by Daisy Waugh
‘Oh, by the way,’ Clive says, ‘guess what we’ve got winging its way to us, courtesy of a certain publishing company in the great city of Londinium?’
‘What? Clive—’
‘Should be arriving any minute, Kitty. Geraldine rang them up pretending she was a journalist.’
‘Honestly. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Could I speak to Geraldine, please?’
Clive laughs. ‘I just hope you and Scarlett haven’t written about us! Friends or no, Kitty old girl, we will sue. We could do with the money.’
‘Oh, really,’ Kitty says impatiently. At that instant, she can hardly remember what’s in the book herself. ‘Sue away, you silly old sod. Only for Christ’s sake, put me on to Geraldine!’
‘Oh. Right-o. She’s just here…Geraldine!’ he sing-songs. He’s not been in such a good mood for years. Not since moving to Fiddleford. ‘It’s Kitty. La Mozely. Sounding a bit cross, actually. She says it’s urgent.’
‘Of course I’m not cross.’ Kitty’s already halfway through her second sentence before Geraldine’s managed to put the receiver to her ear. ‘Only I’m gagging to tell you my news, and he wouldn’t stop talking to me. GUESS WHAT?’ A slightly mad and lecherous gurgle. ‘Ahhh. Geraldine!…Anyway, buck up! I said GUESS WHAT!’
‘I’m glad you called actually, Kitty,’ says Geraldine, squinting to read the scribbled note Clive has just placed in front of her:
Jo’s calling Kitty in half an hour.
We want K to do publicity for us. Please prepare ground?
‘You had us a bit worried. What were you up to last night? We were all waiting. In the end we had to go ahead without you.’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t the vicar call you? He said he would.’
‘Geraldine, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. So come on! GUESS!’
‘Guess what? What you did?’
‘Who I was with, of course! Who was bloody well rutting me like a prize stallion while you were waiting-for-me to do whatever-it-was last night. Who do you think? Who?’
‘Kitty, please.’ She laughs, in spite of herself. ‘I haven’t had breakfast yet. I’ve no idea. Louis?’
‘HA, HAAA!’ Kitty’s laughing so joyously Geraldine has to hold the telephone away from her ear. ‘You see? And ohhh, Geraldine,’ the lust in her voice sounds ready to choke her. She has to clear her throat. ‘Believe me, I’ve seen a few in my time. But never have I – NEVER – Geraldine, you know I hate to be vulgar, but WHAT A COCK! I tell you, that man is built like a God.’
‘Kitty—’
‘What are you doing for lunch? And he’s circumcised, which I adore, don’t you? Nothing beats a big, fat, circumcised—’ She has to pause, once again, to clear her throat. ‘I was right, you see. I knew I could trust my instincts. I do seriously believe you can predict the size of a man’s prick long before you get his trousers off, simply from the way he moves.’
‘Kitty—’
‘Perhaps I should do a little how-to-guess book. Save everyone a lot of time and disappointment. And make a fortune while I’m at it.’
‘Kitty—’
‘But that boy, Geraldine, is a gift. He’s a gift sent to me from – well, never mind. Who cares?’ She pauses, breathes in. ‘So anyway. While Louis was rutting me like a well-trained stallion, in the graveyard, if you please, I suppose you were at some deathly-dull meeting with Fanny Flynn, were you? He said she had some school meeting to go to. Was I supposed to be there?’
‘Of course you were. Didn’t the vicar tell you? It was Dane Guppy’s disciplinary hearing. Unfortunately – tragically – he was expelled.’
‘Oh. Jolly good. So what do you think? Which reminds me, the worst part was—Geraldine, do listen. There we were rolling merrily around in the churchyard, and who should pop their ugly mugs over the wall, but bloody Dane Guppy, and Macklan Creasey and Tracey! All of them!’ She gurgles again. ‘I must admit I’d been smoking a teeny bit of pot. Haven’t smoked pot for years, have you? They looked awfully disapproving.’
Kitty, it turns out, couldn’t be less interested in how the governing body came to meet without her, or what they decided about anything, or why, and in her new ecstatic mood, is more than willing to put her name to anything Geraldine asks of her. And the Dane Guppy Appeal is as good a cause as any – rather better, in fact, since it also happens to antagonise her rival, Fanny Flynn.
