Nature and Necessity

by Tariq Goddard

  Regan had much difficulty in taking to and accepting her surroundings; how could a member of her family live like this? It was little wonder that she and Petula had dubbed it ‘The Pimple’; and that was without even being able to see in. The hurricane outside looked to have done an effective job on the interior of the bungalow too; plastic toys, mainly broken, local newspapers and bottles and plates of every kind were strewn about as though Godzilla had progressed through the habitation on his way to Tokyo. Elsewhere there was little by way of permanent ornamentation; a provisional quality to what little furniture spotted the place, contingent on whether it would still be needed tomorrow, when the next tsunami struck. Despite the overall smallness of the living area, what space there was was mismanaged; Regan noticed slightly-too-wide gaps between the television set and a large plant pot hosting a dead mangrove; a splintered magazine rack rammed with sleeveless records; and a pair of sofas collapsed so low she assumed they had been used as props in a ‘Strongest Man In The World’ contest, competitors doubtless awarded points for hurling themselves on the cushions until they split and the springs broke. The shabbiness of the layout was compounded by a mysterious chalky dust covering the floor, its fine particles as curled as wood shavings, which Regan was afraid she would breathe in, and be poisoned by at a later date.

  Making a great play of wiping her nose, Regan sniffed her tea, able to detect cow’s milk, which she believed she was allergic to, and sugar, which she could not stand. To drink the mixture, an anthropological imperative if she was to be inducted into this surly tribe, would be radically unpleasant, but refusal, confirmation that she was as shallow as Jazzy’s caricature of her. The mug was also chipped, which was unsurprising as the kitchen seemed, like the bungalow itself, to be an abandoned workin-progress. Half of the open-plan worktop area was painted a copper colour, the other half begun in a selection of blues, with no single paint winning overall control of the wall that was unfinished round the edges and sides – the job stopping well short of the ceiling at about Jazzy’s shoulder-height. The colours reminded Regan of ones used in the main house, which is where the pots were most likely salvaged from, as did several other items: a wooden lavatory seat in the hallway waiting to be installed, a lonely drawing of a wild boar that had once hung in their playroom, some white goods and, lying where the children could get at them, a bronze hammer, spade and tongs that used to rest by Petula’s fireplace. The impression these miscellaneous items exuded was of a haul of booty abandoned by fugitives who were in such a hurry to get away, they had forgotten to cover their tracks, and now evinced no shame in discovery. Was that, she wondered, how these people saw themselves and their home? And why bother giving the house a stupid Celtic title, if you were going to fill it full of Yorkshire crap?

  Having spoken to Spider only twice, to ask her on the first occasion who she was, and on the second occasion the same question, not knowing one child of hers from the next, Regan guessed that their view of the place was closer to Jazzy’s functional approach than the compact love-nest Jill had wasted her twenties trying to create; which was probably when she last entered this place, though as Regan recalled, it had seemed relatively crummy to her then too. Anyway, she had not missed much in the interim. It was much worse now, the walls smelling of the grim aftertaste of a garage sandwich, and the fetid stench of dog and man too closely entwined, lingering like a sneering challenge to her priggery. As for her brother, he looked no livelier than his cave dwelling: dematerialising hair, hard-done-by frown lines, and an unhealthy distribution of bumps and nicks, whether spots, shaving cuts, boils or signs of scurvy, she dare not ask. His broken and bent body spoke of hard work that had not made him stronger, and long hours outdoors where the elements had kept him company without sparing him any of their reputed benefits. Touched with guilt, Regan tried to avoid her brother’s baby-brown eyes, helpfully facilitated by him having no wish to catch hers, and tried to picture the last time they had meaningfully engaged, without history being invoked in every alternate sentence.

