‘Drunk out of his mind, the poor fool,’ Petula added, the hint that Jeremy’s mental state had been the real subject of their conversation all along, implicit. ‘No helping him now; the bottle has broken and the red mist released, he’s his own worst enemy. I could see that as soon as look at him.’
Regan was already following Jeremy out; she could think of nothing else to do. Gaining on him, taking at first his sleeve as he shook off the jacket, then hanging onto his bare arm childishly, she pleaded, ‘What are you doing! This is crazy. Let’s talk about this!’
‘THERE – IS – NOTHING – TO – TALK – ABOUT!’
‘But there is!’
‘No, it’s too late, I won’t be treated like some joke. I’m not some piece of shit off the street that’ll stand for it, I’m not! I’m going! I’m not a worm, I’m not a worm!’
‘I know that! I’m not saying you are!’
‘Take a look at yourself, you don’t even know you’re doing it, the way you’ve treated me, it’s disgusting!’
‘What have I done? I honestly don’t know what I’m meant to have done!’ cried Regan, her earlier aloofness forgotten completely, as she tried to drag Jeremy back down the corridor, and then onto the floor with her. Jeremy, making no effort to protect her against his superior strength, swung her ungallantly against a case of glass starlings. There was an ugly crack, the front of the cabinet fracturing like so many tentacles against Regan’s protectively raised arm. Broken bits of glass confetti fell everywhere, covering Regan’s hair and clothes, shards crunching beneath Jeremy’s feet as he pounded on.
‘It’s too late, everything’s too late, alright?’
Regan knew then that if she were to let him leave in this state, it would end a stage of her life she had no wish to pass through or ever have over, and because of this it was imperative that he should stay, allowing her to return to a largely imaginary normality. She also feared that she was to blame for his outburst, having had it drilled into her that passion vouched for the correctness of one’s cause, while cold restraint equalled guilt.
On her feet, she sprinted past him, blocking his way towards the front door. ‘No, I won’t let you do this! You’re being absolutely crazy. I don’t even know why you’ve flipped. So I had an argument with my mum, so everyone argues, and maybe it was boring for you to listen to it and I acted like a bit of a brat but…’
‘Just leave it! Please leave it! I cared about you, you know that, really cared about you! But I never want to see you again, I’m through with you all, you can take your hospitality and stick it up your arses for all I care. I’m through. I don’t ever want to experience Montague hospitality again! You saw what’s been going on all day. What’s there not to get?’
‘Jeremy, please! You don’t mean it, you’re drunk and crazy. It’s been a crazy day for us all. Don’t do something you’ll regret. Please. Stay and sleep on it!’
‘Do you know something? I was actually dreading coming here, you know, dreading all of this ever-so-fucking-superior bullshit, dreading it for months and months, and you know what? It was even worse than I thought! I’m through with you, that’s it, don’t you understand, I don’t ever want to see you again! Now get out of my way.’
‘Don’t be mad, what about your bags, they’re still upstairs, and where will you stay, you’re lost out here in the middle of nowhere! You don’t even know where you are Jeremy, for Christ’s sake, at least stay for the night and we’ll call a taxi for you in the morning. You don’t even have to talk to us or see us if you don’t want, but don’t just leave like this. You’re being completely mad.’
‘I like the way you care about me now! I’m through. I’ve told you to get out of my way, I won’t tell you again. You better get the message.’
‘But Jeremy, you’re being absurd, you sound just like my brother…’ Regan could see it was no use, the more she returned to her solicitous self the more of her there was for him to throw back in her face, her kindness and his savagery feeding off each other inversely.
Without her actually getting out of his way, and without Jeremy exactly looking to avoid her, they found themselves having much the same exchange beyond the door; the full moon spotlighting two shapes grappling against one another, as Jeremy pushed Regan forward like a car charging through a crash barrier, shouting, ‘Get out of my way! Just get out of my way!’
‘I’m not in your way, you’re in my way!’
