by Liz Jensen
‘Yes. I’ll be at the Hopeworth – under Sugden.’
My maiden name. It always reminded me of a blocked sink. I’d been happy to get rid of it, once upon a time.
‘Have you, er … ?’
‘It’s all right, I have money,’ I said, recalling the American Express card that carried my other name: Mrs Hazel Stevenson. My card, Greg’s money.
‘Tell my husband I’ve smashed up a few things in the house,’ I said. ‘But I found the bicarbonate of soda.’ I felt unnaturally calm and collected. ‘And give my regards to Ma.’
I could have told Greg about what I’d done to the house myself, as it happened, because as soon as I’d put down the phone, it rang. I knew it would be him. I let it ring for ten rings while I decided what to tell him. I’d keep it brief.
‘Hello?’ I said coolly.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked, not even trying to hide his annoyance. ‘I got some garbled message from Jane saying you were ill.’
‘I’m OK,’ I told him. ‘But I had a sort of turn. I think you were right about the stress. I’ve just spoken to Dr Stern at Manxheath, and he’s going to give you a call. He thinks I might need some kind of rest. I’m going over there now, and he might keep me in. He says Billy can stay with me, and go to the hospital crèche.’
‘My God,’ said Greg, sounding genuinely concerned. ‘What do you mean, a turn?’
‘Well, it all started last night,’ I said. ‘I had a lot of things churning round in my head, and this morning after you left, after we had that row about Ruby, I just sort of snapped.’
There was a sound like a stifled groan from the other end of the line.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I’ll be on my way as soon as I’ve tidied up this post-op patient,’ he said.
‘No,’ I told him. ‘Don’t bother. I’m OK. I don’t much want to see you, in fact.’
‘I’ll call Dr Stern right away,’ he said. ‘I’ll put him in the picture.’
‘I’ve done that,’ I said. ‘I told him you think I’m having delusions. And he knows about Ma already, remember?’
‘I’ll talk to him anyway,’ said Gregory.
His voice sounded very faint, like he might be wondering something. I hung up.
Having Dr Stern on my side made me feel strangely powerful. It was the same feeling I have had sometimes during sex.
FIVE
Today’s the day
The time is now
Let Jesus in
It’s Holy Hour!
‘Welcome folks!’ The televangelist rolls up purple sleeves and rubs together chunky, do-it-yourself hands. ‘A pleasure and a privilege to be here today, folks. It really is.’
‘Amen,’ murmurs the audience. Those without concessions have paid £30 a head.
‘Amen,’ croaks Linda, and stubs out her cigarette into a foil ashtray.
She is watching the show on TV in the Ministry canteen. Across the formica, Hervé Démaret, her French visitor from the Commission du Beurre Congelé, stirs his bright pink raspberry yoghurt with distaste and observes the absurd Mademoiselle Sugden, stern dominatrix of the Edible Fats Policy Division (Butter Sub-Unit), with baleful eyes. Back in Lille, such shocking dress sense would warrant a memo.
‘You English, you put too much false colouration in your nourriture,’ he reproaches her, by way of conversation, inspecting a lump of vermilion fruit with the mistrust it deserved.
‘Shhh! D’you mind? Can’t you see I’m having lunch and watching television?’
Colleagues within earshot exchange did-you-ever smirks, and shrug their shoulders. Trish, at the next table, points out Linda to Chrissie and makes a circular gesture next to her head, indicating a screw loose.
‘You call zat lunch?’ snorts the Frenchman, inspecting Linda’s plate as though it were an animal dropping. And jerks his head in the direction of the gesticulating televangelist.
‘You call zat television?’
Linda pretends to notice neither the exaggerated scrape of Hervé’s chair as he leaves, muttering, ‘Elle est dingue, cette nénette,’ nor his whispered conversation with Mr Foley, her boss, who is sipping unsweetened espresso in a corner seat. His face indicates he would be happier with poison.
‘Not the first complaint I’ve had,’ says Mr Foley. Linda feels the sting of two pairs of eyes, one blue, one green, on her back as she returns the television’s stare.
The Reverend’s hands cleave together and knead, as though attempting to mate.
‘And a privilege and a pleasure – a great pleasure, Hallelujah – to be able to share a joy and a hope here with you on this special day.’
