Sphinx

by T. S. Learner

  ‘Did Da tell you?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh aye, he were very upset, you know. He’ll be glad to see you. With us long?’

  ‘Just the night, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Shame. Your da’s been ever so lonely since your mother passed. Stay longer - surely it’ll do you good to see a few old faces?’

  ‘I’d like to but I can’t afford the time.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll see you off tomorrow - the 10.45, is it?’

  ‘Aye.’

  I walked down the stairs and onto the street, the rucksack hoisted over my shoulder. I’d planned to walk to my father’s house through the village - the same route I’d taken every day to and from school decades before. But now I didn’t feel like meeting anyone else; I decided to cut through the small field that led onto the row of terraced houses where my father lived and where I’d lived until leaving for university at eighteen. My mother had died five years before and I realised that the last time I’d visited had been for her funeral. It was still difficult for me not to expect her to be waiting with my father at the door of the small red-brick terrace house.

  The meadow was filled with buttercups and daisies whose tiny stems bent with each gust of wind coming off the Fens. There was the faint smell of cow manure and the tang of wet peat. This had been one of the places where I’d done my dreaming as a child, staring up at the sky and imagining each cloud was a magic carpet on which I could escape - to exotic places, to new faces and landscapes. I stood, breathing in deeply, strongly tempted to lie down in the grass in the hope that time would reel back and I’d stand up as a ten-year-old. Cleanly. Innocently. Instead, I hoisted the astrarium back over my shoulder and kept walking.

  My father stood waiting at the door of the small terrace house, his frame, once angular and impressive in its height, buckled with gravity, like an ancient tree. It was a shock seeing him so aged, and instinctively I found myself looking for the small frail figure of my mother.

  The house was part of an estate built for miners in the 1920s - a harsh grid of narrow streets and small, terraced, architecturally monotonous red-brick dwellings. The railway line ran behind the terrace where my father lived, and alongside it stood a neat patchwork of allotment gardens. The one that belonged to my father was filled with marrows, tomatoes, strawberries and the occasional rose bush. This small oblong of territory was his pride and joy. It was where he’d disappear to for hours after church on Sundays. It was also a place that we, his sons, were excluded from. Even now it was impossible to look at the allotment without feeling resentful.

  The house had two bedrooms upstairs, and downstairs there were a front room with a fireplace and a kitchen at the back. There was an outside toilet at the end of the concrete yard; no bathroom, no place to wash except for the kitchen sink. When I was a child we’d bathed in front of the fire in an old tin bath every Sunday night. Da first, then my mother, then myself, and finally Gareth. I would watch my father from the other side of the fireplace, his long skinny back mottled with the blue-black of coal dust, the mystery of his cock and balls a swinging shadow as he gingerly folded himself into the short tub. This rebirth of his, this transformation from black-faced Cyclops with the miner’s lamp on his forehead to mere mortal was my first memory. I must have been about one at the time, and it both fascinated and appalled me. I too wanted to go down into the earth, but I didn’t want it to poison me.

  In the early 1960s, at the end of my first year as a successful consultant, I’d offered to pay for an extension to house a bathroom. My father had been furious. ‘I’ll not take charity from me own son,’ he’d told my mother. It had been a year until he’d agreed to talk to me again. But that was my father - as proud and truculent as the landscape he’d grown up in.

  ‘I thought you’d come in one of your fancy cars,’ he barked awkwardly from the door. I noticed he was clutching a walking stick, his huge bluish knuckles knotted over the wood. He was also wearing a woman’s cardigan, the top pearl button fastened tight, the pale pink wool stretched over his vest. I didn’t dare ask where it was from.

  ‘I took the train,’ I said. ‘The car’s still garaged - I haven’t had a chance to collect it since I got back.’

  My father stared at me, his deep-set eyes searching my face. His skin was hollowed under the cheekbones, the wrinkles a topography of disappointment and anger. Today, though, the eyes were kind.

  ‘I’ve had tea on the table for over an hour,’ he said. ‘But I can put the kettle on again.’

  ‘That’ll be nice.’

  Without shaking hands, we both entered the house.

