Cuckoo (39 page)

He fetched a screwdriver from the kitchen drawer, concealed it in his pocket. Mrs Eady was scraping squashed piccalilli from the hall rug.

‘I'm sorry, Mr Parry Jones, but if you call this a quiet little dinner for three, then I'm the Duke of Kent.'

He'd start with the cuckoo clock, since it was nearest him, in the hall. Frances had been unable to remove it, so she had gagged and stifled it, instead. It was one of his favourites, a collector's piece with its carved acanthus leaves and early fusee movement. The cuckoo itself was hand-painted, with two-tone grey wings and a speckled breast, every detail perfect. He hated it to be out of action, time stopped arbitrarily at six o' clock. He turned it round and removed the backplate. Mercifully, he was almost alone. The hall was too dark and chilly for most of the guests.

The little spring door burst open and the cuckoo bowed its head and flapped its wings, as if in jubilation at its reprieve.

‘Cuckoo-oo!' it whooped, prematurely.

‘Not yet,' mouthed Charles, inserting the screwdriver into a delicate brass pawl. It was only eleven forty-six, for Christ's sake, and he didn't want anyone alerted until his grand finale at midnight.

‘Cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo,' cheered the unabashed yellow beak, dipping up and down, up and down, wooden wings flapping. Charles slammed his hand over its mouth, as he had done with Frances in the bedroom, when she kept struggling up and asking him to dance. The wretched bird was equally perverse. Its beak jabbed up and down against his palm, the cuckoo-oos spilling through it and tumbling out across the hall, rallying all the guests. ‘Cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo …'

‘Oh, how lovely!' cried Amanda Crawford. ‘A cuckoo clock!'

‘A drunken cuckoo clock,' corrected Laura. ‘Don't they say pets take after their owners?' she added,
sotto voce
.

Charles was using his hanky as a gag, while he tried desperately to release the jammed mechanism. But he couldn't halt the cuckoo-oos, only made them hoarser.

‘For God's sake, stop,' he muttered.

The cuckoo ignored him. So did all the guests, who were thronging into the hall, as if to attend a cabaret, egging the cuckoo on with cheers and catcalls.

‘Pretty Polly, pretty Polly!'

‘It's gone cuckoo – ha ha!'

‘At the third stroke, it will be …'

The cuckoo was merciless. It had even woken Frances, who had staggered to the top of the stairs and was gazing down at the heaving, seething circus in the hall below. Laura had started cuckooing herself, and now all the mob was joining in, shouting out in unison, ‘Cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo, cuckoo-oo …'

Yellow beak and speckled chest flashed up and down, up and down, as if conducting a massed chorus. How could such a tiny thing resound like that? Forty-three human throats were now outshouting it, but Charles could hear the bird above them all. However hard he struggled, he couldn't silence it – his screwdriver was impotent. He was suffocating in hot, sweaty bodies; elbows jammed into his side, flailing hands grabbing at the clock. The whole panting, braying herd had hemmed him in. He could smell their cheap scent, their whisky breaths, their reeking underarms. Their throats were open scarlet traps, devouring him and jeering; ‘cuckoo, cuckoo' mocking in his ears, Laura as their ring-leader.

He grabbed the bird by the neck and wrenched it out. There was a sudden snapping sound as the metal rod broke off, and the bird came away in his hand, mute and mangled, wings rigid now, beak silent. The broken mechanism whirred on for a moment, and then ran down into a final, gasping wheeze. As if in sympathy, the whole house held its breath. Every guest stood motionless. Even Frances had stopped whimpering on the landing. The silence was oppressive, ten foot thick. Suddenly, she lurched forward and fell halfway down the stairs. Charles made a move towards her; the tiny wooden corpse still clutched tight in his hand.

‘Murderer,' she shouted. ‘Bloody murderer!'

Frances tried to open her eyes. Someone had glued them together, taken her legs away and left only a pair of bobbing yo-yos. She reached out for her watch, which wasn't there. She didn't need to look at it, knew already it was late. Winter had come that morning, and old age. She eased painfully out of bed, stumbled to the curtains and opened them a crack. There would be only bare brown earth and fallen leaves. She blinked against the glare. The sun was sizzling on to shrieking purple dahlias, the lawn blazed with emeralds, and whooping red carpets had been flung across the hot geraniums. How could the sun be so insensitive, tossing tinsel and bunting across half the world and roistering on with the party, when …? Party. She shuddered at the word, hardly dared remember it. Horror and remorse were clogging up her works like a broken clock.

