Death of a Perfect Mother (23 page)

‘Of course, I'm the last one to complain,' he was saying, ‘but being tied to an invalid wife all these years has been no joke.'

‘I'm sure it hasn't,' said his widow.

‘Particularly one of her disposition,' said Wilf resentfully.

‘Tell me about her,' said the widow.

And Wilf got down to doing just that. Odd that he hadn't noticed the determined set of the widow's jaw, or the glint of contempt for him in her eyes. Had he done so, might he not have thought of frying pans and fires?

• • •

Watching Gordon out on the dance floor again, still smart and precise in his dress, yet spreading his vitality around him like shock treatment, Brian found himself unable to throw off that slight cloud of depression. All that energy, that zest, that animal enjoyment of life.

‘I wish—' he said.

‘What?' said his friend Eric, bending close.

‘I wish . . . looking at Gordon, out there, dancing . . . He's so alive, so . . . electric. He's got something I haven't
got. I wish . . . I wish I could give pleasure like that . . . or feel it.'

‘I expect you will one day,' said Eric, looking at him.

‘When I go out there . . . and dance with a girl . . . I can't do it, not with my whole body, not like Gordon. It doesn't do anything to me. Look at him now. That girl, she's quite an ordinary girl, but Gordon's all bright, like she was plugging him into the mains . . . I never feel like that.'

‘That's because you're different, made different,' said Eric.

And with a strange, secret shock of pleasure Brian felt Eric's hand, under the table, reach out for his, and take it in his own warm one, comfortingly.

• • •

Eve Carstairs, at a business dinner-dance with her husband, danced the last waltz, holding him closely to her. He was pot-bellied, tired, resentful of her energy, but she closed her eyes and transformed him in her mind into something else again—taller, stronger, younger, and of quite another colour.

Fred Hodsden, drinking his last half pint after the darts tournament he had helped to win (his game was much improved these days, by practice) sank into a sea of well-being and became quite loquacious, for Fred. He talked about Lill, what a wonderful mother she'd been, how he'd like to flay alive the young bastard who did it, and what a wonderful little family he'd got, thanks to Lill.

‘I'd best be getting back, soon as you're ready,' he said, looking around the team. ‘The boys are at a dance, but I reckon they'll be home and wanting their suppers before long.' He sighed contentedly. ‘It's a big responsibility, bringing up a family on your own.'

‘You should be looking about you now, Fred,' said one of his mates. ‘You're the marrying type.'

‘Aye,' said Fred. ‘I'd thought of that.'

• • •

‘I need the loo,' said Brian, after he and Eric had sat at the table, silent amid the din, for a very long time. It had seemed there was no group, no amplifiers, no dancers. Only a still world, suddenly remade.

‘So do I,' said Eric. ‘I'll join you.'

They made for the door, but Brian said nervously: ‘I expect Gordon will be back soon.'

‘What if he is?' said Eric. Brian, as though treading on uncertain ground, cast his eyes back nervously at the dance floor, at the bright clothes and the drab, at the sweaty faces red from drink, the matt faces glazed from drugs, those vile bodies. He could see no Gordon among them.

‘Come on,' said Eric softly, and he pulled himself through the door.

Out in the corridor they avoided by silent consent the big lavatory nearest the Student Union hall, by now probably vile with spew or worse. They walked along corridors, up stairways, into alcoves, until the music receded to nothing and there seemed to be only themselves suspended over nothing, with something drawing them together they hardly understood and could not talk about. Finally they found a little gents in the corner of the Russian department, totally deserted, quiet as the grave. They went in. They had reached the ultimate bourne of so many predecessors of their kind, the little-frequented public loo.

They pissed, looking everywhere but down or at each other, and then they went over to the washbasin. They looked, not at each other but at each other in the mirrors: they looked over-bright in the harsh fluorescent glare, tensed up for something to happen. As Brian put his hand down to turn on the tap Eric took it again, openly, tenderly, and drew Brian around to face him. After a moment he drew him closer, closer . . .

The door opened and they shot apart.

‘Oh Gordon—'

Gordon walked over to the latrines with a false casualness.

