‘Really? I see.’
Harvey had expected that his decision would induce no shattering of Dizzy’s smugness, but is still disappointed with this response: there is not even the tiniest crack in his therapist’s voice.
‘Yes, I’m planning to do without therapy. For a while at least. See how it goes.’
‘As you wish, of course. Meanwhile, you have missed eight sessions, including the one you’re now going to miss tomorrow. I calculate, at a hundred and thirty pounds a session, that that means you owe me one thousand and forty pounds.’
‘You’re not actually going to charge me that, are you?’
‘These are my rules, I’m afraid. Shall we say a thousand?’
‘Yeah, but …’ He thinks about saying all the stuff he normally says – about how his dad was dying, about how Dizzy could have a heart, about how, although something may have shifted in him in the last few weeks and he hopes to God it has, this has fuck-all to do with Dizzy and his fucking mantras. But all this would be, he realizes suddenly, just hacking a chanik. The stewardess takes off her life jacket and concludes the demonstration.
‘Dizzy.’
‘Yes, Harvey.’
‘Here’s the thing. I’m not going to pay you the money.’
‘You’re not.’
‘No. But next time you feel the need to call me about that money, or maybe just next time it makes you really cross that I haven’t paid it, why don’t you just think: I’d really, really like to have that thousand quid; but if I never get it, it’s not the end of the world.’
There is a small muffled cough at the other end of the line. It is not the comic-book spluttering and the ‘but … but … but …’ that Harvey would have liked, but it will have to do. And it just gives him the time to say, before Dizzy starts talking of lawyers and letters and whatever else, ‘Goodbye, Dizzy.’
‘Please now switch off all mobile phones and other electronic devices, as we are starting our run-up towards takeoff.’
He switches the iPhone to aeroplane mode. Quickly, he installs the photograph of Stella and Jamie in Spain as his home screen. It looks nice there. It looks like it should be there. He goes back to his chess game. They begin to taxi towards takeoff. As the plane moves faster and the sound of the engine rises, he notices, out of the corner of his eye, the old woman, without looking up from her book, place her hand onto the hand of her husband, who remains staring into space. The plane gets faster. Its wheels leave the ground. Harvey Gold feels good; he feels his life is on an upswing; and so he feels that he should finally beat Deep Green at chess. He plays urgently. Bishop to King 3. Rook to Queen’s Knight 4. Queen to King’s Rook 2. Pawn to Queen 7. Queen to King’s Bishop 5. Ting! It goes. Checkmate. Tiny wins.
* * *
Stella drinks her tea almost as soon as it comes, gulping it down quickly, a mannish action at odds with her deeply feminine appearance.
‘You don’t need to hurry,’ says Violet, thinking that she is ill at ease in her company and wants to get it over with.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m not hurrying. I always like to drink hot drinks when they’re really hot. I never let them cool down. I’m sure it’s really bad for my insides.’
‘Oh, well. Everything’s bad for your insides these days.’ And as she says it, she has a strange feeling, one she has not had for many years: this is a cliché. She shouldn’t say it, at least not in front of someone married to a Gold.
Stella smiles, though, sympathetically. Violet puts her mouth to her own tea, a small, cautious sip.
‘Violet …’ says Stella. Violet hears the note of gravity and significance, and suddenly wants to put off what it portends for one moment longer.
‘How did you find me?’
‘Oh. I’m a lawyer. We have people-finding software, databases, everything like that, on our computers. I’m afraid most information about you or anyone else is findable that way. These days.’
She seems, to Violet, to echo the phrase as a way of saying that using it, that speaking like ordinary people do, is all right.
‘But there must be other Violet Golds?’
‘Of course. But not that many with the correct date of birth. And only one with the correct date of birth and the supporting information, m dot – that means married – E. Gold, 1944–54.’
‘That’s on some computer somewhere?’
‘Yes. Well, on some database. Which also gave me your last address – Cricklewood?’ Violet nods. ‘And a phone number. The people living there now knew where you were …’
So this information exists, easily accessible. Somewhere out there her life has been pinned and mounted around this central fact: her marriage to Eli Gold.
‘Anyway …’ says Stella. She looks uncomfortable. Violet wishes to spare her sensitivities, but cannot quite stop her, yet, even though she knows by now what she is going to say. There is something she needs to hear.
