by Patrick Gale
Why, Domina? Why not leave me, as in capital D; separate bank accounts, I’ll have the TV, you have the deep freeze? I don’t know whether you stopped to think about it, but what am I supposed to tell people who come round asking for you? ‘Oh no, buddy, she hasn’t left me exactly, just gone in search of “herself”. What’s that? How long will she be?’ Minnie sweetest, how long does it take? How long will you need? I mean, are we talking in terms of a month or a cosmic year? Like you say, I’m the eternal adolescent, so I can’t really conceive what timescale you’re functioning on.
I miss you. I just tried to open a can of beans and I cut my finger and I don’t know where the elastoplasts are so I’m dripping gore into a box of Kleenex. The latter are ‘Mansize’; could this be the long-awaited commercial recognition of the male right to cry through Whistle Down the Wind fourth time around? OK, OK, so it doesn’t wash – I can open cans, and you know I never cry into anything but crisp, white linen ironed by you, but I do miss you.
Have I forgotten something? I remembered your birthday. I reminded you about La Mamma Isobella’s. We don’t have an anniversary (surely that isn’t the problem?). I know I’m never God’s gift to womankind when I’m writing, but then your concentration isn’t perfect when you’re bringing forth.
I miss you. Now.
If you wanted a little break, you could have said the magic word and I’d have taken you on a romantic weekend to Bath. If you’d wanted a holiday we could have taken that trip across North Africa we’ve been promising ourselves ever since we sat through that dreadful movie about … what was it called? … anyway, the one about Moroccan flesh-pots. That’s not a bad idea. Just give me another week or two. You can decide how we get there and book the tickets, and we can go. At long last we can go to North Africa and drift in a barge down the Nile, and be cruel about Rick’s friend Larry Durrell. No?
Fine. Swell. I understand, Mina. Just give me a month and I’ll give you a month. I am going to play that elusive creature, the sympathetic male. I won’t fuss, I won’t go to pieces, I’ll keep you informed and I’ll leave the emotional blackmail to the abominable Bingham. And if you don’t come home in a month, I’ll pay you the ultimate compliment of dropping everything and coming to find you. I trust this will be appreciated.
Big, strong, understanding love
from
Randy.
PS Can you remember what to do when the washing machine goes ‘fluggudder-fluggudder’ instead of ‘chugga-chugga-chug’?
7
‘Domina Tey!’
Domina turned on the porch steps, her hands full of shopping, her head full of the letter she had read in the taxi. A coach was disgorging its load onto the pavement and she stared blankly across the crowd. She felt deflated and in need of a bath. She hoped she had misheard.
‘Domina. Over here, you goose!’
She looked the other way and saw him. Oh my God. Gerald Mannisty.
‘Gerald. My God. It’s been ages.’ He still looked like Rupert Brooke, only a corrupted version that had lived rather more and longer. ‘Gerald, you look wonderful.’
Jumping the steps, he swept her into a characteristic hug.
‘Cow. You make me look ancient. You’ve had your hair done – I can smell it – and you’ve bought lots of clothes.’ He cast an expert eye over the names on her bags. ‘And you’re about to go into the seediest building in Inverness Terrace and I want to know why. You’re meant to be in that vast house in Clifton, paying the bills while Randy writes another turgid critique. Don’t tell me … You haven’t … ?’ Gerald rounded baby blue eyes in expectation. Domina fumbled in her handbag for her keys.
‘We can’t talk out here,’ she said. ‘Come upstairs and all will be revealed.’
‘You are a brute! Why did I have to meet you? I was spending a happy, slummy afternoon …’
‘Yes, what are you doing round here?’
‘Sauna, darling. There’s a rather good one just across the road. The Hermes. Haven’t you seen the neon flashing at nights?’
‘I haven’t spent a night here yet. I only arrived this morning.’
‘How exciting! I want to come up and sit on the end of your bath, drinking your gin and having a damned good bitch, but it’s someone’s birthday and I’ve got to drop off a prezzy. Can we eat?’
‘Come back as soon as you’ve done with whoever it is. Who is it?’
