Excerpt of Chapter 1 from
Going Loco, one of the comic novels in
The Lynne Truss Treasury:
Part One
Chapter 1
Since being the heroine of her own life was never quite to be Belindas fate, we may as well begin with Neville. Belinda was a real person, while Neville was an imaginary rat with acrobatic skills; but since he inhabited the pit of her stomach, their destinies were inextricable. Since Christmas, at least, they had started each day together, and if either performed an action independentlywell, neither knew nor cared. Belinda would wake, and at the first choke of anxiety concerning the day to come, Neville commenced preliminary tumbling. Belinda clutched her throat; Neville donned a body stocking and tested his trampoline. It was pretty alarming sometimes, a bit too vivid, especially for someone who had never been particularly drawn to the romance of the Big Top. But she had no control over it. By the time Belinda was dressed and committed to the beat-the-clock panic that seemed to have become her waking life, Neville was juggling flaming brands on a unicycle and calling authentic acrobat noises such as Hup! and Hip! and Hi-yup!
Belinda did once mention Neville to Stefan, but since her husbands own alimentary canal had never been domicile to a rat in spangles, he didnt know how to react. Being a clever Swedish person, he was eager to learn new idioms, new English phrases, which was why Belinda sometimes gambled that he might understand something emotionally foreign to him as well. But when Belinda complained, And now Ive got a rat in my stomach, he had merely looked up from his book, sighed a bit, and turned down the volume on Abba: Gold.
A rat? he queried. This is a turned-up book.
Mm, she agreed.
They listened to Abba for a bit. Stefan mouthed the words. Perhaps under the influence of the song, Belinda found herself staring at the ceiling, wishing she were somewhere else instead.
His scientific mind slid into gear. What sort of rat? Rattus norwegicus?
I dont think so, she said. No, the name Neville had no ring of Scandinavia. Hes more of an acrobatic rat. In tights. With a high wire and parasol.
Stefan gave her one of his steady, serious smiles; she broke the gaze, as always, by pulling a silly face, because its intensity scared her.
Youre working too hard, he said, quietly. Jack is a dull boy, I think.
I know, I know. Of course I am. Thats what Im trying to tell you.
So why do you invent a rat? Why not say, Stefan, my old Dutch, help. Im working my trousers to the bone, but I just cant beat the clock?
Belinda pouted. I dont think I did invent him. I can feel him doing back-flips.
Abba started singing The Name of the Game. Stefan turned up the volume again.
At which point Neville walked on his front paws through her intestinal tract, gripping a beach-ball between his back feet.
Ta-da! he cried.
A couple of things need to be made clear about Belinda Johansson. First, she was not Swedish (obviously). Second, she was under the rather hilarious illusion that she had a hard life, when in fact she had an enviable existence as a freelance literary critic and creative writer in some demand, living in one of the better bits of South London. And third, if she saw an abandoned sock on the bathroom floor, she would glare at it defensively rather than pick it up and sling it into a laundry bag.
This last tendency may not sound too bad, but as any slattern can attest, neglected balled-up socks have a talent for embodying reproach. Im still here, the sock will tell you, in an irritating sing-song tone, on your next five visits to the bathroom. Im going crusty now. And I believe I missed the wash on Sunday morning. Belindas healthy intelligence would not allow her to be browbeaten by mouldy hosiery, which was why she wouldnt stoop to silencing its reproaches by simply tidying it up. But add this insinuating sock to the pile of attention- seeking newspapers in the kitchen (Were still here too, lady!), the ancient wine corks accumulating fluff and grease (Remember us?), and the deadline for her latest potboiler (Tuesday, or else), plus the pressure on her long-term book on literary doubles (You bitch! I cant do it on my own!) and you begin to understand why Belinda was giving house room to the rat. The deadlines alone she might have managed. It was the cacophony of reproach from all fucking directions in this fucking, fucking house that she couldnt tolerate much longer. Its sad but true that, had Belindas DNA not tragically lacked the genetic code for basic household organization, none of the following story need have taken place.
