Frances had stuffed a double wad of Kleenex up her pants. She could feel the blood seeping through it, trickling on to the driving seat. She drove fast, watching the needle soar up to seventy and stay there. She was going home. Home was where her husband was, where she had her periods. Twenty years of periods. She had never, ever missed one, not even now. There was no traffic on the roads. It was too late (or too early) for fellow motorists. She was a migrating bird, flying back where she belonged, where nature and her instincts dictated, following her biology. Or was she merely running away from Acton? Where in hell could she go but home, at three o’ clock in the morning? She could hardly wander the streets all night. Anyway, she needed Tampax.
She hadn’t planned beyond the Tampax. There was too much else exploding in her mind. She’d already stayed far too long at Ned’s. She should have left as soon as she’d realized her period had started, instead of lingering like that, and blurting out the whole stupid story. She shuddered as she played the scene again – Ned sprawling naked on the lino, with a cat on either side of him, and she upside down on the pillows, sobbing with …
No, she mustn’t think of it. All she wanted was to mop up the wreckage of the night, return to base, start again. Perhaps she wouldn’t stay at home, just camp in the house till morning, steal in, lie low, and be gone again by dawn. She needn’t even go upstairs, just stretch out on the sofa like an uninvited guest. She blinkered herself, so that she could think of nothing but the sofa, a velvet-covered Mecca, with soft cushions and supporting arms. She didn’t put the car away, nor dab at the dark stain on the driving seat. The house was hushed and dark, as she crept towards the front door and was engulfed by the familiar smell of wax polish and high principles. Her shadow groped along the hall, shifting and trembling towards velvet-sofa sleep. Suddenly, another, taller shadow intercepted it.
‘Frances!’ murmured Charles.
She froze. She had never even considered that her husband might be still awake. His voice was home, salvation. Their two shadows fused.
Her face was jammed against his shoulder. She didn’t know if she should tell him, or even how. She couldn’t just announce, ‘My period’s begun.’ Yet she never used the more colloquial terms like ‘the curse’ or ‘coming on’. Charles liked even menstruation to be grammatical, precise. Though this time, she knew he wouldn’t care. The fact itself spelled Mafeking for him, victory, reprieve.
‘Charles,’ she stuttered. Her voice was muffled by his dressing-gown. ‘I’m … er … not pregnant after all.’
He was too well-mannered to gloat, or jubilate. He just held her, tighter, so that she could feel his heart hammering into hers, his motor and machinery still powering her frail life.
‘Happy anniversary!’ he whispered. And, suddenly, he was undoing her zip, dragging her dress down over her hips, pushing her to the floor. She had left Ned’s bed barely half an hour ago, still sticky with his sperm and her blood, and now Charles was repeating the performance, with no preliminaries, without even washing. He never made love to her when she was menstruating, found it far too messy and distasteful. Even if she wanted it herself, she never asked. It would stain the sheets, embarrass both of them. Ned’s sheets were already stained and so was Ned. He hadn’t been embarrassed in the slightest. And here was Charles, equally uninhibited, even more impetuous.
He hadn’t spread a towel on the precious Persian rug. There was an urgency about him, a pleading, grabbing violence. It was a relief to feel him back in her again, large and inexhaustible. Ned had always been too small, too playful, a Peter Pan, U-certificate. But Charles was double X – slamming into her with wild, tearing strokes, crushing her body with his own, clawing her back with the pressure of his nails. And he was no longer silent, but making sounds she had never heard before, battle-cries of triumph and relief. She realized, suddenly, even while her body worshipped him, that he was competing with Ned, re-establishing his sexual rights, his ownership. He did not come at once – just went on stampeding her with pleasure, proving his superiority, his staying power, offering her everything he had and was.
Afterwards, they lay together on the rug, sprawled on top of panting Persian dragons, their feet jammed against Charles’ mother’s priceless cellaret, Frances bleeding into him, shattered and sleepless. Charles fell fast asleep. She could hardly believe it, a man who found even hotel beds uncomfortable and who wore pinstriped pyjamas buttoned to the neck, reclining on the floor, clothed only in his own sweat. He was using sleep as a drug, a palisade, to block out all the facts he couldn’t face, including his own messy, bloody, bellowing, unprecedented sexual act.
