Sex and Stravinsky (3 page)

‘So it’s the fashion these days for the bourgeoisie to have a slum hanging in the house?’ he said. At the time he had no intention to sell, but in the end it was the sale of all the paintings that made paying Jack’s school fees possible.

‘And let’s have a dear little baby,’ Caroline is saying. ‘I mean, just as soon as we can. Actually, can we have four? I’ve always wanted lots of children.’ Then she laughs and says, ‘I suppose we’d have to make an extra bedroom in the roof? A “loft conversion” with a little spiral staircase. Kids would love a spiral staircase.’

‘Or a fireman’s pole,’ Josh says, who has not as yet considered having children; hasn’t quite got his head around the idea of being a grown-up himself, and he right now assumes that Caroline’s speaking of making babies is merely a form of pillow-talk, which is certainly having its effect.

But Caroline is quite serious, though she doesn’t question why. She remembers vividly being seven years old and awaiting her sister’s birth. She remembers a fistful of drawings made in tribute to the baby and her almost unbearable eagerness to push the baby in its new pram. But after that she has a large blank. Before Janet. After Janet. She has no conscious memory of being pushed out to the periphery; of being that small child who went through a ruthless withdrawal of maternal love; an experience that would have triggered her strategy of trying ever harder and harder – and, given her natural abilities, it materialised as a strategy that always paid off handsomely with schoolteachers and sports coaches and university lecturers. It paid off repeatedly with committees that gave out prizes. Essay prizes; art prizes; scholarships.

Caroline has no memory of when such strategies began. They are simply too much a part of the person she has become. And, along with it, she carries a strong urge to have a baby. Another baby. A baby to love and cherish, and to be loved and cherished in return. She has a need to go back into that blank space and fill it with hope and light, as people do in the case of certain dreams; dreams in which they urge themselves back in, because they are in hopes of changing the outcome.

‘A fireman’s pole would be good,’ she says. ‘I suppose I ought to get dressed.’

‘Don’t,’ Josh says. ‘Don’t get dressed. Caroline, will you marry me in these slippery silver pyjamas?’

‘Wait till you see my dress,’ she says.

‘Is that right?’ he says. He’s thinking that her hair, especially first thing in the morning, before she’s brushed it, is something quite extraordinary. Voluminous, like Mary Magdalene’s hair. Hair that grew and grew so that, all through the saint’s years of desert exile, as her clothes fell from her in rags, she was protected from exposure.

‘Think
The Philadelphia Story
,’ Caroline says. ‘You are going to love it.’

And then there’s the buzz of the doorbell. Someone in the street has pressed the buzzer for Caroline’s room.

‘It’ll be some dosser,’ Caroline says, sounding somewhat brisk. ‘You get the whole bang shoot around here. Old winos, young druggies, drunk foreign-student kids. It’s sort of like those buttons are all yelling, “Please press me.” Especially at 4 a.m.’ Then she gets up and leans out of the window. He watches her suddenly stiffen. ‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘I don’t believe it. It’s Mum. And my sister. Josh, you’ll have to make yourself scarce.’ She’s already begun to gather up his clothes.

‘But why?’ Josh says. ‘I mean, we’re getting married today.’

‘Quick!’ she says. He can see that she is shaking. ‘Please, Josh. Go and get dressed, but not in here. Go to the bathroom at the far end, OK? Then come back in twenty minutes. But go downstairs and press the buzzer. That way they’ll think you’ve just arrived. And – oh Christ, Josh – please remember to shave.’

When Josh returns, sluiced, shaved and dressed, Caroline’s mother and sister are seated in the two oyster-painted chairs with the pillow-ticking seats; two dumpy, mouse-haired women who have the look of visiting the same hairdresser for a weekly wash and set. Caroline has evidently made the bed in haste, which is now playing host to a large suitcase, alongside which Caroline is perched. She is still in the silver pyjamas. Her mother is evidently in mid-flow, filling the air with down-home small talk, while Janet emits the odd whingeing refrain and looks perpetually down-in-the-mouth.

They pause, momentarily, in this symbiotic double act, to acknowledge Josh’s arrival and follow through with a brief shaking of hands. Then the performance continues, just as if he were not there. Mother is the talky partner, daughter the silent back-up. It reminds Josh of those Jehovah’s Witnesses who always come to the door in pairs. Caroline, he decides there and then, must take after her absent father because, while mother and younger daughter are remarkably alike, in neither can he see the smallest trace of his beautiful girlfriend. Of the two, Janet has the weedier handshake. Otherwise, she’s a clone. To take her hand is like grasping the body of a dead herring.

