All this time, Josh, staring through the glass, was transfixed by the dainty young woman in charge. Short schoolgirl hair, sleek, dark and straight. She had large, widely spaced, velvety eyes and a circular patch of natural high colour on the wing of each high cheekbone. To Josh she was nature’s Coppélia. She was the girl in a picture sequence he’d perused, of the doll in The Tales of Hoffmann who must dance helplessly faster and faster. His own heart had begun to beat faster and faster, until he felt that he might faint.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he said to himself and he quickly looked away.
Then the class was over and Josh walked into the hall.
Hattie had never taught an adult before, but she agreed to give him some lessons, one-to-one. And Josh, she found, was a most apt pupil; a quick learner who was prepared to work hard. He proved himself to be lots of fun and was soon her inseparable friend. He was always at the church hall. She was forever on the campus. Josh became a feature of her twice-yearly dance shows. She became a part of his student drama productions. Pas de deux.
And Josh, who, after completing an MA, was awarded a London postgraduate scholarship, had high hopes of taking Hattie with him; Hattie who had revealed herself to him as a passionate anglophile; a girl for whom the mere idea of Angel tube station induced high excitement for its proximity to Sadler’s Wells.
And then things started to go wrong. Hattie appeared to get cold feet. She wavered. She fell for Herman. (‘But you’ll always be my very best friend, Josh. My best friend in all the world.’) The Aged Parents were at this time being hounded into exile; starved out; banned from doing their jobs. Bernie and Ida had clandestine plans for relocating to Dar es Salaam. They quietly began to sell off some of their things. They invited Josh to pick a favourite item, and they did the same with Jack; Jack, the maid’s boy, soon to be dispatched to a boarding school in Swaziland at the Silvers’ expense.
Prior to their flight, they made arrangements for Jack’s mother to be employed as a domestic by kindly, like-minded friends. Then Ida and Bernie crossed the border with one small suitcase each. They had made it to Botswana by the time Josh went, after dark, to the ballet school to say his goodbyes to Hattie, since his own departure was imminent. It was the bleakest night he could remember. Everything was going; going, going, or gone. And even then, in his precious last moments with Hattie, they were interrupted by a demanding male voice that jarred at them from beyond the door.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ Hattie said and she slipped out into the corridor.
Josh could hear what sounded like some sort of altercation.
‘Bitch!’ he heard the male voice say – a voice that was unplaceable but somehow familiar to him – and he stepped out into the darkness of the corridor in time to see a tall male figure swinging his way round the corner and out of sight.
Both he and Hattie stood in the silence and the dark. Then, after a minute or so, they heard the clang of the outer doors. There were footfalls on the stone pathway between the gravestones.
Hattie was rubbing her arm.
‘Chinese burns,’ she said. ‘That was my brother.’ She had only rarely mentioned her brother, a twin, from whom she was estranged. ‘Wanting to scrounge some money off me. But I didn’t have any, you see.’
But Josh had had money; quite a lot of it. Bernie had left it with him, in an envelope labelled ‘Gertrude’. The money was intended to tide over the maid until her new employers returned from their holiday. And Josh had stupidly left the envelope in the pocket of his jacket, which was hanging on a coat peg in the cloakroom. So on the following day – the day of his own departure – he went to the bank and drew out what constituted a hefty tranche of his UK scholarship money, in order to compensate the maid.
He arrived in London at dawn the next morning, a whole lot poorer than he had meant to be, and he made his way, via the A–Z, into the heart of Bloomsbury. And it was thanks to Marty and Keiran and Tamsin, who offered him cut-price sleeping space on the floor of their shared student house, that he survived his first few weeks; that was the very same student house in which, a year later, he met Caroline.
And now, after the opera; after the performance of Rigoletto, as he and his wife and his mother-in-law are on the way home, it’s twenty hours before his first flight home in almost twenty years. Caroline is finally driving down the last stretch of winding, sick-making road towards her mother’s house. And then they have dropped off his mother-in-law and have seen her safely inside.