  She found that she could remember having seen and enjoyed virtually nothing of Jazzy for years, their lives entirely separate, if often unravelling only yards apart. The snag was that even in his absence, Jazzy was always in the air, no further than the other side of a wall or fence, repeating his droning tale of victimhood, a version of their history recited like an article of faith, whenever she was unwise enough to inquire after his health. Jazzy had his favourite incidents, and comparisons aplenty to call on: birthday treats she’d had that he hadn’t, Christmas presents, holidays, new cars and a dead father, all brought out as examples of unfair treatment and parental discrimination. His upshot was always the same: his life was terrible because he laboured and strived for nothing while she, the favourite, got everything for doing nothing. The creation narrative had begun as soon as she reached her teens, first as friendly chiding, but later as an accusation, soiling her former fond regard, and before that respect, and even earlier, love-like emotions toward him. Regan had practised what she thought of as unconditional love, a concept that tripped off her adolescent imagination, remaining unconditional only up to his last chance, fourteen years before. The setting and content were unexceptional, the difference being the complacency with which Jazzy made his claims, and his ability to conduct hurt like an orchestra that would play for him alone. Jazzy had drunkenly let rip at her for being a spoilt brat and little madam in front of the new Archbishop, a personage whom she had wanted to impress with her goodness, and from that night on she had stopped trying. Time and other things to do had taken care of the rest, and now they were strangers, rapprochement too great an ordeal for either to submit to.

  Regan was not the only one of Petula’s children to have inherited her mother’s passion for judgement. Jazzy noticed and did not care about the critical eye now cast by his sister; he would have expected nothing less from the stuck-up cow. Regan looked ill and lustreless to him. It was perfectly clear that she would like him better if he kept a clean house, bleached the bath, lasered off his tattoos and cleaned his teeth twice a day, and thus conformed to her spotless view of existence, with the germs being washed out along with the passion, spontaneity and laughter. Despite his life not exactly being awash with these things, Jazzy accepted their importance in principle, and refused to be intimidated by what he saw as ‘the sisters’ shared value system, which if anything manifested itself more deeply in Regan than in their mother. Regan’s white skin reminded him of pristine sheets wrapped too tightly round a hard mattress, and he found it impossible to rule out a vampire latching itself to her, drinking six pints of strawberry jam before leaving the anaemic host to disgrace humanity until the next and final feed. Granted, Regan’s beauty was still technically present, prim and precise, which did annoy him a bit as it pointed to the life of ease and luxury she indulged in – waxing, bath salts and what-not – but it was obvious that the spark was all but smothered. His sister was in no condition to take advantage of her advantages, as in spite of her impeccable clothing, the lemony smell emanating from behind her ears, and the fact he had still never heard her fart, she belonged in a sealed box, a doll the children would never play with. Enjoying his heady condescension, Jazzy took wary note of the dangers of relaxing around his foe. Regan had a way of drawing attention to the tolerance of her posture; the magnanimity of her sitting there with him and acknowledging a subspecies she was sometimes confused with. Her natural superiority, in essence her mother in her, held him off barrelling in hastily and going too far to be pulled back. As a consequence, Regan knew she would have to be the first to speak.

  ‘This is cosy. It looks like you’ve been busy with stuff since I was last over. That’s new,’ she said, pointing to a Rothko print that she had last seen hung over her bed as a teenager, ‘it looks really good there, with those different colours behind it.’ Regan was nervous and needed her brother’s help, not only to keep on talking but also to find out why she had come.

  Jazzy raised an eyebrow wi
th ironical deliberation and, lifting his chin, addressed someone who wasn’t there, far at the back of the room. ‘You know, the usual, no time to do anything, I’ve way too many jobs on, right, and way too little time to do them. I’m basically, right, on a hundred-and-seventy-two-hour week, fifty-hour day, and when I get back I have to get stuck straight into all this shit with the house. Never-ending madness, it is. You know, I’m working so hard at it, everything is so full-on I don’t even know what I have done or haven’t, and there’s taxes and bills to sort out at the end of the day too. There’s no one else to do it but me. I can’t see the beginning or the end; it’s madness.’ Here Jazzy was telling the truth; he really was unable to remember where one train of thought began or what separated it from the next, which day or month they were related to, or what he was supposed to be doing when he walked out of the door in the morning, hoping rather that his work would come and find him. Haziness about everything except killing Petula, which, when done, would lift the fog and put the sun in the sky, was the order of his life. Suddenly he saw that he wanted to tell Regan about it, about this latest project that would alter her life as much as his. Was he mad? Or did he, having every reason to not go down this path, sense she would understand somehow?

