Going Loco

  ‘And, as you said before,’ Linda continued, ‘men have always shut themselves away to write books, without anyone accusing them of neglecting the household chores. I mean, Tolstoy didn’t write Crime and Punishment in between trips to Asda.’

  ‘You say the best things, Linda.’

  ‘Thank goodness you don’t have any children.’

  ‘Mm.’

  Linda reopened the fridge and ran a professional eye over its contents. She took a deep breath. ‘I feel very good about this,’ she said, folding her arms. ‘I am absolutely sure that, between us, we’re going to write that book.’

  Belinda looked at the new cleaning lady and marvelled. What a formidable ally to have. She had a silly schoolgirl urge to tell Linda she was lovely. She had such a fruity firmness about her, plus the easy elegance that is often found in people who, at a crucial moment in their teenage development, chose hockey club over Georgette Heyer. Paths divide at every moment of the day, of course. But Belinda believed in the universal hockey–Heyer divide most strongly. In her experience, those who at puberty chose solitary reading over group exertion may (oh, yes) have grown up to be brainboxes earning more money, but they could never quite catch up again in self-confidence with those hearty, practical girls, despite all their well-meant gym subscriptions in later years.

  Outside in the hall, Mrs Holdsworth ran her Hoover into a coat-stand, and said, ‘Shit,’ as it crashed to the floor.

  ‘I can’t sack Mrs Holdsworth,’ Belinda said.

  Linda shrugged. ‘I can leave her a patch of hall carpet. Where are the phones, by the way?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The phones.’

  ‘One in my study, one in the hall.’

  ‘When I’m here, I’ll field your calls. Completely uninterrupted time is what you want, isn’t it? Shall I throw those newspapers away?’

  Belinda nodded. It was like a dream.

  ‘Okey-dokey.’ Linda smiled. ‘Well, the best thing I can do this afternoon is get some shopping and prepare the dinner. I’ll give you a bill at the end of each week. You’re in tonight? What time does Mrs Holdsworth finish?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘I’ll return at four ten. And I’ll finish at six thirty. What are you working on this afternoon?’

  ‘Oh, hack work. It has to be done. I write for money as Patsy Sullivan. Horsy stories. Patsy subsidizes us all. She’ll be paying you too.’

  ‘So you’ve got a double life yourself, Mrs Johansson!’

  ‘I ought to ditch Patsy, really. Now I’m on the same footing as Tolstoy it doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘Well, one thing at a time. Perhaps you’re fond of her.’

  ‘Oh, I am. Tell me about yourself, though, Linda.’

  But just at that moment the phone rang, and Linda lifted down her coat (a neat ivory mac) from the kitchen door, where she had hung it on a little collapsible hanger. She folded the hanger and put it in her bag. ‘I’ll answer that on the way out,’ she said.

  Belinda was startled. ‘What? I mean, you can’t—’

  Mrs H yelled, ‘It’s your fucking phone, Belinda!’ above the din of the machine.

  Linda gave her a funny look. ‘Trust me,’ she said.

  Belinda’s mother regarded herself in her pocket mirror as the taxi bounced along the north side of Clapham Common. With effort and concentration, she twitched the corners of her mouth to form a ghostly smile. She would never actually regret the face-lift, but she had to admit that the general reaction was not what she had hoped for. Instead of her best friends saying, ‘Virginia, you look so good today, so young, but somehow I can’t put my finger on it,’ they walked right past her, even in Harrods Food Hall. To make matters worse, meanwhile, complete strangers were jabbing her in the chest, saying, ‘Do you mind me asking? How much it cost?’

  It had cost thousands, of course. Cheekbone enhancement, lips like sofa cushions, realigned eyebrows, and a revolutionary polymer skin treatment guaranteed to keep the whole lot immovable for at least five years, as long as she took certain precautions. She could go swimming, she could be kissed on both cheeks, and she could sunbathe as long as she wore an enormous hat. ‘But if you feel at all tempted to peek inside a blast furnace,’ her surgeon told her darkly, ‘don’t.’

