by Tim Pears
Uncle Jonny lowered the mobile from his ear and, staring at it, said softly, ‘Fuck.’ He shook his head and said, more loudly, ‘Fuck you, arsehole.’ He put the phone into the right-hand pocket of his jacket and pulled a different one out of the left. He pressed a single button before raising it to his ear. He was now standing almost in the side doorway of the garage, looking out.
‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Here it is. You’ve got until the eighth. If I don’t have the interest by the tenth, we’re fucked. Yeah, yeah, I know, he thinks he’s the dog’s bollocks.’ In contrast to the previous conversation, Uncle Jonny was now animated; although standing still, he gestured with his free hand, nodded his head as if for emphasis to the listener on the other end of the line. ‘You never should have shown him the figures, you fucking muppet, of course he’s being a cunt. So would I. No. Look, I don’t want to hear it, all right? What’s on paper doesn’t mean fuck. Do you not get it? It’s liquidate or die now.’
I’d never heard my uncle – nor any other adult outside movies – speak like this; with this casual, obscene vehemence. It was like a different person, speaking a different language. No, it was like the true animal beneath the civilised veneer – a superficial skin that most people were too timid ever to divest themselves of. My uncle was able and willing to.
‘At least the bastard will accept property as well as cash,’ he said. ‘I can raise a Bernie’s worth here. You unfreeze capital, I’ll get what title deeds I can on the table. I don’t give a fuck if it’s Christmas. Santa Claus isn’t going to help us, you twat. Get to work.’
Uncle Jonny put the mobile phone back in his left-hand pocket, turned around, stepped into the doorway, and stared straight at me. With the light from outside all around him, I couldn’t make out the features of his face: he was simply a dark silhouette. He didn’t say anything. He must have been staring at me. At last he spoke. ‘You have to take risks. Don’t be a loser, Theo.’ His voice was almost back to normal. ‘You have to cover those risks as best you can. Protect yourself. Protect your family. You don’t have to be poor. It’s your father’s choice. You don’t have to make the same choice.’
He turned and walked across the yard. Halfway to the others he called to them, ‘We all set? Got those useless gundogs of yours ready, Pa?’ They piled into their paramilitary-style vehicle, and took off down the drive.
I knew that my parents, and thus myself, were not poor, exactly, but nor were we rich. When she opened the Oxford Times my mother always went straight to the Property section, and would interrupt my father trying to read the news section with his Friday gin and tonic to show him some large Victorian house for sale, nearer the centre of town. They’d not moved house since before I was born and had no plans to; this property envy was just one of my mother’s foibles which neither my father nor myself took seriously. I’d never considered ourselves impoverished. There were plenty of kids at school from poorer homes than mine, from the Cutteslowe and Marston estates – even if they generally had more cash to flash around than I did – and I tended to compare my lot to theirs rather than the few children I knew who went to private schools in the city. But to my entrepreneur uncle, his older brother’s family must have seemed positively deprived. I knew full well, by that time in my life, that such considerations are relative. But what I could not deny was that there was something deeply exciting about the way my uncle had spoken on the phone, and then to me. He possessed some kind of energy I’d not come across before, which I guessed was to do with power over others, exerted for the sake of money.
Grandma walked slowly across the yard, using a stick, beside Jockie. ‘Bring some potatoes inside,’ she said. ‘Enough for the week.’
‘I’ll use the barrow,’ Jockie informed her.
‘You’re getting weak,’ Grandma told him. ‘Getting old.’
‘I’ll never be as old as you,’ he replied.
They always spoke like this, bickering with each other. They had the strangest relationship. Mistress and servant, lifelong friends, locked together in feudal enmity.
‘I thought I told you not to come today.’
‘We’re behind with pruning, ain’t it?’
‘It’s winter.’
‘Been too bloody mild.’
‘You’re only here for the money.’
‘Your husband can afford it.’
