A Rival Creation Read online

  ‘Think good thoughts. Keep your mind on what is right and true and beautiful,’ Liberty said tiredly to her class, sitting, as they always did on Wednesday afternoons, in one of the three Portakabins lent by Tollymead Manor to the Fairfield Adult Education Department. The cabins stood in a row on the edge of the school car park and were used as back-up classrooms for computer work, CDT and pottery. But not on Wednesdays, Wednesday was a half day.

  ‘If your minds are constantly on petty things,’ Liberty went on, ‘the irritating barking of next door’s dog, your husband’s habit of giving one loud belch before he starts shaving in the morning, or how to—’

  ‘You know, Oscar does that.’ Victoria had been as good as her word and here she sat, wide-eyed at the front of the class. ‘He goes into the bathroom and belches.’

  Liberty looked up with a pang of sympathy for Oscar. His wife might just as well have flung open the door to the loo with him in there for them all to see. Neville Pyke, who was working on a DIY Manual for the Senior Citizen, cleared his throat, and two young secretaries from the local firm of solicitors tittered. Victoria seemed unperturbed.

  ‘A petty soul, shrunken from lack of exercise, cannot shed light on creation, let alone create something new,’ Liberty continued, feeling as if she was reading out the charges in court against herself. ‘So don’t just work on the techniques, style and syntax and the clever little metaphors, work on your souls, and you’ll find that the rest will follow.’ Liberty closed her folder. ‘That’s all for today. See you next week.’

  After they had gone, Liberty walked round the room, turning the chairs up on top of the long tables. Victoria, she thought, did not seem very intelligent, but she had cunning and obviously took to truth with as much enthusiasm and discrimination as a Japanese industrialist buying investment art. Liberty had prepared that day’s class some weeks earlier, while she still had hope. Now she had no hope, and by next Wednesday Victoria would sit there, looking at her with those big eyes and asking what had gone wrong with her soul. She looked at her watch; it was only half past four. She decided to walk the few hundred yards to her friend Penny’s house.

  Penny had married Donald Mortimer, a resident music master at Tollymead Manor, some ten years earlier and, introduced to each other by Hamish, she and Liberty had become firm friends. Liberty knew no-one in whose presence she felt such calm. Simply sitting down at the Formica table in the large kitchen, with the smell of baking bread hanging in the air, was like half an hour in the lotus position. Penny was a hippy graduate to earthmotherdom, and the combination of dreamy prettiness and militant homemaking was irresistible to Liberty. Penny knew why she was here and where she was going and she gave you tea and home-made cakes on the way. What more could you ask for in a friend?

  In the kitchen Penny helped nine-year-old Felicity, the oldest of the four Mortimer children, and her friend to bake tiny cakes for their dolls’ tea party. Liberty sat at the kitchen table with her mug of tea, quite content just to be there. She looked at her friend, who wiped up globules of sponge mix from the floor whilst instructing the girls how to grease the frilly paper cake cases. Penny never raised her voice; she never wore jeans, either. Liberty looked down at her own sorry-looking pair. They weren’t even scuffed in decent places like the knees, but on the bottom and on the inside of the thighs, because the tops of her legs were so fat they rubbed together. Penny, on the other hand, looked enchanting in a frilly apron over a long, doe-skin skirt and one of her husband’s shirts. Her husband adored her and called her his Stepford wife. It always made Penny laugh. She had a mind as agile as a marsh frog, leaping across the soggy realities of the day towards her own vision of perfection.

  ‘Have a biscuit, they were made this morning,’ she said, handing Liberty a large plate. Edward, her three-year-old son appeared in the door and, without a word, began to undress himself. After a few minutes contemplating his penis, pulling it this way and that until Liberty thought it would snap like a rubber band, he put his trousers back on, placed his pants on his head like a hat, and walked out. ‘He’s just learnt to undress himself,’ Penny beamed after her youngest. ‘They grow up so fast.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ Liberty said. ‘But you’re lucky, you have four of them growing up fast. That takes a lot longer.’

  ‘But you could never have stood having four children. I know you would have liked two, but I could never see you with four.’

