Kate Atkinson - Started Early, Took My Dog

‘Why? Up to something, are you?’ Ray said. Hardly witty repartee, was it? Kitty Winfield had caught him beneath the mistletoe in the hallway and he had felt himself blush when she kissed him. It was delicate, on the cheek, not like some of the women when it felt like you were being snogged by a salmon, all lips and tongues – any opportunity to get their hands on a man who wasn’t their husband. Kitty Winfield smelled like Ray imagined French women smelled. And she was drinking champagne. Ray had never met anyone who drank champagne. ‘Won’t you have a glass?’ she said, but he nursed a small whisky all evening. The Winfields’ Harrogate house wasn’t the kind of venue where you got drunk and disorderly. Margaret liked a Dubonnet and gin these days. ‘Just a small one.’

The band in the Metropole finished up a clumsily danced cha-cha and a singer came on, looked like he’d been left over from the war. If they weren’t careful he’d start on ‘Danny Boy’ but he surprised Ray by launching into ‘Seasons in the Sun’, leading to some rebellion on the dance floor. ‘Give us something bloody cheerful,’ Len Lomax muttered. Detective Sergeant Len Lomax, a womanizing hard drinker. A rugby player. A bastard. Ray’s friend. His wife, Alma, was a hard-nosed bitch, worked as a buyer for a clothes factory. No kids, by choice, liked their ‘lifestyle’ too much. Alma was the only person Ray could think of that Margaret disliked. If Ray thought about his own ‘lifestyle’ (whatever that was) he felt an iron band tighten around his forehead.

‘Ray!’ Kitty Winfield said when he advanced upon her and Margaret. She smiled at him as if he were a camera. ‘I’m sorry, I’m monopolizing your wife.’

‘No, you’re all right,’ Ray said awkwardly. He lit her cigarette for her, she was close enough for him to smell that French perfume again. Wondered what it was. Margaret smelled of nothing more than soap.

They had been on the same table, the Winfields, the Eastmans, Len and Alma Lomax and some councillor called Hargreaves who was on the transport committee. Len Lomax had leaned across Margaret and in an undertone had said to Ray, ‘You know that the woman with Hargreaves isn’t his wife?’ Margaret made a point of pretending he was invisible. The woman in question – more grey than scarlet – was self-consciously staring at her empty plate.

‘He’s very rude, your friend,’ Kitty Winfield said reprovingly to Ray, inhaling deeply on her cigarette. ‘I felt for that poor woman. So what if they’re not married? It’s 1975 for heaven’s sake, not the Dark Ages.’

‘Well, technically it’s still 1974,’ Ray said, looking at his watch. Oh God, Ray, he thought to himself. Lighten up. Kitty Winfield made him into a dullard.

Everything a mess now at the table, the cloth stained with food and wine, dirty plates that the waitresses were still clearing. A lone pink prawn curled like an embryo on the cloth. It turned his stomach again.

‘Are you all right?’ Margaret asked. ‘You look pale.’

‘Call a doctor,’ Kitty Winfield laughed. ‘You haven’t seen him, have you?’ she asked Ray.

‘Who?’ He had no idea what she was talking about.

‘My husband. I haven’t seen him for yonks. I think I’ll go looksee. You two should dance,’ she said, rising gracefully from the ruins of the table.

‘Should we?’ Margaret said when Kitty Winfield had disappeared into the mêlée. ‘Dance?’

‘I’m feeling a bit queasy, to be honest,’ he admitted. ‘Too much of the old firewater.’

Then Eastman came over again and said, ‘Ray, there’s some people I want to introduce you to.’ Turning to Margaret, he said, ‘You don’t mind if I borrow your husband, do you?’ and she said, ‘As long as you bring him back in one piece.’

He went to the Gents and then got lost in a corridor somewhere. He hadn’t realized how drunk he was. He kept bouncing off the walls as if he was in a ship ploughing a choppy sea. He had to stop a couple of times and lean on the wall, once he found himself slumped on the floor, just trying to concentrate on breathing. Buzzing, everything buzzing, he wondered if someone had slipped him a Mickey Finn. Waiting staff going up and down the corridor ignored him. When he finally got back to the ballroom Margaret grabbed hold of him and said, ‘There you are, I thought you’d been kidnapped. You’re just in time for the bells.’

The singer from earlier was counting down, ‘… five, four, three, two, one – Happy New Year, everyone!’The room erupted. Margaret kissed and hugged him and said, ‘Happy New Year, Ray.’ The band broke into ‘Auld Lang Syne’, no one knew the words beyond the first two lines, except for Margaret and a couple of drunk, mouthy Scots. Then Eastman and some of his pals came over and pumped his hand up and down.

‘Here’s to 1975,’ Rex Marshall said. ‘May all your troubles be little ones,’ and out of the corner of his eye Ray caught Margaret flinching. Stupid bugger.

The men all kissed Margaret and he could see her trying not to shrink away from their stinking breath. The Winfields reappeared, Kitty had managed to find her husband apparently, although he looked even more the worse for wear than Ray felt. There was more shaking of hands and kissing, Kitty offering her lovely pale cheek in a way that made them all want to behave better. But not for long.

‘Gentlemen, to the bar!’ Len Lomax shouted, holding his arm out in front of him as if he were about to lead them in the charge of the Light Brigade.

Both Ray and Ian Winfield demurred but Kitty Winfield laughed and said, ‘Oh, shoo, go on, shoo,’ pushing her husband away. She hooked her arm through Margaret’s and said, ‘Come on, Maggie, these men are here for the duration. I’m calling a taxi, I’ll give you a lift.’

‘Good idea,’ Margaret said affably. ‘You have a good time,’ she said to Ray, patting him affectionately on the cheek.

‘Boys will be boys,’ he heard Kitty Winfield murmur as the two women walked away.

Men didn’t deserve women.

‘We don’t deserve them,’ he said to Ian Winfield as they rolled their way to the bar.

‘Oh God, no,’ he said. ‘They’re far superior to us. Wouldn’t want to be one though.’

Ray had to dodge and weave his way back to the Gents where he threw up every last bit of prawn, chicken and trifle. Eastman came bustling in like a man in a hurry and took up a stance at a urinal. He unzipped himself in an expansive manner as if he was about to release something that would be admired.

‘Pissing like a horse,’ he said proudly. He zipped up again, ignored sink, soap and water and, patting Ray on the back, said, ‘Good to go again, lad?’

God knows how much later. 1975 already eaten into, lost time never to be found again. Back in the Gents, leaning against a stall, trying to remain conscious. Wondered if he was going to end up in the hospital with alcoholic poisoning. He imagined how disappointed his mother would be if she could see him now.

Somehow he found himself in the kitchen. The kitchen staff were having their own kind of celebration. They were all foreign, he could hear Spanish, he’d taken Margaret to Benidorm last year. They hadn’t liked it much.

A man in chef’s whites set fire to a bowl of alcohol and the whole bowl became one great blue flame, ethereal, like a sacrifice to ancient gods. Then the man took a ladle and started lifting it from the bowl, leaving a trail of blue flame behind. He kept doing it again and again, higher and higher. It was hypnotic. Stairway to heaven.

He’d fallen. He’d had an affair with a girl in clerical – Anthea, a snappy modern sort, always going on about women’s rights. She knew her own mind, he would give her that. She didn’t really want anything from him but sex and it was a relief to be with someone who wasn’t in permanent mourning for an empty womb. ‘Fun,’ she said, ‘life’s supposed to be fun, Ray.’ He’d never thought of life like that before.