‘Move will you!’
‘That’s what I’m trying to do!’
‘No wonder you two love actors,’ he yelled, ‘you’re unnatural like they are, you don’t get the “real” in real life. You’re denying reality, I want to go and you won’t let me!’
‘I’m not going to let you be such an idiot, I’m not going to let you make this our last word!’
Continuing in this manner they progressed, surprisingly easily for two bodies thrusting in different directions, to the bend on the gravel path Jeremy had so charily proceeded along earlier that day, Regan’s pumps muddied by a mole hill they detoured through, her jeans splattered in loose earth. She groaned, and finally admitting defeat, uttered: ‘Slow down, please, you’re hurting me. I’ll let go if you let go of me.’
‘Let go of me first then.’
‘You’re hurting me! Let go!’
‘No, you let go! You’re the one still hanging on to me!’
‘You stupid dick, I can’t, you’ve got me by the wrists!’
Fired on by an anger he could not, even after Regan’s earlier attempts to soothe it, believe was not justified, and furious that she had finally shown signs of kicking back – he the fond abuser she must take for granted – Jeremy lifted his arm to let go of her wrist, bringing his hand back down far harder than he intended. There was a rip, and he saw that he had torn a strip off the front of her paper-thin blouse.
Aghast, Regan pulled away. The flimsy garment flopped down below her waist, and drifted off onto a bush. For a hesitant instant Jeremy froze, scared that some line had been crossed, which it had, though neither of them knew what it meant yet. Finding it less embarrassing to continue on his insane course, or else force a situation where he was asking to stay and she telling him to leave, Jeremy tore down the track, running quickly now he was free of her. Regan watched him go, deciding that if he got to the gate without stopping she could just as well commit herself to following him all the way to Richmond in an unsatisfactory game of chase. The gate was the cut-off point; once he reached that she would give him up as lost and return to Petula empty-handed. The gate would show he really was serious.
‘We love each other, we’re friends,’ she bellowed as she watched him vault over the gate and continue down the hill. In the distance she heard a car blow its horn twice, the local custom for a vehicle approaching a blind corner.
‘Jeremy,’ she whispered, ‘don’t be such a dick…’ A vision of her life in Cambridge without him flashed up and vanished. She would have to arrange things differently now that they hated each other; the holiday to Thailand she had been looking forward to was certainly out, shared lifts to hockey, and George’s party would be a bit awkward now too… perhaps he wouldn’t go.
As she walked back to the house, Regan really felt that she had lost something bigger than a friend, and for reasons impossible to pinpoint, had been shown what a hateful person she was at heart. Entering the kitchen, she was about to share as much with Petula, when her life was saved from this judgment by her mother’s speedy intervention. ‘Whatever you do, don’t blame yourself! I know you Regan, and you need to know that it is not, that it is never, your fault. And don’t think so for a minute. Blaming oneself is just the position a bully wants to put you in. It’s how they work.’
‘But he was so… angry,’ Regan said doubtfully.
‘Not angry, mad! Obviously. There’s an important difference.’
‘I’ve never seen him like that.’
‘You wouldn’t have, they’re good at disguising it, that’s the w
ay with abusers, and then slowly, slowly, suddenly, until it all comes out.’
‘I guess.’
‘I know.’
‘But what was that horrible thing about his sticking his, did you hear? His you-know-what, in you? Why would he say such a thing?’
‘Mad! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. As I say, it’s the only explanation. Put it out of your mind. Forget him and everything he’s said. None of it matters, none of it is true. He’s not worth another second of our attention.’
‘I guess he’d have to be crazy, I mean really medically mad, to come out with something like that… that, you know, twisted.’
‘Well of course, that’s how some men are. In his case I’d say he didn’t even realise how far gone he was, and probably thought he was just yearning for a little unqualified joy when he left the house this morning. But there was a nasty, nasty side to him, I saw it at once with all his toadying and flattery, and to then go from that to being… Darling, what’s happened to your blouse? You’re in your bra! Did he try and molest you? The filthy animal!’
