by Glen Duncan
‘Oh, they don’t care in America,’ Skinner says. ‘D’you watch that CSI thing?’
‘That’s another good show,’ Pasha admits. He’s got a thing for Marg Helgenberger. I don’t blame him. I’ve got a thing for her myself, the American high backside and those fitted slacks; if Janet dropped a couple of stone she’d look a bit like her–but all of us realize we’ve slipped, rather, from the point.
‘Owen says you two knew each other in India,’ Janet says. ‘Is that right?’
Awkward silence.
‘He thinks I diddled him,’ Skinner says. ‘Tell him: wasn’t I arrested and sent home from Bombay in fifty-two?’
Pasha looks at his shoes. This is vulgar, he thinks, involving the daughter, saying ‘he’ and ‘him’ like that, as if he wasn’t in the room. Janet, pouring the third of four scotches, doesn’t look up. ‘Well, that’s what you’ve always told me,’ she says. ‘In and out of the nicks of the world. I’ve told you, Dad, it’s nothing to boast about.’
This isn’t the point, I’m tempted to interject. No one’s disputing he was arrested. They’re disputing his honour.
‘Just a very small one for me,’ I tell Janet. ‘I’m driving.’
I take the box back to the bathroom and replace it in the cabinet, not, this time, without upsetting the little blue plastic dish, which drops into the wash basin below with a crash.
‘What are you doing in there?’ Janet calls.
‘Sorry. I just knocked something over. It’s all right I’m putting it back.’
Picking up the bits and pieces I worry there might have been things small enough to go down the plug-hole. I’ll keep my mouth shut about that. Tweezers, hairpins, a pencil sharpener, an old watch without its strap, paper clips, tiepins, a broken silver belcher chain, two ancient fluffy Anadin.
A ring with an unusual stone set in what may or may not be gold.
For a few moments I stand with it clasped in my hand while I replace all the other oddments and put the dish back on its shelf. Digoxin, I see among the pill labels. Co-dydramol. Simrastatin. Paracetamol. This is what the cleanliness and small luxuries are up against, Janet knows. It’ll be in her mind the whole time she’s in the Caribbean. He’s an old man. There are things wrong with him. How much time? Never enough.
BLOODSTONE: A green chalcedony with blood-like spots of jasper; haematite.
Somewhere in the file marked ‘The Cheechee Papers’ is a pink Post-it with this definition scribbled on it.
It’s an oval stone. Dirtyish green with here and there flecks of presumably jasper that look like not spots of blood but membranous strands of it. Menstrual, almost. The whole effect is gory, unlovely, but spectacular. Heavy, too, for such a small thing. I’ll take that one ring also, Ram said.
This is the Raj Rogue moment in the Wimbledon bookshop all over again, the psyche or soul or spirit or whatever (some incorporeal place) experiencing the psychic or soulful or spiritual equivalent of the salivary glands at the thought of a lemon. You believe in destiny, Scarlet had said, as the conversation had woven through the hotel’s small hours. That’s your trouble. All the old scams, God, purpose, fate, design–you’re desperate for them. It’s why you’ve never got out from under your parents’ shadow. That’s the death you’re terrified of, that you dream about: not yours, theirs. Without them, where’s the story?
I don’t know what to do, laugh, squeeze my jaws together, start believing in God. Whether I like it or not I have a new respect for Skinner. Eighty-odd and still thinking on his feet. Because of course this is my grandmother’s ring, which means he was lying to Ross in the hospital in Bombay, which means he was lying to Ross in Bhusawal about being stiffed on the silk theft, which means he was lying to Ross about being able to get passports for money. Which means that in spite of having fallen down the steps and been picked up by two complete strangers, one of whom turns out to be not a stranger but a forgotten a victim armed with a memory, in spite of being so suddenly shoved on to the back foot, he’s lying to Ross again, now.
I examine the ring’s inner band for an inscription. (Ought there to be one? Pasha’s never said. To my own Beatrice? RV&BN? What would the fabled Raymond Varney have written?) There’s nothing, only the ghost of a hallmark. I slip it into my pocket.
