In my mind, it adverted to the calamitous noises that used to go on when David and Allegra lived over my head in our share house. He used to beat her up. It was surreptitious, done when he thought we weren’t there. She would never talk about it although we had evidence; we’d heard them yelling at each other upstairs, and thumping and crashing and her emerging behind prodigious hedges of hair, saying as quickly as she could that she was just going out, she’d be a while…we knew. He’d stay up there brooding for hours and then appear and ask surlily, ‘Did she say where she was going?’ And we’d say, ‘No.’ And he’d go out and come back with flowers and ask if he could borrow the vacuum and he’d be cheerful with Eli, try to get him on side by talking about football. And he’d chop wood for our heater and walk the dogs. And be all smiles when she returned. And she’d go to bed and he’d dance attendance on her…
Until the next time.
The spite and cruelty worked on him by his circumstances had entered him and came thrashing out onto Allegra. And then she was pregnant and something irreversible had begun. In my heart of hearts I felt I could do nothing for her, so I painted The Crushing. David more or less recognised what I was painting and why. He was hopping round my studio like a cross little frog, bobbing up and down with his fist cupping his chin. It made me terribly nervous. Something violent was going to happen. You always knew it was going to happen. Maybe the fight he picked in Mad Meg was vengeance: he was affronted, not just affronted, but confronted as it became obvious to him what I’d done. I’d drawn the psychology of victimhood – a psychology I know firsthand. Victimhood is not what the self-help gurus call the ‘Poor Me’ syndrome; victimhood is a state of deep and anguished confusion, of deracinated sense. It is being crushed up against the window glass and unable to break through.
Oh Eli, where are you and what have you done?
Oh dear, and where is it writ that even when you’re in a state of despair you have to tolerate idiots? I have enough to cope with without bloody Audra ringing up to harangue me about Mum being in a Catholic home. Didn’t I know my mother and she were confirmed as Anglicans together? Didn’t I know that there was a bishop in the family and that he sent my mother a postcard of the Scunthorpe Anglican Church after her confirmation and wrote on it ‘To Bunny with love from “The Bish”’? Bunny! And when exactly was I proposing to go and visit my mother on the next occasion, for Audra was going to come with me now that she is unable to take public transport due to a cat-scratch allergy.
‘Aren’t you a pensioner, Audra?’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Well, you’re entitled to cab charge. You can take a cab up to see Stella whenever you like.’
‘What! Oh…cab charge is only for shopping.’
‘Well, I’m not a taxi, Audra.’ And I put the phone down in her ear. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang again. It was from Redeemer telling me that they’d had a call from one of Stella’s relatives demanding that she have Anglican communion.
I said, ‘Fine. If Audra’s prepared to organise it and Stella wants it, I have no objections.’
‘You wouldn’t be prepared to organise it, then?’
‘It’s not high on my list of priorities. Stella has had nine-tenths of a century to organise her faith; if she hasn’t done it yet, perhaps it’s a measure of how sincere she is.’ I was glad when the girl at the other end laughed. ‘Your mother’s so funny,’ she said. ‘She’s wheeling the house cat around in her basket now.’
So I rang Audra back and said, ‘Audra, you’ll be alarmed to know that Stella now keeps a cat in the basket of her wheelie frame. If you’re allergic to cats you’d better ring up the home first and have them take it away from her before you come.’ That little speech was the only piece of satisfaction I’ve had since seeing that abominable unit.
Right now, nothing is being done about finding Eli because Christmas is upon us, which means it is the season of maximum family crime, relapses into alcoholism and outbreaks of eating disorders. Only rookie cops are minding the police stations at Christmas (and international criminal hunters are having a break).
How do I know? It’s the delight of Christmases past, of the year when we experimented with having David actually inside our home for the lunch. It was twelve years ago, Eli in Washington and Nin still living at home. No Daniel yet. Why did I allow it to happen? Perhaps it is I who am the idiot and I shouldn’t put up with myself. Stella invited Audra. Nin was having her first trial with a girlfriend, a very droll person called Portia who parried her cutlasses of wit on a Christmas galleon across whose deck the cannon kept shifting. Stella was trying to scare Portia off, but she wasn’t scaring, all the cannon were firing inwards. I was at the helm as usual. As usual I’d struggled to make an edible meal. I’m quite good at Christmas trees but lousy at turkeys. Fortunately, Nin has culinary skills and is able to relight ovens that go out mid-turk and rescue sauces mid-clump. So the early comers were assembled: Audra flopped in, red-faced, at ten a.m., saying, ‘The heat, the heat, I’ve had to drive all the way and I’ve got a sprained wrist and a broken toe – don’t ask me how I broke the toe.’ And Stella asked her.
They were drunk and roaring by eleven.
Idiot Portia didn’t stay in the kitchen helping us but entered the fray. I’m glad Nin dropped Portia; Portia loved to tell everybody that they were ignorant and that the Motte cutlery, put out for the festivities, was only silver plate. ‘Silver dipped,’ went Stella and Audra concurred, adding that the Mottes from whom she too was descended had a solid silver service. You never saw such a thrust and parry of common-or-garden old Grosvenor Plate in all your life.
