by Tim Parks
John stood still in the quiet street. ‘Your father is dead,’ he whispered. He remembered the young Indian who had sold him the elephants. ‘Hello, sir. You are wanting a bargain, sir?’ That was the spirit. Sell yourself. John walked determinedly to his grandparents’ front door.
In her early eighties, Granny Janet was everything her daughter Helen was not: flowery and frilly, talkative, seductive, perfumed, posh. ‘Johnny!’ she cried. ‘My my my!’ There were earrings and jewellery on her powdery skin, smart black stockings on her legs. ‘Johnny come lately! Indeed! Don’t we phone, John James, don’t we announce our extremely rare visits, my dear little boy? Come in, come in! How long has it been? How many years?’
At four in the afternoon she insisted on pouring gin and tonics. She offered long cigarettes. She put the young man on a deep leather sofa. ‘Tell me everything. Everything!’ She seemed delighted when her grandson started blurting out his problems in the crudest fashion. John hadn’t smoked for ages but now accepted one cigarette after another. His eyes smarted and he coughed. He needed money, he complained, to live. He was in a very difficult situation. He was about to be evicted. Granny Janet nodded and sighed. ‘Of course,’ she was saying, ‘of course your mother couldn’t come directly to me herself, could she? She couldn’t write to me directly. Or phone. Too proud by half!’
John had already finished his gin. Vaguely, he recalled this stale, upholstered atmosphere from a dozen years ago. He felt exhausted, ashamed of himself, infantile. He had spoken too quickly. The smoke had gone to his head. Finally, he sat back and looked the woman in her rheumy eyes.
‘But by God you’ve grown handsome!’ his grandmother cried. She stood up to kiss him so that he was overcome by a cloud of perfume. Her wrinkled lips were rouged, the skin powdered. ‘Heaven only knows where those looks came from! Jack!’ she called, apparently delighted. ‘Your grandson’s here. Hey, Jack! For God’s sake!’ She shouted at the top of her voice. John saw she was wearing high heels. No one came. ‘He’s such an old fogy,’ she laughed, ‘sleeps all afternoon. Never comes down. Deaf as a post.’
Laughing and shaking her head, she insisted that John tell her about his projects. ‘Tell me everything, mind, my dear. If you’re asking us to invest in you, we’ll need to know where our finances are going, won’t we? Everything now. You know the Sommers like a good return on their money.’
She poured another drink. John collected his thoughts and began to explain about cell structure, the immune system, tuberculosis. The old woman watched, nodding sagely. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, yes, I’ve heard of that, yes, I know.’ He knew she knew nothing. ‘Jack!’ she called from time to time, but half-heartedly. ‘So, there are five metabolic cycles,’ he explained. ‘Are there, indeed?’ she exclaimed. Her fingers played with an expensive necklace. ‘Who would have thought?’ ‘Or another strategy,’ he was saying later, ‘is to interfere with the bacterium’s reproductive mechanisms, to make it impotent if you like. It doesn’t die, but it can’t reproduce.’
‘Impotent!’ Granny Janet interrupted. It seemed to be the first word that had really made sense to her. She began to ask if he had a girlfriend. She stood up, smoothed down a rather tight flowery dress and again fussed with drinks.
‘There’s a girl I’m planning to marry,’ John said.
‘Marriage?’ His grandmother grimaced. ‘You’re a bit young to marry, Johnny.’ She shook her head. ‘Your grandfather and I …’ the old woman went on. ‘It would be lovely to take a photo of you, you know, you’re so good-looking, but I’ve no idea where the camera is. Jack!’ Even with the heels, she was smaller than John’s mother, but with a fussy, brittle energy. ‘Jaa-ack!’
She went out of the room and stood at the bottom of the stairs calling. There were rugs on parquet. ‘Where’s the camera, Jack? He’s such an old fogy!’ She came back and sat down again. ‘Where was I? Your grandfather and I, ah yes, we didn’t claim to be saints.’ She smiled. ‘And we didn’t expect our children to be saints either. Not at all. Cheers by the way,’ she leaned across a coffee table to clink her glass. Inside the silk frills at the top of her dress he could see the slack of her breasts. ‘Certainly,’ she said, ‘we turned a blind eye to some of your Uncle Nick’s …’ she laughed ‘… naughtiness. He could be a bit of a pig you know, your Uncle Nick.’
