She woke in tears. The self-induced brainwashing that motored into action as soon as she opened her eyes had broken down. She could remember everything. It all seemed like terrible déjà vu that had only come half-true, the rest of it patiently waiting for her later in the day. With mechanical swiftness she surveyed her past for a prayer, ‘Lord, if I forget you today do not forget me…,’ repeating it until she was sure it was only words, feeble and human, too small for her predicament. God was the situation, not watching it and providing her with lines, it was his immense awfulness she needed rescuing from.
She was saved by a knock on the door from an unlikely ally, her husband, who made a habit of avoiding her until she had washed and dressed.
Gingerly he turned the handle and half-peered at her, the length of his tall body and most of his long face hidden behind the heavy oak door. It had been Petula’s idea that they take separate rooms; the house was large enough to cope with it and Noah’s snoring, sleep-talking and tendency to need at least his side of the bed annoyed her.
‘Everything okay?’
‘What do you want?’
Her insolent tone was justified by what she thought of as his shiftiness; Noah’s unfailing consideration, however lightly applied, was proof of his guilt.
‘I thought I heard you make a noise.’
‘I asked you what you want. You’re perfectly free to chase around the house worrying about noises in your own time. Have you any idea how important today is, how much rides on it?’
‘Christ Petula, you’re cranking it up a bit early, aren’t you?’
‘Do you? Do you have any idea how much hinges on today, how much its outcome matters?’
‘Well, I know it does to you, I mean, it does, that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. Something’s come up, I’m afraid, no avoiding it, I have to go to London, be there tomorrow morning first thing. Means I have to leave today of course, to get there on time. Damned inconvenient. But no way around it, I’m afraid.’
Petula breathed a sigh of relief, her first of the day. Still, there was no point letting him off the hook too lightly. ‘What you mean is, although you know how important today is to me, for your daughter, and probably most of the rest of the county, and how great a part in it I and this house have to play, you’re buggering off to London for some “something” and leaving me in the lurch, right? In other words doing what you usually do, disappearing when you’re needed.’
‘Come on Petula, don’t lay it on with a trowel.’
‘That’s you in a nutshell Noah Montague! When the chips are down you always fail to come through!’
‘You go too far.’
‘How else am I to achieve balance if not by consulting the extremes?’
‘I’m sorry? What?’
She shook her head, it was a line she had been beating into shape ever since London, and all to waste on a plank like Noah. No matter, she would have plenty of opportunity to use it again later in the day on appreciative targets.
‘Never mind, do as you will, I’m tired. Tired.’ And on this point she was in earnest; not only tired but utterly exhausted. To always remain prepared for a battle, one that she would have to start if it failed to rise from natural causes, was tiring, especially as the fruits of victory would not be enjoyed by her but by future generations, however much it hurt her to think of them. Like a Communist prepared to lay down her life so the masses could inherit the kingdom of heaven on earth, Petula was ready to sacrifice her peace of mind, such as it was, for her contribution to ‘Shatby’s Wrath’. In doing so she would become greater than Shatby and its Wrath, so that the hour would come when ‘Montague Day’ would be how Regan’s children would remember the weekend, if only because Petula intended to be around to remind them.
‘Well, I wish you every, um, success and hope everything accords to the big plan and all that, Petula. With the thought you’ve put in, well, I hope it all comes off, eh?’
‘Leave me.’
Noah closed the door behind him. Petula lay back down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling, an outbreak of winking the only dent in her immaculate self-possession.
‘If I forget you, don’t, whoever else asks you to remember them, forget me…’
*
She need not have worried, the day was efficiency personified; like a perfect wedding, it passed quickly and unmemorably, the rigid planning giving every appearance of a spontaneous sequence of events. The actors, audience and Regan did all they were supposed to with barely a glint of improvisation, wayward inspiration holding its counsel in the minor poets’ tent where a bar had been set up for marginalised malcontents. Of course, Petula did not enjoy any of it, could not, as it would not have been perfect if she had. The actors would not have soared, the canapés would not have vanished agreeably and people would not have left insisting it was perfect and later on wondered whether it was, concluding that it must have been for someone. It was that type of day, the sort that provides its own meaning so that those that take part in it do not have to, their own pleasures and preferences experienced in enjoyable anonymity elsewhere. Fittingly Petula allowed herself a little time off ordering, scolding and fairly well exploding, to watch the entrance and oratory of Wrath, instinct reminding her that recent acquaintance with a dish was the first step in its consumption.
