‘Idiots. You’d have sailed through,’ I said, remembering how nauseatingly Ollie and Daisy used to celebrate Archie’s achievements in their Christmas round robin: top of the class, captain of cricket team, lead role in drama production, etc.
‘I expect you’re pissed off with me,’ he said, ‘what with being a teacher.’
‘I’m just sorry things have been bad.’
‘Ian!’ Ollie shouted again.
‘Coming,’ I shouted back.
‘You’re probably not meant to know,’ Archie said, as I stood up. ‘Don’t tell Dad I told you.’
‘I’m sure he will tell me. We only got here this afternoon.’
‘Still. Promise you won’t say anything.’
‘I promise. But let’s talk, shall we? I’m here till Monday.’
I took his silence as assent.
‘So are you coming to the restaurant?’ I said.
‘Nah.’
‘You don’t like seafood, eh?’
‘Not much.’
‘I’m sure there’ll be other things on the menu.’
‘I promised Em I’d look after Rufus,’ he said, stroking his neck.
You may have problems but you’re still a good kid, I thought. Here you are, missing out on dinner, in order to do a good turn.
Only later did it occur to me that he hadn’t been invited in the first place.
‘Close the door,’ Em mouthed as I entered the bedroom. ‘Have you heard about Archie and school?’ she whispered, once the door was shut.
I nodded. She was leaning into the oval mirror of a rickety dressing table to apply mascara. The room was low-ceilinged, with faded gingham curtains and a reproduction of Millais’ Ophelia over the bed.
‘Daisy told me,’ she said, keeping her voice down. ‘It’s been very upsetting for them. For her anyway. Ollie won’t talk about it. I’m surprised he even mentioned it to you.’
‘He didn’t. Archie did.’
I took the least crumpled shirt from my suitcase.
‘Daisy wanted to call us when he started truanting, to ask our advice. But Ollie wouldn’t let her. Plan B was to get Archie to call us himself. But Ollie vetoed that as well.’
‘He’d be embarrassed about involving us,’ I said.
‘But you’re Archie’s godfather. And I know about school refusers. We could have helped.’
‘I agree,’ I said.
‘Good. So you won’t object if I give Ollie a piece of my mind.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ I said. The guy had a terminal illness, for God’s sake. And we were meant to be having a night out. ‘What’s the point?’
‘Apparently he thinks their mistake was not sending Archie to boarding school.’
‘I thought he was doing brilliantly where he was.’
‘He was. Then the usual happened. He got bored. Fell in with the wrong crowd. Started drinking, smoking dope, staying out all night. Much like the kids I deal with, in fact.’
‘A typical Friday afternoon for you.’
‘Yes, busman’s holiday. Except that Archie’s not in trouble with the police.’
‘Not yet,’ I said, pulling on my trousers, which were black like Archie’s but baggy. ‘He looks a mess.’
‘Daisy says he’s better than he was. She’s found this college where he can sit his GCSEs in January then do ASs next summer.’
‘Some posh West End crammer, eh?’
‘No, a sixth-form college down the road from where they live. Archie wouldn’t consider anything else.’
‘There’s my boy — good for him.’
Education has been a sore point between the Moores and us ever since they removed Archie from the local primary school and went private. They spent hours justifying their decision to us — Archie was being ‘held back’, state education in London was lousy, one’s kids were more important than one’s principles, and anyway the school they’d chosen for him was liberal and co-ed, etc. Later they didn’t even try to justify it — they just knew they’d done the right thing.
‘He’s friends with a couple of kids who go there,’ Em said. ‘It’s nothing to do with politics.’
‘Of course it is. He’s against his parents buying him privilege. It’s Ollie and Daisy who have screwed him up.’
‘He’s not screwed up,’ Em said. ‘He’s lost his way for a while, that’s all. Most kids do, at some point. Only Ollie can’t see that. So tonight I’m going to put him straight.’
‘Everyone ready?’ Ollie called from below.
Hearing his voice, I felt a pang: how many more times would I hear it? how much longer did he have? The brain tumour was surely a random event. But perhaps he thought the stress over Archie had brought it on or made it worse — another reason he found the truanting difficult to talk about.
