The Would-Begetter (11 page)

‘You mean you’re not going to tell me?’

‘That’s about it.’ She yawned again.

Christian sighed. ‘So, are we going to get up then?’

‘Not for a while. He might bring us breakfast in bed, if we’re lucky.’

At eight thirty Zillah heard Hector running water in the bathroom, but by nine o’clock, when not even tea had appeared, she got up and went into the kitchen. Hector was sitting at the table in a plaid dressing-gown and carpet slippers, nursing a full mug between his palms. He leapt to his feet, smiling a welcome.

‘Good morning, and a happy Christmas to you! I would have brought you tea, but thought you might welcome a bit of a lie-in. Now then, how about a spot of grub? What do you normally cook for breakfast?’

‘Me?’

‘Well, I’m sure you’re far more experienced in these matters than I am.’

‘Nice try,’ Zillah said firmly, ‘but doing the cooking is definitely not part of our deal, you know.’

From then on, it became an unspoken contest as to who could manipulate whom most effectively on the catering front.

Zillah knew she had the advantage; she was not aiming to impress anyone. She and Christian both opted for cereals for breakfast and watched with mild curiosity as Hector cooked himself a hard-boiled egg.

‘I like the white hard and the yolk runny,’ Christian observed.

‘So do I,’ Hector agreed mournfully, adding a lump of butter to the pale yellow lump in the egg cup in front of him, in an attempt to soften it.

Afterwards he produced presents, wrapped in fancy paper with stuck-on rosettes of shiny ribbon. Zillah had to admit to herself that the man really was trying. She even felt touched. Christian opened his first and was clearly delighted with them. He set them out on the table in front of him; a jar of sweets, a book token, and a compact camera with two films and a carrying case.

He beamed at Hector.
‘Thanks,’
he said. ‘They’re excellent.’ Then he opened the camera and began putting the first film in straight away.

‘I wasn’t sure what sort of thing you read,’ Hector explained. ‘So I thought you could choose a book yourself.’

‘It’s very kind of you, Hector,’ Zillah said, pleased.

‘It’s a pleasure. Go on, open yours.’

Zillah found that he had given her a large bottle of Givenchy perfume, some chocolate truffles and a multi-coloured silk scarf. She leant across the kitchen table and kissed his cheek.

‘You’re very generous,’ she said, ‘thank you.’

Hector, flushed with pleasure, got up and went over to a shelf where a few dusty cookery books were stacked. He selected one and brought it back to the table, smiling. ‘I seem to remember,’ he said, ‘that if one wants any sort of a Christmas lunch, then one has to spend the whole morning cooking it. I’ve got us a goose, you see, and I’m not sure how long they take.’

‘No more golden eggs then…?’ Zillah said,
sotto voce
.

‘Eh?… So I thought I’d better look up how long to cook it for.’

‘Good idea.’

‘You haven’t ever done one?’

‘Never.’

‘Pity.’

Zillah knew that if she were patient, Hector would be the first to crack. He was. Over the next few hours he put on a butcher’s striped pinny, lit the oven, and muttered a lot to himself. Zillah volunteered to wash and cut up vegetables. Christian took photographs of her doing it, and some of Hector stuffing the goose with sage and onion, oblivious to the large greasy mark on his forehead, where he’d forgotten and wiped it with the back of his hand. Then, whilst transferring the bird on to the roasting rack, Hector stumbled, and dropped it on to the kitchen floor with a dull thud. Christian took another picture. This was Zillah’s cue to step forward authoritatively and say, ‘Here, let me,’ but she was far too clever to be caught like that. She’d seen controlled incompetence before, and she wasn’t fooled by it.

‘Hell!’ Hector exclaimed, picking the goose up and dusting it off with a damp dishcloth. Some of the stuffing had fallen out on to the floor, and Hector picked it up also in two or three attempts and restrained himself, just, from shoving it back inside the bird’s body cavity. Instead he scraped it off his hands in a sticky heap on the edge of table, and then wiped them abstractedly on his apron.

‘Don’t worry,’ Zillah said, ‘it’ll be fine. Just bung it in the oven, I would.’ Then she kept any further advice to herself, and joined Christian in watching television whilst Hector got on with things. Later on she discovered that the steaming pudding had virtually boiled dry and because, so far, she was winning hands down, she felt quite able to top it up with boiling water without losing face.