  ‘I’d love four. In fact,’ Liberty said with a vehemence that surprised her, ‘I’d have loved four children and a kitchen just like yours and I wouldn’t mind Donald thrown in on top so to speak. I’ve always liked Donald.’

  ‘I know.’ Penny helped the two little girls take the baking tray from the oven. ‘But you can’t have him.’

  ‘She can’t have us either,’ Felicity said, but she said it nicely, a bit like a shop assistant regretting a popular item being temporarily out of stock.

  ‘I know, I know, you lovely girl,’ Liberty grabbed her round the waist, planting a noisy kiss on the child’s velvety cheek. She felt happier already, as she leant back in the Windsor chair with its patchwork cushion in green and red.

  ‘Anyway,’ Penny sat down too, wincing as she raised herself again, removing a Stickle Brick from the seat. ‘You’ve got your writing. That’s your world, and you know it.’

  ‘Not any more.’ Liberty took another biscuit from the large plate. ‘Can I at least have one of those?’ She pointed to the blue-and-white frilly pinafore apron that Penny wore as sweetly as if she were appearing in a fifties ad for Ovaltine. ‘I want to wear it when Johnny comes back. He’s always wanted me to be like you. Actually,’ Liberty contemplated her friend for a moment, ‘it’s a truth universally acknowledged that all children want their mothers to be like you.’

  ‘Well they can’t have her either. You’re being very greedy today, Liberty.’ Felicity had a stern look on her small round face as she turned in the doorway.

  ‘Yes I am.’ Liberty nodded sadly. ‘I always get greedy when I’ve had a disappointment. I wish someone would get the message that I don’t get any nicer when I suffer; on the contrary, I get very mean.’

  ‘You can have one of my cakes. Me and Chloë made them ourselves.’ Felicity took the plate of fairy cakes from her friend and held it out to Liberty, who took one. The plate was a heavy blue-and-white pottery one that Liberty had given them years ago. That was another thing about Penny’s house. There was not very much of anything, just enough china or glass or furniture, but what was there was loved, and used, and cared for. The kitchen cupboards were the same avocado Formica that had been there since the last-but-one headmaster’s wife had the masters’ houses refurbished twenty years ago, but Penny had put up shelves, and on each shelf was a frill of red-and-white gingham and hooks to hang cups and mugs. Liberty sat back admiring the ill-matched cups, some with roses, some with animals, one with a painted lighthouse, allowing a feeling of calm to take over. Maybe she should try to adopt. It was not too late, not if they were the sort of children most people did not want. And God knows, there were plenty of those sorts of children around. Johnny would be happy, he had always longed for sisters and brothers. There would be hustle and bustle and shelves in the kitchen just like Penny’s… and then I would shout at them when they made a mess and tell them to be quiet and leave me alone, because I’m not Penny. I am a failure, with a heart so shrunken there’s room only for a son and the memories of words spelt out on a screen.

  ‘You don’t really miss Tom, do you?’ Penny poured them both fresh cups of tea.

  Liberty smiled, an apologetic smile, and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I miss not having someone around, but no, I don’t really miss him.’

  ‘I thought as much when you called up and talked for twenty minutes about the letter from your ex-agent and two minutes about your ex-lover.’

  ‘Penny, what will you do when the children leave home?’ Liberty asked her.

  Penny smiled serenely. ‘I’ve created th
e perfect place for them to be. They’ll come back and they’ll bring their children, and the house will be fuller than ever.’

  As she left Penny’s house and drove towards town, Liberty wondered for the first time if Penny was being quite fair to her family. They might have the perfect childhood, but would they spend the rest of their lives longing for a lost paradise, like the hero schoolboy eagerly turning up at every old boys’ reunion, the school song always ready to burst from his lips?

  She parked the car at the central car park and checked her face before stepping outside. An infection in the wound on her cheek had festered until the scar tissue had become a raised pink rope along her cheek. That morning at the hospital they had cleaned it up and sealed it with three small plastic strips. It had not looked so bad earlier in the day, but now, hit by the cold air after Penny’s warm kitchen, it had turned the colour of hung beef. With a frown of self-disgust, Liberty pulled out a large pair of sunglasses from the glove compartment. Making her way across the lit-up car park she did not see Oscar until she was almost on top of him. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Liberty said, removing her boot from the black leather of his brogue.

