‘Susan can pick something else,’ I say. And she leaves them. I think I see relief in her face. We don’t touch, we don’t say goodbye. I watch her walk slowly back up the path to the house.
Chapter Twenty-three
Brighton is swarming.
We should have gone out-of-town, to the shopping centre,’ says Richard.
This is the third time we’ve cruised this block, waiting for someone to move. We’ve already spotted the tow-away truck six cars in front of us, with someone’s Audi in its jaws.
‘Oh, you sweetheart,’ croons Richard, as a burly man in his sixties reverses his well-polished Honda out of a space. ‘Have you got the parking card ready, Neen?’ I scratch off the date and the time, and put the ticket in the window. ‘We’ll be quicker if we work separately,’ says Richard briskly. ‘Your fish shop’s down there, Edward, turn left, across the road and second right with the pub on the corner.’
‘I know.’
‘You’ll be how long? An hour?’
‘About that. And you’ll be shopping together.’
‘We’ll have to. Nina’s the only one who knows what to get for this dish I’m supposed to be cooking.’
I sit in the mother seat, the power seat, and watch Edward walk away, swinging his string bag.
‘Jesus, it’s even hotter here. Have we really got to do this shopping or can we go to a pub?’
‘We can go to a pub if we cheat and buy the whole lot at Wait-rose while Edward’s traipsing round looking for fresh coriander.’
‘There’s a good one just down here.’
The sea’s like a wall at the end of the street, oily and still. The pub’s got a couple of tables out on the narrow, glaring pavement. Eight chairs are packed round each table and there’s a reek of sun-oil and beer.
‘Let’s go inside.’
It’s dark inside, and half-empty. The back-door’s open to let some air through, and it shows the corner of a blindingly white yard where there are a couple of umbrellas and tables. But it’s better to be indoors. An old man on the far side looks up without curiosity, and then back into his pint, as we pick a table in the corner.
Richard slides into the bench next to me. ‘I hope the gin doesn’t give you a headache.’
‘I’ve got one already. It’ll take it away.’
I lean back and feel the gin begin to move through me. On an empty stomach it’s dazzling. I move up close to Richard so our thighs touch, then press.
‘I could fuck you here on this bench,’ he says.
‘And here we are with half an hour and there’s nowhere to go.’
He laughs. ‘I shouldn’t think anyone’s ever said that in Brighton before. Walk out of here and we’d pass ten hotels in a hundred yards.’
‘Edward might get fed up waiting.’
‘Bugger Edward. Anyway, you said he knows.’
But we both know nothing’s going to happen here.
‘They’d do a good trade renting out beach-huts by the hour, come to think of it,’ says Richard, ‘I’ve often thought there was unused capacity there.’
I drink the gin slowly, making it last. Richard buys us more drinks, salted peanuts, crisps, two pickled eggs on a plate.
‘Do you want another of those?’
‘I won’t be able to stand up.’
‘You can lie down. If we go on the beach, right under the prom, no one’ll notice us. They’ll all be staring out to sea.’
‘You’re mad, the beach is packed with French students on exchange. You don’t think they’re interested in the sea, do you?’
‘I could buy a towel and we could lie under it. A big one.’
‘Yeah, that’d look good.’ I think of the white towel humping and twitching like a pantomime horse. Nothing’s going to happen, not now. But later, when it’s dark, when the food’s all eaten and the candles are out. When the table’s all wax and scraps and wilted flowers. Then we’ll go into the garden, after the party’s over.
‘I meant it when I said she doesn’t sleep with me, you know.’
‘I’ve told you, you don’t need to say things like that.’
‘I kept trying to get her to tell me the truth about why. Wouldn’t you think I’d be old enough to have the sense not to do that? In the end I wore her down and she said she’d married me because she knew I was different from all the other men she’d had. She wanted to break the pattern. But it didn’t work, because the men she finds attractive are the sort who aren’t any good to her. The men she wants to sleep with. I said that couldn’t be true, because the sex was so good for us the first three years. Then she said she’d never felt that way, she’d wanted, to but she hadn’t been able. Maybe she’d pretended to make me’ happy. She said she loved me.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’
‘I want you to know.’
