A Dog's Life (4 page)

They sat in the waiting room of the ‘special clinic’ for what seemed hours before David insisted that his friend, who was dancing at the Opera House that evening, should be seen by a doctor. The anguished Russian was examined. He had gonorrhoea. The word was written on a scrap of paper for him, and he shook his head in bewilderment. He was given an injection of penicillin. David accompanied him to the underground ‘special clinic’ on three more occasions, and when the Kirov were due to leave the grateful dancer embraced him to the point of breathlessness and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘You friend. You good friend. You give me help.’

David’s father was a drunk, a womanizer and a spendthrift. Major Healy was stationed in South Africa at the start of the Second World War, and David and his brother Arthur grew up in Amanzimtoti, near Durban, cared for by a black nanny whom they adored. Their mother, Adza, hated the socializing duties expected of an army wife, and tried for a while to ignore her husband’s constant infidelities. The couple returned to Britain in the late 1940s, and divorced in the following decade. Major Healy disappeared from their lives, only to reappear at the stage door of the London Palladium after a performance in which his eldest son had been ‘hoofing’.

‘I’m your dad, David. Don’t you recognize me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m on my uppers, David. Can you lend your old dad a fiver?’

‘No.’

That was to be their last meeting. The major’s demand for money and the sentimental reminder that he was his ‘old dad’ caused David considerable misery, even though he turned the encounter into a comic anecdote. I think this was the reason he was happiest in the company of women, especially those who were having trouble with men. His ‘dad’ came to represent everything he despised in a certain kind of heterosexual man – the kind who regard their wives or lovers as a subspecies, available at all times in either the bedroom or the kitchen.

Adza was brought up as a Roman Catholic but alienated her devout relatives when she married the major, who called himself a Protestant. She was cut off by the Williams family, who were Irish despite the Welsh name. After her divorce, her cousins contacted her, letting her know that her marriage hadn’t really been a marriage in the eyes of the one true church. Now she was free to marry a Catholic, who would raise her boys in the faith. Adza, who was now living in Abergavenny, chose another Protestant as her second husband. This was too much for her cousins, aunts and uncles, who informed her in a single, outraged letter – signed by them all – that she would not be welcomed if she had the nerve to turn up in Dublin.

Adza was petite and pretty in a doll-like way. She bore a close physical resemblance to the writer Jean Rhys. She dressed elegantly on modest means, a knack her eldest son inherited. Although her second Protestant husband, George, was a retired labourer, Adza still acted like the major’s wife she once was. She considered my sister, who spoke with a pronounced Cockney accent, ‘frightfully common’.

George’s false teeth were rarely in his mouth. He was comfortable with his puckered appearance. Every visitor to the family bathroom was confronted by his Everest of a denture, gleaming unnaturally white in a glass on the shelf above the washbasin. Adza was always chiding him to put the teeth where they belonged, and he invariably responded that his gums were strong enough to chew the roast beef he loved to eat.

George reminded me of Joe Gargery, the honest and sweet-natured blacksmith in
Great Expectations
. Like Joe, he was not at ease in ‘polite company’ and like Joe, too, he found London an intimidating place. The traffic unnerved him, and so did the crowds. The tall, gangling man (he was well over six feet) had to depend on his tiny wife to guide him through the bustling city streets.

They stayed with us for a long weekend and gladly accepted my mother’s invitation to Sunday lunch. I warned them that her lunches were mountainous, and George expressed pleasure at the prospect. We took a taxi to Battersea, with Adza hoping that George hadn’t been teasing her when he said he had lost his teeth. It wasn’t until we were on the doorstep of my mother’s house that George removed the denture from his jacket pocket and popped it into his mouth. The effect was startling. The mouth was hugely expanded, the sculpted molars rendering him incapable of comprehensible speech. His tongue was trapped behind them. He was suddenly a ghoul, with a ghoul’s smile to match.

Joan, my sister, opened the front door. She was transfixed by George’s smiling teeth, the like of which she had never seen. Introductions were made, and the five of us proceeded up the stairs to the second-floor landing where my mother was waiting anxiously. She sensed immediately that the diminutive Adza, in her picture hat and tasteful summer dress, was a woman of a certain class and said ‘How do you do?’ and ‘Pleased to meet you’ in the voice she assumed for her wealthy or titled employers. Adza, having winced at my sister’s dropped aitches and elongated vowels, shook hands with a kindred spirit. George, looming behind her, tried to say something but could only manage a strangled noise that ended in a whistle.

