I stand wobbling on the pebbles. I cannot speak. My eyes are locked on the elephant in my mother’s hand. My body feels cold in the wind.
‘Right,’ snaps my mother, turning back to the sea. ‘Play on your own. See if I care. And you can explain to your father why you were crying over nothing.’ And, as she says this, all I can do is watch the brave elephant rise high into the sky and then drop towards the sea.
*
I glance round the courtyard, but no one notices me. I dab at my eyes, blow my nose, and pick up my handbag, before striding out towards Piccadilly. I always terminate that memory at the moment the elephant stone plops beneath the waves. I must get back to work.
I have just switched on my computer when Maxine puts through a call.
‘Got that Shields Holdings search completed yet?’ a voice barks.
‘I need to talk to you about that,’ I say, struggling to get a word past Rex’s brusque, ex-armed forces manner. ‘Their CEO’s landed a sexual harassment charge. Our candidate for the FD job is threatening to withdraw. It’s not looking good.’
‘Look, Amber. I really need— I mean, the firm really needs that fee booked by the end of this quarter. Tell the board to dump the CEO. That way, we could pick up another search—’
‘I doubt it. The Chairman’s defending him.’
‘What on earth for?’
I drop my voice. ‘The Chairman’s up for three harassment charges himself.’
‘Impossible,’ bellows Rex. ‘He played last year in my four-ball in Sotogrande—’
I sigh, and press the button to open the Venetian blinds coating the clear acrylic panels of my office. I stand and gaze out across the open-plan floor. I see Dominic take a detour to the water fountain via Nicole’s office and lean incestuously in the doorway. A man who manages to look both fat and fit. Maxine and another secretary stand photocopying CVs while sharing a copy of Heat. A researcher is applying lipstick as a prelude to lunch in St James’s Park. (We regret to inform you of the temporary closure today of the staff canteen due to pest-control fumigation.)
While Rex monopolises my right ear, I open an email from Dylan, inviting Matt and me to Sunday lunch. He’s obviously online, because his reply to my next email is immediate.
Haven’t you spoken to your mother yet?
Not as such.
My mobile rings almost immediately. I could, Dylan suggests, absolve my conscience by entertaining his mother instead. Pamela has been invited for lunch to be told of the adoption plans. It’s the kind of family conversation on which the adoption agency insists. There’s a pause in which I hear Dylan give short shrift to a parishioner calling at the door for salvation – then to me, Do come, I need your support. His anxiety soothes me; I feel wanted. Perhaps the company of someone else’s mother will provide the perfect impetus for me to visit mine.
Having said goodbye to Dylan, I turn my attention back to Rex.
‘—and get Julia to send me a fax when you’ve done it,’ he booms.
That, I think, will be impossible. Julia, in Rex’s absence, is avoiding work with all the mutinous venom of a toddler refusing food.
*
‘Where to, love?’
I describe in detail the route to take. I’m exhausted, and want to get home as quickly as possible. As we crawl west towards Hyde Park, the driver maintains an uninterrupted stream of consciousness, until finally I’m aware of a clunking lack of sound.
‘I said, what you do, then?’
I come to and tell him, picking at a stray thread in my trousers.
‘Got my CV in ’ere somewhere,’ he laughs, reaching over to the glove compartment while I roll my eyes. ‘Hah! Only kidding. Reckon you can get me a job?’
I explain that headhunters don’t find jobs for people; rather people for jobs. Even I can hear that I sound prissy.
‘Sounds like jobs for the boys to me!’
So I use the analogy of finding him a wife.
‘Be my guest, darlin’. Only, do a better job than what I done last time rahnd!’
I laugh. He’s growing on me. ‘Well, I interview you to find out what kind of woman you want. And then, after I’ve interviewed the best candidates, you meet the shortlist.’
‘I like that bit!’ He has a deliciously throaty snigger. ‘So, what sort of people do you, er—’
‘Place?’
‘Yeah, “place”.’
‘I mainly do chairmen and chief executives now—’
‘Very high-powered, I’m sure. Bet you’re good.’ There is a minute pause. ‘Kids?’
