by India Knight
‘No, no, leave her. Will you go now, so I can get up?’
He turns to go.
‘Oh, and Frankie?’
‘Mm?’
‘I loved last night too. Now will you get out, please, so I can get dressed?’
Frank winks, and delicately shuts the door.
Lunch that day is like an advertisement for the extended families I was lecturing Cressida about last night. My father is absent, being otherwise engaged with his tailor, but Rupert’s there, and a bashful, almost-silent Cress, and Dominic and his consort, Keiko (who is almost freakishly tall, especially considering she is Japanese), and me, and Frank, and Honey, who rose regally at ten and doesn’t greet her father with as much crazed, hoppity excitement as he might have wished for, choosing instead to hurl herself strategically on to Frank’s lap whenever he is sitting down. (I notice Dominic noticing this, and not liking it one bit.) She likes the Hello Kitty doll and accessories graciously offered by Keiko, though, and she is nice to Dominic; it’s just she’s nicer to Frank.
Despite our respective hangovers, Frank and I have been to the shops and roasted and stuffed two chickens and a truckload of pumpkin. He, heroically, did the peeling, and mashed some parsnips, while I topped and tailed a pile of green beans. We laid the table in the kitchen and collapsed at about eleven thirty, wondering whether a hair of the dog would be a bad idea. He eventually had a Bloody Mary. I decided against, until lunch time at least.
Rupert and Cressida appeared just before noon, she looking fresh-faced but somewhat sartorially dishevelled, he exuding contentment and thus, possibly, sexual satisfaction.
‘Yummy smell,’ said Cressida. ‘Chicken?’
‘Yup. Did you sleep well? Or are you a little bit shagged out?’ I said blandly. ‘It was a late night, after all.’
‘Oh,’ said Cress helplessly. ‘Oh,’ and she went red and stared at her feet.
‘Beautiful morning,’ Rupert boomed, rubbing his hands. ‘Any chance of eggs?’
‘No. It’s nearly lunch. Have some coffee – it’s in the kitchen. Dominic’s coming to lunch.’
‘Oh.’
‘He’s not that bad, Rupe. If you get stuck with him, you could always compare notes.’
‘Goodness,’ said Cressida.
After lunch, Keiko grabs my arm as I am loading up the dishwasher and says, ‘You show arbum’ three or four times in a row, smiling broadly all the while. ‘What album?’ I ask, to which Dominic, lying on the floor playing Mr Potato Head with a now only mildly recalcitrant Honey, replies, ‘I think she’d like to see the wedding album.’
‘I don’t know where it is,’ I wail. ‘It could be absolutely anywhere.’
‘It’s on the third shelf in the little study upstairs,’ says Dominic. ‘Unless you’ve moved it.’
‘Arbum,’ says Keiko, smiling as though she might burst.
‘Port, anyone?’ This from Rupert, who, I suddenly recall, likes nothing better than spending urban weekend afternoons in an alcoholic haze.
‘Yes, please,’ says everyone, except me. I’m off upstairs to find my wedding pictures, which takes about ten minutes as I have, at some point, moved them out of the study. I eventually find them on top of my wardrobe, covered in dust.
I come back down clutching the leather-bound volume.
‘Ooh,’ says Cressida. ‘Goody. I love weddings.’
‘It wasn’t actually a wedding,’ I remind her for the nth time. ‘We just had a party.’
‘You wore a wedding dress, though, didn’t you?’
‘Of sorts. I did the big number with the meringue and the veil with Rupert.’
‘Oh,’ says Cressida, but she is kind-hearted and forces a smile this time.
‘You marry Rupert?’ says Keiko, whose accent I shall no longer attempt to convey phonetically.
‘Yes, that’s right. Long time ago.’
‘Ho!’ says Keiko, still grinning. ‘Ho! Many, many husband!’ She claps her hands together, like a child.
‘Er, just the two. Just the one, really. Me and Dominic …’
‘I know,’ beams Keiko. ‘Make fucking only.’
‘Love,’ booms Dominic from the ground, clapping his hands over Honey’s ears. ‘Say “make love”, Keiko.’
‘You say me, “make fucking now, Keiko”. You say me. In bed,’ she tells Dom reproachfully. ‘Make fucking, Keiko,’ she repeats, just so we’re clear. ‘Mr Dick.’ This, understandably, brings the house down: even Cressida has a quick guffaw. Keiko nods, keeps smiling, and grinds her hips once or twice to show she understands.
