“What’s tiny?”
“Miss Painter is not trying to test m y ingenuity…”
“What’s ingenuity?”
“If you have your baths now and get all ready, Mrs Hubble will help you.”
“Mrs Hubble watches Coronation Street…”
“…and Mission Impossible…”
“She says she’s only here to baby-sit.”
“Please! Try the kitchen; the odds and ends drawer – it’s absolutely full of tiny things. I’ll bring the matchboxes.”
“You look nice,” Daisy said, “except for that huge spot on your back..”
By the time she got out she always felt like chewed string. It was necessary to listen to the continuing saga of Mrs Hubble’s adventures at the ‘orthopaedic’ vis-à-vis her bunions; to kick the television in the appropriate place in order to eliminate the falling snow; to give Rosy and Daisy their supper which always looked so appetizing she could cheerfully have eaten some herself, and did in fact pinch a forkful of sausage with a dip into the mustard and some mash (surely that couldn’t interfere with her appetite); to make her usual speech about bedtime and no reading (absolutely not); to leave the telephone number; to assure Mrs Hubble coffee and biscuits (although she had a sneaking feeling it was only stale trifle sponges) were at her disposal; to reswear she would not forget the matchboxes; to kiss the upturned, still grubby faces with exactly equal fervour, biting back the ‘don’t mess up my hair’ bit; to ensure all doors were locked and say that the girls were not to forget to feed the cat.
“Everyone will have gone home by the time we get there,” Oscar said.
“I can’t help it.”
He opened the front door. “At last.”
“Hang on. I’ve forgotten a hanky.”
Upstairs the bedroom looked as if the contents had been stirred with a giant spoon. From the drawer she pulled a red chiffon scarf and one white kid glove; no hanky. She took one of Oscar’s. Bad mother; good mothers produce matchboxes at will. Bad wife; bedroom should be left tidy and appetizing to come home to. She shut the door on the chaos.
The moon shone on the golden stone of Cumberland Terrace. At windows crystal chandeliers winked; pavements were barren; nose blowing was by permission of the Crown Commissioners only. The elderly estate car hung its head as Oscar parked it unskilfully between a chocolate-brown Corniche and the latest Bristol.
Karen gave the cherry liqueurs to the Portuguese butler as if it was a hand grenade she was relinquishing, together with the suedette coat with the fake fur trim which looked great over trousers on the Heath.
There was no mirror in the hall. Laura’s friends did not require reassurance. She came out of the drawing-room, both hands extended, all flopping Jean Muir and chignon, and embraced them both in a warm bath of Calèche.
“I’m so glad… How are the children?…come…meet everyone… Ashley…?”
He took over the introductions. Laura was vague about names. He presented each to the other and tied neat little labels around their necks. “… Psychiatrist…have to be careful what you say…” belly laugh… “lecturer in Russian military history…doctor of medicine…can one believe it?…manufacturer of every drop of ink I’ll wager you’ve ever used, and our famous and bestselling author…” (Oscar managed a gritted-teeth, fixed smile, knowing better than to protest) “…and his lovely wife…” A medical secretary, Karen added beneath her breath, with a first-class honours degree in English which totally unsuits one for anything at all.
The lady doctor wore ice-pink silk jersey under which there was patently no bra; the lecturer in Russian military history black chiffon with see-through sleeves. The Jaeger skirt into which she had changed after Daisy’s pronouncement about the spot on her back looked as if she hadn’t bothered.
“We have some ouzo…” Ashley said.
Half-a-pint, please, Karen said to herself, and Jaeger skirt will become the Givenciaga Oscar has promised.
Oscar took the twisted-stemmed glass wishing it were a large gin and tonic. Obviously the evening was to be Greek.
“Help yourself to mezes, I never can pronounce that word,” Ashley was saying. “Octopus, cucumber, olives… I believe.” He handed the dish. “Karen and Oscar have the most delightful daughters; grey eyes and ash-blonde hair; absolute little heartbreakers…”
Oscar wanted to ask Ashley if he should sell his Australian mines but the lecturer in Russian military history had a hand with a vice-like grip on his arm.
