by Tim Parks
Again he paused. Having begun blindly, he now felt he should choose the words very carefully. Perhaps I’ve found the right thing to say, he thought. Don’t spoil it. Her young body was vibrating with tension. Her dark face, still averted, would be a beautiful prize for someone. She had such fine lines. Daniel had often looked forward to having a son-in-law, he had imagined the look of fulfilment on his daughter’s face. There would be complicity, about happiness, and about how difficult relationships are. Max was an attractive man.
For example, if you want to live on your own, I don’t see why you have to do it ‘in spite of us’ as it were. I mean, we’d be quite happy to pay your rent somewhere. He stopped. At least for a while. If you . . .
She looked up. Her eyes were streaming tears. But she was laughing too, almost giggling, a knuckle in her mouth. She was shaking. He was swept by the impulse to embrace her, to take his dear child in his arms. My daughter. The first child. You are my first real kin in this world. That was something he used to say. The first person he had known to be in a blood relation to himself. He was getting to his feet. He too was laughing and crying, shaking his head. Sarah, I don’t understand, he was saying, you really must explain to me why you have all these problems and dear Tom is so bloody normal! And why did you go crazy on me that day in the car on the way to school. What did I say, for Christ’s sake? As he moved towards the reconciling embrace, the girl stiffened. I have to go to the bathroom, she said. She bounced to her feet and walked out of the room.
Judge Savage was left alone. He waited. Outside the curtainless windows, the sun lay brightly along the pleasant street; it never penetrated the flat in the afternoon. What has Mattheson found out? he wondered. My life is on the brink. On the wall were the cleaner rectangles where the furniture had been. I didn’t want everything to get so complicated. A patch of mould followed the outline of the big wall cupboard. Beneath it lay a small heap of moths and spiders’ webs. We lived here fifteen years. Almost all my career really. Tom was conceived and born here, he thought. How much of it had been spent fighting! They had bought a wall cupboard that was too big for the room and then been stuck with it for fifteen years. The girl is being a long time, he thought.
He took off the tinted spectacles and touched the patch. The eye had stopped hurting. Minnie is fine, he repeated to himself. That’s a relief. They will take it off and I will see. Everything will be as it was. He looked at his watch. Melodrama nearly over, he thought. The girl’s coming round. He had begun to feel hungry. As after a tough exam. She’ll see reason. In the end I was the only victim of all this. Even if Minnie had managed to see you that night, it wouldn’t have made any difference. You couldn’t have advised her. The false premise of all advice, it occurred to him, is the proposition, if I were you. How can a man of my age advise a young woman from a different community? The interrelationships between the members of these families are quite different from those an average English person would grow up with, Mukerjee had said. If Minnie had wanted an abortion, he told himself, she would have gone and got herself one. She wouldn’t have asked for advice. People already know what they have to do, even as they pretend to be desperate and ask you for advice. I’m pleased Jane has married Crawford, he decided. How could I ever be jealous of Gordon Crawford? It was always unreal.
Close your eyes! his daughter sang out. She must have been in the passage just outside the door. Why? Close your eyes, she repeated. Eye, he said. Okay, close your eye. He heard her come in then sensed her presence close to him. Hug me. He folded his arms round her and immediately jumped back. His head struck the bare wall. Standing beside the mattress, his daughter was naked.
FIFTEEN
THE SOLICITOR WAS discussing his hay fever. Judge Savage arrived breathless. His mother had had it and his daughter had it and now his grandson had it too, poor little chap. The place stinks of menthol, Daniel noticed. The windows were shut and the venetian blinds lowered against the sun. There was a neon glow. So it’s obviously congenital, the man was apologising over piles of papers, an uncle of Martin’s apparently. Sins of the fathers, he joked. To the left, his screensaver was a constant tangling of coloured tubes. What happened? Hilary whispered. It was almost quarter to five. I’ll tell you later. Daniel sat down. But she did agree to leave? I’ll tell you later. Hilary was alarmed. Sensitivity to timothy grass, the man was still explaining. That’s what they make hay from. We’ll have to come to some kind of arrangement with Christine, he muttered. It would have been easier if he had sat next to her instead of leaving the central seat empty. There were three seats and then the sneezing solicitor behind his desk beneath his certificates beside his smoothly complicating screen. Just when it seemed there was no more space imaginable, a tiny green tube, bright as neon, began to penetrate rapidly and confidently into the mesh.
