“A talk? About what?”
“Anything. Books. Writing. Something to peg the evening on. You wouldn’t mind would you?”
“Do you have to turn the house into a Rotary Club meeting every time I’m here?”
“It’s my birthday, Bridget, and I shall do whatsoever I like.”
“Here, here,” said Christmas, raising his glass.
“But who will you invite, mummy?”
“The Richardsons.”
“You hate the Richardsons.”
“That’s not the point. Then there’s that Italian chap with the nice wife from Merida who runs the posada. Alejandro Gomez, our neighbour from a couple of miles down the road—”
“Gomez is a fascist.”
“Oh shush, Bridget. Then there’s Dr. Puig – Oh Bridget, stop looking at me like that! We are going to have a party – why don’t you organise it, darling? You know, Harry, Bridget’s got terribly good organizational skills. She spent all last year on a reforestation project in Aragua. It was Aragua wasn’t it, Bridget?”
“What’s happened there can only be described as wholesale environmental slaughter. What with disaster just round the corner – I mean it’s just so irresponsible.”
“Around the corner?” asked Christmas. “When is that exactly?”
“Well, of course no one knows for sure. The Mayans predicted the end of the world in December 2012.”
“Oh good. Just after the Olympics,” noted Christmas. “Nothing gets me in the mood for annihilation better than Gary Lineker and the long jump.”
“The point,” continued Bridget, ignoring him, “is that this sort of behaviour is no longer sustainable. The world needs to reinvent its approach. We need to change ourselves.” She looked straight at Christmas. He met her stare with a quizzical look and a mouthful of Pinot Grigio. She continued, unfazed. “You should cut down all the flying you do, mummy, for a start.”
“I’d love to travel by train if it weren’t for my back. Dr. Puig’s been an absolute tyrant – no sitting down for long periods at a time.”
“You could stand. You could walk up and down the train.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, darling. I am not a ticket inspector. More coffee anyone?”
“Coffee is not going to solve it, mother. If we keep on at current impact levels, if we don’t modify our behaviour, then millions of people are going to die in floods, droughts and wars over resources. Don’t you think so, Harry?”
“Sorry?” He was thinking of the previous night and Judith on top of him, singing like a porno Julie Andrews. “Come again?”
“We’re talking about the environmental movement. I said what do you think?”
“Well, I suppose it’s given the children of the wealthy something to do.”
“What?” Christmas didn’t reply. “Perhaps,” continued Bridget, “some of us here think they can ignore what’s happening to the world around them, but climate change is not ...”
Christmas turned to the window and began to drift off. Emily would have made short shrift of this girl. She would have got along fine with Judith, but it’d be scruff of the neck time for Miss Bridget: ‘I’ll stop you right there, young madam. Being lectured at by a snotty little teenager who’s nicked all her ideas off the internet is not on the menu tonight!’ Suddenly Christmas felt a sharp pain in his chest. He inhaled. He looked about the table, but no one was watching. Judith was leaning her hand on her chin, pretending to listen to her daughter. He gripped himself, then the table. It was as if someone was trying to strangle his heart.
“... like the banks and the arms industry,” Bridge was declaiming, “who get all sorts of subsidies and bail outs ...”
Was this a heart attack? His mouth wouldn’t work. He tried to breath but it was agony. A patina of sweat appeared over his face.
“... Thatcher said the mines had to close because they were inefficient, but government expenditure remained the same, the money just went into arms to sell to Saddam Hussein instead ...”
Was he dying? Was this it? He tried a breath and got a little further out. The pain began to ease.
“... and I’m sure we all agree that the Iraq war was a disaster ...”
He wasn’t going to die. He took long, exploratory breaths and massaged his chest.
“OK there, amore?” Christmas nodded vigorously. She had caught the scent of distress and he was anxious to prevent any fussing. “You’ve gone a dreadful colour.” Bridget paused for a moment then rattled on a little louder, making sure the fat man in the corner didn’t derail her gospel. “... which is how the crisis is related to the war machine. The economic road map follows the military road map. Even Gaza – and I don’t mean just securing the middle east oil reserves. There are massive natural gas reserves just off the coast. The Palestinians own them and the Israelis want to ...” Christmas wiped his face then took a drink.