‘Our eldest girl Melissa’s in Devon,’ Pasha’s saying, back in the kitchen. Skinner’s disappeared. There are sounds of rootling from one of the rooms down the hall. ‘Then there’s Carl, he’s in Arizona, computers and banking and whatnot. Our other daughter, Maude, she’s still in Bolton, legal secretary, close to home—’ He looks up as I reach with trembling hands for the (not small) Glenmorangie. ‘Then there’s our friend here in London living the bachelor life.’
Which presumably wouldn’t have been his choice of words if he knew I was banging Janet–although at the best of times delicacy doesn’t come naturally to him. ‘The others all have families of their own,’ I say. ‘There’s only me still fighting the good fight.’
Skinner returns with–Jesus Christ, is there no end to absurdity?–a photograph album. Janet rolls her eyes. ‘They don’t want to see that, Dad.’
Skinner magnificently ignores her and flips the album open on the table for my dad to see. ‘I can’t find the proper India album,’ he says. ‘What’ve you done in that bloody cupboard, Jan? I had a system there.’ Then to Pasha: ‘That’s me just off the boat, Bombay, 1936. Gateway to India; I don’t know who that fellow is in the picture. And that’s me and Frank Sykes at the old Cooperage ground.’
‘I played there,’ Pasha says, reaching into his coat for spectacles. ‘Lot of the Inter-Railway matches were played there.’
‘What, football?’
‘I played football for the GIPR from forty-five to fifty-three. We used to stay in first-class carriages at VT.’
‘I don’t know what she’s done with the proper album. There’s only a few from India in here.’
‘Dad,’ Janet says. ‘All the albums are in there, I’ve told you. You never look for anything properly. Anyway, I thought Mr Monroe junior wanted to talk to you about your book?’
I take this as a good sign, that she’s bothering with punishment. If she was never going to see me again there wouldn’t be any point. When she comes back from the Caribbean, I tell myself. Until the Scarlet comet comes round again.
‘Have you been?’ Janet asks me. Skinner and Pater are discussing Bombay geography. ‘India, I mean.’
‘No, I never have.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Haven’t got round to it. I grew up hearing about it, obviously. Don’t know why I never made the trip. Some sort of perverseness, no doubt.’
‘Christ, even I went in ninety-four. On a street near Victoria Station there was a bloke with an Elvis quiff and a stall selling pirate videos of Hollywood blockbusters. Alien Resurrection, I remember. There was an old woman lying on the ground nearby. Turned out she was dead. Maybe you thought it’d never live up to the stories.’
‘You must’ve had them, too.’
‘I did, though half the time I thought he was making it up.’
The ring in my jeans pocket is pressing against my thigh.
‘It doesn’t live up, actually,’ she says (she’s going through her Glenmorangie fast; my subterfuge has hurt, those hours in the sack, me with the huge lie making a fool out of her). ‘If you’ve had all the stories, the real thing’s bound to disappoint.’
‘Stories require imagination,’ I say. ‘Real life just happens. That’s the downer with real life.’
‘Do you tell that to your students? Or aren’t you really a teacher, either?’
‘No, I am really a teacher. A crap one, as you’ll have worked out by now.’
‘I wish you’d been straight with me.’
‘So do I. I fucked it up. I always do. There aren’t any excuses. I just didn’t realize how much it would matter.’ A declaration, surely she must see?
‘Don’t give me any lines,’ she says.
‘I’ve heard them all.’
I’m wondering, by the time we get to the door (there’s been another big scotch for the two old men, Janet showing me the brochures, since Skinner manifestly doesn’t care; subtext of muscular Caribbean boys and a forty-two-year-old wealthy Englishwoman with money to spend and an ego to heal), how exactly we’re going to conclude this utterly ridiculous encounter. Janet hangs back. Pasha and Skinner in wordless intensity shake hands on the doorstep. What can they possibly say to each other?
Nothing, is the answer. The handshake is a strange, silent mutual appraisal. Mistrust? Rapprochement? Enmity? Complicity? It’s impossible to tell. I’ll write Janet a letter, I think. I’m better on paper.
‘Recognize this?’
I’ve waited till we’re back in the Fiesta. Another sudden shower plays humble calypso on bonnet, boot and roof. The windows are already steaming up. Pasha takes the ring from me.
‘What’s this?’
‘You tell me. Is it Nanna’s bloodstone?’
