The Northern Clemency. Philip Hensher
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admired your front garden,’ the wife said. She sneezed.
‘The idea was,’ Malcolm said, ‘that by now there’d be new people in number eighty-four. Just over there. They’d have been more than welcome.’
‘That’s a nice thought,’ the woman said, sneezing again.
‘But there must have been a hold-up,’ Malcolm said. ‘At any rate, it’s still empty.’
Elsewhere in the room, people were talking about the empty house, and about the new inhabitants.
‘Anthea Arbuthnot’s met them,’ a man was saying.
‘Oh, Anthea,’ a woman replied, and laughed. ‘What she doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing.’
‘We call her the Rayfield Avenue Clarion,’ someone’s teenage daughter said, and blushed.
‘I was saying,’ the man said, ‘Anthea Arbuthnot’s met them,’ as Mrs Arbuthnot came up, expertly balancing a pastry case filled with mushroom sauce.
‘Met who?’ Mrs Arbuthnot said.
‘The new people,’ he said. ‘Over the road.’
‘You don’t miss much,’ she said, in a not exactly unfriendly way. ‘Yes, I met them, quite by chance. The house, it’s being sold by Eadon Lockwood and Riddle, which sold me my house too, five years back. It was the same lady, which is quite a coincidence. Her name’s Mary, she breeds chocolate Labradors in her spare time, which was a little bond between us, a nice lady. I saw her coming out of the house one day with a couple as I was going down the road with Paddy, my dog, you know, and stopped to say hello. Naturally she introduced me to the people, they’d bought it by then, they were just having another look over. Measuring up for curtains and carpets, I dare say.’
The Glover girl, Jane, was at the edge of their circle, listening, her flowery print frock, her lank hair, the empty plate she had been carrying round the guests all drooping listlessly. The adults shifted politely, smiling. She was fourteen or so; just about old enough for this sort of thing. ‘Are they nice?’ she said.
Mrs Arbuthnot laughed, not at all kindly. Jane Glover just looked at her, waiting for the answer. ‘Are they nice?’ Mrs Arbuthnot said. ‘I don’t know about that. They’re from London. He’s very London. She didn’t say anything much. They’ve got two children, nine, and a fourteen-year-old girl, I think she said.’
‘Were the children nice?’ Jane said, and now she was surely being deliberately childish.
‘They weren’t there,’ Mrs Arbuthnot said. ‘Their name – let me see – it’s on the tip of my tongue…they’re called – Mr and Mrs Sellers. That’s it.’
‘London children,’ a man said, shaking his head.
‘I hope they’re nice,’ Jane said, and then just walked away. She knew all about Mrs Arbuthnot. Under no circumstances would she tell any of these people that she, Jane, was writing a novel. Already she hated the girl, over the road, fourteen.
‘He’ll break some hearts,’ someone was saying, in another part of the room. It was Daniel Glover they were talking about. He was sixteen, lounging over the edge of the sofa, his long legs spread. His mouth hung slightly open, and from time to time he brushed away the soft fall of long black hair. Every twenty seconds the pregnant nursery nurse was sneezing, and it was Daniel she was sneezing at. His lush musk odour filled the room, making the air itch; it was the eau-de-toilette he’d lifted from Cole’s on Tuesday, and he’d practically bathed in the stuff.
Daniel looked at the party. He was thinking about sex, and he counted the women. Then he eliminated the unattractive ones, the ones over thirty-five, his mother and sister – no, he brought his sister back in just for the hell of it. Balanced it out, removed some of the men. Then – what they do, he’d read about it – the men throw their keys into a bowl, the women pick them out, then—
He lost himself in lewd speculation. Or – he started again – you could just have an orgy here. A sex orgy on the carpet. Because that happened all the time, he’d read about it. It just didn’t happen here, in this house. But he bet somewhere round here it happened all the time. Probably on this street.
Mrs Arbuthnot observed with some interest that the elder Glover boy had an erection. She enjoyed the sight: she had divorced six years ago, her long-held ambition to take part in a game of strip poker never having been fulfilled or, indeed, mentioned to anyone, least of all her ex-husband. She envisaged, like Daniel, scenes of satisfaction; for her, they were what Daniel had done, or might be doing, to the girls in the back garden of number eighty-four, watched soberly by its four dark empty windows.
‘Hay fever,’ the nursery nurse said politely, still sneezing, feeling with alarm a little dribble in her knickers.
‘They’re called Mr and Mrs Sellers,’ someone said. ‘They paid seventeen thousand for the house. Anthea Arbuthnot told me.’
Katherine Glover was relaxing, now that her party was being a success. They were eating the food; she’d made pastry cases with mushroom filling, and prawn, she’d made three different quiches, she’d made Coronation Chicken (a challenge to eat standing), she’d made assemblages of cheese-and-pineapple and cold sausages, she’d made open Danish sandwiches in tiny squares, a magazine idea, and they were eating it all. There were dishes of crisps, too, and Twiglets, but those didn’t count in the way of making an effort. They were drinking the wine, Malcolm’s choice – she’d had three glasses – and in the background, the music was exactly right, Mozart, Elvira Madigan. It was all being a great success.
The sexes were dividing now: the men were talking about their jobs, their cars, about the election, even; the women about their children’s schools, about the cost of living, and about each other.
‘Your hand’s never out of your pocket,’ one said, and another observed that her house had doubled in value in five years. One woman, worldly in manner, said that Sheffield would improve when Sainsbury’s got round to opening a branch, as she’d heard they were planning to.
‘Oh, we know Mrs Thurston,’ another said, referring to the headmistress of one of the local schools.
‘She teaches the piano, doesn’t she?’ the nursery nurse said hopefully. ‘On Charrington Road?’ She was set right, and the others started recommending piano teachers to each other, boasting about their children’s grades, merits and distinctions.
‘It’s all going to the dogs,’ a man said. ‘This’ll be a third-world country by 1980,’ and the others gravely agreed. Malcolm made his rounds again; for the last twenty minutes he had said nothing to anyone, only smiled and offered the bottle, and he was circling too soon. All the glasses were full, and the guests refused with a smile, wondering about their host, who they did not know. Absently, he offered the bottle to Daniel, who took the opportunity, his fourth, to refill his glass, still thinking of tits.
‘It would have been nice if they could have come,’ Katherine said again. ‘Sellers, they’re called.’
‘Your son’s getting to be a handsome young man,’ they said in reply.
‘I’ve got two,’ Katherine said, laughing.
‘Yes,’ they said, wondering where the other was, the one they wouldn’t have meant, since he was, what?, nine years old.
‘We invited Mrs Topsfield, too,’ she said. ‘The old lady who lives in the great big house, the old one, at the bottom of the road, the edge of the moor. But only to be polite – she wouldn’t be likely to come at her age.’
‘I’ve often wondered about her,’ someone said. ‘A gorgeous house.’
‘It’s just her in it, apparently,’ Katherine said.
‘I do think they’ve done their house beautifully,’ Karen Warner said to her husband; they had been marooned together at one side of the room. It was a handsome room;