‘I’m sorry about tonight,’ Caroline says into the silence, but Josh doesn’t respond. ‘Mum had already bought the tickets,’ she says. ‘There was nothing I could do about it.’ Briefly, she takes her left hand from the steering wheel and places it on his knee. ‘I’m really and truly sorry, Josh,’ she says. ‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’
Josh knows by now that this does not mean Caroline will don the silver Hollywood pyjamas and spend an evening – maybe a whole Sunday – idling in bed with him; takeaway fish-and-chip cartons and an empty bottle of Freixenet rolling about on the floor. Because lovely Caroline – lovely as ever, in that gasp-inducing way – Caroline, who, year in, year out, can make the unworkable work, has unlearned the art of idling.
‘I’ll work so hard on the house,’ she says. ‘You and Zoe will stretch your eyes with delight when you get back.’ Then she says, ‘How was the opera, by the way? I mean your opera.’
Josh laughs.
‘Oh my opera,’ he says. ‘That was fine. That was good.’ And then, in order to exorcise the Witch Woman from his thoughts, he starts to tell her about a little baroque opera house in the Czech Republic that he’s angling to visit with his students. That’s if he can get the funding.
‘It’s got all these wooden trapdoors and massive ropes and cog wheels under the floor,’ he says. ‘And pulleys in the loft space. Maybe you could come with me?’
After that, they go on to the old red bus in the farmer’s field off the Abingdon Road. By now Josh is no longer sleepy and, at three in the morning, he gets up and swaps to Zoe’s bed, fearing that his wakefulness will be disturbing to Caroline. He snaps on his daughter’s little bedside lamp and picks up one of her paperbacks. Lola Comes to London, by Henrietta Marchmont. He reads the biographical note on the back. The author is a former ballet teacher who lives in Durban, South Africa. She is married to an architect and has three teenage children. Marchmont, Josh is thinking to himself. As in Marchmont-Thomas? As in James Alexander Marchmont-Thomas? As in the tedious, druggie posh boy who once stole his red guitar? That person was Hattie’s brother?! Hattie Thomas’s twin? Of course! The ne’er-do-well; the bullying sibling; the familiar voice in the corridor. Hattie’s brother was none other than the Crikey Ike-y boy.
It takes Josh just over ninety minutes to read the whole of Lola Comes to London. He reads parts of it with moist eyes. Then he gets up and goes for a walk along the river from Donnington Bridge to Iffley. When he returns, it is no longer dark and the blackbirds are welcoming the dawn. He faxes the conference organisers, recommending that they issue a last-minute invitation to Henrietta Marchmont, local author and long-time dance exponent; also known as Mrs Herman Marais. Then he packs his bag.
Chapter Five
Cat
Cat is so sick of her mother that half the time she wishes the woman would literally drop dead. And she doesn’t even have to speak to drive you mad. It’s like just everything about her. Everything. Like that stupid ballet walk for a start. And like the way she looks in the mirror when she’s putting on her eye make-up. Like she was that dumbo Audrey Hepburn from the 1950s or something. D-R-I-P. Sort of Bambified and precious – like she was a nymph in that song ‘Where’er You Walk’ that Miss Baines got them to sing in choir. Well, that’s from when Cat still went to choir, like last term. Anyway, it’s the way her mum wears all this ‘blusher’, so she looks like a doll. Especially because she’s such a midget anyway. And the way she sort of tries not to wince when Cat walks past the china cupboard lik
e you were an elephant, or a herd of wildebeest or something. And now that Michelle’s gone and stolen all Cat’s friends, her mother just knows that something’s wrong, so she’s forever giving Cat that kind of sideways Oh-God-you-poor-social-cripple look and thinking that you don’t notice.
And, as well as that, Cat just hates that boring Englishified crap her mother’s got in the house. That stuff she’s inherited from her revolting parents, i.e., Grandpa Ghoul and Old Mother Dribble, though Cat knows her dad’s got rid of most of it even before she and the others were born. Like none of her friends’ parents have got that kind of snobby stuff – well, that’s like when she had any friends to speak of, like before Michelle and them decided to start freezing her out. But anyway, she’s got all these old cupboards and desks and things called dopy names like ‘tallboy’ and ‘whatnot’ and ‘davenport’, just like she wanted the whole family to be wearing crinolines and living in la-la land or something.
