‘It’s like a bad play,’ she said. ‘You think it’s the end and then you find out it’s only interval.’
My mother was more hopeful.
‘It’s not forever,’ she said.
‘It just feels that way,’ I said.
When I told Mr Booker he giggled.
‘It’s not funny,’ I said.
He poured me a glass of wine while we sat up in bed and watched a plane taking off.
‘You want me to kill him?’ he said.
‘Yes please,’ I said.
The plane lifted and soared up over the top of the building making the walls shake.
‘Serious?’ he said, once the plane had passed.
‘Dead fucking serious,’ I said, staring at him hard.
And for a moment I thought that he might be thinking about it because he stared back at me without laughing and there was something complicit in the look, as if he knew exactly what it was like to wish someone dead, particularly someone as close to you as a parent or a wife.
And then something happened that I never expected. On a raw, wet day at the end of June, Mrs Booker phoned to tell my mother that she was having a baby and my mother told me. At first I thought she was joking but my mother said it wasn’t the kind of thing Mrs Booker would joke about, given how long and hard she’d tried to have a child.
‘She’s known for a while,’ said my mother. ‘She didn’t even tell Mr Booker.’
‘Why not?’ I said, trying to sound pleased, which I wasn’t, because I couldn’t even begin to know what it felt like to be pregnant or to be bound to someone the way Mrs Booker was bound to Mr Booker even though he loved me at the same time. And now he had to love the baby as well, because he’d been waiting so long for it, whether he wanted to or not.
‘She was making sure everything was okay,’ said my mother.
‘Is it?’ I said.
‘So far,’ said my mother.
My mother told me the baby was due in December and I counted on my fingers back to April when it had been conceived. So Mrs Booker had already known for weeks and not told anyone, which must have been enjoyable, because big secrets have a special pleasure all of their own. I knew that from personal experience.
My mother said the Bookers were coming over to celebrate and told me to go out and tell my father.
This was their arrangement. My mother told my father when she was having friends over and usually he would stay out of sight, except that sometimes she would be sitting in the dining room or out on the verandah with her party in full swing when Victor would make an appearance, crossing the lawn to get to his car out on the street. My mother would wave and my father would wave back, and if anyone asked she would explain that she and my father were still separated but unfortunately not as separated as they had been before, which always made people laugh.
When Mr and Mrs Booker arrived with their arms full of champagne and beer my father was reading his newspaper on the caravan steps. It was like he wanted to see them and also to be seen by them, because half the reason he’d come back was to keep an eye on my mother and me. It wasn’t that he wanted to protect us from anything, it was more that he wanted us to know he was watching, which was actually a lot creepier than when he’d lived with us inside. It was like my mother and I were under house arrest.
‘I see you’ve hired a bouncer,’ said Mr Booker.
‘Me and my shadow,’ said my mother.
She explained how my father had been thrown out of his last digs for making a pass at the farmer’s wife.
‘Giddy up,’ said Mr Booker.
Mrs Booker made a neighing noise and tossed her hair and stamped her high heels on the floor as if she was a frisky pony, which made Mr Booker stare at her until she stopped.
‘We’ll have to cut down on your oats,’ he said.
‘Too late,’ she said.
The transformation in her was total. She was dapple-cheeked and clear-eyed and even her voice had changed, deepening and softening at the same time. She kept smiling like she’d just won something. My mother put her arms around her and hugged her while Mr Booker stood back and watched, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.
‘Such wonderful news,’ said my mother. ‘I’m so happy for you.’
Mrs Booker put her arms around me too and squeezed me to her big breasts, which were bouncier than ever and drenched in French perfume.
‘Congratulations,’ I said, and repeated what my mother had already said, that I was so happy and that it was wonderful news.
Mr Booker was already in the kitchen opening the champagne so he didn’t see the way Mrs Booker held me at arms-length then and winked. I don’t think she meant anything by it because I’d seen her do this before, wink at people as a way of telling them she knew what they were thinking, except that in this case I don’t think Mrs Booker had the slightest idea what I was thinking because even I didn’t know.
The major change in Mrs Booker was that she had stopped drinking and smoking, although this was more difficult she said, because she’d started so young and if you start young the craving for cigarettes is a lifetime affliction.
‘That’s a fact,’ said Geoff, lighting up one of his clove cigarettes and taking a long, hard drag on it.
‘Be afraid,’ said Lorraine, watching me light a cigarette of my own. ‘Be very afraid.’
She and Geoff had joined the party along with Hilary, the Scottish woman who had introduced the Bookers to us in the first place. She was my mother’s oldest friend, and even though she drank all our whisky and was very repetitive my mother couldn’t dump her because her husband had left her for somebody else and she’d raised four children on her own, including Philip, who was borderline autistic. He was at the party too, hovering at my side because his mother had announced I could help him with his English essay on
The Great Gatsby
.
‘I think it’s about longing,’ said Philip very loudly so that everyone turned around. ‘And wanting what you can’t have.’
Which surprised us all, even more so when he recited the last few lines of the book to us from memory, which were about each of us beating our little boats against the current while it kept on dragging us back into the past.
‘On that note,’ said Geoff. ‘I have an announcement to make.’
He smiled at Lorraine and told her that he’d finally remembered to bring along his projector and his slide collection like he’d promised her for weeks he would do. Then he set things up in the front room so that he could show us all the story of his life in pictures, a lot of which had his ex-girlfriend Sandra in them. And all the time Mrs Booker played nostalgic tunes on the piano from an old Cole Porter songbook she’d found inside the piano stool.
When the party ran out of wine I went with Mr Booker to buy some more. It was the first time I had been alone with him all day and I couldn’t speak because all of my blood seemed to be rushing in the wrong direction, which made it impossible to think.
