Parlour Games

by Mavis Cheek

  ‘Excuse me,’ he says, stepping to let her pass.

  He has neat grey hair and a slightly sun-tanned face which is still creased with dissatisfaction as he looks beyond Celia to the bar. He shakes his head again and turns away so that they both execute a little side-stepping pavane which brings them a few steps further forward but still, more or less, in the same proximity. They both smile and shrug.

  ‘Excuse me. Again,’ he says with that peculiarly Transatlantic politesse.

  ‘Not at all,’ says Celia, delighted.

  Dear old Fate, she thinks, for Fate will see me through.

  She allows intuition to take the place of planning and waits to hear what it will have her say. This proves to be the correct course.

  ‘I wouldn’t go in there if I was you.’ She laughs. ‘Even if the Yuppies don’t get you that barman will ... He looks as if he bites.’

  He peers beyond her again, this time smiling.

  While he does so Celia notes as much about him as she can. Neither fat nor thin, unremarkable grey suit, plain white shirt with dark-blue tie, slightly taller than her even with her heels. She decides that the mountains have nothing to do with this. He is attractive. In masculine terms, she decides, he is infinitely more attractive than Pastel Frock. This is a wonderful bonus and does much to restore her courage. She looks up at him and smiles very boldly – she hopes not brassily – and affects an air of rapt attention.

  ‘He certainly does,’ he says positively, and then turns back to her. ‘What did you call them?’

  ‘Yuppies. It’s an acronym. Like Wasp in the States—’

  ‘Ah yes,’ he says. ‘We have those there too.’

  They laugh. They are on each other’s side.

  ‘Perhaps there is more than one bar here?’ she says, much heartened by intuition’s offering.

  ‘Perhaps there is ...’ he says, sounding equally pleased. ‘Shall we ask?’

  A piece of bread flops near their feet.

  ‘Why not?’ says Celia. ‘Why not?’

  To Romeo and Juliet is the Side Saddle Bar, to Anthony and Cleopatra is the Consort Room. It has Regency-striped wallpaper, gilt wall lights that are bright enough to read by but not bright enough to pick out every flaw in a customer’s skin. And the barman, though supercilious, is at least discreet about his contempt. Celia could whoop and holler with satisfaction and joy as she sits herself down. Made it, she thinks, and the triumph wipes out any of the humiliation she felt earlier on. She scrutinises this saviour of hers and thinks that he is a wonderful, wonderful find. Perfect, if she can bring it off, for the Goodwife’s Revenge. In this light she can study him further. Nearer mid than early fifties, she decides. Not that it matters one jot.

  He says, toying with the olive in his martini but looking right into her eyes, ‘Fifty-seven last month.’

  She gapes.

  He sips at his drink and looks amused and satisfied.

  ‘How did you know I was thinking that?’

  ‘I’m a mind reader.’

  She gapes anew.

  ‘You’re not ...’ The very thought of his being able to read even half of what is going on in there is frightening.

  He laughs outright and shakes his head. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then how did you know?’

  ‘When a woman studies a man like that there can be only two reasons. Either she is trying to make up her mind how old he is, or how rich he is. I’d like to think it was the former ...’

  ‘Are you rich?’

  That comes out before she can stop and she curses intuition for getting it so wrong.

  But he laughs again.

  ‘Not rich. Not poor. Average.’

  ‘Me too,’ she says.

  ‘We should be properly acquainted,’ he says solemnly, holding out his hand to shake hers. ‘My name is Walter Flack and I am a fundraiser for the World Health Organisation.’

  ‘How interesting,’ says Celia.

  She offers her hand and says, ‘My name is –’ She hesitates. ‘Celia.’

  He looks at her expectantly. She looks back.

  ‘Just Celia?’ he says.

  For the moment she decides that is all the information she dares to render.

  ‘Some people call me Cee,’ she says, dodging, she thinks, quite nicely.

  ‘Hallo, Cee,’ he says with humorous formality, giving her hand a shake before releasing it.

  ‘Hallo – Walt,’ she says with equal solemnity.

