Parlour Games

by Mavis Cheek

  And for what? For what?

  For what, he asks himself.

  For this shame. For this humiliation. For this, only this, and this is all.

  Familiar sights, like the landscapes of de Chirico, become draped in unspeakable objects. Dali has let loose his art upon the Hammersmith Flyover and the steeple clock tower, which once soared grey and stony, is now bedecked in an Ann Summers special; waving in the breeze it no longer tells the time but makes suggestive, plastic movements that promise pleasure unlimited for Miss Lyall and her kind. Dirty Harry reigns again, risen from the Kew Bridge swamp and wobbling his bobbles as Alex passes by. He blinks, to no avail. The blink merely transforms Fullers Brewery into a structure of Japanese Delight. Alex wails. The noise makes perfect harmonies with Gesualdo. This is, without question, the worst journey of his life, made worse, unbearably worse, by his having no one to blame but himself. As Miss Lyall said to him, her last words as he left her in that dove-grey scene of tranquillity, ‘You must accept liability, Alex. It is nobody’s fault but your own ...’

  The spectre of the beetle quickens across the floor.

  Alex drives on.

  Bedford Park is at hand.

  The neighbourhood judge, out for a stroll, gives Alex a little wave. Alex, focusing, shrinks from such encounters and bends his head down towards his driving wheel. The judge, somewhat surprised, says to himself that if he hadn’t known old Crossland better he would say he was plastered. And a man of criminal tendencies. Perhaps, he thinks, as he continues his stroll, he should fully retire after all. His judgement is clearly not what it was.

  Alex parks outside the house, and takes some small and bitter comfort from the absence of Celia’s car. He looks at his watch. It is well after noon. She has probably taken the children (he gasps at the pain of the thought; my babies, my babies, he thinks, rather as his wife did once) out for the day. Well – thank Christ for that. He can have a few hours to gather himself. There is an urgent demand in his bladder. Whether the drink or whether the nervous agony, who can say? Whatever it is he must get to a lavatory swiftly. He runs up the path, he pushes his key into the front-door lock – the very sight of that piece of metal fitting so snugly into its counterpart sends waves of further agony through his vitals. Even his key has become sexually explicit. Is there no rest from these terrible conceits?

  He tears headlong into the downstairs cloakroom, relieves himself (not looking at the fleshy item in his hands as he does so for he cannot bear to see it, that cheat, that dissembler, that betrayer of good), and feels very slightly better. Sleepy even. Not surprisingly since he is unaccustomed to morning drinking, and Celia was not up in time to see that he ate breakfast (you see, you see, how small things make for larger ones? Alex would have been far less intoxicated and more able to cope if his wife had put a plate of toast and poached eggs before him). So he drags his poor, worn body slowly up the stairs. He has not even paused to close the front door (the Neighbourhood Watch such superficial pleasure now), nor to flush the cistern. Niceties are things of the past. Alex can only dwell on his iniquities – lusting encounters fill his mind like whips, sex objects loom in his mind’s eye castigating him with their lubricious charms, the snares of titillatory items will not cease their dancing in front of his eyes: many-faceted sheaths, crutchless knickers, glossy photographs of Caribbean mouths holding Anglo-Saxon organs flap at him shamelessly. He opens the door to the bedroom with a head bowed in humiliation, in fear of what to do next.

  He shuffles in. There is only one safe thing to do next: one thing above all others that is desirable. He moves swiftly towards the marriage bed. His only thought is to plunge upon it and sleep, sleep, sleep, until (dreaded moment) the calls of his wife, and his dear, dear children, rouse him to face reality.

  He is mid-plunge, unable to stop himself from falling into the soft, forgetful enticement of the duvet, when he notices the final vision: this then is Hell; this then is his Orwell room. It is the worst hallucination possible. It is Mrs Green, the oatmeal of her face aflush with scornful pleasure as she sits so upright, so statuesque for one so shrivelled, upon that spreading receptacle of connubial charm, the bed. And she is holding aloft, like some decayed Statue of Liberty, an ivory-white vibrator which whirrs and shakes in her hand.

