Childish Things

by Robin Jenkins

  They were very enthusiastic when they heard that I had had lunch with Linda.

  ‘Gee, Grandad, that was great. You know, her films have become a cult.’

  ‘Is her place as beautiful as they say?’

  ‘Did you meet Morland? Lots of people would like to meet her.’

  ‘Will you be going back, Grandad?’

  ‘Could you get us invited? It would be fabulous if you could.’

  ‘She’s been married five times. Do you think she’s got her eye on you for her sixth?’

  All that could have been parried with a few witty rejoinders, if only they hadn’t spoken with absolutely no humour. They were as serious as brain surgeons during an operation.

  Later, I was resting in my room when I heard the telephone ring. Madge answered it. Soon she was knocking on my door. ‘Dad, it’s for you. Mrs Birkenberger.’

  I got off the bed.

  ‘Take it in Midge’s room, Dad. It’s more private.’

  In Midge’s room there were no chairs, just cushions on the floor. I sat cross-legged, like Buddha. Posters showing famous pop stars covered the walls. As I picked up the telephone, a memory of childhood came into my mind. A neighbour had given me a black tin box containing marbles; it had belonged to her son, who had recently died. Instead of the coloured clay marbles that I had expected and that I would have been happy to see, for I couldn’t afford even those, cheap though they were, there before my eyes were dozens of beautiful glassies, as we called them, with whirls and whorls of brilliant colours. It was a treasure. Now my hands were shaking as they had been then, as if I was about to open another black box.

  ‘Hello, Linda,’ I said. ‘How pleasant to hear from you again. I hope you’re remembering you’ve to present the Cup tomorrow.’

  ‘What cup?’

  ‘The Birkenberger Cup. A tournament for the over-70s. Tomorrow. I’m thought to have a good chance of winning.’

  She laughed. ‘In that case, Professor, it will be an extra pleasure to present it. I’m afraid I had forgotten all about it. What I’m phoning for is to ask you and your daughter and her husband to come to dinner tonight.’

  It was another black box, full of marvels. ‘For myself, Linda, I’ll be delighted to come.’

  ‘Go and ask them.’

  ‘Yes, of course, but I’m sure they’ll be delighted too.’

  ‘There will be only the four of us.’

  I rushed into the sitting-room.

  ‘She wants us to go to dinner tonight,’ I cried.

  ‘Us?’ said Madge.

  ‘Yes, you, Madge, Frank, and me.’

  ‘At her house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s not giving us much notice, is she?’

  ‘Never mind that, honey,’ cried Frank. ‘Go and tell the lady that we’re honoured by the invitation.’

  Madge said nothing, but looked sour.

  I hurried back to the telephone. ‘We’re all delighted to accept, Linda.’

  ‘Good. Dress informal. Seven-thirty.’

  I returned to the sitting-room.

  Eyes closed, Frank was blissfully imagining the many opportunities he would have to bring up the subject of the account.

  It was as well his eyes were closed so that he couldn’t see Madge’s expression: it was how Delilah must have looked when she picked up the razor.

  ‘The arrogant old bitch,’ she said.

  Frank’s eyes snapped open. ‘What do you mean, honey?’ he wailed.

  ‘She thinks everybody will jump when she gives the word.’

  When $20,000,000 gave the word.

  ‘But, honey, you said you’d go.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘But you didn’t say you wouldn’t go.’

  ‘You must go, Madge,’ I said, sternly. ‘I’ve accepted on your behalf

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad. I want to tell that fat old cow what I think of her.’

  Frank was bewildered. What was the Lord up to? He had melted Madge’s obduracy but seemed at the same time to have put some sinister intention in her mind.

  I had the same fear. ‘I’d rather you didn’t go, Madge, if you intend to make a scene. Remember, Frank’s career could be at stake.’

  ‘So it could, honey,’ said Frank.

  Madge then looked shifty and, dear God, was more than ever like her mother, who had never looked shifty in her life.

  ‘Is that what you both think of me?’ she asked haughtily. ‘I don’t know how to behave myself as a guest in a house that cost three million?’

  ‘It’s worth more than that now,’ said Frank wistfully.

