‘Lovely.’ Emily wiggled her toes.

  ‘Rugs,’ muttered Laura and went away to return with rugs which she swathed round the old people, propping their heads on cushions. Her actions were tender and considerate. ‘You are not all that wet,’ she said, ‘I’d never get you up to bed.’

  Martin watched her. She rearranged the logs he had put on the fire and watched it blaze, then stood looking down at the old people swaddled now in rugs, lying quietly. ‘Better leave the light on in case they get dizzy,’ she murmured.

  Nicholas gave a loud snore and let his arms fall away from the dog, who now leapt from his master’s arms and approached Martin, snarling.

  Terrified but inspired Martin shouted, ‘Die for Eastbourne!’

  Bonzo rolled over and lay flat.

  Laura let out a whoop of laughter: ‘Oh, how? Oh, where did you? Oh, ho, ho, ho ho.’ She pressed her hand against her side. ‘Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, it hurts.’

  ‘I will just get my umbrella,’ said Martin, ‘then I’d better push off.’ He felt acutely embarrassed. This was not how he had visualised introducing himself.

  ‘Yes,’ said Laura, ‘yes.’ Her eyes brimming, she followed Martin into the hall. ‘Of course,’ she said weakly. She was still giggling uncontrollably. ‘Your umbrella.’

  Martin took the umbrella from the stand and said, ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Laura, pulling herself together as she opened the door for him to step out into the rain.

  Martin opened the umbrella and held it up; as the rain pattered down onto it, he was surprised to find he was trembling.

  His aunt was still up when he got back. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ she asked, switching off the television.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Martin. ‘I got bitten.’

  ‘You’ll find Elastoplast in the kitchen,’ said Calypso. ‘Goodnight, my dear, I am going to bed. What a risky occupation yours is.’

  The tone of his aunt’s voice, thought Martin, dabbing antiseptic on his wound, exactly matched the smile Laura had given him as he left. In America women did not ridicule with such diabolical accuracy, they were kind to the weaker sex.

  ‘I suppose you talked to Ann Kennedy?’ Calypso called from the top of the stairs.

  ‘Who is Ann Kennedy?’ Martin answered unguardedly.

  ‘Not a very thorough snoop, are you?’ his Aunt Calypso mocked. He heard her go into her bathroom and turn on the taps; above the sound of rushing water he heard her voice. ‘She rents her loft.’ There was no time, thought Martin dismally as he wound Elastoplast round his thumb, to investigate Calypso’s hint. He must leave for the States.

  ‘Pull, for crissakes,’ Claud yelled, ‘pull.’

  ‘I think—I am—doing—my guts—an injury.’

  Mavis heaved at the belt of webbing strung under the calor gas heater. ‘We must get it up before Mum comes in,’ she gasped. ‘She’s terrified of fire.’

  On the ladder Claud got his shoulder under the stove and gave it a final heave through the trap-door. The stove toppled over, knocking Mavis onto her back. Claud came up through the trap, righted the stove and trundled it into place on its castors. His legs trembled from the strain of lifting. ‘Now the place looks civilised,’ he said, looking at his arrangement of books, typewriter, the box of manuscript, biros, pencils, india rubber, ruler, dictionary, paper clips. ‘Ready for the off,’ he said. ‘If I type out my two paragraphs and sixteen sentences again, I can carry on from there. Brilliant.’ He stood looking at his new domain and wound the belt of webbing round his fist. ‘Where does this come from?’ He looked down at Mavis flopped on the floor.

  ‘I borrowed it from the undertaker.’

  ‘Oh.’ Claud laid the webbing down quickly. How many coffins had this webbing abandoned to the worms? ‘Oh—’

  ‘I’m exhausted.’ Mavis rolled off her back, crawled to the mattress and sank onto it. ‘Oof,’ she said, ‘this is comfortable.’ She still wore her overcoat. She lay and watched Claud light the stove. ‘If you shut the trap-door,’ she said, ‘we can see how long it takes to warm the loft.’

  ‘Did Laura have one of these up here?’ Claud shut the trap-door.

  ‘She had an electric fire. She ran a flex down into the room below; Mum wasn’t pleased when she found out.’

  ‘Does she come up here?’ Claud shrank from the thought of invasion by Mrs Kennedy.

