Parlour Games

by Mavis Cheek

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  MAVIS CHEEK

  Parlour Games

  For Audrey Watson, my tutor, who opened many doors

  This they all with a joyful mind Bear through life like a torch in flame, And falling, fling to the host behind – ‘Play up! Play up! and play the game!’

  Henry Newbolt Vitai Lampada

  PART ONE

  1

  Let us first begin with the place in which Celia lived, and the house within which Celia lived within the place.

  Celia lived in a nice part of London called Chiswick and in an even nicer part of Chiswick called Bedford Park. In Bedford Park the residents are justified in shaking their heads over televised reports on inner-city decay and saying, ‘Well, well – nothing like that ever happens here – surely the media has exaggerated it a little?’ And so it must seem, for Bedford Park streets show no signs of negligence save for the passing nuisance of dog turds hidden in the thickly scattered blossom of spring or under the dry rustling leaves of autumn.

  The same trees which decorate the pavements with their droppings from time to time bear plaques upon their proud trunks, announcing, ‘This is a Neighbourhood Watch Area’. Prospective felons would do well to note this. The signs mean what they say. The men of Bedford Park are good at organising and the Neighbourhood Watch is no idle boast. Understandably, since there is much to protect. The scheme has been adopted with amicable consensus among the wide range of professions represented locally. Accountants, lawyers, and businessmen have structured the committee with interior designers, journalists, and even the esoteric fringe of painters and actors – not usually known for their ability to deal with the harsh realities of life – has rallied round to make the Watch work. The organisation has left the local police feeling slightly frayed by its zeal. In the first few weeks of its implementation they were besieged by calls from alert neighbours and, among many minor confusions, officers were called out to arrest a visiting granny in Priory Avenue and a slightly tipsy semi-retired judge who had, perfectly reasonably, decided to snooze it off in the back garden when he could not quite manage the front-door key. However, such things are comfortably excused as teething problems and the neighbours go on watching all the same. As a group the Bedford Parkers present, with some few exceptions, a liberal face to the world. They have a strong sense of community, a democratic Residents’ Association and enough foreigners from EEC countries to make them feel cosmopolitan. Mid-life incomes are high as is professional attainment and serious financial difficulties are represented in the main by the complications of tax returns.

  There are no garden gnomes in Bedford Park and while walking its streets you could be forgiven for thinking that no dark secrets abide behind its tasteful and well-maintained walls.

  Bedford Park wives tend not to go out to work while their children are young. The few who do employ nannies or au pairs whose moderately punkish appearance and streetwise fashion give the pavements a pleasingly avant garde look as they wheel their charges around. Those wives who do have some kind of paid employment are generally tagged ‘Consultants’ or ‘Freelance’ which means they can stay at home when the nanny walks out or when the children and the au pair get mumps. Some form of domestic help is commonplace: Bedford Park wives (as should all wives, they agree) gave up their jobs to be mothers, not housewives. What is the point, in their economic situation, of wrestling with vacuum cleaners and Windolene when there are people crying out for jobs?

  As a group these women are a good example of the scientific law that says there are no natural vacuums: whatever time they have, they fill. They are energetic, intelligent, articulate. They play tennis, go to the gym or attend pottery and foreign language classes. When they are not doing this they are in each other’s houses drinking tea or wine while their pre-playgroup offspring socialise on their own level around their ankles. At the end of the day these women may justifiably say to their late-returning spouses that they, too, are tired; that they, too, have been on the go all day, and that – despite what their husbands might think – there is no grape peeling and lying back on silken cushions for them either. On the whole they will not admit to enjoying life at home but since its only real justification in this liberated part of the world is because small children make any other choice impossible, some of these women will go on to have a third and a fourth child just to continue it. These additional offspring are generally called ‘accidents’.