  Lucky, then, that there were so few steel mills still under commission in Knightsbridge. Nevertheless she had taken this alarming advice very much to heart. At home, in her Primrose Hill flat, she’d stopped using the oven, and turned all the radiators down. The iron was permanently set to one-dot, and was used at arm’s length. Selling chestnuts on street corners was now totally ruled out as a profession. On the plus side, however, she had given up smoking. After decades of fruitless begging from Belinda, Mother had now kicked the habit overnight, and had even started decrying it in others. In fact, along with rabid jealousy of her facial upholstering, this was the main reason her old friends were dropping her. It gets on your nerves if every time you light up a Benson and Hedges, your companion shrieks, ‘No!’ and shades her face like Nosferatu. Auntie Vanessa, her identical twin sister (though not as identical as she used to be), was a champion smoker and now flatly refused to see her.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Belinda, darling! What a terrible line!’

  ‘This is the Johansson residence. Who is this speaking, please?’

  Mother regarded her mobile phone with a puzzled expression, and knocked it against the car door a couple of times. ‘Belinda?’

  ‘I’m afraid Mrs Johansson is working at the moment. May I pass on a message?’

  ‘It’s her mother, for heaven’s sake. And I’m just on my way to see her.’ The taxi purred at traffic-lights. ‘Right here, then Armadale Road,’ she yelled, pointing.

  Linda effortlessly took an executive decision. In fact she took two, because she bobbed down and unplugged Mrs H’s Hoover at the same time, leaving the old woman open-mouthed.

  ‘Oh, I’ve heard so much about you!’ she lied. ‘Mrs Johansson was just saying how much she’d like to see you. But she is so terribly busy today. I’ll ask her either to call you later or to give me a message for you. Did you have a nice day shopping?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I very much look forward to meeting you. I’m Linda.’

  She plugged the Hoover back in, and replaced the receiver.

  ‘You must be Mrs Holdsworth,’ she smiled, extending her manicured hand. ‘What a lovely scarf. Is it new?’

  Jago spent his afternoon making secret calls to Dermot on his mobile from the gents’. He had no idea that the vile Dermot had been smooching with his wife the night before – or, indeed, that as he spoke to Dermot, mobile-to-mobile, he was in bed with her, showing her the extremely out-of-the-way places where his tan stopped.

  Dermot, it has to be said, was more excited by the human clone in their midst than he’d been about making love to Viv – and, to Viv’s chagrin, did not try hard to disguise it. In fact he waved her away rather nastily, and she retreated to the en suite while he offered Jago his professional opinion – viz., that if Stefan were really a clone in our midst, Jago could get half a million for a book, plus serialization fees. However, if it turned out that Stefan was merely in our midst (and not a clone), he’d be lucky to get a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

  ‘You’re not an investigative reporter, Jago. Did you ever do anything like this before? What’s the nearest you’ve been to cutting-edge stuff?’

  ‘I interviewed Tom Stoppard when his marriage was breaking up.’

  ‘What did he say about it?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘His love life.’

  Jago’s voice rose. ‘You saying I should have asked him? Jesus, can you imagine how awkward that would be?’

  Dermot didn’t have time for this. He sat up in bed and tucked a pillow behind him.

  ‘See what you can get, Jago. But you know how it is. You’ll need patience and perseverance and tact to get this story.’

  Jago w
inced three times. He hated all those words.

  ‘My suggestion is, hire someone to watch him. Find out what happened in Sweden. And don’t get obsessed with the clone thing. Do you think Belinda knows she might be married to a clone?’

  ‘No.’

  Dermot looked up at Viv, who was suddenly standing next to him. If she had overheard, there was nothing he could do about it.

  ‘Don’t tell her.’

  ‘You’re right. I mean, for one thing I don’t want to alarm my oldest friend unnecessarily. And on top of that—’

  Dermot was there already. ‘She might get in first with a book deal?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Mrs Holdsworth finished Hoovering her little patch of hall and tottered to the kitchen for her coat. She pocketed the money Belinda had left her with an aggressive swipe, as if she would just as happily trample it underfoot. It had been an unsettling afternoon. Three times she had tried Belinda with conversational gambits of such outstanding ingenuity that she’d had to have a sit-down afterwards. But even ‘Do you think Richard Branson is really the Antichrist?’ and ‘Whatever made anyone invent the scone?’ failed to find their mark. And then, to top it all, this woman in the light mac had unplugged her Hoover.

  In cleaning-lady terms, this was a direct challenge that cannot be overstated. It is the equivalent of the glove smacked across your face from right to left, and then from left to right.