As usual she had to fight the fear that she had fought too hard for too little. The announcement that Wrath had arrived took her by surprise, and by the time she had successfully cleared the hospitality area, he was halfway to his podium. With the rough assistance of Max Astley, who rather peevishly looked as though introductions could wait, Petula was pushed along a line of other grinning ladies into Wrath’s path, Regan lost in the melee. The revelation was that after all the fear and fury, Wrath was a revelation, and on first sight to boot. A gaunt man of medium height and build, Wrath’s face – almost too serious, wrinkles and creases cutting his forehead into segments and cracked laughter lines bracketing his broad grin – emphasised a care that looked to be punching a way out of the contours of his cruel handsomeness. Under a newly cropped haircut, already grey and dispelling any Byronic glamour, Wrath’s black eyes alternated between asking and knowing, a pinched nose and Chaplin moustache throwing any swift first impression Petula wished to form. She could not quite tell whether he was an attractive man who had tried to play it down, or merely a plain one with a very interesting aura. The simplicity of his dress was a study in minimal elegance; an RAF-blue tunic and trousers, both fitted and slightly worn, had been designed by Brooks Brothers to look like they were found on a Ministry of Defence instillation on Ikley Moor, the deception succeeding as ladies swooned, cameras flashed and men thumped him happily on the back, welcoming home one of their own.
‘Doesn’t he look like himself,’ Astley gushed, ‘not like that pretentious misanthrope Hughes in his schoolmasterly tweeds and Hushpuppies! He’s a good lad!’
‘He looks,’ said Petula chewing her lip, ‘like my father when he was young…’
‘A one-off, a complete one-off, here, Ned, Ned! This is Petula Montague, she’s taken the reigns and… Ned, just a tick, a second please Ned!’
Petula’s disappointment was easy to fathom. Beyond surface politeness and a quick bow of the eyes, Wrath seemed unbothered by her or any of the other stampeding matrons that had gathered for a pound of flesh. Meeting her stare quickly on the way to someone else’s, Wrath skipped past Petula, squeezing Astley’s ear affectionately, and took his place on the podium. He had certainly been aware of her, she was in a violet frock chosen for its effect on the poetic imagination, but no more than aware. Petula’s recovery was instantaneous.
‘What a bore for him, having to push past these salivating dregs when what he needs to do is focus. He’s actually, probably, quite nervous.’
Astley was impressed. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself, Petula. Though if I know Ned he’ll be so far in the zone that he won’t have noticed a thing.’
‘Well of course.’
Wrath’s performance was epically and abruptly short, just two poems, neither longer than six verses. The first he roared out, slowly for there was so little of it, the volume of his delivery a device to overcome his fearful and topsy nerves, Petula was right; the rest of the audience confusing it for Viking aggression and loving his colourful directness. Wrath relaxed. He had entered that small segment of omnipotence that public performance occasionally afforded him, one of the happy privileges of talent.
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘I open my mouth and never know whether the words are going to come out until I hear them.’ His voice was unaffectedly northern and there was a ripple of appreciative laughter, for this was his audience, his readership. Having succeeded in providing them with the illusion of unrepeatable significance, they were now ready to follow him anywhere.
‘Shatby, what can I say,’ he laughed, ‘you’re a lady. The Atlantic City of the North!’
This provoked a number of ‘Hear hear!’s and a group of geology teachers, blind drunk on Buckfast wine consumed on a collective empty stomach, were inspired to begin a rendition of ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow’, the crowd joining in for ‘Three cheers for Neddy Wrath!’
