Tim Parks - Goodness

And in fact I meet my mother going back to the kitchen. We hug warmly.

Almost seven o’clock. The kitchen and breakfast room are lined with tables draped with white cloths and laden with the kind of goodies we certainly never ate in Park Royal. The floor in the breakfast room is a dark herringbone parquet with two small Persian rugs. In the kitchen we have pearl grey polished granite tiles (not as expensive as you’d think).

What a long way I’ve come. And not all thanks to Shirley either (it was me, for example, chose the Regency dresser she loves so much). What a long way, just to find ourselves imprisoned by the life sentence Hilary is.

Shirley pulls a child’s red plastic bowl from the fridge.

‘I’ll feed Hilary,’ I offer.

‘Oh thanks. I’ll just heat it up a minute.’

The electronic bleeping of the microwave.

I refuse to go to the john again. Just ignore it, clench.

‘Okay. Check it isn’t too hot.’

To start the thing I shall use a cigarette smoked almost to the stub. I shall place it down the side of what, according to a government warning pamphlet found in Central Finchley library, should be our most inflammable armchair where I will have spilt/poured a full tumbler of whisky just a few minutes before. The armchair I have forced half under my desk and on the surface of the desk is a nearly full ashtray which I will tip over the chair as soon as the flames begin. This will thus seem, I trust, to those who sift through the ashes, to have been the little mishap that set the whole thing going: a jacket flap, or dress catches that ashtray as someone leaves the room, they don’t wait to hear it fall and anyway it would be almost inaudible on the soft whisky-wet upholstery of the chair; in a few minutes the room is in flames.

I have made no attempt to salvage anything from this lovely little study room with its wood-panelled walls. Not my precious library of floppies with some of my best ideas for new software, not my IBM 8000 with expanded RAM. Not even our wedding photos in the bookcase. I feel quite glad to make these sacrifices, to lose things that are both valuable and precious. I think of us beginning afresh with the insurance money and a new house, and no Hilary. How free and happy we will be at last.

It would be dangerous to be seen to have squirrelled things away.

Forcing the girl into her special high chair, always a struggle, I almost burst out laughing: ‘Too bad Grandad couldn’t be here,’ I shout to my mother as she clatters the vacuum cleaner back into the cupboard. ‘He’d have a heart attack seeing all that booze.’

Mother doesn’t like even the word, ‘booze’.

‘Poor old soul,’ she says. ‘If only he’d agree to have his teeth done it would be something.’

‘Might be worse when he bit the nurses though.’

Both he and Hilary bite the hands that feed them.

‘Poor old soul,’ Mother says again, as if this were some kind of incantation. She will not think badly. Often I feel I’ve had to do the job for both of us.

I stir the food in its microwave dish and blow on it. Hilary is held upright by two strong waist bands and two rigid, vertical cushions either side of her head. Her face is at the same level as mine as I sit to feed her and she opens her mouth in anticipation. A few of Shirley’s church friends have arrived, bringing more food, and somebody now puts Strauss’s waltzes on, very loud. Hilary is suddenly so excited she bangs down her wrist in the dish, splattering chunks of ham and spaghetti rings, laughing furiously. The kind of thing that usually has me cursing with frustration (my trousers are splattered). But I’m cool tonight. We’re on the home straight.

Then it vaguely occurs to me, is this what being mad is like? I aim a spoon into the glistening pink wetness of gums and lips. Her head waves perilously.

‘Would you like an aperitif, sir?’

It’s Shirley coming up behind me in excellent mood with a tray of chilled white wine.

It will look odd if I don’t act merry and do some drinking. The party was my idea, wasn’t it? Though I’ll have to keep a clear head. The most important thing to remember is, since Frederick is to be put to bed in the spare bedroom, I shall have to get up there pretty smartly. But in a way that is part of the plan. I am hardly likely to forget.

And no, I will not go to the bathroom again.

I always find parties of this kind in friends’ houses somewhat dull. Okay, you have a lot to eat, a lot to drink, that can be nice, and maybe you manage to brush thighs, bump arses with some pretty women jiving about the furniture. But mostly you just find yourself sitting on the stairs with a plate of sausage rolls, trapped into conversations so irretrievably humdrum that even an argument with one’s wife would be exciting by comparison; this between getting up every couple of minutes to let somebody climb upstairs to the loo. At best you might find another man reasonably intelligent and sufficiently interested in your own line of business to share a bottle of whisky with till it’s time to go home.

Which is why we’ve never had a party before, I suppose. I remember Shirley was very eager to have a housewarming do years ago when we moved into the Hendon place. ‘Parties are for fun,’ she said. ‘You’re the one who’s always saying he wants to have a good time.’

And it’s true. Parties are for fun. But the only people who really seem to have any are the ones who break through all inhibitions and get into snogging and petting and even bonking people they’ve never met before. Those are the kind who have fun. And the fact is that much as I envy them, I would never be so much of a beast as to do stuff like that with my wife around, or even amongst people who know her. Often, I’m afraid, one must come to the conclusion that one’s inhibitions are the best part about one.

Other people are different of course. Some are quite shameless and have always done exactly what they want when they want. So it is that towards midnight, my chosen hour for the sale of my soul, I will slip discreetly out into the hall away from the guests in lounge and breakfast room, down the passage, through the cloakroom to the study, a lighted cigarette between the fingers of one hand, a big tumbler of whisky in the other, only to find Gregory and Peggy sprawled across two armchairs, more or less humping each other.

Why didn’t I lock the door, for Christ’s sake?

It’s an odd party because we’ve invited such a mix of guests, many of whom we haven’t seen for so long we can barely remember what they look like. We sent out sixty odd invitations but have no idea how many people are actually going to come. Twenty? A hundred? The invitations said eight thirty, but by nine only Shirley’s friends from the choir have arrived, well-behaved, carefully-dressed people happy to drink a glass of white wine, eat snacks and speculate about their dictatorial organist/choirmaster’s private life. The women take it in turns to hold Hilary in their arms and say how well she is looking. One, in a strapless black velvet outfit, looks just the kind decked out for pleasure she won’t have. I can’t help noticing her thin knees and calves and thinking of Marilyn.

Peggy phones to say she’ll be late and can we put Frederick to bed or he’ll become a monster. ‘Grandma’ll read you a story,’ I tell him, thinking to kill two birds with one stone, have both of them out of the way. For Mother, after barely a glass of Soave, can be heard fervently praising the Lord in conversation with a plain weasily little man with his arm in a sling.

‘I don’t want Grandma to read a story. I want to stay downstairs. Five minutes, Uncle George.’

‘Your mummy said bed.’