time to do them both if you go at it.’

  It is a breathless feeling telling Mrs Green to Go At It – especially in her state. Nevertheless Celia feels she can. After what she has been through she can say anything to Mrs Green. Why not? The delicacies of their relationship are as relevant as a pimple on a gnat’s behind to her now.

  ‘You’ve got your key?’

  Mrs Green may be down but she is not out.

  ‘I have not.’ She lies.

  ‘Then how did you get into the house this morning?’

  ‘That man had your keys.’

  ‘Aah,’ says Celia. ‘Of course.’

  Trying to unravel the reasons for Tom being in her house with her keys is beyond her. But it will undoubtedly be with romance in view.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ says Celia.

  Wonderful is hardly the word Mrs Green feels appropriate.

  ‘You can use those and hide them under the plant pot by the front door when you go. I’ll be back tonight.’ And then she adds roguishly, ‘Remember – plenty of elbow grease,
Mrs Green – plenty of elbow grease.’

  Mrs Green has never felt more insulted in her life. Neither does she like the lightness of joy in Celia’s voice. And she has been made to look a proper charlie. She will have a really good rummage in Celia’s bedroom when she gets back there. Fortunately she is so taken up with this idea when she returns to the house that she forgets all about the curiosity of the washing machine and the package continues to lie there, like some ancient wreck in the purple deeps, waiting for Celia to come and rescue it. Tom has no intention of going anywhere near it again. Why people should lock their washing-machine doors is quite beyond him. He does not know (and, indeed, why should he since soiled linen is not his department?) that such appliances have to be child-proof. Poor Tom will never need to know this. He admits defeat over regaining the birthday present. What will be will be. A useful homily under the circumstances.

  Leaving the police station with dignity is not easy: Mrs Green shrinks away from him at the mere suggestion that he give her a lift back to the house and the two policemen look at him as if his thoughts were set in glass and they could read every one of them. He is thinking how little and dove-like and vulnerable the vicar’s wife was last night (mother of three and dimpled in the right places) and how harsh and unyielding Celia has suddenly shown herself by comparison. Why – hasn’t she even sent her own children away for the week in their holiday time – precisely when they ought to be with their mother? Just the sort of thing Susannah would have done if she’d been able to have any. He thinks along these lines as he drives back to Wiltshire. And under all this – as if it were not enough to shatter all his illusions – comes the unpleasant recollection that Celia thinks of him as boring. Than which there can be nothing better guaranteed to finish off his years of devotion.

  Mrs Green, rummaging, finds nothing in the bedroom. By way of compensation she makes herself a fine lunch from the outrageously lavish leftovers in her employer’s fridge and eats it off the best china. Alas, cold meat and cold potatoes taste just the same as they do eaten off her boxed set from Woollies. And that fancy salad cream stinks. There is a lesson for Mrs Green somewhere in this but she ignores it. She has a sherry from one of the many decanters, poured into one of the many crystal glasses, and she holds out her little finger as she sips it. But it is thin and pale and sour to her palate; try as she might it does her bruised spirit no good at all. Disappointedly she sets to work as Celia has directed. Elbow grease indeed! She’ll give her elbow grease. All the same she works diligently. Her employer’s voice had an edge to it. She’d best keep on the right side just in case ...

  Alex falls asleep as he chairs the final afternoon’s meeting of the Brandreth committee.

  Miss Lyall, seated next to him, nudges his knee with her own. He, still remembering the post-luncheon coitus and the amazing discovery that such things as crutchless tights are not merely verbal jokes, smiles without opening his eyes and puts his hand under her skirt, giving the smooth be-nyloned flesh there an opulent squeeze. He grunts as he does so, like a pig in clover. Miss Lyall pinches the flesh of his hand very hard and sits bolt upright, looking like a golden-haired dragon. She fires an unanswerable question down the table towards the junior clerk, whose spots deepen to purplish-black in his effort to come up with something to say. Absorbed by this phenomenon the rest of the committee does not notice Alex’s little cry of pain as his tired eyes blink open and resume, as best they can, cognisance of the proceedings. Miss Lyall writes on his pad ‘pull yourself together’. He looks at her; she is as fresh as a daisy. Her stamina is amazing. She truly is just like a man. On the other hand, he thinks, and here he feels the beginnings of something stirring in his groin, on the other hand she is nothing like a man whatsoever. He would like to suppress the stirring. His sexual organs might be game but the rest of him desires nothing but peaceful intellectual calm. He would like to get back on top (swell, swell, throb, throb – his erogenous zone assumes he is thinking about Miss Lyall) of this committee, but fears that while he is riding two horses (he crosses his legs hurriedly) he is not quite in control of either. He muses on all this, while all around him the Brandreth aspirants debate and discuss, under the subtle guidance of Miss Lyall who realises that Alex is not up to it. She is clever because the assembled still think that he is the one in the chair: so does Alex. She will go far, this woman. In her female shape she is always underrated, in her lusty appetite she is more than a match for her male colleagues who burn themselves out to prove they have no less libido than she, and with her built-in female tact she knows exactly how far she can go before dropping her eyelids, pouting her lips and shutting up. And she has the soupçon of humility required to accede (if only to herself) that she can learn a lot from Alex. He is brilliant in the middle range. She wants to get as much out of him as she can, both in practical knowledge and physical satisfaction. She expects he will get a second wind after this weekend. Quite often, at first, her chosen partners find it hard to keep up (she allows herself a quick smile at the pun) but they usually rally. Alex will too. She is sure. And if he does not? Well – she has one or two little tricks at her disposal which have stood her in good stead in the past.

