‘Oh stop it! I have never wanted to kill you, got it? Or for you to kill yourself! I’ve been saving your life ever since you were a little girl! So don’t drag all that mopey gubbins up again, it doesn’t suit you, you’re too sensible at heart. I’ll tell you what happened. You came back home, it began okay, mainly because with all your cramps and flu you weren’t fit enough to fight; then we quickly moved from fear and suspicion to irritated contempt with nothing sage or fine inbetween, as it always will with us. I’m sorry Evita, it’s who we are and we’re far too alike. Make no mistake about it, I’m that rare old bird, one that actually learns from experience. This is what happens every time.’
‘Learned, learned what? That you don’t want me around you?’
‘On the contrary. I’ve learnt that I don’t need you to go away, to die, yes, die, for me to miss you. I miss you already Evita, stood here in front of me and not… and not loving me as a daughter should love her mother.’ Petula raised her chin, exalted and defiant; it was the kind of inversion of what she really felt that she could produce at a moment’s notice, providing that moment was fluid enough, and then believe for as long as was necessary.
Evita had bent her head to one side as if to see some changing object better; the windmill was first a giant, then a windmill again. She was nearly where Petula wanted her, though not entirely there yet. ‘You Mum, you may not really want me dead, I’ll… I’ll give you that then. There, do you feel lily-white now… but there are other ways of killing, you know there are.’
‘Metaphorical ones I suppose, this is terribly predictable of you dear.’
‘Because you’re still a murderer, I mean it, every day you do it and sometimes you even know it. You know all the ways…’
‘Spare me.’
‘Not listening! By not listening! Ignoring someone’s voice, what they want to say with it I mean, that’s the same as treating them as if they don’t exist. You never hear, you never did believe what I or Jazzy said about Tinwood, one of your precious actors…’
‘An agent as it happens, and for God’s sake don’t bring him into this. It was dealt with at the time. I heard you out then didn’t I?’
‘That’s all you did! We never even told you half of what happened…’
‘Well you were both talking complete contradictory mouthwash, how could I be expected to listen to…’
‘And worse,’ Evita continued waveringly, ‘by getting your voice into everyone else’s heads so they end up thinking like you. You’ve never left anyone alone. The swaggering macho woman, my mother.’
‘Stop it, stop it now.’
‘You hate me!’
‘I’m finishing this Evita. The days of my listening to rants are done. Your performance this morning has settled that for us both. This, none of this, must happen again. So I’ll do you the honour of addressing these… concerns of yours one at a time. Macho? I call it grace under pressure, people of my generation are a bit that way, like it or not. Then this stuff about murder without death or whatever, you’ve got the wrong woman, that’s you dear, what were all of your suicide attempts if not selfmurders minus the grand exit? All the drama of the real thing without having to pay the true cost, pass that onto some other mug. And you talk to me about not listening. I’m here aren’t I? I came back just now to listen; to give you another chance…’
‘What Mum, the Devil having a weak moment?’
‘Don’t be facetious, you don’t have the constitution for it. Touch me if you have to, these aren’t the scales of a dragon, all this demonisation is pitiful. There is a large and not-often-acknowledged element of self-pity in madness, in giving into and rolling in your worst impulses all the time. I believe it’s become something of an addiction with you. I should know. I suffer from my own variation, it’s called duty, though I know you regard all that as a waste of time…’
‘It is all a waste of time Mum, all of this.’
‘Far from it. Why should our relationship be a waste of time simply because we don’t like each other? I can’t think of anything more valuable than knowing another person well and intimately, whether you happen to care for them or not. You’re the needle I can always pull the thread through. That’s how well I know you Evita. I’m sorry you haven’t taken the trouble to return the compliment, and instead created this monster version of me you use to explain each of your unhappinesses. And as for your balderdash about my being a killer, wrong again, the death cult you’ve joined comes from your father’s side of the family. No, I believe in life, there’s nothing crazier, you need guts to do it and a decent grasp of the fucking obvious. Once you believe in it you’ll believe anything, as nothing, nothing at all, is less remarkable or preposterous than a belief in life. Even a belief in yourself. Try it Evita and pack the rest in. I’m being good to you. When I come back I want this mess cleared and to hear a plan, your plan, a plan of what you intend to do next. Right? You look as though you want to say something? Go on.’
