Cupid's Dart (22 page)

It seemed to take for ever, that momentous journey to the Home, the journey that I made every week. I always felt nervous, but I had never before felt this powerful mixture of dread and excitement. It was one of those days when every slow driver in the county has decided to crawl to town, frightened of entering roundabouts, willing the traffic lights to turn red before they got to them. Old men with square heads and caps, tiny women dwarfed by their steering wheels, learner drivers on their second lesson, repair men in white vans who wanted to ensure that they only had time to do three calls in the day, they were all out that afternoon.

I pulled in under the chestnut tree in the vast car park, as the sun had returned and I didn't want the cake to sag in the heat. I couldn't take the cake in with me, because, if I did, I would have to eat a piece. I would have to go out for it when I left, having pretended that I had forgotten it.

I took the carrier bag in with me, in the hope that Mother would assume the cake was in it and not ask questions.

I had an irrational hope that she would have died just before I arrived to kill her, but what were the chances of that? She looked particularly hale that day.

'Hello, dear,' she said, and she said it quite warmly, which disappointed me. I hoped that she'd be in one of her really crabby moods. She'd be easier to kill. Please don't think, incidentally, that I was finding this easy.

We exchanged the usual passionless kiss, two flaccid cheeks connecting for a second.

'Is it warm out?'

'Very.'

'I thought so. All this horrid sun.'

My mother didn't like the heat.

'Were the roads busy?'

'Very.'

'I'm glad I don't drive any more.'

I would never have to endure another conversation like this. Never ever.

But then she said, 'I've been thinking.'

'Oh?'

'You get a lot of time for thinking in here.'

'Well if you'd go downstairs . . .'

'Mrs McAllister just sits in her chair and snores, and Mrs Purkiss eats with her mouth open. You can see all the food. It looks bad enough on the plate. Who wants to see it churning around all wet in an old woman's mouth? And Miss Furlong gives that silly smile of hers all day long. I tried it, Alan, for your sake. I couldn't stand it.'

'I didn't want you to do it for my sake. I wanted you to do it for your sake.'

'Well anyway I couldn't stand it.'

Silence followed.

'Come on then, Mother,' I said. 'What have you been thinking about? You said you'd been thinking.'

'I have.'

'Well, what have you been thinking about?'

It was like drawing teeth.

'Oh, this and that.'

'Oh, come on, Mother, you can't just say you've been thinking and leave it at that. You sounded as if you'd been thinking about something important.'

'I have. I've been thinking about your father.'

This was a surprise. She very rarely mentioned my father these days.

'What about him?'

'He was a good man, your father.'

'Of course he was. But?'

'What do you mean, "but"?'

'You were going to say he was a good man, but . . .'

'I wasn't. I won't hear a word against your father.'

'Of course not.'

'He was a good man. But . . .' She was choosing her words carefully, and this time I had the sense not to interrupt. '. . . he didn't understand women.'

I paused, and then said, 'In what way exactly?' very gently. I was aware that by chance my mother had chosen this very afternoon to unburden herself of something.

'He . . . didn't understand that we like to be told things.'

'What things?'

'Certain things.'

'Like?'

'Well, don't take this the wrong way, Alan, your father was a very kind man, but he never, not once ever, told me that he loved me.'

'Of course he loved you.'

'Yes, I know he loved me, but he never said it, and I wanted him to. Once would have been enough. He'd say, "Chin up, old girl" if he knew I wasn't happy, or "Well done, my girl" if I'd made him a nice meal. I mean, we were very happy, but . . . he wasn't what I would call a passionate man. We were very lucky to have you.'

'What?'

'Statistically, I mean.'

'That's a funny way of putting it, Mother.'

'Well, you know what I mean, and we weren't brought up to talk about such things. Besides, maths is part of your philosophy that you teach, isn't it?'

Of all the things a man doesn't want to hear from his mother, tales of her bad sex life must rank highly. Perhaps only tales of her good sex life would be worse.

'Anyway, that wasn't important in those days, or so we were led to believe, but it seems to have been important to the Bloomsbury Set and people like that: all sorts of things were going on that we knew nothing about in our suburbs until we read about them much later in the papers, and I must say I do feel a bit cheated. I think the way we were has a lot to do with the way you are.'