  Bedford Park was designed in 1875 for private tenants of the wealthy classes to live in exemplary fashion in a perfectly planned environment. Norman Shaw, its revered and influential architect, would be proud of the long-term survival of his original tenets. He was a Good Man: intelligent, sensitive, second-wave Renaissance (or possibly it just took that long for England to catch up) and what he designed is as relevant today as it was in his time. A strictly structured suburb with strong, solid, no-frills houses; all the breadth and none of the clutter of Victorian bourgeois pomposity: firmly practical houses for a firmly practical future untarnished by overdecoration and indulgent excess. Houses that present a clean, family image. Respecting, respectable and cultivated. Tabloid newspapers are not taken in such homes.

  And Celia lives in one of these.

  It has a high, delicately railed wooden fence to its small front garden: a chunky, brick-piered front bay, a little overhanging balcony to the first floor and a nicely pitched roof under which the attics (now converted) sit comfortably. The dark ruddy brickwork makes a pleasant contrast against the white paint of the doors and windows and most of the neighbouring houses maintain this pattern of colour. Good taste abounds (or rather sits discreetly) around here.

  Celia’s road, like the rest, is tree-lined and well endowed with the second cars of the resident wives. These are small, nippy affairs recognisable by their internal disarray of toys and crisp packets and baby seats. It is a peculiar piece of inappropriateness that the first cars of the families, the husbands’ cars, tend to be large, fast, rather status-conscious mobiles – usually of foreign origin – whereas the daily run of school, shopping, and jaunts to the swimming baths is crammed into little Metros or Pandas which you can sometimes see bouncing along with five or more children tucked inside. Volvos, BMWs and the larger-engined Peugeots are husband material and the wives say it is just as well because those monsters are so difficult to park. On the whole Bedford Park residents never buy Fords.

  A few streets away from Celia’s home is a small corner of shops where such items as avocado pears, kiwi fruit, Normandy pâté and taramasalata may be purchased without recourse to the supermarket which is driving distance away. This parade of interesting shops is very handy. Nowadays they are almost all run by Asians who are deferential, quick to understand what their customers require and remind the shopper of what it used to be like before British shopkeepers became so cavalier with service. The new owners are pleased to be offering their tartrazine-free goods and stone-ground bread in an area which is liberal enough to accept their origins without referring to their existence beyond the occasionally overheard, ‘What would we do without them?’ This is the general consensus. There is certainly no Paki-bashing in Bedford Park.

  Behind Celia’s house is a garden of about fifty by thirty feet. Since she has lived here for twelve years, and has a flair for that sort of thing, the garden is very pleasant. Its size and shape reflect all the other gardens surrounding it – Norman Shaw’s plan was firmly mathematical – but Celia likes to think it has the stamp of originality, which it has, without destroying the harmonious uniformity of the designer’s concept. Or upse
tting the ever watchful Residents’ Committee. Bedford Park holds within its perimeters the parameters of its being. It is a designated Conservation Area and only the trees, mature, defiantly rampant and protected from human attack, are permitted to break the skyline. One of these, a tall, majestic conifer, takes all the sun from Celia’s garden by four o’clock in the afternoon, but she doesn’t complain. What is the loss of sunlight compared to the benefits of living in a locale which cares so passionately for Nature? She did complain when she first moved here – but then, she also voted for the Labour Party in those far-off days. Some things must change in order that others may stay as they are.

  In her garden are shrubs, flower beds and a small, tasteful shed which is beautifully hidden by a Russian Vine. Large terracotta and blue and white pots (brought back from a Spanish holiday some years since and quite an innovation then though they have since been copied) are full of trailing lobelia, petunias, scented stocks and other summer delights, reflecting the romantic side of Celia’s nature. There is a barbecue area, of course, and a small conservatory built on to the house in which both plants and children thrive on wet days when the pocket-handkerchief lawn is out of bounds. She used to enjoy propagating her own plants in here, tucking up the new seedlings into their compost beds, but now time doesn’t allow it and each spring sees another trip to the local garden centre for re-stocking.

