by David Nobbs
‘Please don’t. And why do you say “left elbow” rather than “little finger”?’
‘I’m a writer now. I avoid clichés.’
‘The cliché’s actually better, Dad.’
He had smiled and then looked at her with penetrating seriousness. ‘It still burns, doesn’t it, my darling, your desire to lead us away from the promised land?’ he had said.
‘It still burns.’
‘But you can’t fight fanaticism with fanaticism. You need better, softer, gentler, more persuasive weapons.’
‘I know.’
‘You do, don’t you? You do know? You won’t do anything stupid?’
‘No, Dad.’ This just a trifle wearily. ‘I won’t do anything stupid.’
Now they are arriving at Narcissus Road. It’s more than two years since she moved with Colin to West Hampstead, but she still doesn’t have the feeling of coming home. The sight of this street of identical characterless houses depresses Naomi enormously. She longs to be back by the gentle East Anglian river. How mean the street looks.
She tries so hard not to be irritated by the heavy weather her father makes of reversing into a parking space that is only just large enough. She has long been aware that there are two Naomis: a patient, loving, considerate Naomi, and the Naomi of the motor car, a snarling tigress. She closes her eyes, tries to breathe slowly, calmly, thinks of her love for Emily, but that only makes her anxious too.
At last the job is done, though the car is still at an angle of at least five degrees from the pavement.
‘I’ll come in and see everything’s all right,’ says her father, and she’s pleased. She dreads his departure.
Colin’s out. The house is so quiet. And so small. It was never big, but surely it wasn’t as small as this? Can you shrink a house?
There’s a note on the kitchen table, and what a sad affair the kitchen table is.
The note is sadder still.
Dear Naomi,
This letter will come as a great shock, and, believe me, I don’t enjoy writing it. I have decided that I can’t cope with our marriage any more. I don’t say that I don’t love you, but I don’t love you enough any more to be able to deal with the hard work that our marriage would inevitably be.
This isn’t just to do with how you’ve behaved in the last few months, although it hasn’t been easy, and I have to say that I think you have been very selfish. Well, that may be the wrong word, because you didn’t think you were doing it for yourself and I do appreciate your point of view. Maybe I should just say that you have been very difficult to live with, and that goes for Emily as much as for me, and I think you need to think about that.
No, but it goes back further, and it’s all to do with the fact of my writing that bloody sitcom with you in it. I was so pleased you were doing it when I first met you at that very first read-through, but the moment the second series began I knew that the fact that I was in love with you inhibited my writing those scenes. It was a bad part because it wasn’t really what the sitcom was about, and I was embarrassed to have you in such a bad part, and that made it even more difficult to write, so it became an even worse part.
I despise myself for not having the courage to tell you this face to face. I remember you telling me how you went to that taxidermist twit’s place and told him you were leaving him, which on the evidence of his behaviour at the show that night was more than he deserved. I am not a brave person. That’s why I was too shit scared about my career to stand up for my principles when they wanted me to write you out, even though because it was bad maybe I was doing you a favour by writing you out.
This is the third draft of this letter, well, I’m used to writing lots of drafts for the bloody Beeb, but I do want you to know I’m not taking writing it easily.
I just have the feeling, with great regret, that there just isn’t enough left between us for us to be able to work on making the marriage work.
An unworthy thought flashes across Naomi’s mind. This letter isn’t very well written – for a writer.
There’s also Emily. She’s a great girl but I can’t really relate to her. No doubt the fault is entirely mine.
As you know, I’m trying to write a novel, a really ambitious state of the nation novel, searingly satirical and passionate, and I will get round to it some time, but I need to eat so I have been working on an idea for a new sitcom set in a dentist’s surgery, which I think is a very promising idea. I’m calling it ‘Third Molar from the Left’. An independent company is very keen on it, no money yet, but it looks promising. If it comes off, I’ll try to write a part in it for you. When we’re not together, who knows, I may be able to write funny lines for you.