We went into the rarely opened front room. The cutlery gleamed on the dining table, which was covered with a pristine, lace-trimmed cloth. Adza sat down daintily, accepting the gin and tonic she was offered and sipping it with exaggerated finesse. George merited a fierce glare from his wife as he guzzled his beer, the porcelain blockade causing him to splutter.

The rib of beef my mother had prepared was accompanied by roast potatoes, cauliflower in a white sauce, peas, runner beans and glazed onions. There was gravy, of course, in the pretty Victorian gravy boat that only appeared at Christmas or on special occasions. We sat down to eat. The teeth were now giving George agonies of embarrassment as he attempted, and failed, to employ them for chewing. They clacked together and the meat fell back on to the plate.

‘How can I put that poor man out of his misery?’ my mother asked me in a whisper in the kitchen. ‘He looks like a carthorse with those bloody great gnashers stuck in his face.’

‘This is delicious, Mrs Bailey,’ Adza remarked as my mother finally seated herself at the table.

‘I hope there’s enough.’ This was her constant hope, constantly voiced.

‘No, there isn’t, Maudie,’ David quipped. ‘Where are the carrots? And what have you done with the cabbage?’

George’s continuing agony was more than my mother could bear. ‘Don’t stand on ceremony, George.’ (She called him George because she couldn’t cope with his surname, Llewellyn.) ‘Why don’t you make yourself comfortable? Those teeth are a hindrance, aren’t they? Why don’t you take them out?’

Never was a denture removed with such speed, such keenness. At last we could hear what George was saying. ‘Thank you, Mrs Bailey,’ he enunciated. ‘I can enjoy your food now.’ And enjoy it he did, scooping up several helpings, his gums disposing of the meat, vegetables and three large portions of sherry trifle and custard. Adza’s fury was barely contained, though she contrived to wear a dulcet smile whenever my mother drew her into conversation. The hated denture was in a handkerchief, in his pocket, and there it remained for the rest of that long summer afternoon.

A year or so afterwards, Adza began to exhibit the symptoms of the cruel disease, Huntington’s chorea, that would kill her. The patient, devoted George held the cup to her lips so she could drink the tea he brewed for her. Her hands were in a perpetual tremor. Her speech became impaired, and a look of total helplessness seemed permanently set on her once-pretty features. Her life ended in dementia, though the last words to the younger son who was at her bedside suggest she had retained some of her wits: ‘I want David here, not you,’ she declared forcefully. Arthur, thinking that David would be pleased to hear how much Adza needed him, informed his brother of her parting message when he arrived later that day. David was torn apart. The train from London had stopped many times in open countryside, and he had missed his connection. She had been dead for hours when he reached the hospital. He was to relive that nightmarish journey, and its desolate conclusion, on various occasions in the years to come. The words ‘I want David here, not you’ assumed the quality of a curse for him, a terrible reminder of his inadequacy as the favourite son. I once heard him say it in his sleep.

‘God moves in a mysterious way…’ The news of Adza’s death somehow reached Dublin. David received a black-bordered card with a gold cross in the centre. Inside was the message that Adza was now in the Catholic heaven where she belonged. The Williams family were praying for her immortal soul, and X-number (I forget how many) Hail Marys had been said.

David tore the card into pieces, which he then threw into the lavatory bowl. He pissed on them before flushing them away.

The final humiliation came in the form of a letter, banged out on an ancient typewriter with a superannuated ribbon, from a Dublin solicitor. I read it out to him. It transpired that an uncle had opened a trust fund for David and Arthur, the money to be paid to them when Adza was restored to the faith. Now that she was gone to rest it was safe to assume that she was with her Catholic forebears. A cheque for £3,500 was enclosed.

‘Tear it up,’ David shrieked.

I reminded him, calmly, that he owed a couple of thousand pounds in income tax. I advised him to sign the back of the cheque, making it payable to the Inland Revenue. He did so, and never heard from Dublin again.

