by Peter Walker
At Jams and Spreads two young women were clashing shopping trolleys.
‘Cow!’
‘Cow!’
‘She hit me with her thing,’ cried one. ‘She is cow. Her mother is cow.’
Her little face in a brown veil looked like a flower in a pot.
‘Get away from me,’ said the other young woman. Her navel was bared and pierced. ‘Go back to your own country.’
‘Leave her, darlin’,’ said her boyfriend. ‘Do yourself a favour.’
‘You permit me in your country,’ said the first. ‘Now permit me to exist.’
‘She hit me with her trolley. Wiff her kid in it! Shows how much she cares about her kid. She’s a cow.’
‘Cow!’
‘Cow!’
‘That’s enough,’ said Toby.
They stared at him.
‘What’s it got to do with you?’ said the English girl.
‘I can’t get past,’ said Toby.
There was a silence.
‘Cunt,’ said the boyfriend in a small voice.
‘Optrex,’ thought Toby.
‘Optrex!’ he said. ‘That’s what I came for.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ said the boyfriend. ‘That’s good stuff, that is.’
The woman in the brown veil went one way, the English pair another. Toby found the Optrex, paid at the self-service till. ‘Thank you for using Sainsbury’s self-service,’ all the machines were singing. ‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’
He put the Optrex in his bag. Then he saw Jojo’s books there.
‘Damn,’ he said aloud. He had meant to drop them at the library when he left home. Now he would have to go back up the hill. Outside the heat of the sun hit him. The sky had a bronze cast to it. The crowd at the bus stop was huge. The sun had not only brought English limbs out of hiding, it had brought forth the English themselves from a thousand rooms, basement squats in Camden Town, mansions on Primrose Hill. And the convertibles! Where had they been hiding? They came cruising down Parkway as elegant, as evolutionarily inevitable, as dragonflies above a pond. A flock of cyclists went scudding past. People were avoiding the Underground. There were rumours of more terrorist attacks. Jittery, bellicose, magpies clattered their beaks in the oaks above the traffic. A bus came up from the West End; the driver slowed, peered at the throngs on the pavement and drove on.
‘Fucker!’ sang voices in the crowd. Toby rapidly re-calculated. If he took a bus to King’s Cross and dropped the books off there? Or went up to Chalk Farm and then took the tube south? The great shapeless city stretched out in his mind. Then three buses all came along together and he squeezed onto one with the crowd.
‘Ow!’ cried a girl with dark blue hair and pallid skin. ‘Don’t push me. If only you knew how much I don’t like being pushed. OW!’ Her voice rose to a scream.
‘Shocking, that!’ said a black schoolboy joyfully. ‘Like she’s havin’ an orgasm!’
‘Excuse me,’ said the Goth girl. ‘I hurt my foot.’
‘Hurt your head more like,’ said an old woman.
The bus braked sharply.
‘Oh, God! Why did he stop like that?’ said the Goth girl.
‘Some of us have bad backs,’ said the old woman.
‘If there was a accident, we wouldn’t have a chance,’ said an old man. ‘The Routemaster was better. Best bus they ever built.’
‘They always brake like that, for fun,’ said a Goth boy who was with the girl.
‘Ooooh,’ the Goth girl said. She reached up and tousled his hair. ‘Shall we go to yours? I want to – you know – change your body.’
‘You can change my body outside, but not inside,’ said the boy.
The bus stopped by the pub on the corner of Brecknock Road. For some reason everyone peered out the window as if there was something important to see.
‘I had a haircut up the Brecknock once,’ said the black schoolboy.
‘Watchoo ask for?’ said another boy.
Toby got off at the next stop and walked towards the library. He stopped outside his flat and stared down the road. He was thinking of Romulus’s homework: the sun rushing through the galaxy, the galaxy soaring on elsewhere.
‘So we’re never in the same place again,’ he thought. ‘Always somewhere completely new.’
Inside the library a woman in her sixties with a blonde perm was waiting at the desk. The librarian came out from a hiding place. Young, daffy, sweet, breathy, with thick glasses.
‘Can I help you?’ she said to Toby.
‘This lady was here first,’ he said.
