Death of a Perfect Mother (2 page)

‘When you are planning to do her in,' said Gordon.

‘Right. When you are planning to put an end to an existence that brings joy to none, and irritation, nausea, fear, loathing and actual physical vomiting to thousands.'
Brian rolled the words round his mouth lovingly. Words were his refuge, his secret, solitary defence. The only way he could tolerate Lill being Lill and being his mother was to form the words that described her. He lay on the bed forming more phrases, a thesaurus of hate, while Gordon began his morning liturgy of exercises—press-ups, running on the spot, lithe swoops of the trunk from side to side and violent feints at this and that. Gordon's regular exercises were a relic of his army days, something he clung to as desperate men do cling to sure things as they sink in oceans of uncertainty. Besides, as he often said, you never knew when training might come in useful.

‘Bloody Tarzan,' said Brian, tired with all the activity. ‘Give over and think.'

‘I am thinking,' said Gordon, back on the floor and pressing himself up and down at double speed with an expert judgment that just stopped him bashing his chin against the floor. ‘This is when I do think.'

‘Funny brain you must have,' said Brian. ‘What's the result of your thinking?'

Gordon stopped, swivelled himself round on to his haunches, and sat looking at his brother's bed, his square shoulders hunched forward urgently.

‘Saturday. That's the result of my thinking. Saturday. One week from today. As she's coming home from the pub. A sharp blow on the back of the head as she comes through Snoggers Alley. Or maybe a rope round her throat. Are you with me?'

‘ 'Course I'm with you.' Brian lay back against his pillow, his weaker, less intense face wreathed in smiles. ‘What an idea! They'll think it's some casual mugger, eh? We'll take her handbag and keep the small change.' He drowned in ecstatic anticipation. ‘Wouldn't it be marvellous?'

Gordon threw himself forward on to his brother's bed and shook him by the shoulders: ‘Stupid bastard! It's not a
case of “wouldn't it”! I'm serious!'

Brian looked at him, half wondering, half afraid. ‘Serious? You mean you . . . you mean we could?'

‘I mean we've got to. I mean it's our only chance. What else is there? I tried, didn't I—tried to get away. I went into the army, got away for five years. Only it wasn't away at all. Everywhere I went I had this ball and chain attached, labelled “Lill”. It'll be the same with you. Why did you fail your Scholarship levels? Because deep down you wanted to. And she wanted you to too. Now there's no question of Oxford or Cambridge. That would have taken you away from Lill, from old Dracula curls. Now the best you can hope for is South Wessex—twelve miles of good motorway and back home for tea with Lill at five o'clock. Just what she planned for all along.'

‘ “They say it's very good for Socialology,” ' quoted Brian with a bitter smile.

‘You'll have the ball and chain on, boyo, same as I felt in the army. And it'll be there as long as she's alive, and when she dies there'll be no life left in us because we'll have been sucked dry. To get rid of that chain we've got to snap it off.'

‘If only . . .' said Brian, faltering.

‘What?'

‘If only there were some other way.'

‘There isn't!' Gordon towered over him, pumping him full of his own energy. ‘If a getaway was possible I'd have made it. But I came back, and you'll be stuck here for life. I got the job at the shipyard—and we all know how I got that—and you'll go to our little neighbourhood university and land a job as a teacher in some local dump. And that's our lives.
All
our lives. Lill in the centre of her web, entertaining her flies.'

‘You might get married . . . I might too.'

Gordon's face darkened. ‘Do you think I haven't thought about that? In fact that's . . . But it couldn't happen
while Lill's alive. Oh, I've got girl-friends all right, plenty of them, but anything more than that? I couldn't. As long as she's there I couldn't . . .'

‘There's a book about that—
Sons and Lo—'

‘This isn't a fucking book! Sod your books! It's my life! And if I went to . . . her, if I made her want me, what would happen? We set up home in this town, and I'm still mother's boy. We go away, and I'm on a longer lead, same as in the army. She's got us, body and soul. She's owned us, every minute of our lives since the day we were born. If we ever get free, it'll be violently—it'll be by doing her in.' He stared down at his brother. ‘Are you with me?'

Brian didn't look up. ‘Who is she?'

