‘That’s not really the issue.’
They weren’t far now from the hallway where they’d started. There was a weak smell of chicken soup, or a smell of weak chicken soup, and Hazel headed for the kitchen. Henry watched the marvellous switching of her buttocks beneath the clinging grey wool of the dress. He looked at her soft white feet. Henry Mitsui, suddenly but peacefully at home in his 75th year, dearly loved husband of Hazel and father of Virginia, Jonathan and Christopher, beloved grandfather of Jessie, William and Georgia, all consultant paediatricians. Tai plus de souvenirs que sifavais mille ans. And why not? He wasn’t a monster. In fact he had the refined sensibility which came from growing up rich. Poor people always wanted money, but Henry had been free to work out what was worth wanting more than money. He wanted the marriage of Miss Hazel Burns to Mr Henry Mitsui, son of Mr and Mrs Mitsui of Tokyo, Japan, at the beautiful church of St Etheldreda’s, Worth Matravers. Obviously, he loved her, but he was also offering her much more than love. He was an accomplished piano player. He was well-educated and widely-travelled and spoke several languages.
'I’m not a monster,’ he said, following as close as he could behind her, and he believed what he said to be true. Whatever his thoughts he always resisted monstrous actions. He may have had a pocket-full of poison, but he’d never actually killed anybody. ‘I didn’t fall in love with you because you were beautiful. I didn’t even know what you looked like. Doesn’t that say something?’
Behind the kitchen door, Grace screamed.
Grace wished. And she carried on wishing, moving her lips slightly, making sure it was clearly spelt out for whoever took charge of birthday wishes. She wished for a little baby brother called Sholto and one of those footballs on a string which comes back to you after you kick it. She wished for the part of leading lady in the school’s Christmas production of Cinderella, and that if she was ever followed home by a man like her friend Nadine was followed home by a man, then that he wasn’t really following her. She didn’t wish her parents were dead, just changed overnight into people like Hazel and Uncle Spencer. She made a wish for William not to get any older, and wished a long life for her favourite German fish, Herr Trigger. She wished for world peace, and for River Phoenix to be allowed into heaven. And lastly she made a big secret wish for herself, wishing she could be just like everyone else, but not like anyone she actually knew. Amen.
All this counted as one single wish, because obviously everything was connected.
It is the first of November 1993 and somewhere else, in Naples or Srinagar or Riyadh or Hong Kong, in Geneva or Akrotiri or Istanbul or Los Angeles, Hazel Bums is a long way from home, preparing a violent death. A warm breeze brashes her hair against her neck, and inside a rained villa she inspects a mosaic floor depicting a broken Roman river scene. An American Vietnam-veteran dentist now limps towards her, stopping as instructed when his left foot covers the fishing nets flying off to the side of a leaning skiff. A gloomy Mafioso wearing a suede suit creeps up on him from behind.
'Trick or treat?’ he whispers.
The dentist turns, smiles. ‘You must be joking,’ he says, and the gangster pulls a gun from his pocket and shoots him. The victim falls, shudders, dies, stands up, brashes himself down, asks if he did okay.
‘Great,’ the director says, ‘most authentic.’
This last comment is slyly intended as praise for Hazel, who is the film’s research assistant and therefore responsible for making it life-like. The director then adds to the compliment by summoning her to an important meeting in his customised Cadillac. He and Hazel have already worked together on /,’Balcone and Hell of a Ride and Clarissa Explains It All, and at the age of twenty-one, only recently released from University, this all counts as valuable experience. Hazel quickly leams, for example, that every film ever made has to be finished today, and no later. ‘Come on in,’ the director says. ‘Sit down.’ The enlarged space in the back of the Cadillac feels like a small room. They settle themselves on the back seat, which is like a bed, and the director unexpectedly wipes his eyes. His upper body begins to shake. He openly weeps. He mumbles a heartfelt 'Ciao, Federico,’ and Hazel’s experience of the film industry tells her that the unexpected loss of a great hero like Fellini can be made bearable only by sex with a blonde British research assistant.
