Part 2 (1/2)

Cedric Summerson, who does know, and suspects that she also knows, decides to pretend he has not heard the question. (British Sugar, you may wish to learn, became the British Sugar Corporation in 1936, when Frieda's father, Ernie Haxby, was a young man: it became British Sugar pic in 1982, was then taken over by Beresford International, and in 1991 was swallowed up by a.s.sociated British Foods pic, a thriving conglomerate which also owns Allied Bakeries, Burton's Biscuits, Twinings Tea, Ryvita and Jacksons of Piccadilly. Nathan Herz knows he ought to know this, but he has become confused with the brand names of Tate & Lylewho are they? Are they a compet.i.tor? And aren't they British too?) Getting no answer from either Cedric or Nathan, Frieda continues. 'It would be hard to say, David, wouldn't it, which of our forebears might have expected to do better? If you'd been veiled by ignorance, which society would you have chosen to be born into? Eighteenth-century England or eighteenth-century Guyana? How would you have calculated the odds?'

(Only Gogo picks up the significance of this question, for only goodwife Gogo, at this point, is familiar with its philosophic terminology, with the concept of the Veil. Daniel and Rosemary are later to remember it all too well.) David smiles, demurs, indicates that the conversation is becoming esoteric, is excluding Frieda's other guests. Clearly they have been over this ground before.

'The D'Angers', pursues Frieda, 'once owned plantations. They worked their way up. They owned a valley full of eagles and they exported Demerara. Isn't that right, David?'

'That's how the story went when I was a boy,' says David.

'Sugar and rum and coffee,' teases Frieda. 'Thousands and thousands of pounds of the stuff. While we lived on whalegut and turnip.' Her audience grows restless. All this talk of food does not make them hungry, but it does make them nervous. What is she playing at? Is it a game? They cannot have been asked round simply for a discussion. Surely there will be dinner? They have been asked for a meal, but there is little sign of one, though there is perhaps a faint smell of cooking somewhere in the recesses of the house, a stale and not wholly appetizing odour of, is it, onion? Or is onion waiting in from some pa.s.sing teenager's polystyrene walk-about pack? They cannot have been asked round for a drink, for water is not a drink. Nor could anyone in her right mind ask even her own family to come all the way to the Romley borders just for a drink. Is she, they wonder, in her right mind?

She seems to be, for when she judges that they have suffered enough, she makes a move. 'I'd better go and see to the cooking,' she says, disclaiming any help as she heaves herself stoutly to her sandalled feet. 'No, don't come yet. I'll call you when I'm ready. I've got something really special for you. I've had to go a long way to get this meal together, I can tell you.' She smiles at David, with a horrible favour. 'And don't worry, David, I have remembered that you don't eat meat.'

Daniel later claims that it was at this moment that it flashed across his mind that she had some trick in storecow heels, pigs' trotters, stewed babysomething of the sort. But he did not voice it at the time. Instead they all sat in paralysed discomfort, unable to speak in her absence because of Cedric Summerson's presence. Nathan puffed at his eighth cigarette. What a comfort was nicotine, what a blessing was smoke. David, gallant, game, polite, the gla.s.s of fas.h.i.+on and the mould of form, attempted to engage Patsy in a diversionary chat about the video censors.h.i.+p board on which she sat, but Patsy's response was muted. Yes, she limply agreed, the new technology was a worry, but she still thought people greatly over exaggerated the dangers of ... and her voice almost died away, for she could not be bothered to work out what the dangers of what were...

In that large bow-fronted room overlooking the green, they had spent so many evenings: doing their homework, watching television, squabbling, talking, crying, complaining. It had been the family room. Since their departure into their own lives, Frieda had filled it with more and more books, more and more papers. Tables full of papers were dotted about, box files were heaped in corners. Frieda had spewed her work all over the house. Once there had been lodgers upstairs, but now every room in the house was full of Frieda's junk. She lived alone amongst the unfiled doc.u.mentation of her past. The room had not been decorated in decades, yet in it now nestled uneasily some signs of late-twentieth-century post-industrial lifea fax machine perched on a pile of old copies of the Economist, a photocopier in a dirty white shroud, a cordless telephone crowning a boxed set of the shorter OED. Somewhere upstairs she was alleged to have a computer, but n.o.body had actually seen it.

In the old days, there had been a sewing basket of something called 'Mending' under the window-seat. Frieda had never done much mending, but it had been therea historical relic, a tribute to her rustic Lincolns.h.i.+re past. Now, in its place, was a wastepaper basket full of what looked like old tights.