  Later that night, we sat in the tiny front room watching an episode of The Benny Hill Show - one of my father’s few indulgences - on the small black-and-white television I’d bought my parents five Christmases before, mainly to entertain my then-invalided mother. The silence between us was deafening. I’d often suspected this had been one of the many reasons I’d married Isabella - her voice had always run like a stream over my own impenetrable silences. In four hours my father still hadn’t mentioned her death. We’d talked about Gareth’s health, the weather, the latest disputes the miners’ union was having with management, Harold Wilson, Enoch Powell, the failing train services and the state of my father’s meticulously maintained allotment. We circled around the subject of my wife’s drowning like crows over a recently ploughed field.

  The Benny Hill Show finished with the rotund comedian chasing a buxom pigtailed blonde across the screen and my father, who still believed that using the television wore it out, got up to switch it off. On the way back to his armchair, he opened the sideboard drawer where he’d always kept a tin of sherbet lemons. Pulling it out with a rattle, he offered me one.

  ‘So how’s Gareth really?’ he said.

  ‘Surviving.’

  ‘Well, that’s a comfort. How’s that musical group of his?’

  ‘I saw them play. They were good, Da. You wouldn’t have recognised him. I asked him to stay with me - he refused, but he promised to ring in every day. I think he’ll pull through; it’s a stage he’s going through.’

  There was a silence in which I supposed my father was trying to imagine the scene. Then, abruptly, he said, ‘I’ve never said this, but I appreciate you looking out for him. He were always his mother’s son, coming so late in the marriage, like. I know that now. Words don’t come easily between us, not like me and you . . .’

  I smiled, inwardly saddened that my father’s perception of our communication could be so different from my own.

  ‘But he’s close to you,’ he went on. ‘You’ll take care of him, you know, when . . .’

  ‘Aye, you’ll have no worries there, Da.’

  We both sucked noisily on our sherbet lemons. The fire spat a sudden ember.

  ‘In case you’re wondering, the cardigan was your mother’s,’ he said. ‘Silly, really, but wearing it comforts me. I suppose it still smells of her.’

  ‘You don’t have to explain.’

  ‘But I do.’

  He leaned across and poked at the few burning coals in the fireplace, as if he were too embarrassed to look at me.

  ‘What’s happened is unnatural, son. Isabella were a young girl, she weren’t meant to die like that. Promise me you’ll not end up rattling about like your old da, not knowing whether it’s Sunday or Thursday. Worse still, not caring. It’s no way for a man to live.’

  My father sat back in his armchair, as if exhausted by the effort of uttering so many words at once. I was shocked into silence. I couldn’t remember him ever speaking so intimately to me and it was hard to equate this new vulnerability to the great mythical cliff of a man I’d worshipped as a child.

  ‘She was very fond of you, you know that, don’t you, Da?’

  ‘Aye.’ He sighed, a long and hollow sound that seemed to contain all the injustices of the world and, worse, his beaten-down resignation to them. He coughed, as if to change the subject, and sat forward. ‘You know, I decided to finish tha
t little project your mother started just before she died. You remember how she’d begun to research her family tree - the Irish side?’

  ‘Oh aye.’ Hypnotised by the flickering flames of the fire, my lids felt heavy, my many sleepless nights catching up with me. I wrenched open my eyes with some effort.

  Sitting there listening to my father ramble on I suddenly remembered a conversation I’d had with Isabella a few years before, after she’d seen me at work on an oilfield in Italy, in the southern Apennines. Her face alight with passion, she’d called me a diviner, told me I had a gift and that I was wasting it. Her conviction had disturbed me. Was it a reaction to my mother’s blind, passive faith that had frustrated me so much as a child, or had I been unconsciously frightened of something else? In any case, Isabella must have seen it as yet another occasion when I’d trivialised her beliefs. Little surprise that she’d chosen to confide in Gareth and not myself. Why had I always avoided the issue of her mysticism - was it because I sensed something about my own inherent abilities?

  My father had lapsed into another long silence and I could feel the old sense of suffocation and ennui rising up in me; the same restlessness that had propelled me out of the village as a teenager. I didn’t belong then, and I knew I didn’t belong now. Secretly thankful that I was leaving in the morning, I wished the old man goodnight.

