Death of a Perfect Mother Read online

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Told anybody what we feel? About Lill? How she makes goose pimples go up and down our spine every time she opens her bloody mouth? How we’d like to put her guts through a mincer? Shut her in a slow oven and listen to the howls? Have you told anyone?’

  There was silence for a minute. ‘No. I never have,’ said Brian, swallowing hard. ‘It’s not—not the kind of thing you say, is it? I mean, nobody at school talks much about their mothers. And anyway—I mean, when she goes around, saying what she does—’

  ‘Spreading the gospel of light—the Hodsdens, mother and sons, as the apostles of cheery family togetherness. Exactly. Everyone knows we’re devoted. Lill has told them so. She thinks so herself. She’s given us our let-out. She’s dug her own grave.’

  Brian smiled, slowly. ‘That’s nice. It seems—appropriate.’

  ‘Too bloody right it is. Now all we’ve got to do is think through the details.’

  Downstairs a door banged. ‘You lads still up there, wasting a lovely day like this?’ carolled the crow voice from downstairs. ‘You shift yourselves or I’ll be up there with a broomhandle.’ And she burst into affectionate laughter.

  ‘Coming, Mum, just getting dressed,’ came the duet from the bedroom. But as they scrambled into their clothes Brian took Gordon by the arm and whispered: ‘I’ve just remembered. That book. Sons and Lovers. He did his mother in there, too.’

  ‘Bully for him,’ muttered Gordon. ‘I didn’t think we’d be the first. How did he do it?’

  ‘Drugs. She was ill already.’

  ‘That’s no good. Lill’s got the constitution of a horse. It’s got to be some other way. Think about it.’ He suddenly took Brian by the shoulders and pushed him against the wall. ‘You do agree, don’t you?’ he hissed, looking into his eyes. ‘It’s the only way. She’s got to be killed.’ Brian, wondering, nodded. ‘All right then. Now we’ve got to decide on the way.’

  As they pushed in the tails of their shirts and pulled on their shoes they both were turning over in their minds various delicious possibilities.

  CHAPTER 2

  FAMILY NIGHT OUT

  It’s a rehearsal. That’s what it is, a rehearsal, thought Brian. This is how it’s going to be, one week from today. And one week from today Lill will get her chips, hand in her cards, bite the dust, go to meet her (much to be pitied) Maker. This is a trial run for her murder. I’ve got to keep my wits about me; observe everything; notice possibilities—things we could take advantage of, pitfalls that could arise. I can’t just switch off like I usually do. I’ll have to keep on the qui vive.

  It was very much a family night out. They were celebrating Gordon’s birthday a day early—because, as Lill said, Sunday night in a pub’s dead as a doornail. So as usual they had gone down to the Rose and Crown (even the pub names in Todmarsh were unimaginative) as they did every Saturday. They had as always taken the side way, through the little cutting known popularly as ‘Snoggers Alley’, and then down Balaclava Road. Their whole route was vilely ill-lit—providentially, wonderfully ill-lit, Brian had whispered to Gordon. Six and a half minutes ordinary walking time, Gordon had said as they opened the door to the Saloon Bar. Gordon was very consciously the technician of the enterprise.

  Now they were all seated round a table, and beyond the fact that Lill had flaunted up to the bar and announced ‘It’s my Gordon’s birthday, so we’ll expect a free round later on,’ and then had turned to the sparse collection of early evening drinkers and shrilled, ‘Get yourselves in good voice for “Happy Birthday To You” later on’—apart from that, it was a normal Saturday night out for the Hodsdens.

  Well, almost. Because tonight Fred was with them, just for a first pint, and just to be friendly, like. Fred invariably played darts at the Yachtsman’s Arms on Saturday nights, but tonight he raised his glass to his elder son and looked with satisfaction around his little table. Fred was thin, decidedly wizened, and very quiet. Almost humble, you might say. He was like a plant that had never quite flourished after transplanting. Here he was, still pottering round the town’s parks as a basic wage gardener twenty-odd years after they had moved to Todmarsh. Happy enough, in fact, but hardly prosperous, and looking all of twenty years older than his wife. It was not quite what Lill had envisaged when she’d made the move. She told him often enough that he ought to consider himself bloody lucky she’d married him, and indeed that was exactly what in his own mind he did feel. He agreed with his wife absolutely.