Death. If only he could believe that he might meet Emily again, but he knew that was a lie. Emily and their raw baby girl were extinct. Trodden on like insects. Scraped off and slid into the ground. That pain in his chest was the weight of the same awful foot, testing, pressing, readying for the stamp. “... they tried it first in Chile, then Thatcher did it with the Falklands, then Iraq and Afghanistan, all so they could keep our minds on disaster while they deregulated the markets and robbed people’s savings, the ‘real’ economy ...” Bridget mimed the grammar with the dreaded quote fingers.
“Oh, good God!” cursed Christmas.
“Amore?” They both stared at him. He wanted to lecture them about the quote fingers malaise, but he paused instead, and in that pause there was a flash of Slade running at him with a knife. He willed the image away and forgot what he was talking about. When he remembered, the length of the intervening pause had somehow made such instruction unsuitable. He decided to improvise. “It’s about ... whether ... God’s good. Don’t you think?” He did it rather badly.
“Oh, not religion,” groaned Bridget biting into a mango slice.
“You were talking about the environment?”
“Well, yes, kind of.”
“What I meant was ... if you believe that God is good ... then when it comes to an impending ecological apocalypse, then couldn’t you say, I mean, couldn’t you, you know, saaaay ... that it was a good thing?”
“A good thing?” spluttered Bridget. Bingo. He was going to enjoy this. He was going to annoy her.
“I mean let’s face it – we could probably do with another ice age.”
“We?”
“The human project. The rascal multitude!”
“So you believe that a benevolent God would want to wipe us all out?”
“If he had his head screwed on.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“Not in the religious sense.”
“Then why bring him up?”
“Oh no, it’s very interesting,” said Judith, relieved that she could finally join in. “What do you believe in, amore? Life after death?”
“Well, if it does exist, I bet it’s like life: unfair. There’s no life after death for the elderly. Something like that. I think we can assume that death is more than a little ageist.”
“No heaven, no hell?”
“Perhaps a hell, but only for people who believe in it. And perhaps the hellish bit would be the disappointment, you know, you’d fall through the hole or whatever and land expecting to find adamantine chains, lakes of sulphur, harpies and so on, but actually you’d be on some boy scout’s field trip being bullied by an omnipotent Akela – an eternity of wet socks and Kendal mint cake.”
“And no gin, amore. How will you cope?”
“So, are we to understand, Harry, that the famous writer’s position on the bleak future facing the world if we don’t take radical action and completely overhaul our paradigms is, in fact, utter resignation. We could do with another ice age. My, how profound.”
“Well, everyone can see how keen you are on profundity, Bridget dearest, but
look,” he said, shifting onto his elbows, “let’s say here it comes, ecological disaster and floods and population displacement and the rise of tyranny and chaos and looting and rape and murder. Sounds like an average day on planet earth to me. Or let’s say it’s swifter than that. Let’s say a chunk of the Greenland ice shelf slips into the ocean overnight, knocks out the Gulf Stream – bang – it’s woolly mammoths and spears before breakfast. I’m afraid I can’t help driving along the travelator of South East England, repeating backdrop after repeating backdrop, and thinking that an ice age is exactly what’s required.” Christmas took a drink. “Does not our hubristic nation deserve its Arctic punishment? Indeed if everything is going to go underwater, then the only sensible way to face what’s coming is ... probably ... become a better swimmer. And get a gun.”
“So that’s your answer? Guns and swimming?”
“Sounds like the navy, amore. Were you in the navy?”
“Well, I think it’s pathetic! You’ve just turned the most serious issue ever to face mankind into some kind of boys’ adventure holiday.”
“And spears before breakfast? Not an activity I would have thought on the roster for a portly English gent.”
“My dearest Judith, the only activities fit for an English gentleman these days are drinking and cultivated opprobrium.”
