‘There isn’t – ’
‘What I’m trying to say is... I’d like a baby. It’s okay if we don’t, but I’d love it.’
Emma had trained me well: I was quick to put this in the ‘it won’t always be like this’ folder. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. But it was appealing. And of course, I’d already imagined a dark-haired girl. Poetic and studious, affectionate, maybe a bit temperamental.
‘You don’t want another child?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t thought about it,’ I said. ‘No, of course I have. But I’m thirty-eight... and anyway I didn’t think you would.’
We opened the chocolates and made a start on the minibar. Started to relax. He wanted a fair-haired child, preferably a girl, and musical – a small Rosie really, but with brown eyes to show he’d had some input.
It turned out that Gabriel, like Kenny, had always wanted a younger sibling. We started to talk about how our children would visit us at weekends and school holidays, occasionally all together. How we needed a large garden – well, for London – or to be near a park. How he would introduce Seb to his friends’ teenagers. And I began to realise that Emma was wrong. I was wrong. It could happen.
***
Gone nine o’clock and still two stops to go; I’d said I’d be back around eight. I took out my phone and found that instead of switching it to vibrate when I got to the hotel I must have absent-mindedly turned it off. There were three missed calls and two texts, all from Jez.
‘Are you on your way home? Thought I’d make a Thai dinner for us,’ followed later by a curt ‘Where are you? Call.’
I thought of him setting out the ingredients and felt miserable with guilt. ‘I’m so, so –’
‘Where the fuck are you?’
‘Er... East Croydon.’
‘Why? This is stupid – you don’t have to work this hard, you’ll just give yourself another migraine. And what’s with your phone – I’ve been worried, I thought you’d conked out again somewhere.’
‘I’m sorry, I meant to switch it to silent... in the library... but I must have switched it off instead.’
‘God you’re hopeless with that thing. See you soon then.’
***
I took the book out of his fingers and put it on the bedside table. It was one of the Coelho novels I’d bought. I’d said he really must read it, but he’d looked at the first page and decided it was too intense. As if he’d been talking about the fellow countryman who’d recommended the author to me. Now, perversely, he was five chapters in.
I slid under the covers, careful not to wake him. Maybe soon I wouldn’t know what book he was reading. And there’d be no more of this alarm clock with enormous blue numbers that gave out an alien cobalt glow that stopped me getting to sleep. Perhaps I should start sorting out my clothes, have a clear out. With a rush of forgotten maternal sensuality I recalled the bagged up maternity clothes on the top shelf. But perhaps Ricardo wouldn’t be happy for me to wear dresses that had once skimmed a tummy taut with Jez’s babies; he’d even sulked when I’d admitted that Jez had bought me the soft pink cardigan he liked me wearing. I’d never known such a jealous man; it was at once flattering but alarming. He wanted me all for himself, he’d said. Did this mean that he might replace the wedding ring he so hated with one of his own? Mrs Pereira. Rosana Pereira. Rosie Pereira.
An arm came over me. He was asleep, but sometimes a primitive, unconscious Jez would still feel the need to protect me, claim me for his own. It was okay to gently push the arm away, if it was going to make me too hot on a warm night. But I left it there. It wasn’t doing any harm.
23.
‘Mrs Firth. Thank you for coming. Let’s go to my study, shouldn’t be disturbed there at this time.’
He showed me into a tiny office whose jumble-sale furniture reminded me of mine, except that it was scrupulously tidy, presumably to set a good but probably unheeded example to the boys. There was a photo of two chubby pre-prep children – so no personal experience of the hell of parenting teenagers then. You’d think they’d make that a pre-requisite for a senior school housemaster job.
‘How are you finding Seb at home?’
I normally found him lying on his bed in just his pants, making a Jaffa cake mess over his sheets and donging laptop. I shrugged. ‘Much the same.’ He waited for me to elaborate. ‘He’s either on his computer or in Brighton with his friends. Always says he’s done his prep at school.’
‘No, I mean... his mood.’
