George and Spider Part Four - The Jules House

Every few months Arthur would pick a Sunday and organise a family event. This was often a sit-down meal, during which nobody could escape and family members were forced to look at each other, often seeing the worst elements of themselves and feeling thoroughly churned up and dreadful for it. These gatherings did no real good, except to make Arthur feel a little closer to his late wife Cynthia. Francis and George saw more than enough of their father, George and Tony didn't get on and the family were not keen on Maxene. This was palpable and only served to irritate her.

Grandma Kathleen had moved in with the family shortly after her daughter Cynthia passed away. The arrangement was thought to be temporary but she'd never left. At seventy eight years old now, Kathleen existed mostly in a little world of her own. She was however, stealthily observant, particularly in regard to her own family. Often taking her observations and twisting them, stirring them up into a sort of toxic paste which she then flicked back at the poor, observed family members when they were least expecting it.

Seeing all her grandsons together was a marvel to her. She loved to watch them, to compare them, for she had played a big part in bringing them up, and been instrumental in screwing them up.

The Jules family home was a tall Victorian semi, separated from a main road by just a couple of feet. The house was long and narrow with many rooms leading off long, dark corridors. It was big but not spacious. Any sensitive individual who visited the house would feel a building sense of oppression and usually become sick and want to leave after just a few hours.

Kathleen had her own room down on the ground floor, in what could have made a very elegant dining room. She kept her curtains shut all day, instead lighting the room with a dull little flocked lamp which cast an errie light onto the cluttered, stagnant space. Her favourite place however was the lounge, where a large bay window faced out onto the busy street. All day long she could watch people going by. She knew many of their faces and habits, she speculated on their lives and often muttered little comments as she sat or stood next to the wobbly, Victorian glass pane. This was her occupation, for leaving the house for any reason except visiting the doctor's surgery was unthinkable; there she was a regular 'heart sink' patient; whinging and unfathomable.

Arthur spent much of his time in the large, L shaped kitchen. The room was rather tired and beige with faded tiger lillies on the tiles. Although hard to believe now, many years ago, Cynthia had been very excited about in installation of those tiles and derived months of pleasure from seeing them on her kitchen wall. Arthur loved to cook. As a youth he'd desperately wanted to become a chef but his mother had talked him out of it on account of severe varicose veins running in the family (she actually meant piles). Recently Arthur had treated himself to a huge oven with eight gas burners, prompting Kathleen to rename the room 'the soup kitchen'.

On the first floor were two double bedrooms occupied by Arthur and Francis. Arthur's room was pretty much unchanged since his wife's passing. Francis loved to read and had crammed his space with books and magazines. He never changed his bed linen so the air inside was stale and musty. Between these two bedrooms was a large, cold bathroom with a pale blue suite. This was shared between the whole family. Up on the second floor were two identical rooms in the eaves, these were once occupied by the twins. Now Tony occupied both of them, one for him and the other for his clothes. George had been granted the flat above the shop, rent free, on account of the trouble he was perceived to cause in the Jules house.

At the bottom of the house was a huge cellar. This held Cynthia's belongings; her handbag and coats, her hair dryer, make-up and her wedding dress. There was also a double pushchair and various other infant paraphernalia, in dated fabrics and all mottled with black mildew. These items belonged to a previous life when all was apparently well and wholesome within the Jules family. Arthur knew he needed to deal with the cellar but he just couldn't face it. Every now and then a sick mist would come off it and waft through the house, infecting everything with retrospective hopelessness.

On Sunday mornings the men of the house always slept late. Kathleen left her room each morning at six, having woken much earlier. She spent many hours sitting up in bed doing crosswords or simply staring at the roses on the wallpaper, seeing patterns, patterns within patterns within patterns. Then she would do her exercises before going to the kitchen to sip tea. She dressed smartly on a Sunday, for whom she did this nobody knew, perhaps it was just for God but she always made an effort.

Arthur came down at half past ten and immediately noticed she was wearing a new gold necklace. It glinted in the sunlight which streamed through the kitchen window.

'That's a fine necklace Kathleen. Don't think we've seen it before have we?' he said, raising his eyebrows.

Kathleen fondled the necklace and took another sip of tea, then she shook her head from side to side continually for several seconds. She often did this when perturbed.

'Yeah, I forgot to mention,' said Francis, as he entered the room. 'Nan has been buying jewellery from the shopping channel again.'

'Oh Kathleen! I thought we'd sorted this out. If you want anything you only have to ask.'

Kathleen screwed up her little face and ran a crinkly hand through the tight, dark curls at the back of her head. 'You never let me in the shop Arthur,' she said, 'you never let me out of this house!'