“So ignore everything and just go down the pub. Well, if that’s what life’s about, Mr Strong, it’s all just great, isn’t it?”
“No, it is not!” bellowed Christmas. He was getting rather drunk. “Hardly any decent pubs left! Red bloody squirrels in hiding from the bloody grey squirrel of these bloody office pubs, these idiot stables with televisions in the corner and nowhere to sit. I tell you both, it won’t be long before they’ve invented a vertical toilet so you can vomit while standing up, right by the bar. Give me a Breezer. Bluurrrgh. Give me another Breezer. Bluurrggh. They’ll stop selling beer altogether and it’ll just be vicious wines and coloured syrup still sold to the medical industry under its original name. No, young lady, the character of English drinking is by no means a given.” Christmas emptied his glass.
“And how would you define the English character these days, amore? Do you think it will be able to withstand all these horrors Bridget is talking about? In its swimming trunks? With its gun?”
“Judith, I’m sure it will flourish. Being English has always been about a mix of good manners with utter sadism. It’s what allowed us to cut the throats of half the world, build an Empire, come home and still apologise to the person who has trodden on your foot. I think it’s the perfect character set to deal with the four horsemen of the whatywhat. Or what have you.” Christmas noted the quickening of inebriation.
“Guns and swimming,” repeated Bridget with disgust.
“Right then,” said Judith wiping her mouth. “Glass of pudding wine anyone?” She wanted to check herself in the mirror. “Back in a tick.”
Bridget and Christmas were left alone. Hunched over the table, Bridget glared at her plate, then darted her eyes at him. She snorted. Christmas put his glass down. Her face was so screwed up it was like looking into a wastepaper basket.
“For the love of Christ!” he said, “Will you stop slouching!”
“Excuse me?” she gasped.
“Young women shouldn’t slouch like that. You look completely fucking disabled.”
“Oh. My. God.”
“There. That’s better.”
“You know, for my mother’s sake, I’ve been trying to change my opinion of you, but—”
“And what is that?”
“That you are a selfish, self-satisfied, wholly unlikeable wanker.”
“Well, my opinion of your opinions, young lady, is that the gallows, arsenic and the firing squad would all be preferable to tasting any more of the tripe that drips from your stillborn sensibilities.”
For several moments, Bridget could do nothing but blink. “What the fuck are you doing in my house?”
“I’m writing a book. About a murderer who can’t drive. I shall call it, ‘Drop me off at the corner of hell, just opposite the bookies’.”
“You’re sponging off my mother.”
“Well, that makes two of us. I, on the other hand, am an invited guest. And what are you doing, may I ask, other than swanning around South American yoga retreats and whingeing about men? In fact it’s pretty clear that underneath the armour you’re just a normal little girl who wants to find a nice little boy, only you’ll reject a string of men who you’ll deem not clever enough and you’ll end up the wrong side of forty, bitter but right – you’ll be so right about everything you’ll be wrong. You’ll be a wrong person.”
Bridget folded her arms. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you, Harry.”
“Me?”
“You’re obviously speaking from experience and just dressing up your failures as some kind of priceless and hard-won wisdom. Well – newsflash – I don’t want a string of men, and besides, which way do you think you’re headed, Mr Strong? Because wherever it is, I’d say you’ve run out of time. We all know you’ve run out of ideas. You’re what, seventy or something? Obviously you think you were too good for your marriage, too good for a real job, probably too good for any real friends. You’ve certainly lost all your looks if you had any in the first place, and calling me bitter is the kind of rank hypocrisy that could only come from a man whose self-image is so very far away from reality. You are a fat, beaten-up old alcoholic. What’s making it all worth it, Harry? Got a secret?”
“Yes,” said Christmas, “Find someone to love you.”
Bridget opened her mouth then closed it again. After a moment she said, “You know, Harry—” but Christmas roared at her, leaping a little way across the table. It was so loud, so unexpected, that it genuinely frightened her.
“Now if I may beg your leave to pursue my libations ...” he said, settling back into his seat, “I would be so very grateful.” He downed his glass and bared his teeth with a smile. Bridget stormed out of the room.