‘That’s why I’ve come to see you. Because of Eli.’
And that is it: his name, said by someone else in this room, with reference – with respect – to her.
‘He’s dead?’
‘Yes. This morning … I didn’t want you to hear it on the news.’
She feels it as a huge rush of relief, of a type that she thought had been lost to her. Relief as it is for the young – the blast of ecstasy that is a beer poured down a thirsty throat, or the sound of a lover’s voice on the telephone, or orgasm – that had gone, long ago, replaced by more sedate forms of release: sitting down after standing for some time; passing water after an urgent dash to the toilet; taking off waist-biting support tights. But this felt like relief used to: it felt like the sea, dived into on the hottest day of the year.
‘Are you all right?’ said Stella. Violet looks up. Her face, she realizes, is wet. She must have been crying. She is a little amazed at herself – not that such a reaction has been provoked, but that she can still cry. The last time she remembers doing so was when Neville and Valerie tried to force her to sell Solomon’s Testament, and that was so many years ago. She has assumed that the ducts must have dried up. She is surprised that her body has enough juice left in it to produce tears.
‘Yes, yes. I’m fine.’
From the wrist area of her sleeve – she is, after all, an old lady – Violet produces a tissue, and dabs at her cheeks with it.
‘Would you like me to get the nurse to come back?’
‘No, no. I’m perfectly well, really.’ She feels again something she has not felt for a long time: a concerned touch. It is Stella’s hand on hers. Her skin is cool and soft. She looks up. This is what she wanted, the slow telling. She does not really understand why this woman has gone out of her way to provide her with it, but she feels deeply thankful to her. Backed by the grey light falling from the window, she sees Stella’s beautiful face, full of what seems to be sympathy, real sympathy, and, despite her arthritis, Violet has an absurd and ridiculous desire to get down on her knees in front of this angel of mercy, even if it might mean never getting up again. She does not, of course. Instead, she just says:
‘Thank you, Stella. Thank you so much for coming. What a nice thing to do.’
‘Really, it was nothing.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t. Do you live nearby?’
‘Well …’
‘No. Well, as I say. Harvey – is that what you said? – he is a very lucky man.’
Stella shakes her head at this with a self-deprecating smile, as the custom dictates, although there is something else behind it, some complexity, which the older woman cannot quite make out, but which moves her to say, again:
‘A very lucky man.’
It is another cliché: she knows it as she says it. The younger woman nods, accepting the compliment, a little, as she must, ironically. For a second, nothing in particular happens. An aeroplane banks in the air, the sheets are cleaned in a hospital bed, a lock is turned in a prison cell, a child is comforted by its mother, and the world turns, like a dumb dog cha
sing its own tail.
‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’ says Stella, eventually.
Violet blinks at her. ‘Would you mind helping me put on this sock?’ she says.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank, for all their help in various ways towards this book, John Bond, Nicholas Pearson, Mark Richards, Georgia Garrett, Zadie Smith, Frank Skinner and Ben Liston.
About the Author
David Baddiel has written and performed in a series of highly successful comedy shows on British TV, including The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Fantasy Football and Baddiel And Skinner Unplanned. In 1993, he became the first comedian to perform at Wembley Arena. For fi ve years, he had a books column in The Times. He wrote the hit film The Infidel, and is the author of three previous novels: Time for Bed, Whatever Love Means and The Secret Purposes. He lives in London.
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Also by David Baddiel
The Secret Purposes
Whatever Love Means
Time for Bed
Copyright
Copyright © David Baddiel 2011
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The right of David Baddiel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Quotation from ‘No Surprises’ by Thomas Edward Yorke, Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood, Philip James Selway, Colin Charles Greenwood and Edward John O’Brien reproduced with permission of Warner/Chappell Music Ltd (PRS); quotation from Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace (© 2004) reproduced with permission of Little, Brown Book Group; quotation from The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (© 2001) reproduced with permission of HarperCollinsPublishers; quotation from ‘I Am Woman’ by Helen Reddy and Ray Burton reproduced with permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HB ISBN 978-0-00-727083-5
TPB ISBN 978-0-00-736765-8
EPub Edition © 2010 ISBN: 9780007292448
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The Death of Eli Gold Page 45