Nature and Necessity

by Tariq Goddard

  ‘Come on Mingus, you can talk to us. Have you been… in touch with Regan?’

  ‘I said it’s nothing Mum. Just forget all about it, alright? Why do you keep going on?’

  ‘Now Mingus, you don’t need to be like that; if there’s something you know that I don’t…’ Jenny paused. It struck her that she had enjoyed delivering news of the party precisely because of the effect she was sure it would have on Mingus. Her responsible motive for doing so was to drive any fanciful ideas about Regan out of his head, and if the most direct way was also likely to be the most painful, then he would thank her once the pain wore off and good sense prevailed. But she had an irresponsible reason too, motivation so unmotherly that she wondered in the brief moment it took to acknowledge it whether it were hers at all or some miasmic confusion brought on by a badly boiled egg.

  ‘My, what are we all so het up for dear? We were only talking. And it is only a party. Let’s just calm down a bit. I can’t see why we can’t have a conversation about our neighbours without your going all wild. There’s going to be a party in the house, they’ve had lots of them, the only difference is that now it’s the daughter’s turn, and if you ask me, she’ll turn out just like her mother because that’s what her mother wants and her mother is a woman who always gets what she wants. Not like me or your Dad. Or you even.’

  Mingus stuck his fork into the end of a sausage and watched the fat ooze out onto the plate, the dead pig undergoing a second death as unwanted food he would play with.

  ‘Forget about it, just think of me as mad, alright? I don’t want to know any more so just shut up!’

  ‘There’s no call for that! I mean, be sensible, you’ve had parties you haven’t invited her to, haven’t you Mingus, plenty, and I doubt she’s made a fuss over them… scowling at her mother for no good reason; of course she hasn’t.’ Jenny was angry with her son; his belief, unarticulated it was true, that he could waltz into a world that would not have her or Seth, and belong in it, was alarming enough on its own. What made her sick to her heart was that he might be right. She wanted to protect him from becoming the plaything of his betters, a grownup version of what she had seen him turned into as a little boy. It was to her great shame, and would be whenever she had cause to remember it, that she relished what she said next: ‘Perhaps you could go love, they need another waiter…’

  Seth glared at her and put down his paper.

  ‘For God’s sake, Jen!’

  Mingus sprang from the table and headed straight for the door. Once outside he thought there must be some mistake, he knew Regan inside out, their souls had met, she had practically worn his penis and made love to him with it, how could she have neglected to tell him about a party? It was inconceivable that there could be anything about Regan’s life his mother knew that he did not, how could there be after what had passed between them? And how ridiculous it would seem if his very next communication to her was a question, or worse, a tiresome request.

  There he stood like a carpet that was about to have the dust beaten out of it, looking towards The Heights in the hope that it was not too late to hear an invitation being issued from Regan’s open window. Nothing came. Mingus tried to catch his breath, even though he was not in the process of moving anywhere. Perhaps it was because it was only a party, a thing of shallow insignificance that Regan did not wish to waste her own time with far less his… but if the party meant nothing to her it was even more reason for her to have told him, passingly and lightly, of its existence. Could she be ashamed of him, a boy suited to the dead of night but unfit for daylight consumption? It was too awful to contemplate, which of course did not mean it was not true. The weather was crisp with what Mingus now took to be dark potential. His heart was broken, too easily he knew, its course not his to command but frighteningly not Regan’s either. He felt for it with his hand, its survival no more assured than a blister which the most indifferent remark, however slight, could rip and empty. Life, at least his, was destined to be tragic after all.

  Taking off across the fields Mingus began the journey down to the lake. He knew he would not find Regan there but he did not know what else to do and could not bear remaining with himself, not in motion.

  The walk already felt like an exercise in nostalgia and by the end of the holiday would, to Mingus’s unconsolable disappointment, prove to be that, the real object of his journey having undergone the mental taxidermy common to those things that are no longer one’s own.