‘I’ve come for me book I ordered,’ said the woman.
She handed a slip of paper to the librarian. The librarian took it and went away and came back with a book and handed it over.
‘ ’Ere!’ said the woman. ‘That’s not my book! That’s the wrong book.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the librarian. ‘Well – it’s the, um, same title and the, um, same author—’
‘Nah,’ said the woman. ‘It’s not worth reading, that isn’t. It’s too fin. I wouldn’t bother with a book like that.’
Librarian: ‘Oh, well then, I’ll just – um—’
She gave Toby a blind, helpless gaze.
‘Cancel it!’ said the woman.
‘Well – OK,’ said the librarian doubtfully.
‘No wonder they don’t advertise it,’ said the woman. ‘Book like that.’
‘Still, it might be all right,’ said Toby.
‘You what?’ the woman said. She stared at Toby. A fierce eye in a nest of dry wrinkles.
‘It might still be worth reading,’ said Toby. ‘Even though it’s so thin.’
‘Blimey,’ said the woman. ‘You an American?’
‘Yes,’ said Toby.
‘Oh, well,’ she said. She turned to the librarian. ‘I’ll take it then. Just because of what the gentleman says.’
She took the book back and looked down at it in her hand, and laughed grimly at her folly.
‘Fin book like this,’ she said.
Toby handed in Jojo’s books and paid the fine. Then he stepped outside the library and saw Race. Race was at the end of the ramp, staring up at him.
‘Toby!’ said Race.
‘What are you doing here?’ said Toby.
He saw his father just then as a stranger might see him, tall, sandy-haired, slightly lost in the London streets. His check shirt . . .
‘I got in early,’ said Race. ‘My flight changed. So I just thought I’d – I’d – I’d just look around your neighbourhood.’
‘That’s fine, that’s great,’ said Toby. He felt like laughing for some reason. Then he saw the expression in Race’s blue eyes. Race looked innocent, alarmed, uncertain – as if just then he had become the son and Toby the father, as if just for a moment they had changed places, as sons and fathers do.
Part V
2010
1
Jojo lay sprawled on the carpet. She was, in her own view, hard at work. Race, looking through the open double doors into the rumpus room, appreciated the sight. He loved his daughter-in-law and he was appreciative, as well, of her good looks. The long limbs, the shortish blonde hair which she flicked back with one hand as she studied the terrible puzzle. Her hair immediately, heavily, fell over her eyes again. The jigsaw she was doing was also rather beautiful – a long, narrow picture of the Empire State Building, rendered in a greenish hue as if seen under water; the colour was also reminiscent of dollar bills. Though how anyone, Race thought, had the patience to do a jigsaw of the Empire State Building, all those thousands of windows . . .
He himself was doing the dishes. It was his turn that night. FitzGerald had done them the night before, and Tolerton the night before that. The dishwasher had been stacked. Race was now dealing with the pots and pans, the roasting tray. The kitchen had an L-shaped bench from where, to the right, you could see into the rumpus room and, to the left, across the dining area and sitting-room, to an open deck beyond. T
oby was in the far corner of the sitting-room watching a movie. Outside on the deck in the early evening were FitzGerald and his Danish wife, Inga, and Lane Tolerton. Inga was drinking wine. FitzGerald and Tolerton were drinking single malt.
It was on this coast, along this road, perhaps near this very spot, that the old Chevrolet had broken down all those years before. No, they hadn’t broken down, thought Race – FitzGerald had slammed it into a ditch. On their first night in this house, which they had rented for a month, Race went out on the deck after midnight and there, out to sea, was an ocean liner, a cruise-ship, passing silently, all lit up, far away. That sight had been unthinkable when they were last there, standing round the old Chevrolet trapped in the sand. The world had become much richer, and less dark at night. In a way he missed the darkness. So far on this holiday on the coast they had not gone out to the Tawhai farm. Who was out there now? What would they say to them? ‘We’ve come to see Morgan’s grave’? They kept putting the trip off.
