Going to Pot: A Novel by Jill Laurimore | eBook

Read an Excerpt

Going to Pot

By Jill Laurimore

St. Martin's Press

CHAPTER 1

'Who was the man with the big red Vulva?'

Martita Harley-Wright comes beetling across the yard towards her son, Ivor, who is trying to clear a drain. She never walks – she always beetles or bowls or scuttles – often looking like a beetle quite literally, in her customary black leggings topped by some bulbous covering like an insect's carapace. Today it is a waxed dark-green cape against the horizontal February rain and her black stick legs whirl across the cobbles interspersed with the four tiny yapping Yorkies hoping for an early supper.

'VOLVO, Mother,' yells Ivor. A pale, sandy man, he is currently up to his elbows in drain rods and sludge, and his mother is (selectively) stone deaf.

'Such a big red Vulva,' says Martita, who perfectly well knows her Vulva from her Volvo, but likes to annoy. She sniffs the fetid drain air and wrinkles up her little arched beak of a nose. 'Almost a hearse.'

Ivor offers no answer and only wriggles the rod more fiercely, but there's something rock solid down there which refuses to budge.

'It could take a coffin – possibly two.' Martita waits for a reaction. While she stands still, the dogs stand still too, their little heads all cocked on one side, gazing up at her, waiting for the slightest forward motion to set up their yapping and dancing again – willing her towards the kitchen. 'Not that I'll need anything like that. A minivan will do for me, won't it, darlings? An itsy-bitsy little minivan to carry me away to the Chapel of Rest.' She tries a winsome sigh. 'I'm only a little bag of bones.'

Ivor, who has heard it all before, continues rodding, steadily impelling any pent-up irritation down the drain towards the blockage, where it may be of some use. Martita would probably like to continue keeping the dogs in suspense and Ivor's temper in thrall, but the rain is spiking its way sideways through the thick material of the leggings and is seeping down the neck of the cape. It might be better to continue this gibing inquisition later, in the warm. She goes for a quick parting thrust.

'So who was he?'

'Who was who?' She'd heard that all right, even though he'd only muttered.

'You know who. Who was he? The man in the big red Vulva down the drive this afternoon?'

'Oh, that man. Barnaby Fitzgerald.'

'Who?'

'BARNABY FITZGERALD,' yells Ivor, giving an almighty push and feeling something start to move. 'ANTIQUE CHAPPY,' he bellows, as the blockage shifts suddenly and he is hurled forward, chest in the mire, nose down the hole.

'What? What did you say?'

'From Long Pecklam. Antique chappy from Long Pecklam.' He heaves himself up on his haunches, streaked with sludge.

Martita moves one step forward and gives him a very hard look, but it's enough to set the dogs off. 'Be QUIET,' she rasps with surprising force. The dogs freeze in shock. She thinks better of escaping to the warm kitchen – this perhaps is something requiring instant attention.

'Why were you seeing an antique chappy from Long Pecklam down the drive in secret?'

'It wasn't in secret. He was on his way up.' Ivor enunciates very loudly, very slowly. 'I'D TELEPHONED HIM.'

'I'm not selling, you know.'

'Oh, Mother –'

'You needn't think I am.'

'It was only a discussion. Very vague. Just to give us some idea.'

'Just to give us what idea?'

'We've got to see the bank tomorrow. I need some ammunition.'

'I'll never sell.'

'It isn't yours to sell.'

'What?'

'The Collection. It's mine.'

'With conditions. You'll never meet them.'

'Barney thinks we might. He thinks he's found the chap.'

'What chap?'

'A buyer. From America.'

'Never. I never will.'

'He thinks he's found the chap who can do it. Who wants to do it.'

'I'll never sell.'

'It isn't yours to sell, Mother. It's mine.'

'I'll turf you out.'

'Here we go again.'

'I'll turf you out and that will be that.' Martita at last moves off from her starting-block position and the dogs come springing back to life. 'Come along, Boysies – come along, my darlings – sup-sup calls,' and off she beetles towards the scullery door.

Ivor watches her for a moment, trying to wipe some of the slime off his nose with an even slimier hand, and tries to banish uncharitable thoughts.

* * *

In the kitchen, Fliss is forcing a gallon of Jerusalem artichoke soup through the Mouli. It's hard work but it makes her feel slightly better. They grew these artichokes themselves: fed some to the goats, sold a few and netted the rest in the cellar for their own eating. There's something about their knobbly solidity which makes her feel homespun and thrifty – and, oh God, do they need to be thrifty. If only there could be more of these areas in their lives. So many things seem impossibly out of their financial control – a stream of inescapable necessities: rates, insurances, petrol, car parts and taxes, coal, animal feed, children's clothes, electricity – the list is endless. She has a flashing vision – all four Boysies locked in a turbine, desperately scrabbling round and round like hamsters to generate power. If only. Then, in her real life, the door crashes open and the little monsters come dashing in, yipping and leaping, their wet fur clinging to their legs, ponging of drain dregs.

