I’ll Go To Bed At Noon

by Gerard Woodward

  When Janus came over to the tent, however, it was not to say his goodbye, but to announce that he was about to relocate his tent, and pitch it next door to their own.

  ‘I’d like to be here to welcome my father when he arrives in the morning.’

  He settled his motorbike on its stand, and began pulling at the straps of his bundled-up tent.

  ‘I completely forbid it, Janus,’ said Colette, ‘if you put your tent here I’ll call the office and get them to throw you out.’

  ‘But I’ve paid. I want to live here for ever.’

  Colette could see that, for the first time since his arrival in the town, Janus had been drinking.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I’m not being ridiculous.’

  Janus had unstrapped a part of the tent. Colette got up and replaced the strap. Janus laughed.

  ‘I’m begging you, Janus, go away from us. Go back to London. Why don’t you go and see Bill?’

  Janus gave a loud, single-syllable laugh of derision.

  ‘Bill? Why should I want to see that bastard?’

  ‘He and Juliette have split up. Didn’t you know? I should think he’s lonely.’

  Stupid of Colette to suggest that, she realized shortly afterwards. Estrangement from Bill had been responsible, at least in part, for the relatively even keel Janus had managed to keep for the time of his suspended sentence. But she was desperate. She would have suggested anything. It did not occur to her that there had been a falling out.

  ‘I do know,’ said Janus, ‘the bastard blames me for breaking up the marriage. I tried to kill him last week, but I chickened out at the last minute.’

  ‘But he’s your friend . . .’

  ‘Bill? My friend? Don’t make me laugh. That cardboard cut-out jumped-up Marxist? That two-bit artist, supermarket butcher, scribbler, dauber, talentless prick, that rambling, asthmatic shit-head? That pseudoLeninist mock-Stalinist, sham-Trotskyite, fungus-faced, fungus-backed, fungus-bollocked, cack-handed, simple-brained, colour-blind, pox-ridden block-and-cleaver merchant? That spineless, spleenless, mindless, skinless, boneless, brainless, prickless, pithless, bloodless, eyeless, fingerless, so-called artist? I wouldn’t be seen dead with him. I’d like to chop his head off. I’d like to gut him and feed his liver to the Scipplecat. I’d like to crush his bones into powder. I’d like to roll his skin up into a ball and throw it out of the window. That’s what I’d like to do to my so-called friend. Friend? He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Do you know what he does now? He sucks up to footballers in The Quiet Woman. He’s never watched a bloody football match in his life before now and he goes every week to the Spurs to watch his friends playing. He drools all over them. Gets driven around in their Ford BMWs. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word friendship. Blames me for the breakup of his marriage. Did I drag him to the pub every night? No, he used to come round and collect me. You saw him didn’t you? He’d sneak away from Juliette and come round to Fernlight Avenue. It was he who wrote me letters nearly every week saying ‘when are we going to get pissed? When are we going to get pissed?’ If I ever went round to Polperro Gardens I wasn’t allowed in. I slept there on the roses the other night. His precious fucking marriage. He punched me in the face. If that’s what friendship means I’m through with it. I’m finished with it. It’s all just putrid back-scratching. So vile. So false. Falseness. People are false. They’re not real. They never let you know what they are thinking. They won’t let you know who they really are. You’re all just puppets. You’re all clockwork. Everyone. You, you’re a dummy aren’t you. You’re a fucking waxwork . . .’

  Janus went on like this, frightening his mother with an increasingly disturbed stream of invective (all through his speech she’d been saying, quietly ‘no, Janus, stop, stop’) and Janus didn’t stop until Janus Brian emerged from the tent, naked but for his socks, pants and his tweed, feathered trilby, his spectacles with their Groucho Marx eyebrows. He tottered confidently from the tent straight over to the motorbike where this conversation had taken place, almost tripping on the guy ropes, and said ‘Scram, sunbeam.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Janus, halted in his diatribe, all indignation.

  ‘You heard. Buzz off. Vamoose. Skedaddle.’

  Janus Brian’s body was creamy white, with red at the extremities and a scarlet V at the neck, marking the ghost of a shirt. His absurd appearance somehow outranked his nephew’s ranting, trumped his drunkenness.

  ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

  ‘You heard the lady, if you don’t beat it I’ll give you a smack in the mush.’

  Janus, collecting himself, laughed sarcastically. Janus Brian went on ‘I’ll give you such a wallop in the cake-hole you’ll be shitting your teeth, I’ll give you such a smack in the gearbox you’ll turn inside out.’

  ‘You’re an old man,’ said Janus, patronizingly, ‘and I don’t want to hurt you, so you just toddle off back to the tent, have some more gin, and let me talk with my mother . . .’

  ‘You need to show her some more respect, buster,’ Janus Brian said, ‘you think you can pull these cockamamie stunts on your mother – I’m not having it. The game’s up. You think you’re a big shot but I can remember you before you’d learnt to piss in the pot . . .’

  That hat. Now Colette remembered where she’d seen it before. It was almost the same as the hat Kojak wore on television.

  ‘Janus,’ she said, meaning her brother, ‘don’t be silly.’

  There was an awkward pause, where no one seemed to know what to do next. The younger Janus was waiting, it appeared, for his uncle’s next move, but his uncle didn’t seem to have thought that far ahead.

  Suddenly, struck by an idea, Janus Brian crept swiftly over to his nephew’s motorbike, his Vincent HRD, which stood, leaning slightly on its rest, a few paces away. He put both his hands on the machine and leant his weight against it.

  ‘Scram,’ he said, ‘or this goes over.’

  Janus seemed simultaneously amused and outraged by this act. Sensing the sincerity of his uncle’s threat, he went over to the other side of the motorbike, and braced himself against it, ready for his uncle’s push.

  ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ Janus kept saying, increasingly indignant that someone should stand so firmly against him. Janus Brian seemed to be concentrating, feeling up and down the length of the motorbike, perusing it, stroking it. Then suddenly he pushed.

  ‘Hey,’ said Janus, in an admonishing, now-let’s-not-be-silly voice, though he hardly needed to push against Janus Brian, whose slight body was barely able to stir the motorbike at all. Janus and Janus faced each other across the motorbike, the elder leaning steeply into the machine, finding at last a rush of strength enough to send the bike lurching towards his nephew, who then had to lean in opposition to stop the bike from falling. It shocked the younger Janus that his uncle had found that strength and had the will to carry out his threat. He was silently furious.

  Janus Brian felt that he’d made his point and retired to one of the camping chairs, where Colette had also seated herself. He had a glow of satisfaction about him, as he picked up that day’s newspaper that had been folded next to the chair, and began reading it, pointedly oblivious of his nephew’s existence.

  ‘No one’s ever stood up to him before, that’s his trouble,’ he said to his sister, ‘if you ask me all he needs is a bloody good whipping.’

  Meanwhile younger Janus mounted his motorbike and spurred her into life. It was twilight. He flicked on the headlight, illuminating Janus Brian and Colette in its beam. They continued to talk quietly, ignoring him. Janus, meanwhile, caught sight of Julian, who’d been watching the whole incident from a safe distance. Janus winked at his little brother and said, ‘I’m going to run that bastard over,’ in a way that seemed to invite Julian’s approval. Julian, however, was thinking about the telephone by the site office. He was thinking about another emergency call.

  The motorbike gave a shrill scream,
and shot forward at such a pace its front wheel rose into the air, tipping Janus off its seat and onto his bottom. The motorbike continued, riderless, missing Janus Brian and the tent by several feet, and headed off on its own swiftly snaking course across the grass towards the angler’s small tent, which it crashed into. Caught in the tangle of guy ropes and poles the bike somersaulted and fell on its side. The tent was writhing as though it contained frantic escapologists. A man was screaming.

  When eventually the fisherman emerged, red faced and tangle-haired, he looked about the camp site with incomprehension, as though his tent, having been picked up by a tornado, had landed in another country. He looked at the fallen motorbike. Then he saw Janus, who by now was standing. Then he looked back inside the tent.

  ‘Look what you’ve done,’ the fisherman said, his voice almost a whisper, shaking with fright, not the voice of gruff admonishment they were expecting at all, ‘look what you’ve done. Look what you’ve done.’

