Nature and Necessity

by Tariq Goddard

‘Are you listening to me? Am I talking to myself here?’ He could hear the panic in his voice, trying to control it as he went on, ‘We’re trying to have a conversation, yeah? So why am I hearing only one of us talking? It’s time to cut this shit out! Come on Jilly, grow up. I’m talking to you!’

  Jazzy was no stranger to not getting what he wanted from life. What he had no experience of was to lose what he previously had; it was unacceptable, if not impossible, that it could be happening, he and Jill were spiritually conjoined and her respect for him was an essential part of that covenant. She must really be going mad.

  ‘Jilly, sit down, I’m trying to talk to you for fuck’s sake, you’ve got to listen. Are you alright, you don’t look it… is everything alright?’

  With her back turned to him Jill filled the kettle and pulled out a mug, only one, pointedly ignoring her usual custom of filling a pot for both their uses. If this was a glimpse of a new order, one where the most basic customs common to their shared life were not observed, the future was a desolate and unnatural place he had no wish to appease.

  ‘Jesus, I’m asking you how you are! What the fuck do you think you’re doing? For fuck’s sake sit down and look at me.’ Jazzy’s teeth were clenched together; if she did not listen to him he knew he would end up throwing something. No, that was no good, the broken door was proof of that, and God knows how many other objects had been martyred to his temper; he had to try another way.

  ‘We’ve got to talk about this, if we stop talking we’re dead, you’ve got to keep communicating Jill, it’s what makes us humans, right? We’re humans, right? Come on, talk to me. For fuck’s sake talk to me or I’ll break something!’

  Jill said nothing, nothing to that or any of the other conversational openers Jazzy tossed her way over the following five minutes. With her back still turned to him, she drank her tea, at what must have been a scalding temperature, and, with a singleness of purpose that did not come naturally, moved to pick up her bag and leave the house.

  Jazzy was not going to let her get away so easily, and though it would have been simple to trip her – she was walking past him like a robot with limited programming – he did not want to give her any excuse to be angry. The moment called for subtlety; he knew he must effect a thaw without turning up the heat.

  Grabbing her arm as she bent down to pick up her handbag, rather harder than he meant to, Jazzy pressed his face to hers and whispered hoarsely, ‘I love you, why are you doing this to us?’

  At the angle at which he held her it was impossible for her to not look into his eyes and balk at the proximity of one she believed was stronger than her. She had nowhere to go but to return his stare and, from there, crack.

  ‘What do you mean, why am I doing this,’ she broke, ‘why are you doing it, always doing it, every time you come back pissed?’

  It wasn’t the reply Jazzy was hoping for but if she was talking to him then he had won her back; Jill did not have the nerve to resist the most powerful emotion she knew, the need for a bit of passion in life. ‘Good, we’re getting somewhere. At last. You’ve been looking at the symptoms and not the disease. So what if I come back here wrecked, why do you think I do it? Yeah? You think I’m destroying myself for fun? For fun? Come on, you’re cleverer than that. What sends me that way? Exactly. Dig deeper. This isn’t about me coming back pissed, right?’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about you, I’m talking about us. You need to work out what you want Jilly, seriously, because this is crazy, the way you’re carrying on, you’re in a crisis. What do you want? I can’t keep pretending everything is alright when you’re going round the bend all the time. Why do you think I step up and try and get a rise from you? You’ve got to work out what you’re all about, what you want from life. And it’s not just you, right. You need to work out what we’re all about, you know? Us. I mean all you’re going to do acting like a pissy secretary is leak away this thing we have, that we’ve worked so hard to keep when everything’s been against us, wanting us to fail, my mum, Noah, your parents, everyone, they want us broken up, destroyed, finished, right? Yeah, you know it… and I know you don’t want that. To give them the satisfaction of having broken something beautiful.’ This was his trump card. The siege mentality of love against the odds, engendered and strengthened for having been attacked from all sides. It was Jazzy’s usual way of effecting reconciliation, tried and tested in the history of relationships since time immemorial and a tribute to the unconscious way he had picked up elements of his mother’s statecraft.

