Parlour Games

by Mavis Cheek

  Metaphorically speaking, Celia trod on her beetle back in June, the outcome of which has been gathering momentum over the last few months. But in the whole extraordinary, mad scheme of things, her metaphorical squashing of the insect went unnoticed: it was the smallest, most fleeting of incidents compared with the magnitude of the other things taking place in her life at the time, but the world – her world, everybody else connected with her world – will never be the same again because of it. She will learn all about it later today but, just for the moment, she is busy in her kitchen being just like any other Bedford Park wife.

  All over again.

  *

  It is a Friday morning in early October. Out of her window Celia can see Henry and Rebecca in the garden. They have one of those odd things called ‘occasional days’ from school. And Celia – fully prepared for its arrival this time – has made plans.

  Goodfriend Hazel is going to have Henry and Rebecca to her house for the day. They seem to have grown away from Verity and Caspar recently and it will be nice if they can re-establish their friendship. Since their trip to Wales Hazel’s kids have been horse mad and take riding lessons locally as well as tennis coaching at Guess Who’s club. If Celia had been feeling more perky this summer she might have done something about the widening gap; arranged a few energetic diversions of the kind she was once so good at – a day on the river, Windsor Safari Park, a trip to the Mary Rose – but her energy for filling the vacuum has mysteriously vanished. What with one thing and another she just let the children coast through this summer and oddly enough they raised no objections. Providing they could potter about with some of their other contemporaries they had been perfectly happy. Their high spot of pleasure seemed to be gaining permission to go to the local shops alone. Celia found this somewhat crushing. All those years of organising them and it seemed all they had ever wanted was to go independently to choose their own ice creams ... She closed her ears to news reports concerning the abduction of children and let them get on with it. You had to let go a little eventually, she argued with herself, despite the tiny and terrible percentage of malevolence in the world. Otherwise you would be blowing their noses for them on their honeymoon. She had said exactly this to Alex when he confronted her with what he took to be a lapse in her motherly duties – though of course he did not put it quite as pompously as that. Celia knew he would object. Indeed, her first impulse had been to swear the children to silence rather as she had done all those years ago over Henry’s potty training – but something made her baulk at the deceit.

  ‘If they need diversions,’ he said, ‘why not take them down to my mother for the day?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to,’ she said, without knowing that she would.

  ‘We all have to do things we don’t like from time to time,’ he retorted.

  If it hadn’t been the crystal vase in her hands she would have thrown it at him.

  Anyway, Hazel’s resurgence today is comforting in two ways: firstly, because Celia has to get on with the Big Thrust, which is far less exciting than it sounds. The Big Thrust is her household clean-up before winter. She has been psyching Mrs Green up for weeks and Mrs Green has been resisting being psyched up for weeks. It is the annual battle between them. Mrs Green says that you do this sort of thing in the spring. Celia likes to get it over with well before Christmas. The usual result is that Celia wins by half a neck, but Mrs Green’s unwillingness makes the Big Thrust more of a Small Poke.

  However, this year there has been no battle. What has, in the past, been rather an exciting period of psychological preparation has this year been no more than a quietly determined drift towards compliance. After the suitable period of psyching, Celia merely told her cleaner what was expected of her and went on to say that if Mrs Green was not up to it then she should perhaps retire. (Wonderful thought!) If this took Mrs Green’s breath away (not difficult with her smoke-racked lungs) it is nothing to how the sudden arrival of such a statement amazed her employer. For despite all that has taken place, Mrs Green still likes to consider herself the Gorgon, and Celia still pretends towards Andromeda. Perseus has yet to appear. He may, however, be in the wings, for following on from the suggestion about retirement, Celia feels much strengthened. Indeed, she is building up to not making the coffee this morning and, more to the point, not drinking it with Mrs Green either. The very thought still makes her sweat. Can she go so far so swiftly? Perhaps she can. There is something about the autumnal scene beyond the kitchen window that is making Celia snappish. Like a hedgehog in reverse. For it makes her feel that she is coming to life, which is rather an unseasonal feeling given the prelude to winter’s barren call. Autumn has never touched her emotions like this before. So it is a good job, in Celia’s opinion, that Hazel will be here in a minute to collect the children, for the combination of the Big Thrust and her snappishness does not bode well for a day spent in their presence.