You couldnt feel sorry for her, and nobody did. Many women had more responsibilities than Belinda, with considerably fewer advantages. At the nice age of thirty-six, she lived in a nice, large Victorian villa in Armadale Road, Battersea, with a nice, rather entertaining Swedish husband shed met well into her thirties. Her work was nice, too compiling a serious literary book alongside more lucrative horsy stuff for girls. On this Monday morning in February she was about to deliver A Rosette for Verity and collect three thousand pounds. The Swede was a senior scientist, so the Johanssons had money. Only Stefans habit of perusing Over-reach Your English for Foreigners on the toilet each morning could be seen as a cause of strain.
Unfortunately, however, the justice of Belindas complaints was not the point. The point was, her body was a twenty-four-hour adrenaline pumping station. And at the time this story starts, Belindas behaviour was deteriorating badly. She had caught herself waving two fingers at the postman from behind the curtains, just because he innocently delivered more post. Take it away, she yelled. Dont bring it, take it away! A magazine editor had rung up with the offer of a laughably easy horse-tackle column (shed coveted it for years), and instead of saying, Thats great!, shed barked, Do you think I just sit here with my thumb up my bum waiting for you to ring? Get a life, for Gods sake. At the supermarket, she had rammed her trolley into that of a dithering pensioner, saying, Look, have you got a job? In short, the flight-or-fight mechanism Nature gave Belinda for emergencies had gone horribly haywire, as if someone had removed the knob, and lost it.
Stefan would tell her to take off the weight, or hang loose. Stefan was one of those people who has a regular jobor even, in recidivist lapses, a yobwho attends college in office hours, and comes home in the evening to relax. In about fifteen years, he would retire. True, a certain amount of research was required of him, but it was no skin off his nose, as he was proud of remarking. Why Belinda made such a meal of things, he didnt know.
So things came to a head in that pleasant suicide month of February, on a Monday morning. Belinda was racing out of her agreeable house at nine thirty-five for a ten a.m. train from Clapham Junction, and there was (for once) the faintest chance she would make it. She felt terrible, afflicted by a painful and humiliating dream in which she had punched Madonna on the nose for hijacking her car, only to discover that the passengers were all disabled children. This was not the sort of dream to be dislodged easily. The children had waved accusing crutches at her through the car windows, and though shed grovelled to Madonna, shed woken unforgiven and felt like a murderer.
Meanwhile, the manuscript of A Rosette for Verity had done its usual job of transmogrifying into a bowling ball in her shoulder-bag. She was brushing her hair with one hand and fumbling for bus-fare with the other, and Neville was helpfully practising trapeze. Steady on, Neville, she muttered absently. And then the telephone rang in the hall.
Oh bugger, she said, as the phone trilled. Oh no. She flailed about, as if caught in quicksand. Here she was, late already, hair not dry, feeling sick with guilt about the poor crippled kiddies, and wearing a strange fashionable black slidy nylon coat shed allowed her mother to buy her, which made her feel like an impostor.
Ring-ring, it said, as she passed.
Nope, she told it.
Ring-ring, it persisted. Remember me?
So she snatched up the receiver and answered the phone. Why? Because lifes like that. Its a rule. The later you are, the less time you can give to it, the more vulnerable you are to far-fetched misgivings. What if its the publisher phoning to cancel? Or Stefan with his head caught in some railings? All her life, Belindas idea of an emergency was someone with their head caught in some railings.
Hello?
A high-pitched male voice with an Ulster accent. A friendly voice, but nobody she knew.
May I speak with Mrs Johnson, please?
Johansson, she corrected him automatically, shooting a despairing glance at the hall clock. Why did cold-callers always waste time assuming you arent the person theyve phoned? She gritted her teeth. Before catching the train she needed to buy some stamps, renew her road tax, phone a radio producer and touch up chapter three, because shed just remembered the bay gelding of Veritys chief rival Camilla had emerged from a three-day event as a chestnut mare. Perhaps he had got something caught in some railings. Dramatically (and distractingly) Neville swung back and forth in a spotlight, with no safety-net, accompanied by a drum-roll. Meanwhile her bag slid off her shoulder with a great whump, as if to say, Well, if were not going out, Ill stop here.
Hello Mrs Johnson, my name is Graham, and I work for British Telecom. We recently sent you some details of new services. I wonder, is this a good time to talk?
Hah!
