They spent three days in a bleak hotel near the hospital, then nearly a week in Paris to make what Eddy called ‘arrangements’.
‘Don’t you dare call it that,’ Pip had said. ‘It’s a fucking funeral.’ When he had to tell Eddy a second time, he grabbed his father by the neck of his jacket in a café on rue Montorgueil. He’d held a finger, hard, up to Eddy’s face. In his grief, Pip was fearless, and seeing grief, Eddy conceded.
It seemed everyone agreed that Pip should go back to his parents’ house with the baby, and so he let himself be led.
‘Juste pour l’instant,’ Esmé had said. ‘Till you find your feet,’ Eddy added, by email.
His parents’ new house was big and old, and had a lot of land. When Pip had been there for a week, he called his father.
‘Where the fuck have you sent us?’
‘Provence.’
‘How will she ever get better if you won’t let her live anywhere normal?’
‘She likes it there. It’s where she grew up. Where we grew up.’
‘It’s in the middle of nowhere.’
‘It’s not too far from the airport.’
‘She doesn’t fucking drive.’
‘It’s a big house. A lovely big house.’
‘She’s alone in it.’
‘Not with you there.’
‘But I’m not staying. I can’t stay.’
‘It’d be good for her.’
‘You’re so full of shit. There’s no way I’m going to let him grow up ten miles from the nearest village.’
‘Look, Pip—’
‘I’m not going to do that to him.’
‘I have a meeting now.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘And you’ve got a fucking tongue on you. Your mother never brought you up like that.’
‘No. You did,’ and by the time Pip added ‘you prick’ Eddy had hung up.
* * *
Two months later, on one of the weekends when Eddy was home, he commented on the length of Pip’s hair.
‘You’re not looking after yourself,’ he said, and he suggested that perhaps Pip should see the same doctor as Esmé had.
Esmé ended dinner abruptly. She took Eddy into the next room. The next day Eddy made calls. A few calls. Three or four. He got a job for Pip at an accounting firm. ‘Entry level, but not bad. Big place. Lots of room for progression. Easy. London. They’re going to have the intern find you a flat.’
Pip had cut his hair, and packed their bags, and so it was, and here they were.
* * *
That night, J could not eat much of his dinner. It was fish fingers. They had been done on the grill, and for slightly too long. When he cut them open, the rectangles of fish had shrunk inside their cases, It looked like there was glue around them, like they’d been stuck in. He thought of papier mâché. The peas were plump at first, but now they were cold they had wrinkled into raisins.
Pip never thought that he would be hungry at this time – it was seven, though meant to be six-thirty – but often ended up accidentally eating with his son.
‘Dip it in the ketchup,’ he said, mid-mouthful.
‘I think I’m full now.’
‘It’s nice with the ketchup.’ Pip picked up a second fish finger, dunked it in the red and put it in his own mouth. There was something about eating food which had cooled that made him even hungrier. ‘Peas are good in the ketchup too. You can mix them in,’ he said, and he did. Kids’ food, Pip thought. Baked beans, smiley faces. It tastes of things not being complicated.
J said he’d finished.
‘After tea, do you want to do some drawing together?’ Pip asked. Until recently, he’d forgotten how much he’d liked drawing when he was a boy.
‘I thought you said we called it “dinner” at our house.’
‘After dinner then.’ He remembers all of the things I say. How is this possible? I made this boy, I made him. ‘Have you finished?’ He took a spoonful of his son’s peas. ‘Do you want to draw then?’ Stop asking him questions. ‘You like drawing, you’re good.’ Draw with the kid, Pip told himself, if you think that’s a good idea.
‘No,’ J said. ‘Can we watch a film? Or just me. Can I watch a film? You don’t have to watch it if you don’t want to.’
Films stopped you from thinking. Pip said yes and after he had finished J’s peas, and rolled the last fish finger up in a slice of bread, he turned on his laptop, and angled it so that they could both see the screen. They didn’t have a television.
‘What about…?’ Pip said the name of a film.
‘Is it long?’
