Goodness

by Tim Parks

  I give her a specially made up additive-free antibiotic and a sedative in heavy syrup. The antibiotic tastes foul and she refuses to open her mouth. I trick her by dipping my finger in the sedative syrup and smearing it lightly on her plump, child’s lips. She has the features of a five-year-old but utterly blank. Sometimes I force myself to use words like gormless, to remember what the hard world will think of her, how they will laugh, as once long ago my friends would laugh at Aunt Mavis. The coral lips are delicate though and faintly rubbery under my finger.

  She falls for the syrup trick and opens her mouth. As soon as the spoon of foul-tasting medicine is in, I force the mouth shut to prevent her from spitting the stuff out. I manage to do this quite gently really. Firmly. Without frightening her. I’m not bad as a nurse. The only problem then is convincing her that the syrup to follow really is syrup. In the end I have to press thumb and forefinger into her cheeks to force open the mouth. As soon as she gets the whole spoon of syrup I can give her two, three, four more spoonfuls. Double the maximum dose. From small red-rimmed brown eyes, she looks, or gives the impression of looking, in my direction, and there is a hint of appreciation. So that I sense how much within my power she is, her feverish infant body in that foam rubber chair we thought was such a clever idea.

  For I could keep spooning and spooning this whole bottle of sedative, couldn’t I? Her mouth is open, eager. So why don’t I? Why not? Because I know that Shirley would see. Because I reason that the way they measure out these drugs it wouldn’t quite kill her anyway. Because it’s not the solution I’ve settled on and I simply can’t face reopening the whole discussion. Yet in the quiet of her little nursery room, with its red light warm on walls and blankets, on the Beatrix Potter frieze and on the shambles of soft toys people like my mother insist on buying for her as if she were capable of distinguishing one from another – in this cosy atmosphere smelling of cream and talcum and warm breath, I feel that this would be an acceptable, a humane way to do it. If only society would sanction it. If only everybody would say, yes, George, we forgive you, George, you are right, George, go ahead, kill your dragon, save your damsel (for I do love her). Yes, here and now. This would be the way. Spooning sedative to the child as she senses my friendly presence and enjoys one of her few sensual luxuries, the rich cloying sweetness of that syrup.

  Are those red little eyes really looking at me? Is she asking me to do it?

  But of course she can have no concept of such things. All she knows is her pain, her comforts.

  She begins to whine and wriggle again. I lay her down and sing to her. Nursery rhymes. Christmas carols. I sing them with expression as if I meant them. I even sing, why I don’t know, ‘Rock of ages cleft for me’, insisting on the words of the last verse (When I soar through tracts unknown/See thee on thy judgement throne . . .). I keep it up for half an hour, wondering how Shirley will rate this virtuoso performance on the domestic contribution scales. Will Marilyn be forgotten? Will I ever get a blowjob again? Finally I pull off the miracle and my little girl falls into an uneasy sleep. Feeling really pretty proud, I pad back to our bedroom, but Shirley is snoring soundly. Fair enough, she does have a filthy cold. I slip downstairs, pour myself a generous Glenfiddich and watch a European football match in which a Scottish team is soundly beaten.

  Vasectomy Ball

  Our tenth wedding anniversary, I think, should be excuse enough for a party, but Shirley says wrily, ‘Hardly an occasion for celebration.’ She’s not really objecting, though. It’s just that she never expected the idea of a party to come from me.

  ‘If you look at it as a life sentence,’ I suggest, ‘let’s say we’re celebrating completion of the first quarter. Why not?’

  I’m straightening my tie. She’s copying things down from a recipe to complete a shopping list, writing rapidly, a sliver of tongue between her teeth as so often when she concentrates. Now she looks up.

  ‘You’re not serious, are you?’ She laughs. ‘Okay. I’m game. We can call it the Vasectomy Ball.’

  Because yesterday we finally made love. And again this morning. Hence the pleasant atmosphere. I choose my moments.

  I tell her: ‘You don’t want to spread that kind of news about, sweetheart, the phone’ll never stop ringing.’

