‘Then I’m sure that I do want to know more about her, actually! Yes! How could you have got my sister to hate me without even knowing me?’
‘Regan, you’re having a moment of madness. It will pass. You need to calm down, we have a guest here. Don’t lay yourself so open in public. Her hating you had nothing to do with me.’
‘Drop the double standard, you’ve been laying yourself open in front of Jeremy all day! You don’t mind telling him things I’ve never heard before, stuff about yourself, so why hold back with me when I ask about Evita?’
‘Christ! Well since you beg me to speak of it,’ Petula had raised her voice and could not stop herself, ‘your sister moved from seduction to hostile contempt too quickly, that’s why no boy stuck around. All one had to do was leave his calling card to became the object of the most curious hatred. She was so terrified of rejection, so eager to preempt it, that she chased them off before they had the chance to properly pull out! The possibility that it might not happen never occurred to her. She was in too much of a hurry to show she didn’t care. There were a couple of alright ones who tried to persevere, I can’t remember the names, but they were broken reeds by the time she was through. She couldn’t trust anybody who’d give her the time of day. There it is, happy now, glad that we’ve had this adult conversation? Strewth, it’s like having to swim in the gutter, speaking of this stuff. I don’t know what’s come over you.’
Petula knew all too well that she could have practically been speaking of herself. At least it was one way of getting it all out, she supposed, emptying the bottle of white into a half-pint glass normally used for water. In quite a different register, she continued, ‘I know he’s your father, but he was my husband, and his disappearance shouldn’t be a green light for us all to go mad. I can’t think why else you’d speak in so… in so unfriendly a fashion. It’s important we don’t all lose our minds at once. We can come back from this if we just all pull together.’
Jeremy clucked harshly and, getting up, brushed into Regan, who was still balanced against the fridge, and ran his hand over her bottom. Then, his other hand on her hip, he shoved her away, and, adjusting his jeans, began to scrutinise the wine rack above the sink. Scratching his chin, in a grotesque imitation of a connoisseur, he pulled out a bottle of red, and swung it down onto the table with a thud.
‘The bottle opener is just beside the tap,’ said Petula, ‘I assume you know how to use one. Please savour it, that is a rather expensive vintage you’ve chosen.’ She was finding that as she did not trust herself, her tendency to try and persuade others only increased, and that the world, especially this small part of it, must live with her version or pretend to. It really was that simple. She smiled sadly at a crease in her trousers, and tried to ignore her anger. Despite their tightness the line was obstinate and would not go away, and running her finger along it, she brushed an imaginary crumb off her lap. Would Regan stick or twist, for it felt, at that moment, that their relationship depended on a contrite and submissive response that Petula did not think her daughter had it in her to give.
‘I was just taking some interest in a part of our lives you never let me talk about.’
‘Oh, was that it? Jeremy, could you stop looking so pleased with yourself for a moment and help me out. I don’t like switching colours, but I’ll join you in a glass, if I may,’ she said, holding hers up to him for a refill. ‘So are there any more tedious lines of enquiry, or will you sit down and eat something now dear? You look too thin you know, I was thinking that when you got out of the car this afternoon, but didn’t want to say anything knowing how sensitive you are. There’s soup here, Jeremy hasn’t looked at his. Have some, Royce brought it round yesterday, it’s probably quite good. Broccoli, or some other green thing you’d approve of.’
‘It can wait,’ Regan hedged, making the most of her rare anger, ‘everything you’ve just said, I mean, all that stuff about Evita, how can you know all that, what was going on in her head, her motivation? You always speak like this but how can you know?’
Petula snarled superiorly. ‘Please darling, you’re beginning to sound like a second-rate mind. I’m her mother for God’s sake!’
‘No, just listen for once! Why do we have to stop talking about this just because you’ve had enough? I haven’t! And you being her mother doesn’t answer anything…’
‘No, no, of course, it doesn’t, do continue, let’s give Jeremy a real show eh?’