‘What do you mean, is it long? Do you mean is it good?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Yeah, it’s good. Do you want an apple?’
‘No.’
‘Chocolate mousse?’
‘No.’
‘Really? No chocolate mousse?’
‘OK.’
Pip went to the fridge and got a green and silver can of beer, and two mousses. He handed one to his son, with a large spoon meant for serving. ‘We should have had apples.’ Pip opened his beer. ‘Apples are healthier.’
Because of the slight deafness, Pip turned his head a little when he looked at the screen. This made J feel like his father was looking at him, and making sure he was OK, which felt good. The film was funny. Laughing made J’s stomach feel empty at first, and then it felt fine. Pip had another beer and then laughed even more, and that made J feel better still. Soon though, the film was over.
‘But you said it was long.’
‘No I didn’t. I said it was good.’
‘Can we watch another one?’
‘No, it’s nine o’clock. Bedtime.’
‘Just one though.’
‘More film? No. I have a friend coming over.’
‘Who?’
‘You don’t know them.’
J didn’t say anything.
‘There’s nothing wrong with a friend. You have friends,’ said Pip.
‘Are they nice?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, but…’
‘What?’
‘Is it a boy or a girl?’
‘What is this? Are you some kind of policeman, now?’
‘No.’
‘You have to go to bed.’
‘But you’re not going to bed.’
‘I’m your dad. I’m allowed.’
The boy tried his hardest not to, but he yawned.
‘See?’ Pip said. ‘You’re tired.’
J let his body go limp, and his father carry him into bed. Pip brushed the boy’s teeth there, head on pillow, with a tiny bit of toothpaste and hardly any water. J’s eyes were shut the whole time. They were shut until his father left, and with him, the light.
J was not asleep. His ears were open. He waited. He heard the door open. He heard a woman’s voice. He heard his father laugh again. He heard the woman laugh.
The cinema screen in his head started playing films and films and films. Fires again, and hearts stopping working. Falling down stairs; his father falling down stairs. The boy heard more laughter. He imagined kissing. He tried to close his eyes but they were already closed. He tried to open them but it was so dark what he saw didn’t change. They lay on top of each other. Worse, they fell in love. Fires, axes. He put his hands over his head.
He must have stayed like that for an hour, longer. When he let his arms go, and stopped clenching his eyes, and tensing his ears so he could only hear blood, he thought for one half of a second that he had finally found blankness. Then he heard a noise from the next room. A different noise to the one before, and he did not know what it meant. ‘I can’t stay here any more,’ he said, out loud, to no one.
When he came out of his room, he saw that his father was lying still, with his eyes shut, eyelashes wet, in the lap of a woman. The woman looked as if she didn’t know what to do.
(To J, she was a woman. In fact, she was nineteen – though it was not strange that Pip thoug
ht her older. There was something like a shadow underneath her eyes. Her clothes were sandy-coloured. Her hair shone like polished wood. It was the way her wrists were thin and her eyes like almonds that Pip liked. They reminded him of other women he had loved – his mother; Clémence; Jude, still. All of the women he had loved. This girl, this new girl, had brought them back.)
‘Is this him?’ she said. To Pip maybe, or to the air.
J nodded. ‘This is my house,’ he said.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked the boy. He was looking at his sleeping father and down at a dark red stain by the sofa.
‘Is he hurt?’
‘Oh, no. God no. It’s not blood.’ J looked up at the word blood. ‘No, I mean, it’s nothing bad like that. He spilt his drink, is all.’ The girl felt hot suddenly. Her bra strap, yellow, had fallen over her arm; she pushed it back up over her shoulder. ‘Your dad’s sleeping. He’s fine, he’s sleeping. Are you OK?’
‘I can’t sleep.’ J took a step towards them, then stopped. His toes curled into the carpet. Despite the dark beneath her eyes – light smudges, like thumbprints – she was pretty, the woman, the girl, and reminded him of someone.
‘Is he OK?’ J asked her.
‘You can sit next to us if you like.’ It was a sofa for three people.