Evita was sat on the rolled-up Persian carpet not looking as if she wanted to say anything. Leaning forward in a fug of stunned and gormless incomprehension, she started ‘I… sorry, no, you want a plan, I mean, after what happened, what are you on about? I…’
The electronic door bell sounded, changed at Petula’s specification to the gong at the beginning of Rank Films, interrupting Evita’s reluctant response.
Petula, in a show of great patience, ignored it.
‘You were saying?’
The bell went again. Evita looked hopefully round the room, desperate for a hidden witness to step out of a closet and speak on her behalf. A tiredness that felt like the beginning of an acceptance that she had lost again, would always lose at this particular game, was coming over her in agonisingly slow waves. ‘I feel sick… I don’t know what the fuck is going on. Or what you even… want… from… me.’ Evita knew it was smack she needed now, so badly in fact that she could practically feel it working.
‘The first honest thing you’ve said all day. A plan. A plan is what I require from you.’
Evita moaned like a dog tied to a post it wanted to break free from. ‘Leave me alone, can’t you? Isn’t it enough that I am broken, that you’ve made another Jazzy out of me? How can I have a plan when I don’t have a way of living yet, or anywhere to go?’
‘Ye Gods! Alright, stay put for today. And don’t do anything else silly or go anywhere. I’ll be back once I can.’
The bell had gone a third time. It was not like Regan to be so impatient. Stoically Petula steeled herself for another unforeseen helping of drama; but not before thanking God that she had not become too old for her victories. If Evita was right and she was a murderer then she was a just one who would only put to death those guiltier than herself. The point, however, was that Evita lacked the guile and strength to convince the world she was right, which, in Petula’s book, was no different from being wrong. And at least the girl was alive to know it. A disaster had been averted and the chance that Evita might have been killed in their altercation relegated to the netherworld of unrealised possibilities that never were. Admittedly, there was still the perennial ghost of the low Church moraliser that haunted Petula, the reproach that she might have made a mistake or two of her own, her ultimate triumph notwithstanding. Like a pianist changing styles, it was hard to be completely free of one’s old influences. Might it not have been possible to save Evita’s life without the unfortunate bit that came after the selfless bit? Some chance! Petula’s way of dealing with the problems thrown up by free will and choice was by pretending neither existed; the way she had acted was the only way she could have acted and what was done was all that she could do. She was her mistakes and there could be no brilliance or counter-attacks without them.
So it was, that when she finally reached the front door, the bell having just rung for a fourth time, Petula could face the lions with a clear conscience and a smile on her face. The smile disappeared in the time it took her to see her caller was Jazzy. He was scowli
ng and bouncing on the caps of his toes, an arm resting against a pillar and the other balanced officiously on his hip.
Resisting the urge to simply close the door in his face, Petula asked, ‘What do you want now?’
‘Just one more thing, right?’
‘Please God make it quick.’
‘I’m not wearing some poxy uniform, if you want me to play the waiter I’m drawing a line in the sand. I won’t wear a bow tie, or dinner jacket or any of that penguin shit, alright?’
‘What?’
‘I can’t breathe with anything round my neck, ties make me feel constricted, like there’s a snake around my neck or something. And I’m not wearing a uniform that’ll make me look like a poof. Not for you, or Regan. I don’t do ties of any kind, they’re for arse-lickers.’
‘So long as you get out of that filthy tee-shirt which makes you look underdressed as well as dirty, dangerous and horrible, and get into something clean with a collar, I really don’t care what you bloody wear.’
Jazzy looked hurt; he had not expected a compromise to be so quick or equivocal. It almost put him in the wrong.
‘So I don’t have to wear a DJ and get done up like a penguin?’
There was a crash upstairs, the sound of a door slamming and legs stampeding down a staircase. Petula quivered. She had not secured her flanks but then she had not thought that Evita would try anything else – her success had felt too secure for that.
‘Do I have your word?’
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘The bow tie, I ain’t wearing one, do you swear?’
‘Christ yes, what do you want me to do, sign a court order?’
The feet were on a second staircase now, getting closer by the second, a banging following them, some heavy object being dragged along; a bag, Petula surmised, or perhaps some makeshift club that Evita intended to use for Round Two.
