by Patrick Gale
The doorbell rang. Emma chased the cats from the kitchen and followed them into the hall. Crispin was no taller. They had made him change from his uniform into his suit for the visit.
‘Hello,’ she said, sounding as warm as she had done all day. ‘Come on in. How smart you look! Is that a new suit?’
‘Yes. We bought it in Leeds last week.’
‘Very grown up!’
He stooped to pick up Rousillou who was sniffing at his grey flannel turn-ups. The cat seemed bigger than ever in the boy’s small, scrabbling grasp. Crispin was a diminutive version of his uncle Jeremy, who was a cousin of Emma’s, an eligible London divorcé working as a literary agent. Emma had been best friends with Crispin’s eldest sister, following a shared family holiday when they were seventeen. For two years they had gone on trips together, written letters and told each other everything. Then Sarah, amiable but breathtakingly ignorant, had flunked her A-levels. As she drifted into cooking directors’ lunches and as Emma passed on to Edinburgh, their lives had painlessly separated. Emma’s godmotherhood of Sarah’s brother was their only remaining contact.
‘Shall we sit in the garden or don’t you think it’s warm enough yet?’ she asked.
‘Well, it’s not as warm as it looks.’
His voice was half-broken, so it took occasional alarming leaps up an octave or two.
‘Let’s go into Pa’s study then,’ she said, ‘because it’s in the sun at the moment.’
With a ceiling yellowed by tobacco smoke and one wall clouded with grey by an inefficient fireplace, the little study was the room in greatest need of redecoration yet, when it was ablaze with late afternoon sunshine, it was the room she least wanted to alter. It was redolent with tender memories of her father before illness drove him upstairs. She liked to sit there with her marking and a pot of bonfirish, China tea.
‘So tell me your news,’ she demanded once they were settled. ‘You started on Sunday?’
‘Saturday. Boarders had to arrive on Saturday afternoon. There was a sort of welcoming tea party.’ Crispin pushed back a lock of black hair that was bothering him. It dropped back into his eyes within seconds.
‘How grim.’
‘Yes. It was. Ma came but she had to leave almost straight away.’
‘Have you got a nice study?’
‘I haven’t got one at all.’
‘No?’
‘Not a proper one. I share a burrow with a nice girl called Jermyn and eight other boys.’
‘Men,’ she corrected him with a smile.
‘Blast. Yes, men. And I have to sleep in a huge dormitory upstairs.’
‘Nice bed?’
‘Not very. It sinks in the middle so it’s hard to roll over on.’
‘Oh dear. Who’s your form god?’
‘We’ve got two. Officially it’s Dr Brightstone.’
‘She’s nice.’
‘Is she? We share her with 5Bii so Mr Hart comes in for English and to set our Saturday essays.’
‘Weekenders,’ she corrected him again.
‘Yes.’
‘When’s your Lingua exam?’
‘Two weekends away.’ Crispin pulled a face. ‘I’ve only got as far as the first two pages of that little guide they hand out. It’s all so illogical. Why can’t we call a book a book like everyone else? It feels silly calling it a tablet and a teacher’s a teacher, not a god. Didn’t you find it hard?’
‘Quite. But I’d had a head start by growing up here and hearing Lingua all the time. Anyway, as girls had only just been let in, they were too busy building us changing rooms and deciding on our uniform to make sure we learned official slang.’
There was a pause as Crispin stood to peer at a cluster of family photographs on the desk. There were the late Dean and his new bride grinning at the entrance to the Glurry. There was Emma, enchantingly plain and gap-toothed at six, in a bobble hat and pulling a sledge. There was Emma aged seventeen, tanned and smiling in a shapeless cotton jumper amid her equally smiling cousins. Sarah, Crispin’s sister number one, then rather stout and a worry to her mother, stood beside Emma with an arm slung round her narrow shoulders. Behind them, Crispin’s Uncle Jeremy, ever the exhibitionist, posed with a wreath of bladderwrack on his brow and a long, lean leg protruding from a skimpy white beach wrap. Crispin’s parents, Joan and Harry, framed the group. Harry, tubby in a silly hat, held young Crispin on his hairy shoulders. Joan, Jeremy’s eldest sister, with the best figure in the group, stood with sun-streaked hair plastered back off her head and grimaced because her batwing sunglasses were less efficient than fashionable. Crispin’s other sister, Polly, then a stringy thing of twelve, was adding to her mother’s irritation by tugging on one of her arms.