  Even the washing line is in keeping. Norman Shaw’s grand plan seems not to have taken account of washing days but Celia has overcome this by erecting a folding appliance, discreetly hidden by the morello cherry tree near the bottom of the garden, which becomes a pollard of wire and plastic when not in use. Its distance from the house is a nuisance when a sudden shower means wet feet in the haste of collecting in the washing but it is a small price to pay. Neighbours’ gardens are similarly colourful and cared for but Celia has resisted the newest idea, prevalent in some, of setting a patch of wild garden to flourish within the domestic one. Followers of Bellamy and ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’ hope to attract a little wildlife into their outdoor plots by letting dandelions and nettles and other such kidney grow free: they have spent a small fortune in purchasing wildflower mixtures from conservation-conscious seed producers and enriching the ground with organic manure so that these pieces of rampant nature may survive. On the whole these ecological paradises are sited at the bottom of the garden and are less seen than talked about at the various social gatherings that are a regular feature of Bedford Park Life.

  Yes, the neighbourhood is pleasingly social. During the day there is lots of to-ing and fro-ing between the women, and at weekends there is the more formally organised socialising of drinks, barbecues and dinner parties. The wide range of professions represented in the neighbourhood makes these occasions varied and enjoyable: one does not have to look far for stimulating, entertaining company. An actor will sit down with a surgeon, a journalist with an opera singer, and all well within walking distance if the weather is fine. All that is necessary to conviviality is there within the tiny radius of Bedford Park. Normally Celia would scarcely need to look further when planning the guests for a dinner party. Despite her twelve years’ domain the Bedford Park set is not exhausted – people come and people go but the mix remains much the same. But for tonight, since the occasion is a particular one, the mould will be broken. If we move away from the exterior of Celia’s home and come inside we shall find that she is, at this very moment, on this sunny June morning, thraping away in her kitchen to prepare for just such a mould-breaking occasion.

  There she stands among the well-planned units and the volcanic noise of both dishwasher and washing machine, effectively drowning out the phone-in on Radio Four which this week is devoted to healthy eating. But the noise level scarcely bothers her, for her mind is already immersed in thoughts of preparation. She is surrounded by equipment: food processor which will soon add its busy whine to the cacophony of its electrical companions, bain-marie, saucepans and her sharp French knives bought from the enticing kitchen shop in Covent Garden. The bowls and dishes that fill her work-surfaces come from the same source, which is one of her irresistible paradises: it works its magic on her as once, in far-off days, Biba’s shop did, though now it is scarlet colanders rather than feather boas that she brings home.

  And in amongst all this equipment, bursting and spilling over the kitchen like some lavish still-life, is food. Wonderful, fresh ingredients – coriander, basil, parsley – heaped in careless swathes; lemons nestling close to pink-fleshed salmon trout; summer fruits in scarlet and crimson cascades. And in the centre, place of honour, a perfectly symmetrical piece of veal, supplied by her local butcher after detailed consultation – for here in Bedford Park the exhortation to Consult Your Butcher has real meaning. Something low in cholesterol, she had said, and something low in cholesterol she got. Perhaps it is more expensive than buying from the supermarket, but then, the things that are good for you never come cheap. She surveys the other delectable comestibles, their rich textures and colours like some opulent Dutch painting: interesting salad ingredients – fennel, chicory, nasturtium flowers, the maroon-veined hearts of lettuces – lie heaped beside the tenderest snap beans imported from Kenya and the tiny, perfectly round potatoes from Egypt that look like little waxen marbles when cooked. Celia cracks one of the beans between her fingers and feels the snap of it with satisfaction. Finally there are the requisites for the puddings, of which she will make two: a raspberry sorbet (for which she is renowned) and a chocolate mousse with a wicked lacing of rum. This last, according to the cookery books, may be made well in advance and frozen but Celia will make them fresh for tonight as is her pleasure. The vacuum will always be filled.

