Childish Things

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘She’s so gentle and patient. She knows how brittle old limbs are. She will handle your member as if it was a flower.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said, somewhat inadequately.

  ‘Linda wouldn’t mind. Well, she ought not to but, just in case, we wouldn’t tell her. After all, she’s got her young studs. To be fair, if old men find rejuvenation in young women, why shouldn’t old women find it in young men? High-born Roman matrons did it. Look at her. Isn’t she marvellous for a woman her age? Rubens would have loved to paint her. He would have put her among his goddesses.’

  In a green bikini Linda did look attractive for a woman of 70.

  ‘She has had many lovers in her day. I was never one myself. Our relationship was more like that of brother and sister. In any case, I would never have had the courage. Do you know that she once almost castrated a lover? With her nails. A famous name. I won’t say it. He must have said or done the wrong thing. It seems she dug in and wouldn’t let go, like an angry cat. I discussed it at the time with a psychiatrist. He said that in the act of love some people because of inner tensions have orgasms of guilt not of joy. Linda has always been like that. Something to do with her childhood perhaps.’

  I remembered the child of six waking up to find her mother being used as a prostitute.

  ‘Even Al suffered, I believe, and she loved him.’

  ‘Did you know Mr Birkenberger?’

  ‘Very well. He produced many of my movies. You’ve seen the bust in the gallery? It’s a good likeness. He was very generous. He left her millions and also those wonderful paintings.’

  ‘He must have been an old man.’

  ‘What’s age? Some men are old at 20, others young at 80.’

  He paused and again clutched my knee. ‘To come to the point, when I mentioned to Linda that I was in need of a little loan to pay off some urgent debts, she said I’d to talk to you about it.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have. It’s not my money.’

  ‘But if you and she are to be married?’

  ‘Are we? Did she say so?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but, when she was speaking about you, there was something in her manner that intrigued me. She’s never met anyone like you before. She seems to think you and she have a lot in common. I must confess I don’t see it for, on the surface at any rate, you’re very dissimilar.’

  I knew what we had in common, but no one else did, not even Linda.

  ‘I think the way you speak impresses her. Your accent suggests to us brash Americans dependability and probity. She told me you’re helping her edit her memoirs.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Are they any good?’

  ‘I think they’re very good. She certainly tells the truth about herself. In fact, she is obsessed with telling the truth.’

  ‘Oh dear. There could be some red faces then. May I ask if I feature in it?’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘Not discreditably, I hope.’

  ‘She always speaks warmly of you.’

  ‘Bless her. We go back a long way. In the old days there was prejudice against us Mexicans in the film world. We fought it together. You could bring dignity and security of mind to her in her old age. I already notice an improvement in her speech.’

  Because she saw herself as Lady Madeleine.

  ‘Shall we enter into a compact, Gregor? To help each other. You know of course what I am referring to? I need the money very badly. Shall I send Amantha to you tonight?’

  ‘There is no need.’

  ‘But I want to. I like to share with my friends.’

  ‘Wouldn’t Amantha object?’

  ‘Object to doing a kindness? That is not in the dear girl’s nature. Besides, she enjoys comforting old men.’

  I grued, but managed to smile. ‘The fact is,’ I lied, ‘I am to attend our hostess after dinner.’

  ‘Ah. In that case, good luck. If you think you should need them, I have little purple pills. They have a side effect that I should warn you about. Sometimes their effect does not wear off for days, with, as you may imagine, inconvenient consequences.’

  Later that evening he slipped into my pocket a small white box that rattled. It contained the purple pills. ‘No more than two at a time,’ he whispered. ‘To be taken half an hour previously.’

  I waited in my room for Linda to summon me. Confident that she would, for she had been affectionate during dinner, I swallowed two of the pills. The result, alas, was that I broke out in an itchy rash and remained quite detumescent.

  It was as well that the summons never came.

  5

  The Hazelwoods arrived next day. Miguel was sent with the Cadillac to fetch them from the airport. No one went with him. Bliss, forever obliging, offered. He was sure to find the Senator repulsive, he said, but then, so would the Senator find him repulsive, which meant that they would keep a correct distance from each other. Linda said no.

