To Have and to Hold

by Deborah Moggach

  ‘You weren’t so bad.’ She linked his arm. ‘Let’s go.’

  Downstairs the party was in full swing. There were distant squeals of laughter from the children – nine of them – and the lower boom of Smartie Artie’s voice. Ollie and Douglas stood in the study; Douglas wore a party hat.

  ‘Sorry to drag you up here,’ said Ollie, ‘but I have to go in a moment. I shouldn’t really be here.’

  ‘Rum business, isn’t it?’ said Douglas. ‘Things were a lot easier before the world got computerized and the authorities started sticking their noses into other people’s business.’

  ‘There’s something I need to ask you about.’

  ‘The baby?’

  ‘No,’ said Ollie. ‘Ann.’ He paused and took a sip of wine. ‘I’ve traced her father.’

  Downstairs there was a burst of laughter. Viv shouted: ‘Sit down, Daisy!’

  ‘You’ve what?’ said Douglas.

  ‘Diz on the magazine put out some feelers – oh, months ago. Someone on a newspaper in Stockport did a bit on digging and, well, I’ve got an address.’

  Douglas stared at him. ‘Did Ann know you were looking?’

  Ollie shook his head. ‘I was going to ask her if she still wants to know.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Runs a little joke shop.’

  Douglas smiled faintly. ‘Very appropriate.’

  There was a pause. Down below, the clown’s voice boomed.

  Ollie said: ‘You think I should let sleeping dogs lie, don’t you?’

  Douglas paused; then he nodded.

  The pub looks festive, its ceiling burdened with streamers. It was the Kensington pub in which Ollie had spent so many evenings.

  He arrived, breathless from the party.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, sitting down.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Norah. Like many people, she was surprisingly old compared to her phone voice. She wore a fitted suit. ‘We’re delighted to have you join our list,’ she said, shaking his hand.

  ‘Not half as delighted as me.’

  She smiled. ‘I can see the reviews now. “An assured and sensitive debut”, “at last, a man who writes like a woman”.’ They were sitting at the bar. She ordered two drinks and turned back to him. ‘It’s very contemporary, Oliver. And frighteningly honest. I blushed like an eavesdropper.’ She pushed a cigarette into a filter-holder and lit it. ‘What does your wife think of it?’

  ‘She’s a teacher,’ said Ollie. ‘She gave me an A-minus.’

  ‘Minus?’

  ‘She says I’m impossible enough to live with as it is.’

  Norah smiled and exhaled smoke through her nostrils. Ollie thought: she thinks I’m joking.

  ‘We aim to publish in September,’ said Norah. ‘There’s something very special about it, Oliver. A ring of truth.’

  Ollie thought: in two hours’ time, my wife is going to get into her car, drive to her sister’s and give away her son.

  He said: ‘Oh no. If it were true, nobody would believe it.’

  They cleared up the party in silence: Douglas, Vera and Viv. Ken had gone home. Ann was upstairs putting the girls to bed. Nobody spoke, except to hold up a small plastic ring from a cracker and ask: ‘Who left this?’ Though it was the night before Christmas Eve there was the same sense of hushed expectancy, a holiness in the air that gave significance even to folding up paper plates and ramming them into the bin. The baby slept near the tree, his face bathed in multi-coloured lights.

  Ann spent a long time with the girls. When she came downstairs Douglas and Vera had gone.

  She stood in the doorway to the living room. After a moment she said: ‘Always wanted to see one of those clowns.’

  Viv was sitting on the sofa. ‘Terrific, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Didn’t have them when we were children.’

  Viv replied. ‘Didn’t have the money.’

  There was a silence. The baby sighed and shifted in his sleep. Ann said: ‘Still, it wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When we were young.’

  There was another silence. Then Viv said: ‘See you in about half an hour.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want Ollie?’

  Viv shook her head.

  Ann hesitated; then she nodded and left. Their mother was coming round in half an hour to babysit while Viv was gone.

  While shepherds washed their socks by night . . .

  A group of loud young stockbrokers were standing at the bar. It was nine o’clock and their faces were florid.

  All seated round the tub . . .

  Ollie sat alone at his table. Nine o’clock; she should be there by now.

  They raised their voices deafeningly:

  A bar of Sunlight soap came down

  And they began to scrub.

  His daughters sang something like that, but it sounded more appropriate when they did it.

  He fetched himself another pint. Feeling in his pocket for some change, he found a scrumpled party hat. He thought: but when it comes down to it, which of us is really grown-up?

  _____Twenty-eight_____

  VIV’S CAR IS parked outside the small terraced house. On its front door there is a wreath of tinsel and holly. The downstairs lights are on; the lounge curtains are open. Inside the room there is an illuminated Christmas tree and three people: Viv, Ken and Ann, who is holding the baby in her arms.

  Ann kisses Viv. Viv kisses Ken. Then the front door opens and Viv comes out. Standing on the step, Ann and Ken watch Viv as she crosses the pavement to her car and gets in. Ken raises his hand in a half-wave, but she doesn’t see.

