Truth to Tell

by Mavis Cheek

  ‘I’ve been a coward,’ I said. ‘An untruthful coward. There should always be honesty between friends –’

  But she did not wait to hear. And there was nothing I could say to stop her turning, keeping her head up, and walking steadfastly away from me and my friendship. She was absolutely right. We’d all lied and this was the consequence.

  Beware, I thought, as I looked around the restaurant at all those placid lunchers, beware of cowardice in the face of the devil expediency. I paid the bill and left. That was that. Part of me wished, since there was no rescue, that I had told her I thought Bob was a prat and deeply, deeply unattractive – creepy even – and completely and utterly boring – but that was my anger. I was glad that I hadn’t – it would only have hurt her and shriven me for a short while before regret twisted my throat. As I left the restaurant I remembered some lines from another Plath poem. It ended:

  The lioness,

  The shriek in the bath,

  The cloak of holes.

  Indeed.

  As I walked back to the car I became angrier and angrier and there was a haze about my eyes, from the gunsmoke maybe. I am a martyr, I told myself. A martyr. The Emperor Tiberius, living at the top of Capri, received messengers in the open air, at the edge of the cliffs. If he didn’t like what they told him, over the edge they were tumbled into the foaming rocks below. That was me. Thank goodness I hadn’t been standing anywhere near an oncoming bus. Why should truth be so hard to take and lies so easy? We’re all grown-ups, I told myself, so why can’t we all act like grown-ups? By the time I got back to the Peugeot I was thrumming with indignation. This was grossly unfair and I had moral right on my side and who, just who, was she to put me through the mincer when she, Antonia, the true daughter of Tiberius if ever I’d met one, was –’

  I reached the car and pressed the electronic key. Nothing. I tried again. Nothing. I swore and tried once more. Well, that was all I needed – the battery in the electric key was flat. The car was unopenable without my setting off the alarm. And my friend had behaved extremely badly. Therefore, obviously, the car needed a kick. Well, something needed a kick. So I kicked it, quite hard, on the tyre. It was extremely satisfying and a great reliever of emotion for one so usually tolerant and unaggressive. At university I couldn’t even manage the martial arts classes, seeing them as brutal rather than about discipline and self-protection. It was like scratching an itch I didn’t know I had. I did it again, kicked hard, also, this time, drumming my fist on the top of the car. The kick left a tiny mark. This made me, curiously, even crosser. Could one operate road rage at oneself? One more kick before I walked off to try to find someone who could sort this out. A garage. There must be one nearby. So, with joyful fury, I gave it one more lesson in how not to misbehave in front of its mistress with a neat little poke of my boot. And from behind me there came a furious shout of ‘Hoi’.

  Well, there are nightmare possibilities and there are nightmare possibilities. This was a good one. Bearing down on me was a nun. But not one of those sweet, dough-faced women in white wimples and floaty black gowns like those lovely beings painted by Van Gogh. Oh no. This was a modern nun. In a grey outfit more like a business suit, its skirt cut to the knee, its shoulders reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher. Only the headdress was nunnish. But the head inside the headdress was not sweetly doughy at all. It was bright pink and bore a pair of penetrating dark eyes behind flashing spectacles.

  ‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’

  I’m not religious. Nor was I cruelly abused by nuns in my upbringing. Therefore I thought this was simple nose-poking.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘better the car than a person.’ And I gave it another bash with my fist for good measure. At which point the nun threw herself across the side of the thing as if protecting an infant.

  ‘Stop it this minute,’ she said, ‘or I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ I yelled back – yelling being equally satisfying I suddenly realised. ‘Bugger off – it’s my car and I can do what I like with it.’ I kicked it again. We were all grown-ups, were we?

  … I’ll draw a veil. Or a wimple. Of course it was the wrong bloody Peugeot, wasn’t it? Why wouldn’t it be? And of course I had to bend the knee and genuflect a squillion times while trying to explain that I was not usually of a vandalistic nature. Nor an abuser of religious houses. This took a little while to be believed – with a nice, healthy crowd around us. ‘Oh – look – she’s attacked a nun …’ Then I gave her my address, promised to pay for the damage, and walked off, head held high, to my own little silver car that did not so much as blink as I slid into it and beat my forehead on its sweet little steering wheel.

