by Janet Davey
As I pass the living room, a piece of paper flutters and catches my eye. Jude is at the table, an open book, her laptop and a pad of A4 in front of her, some loose sheets, some screwed up in balls. I put the bags of food shopping down in the hall and go in to say hello. I give her a sideways hug. I can feel the bones in her shoulder.
‘Is everything all right? You don’t usually work down here.’
‘I’ve got this timed essay to write. It’s quite difficult.’
‘History? For Mrs Anstey?’
‘No, English, for Mr Child. I don’t really know what I’m doing. So far it’s rubbish.’ Jude indicates the screwed-up paper.
‘Can I help?’
‘’S’all right.’ She tugs at the bottom of the large sweatshirt that belongs to Ross and which she wears as all-purpose leisurewear. ‘Lorna?’
‘Mm?’
‘I’ve reset the start time twice already. Mr Child won’t know, will he? Does it matter?’
‘No. It doesn’t matter at all.’
Jude bends her head. She turns over the pages of the book.
‘Just do your best,’ I say and leave her.
I go out into the garden. A pair of blue tits on the bird feeder startle and fly away. When Mr Milner found out that Mr Child had missed his afternoon classes he and two senior members of staff went to look for him. Police arrived at the school and also an ambulance. Lessons had ended. The students gone. Staff off to the pub. Most of them. On a Friday. There are no extracurricular activities at the end of the week.
In the after-shock of sirens, the nearby roads fell quiet. The one-decker buses bowled along empty of passengers; floors and seats littered with empty drinks cans and food wrappers, single items of school uniform, a blazer or a tie, chewing gum stamped like grey rounds of sealing wax. Mr Milner, back in his office, resumed marking. The head left. It was his wife’s birthday. Dinner was booked and, later on, the theatre.
32
IN MID-AFTERNOON, THE doorbell rings. I am puzzled by the silhouette behind the glass in the front door. A courier, I think, though I have no idea what the delivery might be.
‘Hi, Lorna.’ Randal, in biker’s leathers, on the doorstep, is removing his helmet.
‘Good heavens,’ I say.
‘My new toy. It’s a fantastic way of travelling. All the advantages of a car and a bicycle. Please don’t make the inevitable references. I kept calling to let you know I was coming but you didn’t pick up.’
‘Oh, I switched my phone off. I had a nap. You look like one of those knightly ghosts that carries its head under its arm.’
He puts the helmet on the floor, takes off his gauntlets and begins to peel off his outer clothing. For a few seconds, I watch, mesmerised, then, as he steps out of the trousers, collect myself. ‘I’ll go and make some tea,’ I say.
I hear his steps on the stairs. A muffled interchange takes place with Ross, then Randal goes up to the top of the house. I listen for the knock on Ewan’s door.
He stays up there for about fifteen minutes.
‘Ross says they’ll be down later. Jude says hi. Nice girl, isn’t she?’
I turn the radio off and we go into the living room. I place Randal’s mug of tea on the floor by the sofa.
‘Ewan seems brighter,’ he says.
‘Brighter?’
‘Yeah. I mean, he’s not particularly communicative, but his face. It struck me as brighter.’
‘That’s great. Would I notice tiny changes? I don’t know. I’m happy to believe you.’
‘But you look tired, Lorna. Are you all right?’
‘I woke up too early. I’m fine.’
‘How early?’
‘Four-thirty?’
‘Oh, not too bad. I thought you were going to say two. We were up and down with Stefan. You know what toddlers are like with a cold. His nose was blocked, poor little sod.’
A car alarm starts; a prolonged hoot.
Randal picks up his mug and sips cautiously. ‘Normal tea. Thanks.’
We chat until Ross and Jude come down. She is still wearing the sweatshirt – her breasts comfortably free inside the capacious garment – but she has put on a pair of black leggings. Usually she wanders round the house with bare legs. Ross is wearing an old tweed cap knocked to the back of his head. They both carry their phones and, in addition, Jude clasps her copy of Silas Marner. There is an element of constraint, as though they are about to put on a home-made play. The staged but sheepish entrance. The devastating pause in which it dawns on the actors that even improvisation requires a plan. Randal, Helena, William and I used to watch from a mock-up auditorium of sofa and two rows of dining chairs, our tickets ready for inspection. Shields and weaponry came from the kitchen. Bath towels were borrowed as togas. The performances involved fighting and were over quickly. On one less Roman occasion, Oliver went into labour with a lot of grunting and Ewan, the doctor, assisted with various pieces of garden equipment that he drew with a mixture of desperation and excitement from an old string bag: a trowel, a garden sieve, a packet of sunflower seeds and a ball of twine.
