Mr. Chartwell (6 page)

The clerk of the parliaments at Westminster, he was a heavily constructed man, with the build of a boxer when younger, although he had never tested it. Less than young, the muscle had softened. Now he had the figure of a domesticated, beer-fed bear. When he frowned, two dark creases appeared like the marks of a spoon end. The spoon ends appeared as he saw his wife lying across the sofa in sullen psychic conversation with the bottom of her sherry glass.

“Don’t worry, there’s more where that came from, you beautiful old soak.” Over he came with a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream. He propped the little hat at a jaunty angle, standing like a weight lifter in preparation. And then, a one-man circus, Big
Oliver strained at the bottle, heaving the cork. It came out with a faint pop. Beth’s smile was weak and disappeared. Her glass was refilled. The open bottle went gently onto the low teak table next to a sgraffito pot of white-rimmed ivy.

“What’s wrong?”

Beth spread her toes on a sofa cushion, each red nail pressed into the green corduroy. “Your wife is an idiot, that’s what.”

“Everyone knows that, I’ve known it for years.” Big Oliver tugged the knees of his trousers, sitting next to her on the sofa.

She nudged a foot into his stomach. It bulged, a hard pillow pushing at the shirt buttons.

“I’m big-boned, thank you very much.” Big Oliver gave her a hooded stare.

“Aren’t you just.” Also a great lover of food, Beth had a generous figure. “And they’re growing all the time.” The foot prodded his waist. “Especially here.” She smiled through a sip of sherry.

Big Oliver said, “So, anyway, back to the fascinating subject of you being an idiot …”

“Ummm,” she answered, annoyed at herself. “I was teasing Esther this morning in the library.” She shuffled to sit up, heels propelling her over the cushions to the armrest. Behind the sofa was a room divider—a tall varnished structure of differently sized square compartments, the lower squares containing hundreds of LPs and a set of encyclopedias. She propped her head against the ledge of a shelf which held a spider plant in a red pot and a stack of
National Geographic
magazines. Near Beth, in a square of its own, was a funny wooden animal, a South American animal, perhaps a llama or a goat. It had a wild raffia tail. Beth twisted to grab it, plucking at the tail.

“I was teasing Esther about going on a date—”

Big Oliver’s head dropped back against the shallow sofa. “
Beth
, why can’t you leave her alone? …”

Beth threw her arms up from the elbow, the wooden animal in a fist. “I can’t help it! I’m an idiot! I just want her to meet someone
else.
” More tail-plucking, trying to bend it down. “Anyway, Es was acting very defensive, very sensitive, as I was talking about her going on a date. And now I remember that it’s nearly
the date.
” Beth put the animal on the floor and it fell to its side.

“God,” said Big Oliver. “Is it?”

“I’d completely forgotten.”

“Pccch.”
It was a sound from Big Oliver’s parachute cheeks. He nipped at the inside of his lip. “Poor Es … two years, bloody hell.”

Beth watched Big Oliver over the rim of her glass.

“Well, why don’t we get her to come and stay with us? She could have the spare room for a couple of days.”

Beth considered this. “Yes, she probably shouldn’t be alone. You know how difficult it was last year.”

Big Oliver remembered.
“Um-hm.”
It said,
I vividly remember
.

“She seemed strange today,” Beth said. “Lonely, I suppose. Withdrawn and lonely. I don’t know … she seemed something.”

“Do you think you can persuade her to come here?” Big Oliver explained his reserve with a lifted shoulder. “Esther’s a strong woman in her quiet, quirky way.”

“I’m a strong woman too,” answered Beth. “I’ll just have to strong-arm her, woman to woman.”

“You are strong,” agreed Big Oliver. He squeezed her arm, pretending to admire it. The arm was relaxed, soft flabby skin. He gasped at the power in her Herculean arm. “Very strong.”

“And you’re strong …” said Beth, taking her arm back, “… smelling.”

8.15 p.m
.

B
lack Pat stood up, the chair knocked around by his huge legs. Esther remained seated. She brought a hand up in order to bite her nails, all of them already hard-chewed. “Black Pat, what you just said … how would I know?”

The kitchen was filled with a luminous gloom. Shadows worked as a clock, informing Black Pat that he was late.