  When I got home there was a message from Robert. It was icy. ‘I thought you should have my contact details in case.’ And he gave them. He also added, icily and sarcastically, ‘And sorry to have made you break your little vow of truth. How was the doctor and your poor ear?’ My hand reached out, I was ready to call, ready to spit, and then I stopped myself. Do not rise, I counselled. Peace and Love. Peace and Love. But only up to a point, Lord Copper.

  It was the perfect antidote to my misery over Toni. Peace and Love left the room. I immediately rang the number he had left. I got the hotel – of course he would not be in his room – and I left a sturdy message of my own informing him that I had, indeed, gone to the doctor’s after I left him at the airport, though not for my ear, and so honour was still mine. Then I put down the phone and fumed all evening, expecting him to call. He did not. War had truly been declared.

  In this inflatededly justified frame of mind I wondered whether to call Toni and then decided that I had better not. I was too wound up and likely to say more unpleasant truths if she asked. I’d sleep on it. Let it simmer for a while, let the sand settle, and about six more comforting clichés before I was convinced. Part of me suffered from a creeping fear that she might act on my words and in her angry state declare all to Arturo. Which would be my fault and forever, I was sure, would it be laid at my interfering self-righteous door. Down on to those rocks I would tumble. What was it Mark Twain said? – ‘Truth is the most valuable commodity – let us economise.’

  At least that night I slept. Robert’s reaction and my reaction to him was a touch more normal than all my imaginings about leggy blondes. He did not, as far as I could tell from the muffled message, sound like a man who had been playing James Bond in Casino Royale.

  Seven

  Carriwitchet: a hoax; a puzzling question not admitting to a satisfactory answer.

  John Camden Hotten’s Slang Dictionary, 1887

  VENICE PROVED QUITE a comfort in these disturbing times and at least I had my researches. Things paled in comparison with the deceptions of La Serenissima. Even the idea of solid ground beneath one’s feet is illusory there. The whole history of the place is steeped in deception and betrayal, and their good and holier-than-thou attitude was tempered by the much more seductive underpinning of profit. Our politicians now had nothing on their politicians then. The Venetian Council of Ten might tell the world that there were none more holy than themselves in existence. They might have been convincing enough to persuade the Army of Christian Nobility that their love and support was supreme. And in so doing cleverly win the said army’s contract to provender and convey and make Venice the designated port of embarkation for the Crusades. But when the Crusaders arrived in Venice and wanted to set sail for the Holy Land, they found they were missing a caveat. Venice certainly supported them. But at a price. In the name of God we stand by you – yes – but only for cash will our merchants provide ships, men, stores, arms and everything else that you Crusaders asked for. Despite its being for God, and despite Venice being rich as Croesus, while the spirit is willing beyond price, we do actually have to sell you the goods to effect salvation.

  The Holy Warriors were stuffed. But they were there now, no going back … The Venetians bowed low to them, said they believed wholeheartedly in their goal, agreed
that their success would be good for the whole of Christendom, including their sinful selves. All that. But money on the table first, please. The Third Crusade, something of a disaster for Christendom since it left Saladin firmly in control of Jerusalem, raised twelfth-century Venice to the pinnacle of riches and mercantile influence and had them rubbing their hands together at the prospect of a Fourth Crusade where they did, indeed, present another large bill to be paid in advance. As I suggested to Brando, the Venetians were the true originators of that telling phrase: ‘In God We Trust: All Others Cash.’