‘How’s the homework going?’ I ask Jude.
‘Terrible.’
‘We can’t stay long. Jude hasn’t finished,’ Ross says.
‘Well, at least sit down. Don’t you have to write this timed essay thing too?’ I say.
‘I’ll do it tomorrow when Jude’s gone. Only takes an hour.’ Ross drops down on the floor in front of the fireplace, Jude next to him.
‘Where’s that from?’ I ask, tapping my head.
‘Where’s what from?’ Ross says.
‘The headgear.’
‘Cap. Not headgear. Why do you always think you’re Jane Austen, or something? I found it up the road. On a post.’
I cannot begin to put right the misconceptions contained in his question. But for a few seconds it distracts me.
Randal laughs. ‘She is annoying, isn’t she? What is the terrible essay?’
‘We have to analyse a passage in Silas Marner and explain its significance to the work as a whole,’ Jude says.
‘I hope it has some. Significance, I mean. Does it?’ Randal asks.
‘Oh, yes.’ Jude’s expression is serious. ‘I could read it to you, if you like?’
‘Yes, please go ahead,’ Randal says.
Jude, who is still sitting on the floor, puts her hair behind her ears, opens the book and holds it in two hands, like a chorister. She clears her throat.
‘“Thought had been very busy in Eppie as she listened to the contest between her old long-loved father and this new unfamiliar father who had suddenly come to fill the place of that black featureless shadow which had held the ring and placed it on her mother’s finger. Her imagination had darted backward in conjectures, and forward in previsions, of what this revealed fatherhood implied; and there were words in Godfrey’s last speech which helped to make the previsions especially definite.”’
Randal gazes at Jude as she reads. Her face, the young body under the skull-print fabric, the slender ankles in overlarge socks. I wonder whether he would look at her like that if he lived here. He reveals more than fatherhood. She is seventeen years old, the daughter of doctors. One day, she may have to meet Fred Grabowski. She glances up, aware of Randal, then she looks back down at the text. Ross traces pictures in the rug with his fingers.
‘Hmm,’ Randal says when she finishes. ‘I’d have to hear it again before making any useful comment. You read well.’
‘We have to say what kind of paragraph it is. Coordinate, subordinate or mixed sequence,’ Jude says.
‘Very erudite. Is that what’s called New Criticism?’ Randal says.
‘Is it, Lorna?’ Jude asks.
‘I think New Criticism is old hat now,’ I say.
‘Perhaps your teacher is old. My age. Is she?’ Randal emphasises the word ‘old’ jokily. From Jude, he hopes for a disclaimer.
‘He,’ I say. ‘Mr Child.’
‘He’s quite young, I
think. Would you like to see him?’ Jude puts the book down, picks up her phone and goes over to Randal.
‘Is that one of the pictures you showed me?’ I say quickly.
‘No. This is a new one. I took it yesterday.’
Randal, who pretends he does not need reading glasses, moves Jude’s hand so that the phone is in a better position for him to be able to see. ‘He seems to be carrying a chair.’
‘Yes,’ Jude says. ‘He goes into this cupboard place – an old stationery cupboard – and we don’t know what he does in there. Lorna said maybe mindfulness training – or erotic asphyxiation.’
‘Did she, indeed?’ Randal shoots me a glance of mock astonishment. ‘I’m enjoying this.’
‘I never said that. Surely not?’
Randal dismisses me with a gesture. ‘Funny you should mention mindfulness. We had a taster session of it at work the other week. It went down well. I was surprised. We might roll it out across the company – purchase the downloadable MP3 and get everyone practising the technique. But back to your teacher and Lorna’s astonishing conjecture. What kind of person is he? Do you like him?’
‘He doesn’t have much personality,’ Jude says. ‘And he’s no good at explaining things.’
