Mantrapped (25 page)

Her mother was making things worse. Doralee needed time but there was to be none.

'Darling Dora,' her mother was saying, 'I had a brainwave and called Peter's mother and asked her if she could drive up to join us for dinner. You will be staying, I suppose. So long since we all got together - everyone's so busy these days. Claudia and Gloria say they can come: they'll be thrilled to see you.'

'I expect they will,' said Doralee. 'We can all discuss our new names.' The name change had shaken her more than she thought. Perhaps souls were wandering entities anyway: like a lot of party balloons drifting by, strings dangling, you could grasp whatever one was nearest, and it would do, only normally male kept to male and female to female. It only became noticeable when you got the wrong gender. 'Damned if you do,' observed Ruby, tartly, 'and damned if you don't,' and went back to the kitchen.

Doralee wanted to make excuses, any excuses, and go back to town but the Peter body and the Trisha body said they were hungry, and promised to behave. They would simply act one another. The Peter body reminded Doralee that she had played Polly Peachum in
The Beggars' Opera
and the Trisha body talked about when he had played Ophelia in the school play - his adolescent growth spurt had been late and he had stayed short while everyone around him had been giants. Doralee capitulated.

Dinner was served as formally as could be managed in the panelled library where once Doralee's grandfather had written his sermons. The tablecloth had been her grandmother's, and was of heavy, yellowed linen. Graham had bought up the lot before her grandparents had moved off into an old people's home, rather sooner than they had hoped to go, where there was space for very few personal belongings. They had simply, and kindly, moved over to make room for Graham's new young family. He had been a late and only child, and they wanted their son and his line to have everything they held so dear. Graham in his turn had waited until encroaching Alzheimer's meant they scarcely noticed when he went off with his yoga teacher. Ruby had wept bitter tears in front of them for a while, but they had mercifully got in into their heads that it was because the labrador Rex had died.

It was on this table that all of Ruby's six children had done their homework and carved their unnecessary long names (the girls) and peremptory short ones (the boys). Much of the grandparents' original dinner service had been lost or broken - with Graham's departure Ruby had become something of a butter-fingers, as if the material world itself was a source of indifference to her - so that very few of the pieces on the table now matched. The table was cheerful enough, however, since Ruby had got first choice at the bric-a-brac stall at the village fete over the years, and always picked the brightest and best.

'Nice and cheery and homey,' the Peter body said, as Ruby brought in a tureen of thick green pea soup with a knubbly, crusted brown surface into which the serving spoon had trouble breaking. The tureen itself was Limoges and porcelain, an ornamental crouched hare on its lid in pink and green, and was very hard to clean, nor did Doralee suppose that Ruby had made much effort so to do. Doralee kicked the Peter body's ankles and the Peter body said, 'Why did you kick me under the table?' to which Ruby replied 'She wants to draw your attention to the tureen. It is a very good piece and worth a lot of money and the stains on the bottom are not dirt, Dora, but a flaw in the making, as you know very well. Please do not try to show me up in front of Peter's mother.'

Peter's mother Adrienne, having driven up from London at the last moment, and protesting that she hadn't been allowed time to change properly, only throw on a couple of scarves and pull on some rings, had still turned up with a city elegance seldom seen in Ruby's village. The scarves were Dior and the shoes Blahnik.

'Cheery and homey?' she asked her apparent son. 'Whoever taught you to use words like that?'

'Well I think they're nice words,' said the Peter body, 'and I really like that rabbit on top of the tureen.' 'It's a hare,' chorused Ruby, Claudia and Gloria. The Peter body was the only male, if such he could be called, at the gathering. He seemed to be very conscious of the fact - a parody of a male, indeed - and was looking Doralee's sisters up and down appreciatively, bending a little forward over his bowl of pea soup to see down Claudia's cleavage. Claudia was a make-the-most-of your-assets person, who worked as a TV actress and sometimes made commercials. Gloria was a social worker and came in a woolly jumper and jeans. But all the Thicket women were strikingly good-looking. 'Actually,' said the Trisha body, 'new research suggests that the rabbit and the hare are so closely related genetically it is legitimate to refer to one as the other. There is even a suggestion that they are the descendents of a fertile chimera.'

