Hot Breath

by Sarah Harrison

  Suddenly, at this, Maria lifted her head, and set her face towards the west, turning her back on the funeral pyre that was Kersey House. Her voice, when she spoke, rang out once more with hope.

  ‘Then, Martha, I shall not carry it! I shall lay down the remembrance tree and march forward into life.’ Together, and proudly, they went on.

  I switched off the tripewriter. Life has few moments to offer as sweet as that of finishing a book. Of course, I knew I hadn’t seen the last of it. For a start, I had to do a re-write, and sort out one or two of my more dubious suppositions about seventeenth-century England. Then Vanessa would lay hold of it, and set about the serious business of making her professional mark (‘there’s no question Harriet is a spontaneous natural story-teller, but she does need a firm editorial hand’); after Vanessa it would pass into the province of Dennis the copy-editor, anxious to elevate his essentially mundane role to the status of key operation (‘ I mean punctuation is the good manners of writing, right?’); and finally TRT would reach the printers, Cobbold & Sons of Southampton, who were also not above putting their oar in (‘Battle of Havelocke 1680 surely?’). They were all usually perfectly correct and the book would eventually come clunking back, essentially the same, but outwardly hideously disfigured, like something out of ‘The Monkey’s Paw.’

  Still, any Erans who goaded me, covertly or otherwise, while drinking my booze on Saturday, would get more than they bargained for.

  Next day, Friday, I summoned my domestic lieutenants for an ‘O’ group. The newly confident Damon pre-empted any query by saying at once:

  ‘I got you some good sounds together for tomorrow.’

  ‘Why, thank you Damon.’

  ‘Mother of God,’ spluttered Declan. ‘ In broad daylight?’

  I turned to him benignly. ‘It’s only a little music, Declan,’ I said, ‘not group sex.’

  Declan’s face assumed an expression of thunderous self-righteousness, as though my very denial had confirmed his vilest prejudices. Damon continued as if there had been no interruption.

  ‘Yeah, some nice sixties stuff, bit of James Last, Ray Conniffy type of thing …’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be too staid,’ I reminded him sternly.

  ‘Gotcher,’ said Damon.

  ‘And if you could give the downstairs a real spring clean this afternoon …’ I suggested.

  ‘Will do, natch,’ Damon promised. ‘ I’ll give those toilets of yours a birthday.’

  He went his ways and I turned my attention to Declan, who was still sweating disapproval through every pore.

  ‘Now, Declan,’ I said briskly, ‘let’s get the garden looking tip-top.’

  ‘I been working like a nigger, so I have.’

  ‘Of course you have, it’s only a few finishing touches that are needed—’

  I observed a rebellious glint in Declan’s eye. Finishing touches were not in his line. He preferred broad strokes of the machete.

  ‘I’ll settle for them wasps,’ he declared, taking up a bargaining position. There was a wasps’ nest at the end of the garden, which caused little trouble to anyone.

  ‘I’m not sure whether—’

  ‘If you’re filling the place with people you need to be shot of them wasps,’ he growled threateningly.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. And you’re quite happy to organise the parking?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ I knew, actually, that he was ecstatic at the prospect of a couple of hours as authorised bully of the middle classes.

  ‘And of course you’ll join the party afterwards,’ I said ingratiatingly, ‘and what about Mrs O’Connell …?’

  ‘She’s not a one for socialising,’ snapped Declan.

  And Declan was? I was still tussling with this apparent anomaly as he stamped off to his shed behind the greenhouse, there to mastermind the demise of the wasps. It was nice to see him happy, but I had the gravest misgivings about the insecticide to come. The song ‘Great Balls of Fire’ might have been written for Declan, whose preferred method of dealing with wasps was to thrust a parcel of smouldering straw down the entrance of the nest. But the last time he had engaged in ritual slaughter of this kind, his victims had wised up. A phalanx of super-wasps, seeing Declan approach with a pitchforkful of burning straw, had zoomed from their subterranean fortress and attacked him. Declan had retaliated by whirling the fork with its smoking load about his head, like a demented hammer thrower, and calling down a murrain on the whole insect tribe and wasps in particular. Fragments of burning vegetation had flown in all directions, and drifted wantonly into the neighbouring field full of standing corn. Only the most urgent and intensive use of the hose by Damon and myself had prevented a catastrophe of the first magnitude. I had since left a large can of proprietary wasp destroyer in Declan’s shed, but without much real hope of success.

