“You appal me. I’m deadly serious.”
“No you’re not. If your plan is anything at all it’s a diabolical manoeuvre to get me into church. Surely you wouldn’t go to such trouble. And if you did get the job who’d be here to make my breakfast?”
Her smirk was hard to bear. “You’d have to find some other little handmaiden, wouldn’t you?”
“I prefer a big handmaiden, such as yourself. But I’m sick and tired of all this. Your perversity wears me out. How can a virtuous man like me cope with it? If my breakfast isn’t on the table in ten minutes I’ll, I’ll. …” I started to cry. “I don’t know what I’ll do.” I knelt at her feet, and wiped my mock tears on her bath towel.
“My dear Gilbert, try not to cry, darling. You know I love you.” She laid a gentle hand on my head, like a Christess about to bless me. “You’re out of sorts, my love. Let me take care of you.”
I jumped up, and pulled her towel off. “Get dressed, you slut, or I’ll beat the hell out of you.” I’d never laid a hand on her, or not very often, which she well knew and, I hoped, esteemed me for, but my threat had the right effect, for in not too long several dainty dishes were laid out in the dining room.
Her ponytail of blonde hair swayed left and right as she walked in and out, wearing a white blouse buttoned to the throat, a navy blue skirt (corset underneath) and laced up schoolgirl shoes, as formal as she dared be in my presence. “Before you sit down, sweetheart,” I said, “may I ask you to do a kindness and carry in the mail?”
Breakfast was her only edible meal, a standard bullied out of her after much training. I would regret losing her to the clergy, though hoped she was but teasing me in her ice-maidenly way. I’d learned long ago that it was only possible to get a hint of what was going on in her mind by what she said, and then to conclude the opposite. Trying to fathom otherwise would be like wading a mangrove swamp.
I sorted the letters. An income tax demand for another thousand pounds dropped from my shaking fingers to the floor. An electricity bill went the same way. A begging letter from Oxfam with the photograph of a dying baby on the front was passed for Mabel to weep over — though I knew she hadn’t a penny to her name. An unpaid parking fine also went down the chute. A cheque from my agent for sixteen hundred pounds, being the advance on two Sidney Blood novels about to be rendered into Spanish, was slipped into my pocket before Mabel could see how much it was for. Last, and almost missed in the screwing up of paper, was a light blue envelope with a proper letter inside. The handwriting of the address resembled mine in less mature days, as if I had dropped a line to myself, though I didn’t recollect having done so. A first-class stamp, a whiff of scent, no sender’s location on the back, and postmarked N6. I marmaladed another roll before slitting it open with the butter knife.
“Dear Father,” I read, to myself, in case it should give solace or otherwise to Mabeclass="underline" “My mother thinks it’s time I met my real father who, she told me, is the novelist Gilbert Blaskin. I’ve been putting the matter off for some time, not wanting to complicate my life more than it is at the moment. But I’ve decided to write to you at last.”
I felt a different colour go over my face. Whoever it was did sound somewhat like me.
“To get on with my story, as you might say in one of your books — I’m feeling rather excited, writing this. As a letter it’s easy and hard to compose. Anyway, after my mother’s abduction by you, and seduction or ravishment (you should know, unless you don’t remember, you cavalier bastard — though I write that with affection), she refused to have an abortion, thank God. She was confined in a cottage whose location she still can’t pin down. Then you abandoned her, and me. A few years later, after one hell of a life, she met a man infinitely more worthy of her than you, and married him. He brought me up, and still treats me as his own. So I’m your daughter, maybe the only one, and I think we ought to meet soon. As you can imagine, if you’re capable of imagining — though as a writer you should be, you male chauvinist pig — I want to see you, out of curiosity as much as anything. I’m not in distress, and don’t want money, because I’m married, and more than well provided for.
“My husband doesn’t know anything about this, though I suppose you might meet him one day. I did think of just turning up at your door, but didn’t want to be unfair, even to someone like you. Now you know I exist at least. I’m thirty-seven years old, another fact which might jog your memory. Your Loving Daughter (I suppose I have to say that) Sophie.”
Though facing my all-time steady at breakfast I had something to smile about, in spite of her severely disapproving features. “What is it, Gilbert? I’ve rarely seen you so absorbed.”
I turned the letter over and read it again. “She’s even got my style, so we won’t have the expense of a blood test.” I skimmed the Basildon Bond sheets across the marmalade, one flying so low it picked up the only shred of orange peel in the jar. “It’s from my long lost daughter.”
“Oh no! Not another child!”
Her anguished cry was to be expected. “You make a mistake, my love. It’s from a daughter, and I’ve never had one of those before, though a few more could be floating around. Wouldn’t know, would I? Read the letter, and have a good day.”
Wrinkles shivered across her forehead as if a dozen adders within were having the argument of their lives. I went on with breakfast, the good news increasing my appetite.
“So you’ll see her?”
Knowing she wouldn’t want me to I said I could scarcely wait.
“I wonder what she’ll be like?”
I swabbed crumbs from my face with the napkin before she could reach across to do it herself and make me hit her. “At thirty-seven? If she’s beautiful she’ll be promiscuous, and torment me. I wouldn’t let her, of course, though I expect she’d have a go at you. On the other hand if she’s squat and ugly, with clipped prematurely greying hair and tin ethnic earrings, and a few scars from being knocked about at Greenham Common, she’ll be a lesbian, but I’m sure you’ll love her, until she makes a pass at you, that is.”
“She wouldn’t dare!” She began to clear the table. “But I don’t really like you for saying all that.”
“Still too early in the day? I don’t care whether you like me or not, as long as you love me.”
She smiled in a way that indicated she was having a new thought. “Do you know what would be the best living arrangement for us, Gilbert?”
I was glad to admit that I didn’t.
“It would be,” she simpered, “if we could each have our own private bathroom.”
“What a good idea. And an even better notion would be to have our own breakfast room and then, come to think of it, our own bedroom and sitting room. It would be ideal to have separate flats. I could put on a mask, and burgle yours now and again. So when are you leaving? Sorry, darling, I didn’t mean that. It’s just that in your divine presence I’m unable to curb my exuberance. Now, be a good girl, and bring in another pot of coffee. Or I’d like it in my study. I must get to work. Idleness is unforgivable in a busy man. I occasionally regret the time I first recognised my ability to think joined up thoughts. Perhaps it’s time I retired, but a writer can’t do that till his head turns into a cabbage. In any case I want to be the first man of a hundred to write a novel. So instead of listening to you running me down all the time I’ll get to work. I only ask that you come into my study in a couple of hours with a soft cloth soaked in eau de cologne and wipe my fevered brow.”