Claire was on her knees on the yellow rug, fishing the remote from under the sofa. She clicked it at the widescreen. Up popped a high-definition picture of nothing worth seeing: an old boy in country tweeds pretending to be happy that his great aunt’s wooden chest might fetch three hundred at auction. The expert fingered a brass handle. ‘It’s a pity these aren’t the originals.’
‘Your mum will be good as gold,’ Claire said.
‘You haven’t met her. You don’t know her. Claire, you’ve got to believe me, she’s going to be horrible to you. She declares war on every woman I ever introduce her to.’
He’d only ever introduced her to one, his first girlfriend from school. His mother had bombarded her with hostile questions and made scathing remarks about her looks and her accent.
‘Nonsense. I’m sure she’ll be fine.’ All his efforts to put Claire off were useless. No one was going to come between her and this star-studded event.
He wished he’d never told her who his father was. It shamed him that he sometimes used the connection to chat up women. Even when they didn’t believe him, the idea intrigued them, made up a little for his lack of money and prospects. In the singles bar where he’d met Claire three months ago, more than believing it, she’d been in awe, weaving romance around him as though he were a pauper prince in a fairytale.
Did she see him at all, he wondered, or just the young Harry playing him? She was bursting with thwarted fame-by-association, itching to tell everyone she knew. ‘No,’ he’d said. ‘This is my secret. Mine, not yours, Claire. I don’t want people knowing.’ He would hate strangers to be staring and whispering, talking about him.
‘A bit of fame would be fun,’ was her take on it. ‘Just think – it would put your café on the map and cheer up my clients no end.’ She earned her money as a peripatetic care-worker for Brighton and Hove council, helping frail and confused people out of their beds, seeing to them in their bathrooms, feeding them and their pets, and putting them into their beds again.
She wriggled her bare toes against him. ‘Do you want me to ring your mum for you? Tell her I’m coming? I won’t upset her – I have a way with old people.’
‘She’s not old.’
‘With mad people then.’
‘She’s not mad.’
‘If you say so. Look, I’ll ring her now.’
He snatched his phone from the coffee table and put it out of reach.
‘She’ll chat to me nicely. She’ll invite me to drop in the next time I’m passing. She’ll say, “I’m so glad to be getting to know you, my dear,” and then,’ Claire squealed and shrank in mock terror to the end of the sofa, ‘she’ll come after me in the shower, like that mother in Psycho.’
‘That wasn’t the mother, Claire – it was the son.’ Richard leapt at her, grabbing the remote from her hand and slashing down with it – ‘Eeek, eeek, eeek, eeek!’ – making her scream and hit him with cushions.
He dropped the remote and kissed her, and she kissed him back, and one thing led to another. Maybe she was right, he found himself thinking in the thick of things. She might charm his mother with her warmth and her jolliness.
Afterwards, he cracked open a beer and began channel surfing. ‘Bloody hell, not Tomorrow’s Tycoon again.’
‘Hey babes, I wanted to watch that,’ she said, but he ignored her, pausing on the news, then flicking to some soap where three people were shouting at once, then to a woman with big breasts frying onions, then to his father in an archive chat-show clip, back through Tomorrow’s Tycoon where a contestant was pitching to the panel of fat cats, landing finally on a weather forecast. It was going to be warm and sunny for the funeral tomorrow.
‘Mean bastard,’ said Claire, rearranging her towel and peeling a damp strand of blonde hair from her cheek. ‘TT is good. You should give it a go. You might get some killer ideas for turning the café around.’
He grinned. ‘I’ve already had the killer idea. Tiffany. She’s amazing. She’s got a children’s story hour and elevenses going. The mums have been turning up, droves of pushchairs, drinking coffee by the gallon.’
With Tiffany to help him, he’d begun to enjoy the café again, looking forward to opening up every morning, seeing its possibilities as he had at the start.
‘That’s clever of her.’ Claire sounded dubious. ‘Take care, though. My guess is she fancies you.’
‘For heaven’s sake – she’s a teenager.’
‘No need to snap.’
‘Sorry, but I get enough earache from Mum about women with designs on me.’
