“Who is it?” Flora called out from my bedroom, where she was lying on the four-poster, drawing. She was faking her headache, but that morning I hadn’t had the fight in me to get her out of the house and to school. Perhaps it was the delay of my answer or my tone of voice that made her get up and mouth “Who is it?” as I passed the open doorway.
“It’s OK,” I whispered, although I wasn’t sure it would be. A tabloid journalist had already stopped me outside the supermarket, asking if I wanted help carrying my bags before he began to ask questions about the book’s content and whether it was a true story. He grew aggressive when I wouldn’t answer. No one had dared come to the house before.
I opened the door a crack. “Can I help you?” I said.
He looked about Nan’s age, maybe a little older, fifteen or sixteen. (Still a boy, not even yet a young man.) He had blond down on his chin and a mouth and nose too big for his bony face. He was familiar but I couldn’t place him. The boy paused, as if he’d forgotten his rehearsed lines or wasn’t sure they were the right ones.
“Is Gil Coleman in?” he said.
I hesitated but told the truth. “No.”
He gripped the book tighter, and I looked at it. Inverted, I saw the image of the unmade bed from above, pillows hollowed by the shape of three heads, the crumpled sheet suggestive of a woman’s body. A Man of Pleasure, I read. I’d seen the cover—the jacket, you called it—even though, as you’d promised, we didn’t keep the finished book in the house. You’d shown me the picture, proud of the fact that your name was larger than the book’s title.
“Do you mind if I wait?” His voice was tremulous, still breaking.
“What do you want him for?”
“I just . . .” He held the book up. An autograph hunter, I thought. “Can I wait?” he repeated, nodding towards the table. “I won’t get in your way.”
Normally I’d have said no, but something about him, how tired he looked, made me shrug and close the door.
When he moved towards the table I saw he had a guitar strapped to his back. The boy chose the chair facing the view over the lawns and the pebble path, lined with pots of geraniums, to the sea and your writing room. From inside the house I could hear him tuning the guitar, a repeated note curving upwards. When I walked past the bedroom, Flora was jumping up and down, hissing, “Mum! Why did you let him stay? Now I can’t go out and sunbathe.”
“There won’t be any sunbathing, Flora. You’re supposed to be ill,” I said. I went into the bedroom and, without looking out, whisked the curtains closed across the front window. “Back to bed, Flora, or if you’re feeling better you can get dressed and catch the bus into school.” She huffed and sat.
In the kitchen I continued preparing dinner, chopping and frying onions, browning beef, when I suddenly realised that Flora had been quiet for a long time—longer than she could normally manage. I hurried along the hall to the bedroom, drying my hands on my skirt. I could hear the guitar music, a tune being picked out.
Flora, still in her nightie, was peering through a gap in the curtains.
“Come away,” I whispered.
“Why? You let him sit there.”
“It’s rude to stare.”
“He’s staring, too. He looks like a hungry dog, a sad, hungry dog. Maybe we should give him some food.”
When we went outside, the boy was staring at the sea, his guitar silent across his lap. I put the tea tray on the table. “I guessed at one sugar,” I said, sitting. Flora leaned on the post beside the steps, watching.
“Thank you,” he said. He propped his guitar against the veranda railing, and when he picked up the cup his hand was shaking. I held out the plate of biscuits; he took one and he ate it in two bites.
“I don’t know how long Gil will be,” I said. “But I am expecting him home later today.” Of course I had no idea when you would get back.
“I don’t mind waiting if you don’t mind me sitting here.” He stared at the plate of biscuits, and Flora nudged it towards him with one finger, withdrawing her hand as if she were worried he might snap at her. He took another and ate it.
“Have you come far?” I said.
“Oxford.” His mouth showed churned crumbs.
Flora took one step, all the time watching.