‘Is that it?’
‘Yeah… hang on, another thing…’
‘No, only one other thing; I really do hope you haven’t been in your right mind all these years, because if you have, then there’s absolutely no bloody excuse for you! We’re done here!’
Petula had closed the door on Jazzy’s foot, his boot still wedged in the way, and fingers hanging onto the inside handle.
‘I ain’t through yet! I want to be paid upfront this time, right, not half now, half later… owww!’
Petula picked up a bunch of keys and rapped them over Jazzy’s fingers, loosening his hold and pushing his wrist back round to his side of the door.
‘There’s no more time Jasper!’
‘You’re mad! You could have had them in the door! I’d be left without a livelihood!’ he yelled from the other side.
Catching her breath Petula dropped the lock and turned to face the enemy within. The feet had gone some distance away, not towards her as she had anticipated but in the opposite direction, down the back staircase to the door leading to the garden. With Jazzy knocking furiously behind her this was just as well; the two fronts could not be allowed to converge, the centre must hold. Speedily, Petula crossed the narrow depth of the house, through the kitchen to the back door that sat in the middle of the building. Opening it she looked over to the garden entrance at the east wing. It appeared to be rocking against its frame and at the foot of the shrubbery, scurrying through a gap in the hedge, was Evita. Petula watched her disappear, appear again in the back garden, and run on to the outer gate which clanged shut behind her. So the bird had flown. Petula looked from left to right. There was a silence at the front door, the chilly breath of a northerly wind, and a squirrel stealing birdseed from a feeder, otherwise the garden was empty. On her way back into the kitchen Petula noticed a page ripped from an old textbook pinned prominently to the cork-board above the fridge. Written on it, in Evita’s ugly scrawl, were the words ‘Goodbye Mummy,’ signed, ‘your greatest disappointment – EVITo.’ Well, thought Petula, tearing down the note and throwing it into the compost bin, she was wrong about that – Jazzy was a far greater disappointment, Evita had shown more pluck than she deemed her capable of, even if she couldn’t spell her own name at a speed. The phone was going again and the door bell ringing in multiple bursts. She had to maintain focus, there was plenty that still needed doing and she had yet to ring the caterers for the evening’s reception at the Cathedral Close, or begin her round up of the yeses, nos or maybes to consolidate a good turnout. Of one thing she was certain, she was unlikely to be seeing Evita again that day or any soon after. Pride was the quality they knocked back and forth over the net. As Evita had been able to reject her again, she was unlikely to forgo her ‘advantage’ by returning and risking her own rejection in turn. It wasn’t, Petula reflected, a bad end to their little war.
‘Secrets weary of their tyranny, tyrants willing to be dethroned…’
Rudely and with the single-minded air of a determined zombie, Jazzy’s face appeared against the glass of the porthole window over the conserve shelf:
‘Half now, half later!’
‘Sweet Lord in Heaven! Piss off won’t you!’
‘I want what’s mine, yes or no?’
The front doorbell was still ringing which meant that whoever was there was not Jazzy and, therefore, worthy of her attention. For what felt like the umpteenth time that day, hampered by her remaining clog which had out-served the alibi it was no longer needed for, Petula stumbled back through the house and pulled open the front door, leaning into it to avoid falling over. Some seconds passed as she and Regan stared at one another for what each mistook to be the reasons of the other. Finally, Regan spoke, ‘Mum, you look… hot and tried. Are you okay?’
‘Me? No, just struck by time’s ever-severing wave, that’s all my dear! Come in, you must be hungry. I could do with a little tea and toast myself after the morning I’ve had. I haven’t so much as got off the phone yet and have your brother to contend with. It seems as though through some kink in his temperament, he finds my attempts to moderate, to try and make his life better, an affront to his fanatic’s code. And do you know something? Your other sister is, I mean was, just the same!’
CHAPTER SIX,
complaints and consolation.
