by Adam Thorpe
‘Kind of a waking dream,’ murmured Jack, vaguely, pretending to go off on something inwardly creative.
It was a sunny day and the light under the beech trees was green, like an aquarium’s, although the leaves were turning and some were fluttering down already. They’d been issued with canes, old walking canes with ivory handles and steel tips that stabbed the soft ground as they advanced at a pace suitable for Marjorie. It was like the film of a novel, Jack thought, his glance panning over the trees. He could do the music: pure neo-classical, pure postmodern pastiche. Milly came into his shot and he smiled at her – the sun was being a little cruel with her face, though, exposing lines and the faint blur of facial hair. Last night, in the candlelight of the dinner and then in the moonlight of the bedroom, she’d looked ten years younger. In her early thirties, say. Or even as she’d been when he’d first set eyes on her outside the Purcell Room.
‘Philip said the boys got bored by it,’ said Marjorie, as if she was continuing a subject of conversation.
‘By what, Mummy?’
‘The play. The Shakespeare you took them to. Sorry, weren’t we talking about it?’
‘Not that I know of,’ said Milly.
‘I do that all the time,’ commented Jack, helpfully.
‘Do what?’ snapped Marjorie, scowling at him.
‘Philip asked us a favour,’ said Milly, crossly. ‘It wasn’t our idea. He’d booked the tickets. Or Arabella had.’
‘And were they bored?’ said Jack, who was as annoyed as Milly. ‘That’s news to me.’ He pictured Philip in Dubai, swapping arms for oil or whatever, smirking under his Ray-Bans while his sons were gazing on Shakespeare.
A jay shrieked like a child being murdered and floundered through the treetops. It made Jack jump.
‘Some bloody lookout!’ shouted Richard. His strong tenor echoed through the woods. He was almost as tall as the trees, or gave that impression.
‘Darling, you’ve just frightened any remaining wildlife away.’
‘I’m their boss,’ said Richard, twirling his cane in the air in front of him. ‘I’m their executive manager.’
The jay squawked again and the others laughed. The scent of the woods and the track’s chewed-up grass was mustily sweet. It was almost too hot, and Richard had come out in his ‘tropical’ kit – tough shirt and shorts and boots – that he’d last used on their walking tour of Madagascar in 2000. It would be embarrassing in the pub.
‘I know you’re going to say I’m going on about it,’ said Marjorie, blinking furiously all of a sudden, ‘but why don’t you at least consult this friend of mine in Harley Street?’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Milly exploded, keeping to the side of the rut. ‘We had all this out yesterday. And last week! And last month! Shut up about it, Mummy! God, you keep talking to me like I’m a dog-bitch! A fucking mare!’
‘Well, you know what I think,’ said Marjorie, quietly, over the hum of wild things getting on with their unknown, unseen lives either side.
‘Let’s wait,’ said Richard, in a placating voice, ‘until we’ve got some pints in the oak.’
‘Let’s not,’ snapped Milly, ‘because I don’t want to discuss it ever again, you two. I’m sorry, but. Sorry,’ she added, in a fierce hiss.
Jack kept quiet in the ensuing silence. Blank. Blank as a dead screen. The nightmare hung about him in a cloud. What he had to do was see the real Kaja in order to dispel it.
‘You look awfully pale, Jack,’ said Marjorie.
‘Do I?’
‘Jolly good,’ said Richard, absently, flicking last year’s leaves up with his cane as he walked while this year’s leaves were beginning to join them. ‘Jolly good.’
‘Complete tosspot,’ muttered Marjorie, who was overexerted by what until recently had been a short little stroll for her.
‘I think it went fairly well,’ said Jack, on the way back in the train, ‘all things considered.’
Richard had driven them to the station in the Bentley, as even Graham had Sunday afternoons off. It was a little hair-raising: Lord du Crane had downed two pints in the Hen and Chickens and polished off half a bottle of a 1989 burgundy over the roast (overdone as usual by the new cook, Sandra, in the Rayburn), and there were at least thirty speed cameras between Wadhampton Hall and the station, the winding road striped with bright yellow markings like a helipad.