“I have the greatest admiration for authors.” Her accent was delicious. “To write a book! A book of many pages. Do you work every day so many hours or only when you have the feeling?” She clutched her bosom. “How is it with inspiration or do you not wait perhaps, just take your typewriter or perhaps you have not the typewriter…”
Oscar felt Karen’s eyes upon him and knew that if he met them he would laugh.
It was the pain, no matter how attractively put, fort et dur, one suffered for one’s art; an occupational hazard. The questions never varied. No one would dream when introduced to a dentist, of saying how fascinating, do tell me how many fillings you do in a year; do you use gold or amalgam? Do you work standing up or sitting down, and all the time or only when you have the urge? No one would presume to ask the house wife if she cleaned her pan with Vim or Brillo or how many times a week she washed the kitchen floor. There was a certain accepted reticence in these matters which did not apply to writers. If there was a technique for parrying the inevitable queries Oscar had not discovered it. He merely stared glassy eyed, mentally ticking off the questions in the catechism until he was done. It was as if by careful soliciting the inquisitor could take upon himself the mantle of a craft which appeared to need no other qualifications than paper, writing materials and a little time.
Oscar, allowing his glass to be refilled by Ashley who muttered something about being glad to see how well he was getting on with Katinka, answered up dutifully and waited for the pay-off.
“I would like to tell you about my life.” The hand was on his sleeve again, she was one of the touchers of the world. Her face was close. “It is more than a book! You would have material for a year…”
Oscar drew up his mental drawbridge and battened down the hatches. If novels arose from ideas dreamed up by others, or if the lives they declared ‘fascinating enough for a book’ were one thousandth as interesting to anyone else as they firmly believed, he would be a rich man.
They did not understand that one’s writing came from within. One had to experience, observe, for oneself. If sufficiently drunk he told them what to do with their second-hand goods. Usually they refused to be insulted, going home to spread the word what a marvellous ‘character’ he was.
There was another thing. He never spoke about the work upon which he was currently engaged; not even to Karen. She knew what manner of thing he was writing, play, novel or short story, but little else. She understood, as no one else seemed to, that the first revelation had to be from brain to paper, and once there it was safe. Talking about it, before it was captured in print, eroded the essence of what he had to say a little more each time until either there was nothing left at all or the idea became stale, used, not quite fresh. The progression was simple; head – paper. One had to be firm. It would have been easier the other way; talk it out at cocktail parties, to Karen on the pillow, but it did not work. There was one way only of capturing original thought at the peak of its freshness, date-stamped as it were; no dissipation allowed.
Fortunately before there was time for Katinka to tell him the story of her life he was rescued by Laura who asked them to come in for dinner, hoping they all liked Greek food. He and Karen had found it not worth visiting Greece for but not bad enough to keep one away. He preferred Laura in her French phases, at least one knew what one was at. There would not, he thought, be bouzouki music or plate throwing, certainly not the Minton. One must be thankful for small mercies.
Laura seated them from a table plan drawn
on a piece of card she made no attempt to conceal. She had been known both to get it upside down, leaving herself sitting bewildered at the wrong end of the table until she realized what she had done and they all had to get up again and play general post, and to produce the plan from a previous dinner which would cause her to look in a puzzled fashion at her guests, wondering from where they had appeared.
Apart from the minor deviations, however, Laura’s dinners habitually ran with the smoothness born of punctilious planning. Taramasalata, better than they had ever tasted in Greece, was served in small ramekin dishes accompanied by rounds of fragrant, warmed pitta.
“Consider bread!” Ashley said, holding up the pocketed dough. “Its shape and consistency, I mean.” He looked at Arnold Katz, who was examining the taramasalata as if it was likely to explode at any moment. “I often wonder whether it has any significance. What do you think, Katz? Scottish oatcakes – Russian black – Indian chapatties, Mexican tortillas, Viennese sticks, German pumpernickel, Jewish matzoth and us with our pappy, large, white, wrapped, sliced, tasting more like wet cotton wool than anything else. Perhaps that’s how we are, wet, pappy, characterless. Eh, Arnold?”
