‘Is Mummy all right?’ Camilla said. ‘I guess,’ Noah said.
‘You don’t give much away, do you?’ she said. ‘Mummy has been a bit funny lately, I’ve noticed. Ever since you went to Bologna. She’s not menopausal or anything, is she?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s as regards your first proposition. I can’t answer for the “or any things”.’
‘God save us all from brainy men,’ Camilla said. ‘You’re telling me I don’t speak properly. I’m sorry. But seriously, what’s the matter with her? Why did she go rushing off to South Africa like that?’
Noah shrugged. ‘Why not? It’s where she comes from.’
‘So?’ Camilla said. ‘We don’t all go running back to where we come from. Only if we’re a bit dotty, like Mr Bobrow. You know. Like the way he embraces Judaism once in every ten years or so. I believe she’s having a crisis; a reversion of some sort.’
‘Sometimes it helps to go back,’ Noah said. ‘She’s okay. She’s just fine, Camilla. Believe me.’
‘This Adderley person she used to know,’ Camilla said persistently. ‘He’s featured in Vogue this month wearing paisley elbow patches. God, he isn’t half gorgeous, Noah.’ Noah smiled evasively.
‘He’s too old for you,’ he said. ‘Elbow patches or no.’
‘Me?’ Camilla said. ‘For me? But you don’t really mean that about age, I hope. I’m in love, Noah. That’s really what I came in to tell you. I’ve never been in love before. Until now I’ve just had strings of men.’
‘Congratulations,’ Noah said. ‘With whom are you in love?’
‘With Arnie,’ Camilla said.
‘You’re not serious,’ Noah said.
‘Don’t tell him, will you?’ Camilla said. ‘It might alarm him. I wanted to tell you that the whole thing has been entirely my responsibility from start to finish. I seduced him, and with great difficulty. He was laboriously honourable about the whole thing.’
‘The hell he was!’ Noah said.
‘No, truly,’ Camilla said. ‘I threw myself at him most insistently. He kept expressing himself with great propriety on the matter. He seemed to think that you might mind.’
‘I see,’ Noah said. ‘And what did you answer to that overnice and wholly irrelevant qualm?’
‘I told him that you thought I was so immoderately promiscuous anyway that you would be most of all indifferent,’ Camilla said.
‘That’s not true,’ Noah said. ‘I’m never indifferent to your well being.’
‘I know,’ Camilla said. ‘But leaving that aside, it’s all quite different when you’re in love. What I mean is that I had to have him. I know now with absolute certainty that I want Arnie and nobody else. I wish the hours away when he isn’t with me. I have no assurance that he will ever want me anything like as permanently or as exclusively. In fact I think it highly unlikely, but I will struggle not to hold it against him. What else is there for me to do?’
‘Nothing,’ Noah said, marvelling at her clarity and her courage. At that point he got up from his chair and put his glass down on the desk-top. He planted a kiss on her forehead.
‘Go to bed,’ he said. ‘What is there that I can say to you? If you’re wanting coffee for two, in the morning, call room service, that’s all.’
‘You’re nice,’ Camilla said. ‘I knew you would be nice. Perhaps we could have fried rose petals instead of coffee? I read a recipe last term for fried rose petals, to be eaten by brides at midnight. To tell you the truth, Noah, Arnie says we are not to share beds under your roof. Isn’t that decorous? I mean for a promiscuous letch like Arnie. I hope you’re going to bed too, because you look exhausted. If you sit here all night knocking back your duty-free, you will damage your liver, you know.’
Hattie was next to wake. She joined her father in the kitchen wearing nothing but her small bikini pants and a violent marigold T-shirt bearing the words ‘Sunny South Africa’. Seeing Noah there at the table, she climbed on to his knee and sucked cosily at her thumb.
‘Can I get another kitten?’ she said.
‘Sure, baby,’ Noah said with a good grace, because he knew now for absolutely certain that Hattie had won the last battle in the pet war, and that he himself had lost it. ‘I would have gone to jail for Susan,’ Hattie said. ‘I would have if I’d had to.’
‘I know,’ Noah said. ‘But they don’t actually put small children in jail, Hat. Their parents are held to be responsible for some of the things which they do.’ Hattie looked quite shocked.
‘Do you mean Mummy would have had to go to jail because of me?’ she said.
‘Don’t worry about it, Hat,’ Noah said. ‘Nobody’s going to jail.’
