Hot Breath Read online

  When Damon arrived at two I was still in the garden, on my third glass of wine. Twice, Fluffy and Spot had accompanied me back into the kitchen and twice had been disappointed. Their dejection was obvious, they were not accustomed to wait for lunch. My ministrations were terse and speedy, but usually punctual. Now, my face flushed with sunshine and Spanish red, I stroked and scratched them, and hummed soothingly with my eyes closed, but had so far failed to wield the tin-opener.

  At last, hearing Damon’s motor scooter, I roused myself and went indoors. I fed the pets and wandered into the sitting room, still carrying my glass. Damon was more than usually wan. He was changing the Hoover bag with the care of a surgeon performing a caesarian, but he still contrived to release gobbets of fluff all over the floor.

  ‘Is everything all right, Damon?’ I asked solicitously. ‘Are you quite well?’

  ‘I’m not exactly over the parrot,’ he replied.

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘The jobs people got me another house,’ he said, ‘just up the road. I been there this morning.’

  ‘But that’s good, isn’t it?’

  He shook his head. ‘ She couldn’t handle it.’

  ‘Sorry? Handle what?’

  ‘Me. She’s really into stereotypes, she wants some little old lady with a hairnet.’

  ‘Really? Well perhaps you should wear a hairnet, Damon,’ I suggested. ‘ You know, look the part.’

  ‘I am what I am,’ pronounced Damon, incontrovertibly, plugging in the Hoover. ‘If other people can’t handle it, that’s their problem.’

  ‘How right you are,’ I said.

  ‘What really makes me vomit,’ went on Damon, ‘is I just got past the hundred mark with my savings, now I’ve got this setback. I really don’t need this.’ He switched on.

  I was feeling beneficent. ‘I could take some more of your time, Damon,’ I bellowed. ‘With my husband away there’s plenty of odd jobs need doing!’

  ‘Trif,’ said Damon. ‘ ’ Scuse me.’

  Clara got back at three-thirty, shortly before Damon was due to leave. A cultural gulf yawned between my daughter and my charperson. Clara was skinny, exquisite and supercilious, and viewed the working class as some kind of necessary evil to do with urban life, like public lavatories and litter, and therefore nothing to do with her.

  She was in her final year at the primary school in Basset Magna. During term time her life was divided between this institution, where she queened it as the tallest girl in the school, good at games and brainy enough not to attend in class, and her pony Stu (a mare, despite her name) whom we kept in a nearby field with others of her kind.

  Though Stu was costly to run and evilly disposed towards more or less everyone, I had to allow that it was only her squat equine form which stood between Clara and fullblown punkhood. When I read in the papers about carefully nurtured girls from middle-class homes who nonetheless wound up as pop star’s molls and worse (‘ “ He liked me in leather,” says Brigadier’s daughter’), it was Clara’s haughty young face that I saw staring up from the page.

  I was in the kitchen, making moussaka (my mind still running on things Greek), and Damon was washing the tiled floor in the hall, when Clara arrived.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, dropping her shoe bag, sweatshirt and lunch box to the ground like the spoor of some gigantic beast. ‘ Can I have some money for the shop?’

  ‘For what?’ As if I didn’t know. George was against the practice of sweets-after-school, and it was his stern imagined look which usually stopped me in the act of giving in on these occasions.

  She shrugged. ‘ Dunno … packet of Fangs.’

  ‘What in God’s name are they?’

  ‘Please—go on.’

  ‘No.’

  She went to the breadbin and began making a sandwich. ‘ Has he done my room?’

  I grimaced at her. ‘ Yes! Ssh!’

  She leaned back to peer with exaggerated care at Damon. ‘Ah, swabbing the decks, I see.’

  ‘Clara!’

  She folded the sandwich twice, stuffed the lot inside her pretty mouth and jerked her thumb in the general direction of outside.

  ‘If you’re riding remember your hat. And take that lot upstairs before you go anywhere.’

  She scooped up the elephant droppings and sauntered across Damon’s nice clean tiles and up the stairs. But I was saved having to make any apology on her behalf because the phone rang in the sitting room and Damon rushed to answer it.

  He liked to practise his executive skills on my callers. Now he stood with the receiver hunched between ear and shoulder, a biro and memo pad at the ready.

