Chapter 25
December 1938, London
Of course it was lovely. Fairy lights were twisted around the skinny poplars flashing pink and green, pink and green, and stalls selling roasted chestnuts wafted out their delicious fatty smell. And the children zipping around clutching candy floss on sticks, or sitting on their fathers’ shoulders, bobbing along to the brass band, and the air crisp and chill so that every in-breath felt cleansing. Bettina would love it, she’d soak everything up, attempting to find unique ways of describing things, maybe jotting them down in her ledger so that she might later slot her profound observations into the book she’d been writing for the last hundred years. But Bettina was at home shovelling cake into her face while preparing for a Christmas party so that people they didn’t give a fuck about could come and eat their food, drink their booze and marvel at the picture-perfect house and the picture-perfect family.
He had a go on the coconut shy, winning a catapult for little Monty. Tabby pouted, and so he knocked down some tin cans after nine attempts with a crooked BB rifle, winning her a cheap ragdoll. He gave them both some loose change and sent them off to the penny arcade. He sat at a stall which sold dank ale and mulled cider, his hat pulled over his eyes.
Last week he’d suggested in a roundabout way that Bettina was a bad mother.
No.
Last week he had plainly stated that Bettina was a bad mother.
His exact words: ‘You’re a terrible mother; you should be ashamed of yourself.’
Because she’d forgotten to order that train set for Monty’s Christmas present. And why had she forgotten? Because she’d spent the day getting drunk with Tuna.
‘How dare you?’ she’d whispered, before running up to her bedroom.
He sat on his stool, swilling his drink around in its glass, his mouth fixed into a moody slit. Thinking of all the horrible things she’d said to him over the years. ‘No wonder Étienne left you – I’m surprised he didn’t do it sooner… oh, wait – he did!’ There was one. He’d cried about that. And the time she’d called his films ‘perfectly moronic’. He went up to her room with a speech prepared in his head – ‘So you can dish it out but you can’t take it. Same old Bettina! You’ve implied that I’m a sub-par father, but you women are always so precious about your maternity. Et cetera, et cetera’ – to find her crying on her bed. And Bettina so seldom cried. He immediately apologised (sincerely) and she forgave him, or at least pretended to.
A man two stools over was looking at him.
‘Eh,’ he said, coming over. ‘Weren’t you the Mortician?’
Bart winced and nodded.
‘Well, well,’ said the man. ‘Not every day a man finds himself sitting next to a Hollywood actor.’ Ac-toorr. ‘My old lady reckons you’re the bee’s knees.’
‘Thank you. Your wife has impeccable taste.’ The standard response.
‘Haven’t seen you in anything lately. There was that one, wasn’t there, with the bride of Frankenstein.’
‘That wasn’t me.’
‘Oh. Well. Let’s get an autograph then. For the wife? If you would so oblige.’
Bart took a pen from his breast pocket. ‘Of course.’
The man was in his twenties. He had two missing teeth at the front, a perfectly round bald patch in his moustache, and clear blue eyes. Fuckable. ‘Here,’ he said, taking a book from a Woolworths shopping bag – A Christmas Carol, by Dickens. ‘I bought her this for a Christmas present. If you sign it, that’s two presents in one.’ He nudged Bart. ‘Which means two lays for me.’
Bart laughed, as was required. ‘Well, it’s customary for the author to sign their own book, but seeing as this one’s been dead almost seventy years… What’s her name?’
‘Rosemary. Rose.’
He wrote: ‘To Rose, have a wonderful and spooky Christmas, your friend Bartholomew Dawes’, adding devil horns over the ‘B’.
‘She’ll love this,’ the man said. ‘Thanking you kindly.’ He took the stool next to Bart. ‘So what’s Lillian White like then?’
Oh God. He knew where this was going: What was it like kissing her? Did you feel her arse? Lovely arse on her. I bet she’d do it soon as look at you.
‘Lillian White is a delightful human being. Look’ – he downed his pint and wiped his mouth – ‘I’ve got to go and retrieve my children. Have a lovely Christmas.’
‘You too, mate.’
Bart shoved back his stool and walked away, burping into the back of his hand, hat pulled so low over his eyes he could see only half the world, sliced in two.
The last time this band had played at one of her Christmas parties, there’d been a black man playing the trombone, but he’d now been replaced by a white man. According to their pianist, the black man – Jonty, his name was – had been beaten to within an inch of his life in the streets of Norwich because he’d apparently smiled at a white woman, and was to this day still lying in hospital with his body encased in casts. Bettina asked the pianist if she might write a cheque to help cover some of the poor trombonist’s medical bills, and as she did so, Bart walked past, grinning sarcastically at her while stretching an arm around and patting himself on the back.
‘Oh, Mrs Dawes, what a charitable offer! Our Jonty’ll be over the moon.’
But it was all ruined now.
She signed the cheque, paying a pound more than she’d originally intended – it was Bart’s money.
The nanny was chasing Monty around with a pair of socks in her hand and Doris was repositioning some of the decorations on the huge Christmas tree after a handyman had let his ladder fall into it. Bart stood slouched next to the grandmother clock, reading a book of poetry, which was hilarious – he hated poetry – so she could only assume he was hoping to impress someone.
The doorbell chimed. Bart caught Monty by his lapels and called Tabby over. ‘Come here and stand next to your brother and smile at the guests like perfect little angels.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Bettina. ‘Do what you like, Tabby. He’s just being a meanie.’
He raised a brow. ‘Oh? I thought that was what you wanted?’
She drained her champagne and stood up, ignoring him. She had indeed planned on setting up both her children near the front door to smile at guests, until Bart pointed out what a farce this was. So she’d let her children run wild until bedtime, and if Monty hid under the buffet table eating out of the sugar pot or if Tabby insisted on showing off her sub-par ballet to adults too polite to decline the offer, she’d laugh it off, her pearls and teeth glittering under the chandeliers, everything glittering, her eyes full of benign permission, oh, everything jolly and glittering, because she was carefree and unconstrained by the rigid codes of polite society!
He came over and wrapped his arms around her. ‘I’m sorry. I know you hate it when I point out your inconsistencies. If it makes you feel any better, I am a much worse human being than you.’
‘It does make me feel better,’ she said, ‘and you are.’
He kissed her on the forehead. ‘Let’s behave ourselves tonight.’
She smiled and returned the kiss, aiming for his cheek but bumping his nose. ‘If I can’t be thin any more,’ she said, wiping away the lipstick, ‘then I’ll damn well be a charming and accomplished mother and wife. Allow me this.’