by Patrick Gale
The night was oppressively hot and John slept with both windows open and no more than a sheet to cover him. It had taken him hours to lose consciousness and the jangling telephone rang in his confused dreams before it woke him. He answered still in a fog of sleep. A mail train had been halted by a sabotaged electric signal and robbed at gunpoint. The thieves knocked their victims unconscious before making off with six million pounds in cash, bonds and share certificates. Only men with an intimate knowledge both of railway timetables and the arcane nocturnal workings of the post office could have known which train to rob and where on the network to do it.
During a brief struggle, the driver had unmasked his assailant sufficiently to give a description that matched Farmer’s. A second felon, with a younger voice, had a near-identical build and wielded a prison officer’s truncheon.
Unable to sleep again, unable to read, John shaved, dressed and crossed to his office past startled guards. There were still two hours to go before dawn. There was nothing further he could do and little routine business he could attend to while the prison was still asleep. The robbery had pushed the matter of the escape squarely into the hands of Scotland Yard. However, an overwhelming sense of duty required him to be at his post, albeit uselessly, and seen to be putting obligation before family. Amid the nausea caused by being up before his stomach had woken, he saw the dreams of hurrying back to Cornwall for the irresponsible fantasies they were.
Frances would ring soon. She would hear the news on the radio. She would ring to let him know she understood.
BLUE HOUSE
Wife and daughter were forever accusing him of not noticing such things but John found the holiday household full of strange energies. Frances was herself again, thank God, but had woken edgy, would not sit still and seemed to do most of her talking to and through the children. This did not worry him unduly; she was like a child herself in her ability to tire the mood out of her by keeping them entertained on the beach. Perhaps because she had kept her figure and was still a good swimmer, they were not embarrassed by her in the way little boys would normally be by a woman her age wearing anything less than a knee-length dress. Where her unpredictability made adults nervous, it delighted them. They were especially keen on her new habit of swearing and, despite Sandy’s best efforts, were starting to emulate it.
More disturbing were Will and Sandy, who seemed to have stopped talking to each other. Rather, they talked but without their customary liveliness and each kept starving the dialogue with monosyllables. No doubt the strain of two men sharing a room was beginning to tell. Ordinarily John would have escaped the unhappy atmosphere by strapping on his walking boots and binoculars and taking himself off on a hike sufficiently punitive to deter the others from accompanying him. Today of all days, however, he had agreed to stay in so that a journalist who had been pestering Harriet could interview him on Will’s mobile. They were not due to call until noon, a time he had stipulated so as to give himself a free morning, but now he found himself poleaxed by the past and unaccountably nervous that his memory might play him false under questioning. Will had thrown himself into preparing a needlessly complex lunch dish and Sandy was prowling around like a man under a death threat, clutching some medical journals he kept announcing he was going to catch up on.
John had taken refuge on the veranda. There he could keep half an eye on Frances and the boys, who were building something with pebbles and sand. Both children wore brightly colored wetsuits, which seemed to him the worst kind of mollycoddling. “The sea’s not that cold,” he had exclaimed when they first produced the things. “Granny doesn’t wear one! You just have to keep moving.” Apparently this was a faux pas however, since the ulterior purpose of the suits, while pandering to the boys’ enslavement to the vagaries of fashion, was to protect their white, Scottish skin from the effects of the sun.
He had helped himself to one of Sandy’s drug company pads and was noting down the facts of the prison breakout as he remembered them. Of course they had wanted to talk to his old deputy, Mervyn Mc-Master, who after all had been acting governor when Malone helped Farmer escape, but Mervyn was dead long since. He noted dates and the few facts he could recall about the subsequent inquiry. Then he felt a kind of despair. The journalist would already have the facts in all their dryness at her disposal. What she wanted were the personal details that passed for journalism now. What had Farmer been like? Was it true that he was a family favorite among Wandsworth’s red band work parties? Had John feared for his life or his family’s lives at any stage? How did John feel now that Farmer was immensely rich and about to be returned to justice? He had no training in how to field such questions. In his day, governors had never had to face the press.
“I’m retired,” he thought. “I can say what I bloody like. That I don’t care if Farmer’s now an old man and a regular donor to Brazilian charities and a pillar of his adopted community. I want him to rot. I want him to die behind bars. Why? Because I blame him for …” For what? Blame him, quite unjustly, for personal events that just happened to coincide with the breakout? Well why not? Those events still caused pain, long after the victims of the robbery had died, in the case of a railway guard brain-damaged by bludgeoning, or recovered, in the case of several wealthy institutions.
“Dad?”
A woman’s voice. He looked up and saw a taxi turning back up the hill and Poppy standing there, sunglasses pushed up on her hair, a large bag slung over one arm.
“You’re so brown!” she exclaimed. “I hope you’ve been using total block.”
“Where did you spring from?” Finding her before him was like not realizing how thirsty one was until someone offered one a glass of iced water. He stood to kiss her. She allowed herself to be properly hugged these days. It was one of the aspects he appreciated most to her becoming a mother. When she had first left school, she went through a phase of pecking him on the cheek which he had found deeply depressing.