  *

  Regan did not consider eavesdropping a noxious habit. Usually she lacked the relevant context to understand what she overheard. An absence of success in gaining any advantage from her nosiness made up for the frequency with which she sped round corners she had been lurking behind, a moral balance struck between failure and pointless deception. Despite being as affected by their lakeside encounter as Mingus, the practical side of Regan’s nature had triumphed and she woke in the knowledge that she should seek medical advice. To that end she needed access to the telephone as she had only a vague notion of her gynaecological position or what clinical steps she should take to avoid having a baby or catching Aids. Needing the telephone badly on any given morning in The Heights was an exasperating condition, and it was best to simply dismiss the idea or walk down the track to the The Wart or The Pimple to use theirs, as guests frequently had to. The Petula Communications Cooperation was in full swing by eight o’clock and did not subside until ten-thirty at the earliest, particularly in the run up to ‘an occasion’, which was how Petula divided up her life, Regan’s party having become the latest such event.

  Dressed in one of Petula’s robes, her bare feet covered in dry mud and bits of grass, Regan tiptoed down the corridor, her mother’s voice booming under the floorboards a minefield in the process of detonation. There were phones on every floor, each wing and most of the main rooms, added to which was Petula’s new acquisition, the cordless phone plus the mobile brick she travelled in the car with, but only one incoming line to the house. The temptation to simply pick up a receiver and listen to who was on the other end was great, Petula’s half of the conversation plainly audible to all but the hard of hearing. Usually boredom prevented Regan from this subterfuge, that and the number of times she had listened listlessly to calls before, the conversations all part of an interchangeable assemblage of chatter that seemed to have replaced the role of silence in her life. However Petula’s telephonic activity had been so relentless that morning, a menagerie of shrieks, growls, inducements and hushed whispers, that Regan, who had hardly had time to drop off to sleep before this onslaught began, wondered whether this could possibly be business as usual, or the prelude to an blow-out which superseded what even The Heights had born witness to.

  ‘Tell her it is top bloody priority, okay?’

  It took Regan a few moments to work out what this latest squall was about, and even then she was surprised when she discovered.

  ‘I don’t see why she shouldn’t, I mean it’s simply not on to cherry-pick what one does or does not turn up to. Friendship doesn’t work like that, the shame is that she seems to need to be told. I need to know by today, at the latest. Got it?’

  It was the party Petula had promised for her which she had completely forgotten about. Judging by the racket, it was still very much on her mother’s mind. Regan’s incredulity centred largely on how Petula could have become so animated about it, having held, attended and turned down a flock of similar occasions as a matter of course on a weekly basis. In any case, her party was likely to be a second- or third-division affair compared to the cream of Petula’s calendar, hardly worth testing the strength of her popularity over.

  ‘In that case tell her it is an emergency, I want my daughter and her friends to be stimulated, not bored to bloody death. Stratford can bloody wait. Tell her I said that, yes, tell her from me, she’s been bloody useless the last couple of years, she’d doggy-paddle across the Atlantic to watch Jeremy Irons take a shit on Broadway, the least she could do is rep
ay some loyalty and make a young girl happy. Yes, very virtuous, I know, that’s me all over, very good, good job, byeeee.’ Petula hung up with a flourish and congratulated herself quietly.

  Stopping by the phone on the upstairs landing, Regan waited for it to go again; a lapse of about thirty seconds had passed since Petula put it down. Her mother usually liked to savour her chats before embarking on more. She did not have to be proactive this time as an incoming call rang impatiently, Petula allowing it three rings for the sake of decency before picking up.

  ‘Petula Montague. Good God, do you know I was just thinking of you!’

  Regan rather absently lifted the receiver a fraction after Petula’s noisy declaration. The call must have been part of an ongoing conversation as her mother leapt into the middle of the matter at hand, her tone appeasing and compliant and therefore quite unlike her.

