by Patrick Gale
‘Sure you don’t want any?’ he asked, offering the last inch of the second bar.
‘No thanks,’ Andrew said and could not help smiling.
‘What’s so funny?’ his father asked, munching.
‘I’d forgotten how hungry you get.’
‘Bloody sandwiches were an absolute rip-off. I’d have made some decent thick ones before I set off, but you know how late your mother leaves things and we ended up in a god awful rush. You look well.’
‘So do you.’
He did. Andrew was surprised how young his father looked, even vigorous. He was fifty-three but could have passed for a prematurely greying forty-two. His hands, clutching the battered leather case on his lap, were thick but sinewy — not at all the soft, pink things one would expect on a barrister.
He asked Andrew questions on the way home. He asked about his work, about problems with pollution, footpath maintenance, erosion. He asked about the local population, unemployment and politics. To a stranger it might have sounded like genuine fatherly interest but to Andrew, it was like polite questioning from a visiting dignitary, benefiting from advance briefing at the hands of diplomats. Still, the impersonal questions and answers smoothed their way. He retorted in kind, with questions about his father’s work and was surprised to hear him paying lip service, at least, to the importance of encouraging racial and sexual equality at the Bar and of introducing certain radical reforms in the Law. Like his father’s youthful appearance, it made Andrew realize the extent to which he had coped with their unspoken estrangement by distorting his remembered image of the man into something older, more ogreishly hidebound.
Back at the house, his father continued to make appropriate noises, asking with surprising tact about any plans Andrew might have to redecorate. And yet, behind all the diplomacy, a restless energy seemed to be simmering that had nothing whatever to do with his son’s life. He was keyed up, and not with any tension about meeting Andrew again. Andrew wondered whether he had some grim announcement to make. His father plainly was not ill. Perhaps his mother was? Returning to the kitchen after the necessarily brief tour of a small domain, his father seized the telephone and was already tapping out a number before he remembered to ask permission to use the thing.
‘Just thought I’d—’ he began to explain then was cut short when someone answered. ‘Hi,’ he told them. ‘It’s Kenneth…Hmm. Not bad…Soon I should think.’ He turned to Andrew. ‘We could drive over there pretty soon, couldn’t we?’ Andrew nodded and watched his father turn eagerly back to the mouthpiece. ‘Yup. We’ll be over in a bit…Yes. He knows the way…See you.’
They set out immediately. Andrew did not even bother to offer coffee. The hospitable gesture would have been entirely redundant and coffee was never hotter than when unwanted. Before they left, however, his father dug in his bag and retrieved an envelope which he handed over.
‘I would have brought wine or something but I thought you might prefer these. It’s two tickets to San Francisco.’ He gave some complicated explanation about business traveller’s perks.
‘But don’t you and Mum want to use them?’
‘Not really. She hates America and I haven’t got time. You can change the date quite easily if that doesn’t suit. Just ring the number in the corner. Do you good to get away.’
As Andrew tucked the two tickets carefully behind a vase on the dresser, it struck him that they were probably now the most valuable objects in the house, after the longcase clock, inappropriate to the place as a whirlpool bath or sophisticated dishwasher.
‘Well, thank you,’ he said, and laughed. ‘Thanks, Dad.’
Locking the door behind them, he wondered who he could take. He had a brief, heady fantasy of approaching the exceedingly pretty girl who always gave him a kind smile in the fruit shop but sensed, even as the fantasy evaporated, that he would probably give both tickets away and see his own surprise reproduced on another’s face.
In the car, it struck him as strange that his father offered no information about the people they were visiting but had to be asked.
‘They’re friends of your mother’s as well,’ he was told. ‘They’re decorators. Muralists. Things like that. Holly and Clifford. Dreadful names, really; like a couple of hairdressers. Still. I’m sure you’ll like them.’
‘How did you come to know them?’ Andrew laughed at the implausibility of the connection.
