Pumping Up Napoleon (7 page)

How did I get to be like this? I'll try to think.

I remember being about twelve and at school and doodling on the side of my rough book. Among the spirals and stars and swirls that look like ferns unfolding, the word HELP yells up from the margins, so loud I wonder someone doesn't hear it and come rushing to my aid. Underneath my long-sleeved blouse my wrists are scratched red-sore.

The teacher is moving down an aisle on the far side of the class. She walks up and down between the desks for the whole forty minutes, talking and waving the good conduct book, or bringing it down with a smack on someone's head. We are like white mice glued to our chairs. We quiver, but cannot run.

My parents are never in when I come home from school. But that's no reason to want to kill them; in fact I'm glad they aren't there.

The carpet in the kitchen is new. In front of the sink and cooker it is covered by a new strip of tough see-through plastic. When will it be time for the plastic to come off? Never.

I'd get a lot of sympathy (and the house) if my parents die in a hideous car crash. The hill we live on is very steep. But I don't do anything; I don't know how to do it without getting caught.

When I leave school I cheer up a bit, and even more when I leave home. In fact, I become so cheerful, people remark on it. My boss expects me to be more serious.

‘Hang on,' I say, and go out of his office and come in again, trying to look grave. But it's no good. The grin on my face is bigger than ever. ‘I can't help it,' I say, melting into laughter.

Everything makes me laugh these days. I'm wildly in love with my boss. It's a happy love, uncomplicated, my secret. I know I could get someone younger and better-looking but he's nice and secure and undemanding and the fact that he's older and uglier than my ‘standard' makes me feel thin and pretty and magnificently young.

I loved him then. But one day that love was used up; I longed to shed the useless weight of it, to shake him off. Is this how a murderer feels? One day loving, another day wanting to slice the no-longer-loved one out of your heart? Some people deserve to be eaten by tigers.

I don't feel right at all; I'm snarling. Even though I hold on to my outer expression, the face that's meant to put you at your ease, I'd frighten you if you looked deep into my eyes: I know I would. You want me to help you pretend the world is a nicer place? My little chats will make you think I care; I'll help you push back the darkness; all those awful things that happen. Don't worry, that can't happen here and now. Not to us. Squeeze your eyes shut and hang on; hang on tight to the merry-go-round.

So now I work somewhere else. It doesn't matter where; it isn't interesting work and neither are the people. I doodle on my telephone pad but I don't write ‘help' any more. People would think it strange.

At the end of the long day, when the others leave together, I'll go to a bar on my own and stand there at the counter, drinking, rubbing my wrists and pretending, or not bothering to pretend, that I'm meeting someone.

Anything to put off walking to the station, that moment when I'm waiting in the crowd for the train.

Harvest

Michael pulled up outside Vanessa's flat in a shining four-wheel drive.

‘Oh, my God!' said Vanessa, as she struggled to climb up into the passenger seat. ‘When did you get this?'

‘Well,' said Michael. ‘We
are
going to the country.'

‘We do have roads in Dorset, you know.'

She didn't say anything else for a while, which left him free to concentrate on getting out of London. Once they were on the M3, Vanessa said, ‘You don't have to spend money to impress my parents'.

‘I just want them to see that I'm taking this thing seriously.'

‘This
thing
?' said Vanessa.

Without taking his eyes off the road, Michael reached across and squeezed her hand. ‘Come on,' he said, ‘the you-and-me thing. I know how important your family are to you. I want them to like me. I want them to know that we're prepared to go down at weekends; and they can come up to us.'

She bowed her head and spoke through a blonde curtain. ‘Daddy doesn't much like London, but mummy might like to get away sometimes.'

Vanessa's mother had been an actress, her father a Commander in the Royal Navy; they were not rich, but somehow managed to live in a large house overlooking the sea. In Michael's mind's eye they lived a grainy black-and-white existence, somewhere between
Brief Encounter
and
The Cruel Sea
.