Belinda gave a hollow laugh and started to fill this annoying wasted time by hoisting her bag from under the hall tablethe area Stefan cheerfully called the Land That Time Forgot About. Heaps of stuff made a big tangly nest under here, even though Belinda had frequently begged Mrs Holdsworth just to chuck it all out. She looked at it now, and it said, Ooh, hello, remember us? rather excitedly, because it didnt get the chance as often as the socks in the bathroom or the newspapers in the kitchen. Weekly free news-sheets and fluff in lumps mingled with Stefans favourite moose-hat, and some spare coat buttons. Three empty Jiffy-bags bled grey lunar dust over a novelty egg-timer, a bottle of Finnish vodka, a CD of the 1970s Malmö pop sensation the Hoola Bandoola Band, and an ice-hockey puck. And there among it was a single white envelope bearing the symbol of registered post. Sod it, she said, as she stretched to reach it.
This is Graham from BT, the man reminded her. Is this a good time to talk?
She looked at the clock again: ten forty-three. This envelope clearly contained the cash-card shed argued about with the bank. You never sent it! shed said. But you signed for it! they replied. And here it was, saying, Remember me? In her stomach, Neville started calling other rats for an acrobatic displayYip! Hoopla! Hi-yip! From the way their weight was shifting around, they had started to form the rodent equivalent of the human pyramid. She felt compelled to admire their ingenuity. It felt as though theyd acquired a springboard.
Look, Ive got to go. This isnt convenient.
Graham made a sympathetic noise, but did not say goodbye. Instead, he asked, Perhaps you could suggest a more convenient time in the next few days? It was a routine phone-sales question, but it unleashed something. Because suddenly Belinda lost control.
It was because he had asked her to think ahead, perhaps. Thats what did it. Normally she went through life as if driving in the country in the dark, just peering to the end of the headlights and keeping her nerve. But daylight revealed the total landscape. A more convenient time in the next few days? Her lip quivered. She considered the next few days, a vision of the M25 choked with cones and honking, with nee- nawsof appointments and deadlines and VAT return and, andand started to sniff uncontrollably.
Damn this bloody rushing about. Sniff. Damn this fucking life. Sniff, sniff. Shed had a big argument about this letter, and why had it been unnoticed on the floor? Why? Because there was no time to Hoover this fluff or to clear these papers. Because there was no time to sack Mrs Holdsworth for her incompetence. No time to sew buttons on, or build a nice display cabinet for moose-hats, listen with full attention to Hoola Bandoola with a Swedish dictionary, or get to the bottom of the ice-hockey puck once and for all.
There was never any time, and it wasnt fair. She glanced into the kitchen, where the table was heaped with unpaid bills, diaries. On each of the stairs behind her was a little pile of misplaced items tumbled together (foreign money with holes in, nail scissors, receipts). If items had human rights, the UNHCR would be down on Belinda like a ton of bricks. On the wall above the phone was a handsome blue-tinted postcard of the Sussex Downs with a serene quotation from Virginia Woolf: I have three entire days alonethree pure and rounded pearls. Stefan had given it to her as a yoke. She saw it now, and in an access of Bloomsbury envy familiar to every other working female writer of the twentieth century, Belinda simply broke down and sobbed.
Mrs Johnson?
Belinda made a wah-wah sound so loud it shocked her. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and then, at a loss, wiped the back of her hand on mothers glossy coatwhich was of a material, alas, designed specifically not to absorb mucal waste.
No one would understand what a bad moment this was. Belinda was not the sort of person who bursts into tears. In times of stress, she simply increased adrenaline production while Neville ran a three-ring circus. She didnt cry. Stefan hated cry-babies. His imitation of his first wifes cry-baby mode (Wah, wah! Im so unhappy, Stefan!) was quite enough to put anybody off.
Perhaps you would like some time? Graham persisted. I can tell you dont have time right now.
No, I dont have any time, whimpered Belinda.
Shall I give you a couple of days?
Silence. A sniffle.
Mrs Johnson, would you like a couple of days?
At which point, Belinda sank to the floor again, to sit flat on her bum and sob. Would I like [sniff] a couple of? A loud, helpless wah- wah was coming down the phone.
