Hot Breath

by Sarah Harrison

  Lunch wore on and the retsina went down. We became first convivial, then matey. The behavioural quirks of the Erans, of which I had been so stringently critical not an hour since, now seemed lovable little foibles. We’re all pros together, I thought mawkishly. This is Life. By the baklava and Turkish coffee I was all set to spill the beans concerning Dr Ghikas. Only my well-developed sense of self-protection stopped me, and that in the nick of time.

  I employed the time-honoured means of escape, and went to the loo. This involved running the gauntlet of the Zeus’s kitchen passage, complete with Greeks in greasy aprons, and bins full of what might have been either rotting rubbish or the raw materials for moussaka.

  The Ladies had curling lino and a holy picture. I stared at myself in the mirror (remarking as I did so that it did not suit me to drink, it made the tissues of my face dilate like a sponge under water), and told myself that at the moment, no matter what the temptation, there were no beans to spill. I must wait until matters had developed, which please God they would, and then, with dalliance so to speak under my belt, I might drop it into some future conversation with the insouciance of the seasoned campaigner, and leave them all with their image of me in forlorn tatters about their ears. But for now, what would I be admitting to? Just unrequited lust, not a very edifying state for a middle-aged housewife and mother.

  I went back to the table, where second coffees had been poured.

  ‘Here she comes!’ cried Marilyn. ‘I hope you’ve got your diary handy, Harriet!’ In my dream I screeched ‘Knickers!’ at them, and pulled the cloth

  and everything on it from beneath their noses.

  In reality I sat, rummaged in my handbag for my diary and said,

  with the cheery compliance of the well-trained author: ‘Fire away.’

  I got back to find Clara, astonishingly, in the kitchen with Damon. They were eating toast and peanut butter. Damon was sitting at the table scanning a copy of the local paper, and Clara was standing with her back to him on the other side of the room, waiting for the electric kettle to boil. They looked like an old married couple, and every bit as surly. From upstairs I could hear the pounding of heavy metal, an indication that Gareth, at least, was doing his homework.

  ‘Damon!’ I said. ‘Oh God, of course, it’s Friday today, I’d forgotten our new arrangement. When did you get here?’

  ‘Two o’clock, like always,’ he said.

  ‘But Clara had the key, how on earth did you get in?’

  Clara answered. ‘He got in through that window on the stairs that you leave open for Fluffy.’

  ‘Good grief.’ I sat down at the table.

  ‘It’s a cynch, over the back-yard roof,’ Damon enlarged. ‘ No prob.’

  ‘Honestly Damon, I’m sorry to have locked you out, but I’m not at all sure it’s a good idea for you to be breaking and entering when I’m not here.’

  ‘He didn’t do any breaking,’ said Clara, truculently. ‘I thought I’d just explained that.’ Since when had she been Damon’s ally?

  ‘I didn’t want to let you down. No way,’ added Damon, rather touchingly.

  ‘Well, that’s very thoughtful of you, Damon. It’s just that if anyone had seen you …’

  ‘That’s his look-out,’ said Clara irrefutably.

  ‘But it might give someone else ideas.’

  ‘That’s true,’ conceded Damon. ‘You should get window locks fitted, deffi.’

  I seemed to be trapped in an argument I stood no chance of winning.

  ‘Yes. Anyway, thank you,’ I said weakly. ‘Any chance of some tea?’

  Clara poured me one and bonked it down in front of me like a waitress in one of those small-town-American films.

  ‘Good day?’ enquired Damon over the Basset Bugle. The situation was rapidly making me feel like a stranger in my own home.

  ‘Yes, thank you, not bad.’

  Clara had left the room, and now she came back carrying a note. ‘ This came through the letter-box,’ she said, handing it to me.

  I unfolded it. It was a sheet from a medical prescription pad. On it, in horrific doctor’s handwriting like a barbed wire entanglement, was written: ‘Dear Mrs Blair, I called with my mother’s copy of your book, but unfortunately you were out. Would you very kindly sign it for her? Her name is Anna. I’ll drop in and collect it some other time. Many thanks—Constantine Ghikas.’

  ‘Where’s the book?’ I asked Clara. ‘What book?’

