Mischief (11 page)

No such thing as an accident. Accidents are Freudian slips: they are wilful, bad-tempered things.

Martin can’t bear bad temper. Martin likes slim ladies. Diet. Martin rather likes his secretary. Diet. Martin admires slim legs and big bosoms. How to achieve them both? Impossible. But try, oh try, to be what you ought to be, not what you are. Inside and out.

Martin brings back flowers and chocolates: whisks Martha off for holiday weekends. Wonderful! The best husband in the world: look into his crinkly, merry, gentle eyes; see it there. So the mouth slopes away into something of a pout. Never mind. Gaze into the eyes. Love. It must be love. You married him.
You
. Surely
you
deserve true love?

Salisbury Plain. Stonehenge. Look, children, look! Mother, we’ve seen Stonehenge a hundred times. Go back to sleep.

Cook! Ah cook. People love to come to Martin and Martha’s dinners. Work it out in your head in the lunch hour. If you get in at six-twelve, you can seal the meat while you beat the egg white while you feed the cat while you lay the table while you string the beans while you set out the cheese, goat’s cheese, Martin loves goat’s cheese, Martha tries to like goat’s cheese – oh, bed, sleep, peace, quiet.

Sex! Ah sex. Orgasm, please. Martin requires it. Well, so do you. And you don’t want his secretary providing a passion you neglected to develop. Do you? Quick, quick, the cosmic bond. Love. Married love.

Secretary! Probably a vulgar suspicion: nothing more. Probably a fit of paranoia, à la mother, now dead and gone. At peace.

R.I.P.

Chilly, lonely mother, following her suspicions where they led.

Nearly there, children. Nearly in paradise, nearly at the cottage. Have another biscuit.

Real roses round the door.

Roses. Prune, weed, spray, feed, pick. Avoid thorns. One of Martin’s few harsh words.

‘Martha, you can’t not want roses! What kind of person am I married to? An anti-rose personality?’

Green grass. Oh, God, grass. Grass must be mown. Restful lawns, daisies bobbing, buttercups glowing. Roses and grass and books. Books.

Please, Martin, do we have to have the two hundred books, mostly twenties’ first editions, bought at Christie’s book sale on one of your afternoons off? Books need dusting.

Roars of laughter from Martin, Jasper, Jenny and Jolyon. Mummy says we shouldn’t have the books: books need dusting!

Roses, green grass, books and peace.

Martha woke up with a start when they got to the cottage, and gave a little shriek which made them all laugh. Mummy’s waking shriek, they called it.

Then there was the car to unpack and the beds to make up, and the electricity to connect, and the supper to make, and the cobwebs to remove, while Martin made the fire. Then supper – pork chops in sweet and sour sauce (‘Pork is such a
dull
meat if you don’t cook it properly’: Martin), green salad from the garden, or such green salad as the rabbits had left. (‘Martha, did you really net them properly? Be honest, now!’: Martin) and sauté potatoes. Mash is so stodgy and ordinary, and instant mash unthinkable. The children studied the night sky with the aid of their star map. Wonderful, rewarding children!

Then clear up the supper: set the dough to prove for the bread: Martin already in bed: exhausted by the drive and lighting the fire. (‘Martha, we really ought to get the logs stacked properly. Get the children to do it, will you?’: Martin) Sweep and tidy: get the TV aerial right. Turn up Jasper’s jeans where he has trodden the hem undone. (‘He can’t go around like
that
, Martha. Not even Jasper’: Martin)

Midnight. Good night. Weekend guests arriving in the morning. Seven for lunch and dinner on Saturday. Seven for Sunday breakfast, nine for Sunday lunch. (‘Don’t fuss, darling. You always make such a fuss’: Martin) Oh, God, forgotten the garlic squeezer. That means ten minutes with the back of a spoon and salt. Well, who wants
lumps
of garlic? No one. Not Martin’s guests. Martin said so. Sleep.

Colin and Katie. Colin is Martin’s oldest friend. Katie is his new young wife. Janet, Colin’s other, earlier wife, was Martha’s friend. Janet was rather like Martha, quieter and duller than her husband. A nag and a drag, Martin rather thought, and said, and of course she’d let herself go, everyone agreed. No one exactly excused Colin for walking out, but you could see the temptation.

Katie versus Janet.

Katie was languid, beautiful and elegant. She drawled when she spoke. Her hands were expressive: her feet were little and female. She had no children.