‘Horrid girl, really. Fenella Foy. Know her? Very, very rich, but got a mouth like a rat-trap, so probably mean as hell to boot. I’ll be back around eight-thirty.’
‘Wonderful.’
He took her face in his long, firm hands and planted a kiss on her brow.
‘God, what fun. Taxi! ’Bye, darling.’
‘’Bye.’
As Domina turned the key, she noticed that her name had been added to the line-up by the door-bells: ‘Mrs Tey – ring twice.’ Above her piece of card, and by the same bell, was another: ‘Quintus Harding – ring once.’ She let herself in and walked down to the kitchen to unload the food she had bought.
The kitchen was the largest basement room. It had an old gas stove, a walk-in larder, a broad deal table that could have been of the same vintage as the house, and an assortment of chairs. Standing at the sinks, one could look through the high windows on to the area at the front and up to an assortment of passing ankles.
As she came down, Domina stood aside to make way for the Asian who had passed her her typewriter in the morning. He was clutching a large cardboard box to his chest, resting his chin on the lid.
‘No, no, I insist,’ he said, and also stood aside. Domina despised the dances that could ensue on these occasions, so she accepted and carried on her way.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
At the table sat an old trout in tweeds and thick glasses, whom she assumed to be Avril, and a wafer-thin young man in a white T-shirt and tight jeans.
‘Hello,’ she said, on her way to her shelf.
‘Hello,’ said Avril, ‘you must be Mrs Tey. Tilly’s just told us all about you. My name’s Avril, Avril Gilchrist, and this is Thierry Kalbach. Very little English,’ she added, with no approach to an undertone.
Domina turned with her sweetest smile. ‘How d’you do,’ she said to Avril, and to Thierry, ‘Bonsoir.’
‘Ah, vous n’êtes pas française, Madame?’ he asked quickly.
‘Non, mais je le parle un peu.’
Thierry rose from the table like a Quaker inspired and engaged Domina in conversation as she unloaded the food and walked up to the hall again. Her French was rusty but this did not seem to be important. He had a sweet, well-scrubbed face.
‘That terrible old bat,’ he went on, ‘she has to talk to somebody and knows that as I have little English, I am, how you say in your language, “easy lay”, and so she traps me and will not let me go. But I have found that she has no French, so, if I can speak French, it shuts her up and I can escape. Je m’excuse, I should have shaken hands. How d’you do?’ They stopped on the landing and he shook hands with a studied air.
‘What do you do?’ she asked.
‘I’m a waiter. At the moment I work in Holland Park Avenue, but I don’t think I stay there much longer. Terrible tips and the food … épouvantable! How about you?’
‘Oh. I was a teacher, but I’m between jobs at the moment. Just looking. You know.’
‘I know.’ They had evidently reached Thierry’s door.
‘So nice to have met you,’ he faltered, in English.
‘Not at all,’ she grinned. ‘It was a pleasure to save you.’
‘We strike a bargain. You save me from her each day, and I improve your French.’ They laughed and Domina carried on to her room.
She kicked off her shoes, peeled off her tights then, sitting on the edge of her bed, opened bag after bag. She spread out the booty on the counterpane, pulling off pins and price tags as she did so. It included a full skirt in a rough cotton with bold uneven stripes down it in brickish red and a smo
ky blue. She could wear that, the new white blouse and her old blue pumps. The latter showed off her ankles so well, and she recalled that Gerald had always taken a passionate interest in her ankles. She turned on her radio and found a programme of ‘Golden Oldies’. She tossed off her clothes and pulled on her dressing-gown. Minutes later, with a towel over her shoulders, stiff pink gin in one hand and the radio and bottle of overpriced bubble bath in the other, she wound her way, barefoot, to an empty bathroom and locked herself in.
8
Domina downed two aspirin and a mug of strong, black coffee. Then she bought a Times and fled to a bench by the Round Pond to collect her thoughts.
Gerald had left at some ungodly hour, she had been half asleep and could remember only the pleasure of being left with the whole of a single bed. Dinner had been a good idea, just what she had needed. He had steered her to his favourite ‘dive’ of the moment, an as yet undiscovered Vietnamese restaurant in a Pimlico basement. As they had settled into their corner table and giggled at the Piaf coming over the speaker system, it had dawned on them that they had not once eaten alone since Gerald’s last year at Cambridge.