  ‘No, but she noticed when her electricity bill shot up.’

  ‘Well, that won’t happen with this.’ Claud patted the gas stove. ‘Did Laura have to repay your mother?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Hey, it would have been much easier to get that stove up without the cylinder.’ Mavis chirrupped with laughter.

  ‘Now she tells me.’ Claud stood looking down at Mavis on her back on the bed, Laura’s bed, the one she had left here. He rather envied Laura’s theft of electricity, tried to imagine Laura on the bed, but it was Mavis there showing her bright teeth, eyes half closed, muffled in that bloody coat. She had dark lashes and eyebrows, he noticed; if they had been pale like many redheads, it would have put paid to her looks. He sat beside her on the bed. ‘Why do you keep your coat on?’

  Mavis held the lapels close together. ‘I like it.’

  ‘Wrap me in it, too.’ He stretched out beside her. ‘You smell nice.’ He nuzzled her neck. ‘You don’t wear scent, do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Mavis, ‘no, it’s all me.’

  Claud kissed her mouth. ‘You taste nice too.’

  ‘Tell me the story of your novel.’

  ‘I’ve got an erection.’

  Mavis clutched her coat about her and crossed her legs.

  ‘Oh, for the happy days of carefree love!’ Claud accepted her refusal.

  ‘That generation don’t look any happier than us, I can’t see that it makes all that difference really.’

  ‘It’s the idea—’

  ‘Shouldn’t you direct your energies into intellectual activity? Sublimate.’

  ‘What have you been reading?’ Claud inserted his hand between the buttons of the coat and started peregrinating towards Mavis’ breasts. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Higher up.’

  ‘What a lot of clothes you wear.’

  ‘I feel the cold.’

  ‘The stove is warming us nicely, let me in.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right.’ He lay beside her. The effort of moving his belongings to the attic had been strenuous. He began to feel sleepy in the increasing warmth. ‘The shock of being thrown out of the parental home was traumatic,’ he murmured.

  ‘That’s not the story your mother told my mum. She helped you pack, ironed your shirts for the last time, bought you new bath towels.’

  ‘What a literal girl you are.’

  ‘It will be useful for your novel, though; are all suggestions gratefully received?’

  ‘Not really. I have to work it out for myself; the new schema is one no one has ever tried before.’

  ‘Is that so.’ Mavis in her overcoat sounded sceptical. ‘What’s so original about it?’

  ‘It’s about my mother.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Her love life.’

  ‘Her love life?’

  ‘You are not to tell anyone.’ The scent of Mavis’ flesh filled Claud with dangerous indiscretion; her exertions had made her perspire, which curiously enhanced her attraction. Again he set his hand to explore the labyrinth of garments, fumbling up towards her breasts from the waistband of her jeans. ‘However many layers of clothes have you got on?’ he asked in irritation as he unbuttoned her coat.

  ‘Vest, tee-shirt, shirt and sweater. Your hand is somewhere between the vest and the tee-shirt.’

  ‘You sound like the guide to Hampton Court maze.’

  ‘Go on about your mother.’

  Claud withdrew his hand. ‘She’s past the age for ordinary sex, right?’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘For the purpose of my novel it is.’

  ‘Okay, go on.’ Mavis resettled her clothes, rebuttoning the coat so that should he be so minded Claud would have to start again from scratch.

  Claud folded his arms behind his head, ‘She is in love with her machines.’

  ‘Her what?’ Mavis reared up on an elbow.

  ‘Her dishwasher, washing machine, spin dryer, mixer. They are all more real to her than a man’s penis, she has a special relationship with her microwave.’

  ‘Your mother hasn’t got a microwave.’

  ‘Oh, Mavis!’ Claud rolled suddenly on top of her, staring at her eye to eye. He could kiss her mouth and throat, but added now to her many layers of clothing were his own shirt and jersey. ‘I don’t believe anyone has been confronted by so much preventive clothing for years and years.’

  ‘I am inaugurating a new age of mysterious femininity,’ said Mavis, her mouth against his mouth. ‘You are terribly heavy and I am now too hot.’

  ‘Take some of it off then.’

  ‘No fear.’

  ‘New form of contraception, eh?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I get it, avoidance of our helpful friend?’

