by Fiona Gibson
‘Come on, Mia, off back to bed,’ she says firmly, ‘and, boys, get to sleep if you want to go swimming tomorrow.’
Freddie eyes her from his bed. ‘It’s a bad song, Mum, everyone says.’
‘Well, they might,’ she says briskly, ‘but it’s for younger children, not your age.’
‘I hate Cuckoo Clock.’
‘Yes, I know you do.’
‘It’s crap.’
‘Freddie! That’s enough,’ she says, drowned out by Joe’s delighted laughter from the futon on the floor.
‘It’s the fat people in bird costumes I don’t like,’ Freddie adds helpfully.
‘Me too,’ Joe agrees.
‘Why do they wear ’em?’ Freddie wants to know.
Kerry blinks in the doorway, overwhelmed by a crashing wave of tiredness. Brigid and Harvey aren’t trying to coax small children to sleep; they’re in bed, naked, having one of those spontaneous nights you remember for the rest of your life. She’s probably orgasming right now. Christ.
‘It’s just their job,’ Kerry says levelly. ‘Some people are doctors and have to tweeze bits of corn out of little boys’ ears. And other people have to wear bird costumes.’
‘I’d rather be a doctor,’ Joe says, as if they are the only career options on offer.
‘Yeah,’ Freddie declares, ‘birds are shit.’
‘Freddie, that’s enough.’ Ushering Mia back to bed, and stomping downstairs, Kerry wonders where Freddie is getting his language from. It’s ironic, really, that he’s started talking this way – she’s heard him telling Mia to ‘uck-off’ – since they relocated to Langoustine Land. She carries on de-partying the house until midnight, but even when she’s finished, she still feels too riled to go to bed.
Brigid and Harvey. How will things be if they become a couple? Awkward, or fine once she’s got used to it? It’s amazing, she reflects, flipping from channel to channel on TV, what can seem almost normal once enough time has passed. Like Rob, Nadine and the baby …
Kerry’s phone bleeps, and she retrieves it from the top of the TV. It’s a text from James, saying simply, Fancy that lunch tomorrow? As if he knows she’s sitting here, feeling dismal and alone.
Sorry, taking kids swimming, she replies, pausing before adding, Some other time?
Monday good for you? he pings back, and she wonders if he, too, is having an aimless Saturday night, finding nothing to watch on TV but a stupid quiz show and an ancient episode of Minder.
Monday is New Year’s Eve. Clearly, he doesn’t expect to be working or busy with other, New Year-ish things, which makes Kerry feel marginally better about her own lack of plans. Plus, the children are going to some art event during the day so, technically, she’s free.
Sounds great, she replies. Where shall we go?
Glasshouse at one? I’ll book. Ooh, the big, glassy cube where you glimpse the glossy and beautiful grappling crustaceans. Very chic, and cripplingly expensive, but what the hell. This has been – how should she put it? – a challenging year. And it seems somehow fitting that she’ll spend the last day of it popping scallops into her mouth in the company of a kind, handsome, grown-up man. And not some clown, she thinks, with more than a trace of bitterness.
Chapter Fifty-One
Harvey perches on the edge of Brigid’s Aztec-patterned sofa, wondering what to do. She finds the clown thing a turn-on? Could this really be happening to him, or was there something hallucinogenic in those bite-sized sausage rolls? His mind skims the possibilities of what’s really going on: 1) Brigid wants him to dress up so she can have a laugh, maybe take some photos, then tell him it’s okay, he can put his normal clothes back on now because she was only kidding; 2) She actually wants clown sex – i.e. to do it with him in costume. Harvey rubs his tired face and wonders if this is something he can participate in.
Granted, it’s been a long time since he’s done it with anyone, and no one needs to know. Casual sex has never been his thing, but maybe that’s all that’s on offer these days. He examines his fingernails, wondering why this isn’t making him feel very fortunate indeed.
Harvey can hear Brigid pottering about in the bathroom upstairs, singing out of tune. She’s taking ages, and it’s so tempting to creep stealthily out of her house and head home. Wouldn’t that be the worst manners ever, though? Plus, she’s a friend of Kerry’s, and what would she think? It would be so awkward at his next piano lesson. No, he must sit here and wait, as if anticipating an invasive and highly embarrassing medical procedure. Then, when she finally reappears, he’ll explain, very politely, that this isn’t really his sort of thing.