Janet plodded round on very flat, rather large feet. There was something wrong with them. They turned out slightly when she walked. She had two children. She was, frankly, boring. But Martha liked her: when Janet came down to the cottage she would wash up. Not in the way that most guests washed up – washing dutifully and setting everything out on the draining board, but actually drying and putting away too. And Janet would wash the bath and get the children all sat down, with chairs for everyone, even the littlest, and keep them quiet and satisfied so the grown-ups – well, the men – could get on with their conversation and their jokes and their love of country weekends, while Janet stared into space, as if grateful for the rest, quite happy.

Janet would garden, too. Weed the strawberries, while the men went for their walk; her great feet standing firm and square and sometimes crushing a plant or so, but never mind, oh never mind. Lovely Janet; who understood.

Now Janet was gone and here was Katie.

Katie talked with the men and went for walks with the men, and moved her ashtray rather impatiently when Martha tried to clear the drinks round it.

Dishes were boring, Katie implied by her manner, and domesticity was boring, and anyone who bothered with that kind of thing was a fool. Like Martha. Ash should be allowed to stay where it was, even if it was in the butter, and conversations should never be interrupted.

Knock, knock. Katie and Colin arrived at one-fifteen on Saturday morning, just after Martha had got to bed. ‘You don’t mind? It was the moonlight. We couldn’t resist it. You should have seen Stonehenge! We didn’t disturb you? Such early birds!’

Martha rustled up a quick meal of omelettes. Saturday night’s eggs. (‘Martha makes a lovely omelette’: Martin) (‘Honey, make one of your mushroom omelettes: cook the mushrooms separately, remember, with lemon. Otherwise the water from the mushrooms gets into the egg, and spoils everything.’) Sunday supper mushrooms. But ungracious to say anything.

Martin had revived wonderfully at the sight of Colin and Katie. He brought out the whisky bottle. Glasses. Ice. Jug for water. Wait. Wash up another sinkful, when they’re finished. 2 a.m.

‘Don’t do it tonight, darling.’

‘It’ll only take a sec.’ Bright smile, not a hint of self-pity. Self-pity can spoil everyone’s weekend.

Martha knows that if breakfast for seven is to be manageable the sink must be cleared of dishes. A tricky meal, breakfast. Especially if bacon, eggs, and tomatoes must all be cooked in separate pans. (‘Separate pans mean separate flavours!’: Martin)

She is running around in her nightie. Now if that had been Katie – but there’s something so
practical
about Martha. Reassuring, mind; but the skimpy nightie and the broad rump and the thirty-eight years are all rather embarrassing. Martha can see it in Colin and Katie’s eyes. Martin’s too. Martha wishes she did not see so much in other people’s eyes. Her mother did, too. Dear, dead mother. Did I misjudge you?

This was the second weekend Katie had been down with Colin but without Janet. Colin was a photographer: Katie had been his accessoriser. First Colin and Janet: then Colin, Janet and Katie: now Colin and Katie!

Katie weeded with rubber gloves on and pulled out pansies in mistake for weeds and laughed and laughed along with everyone when her mistake was pointed out to her, but the pansies died. Well, Colin had become with the years fairly rich and fairly famous, and what does a fairly rich and famous man want with a wife like Janet when Katie is at hand?

On the first of the Colin/Janet/Katie weekends Katie had appeared out of the bathroom. ‘I say,’ said Katie, holding out a damp towel with evident distaste, ‘I can only find this. No hope of a dry one?’ And Martha had run to fetch a dry towel and amazingly found one, and handed it to Katie who flashed her a brilliant smile and said, ‘I can’t bear damp towels. Anything in the world but damp towels,’ as if speaking to a servant in a time of shortage of staff, and took all the water so there was none left for Martha to wash up.

The trouble, of course, was drying anything at all in the cottage. There were no facilities for doing so, and Martin had a horror of clothes lines which might spoil the view. He toiled and moiled all week in the city simply to get a country view at the weekend. Ridiculous to spoil it by draping it with wet towels! But now Martha had bought more towels, so perhaps everyone could be satisfied. She would take nine damp towels back on Sunday evenings in a plastic bag and see to them in London.

On this Saturday morning, straight after breakfast, Katie went out to the car – she and Colin had a new Lamborghini; hard to imagine Katie in anything duller – and came back waving a new Yves St Laurent towel. ‘See! I brought my own, darlings.’

