‘They wouldn’t serve him in here,’ said Colette with confidence, ‘and anyway, he doesn’t drink now.’
‘Doesn’t he?’ said Aldous. ‘That’s what you think, is it?’
‘I know it for a fact, and anyway, he’s at work.’
But he didn’t work every night. Even Janus had days off now and then. Usually they were midweek days. He was never off long enough to break his sleep pattern. On his days off he slept all day and was awake all night. Colette wondered what he did all night. Didn’t he get lonely? I love it, Janus had declared. It’s like having everything to myself.
‘I don’t think it can be a good thing to be on nights for so long. It’s been over a year now. Or is it two years? He’s been working nights all that time. It must do something to your mind after that long, it’s not natural.’
‘Can we stop talking about Janus?’ said Aldous.
Colette did stop talking. So did Aldous. They would often sit silently like this, enjoying nothing more than watching their family and their family’s friends enjoying themselves. They settled into a long spell as regulars of this pub. They spent a bleary Christmas Eve there. They drank out the old year and drank in the new. Their circle of friends continued to evolve. Every week someone new was brought along. James would present his latest girlfriend.
‘She’s a specialist in kinship systems,’ he would say, introducing a serious-looking girl with no make-up and dark hair that hung in straight sorceress-like curtains around her face.
‘Oh really, so she knows all about uncles and aunts, does she?’ said Aldous
‘Brothers and sisters have I none, but that man’s father is my father’s son,’ said Colette.
‘Actually, I’m investigating the incest taboo,’ said the student.
‘She’s doing fieldwork in the Amazon next year,’ said James, proudly.
Aldous and Colette were rather disappointed when the kinship specialist became a regular.
Colette found herself increasingly bothered by the flirtations that were continuing between Julian and Veronica. After observing them one evening, how Julian kept pawing at the woman, and how the woman failed to protest convincingly, she said to Aldous, ‘Do you think Julian is sleeping with Veronica?’
‘No,’ he said with an immediacy, suggesting he’d already pondered the question himself, ‘of course not.’
‘Why “of course not”? Haven’t you noticed how tall he’s become? And he’s started washing. He never used to wash . . .’
‘Because we didn’t have a bath.’
‘Besides, I heard him and his pimply friends talking in The Lemon Tree, and they were talking as though he had slept with her.’
‘Were they? How do you mean?’
‘I caught phrases like what was it like, what sort of noises did she make, and more obscene remarks concerning anatomical details that I don’t want to repeat. In short, O’Malley, or one of those three, I can never tell them apart, was asking him about the experience, and he was supplying rich, lurid detail.’
‘Perhaps you misheard. They were probably talking about a film or something. Or else he was just pretending he’d slept with her.’
‘Would it matter if he was sleeping with her, do you think?’
‘I’m not sure. How old is he?’
‘How old is Julian?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t know how old your own son is?’
‘I’ve forgotten. Can you remember?’
Colette thought for a moment.
‘Well he’s still at school isn’t he? He must be too young. They’d be committing a crime.’
‘To be honest,’ said Aldous, ‘if I thought that Julian was sleeping with Veronica I would find it a cause for celebration, even if it meant they both had to go to prison. I would light a box of Catherine wheels. I would hang flags from the acacia to celebrate the fact that I have a normal son.’
‘Unlike Janus, you mean?’
‘Yes, exactly.’
Colette sighed.
‘I suppose you’re right. In that case, perhaps we should be encouraging it. Perhaps I should have a word with Veronica . . .’
When she could, Colette did her best to eavesdrop on Julian’s conversations with his friends and further became convinced that Julian was having an affair with Veronica.
One Saturday Julian didn’t come to the pub, having gone instead to a party at O’Malley’s house in Dorset Street. Colette managed to seat herself next to Veronica, and while Boris entertained the company by performing tortoise races with the rest of the group (this consisted of balancing two cigarette papers on top of two glasses, the competitors then racing each other, each doing an impersonation of a tortoise eating a lettuce leaf, the slowest winning), Colette quizzed Veronica.