Morning was a long time coming. It crept up on them sullenly, with rain. Charles’ eyes groped open, and for one brief, unacknowledged second, she saw terror and embarrassment flick over them, like secret pictures on a broken screen. Then he quickly slipped away from her, and she heard him run the taps, full blast, upstairs; soaping her away in a penitential cleansing rite, washing off her body, her blood, in an anniversary bath.
She stumbled to her feet and retrieved the stained wad of Kleenex, stuffing it back between her legs. She had still not fetched her Tampax, nor even glimpsed the sofa. So, what had she returned for? To be fucked by Charles? She slumped back down again. True, it had been wonderful, burst through all the rules and leapt new barriers, but Charles had already locked away the night like a dangerous aphrodisiac, to be swallowed only in life-and-death emergencies, and with the key in his safe keeping.
The drawing-room looked alien, like somebody else’s house. It seemed to have swelled and stiffened in her absence, all its contents rigid and exalted, lowering down at her, as if she were a scratch upon their stern perfection. She stared around the room – everything so permanent and solid – furniture which had survived the centuries and increased its value at the same time. Stiff-spined chairs glared back at her, brass-footed bureaux pursed their lips, gaunt-eyed ancestors shrugged and turned away. There was no sign of welcome, or even recognition, no joy in her return. The house was always tidy, but at least when she was there, she added little touches to soften it or brighten it, ephemeral, insubstantial things which perished in a day – a bowl of cherries, a vase of fragrant pinks … But flowers and fruit had all been swept away. Now there was only highly-polished emptiness.
The doorbell cut across the vacuum. She started. Ned? No, Ned never wished to set eyes on her again, not after the things he’d said last night. Postman, gasman, Harrods delivery van? She jumped up guiltily. You couldn’t deal with Harrods, sprawled on the floor wearing nothing but a nappy. She pulled on an old raincoat hanging in the passage and sidled towards the door, trying to stop the Kleenex slipping. Mrs Eady was standing on the step, gawping in disbelief at her employer’s bare feet and tangled hair.
‘Oh, so you’re back,’ she said accusingly. ‘Good holiday?’
‘Yes … thank you,’ murmured Frances. ‘You don’t usually come on Saturdays, do you, Mrs Eady?’
‘Not unless I’m asked,’ snapped Mrs Eady. ‘And not even then, unless I’m a fool. Which I must be.’
She was laden with shopping. Frances glimpsed steaks, nectarines, double cream – a Charles-and-Frances shopping list. There were also new potatoes, parsley, peas. God, not peas! She turned away.
‘Brenda’s coming later,’ Mrs Eady announced, plonking her hat on the kitchen table and surrounding it with lemons.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Had Charles shacked up with another girl already, summoned Mrs Eady to lay on a lover’s feast?
‘My daughter – the one that cooks. And don’t say you won’t be needing her, now you’re back. How am I supposed to tell her that, when she lives in Epping and isn’t on the phone?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Eady. I don’t quite understand. I’ve only just returned.’
‘You been out like that?’ asked Mrs Eady, her pale eye fixed on Frances’ unbuttoned raincoat which revealed a lot more than bare feet.
‘Well, no, but …’
‘Oh, I suppose your husband hasn’t told you yet. Well, he’s expecting company tonight and asked me to help him out. My daughter cooks, you see. Fancy stuff. She’s got exams an’ all. Dinner for three, he said.’
‘Three?’ Had Charles invited Ned, arranged some terrible confrontation with him – dinner before their duel? Ridiculous. Couldn’t she think of anything but Ned?
‘The foreign gentleman’s bringing his wife with him. She phoned yesterday – I took the call myself. Couldn’t hear a thing. Dreadful phones they got in Jersey.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Jersey. Oppenheimer. The anniversary dinner with Mr and Mrs Millions. The man she had blamed for the illegitimate child she wasn’t even carrying. No baby, no Ned, no future. But steak and double cream, courtesy of Brenda. Polite cocktail-party conversation, when their whole world was changed, their entire marriage hanging in the balance, calling out for re-negotiation. Charles divided into four, and she left with only a superficial quarter of him, a polished facade, when she needed him whole, real, and undistracted.
Mrs Eady had donned her overall and was already gouging eyes out of potatoes. Frances murmured her excuses and limped upstairs, slowed down by her bottleneck of Kleenex. Charles had locked the bathroom door. She knocked, but got no answer. He hated being disturbed halfway through his toilet, before he was public and immaculate.
