The husband looked up, but still he said nothing, just tapped ash off his cigarette into something obscured by the window frame, an ashtray or the sink. And, oh heavens, the wife was in sudden motion, crossing the room fast towards him. For a moment it seemed she would strike him or shout in his face. But then, no, she was putting her arms round him, her head on his shoulder.
Sympathy demolished Mrs Jones’s envy. She wanted all to be well for this woman. It made her smile that she was consoling her man, or apologising to him, or forgiving him, or whatever other generous thing a spontaneous hug might signify. But now, what was this? He didn’t respond. He stayed as he was, propped against the work surface, arms at his sides, allowing himself to be hugged, but giving nothing back, the cold bastard. When his wife gave up on the hug and stood away, he took a last, deep inhale of his cigarette before twisting to stub it out.
She was speaking again, and he was nodding and saying something at last, smiling his engaging smile and squeezing her arm, so that she grinned and did a little mock curtsey. As she re-crossed the room to the ironing board, he straightened up and went out of the room.
In her beautiful new kitchen, across the moonless back gardens, Lily Caruthers ironed her pink sundress. Martin’s words and his squeeze of her arm had reassured her. All might yet be well. There was maybe no reason to worry.
But Mrs Jones felt differently. For a minute or so longer she watched. Then she turned from the window, unhooked her daughter’s laundry bag from the door and descended into the dog-smelling chaos. When she put her arms around her own husband, the hug he returned her brought tears to her eyes.
Richard
Fifty miles south in the same moonless night, Richard stared down at the glimmer of a grey cat sniffing around the dustbins below. Harry was dead. Good riddance. He ought to be happy, but still his thoughts were in turmoil. It was going to take more than a day to steady himself. Behind him, images of Cambodian jungle temples floated steamily across the screen of his laptop, but even they couldn’t calm him.
His gaze travelled along the alley of downpipes and rubbish bags towards the tranquil June sea. It was too dark to make out its colour or the line where it met the sky, but he tried to hold on to the idea of it, to put the father who’d never given him a thought out of his mind.
Thank goodness for Tiffany. In a neon-green microskirt and with her pink hair embellished with clip-on butterflies, she’d served Maurice and the small flurry of Friday customers with efficient friendliness, shooting Richard shy smiles while he skulked by the espresso machine pretending to do the books. He’d been in no state to charm customers.
He’d found any excuse to go out. To the cash-and-carry. To the hardware store for a new pavement board, chain and padlock. To the seafront to secure the board to a lamppost and guard it. At lunchtime Tiffany had dashed up to the front with a sandwich for him. ‘Don’t worry,’ she’d gabbled. ‘A really nice woman is keeping an eye, and I’ve counted the cakes.’
She seemed more infatuated even than yesterday. He felt bad taking advantage. When they closed up for the evening, he’d tried to give her a fiver, but she’d backed away – ‘Tips’ll do fine, honest. See you tomorrow’ – and run off before he could argue. He’d been so aloof and unfriendly all day, she probably thought he was trying to pay her off.
‘It’s not you, Tiffany,’ he told the cat in the alley. It was thoughts of Harry he needed to send packing. Instead he felt... what? Rage? It made no sense. There was nothing new to be angry about, and his rage never solved anything. He’d learned as a child to stop furiously insisting that this man was his father. It had earned him only a succession of black eyes from bullies and black marks from teachers for the rumpuses he provoked. One boy had told him his mother was a ‘deluded whore’, repeating the phrase over and over, clearly pleased with the sound of it. Perhaps she had heard the taunt, or perhaps he had asked her what the words meant. It was sometime around then that she’d withdrawn behind her theatrical poses and begun her bizarre hoarding.
There were seventeen missed calls on his phone: fourteen from her, three from Claire. Claire could wait, but his mother would get worse the longer he blanked her. He brought her face up on screen, swore under his breath, rang her back.
‘Richard—’
‘I’m coming. On my way now. Are you in bed yet?’
‘How long?’
‘As long as it takes me to get there.’
‘You’ve been with that woman.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ he snapped.