‘Yes,’ John said vaguely. He knew his mother and her brother hadn’t spoken since she left home.
‘Your mother, on the contrary, decided to punish us all with her goodness. Right from when she was, oh, sixteen, seventeen, she always had to prove this point, that she didn’t need our money.’
Granny Janet waited a moment to see how the boy would react. John sipped his fresh drink.
‘And to do that, of course, I mean, to spend her whole life doing good, she had to marry a man blind and malleable enough to follow her to all those godforsaken corners of the globe where good can so easily be done, can it not? God rest your poor father’s soul of course, it was hardly his fault.
‘Now,’ she went on briskly, ‘I will give you whatever you need to tide you over this difficult moment. Of course I will! I’d be a monster otherwise, don’t you think? Family is family. A year or two is the maximum, isn’t it, dear? Let’s say two years, to cover the period till they employ you, I’m sure they will, you sound so intelligent, really, on the understanding, however, the one condition, mind, that you promise not to waste your talent as your parents did.’
Together with a rising wave of relief, John grasped the fact that financial support was to come at the price of accepting that Granny Janet had always been right in her everlasting argument with his mother.
‘I don’t want you throwing away a clever brain,’ the old lady repeated.
‘No,’ John said.
‘The point is this …’ The old lady cocked her head, listened, eyes raised to the door. ‘Oh, I give up on Jack,’ she laughed. ‘Sometimes I wonder if he mightn’t be dead up there.’ She shook her head. The neatly permed hair moved like a loose hat. ‘The point is this, Johnny’ – now she lowered her voice – ‘the Third World is a bottomless pit. You can’t disagree with that. You can only throw energy away there, you know? What has your mother achieved over a lifetime? She has helped ten thousand people, has she? She has seen the thankful smiles on their brown cheeks? She has helped nobody! The next day they fall ill again. The next day their brother dies, their children. Their wives. Or they live on in wretchedness. I know the Third World, John, and nothing can be done. You can be as proactive as you like, but something is nothing in the Third World. It’s a drop in the ocean. Jack’s business took us to the Gambia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria. I’ve seen what I’ve seen and I know what I know. Your mother threw away her life on this idea of saving the Third World and meantime denied herself a place in the only world that was natural to her. England, London. The only place where what she could do would have made real sense.’
John nodded.
‘And she’s not even Christian!’ Granny Janet started again. ‘It would have explained it if your mother were Christian, wouldn’t it, darling? There would be a sort of sense in it if they had been trying to convert poor ignorant souls and have them go to heaven. But no one is really religious any more, are they? Or atheist for that matter. Are you atheist?’ she demanded. ‘Of course you’re not, my dear. You’re a scientist! Nobody really believes they’re going to heaven, do they? Fiddlesticks. Or anywhere else. We’re all scientists really, aren’t we, even when we don’t understand anything? Belief and unbelief have really ceased to exist. An obsolete word. You know something or you don’t. So why go and give your life to a bunch of primitives? Just because dear Jack was a terrible old Tory in the sixties, railing against the unions and supporting white Rhodesia (and, in retrospect, you have to say he was right), your mother decided to become a knee-jerk socialist and she’s been punishing us all ever since. You know? Your Uncle Nick in particular. You can’t imagine how upset he was when she broke with him. Just because he m
ade a drunken pass at one of Helen’s friends. She never grew out of it. Whereas Jack did vote Labour in 1997. Did you know that? Junk-bond Jack they called him at the Exchange. He voted Labour!’ She burst out laughing. ‘I thought pigs would fly!’
Sitting in the deep leather sofa, watching his grandmother’s performance, John was somehow reminded of the situation between himself and his mother that last evening in Delhi. He had been invaded then by an extraordinary tension, fingers, lips and ears tingling with unwanted energy. It was still there, he thought now, that tension. He was still back in his mother’s sitting room. Why?
‘Do you think your father would ever have spent his life in the Third World,’ she was saying, ‘if it hadn’t been for your mother’s enslavement to this ruinous idea of international charity?’