‘Oh hello, Brian. Just the chap I wanted to talk to. Been looking all over.' Eric and Brian stood awkward in the over-bright light, unable to do anything but watch. Gordon finished and zipped himself up. ‘I said I wanted to talk to my brother,' he repeated.

‘Can't you—?'

‘GET!'

Eric looked at Brian, and then at Gordon. Then as Gordon took two menacing steps forward he scooted through the door. They heard his footsteps echoing down the corridor. Gordon continued his walk forward, and when he got to the basins, with a sudden lithe movement he caught his brother under the collar and jerked his head back against the mirror.

‘You bloody little fool!'

‘Gordon—'

‘You bloody little fool! You need cooling off! I've a good mind to put your head under this tap.'

‘Stop it, Gordon. You're choking me.'

‘I would too. Christ, you make me sick. I never thought I'd see my brother playing monkey tricks like that. Handy-pandy under the table with another adolescent queer.'

‘It was the first time!'

‘And the fucking last!'

‘Nobody saw us.'

‘I saw you!'

‘Nobody would care. What's it to them? People's private lives are their own these days. Nobody thinks about it like that anymore.'

‘I THINK ABOUT IT LIKE THAT! Get that message, boy. Do you think I want a pansy for a brother?'

‘You're just old-fashioned.'

‘Thank Christ I am. Do you think I don't know about your sort? We had them in the army all right, don't you worry. Officers. Offer you a drink all friendly, and the next thing you know they're feeling your crotch. Oh no, little brother. I'm not having anyone in our family joining the fairy-queen set.'

‘Give over, Gordon. Let me go. We'll talk about it in the morning.'

But Gordon was not going to be temporized with, and kept his large hand firmly on the neck of Brian's shirt.

‘We're talking about it now. Are you getting the message? You'd better be. Because you're going to swear to me that this is the last time you try any of those grubby little tricks.'

‘Oh, don't talk rot, Gordon. I'm nineteen. I'm not under your thumb. I'm at university. Soon I'll be out working. I'm not going to swear away my life just because you're so bloody medieval.'

‘You're going to do just what I tell you to. I can see I was wrong just to worry about Debbie. All the time there was you, itching to play arse bandits with your little palsy-walsy. Well, get the message, boy: I'm in charge of the Hodsden family now. And if I find you playing these little games again, I'll take you apart, I'll half murder you.'

‘Don't be so bloody melodramatic, Gordon.'

‘You think it's just wind, do you? Well, it wouldn't be the first time. There was a boy in Northern Ireland. I suspected him of shopping one of my mates to the Provos.' Gordon forced Brian down on to the washbasin and stood over him, twisting his tie, and looking at him intently with a glowering, remembering gaze. ‘I got hold of that boy, and I took him, in my army truck, way way out of town, and when I'd finished with him his own mother couldn't bear to look at him . . . I worked on him for three hours, slowly . . . He'll never walk again . . . So don't think this is just big talk, baby brother. I'd do it to
you if I thought you were disgracing us.'

‘You're making this up. You'd've told me . . .'

‘There are some things you flabby intellectuals are too soft to hear. You think you know about life, don't you, but you know
nothing.'

‘I know I'm nineteen. I know I can leave home and come into residence here whenever I want. I know you've got no legal hold over me.'

‘That's typical. That's your sort of knowledge. Legal knowledge. Book knowledge. Well, this is my gut knowledge: I've got all the hold I need. In fact I've got you by the short hairs.'

‘Oh yes? How?'

‘I've got the hold that you and me, together, planned the murder of our late departed mum, Lill Hodsden, who was duly murdered on April 24, 19—'

Brian laughed with relief and almost forgot the hard hand at his throat. ‘Some hold! Who's going to care about that? That boy in Cumbledon's been tried.'

‘Not for Lill's murder. It wouldn't matter even if he had. Cases can be reopened. They'd still be interested if I went along.'

‘Went along and what? Said that, lying in our bedroom, we talked about the murder of our mother—? Don't talk rot.'

