‘He might not be there.’
‘And tomorrow I might get hit by a bus,’ said Esmé, taking Megan’s bag from her shoulder.
When he opened the door to Cornelia, he saw Roderick standing on the verge with Maximilian, by the open boot of the car. Maximilian was wearing the shirt that Alexander had bought him for Christmas, and his football boots, which he was pressing repeatedly into a patch of mud. Like a man signalling from a shipwreck, Roderick waved to Alexander with wide sweeps of his arm.
‘Not an easy morning,’ explained Cornelia. ‘The child is misbehaving. You may not want to stay with us for very long.’
‘He’s excited about the party, I expect,’ suggested Alexander.
‘I don’t know what it is. It might be that,’ said Cornelia, adjusting the slide in her hair. ‘We thought we’d go to the café by the bookshop. Ist das in Ordnung?’
‘Ja. Natürlich.’
‘Sehr gut,’ approved Cornelia, and she tucked a hand under his arm as they waited for a cyclist to go by. ‘You can’t walk with those!’ Cornelia shouted across the road. ‘Put your proper shoes on.’
Roderick lifted a pair of shoes from the car and dangled them like bait in front of Maximilian. Obediently the boy took the shoes, but instead of putting them on he stared at the ground, studying the imprints he had made with his studs. Alexander stood beside Maximilian and looked down at the neat pattern of pits in the rubbery mud.
‘Hello, Max,’ said Alexander. Maximilian smiled at him, but did not reply.
‘You can’t walk with those boots,’ said Cornelia, bending down to remove them.
‘I can,’ said Maximilian, taking a step backwards.
‘You’ll wear them out.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Maximilian. You are not going to the café with these boots on your feet. They won’t allow you inside like this. You wouldn’t like it if someone tramped through your bedroom with muddy boots on, would you? Put your shoes on.’
‘I’ll carry them,’ said Maximilian, hugging the shoes to his chest.
‘You will put them on.’
‘No.’
‘Put them on.’
‘No.’
‘Mayday, Mayday,’ muttered Roderick from the corner of his mouth.
‘Maximilian, you will put your shoes on.’
‘When we get there.’
‘You’ll wear them out. They’re not meant for pavements. You wear them on grass. Not on stones.’
‘I’ll walk lightly.’
‘If you damage them we’ll never buy you another pair.’
Maximilian held his father’s hand and tugged it like a bell pull. ‘Put the shoes on, Max,’ said Roderick, as if they were both conceding defeat, and Maximilian laboriously removed the boots.
‘Where’s the party, Max?’ asked Alexander. The boy surrendered the boots to his father and said nothing.
‘Your friend Neil, isn’t it?’ said Roderick, helping his son to tie the laces of his shoes. ‘The offspring of Tory cannibals,’ he explained to Alexander. ‘Wee Neil doesn’t have pocket money, he has a pension.’
‘Neil is a nice boy,’ said Cornelia.
‘Neil doesn’t stand a chance,’ replied Roderick. ‘Boarding school, university, management training, marriage, promotion, children, directorship, golf, freemasons, adultery, divorce, alcoholism, bitterness, misery, death. Predestination of his class.’
‘Nonsense,’ asserted Cornelia, correcting a lock of Maximilian’s hair. ‘He’s a nice boy.’
They descended the hill, with Cornelia leading and Alexander following Roderick and Maximilian, who walked hand in hand until Maximilian stopped so suddenly that Roderick’s grip was broken. On the other side of the road there was a house that had no front. Colonnades of rusting jacks supported the beams of the roof and the ceiling of the lower storey, from which a lamp still hung. It was a broad flat dish of frosted green glass, of a type that had been in fashion many years ago. A swell of sunlight, moving into an angle of the opened bedroom, revealed a rectangle of golden green wallpaper, embossed with gold diagonals. In a corner, beside a low pyramid of rubble, stood a stool with a seat of white nylon fur and four tapering black legs.
‘How did they live with that paper?’ Roderick wondered.
Maximilian’s gaze explored the gutted house, moving systematically from room to room. Cornelia, ten yards ahead, tapped at her wrist. The sunlight shrank from the house, and Maximilian reached for Alexander’s hand.
