Not the End of the World

by Kate Atkinson

  Occasionally Meredith would check on how Fletcher was doing with Lester Goldman. Each time she looked Lester was chewing on his cigar while Fletcher pitched and tossed plots at him like a lunatic putting on a one-man show. Looking at Fletcher amongst all these people, she felt an odd twitch in her heart, not so much love as fear.

  Someone claiming to be Fiddy’s husband splashed more wine into Meredith’s glass. He was called something doglike and monosyllabic that Meredith immediately forgot (Sam? Max?) and tried to maneuver her out into the conservatory, apparently with the intention of having sex with her amongst the desiccated maidenhair ferns, and was only discouraged from this albeit rather halfhearted pursuit by being suddenly attacked by three small children. “Ankle-biters,” he snarled at them and shouted for the nanny. This nanny (the oddly named Missy) efficiently marshaled the children and steered them out of the conservatory, although not before giving Fiddy’s husband a disparaging look as if he was a particularly badly behaved five-year-old boy.

  “Arietty, Hugo, and little Nell,” he said to Meredith, once Missy had gone, “fantastic kids.”

  Fiddy’s husband spotted someone important foraging at the buffet table and made a hasty exit. Meredith sat down on a rusted cast-iron chair. For the first time in her life she wanted a cigarette. She couldn’t wait to get out of this town, out of this deadbeat country. Slowly, like something tugging at her consciousness, she grew aware that she was not alone in the conservatory. In a corner, half hidden by a limp and unfruitful grapevine, a woman was sitting in a chair, one of those big basket ones with a peacock back, so that the imperial impression she gave was reinforced. With her lacquered black hair arranged in an intricate style, her rouge-reddened cheeks, and her beady black eyes, she had the air of a Chinese dowager empress.

  The woman was dressed in a very peculiar fashion, even for this part of London—a cocktail dress in an emerald raw silk that looked as if it dated from the early sixties, and over it the oddest garment that Meredith had ever seen. It was not so much a cloak as a cape and was made from some weird material. From a distance it looked like feathers, iridescent green, plucked from hundreds of small birds or butterflies, yet, closer to, the feathers seemed more like scales—an exotic lizard or an Amazonian snake. The odd thing was that the more Meredith looked at them the more difficult they were to see.

  “Merle,” this lamian figure said, in a low, almost guttural voice, “Merle Goldman, Lester’s wife.” She extended a hand, which Meredith took reluctantly. The skin on Merle Goldman’s face was stretched tautly across the bones, shiny and papery, as if she’d undergone a hundred face-lifts. But when she raised her hand to shake Meredith’s and the sleeve of the emerald dress fell away, she revealed an ancient arm, brownish and simian, striated with wrinkles and splashed with liver spots. Meredith was reminded of a photograph she had once seen of a mummified Inca sacrifice. She felt Merle’s red talons scratching her skin as they shook hands and smelled her breath with its strange scent—sickly sweet like embalming fluid. Meredith found old people disturbing even at a distance, but close-up she felt that she could see not only the skull beneath Merle Goldman’s skin but also the ropy sinews, the leaky blood vessels, the lampblack lungs, the creaky ancient pump of a heart. She gave a little shiver of horror and Merle croaked with laughter. “You think you’ll live forever, honey?”

  It was odd because Meredith was sure that she had spent no more than a few minutes with Merle in Fiddy Ross’s conservatory and yet afterwards she was left with the impression that she had spent hours listening to an outlandish fiction that Merle Goldman claimed to be her life story, a tale which afterwards would disintegrate into a thousand and one half-forgotten shards that Meredith could not piece together again no matter how hard she tried. All she knew was that Merle’s life had begun a long time ago somewhere in the Mediterranean and had traversed centuries of time and taken in tombs as gorgeous as palaces, palaces as grand as kingdoms, and involved intrigues and exiles, revolutions and wars, sealed trains across continents and sleigh journeys wrapped in wolf skins, and had somehow or other ended up in Hollywood (which was probably the appropriate place for it in Meredith’s opinion) and marriage to Lester Goldman.

  The fetid atmosphere of the conservatory and the endlessly woven fabric of Merle’s tale had left Meredith feeling sick and flushed as if she had been slumped in some opiated dream. She was relieved when Lester barreled up, a deliriously happy Fletcher in tow.

