‘No, you’re going nowhere. An endless succession of soldiers have to be killed to win a war. There’s nothing playful about that. And winning and losing are different things, and it matters which is which. And we aren’t winning, I tell you that, because winning feels very different to this, however you wish to muddy the waters. You’re a muddle. You were always a muddle.’
‘Just cool it, right,’ said Jazzy, losing his cool, ‘I’m not looking to have an argument with you tonight. Winning, right, it isn’t everything, not like how you say it is. If you’ve really tried your hardest, really given something all you have, isn’t that the only thing that counts? How hard we’ve tried? That’s all I’m saying. Effort’s the thing.’
Petula bared her teeth; how this line of excusing failure reminded her of all that had irritated her about her son as a teenager, a state that had seemed to last until he turned forty; the clumsy stupidity masquerading as wisdom, the self-important ignorance behind his sententious questioning, and the tantrums which followed any attempt to set him straight.
‘Please Jazzy, anything but that, tell me for God’s sake, who’s interested in how much effort you put in? If trying your hardest isn’t good enough, all that shows is that you aren’t good enough. It’s not complicated. The rest is just stuff we invent to make children feel better when their test results come in, all scribbled over in red ink.’
‘But not everyone can finish first, can they? The whole thing about places is that there’s a first, second, third and last too. Someone has to come bottom and don’t they deserve to be loved for themselves?’
‘But by whom? Only other losers who don’t matter to anyone of distinction and character. No one else counts, the detritus you talk of is just here to make up the numbers, so there’s less chance that decent people die in car crashes!’
‘And I suppose that’s me, isn’t it? The “detra”-whatever-youcall-it. Jesus you never change! Never. Do you know that? And I mean, haven’t you ever wanted to, haven’t you ever thought how much better you’d feel in yourself if you had? If you just tried, right, to not be you for once?’
‘Change? Why should I change…’ Petula reached out for her beaker and Jazzy moved it further away, forcing her to grin at his cheek. How badly had she ever wanted to change? Not all that much, it had always been a dangerous notion. Certainly never enough to make a decision that would be as large as her life, exchanging the existence she had for one she did not know she could yet attain. ‘There isn’t time to change, not enough time in one’s life to do something that big.’
Jazzy struck his chest martially. ‘That’s a cop-out if ever I heard one, I’d have expected more from you Mum, there’s bags of time, how does that song go, “we have all the time in the world…”’
‘There you go again, misunderstanding everything all the time! All we have is the present moment which we can enjoy as if we had all the time in the world. The line means embracing a cherished illusion. Christ, I may be a senile old lush, but you make me feel like a raging genius Jazzy. Really.’
‘Maybe you are one?’
‘Oh stop it, you’ve never been good at sarcasm.’
‘I wasn’t being sarcastic. Sometimes I think you are a genius, not the good kind, just the type that wants to make the world into a hell for every other poor sod who has the bad luck to live at the same time as you.’
‘Behind every piece of bad luck is a bad decision.’
‘Shit! This is why I can’t even talk to you. Why it’s easier just to walk away.’
‘Oh? And is that why you thought you could take advantage of my reduced capacity to cast me over the coals?’
‘What’s that?’
‘You know, you’re trying to take advantage of me being a silly sot. So you can ask me what you might think are tough questions in the hope I tell you this or that, forgetting it all by the morning, yes?’
Blushing and at high speed, either to cover his embarrassment or because fate had cast the words out of their hiding place, Jazzy asked: ‘So will you marry again?’
‘I’ve already done that twice, isn’t it time you tried?’
Jazzy snorted derisively. ‘I’d have to be in love first. We don’t all marry for money and a big pile.’
‘In the past, self-interest was nothing to be ashamed of. It was what constituted a sensible person’s character, and everyone expected to encounter it in anyone sane. If you read novels you’d know that,’ Petula replied defiantly.
‘Yeah, that’s as may be, I wasn’t alive then, and I don’t have time to read. But I’d still need to be in love to marry.’