I saw your brother Julian in the Ivy the other day, with a very pretty girl. I was going to go up to him and say something, but they started having a row, and she stormed out. He stayed on. I could see that they’d ordered the poulet landaise I think it’s called, which is for two. He sat there for ages ploughing through it, valiantly trying to finish it, but something about his face told me that it wouldn’t be a very good time to go up to him and chat. Also I wouldn’t have known what to say if he’d asked me about us. He did look over towards us but I don’t think he recognised me. People don’t. I’ve never kidded myself that I’m dripping with charisma.
Naomi, I still think you’re great and a much better person than me. One day you’ll look back on this letter, and think, ‘Thank God…’ Oh, shit, I shouldn’t have said that, but I’m not going to tear this up and start a fourth draft. What I mean is, you will look back and be glad to be free of your wimpish second-rate writer husband, who so typically ran out on you at your moment of greatest need.
With love, apologies and happy memories.
Colin.
P.S. Don’t be mad about the Ivy. I know you always wanted to go and I never took you, but I had to go, this was a real business opportunity. Nothing came of it, but I wasn’t to know that.
Naomi hands her father the letter. He sits down to read it. She opens her meagre, unpromising pile of mail. She isn’t interested in a giant carpet sale. Her house is much too small for a giant carpet. She can’t afford to give to Guide Dogs for the Blind or Amnesty International or the Home for Retired Actors. Her inability to give to charity shames her.
Her father puts the letter down and looks at her with compassion.
‘Pillock,’ he says at last. ‘Sorry, Naomi, but he is.’
The fact that Colin is a pillock doesn’t make Naomi welcome his decision. In fact, she wants to cry. But she’s determined not to.
‘Julian should never order any dish that’s for two. Terribly risky,’ she says with a brave smile.
Her father smiles back. She thinks what a lovely smile he has. What a pity he hasn’t used it more.
‘So, what’s to be done?’ he asks.
‘I’ll be fine. I’ll survive.’
Her father stares at the ceiling, stands abruptly, goes to the window, looks out over Narcissus Road, with its rows of mean houses neatly parked in rows and its lines of cars, also neatly parked, with one exception. Naomi knows what he’s seeing. The road is the River Crouch, where he keeps his beloved yawl. The cars are boats, gently swinging on their moorings. Her father is slipping past them towards foreign parts, under engine, just about to raise the mainsail.
‘I’ll take you home,’ he says, in a voice suddenly hoarse.
‘You can’t. You’re going sailing.’
‘I won’t go.’
‘That’s ridiculous. You always go.’
‘Well, this year I won’t. I can’t abandon you.’
‘Dad, I’m all right.’
He can’t stop himself from giving her a doubting look.
‘I am, Dad. I don’t think I was ever mad, I think I was just…a bit obsessed…well, all right, a lot obsessed…but I’m fine now. I’ll be all right. I promise.’
‘I don’t think I can do it, darling.’
He looks up at the ceiling and his
lips move.
‘What are you thinking?’ Naomi asks, though she knows.
William looks slightly embarrassed.
‘I was asking your mother for forgiveness. For going away for a month every year. For only knowing now that some things are more important than my pleasures. I’ve been a selfish man.’
‘No, Dad.’
‘Well…a bit. Quite a lot, actually.’
‘Well, you’re being very unselfish now.’
‘Not really. I’m suggesting it – and it’s actually more than a suggestion, I’m telling you, I’m not going sailing, my mind is made up – because if I did go, and anything happened to you while I was away, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, and I’m all I’ve got. You see. Not at all an unselfish motive.’
‘I believe in judging people by their actions, not their motives, Dad.’
‘Wise words, from a very special girl. Of course I can’t go. I mean it, Naomi.’
Naomi gives him a searching look. He stares back, unafraid of meeting her eyes. She breaks away first. She knows now that he means it.
‘Let’s get back,’ he says. ‘I’ll have to ring Carruthers and tell him the sailing’s off.’
‘Carruthers?’
‘Ridley. But I always call him Carruthers. He’s a Carruthers to me, last of that soon-to-be-extinct breed of Englishmen who shy away from the intimacy of friendship and call each other by their surnames. Anything you need to take?’