  9

  Frank could not have been more excited if it had been the Governor of the Bank of Heaven that he was going to visit. What jacket, what bow tie, what pants, what shoes should he wear? Should he take with him his diplomas, certificates, and testimonials? At what point, with what approach, should he bring up the subject of the Account? Now and then amidst his babbling he would lapse into a dwam, with a dull sad look in his eyes, as if a sackful of dollars had fallen on him from a great height.

  Was he in trouble at the bank? Had he committed some blunder by which a few million had been lost? Had his employers told him that he had reached the limits of his money-making capacity and could expect no further promotion? Unless, of course, he won the patronage of some rich stockholder such as Mrs Birkenberger.

  Madge wore a black dress, bought, she reminded me, to mourn her mother. Her handbag was also black. In it, her smile hinted, could be a gun with which she intended to assassinate her hostess. That was an absurd fantasy on my part and yet, here in California, guns of all kinds could be bought in pawn-shops.

  We set out shortly after seven, Frank driving the Oldsmobile. Madge sat beside him. I was in the back. It was a half-hour’s journey: in California almost next door.

  The evening was warm and pleasant. In Lunderston it would be three in the morning, and probably dull, cold, and wet. How were they all getting on in my absence? As well as they did when I was there. Already I would not be missed. People were too content with their own stay-at-home existences to envy any traveller. It would be the same when I was dead and gone for good.

  I remembered Kate and sighed.

  ‘What’s the matter, Dad?’ asked Madge. ‘You’re the guest of honour, remember. So no sulking, please.’

  ‘When did I ever sulk?’

  ‘Every time you didn’t get your own way.’

  I pretended she meant it as a joke, and let it pass.

  ‘We know she’s half Mexican,’ said Madge, ‘but what’s the other half? No one knows.’

  ‘That’s no one’s business but hers,’ said Frank manfully.

  ‘Isn’t it awful how films and television have made people with tiny talents rich and famous? Don’t you agree, Dad?’

  I had to. She had heard me say it often.

  ‘Of course her boobs were never tiny, or her ass.’

  ‘If you’re going to be vulgar, Madge,’ I said, ‘at least be honest about it. “Arse” is the word, not “ass”.’

  Madge laughed. ‘ “Arse” sounds more like it. I wonder how many men she’s had in her bed. Fifty? A hundred?’

  ‘Please don’t talk like that, honey,’ said Frank.

  ‘And what about the young studs they say she hires? It’s bad enough a man paying for sex, it’s a lot worse a woman doing it, especially if she’s old and ought to be past it.’

  All passion spent, as Milton had put it. But, if it applied to Linda, it must also apply to me.

  ‘To tell you the truth,’ said Madge, ‘I’m more interested in her housekeeper, the murderess.’

  ‘But, honey, haven’t I heard you say she was right to shoot him? Didn’t you say that, if anyone raped Midge, you’d shoot him?’

  That silenced Madge for the rest of the journey.

  The gates opened mysteriously as we approached. We drove through the grounds.r />
  The house and garden, Frank reminded us, had been used many years ago in the film Lost Souls, in which Linda Blossom had starred. It had been shown on television recently. The scene in which she had walked among these statues and bushes with the dead baby in her arms was terrific.

  ‘Isn’t it odd,’ said Madge, ‘that in spite of all those marriages she’s never had any children?’

  ‘It never pleased the good Lord to make her fruitful,’ said Frank.

  ‘It pleased Him to make her very rich.’

  ‘Isn’t she to be pitied, having all that money and yet never knowing the joy of motherhood?’

  ‘What joy? She’s to be envied.’

  ‘You don’t mean that, honey.’

  ‘It’s disgraceful that a woman like her should own a place like this. No wonder there are Communists.’

  Our hostess came down the terrace steps to greet us. She wore a white silk cheongsam, suitable for a shapely girl of 17, not a woman of 70 with bulges. It was so tight round her hips and bosom that she shuffled and gasped. A comb glittered in her hair. Were there diamonds? Her face was white with powder, her mouth as red as the dragon on her dress. She was grotesque and yet, it seemed to me, beautiful.

  It would have been absurd for me, at my age and still grieving for Kate, to be falling in love. Yet I had a warm feeling for her, which could have been affection.

