Muriel's Reign

by Susanna Johnston

  He fell in love and said, ‘Hugh. Congratulations. I hope you’ll be very happy.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be, if I may ask? Are you suggesting that I won’t be?’

  Muriel was talking shyly to their father at the time and didn’t hear the brothers’ interchange. Peter wondered whether he was going to trip and fall – so besotted had he instantly become.

  After that he kept away from the couple although, after the marriage, Muriel tried to include him in family gatherings which seldom took place. Occasionally they spoke on the telephone and one day Peter told her that he was not happy in his flat. Neighbours were noisy and it was dark. Within days she spotted a For Sale sign on a house a few doors from hers and suggested he buy it. Too near to Hugh but never could he be near enough to Muriel. He bought it without much delay or consideration.

  Hugh and Muriel’s marriage was going through a disastrous patch and Muriel took to calling in, pretty frequently, on Peter. He had never been so happy and, since neither he nor Muriel saw much of Hugh, there was no reason for feelings of guilt. They did not flirt with each other; just talked and smoked and smiled.

  At a certain point, Peter became aware of slight headaches and flickering pressure from behind his eyes but made no move to see a doctor. In truth he was afraid to go out very often for fear that Muriel might call. He did not wish to risk missing a precious moment.

  His sight went very suddenly. He saw only black and, at first, it seemed impossible that he was never to see again. Impossible even to light a cigarette. All impossible. His eyes were still in their sockets. That was something but perhaps they looked misty and white. What was Muriel to think when she saw him?

  She did see him – every day and he did, at least, already know how beguiling she looked. He soon began to realise that the compassion released in Muriel made up for his huge and terrifying loss. He was happy and so, it certainly seemed, was she. She took him to any number of opticians but not one of them offered any convincing explanation. One said it might have been an apoplectic effusion in his brain. Another simply said it had been a stroke – an unusual one that had affected only his sight. Not his arms or legs.

  And so, he said to himself as he heard the door open in his study – the rest is history.

  Hugh sat down in a chair near to Peter’s and, clearing his throat, began to speak.

  ‘So, Peter. You are the lucky one now. You don’t know what it is to be excluded – to have to live in an outhouse with you, you, swanning it in my wife’s bed.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Hugh.’ It was easier now that he couldn’t see the black rage that would spread into Hugh’s eyes as he tormented him during childhood.

  ‘It’s the way things have worked out but I don’t swan it. I keep very quiet.’

  ‘So I should hope. I am pretty sure that half this house belongs to me. We’re not divorced.’

  Just then Monopoly walked across the carpet and settled by Peter’s feet. Peter could feel fur brush his trouser leg and stretched out an arm to stroke the dog.

  It was far too much for Hugh who exploded in the way he used to do.

  ‘And my dog. You are vile. Vile. You’ve always been sneaky and vile.’

  But Dulcie charged in. She had heard Hugh’s raised voice and wanted some fun.

  ‘You two. Fighting like babies. Ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Bloody awful the lot of you.’

  Nothing was changed by the ordeal.

  Chapter 20

  It was impossible to get rid of Phyllis. She had been seriously deranged by Hugh’s affection followed by defection and lay twisted on her bed – visited regularly by Dulcie who threw saucepans’ full of water over her face and asked, ‘What the hell did you expect? We all knew he was a prime figure in a scandal of a sexual nature. My mother was a district nurse and brought me up with an iron hand. Absolutely firm. I’m thankful to say, she advised me to have nothing whatsoever to do with men. Nothing whatsoever.’

  The only mercy offered by Marco and Flavia’s New Year’s Eve party was that Judge Jones had not been present. He did not trust himself to the outer world and dreaded seeing Lizzie again. She had asked for it by thrusting herself at him but it had to be faced. He had made a fool of himself.

  He wrote to Muriel the following day. ‘Hail to my neighbour. Would that I could have seen the New Year in with you and your young. I had a blocked nose but I’m on the mend.

  ‘I wonder if this is an appropriate moment to mention this to you but a dicky-bird has told me that your comely housekeeper might be seeking another post and I find that, since the death of my dear Sandra, I would welcome …’

  Peter said, ‘Perfect. Let’s take her over at once. She’d love to be goosed and he can lick her as much as he likes.’