‘Il Maestro would have wanted it that way.’ And Hazel, not for the first time, remembers that she could have been a doctor or a lawyer. She should have listened to her mother, but she was terrified of making wrong decisions simply because she was frightened. Just in time then, and provoked by a stranger in a swimming pool, she made an effort to retrieve her dreams of glory. Examined closely, these came down to books, films, sport, and love. She quite fancied having well-respected novels published by Viking or Flamingo or Hamish Hamilton. But whenever she thought up plots the stories sounded familiar, and she worried about how qualified she was to claim they were true. It seemed almost dishonest to present the plot of a life as a simple story, when her own life had never felt as simple as that.
Far easier to act out the lives of other people and aspire to glory as an actress in films or the theatre, but then she worried about losing herself in the unnatural quest to be convincing as other people. Better then to express her essential self in sport, in Netball or Hockey or Ironman Triathlon, but here the problems were chronic injury and early death and unfair competition from her sister. She uncovered so many worries she might just as well have been her mother, whose only access to glory was love.
Love: either it was Damascus and you had no choice. Or somewhere the faith could be found to make the step and move on. The director says:
‘Fellini was a film-maker with a zest for life.’ In a compromise which made sense at the time (now he slides himself towards her along the seat), Hazel becomes a research assistant for a production company. It involves travel and occasional professional politeness, such as attending functions in blouses not shirts. At company parties she’s expected to occupy the director’s children by asking them what they want to be when they grow up. But essentially, as a research assistant, she’s in the business of making films real.
She mostly researches violence. She learns the trajectories of spent bullet cases or how to torch a locked Cadillac or the best way to conceal offensive weapons. She finds out how it’s done in real life, and then hands over the information for a film to be made from it, even though once it’s in a film it may not turn out to be true anymore. All Hazel can do is make sure it starts out true at the beginning.
‘Like II Mago, I have the most lavish psychic fantasies.’ Film people. An example: Hazel’s mother has been ill. Whenever Hazel plans a visit she’s tired of having to explain that some people live in the provinces all year round, and not just at Christmas. As for her mother, she now takes enough pills to convince herself that she lives life to the full. Marriage is like Jerusalem, she finally decides, two nations one capital city.
'In Jerusalem the two nations stone each other, Mum.’
‘A little adjustment is sometimes necessary.’ She’s usually curious to know which of the film stars Hazel meets in real life, but Hazel doesn’t like to name-drop. ‘Self-indulgent was the word of reproof most frequently thrown at Fellini.’
The director’s bronzed hand slips to the inside of Hazel’s knee, and she wishes her remaining phonecards worked in foreign countries. More than anything, she’d like to talk to Spencer. Nobody else seems to match up, because the people she meets now are old enough to have far more memories than can be fitted into the space of meeting them. She knows where she is with Spencer, as if they indirectly spent their formative years together, and despite the distances between them he is the person who feels most real to her.
‘Like Federico, I also have the most outré erotic fantasies.’ Any second now, back here in the real world, Hazel is about to get herself fired. She calmly lifts up the director’s hand, holding the wrist disdainfully between her thumb and finger-tips, already seeing he
rself with her nose in The Times, looking for a new job.
'I can give you dollars or francs,’ he says, ‘whatever you want.’
She drops his hand back into his lap, where she has no doubt it belongs.
‘Deutschmarks? Yen?’
This is what comes from sitting back passively and waiting for life to start, as if for a long time nothing at all happens and then by some miracle it all of a sudden starts happening. When in fact it doesn’t happen like that at all. It’s about time Hazel took her destiny into her own hands, although somehow that doesn’t sound quite right. How can you lay hands on destiny? It’s supposed to swagger up all by itself (7ft 1 inch tall and 21 stone) and say here I am. This is the way it is, destiny says, so take your filthy hands off me.
11/1/93 MONDAY 14:48
‘What flavour is it?’
‘Chicken.’
‘It doesn’t smell like chicken.’
William sniffed at the pale surface of his mug of soup. ‘And there’s no bread,’ he said.