'What rubbish! You never want to go out. And the last time we took you to the shop, all as you kept saying was how it had all gone downhill since Cynthia left us. We do our best you know - but we're only men. Cynthia had a way of making things look - I dunno - classy.'

'I know she did!' Kathleen blurted out, in a shrill, defensive voice.

'We do our best don't we Fran?'

Francis was making coffee now, he carefully spooned the coffee granules into two huge mugs. 'Ah, we do our best,' he said without turning around.

'Anyway I don't think I can trust you around the customer Kathleen. Not after last time.'

Kathleen frowned hard and cocked her head as if trying to recall something buried within the fathoms of her head. Then she got up from the table, pushing the chair back noisily and shuffled away in the direction of the lounge, clattering her cup on its saucer as she went.

A few minutes later the front door slammed as Francis went off to purchase the broad sheets, his entertainment for the day. Kathleen got up from her favourite chair in the lounge window and fixed her little blue eyes on him as he walked up the road. She could just about see the paper shop if she pressed her face against the window. Without blinking she kept her eyes on the shop door until he came out with the papers, then she watched him walk back, only sitting down when he was back at the front door. This urge to spy was something she couldn't resist.

Arthur had purchased for the occasion a very large joint of meat and he was already pottering around in the kitchen, crushing herbs to make a marinade. He had bacon sizzling on one of the gas burners, the smell of it pervaded the house, although it did nothing to whet Kathleen's appetite. She ate only once a day, offal or steak and kidney pie, no vegetables and consumed very slowly like a spoiled cat. Francis regularly worried about the nutritional value of her diet but his concerns were always met with the same response of; 'you know what you like when you get to my age,'

Francis was just settling down with the papers when George and Maxene arrived at the house. They were in poor spirits, having argued on the bus journey there. They plodded up the four steps which led to the front door with stony expressions. Maxene sighed as George rang the bell. Kathleen had observed their approachand was now leaning towards the glass to keep them in view. 'It's George with his young lady,' she said, continuing to stare and then tutting. 'Hungry dogs will eat dirty pudding!'

'What's that Nan?' said Francis from behind his paper.

Kathleen didn't respond as she plonked back down in her seat with a grimace across her face which suggested the utmost disgust. The bell rang again. Francis waited a few seconds to see if his father would go. Eventually he got up with a puff of annoyance and let the couple in. 'Thought you had a key?' he said.

'Don't live here anymore Fran. Can't just barge in, can we Max?'

Maxene forced a nervous smile. The couple poked their heads into the lounge and greeted Kathleen who simply nodded with pursed lips and looked away. Then they went down to the kitchen where Arthur was sitting at the table reading on of the newspaper supplements. He had put on an apron printed with the anatomy of a voluptuous nude female.

'Hello Maxene,' he said, rather briskly

George noted that his father pronounced the X in her name rather more harshly than was necessary, this annoyed him greatly.

'Hello Arthur,' she returned in a similar tone, almost as if they were having a sort of contest of hostile greetings.

'How's life in the salon?'

Maxene nodded and said, 'Busy - very busy.'

Arthur slapped the palms of his hands down onto the table and said, 'Not too busy I hope?'

Maxene shrugged, her eyes widened. 'Why - not too busy?' she said.

'Well, I was hoping to drop in for a short back and sides,' Arthur said, patting the sides of his head. 'My usual barber is retiring to Spain.'

Maxene laughed a little. 'Oh, is that Mr Mc Cloud?' she said.

Arthur didn't appreciate this laughter, it confused him. 'Yes - why, do you know him?' he said sternly.

'Everyone knows Mr Mc Cloud. He's a well known character around here, isn't he.'

Arthur nodded and said, 'Well I've known him since way back when he first set up shop. Back in the day he used to show porn films, remember George? On that little black and white t.v.'

George blushed slightly, shook his head and said, 'Er, dunno, did he?'

'Oh yeah. You could watch while he was chopping away at your swede - without the wife knowing like. In fact that's how I showed my boys, you know, all about the birds and the bees and all that. It was nothing hard-core obviously, not by today's yardstick! But it was good for local dads to teach their boys - take em for a haircut at Mc Cloud's. He was doing more than haircuts, he was providing a public service when you think about it.'

George shook his head. 'Dad!' he said quietly.

'What? He WAS George. I took you in there remember? You had to perch on a wooden box on top of the chair.'

'I hated the bloke. He smelt of B.O and - moustaches.'

