Foreign Parts

by Foreign Parts (retail) (epub)

  She was as good as her word. In and out of innumerable bistros, brasseries and sushi bars we trooped with members of Monica’s immense social circle. We consumed prawns so huge they must have been stopped with a Kalashnikov, calamari so fresh its tentacles threatened to grab you by the throat, salads so various and crunchy that to eat them was to sound like an army on the march … Oh yes, the food was superb. And the company amiable, vibrant and possessed of the kind of healthy good looks that would have made even the fittest Brit feel like a species of slug. After every social engagement Monica would gaze into my eyes and ask: ‘What did you think of them, Harriet? Aren’t they great? And wasn’t that dinner just the best …?’ And every time I’d assure her that the whole thing had indeed been wonderful, too chicken to confess that my dearest wish was for a night in front of the in-house video in my dressing gown eating a soft boiled egg with Marmite soldiers.

  It wasn’t only the social demands of all this carousing. There was also the issue of Monica’s private life, the complexity of which was awe-inspiring. She had a man in every state as well as a live-in boyfriend at home in Sydney, and a married man to whom she referred as her bit of ‘arvo delight’ as though he were a trifle topping.

  At every gathering of Monica’s friends the conversation – after the obligatory topic of me, my books, and my reaction to Australia – was taken up with in-depth discussion of matters so personal they quite put me off my buttered brains with capers. I’d never thought of myself as easily embarrassed, but Monica and her cronies had me disappearing under restaurant tables from coast to coast.

  At one place in Adelaide, where about eight of us were eating pasta al fresco, Monica suddenly clasped my wrist with a shriek, and said: ‘Hey guys, you know we should really tone this down! Harriet here is a happily married lady!’ This was the one aspect of my life which the Erans had implored me to regard as holy writ engraved on tablets of stone.

  ‘Really?’ Cliff from local radio looked at me in wonderment. ‘How long you been married then, Harriet?’

  ‘Twenty years,’ I said apologetically. You’d think I’d just told them I’d been born a man.

  ‘No! Twenty years? Unreal! That is totally unreal! Twenty years with the same bloke?’

  ‘Yes,’ I muttered shamefacedly.

  Monica put her arm across my shoulders. ‘I think it’s marvellous, I do really. You’re the last of a dying breed, Harriet. Even my mum and dad are divorced.’

  Eventually they composed themselves sufficiently to get on with their dinner, but even then I caught the occasional bright, incredulous glance. I could almost feel the collagen draining from my skin, and the liver spots appearing on my hands.

  It was unbelievably frustrating to have to submit to this youthful incredulity, and not be able to capitalise on my adventures with Kostaki, and more recently with Edward, disastrous though their outcome had been. I promised myself that if I ever needed to I would produce my falls from grace like rabbits ( oh unfortunate simile) from a hat, and even Monica would be gobsmacked.

  The opportunity never arose. Like the jogging, the twenty years of marriage became instant myth. There was no escaping it. Monica contrived to build it in to every exchange. George, who had always been a shadowy figure as far as my publishers were concerned, had now sprung into focus. A helpmeet of more than two decades’ standing had won his spurs.

  So now there was another inevitable question to be addressed.

  ‘And your husband, Harriet – George, isn’t it? – how does he react to your success?’

  ‘He thinks it’s marvellous,’ I would reply.

  ‘You’ve been married for more than twenty-years, so he must have seen you through the tough times—’

  ‘Well yes, of course …’

  ‘All those rejection slips. How much difference does a stable relationship make, Harriet?’

  I was only glad none of my family could hear me as I said: ‘Oh, an absolutely crucial difference. I couldn’t have done any of it without George.’

  This was at least partly true. To be fair to George he had always been a perfectly supportive husband. The hiccups in our marriage had not been of his making, or only indirectly. I suppose any wife is fully justified in saying she couldn’t have made it without her husband. This begs the question of how much more she might have achieved without his clothes to wash, his house to maintain and his appetites to accommodate.

  Still, it ill behove me to complain, especially in public. So the Great Twenty-Year Marriage was at my shoulder as I jogged round Australia.

  ‘What the—?’

