Mischief (6 page)

In the evenings three of them sit down to play Monopoly. Edgar, Minette and Minnie. Mona, being only five, sleeps upstairs, alone, in the little back bedroom, where roses, growing up over the porch and along under the thatch, thrust dark companionable heads through the open lattice window. Edgar and Minnie, father and daughter, face each other across the table. Both, he in his prime, she in early adolescence, are already bronzed from the holiday sun, blue eyes bright and eager in lean faces, dull red hair bleached to brightness by the best summer the Kent coast has seen, they say, since 1951 – a merciful God allowing, it seems, the glimmer of His smile to shine again on poor humiliated England. Minette, Edgar’s wife, sits at the kitchen end of the table. The ladderback chair nearest the porch remains empty. Edgar says it is uncomfortable. Minnie keeps the bank. Minette doles out the property cards.

Thus, every evening this holiday, they have arranged themselves around the table, and taken up their allotted tasks. They do it almost wordlessly, for Edgar does not care for babble. Who does? Besides, Mona might wake, think she was missing something, and insist on joining in.

How like a happy family we are, thinks Minette, pleased, shaking the dice. Minette’s own face is pink and shiny from the sun and her nose is peeling. Edgar thinks hats on a beach are affected (an affront, as it were, to nature’s generosity) so Minette is content to pay the annual penalty summer holidays impose on her fair complexion and fine mousy hair. Her mouth is swollen from the sun, and her red arms and legs are stiff and bumpy with midge bites. Mona is her mother’s daughter and has inherited her difficulty with the sun, and even had a slight touch of sunstroke on the evening of the second day, which Edgar, probably rightly, put down to the fact that Minette had slapped Mona on the cheek, in the back of the car, on the journey down.

‘Cheeks afire,’ he said, observing his flushed and feverish child. ‘You really shouldn’t vent your neuroses on your children, Minette.’

And of course Minette shouldn’t. Edgar was right. Poor little Mona. It was entirely forgivable for Mona, a child of five, to become fractious and unbiddable in the back of a car, cooped up as she was on a five-hour journey; and entirely unforgivable of the adult Minette, sitting next to her, to be feeling so cross, distraught, nervous and unmaternal that she reacted by slapping. Minette should have, could have diverted: could have sung, could have played Here is the Church, this Little Pig, something, anything, rather than slapped. Cheeks afire! As well they might be. Mona’s with upset at her mother’s cruel behaviour: Minette’s, surely, with shame and sorrow.

Edgar felt the journey was better taken without stops, and that in any case no coffee available on a motorway was worth stopping for. It would be instant, not real. Why hadn’t Minette brought a Thermos, he enquired, when she ventured to suggest they stopped. Because we don’t
own
a Thermos, she wanted to cry, in her impossible mood, because you say they’re monstrously over-priced, because you say I always break the screw; in any case it’s not the coffee I want, it’s for you to stop, to recognise our existence, our needs – but she stopped herself in time. That way quarrels lie, and the rare quarrels of Edgar and Minette, breaking out, shatter the neighbourhood, not to mention the children. Well done, Minette.

‘Just as well we didn’t go to Italy,’ said Edgar, on the night of Mona’s fever, measuring out, to calm the mother-damaged, fevered cheek, the exact dosage of Junior Aspirin recommended on the back of the packet (and although Minette’s doctor once instructed her to quadruple the stated dose, if she wanted it to be effective, Minette knows better than to say so), dissolving it in water, and feeding it to Mona by the spoonful though Minette knows Mona much prefers to suck them – ‘if this is what half an hour’s English sun does to her.’

Edgar, Minette, Minnie and Mona. Off to Italy, camping, every year for the last six years, even when Mona was a baby. Milan, Venice, Florence, Pisa. Oh what pleasure, riches, glory, of countryside and town. This year, Minette had renewed the passports and replaced the sleeping bags, brought the Melamine plates and mugs up to quota, checked the Gaz cylinders, and waited for Edgar to reveal the date, usually towards the end of July, when he would put his ethnographical gallery in the hands of an assistant and they would pack themselves and the tent into the car, happy families, and set off, as if spontaneously, into the unknown; but this year the end of July went and the first week of August, and still Edgar did not speak, and Minette’s employers were betraying a kind of incredulous restlessness at Minette’s apparent lack of decision, and only then, on August 6, after a studied absent-mindedness lasting from July 31 to August 5, did Edgar say ‘Of course we can’t afford to go abroad. Business is rock-bottom. I hope you haven’t been wasting any money on unnecessary equipment?’