Her period was still taking its revenge. Dried blood was streaked across the sheets, and someone was dragging barbed wire right through her stomach. There was an angry bruise on her knee and another on her forehead. The entire contents of the compost heap had been emptied into her mouth. She felt sick and hollow and ravenous at once.

She limped and crawled downstairs. The hall smelt stale and smoky. There was blood on the floor, or was it only wine? Broken glass sparkled in spears of sunlight, squashed lumps of cheese patterned the dark sofa, bloated shipwrecked olives floated in puddles of whisky. The cuckoo clock still had its back off, all its private parts exposed. The spring door was turned to the wall, so she couldn't see the broken rod, the empty, gaping house.

‘Charles,' she faltered. ‘Charles …'

Viv appeared from the kitchen, with an overall atop her taffeta. ‘Oh hello, love. How are you feeling?'

‘Where's Charles?'

‘He left with the Oppenheimers about two hours ago. They had to catch their plane. I stayed to lend a hand. Here, let me make you some tea. You look really rough.'

Frances walked slowly across the drawing-room and stopped in front of the bronze figurine. That was the exact spot she had sprawled last night, drunk and out of control. She was almost surprised the cushions looked so normal. Shouldn't they be stained – everything she'd touched in that disgusting swinish state be shrivelled and polluted? Some shrill, insistent voice was screaming in her head, accusing her, accusing.

‘Come and sit down, love. I've made some nice strong tea.'

‘Viv, last night … I hardly dare remember.'

‘Don't! You'd had a horrid shock and were just reacting to it. Charles told me all about it. I hope you don't mind, but he was in such a dreadful state. I stayed behind to help him and it all sort of came out.'

‘What did?'

‘Oh, you know, your … pregnancy. Look, why didn't you tell me, darling? I could have been some help.'

‘I wasn't pregnant, Viv.' Frances spat out each word slowly, as if words were too much trouble for her mouth.

‘Yes, I know that. Charles explained. But, all the same, perhaps I could have … Look, I'm sorry, Frances, I really am.'

‘Why be sorry?'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘Well, I'm not. I'm glad I'm not pregnant. I'm over the moon about it.'

‘Frances, don't be silly, darling. You don't have to pretend with me.'

‘I'm not pretending. It happens to be true. D'you know what I did when I realized my period had started?'

‘What?' Viv sugared her tea for the second time.

‘I laughed! I simply rocked with laughter. I couldn't stop.'

‘That was just shock, another form of crying.'

‘No, Viv, it wasn't. It was real, good, old-fashioned laughter. You don't understand. I was absolutely delirious with relief.'

‘Relief?' Viv looked shocked herself. ‘But I thought you said you wanted …'

‘Yes.' She nodded. ‘But I didn't. That's the whole point – I was wrong. I've been wrong all my life. Everybody tells you, if you're female, you've got to want a baby. So you do. It wasn't until I saw that blood between my legs, I realized how much I
didn't
want one.' She stopped. Why did talking hurt so much? Every syllable banged against her head and made it judder. And yet she had to talk. Words were piling up inside her, fighting with each other, trying to escape and explain themselves to all the world, herself included. ‘I know it sounds crazy, Viv, after all those months of poring over charts and baby books; all the times I've wept because my period has come. But, this time, when it came, it was almost a deliverance. If anyone had told me that, I'd have laughed them out of court. I was absolutely convinced I wanted to be pregnant. And I did, Viv, it was true. But that's all I wanted. Just the
achievement
of pregnancy – the status, the specialness. But pregnancy without a final term, without a baby at the end of it.'

Viv kept trying to interrupt. This was her special subject which she'd studied five times over. ‘Expectant mothers often feel like that, Frances, especially with the first one. It's difficult to visualize the baby, that's all. If you'd really been pregnant, and gone ahead and had it, you'd have been overwhelmed with joy when it was born. All your doubts and fears would have simply vanished.'