  He toys with the olive again. ‘And the answer to your next question is ...’ He looks up, those blue crinkly eyes studying her ‘... that I am also a widower …’

  Celia blushes. Perhaps he can read minds after all.

  Celia is about to deny that the thought ever entered her head, and she begins, ‘Oh but I—’

  He holds up his hand. ‘I know that sounds phoney but it happens to be true. I just think we should set the record straight. After all –’ He indicates the table, the bar, the two of them sitting there. ‘We are sitting here – together – and –’ he shrugs – ‘who knows? It might be relevant ... So – a widower I am.’ He smiles at her. ‘OK?’ He looks as if he has just made a good move in a game of chess.

  ‘I wasn’t going to question it,’ she says, more prissily than she means to because she wants to cover up the fact that his widowerhood is oddly pleasing. She wants it to be true so that there is no other Celia somewhere in the world cooking nice meals and trusting him.

  ‘I was going to say that this is a very posh hotel for a fundraiser to be staying in.’

  ‘Not when you raise as much money as I do,’ he replies cheerfully. ‘I wouldn’t be able to keep up the pace if I had to go back to the YMCA every night.’ There is a short silence and he says, ‘Well. I’ve told you. You tell me.’

  ‘My name is Celia,’ she repeats. ‘Do you mind if I don’t tell you any more than that?’

  ‘Candidly – yes.’

  ‘Later?’

  ‘Sure.’ He shrugs and pops the olive into his mouth.

  Celia finds this strangely alluring. Perhaps because it seems such a relaxed thing to do. She finds herself relaxing too – or as much as all that unyielding underwear will allow. She winces as she thinks of it.

  ‘I think you look much less than fifty-seven,’ she says, still intuitively.

  ‘I try to be a good advertisement for my job. And flattery like that wins you a dinner. That is if you ...?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m very hungry and I would.’

  Knight to Queen’s pawn being decided, they can now relax further. If she had known it could be this pleasant and easy she might have done this sort of thing a lot more. Just as well she didn’t ...

  She thinks that he has the kind of face that can be read easily. He shows his thoughts. Which means he must be a nice person. And she is profoundly grateful that he has not pushed her for more information. The combined forces of intuition and planning have not given Celia any clues as to how to explain her being here tonight. Well, not yet anyway. Perhaps after another martini it will crystallise.

  ‘Do you do this sort of thing often?’ he says. ‘I mean – come into hotel bars on your own?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ she says quite primly. ‘Anyway, how do you know that I’m not a resident?’

  He looks surprised. ‘Um ...’ he says apologetically, ‘are you staying here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says softly. And amazes herself for now and ever after by adding, ‘It rather depends on you.’

  Oh Alex, she thinks, Oh Alex, Alex, my darling Alex. What have you made me do?

  It is much the best way to blame him completely.

  It stops her from feeling so bad about enjoying the experience.

  Enjoyment had not figured in the equation regarding the Revenge of a Bedford Park Wife.

  But it does now.

  She smiles to herself.

  It is a nice smile, a very feminine smile, thinks her companion.

  He smiles back. />
  It becomes rather like the eating scene in Tom Jones. They begin the meal calmly enough. But there is something in the way she removes the snails from their shells and the juice and butter bespatter her mouth that looks seductive. And there is something about the play of his hands on the artichoke leaves and the sucking of their ends that beguiles her also. He, she thinks, holds his wine glass attractively; has the habit of touching his ear lobe suggestively when he speaks; eats unfussily, savouring each mouthful. And she has a way of tilting her head slightly as she drinks displaying her throat which is very touchable; a way of putting her chin in one hand and looking levelly into his eyes; an enticing manner of biting with her small white teeth ... By the time the entrée is cleared away they have both begun to stumble over words, to twist a little in their chairs. She waves away the menu for dessert with the slightest hint of impatience and he, galvanised to look for such small signs, does likewise. The conversation, which was about autumn in Maine, where he lives, suddenly peters out and he says, ‘Are you sure?’

  But the question he speaks is not, of course, about dessert.