‘Yes, I think we get the picture,’ says Dominic, who is, predictably, looking a little flushed around the gills, as well he might do. Mr Dick!
‘Anyway,’ I say to Keiko – who is, like the Eveready Bunny, still beaming her megawatt smile. I open the album. ‘That was it there. The dress.’
Cressida and Keiko crowd in around me, kneeling on the floor.
‘Aaah!’ shrieks Keiko, right into my ear. ‘Aaah! So cute!’
‘It’s pink,’ says Cressida.
‘So cute!’ howls Keiko.
‘Reddish. What can I tell you, Cress? It was a second marriage.’
‘Lovely. Rather risqué, though. Gosh, look at your boobs.’
‘Boobies,’ says Keiko proudly, sticking hers out. Her nipples are rather prominent under her thin, candy-pink top. ‘Titty-ride.’ Good grief: Dominic’s broadening his repertoire.
‘As I say,’ I continue, ignoring the pert bosoms thrust into my face and the unwelcome images of Dom and Keiko hard at it which have popped, uninvited, into my head, ‘I’d done the meringue the first time around.’
My explanation is interrupted by a veritable roar of laughter from the sofa. All three of us look up to find the men hysterical, quite beside themselves. Frank is lying on the floor and actually has tears coursing down his face. Rupert is coughing helplessly, eyes watering also, and Dominic is thwacking him (unnecessarily hard, I can’t help but notice) on the back. Dominic is puce, his mouth a scream of laughter.
‘Haaaa!’ goes Frank. ‘Haaaa! Oh, God, help me.’ I’ve never seen anyone so amused in my life, though the other two are giving him a good run for his money.
‘Hoooo,’ howls Rupert.
‘I’m going to burst,’ shouts Dominic.
‘Oi piggy,’ says Honey, beaming at me.
Which rings alarm bells. Very serious alarm bells, actually. DING DONG, go the bells. DING DONG.
‘Oi piggy,’ says Honey delightedly, tottering across the room towards me. ‘Snorrrrt. Oink.’
The men are nearly hyperventilating. Oddly – or not – not one of them seems willing to catch my eye.
‘Excuse me,’ I say, in my best schoolmarm voice. ‘Hello?’
All three start to clear their throats and look busy. Frank, with one last wheezy giggle, gets up off the floor, mutters something about coffee in a strangulated voice and disappears swiftly into the kitchen. Rupert, who is as pink as his shirt, wipes his eyes and sits up straight on the sofa, fixing the middle distance. Dominic holds his head in his hands for a while, then pushes his hair back, wipes under his eyes and breathes out loudly. ‘Pffft,’ he says, before turning his attentions to Honey again.
‘Golly,’ says Cressida, addressing Rupert. ‘What was so funny?’ An eager smile is playing about on her lips: she too wants to be in on the joke.
‘Oh,’ says Rupert, very wide-eyed, sounding short of breath. ‘Nothing, really.’ He sniffs, and then blows his nose. ‘Oh, God,’ he mumbles to himself. ‘I can’t bear it. How funny.’
Dominic bursts out laughing again, catches my eye and turns the laugh into an unconvincing cough.
‘Show more,’ says Keiko, stabbing the photo album with an impeccably manicured fingernail.
I have to say something, since the alternative is spontaneously combusting with shame right on the spot, or running out of the room weeping with embarrassment.
‘Do you still see all these people?’ I a
sk Dom, gesturing at the album, not quite daring to meet his eye in case he laughs again.
‘Onwards and upwards,’ says Dominic. ‘I’ve had to lose a few. Not the clients, unfortunately. I must say, one does sometimes pine for southerners with classical educations. Ordinary speech, that kind of thing.’
‘You’re a ghastly snob,’ I tell him. ‘You are really ghastly.’
‘Oh, be quiet,’ Dom replies. ‘You didn’t like them either.’
‘I didn’t like them because they were bores, not because they didn’t go to Eton. And besides, the proles with the regional accents have made you extremely comfortable,’ I point out. I hate Dom’s snobby side, which he usually keeps under wraps.
‘I’ve made them bloody comfortable too,’ says Dominic. ‘I’ve made them able to buy cars for their mams.’ He nearly spits the word out.
‘If Frank could hear you, he’d sack you.’
‘What are you going to do, run and tell him?’
