Authors: Liz Jensen

Egg Dancing (35 page)

BOOK: Egg Dancing

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So here we all are now, the night before Christmas: Ma, Linda, Keith, Gregory, Ishmael, Billy, and me. We’re sitting around in the living-room. Despite the new peach-coloured carpet, I reckon you can still see the dark patch where the mustard and cress grew.

Gregory is stiff and polite with my guests. He sits in a high-backed chair, and avoids eye contact. Earlier he showed us his moderately interesting ammonite collection, a ring-binder containing photocopied photographs and diagrams of fossils found in Lyme Regis by other people. He hasn’t changed much. That luncheon meat look is still there.

We’ve had our mini-sausages on sticks and our sparkling wine. There were quails’ eggs, too, but I’d overcooked them, of course, and Ma had spat one out half-chewed, theatrically, into Linda’s ashtray.

‘It’s hard as a wee gel capsule,’ she’d complained. ‘The kind you stick up your arse.’

Of course no one except Billy would touch them after that. Ma has a way of polluting things.

Now Linda wants to watch
Holy Hour Special
. I do, too, but I’m worried about what I might see. The Katie-Koo thing: it still haunts my mind. There’s been much speculation in the press about the Reverend Carmichael’s ‘love-child’, but he’s managed to keep her out of public view by cloistering her in his Northumberland ranch.

The show is to be a sort of Yuletide re-launch after the Easter disgrace. The pre-publicity for the show has indicated that the Reverend will be surprising us all again. Needless to say, he has paid his dues, asked the Lord to forgive him his sins, and is Born Again again.

‘He’s bound to say something about her if he’s re-launching himself,’ argues Linda. She’s clearly got over him: she’s crunching on a Love Heart. ‘How can he avoid it? Anyway, it’ll be part of the deal to pull in the ratings.’

Linda has admitted to me that the Katie-Koo period of her life is now a bit of a blur. The Carmichael bit, too. She has forgotten, but not forgiven.

The public, surveys show, has done the opposite. They’ll forgive him anything. Women, especially, will forgive. Pity the struggling and repentant single father. Blame the mystery slag mother who so cruelly dumped a child on him. Who seduced him in a weak moment. Who failed to use either modern birth control or old-fashioned self-restraint. Blame Linda.

The only one of us who doesn’t have mixed feelings about seeing the show is Gregory, of course. He loathes the Reverend more than he ever did.

‘You can like it or lump it here, sonny Jim,’ Ma tells Greg.

‘Can I offer anyone a cheese cracker?’ sighs my ex, trying to make out it’s his house we’re in, with
his
wife,
his
new loose covers,
his
friends,
his
new dado railing,
his
aubergine bidet,
his
sparkling wine. We ignore him.

‘Fancy a game of chess, anyone?’ asks Ishmael. ‘It’s supposed to be very Freudian – all about killing one’s father.’

‘We’ll kill him later, hen,’ says Ma. ‘Can’t you see we’re engrossed?’

Ishmael sighs, reaches for his embroidery bag, and pulls out the Rothko and a bodkin.

‘The devil finds work for idle hands,’ bitches Ma.

‘So what does that make your
mausoleum
, Mrs Sugden?’ ripostes Ishmael, but Ma pretends not to hear.

The music is thumping away; the Reverend Carmichael is looking jovial and serene; he is dressed as Joseph. Then the camera pulls out to reveal that he is surrounded by a whole nativity scene with real sheep and goats, and kneeling men dressed in shepherds’ costumes. There is even a medium-sized cow, chewing lasciviously on some straw.

There is no Mary; just a crib.

We hold our breath.

‘No!’ yells Linda suddenly. ‘He won’t have the fucking nerve!’

Gregory is looking puzzled; I signal to Linda to shut up and she valiantly restrains herself. The truth has gone no further than our family and we’re keeping it that way. As far as Greg’s concerned, the Perfect Baby never happened: Baby B was a ‘failure’, and Baby A, also a ‘failure’, was now a Trappist to boot. Gregory will never have any idea what really happened to his daughter.

Meanwhile, it transpires that the Reverend Carmichael does have the nerve. He reaches inside the crib and props up a cherubic, curly-haired baby on a golden cushion.

It’s weird. Katie-Koo looks scarcely any older than she did a year ago. A design fault, perhaps. She is angel-faced.

‘Rejoice!’ cries Carmichael, his voice shuddering with paternal pride. ‘For unto us a child is born!’

Linda groans, her eyes glassily fixed on the screen. And we all gaze in wonder and fear as the Perfect Baby sits up in her little cot, smiles benignly on Carmichael, the menagerie and the audience, and cries out in the tiny, tinkling voice of a wind-up toy, ‘Happy Christmas to you from God’s own Child! And a prosperous New Year to
Holy Hour
viewers everywhere!’

The studio audience gasps. What an extraordinary baby! Even Ishmael’s eyes change shape in astonishment as the dolly-child gets to her tiny feet. She is wearing a white lace nightie and a headband with a gold star that flashes through her dark curls.

Then, in a small, quavery, breathy voice, she begins to sing.

Today’s the day

The time is now

Let Jesus in

It’s
Holy Hour
!

I look at Gregory. His face is all twisted.

‘She’s perfect!’ he mutters. The tears are zig-zagging recklessly down his face. ‘A Perfect Baby!’

‘Almost a miracle, eh, Gregory,’ says Linda, who also seems to be choking on an emotion.

‘Looks like God won the race for perfection, sonny,’ comments Ma. ‘Who’s for guacamole?’

On television, they’re voting with their knees: members of the studio audience are descending into prayer posture, like a herd of resigned camels, before the miracle. For a ghastly moment I think Gregory is about to join them, but he grips the edge of his chair with white knuckles to stop himself. I’ve never actually seen him cry before.

Cry me a river.

Linda, Ma and I exchange a shaky triangular glance.

‘Well,’ declares Ma, sinking her chops into a pistachio-flavoured Turkish Delight. ‘That’s kakistocracy for you.’

Linda is wiping her nose on her sleeve and blinking back tears of what might be rage, nostalgia, envy, or a curious Linda-ish mixture of all three.

Now Katie-Koo is waving and blowing kisses. Perhaps she sees the same sort of future I do: the one I saw this morning in Lego.

‘Expect a new world,’ the Reverend is pronouncing, ‘and the Lord shall provide it.’

It’s then that Billy appears like a little security guard in the middle of the room, brandishing the remote control, and presses the Off button.

The TV corner is suddenly cast into darkness, and into the darkness floods that gorgeous and unfathomable feeling of joy that is surely to be mine from now on.

My castle is safe. There it stands, fast and miraculous and inviolate as an egg.

And yes: I’m more in charge of things than I ever was.

Acknowledgements

With warmest thanks to Polly Coles for her sharp critical eye and her friendship, and to Michel Coleman for his love and support.

A Note on the Author

Liz Jensen was born in Oxfordshire in 1959. She has worked in Britain and the Far East as a journalist and in France as a sculptor. She now lives in South London.
Egg Dancing
is her first novel.

This electronic edition published in 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 1995

This paperback edition published 1996

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is available from the British Library