by Nick Hornby
“Oh, God. That bad.”
“I haven’t even got a teaching qualification,” said Andy.
“Is it as bad for photographers too?” said Joseph. He was surprised to hear his own voice, but he’d said it now, and it seemed to be a relevant question, and Andy answered it in full, and Joseph asked him another one which seemed every bit as good, to him and to everyone else in the room, and the first part of the evening was up and running. When they got to the subject of how Lucy and Joseph met, it all seemed manageable.
* * *
—
And he started to see how things worked: conversation was not something imposed from above, like an examination. It was more like a sofa that worked out the shape of your arse and adjusted accordingly, except the dinner worked out the shape of your head. There was a conversation about books, a short one, but it was between Fiona and Lucy, and in any case some of it involved Michael, the writer whose house they had stayed in during the summer, so that was more gossipy than cultural. While that was going on, Pete was chatting to Nina about his kids, and it turned out that Andy, sitting next to him, was a season-ticket holder at Orient, so Joseph asked him about a kid who had just broken into the first team, the younger brother of someone Joseph knew from school.
There was a conversation about Brexit. Joseph imagined that there would always be a conversation about Brexit until it was all sorted out. There was a general agreement that it was a mess and a disaster and the country would be paying for its mistake for years; Joseph had heard all this. But then Fiona asked Joseph how he’d voted.
“Whoa,” said Pete. “You can’t ask that.”
“He knows how we all voted,” Fiona said. “Anyway, if he tells us he’d rather not say, that would be the end of it.”
“And we’d all know anyway,” said Nina.
This was the first time during the evening that he’d felt different from them. There were the five of them, and then there was him, and just the presumption that he might not belong to their gang, that he might have voted the other way, was enough to separate him.
Joseph looked at Lucy’s face and her expression made him smile. She was trying to work out whether there was anything to be offended by.
“It’s fine,” Joseph said to her.
“You sure?”
“Yes. So, I had a problem. My dad voted to leave. He campaigned to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because he thinks he’ll be better off.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a scaffolder.”
“OK.”
“And my mum—she voted to leave, because she works in the N.H.S., and she believed the bus and all that.”
There were weary sighs around the table.
“But Lucy is a passionate remainer.”
“Am I passionate?” she asked Joseph.
There was laughter.
“Yes, tell us, Joseph. Is she passionate?”
“A passionate remainer, I meant,” said Lucy.
There was more laughter, at the obviousness and feebleness of the answer.
“So . . . Well, I came to a logical decision.”
“Which was?”
Joseph shrugged. “I voted both ways.”
“How?” said Lucy.
“Oh, I didn’t cheat. I just put a cross in both boxes.”
Nina and Andy laughed and applauded. Fiona, Pete, and Lucy were trying not to look scandalized.
“I didn’t know you’d done that,” said Lucy.
“I didn’t tell you.”
“Quite a silly thing to do,” said Fiona.
Joseph felt a little sting. He could see that Lucy felt it too, or had at least recognized the danger.
“What if he hadn’t bothered?” Lucy said. “What’s the difference?”
Pete shrugged.
“There’s no difference,” he said.
“No,” said Fiona. “If those are the choices. Apathy or I don’t know what you’d call it. Pointless bloody juvenile rebellion.”
“You’re right,” said Joseph. “I should have just voted out. I was like fifty-one percent Brexit, forty-nine percent remain.”
“Oh, well, that’s even worse,” said Fiona.
“So his only choice was voting remain,” said Lucy.
“In my opinion,” said Fiona. She didn’t seem to be joking.
“Trouble is, it was my vote,” said Joseph.
“And you literally wasted it,” said Fiona.
“And how do you feel about it now?” said Pete.
“Well, it’s over, isn’t it? We’ve just got to get on with it.”
That seemed to bring the conversation to a close, and Joseph thought he detected a collective relief.
“I’d watch your step, though,” said Nina. She was talking to Fiona.
“Why’s that?”
“You started off by saying you wanted to listen. And then you told him you weren’t interested in anything he had to say.”
“When did I do that?”
“You just told him he’d made the wrong choice. And then you told him his second choice would have been wrong too.”
“What am I supposed to do? I think he’s wrong about everything.”
“‘MIDDLE-CLASS NORTH LONDONER LISTENS TO THE PEOPLE, DECIDES THEY’RE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING.’ There’s the way forward.”
“Like you’re not a middle-class North Londoner.”
“Which is why I wouldn’t dream of telling Joseph he did the wrong thing.”
“What if he’d just voted in favor of hanging?”
“I didn’t,” said Joseph. “And I wouldn’t. Two different things.”
He got a laugh, then, and this time they did take the change in mood as a cue to move on—to food, schools, more football.
* * *
—
“How much did you hate that?” said Lucy when everyone had gone and they were stacking the dishwasher.