As the train went into the tunnel Megan looked at her face on the pane of greasy glass, and in the same instant her eye perceived the shine of the steel of the windowframe, and the smell of dust from the seats became a taste at the back of her tongue. A memory touched her like a rill of cold water. It was the memory of a room that she was leaving, and she was unhappy. Now she saw the room: it was in Ronda, and she was looking from the dusty corridor into the room, where the bed frame was raw steel, and Alexander was closing their suitcase.
‘You all right?’ asked Esmé, putting her magazine down.
‘Yes. Twinge in my back,’ Megan replied. The sun struck her eyes and the room in Ronda was erased. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, pointing to the magazine.
‘I don’t know. Some of it’s not bad. Some of it’s good. But there’s a lot of crap in here. A lot of drool. I can’t write drool. You write this kind of stuff with a penis dipped in ink.’
Megan laughed, then checked the seats behind her to make sure no one had overheard. ‘Read me a bit.’
‘You don’t want to hear this.’
‘I do. I want to know what drool sounds like.’
‘Blather, drivel, drivel, “a straight-to-video college-kids-in-peril lech-fest that ringfenced Fliss with a bevy of D-cup babes whose futures, I think it’s safe to say, lie in the world of one-hander websites.” You don’t want to hear this, do you? “A written-by-autopilot saga of cross-generational hatchet-burying, Autumn Leaves was a tsunami of syrup that left no survivors – apart from Fliss, who somehow created the illusion that there was a lot more to little Amy than met the eye. And what met the eye was pretty damn good, because Fliss looks better in gingham than most girls do in skin. Then came highbrow kudos with Scarlet and Black, with Fliss sensational as top-drawer totty Mathilde de la Mole.” Is this entertaining? I don’t think this is entertaining. Do you think this is entertaining?’ She held out the magazine to display a picture of Fliss Reynaud lying naked on a surfboard.
‘I’m out of touch. She seems like a nice girl.’
‘Sometimes out of touch is best.’
‘Ah,’ said Megan, nodding with mock sagacity.
‘Now don’t you start that again,’ said Esmé. She flapped the magazine to make Megan look away from the fields. ‘You should see him. It’d be stupid not to see him. Totally stupid.’
‘You’re right,’ said Megan to the glass.
‘Of course I’m right,’ said Esmé, writing a note in the margin of the magazine. ‘I’m always right.’
From the café they walked to the seafront, where Cornelia took Maximilian into Mr Kid well’s shop to buy him an ice cream and a comic. Roderick and Alexander continued down the ramp to the path behind the beach.
‘So how’s work?’ asked Alexander.
‘Ho hum,’ said Roderick, shielding his eyes to watch a waterskier turn and crash. ‘I’m thinking of setting up a film club. A couple of people at work are interested. We have a projector.’
‘One projector?’
‘That’s all the true cinéaste requires. We shall, of course, inaugurate our first season with a Nosferatu double bill. If we get it off the ground.’
‘What are the chances?’
‘Hundred to one against, I’d say,’ Roderick replied immediately. He sat on a low wall and rested his hands on the curve of his belly. ‘I must do some exercise,’ he sighed, and he smiled indolently at the sea. ‘Have to lift some heavy books after eating.’
Alexander sat down beside him. ‘You seem a little
– preoccupied,’ he commented.
‘I’m all right,’ Roderick replied, inviting a response that did not come. ‘The boy’s been a problem lately. There’s tension in the house.’
‘Things seemed fine at lunch.’
‘A lull. There have been rows of the most tremendous intensity. Cups rattling on the table. Racial stereotypes have been bandied about. There have been tears.’
‘Brought about by –?’
‘The behaviour of the boy, the schooling of the boy, the attire of the boy, the TV allowance, hair length, general attitude. A panoply of discord. We are not getting on.’
‘Temporarily.’
‘I’m sure. But recently I’ve found myself envying you, in your second-floor cave.’
‘Don’t be foolish, Roderick. There’s nothing to envy. You have a good life. We both have a good life.’
