Second fiddle, p.4
Second Fiddle, page 4
‘You reach it up this thing. I’ll go first.’ Mavis climbed a metal ladder towards a trap-door in the ceiling. She still wore her greatcoat. Claud, watching her climb, resisted nipping her Achilles tendon between finger and thumb. ‘A well turned ankle,’ he said, reaching up but not touching.
‘A what? Come on up.’ She had disappeared.
‘Dornford Yates or Somerset Maugham, perhaps?’ Claud climbed the ladder.
Above him Mavis switched on a light. ‘It’s pretty basic,’ she said as he came up through the floor, ‘just the bed, a table, a chair, the bookshelves. You’ll need somewhere to keep your clothes.’
The loft was larger than he had expected; cold light streamed through attic windows. Claud went to the window. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘what a view!’
‘Yes,’ said Mavis, ‘yes.’ She stuffed her hands up the sleeves of her coat.
They looked across slate roofs and jumbled chimney pots to the town gasworks, and to the right the river, where boats moored in midstream, swans and ducks cruised. The air in the attic was dry. Claud sneezed and, when he breathed in again, sniffed the faint smell he had noticed when, reaching across the table in the wine bar, Mavis had set the coffee in front of Laura. Fresh flesh. He felt simultaneously a wish to kiss Mavis’ throat as it emerged from the heavy coat and something which resembled lust for Laura. Watching the gasometer, he sighed as the twin desires cancelled each other out.
Hearing the sigh, Mavis questioned, ‘So it won’t do? As I said, it’s pretty basic.’ She excused the loft. ‘It’s not even an attic.’
‘No, no, it’s lovely. I could bring some rugs from home. Do you think your mother will rent it to me? What’s the rent?’
‘Let’s go and ask her.’ Mavis led the way down the ladder. She feared her mother would find the prospective tenant too young; she wanted a steady tenant who would not be likely to negotiate the ladder drunk. There had been an unfortunate incident with a visiting cousin who had slipped and been badly bruised. Since this episode Ann Kennedy had dreaded an entanglement with insurance companies. On the other hand a tenant of guaranteed sobriety might not be sufficiently spry to negotiate the ladder. It was a worry; she needed the rent. ‘Don’t be surprised if you hear me tell my mother that you don’t drink,’ said Mavis.
‘I don’t, much. I can’t afford to. Why?’ Claud rejoined Mavis at the foot of the ladder.
‘She’s afraid of people falling off the ladder pissed.’
‘I’m pretty good on ladders, drunk or sober,’ said Claud primly.
‘It’s the Irish imagination which foresees possible trouble.’
‘I thought you were a Plymouth family,’ said Claud, watching the back of Mavis’ head as she descended the stairs ahead of him.
‘So what? There are Kennedys born all over. In the United States, for instance. You’ve been listening to Laura.’ Mavis, not over-fond of Laura, sounded quite huffy.
‘I suppose everyone tells you you have beautiful hair?’ Claud attempted to deflect her huff.
‘They certainly do.’ Mavis was unenthusiastic. Then, remembering her mother’s need for the rent, she said, ‘Come on and meet my mum. Mum,’ she shouted, ‘where are you?’
‘In here,’ Ann Kennedy answered from the kitchen.
‘This is Claud, a friend of Laura’s, he’d like to rent the loft, Mum.’
‘Rent the loft?’ said Ann Kennedy, affecting surprise. ‘A friend of Laura’s? Well!’ Impossible to tell from her tone whether Mrs Kennedy thought well or ill of Laura.
‘I’m defrosting the fridge; it’s a job which bores me rigid.’ She waved towards an open refrigerator. ‘Takes forever.’
‘Soften it up with the hairdrier,’ suggested Mavis.
‘Would that be safe?’ Mrs Kennedy was interested. ‘Wouldn’t I get electrocuted?’
‘It’s a lovely loft.’ Claud hastened to stem the diversion. Suddenly he wanted the loft badly; he could see his typewriter on the table, hear his fingers tap the keys. ‘I am a writer, Mrs Kennedy.’
‘A writer,’ said Ann Kennedy in flat tone. ‘Oh.’ She bent to peer into the fridge, ‘It is beginning to drip, perhaps the drier—this fridge is as old as Methuselah.’
