In the Presence of the Enemy

by Elizabeth George

  Luxford put Fiona’s assessment out of his mind. He bent, brushed his lips against his son’s cheek, and turned off the light on his bedside table. He sat on the bed until the sudden total darkness in the room melded in his vision with what outside light filtered through the closed curtains. When he could see the shapes of the furniture and the crisp lines of black frames from the pictures on the wall, he left the room.

  Downstairs, he found his wife in the kitchen. She was standing at the work top, putting espresso beans into a coffee grinder. The moment his foot hit the tiles of the kitchen floor, she briskly clicked the grinder into a howl.

  He waited. She poured water into a cappuccino machine. She plugged its flex into the socket. She packed the newly ground coffee into the filter, tamped it down like tobacco, and pressed the machine’s on switch. An amber light began to glow. The machine began to purr. She stood in front of it, ostensibly waiting for the espresso, her back to him.

  He knew the signs. He understood the volume of unspoken messages a woman communicated by the simple expedient of showing a man the back of her head instead of her face. But he went to her anyway. He rested his hands on her shoulders. He swept her hair to one side. He kissed her neck. Perhaps, he thought, they could simply pretend. “That’s going to keep you awake,” he murmured.

  “Which is quite fine with me. I’ve no intention of sleeping tonight.”

  She didn’t add with you, but Luxford didn’t need those words to know her exact frame of mind. He could feel it in the resistance of her muscles beneath his fingers. He dropped his hands.

  Released, she fetched a cup and set it beneath one of the machine’s two spouts. A rivulet of espresso began to purl from the filter.

  “Fiona.” He waited for her to look his way. She didn’t. Her concentration was all on the coffee. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset him. I didn’t mean things to be carried so far.”

  “Then what did you mean?”

  “I meant us to talk. I tried to talk to him at lunch on Friday, but we didn’t get anywhere. I thought if I tried, with all three of us together, we might resolve matters without Leo causing a scene.”

  “And you can’t bear that, can you?” She went to the refrigerator, where she brought out a carton of milk. She poured a meticulous measure of it into a small stainless steel jug. She went back to the cappuccino machine and set the jug onto the work top. “God forbid if an eight-year-old boy causes a scene, isn’t that right, Dennis?” She made an adjustment on the side of the machine and began to steam the milk. She swirled the jug furiously. The hot air hissed. The milk began to froth.

  “That’s not a fair assessment. It’s no mean feat attempting to counsel a child who sees every attempt at discussion as an invitation to hysteria.”

  “He was not hysterical.” She slapped the milk jug onto the work top.

  “Fiona.”

  “He was not.”

  Luxford wondered what else his wife wanted to call it: five minutes of his carefully prepared remarks upon the glories and the benefits of Baverstock School for Boys greeted by Leo’s dissolving into tears as if he were a cube of sugar and his father the hot water. Tears acting as harbinger to sobs. Sobs giving way quickly to howls. Howls the precursors of feet beating on the floor and fists flailing into the pillows on the sofa. What was hysteria if not that maddening response to adversity that was so characteristically Leo?

  Baverstock would breed it out of him, which was principally why Luxford was determined to wrest Leo out of this cocoon-like environment of Fiona’s and thrust him into a more hard-edged world. He was going to have to cope with that world eventually. What did it profit the boy to allow him to continue avoiding what he needed so badly to come to terms with?

  Luxford had chosen the perfect time to discuss it: All three of them were together, the happy family in the dining room gathered to partake of the evening meal. It was Leo’s favourite, chicken tikka, which the boy had tucked into energetically as he chatted about a BBC documentary on dormice upon which, apparently, he’d taken extensive notes. He’d been saying, “D’you think we can make a habitat for them in the garden, Mummy? They generally prefer old buildings, you know, attics and the spaces between walls. But they’re ever so nice, and I expect that if we created a proper habitat, then in a year or two—” when Luxford decided it was time to clarify once and for all exactly where Leo would be residing in that year or two he was talking about.