  He cannot contain the plunge and down he goes. And his head, unable to stop itself, meets the duvet which should have been so soft; he feels pain. He opens one eye, he does not want to but he does, and he sees, oh Torture, that he has landed on another recognisable accoutrement, another vision from his steamy past. He sees a jar of Vaseline. Is there any pain worse than the sharp edge of a Vaseline jar on the bridge of a nose? At that moment Alex does not think so. He focuses both eyes now and looks beyond the pain in his nose to a yet more familiar and dreadful sight – a packet of condoms, opened, used, nestling up to his cheek. They seem to speak to him, the crinkling Cellophane is real upon his skin, and he knows, much worse, that Mrs Green is also real. He rolls over on his back, spreads his legs and arms akimbo and gives vent. Why not? He has earned the right to cry out. And he does. The noise would curdle the blood of a vampire. Not surprisingly it also has its effect on Mrs Green who leaps to her feet and runs, in a demoniac splendour, out of the room. She had sought for something, she had needed vindication, she has it. In abundance. Two sets of cutlery and a change of curtains is as nothing to this. She can retire now. And she will.

  Those lisle-clad, vein-coursed, Stiltonesque limbs become the legs of Sebastian Coe – she grabs her mackintosh, her plastic bags, crams her beret down on to her head, and rushes like the wind out of the front door. Down the road, through the carpet of russet leaves she goes, sending whirls and eddies of the fruits of autumn in her wake as she flees. She is holding on to her beret with a hand that still clutches the vibrator – the final trophy – the final trophy, whatever it is. She is, as yet, unsure ... And Mr Crossland drunk and all over the bed like that! Well! Riches indeed! Perseus has finally arrived.

  The judge, returning with his bottle of milk and his Crunchie bar, looks on, amazed. Can this be Bedford Park? he asks himself. He shakes his head and enters his own home. Why do other people always seem to have the fun? he wonders. Must he always only sit ponderous and in judgement upon them? Life is very unfair. He would much rather, really, be in amongst it all as a participant. He will retire, damn it. There must be more to life than this.

  Late in the afternoon Celia enters the house nervously. She has found the front door on the latch, which is alarming. Silently she glides along the passageway to the back room which is orderly and empty. The kitchen is also empty, although she notices with annoyance that there is still washing in the washing machine – her summer curtains by the looks of it. Why hasn’t Mrs Green hung them out? Perhaps it is a gesture of defiance because of the Big Thrust. Her irritation grows: to leave the curtains to crease like that; and not to latch the front door properly. If only she had the courage to dispense with the woman. She puts down her bag and goes to the lavatory where she finds the ultimate insult: Mrs Green has not even seen fit to flush it. That settles it. Celia has grown in stature and confidence during the past few months. Her troubles have made her considerably tougher. And her sister’s sanctimonious counselling today has certainly not helped. She will no longer be anybody’s football and she jolly well won’t put up with her cleaner any more. An unflushed lavatory is the final insult. The sacking of Mrs Green will be the first pleasurable pebble in the avalanche and après her the deluge. She has yet to discover that this pleasure has been pre-empted. Later this evening a note in Mrs Green’s unwholesome spidery scrawl will be pushed through the letterbox, stating that their arrangement is terminated and referring obliquely to ‘Goings-On’. Its effect, when it arrives, will be like a wart on an elephant, for by then Celia will have other greater matters on hand.

  Stomping up the stairs she feels a pleasant, righteous anger. Which is a much better emotion than she has been experiencing of late: powerlessness.

/>   Right-ho then, she counsels, this is it. Mrs Green, you have had your chips. I don’t suppose you’ve left the bedroom as you should have done either ...