  They hadn’t been told who their fellow guests were to be, so they hadn’t had time to prepare themselves. Therefore, for that first minute we saw them plain.

  The Senator gave me and the Boltons cold neutral stares, but Bliss he regarded with a repugnance astonishing in its virulence. What made it all the more shocking was that he was a handsome man of 60 or so, tall, tanned, and silver-haired. It was as if all the vicious prejudices in him had rushed to the surface at the sight of poor Raimundo.

  His wife looked at all of us, including Linda, as if, as Bolton later described it, we were bags of shit. Her nose twitched, as if at a nasty stench. It was pudgy and red, that nose, an indication that, as Lunderston would have put it, she was fond of a bucket and it would take more than one bucket to get her paralytic. It was easy, though, to believe that she had once been a proud Southern beauty, that she had been born in a mansion with eight columns at the front door, and that, as Linda had reminded us, her father had blown his brains out in that same house.

  Bliss, the absurd cheek-turner, offered his hand; it was contemptuously ignored. He asked politely if they had had a good flight from Washington, and again was shunned.

  They showed no pity for Amantha, but she didn’t notice. She had been told they had nothing to do with movies so, for her, they were nonentities.

  Linda did not personally show them to their room. She left it to Morland.

  ‘What a pair of obnoxious cunts,’ said Bolton. ‘Sorry, ladies, but that’s what they are.’

  ‘He’s a buddy of the President’s,’ said Linda, ‘and her Grand-daddy was a general in the Confederate Army.’

  ‘No wonder they lost.’

  ‘One cannot help feeling sorry for them,’ said Bliss. ‘How terrible to be so full of hate. How can they ever be happy?’

  Mrs Bolton had no patience with such magnanimity. ‘He looked at you, Mr Bliss, as if you were filth. If it was left to him, you’d be rotting in jail.’

  ‘Instead of which I’m rotting out of it.’

  ‘Raimundo never nears a grudge,’ said Linda.

  ‘Especially not at Christmas,’ he said. ‘But we shouldn’t forget that her father shot himself when she was a child.’

  ‘It was her who found the body,’ said Linda.

  ‘Did he know the gun was loaded?’ asked Amantha.

  ‘Have they any family?’ asked Mrs Bolton.

  ‘A daughter,’ said Linda. ‘She married a black.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. They’ve kept it very quiet.’

  ‘He’s a doctor. So is she. They run a clinic for the poor in Baton Rouge.’

  ‘Linda helps to finance it,’ said Bliss. ‘It does wonderful work.’

  ‘Have they any children?’ asked Mrs Bolton eagerly. Evidently, she hoped they had, children who had taken after their father and so had black skins and thick lips.

  Linda didn’t have time to answer. Mrs Hazelwood was back alone. Leonard, she said harshly, would not appear while Bliss was present. He was allergic to diseased trash.

  We were all speechless, exce
pt Amantha, who remarked that she was allergic to raspberry-flavoured ice cream. It brought her out in itchy white spots.

  Mrs Hazelwood waved Chung over and ordered a large gin and tonic. While waiting for it, she glowered at Bliss. ‘Why don’t you get the fuck out of here?’ she said.

  ‘To oblige you, lady,’ he said, with a ghastly forgiving smile, ‘I shall withdraw.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ cried Linda. ‘Look here, Solace, if you’re not going to treat Raimundo civilly, I’ll have to ask you to withdraw.’

  Mrs Hazelwood did not answer. She was too busy emptying the glass Chung had brought her. She was already thinking of her second, and her third.

  Perhaps, too, in her fuddled mind she was remembering why she and her husband had come: to beg Linda to help them out of pecuniary difficulties.

  It seemed to me she was at the same stage of desperation as her father had been when he had pulled the trigger. Those half-caste grandchildren were pistols at her head. She could end up mad.