Katz, eating his taramasalata with his fish knife when everyone else was using the teaspoon provided, seemed to be decoding the messages his tastebuds were sending to his cerebral cortex, and appeared so enthraled with the result that he was unaware he was being addressed.
Ashley, whose questions were mainly rhetorical, remained unperturbed. From bread he went on to breakfast and his theory that because the French made love in the mornings they had no time for it, while the English, who only indulged on Saturday nights, had all the time in the world, the result of which was bacon and eggs and sausage and mash and, when he was a boy, devilled kidneys and cods’ roes and other good things under chafing dishes on the sideboard, which just about brought them on to Laura’s avgolemono soup.
There was one thing about Ashley, no matter how sticky or ill assorted his guests, which they usually weren’t, he rapidly put them at their ease. Possibly because, unless checked, he never stopped talking. Since it gave one an opportunity to enjoy Laura’s food Oscar rarely minded. The avgolemono was only as lemony as it should be, the few grains of rice tender. Laura picked up her cup but Arnold Katz was there before her. Oscar recalled that the custom originated in Germany.
Ashley (lemons and Cyprus) started them off on holidays with Katinka describing knowledgeably life behind various segments of the iron curtain; ‘ink’ somewhat pompously retailing how he and his wife found this absolutely fantastic little spot in Italy where no tourist had ever set foot (exchange of signals with Karen) and which wild horses wouldn’t drag from him, and Oscar telling them all naughtily about the beach at Birchington and the antics of Rosy and Daisy. He refused this time to meet Karen’s eye or to admit that either of them had ventured further than the Isle of Wight.
The fish, Oscar thought, had currants in. It was followed to his relief by an excellent souvlakia, on a skewer with artichokes and okra. Had it been stewed hare he did not think he would have been able to stomach it.
Ashley, while not wishing to upset Laura, refused to serve retsina, for which Oscar was thankful. The ouzo having been punishment enough, Ashley poured an unresinated Santa Laura (which he took pains to explain rhymed with Cowra) followed by a Mavrodaphne, portish in body, sweet sherry-ish in taste. By the time they were on to the baklava they were all pleasantly merry and relaxed.
Laura’s enquiry as to whether Katinka took her baklava with cream set Ashley off on another of his discourses.
“You mean baklava and cream, my dear!”
Laura stared at him. “That’s what I said.”
“You said ‘baklava with cream’.”
“The same thing, surely?”
Ashley put his fingertips together and leaned back in his chair. “You wouldn’t say, would you, that a woman and child is the same as a woman with child?”
This time he brought the house down, at this stage not very difficult, and the small talk crossfired happily until Laura introduced her outrageous cheese board, apologizing for the Frenchness of it as she really could not bring herself to serve feta.
Possibly (and Oscar considered probably) to relieve Marie-Céleste of any embarrassment she might have suffered from her husband’s outspoken statement associating dislike of cheese with frigidity, Laura took the opportunity to ask Dr Katz what exactly it was that he did in the field of psychiatry. Obviously he had been waiting patiently throughout the previous four courses to explain, and explain he did. His work consisted largely of psychotherapy but at the same time he was a firm believer, in certain cases, of the application of behaviour therapy (‘serrapy’).
Karen, interested, and knowing something of the jargon – Eysenck, the Maudsley, Pavlov – said she had always wanted to know exactly how it worked.
She was to assume, Katz said, turning to face her and warming to the theme, that she was afraid to leave the safety of her own home; a well known condition known as agoraphobia. If she came to him (Oscar forbore to ask how she would get there if she could not leave home) he would, under the influence of a relaxing drug, take her, in imagination, step by step through the feared conditions; leaving the house, walking down the road, going into a crowded shop, travelling on a bus or train. After several of these treatment sessions she would be able, he assured her, to cope with ‘the life situation’.
It was at this point that for the second time Oscar’s eyes met those of Marie-Céleste. There was no need to check with Karen; Katz had her entire attention, also that of the rest of the table with the exception of the two of them. Oscar was aware of a strange sensation within himself. The emotion, he decided, was fear, although the fear was non-specific. He must think, he knew, of Karen, of Rosy and Daisy, of his new book, that he was forty-five, that their paths would most likely never cross again, that she was flat-chested and not particularly pretty. Before he could examine the situation further Laura told them that coffee would be served in the drawing-room.
