Kitabı oku: «The Friendly Ones», sayfa 3

CHAPTER TWO

1.

There was another man next door. Aisha remembered that the old man had said he had grown-up children, and this one could be one of those. She was going to stay on. She had explained to Enrico that she would be hanging around until Wednesday at least, to make sure of Raja, and he might as well get a train back to Cambridge on Sunday night. Enrico had looked doubtful, in his party shirt underneath his tatty old sweater, but Aisha had assured him that the trains were good until quite late on Sunday night. There was a train to Birmingham every hour, at five minutes past, then a short walk over the platform and a fast train to Cambridge, all night until at least eleven. In fact she had no idea. By the time he was at the station and on a train to Birmingham, it would be too late for him to do anything about it.

It wasn’t until she heard the impatient rattle and tick of a black cab outside in the street that she realized how keen she was to get rid of Enrico. The poor man, she found herself thinking. He was sitting there with his coat on, his small bag by his side on the floor, and it only takes the sound of a taxi for them to leap up and say, with relief and thanks, ‘That’ll be for you.’ It was herself she was shaking her head over, leaping up and smiling brightly. Fanny smiled, gorgeously, slowly, pulling herself up without much enthusiasm, and the two of them took Enrico to the door.

‘I’ve very much enjoyed myself,’ Enrico said, scowling. ‘Please thank your mother and father for me.’ He made a sort of gesture towards Aisha, but she had a sandwich in her left hand, a piece of pork pie in the other. Although the rain had retreated to the spattering stage, Aisha was not going to venture out from under the porch, and the handshake he had in mind turned into a sort of shrug, performed by two people leaning into each other.

‘I’m so sorry they couldn’t be here to say goodbye themselves,’ Aisha said formally. ‘And I’ll see you in Cambridge in a few days’ time.’

‘I don’t think that’s Enrico’s taxi,’ Fanny said, drawling. ‘Someone’s in it.’

The cab had pulled up outside their gate, but Fanny was right: there was a man in the back of it. His shape was hunched over, counting money or gathering bags.

‘Why don’t you take it anyway?’ Aisha said. She took a bite of the pork pie. ‘One taxi’s much like another.’

The man got out. He had two suitcases with him, old brown leather suitcases. He put them on the pavement and stretched, a wide, relieved sort of stretch. He looked up at the heavy sky, feeling a drop of rain. There was even some enjoyment in his face at being rained on. At first Aisha thought he was going to walk up their drive, but that was impossible. He was coming home, not visiting a stranger. That was in the way his arms fell after the stretch. There had been other homecomings. She saw the stranger’s relieved face, and it was with a sense of something being talked over that she heard the Italian’s voice beginning to complain. That face, bemused, round, the eyes big and startled and blue: it was like a long-ago familiar piece of music that you caught in a public place and paused, listening intently to its cadence. She could not go on chewing. The stranger’s expression, warm and humorous, regretful, even flirtatious, went over the three of them, and he turned away. The taxi had got the house number wrong – they were hard to read from the road – and this man with the two suitcases walked twenty paces, and into the house next door. It was a strong, assessing, somehow disappointed face moving away quickly from what it had considered.

‘I’ll go now,’ Enrico was saying.

‘See you later,’ Aisha said. She smiled brightly, and surely she smiled in his direction. But there was something strange in the way she did it: he looked at her first curiously, then, as if with understanding, with the beginnings of fury. He walked down the wet gravel drive, hunched as if it were still bucketing down. He did not look back.

2.

Leo had forgotten what the trains on a Sunday were like, and had managed to get on the wrong one. He had found himself at Doncaster and having to change. There had been nothing to eat on either train, and he had even thought about getting a sandwich when he arrived at Sheffield. The girl who had sat opposite, with the Louise Brooks bob, the heavy boots and the delicate ankles, she had agreed – it was a scandal, she was starving. She’d got off at Chesterfield.

Under the porch of the house next door, three Asian people stood, saying goodbye to one of them – no, two and a white man. It had been raining hard. He wondered what had happened to the Tillotsons. His father, when he opened the door, looked surprisingly chipper, and was even rubbing his hands together.