  Lizzie had not resisted spreading the tale of the licking outside the bedroom door.

  Phyllis and her very few boxes were driven to the laurel-enclosed house by Joyce. Dulcie settled into the back of the car for the ride, snorting and assuring the two other women that she was ‘not interested in whose posterior the judge does or does not fancy.’

  Soon after this Hugh left for London. His visit was not a success. Lizzie was nervously sensitive owing to lack of much encouragement from Hugh although he had taken her to buy the newspaper on Boxing Day. She had done her best to animate him and had hoped to be barricaded with blandishments but Hugh was not inclined to kindle too fierce a flame in her, in spite of her sparkle, for he was looking forward to his lunch with Melanie who mixed with intellectuals and showbiz people. Phyllis had frightened him too.

  He arrived at Lizzie’s flat mid-morning. When he had seen his very small bedroom in the basement he hoped to be offered a cup of coffee.

  ‘Lunch?’ she asked. ‘Shall we go out to lunch? There’s a smart new Italian restaurant in Fulham.’

  ‘I’ll be roaming the streets at lunchtime. Tailors and so forth but, perhaps, we might meet up tonight?’

  Lizzie said that she planned to be at home that evening.

  Hugh met Melanie for lunch and found the situation awkward. She had assumed that they were to spend the rest of the day, and probably the night, together and became huffy when he explained that he owed the evening to Lizzie.

  Lizzie was out and he let himself in with a latchkey that she had given him and decided to make himself a cup of tea. There was absolutely nothing whatsoever in the refrigerator. Nor in the cupboards – save for an elderly tin of chicken liver pâté. Not even a biscuit or a banana – let alone a packet of tea.

  They were, as foretold, both in that first evening but Lizzie didn’t offer him anything to eat.

  ‘Seriously,’ she said, ‘I never eat anything from lunchtime onwards. Not until I go out for breakfast in the mornings – unless I’m meeting someone that is.’

  Hugh offered to take her somewhere for dinner but she shied from it. She wanted to watch television. At seven o’clock, she told him, she always turned on the news – however horrible. On this occasion she and Hugh drank wine. Hugh had brought four bottles of the pre-war Cheval Blanc from Muriel’s cellar, squirreled away by Phyllis, with him.

  After the news, she fished out a video, an old ‘soap’ and together they watched that – drinking a fortune’s worth of last drops.

  Video over, Lizzie told Hugh that she was going to bed and he wondered if she expected him to make a move to snuggle up with her. He didn’t want to. She irritated him and he was extremely hungry and a bit drunk. It was very unsatisfactory and he had no idea of what Lizzie’s game was. She barely knew herself. In the aftermath of the judge’s slippery tongue and dirty talk, she had seen a window of opportunity with Hugh but it had closed as fast as it had opened.

  In the morning she told him that she always went to a café for breakfast; that she read the daily rag over a cappuccino. She didn’t ask him to join her so he went his own way and ate a huge quantity of prunes, baked beans, tomatoes, bacon, eggs, fried bread, croissants, cereal, butter and jam in a coffee bar fairly near to
where Lizzie was reading her newspaper.

  After that he returned to Lincolnshire.

  He was relieved to find that the playpen had disappeared and that no trace of Phyllis showed itself.

  Melanie, during their listless lunch, had told him that she planned to spend some consecutive weeks in the cottage that she had bought on a whim in order to distance herself from her formidable social life in London.

  He looked forward to having another crack at her. Seeing a bit of her. Every bit.

  He changed into his country gear and thought of calling on Muriel or, failing that, on Marco and Flavia. He needed company; fidgety after his futile and truncated escapade with Lizzie in London. It was perhaps wiser not to call on Muriel for he remembered the danger of sighting Phyllis. He had not heard of her newfound employment with the judge. It was still very cold and he pulled out an extra jumper as he dithered over whether to target Marco and Flavia.