‘What the hell are you talking about? Answer me.'

‘Who is it you want to marry?'

‘Ann Watson up the road, if you must know. She hasn't so much as looked at me. Why should she? Poor old Gordon Hodsden, the big milksop: still tied to his mother's apron-strings at his age. Before she'll ever look at me I've got to be free. Come on, give me an answer. Are you with me?'

Brian's heart seemed to stop still, then to leap exultantly in his slight body. ‘Yes!' he said. Then he turned to his brother and said ‘Yes, yes, yes!'

‘All right then,' said Gordon. ‘Now we can get down to business.'

‘The trouble is,' muttered Brian, suddenly abstracted again, and pushing a lock of fair hair back from his forehead in worried frustration, ‘that the family's always suspected first.'

‘The
husband's
always suspected first,' said Gordon. ‘Old Fred. Can you see old Fred doing our Lill in? Can you visualize it? He'd have to ask permission first. Anyway, Saturday night's his night on the town. His night out on parole. Darts at the Yachtsman's Arms. He's
bound to have twenty people to swear he was down there being the life and soul of the party every minute from eight to ten-thirty.'

‘In which case,' said Brian, ‘they'll look at us.'

‘Why should they? Us? Her beloved boys? We're one big happy family. The whole town knows that. Lill and her lads. We worship the ground she walks on.' Gordon came up and sat on Brian's bed, looking at him closely. ‘You ever told anybody, Bri?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Told anybody what we feel? About Lill? How she makes goose pimples go up and down our spine every time she opens her bloody mouth? How we'd like to put her guts through a mincer? Shut her in a slow oven and listen to the howls? Have you told anyone?'

There was silence for a minute. ‘No. I never have,' said Brian, swallowing hard. ‘It's not—not the kind of thing you say, is it? I mean, nobody at school talks much about their mothers. And anyway—I mean, when she goes around, saying what she does—'

‘Spreading the gospel of light—the Hodsdens, mother and sons, as the apostles of cheery family togetherness. Exactly. Everyone knows we're devoted. Lill has told them so. She thinks so herself. She's given us our let-out. She's dug her own grave.'

Brian smiled, slowly. ‘That's nice. It seems—appropriate.'

‘Too bloody right it is. Now all we've got to do is think through the details.'

Downstairs a door banged. ‘You lads still up there, wasting a lovely day like this?' carolled the crow voice from downstairs. ‘You shift yourselves or I'll be up there with a broomhandle.' And she burst into affectionate laughter.

‘Coming, Mum, just getting dressed,' came the duet from the bedroom. But as they scrambled into their
clothes Brian took Gordon by the arm and whispered: ‘I've just remembered. That book.
Sons and Lovers.
He did his mother in there, too.'

‘Bully for him,' muttered Gordon. ‘I didn't think we'd be the first. How did he do it?'

‘Drugs. She was ill already.'

‘That's no good. Lill's got the constitution of a horse. It's got to be some other way. Think about it.' He suddenly took Brian by the shoulders and pushed him against the wall. ‘You do agree, don't you?' he hissed, looking into his eyes. ‘It's the only way. She's got to be killed.' Brian, wondering, nodded. ‘All right then. Now we've got to decide on the way.'

As they pushed in the tails of their shirts and pulled on their shoes they both were turning over in their minds various delicious possibilities.

It's a rehearsal. That's what it is, a rehearsal, thought Brian. This is how it's going to be, one week from today. And one week from today Lill will get her chips, hand in her cards, bite the dust, go to meet her (much to be pitied) Maker. This is a trial run for her murder. I've got to keep my wits about me; observe everything; notice possibilities—things we could take advantage of, pitfalls that could arise. I can't just switch off like I usually do. I'll have to keep on the
qui vive.

It was very much a family night out. They were celebrating Gordon's birthday a day early—because, as Lill said, Sunday night in a pub's dead as a doornail. So as usual they had gone down to the Rose and Crown (even
the pub names in Todmarsh were unimaginative) as they did every Saturday. They had as always taken the side way, through the little cutting known popularly as ‘Snoggers Alley', and then down Balaclava Road. Their whole route was vilely ill-lit—providentially, wonderfully ill-lit, Brian had whispered to Gordon. Six and a half minutes ordinary walking time, Gordon had said as they opened the door to the Saloon Bar. Gordon was very consciously the technician of the enterprise.