  So, here she stands – contemplating now – happy in her life and with no more to worry her than the scheduling of preparation. Pushing the flat of a French knife against her pursed lips as she makes her appraisal and asks herself the enjoyable question: where to begin? Probably, she considers, it would be best to cook the fish first so that it can cool properly before she skins and fillets it. The watercress can be sorted later. She pops it into a jug of water where it sits like a bloomless posy. She will deal with the first course first. Her brow clears and her lips cease to pucker on the blade. She swivels the dial to Radio One to get herself in the mood. Now she can start.

  Celia is forty years old today. No, no, she smiles to herself, not quite. Not until one minute past midnight will she truly reach the prime of life. Until then, she smiles again, she is only thirty-nine. Well, well, whatever the minutiae of it – forty or not – she is to be congratulated, for Celia is undoubtedly looking good. Very good indeed. She has put on some make-up and is wearing a shocking-pink jump suit in softly clinging velour that shows her figure to be more womanly than girlish nowadays, which is fair enough. Perhaps she has taken a little more trouble with her appearance this morning but she is never less than well turned-out. Dressing casually in Bedford Park is not a licence to slob. No stretched tee-shirts and greasy hair for these women-at-home. Birthday or not, Celia would never be embarrassed to open her door to a surprise visitor, though she sincerely hopes there will not be one of those today. She is looking forward to an undisturbed orgy of culinary activity broken only, half-way through the morning, by a coffee break with her cleaner, Mrs Green. That, she hopes, will be the only disturbance – and that, she thinks, is more than enough.

  Mrs Green is currently hoovering away upstairs. It must be said that she is also casting her non-Bedford Park eye around Celia’s bedroom in an effort to discover some hint of sexual activity there. She did once: a condom (in the days before such things entered either the polite vocabulary or vagina) with attachments, stuffed under a pillow, called Dirty Harry by its manufacturers though Mrs Green, of course, did not know that. Ever since this exciting find Mrs Green has been keen to know more, feeling in a mysterious way that such discoveries give her ascendancy over her employer. At fifty-nine Mrs Green still has to make do with the launderette and Celia’
s home is a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of consumer durables: it eases the disparity to have discovered the human frailty of Dirty Harry. So far, today, she has found nothing. She hoovers on, looking forward to the coffee break when they sit together, sipping their drinks, making what conversation they can. Mrs Green knows that Celia would prefer to leaf through a magazine during this hiatus, which makes the coffee break an even sweeter occasion for her.

  Celia sings the chorus of the current number-one hit as she sets about the fishkettle. The song has been reverberating in her head since yesterday’s visit to the hairdresser whose salon is next to the Pakistani delicatessen. Adrian makes no concession to age in his business: tapes of Queen, U2, and Sting pound the walls and buzz around the hairdryers. His own hair is lime-green and spiky and he speaks with a peculiarly camp lisp though, as he winks into the mirror at his female clients, there is nothing unisex about him. He knows his clientéle and constantly produces avant garde ideas for his ladies: for the gentlemen he is more circumspect since many of them must go among the unenlightened of the business world. It is thanks to Adrian that Celia is today wearing a peacock-blue highlight in her dark hair. As her reflection in the chrome bowl of her food processor tells her, it has done exactly what he said it would and enhances the green of her eyes. She wears modest make-up: a little eye-shadow, a little mascara, and on her pale skin, which is creamy rather than washed-out, she has put a hint of blusher to enhance her cheekbones, which are, as Vogue might say, good. Some of her lipstick has adhered to the blade of the knife but there is enough left to define a generous, shapely mouth. Birthday bravado has placed a pink bow in her hair, which looks very dashing and matches exactly the pink of her jump suit. Only such as Mrs Green would find this undignified. Mutton dressed as lamb is not a phrase much used in this neighbourhood, where crow’s feet are laughter lines and the ills that flesh is heir to are not readily entertained. Besides, most of Celia’s contemporaries dress with similar youthful vigour.