Nomance

by T J Price

  Yes, Gwynne was on the way to true love. It made him feel sort of protective and warm. Chivalrous even. In which case he had to ask himself what would Charmaine say if ever she found out his sister had got raped and he hadn’t done anything about it? No doubt she would demand to know whether he didn’t have any balls or something. After all, wasn’t Carla getting raped as near as damn it a personal insult to him as well?

  God damn it, Charmaine was right! He couldn’t take that sort of shit off another guy. He had to do something. Him and his mates had to go out there and round the fucker up. Then they’d teach the bastard to think twice before he raped his sister again.

  But to round anyone up, even a fucker, one needs a description. Well, that should be easy to get hold of – or so he thought. But whenever he got back home and found himself face to face with Carla, his usual masterful way with words deserted him. He couldn’t understand it. The question couldn’t be simpler, could it?

  You know that guy who raped you? What did he look like?

  And yet he found himself hesitating in a way he had never hesitated before. The problem was him and Carla had never talked about anything for years, apart from stuff like housekeeping and taking deliveries of bog peat. And conversations like that did not lead straight up her skirt the way rape did.

  The more he prevaricated, the more difficult it seemed to get.

  However, they were watching television in the lounge one evening and Gwynne was telling himself that he was never going to be able to get the words out, when he heard this voice say, ‘Carla, you know you’re pregnant and all that?’

  Gwynne couldn’t believe his luck. It was his voice. He’d blurted the question out without having to think. Once again he had to tell himself that in life you never think too little. He didn’t let himself think now as Carla fixed him with a stony stare. ‘What did he look like then, the man?’

  ‘Never set eyes on him.’

  ‘What? Bastard! What did he do? Use drugs?’

  ‘Yes, a sedative and local anaesthetic.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. If I catch the fucker . . . ’

  ‘Aw, relax will you. It’s all over and done with now.’ Carla turned back to the TV.

  Gwynne found himself mulling over his sister’s reluctance to discuss the situation. Something told him, maybe a film he had seen once, that there were some women who preferred to try and forget rather than exact revenge. It was a baffling reaction and he could scarcely credit Carla with not wanting to break the swine’s neck.

  But hey! Perhaps – just perhaps – she didn’t think her little brother was up to the job of breaking a swine’s neck. Maybe she already thought he had no balls or something.

  And worse still, it looked like she wasn’t going to give him the chance to prove otherwise.

  Well, God damn . . .

  Slowly but surely, Gwynne’s simmering resentment against the man who had raped his sister turned instead to a simmering resentment against his sister.

  He was back to his normal self.

  In actual fact, before the next two weeks were up, Gwynne was better than ever. His friendship with Charmaine developed into a new relationship, and with a new relationship came a new social circle. He was soon too busy to fret one way or another about his sister getting raped. There were other problems to sort out. Like this Friday, when everyone in his new circle had the afternoon off from work because they’d planned for a night of clubbing in South London. They were in the pub, trying to kill the afternoon, and Jake (Charmaine’s ex), was waving these tablets around and Gwynne was struck by how these tablets looked like the tablets he had seen Carla taking in the kitchen.

  Being reminded in this way of his home life Gwynne conceived of a better way to kill the afternoon, and he exclaimed, ‘Lets go back to mine, chill and get something to eat.’

  Everyone agreed straight away, and they headed for Jake’s wheels.

  At some point during the journey West, Gwynne gave Jake a long penetrating look.

  He saw that Jake’s most constant companion was a broad, chimpanzoid grin. It sort of worried Gwynne. Jake was such a joker. Might he, by any chance, drop one of those pills in amongst his sister’s while no one was looking?

  Wasn’t that exactly the sort of monkeying around he would do, just for a laugh?

  Nar. Jake was sound! He wouldn’t even be tempted to play a dirty trick like that, even though he’d already exclaimed at the top of his voice in the pub that the pills looked the same as his sister’s and that the bottle was on the window sil in the kitchen. Jake was bigger than that.

  Hadn’t he even said that he was glad it was Gwynne who’d nicked Charmaine off him, and not some other bastard instead?

  Seven: Spac Attack!