  ‘I think she may be a bit tied up,’ he said, glancing at me as I stood waiting. ‘But if you hang in there for a second I’ll check her out.’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘It’s your editor.’

  As I took the receiver from Damon—it was warm and greasy like cooling bacon—I tried to picture Vanessa ‘hanging in’ anywhere, and found it impossible. Her brand of brittle Oxford effervescence would surely wither under delay.

  ‘Hallo?’

  ‘Hallo, Harriet—again!’

  ‘Hallo, Vanessa.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry to disturb you a second time—’

  ‘That’s all right, I was only cooking.’

  ‘God, you’re wonderful. Look, is there the least chance you could come in here tomorrow? The sales people are dying for a chat with you, and also we’ve got our Australian representative over for a couple of days and I know he’d adore to meet you—you didn’t meet Vince last time, did you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. What time would you want me?’

  ‘Oh …’ she mused, ‘twelvish? Then we can have a talk in the office and go out for a bite of lunch.’

  I could not really quite reconcile the enormous amount of my time taken up—effectively a whole day—with the infinitesimal professional benefit to be gained from lunch with the Australian rep. Still, I was well trained.

  ‘I’ll be there at twelve.’

  ‘Lovely! And Harriet …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Any chance of a tiny peep at The Remembrance Tree?’

  My brain whirred and clicked. ‘ I’d prefer not. I’ve had a bad day, you know, one domestic crisis after another, one never likes to show work after …’ I let the sentence hang in the air. You only had to feed Vanessa her cues.

  ‘Not another word! I know I’m just a typical greedy editor. I honestly think you creative mums are wonderful. ’Bye now, you get back to your delicious cooking and I’ll see you tomorrow, ’Byee!’

  Having, as usual, patronised me to pieces, she rang off, doubtless to refine, package and process my remark about domestic crises for the benefit of the PR department.

  During my conversation with Vanessa, Clara had departed for the stable, and Gareth had returned, in company, from Basset Regis comprehensive. As I entered the kitchen I was confronted by the broad, grey-flannelled beam of Brett Troye as he crouched over the portable snooker table. Other boys, also in the uniform of the comprehensive, stood about, acknowledging my arrival with small twitches of the facial muscles. Damon was on the sidelines, cycle clips on, crash helmet under his arm. Where Clara regarded Damon with Iicy hauteur, Gareth and co simply accepted him, and he in turn blended easily into the background which this young male company provided. After all, Damon was of the same species, and the product of the same education. His few extra years and current status in our household only provided Gareth et al with proof, if proof were needed, that there was nothing out there worth having. The kitchen was thick with the heavy excess energy of the ‘lads’: males of that awkward age when they have ceased to be little boys but are yet not quite young men.

  I waited politely while Brett potted the pink, followed closely by the white. The sharp inhalations of admiration were at once drowned by jeers of derision.

  ‘Suffer, Troye, you great wally!’

  ‘Now look,’ I said, squeezing and trying to take
the floor. ‘Don’t you boys have any homework?’

  This suggestion met with much eye-rolling and ponderously comic face-pulling.

  ‘Come on, put this table away, please, and on your bikes all of you. Gareth, go up and get stuck in.’

  This provoked a positive gale of coarse hilarity, but they put the table away, gouging only a small hole in the ceiling as they stood it on end, and not using any bad language. I surveyed the roomful of lusty pubescent male flesh that was the lads: water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. And since this morning the clear crystal fountain that was Constantine Ghikas had brought on a terrible, raging thirst.

  The lads who did not belong to me—Brett Troye, David Lane and Daniel Lovejoy—left via the back door.

  ‘Seeya,’ said my son, product of a book-lined home. ‘Autographs later, fans.’

  He closed the door after them, said ‘Shite,’ and went to the front door to catch them on the way out.

  ‘Hey, Lovejoy!’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Shall I come up yours later?’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’

  ‘Up yours then!’ More guffaws greeted this rapier-like sally. There were a few more ‘seeyas’, the gate slammed (I knew it would fail to catch and bounce open again), and Gareth closed the front door.

  ‘Off you go then,’ I said. ‘And do it properly. No visiting and no telly unless you give it your full attention for at least an hour.’

