Death of a Unicorn

The chaise-longue arranged itself. A yellow hand emerged from the cushions and clawed a corner of shawl aside to reveal a large wrinkled face, even more toad-like than B’s, and some wispy yellow-grey hair. Surely if B had known he might find his mother in this kind of state he could have left me waiting in the passage and given her a moment to pull herself together, but being B he enjoyed such confrontations. I was cross enough with him already for making me take my nail varnish off just after I’d spent twenty minutes putting it on.

Mrs Brierley didn’t seem at all put out. Two or three of the cushions became her body as she heaved herself into a sitting position, slapping B’s hand aside when he tried to help her. She patted her hair, tugged her shawl, and then, sitting primly on the edge of the chaise-longue, rotated her head like an owl towards me and rotated it back as I walked round to stand where she could see me better.

‘Miss Millett, my mother,’ said B.

She inspected me. The whites of her eyes were yellow and bloodshot but the dark brown irises seemed unbleared. She was very short, but fat, and smelt pungently of Pears soap. The likeness to B was strong, not just in her general ugliness but also in the feeling of self-willed energy that beamed from her.

‘How do you do?’ I said.

‘You are welcome,’ she answered, not with the snap she’d used in speaking to B but with a slight drawl. She patted the chaise-longue.

‘What is your denomination, Miss Millett?’ she said as I sat down.

‘Church of England, I suppose.’

‘Neither hot nor cold, but better than nothing. Do you attend?’

‘When I’m at home. I haven’t found a church I like in London, I’m afraid.’

‘What do bricks and mortar count for? It is the preacher, the man with the Word on his lips.’

‘I like the singing best.’

‘You have never heard singing.’

‘Oh, I don’t know . . .’

‘A thousand Negro voices under the stars, gathered after labour to praise the great Creator.’

‘That must be terrific.’

‘It surely was. The Lord was there among us.’

‘Let’s have a drink,’ said B.

Mrs Brierley reached down to the floor, picked up a satin-covered shoe and used the heel of it as a mallet to strike the brass gong on the table beside her. The old black man must have been poised at the door, ready, because he came in immediately carrying a silver tray with three glasses on it. He was wearing a clean white jacket now, but the same old linen trousers, shredded at the ends like those of castaways in desert-island cartoons. His feet were bare. He held the tray for Mrs Brierley who sniffed at the glasses in turn.

‘Maketh glad the heart of man,’ said the old man. ‘For thy stomach’s sake.’

Mrs Brierley smiled B’s toad-smile and licked her lips, the way I always thought B was about to. She handed me a beautiful tall thin glass, slightly chipped and only about half full. She then chose a large cheap tumbler for herself, brim full, leaving B another old glass, larger and coarser and fuller than mine. I took an incautious sip, thinking it was going to be sangaree, a weak, cold, winy concoction I’d been drinking in bars. It turned out to be some kind of sweet-sour punch, with twice as much rum in it as I was ready for. B had been watching me, amused.

‘My mother drinks rum under doctor’s orders,’ he said. ‘I drink it because I like it. Thank you, Jeremy.’

‘Were you born on a plantation, Mrs Brierley?’ I asked.

‘Born and reared among fields that bore my name. Born in the old days, reared in the old ways, a Halper of Halper’s Corner.’

‘It sounds marvellous.’

‘It was hell on earth, Miss Millett. The Devil walked those fields in the shape of my father, a wicked, lustful, foul-mouthed, drunken atheist. My mother would stumble into my room at midnight to weep by my cot. When she died, many thought it was murder. The other planters would not speak with my father, or have me to their houses. I grew up alone, reared by the devil to be one of his kind.’

‘How ghastly,’ I said, though actually she made it sound perfectly thrilling, and meant to. ‘Do go on.’