Tears sprang into her eyes, but she dashed them angrily away. She had cried enough, for God’s sake, and, in any case, the whole thing was her fault. Indeed, if she lay awake tonight, as she had done for the last seven weeks, that was simply her due punishment.
Closing her eyes, she made a conscious effort to distract herself: recited the dates of battles, ran through the names of birds and flowers. Useless. Every battle, every bird and flower began with the word Dominic. Too bad. She would learn, in time, to reprogramme her mind.
All at once, she was aware of a faint rustle in the room. Please God, not mice, she prayed – she was terrified of mice. But surely they wouldn’t infest her flat, when she never left food about and kept the place so clean. Nervously she squinted through her eyelids, gasping at what she saw. There, within touching distance, were the two angels from the play – or something remarkably similar – dressed in dazzling silver robes and with long, lustrous, silky hair. One was sitting on her bed, the other hovering over the chest of drawers, their huge white-feathered wings arching up above them, filling all the available space.
She stared in mute astonishment. Was this some sort of hallucination, or was she actually asleep and dreaming? She pinched herself, registered the pain. Of course she wasn’t asleep. She had been counting every dragging minute since she’d first gone to bed at midnight. Besides, these angels were so tangible – living, breathing presences, as real as any human, yet with some mysterious quality that transcended the material world. Admittedly, the room was dim, with only a soft glow from the bedside lamp, but, even so, she could make out every detail: the diaphanous, glittery fabric of their garments, the golden sheen of their hair, the extraordinary translucence of their faces, which seemed to shine like lamps themselves.
Neither of the angels spoke – there seemed no need for words – and she herself lay silent, astonished by her own composure. Trapped as she was, with angels closing in on her, shouldn’t she be rigid with fear and desperate to escape? Yet far from feeling threatened, all her recent agitation (remorse, regret and anguish) had somehow drained away, and she was aware of a deep sense of peace spreading through her body. The sickness in her stomach and jagged pains in her head had both disappeared entirely, as if those powerfully protective wings were healing and consoling her, enfolding her in a sheltering embrace. Her breathing gradually deepened and the feeling of tranquillity began stealing through the room. She could feel her eyelids closing, her body drifting down. These angels had brought the gift of sleep and would watch over her till morning.
She woke with a start, reaching out automatically to switch off the alarm. There was no alarm. It was Sunday and singularly quiet – no shrilling clock, no drone of traffic, no sound from the flat above. She peered at the time. Impossible! It couldn’t be nearly noon. How on earth could she have slept for nine and three-quarter hours, when normally she tossed and turned all night?
Only then did she remember the angels. Angels! Was she mad? Now, in the broad light of day, the whole idea of a heavenly visitation seemed utterly absurd. Did she really believe that two supernatural beings would deign to call on her in Muswell Hill? It must have been the whisky, or the effects of drink and aspirin mixed, or perhaps a sort of mental aberration after so long a spell of grief, coupled with the pangs of guilt brought on by the play. Today she must take herself in hand – bin the rest of the whisky, start eating decent food again, go for a run in the park, catch up with her friends.
She swung her legs out of bed, took a decisive step towards the wardrobe to unearth her running shoes, only to stop, astounded, in mid-stride. There, on the bedroom carpet, lay a long white shimmering feather. Unnerved, she picked it up. It was far too large to be a bird’s, even a substantial bird like an ostrich or a swan. Never in her life had she seen a feather of that size and shape – except on those angels last night. So had they been here, in her room? She’d already dismissed the thought as totally far-fetched; now she was less sure. They had, in fact, seemed extraordinarily authentic – not mere tricks of the light – although with that sublime, unearthly character no words could truly describe. Unearthly or not, one of their feathers had landed on her floor, and that peculiar circumstance required some explanation.
She shook her head, to clear it; ran through her twelve-times-table, to check that her brain was functioning. Yes, everything in perfect working order. She might have been prey to fantasies in the middle of the night, or trapped in some weird dream-state, but now it was midday, for heaven’s sake, and she wasn’t even tired – instead awake, alert and remarkably refreshed. Nor were her eyes deceiving her. Light was flooding into the room, making every object clear and sharp, including the long, white feather she was holding in her hand.