  Gareth grabbed my lapels and lifted me on to my toes in a spontaneous display of affection. Not for nothing was he known as the Steroid Kid; he was fully as tall as me and filling out at an alarming rate.

  ‘Looking for hassle?’ he enquired rhetorically.

  ‘Just get on with it.’

  He shambled off, and in a second or two I heard the thump and moan of the New Wave band whose caterwaulings habitually accompanied any of his brainwork.

  Returning to my moussaka I bumped into Damon, whose weaselly presence I had overlooked during the eviction of the lads. He had put on his crash helmet and looked like a khaki ninepin.

  ‘Oh, Damon, your money.’

  ‘When you’re ready.’

  I gave it to him and he counted it with the brooding concentration of a riverboat gambler. ‘When shall I come then?’ he asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The extra time.’

  I remembered my offer, made in the rosy afterglow of my meeting with Dr Ghikas.

  ‘I could use another afternoon,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘I’ll be round Friday then.’ He pocketed the money. ‘Just let me know what needs doing, right.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘I made some tea.’ He jerked his helmet.

  ‘Oh? Oh, thank you.’

  ‘See you tomorrer.’ And he was gone.

  I realised that my unconsidered remark about George’s absence had unlocked an unsuspected cache of chauvinism in Damon. Suddenly it was not I who was doing him the favour but the other way round. I only hoped that he would not interpret my feminine needs in any wider sense. I had already selected my candidate for that particular task.

  Half an hour later I put the moussaka in the oven and the dog on the lead and called up the stairs to Gareth.

  ‘Gareth! GARETH!’

  The music was turned down. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m taking the dog out for five minutes.’

  ‘Right …’

  ‘Please don’t have that thing too loud or you won’t hear the phone if it rings.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ The double affirmative implied both understanding and impatience. Music swelled once more, though not quite as loudly. I took Spot across the road to the ponies’ field. It was a mixed pad. The two geldings with whom Stu shared stood morosely head to tail beneath a tree. Clara was by the fence, cleaning out Stu’s hooves with a calm concentration that comes from being plugged into a Sony Walkman.

  ‘Hallo, darling,’ I shouted. But she might as well have been entombed for all the reaction my greeting provoked. I had a sudden vision of parents the world over ranting, beseeching, entreating, exhorting, while their offspring stared vacantly back, humanoid but uncomprehending, tuned in by wires and headphones to an alien culture. Even Declan, for God’s sake, with all his faults, was at least in direct and ebullient communication with the rest of mankind.

  Clara’s eyes moved across me, but with no sign of recognition. She put down Stu’s hoof and transferred her attention to the rear left-hand corner. Unfortunately she muffed the pick-up and Stu brought down her hoof—the size and consistency of a Le Creuset Marmite—on Clara’s foot. My daughter gave a shriek of agony and ripped off the headphones the better to belabour Stu, who stood with a well-satisfied air, ears pressed back, thick hide twitching beneath the blows. The faint jangle of Frankie Goes to Holloway accompanied this clash of personalities. Spot pricked his ears appreciatively. I waited to be noticed.

  When I was, I got the inevitable flack.

  ‘God, it’s agony!’

  ‘Bad luck, darling, are you all right?’

  ‘No! Is that all you can say, bad luck? She weighs an absolute ton!’

  ‘She didn’t mean to,’ I offered, though without much conviction. Stu’s surly delinquency was enough to test the faith of the most ardent hippophile.

  ‘You don’t seem very bothered, what if I’ve broken something?’

  Because I knew she hadn’t broken anything, I was able to see the potential advantages in this situation.

  ‘I wonder if I should run you over to surgery?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, Mummy,’ said Clara. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’

  Chapter Three

  The next day I made the usual complex arrangements to ensure that the inner child would be satisfied and the house remain standing in my absence, and left to catch the ten-thirty to London. Just before going I cast my eye over Maria et ses amis, rehearsing my responses to the inevitable eager interrogation. I decided that vague but intelligent-sounding replies which begged the question were my best bet. Things along the lines of ‘beginning to feel at home with it’ and ‘writing myself in’ sounded suitably authorly but were profoundly non-committal.

