The Would-Begetter

by Maggie Makepeace

  ‘Hell!’ Hector exclaimed, picking the goose up and dusting it off with a damp dishcloth. Some of the stuffing had fallen out on to the floor, and Hector picked it up also in two or three attempts and restrained himself, just, from shoving it back inside the bird’s body cavity. Instead he scraped it off his hands in a sticky heap on the edge of table, and then wiped them abstractedly on his apron.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Zillah said, ‘it’ll be fine. Just bung it in the oven, I would.’ Then she kept any further advice to herself, and joined Christian in watching television whilst Hector got on with things. Later on she discovered that the steaming pudding had virtually boiled dry and because, so far, she was winning hands down, she felt quite able to top it up with boiling water without losing face.

  At noon, when Hector was getting pinker and more agitated by the moment, the front doorbell rang. Christian ran to answer it, and Zillah heard with surprise and pleasure, his cry of ‘Dad!’

  Brilliant timing, she thought. Good old Clive! After she had greeted him and introduced him to Hector, she’d asked about the strange woman who had turned up at the same time, and then for some unaccountable reason had run off again. Hector told her that Wendy was his home decorator, but was painfully shy.

  ‘It’s a bit beyond the call of duty, isn’t it,’ Zillah asked, ‘working on Christmas day, I mean?’

  ‘I think she’s lonely,’ Hector explained.

  ‘Poor woman. That’s one thing I’ve never been, even when I’m alone.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Clive said, ‘since I’m off again, day after tomorrow. Wouldn’t want you to pine away now would we?’

  ‘Not much chance of that.’ Zillah said, unsurprised at the prospect of his not too distant departure, but noticing that Hector had visibly brightened.

  ‘Summink smells good,’ Clive observed. ‘I’m starving.’

  Hector felt much easier when Christmas was over, and Clive had once more gone off abroad. He hadn’t taken to the man. More than that, he’d been on tenterhooks the whole time in case Clive were to guess the truth about himself and Zillah. Hector was sure he would have been quite capable of duffing him up at a moment’s notice if he’d suspected anything. He was a lot younger than Hector and had hands the size of boxing gloves. But it seemed that Clive hadn’t suspected anything. He gradually allowed himself to relax.

  The only other potential problem was Wendy. When she had appeared unannounced on Christmas day, Hector realised, sinkingly, that she clearly hadn’t understood the strictly temporary nature of their association. But, determined not to jeopardise his precious new relationship with Zillah, he’d managed to fob her off, and was vastly relieved when she hadn’t even come indoors; turning suddenly and running off. Phew! he thought. That was a close thing!

  After Clive’s departure, things had settled down as before, with Zillah secretly admitting him to her bed, all unbeknownst to Christian who seemed to assume that he had spent the entirety of each night on the sofa. Everything should have been perfect, but Hector felt uncomfortably unsettled. It wasn’t anything specific that he could positively identify. It was just that an indefinable something was missing… He considered asking Zillah whether she and Clive had made love in his bed… but he really didn’t want to know.

  It was almost a relief to return to work after the Christmas holiday.

  ‘You doing anything for lunch?’ he asked Jess on their first day back.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I thought we might pop over to the pub.’

  ‘Good idea. Why not?’

  They walked across the road together and when comfortably seated in an alcove nearest to the fake log fire, Jess asked him, ‘How was your Festering Season then, and how is the noble gesture panning out?’

  ‘Noble gesture? Oh I see what you mean. Fine… well, OK anyway.’

  ‘Not quite what you’d envisaged?’

  ‘Well Zillah’s bruiser of a boyfriend turned up for three days over Christmas and quite frankly we didn’t have a lot in common.’

  ‘Must have been a tight fit?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Squeezing you all into two bedrooms. That is all you’ve got, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, that wasn’t a problem actually,’ Hector said, improvising rapidly. ‘Zillah and the boy had my bed and I slept in the single in the spare room. Then when Clive turned up, he moved in with Zillah and the boy slept on the bunk in the cab of the lorry. He loved it. And now of course, we’re back to square one again.’

