Part 10 (1/2)

Where's Mother? I expected she'd have gone by now. Got one of the 'church folk' to drive her home. But she hasn't said goodbye. I don't want her around when it all happens. There are two rather handsome people kissing deeply at the bottom of the stairs. Which reminds me. I walk briskly to the back of the hall and slip into the cubby under the stairs, crouching down under the slanting ceiling. Amongst dusty boxes, there's a heavy half-full drum of varnish from when they did the floors. I s.h.i.+ft it over to the wall on the study side (barely a yard from the armchair) and prise the lid open a little with the car keys in my pocket to release some fumes. Ideally, I would like the stairwell to go up before people realise what's going on. Though that seems a little ambitious.

Then up to check the children one last time. Fortunately the guest room is at the opposite side of the house from Hilary's. For obvious reasons. The important thing is that everybody be where they should be when it begins.

I ease open the door. Frederick has his arms flung out above his head in red pyjamas. His face is so smooth in sleep, despite the thumping rhythm from downstairs, so smooth, so calm. But then he doesn't have dreams like I have, like last night's for example. I watch him. Although they don't actually move you can sense, beneath the calm features, an intense, fluttering, delicate life. Not for the first time I reflect that I too might have had a lovely child like this.

Where the h.e.l.l is Mother? I don't want her holed up in a bedroom somewhere praying. That would be typical. And I quickly move along the two pa.s.sageways that meet at right angles at the top of the stairs, opening doors, checking the bedrooms, the linen cupboard, the bathroom, even the tiny laundry room. Which paranoid activity inevitably reminds me of last night's dream again, and I pause a moment at the top of the stairs as it all comes back.

I knew it had been a bad one. Of course, essentially, it's just the same old mutilation fare. The new twist being that this time I was looking for my face. All over the house opening doors, looking under furniture, searching for my face. Unusually, though, as anxiety mounted, as I desperately hunted for and equally desperately hoped I wouldn't find my nose, my eyes, my mouth, and worse still the expression those features must form, I came across s.h.i.+rley brus.h.i.+ng her hair in the bathroom the way she does, tossing it this way and that with a lovely sensuous motion. Instinctively I lifted my hands to cover myself, but she says calmly, 'Nothing wrong with your face, love,' and immediately I'm calm too. At least no one has noticed, I think, so perhaps it doesn't matter. One can perfectly well go through life without a face if n.o.body notices. But now she frowns: 'You really should get your arms looked at though, George.' As though changing slides on a projector, attention switches in a flash to my right arm where strange pink rubbery outcroppings of flesh are forming just beneath the shoulder. I run a finger across them. 'Age,' I say, in the way one might of the dry fatty skin one tends to get above the elbow. But these jelly-like protrusions are gross. And then I see my forearms. They are bristling, bristling, with long, maybe four-inch lobster claws, blackish, as if burnt, unutterably ugly as they wave and grope of their own accord. I open my mouth to scream. To find I haven't a mouth, for there is no face of course. At which point one wakes up to find that all is perfectly okay.

Downstairs I check out the lounge. Maybe fifteen people. Almost everybody is busy dancing or at least deep in conversation. Gregory's girlfriend is writhing particularly wildly, though always stony-faced. Very suggestive contortions, and not near Gregory either. No sign of s.h.i.+rley, or Mother. Where is she? In the breakfast room Charles is at the buffet table with a leg of chicken in his mouth, defending Liverpool local council against the robust good sense of Susan's man, Eric. One of the karate guys splits his trousers showing how important it is to a.s.sume a low centre of gravity.

There is something very stable about the hum now, as if this buzz of alcohol-fuelled voices will go on for many hours. And checking my watch it is indeed time. I planned to do it now, when in the general tipsy hubbub Hilary will be forgotten. Sensing that if I stop to think, the cold sweat which is already coating face and hands will turn into violent s.h.i.+vering, I move to the sideboard where the spirits are. A well-dressed, clean-shaven boy who doesn't know who I am, offers to do me the honours. 'Fill it up,' I tell him. He grins as if at a fellow freeloader. I take a gulp, light myself a cigarette, and armed, as it were, to the teeth, push through people down the hall, down the pa.s.sage by the stairs, round through the cloakroom, past the bathroom and the door to the cubby and into the secluded study room.

To find Peggy and Gregory.

Why, after my silly, automatic, 'Oops, sorry,' closing the door on them, do I have such an overwhelming sense of frustration, and more precisely of deja vu? My childhood. Hearing, finding, knowing of Peggy with her lovers, feeling excluded, feeling somehow that my bubbly sister has a monopoly on life, on gaiety, that I am always to be in outer darkness gnas.h.i.+ng my teeth. It's only a couple of months since she had her abortion for heaven's sake.

I hesitate in the cloakroom where hooks are overloaded with rain-scented jackets, duffles, macs, mohair. In the bathroom someone coughs. An explosion of laughter comes from just round the corner in the hall. My cigarette is more than half burned. I take a good gulp of the whisky, knock brusquely on the study again and push back in.