Grace offered him another Jaffa cake, candle removed, while Hazel wondered if she could escape Henry Mitsui forever by going out to buy bread and never coming back. They were all sitting round the kitchen table, mostly in silence, like a family. They each had a mug of instant chicken soup and all the mugs were identical, from a matching white set. They felt like blank pieces of paper, waiting for messages. T could go and get some bread,’ Hazel said. ‘We could all go out and get some bread.’
A street full of strangers seemed a more likely defence against Henry than this unknown house with its acres of empty rooms. He never stopped looking at her, and in a way so unapologetic and out of date it was almost criminal. It wasn’t a crime, of course, she knew that, but he wasn’t eating or drinking he was just relentlessly looking at her, and maybe it was already too late. He never blinked. He sometimes smiled. He looked and looked at her, and her skin prickled beneath the wool of the dress.
Her chair screeched horribly as she shoved it away from the table. She’d been doing so well, but now she’d had enough. She was, in fact, a neurotic paranoid just like her mother. This is what her whole life had been leading up to, and it was the hidden truth behind all her behaviour at all times up until now. Henry was going to kidnap her, rape her, kill her. His only reason for living was to do her harm, and life turned out to be full of terror and trouble just like her mother had always promised. For the first time in her life, Hazel insisted on her right to be frightened.
‘He asked me to marry him,’ she said. She had everyone’s attention.
Henry placed his plastic envelope of powder on the table. He was going to give her one last chance.
‘Will you marry me?’
‘No, I will not.’
And this, surely, was when Spencer was supposed to do something, anything. In the absence of Hazel being swallowed up by the floor (Damascus!) or finding the uniquely correct words to say (Damascus!), Spencer could take the situation heroically in hand and instantly prove himself by throwing Henry Mitsui out on his ear (also Damascus).
Henry said: ‘We’re destined for each other.’
‘And if I still say no, what then? Are you going to shoot me?’
‘He doesn’t have a gun,’ William said. ‘Does he?’
‘Of course not,’ Spencer said, standing up at last.
‘So who’s going to shoot who then?’ Grace said.
‘Nobody,’ Spencer said, pretending to be calm, hoping his pretence was a calming influence. It was like a surprise audition for the voice of reason, and Spencer was still working out an approach. ‘Nobody ever gets shot except in films, and in America.’
‘And in Belfast,’ Grace said.
‘Yes.’
‘And maybe in places where they take drugs.’
‘Yes, Grace.’
‘And anyway,’ Hazel said, ‘I’m with Spencer.’
Spencer smiled weakly. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
Grace fed some birthday Jaffa cake to Trigger, crumbling tiny amounts of sponge biscuit onto the surface of the water. William examined his plate, and then dabbed up some splinters of chocolate with his fingertips. Spencer. Hazel. Henry stood up and held his small packet of powder out in front of him, at the same level as his eyes. They were hard, excited, shining like stones.
‘Nobody move,’ he said.
Reflected in the overhang curve of the fruit bowl, his face warped and flattened by the water, Spencer remained a failure, unable to decide, act, rescue Hazel the woman he wanted to love, had loved, almost loved, had he really ever loved her? He loved her, he loved her not, he loved her but. Stunned by the sight of Henry Mitsui gone mad, threatening them all quite sincerely with a small plastic packet, Spencer found himself hoping for some kind of interruption. That would be the easiest way out. The Italians would arrive to look at the house, or there’d be a late Hallowe’en trick or treat. Two escorted youngsters in the afternoon daylight, perhaps, forbidden to parade in last night’s darkness by paranoid parents. Late but determined, they insist on the door being answered, breaking Henry Mitsui’s spell. Or Spencer could do something himself, of course. He himself could be the interruption.
‘It’s poison,’ Henry said. ‘It’s English name is ricin. I made it myself from castor-oil seeds.’
‘We know how it’s made,’ Hazel said.
‘How strong is it?’ Grace wanted to know.
‘It’s very, very strong.’
Hazel said: ‘Are you threatening us?’
‘How do we know it’s real poison?’ Grace insisted. ‘It could be fake.’
‘It’s poison,’ Henry said. 'I made it myself.’