They were also waiting for Candy and Chadwick to arrive. When Race announced he was going to take a trip to New Zealand, Toby and Jojo said they wanted to go as well. Toby hadn’t been back since he was a child, Jojo had never been. Then Candy said that she had to come. Then Chadwick decided to fly in as well. But neither Chadwick nor Candy, arriving from different directions, one from the east and one from the west, had so far appeared. Chadwick was at a conference in New Delhi. India was essential, he said, the future counter-weight to a tyrannous China; the great fact of the next century might just be that India spoke English and was a democracy. Candy, meanwhile, had rolled over on her ankle and she couldn’t travel until the bruising went down and the ligaments began to knit.
‘I’m amazed!’ said a voice. Without looking up, Race knew who it was.
‘Inga,’ he said. He was scrubbing the wire rack. They had had grilled lamb for dinner.
‘I – am – astonished,’ said Inga. She was standing on the other side of the bench, in the dining area, her hands on her hips. Race looked at her admiringly. He couldn’t help admiring Inga – her appearance – the chic hair, the red lips, the amount of cleavage, richly tanned, on display, the good ankles – and her nerve. She has some nerve, he thought.
‘You, doing the dishes,’ she said. ‘While he’ – she pointed at Toby in the distance – ‘and she’ – she pointed into the rumpus room – ‘are lying round doing nothing.’
‘I don’t mind doing the dishes,’ said Race. ‘Leave them. They’re young.’
‘Young!’ she said. ‘They’re not young. They’re twenty-eight.’
‘Inga, this is not your business,’ Race said. Though she’s right in a way, he thought. ‘That’s my son,’ he said. ‘That’s my daughter-in-law. Please don’t interfere.’
‘I’m going to say something.’
‘I’ve asked you not to.’
Inga marched into the rumpus room.
‘Inga,’ said Race.
‘You’re lazy,’ said Inga to Jojo, who was lying poised above the Empire State Building. ‘You’re lazy and you’re spoiled. You haven’t lifted a finger all day.’
Jojo said nothing for the moment. Carefully she inserted the topmost section of the mast on the Empire State Building in its place in the great puzzle.
‘Gotcha!’ she said.
Then she looked up past Inga, to Race.
‘She’s really quite grumpy, isn’t she?’ said Jojo.
Inga had found the house in the first place and arranged to rent it and agreed the terms and conditions and paid the deposit and collected the keys. That, Race thought, might have been a mistake, if it meant she was now going to throw her weight around. She stood looking down at Jojo, then turned and marched away. She came into the kitchen and poured herself another drink.
‘I have no interest in being here,’ she said to Race. She held her glass between her breasts. ‘I only organised it for your sake. I wasn’t on your trips here a hundred years ago. I never knew this Morgan person. But I kept hearing about him from FitzGerald, and then, with all the rest of you showing up . . . Frankly, I couldn’t care less about him. Was he gay?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Race. ‘The last time I ever saw him he was boasting about this girl he’d just slept with.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Inga. ‘That was probably just a cover. Rod Orr says he was gay. He says he killed himself, jumping off a cliff. Or was pushed in a lovers’ quarrel. He says—’
‘You know Rod Orr!’ said Race. ‘I haven’t seen Rod for years.’
‘Of course I know him,’ said Inga. ‘He’s a darling.’
‘I suppose he never liked Morgan,’ said Race.
‘He was jealous,’ said Inga.
‘Jealous?’ said Race.
‘He wanted you as his friend.’
‘Me!’ said Race in amazement. He had never thought of this.
Toby burst out laughing in the far corner of the sitting-room.
‘What’s he doing?’ said Inga.
‘What are you watching?’ said Race.
‘Ghostbusters,’ said Toby.
That afternoon he had found a trove of old video tapes in a cupboard.
‘I was right,’ he called out. ‘It’s pure prophecy. The Stay Puft Man in a rage looks just like Dick Cheney in a rage.’
‘Let’s see,’ said Race.
‘I’ll wind it back,’ said Toby.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Race. ‘I take your word for it.’
He stacked the wire racks and roasting trays on the bench to drain. ‘Done,’ he said, to the dishes. Inga watched the proceedings closely.