‘Because you still love her and you still wish she’d –’
‘No. That’s all over.’
He grips my hand hard, his fingers round my knuckles.
‘She’s right, you know,’ I say, ‘the men she had never were any good. Not really. She’d get rid of one and then find another just the same.’
‘Lots of people do that.’
‘And then she met you and she still couldn’t make her mind up.’
‘You’re right there: She was off and on like an undertaker’s hat,’ says Richard. The pub door bangs open and a woman with bright hair in a tight red dress squints into the dark. The old man in the far corner looks up from his newspaper, sees her, puts the paper on the table and slowly, deliberately, stands. She clicks over to him on her high strappy sandals, shuts her eyes and opens her mouth. They kiss, his hand squeezing her backside.
‘I love Brighton,’ I say.
‘Do you?’
‘It’s fantastic. You feel you could do exactly what you wanted and no one’d care. Anything could happen. Even the sea looks like a landlord who’s going to repossess the place any minute. Look at it parked there at the end of the street, waiting.’
‘I didn’t notice.’
‘Because you’ve got your bloody eyes shut half the time,’ I say, more angrily than I mean to.
‘I did notice the colour of the beach-hut doors, though, last time I was here,’ he says, picking up my hand, soothing it between his. ‘They don’t make that blue anywhere else, do they? We’ll get a beach-hut, Nina. I’ll find out what they cost. You can come down from London and we’ll make tea and shut the door and fuck, and then I can nip out and buy you an ice-cream. You’ll like that.’
‘Listen, we’ve been here nearly an hour, and we’ve still got to do the shopping.’
‘Let’s forget the food. Let’s forget the whole thing.’ He’s leaning against me, his skin hot under the thin white shirt. ‘We could do it if you want. We don’t have to go back.’
We don’t have to go back. We can book into a hotel, not an expensive one on the front but one of the cheaper ones on a street away from the sea. My credit card wouldn’t run out for weeks if we took it easy. Let alone the cards Richard must have packing his wallet, along with his doctorates and diplomas. We’d have the full breakfast and picnics on the pebbles. I’d buy a swimsuit. In the evening we’d walk from one Italian restaurant to the next until we found the one we liked. We’d watch the pier lights come on, blotching the night with fantasy. I’d put money on the ten-pence horse-race machine, and we’d buy four fresh doughnuts for a pound and eat them all. When we looked down there’d be water far below between the pier boards, thick and salt and green. And the slime on the metal, the tall, terrifying stanchions. We’d hold hands. Every day we’d see the long-distance swimming club breast-stroke its way past the end of the pier. We’d sit in the Pavilion Gardens at noon watching Japanese tourists eat British sandwiches. One day we’d take a day trip to Dieppe and throw stones out from the beach, back towards ourselves, before we came home clanking with bottles of wine.
We’d stay in, day after blazing hot day. We’d lie skin
to skin on the unmade bed while the sun travelled from one side of the dirty window to the other. In the end when our bladders got too full, we’d go down to the little bathroom on the landing, with the notice asking us please to leave these conveniences in the state in which we would wish to find them. There’d be one long hair on the edge of the bath, and a smell of Harpic. Richard would whistle while he shaved and his whistling would coil up the stairs until it reached me. I’d lie there waiting in the state in which he’d wish to find me. One more gin and it’ll happen. I lean back and his hand strokes my stomach under the table. He finds my navel and a sharp electric pain goes through to my backbone. Why don’t we do it? Phone now and begin to break those threads, one by one.
We won’t do it. There’s Isabel, Isabel, Isabel. She has spread everywhere and I can’t root her out I’ve never blamed you, Neen. I’ve never blamed you for anything. I love you. The buttons set deep in the mock leather bench opposite are as black as dahlias. ‘We’ll have to get the food,’ I say.
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He yawns and stretches, abandoning himself to the yawn with a shudder. ‘God, I can feel that thunder in my head.’
