Provender Gleed (5 page)

All the same, if I didn't have these thoughts and feelings, these doubts - this urge to somehow make amends - I would consider myself less than human.

What I have yet to establish is how to go about

The sudden throat-clearing shocked Provender out of his skin.

'Mother!' he yelped, crossly. 'For God's sake! How long have you been standing there?'

'Not long,' said Cynthia.

'Christ!' Provender rapidly tapped out a sequence of keystrokes, saving the journal entry and then blanking the file from the screen. 'A man's entitled to some privacy, you know.'

'Not when there's a party going on that he should be at.' Cynthia strode into the room. Glancing through a doorway to her right she saw Provender's bed. His costume was laid out on it, untouched, exactly as she herself had left it that afternoon. Provender was still in his day clothes - open-necked shirt, corduroy trousers, brogues. 'And you're not even dressed. Really, Prov, this isn't good enough.'

'Um, what time is it?'

'Gone nine. You promised me. You promised me you wouldn't be late.'

'I ... lost track of time.'

'I don't care. A promise is a promise. I'm very disappointed.'

Provender tried to look as if her disappointment did not mean anything to him. 'It's just a stupid party.'

Cynthia tried to look as if she did not resent her summer ball being described as stupid. 'In that case, then surely it needs someone like you to come along and raise the intellectual tone.'

'Ooh, nice going there, Mum. Cunning piece of psychology.'

'Yes, I thought so.'

'And just how many nice young ladies are going to be paraded in front of me when I get out there?'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Come on. Two? Three?'

'It's possible I may have a couple of people I'd like you to meet.'

'Female people?'

'Well, if you must be so gender-specific - yes.'

'Mum.' Provender reached down and switched the videotyper off. 'You're a modern woman, wouldn't you say? Emancipated. Liberated. Doesn't this whole finding-Provender-a-wife malarkey strike you as just a bit, you know, anachronistic? Not to mention chauvinistic. At the very least, shouldn't I be left to do it myself, in my own time? You know, hunt my own fiancée fodder?'

Cynthia shrugged and nodded. 'I can't disagree, it
is
an anachronism. But it's also tradition, and Families are nothing if not traditional. Tradition is our bedrock. It's what people like about us. Bloodline. Take away the money, and that's the main source of public fascination: bloodline. I'm afraid it's your responsibility to be a part of that, and it's
my
responsibility to make sure you discharge
your
responsibility, and that's an end of it. Believe me, I'd happily let you, as you so charmingly put it, "hunt your own fiancée fodder", if I thought there was the slightest chance of it happening. I would, I'd step aside and leave you to it like a shot. But since you don't seem able to even get up off your backside and start looking, I've no choice but to get all matchmaker on you. I'm sorry you find it all so irksome, but - Well, no, I'm not sorry at all. It's just tough
mierda
.'

Provender, in spite of himself, smiled. His mother no longer believed, as she used to, that it was all right to swear in front of her children as long as she stuck to her native Spanish. However, the habit had become so ingrained that she continued to do it even now, when they understood perfectly well what she was saying. Not only that but, instead of preserving her children's innocence, she had managed instead to teach them a second set of obscenities to go along with the Anglo-Saxon ones they had picked up anyway from their schoolmates and peers. They were now, thanks to her, doubly proficient at swearing - expletive-bilingual.

'
Mierda
,
madre
?' Provender said.

'Oh, don't start.'

'Wherefore this Iberian invective?'

'I mean it. Stop.'

'This Castilian castigation?'

'Stop it now. Put your costume on. Come to the party. Do as I say.'

'This --'

'Provender!'

Her eyes flashed with pure exasperation. Anger would surely follow if Provender wasn't careful, and his mother's temper, when aroused, could be fearsome. It was the slumbering tiger you tiptoed around.

'OK, I'll come, I'll come,' he said.

'Good. Thank you.'

