The Queen's Margarine (10 page)

So what now? Did he fetch Charmayne himself, or go straight to the police station in the hope he'd catch Tyrone? Even if he arrived too late, they'd have the fellow's details on computer, so he could simply phone or email, and arrange to reunite him with his pet. Then, free again, unburdened, he could return to his simple,
pre-dog
life.

Simple, maybe, but lonely. He reached for the packet of
bran-flakes
, shook some into a bowl, and tried to force himself to come to some decision – not easy, when such contradictory feelings were clashing in his mind. On the one hand, there was no denying that Charmayne was more difficult to handle than when she first showed up; on the other hand, she worshipped him – the only person who ever had in his thirty years to date. There was also the moral issue of depriving Tyrone of his rightful property, not to mention breaking the poor guy's heart – a heart already dodgy, judging by the recent little episode. And supposing he popped round again, to check if the dog had come back? He might see her this time and bust a gut in fury. Should he dye the creature black? Go into hiding? Leave the country? Top himself?

All at once, he tipped the branflakes down the sink, grabbed his wallet, coat and door-keys and swept out of the flat. He
wasn't
collecting Charmayne. Posh Pets would have to keep her longer – all day, if necessary. He was catching a train to Reading, to watch them play Tottenham Hotspur, and refused to spend another minute even
thinking
about dogs.

‘So where's your pal?' asked Phil, as Adam slouched into the office, on his own, for once.

‘In disgrace.'

‘Why, what's the little bugger done?'

‘Don't ask.' He threw himself into his chair and stared moodily at the blank computer screen. Bloody females! They always messed things up. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that Charmayne and Lynette had certain things in common; both bossy and demanding, untidy and unreasonable. And both had started out as paragons, impossible to fault, but gradually deteriorated until they were more or less insufferable. Phil had told him it was
his
fault for failing to exercise the dog or look after it responsibly. But who was bloody Phil to take that sanctimonious tone, just because his aunt knew a bit about the breed? Besides, even Phil would take his side when he heard about last night. The little bitch had actually jumped up on to the table, grabbed the pizza off his plate, dashed into the bedroom with it and dropped it upside-down on the counterpane, where it left a big, red, greasy stain from the tomato and the cheese. And when he shouted at her, she simply barked in defiance, and continued barking frantically all evening, until he'd had furious complaints from both his neighbours.

‘No Charmayne?' said Matthew, sauntering in with mug of tea in one hand and a doughnut in the other.

He shook his head.

‘You haven't lost her, I hope?'

‘No such luck.'

‘Why, what's up?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Listen, mate,' Phil remarked, interfering, as usual, ‘you can't leave her in the flat all day. Bichons need a lot of toilet-breaks.'

‘You're telling me!'

‘Small bladders, I suppose. So what do you plan to do? If you go back every couple of hours, Howard will do his nut!'

‘I don't want to talk about it.'

‘OK, OK, keep your hair on! You're very grouchy these days, you know.'

Adam said nothing. Of
course
he was grouchy. It was only natural, now he'd come to see that there was no such thing as love. It was always cupboard love, he'd realized, and thus a total con. Charmayne only loved him for the perks he provided: a knob of his
breakfast sausage, a bite of doughnut in the office, a saucerful of lager in the pub. And Lynette had been the same. In fact, she had moved in with him originally because his snazzy flat was a definite advance on her own grotty basement bed-sit. And since he earned far more than she did, he was the one who paid for dinners out or trips abroad. Neither she nor Charmayne really gave a shit. And they had both destroyed his property, with no trace of shame or guilt. Lynette had broken his iPod and smashed half his best Heal's china, while Charmayne had chewed two cushions into shreds.

Even now, he was risking the sack. If he went home before the lunch-hour, to let the creature out, Howard might explode. His boss was increasingly miffed about the dog, so would welcome an excuse to rid himself of the pair of them. At present, he was out, thank Christ, seeing a client in Kilburn, but if he returned at noon and found him gone, all hell was bound to break loose.