‘They worked next door — for the Nicholsons. Cheered up that gloomy dining room of theirs by turning it into a sort of, well, I dunno, sort of Pompeian pavilion. But all with paint. Very clever. If you like that sort of thing. Actually, I reckon she could survive on her own as a proper painter but she supports him. I mean, he’s clever, and a pretty interesting bloke once you get him talking — especially about Africa — but not really gifted like her. Or I don’t think so. Now, she said to turn left after the church and keep on going straight towards the sea.’
And he channelled a now sporadic conversation into a series of non sequential exchanges about signposts, wild flowers and the extraordinarily good condition of Cornish roads after the potholed stretches of the London borough where your mother still insists on living.
The house was a sprawling Edwardian one, tucked deep in a thickly wooded valley running down to an inhospitably rocky cove. If there were any other houses in the area, they were hidden entirely in greenery. Even half a mile away, Andrew could hear the furious booming of spring tide waves and he climbed down from the Land Rover. A beautiful lurcher, its shaggy grey fur streaming in the wind, bounded frantically from its nest in the long grass beneath a tree, circled the two of them, panting as it went, then raced into the house announcing their arrival with no sound beyond the swift clattering of its feet on the weedy gravel path. As they drew near the front door, it emerged again, leading a slight, boyish man with very short, black hair. He wore paint-spattered dungarees over bare skin and no shoes on his small, dusty feet. He reassured the dog then greeted Andrew’s father like an old friend, with no hint of respect, as though they were of an age. Then he held his hand out to Andrew with a sweet smile.
‘And you must be Andrew. I’m Clifford. Come in. Holly’s got to finish what she’s started as the paint’s mixed, but she hasn’t got long to go. I’ll get us all some tea. She’s through there, at the end of the corridor.’ He turned to the dog and pointed. ‘Show the way, Fingal. Show the way.’
The lurcher did indeed show the way, pacing gracefully before them down the high, sunny corridor towards a half-open door and the sound of piano music. The building was filled with a strong smell of paint and solvents. Everywhere windows had been tugged open in an effort to drive the smells away and the air was lively with sudden gusts of sea breeze which fluttered papers and banged doors. The lurcher pushed into the room, barging the door wide open to reveal a small, blonde woman perched on the top of a ladder to decorate a high, windowless wall. She had covered most of the wall with thickly painted foliage and the branches of laden fruit trees but the focal point of the ‘illusion’ was a man and a woman bathing and embracing in an ornamental fountain.
‘Coming,’ she said, not turning. ‘Any second. This wretched colour’s a bugger to mix right.’
‘Hi,’ said Andrew’s father. ‘Take your time.’
‘Just one more peach. There!’
She picked her way daintily down the ladder — she too was in bare feet — dropped her brush into a jam jar of white spirit, flicked off the radio with a big toe, then came across an expanse of rumpled dustsheet to shake hands.
‘Kenneth!’
They kissed one another’s cheeks — again like old friends. And again it was a fresh shock to hear his father called by his Christian name — his mother always called him ‘darling’. His father’s hand lingered for a moment on the shoulder of her rugger shirt as she turned to Andrew. She flicked a strand of ash blonde hair off her face and examined her other visitor with humorous, grey eyes. She could not have been more than thirty. Her ha
ndshake was firm as a man’s, her small, heart-shaped face so lovely, so hand-cuppable, that the fruit shop girl was eclipsed in a callous instant.
‘Hello,’ he told her. ‘I’m Andrew.’
‘I know,’ she said, and gave him a conspiratorial smile. Just then Clifford appeared with a tray and she exclaimed, ‘Tea! I’m parched. Let’s go out on the terrace. I know it’s a bit windy but the air’s poisonous in here. Down, Fingal! Yes. I love you too.’
Sensing she was briefly released from the constraints of work, the lurcher had jumped up to flex his paws against her breasts. She hugged him affectionately and kissed his nose before pushing him gently from her. As they walked out through some French windows, the dog stayed close beside her, constantly glancing up at her face, plainly an abject slave.
She handed round tea, Clifford lavishly buttered scones, while Andrew drove from his mind a seductive image of her in Golden Gate Park, reflecting how unfair it was that two such attractive people should have found each other. They exuded cheerful self-sufficiency. He felt they enjoyed this temporary interruption of their exclusivity, were amused by it, but that it was precisely that: a temporary interruption.
