In a Land of Plenty

by Tim Pears

  For the next twelve hours Alice and Harry felt the waves of warning swim through their bodies (sometimes taking it in turn, sometimes with exact synchronicity) and wearily turned aside the bedsheet and staggered unsteadily, moaning, back to the bathroom, where against all logic the malevolent bacteria uncovered further undigested food from the recesses of their intestines and expelled it.

  They also took it in turns to nurse each other – laying a warm flannel across the other’s forehead, moistening vomit-soured lips. Harry stroked Alice’s arm, which made her feel secure against the isolation of illness because it was an action repeated from her childhood, something Laura used to do.

  When, at last, the vomiting and diarrhoea were over Harry and Alice, empty and exhausted, slept for twenty-four hours curled up together, refugees from a violent storm of sickness. They awoke healthy and ravenous, ordered six portions of traditional English breakfast and three pots of tea from room service, stuffed themselves without repercussions (other than noisy belches and burps) and slept again. And then eventually they woke up slowly, in the dawn or possibly the dusk of some unidentified day, and they made love with an abandonment neither had imagined was possible.

  For the rest of their holiday they left their suite only to have dinner, dressed to the nines, in the restaurant downstairs, during which time their sheets were changed and trays of dirty dishes cleared away, before returning to the bedroom; there they divested themselves of their formal attire, and explored the realms of sexual pleasure.

  Harry put their flight back another week, and by the end of their extended honeymoon Alice knew Harry’s body better than her own; Harry was suffering from a pleasant amnesia about anything to do with the English property market; and they had begun a habit that in years to come would cause half their children to recoil with embarrassed disapproval (and the other half to hoot with delight): that of lying in bed, silently, side by side, and taking it in turns to fart with as great a variety of tone, duration and under-the-sheets malodour as they could manage, awarding each other marks out of ten. It was a habit through which, moreover, Alice discovered the last secret of Harry’s body to reveal itself, the location of his funny bone, because he laughed even louder than she did, hooting like a guilty schoolboy.

  Harry and Alice Singh-Freeman (as they’d agreed to call themselves) returned to take up residence not in one of Harry’s acquisitions, as might have been expected, but in the east wing of the house on the hill. Harry had succeeded in going along with the idea Alice had first mooted among her list of marital conditions – agreeing that there was nothing to be gained from a place of their own, he wasn’t a proud man, and there would be plenty of privacy with a wing to themselves – without ever revealing that from the day he’d asked Charles for her hand it was his dream to live in this very house.

  Their crate of gifts had already reached the house before them, and at an impromptu homecoming party they handed round the presents Alice had bought: camelskin slippers for Charles; a stone roller-grinder for Laura, along with a cache of rare spices; a statuette of the elephant god, Ganesh, for Simon (‘’Cos he’s fat and wise like you,’ Alice explained); a Sikh warrior’s dagger, its hilt encrusted with emeralds, for Natalie; turquoise packets of bidi cigarettes for Robert; and a gorgeous silk sari for Zoe, which she would wear thereafter every time she showed an Indian film, like Pather Panchali or Piravi, at the cinema, and which felt like a sad substitute for the travelling days of her youth.

  * * *

  While Harry went off to reacquaint himself with his business, Alice, in the remaining fortnight of her summer vacation, set about refurnishing the east wing, which had had little human occupation in recent years; and it hadn’t been decorated for over twenty. Once again a team of decorators was hired, working to instructions not from the man-in-charge this time but from his youngest child.

  Alice took Laura with her on a whirlwind tour of the home showrooms on Otley Road, the curtains and fittings sections of the department stores in town, and the carpet warehouses outside the ring road. To make way for their delivery Alice hired three skips for the old furniture that was to be discarded.

  Natalie came home at midday from her night shift at the women’s refuge and found the skips overflowing with mattresses, rugs, cupboards, ripped-out shelves and worn-out armchairs. She stormed through the east wing shouting for Alice with such ferocity that the decorators pinned themselves to the walls to let her pass. She found Alice making notes in a distant room on the second floor.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, throwing out all that perfectly good furniture?’ Natalie demanded.

  ‘Oh, I’ve ordered lots of new stuff,’ Alice smiled.