Well, he wasn't going anywhere. Charmayne would have to wait. His salary, his job, his workmates, meant infinitely more than some unruly, boisterous dog.

‘Fucking bloody hell!' Adam barged from room to room, horrified at the sights that met his eyes: a pile of stinking dog-shit on the carpet; a puddle of piss in the kitchen; the new bedspread ripped to pieces; his rubber plant a shattered wreck, knocked over on its side, the ceramic pot broken into shards and earth spilling everywhere. And the cause of this destruction was actually rushing up to greet him with effusion, tail wagging in delight.

He beat the dog. Without the slightest compunction. In fact, it was lucky to escape with its life. And, the minute he'd cleared the carnage, he intended to take the brute straight to Battersea Dog's Home.
They
could find bloody Tyrone and restore his precious dog to him. He'd had more than he could take. Besides, if that mincing queen started accusing him again, he couldn't trust himself not to overreact.

For now, he shut the dog in a cupboard and ignored its piteous howls while he got to work with detergent, disinfectant and
half-a
-dozen cleaning cloths. However, even after his labours, the carpet was still stained, the bedspread quite beyond repair, and
the rubber plant fit only for the dump. And a smell of disinfectant and dog-poo still lingered in the air, mingled in one
stomach-curdling
reek.

He sank on to the sofa, although when he closed his eyes to shut out all the chaos, an image of his seventh birthday party suddenly swooped into his mind, for no reason he could fathom. Yet, there he was, an only child and self-sufficient little lad who preferred his own company to that of other boys, trying to tell his bossy mother that he didn't
want
a party. His mother overruled him, of course, laying down the law in her usual dictatorial fashion, despite the fact he was right, as it turned out. The party guests had broken his best toys; opened presents meant for him (and even nicked a few); grabbed the nicest sandwiches, and gobbled so much birthday cake, he'd been left with only crumbs.

He had realized, at that early stage, that other people invariably spelled trouble, and now, as he sat contemplating, it dawned on him with startling force that it was best to be an only child for ever. If you had to share your space or your possessions, disaster would ensue. He'd seen it with his contemporaries: their elegant houses cluttered up with baby paraphernalia; their once tranquil lives ruined by the demands of wilful kids and nagging wives; their futures compromised by acrimonious ex-wives, dunning them for every cent they earned. And he himself had blithely risked the same appalling fate by trying to find a partner. He had always told his girlfriends that children weren't an option, made that clear at the start of all relationships, but it had still been quite a gamble, it struck him only now. A condom might have broken, or some crafty little female pretended she was on the Pill, then presented him with a pregnancy and asked
him
to foot the bills. He'd avoided that, thank God, but he was now stuck with worse than a baby – a dog without a nappy.

He jumped to his feet, determined not to waste a second more. Once he'd delivered Charmayne to the Dogs' Home, he'd come straight back here and revel in his solitude, his privacy and peace. It was Saturday tomorrow, so he'd go out and replace the bedspread; buy another plant; even look at carpet shops and decide if such a major expense was feasible or not.

Such a decision was trifling compared with the all-important
one he was making at this instant – the most significant decision of his life: from this day forward he would settle for lifelong bachelorhood; remain single till he died. Never again would he let woman, child or animal come so perilously and shatteringly close.

‘So what are you doing for Christmas?' Brigit had to raise her voice above the insistent music throbbing through the pub, and the guffaws of the group at the next table.

Hannah played for time. The question was like ‘How are you?' in that, unless you were in radiant health, no one wanted an honest answer. ‘I'm … still making up my mind,' she said, faking a casual smile, yet uneasily aware that the correct response should be something more conventional and cosy: ‘I'll be with all the family in the country,' or ‘at home with the kids, of course.'

‘Well, if you fancy joining us at
Chez Antoine
, you're welcome. We booked the table ages ago, but I'm sure they can squeeze one more in. We're quite a crowd already, but – hell, the more the merrier.'