“That’s a fair way for a signature,” I said. He’d put your book on the table and I placed my hand flat on top of it, covering the picture of the exposed bedsheet. Now, of course, I know that under the paper cover is a blue board and, inside, an endpaper—the left-hand side pasted down. Your book’s endpapers are pale—the colour of duck’s eggs in the morning. Next is the right-hand endpaper—the flyleaf—blue again. Then there’s the first white page with the title—A Man of Pleasure. Turn that over, and the name is repeated, and below it there’s your publisher’s logo. On the reverse side of that leaf is the copyright page. And opposite that? You know what’s opposite that. If you don’t, you should go and remind yourself.
“No, that’s . . .” the boy said, and then quickly, “Yes. A fair way.”
“Aren’t you a bit young for this sort of book?” I said, my fingers tapping the pillows on the cover.
“I’m fifteen,” he said, sounding aggrieved, but his blush gave him away.
Flora, beside the table now, snatched the book from under my hand.
“Flora,” I said sharply. “Give the young man his book, please.” She ignored me and flicked through the pages with her thumb, stopping where a corner had been folded down.
“It’s OK. I know it’s Daddy’s book.”
“Flora.” A warning in my voice.
“He’s been writing in the margins.” She looked at the boy. I held my hand out. “All right, all right,” Flora said, and snapped the book shut with both hands. To the boy she said, “Daddy would like that.” She put it in front of him. “He likes it when people write in books. That’s his thing.”
He’d taken another biscuit.
“It’s only some notes—my thoughts,” he said, “as I read.”
“What’s your name?” Flora said.
“Flora,” I warned again.
The boy smiled, and the change in the shape of his mouth made his features suddenly sit well together and he became handsome. “Since I know your name, I don’t mind if you know mine.” He held out his hand to her. “Gabriel,” he said.
Flora took his hand and pumped it up and down. “Pleased to meet you, Gabriel,” she said. “This is my mum, Ingrid.”
“I could tell. She looks like you.” He winked and Flora laughed.
“Everyone says I look like Daddy. They say I’ve got his smile, but I want to have my own smile.” She sat in the chair between me and Gabriel. “Are you ill, too? Is that why you’re not at school?”
“Sorry,” I said, but he didn’t appear to mind the questions.
“Something like that,” he said.
“My sister had to go to school today. But I’m at home because my head ached when I woke up.” She took a biscuit and Gabriel picked up the last one.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, smiling. “It must be awful to feel ill on a day like this, when the sun is shining and the sea is just down there.”
Flora nodded vigorously.
“I was hoping you might be able to show me the beach,” he continued. “I live such a long way from the sea. I can’t remember the last time I saw a wave or some sand.”
I was saying, “I don’t think so . . .” at the same time as Flora was shouting, “Yes, yes, I can show you the beach. Can I, Mum? Can I?”
“Flora,” I said sternly. “You’re not at school because you said you were ill. You can’t go to the beach.”
“Maybe we could all go?” Gabriel said, and smiled his charming smile. “I’d love to see the beach; we could have a swim. If you like swimming.”
I hesitated for too long, and it was decided without me even agreeing. Flora charged into the house and packed a bag: towels, bucket, spade.
“Y
ou have to wear something,” I said to her in her bedroom. “You can’t swim naked.”
“OK,” she said, pulling off her nightie and dragging on her costume. In the hall she shouted to Gabriel, “Do you want to borrow some of Daddy’s trunks?”
The daytime crowds were leaving the beach by the time we got there. I’d put my swimming costume on under my clothes, and Flora had tried to give Gabriel a pair of your trunks, but he said he’d be fine in his underpants. We spread out a rug on the sand and sat side by side while Flora jumped in the surf. Neither of us looked directly at the other, but I could see his body was lean, his skin tight, muscles beginning to form into a man’s. I have become used to your body: the grey hairs on your chest, the crosshatched skin on your neck when you recline, the beginnings of a paunch when you don’t know I’m looking. I used to love them all, but in comparison, Gabriel was like a newly hatched man.
“She loves it in the water,” I said. Flora was floating on her front, letting the small waves push her into the beach, using her hands on the sandy bottom to move out, away from us. “We’ll both do anything to come down here. She’ll even tell lies to her mother.”