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘I do Jilly, I do know. I know what’s wrong and I know what’s right. Now come on and get real, right. I’d give anything for us to be happy, why do you think I keep on here if it isn’t for us both? You think I like it? You know better than that. Don’t let them win, don’t let them beat us, don’t give them the pleasure. It’s what they want, have done all along. I love you Jill, can’t you see that? It’s the most obvious thing in my life, the rest of it’s shit compared to that. Why else would I fuck myself up if I didn’t care?’

  Jazzy raised his arm, a prominent cut from a smashed vase dispatched a week earlier trailing down his arm like a malevolent centipede, ‘Why else?’

  This was too much for Jill and she burst into tears. Tears, Jazzy calculated, she needed to shed to be herself again. To be herself and to be his. Tenderly he comforted her, holding her in his relieved grip until she was finished and ready to leave for work.

  *

  Breakfast at the Hardfield’s was never the most talkative of meetings, Jenny’s banal and often surreal ramblings constituting the spoken part of the ritual, Mingus’s head buried deep in Melody Maker and his father’s in the Daily Mirror the rest. One of them would occasionally chip in to ask Jenny to repeat a detail out of courtesy for having prepared the meal, or chuckle contentedly if there was an anecdote she seemed particularly pleased with. Father and son took care to not be too funny themselves as Jenny was not a woman who was at ease with the comical, restricting themselves to a little gentle teasing if the moment required it.

  Jenny had been talking for over half an hour, deliberately taking her tea as slowly as possible in anticipation of what she hoped would be Mingus’s eventual arrival. By the time he joined them, grinning imbecilely, she had nearly run out of things to say, yet seeing him look so handsome and happy, she tacked back to a story she had finished earlier, and resumed it with gusto.

  ‘So I said to her, “What did you just say?” and she said, “Well what do they do? That’s what I want to know, just what is it exactly that they do, tell me that?”’

  Seth, busily buttering another slice of bread, grunted loudly. He had, for once, been listening and appreciated the story, or at least appreciated that it had only been told once before.

  ‘And I said, “How can I tell you? Who’s to tell you because it’s not a thing to tell, not this, not really, so who’s to say?” It isn’t is it? A thing you can just be one way or the other about, at least I don’t think so, do you?’

  Emitting a consenting humph, Seth piled the bread into his mouth, making more communication between them temporarily impossible. Mingus was sat with his head resting on his fist, looking like an engraving of the young Keats, his love-lorn look suggesting that he could easily put up with a thousand such stories today.

  ‘And she went, “Well I say. Nature. It’s just sat there, what does it do?” and I really can’t believe I’m hearing this so I crack and say “It’s nature Marg, it doesn’t have to do anything,” and she just sits there and says, “Well who says it doesn’t? Flowers, I mean what do they do?”as if I’m the one missing some really important part of what she’s trying to tell me. I mean really! And on she goes, I don’t know whether she’s on the Mogadon again or what, and now she’s telling me that if nature were to disappear tomorrow, and I ask her what part, and she says flowers, then she says she wouldn’t even notice it gone, can you believe. Be
cause the only part she’s interested in are the whales, whales, I mean for heaven’s sake, so I knew what to say to that, “Well whales are just sat there Marg, they don’t do a lot either, maybe swim a bit to stop themselves from drowning but what do they do? Not much but it’s no reason for their not being allowed to exist is it?” and she said, “Alright, stuff the whales too, give me something useful any day,” and I go, “What’s useful?” and she says, can you believe, she says, “Michael Douglas’s bum!” Well I say, what do you say to that!’

  Seth scratched the back of his head and refilled his cup. Mingus stared dreamily into the hazy morning light filling the room with its wondrous aura; life was too good. He barely noticed the plate of food his mother put down in front of him, breaking off her story to do so.