  ‘But, Alice!’ Natalie shouted, ‘You’ve been to the refuge. That stuff in the skips is like Louis Quatorze compared to what we’ve got.’

  ‘Well, that’s true,’ Alice agreed. ‘I never thought about it,’ she said brightly.

  ‘Don’t you think maybe you should have?’ Natalie demanded. ‘How could you be so insensitive all of a sudden? And what are you wasting so much money on all this for anyway?’

  ‘These’ll be the guest bedrooms on this floor,’ Alice explained.

  ‘Guests?’ Natalie spat. ‘What guests? Don’t be evasive, Alice, you’re nest-building. You’re building the biggest bloody nest in this iniquitous town.’ She turned round and marched out of the room. Alice followed and called down the corridor after her:

  ‘You’re welcome to get things out of the skips, Nat.’

  ‘I bloody well intend to!’ she shouted back without turning round.

  It became a chaotic afternoon. Natalie found Robert drinking cans of beer with a couple of his mates in the garage and demanded they volunteer the use of a Luton van Robert had just renovated, as well as their labour.

  ‘I’ll give you both a fiver,’ Natalie told the leather-jacketed friends. ‘A bit of beer money.’

  ‘What’s in it for me, babe?’ Robert asked her.

  ‘Well, Robert,’ Natalie said, ‘think of it as doing your bit for the community of single mothers, whose numbers you work so hard to multiply.’

  One of the greasers laughed.

  ‘Shut it, Weasel,’ Robert told him. ‘What do you know?’ he demanded of Natalie.

  ‘You can shun responsibility, mister, but you can’t run away from rumours,’ Natalie told him.

  ‘Ah, come on, Rob,’ the other greaser said. ‘Let’s do our bit for fucking charity, eh?’

  The decorators periodically brought further items of furniture outside, which they placed on the drive instead of throwing them into the skips because Natalie and her unlikely colleagues were hauling out of them any tables and cabinets which were still intact.

  Then the new furniture began to arrive: lorries came crunching down the gravel drive, and maneouvred around the skips and each other and Robert’s box van; delivery men swung open their rear doors and began carrying carpets and wardrobes into the house. Alice felt like a policewoman on traffic duty, particularly as, since she had an aversion to raising her voice, she found herself making hand signals.

  Just then, though, Simon came home from work and decided to join in. He was perfectly happy to raise his voice, especially in the interests of giving advice. He took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, tucked his tie between the buttons of his shirt, and took over before anyone could co-opt him into doing something useful.

  ‘Back it up over here!’ Simon yelled to a newly arrived lorry driver, ‘You’ve got plenty of room, duck, left-hand down and straight back. Weasel!’ he shouted, ‘you missed that standard lamp! Put it in the Luton. Carpets!’ he cried, ‘Where do you want carpets, Alice? First floor? Rightio, up to the first floor with them, sunshine, mind out, they’re bringing down an old dresser there, hang on, I’ll just sort them out. Turn it on its side!’ he commanded, ‘That’s better, that’s fine, ease it round the corner. Yes, a bit further. You’ve got plenty of room. Oops! Right. Well. Look, you’re stuck now. W
atch the paintwork, boys!’

  Laura brought respite to the chaos with trays of refreshments, including bacon butties for Robert’s mates.

  ‘They’re not for you, they’re for your friends,’ she told Robert.

  He drew her to him and whispered his reply into her ear. Laura shrugged herself loose and returned to the kitchen, re-emerging minutes later with tea and cake and biscuits. Before anyone had a chance to pass them round, so the men could partake on the hoof, without wasting time, Simon bellowed: ‘TEA BREAK, LADS!’ at the top of his voice, and he directed Laura with her trays towards the lawn.

  Twenty men and three women were sitting on the grass around the pond when, five minutes later, the Rover came cruising down the drive. Charles leapt out of the back seat and strode towards them.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Simon, who had a sudden attack of déjà vu that made him begin to tremble. ‘He’s going to start chucking people into the pond again,’ he whispered, and promptly curled up into a foetal position and pretended to be asleep.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Charles roared. ‘Who on earth ordered a tea break for so many lazy labourers?’

  Heads slowly swivelled, eyes turned, towards a gargantuan baby dozing in the sunshine.