‘Good, good,’ he said. ‘Parked your car on the road, have you?’

‘No,’ Leo said, coming inside by pushing past his father. ‘It wouldn’t start this morning. Some mechanical thing. I took the train in the end.’

‘You could have got someone to come out,’ his father said. ‘That’s what they’re there for.’

‘I’m just doing what Mrs Thatcher was telling us to do the other day,’ he said. ‘Save the planet. Go by train! We’re all going to die.’

‘I don’t suppose taking the train from London to Sheffield instead of driving is going to put that off very much,’ his father said.

‘You seem cheerful,’ Leo said.

‘Do I?’ his father said. ‘Come through. That would be most extraordinary. I suppose I did something rather clever, just an hour ago.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Leo said, discouragingly. They said that when you returned to your childhood home it seemed smaller. The house was the same size, and in any case, he’d last been here at Christmas. His father had succeeded in shrinking, however. He was determined that he was not going to let him begin by explaining how clever he had been. There had been enough of that. His father should look outwards, and think of other people, and not sing his own praises for once.

‘You know the people next door moved out,’ he said. ‘The people who bought it, a nice family, Asian, they were having a party for all their relations. Visiting, visiting, not living there. And one of them was eating something too fast and got it stuck in his throat. And luckily I could do something about it. He’ll be fine. It all comes back to you when it needs to. I dare say they’ll always be grateful for me leaping over the fence like that, just at the right time.’

‘Like speaking French,’ Leo said.

His father gave him an interrogative look, as if there were something superior and dismissive in what he had said.

‘Is there anything to eat?’

‘Oh, I dare say,’ his father said. ‘I eat at six, these days. Your mother’s left the pantry stuffed with the usual and there’s all sorts of goodies in the freezer. It never changes.’ He went off into the sitting room where the Sunday Telegraph lay folded on the arm of the chair. Had he changed newspapers? Leo could have sworn he used to read the Sunday Times. When he’d said, ‘It never changes,’ he’d meant, of course, that your children came home, dumped their suitcases on the floor, and started demanding food. It was true that Leo had done exactly that. But it was not quite the same. He discovered this by going into the kitchen, and then into the pantry. The kitchen was bare; a single mug and a single plate stood, washed, on the side of the sink. The pine table in the middle had a scatter of breadcrumbs, the remains of something on toast, all that the old doctor thought he would make for himself.

To go from the kitchen into the cool, windowless pantry was to go into the ruin of his childhood. In the past, when he had come home or when he had lived here, there had been six of them – the old ones, Leo, Blossom, Lavinia and Hugh. Quite often a boyfriend or a girlfriend, too, turning up and needing to be fed. Sometimes Leo, at fifteen, had come in here and dithered, pleasantly, unsure whether he would go for a biscuit or for the full sandwich, for a piece of cheese and pickle – one of seven or eight different pickles – or for a piece of cake. What must the shopping have been like? Speculative, unplanned, just getting food in for whenever anyone felt like diving into it. Now it was depleted, like the middle point of a siege: one tin of beans, a jar of pickled onions with the label half slipping off and translucent with spilt juice, cloudy and menacing within, a jar of peanut butter for the children. Leo reached up and took the cake tin from the top of the fridge. There was a dried-up and stony block inside that might once have been half a walnut cake. Christ on a bike. Only in the fridge were there a few things: a small steak, some bagged tomatoes and small potatoes, a block of Lancashire cheese and an open jar of pickle, the lid lost. The contents of the pantry did not show that his mother had got the usual in. Hilary was shopping for himself, these days.

‘No news, then,’ Leo said, coming into the sitting room with the best he could do, some crackers with cheese and a smear of peanut butter and a couple of very doubtful pickled onions. He had found, too, a bottle of beer in the cool corner of the pantry.

‘No developments on that score in either direction,’ Hilary said. He put his newspaper down, folded it, set it aside. ‘I went over after lunch. She’s in a ward with some dreadful old folk. One Alzheimer’s woman wandering round all night, wanting to know what all these people are doing in her bedroom, shouting. I’ve asked that your mother be moved to a private room, but there’s none available just now.’

