Life Goes On

  He or she hung up.

  I wanted to be with Agnes and hold her close, but she was probably in Hawaii by now, working her emotional way around the world. The phone went again. ‘Natural History Museum. Head Keeper speaking, can I help you?’

  ‘Mr Cullen, you’re not being serious.’ I recognised the melancholy voice of Matthew Coppice. ‘I’m phoning from Spleen Manor, just to tell you that my investigations into Lord Moggerhanger’s activities are proceeding apace and according to plan.’

  ‘That’s very good,’ I said. ‘Just keep on keeping on.’

  ‘Thank you. I shall. But I do like a bit of encouragement, Mr Cullen.’

  A moment after I hung up, the phone bell tolled again. I was beginning to think I was home. ‘Michael Cullen here.’

  ‘This is Lord Moggerhanger. Come and make your report. The customs people told me you were in.’

  I was so astonished that I didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m a bit tired.’

  He chuckled. ‘As well you might be, Michael. I’m not a hard man. Take a seventy-two hour pass. Then I shall want to see you.’

  He hung up. I hung up. It was mutual enough to satisfy my honour. He expected me to come running. Let him wait. I wasn’t a London pigeon, to eat out of his hand. I’d run when he did. I found a half-bottle of wine in the fridge and wobbled some out for a drink. Air travel not only frazzled me at the edges, it made me thirsty.

  Wandering around the flat I saw the first thirty pages of the shit-novel I’d written for Blaskin. A khaki circle showed where Bill had put his tea mug, and the cellophane wrapping of a cheap cigar between the pages told me he’d read it. Under the last line he’d pencilled: ‘You can do better than this. Not trashy enough, old son.’

  The typewriter would soothe my nerves, so at great expense of spirit I got my erring couple out of Tinder-box Cottage and into a maze like the one at Hampton Court. The husband was looking for the lover, the lover was looking for his girlfriend, the girlfriend was looking for her lover, and they were both looking out for the husband. I carried this on for a few pages to sustain the anguish and suspense, and in the middle of that particular section I typed the first chapters of Genesis word-backwards. I also copied a few paragraphs from a book by somebody called Proust (one of Blaskin’s favourites) and ended the chapter in mid-air so that I could start the next one in Peppercorn Cottage.

  I was all set to go on, but Gilbert came in with a tall thin woman he introduced as Margery Doldrum.

  ‘I’m happy to see you’re working. I think that trash novel’s a very good plan.’ He told Margery about it while pouring drinks. ‘I never thought I would have a son who would stand by me in my afflictions.’

  He walked restlessly from kitchen to living-room, from bedroom to study, leaving all doors open in case he got pregnant with another book and started to have labour pains at the same time. I told Margery about my trip to Canada, especially relating to Agnes, and she thought I was mad or lying, or both. She didn’t seem all that stable in the eyes herself, but that was because she was acquainted with Blaskin. He came back carrying a chapter of his novel, put it on the table, then got to work trying to open a bottle of ink – so clumsily that Margery looked at me as if to say: ‘What can you expect with such a male chauvinist genius?’

  ‘I’ve been invited to Jack and Prue Hogwash’s cottage next weekend, in Wiltshire,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you come, Gilbert? Bring Michael, if you like. There’ll be quite a party.’

  ‘I’d rather not, my love.’ He went on fiddling with the ink bottle. ‘I was invited to Roland Hamstreet’s place a month ago, and to my everlasting regret, I went. I’ve wasted too many hours of my precious life at weekend cottages. It’s the hugger-mugger I can’t stand, not to mention the fact that if somebody takes a piss in the furthest bathroom from the kitchen, the yolk of your egg shimmers in the frying pan when he pulls the chain. If a tractor goes by in the lane outside, all you see through the window are tyre-treads chucking up mud like water from a mill. Michael, why in tarnation did you screw the lid on this bottle so tightly?’

