Striking a Balance

by Curtis, Norma

  Sarah and Roger’s daughter, Lottie, was standing on the stairs wearing non-sexist striped pyjamas.

  Sarah, still sporting a quiff of camembert and cream, leapt out of her chair with a frantic look in her eye, no doubt wondering how Penelope Leach would have played it.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ she said to Roger through gritted teeth, and in a soothing, insincere voice to Lottie, ‘We’ll be quiet, darling. Let Mummy carry you back upstairs.’

  ‘Not with that yucky stuff on your head,’ Lottie said, retreating indignantly. Sarah followed her.

  The table erupted into giggles.

  ‘Thirty-three is not at all old for a woman,’ Catrin said to no-one in particular, ‘but four is.’

  ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Ten to.’

  Catrin got up, pushed her chair back and followed Sarah to the bathroom.

  ‘Hair all right?’ she asked, glancing at the airing cupboard. All was quiet.

  Sarah ducked her head for Catrin to look. ‘Is it all off?’

  ‘Spotless. Oh, just a dab of camembert there, I’ll wipe it off for you.’ She dabbed at Sarah’s blonde hair. ‘That’s it.’ She lifted the lavatory lid up and put the tissue in. ‘By the way, what on earth is in the airing cupboard?’

  Sarah looked at the cupboard door rather sheepishly. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘The magpie. We found it under the bridge this afternoon. Roger thought this was a great way to teach Lottie about death in a controlled environment.’

  Catrin looked at her wryly as she washed her hands. ‘What’s Roger going to do, strangle it?’

  ‘Is it still alive?’ Sarah said, touching her earring uncertainly. ‘Isn’t it amazing, you’re here in Central London and you have magpies in the garden.’

  ‘Amazing is finding them in the airing cupboard,’ Catrin said. ‘You country types, we’re going to have to use towels with magpie shit on them. Come on, let’s go back down or else they’ll have yammed in the New Year without us.’

  ***

  They went into the kitchen and Catrin took two bottles of Bollinger out of the fridge and gave them to Sarah. She took two herself and they returned to the dining room where Hugh was accepting raucous advice on how to solve a puzzle that had fallen out of a cracker.

  ‘It’s nearly midnight,’ Catrin said as they put the bottles on the table. William got up and started taking the foil off.

  ‘Put Moira Stewart on,’ Tim said.

  ‘Isn’t she the newsreader?’ his wife, Lisa, asked irritably.

  ‘No, that’s Moira Anderson.’

  ‘You always get them mixed up,’ she said, hitting him with a spoon, and they tumbled into the sitting room which was full of balloons and switched the television on.

  Catrin and Jean distributed glasses. The grandfather clock began to chime midnight.

  They lapsed into silence as the seconds sounded by. On the eleventh stroke Hugh gave a premature shout. On the twelfth, to the shout of ‘Happy New Year’ they toasted each other and tipsily joined hands to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Catrin, as always, found she’d forgotten the words.

  ‘Let’s do the fireworks!’ William said, as whichever Moira it was launched into the second verse.

  ‘He’s always been a pyromaniac,’ Catrin said to Jean, out of the corner of her mouth.

  Jean wrinkled her nose and gave William a sideways glance. ‘Pervert.’

  They went out into the dark, cold garden. Frost glistened on the grass from the lights of the house.

  Catrin, Sarah and Jean huddled together under the trees that sheltered them from London’s alien orange sky. Behind them Lisa grumbled at having to come out at all. A dark shadow that was William crouched over the fireworks, lighting the touchpapers.

  He hurried away as with a hiss the fireworks agitated, spewing out sparks in a rush of light that coloured their faces red.

  ‘Aaaaahhhh...’

  Someone handed Catrin a glass of Armagnac. It blazed through her as she watched the sparks from the fireworks burst in the sky, spreading themselves wide as they scribbled down the night like glitter thrown across black paper.

  Hugh came and stood next to her and he put his heavy arm around her shoulder. ‘I wonder what’s in store for us all,’ he said reflectively, holding his glass up to the showers of light.

  ‘That’s up to us,’ Catrin said.

  ‘Ah! You think it’s as simple as that?’ He sounded amused.

  ‘And isn’t it?’

  When he didn’t answer her she linked her arm in his. ‘Life is what you make it,’ she said. ‘It’s a script that you write for yourself. You choose what you want from life and then you make it happen.’

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ Hugh said lightly. ‘And where does fate come in?’

  He sounded amused and Catrin felt a flicker of annoyance. She wondered whether he was mocking her. ‘Our fate is in our own hands, don’t you think?’

  Hugh sipped his drink. ‘You make it sound so simple.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Oh, no buts – ’

  He started to say something else but his words were drowned out by staccato cracks from white blazing stars that lit up the sky and drifted, spent, over the emptiness of Regent’s Park.