There was something Regan was scared of but she could not see what it was yet. It had not been as sad a first day back as usual, the melancholia of coming home and finding there was nothing special for her to do held at bay until her mother revealed plans for the party she had promised the holiday before. Regan was revolted by her own brattish ingratitude. Gush as she had in front of Petula, the shape of the gift was not to her liking. Having been thrown straight into drinks at the Bishop’s inauguration, she had not enjoyed more than thirty minutes alone in her mother’s company, and Petula had been uncharacteristically taciturn and distracted over breakfast, certainly in no mood to hear her offer of a party spurned. Instead, having quickly explained the form of the evening, a dinner party quite at odds with Regan’s current idea of fun, drinking Cinzano in the woods, Petula handed over a seating plan and changed subjects to Penelope Mortimer’s impending trip to Scarborough. Regan listened at a polite distance, her inner weather a squall line of cumulonimbus clouds threatening to break into pellets of sleet.
‘So you see, it’s most important that no one mentions John.’
‘Alright.’
‘I mean it, it’s crucial that Penelope sees herself as a writer in her own right and not an appendage to her ex-husband. Crucial. It must be dreadful carrying that baggage around. Really, I feel sorry for some women.’
‘She has written a book Mum. Loads I thought. She can’t feel that useless. Or need people to feel sorry for her. Didn’t you say someone made a film no one watched about it?’
‘Still.’
‘Sure. I won’t mention him. I mean, I’ve never really even heard of him so why would I talk about the guy?’
‘Really Regan, you don’t half say some silly things for a clever girl. Who hasn’t heard of John Whatshisface
?’
To appreciate Petula’s kindnesses Regan knew one must separate intention from whatever device, words or gesture her mother chose to express that motive through. A superficial reading of Petula’s deeds might traduce a self-aggrandisement that sat at odds with her mother’s true animating principle: a desire to assist at all costs.
‘The other thing, I can’t stress this enough, is for Penelope to feel completely at home here. I want her to be inspired. I want to read about us in her next novel. She has to be able to treat this place as she wishes.’
‘That won’t be hard, everyone who comes here says they’re inspired.’
‘She isn’t anyone, she’s a writer Regan, they tend to be more sensitive to atmosphere than your average run of humanity who can find inspiration over sherry in a shed.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Mmmm what?’
‘Wouldn’t a writer like her be more likely to find inspiration somewhere “normal” than a normal person who needs a beautiful house to get them going?’
‘What? What are you talking about, just be nice to her okay?’
Regan could not keep the edge out of her responses; her disappointment was dying to be aired. However she looked at it, her mother’s choice of guests for her party was stubbornly eccentric, unless, of course, Petula was looking to assist some persons other than her to have a good time, an option Regan could barely countenance entertaining.
‘Don’t look so put out, Penelope isn’t a monster, I’m sure you’ll learn a lot from her. I had even thought of asking her to stay for your party but she’s got to be in Edinburgh. Pity. Still, it did give me the opportunity to invite John instead, and he’s accepted. He says he’s always been very interested in keeping abreast of the young.’
For Regan, this latest kindness was too much like being handed a list of the best novelists under forty and finding the only living entry to be Barbara Cartland, sandwiched between Somerset Maugham and Kipling; these were not the horses she had expected for this particular course. It was not as if she expected to be consulted or allowed to have her way – she was too much a stranger to her own preferences to even know them if called to. Naturally she fully expected her mother’s friends to feature heavily in anything Petula had a hand in, it was always so. Several had made a pet of her when she was younger and she played to their patronage. Besides, it was irrefutable that an evening consisting of only The Lasses would border on an uncouth parody of a societal gathering; they were not ready for their own dinner soirées yet, as Petula must have known when she devised the present one. But what Regan had not anticipated were her numbers to have shrunk to only seven (which would be compatible with a day out but not dinner), and that the other fifty-nine guests would include people she had never met, or only spied from a distance. She ran over the names again: Landon Trafalgar, Wally Burnbeck, Hayden Fox-Davies. Who were these people? Were they for real? The immaturity of her reaction was pitiful and an obstacle to progress. It was an attitude she could have taken towards Petula’s circle at any time in her life and thus missed the social education that marked her as unique in her set. Her failure to embrace this latest challenge was a little girl’s conceit. And yet she could not help herself. This was her first real party since childhood and it would be unnatural if her feelings did not veer a little toward self-pity, miserable as it was to paddle in the shallowness of one’s vapidity.
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