‘I understand you’re sleeping with my son.’
‘What?’
‘You’re sleeping with Julian.’
‘I’m not . . .’
‘I don’t mind if you are . . .’
‘But I’m not – don’t be ridiculous, he’s a boy.’
‘Yes, but he’s very tall.’
‘I’m sorry Colette. We’re just friendly, that’s all. We’re not even that friendly.’
‘I just want to make it plain that you have my blessing, that’s all – and Aldous’s. We’ve discussed it a lot . . .’
‘Colette, please – the thought is too terrible for me to contemplate.’
Colette retreated for a while. Later in the evening she talked to Veronica again. By now a different game was taking place on the table. Boris had stretched a piece of tissue paper across a beer glass and balanced a coin on the paper. People took it in turns to burn a hole in the paper with the end of a cigarette. When the paper was eventually honeycombed with charred holes, whoever made the hole that finally allowed the coin to fall into the beer had to get the next round in.
‘I have another son, you know . . .’ said Colette.
‘I know. He’s sitting over there.’
‘Apart from James, I mean. He seems to have a different girlfriend each week. I mean my son Janus. Do you know Janus?’
‘Yes, I know Janus.’
‘He’s also very tall. And very good looking. He plays the piano . . .’
Veronica was holding up a hand.
‘I know Janus very well, Colette, and I know what he’s like. Please . . .’
Colette, crestfallen, retreated once more. She had done what she could. Janus claimed to be in a relationship with a nurse at the hospital. He had been claiming such for over a year, but he had never presented her at Fernlight Avenue, or any evidence at all that this nurse existed as anything other than a fantasy. Veronica would have been a good girlfriend for Janus. They were almost the same age (Veronica was a little younger), Veronica was intelligent, quite pretty in a Julie Andrews sort of way, musical, well read, she would have been an ideal match for Janus.
But Veronica didn’t come to the pub the following week. Julian was back and looking wide-eyed and lost.
‘Where’s Veronica?’ he said.
‘She couldn’t make it this week,’ said Juliette, through whom Veronica made her arrangements for the Saturday evenings.
Veronica didn’t come the following week either. Or the week after that. Each week of her absence caused an increasing level of anxiety visible in Julian’s tetchiness and increasing drunkenness.
‘I don’t think she’ll be coming back,’ said Colette one evening.
‘What do you know about it?’ said Julian.
‘Nothing, I just don’t think she will.’
‘You’ve said something to her haven’t you. What have you said to her?’
‘I haven’t said anything to her. Anyway, you’ve been drinking too much. You must remember you’re still a little boy.’
‘But you bought me my drinks. You always buy my drinks.’
‘Well I’m not buying you any more tonight, not when you talk to me like that, and stop leaning over the table, you’l
l spill Boris’s drink.’
Julian began interrogating the others. No one knew anything, which was true, since the conversations between Colette and Veronica had passed unnoticed.
‘Take it easy, Julian,’ said Boris quietly as he filled his pipe.
‘I’m going,’ said Julian putting on the leather jacket he’d found one night in The Goat and Compasses and had worn almost permanently ever since.
‘Where are you going?’
Julian didn’t answer but left the pub.
His three friends, O’Malley, O’Flaherty and O’Hogarty, looked rather bewildered in his absence. Not having formed friendships with any others in the group, they seemed at a loss without him.
‘You, you spotty twits,’ said Colette, ‘why don’t you go after him, he might do something stupid.’
The three looked at each other, mumbled incomprehensibly and giggled.
‘I’ll go after him,’ said Boris.
The group became a little subdued while Boris went in search of Julian. He was gone for over two hours. During that time James had amused himself by running a dampened finger round the rim of a wine glass to produce a high pitched wailing noise. The others, fascinated by this phenomenon, joined in with other glasses, producing a spontaneous orchestra of glassy wailing, until someone from another table, a young blond-haired man with a tight-fitting T-shirt leant across.