Totally mystified, she sank down on the bedroom stool, needing time to think. Angels were real for Dominic, of course, as real as his wife and children. And she respected his intelligence – indeed, he was one of the cleverest men she’d ever met. So suppose he was right and she wrong? That would mean that angels could exist; that Gabriel and Raphael could actually have been here – and been here with a purpose. A jolt of wild elation lasered through her mind. If they had come to comfort her (and there hadn’t been a word of rebuke, nor an echo of the punishment meted out to Eve), could she be as rotten as she feared – a marriage-wrecker, child-harmer, a selfish, worthless bitch? Why should she follow Milton’s line on adultery and lust? He was a strict, self-righteous Puritan, and so bound to take a jaundiced view of sex. Anyway, it was Dominic who mattered, not a patriarchal poet who’d been dead 300 years. And with angels on her side, wasn’t there a tiny chance that Dominic would change his mind, see her in a different light, even regard their relationship as blessed?
Racing to the sitting-room, she grabbed the phone and dialled his secret number – the one he kept exclusively for her. She hadn’t used it for seven endless weeks, but he was sure to pick her message up within an hour or so. She spoke urgently, triumphantly, the words tumbling over each other, barely making any sense.
Sense would have to wait. All she knew at present was that, with the angels’ help, Paradise could be regained.
The Biggest Female in the World
‘Edwin!’
He tensed. In his friends’ mouths or his parents’, his name sounded bland enough – an innocuous, obliging name – so why, when Roza used it, did it become an offensive weapon?
‘Edwin!’
‘No,’ he said to no one. ‘Not here. Gone away. Missing person. AWOL.’
‘Edwin, where in God’s name are you? Can’t you come when I call?’
Reluctantly he dragged himself up to the sickroom. Whereas the majority of invalids shrank and paled and faded, Roza had swollen to twice her normal size, and her usual sallow complexion was now a wrathful shade of red.
Steeling himself, he opened the bedroom door. Yes, there she was, his so-called other half, lolling back imperiously against a pile of crumpled pillows. When they’d first married, it had made some sort of sense to talk in terms of ‘halves’, since they’d been roughly equal in the roles they played and the space they occupied. But over the last thirty-seven years, she had gradually expanded, in influence as well as size, until she dominated the house and garden (and the entire street, as well, he feared, when she bellowed from her open window, to summon him in from his vegetable patch).
‘Edwin, I may be ill, but I’m not actually dead – not yet anyway. Which means I need food and drink at regular intervals throughout the day.’
He cleared his throat. Even his voice had a tendency to dwindle when chivvied by her louder one. ‘But I brought you breakfast only an hour ago.’
‘Breakfast? Call that breakfast? One piece of toast – and burnt at that!’
‘Roza, you asked for toast, and you specifically said you wanted just one slice.’
‘I didn’t ask for burnt toast.’
He sighed. The sigh surprised him by its faintness. The way he felt, it should have been a force-ten gale.
‘There’s something wrong with the toaster.’
‘What d’you mean, “something wrong”? Any normal husband would fix it.’
‘Any normal husband would throw it out. It’s in terminal decline.’
‘Well, go and buy a new one – now!’
‘But I thought you said you were hungry …’
‘I am hungry, Edwin. Which is hardly surprising when you keep me on starvation rations. I’d like a lightly poached egg – lightly, did you hear? Not that bullet of a thing you served up yesterday.’
‘OK.’ He glanced at the flotsam spreading like a dirty tide right across the counterpane: damp tissues, chocolate wrappers, dog-eared magazines, abandoned bits of knitting, a bag of barley sugar. She had long since taken possession of the queen-sized double bed; he banished to the lumpy spare-room couch. And, had he still been sleeping with her, he would be forced, by her colossal size, to lie on the extreme outside edge, in danger of falling off. It was the same with both the wardrobes – crammed and stuffed with her clothes, while his hung squashed and gasping at the very end of the rail. And, in the bulging chest of drawers, his puny socks and paltry underpants lay vanquished by her vast pink interlock bloomers, her heavy, clammy nightgowns and fearsome whalebone corsets.