He draws breath. Hadn’t made the connection until the word. ‘My God,’ he says.
‘It was in Skinner’s medicine cabinet,’ I tell him. ‘Pretty incredible, right?’
‘In the medicine cabinet?’
‘In the medicine cabinet. When I put the stuff back, the first aid. I looked for an inscription but there isn’t one. Was there one?’
‘My God,’ he says again. ‘That’s the ring?’
Definitely a question. ‘Well, Jesus, Dad, I don’t know. Is it?’
He turns it in his hands, examines it, shaking his head in disbelief. For what feels like an extraordinarily long time. ‘Blaardy hell,’ he says. ‘It is Nanna’s ring. I think. I’m sure of it.’
‘You know what this means? It means he was in on the Lahore scam, and the silk scam, and the passport scam. The guy’s a liar, Dad.’
‘You stole this?’ He looks at me.
‘Stole it? It’s yours. Bloody hell.’
He gets his glasses out, puts them on, examines again. ‘I can’t believe it. After all these years, eh? What a thing to find it there like that.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s destiny for you.’
For perhaps a minute we sit without speaking, him turning the jewel in the light, me studying his face. The two big whiskies have loosened him. He looks exhausted. I’m thinking of the pleasure I’ll take in telling Vince about all this, the great resolution, the fulfilment of the Quest. Then it occurs to me that after this there’s nothing left to add to the file, the notes, the collations, the Post-its, the memoranda, the goddamned Cheechee Papers. It’s over. The Skinner File is closed. And the Scarlet File?
I’ll come round again. Like a comet.
‘The only thing is…’ He places the ring in the centre of his left palm, bends his head over it. Then looks up and stares through the windscreen.
‘What?’
‘Wait.’ He looks at the ring again. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Mumma’s ring…It had a kind of a…I don’t think it was an oval shape like this. I think it was more of a rectangular thing.’
‘You’re not serious?’
‘I’m sure Mumma’s stone wasn’t like this.’
‘You were sure it was a minute ago.’
He shakes his head again, tutting. In amazement? In disappointment? Buying time?
‘My son, it’s bleddy yurs ago,’ he says.
‘You don’t think it’s a bit of a goddamned coincidence, Dad? You lost a bloodstone ring—’
‘I didn’t lose it, I traded it.’
‘You traded a bloodstone ring sixty-two years ago, here’s a bloodstone ring right now, today, the only connection to both is the man we’ve just met, a self-confessed criminal and by the looks of things a pathological liar–and you don’t think it’s the same ring?’
‘I can’t be sure.’
He hands the ring back to me, can’t quite look me in the eye. Now I sit staring at the trinket in my palm.
I’m not waiting for resolution, Scarlet said.
In the evening, in a spirit of I don’t quite know what I cook a huge chicken Madras. The celebratory–the conclusive dinner, it was meant to be. Pasha furnished with a giant tinkling Chivas sits in the softly lit lounge chatting with Vince, who’s opened and got two-thirds of the way through a bottle of Banrock Station Shiraz Mataro by the time I join them. Vince has put Lena Horne on, since he knows my father loves her. The delicious entanglement, I’m shamefully relieved to hear, has dead-ended on day three.
‘You see, Vince,’ the old man’s saying, ‘the difference is, you people today have got nothing…How shall I say? To steer by. D’you follow me?’
Vince, judging by his face, booze-crimped into essential incomprehension, doesn’t, but nods anyway. This will have started with something innocuous–Vince will have mentioned he’s thinking of changing careers, which he is indeed thinking of doing, vacuously, the smart money says–but will have been dragged by the old man into philosophy.
‘There’s no point in attempting intelligent conversation with him, Dad,’ I say. ‘He’s not properly educated.’
‘Ignore him, Mr M,’ Vince says. ‘He’s only the cook. Go on.’
‘What I mean is,’ Pasha says, sitting forward, opening his left hand with vast reasonableness, ‘it’s all thisthing, lifestyles. You want to be an atheist, it’s a lifestyle, you want to be a communist, it’s a lifestyle, you want to be a’–for a terrible moment of folicle constriction I think he’s going to say gay bugger–‘murderer, it’s a lifestyle. Y’all make choices about these things and it’s like choosing a bleddy hat.’