  ‘Might be—’

  Claud rolled off her. Tenderly he buttoned the overcoat up to her chin. ‘I shall start work first thing after breakfast tomorrow.’ (Susie had said Mavis’ eyes were like jade.)

  ‘Is Mum providing?’

  ‘No, I shall eat at a caff or the wine bar when I can afford it so that you can serve me.’

  ‘Not tomorrow. Tomorrow is market day. Your stall, remember?’

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Claud, ‘shit.’

  Mavis pulled up the trap-door and stepped down onto the ladder. ‘I wonder what Laura really got up to in this loft,’ she said.

  As Mavis disappeared Claud felt the space she had occupied flooded by Laura. Why on earth, what had possessed him to tell Mavis about his mother’s machine lovers? Surely only Laura’s ear, if any, was the one to confide in? Furiously he kicked out at Mavis’ head as it disappeared, missed.

  At some point during his first night in the Kennedys’ loft, tossing restlessly on a bed new to him, Claud realised with chagrin that his hero with the second-hand Alfa Romeo would not fit the scenario of his mother’s mechanical loves. In real life Margaret Bannister used a car to reach A from B. She did not consider a car as anything other than a rather boring means of locomotion. It was with household machines that she had rapport. There was the mixer which would only work for her (I know its little quirks), the Hoover which regurgitated particular forms of dust and refused to ingest spiders, the spin drier which inspired her to raise her voice in song, the washing machine and dishwasher which were as children to be fed, each its own diet. She had, too, a pretty funny relationship with her electric whisk. Would it be possible to weave the whisk into the novel with some esoteric sexual connotation? Sexuality and his mother hardly gelled in Claud’s mind but Come on, he urged himself, I am a writer, aren’t I? I should be able to tease that idea into shape. I am not writing about my living parent, she is merely the blueprint, the toile for the garb of my story. (I must remember not to use phrases like garb for story, they are sickeningly pretentious.)

  Unable to sleep, Claud got out of bed and padded barefoot to the table. The pile of paper reproached mutely. With the obstinacy of a procrastinating child it stood between him and progress. He snatched up the heap of paper and tore it across. What he had written would never see print. Just think, he told himself shivering part with cold, part with emotion, what Laura would say were she to set eyes on it. Not for Laura heroes with Alfa Romeos or heroines with, yes he had written it, long legs, wide apart violet eyes, high breasts and tight little bottoms. It’s enough to make any intelligent person puke, let alone Laura. What could I have been thinking of?

  Claud prised open the window and scattered the shredded bits of paper into the night. Laura need never know. She would appreciate the woman based on his mother and her mechanical familiars, she might even respect his work. I shall dedicate the novel to Laura, Claud promised himself as he closed the window. He went back to lie on the bed, the bed she had installed in this loft when seeking privacy and escape in adolescence.

  Half-regretting his violent act Claud thought, What an awful waste of paper. Then, My God, it’s market day, I must leap up and set up my stall so that I can earn the money to pay for more paper. I owe it to Laura, my muse. Now, now, he muttered, crawling reluctantly out of bed (I was just beginning to get warm again), don’t start calling Laura your muse, that’s a sure way to get kicked in the teeth. Taking care not to make a noise, Claud opened the trap door and, creeping down the ladder, tiptoed to the bathroom.

  He was halfway through shaving when the bathroom door snapped open and Mavis, tightly wrapped in her overcoat, came in. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  ‘Shaving. It’s my first day with my stall.’

  ‘What on earth for? None of the stall-holders shave in the morning.’

  ‘I am shaving. I am different.’

  ‘What on earth do you want to be different for?’

  ‘Just get out of here, Mavis, and leave me alone.’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘Mavis, if you say that just once more, I’ll cut your throat.’

  ‘What on—’

  ‘I will, Mavis.’

  Mavis laughed. ‘The kettle’s boiled, I’ve made tea, or d’you prefer coffee?’

  ‘Tea. What on earth are you doing up at this hour? Shit, it’s catching.’

  ‘I am going to help you as it’s your first day. I know the market people.’

  ‘Oh—’

  ‘I can introduce you, show you the way things get done.’

  Claud grunted.

  ‘You don’t sound very pleased or grateful. I have kept a stall myself from time to time.’