Like if you take the kitchen – just for example – she’s got this like folksy dresser thing that nearly takes up all of one wall and it’s got these rows of flowery plates and jugs and blah, like from those kind of places in England where they used to make little kids work in factories, grinding up bones to put in the clay, and then they all got poisoned from the lead and the mercury, or they used to fall into the kilns and burn to death. And it’s nearly all stuff they never even actually use. It’s just for sitting there and looking Ye Olde.
And then she’s got these ‘mantel clocks’ and this stupid grandfather clock that drives everyone crazy because it’s forever making you late for school – but she’ll go, ‘Oh but the face is so pretty. Don’t you think so, Cattie-pie?’ Plus there are these wheelback chairs in the kitchen that, like, come to bits when you pull them out and sit on them the wrong way round, and she’ll go, ‘But the grain on that elm wood is so lovely. That’s the thing about elm.’
Then, suddenly, like last week, she goes, ‘Oh, Cattie-pie, please don’t use that gorgeous jug to wash your bike. For heaven’s sake, let me find you a plastic bucket. It’s Portmeirion, sweetheart,’ when it’s just some crappy great thing like probably from before people had washbasins indoors. And it comes like the same size as a bucket, practically. And it’s got a crack all down one side. Well, it has now.
And – pur-leez – that’s not even to start on this arty sugar-bowl thingy she’s like always kept on the kitchen table. Like it’s not even meant to be a sugar bowl, it’s just like a big silver cup with dents in it that says ‘Presented to James Alexander Marchmont-Thomas on the occasion of his confirmation, 23 September 1875’, because some ancestor who’s got the same name as her mom’s unmentionable brother, Uncle James, who’s most likely dead for all she knows, and she keeps ‘sugar lumps’ in it. Note, ‘lumps’, because she thinks ‘lumps’ are more posh and Englishified than proper sugar, but most likely she does it to try and stop you adding sugar to your breakfast cereal, or your yogurt. Well, that’s just tough, isn’t it, because all you have to do is go and get the sugar packet down from the cupboard. Moron.
And then there’s even this completely embarrassing thing, like this oar thingy, from some rowing boat that’s fixed to the wall, way up on the top-floor landing – OK, so no one’s actually going to see it up there, except her, when she’s off to her witchy little turret that she calls her ‘stud-ee’, but it’s there because Grandpa Ghoul has made her promise to keep it because of some stupid great-uncle who was a rowing Blue at Oxford and one day it’s supposed to go to the unmentionable and probably dead brother, along with the dented sugar bowl etc. Or maybe even the whole house is meant for him as well?
Plus there’s this twirly bookcase full of pocky-looking Dickens that no one’s ever going to read, especially not her mom, because (a) it’s like printed on that old-fashioned scratchy kind of Bronco Bill lav paper that the Ghoul and Old Mother Dribble still have in their bathroom, and (b) she’s always too busy writing those dumbo ballet books of hers. Lola. And then if you ever tell her you think the Lola books are crap, she’ll go, ‘Oh but it keeps me out of mischief, Cat.’ Like what mischief, for crying out loud? And she’ll like pretend she isn’t offended. She just gets this doll-eyed Audrey Hepburn look again, like from her ‘favourite’ film, Roman Holiday, and she says, ‘I mean no harm by it, Cattie-pie. Don’t let it bother you.’ Cat reckons her mom thinks that anything to do with Italy is ‘cultured’.
Cat seriously wants to die these days, whenever her mother calls her Cattie-pie and sweetheart, etc, and her voice can really grate the way it sounds so pathetic and snobby and ‘actualleh-actualleh’. But the worst thing – I mean the worst – is that, in the very first one of the Lola books she wrote, like when Cat was about eight, she’s put in this really freaky dedication and there it is, still in the school library ten years later – well, OK, eight years, but, anyway, it’s there and it says ‘For dearest Cattie, who danced with me on the Campo Sant’Angelo’. I mean, Jay Christ, how C-R-I-N-G-E is that?
Plus she was always calling her Cattie-pie in front of Michelle, and now, of course, Michelle and them have all pounced on the Lola book and they’re being really mean about it, and telling everybody – just because she didn’t think fast enough to swipe it off the shelf when they first started being so horrible to her. Anyway, nobody at school has ever called her Cattie, or even Cat – not since last year, when she got all her friends and even all the teachers to start calling her Kate. Except that now, of course, Michelle and the others are forever saying ‘Cattie-pie’ behind her back and sniggering. Someone’s even written ‘Cattie-pie ate the pies’ in the girls’ lav. Ha ha ha. Anyway, she’s thinner than Michelle. That’s since this week. Michelle’s bum is bigger and she’s got these really short stubby little legs.