‘That’s me and you, Vincent, that “y’all”, in case you were wondering. That’s me and you who choose ethics like hats. Or in your case skin toners.’
‘In my young days,’ my father continues, ‘we didn’t have so much…I mean, things were simpler then. You got married, it was for good. You believed in God, it was for good. The big things meant something to us, you know? We didn’t know any different, but we weren’t miserable like you buggers today.’
‘We’ve got options, Dad,’ I say, thinking of Janet’s magazine, not really sure whether I’m objecting.
‘But y’all are all bleddy unhappy, aren’t you?’
‘I’m unhappy, Mr M,’ Vince says. ‘But it’s mainly about the rent.’
Pasha laughs. He’s developed this role over the years with Vince, with many of the family’s friends and in-laws, fruity straight-shooter, stirrer. He doesn’t mean half of what he says.
‘Anyway,’ I announce, ‘grub’s ready. Drink up.’
Since my father’s bunking on the couch Vince retires early after dinner with a concealed spliff. I wash the dishes, the old man dries. There’s a small reservoir of adventure in these London trips for him, then he starts missing my mum. I can see it, the drift of his inner attention back up north. They’ve been husband and wife for fifty-seven years. They still hold hands, he still sneaks up behind her and wraps her in his arms, nuzzles her neck, gooses her. Outside marriage and family, neither of them has ever seemed to want or need anything else. By the time the crockery’s put away, bottles gathered, ashtrays emptied and worktops wiped, he’s yawning. The day’s most likely worn him out. Skinner. The ring. The not being sure. The whiskies. The options. While he changes into his Man from Del Monte pyjamas I fold out the futon and make up his bed. I’ll take him to Tooting tomorrow for Indian sweets, barfi, jelabies, ludoos, doot peras, rasgoola. He can get them in Bolton, but it’s something we like to do together.
‘You’re going to have to give it back, you know,’ he says, sitting on the edge of his bed. ‘That ring.’
This has occurred to me, though since I’ve discovered it fits the second finger of my right hand I’ve been wearing it all day.
‘Yeah, I know,’ I say. ‘I’ll do it through the daughter.’
‘Something going on between you two or what?’
‘I like her.’
‘She seems nice.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m not in her good books after today. I can’t see it getting much better when I tell her I thieved her dad’s ring.’
He yawns again, Stan Laurelishly scratches his head. ‘How’s the book coming?’ It’s the first time he’s mentioned it since this afternoon.
‘Don’t ask,’ I say. ‘Goodnight, Dad.’
‘Goodnight, my son.’
It’s three in the morning. Vince has fallen asleep (I suspect) with his CD player still on. Mezzanine, looped. I don’t mind the murmur, and Pasha, a bantamweight with heavyweight sleeping habits, won’t be disturbed. I sit on the floor of my room surrounded by papers. The papers.
‘You know the story,’ the old man said. ‘So what is there to telling it? You start at the beginning, go through the middle, then get to the end.’
It’s always been the ending that’s bothered me. These days, even the sound of the word…
Scarlet, the ether tells me, has flown, and now once again there’s life to get through without her, only the dim prospect of the comet’s return.
You’ll live.
Two hundred miles north, my mother sleeps for once without the risk of nocturnal disturbance. Seeing the old man here on his own has made me miss her, her small face and the tick of her knees. When are you coming to see us again? Soon, Ma, soon.
Skinner, I imagine, has long nights of busy dreams. Wakes to relief, irritation, the tedious wait for the next daughter visit. Asks himself as the shadows revolve through the quiet afternoons: How much time?
Janet may well be awake. Weighing up pros and cons, I hope. If there’s only sadness waiting you might as well have fun in the meantime. I wish you’d been straight with me. The wishing itself proves something.
I’ve been searching for a long time for an arresting opening. The gods and goddesses of romance make their inaugural demands. So do certain matters of fact. That was a front runner for a while. Others have come and gone. Unlike my father, my mother, Katherine Marie Millicent Lyle–Kathy, Katie, Kit, Kitty, but most often Kate–has kept the mystery of her past. For a while I toyed with London is no longer interested in me, but what’s the point in starting on a downer? You write what you want, Sweetheart. None of that can touch me now.