Pumping Up Napoleon (11 page)

Susannah stands up and the scrape of the next chair follows instantly. Footsteps shiver on the new path; Susannah stops by the blue hydrangea. She brushes over it with her hands, and the woman, unwilling to enter the house alone, is kept waiting by the French windows.

At last Susannah leads the woman inside. The tea things have been left on the table, but it doesn't look like rain. After the doors have closed, it isn't long before the blackbird comes flying back.

The Dancing King

Brenda is lying in bed reading a romantic novel when the knock comes at her door.

There he stands, tall, handsome and unfamiliar, dressed in a tuxedo.
‘Pour vous,'
he says, handing her a rose.

‘Do I know you?'

‘I thought you wanted me to take you dancing.' His eyebrows flash.

Brenda takes a deep breath, shakes her head, then swings the door shut in his face and grumbles her way back to bed.

He knocks again.

Brenda bites her lip. Bother. Just when she didn't need a man in her life. ‘Come in.'

He opens the door, wearing a knowing look.

‘Just don't speak to me, that's all,' says Brenda. ‘I'm reading.'

Loosening his black tie, he lies down beside her on the bed. Over the top of her book she can see dark trousers extending all the way down to the end of the duvet and a pair of shiny shoes.

Time passes, and the tension grows with each rasp of a page turned. Out of the corner of her eye she sees him looking at her.

He puts a hand on her arm, brings his face close to hers. ‘Shall we dance?' he says. Standing up, he offers her his hand. Brenda smiles, in spite of herself. She turns down the corner of the page. With a snap of his fingers he brings the sound of a full-string orchestra looping into the room.

Feeling at a disadvantage dancing in her pyjamas, without a shred of make-up on, Brenda keeps glancing backwards, afraid she will snag her spine on the corner of the wardrobe.

‘Would you relax?' he says. ‘It's like dancing with an ironing board.'

Just as an experiment, she closes her eyes and lets herself be moved. His hold is firm, his footsteps certain. It's like floating, another state of being. He doesn't push or wrench.

‘You're good at this,' she says.

‘Only the very best for you, my darling.'

She opens her eyes.

He's wearing a smile of the deepest self-satisfaction. Surprisingly, she finds this quite endearing.

At last she begins to grow sleepy. He sways with her towards and away and towards the bed, with the subtle advance of an incoming tide. She remembers the light going out and the sound of him slipping off his tie.

In the morning he's gone; no need for Brenda to worry about her morning breath or what to say at breakfast. The sheet on his side of the bed is quite smooth and there isn't a dent in the pillow, as if he's never been there. But the rose on the bedside table is drinking from her glass of water.

The next evening she goes to bed early, unfolding the corner of the page she turned down last night.

‘Hello there,' he says.

‘Woh!' The book flies up in the air. ‘What are
you
doing here?'

He shrugs. ‘You called me.'

‘I did not,' she says, indignantly.

‘You must have.' He smiles gently. ‘I'm here, aren't I?'

A few nights later, despite her best intentions not to care what he does when he's not with her, she asks him where he lives.

He takes a drag on his cigarette and blows out smoke before answering. ‘The shed at the bottom of the garden.'

‘There is no shed at the bottom of the garden,' says Brenda.

‘Not at the bottom of
your
garden – no,' he says, teasingly.

The next day she looks out of the bedroom window. The shed belonging to the house next door is quite close to her fence. Brenda turns back to make the bed; there is just a slight crease in the sheet where his body has lain and she hesitates before smoothing it away.

‘I wonder if you could help me,' Brenda says to her neighbour. ‘I've lost my kitten and I think it might have accidentally gotten into your shed.'

‘Nah,' says the neighbour. ‘Door's been shut for days. I've had the flu.' He waves a snot-frozen hanky.

Brenda stands firm. ‘I thought I heard it crying in there. Perhaps it got in some other way?' The neighbour is sceptical but gives Brenda the key so she can have a quick look and set her mind at rest.

Down the garden path she goes, her heart leaping. The shed door is secured by a large, well-oiled padlock. The key slides in and turns easily.

Inside the shed it is dark and smells of old garden tools, clay pots and compost. There's no bed, other than a folded-up canvas sun-lounger, and no clothes or shoes or other things. She does find a blue-and-white striped mug hanging on a hook, with a stain of old coffee inside. The windows are jammed with dirt and cobwebs.

‘No sign of the cat,' she tells the neighbour. ‘Thanks.'

That night her lover does not appear. She curls up in the bed to have a good cry, then reads herself to sleep. In the morning she finds she's slept on her book and buckled its pages.

‘Where've you been?' These are the first words out of her mouth when she bumps into him outside Woolworths.

He hasn't been round for days. Relaxed but friendly, she'd said to herself, that's what I must be next time I see him, whenever that might be, relaxed
and
friendly. But she hears herself saying, ‘Where've you been?' instead; and within two minutes they're having a row and she's shaking.

Later, she feels so sorry for misjudging him. He'd wanted to see her, of course he had. The truth was he'd been on his way over to her place the other night when he'd noticed a woman about to give birth in the doorway of Marks & Spencer. By the time he'd had a chance to call it was already very late.

‘What did she have?' asks Brenda.

‘A boy, a ten-pounder. Really quite something. She's calling it after me.'

He even has a creased Polaroid to show her, of a sweaty-haired woman lying back on her pillows with a tired smile, and himself standing up, wearing a wide grin and a green hospital gown, holding a new baby in his arms.