  She smiled graciously at Frank’s fawning, was amused by Madge’s haughtiness, and, to my annoyance, addressed me as ‘Mr Casaubon’, the sexless clergyman in Middlemarch.

  We sat on the terrace and the Chinese servant Chung took our orders for drinks. I wondered again, was he a eunuch? Once, in a film set in ancient Greece, Linda had been part princess and part goddess, with eunuchs to soap her in her bath. In the script, there had been lines satirical of their inability to give a woman another kind of pleasure and she had delivered them with an earthy gusto unbefitting her divinity. As a consequence, the film had been an international box-office success. She had also, I recalled, starred in a film as an Eastern princess rescued from the clutches of a lecherous sheik by a band of intrepid catamites.

  Madge wanted only mineral water to drink, Frank Coca-Cola. I asked for scotch and was given the finest I had ever tasted. In golf clubs all over Scotland, connoisseurs speak with reverence of whiskies so rare that only Texan oilmen and Arab princes could afford them. Here was such a one. Not even Linda’s persistence in calling me Mr Casaubon could spoil its savour.

  Madge and Frank must have thought she was drunkenly confusing me with one of her former lovers.

  Even Madge was impressed by the display of opulence and good taste shown in the arrangements for the meal. The dishes were made in Sèvres. Vases of silver contained roses. The place mats had paintings by Vèlazquez. The table itself was of massive mahogany and the cloth covering it of finest damask. As for the food and drink, they were excellent. For all this, I was sure, the credit should go to Morland. Linda’s own contribution was the background music, an excruciating mixture of banality and sentimentality, perpetrated by an aged bewigged crooner who had made millions out of it. Jerry was a personal friend, said Linda. She loved his singing.

  Tactfully, I praised it.

  ‘Don’t be hypcritical, Dad,’ said Madge. ‘You hate pop music. When Jean and I were children, you wouldn’t let us listen to it.’

  I could have wrung her neck. She was making me out to be like Mr Casaubon, who also would have hated pop music.

  ‘Well,’ I said, feebly, ‘I have to say, much of it does seem rather shallow and insincere, especially when the theme is love.’

  Frank tried to help. ‘Dad prefers the love songs of Robbie Burns. He’s very good at singing them.’

  ‘I didn’t know you could sing, Mr Casaubon,’ said Linda.

  ‘In an amateurish kind of way,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll have to sing for me.’

  ‘He plays the piano too,’ said Frank.

  ‘Not to mention the bagpipes,’ I said ironically.

  ‘Don’t boast, Dad,’ said Madge. ‘When you’ve had too much to drink, you always start boasting.’

  Linda decided to defend me. Unfortunately, she chose to do it offensively. Perhaps she didn’t think she was being offensive; she thought she was being honest.

  ‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t expect you’ve got anything to boast about, Mrs Sourpuss. Or this pious prick either.’

  She meant Frank, but had she said ‘prick’? Could it have been ‘prig’? But Americans, like the Scots, rarely used that word. It was peculiar to the English, who had so many of them. To be fair, it was as good a description of Frank as any, and Mrs Sourpuss suited Madge.

  ‘The world’s full of jealous bastards,’ said Linda. ‘Look at all the garbage they’ve dug up about me, most of it lies. Why? Because I won the jackpot and they got peanuts.’

  ‘Such people are not true Americans,’ said Frank solemnly. ‘Because of your talents your films were successful, so it was only right and proper that you should have been richly rewarded.’

  Linda laughed. ‘What talents, for Chrissake? A pair of big tits, a cute ass, and a laugh that made the guys want to screw me and the dames want to scratch my eyes out.’

  After the meal, on our way out of the dining-room, Madge whispered to me, ‘Look out, Dad. She’s laughing at you all the time. She thinks you’re an impostor.’

  ‘An impostor? In what way an impostor?’

  ‘Putting on airs as if you were as rich as her, when all you’ve got is a headmaster’s pension.’

  ‘Is money all that matters?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Dad. Of course it is. People like her have got lots of hangers-on.’

  Yes, but I wasn’t just any ordinary hanger-on. Was I not Mr Casaubon?