  It must have been Bill Straw after he wrote his letter. ‘Let me do it,’ I offered. But he wouldn’t: ‘Walk from one room to another idiotically smiling because you’ve just survived one of their batty parlour games, and you leave your head stuck to one of the beams like a bit of skin. Try to find the toilet in the middle of the night and you end up in the dog kennel. That’s the only room in the house with human dimensions. If the Bomb goes off, though, I expect a cottage will be the safest place to be. Half the population will be saved because the roofs are too low to catch the blast.’

  ‘Oh, stop it,’ said Margery. ‘You make me sick.’

  At which I gathered that she also had a cottage.

  ‘Thank you very much, Margery, but I can’t stand cottages.’ He got the bottle of ink open, but so suddenly that he splashed half over his latest page. ‘Now see what I’ve done, a whole week’s work gone.’ He looked at me with a spoiled, malevolent stare. ‘Michael, you idiot, how could you have done it?’

  ‘You talk too much.’ I spoke without malice, wanting only to take his mind off the accident. ‘I told you to let me do it.’

  Margery laughed, enjoying herself, and Blaskin’s bile got the upper hand. ‘Still here, are you? Why didn’t you go with Wayland Smith, and see how he gets his material on the great smuggling ring that’s threatening our national existence?’ Then he turned on me. ‘Listen, John Fitzbastard, clear off.’ I missed his fist, just. He missed mine, because I didn’t really aim. He gets worse as he gets older, I said to myself as I went out, case in one hand and umbrella in the other. I barged into the lift. He ran after me, shouting that I should come back and finish his trash-novel.

  Upper Mayhem in late spring was the most wonderful spot on earth, and buying it was the only thing I’d done right in my life. I got there at dusk, clapped out and jet-lagged, unmistakably rejected and utterly dejected, smelling flowers and fresh fields as I walked down the lane, incapable of understanding why I had responded to Bill Straw’s letter two months ago and given up such a comfortable den.

  Gnats danced in the evening warmth, frogs croaked from a nearby dyke, and birds were like specks of dust between drifting clouds. A whiff of coal smoke blended with the smell of soil. Here was the peace I wanted, and I made up my mind not to leave it again, as I entered my domain via the booking hall, crossed the footbridge over the line to the opposite platform and went up the garden path into the house.

  A loving welcome from Bridgitte was a thing of the past, but I thought I had a right to a not unduly cold reception after an absence during which I had been doing my best to earn a living, if not actually to stay alive so that I might do it again – occasionally – in the future. Maria sat by the living room fire knitting a white shawl, and her smile was part of the domestic order which I now craved more than the exciting life I had been pushed into. She had put on weight, which improved her appearance, and she looked happy, as if she also found Upper Mayhem the perfect haven. When she got up and kissed me it was like being welcomed home by a loving daughter.

  ‘Where’s Bridgitte?’

  ‘In kitchen.’

  Leaving my suitcase by the door, I picked up the jumbo box of chocolates bought at Liverpool Street. Bridgitte sat on the floor wiring up a plug for the electric iron. ‘Let me do that,’ I said.

  ‘I can manage.’

  ‘The blue wire goes on the right.’

  When she got up I gave her the chocolates. She put them on the sideboard. ‘What have you come back for?’

  I was feeling worse by the second. ‘Because I live here. Because I love you.’

  She held the iron high, as if to bring it down on my head. I was ready for her, though I hoped without showing it. ‘Stop that, you bitch!’

  ‘I didn’t believe you’d ever have the cheek.’

  ‘Where else could I come?’

  Her face went from a shade of pink to blood red. ‘You must be in tro
uble.’

  ‘Somebody’s going to kill me.’

  ‘Oh, when?’

  It was the best thing she’d heard in years. ‘I’ll fix you up with a nice seat in the shade as soon as I know. You seem in a bad mood today.’

  She put the iron down and turned away. I knew from the change in the contours of her shoulders that she was crying. An earring fell off as she said: ‘How could you do it to me? How could you?’