‘No, no, it was a mistake. He tore it by accident. I think he thought he’d gone far enough at that point. He just ran off and I let him go. There was no point after that. He didn’t even seem angry, you know, at the very last. It was like he was coming to his senses but knew he couldn’t stay after all that.’
‘Oh I bet he did, all wars are popular to start with and I’ve never seen anyone try and start one as hard as he did, but isn’t it funny how belligerents always expect the war to end when they want it to? The bloody bastard, I’d like to tear his shirt off and see how he feels!’
From Regan’s shaken and quizzical expression Petula feared her daughter was attempting to hang onto a hard-won thought that she was not ready to give up so easily; she would have to make more reassuring noises to capitalise on and make fast her extraordinary luck. ‘Here, put this over you at once’ – Petula handed Regan Jeremy’s fleece and, seeing what it was, quickly replaced it with her shawl. ‘You’re probably in shock, it’s hideous to be spoken to like that, no one feels themselves afterwards, your heart burning and beating and your back up and worst of all, your mind playing all those horrible words over and over. It’s just too awful. I’ve faced it on and off all my life. I’m sorry your turn has come, but you’ll be better prepared for it the next time it happens. Come on. Come here and give me a Montague hug. We both deserve one. With the day we’ve had.’
Hesitantly Regan shuffled toward her mother and stopped, paralysed by a sluggish reluctance to accept that the chapter was closed, Petula having to lean over and actually pull her into her embrace.
‘Let’s just chalk this down to another man we’ve seen off, dear! Another silly-willy full of wounded pride, just like the others…’
On that final point Petula was not wrong. Jeremy was so full of what she ascribed to him, but also shame and remorse, that he was hardly aware of the Land Rover until he smashed into it at full tilt, Jenny Hardfield only able to apply the brakes after her front wheels had travelled over his trunk, the back two pasting his guts over the road. The mystery of what a young man, drunk or on drugs, there was not enough of him in one place for the coroner to discover which, was doing charging down the road from The Heights at the dead of night, marked a turning point in how indulgently such losses were viewed by the local community and in Regan too, who, wishing to avoid more fatalities, never brought a boy back home to meet her mother again.
PART FOUR:
Phlegethon, fire.
If you gave me a fresh carnation
I would only crush its tender petals,
With me you’ll have no escape
And at the same time there’ll be nowhere to settle.
And if you’re wondering by now who I am
Look no further than the mirror –
Because I am the Greed and Fear
And every ounce of Hate in you.
– THE JAM, Carnation
CHAPTER TWELVE,
fighting and finality.
At last it had happened. The decision to kill Petula was one Regan and Jazzy came to on their own, without conference or the faintest notion that the other sibling was being edged towards the same desperate solution to what neither guessed was a shared problem. Nor did they hold the thought in its raw and reductive form, instead discovering, like a tadpole in a petri dish, that it had been growing unwatched all along – Regan believing she loved her mother right up to the night she saw she hated her, and Jazzy long entertaining the notion that nothing would change until his mother passed, without recognising he willed that day on with all his heart, until it was forced from him. Theirs were separate journeys, taking very different routes, made at contrasting velocities, the slower reaching its goal faster, and the quicker drawing the same conclusion later; speed for once being of no account in this race to a conclusion neither had forewarning of.
Like a voter who puts a cross beside the same colour at every election, Regan was too party-orientated to question the self-evident truth that her mother was wonderful, the pace at which she attacked life preventing her from focusing on the passenger left on the platform, in this case herself, mouthing back the opposite of what she thought was the truth. Jazzy, on the other hand, had less distance to travel, nursing so many conscious grievances against his mother that it was an effort for him to think of anything else, from the time he brushed his teeth, to passing out; the shock for him not that he hated Petula – he believed that all along – but that he loved her, and it was because he did that the only course left open was to stop her from hurting him any more. Their decisions, however, were identical in the relief they brought.