  ‘What on—’

  ‘To make a bob or two, dummy.’

  ‘Aah.’ Claud rinsed his razor. ‘I have my stock ready,’ he said. ‘I’ve priced it, stuck labels on the bits and pieces.’

  ‘Clever! Pete will come and look it over.’

  ‘Who’s Pete?’

  ‘Keeps an antique stall. You’d better be careful not to undercut him, he can be touchy. So can Gladys.’

  ‘Does she have an antique stall too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then what on earth am I doing with one?’

  Mavis suppressed a grin at the repetition. ‘The more antique stalls the better, stupid. People come every week to look for junk. If it’s any good, it finds its way to London. The dealers come. You’ll get to know them.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘You will put them in your books. Perhaps you’ve thought of that?’

  Laura had; Laura had pointed out his stall would be useful copy. Claud asked, ‘Any stalls selling machinery?’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Household machines.’

  ‘There’s one that sells old fridges and mixers, ancient mangles, that sort of thing. Collectors’ pieces. Why?’

  ‘Just interested.’

  ‘When we’ve set up your stall, you can look round, get to know where everybody is. I’ll mind your stall, if you don’t take too long, until I go to work.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Claud followed Mavis to the kitchen where she gave him tea. As he drank he eyed Mavis, wondering whether there might be a place for her in his novel, but always as he watched her it was Laura who was superimposed, the dark woman blotting her out, the two obliterating the memory of another girl, a girl he did not wish to think about from his recent past.

  Claud enjoyed the early bustle of the market, the setting up of stalls, the unloading of vans, the disjointed conversations between people who knew each other well yet had not met for a week. Everybody seemed to know Mavis. ‘Hi, Mavis, how’s the theatre then?’ ‘Got a star part yet?’ ‘Still on the dole?’ ‘Resting?’ ‘Never! Working in the old wine bar? See you later then, after market.’

  Mavis showed him how to set up the trestles, found him a place next to Brian and Susie ‘Pure uncontaminated organically grown fruit and veg’. He was glad of their proximity, amused that Mavis, testing the air with a wet finger, chose a place upwind. She had brought a paisley shawl (‘Don’t sell this, it belongs to Mum’) which she spread over the trestle table, then helped him arrange his wares. As predicted Pete came across to view, followed by Gladys. Neither Pete, who was bearded and bespectacled, or Gladys, who had tight white curls and awful lipstick, did more than nod when Mavis introduced Claud. They stared at Claud’s things making rapid, but minute, inventory. Pete picked up a china mug with a floral design: ‘I have one like this. I’ve marked it seventeen pounds.’

  ‘What have I put on mine?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘I’ll mark it up then.’ (I am cautious, not cowardly.)

  ‘Good boy,’ said Gladys. The lipstick had spread onto her teeth.

  Pete laughed, his face transformed. ‘Mine’s a bit chipped,’ he said. ‘Some wally may buy both.’ He wandered back to his own stall, taking Gladys with him.

  By eight thirty the market was filling up with serious shoppers, housewives anxious to buy the cream of the fruit and vegetables, choose the freshest fish and best cuts of meat; they heaped their baskets and scurried back to their cars, making room for another class of shopper who came to saunter round the stalls, pick over the second-hand clothes, wander among the aisles of stalls picking things up, putting them down again with no proper intention of buying. Rather they came to meet their friends, exchange news and gossip. Small children ran about getting lost, getting found, tripping over the market dogs, who milled around undecided whether to fight or romp, searching always with sniffing noses for a possible bitch on heat. A lame girl pushed a trolley selling mugs of coffee and slices of dubious pizza; there were several buskers, none properly out of earshot of the other, and a man with matted hair selling roast chestnuts. Claud began to enjoy himself.

  Mavis disappeared to work in the wine bar; Brian and Susie were busy at their stall. Today Susie wore mittens. Her little pink fingers snipped and snapped up the vegetables, weighing them on the scales, wrapping them in the recycled paper bags. She dazzled her customers with her smile, flashing her neat little teeth. Claud noticed that as she weighed the carrots or potatoes she smiled into the eyes of her customer while a straying finger depressed the scale just a little, just enough, he calculated with respect, to make a considerable increase in her profit. He wondered whether large and burly Brian was party to this trick.

 

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