‘Charles …’
‘Can’t it wait?’
‘No.’
He was listening to ‘Record Review’ on Radio Three, rival recordings of Bach’s St John Passion. Reluctantly, he turned down the soprano. ‘What, darling?’
‘Charles, you’ve got to cancel the Oppenheimers.’
Silence.
‘Charles, did you hear?’
‘Yes, darling.’
So he was flinging in a few darlings, was he, to celebrate their anniversary.
‘Well, will you do it, or shall I?’
The taps were running now again, at top C, outsinging the soprano.
‘Just a minute, darling. I don’t like discussing things through bathroom doors.’
Oh, a touch of humour now, to spice the darlings. Any tactics, so long as they prevented that crucial conversation, stopped them sitting down and facing each other alone across the table, with no guests and no disguises, not even any music.
She was still waiting for him when he emerged, all traces of the Persian rug purged away. She followed him into his dressing-room, switched off St John.
‘Listen, Charles, we’ve got to be alone today. Our whole marriage is at stake, our future. We can’t just carry on as if nothing’s happened.’
Charles frowned at her reflection in the mirror. ‘Of course not, darling. The Oppenheimers will be gone first thing tomorrow. We’ll discuss it then – all day, if you like.’
‘No, Charles, now. This is real life, not a shareholders’ meeting. We can’t just postpone things, like ‘‘business carried over’’. We’ve got to discuss it while it’s actually happening. I’ve come back. That means something, doesn’t it? If we don’t talk now, I may not be here to talk to.’
Charles dropped his comb. She could see that he was nervous. ‘It’ll be easier tomorrow, Frances, on our own. We can’t really talk with Mrs Eady here.’
‘Well, get rid of her, then. We don’t need her now the Oppenheimers aren’t coming.’
‘They are coming, Frances.’
‘No.’
‘Look, darling, we’ve been over all this already. I told you at Croft’s why I couldn’t put them off, and now it’s even more impossible, the very day they’re travelling. Do be reasonable.’
‘It was entirely different then. I thought I was pregnant. Now I know I’m not.’
‘I should have thought that made it easier.’
‘Oh, really? And what do you know about …?’
‘Look, Frances, I’m sorry about the pregnancy.’
‘Of course you’re not sorry.’
‘What I mean is, I’m sorry you’re sorry.’
‘And who says I am sorry? Have you even bothered to …’
‘Frances, you’re upset. Of course you are. I do understand. It’s rotten luck we can’t be on our own today. But, it is only a day. It’s hardly fair to let your period disrupt everybody else’s plans. The Eadys, the Oppenheimers – they’ve all got lives as well, you know. You can’t just bulldoze everyone because it happens to be day one instead of day thirty-six.’
She winced. He was right. She was trampling over everyone again, being selfish, boorish, totally unreasonable. Ned had yelled at her last night, and now it was Charles’ turn. Somehow, she couldn’t stop herself, or didn’t even want to. Some foiled, frustrated part of her wanted to shout and storm. It was almost desperation. She was like one of those roly-poly Russian dolls, which could only rock and wobble from side to side, since they had no legs or feet. If she couldn’t stand on her own, at least she must keep bouncing back, bumping into everyone. Better than lying down and giving in, letting Brenda and the nectarines take over. She jumped up from the window-seat, and stood face to shoulder with Charles in front of the mirror.
‘Day one, is it? That’s wonderful. Fancy you remembering! We really ought to celebrate. A Day One Party. Death of a Baby Party. Of course we’ll have Oppenheimer. He’d love it. He loves celebrations – you told me so yourself. All this would never have happened without him, anyway. I’ll ring him up this minute and ask him to come early, stay the whole week, if he wants, bring his wife, his sisters, his secretaries, his race-horse trainers – anyone he likes …’
She glimpsed two faces grimacing in the mirror; distant, contorted faces, nothing to do with her and Charles.
‘Frances, you’re hysterical. You’d better go and lie down. This baby thing has obviously upset you.’
‘Oh, no, it hasn’t. I’m thrilled about it! I told you, I want to have a party, a proper one. Not just two guests, two hundred. I refuse to spend my anniversary lying down.’
‘Frances, please. How can we have a party at this late stage? We haven’t even planned it. I’ve only bought steak for three.’
