By Flower and Dean Street

by Patrice Chaplin

  ‘Can’t you use an actor?’ Ken asked. He felt all right with men.

  ‘I’ve tried actors, but they don’t look right. He sort of stayed in my mind. Magic appeal.’ He crowed with laughter.

  *

  Christine’s routine: she woke up feeling unbearably depressed. One 5 mgs Valium, a cigarette, and she stood up. Black coffee, three cigarettes and she could face a bath. Another 5 mgs of Valium and that got Matthew to nursery. Mid-morning she was so down she felt a little smoke might help, so she rolled her first joint. 12 o’clock, first sherry. Lunch, a bottle of wine and a bowl of soup — the soup optional.

  Frances thought she was exaggerating.

  One day he actually came home at dinner time and she, weak from her routine, was lying on the couch.

  ‘Where’s my dinner, Christine?’

  She laughed, and when she spoke her voice was slurred. ‘I used to do steak and kidney, chicken curry, cheese flan and always by 8.15. And what happened to it? I gave it to the dog.’ She stubbed out the cigarette and lit another one.

  He shifted about. The guilt when he did see her made coming into the flat during waking hours a nightmare. ‘If you were happy, Christine, you wouldn’t smoke so much. It’s not good for you.’

  Thinking over what she’d been on just that afternoon made her raise her eyes up to the ceiling and laugh.

  *

  He gave up drinking after an incident one Saturday afternoon. He was crossing a bridge over the railway line and he saw, in an alley ahead, a middle-aged woman, her skirt up to her waist, slumped lewdly. Feeling he was going to pass out he clung to the rail. There was no one else about. He looked again and saw she was dead. Her head had been battered, there was a scarlet gash from her stomach to her chin, a piece of her clothing was blowing in the wind.

  He screamed and then turned and ran. He went down the steps at the end of the bridge three at a time. Then he saw a man crossing the road towards him. He whirled round and at the last minute squeezed into the narrow space between a lamp post and the wall; but the man didn’t climb the steps, but carried on up the road, and Ken waited till the footsteps faded. He must get help. He’d get help. The decision was cold, final, and stayed with him as he went back on to the bridge. He’ll get help. He approached the body, cautiously, but before he’d even stepped into the alley, he saw that the body was a bundle of old clothing abandoned by the wall, the bloody gash a bright-red scarf holding it together.

  *

  He met Jane and she said, ‘You look terrible. Thin and fat. You’re fat in the gut and thin round the shoulders. Exercise, my boy.’

  So he started playing tennis.

  *

  Frances thought Ken’s problem was blocked creativity, and Christine, watching him shaving one morning, noticed a sudden, disquieting expression. It would rise up in his eyes and then be gone.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve got blocked creativity. That’s why you’re so moody.’

  ‘You make it sound like constipation. What’s the remedy? Allbran?’ And although he laughed he took the idea seriously. It had occurred to him that if he really needed to write music and wasn’t doing so, it could be causing the disturbing images and distortion. Giving up alcohol had made no difference. He’d start another opera and work on it full time.

  He found Christine in her usual place. ‘I’m going to start writing some music. Perhaps an opera.’

  She was always solemn before the mirror and, with the arrangement of gold bottles, and flowers and scents, she looked as though she was in front of some altar. ‘Oh good.’ She was very pleased. She had even turned round.

  ‘I’ll do just one more commercial.’

  ‘Why not start the opera now?’

  ‘Because one has to have money to support creative ideas.’ He’d also become dependent on the little luxuries. ‘I’ll start in September. Definitely. The end of September.’

  He chose a shirt and tie, and she said, ‘If you could be here this evening. Frances is coming to dinner.’

  ‘What for? I didn’t know you were friendly with her. Why invite her?’

  ‘She’s the only ugly person we know.’

  He spun round. ‘What a stupid thing to say.’

  Her face turned scarlet and she put on three brass bangles. Half the time she was so insecure and drugged she didn’t know what she was saying.

  ‘Twitchy poo, darling.’

  14

  ‘You carve, Frances. I’ll just finish the gravy,’ Christine shouted from the kitchen. ‘Just one piece for me.’