“Most of it was fun. And the tense bit was sort of interesting,” said Joseph.
“Really? Interesting? Not insulting and really fucking annoying?”
“Oh, I didn’t mind. You cared about it more than I did. I’m much younger than any of you. What do I know about any of this crap? Of course people are going to talk down to me.”
“What do any of us know?”
“But see, I’ve never ever had an argument with friends about politics. I can’t imagine I ever will.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Labor, Conservative, Brexit . . . Nobody I know gives much of a shit about any of it. Nothing much seems to change.”
“Your dad does.”
“Oh. Him. He’s not a friend. He’s your generation. Anyway, I wouldn’t argue with him. I’d just be like, whatever. I don’t see the point.”
“You don’t see the point of the future of the country?”
“Not really. Aren’t we all fucked anyway?”
“Why?”
“Aren’t sea levels going to rise a foot and we’ll all be underwater? I care about that.”
“Maybe you should vote for someone who’ll do something about it.”
“What, the Green Party? Isn’t it all too late for that?”
“You’re clever. You just ask questions instead of giving your opinion.”
“It’s not clever. It’s because I never know for definite. I want someone to tell me the answers. I mean, yeah, that Fiona woman is hard to like. But she seems like she knows. She’s so sure.”
“Yeah. That’s what a college education does for you.”
“What, it teaches you everything?”
“No. It just makes you sure.”
“So why aren’t you sure?”
“I don’t know. The older I get, the more I re
alize I don’t know much about much.”
When they went to bed, Joseph fell asleep within moments. Lucy lay there in the dark, still angry with Fiona, wondering how many of her friends she liked, and how many she would still like, by the time Brexit and Joseph were over.
* * *
—
Joseph’s birthday was on a Sunday, which meant that his mother would be expecting him to eat at hers, with his sister. Neither of them had met Lucy and the boys yet. Both sides had asked, but he hadn’t done anything about it, and his excuses and blocks, which had always sounded feeble even to him, were now being met with good-humored teasing (Lucy) and outright hostility (his mother).
“Are you ashamed of us?” said Lucy, secure in his pride and love.
“Are you ashamed of us?” said his mother, who since Joseph’s disappearance lived in constant fear that he was ashamed of her, or the house, or the neighborhood, or something else that she could do nothing about. “Yes,” he said to Lucy. “Of course not,” he said to his mother.
“We’ll go out on Saturday night with the boys,” said Lucy. “And you can go to eat with your mum on the day.”
“She’ll want to know why you’re not there.”
“I’ve got kids.”
“She’ll want to know why they’re not there.”
“School night.”
“She’ll want to eat at six.”
“So we’ll come.”
“Christ, no,” said Joseph.
“Why not?”
Why not? They could both think of plenty of reasons why not. Lucy wanted to avoid the disapproval of a woman her own age, and for some reason she was worried that her children would be judged too. They probably owned too much, talked too often, used language that might horrify Joseph’s mother, a woman who went to church every Sunday. (Lucy wondered what difference church made, and whether disapproval was easier to come by as a result of attendance. It could go either way, in theory, but the churchgoers she had known, mostly friends of her parents, didn’t seem to have had their minds stretched by their faith.) Joseph was afraid that his mother would feel intimidated by Lucy—by her confidence, her clothes, her figure, her curiosity. (Joseph wondered whether Lucy was curious because she was confident. She didn’t mind where she looked, and she asked anything she wanted to know. He hoped his mother was different at work. He hoped she felt she knew what she was doing, and that her competence gave her the eyes and ears and voice that Lucy had.)
“So when am I ever going to meet your mother?”
“Dunno.”
“Will I meet her?”
“I suppose.”
“But not at any family occasion.”
“If my sister gets married. You’ll meet everyone then.”
“Any sign of that?”
“No.”
“What if I met her somewhere for a cup of tea?”
“What?”
He was genuinely uncomprehending, and Lucy laughed.
“A cup of tea,” she said. “Me and your mother.”
“Well . . . What for? What are you going to say?”
“I’m not going to say anything. It would be a chat.”
“What kind of chat?”
“One where you know somebody a bit better at the end of it than you did at the beginning.”
“Oh, God. Without me there?”
“Yes. Although if you wanted to come, you’d be welcome.”
“Why don’t I just pass on a message?”
“I haven’t got a message,” said Lucy. “I just want to understand more about you.”
“No,” said Joseph. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. I’d prefer to split up.”
“The thing is,” said Lucy, “she wants to meet me, right?”
“Yes.”
“And I want to meet her.”
“So you say.”
“And you gave me your home number ages ago, when you were babysitting.”
“This isn’t working. It’s not you, it’s me. I’d like to stay friends. I’ve met someone else.”
“What is it? Seriously? What are you afraid of?”
“It’s just normal. People don’t want people to meet their mothers.”
“Rubbish.”