‘Please’, he said, ‘it’s frightfully annoying.’
James, Boris and Scott, quite drunk by this time, were taken aback by this intervention to the extent that they were silent for about ten minutes. Then feeling affronted by the request, revived their wine-glass wailing, at the same time as loudly ridiculing the well-spoken voice of the man in the T-shirt.
‘Oh it’s frightfully dreadful isn’t it?’
‘Yes it’s most dreadfully frightful isn’t it darling?’
‘Yes its most dreadully awfully annoying darling . . .’
It seemed as though things might have turned unpleasant, as the T-shirted man was looking increasingly perturbed, and seemed to be discussing the situation with his T-shirted colleagues, when Boris returned with Julian. Julian looked bedraggled. It was raining outside.
‘I found him outside Veronica’s house,’ Boris told Colette, ‘sitting in the front garden in the rain.’
Julian didn’t speak to his mother, or anyone else, for the rest of the evening, but remained silent, scowling from under a mop of damp, matted hair.
It was the arrival of Janus in the pub one evening that ended their nights at The Marquis of Granby. He came into the pub carrying Scipio under his arm. He quietly bought a drink for himself and sat at their table, the cat purring contentedly in his arms. Janus did not acknowledge the presence of anyone else in the pub. He didn’t even make eye contact with anyone, he just sat there, Scipio washing himself in his lap, dabbing a paw at a crisp packet that moved in the breeze.
The group melted away quickly. Rita and Scott, James and his girlfriend. O’Malley, O’Hogarty and O’Flaherty remained, since they knew nothing about Janus. Eventually it was just them, Julian, and his parents left at the table, while Janus went on sitting there, as though he believed himself alone.
How old he looks now, thought Colette, who felt as though she hadn’t seen him for years. The moustache made him look old, the long sideburns as well. But he was putting on weight. His neck had thickened. He had the beginnings of a double chin and a beer belly. The drink had taken its toll. And the long nights. He was getting bags under his eyes.
Janus remained silent. It was Julian who spoke. The first time he had spoken directly to his mother for several weeks.
‘I’m leaving school this summer,’ he said.
Colette was shocked.
‘Are you allowed to yet? You’re too young, surely.’
‘I’m old enough,’ he said, still sulky.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to join the merchant navy.’
Colette didn’t know what to say. Aldous was silent, although he smiled. Before she could discuss it Julian was gone, out of the pub with his three friends. Aldous and Colette were alone with Janus.
‘He’s running away to sea,’ she said to her husband quietly.
‘He didn’t mean it,’ said Aldous, reassuringly, ‘can you imagine it, Julian a sailor? It’s ridiculous.’
‘I think he meant it,’ said Colette, ‘he did mean it. He’s running away to sea. We’ve driven him – I’ve driven him – away . . .’
Janus continued stroking Scipio. He had not looked at his parents since entering the pub, instead he had looked at Scipio, intently. Petting him, stroking his ears, nuzzling his brows where the velvety, silver fur lay, stroking his nose, fondling his paws, his tail, his tummy.
Colette suddenly said, ‘That cat looks different.’ Then, ‘He’s got no whiskers!’
Janus looked up.
‘I’ve cut them off,’ he said.
Looking closely she could see. Scipio’s white whiskers ended abruptly a quarter of an inch from his face.
‘Why?’ said Colette.
Janus looked at her. She could see that the redness in his eyes was not due to the sleeplessness of so long on nights, but to crying. Janus had been crying.
‘Scipio is dying,’ he said.
17
Scipio was dying. He died the next day, a Sunday.
At Janus’s insistence, they had a proper funeral.
It was funeral weather that day in the back garden, clouds of varying shades of grey hurrying in the sky – a late spring chill. The garden was still in recovery from a severe winter, the hummocky lawn had a dirty, greasy complexion from several weeks under snow. The previous autumn’s leaves rotted in the flowerbeds. Janus had dug a small grave beneath the pershore tree. It was a problem to know where to bury animals without disturbing the bones of previously interred pets. Janus had been about to dig beneath the lilac before Colette reminded him there were at least two cats buried beneath the tree.
