I’ll Go To Bed At Noon

by Gerard Woodward

  ‘Mum,’ said Julian, ‘Can we go to Tewkesbury on our own tomorrow? Just you, me and dad?’

  ‘What do you mean? Janus Brian’s coming with us. I’ve explained to you . . .’

  ‘But it’s not too late to change things – and Janus Brian doesn’t really want to come. He’d forgotten about it when we saw him last week. Don’t you remember?’

  It was true. It had taken an afternoon of patient explaining and re-explaining before Janus Brian could be made to remember. Even then, when they thought the matter was settled, he would suddenly turn away from the television and say – ‘Dear, can you tell me again – what are we doing next week?’

  ‘Julian – Janus Brian has been looking forward to this holiday for months. What are you suggesting, that I just don’t bother calling for him tomorrow? He would be devastated. It would kill him.’

  A man who was sitting directly behind Colette, who’d turned round the moment Colette had sat back to back with him, had been following this conversation with a leering sort of interest.

  ‘It would kill me,’ he said, ‘to not holiday with you . . .’

  He was dark-haired and ageing, his face loose and empty with drink. He continued to make barely comprehensible noises, rough growls and vague but loud exclamations, sometimes accompanied by clumsy hand gestures.

  ‘You’ve got to try and make some allowances for your uncle. You’ve got to try and be nice to him . . .’

  ‘Be nice to me,’ said the man. He seemed to be of Eastern European origin, and spoke English with a richly pronounced rolling of vowels.

  ‘Do you mind?’ said Colette over her shoulder.

  ‘Why not?’ said the man, ‘I have a thousand sheep.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Julian, ‘can I stay at home? I don’t want to come with you.’

  ‘Come on holiday with me,’ said the man, who, up until now, had been unable to see Colette’s face properly, but now, finally turning fully in his seat, he put a hand on the crown of Colette’s head, patted, then stroked her hair. ‘I can take you to the Black Sea. Come with me to Odessa. I will take you to Transylvania. You like?’

  ‘I don’t think so. We’re going to Tewkesbury.’

  ‘And so they make wine there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where I live, the rivers flow with wine. You ask my wife. I took her there last year. Margaret!’ He addressed the female sitting at his side, a small and dour woman in spectacles who was scowling fixedly into her coffee.

  ‘I don’t think you should be talking to a strange woman like this if you are married.’

  ‘What, you’re not strange, are you. Tell me, what have you been doing. What have you been doing today?’

  ‘We’ve been to the pictures,’ said Colette, who slowly had grown to enjoy the slurred attentions of this man.

  ‘The pictures? Last Tango In Paris, eh?’

  ‘No, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.’

  ‘You should see Last Tango In Paris, it’s my favourite film. Come, I’ll take you to see it now. Give me your hand. A beautiful woman . . .’ He took Colette’s hand, planted kisses on the back of it, red lips pouting from beneath a boot-brush-thick moustache, ‘I shall take you out . . .’

  ‘No, I’m not a beautiful woman,’ said Colette laughing, withdrawing her hand.

  ‘What, you’re not a woman?’

  ‘Yes, I’m a woman.’

  ‘Let me see if you are a woman, eh?’ he reached for the buttons on Colette’s floral shirt, tried undoing them.

  Colette gave a shriek of laughter, took hold of the man’s hand and pushed it away.

  ‘Let me see if you are a woman,’ he repeated, laughing, ‘let me see, let me see.’

  ‘Julian,’ Colette said, smiling, ‘would you mind hitting this man for me?’

  ‘Why don’t you hit him?’ said Julian, rather crossly.

  ‘Aha, your husband, eh?’ said the man, as if noticing Julian for the first time.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We can settle this thing man to man eh?’ he continued, glaring at Julian, ‘with honour. You and me, outside of here . . .’

  ‘He wants you to fight a duel over me,’ Colette laughed.

  ‘Swords,’ the man said, making swishing movements with his hands, ‘you and me, for the honour of this woman . . .’

  By this time the man was leaning so far over the seat back he was almost sitting next to Colette. But then his wife, who’d barely stirred in all this time, leant across and, with controlled anger, whispered something in her husband’s ear. This seemed utterly to deflate the man, who shrank to about half his original size, and was then led tamely from the restaurant by his wife.