‘They were in America three years,’ John finally objected.
‘Yes,’ Granny Janet cried, ‘yes, they were, and just when the poor fellow was beginning to make a big name for himself she drags him back to bongo land because there is nothing for her to do in an advanced country. Or nothing that would make her feel like a saint. Sainthood is a perversion!’ Granny Janet declared. She rattled the ice in her empty glass. ‘And if I give you this money, Johnny love, it must be on the firm condition that it does not get thrown away.’
John tried to smile. ‘Granny Janet,’ he promised, ‘I solemnly swear that I’ll be building a sensible career in biochemistry, here in England, or at most the USA, and as soon as I have an income I’ll start paying back.’
‘Though, of course’ – his grandmother paused to blow out smoke through pursed lips – ‘if your father had had any nous at all, he would have made Helen follow his career and not vice versa. The way Jack did with me. It was always crystal clear what my place was, though I was actually earning more than him when we met. Did you know that? Yes, your granny was earning more as a secretary than him as a bank clerk or whatever he was.’
John was silent. Under a tall glass case a clock ticked in the arms of a porcelain angel. The room was filled with expensive Victoriana.
‘Dad needed something to help him focus his ideas,’ John eventually said.
Granny Janet turned from the window and stared, as if the boy had inexplicably changed the subject.
‘I mean, a group project,’ John said. ‘Something team driven. Dad tended to be all over the place, following whims, or drifting with the tide.’
‘Because your mother kept him entirely to herself! That was another reason she took him to the ends of the earth. She wanted him exclusively for herself.’ Then in a lower voice Granny Janet added: ‘Helen was very beautiful, you know. What a waste!’
‘I know,’ John said appreciatively. ‘She still is.’ He felt a rush of emotion.
Granny Janet looked at him sharply. ‘I don’t want you to marry while I am supporting you. Is that clear? You are too young.’
‘Fine.’ John steeled himself. ‘I’ll need about £5,000 right away,’ he told her boldly.
Standing at a writing table, the old woman scribbled a cheque. ‘Jack,’ she called, again. ‘Jack! Do come and say goodbye.’ She waited a moment, then shook her head. ‘He probably wouldn’t recognise you, I’m afraid.’
‘I’ll go upstairs,’ John offered.
‘No, no, no. I’m too tired now, Johnny. This has taken a lot out of me, you know. Heavens, your barging in on me like this without any warning. I’m in my eighties, my dear, I will have to rest.’
In the event, she almost pushed him out of the door.
So, in just an hour and a half John James had got what he wanted: money. And if the journey out to Richmond had been a long, confused stumbling toward a place he hadn’t even admitted he was aiming for, the return to Elaine’s to give her the good news was a smooth pleasure of easy Tube connections and wide-awake contentment.
‘Oh God, I’ve got rehearsals,’ his girlfriend exclaimed. She refused to share a bottle but pulled him to the bedroom for the most rapid and eager lovemaking of all their time together. ‘It’s good news we don’t have to marry!’ she cried. The sly grin on her face dissolved. ‘Congratulations, Jo,’ she whispered. ‘Welcome back to sanity.’
‘Truth is, Mum worshipped Dad,’ John told her a little later, after recounting his grandmother’s long rant. ‘And Dad admired Mum immensely. They were very close.’ He spoke with his head on the pillow while Elaine hurried to get dressed and go out.
‘Often she was the only doctor who would do things without being paid. Sometimes she even bought patients’ drugs herself. In emergencies she used Dad’s research funds. He never objected. Dad never really objected to anything.’
‘Because she had a real vocation,’ Elaine sighed, wriggling on her tights. ‘And he really loved her. I hope I can be as dedicated to the theatre. I hope I get the chance to be.’
John objected that that was rather different. ‘You do the theatre because you like it, and you want to be famous. Mum does it entirely for other people.’
‘Not true,’ Elaine frowned. ‘It’s because I love the stage, the art of it. It’s a passion. Why do you think we always stay so late rehearsing?’
Her boyfriend watched her, his head shaking. But he didn’t want to contradict. They were happy for the first time since he had got the news of his father’s death. Perhaps now they could get on with their lives. For a start, her father could have his £200 back.
