Pagan and her parents

by Michael Arditti

  ‘That’s better,’ your mother says. But her victory is punctured by a sharp bite. ‘You wicked girl!’ She slaps her. ‘Look!’ She displays her hand for all to see. ‘You’ve drawn blood!’ If Rebecca were not restraining me, there would be more.

  I screw up my eyes, as your parents haul Pagan out between them. She kicks and squirms and squawks as they drag her down the stairs. I seem to hear the scuffle extend into the street, but it may just be the screaming in my head. There is a rush of silence. I feel as cold as an empty mirror. I look at Rebecca and Susan, but their faces are blank. I catch sight of the Families Need Fathers poster and, with no thought for any other family, rip it off the wall.

  5

  I return to an empty house but a crowded pavement. As I park the car, I am beset by a pack of middle-aged women. At first glance, I take them for reporters, but they are readers, with the sneer of yesterday’s headlines reflected in their eyes. It is women like these who have been my most faithful fans; who bake me cakes and knit me scarves for my birthday … the Gloucester Road Oxfam shop will lose its most profitable line. Now they stand in shapeless coats and sensible shoes baying abuse. One of them whacks me with an umbrella, although there is no sign of rain; another plucks the braid off Susan’s sleeve. We escape up the path. They make no attempt to follow, even as I fumble with the key. They respect my property, if not me.

  We stumble inside, where Susan’s cracked voice belies her calm words. I rage at the Nation for printing my address. It adds nothing to their story; unless they are hoping to provoke a sequel … Disgraced Star Lynched By Disgusted Readers. I wonder at the hatred that has lured these women from their comfortable homes – for they are comfortable, that much is clear – in order to wait in the street on a freezing February evening for a momentary shot at me. How did they know when – or even that – I would return? Will they come back tomorrow? Are they a group? A secret cell from the Women’s Institute … flying bigots? Or did they make their way here independently, like the thousands who cheer outside Buckingham Palace … ‘We want the Queen’.

  I peer through a gap in the sitting-room curtains, as though I have something to hide. They are still there. I half-expect them to launch into a chorus of ‘Jerusalem’. What are they waiting for? A party of underage rent boys to arrive for a post-trial orgy?

  ‘I don’t understand what drives them,’ Susan says.

  ‘Anger … with me, with themselves. Resentment. Revulsion. They’ve invited me into their living rooms twice a week, only to find that I’ve crapped on the carpet.’

  And yet the explanation is too glib. The expression on their faces is more than indignation. I have not just affronted their sense of decency but aroused their deepest anxieties. My sexuality threatens them, of course; but is that because it is ‘unnatural’ or, rather, unknowable? Do they fear for their husbands and sons, or do they suspect them? Are they blaming me, by association, for the disaffection of their marriage beds? I long to convince them that sexuality is no guarantee of intimacy … quite the reverse. Sex is no respecter of personalities or persons. Friendship is about ‘you’ and ‘me’; sex is about itself. As you told me years ago, women mistrust men because they know that, at the moment of truth, they are an irrelevance. My lover … my fiancé … my wife … are all swept aside in the rush of an orgasm; only the female remains.

  I trace the remark back to Cambridge. We are sitting in your room at King’s discussing our childhoods, when, as so often, conversation strays to sex.

  ‘As a girl, I thought that pubic hair was public.’

  ‘And you’ve lived the rest of your life on that principle?’

  ‘Don’t be such a prude. The only thing wrong with sex is when it’s confused with love.’

  ‘I can’t work out if that’s the most profound paradox or utterly perverse.’

  ‘Sex is so powerful that we have to protect ourselves from it; or else it’ll tear us apart. So we invent love, or rather the troubadours did. At least it means that our partner will be there in the morning. Sex keeps love alive; love keeps sex controlled.’