  Come on, Haze, she thinks impatiently, for the urge to talk to her is strong. She is vague about what she wants to say but the strength of the urge is definitely there – and growing. Indeed – what with the Big Thrust and this sense of renewal with her friend it should be more like spring in her heart than the autumn that creeps beyond the window ... perhaps it will be once she gets a few things off her chest. Hazel, she says to herself, surprised at the intensity of her need, hurry, hurry, hurry ...

  If the children have grown apart, Celia has also seen very little of her friend since her birthday. The munificent Jo has found favour over her. Not surprising, in fairness, Celia thinks, because she has been, well, preoccupied – not quite herself – and unable to confide the reason why to anyone. Even Hazel. Then there were the summer holidays which came in the middle of everything with Celia and Alex setting off on the Saturday that Hazel and John returned. So all in all it is comforting that she and Hazel are about to resume some kind of normality in their relationship. Despite Celia taking some of the blame for the coolness between them, she does feel that Hazel could have shown a little more push in her direction. There was a time, not so long ago, when Celia began to feel ready for the Confessional, a time when she felt that even the slightest overture from her friend would result in a soul-easing confidence, a lifting of the burden of the recent past – but Hazel was doing an orienteering course at the time (with Miss Grab-all Liberty Belle, naturally) and couldn’t find the time. ‘Why not join the course with us,’ she had said brightly. But Celia refused. After all, the landscape she needed to steer a course through could hardly be negotiated with maps. And after that the munificent and tireless Jo went on producing all kinds of Hazel-bound plans and Celia, cutting off her nose to spite her face, refused even to attempt to compete. Not a little wounded, she let Hazel slip out of her fingers with scarcely a murmur of complaint.

  ‘She’s not the usual kind of Conservative Party lady,’ Hazel said defensively. ‘Once you get to know her she’s very nice ... I think you’re just prejudiced against Americans.’

  If only you knew, thought Celia, but she let it go.

  But today, with the smell of the bonfire in her nostrils, and the sound of rustling leaves being swept up in the garden, she feels the need to regain that lost intimacy. Mrs Green can drink her coffee on her own and Celia will take Hazel into the front room, the adult sanctuary, and perhaps – who knows – pour out her heart. She needs to do this with somebody. She needs this very badly indeed. Those burning leaves make her realise that now.

  Perhaps after that, once Henry and Rebecca are out of the way, Celia will find the housewifely energy required to begin on the downstairs woodwork. She has neglected her home of late. For some reason, as she thinks this, her mother’s words come into her head and she finds herself nodding at the Raynes Park-ism, ‘Idle hands make mischief’. She agrees and, in consequence, from now on, she will keep busy, busy, busy. She ought really to do some cooking again – re-stock the freezer – and think about another dinner party; she has not even thought about giving one for months – not
since, not since – well, months and months anyway. And then there is the question of Hazel’s birthday cake – that event is coming up in a couple of weeks – all these things that she has neglected. She must, really must, put them right ... She can hear Mrs Green thumping away upstairs and a certain guilt descends, just as it used to. She should be making the coffee now – she looks at her watch – perhaps she will make that concession after all. What greater sign of her hard-won superiority than the waiving of it? She giggles. Shades of the old Celia. She recalls that memorable conversation with her cleaner at the beginning of the summer – a conversation in which they both stalked each other like players in a game of cat and mouse, each one thinking she was the cat. Mrs Green started it by handing Celia a little plastic bag and saying, ‘Yours, I think, Mrs Crossland.’

  And Celia, taking it, had swallowed very hard (to suppress mirth rather than fear) and said, ‘A present, Mrs Green – how nice – thank you.’

  Mrs Green’s nasal passages had gone into overdrive. ‘I think you should look at them closely,’ she said, her eyes glittering.

  Celia peered in fleetingly and recognised the wrappings of Sparkling Nights.