  Julian was already on his way to the phone box.

  The fisherman carefully drew back the flaccid material of the tent further to reveal the reclining, unconscious head of the young girl. She was bare shouldered, and the fisherman, rather guiltily, revealed as little of this fact as he could. But her face was enough information. It was cut badly. The lips were as thick as plums. Blood was trickling from her nose. Then she gave a moan and ejected a spray of blood. The first sign that she was alive.

  ‘You’d better go now,’ said Colette to Janus, ‘Go now, quickly.’

  Without a further word Janus ran to his motorbike, lifted it with difficulty, and rode off.

  The fisherman was too concerned, too frightened, about the girl, to notice.

  ‘I told you,’ Janus Brian said to Colette, joining her at the fisherman’s tent, where the girl was now sitting up and crying through a mouthful of blood, ‘I told you ages ago that you should have left him to me. I could have sorted him out.’

  Graham’s Flat

  Don’t know.

  in a time of drought

  Dear Janus

  So, who saved who? Do you remember? I thought I’d better write and thank you, in case it was you that saved me. If it was me that saved you, I expect a letter in return, thanking me, plus a postal order for £10.

  Will you believe me now when I say my drinking days are over? It is not as I would wish it, but you can see what happens. It’s the booze that’s causing the asthma, which means one drink and I’m short of breath. In effect, if I drink, I drown!! Thought I’d better set things straight, because I had the impression that you were expecting a revival of our great drinking sessions in the near future. Alas, it cannot be. If my condition is permanent I do not know. As you can imagine, the prospect of a lifetime on the shores of sobriety, while the great ocean of drunkenness lies before me, is one I can barely tolerate. In fact, I can’t tolerate it at all. Even writing about it now is causing me to weep. I’m sorry to say I’m missing the bottle far more than I’m missing your sister (don’t tell her that). Still, we are all prisoners of our bodies, when we are sober, at least.

  As you can see I am no longer resident at Polperro Gardens. Had to move out sharpish once Juliette had left. Left most of my stuff there, which the landlady will no doubt flog in lieu of rent.

  Don’t really think it would be a good idea for us to meet, Janus, old friend, life-saver though thou art. At least, not for a while. I’ve moved into Graham’s flat. I know you hate him, but he had space, and he’s an old square who’ll make sure I steer clear of the hard stuff.

  So, so long, old buddy. No doubt our paths shall cross one day in the future, until then, adios. By the way, I don’t suppose you’ll take much notice of this, you old boozer, but you could think about going on the wagon yourself eh? What do you think?

  Yours sincerely

  Bill

  39 Cedar Way

  High Wycombe

  Bucks

  27th October 1976

  Dear Colette,

  I am writing to thank you for the sensitivity and graciousness with which you handled the events of last Saturday. Since our relationship has become somewhat unsavoury over the last few years, I was anticipating that the experience might have been rather less agreeable than it was. In fact, you will not be surprised to learn, I had doubts about coming, and it was really only at the insistence of Lesley that I made the journey to Fernlight Avenue at all. But I needn’t have worried. You made me feel welcome, and I am grateful for that.

  It took the events of the funeral to make me realise how much Janus Brian must have meant to you. Lesley, in fact, has been too upset since the funeral to talk about it, which is why he is presently unable to write to you. You will remember that it was Lesley who discovered your brother’s body. An awful shock. Sadly it has taken Janus’s death to make Lesley realize how much his little brother meant to him.

  We are both praying for him.

  I hope now that you and I, Colette, can start afresh. We have little time on this Earth. Let us not spend it in petty dispute or trivial altercation.

  Yours affectionately

  Madeleine

  Part Four

  14

  ‘I think you’re very brave, Juliette, to have the party here,’ said Veronica as she peeled the layers of crumpled foil from a clutch of cocktail sausages, ‘considering everything.’

  Veronica was wearing a maxi-dress fastened down the front by a long line of pea-sized buttons, the whole thing patterned with myriad forget-me-nots. Veronica’s tall, full figure was somewhat lost within this column of fabric, though a square neckline revealed the beginnings of a smooth, unblemished cleavage.