  ‘What a strange man,’ said Colette, who’d watched his departure closely, following his progress through the doors, then, along the High Road, supported by his small wife, and out of sight. Julian could see how his mother looked flushed and bright-eyed, glowing with the attention she’d received. ‘He was just drunk, I suppose.’

  Julian wanted to bring his mother back to the subject.

  ‘Do you mind if I stay at home for the holidays?’

  ‘Yes I do. And I think you’d mind. Do you really want to spend the summer in the company of your brother?’

  ‘Why don’t you give me some money so I can go on holiday on my own?’

  Colette laughed.

  ‘At fourteen? It would be against the law. I’m sorry, Julian, but you’re stuck with us. Between a drunken brother and a drunken uncle I know you don’t have a great choice, and you’ll hate me for ever and ever, but I have to put Janus Brian first. He’ll be dead soon and then you can dance on his grave, but until then I want to make what life he has left as enjoyable as possible . . .’

  Colette hesitated. Her son was looking devastated. She thought for a moment he was going to cry.

  ‘Of course,’ she went on, trying to repair some damage, ‘I don’t really want him to come. I’d much rather it was just you me and daddy . . .’

  ‘No,’ said Julian, ‘you want him to come. You’re actually looking forward to it. You like the company of drunks – you’ve proved that this afternoon. You’d be happier if the whole world was drunk.’

  Colette laughed, thinking Julian’s remark rather charming, and not quite knowing how to take it.

  12

  Janus put a hand to his face. It hurt. He fingered the strange, rough texture that adhered to its left side, followed it from his eyebrow all the way down to his jaw. Dried blood. He recognised the sensation.

  Janus discovered that he was nestled in a rose garden. Thickly tangled rose stems studded with thorns were all around him. If he moved, they dug into his skin. It was a kind of trap into which he had somehow fallen. Or perhaps he had been pushed. Janus had no memory of how he came to be among roses. He wondered if he had been asleep for a hundred years.

  It was hot. Looking up through writhing stems and the lush crimson heads of roses he could see bright blue sky. Then thirst struck him. The drought was in his mouth. His whole body was a desert.

  He rolled to the side, crushing stems, feeling thorns against his legs. He could feel the pain but wasn’t hurt, and discovered the roses he’d rolled out of were the ones that grew in the front garden of Bill and Juliette’s house. He found himself facing their front door. At least, it was the front door to the house in which they occupied an upper floor. One ring of the doorbell would produce the landlady, Miss Steel, who lived downstairs. Bill and Juliette required two rings.

  It was a little Victorian front door set in a recessed porch like a small cave, tiled attractively in terracotta arabesques to the sides, black and white diamonds on the floor. Janus stepped into the porch and pressed the bell twice. There was no reply. He rang the bell once. No landlady came. What day was it? Sunday. Miss Steel probably went to church on Sundays. What about Juliette and Bill? They didn’t come round to Fernlight Avenue any more. They stayed in bed on Sunday mornings. He rang the bell twice
again. No answer.

  Still Janus felt no pain. He felt he could easily have punched a hole through the frosted glass panel of the front door and turned the handle. He wouldn’t have felt anything. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to go home and lie down. So he began walking.

  He tried to remember what had happened the day before. He could remember playing the piano in the afternoon, then following his mother and the others to Wood Green on Julian’s bike. What had happened to that bike? Janus paused and looked back at the squashed rose bed to make sure the bike wasn’t in there. He could have cycled home. But the bike wasn’t there.

  It took Janus nearly a whole day to walk home. He had no money for a bus, and the new pay-as-you-enter buses wouldn’t admit the unmonied.

  He took giant strides along Green Lanes, the events of the day before slowly trickling back into his mind . . . So we’ll go no more a-boozing . . .