Doralee could see this was not going to work for long. She could claim sudden illness and leave the dinner party but then who would drive? Trisha had never learned and she could not trust the Peter hands, or even the Trisha hands under Peter's control, to take the wheel. Having children must be like this. A constant anxiety that they would disgrace you in company, an inability ever to relax and enjoy your dinner. Terror as to what was about to happen next.

Adrienne was looking at her apparent son as if puzzled by something. 'Do you have a sister called Thomasina?' the Peter body was asking Claudia. 'I have a good friend on the stage called Thomasina. She's so like you it's amazing. She's appeared on the Edinburgh fringe.' Trisha had assured Doralee that her lesbian days were over but Doralee could see that they were not. The Peter body was now fingering Claudia's sleeve. Another kick under the table from Doralee, and the Peter body desisted, saying brightly, 'I do so just love good old-fashioned velvet like this.'

The company looked confused but Ruby was bringing in a boiled gammon, roast potatoes and green peas and carrots mixed. Both Claudia and Gloria looked at the meal askance - Claudia was on the Atkins diet and Gloria was a vegetarian, but it was their mother's custom to ride rough-shod over sensibilities of which she did not approve. Doralee was too distracted to engage her mother in reproaches on her sisters' behalf.

'Surely you know how many sisters your partner has?' asked Adrienne, drawing the edge of a chiffon scarf out of spilt soup. When the spoon finally went through the crust there had been quite a splash. 'I know there are quite a few, but even so. How many years have you been together?' and the Peter body answered gamely 'Lots. And every one a delight.'

'High time they actually got married,' said Ruby, finally saying it. 'Don't you think so, Adrienne? Then we two can be the mothers-in-law and have some status. Will you carve, Peter?' and the Peter body took up the carving knife and with inexpert, albeit, male hands and no knowledge of how the thing was done, began, carving the wrong way of the grain and still paying attention to Claudia's cleavage which he could now see to advantage.

Claudia raised the top of her dress a little and said pointedly it might be just as well, it might help to grow Peter up a bit. Everyone knew marriage made for a stable partnership, whereas being a partner was just asking for trouble. She was dedicated to her work and so wasn't going to have either, and certainly no children.

Ruby said she would change her mind when she got to thirty and at least Dora was trying, and with any luck hadn't left it too late, didn't Adrienne agree. Gloria said on the contrary, probably Claudia would not, the latest statistics showed otherwise. Podding off was simply not what people in a modern society did any more, wasn't that so, Peter? The birth-rate was dropping and a good thing too. The Peter body said he didn't have the slightest idea about that kind of thing.

'I hope you're not getting depressed, Peter,' said Adrienne to the Peter body. 'You have such a good job there it would be a pity to lose interest. That's what your father did before he died - got depressed and lost interest. That's why the cancer got a hold so easily. And if you lost your job, what would Doralee have to write about in her column?' 'I expect I could find something,' said Doralee. 'I didn't mean it like that,' said Adrienne. 'You know I didn't. But I would like a wedding to look forward to. It can't be a proper Jewish wedding because of Doralee, but I'm reconciled to that by now, and Christian weddings can be quite nice, if things are done properly. I'm sure you'd conceive quite soon, Doralee, once you were legally married.' 'Well said,' said Ruby. 'Well said!'

'I would like to have things settled before I pass on,' said Adrienne. 'When your grandmother was my age she died of cancer of the liver. We're not a long-lived family, I'm afraid. I haven't been feeling too well lately, but don't worry about me. I expect it's just neurotic. Shall we say in the autumn? September is such a pleasant month for a wedding. High summer and it's difficult to know what to wear. One doesn't want to look Ascoty, but one does like to look as if one had made an effort.' But the Trisha body had pushed back her chair and was now crouched by Adrienne's side, and was taking the older woman's hand in her own soft little one. 'You must stop thinking like this,' said the Trisha body. 'And I have never seen you look so healthy.' Adrienne pushed the Trisha body off, and hissed at the Peter body.