  Saturday, as they say in books, dawned fine and hazy, with the promise of a perfect midsummer’s day to follow. The flat fields of Barfordshire seemed to purr with bees and grasshoppers as the sun broke through and in these most ideal of conditions my garden seemed to acquire what I always hoped for but rarely seemed to achieve, an appearance of artful artlessness.

  The crack troops reported early, starting with Declan, hugely pleased with himself after dismissing the wasps with only minimal incineration of the farmer’s hedge. He was dressed to slay, in a deafening plaid jacket and important-looking brogues that might have been hewn from the living bog oak.

  ‘Declan,’ I said, ‘you look terrific.’

  His response to this was to treat my threadbare jeans and Toms T-shirt to his most strafing appraisal and ask: ‘Will you be changing?’

  ‘But of course! Today, Declan, I’m going to look like a proper romantic novelist.’

  ‘Lord bless and save us.’ He darkened with horror. Declan was genuinely squeamish about my job. But as he went off up the garden to take charge of the parking lot, nothing could disguise the fact that he was in outstandingly good form.

  Damon arrived next. Like Declan he made no concessions to the temperature in matters of dress, and was apparelled à la Sky Masterson in a black suit and shirt with a white tie and two-tone shoes. In the darkness of my barn where he had elected to set up shop, he was like a living negative. He had brought huge amounts of equipment, in a battered van.

  ‘Do you need any help?’ I asked.

  ‘Clara’s coming,’ he replied. ‘It’s cool.’

  Right on cue, my daughter appeared, dressed in the awful shapeless clothes which make the slim and young look even slimmer and younger. She had squirted some pink hair dye on the front of her fringe.

  ‘You’re going to give Damon a hand, are you, darling …?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Clara defiantly. But my nascent suspicions were smothered at birth by the arrival of Spot. He was usually whitish with black bits. This morning he appeared to have been tie-dyed with cochineal.

  ‘My God,’ I said.

  ‘No, it’s Spot,’ exclaimed Clara. ‘I sprayed him with my Hair-Glo. You know all the best lady novelists have bright pink hair and Pekes to match, so I did Spot for you. It’ll get you a few laughs, anyway,’ she said, with a chilling note of scepticism.

  ‘Thank you.’ I looked down at Spot. The black bits had turned purple. He wagged his tail and panted, revealing a gruesome fuchsia tongue.

  ‘Is it poisonous?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course not. And it comes out.’

  ‘Oh … good …’

  Damon and Clara disappeared into the barn, and Gareth hove in view, dressed in his football gear—‘It’s what I do, Ma, okay?’—and went away again almost at once to fetch Brett Troye whom he had enlisted as fellow greeter.

  Next to arrive were Attwood & Co, Caterers of Basset Regis. Linda Channing’s description of them as obliging and presentable had been, I considered, an extremely liberal interpretation of the facts. As with many such organisations—a selection of others being removal companies, carpet layers and furnitu
re delivery men—the team comprised three: a smart alec, a geriatric and a mental defective.

  The smart alec was the eponymous Attwood, who paraded about my patio with his thumbs in his waistcoat, telling me that the heat was against me, and my petits bateaux de fromage would certainly wilt, but then I as the customer appreciated that and would accept full liability for the exigencies of the weather.

  All this time it became clear that while he was in charge of the bullshit the other two did the work. They quietly set about organising the buffet in the kitchen. The elderly one had a nasty cough, and the not-so-bright lad had a tendency to bring things into the house, stand stock still for a minute or two, and then take them straight out again. But the operation seemed to be progressing, so I went up to change. There was no point, as the saying goes, in having a dog and barking yourself.

  I emerged twenty minutes later in the next best thing to the cloud of pink marabou suggested by Bernice. I wore the purple silk from Boutique Meridiana, with some pink cotton trousers underneath, Indian style. I had gone mad in the jewellery department, with beads, bangles and dangly earrings, and I had with me Spot on a length of purple dressing-gown cord.

