by T J Price
‘Gwynne’s not dead. I know he’s not,’ Carla snarled with contempt, ‘or I’d have heard off the EasyHomes DIY Superstore by now, wouldn’t I?’
The woman from the Government opened her mouth, but a reply did not come out of it. Carla shouldered her aside and took a step towards Juliet.
‘It’s your baby that’s in danger,’ she yipped, gripping her belly like a bomb. Then glancing round to check no one else was listening, she added in rasping whisper, just loud enough for next door to hear, ‘Gerald’s feeding me drugs, you know. Trying to kill it so I don’t get your five thousand pounds. He can use it for stem-cell research. It was on the telly!’
Juliet shook her head and squeaked. All at once, the woman from the Government was in Carla’s way again.
‘Listen sweetheart, who is this Gerald? Please tell me, so I know what to say when I call the police.’
Before Carla could open her mouth, Tamsin intervened on her behalf, ‘Gerald’s her doctor, Helena, and her doctor appears to be mad.’
Carla heard the news race round the party – mad doctor!
Helena produced a glacial smile. ‘Well, if you don’t want to go back to hospital because your doctor is mad, you don’t have to. But dear, you can’t stay here, now can you? So, tell me, what is it exactly that you want to do?’
Carla clutched at her stomach as the pain dazed her for a moment, then, collecting her thoughts, she made a supreme effort to carry on like nothing was wrong and to answer the question.
‘I want to supply all the flowers for your funeral,’ she wailed. ‘So before you die, could you please call Rupert Nodes. You can’t go wrong – he was established in eighteen ninety-nine.’
And with that she sank to the floor in agony.
Once down there, she assumed the position – it always eased the pain to get her knees as close as possible to her ears.
Apart from her grunts and snorts, an utter and complete silence descended on the room.
Till Tamsin spoke, that is. Or rather, screeched, ‘My God, she’s gone into labour!’
Carla dropped her legs in alarm and also screeched. ‘What?’
She gaped at the towering figures around her. The guy with the bongos clutched them to his chest in horror. Phoebe reached out to take the lugubrious man’s arm, but the lugubrious man took a deft step out of reach and she gripped the freestanding lamp instead. And Juliet – Juliet put her hands to her sheet-white temples now and emitted a spine-tingling shriek.
‘Dear God, not on my floor!’
This banshee cry sent a convulsion through the crowd. Many were galvanised into action. Amongst cries for towels and boiling water and – Call the fire brigade, the heftiest guests, not all guys, lurched forward in order to lift Carla and carry her into the bedroom. Though some of them tried to take her to the kitchen instead. As she receded into the darkness of the bedroom, Carla saw Philip holding onto Juliet while calling for an ambulance on his mobile. Several guests were also calling for an ambulance on their mobiles. But then, she reflected, you could never have enough ambulances, could you?
Carla was laid groaning on the bed. She closed her eyes to stop the room spinning, and then she must have blacked out, because all at once she was being grappled by two ambulance medics.
They made a right job of getting her onto the stretcher, groaning louder than the patient. After a moment to recover, they heaved her up, and stamped out into the living room like they were carrying a piano instead.
To get through to the stairs they now had to pass through an awkward succession of doorways. At their first attempt they got stuck and there was nothing for it but to back out and try again. But then they found the stretcher had lodged tight.
‘Nige!’
‘Vern!’
‘Back!’
‘Give us a chance then!’
‘Just push!’
Vern pushed, Nige pulled and with Carla shouting, ‘What the fuck are you doing to me?’ they lurched free and pitched back into the livingroom.
People leapt out of the way, fearing for life and limb. Carla screamed, finding herself hurtling towards the window. Unhindered, Nige and Vern stumbled backwards right across the room, gaining momentum as they went. They crashed, with tooth-jarring force, into the dining table. Carla heard the thing squeal and scrape on its pointy legs and turning, she saw Phoebe’s metal candelabra topple, bounce and roll off. Tamsin, staring wide-eyed at the unfolding drama, was standing in wrong place at the wrong time. The candelabra felled her in one and pinioned her to the floor, where she lay, screaming and bloodied.