My stomach contracts. The question is always there. As if it mattered. As if everything beforehand, the apparent interest in my career, the flattery, has been merely preamble.
Stuck with Blu-Tack to his dashboard are photos of two ‘kids’ in school uniform. The boy, no doubt yanked off the football pitch and made to sit still, sports a cowlick. The girl, older, wears a bulky cardigan, the type in which grandmothers excel. Why did you bother having children, I want to ask? Where are they now, as you ferry me around on a Friday evening? When do you see them? Or are these photos to remind you they exist? What happened to your first wife? What effect did divorce have on your kids? Is your life more complete with them in it? Are your children happy?
Or do they hate being a child as much as I did?
And now I can’t stop the memory, the one I can usually freeze the moment the elephant stone sinks beneath the waves, from barging in. How, as I turn to follow my mother back up the wobbly pebbles, I step into an ice cream someone has dropped, one with a square cone and a brick of yellow ice cream like I’ll be allowed to have when I’m bigger. First of all, I feel the cold ice cream on my toes. Then I feel tickling. I look down to find tiny black creatures crawling all over my feet. Ants! They run across my nails, and over my scuffed sandals. Then they are circling my ankles, and running up my leg. I scream, and stamp my feet up and down. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, and I want it to end now. I jiggle my legs, and overbalance. And still they cling on.
Finally, I scream once more, and sense my mother turn around. The tickling on my legs is unbearable. Mother comes towards me and then stops. She will get rid of them. I gulp for air.
‘Serves you right,’ she says, staring at my legs. Digging her heels into the pebbles, she turns around and clambers back up the slope. I watch her hike to where a plastic Spar carrier bag sits knocking in the wind. I have forgotten the ants. All I want is for my mother to turn round and reach out her hand. She picks up a library hardback, opens it and begins to read.
Her voice, as I recall it now in the cab, contained all the triumph normally reserved for observing the painful demise of one’s husband’s mistress.
Chapter Fourteen
‘WELL, that wasn’t too awful, was it?’ says David brightly, slamming the front door. From the far end of the church cul-de-sac, Pamela’s
car can still be heard straining in first gear. Dylan’s vicar-cage is a modest Victorian cottage near ‘Colombia Common’, rechristened for its popularity with drug pushers. The more narcotically desirable the area, the greater the number of car-chase-repellent road bumps. Soon Pamela’s car can be heard in the distance attacking one at speed.
We return to the kitchen to wash up. Or, rather, David washes, Matt and I dry, and Dylan smokes and tells us where to put things. Dylan has never seen the need to acquire a dishwasher. That’s what parishioners are for.
‘I thought she was choking on a roast potato,’ remarks David, as yet unused to Pamela’s repertoire of voices and facial expressions. Dylan’s mother lives by her wit. Unskilled, as were so many women of her class and generation in anything but marital mergers and acquisitions, she was raised to believe that her passport in life was not so much to entertain as to be entertaining. Her parents having disapproved of a career on the stage, the woman has reacted by turning every encounter into a vaudeville act, every conversation a chance for a soliloquy. Years of practice have proved const
ructive, for now she has a regular spot on Tuesday nights as a cable television quiz-show panellist.
‘I wish she had,’ mutters Dylan, in between cigarettes.
‘Darling, she wants to make sure you’re happy. That we’re doing the right thing,’ says David, depositing a baby meringue of soap suds on Dylan’s nose. I want to vomit.
Dylan laughs. ‘I know, I know. But even I was appalled by her outburst, and I’ve seen some in my time. She’ll be off now on one of her Michael Douglas Falling Down rampages. Anyone would think we’re planning to adopt a Siberian throat monkey. I hoped a mother whose son is gay would be more, well, tolerant.’
‘She’ll be fine in a day or two,’ says Matt. He makes it sound as though Pamela is one of his patients. Perhaps she is!
‘And it’s not as though the adoption’s definitely happening,’ I say, attempting to sound casual. ‘Is it?’