The TV picture cuts to a section of the studio audience, where a family of five with the faces of bloodhounds are nudging each other and grinning in anticipation, then swoops along the front row, taking in the tans, jewellery, and pastel tracksuits of women empowered by hormone replacement and the Lord.
‘And the message is this, folks.’ The preacher’s face forms itself into a benign tumour of intimacy.
‘The message is this.’ Master of the pause, he waits. Waits, and then waits some more, until a murmur sets up in the audience and the Third Age jangles its bracelets. Finally, he raises a finger for silence.
‘The good-news message is this. The money that’s been pouring in, which you special people have dug deep in your pocket and your heart for, is now ready to start working for the glory of god! Praise Jesus!’ The preacher smites the air with his fist, and a cheer erupts, whipped to a froth by tambourines and a drum-roll.
In the Ministry canteen, Linda gulps fizzy water and winces as her nose pricks with gas.
‘We’ve been talking a lot about the House of God here on Holy Hour in the last months,’ the Reverend is saying. Linda feels his eyes on her, and as they burrow electronically to her soul, she becomes aware of a spreading flush. She stabs a haricot bean.
‘A divine project to glorify his name,’ exults the preacher. ‘He died on the cross for us. So now we’re going to do something for him. You too, sir, and you, madam, and you junior faithful too. Help create this cathedral in his glory. Help design it.’
Linda cuts into a mushroom pie and releases a steaming dribble of black liquid, which she mashes into her potato and rakes into a cowpat shape to cool. She wishes she had not worn such thick woollen tights.
The Reverend is explaining that the design of the cathedral is not a competition, as the Lord loves us all equally, even the morally abominated, such as homosexuals and lesbians. God likes team things, and God likes communities, and God likes families, because prayers-together are stayers-together.
Tortured by wool, Linda wiggles in her seat and scrapes at a forkful of grey matter, as the preacher paces the stage, jabbing a finger at members of the audience to emphasise the point that he who buildeth his house upon a rock – the rock of faith, the almighty rock of faith, the almighty, blessed, holy, powerful and empowering rock, praise Jesus – shall be for ever blessed. Today, tomorrow and yesterday. Yo.
‘Yo!’ squeals the Third Age, and drums its trainers on the studio floor.
‘Now let’s get practical,’ continues the evangelist. ‘We want your ideas, diagrams and plans, people. However lowly. For he careth not for the quality, he careth only for the act of faith. Your ideas, folks, will be combined, streamlined and amalgamated by technology to create a cathedral in the glory of the one great architect. Perhaps you’ll send a photo of a building you particularly like – be it the Taj Mahal or your local leisure centre. Or something your child has drawn.’ (Linda’s face tightens, then forces itself into a tolerant smile.)
‘Perhaps you’ll just send a donation. And remember, think interior as well as exterior, so you ladies can dazzle us with your design and furnishing ideas.
‘Spill out your heart to us. Let’s hear what you want. And then what we’re going to do, with God’s help and a bit of computer technology and Ron, our architect, we’re going to incorporate all of that into o
ne magnificent building. Yo! Alrighty!’
Hoots of glee from the studio audience, as the man called Ron demonstrates his computer software, which draws three-dimensional architectural plans in Virtual Reality. A structure that looks like a melted candelabra erupts on to Ron’s screen, and the audience breathes a great ‘Whooo!’ of admiration.
‘Help build the House of God,’ Linda hears the Reverend murmur to her alone. Mummified in wool, her overheated thighs ignite. Suddenly, from nowhere, a picture emerges in her head like a Polaroid snap: a chair, its velveteen upholstery heaving to an ancient rhythm, with herself on it, naked, callisthenically squirming, astride –
She witnesses her own sallow buttocks juddering and the Reverend’s triumphal groan.
Name: Sugden, Moira Janet
Age: Fifty-nine (a dangerous age)
Marital status: Single. Also separated and widowed
Children: Linda and Hazel, ungrateful
Weight: 16 stone 11 pounds
Bust: 50 in. approx
Waist: None (ha ha)
Education: Librarian’s Higher Diploma, Inverness
Hips: 2 yds approx., large chairs only.
IQ: Well above average
Friends: Signora Isabella Pimento and Mr Keith Proutt
Guru: Dr Stern
Enemies: Dr Stern? Dr Sarah McAuley. Linda and Hazel.
Medication: Lithium et al.