‘Who needs steak? Or grouse, or nectarines, or all those other fancy foods your fancy friends were weaned on? Let them eat bread and cheese for a change. It’ll do them good! We’ll have a bread and cheese party in our dressing-gowns. Wouldn’t that be fun, Charles?’ The smaller face was jeering in the mirror. It couldn’t be hers – she didn’t mock and snarl like that, or wear dirty, faded raincoats beneath lank, unwashed hair. She turned her back on the reflection and strode towards the bedroom. ‘You shift the furniture – we’ll need a hell of a lot of room. I’m going to phone every friend we’ve got!’
She pounced on the prim grey phone by Charles’ bed. ‘Viv? Hello, darling. It’s our wedding anniversary. Yes, a hundred happy years together. We thought we’d have a party. Can you come? No, tonight …’
The tall, contorted man in the mirror had followed her, and was trying to drag the receiver from her hand. She hung on grimly. ‘Sorry, Viv. A bit of interference on the line. No, don’t bring anything – we’re going to keep it simple. Just yourself. Oh, and a few records for dancing. Charles has only got Bach fugues, and we want to let our hair down. Right? See you later, then.’
Frances slammed the phone down, then picked it up immediately, began to dial again. She was squatting on the floor, the blood-stained mac trailing out behind her. ‘Laura? Frances here …’
Charles reached across and cut her off.
‘What’s the matter, darling? Surely you want Clive and Laura to come to our little party?’
‘Frances, I absolutely forbid you to phone Laura. You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re not well.’
‘I’m perfectly well. Never felt better in my life. And Laura would love the Oppenheimers. You know how she worships money.’
‘Frances, you are not to phone her. She’s … got a bug.’
‘A bug? Poor Laura! She’s ill, I ‘m ill – there must be an epidemic. All the more reason to phone her, so we can swap symptoms.’
‘Frances, listen, Laura’s not available. She’s going to the Mirabelle.’
‘The Mirabelle, with a bug? That’s not very kind of her. She’ll give it to all the waiters. How do you know, anyway? You haven’t seen her, have you? Oh, hello, Laura. It’s Frances. You shouldn’t spread your germs about, you know. What? No, Charles told me you were unwell. Have you been in touch with him? Oh, I see, you thought he was sickening. No, he’s not, we’re both fine. In fact, we’re planning a party. Tonight. Yes, it is rather sudden. Yes, a little celebration – how did you guess? Just a minute, Laura. I can’t hear. Charles keeps interrupting. (Be quiet, Charles! Yes, I know they’ve booked a table at the Mirabelle, but Laura’s going to cancel it. She says our party sounds too intriguing to miss. Isn’t that nice?) Laura? Hello? Are you still there? Listen – Charles is thrilled you’re coming. We both are. No, don’t dress up, any old thing will do. See you at eight o’clock, then.’
Eleven o’clock. Blasting trumpets and wailing synthesizers terrorizing the quaking porcelain; guttering candles weeping scarlet wax; hot, half-naked bodies, playing blind man’s buff with the furniture; wine in slow, red rivers, bleeding down a stricken sideboard; peanuts pulverized into priceless Persian rugs.
Charles stood at the door of the drawing-room and watched the party engulf his house. A celebration, that’s what it was called – girls whose names he hardly knew, wounding his parquet with their cruel stiletto heels; neighbours he hated, guzzling his grand cru wines; blue-jeaned Mafia stubbing out their fag-ends on his gasping Sheraton. Frances had scraped the barrel for her guests. At such short notice, she hadn’t had much choice. Their overweight, under-dressed butcher was entangled on the sofa with Brenda Eady’s pink angora breasts. And Mrs Oppenheimer, standing, nervous and neglected, by the window, nibbling on a twiglet, awaiting, no doubt, the caviare and canapés, hot crab vol-au-vents, lobster mousseline – all traditional fare at Parry Jones parties. Frances had kicked tradition in the teeth, sent Charles out to Sainsbury’s for simple bread and cheese, hacked it into chunks, and flung it on the kitchen table with a jar of Branston pickle. Nobody had touched it. Even the steaks and nectarines were still in their cellophane coffins in the fridge. He had tried to compensate with his best malt whisky and the choicest offerings from the Wine Society, but all it had done was embolden their autistic solicitor to blow up Mr Men balloons and burst them with a lighted cigarette, and remove the last of Brenda Eady’s inhibitions, along with her fish-net stockings.