  This is one of those exclamations which, like ‘Oh, and by the way’ and ‘Here, drink this’ and ‘I might say the same of you’, are usually only employed in TV plays. But there was no doubting George’s genuine alarm.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Leaning against George’s shoulder was the biggest domestic cat I’d ever seen – coal-black, long-haired, with eyes the colour of barley sugar, a tail like a lavatory brush and voluminous feathered trousers. The girls came rushing down from the sous-sol and picked it up.

  ‘Oh, he’s really swee-eet …!’

  ‘Christ, it scared the living daylights out of me,’ said George grumpily and flopped down again. The cat reposed in Clara’s arms, emitting a thunderous purr, its enormous gut dropping like a furry hammock. Despite its size it was a cuddly animal unlike our own cat, Fluffy, who was shifty and combative.

  ‘I expect it’s a neighbour’s,’ I said.

  ‘I see you’ve found Teazel!’

  It was Royston, passing by on the far side of the pool in the direction of the compost heap, a dripping bin liner in one hand. At that moment he was the man for whom the expression ‘blot on the landscape’ had been created.

  ‘Sorry to intrude,’ he said, ‘just recycling. Jules and Antoinette are very hot on their compost.’

  For some reason I had a fleeting vision of our landlords coupling wildly on a mound of steaming rubbish.

  ‘Is that his name?’ said Clara. ‘Teazel?’

  ‘It is. He’s my best boy, aren’t you, Teazy?’ Royston made a smacking sound with his lips that sent a cold shiver down my spine.

  ‘Where does he live?’ George did not like cats and only tolerated Fluffy at home because of his hostile and reclusive nature.

  ‘Where does he live?’ Royston echoed, with a stupid expression of incredulity. ‘How can you ask? He lives here, of course.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ chorused the girls. ‘He’s so gorgeous!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Royston, ‘he’s a real mensch, isn’t he, girls? And this is his manor, his domain. Teazy rules the roost.’

  ‘You look after him, do you?’ said George.

  ‘Well, it’s a joint effort really.’ Royston stepped on to the poolside, his bin bag dripping dark spots on the white stones.

  ‘Joint effort?’

  ‘We’ll look after him the whole time, won’t we, Nev?’ said Clara.

  Teazel’s purr had now risen to a sound like an approaching helicopter.

  ‘By all means,’ said Royston.

  George stood up. ‘No, I don’t think so.’ He grinned tetchily. ‘Minding the owners’ cat wasn’t part of our remit. We come on holiday to get away from pets.’

  ‘Speak for yourself!’ Clara and Naomi bore Teazel away to their camp by the sous-sol.

  Royston smiled. ‘It looks as though you might have a spot of bother reaching a consensus on that one.’

  George sat down. ‘It looks as though we’ll have to put up with him being about – we haven’t much option – but there’s no way I’m feeding him. The thing’s the size of a small panther, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Amazing, yes,’ sighed Royston admiringly. From his expression I had a nasty feeling he would have liked to be up by the sous-sol luxuriating in the girls’ attentions along with the laid-back Teazel. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’

  We lay down. The sun beat. The ghetto-blaster played Madonna�
��s ‘Cherish’. The girls cooed over the cat. But I could just hear the squelch of Royston’s bin bag evacuating on to the compost.

  I got up and leapt into the pool, sending a shower of cold drops on to George and disturbing him again.

  As our first day was a Monday and the shops were closed we were using up such supplies as we’d brought with us, and those things which RP had requested Royston to get in on our behalf. Knowing that the baguettes, cheese, pâté and salad had been purchased and handled by Annexe Man rather took the edge off my appetite. I gave a saucer of the pâté to Teazel, guiltily aware that I was thereby binding him to us with hoops of steel. Tomorrow there would have to be a foray to the supermarché in Lalutte.

  In the evening after supper the girls went for a swim. Their splashes and shrieks floated to us as we sat on the verandah in the golden glow of the dying sun. From beyond the corner of the verandah I could see a bright shaft of light emanating from the annexe, and wondered what Royston was doing. Teazel appeared from the undergrowth and sat on the grass, feet together, gazing at us from his ruff like some pampered Elizabethan favourite.

