Perfectly Pure and Good (5 page)

He slouched the half mile back into what he thought of as a town.

A fly buzzed at the window. The room was full of half-read books, usually less than half.

Edward Pardoe pretended he had read them all, so that he could quote the odd bit of poetry or drama and dazzle the hayseeds with whom his superior artistic tendencies were forced to slum.

At his feet was a painting of Joanna. Edward read from his pocket book of Browning.

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive .. .

She didn't. His sister's face looked flat and dead, a bad piece of chocolate-box art. Edward threw the book away, kicked the painting under the bed and turned to the doll's house.

Ènter the dreamers,' he murmured, and they obeyed. Inside the stage set on which they performed, each tiny wooden figure could only bend and gesture in strict response to his own fingers. They could sit on chairs with legs crossed, lounge on beds, raise their arms, look as if they were running for their lives. He often played with the doll's house he had made. Other grown-up boys of twenty-two played with steam trains or computer games, depending upon the early taste of their fathers, but Edward was different. He was like the God of Eden who could never quite leave his creatures alone.

Òh Mummee, Mummee,' he whined, as a little figure held in his hand sat in a sulk with her ballerina skirt sticking straight to expose a wooden crotch and miniature sexless limbs. 'Oh Mummee, I've got a headache and my dress is RUINED!'

`Shut up,' Edward replied. The little figure lay down on her back, knees apart. 'You be careful, Jo,' Edward murmured again.

Crouched over the doll's house, he concentrated on the mummy puppet on a sofa, decked out with ribbons and looking like a dead tin general ready for a funeral. At the dining table, sat the tiny figure of Julian, coated in a little tweed suit. Joanna had made that in the days when she humoured him more. Real men don't sew, she had told him. They may create houses, but they don't sew. Edward had always wondered why not.

Òh God!' The genuine Joanna, too tall, too broad and shockingly blonde, exploded into the room. 'What are you doing, Ed? It's too hot to be in here.'

`Go away, Jo. Leave me alone.'

`You should have locked the door if you wanted peace.'

He stood with his back to the doll's house, his wiry frame too small to hide his preoccupation, his face unable to disguise his pleasure in seeing her.

`Playing!' Joanna said, contemptuous but nervous. 'Playing happy families, I suppose. You'd be better off painting. Why don't you grow up?'

That was Edward's problem. He refused to grow up. Wanted to be king of the castle without doing anything to earn the crown, his father had said scornfully. Joanna always felt slightly guilty about the disparity between their father's treatment of his second son and only daughter.

Edward could never do anything right. She could do nothing wrong.

`What?' he jeered. 'Grow up like you? Progress to the amusement arcade? Very sophisticated.

Completely mature.'

Joanna was not in the mood to take offence. Edward's teasing lacked any real force, unlike his elder brother Julian, who could make her weep with a mere glance. She flung herself on the bed, began chewing a length of her blond hair, twitchy and insecure as ever.

Òh big brother, I'm so miserable. Do you know, I could feel him trembling when he held my hand? Now he avoids me. Weeks, not a word. What did I do? Am I too fat? I want to die.'

'Of course it isn't anything to do with the way you look. I've told you why, how many times?'

They both knew the subject of Joanna's religious fervour. The conversation was stale, but it was the only one which would have tempted her into his room. Edward shook his head. The room was full of sighing. He moved to the window through which the sun streamed, leaned on the sill, looked at the view he had examined a million times before.

The front garden led down to the narrow road; beyond that, flat land spread out in a brown plain until the sun caught a yellow spit of sand. To the left was the village and beyond that he could just see the ground sloping up into gentle, pine-clad dunes. On the stillest of nights, the sea was audible; by day, never more than a ribbon flecked with white. The view swam before his eyes in the shimmering heat. In his mind's eye, he planted exotic shrubs into the flatness, ripened the sea lavender which would change the dun colours into purple during August, included a bit of yellow corn and a few dappled deer, added alien palm trees. An artistic eye could always create such an improvement.

It was so much easier to amend the landscape than it was to acquire the skill to portray it in paint.

He had tried to learn, but like everything he did, the discipline defeated him. He blamed the teachers. Blaming others for his own laziness was Edward's first and last resort. Silly old farts.