Mrs Eady hadn’t noticed, yet. She was deep in emergency first-aid with floor-cloth and bucket. ‘I said I’d look after three,’ she grumbled, ‘not a houseful. And why say steak, when he means peanuts? It’s like a monkey-house in here!’
Charles turned his back on her dustpanful of nuts. He was busy enough himself, for Christ’s sake, trying to act as host, barman, bouncer and furniture restorer, not to mention nursemaid to his wife. Frances had subsided for the moment, thank God, sprawled in a chair with her legs wide apart, grinning grotesquely at her empty glass. He shuddered as he glanced at her. She was wearing her unwashed hair and some strange athletic garment in purple towelling. He had asked Viv to keep an eye on her, but Viv was deep in the benefits of breast-feeding with their breastless next-door neighbour. He tried to catch her eye.
‘Well, I did get an abscess with my third, but that was only because he bit. What’s the matter, Charles?’
‘Er … nothing.’
How could he yell to Viv across a mob of lurching John Travoltas, would she please muzzle his wife with Valium, or lock her in the lavatory before someone refilled her glass? He couldn’t even reach her. It was impossible to cross that palpitating dance floor, which had once been called a drawing-room. Forty-three revellers loose and whooping in his house, friends of the friends of the friends Frances had telephoned that morning. ‘Yes, of course bring your sister along – ask anyone you like – the more the merrier!’
His face ached with the polite pain of introducing people, yet he was the one who needed an introduction. Everyone else smiling, swilling, junketing – but he a stranger and a gate-crasher at his own party, stiff, cold, sober and alone. There was no one he could count on. Laura had arrived early, on purpose, and found him still minus his shirt and quarrelling with Frances over the merits of disposable paper plates versus the Royal Doulton. Viv had arrived late and smashed a Ch’ien Lung vase. Even his own acquaintances had turned into fools and drunkards. Their local estate agent was on his knees to Amanda Crawford, sporting a burnt-cork moustache and a funny hat, and the asinine Clive was labouring to prove that he knew the difference between the Manhattan Hustle and the hand-jive.
He joined the group by the piano and forced his face into the ruins of a smile. Perhaps he could initiate a little serious conversation about the new production of Idomeneo, with Janet Baker as a ravishing Idamante, and Colin Davis in the pit.
‘And then he said he’d have to take the ovaries as well. He told Dave he’d never seen fibroids like it. Veritable grapefruits. I haemorrhaged for weeks.’
Christ! What hope was there for Mozart, when every bloody female was up to her neck in gynaecologists? It must be Frances’ influence. Wherever she was, the conversation turned to wombs. He’d already escaped from a double prolapse and a hysterectomy.
Laura wasn’t much better. Her line was storks and gooseberry bushes. He could see her now, out of the corner of his eye, flagging him down with a bottle of gin. She was resplendent in a Zandra Rhodes creation, set off with all Clive’s diamonds. His own eternity ring was still on her middle finger, looking puny and insubstantial in comparison with her husband’s mocking sparklers. He could hardly bear to look at her, now that he’d lost her, and if he did, Magda was still entangled with her, both of them mocking and denouncing him, ex-mistress and ex-daughter in a double exposure. Black letters were punching into his head, branding the cold white paper of his mind. The telegram! It would be on its way, by now, scalding over Europe, crash-landing at Westborough. His hands were damp with sweat. Perhaps he shouldn’t have phoned Piroska at all. How would he ever know if …?
No, he mustn’t think about it. Those perjured, pre-paid words must be erased from his mind for ever, the whole business of the telegram consigned to a section of his life marked ‘File Closed’. He was sweating more profusely now, shameful droplets beading on his forehead, as fat and rank as Laura’s diamonds. She’d edged so close, he could smell the faint, intimate odour of her hair.
‘Darling, do tell me what we’re celebrating. I was wondering, actually, whether to bring a little gift along. Blue bootees, for example?’
Charles turned his back and stormed into the kitchen. He’d chill more wine, replenish the ice – anything – to keep away from her. He sneaked a look behind him, to make sure she wasn’t following. But Laura had already turned her charms on the most important guest.
‘I adore these simple little spur-of-the-moment soirées, don’t you, Mr Oppenheimer?’