Cynthia crossed over to the row of windows that occupied all of one wall, giving access to a balcony. She rolled one of the windows open, to let in some air. The main room of Provender's suite was the size of a tennis court but even with all that space it could start to smell musty and stifling if he spent too much time there. A breeze wafted in around her ankles, bringing with it the scent and sound of waterfalls. There was a cascade directly below the balcony, a sequence of sluices and rock-pools that decanted into a stream and thence to a forest-fringed lake. Above the rushing water the night air thrilled with insects and misty spray.

Turning, she said, 'Do you need a hand getting your outfit on?'

'Twenty-four, Mother,' Provender replied, mock-wearily.

'I'll wait out in the corridor then.'

'Do that.'

'Five minutes.'

'
Fine
.'

6

Five minutes later, mother and son were making their way through the house. Ten minutes after that, they were approaching Venice.

By then Provender was already regretting his choice of costume. He had elected to go as the Medico from the Commedia dell'Arte, a kind of private joke since the character's look was derived from the outfits worn by real Renaissance doctors during times of plague. It amused Provender to think of himself at the ball as the one healthy individual among a batch of the diseased.

However, he was in a long black linen cape, which was hot and itchy, with a flat broad-brimmed hat, also hot and itchy, and worst of all was the mask, with its elongated beaklike nose and small round spectacles perched in front of the eyeholes. Navigating in this was phenomenally difficult. Wherever Provender looked, the nose was always in the way, obscuring a significant portion of his field of vision. He cursed himself for not having tried the mask on beforehand and wondered at what point he would be able to dispense with it - at what point he would feel his ironic statement had been sufficiently made.

On the plus side, he was equipped with a baton-like stick, like the ones the Medico (and the real Renaissance doctors) carried in order to be able to remove patients' garments from a safe distance. Even if no one 'got' Provender's costume, there was always the option of whacking partygoers around the head with the stick to show them what he thought of them. No, not really. But he didn't doubt that he would at some point tonight be sorely tempted.

First to greet him on the Piazza San Marco was Uncle Fort, several sheets to the wind by now. Rocking unsteadily, Fort regaled Provender with an account of his arrival, pointing with pride to the parachute which still engulfed the Golden Angel like a squid, its severed ropes dangling tentacularly. 'Thought I was a goner for sure this time!' Fort exclaimed, and his breath was the sweet-sour stench of a hundred vineyards, strong enough to assail his nephew's nostrils even through the Medico mask's prodigious proboscis.

Then came Gratitude, followed closely by Extravagance. Like galleons on a calm sea they sailed towards their brother, homing in. Cynthia, meantime, had melted into the crowd, and Provender knew it wouldn't be long before she was back with one or both of her marriage prospects in tow. He tried not to think about it.

His sisters gave him grief, in a sisterly fashion, for not turning up when he should have and for making their mother go to the trouble of fetching him. He in return, in a brotherly fashion, told them they could stick it up their wigs.

'You have obligations, Prov,' said Gratitude. She was his elder by two years but often behaved as if it was more like ten.

'Fuck obligations,' he replied. 'I don't see why I should have to be here if I don't want to be.'

'Oh, very mature,' said Extravagance, who, though seven years younger than him, also behaved as if she were a decade his senior. 'And what sort of costume is that? This is a ball, Prov, not a Halloween party.'

'Really? So why are there witches here then?'

Extravagance went through an elaborate charade of not understanding the reference, then understanding. 'Oh, I get. You mean us. Gratitude and I are witches. How clever. Sharp as ever with the putdowns, Prov. Obviously, spending hours on your own in your room does nothing to blunt the wit, does it.'

'Is that the best you can do, 'Strav?' Provender replied. 'Have a go at me for preferring my own company to that of others?'

'Oh no, I can do much better. I'm just getting warmed up. For instance, your slothfulness on the marriage front. I mean, what's it going to take for you to realise you
have
to get some poor girl up the aisle, ASAP?'

'And if I don't, ASAP? What the worst that can happen? I get to spend a few more years single. Not such a bad alternative.'

'Not for you maybe. Probably not for your putative wife either. But you know what's at stake, and still you faff around.'

'I don't see you in any hurry to get hitched,' Provender said. 'You either, Grat.'

'It's not so important for us' said Extravagance. 'We can leave it as late as we like. No Y-chromosome. Sorry!'