He laughed. “Sometimes I don’t see the point of school. I’ve got to go back in a week, but I’m going to leave next year.”
“What will you do?”
“Don’t know. I’ve had enough of it, though.”
“What do your parents think?” Immediately I asked the question I regretted it. I sounded old.
“They don’t know yet.”
We sat watching Flora until I said, “I do find it hard to be cross with her, about wanting to come to the sea. It’s the one thing we both love.”
“And do you tell lies, too, so you can go swimming?” He lay back on the rug with his legs out, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Sometimes.” I felt myself blushing, and raised my hand to my eyes, pretending to shade them from the sun.
“To your husband?” he said.
I didn’t answer, instead shouting to Flora not to go too far out. She ran over, plonking herself between us. Gabriel yowled as her icy skin touched his. “You’re freezing! Get away,” he said, laughing. Flora shook her head over him so that drops of seawater flicked out from the ends of her hair. He scrabbled backwards and stood up. “Don’t you dare,” he said, and set off running with Flora chasing him in between the late picnickers, the metal-detecting man, the elderly couple in their folding chairs. When they returned they were both panting.
“Do you want to build a sand castle?” Gabriel said to her. “You should go for a swim,” he said to me.
Flora barely glanced up when I put my hand on her head and said, “I won’t be long.” When I was far out, I turned towards the beach, pedalling my legs. I scanned the sand for Gabriel and Flora but they weren’t where I’d left them. It was then, when I couldn’t see them, that I considered what I was doing: leaving my daughter with a stranger. He might be fifteen, but I had known him for two hours. I felt sick, kicked my legs, and started swimming back. And then I saw them where they were supposed to be; it was I who’d drifted in the current. At that moment they both happened to stand up, look towards me and wave: big arm waves, slow and synchronised with each other. I waved back and swam out to the buoy.
When I’d dressed, we walked up the chine rather than the zigzag path, Flora running ahead, still in her swimming costume, plucking the flower heads out of the marsh thistles and leaving a trail of purple petals behind her.
“Are you going to have any more children?” he said.
I laughed. “I thought that was one of those questions you weren’t meant to ask, like how much are you paid or whether you’re happily married.”
“Are you?” he said.
We were both silent a fraction too long. And then I said, “Gil always wanted six children.”
“And you ended up with two.”
I wanted to tell him about George and the others, but I didn’t trust myself. Then Flora came running down to us.
“Can I have some chips? The van’s at the top of the lane. Come on!” It was Gabriel’s hand she grabbed, not mine, and he let her tug him around the corner.
He bought three bags of chips, drawing the money out of the back pocket of his jeans—a screwed-up five-pound note. I wondered if it was his last. I bought two more packets for you and Nan, and when we got home I put them in a low oven to keep warm. Despite the swimming and the afternoon, or perhaps because of it, it still didn’t feel right to invite Gabriel indoors, so the three of us sat around the table on the veranda and ate chips straight from the newspaper, and I didn’t care that our appetites would be spoilt for dinner, or, indeed, that I hadn’t finished the cooking. Your book was on the table where we’d left it.
Gabriel picked up his guitar again when he’d finished eating. He wiped his fingers on his jeans and played the song he’d been playing earlier, singing about the moon and the rain and lovers, teaching Flora the lyrics. I watched his fingers pluck the strings and his eyes close as he sang. Strange to think this was only ten months ago; it feels like years.
It was Flora who saw you first. She leapt from her chair and ran to you, shouting, “Daddy! Daddy!” I don’t know how long you’d been standing on the drive, listening.
Gabriel stopped playing, and I stood up guiltily, although there was no reason.
“What happened to the car?” I said, leaning over the veranda railing.
Flora was jumping, pulling on your shirtsleeve. You’d taken off your jacket and had slung it over your shoulder. “Daddy, I’ve got chips. Look, chips!” Flora took her last one out of the soggy paper and held it up to you. You bent and opened your mouth, Flora put the chip inside, and you pretended to eat her fingers.
