‘You one of “them”?’ he said. ‘That’ll be two pounds, thirty-five.’
Christina made a dash for the main entrance of the school. Apprehension, combined with the heavy rain, and the taxi driver’s bigotry, and the absence of food since Judith’s lime-green jelly, and the stresses of the afternoon, was doing something unfamiliar to her supply of oxygenated blood as she deftly skirted the secretary’s office and made her way to the maths block. She was lucky in that, though the hour was five, Roland was still there tutoring additional maths. All Saints’ Day had come and gone, and once again the mock exams were looming. Through the windows that gave on to the corridor, Christina could see that on the blackboard Roland had drawn the Trinity. Mrs del Nevo’s Trinity. Three intersecting circles were there before her eyes, though Roland had not coloured the overlapping centres in gold. He had denoted, instead the various areas of intersect by a code of differentiated stripes, and underneath he had written a column of set notation. The image was one that inspired Christina and provided her with insight.
‘I’m giving up English literature,’ she said to herself inside her head. ‘What I must do is switch to maths.’ She thanked the Trinity for its help and she advanced upon the classroom door. Roland paused mid-sentence. He was holding chalk in his hand.
‘Christina,’ he said. ‘Good Lord. Whatever are you doing here?’
Christina spoke as boldly as she could. ‘I’ve come to see you,’ she said, ‘on an important personal matter.’
‘Ah,’ Roland said, and he glanced at his watch. It was a tribute to his considerable control that the children, who were grinning and nudging among themselves, were doing so under cover.
‘Take a seat, Christina,’ Roland said. ‘I’m sure it can wait five minutes.’
Christina stood there, dripping. She was making a pool, like Jeremy Fisher. The oxygenated blood was now coursing through her head.
‘It’s been waiting for nineteen years,’ she said. ‘I’ve come to tell you that I know you are my father.’
In Roland’s bathroom, to which he had directed her, she took a bath and washed her hair. Then she put on a pair of Peter’s old jeans along with one of Peter’s sweaters and a pair of Peter’s socks. When she emerged into the living-room she saw that Roland had made a wood fire. A log was glowing and cracking in the grate, sending up small firework showers, bright in the darkened room. Two large bowls of soup were waiting and a few rough chunks of bread. Gentille and the girls were mercifully not there. Gentille, it seemed, had business abroad and on the way she was visiting Roland’s sister, so that the girls could have time with their cousins.
‘I hope this soup has not got “bits” in it,’ Christina said. ‘Chicken entrails and things like that.’
Roland peered, unoffended, into the bowls. ‘It’s leek and potato, I would imagine,’ he said. ‘My wife made it before she left.’
‘I never liked your wife,’ Christina said. And then they ate their soup and bread in silence.
Finally Roland put down his bowl and coughed and began politely: ‘If you are sitting comfortably, there are things that I need to explain. My dear, I was very much in love with your mother, I was very determined to marry her, so much so that I could not see that the feeling was all one-way. She had kept me most effectively at a distance – a thing I attributed to her shyness. She was very shy, you know, and she had a bad stammer.’ He paused, looking rather rueful. ‘That is, she stammered with me,’ he said. Then he looked straight into her eyes. ‘I never made it with your mother, Christina, much as I longed to and stubbornly believed that I would. Ours was not a friendship that was ever sexually consummated.’
Christina sat silent, staring into her empty bowl. The soup had had no leeks in it, it was just that Roland couldn’t tell. It tasted divinely of fresh potatoes, but the other tastes were more those of wild mushrooms and wild sorrel. She found now that her eyes had begun to drip compromising tears on to the empty surface of the bowl.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘Grown-ups lie. They lie all the time. There’s nothing that is what it seems.’
Then Roland told her, as lightly as he could, the story of his unsuccessful propositioning of her mother on the bridge in Northumberland. He told her how her mother had panicked, and rather than have him make love to her had swung the wheel of his beautiful old Citroën so that it crashed over the parapet of a bridge and landed them both in the river. He went on to tell her how, after duly administering first aid to her mother, he had commandeered a man, a personable young Geordie who had been driving a small white van at the time which had coincided with them on the bridge.