‘Is he crying?’
‘I don’t know. He’s been … I don’t know.’
‘That’s my dad.’
‘I know.’
J climbed onto the sofa using his knee. He sat next to the girl. His feet did not touch the ground.
‘Why was he crying?’ J asked. He hadn’t quite yet learnt to whisper. Some words were soft, others pushed out at full volume. Pip did not wake up though, just stayed, somewhere else, with his head on the girl’s lap.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said.
‘Has he been thinking too?’
‘Probably. Don’t we all think?’
‘Are you doing it as well?’
‘I think we all do.’
‘I know. But did he tell you about the thing?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Which thing? About…’ The girl pointed, loosely, kindly, at a photograph of Clémence in a small frame on the table. ‘About your mum?’
‘No. Not about her.’ J shook his head. ‘About the thing that he said. That nothing ever happens like you think it will.’
The girl did not look troubled, like J had been. She looked down at the man’s head, passed out in her lap, and thought that it was probably true.
‘He said: “Nothing ever happens like you think it will. Exactly.” For it to work, you have to think it exactly.’ J sat on his left foot, because it was cold. ‘If you think it in your head then it will only happen there, and not here. You can stop it from happening here.’ With the word ‘here’, he touched the sofa, like the sofa was the real world, and the whole world. ‘He said he read it in a book.’
The girl just looked at the boy. She didn’t have any brothers or sisters either; she didn’t know how to be with children. Half of the girl, more than half, wanted to go home.
‘It’s hard though,’ J said, and his forehead moved, trembled, like water in the wind. ‘I’ve been trying to think of everything. Everything bad, that I don’t want to happen.’ He looked up at her. ‘I have been trying. If he wakes up, will you tell him I have? Will you tell him I tried?’ J was starting to cry now. Pink had poured into his cheeks – he changed colour just like his father did; in so many ways he was just like his father – and hot tears, she could tell they were hot just from looking at them, swelled in his eyes. ‘But I’m tired now,’ he said. ‘I’m tired but,’ tears at the tip of his nose, on his chin, all over his face, ‘I still … still can’t sleep.’
‘Oh. Oh,’ the girl said. ‘Come here. I don’t think he meant that.’ J found space for his head in the side of her waist and nestled into it. ‘I don’t think you have to do that. It’s not up to you to do that.’
J could feel the heat of his father’s head against his own. The girl could feel the heat, and weight, of both of them. She realized that there are certain things which make you an adult. The simple presence of someone younger than you. The girl had never done this before, but she said, ‘There, there. There, there. There, there, there.’
For a while, J cried. Then crying turned into breathing, turned into slower, turned into something like sleep. There was silence, the screen in his head was finally blank.
* * *
That night, the house did not burn. There were no scorpions, hooded men, knives. Just a father, a son, and a girl to rest their heads upon.
Other People’s Shopping Baskets
Days turn into weeks turn into years. It is Sunday, Sunday again, and the supermarket shuts in ten minutes.
People who shop at this time have not chosen to shop at this time. They are rushing, and thrust just enough for Sunday night and Monday morning into their trolleys. Crisps, chicken, wine for a kind of communion; cornflakes and milk for breakfast.
Pip has just walked in through the automatic doors. He says ‘shit’ in his head as his eyes scan the queue. Thirteen people, more, stretched out into clots and clumps all along the biscuit aisle.
Marvellous, he thinks. There’s only one person on the till, and it’s a fully fledged child.
The gluey-skinned teenage boy at the check-out holds a £5 note to the light to check for the hologram.
Don’t fanny around with fivers when the whole world and his wife is here.
Pip looks down. The whole world and his son. His son. When they walk next to each other, he only sees the top of the boy’s head and the tip of his nose. Half of me. Half made of me. He reaches down and dusts J’s blond hair with his knuckles.
‘Get off,’ J says and winces away. ‘Eugh.’
He has recently discovered rudeness. Pip still finds it novel.