‘Thanks, Brigit, it sounds great. But, actually, I'm … thinking of going abroad – you know, for a bit of winter sun, or—'

‘Haven't you left it rather late to book?' Karen interrupted.

‘Yes, deliberately,' she lied. ‘More chance of bargains then. And what about you?' she asked Karen, keen to shift the emphasis from her own Christmas plans – or lack of them.

‘Oh, I'm going to my sister's, although I can't say I'm looking forward to it. You see, I'm allergic to my brother-in-law. He invariably gets pissed at Christmas and starts some frightful row.'

‘
We'll
get pissed,' said Brigit, taking a swig of her spritzer, as if to undermine the point. ‘You can bet your life on it.'

‘Yeah, but only nicely pissed. You won't shout abuse, or throw up over the Brussels sprouts. One year, dear precious Philip even wrecked the bloody Christmas cake.'

‘You're joking!'

‘I'm not. He smashed a bottle down on top of it and reduced it to a mass of crumbs.'

‘Shit! What a brute. Why doesn't your sister leave him, for God's sake?'

‘Not easy with four kids. Anyway, she says he's great in bed, and I suppose that compensates.'

‘It wouldn't for me,' Ruth shuddered. ‘Anyway, talking of getting pissed, let's have another round. Hannah, same for you again?'

‘No, better not. I'm driving. In fact, I ought to get off pretty sharp, so, if you'll all excuse me—'

‘Where you going?' Brigit asked, always the nosy-parker.

‘Just … visiting relatives.' That was true in one sense – dead relatives, at least.

‘Well, Happy Christmas, whatever you decide to do!'

‘Yes, Happy Christmas!' the others chorused. ‘See you on the 2nd.'

‘Don't remind me!' Hannah grimaced, although, in truth, she was already counting the days until she was safely back at work. By January 2, the twin obstacles of Christmas and New Year would be over and done with, thank God.

Having collected up her coat and bag, she picked her way between the crowded tables; one group sporting paper hats; another, rather the worse for wear, singing along to the music. ‘Jingle Bells', ‘Rudolf, the Red-Nosed Reindeer' – the old favourites had been playing in succession. And no corner of the pub was free of its Christmas overlay: garlands, decorations, fairy-lights, holly wreaths, menus boasting turkey dinners, bar staff wearing Santa caps….

She paused at the door to button up her coat, glancing back at her workmates. They'd probably stay here the whole afternoon, getting happily plastered, and normally she, too, would stay – if only not to seem a spoilsport. But for the last two months, she had felt distanced from them all, as if inhabiting a different world – a funereal and grey world, totally out of tune with this gold-
and-scarlet
junketing. Admittedly, they were all younger than her – mostly in their twenties still, while
she
had reached that stage when hours of drunken partying seemed hardly worth the hangover – but it wasn't just a matter of age. There seemed to be a high
brick wall between her and other people, cutting her off in a dark, solitary cell.

It was barely half-past-three as she drove away, yet the
street-lamps
were already on, and the natural light was waning to a leaden, murky blur. It had been overcast all day, as if the sun had felt too weary to drag itself out of bed, or make the slightest effort to show its face and shine. She nosed along the High Street, turning on the radio, to try to lift her mood, only to switch it off again in the middle of ‘White Christmas'. Never before had Christmas seemed so … so relentless. Every bar and shop and restaurant, every radio and TV programme, newspaper and magazine, was celebrating the Holy Day of Hype. Which, in the circumstances, seemed almost an affront.

She turned left at the Crown and Anchor (festooned with a couple of reindeer pulling a silver sleigh), then drove the now familiar route: past the common, past the school, then five miles tedious motorway, until the turn-off for the cemetery. Having parked outside the sombre wrought-iron gates, she picked up the bouquet from the back seat of the car, and, cradling it like a baby, trudged along the path towards the grave. She had chosen flowers in preference to a wreath, and tulips rather than lilies, since wreaths and lilies were symbolical of death, whereas tulips suggested spring, new life. She was kidding herself, of course. Her parents were hardly likely to thrust up out of the earth again, like a couple of hardy perennials. The cruellest thing had been losing them both within six months of each other. Yet typical of her mother to follow her husband's lead, as she had done in all their sixty years of marriage. Or perhaps she had simply died of grief, unable to cope without him.

