Fifty-Minute Hour

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Forty.’ He could see it spelt out on a plaque attached to Mary’s gate – more classy than mere ‘40’, and befitting the smug house itself, which was Queen Anne period style with two white columns flanking the front porch, ornamental shutters on all the latticed windows, a double garage (panelled), and coloured gravel on the drive in tasteful shades of pink and green. He felt ashamed for his own hencoop in vulgar Ivy Close, with its plain and basic semis, which had neither appealing house-names, nor what the estate agents called ‘character’. Mary’s home wasn’t simply ‘Forty’, it was also gracious ‘Wych Elm’. He admired the second carved wood plaque, the name itself with its stylish sloping ‘y’; felt he shared a bond with it. Bryan with a ‘y’ and wych with a ‘y’ was surely a good omen. He couldn’t see an elm – either wych or otherwise, but it was probably round the back, and he was still dithering in the street. He took a deep breath in, checked his tie and smile were both in place, then opened the front gate, plunged up to the rustic oak front door, heard the tinkling door-chimes echo down the hall as he pressed the bell with one damp and trembling finger.

  A fierce barking from inside made him back away immediately, ready for full flight. Perhaps he’d got the day wrong, or even dreamed the whole idea. Why should Mary bother with a …?

  ‘Hallo, Bryan. You found us, then?’

  ‘Look, I can go away if it’s not convenient, or if I’ve muddled up the date … ? His words were petering out. Mary looked so lovely, so womanly, so perfect. She was wearing blue – the colour of high summer: blue sea, blue cloudless sky, blue gentians, blue heaven.

  ‘Muddled up the date? But we confirmed it only yesterday. Come in. Are those for me? How gorgeous! You shouldn’t, Bryan, really. It’s your birthday, so you should have the presents. Down, Horatio! I hope you don’t mind dogs.’

  ‘No, I love them.’ Bryan fondled the old labrador, which was the colour of rich honey, its sagging pregnant belly contrasting with its well-developed testicles. He’d love an orang-utan or a man-eating piranha, so long as it were Mary’s. He’d never had a dog. His Mother had dismissed the entire canine population as dangerous, germy, expensive and a tie. He’d invented an imaginary dog when he was eight or nine – a small mongrel called Rover (he’d never been imaginative), who was faithful and devoted and quite flatteringly affectionate. Horatio seemed the same, was licking both his hands, sitting on his foot, trying to reach his face so he could cover it with kisses.

  ‘You’ve really made a hit, Bryan. He usually growls at strangers. That’s enough now, Horatio. Let Bryan take his coat off.’

  He wished she’d take her own off, or at least that jacket thing which was concealing her full breasts and surely quite unnecessary in the warm fug of the house. He looked around appreciatively – fitted carpets everywhere, even in the hall, and those big broad-shouldered armchairs in the sitting room (with what looked like large blue dandelions blooming on their comfy cushioned seats), and a piano and a hi-fi and a proper cocktail cabinet with cut-glass decanters labelled ‘Port’ and ‘Sherry’ respectively, and nice safe cosy pictures of the countryside and coast, and china spaniels on the bureau and a clock which seemed to smile, and best of all, a real coal fire which purred with noisy pleasure as he sat down on the sofa, stretched his legs towards it.

  The only thing which spoiled the room was the preponderance of photographs – all of other men – an overweight and scowling chap whom he assumed must be the husband, and several smugly smiling boys in various stages of undress; starting with a semi-naked baby and proceeding to a gangly lad in swim trunks, sucking an ice cream. He dragged his eyes away from them, rehearsed his opening line of conversation. He’d decided to impress her by talking about Superspace, a new and very complex book he’d borrowed from the library (and which his Father had commended at last week’s science class). He’d spent the whole night reading it by torchlight, so he could drop it sort of casually into the birthday conversation. The book had said that total chaos in the universe was averted only because matter was undisciplined and lazy. He’d been called the same himself – since infancy, in fact, but for matter to be lazy sounded downright dangerous, yet according to the author, it was feckless and plain indolent – lolled about, ran down.

  He cleared his throat, prepared his opening lines. He must avoid all boring jargon, while sounding deep, intriguing; perhaps crack a little joke, as Skerwin did so often, to dilute his frightening braininess.

