THE IMPOSSIBLE BOY

Colonel Bagley swore as he struggled to insert a stud into his starched collar.

'Marjorie!' he yelled. 'Where're my shoes?'

Mrs Bagley came in, bearing the patent pumps, now cracked and with much of their lustre gone.

'I've polished them. Perhaps you ought to think of getting a new pair -'

'Why are women only happy when squandering money?'

He snatched them from his wife's hand. The accusation of extravagance was unjust, thought Mrs Bagley, looking about her husband's dressing room, at the scarred chest of drawers missing a handle, the threadbare carpet, the iron bedstead that had once cradled the corpulent form of Mrs Bagley's mother's cook. The lining of the yellow curtains, chosen with such pleasure by the bride had rotted in the sunlight of nearly thirty summers. There was a mottling of damp on the ceiling. But thank goodness he found no fault with it. The relief of having her bed to herself after fifteen years of his snoring, intestinal eruptions and worse - those dreadful grapplings in the dark - quickly Mrs Bagley brought down a shutter in her mind.

'You'd better take a bismuth powder, dear. Remember how unwell you were after last year's dinner-'

'Kind of you to remind me.' The Colonel spoke with repelling sarcasm. 'The beef was off, that was all. If I reminded you of every occasion when you weren't feeling quite the thing we'd never be done. Headaches, nerves, collywobbles, a walking compendium of ills. Remember that time you fainted in Evensong?' He gave a crack of laughter. 'It took four of us to carry you out.'

Mrs Bagley smiled thinly.

'Here's your whisky, Daddy.'

Catherine stood in the doorway, her fair hair flopping over her eyes. Mrs Bagley was tempted to remark unfavourably on the new hairstyle but repressed the criticism and was glad of it, a moment later when Catherine said, 'You look nice, Mummy.'

They both knew it was a lie. Mrs Bagley's amethyst taffeta dress, once pretty but several times dry-cleaned, was now an unbecoming shade of purplish-brown. The fur bolero looked old and defeated. But the lie warmed her, nonetheless.

'What's the matter with your hair?' Colonel Bagley took the glass from his daughter's hand and sipped noisily, smacking his lips. 'You look like a Piccadilly tart.'

'Don't wait up for us, dear,' said Mrs Bagley. 'Just remember to leave the chain off the door. There are sandwiches and a flask of soup. Put the guard in front of the fire before you go to bed, won't you?'

'Mind you take the dogs out. At least ten minutes.'

'It's too cold for her, Ronald,' protested Mrs Bagley.

'Rubbish! She can put a coat on. And don't forget to riddle the damned boiler.'

'She does seem better,' said Mrs Bagley, after Catherine had gone downstairs. There had been a tenderness in the goodnight kiss, a lingering pressure in the arm round her neck that had delighted her. It had hurt, these last few months, to see the child so wan, her eyelids heavy, her mouth a downward-curving bow of disappointment and ennui.

'What did I tell you! You were all for wrapping her in cotton wool and taking her away to the Lake District to get over it. Lucky I wasn't going to stand for any nonsense. You females have got a lot of romantic twaddle in your heads. I tell you, men that age are just cruising sharks, sniffing out sex wherever they can get it. Women are nothing but a bit of skirt to them. The boy was impossible and there's an end to it.'

'Yes. Impossible.' Mrs Bagley fingered the place where the wire of her evening brassiere dug painfully into her breastbone and thought of the young man with the knowing smile. His confident swagger had been intimidating.

'Bugger the bloody thing!' her husband tugged savagely at his bow tie.

'You must have been about the same age when we met' she said unexpectedly. 'Were you cruising around looking for sex?'

'Don't be ridiculous, Marjorie!' Her husband's eyes stared angrily at her from the looking glass. 'I was an officer and a gentleman. That fellow's father sells fish from a van.'

But he had not answered her question. For the first time in ages, Mrs Bagley realized she was interested to know what her husband thought. 'You were so cross when I wouldn't let you touch my breasts -'

'Coarseness is extremely unattractive in a woman.' He bared false teeth at her, exposing plastic gums. 'You ought to know that. But I suppose riches are no substitute for breeding.'

He had never forgiven her family for having money.

As they drove away in the ancient Rover Mrs Bagley thought lovingly of her bed. Catherine ate the sandwiches but left the soup. She riddled the boiler but forgot the fireguard. The two Labradors were overjoyed to be allowed back into the warm kitchen after only a minute. Catherine fetched her suitcase. As she propped a letter on the chimneypiece she felt a pang of pity for her mother that made her resolve falter. At the same moment Mrs Bagley examined her pallid prawns with misgiving. Discreetly she tried to adjust the murderous bra while attending to her neighbour's diatribe on nationalisation. A pain worse than the wire pierced her midriff. Catherine, she thought. My darling, my comfort! Somehow you must be saved from this.

Slamming the front door, Catherine ran down the drive to where a motorcycle waited in the lane.

'You're late.'

'I couldn't help it. They were late leaving.'

'I saw them drive past, done up to the nines. Not much of a car, is it?'

Catherine remembered the fish van in which she had once been taken to the cinema, but said nothing. Astride the pillion, she put her arms around the leather-clad waist of the impossible boy.

Colonel Bagley was astonished to see, when he looked across the table, that his wife's eyes were full of tears.

© Victoria Clayton 2002

Work in progress:
I am working on novel number eight.

News:
My books for children, written more than 30 years ago, are now published again in the UK and USA. See the 'Children's Books' page.

'A Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs' (HarperCollins, 2007) has been short-listed for the Melissa Nathan Award 2008.

Blog
I started a weblog a year ago as somewhere to jot down my thoughts about the things that interest me day to day and occupy my thoughts when not writing a novel. A year on it has at last developed beyond the first entry. You can visit it here.