They sat, oppressed, and waited meekly for her command. And at last she called them and released them from the terrible game of statues she had forced them to play. She ushered them through to the dining-room, where the faint wafting of unpleasant cooking smells slightly intensified. The table, however, took them by surprise. The old scarred gate-leg familiar of their youth had been covered, exceptionally, with a clotha slightly rust-stained beige linen cloth, embroidered with baskets and garlands of flowers done in not very elegant chain st.i.tcha Lincolns.h.i.+re heirloom, no doubt, from Grandma's collection. And at each place setting was a whole battery of cutlery, from the old green baize-lined boxHaxby plate, Palmer plate, none of them knew, and they had never seen it in use. There was a wine gla.s.s at each place, and matching side plates from the set which had come out for special occasions, and a dinner plateeach dinner plate covered with a silver cover. Well, not silver, perhaps, on closer glancethey had, perhaps, been bought from a hospital or school dinner charity salebut, with the overall attempt at formality, they gave well enough the impression of those fancy silver-service bell-jars which pretentious restaurants and clubs favoured in the 1980s. A bottle of wine stood in the centre of the table.

'Sit yourselves,' she said.

There was a placement, a label by each plate.

They sat. She sat. They watched her.

Ceremoniously, slowly, with dignity, she raised the lid from her plate. In unison, they imitated her action. Round the table, seven metal covers were lifted. They stared, amazed.

On seven large white gold-rimmed plates reposed what looked like small, shrivelled beefburgers. On the eighth plate, in front of David D'Anger, was a small round display of bright green peas. Nothing more, nothing less.

To laugh, to cry, to eat? They paused. Frieda paused. Never had the etiquette of following one's hostess's lead seemed more relevant.

She pitied them, reprieved them for a moment.

'A gla.s.s of wine?' she asked.

A ripple of relief ran through them, as Daniel leapt up to help, surrept.i.tiously inspected the label, lifted the alas already lifted cork. He poured a little of the dark red into each gla.s.s. Two more bottles stood on the side. (Do they need a poison-tester, or will she drink herself?) Frieda picked up her fork. They picked up their forks. She put hers down again. And so did they.

'Now,' she said in pity, 'I'll tell you what you have before you. And you can eat it if you wish. If not, you may proceed to the next course.'

She rummaged in the large black bag hung from her chair arm, produced a piece of paper, put on her spectacles. She cleared her throat and announced, 'What you have before you are Butler's b.u.mperburgers. And here is a description of what they contain.' She adjusted her spectacles, began to read. 'The makers of Butler's b.u.mperburgers were fined 2,000 after trading standards officials in Somerset found the product contained no meat. Hot Snax of Middleton, West Yorks.h.i.+re, admitted false labelling of the burgers, which were made of gristle, fat, chicken sc.r.a.ps, and water from cows' heads.'

A silence fell. Gogo recovered first, as she smartly put the cloche back over her plate. 'Lucky you, David,' she said, eyeing his supernaturally green peas.

'I'm not so sure,' said David. 'I'm not so sure at all.' He prodded a pea, pierced it and pointed it in interrogation at Frieda.

Frieda looked approving. 'Clever boy, David,' she said. 'Quite right.'

'But what', asked Daniel, 'can you do to a pea?'

'Sell-by date?' suggested Nathan quickly.

'Clever boy, Nathan,' said Frieda. 'But worse than that, worse than that. These peas were frozen long, long before the concept of sell-by date had been dreamt up. G.o.d knows how old they are, but certainly pre-1978, I've been a.s.sured.'

'Still,' murmured Gogo, 'all the same, I'd rather have the peas than these things. Given the choice.'

'Say it again,' said Nathan, entering with a professional curiosity into the spirit of the occasion. 'Water from the cows' heads, did you say?'

Rosemary left the table and went off to retch in the downstairs cloakroom, and simultaneously Frieda rose to her feet and started to clear the plates, sc.r.a.ping the brown wrinkled matted fibrous discs into a plastic bag. Conversation broke out, gla.s.ses were raised, cries of, 'What's this wine, Frieda? What vintage?' were well fielded by Frieda, as she s.n.a.t.c.hed David's peas from him, but not before he had defiantly, with bravado, eaten at least three. The demonstration was over, and Frieda disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a large dish of macaroni cheese and a bowl of salad. 'Clean plates, I think?' she said, as she took a new pile of the old chipped set from the dresser and began to serve. The macaroni cheese looked delicious. They set about it with grat.i.tude, with cries of appreciation and relief, as they began to ply Frieda with questions about her performancewhom was she testing, and how, and why, and where she had managed to get hold of those beefless burgers, those antique peas? Why had she done this thing to them? Was it, they now dared to ask, an attack upon poor Cedric, upon the government? Had she become a vegetarian? Was she joining an animal rights campaign?

Frieda dished out, sat down, tucked in, refilled gla.s.ses. 'Look,' she said eventually, when she had their calmer attention. 'I wanted to give you all a meal to remember. It's our last supper. Our last supper in this house. I've got rid of it. I'm off.'

Where to, they wanted to know, and she told them. To the sea's edge. To the end of the road. They must come and claim what they wanted, before she got the house-clearance men in. There were still old toys, old school reports, old textbooks from Romley Grammar School upstairs. They must make a date.