Carla squeezed her eyes shut tight as she heard Nige say, ‘Better bring her too.’
Merciful darkness swept over her then like a wave of warm water. She seemed to swirl round and round till a hand reached out and held her arm. All at once she was back at the shop. The plants were grotesquely overgrown. She could barely breathe in the fetid air. The hand gripped her arm more tightly.
It was Juliet.
‘Carla dear, what an absolutely divine little place you have here. It’s just so sweet and lovely. Look at all these fabulous flowers. Why, this is just heaven – you’re so lucky, you really are.’ Juliet was wearing that little smile that all her snooty customers wore when they claimed they envied her.
Carla couldn’t bear any more.
‘Flowers! Flowers! Flowers! I hate the bastards! This shop is the bane of my life and I can’t wait to sell it. I tell you this, when I move to a new place, I’m going to cover the front garden in concrete and park a lorry on it!’
Juliet laughed derisively. ‘But, darling, I wasn’t ever going to buy any flowers. I’ve got what I want from you.’
Carla howled and tried to wrestle free. ‘No!’
The grip tightened on her arm. Juliet’s thin face was devilish. ‘Oh yes.’
‘God, help me,’ Carla cried, and, in that instant, He did! A brilliant idea came to her – the best idea she’d ever had, so it must have come from above – and she commanded Juliet, her most nightmarish customer yet, to – ‘Go to hell. I’m going to have an abortion, see, and I’m going to bill you for the funeral!’
Juliet’s face twisted demonically. Too late, Carla saw she was grasping a fork in her hand – a garden fork. In the next instant, the evil creature thrust it into her stomach.
There was no pain.
‘Carla?’
The smooth voice was familiar. She tried to open her eyes but the light was blinding. She shook her head and groaned. ‘Carla?’ The voice again. ‘How are you doing?’ It was Gerald. Other voices were murmuring further away. Some were laughing.
A gentle hand rested on her forehead and in its shade she managed to focus a little. The kind face of a middle-aged nurse was smiling down at her. ‘It’s a lovely little boy,’ she said.
Ten: Taking Stock
It was about six months later when Charmaine and Gwynne’s relationship fell apart.
Everyone was taken by surprise. And that included Charmaine and Gwynne. They couldn’t seem to see why they had to break up either. It just didn’t make any sense. And yet . . . they did.
Gwynne moved back to Romance, and was disconcerted to find the place seemed different somehow. And after he was disconcerted, he was puzzled, because the place looked the same. But more than that, he sensed that he too had changed in some way, and this frightened him a little. For a start, he found he could no longer take comfort with “Beast Horde: The Ultimate Conflict” on his GameBoy. That had never happened to him before. Still more disturbing was how he had lost his urge to play in a band. It didn’t rankle with him in the least that Pod, Ba’a and Rocco had kicked him out of The Dead Dianas.
Now that was odd.
In his experience, getting kicked out of a band should have rankled – and kept rankling for at least two whole years non stop.
Whatever the explanation, not being rankled led to an unexpected consequence – he stopped rankling other people.
And the first person he stop
ped rankling was his sister. Of course, Carla had shouted and balled when he first came back home, but Carla’s shouting and balling was something he had heard countless times before. He didn’t see the point in answering anymore. And because he wasn’t answering, Carla appeared to lose the thread of her argument.
Which wasn’t to say he had stopped communicating with her.
For instance, a week after his return to Romance, and just as he was about to finish his breakfast, he looked up from his cereal bowl and stared long and hard at her.
After a full thirty seconds, he asked, ‘Didn’t you used to be pregnant, or something?’
Carla started, like she hadn’t been aware he was there and answered yes, rather than telling him to mind your own fucking business, which is what he’d sort of expected to hear.
But even so, Gwynne was a little too pushed for time right then to think of the next question.
He would be merely on time for work if he didn’t get going, rather than early.
That’s right, nowadays he made a point of arriving at the EasyHomes DIY Superstore even earlier than he needed to.