  She hurried in with a bowl of salad. She was wearing a short, low-cut, see-through floral dress and apparently no underclothes. ‘Don’t trouble about doing it dainty. Just hack it. Ken’s hopeless at it. I’m down to 8-5. Isn’t it incredible?’ Gordon came out of the lavatory, and his eyes popped as he saw her. She sat down and her bosom hung over the low table. Ken closed his eyes. ‘Light the candles, poppet,’ she told him. ‘Oh! The gravy.’ She got up and made as much of the movement as she could. Ken sighed.

  Gordon, staring uncontrollably, felt he should say something. ‘You’re very brown.’

  ‘I lie out all day. I’d lie naked if I could, but where is there? I don’t wear a bikini, just a very brief black silk bra and matching pants. Men come and lie in a circle around me, like wolves.’ She shook her shoulders and the top of her nipples could be seen.

  ‘I’ll do it, Fran.’ Ken took the long knife and fork and sliced the meat quickly.

  ‘Well, well. He’ll do it for you, Frances.’

  He threw the fork down, picked up another knife and jabbed at the joint with both knives at once. There was a long silence as everyone watched this peculiar act. Then Christine said, ‘That’s enough love. We can always have seconds.’

  His eyes burned. Yet they were oddly unexpressive. ‘Who’d like potatoes?’

  Christine had given a lot of thought to hobbies and other topics of conversation since he’d last told her she was bored and boring. She realised contriving an interest in something and talking about it could be disastrous. She couldn’t handle politics. She didn’t have the education to do much with general knowledge, so she decided to talk about what she did know and was interested in — herself. She’d start with slimming and childbirth.

  ‘So I only gave one push and there was Matthew. It was incredible. The nurses thought it was out of this world.’

  There was a long, hysterical silence. Then Gordon and Frances said together, ‘Doesn’t Christine look — isn’t she looking super.’

  Ken said, ‘Yes.’ His smile was sincere. He got up off the floor. ‘They’ve done pretty extensive market research already. Joel wants to deepen the colour of the tins. He says they’re not different enough. The slimming jingle’s got to go quicker. He wants an overweight dog, its rump dragging on the floor, on the front, and the effect of slimming Snap — i.e. a greyhound — on the back.’

  ‘He’s twitched, that guy,’ said Christine, clearing the table. ‘And that Bunty creature’s all boobs and no brains. Has Ken told you his secret?’

  ‘What secret?’ they asked.

  ‘I’d better not say. Sorry. Perhaps I’ve said too much.’

  Alarmed, Ken shot up. His dog barked. ‘What are you saying?’

  Gordon and Frances looked at each other. It was still too early to go home. Christine mouthed the word, ‘Opera.’

  ‘Oh that.’ He flung himself back on the couch.

  ‘Why get so twitched? Wowee!’

  Gordon followed her into the kitchen to help with the coffee.

  ‘I can’t stand people prying,’ said Ken.

  ‘She wasn’t prying,’ Frances said, gently.

  ‘Do you feel you want to pry?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘There you are then.’ He leaned back and slowly relaxed. Frances, her long hair held off her face by two brown hair-slides, sat by his feet. He felt easy with her. Frances, with her pale, unpainted face, didn’t threaten him. Her flesh was
unremarkable and covered up. She didn’t smell. Her voice was soothing. She would never wiggle. Her desires, if any, were secret and covered by the opaque flesh.

  They heard Christine say, ‘I always sleep naked between silk sheets.’

  ‘Do you put perfume on them?’

  ‘I put enough on myself, love.’ She laughed fiercely. To hear her, Ken thought, you’d never think she was beautiful. Since he’d withdrawn his love she was unanchored and coarse. He grabbed his mineral water.

  ‘Do you miss drinking?’ Frances asked.

  ‘I was drinking far too much. I ... Do you think it could affect your brain?’

  ‘Well, it affects your perceptions.’

  ‘Would the brain damage be irreversible so that symptoms carried on even though you’d stopped?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d drunk enough for anything like that. What are you worried about? DTs?’

