All the Hopeful Lovers

by William Nicholson

  ‘He agreed to that?’

  ‘Sure. Why wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Did you tell him I wanted to see him?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I kept it all very casual. I said you’d love to get together, talk about the old days, blah-de-blah. I said if I could make it I’d join you. But I won’t, of course.’

  ‘So it’s just meeting up and chatting?’

  ‘That’s all. You don’t have to put on clean knickers.’

  Alice gives a nervous laugh.

  ‘You have no idea how this kind of thing scares me.’

  ‘What’s there to be scared of? If it doesn’t work out, what have you lost? Nothing.’

  Just another little flicker of hope, thinks Alice. Every tiny failure adds to the burden that I drag behind me, that keeps me earthbound. One day I’ll stop trying. Just sit down on the ground and go nowhere ever again.

  ‘It’s easy for you,’ she says. ‘You know what to do.’

  ‘There’s nothing to do. Just be friendly. Then, if it looks like it’s going well’ – she leans over to Alice and lays one hand on her thigh – ‘touch him.’

  ‘I can’t do that!’

  ‘Why not? I’m not saying feel him up. Just a friendly touch, like this.’

  ‘Honestly, I could never do that.’

  ‘Couldn’t you?’ Chloe gazes at her thoughtfully. ‘It really speeds things up, touching.’

  ‘But how do I know if he wants it?’

  ‘Oh, boys just do.’

  ‘With you, maybe.’

  ‘See here, Alice. I’m not going to let you screw this up.’ All at once Chloe has become engaged. ‘You can make this happen. He’s only a stupid boy. We’re so much smarter than them. All you have to do is take charge and you can switch them on and off like a Hoover.’

  ‘Like a Hoover?’

  ‘Well, I was trying to think of something that makes a noise and then just fizzles out.’

  They both started laughing.

  ‘You don’t sound as if you think much of boys,’ says Alice.

  ‘I don’t. Or men.’

  ‘So why do we bother?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ says Chloe. ‘It’s biology. Or evolution. Or something. Why do you bother?’

  ‘I think I’ve read too many stories,’ says Alice, ‘seen too many films. I can see through it with my brain but somewhere deep down I’ve bought the whole romantic couple thing. I want a soulmate. Someone I can love body and soul, who loves me the same way. It’s pathetic really.’

  ‘Same,’ says Chloe.

  ‘You’ve at least got a chance. Thirteen and counting.’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve got no staying power.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I’m always falling in love, but somehow when it all starts to work out, I get bored. I don’t know why. I wish I did, actually. Maybe I’m just a natural born slut.’

  They start laughing again.

  ‘We should team up,’ says Alice. ‘You can get them started. Then I’ll move in and take over for the long haul. Like breaking in wild horses.’

  ‘Wild horses! If only.’

  Alice watches Chloe laughing and thinks how pretty she is, how if she was a boy she’d want to love her. Maybe that’s all it is after all, a quirk of the genes, a nose like this and not like that, and you get love or you don’t. The mind revolts against such a conclusion, it’s too brutal, too impersonal, but why should nature care about our feelings?

  ‘Look, I’m going to get back to my shopping. You meet Jack for lunch tomorrow and just keep telling yourself, I’m doing this saddo a favour. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  They go back downstairs. Guy hears them coming and gets up off the floor.

  ‘See this kid go!’ he says.

  Cas works the remote control, tongue protruding between his lips. The robot marches, turns, picks up a Lego man from the floor, throws him aside. Then Cas makes him roar, and roars himself.

  ‘He’s a monster,’ says Alice.

  ‘He’s wicked,’ says Cas. ‘He’s blinding.’

  ‘My God,’ says Chloe. ‘I feel so old.’

  Guy catches sight of the time. ‘Christ! I have to motor.’

  ‘Are you going, Guy?’ For a moment Cas’s little face is bereft.

  This is what he does, half-brother. He comes, he makes you feel life can be magical and bright, then he goes.