  He said expansively, “I’d no idea you were interested in natural science, Leo. Have you given veterinary medicine any thought?”

  Leo’s mouth formed the word veterinary. Fiona glanced Luxford’s way. Luxford decided to ignore the minatory quality of her expression. He gambolled on.

  “Veterinary medicine is a fine career. But it requires some preliminary experience with animals. And you’re going to have that experience in spades—why, you’ll be head and shoulders above the other applicants—by the time you’re ready for university. What you’re going to especially like about Baverstock is something they call the model farm. Have I mentioned it?” He didn’t give Leo a chance to reply. “Let me tell you about it.” And he began his monologue, a paean to the glories of animal husbandry. He actually knew little about the school’s model farm, but what he didn’t know, he embellished upon unashamedly: afternoons in the sunlight in the hills in the wind, the joys of lambing, the challenge of cows, breeding stock, gelding stallions. Animals galore. Not dormice, of course, at least no legitimate dormice. But in the outbuildings, the barns, perhaps even in the garrets of the dormitories themselves, the occasional dormouse might be encountered.

  He finished his discourse by saying, “The model farm is one of the societies, not one of the formal classes. But through it you’ll have the sort of exposure to animals that can eventually lead you towards a lifelong career.”

  As he’d been speaking, Leo’s gaze had moved from his father’s face to the rim of his glass of milk. He fixed it there and the rest of his body became ominously still, except for one foot which Luxford could hear kicking rhythmically against his chair leg. Kerklunk, kerklunk. Loud then louder. Like Fiona’s presentation of her posterior, Leo’s fixed gaze, kicks, and silences were warning signs. But they were also a source of aggravation to his father. God damn it, he thought. Other boys went off to school every year. They packed their trunks, they put scoff in their tuck boxes, they selected a favourite memento of home, and off they went. Perhaps with butterflies in their stomachs, but with a show of outward courage on their faces. With an understanding that their parents knew best and most of all without a display of histrionics. Which, Luxford knew, this chairkicking was leading to, as inevitably as sunset heralds the night.

  He tried the power of positive thinking. He said, “Imagine the new friends you’ll make, Leo.”

  “Got friends,” Leo said to his milk glass. He said it in that irritating Estuary English that was becoming so fashionable, a glottal stop in place of the t in got. Thank God public school would soon breed that out of him as well.

  “Think of the loyalties you’ll develop, then. They’ll last through your life. Have I told you how many old Bavernians I still see in a single year? Have I told you how influential they’ve been in seeing to each other’s career advancement?”

  “Mummy didn’t go to public school. Mummy stayed at home and went to school. Mummy had a career.”

  “Of course. A fine one. But—” God, the boy wasn’t now considering becoming a fashion model like his mother, was he? Professional dancing had seemed bad enough, but fashion? Fashion? Striding down a runway with one’s pelvis thrust forward, an elbow jutting out, a shirt unbuttoned, hips on the swing, one’s entire body an implicit invitation to sample one’s wares. The idea was unthinkable. Leo was no more ready to take on that kind of life than he was ready to fly to the moon. But if he persisted…Luxford wrested back control of his raging imagination. He said kindly, “It’s rather different for women, Leo. Their focus in life is different, so their educa
tion is different. You need a man’s education, not a girl’s. Because you’re going to live in a man’s world, not a girl’s world. Right?” No response. “Right, Leo?”

  Luxford saw Fiona’s eyes on him. This was dangerous ground—a veritable bog—and if he ventured upon it, he risked becoming mired in more than merely Leo’s histrionics.

  He took the risk anyway. This question was going to be settled and it was going to be settled tonight. “A man’s world requires traits of character that are developed best in the public school, Leo. Backbone, deep inner resources, quick thinking, leadership skills, the ability to make decisions, self-knowledge, a sense of history. That’s what I want for you, and, believe me, when you’ve completed your time at Baverstock, you’ll thank me for my sense of vision. You’ll say, ‘Dad, I can’t believe there was a time when I was reluctant to be at Baverstock. Thank you for insisting it was for the best when I didn’t know—’ ”

  “I won’t,” Leo said.