  ‘Top marks!’ Charles exclaimed. ‘Good show! How about some for the old man?’ he asked Laura. ‘How’s it all going?’ he asked Alice.

  Harry didn’t get home till after dark; the decorators and deliverers were long gone. After supper Alice took him to the east wing: the floors were covered with plastic sheets and their footsteps rustled. Most of the windows were open but the air was still thick with the fumes of oil and emulsion paint.

  ‘I’m so happy, Alice,’ Harry told her. They went up the stairs hand in hand. ‘Well done, my wife, you’re so clever,’ he said. ‘I knew it was best to leave it to you.’

  ‘I’ve had a little help, silly,’ she admitted.

  The rooms were mostly empty: the new furniture had been deposited in two rooms on the first floor, until the decorating was completed and they could be put in place. They reached the first of these rooms and Harry let go of Alice’s hand.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he asked quietly, stepping forward, moving between items of furniture, his hand trailing across them.

  ‘They’re the new things I bought today, for—’

  ‘This won’t do at all,’ Harry interrupted her. The icy quietness of his voice made Alice catch her breath. Harry shook his head. ‘No, this isn’t right, we’ll have to change it.’

  Alice forced herself to breathe. ‘What’s wrong, Harry?’ she managed to ask.

  ‘Nothing, my love,’ he replied. ‘Except for this furniture. It’s all new, you see. Any Tom, Dick or, or, anyone can buy this, off the shelf. It’s simply not special enough; for my wife, you see? For us. We want genuine antiques, Alice.’ He’d returned to face her. ‘That is what we want.’

  ‘You’re angry, Harry,’ she said.

  ‘Me? I don’t get angry, my love,’ he assured her, in the same flat tone of voice. He took her hand again and led her back into the corridor and towards the stairs.

  ‘But I’ve paid for all these things,’ Alice told him. ‘I can’t take them back.’

  ‘That’s no problem,’ he replied. ‘I’m thinking of moving into the letting business, you know, I’ve just bought some flats off Stratford Road. I can move these things in there. Anyway, don’t you worry, my love, leave it to me. Now, let’s go to bed. I’ve been thinking about you all afternoon,’ he told her, his hand roaming across her backside.

  ‘Who were you thinking about this morning, Harry?’ Alice demanded. ‘Harry, my horny husband,’ she teased him, grasping with relief and gratitude the distraction from their power struggle that Harry had just provided; avoiding confronting the fact that, although she could tease and cajole him into suppliant confusion whenever she wanted, it was all no more than a game. Beneath his pompous, phlegmatic surface, horny Harry, droopy-features, fish-face or whatever she called him, was as unremitting as a glacier. And as they made their way back into the main house, to their temporary bedroom on the third floor, giggling and poking each other, in reality Alice knew she was stepping out of his way.

  After they had made love Alice lay with her head on Harry’s chest, and he asked her: ‘Was I dreaming this morning, before I woke up, or did I hear you throwing up in the bathroom?’

  ‘I did a bit,’ she affirmed. ‘I was a bit queasy.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s a recurrence of that damn Indian food-poisoning, do you?’ Harry wondered.

  Alice chuckled. ‘Don’t be silly, fish-face,’ she told him.

  Chapter 7

  THE FREEMAN TEN

  JAMES HAD BEEN so busy meeting other photographers and artists in the town that he’d lost touch with the music scene, and when he had more time on his hands to get into gigs again for free and take pictures of new bands, he found that there weren’t any. Venues had stopped providing live music because they were tiny stages at the back of pubs, and pubs were going through a period of transformation: all over the town breweries had bought out free-house publicans and brought in builders who specialized in working twenty-five-hour days to gut public bars and refurbish them in a style somewhere between an Edwardian country house and a motorway service station, in various shades of red. Local beers were replaced by mass-produced lager (which research showed was drunk in greater quantity, though no amount of research could find out why). Coffee machines appeared below the spirits bottles and kitchens were renovated in accordance with EEC hygiene regulations: the idea was for pubs to become continental cafés, English alehouses and fancy restaurants all in one. Dominoes and shove-halfpenny were banned, old men who’d been propping up a bar since the war vanished like smoke, while single women felt able to go out drinking alone for the first time. At lunchtime the beer gardens were invaded by whole families; and at night live music was scrapped in favour of karaoke, because what was the point in paying unknown bands to make a racket if the customers preferred to do it themselves?