He shook himself mentally and decided it must have been a combination of the ouzo and the Mavrodaphne, although he knew that it was not. They complimented Laura on her excellent dinner and, bemoaning the diets gone west, followed her.
Oscar noticed Karen settle on the two-seat sofa next to Marie-Céleste. He decided to ask Ashley about the Australian mines although he knew very well that the advice would be that it was never wrong to take a profit, followed by the inevitable truism that ‘they never rang a bell at the top.’
Ashley gave the problem his full attention. He pointed out that in his view the determining factor for the equity market in the short term must be prices and profits control, about which the Chancellor as usual appeared to be dithering. It was not, he added, and could never be, “wrong to take a profit.”
“Ah, but there are profits and profits,” Oscar said, warming his Napoleon brandy, glad that Greece seemed quite to be forgotten.
Ashley put an arm round his shoulders. He caught a whiff of the expensive aftershave and was able to examine the Harvey and Hudson shirt and tie more closely.
“My dear boy,” Ashley said.
Oscar closed his eyes.
“They don’t ring a bell at the top!”
Going home in the car Karen said:
“Nice. Drunk.”
“Pleasant. Tired.”
“All very well. You don’t have to get up in the morning.”
“Poor darling. I swear to you this book…”
“I know, I know.”
In the hall they found the table littered with gold safety pins, paper clips (Oscar’s desk), split peas, sultanas, buttons, halfpennies, tacks and the top from the toothpaste. Propped up was a note: ‘Dear Mummy, please put the things into the match bocses.’
They looked at each other.
“I quite forgot,” Karen said.
“What?”
“Matchboxes. To ask. It doesn’t matter. Yes it
does. Oh hell!”
She explained to Oscar. They looked helplessly at the forty tiny objects.
“They ask such impossible things,” Karen said. “Why don’t they leave the parents alone? We pay the bloody rates.”
“We’ll think of something in the morning. Come to bed.”
“You can’t think a matchbox!”
“They will have to explain.”
Karen gave him a withering look. It caught his back as he went upstairs.
In bed, arms behind his head, waiting for Karen, Oscar thought of Marie-Celeste, allowing full flight to his fantasy. When Karen turned out the light he dismissed it as a pleasant, harmless mental exercise. He would never see her again.
Yawning, Karen nestled into his back.
“Good dinner.”
“Mm.”
“I adore tarama. Laura’s was particularly good. I forgot to tell you…”
“Mm?”
“Mrs Burns.”
“Burns?”
“Doctor, I should say. Marie-Céleste; she’s absolutely sweet. I’ve asked her to look after the children.”
Two
Oscar sat at his typewriter staring at the green-topped keys and the sheet of blank paper. It was the worst moment; quite the worst. The muzzy head. Eyes rough as sandpaper. Numbed brain. Through the window there were leafless trees – nice but uninspiring. He was a town person. He wanted to go back to bed, anything…picked up The Times, back page; ‘Like the poets pool (or his brow)?’ Seven letters. No, he was not in the mood. A daughter, Goneril, had been born to Val (née Sullivan) and Alan Lang (sister for Regan and Cordelia). Richard Marsh, aged sixty-three, adored husband of Dorothy and father of John and Andrew, had died peacefully (was there another way?) in hospital. Cut flowers only. Oakley and Gunn, undertakers, had their permanent inch and a half display in the adjoining column, as did also ‘Charming Floral Tributes’. He did not want a diamond for investment nor an Indian miniature. He had not been on the SS Tubantia sunk in the North Sea on 16 March 1916, so he would not be contacting Box 20. He was glad to see that Lady Buxton was grateful to all those who had sent her second-hand clothing, and that for the asking he could have a ‘super cook for that extra special dinner’ or donate to the Home for Aged Horses or learn to water-ski in Devon. None of these appealed. He could go overland to Katmandu for £125, save £25 on a flight to Spetsai, or escape to Corfu. He could sell his Persian carpet or buy a pug; savour French Provençal cooking in the King’s Road or rent a five-bedroom house in Hyde Park.
The Life Situation Page 2