  Regan felt she had blundered onto the wrong track, allowing Jazzy to settle comfortably into his favoured role of the exhausted workhorse, and reel out his song of labour and woe, which was not why she had agreed to his invitation. She needed him to understand that they both must risk being open with one another, or else everything would carry on like this until they were dead.

  ‘Shit. That doesn’t sound too bright.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he continued resignedly, ‘London might be booming but we see nowt of it up here, right, nothing trickles up you know, none of the brass. Here it’s swings and roundabouts, one day forward two days back. It’s just the way it goes for the working man, always was, always is, you know, mines shutting, shit prospects, you can see why folk go mad.’ He was talking such rubbish that he hoped she wasn’t listening; this conversation was making him nervous, where was he going with it? ‘…Yeah, shit happens and you get desperate, you know what I mean? You run out of options,’ he added obliquely, ‘so desperate you could see yourself doing anything to get some food on the plate, you know, to have your hope back again. To give yourself something to look forward to so you can look past all the shit and all the crap, yeah? It’s been desperate. I’ve been desperate to tell the truth. Yeah, there it is.’

  Had she heard something else just then? Another book waiting to be read? Regan intuited that Jazzy’s heart was not in his standard litany this time, she had got him going down the old paths but he did not seem to want to go. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said, ‘that things haven’t got easier for you with time.’

  ‘Yeah? Well so am I. So yeah, work, you know how it is, phone ringing all the time. And ever since I got that e-mail thingy, I don’t even know what half the things on the bloody computer are for, to be brutally honest, it’s been even worse. Mum uses it all the time, fucking e-mails, I mean, Jesus, is there a technology she doesn’t abuse? And the weather’s just about to turn, another fucking winter in this place with the boiler packing in all the time… It’s alright for her up there but down here, shit. Everything is shit basically. Like the Tories get into power every morning.’

  ‘How is she?’ Regan had dropped the bomb deliberately. In the past to simply raise the subject of their mother was to invite criticism of herself.

  ‘She’s worse than ever,’ Jazzy replied sharply, and waited for her reaction. His sister could always be relied upon to strenuously defend Petula, lecturing him on how he should take better care of her, and afford her every allowance, as she had built The Heights in seven days and created them out of clay. His rebuke that it was he who did the work, Regan knowing nothing as she used the place as a holiday home and shag pad, had never cut any ice. No matter how passionately he tried to set her straight, he was always met with the same curt dismissal, followed by the infuriating shrugging of the shoulders and yuppie neologisms like ‘Deal with it,’ or even worse, ‘Get over it.’ It had been years since they last fought like that, there was no benefit, he despaired of her ever seeing the light; hers was a mind that could not be entered and tampered with, her faults and strengths too crisscrossed and complicated to unpick. In theory, Jazzy had always liked to believe that he was forgiving enough to allow for a new chapter in their relationship, but only if Regan instigated it herself through a genuine change of heart. Could that be what was happening now?

  ‘Really. That bad?’ Regan had stopped pretending to drink her tea and was batting her lids like an impatient lover who could not believe the beloved had not got the message yet.

  Jazzy sat bolt upright and looked at her askance. ‘You what? Did you hear what I just said? I was slagging off Mum, right? I’m saying she’s worse-than-ever, got me?’

  ‘Yes. And I said is she that bad. Worse than ever, according to you. Yes, I’ve got you.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Jazzy, still not really believing what he was hearing. Regan was calm, showing no signs of tensing up for a fight.

  ‘This is Mum I am talking about Regan, your best mate, I mean you and her, it’s like Batman and Robin, “the sisters”, right?’

  Regan spoke over his insult: ‘That must be pretty bad then. If she’s worse than normal.’