“I need some fish fingers to go with my chip,” you said, and Flora shrieked with pleasure. And to me, “The bloody thing broke down. Luckily, Martin was passing and gave me a lift.” You started on Flora’s other hand.
“We’ve got a visitor,” I said. Gabriel stood and moved towards the top of the steps, looking at you crouched on the path. He held his guitar by its neck. Slowly you took Flora’s thumb out of your mouth and stood up.
“Hello,” Gabriel said, and your smile faded. Flora stopped laughing and turned to stare at our visitor.
“This is Gabriel,” I said. Convention, I suppose, made me introduce him.
“I know who he is; I just don’t know why he’s here,” you said. Flora slipped her hand into yours.
Gabriel took a step. He raised his hands to chest height, the guitar with them, a gesture of surrender, as if you were pointing a gun at him.
“Dad,” Gabriel said.
“Get out,” you said, and Flora buried her face in the cloth of your shirt.
The rest, of course, you know; you were there.
I woke at a quarter past three alone in the bed; in my nostrils, the acrid smell of burning. I traced it to the kitchen: in the oven, the packets of chips which I had bought for you and Nan were still waiting to be unwrapped, the newsprint singed and smoking. I took them to the bin outside and sat on the veranda, tucking my feet beneath the blanket. The light in your room was out. I’d asked you to tell me Gabriel’s birthday. You’d said you didn’t know it, that you weren’t even sure he was yours, but I remembered his smile and knew where I’d seen it before. It was your smile; Flora’s too. Later I learned from Jonathan that Gabriel had been born during the first summer we spent together and that his mother wrote to you, but you destroyed the letter (remember?) and denied the boy was yours because the woman refused to marry you. Would you have done the same to me and Nan if I’d said no? It should be funny how you reverse convention, Gil, but it isn’t. Gabriel is only nine and a half months older than our first child.
But that evening, I had worse things to discover than your sixth child (an illegitimate son you wouldn’t acknowledge). A Man of Pleasure lay on the table, left behind by Gabriel, and when I saw it, I wondered if he’d buy another copy so he cou
ld finish reading.
I unfolded his turned-down corner and opened the book at the very beginning—the endpapers, the flyleaf, the title page, the copyright information, and opposite it, the dedication you’d written. The one that had been printed in all the books on all the shelves in all the bookshops across the country: For Louise.
Ingrid
[Placed in Good-bye, Mr. Chips, by James Hilton, 1934.]
Chapter 41
Flora sat once more by her father’s bed. His breathing had changed to a rumble like an approaching Underground train. She stared at his collapsed face, trying to reimagine Gil into a womanizer, someone who had slept with “whoever he could get his hands on.” A man who took women to his writing room while his wife and children slept a few yards away. The image didn’t come. The knowledge, if that’s what it was, also changed the way she thought about Ingrid—made her more concrete, a real person with thoughts and feelings, decisions to make and an understanding of their consequences. Flora would have liked to ask her parents why the words “to father” have such a different meaning from the words “to mother.”
When she wasn’t sitting, she stood by the window, looking out at the concrete sky and the drive, hoping to hear the Morris Minor’s throaty engine.
After Nan had thrown the bowl at the kitchen wall, she’d run out of the house without taking her car key; she’d fled along the lane or to the beach. Flora and Richard didn’t see which way she went.
“Let her go,” Richard said, holding Flora back. “Give her some time.”
Flora wanted to chase after her, but she remembered Nan’s warning about not leaving Gil alone, so she made Richard go down to the sea to look for her sister. When he returned, he said he’d waded around Dead End Point and walked as far as the nudist beach sign and had seen dog walkers, kite fliers, and birds, but no Nan. She sent him to the pub to bang on the door until they opened up; she wasn’t there. Without clearing up the debris in the kitchen, Flora made jam sandwiches but picked at hers. She brewed a pot of tea, which she poured but left to go cold, and when even Richard had tired of waiting, he agreed to go out in the car and drive through the lanes and to the ferry to check whether anyone matching Nan’s description had boarded.
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