  ‘So, what is the problem?’ Jess asked.

  ‘Mmmmm?’

  ‘You look fed up.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Oh, I was just thinking about bloody Clive. He just about ate me out of house and home, and then had the cheek to say to Zillah (when he thought I wasn’t listening), that I was… Oh never mind.’

  ‘Go on,’ Jess urged. ‘You can tell me.’

  Hector sighed. ‘It’s nothing really. He just said I was past my sell-by date.’

  ‘Cheek! And what did she say?’

  ‘She laughed.’

  ‘Ungrateful bastards, both of them.’

  ‘Oh well, I expect she’s afraid to disagree with him. He’s a tough sort.’ Hector sighed again.

  ‘So it is only skin deep – beauty, that is?’

  ‘Oh I wouldn’t say that,’ Hector said at once. ‘She’s a lovely person. I suppose my ideas of suitable behaviour are just rather old fashioned…’

  ‘Never mind. Better luck next time, eh?’ Jess smiled encouragingly.

  Hector refused to smile back. ‘That’s an odd sort of thing to say. I mean, it isn’t as though I had any special interest in the woman.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I don’t know what it is about you, Jess Hazelrigg, but you always seem to twist our conversations around to the personal.’

  ‘I have a morbid fascination with the depths of human depravity and private tragedy,’ Jess said. ‘That’s why I enjoy our little chats so much. Talking of which, what’s happened to Wendy lately, d’you know?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘It’s just that she looked like death this morning, and after only about an hour in Reception, she had to go home. Barry says he’s really worried about her.’

  ‘What’s it to him?’

  ‘I think he worships from afar.’

  ‘But he’s about half her age!’

  ‘Love knows no boundaries, Hector. Surely you understand that?’ Jess took off her glasses and began to clean them on the hem of her sweatshirt. Hector turned jokingly to meet her gaze and found himself brought up short by the look in her exposed brown eyes.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Right.’

  Barry went round to Wendy’s house after work and rang the doorbell, stepping backwards to look up at the windows to see whether he was being observed. The curtain in her bedroom twitched, but no one came to the door. He rang the bell again. On the fourth ring the door opened a crack and Wendy’s voice said,

  ‘Go away Barry! I’m ill in bed.’

  ‘I just came to see how you are.’

  ‘Thanks, but I can manage.’

  ‘So what’s wrong with you then?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got a virus the doctor says. I’ll be fine once I’ve taken the antibiotics.’

  ‘But viruses don’t respond to… Look Wendy, just let me in will you?’

  ‘I can’t. I look a mess.’

  ‘I don’t give a stuff what you look like. It’s the real you I care about.’

  ‘Oh…’ The door opened wider and Wendy peeped out. She was fully dressed. Her eyes were red and puffy and full of tears. ‘… nobody’s ever said that to me before.’ She looked utterly pathetic.

  Barry stepped forward at once, putting both arms around her, and she began to sob against his chest. ‘Come on,’ he said, patting her back gently, ‘let’s go inside and sit down and you can tell me all about it.’

  Little by little he go
t it out of her; all except a name.

  ‘He’s had to go abroad on business,’ Wendy said, sniffing, ‘in… indefinitely. And when I offered to give up my job and go with him, he told me he was married to some woman in… in Israel, who’s a… Catholic so he can’t get a divorce…’

  ‘Poor you,’ Barry said comfortingly, holding her hand as they sat side by side on the sofa. He didn’t believe a word of it, but was nevertheless affected by her obvious despair. ‘What a shame. You must be devastated.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Wendy gulped.

  ‘Well, there’s not a lot you can do in the circumstances, is there?’

  ‘I thought he loved me, you see.’ She took her hand away from his in order to blow her nose on a small pink tissue.

  ‘The rat,’ Barry muttered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sure he did (love you, that is), but you know… circumstances beyond his control and all that.’ He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed them.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’ll all work out in the end, you’ll see.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ She wiped her eyes again.