  ‘It’s … er … cold for early December.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘The fire’s nice, though.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’

  ‘My Mother doesn’t like coal fires.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘No. She says they make a lot of extra work.’

  ‘Well, I suppose they do, but it’s worth it, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Silence. Except for Horatio’s heavy snuffling breathing. He was lying on Bryan’s foot. Bryan stroked the silky head, rubbed the smooth gold tummy. He had pins and needles in his leg, but he didn’t like to shift the dog. It was miraculous he’d ‘made a hit’, as Mary had expressed it; gave him hope he might succeed not just with a labrador, but – later – with his mistress. Could he stroke her silky head, rub her smooth gold tummy? He rifled through his mind (and books) for something to astound her: muons, tauons, leptons, the Grand Unifying Theory, the Anthropic Principle. ‘I … um … like the silver cups.’

  ‘They’re James’s – for his golf. They make extra work, as well, but he’s so frightfully proud of them, I like to keep them nice and bright and shiny.’

  Bryan wished he’d never mentioned them. He’d imagined they were Mary’s – cups for schoolgirl hockey, or cookery, or mothering, or just for being the most desirable woman in all Walton, Weybridge, the whole of southern England, and probably …

  ‘What are you doing for Christmas, Bryan? Will you be abroad?’

  He stared at her, unspeaking. He’d been bragging once again of his non-existent foreign trips just last night at the class. She must assume he spent most holidays lolling on the beaches of sun-kissed Acapulco, or exploring the high Andes. The longest trip he’d ever made was a Bronte Country coach tour, which had been ruined by his Mother catching shingles. ‘It … er … depends on Mother,’ he answered enigmatically. That was true, at least. Everything depended on his Mother. ‘How about you?’ he inquired of Mary, smiling. Best to shift attention from himself.

  ‘We’ll be at home. We always are for Christmas. It’s funny, I’ve always rather liked it other years, but I’m feeling a bit restless this December, wondering if we ought to book a holiday – you know, go abroad straight after Christmas Day, break the pattern, so to speak.’

  ‘Had you anywhere in mind?’ Bryan tried to disguise the anguish in his voice. Bad enough Mary living down in Walton, cruel miles away from Upminster, but if she was going to put a continent between them …

  ‘Rome,’ she said, smiling now herself, a smug and secret smile he didn’t like at all.

  ‘Rome? Why Rome?’ He tried to work the mileage out – Ivy Close to the Forum.

  ‘Well, Oliver’s doing classics, so it would help him with his school work, and I’ve never been there in my life, which is shameful for a Catholic, and there’s a local Surrey saint being canonised just twelve days after Christmas, and … and …’

  Bryan wiped Horatio’s slobber off his trouser leg. Why was Mary blushing, lost for words? Perhaps the mention of religion. He’d heard a programme on the radio just a week ago which said many modern people found it more embarrassing to mention God than sex. He tried to help her out, fill the awkward silence, but his sheer unadulterated misery at the thought of her and James cavorting in the Colosseum made all speech impossible. He’d throw James to the ravening Hons and his rotten golf cups.

  ‘Are you thirsty, Bryan?’

  He jumped. He’d been watching a huge leo devour James’s last pale limb, its blood-stained fangs still slavering as it
crunched up bone and silver. His eye caught the decanter label – ‘Sherry’. Was she offering him a drink at only five past four? A litre of Black Label would help to calm his anger, give him instant courage, but she might suspect he was a secret alcoholic. ‘Er … no, not at all.’

  ‘I was going to suggest we started tea, but if you’d rather wait a while …’

  ‘No, please, I’m very thirsty, absolutely parched, in fact.’ He jumped up to his feet, alarming the fat labrador who started barking at imaginary intruders, and upsetting an arrangement of dried grasses and silk flowers. He almost wept with shame. He had obviously inherited his Father’s clumsiness.

  Mary rushed to save them. ‘It’s quite all right, don’t worry. They needed dusting anyway. Those dried ones get so dirty and I never seem to find the time these days.’ Her flush deepened, stained her cheekbones, rippled down her neck. He watched it hungrily, longed to strip her clothes off to check how far it spread.

  ‘The kettle’s boiled already, so I’ll go and make the tea. Come into the dining-room. I’ll only be a second.’