  ‘Anyway, I wasn’t letting her get away with that kind of smut, not at the expense of whales and flowers so I said, “Well it’s very pretty, nature, prettier than your Michael Douglas, the chubby womanising so and so, and if it wasn’t for nature, he wouldn’t even have a bum and nor would you!” He makes me want to wretch really whenever I see him, he’s so awful, carrying on as he does at his age, he must be at least forty now…’

  ‘Oh he’s not so bad’ said Seth.

  ‘Oh he is.’

  ‘I liked him in, what do you call it, Easy Rider, with the motorcycles.’

  ‘That was Dennis Douglas pet, Henry Fonda’s son, the Douglas we’re talking about is Burt Lancaster’s boy, and I didn’t have very much time for him either, truth be told, divorcing all his wives.’

  ‘You’re thinking of Kurt Lancaster love. And it was someone else that did the divorcing. A woman, not a bloke.’

  ‘Lancaster Douglas, that’s it, well he was no better. Anyway, what I told her is so far as nature is concerned anything that makes life easier on the eye is alright by me, eh Mingus, that’s what an artist would say isn’t it? Even a chocolate orange.’

  Mingus, full of the glorious anaesthetic of the night before, his miraculous accomplishment teetering on that point where sensation is lost to memory, and memory to a glorious future, merely smiled.

  ‘Eh Mingus? That’s what an artist would say, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sure Mam.’

  Jenny basked in the comforting glow of approval and, not appreciating that she had been delivered a feint, moved onto other matters at the very point her son had hoped she would shut up shop for the day.

  ‘How was Jazzy last night? That pub does good business out of the both of you. You two do enjoy your evenings there, don’t you, up all hours nattering away, I wonder what you find to talk about, I’m not sure there isn’t a girl or two you keep down there, in The Felon. Is there? Jazzy was always turning up with someone new before he got mixed up with that little thing. How’s he doing with her I wonder? It feels like ages since we last saw him.’

  This would have normally annoyed Mingus. It was bad enough spending an evening with Jazzy without being asked by someone who had seen him only the morning before, and every other morning for countless years, how he was, as though he might have undergone a sudden change that afternoon and become a butterfly. It upset him to see his family absorb Montague gossip and absurdities with their own, depressing him even more when his mother thought this trivia might act as a bridge to reach him.

  ‘There are no lasses in The Felon Jenny, it’s a drinkers’ pub.’

  Jenny chose not to hear the note of caution in her husband’s voice, and continued with her well-meaning interrogation, ‘So what did you talk about love? I bet Jazzy was still raging about the party eh? You should have seen his face when he came in yesterday, ooh it was a picture, I don’t think we’ve ever seen him so angry, have we Seth? Oh I do love his moods! And when he holds court. Telling us what she could do with her filthy uniform and all sorts. The way he was carrying on I thought that boy, that boy will have a heart attack before he’s thirty, honestly, he was fuming!’

  ‘I can’t remember what we talked about. But it sounds like you already know how he is without me having to tell you Mam.’

  ‘Oh he must have said something, didn’t he say anything about the uniform? He must have, she really knows how to push his buttons, she does. A uniform, you have to laugh. You’d think she’d know him by now.’

  Mingus took a bite of egg and drew the sports section of his father’s paper towards him with no thought of reading it, merely to establish a barrier between his ears and his mother’s chatter. He hated himself for it, but loathed what he perceived to be his mother’s brute ignorance, his father’s, so much plainer, always much easier for him to bear.

  ‘A blazer I think,’ said Seth, hoping to draw attention away from his son, ‘she wants him to wear a blazer. Like one of those stewards on the QE2.’

  ‘He’ll look ever so nice in one of those. If she gets him into one that is! I should have a word with him, there’ll be some nice girls there I’ll bet, she’s bound to have some of her friends there, pretty friends at that girls’ school, Regan I mean, he’ll want to look his best in front of them, they won’t mind him in a uniform I’ll bet, he’ll look very presentable once his hair’s swept off his face. It really doesn’t suit him so long. I’m surprised they don’t get his nose when he goes in for a haircut.’

  Dimly Mingus became aware that he was listening. His mother had used a name he did not want to hear uttered by anyone else, not yet anyway and not in connection with Jazzy.