'George, really!'

'Sorry, I don't want to bother you guys, but Charles is looking all over for you, Peg. Could walk in any moment.'

They're still at the stage of fumbling in each other's clothes. They only met at most a couple of hours back. They both came with other partners. Gregory half sits, fl.u.s.tered, a glint of saliva on his beard.

'Why don't you, er, adjourn a moment and nip upstairs. Go to our room at the end of the pa.s.sageway to the right. There's a key in the door.'

But our room is next to Hilary's room. Why on earth did I suggest this? Do I want them to burn? Or do I want them to save Hilary? In which case, what's the point? Or was it the only thing I could think of? In any event I'm s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up. I'm losing control. I draw the last puffs on the cigarette with my black lobster claws and tip another gulp of whisky into the place where my mouth must be. Only half the gla.s.s left.

'Good on you, bruv,' Peg says chuckling. The two of them are getting up, rearranging their clothes. 'We'll run the gauntlet of the hall then.' And crouching down, like a commando about to storm a beach she grabs gangly Gregory by the hand and begins to hurry out through the cloakroom.

I look around. They've turned on the angle lamp on the desk, pointing it down at the floor near the wall. And in this would-be romantic, shadowy light, I quickly toss my whisky onto a dusty green armchair, then dislodge the dying coal of my cigarette so that it falls at the edge of the little pool of yellow spirit seeping into the cus.h.i.+on. Immediately it goes out. Without hesitating I pull a lighter from my pocket and try to light the material directly. An almost invisible paraffin flame appears, but seems not to touch the material itself, seems to dance, detached and ghostlike. It surely can't be enough. But I must get out now. I can't wait to see. I haven't even closed the door properly. I turn to grab the ashtray I left on the desk and spill it over the flame. But it isn't there. Why? Why not? Has some creepy person like my mother already gone round gathering and emptying ashtrays? For heaven's sake!

The flames are biting into the material now, the metamorphosis of fire is taking place, flaring yellow and smoky. I should put the thing out at once. Any forensic idiot will be able to see it was started on purpose. But in a trance I move to the door. And at last I realise, with the sudden lucidity of revelation that I am only acting here and now so that some action in my life at last there may be. So that I won't keep plaguing myself trying to decide what to do. The outcome is almost irrelevant. I am acting because I can't bear myself. I find my mental processes intolerable. I am horrible. And I may very well just go upstairs and sit out the horror with Hilary, burn away my lobster claws, my jelly flesh. My mother is right. I have been d.a.m.ned from earliest infancy.

The light of the flames is now brighter and fiercer than that of the lamp. I must have been here five minutes. There's the fierce crackle of a bonfire. Suddenly frightened by the common-sense fear that somebody will hear, will smell, I hurry out of the room and close the door carefully behind me. The heavy wood clicks softly on good do-it-yourself insulating foam. And in an unplanned brainwave I go and pick up the low table at the bottom of the hall, bring it back, set it down across the study door and, unburdening the hooks one by one, place a huge pile of damp coats on top. Now back to the party. My face, I feel, like Moses returning from Sinai, is glowing with heat.

Help Me 'You're wanted in the lounge.'

I've barely turned the corner out of the cloakroom when I run into one of the church folk s.h.i.+rley introduced me to earlier. The word 'wanted' frightens me. I would have washed my face if only the bathroom was empty.

'Oh really. Thanks.'

I meant to hang around chatting in the hall at this point until the fire was discovered, then rush upstairs, save Frederick and report that Hilary's room is already engulfed in flame. Can I spare a moment?

'Hey, George,' Charles calls through a group of talkers. 'There you are. You're wanted in the lounge.'

I'll have to go. I cross the hall and start to walk across the parquet of the lounge, normally covered by carpets, where twenty or thirty people are dancing to African music I didn't know we had. Who wants me? Is it a trick? All at once s.h.i.+rley comes across from the window end and throws her arms round me in celebratory embrace. 'George, where've you been? Everybody's waiting for you!'

People dancing part about us. It's like a scene from a film. Or a dream. It feels orchestrated. And s.h.i.+rley has changed. She's wearing a short black dress with glitter, the skirt pleating out high on her thighs, black tights with a zig-zag pattern, silver heels. Her hair is up with just two copper ringlets falling round each temple. A lot of make-up makes her look younger than I ever expected to see her again. I realise I haven't really looked at her all evening. She must be mad at me.

She does a twirl, a pirouette, the motion lifting her skirt, then grabs me in a tight hug. Apparently this is prearranged because the music stops now and everybody cheers. But my ears are straining for some sound behind this sound. One of the school crowd, a small, smug, balding man in cord jacket and jeans, throws handfuls of confetti over us. Everybody's clapping. 'Give the girl a kiss,' a voice shouts. But it's s.h.i.+rley kissing me, twining tight to me. I try to return some pa.s.sion. Thankfully, the stereo crackles, starts, stops somebody is having trouble with the faulty cueing device then settles into 'As Times Roll By', or whatever it's called. The appropriate guff, but loud enough to cover anything behind I think. Everybody is crowding into the room for the celebrations. n.o.body will notice anything.