‘Two ticks,’ I shouted down.
I slipped a jacket on, in case it was chillier on the coast.
‘Leave it for tonight,’ I said to Em. ‘Give Ollie a break.’
‘What are you afraid of? Ollie can look after himself.’
‘I’m not so sure about that.’
‘What do you mean?’
I told her what I meant. About the brain tumour. And how he didn’t have long. With Ollie at the front door, shouting at us to hurry, I kept it brief. But she got the gist.
He had asked me not to tell anyone. But he could hardly expect me to keep it from my wife.
Em’s eyes filled and her lip trembled. I worried she would cry and that Ollie would hear her. Or that her mascara would run and give her away.
‘Don’t say anything,’ I said, as she rechecked her make-up.
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘Unless they do.’
‘They won’t. Ollie can’t bear to and Daisy doesn’t know.’
‘What?’
‘He hasn’t told her.’
She shook her head, struggling to take it in.
‘Coming!’ I shouted, when Ollie called up again.
At the top of the stairs, Em pulled me back and whispered: ‘She can’t not be told. If Ollie won’t tell her, then we must.’
‘So it’s a seafood place,’ I said, as we set off.
‘That’s right,’ Ollie said. ‘Oysters from the local creek and fish from the North Sea.’
‘We remembered Em’s not keen on meat,’ Daisy said.
‘And that you’ll eat anything, Ian,’ Ollie said.
As usual they’d got it slightly wrong. Em avoids beef and pork but does eat chicken and lamb. The only fish I like comes in batter, with chips. But we both smiled and said the restaurant sounded great.
I sat in the front with Ollie, Daisy having surrendered the passenger seat on the grounds that I have longer legs than she does — Em, who’s as tall as I am, scrunched up with her in the back. At university, Ollie had craved a car like this, with leather seats, a walnut dashboard and a soft top. But it seemed a bit desperate for a barrister with a late-teenage son. Had he bought it knowing or suspecting he was ill — a last indulgence?
‘Slow down, Ollie,’ Daisy said, her hair streaming behind her, ‘it’s blowy back here.’
‘I’m only doing sixty.’
‘It’s the last time you buy a sports car,’ she said, nearer the bone than she knew.
‘My dad used to drive an MGB,’ Ollie said, turning to me. ‘This could be his, in fact.’
‘The same model?’
‘The exact same car. They only made about 350. You see the chip in the glass of the oil gauge, there — I can remember that from childhood. That’s why I bought it, to tell the truth. Paid over the odds but it was worth it. Me sitting where my father sat — can you imagine?’
I couldn’t. But if deluding himself this was his father’s car made Ollie feel better, that was fine by me.
He was taking the back roads to avoid speed cameras, he said. All the roads round Badingley seemed to be back roads anyway, as if the budget for road-building had run out twenty miles inland. The landscape changed be
tween each village — from deciduous woodland to pine forest, from scrubby heath to lush farmland, from reed beds to rolling hills. The sun sank in the west over Ollie’s shoulder. Side-on, circled by light, he looked like an emperor on a Roman coin. And Daisy, in the back, was a minted empress, her hair flying behind her.
I’d imagined big windows overlooking an expanse of sea. But the restaurant was in a side street, half a mile from the harbour, and our table was a corner table, under low rafters, with a view of a small walled garden run to seed. The tables were imitation-marble Formica, with knives and forks so flimsy a breeze might have blown them away. It was no more Daisy’s kind of place than the cottage was, but Ollie, who said he’d eaten here with his parents when they last came, seemed perfectly at home.
‘White?’ he said. I suggested a New Zealand Marlborough, but Ollie, hogging the wine list, said the only wines worth having were French.
‘Let me treat you,’ he said, before conspiring in whispers with the maître d’, who, despite the modest surroundings, wore a white jacket and black tie. I know nothing about wine but when the bottle was uncorked I turned the label my way: Château Laville Haut-Brion 1986, it said.
‘Christ, Ollie, it must be expensive.’
‘Not really,’ he said, then leaned across in a whisper. ‘I don’t think they realise what they should be charging.’
‘Tastes good,’ we all agreed.
