Nature and Necessity by Tariq Goddard

Author:Tariq Goddard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nature and Necessity
ISBN: 9781910924457
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2017-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE,

reputations and reversals.

The wind changed direction, again. The next three years saw Petula rise from a celebrity to a legend. Notoriety was the open prison she operated from, protected by a healthy reputation for madness, a short fuse and the ghoulish rumours surrounding the house on the hill: wild orgies, black magic and psychedelic experimentation constructing a dark halo over The Heights, Mockery Gap’s own Castle Dracula. This myth-making was supported by the voyeurism of the village itself, proud of its newly acquired reputation for the dark arts, and pleased to have come out of the twee shadow of Richmond and Shatby. Scandal added to Petula’s lustre, there being no firmer stamp of exceptionalism than having one’s guests leaving one’s party dead in an ambulance. The judge who decided that the verdict of death by misadventure for Rex Wade would be punishment enough for Petula, supposing the damage done to her reputation should render further prosecution unnecessary, did public opinion a disservice. Society, contrary to the formulations of reason, was to prove a far more perverse referee than either the Law or Petula could have guessed, her glamour now enhanced by a macabre and dangerous mystique.

Death (though, crucially, not her own) opened doors for Petula. Aiming higher than fate would allow her to go ceased to be a problem. People whom she would have once sought to cultivate were frightened of her in a way they had not been prepared for, allowing her to ruthlessly press her advantage. Choosing to come out on the front foot, exactly at that point when conventional wisdom said a defensive feint was called for, was a move so audacious that her critics were left with nowhere to go. Instead, the malcontents who whispered that Petula had tried a little too hard in the past found they were prepared to make the extra effort themselves when faced with social irrelevancy. Besides, they knew Petula’s weaknesses and how many sugars she took in her tea; she had played coy with them before. Put up with her for a bit, safe as they were behind their electric gate codes, then watch her choke on her own hyperactivity, the same way she always had; all they had to do was to sit tight and allow the storm to pass.

These relics of the old order underestimated her. Petula no longer cared for their patronage, oblivious to the blandishments and bribes dangled enticingly within reach. Whereas she had never known how to say no to society before, living under the shadow of eventual rejection, she now discovered that it was good for her soul to do a bit of rejecting of her own; the more indiscriminate, partial and obscure, the thinner the explanation and more oblique the motive, the better.

Sensing that this reprieve called for a stylistic overhaul, Petula cut her cloth accordingly, ditching the Eighties and their superannuated notions of demi-monde chic by her back door in shiny black bags for the council to collect and recycle. Adopting

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