‘I am very quiet,’ said Claud in recommendation.
‘Quiet,’ said Ann Kennedy. ‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ said Claud.
‘There’s the ladder.’
‘I’m pretty nimble.’
‘I don’t doubt.’
‘I scarcely drink.’
‘Scarcely.’
‘I could pay the rent in advance, if it’s not too large, that is.’
‘M-m-m.’ She peered into the refrigerator.
‘Cash,’ said Claud.
‘Cash,’ said Mrs Kennedy. ‘Did you tell him the rent, Maeve?’
‘Mavis,’ said Mavis. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘If you must keep changing your name,’ said Ann Kennedy in accents of extreme irritability, ‘why can’t you choose one we can all stick to? A decent biblical name like Ruth or Rebecca or Miriam?’ Her voice rose as ice suddenly began to clatter noisily onto the ice tray. ‘Or Mary? What’s wrong with the virgin Mary?’
‘It’s common.’
‘There’s only one virgin Mary,’ snapped Ann Kennedy, ‘why not—’
‘Because I can’t stand the Jews forever killing the Arabs and vice versa, they are as bad as the Northern Irish.’ Mavis’ voice rose to meet her parent’s.
‘It would be simpler with all this chopping and changing to know you by a number. Number One would suit you fine,’ Ann Kennedy snapped.
Claud registered that this was a well-established conflict. ‘Could we get back to the rent?’ His masculine calm rather pleased him.
‘Of course.’ Mrs Kennedy stooped to field an oblong wedge of ice which was slipping towards the floor. ‘Gotcher.’ She named a rent high in excess of the amount he had expected. ‘Any friend of Laura’s is welcome.’ She avoided her daughter’s eye.
‘Great,’ said Claud. ‘Perhaps I could move in next week?’
The telephone shrilled in the next room. Before answering Claud’s question Ann Kennedy moved away to answer it. Waiting for her to return, Claud watched Mavis standing dwarfed in her immense coat, her face a mixture of surprise and something else. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, feeling that if he were to become a writer, he must be sensitive to people’s moods.
‘Nothing,’ said Mavis, torn between admiration for her mother’s bold greed and fear that on reflection Claud might change his mind.
‘That was Laura,’ said Ann Kennedy, returning.
‘Oh?’
‘Message for you to ring her up or go and see her.’
‘Me?’ asked Mavis.
‘No. Mr—er—what’s your name?’
‘Claud Bannister.’
‘That’s right, Claud. I’m glad she rang. I was a bit bothered about the rent.’ Mrs Kennedy bent to catch another bit of ice effecting its escape. ‘So I asked her; she said knock off a couple of quid.’ Mother’s and daughter’s eyes met.
‘No business of Laura’s,’ said Mavis.
‘I’m quite happy with what you—’ began Claud.
‘No, no. As I say, knock off two pounds. She said either give her a tinkle or come over, she could tell you something about your stall. You didn’t say anything about a stall?’
‘Well, no. No, I didn’t. I could go over this afternoon. Thanks. Would you come with me, Mavis? Show me the way?’
‘I have to wash my hair,’ said Mavis. ‘You’ll find it all right.’ She pulled her coat collar up over her chin. Claud was reminded of Laura wrapping her scarf across her face in the wine bar. She had looked exotic. Mavis disappearing into the outsize overcoat gave the effect of a tortoise. ‘There’s a bus,’ said Mavis, ‘catch that.’
Arriving at the Old Rectory, Claud was not in the best of tempers. He had consulted the timetable but arrived to see the bus leaving the square minutes earlier than he expected. On protesting to a youth waiting for a bus in the opposite direction, he had been outraged at the suggestion that he had studied the wrong timetable. ‘It’s winter, zee, you should look for winter times not zummer times.’ The boy leaned against the wall, grinning. ‘Ain’t no more buzzes til zix thirty or so.’ Humiliated by the fake yokel accent and the suspicion that he had in fact made a stupid mistake, Claud set off walking, more with the intention of distancing himself from mockery than of reaching Laura.
As he walked annoyance coupled with his imagination spurred him along. Not profligate with ideas, he would use the incident in his new novel: his hero, as yet rather an intangible character, would foot it towards the girl he loved. Naturally he would have to walk somewhere more inspiring than this main road with its draggle of bungaloid habitations punctuated by filling stations. He would set him to walk over a moor, across the Fens or along the Pennine Way, somewhere more peaceable than a main road where cars hurtled past breaking the speed limit, polluting the air with disgusting fumes; he would walk towards his lover, waiting expectantly.