Weary. Bolshie. ‘I don’t know really.’
‘Does he talk to you? About school? His friends? Or... what he does in Brighton?’
‘Not much.’
‘Doesn’t that concern you?’
He was beginning to sound like the policeman. Why couldn’t Jez take this grilling for a change? This just had to happen when he’d buggered off to Crete again. ‘Well they’re all like that, aren’t they?’
He pulled a plastic folder out of a drawer and took out what looked like an essay in Seb’s surprisingly elegant hand. ‘Flo Brown, his English teacher, gave me this. She’s used to teenage essays, pretty much unshockable, but this...’ He put his hand on it as if calming an unpredictable animal. ‘We thought you should see it. Can I get you a drink? We’ve run out of tea bags, but there’s coffee.’
I was left alone in the room. I could hear the grind of the coffee jar being opened, the whump and squeak of a fridge door. I looked out of the window at the wooden huts that served as dormitories; scandalous charging us eight grand a term for this shanty town.
I was given a drink and a chipped saucer with two Bourbons. Mr Warner looked at me carefully, his professional eye telling him that I hadn’t even started the task I’d been set. ‘Shall I leave you to it? I’ve got to have a word with matron anyway,’ he said, disappearing before I could answer, and this time closing the door behind him as if suggesting that I needed help to concentrate.
I picked up the essay: several pages – quite a feat for absolute-minimum Seb.
A teenage boy was on a train to Brighton. Well, no surprises there. According to the small red writing in the margin it was a good opening. The boy was responding to songs on his iPod, and apparently coming out with interesting awareness of the senses and use of metaphor. The sunny weather was also well described – particularly for somebody who spent much of his leisure time holed up in a blinds-down room.
A girl sitting opposite inspired a number of ambitious but misspelt adjectives. There followed a mostly well-punctuated dialogue between them, with apparently good use of interior dialogue, but the description of the effect the girl was having on his anatomy prompted an admonition regarding content and the suggestion of a blander alternative.
So this is what they’re in a stew about, I thought. I prepared myself for a fumbling description of – hopefully imagined – teenage sex. I found myself hoping that it would be romantic rather than graphic, before telling myself that, of course, it would almost certainly just be lifted from whatever steamy film he’d last watched. Atonement, hopefully. Really the teachers should realise this and calm down.
They went into the tunnel. At a higher level there might have been praise for the subtly erotic description of the excitement, the satisfaction after the blinding sun through the windows, the difficulty in sustaining conversation in his heated state. On an artistic level, Seb’s increasingly flamboyant handwriting was very effective. It was as if he were standing up and wanting his creative – or perhaps procreative – energy to be appreciated rather than just marked. Applauded. But the red pen seemed to have been stunned into silence.
As I turned the third page I began to understand how he’d covered so many: the writing was becoming still larger and more erratic – hurtling towards its conclusion.
As was the story. Because after the tunnel, and whatever was supposed to have gone on in there, the geography and timescales were awry. The station had slid down the hill to be right next to the pier. The sweltering summer da
y had been rapidly earth-rotated into an ice-puddled evening. And the girl had arrived in Brighton complaining, considerably more care-worn, and accompanied by an ugly child. This disintegration of the teenage dream was enthusiastically congratulated by a large red tick.
The boy, now accompanied by a rabble of whooping friends, took a ride on the dodgems but immediately lost a foot – something that apparently required further explanation. The girl now seemed to be in cahoots with the red pen, demanding to know why he’d done this, but the boy was handed two pistols and answered her by shooting her in both eyes simultaneously. ‘Oh!’ said the red pen, but apart from a hesitant mark and a few bloody little dots was not to be heard from again.
A succession of rides and gruesome severances followed, each time followed by a woman showing concern and being fatally punished for doing so. Targets were very specific: the boy silenced the doughnut seller’s query with a shot in the mouth; a woman with a screaming baby was somehow simultaneously shot in both ears; a plump sensible girl at the milkshake stall was shot in both nipples.