‘You must be pleased,’ I finally said, sounding like I’d lost my voice.
‘I never touched her,’ he said, chortling at his own joke.
Instead of taking a left at the end of our street, he turned right and I asked him where we were going.
‘Do you have somewhere else to be?’ he said.
I shook my head.
He drove me to their house and pulled up in the driveway. Then he came round to open the car door on my side so I could climb out and he took me by the hand and walked me a few paces down towards the street where he pointed to a spot on the concrete. I stared at it but I couldn’t see anything.
‘What am I looking at?’ I said.
‘It’s where the cat died,’ he said.
‘You drive me all the way out here to show me that?’ I said.
He still had me by the hand so he led me towards the house, then he fumbled for so long with the keys that I had to take them from him and let us inside.
‘You’re drunk,’ I said.
‘I’m drinking for two now,’ he said, leading me down the passageway and into the main bedroom where Mrs Booker’s clothes were strewn all over the bed. I watched while he gathered them up and tossed them onto the chair under the window. He told me to hurry up and get undressed before we were missed and when I was naked he lay down next to me and told me to touch him so I undid his trousers and took him in my hand and tried to make him hard but it didn’t work. When I asked him what was wrong he stared at the ceiling and said it was just that he was nervous.
I could tell it was true from the way he was shaking. He reached over and took his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and lit us one to share.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘So you should be,’ I said.
And then we just lay together and smoked and Mr Booker talked about how joyless it had been for him to fuck Mrs Booker on cue whenever her hormone levels dictated. He said the only way he could ever get it up was to think of me.
‘Which doesn’t work when I’m lying right next to you naked,’ I said.
‘I’m as mystified as you are,’ he said, holding the cigarette to my lips so I could take a drag. He lifted his head then and stared down at his penis.
‘Oi,’ he said. When there was no reply he gave it a little slap so that it rolled to one side.
Then he lay back down again and said it really wasn’t going to make a difference to us that Mrs Booker was pregnant, unless either one of us decided there was a problem. But even as he said all this I had my doubts, otherwise why were we having the conversation in the first place.
‘It’s better in a way,’ he said.
‘You think so?’ I must have sounded unconvinced.
‘It means I’ve given her what she wants, so now I don’t have to try so hard.’
He turned to face me, his cheek resting on his arm.
‘How did you figure that out?’ I said.
‘It’s not rocket surgery,’ he said, looking very pleased with himself. His smile when he stared at me was so full of relief and gratitude I had to laugh. It was like he’d been scared of what I was going to say to him, as if I was going to blame him for getting Mrs Booker pregnant, which I couldn’t really, given that she was his wife.
And to show him I wasn’t angry in the least I pulled his pants right down and took him in my mouth and sucked him off and when I was finished I asked him if he was still nervous. He held his hands up to show how steady they were.
‘I think it was the matrimonial bed,’ he said.
‘I know what you mean,’ I said, picking my clothes up out of the piles of Mrs Booker’s discarded underwear on the chair, making sure not to leave anything behind for her to find.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Stop apologising,’ I said.
Then he took hold of his sticky penis and waved it in my direction, speaking for it as if it was a puppet.
‘Merci beaucoup,’
he said out of the corner of his mouth.
‘De rien,’
I said.
He watched me getting dressed then asked me if I still wanted to marry him.
‘You can’t have your cake and eat it too,’ I said.
‘Watch me,’ he said, leaping at me and undressing me again, which meant we were very late getting back to the party.
When we arrived back at the house Victor was just getting out of his car so we had to stop and wait for him to pass in front of us. I told Mr Booker not to say anything but he ignored me and wound down his window.
‘Permission to land, sir,’ he said, giving my father a salute.
Victor refused to even look at him. He just marched over to his caravan and climbed inside.
‘I don’t think he likes me,’ said Mr Booker.
Lorraine and Geoff were having a fight in the front room when we came inside and everyone else had moved to the sitting room where my mother had made a fire. Mrs Booker was lying on the sofa next to it now with a placid look on her face. Mr Booker went to her and leaned over to kiss her forehead and she surprised him by grasping hold of his jaw and pulling him in closer so she could kiss him back.
‘Where have you been?’ she said, gazing up at him. ‘I missed you.’
I told her I’d made Mr Booker come home via the bookstore in town so I could see if they had anything on F. Scott Fitzgerald. Mr Booker looked impressed at how skilful I was at telling lies. I even impressed myself. It hadn’t been necessary so much when Mrs Booker drank, but now that she had sobered up I could tell Mr Booker and I were going to have to be more inventive.
‘Did they?’ said Mrs Booker.
‘No,’ I said.
My mother put on
Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits
so that we didn’t all have to listen to Lorraine telling Geoff how humiliating it was for her to be cast as the witch who had lured him out of the arms of his girlfriend.
‘Nobody cares,’ we heard Geoff tell her. ‘Nobody’s paying any attention.’
‘Why’s she invited to the wedding?’ Lorraine said.
‘She’s not,’ said Geoff. ‘There isn’t going to be any wedding.’
We didn’t hear any more after that because Frank started into ‘Under My Skin’ turned up very loud, so loud that my father came to the window of his caravan and frowned. He hated Sinatra. My mother saw him as well and told me to turn the song up even louder. Mr Booker and I danced while Mrs Booker watched us. I don’t think I’d ever seen Mrs Booker look happier, especially when she decided to sing along. She took off her glasses, shut her eyes and, taking hold of an imaginary microphone, she threw her head back as if she was on stage in front of an audience. My mother glanced at me to see if I was watching and I shook my head to let her know I didn’t understand any more than she did.