June staggered from her bedroom onto the landing. As overcome by hysteria as she had been at the arrival of the police she had not disrobed and her suit, badly creased, was sadly in disarray. As she had tossed and turned in her distress it had ridden up to her thighs and now remained there, caught up, unfortunately, in the fastenings of her capacious girdle. Her unhappiness at the consequences of Sandra’s mistake and the sense, much fought against, that she, June, might perhaps have put into motion a chain of events which could have undesirable consequences had caused her to take refuge in a large quantity of cognac. On an empty stomach this had proved unwise and June had been copiously sick. The evidence of this was also a sad detriment to her appearance.
Her hair - normally so strictly controlled, firmly permed and heavily sprayed - was also markedly awry. Indeed a good portion of her curls seemed to be slipping down over one eye in such a peculiar way that the possibility of their not being, in fact, attached to her head, couldn’t help but suggest itself to the onlookers. June’s generously applied make-up had travelled unchecked across her visage and the combination of smeared eye shadow and smudged mascara made her look like a victim of a terrible attack. Her lipstick formed a vivid gash across her mouth.
The sum of these parts was not happy and June herself was plainly anything but pleased. As the ardent squeaks and chirrups of her orgasmic daughter emanated down the landing June’s roar of fury rose to meet them. She pointed savagely at Muriel, blissfully enfolded in the bosom of the McKay family, but her anger was inarticulate. It stuck in her throat and choked her until it was expelled with astonishing velocity before a shining stream of vomit which propelled it decoratively onto the opposite landing wall.
✽✽✽
Mary looked through the window of her room into the impenetrable blackness of the garden. She had tried to sleep but lying next to Robert in the bed had been like lying next to a corpse. No vestige of heat had emanated from his body to warm the chill sheets and any heat she managed to generate herself seemed to be sucked away from her into his still, sleeping form. In a far corner of her mind she wondered if she was suffering from some kind of shock. It hadn’t just been the cold which had kept her awake; her mind had been frantic with the incidents and impressions of the day. Robert’s disappearance in the morning had been yet another confirmation in Mary’s mind that he just wasn’t safe. He couldn’t be relied upon to think logically or to act rationally and it was a burden of responsibility she felt increasingly unable to bear. He was plagued by perfectly ridiculous fantasies, insisting that impossible things had happened to him; that a stone statue had come to life in the garden. No amount of reasoning could dissuade him and Mary found herself finally acceding to his theories in a way which made her feel complicit to his madness. Physically, he was more and more of a handful. He couldn’t – or wouldn’t – wash or dress himself or take himself to the toilet. His table manners were unreliable. All in all Mary was coming to the conclusion that the time was fast approaching when she would be unable to care for him herself. As bizarre as it sounded she was seriously considering whether the Oaks might not be a possibility for the son as well as for the mother. Before his stroke Robert would have ridiculed any suggestion that he might someday be unable to make rational decisions, rule his family and control his company, let alone be his own master. Mary was now fully mistress of their financial situation for the first time in all of their married life. It was quite surprisingly comfortable and she knew that money was available for the Oaks or somewhere similar if necessary. Of course Robert would resist all suggestions that he should go into a nursing home but Mary would enlist the help of her children; now they were so confident and well-launched in the world, he would not be able to resist them all.
Mary had given up on sleep and got up out of the icy bed. She’d pulled off the heavy blue counterpane and wrapped it around her before sitting in the blue velvet armchair. She wished that she could get away from the skeletal shell of her husband - go down and make a cup of tea, and find a hot water bottle and fill it from the kettle. But she knew that the lights would be off and she worried about tripping or falling in the dark, or disturbing others, and so she remained huddled in her blanket and allowed her thoughts to roam.