So she won’t go? Hilary closed her eyes rather dramaticalty, as if to avoid looking at the end of the world. Some sort of difficulty? the solicitor now enquired. This was typical Hilary. She whispers, but loud enough to be heard. No last minute hitches, I hope? He spoke through a slurry of congestion. The room is suffocating, Daniel thought. Just a detail or two we have to go over with Mrs Shields, Daniel told him. And by the way, the elderly solicitor now rubbed his hands together, my warmest congratulations, Mr Savage. Thank you. But Daniel hadn’t understood. It’s official, Hilary explained, you’re getting the MBE.
As he tried to smile, Judge Savage was aware that he really hadn’t wanted this. Hilary would be telling everybody. There’s no merit in being assaulted. Where’s Christine? he asked. He had done nothing courageous. Late, Hilary said. Daniel recognised her official-situation primness. She is nervous. It’s only because I’m not white, he thought. They would never have given Martin such an honour. If Martin had been assaulted. Probably the traffic, the solicitor smiled from his Kleenex. Not to mention the parking problem since they opened this Saver Centre. When it seemed it must go on filling forever, the screensaver suddenly dissolved to a blank. Did Mattheson phone again? Daniel asked. A single red tube appeared in a corner and started to snake this way and that.
The solicitor launched into a spiel about what a pleasure it was when people managed to sell a property on a friendly basis, a basis of mutual trust, without all the usual gazumping and price haggling and people not vacating the premises when they should. There’s no consensus about how things should be done. He had a client – he is one of those men who are perennially pleased with themselves, Daniel thought – who had sold his house and vacated it on schedule, you see, but the owners of the house he was buying didn’t vacate despite the exchange of contracts with full payment. The solicitor sighed, held out his hands palms upward. Now he’s stuck in a hotel with wife and three kids! Terrible, Hilary agreed. On the edge of bankruptcy, the solicitor pointed out. Absurdly, Daniel was reminded of The Cambridge. In the end he had enjoyed his time there. You should never have come home, Sarah shrieked. Never never never. She banged her face into the mattress. I was so happy when you left! Perhaps we’d better phone her, Hilary suggested.
There was no response from the Shields’ phone. No one knew if Christine had a mobile or not. They sat waiting. Their buyer was now forty-five minutes late in a town that could be crossed in half an hour at the worst of times. Odd that Martin doesn’t answer, Hilary said, since he never seems to leave home these days. You heard that he’s stopped working? she asked the solicitor. The elderly man, at once gaunt and merry, hamming his hay-fever, declined the opportunity to talk about his nephew. Suddenly concerned, but perhaps about something that had nothing to do with them, he could only remark on how fortunate it was that this was the last appointment of the day. We can wait without keeping people waiting, if you see what I mean. Could I borrow a hundred grand privately, Daniel wondered? Fame and honours should serve at least for that.
I’m going to be late for Max’s lesson, Hilary announced. The solicitor’s secretary put her head round the door to ask if she could leave. I gather, Daniel found himself saying to h
is wife in a low voice, that Sarah actually knew Max before you did. The image of his daughter’s body still filled his mind. Hilary narrowed her eyes over her watch. Yes. It seems she button-holed him, would you believe, on one of her silly evangelical outings. She tried to convert him. But you know what’s happened, don’t you, she went on; they’re making up, aren’t they, Christine and Martin, and so they’ve changed their minds. They were buying the place to split up, pretending nothing was happening, probably so as not to upset the parents, his parents are still alive, aren’t they, but now that push has come to shove they’ve gone and had it out between them and changed their minds and we’re going to be left holding the baby. This was a crazy idea. They’ve already paid fifty grand, Daniel said acidly. They’re not the kind of people not to honour a commitment.
Again the screen’s impossible tangle magically dissolved and shortly after six, driving home, both in a state of some anxiety now, or at least aware that all kinds of practical problems would have to be looked into, Judge Savage told his wife how Sarah had stripped all her clothes off. I thought she’d finally agreed to leave, he explained. She said she had to go to the bathroom for a moment. Then when she came back she had no clothes on. I shouldn’t have told her, he immediately thought.