Eventually the boy grabbed the ugly child and made his way to the helter-skelter at the end of the pier. It wasn’t clear how this was achieved with – if I’d got it right – only one remaining limb, but without the red pen’s continuity check the boy soon reached the top.
The adoring crowd were applauding and singing an anthem accompanied by a fortuitously compatible group of buskers. At the climax of the song the police arrived, aimed their guns, and fired. The ugly child was riddled with holes and tossed into the sea. I turned over to read of the inevitable demise of the one-limbed boy, but the page was blank. He hadn’t finished it. Or perhaps the essay had been whisked away before he could.
‘What d’you think?’ he asked, sitting down and putting his hands together as if in prayer.
‘Well, it’s very distasteful,’ I said. But I was used to distasteful: his bedroom bin, his mother-fucking music. ‘But he’s probably lifted a lot of it from some film he’s downloaded.’ And you should have realised this and not wasted my time and fuel with this pointless summons. ‘Trying to shock her, very silly of him.’
‘I’d say it was more than silly,’ he said, taking it from me and putting it back in the folder – Exhibit A. ‘Especially in conjunction with his recent behaviour.’
‘Oh. What’s he been doing now?’
‘He seems very... low. Likes to take to his bed. Not malingering – although he has done that of course – just unable to motivate himself. Half asleep in most lessons. Not talking. And then, suddenly, he’s doing a star turn for his friends. Like last night’s performance on the roof.’
‘The roof? Are you sure?’
‘Oh yes. Plenty of witnesses. Quite a show apparently, but some of the boys were worried and came and fetched me.’
An old image came to me: Jez’s sister Kate and I laughing as we watched Seb in a playground, deciding he reminded us of a slow loris.
‘But he hates heights.’
‘He’s been given a punishment essay – The Fall is the title. Make him think about what could have happened. And there’ll be lunchtime detentions until he’s finished it. He’s lucky – usually this kind of behaviour would mean a suspension, but we don’t want him to miss the inter-house drama competition on Monday. It’s been good to see him putting his creative and showmanship skills to better use. A tantalising view of what he could contribute if... he got himself together.’ He shifted in his seat. ‘I know he’s due to see a psychologist in the holidays, but we feel you should try to bring the appointment forward. The school doctor has written to you summarising our concerns, and has included a copy of this essay for you to take with you.’
I agreed I would try, and bit my lip as he assured me of how they wanted to help, how they still thought there was a fine young man underneath it all.
I made my way back to the car. I waited. And waited. He was always the last out of anywhere. I watched the other boys and girls dashing about, getting ready to go home or get on with whatever they’d planned for the weekend at school; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Seb dash anywhere. There were a few spiked or whipped hairdos, low-slung unbelted trousers, hitched-up skirts. Seb’s rebellion is more complicated, he’d said recently or was that the Head of Year guy with the beard. Or the pregnant Second Head woman. It didn’t matter; they would probably all agree. Complicated: that’s my kids alright. Never mind antenatal tests; there should be one you can do to show what the combining of genes is likely to throw up so you can make an informed choice before you even consider conceiving.
My phone buzzed. ‘Gabriel not happy with new glasses. Ana will bring him on Monday to see you. I am sorry Rosie. I will come xxxx’
For a moment I wasn’t sure if I was more upset about the idea of seeing Ana or the thought of how wonderful it must be to have an uncomplicated child like Gabriel. Then I thought, perhaps I still might have an uncomplicated child like Gabriel.
A knock on the window made me jump. He was grinning: a sure sign that he knew he was in trouble.
‘How are you?’ he said, getting into the front seat. ‘Can we stop off at the garage? I’m starving.’
‘Oh I think we can do better than that. How about that tea room with the amazing quiches and banana cake?’ I knew he hated the place really – the patronising waitress and too many old ladies – but I took advantage of the likelihood that he wouldn’t complain. Like his father, he was going to be all consideration and geniality while I pretended I didn’t know what he’d been up to. But I had to deal with the roof.
