Nature and Necessity

by Tariq Goddard

  If she found his habit of indulging in all sorts of imaginary weirdness, talking to himself and acting out films he had seen on his own, a tug at her suppressed maternal instincts, his motley appearance guaranteed that the tug remained no more than a faint pull. Clad in Seth’s ‘hand-me-downs’, leaves and branches sticking out of his torn clothes like the distended limbs of a Green Man, Jazzy strutted round Petula’s field of vision with the air of a vegetative deity. His ardent desire to be a farmer, expressed through wearing his school uniform with a straw hat and gypsy jewellery discarded by her, was enough to make Petula blush, and she took care to confiscate these items whenever she could. It was no surprise that as he turned into his teens, ‘Jasper’ was symbolically changed to ‘Jazzy’ though Petula could not bring herself to call him this, ending up by not calling him anything at all when she could help it.

  Just as with Evita, Petula had the sense of watching a tragedy unravel slowly from a great distance, a happy outcome incapable of overcoming the genetic material Anycock had lumbered her with. Bit by bit she observed her son’s decline from an eager schoolboy to one whose prospects were no better than that of a menial labourer. She knew his enthusiasm should have been welcomed, but in practice he hindered farm work by his wish to be involved in tractor driving, planting and the other affairs of the bad-tempered professionals the land had been leased to – there being no real farm of his own to ‘work’. His fraternisation with local roughs grew increasingly compromising as Jazzy recovered from Mingus’s abandonment by terrorising the retired army colonel and wife who lived at the third cottage on the farm, then still called The Jacaranda Tree. Though Petula regarded Colonel Kefford and his wife as crashing bores, it was impossible to ignore the validity of their frequent complaints. Bat excrement through their letter box was un-neighbourly, as was a full-scale brick attack on their MG Midget, a firework thrust up their cat’s arse and a beheaded bed of roses, the trail of blood leading back to Jazzy every time. Acknowledging the severity of the situation, Noah finally gave up on cheque-book diplomacy and, after the police were called a third time, politely asked Petula for permission to send Jazzy to boarding school a year earlier than agreed. Petula was glad the decision had been made for her. All in all the boy had made rather too much of the place being his for Petula’s liking, images of him bringing up a family of village bastards on her doorstep and their hanging round her farm forever filling her with horror.

  The well-meaning interventions of Royce, Noah’s childless elder sister, gave Petula her single reservation. Royce was a kindly lady, who seemed elderly even in her late forties; her teenage fiancé having died in Korea arresting any hope that her life would develop significantly from that point on. As with many spinsters of her generation she kept her spirits up with hobbies, The Mail On Sunday, gardening and regular interference in the lives of younger relatives. Perceiving no threat in her bumbling advice, usually on how much pocket money to give the children, Petula warmed to her, using Royce as her powerbase for winning influence amongst the rest of the Montagues. Attached to her clapped out Morris Minor, lilac-rinse bouffant and handbag full of melting chocolate mice, Royce was Miss Marple minus the crime-fighting flair. It thus came as a surprise to Petula when her essentially clumsy desire to be something of a godparent to Jazzy and Evita took the form of sticking up for them, however ineffectually.

  ‘Are they really such bad children, well I don’t know, I just don’t know about that you yourself say that they didn’t turn all that suddenly…’

  As with her neighbours and servants, the Hardfields, Petula felt that there was something about conventionally moral people she should remain on her guard against. It was uncanny how often their innocently helpful remarks morphed into penetrating attacks, before re-submerging again into the harmlessness from which they arose. So it proved with Royce, who bit by bit gave the impression that her everyday homilies were value judgments of the most ominous kind, feeding Petula’s hunch that the meek would snatch the earth from the industrious if they were allowed to; all it took was for the industrious to do nothing, for however short a time. Firmly and without fuss, Petula pushed Royce towards Regan, who by now had risen to be such a favourite that Royce had to wait in line as an assortment of well-wishers sought to win favour from the rising sister. It was a tactic that worked, even though Petula could see that Royce still cast a wishful glance at the neglected early-comers, both of whom would have been ready to walk over coals for her, had a grandmotherly relationship been permitted.

  Observing Jazzy pack for boarding school the summer before Evita was swallowed by London, Royce, not having seen the boy for months, remarked sadly to his mother, ‘you know, they will grow up one day.’ Petula felt a distant but implicit threat in her words. For a moment she wondered whether this benign old dear was perpetrating a lifelong con, a game of sabotage motivated by a jealousy for the baby-boomer generation, exemplified by its most shining exemplar. Stopping herself from saying that it wasn’t her fault Royce’s fiancé had been killed in a war, Petula retorted, ‘I think that happens to all of us, don’t you Royce? Hopefully once they’ve grown up they’ll appreciate all that’s been done for them. If I hadn’t said enough was enough to their father, more of a thug than a man, they’d probably be strangling battery hens for a living by now. Instead of having the world at their feet. I know which way I’d like it if I were them.’

  ‘I suppose Noah has helped too.’

  ‘And I’ve helped Noah.’

  ‘Of course you have. Success is a team effort dear.’