  ‘That’s all right. But you’d see better if you weren’t wearing those glasses. It’s six o’clock, dark and all that.’

  Liberty stared at his chest, comfortably wide and clad in a worn tweed jacket and, like a vertigo sufferer staring over the edge of an abyss, she wanted to throw herself against his chest, sob and wail. Going, going, gone, she kept on staring. Think about it, the feeling of release, the final comfort. She blinked and shook herself. ‘It’s my cheek. I thought I would cover it up.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’ Oscar asked lightly.

  ‘It’s nearly supper time so I thought it best.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t quite follow.’

  Not really concentrating, Liberty explained. ‘Well, you know that vet series that was on television some while ago? It was uncanny: the moment you put the first forkful in your mouth, Christopher Timothy would put his arm up a cow’s backside.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘But I don’t suppose you ever eat supper in front of the television. I do all the time.’ A car passed with its headlights full on, lighting up Oscar’s face.

  ‘I promise you,’ he said, ‘you look nothing like a cow’s backside.’

  Unable to receive even the mildest compliment gracefully, Liberty changed the subject. ‘Are you on your way home?’ she asked. ‘I had Victoria in my class this afternoon.’

  ‘No, no I’m not. I just nipped out of the office for a moment. We’ve got quite a big story on our hands, well, big for around here anyway. The teenage daughter of a local businessman has gone missing. Her father is Robert Seth. He owns the big Mercedes garage on North Street. The family is obviously extremely worried. It could be a kidnapping.’

  ‘It must be difficult in your position,’ Liberty said, ‘to know whether to be excited or saddened when things like that happen. I mean, terrible trouble titillates, it sells copies. Wars, nude duchesses – all good for the job. I know when my grandmother lay dying, we all came to say goodbye and, loving her as I did, I still couldn’t help thinking that this was an opportunity not to be missed to study death at close hand. I made notes straight afterwards, about the way her breath came so shallowly that it never seemed to touch her lungs at all, and the colour of her skin, grey, really grey with no tinge of relieving pink, and the looks on everyone’s faces. Then, after putting my notebook away, I began to cry. Of course I felt guilty for ages.’ With a little smile she added, ‘It wasn’t even as if I ended up creating great art from it.’

  ‘Guilt is a very destructive feeling,’ Oscar said. ‘Don’t indulge in it.’ He took a step back. ‘I must be off, I’m afraid. Don’t drive with those things on, will you?’

  ‘I think I failed to charm,’ Liberty said to herself as she wandered back to the car, depositing the plastic carrier bag on the front passenger seat. ‘You’re a poor substitute for a lover or a child,’ she muttered, placing the glasses on the imagined face of the bag and hooking the sides of the frames through the handles. There were far too many young mothers with families around, loading up the boots of their cars. It was depressing. Only a year ago Johnny had still been home so that she could sigh companionably in the supermarket check-out on a Friday night, ‘Teenagers, never stop eating,’ as she loaded bag after bag. Tonight she had ended up buying a whole heap of different biscuits because she could not bear to take such a lonely basket through the check-out. As she stood there watching the checkout girl slide first one then another and another packet across the scanner, it occurred to her that it might seem as if she was just a lonely binger. ‘My old father,’ she muttered to the girl, ‘can’t have enough of them. If you dunk them for him in coffee, or tea, tea will do just as well, they simply melt in his mouth, right past his dentures.’

  ‘Mushrooms one pound twenty, all right?’ the girl chanted.

  Liberty had smiled a yes. And back home she smiled again, as she mixed the mushrooms and pasta in a warm bowl. It was lucky she had bought the mushrooms, as Hamish had called up when she got home to say he was coming over.

  That evening Hamish was in one of his funky American professor moods. His thick grey hair was cut in a fashionable short back and sides, a lock left to flop across his forehead, and he was wearing a black polo neck under his tweed jacket instead of his normal Viyella shirt. Someone had once asked Hamish if he had ever thought of writing. Hamish had bridled and muttered about lack of time, but Liberty knew he was far too busy reinventing himself, working on suitable sets and plot lines for every new Hamish Bell, to have interest left for any other story. He was a good teacher, an inspired one at times, but his life’s work was himself and, like a true artist, his work was never done as he pruned and added, changed a bit here, did an overhaul there.

