Nature and Necessity

by Tariq Goddard

  ‘Aye, you look like you’ve been having to squeeze the laughter out tonight my dear, that’s the thing about so-called good times, there’s always something bogus about them, especially when we have to try too hard for too little, if you take my meaning. So tell me to shut up if you want to. I don’t mean to pry into what isn’t my business, not my style, which is why I say stop me if you feel so inclined. Aye, tell me to shut my big lid; but you know sticking my nose in is not my way, never has been. In normal circumstances there would be nothing to say. But look at this lot for crying out aloud Petula, just look at them. They’re not your sort of people, they’re not my sort of people, I don’t know whose sort of people they are because, and I’m going to be perfectly frank with you here, they’re not people. They’re rats, furry-tailed rodent scum to a man jack, every one of ’em without exception, look at them for shame, call that dancing? Call that music? They look like they’ve spent their lives cavorting round the sewers of Scunthorpe. Not a decent lad amongst them. Say what you like about me, people do, but in my line of work, and in all my years in that work, real work mind you, not the prancing and posing this filth call graft, the one thing in all those years I’ve learnt, beyond any doubt, and if you’ll pardon my French because there’s no delicate way of putting it…’

  Please, please, get to the point and then shut up, thought Petula, squeezing her knees together to resist the urge to get up and dance. Dance, dance and dance, it was all she yearned to do, her limbs contracting in mighty explosions of energy, as if a great wind were blowing her forward, her body seeming to have made the decision to fly for her…

  ‘…So if you’ll forgive my bluntness and excuse my calling a spade a spade, I’ll put it to you in terms any layman, fitter or joiner would understand: I know cunts well, every kind of cunt mind you, not just the ones that normally hang round with you or were brought here tonight, every kind of one. Now that is something I’ve wanted to say to you for a long time, never knew how, never felt like it was the right time to, but the despicable, yes despicable’ – Trafalgar crinkled his nose as if he were trying to avoid inhaling a decomposing object that pervaded the air – ‘display of bad manners that I saw, and still witness, here, tonight, forced my hand. You can’t go on like this Petula! Letting weak and evil people decide your priorities for you, you need a firm hand. No stop, let me finish, I know you’re an iron lady, one of the flintiest, but that’s not my point. Even the strongest need guidance and help, that’s what I had my Bessie for, and now she’s gone I need someone else and so, well so do you. That man’s no good for you, if he was he’d be here, at your side, making a stand. What I’m saying is you need help to drive the cunts out of your life, and then to fasten the hatches and not let them in again. Oh I know this isn’t the language you’d normally hear me use, but why keep lying to ourselves? Help me Petula, help me help you! Help drive them out, my dear, and together we’ll drown them like the vermin they are! There, I’ve said it, and be sure of it, once we’ve achieved their drowning, and by God we will, well then – no, let me finish – then you’ll be ready to be led into the sunny uplands of common sense and, if I might so bold, good companionship with one worthy of you.’

  Trafalgar cleared his throat, his face quite violet after the exertion of delivering this speech, and, leaning forward in his chair, waited for a response, the heavy force of his breath spreading cheesy moisture over Petula’s already soaked arm. Not knowing how to reply, Petula sat on her hands, all the better to trap them and stifle the overflowing desire to wave them in the air. She had always known Trafalgar was a stentorian bore, but never realised he was quite this nutty.

  ‘Well my dear? What say you?’

  ‘I really could use a glass of water.’

  ‘Water be damned! About my offer girl, what say you to that?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘I…’

  All Petula could think of, absurdly she knew, was asking Trafalgar if he wanted to dance. Irrelevant as her unmade offer to take the floor might be, it was still the reaction least likely to offend the man. The music had grown so loud that she could hardly hear the bulk of his speech, and what she had heard annoyed her, not on account of Trafalgar’s words or intentions, simply because it was talk, and talk was one activity she wanted no more of at present. She was wasting time, Petula needed to dance and recognise the authority of the virtual remote control planted on her back. This device, installed by whatever laboratory Tinwood’s ecstatic pill had been devised in, enjoyed complete control over her future movements; the thought of potentially gyrating against a speaker making Petula tremble all at once. She was not herself, but this time it was a blessed release. Tinwood had, against all odds, come good!