It was well known that Jockie wouldn’t take orders from Grandpa. ‘He’s getting chippy with Leonard again,’ Grandma would say with some glee. Mostly, her gardener just got on with whatever he thought needed doing. Grandma would interrupt and tell him to do something else, out of a sort of obligation to exert her authority, and he’d listen to what she had to say and then go back to whatever he was doing before.
Holly and I spent the morning exploring. I wanted to show her my favourite places. The first was Grandpa’s workshop in the coach house, which you reached – unless its big double doors were open – through a side door. There were shelves along all the brick walls, shelves that had once been floorboards in rooms in the house, replaced fifty years ago. Arrayed upon them were jam-jars and tins filled with all manner of screws, nails, rivets and hinges; washers and plugs, bolts, switches. Unlike in Grandpa’s geological mini-museuem, there were no labels here to identify the size or gauge of hardware. Lengths of rope and string, coils of wire, differing thicknesses of electrical flex. Running right along the whitewashed back wall was a long, thick slab of wood, the workbench, above which hung every imaginable tool, over its felt-pen outline. Saws, hammers, spanners. Screwdrivers, chisels, pliers.
We looked through cans, at parts we could not identify of machines we were unable to imagine. There were implements that were broken and which Grandpa was planning to get around to mending, or had tried to fix and failed to; a large lock whose back had been removed, and whose parts lay all jumbled in a little heap inside; an ancient electrical appliance whose wires and springs spilled out like the entrails of some abandoned dissection.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ I asked Holly.
‘What is?’ she asked.
‘You know,’ I said. ‘All this.’
‘All what?’ she said.
I thought it was self-evident, and was at a loss to explain.
‘All these bits and pieces,’ I said, waving my arms around to indicate the totality of objects in tins and jars all around the workshop. ‘They all fitted into something once, and Grandpa’s kept hold of them, because any one of them could come in useful again one day. Except they won’t, because things aren’t made like that any more, of replaceable parts: something breaks, you bin it and buy a new one. Grandpa wouldn’t know how to fix a modern radio, or hairdryer, or electric drill. It’s kind of, I don’t know, sad, isn’t it?’
Holly shrugged. She didn’t really get what I was on about, and after a while neither did I. What did impress her was that at one end of the workbench were paintbrushes; containers of putty, white spirit, turps. On the shelves above were cans of paint with stickers, on which were written the room they’d adorned, kept for touching up. Grandpa or Jockie or someone must have tested colours on the table, or maybe tried to work excess paint off a brush: layers of different colours, vintages and types of paint had created a thick impasto that she gazed at for a while. ‘A collaboration between Jackson Pollock and Howard Hodgkin,’ she said. Seeing my puzzlement – neither of my parents were much into visual arts; nor was I – she said, ‘Art’s my best subject. Our school’s got Art specialist status.’
She drew her small camera out of the pocket of her hoodie, and took pictures.
The smell of turpentine, and linseed oil, entered one’s nostrils. Holly reached up and brought down a bell that hung on the wall. ‘I wonder what this is for?’ she asked.
‘It was Grandpa’s grandfather’s. He was a shepherd.’ Grandpa had told me about him. ‘He always had a hand-reared lamb, which became the leading sheep: it would follow him, and the rest of the flock would follow it, or rather they’d follow the sound
of the bell around its neck. He could walk in front of the flock, open gates, lead the way. His dogs would follow behind, rounding up stragglers.’
‘I didn’t know about the shepherd,’ Holly said.
‘Grandpa said his earliest memory is of picking acorns in the autumn for his grandfather’s pig.’
‘Until yesterday, I thought he was always wealthy.’
I shook my head. ‘He had nothing,’ I told her. ‘He made it all himself.’
3
Lunch was a mishmash of a meal, concocted by various members of the family. Melony and Holly prepared a salad, while I made sure everyone witnessed me making houmous in Grandma’s Kenwood liquidiser, and understood that I was adding ingredients from memory: one tin of chick peas; half a jar of tahini; two cloves of garlic, crushed; the juice of one lemon; water from the chick peas, to achieve a desired consistency, and soy sauce to taste.