  ‘Have you had anything to eat lately?’

  ‘Haven’t felt like much,’ Wendy admitted.

  ‘How about…’ Barry felt about in his jacket pocket and produced a packet of crisps, ‘… one of these. Salt and vinegar?’

  Wendy inhaled; half hiccup, half laugh. ‘Oh Barry, you’re so silly. Fancy thinking a handful of those could mend a broken heart.’ But she ate some anyway.

  Hector was aware of mixed feelings when Zillah and Christian finally left to go back to their own cottage. As he drove them there, he was forced to admit to himself that it hadn’t been, as he had hoped, ten days of unmitigated bliss. There were certainly great advantages to be obtained from a live-in woman like Zillah, there were also notable… what was that abominable word that Nigel used all the time?… Yes… dis-benefits too.

  On the plus side, Zillah had been wonderful in bed. She’d slept with him enthusiastically, and (apart from terminal exhaustion) she’d made him feel so desirable, skilful, and alive. He thought he had never wanted a woman as much; had never found one who so uninhibitedly enjoyed him. But… he couldn’t rid himself of the suspicion that she might have slept just as cheerfully with any other man who’d asked her. Could he really marry someone who might well be promiscuous?

  And then there was Clive. When he had unexpectedly turned up, everything had changed. Hector, who wasn’t in the habit of sitting on the reserves bench, found it decidedly humiliating, but valiantly kept up the pretence for Zillah’s sake. For some unknown reason, she seemed to be very keen on the brute. Incomprehensible, Hector thought to himself, but if it’s a straightforward choice between him and me, then there’s surely no contest? She must be bright enough to work that one out. But…

  Hector gripped the steering wheel with both hands, the better to concentrate his mind. He would have to face up to some uncomfortable thoughts. There was no getting away from the fact that Zillah was not a very suitable prospect as a wife; definitely more mistress material – for bed but not board. But that was not all; it seemed she couldn’t cook. She didn’t appear to recognise the necessity for housework at all, and she was noticeably deficient in the normal female capacity for self-reproach which, in Hector’s view, was the essential cornerstone of a good marriage. How, he wondered, could a man manage such a woman? There were no obvious constraints; no sanctions one could employ. She held all the cards.

  And then of course there was the boy to consider. He would be part of the package. Hector would have to be a stepfather to him, would have to get used to having him around all the time, for another nine years at the very least. Would (God forbid!) for Christian’s sake, have to be polite to Clive…

  Then the optimistic side of Hector rose to the fore and he said to himself: Easy! Christian and I like each other. What’s the problem? Anyway, Zillah-as-a-guest is probably a totally different reality to Zillah-as-a-wife. As guest, she was probably being super-sensitive; trying not to interfere in my house. But as Mrs Mudgeley…

  ‘Here we are,’ Zillah said. ‘On the left, just here.’

  ‘Home!’ Christian cried.

  Hector braked and drew up outside a run-down cottage. Dead carpets and easy chairs with tide-marks had been dumped in the front garden and were still there. It looked decidedly insanitary. Christian scrambled out of the car without closing the door, and ran round to the back of the house.

  ‘Are you sure it’s fit for human habitation?’ Hector asked.

  ‘It’s fine inside,’ Zillah assured him.

  ‘Well, I think I ought just to make sure…’

  ‘NO! Stay put Hector. My landlord has had hot-air blowers drying it all out, and he’s got’ us new carpets and chairs and stuff. He rang yesterday to tell me all about it.’

  ‘You never said?’

  ‘Well you were at work at the time. So anyway, thanks for everything. Don’t bother seeing us in. We’ll be fine.’ She opened her door and got out. Then she pulled the two cases and a cardboard box of books from the back seat, and stood them on the road.

  ‘But Zillah,’ Hector said, leaning across her seat and looking up at her, ‘You haven’t given me your phone number?’

  ‘Haven’t got one.’

  ‘But I will see you again, soon? We could go out for the odd meal?’

  ‘Somehow I don’t think Clive would be too keen on that idea,’ Zillah said, starting to close the door. Hector held it open.

