Tim and Ma had another squabble, so public, out on the terrace, and so noisy that yet again I was sickened by the gaudy thread of exhibitionism which flashed through almost all their behaviour together. Just as they would fondle and even kiss each other not merely in the house and on the terrace but also in restaurants and cafés or walking by the lake, so too they would savage each other with an equal craving to be heard and seen.
Bob and I were once again upstairs in my room, this time playing not chess but bezique (‘You’ve just got to face it,’ Bob had said, ‘you’re not up to chess’) when we heard the voices. ‘Oh, lord,’ Bob said, ‘not again! What will those two biddies next door think?’
‘They’ll think what they must have been thinking for a long time.’
Loud and clear, I could hear Tim’s: ‘ You stupid cunt!’, followed by Ma’s: ‘How dare you speak to me like that! How dare you!’
I put my hands over my ears. ‘What I can’t bear is the mess,’ I said. ‘Wherever Ma goes and whatever she does, there has to be mess. Day after day Maria and Violetta tidy up, and day after day she turns eveiything into a mess again.’ I was thinking of the bathing towel which, returning from the hotel swimming pool, she would abandon over a chair in the hall; of the shoes which she would kick off on the terrace and then forget; of the cigarette-ash scattered over the parquet and the cigarettes stubbed out in teacups or saucers. I was also thinking of the emotional mess in which she lived, passion and hate and jealousy slopping out in all directions.
‘Delenda est,’ Bob said, fanning his cards. His tone was matter-of-fact. He might have been talking of the putting down of a cat or a dog. ‘But how? There’s the car idea. Or there’s poison. How about some poisoned chocolates? She’s always guzzling chocolates.’ He began to tell me of a recent murder case, in which a poisoned chocolate had been the means chosen by a retired army officer to murder his neighbour. But how was the murderer to ensure that his victim ate that particular chocolate and no other? The murderer had held it out: ‘ Excuse fingers,’ he had said. ‘With your mother you wouldn’t have that problem. Given a box of chocolates, she could be relied on to demolish the lot.’ He picked up his cards again. He played one. ‘ Oxalic acid,’ he said. ‘That would be a possibility. Thar s what’s used in that novel I’ve been reading – Death of My Aunt. The best thing, of course, would be to give her an injection of insulin. That would leave no traces. But how would we get hold of it?’
Was he joking? Was he being serious? I could not be sure.
Certainly he must have been joking when he went on to speak about the possibility of pushing Ma into the huge oven in the antiquated kitchen and roasting her – ‘It would be like the witch in Hansel and Gretel – but think of the pong!’
When we eventually went downstairs for dinner, Tim had vanished and Ma was slumped on the sofa, legs up, with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth and nose.
‘Whars up?’ I asked, although I knew perfectly well. ‘Oh, Tim’s just been horrid to me, perfectly horrid.’ She gave a small, choking sob into the handkerchief and then put it down in her lap, before stretching out for her glass of neat gin on the rocks. ‘ Why does he have to be so horrid to me?’ she demanded. ‘I do so much for him, I constantly spend money on him.’
‘Perhaps it would be better if you did less and spent less.’
‘It’s easy for you to say that! If I weren’t so generous, he’d just walk out on me. That Platz creature telephoned from Rome this afternoon. I couldn’t help overhearing. Of course he’s trying to lure him away. How am I supposed to compete with a millionaire film producer?’
‘People say his career is on the skids,’ Bob interjected. Ma glared at him over her upraised glass. ‘Would you mind not
butting in? We’re discussing a purely – a purely f-f-familiable matter.’ It was then, as she ludicrously stumbled over the non-existent
word, that I realised that that gin was not the first, there had been
many before it.
I stooped and began to pick up the sheets of the Daily Sketch
littered around her.
‘I do wish you’d find him,’ Ma said in a fretful voice, close to
tears.
‘Oh, I expect he’ll be back for dinner. He’s unlikely to miss that.’
‘Don’t, don’t be so utterly heartless!’ Ma wailed. ‘In his present
mood, he could do anything.’
I heard a sound in the hall.
‘He’s back,’ I said.
Ma jumped to her feet. ‘ Tim! Tim! Is that you? Oh, darling, I
was so worried – so upset …’
Bob looked over to me.
Then, for the first time, I really thought that I could kill her;
and really hoped that Bob, who would do it so much more efficiently
and resourcefully, would kill her for me.