  He followed with Horatio, stopped in rapt amazement as he stared down at the table. It was covered with a crimson cloth, though the cloth was barely visible beneath the vast array of plates – sandwiches and vol-au-vents, iced biscuits and meringues, every sort of cake from feathery ones in tiny paper cases to a magnificent iced birthday cake with ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRYAN’ written in blue capitals – and candles – yes, eight candles, arranged in a triumphant circle on the top.

  Mary’s eyes were also on the cake, anxious eyes which swivelled back to his. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t know how old you were, and it seemed rather rude to ask, so I decided to put eight on, as I would have done for Jon. I hope you don’t object?’

  He sank down on the chair she offered. Object? This was a near-miracle, the most awesome and amazing thing that had ever happened in his life. All those cakes and biscuits were homemade, and exquisitely home-made, oozing jam or butter-cream, and decorated variously with coconut or almonds, cherries, glace fruits. His busy work-worn Mother had spent hours and hours slaving in the kitchen just for him; had gone to all that trouble and expense. All his favourite goodies: éclairs and strawberry tartlets, cream-filled brandy snaps – treats he was forbidden as too rich or too extravagant, or bad for his digestion (or liver or complexion). And – oh! – a rabbit jelly, a wobbly gleaming scarlet one, eyes and whiskers piped in white whipped cream, and sitting on a bed of chopped green-jelly grass. Never in his thirty-two long years had he ever (ever) had a rabbit jelly, let alone one made in his honour.

  His eyes tracked back to the birthday cake. She’d even spelt the Bryan right – with a ‘y’, and piped fantastic fragile spiral things all around the edge and sides, and put it on a silver board with a ribbon round its middle. And there were crackers piled at each end of the table, not Christmas ones in red and green, but blue to match the cake, and special paper serviettes with ‘Happy Birthday’ on, and balloons above the sideboard, hung in glowing clusters, and a second real coal fire, lit specifically to warm him, when his own Mother would have groused and grudged. ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees, Bryan, and if you did a bit more round the house, instead of idling with your nose stuck in a book, I might not have this backache from lugging coal all week.’

  Mary was still out in the kitchen, making tea. He checked the door – all clear – leaned across and touched the food, to make sure it was real, not just a dream, a mirage. ‘Don’t touch!’ his Mother snapped. No, she wasn’t there – only his other angel Mother, who wouldn’t mind if he stroked a marvelling finger against the soft breast of a sponge, scooped a flake of chocolate from a plumply moist éclair, inserted a bold finger into the hollow of a brandy snap, eyes closed in total ecstasy as he tongued cream off his fingertip.

  ‘Bryan, are you all right?’

  ‘Er … yes. Er … fine. Just feeling a bit … faintish.’

  ‘Gosh, I’m sorry. It’s probably the heat. D’you think you ought to lie down for a moment?’

  ‘Yes,’ he screamed, ripping off his shirt. ‘Lie down all day, all night, all week, so long as you are with me, stretched out on our double bed, naked and embracing.’

  ‘No,’ he said, straightening his straight tie. ‘It’s nothing. I sometimes get these dizzy turns, but they never last that long.’

  ‘Well, perhaps a cup of tea will help. Milk and sugar, Bryan?’

  ‘Just a drop of milk, please.’ His Mother had insisted he give up sugar in his tea, after reading the headline ‘PURE, WHITE AND DEADLY!’ and the article which followed it in last week’s Daily Mail, which claimed sugar was an extremely dangerous food. So many foods were dangerous, at least in Ivy Close. Cheese clogged up his arteries, bacon killed him outright, coffee gave him heart attacks, and most common fruits and vegetables were sprayed with poisonous pesticides and grown in toxic soil. Mary’s house and garden seemed safer altogether.

  She passed his cup and a brimming plate of sandwiches. He stared at them in awe. Not only were the crusts cut off, but they had been stamped into artistic shapes – triangles and circles, even hearts – and stuck with tiny labels written in her own neat hand ‘Egg and cress’, ‘Smoked salmon’, ‘Cheese and Marmite’. He chose a heart, a jam one, which looked as if it were bleeding, pretended to be chewing it, so he wouldn’t have to talk. He was so touched by her trouble his voice had disappeared. He put the sandwich down again. He could no more eat than speak. It would be sacrilege and outrage to chew up Mary’s heart.

