‘Leave it Tim,’ muttered Astley. ‘She’s got the message.’
‘Yes, I’ve got the message.’
To Tinwood’s surprise, and Petula’s own, she did not pull her hair out, stab him in the eye with Astley’s new tie-pin, or order her food to be taken to Shatby and rammed down Wrath’s throat, all filmed for ten minutes of not-so-commercial air-time.
Instead she gently removed herself from Tinwood’s flimsy grip and brushed some imaginary crumbs off her chest. Whistling tartly at Jenny Hardfield, who had been appointed head waiter for the evening, she said, with a carelessness that was meant to be noticed, ‘Jenny, we are going to a Chinese restaurant in Shatby tonight and will have no need of the dinner that has been prepared with such great care. Can you pack and freeze what you can, and distribute the rest amongst the help to take home with them. I abhor waste. I know you have Mingus to go back to but would you mind staying on here to keep an eye on Jazzy and Evita… Regan will come with me.’
Both of the older children had been brought downstairs for a cursory and ill-tempered introduction to the guests. Unlike Regan who had stood wide-eyed and silent by her mother’s side, Jazzy and Evita had returned to their bedrooms as quickly as they could, scratchy anarcho-punk filtering out from under their closed doors.
‘I’d love to Mrs M, but I promised Seth and Mingus I’d be home to make them a late supper. Otherwise I…’
‘I’m tired Mummy,’ said Regan, ‘I want to go to bed.’
‘I suppose I should step up,’ said Royce, who had been hanging around helpfully all day. ‘No one will miss me at supper, even though I did so want to tell Ned Wrath how much I enjoyed that poem he recited last.’
‘No, no need for that,’ Tinwood raised his hand, the compere demanding silence of a noisy audience, and screwing his small face up painfully he added, ‘The fault, or at least the responsibility for this fiasco, is all mine. He’s my boy and I should have kept an eye on him. So go, go and enjoy yourselves, I’ll hold the fort till you get back. No hurry, no hurry at all. In fact, it won’t do me any harm to listen to what tuneless noise these kids consider to be music. Punk’s been and gone but it still all sounds awful to me. One eye on the stars of tomorrow, eh?’
‘Well, let me put Regan to bed first then.’
Which was all the encouragement the famished party needed as they drained their glasses, crowded into the doorway, and poured hungrily into their cars.
Petula was the first to walk in and coolly stride up to the main table, coming to a majestic halt behind the empty chair next to Wrath. He was alone, drawing a figure of eight on the tablecloth with a damp bottle of beer. A small pyramid of cigarette ends were collected in a saucer; specks of deep-fried seaweed strewn amidst the ash and empty bottles guarding him like sentries asleep in their boxes.
‘It looks like you have had quite a party.’
‘They say one is fun. Do I have the pleasure?’
‘I’m the lady whose house you were meant to be having dinner in,’ Petula announced loudly. Anger had settled her nerves most nicely and she was still at a stage of her life where controlled rage made her attractive, its brute aggression diffused in sparkling malice.
Wrath looked up and smiled clumsily. For a second it seemed as though he were about to deliver a clever riposte but instead settled on, ‘Dinner?’
‘Yes, that thing after lunch but before breakfast.’
‘Ahh, that. I think we used to call that tea.’
He was pleasantly tipsy and had, she guessed, embarked on a pub crawl, no doubt conversing with wise fishermen, retired tram-drivers and, by the speed at which a waiter was bringing him another beer, the staff at this strange place. In truth it was not as bad as she had hoped. The walls were decorated with a troop of colourful dragons, all fiery tongues and bulging eyes, that quite appealed to her, as did the hanging carpets and flags, resplendent in matching jade. In fact, she had to concede, once the tanks holding luminous fish, lobsters and pirate treasure were taken into account, Chinkies had made a reasonable aesthetic fist of making up for its unfortunate entry into her life.