  ‘Yep. I’m off.’ Not a hint of remorse. ‘But the roboguy stays with you.’

  Roboguy. Please. How much of a giveaway is that? But Cas is innocent and willing to take the trade.

  ‘Okay. Roboguy says goodbye.’

  He makes the robot wave a claw.

  ‘Love to Liz, yes?’

  Guy’s on his way out. Chloe gives Alice a kiss.

  ‘Kill ’em dead, sister.’

  Then she too is gone.

  Alice turns back to watch Cas at play with the pin-headed monster.

  ‘The batteries’ll run out,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Is that why you wanted to see Guy? So he’d give you a present?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He didn’t give me a present.’

  ‘You’re a grown-up.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose I am.’

  Cas makes the robot speak a whole string of growls and grunts.

  ‘He says, I’m Roboguy and I rule the world.’

  Alice bends down and topples the robot onto his back.

  ‘Hey! What did you do that for?’

  He rights the robot, handling him with respectful care.

  ‘He’s so ugly,’ says Alice. ‘He’s got bosoms. His head’s too small.’

  Cas isn’t listening. He’s back working the buttons of the remote, murmuring to himself in his own version of a growly voice.

  ‘Nobody messes with Roboguy.’

  19

  Matt Early is working in his shed, absorbed, locked in silent concentration, when the bell rings. This is the bell he rigged up himself when he first built the shed, so that his mother could call him if ever there was an emergency. There never has been an emergency, but still she calls him, sometimes several times an evening.

  Matt sighs, but he obeys. He turns out the lights in the windowless shed and locks the door behind him. He alone has the key. He strides down the concrete path to the back door of the house, a path he laid himself, a distance of some ten metres: to him as wide as an ocean, a journey from the new world back to the old.

  His mother is sitting in the lounge with the television on, watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind on Channel 4. Except she’s not watching: her head and upper body are twisted round towards the back entry, looking out for him. She’s wearing an orange shawl draped over her thin shoulders to demonstrate that she suffers from the cold, even though the house is heated to a temperature of twenty-two degrees.

  Every time he sees her again, even after a short interval, he’s surprised by how small she is. She paints her eyebrows with a thin line of brown eyebrow pencil, so she always looks disapproving. Her hair is dyed a colour she calls chestnut, more red than brown, entirely unconvincing. She wears tan coloured slacks and carpet slippers made of tartan cloth. Round her neck hangs the button he gave her, a wireless bell-push designed for front doors that communicates by radio waves with the bell in his shed.

  ‘Yes?’ he says. ‘What is it?’

  He can see at a glance that nothing is wrong. His mother claims to be disabled.

  ‘I’m sorry, Matthew, but it’s not easy for me, you know. You try sitting in a chair for three hours all by yourself. It makes you want to scream. I would scream, only what’s the point? Who’d hear me?’

  ‘If you don’t like sitting in the chair you can always get up.’

  Matt speaks softly, as ever, but there’s a dull note in his voice. They’ve been here before.

  ‘But I can’t, can I?’

  She presses her hands on the chair’s arms, and pretends to try to ris
e.

  ‘You try getting to your feet when your joints are in spasm. Do you have the slightest idea what it feels like? No, not the slightest. Well, I’ll tell you. It’s like being stabbed by knives. It’s unbearable, Matthew.’

  ‘You’ve managed before, Mum.’

  ‘Sometimes I think you just don’t care.’

  It’s true: Matt doesn’t care. All his capacity to care is used up doing the mundane tasks she requires of him. He has no surplus energy left for actual sympathy.

  ‘You should move about more, Mum. I keep telling you. If you just sit and watch telly you stiffen up.’

  ‘Stiffen up! What do you know? Do you have arthritis? Are you the expert? Come over here and help me.’

  He goes to her side and offers his arm. With many a groan, pulling faces that would be comical if they didn’t irritate him so much, she pulls herself to her feet.

