Sunday Best

Bernice Rubens

For Sharon and Rebecca

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Part Two

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Part Three

Chapter One

Note on the Author

Just because I'm writing a book doesn't make me a writer. Let's get that straight from the start. My only problem is that if I ever finish this book, it might give me ideas. I might want to write another, and yet another. So just in case I'm going to be a writer, I must guard against writing my first book in the first person. I could say it all happened to ‘him'. That would at least envisage his present, his future. But with the ‘I', there is only past. ‘I' is final; ‘I' is the recognition of death. ‘I' is not for the first book, but the last.

You see, you write a paragraph and already you think you're a writer. Already you're worried whether this might be your last book. Maybe, when all this is down, I will have said it all, and there'll be nothing more to write about anyway. Not that that ever stopped a writer. But with God's help, when this is finished, I can shut up and start living a little. No more books, and I can afford the ‘I'.

So I take in my hand that thorny pronoun. Forgive me my histrionics; writers are prone to dramatize themselves a little. It's a lonely job, and there's little drama in the making of it. So allow me my thorns, let me grasp them, let them bleed me a little. My pleasure. Let me drop them when they get too painful, and you'll have to make do with the ‘he' for a while. Let George Verrey Smith feel them in his rotten flesh. It's easier for me that way.

But since this is the beginning of my story, you must know where I stand. So I pick it up, that nettled pronoun, and hold it gingerly. I am going to touch it with myself, and plunge straightaway, for I am a devout coward, into the shallow end. My name. I have no problems with that one at all. Neither with my address, though the latter is subject to change. It's the other headings that fox me. Age,
curriculum vitae
, referees. Such proclamations wither me, and might even reduce me to the ‘he' again. But bear with me, if you are still there, that is. I
am moving into an honest, self-revealing phase, so that, although I already feel myself a writer, I don't kid myself about my compulsive qualities, and I humbly address myself to those who are still with me, to regard this preamble as a final rehearsal for the gentle movement of my tool of thorns towards my body. It is here. I am ready to name myself, and savour it well, for not only is it a name to conjure with, but it is the one solid thing about me of which I am absolutely certain. My age, my profession, my testimonials, in these I have no confidence or conviction whatsoever. But my name, challenge it at your peril.

George Verrey Smith. It doesn't look that good on paper, but I promise you, that rolled off the tongue by the Major Domo at the dinner of the Society of Authors – I'm not an ambitious man; my sights are painfully low – take my word, such as it is, that that name has a noble ring, that much more will be heard of it, even if you care not to listen. George Verrey Smith. It will stand repetition, even in writing. Notice the lack of hyphen. The hyphen is a legal appendage, an indication of a name in law. But my name is blood, pure blood, and marriage had nothing to do with it. Get that straight, 'cos I don't want you to start thinking that my wife has contributed anything to my being, well or otherwise.

I'm going to get my age over quickly, because I like to pretend I'm not sure of it. Even so, I hesitate, since hesitation about one's age gives one's readers a loophole. So give or take a year or two, it's, er, forty-two. I am now faced by what I take as a personal affront;
curriculum vitae
, I have never heard that phrase spoken. It is a phrase of cowards, and only written down, and I intend to ignore it. For all the jobs and activities I've taken part in during my life I find utterly irrelevant, and so for your sake and mine, I shall spare you all that. And generously will offer you a re-cap. My name is George Verrey Smith, I am – er – forty-two years old, my profession, that of a schoolmaster, and I no longer have any confidence in my teeth.

There. I've said it. And it was supposed to be the last thing I would tell you and I've blurted it out like a solution without a problem. So we'll have to go back a little. I'll start at the beginning, which is not, after all, a surprising place at which to start. I had a nanny once, who, off or on duty, looked like a fashion model. One afternoon, she went for a walk and was
run down by a taxi. They took her to hospital and undressed her. The poor woman confessed that never in her life had she had a bath, and changed her underwear only when it fell off her. Her immaculate topping marked her as a fraud. Now there was a woman who didn't begin at the beginning. I won't be referring to her again, so I might as well tell you that as they peeled off her grey chemise she expired. Whether from shame or injuries sustained, I cannot tell, for there was no postmortem. In any case, how can you tell if someone has died from dirty underwear? My wife, after all, is hale and hearty. I'm not saying that a bath and clean underwear would have saved my nanny from the taxi, but at least, had she known to start at the beginning of things, she might have died with a less unsavoury reputation. So mindful of my poor old nanny, God rest her soul, I'm starting with the start, whatever that means, and I'm going to tell you the root of all my troubles, whatever that means also. I mean, even if you're talking about yourself, and perhaps, as by now may well be the case,
to
yourself, you must have some respect for chronology. Otherwise, there is nothing but confusion. So roots are beginnings, and my teeth are the root of my problem. Now you may think that this is a small matter, but when you're pushing – er – forty, and you're already afraid to look too closely at your hair, when snow is not as white as you remembered it, well, this is no time to begin losing confidence in your teeth.