Have you got a tissue, Mrs Johnson? Graham asked, gently.
Jo-hansson! she sobbed.
Ill give you a couple of days.
Belinda struggled to her feet, dragging her bowling ball towards her.
Give me three pure and rounded pearls, Graham. What I wantshe sniffed noisilyis three pure and rounded pearls.
You shouldnt dislike Belinda. She had a great many redeeming features. She knew lots of jokes about animals going into bars, for example. But clearly she had a big problem negotiating the routine pitfalls of everyday existence.
Its a control thing, her friend Maggie said (Maggie, an actress, had done therapy for thirteen years). You want total control. You somehow think an empty life is the ideal life, and a full life means its been stolen by other people. You think deep down that everything in the universeincluding your friends, actuallyexists with the sole malevolent purpose of stealing your time.
Oh, I see, said Belinda. And is this the five-minute insult or the full half-hour? But secretly she was aghast. The description was spot- on. Mags was right: even this short conversation now required to be added to the days total of sadly unavoided interruptions.
The first thing shed noticed about Stefan was that he smiled a lot, especially for a Scandinavian. He was solemn, and said rather peculiar things, like A nod is as good as a wink and Thats all my eye and Betty Martin, when first introduced, but he smiled even at jokes about animals in bars, which was encouraging. They had met three years ago in Putney at her friend Vivs, at a Sunday lunch, where they had been seated adjacently by their hostess, with an obvious match-making intent. Belinda resented this at first, and almost changed places. Viv had an intolerable weakness for match-making. In a world ruled by Vivs, happy single people would be rounded up and shot.
But she took to Stefan. He was recently divorced, and recently arrived in London to teach genetics at Imperial College. He was solvent, which counted for a lot more than it ought to. Tall, blond, slender and a bit vain, he wore surprisingly fashionable spectacles for a man of his age (forty-eight at the time). Of course, he wasnt perfect. For a start, middle-of-the-road music was a passion of his life, and he would not hear a word spoken against Abba. He idolized Monty Python, played golf as if it were a respectable thing to talk about, and was proud of driving a fast car. A couple of times he told stories about his mentally ill first wife, which struck Belinda as cruel. Also, he was condescending when he explained his work on pseudogenes. Like most specialists, she decided, he muddled reasonable ignorance with stupidity.
But basically, Belinda fancied him straight away, and had an unprecedented urge to get him outside and push him against a wall. In the one truly Lawrentian moment of her life, she felt her bowel leap, her thighs sing and her bra-straps strain to snapping. Having been single for seven years at this point, she knew all too well that she must act quicklya specimen of unattached manhood as exotic and presentable as Stefan Johansson would have an availability period in 1990s SW15 of just under two and a half weeks. Her biological clock, long reduced to a muffled tick, started making urgent Parp! Parp! noises, so loud and insistent that she had to resist the impulse to evacuate the building.
The lunch was half bliss, half agony, with Stefan dividing his attention between Maggie and Belinda, and finding out whose biological clock could Parp the loudest. Perhaps his understanding of natural selection contributed to this ploy. Either way, Belindawho had never competed for a manwas so overwhelmed by the physical attraction that she contrived to get drunk, make eyes at him, and (the clincher) ruthlessly outdo Maggie at remembering every single word of Thank You for the Music and the Pet Shop Sketch.
Lift home, Miss Patch? hed asked her breezily, when this long repast finally ended at four thirty. Shed known him only four hours, and already hed given her a nicknamesomething no one had done before. True, he called her Patch for the unromantic reason of her nicotine plasters; and true, it made her sound like a collie. But she loved it. Miss Patch made her feel young and adorable, like Audrey Hepburn; it made her feel (even more unaccountably) like shed never heard of sexual politics. Lift home, Miss Patch? was, to Belinda, the most exciting question in the language. Soon after it, shed had her tongue down his throat, and his hands up her jumper, with her nipples strenuously erect precisely in the manner of chapel hat-pegsas Stefan had whispered in her ear so astonishingly at the time.