  ‘Maneater,’ said George. He sounded quite mellow. ‘Think I’ll go for a bit of a walk,’ he added. ‘Fancy coming?’

  We strolled up the side of the house, where the bedroom doors opened on to the garden, and down the driveway in the direction of the lane. As we passed the annexe we saw Royston sitting at his desk, tapping busily on a keyboard. The VDU in front of him was packed with text. On a table next to him a fax machine spluttered forth documents, the first few sheets of which had already slipped to the floor.

  At the top of the drive, on the other side of the road, a broad track led on up the hill. We could make out the top row of the château’s many windows glinting in the afterglow.

  ‘Shall we?’ said George.

  We walked through the woods, bypassing the château’s garden, and emerged near the top of the hill in the road I had first taken. The view was charming – lush, domestic, profoundly and mysteriously rural as only the landscape of a peasant economy can be.

  We walked along the lane as far as the entrance to the château. As before there was no sign of life, and no sound from inside. We stood staring, enjoying the peace. The tattered ‘flag’ hung limply from its branch. It wasn’t a flag at all but a square of material on which someone had written some words in smudged gothic script:

  ‘Backpackers and Wayfarers Always Welcome.’

  ‘Crumbs,’ said George. ‘Castle Dracula.’

  Chapter Four

  A ll her life (I wrote) Mattie Piper had known that Seth Barlow would wait for her. No matter what she did, no matter how many other hearts she broke, no matter how long she went away for, Seth would be waiting at the corner of her street when she returned.

  Writing Down Our Street was comfortable. For one who felt like a foreigner after Scratchwood Services I was remarkably at home with it. In fact I felt set to out-clog allcomers.

  Not (I added) that she had any intention of encouraging Seth. Quite the reverse. As she tripped down the cobbles in her bright new shoes, the skirt of her dress lifted daintily in one hand, she was conscious of being watched from the narrow, darkened windows of this street where she had been born and raised. Watched, and envied …’

  My heroine was not to know that come-uppance time was nigh. Like Scarlett, Amber, and scores of other fiery and impulsive heroines before her, Mattie Piper needed bringing to her senses. Mattie was a good girl at bottom ( I was beginning to think in the vernacular), but had got a bit above herself since turning her back on her humble origins and the devoted friends of her youth and swanning off to the bright lights of the apocryphal city of Haddeshall. There she had knocked about a bit on the halls before catching the eye of a bewhiskered, cigar-chewing impresario and carving out a reputation as a singer: The Northern Nightingale. But Mattie was soon to discover the hard way how ephemeral was the nature of fame. The Nightingale would be sick as a parrot by the time I, and the residents of Marsdyke, had done with her.

  Halfway down the street she passed Seth’s doorway. It was evening and he would likely be in – I allowed a hint of colloquial speech to colour my style here and there – She kept her chin lifted and her eyes straight ahead, conscious of the pert beauty of her profile beneath its becoming city hat. Caleb – I referred to the leering impresario – had often told her she had the profile of a princess, and now she wanted Seth to see it too. During her time away Mattie Piper had learned to collect men’s admiration like the flowers they threw on to the stage: she scooped them up with a smile, and threw them away a moment later.

  ‘Mattie! Mattie Piper – is it you?’

  It was Seth himself, opening wide his door and stepping out to greet her.

  ‘Mattie – I can scarce believe it!’

  She stopped and turned to face him. ‘You had best do so, Seth Barlow, for I shan’t be here long.’

  His blue eyes drank in her smart clothes, the fetching hat, the dainty red shoes. He ran a work-roughened hand through his fair thatch.

  ‘Not staying?’ There was naked disappointment in his voice.

  Was nakedness audible? I often wondered. Anyway.

  Mattie tossed her head. ‘I should say not!’

  ‘But you’ve been away so long, Mattie girl. And by – you look fine.’

  I wasn’t dead sure whether I was the right side of the Pennines with that ‘by’, or even in the right latitude … But this was only the first draft, so I circled it and moved on.

  ‘And that’s the way I intend to stay,’ said Mattie. ‘I just came back to see Uncle and Auntie, and then I’ll be away back to Haddeshall. I’ve a tour coming up.’