‘He drove us to the hospital,’ Roland said. ‘He was local, and thank God he knew the way. Your mother was concussed, you see, and she had several fractured ribs. I confess I did not hang about much after that. I may have been tenacious, Christina, but I had a degree of pride. I stayed only to get my arm bandaged up and to assure myself that your mother was all right. After that I contacted your grandparents, and I said my goodbyes and I left.
‘We coincided only once more after that occasion. It was very briefly and entirely by accident in the house of your mother’s Oxford landlord. I was giving some extra coaching to one of the children of the family. It was some months after the accident. Your mother appeared with your father and also with her dead friend’s baby: the baby, of course, was your sister.
‘It is really not for me to say what had become of your mother in the interim. I know that she had gone home after the accident to recuperate in her parents’ house, and that some time towards the end of the summer she had coincided with your father. I did hear tell from your mother’s landlord that she had for a brief time been engaged to marry the Geordie boy from the hospital. Some sort of science graduate student he was, as I remember – engineering, perhaps. She had taken time out after the accident and your grandparents were very fond of him. I was told that your grandfather had given him a little job – a part-time job, to do concurrently with his studies and help to make ends meet. Your grandfather, I believe, had also agreed to house him, rent-free, for the same reason.’
Christina sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘Mummy’s Nice Young Man,’ she said. ‘Your Grampy let him live in it because we were all so fond of him.’ She sniffed again and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. ‘Fuckinell,’ she said. ‘And all the time I thought it was you.’
She looked up at Roland. ‘Well, she had said he was “nice”, Roland, and that he lived in a “very grand house”. The Nice Young Man, she told me, had done “very well for himself”.’
‘Why, thank you, Christina,’ Roland said. ‘I’m flattered by the association. I’m sorry to tell you, however, that your grandmother never cared for me, nor did she regard teaching school as an up-and-coming career.’
Christina sighed. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I can see now that that would be true. I don’t know if it’s any comfort to you, but she’s always detested my father – that is to say, the man who has always chosen to mime that role in my life. Well, at least you weren’t a show-off, Roland; nor were you a serious Catholic. So where do you suppose he is now, my father, the personable Geordie? Do you suppose he is engineering somewhere, or will he have taken a step sideways and joined the managerial class? I mean, what sort of person does well for himself? By my grandmother’s lights, is what I mean.’
Roland smiled at her gently. ‘Dear girl,’ he said, ‘is it possible that you could try not to let this prey upon your mind? I’m aware of how things stand with you and your parents, but may I even in spite of that suggest that you talk this over with your mother?’
‘What was he like?’ Christina said. ‘Come on, Roland, I want to know.’
Roland sighed. ‘Oh, gosh,’ he said. He was thinking to himself, ‘On the make, little swine. Garrulous. Insinuating. Taking advantage of Alice’s parents at the time when they were most vulnerable. God in heaven, I remember how I loathed the idea of the man.’
He was over
come suddenly with sadness as they sat there in the lamp-light. ‘You will believe me when I say,’ he said, ‘I was rather preoccupied at the time. I had a half-drowned girl lying in my lap. I would say that he was “chippy”, Christina. A cheerful type. Talkative.’
Christina eyed him suspiciously. ‘He was a schmuck,’ she said. ‘Now I want you to tell me what he looked like.’
‘Dark,’ Roland said, ‘and of medium height. What else can I say?’
‘Any distinguishing marks?’ Christina said.
Roland took the question seriously. He sat thoughtfully for a while. ‘Most of the time,’ he said, ‘I could see the back of his head. He turned it to the left much of the time – he was throwing his voice to the back of the car. I do remember noticing a curious gristly bump on the lobe of his left ear.’
Christina held forth her lobe in triumph. ‘My Born Lump,’ she said. ‘Do you remember his name?’
‘Riley,’ Roland said. ‘That’s one thing I do remember. His name was Matthew Riley.’
