Hot Breath

by Hot Breath (retail) (epub)

  ‘Bound to be for me,’ he said, and picked up the receiver. Even at a distance of some six metres I could hear the penetrating wail of panic on the other end. Another deserving patient, no doubt. I clenched my fists. At that moment I could cheerfully have put the sufferer out of her misery with a blunt instrument.

  ‘It’s for you,’ said Constantine. ‘Your daughter.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your daughter wants to talk to you.’

  ‘She can’t.’

  ‘You tell her.’ He gave the receiver a little shake, like someone encouraging a donkey with a carrot.

  I went over and took the phone from him. ‘Yes?’ I snapped, through bloodless lips.

  ‘Mummeee! I want to come home! I had an awful dream!’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Clara, have you any idea what time it is?’

  ‘No, but I—’

  ‘It’s twenty past one in the morning. Will you please go back to bed.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Clara—! Go and fetch Mrs Langley.’

  There was a spluttering exchange on the other end, and Lydia Langley came on the line. She sounded as she always did—harassed, amiable and resilient.

  ‘Harriet, I’m so awfully sorry about all this, but she went on and on about talking to you and I just couldn’t say no in the end, I thought the little mite would have a fit.’

  ‘Give her a sandwich,’ I said. ‘ She’ll be okay. But you’ve been disturbed at this ungodly hour—’

  ‘Oh, not to worry about that,’ said Lydia. ‘Dominic’s never had an unbroken night’s sleep in his life.’ (She referred to the smelly toddler whom Clara so disliked.) ‘In fact he’s the cause of all this, he went and climbed into bed with your Clara and gave her a fright, the little monkey …’

  I could hear snifflings and squawkings in the background, children’s voices raised in dispute, a man’s snarl of irritation.

  ‘Oh God,’ I said, ‘is poor Barry awake too?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about him,’ laughed Lydia. ‘He’s a real owl, he’s just making a nice jug of cocoa, we’ll be right as rain in no time. We’ll pop Clara back in the morning!’

  As she said this I felt a hand touch my shoulder, and looked up to see Constantine about to leave, putting his bloody silly hat on, opening the front door with exaggerated care and delicacy, raising a hand in understanding farewell. Desperately I flapped an arm at him, but of course he was far too well brought-up to stay when my maternal withers were being wrung.

  ‘Thank you, Lydia, you are a brick, thank you so much,’ I gabbled, and hung up. But already I could hear the Fiat starting up, and as I reached the gate it shot tangentially from the kerb and bunny-hopped away.

  I went back into the kitchen. The teapot stood ready. A residual ribbon of steam rose from the kettle.

  With a roar that would have shamed all seven samurai I lifted the teapot (£7.95 at Close Seconds) and hurled it into the sink.

  The sink being half-full of murky water, the pot failed to break. But a shower of brown and oily droplets flew to join the hair-dye on my towelling dressing-gown.

  Chapter Nine

  I woke next day with a mood of deepest indigo and a head like a bucket. Church bells rang, papers arrived, Clara came home and (displaying admirable discretion) went out again. Even Gareth lumbered downstairs while I lay in my bed like a marble effigy, with Spot at my feet and Fluffy on my chest, trying to forget. Only two people could possibly have cheered me, and one of them rang up.

  ‘Morning, campers!’ said Bernice. ‘It must have been a good do last night, I’ve got a mouth like a fell-runner’s crotch.’

  ‘Hallo. Did you get Damon back safely?’

  ‘But of course. I even had a brown ale with Damon’s dad, so put that in your pipe and smoke it!’

  I was impressed. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Like Barty only not so pretty.’

  ‘Struth.’

  ‘How about you? Anything good happen after we left?’

  ‘Nearly.’

  ‘Only nearly, shit! Did he come back then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he seemed really keen, but then the phone rang.’

  ‘Look,’ said Bernice severely. ‘Nobody who’s really keen gets put off their stroke by the bloody phone.’

  ‘They do if they’re doctors. And anyway, it was for me, and while I was talking he left.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bernice in an exasperated tone, ‘I really don’t know. So what next?’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘He’s going to be manager of Gareth’s football team, so that’s something.’