Naomi gathers a few things together, puts them in the car, locks the door of her unloved house, remembers, unlocks the door, rushes up the mean stairs, into the mean marital bedroom, opens the third drawer down of the chest of drawers, pulls out from among her knickers the sepia photograph of the handsome young man that Timothy had once seen all those years ago, but which she has always hidden from Simon and from Colin, hurries down the stairs, locks the door again, puts the photograph carefully on top of all the items piled onto the back seat of the car, and smiles apologetically at her father, who gives her an understanding smile in return.
She offers to drive.
‘Wouldn’t hear of it. No fit state.’
Yet that is the extraordinary thing. She is in a fit state.
William drives back rather faster than usual, which pleases Naomi. Curiously, under the circumstances, he is happy. He even hums once or twice, and two or three times, on straight stretches of road, he runs his left hand affectionately down her right arm. Naomi feels extraordinarily happy, and that is even more curious, under the circumstances.
The phone is ringing as they enter the house. Her father doesn’t hurry, risks the caller ringing off, but the caller doesn’t.
‘Hello…Ridley! I was just going to ring you…What? How? When?…’ He gives Naomi a thumbs-up and a very theatrical grin. What’s going on? ‘Oh, that’s terrible…Well, what bad luck…Well, of course you can’t.’ He gives a tiny leap into the air. Naomi is nonplussed. ‘I’m so sorry, Ridley…Well, no, you can’t say that. You’re not letting me down. How can you say you’re letting me down?…Well, of course I’m disappointed.’ He gives another thumbs-up. ‘Dreadfully disappointed.’ He puts his free hand to his nose and mimes elongating it furiously. ‘Well, thank you so much for letting me know. And I really am sorry,. Truly sorry. I hope it mends very quickly.’ He puts the phone down and does a little, hopelessly inelegant jig, then roars triumphantly, ‘Ridley has broken his leg!’
Naomi stares at him.
‘What?’
‘In two places. Chelmsford and Colchester.’
He roars with laughter at his joke. Naomi is astounded. She’s never seen him like this. He’s like a naughty, overexcited child.
But now he sobers up.
‘No. I mustn’t laugh.’
But then the naughty, inappropriate delight steals over his face again.
‘My sailing companion has fallen off a ladder. He cannot go sailing. Hallelujah!’
‘I can see that this lets you off the hook about letting him down, but why are you so delighted?’
‘Because I’m going to take you.’
Naomi stares at him again.
‘I’ve never sailed in my life, Dad.’
‘Well, we aren’t going far, Only to Denmark. You’ll come, won’t you? You’re a girl of spirit. You’re my girl.’
‘There’s Emily.’
‘Oh, blast. So there is. Lovely girl. Gem. Can’t you phone? She may be perfectly happy with Simon and long name.’
‘Francesca. Yes, I suppose I could phone. But, Dad, I’ll be useless. No help.’
‘We aren’t going round Cape Horn. Do me the favour of believing that I am a highly competent sailor and a fully qualified captain of my ship.’
‘I haven’t got any clothes.’
‘East Anglia is weighed down with yachting clothes. That’s why it tilts. That’s why it floods. Phone.’
Naomi phones.