Drink, however, would have the opposite effect on Richard: it made him drive slower, and any wandering was due to the Bentley’s pre-precision steering. What was hair-raising was the extra time it took. They leapt from the car and hurtled into the station and felt sick. As it was Sunday, the train arrived twenty minutes late and there was no first class and no one in a uniform to ask.
‘I hope there’s a train driver, at least,’ said Milly.
All the carriages smelt of smoke – or worse, of smoky breath – with a subtle hint of stomach gas. It was always strange for Jack to come back to earth after Wadhampton Hall, but it was particularly unfortunate that ‘earth’ was, by geographical proximity, Basingstoke. Although it was teatime on Sunday, the new shopping mall was packed with people, and their vehicles and pushchairs had added to the panic on the way to the station.
‘Everyone in England’s so ugly,’ Milly had muttered, peering from the Bentley’s window. She’d had a barley wine before lunch, which was a mistake. ‘So ugly and fat, with awful hamster eyelashes and really really really nasty clothes they shouldn’t ever even try to put on.’
‘I say, you mustn’t actually call ’em chavs,’ Jack had joked, pretending to be a posh, weak-chinned jerk.
‘I’m not labelling them,’ Milly had rejoined. ‘I’m just observing a reality. It’s because they’re manipulated. They’re victims.’
Men with weak shoulders and huge exposed thighs had gawped at them as they’d purred past. Hefty children in pastel sportswear had pointed. Tubby, pink-clad women in snow-white trainers had nodded, as if they recognised the celebrities within. Jack, in the snug leathery vastness of the Bentley’s interior, had enjoyed feeling like a fascist dictator. You could so easily wipe out millions, if it came to it; call them chavs first and turn them into a subspecies, into ants to be crushed.
His parents would also store-cruise on Sundays, generally climaxing in IKEA.
‘God, it’s more and more of an effort with the parentals,’ Milly was saying, folding her arms in the near-empty train carriage. ‘They’re not getting any younger, anyway.’
‘That’s true, too. I think it’s good you told them where to get –’
Milly’s mobile went off: its ringtone was the rainforest at dawn, rising to a horrendous pitch of parrots and monkeys if left unanswered. Jack hated it. Milly scrabbled for it in her bag. The train was stopped for engineering works between Frimley and Woking, perhaps for days, ticking calmly like a drip in a dungeon. Jack’s heart always thumped when Milly’s mobile went off: it must be a lot worse when you have kids, he thought.
‘Hello? Hi? What? Oh Gawd. No. No. No. Brilliant,’ she said, too loud and with that mad, exultant stare people on mobiles have, as if someone’s secretly jacking them off. ‘Brill. Yeah. No, I haven’t. Gordon Bennett. Neil? Oh shit. Blimey. Yeah. No. Oh shit. I’ve – we’ve told them about the waste stream, Doug. Yup. I know. Hey, is there anyone out there, and all that. So really annoying.’
Jack watched her, smiling. Milly had remade herself from a Roedean upper-class deb into a right-on, save-the-world businesswoman, and he admired that.
‘Grey water at eighty per cent recoverable,’ she said. ‘Ye-es. I bloody told him. Yeah, a real smart-arse!’
For a moment, when the mobile had rung, he’d imagined it was Kaja, that Kaja had somehow found out Milly’s number. He was still afraid of her, then. Afraid of this comfortable life – underachieving, maybe, but comfortable – getting shattered as lives were, not by a train crash or an earthquake or a bomb in a rucksack, but by something connecting that shouldn’t connect. Or that should, maybe, by
the laws of evolutionary chance.
He looked out of the dirty carriage window and tried to work out what he should do next. He had hoped that the beechwoods would have given him an answer, but they hadn’t. The hours had whipped past, mostly steeped in ale or wine, and he now felt overindulged and seedy, like the view that he was looking at: a retail park surrounded by what looked like scrub desert. Somebody had painted, in big dripping black letters, BACK OF ARSHOLE BEYOND on the metal fence, like something for a fashion magazine’s photo shoot.
He had to get a grip on this whole thing. He was sleepy and he had to get a grip.
‘On a sodding Sunday!’ said Milly, snapping her mobile shut and startling Jack out of a micro-nap. ‘Panic stations.’
‘Everything all right, then?’
Milly had something in her eye. ‘It never is, and at the same time it is,’ she said. ‘You know what I mean?’