  ‘Is it? I wouldn’t know.’ There was a brief, gloom-filled silence. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we meet at the Hideaway one day this week?’ She named the luxurious women’s health club of which she was a member. ‘We can swim with our sisters and talk dirty to our hearts’ content.’

  ‘All right. Yes, good idea, I’d like to. I’ve got to go into Era some time anyway, so I’ll try and combine the two.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake do, don’t squander five quid going into town purely for pleasure, whatever you do,’ said Bernice, sarcastically. ‘Haven’t you got some unpleasant elderly relative you could visit at teatime, too?’

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘Shall we say Wednesday?’

  ‘Why not.’

  ‘Eleven o’clock then, Wednesday, the Hideaway. Perhaps you could manage a rather more action-packed instalment by then.’

  ‘I’ll try. ’Bye.’

  I felt better for having made this arrangement. And my depression lifted still further when, as I was getting dressed, I heard the letter box click, and subsequently arrested Spot in the act of defending me from a handwritten note, black ink on grey paper.

  ‘Dear Harriet,’ I read, or rather deciphered. ‘Just the briefest of lines to thank you for an enjoyable evening. The next time of which we spoke need not be long—I shall of course attend the soccer tournament, and Mr and Mrs Atkins also mentioned a disco … I do hope your little girl was all right in the end. My thanks again, yrs Constantine.’

  I read and re-read this communication, trying to extract from it that which I wished to find. But it proved tantalisingly elusive. The tone of teasing neutrality seemed to promise something and yet to deny it. I began to realise that Maria’s reaction to Richard Hawkhurst was more firmly rooted in reality than I’d supposed. Could it be, I wondered, pulling on my running gear, that all those cold eyes, sardonic smiles and flaming cheeks were not clichés, the jargon of pulp, but actualities? And was I suffering from them right here in Basset Magna in 1984? But he had touched my hand, spoken warmly of there being a next time, said: ‘You’re so—’

  So what, exactly, I wondered? So irresistible? So alluring? So handy in the kitchen? So obtuse? That one word was the missing link which might have moved our relationship (if we could be said to have a relationship) on to a different plane.

  Positively buzzing with hypotheses I ran out of the front gate at exactly the wrong moment and found myself moving against a steady current of the faithful, off for their weekly fix of plain man’s religion as pedalled by Eric Chittenden. Conspicuously, almost insultingly ungodly in my satinised briefs and Snoopy singlet, there was no alternative but to brazen it out with a turn of speed and a carefree wave as I zig-zagged between the soberly clad churchgoers.

  Fortunately, as I passed Trevenda, a useful escape route presented itself, for the Tunnels rarely troubled their Maker, and there was Trevor creosoting his side gate. Seamlessly I cornered and jogged up their path, as if that had been my express intention all along. Three sets of closely drawn curtains on the first floor showed that Jason, Nigel and Michelle were still, mercifully, asleep. Of Brenda there was no sign.

  ‘Trevor, good morning!’ I cried, whisking through the half-open gate and nearly weather-proofing the both of us. ‘ Is Brenda about?’

  ‘She’s still upstairs,’ said Trevor. Caref
ully he set down the can of creosote, with the brush resting across it, and pushed the gate to behind him. He had a large wad of lint strapped to the left side of his head, and over his ear, and looked distinctly peaky, but he managed a small smile.

  ‘You’re looking very sporty, Harriet,’ he said. ‘ How many miles today?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, I’ve only just left home. What happened to you?’

  He touched the wad gingerly. ‘I walked into something.’

  I considered that he’d fielded that one quite nicely, considering.

  ‘Is Brenda still asleep?’

  ‘No, no, no, I’ll give her a shout.’

  He went past me, and in through the back door. ‘Come in, why don’t you,’ he offered, and I stepped over the threshhold into the kitchen. Trevor did not shout, but went upstairs, having first removed his shoes, and I surveyed my surroundings. They presented a picture of serenity. The window was mended, the draining board clear and wiped, the Winter Wonderland all safely housed in cupboard and on shelf. The soothing aroma of beef browning in the oven wandered lazily through the air.