She wondered if Belinda was sleeping. June’s display on the landing had been humiliating indeed. Les’ righteous anger had more than compensated for his daughter’s appalling behaviour and he had been quite masterful in over-ruling of June’s strident if laughable attempts to impose her will on the situation. But still Belinda’s resentment had not been entirely assuaged. As a child she had been mild and forgiving, patient and easily pleased. Mary would have expected Belinda’s anger to have melted at the sight of June’s misery, but the exchange between June and Les seemed to have left her, if not unmoved, still dissatisfied. June had made a complete spectacle of herself, struggling to stand, waving an indicting finger in Muriel’s direction, insisting incoherently that Muriel be removed instantly, that she had no right to be here, and who did she think she was, to impose herself. Muriel had blanched and then become tearful and had finally been escorted downstairs to the small sitting room to be comforted by Miriam. The children, mercifully, had also been removed. Les had paraded up and down the landing shouting about pots calling kettles black, and telling June in no uncertain terms that now she had made her bed she would certainly be made to lie in it, until Thursday at least. Mary had thought him magnificent. June had begged, begged to be taken home, had threatened to drive herself there if Les wouldn’t take her. She had stumbled back into their bedroom and come out again triumphantly clutching their car keys but Les had taken them off her easily, like taking candy off a baby. In the meantime he had turned his attention to Sandra who had emerged sheepishly onto the landing. He had asked her how she dared to show her face amongst decent folks and with children present too, and called her a wanton and a hussy. Sandra had dissolved into tears for the second time that evening. Kevin, sensibly, had remained inside the bedroom. Then, with both his women folk in tears, he had stalked down the stairs, leaving them behind him on the landing. They had clutched one another.
‘Please,’ June had sobbed, ‘please make Daddy give me the keys.’
By this time James had walked Robert through to the bedroom. Heather and Jude had gone to put Starlight to bed. Elliot, after quickly assimilating the reason for the hullabaloo, had retreated downstairs. Ruth, Belinda and herself had remained on the landing, unwilling witnesses to the scene and yet in some way feeling that it was their right to see June get her comeuppance.
Then Mitch had arrived with a bucket of hot water and begun the grisly job of cleaning up. Sandra had taken her mother back into her room. Ruth had gone to find some clean sheets. Mary and Belinda had hugged each other briefly before retiring to their own rooms. Now, Mary considered it quite likely that in view of the day’s events Belinda might suggest the abandonment of the entire holiday if she didn’t receive some encouragement from the rest of the family that all was not lost. On balance Mary felt that on her own account at least there was more to be gained by staying. She wanted her children to observe the deterioration in their father first-hand before she broached the question of the Oaks. Also it was pleasant to have help with him, and distraction - even if today’s distractions had been of an unprecedented kind. The next day was to be Ellie’s birthday; surely they could all make an effort for that?
There were other issues. Young Robert was sullen and solitary and spent far too much time on his computer. It was Mary’s opinion that for a boy the positive influence of a benign father figure was very important - look how things had turned out between Robert and Simon! The ugly and never confessed truth was that Robert had failed Simon in every important respect and Mary wished that there was some way that she could ask Simon to talk over the consequences of this with Elliot. But how could she unearth yet another deeply buried family skeleton? And what further putrid bones might such a discussion itself reveal? It didn’t bear thinking abo
ut; perhaps some things were better left buried. Simon himself was an excellent father - to his sons and his daughter; they clearly idolised him. Rob was now at such an age – he was seventeen – when a son’s love for and trust in his father should naturally begin to evolve into respect and liking between one man and another. From what Mary could see, there was nothing between Rob and Elliot other than mutual irritation. History, she could see, was threatening to repeat itself, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Mary sighed. Down in the hallway, the clock struck four. She wondered if Muriel was sleeping. It had struck Mary as very odd that, of all the people in the house, Muriel had asked for Les on her arrival, rather than Simon, who had spoken to her on the telephone, or Belinda, who was understood to be the hostess, or even Mary herself, who had known her longest. Then, Les’ greeting had been so warm. Mary was sure that he had not expected her and yet his pleasure upon seeing her had been unmistakable. Finally there was the suspicious matter of the dog, which had snarled at them all, been impervious to all friendly approaches, and yet trotted off perfectly happily with Les, for all the world as though they were very well acquainted.
