Jacob found a tissue and dabbed Monica’s lips. ‘You’re drooling. Must be the smell of that hospital dinner. Now let’s run a few checks!’ Jacob was going to be bluff and cajoling because this is what would make his mother feel comfortable. He could adapt perfectly when he chose.
‘Who’s Prime Minister?’
‘That bloody woman. She is a woman, isn’t she?’
‘Clement Atlee! Absolutely right. And who’s on the throne?’
‘That other bloody woman.’
‘Boudicca! Nothing wrong with you at all! And the year?’
‘Just another bloody year …’
Half an hour later, Jacob and Sally fled. When the lift doors closed, Sally asked, ‘Did you understand anything she said?’
Jacob shrugged. ‘Not a word, poor old cow. Still, at least something’s finally rid her of that dreadful west-country burr.’
Sally screeched, delighted. She did not notice that her brother was shaking.
Jacob walked down to the river and east along the difficult north bank, where he was forced into detours among churches, coffee houses and money houses on streets that jack-knifed or divided, or brought you into alleyways and newly inserted corners, as if to compel you to keep up some kind of attention and pace. He walked tirelessly and lightly, and believed that he could keep moving forever and leave no trace. He hated his mother. When his father died, fifteen-year-old Jacob had caught her looking at him in church in a way he could only describe as triumphant. He hated his father, too, for forcing her to be so small and for, in the end and despite everything, belonging to his wife and not to his son.
It was raining hard. Jacob walked on with his coat open and his hat in his hand. His hair grew wet and his face cold and still he walked, wanting to find the dark that ought to come. Further east he reached a certain street where he stopped and waited. Two hours later, Barbara came downstairs and found him. She ran him a bath, took off his wet clothes and left him.
‘You can stay if you like,’ she said when he re-emerged wearing things he had found in cupboards neither he nor Barbara had emptied. ‘In the study, though, not –’
‘Thank you.’
Jacob offered to make soup. He found potatoes and kale, chopped them roughly and cooked them briefly with a lot of garlic and chilli. He made Barbara watch him cook and told her when to sit at table. He watched her eat and jumped up to fetch whatever she might need – a napkin, a glass of wine, a tissue for her streaming eyes. She praised him energetically and he cleared everything away, and although Barbara knew that nothing would be properly clean or in its right place, she let him.
That night, they were gentle.
‘Will she be alright?’ Jacob asked.
Barbara had spoken to Sally, made some calls and done some research. ‘Not entirely, but within a month or so she ought to be able to go home, providing there’s some local care.’
Jacob had nothing left to do, so he sat down.
‘You must be exhausted,’ Barbara said. ‘What a shock.’
He shrugged, stretched and closed his eyes. ‘She’s a tough old boot.’
‘Yes.’
‘And she gave up on me years ago.’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Was it at Sally’s fortieth, in that nasty little restaurant?’
‘Suppose so.’
‘Not since then?’
‘What’s the point? She has no interest in me.’
Barbara could have pointed out how avidly Monica tried to follow her son’s career and that she only telephoned so rarely because Jacob made her nervous, but she also knew that this was what he did when he thought someone might leave him – insist they had left him already. As for when he wanted to leave …
‘Are you really here?’ Barbara asked. It was a serious question but one she knew she would have to answer for herself. ‘I don’t think I ever believed, in all those years, that you were really here. Or even that you were real. Because you don’t even feel real to yourself, do you? You haunted our life and you haunt yourself.’
‘It is,’ said Jacob, without opening his eyes, ‘a question of style.’
‘As serious as that?’ said Barbara, with more kindness than you might expect.
The next morning, Juliet woke up and blushed. ‘I was spying,’ she said to herself, and then to Fred as she hauled him out from under his blankets, ‘Do you think I’d make a good spy?’
‘No, too bad-tempered.’
‘Why can’t a spy be bad-tempered?’
‘Because people notice you. They notice your temper. But don’t worry, it’s your charm.’
‘Don’t you mean part of my charm?’
Fred considered this. ‘No.’
THREE
One Saturday afternoon, Fred came home with a large and smelly parcel under his arm. He went upstairs, ran a bath and came back down.
‘Are you in for dinner?’ he asked Juliet. ‘And what’s that you’re reading?’
‘It’s about the picture outside the picture if you must know.’
‘Aren’t your swotting days nearly over? I thought you were about to become the Doctor of Departure.’ It was his joke.
‘Just trying to keep up.’ The book was by someone who taught at Littlefield, the Massachusetts college which had offered her a year’s research post.
Fred took the book from her hands and raised her head so that he had her full attention. ‘I’ve invited a couple of people round.’
‘Who?’
‘Caroline and the others.’
‘Others?’
‘The ones she lives with, Graham and Jane. They had me to dinner last month. I told you, remember? A mansion flat with those ceilings that have been iced like a wedding cake, balcony windows like barn doors, low-slung chairs with metal bars, candles like tree trunks, good steak.’
‘And you want to reciprocate.’
‘It’s the polite thing to do and anyway, I’ve bought a salmon; it’s in the bath.’
‘Isn’t it one of those things that has a season?’
