‘Are you going to Belinda?’
‘I thought I would, yes. Oh, Viv, don’t look like that. I’m so sorry. But at the end of the day, I’m only your cleaning lady!’
‘How can you say that?’ Viv gasped.
Linda took Viv’s hand and squeezed it. It would have been clear to any onlooker that the usual relationship between employer and cleaning lady (‘How are the feet?’ ‘We need more Jif’) had been long since outgrown.
‘It’s gone a bit mad here,’ said Linda.
Viv laughed. ‘You can say that again.’
She thought about it, took a deep breath, and resolved to be brave. ‘So. How are we off for J-cloths?’ she asked.
Linda smiled at her gratefully. ‘How the hell should I know?’ she retorted.
At which the two of them laughed and laughed in the small hours until they had to hold each other up. At three a.m., Belinda woke Stefan by turning the light on. She’d had a dream she needed to write down. And since he was now awake, she was quite keen to tell him about it, too. And also to treat him to an instant analysis, as she always did. In this dream, she said, she’d been bundled up in the bedclothes and placed in the washing-machine by an unseen hand. ‘It was an unseen hand,’ she said, significantly. ‘But I think we know whose it was. She was singing “I Should Be So Lucky”.’
Stefan shrugged.
‘Kylie Minogue,’ she explained. Belinda popped to the loo, and came back, over-confident that she had captured her husband’s attention. She shook him awake to continue.
Belinda often had premature burial dreams, but this one was different. No shovel, no grit. No bone-white fingers poking through the black earth. No, this was the opposite of the Gothic nightmare. Instead of feeling frightened and stifled in this one, she’d had rather a wonderful time. The water was warm and sudsy, something like amniotic fluid but with bright blue enzymes for a whiter white. And the rhythm was very comforting. ‘Slosh-to-the-right, two, three, slosh-to-the-left, two, three. Over, over, over, over, slosh, slosh, slosh.’ It reminded her of perhaps the greatest joy of her infancy – the bathtime game her father had played with her, safely cradling her in strong arms, then gently drawing her the length of the bath while singing the old music-hall song, ‘Floating down the river, on a Sunday afternoon’.
Stefan closed his eyes. As a scientist, he was more interested in the physiology of dreams than their nostalgic evocations.
‘No chance of you drowning, my dear? I say it helpfully, you understand.’
‘No, no. I didn’t even struggle. It was so cosy. Sloshing about. I just tapped on the milky glass from time to time – “Hello? Excuse me! Hello?” – because life was going on outside, and you were out there, Stefan, eating a bagel. You didn’t even seem to notice I’d gone.’
‘Which cycle were you on?’
‘Special treatments.’
‘Oh, good. I have always wondered what that was for.’
Belinda happily snapped shut her dreams notebook and turned the light off. ‘You know what this means?’
‘Something about the womb?’
‘No, it means Accept the Cleaning Lady. That’s good, isn’t it? Even my subconscious says it’s a good idea.’
‘Well, I’m going up,’ said Viv. ‘Thanks again for everything tonight. It will be odd not to make a list for you.’
‘It was all a sham, Viv. It’s time for you to admit it. You are Superwoman. We talked about this. We knew it couldn’t go on.’
Viv’s chin wobbled. ‘I’m not Superwoman,’ she said.
Linda put her hands on Viv’s shoulders. ‘Yes you are.’
And Viv jumped, as if she had been stung.
‘And what was the spin like?’ said Stefan.
‘Oh, that’s a point.’
Belinda turned on the light again as Stefan groaned.
‘What is it now?’
‘I woke up before the spin.’ She made a note. ‘Perhaps I’ll have to have the spin another time.’
When the lamps were finally out, they lay quietly in the dark for a minute. Stefan’s pre-sleep breathing had a little rhythmic squeak in it, a whistle in his nose. Belinda listened to it comfortably, happy. The room was otherwise perfectly still, perfectly quiet.
Hiring a new cleaning lady had been such a small decision, yet it had changed everything. On her way to the bathroom she had spotted a heap of laundry at the top of the stairs but it had not said, ‘Remember me?’ Instead it had asked rather excitedly, ‘When does she start? When does she start?’
Something else had changed, too, although at first she couldn’t put her finger on it.