‘No, of course not,’ says Minette. Minette tells many lies: it is one of the qualities which Edgar least likes in her. Minette thinks she is safe in this one. Edgar will not actually count the Melamine plates; nor is he likely to discern the difference between one old lumpy navy-blue sleeping bag and another unlumpy new one. ‘We do have the money set aside,’ she says cautiously, hopefully.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ he says. ‘We can’t afford to drive the car round the corner, let alone to Venice. It’ll only have sunk another couple of inches since last year, beneath the weight of crap as much as of tourists. It’s too depressing. Everything’s too depressing.’ Oh Venice, goodbye Venice, city of wealth and abandon, and human weakness, glorious beneath sulphurous skies. Goodbye Venice, says Minette in her heart, I loved you well. ‘So we shan’t be having a holiday this year?’ she enquires. Tears are smarting in her eyes. She doesn’t believe him. She is tired, work has been exhausting. She is an advertising copywriter. He is teasing, surely. He often is. In the morning he will say something different.

‘You go on holiday if you want,’ he says in the morning. ‘I can’t. I can’t afford a holiday this year. You seem to have lost all sense of reality, Minette. It’s that ridiculous place you work in.’ And of course he is right. Times are hard. Inflation makes profits and salaries seem ridiculous. Edgar, Minette, Minnie and Mona must adapt with the times. An advertising agency is not noted for the propagation of truth. Those who work in agencies live fantasy lives as to their importance in the scheme of things and their place in a society which in truth despises them. Minette is lucky that someone of his integrity and taste puts up with her. No holiday this year. She will pay the money set aside into a building society, though the annual interest is less than the annual inflation rate. She is resigned.

But the next day, Edgar comes home, having booked a holiday cottage in Kent. A miracle. Friends of his own it, and have had a cancellation. Purest chance. It is the kind of good fortune Edgar always has. If Edgar is one minute late for a train, the train leaves two minutes late.

Now, on the Friday, here they are, Edgar, Minette, Minnie and Mona, installed in this amazing rural paradise of a Kentish hamlet, stone-built, thatched cottage, swifts flying low across the triangular green, the heavy smell of farmyard mixing with the scent of the absurd red roses round the door and the night-stocks in the cottage garden, tired and happy after a day on the beach, with the sun shining and the English Channel blue and gentle, washing upon smooth pebbles.

Mona sleeps, stirs. The night is hot and thundery, ominous. Inflation makes the Monopoly money not so fantastic as it used to be. Minette remarks on it to Edgar.

‘Speak for yourself,’ he says. Minette recently got a rise, promotion. Edgar is self-employed, of the newly impoverished classes.

They throw to see who goes first. Minette throws a two and a three. Minnie, her father’s daughter, throws a five and a six. Minnie is twelve, a kindly, graceful child, watchful of her mother, adoring her father, whom she resembles.

Edgar throws a double six. Edgar chooses his token – the iron – and goes first.

Edgar, Minette, Minnie and Mona.

Edgar always wins the toss. Edgar always chooses the iron. (He is as good at housekeeping and cooking as Minette, if not better.) Edgar always wins the game. Minnie always comes second. Minette always comes last. Mona always sleeps. Of such stuff are holidays made.

Monopoly, in truth, bores Minette. She plays for Minnie’s sake, to be companionable, and for Edgar’s, because it is expected. Edgar likes winning. Who doesn’t?

Edgar throws a double, lands on Pentonville Road, and buys it for £60. Minette hands over the card; Minnie receives his money. Edgar throws again, lands on and buys Northumberland Avenue. Minnie throws, lands on Euston Road, next to her father, and buys it for £100. Minette lands on Income Tax, pays £200 into the bank and giggles, partly from nervousness, partly at the ridiculous nature of fate.

‘You do certainly have a knack, Minette,’ says Edgar, unsmiling. ‘But I don’t know if it’s anything to laugh about.’

Minette stops smiling. The game continues in silence. Minette lands in jail. Upstairs Mona, restless, murmurs and mutters in her sleep. In the distance Minette can hear the crackle of thunder. The windows are open, and the curtains not drawn, in order that Edgar can feel close to the night and nature, and make the most of his holiday. The window squares of blank blackness, set into the white walls, as on some child’s painting, frighten Minette. What’s outside? Inside, it seems to her, their words echo. The rattle of the dice is loud, loaded with some kind of meaning she’d rather not think about. Is someone else listening, observing?

Mona cries out. Minette gets up. ‘I’ll go to her,’ she says.