  She’s a real winner, my Lill, he thought, raising his mug to his lips. Regular life and soul of the party. And she’s brought up a wonderful family. I’m a lucky man.

  Lill Hodsden’s daughter was also out with the family tonight and drinking a gin and lime. She was an occasional rather than a regular addition, and as a matter of fact she was still well under eighteen. But what landlord would argue the toss with Lill? Come to that, what policeman? So tonight Deborah tagged along with Mum and the boys because until later she had nothing better to do.

  Deborah she had been christened (C. of E., what else?), Debbie she had become. She hated the name in both forms. It symbolized Lill’s classy aspirations, and their shoddy outcomes. Mary, Eileen, Dorothy would have been better. Or even, come to that, Petula or Cilla. But she was Deborah, become Debbie. She heard her mother speaking:

  ‘Look at old sourpuss over there. Come on, give us a smile, Debbie. It doesn’t cost you anything. It’s Gordon’s birthday, what do you think we brought you out for? Get a smile on your dial, fer Chrissake.’

  Lill disliked her daughter. For a start she wasn’t a boy, and Lill preferred boys—well, didn’t everyone? Then, in the last year, she had grown up, so on family outings there they were together, mother and grown-up daughter, thirty-odd years all too evidently between them. They were like two pages in a family snap-album, wide apart. Only Deborah had all the looks that Lill had had as a girl, without any of the coarseness. She hasn’t got a bit of my go! said Lill to herself, consolingly.

  If I can only get away from her, thought Debbie to herself, nothing in my life can ever be as bad again. If I can only get shot of Lill . . .

  ‘Well, we won’t let old sauerkraut cast a blight over the proceedings,’ said Lill, turning back to her boys. ‘This place seems to need a bit of pepping up tonight. I can see I’ll have to brighten things up with a few verses of “Lily the Pink” later on. That’ll put a firework up them.’

  Oh God, thought Gordon, not Lily the Pink. I don’t think I could stand it. It’s my birthday. Why should my birthday be celebrated with ‘Lily the Pink’?

  For even Gordon didn’t quite realize that it was his birthday, but Lill’s celebration.

  Luckily Lill’s attention was distracted for the moment by the arrival of Mr Achituko.

  ‘Archie!’ she trilled. ‘It’s my pal! Yoo-hoo, Archie!’ For Lill, never very good on words of over three syllables, had been totally defeated by Achituko and had picked on Archie as friendly-sounding. Mr Achituko, his smile fixed and imperturbable, wished he had gone into the public bar, or to the King’s Head, or back to the Coponawi Islands. But as always happened with Lill, he gave in to his fate and brought his glass over to the table by the Hodsdens. He was greeted by Lill as manna from Heaven. He was something to enliven her evening.

  ‘It’s my boy-friend. Isn’t he lovely? I could eat him.’ Instead of which she kissed him loudly, for the benefit of the whole bar. Then, as she always did, she regarded his blackness comically, and said: ‘Does it rub off?’

  Mr Achituko smiled—fixedly, imperturbably. Debbie flushed and looked at the table. Fred, watching out of his washed-out blue eyes like aged overalls, said to himself: My Lill’s in great form. Always gets a bit of fun going. Just what this place needs.

  Darts were Fred’s treat of the week, but when he drained his glass and stood up, it was almost with reluctance.

  ‘Well, I’d better be off,’ he said. ‘Enjoy yourselves.’

  ‘Okee-doke,’ sa
id Lill, off-hand. Fred threaded his way apologetically through the drinkers, and as she heard the door-latch click after him, Lill beamed round at her brood and said: ‘Well, he doesn’t leave much of a hole, does he?’

  And it was true. That was the trouble with so many of Lill’s brutalities. They were true, or horribly close to target at worst. When Fred had left the room you couldn’t remember whether he had a moustache or not, whether he wore glasses or not. He left behind himself nothing much more than a vaguely snuffed-out atmosphere and a smell of old clothes.

  And now, thought Brian, this really is a rehearsal. This is how it will be next Saturday. Just Gordon and me, Debbie perhaps, and Lill. Debbie will go before long, because she can’t stand being out with Lill for more than an hour or so. She’ll drift off to see one of her friends. She’ll be sure to be somewhere where there are people to swear to her presence. Just as there’ll be people here, in this pub, to swear to us.