Frances slung a cushion from sofa to floor. ‘I'm sorry, Viv, I simply don't believe it. That may be true for you, but not for me. Oh, maybe there's something wrong with me – I'm the first to admit it. But my period was actually like a victory sign, a great reprieve, a peal of bells. I felt as if I'd been brought back from the dead.'

Viv swallowed her tea too fast and spluttered through it. ‘But that was only because of the circumstances. Don't you see? Of course you'd be relieved, when the baby wasn't …' She broke off in embarrassment. ‘But supposing it was Charles' baby …'

‘I don't want anybody's baby. I was just obsessed with my own mysterious womb.' Frances pushed her cup away. One small cup of tea was useless against the gritty thirst raging through the room. The entire Niagara Falls couldn't wash that rank taste from her mouth. All her words seemed coated with it. ‘Do you realize, Viv, I totally believed that I was pregnant, didn't have the slightest doubt. Yet there was no real proof at all. It was far too early, anyway. But I managed to talk myself into all the signs and symptoms. I'd almost had my labour pains by day thirty-five! I can hardly believe how ridiculous I must have sounded.'

‘It's hardly ridiculous to want a baby, Frances. Most women do.'

‘That's exactly it. Most women do, so all women must. And, if you don't, you're a freak, and a monster and a … Yes, Viv, I admit I feel ashamed. It's so much easier to be normal and maternal and want the things which other women want. It's almost wicked and unnatural to realize you've no desire to procreate, that the thing you've set your heart on for the past few years suddenly means less than nothing. What do I do now, for heaven's sake? Return to the fashion world and write hollow puffs about thigh-length boots and bat-wing sleeves? Or take refuge in Good Works? Or buy a goldfish?' The words were pouring out, struggling past her throbbing, grudging head, blasting through the sewer of her mouth. It was as if she had been wound up to some frantic fever pitch, and all the wine she had gulped down at the party had turned into spurts of clumsy, drunken rhetoric. ‘My whole existence feels as if it's been wrenched inside out. I hardly dare examine it too closely, in case I find out something even worse about myself. God! I realize now why women daren't be different. It's just too terrifying.'

Viv took her hand and squeezed it. ‘You're just upset, that's all. Don't you see, you've had such an awful shock about the baby, you're trying to drown it in a tide of words. It's just a form of rationalizing. You wanted that child so desperately, now you've got to persuade yourself you didn't – just to make it bearable.'

Frances snatched the hand away. ‘I'm sorry, but that's rubbish! You're as bad as Charles. You both refuse to allow me any opinions of my own. You're rationalizing things as much as I am. You're so horrified that any woman might prefer not to be pregnant, you've got to twist it round.'

She groped to her feet and started clearing up. Her body seemed to be blundering a pace or two behind her, as if she were dragging it along on a broken string.

Viv tried to sit her down again. ‘I don't want to sound smug, but you can't really know about having babies, until you've actually got one in your arms.'

Frances swung round to face her, almost fell. ‘And what d'you do then, I'd like to ask, if you find you still don't want it?'

‘But you will, Frances. You told me yourself you'd been longing for a child. That's a true, natural, undistorted instinct. It's stupid to disown it, just because you've been disappointed once. You go on trying, love – with Charles, I mean – and I'm sure you'll have one soon. Then you'll realize that all this intellectualizing is nothing but sour grapes.'

‘Oh, shit, Viv! Look, I'm sorry, but you haven't heard a word I've said. I keep trying to tell you, what I actually wanted all the time had nothing to do with babies. It was only a sort of pride. Trying to prove myself, that's all; do what was expected of me, not let anyone down, least of all myself.' Frances leaned her head against the cold glass of the bookcase. Her tongue had been taken away and swapped with somebody else's. The new one didn't fit, just sat there, hot and swollen in her mouth, choking all her words. Yet, she had to go on talking, had to tell the world what she believed.

‘Look, Viv, what's the very first word we all learn? Mama! We don't even know what it means, before we're lisping it. We
have
to be mothers. That's what we're made for. Society tells us, and so does our biology. Even all the great religions put in a plug for motherhood. It's like the Annunciation, in a way. You just fold your hands on your cosy little prie-dieu – and lo! – God fills your womb and your life, and everyone bows down to you as a Sacred Receptacle.'