  Licking her lips in anticipatory pleasure, not caring whether the technological intensity of the latest track excused her rudeness or not, Petula edged her chair away from Trafalgar’s and prepared to get up.

  Trafalgar appeared not to notice this tactical displacement. ‘What say you Petula? A man can hardly reveal all that I have and not expect a word or two back, can he? That would hardly be in the spirit of the game. The game, you hear? Make no mistake, a game is what we’re playing here, the life game, aye, high-stakes poker my dear, the roulette wheel, the card table, I make my move and then you, my prickly pear, pull out your little finger and make yours? Hmmm? Now I know you may have found me shocking. You wouldn’t be the first, you might even have thought that I didn’t have it in me to be such a coarse old badger, eh? I don’t say it was easy for you to hear, but what’s the use in forcing the back door when the front one will do very well for the same purpose? Eh? You don’t, when all’s said and done, make friends with a pirate like me for reassurance but for the challenge, aren’t I right? Come. We’re friends. Speak openly, I won’t bite!’

  ‘I…’

  By now Petula did not have any memory of why she was friends with Trafalgar. Far away in the distance, she recognised a lifelong tendency to befriend the powerful, rich and established. Whether this was the best way of ensuring her security or a means of joining their number Petula could not decide; only that her pursuit had forced her to overlook their glaring character deficiencies, namely that most of them were as dull as Trafalgar. Like that other great imperative she followed at all costs, fawning obsequiousness to the glamorous, creative and exciting, her desire to know every wealthy person who crossed her path was unquestioning and long subsumed into instinct. As such it did not really count as a decision, far less a conscious choice, inspiring Petula to exclaim, ‘Friends? Us, Landon? I never had any choice. I sought you because of the way I am!’

  ‘Exactly, you put your finger on it my girl! We were made for each other! Neither of us had a choice. Oh, I grant you, we’re not everyone’s idea of star-crossed lovers in their first flush of youth but chaff to that! I always knew you saw me as another father, yes, a father figure, to replace the one you never had. And soon you’ll learn I can be much more than that!’

  Petula nearly choked on her tongue. This put things into clearer focus. The impatience she had always blocked, towards this man and every other local worthy she toadied to, along with the years of being subjected to their judgments, small-mindedness and irritating unawareness of other minds, spilled out into a curtly-put, ‘No! No! You’re wrong, all of you!’

  ‘Yes, yes! We understand each other only too well; don’t be too clever and not good enough, our connection is an exceptional one lass, exceptional! We understand each other, you can’t take a thing as important as that for granted, I’m old enough to know. Be sure of it. Being right is one of the few things I’ve been able to enjoy in exactly the same way through the years, a pleasure that’s never changed. And by all the angels in heaven, I’m right this time too! Love has no time limits.’

  Trafalgar was right about his base assumption, Petula could grant him that. She did understand him, understood him well and despised what she understood; she had had enough of taking her place in a gam
e of societal musical chairs that dignified one aspect of her being and neglected every other. To look at what it had incubated and ultimately led to, namely a septuagenarian shopkeeper in a smoking jacket slobbering sweet nothings to her, was indictment enough of her former policy. What could be more ridiculous than cultivating a father figure when she hated her father? In fact, hated all fathers; no man had sired her, she was the product of pure alchemy. Tinwood’s television trash were rodents, on that Trafalgar was correct, but in controlled circumstances they were devourable, whereas this old man was food for the moths, and more importantly, they were dancing and he wasn’t. Petula stood up.

  ‘Where are you going? Not out there, with them, surely?’

  ‘I’m sorry Landon, there are other guests I have to see.’

  Panic seized Trafalgar, and he lunged for Petula’s wrist.