Tears glistening in her wide eyes, an extraordinary yearning look on her face, s.h.i.+rley whispers: 'Shall we dance?' Her voice conveys infinite tenderness and irony. It's a voice that says, 'Despite everything, George, here we are, so we may as well celebrate.' She begins to lead me in a slow lilting embrace.

Am I crying? I register such intense alarm. What am I doing? She hasn't guessed the slightest thing. If she knew, if she knew even what I dreamt last night she might never touch me again. She might sense the lobster arms, the cancerous jelly protrusions.

Instead here she is being very s.e.xy, pressing her whole slim body against me, her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The guests part into two lines forming an aisle down the lounge as we drift in slow and frankly clumsy rotation toward the fireplace end where a huge cake has appeared on a gla.s.s trolley. Behind it stands my mother, knife in hand, beaming almost tangible sentimentality. I recognise at once her Christmas cake recipe from Gorst Road days, it will be full of a pension's worth of dry fruit and suet. Though instead of the usual Mary, Joseph and Jesus plus farmyard friends in adoration, another holy family are standing on the icing: three figures, toy figures, cuddly bears but dressed as human. There's Daddy with a peaked railwayman's cap, Mummy in an ap.r.o.n, and little girl. Us. Except that the child is standing up.

I glance at my watch. How long has it been?

A sudden hush. Mother pushes a knife into the cake. 'Bless you, my dears,' she says. 'Many happy returns.' Charles pops a champagne bottle. He says, 'Good on you, George lad,' in a fake downwardly-mobile voice. Shall I tell him that Peggy is having it off with Gregory upstairs? Around the happy figures on the cake, in rose-pink icing, Mother's shaky hand has traced with how much love, '10TH ANNIVERSARY'. Loud cheers go up with the first splas.h.i.+ng of champagne. Everyone crowds round to kiss and squeeze.

Then someone cries: 'Speech, speech from the happy couple.'

'Speech!'

A slow handclap begins: 'Speech, speech, speech.'

My house is burning.

s.h.i.+rley says: 'Go on, George!'

I can feel the muscles in my face working. What is happening? Why has n.o.body said anything? Obvious. Because everybody is in the room here, looking at me. It couldn't have been more perfectly timed. The jostle of gla.s.ses, plates of cake moving round, jokes, red faces, comments. Two or three flashes pop.

Frederick. I must hurry. Unless it has already gone out. Just say something and get it over with. Say something.

'Oh come on, George.'

Why can't I speak!

'Tongue-tied by love.'

'Give the man a drink.'

'Spoilsport!'

My mother says: 'Come on, love.'

And now I am perfectly aware that I am breaking down. This is what it is like, then. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. My whole body surges with damp nervous heat. My bowels are melting. I gaze at all these faces, eager, grinning. They find my bewilderment so touching. Probably all I have to say is thank you, thank you, for this wonderful surprise. But I feel my jaws locked, paralysed. They will not speak. I can sense tears rolling down numbed cheeks. Until finally I manage to croak, 'Help me.'

But n.o.body hears; my whispered plea is drowned in a fierce yell from the door: 'Fire! There's a b.l.o.o.d.y great fire. Everybody out.'

An Act of Goodness I should say, if for no other reason than not to appear ridiculous, that I always knew my plan was a risky one, that it could perfectly well have an entirely different outcome from the one I intended. Or, most probably, no outcome at all. At the time I reasoned that this was precisely why I was choosing it. In this sense: that no one with only moderate insurance and no financial problems could ever be suspected of arson against his own household; and second, that no one could ever be suspected of a murder attempt when the outcome was so spectacularly uncertain and in circ.u.mstances where so many people might, theoretically, rush upstairs to save the handicapped child who couldn't save herself. That said, however, I felt fairly confident that in the selfish tipsy hubbub that is a party around midnight, the general reaction to a fire that in the secluded back study under cover of the thump of music and a haze of cigarette smoke ought to be well advanced before being discovered, would be to panic and rush to get out.

I was worried, of course, about s.h.i.+rley and Mother. It was unlikely they would forget the little girl. Which was why I'd much rather Mother had never been invited, or had gone home early. But my idea was that I, being mentally prepared and well placed at the foot of the stairs, would shout commandingly to the others to stay down and dial 999 while I went up for the children. Given that Hilary's room was directly above the study, given that both windows would be open, given that curtains are reasonably inflammable, and given above all that I would have the excuse of going for Frederick first, I very much hoped that on arrival in her room the child would be beyond saving, already liberated I liked to put it to myself, and why not for heaven's sake?, from the prison of her body. I would rush down with Frederick only seconds before the staircase was engulfed in flames from burning varnish beneath, and by the time the fire brigade arrived all would be over.