It started about a year ago when I picked up an apple. I am, or rather, was, a great apple-eater, but there was something about this one apple, this year-ago apple, that suddenly assumed a look on its mottled face of such scorn and mockery, that I knew better than to argue with it. During my life, I have taken up most challenges that have been offered me. I have always had, as it were, a fighting chance. I'm not a man to shirk a challenge. But I'm wise enough to know when I'm beaten. I put the apple down, and fingered my front teeth, my long-standing apple teeth. They wriggled with gratitude at my decision. Since that day I have never touched an apple. I have nurtured in myself such a loathing for apples. They were a signal to my present condition. In fact, I might as well face it. The root of my troubles is not teeth at all. It's apples. You see how roots can shift, and beginnings meander. Maybe my nanny, God rest her soul, was not so very wrong after all.

So to hell with chronology. Neither forwards nor
backwards shall I go, but rather, like a crab, sideways, for in such direction is less chance of collision, and what with my nodding teeth, this can be a decisive factor.

So off on a tangent to my breakfast this morning. She'd just put the tray before me, she being my wife, whose name, even in thought, I find difficult to refer to. But for what it is worth, I give it to you, for after all, she did you no harm, so why should her name stick in your throat. Joy. Believe it or not, that's how her mother named her. Imagine. I have noticed that it is a name that has a habit of appending itself to the most joyless of creatures and my wife is no exception. Well, I sat there this morning facing my toast, porridge and fried sausages. She has a habit of bringing everything at once, and keeping me waiting for my coffee. It's her own special brand of efficiency, tho' I know it by no other name than spite. The sight of the toast unnerved me. As I spread it with butter, I deliberated which part of my mouth could safely accommodate it. The sole back molar on the left side was normally my only toast tooth, but even that, over the last few days, had painfully rejected calls on its function. That too, like the others, was loosening. I considered giving it a rest, thinking that in idleness it might tighten itself. Desperation can often blunt a man's intelligence. I could of course, have dipped the toast in my coffee, if she ever got round to bringing it. But I withdrew from such an abdication and started with confidence on my porridge, confining the mixture to my four wriggling front teeth, good for little else now save pap. I decided to give a miss to the toast and to test my right molar on the sausages. Damn her with that coffee. Her place had been discreetly cleared away except for a few crumbs that surrounded the white damask ring where her plate had been. The crumbs irritated me, yet another reminder of her lack of thoroughness. Everything about her, apart from her underwear, was just that much short of perfection, but it's this small deficiency that unnerves me so much. She might as well be an out-and-out slut. She tidies my study, for instance, till not a speck of dust remains, but she constantly neglects to place my pens in line, and their lack of symmetry infuriates me. She leaves the cushions unplumped; the drawers of my tallboy are never one hundred per cent closed, the counterpane is always uneven on one side. And now those crumbs she'd left around her plate. For a moment, I considered hoisting my body from my
seat and removing them myself, but such an act would be a surrender, a participation in what, after all, is her duty to me. And I am a firm believer in not giving an inch when a mile is takeable. So I weighed up the intensity of my own irritation on the one hand, and the effort and surrender of clearing the crumbs myself, and the crumbs and my irritation won the day. Where the hell was she with that coffee? I loathe her heartily.

Now you may think from all that, that I do not love my wife. But I don't hate her either. Tho' it's difficult. The point is I've treated her rather badly over the past few years, and that's enough to make you hate anybody. She's been so decent about it all, and it's this full-blooded decency of hers that fills me with loathing. Yet I can't hate her. I've never been able to leave her either. If two such negatives add up to anything at all, well, that's more or less what I feel for my wife.

I checked on my teeth again. Panic-loose. I must go to a dentist. Perhaps now, in any case, it's all too late. You'd think I'd have something better to do than to sit here testing my teeth. You'd think a man like myself would have real problems. You're right, I have. I'm trying to concentrate on my tooth problem, I tease those left-over molars of mine with sausage meat and pap, because the real problem, I cannot face. I play safe with a touchable, tangible problem. I have to. I daren't allow my mind to stray to anything else. Because, many years ago, but the guilt is as sure as yesterday, I killed a man.

There, I've said it. Or rather, I've written it down. To say it aloud invites an echo, a magnification, and it is enough, what I have done, without enlargement. I dare not risk it aloud. I write it down. I minimize my sin with pen and ink, or rather with the stub of a pencil, which is close, close to the page, with the proximity of absolute confession. So I whisper with my crayon. ‘Long ago, I killed a man.'
II y a longtemps, j'ai tué un homme
– a hangover from my translation days, before I started to make my living at the blackboard. I often translate a predicament if it's too tough to handle. I reduce it to a job of work.
Oui. J'ai tué un homme.
But it was no Frenchman's doing. It was my very own.