Later, after sex (forgiving, tender, urgent), while they are mid-snuggle, she mumbles to him in a sleepy and contented voice, ‘You can always call. I don't mind if it's late. I lie awake anyway, reading.' But just as she falls over the rim of sleep she thinks: isn't it odd that I don't even know his name? And now he's given it to someone else's child.

That summer, they go on holiday together for two weeks, driving and dancing around Scotland. They laugh at each other's jokes. Sometimes they get lost.

‘It doesn't matter,' says whoever's at the wheel. ‘We're bound to end up somewhere in the end.' They dance during the day among the heather and look out for hotels with ballrooms.

She hears him whistling in the bathroom when she wakes. He gets up early to shave so that his chin will be smooth when he kisses her. While he's doing that she chews gum and applies subtle touches of make-up. When she hears him pull the plug, she wraps the gum in its silver paper and hides it under her book. He finds her smiling sweetly, eyes closed, ready to be woken with a kiss.

Sometimes though, at dinner, they don't have much to say and she glances about, wondering if she would prefer to be talking to someone else; but then she looks sharply at him, wondering if he's thinking the same thing. Given the chance, they take to the floor and glide until she is happy again.

He moves in with her. When the first night comes when neither of them wants to dance, it feels as if something has ended. Brenda reaches for her long-neglected book. But he says, ‘I need to go to sleep now. Got an early start.' She puts out the light, but then lies awake, wondering whether to cuddle up to him; for the first time the bed feels too hot with him in it.

To show her adaptability she buys herself a torch for reading in bed when he wants the light out. In the winter she changes this for a lamp on a headband, so she can keep at least one hand at a time under the duvet. He laughs at her. Without speaking or looking up from her book, she brushes her icy fingers along his thigh. He stops laughing and yelps.

Some time later, he's calm enough to try sleeping. He turns on his side and puts his back to her, mumbling, ‘And you've got a cold bottom'.

But she's always had a cold bottom; he's supposed to like warming it up.

Around Christmas time he goes out a lot without her; she accuses him of dancing with someone else.

‘You're paranoid,' he says, fumbling with his black tie.

‘Here, let me.' She nips at his fingers till he lets go of the strip of silk and allows her to knot it for him.

He kisses her on the cheek, saying, ‘Don't wait up'.

In the week before Valentine's Day, he disappears. It doesn't look, at first, as if he means to stay away. His razor is left unrinsed in the bathroom; his shirts are on a hanger, waiting to be ironed; his socks are strewn across the bedroom like the droppings of a large and restless herbivore.

When all the socks have turned quite stiff, she puts them in an old pillow-case. But the laundry basket is never empty while they are in it.

A month later, opening the bedroom window, she extracts a corrugated sock and lobs it onto the roof of next door's shed. Soon the pillowcase is empty.

That night, to distract herself from saw-edged emotions which are trying to cut her in half, she browses the half-read pile of books by her bed. Every time she feels like crying she makes herself read another sentence.

One evening, when she can think about signing up for contemporary dance classes without weeping, he knocks on her door.

‘I've got my dancing shoes on,' he wheedles through the lock.

Brenda says nothing. At last he goes away.

The next evening she is tensed for his return. Tap, tap, tap. He calls to her through the keyhole, ‘Let me in'.

She turns out the light and says nothing, even though she wants to yell at him. Or weep and open the door.

On Saturday he comes round at midnight, drunk.

‘Go away!' she shouts.

All is quiet. Brenda wonders if he is preparing to climb the drainpipe and try to get in at the window. She stays sitting up in bed for some time, straining to hear. But there is nothing.

The summer comes and the evenings are so light and so sad. She reads and reads and reads. How glad she is to have the big cool quiet bed to herself. But her feet twitch and, having turned out the light, she often hears music coming from the garden of a house close by, a deep familiar voice, and twirls of carefree laughter.

These sounds are just loud enough to keep her from falling asleep.

Invitation

When she hears she is going to die soon, mother decides to hold a party.

‘I'll have it in hospital if need be,' she says, worried about delay. ‘Let them come before I start to smell bad.'

She calls it ‘ ...an opportunity for some last precious hours of intimacy and pleasure.'

I foresee a lot of awkwardness and a shortage of chairs.

The hospital on a Sunday. Extended visiting hours. In the centre of the main hall is a café with round tables at which people sit on black and steel chairs, under a glass dome; simulated
al fresco
, no umbrellas necessary. People are eddying in and out of an open-fronted shop which sells a little bit of everything: gifts, newspapers, cuddly toys, sandwiches.

In here are people quietly queuing: buying flowers, tissues, sweets and magazines. There is a comforting aroma of coffee; an
espresso
machine clears its throat. From the main hall comes an almost industrial hum of human voices. The shop till chirps as if it lives in a permanent electronic springtime.

I buy some books of first class stamps, cross the flow of people in the hall and go right up to the glass wall on the far side. From here I can look down into an atrium, where tall plants grow, and water runs over black and grey pebbles and around fallen logs. There are no seats and no people in there. No animals or birds that I can see. Probably no sound either.

There is a mild ‘splat' behind me and people stop talking. I look round to see a little girl in a blue coat face down on the floor, still holding on to the hand of a good-looking man in a dark blue suit. People are holding their breath, waiting to see if she will cry. She opens her mouth but no sound comes. The man pulls her up quickly by the hand, right up off the floor, and as her feet touch down, she suddenly laughs. Relieved voices rise up again and close over the moment.

I take mother the stamps and a carrier bag full of things: a framed photo of me newly aged ten on the bike she had bought for my birthday; two clean nighties and two sets of underwear; a small new tube of toothpaste.