Nature and Necessity

by Tariq Goddard

  ‘What…’ she began hastily.

  ‘I… you?’ Jazzy started and did not finish.

  They were saved then, and forever, by an urgent volley of knocks on the front door, followed by a woman shrieking their names at the top of her voice.

  *

  Ten minutes earlier Jenny Hardfield had been busy in her kitchen – marginally, but not much, larger than the lavatory Jazzy had locked himself away in – preparing a chocolate sponge for Mingus’s visit home, and a speech she would deliver to Petula when she next snubbed a greeting of hers on the track down to the village. This speech had been something of a valorous work-in-progress for many, many years now, prey to limitless revisions and changes of emphasis, new passages of freshly received offence joining those staple and longnurtured grievances that formed its spine, the overall length at times verging on the un-performable, with a process of subtle displacement ensuring that if it ever were to find its way into the open, it ought to last not much longer than forty-five minutes, providing Petula remained silent during its hearing. To Jenny’s great annoyance, on those few occasions Petula did deign to acknowledge her, it was still on her old employer’s terms, and never the conversation she was preparing herself for. So even if she was insulted in some pertinent way, which she nearly always was, the necessary bridge to drive her speech over invariably failed to materialise, meaning that she was left with even more to say, if and when the fateful day of deliverance finally dawned. At times she would rehearse highlights with Seth, who characteristically made no comment beyond ‘That’ll get you into trouble,’ and on various mutual acquaintances whose looks implied ‘Rather you than me,’ though after the first few years they inclined towards believing that what they were hearing was a robust form of therapy for Jenny, and not anything Petula Montague would actually find herself having to hear.

  That morning, as she removed her oven gloves and turned off the radio – she loved the ‘retro’ stations but hated the adverts that came on every third song, tempted to defect back to the BBC – Jenny was tending towards a shorter version of her magnum opus, entertaining an idea her son had put in her head. Mingus, who on transatlantic calls was often cast in the role of agony-uncle, knowing all the main parties and being excessively patient with matters he found elementary and risible, had, in as close to a fit of pique as he was likely to achieve, explained to his mother that her lament might be made more effective if she was to distil her injuries, and the years that suffered them, into a few simple lines, instead of the Book of bloody Revelations, because Petula had quite enough of that with Jazzy, and was probably adept at dismissing such objections with ease, if she knew what was coming, reacting only to what surprised her and not to what she could predict.

  Jenny looked daggers; her inner voice composing a brief letter of complaint appropriate to an insurance payment that had been held up, rather than humiliation’s greatest hits of the last thirty-five years, a mushy blanket of falling leaves swishing through the open window and onto her spotless floor, forming a yellow and orange quilt she had no wish to disturb yet.

  Excuse me Petula, she would begin, but don’t you think it would be nice to say hello back to someone who says hello to you, even if you are in a hurry or busy with something else, and wouldn’t you say hello if it was anyone else apart from me? I think you would, wouldn’t you, because I see you being nice to important people all the time, and it doesn’t make me feel very good about myself being made to think I’m less important than them, especially as I’ve always tried to be so nice to you, and so have my son and husband, even when you haven’t been so careful as us in trying to be nice back. And I just think it’s gone on long enough and if I don’t say anything now you’ll never be any nicer, so…