  * * *

  One evening after meeting with the Artists’ Group Karel persuaded James to join him on a visit to the nightclub below the theatre in the middle of town.

  ‘A lot of bloody foreign women go there,’ he told James.

  At the nightclub Karel bought himself and James a beer, rolled a cigarette, and then leaned against the bar, watching the dance-floor. James realized he’d already been forgotten. After a while Karel moved forward, and James watched him making his way through dancing bodies less towards any one woman in particular than into the midst of mutual glances and reciprocal movements.

  James followed. The period of pogo-ing to punk bands years before had robbed him of his inhibitions, but also any chance he might have had of acquiring a sense of rhythm. He entered the orbit of various women but paid more attention to imitating their dancing than making contact, and they seemed to leave the floor before he’d succeeded in accomplishing either. So James closed his eyes, let thumping disco music enter his body, and wheeled around in a world of his own.

  James didn’t notice Karel leave. He stopped intermittently to have a rest and a glass of water, and carried on dancing, oblivious to the bodies around him and the passing of time, until suddenly the music stopped. In the deafening silence the nightclub rapidly emptied. James walked up the stairs and into the dark, cold morning: the night exerted a chill grip on his sweaty torso, and a sound like a thousand cicadas rang in his ears. He’d had no more than a couple of beers but he reeled home, drunk from dancing.

  A few days later, after working late in the darkroom, his neck stiff, his eyes tired, James went back to the nightclub on his own. He entered past the thick-necked, bow-tied bouncers, paid at the kiosk, descended the crimson-carpeted stairs, checked in his jacket at the cloakroom and ploughed through the crowd to the bar. Sipping his first beer of the evening, he watched the pulsating dance-floor, multi-coloured lights cascading across it, a heaving sea
of bodies; and then he caught sight of the DJ: it was Lewis.

  James made his way over. When Lewis saw him he beamed, leaned over the console and extended his long arm in greeting, and said something not a word of which James could make out over the din.

  ‘WHAT?’ he shouted. Lewis gestured to him to come around the side of the stage and join him. Between changing records Lewis and James conducted a difficult conversation, in which James couldn’t hear himself speak and so wasn’t absolutely sure he was saying what he meant to say; fortunately Lewis appeared able to lip-read. From Lewis’s utterances James managed to glue together dislocated syllables in the deafening din and decipher the fact that Lewis worked in the club four nights a week; he was one of two resident DJs. But James found it such hard work to make out much else that he swapped assurances with Lewis that it was good to see each other and they’d talk again, and then returned to his original mission, which was to lose himself on the dance-floor.

  Despite his ineptitude, James loved dancing. And he loved walking home at one or two in the morning, along deserted streets. The only people he passed were lost drunks or workers on their way to an early shift, bicycling blindly, heads down. The pubs, restaurants, even the burger vans had shut up shop and gone home. The one place still functioning was the bakery a couple of hundred yards short of his bedsit; the bakers worked all night. The smell of bread baking would greet him at some point along the street and entice him gently homeward. He’d stop off, and buy whatever was most recently out of the oven – a hot doughnut, a warm roll – off one of the bakers who gave change with floury fingers from a plastic bowl by the door. And then James would get home and eat it with a mug of tea, coming down off the buzz of dancing to far-too-loud music, before sleeping like a log.

  James had never been so fit, bicycling around town, dancing till dawn.

  All through that winter and spring of 1985 James went to the nightclub at least once a week. He always went alone; and usually left alone, too, although a couple of times he found himself emerging with a partner. One was a young Spanish woman: he walked her to the YWCA, and they communicated less on the empty pavements than they had in the cacophonous crowd; she spoke little English and he spoke no Spanish. They said good nights and buenas días at the door of the hostel and he never saw her again. Another was an American who took him back to her hotel near the station, made fast and furious love, and promptly fell asleep in his arms. James extricated himself and walked home, grinning at the streetlights reflected in drizzly puddles, and wondering why English women didn’t like him.