“Where’s Bridget?” said Judith re-entering a moment later with a bottle of Sancerre and rearranged hair. “What was that noise?”
“She’s gone to bed. I was trying to cheer her up with some animal impressions.”
“Really, Harry, she’s not a baby.”
“Isn’t she?”
“Oh, look, amore ...” Judith put the bottle on the table and slipped onto his lap. “... we’re alone ...” She caressed his face with a drunken hand, poking him slowly in the eye. It was time to succumb to the inevitable.
25
That night Christmas dreamed he was with Emily. They were on the balcony in their house in Malaga. Slade came out of nowhere and cut her throat.
He woke gripping the bed. Judith was already up and gone. He turned to the window. A trail of insect bites registered themselves across his back and arms.
Christmas stood beneath the shower, the gash on his head tender under the heat. He rested his forehead against the tiles and replayed his argument with Bridget. He had to leave. He had to find Guiria. Expanding his torso, he thought about the chest pain of the previous evening. There was no tightness, only a belly hot from drink. Christmas rotated his arm, pinched the top of his nose and cleared it towards the plug.
Walking downstairs to breakfast, Christmas spied Bridget already in the kitchen reading a newspaper.
“Hullo,” he said, sitting down, ready for round two.
“Oh, hello,” she said brightly. “Do you want my egg?”
“Egg?”
“Here you go. I don’t want it,” and with that she put her boiled egg on his plate, flicked him a smile and continued reading the newspaper. Christmas was surprised, but quickly recognised the phenomenon of women, used to endless supplication on account of their beauty, enjoying nothing more than being violently disagreed with. Indeed they could develop a strong affection for anyone who treated them normally. In Bridget’s case this was compounded by the small embarrassme
nts of a hangover. She hadn’t meant to call him a fat old alcoholic in quite such forthright terms. She’d had time to reflect on how happy her mother was. This man had roared at her like a lion. Perhaps he was quite interesting.
“Listen to this,” she said, reading aloud, “‘Armed Pirates Loot French Lawyer’s Yacht: The attack came just a few miles out of Puerto La Cruz where the family were in the middle of a two-week fishing holiday. Anchored for the night, the thirteen-metre steel-hulled ketch was approached at dusk by a six-metre open fishing boat that contained five men carrying pistols and machetes. The family was bound head and foot, and a shotgun held to their heads while the boat was ransacked for electronic instruments, sail clothing and other effects.’ God, how frightening.”
“Could’ve been worse.”
“Worse?”
“They could’ve outraged the women. Pressed the lads into service.”
“I bet you fancy yourself as a bit of pirate, don’t you, Harry? Bet you think you would’ve fitted right in.”
“A gentleman of fortune? An ambassador for the Republic of the Sea? Never thought about it.”
“Of course you haven’t.”
“Well, m’lady, perhaps you wouldn’t be so slow to sign the articles and step under the Black Flag yourself.”
“A female pirate?”
“Ever heard the story of Mary Read?” he said, de-shelling his eggs.
“Nope.”
“Seventeenth-century daughter of a sea captain. Brought up as a boy so the mother could ensure her husband’s inheritance for her ‘son’ after his death. The young Mary gets a job as a footman but then runs away and finds work on a Man O’ War. Big mistake. Not fun.”
Christmas smeared the eggs onto a piece of toast. “Mary jumps ship, joins the military – all still as a boy, mind – is promoted to the Horse Regiment after displaying bravery at the Battle of Flanders, falls in love with a soldier, confesses her sex, the two get decommissioned, marry, scandalize the military and open a pub.” He added a layer of marmalade over the eggs. “Hubby dies, she gets bored, gets a ship to the West Indies which is captured by the notorious pirate Calico Jack and his mistress Anne Bonny. Bonny takes a shine to her, discovers her secret, Jack gets jealous, draws his cutlass, and so they let him in on the secret too. Mary joins the crew and off they go a-pirating.”
A Bright Moon for Fools Page 12