  Again she laughs. Then wrinkles her nose. She really doesn’t seem to care terribly much about my faithfulness or otherwise. In many ways she is more independent of me than I of her. I can’t really decide whether this is a good thing or not. I don’t want to feel free to do what I choose. I want her to want all or nothing, like me. Perhaps when she no longer has the child to exhaust all her energies . . .

  Come the evening of that same day and she is positively enthusing about it – our Tenth Anniversary Party. A grand affair. In the space of a day the idea has taken on a milestone symbolism. George and Shirley back on the rails.

  ‘You see,’ she says happily, as we draw up the guest list. ‘There’s no reason why Hilary should prevent us from having a good time. It’s all in your mind.’

  The girl is half sitting, half lying in her lap. At five and a half she has begun to chant the first ma-ma-ma’s and da-da-da’s that most babies start at six months. Shirley is very excited about this, though there is no sign of the sounds being referred to anything or anyone in particular. The little girl smiles continuously this evening from inside the frame of her gloriously thick chestnut hair which Shirley keeps brilliantly washed and brushed. Her only real asset, it picks up faint hints and depths from the discrete wall lighting which proved such a wise and fashionable choice. When tickled under her tubby chin, she giggles. She hasn’t been ill for upwards of a fortnight now, and since a dietician suggested we substitute cow’s milk with goat’s, she has definitely been less irritated and irritable.

  These are the blessings Shirley counts with a religious mathematics she might have learnt from my mother, i.e. add this hundredth to that thousandth, multiply by whatever crumb or fragment is available and then lift to the power of a small sop and somehow you can cancel out negative figures with untold noughts after them.

  ‘No reason at all,’ Shirley goes on, kissing the child’s fat cheeks as I scribble out the names. ‘We should have started doing this ages ago. I mean, if we can’t go out, obviously we’ll have to have people come here. And if we don’t invite them they’re not going to come, are they?’

  I don’t remark that they used to invite themselves. Instead I say: ‘I haven’t exactly been preventing you from inviting them, have I?’

  ‘No, but you’re such a monster of purpose, always working or reading medical journals or planning trips to consultants. It’s as if you were always putting off living to some distant date when you’ll have sorted everything out.’ She lays a hand on the inside of my leg and looks into my eyes. ‘I’m glad you’re beginning to let be at last. If you don’t insist on its being a tragedy then it isn’t.’

  The touch has a definite promise of sex.

  She giggles. ‘Perhaps it’s to do with the op. Less hormones about or something. You’re mellowing out.’

  I haven’t seen her so silly and girlish in years, though the silver strands are daily thickening in her once copper hair.

  ‘We’ll invite everybody,’ she says. ‘Even if we haven’t seen them in years and years. We can clear the lounge and dining room for dancing and set out a big buffet in the kitchen and breakfast room. How much money can we afford to spend?’

  ‘Anything. Doesn’t matter. No object.’

  ‘Great, now, let’s see . . .’

  But what is George Crawley really thinking inside the dark lumpy 900ccs or so which is his brain, which is me? Obviously I am feeling terribly tender toward my suddenly excited, though definitely ageing wife. I am thinking how smart I’ve been to renew our relationship before the great event, to have her feel I’m on her side at last. And I’m genuinely heartened by the thought that after all we’ve been through this renewal can still occur and be so warm and genuine. I’m thinking th
at in a way I’m doing this for her sake even more than mine. But at the same time I am wondering if perhaps she isn’t right, could she be?, if perhaps we mightn’t be happy like this, if I shouldn’t have let be ages ago, if I oughtn’t to give the whole thing up and just enjoy the incongruous adventure of hosting a party. Suddenly surprising myself with all these heterogeneous thoughts, I shake my head to chase them all away. They rise and flutter like birds surprised by gunshot, leaving nothing behind. I wonder, where is my identity in all this chaos of feeling and reflection? Who am I? All I can sense is a feverish darkness gathered around an even darker purpose. I have given myself to the decision now. It won’t be reconsidered.

  ‘And for booze? Couple of hundred quid cover it do you think? Er, Earth to George, come in please. The booze. How much?’