Christina got up. ‘I must go,’ she said, ‘I’ve taken up your time for too long.’
In the car as he drove her to the station Christina spoke with remorse. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I embarrassed you in front of your pupils. That was pretty bad.’
‘That’s perfectly all right,’ Roland said. ‘I ought to be getting used to it by now. Your family does make a habit of bursting in on me.’
Christina looked up, she opened her eyes wide. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Has my father been in to duff you up?’
Roland acknowledged her terminology with a smile. ‘He came by with your sister,’ Roland said, ‘almost three years ago now. There was a matter of some gravity that needed to be cleared up. As I remember, they seemed a little worried about your whereabouts. And if I may say so, I was worried about you myself.’
‘Sorry,’ Christina said again. ‘Look, Roland, I scarpered. I haven’t seen them since. I know all about the little “matter”, by the way: it was because of that that I walked out. I had arranged for Pam to have a termination, you see. I’d sort of hoped to pull the wool over her eyes. I’d found this gynae bloke who was prepared to delude her. Well, anyway, it all went wrong. The parents turned up early – they walked into my grandmother’s house two days before they were expected.’
‘Blame me,’ Roland said. ‘I’d summoned them and with some difficulty. I believe – could I have been hearing correctly – that they’d been bicycling through the Western Highlands.’
‘You heard correctly,’ Christina said. ‘Only by the time you got them they must have just about made it back as far as the New Forest. They appeared in a flash, clothed head to toe in lycra and with their favourite priest in tow.’
‘I remember that I was concerned about Pam,’ Roland said. ‘I’d been alerted by her exam results and it did seem to me that she was becoming rather withdrawn.’ He paused. ‘I could tell that something was bothering her,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I drew the conclusion that it might be a form of religious mania. She’d given up the singing, which worried Vanessa. It was the impression of one of my staff that she was not eating properly. I began to fear that she would fly off and take the veil.’
Christina made a sort of spluttery noise. ‘So it’s all right to get raped by some puking slob at sixteen and find yourself pregnant,’ she said. ‘Just so long as you don’t go and “take the veil”. Is that what being a Protestant can do for your brain?’
Roland did not respond to this. ‘I had happened, the evening before your father and sister burst in,’ he said, ‘to have been talking to Vanessa. Once I’d expressed my anxieties to her, she remembered a rather strange letter – it was one your sister had written her on the evening of All Saints’. It mentioned the names of three of her classmates. Putting two and two together, I summoned them immediately. It took a little persuading to get your sister to confront them, but having once done so she was splendid. I wish you had been there to see her, Christina.’
Christina felt a knot form in her stomach. ‘All Saints’?’ she said. ‘Hallowe’en? Three of them? Sort of dressed like cripples?’
‘Why, yes,’ Roland said.
‘So which one of them was it?’ she said. ‘Stet Gregory, I’ll bet. Or maybe it was all three.’
Roland sighed. ‘That is something you are going to have to ask her yourself,’ he said. ‘Given that she did not wish to pursue the matter with the police.’
‘And how about the fourth?’ Christina said, sarcastic, tense. ‘How about Jago Rutherford?’
‘Well, this is where you might have helped, Christina,’ Roland said, and he looked at her. ‘Jago, when I called him in, had a perfect alibi. He had spent the evening sweet-talking you in a pub. You had been wearing a rather unusual mask. The publican remembered the two of you.’
Christina had become quite agitated. ‘But that evening,’ she said, ‘that evening Jago did leave me – he was gone for ages and ages. And when he came back he seemed so – well – so different, so shaken. After that he was altogether changed; subdued. He gave up those smart-ass friends. He took up with me, do you remember? I was in a state of bliss about it. I thought he was in love with me. I had been in love with him for years.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ Roland said.
‘I was wild about him,’ Christina said. ‘He was one of the very few people to whom I’d given my address, yet I never heard from him again.’
There was a longish silence. ‘As to your sister’s assailant,’ Roland said, ‘I think we established his identity beyond all possible doubt. Also that the party had numbered three. Three, Christina. Not four. It may be from what you’ve just told me that Jago Rutherford knew something more than he led me to believe at the time.’