  ‘No, nothing like that,’ and he changed the subject.

  When she next mentioned his giving up he said he’d done it because he was getting fat.

  Christine took Gordon into the bedroom to show him the sheets. Eight lighted Japanese lanterns hung from the ceiling. There was a rubber-plant in one corner, an old antler coat-stand, and a row of old cinema seats against the wall.

  ‘You’ve done this place really great. You’ve got such taste.’

  It was the first compliment Christine had had in a long time, and for a minute she thought she was going to cry.

  ‘Have you seen your mother?’ Frances asked Ken.

  ‘I could see my mother was a lunatic when I was four,’ he replied. ‘I had to wait till I was fourteen to get away, but I did get away.’

  ‘Does she still push you?’

  ‘Not any more. I push myself. That’s enough. My father was rather a sweet person. A bit of an arse-licker but luckily not many people knew, because, as with everything else, my mother had the monopoly on his arse-licking.’

  ‘What does she do now?’

  ‘She overpowers people. Her au pairs disappear. I think she eats them. You need to take your entero-vioform with you if you go to dinner up there, I can tell you.’

  Christine was in the room, sitting lasciviously on the edge of the steel-rimmed chair. He took no notice of her.

  ‘She likes food with mould on. I think she thinks it’s nourishing. I can’t stay in the house more than five minutes. I force myself to do twenty. I see her just enough to keep my guilt to a minimum and not enough to let her tear me up. Still, you can’t blame your parents. You have a choice.’

  ‘What choice?’ asked Christine.

  ‘What you do. What you are.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Of course. Every minute of my life. I don’t think I could go on if I didn’t.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ said Christine.

  Frances said, ‘So you believe in self-determination?’

  ‘Certainly. What else is there?’

  Frances smiled. Smiling, she had an enigmatic, cat-like quality. Christine started finding attractive things about her, but if he’d talked to a dustbin for more than three minutes she’d have found something appealing about the dustbin and got jealous. She writhed on the chair, her long legs mauve-brown in the light. Frances thought that to be as lovely as that must surely mean to be without problems. Even with yellow hair she looked beautiful.

  Ken leaned close to Frances as he got his glass of water and said, ‘If you marry you’ll have a meaningful marriage, Fran. Most people, when they get married, just throw themselves into the slop pail.’

  Christine moved quickly. She seemed to leap over the low table. She hit him twice, and then stood breathless with rage, as he cowered, hands covering his head.

  She looked as though she was going to spit but turned and went into the bedroom.

  Gordon and Frances looked away as he sat up and straightened his tie.

  ‘She’s so fucking violent.’ He reached for his water, his hand shaking. ‘Just an example, Frances, of how meaningful it can get.’

  *

  He played tennis with Jane every day. The games were short because she always won, but he spent a lot of time watching her train for the club tournament. She was always asking him to come to dinner, to have lunch, a drink, to meet her husband, but on the other side of a net was how he liked her best.

  Jane phoned Christine and talked about a washing-up machine.

  ‘How’s Ken’s tennis?’ Christine asked.

  ‘Uneven. His arms are wishy-washy because his wrists aren’t strong. Then suddenly he gets quite a different arm-movement and plays like the fury. He can’t keep it up because he doesn’t know how he gets it.’

  ‘I suppose he’s not consistent about turning up either.’

  ‘He is,’ she cried. ‘On time too. Come to dinner tomorrow night. Do you know Daniel and Connie? They’re coming too. Bring Ken.’

  ‘I’ll ask him but he’s so incredibly busy.’

  He was too incredibly busy.

  *

  Ken did go to Jane’s club tournament and watched her win the single and mixed doubles. He didn’t remember much about it, except that it was very hot and overflowing with boring people. Afterwards, in the clubhouse, kids tore through the piles of cakes and Jane stood close to a short middle-aged Jew and looked flushed, whether from his proximity or sporting success Ken wasn’t sure. He went up to a rather plump pretty woman who was pouring lemonade and asked for a drink. She looked sad.

  15

  Like the dormant stage of an illness it lay low for some months and it wasn’t till nearly Christmas time when it started again, violently. Its return coincided with the obligatory twenty minutes in Highgate to see his mother.