  ‘What about friendship?’ I proclaim my own article of faith. I watch all my women-friends – not only you but Imogen, Laura and Virginia – jumping on the merry-go-round of sex, only to see it turn into the helter-skelter or the dodgems. I pick them up, battered and bruised, or comfort them when they are dumped at the end of the ride … I may not share the thrills and spills, but I always come up with the candyfloss. I am closer to you than your boyfriends. Our relationship does not run on the roller coaster of the orgasm; it is built on sympathy and humour and respect. So I want to go outside and tell those women that they have vilified the wrong man. I am their ally. If they want intimacy, they must look to friendship not sex. But, as I peep through the curtains, I see that they have left.

  I telephone Hove. Your father answers. He is reluctant to summon Pagan and claims that she is having a bath. I insist that I can wait. I am resolved to remain calm, even when it becomes clear that the delay is deliberate … I start to wonder if it is a slur on my standards of hygiene. She finally comes on the line, and I greet her with the forced gaiety of a shop-soiled Father Christmas. She replies in a plaintive whisper which seems to sift through the gap in her teeth. I struggle to unravel her speech, which is more full of sobs than sense. I urge her to take a deep breath … but my advice is waylaid by your mother, who grabs the receiver and accuses me of purposely seeking to unsettle her.

  ‘It’s clear we will have to set a time, once a week, for you to call, or else all our good work will be undone.’

  ‘She’s not a prisoner. I have the right to speak to her at any reasonable hour. And vice versa. Though, don’t worry, it’ll cost you nothing. I shall tell her to reverse the charges.’

  ‘It’s not a question of money but of principle. If you have something to say to her, send a letter. All this telephoning isn’t good for children. No wonder the standards of literacy have declined. In my day, writing was an art.’

  ‘There’s also an art to conversation.’

  ‘I’d expect you to say that; it’s your job. In my view, it’s just so much idle chatter.’ She hangs up. I blame myself for not teaching Pagan to use the phone. When we showed her how to answer it for you, we should have added how to dial. In any case, I am afraid that she will forget my number. Susan suggests that we have it inscribed on a necklace or a bracelet. Yes, I reply, then all we need is a disc marked Reward … we can take it off the cat.

  Trouble slinks off with a show of supreme indifference to the fate of his mistress. Susan and I go up to her bedroom to decide what we should pack for Hove. I propose that she should have enough to feel at home but not so much as to forget that it is only temporary. I find that it helps to think of her as an evacuee and to speak of ‘for the duration’. We move to the nursery, now a mockery of childhood with its Wendy house (soon to be repossessed), rocking horse (destined for the knackery), and piles of cuddly toys, testament to our naive belief that her life would be equally cuddly. We should have offered her spikes and blades; we should have left off the safety gates and the fireguard. Do you remember Melissa’s horror when Edward put Dougall and Sweeney on the garage roof so that they would leave him undisturbed to watch the Test Match? For months, she lambasted him for being an unnatural father. But she was wrong; he was preparing them for the fall.

  ‘Where do we begin?’ I ask Susan who, ever practical, makes successive rounds of elimination on the grounds of size, acceptability and mess. She suggests the Easy Stitch (suitably feminine), the Etch-a-Sketch (creative but clean) and any number of dolls (role models) … although I draw the line at Barbie. From the games’ chest, she picks Hedgehog’s Revenge, Junior Cluedo, and Treasures and Trapdoors; but, given their need for ‘two to six players’, I suspect that she will have more use for Solitaire. My contribution consists of books, paints and her flute, to which, in a spirit of rancour, I add a mouth-organ, bugle and drum.

  The choices are made; and Paga
n’s life is tied up in string. As we return downstairs, Susan asks me how long I want her to stay. I am shocked that she should consider leaving and insist that the dark days will not last – in my wartime scenario, I now place your parents in Hamburg not Hove – and that she will be needed on Pagan’s return. I confide Max’s view that, if we serve notice of the appeal right away, it is likely to be held in April. I would regard her departure as an admission of defeat; although, after the Nation’s revelations, it would be quite understandable. She pours scorn on the report and protests that she will be delighted to stay. Besides, she quit her previous post when the husband tried to seduce her on the night that his wife gave birth; there is no danger of that here. I suggest that she, at least, consult her parents and Geoffrey. She smiles shyly … slyly, and adds that there are some advantages to having a fiancé two hundred feet under the sea.

