It was eight o’clock when I climbed into bed. Despite the Do Not Disturb light outside my room, the maids kept trying my door, especially around midday. I slept fitfully until three in the afternoon. On getting up, my first instinct was to call Ralph. I resisted, though; I had bothered him enough. Every now and then, I would glance at the phone, but I didn’t pick up the receiver.
On Sunday morning, I flew back to London.
You took me very literally. That sentence of Ralph’s had stayed with me. There was a ruefulness about it, but at the same time he could almost have been reproaching me. Perhaps I should have reacted differently. Ignored what he was saying, or even told him not to be silly. Like a Chinese taxi driver, though, I had been baffled, even paralysed, by Ralph’s directions. He seemed surprised that we’d had so little to do with each other, but not unduly upset. In the context of his life, I wasn’t that important. All he needed was his family – the one he had made – and a handful of strangers, people he came across by chance and drank with, or joked about, or waved at from car windows. I mean, I like you – and I like Robin. It’s just that I like Vivian more.
Still, I was happy to have seen him. I had put things that had been troubling me into words. I had said I was sorry. And I had received answers to questions I hadn’t even asked. It hadn’t been in my mind, for instance, to wonder what I felt for Ralph, but I had found out on Saturday as the distance opened up between us, as he was swallowed by the murky grey-brown of a Shanghai dawn. Love had caught me unawares, reaching out through the back window of the taxi like a line thrown from my heart. Because he seemed to be sinking – a leaf in water. Because I seemed to be losing him again. This love was strong – no, unconditional – and he could do whatever he wanted with it. Even nothing. Nothing was fine. But I would be there for him if he ever needed me. He could call on me. Rely on me. There would be no more letters saying no.
The Burning Bed
On our last morning in the house, it’s the hammering of my heart that wakes me. I am lying on the carpet, in a sleeping-bag. I feel as if I have overslept, and am now late for an appointment. Panic swarms through me, but still I don’t move. The house sounds hollow, like the inside of a cello. In the kitchen, a loose piece of parquet lifts under someone’s foot, then clacks back into place. The others are already up.
I imagine the house might have felt like this thirty-five years ago, when my grandmother left for the asylum. There would have been the same unnatural quiet, the same air of imminent abandonment. Who kept an eye on things after she was gone? Did anyone? I wonder if local children thought of the house as haunted. A mad lady lived here once. She had funny teeth. Her hair turned white in an earthquake.
When my parents arrived in the early 1950s, the dust was half an inch thick, and dead flies lay in brittle, glinting heaps on all the windowsills. My mother had to scrub every surface with detergent, then there was the decorating to be done. You should have seen it, my father told me once. The whole place was brown. Wendy had spent most of her childhood in the house. She had only been away for three or four years. How did she feel about returning? Had she imagined a different, more exotic life?
A door slams downstairs.
I glance at my alarm clock. Ten to ten. Unzipping my sleeping-bag, I scramble to my feet.
Since the kitchen table and the chairs have been destroyed, we have to eat breakfast standing up. Afterwards we throw everything into the skip – kettle, teapot, mugs and plates, the cutlery. By a quarter to twelve, we are ready to leave. Ralph and Vivian have ordered a taxi to take them to the station. They are renting a place in Scauri, not far from Naples. They have no idea how long they will be away, or where they will be living when they come back. Robin and I will drive up to London in the Rover. To start with, we’ll stay in the Oval. Robin plans to buy a flat of his own with his share of the proceeds from the house. I will go and see Hanne in West Berlin, then I’m thinking of spending a few months in New York. I will keep in touch with Robin, as I always have, but I can’t imagine when I’ll next see Ralph.
We gather in the hall, uncertain what to say now that our time together is over. Then Robin lets out a gasp.
‘My bed,’ he says.
We have forgotten about Dad’s bed. If it’s in the house at midday, it will constitute a breach of the agreement, and the sale might fall through. We all start talking at once. The skip! What about the skip? No, wait. The skip’s already full. We only have one option: the bonfire.
We rush upstairs and into Dad’s bedroom. Judging by the pale, hazy air above the hedge, the fire’s still just about alight. We upend the mattress. Slide it out of the room. Once outside, we lay it flat, then drag it up the garden and hurl it on to the remains of last night’s blaze. We race back to the house. The base proves more unwieldy. Even flipped on to its side, it barely fits through Dad’s bedroom doorway. On the landing, we have to lift it above our heads so as to manoeuvre it down the stairs. We knock against a banister post; it creaks, but doesn’t break. By the time we reach the kitchen garden, blue-grey smoke is seeping from beneath the mattress. We heave the base on to the mattress, but it slips sideways, ending up on the scorched ground that surrounds the fire. We should have put the base on first; with its wooden frame, it would have burned more easily. Swearing, we take a corner each and hoist it skywards, then lower it again. This time it stays put, its four stumpy black legs sticking up in the air, its hairy hessian belly shamelessly exposed.
From the road comes the sound of a car’s horn. Ralph’s taxi. The three of us run down the garden. Ralph disappears through the French window, but Robin and I stop outside the glasshouse. We’re breathing through our mouths, like animals.
‘Look,’ I say, pointing at the hedge.
The smoke flooding up into the sky has changed colour: it is darker now, and oilier.
Robin nods grimly. ‘Another helicopter.’
I watch as one final suitcase is wedged into the taxi’s boot. Ralph and Vivian have an unbelievable amount of luggage; I’m not sure how they’re going to carry it all. Along with the clothes and baby things, Ralph has packed his trumpet and a set of Dickens novels. He is also taking some of Dad’s tools – the hand-drill, the axe and several balls of string – which he thinks will come in useful in Italy. Vivian is already sitting in the taxi. Her long hair screens her face. I still don’t understand what came between us. There were nights when we got on, but the next day the awkwardness and tension would be back. Perhaps we’re not supposed to be close, or even to know each other at all. We’re not exactly the first family to fray around the edges. Life tends to unravel, given half a chance. Some loose ends just get looser.
I remember how Ralph and I used to play football together on Christmas Eve. It was a ritual of ours – only the two of us, and only on that one night of the year. The most thrilling of all nights if you’re young: the ground quartz-like and crackling with frost, the smell of candle smoke, the multicoloured paper chains looping through the downstairs rooms, the stockings, as yet unfilled, draped limply across our beds …
I can see us on the drive, me fifteen, him ten. My turn in goal. I crouch in front of the five-bar gate. To my left, the yew trees, quill-sharp at the top, and inky black. Darkness is falling, but there’s still a blue glow to the sky behind the house, a halo of uncanny, spectral light, as though a spaceship has just touched down on the lawn. He places the ball and takes a few steps back. He gives me a crafty look. Darts forward. Shoots. The ball flies past my outstretched hand, over the gate. Luckily, no cars are going by. Standing quite still, we listen as the ball bounces off down the road. Then our eyes meet, and we laugh.
Copyright
Granta Publications, 12 Addison Avenue, London W11 4QR
First published in Great Britain by Granta Books, 2010
Copyright © Rupert Thomson, 2010
Rupert Thomson has asserted his moral right under
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as the aut
hor of this work.
Lines from ‘Amsterdam’ Music by Jacques Brel/English lyric by
Mort Shuman – © 1965 Editions Jacques Brel s.p.r.l. –
All Rights Reserved – Reproduced by kind permission of
Carlin Music Corp., London NW1 8BD
Lines from ‘Home’ are reproduced by kind permission
of Robin Farquhar-Thomson
All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in
any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed
under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted
by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be
a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 84708 280 0
This Party's Got to Stop Page 23