  It was proceeding well, Jenny thought, and she hadn’t even mentioned her nuclear weapon yet – that they were moving to a new house Mingus was having built for them by the sea in Filey – or said anything about how awful it was when she had overheard Petula say she didn’t want people ‘like them’ (like them!) in her life, ruining the happy memories Jenny associated with Mingus and Regan’s childhood, where she had thought she was accepted, if made occasional fun of. The saddest part was that she could tell Petula was hurting too, as the result of her own policies, and it might be worth adding that as well, just to show she could be even-handed and that it wasn’t only she who let pain get to her… Jenny stopped. She experienced a thud against the kitchen wall as though it were her skin being punctured, and heard the sound of her name being called rattle through the house, as if spoken from a dream, both noises over faster than she could register, her memory of them being loud (or was she amplifying the feeling rather than the noise?) and uncannily subdued at the same time. Jenny knew that this was of importance and that she should go out and look at what had happened, at the same time as being too scared to leave the kitchen on her own. An event had occurred, the time of preparing and waiting was over, life was very much back on again, and there was nothing she could do about it except pretend that it had not happened or admit that it had. Memories of running that boy over years earlier came back to her, how could they not, it had occurred on the very hairpin bend at which she lived so where could she go to forget? And what had she heard besides the whack of his body that night? A voice, echoing through the car, calling her name, yes, she had definitely been called again just now, by the same voice, to perform one last service, oh, she knew it, knew it and had to do it.

  ‘Seth,’ she cried, ‘Seth, can you come here, quickly, I need your help?’ Her husband had been clanging round in an upstairs room, looking for an axe handle (‘Who else keeps axe handles in the spare room Seth, I mean really!’ she had said, though it wasn’t really a spare room, it was Mingus’s old room, and she resented the way Seth stored rubbish that didn’t belong there amongst the carefully preserved artefacts of the love of her life), ‘Please, I need you down here love, it’s an emergency!’

  There was no answer. Taking off her apron, Jenny decided she must be brave and bear up to it alone if she had to, and pushing the back door, which opened on to a small herb garden, she tried to avoid looking at the robe, filling with air like a parachute, and underneath it, the crumpled and naked body squashed against the wall, a bicycle lying nearby with its bent front wheel mangled, the back wheel still spinning in the air. The rider had proceeded straight down the hill at full pelt, not turned at the corner and, by choice or necessity, pivoted straight over the hedge, somersaulted, and been stopped by the kitchen wall, which is where the body, quite obviously Petula’s, had ended its journey, a solitary lock of red hair having settled on one of the crushed hollyhocks.

  ‘Christ,’ whispered Jenny, ‘my oh my.’ So that was it. The proud city whose high walls, once thought impregnable, would stand no more, and in its place, strife, rack and ruin would rage unchecked through the land. Or the snow would melt and the little creatures would come out to play. They would find out soon enough, as there was no use pretending she was still alive.

  At some point Jenny had been joined by her husband, who, scratching his nose, approaching but not getting too close to the body, inspected it mistrustfully. ‘Those legs of hers couldn’t bend, she wouldn’t have been able to bring them up at the knee, you can’t ride one of them racers if you can’t peddle. Can’t ride any bike if you can’t peddle. Tell the truth, I’m a might surprised she could even get on, without help. Someone would have had to have lifted her. Fair go, game to the end. Not very thoughtful though, you know, to leave the house in, er, so few things.’

  ‘She weren’t on it for a pleasure ride Seth. Get her some of the clothes, the old ones of hers she gave me, and dress her. It’s indecent as it is. They could say she was mad after all instead of saying she was ever so marvellous.’

  ‘Don’t you think we should wait for, er, the Police. I mean Emergency Services, love?’

  ‘Them? Don’t be daft,’ laughed Jenny, going inside to fetch her coat, ‘the only thing that could stop her was what d
id. And even then it weren’t her fault. I blame the wall.’

  *

  Regan chose a little-known passage from Ned Wrath’s posthumous notebooks to read at the funeral, which, contrary to Petula’s wishes, took place at the small Baptist Church in the village, and not York Minster Cathedral:

  ‘A humble born and bred race, growing up in the right conditions of outdoor as much as indoor harmony, would find it enough to merely live, in their relations to the sky, air, water, trees, and in the fact of life itself, discovering and achieving happiness, with their being suffused by wholesome ecstasy, surpassing all the pleasures that wealth, amusement, erudition, the intellect, or even a sense of art could afford, to leave all thought behind and to just be in being…’