  ‘There should be a book with this.’

  ‘Hold it,’ said Damon. ‘Stay right there.’ He went into the hall and returned with a fat brown paper parcel.

  ‘Found it on the doorstep,’ he explained.

  I opened the parcel. Inside was the hardback edition of Love’s Dying Glory, whose cover (mercifully) depicted nothing more than a sheaf of red roses with one or two fallen petals. No duellers in the surf, nor film stars in digital watches—in fact nothing whatever to be ashamed of.

  ‘One of yours?’ asked Damon. ‘ M-hm?’

  I opened the book and glanced at the title page. In the same atrocious hand were inscribed the words: ‘Dearest—I’m sure you’ll like this. Many, many happy returns—Kostaki, November 1983.’

  So he was her little Kostaki, was he? Phase one must certainly culminate in being invited to address him by this charming diminutive. I could hear myself murmuring ‘Kostaki … oh, Kostaki,’ as we embraced on some not-too-distant future occasion.

  ‘I must go and make a phone call,’ I said, abandoning my tea, and went through to the sitting room. This was directly beneath Gareth’s room, and the harmonised pile-drivers of Status Quo were consequently more intrusive. I pressed my fingers to my temples and tried to collect my thoughts. I couldn’t ring him at the surgery; on the other hand there were only ever two doctors on duty, so he might possibly be at home. But there again I had neither home address nor phone number. Surely, though, there could only be one Ghikas in Basset Parva?

  I sat down by the phone. My right hand was just poised to lift the receiver, the left to dial directory enquiries, when it rang.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin as though the phone, like a malign, many-eyed mollusc, had found me out in a disgusting secret vice. Which, if wishes were doctors, it would have done. I picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hallo there!’

  ‘Hallo …? Sorry …?’

  ‘Telepathy—you were just about to call me!’ It was George. The chill shock of reality made me slump back in my chair.

  ‘Hallo, George.’

  ‘Don’t get too carried away, it’s bad for the blood pressure.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘San fairy anne. Happy anniversary.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Shall I ring off and start again?’

  His determined geniality goaded me into some semblance of civilised behaviour.

  ‘I feel awful I completely forgot.’

  ‘Well I didn’t, so I thought I’d ring and tell you that it don’t seem a day too much.’

  ‘How sweet of you.’

  ‘Think nothing of it. How are you all? Kids okay?’

  ‘They’re fine. I’ve been in town today, at Era. Clara’s eating toast in the kitchen and Gareth’s doing prep.’

  ‘What about you? How’s the oeuvre coming along?’

  For once I wished he wouldn’t be so interested in my work. I’d answered enough questions about it for one day, and his well-meant enquiry just increased my sense of guilt.

  ‘Lousy,’ I said. ‘Yesterday Declan fouled up the electrics and then cut himself on the shears, so I got next to nothing done.’

  ‘He’ll have to go.’

  ‘No, no, he’s invaluable really.’

  ‘He’s a walking bloody disaster area, with absolutely no regard for anyone else’s time or work. Or patience. And you know it.’

  This was bad news. If George decreed that Declan should be fired it would fall to my lot to do the firing and to suffer the consequent verbal fla
ck. I shuffled back down.

  ‘It wasn’t his fault he cut himself, and it was quite nasty. I had to take him to the doctor. He’s done a good job on the hedge,’ I added, with the smooth mendacity of fear. ‘By the way, did I tell you that Era are sending me to the Fartenwald Buckfest next month?’

  ‘Are they? That’s terrific. You’ll enjoy that,’ George assured me firmly. ‘Will you be able to arrange it with me away?’

  ‘Yes, it’s only for three nights. I can farm the children out with the Tunnels, I hope.’

  ‘Good!’ There was nothing George liked better than news of purposeful activity. ‘ Good, good.’

  We continued the conversation along lines of effusive mutual admiration for another couple of minutes, until George terminated it with a crisp ‘I love you,’ and rang off.

  I sat there, limp and glum as a mackerel on a slab. The wind was well and truly out of my sails. Hearing George’s voice had brought home to me the real enormity of my intentions with regard to Dr Ghikas. Unfortunately it had not put paid to them. I knew I would continue right on down the primrose path, but the going might become distinctly shitty.