'I won't have it,' says Martita, standing in the doorway and shaking the rain off her cape and all over the floor.

'What is it, Titty?' Fliss has from long experience learned to develop a stolid surface calm when necessary.

'Ivor's been seeing people behind my back.'

'No, he hasn't – not "people".'

'What?'

Oh, Fliss thinks, it's one of those days, and shouts, 'NOT PEOPLE.'

'Antique chappy.'

'That's Barnaby Fitzgerald and we both called him in.'

'I should have known you'd be behind it.'

'Barney knows about our problem and thinks he may be able to help out.'

'What?'

'Our PROBLEM – he knows.'

'We have no problem,' says Martita in a small but haughty voice. She straightens out her spine as far as it will go and tosses back the structure of her hair. This is a dangerous movement, like the displacement activities of wild beasts, and signifies the storm to come.

Once, when Martita was very young and very beautiful (so she says), and still called Maud and was working in the post office in Croydon, she was taken to the Gargoyle Club in Soho by a grateful and randy customer called Sydney, who hoped to get his leg over once he'd got her good and pissed. There she had been spotted by Augustus John, who (so she says) was so taken with the auburn glory of her hair that he had kissed her on the nape, called her his Titian Rose, and ordered her a bottle of Pol Roger '21. It so happened that for that very occasion, or 'outing' as she then termed the venture, she had experimented with her hair – had pinned it up all the way around in a fat pleat from ear to ear and had piled the rest up into a smooth, glossy tower. It was only because of this experiment that the great Augustus had been able to view her nape, and that viewing, plus the effects of the Pol Roger, spelt, in one way or another, the end of the post office, Croydon, Sydney and indeed 'Maud' as she then knew herself. From that day on, the Titian Rose faithfully stuck to the style of her hair. Through decades of changing fashion, through the loss of colour and gloss, with the aid of Autumn Chestnut dyes and potions, which always now left a rim of grisly grey along the skull, with backcombing of the remaining fluff over sausages of horsehair to give it substance, Martita stuck to the precious, lucky structure.

Now she tosses it back so the weight of the horsehair supports pulls her own hair back taut from her forehead and Fliss can see the paper thinness of her white brow. Martita does this only when she's very angry indeed, for it takes time to construct the edifice every morning and wispy flyaway hairs ruin the effect of fierce symmetry.

'What is all this talk of problems? I loathe talk of problems – it's all so petty and defeatist,' she hisses.

'We have to try to face FACTS, Titty,' Fliss yells.

'And Harry loathed them too – so suburban and déclassé – we never had them in Harry's day.'

'We had masses of problems in Harry's day. If we'd only faced them then, we might not be in such a mess and muddle now.'

'I simply won't have it. It's all so pathetic and gutless. We should simply face things with abandon – take a stand.'

'That's what we're trying to do – right NOW.'

'But properly – with verve. We're not – absolutely not – the sort of people who give in.' She looks wildly round the admittedly very large, but definitely scabby kitchen. 'Look at what we have!'

'Yes, Titty – do look – have a good look – either collapsed or collapsing. We're overdrafted up to our eyeballs – we've got to get hold of some capital or they'll HAVE us.'

Bugger. She's broken Rule Number One and let naked desperation pop out into the open. Always a mistake. Apart from anything else, she has a suspicion that Martita finds all outbursts obscurely satisfying – a type of brain food.

'Oh, Felicity, Felissssity,' she mutters now, investing the name with enough scorn to turn it into an insult. 'Such a misnomer – hardly felicitous in nature – should have been christened Cassandra – much more appropriate – our very own little prophetess of doom. I'm sure you were a very gloomy baby – straight from the womb.' She shifts her gaze down to the Boysies and addresses them directly. 'Perhaps her mother's was a gloomy womb.'

The dogs, delighted to be noticed again, immediately renew their chorus and start dancing around her feet, scrabbling at her Hush Puppies. Her scowl transposes into a beaming smile.

'Oo's an Ozzie? Ooo's an Ozzie baby? Oo's a clever Boysie then?' She bends to scoop up one straggled creature. 'I think he may have caught a rat – there's blood on his jaws.'

'I really wouldn't do that, Titty. What about Weil's disease? Though I don't think he could have had a rat – he's hardly big enough.'

'But he has guts, you see – unlike others we could mention – guts and bravado.' She gathers up the tiny, filthy little animal and shakes it lovingly. 'Weil's disease – problems –' She spits the words out with contempt and kisses the dog on the nose with a resounding smack. 'We're supposed to be above such things.'

'Titty, money is haemorrhaging out of this household – we can't seem to stem the flow and we have virtually nothing coming in. It's essential to sell the Collection if we possibly can and Barney thinks he has a lead.'

'You,' says Titty with finality, 'would sell your souls for a mess of pottage.'