  He noticed, as he sorted himself out, that there was a letter for him that had been delivered when he was away. It had come by airmail from South Africa. He unpacked his sponge bag – aperients, mouthwash, electric toothbrush – and arranged them like a little army, fighting for his life, beside the basin.

  He opened the stiff envelope and sat down heavily as he read the typed sheet. It came from a solicitor and told him that he had fathered a little boy in South Africa. His eyes began to dance and to water but he had not even read the name of the declaring mother before his concentration fully left him. He did just manage to stand and allow his eyes to swivel to the looking-glass in front of which he preened and straightened his tie.

  Pearl, perhaps, or Gloria. A beige brother for Marco. Uncle to Cleopatra. He and Muriel were still married and the little bundle might have a claim on Bradstow Manor. Anything, in his manliness, became possible.

  When he was steadier he returned to the letter. Good God. They were soon to be on their way. Mother and child. Due to arrive within weeks and expecting to be met at the nearest station. The mother was neither Pearl nor Gloria but the estranged wife of a Belgian banker. Only once, too, he recalled dimly as the episode returned to irk him. The night he had arrived in Johannesburg. They had stayed at the same modest hotel and he had been disorientated – Muriel refusing to join him and missing his dog.

  ‘Marcelle’ had tracked him down somehow and the boy must be about the same age as Cleopatra. He was called Pierre. Peter. Too many Peters already.

  A walk was the answer. Might do him good.

  In the courtyard he was startled. Was that really Cleopatra in a peek-a-boo bonnet with a dummy, trailing a vast bow, in her mouth? It was, presumably, the old pram that she was strapped into but along the edges of the hood crawled felt mice in floral headgear carrying cocktail umbrellas. The carriage was painted mauve and the bar of the handle glistened with silver spray.

  From under a grubby sleeve, cigarette smoke threaded and evaporated in the cold air. Tommy, who was wearing a very flat grey hat, beamed.

  ‘Here’s Grandad, my little lovely.’ He pinched the baby’s cheek and told Hugh that he had devoured a book on Norland nursing, ‘potty training and the lot’, and was now in full charge of Cleopatra.

  ‘One has never felt so fulfilled.’

  Hugh asked whether one might feel even more fulfilled if one had two, so to speak, to care for. The pram had been designed for two in the first place.

  ‘Why not? Double trouble as they say. Double pennies too, please. One might get the creative urge and dress them to match.’

  ‘It’s a boy. Pierre. Peter.’

  Tommy winked, ‘I shall call him Pee-Pee. What’s the difference so long as she’s pretty.’

  The dummy slithered from Cleopatra’s mouth and she started to howl. It seemed she didn’t like the notion of sharing her pram with a boy called Peter – especially if he was to be dressed as a girl. She didn’t know, of course, that he would also be her uncle.

  In the distance Hugh saw Muriel walking with Peter and Monopoly. Curtains were closed in the barn. It was already afternoon but still early for Marco and Flavia. He trudged alongside Tommy Tiddler whose stupefying scent drifted, intermingled with cigarette smoke, as strongly in the outdoor weather as ever it had done elsewhere.

  Muriel, spotting him, was dismayed to see that Hugh had hurried back from London but said to Peter, ‘So. That’s that. Phyllis gone for good. Hugh, with a bit of luck, subdued and Cleopatra. Oh God.’

  They watched the eccentric group move slowly as Tommy navigated the pram along a path, Hugh at his side.

  For the time being, at least, Muriel planned, with the help of Peter, to reign over her kingdom comparatively undisturbed.

  The following day Hugh took up with Melanie who had hastened to Lincolnshire in pursuit of him and who ‘understood’ everything. She elected to drive him to the station when the day came for him to meet with the estranged wife of the Belgian banker and the boy who, he had been assured, resembled him. Marcelle, the boy’s mother, having handed over the baby, took the next train back to London. Hugh barely recognised her and they spoke few words to each other.

  Hugh, fed up with the squash court, moved in with Melanie and they lived off the generous proceeds of the near-Bronzino. It had turned out to be a rare contemporary copy and Muriel gave it to him in exchange for a divorce.