He cut off the call and stood a few moments glaring out at the alley, refusing to leave. Or yes, he would leave, but instead of turning his bike east towards Brighton and Hove and his mother, he would turn west and start pedalling, fast at first and then steadily, heading for Dorset or Devon or Cornwall. Penzance, the Scilly Isles, the Azores. He would chuck his phone in the sea as he went. He would change his name, never come back.
He stuffed underwear, a shirt and some bed linen into a bicycle pannier, then crammed in an assortment of groceries, half-pretending they were for his escape: a packet of chocolate digestives, a Mars bar, a roll of bin bags, some bananas and a tin of baked beans.
The laptop had gone to screensaver. He stole a last look at Cambodia, trying to imagine the heat-sweat breaking all over him, the hum of insects, but it was no use, unreachable. He logged off, bolted the front door and went out the back.
The night air was warm and a smell of vinegared chips rose from the alley. He carried the bike down the fire escape into the darkness and turned on its lights before wheeling it out through the puddles from yesterday’s rain. The eyes of the grey cat glowed briefly from where it hunkered on a bin, its fur ruffled by the wind. For a short while he paused on the seafront, hearing the Channel chew at the pebbles, watching the swell break, ghostly-white, around the struts of the pier and along the ragged, receding lines of the breakwaters. Then he set foot to pedal, threw his leg over the bike, and turned the handlebar east towards Brighton.
Weights seemed to drag at his limbs, it was an effort to reach cruising speed, but when he did he felt better. With the breeze in his hair, he could imagine he was free. There were ten miles to go, the road was clear and the wind was behind him. He told himself again he mustn’t rage at his mother. He shouldn’t have snapped at her on the phone.
It was late by the time he turned off Hove seafront and zigzagged his way to her street. Along the dilapidated terrace all the windows were unlit, hers included, and as he chained his bike to the railings he played with the notion that she would prefer not to be woken, that he should pedal home again and come back tomorrow. But she wasn’t in bed, he knew. She would be wedged in her place by the window, all set to cross-question him and wheedle him and fill him with guilt. He could feel himself becoming a child again, unmanned each time he made his feet climb these steps.
He let himself in, pushing the door against the stacks of junk mail and carrier bags that bulged with who knew what, squeezing his way past them. He pulled a face, never fully prepared for the fusty odour of rotting fabric, yellowing paper, stale dust and cobwebs. In the dark front room the TV screen flickered, a chamber orchestra played and his father’s young voice – resonant, but not yet matured to its recent more sensual gravel – asserted, ‘My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever.’
Edging between stacks of boxes and magazines to the foot of the stairs, he switched on the landing light to illuminate the hall. ‘Hello. I’m here.’
‘Yes, I know. About time,’ came her voice from the front room. ‘Where on earth have you been? I’ve been ringing and ringing. Will you make me a cup of tea? Did you bring biscuits?’
‘Yes.’ He held on to his temper. ‘Be with you in a minute.’
He wedged the pannier amongst the junk on the stairs, loaded his arms with the things he had brought for her, and pressed on through to the kitchen. While the water came to the boil, he acted fast, shaking out a bin bag and chucking into it whatever useless objects ca
me to hand, leaving gaps that with luck she wouldn’t notice. A bouquet of paper roses, a bag full of corkscrews, another of tape-cassettes, two Venetian masks, a bunch of plastic grapes, a small bust of Beethoven, a tin whistle and a set of Shakespearean fridge-magnets. Theatre props, his arse: these days she was bringing home any old junk. He topped up with newspapers and books, barely glancing at the titles, sending the spiders scurrying for cover. Futile but satisfying, a few temporary points scored. Holding the bag aloft, he eased between the teetering mountains of stuff towards the street door.
A light came on in the front room. ‘Richard, what are you doing?’
‘Nothing. Putting my bag on the stairs to go up.’
‘You’re not moving things, are you?’
He didn’t answer.
‘I can never find anything after you’ve been. Why didn’t you answer my calls?’
‘I did. I’m here, aren’t I?’