‘Yes, it’s a shame about Dad,’ Caroline’s mother is venturing. ‘But we decided on coming at the very last minute, so there wasn’t the time to make contact. He was off at work, as usual. Quite an adventure, wasn’t it, Janet? Coming to the UK. But, of course, we told Mrs Dodds next door, and she’ll have passed on the news to Dad by now.’ Then she says, ‘Mrs Dodds seemed quite excited, by the way – I mean about you getting married, but then she always did play favourites, didn’t she? She’s sent you a tea cosy, Caroline. It’s one she made herself, so you’ll remember to write her a thank-you note, won’t you? Just a notelet will do.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ Caroline says. ‘I will.’ Caroline, recent maker of scissor-work greeting cards and ruched, Thai-silk ball gowns.

‘We’d have got you something in the duty-free,’ the matriarch continues, but you’ll appreciate that Janet was much too tired before the flight. When it comes to stamina she’s always been so much less fortunate than you.’ Then she turns to Josh. ‘I hope you’ll call me Mum,’ she says. ‘I’ve always been very informal. I’m very easy-going, Josh. I take people as they come. I must say, you’re not very tall, now, are you?’

It appears that Caroline’s less fortunate younger sister was born with a cleft palate which was successfully treated in infancy, as was her childhood asthma. Other than that, there is nothing at all wrong with Janet, except for her markedly less fortunate personality. Josh can’t quite see the point of Janet, other than that she evidently exists to act as sidekick and backup to Caroline’s mother, along with offering that lady the means to induce guilt in her beautiful and brilliant elder daughter. In short, he finds his in-laws to be a couple of grotesques.

The mother has the daughter on a length of invisible string – both daughters, come to that – and she certainly knows how to sabotage the spontaneity of the wedding feast by constantly diverting poor, conscientious Caroline with what seem to him idiotic and spoilt-brat demands for special treatment. Janet is cold. May she please change seats? Borrow a cardigan? Move out of the draught? And how many eggs are in this quiche? Thanks but no thanks. Only one egg a week. Those are my doctor’s orders. And onions have a nasty habit of repeating on me. Not exactly the thing for one’s wedding night, if I may say so. Fish? No thank you. I’ve never been one for fish. As you will appreciate, I’ve never been a fussy woman, but fish has always been a no-no with me. Caroline, could I possibly have a smaller fork? A sharper knife? A riper tomato? Eton Mess you call this? I must say, it certainly looks rather a mess! No thank you, dear. Not unless it’s low-fat cream. And Janet can’t eat strawberries, as you surely will remember. Caroline, is this decaff? Sorry, but caffeine is not for me.

By nightfall it has become horribly apparent that the ghoulish pair have made no arrangements regarding accommodation and that Caroline’s mother is making it clear that it’s her daughter’s job to play host.

‘Well, you surely didn’t expect us to go traipsing about in the cold, looking for a hotel?’ she says. ‘What with Janet having one of her colds coming on, after sitting in all that draught. You do have a cold coming, don’t you, Janet? And mark my words, it’ll turn to bronchitis if we don’t take care.’

‘A-tish-oo,’ Janet says.

‘And aren’t the two of you “going away”?’ she says. ‘I naturally assumed we’d have the use of your room, what with us having come all this way. Whatever happened to hospitality? Not to mention the honeymoon?’

‘You see, Mum,’ Caroline says, sounding, as she has all day, both submissive and apologetic. ‘You see, it’s not the vacation yet and I’ve got my field trip to budget for. I’m going to Iran next term and –’

‘Well!’ her mother says, cutting her short. ‘I must say, it’s all been
so
romantic, it makes me want to get married all over again – I don’t think! I can’t imagine your sister making such a poor fist of things. That’s when her “special day” comes along.’

‘Josh,’ Caroline is saying in whispers as, together with a handful of friends, they are clearing up the party debris. ‘Josh, we’ve got to give them my room. After all, she is my mother.’

‘But it’s our wedding night,’ he says.

‘Oh never mind,’ Caroline says. ‘Look. We’ve got the rest of our lives together.’