Hilary kept her eyes fixed on the traffic. I didn’t know what to do, he insisted. He felt he had betrayed the girl. And she asked you to hug her, I suppose, Hilary said quietly. Yes. Is that the first time? Of course it’s the first bloody time, he shouted, or I’d have told you! Hilary snapped: How am I supposed to know what you tell me and what you don’t? She turned and glared. It was a fine round English face of grey-blue eyes and greying blonde hair. She drove straight-backed. She told me, Daniel said, that I had ruined her life when I came back home. She said if I was going, I should have gone. She did, did she? Hilary remarked. And she needed to be naked to tell you that, I suppose.
Judge Savage didn’t reply. Hilary drove. She always kept both hands at the top of the wheel, the forearms stiff. Her mouth was determined. Streets appeared and twisted this way and that and dissolved. My wife gives the impression, these days, he was aware, that life is an exhausting task, an oppressive burden. Even when she’s exhilarated, he thought, and shouts not to be boring, she does it to spur you on to some exhausting task, to have you take up your heavy burden. Bringing up children, making music, making love. We’re both exhausted, he said.
Then Hilary told him: She’s done it twice with me. What? Taken her clothes off like that, like you said, asking to be hugged. But why didn’t you tell me? You had enough on your plate. You’d just started as a judge. I thought it was the last thing you needed. Daniel experienced a strange leadenness. His eye ached. So how did you handle it, he asked. I told her that if she wanted to do something silly like that, she should do it to Max, not me. To Max? A bell rang in Daniel’s mind. Get dressed, he had told the girl. He was aware of having spoken too sharply. He had shouted. Perhaps some different kind of response had been in order, something more tender. But he couldn’t imagine what. Hilary braked hard for a dog. Don’t imagine – he had spoken very sharply – that you can make a fool of me! Why had he said that? The dog didn’t cross after all. His eye had rested for just a moment on her sex. It was the first time he had seen her naked for many years. Where were you, Hilary asked evenly, that evening immediately before they beat you up?
They were out of the centre on dual carriageway now. He had been expecting this challenge at some point, but was unprepared. I don’t prepare my lies any more, he realised. You do know, she said, that you actually phoned me to say you were in the Polar Bear waiting for Crawford. You said you were there in the pub. It must have been just before it happened, she insisted.
In the silence that followed, as she tried to make a difficult right through fast oncoming traffic, he was aware of the danger – they should put a light here, she was muttering – of simply telling the truth in spite himself. Out of exhaustion. Careful! he cried involuntarily. Hilary released the clutch with a jerk. The car rushed a few yards, then was stopped again. She gripped the wheel and waited. I mustn’t, he decided. Oh, but he hated the way his wife knew to leave long silences at crucial moments. Things would fall apart, he thought. She stared at the traffic ahead. They were moving again. Finally, he said: Well then I must really have been in the Polar Bear. What can I say? I don’t remember. Why didn’t you tell me this before? It was for her sake he was lying. This time she spoke immediately: But Crawford says he didn’t know anything about being supposed to see you. Daniel shook his head. I don’t know. Perhaps a message went astray somewhere.
Five minutes later, with a little premonitory cry Hilary announced: Jane Simmons came back that week, didn’t she? Abruptly, she pulled the car over at the bottom of their hill and turned away from him to the side window. Above rising cornfields clouds were piled in soft layers on the horizon. I was not with Jane, Daniel said at once. He put his hand on her shoulder. She was rigid. I’ve told you a million times . . . So you do know what you didn’t do, Hilary came back. Hilary, Hilary . . . I don’t want to know! I could have checked up on the call, she said. I could have phoned BT, or told the police. But I didn’t? I don’t want to know.