‘Can I really have a kitten?’ she said. ‘Truly?’
‘Yes,’ Noah said. ‘So long as you keep it out of the bedrooms and out of my study.’
‘And can I have my ears pierced as well?’ Hattie said, jumping in hopefully while blessings to the bereaved were being dispensed.
‘No,’ he said firmly.
‘When I’m older?’ Hattie said. ‘Like when I’m ten?’ ‘Like when you’re eighteen maybe,’ Noah said. ‘Some good things are worth waiting for.’
‘Mummy’s had her ears pierced,’ Hattie said. ‘Did you notice?’
‘Sure I noticed,’ Noah said. ‘Do you take me for a blind man?’
‘And do you hate it?’ Hattie said.
‘I love it,’ Noah said truthfully, since – to his own surprise – he had discovered Ali’s pierced ear lobes to be quite irresistibly sexy. ‘I bought you a beautiful book, Hat,’ he said and he reached across the table and handed to her a hardback poetry book for children, liberally endowed with shiny pastel illustrations. He had bought it for her on the day he had gone bearing gifts to the Brainbox and his new born sister.
‘Thanks,’ Hattie said and graciously she leafed through her book, though her heart cried out in disappointment for disco roller-skates like Rebecca’s. ‘I like the pictures,’ she said truthfully, because there was a lovely picture of a gypsy lady called ‘Old Meg’ who was all alone on a scary moonlit moor with crags, and she looked sort of wild and brave. Hattie found the picture an inspiration, but she couldn’t quite say why and did not try. ‘Why are the pictures called plates?’ she said. ‘Because they’re not plates, are they? They’re pictures.’
Ali rose at nine-thirty after a restless night of troubled dreams which, having meandered through bullet holes and lifeless cats, had fixed, as usual, upon Camilla. When Ali was troubled it was safe to say that she always dreamed about Camilla. Camilla at three, pulled away from her at cattle trucks or lost on refugee trains; backdrops of barbed wire as in Käthe Kollwitz; Camilla abducted on her way from school; Camilla, trying through tears to pull at parachute strings while aeroplanes flamed in the air. Camilla, as now, disintegrating horribly into particles and atoms before her eyes. Ali woke in terror and ran to the window wanting evidence of Arnie’s hired motor car in the drive, but the car was not there. Shaking, she entered Camilla’s room to find the empty bed. Perhaps because she was not yet wholly awake, she threw back the covers out of old habit and checked the bed for urine stains. There was nothing on the sheet but a small speck of menstrual blood.
‘Camilla!’ she called at the bathroom door, but Camilla was not there. Neither was she in the kitchen where Noah sat reading verse with Hattie.
‘Noah,’ she said shaking visibly, ‘Camilla is not here. Arnie’s car has gone. What’s happened to them?’
‘They’re home, Al,’ Noah said patiently. ‘For heaven sakes I saw them come in last night. They parked by the barn not to wake anyone. It was late. Sit down. Relax.’
‘I had a dream,’ Ali said. ‘Where is she?’
‘Search me,’ Noah said, a little evasively. ‘Taking a bath; taking a walk; asleep maybe. Relax.’ Ali stared at him.
‘She’s in Arnie’s bed!’ she said with sudden violent illumination. ‘That philandering bloody bastard has got her in his bed! I’ll ki
ll him.’ The outburst was not wise before Hattie – a spurned stepsister who jerked violently in Noah’s lap, grinding the bones of her pelvis sharply into his testicles and crashing his teeth together with the upward twitch of her head. Noah winced and responded in kind. He smacked her hard on the tender sunburned flesh of her exposed thigh. Ali drew in her breath and watched transfixed, as the brazen imprint of his hand sprang up fast and telling on the skin. Tears of surprise and shock sprang to Hattie’s eyes. She leaped to her feet, snatching up the poetry book, and lifted it in readiness to bang him on the head with it. Then, instead, she flung herself wildly at Ali.
‘I HATE HIM! HORRIBLE PIG!’ she screamed. ‘ANYWAY, I DIDN’T WANT A STUPID POETRY BOOK! SO! I’LL NEVER TALK TO HIM AGAIN! NEVER! SO!’ She ran from the room and up the stairs, slamming doors fit to wake the dead. Ali’s reproachful glance was enough to make Noah rise up in his own defence, though she said nothing.
‘An honest response, Al,’ he said. ‘An honest response is sometimes necessary. Did you ever get kicked in the balls?’