‘Excellent,’ says Geraldine, once again redirecting the conversation from Kitty’s obsessively detailed description of Louis’s genitals. ‘That’s great. It’ll be good publicity for you, too, Kitty. Anyway, Jo’s going to call you in a bit, and you can fine-tune things with her. In the mean time, let’s hold fire, shall we? Until Clive and I have let Fanny and the other governors know what we’re doing.’
‘What are you doing?’ Kitty asks vaguely, although Geraldine’s already explained it half a dozen times at least.
‘We’re making legal history, Kitty. That’s what we’re doing,’ Geraldine’s voice quivers with Kitty-like rapture. ‘The press’ll want to murder us, Kit, but if we play our cards right, we’ll be on the front of every newspaper in the – well, in the EU! Yes. Christ. It’s actually very exciting!’
56
Holding fire has never been Kitty’s speciality. She hangs up on Geraldine, nestles back in the bed, and prepares to run herself through last night’s memories all over again. But is surprised to find that she can’t concentrate.
Images of Louis’s studliness are being superseded by even more beguiling images – of herself, Kitty Mozely, as a Campaigner for Justice. On the front page of every newspaper. She’s dressed in flowing white, of course, but with a sartorial nod to the other great female protesters…Kitty Mozely, Campaigner for Justice, with a banner and maybe a corset of some sort. And a little hat. And a bank of admiring press people before her – and Louis, of course, in front of them all, gazing lustfully through the lens of his camera…
She sits up, suddenly impatient. Why doesn’t Jo Maxwell McDonald call her? She can’t wait around all morning.
Kitty rummages among her bedclothes until she finds the telephone again, gets the number for Lamsbury’s Atlas Radio and asks to be put through to the news editor, Stephen Knightly. It’s a quiet office at the best of times, and a quiet news day even for Lamsbury. His only reporter is sitting beside him, reading yesterday’s Daily Mail. Mr Knightly leaps on the call, listens to Kitty’s story, which has plenty of good ingredients: Mystery Fire/Suspected Arson/Celebrity Author/Village at War etc., and dispatches his duty reporter to Laurel Cottage at once.
Jo telephones fifteen minutes later, having rescued her twins from the Smarties. But by then it’s too late. Kitty has regained her mental focus. She doesn’t even hear the telephone ring.
‘I admit I don’t entirely understand the legal technicalities,’ Kitty beams at the Atlas Radio man. (He’s nothing like Louis. Who hasn’t called yet, in spite of her own three calls to him. But fit and young. And this morning she’s insatiable.) ‘Anyway, I don’t really want to get into technicalities with you. What I want, from this encounter, is for us to get the ball rolling. Do you understand? Because this isn’t about technicalities. It’s about children and liberty. Liberty for children to do and be as they want to do and be.’
‘Excuse me – excuse me for interrupting, Miss Mozely. But you’ve mentioned liberty a couple of times. I’m just wondering – I can see there are several issues at stake here but I’m not clear exactly what liberty has to do with any of them specifically?’
‘What’s that?’ She frowns. (What’s he talking about?) ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Liberty,’ she says, ‘is integral to everything. You can’t talk about justice – you certainly can’t talk about children – without talking about liberty in the same breath.’
‘Well, perhaps, but I mean surely you’re not suggesting the boy should be at liberty to set fire to the school if he wants to?’
Kitty and the young reporter a
re sitting at her kitchen table among piles of old newspapers and general muck. Before he arrived, Kitty had hauled mind and body from their contemplation of Louis, to rummage through her musty, crowded wardrobe. Inside she discovered an old Vivienne Westwood stretchy satin bodice, quite similar to a corset. She’s wearing it (bursting gloriously out of it) with an open shirt, and a wedding hat, stiff and wide brimmed, which she has balanced at a jaunty angle on her head. Both items, she feels, make a sartorial nod to the noble efforts of her sister suffragettes and they inspire her, as she sits there, to let rip on the subject of liberty, justice and so on.