You have no idea of the way I am, Mother, not any more.

'You
have
been thinking.'

'You do when you get old. I haven't got very long to live, Alan. No, don't deny it.'

I wasn't going to.

'You do get to thinking in those circumstances. Your father . . . he never really noticed me, not really. He never noticed my clothes. I bought new hats and he just didn't see them. I had to say, "I've bought a new hat, Archie," and he'd say "Oh yes," and I'd say. "Do you like it?" and he'd say, "It's very nice." I had to drag it out of him, and I knew that he'd say it was very nice even if it wasn't. Then he'd say, "How much did it cost? Not that I'm worried," and I'd say "Forty pounds," when it was sixty but I didn't dare admit it, and he'd say, "Forty pounds! That seems steep. Not that it matters. We aren't paupers." Just once he was really upset by something I'd been thrilled to buy – a lovely skirt, a bit bold, I suppose – and he said, "You aren't coming out in
that,
are you?" '

'I'm sorry, Mother.'

'You don't need to sympathise. I don't need sympathy. We had a good life. It's just . . .'

'It could have been better.'

'I suppose you can say that about anybody's life.'

Then she said something that really did astonish me.

'Come and sit closer.'

I moved my chair up close to hers. She reached out and held my hand.

'Do I smell?' she asked shyly.

'What?'

'My breath. Does it smell?'

'No.'

'You'd tell me if it did?'

'Yes!'

'Margaret's does. It's very kind of her to come, but I dread it and she comes every month. Without fail. She's boring too. I'm very nice to her. I should get remission for good behaviour.'

'Mother!'

'Oh, I'm not complaining. I daresay I'd miss her if she didn't come, though I doubt it somehow. Alan?'

Her tone sent a shiver down my spine. It suggested that real confessions were on the way.

'What is it, Mother?'

'I've been a bad mother.'

'Mother!'

'No. I have. What it is, I needed your father to teach me how to love. It . . . it doesn't come naturally to me. I . . . but Alan, in my way, I . . .'

I waited. When it came it was little more than a whisper.

'I do love you.'

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. I just let the incredible words sink in.

'Do you love me?'

I had dreaded the question. I respected her too much at that moment to just say 'Yes.' It was almost as if I suddenly realised that I loved my lonely old mum – I longed to call her 'Mum' – too much to give her the easy answer that I loved her.

'You haven't given me a lot of chance to love you, Mother.'

I was sweating, from emotion as well as from the heat in that stifling room, with its faint smell of the commode.

She squeezed my hand. I squeezed hers.

'It's just that . . .' she began.

'Just that?' I prompted.

'Just that . . . don't take this the wrong way, Alan, but I can't help wondering, is it our fault, is it my fault, that you're the way you are?'

'What way am I, Mother?'

'You know.'

'I know, Mother, but you don't.'

Then, as naturally as if I was discussing the weather, I told her the story of Ange, more concisely than I've told it to you, but just as honestly. I spared myself no ridicule. I didn't skate over my moments of naïvety. I told her the lot, and she listened, and squeezed my hand with her frail, bony, veiny one, and ran her elderly fingers across the back of mine. Towards the end of my tale the tea arrived, but I carried on and we drank our tea without tasting it, and she didn't even notice that I hadn't brought out a cake.

There were all sorts of things that she might have said when I had finished. She took quite a long time before she said anything, and when she did speak what she said was a great surprise to me.

She said, 'I think I might have liked her.'

My mother and I had travelled a long way in an hour and a half. I stood up, and she stood up, and we just stood there in each other's arms for . . . oh, maybe three or four minutes. Three or four minutes in which we started to make up for fifty-five years of missed opportunities.

Then we continued to drink our tea, which had grown rather cold, and suddenly she remembered that there ought to have been cake.

'No cake today?' she asked.

'No. No cake today.'

'You naughty boy. You naughty, naughty boy.'

I don't know how I managed to drive back to my garage. I was quaking. I couldn't believe what a narrow escape I'd had.