Oppenheimer murmured something indecipherable through a mouthful of potato crisps. He was gallantly pretending that Golden Wonder’s Onion Flavour were the perfect partner for a Latriciéres-Chambertin 1973.
‘This is a very noble wine. I can highly recommend it. May I get you some?’
‘No thanks, I always stick to gin. Besides, it’s all gone.’
Laura had watched the last bottle disappear into Brenda Eady’s holdall, aided by the butcher’s sleight-of-hand. The Chambertin was the pride of Charles’ cellar – he had been cosseting it for Christmas, two whole crates of it.
‘Well,’ said Oppenheimer, caught between Laura’s gin bottle and the last broken fragments of the crisps. ‘Shall we go and say hello to our hostess? I’ve hardly seen her.’
‘I think she’s keeping what they call a low profile,’ sniped Laura, gesturing to Frances, who had slipped from her chair and was sprawled ignobly on a pile of cushions.
‘Hi!’ giggled Frances, watching Oppenheimer’s calf-skin shoes glide purposefully towards her. She reached out a playful hand and grabbed his ankle. ‘Great party, isn’t it?’
‘How are you, Mrs Parry Jones? I haven’t had a chance to say hello to you.’
‘Call me Fran.’ She kidnapped the other ankle. Five foot ten above her, Oppenheimer tried to keep his balance.
‘It was most gracious of you to offer us hospitality. You have a very beautiful home, if I may say so.’
Frances burped. ‘Think so? I’ve just run away from it. Only came back today. That’s why we’re celebrating. Return of the prodigal.’
She released the ankles and pulled him down towards her on the cushions. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? I ran away to have a baby. It was your fault, really. Except I’m not having it. We’re celebrating that, as well. The death of a foetus. Did you ever have a baby – Your wife, I mean?’
‘Er, no. We …’
‘It’s safer, isn’t it? Babies are such messy things. Disgusting. They ruin everything. Heinrich … may I call you Heinrich?’ She squeezed closer to him, fingered his Victorian cravat-pin. ‘Would you be an angel and fill me up? Charles is such a spoil-sport, he says I’ve had enough. But it’s my party, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, of course. What are you drinking?’
‘Anything.’
Frances was suddenly alone again. She could hear the party roaring all around her, out of key. She stuck out her tongue at a smug bronze figurine posturing on a low table. ‘Hap-py ann-i-vers-ary,’ she whimpered to it. ‘Hap-py, hap-py, hap-py, hap-py, hap-py …’
She wasn’t sure how happy she was. The room was thick and coated, and there seemed to be two of everything, and her glass wouldn’t stay where she put it, and her head had turned into a stereo and was playing dreadful roaring music, and underneath the roar there were little niggly voices imploring her to pull herself together.
‘You’re behaving outrageously,’ they whined.
‘Yes, outrageously!’ she agreed. And giggled.
‘Making a fool of Charles.’ Charles? He was the tall one, with the terrifying grey smile. They must have got it wrong – you couldn’t make a fool of Charles.
The voices were still nagging. ‘Messing up your clothes, swaying on your feet …’
She grinned. Not on her feet – she couldn’t be – she was swaying on the floor. Just one more tiny drink, and then she’d stop. She’d only downed a glass or two, to drown the pain of her period. It was the heaviest one she’d ever had, with cramps.
Heinrich had returned with two glasses. She struggled up to grab one.
‘Oops – sorry!’ Why on earth did the floor have to shift like that, when it was her turn to move?
‘It’s quite all right.’ How could it be all right, when that greedy red stain was gobbling up his pale oyster suit?
‘But I’ve soaked your trousers.’
‘Please don’t mention it.’ No, mustn’t mention anything – Charles had told her that. Not trousers, nor babies, nor Neds, or beds, or wombs, or periods, or Charles, or …
She stroked a sweaty finger down his arm. ‘What do you think of Charles?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Heinrich was mopping his knees with a white silk handkerchief. She wished to God he’d stay still, instead of bobbing around like that. It hurt her head.
‘Charles. Charlie boy. My other half. Do you like him?’
‘Your husband is a very brilliant man.’
‘But do you like him, Heinrich?’
‘Well, yes, of course, I …’
‘You don’t like him, do you? I don’t blame you, actually. I don’t like him much myself.’