But about half an hour after she had gone out, John began to pace the room. Why hadn’t his mother answered his emails? It should have been his parents giving him this money, he thought, not a gaudy grandmother with an unpleasant axe to grind. What did she mean he wasn’t old enough to marry? Nothing has been settled. In a moment of agitation, John put on his coat and began walking back to his flat, then stopped almost at once at a small Internet place.
‘Dad,’ he typed. The only new mail in his inbox was junk. ‘Dad, I hate you for this.’
The machines were in the basement under a café. When the message-delivered sign came up, John hurried upstairs and ordered a coffee. The man behind the counter was Indian. How appropriate, John thought. He felt exhausted. But why was it appropriate? Half the world is Indian.
He carried the coffee down the stairs and wondered how to use the half an hour he had paid for. Behind the monitor was the rough brick wall of an old cellar. The place smelled dank. Clicking on the inbox he knew he would only find Dad’s out-of-office reply. All the same he opened it. ‘Albert James regrets … In case of emergency, phone …’
John pulled out his mobile and called the number at once. No signal, the phone told him. He would have to go out in the street.
Then by one of those curiosities of email timing, when he returned from message to inbox a new message had arrived. ‘From Dr Helen James MD, re: MONEY.’ John was aware of an intense trepidation as he moved the cursor to click the message open.
Dear John,
I’m sorry your situation is so acute. I’ve been trying to find out exactly what resources are available. Very very few, I’m afraid. Your father was always happy to live from hand to mouth. You know his favourite Bible verse was, ‘Consider the lilies of the field, they sow not, neither do they reap …’ In the circumstances, the only thing I can do is write to your grandmother to ask if she will kindly move some money into your account. However, if you will forgive my saying so, you are now twenty-four years old and have completed your doctoral thesis, something of which I’m very proud, as your dear father would have been too. Given this situation, you should be able to look after yourself and hence I really can’t understand the tone of these emails you’ve been sending as if you were the victim of some kind of tsunami. If you insist, I will write to your grandmother, but please think it over first. I’m sure you will feel much better if you solve this problem on your own like a man and I’m sure that that would have been your father’s wish.
Apart from which, all is well here. The weather is hotting up and the long summer will soon be beginning.
With love,
Mum
John hurried out of the café and began walking fast. Without thinking, he headed east across the Edgware Road and into town where Elaine would be finishing rehearsal. He needed her company. ‘I need some kind of medicine,’ he muttered out loud. ‘A drug.’ Vaguely, he thought of the chemistry of emotion, the shifting balance of genes expressed and suppressed, the subtle alterations in infinitely overlaid metabolic cycles. It had come on to rain again. If ever there was a quack’s paradise it was psychiatry, he thought.
He walked past shops with computers, with clothes, with furniture. ‘I have money now,’ he muttered. ‘I can spend.’ He crossed to Gloucester Place. His hair was wet. The night was chill. Then at the next corner he saw the actors and actresses already leaving the school where the company rehearsed. They weren’t staying late after all.
There were a dozen of them in overcoats, under umbrellas. They crossed the forecourt and came out through the school gate. Some were hurrying to cars, some laughing; then four or five broke off in a dark little knot and headed for the pub on the next corner, the Ploughshare. What a stupid name. It was a new pub. Now he saw Elaine slipping her arms into her jacket as she walked. She was chattering, moving very self-consciously, as if imitating someone else, mincing in her denim skirt, enjoying the performance of being herself. The small, stocky man behind her must be the director, John thought. He was definitely Asian. One of the younger men started to sing, showing off. A baritone. Elaine added her own voice, but she was hardly audible with a car swishing by. Elaine had a beautiful voice, but not strong enough. ‘Dad is always telling me my voice isn’t strong enough,’ she complained. Now she shook her hair in the rain and sang. John saw she was happy.
He hurried to catch up. We can go home together, he thought. We can make love again. This is my woman. I’ve chosen.
Just as the group stopped to push through the pub door, the squat director slipped his arm round Elaine’s waist and pulled her toward him. They were behind the others. The actors were waiting to go in as another group came filing out. There was a moment’s confusion. The arm was definitely around her waist, John saw. And it definitely stayed there.