Passing the last filling station, Claud consoled himself for this boring trudge by giving his hero a bicycle, then, growing impatient with the tedious journey, he bought him a car. It was hard to decide on the make. He was snobbish about Fords, averse to Fiats and despised Sunbeams, but by the time he read on a white board half-hidden in a laurel hedge the words, ‘The Old Rectory’, he had bought his hero a second-hand Alfa Romeo. With that little matter settled he could apply himself to his character’s destiny in the next chapter.
Claud walked up a curving drive to the front door and rang the bell.
A dog barked loudly. The door burst open. Laura, twenty years older than she had been that morning, beckoned him in. ‘Come in, come in, are you in trouble? Run out of petrol? Car broken down? Want to use the telephone?’ She backed into a dark hall. ‘Or have you come to read the meters?’
‘I walked—I—’
‘Walked! Heavens! Nobody walks. The road is lethal. I am surprised you were not squashed like a hedgehog. I’ll show you the meter, you’re new—’
‘Laura—I—you—’
‘Oh! You want Laura,’ said Laura’s double. ‘Round the back, try that, servants’ entrance.’
‘Oh—I’m sorry, I mistook, I thought—I—’
‘Round the house, the other door.’ The door so brusquely opened clicked shut in his face.
Repulsed, Claud made his way along an alley which led through overgrown shrubs to a door at the back of the house. There was a knocker. Claud knocked.
‘I can see by your face that you met my mother,’ said Laura, opening the door. ‘She gets tremendously annoyed if she’s mistaken for me, which is a pity because I had an idea that we might prise some junk for your stall out of her; the attic is bulging with tat. Come in.’
Claud followed her along an ill-lit passage into a combination of kitchen and sitting-room. Where once a kitchen range had stood was a large open fire, along one wall a gas cooker, sink and refrigerator, in front of the fire a shabby sofa and armchairs. Behind the sofa stood a long deal table, one end obviously used to eat off, the other to work at. A dresser held books as well as china. The room was warm and smelled agreeably of garlicky cooking but beneath this aroma there was a hint of mice. The view from the windows was on to a large neglected garden. Claud felt his spirits rise. ‘Nice,’ he said, ‘it’s nice.’
‘Well—yes—it does. I’ve walled them off.’
‘Who?’
‘Family.’
‘Oh.’
‘I sleep in what was the servants’ hall, and my bathroom was the pantry. I’m not here much.’
‘I got your message.’
‘I gathered from Mrs K that you’ve rented the loft. Sit down, do.’ She pointed to an armchair occupied by a cat.
Claud sat, edging next to the cat, held his hands towards the fire. ‘Yes I have, it’s superb.’
‘I used to rent it myself,’ said Laura. ‘I put the bed and table there, and the chair.’
‘Really?’ Claud was surprised. ‘What for?’
‘Privacy. To escape. I spent my pocket money on it. I lay and dreamed and counted my pimples.’
‘Oh.’
‘You know what it’s like when family become oppressive, unbearable.’
‘Well, actually, I—’ Claud thought of his gentle unobtrusive mother. ‘Not exactly, my—’
‘Drink? Tea? Coffee? Wine? Did you walk?’
‘Yes, your mother seemed surprised. Coffee, please.’
‘Walking, the lost art.’ Laura poured beans into a grinder and filled the room with its screech. ‘Sorry about that, it’s French,’ she excused the grinder. She switched on an electric kettle. ‘No one in their right senses walks along that road, you should have come over the hill across the fields, or come by bus.’
‘I missed it.’
‘People do.’ Laura poured boiling water onto the coffee, stirred the mix in a jug. Claud, breathing its heavenly smell, found himself telling Laura about his hero who, starting out as a pedestrian, was now the owner of an Alfa Romeo.
‘How splendidly vulgar.’ Laura peered into the coffee jug. ‘Nearly ready. What’s his name, your hero?’
‘Justin.’
‘Oh God!’ said Laura. ‘You can’t call him Justin.’
‘Whyever not?’ Claud was nettled.