  ‘How pretty,’ she said. And fixing her cleaner with a gimlet eye, she added, ‘What are they?’

  ‘Well,’ said the cleaner, folding her arms and flushing a little. ‘I can tell you what they are not, Mrs Crossland.’

  Celia nodded encouragingly.

  Mrs Green shuffled a little but more or less stood her ground. ‘I can tell you that they are not the sort of thing you’d want to put on your feet.’

  ‘No?’ Celia give a radiant and innocent smile.

  ‘And they most certainly are not cornplasters!’ But Mrs Green’s sense of triumph was a little premature.

  Celia said musingly, ‘Not for feet and not cornplasters. I give up. What are they?’

  The flush deepened. The sniffing amplified. All her life Mrs Green had avoided calling a spade a spade – even normal bodily functions were reduced to numbers. Too old to change the habits of a lifetime, she was not going to put a name to the unspeakable if she could help it.

  ‘Well?’ said Celia brightly, for Mrs Green’s discomfort was a joy to behold.

  ‘I’d rather not say,’ she said firmly. ‘But they are what you gave me outside the chemist’s.’

  ‘Then they are cornplasters ...’

  ‘They are not ...’

  ‘Get along with you, Mrs Green,’ Celia said playfully. ‘We really can’t spend all day standing around here playing games like this.’

  Mrs Green’s struggle with decorum and desire twitched in every feature.

  Celia kept innocence upon her face.

  A few moments of stalemate.

  Then Mrs Green said, ‘I suggest you look into the bag more closely.’

  Obediently Celia did so. She very nearly wet herself when she saw that the packet had been opened.

  She looked up. Mrs Green’s eyes were slitted with expectancy.

  Celia said, ‘Balloons, Mrs Green. How nice.’

  Mrs Green opened her mouth.

  Celia said, ‘I’ll put them away for Christmas, shall I? How very kind of you.’ Seeing that her companion was struggling and in danger of overcoming decency in the name of accuracy Celia went on swiftly, ‘Oh – and by the way – I have had a word with the people next door and they were quite ready to forget all about your mistake with Mr Mason. So we’ll do the same, shall we?’

  ‘My mistake?’ said Mrs Green, getting a second wind.

  ‘Yes,’ said Celia kindly. She put the little bag down on the bench and patted it, giving her cleaner a long hard look. ‘Well, we all make them ... don’t we?’ Then she smiled. ‘Now – there is a lot to do so shall we get on ...?’

  From this small and apparently insignificant victory, Celia derived a good deal of comfort.

  Mrs Green, on the other hand, had put the week’s clean socks away, all twenty-four pairs, without folding them into each other. But it was cold comfort. In her bosom, that flat and dried-out place, she stored a deepened resentment that only some monumentally awful discovery could ever allay.

  As Celia sets down the mugs and has her last chuckle at the memory she finds herself wondering if that was the last time anything funny happened in her life. There doesn’t seem to have been much to laugh about since then – more than three months ago – she sighs. So this is being forty, is it? Well, well ...

  She looks through the open door into the conservatory. She really must sort that out too. Half the plants need watering and the rose has greenfly on its dried-up husks. The children have made a camp in there out of the rattan furniture and the wind has blown in leaves and dried grass. It looks exactly as if a bomb has hit it. She should make the two of them clear it up, and she will – when she gets around to it – but it took enough energy getting them to clear up the leaves. The prospect of making them deal with the conservatory as well is too much today. Come on, Hazel, she thinks, hurry up, please ...

  The bonfire is smoking sullenly. Henry looks up to see if they are being observed. If they are not he will pinch a bit of white spirit from the shed and get a good blaze going. Alas for his pyrotechnic dreams, his mother is gazing out of the window at them. But at least she is smiling. By way of compensation for the lack of blaze he says to his sister, ‘Quick. Mum’s smiling ... go in and ask if we can have a drink of coke before she stops ...’

  But Rebecca is too late. By the time she has said, ‘Why me?’ and, ‘Bloody Hell,’ (the current favourite between them), put down her rake and walked through the conservatory the telephone has rung, Celia has answered it, and already her mood has changed.