  ‘I hear your wife is very thin. Is she ill?’

  He dispelled any such hope. ‘Slimming. Sorry.’ She also wore horn-rimmed glasses with plain lenses and sat up in bed reading the dictionary, but he didn’t tell her that. He’d clung to Frances, and Christine, clinging to him, had once again changed her image. Frances was insignificant, plain, intelligent and kind. Glasses and the dictionary were the nearest Christine got to it.

  ‘Have a drink.’

  ‘I don’t drink.’

  ‘Your father was an alcoholic, among other things.’

  ‘Pack it up. He’s dead.’

  ‘But you’re not alcoholic. You were breast-fed properly.’

  His head swam. He looked out of the window, but her hanging, shrivelled breasts were too ripe an image to escape from.

  ‘You were suckled as often as you wanted —’

  ‘I warn you, Mother. You’re making me feel distinctly queasy and I’m not in the mood to be too particular about finding a bog.’

  ‘I’d like my four thousand back.’

  ‘You’ll get it.’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘I need it at the moment.’

  ‘I think you made a mistake, Ken. The hanging thing by the front door is a nineteenth-century lantern, not three brass balls.’

  ‘I’m trying to write an opera.’

  He looked at his watch. Twelve minutes to go. ‘They’re nice flowers, Mother.’

  ‘You’ve changed.’ Her eyes were baleful. ‘I suppose it’s that tart.’

  ‘My wife is not a tart.’

  ‘No, you’re right, Ken. She’d be all right if she was, but she’s only half a tart. A prick-teasing shop-girl on the make. No courage. Don’t talk to me about her!’ she yelled. ‘Get out of my house!’

  Eleven minutes. His mother’s face was scarlet, her lungs rattled.

  ‘I don’t think sending my wife a pair of corsets promoted much good feeling between you,’ he said smoothly.

  ‘She’s like a cow in rut. All that wriggling and wobbling. She always looks as though she’s got at least three tits, and I might add, that’s her only distinction. Pour me a drink. Not too much water.’

  Ten and a quarter.

  ‘They’re almost ripe. Heavy and bright.’
<
br />   ‘I asked about your son.’

  He shut his eyes. ‘I thought you were talking about my tomatoes.’ They hung in his mind, fleshy, almost bursting with juice, and they reminded him of something else ...

  ‘Are you going to put your boy down for Eton?’

  ... Something he shouldn’t think about. ‘I’m sure we’ve had this conversation before.’ His mind was sticking again. He was sitting down but didn’t remember doing so. The images were flitting at the edges of his mind, alien images.

  ‘You don’t look well.’

  ‘I’m not sleeping.’ They didn’t belong to him. He thought he felt hungry and went over to the cake-stand and picked up the long knife.

  ‘Get out of that marriage.’

  ‘It’s not possible.’

  Suddenly he remembered Christine cutting herself — especially the blood, startling against the pale skin. She’d screamed. There shouldn’t have been a scream. Sweating, he moved to the window. He was still holding the knife.

  ‘Get out of it.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Of course you can. Especially you. You ought to be used to it.’

  Her face had been clenched with pain. He saw it clearly and was surprised that he felt no sympathy. Suddenly he found himself sexually excited. He dropped the knife and pressed his head against the pane of glass. ‘I must play tennis. I must play tennis.’

  ‘Can’t you keep still, Ken?’

  He felt as though he was on fire. Frances’ face was white, opaque, and he held it in his mind, held it pressed against the thoughts like a cooling compress.

  ‘Are you going to leave her?’

  ‘I’m trying to make this one work.’ Remembering the blood spreading and dripping was a delicious sensation.

  ‘Everyone makes mistakes. The worst one is sticking to something when it’s not right for you and you aren’t happy.’

  ‘I see you’re having a moment of lucidity. Don’t tire yourself.’ He still had an erection.

  ‘You should choose a partner on your level, emotionally and up here.’ She touched her head. ‘That girl is slow-witted. No wonder you’re not sleeping.’

  ‘Christine is loyal. The marriage will go on and on.’