‘Neville?’ she whispered, at last. In her abdomen, a spotlight swivelled around a deserted Big Top, finding only sand and sawdust, and bits of torn paper streamer. ‘Neville, are you there?’
Three
Belinda was right to say that Maggie had her own agenda. In fact, Maggie’s agenda was about as well disguised as a Centurion tank in a hairnet. Thus, when she told her oldest friend Belinda, ‘You work too hard’, what she really meant was ‘You don’t spend enough time listening to my problems’. When she said to Stefan, ‘Belinda cares only about her work,’ what was clearly imported by this treachery was ‘I’ll always love you, Stefan, I want to have your babies, and it’s not too late’. Telling Leon she thought Villeneuve was a bridge in Paris translated as ‘You’re a dreadful motor-racing bore and I can’t believe I’m listening to this.’ Indeed, the paradox of Maggie’s life was that the more rudely she semaphored her real message, the more her friends felt it polite to take her words at face value.
When she woke on Wednesday in her Clapham flat, the morning after the dinner party, it surprised her to find that Leon was still there. She assumed it was Leon, anyway. An enormous naked male body was sleeping face down diagonally in her four-foot bed, which was as unprecedented as it was uncomfortable. Blokes who went to bed with Maggie were, of course, not literally ‘all the same’, as she would sometimes complain, but they certainly shared many tendencies, and one of these was the quite strenuous avoidance of sleep. As if obeying house rules pinned to the door, they would resolutely roll out of Maggie’s bed and breast the cold night air without so much as a cup of tea or a post-coital cuddle. It was a strange, inexplicable nocturnal-urgency syndrome she had often remarked on.
‘Gotta go,’ they’d say, hopping about zipping their trousers and cleaning their teeth at the same time, like characters in a bedroom farce. ‘Unfortunately, I’ve got a very, very early appointment in the morning. Is this soap scented? It’s not bluebell or something?’
‘All my conquests are either undead or office cleaners,’ she would tell her mates, by way of brave humour. But in fact her conquests were fathers of small children, of course; fulfilling some sort of universal genetic imperative to cheat on the wife during the first year of parenthood. Maggie made a point of meeting the wives of her Undead Office Cleaners as soon as possible – not to cause trouble but simply to prevent her from becoming ‘the other woman’. Meeting the wife had this curious way of dispelling any self-deluding fantasies about adultery. Before you met the wife in the living flesh, you could imagine you were the real person and the wife was the anonymous incorporeal phantom. Whereas after you met her, the mirror swivelled to offer a truer perspective, in which the wife was the real person and you were the lump of garbage.
Anyway, ask any of her friends, and they could tell you Maggie’s exact emotional pattern on these wham-bam occasions, because she’d described them often. As the taxi roared off at two a.m., she would wave gaily from the doorway in her dressing-gown, feeling all jelly-legged and warm. Then she’d go back to her tousled bed with Ariel and Miranda (the cats), Hello! magazine and a hot cup of something brown and chocolatey called Options (nice touch), and as she brushed the condom wrapper from the sheet, she’d tell herself that no scene could better sum up the freedom of modern womanhood.
Oh yes, Simone de Beauvoir would be so proud. Look, all that money, yet Ba
rbra Streisand still had a hideous home! On the verge of sleep, she might decide it was high time a sexy woman of her calibre had her navel pierced. And then, seemingly a minute later, she woke alone in broad daylight. The room looked dusty; her pillow was caked in dribble and cat hair; she felt ravaged and cheap. The man in question was by now several miles away playing with baby in the bath, and would doubtless ignore her the next time they met, making her feel she’d been punched in the stomach. ‘What have I done?’ she would wail, then burst into tears and phone Belinda.
‘Shouldn’t you be getting home?’ (translation: ‘Get out of my house’) she asked Leon. She kicked his bum, which wobbled. Although she couldn’t now remember all the details, it had not been a terribly successful night, and it was annoying to find him still here. Evidently in Formula One they can refuel a car in under seven seconds – a statistic that was now proving hard to dislodge from her memory. Good grief, she still had her bra on.
Quite rightly it offended Maggie that while she was fit, pretty, clever, a bit famous and had screen-tested for Titanic, she’d still allowed herself to go to bed with Leon. It was so obvious she was too good for her sexual partners, yet strangely, there was no system of justice governing such matters, no god of eugenics who intervened on her behalf. ‘Stop!’ a voice should have said, as Leon gently placed his big paw on her neck in the car. ‘This coupling goes against nature, and must not proceed. This woman is reserved for clever, attractive males who write poetry and stuff. Kenneth Branagh, at least.’