  ‘Yes, of course there’ll be girls Tim, loads of the wretched little things, it is a girl’s party after all. Are you worried about the ratio, don’t be, I mean there’ll be plenty of older women there too; no, not geriatrics, but mainly it’ll be girls, quite a few of them at any rate. How many? Well Regan’s invited eight or nine I think. You don’t think that’s enough? No, it isn’t really is it? I can get her to invite more, no I’m sure it’ll be enough notice, these are teenagers, I’m sure their diaries aren’t full to bursting, they are a bit scattered but their parents could always pull their weight. Yes, yes, I’ll make sure we only ask the pretty ones! I don’t want Crispin Fogle sat next to some virgin with spots and braces either. Of course, I know most of your clients are used to models at Cannes, well, I can’t promise them that but some of these girls, once they’ve got a bit of makeup on them, well, you’d never know how old they are. Yes, real stunners. Oh, you are pressing me a bit, did he really say that, that he wanted to know what the filly situation was? Cor, what a way of putting it! Well assure him as his agent that he has nothing to worry about on that score. You are insistent Tim, incorrigible… Regan, well of course she’s beautiful, she’s my daughter, yes, we’ll sit her between Crispin and Dex. Yes I quite agree we don’t want to waste her on homos! You really are too much Tim! That’s my flesh and blood you’re talking about! Please! Stop it!’

  Tim Tinwood was sure he was too much, but having gone all the way before with this woman’s family why not do so again? He had yet to meet anyone who was as crazy for stardust as Petula Montague, or one as likely to give in to audacity as use it. Tinwood had sailed too close to the wind in his time, and been burnt often enough to develop an astute sense of whom he could afford to be ‘himself’ with. Petula had first struck him as a terrifying Gorgon who had strayed into the wrong epic, her interest in showbusiness verging on the arbitrary, but halfway through that first day in Shatby she fell into place, and by the time he saw her return to the farm in tears after the debacle at the restaurant, he knew she was a woman he could work with. Far from being a formidable matriarch, or a randy rack of mutton that wanted to hump a poet, Petula was going for something more complicated, the ultimate ineffability of her search its great weakness. What she wanted from her actors, scribes and artists was an immaterial reward she did not believe she deserved, a return she was afraid she was not good enough for, worrying her to a point where she must have it at any cost all the time. The desire for this kind of invisible distinction, a social substitute for religious grace, was the mistake many a meritorious person who believed they were not ‘good’ at anything fell into, except in Petula’s case it was a raging, warring complex she was barely conscious of the consuming force of. If Tinwood was right, and the years had not disabused him, he knew he had her down for what she was and, having got her, was careful to instigate close observation with a view to never letting her go, his client list the perennial bait she could not resist the lure of. For a visibly sweaty man, who overcompensated for his nerves with colourful and aggressive verbiage, it paid for Tinwood to know his way around the sewage system of human insecurity, as it paid him to know the canals, estuaries and lakes of high aspiration. The rule of thumb that rarely let him down was that a person’s natural state was the opposite of their self-image, all one had to do was hold one’s nose and try not to laugh at the mess created by the conceptual confusion. In this respect Petula had been a stickler, and with a carelessness he really ought to have checked, it was impossible to not have a little fun with her when the occasion demanded.

  ‘Oh do, do come off it Timmy. I mean come on! He should be here anyway, do we really have to promise him that? No, I’m not saying that that might not happen, only that saying it definitely will is a bit much really, isn’t it better to just let nature take its course? Oh you’re only joking? Well of course, ha ha!’

  Surprisingly, making a conquest of two of her kids while the others fled to Chinkies had given Tinwood sleepless nights for over a decade. With a past like his the security of the present moment was never more than a denunciation away. That sibling sandwich was a risk he would never repeat, certainly not with upper-middle-class children who had access to materials, and in deference to that fear he had been careful to avoid physical penetration below the waist, though both Jazzy and Evita had had to clean their teeth and wash their legs once he’d finished with them. Still, they hadn’t been hurt, violence was a line he would not cross. How the English hated a fuss, anything to avoid one and its sequel, social embarrassment – only violence could rouse them to anger, and then only sometimes. That’s why no one had come after him. It owed a great deal to the culture he chose to operate in, never leaving any marks and picking his victims well. Kids who did not wish to get into trouble and parents who would rather the family suffered in secret than gain a reputation for scandal or unclubbability, and failing that, little brutes who knew they would never be believed. Without a cassock or schoolmaster’s robe to hide behind, allies like these were a necessary part of his success, for unlike some contemporaries, he did not waste time giving promises of television appearances or trips to Chessington Zoo to silence his victims. Whatever else they might say about him behind his back, he had the integrity to get his share of candy without recourse to any soft-soap bullshit, a point of principle of which Tinwood was proud.