‘Were you actually there all that time to see what was going on in her mind, and watch all the neurones or whatever they’re called click in her brain…? I mean, only God is supposed to be able to do that, right? But you do it all the time…’ Regan’s voice was shaking and her teeth were chattering. She was not at all pleased with her effort so far but she was too angry to stop. Compared to Petula’s speech, which in truth had deeply impressed her, her rebuttal was little better than face-saving qualification. Once more she saw herself playing the part of herself unconvincingly, the daughter faking the standard adolescent line in the face of the slow and sudden accumulation of wisdom that was Petula. What did her mother see when she looked at her: a feeble pretender thrashing at what could not be kicked away, whose self-discovery was that it was no self, only an echo? Or did Petula secretly fear what she could become; an agent of rebellious pandemonium, the first crack in the ice? It was an emission of confidence worth riding into battle on, and she pressed, ‘Maybe she rejected others because she felt rejected, by you?’
Petula snorted, ‘Hurrah, which book did you throw that up out of? Please Regan, I’ve already warned you, you’re speaking like some common redbrick militant and I can’t have it, I won’t, you’re too good for that.’
Breaking wind sharply, the chair sounding as if it had been cracked in half by a bull-whip, Jeremy tipped the rest of his glass into the bowl of soup that had sat there untouched, and drawing it to his mouth like a chalice, drained the lot, a mixture of caramelised broccoli and red wine sloshing over his cheeks, chin and neck.
Ascertaining that the evening was going bad in ways she had not even allowed for, her gut instinct and pessimism having grown pretty much interchangeable, Petula moved her foot up to Jeremy’s, with the intention of re-establishing contact. If sleeping dogs were to stay asleep she needed to throw them the odd bone, and bringing her boot forward, to kick him playfully, she instead launched an angry blow to his shin, causing him to grimace like a removal man lifting a bed. Glowering, Jeremy grabbed a piece of bread and stuffed it into his mouth to confuse the pain, Petula’s attempt at under-the-counter flirtation coming off as a warning shot, her crackling adrenaline too intense to smother her true feelings towards her guest.
‘Instead of telling me I’m unworthy of a reply…’
Petula tried to block out the words. It was enough to know that she would rather accept death than admit to having made a mistake, without having to hear it from Regan in politically correct jargon. However much she wanted to explain that there were no villains and no victims, that everyone was both and took turns at being each, introducing this level of ambivalence into their dynamic carried dangers worse than those already unleashed. She would have to embrace sainthood for the moment, while praying Jeremy did not become too insufferable in the time it took to work out how to expel him.
‘…because it isn’t a reply, is it? It’s basically just more manipulation.’
The word brought Petula to her senses. ‘Manipulation? Ha! Stop it! Any person who knows their own mind, or can make their case clearly and would like others to agree with them, could be accused of that! Can’t you see that you’re doing exactly the same thing, only inexpertly, trying to get me to accept your underlying reasons for thinking what you do – but with less success?’
Regan opened her mouth into a beautiful oval shape that no sound passed through, reminding her mother of an exotic fish swimming from one side of a tank to the other to find, once again, that the context of its journey forbade it to go any further. Petula
turned to Jeremy. ‘The stupid thing is that she doesn’t even know if she likes this sister of hers, so instead, we get to hear all this dreck about manipulation!’
Jeremy scratched the table and issued a screeching meow, the inference that Petula was most herself when she made no effort to be nice, mirroring Regan’s own solid grasp of the fact that her honesty was often synonymous with unpleasantness.
‘Manipulation, please! You’ll be talking about star signs and crop circles next. And whatever you say, none of that slush about how a desire to defend oneself mutates into the exploitation of others, I’ve heard it all from your sister, and she nicked it all off Channel Four. You can actually read, so you’ve no excuse.’