  From her ground-floor office, Belinda listened as Mrs Holdsworth left. She felt half guilty and half excited by the idea of hurting her feelings. She loved the sense of danger. What if Mrs Holdsworth told her off?

  ‘I’ll be off, then, Belinda,’ the old woman called. ‘We’re out of Jif.’

  ‘Right. Many thanks.’

  ‘Back next week.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Did you know the other woman took a key?’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  She heard the front door opened; felt the draught; heard traffic noise. Mrs H was evidently taking her time, deciding whether to pursue it. Then, with a muttered ‘Fuck it,’ the door was slammed, and Mrs H could faintly be heard coughing (‘God Almighty, Jesus wept’) at the garden gate.

  Stefan was not expecting to meet his mother-in-law Virginia lurking behind a denuded London plane tree as he walked from the bus along Armadale Road. It was six thirty and dark, which didn’t help. And since she no longer looked remotely like the woman he knew as Mother, he walked straight past her, consulting a little book and talking to himself. ‘Make it snappy or make tracks,’ she heard him saying. ‘You have made a hole in my pocket but I won’t make a song and dance. How do you make that out exactly? Ha! That makes you sit up, for sure.’

  ‘Stefan!’ she called. She had always liked Stefan, because he was big and handsome; and he had always liked her, too. The reason they saw Mother so infrequently was only that Belinda was discouraged by criticism, and Mother, unfortunately, had no other mode of communication.

  He turned. ‘Let’s make a night of it, baby,’ he said. ‘Oh, hello, Virginia. Didn’t recognize you. Something up?’

  Mother’s permanently fixed expression of wide-eyed alarm often gave rise to this question. But on this occasion at least the context made it the right thing to say.

  ‘I had to see you,’ she said. ‘Who’s Linda? What’s going on?’

  Stefan’s eyes swivelled. ‘I don’t understand. Why are you out here in the street? Has there been dirty work at the crossroads?’

  Mother pursed her lips. Or, more accurately, she attempted to purse her lips but gave up.

  ‘Yes, I rather think there has,’ she said at last. ‘I wanted to invite Belinda to the opera tonight. This Linda refused to let me.’

  ‘Really? She sent you away from the door, like a dog in the night?’

  ‘I phoned. They wouldn’t let me in, Stefan.’ She pouted. ‘I’ve been out here in the cold. It was someone called Linda and she was very rude. Typical of Belinda to hire somebody who’d be rude to her mother.’

  At which point, as they approached the front door, Linda opened it and smiled at them both. She was evidently just leaving, but when she saw them she ushered them inside, gesturing at them to keep the noise down.

  ‘Mrs Johansson is working until seven,’ she whispered. ‘The dinner will be ready at seven thirty. I’ve rigged up a temporary answering-machine, made a list of the more urgent bills, filed the letters, cleaned the kitchen windows, sprayed the cat for fleas and changed all the beds.’

  ‘Linda is our new Mrs Mop,’ Stefan explained, somewhat redundantly.

  ‘The newspapers I took to the dump,’ Linda continued, ‘but I’ve rung the recycling people and they’ll start coming next Tuesday. Um, what else? Your dressing-gown is warming in the airing cupboard, Mr Johansson. I didn’t know what to do with this ice-hockey puck, but I can ask Mrs Johansson at our three o’clock meeting tomorrow. Normally our meeting will be at one o’clock, when I’ll provide soup and a hot dish, but tomorrow I’ll be a little late, as I’ll be having lunch with Mrs Johansson’s agent on her behalf.’

  A number of objections raised themselves in the minds of Stefan and Mother, but under this barrage all they could do was laugh nervously.

  ‘Does Belinda know all this?’

  Linda was surprised. ‘Of course not. That’s the idea.’

  Stefan ran through the list again in his mind. He frowned. ‘I think the cat was not ours, Linda. We do not own a cat. I fear you have de-fleaed the cat of another.’

  Mother made a strangled noise. ‘The cat of another?’ she exploded. ‘Who cares about the cat of another? I’ve never heard anything like it. This is so typical of Belinda. Having lunch with Jorkin? How dare you?’