Then David arrived. He was quite nice to everyone to begin with. He had a lovely present for Nin, a whimsical miniature doll’s house.
Could it possibly, possibly…?
No, of course not. It never does, you idiot, Isobel, does it? It never does. It’s just that the doll’s house was so intriguing it took Stella a good hour under the influence to work out a nasty thing to say about it.
‘What’s it made of? Oh…paper…But it’s only a sort of a…a sort of a card…’
‘You could make money with those!’ piped up Audra.
Did anyone care that Nin and I had created a table in the presence of enemies? Did the lamb lie down with the lion? The answer is no. A dead turkey flew. A man went mad, armed with a blunt bread and butter knife – Grosvenor Plate, of course – in a house full of women. The man would not calm down and had Stella bailed up, at top throat, in the bathroom.
I rang the police.
Two eighteen-year-olds in uniforms too big for them turned up and that’s how I know who minds the police station on Christmas Day. Audra would have pressed charges had it been in her power to do so, but she was not the one assaulted. Stella did not press charges, nor did I. Some people think that the way to solve domestic violence is to press charges, but you need to be incredibly brave to do that and it’s you who needs to be locked up afterwards, not the perpetrator because the perpetrator will be released one day and come looking for you. The violent believe that violence is the answer to their problems like others believe in prayer. I just told myself that I would never invite David into my home again.
David left and drove off in a backfiring car.
Portia sat around, hysterical and panting out things like ‘Oh Nin! Your family is hilarious! Hilarious!’
Audra took Stella away with her and neither of them was seen again…just like in a children’s story. Not. But I had a peaceful January. And in February Stella got another friend of hers to ring and say, ‘Don’t you think it’s time you made up?’
And now it is Christmas Day 2007 at Redeemer and Mick is here (I haven’t dared to tell him the story of Eli yet) and we have taken Stella to the mass in the chapel and Stella looks like a toad whose head has been stepped on, her eyes rolling in ripe fury. People are ‘body of Christ’-ing all around us and Stella is saying, ‘Huh!’
Well, I t
hink, with the mad, the answer is to take them one at a time. More than one at a time leads to the kind of debacle we had those twelve Christmases ago. My logic then was throw them all in together and then you won’t have to protect yourself because each of them will act as a foil or distraction for another. For instance, I thought that David would act as a foil for Nin and her first foray into same-sex love. I knew that Stella wouldn’t be able to cope with two women making a go of it together, but David, because he hates the bourgeoisie, would. I thought they would cancel each other out. I thought we could build them into their own little concrete cocoon and repair for drinks to the back veranda. I didn’t count on Audra seconding Stella in a family stoush. Nor did I imagine that Portia would be another maddie. The problem, eventually, was Nin and me – we wanted a normal Christmas with trees and presents and things – the sort of Christmas Nin has told me she is giving Daniel at this very moment as Stella is grumbling up the hall to the dining room, grinding that pulverised tooth of hers and mentioning the word ‘cat’, that creature not being, at the moment, in her wheelie basket (after all, it is Christmas and the cat has been put outside). Daniel, I was told, would be having a tree and presents at Gorgon’s (Gorgon being what Daniel calls Wendy’s mother) in the embrace of Wendy’s three siblings and their children. There would be Christmas bonbons, running in the park and picnic blankets in the thinning shade of the droughtstricken trees. There would be champagne and nobody like George Green pouring it or Fridlinda Häken-Green complaining about the venue.
So now we are sitting at the table, Mick on one side of Stella and I on the other, and Mick mentions how sensible it is of the home to have electric candles in lieu of real ones. Festive and not dangerous. The chicken is being served. Quite pleasant chicken by the look of it, with a modicum of festive trimmings. Mother Oldmeadow is at a table over the other side of the room and we have Father O’Brian and Brother Donald, both of them teachers in their day.
Brother Donald was a Christian Brother. Taped Christmas carols quietly in the background.
‘Where’s the cat?’ goes Stella.
‘They’ve put him outside Mum. During lunch.’
‘Why isn’t the cat being given Christmas lunch?’
‘Well, I dare say it’ll be getting the leftovers.’
‘Leftovers, huh! I want to share my lunch with the cat… Here, Puddy, Puddy, Puddy, Puddy, Puddy…’
We can see the cat looking in from outside the window.
Father O’Brian stands to give the blessing.
‘Puddy, Puddy, Puddy…’
‘Hush, Mum.’
‘I WANT THE CAT TO SHARE MY LUNCH.’
Lovely Liz from the nursing home rushes up to Stella and takes her hand. ‘It’s okay, Stella. The cat’ll get the leftovers. You’ll see.’
‘…for these, Your gifts…’
‘I WANT TO FEED THE CAT.’
The Babushka, unnerved in her senility, starts to sing ‘Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…’
Steam starts to come off the top of Stella’s head. As we pass the condiments, she begins to stamp, first the left foot, THUMP, then the right, THUMP. ‘Now, now, Mum…’
‘Oh what fun it is to ride…’ goes the Babushka, feebly, but it’s not Santa’s sleigh that’s coming, it’s Stella…She starts to sing – at first in a low and grinding way, ‘Buggery, buggery, buggery, buggery,’ and then the volume increases, ‘BUGGERY, BUGGERY, BUGGERY, BUGGERY!’ and it’s surprising how far an old woman’s voice can carry, rising above the benediction at a table full of priests, like Tartarus’s roar.