‘Can’t you pull rank?’ Leo said.

‘Well, I could,’ Hilary said. ‘But I don’t know that it’s worth it. You’ll see her tomorrow. Gaga with morphine, alas.’

It had always been one of his father’s guiding principles, he remembered: pick your battles. If you’re going to have to stand your ground over the withdrawal of palliative care tomorrow, don’t have a row about the shepherd’s pie not being hot today. For a moment they sat in silence. The light was fading, but only the small lamp by his father’s chair was lit; some paperback book was on the table, his place marked neatly with a bookmark.

‘They seem quite nice,’ his father said, in a conciliatory way.

‘At the hospital?’ Leo said, puzzled.

‘Next door,’ Hilary said. ‘Our new neighbours. Asians. Very nice. A pair of boys and an older girl at university. I think she said Cambridge. They were all visiting this afternoon, though, aunties and cousins and all, coming over for a party in the garden. That sort of person, they keep in touch with every one of their family, having them over at the drop of a hat. Live with them, too – there’s always an old mother in the spare room, sewing away, not speaking much English.’

‘How many are they next door?’

‘Oh, I’m not talking about next door. There’s only four or five of them, less than us. Practical, professional people. Speak better English than you do. I meant the families I used to see when I was in practice – nine or ten of them, living on top of each other, you couldn’t understand how they were related to each other, happy as clams. Baffling.’

‘It’s the culture, I expect,’ Leo said.

‘Of course it’s the culture,’ Hilary said shortly. ‘I don’t think anyone would suggest it was biological necessity.’

‘I see.’

Hilary looked at him. He might have registered for the first time just which child it was who had arrived. ‘Can you get time off work like this?’ he said. ‘Don’t you have hotels to write about? Tell the readers how luxe they are? Counting the sausages at breakfast? That sort of thing?’

‘That sort of thing,’ Leo said. ‘I’ll have to take their word for the number of sausages at breakfast, though. I just go down for the day.’

‘What a wonderful way to earn a living,’ Hilary said.

Leo smiled graciously. He had made a decision, long ago, and with renewed force on the train coming up to Sheffield, that he would not respond to Hilary’s disgusted comments on his job. Of the four of them, it was only Lavinia, his younger sister, who had anything resembling a job that Hilary thought worth doing, and that not very much: she had left her job as a marketing assistant for Procter and Gamble and was now working for a medical charity. Lowest on the scale was Hugh, just out of drama school, scrabbling for parts in this and that. Blossom had four children and a colossal house in the country: she was excused, with all the glee at Hilary’s command whenever he spoke about her. Leo did not do the job that the elder son of a doctor should do. He knew that. He worked for one of the daily newspapers that Hilary never read and, between subbing the copy of grander writers, was permitted from time to time to go round the country, visiting hotels and restaurants and writing a paragraph on their pretensions. How he longed, sometimes, to be allowed to spend the night at one of these places, and be rude about it afterwards! But the hoteliers told him they were aiming to introduce a new level of luxury to Harrogate, and he went home from a long day taking detailed notes about thread counts, and wrote, ‘The Belvedere Hotel is going to introduce a new level of luxury to the already excellent Harrogate hotel scene.’ It was the job that the recently divorced son of a doctor did.

‘How’s Catherine?’ Hilary said, as if he had closely followed Leo’s train of thought into the deep morass of his failures. ‘I always liked Catherine.’

‘I always liked Catherine, too,’ Leo said. ‘Catherine’s absolutely fine. She’s staying with Blossom, in fact, as we speak.’

‘Blossom said she was going to come up soon, but I can’t imagine when,’ Hilary said. ‘I told her she didn’t need to bring the children – there’s a difference in coming if you have to bring four children.’

‘It takes some organization, I expect,’ Leo said.

His father stood up; jounced his fists in his pocket; went to the window and looked out, pretending to be very interested by something in the garden. Finally he made a casual-sounding comment.

‘I was thinking the other day,’ Hilary said, ‘what would it be like to have your family – all your family, the grown-up bits as well – all of them around all the time?’