I suppose that sounds rather egotistical. After all, my mother had had an even narrower escape.

I set off back to my rooms, carrying the wretched cake. I mean, I couldn't just leave it in the car. If the garage was broken into, and the car stolen, and the burglar died, his family would sue. That's the kind of society we live in. It wasn't easy to carry the cake, and I wished that I hadn't left the empty bag at my mother's. I had to balance the blessed thing on one hand. If I pressed on it my fingers would sink into it, and might pick up some of the poison.

The cake looked beautiful and very inviting. A man whose face I vaguely recognised said, 'Hello, Alan, that looks good. I suppose a slice is out of the question.' I was embarrassed by the damned thing, but I didn't dare dump it in a refuse bin. Oxford has its share of tramps. I didn't fancy what would have amounted to a blind mercy killing.

I had to pass a baker's shop on my way to the college. The owner was standing at the door, taking a snatch of sunshine at a quiet moment, like an old dog. He looked at the cake and gave a wolf-whistle of admiration. I had never heard a cake get a wolf-whistle before, and it gave me an idea.

'I wonder if I could have a bag for this?' I asked.

'I'd be proud to let people think it was mine,' he said.

I felt better with the cake hidden from view, but not much. I felt faint. My legs felt as if they were made of lead. I had to sit down in the doorway of a dental surgery. A mother hurried her young child past me as fast as possible.

I couldn't believe it. A policeman was approaching. They are never around when you need them, but when they're the last thing you need, up they pop.

'I'm not drunk or drugged, officer. I just felt faint. It's the heat. I'm a philosophy don.'

'Have you any means of identification, sir?'

I showed him my driving licence, which was all that I had. It did not state that I was a philosophy don, and I wasn't sure that it satisfied him, because he went on to say, somewhat officiously, 'May I ask you what are the contents of your bag?'

'You may.'

'I beg your pardon, sir?'

'You asked if you might ask me what the contents of my bag are. You may. You are very welcome to.'

'Don't you get funny with me, sunshine,' he said.

'I'm being deliberately pedantic,' I said. 'If that doesn't prove that I'm a philosophy don, nothing will.'

I handed him the bag.

'It's a chocolate sponge,' I said. 'It's not poisoned.'

He smiled wearily, gave the cake a cursory examination, and handed the bag back to me.

'Please try to move on,' he said.

He helped me to my feet. My legs no longer felt like lead. They felt insubstantial, unreal, mirages. I moved them carefully, having no confidence that they would support me, but they did.

'I'll be all right now, officer,' I said. 'Thank you.'

I walked away from him as quickly as I could. I had not enjoyed being so close to him. I was, after all, a man who had intended to poison his mother. I was unfit to live.

I don't know how I got to my rooms. I felt that I was in one of those anxiety dreams in which one gets no nearer to one's destination, however fast one walks.

At last I was there. I took the cake out of the bag. I realised that I had no idea how to dispose of it. Even if I took it to the dump, someone might rescue it and eat it. At best, several gulls would die.

I put it on a plate, and sat it on my little kitchen table. It looked so good.

Of course. The obvious way to dispose of it was to eat it. Why hadn't I thought of that before? I was certain that I had lost Ange. I had nothing left to live for, and I didn't deserve to live. I had intended to kill my mother, that lovely, unhappy, unfulfilled woman whose whole life had been a disappointment, and whom I had misjudged so monstrously in my egotism.

I cut myself a slice. I was shaking. It looked so delicious. It turned out that I was good at baking after all.

I put the slice of cake on a plate. I took the plate in my hands.

I didn't want to die.

I put the plate down.

I didn't want to die, but I wanted not to live any more.

I picked up the plate.

My mother needed me. She
needed
me! I had to go on living.

I put the plate down again. I decided to put it in the bottom of my rubbish bin, but, before I could do so, the doorbell rang.

My doorbell was ringing.

My doorbell never rang.

I wouldn't answer.

It might be the police. 'A colleague has reported that you had a suspicious cake in a bag. We have reason to believe that it may be poisoned. You have been reported as buying weed killer in garden centres all over Oxfordshire.'

The bell rang again, insistently.

I wouldn't answer.

