The Manner of the Mourning

by Robert Ward

  “Eight,” he said as the doorbell rang.

  Daniel Smith and Cathy, his partner, stood in the hall as Charles took their coats. Daniel was very black, with his head completely shaved, though he wasn’t naturally bald at all as the shortest possible stubble was visible above his hairline. He was short with a full face and he was overweight. Cathy was as tall as Daniel and was very light skinned, like a pale coffee colour, with almond eyes. She was slim and quite beautiful. Her hair was long and black and straight.

  “Are we the first?” Daniel asked. “I never was any good at making an entrance.”

  “Perfect timing,” Charles said. “The others should be here any moment. Let me get you a drink. What’ll you have? Cathy?”

  “Bacardi and coke, please,” Cathy said looking around her.

  “Daniel?”

  “Scotch, please.”

  “Glenfiddich?”

  “I prefer blended, if you’ve got it.”

  “Of course.”

  Elizabeth came in from the kitchen and Charles introduced them as they sat in the sitting room. Elizabeth noticed how lovely Cathy looked in her low cut backless short tight black dress.

  “Before we eat, I’d like to announce that I am not responsible for any of it,” Elizabeth said. “For good or ill it is all the work of our host.”

  “Providing it isn’t poisonous, I’ll eat it,” Daniel said. “I’m hungry as hell.”

  “When aren’t you?” Cathy said. “I’ve seen him eat two big hamburgers at once sitting, Elizabeth, and that was just for a snack on the way home.”

  “I have a healthy appetite, that’s all. I think, Elizabeth, that Cathy is trying to imply that I’m a glutton, which is very far from the truth.”

  Elizabeth turned from one to the other, smiling at them both and then put on some music. It was one of those collections of chart hits that just happened to be lying on top of the stereo, but it was pleasant mostly and innocuous, and more importantly would not need changing for an hour or so.

  “Charles, dear, do you think you could get me a drink too?” she shouted in to Charles who had returned to the kitchen.

  “Help yourself,” he shouted back. “You know where everything is, and I’m rather busy, dammit.”

  “He’s not usually so tetchy,” she said to Daniel and Cathy. “I think the poor thing is nervous about making a good impression. I suggested takeaway Chinese but he wouldn’t have it. I’ll make him pay later for not waiting on me.”

  “You don’t live here then”? Cathy asked.

  “Oh, no. I have my own house, closer to the town. Why, has Charles said otherwise?” she asked, looking at Daniel.

  He looked up at her having been absorbed in his drink for a moment and only half listening.

  “No, not to me,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” Cathy said. “I just presumed.”

  “Presumption is one of your few faults,” Daniel said, laughing.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Elizabeth said. “It’s a natural thing to think. We are an item, of sorts, I suppose. But you know what these boastful boys are like, Cathy. You let them kiss you on the cheek and they tell all their little friends that you’ve asked them to give you a child.”

  Cathy laughed as she sat back in her armchair resting her glass on the arm while still holding it in her hand. She was much younger than Daniel, twenty years younger, and was only a little older than Elizabeth. She had the looks and figure to be a model except she wasn’t abnormally tall.

  Charles came back in and poured himself a small measure of malt whisky and sat down next to Elizabeth on the settee.

  “I see you managed to get yourself a drink,” he said.

  “No thanks to you,” she said. “And you’ve only got Jack Daniels and you know I prefer Jim Beam.”

  “Blame the off-licence.”

  Daniel and Cathy shot each other a glance and smiled. The four of them then sat down for a moment without speaking in the awkward silence of people not yet used to being in each other’s company. It was Daniel who spoke first.

  “Johnny and Lucy are coming, aren’t they? I think you did say.”

  “Yes,” Charles said. “It’s only just past eight. They should be here any moment.”

  The silence descended once more.

  “How long have you lived here now?” Daniel asked. “I must say, you’ve found a lovely spot. I wouldn’t mind a place like this myself. Our flat is very small.”