Mary remained seated in her blue velvet chair, enveloped in the blue and white crewel bedspread and pondered the possible explanation for these matters, and presently she began to feel much warmer. With the warmth came a feeling that sleep would come to her. She gathered the bedspread around her and took a last glance out into the night. On the far horizon, the blackness was lightening a little. Ah well, she sighed as she made her way towards the little dressing room and its single bed, another day.
✽✽✽
Mary was not alone in finding sleep a stranger. The baby had been wakeful and once he had managed to settle her Mitch found that he was past sleep. Soon it would be morning anyway. He decided to go down to the kitchen and make himself a cup of tea.
He surveyed the kitchen while he waited for the kettle to boil on the Aga hob. Evidence of the family was everywhere - a cardigan draped over the back of a chair, a book left open on the dresser, somebody’s reading spectacles abandoned on the worktop. He was beginning to know them now; the cast of relative strangers was taking on flesh. The cardigan, he guessed, belonged to the grandma, the book to Ruth, the glasses... he couldn’t place the glasses, yet. But his initial impression - that observing the family would be like watching a play - had been right on the money. Today’s events in fact had borne the hallmarks of outright farce and it would have been all too easy to laugh up his sleeve at it all. The comedic arrival of more and more relations - and those relations! Drippy, gormless and potty by turns - the family posturing, jockeying for position, furtive discussions in hushed voices. And then, in a climax of comedy, the police, for all the world like the key-stone cops!
But somehow, in spite of the comical potential, Mitch couldn’t bring himself to laugh at them. At one time he had found Jude and Heather very funny. Their life-style was shambolic, they were often overrun by guests who came for dinner and stayed a fortnight. They were at the mercy of sudden unappeasable impulses - they must eat crêpes, simply had to have a hot air balloon. Heather’s weird enthusiasms – for liturgical dance, and eastern mysticism – and Jude’s vague, artistic preoccupation which made him forget meetings or even mealtimes or set off in the wrong direction on the M40 to find himself in Birmingham instead of London. Yes, at first – Mitch would admit it – he had been inclined to laugh at them. And his job – he had been told to ‘make himself useful around the place’ – was, by anybody’s standards, so easy. It would have been a cinch to take advantage (many already had), both of their good nature and of the situation. But they were really nice people – sincere and genuinely good – underneath their absurdity, and also (because of their goodness) rather vulnerable. And it was this vulnerability which quashed any urge in Mitch to lampoon them. At the same time it threatened his determination – his need – to retain an appropriate distance, an emotional distance; it made it hard not to care. He had to remind himself, sternly, that, nice as they were, they didn’t owe him anything. He was, when all was said and done, only an employee and they could decide they didn’t need him at any time. He could forget the opportunities to travel – he had skied in St Moritz, been scuba diving off St Lucia and caddied at St Andrews. The chance he had been handed to develop his aptitude for all things gadget - cameras and computers and the mixing desk in the recording studio - would be at an end. He would be turfed out of his little flat above their four-car garage. All of these things would be a loss, but nothing compared to the loss of the sense of belonging he had with Jude and Heather themselves. If he started to care too much, where would that leave him? It was a constant battle he had with himself and the baby was the biggest test of all, sweet, funny, wilful little thing that she was. She was beginning to tug on strings in his heart that he hadn’t known were there.
It was happening here, too, he acknowledged, as he poured boiling water into his cup and put the last meringue on a plate. He couldn’t laugh at the family’s farcical predicament because he saw in them, too, genuine goodness. He saw through the thin veneer of their clannishness to a species of susceptibility. He was beginning to care about them, too, as though his feelings for Jude and Heather and the baby had travelled along their genetic connections. Was that how family worked, he wondered.
He cared about the girl. He fancied her, of course, that went without saying; she was gorgeous, with flirty eyes and a delicious little dimple in her cheek when she smiled. He wasn’t very experienced with girls. There had been the odd brief liaison with a dancer or a stage-hand so he knew the general lie of the land but this could not be like that had been and he didn’t want it to be. She was helpless and sort of lost in a way which cried out to his protective instincts, to his emotional susceptibilities, not his predatory ones. His conversation with her that evening had struck a chord. He was already no fan of Rob McKay – their few encounters in the past had left a sour taste – and the girl was right, he was neither use nor ornament here on this holiday. Mitch wondered now, as he padded down the passageway, across the hall and into the study, whether he might not be able to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion to all parties.