Claire giggled. ‘Me, you mean? A gold-digging harlot, is that what I am?’
‘Exactly. No gold to be dug, though.’
‘Which reminds me,’ she said, snuggling up, ‘I’ve been thinking. The press would give a lot for your story. It would solve all your problems. You could pay off the bank, and—’
‘Good try,’ he interrupted, ‘but Mum had the same thought when I was a kid. I think she hoped the publicity would bring Harry back to her somehow. She got nowhere. The journalists laughed in her face, told her she was a fantasist, wouldn’t touch it.’
‘Of course not,’ Claire said. ‘They’d have been afraid of his lawyers, but it’s different now – dead men can’t sue, and you can back her up. You look so much like him, and they can do DNA.’
He pulled away from her. The idea made him uncomfortable. ‘I don’t see that it’s much of a story,’ he said. ‘Harold Whittaker fathered a baby. So what? Who hasn’t these days?’
‘Yes, but your mother’s the angle.’
He shook his head. He wished she would drop it.
‘The press need a hook and an angle. The hook is he’s just died and—’
‘Have you been to journalism school?’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s commonsense. The angle is your mum’s like that batty woman in Great Expectations. She sits in her wedding dress and won’t wind the clocks, and her cake goes all mouldy, and—’
‘Stop it, Claire, please. This is my life we’re talking about. I couldn’t bear to be famous – can’t think of anything worse. And Mum’s vulnerable. Publicity could tip her over the edge. The last thing she needs is the press telling her she’s Miss Havisham.’
‘Go on. She’d enjoy it and you need the money.’
‘I get it.’ He faked a grin. ‘You are a gold-digging harlot.’
‘Yeah, right,’ she said, sounding huffy, ‘and that’s why I’ve sunk my claws into such a whizz entrepreneur.’ She snatched the remote from him and switched back to Tomorrow’s Tycoon. ‘It’s the only decent thing on.’
He groaned, but he didn’t mind really. Anything would do to shut her up and fill the time between now and tomorrow. He tried to focus on the programme. Tiffany reckoned he resembled this curly-headed ego-trip called Quentin who was out on a task now, haggling prices for bolts of cloth. He was using his charm, making the Indian stallholder giggle, her double chin wobble. She was meeting him more than halfway. Then cut to the aftermath: Quentin’s arms full of patterned silk and the Barbie-doll presenter of the programme high-fiving him, trilling, ‘That was so, so cool.’
‘Seriously,’ Claire said. ‘You’re more photogenic than any of this lot. You’d look smashing in the papers. Which reminds me – have you noticed my teeth?’ She drew her lips back to display them. ‘I’ve been whitening them in case anyone takes pictures tomorrow.’
‘I’m dazzled.’
She laughed, and for a while she was quiet, watching the programme. Then, ‘By the way,’ she said lightly, ‘there’s something else I’ve been meaning to ask you.’
Her eyes were on the screen, but she had his attention.
‘Thing is, it’s July already, and my lease runs out first of August. Any chance I could move in with you?’
He said nothing, gathering his thoughts.
‘Share the rent? Save us both a bit of money?’
‘Can’t you renew?’
‘Nope. Landlady’s due ba
ck from Seattle and needs it herself. You’d hardly notice me, honest. None of this furniture’s mine. It would be just the telly and a few bits and pieces.’ She looked up at him. ‘Nice telly.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but can I be straight too? I’m not serious enough about us, that’s the truth of it, Claire. I don’t think you are either, not really.’
For a moment the silence was awkward. Then, ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Just thought I’d ask. See what it sounded like, eh?’
‘I’ll be happy to help with the flat hunting.’
‘Great. Thanks.’ She stared at her nice telly. ‘I’ll probably look in Brighton. More expensive, but I won’t have to commute every day.’
Lily
A young man who worked for her husband was the next person to realise that Lily’s marriage was broken.
The office party was spiralling fast out of control, the air becoming humid with sweat and free booze. The speeches had been made, most of the bigwigs had gone, and the whole of the tenth floor was now heaving with drunken dancing.