‘No,’ groans Dylan, hand to forehead. ‘The whole plan’s a nightmare. Tell them about the video, darling.’ So, David describes how at one of the agency meetings they’d watched footage of a supposedly authentic story depicting a family destroyed by the arrival of a disturbed adolescent. ‘They certainly do their best to put you off.’
‘I think it’s good they make you reflect,’ says Matt, reaching for cups. A rare personal opinion, I observe, from my husband. I married the epitome of nonchalance, after a childhood of critical judgement. I smile, as he continues. ‘It’s a pity more people don’t consider the effect kids will have on a relationship before they conceive.’
‘You wouldn’t be thinking of the lovely Louisa and Ed, would you?’ smirks Dylan.
‘Not especially,’ Matt replies, arranging the cups on a tray. ‘There are lots of unhappy children out there. Most of them are grown up, now, of course.’
I can feel my cheeks reddening, and make a point of rummaging in the fridge for the milk.
‘So, isn’t it up to people like us to offer a fresh start?’ says David, above the rolling boil and click of the kettle. But you’ve got children already, I think.
‘David, you might be right,’ says Matt, lifting the tray and making for the lounge. ‘But if you carry on saving broken spirits at this rate, I’ll be out of a job!’
*
After evensong, Dylan and I return to the vicar-cage; Matt cries off to dictate case notes, David, to attend to lingering post-divorce matters. Around Dylan’s kitchen table, he and I sip black coffee and prise apart pistachios; Dylan thinks two-syllable snacks are common.
‘How are you feeling about your dad?’ asks Dylan.
I manage a nod and a sort of grimace.
‘It takes time,’ says Dylan, crossing to a cupboard under the sink to retrieve his baise-en-ville from behind a tub of household cleaning products.
‘This kind of thing helps,’ I say.
‘What? Shelling nuts with a sad homosexual? Ooh – Will & Grace, eat your heart out.’
‘It is helping.’ I manage to laugh. ‘Don’t knock it. And anyway, what’s with the “sad”?’ I put my mug down on the pine. ‘You and David aren’t splitting—?’
Dylan shakes his head.
‘What, then?’
‘Nothing.’ He gestures at his snap-lock packet of weed. And for the first time, I seriously consider it; instead, I pull at strands of hair near my crown. I watch him roll his joint, as he explains how he lives in dread of a call from the Bishop, ‘demanding a little chat, setting one of his little traps—’
‘That’s unlikely, surely. What sort of traps?’
‘The “we’ve noticed you’re not married yet” ones.’
‘But why now? You’ve been in this parish, what, five years? Who’d tell tales?’
So he tells me about Peter, a vicar from another diocese, who’d accepted a new job running a church mission for the homeless, but who’d recently been leant on by the Bishop to withdraw from the post because he was actively gay.
‘As if he’d want to stay in the church, if that’s how it carries on,’ I say.
‘Quite. Competence is no longer the issue. Whether you’re sleeping with someone of the same sex apparently is.’ He takes a long drag on his spliff and exhales slowly. ‘So, I’m thinking of leaving.’
I stare at him, open-mouthed. ‘Leaving the church?’ I swallow. ‘What ever happened to faith, hope and charity?’
Somewhere deep inside I have the sensation of old scabs splitting. Not that I’m so religious that his departure could weaken my virtually nonexistent faith. But something about Dylan being untethered leaves me reeling. I lunge for his parcel of dope, and make a hash of opening it. I’ve watched Dylan roll joints for years, and I can’t for the life of me begin to remember how he does it, so my spliff ends up very droopy.
‘Ah, little Bambi-bunny,’ says Dylan, offering me his lighter. ‘That’s the problem with the church. It still expects those of us who preach its gospels to live the life of saints. And Christianity, for lots of people around the world, means “no gays”.’
I inhale quickly, as if to deny the act to myself. My heart is racing. I am taking drugs! Wa-hey! I am part of an inner circle. Stick that in your Bambi-shaped pipe and smoke it! ‘I remember when there was that fuss about appointing a gay bishop—’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And in the States, they’ve got gay bishops, haven’t they? So we can, too.’
‘’Fraid not. My stipend’s paid from a national pot. If the church ordains gay bishops, wealthier, anti-gay parishes will withdraw their funding. There won’t be enough money to pay priests like me, and the church will split.’