Wrath rubbed his eyes and in a relaxed and friendly voice said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been carried away. Crazy eh? Who rates Shatby over New York? I never thought I did. So like I say, sorry, I’ve reverted to being a selfish teenager. I’d forgot there was this infrastructure in place to help me. I told Tim I just wanted to make the day up as I went along, but then the silly prick brings all the rest of this stuff into it…’
‘Other stuff? I suppose you mean the bloody hard work other people have put their hearts and souls into for you? I’m sorry, but whilst you sport the pose of a great poet who’s above all this pedestrian hassle, others have had their noses to the grindstone. And by the way, hasn’t Dylan Thomas already given this “poet-as-a-struggling-alcoholic” a bad name?’
Wrath burst out laughing, ‘Christ, I’m not that much of a turd, am I?’
The chairs around them were filling up fast and Petula saw that if she wanted to she could make this man pay for what he had done. She might even get away with telling him that the poem he wrote at fifteen was piss. It would, however, mean ignoring a more enjoyable course open to her. In years to come she would persist in administering a punishment, at whatever cost to her own happiness, because by then keeping accounts was the only way she knew of orientating herself. Tonight in Shatby it was different. She was still younger at heart than she knew, and a glorious impulse to follow the flow surged over the tiresome obligation to be herself.
‘Hearts and souls, alcoholism, Dylan Thomas? Sounds like the jig’s up,’ smiled Wrath, still amused, but only potentially. ‘Being found out comes naturally to us all.’
‘Sorry,’ she corrected herself. Ignoring the interest they were attracting Petula slid into the seat next to Wrath, taking care to straighten her back and thrust her breasts where they could be most easily admired. ‘I’m a natural exaggerator, I’m simply unable to prevent myself. I’ll have one of those,’ she pointed to the beer Wrath was drinking.
Wrath nodded appreciatively, ‘Don’t worry about exaggeration, all writers are natural exaggerators, it’s what makes the important details stand out. Could we have another beer please and some platters, I can’t face a full meal,’ he said to the waiter. Turning back to Petula, he added, ‘I think I’m going to choose liquids over solids tonight. I hate mixing food with gassy lager.’
Normally such a sentiment would have left Petula aghast, as would the taste of beer and the smell of so much of it on a man’s breath. She had left Anycock to escape such things, and it had never occurred to her that there could be anything to be said for going backwards.
‘I think I may join you on that mission, my appetite isn’t what it was,’ she said, having looked forward to an extra helping of roast lamb all day.
‘I see you’ve met Petula,’ called Astley who had been sat in a nearby booth, the main table overflowing with takers. ‘Watch her Ned, she’s a woman who isn’t scared to bring fire down on her own positions!’
Petula screwed up her eyes to affect annoyance. In truth she could not have coerced Astley into granting her a greater compliment, the act of paying it creating the impression that they had known one another for fifteen years, at least.
‘Oh come on!’
As in a fairy tale, albeit a Shatby one, two ice-encrusted bottles of beer arrived with a selection of spring rolls and deepfried lumps that looked suspiciously like scampi; the other diners were already a blur, the restaurant’s informality offering unexpected salvation for them all. It was a blur they would not emerge from, in memory or in fact. Not waiting for the entire bottle to be poured, Petula sank the beer in her glass and tapped it impatiently with her knife. Closing one eye, as if taking aim, she necked the second glass as fast as the first and slammed it onto the table harder than she meant to. Her knee was trapped next to Wrath’s, both jammed in by the same table leg. In trying to dislodge it she brought her thigh into the equation, the
effect thrillingly sexual, their skins as close as cloth would allow.
Wrath smiled gamely. ‘Don’t misconstrue me for arrogant, we’ve made a poor start and I don’t believe anyone exists for my amusement, but it has to be said, you’re a natural comic.’
The ability to make others laugh was one compliment Petula had never been paid, largely, she believed, because nothing could be further from the truth. Trust a poet to get it so arseabout-tit. Still, she wasn’t going to disabuse him of so potentially useful an illusion.
‘Funny? All the bloody time. That’s my trouble, I can’t take a single thing seriously.’
‘You’ve seen the funny side of tonight, you’re a good sport… I’m sorry, I’m rubbish at remembering names.’