Personal therapist: Dr Sarah McAuley
Hobbies: Gardening. Reference books. Iris Murdoch. Virginia Woolf
Expectations: Few
Yes, late husband, it is I. And you thought there might be an escape beyond the grave. My decision to write to the dead, i.e. you, is perfectly rational (though try explaining that to the likes of Dr McAuley) because I will not be disappointed when you fail to reply. Pessimism pays, in the long run. ‘You can put hope in one hand, and spit into the other,’ say the Danes. ‘Then take a look and see which hand holds the most.’
Useful places, libraries.
Look at the facts: despite the hundreds of letters I have written to them over the years, our daughters never answer – unless you count Linda’s ‘pull yourself together’ postcards from Brussels, sent because she likes me to know that, despite her bulldozed ego, foreign travel is an ‘integral part’ of her important career at the Butter Mountain. (A slippery slope, I told her.) Hazel just coddles herself in domesticity, on the other hand. A clever-dick doctor husband with a face as memorable as a cardboard box (he is some kind of fertility hero), a curly-haired, constipated boy, Billy, to whom I am denied access, a ‘nice house’ in Oakshott Road, Le Creuset casseroles: the usual capitulation.
You may have been wondering where I’ve been all these years. What has been occupying my time since you left me with that witch from the flyover. I would put money on it that she has re-aligned herself to a hapless New Zealander by now, and chucked your ashes in the Whirlpool Spa. My life since you left has been normal-ish. Like most people’s, it has been a bit of this and a bit of that. I have been up and I have been down. I have been in, and I have been out. This time, I’ve been in for two years. Quite a stretch. I have no plans to leave, having no home to go to, as your daughters sold the Cheeseways house and put the money in a ‘trust’, which is an odd word for it, as they don’t.
Time. I have had a lot of it on my hands, one way and another. I have spent it, passed it, and sometimes killed it. And time, in turn, has been killing me. A fact spelt out for me by others, younger than myself and more in the know about the human body and its frailties.
‘Unfortunately, Mrs Sugden …’ they say.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but …’
‘Bad news, I’m afraid, Mrs S …’
The doctors tell me that, if I cannot reduce my weight, I will drastically decrease my life expectancy.
‘But I never expected much of life in the first place,’ I tell them. ‘You only have to look at my CV.’
They point to charts that map my folly, to graphs on whose most dangerous matrices I am a lone statistic, to catastrophe scenarios of which I form the epicentre, and thence to a medical pale which I am far and hopelessly beyond.
‘I don’t want redemption,’ I tell them. ‘Leave me in peace.’
But they want to help. They want to explain. So they tell me there is a risk of internal breakdown. Your body is full of organs which you have abused over a lifetime with your excessive dietary habits, Mrs Sugden. Spleens, livers, pancreases, tracheas, bile ducts, upper and lower bowels, phlegm systems, aortae. There will be a build-up of ‘undesirable matter’ which will cause a blockage in an internal lift shaft, a log-jam in a tube of gristle, a failure of the heart to hoik the sphincter muscles into gear. And pop will go the weasel. My fat will squash me.
‘Eat less,’ they say. ‘Prolong your life.’
‘Why?’ I ask. Silence. They shuffle my notes.
‘What for?’ I repeat. More silence, as though I had not spoken.
‘Any reason?’ I query again. Taboo, taboo, taboo. But I persist: ‘Pourquoi?’
And they have nothing to say. They pack away their doomy stethoscopes. They cannot claim that I enhance the world as they know it.
‘Cheer up, Mrs Sugden,’ they prescribe as they leave.
But Mrs Sugden does not need to ‘cheer up’. It may fly in the face of reason, but Mrs Sugden is already cheerful. How? A woman of my age, a mountain of lard with a poor medical prognosis? Full of bright thoughts, and plans for her future? Impossible! A po-faced librarian, you thought, sad doler-out of 50p fines and public humiliator of those who leave snot, a panty-liner or a rasher of bacon between the pages, a woman with no inner resources who, when it all got too much, retreated to an institute for the out of kilter where they mop the floors twice a day and teach grandmothers to suck eggs. But, Brendan. But, but, but. Miracles do happen. And some pigs can fly.
Let’s just say it happened. One day there was nothing but a flat expanse of lawn, and the next, its white Jurassic skeleton towering above the trees, its glass a-dazzle, its plant life astounding the unwary – the greenhouse. It has changed our lives. But its sudden appearance aroused no interest in the staff here. In fact, they were quite oblivious. A failure of perception, I suppose. Or mass hysteria. Our daughter Hazel walked past it on her last visit without a glance: her loss.