She’s slopped a grubby cup of very strong coffee in front of him, with no milk because there isn’t any. He’s a good, clean boy, ambitious and serious, and he’s never encountered anyone like Kitty before. What with her musky smell and husky voice and occasional cheeky caresses, he’s ashamed – alarmed – to find himself feeling aroused, and more than a little out of his depth. He earnestly desires to get to the heart of what it is she’s saying. It doesn’t cross his mind that there is no heart, that she’s simply killing time until a better opportunity for jollification comes along.
Kitty’s hat and head emerge from her enormous handbag where she’s been foraging for a pack of Gitanes cigarettes. She puts her matches on the table and a Gitanes to her lips, and waits for the good, clean boy to light it for her. It takes a second or two for him to understand what’s expected of him.
‘Oh!’ he says, pouncing on the matches, striking one with clammy, shaky hands. ‘So sorry!’
‘Where were we?’ she breathes, looking up at him through the smoke. ‘What was the question again?’
‘I was just saying,’ he repeats patiently, ‘surely you’re not suggesting the boy should be at liberty to set fire to the school just because he wants to?
‘Hmm? Don’t be fatuous…’ A pause while he blushes and she wonders again why it is that Louis hasn’t called. ‘Could you be sweet,’ she says, squinting at her mobile telephone. ‘I don’t have my contact lenses in. Is this bloody thing on, or isn’t it?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he says helpfully, ‘it’s definitely on.’
So why hasn’t he called? What’s he doing? Her mind wanders.
She imagines him, right now, Louis and his magnificent cock, sticking it to Fanny Flynn. She is ten years younger than Kitty, fitter, prettier, nicer – better. A better human being. Kitty feels a shock of self-disgust; of anger and jealousy. It comes upon her from time to time. Inevitably. And the consequences are never positive. ‘What I “suggest”—’ she snaps suddenly. ‘Are you taping this? What I “suggest” is really neither here nor there. I’m not a lawyer.’ Suddenly she leans forward, drops her voice to a husky murmur so that the nice boy has to lean right in. ‘But it’s a bit rich, isn’t it, dear—’ (she’s forgotten his name) ‘Dear – boy – when Little Miss everyone-in-Fiddleford-adores-me Fanny…Fuck-me-Flynn—’
‘Sorry, could you speak up a teeny bit. I don’t think the tape’s going to get—’
Kitty stretches across him, pulls the tape recorder closer. ‘I said it’s a bit rich when Little Miss Perfect Fanny Flynn turns out not to be quite so Miss Perfect as she pretends.’
‘Hmm?’
Kitty taps his arm, doesn’t notice her cigarette ash tumbling on to the back of his hand, ‘When Little Miss Perfect turns out to have been secretly married to a junkie, heroin-addict jailbird.’ She leans back suddenly. Very matter of fact, and pauses for a deep, malicious drag on her cigarette. ‘Who almost certainly,’ she adds, ‘died of Aids…’
‘I’m sorry? I don’t understand—’
‘I mean really – has anyone given the wretched woman a drugs test? I doubt it. Let alone an Aids test!…Have they?’ Kitty’s husky voice is growing louder. ‘She’s probably infecting our poor children as we speak—’
‘Miss Mozely,’ he interrupts, his innocent brow creased in consternation. ‘Sorry, but I’m not sure if this is really very relevant—’
‘There ought to be legislation. Paedophiles aren’t allowed anywhere near our children. So what about junkies? Disease-ridden junkies? And I demand, actually I challenge, that young woman to be Aids and drugs tested. Immediately!…And that, young man, is your story! Never mind all the rest of it. Do you understand?’
The reporter scuttles back to Atlas Radio’s HQ not long afterwards. He delivers his tape to the news editor, Stephen Knightly, declaring he doesn’t want anything more to do with it. ‘She’s barking mad,’ he says. ‘Seriously. Dangerously insane. And the whole story’s very nasty and very irresponsible.’
Stephen Knightly throws back his head and roars with bitter laughter. ‘I suggest,’ he replies, his fingers already dialling the number for Fiddleford Primary School, ‘that you have a serious think about your future in journalism, my boy, if “irresponsibility” and “nastiness”,’ he pronounces them with a lisp, ‘are going to upset you so much.’
Fanny’s in her office being outmanoeuvred by Robert, once again. She had sent glass-eyed Mrs Haywood to summon him, and he glided into the room wearing an insufferable little smile.