Sandy appeared on the veranda too. “Hey!” He gave Poppy a kiss. “How come?”
“Oh. The squash course was postponed till the autumn,” she said. “Not enough takers. So I stuck around for a couple of days just doing things I hadn’t done for ages, like going to galleries and seeing old girlfriends. Then I thought, this is silly, I can join them. So here I am. You don’t mind, do you, Will? Is there room?”
“Course I don’t mind,” Will said from the doorway. “And Sandy’s broken into the fourth room, so I can sleep in there now.”
“You must have left at dawn,” John said.
“Pretty much.” She looked pale compared to the rest of them. Citified. “This is lovely.”
“The boys are on the beach with Frances,” Sandy said. “I’ll go and get them. They’ll be over the moon.”
“No,” she said suddenly. “Wait.” She frowned. “Can I have a drink or something? I’m boiling.”
“Of course. Come in, come in,” said Will, playing host, and John felt how relieved he was that Poppy was there. “Water, then something stronger?”
“Just water,” she said, following him in and glancing around her. “Look. I’d better be quick before she comes in. Is Mum OK?”
John exchanged a glance with Will and realized how guilty they must look. “Well,” he began.
“She hasn’t been brilliant,” Will added. “She got terribly distraught one night at a concert and her mood’s been all over the place ever since.”
“She seems OK today,” John said. “Why?”
Poppy sighed, took the water and sat heavily on the sofa. “The squash wasn’t postponed. I was really enjoying it, actually. But I came because I was worried. She rang me last night. In the middle of last night. It was really scary. She ranted about needing me here and … and she said Will could explain. In fact she got quite obscene. For her.”
“There’s been a lot of that,” Will said.
“You should have rung me on the mobile if you were worried,” said Sandy. “You didn’t need to come all this wa
y.”
“I tried last night but it was turned off. And several times at the station and on the train but you were permanently engaged.”
“Hugo was on the Net first thing,” John said.
“I’ll bloody murder him,” said Sandy.
“Her actual words, if I got this right, were that she was worried about Sandy. Then, when I asked how she was and was she having one of her bad days, she completely lost it and said, Just get your effing butt down here and ask your filthy little brother what he’s been up to.”
Will shifted uneasily and sat beside her. “God,” he said.
“She’s worse than I realized,” John said. “Darling, I’m so sorry. It must have been vile.”
“Don’t be silly,” Poppy said. “But I had to come. You see that?”
“Oh yes,” Will said. “Absolutely. I mean … You didn’t think she was serious about me …”
“No.” She laughed. A little tensely, John thought.
“Or you’d have rung me on my mobile.”
“You promised to leave it at home,” she said sharply.
“Yes, but, well. Old habits. I was worried about an emergency at the shop.”
“You are hopeless. Has he been pestering poor Kristin every day?” she asked John.
“No,” he said. “I’ve been taking more calls on it than he has.”
“Which reminds me,” Will said. “I thought that journalist was ringing you half an hour ago. You’re not going to let them ruin lunch? Not now we’ve got a surprise guest.”
“What journalist?” she asked.
John was starting to explain about Farmer and the proposed extradition agreement when Sandy, who had fallen quiet, jumped up and interrupted.
“Come and look round,” he said. “Come and see our room.” She looked puzzled but Sandy was holding out a hand so, bemused, she smiled and took it. “There’s something I want to tell you,” he added.
“Sandy?” Will said, then jumped up for all the world as if to hold them back. “How about drinks first?” he said. “What about Bloody Marys? I’d love a Bloody Mary. Dad?”
“Oh. Well, yes?” John said uncertainly.
“Sis?”
“Sure. Let’s be devils,” she laughed.
But when Sandy led her into his room and shut the door, Will made no move toward the kitchen but merely stared for a while before walking out on to the veranda. John thought he would be fetching in Frances but he only stood out there, staring at the people on the beach. Then, when the breeze fluttered his shirt, he reached to unhook the sculpture thing Frances had wasted her money on and nudged into motion the wind vane that drove it. The sculpture began its regular thwacking noise, which Frances had explained was a rook-scarer but which John thought served merely to crank up an unpleasant sense of tension in all who were forced to hear it. Perhaps it was Will’s playful way of summoning Frances.
Suddenly there came a gasp from behind the bedroom door followed by the unmistakable whack-whack of a double-handed face slap. Then Poppy emerged even whiter than when she arrived and John jumped up. “What the hell …?” he started.
Fury made her lips tight. “Where are they?” she asked. He had not seen her like this since she was a girl.
“On the beach,” he told her. “What’s going on? I’m sure they’ll be in any second.”
But she was flying out through the French windows.
Will stood in her way. “Listen. Whatever you think … It was over. Don’t listen to him, all right? Whatever he’s told you wasn’t true. He loves you.”
“I’m not speaking to you,” she said, her voice dangerously level.
“No,” he said. “Of course you’re not. I’ll get the others. You’ll be wanting to pack.” He turned toward the garden gate.