  I’d always thought that what the eye didn’t see the heart didn’t grieve over, so had she, by some magic message system, heard about my ten-minute grapple with Alice Whipplegate, or my brief encounter with Agnes in the New World? ‘How could I what?’

  ‘Do that to Maria, and then bring her here.’

  ‘I took pity on her, the same night I brought her. What the hell do you mean?’ I was arrowing into a pit of fatigue. ‘I thought I’d come home to my everlasting love. But I’m not staying. I’m off. I’ve had my bellyful.’

  ‘You’ve had your bellyful, have you?’ She wiped her eyes and took off the other earring. ‘You’re a treacherous, lecherous beast. You had the cheek to bring Maria here when she was pregnant, and you thought you’d get away with that, did you?’

  I staggered back. I really did, hitting my head against the closed door. ‘Pregnant?’

  ‘I suppose you didn’t know,’ she jeered. ‘You fuck women as if babies still come from under bushes. And you pick them when they aren’t on the pill. It’s the only way you can do it. You walk along the street playing a game called “Is She On The Pill, Or Isn’t She?” – and all those who aren’t, you fancy. Oh, what a rat you are. Why did I ever meet you? – me, who comes from a good family and had a very religious upbringing?’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that when I first met you.’

  She was crying again. ‘You didn’t ask me.’

  I laughed. It wasn’t hysteria. It really was funny. ‘I had no idea Maria was pregnant.’

  ‘Well, she is.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘She slept with me after you left because she was in terror of the man she’d worked for. She kept thinking he’d come and get her. Then one morning she was sick all over the bed.’

  I sat down. ‘Maybe it was a tin of salmon.’

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘Put the kettle on, and let’s have a cup of tea,’ I said.

  ‘This isn’t the Blitz. Put it on yourself.’

  I tried to kiss her. ‘Are you sure you didn’t make her pregnant?’

  She was a big woman, and the fist at my shoulder almost spun me off my feet. I put myself in a state of defence: ‘If you believe I made her pregnant you’ll believe anything. Did she tell you I did?’

  ‘She doesn’t say anything. But she’s in love with you. Whenever your name’s mentioned she looks ecstatic. You think I’m an idiot? It’s just one of your tricks.’

  I put the kettle on and spread a slice of bread with good Dutch butter. ‘It’s my fault she’s here, that’s true. Trust a fool like me to bring somebody home like that. But how was I to know she was up the spout?’

  ‘If you didn’t know, who could?’

  I spoke with my mouth full. ‘We’ve got to ask her direct.’ I took her by the arm. ‘Come on.’

  In the living-room Maria was leaning close to her knitting, as if short sighted, black hair covering the side of her face. Her luscious figure was so visible I almost wished I had made her pregnant. If I went to bed with her I’d never want to get up again. The way I looked at her did nothing to convince Bridgitte that I was not responsible for her condition, and the smile Maria gave when she realised I was in the room only doubled the proof of my responsibility. ‘Maria, Bridgitte tells me you are going to have a child.’

  She stood up, and put her half finished baby shawl on a chair. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Whose is it?’

  She smiled, and pointed to both of us. ‘Your baby.’

  I regretted there wasn’t a snowstorm outside that I could turn her into, thick wet flakes piling up beautifully all over the inhospitable soil. ‘Maria, you know it’s not mine. It can’t be, now, can it?’

  Bridgitte actually stamped. ‘You’ll do anything to make her deny it.’

  Maria’s dark and doll-like face screwed up as if to have a good cry. ‘You take baby. A gift.’

  I’m sure she was an intelligent young woman, and we weren’t too far behind in our powers of perception, but her lack of English, and our turning against each other when in a crisis tended to confuse the issue. ‘I’ll take her to my father’s place.’ I didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘Not to that monster,’ Bridgitte cried.

  She was right. It was an unreasonable suggestion, pregnant – oh God! – with disaster. He would make her write a Portuguese novel, then find a translator and pass it off as his own. ‘He wouldn’t molest a pregnant woman, though.’ I wanted to defend him against such outright rottenness though didn’t really see how I could. Bridgitte still did not get the drift of what Maria meant, so I decided to be a little more forthright, even if only to clear my good name, and asked as tactfully as I could:

  ‘Maria, who fucked you?’