  ‘I’ve made a fearful ass out of myself, haven’t I?’

  ‘No more than I have. Would you please take your hand away.’ ‘Listen to me Petula, you must listen to me, I don’t usually announce my goals until I’ve achieved them. I took a chance with you and…’ It was a weak countermove, Trafalgar could see that Petula was gazing longingly at the dancefloor. The actors had been joined by a surprising number of guests, the party, against all odds, finding its collective pulse thanks to the enigmatic nonentity behind the decks.

  ‘It’s no use pretending to enjoy yourself, no one will believe you, you don’t fool me like that!’

  ‘Please stop squeezing, you’re hurting me.’

  Trafalgar let go of Petula’s hand and surveyed her with compassionate distaste. Deciding to give her one final piece of wisdom, but catching her impatient eye, Trafalgar abbreviated it at the point of delivery. ‘You know Petula, you do very well, but you can’t abolish time. You’re larger than life now but only because you’re scared of it. Mark my words and mark them well…’

  Petula was already away, throwing first one shape with her hand, then another, coyly circling the cluster of ravers without knowing if she could shake off every last semblance of restraint and respond to the music in the sole way it demanded. To her immense satisfaction she found she could, the rhythm disarmingly easy to follow so long as she did not mind moving in a way that had little to do with her existing ideas of dance. Petula had lived through the Sixties, not the swinging version, yet close enough to copy the manic deliberation of the girls she watched jive on television on the few occasions when the opportunity to do so herself arose. Tonight the music asked for no such accompaniment, simply for her to mirror its chaotic assemblages and sometimes clear circuitry, which in practice meant that Petula began to jog sideways on the spot, her arms flying about either side of her like an excitable lollipop lady.

  ‘Yo, yo, yo!’ hollered Fogle, taking a break from blowing the referee’s whistle round his neck, ‘Look who’s got the bloody spear out of her arse and’s going for it!’

  ‘I’m loving it,’ shrieked Petula, ‘really, really, really!’

  ‘You what? You what, you what, you what?’

  ‘Loving it I said! Loving it!’

  Petula had moved to a new country and had no use for old customs. Let somebody else pick up the pieces and worry. Qualifications be damned, when had she last experienced her body as an instrument of wonder, been lifted so high and taken so far? To feel this attractive normally would be an effort contrived entirely from the subtle and patient application of makeup; tonight the love was bubbling forth from within. Christ she felt sexy! And not just her, they all were, every shambolic set of limbs and feet, entwined together and communing in a huddle of love.

  ‘I love it!’ Petula repeated, ‘Louder! Louder!’ A wistful falling-away was easing down her sphincter like the airiest and most erotically satisfying fart ever slow-released. ‘Total heaven,’ she gasped, ‘to be alive. Whooh!’

  ‘Whooah, Petula! I didn’t know you liked to dance!’ croaked Tinwood hoarsely, suddenly aware of her at the centre of the melee. Touching her face, with near-animal curiosity, he added, ‘You’re feeling good, right? All that other shit just a bad memory?’

  ‘Good? Too good, I love it!’ Petula laughed, this simple affirmation nearer to the truth than any other spoken alternative she could think of. ‘Really I do!’

  ‘Cool,’ Tinwood intoned, a clumsy slowness to his movements which meant that he was lagging behind the accelerating beat. Wiping back his sweaty combover he gave Petula a cheeky thumbs-up; she winked back, the two of them children in thrall to their new toy.

  ‘Nice one!’ he sniggered.

  ‘You too!’ she found herself saying, ‘Alright! Let’s fucking dance!’

  Petula felt an intense connection with the agent, and realised that it was shared with all her fellow dancers, the room, and life, divided between the movers and the statically bemused. Those on their feet were enjoying an identification stronger than politics or religion; it was enough that an individual should choose to join the dance, no matter how grievous their prior shortcomings, to belong.

  ‘Shake a leg girls!’ she called over to Regan’s table, her voice drowned in the squelching bass, ‘This… this stuff’s tremendous!’ Manically, and not a little unhingedly, she pointed to the decks and gave a knowing thumbs-up.