  Trevor re-entered. ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he said, ‘I’ll leave you to it and get back to my gate.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Close on his heels came Brenda, in a navy boiler suit and espadrilles. I was sure she had chosen navy for its supposed slimming qualities, but unfortunately it was impossible to ignore the resemblance to Churchill.

  ‘Brenda—was I disturbing you?’

  ‘I was having a sort out,’ she said, not answering the question, but she looked perfectly calm and I did not anticipate any airborne sauceboats.

  ‘I came to ask a favour, actually,’ I explained. ‘I did call the other day but—’

  ‘I was fighting with Trevor!’ she finished, triumphantly.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say …’

  ‘I would! Trevor told me you’d been when I was taking him to surgery. He was embarrassed, but I said what for? If there’s one person in this village who knows about expressing emotion, it’s Harriet!’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘It’s so damaging to suppress anger. Isn’t it, Harriet? Damaging and unhealthy for a relationship. That’s the trouble with Trevor, he’s frightened of his own anger.’ She’d been reading again. ‘I lost my temper, I admit it. I threw things and shouted. I felt I was justified, you know? But now I feel one hundred per cent better!’

  Undeniably, the contrast between Brenda, bright-eyed and boiler-suited, and Trevor, ashen and afflicted, was striking. I wondered If Brenda would have felt quite so chuffed if Trevor had rounded on her and broken the fluted flan dish over her head. Still.

  ‘So what can I do for you?’ she asked benignly.

  Since she was in such a good mood it seemed pointless to beat about the bush. ‘I have to go to a book fair in Germany at the end of the month,’ I said, ‘and I wondered if you could possibly see your way to putting up Gareth and Clara for three nights. It will be term-time, they can always go home for a bit after school, Clara will want to ride her pony and Gareth can do his homework, it’s just a case of—’

  ‘Of course! Say no more. They can come here, my three will be thrilled to bits!’ I had leave to doubt this. The closest I had ever come to seeing the junior Tunnels thrilled was when Jason had framed me a few days ago. All the same, their reaction to the arrangement was unimportant. What counted was Brenda’s co-operation, which it appeared I had in full.

  ‘That’s sweet of you,’ I said. ‘ I’ll leave a key with them. There’s just one other thing.’

  ‘You only have to say, Harriet.’

  ‘My gardener will come on the Thursday. I don’t suppose you could just pop down and see he’s all right, about midday?’

  ‘I’ll do more than that, I’ll take him something in a thermos,’ said Brenda.

  ‘He’s not awfully sociable,’ I warned. ‘But he cut his hand working for me the other day, and since I don’t stamp his card or anything I don’t want to take any risks.’

  ‘Just leave the whole thing to me.’ Brenda went to the oven and opened the door, exposing a vast chunk of spluttering topside. ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ she added through the belching steam. ‘You just have fun at the fair.’

  As I jogged on my way I reflected on what I had come to think of as the Brenda syndrome. To be hurling sauceboats one day, to be queenly and obliging the next, that was surely the sign of being what the French call ‘heureuse dans la peau’. Whereas my skin this morning, both actually and figuratively, felt like an old army blanket that had been left out in the rain. Brenda had invoked me to poor Trevor as the high priestess of self-expression, than which nothing could have been further from the truth at this moment.

  But as I hit the bridleway, exercise began to have its usual therapeutic effect, and my spirits rose. It was a fine morning and there was plenty to look forward to. As Constantine had pointed out, there was the soccer tournament next Saturday, and the Toms disco not long after. The eager excitement with which I anticipated these two events was evidence of my altered state. B.C.—Before Constantine—I should have gone to almost any lengths to avoid them. And in three weeks’ time there hovered the Buchfest, an entirely unknown quantity, but at least representing three days away from home at Era’s considerable expense. Who knows what might occur between now and then? As I became increasingly aerobic so my head swirled with fantastic possibilities.

  More immediately, I should have a pleasant day in London on Wednesday, the first half spent with Bernice in the Hideaway, the second spent with the Erans as they apprised me of my programme at the Buchfest. By the time I got home I was positively benign, and took Gareth and Clara to the Wagon and Horses for lunch where we ate microwaved pasties and drank gaseous shandies in the garden, without a single twinge of conscience.