‘Mrs Parry Jones, I simply …’
‘Call me Fran. I’m drunk, aren’t I? I’m a rotter. Don’t like my own husband. I use him. I use people all the time. Charles says so. Charles says I use you. Do you think I use you, Heinrich?’
‘No, of course not, Mrs Par …’
‘Oh, listen! They’re playing our tune. Someone’s put on the Anniversary Waltz. Shall we dance?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Parry – Fran … I’m afraid I don’t dance.’
‘Oh, you don’t dance. The richest man in the world and he doesn’t dance. What a shame!’
Oppenheimer had taken two steps backwards. That was stupid. You were meant to move towards people when you danced with them. Frances crawled after him on her hands and knees. ‘I don’t believe you, Heinrich. You just don’t want to dance. But I want to dance with you. Charles says we’ve got to dance. I’ve got to entertain you. That’s why I’m here. You’re his most important client and … Oh, please don’t go away.’
She pulled herself up, using his leg as a lever, and then laid her head against his shoulder. Except his shoulder wasn’t there. Only a sort of awkward gap between them, which made it impossible to waltz, let alone stand up. And suddenly, the rhythm had changed and she had swapped partners. They must be doing a Paul Jones, because Heinrich had disappeared and the tall, terrifying one had grabbed her, with the smile. The smile was cutting her to pieces and the sharp, splintered voice had crashed into the music and was spinning at the wrong speed on the dizzy turntable inside her head. ‘Go away, Charles, I’m teaching Heinrich to dance.’
And now there was Viv, vast and rustling in puke-green taffeta, wanting to waltz with her as well. They were tugging her in two – the stiff, steely one, yanking at her right side, and the soft, flabby one lungeing at her left. It felt strange, as if one leg were shorter than the other.
‘No, Viv, I don’t want to dance with you, I want to dance with Heinrich. Let me go, Viv, I don’t want to go upstairs …’
When Charles came down again, Laura was draped across the banisters. ‘Frances unwell, darling? A touch of morning sickness, I suppose. Or is it that bug you said I had?’
He stared past her sequins at the wreckage of his house. The Sex Pistols had kidnapped his outraged stereo; retching ashtrays were sicking up their contents on the pale wild-silk upholstery; a fourteen-stone bruiser was standing on the sideboard, looping multi-coloured streamers from the antique chandelier.
‘Off the sofa, everyone – we need more room. Shove that table back. Wow, mind the wine!’
Charles groaned and turned away. He could see Oppenheimer, like some silent portrait of a cursed and hunted ancestor, cowering in the shelter of a tallboy, pale and wary, glancing at his watch.
How, in God’s name, could he turf out forty-three barbarians, some of whom he didn’t even know; how ensure his most respected client a decent night’s sleep, before a crucial flight to Bogota? It wasn’t even midnight. The party might rollick on for hours, yet. Drinking on empty stomachs had made everybody reckless; last trains or morning church or baby-sitters, all conveniently forgotten. There were not even any clocks. Frances had removed them from the whole of the downstairs area. It was another of her crazy, new-wave whims, some Rousseau-esque rubbish she had picked up at Acton, along with her cave-man hairstyle and tomboy clothes. Clocks killed spontaneity and natural body rhythms – or so guru Frances claimed. Those she couldn’t hide, she had castrated, by insisting he remove their pendulums. Even his long-case clock was neutered now. God Almighty! A month or two ago, he would never have allowed her to dictate to him like this, mess around with expensive fragile mechanisms, in the name of some mumbo-jumbo mysticism. It was proof that he was weakening. Yet now she wasn’t pregnant, he felt he had to humour her, indulge her, even in absurdities. He couldn’t bear to lose her, not a second time.
Besides, it unnerved him, somehow, to know that she had never liked his clocks. Why hadn’t she told him so before? In all the sixteen years they’d been chiming and pealing in what he saw as gloriously conformist harmony, she had been gritting her teeth, clenching her fists, longing for silence, or discord, or some millennial myth of sun-dial randomness. And he hadn’t even known.
So, tonight, he had conspired with her in silencing his clocks, as if a single evening could compensate for all those jangling, booming years. Frightening, really, to see how easily their hands and pendulums surrendered, as if he himself had been muzzled or unstrung.