I sigh. Don’t get me wrong: Dominic has always looked out for me, and he does have virtues. But sometimes they spread themselves a little thinly, and I really hate him. Still, this isn’t the moment to have a row, and besides, he isn’t my concern any more.
I know what is, though.
‘Take Honey with you a second, would you, Cressida?’ I say. ‘And why don’t you show Keiko the garden, while you’re at it?’
‘Oh. OK.’ Cressida scoops Honey up with one hand and extends the other to Keiko. ‘Come on, you two.’
I get up too, shut the living-room door and take a deep breath before marching up to the sofa.
‘Right, you pair of bastards,’ I tell Dominic and Rupert. ‘You pair of treacherous, sniggering, babyish turds. Tell me why you were laughing.’
‘I’d rather not,’ says Rupert primly. ‘If you don’t mind.’
Dominic is shaking his head and grinning like a moron.
‘Sorry, Stella. Private joke.’
‘Tell me.’
‘You wouldn’t find it particularly amusing,’ Dom says, hiding behind his floppy hair and biting the inside of his cheeks. ‘Frank did, though.’
‘Try me.’
‘It was, um, it was a bloke joke,’ says Rupert. ‘About girls. That’s all.’
‘Share it with me.’
‘No,’ says Dominic. ‘House looks nice. Not my taste, but it’s very cosy. Homely. And isn’t Honey sweet? Little poppet. Speaks just like Frank, I notice.’
‘Speaks like Pam Ayres, actually. Nothing to do with Frank, and don’t change the subject.’
‘They’re taking a long time with the coffee,’ Rupert says desperately, looking around him wildly.
‘Shove up,’ I tell him, plonking myself down on the sofa. ‘Was it about, er …’ I clear my throat. ‘Was it about me?’
‘Goodness me, no,’ says Rupert, whose blush has spread to his neck.
‘Absolutely not,’ says Dom. His lips are quivering with suppressed mirth.
‘Look,’ I say, cutting to the chase. ‘You have to tell me. I really need to know. Rupe?’
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ insists Rupert.
‘It has recently come to my attention,’ I begin, but I can’t go on.
Dominic and Rupert are staring at the floorboards by my feet.
I clear my throat and try again: I have to get to the bottom of this.
‘It has recently come to my attention that … That perhaps I … I … I make an unattractive noise when … in bed.’
This conversation is painful on a number of levels, not least because it is forcing me to cast my mind back to a number of sexual encounters with both of them: pictures of Dom and Rupert, naked and eager, flow into my head.
‘Really?’ says Rupert, looking just over the top of my head. ‘Fancy,’ he squeaks. He makes to get up, but I push him down again.
‘What kind of noise?’ says Dominic, who’s always had a sadistic streak.
‘A … A sort of grunt.’ It is my turn to blush.
Rupert and Dominic collapse.
‘Snorrrrrrt,’ yells Rupert, who’s had too much to drink.
‘Oink,’ says Dominic, his eyes filling up again.
‘No,’ I say. ‘No. It can’t be true.’ I can feel my shoulders literally sagging down under the weight of this information.
‘Not always, Stells,’ says Rupert kindly.
‘More often than not,’ says Dominic.
‘Why haven’t either of you ever mentioned it?’
‘Didn’t want to hurt your feelings,’ says Rupert piously.
‘Didn’t seem appropriate,’ says Dominic. They are deliberately not looking at each other in order to stave off another hysterical fit. ‘And then Frank asked.’
‘I’m sure we all do odd things at the, you know, moment of crisis,’ says Rupert.
‘You do, as a matter of fact,’ I tell him, hungry – no, starving – for revenge. ‘Shall I show you?’
‘What on earth do you mean?’ says Rupert.
‘Shall I show you the face you make when you come?’
‘Steady on, Stells.’
I push my chin right down into my neck, so that it is instantly tripled. I flare out my nostrils as far as they will go. I roll my eyes back. ‘Eeeurgh,’ I boom, in as deep a voice as I can muster. ‘Waaaah.’
‘That’s what you do,’ I inform Rupert pleasantly. ‘You actually look facially deformed for a second or two.’
Dominic has collapsed into a helpless giggling heap.
‘That isn’t true,’ shouts Rupert.
I raise my right eyebrow at him knowingly.
‘As for you,’ I turn to Dominic. ‘As for you, Mr Dick: like this.’