  The pews rumbled with unease, some affected, some not, the more clued-up accusing Regan of exercising poor taste, more still consternated that they had been deprived of one last grand act to get their teeth into, Regan glad for real friends like Max Astley, who tipped his hat and bowed with a wink, as she followed the coffin out of the church into the graveyard, followed by Jazzy and Evita. Her two siblings had allowed Regan to handle everything, from the important details to the boring ones. Jazzy’s immediate breakdown and confiscation of the body, lasting for six awkward hours, was fast replaced by a stately silence and an authoritative dignity that suited him, coloured a little by worrying talk about ‘knowing his rights’, and the hiring of a notorious local law firm that specialised in ‘family’ disputes and ‘accident’ claims. Meanwhile Evita had appeared from nowhere with twins and an earnest Paraguayan husband in tow, her smile painted-on and irremovable as she devoutly set about baking cake after cake and organising children’s games for the adults, her family belonging to the Jehovah’s Witnesses whose brethren, she hinted, might find their own uses for The Heights, should God be allowed to have his way. Noah was nowhere to be seen, a brief note letting his daughter understand that she was in charge now and could do whatever she pleased so long as she did not involve him, which was the most he now wished to have to do with their lives. Mindful that critics should never confer, and that if their opinion was of any use it should be all their own, all three children elected to glide past each other without conference, content to be left, for now, to enjoy these first days of freedom as best they could, before the next war started. Especially as the farm had never looked so beautiful that winter, the mildest on record, nor so full of the potential to make those that dwelt on it happy. Had this blessing now fallen to Petula’s children, as her true legacy, or was the early appearance of snowdrops and daffodils marking the peace that descends on a valley between battles, its symphonious succulence no more than the prelude to the burning lake of fire all would soon be reduced to?

  Moving into her mother’s room, Regan grew uneasy that she might mix things up and forget the force that once was. Petula’s was a personality that relied on its existence for its effect with no recourse to outside help, its strength based on the illusion of its glare; once extinguished, what trace would it leave when it was no longer there, to need or miss itself? Regan need not have entertained any doubts on that score. As the weeks passed she observed that she did not move nearer or further away from her mother, who belonged in another realm; all she had to do was switch levels. Her concern that a gulf may appear, not knowing whether the tunnel she saw as she closed her eyes led to the stars or to nothing, was baseless. Passing time, ten minutes or twenty years, could make no difference to their proximity, nor death alter their relation. Late into the night, Regan would draw open the windows to allow the nocturnal chill to advance over her bedding, and gaze out at the Thanatosphere; a silvery ring round the moon where the souls of the dead waited hopefully to be reincarnated and given another chance. She would then imagine Petula circling the cosmos in search of an opening: would they meet again?

  Silently she mouthed the words, so close to becoming tears, ‘I love you Mum’; then drew the covers over her shoulders and tried to forget about her.

  Acknowledgements

  My love and thanks to John Stubbs, whose comments on an early draft of this book were extremely helpful, and also to Georgina Garrett, Margaret Glover and Etan Ilfeld for their considered feedback. Thanks also to my editors at Repeater, Phil Jourdan, Emma Jacobs and Alex Niven; to Jan Middendorp for formatting the work; to Stephanie Rennie for the author’s photograph, to Johnny Bull for the cover and Mat Osman and John Carter Cassady for the ideas that helped inspire it; and to my wife, Emma, for many happy times that outnumbered some sad ones, in the four and a half years this book took to write.

  The poet Ned Wrath plagiarises selectively from John Ashbery in his essay and later from Walt Whitman for the funeral address; the rest is fiction.

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  A Repeater Books paperback original 2017

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  Copyright © Tariq Goddard 2017

  Tariq Goddard asserts the moral right to be identified as

  the author of this work.

  Cover design, snake vignette: Johnny Bull

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  ISBN: 978-1-910924-44-0

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