‘Petula.’
‘Petula. I like that, it’s a good name, even if it puts me in mind of screeching child stars with big hair-dos.’
Petula laughed a little at this. ‘Success at last. To join yours. I thought your last poem might have been pushing it a bit, but if today wasn’t a success for you, don’t tell me what is. It’d be too much work to do it again.’
Resisting the temptation to take her compliment seriously, Wrath replied, ‘I measure the success of anything by how few of my principles I have to compromise to attain it. Reciting that poem was just something for my conscience, to remind me of how bad I can be even when I thought I was being great. The sad thing is I’ve written worse.’
Petula pretended not to hear him out; she could not think of what her principles were, offhand, and did not want to go anywhere near the subject of her conscience. ‘I thought you recited it so people who like things that rhyme might have something to remember you by. The earlier ones were just too glorious to get a location on.’
‘Glorious? You liked them then?’
‘Liked them? How could I not, they were brilliant, you stupid man, absolutely so.’
‘That’s sweet of you, I’m glad you think so.’ Modesty had made Wrath’s face, thin enough to spread her hand across, appear saintly, and, as if worried that this might be a device to manipulate the unwary, he added, ‘I’m good only compared to the competition; compare me to perfection and I’m wanting.’
Petula leant into him and said, ‘Balls to that, none of us pass the utopian gold standard, you can only compare yourself to the alternatives, not to what doesn’t, and never can, exist outside of your head.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, you can only measure your success by how the others are getting on. That was the Communists’ trouble, wasn’t it? They live too much in their imaginations and set an ideal standard, and look what they end up with. Something even worse than what we have.’
‘How would anyone create anything new then?’
‘That’s your problem, you’re the poet!’
Petula emptied the rest of the bottle in her glass, taking care to give Wrath a new one. ‘You must think me a terrible lush – a few hours ago I would have driven groceries to your door just to hear you read another of your poems, an hour ago I could have sawn your legs off, now I find I’m back in the fan club. A couple of glasses of beer can change everything; that doesn’t say much for me, does it?’ She took a sip from his glass. ‘Am I being too forward for you?’
‘Forward fuck. Go right on, over-familiarity is one of my flaws.’
‘And inconsistency mine, friends tell me that enlisting my support is like quoting the Bible. You’ll find the opposite point of view to the one you want support for on the same page… Shit, there it goes again.’
‘What?’
Petula tipped back in her chair, scared that she was already falling dangerously under the influence of Bacchus, ‘I swear I’ve said that before, this has happened before.’
‘Déjà vu?’
‘Yes. That’s it, exactly, even my saying this is part of it.’
‘It’s lucky we didn’t start on the fortune cookies.’
Petula pinched his wrist with undisguised merriment; everything from the tablecloth to Wrath’s shirt sleeve was imbued with a recurring significance she had felt the flicker of all day. A feeling entirely free of dread had entered the room, a new precursor, the becoming-real of a previously hoped-for possibility: happiness.
‘This isn’t how mine normally happen, déjà vus I mean. Every time I have one it feels like the thin end of a wedge, another clue that I’m progressing down the wrong road, or maybe that the worst has happened and I’m already at the end of it. This feels like I’ve picked up a different destiny to the one fate mapped out for me… sorry if that sounds like a line, but there you are. It doesn’t sound like a line, does it?’
‘Only if you think about it.’
‘Whatever you do, not that, none of us are important enough to stand up to that kind of scrutiny.’
Wrath nodded and pushed a plate of cold ribs away. ‘All slaw and no ribs, empty vessels.’
‘Exactly,’ Petula raised her hand to her mouth, a burp uncomfortably close to the offing. ‘I just don’t think there’s that much to any of us,’ she went on quickly, ‘scrutiny is a process of inventing what isn’t there, to hide, basically, nothing at all. That’s what I think the substance of most of us is, don’t you? A nothing we overcompensate for.’ She was going where she felt like going, her first point already forgotten and the next a surprise.