She laid the flowers down on the uneven grassy knoll. The absence of the tombstone made the grave look achingly forlorn, as if it were just some makeshift thing, lacking in formality. The stone had barely had time to settle after her father's death in April, before it was yanked up in October, to allow her mother access. Now, it was at the stonemason's, awaiting its second inscription; delayed, they said, by a glut of winter deaths. The word ‘glut' had stung, as if her parents were just part of a production line – or a destruction line, more like.

As she squatted down on her haunches to remove an insolent weed, she seemed to hear her mother ask: ‘So what are you doing for Christmas?' – that dreaded question she had fended off at least a dozen times already – in fact, been fending off, in some ways, all her life. She had never told a soul that she had spent every single Christmas cocooned and safe in her parents' house – yes, even as an adult – since it made her sound wimpish and pathetic. Usually, she muttered something about being ‘with the family', hoping the phrase implied a whole huge tribe. Her family, in point of fact, were extremely thin on the ground: no siblings – and thus no nieces and nephews – no uncles, aunts or cousins, and no grandparents on either side – or none that she had ever seen except in photographs.

Not that she'd been lonely, with just her parents for company. And a threesome, for them, had been something of a miracle, since they'd long given up all hope of a child when her mother conceived at the age of forty-five. And, once they had a daughter to spoil, after twenty childless years, they had invariably gone overboard at Christmas, to make up for lost time: storms of cooking, yards of tinsel, miles of paper chains, whole shrubberies of holly and ivy, and enough presents to make Santa jealous. Her mother had even made a brand-new outfit for the Christmas fairy every year, happily sewing tiny taffeta dresses, organza underskirts and stiffened, gauzy wings, while her patient dad glued sequins on to wands.

She freed the flowers from their confining sheath of cellophane. It seemed important they should breathe and blossom, not lie coffined in a shroud. ‘Well, Mum,' she whispered, ‘whatever I do for Christmas, it won't be a patch on yours.'

She picked her way towards the ramshackle structure where garden tools were kept: spades and forks and rakes and suchlike, along with old tin buckets and various odds and ends. Having eventually succeeded in tracking down a vase, she filled it from the watering-can. The cobwebbed corners and musty smell reminded her of her father's garden shed, which, as a child, she had transformed into a wigwam, or an igloo, a castle, or a palace, even Noah's Ark. She had probably never been that happy since, she realized, with a pang.

The whole graveyard seemed deserted – no sign of even the surly guy who normally appeared about this time, to round up any stragglers and herd them towards the exit, so that he could lock up and go home. There
were
no stragglers today; no visitors save her; only the shadowy presences of rows and rows of tombstones. Most people, presumably, would either be at work, or struggling to finish their Christmas shopping before tomorrow's general exodus. She envied all those lucky enough soon to be
en route
to some planned and solid Christmas destination. Only failures were alone at Christmas; people on the shelf, like her. She had friends, of course, but most of them were busy with their own families and plans, and although Judith had invited her for both Christmas Day and Boxing Day, she had turned the offer down, suspecting it might have been prompted by an element of pity.

Self-pity was still worse, though, and, as she carried back the vase, she made a conscious effort to reflect on her good fortune, compared with the suffering world. She wouldn't be sleeping rough on Christmas Day, or battling cancer, or being tortured in some foreign gaol, or trying to beg a crust – or even stuck, like Karen's sister, with some violent pig of a husband. In fact, instead of feeling sorry for herself, she ought to volunteer to man a helpline over Christmas, or serve turkey to the down-and-outs. The only problem was, if she broke down and cried in the middle of a call, or the middle of the lunch, it wouldn't be much actual help. Next year, perhaps, when – if – she felt less raw.