  “Honey,” Lester said solicitously to his wife, “we should be heading back to the hotel, you’ve gotta get your beauty sleep.”

  And that was when it happened. As Lester Goldman helped his wife up from her peacock throne, Merle’s extraordinary reptilian cape slipped so that her withered shoulders were exposed to the air. In that instant she began to disintegrate—the skin turning to dust, the flesh liquefying and melting, and, for a fragment of a second, as if in some unearthly X ray, Meredith really did see the skeleton beneath Merle’s skin. She wanted to turn to Fletcher and say, “Wow, just like the vampires in Buffy when they’re staked,” but she couldn’t move, and anyway Lester and Fletcher had failed to witness this extraordinary event and had begun an animated conversation about some witness-protection plot that was a perfect vehicle for Jodie Foster. Merle had moved as fast as a snake to grab the cape and replace it, holding it close at her throat as if she was freezing cold.

  Meredith looked into Merle Goldman’s eyes. Meredith Zane’s blue, all-American-girl eyes looked deep into Merle Goldman’s glittering old European eyes and a cold horror should have gripped her heart. But it didn’t.

  “Lester,” Merle said hoarsely, “time to go, lamb chop.”

  A car and a uniformed driver were waiting for the Goldmans on the pavement outside Fiddy Ross’s house. Fiddy was nowhere in sight so it was Fletcher and Meredith who performed the hostess’s duty of farewells. The driver opened the door of the car for Merle. Meredith could see her scarlet nails digging into the sleeve of Lester’s unimaginably expensive suit as she positioned herself to get into the backseat.

  Meredith knew what she had to do. Without daring to breathe, without daring to think, Meredith snatched at the cape, grabbing it as hard as she could with both hands and hauling it off Merle Goldman’s body. She heard Merle give an unearthly shriek and she heard Lester say, “Jesus Christ, what the fuck is going on?” and she caught a glimpse of Fletcher’s disbelieving, ashen face as Merle crumbled into dust in front of his eyes and finally—and not before time, in Meredith’s opinion—joined the massed ranks of the dead.

  In her purse she had a plane ticket and an American Express card. On her feet she had a pair of Air Max Motos that were already eating up the gray, gum-stuck pavements of London. Her hair fell free from its band and streamed in her wake. Thunder cracked overhead. Meredith threw the cape over her shoulders. It felt impossibly beautiful. Meredith laughed as she ran, neatly sidestepping the golden apples lying in her path. She carried on running and running. Meredith Zane ran into the future forever.

  IV

  DISSONANCE

  Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth

  all things, endureth all things.

  ST. PAUL, I CORINTHIANS, 13:7

  For Maureen Allan

  SIMON WISHED HIS mother would die. Right that minute. Right where she was sitting, which was almost undoubtedly down in the kitchen, at the bloody kitchen table, correcting her bloody essays. I’m at my wits’ end with you, Simon. I worry about what’s going to happen to you, I really do. Well, if she was dead she wouldn’t have to worry, would she? And he wouldn’t have to listen to her bloody nagging. Shoes don’t live in the kitchen, Simon. If you spill something, do you think you could wipe it up, Simon? Do you know what a dishwasher’s for, Simon? He knew what would go on her bloody headstone as well. I’ve just cleaned that, Simon.

  Korn’s Life Is Peachy pounded on the stereo, helping keep his thoughts in rhythm with Tekken 3 on the PlayStation. Hwoarang hammered machine-gun punches
into Lei Wulong’s stomach Simon, if you’re going to finish all the milk, could you buy more? Paul Phoenix pulled a three-hit combo with a God Hammer Punch on Yoshimitsu If you use something, could you put it back when you’ve finished with it, Simon? Simon snorted with adolescent schadenfreude as he imagined his mother in the King of the Iron Fists Tournament, Forest Law thwacking junkyard kicks into her virtual body parts, Jin Kazama chopping her into submission Do you remember when you used to kiss and cuddle me and call me “Mummy”?