  He’d followed the others to Wood Green. Then he’d gone into the cinema and found his mum and Julian watching a film. Couldn’t remember what film. Then what? Getting thrown out of the cinema. Then seeing Bill walking along the High Road, only it wasn’t Bill but his doppelganger. Then he went to Polperro Gardens. That was it. Polperro Gardens to call on Bill. He gave two rings of the bell, but only Juliette answered. Bill wasn’t there, she said. Where was he then? She said she didn’t know. You must know where he is, he’s your husband for Christ’s sake. She tried to shut the door, Janus put his foot in. You can’t stop me from seeing my best friend, Janus had said. He’s not your best friend, his little sister had replied. And Bill doesn’t drink now, that’s what she said. That’s what the doc told him. So we’ll go no more a-boozing. Or Bill could be dead. If Janus takes Bill out for a drink it could kill him. Kill Bill. She was telling lies. Of course he can still drink. Janus had seen him in pubs from which he himself was banned. He’d seen him reeling out of The Quiet Woman, or quaffing ale among the Tyrols and flock wallpaper with that barmaid in The Volunteer with the orange plaits and the ginger-beer coloured pubic hair (so he’d heard). He was in The Coach and Horses drinking with washed-up footballers, failed actors, gone-to-seed glamourpusses whose heyday was a bit-part in Upstairs Downstairs. Bill’s liver is on the edge, said Juliette. Bill is jaundiced and his blood full of urea, Bill doesn’t socialize now, just stays at home with a mug of Horlicks and his feet up in front of Nationwide.

  ‘I’ll call the police,’ Juliette had said.

  That was as far as Janus could remember.

  Janus had written Bill a letter. It began ‘Dearest Bill, so the sun has finally set on the golden age of our friendship . . .’ but didn’t go on, and Janus never sent it. In their epistolary exchanges Janus always felt outdone.

  Bill Brothers was a fucking fascist.

  Janus passed Swallows, the North Circular, the Cock, the Bus Depot, the Library, the Triangle. He was thrown out of a Greek Cypriot Cafe (Kafe Aphrodite), whose aroma of coffee and cheroots had soothed him. The grey-whiskered, poker-playing proprietor had tolerated his penniless presence for an hour before finally asking him to leave. He had amused the clientele by spouting Euripides in the ancient version of their language.

  My barque is freighted full with sorrow, there is no room to stow aught further. All hail!

  My house and portals of my home, how glad am I to emerge to the light to see thee. Ha! What is this? I see my children before the house in the garb of death, with chaplets on their heads, my wife amid a throng of men, and my father weeping o’er some mischance.

  He wandered for hours among the cedars of Brimstone Park, watched mandarin ducks nibble at the soggy nubs of Wonderloaf that were silting-up a corner of the ornamental lake, and visited the museum that occupied the ground floor of the stately Tudor home at the centre of the park.

  He drifted through a room full of stuffed animals with waxy tongues and realistic eyes. Another room of local history. A penny-farthing. An ancient, wooden ice cream stall. A relief map, under glass, of Windhover Hill and environs before their suburbanization, a swathe of rumpled greenery, teeny-weeny trees sculpted in green sponge, the lanes marked in white, labels here and there marking the sites of present-day landmarks. The Goat and Compasses was said to be the oldest pub in the district, in existence long before the railway came, and The Red Lion, as well, was there at a corner of Green Lanes. On the map you could see how Windhover Hill was really a hill, a distinct though shallow prominence on the edge of the basin of the river Lea, geologically it was one of the first foothills of the Chilterns, though formed not of chalk but syrupy London clay.

  There were some old postcards displayed on the walls. Scenes of an almost unthinkable rusticity, taken around the turn of the century, not long after the railways came. ‘Mr Withens’ smallholding, Windhover Hill Woods’. There was Mr Withens with his prize pig. An enormous, pink, tusked brute that looked only one generation away from a hippo. Janus laughed. There was a picture of a prize bull, a rosette on its horn, that once trod the soil of farmland near Fernlight Avenue, its proud, handlebar-moustachioed owner standing dangerously alongside. There were many other pictures of this sort. ‘The stables at Windhover Hill Farm’, showing a row of mucky-looking work-horses, another of horses harnessed to a plough, turning the soil of Grange Farm. ‘Young girls in Hoopers Lane Orchard for apple picking’. This was a picture that struck Janus especially. Those beautiful young virgins in their smocks and floppy hats, sitting in dappled light beneath heavily fruited boughs, laughing. Girls then, dead by now, but those orchards must have practically bordered the garden at Fernlight Avenue, and extended all the way along Hoopers Lane almost as far as The Goat and Compasses.

