Parlour Games

by Mavis Cheek

  One of the reasons that she always did so well at composition was her vivid imagination. Mostly she has it under control nowadays but occasionally, like now, it will break out. Stockbridge at six-fifteen on a Saturday has the air of Pompeii about it. No one has noticed her, she thinks, and she might very well end up in the tent of a sheikh.

  Continuing the notion she refuses tea, for it might be drugged.

  The woman, wife of her deceased husband and sensitive to other needs, suggests gin. Celia, looking about her at the Indian artefacts, and in particular a large elephant’s hoof upon which a blossoming African violet gives forth, toys with the idea of it being a nabob rather than a sheikh, dithers momentarily, and then accepts after all. ‘Just a small one,’ she says, ‘as I am driving ...’

  ‘Excellent,’ says the woman forcefully.

  And Celia realises that she was never going to get out of here without having imbibed something. Logic tells her that this woman is probably rather lonely. Imagination tells her that she should not touch the proffered drink.

  Ah well, she thinks, so what if it is tampered with? She decides to risk it and to go with Fate. One part of her continues to think that the fantasy might be real, one part of her says very sensibly that it is not. She was born under the sign of Gemini which might explain this duality ... She is also feeling uncommonly reckless. No one knows where she is. She has not been so completely untraceable since she married. It is quite exciting. Considering she is now forty, she doesn’t feel very old at all.

  The gin is a large one. Celia is offered a seat next to a beautiful rosewood cabinet, the harmonious effect of which is completely spoiled by its contents – a collection of amazingly hideous exotic brasses.

  ‘Very nice,’ says Celia.

  The dog woman relaxes. Her first impressions were not wrong. This is a woman of taste.

  ‘Ursula Stone,’ barks the woman.

  Celia gives her name.

  ‘And are you a native?’

  Celia is thrown by this. The proximity of the elephant’s foot and the brasses makes a kind of muddled link in her head.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she says cagily and takes a sip of her drink. It makes her eyes water – the Indian influence seems to have stopped short of tonic. If she could she would drink up and go but it is hard enough getting one sip of neat gin off her tonsils and down her gullet let alone throwing back the whole measure in one. She resigns herself to sitting it out.

  The woman understandably finds Celia’s caginess odd. Surely one is either from Hampshire or one is not?

  ‘Where are you from?’ she says loud and slow. It is a communicative art well learned from her Indian days.

  Celia tells her.

  ‘Well, surely you have plenty of bookshops there to choose from?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ says Celia. ‘It’s just that –’ Is it the gin? Is it the elephant’s foot? Is it her latent love of invention? Whatever it is, Celia suddenly finds herself launching into an amazingly untrue account of why she is bookhunting in Stockbridge.

  And all delivered in a kind of breathless vernacular of an Agatha Christie heroine. Whence its fount and whence it will lead she does not know. But off she goes. She listens to herself with astonishment as she says: ‘I am on my way to weekend with some very boring people,’ (thinking of the Brandreth lot this is hardly a lie) ‘and I couldn’t get through without a decent book to read.’ (Decent is the sort of word she thinks this woman will like so she slips it in.) ‘And I forgot to pack one. Just the thought of being adrift in their country house without a book is absolutely ghastly.’ She hoots – she enjoys that bit. ‘They are such frightful Philistines. Utterly, utterly boring, I’m afraid.’

  She stops as suddenly as she started. She is aware that the smoked salmon was a long time ago. The gin is very current. Enough is enough. Any more and she will explode. There is quite a lot of laughter trapped in her solar plexis and it is probably hysterical. Silence – or betrayal: she clamps her jaw shut.

  The dog, overwhelmed by the iniquities of human deceit, curls up and sleeps. Celia basks in the exaggeration which she has thoroughly enjoyed. Why is she behaving so foolishly? Reaction against the eggshells of last night, perhaps? Pansy be blowed. Anyway – it harms no one; she will never meet her hostess again, so why not have this little piece of fun?

  The woman, quite au fait with Celia’s assumed vernacular, agrees that there is nothing worse than bores. She begins to talk about India and the jolly times before Partition. It is a long time since she has had such a good listener. ‘Never a dull moment,’ she says. ‘Until after Mountbatten. Then it got very dreary. Very dreary indeed.’