  The dreadful Attwood redeemed himself a little by greeting me with a glass of the Spanish champagne I was paying a competitive price for.

  ‘May I say the hostess looks très glam?’ he asked. I gave him a queenly smile and strolled out into the garden, glass aloft, Spot trotting after like something that should have been pickled.

  I had just sat down, graciously relaxed, in one of the deckchairs which were scattered invitingly about, when Gareth’s head appeared round the corner of the house.

  ‘Hey, Ma!’ he called, his voice rising to compete with the Beach Boys invoking ‘California Girls’, ‘ There’s a stinking great Roller out here!’

  How typical of the GM not only to turn up unannounced, but early, and with his tall and mournful chauffeur, Anstey, staggering beneath the weight of a huge basket of flowers. As the two of them processed down the garden towards me I was conscious of people peeping and prying from every available vantage point.

  ‘Mrs Blair!’ grated the GM, surveying me. ‘Get you!’

  He himself was wearing a tight double-breasted cream suit, with a blue and brown striped shirt and a tie whose only justification can have been that it was the emblem of some distinguished club. Above this ensemble the GM’s face gleamed ruddily, but not, I suspected, from heat alone.

  ‘Oh … for me?’ I cooed appreciatively as Anstey lurched forward with the flowers. Spot bared pink fangs; he looked as though he’d been using plaque disclosure tablets. ‘It’s all right,’ I explained, ‘he’s part of my costume.’

  The GM laughed throatily. ‘Anstey, why not take the flowers into the house for Mrs Blair?’ he suggested. ‘And then park the motor.’

  Anstey staggered off, glads bobbing, and I hung on tight to the purple dressing-gown cord.

  ‘Could your wife not come?’ I asked pointedly.

  ‘Shame, no,’ said the GM, ‘she’s opening a family fun day. But I thought why not? … Mrs Blair, no hard feelings I trust?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I said with a vague, distracted smile. ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘I like your style,’ said the GM, with perceptible relief. ‘Well, I must say I call this very pleasant! Ve-ery pleasant.’

  He accepted a glass of champagne from the dumb waiter and collapsed on to one of my folding chairs with a sharp crump of canvas under stress. I took a deep draught of my own drink. Things had not got off to a very promising start. Spot panted pinkly at my feet, gazing up at my face as though awaiting instructions. In the parking area I could see Anstey at the helm of the metallic grey Rolls, backing and filling manfully under Declan’s gloating supervision.

  The air vibrated with awkward cross-currents. And of Kostaki there was still no sign.

  That was at twelve-fifteen. By one-thirty the novelty of the GM’s presence had long since been swallowed up in the roaring, squawking, eclectic tide of other guests. The music thumped on, now no more than a descant for the drunken hubbub below. Everyone had survived the attentions of Attwood & Co, so far. The drink flowed on. No cars had been scratched. Kostaki had still not arrived.

  I was as tight as a tick. Nervous anticipatory drinking had given way to the steady fuel consumption of the condemned woman. Why had I asked all these people? Did I really know them all? And if so, did I want to know them any better? Neither my husband nor my lover was present, yet the air in my garden positively pullulated with sex. The very tadpoles in the pond looked, to my jaundiced eye, like a pack of jet-black super-sperm, gathering for a massed ovarian raid. As I stood on the patio sipping my tepid bubbly Attwood materialised at my side, patronising and confidential in his white coat, like a doctor with the result of tests.

  ‘Mrs Blair, would you like dessert served now?’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘And would you like the cheese to be offered at the same time as an alternative, or when everyone’s had dessert?’

  ‘Er …’

  ‘May I suggest the former? We can always hold some cheese back to offer afterwards, and in this heat …’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Mrs Blair.’

  It was all going perfectly well without me. I retired into the kitchen, passing as I did so the Attwood menials on their way out to gather up dirty dishes, while Attwood himself began uncovering tureens of strawberries and towering alps of meringue and whipped cream with a flourish. All of a sudden something cut through the miasma of alcohol and gloom: the phone was ringing.