  ‘Brave?’ said Juliette, ‘Oh, you mean Bill. Him and Boris have met before.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’re not exactly best friends, but they tolerate each other.’

  ‘I still think it’s a funny thing to do,’ said Rita, who was busy with another foil-wrapped object, the loaf-shape of which puzzled Juliette and Veronica, ‘having your twenty-first birthday party at your ex-husband’s flat.’

  The phrase ‘ex-husband’ still sounded odd to Juliette, even though Bill had been thus for nearly a year. But then she’d always felt odd referring to Bill as her husband anyway. She’d never felt properly married, being so young, and after that perfunctory ceremony in the Civic Centre with cheese sandwiches and sweet Spanish wine at Fernlight Avenue afterwards, then residence in a rented upstairs flat at Polperro Gardens, which had never seemed really theirs. Looking back on it now, on the evening of her twenty-first birthday, her marriage had seemed as ephemeral and as trivial as a passing teenage obsession with a pop group might seem – all-absorbing at the time, the reason for life itself, yet in hindsight a baffling, bewilderingly pointless act of misdirected devotion.

  ‘It was Graham’s idea,’ said Juliette, ‘Boris’s place is too small and the walls are too thin.’

  ‘Did he ask Bill first, we wonder,’ said Veronica, with a half wink to Rita.

  Graham’s flat was over a lingerie shop on Windhover Hill Parade. It had one large living room which overlooked the High Street through two tall sash windows, the view partially obscured at the moment by roofers’ scaffolding. Being adjacent to the zebra crossing the room was lit by the endlessly repeated glow of a Belisha beacon, which in the evening cast the shadow of a cheeseplant huge on the back wall. ‘Free disco lighting,’ Graham had bragged when persuading Juliette to use the flat. Bill now lived there as a sort of sub-tenant, occupying a child-sized bedroom down one of the narrow, twisting passageways. He and Graham seemed to fit in well together, and with the flat. There was a loose, scuffed, bohemian atmosphere to the place. A grotesque work of art hung on one wall, halfway between a painting and a sculpture, in which a figure that could have been a First World War soldier in helmet and gas mask, rendered as a bas-relief in white plaster, loomed phantom-like from a black background. On another wall hung a gallery of Russian icons, Bill’s work. Juliette recognized some of
the images that had hung on the walls at Polperro Gardens. Against the longest wall there was a long, soft, ripped couch. A record player with stereo speakers as big as fridges, which Graham never played above talking level, filled a corner. By the windows was an extended dining table, and it was on this that Juliette, Veronica Price and Rita Michaelangeli were arranging food and drinks for the party to come.

  ‘Have they gone to the same pub?’ said Veronica.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bill and Boris.’

  ‘Bill is in The Quiet Woman, naturally,’ said Juliette, ‘and Boris said he was going to The Red Lion with Scott and some others. They won’t meet until they’re here, by which time the party will be in full swing and they won’t even notice each other.’

  Rita had unwrapped the mysterious object by this time, the result of a long and careful process, peeling away layer upon layer of foil, to reveal a rectangular cube of something that looked like not-quite-set plaster, with piped decorations along the edges, a row of sliced, stuffed olives along the top and whole hazelnuts at the corners.

  ‘Is that something you can eat?’ said Veronica, with genuine puzzlement.

  ‘Of course it’s something you can eat,’ Rita snapped, though her face remained serene.

  ‘What is it?’said Juliette who, with Veronica, was now bending down and peering closely at the object, as archaeologists examining a recently unearthed ivory casket.

  ‘It’s a sandwich gateau, and I spent all afternoon making it, so don’t take the piss.’

  ‘How did you make it?’ said Juliette.

  ‘You take a wholemeal loaf,’ Rita began, with the eagerness of someone who’d been waiting all day for this moment, ‘and then you slice it up. Then you make a white sauce and divide it into three. To one third you add salmon and cucumber, to another third you add cheese and chives and to the third third you add a dollop of Marmite. You spread these mixtures on alternating slices of the loaf, then you reassemble the whole thing, chill it, then coat it with a mixture of curd cheese and milk.