`What gives?' said Joanna, peevishly, changing the subject in deference to his indifference, still chewing her hair like a little girl. He liked her like that.

`You're home early. Don't tell me you've got the sack again.'

Another sigh. Edward had turned back to his doll's house, about to replace the dolls, but the gust of his impatient breathing knocked over the sofa on which Mother sat and sent her tumbling to the floor. She lay with her head in the fireplace.

'No, not yet. I didn't have much to do today, honestly.' He shuddered and Joanna shrugged in sympathy.

Àll right, don't sound so defensive. You know what I think? I think the idea of you being an estate agent is ridiculous. There, I've said it and that's all I'll say. Anyway, since you're here, I could do with a bit of help.' She was lying on the bed with her arms folded behind her head, her bare feet leaving dirty marks on the coverlet.

It was this last detail, along with her bitten nails, which reminded him that the languid attitude was not one of a willing courtesan in a painting, but the artless, unselfconscious sprawl of a teenager. 'I need help,' she continued, 'because of this awful solicitor woman coming to stay in the cottage. Do you think you could clear up some of your fishing tackle? It does get in the way in the kitchen. And the hall, and the dining room. I suppose supper ought to be better than usual.'

Ìt's always good,' Edward said gently. 'And often marvellous.' She flushed, the pleasure quickly hidden by a flick of the hand across her pink face.

Òh, pooh. Not what Julian says. He says if you really want to cook, go away and learn how. Why does he want us both to go away?'

`You know perfectly well,' Edward said gently. 'Neither of us can, can we? Julian wants to grab everything and shove Ma in some horrible home the day after we leave. How many times must I tell you?' He lightened the sombre tone which always caught her attention.

'Anyway the cooking does a lot for me. You could even make me fat.' Jo grinned at him, threw a cushion from the bed towards his head.

He caught it, threw it back, growling; she seized it again and hurled it harder. Edward let it drop, then went into his King Kong mode, lurching towards her with legs splayed and arms raised with the elbows above his shoulders, fingers twitching. Jo behaved like a maiden waiting for a dragon, wringing her hands and shrieking, 'OH! Oh! oh!' until he came closer and there was a hint of real fear in her laughter. Edward dropped the pose.

`You don't take me seriously,' he said. 'No-one does. Oh dearie, dearie me. I'll never get to eat a virgin.'

`Sturgeon, maybe,' said his sister, leaping off the bed noisily, shaking out her skirt The waistband was loose round her small waist, the skirt itself extra voluminous, old-fashioned, flounced and girlish to hide the wide hips she detested. If only, Edward thought, I were larger all over .. .

Joanna also detested her white skin, her cheeks currently blooming into pink as they always did in response to the slightest emotion or exertion. Edward frightened her sometimes.

He always took a joke too far.

Ànd of course I take you seriously,' she added carelessly, retreating. 'Though maybe not as a maiden-snatcher. Oh, I wish someone would snatch me. Listen, do you think Julian will lay on wine for dinner? In deference to the Law amongst us?' Julian, tyrant, despot, unfair critic and spoiler of everything.

Ì expect so,' Edward murmured, suddenly depressed. 'Provided we undertake to keep it away from Ma.'

Òh yes. Easier said than done.' Both lapsed into silence. Edward moved back to the doll's house, where he replaced the little figure he had blown off the sofa. He felt Jo bending beside him to look into the room with the same old fascination she found so easy to scorn and he so quick to rekindle. At moments like these, they could have been the same childish age instead of he four years her senior. He wanted to pull her closer. The effort to restrain himself was almost too much: he could feel her breath, the babyish talcum powder smell of her and it made him want to faint. His fingers itched to feel the warm patch at the back of her neck.

There was a sound from the road which separated the summer garden from the channels beyond. It was a tinkling parody of Big Ben chimes on the hour, Da dah, dah da, dah da, da dah, garish and eerie. The ice-cream van, calling to Joanna like the music of the spheres.

Òh no!' she wailed. 'It's him! And I look so awful!'