‘That’s true,’ said Roderick, and he looked at his hands as if he had chosen them and was considering whether they suited him. ‘She wanted me to talk to you,’ he said, noticing that Cornelia and Maximilian were approaching. ‘About the way things are, at the moment.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘I can’t imagine why. I don’t know anything. Not about being a parent.’
‘No, but confession helps.’
‘Not much of a confession,’ said Alexander.
‘There’s more, father,’ Roderick laughed.
They watched the waterskier rise from the water, raising a quill of spray, then sink, as if into something viscous.
On the station forecourt Esmé checked the map. ‘Do I get a cab or do I walk?’ she asked herself, but before she could decide her phone rang. ‘Hi,’ she laughed into the phone, moving away and raising a hand to Megan in apology.
Megan surveyed the station building and the broad street that stretched in front of them, aware that both had looked different when she had last been in Brighton, but unable to picture what she had seen then. Trying to work out when that visit had been, she recalled seeing Atlantic City with Alexander in the afternoon, because the rain was so heavy, and afterwards walking along the windswept pier, which was as bleak as the boardwalk in the film. Alexander had been wearing his grey coat, she seemed to remember. Boys with scarlet hair were kicking a can against the doors of the shops underneath the esplanade. She asked herself what year this would have been, though she knew that the question was of no importance, and still did not know what she would do when Esmé had gone.
‘I’ll walk,’ declared Esmé. ‘We’re ahead of schedule.’
‘Which way do you have to go?’ asked Megan.
‘Straight ahead, then left at the Clock Tower is quickest.’
‘I’ll come with you that far.’
‘Aren’t you taking a cab?’
‘No.’
‘OK,’ Esmé replied, giving Megan a penetrating look. ‘You’re backsliding, aren’t you?’
‘No. I just don’t like taking taxis.’
‘You’re backsliding,’ said Esmé, with a cynic’s grin.
‘Esmé, please. Respect your elders. Enough.’
‘OK. Easy.’
They walked in silence to the Clock Tower, where they parted, having arranged to meet at the station at seven o’clock. Megan watched Esmé disappear into the crowds on North Street. There was a Bond Street somewhere in that direction, she told herself, and a Regent Street as well. Kensington Gardens was in that area too. Churchill Square was around the corner, where Alexander had bought her a pen to replace the one that was in the bag that was stolen. She recalled the way he had sidestepped into the shop and plucked at her sleeve, and then she stopped herself and hurried down West Street, as if to walk away from the distraction of what she remembered. The buildings ended and the sea’s horizon filled her vision. She had not decided what to do, but she took from her bag the card on which Esmé had written Alexander’s address, and she turned left for the bus station.
‘This is unusual,’ Alexander remarked to none of them in particular, and he went over to the foot of the cliff and cupped a hand around a clump of mauve plants. ‘It doesn’t look like much, but it’s very rare,’ he said to Maximilian. ‘It’s called Rottingdean sea lavender, and this is the only place in all of England where you’ll find it. It’s originally from Sicily, which is a part of Italy. People planted it in their gardens, but it escaped.’
‘How do flowers escape?’ asked Maximilian.
‘On the wind. The wind blows the seeds about, and now it grows on the cliffs. And that up there,’ he went on, ‘is another type of sea lavender. This is the only place in the east of England where that kind grows. There are lots of different kinds and they are all related to a plant called thrift, which is also known as ladies’ cushions, or cliff clover.’
‘You’re pitching it a bit high, I think,’ said Roderick. ‘He’s only five years old.’
Alexander bent the stems gently, to bring the flowers closer to the boy’s face.
‘We shouldn’t tarry,’ said Roderick. ‘Neil’s dad probably imposes a fine on latecomers.’
Maximilian stood on his toes to peer at the sea lavender. ‘Can you see, Max?’ Alexander asked him, and the boy nodded.
‘Back to the car,’ said Cornelia, putting a hand on her son’s shoulder. ‘You don’t want to miss any of the games, do you?’
At the foot of the ramp Alexander shook hands with Roderick. ‘I’ll stay down here for a while,’ he told him, and then he shook hands with Maximilian. ‘Enjoy the party,’ he said. Maximilian turned away.
‘It’s going to rain,’ Cornelia observed to Alexander, and she kissed him on the cheek.