  Celia pictures Alex’s Maugham-like stance in the conservatory last night and smiles – how amused he would be by all this. What witty ironies he could fashion out of the post-Partition débâcle being called dreary – what fun she will have describing it to him when they eventually meet up. To her companion the smile looks very sympathetic. The woman leans across, responding to it, and puts her hand on Celia’s knee. Celia, brought out of her cogitations, gives a little yelp and it is now Rebecca’s turn to feel affronted at being mimicked.

  ‘This is nice,’ says the woman. ‘One gets terribly lonely in the country sometimes ...’

  And her hand lingers warmly.

  First Tom and now a stranger: what is it about her knees?

  Celia’s interpretation of this gesture is a confused and rather unfortunate one. What with the notion of White Slavery and Agatha Christie she imagines there is something a little sinister in the intimate gesture. Possibly even, oh that fertile brain, just possibly something – well – not quite right ...

  She brings her culottes very tightly together, sits bolt upright, stamps a glassy smile on her face and does a sort of bottom shuffle along the settee, out of reach of the hand.

  This odd behaviour, being quite uncalled for in her hostess’s opinion, makes the woman wonder if her guest is, indeed, a lunatic after all – despite the Jaeger. And being a woman more used to the ways of dogs than people she immediately recognises a look of fear on Celia’s face. Why it is there she does not know, but how to deal with it she certainly does. She moves a little further forward and reaches out to pat Celia’s clamped knee again, for reassurance, at which Celia leaps up and says in a high-pitched voice that she must go. Whereupon she promptly backs into the elephant’s foot which releases its African violet in a shower of compost and petals all over the Tabriz rug.

  With a superbly stiff upper lip the woman assures Celia that this is nothing, nothing at all, and watches mesmerised as her guest tramples over the dirt, crushing it into several hundred pounds’ worth of floor covering.

  Celia says brightly, ‘Oh I am so sorry. Oh dear. Well – I must go now. Thank you so much. Cheerio ...’ Trample, trample, trample.

  The woman gets up and advances, attempting to avoid as much of the pot plant as possible, which means that she executes a curious little foxtrot.

  Celia thinks that this definitely shows a sinister behaviour pattern.

  The woman says, ‘But what about what you came for?’

  Celia, backing away gingerly and playing for time, says, ‘And – um – just what was that?’

  The woman’s view on Celia’s mental stability is confirmed.

  ‘Why – your book dear ...’

  ‘Book? Book? Book?’ says Celia, sounding like a frightened chicken.

  ‘They are all upstairs,’ says the woman, hurrying away.

  I bet they are, thinks Celia.

  ‘Would you like to choose?’ shouts the woman from the landing.

  ‘Oh no, thank you,’ calls Celia.

  ‘Well, what sort of a book did you want, dear?’ returns her harassed hostess.

  ‘Oh, anything, anything at all ...’ Celia is moving rapidly across the hall.

  The woman’s head appears over the stair rail.

  ‘Surely you have some idea? Do come up. I have so many boxes.’ This sounds wistful. In
fact it is the nearest the woman can come to sounding irritated.

  ‘Short stories would be nice,’ calls Celia. She moves slowly, crab-like, past the foot of the stairs, towards the front door.

  Rebecca the dog finds this behaviour untenable. She appears at the entrance to the sitting room and lets out a long, low growl. Celia snarls back at her. The dog woman appears at the top of the banisters. She is holding an arbitrary handful of books. She sees Celia growling at her dog. She will never trust Jaeger again.

  ‘I hope one of these will do.’ She descends rapidly, glad that she has her hound to defend her if need be.

  Celia – feeling the front-door latch secure in her hand – gives her hostess the benefit of a radiant smile and her hostess attributes these mood swings to a personality disorder. Dogs get it too. The woman stands a safe distance off holding out the books while Celia wrestles with the door, which will not open. In her desperate state she is entirely in keeping, visually, with a heroine who has got herself in a bit of a jam. She is also scarlet in the face and – for some strange reason – puffing.

  The dog woman reaches across cautiously and releases the latch. Then stands back, holding out the selection of books – as offering or barrier? It is hard to say.

  Now the door is open, Celia decides to brazen it out and reaches for one of the books. For some reason she finds herself saying, ‘That’ll do nicely,’ and then giggles again as she stands back to let the dog woman pull wide the front door. Celia steps out into glorious freedom. ‘Silly, these advertising jingles, aren’t they?’ she adds conversationally.

