A Piece Of Cake

A TV chef is chattering about icing when Harvey Tillotson hears the letterbox rattle, hears post landing on the door mat – no thud, just a soft, papery splash. Charity stuff. Nothing exciting, nothing heavy, Nothing for him - Harvey, Factotum Designate to Mrs. Tillotson, Constance, aka Lady Dracula. In social gatherings she makes his name sound silly. ‘Harvey this’ and ‘Harvey that’ and ‘Harvey says’, she says. Colleagues and friends call him Harv, which makes him sound American. 

      ‘If there's anything for me, bring it.' Constance from her bedroom. Awake then. Alert then. Listening. Lis-ten-ing. Sotto voce he says, ‘Would a “please” now and then damage the organs of speech?’ 

   He gets up, goes into the hall, picks up the post. Flyers - from tradesmen, oriental takeaways, supermarkets. Charity circulars from the Lifeboats, Red Cross, Cats’ Protection League. And two letters. One is for him. Its Canadian stamp surprises him. The letter is addressed in a hand he recognises but has not seen for, what - four years? It has been redirected from the address where he lived those four years ago.

   ‘Kitty,’ he says, puzzled. He stuffs the letter into his pocket. He bins the flyers, puts the charity envelopes on the hall table. The other letter -

     'One for you, Beloved.'   He takes the letter that’s for his wife to her room. She is sitting up in bed, her hand held out in anticipation.

    'What kept you? Give.'

    'Apologies. I mislaid the silver tray.'

    She glares. 'Don't talk rubbish.' She points. 'Knife. There. On my bureau,' - the word dressed in a French accent, predictably.

    He picks up the knife - a paper-knife - from the bureau. It is not sharp. Even so, his glance goes from it to Constance’s neck. He hands her the knife, with the letter. 'Anything else, Beloved?'

    'Try leaving.' Not looking at him, she slits the envelope, takes out flimsy sheets and reads and smiles and stops and glares and tells him not to look at her when she’s reading. He bows repeatedly and plays the game of walking backwards – her flunkey - from the bedroom. She takes no notice.

   In the lounge again he examines the envelope. No mistaking the handwriting. 'Kitty,' he says. 'In Montreal. What can the little lady possibly want?’

   Kitty. A pert, pretty face with a talent for pulling silly ones. She moved in with him – 'to see how it goes.' It stopped going after some few months when she stormed out yelling 'You! I was doing fine before I met you! I was serene!' He remembers her small, mobile body and the chasm of missing her after they parted. Constance found him at the bottom of the chasm. ‘I rescued you,’ she said. ‘Kitty. What sort of a name is that? A shop-girl. A shelf-stacker. You deserve a real woman.’

    So here's she comes again, Kitty. Twenty-six now, he figures, to his twenty-nine, writing – he supposes - to congratulate him, however belatedly, on his marriage, though the letter is addressed to him alone, to Mr. Harvey Tillotson, not to Mr. and Mrs. The marriage is heading for its second anniversary and the rocks.

    There’s a brief account of her life in Montreal; the city, the cold, her duties as warden of the nurses' residence in the General Hospital, how her French has improved. About him, what he’s doing, where he is, how he is – nothing. Curious. There’s her email address. And curiouser.

   He sits. The TV chef is piping icing onto a cake. 'A wedding cake!' he says, 'How numbingly appropriate.' Then he looks at the envelope addressed to him and says ‘Cake?’ and stands up, frowning, and says ‘Wedding cake!’ and then - ‘Of course. The pieces of cake.’ He gets up, goes to the study that is also his bedroom. He switches on the printer. He copies the letter, hides the copy. He puts the original, in its envelope, alongside the charity stuff on the hall table. Back in the lounge the chef is now preparing to slice the cake. He seats himself. ‘Game on,’ he breathes. He waits.

    Twenty minutes later his wife comes into the lounge dressed for outdoors. She is holding Kitty's letter as if it had an unpleasant smell. 

    'Who is Kitty?' she demands. 'Another of your tatty little tarts?'

    'Another? I could be so lucky.' He clicks the TV off.

   'Don't try to be clever. It doesn’t suit you. Who is this female illiterate with nothing to say for herself that's worth the words?' 

    Kitty illiterate? Hardly. Nothing to say? True, but why nothing? 

   'Kitty? I did tell you about her, Beloved. We - ' He stops. Has she forgotten he and Kitty lived together, or is she pretending she’s forgotten? 

    'We were an item for a while,’ he reminds her. ‘But we were too young. At least, I was. Still am.'

   'Kitty? I don't remember. I'm not interested in your adolescent fantasies, only why this one is writing to you now. Are you corresponding with her behind my back? Is she your secret pen-friend?’ 

  ‘Secret? I let you see her letter. I fronted up. No secrets, remember. All open and above board. Pen friend? A minute ago she was my . . .’

   ‘ . . . tatty little tart,’ Constance says, blazing. ‘I told you to stop being clever.’ She makes a scornful sound.  ‘Is this twaddle . . .’ - she waves the letter, an abrupt gesture - ‘. . . her first?’

    ‘It is.’ 

    ‘Then how does she know where you live?'

    'She doesn't. It's redirected. Check the envelope.'

    Constance glances at the envelope, then scowls at him. 'I'm waiting for an explanation.'

    'Of what? How the letter found me? Slice of luck, I guess. Who Kitty is? You know who she is. Was. Or why this . . . um . . . blast from the past?’

   ‘Yes. That.’