‘I prefer not to follow a recipe,’ I explained to Holly. ‘I’m more of an intuitive cook, really.’ She was deeply impressed, I could tell.
A large block of cheddar and another of Stilton joined the shoulder of ham on the counter.
Just as we sat calmly, quietly tucking in, we heard loud excited voices, doors banging. Grandpa, Uncle Jonny and the twins came striding noisily in, the dogs weaving around their legs. Xan and Baz each held up a rabbit by its hind legs; each boy had an identical, proud grin on his face.
‘I don’t want blood on my kitchen tiles!’ Grandma exclaimed. ‘Hang them in the scullery, Leonard.’
‘The boys just wanted to show you,’ Grandpa told her.
‘Yes, yes, very good,’ Grandma said. ‘Now go and wash your hands and be so good as to join us for lunch.’
If the four hunters had expected cheering to greet their heroic return, they didn’t look crestfallen by its absence; they were too wrapped up in their shared exertions. When they’d left the room, Grandma said, sotto voce, wrinkling her nose dismissively, ‘Of course, it’s not real hunting.’
When they returned and joined us at the table, the twins told how they’d both bagged their quarry within ten minutes of leaving the car.
‘The poor bunnies were fast asleep,’ Uncle Jonny said. ‘We were practically upon them, could have knocked the little blighters on the head with the tip of the gun barrel as easily as shot them.’
‘Father’s upset,’ said Xan, ‘because he didn’t pop a pheasant.’
‘Kept missing,’ Baz agreed.
‘We only came home when he ran out of cartridges.’
‘Ho, ho,’ Uncle Jonny said, which was his personal alternative to laughing, something he never did; he just acknowledged other people’s remarks. ‘Ho, ho. I blame Pa’s bloody dogs. They blundered around in the undergrowth, alerting all the game to our presence.’
Grandpa didn’t say anything. He just sat there at the head of the table, basking in the recounting of the morning’s expedition, and in the rare gathered company of his offspring.
Dessert was a fruit salad Mum and Gwen had put together, with a choice of yoghurt or crème fraîche to go with it, and there were trays of dried dates and crystallised ginger.
My father had avoided preparing anything, as usual; he’d been in the TV area, or what had become the reading area, slumped in a chair across the room from Sid, each lost in their own world, oblivious to the rest of us working our fingers to the bone, as Grandma put it, getting their lunch ready for them. They didn’t appear to hear a word.
The truth was that my father was smarter, and wilier, than people gave him credit for. He pretended to be all clumsy and vague and forgetful, but he didn’t fool me. Like when Mum moaned about doing most of the cooking, he’d wait until people were coming to dinner and insist on taking responsibility. He’d waste all morning shopping for precise ingredients, then spend the afternoon in the kitchen ruining the meal. He’d be cursing loudly in there, while I was helping Mum hand round alcohol and olives, and you could tell it gave the impression to their guests that he’d been forced somewhat against his will to prepare their food. There was always at least one noisy breakage. Eventually he’d call everyone to the table and serve up one dish underdone, another one burned. The mashed potato was lumpy, the joint was still half-raw or the supposedly al dente pasta was soft.
Most adults, I gathered, had what they called a signature dish, a particular delicious meal they could cook. My father had signature dishes of his own: meals that were legendary for their awfulness. They were brought up in conversation by his and Mum’s friends for years afterwards. ‘Remember Rod’s broad bean pasta? Or what about the time he gave us food poisoning with that uncooked salmon?’ The memories were regurgitated, accompanied by grimaces and laughter. They loved him for it. And the thing you wouldn’t believe unless you saw it with your own eyes was that Mum fell for it, too. She and Dad would laugh about each travesty of a meal after the guests had gone home, and for days afterwards.
And my father would say things like, ‘I just don’t get how it’s possible to cook more than two dishes and serve them at the same time. I can’t see how it’s possible, darling, and sometimes you serve six!’