  Consuela returns from canasta in Shepherd’s Bush. She is surprised to see us and distressed not to see Pagan. I explain the gist of the judgment. She nods and says nothing; but her face conveys all the pity – and pain – of one who knows what it is to give up children. For the first time, I feel that I understand her. I sense a bond between us where there has hitherto been only a contract. I have always supposed that her anguish at leaving Alicia and Roberto was balanced by relief at escaping from the tyrant-in-law who excoriated her first for stealing her son and then for allowing him to die. Now I know that nothing balances the barrenness.

  I drag myself to bed. I go through the motions of going to sleep. My eyes acknowledge their exhaustion, but my mind mocks it. I feel as though Pagan is dead to me and there are no words to express my grief. As my head pounds and my chest cramps, I lack even the analgesic of analogy. I console myself with the closest thing that I can find to her … the fleecy Bo Peep blanket from her cot. Although it has lost several sheep, it retains all its slops and spills and smells. How could it do otherwise when, despite every inducement, she refused to relinquish it to the wash? Now I am grateful for her obduracy. Each stain is a map of her childhood. Her comforter has become mine.

  I awake to a vile game of postman’s knock. Consuela brings me the mail, which includes a parcel. I open it to discover two coils of brown in a box. They emit such a putrid stench that, at first, I take them for decomposing rats. Then the truth hits me. I gulp … I gag; but I refuse to crack. I put on gloves and examine the specimens like a pathologist (although the disease is in the mind). There are no clues, not even a note, as if the connection speaks for itself … even a rat would have been less insulting. I flush away the contents, but I fail to expel the smell, which defies disinfectant to linger beneath my nails; I clip them to the quick. I try to picture the mental processes of the sender, but even the physical processes are beyond me. Was he – or she (I must make no assumptions) – at such a loss for words? Your mother was right; the art of letter-writing is dead.

  I open the rest of the mail with foreboding; I have never been so grateful for an estate agent’s speculative designs on the house. In fact, I find nothing but messages of support. The sole unwelcome note is sounded by Duncan Treflis who, from the respectability of the Garrick, sends me a membership card for the Stallion, a club which, on the evidence of its logo, caters to a rather different clientele. The scrawl, like the man, demands a disproportionate effort. I decipher ‘A stable door that can be closed even after the horse has bolted’ and determine not to reply.

  Susan is screening my calls but lets through my mother. Her voice sounds as if it has been filtered through muslin: not soft but dead. I clasp at straws. There was a distribution problem; the Nation never reached North Wales. The straws give way in my hand.

  ‘How are you keeping, Mother?’

  ‘Poorly. My asthma has come back. The doctor says it’s stress.’

  ‘I thought that from New Year to Easter was your quiet time.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no one staying; that’s one blessing. Mrs Coombes says we’ll be lucky if we ever get any bookings again.’

  ‘She’s always a comfort.’

  ‘She’s been a good friend to me. She came in an hour early on Sunday morning to show me that paper.’

  ‘Mrs Coombes reads the Nation!’

  ‘Her Donald had rung with the news; he thought I should be warned.’

  ‘I bet he did.’

  ‘He was your best friend; he always asks after you.’

  ‘He’s two hundred pounds of prime malice. The only news he wants is bad news. He can’t forgive me for having got out and made something of my life, while he’s stuck there in a dead-end job and a dead-beat marriage.’

  ‘What do you mean? He has four children. They’ve called the youngest after Enid.’

  ‘Poor girl!’

  ‘So what have I got? What have you? And don’t go giving me Pagan.’

  ‘I won’t … I can’t.’

  ‘She had to read it out loud to me because I couldn’t find my glasses. I came over so bad that I couldn’t go to chapel. It’s the first Sunday I’ve missed since your father’s attack.’

  ‘I’m sorry, truly.’