Crispin walked with the photograph back to the sofa. He touched his tongue on his upper lip.
‘Your ma sounded so well on the phone,’ Emma said. ‘She told me all about Sarah getting engaged. What’s he like?’
‘OK,’ said Crispin.
‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’
‘He’s a bit old.’
‘Oh. But he’s nice?’
‘He’s OK. I think Ma finds him rather dull but Sarah’s over the moon so she’s happy for her sake.’
‘Ah.’ Emma stood. ‘I’ll go and make the tea. Is cake all right or do you want bread and butter too?’
‘Cake’s lovely,’ he said. Finally she had made him smile. A watery smile, but a smile none the less.
When she came back with the cake and tea things on a tray, he was crying.
He had dropped the picture on to the sofa beside him, drawn his knees up, and was grinding his fists against wet, scarlet cheeks.
‘Crispin, don’t. Please don’t,’ she begged. She set the tray down as fast as she could and hurried over. She sat beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He flinched and, trying to stop, slid his feet back to the carpet.
‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, swollen lips groping for the words. ‘It’s just … So sorry.’
‘Ssh,’ she urged.
He felt roughly in his jacket pockets then stood, lurching, and felt in the pockets of his trousers, sniffing the while. The only handkerchief she had on her was Fergus Gibson’s which she had washed and ironed the night before. She had pushed it, like a talisman, into her cardigan pocket as she left the house that morning.
‘Here,’ she said, passing the pressed white square to Crispin’s grasp.
‘Danks,’ said Crispin in a rush, and hiccoughed. ‘Sorry.’
‘Ssh. Poor boy. I shouldn’t have let you see the photograph. I had no idea.’ He sat back and blew his nose hard while she rubbed his back and made sounds of encouragement. When he seemed to be rallying, she left his side to pour their tea and to slide a slice of chocolate biscuit cake on to a plate for him. Rousillou had left the room to watch her collect the tea and so had missed Crispin’s tears. He returned now with his mother and jumped on to the sofa. He settled there in a peculiarly canine pose with his chin resting on the boy’s nearest thigh. Blanquette watched him from the vantage of Emma’s lap.
‘It’s so silly,’ Crispin muttered. ‘I’m not homesick, not in the least. It was just being here with carpet and flowers and the photographs. I was starting to forget. I sort of melted.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No. I’m sorry.’ The telephone rang on the desk. ‘Shall I?’ he asked. She nodded, so he answered it. ‘Hello? … Yes of course. Who’s calling? … Jeremy, hi!…Yes it is. Emma’s asked me to tea here … Yes. How are you?’
Crispin’s face lit up. Jeremy was obviously a favourite uncle. Never exactly a he-man, he was, Emma supposed, still handsome, funny and sophisticated enough to inspire the admiration of an undersized thirteen-year-old. He was precisely the sort of older male relative whose influence, while likely to be bad in large doses, was held to exert a usefully maturing effect on growing sons with no brothers of their own. Emma sipped her tea and watched with Blanquette as the gloom evaporated from Crisp
in’s bright, round face.
‘Do you want to speak to Emma now?’ Crispin asked finally and she stood to take the receiver from him. ‘I’ll hand you over.’
‘Emma darling,’ said Jeremy.
‘Jeremy. Hello. How are you?’ She could hear a word processor’s electronic scything in the background.
‘I’m fine. How are … Oh, wait a second, Emma.’
He held the receiver away from his face and she heard the languid tones of one of Jeremy’s armada of plummy assistants. Emma wondered if he were ringing to ask her to the theatre. He did so sometimes. She would go to his office in Bloomsbury, via a potter in the Hellenic rooms of the British Museum, and a plummy assistant would offer her tea or a glass of delicious, cold wine. Jeremy would emerge, briefly introducing her to the client who was leaving and who was often someone whose name or work she knew, then steer her to a taxi and off to a play or opera. The evening would end with an elegant meal on his company credit card. She entertained no fond illusions about him, sensing that his brand of woman would be at once less earnest and more worldly than she, and that, while their cousinship was distant, it still set a bar on any emotional engagement beyond the familial. Yes, Emma hoped he were ringing to invite her to London.