  The dog woman, who has not caught up with credit-card life-styles, misinterprets this as Celia having heard bells. She will never, she decides, bring in anyone off the street again, no matter, even, if they sport Hartnell kilts and corgis.

  Politeness and sanity return to Celia once she is back in the safety of the Georgian porch.

  ‘Oh, but I must pay something for the book,’ she says.

  The woman demurs.

  Celia insists.

  She presses a pound coin into the woman’s hand. ‘Well, thank you so much,’ she says brightly.

  To the immense relief of both parties the front door is then closed, with Celia on the one side, safe in Stockbridge High Street, and the dog lady on the other. This latter is looking at the money in her palm and shaking her head. If it weren’t for the fact that the woman who gave it to her was unbalanced she would feel insulted, not least because the sum – one bright new penny – is so paltry. Perhaps Fate wishes to deal out a little retribution for she feels something akin to what the natives of Poona once felt when she gave them baksheesh. If you are going to do that kind of thing, she thinks, you might at least be generous. (And so, though they were too wily to show it, thought they ...) In cream linen Jaeger there is no excuse for meanness. She must be deranged.

  Ah well. She strokes the dog’s indignant head. Pity the poor souls with whom she is going to stay for the weekend – if she really is – no wonder she finds them boring, being so dotty herself.

  Celia runs back to the car feeling that if she is not careful this simple trip is going to turn into something resembling the Pilgrim’s Progress: if the Slough of Despond was Bedford Park then the dog lady might be the Valley of Humiliation. Certainly the incident has been an unnerving one and has destroyed some of her confidence in the venture: she feels quite akin to Bunyan’s character as she makes her way back to the car. Well, anyway, if she has met with the Slough of Despond and the Valley of Humiliation, then that must make Alex the Celestial City. Which thought restores her good humour immediately. Best not tell Alex though. He has become, she dares to say to herself, just a little bit puffed up about the Brandreth case. Much as she loves him he can be slightly pompous nowadays. He might take the Celestial City idea a bit seriously. Ah well. One good night together should restore the balance. Maybe in the morning she will say to him, ‘You are my Celestial city,’ and they will have a laugh over it. What a relief that will be.

  Safely back in the car and out of reach of the White Slave traffickers, she looks at the book she has procured. It proves to be not short stories but a selection of historical love letters, which, given her quest, seems highly appropriate. Almost fateful. Celia sits and flicks through it, remembering a kind of game she invented for herself in her teens. At moments of intense crisis or indecision or pleasure (which just about covered every moment of teenage life) she would open a book at random – and whatever she read on the page she would take as some kind of karma. Of course she was always careful to make sure the chosen book was fitting – Shakespeare’s sonnets and John Donne could always be counted on in matters of love and the Bible was best for general subjects. She smiles. How strange that it should come back to her after all these years. She looks around her slyly. Stockbridge is still deserted. Would it be too silly to play it now? No one will see. No one will know. The book in her hand being one of love letters, it is a pity to waste the prospective fluence, really. So, with Alex and the stolen weekend in mind, and Just for Fun, she closes her eyes, wishes very hard, and lets the book fall open where it will.

  She is entranced. It opens at a love letter written by Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn (a happy adolescent pleasure in historical romances has long made the Tudors a favourite of Celia’s – so that’s a good sign) and she reads something so beautiful, so moving, so completely heartfelt, that she is sure it echoes her happy destiny. She also forgets that a few years later he chopped his correspondent’s head off.

  She reads:

  My Mistress and Friend,

  Celia naturally changes this to ‘My Master and Friend’ which, sadly, does not have the same ring of loving equality to it at all. However, she is prepared to slide over this one.

  It goes on:

  I and my heart put ourselves in your hands, begging you to recommend us to your good grace and not let absence lessen your affection, for it were great pity to increase their pain, seeing that absence does that sufficiently and more than I could ever have thought possible;

  Celia, sitting in her new car, all belted up, holding the book, is quite delighted. This is a very good omen. She reads on:

  reminding us of a point in astronomy, which is that the longer the days are the farther off is the sun and yet the hotter; so it is with our love, for although by absence we are parted it nevertheless keeps its fervency, at least in my case and hoping the like of yours;

  The sun is indeed hot; and she is, indeed, separated from her love. Inside the car Celia is roasting – partly from summertime temperature, and partly, it must be acknowledged, from the sheer longing of the words. Very romantic, really, is Celia. It all seems to echo exactly what she is feeling. The dog woman might well be some kind of deity sent to kindle the flame of Celia’s resolve.