Half a year of unplanned celibacy had sapped the young man’s confidence. All he had to do was find an unattached woman, he kept telling himself, and the rest should be easy: your place or mine? But the admin girl he’d just shouted his best chat-up line at had given him two fingers and, if his lip-reading was right, underlined this with, ‘Get lost, loser.’
Shielding his plastic cup of red wine, he retreated to the fringe of the battle to regroup. Lower your standards, he told himself. It didn’t much matter who the next woman was. Not busybody Karen, who was roaming the place spying and stirring – he would never live that down – but where was Tamara, his new boss’s PA? A bit ropey to look at, but a good laugh, a good sport, and right now she’d do nicely.
He stood on a chair and peered across the crowd. Holy shit! Pussycat Christine from marketing was snogging that berk from accounting. If berks from accounting could pull pretty women, then so could he. He stood taller on the chair and stared around angrily. That bird in the red dress by the buffet, for example.
He watched her for a minute. She looked a bit lost, a bit down, no one talking to her. Age hard to tell at this distance – mid-twenties perhaps – but super-elegant with all that brown hair piled up on her head. Way out of his league, not least because something about her shouted intelligence, which he felt a bit short of right now. Hang on though, didn’t they say the beautiful, intelligent ones were short of offers because nobody dared ask? And if she said no, she would say it politely; she didn’t look like the ‘get lost, loser’ type. He drained his plastic cup and tossed it aside before climbing unsteadily down from the chair. Expanding his chest and jutting his chin, he began shouldering his way through the crush.
Before he reached her, she turned, looking for someone, and he stalled, shocked first by the shiny red-onion-skin of her cheek and then by the realisation that he’d been about to proposition his new boss’s wife. He’d only seen her right profile when they came in together. Jesus. Bad move. Think again.
He wasn’t altogether repelled by the birthmark. Jostled by the crowd, he wondered tipsily how it must feel to be beauty and beast in one skin. Others, he noticed, were darting glances, as if she were a puzzle they needed to solve. Curiosity held him. More than curiosity, the lure of the exotic. He very much wouldn’t mind giving her one, he decided magnanimously.
He grazed the buffet, brushing her arm as he reached for a handful of peanuts, and seeing close up the ragged spatter of bluish-red mottling that spread down from her cheek to her jaw.
‘Are you all right, Mrs C?’ Busybody Karen arrived, beaming fake warmth, standing too close and touching the woman’s shoulder as she bellowed in her ear, ‘Come and join in. No need to be on your own. I’ll introduce you around.’
Mrs C shook her head, smiling, insisting she was fine.
‘Well, if you’re sure, love, but come and find me if you need someone to talk to.’
Alone again, the woman showed the whole of her disturbing face to the crowd, scanning it for her husband. She looked a bit lost, younger than she’d seemed from across the room. It was clear she’d had enough of this party: she wanted to go home.
The young man munched peanuts, looking for Martin too, wanting to see how he behaved with his unusual wife. There was no sign of him, which was odd, come to think of it. He’d had his new boss down as the life-and-soul type.
He lurched off round the edge of the party in search of him. How naff would it be to tell him his missus was after him? Might be worth it though, just to see his reaction. He wasn’t among the dancers. Or in the gents. Someone was throwing up in a cubicle, but the feet in scuffed trainers weren’t his. The young man pushed on to the far end of the building, where the meeting rooms and senior staff offices were shuttered and dark behind venetian blinds. Still no sign of Martin. He stood swaying a moment, trying to remember why he was looking for his boss, starting to size up the women in the group coming in off the stairwell.
Just then the door of meeting room 3 opened and Martin Caruthers emerged from the darkness. The young man stepped forward, then paused, disconcerted, because the door behind Martin was closing as though someone was pulling it from inside. Checking his flies and smoothing his hair, his boss headed off briskly.
The handle to meeting room 3 was quivering and turning. Who would the woman be? Blimey, it was Tamara, the PA. She slipped out and stood for a moment with her back to the door, glancing nervously about. The young man shrank into the stairwell as she passed. She stumbled, then stopped, leaning a hand on the wall while she raised a foot to adjust her shoe.