‘A black featureless shadow, eh? Carrying a chair and a small rucksack. I’m more prosaic than Lorna. She has a wild imagination. I think he was going to change the light bulb. What do you say to that?’
Ross groans. ‘Don’t start him on light-bulb jokes. He tells the most terrible jokes.’
‘How big is this cupboard?’ Randal asks.
I see silver stars above the fireplace. They are linked in a string and draped over the mirror. One end of the string starts to lift as though something or someone tugs at it. The sparkly thread moves in a slow, sick circle and the room is dragged along too, like a curtain on a rail. The pictures slip between the folds of the walls, then the windows. They are dark, glassy squares that slide away and reappear. When the furniture leaves the floor I put my head between my knees into upside-down dark.
Lorna. Mum. Voices break through. I am light. I am heavy as a bell. Inside my skull, matter spins and tips, spins and settles.
I bring myself cautiously to a vertical. Three faces. They tip backwards and forwards. I try to smile, though my lips are dry and the shape they make feels lopsided and far from reassuring. I must have missed the stars when I took the Christmas decorations down. The spot is out of reach of a tall man or boy, even should one be willing. A stepladder is required. The box marked ‘Brother’ has been put away.
33
I SWITCH THE oven on and go to the fridge to get out the shoulder of lamb. As I sit the meat on the rack of the roasting pan, I remember that William is not coming for Sunday lunch, a fact I forgot as I threw food into the supermarket trolley – and at every point until this moment. I am sorry I won’t be seeing my father. I want to take his coat from him in the hall, let it hang over my arm – its weight a comfort – while we greet each other and go through the normal enquiries. Health, journey, sons and so on. Apart from the corduroy suit that he wears for special occasions, he sticks to a plain cotton shirt of indeterminate grey/green colour, beige trousers held up by a brown leather belt, a wool jacket and one of a selection of crew-necked jumpers darned at the elbows and cuffs by my mother. He washes with a kind of soap that no one buys any more. The peppery cologne smell of the soap is particular to him and I am glad that he bothers to make the journey to the chemist’s shop in Cricklewood that still stocks it. I lead the way to the kitchen. He sits at the table and I pour him a drink. You’re hovering, he says. Anything I can do? No, you just sit there, Dad, and enjoy your wine. I resume chopping the parsley, or whatever it happens to be, surprised, as I always am when my father first arrives, that time is at a standstill.
The back gardens are quiet on a Sunday morning. The sky is the same white as on the previous day, sterile and dazzling. I check my messages in case there is something more from Ginny.
Around midday, there are stirrings upstairs; music, doors slammed, feet, the sound of the shower going. Soon afterwards, Jude calls out goodbye and leaves for Crews Hill. I imagine Jane Brims and William plodding round the National Army Museum in their outdoor clothes; two seniors with their concession tickets. My earlier, manic animosity towards the woman has dulled.
‘Grandad’s not coming today,’ I tell Ross when he comes down for roast lamb. ‘He’s gone to an exhibition.’
‘Oh, OK.’
‘With a friend. Jane Brims.’
‘Nice.’
Ross has never heard of the Crimean War so I give him a short, possibly not wholly accurate résumé of events and recite some of Tennyson’s poem, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. He seems to tolerate this, and I assume he is not listening, but at the end he says, ‘You said “not” twice.’
‘That’s right, “not Not the six hundred”.’
‘So that means they all came back. All six hundred of them. What’s the fuss about?’ His mouth is full of roast potato.
We argue for about fifteen minutes. It is like talking to Bishop Lowth. I come close to raising the Chapter Sixteen, sixteen-years controversy that Deborah Lupton mentioned but stop myself. The ramifications are complex – too many sixes, like the mark of the Beast – and I have the information third hand.
‘Why didn’t you go to the exhibition as well, if you’re so interested?’ he says.
‘Fair comment,’ I say.
34
I SIGNED UP for ParentMail years ago. The letter when it comes, late on Tuesday afternoon, is electronic. The content and style are peculiarly bloodless and the tone is wrong. I am used to the garbled messages that emanate from the school: the mixture of management-speak and muddled syntax that through obfuscation – deliberate and accidental – reveals a holier-than-thou defensiveness that sickens me. They are, it seems, always hiding something. My father, who believes in a good-quality sealed envelope and headed writing paper, would blame the medium, and perhaps, in this instance, he would be right. There is a lack of respect in the paragraph that pops into my inbox under the strap-line, Important Announcement.