But Maggie knew that the voice saying, ‘Stop!’ would never be hers. While she waited for Stefan to stop loving Belinda, she made the best of things; responded to advances from all directions; made quite a few advances of her own. Not that she was blind to male imperfections; far from it. But in sexual matters, you are often obliged to take your partner at his own estimation, and it’s a sad fact of life that many ugly, bald men look in the mirror and see Kevin Costner. Consequently, Maggie’s romantic career had encompassed sexual partners who, in former, more brutal, God-fearing eras, would have been stoned to death by mobs.
Leon snored and flapped a big white arm, but otherwise showed no sign of life, so she got up. She could have snuggled down, growled an erotic Murray Walker impersonation to rouse his ardour (she was good at accents). But on second thoughts, a bacon sandwich was more appealing. It was nearly lunch-time. So instead she made unrestrained noise having a shower, getting dressed, playing an oldies programme on Radio Two, and singing. She switched off half-way through Abba’s ‘Take A Chance On Me’ – it reminded her too painfully of her first-in-line feelings for Stefan.
She checked Leon wasn’t dead, of course. Remembering her duty as a hostess, she held a mirror to his lips until she saw vapour. But he wasn’t dead, and he wouldn’t wake up. So, humming ‘Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (A Man After Midnight)’, she left him a note with directions to the Gemini corner café, and went out.
At college, Stefan was having coffee with Jago in the library canteen. They had arranged it the night before, when Jago overheard Stefan on the subject of killer tomatoes. ‘We’ll do a genetics supplement and you can be consultant editor,’ he’d told Stefan. ‘I’ll see you at eleven.’ The trouble with journalists (as Stefan had often said to Belinda) was that they couldn’t help regarding you not as a person but as a source.
‘I need some Swedes quick,’ Jago might ring up to ask, mid-thought in his scurrilous weekly column in the Effort. No preamble, of course. Busy man, Jago. Part of his charm.
‘For sure. Ingmar Bergman, August Strindberg, Björn Borg.’
Jago could be heard tapping his keyboard in the background. ‘B-U-R-G?’
‘Well, B-E – which one?’
‘All of them. You tell me.’
‘Ingmar is B-E-R-G, August is B-E-R-G, and Björn is B-O-R-G. The reason for such a high incidence of the name Berg and its variants, of course—’
‘Great. You sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘One more Swede who isn’t a Berg, in case the subs don’t take my word for it?’
‘Abba?’
Four more emphatic taps.
‘Good man, gotta go.’
‘That was Yago,’ Stefan would tell Belinda, still holding the dead receiver in his hand.
‘How did I guess?’
The phrase ‘need-to-know basis’ had been invented for Jago. He was only interested in anything when he needed to know. Tell him a fact at an inappropriate moment (when he wasn’t writing an article, or commissioning one) and he literally screwed up his face to prevent it getting in. He was a tabula rasa with a straining Filofax, and other people were the fools who stored primary material until he came along to nick it. Not that your help would earn you any loyalty from him, let alone thanks. You could help him a hundred times, and he’d stitch you up on the hundred and first. The curious thing was, when Jago looked in a mirror he saw George Washington.
‘So how big is this supplement in the Effort?’ Stefan sighed, playing with his specs in a professorial manner.
‘Twelve pages. Minus ads. That leaves room for about three articles and a dozen pics.’
‘Why do you think I’ll contribute to it?’
‘Um, because if you don’t, I’ll go straight to Laurie Spink?’
Stefan smiled but didn’t reply. Laurie Spink made television programmes about genetics. He had a column in The Times.
‘OK, forget that Spink blackmail thing, that was tacky. If you do this for me, Stefan, I promise never to tell Belinda how I know you’re not a natural blond. What more can I say? Copy is by next Friday. A thousand words on anything. Is there a gene for monstrous boobs? Could you look for it between now and next Friday? I’m only thinking of the picture desk.’
‘Do people actually read these supplements, Yago? I’m afraid I am a doubting Thomas.’