  Luxford chose to ignore the open defiance. Open defiance was unlike Leo, and chances were he hadn’t intended to sound rebellious. He said, “We’ll go down there in advance of Michaelmas term and give the place a thorough look-over. That way you’ll have a leg up on the other new boys when they arrive. You’ll be able to show them around yourself. Won’t that feel good?”

  “I won’t. I won’t.”

  The second won’t was higher, more insistent than the first. It was the flare that preceded the actual bombardment, an antecedent shot into the air to light the way for the bombs to follow.

  Luxford tried to maintain calm. He said, “You will, Leo. This is, I’m afraid, a decision that’s been made and is, therefore, not open to further discussion. It’s natural to feel reluctant—even frightened. As I’ve said before, most people greet change with some degree of trepidation. But once you’ve had a chance to adjust—”

  “No,” Leo said. “No, no, no!”

  “Leo.”

  “I won’t!” He shoved his chair away from the table, and stood, preparatory to leaving in a temper.

  “Put your chair back.”

  “I’m finished.”

  “Well I am not. And until you’re excused—”

  “Mummy!”

  The appeal to Fiona—and all that appeal implied about the nature of their relationship—made a flash of red lightning pass across Luxford’s vision. He reached out, grabbed his son’s wrist, and yanked him back to the table. He said, “You will sit until you are told you’re finished. Is that clear?”

  Leo cried out. Fiona said, “Dennis.”

  “And you,” to Fiona, “keep out of this.”

  “Mummy!”

  “Dennis! Let him go. You’re hurting him.” Fiona’s words acted as invitation. Leo began to cry. Then wail. Then sob. And what had been a dinner conversation quickly escalated into a brawl in which a screaming, kicking, fist-beating Leo had finally been carried to his room and dumped inside where—in consideration of his precious belongings—he would be highly unlikely to do anything more than to beat his head against the pillows of his bed. Which is apparently what he did, unto exhaustion.

  Luxford and his wife had finished their dinner in silence. They’d cleaned the kitchen. Luxford had read the rest of the Sunday Times while Fiona had used the fading light to work in the vicinity of the pond in the garden. She hadn’t returned to the house until half past nine, at which time he’d heard her shower running, at which time he’d gone to check on Leo and had found his son asleep. At which time he wondered for the hundred-thousandth time how he was going to resolve the discord in his home without pulling rank and acting like the sort of paterfamilias he completely despised.

  Fiona was pouring steamed milk into her cup. She always complained about the exorbitant cost one was asked to pay for a third of a cup of espresso and two-thirds of a cup of froth the consistency of dandelion down, so she was making herself a caffe latte instead of a cappuccino. She used three tablespoons of froth for the top and shook cinnamon onto it. Then she meticulously took the filter from the machine and set it just as meticulously into the sink.

  Everything about her said, I don’t wish to discuss it.

  A fool would have rushed forward. A wiser man would have taken the hint. Luxford chose to play Feste.

  He said, “Leo needs the change, Fiona. He needs an environment that will require more of him. He needs an atmosphere that will give him some backbone. He needs an exposure to boys from good families and decent backgrounds. He can only benefit from Baverstock. You must see that.”

  She raised her caffe latte and drank. She pressed a small square napkin against the foam on her upper lip. She leaned against the work top, making no move to go to a more comfortable location in the house, which is what he would have done to conduct this conversation and she knew that damn well.

  She held her cup at the level of her breasts. She studied its cinnamon-topped foam. Then she said, “What a hypocrite you are,” speaking down to the foam. “You’ve always touted equality, haven’t you? You even went so far as to demonstrate your belief in equality by marrying into a squalid little family—”

  “Stop that.”

  “—from south London. Heavens. The other side of the river. The daughter of a plumber and a hotel maid. Where people say toilet instead of the loo and no one listening has a seizure or even knows why they ought to be having one. How did you ever manage such a descent? How was it possible, believing, as you obviously did, that what you really needed was an exposure to good families with decent backgrounds? Or did you do it just for the challenge?”