  She was going to tell his father. Shoplifting, Simon. That’s theft, pure and simple. Like the shops weren’t ripping him off in the first place. And how do you work that one out, Simon? She knew he couldn’t argue like Rebecca. She was always trying to get him to explain things. Why did you do that, Simon? What were you thinking? Stupid cow. Just because your father doesn’t live with us anymore doesn’t mean he can abdicate his responsibilities. “Tell Dad if you want, I haven’t even seen him in weeks.” Dad wasn’t interested in them anymore anyway. He had Jenny now. It’ll never last. Jenny who was pregnant, except their mother didn’t know it. What do you think will happen to you if you keep on this path, Simon? Hm? King punched Ling Xiaoyu and then jumped on her body. KO. Ling Xiaoyu gave a girly little scream. Game Over. You Win.

  Rebecca was making a bar chart for Higher Maths to the un-troubling sound of Travis on her headphones. She was using Excel—neat blocks of red, blue, green, and purple that would come out nicely on her Epson color printer. Rebecca liked everything to be neat. Her room was completely coordinated—lilacs, purples and blues, a touch of pink but not too girly. She didn’t think of herself as a girly girl. The cover on her bed was pulled smooth, her books and files aligned with the edge of her shelf. You take after your father, don’t you?

  She checked the clock. 21:43. At ten o’clock she’d make hot chocolate. Rebecca thought she might buy a kettle and a small microwave for her bedroom. She had enough money, she’d worked as soon as she could get a job—down at the Alldays, in the video shop—now she worked in Superdrug on Saturdays and holidays. Her own money, not guilty paternal handouts. You’re so self-sufficient, Rebecca. If she had a microwave and a kettle she’d never have to bother with the rest of the house, apart from the bathroom. It was a shame her Superdrug job didn’t run to funding an en suite bathroom, then she could stay in her own neat nest. She couldn’t wait to be living in a hall of residence.

  22:00. Rebecca removed her headphones and was assaulted by the noise from Simon’s stereo. No wonder he had mince for brains. And he played such shite. Korn, for Christ’s sake. I don’t know, when I was your age songs used to have a tune. When their mother came out with her nostalgia crap, Rebecca felt the same irritation as her brother, but she would never give him the pleasure of sibling camaraderie by telling him that. Their mother talked about her youth a lot these days, ever since Beardy Brian came on the scene. They used to be at university together, a fact that seemed to continually amaze them both—Who’d have thought then that we’d get together?—as if they were the only two University of Aberdeen alumni on the planet.

  “Alumni.” That was a word she had learned from Beardy Brian. She’d tucked it away for further use. “Yes, I’m a Trinity alumnus.” They did Latin at Watson’s; she knew her plurals. Their mother never stopped telling them how lucky they were to do Latin. In my day everyone did it. Now you only get taught it if you go to expensive schools like yours. What about my poor kids, don’t they deserve the choice? But they had never had Latin on the curriculum at the schemie school her mother taught at and she knew it.

  Not that Rebecca was sure about Cambridge. There were plenty of places she could apply to. But Edinburgh has an excellent reputation for medicine—then you could live at home. Yeah, that’ll be right.

  Not that she was entirely sure about medicine either. Her subjects were strong across the board; maybe she should do an arts degree. But when she thought of herself in the future—which was all the time—she saw herself as a doctor, not in some scummy NHS hospital but as a surgeon with Medécins sans Frontières, operating in impossible conditions in a war zone, or a doctor in some remote mountain village vaccinating the photogenic babies of noble tribeswomen. Dr. Rebecca McFarlane.

  Rebecca opened Simon’s door and yelled at him to turn his stereo down. His face flushed a furious fuchsia at this intrusion.

  “You wouldn’t stand for it if I came into your room without knocking, would you?”

  “No, I’d fucking kill you,” she said matter-of-factly. It was hard to believe anyone she shared so many genes with could be so unattractive. Simon had spots like braille. A blind person could probably read half of Shakespeare on his face. “It stinks in here, Simon.”

  “Leave then.”

  “No, really. I’m serious, it’s disgusting.”

  You do shower every day, don’t you, Simon?

  “I said leave.”

  “You shouldn’t wank so much in here.”

  She managed to close the door just in time for his shoe to thud off it. “Whore,” he yelled as Rebecca ran lightly down the stairs, laughing.