  “I’ve had a bit of trouble with the damp,” Charles said. “But otherwise I’m pleased with the place. I even enjoyed decorating it.”

  “You did it yourself?” Daniel asked.

  “Yes, mostly. There were one or two things I had to get people in for. But otherwise, yes.”

  “It’s lovely,” Cathy said. “And it’s really quite big. I’d love to have a whole house, especially one out in the country like this. But it’s so convenient for the town as well. There’s just no room to move in our flat. We’ve been looking for something else, since we moved in really. You’re very lucky to have found this.”

  Even Elizabeth had to admit that Charles had tastefully decorated the flat, with white being the predominant colour with dark wood and russet and dark green being the themes for furniture and fittings. He had managed to produce bright modern interiors without making them seem out of place in a building of such antiquity. The house had been built, apparently, in the eighteen forties, and from the outside looked like so many other small farmhouse buildings, being of red, time darkened brick, and with more chimneys than seemed necessary. There were in fact three, which for such a relatively small house was excessive, but two of them were now blocked off. And, as central heating had been installed, even the one left open was redundant. However, Charles was thinking of having the open fire restored, which would require reopening the bricked-up stone fireplace, as that would, he felt, be the finishing touch in making the place homely and like a proper farmhouse should be. Even though, in fact, it wasn’t an authentic farmhouse at all, but rather a house on a farm, let no doubt in times past to a superior sort of farm worker and his family. The technicality though was not important.

  When he was at the drinks cabinet, the doorbell rang again and Elizabeth went to answer.

  Both of the other couples arrived together and Elizabeth took their wet coats in the hall and introduced herself as she did so. It was now raining heavily outside.

  “Charles is making some drinks in the sitting room if you’d like to go in,” she said. “Daniel and Cathy have already arrived. Dinner won’t be long. That’s if it isn’t burnt.”

  “I’m so sorry we’re late,” Johnny Spencer said, brushing down the wet trousers of his herringbone suit. “I don’t know what it is but taxis always seem to be tardy on wet nights. You’d think their business would be slack but it seems not so. And so this is the beautiful Elizabeth that Charles has mooned to me about.”

  “You mean he’s shown you his bare bum while talking about me?” she said.

  Johnny laughed and dabbed his wet face with a handkerchief.

  “I meant moon, in the romantic sense,” he said. “I’m not too familiar with modern parlance. At least, I pretend not to be. It maintains my image as an eccentric old buffer who is to be respected for his quaint ignorance.”

  Elizabeth laughed and indicated with her arm the direction in which he should go.

  “This is Dolly, by the way,” he said looking back. “My wife. I know you know, but for form’s sake and all that.”

  “I’m sure Dolly will manage to tell me who she is,” Elizabeth said. “Good evening, Dolly.”

  “You’ll have to excuse him, Elizabeth,” Dolly said. “He always gets over excited when he meets a young girl. I’ll try to make sure he behaves.”

  Dolores, now Dolly, was a woman of about fifty but who had a much more youthful demeanour. She had a slight, slender, not quite too thin figure and neck and face, with silver hair with a honey coloured cast and bright grey eyes. S
he followed Johnny into the sitting room and Elizabeth looked at her as she did so for a brief moment before turning back to Lucy and her friend who were still standing just inside the doorway.

  “I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said. “Are you soaked? Did you come by taxi as well? Go in and get yourselves a drink. Dinner will be ready, well, now, I think.”

  Lucy Peacock, the notorious lesbian from the sociology department was actually quite strikingly good looking in a masculine sort of way. Though androgynous would be a better description. She was youngish, perhaps not forty, and she had obviously made an effort in making herself as male or at least as un-female as possible. Her blonde hair was not quite close cropped and she wore no make-up and she was dressed in a pinstriped suit. As she was, she might even have been attractive to some men.

  “Jodie drove us here,” Lucy said. “She doesn’t drink you see. So there’ll be no problems in getting home. We got wet on the way out and on the way in. It’s pouring down outside.”