“Right, then,” he said, the authoritarian, her question ignored, “we’ve got to make a decision.” He corrected this: “You have, you make a decision. But make it quickly, I’ve got to go.” He ate more cheese, eating in a gobble to demonstrate the speed he would prefer.

“Please don’t do that,” said Esther, wet cheese sprinkling over everything. “I really hate it when you do that.”

“Do you?” said Black Pat, astonished.

“Please could you stop,” said Esther. “I really hate it.”

“Do you?” Black Pat said, again astonished, cheese spraying.

It was a form of punishment, this eating. And now enough time had passed, enough tedious wavering. “What’s your decision?”

“Are you going to Churchill?”

This wasn’t a decision. Black Pat’s tongue moistened the roof of his mouth with slow smacks. Resigned, his haunches hit the tiled floor. Sitting there he was still taller than Esther on the chair. He gave her a display of magnificent disappointment, eyes dull with it. But his delicate senses were in motion. Those instincts sent out frequencies and recorded specks of phosphorescence in the blank screen of Esther’s deliberation. Yes, she would make the choice, it was made without her. Secretly he found a cupboard handle behind him and pressed his hip against it, enjoying the massage. The handle snapped off. They both heard it fall to the floor.

Esther was looking at him. His thick neck was almost the circumference of her circled arms. She imagined putting her arms around that neck. With the intuitive memory of muscle she knew that the sensation would be similar to gripping the neck of a horse and feeling it react with shimmering strength. His blackness was radiant in the rising dusk. A handsome spectre, he let her look.

“I can’t seem to make a decision.…”

“Why?” Black Pat’s left ear leant in a fold, head cocked.

“Because …” Esther said eventually, trying hard to pin an answer.

“You won’t let me stay here?”

“I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do.”

“The
right
thing?”

Esther rubbed a wrist on the tabletop, conflicted. “I mean the thing that most people would do.”

“Most people …” Black Pat made a sassy little move.

“What would most people do?” Esther asked him and herself, mainly herself. “When faced with this situation, what would everyone else do?”

He said, “But what do
you
want to do, Esther?”

Esther didn’t know. She didn’t believe she knew. She wallowed in a highly melodramatic sort of self-pity. “I don’t know.”

“Yes you do.”

Yes she did. The phosphorescence collected in little pools, gathering. Other glowing points emerged and grew brighter.

Esther wouldn’t say it, no she wouldn’t. A small poisonous voice slithered through her:
Yes, say it, Esther. Admit it
.

Black Pat played it cool. That colossal physique heaved up, the beefy sound made by four animal legs. The rough leather of the pads on his paws pounded across the tiled floor into the hall.

“I’m sorry, it’s just …” Esther called after him, “… I’m too boring to make this sort of decision.”

From the hall came this reply: “You’re much too honest.”

“Sorry?” She nearly rose from her seat.

A grin burst from the voice: “I said you’re much too modest.” The acoustics changed. Black Pat had mooched into another room and there was silence.

The kitchen was impossibly empty without him. Outside the window a blackbird called with its brisk song. The broken silence healed back together. Soon shadows would grow down the walls as the evening became night, the night becoming late. Esther watched a sad film of herself enduring the dregs of the day, watched herself sitting here over a talentless meal, watched
herself from behind as she scraped the food into the bin. And here was the scene where she washed up in socked feet, one sock worked loose and bent under her foot. This sock would flap as she trudged around. Repulsively desperate, the whole scene. Esther made her fingers into a comb, brushing hair behind her ears. A tuft on the crown had been slept on so it rebelled from the rest, not about to surrender now.

The light was greying. A cactus on the windowsill greyed with it.
Another evening with me?
it said.
Here in the kitchen, us together
.

It was too much, too awful.

She jumped from her chair and made her way to the hall, standing there in the twilight. No dog there. He’d already gone? Quick steps took her towards the front door.

A shape in the dimness stopped her, a shape propped against the front-room doorway.

Esther leant back on the wall. “I thought you’d gone.”

“I can’t until I get an answer from you.” Black Pat waited a beat. “So maybe it’s time you said what you meant.”

“I honestly don’t have an answer.”

A sarcastic scoff:
“Arf.”
His eyes came out at her like horns. “Maybe it’s time you meant what you said.”