‘You just cannot.’ Laura poured coffee through a strainer into beautiful but chipped cups and handed one to Claud. ‘Milk? Sugar? Help yourself. I’ve got a cake somewhere.’ She moved to the dresser, where a half-demolished cake sagged crumbling on a broken Worcester plate. ‘Justin,’ she said, ‘is unsplendidly vulgar.’
‘Um.’ Claud gulped his coffee. It burned. He could feel the burn right down into his chest. ‘I’ll have to think about that.’ He was not prepared to yield, knew that he would and must take care not to tell Laura that the choice of name had hovered between Justin and Crispin.
Laura subsided in a flowing movement to sit cross-legged in front of the fire; she had taken off her boots and was now barefoot.
‘You have beautiful feet,’ said Claud.
‘Yes.’ Laura tucked them out of sight under her skirt. ‘I know.’
‘I thought your mother was your doppelganger,’ said Claud.
‘And well she might be,’ said Laura. ‘There’s a male version too.’ She did not explain. ‘Have you seduced Mavis yet?’ she asked.
‘I haven’t had time,’ said Claud. Two can play at this, he thought, watching Laura’s face in the firelight; what does she take me for?
Laura showed her teeth; she had her back to the light and might have been smiling, it was difficult to tell. ‘Have some cake.’ She proffered the plate. ‘That’s not mouse shit, it’s seed cake,’ she said as Claud hesitated.
‘No thanks.’ He recoiled.
‘Well,’ said Laura, ‘since you are here we’d better brave the doppelgängers.’ She reached for a pair of tights hanging on the fireguard and began putting them on.
Claud observed her legs; they were long and peculiarly neat. Her movements as she pulled the tights up over her bottom had a sensuality which brought the word risqué to what he was beginning to think of as his writer’s mind. ‘I would like to seduce you,’ he said. He decided to give his heroine Laura’s body. She had already, he realised, got Mavis’ hair in his writer’s mind’s eye. He had become aware of Mavis and the smell of her flesh in the wine bar, but he had been taken up with Laura, and later all he had seen of her was the enormous overcoat; she had even hidden her hands in its sleeves. ‘I would like to seduce you,’ he repeated.
‘Fancy that,’ said Laura, picking up the telephone and dialling. ‘I am coming round,’ she said as someone answered, ‘to explore the attic.’ Then, ‘You’d put in a bit of practice before tackling Mavis, would that be it?’
Claud did not know what to make of this. ‘I don’t know what to make of you,’ he said. Surely at this juncture any woman of Laura’s age would laugh and say, I am old enough to be your mother, or words to that effect.
But Laura gave him what that morning he had called her sidelong look. ‘Just concentrate on Justin,’ she said. ‘And what is his lover’s name to be?’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’ Quickly he dismissed the name he had been toying with, it would never do. Pearl must be dropped back where it came from. Indeed later when he tried to remember the name he could not and even believed it might have been Fleur, or perhaps June.
Laura tugged at her boots. ‘Coming?’ she asked.
With his back to the light Claud poured tea from the pot his mother had placed before him. His eye was extremely painful, his head throbbed. Beside the teapot his mother had put a bottle of aspirin. The scene revived memories of the times before his father left home, driven away by his wife’s intolerable forbearance.
Claud unscrewed the aspirin bottle, tipped pills onto his palm, gulped them down with scalding tea, drained the cup and refilled it. My pa, he thought, was an incurable alcoholic; he did not last long after leaving Ma’s tender care. Perhaps if they could have had a hearty row, a healthy shout when he came home drunk, he would be alive to this day? But I was not roaring drunk last night, Claud told himself. I am not an alcoholic. On the other hand recollection of what happened in the Old Rectory is dim, if not zero. ‘I think I got a bang on the head,’ he said as his mother rustled the sheets of her newspaper. ‘I probably have a slight concussion.’
Margaret Bannister, an inveterate Guardian reader, did not answer. Claud calculated that she had just about reached the leader page after starting at the back with the sports; she was unlikely to reply to his remark until she had worked through to the front page. By that time the aspirin and tea would have begun their work. Thinking this, Claud realised what he had not realised before: that this ploy had evolved over years of his father’s hangovers. (Make strong tea, supply aspirin, give it time to work before speaking.)