Despite himself, Dom has to look. I make a grunting, pushing face, eyes screwed shut, mouth ground down, which I top off with an agonized pained-yet-relieved rumble.
‘You,’ I inform him, ‘make this face. Exactly as if you were having a poo. And then you grunt like that, as if you’d finally got it out.’
‘Stella!’ he roars. ‘You are the most childish and disgusting woman I have ever met. I do not make that face.’
‘I’m afraid you do,’ I say smugly.
‘Do not.’
‘Yes, you do, and I know it because I’ve seen it.’
‘Bloody hell,’ says Rupert slyly. ‘I thought mine was bad, but at least I don’t look like I’m taking a crap.’
‘Fuck off, Rupert,’ says Dominic.
‘I don’t think I would ever dare have sex again,’ says Rupert, copying the face I’ve just shown him. ‘I mean, one couldn’t, could one, knowing that?’
So we’re quits, then. Not much of a comfort in the long term, granted, but it feels like it helps right now. I can’t believe Frank asked them, though. He shall be punished.
13
I’m trying with Happy Bunnies, I really am. But it’s hard. First, before you’ve even managed to get your coat off, you’re greeted by lumpen, tubby Ichabod and the words ‘I’ve done a poo’, the truth of the statement borne out by a bulgy wide-legged shuffle. You fleetingly realize that Ichabod doesn’t really have any lips, only slits, like a fish, which creeps you out a bit. Then, before you have time to properly register your disgust, you have to go and change Icky, because everyone else is suddenly very, very busy looking at books, watching the kettle boil and arranging the pencils in a special way.
Today Kate, Icky’s mummy, is absent: she’s got an appointment in town, having extra hair transplanted to her upper lip or some such. It quickly becomes clear that I’m not the only one with, shall we say, in true Happy Bunnies speak, issues with Ichabod: Julia, mother of triplets Castor, Pollux and Hector, actually seems scared of him. And no wonder: he bites, along with the kicking, pinching and hand-stamping. He drools. I know all toddlers drool, but Icky has the full complement of teeth: why is he still dribbling like the Jabberwock?
‘Do you think there’s actually something the matter with him?’ I ask Emma, mother of Rainbow, as we set out
the Play-Doh and cutters. The Play-Doh today is pitch black, I notice, but it’s past Hallowe’en. ‘Seriously. And what’s with the Gothic dough?’
‘So the black children don’t feel left out.’
‘But there aren’t any black children.’ I laugh. It really is like being in a loony bin. ‘And they’d probably be wildly offended if there were: I mean, no one’s that colour, except crows.’
Emma shrugs, though I detect the hint of a smile playing about her mouth.
‘Come on, Emma. Admit he’s horrible.’
‘He’s just a bit of a handful,’ she smiles nervously, not looking 100 per cent convinced.
‘I’m getting rid of this dough. It’s gruesome. I made some green last week – it must be in the cupboard somewhere. To welcome the Martians among us. You know, the pretend Martians, playing in the corner with the pretend black kids and the little girl in the wheelchair, who is in fact invisible.’
‘You’re very naughty,’ Emma says, actually smiling now.
‘Look at him,’ I whisper, emboldened and immediately forgetting all my good intentions, as Ichabod grabs hold of Susannah (mother of Mango)’s skirt and swings on it, as though it were a fence. Susannah keeps gently shooing him away, but he returns, hulking towards her, and has another go. Any second now, her skirt’s going to tear: Ichabod isn’t exactly a wisp of a child. ‘He’s a monster.’
‘Stella!’ Emma hisses reproachfully.
‘Well, he is, though, isn’t he? Come on, Emma.’
‘He’s difficult,’ Emma concedes, keeping her voice low. ‘But gifted children often are.’
‘You think he’s gifted?’ I cry, raising my voice despite myself. ‘Ichabod? On what possible grounds? I mean, I was wondering whether he was quite all there. Whether he was ill, even, in which case I take it all back. Ish.’
‘Kate says he is a gifted child,’ Emma says, bagging up the black dough and helping me divide up the green. ‘She’s having enormous trouble finding a school for him. They’re always going to interviews, but no joy.’
‘There’s a surprise. In what way is he gifted, allegedly?’
‘Kate says he’s very musical and artistically talented. Also, she took him to a child psychologist who said that perhaps he didn’t say much because he was so busy having really intelligent thoughts.’