Poppy hesitated, torn, robbed of a gesture perhaps, then marched back inside. “Dad? Where were they sleeping? Hugo and Oz, I mean.”
“In there.” John gestured to the middle bedroom. “Look, would someone please …?”
But she marched on into the room and started hurling the children’s clothes and toys into a suitcase. She packed with single-minded fury, even leaving out dry clothes for them to change into. As awed as he was confused, John merely watched. Sandy emerged slowly from his room, heard what was going on and walked to the bathroom, whence he returned with the children’s plastic carrier bag of wash things. “You’ll be wanting these,” he said, standing outside their bedroom door.
“Thanks,” she said, and grabbed the bag.
“Please,” John said, firmly this time. “What in God’s name has happened?”
She looked up, startled, as though she had forgotten he was there. “Sandy can tell you. Can’t you, Sandy? He has a little speech all ready.”
“Look, can’t we just …?” Sandy began but Poppy slammed the door on him and continued thumping around behind it. Sandy looked mournfully at John, shrugged and said, “You were bound to know sooner or later. The thing is, John, I’m gay. Bisexual. Whatever. And the reason I’ve realized this is because as long as I’ve been happily married, I’ve also been having an affair with Will and he tried to split up with me last night, which is what made me see. That I’m … not straight.”
The room felt very still and very small, as though someone had switched off the beach. While Sandy was making his announcement, Frances and the children arrived on the veranda, Oscar shouting. “Mum!” Hugo only staring solemnly. Poppy emerged with their suitcase and a hand held out.
“Keys,” she demanded.
“What?” said Sandy.
“Car keys. Now.” Obediently he handed over a bunch and she marched past Frances and the boys—Oscar was starting to cry—saying only, “Come on. Quickly. Get them out of those things, would you, Mum?”
Sandy ran after her. Frances struggled to comfort Oscar as she freed him from his wetsuit. Hugo peeled off his own. John took them out their dry clothes. Frances was crying too. And all the time the bloody sculpture was going thwack! thwack! Returning from the car to help, Sandy obviously became maddened by it too. He tried to fasten it again but his hands were shaking and he shoved it instead. There was a sound of splintering wood and the thing tilted over and became disconnected so the wind vane spun on in silence, to no effect.
“Sorry,” Sandy said, possibly for breaking the sculpture, possibly for more.
There was a yell from the car. “Will you come on!”
“Come on, small fry.” Sandy picked Oscar up while Hugo ran on ahead. With a desperate glance round at John and Frances, Sandy ran over to his car, loaded the boys in and went round to the passenger side. But the car flew off before he could open the door.
John turned to find Will standing on the veranda behind them. He had their bags packed too. He must have moved like a demon. A shirtcuff trapped in the lid of one case bore testimony to his speed. He had even slung Frances’s precious herbs and spices and the remaining drinks bottles into the cardboard box in which they had traveled down.
“What …?” John began.
“I think you’d better be off too,” he said.
“Darling,” Frances began and he turned on her.
“Go,” he said. “Just go. You stupid, meddling, ignorant woman.”
“No,” she whimpered. “No!”
“It was over. It was all over. I had ended it. No one would have been hurt. But you had to put your … your fucking oar in and now this happens!”
“Look, Will,” John began.
“Go.” Will was like a stranger. A tall, gaunt, exhausted stranger. There was real hate in his eyes as he spoke to Frances but when John, thinking to stall matters, asked if they might at least use the bathroom before they set off, the hate melted and Will crumpled against the door-jamb. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Do whatever you need.”
John checked quickly for their belongings and Frances’s drugs and filled a few more bags. Will’s mobile telephone rang. John answered, thinking bloody journalists, but it was Harriet. “This rea
lly isn’t a good time,” he told her.
“Really? God. Sorry. John, look, it’s just to say that Heather Sutton won’t be ringing after all. The extradition’s off.”
“It’s off?”
The tone of her quick explanation was one of real concern but it could not have mattered less. Will had disappeared. Frances had sunk on to the teak bench outside. No longer crying, she was vacant, utterly lost. Sandy was standing in the drive, no less helpless.
John assumed control. He led Frances to the bathroom to tidy herself up and change out of her swimming things then, having easily persuaded her to take a couple of sleeping pills, shepherded both her and his son-in-law to his car.
Many fathers in his position would have refused Sandy a lift or, at best, have taken him no further than the nearest station. But they were on the motorway, buying petrol, before this thought dawned on him, by which time any such gesture would have been both limp and inconvenient. Besides, he felt dismay, not anger. Sitting on the back seat, while Frances snored quietly in the front, Sandy seemed intent on making himself as small and inoffensive a presence as possible. He was, John thought, as much a victim of fortune as the rest of them.
When they finally reached the outskirts of Barrowcester, John dropped him off at the foot of the drive to walk to his wife and house like a lost thing. Frances had woken by now and gave Sandy a farewell kiss that was nonetheless loving for her having temporarily mislaid the unfortunate circumstances.