‘A cheerless theory Petula, I wouldn’t exactly be much of a poet if I went for it.’
‘What, you think I’m talking out of my hat? I probably am you know.’
‘I’m for inspiration, I can’t march about thinking we’re banal automatons, each of us powered by our own lack. And I don’t believe you really do either, at least not in your own case, or maybe only in your own case…’
Petula, undone and freed by candour, so different to the appearance of it she normally wore, allowed Wrath to refill her glass, enjoying the originality that had only come to her when honesty forbade its opposite. Raising her eyes to his, she saw that he was listening with an intense and fixed concentration. Petula was not used to being appreciated for her confused, uncollected self, her mask too close a fit to risk the unpredictable outcome of such exposure.
‘Up to the top please, this is my new favourite drink, what’s it called?’
‘Carlsberg Export.’
Petula drained another glass. Here she sat, an ideal companion beside her, knowing what it was to be his equal; what should she do about it, stick or twist? A glimpse of heaven may have been enough for most people, but not Petula.
‘What is it?’ he asked her.
Petula bit her lip coyly. Her bare foot had been pressed against his shoe too long for him to consider it an accident, her toes running up and down the leather like children coursing each other on a staircase.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing. Nothing much. I was only thinking how rare it is in life to look forward to meeting a person and find that the anticipation is rewarded. That what I was scared of happening, hasn’t.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Finding out that I didn’t like you, or that you didn’t like me. That I was a type and that you were too, and that we weren’t each other’s.’
‘What my friends all have in common is that none of them are a type. I write poetry, I don’t try and play “the poet” you accused me of back there.’ He stopped, his voice not sounding real to him. ‘I’m still acting, I can’t help it, reading the lines off a script written by identity. But I try and resist doing it on purpose and becoming too preordained. Anyway, you know what I do. You strike me as pretty unclassifiable; who are you, Petula?’
‘Who am I?’
‘Alright, I’ll make it easier; what do you do?’
Petula smirked and threw back someone else’s glass which was full of a noxious wine that tasted of tomorrow’s aspirin. Wrath’s leg could have been the table, so firm was its support of her own. ‘What do I do? God, how to answer that.’ She paused. ‘I’m a woman of action, not a perfectly rounded g
em or a morsel that a reclusive author knocks out once every fifteen years. I’m a saga to be run ragged with, substantial and episodic. I live in a museum without walls, my life’s a wayward story and the way I live it my art. That’s what I do… and I hope to die alive.’ Petula took Wrath’s glass and inhaled deeply, allowing her hand to fall on his lap. She had meant every unrehearsed word of it.
‘Is this whisky? What kind? I love the smell.’
‘Chinese for all I know. If we were in America, I would tell you that you should run for office. You’re a natural politician.’
‘Politics? I have none, there’s no remedy for this nonsense.’ Petula suppressed the desire to move onto Wrath’s genitals, balanced inches from her finger tips. She knew if she were not careful she would slip into a version of eternity and leave time and the table altogether. Wrath’s careful and wise gaze, possibly an invention of the drink, was having a hypnotic effect. For the first time in her life she was discovering the pleasures of losing control. For nearly the first time she could understand why people drank too much.
‘I sense from your answer that you do what you like all day, that you may even be a woman of leisure.’
‘Correct. Yet with anarchy comes great responsibility and I’m getting to enjoy the hangovers as much as the parties these days. Have you any idea of how much lamb I’m going to be left with in the morning?’
‘I’m sensing you’re a complex creation, not a nothing-at-all.’ ‘Again, correct. I’m one of those things that’s better read about on paper than heard aloud. To listen to me is to know I could never work in real life.’
Wrath let Petula stuff a piece of melon into his mouth, confirming her notion that he was as at least as inebriated as she, or did not mind pretending to be.
‘Why did you go to America?’
‘America, yeah America,’ he replied, spilling ash onto his lap as he tried to put out a cigarette he’d forgotten about, ‘because too many things were going wrong too many times, that was why, and I was desperate enough to believe in a fresh start.’
Nature and Necessity Page 10