  ‘That might turn Jazzy’s head, a lot of pretty girls for him to run round after, “bring us this, bring us that”, he’ll end up loving it I’m sure.’

  ‘He’s got a girl Jen, stop making trouble,’ interrupted Seth, ‘he’s as good as married to Jill and she’s good to him, nice and sensible. He needs that. He’s not the most grounded lad. Very up-and-down.’

  ‘At his age he should be footloose and fancy-free, eh Mingus? He’ll have a crop to choose from at the party however much he might not want to be there. Every grey cloud eh?’

  ‘What party Mam?’

  ‘He’s finally awoken! The great sea beast! I thought you’d never stir, and what time did his lordship get in last night I wonder?’ Having achieved her objective Jenny switched the onus of her conversation to things that really interested her. ‘Were you wearing enough clothes last night, it was freezing, you don’t want to go back to your college with a cold, you’ll be ill all term, you’re thin enough as it is and that coat you always wear is useless…’

  ‘What party? What girls are you talking about?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just now, you were saying that there was going to be a party somewhere here. What party?’

  ‘Oh! Haven’t you heard? I would have thought Jazzy would have talked about nothing else. He was so worked up, I mean, really, it’s only a party I told him!’

  ‘No, I don’t remember. He didn’t say anything. What party? No, hang on, he did say he had to be butler at something… but what party?’

  ‘Don’t worry love, it’s not going anywhere!’ Jenny was beside herself, she at last had something to say that might interest her son, a golden nugget that would ensure that for however short a time, he would actually listen to her.

  ‘Come on Mam. What were you on about?’

  ‘The party of course, your old friend, Regan, it’s her one, she’s having it.’

  ‘What? She’s having it or she’s had it?’

  ‘Oh, it’s still to come, but not long to go.’

  ‘Soon then?’

  ‘Yes, she’s having a great big bash put on for her, a coming-out kind of thing I think they’re called. Petula’s arranging everything of course, so you can guess what kind of party it’ll be from that. Frocks and dinner jackets and all sorts. Honestly, I think she’d be just as happy if she were left to it in a barn with her friends. All that sort of razzmatazz is wasted on the young, even her sort.’

  ‘When… when’s all this meant to be happening?’

  ‘In a week!’

  ‘It isn’t.�
�

  ‘It is!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well why not? As far as I know the Montagues don’t run their social plans past you first do they dear?’

  ‘I’d have known if it was happening. She’d have said something.’

  Jenny laughed outright, ‘Are you having a laugh love? When’s the last time Petula Montague sought your consultation, really!’

  Seth folded his paper in two, the passion in his son’s voice waking a protective instinct that he felt helpless before.

  ‘I know her better than you do, she’d have said something to me.’

  ‘You must be out of your mind Mingus, I’ve known Petula before you were even born. Of the two of us it’s me that knows her better, really it is. She invites me into her house, has done for years. We were quite, quite close once…’

  ‘I don’t mean bloody Petula, I mean Regan!’

  ‘Oh I see! You mean her, do you. Regan, well. I don’t know what to say. Poor boy, you thought you’d hear from her… well, I don’t know what to say to that, I mean, it’s been a while since you and she were going to each other’s parties isn’t it? Not exactly last week that you went off to London together is it? And really, there is no need to swear at me, really there isn’t.’

  ‘She’d have told me, of course she would.’

  Jenny laughed again, a little startled, ‘Is there something you’re not telling me Mingus? Because from where I’m sat this is a little puzzling, love. Is there any reason why she should be telling you about her parties other than politeness?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s nothing.’

  ‘Don’t clam up pet. It looks like it does matter. If there’s a story I want to know, I’m your mother.’

  Mingus had pushed away his tea and was looking slightly manic, a rare trace of colour emerging from under his olive skin. Jenny felt something she had hooked withdrawing to a place where it would never take her bait again, as if a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break the riddle of who this stranger was, and gain an understanding of her son, was on the verge of being lost forever.