With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed (4 page)

‘Milk or lemon?’ a hotel waiter would ask.

‘Milk,’ piped Adam; ‘Lemon,’ barked Eve (both speaking simultaneously);
Hargh, hargh, hargh,
went the audience.

But Osborne had stopped listening to the dialogue and had even abandoned the delights of his Tuna Surprise; he was peering at the snarling close-ups of Angela Farmer with an increasing unease, his initial frisson of recognition having broadened and deepened until it flowed through his body like a river and leaked out horribly at his toes.

‘Inside or outside?’

‘In,’ said Adam; ‘Out,’ said Eve; and the audience roared again.

Osborne felt ill. Had she said ‘Out’? Where had he heard her say ‘Out’ like that? Perhaps it was his imagination, but he suddenly felt quite certain he had heard Angela Farmer say ‘Out’ in that pointed manner before. And the horrible thing was, she must have said it to him.

Back at Tim’s flat,
Forgive Us Our Trespasses
was also playing. There wasn’t much on the other channels that evening. But in any case,
Forgive Us
was the sort of television Tim particularly enjoyed: safe, predictable, and OK if you missed bits when suddenly you felt the urge to check that the fridge light still worked. Watching Eve with interest, he found that he rather envied Osborne’s luck in interviewing Ms Farmer; he must ask him what she was really like, beyond the parameters of the shed stuff. He reached for a Post-it pad and wrote tell
OSBORNE I THINK A.F. IS A V. FINE ACTRESS
, and stuck the label on the side of the coffee-table.

Lester made a noise that sounded like ‘meat’ (but it might have been ‘me, eat’), and arched his back before sinking his front claws into the chair and ripping. Teatime was long past, yet the happy clink of spoon on cat-bowl was yet to be heard, and Lester was running out of hints. Why was Tim so oblivious to feline nuance? It was enough to drive a cat crackers. So it was back to ripping the sofa, even though he didn’t really feel like it. ‘How banal, really,’ thought Lester, as he dug in, and the fabric made
poc, poc, poc-opoc-poc
noises, like fireworks on Chinese New Year. ‘How stupid.’

‘Just stop that!’ said Tim in a voice so loud and commanding that Lester sprang back and gave him a look. Tim stirred in his chair, but Lester was right not to race to the kitchen, for it was a false alarm. Tim reached for his pad again.
BE MORE PATIENT WITH LESTER
, he wrote, and, at a loss where to put it, stuck it on the cat.

Makepeace sat at his typewriter, not watching the TV, and composed the covering letter for his
Come Into the Garden
book review, every word of which was an obvious lie to anyone who knew him.

Miles eastward along the river, past Greenwich Reach and the Isle of Dogs, Lillian was sitting with her feet up watching
Forgive Us Our Trespasses,
just like everybody else. From the steamy kitchen she could hear the pleasant sounds of George (the hubby) making dinner, and she looked up in proper feeble-invalid fashion to see him present her with a pre-prandial cup-soup, made especially in her favourite Bunnykins mug. Some people might balk at the idea of cup-soups forming any part of an evening meal, but somehow it had become part of the routine. The idea was that, with God’s help of course, it would keep up Lillian’s strength until the arrival of solid food.

‘Dwarling,’ he said in a singsong baby voice. (I’m sorry if this is ghastly, but it’s true.) Lillian looked up, saw the cup-soup, pretended it was all a big surprise and gave him a sweet, affected, little-girl look that was enough honestly to freeze the blood of any disinterested onlooker. She peered into the bunny-mug and frowned a deep frown.

‘No cru-tongs, bunny,’ she lisped, her mouth turned down in disappointment.

‘Poor bunny,’ agreed her husband (who by day, incidentally, was a used-car salesman). ‘No cru-tongs for bunnywunny.’

He hung his head, extended his arms behind his back and kicked his instep.

Fortunately, she smiled her forgiveness, and the moment of conflict passed. Otherwise there might have been a tantrum. But tonight they made secret-society gestures with their little fingers, as proof that the no-crutong incident had been forgotten. Don’t ask. They just seemed to enjoy it, that’s all.

‘Bunny tired?’ asked Mister Bunny, after a pause.

‘Bunny
werry
tired.’

‘Did the phone never stop ringing again?’

‘Never.’ Lillian pouted and delicately picked some fluff off her teddy-slippers, real tears of childish anguish starting in her eyes.

‘Phone went ring ring ring ring ring ring –’

‘Poor bunny, with phone going ring.’

‘Yes, poor bunny.’

‘Nice spinach for tea, make bunny stwong.’

‘Bunny
never
be stwong, bunny.’

‘I know,’ said Mister Bunny, with a tinge of heart-felt regret. ‘Poor poor bunny-wunny.’

‘Mmm,’ said Lillian, closing her eyes.

Osborne was trying to make notes for his interview on Tuesday, but somehow the usual all-purpose questions about sheds looked rather hollow and unsatisfactory: ‘Old shed/new shed? Shed important/unimportant? Hose kept in shed? Or not? (Any funny hose anecdotes?)’

He looked at the TV screen and there she was again, this
amazing blonde woman with the mystery and the scarifying attitude.

‘Singles or double?’ asked a hotel receptionist.

‘Double,’ said Adam; ‘Singles,’ barked Eve.

It was the last line of the show, and Osborne switched off just before the inevitable gale of appreciative studio applause. Looking at his notebook, he saw he had written: ‘Bugger the trespasses and bugger the shed. Why didn’t you tell me who you were?’ And now he looked at it, aghast, because he didn’t have a clue what it meant.

Michelle heard the closing music to
Forgive Us Our Trespasses
from the kitchen, where she had just discovered a cache of trick daggers and tomato ketchup wedged behind the U-bend in the cupboard under the sink. She felt a twinge tired of all this, though far be it from her, etcetera. Nobody at the office knew about Mother; it was such a sad old commonplace for a single professional woman to have a loony mum at home that she simply wouldn’t stand for anyone to know, especially not Lillian; she wanted to circle the offending cliché in thick blue pen and send it back for a rewrite. But life is not susceptible to sub-editing, by and large, and the mad mum remained fast embedded in Michelle’s text. Mother was a liability – mischievous, hurtful and addicted to practical jokes. Underneath the sink Michelle found an invoice, too: evidently Mother’s latest consignment from her favourite mail-order novelty company included a new severed hand which had not yet come to light.

She sat back on her heels for a moment and, without undue self-pity, considered what she had to put up with. The irony was unbearable. Here she was, possibly the only person in the world who knew the difference between ‘forbear’ and ‘forebear’, and she was also the only person of her acquaintance
who was consistently obliged to put both words together in the same sentence.

Tim made a note,
WATCH FORGIVE US OUR TRESPS NEXT FRIDAY DON’T FORGET
, and attached it to his jumper with a safety-pin, next to
GO TO BED AT SOME POINT –
which he had written carefully backwards, to be read when he caught sight of himself in a mirror.