  ‘Mother of God have mercy on me!’

  They walk from the lounge to the kitchen, Mrs Early leaning heavily on her son and dragging one leg.

  ‘You were walking fine earlier,’ he says.

  ‘I was not. I just kept quiet about the pain.’

  ‘Come on, now. You don’t need me.’

  Matt stopped believing in his mother’s pain long ago. She’s perfectly healthy, and sixty-six isn’t old. The only pain she suffers is that she’s a lonely woman living a meaningless life.

  ‘So now you want to get away too? Is that it?’

  Yes, Matt wants to get away. His mother has never forgiven his father for what she calls ‘getting away’: slithering out of his responsibilities by staging a fatal heart attack.

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  ‘Not that anyone would know it. I never see you. What do you get up to in that disgusting shed of yours?’

  ‘It’s not disgusting.’

  ‘Well, I’ve never cleaned it. Have you ever cleaned it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s a lie. Now put the kettle on. I want a cup of tea.’

  ‘You can do it for yourself, Mum. You’re not a cripple. If you stop doing things for yourself you’ll end up a cripple.’

  ‘Not a cripple? What do you know? You never did have any imagination, Matthew. Just like your father.’

  ‘There. Make your own tea. You can do it.’

  He parks her by the sink.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going back outside.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘You’ll be all right, Mum.’

  ‘How am I supposed to get back to the lounge?’

  ‘Walk.’

  ‘I told you. I can’t walk.’

  Her gaze holds him, never letting go, accusing, needing. The anger breaks within him.

  ‘Then crawl,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, if your father were alive to hear you!’

  ‘He’s fine. He got away. I wish I could.’

  ‘So go away! I don’t care. Leave me. You’re no use to me. You never help me. You’re never here. You might as well just go.’

  ‘Right. I’ll be off in the morning.’

  Always the same exchange, always the same conclusion. He can’t leave, and she knows he can’t leave.

  ‘If I wasn’t here to help you, you’d be walking all by yourself soon enough.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘I’m just pretending. I can walk.’

  She takes a step away from the sink. For a brief moment she stands unsupported. Then as her legs start to give way she turns back, hands scrabbling for the sink’s edge. Heaving with exertion and stress, she pushes herself upright again.

  Then she turns to Matt with a look that says, I told you.

  But in that moment Matt sees something else. He sees his mother standing by the sink thirty or more years ago, turning round to smile down at him, happy to be interrupted in her chores. That unfailing welcome that you take for granted as a child. The simple profound conviction that this all-powerful being will love and protect you for ever. How do you ever repay that?

  ‘I wish you’d try harder, Mum. One day I’ll be gone. Then you’ll have to manage by yourself.’

  ‘Gone? Where have you got to go?’

  ‘I’ll get married. I’ll have my own house.’

  ‘Married! Who’d have you? What are you now? Forty? It’s a bit late to expect the girls to come knocking on your door.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  This is where they always end: he just starts agreeing with everything she says. He does it because he doesn’t want to argue with her any more. But still they argue.

  ‘Why, have you got somebody?’

  ‘I wouldn’t tell you if I had.’

  ‘So you haven’t.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do say so. You’re like your father. He’d never have married me if it’d been left to him. Had to do it all myself.’

  This too is an old refrain. Nothing hurts Matt more deeply than her contempt for his father.

  ‘There you are, then. You know it all. I’m going to go outside.’

  ‘Get my cup of tea first. And help me back into the lounge. Look at you, dithering in the doorway. Just like your father. I never knew whether he was coming in or going out.’

  Matt stands there in the doorway, his powerful body caught between conflicting forces, one of which is his desire to escape, the other the lifelong pull of this bitter, lonely woman, his mother. Just as his father was caught.

  ‘Rosemary from next door says it’s pornography. She says that’s what all men have in their sheds. But I told her. He goes out there to play his violin. “Oh, it’s violins, is it?” she said, like we were talking about paedophiles. You’re not a paedophile, are you, Matt? You’re not locking little girls up in your shed, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘It’s just violins, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Mum. Just violins.’