  Hamish declined a second helping of pasta, stretching in his chair and patting his stomach. ‘Not bad for an old man eh?’ he boasted the way he always did.

  ‘No, very good. Very flat. Norfolk,’ she added before she could help herself. She thought of Oscar’s remark about guilt being destructive. She was not sure he was right. Would she be half as nice to Hamish if she had not felt bad about taking away his wife?

  Hamish leant across the table and peered at his daughter’s face. ‘It’s healing up well,’ he said sitting back with a smile. ‘You’ll hardly be able to see the scar, just as I told you.’

  He really believes that. Liberty got up to clear the table. And why be surprised? Hamish was, after all, the embodiment of the saying, ‘Life’s what you make of it.’ Son of Pangloss, that was him. Of course the difficulty with having such a man for a father was that he would never help you solve a problem because, quite simply, there never was one; life was so much nicer that way. Now you see it, now you don’t. Gone, vanished.

  ‘Everyone hates me at school,’ the twelve-year-old Liberty had wept to Hamish at the end of one school holiday. ‘They say I’m weird. They hate my clothes, and when I come to join in a game they just look at each other, like this.’ Liberty had heaved her skinny shoulders and rolled her eyes. ‘Then they all just walk away.’

  ‘Now I don’t believe that is so at all.’ Hamish had smiled calmly. ‘I think you’ll find that you are looked upon as rather a leader by your peers. They admire you precisely because you do not run with the herd.’

  Liberty had wanted to say that her dearest ambition was to run with the herd if only she could find a herd that would let her, and that locking someone in an airing cupboard so they missed the school outing to the Theme Park, and cutting up their Sunday tights just after they had been mended, were strange ways of showing admiration. But Hamish wanted his daughter to be popular, so in his mind she was. Now you see it, now you don’t.

  ‘Look,’ Liberty said now, pushing her face close to her father’s. ‘Before you is the beginnings of a puckering scar that will remain until it rots away with the rest of my face, a scar which is pulling
at the corner of my eye so that I look like a clown every time I smile.’ She sat down and did not look at her father as she poured them both some more wine. ‘Can’t you see you are taking positive thinking a tad too far. I mean, I was surprised when you didn’t argue with the doctor who pronounced Granny dead. Denying that a problem exists won’t make it go away. It just goes underground for a while, like a terrorist, sneaking round the innermost corners of your being, leaving little destructive reminders of its existence like parcels of gelignite to detonate just as you think you’ve won.’

  ‘Very well put Liberty. Very well put,’ Hamish nodded wisely and lit his pipe. ‘Now let me look at those letters you had back with your manuscript.’ Sitting back comfortably he said, ‘You know I can’t believe they’re as bad as you say.’

  Hamish stayed until well after midnight. As she washed up, Liberty noticed the outside light coming on at the vicarage. She turned the tap off and hung the tea towel on the Aga rail. Someone is dying, she thought, or in Hamish’s world of positive thinking, the vicar is having friends over for a late game of bridge.

  The vicarage was an unlovely fifties’ box that acted as a permanent reminder to each new incumbent of his reduced status. It stood some distance away from the church, but not far enough to deny a view of the old vicarage, large, Georgian and mellow. Ted was the first vicar to say he actually preferred the new house. All that he had asked for was some automatic floodlights for the small forecourt, and it was these that came on as the slight black-clad figure moved from behind the large yew tree.

  Ted Brain had gone to bed leaving an indifferent Sunday sermon on his desk. Suddenly he felt sympathy for his washed-out mother who, after years of failing to awaken her husband’s interest by doing what she did best, cook marvellous meals on a small budget, had sunk into sullen despair, to rise no higher again than some re-heated soup with a dollop of cream on top. He knew just how she must have felt. And that was what his parishioners were getting, a re-heated sermon with a small lump of fresh thought chucked on top. They deserved no better.