  Jodie, Lucy’s friend, looked about seventeen but was in fact twenty five. She was very small, and slight in every way. She was wearing a dark green pleated dress and white shoes with three inch high heels. Her hair was long and dark and framed her young and innocent looking pale face. She had big rich brown eyes the colour of milk chocolate.

  “Please, go in,” Elizabeth said, indicating that they should follow Johnny and Dolly into the sitting room.

  Elizabeth brushed past Dolly as she was standing next to Johnny at the drinks cabinet as Charles made them some drinks. She noticed that Dolly’s dark grey dress matched her eyes.

  “Will you help me serve up?” Charles whispered into Elizabeth’s ear.

  “Yes, okay,” she said. “But why haven’t you hired serving wenches?”

  “I don’t need them when I’ve already got you,” he said. “If everyone would like to move into the dining room,” he then said aloud. “I’ll start serving up the dinner. I’m sure you all must be hungry. Take your drinks in with you.”

  The dining room was very small, with barely enough room to move around the table, which was rectangular and made of oak. The chairs were high-backed and matched the table. They had Jacobean hunting scenes on the cloth covers of the seats. The ceiling was low, making the room seem even smaller. It could in fact have been some kind of large store room before the conversion, as it was next to the kitchen.

  The French onion soup was nice and peppery and the beef in the goulash was tender. Nobody seemed to miss the sour cream. Everybody dipped into the various salad dishes and the lemon meringue pie was a big hit. Charles was quite pleased with himself and the nice red Bordeaux flowed freely.

  “You did all of this yourself, Charles?” Dolly asked with a note of admiration in her voice.

  “Yes, but it was all quite simple really.”

  “I don’t think Johnny could open a tin,” she said.

  “Yes, I can,” he said. “What about that time when you were ill and I made you chicken noodle soup?”

  “One time in twenty years and he still remembers it. And that was a packet, dear, not a tin, and it wasn’t quite right if you remember. You didn’t simmer it for long enough and the little bits of chicken tasted like cardboard.”

  “I see you still remember it, then,” he said.

  She smiled at him.

  “Cathy is an excellent cook,” Daniel said, before taking a large gulp of wine.

  “I find it boring though,” Cathy said. “I know some people love it. I suspect when they don’t have to do it, or if it’s a profession. Doing it for a family three times a day must be a real bind.”

  Elizabeth was staring at the painting on the wall behind Charles. It was a print of Dali’s Temptation of Saint Anthony. She didn’t like it. Charles was sitting at the head of the table while she was at the foot, with Dolly, Lucy and Daniel down from his left, and Cathy, Jodie and Johnny up from her left. Charles noticed she was looking above and past him at the picture. The music from the sitting room floated in through the open door.

  “Do you work at the university, Elizabeth?” Lucy asked. “I’m sure I’ve seen you before but I can’t place you.”

  The sound of her name caught Elizabeth’s attention and she refocused her eyes.

  “Yes, I work in the library,” she said, surprised that she had heard what was said to her. “I’m just an assistant.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember seeing you there now. Have you been there long?”

  “Too long.”

  “Why, is it awful?”

  “Quite awful. I hate fucking students.”

  “Oh, dear, that is a disadvantage when working in a university,” Lucy said.

  “What is it you dislike about them?” Johnny asked, as he refilled his glass with claret.

  “I don’t so much mind the ones who are here for the sex and the drugs, it’s the earnest ones I despise. The ones who want to get good degrees and do subjects that will get them a job. The whole ethos seems to have changed. The idea that by going to university you will get a job seems… well… obscene somehow. Art for art’s sake has died a death I fear. Especially now that you basically only have to breathe to get in.”

  “It sounds like you long for a bygone age when only the privileged who didn’t need jobs went to university,” Johnny said.

  “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “I agree with you,” he said.

  “Johnny, don’t be so facetious,” Dolly said. “You just want to agree with Elizabeth because she’s beautiful. And Elizabeth, watch out later when he’s had a few more drinks. Don’t let him near you. He’ll pinch your bum and then laugh it off pretending to be a harmless just pre-senile old fool.”