They’d brought nothing else. No fruit, no meat, no vegetables, not even bread, certainly not a box of chocolates. They’d gone off to bed with alacrity, the night before, and the spare room rocked and heaved: well, who’d want to do washing-up when you could do that, but what about the children? Would they get confused? First Colin and Janet, now Colin and Katie?

Martha murmured something of her thoughts to Martin, who looked quite shocked. ‘Colin’s my best friend. I don’t expect him to bring anything,’ and Martha felt mean. ‘And good heavens, you can’t protect the kids from sex for ever; don’t be so prudish,’ so that Martha felt stupid as well. Mean, complaining, and stupid.

Janet had rung Martha during the week. The house had been sold over her head, and she and the children had been moved into a small flat. Katie was trying to persuade Colin to cut down on her allowance, Janet said.

‘It does one no good to be materialistic,’ Katie confided. ‘I have nothing. No home, no family, no ties, no possessions. Look at me! Only me and a suitcase of clothes.’ But Katie seemed highly satisfied with the me, and the clothes were stupendous. Katie drank a great deal and became funny. Everyone laughed, including Martha. Katie had been married twice. Martha marvelled at how someone could arrive in their mid-thirties with nothing at all to their name, neither husband, nor children, nor property and not mind.

Mind you, Martha could see the power of such helplessness. If Colin was all Katie had in the world, how could Colin abandon her? And to what? Where would she go? How would she live? Oh, clever Katie.

‘My teacup’s dirty,’ said Katie, and Martha ran to clean it, apologising, and Martin raised his eyebrows, at Martha, not Katie.

‘I wish
you’d
wear scent,’ said Martin to Martha, reproachfully. Katie wore lots. Martha never seemed to have time to put any on, though Martin bought her bottle after bottle. Martha leapt out of bed each morning to meet some emergency – miaowing cat, coughing child, faulty alarm clock, postman’s knock – when was Martha to put on scent? It annoyed Martin all the same. She ought to do more to charm him.

Colin looked handsome and harrowed and younger than Martin, though they were much the same age. ‘Youth’s catching,’ said Martin in bed that night. ‘It’s since he found Katie.’ Found, like some treasure. Discovered; something exciting and wonderful, in the dreary world of established spouses.

On Saturday morning Jasper trod on a piece of wood (‘Martha, why isn’t he wearing shoes? It’s too bad’: Martin) and Martha took him into the hospital to have a nasty splinter removed. She left the cottage at ten and arrived back at one, and they were still sitting in the sun, drinking, empty bottles glinting in the long grass. The grass hadn’t been cut. Don’t forget the bottles. Broken glass means more mornings at the hospital. Oh, don’t fuss. Enjoy yourself. Like other people. Try.

But no potatoes peeled, no breakfast cleared, nothing. Cigarette ends still amongst old toast, bacon rind and marmalade. ‘You could have done the potatoes,’ Martha burst out. Oh, bad temper! Prime sin. They looked at her in amazement and dislike. Martin too.

‘Goodness,’ said Katie. ‘Are we doing the whole Sunday lunch bit on Saturday? Potatoes? Ages since I’ve eaten potatoes. Wonderful!’

‘The children expect it,’ said Martha.

So they did. Saturday and Sunday lunch shone like reassuring beacons in their lives. Saturday lunch: family lunch: fish and chips. (‘So much better cooked at home than bought’: Martin) Sunday. Usually roast beef, potatoes, peas, apple pie. Oh, of course. Yorkshire pudding. Always a problem with oven temperatures. When the beef’s going slowly, the Yorkshire should be going fast. How to achieve that? Like big bosom and little hips.

‘Just relax,’ said Martin. ‘I’ll cook dinner, all in good time. Splinters always work their own way out: no need to have taken him to hospital. Let life drift over you, my love. Flow with the waves, that’s the way.’

And Martin flashed Martha a distant, spiritual smile. His hand lay on Katie’s slim brown arm, with its many gold bands.

‘Anyway, you do too much for the children,’ said Martin. ‘It isn’t good for them. Have a drink.’

So Martha perched uneasily on the step and had a glass of cider, and wondered how, if lunch was going to be late, she would get cleared up and the meat out of the marinade for the rather formal dinner that would be expected that evening. The marinaded lamb ought to cook for at least four hours in a low oven; and the cottage oven was very small, and you couldn’t use that and the grill at the same time and Martin liked his fish grilled, not fried. Less cholesterol.

She didn’t say as much. Domestic details like this were very boring, and any mild complaint was registered by Martin as a scene. And to make a scene was so ungrateful.