These decisions once accepted, neither brother nor sister had cause to consult the past again, question the righteousness of their motivation, or blame coincidence or bad luck for the parlous desperation that drove them to leave the world they knew, and enter a secretive hell in which their most intimate imaginings and longings lay beyond the law. Both had heard it said often enough that if this or that had not happened, a certain conversation not overheard, the wrong bit of gossip not shared, the rain having fallen on that day rather than on this, then destiny would have happily resolved its tensions in a way compatible with everlasting satisfaction. This they no longer believed. The tale that life had fallen foul of malevolent chance, altogether too rosy and itself worthy of a Hardy novel, was pushed by their aunt Royce in an attempt to build bridges, without straying anywhere near the sore core of their purulence, her optimistic characterisation of their dissatisfaction as accidental, too hopeful by far. Royce would have been better served consulting the Russian novelists of the nineteenth century. Here she would have found a pushy and inexorable fatefulness, born of an eternally present horror, capable of being challenged at any time and therefore tragically stoppable; had there actually been a possibility of the challenge succeeding and tragedy avoided. Regan and Jazzy lived through slights, slings, tedious lunches and spontaneous gatherings, where all it should have taken was to ask Petula what the hell was she doing and could she please stop, to prevent the fall into criminality. Simple as this sounded, Jazzy and Regan had danced to variations of this tune for years, forever slipping up on the oily blatancy that underwrote their mother’s rule. All Petula had to do was simply deny that she knew what they were talking about and that there was any problem at all, only a mania the siblings had built up in their own minds, which is exactly how it would look to others once she had knocked their paranoiac querulousness into touch, and followed through with a speech that would shut them up for another two years. Regan and Jazzy would still be stuck with a version of themselves they despaired of, to be endured until its cause had gone, or, more likely, by their dying first (having never really lived), their mother scolding the undertaker for being late and reciting the funeral addresses over their coffins to a Cathedral packed full of her chums.
The step from conceding that only death, the black attendant, terrible and uncondi
tional, would stop Petula from enjoying the last word, having exhausted the civilised problem-solving consensus, was a stroke from admitting that beneath this thought breathed another, with a crucial prefix: nature could not be expected to act on her own – if they were to enjoy the carefree mornings of a Petula-less future, it would need help. They would have, sooner or later, to pick up the slack reigns of their personal agency, otherwise Petula was going nowhere and nor, more as to the point, were they. Doing something in this context did not yet mean murder, and might even have entailed being able to persuade Petula to up sticks and leave the country, or convince her to simply leave them alone to live undistinguished existences away from her orbit and interference – these un-fatal remedies quietly suppressing the one true solution over a decade of wishful prevarication and second thoughts, matricide still too preposterous for them to contemplate.
Outwardly none of this was obvious, the slide towards barbarity concealed behind the dignity-sapping patronage that suggested a misleadingly cyclical picture of life at The Heights continuing without interruption. For his well-wishers – Jazzy had retained his gift of cultivating enduring pockets of sympathy – there was enough to celebrate in the solid and joyless progress he displayed on the farm, tackling chore after task, supported by Spider and their cottage full of her children. With a dogged persistence luckier people showered in cheap praise, and a firm handle on the irruptions that had previously played havoc with his nervous system, Jazzy applied himself to a life nearly free of hope, ambition or direction, and in this way was closer than ever to the peasants of the past he imagined a kinship to. With muted satisfaction, he observed how well he could manage his days without being inspired, stimulated or particularly happy, a competent and fierce worker; loyal too, as there was no question of his ever labouring for anyone anywhere else, the slow pace of his achievements – a bodged door that saved Petula the cost of a replacement, hedges trimmed like crew-cuts and drains as leaf-free as the trees they fell from – marks of a hair-splitting thoroughness that not even his mother could dismiss the solidity of.
Nature and Necessity Page 47