‘Well, don’t you love that person you’ve been living with for however long, I lose count now; don’t you love her, your Spider?’
‘We’re not like that, it’s more of a practical thing, we care about each other but… you know, it’s not so romantic, we’re more partners than, you know, lovers. She’s my companion in life. There isn’t that passionate part anymore, and there wasn’t ever really that much of that to begin with either.’
‘You could have fooled me, walking round holding hands all the time and writing each other poems, you said.’
‘Yeah, we’ve had special moments for sure…’
‘And you’re always banging on about how much she means to you, how I’m looking down at her and her little termites all the time, and how she deserves my respect. Don’t tell me that’s all another load of your blah-blah?’
‘You stop that or…’
‘Ha!’
Jazzy threw his beaker against the wall, and watched it bounce off and loyally roll back across the stone floor to his boot. Squeezing his fist, he wanted to yell ‘Aren’t I the one who’s meant to be asking the questions?’ but knew that a pat line from a police drama was the admission that she was waiting for: that he would never overtake Petula. Instead he cried, ‘Christ, it’s not that simple! Not everyone is like you, clear-cut and cut-anddried!’
‘What complicated feelings you harbour Jasper. How hard it must be to grope about in the shadows. I’ve seen the two of you walk around the place holding hands, you said she was very dear to you, that she was your whole life; your words, not mine. Who would be blamed for thinking you were in love? I merely remark upon what you offer up for my consumption. Wasn’t that the impression you were trying to convey? The point you were trying to make?’
Jazzy raised his hands in exasperation. ‘Blimey, you sober up quickly in the race to become a bitch again! We do, you know, care about each other, a hell of lot. Of course we do. But it’s not like, like it was with Jill. We’ve a different kind of understanding from what happened with me and her. It’s not the same for me and Spider.’
‘And does the Tarantula know that?’
‘No, of course she doesn’t, and don’t go telling her anything either! It’s none of your business anyway. This is one thing I don’t want you fucking up for me. I was in love once before and you showed no respect, don’t ruin this too.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, I always liked Kitty or whatever her name was, it was just difficult to get a word out of the girl, that’s all. She seemed perfectly pleasant to me. In an unassuming way.’
‘No, stop right there. I don’t want to hear it, that ever-sofucking-nice bullshit, save it, I know that’s not you. You, you treated Jill like a second-class citizen, an underling. I was there, remember, I saw how it was.’
‘Well she seemed terrified of everything! Still, I grant you, she was… clean and pretty well turned out. I’ve nothing against her.’
‘That’s big of you. So very good of you Mum now that you’ve done your worst and driven her away. What relationship could survive in the atmosphere you create here? And think about it if you care at all – where round here am I ever going to find another girl like that eh? At my age. I’m getting old too, I feel it every day when the bones pop as I get out of bed. Jill was a one-off, a complete babe, right? Someone I could really fall headlong and head over heels w
ith. Oh aye, you only love like that once in your life. That was my chance, and you robbed me of it!’
‘Now who’s getting maudlin? I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done or not done. You may well be right about Kitty, but you’re wrong about the one part that actually matters, that isn’t what love is, what you say, a once-in-a-life chance. You’re worrying over nothing if you think it is.’
‘Oh no? Like you’d know would you? Spare me that act!’
‘I don’t want to spare you, I want to help you. You ramble on about love, like you ramble on about everything else, but it’s not the unique event you think it is. Love makes use of us, replaces us, reassembles and finds different combinations; it’s the most active force in the world,’ Petula sneezed again and slapped the table for emphasis, ‘because it’s not about us, we’re at itsservice.’
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘I’m saying that it chooses and discards individuals, and is only sometimes about them. Your turn may come up again. Who knows?’
‘And that’s meant to make me feel better?’
‘Oh grow up! Can’t you see I’m trying to get you to a place in life when you can finally become a man, a real one and not some popinjay who struts around like some extra from The Archers spouting homilies! All this stuff about Jill is just more retroactive nonsense, and it’s typical of you. I never heard anything like it when you were actually together. You’re just making it up now so you have an excuse to hate me!’