The study was in a terrible state. There were empty glasses, cereal bowls and small plates littered over the surfaces. Sweet and crisp papers were strewn across the floor. The computer had been left on; its offensive screensaver bouncing around the perimeters of the monitor. Mitch took a bite of his meringue and opened Outlook Express. To his horror, in spite of Ellie’s appeals to her better nature and their friendship, the in-box contained a number of emails from Caro who was evidently eager to win Rob’s approval. She commiserated with him on having to stay at this ‘derelict pile’ along with his ‘insane relatives’. In sent mail Mitch read Rob’s account of the day; the arrival of the ‘geriatrics’, the assault by the police squad, the noisy sexual adventures of his cousin which had sent all of the grown-ups into hyperspace, the drunken sickness of his aunt. Rob made it all sound like an episode in a television program. Mitch could tell from Caro’s responses that she hadn’t believed half of it. Then his eye caught the word ‘secret’. The phone message he had overheard had implied a secret and here was Rob asking Caro to tell him what it was.
His opinion of Rob, already low, plummeted further. Brothers shouldn’t betray their sisters. People shouldn’t slag off their relatives, even if they were a bit bizarre. Rob’s derogatory comments about his family and his holiday made Mitch seethe. Some people were so lucky and they just didn’t know it. This boy needed to be taught a lesson and perhaps he would be the one to do it. He connected to the internet and visited a few websites. He printed off some material. Finally he used Rob’s email account to send Caro an email telling her that she was a cow, an ugly cow, and that Rob didn’t want to hear from her again.
Belinda – A Memoir from 1985
Belinda was always tired on Tuesdays; it was her day at the Enquiries window dealing with queues of
people requesting improvements to their houses, demanding repairs, objecting to their rent or lodging complaints about their neighbours. Today she had been held back long after five by a particularly vociferous tenant and as a result she had missed her bus home. She had had to stand in the rain for twenty minutes waiting for the next one. When she stepped off the bus it pulled away behind her through a puddle which had gathered over a blocked drain and splashed the back of her raincoat with filthy water.
Tuesday was always a quiet evening at home because Heather went straight from school to the house of a friend for a quick tea before both girls attended Miss Morton’s Academy of Music, Singing and Dance. Normally, after tea on a Tuesday, Belinda and her Mum would do some baking or she would climb the stairs up to the loft room, the one which had been Simon’s, where she now had her sewing machine and a large work table for her quilting and appliqué night-school projects. But tonight Belinda thought she would rather have a hot bath and an early night. She felt cold and wretched. She couldn’t face Simon’s room tonight.
It would always be Simon’s room no matter how vehemently her parents now referred to it as ‘the work room’. It had been his room from the moment it had been constructed amongst the eaves of the house. He had had his train set up there and his Lego models and, when he got bigger, the boxes of mysterious circuitry and wires and sockets and widgets that he liked to tinker with. Then he was gone, just gone into the night a few days after his eighteenth birthday with his passport and his birth certificate and his savings book and a backpack of clothes. At first they thought he would turn up again a few days later, muddy and hung-over from a rock festival. Or that there would be call from Ruth - staying on at University over the vacation to write her thesis - to say that he’d turned up on her doorstep ravenously hungry but quite unharmed. But there had been nothing. His friends hadn’t seen him or heard from him. There was no sighting of him in any of his old haunts. It was as though he had disappeared off the face of the earth. After a couple of weeks Dad had stamped up the stairs to the attic room, packed away all Simon’s things into cardboard boxes and taken them off to the tip. His clothes and books and records, his files from college, the posters off the walls, even the bed and the furniture had been dismantled and hauled away until there was nothing left at all to show that Simon have ever been there. Mum had wept and wrung her hands and jumped up at every ring on the bell, every passer-by on the pavement, every shrill of the telephone. Belinda found her on several occasions up in the stripped attic room, her head pressed against the roof-light, inconsolable, sobbing, ‘I miss you. I miss you, my little man.’
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