Gerald had been two years above Domina. Nocturnal event number five, he had suffused her first university summer with a daft, pink glow. Theirs had been the first proper affair of her life. Neither of them had taken the thing seriously, which on reflection explained how they managed to spin it out for so long. Gerald was the outstanding economist of his year, yet had set his heart on becoming an actor. He won a place at RADA, then gave up after a year of the course. He had written to Domina announcing this move, the only expression of genuine disenchantment she had known him to make. He realized, he wrote, that university drama was, like university politics or journalism, a cipher. He had acted because it was the most efficacious way of making people take notice in an atmosphere of fierce social competition. He was doing quite well at RADA, he wrote, but he was no fool. There was little point in trying to become an actor unless one had the makings of a great one, which he did not. He did, however, have the makings of a vast fortune in the shape of a bevy of rich prats from King’s who were begging him to invest their inheritances for them. The Stock Exchange was unaesthetic, certainly, he went on, but just think of the bliss unparalleled of an early retirement. Domina could be arty, he would make a mint, and then he would take her to Glyndebourne every year to quiet his conscience. In the event, he had taken her to Glyndebourne only once, and that was with Polly Schreiber, the other half of a disastrous marriage that was now in the last stages of its dissolution.
Dinner had been just what she needed. Volley after ego-buffing volley of social venom. Then, by the time they were ordering tinned lychees for a laugh, and had dissected the failures of their several friends, the wine took effect, the conversation turned in on themselves, and Domina had found herself telling Gerald, through a fog of tears, that she had run away to London because she could not face middle-age. Then Gerald, who as always was not quite as drunk as his companion, turned on his highly-sexed uncle routine and said he wanted them to go back for cocoa at her place and prove that the vitality of their suspended passion was undimmed. Then she had said yes please, and found herself letting him in at the front door of Inverness Terrace. He had read the card marked: ‘Mrs Tey – ring twice’ in a voice that seemed hideously funny at the time, and they had giggled all the way to the attic.
Installed in her room, Gerald had given her Gordon’s instead of cocoa, and had proceeded to remove her clothes. The gin had sent her into new realms of hilarity and she had danced a tango with him. At each swing of the dance, he had removed an article of his clothing, and by the time she heard the knock at the door, he had begun to get very excited indeed. Had Domina been a fraction more in control, she would have put her finger to her lips and waited for the knocking to go away; as it was, she clutched her new skirt to her chest and stuck her head around the door.
He was slightly taller than her, which made him about six foot. He had light brown hair which curled at the edges, thin lips and sea-green eyes. He looked anorexic. Seeing him dithering there in dressing gown, winceyette pyjamas and corduroy slippers, she could barely control the impulse to drop her skirt and fling wide the door. The innocence of his glance was sobering, however, so she smiled gaily and asked,
‘Yes?’
‘Oh. Sorry to disturb you, but –’ A young voice. Twenty or twenty-one, she surmised. His eyes remained firmly on her face. She wished her nipples could whistle to attract his attention. T wonder if you could possibly be a little quieter,’ he ventured. ‘You see it is quite late.’
‘Is it?’ She really had no idea.
‘Yes, and actually, we’re not supposed to have guests after midnight.’
‘Sorry,’ she whispered. His prudery was insufferable. ‘I’ll try not to do it again.’ And she shut the door in his face, very gently.
‘Ciggie. Here, Ciggie! Come on, Cigarette.’ A young girl called her cocker spaniel, waving a stick as she did so. ‘Go on, Ciggie!’ She hurled it into the water and the dog obediently leapt in, struggled bravely through the little waves, and retrieved the thing for her. ‘Good girl. Good, good Cigarette.’ She stroked the head lovingly, then tossed the stick back into the water. ‘Go on, Ciggie. Go on. Fetch!’
Domina watched as the spaniel plunged back in, sending the ducks churning to either side.