‘Well, I’m glad you asked that. Research shows that, yes,’ he screwed up his face, as if trying to remember the exact figure, ‘one million, two hundred and twelve people read these supplements.’
‘But really they’re thrown in the bin?’
‘In a New York second.’
Stefan checked his watch and stood up. Jago took the hint. Besides, he’d arranged to call Laurie Spink in five minutes’ time. ‘I’ll be off,’ he offered. ‘So you’ll do it?’
Stefan shrugged. ‘No. It’s not really me, I think.’
‘Of course it’s you!’
‘I’m not a writer, Yago.’
‘No problem, big guy. We’ll write it for you in the office. I’ll ghost you. Happens all the time.’
‘Monstrous boobs may be for some the cat’s pyjamas, but – no.’
‘Stefan, why are you doing this to me?’
‘Because it’s a free country.’ Stefan shrugged. ‘East is east and west is west. Genetics is not all beer and skittles.’
Jago was confused, but more than that, he was hurt. Journalists always pout if you puncture their plan, even if they’ve only had the plan for the last ninety seconds.
‘Why do you call it copy?’ Stefan asked.
Jago looked puzzled.
‘Call what copy?’
‘Copy. I mean, the writing is supposed to be one-off, I think?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far. This is journalism we’re talking about.’
‘I mean, would you ever say, “Gosh, hey, this is very original one-off copy”?’
Jago had had enough. ‘If I ever said, “Gosh, hey,” at all, I’d lose my job, Stefan. As should you, I might add.’
He strode out of the canteen, and extracted his mobile phone from an inside pocket. Stefan had just completely wasted his time. What a two-face! ‘Gosh, hey, this is very original one-off copy!’ he said, with Stefan’s careful accent. He couldn’t wait to get back to the office to try that one on the guys.
Belinda spent the morning writing an imaginary riding-in-Ireland piece for Jago’s paper, and wondering what had happened to Neville. He was not his usual bouncy se
lf. Even when the phone rang and it was her mother (eek!) there was only a twitch or scuttle from Los Rodentos. Someone phoned up to ask Belinda to appear on radio (she declined, but felt agitated); she remembered Stefan’s birthday was next week; the usual pressures most certainly applied. But no trampolining by small furry bodies. The rats were on a go-slow. Ever since she’d decided to hire Linda, she’d felt like the proverbial sinking ship. ‘Psst, Neville,’ she whispered. ‘Are you all right?’ Not a scuttle; not a squeak. Life was odd without his wheeling and bouncing. She pictured him with little round spectacles, like John Lennon. But no matter how much she hummed ‘Imagine’ to encourage him, he simply wasn’t interested.
Belinda always had a marvellous time alone with her imagination. Having invented quite a good travel piece, if she said so herself (‘Wind and soft rain whipped the ponies’ fetlocks; my hat was too tight, like an iron band’) she was now plotting the next Verity novel, Atta Girl, Verity!, in which Verity’s impoverished mum would break the terrible news that she couldn’t afford to stable Goldenboy at the Manor House any more – or not unless Verity took a backbreaking after-school job pulling weeds in Camilla’s mummy’s seven-acre garden.
How she enjoyed visiting pain and anguish on Verity, these days. She beamed as she considered Verity’s fate. Ho hum. By the rules of such fiction, Verity must, of course, come back from a perfect hack on Goldenboy, and be rubbing him down with fresh-smelling straw when in the distance, eek! splash!, Camilla falls into the ornamental fishpond! Run to the rescue, Verity! Don’t care if your plaits get wet! Recover Camilla unconscious, apply life-saving techniques, and after a feverish period awaiting Camilla’s recovery, receive as reward (wait for it) free stabling for the rest of your life! And not forgetting double oats for good old Goldenboy!
The children’s book world was mainly supplied these days with grim stuff about discarded hypodermics, but Belinda knew her own smug little readers would lap up the free stabling plot all right, mainly because they had already proved themselves stupid with no imagination. How easy they were to manipulate, these little princesses. Psychoanalysis might never have been invented. ‘Camilla cuts off Verity’s plaits,’ she wrote now, mischievously. ‘Verity caught cheating in the handy-pony. Shame increases when V investigated by RSPCA; maltreatment of G Boy exposed on national TV by Rolf H. V’s mother seeks consolation in lethal cocktail of booze and horse pills, and is shot by vet. Camilla wins Hickstead.’