  ‘ ’Ere, look,’ said Lill in a stentorian whisper, ‘look who’s over there. It’s that little Mrs Watson from along the road. Isn’t that good? She’s such a lovely girl. Sort of distant . . . aristocratic, know what I mean? She shouldn’t shut herself away like she has been. She must be getting over it at last.’

  In the far corner of the bar, sitting with a girl-friend, was a woman in her mid-twenties. She had long fair hair, an unmade-up face with classically perfect features, and eyes full of pain. Distant she may have been, but she registered Lill: a twitch of the mouth, a fleeting expression of annoyance, showed she was aware of Lill’s interest. She leaned forward over a bag of potato crisps, talking with desperate concentration to her friend.

  ‘Do you know,’ said Lill, still in that same ear-shattering whisper, and leaning across to Mr Achituko in hideous intimacy, ‘her husband was killed in Northern Ireland. Shot in the back. On duty. Isn’t it awful?’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Mr Achituko, his fixed smile disappearing for a moment. ‘I have talked with her.’

  ‘Oh, have you?’ said Lill, withdrawing in displeasure. ‘Well, don’t you go trying to cut out our Gordon. I’ve got her marked down for him.’

  ‘Stow it, Mum,’ said Gordon, who had flinched when the name was first mentioned but now responded with great geniality: ‘I can choose my own girl-friends.’

  ‘Well, you’ve never chose half such a smasher as that yet,’ said Lill. ‘She’s just what you need. She’s just coming out of her shell too—it’s taken her quite a time.’ A thought struck her. ‘Crikey, if old Fred snuffed it I’d be on the look-out for my next on the trip back from the cemetery.’

  She had forgotten her whisper, and bellowed it round the whole bar, looking complacently at the people at the surrounding tables. One of them said: ‘I bet you would, too, Lill,’ and she chuckled in self-approbation.

  Getting serious again, she turned to Gordon and said: ‘Why don’t you go and chat her up a bit, Gord? She’s a lovely girl, just your style. You ought to get to know her better, it’s only neighbourly.’ And she winked suggestively. Lill prided herself on not keeping her boys tied to her apron-strings. She was always telling them to go out and get themselves girls. Mrs Watson would make a lovely wife for her Gordon. She’d be a better housewife than most, having been married before. And he’d be living just up the road.

  ‘Come off it, Mum,’ said Gordon, with that unabated good-humour that now, more than ever, it was essential to preserve. ‘What would I say to her? “My Mum says I was to come over and chat you up a bit”?’

  ‘Oh, go on with you. You’ve got more nous than that. You can do it casual, like.’

  Gordon smiled enigmatically, but when five minutes later he went to the bar, he exchanged a few cheery words with little Mrs Watson from along the road. And Lill, pointy ears aquiver, caught them, purred, and smiled at Brian a smile of (she thought) great subtlety, full of hidden meaning.

  Don’t smirk at me, you old crow, thought Brian. You’ve got us all on a puppet-string, haven’t you, or so you think? Just a little twitch from those pudgy, purple-painted fingernails and we jerk up and do your bidding. In one week’s time, oh horrendous Lill, you are going to feel a jerk from your Muppets that you haven’t been expecting at all.

  With her second, and then her third, drink, Lill—as usual—began to get rowdy. Her advances to Mr Achituko became more brazen than ever, and before long he downed his drink with uncharacteristic zeal and managed to get caught up in conversation by the bar. This gave Lill an opportunity to engage in raucous conversation with all the tables around her about the sexual prowess of ‘darkies’. Even the Todmarshians got a mite embarrassed at this (though it was a subject they greatly enjoyed speculating on in hushed tones). Deborah thought her mother might conceivably take it as a reproof if she took herself off, so without a word she got up and went out.

  Lill’s reaction, however, was no different from her reaction to Fred’s departure: she took care to say to Debbie’s departing back: ‘She’s getting stuck up, that one. She’s too proud for her own family.’ Deborah, reaching the outside air and the darkness, leaned for a moment by the wall, laid her forehead against the coolness of it, and breathed deep. Then, with the resilience of youth, she shook herself and went off to play records with one of her friends.