Looking back, it would have been better to have thrown Gerald out at that juncture, but then, without underwear one is somehow of diminished moral stature. What followed was quite unexpected and deeply disturbing. She had remembered him as a gentle lover, courteous, solicitous even. Fifteen years of the Stock Exchange and Polly Schreiber had left their mark. Now he was rough. He didn’t just nibble – she liked that – he spanked her. He slapped her face. He even spat. What shocked Domina most was that, while a part of her sat soberly up and said this is sordid and unnatural, the other drunken, active part of her lay back and enjoyed it. She let the overweight War Poet spit in her face. As she stared balefully at the reiterated errands of the swimming dog, she recoiled from the recollection that she had gone so far as to participate in his verbal fantasies. ‘You’re the Boss,’ she had moaned, ‘no one’s allowed to do this but you ‘cause you’re the Boss.’
He had fallen asleep immediately it was over. She had lain on the outside of that hopelessly single bed, one foot resting on the carpet, and heard music. It had been very soft and it had come from that boy’s room. Quintus Harding. A piece of Gregorian chant, it had taken her back to spring mornings in the convent gardens. Cum veni Sancti Spiritu. She had passed out while trying to remember the translation, and failing to summon more than ‘Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire, and lighten with celestial fire.’
Domina shuddered and tried to read her paper. The sun was now almost overhead and she could feel it on her skin. Her fingers were still puffed from the long, therapeutic soak she had taken on waking. The painkillers were keeping the headache at bay; there was only a vague throb – more a distortion of sounds than a pain. The children of Bayswater were throwing stale bread to the geese and ducks. A herring gull and a bevy of bustling pigeons were muscling in on the treat. Behind her a man’s voice, Californian, and a little girl on the brink of tantrum:
‘We’re going home to Mummy.’
‘Nooo!’
‘Please, Señora?’ A Spanish girl, about fifteen, stood at her shoulder behind the bench. She held out a camera. Behind her a group of five or six other girls were crouching, tittering on the grass. ‘Please. You take our picture. Yes?’
‘OK.’ Domina accepted the camera, a small, stylized one with minimal controls. She aimed it at the Spaniards. ‘Smile,’ she commanded. They obeyed. All overweight, they smiled and laughed. Domina fired.
‘Thank you so much.’ The ringleader took back her machine. ‘Goodbye.’
Domina stood. The breeze that had been so cooling across the water had dropped. It was becoming an extremely hot day. She folded the
newspaper and set off towards the Serpentine. She reached Physical Energy, Watt’s horse and rider that seemed about to gallop up through the air over Kensington Palace. Her father had made her admire it as a child, but she had never ceased to find it indecent. The offence had something to do with the man’s muscle-bound feet. It was sexy, though, beyond question; the grip of his thick, naked thighs on the animal’s flanks was spectacular. As she walked past, she noticed that someone had marked the podium with the red-painted plea: ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ and that this in turn had been half daubed out by a National Front symbol in white. The piece certainly had fascist overtones.
Hitler’s Olympics. The nearest she had come to a row with Randy in recent years had been over those. She had championed Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia as an example of documentary rising above propaganda, he had made a scene, and they had been forced to leave the dinner party in an unseemly rush.
Domina stopped at the crest of the slope. On one side the path ran back to the Bayswater Road, on the other to the avenue and so to the Albert Memorial. Before her lay the Serpentine. She had a sudden hankering to see Peter Pan and set out to do so. It was only when she was half-way through the trees to her right that she flushed with irritation at the failure of her memory. She knew the Orangery, and Pram Walk, and the Memorial, and that fountain with the little dog in it, but she could not remember how to find Peter Pan. She kept walking, just the same, in the hope that she would find a map, then her foot caught on something and she fell. She was quite unhurt, and the ground was dry. She had even managed to fall unseen.
It was a goose. A long-necked Canada goose, and it was dead. She jumped into a crouching position with a little cry and reached out a hand. Beneath the feathers the flesh was still slightly warm. She knew nothing whatever about birds, but assumed that there must be a heart. She moved a palm rapidly about its chest, feeling for a flicker of life. There was nothing. Gingerly she reached a hand beneath it and turned it over. There was no blood, no apparent damage. The plumage was quite unharmed.