  He is not looking at her, as he smooths his serviette.

  ‘I’d like a brandy,’ she says, much more positively than she feels. And then adds, ‘How old do you think I am?’

  ‘Oh ...’ He traces some kind of pattern on the folded linen. ‘About several thousand years or so ...’

  Celia pulls herself together. This is not going the way she expected it to. It is like participating in a love story. She reminds herself that she is here for Vengeance. Nice as he is. Enjoyable – very enjoyable – as the dinner has been, that is why she is here. And that is all.

  ‘We could,’ he says, ‘have the brandy somewhere else ...’

  The image of Alex and his dalliance is before her. Into her mind floats reason’s certainty: I don’t think, it tells her, that you can go through with this after all ...

  ‘... Couldn’t we?’ he adds hopefully.

  ‘We could,’ she agrees.

  ... And floats out again. Quite forgotten.

  He gets up and comes round to her chair which he pulls out from the table. His hand is light on her arm as he helps her to stand. This makes her smile as she remembers the crassness of the boy with the champagne shoe. Perhaps there is something more pleasurable in being Cleopatra rather than Juliet.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’

  ‘Because,’ she says simply, ‘I really want to cry.’

  He takes the neatly folded handkerchief from his breast pocket and puts it into her hand. It has the initial ‘W’ embroidered in one corner. She is pleased that he has been truthful about his name. Very pleased. And being a widower makes it all perfectly fine from his point of view. If I’d known it was this easy, she thinks again, I really might have done this sort of thing years ago ... And then she giggles, puts her hand to her mouth as the giggle is replaced by shock and thinks, My God – what am I saying?

  He puts his hand somewhere near the base of her spine to guide her.

  ‘Will you come up and see my etchings?’

  Then she takes her hand away from her mouth and allows herself a really joyous laugh.

  ‘I thought only Europeans went in for such nonsense ...’

  ‘Oh, it’s pretty universal I guess,’ he says.

  In the lift he moves away from her and does not touch her again. At his room he pushes the door open and lets it swing away in front of her. She waits for him to put his hand on some part of her to usher her in, for the intimacy of the touch was so nice, but he does not. He waits. She can feel his breath behind her. The room has a double bed with the covers turned down. On it is an open newspaper – the New York Times – and a pair of spectacles with a black towelling robe draped across one corner. She pushes this to one side and sits down very gingerly, looking about her, trying not to notice that the door has swung shut again and that he is locking it.

  ‘Do you do this sort of thing very often?’ she asks. She had hoped to sound like Zola’s Nana but it comes out more like J.M. Barrie’s. Or a maiden aunt’s.

  ‘Nope,’ he says.

  He crosses to the telephone by the bed, picks it up, orders two brandies and loosens his tie knot.

  Replacing the receiver he turns, crosses his arms and looks down at her.

  ‘Do you?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘You are wearing a wedding ring.’

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘I told you. I’m a widower.’

  ‘Couldn’t you even be divorced?’

  ‘Would that help?’

  ‘It’d be ...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘... wickeder,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t think –’ He uncrosses his arms and squats down in front of her putting a finger under her chin – ‘that we could get much wickeder than this. Do you?’

  The kiss makes all kinds of inroads on her senses but she does have the clear thought, very fleetingly, that if this is Vengeance then it is, indeed, sweet. Out in the hinterland there is a knocking. The kiss ends. The door is opened, the tray taken, the lock reset. He takes off his jacket, holds out a glass to her. She is still clutching the handkerchief. She gives it back to him, drains her glass, and sighs. It is a sigh of absolute certainty. No going back now.

  ‘Better?’ he asks politely. ‘I have some Scotch whisky here if you would like some?’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ she says.

  ‘Then you don’t have to have it.’

  The innuendo gives her goose-bumps.

  Their eyes meet and he slides (rather well for a beginner, she thinks) on to the bed beside her.

  And immediately rises up again with a startled grunt.

  He has sat on her little bag.

  ‘What the hell have you got in there?’ He looks down at it in surprise. She makes to grab it, he gets there first. ‘Women and their handbags.’ He chuckles.

