He had better keep the water jug filled. Everyone was getting pissed, fast, Jonathan noted—everyone except Rosanna, who was on what she called ‘a detoxification journey’, and Marie, who sat, a handkerchief in her hand, intermittently wiping something near her eye. She did not look relaxed, but as if she were prepared for flight at any moment.
‘Oh, shut up, Joni,’ PP was saying. ‘Studies have shown you can take exactly this much of Joni Mitchell before you want to kill her.’ PP raised the forefingers of both hands in the air, as if illustrating the measurements of a fish.
Gordie, opposite Marie, was disagreeing with Celia about everything, except that the world was possibly being overrun by Muslims.
‘I’m against fundamentalist Islam—but only fundamentalism, mind you—because of its innate conservatism,’ Gordie said, attempting to explain the nuances of his position. ‘I’m not against Muslims per se.’
‘Oh, I am,’ said Celia. ‘They think we’re infidels. It’s the War of the Roses all over again.’
Jonathan admired Gordie’s restraint. ‘I think you mean the Crusades,’ he said.
‘Whatever war it was. Muslims are always having wars, aren’t they? Screaming and howling on the news, carrying coffins.’
‘Correct,’ said Marie. ‘Wherever they go they cause nothing but trouble.’
‘I read somewhere that in fifty years, ninety per cent of the whole world will be Muslim, even Australia,’ said Rosanna from the far end of the table.
‘It makes you think,’ said Celia.
‘Really? Ninety per cent?’ said Gordie. ‘That figure sounds rather improbable.’
‘It’s got the whiff of a conspiracy theory,’ said Jonathan. ‘Like the where-were-all-the-Jews-when-the-Twin-Towers-fell-down conspiracy.’
‘Mate, that one’s true,’ said Glen. ‘The records show that four thousand Jewish workers who should have been at work on September 11 didn’t show up.’
‘Oh, that’s preposterous!’ said Penny. ‘And anti-Semitic. You should be ashamed of yourself for repeating it.’
Jonathan looked at her with admiration; she had fire and spit, a quality of integrity he had possibly mistaken for vexatiousness.
‘It’s all on the record, Penny,’ Glen said. ‘The only part where there’s no written evidence is why the Israelis did it. One theory is that Israel was in cahoots with the American government to justify the War on Terror.’
Jonathan saw that Glen was drunk, in that he appeared to have melted, in that he had spread out from the outline of himself, his shirt free of the restraint of his pants, his eyes smeared, his gestures smudged. Jonathan glanced at Celia who, clearly, was not going to be of any help. Her tiara of daisies was askew.
‘Who’s for cheese?’ he said. ‘I hereby ban all discussion of politics because I am king of the house.’
‘Can I say one more thing?’ Anna, whose red lipstick had run, did not appear as drunk as the others. Her voice was low, melodic; everyone leaned closer. ‘My best friend Niala is Muslim. Her parents are from Pakistan but she was born in London. During the London bombings she was spat on in a bus.’
Penny’s face had a queer expression; in the flickering candlelight, she looked sunburned, aflame.
‘That’s awful!’ said Cheryl. Jonathan risked a glance; he was not proud of himself. How many kisses in the world were misguided? How many misspent?
‘I held her hand while she cried,’ said Anna. For a moment there was a respectful silence.
‘The fact that some of your best friends are Muslims doesn’t mean anything, sweetheart,’ said Pete. ‘I’m sure Goebbels was a nice man when he was at home. Gadaffi was an absolute whiz in the kitchen. Bin Laden wasn’t much chop, though.’
‘Enough!’ said Jonathan. Anna rewarded him with a moist-eyed look.
‘Can we talk about how many wives we’ll be allowed to have under sharia law?’ said Pete, blundering on. ‘I’m requesting four.’
‘One’s enough, mate. One’s too fucking much,’ said Glen. Pete laughed; a dismal sound.
Penny was struck by how undone Pete looked, how sadly he laughed. He appeared miserable, one of those failed, overweight, middle-aged men he had once so feared becoming. How had she not noticed before? Was it because he was sitting next to Marie, his former mother-in-law, with whom he had shared so many familial tables? For the first time in years they were seated side by side again, allowing Penny to see how young her mother looked and how sadly diminished her former husband appeared beside her. She had just seen—for the first time—that one of Pete’s side teeth was missing: he saw the shock on her face, and quickly moved to cover his mouth with his hand. A broken tooth! He was falling apart!
‘I’m getting it fixed next week,’ he said, as if she had asked. He looked heartbreakingly vulnerable, unveiled as a child, and she realised with horror—with a terrible drunken sense of illumination and certainty—how baffled and alone he was.
She was flooded with remorse, with a dreadful awareness of her own culpability. How stranded he looked, how hapless! She felt his terror, and her own, and a dreadful new certainty that it was not him who was chronically disappointed by life but her. She felt winded, exposed, as if everyone in the whole world had known this long ago—everybody, that was, except her. She looked quickly around the table, but everyone was talking, laughing, drinking. No-one knew, not really, if anyone was happy or sad, if anyone woke with dread in the night. How alone Pete was! How alone they all were in their adult lives, the only ones responsible for their own yearning. No-one knew the most intimate things about her: if she was still taking those anti-depressants the doctor had prescribed two years ago, if she was slowly drinking herself to death. All those years trying to get Pete to go and see a doctor about his depression, when all the while it was her! Not even the red flag of the doctor prescribing antidepressants in the guise of menopause relief for hot flushes had alerted her to her own misery. Was misery too strong a word? She did not know; all she saw—suddenly, terribly, and all at once—were the lies people told themselves, including her. How intricate the lies, how obscuring; the marvellous scaffolding erected around the small, sad facts.
She was too drunk to stand up, but her spirit did; that muffled ghost rose from the table. The smothered thing inside her stood, even if all the while Penny’s body remained tethered to the chair. Her new knowledge lay curdled inside her, the ingloriousness of it. Why did she keep reading books as if she was going to find the one book that would tell her everything she needed to know? Why did she relinquish her desire to make a piece of art of meaning and beauty? She wanted to know why the world was so sad; what her mother’s suffering was for. Who are these people? she wondered, looking around the table. Am I supposed to care about this one, or that? Her eyes moved from face to face; she felt as if she was on the point of some truth, a miraculous clarity, if only she could concentrate hard enough. What was her small life worth, or silly, self-important Celia’s, counting her shoes? What was it all for?
Her eyes travelled to Marie’s face and straight away she saw something was not right. Marie’s head sat at an unnatural angle; a puffiness down one side of her face. Instinctively, drunkenly, Penny stretched out her hand and to her great surprise—the shock of it, her mother’s flesh which might be her own; the flesh she never touched—her mother took her proffered hand, holding fast, as she slowly went down.