‘She’s perfectly all right,’ says Edgar. ‘Don’t fuss.’

‘She might be frightened,’ says Minette.

‘What of?’ enquires Edgar dangerously. ‘What is there to be frightened of?’ He is irritated by Minette’s many fears, especially on holiday, and made angry by the notion that there is anything threatening in nature. Loving silence and isolation himself, he is impatient with those city-dwellers who fear them. Minette and Mona, his feeling is, are city-dwellers by nature, whereas Edgar and Minnie have the souls, the patience, the maturity of the country-dweller, although obliged to live in the town.

‘It’s rather hot. She’s in a strange place,’ Minette persists.

‘She’s in a lovely place,’ says Edgar, flatly. ‘Of course, she may be having bad dreams.’

Mona is silent again, and Minette is relieved. If Mona is having bad dreams, it is of course Minette’s fault, first for having slapped Mona on the cheek, and then, more basically, for having borne a child with such a town-dweller’s nature that she suffers from sunburn and sunstroke.

‘Mona by name,’ says Minette, ‘moaner by nature.’

‘Takes after her mother,’ says Edgar. ‘Minette, you forgot to pay £50 last time you landed in jail, so you’ll have to stay there until you throw a double.’

‘Can’t I pay this time round?’

‘No you can’t,’ says Edgar.

They’ve lost the rule book. All losses in the house are Minette’s responsibility, so it is only justice that Edgar’s ruling as to the nature of the game shall be accepted. Minette stays in jail.

Mona by name, moaner by nature. It was Edgar who named his children, not Minette. Childbirth upset her judgment, made her impossible, or so Edgar said, and she was willing to believe it, struggling to suckle her young under Edgar’s alternately indifferent and chiding eye, sore from stitches, trying to decide on a name, and unable to make up her mind, for any name Minette liked, Edgar didn’t. For convenience sake, while searching for a compromise, she referred to her first-born as Mini – such a tiny, beautiful baby – and when Edgar came back unexpectedly with the birth certificate, there was the name Minnie, and Minette gasped with horror, and all Edgar said was, ‘But I thought that was what
you
wanted, it’s what
you
called her, the State won’t wait for ever for
you
to make up your mind; I had to spend all morning in that place and I ought to be in the gallery; I’m exhausted. Aren’t you grateful for anything? You’ve got to get that baby to sleep right through the night somehow before I go mad.’ Well, what could she say? Or do? Minnie she was. Minnie Mouse. But in a way it suited her, or at any rate she transcended it, a beautiful loving child, her father’s darling, mother’s too.

Minette uses Minnie as good Catholics use the saints – as an intercessionary power.

Minnie, see what your father wants for breakfast. Minnie, ask your father if we’re going out today.

When Mona was born Minette felt stronger and happier. Edgar, for some reason, was easy and loving. (Minette lost her job: it had been difficult, looking after the six-year-old Minnie, being pregnant again by accident – well, forgetting her pill – still with the house, the shopping and the cleaning to do, and working at the same time: not to mention the washing. They had no washing machine, Edgar feeling, no doubt rightly, that domestic machinery was noisy, expensive, and not really, in the end, labour saving. Something had to give, and it was Minette’s work that did, just in time to save her sanity. The gallery was doing well, and of course Minette’s earnings had been increasing Edgar’s tax. Or so he believed. She tried to explain that they were taxed separately, but he did not seem to hear, let alone believe.) In any case, sitting up in childbed with her hand in Edgar’s, happy for once, relaxed, unemployed – he was quite right, the work did overstrain her, and what was the point – such meaningless, anti-social work amongst such facile, trendy non-people – joking about the new baby’s name, she said, listen to her moaning. Perhaps we’d better call her Moaner. Moaner by name, Moaner by nature. Imprudent Minette. And a week later, there he was, with the birth certificate all made out. Mona.

‘Good God, woman,’ he cried. ‘Are you mad?
You
said you wanted Mona. I took
you
at your word. I was doing what
you
wanted.’

‘I didn’t say that.’ She was crying, weak from childbirth, turmoil, the sudden withdrawl of his kindness, his patience. ‘Do you want me to produce witnesses?’ He was exasperated. She became pregnant again, a year later. She had an abortion. She couldn’t cope, Edgar implied that she couldn’t, although he never quite said so, so that the burden of the decision was hers and hers alone. But he was right, of course. She couldn’t cope. She arranged everything, went to the nursing home by minicab, by herself, and came out by minicab the next day. Edgar paid half.