  ‘It’s certainly felt pretty solo to me. I don’t blame him for never really wanting to get involved with them, he hardly knows how to be around Regan so I can’t damn the man for not being Santa Claus around those two. Some people are good around children, others aren’t. It’s the same with animals.’

  ‘Of course. Still, they will grow up one day. I wonder what they’ll make of it all.’

  ‘All of what? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know, all of this. Forgive me, I’m just doing my thinking aloud I suppose.’

  ‘I’ve told you what they should think; that they’ve been damn lucky. And if that isn’t good enough for them then what do you expect me to do about it? We’re all stuck with doing our best. We enjoy every moment for what it was and not for what we’d have liked it to be, and make the most and no more than the most of it. What they will think is anyone’s guess. You look at them as babies and you can’t believe that they’ll one day be creatures that’ll swear they were orphans. Newborns tend not to resemble teenage ingrates, but ingrates can one day make remorseful adults.’

  ‘Quite.’

  It was not just their futures that scared Petula, it was the future itself, like a villain in leather chaps mincing towards her, the years to come an uncolonised space in which outcomes were the property of no man, or sister either. And the possibility that one day those little harbingers of guilt, Evita and Jazzy, might exact losers’ justice for what they would yet become; their future paying the price for her divisive present.

  ‘I’ve made mistakes Royce, I’ll be the first to admit I have, they’re both too self-centred and that’s my fault. I told them they were right even when they were wrong, and sympathised when what they needed was a kick up the arse. I took their sense for granted and now they’re taking me for granted. But I hope to God the world kicks some sense into them,’ she said, turning to a row of blue tulips, out early that year. ‘I mean, not in a way that would hurt them, only to open their eyes a bit, to build on the work I’ve already put in for them.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Royce, ‘that kind of kicking. That was the sort I thought you meant.’

  *

  Petula’s first real test of modest local success, in the severe style, was to turn out to be a no-score draw. ‘Shatby’s Wrath’ was the grandly ominous name given to the day to be held in the great poet’s honour, Evita and Jazzy barely teenagers at the time and Regan with her eighth year stil
l to look forward to. Petula’s first act, having come back from the Dick Whittington outing on what, she decided a day later, was an all-time high, was to agitate against the public officials organising the event and the librarian being appointed master of ceremonies. This unfortunate lady, Ursula Midge, was a devoted and conscientious servant of the community, having lent the young Wrath library books as a boy and followed his career as if he were her own son. She was also forgetful, rather old, smelt of digestives and spoke with a juddering stammer.

  ‘Thoroughly unsuitable for the task at hand,’ was how Petula surmised her, and with the help of her influential new friends, the actors, displaced the old lady as a prelude to ‘tightening up’ the order of the day. In practice this meant Geoff Boycott, a famous Yorkshire cricketer, would act as compere (for a generous fee) and the BBC would film the event using a casting agency run by Noah’s nephew to provide ‘northern extras’. Local participation was restricted to the catering, which Petula had taken charge of. The name ‘Shatby’s Wrath’ was also her doing, the idea coming from the editor of a local paper who had fallen in love with her at the Harvest Festival the year before, and now did her bidding like a reliable mastiff, the dog he most closely resembled. With his help, and that of his equally besotted brother, the former mayor, she ensured that her name would be added to the day’s programme just below that of the official sponsors, The Genocider Apple Press.

  Once in a position of responsibility, Petula discovered that the old regime had left her a crass leaving present that threatened the day’s integrity, namely a ‘live’ poetry contest that Ursula Midge had arranged with a pensioners’ reading group, in the hope that Wrath could judge their efforts after his own reading. This fantasy was quickly scotched and switched to a champagne reception that Petula would do the canapés for, inspiring her coup de grace: instead of everyone hanging on for a gloomy supper at the town hall, a select few, she decided, led by Wrath, were to be invited to The Heights for dinner in the old high way.

  With the exception of the actors, who were allowed to overrun, the rest of the day was as closely choreographed as a squadron of Red Arrows, right down to Wrath’s entrance in his favourite car, a Humber Super Snipe, thoughtfully lent by Noah’s uncle who had a collection of vintage automobiles. Although Petula thanked her lucky stars that her plan was coming together, Wrath’s willingness to be feted did take her slightly by surprise as she had prepared herself for some socialist faux-modesty, especially when the brass band was dropped, but Tim Tinwood, his agent, registered no objections on this or any other alteration. Petula had always worked on the assumption that the vanity in even the humblest creative person was the asset that made them most vulnerable to her attentions. Now she felt sure of it.

  There remained a single fly in the ointment. Regan had responded to her mother’s entreaties to volunteer for every theatrical opportunity open to a child, by being cast repeatedly as Mary in nativity plays and the ‘little girl’ in every adult play in need of one. This she took in her usual undemonstrative and stoical style, neither enjoying nor objecting to her duty and earning the nickname ‘Still-life’ as a result. Petula would have liked her to be more passionate, indeed urged her to be, slightly consoled that at least the girl made up in obedience what she lacked in animation. All this changed when Regan was cast as Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, having been chosen, as she always was, on looks alone. Partly through observing Evita’s ‘dancing’, and with the help of the cartoon version watched on her father’s Betamax recorder, Regan began to copy the fairy’s blithe energy, for she could see that the languid style that had served her so far was of no use in this role. Moreover, the exhibitionism necessary for the part answered a need in her that made her tingle: she wanted to be heard and not just seen.