You see, there had been a change at work as well as at home, and he took his new responsibilities at the EasyHomes DIY Superstore very seriously indeed.
These responsibilities had devolved upon him because his superiors had noted how quiet Gwynne had become since he’d broken up with Charmaine. Interpreting his lifeless expression as a mark of a sober young man, mature beyond his years, they had offered him promotion.
Well, it was either him or that complete drip, Ba’a, in Tiles and Grouting.
Gwynne jumped at the offer. After all, even a complete drip knew promotion meant more money. What did come as an unpleasant surprise was the hidden catch. Promotion, as it turned out, involved stock taking.
Just his luck!
And Gwynne could tell you a thing or two about his luck. Things to make your hair stand on end. Except . . . wait about! After a few faltering first steps, Gwynne found himself zipping through the new procedures with ease. No, it was worse than that – he was soon taking an exotic pleasure in learning them.
Now who the hell could have predicted that?
Not Gwynne, for a start. For although stock taking theory was devoted to material objects it was, nevertheless, a form of abstract thought and till that day Gwynne had been a stranger to abstract thought. An enemy, even. Or at least he felt thinking rationally was something to be treated as a hazard. Thus he had engaged with abstract thought as tentatively as he would a tray of cacti back at Romance. To his delight, however, the result was not the very familiar pain and misery, but rather a revelation. Stock taking, unlike Charmaine, car insurance, Elaine, the popular music industry, Carla, Kitty and flowers made . . . perfect sense.
In fact, if it came to that, what stock taking procedures actually made was . . . life worth living again!
By sheer chance Gwynne had stumbled upon what so many fail to attain in this restless and corrupting world – self-realisation.
And to think that if Charmaine and him hadn’t split he might never have got promoted and learned stock taking. Just shows what a fine line runs between tragedy and comedy.
And then, all his friends had been wrong, hadn’t they? They thought they were fucking him over by kicking him out of the Dead Dianas. But who was laughing now? Him, with a career in stock taking? Or that load of, plinky-plocky, warbling, guitar-twanging failed pop-star wankers?
And he would be laughing a lot, lot more when he found a way to frame Pod, Ba’a and Rocco for all the stuff that was going missing from the warehouse.
Stock taking – geddit?
So, anyway, that was the essence of Gwynne’s transmogrification, and a rundown of his current intellectual obsessions, so it was not terribly surprising that the next question that logically followed from – Didn’t you used to be pregnant? had yet to occur to him.
The hours passed. Then the days.
What he needed was a good Samaritan to jog his memory and give him a clue. And as luck would have it, that office was performed by Philip Westhrop, when he came to call at Romance one Saturday morning.
There was a knock on the back door, which was the nominal tradesman’s entrance.
Just then Gwynne happened to be showing Carla the plastic buckets he’d nicked from the EasyHomes Superstone – a bit of stock taking lite – and, coming at that delicate juncture, the confident rap on the door played strongly on Gwynne’s imagination. Glancing at the door in question, he was suddenly and absolutely convinced that the law was lined up on the other side of it, and at that moment he found his plastic buckets weighing like lead buckets instead.
‘Don’t answer it!’ He hissed, ‘I’ll take that new shower attachment back tomorrow.’
Carla turned to the door and yelled, ‘It’s open!’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Gwynne was too indignant to run. He watched, filled by sullen resignation, as the door opened to reveal a tall, rather desiccated young man, dressed in a grey flannel suit.
‘Oh great.’ He thought. ‘Someone from the non uniformed services!’
‘Not another one trying to flog sphagnum moss?’ Carla jeered lustily. She enjoyed a bit of raillery now and then with the salesmen.
‘No, I’m not,’ the man said.
‘Everyone’s trying to unload sphagnum moss just lately. Come on then, tell us what you got.’
He stepped in. ‘I don’t think you remember me, do you?’
‘We get loads of salesmen.’
‘I’m not a salesman. I’m Philip Westhrop. We have met, Carla. You know, during the party.’