Elsa, David’s dance teacher, lived with her sister Lila in a house in Bayswater that had been built specifically for one of Queen Victoria’s more favoured servants. They spent most of every day in the kitchen, where Lila toiled contentedly at the stove, surrounded by a succession of mangy cats. The sisters disapproved of vets and doctors, believing that nature knew best and that medical assistance was necessary only in extreme circumstances. The flea-ridden creatures would slink in from the wild, overgrown garden in absolute confidence that food was there for the miaowing. They would leap on to the table on which Lila was rolling pastry or stuffing a chicken and be certain of a tasty titbit. ‘Is
angelita
hungry?’ The question had only one answer, as the cats demonstrated each time it was asked. If two or more were present, it was left to Elsa to separate them, sometimes with a broom handle, as they pounced on the scraps Lila tossed in their direction.

Lila had a serene, even temper, which perfectly complemented Elsa’s tendency to overdramatize the mildest upset. Lila cared nothing for appearances, especially her own. She made no effort to get rid of facial hair, and a tooth that suddenly fell out was never replaced. Elsa wore elaborate jewellery – vast hoops of earrings – and applied mascara, powder and vivid scarlet lipstick in a manner that became ever more slapdash as she got older.

Lila was a brilliant and eccentric cook. She had hundreds of recipes at her command. The various liqueurs that relatives sent or brought back from Argentina were seldom drunk – ‘This will give the dish a kick’ – but rather used as exotic flavourings for the cakes and biscuits she was always baking. I watched her closely one December afternoon as she made a chocolate gâteau. Into the large bowl she flung flour, butter, caster sugar. An
angelita
appeared beside her. She stroked it tenderly, and then put her hand back into the bowl. She picked up a brown bottle and poured its entire contents into the mixture. ‘For the kick,’ she explained. I was to remember the floury hand on the cat’s arched back when my sister requested a second slice of the chocolate cake on Christmas morning, declaring it the most delicious she had ever eaten.

We were gathered in the state apartments, as the sisters described the dining room, that Christmas. The dining table could accommodate twenty people. A heavy iron chandelier dominated the room. The furniture was of dark, solid wood. It might have been the setting for a play by Lorca – except that these two sisters had satisfied desires the wretched daughters of Bernarda Alba were forbidden to experience. Elsa had mixed the drinks in anticipation of the guests’ arrival – gins and tonic; whiskies and soda. In her anxiety to discover if she had got the measure right, she had taken a sip from every glass, each one of which bore a sizeable trace of her scarlet lipstick. My fastidious mother could not conceal the disgust she felt when Elsa handed her a gin. In common with everyone else, she drank from the unstained side of the glass, though at a moment when Elsa was out of sight she dipped into her handbag and produced a tissue with which she wiped the rim.

Elsa and Lila were frequent guests at the Royal Opera House on ballet nights. They sat in the centre stalls, in aisle seats. Elsa wore a long green evening dress and pearls and earrings, while Lila dressed in discreet black. In winter, both donned furs. They refused to eat or drink in either the stalls bar or the Crush Bar, finding the prices exorbitant. So they took their dinner with them, in a picnic basket and a bedraggled shopping bag. They were not, it has to be said, popular with the balletgoers sitting near them, who had to step over the picnic basket and endure the smell of hard-boiled eggs after the first interval. They ate cold meats and salads, and drank red wine and hot coffee from a Thermos flask. The meal lasted until the curtain calls, and sometimes beyond. Elsa was in the habit of muttering obscenities in Spanish if a dancer or choreographer displeased her, and those in the audience who understood the meaning of
coño de puta
were either amused or shocked. Regular patrons were inclined to ask at the box office if they could be kept at a safe distance from those two ‘appalling old women’, one of whom refused to be silenced, even after threat of being removed from the theatre. Elsa and Lila were, as my sister noted appreciatively, ‘proper characters’.

Elsa was returning to bed one night with a glass of milk when she heard a curious sound coming from the state apartments. Her decision not to investigate probably saved her life, for the noise she heard was of the chandelier hitting the dining table. It had proved too weighty to hold for the burglars who had unscrewed it from the ceiling, and the sisters were to see it the following day, embedded in the ruined table, amid other wreckage. The thieves had been thwarted, and in their frustration and haste to leave they stole an album containing photographs of parents, brothers, uncles, aunts and cousins. The loss of these precious souvenirs upset Elsa and Lila deeply, motivated as their theft was by spite, not gain. The men also took some gold doubloons – family heirlooms, beyond value.