Regan had no adequate reply. A disabling inertia, too heavy to be panic, had come between her and her anger. Was this all she was conditioned for: to only agree or disagree and not understand anything in between? Thinking for herself sounded so simple in theory; if only she were able to find a subject her mother was not already right about, then she might be able to start. When she thought of family, all that really meant was Petula, the others never amounting to more than bodies encountered in familiar spaces, the question of whether she ‘liked’ them or not as remote as whether she ‘loved’ them, and equally as irrelevant. Who had Evita been to her? An intimidating prospect more complicated and enthralling than herself whom she would have liked to have been noticed by. Instead she received mistrustful acceptance from her half-sister, punctuated by outbursts of unnerving friendliness that struck as suddenly as illnesses, Evita’s smiles too nervous to settle or reassure, however much the cessation of prickly sensitivity was greeted by the family as a holiday. Growing up expecting her relationships to be stampeded on by the more determined ones Evita was ready to have, her cares and interests like those anonymous Argonauts written into a film for the Minotaur to pick off, explained why she secretly pined for Petula’s patronage; Evita being too much like their mother for her to stand a chance in an equal contest. Regan had never confided in her sister, or supported her and Jazzy’s rebellions against Petula, shattering any hope of an alliance between them, because it would be as pointless as going to war with herself. There was one thing she remembered Evita bringing up in arguments that had always put Petula on the defensive, however, and she tried it for herself now. ‘Evita told me you could only love people who didn’t scare you. She said she scared you, but if you had the courage to be a feminist, and brought her up as one, instead of relying on men all the time, you’d have been able to bond properly. That’s what she said.’
Petula, who looked run-through by a lance at the mention of fear, and raised to heaven at the reference to feminism, spluttered: ‘So that’s her take is it? Feminism would have saved us from ourselves. All us wimmin together, loved up on polytechnical lesbianism, standing up to nasty old patriarchy?’
‘Yes, well, no, only part of it, her perspective I mean.’
‘Is that what you call it? Patriarchy, you do realise, is just another phrase for trans-historical permanent reality?’
‘Look, this isn’t an argument about politics, it’s about our family and…’
‘Isn’t it? Trust me, so far as perspectives go, you’ll find that it’s my one that tallies with all that reality stuff out there that you seem so unbothered by, not Evita’s pissy little intersectional self-justifications. And whilst we’re at it, could you, or anyone, explain to me the difference between a feminist and an ordinary woman these days? What does one do that the other doesn’t? I mean, really, what does a woman think she’s doing calling herself a feminist at all, it’s such a miserable little alibi! And there are so many braver ways of making an impression. Evita once told me that her sleeping with so many boys was an act of feminist defiance; I told her that the real surprise isn’t the number of people we’ve slept with but the number that we haven’t! Think of it, the billions and trillions of men we haven’t fucked! Haven’t fucked yet and never will! They’d like to do it, we’d like to do it, if certain conditions were met, and yet somehow we can’t get our act together! We ought to be telling strangers that it’s their turn next! There should be copulation in the streets! Feminist my bony arse! I wouldn’t cock a leg on one!’
Jeremy watched Petula light up and egg herself on – it was like listening to a poem while watching a contest – her eyes alive to how much fun she was having, even if her code of conduct would not admit it, and Regan, shivering behind her sanity, sincere in her thwarted desire to leave the world having learnt something, while hating every step of the dance. These were the sisters he had resolutely failed to live in the moment for, projecting his way through the last two terms in the shabby hope that he would one day be admitted to this famous kitchen, where whatever-it-was was supposed to happen. And so it had, though not in a way that had any need for witnesses or survivors. Jeremy couldn’t deny it any longer. He was the guest of people to whom he would never mean any more than nothing, no matter how many times he met them or years he spent attending their parties, get-togethers or weekends away. It was a play that nothing outside of the two sisters could explain, his birth, experiences and continued existence utterly superfluous to the outcome. Lying naked with Petula had meant nothing to her, no more than his earlier attempts to clown around and generally try to make a charming nuisance of himself had. Even offensive and calculated vulgarity was a waste of time; between him and them was an electric fence powered by eternity that would never be breached, and he had been a detestable fool to think otherwise.