Edward clenched his fists. The door slammed, the room shuddered and everything in the doll's house fell over. Edward peered inside and took the ballerina figure and the small doll dressed like an artist with a smock and placed them with their arms around each other on the master bed of the biggest room upstairs. Then he threw a cloth across the whole construction as if he was silencing a parrot in a cage and took up a station behind the window, out of sight.

The ice-cream van drove down the drive, where weeds had almost overtaken the remnants of gravel and the lawn, where a sheep grazed, somehow expanded into the grassy flower-beds. Mist was beginning to roll in from the sea, warm and wet, promising oblivion. He watched as the ice-cream van stopped below, still tinkling, shut his eyes, tried to imagine the sound of the distant waves, failed.

Please don't run, Jo, please don't. He could not abide to witness her humiliation or watch her bitten nails pushing through the blond hair; could not bear to see her preen the way she never had for him. He clenched his fist. 'Why is it I never get what I want?' he murmured petulantly. 'Things will change, Dad, just you wait and see.'

As the van drew to a halt, with its monstrous bells still ringing to the faithful, a figure emerged from the front door of the house with a joyful scream. Edward closed his eyes again in the instant he recognized that high-pitched shrieking and the jumble of excited words which followed so harsh on his ears. He looked, without amusement, as a plump figure banged on the side of the van, yelling, 'Hallo, hallo oh, goodbye, darling thing, are you being good today?'

The van stopped, lurched forwards a few yards, part of an act. The bright little figure ran after it, whooping with laughter. Edward relaxed. At least this little fool wasn't Joanna. Only his own darling mother, sweetly dotty and harmlessly senile. He looked down at her with more indifference than contempt. As soon as he could manage it, she was going to live in a zoo. If not a zoo, at least behind bars, and a grave would be best of all.

Joanna, money, this house to pull down and this landscape to alter. If only. He wanted never to work, and to go on as he had so far, in the careful cultivation of an image of himself as a cunning player of games and a deeply interesting, deeply unpleasant young man. Oh, yes, and maybe a better fisherman than his father. Nothing else mattered.

Everyone mattered too much.

`Nice evening in store, Doctor?'

`No,' said Julian Pardoe, writing the prescription as he spoke. Ì very much doubt it.'

`Why's that, then? Lovely big house, yours. So I'm told. People says.'

Àh, the word of authority. People says. Lovely house. You should try living in it. You should try coping with leaks and delinquents of all ages. You should try . . .' He stopped, not embarrassed, but ashamed for listening to his own voice rising into a petulant yell. Miss Gloomer, obdurate spinster, eighty years old, chronically and courageously ill, sat across the desk in his surgery, knowing her manners, while he forgot his. Her face was a map of pain, patience and fortitude.

She managed to sit in her chair without trembling only because of the stick with the ornamental duck's head she clasped with both hands pressed into the top while the ferrule was digging a hole in his carpet, absorbing the constant trembling of her limbs. I'd be so much better, Julian thought, if I talked to them more, the way I used to, but I can't bear it. Women of virtue like this are the worst, so patient and kind they take a piece of you. I've nothing to give them, even when I like them as much as this, I can't be patient. He turned the bark into a laugh and finished the prescription. `Mustn't complain, mustn't complain,' he said, testily.

`Why not?' she said surprisingly. 'It's allowed. We all got problems. Perhaps you should try living alone. You've been the same since your father passed away. There was a time when you had a kind word for everyone. I suppose they call it stress.' Snatching the prescription quickly to avoid more than a split-second release of the stick, she was on her way to the door. Oh Lord, he thought, I should be helping her, instead of sitting here like an inconsiderate dummy.

In his own confusion and her rumbling movements, he still recognized something horribly astute.

Ì appreciate it's very hard living alone, Miss Gloomer . . he began to say, trying to make amends with a particle of conversation. She stopped dead and cackled.

`Don't you believe it. Only thing I ever got right. Even if it is frightening, sometimes.'

Ì'll probably see you later.'

`No need. Only if it suits you.'

This time his smile was right from the eyes. He heard the stick guide her down the corridor and waited before pressing the bell. Living alone seemed like a vision of heaven and he would appreciate it now if the next patient was a hooligan tourist deserving of rudeness. 'Next!' he yelled, when the bell brought no response. Nurse popped into the room, smiling, her endless cheerfulness like sand in a graze.