  The grim delight is very swiftly wiped away when Celia opens her bedroom door to find her husband stretched across the bed. She blinks, once, twice, thrice, but the picture does not remove itself. Alex is there all right and in the dying mid-afternoon light she sees other things as well. She sees her guilty purchases from the chemist strewn about him so that the bed resembles a wicked Hockney still-life. And there, on the carpet, is the dog-lady’s book, wherein she hid the plain and daily condoms (well – the one that was left) ... And her husband is pillowed on the Vaseline jar which had been tucked behind it. Oh my God. Has she been discovered? It certainly looks like it.

  ‘Alex,’ she shrieks, quite loudly for she has a terrible feeling that he may be dead. Overcome, perhaps, by her perfidy. But no. His eyelids flutter, he breathes – he even moans.

  ‘Alex! Alex! What on earth are you doing here?’

  He rolls over and puts his hand to his head. Lunchtime drinking, a jar of Vaseline and deep sleep have taken their toll. At the very moment when his legal mind should have been as sharp as an onion on an open wound, he is fuddled. He sits up. For a moment he has forgotten the recent past. He smiles, he blinks, he puts out his hand in welcome to his wife. And then he remembers.

  Without recourse to his training he eschews silence, and damns himself.

  ‘Oh Celia,’ he says. ‘I’m going to be a father.’

  Several things occur to Celia. Predominant among them, but only for a fleeting moment, is relief. She has not been discovered. But the relief is, necessarily, short lived. The other things that occur are these:

  Alex is drunk.

  Alex is mad.

  Alex is drunk.

  Alex is not mad.

  And if Alex is not mad then he must know what he is saying.

  If he knows what he is saying and Celia is not pregnant then somebody else must be.

  It does not take an inordinate number of brain cells to work out who.

  With dexterous cunning she gathers up the scattered articles from the bed and thrusts them out of sight. And only once she has done this does she give her feelings permission to be verbal.

  ‘You rotten, stinking, double-dyed louse,’ she snarls.

  Alex holds his head and says nothing.

  She sits down very hard on the bed and pokes Alex in the ribs. Each poke is expressively accompanied by a word. ‘Rotten, rotten. Stinking, stinking. Louse, louse, louse ...’

  ‘I know,’ mumbles Alex.

  ‘Well?’ says Celia, crossing her arms. The truth is she is rather enjoying herself.

  ‘I only slept with her once,’ tries Alex.

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ she says, poking him again. ‘I know all about it. I’ve even seen you ...’

  Alex finds this startling since he is still bound up in those terrible visions and can only assume his wife means in flagrante delicto – if he thought matters could get no worse this disproves it.

  ‘My God,’ he says. ‘When ...?’

  Celia gets brisk. ‘It doesn’t matter. The point is you are lying, and I know you are lying, and please don’t lie any more.’

  So he tells it as it really was and Celia listens without interrupting.

  When Alex has finished she says, ‘Wasn’t she on the Pill?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Well why on earth didn’t you take precautions?’ An odd response given the circumstances perhaps – but a valid one.

  ‘But we did,’ he says, and the mystification is genuine. ‘My God – we did nothing but take bloody precautions – dozens and dozens of them. Do you know, Celia, I even –’ He decides to come completely clean. ‘I even took that one I bought for us and used that—’

  ‘You mean Dirty Harry?’

  He nods mournfully.

  Celia remembers something.

  She remembers the last time she saw that profligate item.

  She remembers it hanging in deflated fashion from her knickers and Tampax drawer as she rammed the wood home on it, once, twice, thrice. And she remembers its punctured response to the harshness of the treatment. She had holed it.

  ‘Oh bugger,’ she says.

  Alex’s little pansyflower resurfaces. In the way of women everywhere Celia robes herself in guilt. Somehow she had always known things would turn out to be her fault.

  And the beetle, of course, skips its happy way across the phantasmal plain.