'He shaved that thing off years ago. He's getting on a bit now, he's got to an age where he needs a daily dose of sunshine just to keep himself going.'

'He must be roughly the same age as you Dad,' said George, 'And you must know that the place Max works isn't a barbers, it mostly does afro hair.'

'It only does afro hair,' said Maxene flatly.

Arthur froze for a few seconds, then looked thoroughly dejected and slightly embarrassed. 'I did not know that,' he said, rubbing his hands.

'You could cut your little bit off yourself, with a shaver, to be honest,' said Maxene.

Earlier that morning, while he'd been eating his bacon sandwhich, Arthur had spent some time wondering how he could deepen his relationship with Maxene, and he reckoned that by getting her to cut his hair he'd found the perfect way. Her response seemed to him like a rejection of his carefully thought out olive branch. The truth was that Maxene could cut any man's hair, a dog's even. However she found the idea of touching Arthur's bronze head rather creepy and was thankful to George for intervening.

Arthur checked his watch.'Well I hope you both like beef coz that's what we're having - with all the trimmings,' he said dryly, as if he were issuing them a sentence. Then he got up from his seat, turned his back on them and began to man-handle the meat on the surface, bashing it with a wooden hammer and putting an end to their conversation.

The couple looked at each other. George tried to apologise with his eyes and mouth, tilting down the corners of his lips and tilting his head. He felt crushed and uneasy in his own home, so much so that he felt he could go crazy, smashing up his mother's ornaments and injuring family members. Ever since he was a child, George had fantasized about taking the large, antique barometer off the wall and smashing it over Grandma Kathleen's head, until blood ran from her nostrils and out of her eyes, as her tiny skull imploded. Now that she was elderly, it would surely take just a single blow. There was less fun in that. The fantasy had lost weight.

The couple wandered down the narrow hallway to the lounge where Francis was lost in his newspapers and Kathleen was staring, fixated on the view through the window. Smiling politely at them, Maxene sunk into sagging, beige sofa and George sat very close next to her. They held hands and briefly grinned about something they'd once done on it.

With shifty grey eyes, Francis peered up at them above his drooping newspaper. The palms of his hands released a little flush of sweat which made them stick to the paper. Partly to unstick them, partly to make the paper stand upright, he flicked out the pages in an abrupt, rustling gesture.

Francis was uncomfortable around women generally, but Maxene made him particularly tense. When he thought of her there were two emotions which ran through him simultaneously, both had their roots in hostility. He disliked her because he felt threatened by her. Maxene wasn't needy or flirty or stupid, she had none of the traits which Francis expected to find in women. She was strong and unflappable, just the kind of woman who unsettled him most. She made him hate himself and that manufactured hate which he wished to throw back at her, but he stifled it and it bounced inside his head and grew and grew.

He had also thought about Maxene in a sexual way. Several times he'd engaged his imagination in an all consuming fantasy which involved her inviting him up to their flat while George was in his shed. He'd pictured her naked on the bed, in THOSE boots and he'd imagined her darkest place, worse than that, he'd been in and had a poke around among the conjured flaps and forests. There was no dialogue in this fantasy, just black boots and submission. Within the safe confines of his head, he'd dominated her. The reality was quite different. Just her silent presence was sufficient enough to control his thoughts. He felt livid with Maxene for making him think those thoughts and tainting, what he considered to be, an otherwise immaculate imagination. He was perhaps jealous too, that she now seemed to be in control of George's life. Francis felt quite sure that Maxene was somehow contaminating the purity of their family life with her strong, unflickering presence.

Francis let our a little cough to break the silence, placed his hand on the side of his head, grabbed a bit of his hair and said, rather flimsily, 'Your hair looks nice M Maxene - it looks sort of bigger, longer.'

'It's hair extensions,' she said quickly, flicking it back behind her broad shoulders.

Kathleen stood up, turned around and stared at Maxene with rather mad eyes, then sitting back down she said, 'Looks like a rat's nest!'

Maxene's facial expression changed in alarm. She blinked at poor George who could only cover his face with his hands. Francis, who saw himself as the family peace keeper, got up suddenly and began to shove a cushion into the gap between his grandmother's back and her chair. 'Backrest!' he said breathlessly, 'she wants a backrest.'

'I don't want that!' Kathleen screamed in her shrill voice. 'Francis, what the blastards are you doing to me? I'll have you arrested!' She twisted in her chair, grabbed the cushion in her gnarly, bejewelled hands and threw it at Francis, causing his spectacles to fly off his face. He picked them up slowly and went and sat back down heavily in his seat. A deep red flush blazed on his cheeks.

to be cont'd