'Best not leave it
too
late. There's a limited shelf-life for the Y-chromosome-less, and spinsterhood can creep up unexpectedly. One moment you're young and lovely, the next you're a crocheting old hag.'

'Cheap shot. But seriously, Provender, what if something happens to you? What if there's an accident or you get ill or something? What if --'

Gratitude stepped in. As the oldest sibling it usually fell to her to make peace between the other two. It had been that way since they were little, and she would not have minded so much if the level of the bickering between her brother and sister ever rose above childish, but it never did and probably never would.

'Listen, both of you,' she said, low-voiced, stern. 'Not now. Not here. We're on our best behaviour. You can argue all you want tomorrow. Tonight, we're one big happy Family. All right?'

Provender and Extravagance glared at each other, the tips of their masks' respective noses almost touching. Then both of them nodded, reluctantly, surlily. As the three siblings parted company, Extravagance turned and popped her tongue out at Provender. He, in response, brandished his stick at her. Each felt this constituted the last word and so was able to walk away satisfied, victorious.

Spying a Harlequin with a drinks salver, Provender made for him. He was almost at his goal when a partygoer stepped in the way, blocking his path.

'Provender. It is Provender, isn't it, under all that?'

'It is,' said Provender, warily.

'Thought so. I'm pretty good on posture and gait. Got an eye for it. And yours are pretty distinctive. You always look like you're expecting something bad to happen.'

It just did, Provender thought. 'Arthur,' he said.

'None other,' said the partygoer, and executed a sweeping bow.

Provender's cousin had, like Provender, chosen his ball outfit from the ranks of the Commedia characters, but his was that of Scaramouche. Consisting of a multicoloured, gold-buttoned tunic, a feathered hat, a swirling moustache, and a sword at his side, the costume lent Arthur a swashbuckling look, which was let down somewhat by the fact that Arthur was a shade over five feet tall, five-two if he was wearing his lifts, and had ears that wouldn't have been out of place on a football trophy. Height, it would seem, was a prerequisite for successful swashbucklery, and so was a set of aural appendages that did not stick out sideways.

Arthur was the son of Prosper's other younger brother, the late Uncle Acquire. Uncle Ack, as he was known, had been the black sheep of that particular generation of Gleeds, turning his back on the Family and going off to live on a remote Scottish isle where he met, and for a while shared his humble croft with, a local girl who became Arthur's mother. Whether she and Uncle Ack were ever actually married was a question nobody dared ask. Ack died without mentioning her or her child in his will, at any rate, and so the Family chose to regard their union as not having the legality of even a common-law bond.

That was until the product of their union left the island in his late teens and came to the mainland, presenting himself at Dashlands and demanding to be treated as a proper Family member or else. What the 'or else' consisted of was never made clear but it seemed likely to have something to do with the legitimacy or otherwise of Arthur's birth. Arthur appeared to be threatening to expose himself publicly as a Gleed bastard if he didn't get what he wanted, and rather than face that PR nightmare the Family decided instead to welcome him to its bosom, purchase him a fine London townhouse, furnish him with a handsome allowance, and help him get on in whatever trade or profession he might wish to pursue.

Arthur wished to pursue the craft of acting, and so was enrolled at the Gleed Academy of Music, Drama and Dance, from where he graduated
summa cum laude
and stepped straight into his first starring role in a TV series in which he played a dashing police detective who solved crimes while moonlighting as a cabaret singer in his spare time. That Arthur was neither dashing, nor old enough to be a detective, nor any sort of singer, was not perceived as a hindrance to his getting the part. His principal qualification was that he was a Gleed. To have that surname in the cast credits guaranteed good viewing figures.

Thereafter, Arthur had never been out of work. Movies, comedy, radio drama, musicals - whatever type of role he set his heart on, he got. Some critics grumbled that he had no charisma or presence or discernible talent, that listening to him recite his lines was like listening to a washing machine running through its spin cycle. Not many critics expressed such opinions in their reviews, however, and few who did lasted long in their jobs. It wasn't a wise career move to be anything less than unstinting in your praise of a Gleed.