With a considerable flounce, she turns her back on Fliss and stalks out of the kitchen. The Boysies are caught on the hop. This wasn't the plan. The saucepan of boiled lights and heart – their saucepan – remains on the edge of the range hotplate, unserved. The door has banged in their faces and they can hear the sound of their mistress's footsteps climbing the stairs. Fluttering with puzzled disappointment, they subside in a heap gently on to the hearth.

CHAPTER 2

It's another ghastly night filled with phantoms and chimera. THE VISIT TO THE BANK flaunts itself in capital letters, forcing itself into every miserable attempt at sleep. By morning, Fliss and Ivor feel hollow with exhaustion.

Ivor goes to let out the chickens and geese and feed the other livestock, while Fliss tries to administer breakfast to the children – mostly an unrewarding task. Emma is buried in 'A' level revision, while simultaneously removing purple nail varnish from her toes. Daisy, who is secretly on yet another diet, hasn't come down but will grab the inevitable mug of black coffee as she swings out of the house at the last possible moment. Only Henry, at eleven still blissfully uncomplicated and round of face, is cheerfully munching toast and Marmite.

It seems essential to Fliss to maintain an atmosphere of normality for the children; or as much of a normality as is normal for them. They are of course well used to an atmosphere of financial uncertainty, but there's a deep chasm between a daily, almost jaunty sense of being on your beam-ends and a real, immediate crisis, and they've yet to cross it. Fliss is ashamed of her own sense of engulfing panic and struggles to delay its overspill.

Martita has long been up and is bustling around as usual, currently brewing some foul, meaty concoction for the Boysies out in the scullery.

'It stinks in here.' Daisy slinks in. She's wearing a tight navy-blue T-shirt which rides up to reveal an inch of flat stomach.

'Is that what you're wearing?' says Fliss – daft – just asking for it.

'School colour,' snaps Daisy defiantly. 'Dress code.' She dares contradiction.

'But, darling, it's freezing outside.'

'It stinks in here,' says Daisy flatly.

'You'll catch your death,' says Fliss with no conviction.

'What's Titty up to?' Daisy shouts through to the scullery. 'It stinks in here, Titty.'

Martita pokes her head round the door. 'It's a good honest smell – free of chemical additives.'

Daisy grabs her coffee. 'You can't breathe in here.' She perches her tiny bottom on the edge of the dresser and shudders delicately.

'You see – you're shivering already,' says Fliss.

Daisy offers up a baleful glare. As the clock hands hit 8.20, all three children seize their various bags and crash out of the kitchen. The bus will pick them up at the bottom of the drive. Daisy takes her mug with her – she'll leave it, empty, in the hedge and pick it up in the evening.

'Ghastly child,' says Martita. 'It's that school, of course. Why on earth you wouldn't educate them properly I'll never understand.'

'They're being very properly educated,' says Fliss stiffly.

'Henry should be going to Immingham,' says Martita. 'Harley-Wrights always go to Immingham.'

'Ivor hated Immingham.'

'He only says that. He loved it really. At least he was taught some manners. You should talk to that bank – make sure they cover the fees. It's scandalous if they don't. That boy ought to be going to his father's school. To his grandfather's school. To his great-grandfather's school.'

'Don't be ridiculous, Titty. The fees are over three thousand pounds a term. He won't even be taking Common Entrance.'

'And whose fault is that? Just you see to it.' Martita raises her eyebrows and deposits one of her looks on Fliss, something like a curse.

Fliss feels herself shrivel under it and is more exhausted than ever. By the time she and Ivor are ready to leave for the bank, they hardly have the energy to speak.

* * *

They drive into town in one of their several elderly Peugeot 504s. They can only ever afford cars of the banger variety – the sort which just scrape through their MOTs. Many years ago, Ivor took to his habit of plumping for a particular, preferably extinct, model of motor and buying up for a song any old clapped-out, pockmarked example he could find. Then he would cobble them together, swapping bits of one to another as the need arose, to give them one, or sometimes even two, viable if bastardized wagons.

He'd started with Citroën 2CVs, the mere idea of which Fliss had always loved because you could take the seats out for picnics (how typically, wonderfully French, she'd always thought), but in real life there was never any time for these imaginary picnics, and they'd come to need larger, more workhorse vehicles for transporting all manner of lumpy mess – everything from hay to sacks of clay – in order to service their various enterprises. So they'd worked up through various phases of Fords and Vauxhalls to the current run of decrepit Peugeots. The cars Ivor put together were often decked in motley colours with odd doors and tailgates, but each was almost comfortingly identical in being rimmed with splodges of rust in exactly the same places, like a baby's nappy rash.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Going to Pot by Jill Laurimore. Copyright © 1999 Jill Laurimore. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Going to Pot: A Novel

eBook

Customer Reviews

Read an Excerpt

Going to Pot

St. Martin's Press

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Recently Viewed

Going to Pot: A Novel

eBook

Customer Reviews

Read an Excerpt

Going to Pot

St. Martin's Press

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Recently Viewed

Related Subjects