‘But you might only be saying that.’
Henry tore off a strip at the top of the packet, and held it out defensively in front of him, his arm straight. To Hazel he looked like a small boy with a crucifix, playing at vampires,- hoping he’d made himself invincible. Spencer took a step towards him.
‘Come along now,’ he said. ‘I think it’s time you were going.’
‘It’s real poison,’ Henry said. ‘You better believe me.’
Spencer frowned, raised his eyebrows, pushed his chin forward and tried to look belligerent, all to little effect. None of it stopped Henry from leaning over the table, knocking the packet sharply with his index finger, and showering a tiny amount of powder across the top of the water in the fruit bowl. Trigger angled his body upwards, to where every disturbance meant food. William knocked his chair over as he gathered up the fruit bowl and rushed it to the sink. Grace ran after him.
‘What’s happening?’ she said, trying to look round William’s back.
‘It’s alright,’ William said, clumsily trying to tip out the water without losing Trigger. ‘Everything’s alright.’
‘Is he poisoned?’
‘He’s fine.’
‘Well it doesn’t work immediately, Henry said.
Hazel started to laugh. In fact the more she thought about it the funnier it seemed. She sat herself down again, leant back in her chair and laughed some more. ‘You’ve done it wrong, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘If you want to threaten people you can’t do it with poison, not like that. It’s not like it’s a gun or anything. You have to keep it a secret. It’s supposed to be a secret way of getting to people.’
Henry poured all the powder still in the packet into his untouched mug of soup. He stirred it in with a spoon. ‘I know it’s not a gun. I don’t want a gun.’ He picked the mug up by the handle, as if he was about to drink it, and Hazel stopped laughing. He raised the mug most of the way to his lips.
‘It really is a poison,’ he said. ‘And this is a fatal dose. Will you marry me?’
It is the first of November 1993 and somewhere in Britain, in Nuneaton or Newcastle or Eastleigh or Hexham, in Meadowbank or Kendal or Loughborough or Hemel Hempstead, Spencer Kelly is twenty-one years old and despairing of all things provincial he declares himself a Republic. As of today he’ll take no more orders from an
unelected father whose only claim to authority is by birth. From now on Spencer will do only what he wants to do, beginning with not going to work at the warehouse. He shall then prove how serious he is about becoming an actor by going to London to look for work as a waiter.
His father, coming home early for lunch, finds Spencer packing his sports bag. He talks him down into the lounge, suspecting another false crisis changing nothing and soon forgotten. He points out to Spencer that he doesn’t become a republic just by saying so. In this house he has certain obligations, not to mention binding attachments.
'The Republic is declared,’ Spencer says. ‘And I am it.’
His father tries to appease him by conceding that he might just qualify as a disputed territory. It’s another phase you’re going through,’ he says. ‘You’ll get over it.’ He then reminds Spencer of all those Mondays the warehouse let him take off for community service. He’d be crazy to leave now.
'They did the same for you.’
'I’ve been there forever. You’re a young man, Spencer. You have prospects. You should settle down.’
It’s all his Dad thinks he’s good for. Spencer should get married and breed and with any luck (of the kind which Mr Kelly believes he’s due) it’s his grandson who’ll have the spark and the golden sporting gene.
Spencer starts to hum Born Under a Wandering Star. Predictably, this infuriates his father, who asks him sharply what exactly it is he thinks he wants? In general terms, Spencer thinks, all that I have not got. He wants what the adverts tell him to want, holidays in Malta or Egypt or the Algarve, and a suit from Armani or Simpson’s of Piccadilly, and a mail order embroidered cushion, and privileged entry to the latest minority-interest debates. That’s why he has to go to London, and the legendary addresses where such miracles begin, in Bond Street or Portland Square or Brook Street or the King’s Road. He’ll be expecting to neutralise his accent of course, if he’s going to make it as an actor, but it shouldn’t be too difficult after all the different places he’s lived. As soon as he sounds like he could have come from anywhere, and after a brief but glamorous period of undemanding struggle, he confidently expects to make rapid progress from waiter to actor to a life changed beyond all recognition.
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