  Before Gwynne and the crew arrived, Carla was busy serving in Romance.

  Mrs Shelly Hedley had just stepped into the shop and Carla’s heart missed a beat. Shelly hadn’t been around for months and, as her No. 1 customer most likely to die, Carla had grown pessimistic and assumed Romance had missed out on her funeral. Oh, how cruel! Shelly gave many indications of having a wealthy husband and Carla felt confident he would be able to afford to put the cemetery knee-deep in flowers on the big day.

  On the other hand, as desirable as Shelly’s death was financially, Shelly was still one of the few customers Carla had a sneaking admiration for.

  Why?

  Because Shelly had a smoldering black core of evil, encrusted by a thick, silky saccharine coating – like she was the child Satan had begot upon the Sugar Plum Fairy.

  That’s why.

  And hence Carla’s delight on seeing her again.

  ‘Good afternoon!’

  ‘Good afternoon, dear,’ Shelly’s thin, cut-glass accent sliced through the lush air of Romance and Carla shivered with anticipation. ‘I’d like to order – ’ She was abruptly silent. Her eyes – as clear and colourless as ice – had alighted upon Carla’s stomach. Her fixed stare gave was akin to that of a monestrous, ancient and dilapidated owl about to swoop for the very last time. Carla felt the child kick within her, as if in trepidation. ‘Well, I say!’ Shelly trilled with joy. ‘When’s the happy day?’

  Carla really didn’t like to think about that, let alone discuss it. However, she had to consider all those deluxe wreaths just over the horizon, not to mention Shelly’s regular order of dahlias, tulips and daffs.

  There was no way round it, Carla must give an answer that pleased.

  ‘When’s the happy day?’ She mused aloud.

  Oh, but she so wanted to tell her! Carla would willingly tell Shelly anything she wanted to hear, if that’s what it took to win the funeral for Romance. And for that reason wasn’t it brill that she could provide an answer based upon Gerald "The Inseminator" Lytton’s expert opinion?

  ‘Three weeks, two days, four hours,’ she laughed girlishly, ‘and counting.’

  Shelly greeted this frippery with a hollow gibber and remarked, ‘If only doctors could be so accurate. I myself don’t rate them above weather forecasters. And of course, the daughter of a friend of mine relied on her doctor’s prediction and took it for granted that she wouldn’t be inconvenienced during her honeymoon in Sri Lanka. But of course she ended up giving birth on the aeroplane. And so there you are, she joined the mile-high club the day after her wedding.’

  It was on the tip of Carla’s tongue to correct Shelly about the meaning of the Mile-High Club. But something told her that any reference to sex would only send Shelly into howling shrieks of laughter.

  But there was no time for laughter anymore, was there? The proper subject of conversation was now age, death, decay and funerals.

  ‘How about you, Shelly? Do you clock up many air miles?’

  ‘No darling, I like to keep both feet on the ground these days.’

  ‘But a lot of people – I mean retired people – travel more than ever,’ Carla said artlessly, thinking of Rupert Node’s remark that exotic holidays and long-haul flights did his undertaking bus
iness a world of good. She giggled. ‘It’s called skiing.’

  ‘Darling, these days standing’s hard enough.’

  ‘No, no, ski. S. K. I. It stands for spending the kids’ inheritance. See?’

  ‘I don’t have to travel to do that, dear,’ Shelly smiled.

  ‘That’s good,’ Carla said, trusting this meant Shelly would SKI on her funeral.

  ‘Of course, I loved to ski when I was younger,’ Shelly reminisced, ‘only then, of course, I was fighting fit.’

  ‘But you still are,’ Carla tinselled.

  Shelly fixed her with a reptilian stare. ‘Not since I carried my two boys I’m not. I don’t know about you, but pregnancy played merry hell with my spine.’

  ‘I do get a slight twinge now and then.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  Carla gave her a dimpled smile. ‘But I don’t complain. I always think how lucky I am. I mean,’ she gushed, ‘it’s not like any little fall might crack my hip or anything. I’m always awed by the very, very old people. They are the real heroes, aren’t they? Those who risk six months in hospital just for the right to stand on their own two feet.’