  Catrin glanced back at the house. Through the half-open curtains she could see the lights of the Christmas tree. She looked at the garden sheltering their guests, their friends; the fireworks were lighting it up like a grotto. She smiled to herself. Fireworks; for celebration.

  ***

  Later, when they were saying goodbye, a red balloon that had broken free shied away from the gust from the opening door. It scooted in a circle and drifted out with Hugh and Jean, floating around their ankles anxiously. They laughed and caught it and got into a chugging cab.

  Catrin watched with William until the rear lights of the taxi disappeared down the road and then she heard a small voice behind them. ‘Catrin? Where’s my mummy?’ Lottie’s small hands fiddled with a loose red button on her pyjama top as William closed the door.

  ‘Hello, Lottie. She and Daddy have gone to bed, I think.’

  ‘Have I missed the fireworks?’

  ‘Yes. But William’s kept some sparklers for you.’

  This information was accepted in silence. The button was tugged harder. ‘I didn’t have a story tonight,’ Lottie said.

  ‘Didn’t you? In that case you’ll have to ask Mummy to tell you two tomorrow,’ Catrin said treacherously. ‘Come on, let’s get you to bed.’

  She picked up the small, warm figure and took her back to the guest room.

  Lottie got into bed reluctantly and leaning back on her stiff little arms she stared at Catrin. ‘I can’t sleep without a story,’ she said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘Oh.’ Catrin sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I could tell you a poem,’ she capitulated. ‘It’s a poem with a story in it.’

  ‘Is it Hiawatha?’

  ‘Is it Hiawatha? Do you know what the time is? Right, this is the poem. “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost, all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” ’

  Lottie continued to look at her expectantly.

  ‘That’s it,’ Catrin said, getting up and smoothing the creases out of her dress.

  ‘It was very short.’

  ‘Yes. It’s enough, though, isn’t it? From losing a nail to losing a kingdom?’

  ‘It’s silly.’

  ‘I quite agree. But that’s the olden days for you. Goodnight, Lottie.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Sleep well – and – Happy New Year.’

  ***

  Catrin went back downstairs and found William at the dining room table upending the last of the champagne into a glass. A streamer was draped round his neck.

  He smiled up at Catrin and passed her the glass. ‘Happy New Year, you,’ he said.
/>   ‘Happy New Year.’

  ‘Come here.’

  Catrin smiled and sat on his knee, curling her hand around his neck. She pulled her dark hair away from her face and put her cheek to his, feeling his bristles prickle against her skin. She stroked them with her finger, making them rasp.

  William held her finger and kissed the tip of it with his moist mouth and pressed his nose against hers. ‘You know Hugh’s Jean, she said naturists refer to us modest people as textiles,’ he said. ‘Seems to think it’s we who are odd.’

  ‘I expect she felt a bit over-dressed.’

  They grinned at each other. Catrin looked closely into William’s slightly unfocused eyes. His irises were huge and she tried to see herself in them but it was like looking into the black lagoon. She moved her head back and let the flickering candlelight reach them.

  ‘Your eyes are the colour of wet slate,’ she said softly.

  ‘Ah, Catrin, it’s the Welsh in you. How many English women would know the colour of a decent piece of slate?’ His hand was on the tiny red buttons at the back of her dress.

  Catrin felt his fingers climb down them slowly, each in turn. She felt her red silk dress loosen until it slithered down around her waist. The heat from her body made her perfume drift up in a warm scent and she shivered.

  With gentle hands, William held her hair away from her face and began to kiss her. Catrin shut her eyes and felt his mouth move to her temples, eyelids, cheeks, lips; the warm moisture cooling on the places he had left. William’s mouth moved to her neck; he nuzzled the place where the blood throbbed through her artery, his warm breath stroked her skin moments before his lips rested on her throat and moved down to her chest, breasts, thorax, her navel.

  He put his hands underneath her bottom and lifted her up to ease off her dress. As she stood in her underwear, one eye on the door, she felt goose-bumps tingle on her skin as her kissed her abdomen, moved his warm mouth to her pubic hair underneath her panties, then to her thighs, and her knees, and down to her ankles, to her toes and their red nails, to the back of her knees, her bottom, the small of her back...He stood behind her and held her tightly, his arms folded across her.

  ‘Time for bed,’ he said, his warm breath in her ear. Catrin looked at the party poppers, the streamers, the bottles, the glasses, the end of the party.

  ‘I love you,’ William said, his mouth pressed against her ear.

  Catrin twisted her head to look at him, took his warm hand and kissed it, feeling it furl around her face. It smelled vaguely of his woody aftershave. She picked up her dress from the floor and blew out the candles. Their smoke swirled palely in the air.

  On their way to bed, dragging their clothes in one hand and holding hands with the other, William lifted up their joined hands and asked her how she’d cut herself.

  ‘There’s a magpie in the airing cupboard,’ she said, tossing her hair away from her face.

  Death in a controlled environment. On their towels. She smiled at his expression and squeezed his hand gently. ‘Just one. For sorrow,’ she said.

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