Truth to Tell

by Mavis Cheek

  Bread was brought, with olives and my wine; his water arrived. Afonso, who brought it, enquired after our health and then departed, and we settled back in our chairs.

  ‘So –’ I said, ‘Miami is beautiful? Really?’

  ‘Parts of it are. I think you’d have liked some of it. Of course it’s brash as well and a bit over the top and I suppose with the money crunch the lights will be going out there, too – but some of it – much of it – is great. The art deco stuff is amazing, there’s a museum with a collection of Meissen you’d love, parks and waterways all over the place – we stayed near a place called the Venice of America – pretty little canals – all very picturesque – and not as trashy as you might think.’

  I wasn’t thinking trashy, I was avoiding thinking Venice, and instead thinking normal, this is all normal. ‘Yes – well – I’m sorry I didn’t go with you. I let you down and it was a pointless bit of pretentiousness, selfish and –’

  But he was smiling at me in a kind of wonderment. ‘You have no idea,’ he said. ‘None at all.’

  This was true. At that precise moment I felt ill-prepared for anything.

  ‘Well, bloody what then?’ I said, quite aggressively.

  ‘How much we all hated it. Not just me. Every single one of us.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You didn’t speak to me once. Just that message. If you’re just trying to make me feel better then –’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Then why did you all go?’

  ‘Precisely. This is what we ended up asking ourselves. Why?’

  I drank deep of the Vinho Verde. ‘All these years? Or only because it was Florida?’

  ‘There was nothing wrong with Florida – I told you,’ he said, a little testily – sure sign he was still suffering – and he started moving the cutlery and wine glasses around on the table, as if he were arranging his thoughts. Finally he looked up from the acutely important decision about where to place the olive-oil bottle. ‘So – we’d have been fine there if we hadn’t all been competing with each other and worrying about Hugo’s bloody points scheme and last one in’s a dork and all that. And never mentioning that capitalism, the engine of our world, this world, was in major collapse. It wasn’t great doing all that mad stuff when we were in our thirties – but now –’

  ‘You can’t claim the privileges of age and retain the playthings of childhood?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Dr Johnson.’

  ‘He’s right. It’s a death wish. I’ve never seen so many fixed grimaces as we all tried to look as if our screaming muscles were fine, just fine. It would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so sad. And I include myself in that … And the trouble was I suddenly saw it all through your eyes. I knew you were right. I should have phoned you and told you –’

  ‘More to the point you should have phoned me and my mother –’

  ‘Oh God, I know,’ he said, and held his head again.

  An anxious Afonso came over – sensing that Robert was suffering in some way – and asked if we wanted anything. Robert patted his arm and smiled wanly. ‘Not unless you can administer a quick rub-down with horse liniment.’ Afonso shrugged and looked at me.

  ‘We’re fine,’ I said. ‘Unless …?’ Robert shook his head. He still looked quite green. There was a strong smell of hot oil and garlic in the place, which might have accounted for it. Afonso backed away still looking perplexed.

  Robert leaned back in his chair. ‘It was Lorna who started it. On the last night. We were all sitting round the pool, lovely evening, drinks et cetera. Hugo had congratulated us all on everything, particularly James who’d sprained his ankle in the rowing competition – so he’s in for a promotion then – and good old James gives a big smile and says, Not at all – to which Lorna suddenly said, because she remembered your ear, that she wondered how you were getting on without us all and whether you were coping OK and how miserable for you. And something clicked in me, thinking of you sitting around the house, all on your own, or maybe working with Brando, or in the garden pottering, seeing Toni for a pasta or curled up on the sofa watching something daft – any of those normal, ordinary things.’

  My eyes did not waver. I thought about the day I got into a fight with a nun, the Campari evening, the Waverley night – and still my eyes did not waver. Just like a stopped clock is right twice a day, I thought, so somewhere in the world there is someone who considers stuff like that normal.

  ‘I knew that you’d be fine and that I missed you and wished I was – well – just with you. You were on your own in our lovely house in its lovely neighbourhood while our lovely children were far away and out of our hair at last – all paid for by what I do day to day, not the kind of poncy, corporate rubbish I was doing. It was all so bloody bogus. So I had another tequila sunrise or two and said it all. I just stood up and said that I wasn’t going to do anything like this ever again, that I didn’t see the point, that I hadn’t enjoyed all the competitive stuff, that James was a twerp, that I didn’t think it really proved anything, that you had spotted it first and that given the state of the world it was all bollocks.’ This last was delivered with maximum intent and Afonso, who had been sidling up again, scuttled away. I gave him a little reassuring smile, more or less implying that my husband was having a turn. And resumed listening. It was hard to take it all in.

  Robert was moving the cruet again. ‘Then I said that I’d much rather be at home with my wife, or relaxing on the beach with her if I had to be here, or doing the whole tourist bit – you know, floating around on the Venice of America and poking around in the art galleries – seeing the place instead of wrecking myself for the next month pretending I was fit as a fucking stud.’

  ‘Is there any other kind?’