‘Come on Regan, why so shy, isn’t this the kind of conversation you thought you wanted? To play grownups with your shallow half-wit of a mother?’
Jeremy stood up, not yet knowing what he was going to do or say, only that he could not remain silent any longer and still command the self-belief needed to live out the rest of his life. Petula barely noticed him rise, though Regan did, potentially grateful for a sacrificial distraction.
Before Jeremy knew it, he was talking, and could hear his voice speak as if listening to a pre-recorded broadcast, with the sensation that what he was saying had already occurred, and that he was merely laying rightful ownership to it, overwhelming. ‘What I want to know is why do I have less right to exist than you two? No one’s ever given me, my mum, dad or anyone I know, as much talk or attention as you two do each other. Quacking away like the world doesn’t exist, it’s not right! There are babies that die without anyone knowing who they are. You think you’re the best people in the world but you’re dregs, you’re just where you are because of luck, that’s all, because you’ – he pointed to Petula – ‘married who you did and you’ – he turned to Regan – ‘had her as your mother, and that’s it. None of what you take for granted has anything to do with you, but you act like it was created off your own backs and you have a right to it all, and talk about yourselves like you’re something important. You aren’t. The person who does the paper round is more important than you. You don’t deserve any of this and you’re spunking it away and too busy doing it to realise you won’t get the chance to have any of it back. Luck doesn’t repeat itself till it’s blue in the face and you lot have had more than’s fair. It’s not right! You’re really bad people!’
‘At last he speaks!’ laughed Petula dryly. ‘Perhaps if you’d tried engaging in a more human way earlier we’d have taken more notice of you. And not just you, but your mother, father, the dead children, the paperboy and anyone else in the world you cared to entertain us with the existence of!’
‘Just fuck off will you?’
‘Please Jeremy! Don’t speak to my mum like that!’
‘And you can too!’
‘It’s alright darling, Jeremy is on his way to becoming a nicer person. It’ll just take a little more time and practice than he thought. We all need to be patient for him.’
Jeremy had turned his back to them and was grabbing coats off chairs, lighting on one of Petula’s Barbour jackets that lay over his Puffa. ‘Nicer person?’ he yelled at the
garment, ‘you can talk about nice people! Perhaps that’s what we should have discussed after I stuck my cock in you, yeah? How one goes about becoming a nicer person? What about that, eh?’
‘Since you ask Jeremy, I’ll put the answer in an idiom that won’t confuse you: you enter a room, like this one, look around for the biggest cunt in it, and if you can’t find one you leave, because that cunt is you. Nice-person conversation over.’
‘Don’t try me, I could take you out just like that! You can’t get away with treating people like this, not me anyway. I’m going, off!’
‘Then you’d better go,’ said Petula quietly, folding her arms and haughtily staring past him at a painting of an octopus on an operating table, that she had kept meaning to move, but was now belatedly grateful to have hung in her line of vision.
Regan had gone white. She watched Jeremy, his eyes nearly crossed with fury, struggle to get his arms into the sleeves of the coat, pulling it on the wrong way like a madman strapped into a straightjacket he was trying to escape. Without stalling to correct his mistake, Jeremy stumbled away from the table, arms outstretched before him, tripping through the kitchen door face-downwards into the corridor. His obvious distress and the leery clumsiness of his flight excited a pity in Regan that her mother did not share.
‘Never mind, in life you don’t always have the conversation you were preparing for,’ Petula called after him loudly, to establish before them both that Jeremy had already left their lives, if not the actual building yet.
‘You can’t treat people like this!’ he yelled back, ‘you can’t!’
Nature and Necessity Page 46