  The call is from Hazel. And her cheery tone is transparently tense. Celia already knows the gist of what she is going to say before she says it – and she is right. Jo has decided, on the spur of the moment because England is so beautiful in the fall, to go down to their Cotswold cottage for the weekend. Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, goes Hazel’s nervous laugh. And guess what? More tinkles – there are shards of guilty laughter all over the place – she has invited Hazel and the kids to accompany her. Sorry, Celia. Celia affects bonhomie and says not to worry. Relieved, Hazel prepares to ring off with the reminder that she will see her friend at her own fortieth birthday party soon anyway.

  ‘Ah yes,’ says Celia. ‘I was going to ask. What kind of cake do you want?’

  ‘Oh – Um – Er,’ says Goodfriend Hazel.

  ‘Come on, Haze,’ she says, endeavouring to regain some of their old easiness. ‘I can do anything within reason ...’

  ‘Er – Oh – Um,’ continues the prospective birthday girl, and Celia suddenly knows what is coming.

  ‘As a matter of fact, Cee—’

  Celia stays silent. She is not going to help her on this one.

  ‘As a matter of fact – well – Jo – has kind of volunteered to do something ...’ and there go the nervous tinklings again.

  ‘Fine,’ says Celia, wounded beyond measure. ‘That’s OK. Fine.’

  ‘But I thought,’ continues Hazel, apparently impersonating Joyce Grenfell, ‘that you might organise some games for us. You’re so good at that sort of thing, Cee –’ Joyce Grenfell has become somewhat strangulated. Celia lets her founder. ‘Celia?’

  ‘Bye, Hazel,’ she says. ‘Enjoy the fall.’ She puts the telephone back in its rest. ‘Hope it breaks your neck.’

  For some reason the word fall has added to the soreness. Somewhere along the line Celia decides she has lost a skin.

  It is not, therefore, the most propitious moment for Rebecca to appear with her request. Not only has Celia lost a skin but a great, gaping wound seems to have opened. She rounds on her daughter and lets rip, hating herself as she does so ... does she want her teeth to rot or what? Get back out there and finish sweeping those leaves up, and put away all those summer things of yours or they’ll get thrown on the fire. Rebecca, spirited like her mother and as yet unbound by adult convention, does not
take this lying down. She suggests sarcastically that it wouldn’t matter because – given the stupid refusal of their request for some real ignition – nothing will burn anyway.

  ‘Go!’ yells Celia, pointing a long and quivering finger, ‘before I put you on the bonfire instead.’ Rebecca decides to cede defeat. Her mother is showing unusual forcefulness. ‘Out, out and don’t come back in until you’ve done it.’ As she says this she sees the Russian Vine, quite dead now, no more than a welter of ash-grey sticks. It adds to her anger but the spurt of words does little to relieve her feelings.

  Bloody Hazel, bloody autumn, bloody everything.

  And – while she is at it – bloody California too.

  Susannah is in California.

  Susannah will be in California until Susannah decides to come home.

  Susannah went off to California just after Celia returned from her summer holiday. Never had she felt the need for a heart to heart so acutely yet what could she say to her friend? Susie – all excited at getting back to America for a while – explained that what with the dollar exchange rate (Celia had made what she hoped was a suitably understanding ‘Uh-huh’ down the phone at this) and the terrifically good sale of the dog-woman’s Daimlers, it made it much more sensible for them to pick up some real estate on the West Coast.

  ‘Sure you’re all right, Cee?’

  (Another noncommital uh-huh.)

  ‘Good. Poor old Tom isn’t. He’s been like a bear with a sore head. God knows (tee hee, how apt!) what it was that the vicar’s wife had, but it must have been wonderful. It seems to have ended very quickly and it’s left him showing all the symptoms of a man who has been deeply affected by something. Poor Tom – knocked sideways by the wife of a rural rector. Do you remember what she looked like, Celia? All that powder blue and matching eye shadow. You wouldn’t credit the things men fall for, would you?’