  ‘Huh?’ He looked at me blankly, in no mood to be stopped by what I thought was quite a witty aside.

  ‘Do you think you could lower your voice when it comes to the profanities? Afonso is breaking out in a sweat over there. Sorry to interrupt.’

  He nodded and spoke more quietly. ‘And I told them exactly why you hadn’t come – that it was nothing to do with your ear –’ He paused and some of the old Robert emerged as he asked sympathetically, ‘How is your poor ear, by the way?’

  ‘Functioning perfectly. Get on with it.’

  ‘You hadn’t come because you were far too sensible to pretend to like the whole thing and that I was going to be as honest as you in future – and that was that. No more Team Building for me. Thanks. Or at least not that kind. And I had another drink – and another.’

  ‘Blimey,’ I said, impressed. ‘What did Hugo say? Did he sack you there and then? And poor James and his injury. And Lorna? Did she throw her drink over you?’

  He smiled. ‘None of that,’ he said. ‘Because Lorna suddenly said, “Well, well – at bloody last,” and ordered another couple of pitchers of drink, and then Polly piped up and said something about it all being a stupid charade and then James said that he thought so too, his ankle being an indicator of the kind of madness it all was – and before you knew it, everyone was laughing, drinking and saying it was all very stupid and how could we ever have been persuaded otherwise. A microcosm of the corporate world, Lorna said.’

  ‘And Hugo?’

  ‘Well, he stood there in his immaculate dinner-suited get-up – those end-of-the-pier-show clothes – looking like a pastiche out of a piss-taking movie – with the sky behind him full of stars and a big, white moon beaming down so that you expected him to say something along the lines of “The name’s Bond” – and then he laughed, too.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘He did.’

  It was my turn to rearrange the condiments.

  ‘And then the drinks arrived and we drank them. I went to my room and got a bit of sleep but I don’t really remember very much detail after that. Except that on the plane back Hugo kept slapping me on the back and saying that I was quite right, that these bonding trips were a thing of the past, obv
iously, and this would be the last. That he took the point, took the point. God knows how we got on the plane with all that booze sloshing about – they probably thought that because we were business class we’d be elegant drunks. We just had to shut Hugo up until we were in the plane. He kept trying to make a speech until Lorna did that dog-warning voice of hers. I think he was slightly annoyed – embarrassed probably – but more, much more, he was relieved. So there you are. I told them, Truth Will Out. And I’m sorry, so sorry.’ I was about to be humbly gracious when he added with a chuckle, ‘Then we had a right old argument about where the saying comes from and that you’d know. I said it was probably the Bible.’

  ‘It’s Shakespeare,’ I said.

  ‘Which play?’

  I could feel myself going pink. ‘The Merchant of Venice.’

  ‘Oh, Venice,’ he said, amused. ‘Might have known.’

  ‘Launcelot says it as part of his debate between corruption and the angel of conscience. “But at the length truth will out” – or something like that. More water? How was the stew?’ But it didn’t work.

  ‘Polly thought it was Shakespeare but she couldn’t place the play. Dear old Venice. You’d really like the Florida version. Maybe we should compare them one day.’

  I rushed on before the truth overwhelmed me. ‘He’s also the one who says, “It’s a wise father that knows his own child.” Launcelot.’

  He raised his glass of water to me. ‘Are you trying to tell me something?’

  ‘It’s what I’m paid to know,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s why Brando employs me. He even thought that Shylock was the –’

  He looked at me in the same amused way he used to look at me when I first knew him. ‘Was the what?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘So, am I forgiven?’

  ‘You’re a prat,’ I said. ‘There’s been hell to pay.’

  ‘I’ll talk to your mother first thing tomorrow. And Tassie. I promised to call her. She made sure of that.’

  ‘I’ll bet she did.’

  ‘And Johnno? I don’t suppose …?’

  I shook my head. At least that made us smile again.

  ‘I kept thinking of you being here, being normal. I think I was jealous. I did think about coming back early.’

  Good grief. Perhaps I did have a guardian angel. ‘You’re tired,’ I said very quickly, and put up my hand to touch his face. He looked puzzled and then held my fingers and looked at them. ‘What happened here?’ he said. He was holding the hand that went into the lion’s mouth; it still hurt and I winced. He examined the faded bruises and my damaged ring.

  ‘It got stuck in a hole,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a helluva mess. How?’ He looked at me seriously.

  ‘Nothing important. Just me thinking I could do something that I couldn’t.’ Still he looked at me. ‘Forget it,’ I said, ‘for now.’

  He shrugged, kissed the bruises and then examined the ring. ‘We can probably get it fixed. Hurt much?’ I watched his familiar fingers as they gently traced its shape, the purse of his lips as he did so. Any minute now and I’d be crying yet again.

  ‘Not now it doesn’t. Let’s just eat up and go.’