  Their mother was standing at the kitchen door, a frown contracting her round moon features, her voice full of concern. Did he just call you a whore, Becca? “Yeah, you’d better go and throw The Female Eunuch at him.” You can’t call women whores, even if you don’t mean it. “But what about if they actually are whores?” It’s a derogatory term. Language is how we define our world. “Yeah, use that argument on Simon, why don’t you, like he’ll really understand what you’re talking about.”

  Her mother was wearing that disgusting, worn-out denim smock that looked as if she’d had it since she was pregnant. She looked pregnant in it now. She had no waistline whatsoever. She took her glasses off and let them dangle on the chain that bounced off her cushiony breasts as she walked up the stairs. She might as well not be wearing a bra.

  Her mother’s underwear was horrible, everything slightly gray and stretched, the elastic gone in the M and S sports bras she wore, even though she was the least sporty person Rebecca could think of. Rebecca did her own washing. The idea of contaminating anything she wore with her mother’s saggy bras and washed-to-death Sloggis or—infinitely worse—Simon’s skid-marked, urine-spotted boxers, At least make an effort to aim for the toilet bowl, Simon, made her feel ill.

  Rebecca’s underwear was spotlessly white—she presoaked it in Vanish—she preferred white and so, luckily, did her boyfriend, Fraser. Fraser was as good as they got, captain of the rugby team and Dux of the school, he had his own car and was allowed to have Rebecca to stay whenever he wanted, although they never had sex in his house; Rebecca couldn’t bear the idea of Fraser’s mother listening to them. Rebecca was going to finish with Fraser when she went to university. It was a curiously empty relationship, not based on passion, something Rebecca was looking forward to experiencing one day.

  Her mother had been listening to Classic FM—a Mahler symphony, Rebecca didn’t know which one. She didn’t like Mahler. Rebecca whisked the hot chocolate into a pan of milk. Her mother had a still-warm cup of chamomile tea next to her pile of essays to be corrected. “Update Romeo and Juliet to the modern-day world.” Oh for Christ’s sake, they’d just write about the Baz Luhrmann film. Or Northern Ireland, or Bosnia, except they wouldn’t know where that was. How cliched. Why couldn’t they just study the bloody text? You have to make literature relevant to real life. Why? Rebecca leafed idly through the top essay, a scrawled, messy affair. She smirked at the conclusion: “What a sheer, big waste of love Romeo and Juliet is!” What a moron.

  She could hear her mother’s one-sided conversation with Simon, her mother on her side of the door remonstrating with that reasonable whine in her voice, Simon on the other side grunting like preliterate Cro-Magnon man. In fact, if you thought of Simon as an unsuccessful example of early man, his entire existence was easier to make sense of.

  Her mother plodded back down the stairs. Rebecca could see only her le
gs through the banisters—white and veined, and her ankles like melting Brie above those bloody awful faux Birkenstocks. She sighed as she came into the kitchen. Her mother had a huge lexicon of sighs. A sigh for every occasion. Her Simon sigh was always a particularly heavy one.

  He’s got Standard Grades next year, she said, as if Rebecca might be interested, as if Rebecca was the other parent for God’s sake.

  “Like I care.”

  You didn’t think to ask if I wanted any hot chocolate then? her mother said, adding a no one in this house ever thinks about me sigh.

  “You’ve got chamomile tea.” The only conversations we ever have are arguments, have you ever thought about that, Rebecca? “Well, maybe that’s your fault, have you ever thought about that, ‘Mother’?”

  Rebecca left the kitchen abruptly. She wasn’t going to give her mother the satisfaction of any kind of conversation. She slammed her bedroom door. “Why don’t you just die,” she muttered. “Drop dead of a brain hemorrhage and leave us to get on with our lives.”

  Simon turned his stereo up. Machine Head, The Burning Red. Boak’s first album, Guts for Garters. He got into bed without bothering to undress and fell asleep imagining he was Eddie Gordo kicking and spinning and punching to his own beat. One day everyone would know the name of Simon McFarlane. Know it and fear it.

  Slipknot, for God’s sake. Surely their mother wasn’t going to let him play that junk so loud at this time of night? What did the neighbors think? (God, had she really just thought that?) She put her headphones on and fell asleep listening to the “Goldberg” Variations.