Here came busybody Karen. ‘Ooh, Tamara, you’re awfully pink. You need to go carefully. How much have you had? And hang on – no – I don’t believe it!’
Karen erupted in a great screech of laughter that had everyone looking. Tamara, grinning, tried to slide past, but Karen caught her by the wrist, spluttering and gathering herself for the kill. ‘You mad hussy,’ she managed at last. ‘Un-freaking-believable. What have you been up to? You’ve got your dress on inside out.’
Thursday
Harry
‘But what happens with babies?’ I’m yelling. ‘How does this nonsensical rule work for them?’
‘Babies?’
‘Or people whose family and friends all die before they do.’ I’m becoming hysterical. ‘There must be millions of those.’
Scotty smiles. His eyes twinkle merrily. Has elevation from spirit to lesser angel released his inner imp? I could happily wring his neck for that smirk, if I only had hands.
His T-shirt today advises: Peace comes from within. He showed up just as the cortège was setting off from the funeral parlour, where two undertakers became four, Bill and Frank in the hearse, the other two in the limousine that now follows us, carrying Simon Foyle and Mrs Butley, my cleaner. All my furious attempts to transfer, first to Simon, then to Mrs Butley, as the coffin was carried to the hearse were in vain. I was brought up short like a stringed cork from a popgun.
Encased within polished glass, a great mass of white and gold roses and lilies dazzles in the afternoon sun as we process up Lewes Road out of Brighton towards Woodvale Crematorium. Scotty sits cross-legged amidst the flowers at the shoulder of the coffin, the pink soles of his bare feet neatly upturned, while I spin and jump at the narrow end, demanding fairness from the implacable laws of the universe.
‘People who are murdered,’ I try, ‘and dumped, never found, no fault of their own – are you telling me they get stuck with their bodies?’
Scotty’s eyes follow an overtaking hatchback laden with children and small, panting dogs. ‘See that window sticker?’ he giggles. ‘Menagerie on board.’
‘What about it?’
‘Nothing. It’s funny, that’s all. I love families, don’t you?’
‘How dare you!’ I fly at him furiously, only to find myself at the head end of the coffin with a close-up view of his self-satisfied back. A small, tasteless wreath of r
ed carnations sits in pride of place here. The card, from Mrs Butley, says Will be sadly missed, in reference to her wages most likely.
Scotty raises himself, upturned soles and all, on his hands, rotates to face me, and backs off a little before lowering his angelic backside into the petals and foliage. ‘Try to be calm,’ he says.
‘Calm? Are you crazy? Are you even listening to me?’
‘Yes, but you’re not thinking helpfully.’
‘I’m pointing out the flaws in the logic. People die away from their loved ones. Happens all the time. At war, or at work, or travelling. Climbing Everest, for example. Crashed in the Amazon jungle or the Pacific Ocean. What about them? The rules are ridiculous.’
He leans towards me, his eyes at last serious. ‘You care about these people?’
‘The whole thing’s a farce, is what I care about. The system’s unfair.’
‘Unfair to the people you mention?’
‘Unfair in principle! Someone needs to review it, the total absurdity of it, and put my case on hold, quickly, please.’
The hearse is turning right. I glance out through the glass, and my panic enters the red zone. We’re at the cemetery already, gliding through the gates and now, smoothly, inexorably, up the long, sloping valley lined with ancient trees and old tombstones. A blackbird glides over the hearse to the ground before bouncing away across the grass with its head cocked for worms. I throw myself towards it. ‘For pity’s sake, let me out!’
Scotty unfolds his lotus-legs, leans back on his hands and regards me as if we have all the time in the world.
‘Answer me,’ I beseech him. ‘This makes no sense at all.’
He shakes his blond head. ‘Okay,’ he says carefully. ‘Since you insist. Would it help you to know that the babies, those who’ve lost all their loved ones, the unfortunates who die far from people they’ve cared for, that they’re happy and safe, that what you call “the system” looks after them. Would that make you feel better?’
The Posthumous Adventures of Harry Whitaker Page 6