‘Yes,’ Josh says. ‘But . . .’

‘Come on,’ she says. ‘It’ll be fine. I’ll work something out. You’ll see.’

And it is. She does. It all works out, because Caroline is nothing if not a prodigious problem-solver. Two of her friends, Sam and Jen, are an artist couple who live in a decommissioned red double-decker bus that they park in the field of a local farmer, just up the Abingdon Road. And Horst, the physics post-doc from Freiburg, has a two-person tent along with camping equipment. So the newly-weds bike out to pitch camp alongside the artists’ vegetable patch and bed down to watch a star-studded night sky through the lean isosceles triangle of the tent’s open access.

In the balmy summer morning they make coffee and heat up a tin of baked beans on Horst’s little Trangia stove. They watch sheep graze in a field. Caroline is in the slippery silver pyjamas and Josh is wrapped in a flowered kanga. Beachwear from his home town.

‘We’re having a honeymoon after all,’ Josh observes. ‘You are a genius, Caroline.’

‘Thank you,’ she says.

Then they go for a second cup of coffee, with Sam and Jen inside the bus. Both Josh and Caroline are enchanted by the bus, with its shiny metal footplate, which now constitutes the floor of the porch, and its ting-ting conductor’s bell, which is still in working order. The lower deck, now minus its passenger seats, makes a long kitchen-living room, while up the narrow winding stairs is an elongated, many-windowed bedroom with a tiny shower room. Sam has made a stepping-stone path from the bus to the farm track. Jen’s vegetable patch is bordered with tall sunflowers.

‘Isn’t this heaven?’ Caroline says and Josh has to agree.

Then they bike back to the ghoulish pair, who are up, dressed, and waiting for their breakfast with foot-tapping impatience.

‘About time too,’ says Caroline’s mother. ‘Don’t mind us, will you, Caroline?’

‘I’m so sorry, Mum,’ Caroline says and off they go to a café in Holywell Street, where – doctor’s orders cast aside – the matriarch tucks into eggs and bacon and toast.

‘And now you can show us the sights,’ she says, neatly placing her knife and fork at twenty-five past.

‘Yes, Mum. Of course, Mum,’ Caroline says.

‘If Janet feels up to it,’ she says.

‘A-tish-oo,’ Janet says.

‘You get a fantastic view of the city from the cupola of the Sheldonian,’ Caroline ventures. ‘It’s just a stone’s throw from here.’

‘No thank you,’ her mother says. ‘Not if it’s going to mean climbing umpteen stairs. You might be as strong as a bull, Caroline, but I think you might show some consideration for your sister.’

‘OK, Mum,’ Caroline says. ‘Sorry, Mum. What about a walk through Christ Church Meadow? It’s just off the High Street and you come out via a cobbled lane just opposite –’

‘A meadow?’ says her mother. ‘And what makes you think we packed our gumboots?’

It transpires that what the pair really have in mind is to dawdle round various retail outlets, acquiring armfuls of clothes.

‘This way we get the fashions a season ahead,’ says Caroline’s mother, doing a girly gaiety voice in the aisles of M & S. ‘Janet’s always had a really good eye. Haven’t you, Janet? And what on earth is that thing you’re wearing, Caroline – just by the way?’

Caroline is wearing her immaculate Levi’s with a simple white cotton top, delicately pleated at the yoke, like a cropped choirboy smock.

That night, since mother and daughter have plans to spend a second night, Josh and Caroline, once again, bike up the Abingdon Road. Then, next morning, the pair, whom Josh by now has inwardly dubbed the Witch Woman and the Less Fortunate, announce their intention of travelling by train to Aberdeen, in pursuit of a maternal cousin, several times removed; a cousin who has had no hint of her relations’ imminent arrival.

‘I don’t like to stand on ceremony,’ the Witch Woman says. ‘I like to be informal.’

‘A-tish-oo,’ says the Less Fortunate.

And then, at last, they are gone. And then; and then.

And then the Iranian revolution is happening. And then, alas for the country’s long-suffering progressives, it is taking an unfortunate turn. Bearded mullahs are staging public executions in sports arenas and city squares. Black chadors are transforming the female population into a flock of faceless crows – and Caroline’s research trip is, of necessity, placed on hold. Josh, meanwhile, has planned to spend the next five weeks in Paris.