‘Your trouble is that you don’t know me, you never have. If you had you’d know that you’re the hater and I’m the lover!’
‘This is turning into something it shouldn’t. You’re provoking me now.’
‘So what? I’m telling you the truth: I loved Jill and still do! If you knew me you’d know that. And the past, up here in my head, is the only place I can still see her, thanks to your treating her, and everyone before her, like shit. And then you go and blame me for living in the past.’
‘Stop this obsession with the past, stop thinking of it as a paradise, really, I implore you. It’ll only break your heart! Like dwelling on the death of an old friend. You’ve got absolutely no idea of the problems you’re creating for yourself. You never look ahead.’
‘What’s the point in lying to yourself? You were saying the same thing not a moment ago, about how we’re all washed up and have only our past to keep us going. I’m not going to bullshit you, you’re right, you had your day, it lasted for a while, a whole lot of people came here and did some crazy stuff and then buggered off to leave you sitting in the kitchen on your own with me. And I had a past too. Don’t deny me that, and it was Jill. Everything about her and that time is better than what this is, right. The sky was different, breathing was different, the colour of everything, more special, purer. Sometimes when I’m falling off to sleep I remember it, feel it just as it was. It’s silent, there’s no separation. Life is all one thing again. Fuck it, what do you know about it eh?’
‘Everything in fact.’
‘Bullshit.’
Petula put her glass down. She could see and hear nothing, sense only a glowing red dot in the far distance, slowly advancing until all beneath it would become an entropic desert; the black-tempered need to injure her son absolutely beyond her power to control. There it was, it was time to release the heat; rising she shouted, ‘Damn you, you gangling idiot! Don’t be so bloody, bloody… wet! You’re wet on the insides, you’re so wet you’ll turn to muck! I can’t even hear you without seeing rivers of liquid silage bubble before my eyes! How I bore you I will never know!’
Jazzy had also stood up, Mark Antony to her Brutus, and was pointing at his mother’s face so closely that an inch further would have resulted in him jabbing out an eye. ‘Not even you can take the happiness I’ve had from me,’ he proclaimed grandly, ‘it’s sad to see you reduced to this, a pissed-up old witch. You always were black all the way through, but never so evil as the booze has made you. So what if we’re both outcasts in our own time? I have less to lose than you, because I’ve never been anything anyway. But at least I know what it is to really be loved by a person, and to love them back. That’s the only difference I need between us to walk out of here with my head held up high. Held high!’
Petula shimmied Jazzy’s tumbler over to her side of the table and drunk most of it to buy herself a sliver’s respite from her bilious choler. She wished she was not doing this, still doing it at her age, but was powerless to stop what was coming.
‘My head held up high, do you hear me, held up high!’ Jazzy repeated, smashing his fist down on the table.
‘Idiot!’
Petula shook her head rancorously. Self-restraint; ought she to experiment with this alien notion or continue as she always had, towards ever-harsher forms of indiscretion? To hold back was too like acknowledging her drift towards death, that final threshold which, once accepted, towered over every other trifle; each smaller self-imposed limit a way of reconciling her to a temporal nature she had always wished to exceed. Far better to speak up and allow the scalding fire of her temper to burn all before her; ‘I know about the letters!’ she shouted, ‘You didn’t know that, did you?’
‘What?’
‘The letters, I bet you don’t know anything about them, do you?’
‘You what? What bloody letters?’
‘You never had to read her letters did you? Horrible drippy things that came for, oh I don’t know, maybe six months or a year. Dreary second-rate rubbish they were too!’
‘What are you talking about? Whose letters?’