Wrath looked ready to strip off and sunbathe in the cloud-broken light; his second poem was quietly and passionately spoken, his face full of reclining intensity and modest assurance. The crowd, sensing that they had been trusted with great art, and flattered by the honour, showed they were worthy of it by applauding madly and heartily. Without consulting the large book resting on the lectern in front of him, Wrath stepped away from it and lifting his hands in a bid to overthrow any remaining self-consciousness said, ‘I love you, the ones I’ve always loved, never loved or never loved until today, all of you. I mean it. I look out at you all and wonder, wonder really what you expect me to say, how I could have got in a position where my words are worth your time, your money, your interest, maybe even your respect. I’ll never know, I just keep on with them because there’s nothing I know beyond them. I mean it, I don’t even know why you’re listening, I love you. And I thank you.’ Although he was smiling they felt as though he might cry, this unplanned statement, worthy of a Formula One winner, as heartfelt as anything he had ever written.
‘Rock on, Shatby!’ a fan shouted and Wrath fended off a tear.
‘More,’ called Petula, ‘more!’
No one noticed her, the audience was only looking one way, they were watching a break with planning, here was a free human being and anything could happen next. Petula watched too; Wrath’s defiance of the thing that stood before chaos and the void, her belief in a society of fixed mores and meanings, was as compelling and odd as witnessing her house being burnt down in slow motion. To plan what was to happen next was Petula’s way of protecting herself against what would happen next if she did not have a plan: Wrath was not like this. Touching his face thoughtfully, Wrath glanced at his shoes and chuckled, ‘Here’s one you might not have heard before,’ adding, ‘the good news is I didn’t think up the idea. I ripped it off some foreign bloke I thought no one would have heard of. It’s all about a naive young idiot hating and loving where he comes from, the first thing I wrote and it’s still all up here,’ he tapped his head, ‘so forgive me if, as the Yanks say, it sucks big ones.’
‘An exclusive,’ whispered Astley noisily, ‘who cares if it’s juvenilia, he’s giving us a fucking exclusive!’
Wrath shook his head, like one who knew better, cleared his throat and began:
‘This town of semis, pub, promenade and pier,
I’ve seen and walked through year on year:
good times and great times, sad times and all climes.
I had you when I were happy, you had me when I were sad,
with so much incident, feeling, I know,
it were mad.
The point of you were heart and feeling
that I’ll seek on sidewalk, chateau and far-off ceiling,
because Shatby, you were me, and ought to know,
that I’ll carry you, sea salt and vinegar, wherever I fucking go.’
It was enough that he had started and no day for discernment. ‘“Were”?’ muttered Astley to Eager. ‘Why all these “were”s?’
‘Because he were fifteen and from Yorkshire,’ groaned Eager, coming up behind him, ‘and were wanting to be a poet, like.’
At the signal from Petula, who had remembered herself and followed the hunch that Wrath may have peaked prior to this unscripted encore, Lady Oswaldo, the famous opera singer who had been born up the road in Swinefield, began singing a libretto commissioned for the day, over the whoops and cheers of the Shatby mob. Perfection was back where it ought to be.
Petula was just wondering whether she was wise to share Wrath with the editor of Faber’s new French girlfriend at dinner, and if a tweak to the seating plan may yet be possible, when Astley grabbed her arm.
‘Bugger it, the bird has only gone and bloody flown!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Neddy boy! He’s sodded off some place and done it sharpish. Timmy thought he was with me and I thought he was going to the dignitaries for one last round of handshakes, and they thought he was doing that too.’
Petula cast her eye at the group of portly men and women in pinstripe suits and flag-day dresses, staggering about in a drunken dance of backslapping and high-pitched laughter. ‘He’s certainly not there, not that they’d care now. They’re shitfaced.’
‘Of course they don’t care, he’s already worked his magic, and what magic eh? Yes, he’s played his part to a T, that’s the business end of it sealed up at any rate. We can all afford to go home and relax.’
‘But what about dinner?’ cried Petula, unable to restrain the desperate tilt to her voice. ‘What about my dinner!’
‘Oh,’ blanched Astley, rather taken aback by his hostess’s need, ‘I’d forgotten about that. Forgive me, he’ll turn up by then I’m sure, you know what poets are like… Everyone’s clearing off anyway, give him a few hours, he’ll be back.’