  She stopped crying, and looked at me so intently with her shining brown eyes that I knew she was staring into space. ‘Who fucked you, then?’ I shouted.

  Bridgitte, both hands to her ears, looked at me with contempt and horror.

  ‘Mr Jeffrey,’ Maria said.

  ‘Jeffrey who?’

  ‘Har-lacks-stone’ – or Horlickstone, something like that.

  ‘The man you worked for?’

  She nodded, and fell onto the carpet in a dead faint. We struggled upstairs with her and, on the landing, I edged her towards the spare room. ‘She sleeps in my bed,’ Bridgitte said.

  ‘Our bed, you mean. What for?’

  She switched on the overhead light to tell me. ‘Because I don’t want to sleep with you. Because I like to sleep with her. Because Maria likes it as well. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Have it your way.’ I was appalled that she didn’t trust me even now. She saw me sloping into Maria’s room in the middle of the night to have it off with her. I’d never felt so offended. I pushed them into what had been described in the estate agent’s information sheet as the master bedroom, and went back to the kitchen to find it filled with steam from the boiling kettle. Enough water was left for a pot of tea. I poured Bridgitte a cup when she came down. ‘How is she?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Do you believe me now?’ I tried to kiss her, but she still wouldn’t have it.

  ‘You’ll have to go and see this Mr Horlickstone.’

  ‘What good will that do?’ I asked. ‘He’s married. He’s got four kids. And nobody would be able to prove anything.’

  ‘Then I’ll go and see him. I’ll take the shotgun.’

  I trembled, knowing she would do it. Man shot dead in the prime of life by Calamity Jane. The newspapers would love it. Any number of photographers would descend on Upper Mayhem. My face would get on the front pages. The lads in Canada would know where I lived. Most of all, I couldn’t stand the thought of Bridgitte getting six months for murder.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I promised.

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll go now. I’ll take the car and be there by dawn. I’ll pull him from the new au pair’s bed and execute him against the ivy-clad garden wall. He’ll love it.’

  She thought I was being serious. ‘You look tired. Do it tomorrow.’

  I had no intention of moving anywhere for a few days. After more bread and butter I went into the damp bed in the spare room and slept till three the next afternoon, a big white whale chasing me eternally through hanging fronds of seaweed. Bridgitte tried to trawl me out about eight, and came up with tea at ten, but even her imagination must have told her I had to sleep myself out.

  A gritty floorcloth was being pulled across my face, and I opened my eyes to see Dismal on the bed. Then I heard Bill Straw d
ownstairs shouting that he wouldn’t mind a cup of tea and six fried eggs after hitch-hiking all the way from Lincoln.

  His demanding voice brought me back to life. I dressed and shaved, and found him sitting by an empty plate in the kitchen, trying to cajole Bridgitte into grilling some beef sausages. ‘Thanks, Michael. That’s one more life I owe you. You took long enough about it, though.’

  ‘I didn’t get back till yesterday, and I posted the money within ten minutes of reading your letter.’

  He wiped the fat off his plate with a piece of bread and it was halfway to his mouth when Dismal took it. He looked at Maria: ‘Get me some more to eat, duck, will you?’

  ‘Didn’t they feed you in prison?’ I asked.

  ‘Prison?’ Bridgitte looked away with shock. ‘I suppose all your friends are jailbirds?’

  ‘I was only in two days,’ Bill said, ‘so don’t get like that, duck. It was a case of mistaken identity and false arrest. A graver miscarriage of justice I’ve never been involved in. They gave me a good breakfast, though, before I left this morning. It was so big I thought they were going to hang me.’

  ‘Tell me about it later,’ I said.

  Bridgitte went out, and Bill nodded towards Maria, who put more sausages and bacon under the grill. ‘Who’s she, then?’ I introduced them. ‘She’s lovely,’ he said.