He was silent again, for quite a while. ‘I heard from your sister quite recently,’ he said. ‘The boy is almost two.’
‘Boy?’ Christina said.
‘Your nephew,’ Roland said. ‘How silly of me. I ought to have shown you the photographs. She’s gone back to school, as they say over there, and she’s working hard at the singing.’
Then he said, ‘But what about you, Christina? Tell me, what have you been doing with yourself since you ran from your grandmother’s house?’
Christina shook herself slightly. ‘I’d met this girl,’ she said. ‘Dulcie. I’d met her in the lavatory at the Barbican Theatre. She’s great. She’s the best. I went to live with her. Her mother helped me fix it so I could join her Sixth Form somewhere in Tottenham. Inner city comp – it was a heap really. It was great. I loved it. It was life. It was education, Roland.’
Roland was smiling a knowing sort of smile. ‘I taught in Hackney for a time,’ he said. ‘When I was young. Well, it’s certainly one sort of life, Christina. I’m not entirely sure that I’d go so far as to call it education.’
‘It was great,’ Christina repeated. ‘You ought to try it again, Roland. I mean, why do you waste yourself teaching all these pampered snots?’
Roland laughed. ‘Never mind me,’ he said. ‘I thought we were talking about you.’
‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘While I was there this geezer came along, you see. This sort of charley from Cambridge, touting for applicants for his college.’
‘One of the dons?’ Roland said.
‘Yeah,’ Christina said. ‘Total weirdo. Worzel Gummidge sort of person.’
‘Well?’ Roland said.
‘Well, four of us got sent to case the joint.’
‘The “joint”,’ Roland said, ‘being a Cambridge college?’
‘Yeah,’ Christina said again. ‘And then they all dropped out, except me.’
Roland beamed at her suddenly with unqualified admiration. ‘Can I take it, Christina,’ he said, ‘that you are in point of fact not a street child but a Cambridge undergraduate?’
‘Sure thing,’ Christina said, ‘English literature. Only my supervisor has a problem. He’s one of life’s professional truants. I’ll tell you something that’
s going to happen when I get back. I’ve got plans to switch to maths.’
‘Really?’ Roland said, sounding pleased.
‘Yeah,’ Christina said. ‘I’ve got A-Level maths, why not? It didn’t occur to me before today. It was only when I saw what you’d put up on the blackboard. I was peeking in through the windows and I saw that you’d drawn the Trinity.’
‘The Trinity?’ Roland said.
‘Yeah,’ Christina said. ‘The Trinity. I’d been having problems with the Objective Correlative and then your Venn diagram swung me.’
At the barrier she hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
‘I hope you’re proud of me,’ she said. ‘I hope you wish you were my father.’
Air and Angels.
Serious Syrius and the Marvellous Boy
When Christina approached her room that night she was still wearing Peter’s clothes. She entered the room and then she gasped, because right there lying on her bed was Peter, and he was fast asleep. To say that he was on her bed was not altogether accurate. Peter appeared to be suspended on a cushion of air above the bed. Christina blinked and stared at him. She removed her shoes, then, very cautiously, she approached the bed and peered at Peter from close up. She went on tiptoes all round the bed on its three accessible sides. It left her with not a shred of doubt that Peter’s slight but less pale body was indeed raised horizontally some three centimetres above the covers. She sat down for a while to watch him. He was in all respects quite simply asleep. As she began to get used to his presence, it occurred to her that Peter would probably be cold. He was lying on top of the covers, after all, and his clothing was not of the warmest. She got up and reached for a pair of spare blankets that were stowed on the top of her cupboard. Then she opened them out with a shake. As she did so, Peter’s nose twitched and he sneezed and blinked and sat up.
‘Salute,’ Christina said. ‘I’m sorry. I made you sneeze. These blankets are very dusty.’ She observed that as he emerged from sleep Peter’s body had floated gently, unobtrusively downwards until it was resting on the mattress.
Juggling Page 24