  I was sleeping in the second bedroom, Gareth’s room once I’d left home. It seemed to be still waiting for a thirteen-year-old boy, with its ancient Beano comics, the dusty model aeroplanes hanging from the lamp, a Boy Scouts’ flag pinned over the mantelpiece. Mixed in with these were remnants of adolescence - a poster of the band Queen, on the side table an old copy of Rolling Stone magazine with Marc Bolan glaring out from the cover. Sitting on the desk, still in the rucksack, was the astrarium - my talisman of Egypt.

  Pulling back the sheets, I squeezed into the single bed.

  21

  The next morning I tried to ring my brother at the squat. I woke Dennis who informed me that he’d only seen Gareth for a couple of hours in the past two days. This wasn’t comforting.

  The train back to London was strangely empty. I’d sat in the second-class carriage near the sliding train doors. I was prepared to leap out at the nearest station, but I found myself nodding off, lulled by the rhythm of the train as it rushed through the luxuriantly green English countryside. I would fall asleep then wake with a jolt when the train pulled into a station. I forced myself to sit upright, back stiff against the seat, determined to stay viligant - only to fall asleep again as the wheels rushed over the rails, creating a sound like the roar of a distant sea.

  The third time I woke there was a man sitting opposite. Dressed in tracksuit bottoms and an ill-matched zip-up jacket there was something decidedly odd about him. Tall, in his early forties, he had prematurely silver hair and a strangely expressionless face. He appeared to be staring at the rucksack I held on my lap, the rucksack that contained the astrarium. As I tried to work out how long it would take me to bolt to the exit, his gaze shifted to my face, a blank aggressive stare that did not waver. I was just about to get up when he reached down to the floor and picked up a white stick - the kind that the visually impaired use. Ashamed of my paranoia I turned back to the window and the landscape rushing past, trying to still my pounding heart.

  An hour later we drew into King’s Cross Station. I was amazed to see that the platform was hung with Union Jacks and signs announcing the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Now I understood why the train had been empty. I’d forgotten that it was the seventh of June. By the time I got back to my flat, London was in full celebration. The road was blocked off and the cul-de-sac itself had been transformed. My neighbours must have organised the street party when I was in Egypt.

  In the centre of the street, under a canopy, stood a long table covered with cakes, sandwiches, jellies and other manifestations of English home cooking. Small stalls selling a range of souvenirs flanked the display. There were china mugs printed with pictures of the royal family, teacups and saucers with the Queen’s face smiling up from the bottom, Silver Jubilee spoons, butter knives, postage stamps and souvenir programmes.

  A reggae band playing Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman No Cry’ stood at one end of the street, while at the other end an amateur string quartet played Elgar. Banners strung overhead proclaimed the twenty-five years of the Queen’s reign, and Union Jack flags hung out of various windows, fluttering like garish laundry. Neighbours, friends and families milled excitedly around the tables.

  Several food stalls were set up along the kerb, one of them selling West Indian cuisine - fried plantains, curried goat and rice - while another offered Indian curries and samosas. A third stall advertised English pork sausages, pickled eggs and jellied eels. The air was filled with a dissonance of smells - curry, hot chips, incense and the occasional whiff of burning toffee.

  Two Rastafarians with waist-length dreadlocks chatted to a middle-aged couple dressed as a cockney pearly king and queen, their button-covered jackets shimmering in the sunshine. There was a buxom brunette dressed as Britannia sitting on a throne, sceptre in hand, as several drunken husbands posed to have their photograph taken with her. One old man had dressed his rather plump white British bulldog in a tailored Union Jack jacket.

  Families danced together on the tarmac, waltzing to the violins or bopping to the reggae band. Children darted among the intoxicated adults, chasing each other and screeching with excitement. There was something gloriously pagan and uplifting about the whole event and, for a moment, I allowed myself to forget the ordeals of the past two months. Grabbing a sandwich, I half-danced and half-pushed my way towards my front door, almost unrecognisable under the streamers and balloons adorning it. Just then Raj grabbed my shoulder.

  ‘Oliver, there is a man who is looking for you. He has come twice to the house already. Tell me, my friend, are you in some kind of trouble?’

  I spun around, scanning the crowd wildly. There was no sign of Hugh Wollington, but it was hard to see anyone over the dancers’ heads.