  Inside things were working up inexorably towards ‘Lily the Pink’. Lill could sing other songs: her tastes tended towards the music-hall—to the blowsier numbers that she thought of as ‘a bit of fun’, where she could bring out all the innuendoes and add a few of her own. But ‘Lily the Pink’ was to her what ‘My Way’ is to Frank Sinatra: an irresistible mixture of Credo and blatant self-advertisement. She had been in her seventh heaven when the song was rediscovered. It beat ‘Lily of Laguna’ into a cocked hat. So now it came out on all feasts and high days, and the whole bar, after five or six hints, recognized its inevitability.

  ‘All right,’ said Lill at last, as if giving in to overwhelming popular demand. ‘Stand back and give me a bit of room.’ And pushing back the chairs in her vicinity she slipped off her apple green plasticated shoes and stood on the chintzy seats built solidly into the saloon bar wall. ‘Come along, all,’ she shrieked, ‘help me with the chorus!’

  And only half-reluctantly the bar turned in her direction, paid homage to the buxom bright figure standing there, bursting out of her electric blue dress and grinning encouragingly from under her outrageous mop of red hair.

  ‘Go it, Lill,’ someone said. ‘We’ll back you up.’

  And as someone, from long training, began simulating the hurdy-gurdy accompaniment, Lill steadied herself on the bouncy cushions, opened up her healthy pink throat and let them have it.

  ‘We’ll drink-a-drink-a-drink to

  Lily the Pink-the-Pink-the-Pink,

  The saviour of the human ra-a-ace . . .’

  She was in her element. This, she thought, should have been her life. Doing the Halls. Doing the Clubs up North. No class there, of course, but lots of life. She waved her hands for the chorus and a ragged sound emanated from the saloon bar regulars. ’Course everyone had life in them, Lill thought, but with some you had to work to get it out. She grinned encouragingly at them, and the sound grew louder and more in unison. She purred. She might have been God listening to the Hallelujah Chorus. She looked at little Mrs Watson, sitting with her back to her in the far corner. Funny: she hadn’t had her back to her before. She looked at Mr Achituko over by the bar. Dear old Archie. What memories he’d take back with him to—wherever it was! Well, he can’t say anyone was prejudiced here! Then her eyes rested on her boys, chairs pushed back, looking up at her smiling. That’s what she liked—just her and the boys. That was how it should be. They were lovely boys. Good-looking too, though she said it herself and shouldn’t. And they adored her. You couldn’t put it any other way. Look at them now—you could see it in their eyes. They simply adored her.

  Gordon glanced at his watch surreptitiously as he raised his mug to drink. Twenty past. A bit of applause, a quenching of
the thirst, and Lill would go. Half past on the dot on Saturday night. He’d join in the applause, then he’d make himself scarce. That should be easy enough. After one of Lill’s performances everything became somehow more . . . flexible.

  And indeed, when Lill bleated the song to its conclusion the bar, led by her sons, burst into proprietorial applause—she was our Lill, after all, and quite a character when all was said and done—and then the groups began loosening up, talking, laughing, and trotting to the bar for orders. And at the centre of it, as always, Lill, standing flushed and happy, accepting the compliments and finishing her drink.

  ‘That’s the stuff to give the troops,’ she said. ‘That Olivia Newton-John’s got nothing on me, eh?’

  Gordon, with an athlete’s grace and quietness, sauntered through the various shifting and coalescing groups and out through the door marked ‘Toilets’. The door led into a corridor with, at the far end, two doors marked with diagrams supposedly indicative of gender, which you had to peer at closely before pushing the one of your choice. But immediately to the left was a door leading out to the Rose and Crown’s back yard, and close by it was a gate out to the street. Gordon was through it in a flash, and then walking coolly up the street towards home. No point in hurrying it. Might attract attention. Anyway, he only had to be sufficiently ahead of Lill for her not to recognize his back. His watch glowed phosphorescent in the darkness. Nine-twenty-eight. He was going to time this operation like a miler making an attempt on the record.

  Back in the Rose and Crown Lill was collecting up her belongings—handbag, best coat, assorted make-up gear she had scattered over the table after a ‘patching-up’ operation. Once gathered together, she smiled her fearsome smile of maternal love at Brian.

  ‘What you fancy for supper, love? Nice hamburger with a fried egg on it?’

  ‘Lovely, Mum.’

  ‘Where’s Gordon?’ Lill looked around the bar in the direction of Mrs Watson, and her eyes registered disappointment.