Perhaps to compensate for his comments in the car, his father gave most of his attention to Clifford, asking about the house and its absent owners. Just occasionally his eyes were drawn back to Holly. Feet tucked up onto the bench beneath her, she drew Andrew out on his Cornish life and her wide-eyed fascination and frequent little pouts of concern imbued his account of his solitary tasks with a windswept romance. Suddenly she seemed struck with an idea and laughed, running a paint-spotted hand through her hair.
‘Would you mind? Clifford do you think he’d mind? Kenneth?’
‘Mind what?’ Andrew asked her, quite sure that he wouldn’t.
‘Posing. I’ve suddenly realized you’d be perfect. I need a shepherd to peer through the undergrowth at my couple in the fountain in there.’
‘Well I’m not sure I’d be very good at sitting still.’
‘You wouldn’t have to. You don’t even have to take off your clothes. Not unless you wanted to.’ She laughed. ‘Go on. It would be fun.’
‘Go on, Andy,’ his father urged.
‘All right,’ said Andrew.
‘Brilliant,’ Holly enthused and winked at him. ‘We were going to invent someone or use a photograph but real people are so much better. And Kenneth, I want you to come and see the beach. You’re looking all grey and Londonish and in need of fresh air. You can manage, can’t you Clifford?’
‘I can manage,’ said Clifford, stroking her arm as she passed his chair.
The tea things were abandoned where they lay as Holly led his father off beneath the trees and Andrew followed Clifford back into the house. He was peeved that it was not Holly he would pose for, but Clifford seemed to read his thoughts.
‘I’ll just do some sketches,’ he explained, seating Andrew halfway up the ladder and setting to work with charcoal and a pad. ‘The artist will do her stuff later.’
The sky was clouding over rapidly. Shadows hurtled across the lawn. A gust of wind billowed the thin curtains away from the French windows. Fingal trotted in.
‘Got bored, did you?’ Clifford muttered under his breath. ‘Settle down, then.’
The lovely dog performed a quick, enquiring circuit of the room, turned a few, nest-making circles on the spot then settled with a low grumble on a heap of dirty overalls, watching his master at work.
‘Could you just pull a bit of your hair down?’ Clifford asked. ‘No. Like this. Hang on.’ He stepped forward and, reaching up, pushed Andrew’s hair back off his forehead with thin fingers before teasing down a single lock. Andrew must have stiffened unconsciously at the contact. ‘It’s okay,’ Clifford assured him. ‘I don’t bite. None of us does.’
Andrew tried to relax but the cool draught had chilled him.
‘Amazing place,’ he said, for something to say.
‘Yes. It’s surprisingly noisy at night. There are owls and a fox and the house is full of creaks and bangs. Like a ship. We’ve tried sleeping in different rooms too. It’s fun waking to new views. There! Look at yourself!’ He held up a startlingly truthful sketch then almost immediately started on another one. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘let’s try you with this on,’ and he crowned Andrew with a wreath of plastic leaves sprayed gold. ‘Ah. That’s better! Holly wore that to a fancy dress party once. She said men kept reaching out to touch it then blushing. Did Kenneth let you have a dressing-up box when you were small?’
‘Er…no,’ Andrew confessed, thinking back. All he could remember was a train set with a realistic steam effect. And a neglected stamp collection. ‘I was an only child,’ he added, for some reason.
‘We dressed up all the time. Even when it wasn’t a fancy dress party we’d go as pirates or witches.’
‘Did you have many brothers and sisters.’
‘No. Just Holly.’
‘Oh,’ said Andrew. ‘Oh.’
Clifford laughed.
‘You didn’t…?’
‘Fraid so. Dad didn’t explain anything.’
‘She’s my twin.’
‘Oh yes.’ Andrew saw it. ‘You’ve got the same eyebrows.’
‘Yes. Among other things.’
‘But you share a room?’
Clifford frowned momentarily, glancing up at Andrew then back at the paper.