  “Fiona, my decision about Leo has nothing to do with class.”

  “Your nasty little schools have everything to do with class. They have everything to do with meeting the right people and making the right connections and learning the right accent and making sure one’s clothing, posture, outside activities, choice of career, and attitude towards everyone else can be labelled U. Because God help the person who tries to get along in life simply on talent and the credentials of his worth as a man.”

  She’d wielded her weapons well. It was the fact that she used them so seldom that made them wound so effectively. Trench fighters were all like that, Luxford knew. They bided their time, dodged incoming shells, and lulled the opposition into thinking their arms were insignificant.

  Luxford said with some stiffness, “I want the best for Leo. He needs guidance. He’ll get it at Baverstock. I’m sorry you fail to see it that way.”

  She looked up from her coffee. She looked directly at him. “What you want for Leo is change. You’re worried about him because he seems…I suppose you’d choose the word eccentric, wouldn’t you, Dennis? Rather than the word you really mean.”

  “I want him to have a sense of direction. He’s not getting that here.”

  “He has plenty of direction. You merely don’t approve of it. I wonder why.” She sipped her coffee.

  He felt the fingers of warning tapping against his spine. To acknowledge them, however, was to hand power to the coward. He said, “Don’t play amateur psychologist with me. Read that rubbish if you must. I don’t object and you seem to enjoy it. But I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t inflict your diagnoses upon our relationship.”

  “You’re terrified, aren’t you?” she said despite his words. “He likes dancing, he likes birds, he likes little animals, he likes singing in the school choir, he likes medieval art. How can you possibly interpret such horrors in your son? Is the fruit of your loins going to turn out a poof? And if that’s the case, isn’t sending him to a boys’ school just about the worst environment you can put him in? Or is it just the opposite because the first time an older boy shows Leo what’s what when men get naked together, he’s going to recoil and miraculously have any aberrant tendencies driven right from his head by fear?”

  He watched her. She watched him. He wondered what she could read from his face and whether she could tell how his body had tightened and that he could feel his blood raci
ng to his extremities. From her face, he could see only the process she was going through to evaluate him.

  He said, “I’d assume you’d know from your reading that some things can’t be quashed.”

  “Sexual preference? Of course not. Or if it’s quashed, it’s quashed only indefinitely. But the other? It can be quashed forever.”

  “What other?”

  “The artist. The soul of the artist. You’re doing your best to destroy it in Leo. I’m beginning to wonder when it was you lost yours.”

  She left the kitchen. He heard the sound of her leather sandals slapping quietly against the wooden floor. She went in the direction of her sitting room. From the kitchen window he could see the light snap on in that wing of the house. As he watched, Fiona came to the window and closed the curtains.

  He turned away. But in turning away, he came face-to-face with his disregarded dreams. A life in literature was what he’d intended, making his mark in the world of letters. He would become a twentieth-century Pepys. He’d had the words. The ideas had been second nature. He’d fallen asleep to their marriage nightly. Finest writer I’ve ever known, David St. James had introduced him last week. And what had it come to?

  It had come to being realistic. It had come to putting food on the table. It had come to building a roof over his head.

  It had also come to the exquisite pleasure of wielding power, but that was secondary. Primary was that it had come to growing up. As everyone did, as everyone must do, Leo included.

  Luxford decided that they weren’t through with their conversation, he and Fiona. If she was insistent upon playing the game of psychological analysis, surely she wouldn’t be averse to an examination of her own motives with regard to their son. Her behaviour towards Leo could do with a decent scrutiny. Her placement of herself between the wishes of Leo and the wisdom of his father could also do with a period of study.

  He went to find her, readying himself for another round of verbal fisticuffs. He could hear the sound of the television. He could see the shifting dark and light images blinking against the wall. His footsteps slowed. His determination to have it out with his wife lessened. She must be more upset than he had originally thought, he realised. Fiona never turned on the television unless she wanted her agitated brain to be lulled.