‘Seriously? Are you serious? You make me laugh. You’re not fifteen. Go and get the bread.’
‘Fine,’ J replies and walks off. The way he says ‘fine’ makes Pip hate American TV shows.
‘Brown bread,’ he calls after his son. ‘With bits in. Healthy, OK?’
Pip wonders suddenly what it will be like when they walk next to each other and are head-to-head. He’s going to be so tall, people keep on telling Pip, tall and heartbreaking. Just like his daddy. It always occurred to him, after people said it: wasn’t the term ‘heartbreaker’?
Pip has sundried tomatoes, orange juice, beers, and lasagne for two in his basket. He needs garlic bread and apples. He finds them. Then he finds his son, who has brown sandwich buns in one hand, and a jumbo bag of brioche in the other.
They get in the queue to pay. It’s curved round to the frozen section now. The kid on the till is still checking each note and doesn’t know the code for any of the fruit. Pip props his beers on top of frozen cauliflower florets in an open freezer so they’ll stay cold.
‘I don’t like lasagne,’ J says, bending over and tapping the packet in the basket.
‘Stop. Now you’re just trying to be annoying.’
‘I’m not, ack shully.’
‘It’s what you order when we go to restaurants.’
‘Not any more.’ J pauses. He wants to get the next bit right. ‘Meat is animal.’ He looks up at his dad. He feels brave. ‘Dead,’ he adds.
‘Oh no. No, not at all. I’m not going to have a vegetarian for a son. I refuse.’
Pip realizes that the woman in front of them in the queue is laughing at their conversation. He sees movement in her shoulder blades, and in her hair, which is long, blonde, shines, has a slight wave at the ends. It’s the kind of hair men want to touch.
‘I’ll have to leave you here,’ he says to his son. ‘Right here in the supermarket. You’ll have to live here.’ It’s not strictly intentional, but he’s speaking louder so the woman in front can hear. He likes to make a woman laugh; he hasn’t always been able to.
‘I don’t care,’ J says. ‘I’ll just eat chocolate.’
He points at the wall of biscuits.
‘You’ll have to pay for them, and you don’t have any money and then…’ The queue moves forward a bit. ‘You’ll go to prison.’
Pip wonders if he’s gone too far. The woman in front turns around.
For that first half of a second, he doesn’t look at her face. Her chest is distracting. She doesn’t have a trolley or a basket. Her arms are up high as if to hold a baby – and he looks at her chest from left to right to see what she is carrying. So many things. Nectarines, pesto, super plus Tampax, a four-pack of yoghurt, herbs, rosé. A tin of foie gras balanced in the crook of her elbow.
As she turns, she keeps her eyes on her arms so she can concentrate. The tin of foie gras steadies and she looks up at Pip.
‘He’s…’ She was intending to say ‘he’s so sweet’ but she catches Pip’s eye on her way down to the child, and goes no further.
His face. She looks at him and knows his face.
He knows hers too.
‘Oh my God,’ he says. He doesn’t mean to breathe in quite that hard.
‘Shit.’ Her tampons fall. ‘Hi. Hi,’ he says. ‘It’s you.’ He can’t believe it. ‘I can’t believe it’s you.’
He looks at her armfuls again. ‘Why don’t you have a trolley?’
‘I don’t – I never do. Things get—’
‘You look amazing.’
‘—squashed.’
Sofi and Pip are looking at each other and trying to see how many years it’s been in clues like clothes and eyes. His jumper is soft, powder-grey, and stubble on his cheekbone catches the strip-lighting. Egon Schiele angles still, but sanded down now. He is noticeably handsome. She is wearing bright red. She’s just been on holiday in Croatia and her skin is still tanned.
Sofi looks down at the young boy. ‘Fuck me! He’s not yours, is he?’ J’s feet are slightly apart so he can stand strong and his eyes are bright blue and huge, almost too big for his head. ‘Fuck! I’m sorry for swearing. But is he yours?’
‘I’m my own,’ J says. Skin like eggshell. His lips are so pink.
The Last Kings of Sark Page 19