‘Oh, hello, Francesca. How’s things?…Good. Brilliant. Look, Francesca, something’s come up. Ridley – that’s the man my father sails with, but he calls him Carruthers, I don’t know why – has broken his leg…I don’t know his Christian name. Maybe he hasn’t got one. So, he can’t go sailing with my dad. So my dad wants me to go…Well, tomorrow…About a month. I know it’s impossible, but I thought I’d ask…Do you mean it? For a whole month?…Are you absolutely sure?…That’s good to hear. But what about Simon?…Are you sure?…Look, is…Thank you…Hi, Emily, are you having a good time?…Great. That’s, that’s just great…Oh, much better, thank you. No, I’m fine. Absolutely fine. One hundred per cent. Look, darling, it’s a long story, but the man Grampa goes sailing with every August has broken his leg…Ridley, that’s right, gosh, what a memory. And…no, I don’t know what his Christian name is either…no, sweetheart, of course I’m not worried about calling it a Christian name, all that’s over, I mean I still…but, no, it’s over. But anyway, with Ridley with no Christian name not being able to go sailing, Grampa wants me to keep him company and go instead…Well, for about a month…Well, yes, I’d like to go, it would be fun, but I won’t even dream of going if it would upset you staying on there another month…Are you sure?…Oh. Well, that’s all right, then…Oh. Well, that’s just great…Oh, do you think so?…Well, that’s great, then. Terrific…Denmark…Of course I’ll send cards. Lots of cards…Yes, with storks on, if I can find any…So, you’ll be good, won’t you?…I know you are…I’ll try. I may be a bit frightened…I will…I love you too.’
She puts the phone down, very slowly. She turns towards her father.
‘She’s delighted,’ she says.
‘Good. Good.’
Her father is delighted too, and can’t hide it.
‘Absolutely delighted.’
‘Good. That’s good.’
‘Thrilled.’
Her father is beginning to realise that it isn’t actually all that good.
‘She said, “I think the time and space will help you sort yourself out, Mum.”’
William shakes his head in wonder at the precocity of children. He smiles. Naomi tries to join in, but her smile is a sad little affair.
She bursts into tears.
A new millennium. A new start.
The auction takes place at the premises of Tankerley and Phipps, Coningsfield’s leading auction house. Correction: Coningsfield’s only auction house.
There are a few pieces of Pickering family furniture, mainly Georgian and Victorian and not of spectacular merit, but in the main the lots consist of the works of Roly Pickering, plus a few of Timothy’s.
Timothy hasn’t found it easy to tell his father that he’s retiring from taxidermy, but he had felt confident that the tactful way in which he’d chosen to put it – that he has been far from his father’s equal and unworthy to continue the family tradition – would flatter the old man. In the event he had felt that his father’s acceptance – ‘Take your point, son of mine. Take your point.’ – was just a little too ready. A little gentle disag
reement – ‘No! Unworthy? You. Surely not?’ – would perhaps have been a little more tactful on his father’s part. Sometimes he felt that all the tact in the relationship went one way.
In fact, Roly was quite excited at the idea of his works coming under the hammer. ‘I’m tickled pink. Tickled pink I am. I can’t see them any more, so let the world see them. The Roly Pickering Collection goes under the hammer.’ He would only be allowed to keep one item in his room at the Cadogan, which had strict regulations on ornaments due to Health and Safety and the cost of modern dusting, and Timothy would take his favourite piece, the three Icelandic puffins, as a memorial to his father’s life and talents, but all the other items would be up for sale.
The various lots are on view from nine thirty, with the sale commencing at ten thirty. Timothy arrives early. He’s anxious. He hasn’t slept well. He’s had the dream, as he so often does before difficult events. It was really vivid, perhaps more vivid than ever, really upsetting. He’s woken so bathed in sweat that he’s needed a bath. There hasn’t been time for one, he hasn’t fancied a shower, so he’s had to fall back on washing himself from head to foot in cold water. He feels better now, but still shaken. And stirred.
It has been decided that he and his father will split the profits of the sale equally, but it isn’t this that worries him. What worries him is that his father’s masterpieces won’t meet their reserve. It will be awful if the poor, proud man is humiliated in public on this great day.
He’s also worried that nobody will come. Then the humiliation will be his, for holding the event.
A few people drift in, a couple of collectors, the owner of a local gallery, a tourist who’s forgotten his raincoat and will at least keep dry for a couple of hours, the retired piano teacher who goes to all the auctions and never buys anything, and a taxidermist from the other side of the Pennines, who encourages and discourages Timothy all at once by saying, ‘Your father’s a great man. A legend in taxidermy circles. His stuff’ll sell. Lot of people want to get their hands on a Roly Pickering.’ Timothy suddenly wishes he could withdraw the few items of his own making that he has entered.