  ‘I don’t know why you can’t play it in the house.’

  Because you put your fingers in your ears when I play, and make a face like it hurts. Because you told me from the start I was no good. Because you want to destroy anything I love that isn’t you. Because you love me too much.

  ‘I’m going back out now, Mum.’

  ‘Help me through first.’

  She’s made herself a cup of tea. He helps her through, as she knew he would. Her weight so slight on his arm. And this the body that brought him into the world.

  ‘You only go out there to annoy me,’ she says.

  ‘That’s right, Mum. I sit there all by myself thinking how much I’m annoying you.’

  ‘With your little violin.’

  He settles her back into the armchair.

  ‘There you are. Watch the telly. I’m going out.’

  ‘I don’t understand this film at all.’

  ‘There’s nothing to understand. Aliens are coming to earth, and all these people want to meet them, and then they meet.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know why.’

  ‘So why is he making a mountain out of clay?’

  ‘You’ll see. I’m going now.’

  ‘Matt—’

  ‘I’ll be another hour or so. No more.’

  She reaches up her hand and he takes it. She squeezes his hand with hers, the slight familiar pressure that says, You know I’ll always love you. This strong hand that has held him all his life.

  He returns the pressure, and lets her hand go. He leaves the room without saying anything more. It’s the only way to get away.

  Matt does more in his shed than play the violin. He builds violins. He buys old and broken violins in junk shops or at car boot sales. Sometimes they’re undamaged but undistinguished instruments no longer wanted by owners who’ve found out how many hours of practice it takes to make an acceptable sound; but mostly they’re in a bad way, the belly cracked, the strings gone, the bridge broken. The Collin-Mezin, his best find, was in pieces when he chanced upon it. But there
was the signature in pencil, dated 1889. He paid £10 for the bag of fragments. When restored he’ll get maybe £7,000 for it.

  He’s never told his mother. She’d say it was all a waste of money.

  His tools line one wall. Violins in various stages of renovation line another. His workbench is brightly illuminated by two powerful daylight lamps. A bandsaw the size of a fridge-freezer fills one corner. A tailor-made rack houses his prized possessions, a collection of bronze Lie-Nielsen planes. Whenever he sells a violin he pours the proceeds back into the buying of tools. This shed must house several thousand pounds’ worth of instruments and materials. So it’s not about making money. It’s about peace of mind.

  He takes up the bridge blank he’s been working on, and a small carving knife, and continues the slow careful process of fitting the bridge to the belly of the violin. The violin is a Jesse Dennis, bought in Brighton for £40 cash. The bridge is French maple, made by Aubert. The carving of its feet alone will take him hours. The fit must be perfect. But once in his workshop time ceases to exist for Matt. He has passed into eternity.

  He works away steadily, his knife shaving the bridge in microscopic slices, and so slips into a concentration so absolute that his mind is free to roam where it will. His mind chooses to think about Meg Strachan, her face in her hands, weeping. No surprise that this has had a strong effect on him. It’s natural when you see a woman in tears to want to help. But it goes deeper than that. It’s as if this single sight, her face raised up to him, her eyes shining, her cheeks running with her tears, has penetrated to his innermost soul and taken possession of him.

  A bit late to expect the girls to come knocking on my door.

  ‘Meg,’ he says aloud as he works.

  The sound of her name brings her into the shed with him.

  ‘You’re the one for me, Meg.’

  There it is: the ridiculous truth. But there’s no one here to laugh. Matt has never known a conviction like it in all his life. He looks on it with awe. It’s come from nowhere, for no reason, and so he trusts it. This must be what it’s like to be greeted by an angel. The angel appears and dazzles you, and whatever the message you accept it, because of the way it’s delivered. Follow that star, the angel says. Fine, you follow it. You don’t know why, or where you’re going. You just do what the angel says.