‘It won’t,’ I scoff. ‘The church has weathered rifts for centuries. There’s a tithe barn in my home village, mentioned in the Domesday Book, regarding a dispute over the appointment of a rector—’
‘Oh, right. So, it’s OK for the church to behave as it did in the thirteenth century?’
‘Well—’
‘The problem is’, he spits, ‘that the church is confused.’ He snatches another handful of his beloved pistachios. ‘“God is love”, they say. “God will forgive you. Come to confession and be absolved of sin.” Which is all very well until you’re a man loving a man. Then they don’t want to know. You’re evil. An outcast.’ He’s striding around the kitchen now. ‘I’d say that most of my parish know I’m gay. They accept it; they’re not bothered. But there are a few, who praise my sermons and admire my fundraising abilities, who invite me to lunches to meet their eligible nieces. Now, if they suspected, they’d petition to have me thrown out. They’d write to Lambeth Palace, insist I was a bad influence; say I was undermining traditional biblical morality. I’m the same person who delivers the wonderful homilies, who consoles them in their grief. But the real me offends them.’
Even I, with my slightly doped-out brain, can hear Dylan’s bitterness. I ought to be able to relate to all this, but I can’t get a hold of it. My mind is scrambled.
‘Look,’ he continues. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m really trying to see both sides. I’ve got a great supervisor, and she and I talk about this every day. I have a responsibility to my parish, to my parishioners – even the ones whose views conflict with my own. I know that. All I’m saying is, I’m finding it difficult. Unbelievably difficult. I’ve lost sight of who I really am. And I don’t know whether to renounce my sexuality for my calling, or renounce my calling for my sexual integrity. Either way, I’m buggered. As the actress said to the bishop.’
On the table lie shrivelled nuts ripped from their shells. They look naked. I start to giggle uncontrollably.
Dylan stops pacing up and down. ‘It wasn’t that funny— Bambi, are you stoned?’
‘No,’ I snigger. ‘Am I?’ I feel fantastic!
‘Sometimes people get thirsty, especially their first time. Or hungry. Are you hungry?’
‘Don’t you get stoned?’
‘Not so much now. Look, don’t have any more, you’re not used to it.’ Dylan takes my joint and props it against the n
ut bowl.
I try to sulk, but my brain has mislaid the instructions. I sigh happily. ‘I feel content. Is that part of it?’
Outside it is twilight, although the oak tree in the middle of the garden makes the kitchen seem darker. I look at Dylan carefully, this surrogate family of mine. Perhaps Dylan is in some way my mother, and Matt my father; and perhaps this is why I made the choice I did, not to have children: I’m the needy child. I feel sweaty and uncomfortable.
And yet, even as the dope wraps me in its lethargy, I sense something shifting in me. And Jenny pops into my head, along with a sense of guilt that by not reaching out to her that time on the Tuscan stone patio, I have somehow aggravated her sense of loneliness.
This is what I see tonight. That Dylan is struggling to find his path in life. He is someone who needs to be stroked. It’s just that I’m unsure how to do it.
Dylan sits at the table and clasps his hands behind his head. His voice is very calm. Too calm. ‘I haven’t told David yet, but I have had The Call from the Bish. Left when I was on retreat. Wanting that chat-ette.’ He spits the final consonant. ‘I think we can guess what that’s all about. So, I’ve got the Bish, my parish and David. And I can’t say I’m handling any of them very well. Talk about a test of faith.’
I’m shouting. ‘Well, you can’t punish your parish? The people who need you most?’
‘Oh, please. I was married to the church. Don’t you get that? And every time the church hurt me, a little piece of my love for it died. Now it’s nearly all gone, dried up.’
‘Is that what this adoption is all about?’ Even as I hear my own words, I hate myself. I decide it’s the dope making me so belligerent.
‘Is it connected? I honestly don’t know. I wondered the other day whether I’m going along with it because it’s an easier decision to make than leaving the church. There – isn’t that dreadful?’
I latch on to the words going along with it. ‘I don’t understand.’
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