‘Holly hates to sleep alone,’ he said at last. ‘One more sketch, then we’re done and you’re immortal. Let’s have you the other way this time. Ah yes. That’s much your strongest profile but you always show the other. I wonder why that is. Head up. That’s it. Hold that for a bit if you can. So. Tell me. When you’re out on your warden duty do you have to wear a uniform?’
‘Yes. It’s sort of khaki and brown. Not very interesting,’ Andrew told him then wished he had kept quiet as he saw Clifford’s interest quicken. Various facts about this rootless menage were slipping into place. He was not entirely innocent, having had some embarrassing encounters when collecting litter in the more remote sand dunes by the military zone at Perran-porth. A certain kind of male sunbather, he had discovered, became excited at the very idea of a coastal warden.
‘Holly’s extraordinarily attractive,’ he said, in clumsy self-defence.
‘Hmm,’ said her brother, ‘and sometimes fatally unaware of the effect she has.’
The sketches finished, Clifford took Andrew on a tour of the building. The owner was the grandchild of a famous artistic hostess and the place was littered with paintings and memorabilia. Ordinarily it might have interested Andrew but his thoughts were half a mile away, under the trees, on the beach. After the tour, he retreated into a bathroom and stole some poison-green mouthwash in case he had a chance to stand near Holly before he left. Fingal was waiting outside the door when he emerged and shepherded him along another, darker corridor cooled by a floor of great slate slabs, to the kitchen, where Clifford was absorbed in rapidly filling a cryptic crossword. Andrew peered through an overgrown window, straining to see across the daisied lawn.
‘They’re taking a long time,’ he said at last. ‘The weather’s turning with a vengeance. I hope everything’s all right.’
‘She’s probably making him go for a proper walk along the cliff path. They’ll be fine. Anyway, you’ll stay for supper, won’t you?’
‘Oh I think Dad’s quite tired after his journey. And I hate to stop you both working. We ought to get back,’ Andrew said hastily, thinking of the steak he would never eat on his own.
‘Holly wouldn’t like that.’ Clifford tossed aside the finished crossword. ‘Can you cook?’
‘Not much. I can chop.’
‘Come on, then. You can chop veggies while I’m creative. Have some wine.’ Clifford pulled open the fridge and splashed the contents of a half-drunk bottle into two mugs. Pushing one across the kitchen worktop, he looked assessingly over Andrew’s face and laughed at him again. ‘You’re really worried about
your dad, aren’t you?’
‘No, I…No,’ Andrew assured him and gulped some wine, but the mere denial brought nightmare scenarios to mind. How could he explain to his mother that Dad had broken his neck while exploring cliff tops alone with some absentmindedly seductive, shoeless blonde?
Holly brought his father back after another twenty minutes, by which time Andrew was thoroughly involved in preparing supper. The clouds had burst minutes before and the two of them were soaked. Clifford poured them brandies while Holly towelled her hair and then Andrew’s father’s. Andrew watched her pick pieces of fern off his father’s back.
‘How was the beach, Dad?’ he asked.
‘Wonderful,’ his father enthused, shivering over his brandy but contriving to look even less fifty-three than he had on leaving the train. ‘All my cobwebs thoroughly blown.’ He raised his glass in a toast. ‘Don’t know how you ever get any work done, Clifford.’
‘Easy.’ Clifford slid a tray into the oven. ‘We work with our backs to the windows.’
‘Are we staying for dinner, Andy?’ his father asked.
‘Of course you are,’ said Holly.
His father raised his eyebrows enquiringly.
‘Andy?’
Andrew was torn. A part of him, a tight, celibate part, wanted everything to go ahead as he had originally planned, wanted his father to eat steak and ice cream, wanted to take him away from these dangerous people. Another part, frightened yet eager for carelessness, was glad that his stuffy father had not been afraid to cultivate these sexy friends so much younger than himself.
‘Well I did buy us food,’ he admitted, ‘but it can keep. And look at the time! It’s half past seven already.’
‘That’s settled then,’ said Holly.
‘It already was,’ her brother murmured.
Andrew’s father only replied by offering Andrew a strangely crestfallen smile. Or perhaps he imagined the crestfallen bit and his father was merely pleased to be promised a better meal than he knew his son could cook him.