Now they were all seated round a table, and beyond the fact that Lill had flaunted up to the bar and announced ‘It's my Gordon's birthday, so we'll expect a free round later on,' and then had turned to the sparse collection of early evening drinkers and shrilled, ‘Get yourselves in good voice for “Happy Birthday To You” later on'—apart from that, it was a normal Saturday night out for the Hodsdens.

Well, almost. Because tonight Fred was with them, just for a first pint, and just to be friendly, like. Fred invariably played darts at the Yachtsman's Arms on Saturday nights, but tonight he raised his glass to his elder son and looked with satisfaction around his little table. Fred was thin, decidedly wizened, and very quiet. Almost humble, you might say. He was like a plant that had never quite flourished after transplanting. Here he was, still pottering round the town's parks as a basic wage gardener twenty-odd years after they had moved to Todmarsh. Happy enough, in fact, but hardly prosperous, and looking all of twenty years older than his wife. It was not quite what Lill had envisaged when she'd made the move. She told him often enough that he ought to consider himself bloody lucky she'd married him, and indeed that was exactly what in his own mind he did feel. He agreed with his wife absolutely.

She's a real winner, my Lill, he thought, raising his mug to his lips. Regular life and soul of the party. And
she's brought up a wonderful family. I'm a lucky man.

Lill Hodsden's daughter was also out with the family tonight and drinking a gin and lime. She was an occasional rather than a regular addition, and as a matter of fact she was still well under eighteen. But what landlord would argue the toss with Lill? Come to that, what policeman? So tonight Deborah tagged along with Mum and the boys because until later she had nothing better to do.

Deborah she had been christened (C. of E., what else?), Debbie she had become. She hated the name in both forms. It symbolized Lill's classy aspirations, and their shoddy outcomes. Mary, Eileen, Dorothy would have been better. Or even, come to that, Petula or Cilla. But she was Deborah, become Debbie. She heard her mother speaking:

‘Look at old sourpuss over there. Come on, give us a smile, Debbie. It doesn't cost you anything. It's Gordon's birthday, what do you think we brought you out for? Get a smile on your dial, fer Chrissake.'

Lill disliked her daughter. For a start she wasn't a boy, and Lill preferred boys—well, didn't everyone? Then, in the last year, she had grown up, so on family outings there they were together, mother and grown-up daughter, thirty-odd years all too evidently between them. They were like two pages in a family snap-album, wide apart. Only Deborah had all the looks that Lill had had as a girl, without any of the coarseness. She hasn't got a
bit
of my go! said Lill to herself, consolingly.

If I can only get away from her, thought Debbie to herself, nothing in my life can ever be as bad again. If I can only get shot of Lill . . .

‘Well, we won't let old sauerkraut cast a blight over the proceedings,' said Lill, turning back to her boys. ‘This place seems to need a bit of pepping up tonight. I can see I'll have to brighten things up with a few verses of “Lily
the Pink” later on. That'll put a firework up them.'

Oh God, thought Gordon, not Lily the Pink. I don't think I could stand it. It's
my
birthday. Why should
my
birthday be celebrated with ‘Lily the Pink'?

For even Gordon didn't quite realize that it was
his
birthday, but Lill's celebration.

Luckily Lill's attention was distracted for the moment by the arrival of Mr Achituko.

‘Archie!' she trilled. ‘It's my pal! Yoo-hoo, Archie!' For Lill, never very good on words of over three syllables, had been totally defeated by Achituko and had picked on Archie as friendly-sounding. Mr Achituko, his smile fixed and imperturbable, wished he had gone into the public bar, or to the King's Head, or back to the Coponawi Islands. But as always happened with Lill, he gave in to his fate and brought his glass over to the table by the Hodsdens. He was greeted by Lill as manna from Heaven. He was something to enliven her evening.

‘It's my boy-friend. Isn't he lovely? I could eat him.' Instead of which she kissed him loudly, for the benefit of the whole bar. Then, as she always did, she regarded his blackness comically, and said: ‘Does it rub off?'