  Susannah comes downstairs and finds Celia curled up, Vesta the cat on her lap, Country Life in her hands and a look of almost mystical pleasure on her face.

  ‘You seem to have made a good recovery from the pangs of being a wronged wife,’ she says, pleased. ‘Who was that on the telephone?’

  ‘Tom,’ says Celia.

  ‘Any message?’ asks Susie.

  ‘He’s going to miss lunch.’

  Susie crosses to the settee and strokes the cat, which makes no response.

  ‘Why?’ she asks.

  ‘Do you know,’ says Celia, ‘I forgot to ask.’

  ‘Oh well,’ says Susie. ‘It really doesn’t matter if he’s here or not. Does it?’

  Celia shakes her head. She feels no guilt whatsoever now. Each to their own, she thinks, with good-natured pity.

  Susannah, stroking the unresponsive Vesta’s silky ears, says, ‘Have you decided what to do? Are you going to confront Alex or what?’

  Celia says that she is not.

  ‘Take my advice,’ says her friend, ‘and extinguish the word divorce from your vocabulary. Find some other method of coming to terms with it.’

  ‘I intend to.’ Celia strokes Vesta’s tail very gently. At these two assaults on her sensuous nerve-endings the cat very nearly submits and begins to purr. But she holds off. No good ever came of rolling over and revealing your soft underbelly to anyone. So thinks the cat.

  ‘Any ideas?’ asks Susannah.

  ‘Lots,’ says Celia.

  ‘Tell,’ says Susie.

  ‘Shan’t,’ says Celia.

  Susie smiles. ‘Well – don’t do anything I wouldn’t do ...’

  And Celia, returning the smile, thinks, You must be joking.

  She sets off for London mid-afternoon.

  She needs to get home before Alex arrives so that she can open the gift in peace and make her telephone call to Tom to fix their first assignation. She and Tom pass each other on opposing sides of the motorway – though they, of course, do not realise that. Tom stops off at Stockbridge and has a cup of tea with the dog woman just to add authenticity to his tale when he reaches home. During this visit they, not unnaturally, mention Celia. Like a man who will roll on nails, Tom exhumes the conversation of weekender bores. Mrs Stone gives unshakeable evidence and adds the souring festoon of the one-penny piece.

  ‘So mean,’ she says.

  ‘So mean,’ Tom agrees.

  And, as Good King Hal before him, he submits to the hearsay of others to damn his Queen finally. The vicar’s wife, like pale Jane Seymour, waits willingly in the wings. So much for Celia. And so much for the power of the book game of chance. Judge for yourselves its felicity.

  Driving home Celia makes a little detour through Salisbury, just to see how she feels. She slows down as she passes the cathedra
l, quite beautiful in the afternoon sun, and smiles and waves on the tourist pedestrians who dart across her path. They will take back with them to Minneapolis, Tokyo, Rome, the impression that English women are the most courteous and friendly drivers in the world. At the Queen’s Brough her foot presses the accelerator without her thinking about it, and she whizzes on, away from its smoothly respectable façade, towards the edge of the town. She passes that Monday fruit and cheese market and subdues the old Celia’s response of stopping here to buy some local produce for future culinary delight. Be hanged to that, she thinks, look where goodwifery has got me.

  And onwards she drives.

  Behind her, draped across her suitcase, is the borrowed black-and-white dress. Now hers. Susie’s gift. ‘Because,’ said her friend, ‘I shan’t wear it again. And you like it so much.’

  Note that she does not say, ‘Because it suits you so well.’ Susie hopes she will never have cause to say that. Celia is Celia, just as Susie is Susie. She may try to change aspects of her approach to life, but never her character. That is, after all, what makes her her friend.

  Celia is thrilled to own the frock. She will wear it for her first illicit meeting with Tom. Why not? He clearly likes women with style. She has forgotten the vicar’s wife’s powder-blue mini-skirt.

  Bypassing Stockbridge she remembers the book. How silly. Nevertheless, it nestles in her luggage. She is still puzzled by that ’sovereign indifference’ of Proust. Hardly fitting ... So very wrong. Ah, well. She will keep the book as a talisman anyway.

  She drives happily towards Basingstoke and the road for home. She puts on the radio, tuned to Radio One, but every single song seems to be concerned with love – both false and true. She swivels the knob away from such claptrap and finds Radio Three. Here there are unaccompanied voices singing out a spine-chilling vibrance of notes. Could be modern, could be ancient, but they are suitably odd for the journey. She turns it up. It lasts almost to the end of her road when the announcer says: ‘That ends our programme of music by Gesualdo (Prince of Venosa, 1560-1613) whose chromatic modulations and nervous restlessness are thought by some to reflect his inner agonies ...’