But when we go out it’s as hot as ever, and almost as bright. One small brass-rimmed cloud hangs very high overhead.
Chapter Twenty-four
There’s a neat note taped to the top of the windscreen. A little envelope with ‘Richard and Nina’ written on it. I unfold it. Inside it says, ‘Waited from 1.15 until 2.05. Have gone to get train to Lewes and then taxi. I’ll see you both back at the house.’ Where did he get the envelope from? Does he carry them round with him all the time? But Richard’s ripping open another, official envelope. A parking ticket. On the right side of the windscreen there’s a bright yellow sticker which reads ‘Authorized for removal.’ Just then, at the top of the street, we see the tow-away truck beginning to back down towards us.
‘Get in the car.’
We throw our four carrier bags on to the back seat and jump in. The truck clunks and judders, finding its way through rows of parked cars. ‘They make a fucking fortune round here. Just don’t try to block me, you bugger. Just don’t try.’ Richard pulls the wheel round and reverses fast out of the space. ‘I bet that bastard Edward phoned them,’ he says as we drive away. ‘What’s he say in the note?’
‘Get stuffed. This is going to cost you.’
Richard laughs. ‘Good on him.’
‘No, he’s gone home on the train.’
‘We’ll be back before him. We could pick him up from the station.’
‘Or we could leave him to wait a very long time at the station and then have to pay for a taxi and maybe walk all the way up the track with his shopping.’
‘Sounds all right to me. Listen, there’s a place up here we can stop for the champagne. Are you sure we got everything else?’
‘Yeah, we got everything.’
‘I’m not looking forward to this meal.’
‘It’ll be fine. I wouldn’t let you make anything that wasn’t.’
‘I don’t mean the food.’
We’re heading up for the bypass, with all the windows rolled right down so hot air thrashes round the car and we have to shout to hear each other. Suddenly Richard pulls in. I’ve noticed before how he drives as if the passenger knows what he’s thinking.
‘I won’t be a minute.’
I watch him disappear into the wine shop. Behind, you can still see the sea. A faint glitter, like swarf. But the avenues are big and quiet, stunned by heat. It’s stiflingly hot now, worse than ever, and the shadows of the trees are blurred. The sky isn’t blue any more, but yellow. Richard’s right, there’s a storm coming, though it might take days to come. The leaves are lustreless and brown with drought, hanging on for rain.
Richard comes out of the shop, balancing the box on his knee as he turns to shut the door. But the shopman comes out after him, in deference to the amount of money Richard’s spent. He ushers the box into the boot of the car, says sir and goodbye and then adjusts the chain on a plastic guide-dog for the blind while he watches us drive off. Richard drops a Mars Bar into my lap. It’s cold, solid.
‘That’s instead of lunch. He kept them in the fridge so it should be all right.’
‘I’m sorry, Richard, not on top of the gin.’
The gin’s not a dazzle any more, but a sharp, nauseous pain in my stomach. I should have eaten. Pickled eggs and crisps and booze fight one another. The road leaps and twists in front of us. Surely he didn’t drive this fast when we were coming the other way. The houses have gone, and now there are white fields, dusty hedges, a man cycling slowly on the cycle track alongside the road.
‘Richard, can you stop?’
He glances at me. ‘There’s a turn-off in half a mile.’
‘OK.’
When we stop the silence and stillness rush over me, swamping me. I struggle out of the car and on to the dry grass at the roadside. I kneel down by a patch of nettles and retch but nothing comes up. The thing is to keep still and breathe deeply through my nose. I’m not going to be sick. I put my head down, breathing steadily.
‘Here,’ says Richard, ‘wipe your face with this.’
It’s a baby wipe. We bought them in the supermarket along with all the other stuff. It’s cool and moist and it smells innocently of baby lotion. I wipe the sweat from my face and neck, and sit back. Fifty yards from us the road hums, but we’re quite hidden.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. It was too much gin, that’s all.’
‘And the excitement,’ he says, ‘don’t forget the excitement.’