I waited until he’d finished his jacket potato, just in case he lost his temper and stopped eating. ‘Okay, are you going to tell me about the roof?’
A chuckle and an ingratiating smile. ‘Oh. Mr Warner told you about that? It wasn’t dangerous, everybody goes up there.’
Keep them safe, the policeman had said. ‘Of course it’s dangerous. You want to break your neck and spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair? For God’s sake Seb, promise me you’ll never go up there again.’
‘Everyone was asking me to sing We are the Champions.’
‘Promise me you’ll never go up there again.’
‘Okay, okay.’ He was looking at the menu again; it was good to see him eating well for a change. Somehow that seemed more important than discussing the essay. The truth is that although I was annoyed at him for upsetting the teachers, I was very impressed with his writing. Who would have thought that a person who had so little to say these days could be so eloquent on paper? I was looking forward to seeing what he’d do with the essay they’d set him in lieu of suspension.
I asked about the inter-house drama and watched him let his crumble and custard get cold as he described it in detail, laughing as he recalled the blunders in rehearsals, confident his house could win. I felt like I was sitting having lunch with the old Seb.
***
I stayed in his arms a little too long, even though he was damp and sweaty from watering the garden, and acrid from his pipe.
‘You flop down and relax – stressful dealing with school teachers. I’ll make them,’ Terry said, patting me on the back.
I sat down outside with my feet up. The wind had pushed the morning’s clouds away and I was sitting under a Mediterranean sky. Like the one Jez had said I’d be sitting under with him one weekend, but that seemed a long time ago. I wondered again whether Sarah had taken my place.
‘So what’s he been up to then?’ said Terry, dunking his digestive. For a moment I wasn’t sure whether he was talking about his son or grandson.
I told him about the roof, and moved swiftly on to how well Seb was doing with the inter-house drama. He made Seb promise that he’d never do it again, and then recounted a similar school escapade of his own. I watched his animated talk and thought how much I loved him, how I’d always told my friends – and Jez – that when I looked at Terry, I had a very agreeable preview of what I would be married to in the future. But now
I probably wasn’t prepared to wait and find out; I was going to be elsewhere, with a man who hopefully wouldn’t turn into his father. And Terry would be understanding, but our relationship would never be the same again.
‘I want to do the cha-cha-cha, like Dr Who,’ said Kenny, bounding on to the decking.
‘What?’
‘And definitely the waltz.’
‘What are you on about?’
‘I put what I thought was Robin Hood on for him – that’s what it said on the box – but it was an episode of last year’s Strictly Come Dancing. And he’s watched it over and over,’ said Terry.
‘Dr Who’s in it, come and look,’ said Kenny, grabbing my arm and spilling some coffee.
‘I’ll leave you to it – want to finish the watering,’ said Terry.
Kenny pulled me to the living room and wound back to just before Dr Who’s first entrance; the actor looking awkward in his frilled shirt, allowing the platinum-bobbed professional dancer to stroke his cheek and pat his arm as if he were a nervous child. And then they were off. And so was Kenny, imitating all the moves – even the actor’s attempt at a Latin leer.
‘Wow Kenny, that’s really good!’
‘Go Kens!’ Seb said, appearing in the doorway.
He grinned, but was busy fast-forwarding to a now suavely suited Dr Who with his glamorously pink-frocked partner. Kenny copied well, rising and falling on his feet beautifully, getting irritated with the furniture in his way.
‘Put it on again!’ I said, handing him the controller, while Seb cheered and clapped. ‘I want to be your partner, if you’ll have me.’ But I was lost after the first few steps, and he began to lose patience with teaching me. ‘Okay, I think you’re right. You need to go somewhere where you can dance with a girl who knows what they’re doing.’
‘Yeah mate, I used to do it – you get all these rosettes and stuff,’ Seb said, and I could have hugged him for being so encouraging.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t be too shy?’ I was worried it would be like the group swimming lessons, the taekwondo club, the art place. All of which had politely let us know that he was not joining in or behaving appropriately, other parents were complaining, and he had to leave.
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