by Judy Astley
Conrad had come into the house and complained, only the other day, that he had been ambling along the high street, not really concentrating as he walked, and had wandered into a group of teenagers. ‘Grandad’ had been the politest of the terms they’d used for him as they’d jostled him out of their way. He had reported all this to her with some surprise, as if he didn’t expect to have it confirmed by anyone out there on the streets that he was as old as his birth certificate told him.
Sara now decided to leave the subject alone, in the interests of tact, especially as he got so grouchy at any mention of his forthcoming birthday. Was it really going to be a day they must ignore? She hoped not. She quite liked birthdays. Somewhere out there would be the annual death days, waiting secretly hidden on the calendar, for all of them. A tiny superstitious part of her believed that if you carried on celebrating the one loudly enough, you could perhaps ward off the other, like clapping to show you believed in fairies to keep Tinkerbell alive.
Conrad was pushing Charlie’s buggy, looking happy. And so he should, Sara thought. A grandchild was a delightful thing. Charlie was theirs and yet not theirs. Theirs for fun and to love but not for all-time responsibility, apart from on days like this when they were his minders – and it did feel good to be sharing this outing with Conrad. She hadn’t really had anything special in mind to do with him if she’d been by herself, nothing more than possibly a trip round Waitrose and maybe taking him to buy some board books to entertain him.
Were grandchildren a last-chance thing about getting relationships with children right for once? With her own, she’d spent so much time when they were little just struggling to get through each day that any bigger vision became a bit lost in the mix. Conrad had been away such a lot, teaching at first as a visiting lecturer wherever he was invited so they could survive financially, and then as he started to get celebrity portrait commissions he’d be away meeting clients, making sketches, working on the projects from life wherever they happened to be located. Later, when he became as fashionable as his subjects, they’d come to his studio. But by then the girls were into their early teens and didn’t need or want the hands-on input. The thought of cosy family outings tended to have them going, ‘Eugh do we have to come?’ in that awful way that young teens do when faced with the thought that they might be seen out with the parents. Too humiliating, and as they put it, bo–ringggg.
‘We haven’t been up here for quite a while, have we?’ Sara commented, looking around. They were approaching the Hayward Gallery, making for the riverside so they could walk along by the water, get Charlie out of his buggy and show him the boats on the Thames. It was breezy but sunny, the kind of day when you suddenly realize with mild surprise that the seasons have slid round to summer, and that days like this have to be appreciated while they’re here.
‘I loved it the last time, when we came to the Antony Gormley exhibition,’ she went on. ‘There was almost a party atmosphere out here on the street, with everyone looking around to find those bronze figures way up on the roofs for miles around. Strangers talked to each other, pointing out the figures, getting excited whenever they spotted another one – you don’t often get that kind of spontaneous communication outside a disaster or freaky weather.’
‘Event Horizon he called that,’ Conrad was frowning, ‘though how can you call something an “Event” when it’s just static? It reminds me of back in the sixties when there were all these things called “Happenings”, but nothing much did, just people in a field, looning about with acid, sex and music. It was all very self-conscious, “look at me, I’m cool enough to get naked.” You could do all that at home.’
Sara prodded him in the side. ‘Hey come on now, don’t get all antsy about Gormley! And it wasn’t static. The people talking to each other were part of the event, surely? Think of it that way.’
‘He got lucky,’ Conrad muttered.
‘He’s got talent,’ Sara countered swiftly. ‘And anyway, you liked that exhibition. In fact you loved it. I couldn’t drag you out of the Blind Light box.’
‘That’s because I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t find the exit,’ Conrad grouched. ‘I certainly didn’t see the point.’
‘Ah! But it made you think!’ He could be such hard work, she thought suddenly. Why couldn’t he just admit that he’d enjoyed it? She knew he had at the time. Was this another of those ‘old’ things? There were so many lately, what with the no-birthday thing, the sleeping in the studio and the refusal to travel, and this mad idea that he wasn’t going to make it to seventy. Could she face another possible, what, maybe as much as thirty years of him winding down, ever more moody, till he ended up complaining that he didn’t want all that hundredth-birthday fuss? No wonder she thought of . . . A fleeting picture of the man from the pub, in the sun with a glass of wine, came into her head. She banished it, fast. Thinking about one particular man in a vaguely fancying way was surely the first step on the Marie-and-Angus route – something which was never going to happen to her.