  By Wednesday morning I was inordinately glad of something positive to do which would take me out of the house. Forty-eight hours of relatively undisturbed work had advanced TRT wonderfully but had left me feeling like an O, and a jittery one at that. I had forgotten (after fourteen years of marriage, one does) just how detached a state is that of being in love, or lust. One exists only through the lust-object. One may be busy, but one is never involved. Every other activity is transcended by the overwhelming desire to fuck.

  It was a hazy, promising morning as I drove to the station, and I daydreamed. In spite of the entirely carnal nature of my feelings for Constantine, these daydreams comprised a sort of soft-focus rustic idyll. There was I, in dirndl skirt and artfully disarrayed peasant blouse, gambolling through waist-high corn bright with poppies … and here was Constantine in flowing white shirt and skin-tight trousers, bounding in hot pursuit, his usually well-groomed hair flopping all over the place, his arms flung wide … When he caught up with me, which he did with very little difficulty, we embraced and sank to the ground, to be hidden by the corn, the fluttering surface of which supplied, like the waves of the sea, the necessary implication. In my daydream we were careless of the prickly and insect-infested discomfort of our surroundings, and no irate landowner apprehended us for flattening his crops. It was all amazingly like LDG, TRT and the rest. I should have had a large, red ‘L’ pinned to my backside.

  Pleasantly preoccupied, I drew up at the crossroads between Magna and Parva and waited for a loaded tractor to pass. When it had done so I was confronted by Dr Salmon in his burgundy Mercedes estate, turning right off the Parva road, on two wheels.

  Spotting me he braked noisily, straddling the dotted line, and rolled down the window.

  ‘Hallo, Mrs Blair!’ He spoke loudly over the strains of Pagliacci.

  ‘Morning, doctor.’ I revved the engine nervously. I felt as though I were up before the Beak. Thus conscience, and so forth.

  ‘My young colleague Dr Ghikas told me he saw a patient of mine the other day, Mr O’Connell.’

  I broke out in a warm dew of relief. ‘Yes, he cut himself on the shears, but he seems quite all r
ight now.’

  ‘I only mention it,’ went on Dr Salmon chattily, as another motorist swerved round him like an angry hornet, ‘because the poor chap is absolutely terrified of injections, and it was rather bad luck for Dr Ghikas having to cope with that without prior knowledge.’

  ‘He coped splendidly,’ I said. ‘I was full of admiration.’

  ‘Good, good …’ Dr Salmon blipped the accelerator as if to move on, changed his mind and added, ‘Didn’t ruin your evening on Saturday, did it, my having to hand the torch to Dr Ghikas? Not too many calls I hope?’

  ‘No, that was fine.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent!’ He wagged a finger at me. ‘Not too many days off now, Mrs Salmon is looking forward to your next yarn!’

  I revved again, urging him to be gone. A gigantic container lorry had pulled up in the centre of the road, signalling right, the driver glowering down from his great height with the menacing confidence that comes from superior size.

  Dr Salmon glanced in his mirror, said, ‘ Infernal ruddy juggernauts,’ and shot away on a wave of recitative.

  I slunk left in the lee of the lorry and spent the rest of the journey to the station practising mature and dignified speeches of self-extenuation in my head.

  Bernice was waiting in the foyer of the Hideaway, off Lancaster Gate. She was a member of the club and this permitted me to use the place a maximum of once a month at preferential rates, as her guest.

  For a morning’s expensive mortification of the flesh, my friend wore yellow cheesecloth harem pants and a white cotton top conspicuous for the absence of much of what is usually there. Her hair encircled her head in a huge bushy cloud. On her feet were gold and purple Turkish slippers with curled-up toes.

  ‘Hail, friend!’ She enfolded me in her huge, cuddly, feather-bed-like embrace. ‘What’s new?’

  ‘Nothing, I’m afraid, I haven’t seen him. But he did send a note.’

  ‘He’s awfully polite, isn’t he?’ she said mournfully.