  Oh.’ In a daze, I say, ‘The more the merrier.’

  Another thought wings across the dark night sky of my spirit: the more booze, the faster the place’ll go up in smoke.

  Three weeks on; D-Day minus five days. I am now absolutely determined that the day after, Sunday the tenth, I shall feel only regret for my beautiful home, its three reception rooms, four bedrooms, delightful conservatory and garden (in the meantime I have checked that the insurance is more or less adequate; could have been better but one can’t alter it now). I shan’t fear detection, for of course I have planned the thing so well, and from the forensic point of view my tracks will be perfectly covered. Clearing the dining room to dance is going to mean cramming four highly inflammable armchairs into my little study, which, as fortune would have it, is directly below Hilary’s room with only plaster and timber between. Ten minutes, max fifteen. All things work together for good . . .

  For it will be an act of goodness, the first time I will have channelled everything that I know is abrasive and unpleasant in my character into a gesture of love greater and more healthy than anything my mother or Shirley with their interminable self-sacrifice could manage. I will have the courage of my convictions.

  I Think of Us Beginning Afresh

  The most elementary secret to a successfully disguised arson is that the fire must have only one focal point. So far so good.

  My mother is the first to arrive, bringing Frederick who she has been looking after for the day. She has construed her invitation, though this has never been asked, as a request for help and babysitting, and thus arrives early to give Shirley a hand with the food and with Hilary. Although she no doubt disapproves of the regiment of glinting bottles marshalled end to end of the sideboard, she is clearly glad that we are celebrating our tenth anniversary; no doubt she sees it as a kind of triumph over evil, a sign that our marriage is healthy again, and she mucks in, jollily washing saucepans.

  Frederick, sensing excitement in the air, becomes a Japanese robot and struts about, hissing destructive laser sounds. He paces mechanically round and round Hilary who lies on her foam rubber mattress in the huge lounge now cleared for dancing. She wriggles wildly from side to side following the direction of his laser fire as best she can, her oddly flat face smiling blindly, unaware he is shooting her.

  When she goes to bed, the foam mattress will go in the study room to make way for the dancing. I have already made sure that a huge pile of mags and newspapers are stacked on one of the armchairs.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, I’ve been shitting a lot this afternoon, as was to be expected I’m afraid. Unpleasant, hot, acidic shits that leave your anus burning. I’ve got some good cream for it though. In the bathroom I run my fingers regretfully over silk-finish, coffee-coloured Italian tiles. Opening the window I look out at a broad stretch of garden to the side of the house. A blackbird is hopping in the grass. There are roses. The air is sweet, soft. Toward the Heath, and this is always a symbol of joy for me, swallows are diving and wheeling in the warm twilight. Eating their prey alive of course. Though as a child I believed they just whirled about for fun.

  Which reminds me, I must open the window in the study, make sure there’s some oxygen about. Some weeks ago, complaining of Hilary’s racket while I was debugging a program, I got Shirley to buy some strips of foam insulant to put round the door. No one will smell anything until it’s roaring.

  Coming down the stairs, I let my feet feel the fibrous sponginess of expensive pile carpet. My hand lingers on the polished wooden banister. Illuminating the red and gold wallpaper up the hallway are two light fittings with elaborate Venetian glass which Shirley bought from a shop in Belgravia. It annoys me that Mother never expresses any real admiration for this house, anything beyond, ‘what big rooms, what a huge garden, it must be a nightmare keeping it tidy’, etc. etc. If she were to show any desire to come and live here, instead of endlessly singing the praises of her Cricklewood shoebox, I would be glad to have her. I’m not in the business of bearing grudges.

  And in fact I meet my mother going back to the kitchen. We hug warmly.

  Almost seven o’clock. The kitchen and breakfast room are lined with tables draped with white cloths and laden with the kind of goodies we certainly never ate in Park Royal. The floor in the breakfast room is a dark herringbone parquet with two small Persian rugs. In the kitchen we have pearl grey polished granite tiles (not as expensive as you’d think).