The move had been coming up on her for a long time, she said. She had grown to hate London. She had come to hate the human race. What was the point of it? 'I resign,' said Frieda, telling her amber beads as though they were a rosary. 'I leave it all to you. To you, Cedric, and to you, David, I leave the politics. You can divide it equally. That's fair. I leave justice to Daniel, who will surely be made a judge soon. Judges get younger every day. I leave education to Patsy, and the arts to Rosemary, and the free market to Nathan, and the health service to Gogo. That just about covers the lot. I've had enough.'

And they saw that although she now smiled and fed them clean food from a large dish, she had gone mad.

Over puddinga large, unsuspicious nursery apple-crumbleshe elaborated. They had heard the story of how she had tried to get rid of the car? They hadn't even let her get rid of it. She was chained to it. Why bother with cars, with roads, with going from place to place? It had all gone wrong. She would remove herself. Urban life was poisonous. The air was impure, the foodstuffs were contaminated. Madness had fallen on the land and she had caught it. People could no longer tell the good from the bad. You only had to look around to see that they were suffering from a terminal disease. They crowded together to die, like a species intent on extinction. Pallid, shuffling, talking to themselves, crazy. Even when they thought they were having funand she p.r.o.nounced the word 'fun' with impressive venomthey were stoking themselves with misery. She had walked through that dreadful little open air piazza in Covent Garden the other day and she had seen people sitting at tables eating food that was garbage. She had seen mould growing on a slice of wet giant quiche. She had smelt vomit, and had then discovered that what she smelt was not vomit but burger and pizza. People were eating food that smelt of hot vomit (sorry, Rosemary, are you feeling better now?), of regurgitated vomit. Like biblical dogs, they ate. She had pursued the burger story, spotted in a tiny four-line news item in the Independent, and had taken herself to abattoirs in Middleton and Somerset. She had seen the light. And while in Somerset she had bought a castle by the sea. She had walked into an estate agent's and bought it. And there, alone, she would moulder.

Triumphantly, she lit another carcinogenic cigarette.

'And you think', inquired Rosemary, 'that you will find the countryside full of pure, clean-living, ecologically correct people? It isn't, you know. It's full of burgers too. Even fuller of burgers than Covent Garden.'

'That's as may be,' said Frieda. 'There must be bits that are empty still.'

There was no reasoning with her, they could see. Meekly, they drank their coffee and made their farewells.

Outside on the pavement, Daniel Palmer had attempted a word of man-to-man worldly deprecation to Cedric Summerson. After all, the woman was his mother, and Summerson was a minister. A bad mother, and a bad minister, but the courtesies must be observed even in extremis. 'Bit of a Timon's feast, eh?' said Daniel, pressing the little battery of his car alarm. His car winked back at him.

Summerson took it like a man. 'Impressive woman, your mother,' he said, with a not very successful attempt at a twinkle. They shook hands on it.

Summerson walked down the road to his own car. Although he did not know who Timon was, and was never to discover, he knew quite well why he had been summoned. It was her revenge. He hoped the others did not know. He suspected they did not. Clever they might be, but innocent, he guessed. High-minded, ambitious middle-cla.s.s innocents.e.xcept, perhaps, for Nathan. But Nathan had shown no sign of recognition when the words 'Hot Snax' had been mentioned. Nathan had probably never represented any product as downmarket, as obscurely and deviously provided, as cheap, as Hot Snax. Nathan was more a Safeway, a Sainsbury man. The trail was not clear. However had Frieda followed it? She was dangerous, as well as impressive. Just as well that she was about to remove herself from society. Just as well that she would, in a court of law, appear as mad as a meat axe. Her testimony was worthless.

Daniel and Patsy had talked of Frieda's craziness as they drove home that night. So did Rosemary and Nathan. But David talked of social justice, while Gogo drove and listened. Those three peas, he knew, had infected him, as Frieda had intended that they should. He would never expel their message from his system. Like the princess on her twenty mattresses, he would be tormented. He was susceptible. Frieda had known this, and she had chosen to offer him this torment. He would not reject it.

'In his Utopia,' said David relentlessly,as Gogo drove down the b.a.l.l.s Pond Road at midnight, 'More proposed that butchers should be recruited, as a punishment, from the criminal cla.s.ses. You would not expect a good man to become a butcher. Fourier went one further and proposed that all unattractive jobsall jobs that n.o.body in their right mind would do without constraintshould be simply abandoned. Society would readjust, he argued. Readjust and do without. Kendrick goes one further still and argues that with any fair system of job allocation any society would choose to be vegetarian. No more abattoirs, no more chicken gutters, no more beefburgers, no more cows' heads. Bernard Shaw said we could live on pills and air.'

'Shaw was fastidious,' said Gogo. 'Like you. Like, it would seem, the reincarnate Frieda.'

'I suppose', said David, 'that I'll have to go and visit an abattoir. She was pointing at one in my const.i.tuency, I a.s.sume.'

'There's no need to be so compet.i.tive,' said Gogo, although she knew there was.

'It's not as though I can't imagine what's behind the curtain,' said David. 'I know what's there. That's why I don't eat meat anyway.' 'n.o.body was accusing you,' said Gogo.

'I accuse myself,' said David.