At noon, when Hector was getting pinker and more agitated by the moment, the front doorbell rang. Christian ran to answer it, and Zillah heard with surprise and pleasure, his cry
of ‘Dad!’

Brilliant timing, she thought. Good old Clive! After she had greeted him and introduced him to Hector, she’d asked about the strange woman who had turned up at the same time, and then for some unaccountable reason had run off again. Hector told her that Wendy was his home decorator, but was painfully shy.

‘It’s a bit beyond the call of duty, isn’t it,’ Zillah asked, ‘working on Christmas day, I mean?’

‘I think she’s lonely,’ Hector explained.

‘Poor woman. That’s one thing I’ve never been, even when I’m alone.’

‘Just as well,’ Clive said, ‘since I’m off again, day after tomorrow. Wouldn’t want you to pine away now would we?’

‘Not much chance of that.’ Zillah said, unsurprised at the prospect of his not too distant departure, but noticing that Hector had visibly brightened.

‘Summink smells good,’ Clive observed. ‘I’m starving.’

Hector felt much easier when Christmas was over, and Clive had once more gone off abroad. He hadn’t taken to the man. More than that, he’d been on tenterhooks the whole time in case Clive were to guess the truth about himself and Zillah. Hector was sure he would have been quite capable of duffing him up at a moment’s notice if he’d suspected anything. He was a lot younger than Hector and had hands the size of boxing gloves. But it seemed that Clive hadn’t suspected anything. He gradually allowed himself to relax.

The only other potential problem was Wendy. When she had appeared unannounced on Christmas day, Hector realised, sinkingly, that she clearly hadn’t understood the strictly temporary nature of their association. But, determined not to jeopardise his precious new relationship with Zillah, he’d managed to fob her off, and was vastly relieved when she hadn’t even come indoors; turning suddenly and running off. Phew! he thought. That was a close thing!

After Clive’s departure, things had settled down as before, with Zillah secretly admitting him to her bed, all unbeknownst to Christian who seemed to assume that he had spent the entirety of each night on the sofa. Everything should have been perfect, but Hector felt uncomfortably unsettled. It wasn’t anything specific that he could positively identify. It was just that an indefinable something was missing… He considered asking Zillah whether she and Clive had made love in his bed… but he really didn’t want to know.

It was almost a relief to return to work after the Christmas holiday.

‘You doing anything for lunch?’ he asked Jess on their first day back.

‘Why?’

‘Because I thought we might pop over to the pub.’

‘Good idea. Why not?’

They walked across the road together and when comfortably seated in an alcove nearest to the fake log fire, Jess asked him, ‘How was your Festering Season then, and how is the noble gesture panning out?’

‘Noble gesture? Oh I see what you mean. Fine… well, OK anyway.’

‘Not quite what you’d envisaged?’

‘Well Zillah’s bruiser of a boyfriend turned up for three days over Christmas and quite frankly we didn’t have a lot in common.’

‘Must have been a tight fit?’

‘What?’

‘Squeezing you all into two bedrooms. That is all you’ve got, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, that wasn’t a problem actually,’ Hector said, improvising rapidly. ‘Zillah and the boy had my bed and I slept in the single in the spare room. Then when Clive turned up, he moved in with Zillah and the boy slept on the bunk in the cab of the lorry. He loved it. And now of course, we’re back to square one again.’

‘So, what
is
the problem?’ Jess asked.

‘Mmmmm?’

‘You look fed up.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Well?’

‘Oh, I was just thinking about bloody Clive. He just about ate me out of house and home, and then had the cheek to say to Zillah (when he thought I wasn’t listening), that I was… Oh never mind.’

‘Go on,’ Jess urged. ‘You can tell me.’

Hector sighed. ‘It’s nothing really. He just said I was past my sell-by date.’

‘Cheek!
And what did she say?’

‘She laughed.’

‘Ungrateful bastards, both of them.’

‘Oh well, I expect she’s afraid to disagree with him. He’s a tough sort.’ Hector sighed again.

‘So it is only skin deep – beauty, that is?’

‘Oh I wouldn’t say that,’ Hector said at once. ‘She’s a lovely person. I suppose my ideas of suitable behaviour are just rather old fashioned…’

‘Never mind. Better luck next time, eh?’ Jess smiled encouragingly.

Hector refused to smile back. ‘That’s an odd sort of thing to say. I mean, it isn’t as though I had any
special
interest in the woman.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘I don’t know what it is about you, Jess Hazelrigg, but you always seem to twist our conversations around to the personal.’