Gardening is a never-ending task, but we are reaping the fruits. Yesterday, kiwis: today, rhubarb. Tomorrow – who knows? – runner beans, gladioli, water lilies and pomegranate. Everything is possible. I am a happy woman. And you, Brendan, are a dead man.
My successes to date: last summer I supervised the planting of four miniature tangerine trees of a variety found in only twelve of China’s thirty-six provinces, and we dealt with the potato blight by applying cigarette butts to the root area. In September, Isabella Pimento and I stayed up all night to watch the blooming of a Tibetan plant which flowers only once every fifteen years. It was marvellous: yellow with red stripes, and it positively sang, but by dawn it was stone dead. November saw the sprouting of a new variety of fig tree, and a bumper crop of radish, and I organised the drainage and re-planting of the tropical pond. There were a few mishaps while the fauna were transferred; one angel fish went down the plughole in the sink, and three blue Lapu-Lapu died inexplicably. I fed them to the Venus’ fly-traps in the carnivorous corner. I’d have eaten them myself, but the fly-traps were looking poorly. Three days later they died too.
In December, I went public with my enterprise, and invited Dr Stern and Dr McAuley (or ‘Sarah’ as we are urged to call her in Group) for a conducted tour. They seemed impressed, and spent a while with their heads together over it, but they caused so much damage that the invitation will not be repeated. They trampled all over the plants, crashing into trees, walking right through them even, regardless. It struck me as surprising how little basic biology doctors seem to know. When I quizzed them about it, I found they had no conception of the delicate balance of carbon dioxide and oxy
gen in this essentially artificial environment, nor of the vagaries of the food chain, or the alchemic process by which plants convert light into chlorophyll. I explained that a return visit was out of the question, and walked away. We are urged, in Group, to walk away from situations we find ‘uncomfortable’. Hence I do a lot of walking. Keith pointed out to me the other day that I ricochet like a ballbearing in a bagatelle machine from one catastrophic encounter to the next. Later Dr McAuley asked me to talk about it in Group (‘What does the word “greenhouse” signify to you, Moira?’) but my lips were firmly sealed. I am no fool.
So, Monsieur Complètement Mort. Are you impressed by my endeavours? Are you jealous of my boundless energy? Yes, I have had some hard times since you left. No, I have not been quite the standard mother to those two girls – but they survived. I think of you sometimes, Brendan Sugden, though I never dwell on you for long. My art therapist has been encouraging me to express you in clay, but all I can come up with is a phallic sausage shape. It seems to be what she’s after. (Simple things, eh?) I appear to be turning into something of a ‘people pleaser’ after all.
Yours sincerely,
Moira Sugden
PS: In case you were wondering: Non, je ne regrette pratiquement rien.
Less is more. On TV I have seen them, the rich women with perfect figures in St Tropez, who wear nothing but a Lycra G-string, a bit of gold jewellery, and round their insect waist a sequinned pochette containing an American Express card and a single condom. Having always admired the luxury and elegance of travelling light, I tried to keep my luggage down to essentials when I packed to leave my husband: two suitcases of clothes, a box of junior nappies, three dummies, Billy’s buggy, sixteen plastic dinosaurs, a spare hanky and a Lego garage. The rest could come later.
I had always wanted to see the rooms in the Hopeworth. Ours was Number 308, double with cot, reached via a pinging lift and a runway of carpeted corridor, and entered by means of a key to which a brass hand grenade was attached. It was elegantly neutral, with a small but cleverly designed bathroom containing sachets of mauve shower gel, white towels in six sizes, and a shining toilet, the seat of which wore a beauty queen’s ribbon emblazoned ‘Disinfected for your hygiene protection’. The mood of the main living space was beige, with some understated chintz, and from the corner of the ceiling, the giant eye of a television gazed down on the double bed. Billy jumped up and down on the tight-sprung mattress and shouted for an hour while I unpacked, and then we squatted on the floor and laid out the brontosaurus, the stegosaurus, the triceratops, the pachycephalosaurus and the tyrannosaurus rex in a row to graze on the thick pile carpet. Billy managed to eat some of it too, and after I had cleared up his sick as best I could, I told him, ‘This is a hotel. It’s a nice place. We’re on holiday, darling.’