“What are you talking about?”

Black Pat shifted, his shoulder hitting the doorframe. “Listen, how long is it going to take you to make up your mind?”

Esther pushed off the wall and sat on the bottom step of the stairs. Her arm went round the sturdy gloss-painted banister and she shrugged with an elbow. “How long is a piece of string? …”

Black Pat threw a glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. “About two minutes.”

“Okay,” she said.
It’s okay
, she said to herself. “You can stay.”

“De-lovely.” Black Pat’s tail drummed the carpet. Dust rose in a mist, beaten from his shaggy tail. He said, “I’ve got some bits to put in my new room.”

He sailed out. She could hear him poking round the hydrangeas in the front garden. He came back hugging a cardboard box.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“My luggage,” he replied as if she had the intellect of a baby. He carried the box up the stairs. She heard him up there, crashing in the boxroom, then down he came, satisfied.

A nervous laugh escaped. The presumption of his box ready in the garden. “That was quick.”

He accepted it. “I’m a professional.”

“But your box was in the garden? You didn’t know I’d let you stay here.”

He had a good answer for this. “A professional prepares.”

She mustered the courage to ask him. “Black Pat, you can stay for tonight, as a trial run. But, ahm, perhaps you wouldn’t mind sleeping in the front room.”

Black Pat made a wet cough from his sinuses, so unimpressed.

“Just for now.” This was an apology. “I suppose I’ll feel safer.” This sounded artlessly rude. “Sorry, no, I’m trying to say it’s only a period of adjustment, that’s all.”

Black Pat’s tongue slid over the black bulb of his nose. “Well, at least the front room is better than the garden.”

As an idea, even better. “The garden? So you’d consider sleeping in the—”

“No,”
Black Pat interrupted flatly.

“I could put out a blanket and—”

“Forget it!” He walked on hind legs to the front door.

Esther remained on her stair, surprised to feel slightly forlorn at his departure. “Will you be coming back tonight?”

“Very late.” Black Pat was fiddling with the door lock, finding it hard to grasp. Then he had it, the door opening a crack. Something took his attention.

On the wall next to the front door was a corkboard with hooks for keys. The board was a biography of keys and key rings: a doll’s leather sandal from Greece on the car keys; a shell on a chain hung beside a red plastic pendant of a Welsh dragon; a large ornate key hung uselessly, its lost lock long forgotten. Another key held a cardboard room-number tag, a stolen key from the honeymoon suite. Buried in the middle of the board was a key with a wishbone attached to it. From the tangle of countless keys and talismans Black Pat unhooked this one. He stooped to it, the coarse whiskers of his muzzle highlighted as he examined. Esther stretched to see what he held.

To Black Pat’s nostrils the scent of the wishbone was still informative, telling a chemical story of pockets and jackets, of frost and rain and humidity. It was a Pantone chart of hormones passed through the owner’s hand and linked to the heart.

Esther recognised the outline of the white bone in his paw. She didn’t want him touching that key. “Oh, I forgot to offer you a key. I’ll get you a key.…”

Black Pat looked at her quickly, the wishbone replaced on its hook. “It’s all right, I don’t need it.”

“You don’t
need
a key?” Esther said, disbelieving.

“Nope.”

She watched him. The headlines of her face changed. “Why did you pick that one?”

Black Pat spoke: “I’ve always liked it.” Too explicit. “I’ve always liked wishbones, I really like them,” he said, devastatingly unpersuasive, scratching his cheek.

Again he started to go and was halted by a tone in Esther’s voice. She had crept up behind him, seizing the key from the corkboard. They were several inches apart. A dangerous gravity, the strangeness of his proximity fastening her there. Black Pat felt his physicality mesmerising her, he felt her being spellbound. That gothic seducer, he understood this.

“Black Pat, you’ll come back?” Her question wasn’t supposed to sound hopeful. It embarrassed her.

His furry head tilted at her, his mouth in a grin she wouldn’t yet understand. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

The door slammed.

Minutes went by in the dusk of the hall. The empty house closed around her like a shroud. Esther held the key with wrapped fingers, the wishbone making white indentations in the drumstick of her thumb. It had been Michael’s key and so she held it hard, holding it to her chest and protective.