My mother would accept the compliment and have a pleasant chuckle every time she kicked him out of the kitchen. ‘I’m not letting you in here.’ Until six months later she’d start moaning about always having to do the cooking and what was wrong with the men in this house?
The thing was, every now and then Mum would go away, to a conference or on one of her girlfriends’ walking weekends, and Dad would knock me and him up decent grub – or ‘tucker,’ as he called it – without ever breaking anything, or swearing. Whereas my mother, it seemed to me, was not as smart as she – and everyone else – thought she was. But she bossed people around at work, and gave lectures to hundreds of students, and Dad was always telling her how clever she was, and she believed it.
‘Amy takes care of our money,’ he’d tell people. ‘I haven’t the brains for it.’
‘I couldn’t trust Rod with the bills,’ Mum would say. ‘He hasn’t a clue.’
But take Scrabble. I’d been playing with my parents for a while by then, occasionally, just to humour them. And even I’d beaten Mum, when I had decent letters. But she was always outraged if Dad was winning, like she couldn’t believe it, and he’d say, ‘Pure luck, darling. I’m so sorry. What are the odds of getting a Z on the double-letter of the triple-word score, with a seven-letter word? Pure fluke.’ But the thing was, you see, they kept a little old notebook in the Scrabble box to write the scores in, and one rainy day I checked back through them. They must have been playing Scrabble together for years. Sometimes another one or two people played – what thrilling dinner parties those must have been – usually it was just the two of them. I totalled the results. Dad led Mum by a hundred and seventy-three games to sixty-one.
I’d not drawn Mum’s attention to this, nor had I any intention of doing so.
Grandpa was asking Melony about her work. She was a nurse, or at least she used to be. Now she seemed to be something else. He asked her if she’d ever worked in a hospice – I don’t know why – and it turned out she’d been a nurse at Sobell House in Oxford. She told Grandpa a story of how Doctor So-and-so had this private patient, and requested that Melony find her a single room.
‘I was so determined not to give her preferential treatment that even though one happened to be free, I moved another patient out of the four-bed ward and into the room.’ She shook her head. Melony spoke quietly, just loud enough for Grandpa to hear, although by straining hard and leaning a little across Sid, who was talking to Aunt Lorna next to her, I was just about able to as well.
‘The result was that the woman I’d moved was miserable. In the last days of her life. She hated being alone, cut off, from the small community she’d just joined.’
‘What about the private patient?’ Grandpa asked.
Melony made a wry shrug. ‘She integrated immediately in the ward, and was very happy there.’
&nbs
p; Myself, I’d barely said a word to Melony. Two shy people are a poor combination. Shy people may resent loud and insensitive boors, but also appreciate the fact that they don’t notice their shyness; it means they can ignore it themselves. Whereas you know that another shy person is acutely aware of your every hesitation and anxiety.
Seated in the middle, between Sid and Holly, I could sweep the entire company. Aunt Lorna, fortunately, was blocked by Sid: since this morning, I’d avoided looking at her, afraid that if I did so I might faint. At the end of the table to my right, Uncle Jonny seemed to be inviting his brother and sister to join him on a Christmas Eve pub crawl. ‘Catch up with one or two of the old crowd,’ he said. ‘Bound to be there.’
Dad frowned. ‘I’m not really sure,’ he said.
‘I think I’ll stay here with Melony,’ said Auntie Gwen.
‘Bring her,’ Jonny said, with a sort of exasperated shrug. ‘It’s the twenty-first bloody century, Gwen.’
My aunt screwed up her nose as if to indicate her scepticism at this proposition. ‘Round here?’
‘Maybe Pa would like to come,’ Uncle Jonny wondered aloud.
‘Leonard?’ Grandma said, loudly. ‘Your father’s never been in a public house in his entire life. Why on earth would he start now?’
The twins, meanwhile, were conferring behind my mother’s back. ‘Why don’t you two ask to get down?’ she told them. Xan leaned towards her and whispered something in her ear. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Mum said.