She’s coming now, padding softly downstairs. ‘Close your eyes!’ she trills.
‘Er, Brigid …’
‘I’m not coming in unless your eyes are closed. Are they?’
‘Yes,’ he replies truthfully.
‘Good boy.’ God, he wishes she wouldn’t address him like an obedient hound …
He hears her stepping quietly into the living room, her soft footsteps on the ageing Turkish rug. ‘You’re a naughty, naughty clown,’ comes her husky voice. ‘You’re not in costume, Harvey.’
He opens his eyes, about to rattle through his rehearsed speech: It’s not you, it’s me. And it’s been a lovely evening but—
‘So what d’you think?’ She does a little shimmy in her thigh-length white dress. At least, he assumes it’s a dress. It’s sort of gathered at the neck, like an outlandish silken napkin with three large fluffy black pom-poms down the front. There’s a kind of ruff thing happening at the neck too, like something from the Elizabethan era, and her pale-painted face has been adorned with a purple teardrop.
‘Er … what are you wearing?’ he splutters.
‘I’m a sad Pierrot clown! Don’t you like it?’
Oh, dear God.
‘No, no – you look great …’ Sweat springs from his forehead as he glances towards the living room door, quickly calculating how many strides away it is. Perhaps he’d underestimated how pissed she really is. Or maybe, unwittingly, he’d somehow given the signal that getting it on with a lady-clown would round off his evening perfectly. In a flash of optimism, he wonders if she’s dressed up like this just to chat, or because she’s thinking of going into the entertainment business herself and wants his considered opinion on her costume …
She’s plonked herself beside him now and draped her arms around his shoulders. ‘Go get your outfit,’ she purrs. ‘Get those funny long shoes with the bells on.’
‘Brigid, look, I’m just not into—’
‘Just the hat, then, with the bobble on top …’
He shrinks away, pressing himself into the back of the sofa. ‘Erm, your teardrop’s a bit smudged.’
‘Never mind that,’ she growls, leaning towards him and breathing hotly into his ear. ‘Be a good clown and ravish me in your big top …’
He explodes with laughter. ‘My big what?’
‘Your big top! Oh, go on, it’s just a bit of fun …’
‘I don’t actually have one,’ he says, shoulders bobbing as he tries to contain his hysteria. ‘I have a two bedroom flat next to the Carpet Warehouse. I’m sorry, I really have to go …’
‘Pierrot’s sad,’ she exclaims. ‘Pierrot’s crying …’
Oh no. Now she’s referring to herself in the third person, as if being trapped in a cluttered living room with a deranged mime artist person wasn’t enough for one night.
‘Sorry,’ he says again, wiping the tears of mirth from his cheeks as he leaps up. ‘Got a party to do first thing in the morning.’
‘A party? In the morning?’ Her nostrils flare a little and the effect – of an extremely vexed Pierrot – is reminiscent of a nightmare he can still recall from when he was off school with measles, aged seven. No wonder people joke about the thin line between circus people being entertaining and completely fucking creepy.
‘Er, it’s a breakfast party,’ he blusters, at the front door now, already stepping outside
into the bitterly cold night. ‘Anyway, see you around soon, I’d imagine …’ He hears Roxy whining and scraping at the kitchen door.
‘But Harvey—’
‘Good night, Brigid. Sleep well.’ He plants a brief kiss on her greasy cheek and turns away.
He starts walking, past his car, past the scruffy bow-fronted houses to the end of her street. He doesn’t care that he’s freezing – he’s left his favourite black sweater in there – or that, right now, his nice, tidy living room will be a fug of smoke and bikers’ farts.
‘Harvey, wait!’ He whirls round. Brigid’s out in the street now, marching after him with a small black bundle in her hand.
‘What is it?’
‘I said, wait!’
As he watches her approaching, it strikes him that, while she’s thinking clown sex, he’s concerned only about her being out with bare legs in the middle of winter.
‘You’ll freeze,’ he hisses. ‘Go back inside, you’ll catch your death …’
Across the street, a smartly dressed couple has stopped to observe the proceedings. ‘My God,’ the woman sniggers. ‘It’s one of those scary clown movies come to life.’