I hadn’t noticed the other diners till then but they had certainly noticed us. They were mostly couples — men in white shirts and ties (their discarded tweed jackets hanging over their chairs), women in floral dresses with pinched waists and conical bosoms. Why were they staring? Had we made too much noise? Did they consider us underdressed? Or was it just me they’d taken against, a lowlife who didn’t belong with the likes of them? I clenched my fists beneath the table — then realised that what they were staring at was the blackboard above my head: Today’s Specials, chalked in a looping script. The prawn cocktail and scampi already had lines through them.
‘What do you fancy?’ I said to Em.
‘Guess,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re having.’
‘What?’
‘The tomato soup to start. Then the tuna.’
I nodded. It wasn’t hard for her to guess, since all the other starters involved shellfish and tuna was the nearest thing to steak.
‘And you’ll have the beetroot salad followed by cod,’ I said.
Beetroot salad being the only vegetarian starter apart from the soup, and cod being cod, even if it didn’t come with chips.
‘Spot on,’ Em said.
‘God, how sickening of you,’ Daisy said. ‘I can never predict Ollie.’
‘The starter’s easy,’ Ollie said. ‘They have their own oyster beds. You must try some, Ian.’
‘Shellfish don’t agree with me.’ ‘Oysters are different. You eat them raw.’
‘Yuk.’
‘Where’s your sense of adventure, man? You’ll let him try, won’t you, Em?’
‘I’m not his boss.’
‘Em knows what’s good for her,’ he winked. ‘They’re an aphrodisiac.’
‘Should I risk it?’ I asked Em, ignoring him.
‘It’s your funeral,’ she said.
‘Let’s order,’ Ollie said. ‘The service can be horribly slow.’
It seemed unlikely that the service today bore any resemblance to the service thirty-odd years ago. But the frizz-haired waitress in the short black skirt looked as if she could have been around then. And to help the time pass Ollie ordered a second bottle — a Château La Perle Blanche 1976.
‘When people talk bollocks about the greenhouse effect, I remember that summer,’ he said. ‘The heatwave lasted six weeks.’
Em and I exchanged looks. Ollie had doubtless intuited our global warming worries and was winding us up. Or the intimations of his own death made him indifferent to the death of the planet. Either way, I wouldn’t be drawn.
‘Steady with the drink,’ Daisy said, as Ollie topped us up. ‘You’re driving.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Ollie said, laughing her off. ‘They haven’t introduced the breathalyser round here.’
Something else they’d not introduced was the ban on smoking. All around us people were lighting up. Perhaps the restaurant had a special licence, or had reached some tacit arrangement with the local police. And perhaps that’s what made it so popular, despite the limited decor and fish-only menu. One woman even had a cigarette holder, as though she were starring in a forties movie.
The waitress arrived with our starters. The tomato soup could have come straight from a can, so when Ollie put an oyster on my side plate I didn’t object.
‘The Tabasco sauce is optional,’ he said.
I lifted the ugly wrinkled shell. The gob of phlegm lodging inside it smelled like a urinal.
‘Just tip the shell and swallow it whole,’ Ollie said.
‘I like to taste my food,’ I said, playing for time.
‘You will. It’s pure ambrosia.’
If oysters are ambrosia, then spare me heaven. The slimeboat slithered down, spilling its cargo. It tasted of snot, marinaded in brine.
‘You’ve still some juice in the shell,’ Ollie said. I licked it cautiously, like a cat lapping at a rock pool.
‘Wonderful, eh?’ He pushed a second oyster at me, sprinkling red sauce on it as he did. ‘With Tabasco this time.’
Resisting the impulse to hold my nose, I poured the red-laced phlegmball down my gullet. Instead of an estuary, I tasted fire.
‘You’ll never make a gourmet,’ Ollie said. ‘Last one. This time try chewing.’
I offered the shell to Daisy and Em, who shook their heads. I guessed that Daisy had eaten oysters before, and even enjoyed them, but she was indulging us — as if only men had the courage for such cuisine.
I chewed before I swallowed, tasting stringy innards and sand grains, and waiting for some revelation, as though it was mescalin or LSD. Nothing happened. I didn’t feel sick, nor did I feel horny. My chief sensation was self-disgust. Oysters, maître d’s, fat wankers stuffing their faces — what was I doing here? But this was a holiday. A break from real life. And I owed it to Ollie and Daisy to behave.