  ‘Well, knowing how you two cosy up, it’s kind of surprising to hear you say that. I mean, you letting me talk the truth for once and not contradicting me.’

  ‘But you think so, don’t you? That she’s entered a new phase.’

  ‘Yeah, much worse is what I’m saying.’

  ‘How much worse?’

  ‘Plenty and in every way. Just the other day, she basically just came out and said she hated me over an argument about cheese, and then before that, Christ, I’d basically helped her into…’

  ‘Go on. Please, I’m listening.’

  Jazzy paused. Was it time to consult the natural suspicion that his sister’s line of questioning was a set-up, she having been sent by Petula to sound him out and ensnare a full confession, which would lead to his arrest and ultimate imprisonment? History would say yes, yet he squashed the possibility with the briefest glance at her earnestly pained face. He was as certain as life exists that his sister was sincere, and her worried eyes, naked before caution, wanted him to know it. Let the ground break his fall; he believed her.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right, forget the specifics, she’s worse in every way, so bad so you wouldn’t believe. I’ve seen her at her worst before, don’t get me wrong, had stuff done to me by her you wouldn’t even know about, right, but this, how she’s been… I know her inside-out, is what I am saying, but what she’s turning into, it’s nothing like before. I mean it is, she’s still the same in a way, but amplified, taken to a hundred and ten, you understand? Totally a different level. It’s been hell, hell I tell you, to be near her when she lets go. Some of the things she’s said about me, Spider, the kids, my Dad, even Jill and Evita, it’s horrible.’

  Regan nodded.

  ‘Jesus, the stuff that’s gone down, boozing and hating, she’s become so, well, evil really. There are times when I go in and she just starts screaming at me and it’s like she doesn’t even know she’s doing it, like she’s possessed by something…’

  ‘Her anger?’

  ‘No, by something else, like some kind of monster’s in charge. And I can’t stand it. I can’t bear being there hearing it.’

  ‘You never could though. Stand it.’

  ‘I did though, didn’t I? I’m still here. But what I stood before wasn’t this. She’s got a different way about her. An evil way with her, her manner, it’s so fucking dark.’

  ‘I know she can be… nasty. I’ve had it happen to me too.’

  ‘More than that, she always had it in her to be sadistic, that’s all happened before, but this is new, she’s pushed me over the edge, y
ou know, beyond my limits. I’m over them now. I’ve never been here before, you understand, she’s pushed me somewhere else.’

  Jazzy felt the beginnings of tears push through, the frustration shoving them forward, ‘I can’t fight her in small ways anymore. If we can’t finish it, then it’s not worth doing,’ he heard himself say, adding, ‘we’ve got to finish this thing. Otherwise I can’t stay in one piece anymore.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ said Regan, offering him her hand, ‘I feel the same way, coming up here, not knowing why, wondering whether I ever knew why. I don’t expect anything from her now, not niceness, kindness, honesty to me or to herself. I don’t know what’s happened to her…’

  ‘Nothing, like I say, she’s always had it in her.’

  ‘I don’t want to believe that. She’s been through too much and it’s changing her, I think she’s going mad. She’s become ill. She’s even got me trying to organise her parties for her. Regan pointed at the table where Jazzy’s invite lay, ‘I had those printed. I don’t think she can even cope with her obsessions anymore.’

  ‘What’s she ever gone through or had to cope with? Come on! She lives in paradise, does what she likes, goes where she wants, and has never had to worry or want for a thing.’

  ‘But you yourself said she’s getting worse. Let’s not go back to arguing like we always have, I’m tired of that.’

  ‘Me too, I’ve had my fill of it, I don’t want to end up like her. And you’re right in a manner, you and me, we both are. She is cracking up alright, you know, toddling round without her clothes on half-cut, off her head shouting at trees, and she’s had the front gate clean off twice this year. And meaner than ever. But what’s coming out, right, it isn’t some disease she’s contracted on holiday, it’s just more of what was there already. All she’s done is she’s gone and lost her balance. Her intensities are out of control.’