  ‘Why didn’t you warn me?’

  ‘I knew nothing about it. It was hardly one of those A Day In The Life Of My Favourite Things In A Room Of My Own features. I was as shocked as you.’

  ‘You are going to take them to court? They’ve no right to print such lies.’

  ‘I think I’ve spent enough time in court lately. No one wins but the lawyers.’

  ‘What about Elton Donovan; he won, didn’t he?’

  ‘It’s not always that clear-cut. I may have met one of those men at a party.’

  ‘At the BBC?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Then why did they pick on you? Why not Terry Wogan?’

  ‘Because I’m gay, Mother. And don’t pretend you don’t know or that it’s a bad line. It’s hard for you and I’m sorry; but it’s what I’ve been for twenty years, so nothing’s changed.’

  ‘What about Candida?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘You lived together all that time.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It was a mockery.’

  ‘No. Marriages may be mockeries, but not friendships. Marriages have to stick to the rules; friendships make up their own.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Shall I ring you back when you’ve had a chance to think?’

  ‘I always brought you up to know what was right; I always brought you up to know what was clean.’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember …’ I remember sitting in the kitchen reading library books in a pair of rubber gloves, because she was convinced that public pages spelt disease. She even sprinkled them with flea-powder, until she found that it brought on her asthma. ‘I was as clean as a boy in an oxygen bubble.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  I bite my tongue as the bubble bursts. ‘I grew up. I discovered life.’

  ‘You discovered a lot of fancy ideas. What made you any different from Donald Coombes or any other boy? Your voice, that’s what. I wept when the Bishop of Bangor called you an angel.’

  ‘I grew up. I fell from grace.’

  ‘This is what comes of all those books.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing I feel ashamed of.’ I struggle to convince myself as much as her. ‘I’ve slept with a few men whom I wouldn’t ask to dinner, but is that a sin?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve never lied to you, Lenny, and I don’t mean to start. It may not be a crime any more, but it’s still a sin. That’s the difference between God’s law and ours; and all the fancy talk in Parliament can’t change it. There’s one truth, same as there has been for two thousand years. But, these days, everyone thinks they can pick and choose for themselves. They treat right and wrong like the sweet counter at Woolworth’s. They want to serve themselves with life/God/the Bible –’ she elides them in word as in spirit – ‘just like they do with the coffee creams and the hazelnut clusters. “We’ll take a few adulterers but no
murderers, a few blasphemers but no thieves.” But you can’t pic’n’mix the Ten Commandments. You can’t leave out the soft-centres. They all weigh the same to God.’

  ‘No, they may have done to Moses, but Christ made distinctions.’

  ‘What would you know about it? You don’t even go to church.’

  ‘Not now, but I did. Fifteen years of sermons leave their mark. A friend once gave me a pamphlet, Christ’s Words on Homosexuality. I opened it like a tax demand. But I needn’t have worried; every page was a blank.’

  ‘We know you’re very clever. You can twist anything; you can make black seem white. But, in your heart, you know what’s right.’

  ‘Exactly, it’s my heart, not my conscience or my memory, but my heart.’

  ‘What about mine? It’s breaking, doesn’t that count for anything? I’m sixty-three. I don’t ask much of life. Who knows how much time I have left? For twenty years I’ve had to care for your father and watch him grow as simple as a child. At least there’s one consolation; he’s been spared this.’

  ‘Don’t you think he might have understood?’

  ‘Oh, very likely; when it was two of them – two of you – who did it to him.’

  ‘Don’t blame me. I didn’t hit him. I wasn’t even in the country.’ I am guilty none the less, and of the utmost depravity, as I allow his attackers first to enact my desires and then to embody them.

  ‘I know. Who was it who had to deal with everything?’

  ‘You could have sent me a telegram.’

  ‘I wanted you to have the chance to sing; I wanted you to enjoy Venice. How I wish I’d never heard of the place! I always knew that girl was out for no good. And so it’s proved. Come home, son; come home, and we’ll see this through together.’