Ange! It might be Ange! It must be Ange! Nobody else ever called, except my students, and it hadn't been a student's knock. She had realised how much she loved me, how she couldn't live without me. This was my reward for not killing my mother.

'Coming'

I unlocked the door, which was an elaborate process, and even more elaborate than usual on this occasion, because in my excitement I was clumsy.

To expect to see one's beloved and be disappointed, that is cruel – but to expect to see one's beloved and find oneself staring into the bland, greedy, anxious, ambitious face of young Mallard, that was almost too much to bear.

'I wonder if I could come in, Alan?' he asked. 'I need your advice.'

I was flattered. Even at that moment of emotional turmoil I was flattered. Very few people have ever asked me for my advice.

'Come in,' I said.

The social conventions are very strong, and I heard myself offering him a cup of tea.

'That would be lovely,' he exaggerated.

I went into my little kitchen and immediately saw the cake. I was about to pick it up when I realised that he had followed me.

I put the kettle on and ignored the cake. I was irritated that he had followed me into the kitchen and that he was standing so close to me. I believe this is called crowding someone, though whether one person can become a crowd is extremely dubious. Perhaps 'invading my space' describes it better. I would have felt that young Mallard was invading my space if we were sitting on opposite sides of the Albert Hall, so this was well nigh intolerable.

'You've probably heard that I made a bit of a cock-up of the Ferdinand Brinsley,' he said.

The gas wouldn't light.

'Let me do it,' he said.

The bloody thing lit for him. It would. I had never liked it.

'I did hear that it didn't go down so well,' I said. 'I was really sorry.'

When one hates someone, one has to tell a lot of lies, and each lie makes one hate them more. It really is a vicious circle.

'It was my first big lecture.'

'Well, at least you've broken your duck, Mallard,' I said. It was said for Ange, absent though she was.

'Well, there is that,' he said, missing the humour, if you can call it that, 'but frankly, Alan, I feel that I've lost my way. I'd welcome your advice.'

'Why me?'

'Well, you're experienced. You have a reputation. The world is agog for your book on Germanic philosophy.'

'Agog? Surely not?'

'In some quarters. Everyone says that you have a very fine mind but have not yet produced that definitive work. You've been fourteen years on it, I'm told. It's going to be a great event, Alan. So I wondered if I could . . . .this is a frightful imposition . . . ask you to read some of my stuff and help me, put me on the right road.'

'Well . . .'

This was the last thing I wanted. It was one more reason to eat that cake. I recalled a phrase that Lawrence used about him when he wanted to puncture Jane's delicacy.

'A mallard up shit creek without a paddle,' I said. 'That's serious. I don't know. I really don't know. I am rather busy.'

I had finished making the tea. I took the tray into my sitting room. It was a very ordinary college scene, two dons having tea in a book-lined room. Ordinary except for that bloody cake, sitting there on the kitchen table, staring at me even when I wasn't in the room, following me about.

'Aren't you going to offer me a slice of that delicious-looking cake I saw in your kitchen?' asked young Mallard.

He really did look so young, much younger than his thirty years. I realised that he was greedy too. His eyes glinted with lust for cake.

'No,' I said. 'I'm not.'

He went pink He looked even younger when he was pink.

'Oh?' he said. 'May I ask why not?'

'Yes, you may.'

I wasn't just being pedantic. I was wondering rather furiously what I could possibly say.

'Oh God,' he said. 'I forgot you're known for your pedantry. Why are you not offering me a slice of cake?'

I couldn't say, 'Because it's poisoned.' I said, 'Because I'm fifty-five and you're thirty. Because you're young. Because you're greedy. Because you're a mallard that wanted to fly before he could swim. Because I hate you.'

'Well!' he said. 'Well!' He had gone bright red. 'I knew it was a mistake. I knew you were a bastard.'

He walked out of my rooms and tried to slam the door behind him, but the heavy doors on those old staircases don't slam.

I felt sorry for him at that moment. The moment I had told him that I hated him, I didn't hate him any more. Hate is like that. But what else could I have done? I couldn't kill him, a young man with most of his life before him. I couldn't have sat there and watched him killing himself. Or taken a slice too, so that we died together. Mystery of Sponge Dons' Deaths. That couldn't happen.