  Before long a large glass extension and another full story were added to Melanie’s cottage. She was childless and declared herself ‘over the moon’ to take in little Pierre whose mother had returned to the Belgian banker on his condition that her aberration with Hugh in Johannesburg was never mentioned. Melanie also made the condition that Tommy Tiddler was to be fully employed to look after both Cleopatra and her small uncle.

  Tommy, after dressing and spraying Cleopatra with scent each morning, took to fetching Pierre, popping him into the pram and spraying him behind the ears; that and around the rim of each peek-a-boo bonnet.

  ‘Sneaked in a little mimosa sprinkler,’ he mentioned to Hugh who walked down the path to greet the group as they set off for one of their morning outings.

  ‘One of the tots might do a toilet and one doesn’t want stinky-poo if one has to do a speedy changums, does one?’

  Cleopatra and Pierre spent most of their time with Tommy at the Old School House where, in a newly-fashioned night-nursery, he had painted a mural. It consisted of several centaurs – each with their heads depicting various members of the community; Dawson in dog collar, Delilah with very curly hair, Alastair wearing a wistful smile; Dulcie, Muriel, Peter, Hugh, Melanie and others but none of them skilfully achieved and therefore unrecognisable. The dog collar gave a hint but that, too, was smudged – so no feelings had to be wounded.

  Melanie, although perfectly happy to be a proxy parent, was also happy to enjoy Hugh’s son and granddaughter at a distance. She had no wish for them to cause any destruction in her newly rebuilt house – or to the thatched music room, also newly built, at the end of the garden.

  Chapter 21

  Hugh waved the unlikely cortège away with a courageous smile and returned to Melanie who was percolating coffee in the well-appointed kitchen.

  ‘This knife sharpener was a good buy, Melanie.’ He sat and delighted in his comfort and new purchases.

  He had been practising riding a bicycle without using the handlebars so as to be able to play the flageolet as he peddled up the village street. It was a small, flute-like, instrument with four finger holes on top and two thumb holes below. He had found it in the attic at Bradstow Manor. Muriel had seen no reason why he shouldn’t take that along with the near-Bronzino and various other musical instruments, including sheet music. Mostly glees and madrigals.

  As he and Melanie set knives aside before embarking on the adventure of turning the handle and achieving sparkling results, he suggested, ‘I think we ought to get around to organising our madrigal evening. It’s going to take careful planning. Christening of the music room. Local talent.’

  ‘It’s up to you, H
ugh dear. I wonder who we’ll ask.’

  He kissed her with a long look and slightly swollen lips that had suffered from his bicycle rides, as he guided the wheels partly with his knees and partly with the pressure of his weight, with the flageolet in his mouth.

  They had put finishing touches to the thatched music room. There was a platform set up with music stands and many uncomfortable chairs waited for an audience.

  ‘We might kick off with “Dainty Fine Bird”. Something like that.’

  ‘I love the one about the swan, Hugh. You sing that so tunefully.’ He smiled and stood up straight at the foot of the table, just beyond the knife sharpener and sang, ‘The Dying Swan when Leeving had Noo Nooote.’

  ‘Oh Hugh. I hope we can find some voices as lovely as yours. Of course, in London, I knew professionals – but here …’

  Melanie’s London friends had not attempted to bother her and she was without a circle. She ran round in them, though, gleeful at all she had gained.

  Delilah, it turned out, had a strong voice, if sharp, and put herself forward as part of a quartet. The other two voices were also recruited locally and were a husband-and-wife team with some experience.

  It rained on the day of the party although it had been planned for mid-June. Guests were allowed to leave umbrellas in the half-timbered porch and took to their uncomfortable seats in squelching shoes.

  Dawson on his own (Delilah was performing and thus waiting excitedly behind the scenes), Muriel and Peter. The judge and Phyllis, Tommy with a child on each knee, even Dulcie, as well as many others, sat there as Hugh, on tiptoe and eyes turned to heaven, gave short explanations before each ‘piece’.

  Melanie acted wanly as a modest but knowing hostess wearing a bemused and self-deprecating smile as she mumbled, ‘Very local, I’m afraid. Not like a London “do” at all, but very touching.’