   ‘I can’t begin to guess. I take it you don't think much of what she says?'

   'I do not. Drivel. A twelve year old writing to a maiden aunt.' 

   He pauses, then, ‘Am I delaying you, Beloved?’

   ‘What? What d’you mean . . . delaying me?’

   ‘You’re dressed for the great outdoors. The letter, and subsequent cross-examination . . . I wondered if they were keeping you from your excursion. Appointment. Assignation. Whatever.’

   ‘Don’t be ridiculous. And don’t change the subject.’

   ‘Ah, yes, The subject. The letter. You were saying you think little of what Kitty says . . .’

   Constance heaves a sigh. ‘An understatement.’

   He steps closer, takes the letter from her, makes a show of reading it. Finished, he offers it back, holds her gaze until she takes it.

   ‘And what d’you make of what she doesn't say?’

    Constance hesitates, then ‘Don’t be silly. How can I possibly know what she doesn't say?’

    ‘Well – for starters, she doesn't offer congratulations on the marriage.’

   ‘If you can call it that.’ She has a point. He doesn’t pursue it and Constance goes on. 'Since she doesn't know you’re married, she can’t know congratulations were in order.’ She pauses and something like a smile visits her face. ‘Unless you told her.’ 

    When he stays silent, she scoffs. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? Behind my back. Like I said.’

    He holds up his hands in the peace gesture. ‘On my oath, Beloved. No. Previous. Correspondence.’

   Though her stare still carries suspicion, she goes on. ‘Accepting that this pathetic -’ she brandishes the letter ‘- missive is out of the blue, you surely don’t imagine she woke up in . . . in . . . wherever she is . . . some Saturday morning and saw her diary for the weekend was blank and thought “What shall I do? I know! I’ll write to Harvey.” Of course not. She has an agenda.’

   ‘Ah! Now that’s interesting. An agenda. Who doesn’t have an agenda. What was hers, I wonder?’

  ‘You don’t know women, do you, Harvey? She knows you’ll be intrigued. She’s hoping you’ll write back. She’s revealing nothing of her heart whilst hoping to test yours. She wants to try again. Only a fool would fail to see it. But then . . .’ She interrupts herself with a harsh laugh.

    He allows his face to light up. ‘I get it. I get it. By writing this totally neutral letter . . .’ He reaches out so that they are both holding it. ‘. . . she prepares herself for the let-down of my not replying, or of being told something she might not want to know even though it’s something she should know already but clearly hasn’t been told and would have written a very different letter if she had been told.’

    ‘Now you're being cryptic. What hasn’t she been . . .’ She falters. ‘Told?’

     He waits. He can see she knows she’s in a hole, but he knows it’s not like Constance to stop digging.

    'Keep going,' he says. 'I think you're catching up.'

   She does not reply. He guesses she has sensed shallow water ahead.  He inhales deeply, holds the breath, pauses. ‘You took Kitty off the list.’

    She turns her gaze from him. ‘What list?’

    'The list of people your mother asked me for – you know - to post little boxes of wedding cake to with a card announcing we are joined in Holy Deadlock. You following this?' 

    Constance says nothing. 

   'Maybe you asked to see the list I gave your mother and struck Kitty off because, "You see, Mother, Kitty is one of Harvey's adolescent fantasies and it's high time he stopped obsessing about her." Possibly adding, "She'll never know if we simply take her off Harvey’s list. Neither will Harvey." Is that what happened?'

   His wife's body language communicates controlled fury. ‘What utter unfathomable nonsense. How dare you!’ She waves the letter at him. 'In case you intend responding to this twaddle - ' she tears the letter in half, and again, twice - 'it’s going to the one place it’s fit for.' She leaves the room and a moment later he hears the lavatory flush, hears her quick step in the hall, and then the front door slams. 'No one flushes quite like you, Beloved,’ he says. 'Or flounces.'

    He turns the TV on. The chef is making Eton Mess. 

   'It’s a mess all right, mate. Bet Kitty would like it, though.' Kitty would poke a finger into whipped cream, or curry sauce or garlic dip, and offer him the finger-tip. He remembers her, eager and impatient in their bed. He thinks of Lady Dracula summoning him at four weekly intervals, turning back her duvet, patting the mattress, a sure sign she is ovulating, whereupon he spends himself while she lies joyless and rigid. 'This marriage,' he told her, 'reminds me of 'Brief Encounter,.’ Classic forties cinema, screened once a month in darkened British bedrooms.' She replied that she has settled into marriage quicker than he, that's all. He expects too much. Most husbands do. After twenty months, her strategy – he calls it Dracula's Statute of Limitations - has not resulted in a foetus. 

    He clicks the TV back on. Wedding cakes have given way to a countryside program. Two anglers wearing waders stand in a stream, reeling in, casting, their floats bobbing, sunlight catching the drops on their lines. The camera zooms closer and he sees one of the anglers is a woman.

    'She’s right,' he says. 'Kitty – you’re fishing.’

    There’s a close-up of the anglers’ keep-net where two sleek brown trout twist and gobble and gaze and fruitlessly seek a way out. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘We've all got problems.’

    His wife’s key sounds in the lock and she comes in and in seconds the front door slams and he hears her I-will-not-be-bested voice informing him that she will be in her room until he is ready to apologise.

   Would a little contrition help? Does he want it to? ‘Of course, Beloved. Give me a minute.’ 

   He has an email to send, but he cannot be sure what he will say to Kitty or will want to say until he has a clear idea of what he and Constance will say to each other, if indeed there is anything left to say.