‘Which murder duly took place in the manner we had planned it, strangulation, by a piece of wire, strong, thick wire now lying buried in the War Memorial Gardens—'

‘They never found the wire—'

‘Where one day next Spring, perhaps, old Fred will turn it over with his rake and throw it on the rubbish heap—'

‘Old Fred?'

‘—without thinking it's the wire that sent his better half to judgment, because the handles aren't there, the handles were twisted off it, and thrown on the fire of the
Rose and Crown, in the Saloon Bar, at ten to ten on the night of the murder, where they burned away to nothing.'

‘Gordon! You're lying!' Brian struggled free and looked at his brother. The vital body that had seemed so full of energy on the dance floor now seemed to crackle with violent force as Gordon remembered back to the night in April. When the full realization of what he was saying struck Brian, he keeled over towards the washbasins and retched.

‘Oh, you throw up at the thought, don't you? I knew you were too weak to go through with it. Do you think I didn't feel like throwing up? I held it back. All the way back to the pub I held it back. I drank beer with the rest—poured it down while I was churning up inside. It was only after we'd heard, on the way up—'

‘Stop it, Gordon, for God's sake! I don't believe you. You're just saying it because that's what you
wanted
to do.'

‘Wanted to do and did. I could see you were chickening out. You were never really on in the first place, were you? And as soon as Mum and Debbie had that fight you were going to use it, weren't you, as your little get-out? You're a gutless little weed. So I had to take it all on myself. I just changed the day, changed the venue, then went ahead and did it. I enjoyed it, too.'

‘You didn't-'

‘I did. I enjoyed feeling her body under me. I enjoyed seeing her looking at me. I put my head out into the light, just for a second so she could see, and know. She knew it was me. She knew I was murdering her. That's what I enjoyed most of all.'

‘You're lying, Gordon. Romancing. Just to make yourself feel big.'

Quick as a flash Gordon dived into the inside pocket of his suit and came out with something cradled in the palm of his hand. ‘Remember that brooch? The one the Inspector
was after, to get a lead on that boy? The one Corby had given her? What do you think this is?'

He opened his palm and shoved his hand under Brian's eyes. Sparkling in the over-bright light was a little silver peacock, with diamonds studding its head and tail—a worthless, expensive trinket, Lill's last love-offering.

‘Lovely, isn't it? Real class. It's been hidden at work. If they'd found it they'd have suspected old Corby. I'm going to keep it on me always. To remind me of my finest hour. Tell me I'm alive.'

Brian's eyes, glazed and disbelieving, stared at the jewel, winking hypnotically in the white light. The brooch from Lill's dress, the brooch that had been ripped off the body. Suddenly he felt stunned, crushed: there was no more room for doubt. Again he keeled over, and sobbed and retched into the washbasin till he felt empty of everything except fear.

‘So you see,' said Gordon, silky of voice, when at last Brian forced himself upright and cooled his forehead against the icy mirror, ‘here we are, both in this together. Just as we planned. You—at the very least—as accessory before the fact. So get this straight: if I go and confess, you're in it with me.'

‘You wouldn't confess. Why would you?'

‘I don't know,' said Gordon, suddenly thoughtful, almost sad. ‘Sometimes I feel like it. Sometimes I feel there . . . there isn't any point to things. Any meaning anymore. Do you know what . . . she . . . what Ann said to me? She said: “When I'm with you, it's as though, somehow, you're not
there.”
' He swallowed, as if he had crunched a nasty pill. ‘I know what she meant, now. Mum did that to us. To you too. She sucked us dry, and spat out the pips. These girls I've been fucking all summer. Do you know why there've been so many? Because they're not interested after they've been with me two or three times. I expect they feel the same. That's how she
left us, our Lill. Really all I've got is the family . . .'

Brian did not speak, a terrible fear on him.

‘You. And Debbie. Even old Fred. It's something. Something I've got to do. My responsibility. And I'm going to make a job of it. We're not going to be the town laughing-stocks, like we were. You're none of you going to disgrace us.'

Brian could stand it no more. ‘I've got my life to live, Gordon,' he wailed. ‘My life!'