‘And a decent cup of tea, mind. Make sure you warm the pot first, and put in three heaped spoonfuls.’
‘Roza, I do know how to make tea.’
‘Really? I can’t say that I’ve noticed.’ She heaved herself up to a sitting position, her pendulous bosom wobbling as she moved.
Deliberately he averted his gaze. On their wedding day, she’d had breasts like little peaches, ripe and full, but small. Now they’d metamorphosed to pumpkins, which, entered for a gardening contest, would have easily won ‘Biggest in the Show’. Once, he could hold a whole peach in his mouth. Now, should he try, he’d be instantly asphyxiated.
‘Edwin, are you listening? When you bring the tray up, could you bring my glasses, too – my second pair, in the navy leather case? And you’d better do the shopping before everything’s sold out.’
‘It’s precisely five past nine, Roza. The shops are hardly open yet.’
‘And drop in at Taylor’s, will you, so tomorrow’s toast isn’t cremated like this morning’s. I know it’s quite a trek, but …’
A good mile, he muttered under his breath, and most of that uphill.
‘Oh, and by the way—’ Her words were drowned in a protracted fit of coughing.
‘What?’ he asked, once the chesty, phlegmy, rasping sounds had gradually subsided.
‘Are we out of cat-food?’
‘Cat-food?’ he repeated. They didn’t have a cat; owned no pets at all. Please God, he prayed, with a sudden sense of dread, let this not be the first sign of dementia. Cancer was one thing, Alzheimer’s another. ‘Why,’ he asked, struggling to stay calm, ‘should we want cat-food?’
‘Why not?’ she said, with an air of such authority he immediately doubted his own mental equilibrium. Did they have a cat? And he’d somehow overlooked the fact? Was he the one losing his grip on reality? ‘OK,’ he murmured weakly. ‘I’ll put it on the shopping list.’
Returning from the village, he took a detour to the churchyard, craving its peace like a tranquillizing drug. In that hallowed spot, his cares seemed left behind – no one complaining save the ghosts and spectres; no one squawking save the crows. He was glad to see his favourite bench was empty, although a man was working just nearby – a gardener, by the looks of it, or perhaps some chappie from the council, sent to tidy up the place.
‘Good day,’ said Edwin, offloading his piles of shopping on to the bench. Carrying three heavy bags had left red weals on his wrists.
‘Good day,’ the fellow mumbled.
Edwin sank down on the seat. Few days were good for him, in fact, with Roza in her present state. However, surrounded by these silent graves and quiet, well-mannered yews, he felt his spirits lift. The heat of the sun was tempered here by the shade of kindly trees and by cool, green, soothing, velvety moss embroidering grey stone. The dead were perfect company; made no demands and didn’t answer back. Well, he’d better make the most of it. Once he got home, there’d be demands and taunts enough. The new toaster was bound to be wrong, for a start – too small, too big, too shoddy, too expensive, a dreadful colour, a ridiculous shape …
He glanced at the man again: a wiry fellow, with a balding, sunburned pate, and a fuzz of sandy hair glinting on his arms. ‘Lovely weather,’ he ventured, grateful for some company other than his wife’s. She had long since driven all their friends away.
‘Bit too hot for this lark,’ the chap responded, pausing for a moment and leaning on his spade.
‘What is it you’re doing?’
‘You may well ask! The Reverend gave me orders, but he’s expecting the impossible. He might as well have told me to raise these buggers from the dead.’
In his mind, Edwin saw creaky, creepy skeletons start pushing up their headstones and go staggering about. ‘Why? What’s the problem?’ he asked.
‘This stuff!’ The man pointed to a ragged clump of bushes, as tall as he was himself.
‘What is it?’ Edwin had never been one for Nature Study. Roza invariably mocked him because he couldn’t tell a primrose from a celandine.
‘Japanese knotweed. Or Big Trouble, as I call it!’
‘Oh yes, I’ve heard of knotweed! In fact, it came up on Gardeners’ Question Time just the other week. Bit of a bother, they were saying.’
