by Patrick Gale
‘So, no, Robin. It’s a very nice body, but I don’t fancy it.’
They stayed there for about three minutes, Robin sitting, Luke standing and, Robin supposed, staring down at him waiting for an answer. He didn’t give him one. Robin found himself stupid, cross and wordless.
Then a commotion of some sort started at the far end of the corridor. A man was protesting and others were trying to shout him down. It came nearer. Luke sighed impatiently and tugged open the door.
‘Where is he? I have to speak to him!’
‘In here,’ Luke said. ‘Go on, it’s all right. You can let him through.’
Robin looked up to see what was going on. Luke moved back into the corridor gesturing towards him with his arm. Faber ran into the doorway and stood there staring at him wildly. He was clutching a tabloid.
‘Look,’ he said, but Robin was looking at his face. ‘No,’ Faber said crossly, ‘Look here. Look.’ He held the paper up and banged its front page with the back of one hand.
‘CANDIDA LIVES!!’ it said.
Forty-Four
The farce with the train and the ‘TV personality’ had been explained and laughed over then Luke had steered the monks away to their morning business and Faber found himself alone with Robin. Robin reached towards him for a kiss but Faber pushed him away.
‘How could you?’ Faber asked. ‘Why did you just run off like that? You didn’t think that Candida and I ..?’
‘Of course not. Not really. But I’d just hit her son and …’
Faber broke in. ‘She came to talk about Iras’s novel. She didn’t know about Marcus and then Marcus’s secretary suddenly came in with a letter from the solicitors and, well, I dissolved on her. Poor Candida. Oh yes.’ Faber sighed. ‘All of a sudden we’re rich. Very, very. Marcus left us everything – me and Iras, that is.’ He drifted to stare out of the window. He drummed his fingers on the cold radiator. ‘Why did you come here? If something was wrong you could have stayed and told me. Oh, but of course, I forgot: you’d killed Candida. Sorry. I’m burbling. I’m very, very tired. And I’m cold. Why isn’t the radiator on? Does that make it more holy? I spent the night on a bench in the bloody harbour waiting for a boat. Sorry. Well, say something!’
Robin had been sitting on the bed all this while. Now he stood and held out an arm towards the open door.
‘There’s something you should see,’ he said.
They walked in silence along a blank white corridor down a broad spiral staircase and out into a courtyard. Faber had been in such a rush when he arrived that he had barely looked at the strange building around him. Whelm resembled a nineteenth-century monomaniac’s idea of a French château. The pointed roofs and pinnacled turrets were in poor repair. The cream paintwork was streaked with green. The fine blue-grey slates had been replaced here and there with cheap green alternatives. The place stirred uneasy memories of Faber’s strange schooldays. Robin led him out of the courtyard to a large outbuilding. A barn, perhaps, or a stable.
‘In here,’ he said, opening a door.
It was as large as a barn, with high beams and great, barred doors but instead of hay bales there were apples and pears everywhere on trays in old wooden shelves that rose at least fifteen feet high. There were long ladders fixed to rails which ran along the lines of shelving.
‘Apples,’ said Robin, sliding one of the ladders towards him. He jumped onto it and slid away from Faber. The air was heavy with apple. ‘They call it the Fruit Library because of these things,’ he said. ‘Have one.’ He tossed Faber an apple. The tissue paper slid away in Faber’s grasp. The fruit’s skin shone red-green in the dim light from the half-open door.
‘There must be more here than they can possibly eat in a year,’ Faber said.
‘Oh yes. Some go to the girls on Corry in a swop for honey and wax, otherwise the surplus is sold in the market at Cloud Regis. They make cider too, and chutney. I found some of the chutney in a grand delicatessen in Chelsea so it’s not as amateur as it looks. I very nearly died in here,’ he went on. ‘I should have, really.’ Faber replaced the apple and caught up with him.
‘How come?’ he asked.
‘When I first arrived, eight years ago.’ Robin came down from the ladder and took Faber by the shoulders. ‘Faber, listen. I’m not well. I have attacks.’