‘Had many girlfriends, Michael?' the Commander was saying, in Michael's head.

‘I won't deny I've lived the bachelor life.' He must try not to sound too defensive.

‘And what's so special about my daughter?'

How could he explain? Michael had not understood love before he met Vanessa. Love, and the way it made his old friends behave when it hit them, had seemed an odd kind of practical joke that some of them simply refused to acknowledge as such. One by one his bachelor friends had slipped into coupledom; some were sheepish about the way they changed, others shrugged it off. As far as Michael could see, love made them do things unnatural to their bachelor souls and he had enjoyed telling them so. But after Michael met Vanessa a crowded address book seemed suddenly worthless. He found himself saying that life had been ‘empty without her' – and meaning it.

All the way to Dorset Michael held a conversation in his head with Vanessa's father, rehearsing his responses until the Commander, satisfied at last, clapped him on the back and shook his hand, saying warmly, ‘You're a man after my own heart, Michael. I felt the same when I met Vanessa's mother. It was in London during the Blitz….'

‘Get ready!' said Vanessa, sitting up. Hours and miles had passed and they were now on the last stretch of trunk road before their descent into country lanes. ‘It's a sharp turn at the bottom of the next hill.'

Just as the view on their left opened out all the way to the sea, Vanessa said, ‘This is it!' Michael just managed a glimpse of green fields and dark woodland, church towers, clustered farms and the faraway shining water, before they plunged between the hedgerows of the Bride Valley.

In between directing him through lanes and villages towards the sea, Vanessa exclaimed over all the things she could see from her high seat in the four-by-four, her voice bright with excitement. ‘Nearly there now!' she cried, as they swung out onto the main coast road and climbed the first hill. At the top, they seemed to hang a moment; the western half of Lyme Bay opened out below them; large in the distance were the yellow-faced cliffs: the flat top of Golden Cap, the slope of Thorncombe Beacon – those sea-bitten, green-backed hills. Beyond these, Lyme Regis, banked up to face them on the coast, the long slope of Black Ven, and shadowy headlands, stealing away into Devon. Michael was about to impress Vanessa with his geographical knowledge, gleaned from studies of the Ordnance Survey map and several guidebooks, but Vanessa was leaning to the window and saying, ‘I can see the house!'

Down a pot-holed track between fields they lurched, towards a line of trees standing parallel to the long shingle bank below. Through thinning leaves Michael could see the outline of a big square white house. Now he had a view that encompassed the whole of Lyme Bay, with the Island of Portland away to the east like a gigantic long-tailed sea beast head-butting the mainland.

Vanessa wound down her window and in blew salt air and the smell of seaweed, grass and reeds, tough pasture strewn with sheep's droppings, damp and dirty wool, with an acrid top-note of smouldering leaves. A stoop-shouldered old man, prodding at a bonfire with a rake, looked up and stared at them as they passed. ‘I didn't know you had a gardener,' said Michael.

‘We don't,' said Vanessa, and she leaned out and called to the man, ‘Hello, Daddy!' as the four-wheel drive rolled past, its gleaming paint a shout in the muted landscape.

Vanessa's father raised a hand and began to walk towards the house. Michael drove round to the front and pulled up on the gravel. Now that he could see the house more clearly it appeared to be more grey than white, its render pockmarked and patchy. As soon as Michael had applied the handbrake, Vanessa jumped out and ran back to embrace her father. Michael busied himself getting the bags out of the car, but when Vanessa and her father, arms linked, came round the corner of the house, he went to meet them.

The Commander gave him a searching look and held out a grimy hand. Michael took it, making sure to use a firm and manly grip. ‘Steady on,' said the Commander, wincing. ‘Mind the arthritis.'

Michael dropped the hand at once, only then noticing the outsized knuckles and the way the fingers slanted, like thorn trees do before the wind along that coast. He began to splutter an apology but the Commander said, ‘That's our Vanessa. Always the same. Sink or swim.'