  Damon put his head round the door.

  ‘I’ll be off then. I done those window frames in the spare room.’

  ‘Oh—thank you, Damon.’

  ‘We could do with a drop more Sanifresh.’

  ‘Rightie-ho.’

  ‘Get the Meadowsweet if you can.’

  ‘I will.’ He stood there. ‘Sorry, your cash.’

  ‘You could give it to me Tuesday,’ he said, without conviction.

  ‘No, no, hang on.’

  I located my bag and paid him. As he left, he lifted a hand to Clara, and she reciprocated. I should have been glad to witness this apparent breakthrough in my daughter’s attitude to the sons of toil, but I wasn’t. I felt only the gravest foreboding.

  Chapter Four

  On Friday night, galvanised into activity by my day with the Erans and subsequent conversation with George, I enlarged to some effect on Maria Trevelyan’s relationship with the Hawkhursts, and with the spine-tinglingly glacial Richard in particular. It was the sort of thing I could do with my eyes shut, but the sight of those few well-covered pages lying beside the tripewriter bucked me up no end, and I spent the next hour cogitating on the right dedication for Constantine Ghikas’s mother. In the end I plumped for the simple and dignified: ‘To Anna Ghikas, with very good wishes from the author, Harriet Blair—Basset Magna, May ’84.’

  Saturday and Sunday dragged their heels. The weekend was the only time when I positively missed George’s organisational flair. Without the prop of his inspired bossiness the three of us sank into a slough of sloth and mutual recrimination. In my case this was aggravated by the need, as I saw it, to hang about the house and garden in case Dr Ghikas called back for his book. But of course I should have guessed he would be far too considerate to trouble someone during their hard-earned leisure with anything so trivial.

  I actually had to go out twice. On Saturday night I attended a dinner party of stupefying tedium given by some friends the Channings, who misguidedly saw it as their mission to save me from the miseries of grass-widowhood. To this end they had twinned me with a whinnying wine importer whose only redeeming feature was that he far preferred the sound of his own voice to that of mine, thus absolving me from conversation.

  On Sunday I took Gareth and Clara, under protest, to a barbecue in aid of the church roof. Everyone who was anyone in Basset Magna society was there, spreading the word about up-coming flower festivals, craft fairs, toy evenings and sponsored skips. The rector, Eric Chittenden, in whose garden the barbecue was held, presided over us with practised bonhomie, sausage in one hand, cider cup in the other, advising a select few of the existence of an acceptable sherry on the sideboard in his dining room. By the time we went home at three-thirty the children’s morale had risen considerably under the influence of the fizzy infuriator, while mine had sunk to an all-time low.

  On Monday morning the signed copy of LDG still lay on my kitchen table, a hostage to lust, but there had as yet been no word from Dr Ghikas. This morning I was going to need rather more than the Irish DJ could provide if I was to trouble the typewriter. So when Gareth and Clara had left for their respective schools I put on my running kit.

  Spot, alerted by this dreadful note of preparation, attempted to squeeze under the bed, but I was too quick for him.

  ‘Walkies!’ I cried threateningly, and clipped on the lead.

  When kindly and admiring friends asked me why I ran, how I found the time, and what precisely the benefits were, I had my answer ready. It has changed my life, I would rhapsodise. I have so much more energy. I no longer have a weight problem, nor do I suffer from depression. I enjoy a sense of well-being.

  These protestations shut them up, but they were not the whole truth. The plain fact was that running was so grim, so taxing and so unutterably dull that the rest of life gained by the comparison.

  Also, it freed the mind wonderfully. I was a different being to the one who had started jogging a year ago. Where once I had cowered behind haystacks and parked cars, smarting with embarrassment as acquaintances and tradesmen passed by, I now loped along in a world of my own, equally oblivious to wolf-whistles, jeers and greetings. And once I was out of the village and pounding the open bridleways, nothing short of a motor-cross rally coming in the opposite direction could have brought me back to earth.

  Today I ran with the scowling doggerdness with which I imagine men on oil rigs take cold showers.