“Excuse me? You basically told me I couldn’t go to your parents’ house.”
“I was protecting you.”
“Well, I’m protecting you.”
“From what?”
He was protecting everyone—Lucy, his mother, himself. He couldn’t have articulated what made him so uncomfortable. All he knew was that God had put all those bus stops between his old home and his new one for a reason. It didn’t matter what he felt, though, because Lucy called her anyway.
16
Is that Mrs. Campbell?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Lucy Fairfax. I’m Joseph’s . . .”
Why hadn’t she thought of the right word before she’d called? She’d spent a lot of time thinking of venues, and reasons, and times, and dates, but for some reason she’d skipped through the hardest part of the conversation.
“I know who you are,” said Mrs. Campbell.
She said these words neutrally, with neither warmth nor froideur, but all Lucy heard was the absence of warmth, which quickly became the presence of a chill.
“I was just wondering . . . Well, what with Joseph’s birthday coming up, and then Christmas and so on . . .”
“Yes.”
But it wasn’t a yes that was encouraging any shortcuts. She was merely inviting Lucy to continue flapping and stuttering.
“Well, I wondered if you wanted to meet.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Without Joseph.”
“I wouldn’t want him there, telling me what I can and can’t say.”
“But if you don’t want to . . .”
“No, no. I think that’s sensible. He’s moved out without ever saying anything. I suppose he’s living with you.”
“He wouldn’t miss his night a week at home.”
“He missed last week’s.”
“Last week, yes. But . . .”
“Where would you like to meet? Do you want to come round here?”
“Or shall I meet you halfway? In a, a café or somewhere?”
“Oh.”
“I’d love to come to your house, though, if that’s OK.”
“Of course.”
They arranged a date and a time, and when Lucy hung up she was slightly sweaty. She had met countless parents over the years, but none of them had ever discombobulated her like this. She didn’t mind being judged as a teacher, not anymore, not since she got good at it. But now she was going to be judged as a woman and a partner, by a peer, and there was nothing to protect her.
* * *
—
Mrs. Campbell lived in a terraced house, ex-council, probably built in the 1960s, Lucy reckoned. When Paul had finally realized that he wasn’t moving back into their old marital home, and thought he should buy somewhere with three bedrooms and a back garden, he’d sent her a link to a house like this one, not far from here. It was on sale for £400,000. You couldn’t buy anything like it near his former family home for less than £1.5 million. Yes, Lucy’s new house had an extra floor, but that couldn’t account for the million-pound gap. The difference was everything else—transport, schools, proximity to the large estates that had become notorious in the 1980s.
She walked up and down the road so that she arrived forty-five seconds after the appointed time, and then rang the front doorbell. She tried to recall the last time she’d been as nervous before a social occasion. It would have had to involve a teenage boyfriend, but the boyfriend would surely have been on the other side of the door, not in a le
isure center a couple of miles away. Maybe this tea would go so well that she could make a complicated joke about teenage boyfriends and Joseph and how she’d never really moved on, and Joseph’s mother would produce a scandalized chuckle.
Mrs. Campbell looked steadily at her before saying anything. There would be no scandalized chuckling. She was taking Lucy in. Lucy decided that she couldn’t do much about being taken in, so she held the other woman’s gaze and smiled. She was smiling at a large, unsmiling woman who, Lucy guessed, wouldn’t warm to her for several years to come. Lucy had done some terrifyingly adult things over the last few years, some involving Paul, some involving school. She’d been to an inquest, changed her husband’s soiled trousers, had several dealings with the police. None of it, however, had been her fault. Mrs. Campbell’s obvious dislike was her fault.
“Come in,” said Mrs. Campbell, and she ushered her through to the sitting room. The tea had already been made, and there was an empty cup waiting for her on a coffee table by the armchair that Lucy was guided toward. The steaming teapot on the tray seemed to suggest that Joseph’s mother was tense too, that she’d been looking for a way to count off the last three or four minutes.
“This is a nice house,” said Lucy, and she meant it.
“It belonged to my parents,” said Mrs. Campbell. “They were over in Ladbroke Grove with everyone else when they first arrived. But when they applied for a council house, this is where they ended up. And then Mrs. Thatcher let them buy it, cheap. I didn’t agree with everything she did, but that was marvelous.”
Lucy had strong views on the privatization of social housing, and she had expressed them many times. She had never expressed them to a beneficiary of Mrs. Thatcher’s largesse, however, and she could now see that she never would. She’d save her bitter opposition for the ears of people with six- or seven-figure mortgages.
The room was spotlessly tidy. There was a matching gray three-piece suite, and photos of the children everywhere, on every shelf and mantelpiece and wall. If it had been up to her she’d have walked around the room, inspecting the place for every trace of Joseph; from where she’d been sitting, she could see an unbelievably cute picture of him in his school uniform on the mantelpiece. He looked fourteen or fifteen.