He left the swag by the door, hidden beneath a moth-eaten rabbit-fur jacket, a barrister’s wig, a box of Christmas tree baubles and a brass candelabra. He would smuggle it out later and dump it among the bins a few houses along. Back in the kitchen he made the tea, then set off for the front room, telling himself to stay calm, not to flinch at whatever ludicrous costume she was wearing to mark Harry’s passing. Judging by the old movie she was watching, he put his money on a Regency ball-gown.
To his surprise she looked almost normal. The black dress, though a bit big for her, was stylish. Her face was brightened with blusher and with blue round her eyes. Her hair was fluffed from its usual lank skull-covering into a cloud of brown waves. Had she been to a hairdresser, a beautician even? She looked barely older than her fifty-one years, sitting straight and with life in her eyes. She smiled as he manoeuvred towards her with a mug in each hand. ‘Don’t spill them,’ she said. ‘I can’t always be mopping up after you.’
He stooped for a kiss, a mug held either side of her. Her lacquered hair brushed his cheek. He smelled scent. ‘You look wonderful,’ he told her.
‘So do you, my darling.’ There was almost a laugh in her voice.
He’d expected her to be in a state of hysteria. Her voicemails had been melodramatic variations on ‘Richard, where are you?’ Was she glad Harry was dead? Or could it be that the news hadn’t reached her and her summons was about something else?
‘What’s new?’ he said cautiously. ‘Did the social worker come by?’
‘Who?’ she said. Her attention was back on the movie still playing, on young Harry Whittaker galloping on horseback through Jane Austen’s green countryside.
‘She said she would come.’
‘Who did?’
‘The social worker.’
‘Nosy madam. I didn’t open the door.’
He parked the two mugs amidst the clutter on top of the stone-age TV while he cleared space beside her. Her table was loaded as ever with back copies of The Stage.
‘Be careful. Where are you putting those?’
‘They’ll be safe over here.’
‘But I need them.’
‘You can have them back later.’
He straightened up, looking around him. The corner by her chair where he usually sat on a big, tasselled cushion had disappeared beneath two cardboard boxes and several volumes, black with dust, of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. At least she couldn’t have nicked those – some car-boot-sale bastard must have ferried them here. He swallowed his frustration. ‘I’ll be back with the biscuits and some bananas I’ve brought you. Have a think where I’m going to sit, Mum. Will Sid mind if we move him for once?’
‘What?’ She was mesmerised by Mr Darcy.
‘Sid. May I shift him?’
He laid a hand on the head of the giant wooden Buddha that beamed from the disintegrating armchair beside the TV. For a moment his mother bristled, working herself up to find reasons against. Then she nodded and winked. ‘I’ll ask him nicely,’ she said.
‘What kind of biscuits?’ she called after him.
‘Chocolate digestives. And a Mars bar.’
He fetched them and put them beside her mug. ‘Have a banana first,’ he suggested, but she unwrapped the Mars bar. She would rather buy a feather boa than eat a square meal.
He hefted the Buddha over to the stack of encyclopaedias, where it listed like the figurehead on a sinking ship. ‘Thanks, Sid,’ he murmured.
The television screen filled with a soft-focus, close-up image of the young Harold Whittaker. ‘I wish I’d known him then,’ said his mother. ‘Wasn’t he just gorgeous?’
‘Yes, but can we pause him?’
She pointed the remote and the movie stopped. Richard closed his eyes for a moment, savouring the respite from Harry. Then he lowered himself gingerly into the sagging seat of the armchair, shunted close to his mother and took her hand. ‘Tell me this,’ he said, as gently as he was able. ‘Have you heard that he’s died?’
Her big blue eyes widened and Richard steeled himself for the onslaught of emotion. Then, ‘Of course I have, darling. It’s been on the news all day.’
Too right. He wasn’t able to turn on the radio without hearing another hyperbolic tribute or clip of Harry’s voice, and the whole world was posting about him online.
‘But that’s great.’ He gripped her fingers. ‘Great that you’re okay, I mean. I thought you’d be sad.’
Her expression changed on cue, the mouth quivering, the eyes pained. ‘I am sad,’ she said. ‘And so should you be.’