  ‘But you’re not married to the man!’

  ‘Well that’s hardly the point, is it?’

  ‘MUM!’ Christian called, running back breathless, ‘my bike is still in the shed. No one nicked it. Isn’t it great!’

  ‘Good,’ Zillah smiled round at him. ‘Say thank-you to Hector then, and help me carry the bags in.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Christian said. ‘It was… great. Thanks for all the books too.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  “Bye then.’

  ‘Goodbye Zillah,’ Hector called, but she was already in the cottage porch with her back to him, and she didn’t even turn and wave as he slammed the car door and drove away.

  Hector felt miserable and furious all the way back into town. It was Saturday morning and he had the whole weekend ahead, with nothing to take his mind off her casual rejection. He felt badly in need of comfort and reassurance. Then he remembered the expression in a woman’s eyes not so very long ago, which had conveyed everything that he now most wanted to feel. So, without further thought, he drove straight to her house and hammered on the door. It wasn’t until she opened it, that he began to have qualms.

  ‘Uh, hello Wendy,’ he said.

  Chapter 8

  Jess drove to Caroline’s flat one Saturday evening in early April. It had been a heavy week and she had been in the darkroom all that morning, catching up on the backlog of photo re-prints requested by readers of the Chronicle. She was glad to be up to date, but tired, and ready for a relaxing time doing nothing special. She and Caroline hadn’t seen much of each other since before Christmas. Both had been so busy at work.

  ‘Hello,’ Caroline said, giving her a hug. ‘Come in. How lovely to see you.’ Jess was flattered to notice her Christmas present hanging on the wall in the kitchen. ‘Looks great there, doesn’t it?’ Caroline said, following her gaze. ‘Pity really, but I’m sure it will look good anywhere I choose to hang it.’

  ‘Sorry? I’m not with you,’ Jess said.

  ‘Glass of wine?’ Caroline asked, ‘or cider? See, I remembered this time!’

  ‘Cider would be lovely, thanks.’

  ‘Let’s go and sit down comfortably then. I’ve got lots to tell you.’

  Jess noticed that Caroline herself was not drinking anything, so she held her glass tentatively, feeling that perhaps she shouldn’t either. As they sat down opposite each other, Caroline said, ‘I’ve been head-hunted,’ she looked triumph
ant, ‘by a firm in London!’

  ‘But you’ve only been here since December…’ Jess said. ‘So, won’t your present company feel a bit…?’

  ‘Yes it is tough on them, but that’s life, and it’s a wonderful opportunity for me. It’s a much bigger operation in London, masses more scope.’

  ‘I shall really miss you,’ Jess said.

  ‘You can come and stay,’ Caroline encouraged her. ‘Weekends in the big city; visits to the theatre, concerts, to say nothing of shopping.’

  ‘It won’t be the same… But I am pleased for you. Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Caroline looked pussy-cat sleek. She didn’t seem to have changed in any clearly defined way, but she looked… fulfilled? extra assertive? glossy. This is where I get left behind, Jess thought sadly.

  ‘But that’s not the most important thing,’ Caroline said, almost carelessly. ‘The best news is that I’m pregnant.’

  Jess was astonished. ‘So… when’s it due?’ she managed to ask.

  ‘Twenty-first of September or thereabouts. I’m just beginning to feel the bump!’ She patted her stomach.

  ‘But what about your new job?’

  ‘I haven’t told them yet, but it’ll be fine. I’ll get myself a nanny for the first few years; no sweat.’

  ‘But… are you and Vivian going to get married?’

  Caroline gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Good heavens, no,’ she said. ‘Vivian hates mess. He’d be useless as a father.’ Her expression did not invite Jess to enquire further.

  ‘Oh… um… well what about you? Your life is so ordered, so sophisticated. How do you feel?’

  ‘Ecstatic,’ Caroline said simply. ‘If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be feeling like this, I’d have laughed in your face, but there you are. That’s hormones for you. I’ve never felt so content. I’m positively cow-like!’