  She continues:

  assuring you that for myself the pang of absence is already too great, and when I think of the increase of what I must needs suffer it would be well nigh intolerable but for my firm hope of your unchangeable affection;

  Oh, breathes Celia.

  and sometimes to put you in mind of this, and seeing that in person I cannot be with you, I send you now something most nearly pertaining thereto that is a present possible to send, that is to say, my picture set in a bracelet with the whole device which you already know;

  Celia pats the car in which she sits and says to it that a bracelet was all right for the Tudors, but she’d rather have a car any day. Of course it would have been even nicer to have both – she thinks with fleeting regret of those little forget-me-not earrings – really, given all her other blessings, such thoughts seem downright churlish. Dear Alex, she thinks, I wonder what you are doing at this precise moment?

  In a slight blur she reads the conclusion.

  wishing myself in their place when it shall please you. This by the hand of your loyal servant and friend,

  H. Rex.

  In pleasurable anticipation Celia breaks down, and sobs. The sheer weig
ht of the love and longing has overtaken her (coupled, perhaps, with the gin) and she gives herself up to a really good cry. Oh Alex, she thinks, I can’t wait to be with you again. Sob, sob, sob. But at least these are tears of hope.

  The dog woman is walking Rebecca back down the empty High Street for in all the excitement of meeting Celia she forgot the real reason for the stroll which was, of course, the dog’s daily bowel movement.

  ‘We have a busy day tomorrow,’ she says to her hound. ‘So we will just go as far as the church. And then supper – eh, Rebecca? Eh?’

  As she passes she looks into the lone parked car, as does the dog. They both see the sobbing woman within. Rebecca snarls and her owner, seeing who it is sitting so distressed, immediately crosses to the other side of the road, where the well-bred dog crouches thankfully and fouls, looked upon affectionately by its well-bred owner.

  This typically English scene goes unnoticed by Celia as she dries her eyes, closes the book, and drives off into the low sunlight of a seven o’clock June evening in a pleasurable anticipatory melancholy. Such is the power of the written word, albeit centuries old. She longs for her husband as that Golden Prince once longed for his witch-like Anne. So this is love. From Ages Past to Ages Given, Always And Ever It Shall Be ...

  Just outside Salisbury, half an hour on, she stops and adjusts her hair and her make-up. The Brandreth conference proper must be over for the day by now. Alex will be contemplating dinner. She pictures him showering and getting ready to relax, and dispels any fears she may have about her arrival by telling herself over and over again that she will be a discreet wife. If he does not feel able to include her in tonight’s socialising, she will accede graciously and wait for him in the night. I am your mistress and your friend, she says to herself as she drives into the hotel carpark. And she sits, looking across the town to where the cathedral spire sends its shaft up into the clear evening sky like a grey finger of hope to any pilgrim who might chance to come its way.

  Her step light, Celia enters the Queen’s Brough and makes her happy way towards the reception desk. It is a grand coincidence, not surprising, she thinks, given her tryst with Fate, that while she waits to be dealt with she sees in the distance, at the bar of that worthy establishment, her husband, fount of all this pleasurable projection, opening his arms in welcome, and bearing the unmistakable creases of a face lit up with loving desire. Not unnaturally she thinks it is to her that he gestures and her heart lifts. She turns, she almost calls his name, she prepares to run towards him. There is nothing between them save a few potted palms. The bar is empty apart from the attendant behind the counter who has his back turned and her husband who has his arms raised in that unmistakably loving gesture. A swift sprint and she could be held within them. But what is this? Even as the soles of her feet are set to spring Celia now notices a woman who walks, with indisputable assurance, towards him. And yes – Celia squints but she is not mistaken – not only walks towards him, but right on into those arms as well. And the arms are apparently bent upon enfolding this creature, for they begin to move in the manner of arms that will do so. They envelop this fair, coiffured female who is wearing (Celia feels it is right that she should take in every detail) a horrible, floating chiffon frock of pastel pink and primrose, which wafts around her high-heeled ankles as she enters what should, by right (both emotionally and legally) be Celia’s domain. The arms of Alex.