‘Exactly,’ said Jack. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’
The train squealed and shoved itself forward for a few yards, then stopped with a weirdly human groan.
‘Oh no, you can’t be serious,’ said Milly, to the window, to the air – to the entire steely elaboration of the privatised railway network, it seemed to Jack.
And then: ‘I’m supercool. I am not stressed. It’s only a frigging train.’
Howard was up their way again for a lunchtime concert he’d been booked for previous to his digital accident. His replacement was Ffiona of the two fs, playing Schumann and Frank Bridge on Howard’s 1625 loaned viola. It made a sound that was unearthly.
Jack sat in the pews during the rehearsal, tapping the suspended prayer cushion from side to side with his knees. The church acoustics were muddy and the piano too loud, and the pianist had to soften his game. Whenever the tenor – Jonathan Matthews, a rising, slightly conceited star – made a mistake he slapped his own cheek, playfully. Ffiona came in late with a note and apologised: it was the Bridge piece arranged by Britten and the metre was demanding. Matthews lifted his leg out to the side and laughed. He was dressed in jeans. Howard said not to mind. Jack leaned his arms on the pew, his chin on his arms, and watched. The piece came to an end.
‘That’s great,’ Howard said, all four smiling broadly, confident of their skill and their powers. The audience was already beginning to gather outside, the programmes spread on the table in the entrance. The tenor was adjusting his position onstage.
‘I don’t want you further away,’ said the pianist.
‘All right, OK.’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
And then Howard looked towards the pews and found Jack and said, ‘Was that tempo OK, Jack? Not too fast?’
‘A little bit fast,’ replied Jack, standing up and coming forward helpfully.
Jonathan Matthews had disappeared into the back to change. Howard nodded. ‘OK, Ffiona honey, take it a bit slower. OK?’
‘OK,’ said Ffiona, clearly a bit nervous. She looked attractive in the sombre light of the church, under the yellowish spots.
‘That’s good,’ said the pianist, who was Norwegian.
It was all very polite and informal. Jack felt good about his world. Then he turned to the right and with an intoxicating punch, like a triple Scotch downed in one, saw two familiar profiles: Kaja and Jaan, picking up a programme, smiling at the elderly woman on the desk. Howard must have invited them. Howard hadn’t told him. Why should Howard have told him? Howard didn’t know anything.
Jack walked briskly up onto the stage and dived down past the piano into the vestry. The tenor was in there, his trousers off to red boxer pants. He had plump knees and looked surprised. The vestry smelt like an inn in a state of grace.
‘That was lovely,’ said Jack, ‘sorry I can’t stay. My mother’s in hospital, all that. Tell him, please, tell Howard, Howard, to drop round as planned afterwards, but on his own. Solo. OK?’
‘On his own. Howard. Right.’
He emerged by the vestry door into the graveyard. The air was grey and sultry. He stopped by Rex Harrison’s grave and wanted to burst into tears: he might well be running away from his own child. But he kept on going.
‘A pity you had to hurtle off like that. Jaan’s here. My prodigy. With his mum.’
‘Didn’t Jonathan tell you? My own mum.’
‘That’s why you’re down at the hospital, is it?’
‘Howard, be understanding.’
Howard was phoning from the church on his mobile. His voice had the acoustics of a tinny god’s.
‘I need to talk to you about summat,’ Jack said. ‘On your ownsome. Walk on the Heath grab you?’
September was well over halfway through, but the Heath hadn’t noticed. It was hot. Howard had long arms and they swung loosely as he walked. He had changed at the house into his Helsinki Musica Nova T-shirt and tropical shorts that half covered his bony knees and in which his bottom looked over-large. They had hidden his 1625 viola under the dirty washing in the utility room, in case. It only now occurred to Jack that Marita might come back and throw it into the machine along with the smalls.
Despite his pupil’s success in the concert, Howard had started off in a tizz. Cliff was shimmying. Shimmying? Swimming on the spot, without advancing. Jack said he knew the feeling. The prelude to death, Howard insisted. He had looked it up on the Internet and the list of goldfish ailments was staggering.
Jack wondered how to dovetail Kaja into the conversation, coolly and calmly. He needed help. He needed to stop shimmying.