  Seth beamed. ‘I heard you were doing well. Top of the bill, I heard.’

  Mattie didn’t bother denying it. It was almost true, wasn’t it?

  ‘I must be on my way, Seth.’

  He stepped aside humbly and she walked off down the street with her head held high, feeling his eyes upon her every step of the way.

  I closed the A4 pad, laid down my Biro (‘Another bonkbuster from the ballpoint of Ms Blair’, one past reviewer had written) and stretched luxuriously. I was aglow with virtue. Only eight o’clock in the morning, the sun barely warm on the surface of the pool, and I’d already done an hour’s work! I owed myself a tranquil swim and a coffee before the girls rendered the day unholy with pop music and wrangling over sunbeds.

  I got up from the table in the large gallery atelier which I’d appropriated as a study. Near the balustrade that overhung the kitchen area on the level below was a jigsaw belonging to the owners, a five-thousand-piece behemoth depicting ‘The Building of Stonehenge’. Thousands of tiny, simian figures, heavily bearded and scowling, stretched away into the distance. Acres of storm-tossed clouds melted into vast areas of shadowy downland from which the giant rocks jutted in their grim uniformity. Come to think of it, the landscape had a lot in common with that featured in Down Our Street. A few satanic mills would have been perfectly in keeping. The jigsaw had only two helpful landmarks. One was an overseer, or foreman, just left of centre (as was only proper). In spite of the inclement weather he looked a bit more cheerful than the others – access to Management amenities, no doubt. The other was the Chief Druid, all in Persil white.

  I crouched down and peered at the sea of grey-green pieces. There were a couple of paler ones where a shaft of dismal sunlight slanted through the storm clouds, and I homed in on these and stuck them in. Then I went downstairs.

  George was still asleep, covered by a sheet which protected his modesty in the studiedly casual way of sheets in PG certificate films. There was no evidence that his dreams rated an ‘18’. I didn’t disturb him. Instead I removed my I’ve Got the Fiction Addiction’ T-shirt (a gift from Barford Central Library on the occasion of their Historical Romance Festival in 1987), and got into my new bikini from Medusa Modes. The bikini represented the ultimate triumph of market forces over common sense. How else could I
have been persuaded to buy two strips of nylon bunting for a price in excess of twenty pounds?

  And there were the hidden costs involved in the wearing of such a garment. My entire body from the hips down had been subjected to a waxing so intensive that my follicles had gone into permanent retreat. The handmaidens at the Oasis Health Club had then declared open season on cellulite with a motorised rubber hedgehog which had my fatty cells running for cover.

  Still – I did a quick twirl in front of the full-length mirror – it had been worth it.

  I stepped out of the bedroom door into the early morning sunshine. I was not quite alone. In the melon field on the hill opposite a man in blue overalls was doing something complicated with rolls of wire. He was far enough away for me not to be able to see his face, so perhaps that meant he was also far enough away not to be able to see my hips, which now felt unpleasantly exposed.

  My other companion was Teazel, who sat like a teapot by one of the pool’s overflow ducts, staring down through the grille. I knew what this meant, and steeled myself. First I picked up the cat and carried him, stiff with outrage, to the bedroom, where I shut him in. I then lifted the grille, revealing the wretched shrew that was paddling round and round with nightmare slowness inside the duct. I picked out the shrew, placed it in the shelter of the plants, and replaced the grille. My next move was to take the six-foot pool net and trawl the surface for the flies, moths, harvesters, spiders and other winged beasts who had dived in overnight. These I carefully emptied out on to the grass where, we quickly learned, they dried out in record time and plunged straight back in, repaying one’s kindness by closing their mandibles on the first bit of human flesh they encountered.

  Having thus cocked a snook at Nature red in tooth and claw I dived in and began a leisurely fifty lengths.

  This was the holiday fantasy I entertained on those dark days in the new year when the temperature plummets, the mucus rises, and the only thing keeping the wolf from the door is the log-jam of manila envelopes. This morning sun, and blue water, and perfect silence broken only by the soft gloop of breaststroke … this, indeed, was the Business …