  When we arrived home I shovelled him up the stairs, tucked him into our bed and went back down thinking that lies had a nice, soft, protective quality and feeling more relief than I did after giving birth to both babies. In a way some battles had been won. I now understood my mother better, gave her some credit for being frail and human as well as bossy and opinionated, and I resolved to be kinder to her. I had given my daughter her boundaries, or rather my boundaries, and I would have given them to Johnno if I could locate him. It was about time. And I had been tumbled down the rocks by my best friend and lost her – but honourably; it didn’t help much, the honourable bit, but at least I could hold my head up. Yet there was one great big fly in this smug little ointment pot. Venice. The Italian. What was I going to do about that little bit of deception? Forced errors in tennis, forced lies in politics; I revived my creeping sympathy for politicians.

  Downstairs, in the light of one lamp, I listened to the clock ticking towards midnight and my husband’s faintest of snores. Truth, it seemed to me, is sometimes best kept to yourself until you can make it worthwhile. Like those Venetians in their hanging baskets who exercised Truth without Power and made it into a futile thing. They were hardly a good advert for its happy joys. Maybe I felt better for my efforts but nobody else did. Not even Robert despite being free forever from those appalling Bonding Breaks. Whoever invented us as human beings gave us the power of judgement. Where truth is concerned, we should use it. Robert may have thought he had learned that truth is best, but my lesson had been quite the reverse.

  For now I just wanted to get into bed beside my pale, tired, possibly still-pissed husband, and fall asleep with my head on his chest and wake up to find it was all just a dream.

  Nineteen

  Swacker: something huge; figuratively, A Big Lie.

  Reverend Robert Forby’s Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830

  IT TOOK ROBERT about twenty-four hours to get over his little problem with imminent liver failure. And then suddenly, like a small child after vomiting, he was completely better. It was Sunday. Outside our windows the sun shone anew and the few showers that April bestowed hardly made a mark. Everything was well in our world after all and we had made it through a dangerous journey. I’d been harnessed before too much damage could take place, and out in the garden, as I set the coffee down on the table and the birds trilled loud and the leaves rustled in their fresh greenness, well – it was near perfection.

  The upstairs window sash opened and Robert, with the telephone to his ear, leaned out. ‘Tass sends her love,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I’ll speak to her.’ I ran towards the back door but Robert called again. ‘No – she’s on short rations with the phone and I can’t call her back. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, she’ll be home next Saturday.’

  ‘And Johnno?’

  ‘The week after.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  ‘If he can find his ticket.’

  ‘Normality returns,’ I said.

  ‘And now,’ he said in a triumphant voice, ‘I’ve arranged to take a few days off …’ He tapped the side of his nose. I didn’t think anything of it and began clipping at the mightily overgrown wisteria which should have been done in March. I was getting on top of things again, and I was happy – both children coming home, Robert here, no blondes in the casino, so he said, and the memory of that sultry hotel room buried and forgotten. Life was good. Clip, clip, clip, I went, innocent as you like.

  Ten minutes later Robert bounded out of the kitchen into the garden like a boy of seventeen. He put his hands on my shoulders, kissed me on both cheeks and said, ‘I’ll do your mother later.’

  ‘Yes, you might need to build up to that.’ Clip, clip, clip.

  ‘And you and I, dear wife, are going away. We’re going to have a few days to ourselves before the travellers return.’

  ‘Lovely,’ I said, my mind still on the wanton greenery. Clip, clip, clip, I went. ‘Where?’

  ‘Venice,’ he said, happily.

  Clip, clip, clop.

  ‘Venice, Florida?’ I asked, smooth as I could. ‘It’ll be a bit of a rush.’

  ‘No, we can do that another time – when we’ve got longer. No, this is Venice in Italy. Reprise the romance. It’s years since we were there. I couldn’t stop thinking about the real thing when I was in the Florida version. It reminded me of all sorts of things.’

  I put the clippers down in case of an accident.

  I went through everything I could. Pointed out that the children’s rooms needed a clean – to which he – understandably given my – to put it kindly – impromptu approach to housework – looked deeply sceptical. To my suggestion that there might be an airline strike so that we wouldn’t be back for their arrival he said, very sensibly, that if there were an airline strike it would prob
ably affect them, too, and they would also be late back. And I didn’t have the heart to say, ‘Not if it’s only in Italy.’ I ran my mind over the suggestion that my mother might get ill – but since she was as robust as a Second World War jeep (same vintage) this was pointless. I tried saying that Brando would need me, but Robert said he’d give him a ring, the old romantic. Brando? I found myself squeaking for the third time that week. On no account was Robert to speak to Brando.

  ‘No – I’ll do that.’ And so I gave in.

  ‘Do not, under any circumstances,’ I later whispered down the phone to Brando, ‘say anything to Robert about my coming to see you in Venice. Not ever.’

  ‘Why?’

  I told him.

  Brando laughed. Oh, it was tremendous fun. He always said that old queens were good at spotting a weak spot and going for the jugular first. From a lifetime of practice in his case. But this time, not if I got to his jugular first. ‘Well, why didn’t you say that I was out here already?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t think straight. And it’s a bit late to suddenly remember now.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said, and laughed even more enjoyably. The Brandos of this world. Such fun to be had with the rest of us. It probably keeps them alive.