‘Watch out, mate,’ the man cries. ‘There’s a freaky Pierrot after you … need any help?’
They convulse with laughter, clearly enjoying the show. ‘We’re fine, thanks,’ Harvey barks across the road, willing them to move on.
‘I know you,’ the woman announces. On the plus side, at least she’s stopped laughing. Less happily, she’s now grabbed her partner by the hand and is trotting across the road towards them. ‘You’re Charlie Chuckles, aren’t you? Remember I booked you for my daughter’s party in the community centre – the one where you made the scary testicle dog from a sausage balloon …?’
‘Er, yeah, yeah,’ he says, not even bothering to correct her as Brigid gawps at him uncomprehendingly.
The woman sniggers. ‘Isn’t it sweet,’ she says, turning to her husband, ‘that he’s got a clown girlfriend? To be honest, Charlie, I assumed you just shoved on your costume to make a quick buck, but you really immerse yourself in the part!’
They beam at a shivering Brigid. ‘That’s what I call method acting,’ the man says with an infuriating whinnying laugh.
‘Yes, well, nice seeing you again,’ Harvey says quickly, putting an arm around Brigid’s shoulders and guiding her back down the street towards her house.
‘I wonder if he has an elephant as well?’ the woman muses as they walk away.
Having shaken off Harvey’s arm, Brigid is stomping back home at an impressive speed. ‘You forgot your sweater,’ she says sulkily, thrusting the soft black bundle at him.
Harvey takes it from her. ‘Thank you.’
‘You know what? You’re no fun at all.’
Harvey smiles, pulling on his sweater as they walk and giving her a quick hug as they reach her front door. ‘You’re probably right. I always suspected I wasn’t really cut out to be a clown. Now go back inside and see to Roxy, okay? She didn’t seem too happy being shut in the kitchen.’
‘Erm … I can’t.’ Brigid shivers and rubs her bare arms.
‘Why not?’
She gazes up at him, her white-painted face looking chilled and faintly unwell under the silvery light of the streetlamp. ‘I left my key inside, Harvey. I’ve locked myself out.’
Chapter Fifty-Two
While Kerry launches herself down the biggest slide in the pool – she loves flumes, the sensation of whooshing down a huge plastic tube – Rob is lying on a rather hard, leopard-patterned couch in his stockinged feet in a flat in Hackney. It’s a damp Sunday morning and by rights he should be having a lie-in, drinking coffee and leafing idly through the papers – i.e. attempting to have a normal, couply time with Nadine. Unable to face anymore squabbling and bitterness, he has decided to accept her version of events – at least until the baby’s born.
Yet even last night, they ended up bickering again. ‘Oh, so you’re smoking in the car now?’ she’d announced, detecting a whiff as he’d let himself into the flat. ‘The car I have to sit in and, more importantly, our baby will travel home from hospital in.’
‘Yes, in five months’ time,’ he’d snapped back. ‘I think the smell will have gone by then and if it hasn’t, I’ll buy a bloody air freshener.’ And so it had escalated, a stupid row about how she had no intention of subjecting the baby to the disgusting synthetic fumes of a pine-scented thing dangling from the rearview mirror, and Rob alerting her to the fact that you can now buy ones that emit a new car smell, no matter how old your vehicle is. Which Nadine interpreted as him taking the piss, triggering her to make an urgent call to Jade.
Not merely one of Nadine’s best friends in the whole world, Jade is also a qualified hypnotist. What did that mean anyway? Which university course in advanced mind-fuckery had she actually completed? Anyway, Nadine was adamant and, after a quick call, announced that Jade would be happy to ‘treat’ Rob the next day.
‘You’re lucky,’ Jade says now, placing her cold fingers on his slightly clammy forehead. ‘I’m chock-a-block at this time of year with everyone trying to give up something for New Year.’
Rob mulls this over as she stops prodding at his head and potters over to a wonky, cheap-looking unit stuffed with books and CDs. Is that what New Year is about, then – not looking ahead with a positive frame of mind (which he is desperately trying to do), but denying himself the one little puff of pleasure he enjoys twice, maybe three times a day? Okay, it has escalated to more like fifteen a day, but still … stressful times.