He tried to embrace her, but she grew more rigid. She was like Sarah, he thought. Then she turned abruptly to the wheel and put the car in gear. We’ve got to get this money problem sorted out, she said grimly, before we’re kicked out of house and home. Daniel was furious. It was exactly the kind of remark that drove him insane. You know it’s not that dramatic, he shouted, they’d never kick us out. I’ve just been given the bloody MBE, for Christ’s sake. It’s a miserable little money problem! Hilary was accelerating. With the salary I have, he went on, he wanted to force her to admit it now – she pushed the accelerator to the floor – even if we had to pay it all and keep both flats forever, which we don’t, I could borrow . . . He knew she was not listening. We would be so happy together without her, Sarah had said. She never listens. You ruined my life when you came back, his daughter had wept. She had kept shaking her head back and forth. I understand nothing, Daniel thought.
Hilary turned into the gate and pulled the handbrake hard a second too soon. A Mr Mattheson called, Tom announced cheerfully, coming to the door. He wants you to call him back. I took the number. Oh well done, Tommy, Hilary told him in her most ordinarily jolly voice. You’ve started writing down the numbers at last, have you? Max, she cried. I am sorry! Poor Tom never used to write down numbers, she explained. We’d come home and he’d say, some bloke called and he could never remember the name or the number. She laughed. Max was polite as ever. So, Debussy, she cried! Let me hear where you’re up to. Daniel took the piece of paper with Mattheson’s number on, a mobile. He slipped it into his pocket.
That strange and elusive music! Bloody Debussy, Tom groaned. In the gleaming new kitchen, Daniel and his son heated up a tin of soup. Looking out through French windows, the boy made a bowling action. There’s nowhere level enough to practise, he complained. Football was suddenly behind him. The back garden rose to a stone wall and the thickly piled cloud beyond. It seemed solid. Daniel went back into the sitting room where Hilary was pacing up and down beside the piano, beating time on her thigh as Max sat handsomely at the keyboard absolutely intent on his music. Accountant by day, musician in his spare time. Perhaps it had been a mistake to buy the thing so soon, Daniel thought. The mockingly solemn notes filled the room. It was thirty grand more to borrow in the end. He noticed the flowers she’d chosen. No one could deny Hilary’s taste, the sober but sunny ease of the room that she’d put together.
Shall we keep some soup for you, he mouthed. Hilary shook her head. She began to tell Max he was doing it all wrong. Don’t be so boringly sentimental! I must get Max’s phone number, Daniel decided. I must talk to him privately. Forgetting why he had come into the room, he went back to the kitchen. You haven’t phoned that Mattheson bloke, Tom said. He said it was urgent. The boy dipped a chunk of bread in hi
s bowl, turning his head sideways to fit it into his mouth. His hair is too long, Daniel thought. The room was silent between them and at the same time filled with the sound of the piano, stopping and starting round the same soft phrase. Debussy is all about not being sentimental, came Hilary’s voice. Tom grinned at his father. When most he seems romantic is when you can be most sure he isn’t! So there you are! Tom giggled. Trying to laugh, Daniel remembered what it was he had wanted, got up and went back into the sitting room to retrieve the phone from her handbag. Again he set it to call the Shields number.
Is there something wrong, Dad? Tom asked. Judge Savage looked at his son. Of course Tom knew, Sarah had said. He isn’t stupid, is he? Weren’t they the very same words Hilary had used when she told him Sarah knew? She isn’t stupid, you know. Tom knew. Yet his parents’ problems didn’t seem to have bothered the boy. He reads his war books, has his computer games, his sports, and now the dog. He’s a completely normal kid. Where’s Wolf? Daniel asked. Mouth full, Tom shrugged his shoulders. Daniel watched his son. What do you think of Max? he asked. Tom was looking under the table for the dog. He’s all right. The animal came wagging from behind a chair. The house rests on Tom, his father suddenly decided. We have to protect Tom.
Vaguely Judge Savage hazarded: I never worked it out, Tom; is there actually anything between him and Sarah? Oh I think she fancies him, Tom said offhand. But you know what she’s like. No, I don’t really, what is she like? Tom looked up: Great when she’s not here, the boy laughed. Dad? he asked. Now he was on his feet, rooting in the freezer. You know that tree they cut down – he found an ice-cream – beside the back wall. You know? He wanted to start burning the wood. But what’s the point when it’s already so warm? Don’t you miss your sister at all? he asked. Please Dad. Can I chop it up? It has to be cleared. We can stick a couple of logs in the fireplace. All right, Daniel said. When those two have finished their lesson.