The writer, or committee of writers, has taken pains to give as little information as possible. The result is puzzling. I am left wondering whether Mr Child succumbed to a sudden mysterious illness or was involved in a road-traffic accident in the vicinity of the academy. Nothing bad happens on the premises. A casual reader might think he was alive but unable to continue in his chosen profession. Having dealt with the tragedy, they move on to school housekeeping:
Miss de Silva, who many of you know but many of you might not know that she has a joint honours degree in Theology and English Literature, will put on her other hat and be taking the Year 12 English group until a new, permanent member of staff is appointed. Excellent temporary staff under the expert guidance of Mrs Sharon Laws will be covering Years 7 to 11. You should be assured that recruitment has already begun. We mustn’t forget that the period we had the leaks was in an exceptionally inclement period and an overkill situation should be avoided not withstanding it may be pragmatic to bite the bullet as a long-term solution.
To close, the standard spiel about the school’s counselling service is pasted in.
‘This is very sad news about Mr Child.’
Ross, at his desk, has his back to me. The curtains are open and in the reflections of the glass I see the lid of his laptop, the blue of his sweatshirt, part of his face.
‘What about him?’
‘Well, he’s died, Ross, hasn’t he?’
Ross makes some kind of noise, possibly of assent, if not confirmation.
‘I’ve had an email from school.’
‘There you go.’
‘Are they marking it in some way?’
‘What?’
‘A special service or assembly.’
‘Prayers, you mean?’
‘Maybe but not necessarily. It wouldn’t have to be religious as such.�
��
‘There’s no such thing as non-religious prayers. “O Mr and Mrs Child, we remember today your son, Alan Child.”’
‘Ross, that’s horrible. His poor parents. Anyway, he might not have any.’
‘Yeah, he lives with them. In Romford. Why doesn’t he get his own place?’
‘Lived. Didn’t. Don’t keep using the present tense. It’s really unpleasant. What’s the matter with you?’
‘He’s too old to live at home. Was, sorry.’
‘I think you’re being incredibly callous. What’s got into you?’
Beyond and through the mirrored bedroom are the lighted windows of the next street’s houses and the dark outlines of roofs with their redundant chimney stacks. In the intermediate space the tree’s branches hold steady – they stretch in every direction – and invade the shadow copy of my son.
‘Is Jude OK?’
No response.
‘Is she?’
He nods, grudgingly. I wait. He flings out an arm. It is a gesture of dismissal but I stay put.
‘Why are you still there?’ he says after several seconds have passed.
‘We haven’t finished the conversation.’
‘There isn’t a conversation.’
‘She wasn’t her usual self at the weekend.’
No response.
‘It won’t be easy for her. Her mum and dad with their troubles. And now this sad thing at school.’
35
‘DOING ANYTHING NICE this evening?’ my hairstylist asks. Her name is Dahlia and she comes from Estonia.
‘No, nothing special.’ My upper chest is weighed down with a heavy rubber cutting collar, a curious fetishistic object that some people might enjoy but the sensation reminds me of the bouts of bronchitis I suffered from every winter in my cigarette-smoking days. Underneath is a billowing black nylon cape without slits for hands. I am entrapped in this costume with only my head showing, like Estelle, the fairground spider woman, who wrecked any illusion that she was a phenomenon of nature by chatting to us from her web and asking my brother, Hugh, and me our names and ages and what we liked doing at school. I believed that she and Electra, who defied death by 27,000 volts, were wholly contemporary though they must have been vintage artistes in that era – revivals several times over – like the steam fair rides, and billed as such in garish posters. The headless lady was my favourite. She stood at a counter with a mirror behind her, like the woman in Manet’s painting, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. You could see the back of her velvet dress and the bow of her white apron. She poured drinks for imaginary customers and for the intoxicating climax of the act made as if to take a surreptitious snifter herself. She raised the glass to absent lips. My eyes never left her. In the last crucial second, before the red wine vanished into thin air, or alternatively spilled down her front, her shoulders twitched, as though she sensed the landlord watching nearby, thought better of the action, diverted the glass, and lifted it in a toast to the audience.