  On the platform of British Rail Basset Magna, I spotted a couple of familiar faces. One belonged to my neighbour Brenda Tunnel, the other to Robbo Makepeace, chairman of Basset Tomahawks YFC, of which Gareth was a midfield star. I too was on the committee and knew that at this time of year, with soccer about to go into temporary abeyance, fund-raising reared its ugly head. I did not want to spend my journey into town discussing discos and draw prizes with Robbo, so I gave him a cheery wave and fled towards the end of the platform with the purposeful air of one hell-bent on travelling in the last seat in the train. My headlong flight carried me straight into the arms of Brenda Tunnel.

  ‘Hallo, Harriet! How’s the writing going?’

  ‘Okay, thanks,’ I replied. ‘Where are you off to today?’

  ‘Oh don’t worry,’ shrilled Brenda, divining the reason for my question, ‘I’m only meeting Trevor’s mum off the train, she’s coming for the day.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I said, with rather more warmth now that I knew the conversation would not extend beyond the next few minutes.

  ‘She absolutely has to sit in the last seat in the train,’ explained Brenda. ‘She thinks then if there’s a crash she’ll be safe.’

  ‘She may well be right,’ I said. ‘And how are things, Brenda?’

  She sighed. ‘Not too good. You know, with me and Trevor.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Why exactly? You always seem so—’

  ‘He doesn’t like me working at the Wagon.’

  ‘Oh dear. I see.’

  ‘He’s very jealous, very possessive,’ said Brenda, with some pride. I looked at her in a new light. She was built, as I’ve mentioned, on a Wagnerian scale, resembling nothing so much as two hundredweight of nutty slack in a duvet cover. But on the plus side she had a good skin, nice hair and an extrovert nature
. It was not wholly impossible to imagine the Wagon’s habitués giving the spiel to Brenda.

  On the other hand it was a good deal harder to cast Trevor Tunnel in the role of fierily possessive husband. He too was on the Tomahawks committee, a thin, strangely dejected man, much given to hackneyed idea-logical pronouncements which he dropped into the discussion with the forced and leaden regularity of constipated stools.

  All in all, Brenda and Trevor were one of those couples whom it was especially hard to picture in the conjugal bed.

  ‘Have you considered giving up the job?’ I asked, since I was being placed in the invidious position of ad hoc agony aunt.

  ‘I couldn’t do that!’ objected Brenda con spirito. She was a recent convert to feminism, and as with most converts, its tenets were law to her.

  ‘Then you must convince Trevor that it doesn’t constitute a threat,’ I said, wishing the train would come.

  ‘Being friendly with the customers is part of the job,’ insisted Brenda. ‘ It’s part of what they pay me for. And I flatter myself I’m quite good at it.’

  ‘Right, of course, I see the difficulty,’ I agreed. Mercifully, at this moment, the train appeared. ‘Well, here we are! Have a good day with your mother-in-law.’

  Brenda wrinkled her nose in what was intended to be a gamine expression of disfavour but which in a woman of her build resembled the snorting of a percheron.

  Trevor’s mother turned out to be tiny and wizened. Had both women been animals I would have half expected Mrs Tunnel senior to leap at Brenda’s throat and drain her of red corpuscles.

  I had a quiet journey. It seemed I’d successfully evaded Robbo, and I saw no one else I knew. I read the paper, but without taking in what I read. Rapists and rock stars, athletes and arsonists, pundits and personalities paraded meaninglessly before me; my mind ran on Constantine Ghikas. Like most married women my imagination had been unfaithful several times a week for the past ten years or so, but this was not tantamount to admitting that our marriage was on the rocks. On the contrary, it was a success. It worked. We understood each other, we liked each other, and, increasingly intermittently, we fancied each other. When our respective fancies coincided the earth still moved sufficiently to account our sex life a success. When they did not, each of us was quite prepared to accommodate the other in a spirit of sporting good fellowship. The very ease with which I had decided not to accompany George to the Middle East and the good humour with which he had left me, was one of the reasons I knew we were built to last. We had integral flexibility. Marriages like ours were not made in heaven so much as manufactured on earth for optimum durability, the product of careful planning and good will on both sides. George could be pompous, vain and high-handed. But he was handsome, generous, and uncomplicated. And he was also unreservedly enthusiastic about my work, read what I wrote with genuine interest, and spoke of me with pride to others.