  ‘Is he here?’ I ventured, trying not to panic.

  ‘I cannot see him now, but I think so.’ Raj looked up at me, clearly worried. Without bothering to explain, I began to make my way towards a clearing in the crowd and an empty side street beyond, pushing past revellers.

  Just then I felt a tug on my jacket. Stanley stared up at me solemnly. Then, putting two fingers into his mouth, he gave an ear-splitting whistle. I tried to break free but the child would not let go. Meanwhile Alfred ran towards us from the other side of the road, followed by a thin older man, Mediterranean in appearance.

  Holding my arm firmly, Stanley’s eyes narrowed accusingly. ‘It’s an Italian gentleman. He’s looking for yer. Probably ’cause he knows you murdered Issy.’ His fist tightened around the sleeve of my jacket.

  I crouched down so that I was at eye level with the eight-year-old. ‘Stanley, Isabella died in a very sad accident—’ I started, but was interrupted by a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Mr Warnock?’

  The stranger stood in front of me, awkwardly holding out his hand for me to shake - to the amazement of the watching twins who were obviously expecting some kind of citizen’s arrest. The man’s face was heavy in the jowls and his mouth had a sensual fullness. He looked like an ageing voluptuary. I guessed he was in his late fifties, but his skin tone was an unhealthy grey and, on closer inspection, his face was etched with a web of fine lines, as if he’d recently suffered some great tragedy.

  ‘My name is Professor Enrico Silvio,’ he said in an Italian accent. ‘I was your wife’s tutor at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.’

  I closed the window and the sound of the steel drums and bass guitar outside diminished. Professor Silvio stood scanning the living room as if trying to glean the history of my marriage from the surrounding furniture and photographs. Sensing my gaze, he swung back to me.

  ‘It was kind of you to invite me into your apartment, Mr Warnock. I’m sor
ry if I startled you.’

  ‘It was I who called you initially,’ I replied carefully. I wouldn’t make the mistake I’d made with Hugh Wollington twice, but the professor’s face was so honest and he seemed so frail that I didn’t think it would be dangerous to ask him upstairs for a conversation.

  ‘And here I am.’ His broad features gleamed with a resigned amusement.

  ‘Besides, if you were going to rob or attack me you would have done it by now,’ I added quickly.

  ‘Attack you? Why should I attack you? Are you a man with many enemies?’

  ‘I seem to have acquired a few lately,’ I said wryly. ‘Hence trying to escape just now. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. I didn’t know your intentions. I work in the oil business. Isabella’s world is sometimes quite alien to me, alien and bewildering.’

  ‘I can imagine.’ Silvio sighed and fragility shone out again through the drained, pale skin. ‘I’ve always wondered what type of man Isabella might have married.’ He moved to a side table and picked up a framed photograph of her. ‘I thought maybe an artist, or some kind of left-wing revolutionary, but never a businessman. She was looking for a zealot, I was convinced of it.’ He put the photograph back on the table.

  ‘It sounds as if you knew her well,’ I said.

  My statement seemed to agitate him. He began to move around the room restlessly.

  ‘I’m dying, Mr Warnock.’ There was a brief pause. Then, as if he were making a confession, he went on. ‘One of the benefits of confronting one’s mortality is a sudden appreciation of the brevity of life. I have no time left for subtlety or nuance. As a dying man I must speak directly.’

  ‘You and Isabella had an affair?’ It was just a speculation, but I was amazed at how angry I felt at the thought.

  A twitch ran like quicksilver over one cheek. Silvio paused, remembrance clouding his eyes.

  ‘Yes, we were lovers, but to call it an affair would be to trivialise our relationship.’ He dropped his head in his hands, then swept his fingers through his hair: the habitual gesture of a once-handsome man. ‘You must understand that I am not proud of how I was at that time of my life. I was ambitious, but I had traded too long on the originality of the thesis that had made me famous. Isabella was remarkably lateral in her thinking, even at that age. Her cultural perspective gave her a unique angle on archaeology. For her it was a living subject; it was in her blood. She came to me with the story of this remarkable device she was going to base her doctorate on. She trusted me, but I betrayed her. Yet you have to believe that I loved her.’