‘It’s here somewhere,’ Jade mutters, grabbing a bunch of CDs from the unit and flipping through the plastic boxes.
Whale music, Rob decides with absolute certainty. Or someone singing in Sanskrit …
‘Here it is.’ Grinning, she holds up a CD entitled Stop Smoking With Self-Hypnosis. ‘I wondered where it had gone.’
‘But …’ Rob peers at her from his prone position on the couch. ‘Aren’t you going to hypnotise me personally?’ I’m paying you fifty quid to put on a sodding CD? is what he wants to say. You’re planning to leave me lying on this grubby couch while you fuck off and have a bath, or phone your mum, or go back to bed and eat cake?
‘This is just as effective,’ she says. ‘It burrows deep into the subconscious mind.’
‘Mmm. Like a little rabbit.’
‘Ha. You are funny.’ She smiles unconvincingly.
‘But, er …’ Rob continues, ‘isn’t that what hypnosis is supposed to do? I mean, real hypnosis, done by an actual person?’
‘Oh, you know a bit about it then?’
About as much as you do, probably … ‘Erm, not really,’ he mutters.
‘The thing is, Rob’ – she switches on the CD and plugs in some headphones, which she hands to him – ‘you’re bound to have your own, personal beliefs about smoking. Like, you think it makes you look cool …’
Cool? How old does she think he is, fifteen?
‘… So the whole purpose of hypnosis is to forge a channel through all that and bore right into your brain.’ Then, with a sugary smile, she clamps the large, not especially hygienic-looking plastic headphones onto his ears and trots out of the room.
Rob lies there, wondering what possessed him to think he could be cured of an addiction in a twenty-year-old’s rather nasty living room. The smell of fried egg hangs in the air, and a solitary goldfish drifts in a bowl full of algae on the bookshelf. The voice has started, but Rob isn’t listening because all he can think is, she reckons I smoke to look cool? No, he smokes because he’s fallen into a fully-fledged relationship with a girl he doesn’t love, who doesn’t even know who the Wombles are, and in three days’ time he’ll have to go back to the office he despises and work for an arsehole who, until about ten minutes before Rob’s 40th birthday, was also sleeping with Nadine. How terribly cosy. Is it any wonder he finds solace in an occasional nicotine rush?
… To help you achieve a state of
deep relaxation, the man’s voice drones on.
That’s a laugh. Rob feels as if he hasn’t been deeply relaxed since he was about eight years old and tucked up in bed with The Beano.
… I’ll help to loosen those nicotine ties that bind you, freeing you to a healthier, happier, longer life in which you’ll experience no irritation, just a blissful state in which you no longer need poison surging through your blood… .
On and on he goes, regurgitating gobbledegook for what feels like weeks on end. Yet, perhaps due to being unable to sleep lately, Rob finds himself floating away from the leopard print sofa and depressed goldfish. And now he’s no longer in a sordid Hackney flat, but Jack’s, the private members’ club he doesn’t even belong to. It’s his fortieth birthday. There is lemon cake and he’s with Eddy and the crowd. Ava is there, looking like a corpse with lipstick, and everyone is making a fuss of him and telling him what a great bloke he is.
The scene changes, and they’re at Nadine’s flat. He’s woozy – he actually feels drunk in his semi-conscious state – and it happens, it actually happens … she’s there beside him on the sofa bed, this young thing with her hair like Kerry used to wear it when they first met. A little impish crop that shows off a slender neck and striking cheekbones. It happens, briefly, and there’s a flicker of horror as Rob realises what he’s done. He’s had sex with Nadine – accidentally cheated on his beautiful wife – so he does the only thing he can think of. He fires off a drunken instruction to his brain to erase this moment, as if it has never happened, and when he wakes in the morning he’ll go back to Bethnal Green, a little hungover but still a decent, grown-up man.
‘Rob?’ Jade’s voice snaps him awake.
‘Huh?’ he barks, heart pounding.
‘That’s the end of the CO. Take your time before you get up, okay? You might be a little woozy.’
He opens his eyes and squints at her.
‘How do you feel?’ she asks, gnawing spearmint gum.
‘Er … okay, I think. Kind of drowsy.’
Jade nods sagely. ‘It’s a very powerful CD.’