  ‘I can’t hear you Mum,’ Regan shouted back, the relative darkness sparing her blushes.

  ‘Forget about it, just get your arse over!’

  For Petula, judgement was an annoying memory that no longer worked, this abolition of standards arriving in time for Tackleberry who, having reemerged playing an imaginary flute, was hopping about blowing raspberries dangerously close to her toes.

  ‘Who are you, the cunty Jester?’ Petula yelled.

  Tackleberry performed a little twirl, and caressed the air, his stubby shoulders bopping back and forth as he held his hands round a virtual neck that he seemed intent on clumsily strangling.

  ‘Come on, come on, everyone come on!’ beckoned Petula to all-comers, ‘Come on in!’

  Nestling up to her backside was Fogle, rubbing against her sticky dress with the crude audacity of a one-man conga line, and beside him Chips Hall, bending awkwardly and clutching his sides, in an attempt to get down with it, for it now seemed the thing to do.

  ‘Connect woman, connect,’ Fogle breathed heavily into Petula’s ear, his face balanced on her neck, ‘you got to connect with yourself, I demand it.’

  ‘Oooah…’

  It was like gorging on a dirty chicken kiev she had just got out of the freezer and could not stop eating, she knew she should desist but Petula couldn’t, the garlic as good as dribbling down her chin. ‘Connect me,’ she replied, ‘go on. Do it…’

  Fogle’s hands were all over her, their bodies moving in an electronic tango, the partners dissolving into a shapeless libidinal movement, Petula so far from shame that Fogle could have entered her there and then for all she cared. As in the height of her lovemaking, Petula was giving into an injurious and sweet pain she could at last express, a feeling of absolute relief that was not secret anymore… their dance was like that but without the beauty, without the point, and without the impediment of personality and character; they were inhuman shadows, no more real than the DJ’s flickering strobes and half whacked-out smoke machine, puffing away doughtily behind a curtain.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes…’

  There were no indications of reality, Petula did not have to make the abstractions concrete, only take another beating from the ever-present drumroll and scream as loud as she could, ‘I could do this forever!’

  ‘You know you could baby, you know it.’

  Petula closed her eyes, and reached out for the ghost in the machine. In the past her love of landscapes and skies had not so much disguised as announced her longing for immortality, the hills and stars as permanent and unending as she wished her future incarnations to be. She was where she wished to be; pure soul. And the music kept playing on…

  ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’

  Regan watched her moth
er, half-absorbed, half-disturbed, mindful that this was the moment she most feared the arrival of, the part when Petula enjoyed herself more than she did, but for it to happen like this, with her music and her friends dancing round her mother like bees buzzing round the queen… It was too much, and quietly, in a way she hoped would attract no attention, she broke a breadstick in half and stabbed both ends into the table.

  ‘That smoke eh? It’s like bloody tear gas,’ said Eager, offering Regan his handkerchief, ‘reminds me of the bloody war. Can’t say what this music reminds me of, one of those Earl’s Court light shows I think, before they show you all those new cars no bugger can afford to buy.’

  Regan felt grateful for the old actor’s presence, and thanked him by accepting his handkerchief and blowing her nose into it. There were tears in her eyes but they were not falling, simply staying where they were, and doing nothing.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Think nothing of it.’

  ‘Some skins are thinner than others, some skins are thinner than other skin’s mothers,’ growled Trafalgar barging into them, a bottle of brandy in hand. ‘Watch that one,’ he went on, pointing at Petula, ‘she’s a great dame for hiding in the light.’ Taking a hefty swig he collapsed into an armchair and surveyed the scene with an exaggerated scowl. ‘We could have almost had it all lass,’ he grunted. ‘There, right there for the taking,’ he added, clenching and unclenching his hand.

  ‘Hmmm,’ chuckled Astley, joining them both and handing Regan a beaker of champagne, ‘so… tonight… I think it’s gone quite well, don’t you?’