  What a long way I’ve come. And not all thanks to Shirley either (it was me, for example, chose the Regency dresser she loves so much). What a long way, just to find ourselves imprisoned by the life sentence Hilary is.

  Shirley pulls a child’s red plastic bowl from the fridge.

  ‘I’ll feed Hilary,’ I offer.

  ‘Oh thanks. I’ll just heat it up a minute.’

  The electronic bleeping of the microwave.

  I refuse to go to the john again. Just ignore it, clench.

  ‘Okay. Check it isn’t too hot.’

  To start the thing I shall use a cigarette smoked almost to the stub. I shall place it down the side of what, according to a government warning pamphlet found in Central Finchley library, should be our most inflammable armchair where I will have spilt/poured a full tumbler of whisky just a few minutes before. The armchair I have forced half under my desk and on the surface of the desk is a nearly full ashtray which I will tip over the chair as soon as the flames begin. This will thus seem, I trust, to those who sift through the ashes, to have been the little mishap that set the whole thing going: a jacket flap, or dress catches that ashtray as someone leaves the room, they don’t wait to hear it fall and anyway it would be almost inaudible on the soft whisky-wet upholstery of the chair; in a few minutes the room is in flames.

  I have made no attempt to salvage anything from this lovely little study room with its wood-panelled walls. Not my precious library of floppies with some of my best ideas for new software, not my IBM 8000 with expanded RAM. Not even our wedding photos in the bookcase. I feel quite glad to make these sacrifices, to lose things that are both valuable and precious. I think of us beginning afresh with the insurance money and a new house, and no Hilary. How free and happy we will be at last.

  It would be dangerous to be seen to have squirrelled things away.

  Forcing the girl into her special high chair, always a struggle, I almost burst out laughing: ‘Too bad Grandad couldn’t be here,’ I shout to my mother as she clatters the vacuum cleaner back into the cupboard. ‘He’d have a heart attack seeing all that booze.’

  Mother doesn’t like even the word, ‘booze’.

  ‘Poor old soul,’ she says. ‘If only he’d agree to have his teeth done it would be something.’

  ‘Might be worse when he bit the nurses though.’

  Both he and Hilary bite the hands that feed them.

  ‘Poor old soul,’ Mother says again, as if this were some kind of incantation. She will not think badly. Often I feel I’ve had to do the job for both of us.

  I stir the food in its microwave dish and blow on it. Hilary is held upright by two strong waist bands and two rigid, vertical cushions either side of her head. Her face is at the s
ame level as mine as I sit to feed her and she opens her mouth in anticipation. A few of Shirley’s church friends have arrived, bringing more food, and somebody now puts Strauss’s waltzes on, very loud. Hilary is suddenly so excited she bangs down her wrist in the dish, splattering chunks of ham and spaghetti rings, laughing furiously. The kind of thing that usually has me cursing with frustration (my trousers are splattered). But I’m cool tonight. We’re on the home straight.

  Then it vaguely occurs to me, is this what being mad is like? I aim a spoon into the glistening pink wetness of gums and lips. Her head waves perilously.

  ‘Would you like an aperitif, sir?’

  It’s Shirley coming up behind me in excellent mood with a tray of chilled white wine.

  It will look odd if I don’t act merry and do some drinking. The party was my idea, wasn’t it? Though I’ll have to keep a clear head. The most important thing to remember is, since Frederick is to be put to bed in the spare bedroom, I shall have to get up there pretty smartly. But in a way that is part of the plan. I am hardly likely to forget.

  And no, I will not go to the bathroom again.

  The Romantic Fort

  I always find parties of this kind in friends’ houses somewhat dull. Okay, you have a lot to eat, a lot to drink, that can be nice, and maybe you manage to brush thighs, bump arses with some pretty women jiving about the furniture. But mostly you just find yourself sitting on the stairs with a plate of sausage rolls, trapped into conversations so irretrievably humdrum that even an argument with one’s wife would be exciting by comparison; this between getting up every couple of minutes to let somebody climb upstairs to the loo. At best you might find another man reasonably intelligent and sufficiently interested in your own line of business to share a bottle of whisky with till it’s time to go home.