‘No it didn’t make me think,’ Conrad told her. ‘It made me damp and cross and I could hardly breathe in there.’
‘Yes, but there was that one thing though.’ Sara was determined that he should be positive. ‘Don’t you remember? The blind man – that was interesting. He went in there with the woman. Outside the box he was dependent on her to be his eyes, but they were on equal terms in that dense mist, neither of them able to see, dependent on each other in exactly the same way. Perhaps he was showing her what he “sees”; the blindness in there being stark white, being completely unable to see in bright white rather than darkness. Or . . . would he know the difference? You see? There was a point to the thing. It made you question. We’re talking about it, even now. Isn’t that a good thing with art?’
Conrad wasn’t having it. ‘They’d have been on equal terms anyway, in being run into by screeching overexcited schoolkids in there. Nothing like a dense, choking, steamy fog to get kids all wired up. Though I suppose,’ he grinned, ‘having schoolkids get excited by an art piece is an achievement in itself. All credit to Mr G. for that.’
He was looking across the river towards the Houses of Parliament. Sara wondered if his antipathy to Antony Gormley was anything to do with the student who had approached him at the Hayward in the room with the wire figures, the one who had rather nervously come up to Conrad and murmured, ‘Excuse me, aren’t you Lucian Freud?’ Conrad had been amused, flattered to have been recognized as a painter, even if it was the wrong one, and a much older one.
‘No, but close. I’m Conrad Blythe-Hamilton,’ he’d informed the lad, confidently waiting for the next bit which was usually, when admirers accosted him, something about his once-controversial painting of Mick Jagger as the crucified Christ and asking whose idea it had been for him to pose like that (Answer: Conrad’s). Instead the questioner had looked mystified, had simply said, ‘Oh. Sorry to have bothered you, mate.’ And walked away with no further comment.
‘I don’t look anything like bloody Freud.’ Conrad had sulked all the rest of the day. It wouldn’t be kind to remind him about this.
Sara also recalled, guiltily, other details of that day. Much as she’d loved Antony Gormley’s exhibits, she’d found herself distracted, her eye caught by a woman in a stunning coat. It was cream, overlaid with pale grey figures, like a very subtle toile de Jouy pattern, and she’d absolutely loved it. In the end she’d simply gone up to the woman by the pile of spent bullets in the corridor and asked her where it was from (Agnès B). She probably wouldn’t have done that on the street, but being at an event like that gave the viewers a common bond, even over something as frivolous as fashion. They’d had a girly chat about clothes, while eager culture vultures around them talked of vision and provocation and the challenges of spatial values. It was so different somehow from the starchy private views that Conrad had always hated, where people stood around clutching warm wine and a catalogue and making interested faces at paintings, wishing it was so
mehow all right just to have a normal conversation about absolutely anything else rather than express constant near-reverence at what they were looking at. She couldn’t blame Conrad’s age on his loathing of such gatherings.
Once inside the Aquarium, Charlie proved disappointingly uninterested in the fish. After watching a few of the more colourful specimens gliding across his line of sight, he lost interest and fidgeted to get out of his buggy. Conrad held him in his arms and pointed out the big sharks in the huge four-storey central tank, but Charlie was now more interested in the constant stream of school-children who bustled about being excited and comparing notes on the worksheets they were filling in.
‘He’s a bit young,’ Sara said. ‘I suppose he’s only just learned to focus really.’ And what are we doing here, she thought, looking at these poor captive creatures? This was just a zoo, but in water. Was it cruel? She couldn’t tell. It was certainly beautifully put together. Perhaps it was only cruel if the fish had the kind of brains that knew there was an alternative to captivity. Did lions at the zoo know this? If she was going to get all philosophical about this, how did it work if you applied it to humans? It would be different, because only humans could move away from the life they had to a life they’d chosen.