‘I thought you’d be in shreds, but you’re not.’ He did his best to look solemn. ‘Look at you, you’re not.’
‘I’m devastated,’ she insisted. Her eyes glistened with tears. She could shed them at will. Instead of living on the money her parents left her and obsessing about Harry, she really ought to have gone on the stage. ‘I couldn’t stop crying last night. I was crying this morning, but then I had to go out. You wouldn’t answer the phone to me.’
‘I’m sorry. I should have done.’
‘Pretending not to care. Pretending he doesn’t matter to you.’
She was a fine one to talk about pretending. ‘I needed time. I was shocked,’ he said.
The tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘I can’t believe it. How can Harry be dead?’
‘He was bound to go one day.’
‘But your father, Richard, your father.’ She accused him with those streaming blue eyes.
He looked away, at the darkness beyond the window. ‘Which is why I’ve been shocked, okay?’
She gave a disbelieving sigh. ‘Anyway, I’ve been out and bought this mourning dress. Do you like it?’
He refocused. ‘Very much.’ What a neat swerve from lamentation to vanity.
‘And had my hair done. And washed and ironed my best hanky in case I cry in public.’
She produced a white, lace-edged square from the sleeve of the dress.
‘Beautiful. Don’t use it. You’ll spoil it.’
She located a box of tissues amongst the flotsam and jetsam around her, pulled one out and dabbed at her tears. ‘I can’t bear it. I really loved him.’
As sincere as the soup woman. ‘Yes, Mum,’ he said, smiling.
‘You’re talking down to me, Richard.’
‘I’m sure you loved him very much,’ he made himself say.
In the past perhaps, but not now. Her love had as much meaning and use now as a box of Christmas tree baubles and a bag full of corkscrews.
‘Nobody understood him.’ She gazed past Richard at the paused TV screen.
Oh no, here we go. ‘Except you,’ he quipped cynically and saw her shrink a little, wounded, or acting wounded, same difference. He reached for her hand again. ‘I’m sorry – that was unkind of me.’ His job was to play along, to feed her the cues, to listen and smile and agree.
‘I’ve seen beneath the surface,’ she said.
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘Everyone thinks that they know him, but they’ve only seen the masks he puts on.’
>
‘Exactly. What he wanted them to see.’
‘But Richard, there’s a good man inside.’
He couldn’t bring himself to agree. He sat back, took a gulp of tea and examined the mug he was holding. Save our theatres! it demanded.
‘You’ve never believed me, but everyday happiness frightens Harry. He doesn’t know how to do it. It feels like forgetting his lines.’
As a child Richard had soaked up her apologies for his father, wanting to believe in the romance, but he’d seen through him long ago. He was just a lying Casanova who’d seduced his mother, then dumped her and never given her a second thought beyond coughing up child support and instructing his lawyers and minders to keep her off his back. Richard stared dejectedly at the bananas he’d put in her lap, then lifted his eyes to her thin face.
‘I have to go,’ she was saying. ‘They’ll be trying to prevent me, I know, the ex-wives and the minders, but you’ll be with me, making sure we get through.’
‘Get through what? Go where?’
‘To the funeral,’ she repeated. ‘You’re not paying attention, Richard. That’s why I’ve bought this dress, and—’
‘No!’ He sat straight in the chair. ‘It’s a terrible idea.’
Images flooded in of the day she’d gone crazy when he was eleven. She’d heard or read somewhere that his father was married again, and begun yelling and weeping, finally marching him out along the front and past Brighton Pier to camp on Harry’s doorstep on Marine Parade. A bad-tempered housekeeper with cigarette breath had told them to push off. The happy couple weren’t here, she’d said, nor likely to be any time soon. Sir Harry was filming in Spain and his new wife was away in Los Angeles.
His hysterical mother had refused to accept it. She’d insisted on waiting, unrolling their sleeping bags beneath the white-pillared Regency porch and screeching at passersby that this was Sir Harry’s child, that she should be living in this grand house, not in a hovel in Hove.
The Posthumous Adventures of Harry Whitaker Page 4