When he had gone I started to shake. I shoved the cake into the bottom of my rubbish bag, and took the bag out to my dustbin, my very own dustbin marked 'Calcutt'.

Such was my state that, the moment I had removed the cake, I wanted to eat it. Such was my confusion that I didn't go for it, because I felt that it might be unsafe to eat having been in the bin. When I realised this I felt quite disgusted with myself for my lack of mental clarity. How could I ever have had any pretence to writing a great book on philosophy?

I knew what I had to do. I had to rid myself of an intolerable burden – my pretension, my delusion, my career, my book.

You will be amazed that I had only one copy, but I had written it in longhand. My study on that stone staircase in that stone building was as fire-proof as any room could ever be, nobody steals from the studies of dons, nobody would want to steal my book even if they did, and I would have all the time in the world to have a copy made when I had finished it.

For several years now I have possessed a shredder, which cuts documents in two different directions so that it's impossible for them to be pieced together. I use it for things I intend to throw away – financial documents, bank statements, early drafts of articles for magazines.

I fetched 'Germanic Thought from Kant to Wittgenstein' from my desk and I began to shred it. I cried a bit as I did it, but once or twice I laughed, with a laugh that was probably not entirely sane. It was exhilarating, though, even on that desperate night, to get rid of all this unoriginal, tedious nonsense on which I had wasted the last fourteen years of what I exaggeratedly refer to as my life. Germanic. I'd had to put that, instead of German, because bloody Wittgenstein had gone and been born Austrian, ruining my title, the inconsiderate bastard.

It took a long time, because I kept having to empty the shredder. The pile of tiny pieces of paper grew larger and larger all around me. Eventually it got ridiculous and I went to a cupboard where I keep a large roll of black bags – I am a cautious man. I stock everything in bulk. I have three huge bottles of washing up liquid – and I started to shove the shredded remains of my life's work into the bags.

I went to bed just after five thirty, feeling desperate, yet
also liberated. I felt angrily light-headed, anxiously relieved and utterly
exhausted.

I woke suddenly to the realisation that I had almost killed my mother, which, curiously, seemed much more wicked now that I hadn't done it. It was a glorious morning of high summer, utterly incongruous. As I walked to fetch the Mem Saab, Oxford was full of the delicious scent of new-mown grass. I drove along the Abingdon Road to the rubbish dump, or the Recycling Centre, as it is called in these enlightened days.

The skips were huddled in the centre of the dump like carts in a Western shoot-out. I drove around the outside of the group, noting the signs on them. Rubble. Fridges and Freezers. Bikes. Soft Plastics. Textiles. Newspapers and Magazines. Landfill. Green Waste. Bric-a-brac. Cardboard. Glass.

I found myself back at the starting point and started a second circuit.

I knew that my book was rubbish, but I didn't know what kind of rubbish it was.

I parked under some scruffy trees, which were whispering gently in the wind as if discussing my predicament, and entered a dirty Portakabin. An immense man in an oily vest sat at a desk.

'Excuse me,' I said.

'Yes?' he said without looking up.

'Erm . . .' I began, feeling very foolish. 'I'm throwing away a lot of shredded paper, but it's wrapped in black bags and I'm not quite sure where I should put it.'

'Landfill,' he said, and again he didn't look up.

Landfill! I ask you. Nobody could say that I'm conceited about my work, but . . . landfill. Fourteen years of work.

I had passed the Landfill skip, which added to my anger. Back in my car, I roared off on my third lap, Schumacher at last. I screamed to a halt, and suddenly my anger left me.

I began to pitch my black bags into the Landfill skip. The second one caught on something sharp as it fell, and it burst. At that very moment a brief, sharp gust of wind blew up, as it sometimes does on days which may be thundery later. The gust caught the shredded contents of the black bag as they spilled out, and sent them spiralling up into a hazy sky whose blue was as pale as Ange's eyes, and then the wind died as suddenly as it had risen, and a snow shower of thoughts drifted down on to Landfill, and Green Waste, and Soft Plastics.