‘OK, Ian?’ Ollie said.
‘Grand,’ I said.
Outside the world had gone dark. In our low-raftered room the air was hot and smoky. Ollie buried himself in the wine list.
‘I think a red now,’ he said. ‘Even if we are having fish. How would a Château Margaux 1966 be?’
‘Astronomically expensive, I expect.’
‘The year you were born, Ian.’
‘Don’t choose it on my account.’
‘The 1964, then.’
‘A house red would do fine.’
‘It’s not that pricey. Relax.’
Back home, when we eat out, it’s usually a curry and Kingfisher beer, or else rump steak and a Chilean red. Ollie’s extravagance put us in a quandary. It wasn’t fair to let him treat us but going halves would be ruinous. Perhaps if he paid for the wine, I could cover the rest: honour of sorts.
‘It’s a special night,’ Ollie said, explaining his choices: 1964, the year of his birth; 1976, the year he was last in Badingley; 1986, the year he met me. I felt touched but also embarrassed. Ollie had always been preoccupied with his past. Tonight — robbed of a future — he seemed in thrall to it.
‘To old friends,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘To a great weekend. And to the bet.’
‘Which bet is that?’ Em said.
‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ I lied.
‘We made a bet,’ Ollie said. ‘Which Ian is winning. Tell them, Ian.’
Em gave me a sharp look.
‘Call of nature,’ I said, standing up.
It began with one of our lunchtime debates. We’d been discussing chance and probability, and afterwards, on our way across campus, Ollie with his crutches, me carrying his books for him, I recounted a story I’d ju
st read in which two men get into an argument about punishment (which fate is worse, a life sentence or execution?), the first man offering to pay the second a vast fortune if he can survive fifteen years in solitary confinement. I forget now how the story ends or who wrote it (probably some Russian: I read a lot of Russian fiction while bunking off law). But Ollie found it thrilling: to push yourself to the limit like that in order to win a bet. His education had taught him the value of competing. But not that you could do it for money.
He returned to the subject the following day, in order to make a distinction between betting and gambling: a bet involved skill and stamina, he said, whereas a gamble was pure chance. I accused him of playing with semantics: wasn’t a man placing a bet on a horse a gambler? Moreover, to bet on a horse was no shot in the dark, I said, but involved judgement and expertise. ‘Judgement?’ he scoffed. ‘Expertise?’ I could have hit him. Betting on horses was something I knew about. My dad has always liked a flutter, and would often send me down the bookie’s on his behalf. ('A fiver each way on the Duke of Venice in the two thirty at Doncaster and Honourable Wench in the four o’clock at Chepstow. Got that?’ ‘Can I have an ice cream if one of them wins?’ ‘Shut your face and get down there sharpish.') It was illegal for me even to enter the bookie’s, let alone place bets. But the man who ran it was a family friend, Micky Cass, and knew the trouble my dad had getting off his arse, so he’d ruffle my hair and say, ‘Just this once then.’ You can’t spend time in such places — among the cigarettes, the television screens, the dingy clothes, the poker faces — and not be tempted. And once I was a teenager, earning pocket money from a paper round, I made errand-running for my dad more tolerable by placing small bets of my own. I didn’t win much but nor did I lose so badly as he used to, and by studying form and weighing odds I came to see that betting on horses needn’t be a lottery — that judgement and expertise can play a part.
I tried to explain this to Ollie. But it was only by taking him to a betting shop that I was able to prove the point. I’d already located the nearest one, just off campus, which wasn’t a smoky cave, like Micky Cass’s, but bright as a supermarket. Despite the wholesome ambience, Ollie looked worried, as if we might be mugged or murdered. I calmed him down by suggesting a horse to bet on in the next race: a seven-year-old filly called Mandragora. He shrugged and handed over a tenner, and Mandragora came in at 8—1. That showed him. With the winnings, we kept going for another three hours. By the end Ollie got through forty quid, a small fortune in those days. To me it was money well spent.
The Last Weekend Page 7