  Shelly scraped the air with joyless laughter. ‘But then, dear, they’ve always had to. My generation, you see, never got benefits off the state. Life was tough for women back then. On the other hand, though, if you did get pregnant there was at least a fifty-fifty chance your husband would stick around . . . and then, maternity leave was unknown. How about you, darling, are you going on maternity leave?’

  ‘Oh no, Shelly, dear,’ Carla cooed, ‘I have to support myself in my hour of need. As you can see, I run the business on my own and I can’t afford not to work. I expect I’ll still be at it even when I’m very, very old.’ She gave Shelly a meaningful look. ‘Not that I ever want to retire. No, not me. If you don’t work then what else is there to do, apart from sit round all day drinking coffee and eating thin little biscuits? If ever I ended up like that I’d probably want to top myself. But of course, only after I had arranged the very best send-off I could afford.’

  ‘But it is terribly hard for single parents to hold a job down, isn’t it?’ Shelly cooed back. ‘I’m not saying you’ll have to quit work, but many do, don’t they? And that’s such a shame, I think. Especially if they feel really worthless about themselves and end up,‘ she smiled at the quaintness of Carla’s term, ‘topping themselves.’ She paused here and they both observed 0.2 of a minute’s silence in remembrance of the topped. ‘But never mind,’ Shelly continued breezily, ‘it’s not all bad nowadays. The Government has, at long last, started to force the men pay up, haven’t they? So I reckon – even if the worse came to the worse – you’d be able to afford a pretty good send-off.’

  ‘I only wish the Government could force my man to pay up,’ Carla said, recalling that, like every one of her other customers, Shelly had never stooped to find out whether she had a partner or not. Well, it was time for a little white lie – just in case Shelly got away with the idea she was a loose woman. That might be bad for business. ‘But they won’t get a penny out of him, because you see, my husband’s dead. Yes, and he was a great big strapping erector too. You know, he put those . . . rods up. Never had a day’s illness in his life. Fit as a fiddle, he was – right up to the second he hit the concrete.’

  ‘I’m . . . terribly sorry to hear that,’ Shelly said, looking amazed.

  ‘Oh, I’m tougher than I look,’ Carla reassured her, ‘and anyway, I see it all the time in my line of business.’

  Shelly was momentarily confounded. ‘Why? Are you a . . . erector too?’ Her eyes roamed over Carla’s meaty shoulders. ‘In your spare time?’

  ‘No, just a humble florist. What I mean to say is, I do a lot of funerals.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It goes without saying that I really went to town when they buried my husband. People came from all over to see my displays. I very much doubt whether there will be a funeral like it for a good few years to come. Not, anyhow, till I bury Gwynne, my brother. I’ll do something special for him. Though I always hope someone else might come along first, someone who can afford to stand out from the crowd. Someone with the vision thing. That’s where Romance can offer you more. See, with us, you can order in advance and die feeling completely confident about the future.’

  Shelly nodded throughout this speech, while her hands, acting, as it seemed, of their own accord, brought out a carton of fancy cigarettes from her handbag, a handbag which no doubt cost more than what Carla earned in a month – a year even. ‘Oh, what am I doing?’ She upbraided herself, and put the carton back.

  ‘No, no, please, carry on,’ Carla urged.

  ‘You see, it’s an immemorial habit with me. I caught myself taking them out in Fortnam and Mason’s last week. There’d have been a riot if I’d actually lit up. But it’s just automatic with me, that’s all.’

  ‘But please, go ahead. No one else is here and you’re my . . . most valued customer.’

  ‘Am I, dear? Well,’ Shelly hesitated for a moment and removed the carton once again. ‘Thank you very much. Just lately you’re made to feel such a leper if you smoke. Do you smoke, by the way?’

  ‘Yes,’ Carla said, though she had never smoked in her life, such was her eagerness to please.

  Shelly offered her a cigarette and Carla took one. She’d smoke the whole packet to get Shelly signed up to her funeral programme. ‘Some people say you shouldn’t when you’re pregnant,’ Shelly observed, lighting Carla’s cigarette before her own.