He’d decided to cut down on his own expenditure, at least. Buy fewer clothes and luxury items like these Oakley shades. Avoid the pointlessness that wealth generates. Siphon it to her. A direct sacrifice. A kind of redemption. Milly would never know.
Howard was banging on about how much more hassle everything was, these days.
‘These days,’ said Howard, ‘if you don’t have a DPhil in Goldfish Care, they die within hours.’
They walked up towards Kenwood. Jack always had high expectations of time out with Howard, but was generally disappointed. He gave the impression of being someone very open, but he was made up of layer after layer of complication, matted like fibreglass. The sun had disappeared behind a huge advancing ice cap of cloud. The clear sky at its edge was a luminous green.
He cleared his throat. ‘Um, she hasn’t phoned, by the way.’
‘Who?’
‘Jaan’s mum.’
‘You could have arranged something just now.’
‘Blimey, I’ve explained.’
‘Then why mention her?’ asked Howard, with a sideways look.
They passed a picnic crawling with small pre-school children, their faces streaked with warpaint. A dad with a tuft of hair under his lip was constructing something interesting out of bendy wires. Mothers in glasses and flowing printed summer dresses were talking to one other as if they were at a political meeting. It was like a historical reconstruction of the seventies.
So self-satisfied, so expert. As if they hadn’t ever not had kids.
The only jarring note was a woman in yellow dungarees doing feeble jumps off a little trampoline: perhaps the hired entertainment. She looked amazingly like Jimmy Savile. No one clapped as she landed with a wobble and spread her arms out each time.
‘Aren’t people good?’ said Howard, beaming at the picnickers.
‘Any idea who the father is?’
‘Whose father is?’
‘Jaan’s.’
‘Oh no. I don’t pry.’
Kenwood House loomed like the big wedding cake it was always being compared to, down to the icing-like glisten of its stucco front.
‘I don’t suppose she can get a grant for Jaan, can she?’
Howard shook his head. ‘Given she’s probably an illegal, no.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Not a clue.’
They flopped onto the grass bank in front of the house. Howard lay on his back. On the slope down towards the lake and the ugly white
giant arch of the open-air concerts, couples in various states of passionate embrace were dotted about. One seated couple appeared to be copulating, the girl’s bared legs straddling her man’s waist, but it might have been an illusion.
‘A great musician,’ said Howard, ‘now I think of it.’
‘Who?’
‘The father. Gr-reat musician. Mystery of Jaan’s gifts solved, ho ho.’
Jack pulled a face, feeling his chest burn. ‘Really? How do you know?’
‘She told me.’ Howard was chewing on a stem of grass. ‘Mr Davenport, he was a gr-reat musician. Just that. Nothing more. I didn’t ask. She told me to keep it secret. I’m very good at keeping secrets.’
Jack stared down the slope. Two men were throwing a bright yellow Frisbee. He followed it as it sailed each time over their outstretched arms, unreachable.
‘Do you feel you’re in need of constant reassurance?’ asked Howard, suddenly. His bony knees, covered in a light down of hair, irritated Jack, who had opened his eyes with a slight swimming giddiness. Incredibly, it appeared he had nodded off.
‘Oh, know what you mean,’ he said, expecting a reassuring confession from Howard.
‘Thought you were.’
‘Me?’
‘Why your recent work, er, lacks cohesion,’ said Howard.
Jack felt himself pinned to the slope by dismay.
‘You’re forever looking over your shoulder instead of into your soul, heart, or whatever it’s called nowadays.’
‘You’re talking about me?’
‘For once.’
Jack wanted to scream, to turn everyone’s heads their way on the pleasant green lawns of Kenwood, with its slight whiffs of dog turd.
Instead, he said: ‘Listen. Do you know what it says on the website where you buy tickets for the Kenwood concerts, Howard? It says that for an extra charge you can have dinner for thirty-plus in the fabulous pile behind us – with, I roughly quote, its two hundred and sixty million pounds’ worth of paintings. Not which paintings or by whom – not Rembrandt or Gainsborough or Stubbs or that French one, the phallic cherries –’
‘Boucher.’
‘Or Boucher. No, just the value. So that the punters get the point in the only way they know how. That’s one end. I try to be at the other end. That’s all I’m trying to be. Hey, please don’t call me commercial, Howard.’