And now here they were, married, and Belinda was having this silly problem with the El Ratto indoor circus; and Maggie could decipher plainly all the selfish secrets of her soul, and shed burst into tears like a madwoman talking to a complete stranger on the phone because he offered her big fat pearls but didnt mean it. However, Stefan was still smiling because (as she had soon discovered) he always smiled, whatever his mood. He had told her that he was known in academic circles as the Genial Geneticist from Gothenburg.
So what did your masters think of Veritys Rosette? he asked. It was Monday evening, and they were loading the dishwasher to the accompaniment of Voulez Vous.
A Rosette for Verity? Theyll let me know. We discussed the idea that she might break her neck in the next book and be all brave about it, but I said, No, lets do that to Camilla. Six Months in Traction for Camillawhat do you think?
He smiled uncertainly. You are yoking?
A bit, yes.
You remember we visit Viv and Yago tomorrow?
We do? she said. Damn. I mean, great.
Maggie will be there, too. Maggie is a good egg, for sure. I want to tell her she was de luxe in the play by Harold Pinter. Mind you, no one could ever accuse Pinter of gilding the lily, I think.
Shall we watch telly tonight? The Invasion of the Body Snatchers is on.
Although she was really desperate to get on with some work, she felt guilty about Stefan, and regularly made pretences of this sort. Hey, lets just curl up on the sofa and watch TV like normal people! She fooled nobody, but felt better for the attempt. The trouble was, whenever she felt under pressure, she had the awful sensation that Stefan was turning into a species of accusatory sock. Besides which, it was nice watching television with him, and cuddling. She always enjoyed those interludes with Stefan when they didnt feel the need to speak.
Dont you want to work?
Well, I
He smiled.
You have been Patsy Sullivan today, all day? (Patsy Sullivan was her horsy pseudonym.) Then you must work yourself tonight.
Are you sure? Its just, you know, its February, and the book is due in October. And I feel this terrible pressure of time, Stefan. And Ive got fifty-three Verity fan letters in big handwriting to answer. I have to pretend to the poor saps that I live on a farm with dogs and stuff. And Ive got to go and see saddles tomorrow in Barnet. Do you know the line of KeatsWhen I have fears that I may cease to be, before my pen has gleand my teeming brain?
Stefan thought about it. No, I dont know that. But it sounds like you. He turned to go, then stopped. So I shall look forward to tomorrow night. Now just tell me about Yago and Viv. Why is it that whenever I perorate in their company, they react as though I have dropped a fart?
This was difficult to answer, but she managed it.
Theyre scared of you, Stefan. Its scary, genetics. There you sit, knowing all about the Great Code of Life, and all Viv and Jago know about is Street of Shame gossip and the Superwoman Cook Book. Its a powerful thing, knowing science in such company.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king?
Exactly.
I have got bigger fish to fry?
Thats it.
Belinda was glad shed reassured him. She decided not to mention the fart. Even Im scared of you, a bit, she said, squeezing his arm and looking into his lovely eyes. They were like chips of ice, she thought.
Oh, Belinda he objected.
No, its true. I sometimes think you could unravel my DNA just by looking at me. And then, of course, you could knit me up again, as someone else with different sleeves and a V neck.
Belinda envied the way Stefans work fitted so neatly into the time he spent at college. She imagined him now with enormous knitting needles, muttering, Knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one, in a loud, clacky room full of brainy blokes in lab coats all doing the same, trying to finish a complicated bit (turning a heel, perhaps) before the bell rang at five thirty.
People were always telling Belinda that genetics was a sexy science, but Stefan said it was harmless drudgeryand she was happy to believe him. Clueless about the nitty-gritty, she just knew that his research involved things called dominant and recessive genes. So some genes are pushy and others are pushovers, and the combination always causes trouble? shed once summed it up. And hed coughed and said gnomically, Up to a point, Lord Copper.
At that momentous Sunday lunch, she had not told him much about her own work. As she discovered later, Swedes dont ask personal questions; they consider it ill-mannered. But she had told him about Patsy Sullivan, and made him laugh describing the horsy adventures. However, the time she regarded as daily stolen from her had nothing to do with her desire to write about red rosettes for handy-pony. It wasnt time she wanted for herself, either. Magazines sometimes referred to women making time for themselves, but driven by her Keatsian gleaning imperative, Belinda had absolutely no idea what it meant. Make time for yourself. Weird. Chintzy wallpaper probably had something to do with it. Long hot baths. Or chocolates in a heart-shaped box.