‘You never see any dead ones,’ Conrad commented as they walked along the corridor towards the Touch Pool, where the rays were on display in a huge shallow-water pond and could be stroked by onlookers. ‘When I was a child, my father kept a complicated tank of tropical fish and almost every week there was some poor thing floating, belly up. You’d think out of all the thousands of fish in here, at least one of them per tank, per day would have snuffed it, wouldn’t you? I’d love to lob a dead haddock into one of these so perfect displays, see how quickly any-one notices.’
‘Something would eat it. You’d probably find you’d chucked it in with the piranhas. And then you’d get thoroughly told off – I bet these fish have personal nutritionists.’
‘You’re too sensible, Sara.’ He sighed.
‘Maybe I am. Come on, one of us has to be.’
‘Hey!’ Conrad had an idea. ‘Maybe they’re not real at all, maybe they’re holograms!’ He put his nose up against a glass tank full of Pacific fish. They were the colours that a magazine fashion spread would describe as ‘acid brights’.
‘Well, look, they’re definitely not holograms in here. You can even do hands-on stuff,’ Sara told him, as they entered a room full of hyper-excited schoolchildren spread round a vast shallow tank, every child having a hand in the water. The elegant rays, some as large as tabletops, undulated round the pool, generously allowing themselves to be touched, then making for sanctuary out of reach in the centre when the mauling got overenthusiastic.
‘Don’t splash!’ roared an ineffectual teacher as the children tried to get the rays to swim over their fingers.
‘Now this is weird,’ Sara commented. ‘I wonder if the fish like it, having their bodies stroked by grubby schoolkids?’ But Conrad was already dangling Charlie over the side, gently putting his hand on the water’s surface. It wasn’t easy to keep the space, though – there were so many children, all jostling for room to touch the fish.
‘Conrad! Please be careful – hang on to him!’ She felt a dire certainty that Conrad was going to choose that moment to lose his marbles completely and see what happened if Charlie slid into the water with the fish. Of course he wouldn’t hurt him on purpose, but . . . well because there was something so not-as-usual about Conrad at the moment, she wouldn’t put any possibility past him. But Charlie was fine; he was wriggly and excited, happily bashing at the water’s surface as if he was in his bath. He was too small to reach the fish.
‘Pretty, aren’t they Charlie?’ Conrad was saying to him. ‘Very graceful. Look, those smaller ones over there, they’re called plaice. We eat those.’ Charlie smiled.
‘I don’t. I’m a veggy-tarian,’ a passing small girl sneered at him.
‘Hush, India. Come away.’ Her teacher glared at Conrad as if he was about to pounce and hold the child’s head under the water. Conrad glared back as if he was tempted to do exactly that, then looked at Sara and winked at her. She smiled back, feeling reassured that he seemed to be, for the moment, reasonably sane and happy. She relaxed and turned to look at the posters on the wall and read up about the different varieties of rays in the pond. As she was halfway through a description of their feeding preferences, the volume of the child crowd suddenly increased – there were shrieks and squeals and someone angry and adult shouted, ‘Hey you! Out of there, NOW !’ A whistle blew, sharply, urgently.
Sara looked through the crowd of laughing, pointing children who were being haphazardly rounded up by their teachers.
For a moment Sara couldn’t see Conrad, then she realized that he was actually in the pool, thigh deep and apparently oblivious that he was completely soaked. He’d left his shoes by the buggy, she noticed, so he’d at least had a moment to consider what he was doing. It wasn’t a hundred per cent spontaneous gesture, then. He was wading carefully towards the centre, taking no notice of the frantic staff, holding Charlie down close to the water as if this was just the shallows on a tropical beach and he was showing him the pretty shells.