‘Emma.’
‘Hello again.’
‘Sorry about that.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘I’m fine. Are you?’
‘Yes. Perfectly. I’ve got Crispin here.’
‘Yes. Lovely.’ She could hear him nodding at an assistant to leave something on his desk or to ask someone else to hold on. ‘Emma darling, can you do me a huge favour?’
‘Of course,’ she said, disappointed, yet curious because the request was so rare. ‘What?’
‘Well a client of mine is staying in Barrowcester for a week to do some research in the libraries. Evan Kirby.’
‘Oh yes. I heard that talk of his on the radio last month.’
‘Lovely. Well, could you ask him to tea or something, ’cause he’s American and won’t know anyone there and he might be feeling a bit low seeing as his divorce has just come through.’
‘Of course. Is he at the Gladstone?’
‘No. He’s staying with … Hang on … Yup, he’s staying at a Mrs Merluza’s. I’ve got the number here.’
‘It’s OK. I know her. Sort of.’ Emma mouthed ‘more tea?’ at Crispin, who poured them both a second cupful. ‘What fun!’ she went on. ‘I’ll drop him a note.’
‘You are sweet. He’s there for about a week. Emma, I’ve got to dash as I’ve got some wretched novelist on the other line, but look, I’m glad you’re so well and that young Crispin’s keeping an eye on you. And look, you must come up again soon. Maybe Billy Budd. Would you like to see Billy Budd?’
‘Love to.’
‘I’ll ring you soon then. Bye. And thanks.’
‘Bye.’ She replaced the receiver. ‘What good timing,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ replied Crispin, helping himself to the second large slice of cake. ‘I haven’t seen Jeremy in ages. Does he ever come down here?’
‘No. Not really. He’s awfully busy and high-powered nowadays and I think he likes to collapse at weekends.’ Jeremy had a house in Camden which Emma had never seen. That, and the fact that he had a lodger who was a vet were all that she knew about his private life. ‘Maybe we can coax him down on one of your exeats, though.’
‘That would be great,’ said Crispin, rubbing Rousillou’s honey-coloured stomach as the cat stretched languorously and rolled on to his back to give the boy better access. ‘It is odd being a a boarder,’ he said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well I feel so stupid because all the other new boys, sorry, new men in my house have boarded since they were seven and a half or eight. For them, going away to school for twelve weeks at a stretch is like being sent to stay in a rather basic hotel. It’s so hard getting to sleep in a room full of people muttering and whispering. I’ve only been to hospital once, when Granny thought I had appendicitis, and it’s just like that. It doesn’t get quiet until about one in the morning and then I have to get up at six forty-five to wake people.’
‘Poor thing! Every morning?’
‘Not Sundays. It depends on how early they want waking. I’m a sort of human alarm clock. And the other thing I hate is that it’s almost impossible to be alone.’
‘But that apart, you’re not too miserable?’ Emma smiled at him, teasing. ‘You’re not homesick?’
‘Not at all!’
The floodgates truly opened now. Emma took a second thin slice of chocolate biscuit cake and decided that the most godmotherly thing was to listen. She sat for half an hour, occasionally clipping off another sliver of cake, and listened to Crispin’s heartfelt condemnation of family life. His father was cold and uncommunicative, he said, his mother manipulative and temperamental and his sisters stupid and irritatingly high-spirited. The only thing he seemed to miss about home was cake at teatime and the silent fidelity of his dog, Lottie, who was to have puppies any day now.
Crispin leaped up to go at half past five, realizing that he was going to be late for high tea in school, and thanked Emma profusely for her hospitality. She saw him to the door and pressed on him the remaining half of the cake along with a bag of grapes, because to ply a godson with nothing but chocolate seemed a mite irresponsible. When he had closed the garden gate and she was fluffing out the cushions on the sofa, she remembered that he had left with Fergus Gibson’s handkerchief.