They went up to the bathroom where a flabby grey fish lay on its side in an inch of water.
Fred looked nervous. ‘It is a salmon, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know what they look like, not a whole one with its skin on and everything.’
‘The man in the market said it was fresh.’
Juliet considered the fish’s slack mouth and clotted yellow eye. Its scales looked as if they had been brushed with glue. She thought of all the things she might point out but she was tired and Fred was excited, and so she decided not to.
Caroline, who was the only one to have visited Khyber Road before, took it upon herself to act as interpreter. Juliet wasn’t saying much and Fred was in the kitchen.
‘Isn’t this room an interesting colour!’ she declared.
Graham nodded, ‘Absolutely,’ and leant back against the mantelpiece. He would not sit down. His wife Jane had retreated to a stool and she also nodded, but did not speak.
‘It’s to help them sleep,’ Caroline continued. ‘They have this little man who takes drugs and lives in the roof and never sleeps only he likes brown, so …’
Graham became interested. ‘You live with a junkie?’
‘I wouldn’t call him that,’ said Juliet.
‘What would you call him?’ asked Caroline. ‘I mean what ought one say?’
‘It’s alright,’ said Juliet, ‘he’s gone back to his mother’s. I won’t be effecting any introductions.’
Graham looked disappointed and then bored. In firelight, his colourless English looks took on the urinous tinge of a weak streetlamp. He was resting a hand on the mantelpiece and from time to time the hand would creep along reaching for something to toy with, an invitation or an ornament, only there was nothing and so the hand would go limp and slide back towards Graham, who would then scratch his head or nose, as if to distract the others from its wanderings. He was accumulating
streaks of dust on his face and was trying to stop himself rubbing one ankle against the other, unable to get rid of the notion that fleas had settled in his trouser turn-ups.
‘Is the man in the roof an insomniac?’ asked Jane. ‘I never sleep.’
Juliet had already forgotten that Graham’s wife was sitting beside her, almost behind the door. She looked from Caroline to Graham and then back to Jane, and had to stop herself leaning over to push the girl’s hair out of her eyes.
‘He doesn’t trust himself to sleep,’ said Juliet, wondering what she meant.
Jane gave a hiccup of a laugh and for a moment lit up as if she understood this perfectly. Caroline reached out her foot and tapped Graham’s leg. He nodded and moved across to kneel in front of Jane, who squeaked and drew away. Juliet was fascinated.
‘Jules!’ Fred bellowed from the kitchen. She picked up the bottle of wine and carried it through.
‘Shut the door.’
The room was full of steam but Juliet, who did not cook much herself, trusted her brother knew what he was doing. The hot tap was on full blast and the kettle was being kept at a boil. Fred was dancing between the two, trying to waft steam towards the fish which was draped bumpily across two roasting tins straddling the two front gas rings of the stove.
‘It wouldn’t fit in the oven so I had a great idea. Poach the bastard. Only it got a bit dried out.’
‘How will you tell when it’s done? You can’t see a thing in here.’
‘By feel. Now, can you give them another drink? They brought something rather nice with them.’
‘I put that away.’
‘And there’s a bowl of Ma’s olives to pass round and a plate of that ham she sent down. On the windowsill.’
‘Fred.’
‘What? The olives, come on, Jules!’
‘Don’t call me Jules.’
‘What?’
When he had decided that the fish was ready, Fred opened the kitchen window and back door. The walls were slick with condensation and their variegated surface of plaster, flock, graffiti and brick was exuding a smell of leftovers. Juliet returned to the kitchen with the plates of olives and ham, almost untouched.
‘Graham chewed a corner of ham and then spat it into his hand and rolled it along the mantelpiece. I think he must have pocketed it in the end. Then we had the “I didn’t know your mother was Italian, how romantic, all that fiery blood” conversation. I said “Don’t you mean all that fiery breath?” at which your Caroline produced a packet of mints and offered them round.’ Juliet did not tell him that Jane had been vacantly scratching at her cheek with an olive pit until Graham took it from her.
Fred put his hands on his sister’s shoulders. They were both smaller and darker than their three red-headed siblings, and were referred to in the family as the Little Ones, even though Carlo came in between. Carlo was the size of the two of them put together.
Fred was shaking, not trembling but pulsing. ‘Please.’
‘The fish looks … tremendous. What are we having with it?’
‘Parsley.’
‘You can’t just … I mean, we can’t eat in here. Let’s take the table in there.’
They slung the pots and pans onto the floor, separated the top of the table from the legs and carried the pieces through, angling them round doorways and along the narrow hall. The three guests stood up and offered to help but in the end had to wait pinned against the fireplace, their legs reddening while Fred and Juliet banged the table back together, collected up chairs, found a sheet to serve as a tablecloth, lit candles and brought in the salmon, which had broken into several pieces but was so liberally covered with parsley that no one could tell. Fred, brandishing a cake slice and a grapefruit knife, made a great show of carving it.
No one ate very much, Juliet least of all. She drank quickly and said little.
Caroline observed this and suddenly asked, ‘Are you not well?’
‘One ought not …’ whittered Graham. ‘Not at table, it’s not quite …’
‘Are you?’