  ‘Give it back,’ she commands.

  He holds it just out of her reach.

  She snatches, gains it briefly, before he pulls it free. The clasp, which has always been faulty, gives way and out on to the bed tumble her purse, her scent mini-spray, a comb, a few other small items and – naturally enough – the jar of Vaseline and the packet of condoms.

  ‘My God!’ he says, looking down in disbelief. ‘You are a hooker.’

  ‘I am not,’ she says fiercely.

  He turns the jar and the packet over in his hands. ‘It doesn’t look like it.’ The sarcasm rasps unpleasantly.

  So then, quite reasonably, using one of the few options open to a woman in such circumstances, she bursts into tears.

  He gives her his brandy, his handkerchief again; and pours himself a rather large whisky. He sits far away from her on his hotel armchair and watches her tears but he does nothing at all to stop them. She knows that he feels conned because she has gone through quite a lot of that herself just recently. There is no other way forward but to tell him everything. She sniffs, blows her nose, sips the brandy, sits bolt upright and says, ‘Walt. You are probably not going to believe this, but I’m going to tell you the whole story anyway ...’

  And she does.

  While Alex sips a very fine port, stifles yawn upon yawn and agrees with everything Judge Watson decrees, his wife is sitting in an hotel bedroom recounting her most intimate (and, therefore his most intimate) secrets to a stranger from Maine. And this same stranger, as Celia speaks, is drawn slowly back towards her, coming to rest very gently beside her on the bed, and making an unhurried, sensual exploration of her body which begins with his fingers stroking the nape of her neck. Celia has an advantage of which she has never been aware: she can cry and look appealing at the same time.

  At least, so it would seem from the investigative interest he shows.

  By the time she has finished the telling of it she is lying back on the bed, the newspaper crackling beneath her shoulders. His hand has moved from external preludes to the fugue itself. Slipped ins
ide her dress, it has encountered her underwired breasts which rise gratefully to meet it, quite as stiff as their metallic supports. Celia is now past considering the rights and wrongs of this, it matters not at all, though he, whispering close to her ear, makes it clear that he thinks what she is doing is right, is right, is Oh So Right. He kisses her ear, her neck, her ear again and says, ‘Forty is a wonderful age for a woman, a wonderful age ...’ And Celia whispers back, dreamily and just as softly, ‘And how old is your wife, Walt?’ To which the hand that caresses her shows no sign of disturbance as its owner utters the fateful phrase, ‘A little older than you ...’

  And then, of course, the hand freezes. The voice in Celia’s ear stops and, when it starts again, it says one small phrase.

  It says, ‘Oh shit.’

  It can say nothing else for Celia subdues it with her mouth which is laughing and triumphant.

  ‘That’s better,’ she says, smoothly rolling on top of him and looking down into those brilliant blue eyes which are, not unnaturally, sheepishly questioning. The suspender belt is really cutting into her flesh now, biting at skin which has had quite enough of it and cries out to be soothed by a lover’s lips.

  Frankly, Celia cannot wait to get it off. And it is not long before she does so.

  PART FOUR

  1

  Our smallest action has consequences. Tread on a beetle and the world is diminished, changed, however slightly. Stub your toe in the morning and the pain will lead to ill-temper, the ill-temper to erratic driving, erratic driving to lack of control, lack of control to driving into a stationary bus. And the consequences will not end there. You may yell something obscene at the driver, or call him a pratt for parking there, and the next thing you know you are having a punch-up; you are late for an historically important meeting; the client, furious at being kept waiting, uses someone else; you lose your job and cannot get another (your case for assaulting a public servant comes up next week) ... take to drink ... drugs ... prostitution – and all because of a stubbed toe. But feed it backwards. Why did you stub your toe in the first place? You stubbed it because just as you were leaving the house for the important meeting you noticed a nasty squashy mess on the side of your shoe, so you take it off to clean it and on the journey to the shoe-cleaning cupboard you – stub your bare toe. The nasty squashy mess on the side of your shoe was, of course, the beetle.