She set the tea things back on the kitchen table then took up the cake plate. Bending forward, she licked off the remaining crumbs of chocolate although she was already feeling sick.
She went to sit by the telephone and dialled the number of an old Edinburgh friend who had drifted into corporate finance. She glanced at her watch, though, saw that it was still too early to call at a cheap rate, and hung up before anyone could answer. On the telephone pad she had scribbled,
‘Boredom, tedium, melancholy, melancholia, uninterest, flatness, staleness, leadenness, inactivity, repetition, wearisomeness, satiety (12).’
She took up the pencil that lay there, thought for a moment, then added, ‘taedium vitae, insipidity, indifference, irksomeness, disgust, monotony (18).’
22
Fergus was kneeling on a fertilizer bag in a corner of the Gardens of Remembrance. He stretched out to the back of the little rose bed before him and tugged up the last weed. He emptied a bucketful of compost around the bases of the bushes and dug it in with a hand fork. The soil was dry so he walked to a tap hidden along with a wheelbarrow and a dustbin in a spinney of laurels and brought back a bucketful of water which he tipped around the bed. The roses were fleshy pink monsters with a name like Passion Tiger or Lady Jayne. Planted by mistake, or through wilful ignorance on the gardener’s part of his request for something old fashioned and white, he had had to leave them there. The prospect of tearing out plants that had fed on one’s lover’s ashes was abhorrent. As the months passed and the bushes grew sleek and glossy, he had continued to tend them but did so with disgusted resentment, as a child might learn to tolerate a blooming stepmother in lieu of a finer, thinner creature who was no more. He cherished a secret desire that one day he would drive over the Roman Bridge, park the car at the gates and walk the bosky length of these gardens of cypress, rhododendron and mourning laurel to find Roger’s roses slashed to death by a vandal’s blade and trampled by an unwittingly discerning boot. He had grown half-used to the replacement of Roger with Passion Tiger as he had grown half-used to the substitution of dying lover by all-too-lingering parent.
Roger had been half Barrower. He had grown up in Liverpool where his father was a shipping clerk, but his mother had been a Barrower born. When the two men fell for the place during a day trip one summer then bought a house in Tracer Street it was thus a manner of homecoming. They had met in Liverpool. Fergus had almost finished a half-hearted training in an architect’s office and Roger
was designing textiles in a cooperative while working as a waiter so as not to starve. They had shared a house in gentrified Toxteth where they ran a ‘design’ shop, selling wallpapers, fabrics and the occasional obelisk, all-purpose bust or marble-topped table to their largely academic neighbours. The business succeeded after a fashion, eked out by Fergus’ freelance architectural work, but after eight or nine years they were both tired of Liverpool. Barrowcester’s leafy precincts offered the perfect antidote to the Mersey. The cathedral city was also a perfect site for the interior design consultancy they had always hoped to set up. Since Barrowcester had become a commuter town there was an increasing number of Barrowers blessed with the money to redecorate their houses but neither the time nor the energy to do so themselves. These leaped on Fergus’ and Roger’s services, chequebooks waving in the wind, as did those keen to decorate themselves but greedy to buy from the more ‘exclusive’ range of papers and fabrics with which Drink-water and Gibson Design Consultants could supply them.
They had lived there only two years when Roger fell ill. At first they had assumed it was glandular fever or hepatitis. His glands had swollen and felt sore and he had become listless, no sooner out of bed than ready to collapse again in exhausted sleep. Then he had started to lose weight. Ever slightly on the plump side, he had been delighted. Rallying from his languor, he had laughed as he pulled on pair after pair of once-outgrown trousers and joked that it was worth being off-colour occasionally if the results were so flattering. But the weight had continued to fall off him. Literally. Flesh dropped where muscle had once held it firm, as if his body were being aged at a supernatural rate. Fergus would wake in the night to find himself drenched in the sweat that was coursing off his lover’s limbs, and wake in the morning to see a hollow-cheeked, sunken-eyed face across the pillow that he scarcely recognized.