'You just sit there and do nothing! You will be marrying into a very peculiar family, and I don't think much of your new friends, but you will do what you will, I suppose. Carving pig! What point exactly are you trying to make?' 'Oh my God,' said Ruby, mortified. 'I am so sorry!' Ruby had served boiled gammon so often in her life, she said, such an easy dish to prepare and always popular, she had quite forgotten what animal it came from, and Peter always ate bacon when he came to stay. But she was so sorry, she would make Adrienne a nice tinned salmon salad this very moment, and Adrienne said not salmon, it would only be farmed and full of little worms. She apologised for her outburst: she thought it was because her metabolic balance was disturbed, and perhaps that was the cancer. And it was really hypocritical of her to be worried about eating pork, since she had given up kosher when Peter's father had died. What kind of God was it that allowed such things to happen? Everyone waited until she had finished the food on her plate. Doralee wondered what it would be like if she and Peter had a child and it turned out to be like Adrienne. It would have a minimum of twenty-five per cent of her genes.

One way and another attention was diverted from the odd behaviour of Peter and Trisha, until the serving of tinned peaches and ice cream during which the Trisha body, who had drunk far too much, began to laugh hysterically and said to the Peter body, 'I could have another son and call it Thomasina,' and the Peter body reacted by tweaking Claudia's nipple, at which Doralee burst into tears and said she had terrible stomach cramps, probably a miscarriage and she wanted to go home right now.

Everyone crowded round, offering to call ambulances and saying she couldn't possibly drive, and having to pull her back from the driving seat, and Claudia said Doralee had always been insanely jealous, and Gloria that Doralee had always stolen her boyfriends what was she complaining about, and Doralee pushed Trisha into the driving seat and got into the back with the Peter body and they drove off. Though when they were round the corner she made Trisha stop the car, and got in the front and drove herself, cool as a cucumber, and pain free, all the way back to London.

Doralee parked in her allocated parking space in the courtyard of High View as the Kleene Machine van was leaving from outside the front door. George was just locking up. 'You're late,' he said. 'I thought you were off for the night. The cleaners left some stuff for you,' and he handed over a couple of hangers, well draped in plastic covers, which Doralee removed and binned as soon as she entered the flat. It was her black dress, deliberately slit in many places from hem to neckline, falling from its thin straps like black streamers.

Doralee stared at it for a long time. It is horrible to be hated, and cursed, when all you have done is demand your rights as a consumer. She even cried a little. 'I don't see why they should take it out on you,' said the Peter body, 'just because I gave you the mattress-cover without asking for the money. I quite forgot, what with one thing and another.'

'What exactly,' asked Doralee, 'was the one thing and the other?' and the Trisha body said that after they had realised what had happened, that they were each other, and had tried passing and re-passing on the stairs for a bit and it hadn't worked, they'd had rather a lot to drink and gone down and trashed the shop.

'It was great,' said the Peter body. 'It seemed what my body was made for. What's the point of muscles if you don't use them to bash about with? I smashed the chairs and the computer and found the mother board and stamped on it and destroyed all their stupid records. I swung from the light fittings and brought them down. I poured all the carbon tetrachloride down the sink and kicked their piles of mending stuff around and tangled their embroidery threads.'

'It was great, just great,' said the Trisha body proudly. 'And I wedged a fifty pence piece in the ironing machine so when I turned it on it overheated and burned. And I got all the stuff from the racks and muddled it up on the floor. That'd serve her right, the old bitch.'

'Nobody treats me like that and gets away with it,' said the Peter body. 'Nobody speaks to me as if I was nothing. I'm a lottery-winner; I am accustomed to respect.'

'It might be that the fumes got to her brain and destroyed some brain cells,' said the Trisha body. 'That might even have triggered the swap.'

'But nothing
happened
,' said the Trisha body, who was not interested in causes, only in consequences, to Doralee. 'She's not my type. Only ever you, darling, only ever you.' And the Trisha body put her arms round the taller woman and stared up at her with Peter's sweet look but smirking, and smelling of the peppermints she had eaten in the car. Doralee distanced herself as best she could.

'And I'm the one who gets the voodoo object or whatever it is,' said Doralee, crossly. 'From the sound of it I'm lucky to have got off so lightly.' She bundled the fragmented dress into a plastic bag and put it down the rubbish chute. She just wanted it out of her home.