‘I think I’ve had enough,’ says Mick. ‘I’ll go and wait for you in the car.’
He made me a beautiful Christmas dinner in spite of everything. He wiped away my tears.
Mick. The food he cooks me is perfect, except for the turnips. I have to stop him from slinging turnips into everything. That’s a problem with your Yorkshire man born during rationing. He’s learned to live with turnips so well he’s even developed a taste for them. Turnips he loves and me. Where would I be without him? He has carried, accompanied, driven, assembled, sorted and supported while Stella crumpled, wilted, thurped up breath between her teeth, tottered, staggered, collapsed and collided and introduced him to the staff at Redeemer as ‘him’. She barely remembers his first name, let alone his second. More than once she’s said, ‘He’s only after her for her money.’ It makes me contemplate eldercide.
Mick tolerates Stella and is endlessly patient with her, not allowing her senile jibes to penetrate. The fact that she would have made them before she was senile doesn’t perturb him. ‘Windbag,’ he calls her. When we settled her into Redeemer at last, it was as if we’d chucked a rock into a beanbag full of dust, such an airing of lost recriminations and unguided missiles came up with the impact.
I would not have been able to cope with Stella without Mick. I’d be a heap of chagrin and rotten temper and I’d have taken it out on everyone around me. This I Know.
Daniel didn’t have such a hot Christmas either, because Gorgon made him go to bed with the light off. He wept in self-pity when he told me.
‘But there might be good things in the dark,’ I suggested.
‘No they isn’t. They’s monsters.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, they didn’t tell you the right thing.’
‘You let me have the light on.’
‘Yes. But I’m an old softie.’
‘What means softie, Sibella?’
‘Well, walls are hard and beds are soft. I’m more of a bed than a wall and Gorgon’s more of a wall than a bed.’
‘Beds are best.’
‘They don’t keep the wind out.’
We’re going to visit Great Gran, even though she doesn’t deserve it after Christmas Day’s performance. It is New Year’s Eve, Daniel has a present for her and the mothers are worn out again. He’s sleeping over with me tonight. We are driving past my psychiatrist’s rooms above which there is a gigantic girl with the close-set eyes whispering into the hearing aid of a poor old crone who’s been placed in a home. The girl is smiling, but those are not the muscles of sympathy she’s exercising, they’re the muscles of gloating exaltation. Some wag has scaled the shop awnings and blacked out one of her teeth.
‘Three cheers!’ I hate that ad.
‘What you say that for?’ goes Daniel in the back.
And my mouth starts a long, theoretical monologue about the blacked-out tooth, which Daniel interrupts to ask if I’m old yet?
‘A bit,’ I say.
‘Gorgon’s old,’ he says.
‘I’m nearly that old.’
‘Why we get old?’
And my mouth goes off in a long-winded theoretical monologue about growing up and growing old and when I’ve reached the explanation of decrepitude, Daniel says, ‘Gorgon’s got stripes up and down. Like this,’ And I watch him in the rear-vision mirror as he draws vertical stripes with his index finger over his lips. ‘You not got stripes. You not old. What means die, Sibella?’
‘Well…’ I put the car into gear. Daniel and I take lots of trips to the museum… ‘you know how in the museum you see the animals and they’re not moving anymore…’
‘Because they finished they turn?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ That’s what I’ve been discussing with him lately, that life is ‘having a turn’ (what I don’t tell him is that often enough, it’s a turn for the worse). The explanation was partly expedience because Dan is learning to share his toys, but it also felt like a good way of explaining that life isn’t forever. Gorgon’s sister-in-law died recently and Gorgon cried and told him she was sad. So why was it sad that Sylvia died? Well, it was sad for Gorgon because she wouldn’t see her anymore…
‘Will Great Granma die?’
‘Yes, she’ll die.’
‘Today?’
‘No. I don’t suppose so. We’ll see her today.’
‘When she finished she turn, will we see she in the museum?’
‘Well, that’s a good question. I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose we could have her stuffed and put in the museum, but then again we might put her into a grave.’
‘Like Sylvia?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
What do you say? Because the wolves will get her? Or shut up. Or I don’t know. Or because she’ll go off if we don’t either bury or burn her. You have to be careful what you say to children – who would have thought that Nin would remember those porn magazines? Maybe the soul is the best way out of the death dilemma at this stage, although the scientists seem to be saying it’s best to be absolutely honest so that children won’t fall into the God trap. But then again, is God a trap? When I told Daniel about how elephants are sad when other elephants die and they go back to grieve over them, Daniel drew me an elephant and then put a cage over it with a handle on top and so I asked, ‘What’s that for?’ and he answered, ‘A basket with a handle so God can carry the elephant to Heaven.’ No, God isn’t all that much of a trap… But he is a bastard, because that’s just the kind of drawing David would do.
‘Why Sibella?’
‘Why what, darling?’
Window Gods Page 19