  Linda looked puzzled. ‘I am thinking only of what’s best for Mrs Johansson, and for everybody. Truly, I’m very good at this sort of thing. One of my previous employers said I was like Nature. I abhor a vacuum. Meanwhile, as I’m sure you’re aware, Mrs Johansson has fears that she will cease to be before her pen has gleaned her teeming brain.’

  Mother tried to look aghast, but (of course) continued only to look mildly surprised. In any case, it was hard to have a proper scene huddled by the front door, talking in hushed tones for fear of interrupting the sacred work of Belinda.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she hissed. ‘This house! This is so typical! You waltz in here. You just waltz—’

  Mother, breathless with exasperation, seemed to be getting stuck on the insufferable image of Linda waltzing. ‘I mean, here’s an idea, Linda, whoever you are,’ she spat. ‘If you’re doing everything for my daughter, why don’t you just come to see Così Fan Tutte with me tonight, then sleep with Stefan afterwards?’

  ‘Virginia!’ exclaimed Stefan. English sarcasm always outraged him.

  But Linda had her head on one side, as if making her mind up. ‘Would you stay there, please?’ she said, and disappeared in the direction of Belinda’s study. They waited awkwardly by the front door, like neighbourhood children waiting for a friend to come out to play.

  Linda returned. ‘I’d love to,’ she said. ‘I mean, I’d love to come to the opera in Belinda’s place. She’s happy to carry on working, and she said it would be a good opportunity for me to get to know you. She also said you know perfectly well she hates poncy opera. So thank you, thank you very much. Is that a Prada coat? I thought so. Look at the tailoring.’

  She attempted to give Mother a kiss on the cheek, but was almost shoved away. ‘Poncy?’ Mother queried, obviously hurt. ‘Belinda!’ she called.

  Stefan intervened. ‘If the ticket is spare, Virginia, why not take Linda? She takes us by surprise, yet it is a swell idea. Here is a vacuum for her to fill, I think. Surely we should give her the glad hand for the kitchen windows and such. Only the cat of another has the right to bad feeling.’

  ‘May I call you Virginia?’ asked Linda, with a smile.

  ‘Of course not.’

  Mother was beginning to feel dizzy.

 
‘You must come to dinner tomorrow night, mustn’t she, Mr Johansson? I happen to know Belinda’s aiming to finish her chapter on Dostoevsky this week, and she’ll be so relieved to know she needn’t do anything.’

  ‘Poncy?’ Mother repeated. ‘Così isn’t poncy.’

  Linda waved it away. ‘May I call you Mother?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, this is very exciting. Do I need to change first, do you think? Or shall I come as I am?’

  Back in her flat, Maggie stroked Ariel and Miranda in the dark, and tried to imagine how she would tell Belinda what had happened. Belinda ought to be informed about a real-life case of doubles, surely? But, on the other hand, the vocabulary was so difficult. ‘I met a double’ would sound like she’d met her own double; ‘I met two doubles’ sounded like she’d met four people, possibly dressed in tennis whites, which was in no way a reflection of what had happened.

  If only she had a contact number for Leon! If only she had listened more carefully when he told her the details of his next indie-car yawnfest assignment in Oshbosh, Oklahoma. ‘Off to Oshbosh,’ said his note. ‘You were lovely. I want to see you again. Yours anally, L.’ She couldn’t possibly ask Jago about him: it was imperative that her friends never find out the calibre of person she allowed herself to sleep with. But, there again, Leon’s presence was desperately required, simply to prove to her bloody therapist that she hadn’t made him up.

  Olivia in Twelfth Night, she reflected, had had such an easy time of it by comparison. ‘Honestly, you look exactly like him,’ she had lamely told Noel, Julia’s husband, in the café, when he’d revived her. But he only nodded solemnly and exchanged professional tut-tut glances with Julia. He was a therapist too, naturally. Neither of them believed her. It was a nightmare. They wanted to know why she’d identified herself as Penelope Pitstop, but since neither of them had a sense of humour or had watched children’s television, it had been necessary to abandon the explanation.

  ‘Margaret won’t mind me telling you,’ Julia was informing Noel now. ‘We’ve been working for several months on a specific complex, relating to her feelings of invisibility. Her greatest fear – I think this is true, Margaret? – is of being publicly ignored and rejected by people who’ve been intimate with her. I think we agreed that of all humiliations this one utterly annihilates you, doesn’t it, Margaret?’