Juliet’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Since you ask –’
‘Now look what you’ve gone and done,’ said Graham, moving his chair away from Caroline’s. ‘Do you know what they called her at school?’
‘Don’t,’ said Jane.
‘Blunderer. Blunderer Broad-Jones. Good old Blunderer!’
Fred, who had been helping Jane to more wine, slammed the bottle he was holding down on the table. ‘Shut the fuck up you fucking creep and get the fuck out of my house.’
Graham went purple. ‘Stand up and say that!’
‘I am standing up,’ faltered Fred, and everyone laughed except Graham, who hadn’t got the joke and so could only conclude that they were laughing at him.
When they had calmed down, Fred said quite amiably, ‘I meant it though. Out of my house, creep.’ Graham made a show of not doing what Fred asked until Jane and Caroline led him away, thanking Fred loudly and repeatedly in the hope that he couldn’t hear what Graham was muttering about slums and drugs and darkies waiting to rob them on the way home.
‘Off to bed with you!’ said Fred to Juliet who was still sitting at the table. ‘I’ll clear up.’
‘I need a hot-water bottle.’
‘I’ll bring you one, and a cup of tea.’
When he knocked on her door, Juliet was lying in bed smoking a joint.
‘Is that good for you?’
‘Very.’
She offered it to him, which he took as an invitation to sit down beside her.
‘What are we going to do with all that salmon?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, smoke it?’
Fred exhaled as slowly as possible. ‘Really? Do you think it would have any effect?’
Juliet opened the door to her office to find Tania kneeling on her desk, pressed against the wall. Juliet laughed and said, ‘You can hear every word, can’t you?’, making Tania start and turn. She was holding a tape measure.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I mean … Shelves?’
Tania unnerved Juliet with the proficiency of her warmth. The younger woman could not bring herself to trust it. It did not help that her boss looked a bit like her mother. They had the same heavy, waved hair that was fading dramatically, and which they knotted into a chignon that kept itself in place.
So Juliet, the naughty daughter, chattered all the way to the new DIY warehouse on the Old Kent Road, promised she knew what she was doing and ran up and down aisles collecting everything she could think of which would block out the wall and his voice. Chipboard, brackets, rawl plugs, screws, batting, primer, undercoat, matt white gloss, large and small brushes, and a new drill. She had a drill at home but Fred had broken it trying to engrave his and Caroline’s initials into a vaguely heart-shaped piece of slate. Tania insisted on buying a face mask and gloves for Juliet, as well as an apron because the teenagers and pensioners who worked in the store all wore one. Juliet said thank you but intended to put it straight in the bin.
‘We should warn Jacob that there’ll be some noise,’ said Tania as she drove them back to the gallery.
‘Jacob?’ Juliet could not admit that she knew who he was.
‘I’m so sorry, have I not introduced you yet? I’ve been rather caught up. Jacob Dart.’
‘Jacob Dart?’
‘You know, who wrote Foucault’s Egg.’
‘Oh.’ Someone had given Juliet a copy and for a while she had meant to read it. Somehow, she had forgotten the name of the person who wrote it.
‘He needed a place to work, at least that’s what he said.’
Juliet kept quiet so as to encourage her to go on.
‘Barbara and I have known each other for years. I know them both, which is why I offered Jacob the room. How was I to know he’d use it as a bolt-hole?’
Tania swung her venerable French car off the main road, and nudged and bumped her way through the back-streets to the gallery. When a fender scraped against
a wall, Juliet made a sound of dismay but Tania did not flinch.
‘I’ll take you round to meet him.’
‘No!’ Juliet was too emphatic.
Tania smiled, to show that she found this reticence charming. ‘He won’t bite.’
‘No, it’s just that I’d prefer …’ Prefer what? ‘I’d prefer to introduce myself.’
Tania chose to appear as if she understood.
Juliet knew what she was doing. She had selected the bit, a masonry bit, according to the size of the rawl plugs. All it needed now was decisiveness and heft, and then she would have the shelves up and so full of files and books that she need never hear him again. She placed the tip of the bit against a pencil mark (one of three) and leant into the drill as she pressed its control switch fully down. The bit ground and then burst through the plasterboard too easily, right up to its neck.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Juliet yanked the drill back but it caught and swung round, enlarging the hole. She turned it off and put her eye to the wall. ‘Fuck.’ She could see light on the other side. ‘God. Fuck. Christ.’
Juliet could not stand her first meeting with him to be in order to give an apology so she wrote a note, ‘Sorry. Wall crap. Will fill’, rolled it tightly and prodded it through the hole. After ten minutes or so, a note came back. ‘Don’t worry and don’t fill. What did you mean “Dog muck nice”?’ God. Fuck. Christ. It made her laugh out loud and she dashed off a reply: ‘Why don’t you listen? I said “Rugs pack lice.”’
This continued for a week.
‘Why so rude on the phone?’
‘Because I prefer it stewed on the bone.’
‘Too many “Why me?”s, too many “Thank you”s.’
‘I must be more careful. Can you really catch diseases from bankers?’
An Irresponsible Age Page 3