  ‘But he can’t sleep in there Tim. Diamanda, yes, Diamanda, Regan’s best friend, Diamanda, she’s already in there with two other girls. I’m having to get a bunk bed in or sleep them on the floor in bags. He won’t mind that? You are impossible Tim! I’ve half a mind to let you organise this thing on your own! Really, you are, no don’t, stop it, that’s just being wicked!’

  Tinwood reckoned on at least fourteen years’ grace before most children started talking, allowing for a handful that never would and a brave few who had never stopped. As far as Petula’s two were concerned that time was up and who knew what buried tales might be finding their way up to a bosom buddy, social worker, or worse, a journalist. Of course, his fear depended on the youngsters wanting revenge, their not enjoying his ‘breaking-in’ ceremony and growing up with a view to avenging their lost innocence. Yet it did not have to play out that way, however bad it might have seemed from their end at the time. The brats might even move to a more nuanced position as they matured. Perhaps even a grudging gratitude, or kinky acknowledgement that had it not been for him they would never have been set on their way as sexual beings, free of the ridiculous hang-ups he grew up with.

  ‘I know it’s a party and I should loosen up, that’s easy for you to say Tim. But I’m the one that has to bloody live here after you’ve all gone! You should try living in the country, absolutely everybody remembers everything!’

  He was a gambling man and there was no sense in exchanging pleasant memories for panic, that was doing the prudes’ work for them. Life was nothing without a little sugar and spice and if the price for a wild night was ten sleepless years then so be it. Anyway, the key was their mother’s reliability. Petula either knew and did not care, knew and did not believe her children or did not know but would not have cared if s
he had. And now the same woman was helping him arrange a ball for a roster of the randiest young actors in the country. Ludicrous! Even if he had wanted to proceed along other lines how could he resist steering the evening into an orgy? The cast and location were just too perfect.

  ‘Be sensible Tim, this is North Yorkshire, not Monte Carlo, Greenwich Village or, I don’t know, Soho. Yah I know all that but come on. That kind of entertainment would not do. It would be like putting Audrey Hepburn in a triple XXX, you’re getting carried away. No, I mean it, I’m going to have to put my foot down this time. The youngest person there will be no more than fourteen. Be sensible for heaven’s sake! No I’ve already said I mean it, do you want me to get arrested?’

  Tinwood had not the subtlety or patience to consider a fourth position that his hostess might hold regarding the defilement of her children. Petula did not want to know because she knew she would have cared if she had. Like a student of history offered proof of her country’s past crimes, Petula chose to embrace the myth of imperial glory, paternalism and a rose-tinted past over the painful reckoning of famine, war and disease ushered forth by revision. Pretending that Jazzy and Evita’s outbursts regarding their rough use at the hands of her most useful contact, a man they had never liked, were ‘true’ did no one any good, casting doubts over the mental health of both children if anyone else were to find out. Recognising the accusations as backdated inventions calculated to hurt her, the crimes they fragmentarily accused Tinwood of copied off an American network drama, spared her the humiliation of having to destroy a network of friendships she had worked hard to sustain. And in fairness, there had never been an occasion when either her son or daughter had come to her in a calm and considered fashion with a report of what actually happened, only snippets worked into shouted arguments and denunciations that amounted to little more than garbled innuendo, making it quite impossible to know what they were talking about. A court of law would have dismissed the whole fuss in a finger flick, though thankfully, neither child had the confidence in their lies to take matters that far.