‘You’re better. You said so. The breakdown’s finished. Anyone can see that.’
‘No. I still have attacks. It’s like … They’re like panic attacks. Paranoia. I don’t know. I read up on them a bit in London. I even went to some doctors. I think I might be schizophrenic. It could get worse.’
Faber locked his hands over Robin’s arms.
‘You should have told me,’ he said.
‘Would it have made any difference, then?’
‘Of course not. But you should have told me.’
‘How could I? You had enough on your plate and I … I thought it had gone away.’
‘What brings them on? These attacks.’
‘Nothing in particular. Stress, perhaps. I don’t know. Faber, it’s not fair on you. It’s not fair on Iras either.’
‘You running away isn’t fair. We love you, Robin.’
‘I hadn’t had one when I got here first. Not badly. Not since the mild ones when I was younger. I was just running. I just wanted to get right away from everybody.’
‘What happens when one comes on?’
‘Noises all go wrong. It’s as though everything’s hostile.’ Robin’s voice rose. ‘That sounds nothing, but I can tell you …’
‘Ssh. I know.’ Faber held him. Robin kept talking.
‘I arrived in the evening – at dusk. I only knew about the place from a theology tutor I’d talked to a bit – he’d spent time here – so I didn’t know my way around. An attack started as I came off the boat and was walking up here. The seagulls sounded like … just horrible. You can’t imagine.’
‘I think I can.’
‘You can’t, Faber. You couldn’t possibly.’ Robin broke away and snatched up a pear. He handled it absently as he talked. ‘Anyway, I just ran and all I could think of was getting indoors. This was the first door I found unlocked so I ran in here and slammed it shut behind me. People came and shouted outside – they’d seen me racing around like a rabbit and come to help. But their voices made it worse so I bolted the door. Then I tried to climb to get away. It was dark and I didn’t see the ladder. No one was sure what happened but Luke – that’s the one who was with me when you –’
‘Yes, Robin. We’ve already met.’
‘Of course you have. He said that when they unpadlocked one of the other doors and got in I was buried under about a ton or more of fruit and timber. This lot had collapsed. See? Here, where the wood’s newer than the rest. I was bruised a lot, I’d bust an arm and I was out cold for a day or more. It’s a wonder I didn’t suffocate. Apparently I only came round in order to go into a kind of, what’s the word, catalepsy? Catatonia?’
‘Don’t ask me.’
Robin drop-kicked the pear to the far side of the room.
‘I have no memories until five or six years later,’ he said.
‘Christ!’
‘Quite.’ Faber went after Robin and held him close. ‘You don’t want me,’ Robin mumbled. ‘I don’t work properly. I malfunction.’
‘You function fine.’
‘Hardly.’
Faber rocked him gently against a ladder.
‘Fine enough,’ he said. ‘We’ll cope. When you have an attack, I’ll hold you like this and I’ll take all the sound away. We’ll find a specialist. I’m rich now, remember? We’re rich. Rich people get better …’
‘I don’t want to be rich,’ Robin cut in.
‘Think of all those bus rides! Unlimited bus rides! Once a week you can change the life of the beggar of your choice.’
‘Don’t be flippant, it ill becomes you. Will you still paint?’
‘Stupid! Of course I will and you’ll still have to ge
t a job and Iras will still have to go to school. Come home, Robin.’ Robin still felt hard and resisting in his grasp. Faber breathed in the rich apple smell and wondered if he had ever felt such desolation. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please, please come home. If you don’t, I’ll …’ Faber faltered. Robin pulled back and looked at him
‘You’ll what?’