Just then an upstairs window opened and a voice fluted, ‘Vanessa darling!'

‘Mummy!' called Vanessa, and she darted into the house, Michael looked up just in time to see a plump woman in a flowery silk
peignoir
turning away from the window.

‘Good drive?' said the Commander, looking at him with narrowed eyes.

‘Oh, yes. Thanks,' said Michael. ‘What a fantastic place this is. Such stunning views.'

‘Glad you like it,' said the Commander. ‘Well, I'll see you at supper; best not to leave the bonfire unattended, even in this damp weather.' And he went, leaving Michael standing outside the house with the bags.

Michael picked up two of them and approached the wide front door. He was about to call out a hello, when a robust-looking red-cheeked woman with black hair and dark eyes appeared, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘You must be Michael,' she said. ‘I'm Mrs Brightwell. If you'd like to follow me I'll show you to your room.'

‘Oh, thank you,' said Michael. ‘I wonder where Vanessa's got to.'

‘I don't suppose you'll catch sight of her now till dinnertime. She'll be up with her mother.'

‘Shouldn't I go and say hello?'

‘Bless you, no. You'd better not. Her ladyship's not dressed for visitors and she's sure to keep Vanessa with her. Asking about you, I expect.' Mrs Brightwell gave a comfortable laugh. ‘You'll see them both at dinner.'

Her ladyship? Michael stopped at the threshold of the house and put down the bags. ‘Just a moment,' he said. Going back to the car he fetched three bottles of champagne. ‘To help celebrate – umm, Vanessa's mother's birthday.'

Mrs Brightwell said, ‘How lovely; we'll enjoy these I'm sure. I'll get them in the fridge just as soon as I've settled you in.' And she put the bottles down in the hallway and instructed him to leave Vanessa's things there too.

The house seemed pleasingly proportioned, its entrance hall spacious and its staircase wide. As Mrs Brightwell led him towards it, he looked around for clues: there was a hall table with an old leather dog lead on it and an empty silver tray that had not recently seen polish. At the bottom of the stairs was a large photograph of a man recognisable as a younger version of Commander Clifford, standing in shirtsleeves and cap on the deck of a submarine. Further up were photographs and then portraits of seafaring Cliffords of the past. Down the long corridor Michael felt he was being weighed up by the ancestors, a succession of men in wigs and white stockings, and ladies in pink satin dresses, with black dogs at their feet and square-rigged ships on the horizon.

‘You're in the Blue Room,' said Mrs Brightwell, opening the door. Indeed it was blue, from coverlet to walls, though the carpet was badly faded and even threadbare in places.

In his room there were no portraits, only more pictures of sailing ships and a large print of the ‘Raft of the Medusa', so placed as to appear to be heading out of the window and towards the open sea.

Michael put away his things, then lay down for a while, listening to the sound of waves booming on the shingle bank, until Vanessa came and knocked on the door. ‘Why are you hiding up here?' she said. She smiled at him, then went to the window to look out. ‘You have one of the best views,' she said. ‘We only put important people in this room.' Michael got up and went to her, put his arms around her and kissed her. She leaned her head against him and he breathed in the scent of her hair.

‘Come on,' said Vanessa, taking his hand. ‘We mustn't keep them waiting.'

‘Bubbles, what a treat.' Vanessa's mother sipped her champagne, raised her glass and looked at him with dark eyes. ‘Thank you, Michael.' In her grey silk she looked like a seal with breasts.

He smiled and raised his glass. ‘Happy birthday, Mrs Clifford.'

‘Oh do call me Doatie,' said Vanessa's mother.

Doatie, thought Michael. Must I? Vanessa's father was staring at him again. What should he call him? Sir? Commander? Daddy? No, definitely not Daddy.

Vanessa smiled encouragement and he wanted to smile back and stretch out his foot under the table in search of hers.