It hadn’t paid. He’d given way to irrationality, and now his rule and territory were overrun, his drawing-room under siege. It was time to take a stand. His clocks must be his allies in the return to order. If he replaced or re-hung them all, their so-called guests might take a hint and go. It was nineteen minutes to midnight. Fifteen clocks, striking twelve times each, could hardly be ignored. Once he’d boomed and chimed them off the premises, he’d be left only with the Oppenheimers, and they were more amenable. He’d bundle Mrs off to bed with a mug of charm and Ovaltine, and woo Heinrich with his strongest five-star cognac, and a man-to-man apology (wife unwell, women’s troubles, hormones playing up). Then, with any luck, bed and oblivion until the morning plane.
He fetched a screwdriver from the kitchen drawer, concealed it in his pocket. Mrs Eady was scraping squashed piccalilli from the hall rug.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Parry Jones, but if you call this a quiet little dinner for three, then I’m the Duke of Kent.’
He’d start with the cuckoo clock, since it was nearest him, in the hall. Frances had been unable to remove it, so she had gagged and stifled it, instead. It was one of his favourites, a collector’s piece with its carved acanthus leaves and early fusee movement. The cuckoo itself was hand-painted, with two-tone grey wings and a speckled breast, every detail perfect. He hated it to be out of action, time stopped arbitrarily at six o’ clock. He turned it round and removed the backplate. Mercifully, he was almost alone. The hall was too dark and chilly for most of the guests.
The little spring door burst open and the cuckoo bowed its head and flapped its wings, as if in jubilation at its reprieve.
‘Cuckoo-oo!’ it whooped, prematurely.
‘Not yet,’ mouthed Charles, inserting the screwdriver into a delicate brass pawl. It was only eleven forty-six, for Christ’s sake, and he didn’t want anyone alerted until his grand finale at midnight.
‘Cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo,’ cheered the unabashed yellow beak, dipping up and down, up and down, wooden wings flapping. Charles slammed his hand over its mouth, as he had done with Frances in the bedroom, when she kept struggling up and asking him to dance. The wretched bird was equally perverse. Its beak jabbed up and down against his palm, the cuckoo-oos spilling through it and tumbling out across the hall, rallying all the guests. ‘Cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo …’
‘Oh, how lovely!’ cried Amanda Crawford. ‘A cuckoo clock!’
‘A drunken cuckoo clock,’ corrected Laura. ‘Don’t they say pets take after their owners?’ she added, sotto voce.
Charles was using his hanky as a gag, while he tried desperately to release the jammed mechanism. But he couldn’t halt the cuckoo-oos, only made them hoarser.
‘For God’s sake, stop,’ he muttered.
The cuckoo ignored him. So did all the guests, who were thronging into the hall, as if to attend a cabaret, egging the cuckoo on with cheers and catcalls.
‘Pretty Polly, pretty Polly!’
‘It’s gone cuckoo – ha ha!’
‘At the third stroke, it will be …’
The cuckoo was merciless. It had even woken Frances, who had staggered to the top of the stairs and was gazing down at the heaving, seething circus in the hall below. Laura had started cuckooing herself, and now all the mob was joining in, shouting out in unison, ‘Cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo …’
Yellow beak and speckled chest flashed up and down, up and down, as if conducting a massed chorus. How could such a tiny thing resound like that? Forty-three human throats were now outshouting it, but Charles could hear the bird above them all. However hard he struggled, he couldn’t silence it – his screwdriver was impotent. He was suffocating in hot, sweaty bodies; elbows jammed into his side, flailing hands grabbing at the clock. The whole panting, braying herd had hemmed him in. He could smell their cheap scent, their whisky breaths, their reeking underarms. Their throats were open scarlet traps, devouring him and jeering; ‘cuckoo, cuckoo’ mocking in his ears, Laura as their ring-leader.
He grabbed the bird by the neck and wrenched it out. There was a sudden snapping sound as the metal rod broke off, and the bird came away in his hand, mute and mangled, wings rigid now, beak silent. The broken mechanism whirred on for a moment, and then ran down into a final, gasping wheeze. As if in sympathy, the whole house held its breath. Every guest stood motionless. Even Frances had stopped whimpering on the landing. The silence was oppressive, ten foot thick. Suddenly, she lurched forward and fell halfway down the stairs. Charles made a move towards her; the tiny wooden corpse still clutched tight in his hand.
‘Murderer,’ she shouted. ‘Bloody murderer!’