‘Frankly, I’m not the slightest bit interested myself,’ she said. ‘I had my own friends, thank God. But since we’re here, for God’s sake go out and see the place. Just go. Stop this pussy-footing round.’
Race nodded. ‘She’s right,’ he thought. He walked out through the sitting-room. Inga followed. Race bopped Toby on the head with one finger as he went past. Toby, intently watching the credits roll, took no notice. Race and Inga went out on the deck above the sea. The sun had just gone down but the night was already quite dark. The sea was calm – a rolling, soft-footed calm, breaking on the rocks as if reluctant to make any sound at all. You thought of a parent watching sleeping infants, or a burglar waiting on the sill.
‘So here we are again,’ said Tolerton.
‘We should go out there tomorrow,’ said Race.
‘Not me,’ said Tolerton. ‘Not with this foot.’
He had been stung by a bee in the grass in the late afternoon and his foot had swelled up twice its size.
‘My own fault,’ he said. ‘Going round barefoot.’
‘You’re sure you’re all right?’ said Inga. ‘You’re not going to go into anaphylactic shock on us, are you?’
‘I’m slightly allergic, that’s all. It will go down in exactly three days. This whisky is extremely good for it.’
The next day a violent wind was blowing in from the tropics. Each of the headlands, one after the other – Horoera, Wakatiri, Cape Runaway – stood out to sea under a bonnet of shining cloud. Everyone was going on the expedition with the exception of Tolerton who came to the carport at the back door to see them off. He was in a red dressing-gown and walking with the aid of a stick. He had one foot in a running shoe, the other was bare as no shoe would fit it.
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ said Inga. ‘We might be away for hours.’
‘Of course I’ll be all right,’ said Tolerton. ‘I’ll be glad to get some peace and quiet, you lot out of the way. I have some work to do.’
Tolerton was a High Court judge. He had been able to get away for only a few days and he had brought some judgments to write. Now he raised his walking stick like the starter at a race-track and the cars set off, FitzGerald and Inga in the lead in a smart new silver sedan, Race and Toby and Jojo in Tolerton’s old Land Rover. Toby and Jojo were not in fact going out to the Tawhai farm. They had strapped their kite-surfing ge
ar on the roof-rack and were planning to jump out at one of the beaches along the way.
‘Here, Dad,’ Toby kept saying. ‘This looks great. Just stop here.’
‘Wait,’ said Race. ‘It gets better.’
He had been along this road now, he calculated, four times in his life – twice in daylight – and he remembered great sweeps of empty sand, the surf breaking for miles. No, six, he thought. Three times in daylight.
Toby meanwhile was getting agitated. Race might have been here before, he thought, but what did he know about wind-surfing? Look at those waves, look at those caps.
But the further towards the cape they went the stronger the wind blew.
‘Here we are,’ said Race, thankful that his memory had served him: two, three, four miles of sand stretched before them, not a soul, not a footprint to be seen.
Toby and Jojo jumped out, took down their gear from the roof, waved and were gone, over the low dunes without looking back. Inga and FitzGerald’s silver sedan was a speck in the distance. Race followed it and turned left at the crossroads and took the road to Cape Runaway. Everywhere he looked, the lie of the land had shifted, as if everything had swung slowly at anchor over the years. That roofline, that had not been there before, surely – yet the house was ancient, falling to bits in fact. This little creek he didn’t remember, with its white concrete bridge. And the cliff road, when he came crawling around it, was not nearly as high as it used to be . . .
And then, round the corner of the coast, there was a church with a scanty wooden belfry which was simply not listed at all in his memory.
In the distance he saw the silver sedan parked in the driveway of a newish-looking house by the road. Race stopped at the gate and got out of the Land Rover.
The wind here was direct, tremendous. He went up the path: all the new plantings – the flax and the giant grasses – were bending and shaking as if speechless at the wind and then, coming round the corner of the house, there was Morgan. But of course it was not really Morgan. ‘It’s only his brother,’ Race thought, but all the same he was startled, and impressed by the fidelity of the silent codes of inheritance. The man coming round the corner of the house looked just like Morgan might have, decades on. He had a startled expression on his face too, although he knew who Race was, he said, and he had come out to meet him.