  ‘I like it,’ he said, and I could hear him scribbling away. Not for the first time I wondered why he was said to be writing the book and I was only said to be researching it. When – if – it were ever published – my name would not even signify. Was every situation that I held in my life holding untruth at its core? I completed what I had to do at the British Library that day and left. All these years of wishing I could spend as much time as I wanted in that quiet, helpful place, and now it felt wrong to be sitting there apparently calm. Apparently because I was not calm, I was agitated and not a little miserable. I couldn’t settle, that was the truth of it. It continued to be exactly how I felt when I first met Robert and I used to wait painfully for him to call me, imagining all the while that he never would again because I had done something dreadful without knowing it or he had been scooped up by someone else. Now I really had done something dreadful – as far as he was concerned anyway – and for all I knew …

  On the other hand, I thought, struggling on to the Tube, he was a first-class shit.

  Back through the front door I came with a couple of useful books and a hopeful look at the answerphone. Nothing. Not surprising, really. My message to him had hardly been conciliatory. Fool, I told myself, flinging down the books, fool. One of the pages flopped open to reveal the picture of a woman in a scold’s bridle. Chillingly appropriate.

  Then Tassie rang. Just as I was settling myself down with a notebook and pen. I flung myself at the phone, eager as any teenager with a crush, feeling sure it was Robert and that everything was going to be all right.

  ‘Hello,’ I said with tremendous joy and laughter.

  ‘Mum?’ said an uncertain little voice. ‘What are you doing there? I thought you were in Florida?’

  My parents were terrible liars. Looking back I realised so many things they said were just not true. The first time I went away on a school trip, with tent, I anxiously asked if my parents would miss me and they said that they really wouldn’t, not at all, that I wasn’t to think it for a moment. Just go away and enjoy yourself, they said, as if it would be out of sight, out of mind for them, too. It was meant to cheer me up but instead I set off in the school coach feeling miserable and unloved. Especially as my abiding memory during that week away in the Welsh hills was the sight of my jolly-faced parents waving and smiling and looking for all the world as if they were intending to have a rip-roaring time while I was away. Later, much later, many years or more, when I remembered and told them how I felt, they were really shocked.

  ‘Your mother cried all the way home in the car,’ said my father, with a certain indulgent smile that always drove my mother mad.

  ‘And your father was downstairs in his pyjamas at three in the morning for the first two nights you were away,’ she rallied, ‘checking with the Met Office.’

  ‘If I’d known that,’ I said, ‘I’d have been so happy.’

  Well – I’d been doing the same to Tassie. Saying we were fine, saying we hoped she was having a good time, not mentioning how dangerous some of the places were, nor that I had a pain like a hole in my heart for the first few weeks she was away. I’d go and sit on the end of her bed and look at the glassy eyes of her assorted teddy bears and her silly soft toys and dissolve into memories of holding her to my breast and singing her lullabies. It wasn’t quite the same in Johnno’s room. I missed him badly, too, but perhaps there is something extra in the connection with a firstborn. Robert was more robust but he missed both of them in smaller ways – like going out with Tass to get the Sunday papers and walking the long way round to come home. Neither he nor she would acknowledge that this was their regular bonding moment but that’s what it was. Since she had been away he’d scarcely bothered to buy a paper on Sunday. And he missed Johnno’s music so much that once or twice I’d found him sitting on the end of the bed, listening to a CD. I even suggested that we got a dog – or borrowed one – just so he had something to do, but he wisely pointed out that the one – and perhaps only – great benefit of our children having gone halfway across the world was that we were free to go anywhere we liked, too. A dog would tie us down. But as it was – apart from horrible Florida – we hadn’t gone anywhere. Holidays had always been family events up until now, with the two of us taking the occasional two- or three-day break. I think that neither of us had the heart to go travelling until the two of them came back. Daft but true. Despite all this, to Tassie and Johnno we remained very cheerful. It was far less hard with Johnno because he so seldom rang home. But here was our daughter now, on the phone, about to ask a very direct question, and I had to answer her truthfully. Did I? I did.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why aren’t you two in Florida?’

  ‘Your dad is.’

  ‘Why aren’t you? Are you ill?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. What did you ring for, if you thought we were in Florida?’ As if our daughter would allow me to change course.

  ‘I was just going to leave a message to send on some of my savings. I thought you’d be all mellow when you came back and Dad wouldn’t go off on one. Why are you still there?’