  Eventually Janus found his way back to Fernlight Avenue. He couldn’t find his key so knocked but, as at Polperro Gardens, there was no reply. Is there no one in, in the whole world? thought Janus. He had to walk through the side alley, climb, with difficulty, over the tall gate at the back, and walk round to the music room’s French windows. These were fastened, on the inside, by string, which snapped after one good tug. The house was empty. On the kitchen table there was a note.

  Janus

  Be good. We’ll see you in three weeks. There is plenty of food in the cupboards, but you will need to buy some cat food.

  Love Mummy

  There was a five pound note set beneath a vase on the table. Of course, he had been told many times that mum, dad and Julian were off on holiday today. He’d forgotten. The reason he’d forgotten was that they had never told him where they were going, so the holiday hadn’t seemed like a real event to him. Colette claimed that she didn’t know where they were going herself, but would leave it until the last minute to decide. Janus felt the sudden thrill of having the world to himself.

  So we’ll go no more a-boozing. Janus remembered much wandering yesterday. Much roving from pub to pub, from park to park and back to Polperro Gardens. In one pub he had seen Rita Michaelangeli and Hugo Price. Or was it a pub? Was it a restaurant? Whatever, they were alone, sitting at a table, looking at each other with lovey-dovey eyes. How long had they been having an affair, Janus wondered. It seemed to have been going on for years. On and off. Everyone knew about it, except for Veronica, Hugo’s wife.

  Veronica Price. Her name stuck in his mind. There was something important about Veronica Price. Something to do with this weekend. Then he remembered. It was Veronica’s birthday. She was having a party. Was it tonight? Odd to have a party on a Sunday night. Perhaps it was to be more of one of those genteel soirées with decanted wine and canapes that she was so fond of having. Whatever it was, Bill would be there.

  Hugo and Veronica lived in Hoopers Lane, not far from The Goat and Compasses. Janus bought some Special Brews with his mum’s five pound note and drank them quickly. Then he went to Veronica and Hugo’s house at twilight.

  Their front garden was asphalted, the sort of deep, black asphalt that is sprinkled with little chips of white stone. Their garden had been converted into a car park, though neither Hugo nor Veronic
a drove. The curtains were closed. Party noises, heavily muffled, were audible. Janus knocked and Veronica answered. A tall woman, the back-lighting of the house made visible the outline of her skull through the fine mesh of her tight, frizzy perm. Her eyes, as always, were set within greasy troughs of eye-shadow and mascara. She wore a black velvet choke to which the neck of her pleated dress seemed to hang. The dress was a Romanesque garment, bright red, pleated all the way to the ground, like a fluted column. Beneath it, clearly visible in outline, was a black brassiere of sturdy construction. Veronica’s hostility towards Janus probably stemmed from the time, at another party, when he’d taken hold of her plump bosoms and jiggled them about. It must have been years ago, but the memory of their weight in his hands had stayed with Janus ever since, rekindled by the sight of her bra he now had. In certain lights Veronica had a mysterious, towering beauty.

  She’d been laughing as she answered the door but when she saw that it was Janus her laughter stopped instantly and she closed the door a little, so that there was only room for her face, which said ‘No. You weren’t invited.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Janus.

  Seeing she was about to close the door he blurted ‘Is Bill in there?’

  Veronica hesitated, as though not sure how to reply. She glanced back into the house, from which was coming tremendous laughter, oblivious of Janus’s presence.

  ‘I’m not sure . . .’

  ‘You’re not sure?’

  Rita Michaelangeli’s small dark head appeared beside Veronica, peeking out, childlike, from beneath Veronica’s armpit.

  ‘Who is it?’ she said in a giggly, excited voice, then, seeing Janus, said ‘Oh,’ and withdrew.

  ‘Anyway, whether Bill’s here or not,’ said Veronica, reasserting herself, ‘I can’t have you in my house Janus, not after the last time . . .’

  ‘What last time?’

  Did she mean the bosom-jiggling incident, but that was years ago, surely . . .

  ‘You know perfectly well Janus, now go away.’

  She began again to close the door.