  His hand crept back to the plate again, withdrew a perfect circle with a pink filling of smoked salmon. He’d never had smoked salmon in his life – only Shippams Salmon Paste spread thinly on his Mother’s doorstep sandwiches. He moved it to his mouth, stopped half-paralysed. He couldn’t eat that either. He wanted to preserve this tea, take every item home with him, not casually devour it. Even when the cakes went stale and the sandwiches turned mouldy, he’d still have the solid evidence of his Mother’s selfless love. He reached out for a pink meringue, a jam-glazed strawberry tartlet, two fairy cakes, a flapjack; piled them on his plate, eating nothing, tasting nothing, just gloating and admiring.

  ‘Leave room for the hot things, Bryan.’

  ‘Hot things?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got them in the oven – mince pies and sausage rolls. Oh, I know I’ve made far too much, especially for just two of us, but I got quite carried away, and once I’d started I couldn’t seem to stop. Cooking’s my main hobby and I don’t get much chance to cook these days, especially not cakes and pastries. James has to watch his weight, you see, and the boys are all at school and …’ She bit into a cheese and Marmite triangle, dabbed a thread of Marmite from her hp. ‘I really enjoyed this morning. I got up at the crack of dawn and went through all my recipe books and tried to choose the things I thought you’d like.’

  ‘The things you thought I’d … like?’

  ‘Of course. You’re the guest, the birthday boy, the VIP today.’

  ‘Oh, Mary …’ He gulped his tea to hide his burning face. The VIP! Someone so important that she’d sacrificed all Saturday to cook for him, and had actually enjoyed it, poured out thought and care on his preferences, his tastes. His Mother hated cooking, saw it as a thankless chore; always seemed to intimate that she could live quite happily on plain water and thin air, and it was only his gross appetites that forced her to keep slaving over dirty dangerous stoves. This tea was made with love. Ingredients like flour or sugar were purely insignificant. Love had made the cakes rise, puffed up the meringues, filled the tarts and sandwiches, iced the birthday cake. He leaned back in his chair, gratitude and sheer dazed incredulity fighting in his breast.

  ‘You’re not eating, Bryan. What’s wrong?’

  He shook his head, didn’t trust his voice.

  ‘Are you feeling a bit faint again? The fire is very hot.’

  ‘No, no, it’s …’ He wanted to say ‘wonderful’ – two coal fires as birthday presents – what l
uxury, what spoiling! Could he take those home, as well, their golden flames leaping from his carrier-bag, their crackling logs warming his chill bedroom?

  ‘Well, I’ll fetch the sausage rolls. If you’re not that keen on sandwiches, then …’

  ‘I love the sandwiches.’

  Too late. She was already through the door, reappeared with a plate in either hand: tiny tiny sausage rolls made of tissue paper, and light-as-angels mince pies dusted with fine sugar – not white and deadly, but white and magical. She passed him both at once. He shook his head again. He could no more eat them than eat the Holy Grail, devour Aladdin’s lamp or chew up the crown jewels. ‘Oh, don’t refuse, Bryan, please.’

  He was astonished by the tremor in her voice, watched her face begin to crumple up. Whatever could be wrong?

  ‘It’s stupid, Bryan, I know it is, but I’m just a little sensitive about my m … mince pies. You see, I made some just last week for … for … Well, he’s not a friend exactly, but …’

  ‘An acquaintance?’ Bryan suggested, aghast that she was so upset, as lost for words as he had been himself.

  ‘No, not really an acquaintance. Let’s just say somebody I know, somebody important. Anyway, he refused to take them, wouldn’t even try one, just gave them back to me. I was terribly upset, Bryan. I mean, I was going shopping for James’s shirts and socks, and I had to carry them all round those huge department stores in the heat and crowds and everything, but it wasn’t really that. I felt – well so rejected, and sort of stupid and put down. I know I shouldn’t be telling you this when it’s your birthday and a happy day, but you haven’t touched a thing yourself, you see, so I’m beginning to feel that perhaps I’ve lost my cooking skills and no one wants to eat the things I make.’