3.

‘It must be terribly hard for your father,’ Leo’s mother used to say, ‘to spend the whole day telling people exactly what to do. And then come home and find out that he can’t do the same to us. We don’t follow doctors’ orders, do we, darling?’

Whenever Hilary said something of great import, something he had been contemplating for days and weeks, he brought it out casually, sometimes walking towards the door or turning away while he spoke. Leo supposed that it was the habit of an old GP, getting the right answer to an important question about vices or symptoms by asking it in passing. In just such a way, he had chattily said, ‘Oh, another thing – I don’t suppose you’re drinking much more than a bottle of vodka a day?’ or ‘Still taking it out on you, is he, your husband?’ just as the patient was getting up to leave his consulting room. His children had got wise to it, of course, and the words ‘Oh, by the way …’ or ‘I don’t know whether it’s of any importance, but …’ had long put them on guard. Only Hugh could imitate it convincingly, the way Hilary’s voice querulously rose in light, casual enquiry, like the happy, imperfect memory of an old song.

But this was not an enquiry: this was Hilary observing that he didn’t know what it would be like to have your family, the grown-up bits as well, around you all the time. He was not – could not be – casually suggesting that all his children uproot themselves and come and live in his house. It could only be a general observation, yet Hilary had brought it out exactly as he brought out the one significant statement of the hour, with a careful lack of weight, his voice rising a jocular octave. What would it be like to have your family, your grown-up family, living around you all the time? Leo said, ‘Ye-esss,’ and then, ‘Well …’ and then a delaying ‘Erm’ that threatened to turn into a hum. He was examining the statement from all sides. Finally he had to respond. His father had fallen silent, waiting, head slightly cocked, for the answer.

‘It would be nice,’ he said. ‘But it’s not very practical nowadays. I suppose people elsewhere marry and move in and work alongside each other. We probably wouldn’t get on, anyway.’

‘I always thought it was odd that you threw in the towel so early.’

‘Threw in the towel?’

‘With Catherine.’

‘Oh,’ Leo said. ‘We’re much better off now.’

But his father shook his head irritably, and Leo understood that he was thinking about their separation and divorce from his own point of view.

The marriage had been failing for ever – sometimes Leo felt that what had separated them permanently, put an end to whatever joy there had been, had been the long, painful and ugly preparations for their immense wedding. For eight months before the wedding, there had been something to talk about in absorbing and horrible detail, every aspect of it. They had gone on fucking – that was the thing, the way they’d fucked ceaselessly, three times a day, four, the feeling that here he’d met his match. But before the wedding you couldn’t help seeing that the fuck came at the end of a big argument. Disagreement about a choice between napkins – surprising personal remark – serious row – apology – fuck. Catherine had been swept up in the intricacies; Leo had gone along with the process and the reconciliatory fuck; and then, three days into the honeymoon, sitting on a beach in the Seychelles, facing the theatrical sunset, she had turned to him and he, unwillingly, to her. They had seen that they really had nothing more to say each other. He had got a good deal from the Seychelles Tourist Board for flights and accommodation and a couple of excursions.

So the marriage had failed from the start. Before long, Leo had turned up in Sheffield on his own, and told his parents he and Catherine were going to separate, and then divorce. ‘A trial separation?’ his mother had cried, half rising from her chair, but his father had shaken his head irritably. For Hilary, the crisis had come at that moment when, in fact, Leo and Catherine’s marriage – their divorce, rather, it was so much more permanent, dynamic and long-running – had gone beyond the new lacerations of contempt and insult and into a curious cosy zone where the whole thing was the topic of despairing, rueful, shared jokes, mock generosity about awarding custody of the household’s colossal Lego collection, the occasional absurd, almost ironic fuck, with Leo not bothering to take his socks off, and the important question of who would have the more successful divorce party when it was all done. Catherine had not come to break the news. It was for Leo alone to see the collapse of his mother’s face, his father turning to him with what looked very much like irritation. He had quite enjoyed it, actually.

‘People stay married all the time,’ Hilary said.