Forty-Five
Candida kicked off her shoes then unzipped her dress, slipped it neatly onto a hanger, and sat at her dressing-table. Tanya, the new nanny, would be taking a heap of clothes to the dry cleaners tomorrow. Tanya was a blessing. More than that, she was a Good Person. She was firm in her kindness, even to the point of measuring out advice to Candida several times a day, which in anyone else – the ghastly Samantha, for instance – would have irritated her employer beyond measure. In Tanya however, Candida found it an awesome quality. Tanya told her to stay in more and entertain less. If the phone rang while Candida was reading Jasper a story or cuddling Perdita, Tanya told her to stay put then told whoever it was that Candida was unavailable. When Candida finished her brief stay in hospital, Tanya told her (as Jake had tried to do) that it was out of the question for her to return to work without at least one day’s rest at home. In some dim, neglected corner of her spirit, Candida had discovered a slightly lazy liking for being told what to do. She didn’t want Tanya to go the way of the others and she was treating her well. She was sure the Lady Canberra agency had no inkling that Tanya was a fervent follower of an extreme Right-wing Christian organisation called ‘Families First’, but Candida had no intention of letting the agency or Jake or anybody know.
‘If I were you, I wouldn’t tell Jake about the little incident with the young man at Jasper’s school,’ Tanya had said. ‘He’d only worry and insist on Jasper being moved. Jasper will be far happier staying where he is. Change isn’t good for them at that age.’
So Candida had told Jake nothing. A quick chat with Peter Maitland had made it clear that that particular problem was thoroughly out of the way. The other evening Tanya had seen the pills in Candida’s bag. She had told her to hand them over for examination then, pleasantly and calmly, handed them back and stood over Candida as she flushed them, one by costly one, down the waste disposal unit. The elder Maitlands were coming to a supper in a few days’ time; Tanya had been asked to join the party.
‘Mummy!’ Jasper ran in without knocking. Candida registered the fault but said nothing. Tanya had said he was too young to learn and that formality would make him more nervous than he had already become.
‘Hello, poppet.’
‘You’re home!’
‘Yes.’ She bent down and swung him up onto her lap for a kiss. He sat there and played with her hand mirror. ‘Hello, Tanya. Good walk?’
‘Lovely, thank you. We met Mrs Maitland with her little dog.’
‘She’s called Brevity,’ said Jasper, examining his nose closely in the mirror. ‘When can we have a dog, Mummy?’
‘Whenever we like, Jasper. When would you like one?’
‘But you always said no before!’
‘Well, silly Samantha didn’t like dogs. She said they made her sneeze. But Tanya says she’d enjoy it.’
‘Would she?’ Jasper threw a questioning glance at his new nanny.
‘It would stop me missing our ones at home,’ said Tanya.
‘When, then?’ he asked Candida.
‘Wait and see,’ she said, tapping his nose.
‘It can’t be for my birthday because I’ve already found the Cacharel jersey you said you’d give me if Perdita got chrissed.’
‘Christened,’ Tanya corrected him.
‘Yes, that,’ he said. ‘Well?’
‘Wait and see.’ Candida said again and smiled.
He looked sceptical.
‘I think it’s time for my tea,’ he told Tanya, who laughed and led him away.
Candida held her hand mirror so that it reflected the back of her head into the main looking-glass before her. After the bandages had been removed, there had still been bad bruising and an ugly line of five stitches on her scalp. Her hairdresser had cunningly teased her hair to mask it all. Turning her head slightly, to catch the light, Candida lifted his handiwork with her free hand, and inspected the damage. The bruise had almost gone. A nurse was calling at the studio tomorrow morning to take out the stitches.
She heard Jake’s car pull up outside. Since her wild cover-up attempt and its awkward results the other night they had not tried to make love. At first she had thought they were sulking with each other. Now she understood that they were manoeuvring with extreme delicacy, like two unwrapped burns victims in a confined space. The unfamiliarity of the sensation was such that she had misinterpreted it. Under Tanya’s benign rule, they had recently found themselves with a ‘quiet night in’ and had spent it listening to records and reading on either side of the fire. The extraordinary peace of the evening and the sudden sense of kinship with her husband had been almost frightening. In the days after their fight, she had thought she would never forgive his deceitfulness, but the pique her vanity had received in finding she had been Jake’s second choice was shamefully soothed by the secret consideration that Jake, her Jake, had been Robin’s first one.