‘Bit of a bother? A fucking menace, more like! Pardon my French, but it’s nothing but an alien – a sodding great invader that’s taking over the country and spreading like wildfire.’
‘It looks harmless enough,’ Edwin observed, peering more closely at the glossy leaves and delicate clusters of creamy-coloured flowers.
‘Harmless! We’re talking Hitler and Stalin, with Pol Pot thrown in as well. Except all knotweed plants are female, in Europe anyway. So if you can imagine a female Stalin—’ He broke off with a humourless laugh, mopping the sweat from his forehead. ‘The damned stuff grows so fast, it kills off almost every other plant – not just fragile things like bluebells, but even prickly hawthorns. And the older it gets, the bigger it becomes. In fact, I’ve heard it called the biggest female in the world, in terms of the total landmass it takes up.’ With a grimace of distaste, he started jabbing with his spade again, trying to dislodge the tangled roots. ‘You may find this hard to believe, mate, but if you collected up all the knotweed in one small town like Truro, it would weigh as much as thirty-three Blue Whales! And it’s not just England that’s affected. The sodding thing has spread all over the world – Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand – you name it. They’re all fighting back, of course, chucking billions down the drain in an effort to root it out, but they’re totally deluded imagining they’ll succeed. And the vicar’s just as bad. With all due respect to the Reverend, he’s talking utter balls. Clear it all out, he tells me. Fine for him – he believes in miracles. And you’d need a bloody miracle to get rid of even this amount.’
‘You seem to be doing fairly well.’
‘Don’t kid yourself. I could spend all week here, slashing it to pieces or spraying it with chemicals, and it’ll still spring up again. Some people inject pesticides right into the stems, but even that’s a waste of time. You see, underneath the soil, is this bloody great rhizome system, which extends sideways twenty feet or more, and goes down really deep. And it keeps throwing up new shoots, so even if I cut it back’ – he demonstrated with a swingeing attack – ‘and continue every day like this until I’m fucking blue in the face, it’ll still defeat me in the end. Nothing seems to stop it, not composting, or burning, or burying it deep underground. It can even regrow, for heaven’s sake, if you put it through a shredder!’
‘Dear, dear,’ said Edwin, sighing on his own account as well as on the gardener’s. What he’d hoped would be a pleasant chat had turned into a rant. A
nd the fellow showed no sign of stopping, punctuating his tide of words with further angry lashes at the plant.
‘What’s absolutely baffling is that it’ll put up with conditions that would kill any other species – air pollution, acid soil, contamination with heavy metals – it survives the bloody lot. It can even break through paving stones or tarmac, or between bricks in a ruddy great wall. And, believe it or not, it’s been known to pop up in people’s living-rooms, having worked its way through the foundations of the house!’
Edwin shook his head, tight-lipped. If he kept quiet, perhaps the tirade would abate.
‘And that’s not all. You can be landed with a dirty great fine if you cause the thing to take root in the wild. Just chuck a bit on a rubbish-tip and you’ll be coughing up five grand. And it’s no good saying you can’t pay, because then they’ll bang you up in gaol. Yeah, two fucking years in Wormwood Scrubs, not for rape or murder, but for being a bit careless with a plant!’
‘Shocking!’ Edwin murmured, picking up his shopping bags and beating a hasty retreat. His cemetery-oasis had become a little too like home: a loud, petulant voice haranguing him with a stream of endless complaints.
‘But you told me to get cat-food!’
‘Nonsense! Why should we want cat-food when we don’t have a cat?’
Why indeed? He stared down uneasily at the tins of Rabbit Chunks in Jelly. ‘Don’t worry – I’ll give it to the Lloyds at number six.’
‘What, waste good money on that flea-ridden creature they have the cheek to call a Persian? Over my dead body! No, you can take it back – this instant.’
‘Roza, I’m not going out again. It’s boiling hot and I’m deadbeat as it is.’
‘Well, tomorrow, then.’ She glanced accusingly at the bedside clock. ‘It’s way past lunchtime, Edwin. Did you get the fish?’
‘What fish?’
‘I asked for a nice piece of plaice.’
The Biggest Female in the World and other stories Page 24