And turn up he did, but with a caveat that a soul less battle-hardened than Petula’s would have cracked at. Dinner was all good and well, that part could stay as it was, but the location chosen for it was no longer to Wrath’s liking. Wrath wanted to stay in Shatby, his Shatby, and had made a wonderful new discovery on the walk he took, having vanished at the festival’s end. There was a brand new Chinese restaurant on the seafront, Chinkies, that he had never heard of before, and he wanted the party to join him there as soon as they could.
‘Chinkies!’ Petula gasped and swallowed hard. Now was no time to go to pieces, but the past few hours’ wait had been bad enough without that. ‘Can we be thinking of the same place? The one opposite the old pier? It’s not even a proper restaurant, I mean, they serve prawn crackers and that sweet-and-sour stuff that tastes of goo. All I ever hear is of people going there and coming home sick. Really, the place is a hymn to food poisoning.’
‘Have you been there then?’ asked Royce, who had been following developments anxiously.
‘Hardly, I don’t need to. Chinkies,’ Petula shook her head, ‘I mean come on! He’s supposed to be an intelligent man.’
For the past two hours Tinwood and the other guests, actors and Mayor had hovered round the telephones, complimenting Petula on the artwork, beautiful views and endless succession of cold meats and pâtés that had filled the dreadful waiting. Unsettling as the prospect of crossing this formidable woman was, at least a way out of the stasis had presented itself.
‘Yes,’ said Tim Tinwood, ‘I’m afraid so, Chinkies. I think the idea of a foreign restaurant in Shatby fascinates him, so different from his, er, memories of the place. And he’s developed quite a penchant for all that Oriental crap since moving over to the States where they eat it by the bowl-full. Apparently. Or is that Jap food, yeah, it might be, anyway, point being our boy loves it. Still,’ he added, resuming his professional face, ‘I
can’t tell you how sorry I am Mrs Montague. So sorry. I know how much trouble you’ve gone to tonight to make everything succeed and, of course, managed it all in the best possible taste.’ Tim Tinwood was scared stiff, though to his credit, did not appear to be. A bent man with a monkish beard, platform shoes and an outfit too flamboyant to be confused for anything other than the attire of a showbiz pimp, which usually disguised Tinwood’s furtive nervousness. And his booming stagy voice, borrowed from his clients, dispelled any lingering suspicion that his confidence was a con. ‘Give me a luvvie over a bloody poet any day Mrs Montague, at least I know where I stand with those boys. Actors never let you down. Christ knows what Neddy’s thinking of, reminds me of the time he blew me out in Trieste, all because he wanted to rescue some donkey tied up in a field…’ Tinwood adjusted his bow-tie and tried to ignore the hunch that he had just addressed a volcano that would erupt as soon as he uttered another word.
‘Cheers Timbo,’ said Donald Eager through a yawn. The wait had been merely boring for him, hunger, tiredness and aching joints trumping any other consideration. ‘Well, now that we know what we’re doing, even if we are to feast on muck, can we damn well hurry up and do it. Sorry Lady P, Wrath’s a dredge who enjoys ruining everything, what did I tell you? And one other thing, I’m not going to use fucking chopsticks. I hate those fiddly little bastards.’
Tinwood gently removed Petula’s wrists from her hips and took them into his moist palms, conscious that this display of affectionate solidarity might occasion a punch on the nose, for Petula, inflamed and shaking, towered over him like an agitated Dominatrix.
‘I really don’t know what to say, Mrs Montague,’ he mumbled through the menacing fire of her silence. ‘We can’t very well let our prize asset, damn him for being so, dine alone with a lot of rice-wine merchants, can we? I’m afraid he is the star of this particular show,’ and correcting himself, ‘one of the stars at any rate.’ Out of the corner of his eye he could see another succulent joint of lamb being carried into the kitchen, the smell of clam chowder wafting fragrantly through the brightly decorated hallway, bowls of roses and lit candles ready for a night that never was. ‘He rang from the restaurant you see, sounding like his mind was very much made up. These stubborn sons of York, reverse snobbery I call it…’
Nature and Necessity Page 9