‘Anybody home?’ Jake called in the hall. She heard Jasper call out to him and then both their voices in the kitchen. Quickly, she patted her hair back into place, dabbed on some scent and pulled on a woollen dress Jake had bought her once, that she had never worn enough. He met her in the hall.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hello.’ He took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. The gesture felt more intimate than any brief kiss.
‘I’ve got you a present,’ he said. ‘Well. I’ve got us a present.’
‘Where?’
‘In here,’ he said, smiling, enjoying his mystery. She followed him into the sitting-room. She could see nothing at first then he switched on a light. She looked around her and gave a gasp of genuine surprise. In place of the sea-green abstract that usually hung over the mantelpiece there was a new painting. ‘I bought it days ago but it’s only just come back from the framer’s,’ he told her.
She recognised its elements as swiftly as if it had been a photograph. Robin. Iras Washington and part of Faber’s studio. The colours were beautiful. Faber’s paintings were usually cold as though he were shining too harsh a light on his subjects, but this one glowed. The frame was smooth lime-bleached wood, like driftwood.
‘Is it by who I think it is?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but he hasn’t signed it, which might affect the value. Do you like it?’
‘Yes. Well. The colours are wonderful. “Like” is hardly the word, though. In the circumstances.’
‘But it’s good,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘Very,’ she reassured him. ‘I’m surprised he wanted to sell it.’
‘He didn’t.’
‘Ah.’
She walked up to it. Robin seemed to be teaching Iras how to read. The sun played in their hair.
‘We can’t possibly hang it in here,’ she said.
‘Why ever not? I’m sure Faber wouldn’t mind.’
‘Jake, just think a little. People will come to this room. Not just Faber and Robin, other people. This is our painting. Look. I’ve got the perfect place. I’ll show you.’ She lifted it off the mantelpiece and carried it upstairs. He followed her into their bedroom. ‘See?’ she said, leaning it on the mantelpiece in there. ‘If we hang it here, the sunlight in the picture’s going the same way as the sunlight in the room. It’ll be the last thing we see at night and the first thing we see when we wake up.’
‘Oh yes.’
She was glad he agreed to join in the lie.
‘Jake, it is special. It must have cost the earth. Thank you.’ She kissed him. He smelt of car leather and offices and tension; smells she liked. She kissed him again. He kissed her back urgently. Whenever he did that now she would think he was trying to prove some point ab
out his manhood. It was a strain they would learn to live with. Like the painting.
He pulled back, looking over her shoulder at the colourful canvas and her childhood friend. Perdita was crying and they heard Tanya’s quick, light footfall on the staircase.
‘What’s that bit?’ he asked.
‘Which.’
‘There.’ He pulled away altogether and pointed. ‘The orange thing in the shadow on the table.’
‘Oh, that,’ she said, reaching out to squeeze his hand in sympathy. ‘Orange peel. Don’t you remember? Robin’s peeled an orange to make a perfect F. Faber may not have signed it, but he’s there.’
Forty-Six
Andrea was watching television. She was so excited she could hardly sit down. She kept leaning forward to adjust her books and newspapers that were on the table between her and the screen.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s nearly time.’
‘Coming,’ Peter called from below. What was he doing? There was a report on school meals going on. A clock in one corner of the screen said it was a quarter to nine. Faber had said that they’d be on by then.
‘Quickly,’ she shouted. ‘You’ll miss it.’
The report finished but unexpectedly, Candida announced Cartoon Time and the screen was taken up with the antics of violent mice. Perhaps there was some hitch in the studio. Iras was bound to be nervous, poor dear. Peter started to sing Happy Birthday to You on the stairs.
‘Oh, hell,’ Andrea thought. ‘I’m fifty. I don’t want to be fifty.’
He appeared in the doorway with a beatific grin on his face and something behind his back.
‘You’d thought I’d forgotten, hadn’t you?’
‘No,’ she protested, laughing.