  That afternoon she came into the library looking for me. It was a wonder she was still able to walk, for at lunch she had emptied two bottles of wine. The Senator had had lunch in his room. She had heeded Linda’s warning and left Bliss alone. She had picked on the Boltons instead, especially Annabel. ‘Is it true you don’t allow mirrors in your house, Mrs Bolton?’

  I was reading when she came in. The book was Sir Walter Scott’s Old Mortality. All of Scott’s novels were there; all of Dickens’s; all of Thackeray’s; and all of George Eliot’s. Every book sumptuously bound in red leather.

  I stood up with a gentlemanly smile. Inwardly I cursed my luck. I should have stayed in my room, like the Boltons.

  She put her hand on my arm, to help her stand upright. Anyone looking in would have thought the blue-haired lady was propositioning the white-haired gentleman.

  So she was, but what she was proposing was that I should go at once and tell our hostess she must get rid of Bliss and his little harlot.

  I set her down in an armchair and myself sat on an adjacent sofa.

  ‘Mrs Hazelwood,’ I began.

  ‘Call me Solace.’

  ‘Solace, then. I shall be frank. I understand that your husband wishes Mrs Birkenberger to invest a large sum of money in a business enterprise. Let me assure you that he is going the wrong way about it by insulting Mr Bliss. Mr Bliss has been a friend of hers for many years. I need say no more.’

  In fact, I needn’t have said anything. She wasn’t listening to me, she was staring into the past.

  ‘When I was a young woman,’ she said, ‘I went out with the Klan once. We hung ourselves a nigger. He had molested a white woman. They said he had molested her but I didn’t know whether he had or not. It made no difference. He screamed and pissed himself. He had on white pants. You could see he had pissed himself. We all laughed.’

  Outside, workmen were erecting a large Christmas tree on the terrace. Their radio was blaring out seasonable music. I listened to ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ and saw in my imagination the black man dangling from the tree.

  My blood turned to ice.

  ‘It was the happiest time of my life,’ she said.

  All the evil of the world descended upon me then. Like a survivor of a nuclear holocaust, I did not know what to think or feel. There was no comfort in anyone’s company. All that was good had come to an end.

  The feeling lasted less than a minute but I would remember it all my life.

  ‘That gorilla with his dream,’ she said. ‘I have a dream too. An America where all the blacks have been sent back to Africa and where white trash have been eliminated. Hitler had the right idea.’

  What could I have said to that? What could anyone? Demosthenes would have been struck dumb.

  Suddenly she realised where she was. ‘Look at those books. Who reads them? Look at this house. Who owns it? A fat vulgar old tart. When I was young, you’d find her sort in their proper place, the brothels of Savannah. Do you approve of the world we live in, Professor, that rewards those who disgrace it, like that fat cow, and abuses those, like my husband, who try to elevate it?’

  Did she really believe that about her husband? Yes, she did.

  ‘How can a man of his stature be expected to beg from a creature like her?’

  So that was it. It wasn’t disgust at Bliss that was keeping the Senator in his room, it was a mixture of shame, anger, and maimed pride.

  His wife’s face then was the one under the pointed hood 40 or so years ago. The hanged Negro had come alive again and married her daughter.

  To my great relief, she got up, muttering that she needed a drink, and staggered off in search of it.

  6

  When I told Linda that I was going to Madge’s with the Christmas presents I had brought from Scotland and that I might spend the night there – after all it was Christmas Eve – she said she would be very disappointed if I wasn’t present at dinner that night; she had a surprise arranged. In that case, I replied, I would certainly be present. I let myself wonder if the surprise might be a public announcement of our engagement. It would be like Linda to tell others before she told me.

  Madge’s family were all at home, though hardly in a state of Christmas amity and goodwill. Madge was quite cantankerous. When she was out of the room, Frank, in agitation, whispered the reason: she had resigned from the church, on the grounds that it was too mercenary. Unfortunately, she had been unnecessarily rude to Pastor Snodgrass. I took that to mean that she had carried out her threat and told the clerical buffoon to go kiss her arse. Well done, Madge, I thought, but you could have waited till after Christmas.