‘I didn’t see,’ said Ali. ‘But whatever she did you oughtn’t to have hit her.’
‘Pardon me,’ Noah said impatiently, on his four hours’ sleep, ‘but there is room for only one saint and martyr in this house and, baby, it ain’t gonna be me. The child needs constraints. Any child needs constraints. Al, for God’s sake sit down. Calm down. You’re living on your nerves, do you know that?’ Ali was visibly shaking by now, on behalf of her daughter.
‘What I’m telling you,’ Ali said, ‘is don’t hit my children. Don’t you dare ever hit my children.’
‘And how about you not feeding mine on Sugar Puffs?’ Noah said. ‘I don’t “hit children”, Al, for Chrissake. Sometimes I defend myself against violent assault, that’s all. Hey, listen, can I get you some breakfast?’ He made a move to accommodate her at the table, but Ali turned away and began to hack crudely at yesterday’s loaf on the workboard.
‘Would you like some toast?’ she said. ‘There’s no coffee. I’ll shop this morning.’
‘I’ll shop,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the kids. Have yourself some time off. Finish the painting.’
‘It’s finished,’ Ali said. With the painting finished and along with it the days of creative intensity, Ali felt drained and flat.
‘How was the gallery interview?’ Noah said. ‘You never told me.’
‘I stood it up,’ she said. ‘I forgot. I’m sorry. How I must pain you with my lack of ambition.’ It was perfectly true that Noah promptly experienced on her behalf a small undemonstrative agony.
‘I don’t want for you to be ambitious,’ he said, ‘only for you to be happy.’ Ali was fidgeting with bolts on the grill pan. ‘How’s the old lady?’ he said.
‘Lousy,’ Ali said. ‘She’s been put into a home. I went to see her there. It’s not a good way to go, believe me. The old aren’t very nice, Noah. They grumble and they smell. They fidget with their false teeth. No wonder doctors don’t like geriatrics. No wonder lungs and hearts are generally more popular.’ Noah ignored the jibe sensing that the moment was not appropriate for taking issue with her.
‘Her neighbours said there was a fire,’ Ali continued slowly. ‘They sent for an ambulance and for the firemen. Margaret suspects the landlord. She says he was trying to prise her out. There was no fire, she says. Only a bit of smoke from signed dog meat.’
‘For Chrissake, Al, there was a fire,’ Noah said. Even before he had said it, Ali knew that there was no way that Noah would not believe the neighbours and the landlord. Profound and gaping differences in allegiance would appear before them which – though affection and loyalty would help them to be tolerant – would never be resolvable. It made her sad.
Arnie appeared suddenly, shirtless, myopic and rumpled, stretching idly like a waking cat.
‘What time do you have, Noah?’ he said. ‘Darn it. I lost my watch last night.’
‘Five after ten,’ Noah said. ‘It’s late. God knows how you sleep so well in a house full of children slamming doors.’ Arnie laughed on a careless yawn, and staggered to the kitchen tap.
‘Hi, Al,’ he said.
Ali turned on him a pent-up and hostile stare which, without his glasses, completely passed him by. She found herself resenting his half-naked indolent intrusion into her kitchen; his yawning ease, his underarm hair, his nasty, grizzling wart. It was then that she noticed, to her further intense annoyance, that he was wearing, in his pierced ear, one of the small roseate clusters given to Camilla by her stepfather.
‘You are wearing my daughter’s earring, you swine,’ she said. ‘Take it off!’
‘Pardon me?’ Arnie said, and he compounded the insult by putting an arm around her shoulders. Ali threw him off.
‘I said take it off!’ she yelled violently. ‘And put your clothes on before you come into my kitchen. Do you mind?’
‘Hey, wait a bit,’ Arnie said. ‘The earring, did you say? Are you talking about the earring? Camilla gave it to me. What d’you think? You think I stole it?’
‘You bloody well seduced her, Arnie Weinberg,’ Ali said. ‘And in my house. Go on. Deny it.’
Arnie, having stipulated separate beds the previous night, had woken in the small hours to find Camilla sharing his comforter and weeping quietly in remembrance of a small dead cat with a white speck on the end of its tail. She was dressed inadequately in a thin sleeveless nightgown, her arms goose-pimpled from the cold, her feet like blocks of ice. Arnie, who had gone to sleep in his soft twill shirt, peeled it warm off his back and wrapped her in it. In the bleary haze of a heavy sleeper, he had leaned down and groped on the carpet for his thick, discarded sports socks which he had then pulled on over her feet. After that he had drawn her into the warm zone of his bed before returning, very promptly, to sleep.