When the rain began, Alexander sheltered in a bus stop by the golf course. He looked up at the island of basalt-coloured cloud, at its fringe of surf-coloured vapour, and waited for it to pass.
Through the window of Alexander’s flat Megan saw a paper lightshade and a segment of ceiling and a section of cornice and a door that led to other rooms in which Alexander lived. Finding herself on the point of crying, she returned to the end of the street, where she took from her bag the letter she had written to him. She read his name over and over again, and she remembered the appearance of his name on the order of service. As he read at the lectern it was as though the congregation had become invisible to him. She recalled the repulsive vicar. ‘Eternal peace is his,’ he told her, complacently, as if giving himself credit for the destination of her father’s soul. ‘He’s not asleep,’ she said, ‘he’s dead.’ Mr Harvey shook her hand with a hand that was cold and hard, and then Alexander was by the trees, gesturing to her, and later she sat beside Alexander on the hill, until dusk, barely speaking.
Rain began to fall from a single vast cloud that covered the whole town. Across the road a fat man was holding open the rear door of a car, and a thin woman was shouting at a boy who was looking into the car as though he suspected that he was being lured into a trap. Megan rang the doorbell once and waited. There was no reply. She did not ring again but posted the letter quickly, and immediately wished she had not, and sat down on the step. She raised her umbrella. She remembered her mother standing beside her father in the garden, and putting her arm around his shoulders as she cut a rose and pushed its stem into a buttonhole of his shirt.
Within ten minutes the rain became a haze that was warm and brilliant, and swirled in eddies behind the moving cars. The tarmac gleamed through wisps of steam, as though it had been newly poured. Steam rose in flame shapes from the hoods of the traffic lights. Alexander ambled through the town, taking detours down roads in which he had worked. He passed the Mar wicks’ house, where he had planted a hornbeam hedge and raised a trellis of clematis and honeysuckle. He passed Mrs Barker’s house, where he had made an enclave of blue aconites and hydrangeas and delphiniums, and the Wilsons’ garden, where the Californian poppies were in bloom. At Mr Harper’s house he saw Mr Harper’s daughter sweeping the brick pavement between the herb beds. He thought of something else that
he needed to buy at the nursery. Startled by the lateness of the hour, he turned down the alleyway that led back towards his street.
From the corner of his street he saw a woman sitting on the front step of his house, holding an umbrella across her knees. She was wearing a black beret and red raincoat, and she stood up and waved at him when she saw him. A moment before his hand raised itself, he realised who she was.
Megan saw Alexander raise his hand like someone who had been gone for an hour, but he did not smile as he came closer. She stood up slowly, and ran a hand over the buttons of her coat as he approached. A couple of yards away from her he halted; he said nothing; his eyes traced a frame around her. ‘Alexander?’ she said. He looked at her eyes and seemed to flinch. ‘You didn’t recognise me, did you?’
‘Not at first,’ he said.
‘I’ve spread a little,’ said Megan, patting a hip. His dull gaze fell to her hip then rose to a place in the region of her shoulder. ‘But I recognised you at once. A touch of grey,’ said Megan, and she stopped the hand that had begun to move towards him.
‘This is a surprise,’ he said at last, but there was no surprise in his voice. It was as though he were merely putting a name to something.
‘I’ll go, if you want,’ she said. ‘Say the word and I’ll go back.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘So she told you?’ he asked. ‘Esmé?’
‘Yes. Of course she told me. Why on earth wouldn’t she, after tracking you down? Or did you think I wouldn’t do anything, once she’d told me?’
‘I don’t know, Meg. It’s possible.’ He looked at the keys in his hand, as if he could not comprehend why he should possess such things.
‘Do you want me to go?’ she asked him.
Ruefully he surveyed the sky above his street. ‘No, I don’t want you to go,’ he said, yet his expression did not change when his gaze returned to her.
‘I know this must be strange,’ said Megan. ‘Arriving unannounced.’
‘No. No,’ he replied, but the sentence that he seemed to be commencing remained unspoken.
‘I did write to you.’
‘I never got anything.’
‘No, you wouldn’t have,’ she smiled. ‘I only put it through the door an hour ago.’
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