  Frank Junior looked in, thanked me for my present, and went off again.

  Midge did not appear.

  ‘Are you going to stay the night, Dad?’ asked Madge. ‘It’s Christmas Eve.’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Madge. I promised Linda I would be back in time for dinner.’

  ‘Oh, you did, did you? So you’d rather be with that bunch of strangers than with your own family? Of course, they’re rich and important.’

  ‘Mrs Birkenberger said she had a surprise for me. It could be that she’s going to tell me that Frank’s to have her account.’

  ‘In that case, Dad,’ cried Frank, ‘you must go.’

  I felt sorry for him and ashamed of myself.

  ‘Have you talked to her about it?’

  ‘Yes, Frank, I have.’

  I hadn’t, though. I was up to my ears in new lies. I had long ago been drowned in the old ones.

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ said Madge. ‘You’ve always wanted to associate with rich and important people.’

  ‘If so, Madge, I never got much opportunity in Lunderston.’

  ‘What opportunities there were you took. Look at the fuss when the Prince of Wales visited the golf club. Who played golf with him?’

  ‘I was the golf-club captain at the time. It was my duty to play with him.’

  ‘Then you made a point of being introduced to the Lord Lieutenant of the County, though you’ve always called yourself a socialist.’

  ‘I was president of the Rotary Club at the time.’

  ‘Wasn’t it strange, you a socialist, being elected president by a bunch of Tory snobs? I never heard of you visiting the Old Men’s Club. They were all poor pensioners there.’

  That was regrettably true. I had always preferred the company of the well-off.

  There was a reason but I was going to keep it to myself. Not even Kate had been told.

  ‘Then there’s that woman Cramond you’re hoping to marry. She’s rich, isn’t she? She lives in a mansion.’

  Frank was looking more and more puzzled. ‘What’s wrong with all that, honey?’ he asked. ‘Anyone would want to associate with successful people.’

  She ignored him. ‘I’m going to ask you straight to your face, Dad. I’m not going to plead. I’m just going to ask. Will you stay and spend Christmas Eve with your family?’

 
I could have said they weren’t acting like a family, but I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been the real reason for my preferring dinner at Linda’s.

  ‘Of course this house is a dump,’ said Madge, ‘compared to hers, and we’re boring insignificant people compared to Mrs Birkenberger, and the Boltons, and the Hazelwoods.’

  With that, she burst into tears and ran out of the room.

  ‘It’s not your fault, Dad,’ said Frank. ‘She’s really pleased that you’ve made such important friends. It’s Midge she’s worried about.’

  ‘But I thought Midge had admitted she’s not pregnant.’

  ‘Yes, but she still uses it as a threat. Would you like to talk to her, Dad? She respects you.’

  ‘Does she?’ I didn’t believe it, but she was my granddaughter and, if I could, I should help.

  ‘You’ll have to knock hard on the door, Dad. She plays her music rather loud.’

  ‘So I hear.’

  The whole house now and then shook with the blast.

  I took my present with me, a blue cashmere cardigan, made in Scotland.

  Knocking on the door was no good, so I opened it and went in.

  She was seated on the floor in a Buddhist posture. She was wearing a white shirt and very brief black briefs. She opened her eyes for a moment, saw it was me, and closed them again. She smirked like Buddha. She was trying to look wise and serene.

  ‘Do you mind?’ I roared, as I turned the knob that would produce blessed silence. But I didn’t dare turn it off altogether. So some idiot continued to drool about love.

  There was no chair, only a low pouffe, on which I had to sit as if on a chamber pot.

  ‘I’ve brought you a present,’ I said. ‘It’s a cardigan. It’s blue. I hope you like it. Blue was your grandmother’s favourite colour.’

  She didn’t open her eyes to look at it. ‘Thanks. I’ve got nothing for you, Grandad. I’ve got nothing for anyone. Christmas shouldn’t be commercial. Did Mom send you to snoop?’

  ‘Your mother did nothing of the kind. She’s very worried about you.’

  It had often struck me that, while adults were frequently childish, the young were just as often repellently precocious.