‘Sure, I’ll deny it,’ he said, filled with righteous indignation. ‘Your daughter came to my bed last night, Al. She was crying over the cat. Nothing happened.’
‘Like hell!’ Ali said.
‘Cut it out, Al,’ Noah said warningly. ‘Drop it. Drop the whole subject right now.’
‘Nothing happened,’ Arnie said angrily. ‘Al baby, your daughter has her period, as a matter of fact.’
‘Oh indeed?’ Ali said sarcastically. ‘And that would stop you I suppose?’ Having said it, the greater awfulness dawned upon her that it quite possibly would.
‘Oh my God!’ she said in disgust. ‘Now I see it all. You can screw everything in skirts between here and Middletown just so long as there’s no bleeding. Is that right? Oh my God, I almost believe you.’
‘I said drop it!’ Noah said. ‘Behave properly, Al, or get out of the kitchen. Go get a shirt on, Arnie. Al’s upset. Can’t you see that? She’s emotional. She’s upset about the cat. She’s readjusting. She’s protective of her children.’
‘One of her goddam children just bit me in the leg,’ Arnie said ruefully. ‘I offered to help the kid tear up a poetry book since the project was giving her some trouble. Meanwhile, she’s taking up most of the bathroom. Do you mind if I pee in what your wife’s gardener has left of your flowerbeds?’ He made a timely exit through the kitchen door.
‘And while we’re on the subject,’ Ali said, turning to Noah with a wish to dredge up grievance, ‘can you tell me why you brought the child a poetry book? How often do you read poetry?’
‘Al,’ Noah said wearily, ‘the grill pan is on fire.’
‘Poetry is for women, I suppose?’ she said. ‘“Created by men with women in mind”. Like Crimplene. I hope you brought a poetry book for Daniel?’
‘Daniel can’t read,’ Noah said. ‘Al, the grill pan is on fire.’
He leaped from his chair as a column of black smoke rose to the ceiling. Stretching over her, he grabbed the flaming pan by the handle, but as Ali turned to face it, they came into collision. An accumulation of William’s bacon grease, melted and bubbling treacherously, slopped over both of them, down on to Noah’s left forearm
and on to Ali’s right. Both of them yelled in pain.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Noah said, crashing the pan down on to the workboard where the flames subdued and died. He took her by the hand to the sink where he held first her arm and then his own under cold running water.
‘Sorry, Al,’ he said, moved beyond conflict towards inexpressible pity by the injury to her flesh. Ali, undone by pain and by pent-up emotion, sat at the table and cried. Noah sat down beside her, while between them they watched the white blisters rise from the red.
‘Mine’s bigger,’ Ali said. ‘Much bigger. Say, doesn’t it stink of old dripping in here? A touch of the old streaky rashers, what? I may not be cordon bleu, but I don’t leave other people’s grill pans full of stinking pig fat, do I?’ Chastely, Noah kissed her cheek.
‘I love you more than my life, Al,’ he said. ‘I always have. I always will. Can we go out for breakfast? I need coffee.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I have driven out your esteemed, half-naked colleague. Why do you think I care? Is it that Camilla’s sexuality disturbs me? Does it make me jealous? I surely don’t want that ever-so-slightly bent Middletown hip for myself, do I?’
‘Let’s just say you’re worried about your daughter,’ Noah said. ‘That’s fair enough – I’ll make you a deal. You worry about Camilla and I’ll worry about Hattie.’
‘Hattie’s all right,’ Ali said. ‘Hattie will go far.’
‘Only if the country discovers a sudden need for a good hanging judge,’ Noah said. ‘How’s your arm feel now?’
‘Not bad,’ Ali said. ‘It feels all right.’
Camilla came wafting through the kitchen, trance-like and breathing sleep. Yesterday’s eye make-up smudged her cheeks, but could do nothing to sully the remarkable purity of her extraordinary looks. She had on Arnie’s socks and Arnie’s shirt, the latter flapping loose at the cuffs. She moved right through the kitchen and on into the garden where she embraced Arnie from behind, leaning her cheek on his spine between his bare shoulder blades and rocking him slightly to and fro. Ali, in spite of herself, was profoundly moved. It was while she watched them that the telephone rang. Noah took the call, reaching for the receiver with his unblistered right arm.
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