‘Don’t they just,’ Leo said. ‘Do you mind if I turn the lights on?’

‘Do as you please,’ Hilary said. He watched him closely as he moved about the room, turning on the two standard lamps, the other table lamps; there was a central light, a brass construction, but no one ever lit it: it cast too brilliant a light over everything. ‘No one else planning a divorce, I don’t suppose.’

‘Not that …’ Leo began, but Hilary didn’t expect or need a response.

‘I rather thought – I don’t know, but I rather thought’ – his voice went up in that querulous, amused, treble way again – ‘it might be my turn.’

‘Your turn?’

‘My turn to get a divorce,’ Hilary said.

‘That would be interesting,’ Leo said.

‘After all,’ Hilary said, ‘it’s now or never, you might say.’

‘No time like the present,’ Leo said. ‘You might even find it an interesting way to fill the time, you and Mummy.’

‘Oh, I haven’t told your mother yet,’ Hilary said. ‘I’m just going to present her with it when it’s all …’

‘What?’

‘When it’s all …’

‘When it’s all …’

There were questions that, in the past, Leo’s father had raised with him in exactly this way, at exactly this time of day, when there was nobody else in the house. When Leo’s life had run away from Oxford, the conversation about his future had begun here – they had, surely, been in the same chairs. Hilary was sitting and, in his light-serious voice, talking about getting a divorce in the same incontrovertible way. Hilary gazed, half smiling, patiently, into the middle distance, waiting for Leo’s slow understanding to catch up.

‘Are you serious? You’re not saying …’

‘Am I serious?’ Hilary said. ‘About getting a divorce?’

‘A divorce from Mummy?’ Leo said.

‘A divorce from Mummy,’ Hilary said. He sat back; he might have been enjoying himself. ‘Why wouldn’t I be serious?’

Leo stared.

‘I should have done it years ago,’ Hilary said. ‘Actually, I was going to do it five years ago. Perfect time. You’d all left home. Then you waltz in with your news. That was that. Couldn’t possibly have two divorces in the family at the same time, would look absurd. So there you are. It has to be now, really.’

‘You’re not serious,’ Leo said.

‘I wish you’d stop asking me if I’m serious.’

‘But Mummy –’

‘Oh, Mummy,’ Hilary said, in a full, satisfied voice: it was the voice of parody, but also of warmly amused affection for something almost beyond recall. ‘Well, I’ll tell Mummy myself. You can leave that to me.’

But that was not what Leo had meant. He did not see how he could point out what he had wanted to say. The urgent point that first presented itself to Leo was that the situation would solve itself: that a man who wanted an end to his marriage could, in Hilary’s position, save himself the trouble of a divorce by waiting six months and burying his wife. It was only in a secondary way that the humane point cropped up, that his mother might, at the end, be spared something. Silence had fallen between them. His father, surely, had never said what he had said.

‘You shouldn’t even say such a thing,’ Leo said.

‘Oh?’ Hilary said. ‘Why? Is it forbidden now?’

‘You’re …’ Leo waved in the air.

‘I’m?’ Hilary said. ‘Or we are? Are you trying to allude to something unmentionable? Oh – I think I see. You think divorce shouldn’t happen after the age of, what, seventy? Or sixty? Or is it the length of marriage that’s in question? One isn’t permitted to think of divorce after forty years of unhappiness? The thing I don’t believe you quite understand is that I am still a free person, able to take my own decisions, and your mother has a degree of freedom, too. I am under no illusions. She deserves to have a future without being shackled to me. There should be an end to this ‒ this punishment.’

‘But she’s dying,’ Leo said, forced into it. He looked away.

‘Well,’ Hilary said. ‘Well. Yes. That’s why there’s some urgency about the matter.’

‘You must be mad,’ Leo said. With that he hit, apparently, the right answer. His father sank back in his chair, almost smiling. He had been waiting for exactly this. He might have started the whole conversation to lead Leo to say that he was mad.

‘You might like to reflect whether you have ever changed anyone’s course of action by calling them mad. Worth thinking about, that one. And here comes Gertrude,’ his father said, with sardonic pleasure.