  I thought about Maria. Time now to illustrate the polarities of her complex nature as personified by blond, aristocratic Richard, and the swarthy under-gardener with his well-filled trousers. How to do it? I observed the flapping question mark of Spot’s tail above the young kale. A hunt was always good value. Competing with the flash horsemanship of the Hawkhursts, and of Richard in particular, Maria would come to grief over a ditch. The first face she saw when revived would be that of the gardener, as he pressed a cup of water to her ashen lips …

  The only trouble was, I couldn’t keep Dr Ghikas out of it. Willy-nilly, his well-groomed golden head peeped from behind each yew hedge and arras; a specimen bottle gleamed dully amongst the stirrup-cups; his stethoscope whisked tantalisingly through the maze; his black bag lay, a seductive anachronism, in the Great Hall. I could not erase a mental picture of his elegant figure in period dress—the well-turned calf in coloured stockings, the face framed by an extravagant ruff. I began seriously to consider altering my synopsis to take account of a soulful and toothsome stranger from foreign parts.

  So far gone was I in these fanciful musings that I failed to notice Spot, who had stopped dead in his tracks to investigate the mouldering carcase of a rabbit. His motionless form, rigid with ecstatic concentration, neatly chopped my shins just below the knee so that my legs remained on one side of him and the rest of me hurtled on its way into a heap of rotting sprout tops. I emerged dirty but unhurt, landed one or two well-aimed blows on the dog and squelched on my way, paying rather more attention to my route.

  I had covered three sides of a rectangular circuit of about four miles, and was now approaching the road on which I would turn right for the home straight to Basset Magna. I put Spot back on the lead, and set myself the unprecedented challenge of covering the mile home in seven minutes.

  After about a hundred yards I became aware of a car coming up behind me. I hugged the side of the road, mentally preparing myself for the buzz which no red-blooded motorist can resist giving a pedestrian on the open road. But it didn’t come. The engine-noise of the car, a cheap and cheerful down-market puttering, remained steady about four metres behind my right shoulder. It seemed I was the unlikely focus of attention for a kerb crawler. The road began to slow down into the welcome dip which preceded the steep climb into Basset Magna, and I accelerated. The puttering rose a semitone or two and stayed with me.

  Irritably, I veered on to the grass verge
and stopped. The car—a jaunty green Fiat with its bottom in the air like a motorised wheelbarrow—drew alongside me and pulled up. The driver leaned across and pushed open the door on the passenger side. The face looking up at me, from beneath the brim of one of those adorable tweed fishing hats, was that of Dr Constantine Ghikas.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. How suave he was!

  ‘Good morning,’ I replied. ‘I tried to call you on Friday. I’ve signed your mother’s book.’

  ‘Thank you so much. It seemed rather rude just to leave it on the step, but then I didn’t want to bother you at the weekend …’

  ‘Not at all, absolutely … anyway, it’s done now, so you must collect it.’

  ‘Well, yes—look, should I insult you if I offered you a lift?’

  The thought of climbing into the snug confines of that nifty little car went to my head like strong drink. My leg would be only inches from his own twill-covered thigh, brushing the trembling upright gear lever upon which his hand (the back adorned with a scattering of coppery hairs) now rested.

  I leaned forward eagerly, the sweat breaking out on me like sap rising in the spring. ‘How very kind,’ I said, ‘ I don’t see why—’

  It was at this moment that I became conscious of the smell arising from my perspiring body. The pile of nicely degrading sprout tops into which I had so recently ploughed was taking its delayed toll. The odour was not, unfortunately, indescribable. I could describe it quite accurately. It was as though I had farted. And no ordinary fart this, but a veritable empress of flatulence. A real five-star, blue riband, nostril-clenching knock-out.

  I lurched backwards, head thrown up like a nervous racehorse.

  ‘But I mustn’t!’ I squawked. ‘I’ve just fallen over in something nasty, and I’ve got the dog with me, and your nice clean car—’

  ‘I quite understand,’ he soothed. ‘Tell you what, shall I call in later this morning when I’ve done my house calls? I won’t keep you from your writing, I’ll just be in and out.’

  Oh, be in and out, do, I thought. In and out, in and out … feel free.

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said.