‘Don’t be thick! Letters that that girl wrote you, the one before the Spider that you can’t shut up about. She got your name right, but for some reason they were all addressed to the main farm house; there must have been about five or six of the things. I read them and threw them all straight into the bin. Nauseous little missives, really awful.’ Petula curled her nose up and drew her shoulders in as if to protect herself from a nasty draft. ‘Let me see, first I think she wanted you to take her back, and she was sorry for humping whoever it was you caught her with, next she was upset you hadn’t replied, and then the rest were all rather pointless ways of making those same points, but without any useful upshot. And finally she wrote to say that she had gone to live in Australia with another woman; yes, she became a lesbian. Or it might have been America; anyway, quite absurd.’
‘You’re lying! Lying! I don’t believe you, you’d never have kept them from me. You can’t keep secrets. You can’t keep your mouth shut. I know you!’
‘Why should I have told you? They were boring, petty, silly little notes from a mousey mediocrity. A silly little bitch who would have ruined your life if you ever got back together, though granted, at that stage I hadn’t realised you had it in you to do so much worse! And don’t get me going on secrets,’ cackled Petula in full flow, ‘whether they fiddle their expense claims or fiddle with kids, there isn’t a secret in this county I haven’t encountered. Yes, that’s right, I know everything! Who fucked whom when they were married to whomever, the whole tawdry history of this place written and kept in my archive!’ Petula slapped her forehead, her rings breaking the thin skin into tiny bruised cuts; ‘I know everything! Did you get that? Everything!’
‘If you’re telling the truth, if for one moment, right, for one moment I really believed you, I could…’
‘Yes?’
‘I could kill you!’
‘Go on, what’s stopping you?’
Jazzy beat his chest with his fists. ‘For crying out aloud! What kind of thing are you? I could kill you! I could really kill you! Do you know that?’
‘You can’t! It’s already too late! You could have just now but you didn’t! You told me instead! And you’ll never find it in you again! You’ve never had the courage to act on what you really want. And you know how I can say that? Because I do know you! I do know you, you idiot!’
‘You’re talking about what I want? All
I want, all I ever wanted is to be left alone and given a chance to run this place!’
Petula screamed with laughter. ‘Is that all! Then you really will have to wait until I die! But beware! The spider and the fly usually die together because the spectacle of their squabble offends whatever higher power happens to be having its lunch! You won’t outlast me by a single day! Not a single sodding day…’
‘Damn you to hell, I hate you, Mum, and I mean hate you! Some bad thing deserves to happen, some very bad thing needs to happen to you. I’ll never forgive you. Never, forgive you for… for… for this!’
Petula carried on guffawing like a fairground ass, her body rocking unsteadily with mechanical merriment. As she correctly guessed, Jazzy had given up thoughts of dashing her head against the wall, though not for the reasons she thought. A new spirit of calculation had entered him as swiftly as instinct; he knew he could kill, the question was how and when to do so, and get away with it.
‘You’ve got to avoid holding things against people for the rest of their lives and yours, their lives are how they pay for their mistakes! Save yourself a chore and forget about never forgiving me. Oh bless you, look at your face, do you have an idea of how ugly you are when you’re this angry? It’s amazing how much you resemble your father! Really. I’ve spent some time with some rough customers, long service in hard stations, but in a mood, you take the whole tin!’
Petula started to sneeze with diabolical mirth, the snot streaming out of her nose and collecting on her chin. She closed her eyes and carried on shaking her head, the situation, all situations, too funny by far.
‘Bless me, you’ve given me a much-needed laugh!’
Without a word Jazzy turned his back to her and tore out along the corridor, wondering how the world could have changed so much in an hour. When he had got back to the cottage, he coldly relayed the events of that evening to Spider, omitting those parts that would embarrass him or compromise their domestic arrangements, and finished by swearing that this latest outrage would be the last. Spider, having already commented that he seemed like a different man, assented gladly to his proposed way of ensuring that Petula’s days were numbered, and having made love to confirm the unity of their intent, fell asleep in his arms. Jazzy awoke with pins and needles some ten minutes later, and waited until morning before the feeling returned to his right side, thoughts of murder most final sustaining him through the hours of darkness.
Nature and Necessity Page 53