The thing is it was all because Alan liked her and she liked him and she would have said yes to him, except that Michelle went on and on and on about what a slimeball he was. On and on until she had to agree, because Michelle was her best friend, and so she had to tell Alan no, she didn’t like him, not as a boyfriend anyway. And then guess who moved in and took him over, just like that? Bloody Michelle. Of course. But not only that, because now Alan’s been acting like she was kind of so repulsive, like you could get leprosy or something if you went near her, and between him and Michelle and Eleanor and the others, the whole crowd has just pushed her out.
They’ve got this special way of going really quiet the moment she comes near, or else they make this kind of growly noise in their throats, as if they were having to warn each other about her coming their way, like they were going to get poisoned if she breathed on them. Then they all start looking at their fingernails like mad, because none of them will look her in the eye. It’s been going on now ever since last term began, like about eleven weeks, because Alan and Michelle must have got it together during the holidays before the ones they’ve just had, and she knows they call her Miss Piggy behind her back, when it isn’t Cattie-pie.
And another thing is they make out like she’s a big lump by leaving stuff in her desk that they’ve cut out of magazines about cellulite, etc. It’s just like one day she was Kate Marais, with a whole crowd of friends; Kate Marais, who was always best at history and maths and drawing and netball – best at everything, to be honest – Kate Marais, who always got chosen to sing solo in the choir, and then the next day she was the great untouchable. And by now she wouldn’t even mind so much if they’d just literally leave her alone, but they don’t. They pretend they do, but then they keep finding ways of tormenting her.
And now there’s not even anyone to talk to out of school, what with Suz and Jonno gone to uni and her dad away all the time, because he keeps on phoning up and postponing his coming back – and now he’s suddenly gone off to Maputo for another week, or it’ll be Botswana or London – and with her mom who’s got nothing better to do than snoop on you, like the way her eyes follow you round the room when you’re trying to get your breakfast, or like when you get up from the table
to use the lav. It’s like you get the feeling she’s got those compound eyes like an insect that can see all over the place. Plus it’s a really big piss-off, the way she’ll try to put these crap cereals like puffed brown rice and Shreddies and stuff at the front of the cupboard, in case you’ll just grab one of them by mistake, instead of taking the Coco Pops.
Anyway, about the Coco Pops, etc, Cat’s already lost twelve kilos, only no one’s going to notice, are they? Not that she wants her mother to notice. She wouldn’t give her the satisfaction, which is why she wears Jonno’s old trackie bottoms all the time, and his old baggy T-shirts when it isn’t school. See, if you’ve got a sort of podgy round face, then everyone just thinks the rest of you is podgy and round to match. But Cat knows she’s got thinner, so fuck her. You just have to pray that she’ll soon disappear into her witchy little room – sorry, her ‘stud-ee’. That’s what she calls it – her ‘stud-ee’ – where she writes all that Lola crap, and another thing that’s disgusting is that her mom has got this like black-and-silver tutu thing that’s hanging from the ceiling over her desk, like strung up on some of her dad’s fishing line. She says to think of it as ‘sculpture’ if it bothers you so much.
Well, maybe she hasn’t noticed but Cat’s stuck her brother’s bowie knife through the crotch, so now it’s got a slash in it, like in those purply Silk Cut cigarette adverts. That’s if she’s ever thinking of it as one of the heirlooms, along with all the clocks and ‘whatnots’ and ‘davenports’ and crap. Anyway, how can a tutu be sculpture? Because sculpture’s got to be made out of stone or bronze or wood or something, hasn’t it? Otherwise it’s just needlework. I mean, a tutu is like just a kitschy sort of sticky-out party dress that shows your fanny. Plus it’s repulsive to think that someone else’s been all sweaty in it. And, by the way, her mom’s feet are really disgusting as well. It’s from all the dancing. It makes your feet go all kind of pervy-looking and weird.
Sex and Stravinsky Page 13