  Sitting in the car, Viv turns and looks at the back seat. Something has been left behind; it is the baby’s shawl. She leans back and picks it up, then she opens the car door and gets out.

  But the front door is closed now. In the lounge, Ann is holding the baby and standing beside the mantelpiece. Ken moves to the window and starts closing the curtains.

  The curtains are closed now. The family is complete. Viv gets back into the car and drives away.

  _____Twenty-nine_____

  IT WAS NEARLY ten o’clock. In the pub the Hooray Henrys had become more boisterous and had been joined by more of their kind. He could have become one of them; he had been bred to it. It was Viv who had saved him. They had grown smutty now; there was loud talk of arseholes.

  Ollie finished his crisps, scrumpled up the empty bag and put it in the ashtray. At some point he must go back to the flat. Soon he would be too drunk to do so.

  When he next looked up Viv was there in her overcoat. She looked very cold.

  He moved up. She sat down beside him. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ she said.

  He got to his feet, but she started to say something so he sat down again.

  ‘Come on Christmas Day,’ she said. ‘Disguise yourself in a red cloak and white beard, become an outmoded patriarchal fantasy, become my regeneration myth.’

  He sighed. ‘Life would be simpler if you couldn’t make me laugh.’

  He fetched her a beer. They drank to it.

  Read on for the first chapter of Deborah Moggach’s brilliant new novel Something to Hide

  Pimlico, London

  I’ll tell you how the last one ended. I was watching the news and eating supper off a tray. There was an item about a methane explosion, somewhere in Lincolnshire. A barn full of cows had blown up, killing several animals and injuring a stockman. It’s the farting, apparently.

  I missed someone with me to laugh at this. To laugh, and shake our heads about factory farming. To share the bottle of wine I was steadily emptying. I wondered if Alan would ever move in. This was hard to imagine. What did he feel about factory farming? I hadn’t a clue.

  And then, there he was. On the TV screen. A reporter was standing outside the Eurostar terminal, something about an incident in the tunnel. Passengers were milling around behind him. Amongst them was Alan.

  He was with a woman.
Just a glimpse and he was gone.

  I’m off to see me bruv down in Somerset. Look after yourself, love, see you Tuesday.

  Just a glimpse but I checked later, on iPlayer. I reran the news and stopped it at that moment. Alan turning towards the woman and mouthing something at her. She was young, needless to say, much younger than me, and wearing a red padded jacket. Chavvy, his sort. Her stilled face, eyebrows raised. Then they were gone, swallowed up in the crowd.

  See you Tuesday and I’ll get that plastering done by the end of the week.

  Don’t fuck the help. For when it ends, and it will, you’ll find yourself staring at a half-plastered wall with wires dangling like entrails and a heap of rubble in the corner. And he nicked my power drill.

  Before him, and the others, I was married. I have two grown-up children but they live in Melbourne and Seattle, as far away as they could go. Of course there’s scar tissue but I miss them with a physical pain of which they are hopefully unaware. Neediness is even more unattractive in the old than in the young. Their father has long since remarried. He has a corporate Japanese wife who thinks I’m a flake. Neurotic, needy, borderline alcoholic. I can see it in the swing of her shiny black hair. For obvious reasons, I keep my disastrous love-life to myself.

  I’m thinking of buying a dog. It would gaze at me moistly, its eyes filled with unconditional love. This is what lonely women long for, as they turn sixty. I would die with my arms around a cocker spaniel, there are worse ways to go.

  Three months have passed and Alan is a distant humiliation. I need to find another builder to finish off the work in the basement, then I can re-let it, but I’m seized with paralysis and can’t bring myself to go down the stairs. I lived in it when I was young, you see, and just arrived in London. Years later I bought the house, and tenants downstairs have come and gone, but now the flat has been stripped bare those early years are suddenly vivid. I can remember it like yesterday, the tights drying in front of the gas fire, the sex and smoking, the laughter. To descend now into that chilly tomb, with its dust and debris – I don’t have the energy.

  Now I sound like a depressive but I’m not. I’m just a woman longing for love. I’m tired of being put in the back seat of the car when I go out with a couple. I’m tired of internet dates with balding men who talk about golf – golf. I’m tired of coming home to silent rooms, everything as I left it, the Marie Celeste of the solitary female. Was Alan the last man I shall ever lie with, naked in my arms?

  This is how I am, at this moment. Darkness has fallen. In the windows of the flats opposite, faces are illuminated by their laptops. I have the feeling that we are all fixed here, at this point in time, as motionless as the Bonnard lady in the print on my wall. Something must jolt me out of this stupor, it’s too pathetic for words. In front of me is a bowl of Bombay mix; I’ve worked my way through it. Nothing’s left but the peanuts, my least favourite.

  I want to stand in the street and howl at the moon.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN 9781473520769

  Version 1.0

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  Copyright © Deborah Moggach, 1986

  Deborah Moggach has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published in Great Britain 1986 by Viking

  This edition published in 1993 by Vintage

  Published in 2014 by Vintage Books

  www.vintage-books.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library