  ‘Oh, it’s just once in a while. And it’s my belief is a ciggie now and then is miles better at calming your nerves than sedatives, and definitely safer. I don’t care what the doctors say, smoking does wonders for me. So long as the cigarettes are not too mild.’

  Shelly liked this. ‘I think a pregnant woman has an instinct for what’s good for her, and these are made with the very best Turkish tobacco, you know. The kind I smoked to calm my own nerves while I was carrying Stewart, my first son.’

  There followed a brief interlude in which the pair indulged in smoking mannerisms peculiar to themselves. Shelly exhaled mean, thin clouds, as perhaps might have issued from the chimney of a death-camp incinerator, while Carla puffed away like a Wild West steam engine.

  ‘All pregnant women smoked when I was young,’ Shelly declared with satisfaction.

  Carla considered this statement. ‘You know, nobody mentions that anymore. And yet, they’re still going on about Thalidomide. Just shows, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s right, my dear,’ Shelly agreed warmly. ‘Now while I don’t know anyone who ever suffered because their mother smoked, with thalidomide the first person I always think of is my cleaning lady . . . ’

  Shelly, as it turned out, had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the frightful effects of thalidomide. And too, the frightful effects of arterial sclerosis, emphysema, cancer and gas gangrene. What’s more she could reel off the names of her contemporaries, and household staff, who had died of them. The grand prize went to Uncle Cecil – killed off by lung cancer, even though he had never smoked a cigarette in his life. Which just went to prove what Shelly had always suspected – that all these things came and went in fashions, like the length of women’s skirts. Apropos of which she now recalled with great fondness her friend at school, Lydia. She observed, ‘But isn’t it so odd, dear, how one simply never sess club feet anymore?’

  Carla tutted and shook her head, ‘So many things are changing for the worse.’

  ‘Very true! For a start this area of London is awash with drugs these days. They’re all taking them, pregnant or not. I dread to think what horrors pop out in maternity clinics. Things that make club feet look like buck teeth, I imagine.’

  ‘You’re telling it the way it is, Shell,’ Carla declared. ‘And yet, between you and me, a couple of club feet would be a godsend,’ she rubbed her belly. ‘His little kicks are really sharp.’

  ‘My dear,’ Shelly said with a sm
ile, ‘the kicks are nothing. You wait for the birth.’

  ‘Well of course that’s when a little pointy head comes into its own.’

  ‘You may well be lucky, Carla, you may well be lucky.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of little pointy heads?’

  ‘Dear, nowadays little pointy heads are the only staff I can get.’

  This was the moment that Gwynne and his crew lumbered in through the shop door.

  Carla was set to step from behind the counter and save Shelly, who looked tiny compared to the gangly, loose-limbed youths. However, Shelly showed no fear. She smiled at Carla with a twinkle in her eye, ‘And talk of the devil.’

  ‘Carla, the back door’s bolted,’ Gwynne complained, leading the rest of the crew through the counter door and into the house behind.

  Carla was too affronted to answer. She could only glare.

  Gwynne was followed by a tall, dark-haired girl with a tough swagger. She gave Carla a quick on/off smile as she slipped by. Behind her was a lanky, dangerous looking lad whose simian features blazed with silent hilarity. After that . . . but it was too awful. As the last specimen vanished into the hallway that led into the house, chimpanzeeing as he went. Carla opened her eyes to check that Shelly was still alive.

  ‘My word, are you having a party?’ Shelly exclaimed, seemingly unaware of Carla’s distress. If anything, the crowd of thugs appeared to have thrilled her. ‘Or should I say – a rave?’

  ‘That was my brother and his friends.’

  ‘Oh, the one you’re going to do a really good funeral for?’

  ‘If all goes well.’

  ‘Lets hope. But this talk of raves had reminded me why I’ve dropped by, dear. I think some daffs to brighten the dining room. We’re throwing a dinner party next Friday.’

  ‘Lovely.’ Clara gave her a bright smile. Well, she reflected, a dinner party’s no funeral – but it’s better than nothing.

  Once Shelly had departed, with a promise to visit again soon (oh, these old crones were so sweet! It was more than some of her younger customers could do to mumble ta ta), Carla stalked back into the house and found the pack of jackanapes debouched in the kitchen.