  I went over to the piano and began to amuse myself by playing a medley of Burns’s songs.

  Linda was sitting beside Frank on a sofa. He was talking seriously. This, at last, was his opportunity. She seemed to be paying heed.

  Madge, seated apart, smiled and scowled in turns. Such was her mood the scowls became her, the smiles didn’t.

  ‘Sing me a love-song by Robbie Burns, Mr Casaubon,’ salled Linda.

  ‘I doubt if Mr Casaubon ever heard of Robert Burns.’

  ‘Sing one anyway.’

  ‘Very well. “Ae Fond Kiss” it shall be.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Dad,’ said Madge, ‘remember where you are.’

  She meant in plutocratic California, where the songs of an Ayrshire farmer who had made not a penny out of them were hardly likely to be appreciated.

  ‘If I were among the Inuits of Canada or the Tamils of Southern India, this song would not be out of place. Its appeal is universal.’

  I had drunk just the right amount to be able to sing with the right degree of pathos that most moving song of lost love.

  As I sang, I recalled that the love affair that had inspired the song, that between Burns and his Clarinda, alias Mrs McIlhose, respectable Edinburgh housewife, had not lasted long and had elements of comedy in it.

  My mood therefore was more ironic than mawkish. So I was astonished when suddenly I was overwhelmed by a great sadness. My fingers on the keys stopped, my voice faltered. I was in tears.

  There was silence.

  ‘I warned you, Dad,’ said Madge. ‘You’ve drunk too much.’

  ‘He’s thinking of your mother, you dumb bitch,’ cried Linda.

  So I was, and of my own mother, dead almost 50 years. The wrongs I had done them, never now to be remedied, would fester in my soul until I died. But these tears were not only of guilt, grief caused them too, and a sense of my own inadequacy.

  Linda brought to me a glass of Drambuie. In her eyes I could see that she did indeed regard me as an impostor, but of a more interesting kind than she had supposed.

  ‘Thank you, Linda,’ I said. ‘Sorry about that. Don’t know what came over me.’

  ‘I know. I
t happens to me often.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t feel like singing. Another time perhaps.’

  ‘Sure, another time. What I heard was beautiful.’ She bent and kissed me on the cheek.

  We left about an hour later. Linda saw us off. She put her head into the car. ‘Make sure you win the Cup tomorrow.’

  ‘Knowing that you are to present it will make me try all the harder.’

  She laughed, raucous as a peacock.

  We heard her all the way to the gates.

  ‘What a dreadful woman,’ said Madge, but she wasn’t so sure now.

  ‘She listened to me,’ said Frank, ‘and asked some very pertinent questions.’

  ‘She’s senile,’ said Madge. ‘Look how she kept calling Dad Mr Casaubon.’

  ‘I wonder who Mr Casaubon was. Sounds like a Frenchman. Do you know, Dad?’

  It was Linda’s secret and mine. ‘I think it was just a little joke on her part.’

  ‘A silly little joke,’ said Madge.

  So silly that once or twice I had been on the point of retaliating by calling her Dorothea, for I was no more like Casaubon than she was like Dorothea.

  It happens to me often, she had said. What had she meant? Did she too have terrifying moments of guilt, grief, and inadequacy?

  Perhaps, if our friendship ripened, we could help each other to face the truth and be happy in spite of it, in our final days.

  10

  Only 15 took part in the over-70s competition for the Birkenberger Cup. There had been 18 names on the sheet but two had to withdraw because their legs, literally, had let them down, and the third had expired in the interim, while practising putting on the carpet at home. Jests were made on the subject of old Silas’s last putt, but there was a minute’s silence on the first tee in his honour, during which the remaining contestants, including myself, wondered when the Great Starter in the sky would call out their names.

  It was a stroke competition. Every player who managed to complete the round would deduct his handicap from his score and the result would be what counted. Mine was the lowest handicap at eight. The highest was 30. That meant I had to give starts, as it were, of up to 22 strokes. Usually this would have been almost impossible, but here those with the highest handicaps were so frail that their electric carts were really ambulances. Small wonder, therefore, that the event was a source of wisecracks. It would have been scrapped from the calendar years ago but for fear of offending the patroness who happened also to be the landlady.