  I put my glass down and fled across the hall to the sitting room, then changed my mind and bounded up to the bedroom, two at a time. As I reached the top of the stairs I bumped headlong into Mike Channing, dressed in Financial Times pink. I thrust him aside and burst through the bedroom door. As I did so, the phone stopped ringing.

  ‘Bugger!’

  ‘Wash your mouth out, I answered it for you,’ said Bernice, who was standing by the bed with the receiver in her hand. She wore a white crochet dress, a shell necklace and a scattering of dark red love bites.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, and snatched the instrument from her. She left the room with the large person’s legendary lightfootedness and closed the door behind her.

  ‘Hallo?’ I barked.

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Oh, hallo. Talk about yesterday’s mashed potatoes.’

  ‘I’m late.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Sorry, not a thing I could do, one of my old ladies had a heart tremor.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Remembering the Fartenwald crack about pre-conception care, I took that one with a pinch of salt.

  ‘I’m on my way now. Party going with a swing?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘See you soon, then.’

  ‘ ’Bye.’

  I put the receiver down and stared out of the window. My wine-soaked mind lurched forward a pace or two. What the hell had Bernice been doing in my bedroom?

  In spite of everything, I had my pride. I did not wish to be found alone and palely loitering by Kostaki when he arrived. No, I would be out there in the thick of it, sharing jokes, exchanging confidences, showing that I was not the sort of woman who needed a man in order to feel complete.

  Accordingly I appropriated another glass of champagne and went out to mix with the gay company.

  The heat hit me like a smack in the face. I had left Spot tied up in the shade beneath the kitchen window, but when I went to retrieve him he was no longer there. The end of the purple cord trailed limply in his water bowl. I could only hope that whatever he was up to, it was not actionable. Although the law of probability would be on his side. ‘I swerved sharply, Your Honour, to avoid hitting this large pink and purple dog …’

  Moving among my guests was rather like a ride in a brightly lit ghost train. Bizarre and disconcerting images rose up before me at every turn, emitting weird sounds. H
ere was Stan Nutkin, in stetson and spurs, munching a vol au vent and apparently exercising some hitherto unsuspected animal magnetism over Baba Moorcroft, in an apron (‘ I’m only a housewife’) … here was Stan’s wife Nita, in suedette bolero and gauchos, confiding to Trevor Tunnel that a ‘finger buffet was absolutely ideal but texture is so important, oh hallo, Harriet!’ … Eric Chittenden, a vicar from the waist up, was Lee Trevino from the waist down, in yellow and black houndstooth trews … ‘The trouble is,’ complained Lydia Langley, ‘that since March I’ve had builders in my back passage,’ … Mike Channing was telling Tristan about books. ‘You would call that a serious book, in my business we would say that it was not user-friendly, see the difference?’

  … both Tristan and Vanessa had arrived wearing dustbin lids (‘hardcover editors’) but had long since discarded them. Vanessa now sported red shorts and a white sun-top and was engaged in telling Gareth, with much vivacious wriggling, that since she was dressed in his club colours she should be on his team. She had made a bad error of judgement with regard to his age—Gareth was hypnotised by so much bare, adult, female flesh, but only I knew how unlikely he was to respond to her hectic advances when close at hand hovered safer company, in the form of Sabina Langley. Poor Vanessa. On the rockery were Arundel, Marilyn and Barty (the latter formally attired, as promised) all sitting on Arundel’s academic gown. Barty waved his glass at me—‘I’m having a smashing time, darling, just keeping a watchful eye on the lad here, you can’t be too careful!’—and Arundel crimped his lips in his most poisonous smile. Marilyn was completely Brahms and looked as if she might do something disgusting at any moment. I moved on.

  Up by the greenhouse I stumbled on Tanya Lowe, wandering about anxiously with a length of chain in her hand.

  ‘Hallo, Tanya,’ I said, ‘how’s your glass?’

  ‘I’ve lost my Sukey,’ she answered, plainly distressed. ‘Is your garden enclosed?’

  ‘More or less.’

  Tanya shook her head dismally. ‘I only brought her because she seemed under the weather.’