Gwynne, struck as he was by his sister’s abrupt loss of colour, was enormously relieved to learn that the plainclothes detective was here to arrest his sister instead.
‘Yes, I recognise you now,’ Carla murmured darkly.
‘I’m sorry to intrude.’ The guy glanced at Gwynne. ‘I’d like a word, if you don’t mind, Carla?’
‘What about?’
‘It’s not something I can explain in a few words. Don’t worry though, I’m not here to cause any sort of trouble – ’
‘What kind of trouble?’ Gwynne interrupted with subdued menace.
Philip looked at him. ‘The kind I’m not going to cause.’
Gwynne had to chew this one over and as he did so the guy from MI5 continued his conversation with his sister.
‘In fact, I think you’ll be very interested by what I have to say, so I hope you’ll hear me out. You don’t have anything to lose. In fact, you have a lot to gain. Everything that you want, perhaps.’
‘Everything that I want?’ Carla sounded incredulous.
‘I think you know what I mean,’ Philip said. ‘But this must be a shock for you, so what I want to do is go away and come back at about twelve and we can discuss it over lunch. I mean, I’ll take you out to lunch. I’ll explain the whole deal then. But there’s no obligation, Carla. If I come back at twelve and you don’t want to see me, then you’ll never hear from me again. But think about it first.’ He nodded. ‘Thanks for your time.’
He turned and left, closing the door after him. Gwynne gaped at Carla. ‘What the hell was that about?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘But you said you knew him. Who is he?’
‘He’s the father of that kid I was carrying.’
Gwynne slapped his head, ‘The father! That’s what I should’ve asked! Who the father was.’
Carla walked away and ended up in the chill livingroom, sitting on one of the armchairs and staring down into the murky patterns of the carpet. Gwynne followed cautiously, and watched her from the sofa, where she seemed surprised to see him when she looked up again.
‘What?’ She asked.
‘Carl . . . where’s the baby now? It’s not in your room, is it?’
But in actual fact he was thinking of the attic.
‘With its real mother, of course,’ Carla blared at him with exaspera
tion.
Gwynne shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s simple. That guy, Philip, and his wife, paid me to have her kid. She couldn’t have one herself, or that’s her story. But perhaps she could and she just didn’t fancy the idea.’
‘No shit.’ Gwynne never imagined his sister’s pregnancy could be this interesting.
‘Anyway, I did it for her because they’ve got the money and this business is going down the drain . . . but you don’t care about that, do you?’
He shrugged. ‘So, how did you meet them, these people?
‘Through a doctor. He owns a clinic in Acton. I met him in Cyprus.’
‘Cyprus? Is he straight up?’
‘Of course he is. He earns a good living out of it too.’
‘Yeah? So how much did you get out of it?’
‘Five thousand.’
‘Five thousand! Is that all? You can’t even get a decent motor for that.’
‘You don’t have to tell me, but I was desperate, wasn’t I?’
Gwynne’s face flushed with indignation. ‘It doesn’t seem right. I mean it’s a new life, isn’t it? That should cost at least as much as a decent motor. You ought have kept it, just to spite them.’ Then he noticed that if she had done this she would be even worse off. So he added, ‘And of course, waited a few months before sending it to the social for adoption.’
Carla smiled. ‘You bonehead, if I did that, they’d only find out and adopt it themselves, wouldn’t they?’
‘Yeah. Slimy Bastards!’ Gwynne murmured. Then, having pinned these people down in the great scheme of things, he began to wonder about the motive for Philip’s visit. ‘So anyway, what’s he talking about when he says he wants to give you everything you want? That’s money, ain’t it?’
Carla thought about this. ‘Maybe they want me to have another kid. I wouldn’t put it past them.’
‘Well, now’s your chance!’ Gwynne cried feverishly. ‘Make fucking sure they pay the going rate this time.’
Carla reddened. ‘I don’t care how much they want to pay. Being a surrogate mother is a traumatic experience. The nearest you could come to it is being in a car crash. After something like that you just want to forget.’