‘Conrad! What the hell are you playing at?’ she yelled. The room was clearing as the school parties were vanishing fast, ushered out by one of the attendants. The three remaining staff were looking furious but uncertain – one of them kept a hand hovering over the fire alarm. Possibly nothing in their training schedule had equipped them for how to deal with a lunatic who decided to paddle with the fish. They looked at her now. ‘Get him out, immediately,’ one of them ordered, as if she was the only one who could make him hear.
Conrad looked up in surprise. ‘Charlie couldn’t reach the fish!’ he said, as if climbing over the barrier and wading around in the water was the most logical remedy for this. Obviously to him, it was.
‘But Conrad . . .’ Sara began, but at that moment Charlie lurched from Conrad’s hands and fell forward, his top half sploshing into the water on to a very surprised ray, which flicked its tail, sending a spray all over Conrad. Conrad grabbed Charlie, retrieving the now howling child quickly, and wiped his head on his shirt. Charlie, having worked out how cold the water was, upped the volume of his crying.
‘It’s all right Charlie boy! It’s only a bit of water! No harm done, is there?’ Conrad hugged him close and wet stains spread across his denim jacket. Water dripped from Charlie’s sparse hair and from his nose. Conrad now waded to the side of the tank and handed the baby over to Sara.
‘Quick, you mad idiot, let’s get out of here before we’re arrested,’ Sara said. ‘I’m going to get Charlie changed and dry and then I’ll meet you outside.’ She grabbed the buggy and turned it round, heading for the door.
‘Why? What’s the rush?’ Conrad asked. ‘At last he’s actually enjoying it!’ He climbed out of the tank, sending pools of water all over the floor. He looked around for his shoes and put them back on as if what he’d done had been nothing out of the ordinary.
‘No really, Conrad, let’s just go. I’ve got lots of spare clothes for him and he needs to get warm again.’ Sara almost pushed Conrad through the door and looked for the signs for the loo. She felt scared, as if she’d discovered something alarming and frightening about Conrad. Perhaps she had, she thought. He’d always been a tiny bit off the wall, but was he really beginning to lose his mind? Was laughing at Charlie the right reaction for almost plunging him into the cold fishy water? Her heart thumped fast at the idea of some version of dementia setting in. Her mother’s long-ago warnings came back to her. ‘In sickness and in health,’ she’d crowed. ‘That’s hardly going to be a fair division over time, is it?’ How spiteful that had sounded. Sara hadn’t really ever quite forgiven her for that. Illness could happen to anyone, she’d argued back: Sara herself could die, leaving Conrad alone with young children. She could have been run over in the street only weeks after they ma
rried.
Conrad was dispatched to wait outside the building on the steps by the Thames – always assuming, she thought furiously, that he didn’t decide he’d got a taste for leaping into cold water. Sara changed Charlie’s clothes, thanking the heavens that she’d brought plenty of spares with her and spreading them out over all the available space in the baby-changing area. Charlie seemed to understand her anxiety and cooperated beautifully, not rolling or wriggling but just looking at her calmly, as if trying to communicate that all would, somehow, be well. She prayed he was right.
‘You need to carry around so much kit with babies, don’t you?’ One of the teachers from the ray pool was by the door as Charlie was being crammed into his coat. She was a plump woman with too-long raggedy grey hair that had probably been gloriously auburn in its younger, darker days. Sara smiled uncertainly, feeling crazily paranoid that this woman might be tailing her, spying for a report to Social Services that she and Conrad were unfit grand-parents. A mad thought, but it went perfectly with her mood of the moment.
‘And it can’t be easy for you,’ the woman sympathized, leaning against the doorpost. ‘I know what it’s like being an older mum and dealing with an elderly relative at the same time; they’re like extra babies, aren’t they? A liability when they start to lose it, the way your father did in there. And us, stuck in the middle between our own children and our second-childhood parents!’ She patted Sara on the shoulder; it was meant kindly but made Sara want to cry. She didn’t trust herself to speak, so didn’t put the woman right about the various relationships here. What, after all, was the point? She muttered dutiful thanks, managed half a smile, gathered Charlie and his possessions into the buggy and fled.