  ‘Oh – well – Florida –’

  ‘Are you OK? I mean, is there anything wrong or –’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Oh, your dad and I had a bit of a disagreement.’

  ‘You had a row?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What exactly?’

  ‘A disagreement.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘A matter of philosophy, actually.’ My voice had taken on a defensive tone. And Tassie was too steeped in family nuances not to notice. ‘So he went on his own.’ I tried not to make this last sound pathetic. Possibly I failed.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Mum,’ she said exasperatedly. ‘Why not just get on a plane and go out there? Just go. Why not? You’re obviously missing him.’

  Babes and sucklings. Irritating items.

  ‘Here’s the truth of it. I’m not out there with him because I don’t want to be there. I’ve about as much interest in being in Florida, wearing cruise wear and going to Disney World as you have in going to a Britten opera at the ENO.’ That, at least, had the momentary effect of stopping our daughter in her tracks. She had, indeed, refused to come when we bought an extra ticket and she had, indeed, stressed very loudly and very firmly that it was her absolute right not to do things she did not want to do. There was a short silence, in which I could hear the cogs working in her devious little mind, and then she regrouped. ‘Poor Dad,’ she said, feelingly. ‘Poor Dad.’ To which, of course, there was no answer that did not sound uncaring or downright cruel, but I had a go.

  ‘Why poor Dad? He’s doing what he wants.’

  ‘Yes, but not with who he wants. Well, I’m going to talk to him.’

  ‘I don’t think his mobile works over there.’ That was a reasonable bit of equivocation.

  ‘What’s the name of the hotel he’s staying in?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Also true. He had only left the phone and room numbers.

  ‘Then I’ll have to find out.’ She paused and then continued in an enviably lofty tone. ‘You know, it’s the last thing someone like me wants when they are on their famously character-building travels – to find their parents acting like a couple of prats.’

  You know so much when you are that age.

  ‘I’m not acting like a prat, Tass, I’
m doing what I believe in. And whatever you may think, and despite its causing ructions, I feel very good about it; I do not want to go on those jaunts any more and being truthful should be easy and good, and so far it’s been quite the opposite. What does that tell you about society?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘that I didn’t know already.’

  In the end, I fondly believed, I persuaded her not to call her father on the grounds that he should have as carefree a time as possible. And with a dollop of common sense riding to the rescue, Tassie said she saw the point. Devious of me, but not untruthful. I promised to call her the moment he came home and was about to say ‘I’m sure it will all blow over’ before hanging up, when I realised that I didn’t exactly feel it would. We’d been married long enough to know each other very well – this was no little blip, this had seriously rocked Robert – and me – and the picture of him coming through the door with a suntan, a bright smile and a nice bottle of my favourite perfume was not believable. Given the economics of a world in meltdown, it probably wasn’t the right time to practise truth, but I was dug in now and short of dumping the principle and flying out to him and feeling (I knew myself well enough) a resentful martyr, status must remain in quo.

  It was with an uncomfortable lump somewhere in my solar plexus that I went back to my screen and back to the comfort of Venice’s seamy side. And much dirt there was. The Venetian and Augustinian theologian Paolo Sarpi, who took on the might of the Pope by starting a free church in Venice and removing the city state’s allegiance to Roman Catholicism, said something I took to heart. ‘I never tell a lie, but the truth not to everyone …’ Which summed up pretty well the way, then and now, we all made our way in the world. If it was good enough for a friar and man of God, what hope for a twenty-first-century ordinary woman?

  I found a sinister Goyaesque picture of a woman in late-eighteenth-century Venetian mask and dress, basket over her arm, reaching up to remove the teeth from a hanged man a-swinging on the gibbet. ‘Apparently,’ I told Brando, ‘the best false teeth were made of real human teeth and worth a lot …’ Even Brando had the grace to whimper. If he wanted it included I thought we would probably have to pay a reproduction fee. ‘It’s not unique to Venice, the practice of nicking teeth from the dead, but it’s very Venetian to want to make a huge profit out of it.’