Having arranged the flowers as best she could, she stood a moment by the grave, saying a silent farewell to her parents. Thank God there was no one around to see her tears, which continued in the car, making dark stains on her shirt, as she drove back up the hill, then manoeuvred her way through the jammed and busy town, before heading out to Westfield, to deliver Judith's presents. Some of her fellow motorists were visibly frustrated by the traffic jams, blaring their horns, or cutting in on each other, or even winding down their windows and yelling foul abuse. But aggression was just part of Christmas – as was loneliness.

Judith's house blazed with light, outside as well as in. Strings of fairy lights were looped around the doors and windows, and a brilliantly lit Christmas tree stood inside the porch. She glanced up at
the sky, so dark and drear in contrast; no stars, no glint of moonlight; only a thick bank of lowering cloud. She shivered suddenly, imagining the zillions of galaxies that dwarfed their own Milky Way to puny insignificance. And those baffling things she'd read about, like Dark Matter and Dark Energy, which not even cosmologists appeared to understand. In fact, as far as she could gather, the greater part of the universe was unseeable, unknowable, immeasurable and inexplicable, so was it any wonder she sometimes felt like an ant confronting Everest?

The chimes of the doorbell brought her back to earth, followed by the sound of footsteps pounding down the hall, as Judith's eldest, Patrick, raced to let her in. ‘We're just decorating the tree,' he announced, in a tone of breathless self-importance.

‘It looks as if it's done already.' She gestured to the shimmering tree, resplendent in the porch.

‘No, that one only has lights on. The
second
tree has loads of things. Want to come and see?'

‘Just give me a minute to say hello to your mum.' She stepped into the warm, cluttered hall; found Judith at the kitchen table, feeding Alexander.

‘Sorry, almost finished. Great to see you – take a pew. Patrick, can you get our guest some fruit juice from the fridge.'

‘She's not a guest; she's Hannah.'

‘Well, all the more reason to make a fuss of her.' Judith switched the baby to her other breast, mopping up a drool of milk. ‘When Ben gets in,' she added, ‘we'll have something a bit stronger.'

‘Thanks,' said Hannah, as Patrick passed her a stained plastic beaker full of lurid scarlet liquid.

‘Patrick, grown-ups get proper glasses – I've told you that already – and give Hannah decent juice, not that ghastly pop stuff.'

‘It's not ghastly – it's my favourite.'

‘Don't worry, it'll do fine.' Hannah's smile felt forced and false. Watching Judith breastfeed was always an ordeal – the sheer longing for a baby of her own, followed by the surge of panic that it would probably never happen. Her mother had achieved it very late, of course, but her mother had been married then for more than twenty years, whereas
she
had yet to find her man – or at least one who wanted children. Her first boyfriend, Geoff, adored
kids, but he'd gone off to be a monk, of all things. And Mark's own unhappy childhood had made him wary of fatherhood, while Andrew had a problem with commitment. And that had been the sum total of her love-life, apart from a few sporadic flings.

‘Want to help with the tree?' Patrick asked, jigging up and down impatiently. ‘I'm in charge, but I'll let you put a
few
things on.'

‘Yes, love to. In a minute, though.'

‘Grown-ups always say “in a minute”. But it never
is
a minute, more like half-an-hour.'

‘Right, ten minutes, I promise – not a second longer.'

‘OK,' he agreed grudgingly, before rushing off at his usual frenzied pace. Patrick seemed to explode with energy; even spoke like a radio commercial, trying to pack a spate of words into a
quick-fire
thirty seconds.

‘Where are the girls?' she asked, once he'd thundered along the passage into the lounge.

‘Oh, driving Patrick mad, and breaking half the ornaments, no doubt. I know I should be supervising, but it's been a total madhouse here today. My parents came round earlier and stayed the entire morning, then Ben's sister popped in, and—'