The coffin was a brown cardboard box hand-decorated by Janus in a vaguely Egyptian design (Anubi and the eye of Horus were a prominent feature), and Scipio lay inside shrouded in fabric cut from one of Colette’s old dresses – a crimson material embroidered in gold thread with horses, though this was visible to none of the mourners as Janus lay the coffin in the grave.
A reluctant Aldous was present at the insistence of Janus. Julian was there less reluctantly. Everyone looked down into the grave with solemnity while Janus provided an oration which began with a recital of Scipio’s pedigree.
‘Scipio, of the family Silver, of the line of Silverseal and Silverleaf, son of Sylvia Clairedelune and Silverseal Edward, whose grandparents were Silverseal Maurice, Hillcross Silver Petal, Silverseal Reginald Bosanquet, Silverleaf Tiffany, of the line of Bellever Calchas d’Acheaux, Silverseal Alouette, Jezreel Jake, Csardas Silhouette, Silver Lute of Blagdon, Silverleaf Leineven, Hillcross Silver Flute, Marguerite of Silverleigh, Lady Jane, Demon Lover, Silverseal Black Lion. O Friends, No more these sounds! Let us sing more cheerful songs, more full of Joy! Joy, bright spark of divinity, Daughter of Elysium, fire-inspired we tread thy sanctuary. Thy magic powers re-unite all that custom has divided, all men become brothers under the sway of thy gentle wings.’
Janus tipped earth onto Scipio’s coffin. Colette was glad to see that he seemed to be coping well with the emotion of the day, particularly by the optimistic recital of Schiller to close the oration. She had worried a little about how the death of the cat would affect her son, who had been so unnaturally fond of the animal, especially since its injury. The first effect Colette noticed was that Janus had begun talking about death. It occurred to her that he had never talked much about death before, at least not since his childhood.
‘Why doesn’t it drive you mad?’ he said to her one morning after coming home from work.
‘Why doesn’t what drive me mad?’ said Colette.
‘The thought of dying.’
‘But you’re so much closer to it. You’re getting on for sixty now – and if you look at yourself in the mirror and think how you’ve treated your body over the years, you can’t be expecting to get much further – so how do you cope with it? I suppose you just close your mind – but how do you do it?’
Then another morning, he would claim to have the answer.
‘I know – you just get tired of worrying about it don’t you? It’s not that you ingore it, but that your mind just gets tired of it. Bored of it, I suppose. That’s what happened when I went to the dentist yesterday. For three weeks I had been putting it off and letting the pain get worse and worse, and worrying about what the dentist would do, and I thought – how am I actually going to get myself through the door of the dentist’s surgery without running away? But the day before I just stopped worrying – I’d used all my worry up and I just walked into the surgery as though I was doing nothing more frightening than buying a pint of milk. That must be what happens with old people like you – you just get tired of worrying about it and in the end you don’t care about dying at all.’
‘I wish you would stop talking like this,’ said Colette, ‘it must be the nights. You must stop working nights like this, Janus, you must come back to the daylight with the rest of us, you’re getting too morbid.’
She felt it was true. He didn’t sleep well during the day. There was an annoying motorcyclist who’d rented one of the garages next door and who spent whole afternoons tinkering noisily with his machines and wouldn’t stop no matter how many times Colette complained. Sleep deprivation can kill people, so she’d read, slowly and unnoticeably, like a poison. And Janus’s morbidity seemed to reach a new level when he came home one morning shortly afterwards.
He had brought home with him a large leather bag which, after making himself a cup of tea, he placed on the table. He unzipped it and lifted something carefully from within – a bundle of newspaper wrapping something that had, evidently, to be handled carefully.
I’ll Go To Bed At Noon Page 33