  “Dolly, how could you give the game away like that? You always spoil my fun.”

  “Jodie is a student. A mature student, that is,” Lucy said, placing a thin wedge of Stilton onto a water biscuit.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” Elizabeth said, flatly. “I mean, you can’t generalise, can you. I was a student myself many centuries ago. You know what I mean? Some students are students and other students aren’t. What are you studying, Jodie?”

  “Art history,” Jodie said quietly, darting a look at Elizabeth with her big beautiful brown eyes.

  Everyone then realised that it was the first time she had spoken all evening.

  “That’s a good subject,” Elizabeth said. “At least it’s not something ridiculous and easy like sociology, or what is it? African Studies?”

  Elizabeth smiled at both Lucy and Daniel so that they wouldn’t know if she meant what she’d said or was just being deliberately provocative. Charles winced and looked at Lucy, shaking his head.

  “What exactly are African studies, anyway, Daniel?” Elizabeth asked, feeling something familiar rising in her, which she hated. “I mean, do we have European studies? Yes, we do, don’t we? But then we would, wouldn’t we? But do they have European studies at the University of Ouagadougou?”

  Daniel laughed and drained his glass and refilled it.

  “Actually, Elizabeth, there is a university at Ouagadougou and it’s a very fine one too. But I’m afraid I’m not going to rise to your bait. What is it you really want to say?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking around her but avoiding eye contact with anyone. “I’m sorry everyone, I’m just a vicious bitch, I know, but I’m trying to make the evening interesting. Anything is better than nothing, surely?”

  “This isn’t nothing,” Charles said, more annoyed with her than he had ever been. “It is possible for friends to have a pleasant evening together without something violent and hurtful being said.”

  “Not with me it isn’t,” she said. “You should know that.”

  “You haven’t explained your prejudice against sociology yet,” Lucy said to Elizabeth, lighting a long thin brown cigarette. “Is it as irrational as everything else you’ve said tonight?”

  Elizabeth stared at her for a long moment and then sat back in her chair a
nd placed her hands together, with interlocking fingers, resting them on the table.

  “Now don’t get cheeky with me, dear,” she said. “You must know that the most incompetent of incompetent students choose sociology because it’s an easy option. What does it teach people? How to be social workers for the underclass. Who cares if they can’t read and sexually abuse their children? It’s always been the same, surely? We know that social control through religion or patriotism is disintegrating because the underclass is no longer constrained by middle class values. We know that there are no jobs in factories for uneducated working class males any more and so they can’t support their numerous progeny in a structured society of knowing their place. The whole subject is outdated now. The time when we needed to understand society is long past. We know how it works now and that nothing can be done about it. Human nature can’t be changed.”

  “You don’t appear to know what sociology is, Elizabeth,” Lucy said.

  “Who the fuck wants to?” Elizabeth answered.

  Charles suggested they all move back into the sitting room for drinks and as they did so, he pulled Elizabeth to one side.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked her.

  “I’m just trying to liven things up a little,” she said. “I enjoy being devil’s advocate, as you know.”

  “Well just go easy will you? I have to work with these people.”

  “Don’t be such a coward,” she said. “And give me a kiss. Have you noticed how old Johnny boy has been looking at Jodie? I think it’s going to be her bum that gets pinched, not mine.”

  As they all sat around the room, Charles went over to the stereo and put on another pop anthology, hoping that something innocuous and bouncy might lighten the atmosphere. Elizabeth meanwhile had sat down between Daniel and Cathy on the settee.

  “Why have you put on some of that fucking awful music again?” she asked.

  “Well you chose the first lot,” he said angrily. “Tell me what you want on then.”

  “I think we should have some reggae, or rap, don’t you? Or should that have a C in front of it?”

  “I hope you don’t mind me saying so, Charles, but your girlfriend is a fucking bitch,” Lucy said.