‘I have a morbid fascination with the depths of human depravity and private tragedy,’ Jess said. ‘That’s why I enjoy our little chats so much. Talking of which, what’s happened to Wendy lately, d’you know?’

‘No idea.’

‘It’s just that she looked like death this morning, and after only about an hour in Reception, she had to go home. Barry says he’s really worried about her.’

‘What’s it to him?’

‘I think he worships from afar.’

‘But he’s about half her age!’

‘Love knows no boundaries, Hector. Surely you understand that?’ Jess took off her glasses and began to clean them on the hem of her sweatshirt. Hector turned jokingly to meet her gaze and found himself brought up short by the look in her exposed brown eyes.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Right.’

Barry went round to Wendy’s house after work and rang the doorbell, stepping backwards to look up at the windows to see whether he was being observed. The curtain in her bedroom twitched, but no one came to the door. He rang the bell again. On the fourth ring the door opened a crack and Wendy’s voice said,

‘Go away Barry! I’m ill in bed.’

‘I just came to see how you are.’

‘Thanks, but I can manage.’

‘So what’s wrong with you then?’

‘Oh, I’ve got a virus the doctor says. I’ll be fine once I’ve taken the antibiotics.’

‘But viruses don’t respond to… Look Wendy, just let me in will you?’

‘I can’t. I look a mess.’

‘I don’t give a stuff what you
look
like. It’s the real you I care about.’

‘Oh…’ The door opened wider and Wendy peeped out. She was fully dressed. Her eyes were red and puffy and full of tears. ‘… nobody’s ever said that to me before.’ She looked utterly pathetic.

Barry stepped forward at once, putting both arms around her, and she began to sob against his chest. ‘Come on,’ he said, patting her back gently, ‘let’s go inside and sit down and you can tell me all about it.’

Little by little he got it out of her; all except a name.

‘He’s had to go abroad on business,’ Wendy said, sniffing, ‘in… indefinitely. And when I offered to give up my job and go with him, he told me he was married to some woman in… in Israel, who’s a… Catholic so he can’t get a divorce…’

‘Poor you,’ Barry said comfortingly, holding her hand as they sat side by side on the sofa. He didn’t believe a word of it, but was nevertheless affected by her obvious despair. ‘What a shame. You must be devastated.’

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Wendy gulped.

‘Well, there’s not a lot you can do in the circumstances, is there?’

‘I thought he loved me, you see.’ She took her hand away from his in order to blow her nose on a small pink tissue.

‘The rat,’
Barry muttered.

‘What?’

‘I’m sure he did (love you, that is), but you know… circumstances beyond his control and all that.’ He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed them.

‘Yes.’

‘It’ll all work out in the end, you’ll see.’

‘Mmmm.’ She wiped her eyes again.

‘Have you had anything to eat lately?’

‘Haven’t felt like much,’ Wendy admitted.

‘How about…’ Barry felt about in his jacket pocket and produced a packet of crisps, ‘… one of these. Salt and vinegar?’

Wendy inhaled; half hiccup, half laugh. ‘Oh Barry, you’re so silly. Fancy thinking a handful of those could mend a broken heart.’ But she ate some anyway.

Hector was aware of mixed feelings when Zillah and Christian finally left to go back to their own cottage. As he drove them there, he was forced to admit to himself that it hadn’t been, as he had hoped, ten days of unmitigated bliss. There were certainly great advantages to be obtained from a live-in woman like Zillah, there were also notable… what was that abominable word that Nigel used all the time?… Yes… dis-benefits too.

On the plus side, Zillah had been wonderful in bed. She’d slept with him enthusiastically, and (apart from terminal exhaustion) she’d made him feel so desirable, skilful, and
alive
. He thought he had never wanted a woman as much; had never found one who so uninhibitedly enjoyed him. But… he couldn’t rid himself of the suspicion that she might have slept just as cheerfully with any other man who’d asked her. Could he really marry someone who might well be
promiscuous?

And then there was Clive. When he had unexpectedly turned up, everything had changed. Hector, who wasn’t in the habit of sitting on the reserves bench, found it decidedly humiliating, but valiantly kept up the pretence for Zillah’s sake. For some unknown reason, she seemed to be very keen on the brute. Incomprehensible, Hector thought to himself, but if it’s a straightforward choice between him and me, then there’s surely no contest? She must be bright enough to work that one out. But…