  What with maternity leave and nannies there is no reason for Miss Lyall to dispose of her child. Indeed, now that the morning sickness has gone, she is looking forward to motherhood. It will be a challenge. One at which she, unlike the rest of her sex, will be extremely successful. It is no good telling Miss Lyall that all expectant mothers secretly think this. She will discover, in due course, sometime next March, that the head cannot rule the heart where motherhood is concerned. She will flounder in that vale of tears and joy just like the rest, but without benefit (or otherwise) of a husband to share the shadows and the sunshine. For Alex is most certainly not going to marry her. Celia did offer, very nobly, to let him go but she received such a look of stricken terror for her pains that she made no attempt to be noble. All Alex could do at this fine gesture on his wife’s part was to shake his head and say over and over again, ‘I should have thought of you only, and my little ones ...’ Which made Celia think, quite suddenly, of Oliver Cromwell, with a creeping goose-fleshy notion that her cabalistic dabblings in that poxy book seemed to have more than a little validity. Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn indeed. Surely what Alex was putting her through was quite as good as having her head sliced neatly from the shoulders? Anne may have had a French swordsman for her little neck but Celia had a French letter. The corollaries were clear. She pushed the little book under the bed with her toe. She would have to deal with it at some point – a ritualistic burning perhaps? But not yet.

  ‘If you are not going to marry the woman what do you intend to do?’

  Celia is sitting next to her husband and massaging his neck. He looks, as he feels, quite ill. And his nose has swollen on one side which makes him squint. Oddly enough this makes Celia feel rather tender towards him.

  ‘I shall support the child, of course.’

  Celia’s tenderness deepens. This is the old Alex talking, the fair-minded, socially conscious, liberal Alex.

  ‘Good,’ she says. ‘So you should.’

  ‘And probably Miss Lyall too.’ He does not add that this is the only way to avoid scandal. Miss Lyall told him that. Very directly.

  What she had said, incontestably, was, ‘A man in your position, Alex – a high-flyer, a leader, peaking in your career – you can’t afford scandal at this stage. Look at Brandreth. No, no – I am quite prepared to be discreet providing you do not neglect to provide ...’ And she had smiled, pleased at the rather witty use of words and pleased at their incontrovertability.

  Alex winces, recalling the smile, and his voice is much weakened at the memory. ‘So I’m afraid it will necessitate some financial changes.’

  Celia’s tenderness diminishes. Not for what he says, but for the pompously businesslike way he says it. She removes her hands from his neck.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘It’s bad. But it can’t be helped.’

  ‘Like what?’ she asks, prepared for sweeping changes – selling the house, taking in washing, becoming a Kissagram. The radicalism of it all has a strange allure ...

  He turns and looks with his pale eyes into hers which are bright and searching and eager with life. ‘Oh God, Celia,’ he says. ‘Brace yourself. I’m afraid we won’t be able to educate the children privately.’

  Alex will be moved to remark many times in the years to come that women are a mystery to him. He will cite in perplexed tones his wife’s response at this moment by way of example. For Celia laughs and laughs and laughs. She holds her sides with the mirth of it. A
nd she says, when she can, ‘My dear Alex. Just look at you. If you are a product of it then I’m bound to say it may very well be for the best.’

  She laughs again and pats his sagging cheek. ‘I was never convinced about it anyway and the local comprehensive seems rather good ...’

  Something shrivels inside her husband. He balances the two scandals in his mind – the illegitimate swelling of Miss Lyall’s belly and his legitimate Bedford Park children cast adrift in an institution of the state. Perhaps they should move? ‘I will resign as chairman of the Watch,’ he says. It is all he can think of to say.

  And Celia, infuriatingly, laughs again. ‘Do,’ she says, thinking of the munificent Jo’s husband. ‘I’m sure they will find someone as good as you to step in. After all – there’s no dearth of leaders hereabouts, is there?’ She looks at her husband’s sagging, greyish features and the tender bump on his nose.

  And so much for the Celestial City, she thinks.

  Endgame

  During the next twenty-four hours Celia behaves almost immaculately. Her only concession to the situation when speaking to Alex is an occasional reference to ‘Your Bastard’ which has a pleasantly deflationary effect. It is, she feels, not the sort of thing a pansy, given the power of speech, would say.