‘There wasn’t enough of that.’ Through a gap in the hedge I see a small, framed oblong of landscape. Two fields, a house, a hedge. Perfect and complete, the way other people’s lives look.
‘What are you looking at?’
‘That house through there.’
‘Would you like a house like that?’
‘I was thinking about how I’d draw it.’
‘You haven’t got your sketchbook with you, have you?’
‘Yes, it’s in my bag.’
‘Can I look at it?’
‘If you want to. I’m not going to draw now, my head’s banging.’
He opens the sketchbook, turns a few pages. The cabbage, the cherry-tree bark, a duckling in the huge wake of its mother. Cabbage again. I see him stiffen and then I know what pages he’s reached.
‘I didn’t know you were doing all these.’
He flicks the pages. Ten, fifteen, twenty. I’m surprised myself, because in doing the drawings I didn’t realize how many there were.
‘Are they all of him?’
‘Of Antony, you mean? No, not all.’
There is Antony in Susan’s arms. Antony kicking on a blanket in the garden. Antony doubled up with colic, his face creased with anger and anguish. I’ve drawn him in his bath, with Susan’s fingers under his neck supporting his shoulders, and his legs hanging limp as if astonished by the warm water. It must feel so much like home. There he is fastened on to his bottle, all his existence flowing towards the nipple. And in one drawing he sleeps his damp, feathery, solid sleep.
‘Has Isabel seen these?’
‘No.’
He keeps on turning pages. He stops again, looks closely at these new drawings, and then flicks back a few pages to compare. Then he looks at me.
‘These aren’t the same. You’ve made him bigger, haven’t you? Look at his legs. And Antony hasn’t got that much hair.’
‘These drawings aren’t of Antony.’
‘But surely – they must be. It’s the same baby. Look at the shape of the eyes. And the hands, the hands are exactly the same.’
‘It’s a bigger baby, you were right. This baby’s older than Antony. He’s three months old. Don’t you know who he is? Can’t you guess?’
‘What do you mean? Am I supposed to recognize him?’
‘You’ve never seen him.’
‘Nina, for
God’s sake, what is this? It’s a baby, that’s all. Just a baby. It looks like Antony to me but you say it’s not.’
‘He’s Antony’s uncle.’
He can’t be faking that look of surprise.
‘Steve, you mean? Did you do it from a photo?’
I’d forgotten that Richard’s got a brother too. ‘No, not your brother. Mine. Mine and Isabel’s.’
A long breath. ‘Oh. I see what you mean.’
‘You knew about him, didn’t you?’
‘I’d forgotten. Isabel did say you had a brother. He died though, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you’ve done these from a photo of him. How amazing. He looks exactly like Antony.’
‘I didn’t do them from a photo, I did them from memory.’
‘But you must have been tiny. Isabel was only – what? – about eight?’
‘Seven.’
‘Then you were only four.’
‘That’s the kind of memory I have.’
Richard turns the pages again, slowly this time. ‘I hadn’t noticed. He’s wearing different clothes from Antony. Different kind of clothes.’
‘He wore our baby dresses. My mother put blue ribbons in them. She didn’t have enough money to buy new things.’
‘I can see the ribbons. You’ve drawn the ribbons.’
He pores over the book. ‘It’s extraordinary, Nina. Did you really remember all that?’
‘Yes.’
‘I never knew you were doing any of these drawings. Isabel will love them. We must have them framed.’
‘They’re only sketches.’
‘Are you feeling better now?’
‘Yes, I’m fine. We’d better get on.’
Richard stands up and scans the landscape. ‘You can see for miles from here. I was right, look at those clouds beginning to bunch. We’re going to get a hell of a storm.’
‘It won’t come yet.’
‘It’ll come before tonight,’ he says with satisfaction, ‘so maybe I won’t have to cook after all. We can drink champagne and watch the lightning.’
‘Come on.’ I’m shivering a bit, though it’s so hot. Nausea makes you cold. I feel as if I can’t quite get my breath, as if the air is thick, not air at all. ‘Richard, we ought to hurry.’
Talking to the Dead Page 15