Thus, if well-intentioned people chose to flatter Belinda in a feminine way, it just confused her. Buy yourself a lipstick, Vivs mother had said during her university finals, giving her a five-pound note. But the commission had made her miserable. Shed hated hanging around cosmetics counters with this albatross of a fiver when she could have been revising the Gothic novel in the library. Belindas revision timetable had been incredibly impressive, and very, very tight. Only when Viv absolved her with Buy some pens, for Gods sake, did she race off happily and spend it.
Yes, for someone who lived so much in her head, it was an alien world, that feminine malarkey. Luckily the other-worldly Stefan didnt mind too much, but Belindas well-coiffed mother despaired of her, and left copies of books with titles like Femininity for Dummies lying around in her daughters house. Yet even as a teenager Belinda had flipped through all womens magazines in lofty, anthropological astonishment, amazed at the ways contrived by modern women to occupy their time non-productively. Facials, for heavens sake. Leg-waxing. Fashionable hats. Stencils.
From this you might deduce that Belindas secret personal work was of global importance. But she was just writing a book called The Dualists, a grand overview of literary doubles through the ages. Being Patsy half the time had given her the idea. Like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, she explained, when people looked blank. Or like me and Patsy Sullivan. But if she implied that she took the subject lightly, she certainly didnt.
In fact, like most areas of study, the closer you got to the literary double, the more importantly it loomed; the more it demonstrated links with life, the universe, everything, even genetics and photocopying. Abba impersonators, Siamese twins, Face/Offthe world was full of replicas. And why was the genre so popular? Because everyone believes theyve got an alternative, parallel lifein Belindas case, perhaps, the ideal existence of that unregenerate toff Virginia Woolf, with her pure and rounded pearls. This parallel life was just waiting for you to join it, to stop fannying about. Every time you made a choice in life, another parallel existence was created to demonstrate how your own life could have been. Surely everybody felt that? Surely everybody looked in the mirror and thought, Thats not the real me. It used to be, but its not now. Surely everyone measured themselves against their friends? Especially these days, when everyone was so busy?
Either way, for the past three years, between all the demands of Patsy and socks (and Stefan), Belinda had left unturned not a single existential book in which a malevolent lookalike turned up to say, Im the real you. And hey, youre not going to like what Ive been doing! Her office, formerly the dining room, was heaped with books and notes. She had become an expert on the dark world of Gogol and Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Stevenson and Hogg. Name any writer who shrieked on passing a reflective shop window, and Belinda was guaranteed to have a convincing theory about the personal crisis that conjured up his story, and summoned his double to life.
Oh yes, the nearer you stood to the literary double, the more (spookily) it told you universal truths of existence. Unfortunately for Belinda, she could never quite appreciate that the further you stood back from the literary double (as all her friends effortlessly did), the more it resembled leg-waxing by other means.
The phone rang at ten oclock and Stefan answered it.
It was a man from British Telecom, seemed a bit rum, he reported to Belinda, who was curled up with a book in her study, Neville snoozing contentedly save for the occasional twitch of his little pink tail. His name was Graham.
Belinda bit her lip. Oh yes?
He was ringing from home, to check you were recovered. I told him, This is ten oclock at night, were you born in a barn?
Belinda looked amazed. Neville stirred.
You are all right, arent you, Miss Patch? He said he only mentioned his money-off Friends and Family scheme and you wept, like cats and dogs.
She nodded. She felt cornered. When women had breakdowns, their husbands left them. It was a well-known fact. When Stefans former wife Ingrid had a breakdown, he left her good and proper, in an institution in Malmö.
You try to do too much, he said.
I know.
Its not my fault, is it?
Belinda gasped. His fault?
He searched her face, which crumpled under the strain of his kindness.
Of course its not, she snuffled.
Come to bed, he said, reaching to touch her.
All right, she said.
You must not forget, Belinda. No man is an island.
No.
She put down her book, and got up.
He smiled. The thing about you, Belinda, is you need two lives.
Well, three or four would be nice, she agreed, switching off the light. Why dont you make some clones for me? You know perfectly well you could knock up a couple at work.