  Rehearsals were a revelation, Tinkerbell easily upstaging Peter Pan, Wendy and even Hook, played by an older boy who would go on to star in a television version fifteen years later. Because Petula was so engrossed in ‘Shatby’s Wrath’, her daughter’s evolution from pretty little clotheshorse to bubbling talent was largely lost on her. This was to Regan’s relief, as her mother’s support had already begun to feel like the control it would eventually end as. Unfortunately, the North Yorkshire sky could not support two blazing stars. Disaster struck, for the opening matinée clashed with the proceedings at Shatby, and as the play could not very well have two Tinkerbells, one for the opening and then another for the following two performances, Regan was asked to choose which she would prefer more, a chance to encounter real art in Shatby, or to stick with a childish amusement.

  Regan understood her mother was not really offering her a choice. It was only by sacrificing her selfish and juvenile pleasures that she could be sure of equality with her mother, and be spoken to as a grownup and not as the little girl she still was. This was the reward of sisterhood, the egality of two absolute beginners finding their way in the world, the difference in age an irrelevant detail. Over the years, first as a baby and now as a youngster, Regan had acted as a sounding board for her mother’s monologues and justifications, her role progressing from that of mute psychiatrist to henchman and enabler. Being addressed as an adult became the gift Regan could not live without; friendships with children of her own age were shallow in comparison. As far as Petula was concerned Regan was a person, a lady and not a delightful object to stuff with sweeties. Valuing the respect she was offered, and the responsibility and sacrifice required to keep it, inspired a blind loyalty in the little girl. Any perceived slight against her mother, from adult or child, was dutifully reported back, as her little eyes and ears patrolled the social frontiers her mother wished to annex. Choices like Shatby were a test, and the greater her self-denial, the closer the bond between the two grew. Centre-stage was Petula’s place, not hers. Because this was not formal knowledge, rather a hardwired instinct, there would be occasions in her life when she forgot it. The decision to turn her back on Tinkerbell was not to be one of them.

  ‘Of course not Mummy, I want to be with you.’

  ‘Of course you do!’

  ‘The play was…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘…was really boring anyway.’

  ‘Please not boring, only boring people are bored.’

  ‘Okay, it was a silly play. Babyish.’

  ‘Of course it was. Really who ever heard of a great actress debuting as Tinkerbell! Just think of it, they may as well put you on top of a Christmas tree and cover you in tinsel. Fairies with tiny skirts are alright for dizzy shop assistants and factory girls but you have bigger game to hunt my dear. Real actors and real acting is what we are to have for tea; trust me, you jewel, you’ll see and hear things tomorrow that you’ll remember for the rest of your life…’

  And as usual her mother was right. Regan watched Petula hurry off to the car, an important errand in need of her attention, and waited at the door for her mother to call back ‘I love you,’ as she had seen other mothers do. Instead the Volvo tore off into the mesmerising April sunshine, gravel parting before its fiery tyres, as priorities fell into place and future unhappiness was booked in and all but assured.

  *

  The big day began badly for Petula, who usually made a deliberate point of not remembering her dreams. She was back in the past, engulfed in its forgotten essences and boarded-up importance. Two Red Coats were walking through Butlins holiday camp with a big drum for the nightly ‘penny-on-the-drum parade’. It was the highlight of Petula’s stay; every night they would bang their drum and walk along collecting a large crocodile of campers behind them, singing,

  ‘Come and join us

  Come and join us

  Come and join our merry throng.’

  The procession began at the Alamein Bar and worked its way through the main camp into the Jutland Lounge, ending with everyone rammed in the Ballroom, the adults raising tankards of Beefighter Beer to the new Queen, the children glasses of squash. Everyone laughing and singing at the top of their voices as the procession wound down
and the big band started up, campers of all ages joining in a mad rendering of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and ‘In The Mood’. Petula was there of course, at the head of the procession, resplendent in a big red coat and white socks and sandals, the other redcoat a little girl she recognised as Regan. Grappling with her sticks, Petula tried to establish a rhythm to get the merry throng going, yet her beat was slow, too slow, nearer a drum-head court-martial than a Butlins conga. No matter how quickly she pounded the instrument, momentum was impossible to attain, and as the march began she turned round to see who was behind her. Her mother and father and sisters and even Anycock and Jazzy and Evita. After them her camp pals, the little boys and girls she had made friends with on the boat from Singapore, every kind face that never refused her a smile, all looking slightly worried for her but ready to give their best. Harder and harder Petula thumped, until tension’s release had become preferable to pleasure’s accumulation, her arms and hands sore and tired and to no avail. Instead of growing bigger, the crowd was falling away, some individuals disappearing into bungalows, others hastily turning the wrong way, a hand snatching Regan, and Petula ending up on her own, the ballroom as empty as a boarding school in July.