‘I delivered the – object – you left on my door last night to the police this morning,’ she lies, ‘I imagine you know why,’ and waits, in vain, for his little smile to wither. It grows.
‘Why did you do that, Fanny?’ Slowly, deliberately, he produces a tissue, folds it neatly – once, twice – holds it to his reddened nose, and blows.
They eye each other then, any pretence at civility between them now quite gone. He leans across her desk, drops the used tissue into the bin beside her feet. ‘You must think I’m very stupid…By the way, has the LEA been in contact yet?’
She can’t speak. She wants to throw up.
‘No?’ he says. ‘Only I must admit, I have mentioned a little incident to them…’
There is a tap on the door and Mrs Haywood plops a hand-delivered letter on to her desk. Fanny opens it listlessly, with Robert looking on. Something formal, legal, typed on expensive, headed paper. Adams Family Practice, it said on the top. ‘Oh, yes,’ Robert says, peering down at it. ‘And then there’s that. Well. Perhaps I should leave you to it. Was there anything else?’
It’s just as Robert is leaving, and Fanny has dropped the Adams Family letter back on to her desk to be read later, that the call from Atlas Radio comes through. Stephen Knightly the news editor explains that one of his reporters has just returned from interviewing Kitty Mozely, whom he understands has a daughter at the school.
‘That’s right,’ says Fanny.
‘She’s very worried. Are you aware of that?’
Fanny suppresses a groan. ‘Really. What about?’
She has to ask him to repeat his next question three times, because the single word ‘Aids’ keeps drowning everything else out.
…Aids…drug abuse…marital relations…understandable concern among parents…can you confirm or deny…
‘I’m sorry. What did you say?’
…Convicted criminal and heroin addict…Aids…children in your care…infectious nature…do you deny…?
‘I’m sorry. Could you say that again?’
She thinks of Nick wasting away, of how lonely and frightened he must have been; she thinks of all his unimaginable suffering, and of how it has been reduced to nothing more than this. For a moment she forgets to hate him, or to hate herself for ever having loved him. Fat, hot tears roll down both cheeks, and all she can say is, ‘I’ve already had an Aids test. Like a lot of women my age.’
An astonished silence from Stephen Knightly. Then, ‘So you don’t deny it?’
‘I’ve already had an Aids test,’ she says again. ‘I’ve had two, actually, since Nick left. Like a lot of women my age. That’s all I have to say. You can tell Kitty Mozely she has nothing to worry about. Thank you. Goodbye.’
Stephen Knightly looks down at his notes. He thinks he can certainly make a package out of the story. And why not? A bit of midsummer fun. A mini-scoop. M
ight brighten up someone’s day.
Fanny looks down at her notes, at the hand-delivered letter, on the very thick, headed paper…It’s from Clive and Geraldine, or rather, from the Adams Family Practice. Good name, she thinks. She reads it and rereads it. Posh paper, she thinks. They’re taking me to court, she thinks. Perhaps. But the words keep swimming off the page.
Stephen Knightly didn’t tell Fanny where Kitty Mozely got her information from and Fanny didn’t ask because she immediately assumed it was Solomon. And as she sits there, pretending to make sense of the Adamses’ impossibly-worded letter, she finds it’s that – Solomon’s betrayal – which she minds about most.
She glances at her watch. Outside she sees Robert, back on playground duty. He’s out there in the blazing sunshine, all hunched up in his lightweight polo-neck, blowing into his tissue again. He must feel her eyes burning into his back because he turns, with the tissue still to his nose, and gives her a little wave. She looks away. Picks up the telephone and dials.
‘Solomon. It’s me. Fanny.’
‘Fanny!’ He sounds pleased. She pictures his lean, hawk-like face creaking into a smile – his first all day, though she wouldn’t have known it. She hears him stretching back in his chair, settling down to gossip. ‘I was wondering when you’d resurface! I’ve been worried about you. How’s it going? Are you OK?’
She wavers. The temptation to sink into the warmth of his apparent concern briefly prevents her from answering. She clears her throat, reminds herself why she’s telephoned.
‘Fanny?’ He misinterprets her silence. ‘Nothing’s happened? Are the children—’
‘No, no. The children are fine. The children are fine.’ She bites her lip. Realises, to her horror, that if she says another word she’s going to cry.
He waits.
