Summer in the City

by Fiona Collins

I fall silent. Dad does, too. We’re on the final escalator up to street level. Near the top, he sighs, then in a voice so quiet I can barely hear him, he says, ‘You know, if anyone should be sorry, it should be me.’

  ‘Whatever for? Careful, Dad, we’re at the top of the escalator. Step off – now – that’s it.’

  He retakes my arm.

  ‘For going blind in the first place. For jabbering on like the young excited idiot I was and walking straight into that metal beam.’

  ‘A metal beam that shouldn’t have been there! A metal beam that defied all safety regulations. That was in breach of about a million things. It was an accident. An on-site contravention. You remember what they said in the compensation case! Don’t blame yourself.’

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ he says. ‘I do. I couldn’t afford to go blind! Your mother had left, I was a single father – it was the stupidest thing that could ever have happened. And because of it I’ve brought you down, over all these years, and Angela’s not here.’

  ‘Oh, Angela was always going to abscond,’ I say. ‘That’s just the kind of person she is. And if anyone’s brought me down, it’s me. I’ve done that all on my own. You really don’t need to be sorry, Dad,’ I add quietly. ‘You’ve been a fantastic dad. Blind, or not bloody blind.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he says. We are out in the bright sunlight now, the Shard winking at us from across the street. ‘Even if you don’t mean it.’

  ‘I do bloody mean it!’

  My eyes adjust to the sun. Dad is wearing sunglasses, purely as sunscreen. ‘My Peters and Lee look,’ he said, as we left The Palladian, and I am old enough to get the reference.

  ‘The Shard’s just over there,’ I say. ‘About twenty feet away. It’s magnificent, Dad.’ Dad followed its construction. He’s read about it from inception to completion. He’s studied it for years. ‘I’m getting that giddy feeling looking all the way to the top.’

  ‘Describe it to me,’ he says, as we walk towards it. ‘I’ve listened to Steven Berkoff banging on about it on VocalEyes, but I want to hear your description.’

  ‘VocalEyes?’

  ‘London Beyond Sight,’ he says. ‘A project where actors describe iconic London landmarks for the blind. I’ve listened to all the luvvies waxing lyrical on some of the great buildings in London.’

  I laugh. ‘I’m not sure I’m going to be as lyrical as Steven Berkoff.’

  ‘Good. I want it from your eyes.’

  We’ve stopped now, on the pavement. People are snaking their way around us. ‘OK, well, it’s endless, majestic. It rises like a ship’s mast, an obelisk, a tall and narrow pyramid, almost.’ Oh, I’m doing well here. ‘Yet there’s something brittle about it, something piercing. It’s grey and it’s blue and it’s white,’ I say. ‘The clouds and the sky are reflected in it, like it’s a painting by Monet, or Constable.’

  ‘A ship’s mast,’ says Dad, concentrating. ‘Clouds by Monet … OK, OK, good, thank you, Prue.’ He nods then squeezes the back of my arm. I’m pleased with myself. ‘Right, let’s walk all the way up to it.’

  We cross the road and head for the main entrance, the corporate lobby beyond.

  ‘OK, we’re here.’

  ‘I want to get close to the glass, how many more steps?’

  ‘Three or four.’

  ‘Guide me.’

  I lead him a little to the right. ‘We’re here, Dad. Just reach out your hand straight in front of you.’

  Dad takes the flat of his hand and places it against one of the glass panes. ‘It’s warm.’

  ‘The sun’s right on it.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Good,’ he adds, like he has come home. And I realize that behind his sunglasses he is crying.

  ‘Oh, Dad,’ I say.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he says, and he stands there and he sighs and he smiles and I place my hand on his upper arm, slipping it under the hem of his T-shirt sleeve and I feel his firm, warm bicep. My lovely Dad.

  ‘Why have we wasted so much time, Prue?’ he says. ‘Sitting in that flat day after day, when all this life – all this beauty – was out here?’

  ‘I don’t know, Dad. But we’re out now, aren’t we? We’re here.’

  ‘Yes, we’re here.’

  His hand is still on the pane of glass, as though he is drawing energy from it. He sighs again. ‘I’m scared, Prue.’

  ‘Why, Dad? Tell me why you are scared.’

  ‘I’m starting to forget.’

  ‘Forget …?’

  ‘What things look like, as I’ve been blind for so long. Objects, things, animals, shapes, even. Types of flowers. Colours. I can remember so many things – numbers of things, mainly, how many steps, things I’ve read, but some shapes now, some colours … I don’t remember how a ship’s mast looks. Or paintings by Monet. Or even clouds. Not really.’

  ‘Oh, Dad. I’m so sorry; I’m an idiot, I—’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’ He takes his hand from the glass. ‘Your descriptions are excellent, Prue. But when you say there’s a pigeon on the tube, I simply can’t remember what a “pigeon” looks like. It’s so strange, you know, to say the words but not see them in my head.’ He sighs. ‘For a long time I used to test myself every day. Go through a list of animals, say, in my head, one by one. Dog, cat, wolf, bear, rabbit, guinea pig, killer whale … I did it most days, for a long time. Then other days I forgot. And then I’d think, What was the point? Time is a killer, Prue – it is eroding my memory of all these things in life. Some of these animals don’t exist for me, now, or they blur into one. I don’t think I can see a difference in my head now between a dog and a wolf, for example.’

  ‘Does it matter, Dad, if you don’t know the difference?’ I say, but I know that it does. To him. ‘I could help you. I could describe those animals to you, explain the differences. Talk about lots of other things. Remind you.’

  ‘I suppose so. If we carried on going out, if we talked more …’

  ‘We can, Dad! We are doing that, aren’t we? We’re talking now.’

  ‘There’s so many things now, though. So many things I have forgotten.’

  ‘We could try, though. What else can we do but try?’

  Dad’s confession has floored me. I want to cry for him. I want to stand on this street and weep for my father. He has never told me this. He is telling me secrets from deep down inside of him, when I have failed to reveal mine. He is starting to forget, when I remember everything but cannot put my worst memories into words.

  I am still clinging on to his arm. A man in security uniform walks round us and disappears into the mouth of the Shard.

  ‘You know, there are some things I’ll never forget,’ says Dad. ‘Never in my life. And two of those are yours and Angela’s faces when you were born.’

  I attempt a laugh. ‘Well, you would hardly forget mine, would you? I bet the massive birthmark was quite a surprise!’

  ‘I’m not talking about that,’ says Dad. ‘Angela was all scrunched up, yelling at the world, making herself heard. You were quiet, after an initial yell. You just looked and looked – your eyes huge, as though you were saying, “OK, well, this is where I am now, is it?”’

  ‘Did I already look pissed off?’

  ‘No! You looked serene, all knowing.’

  ‘I’m so glad you can’t see me now.’

  ‘Stop it, Prue. I don’t need to see you. Seeing is not knowing. What you say and how you say it, how your personality is, that’s more important than how you look.’

  ‘But my personality is terrible,’ I say, only half teasing (I won’t mention Angela’s).

  ‘You’re crazy, aren’t you?’ says Dad. ‘You are a loving woman with a big heart. You have a lot of love to give and deserve to receive a lot of love in return. You just need to see that. You just need to see you can be happy.’

  I have no answer to this. I think of Salvi. Is he someone who I could love and maybe have him love me in return? Is he my happiness, waiting at the end of the tunnel? I’ve n
ever thought I deserve love. Not from my mother or my sister or from any man out there. Only from my father.

  ‘Actually, I’m glad I can’t see you,’ continues Dad, ‘as I know you’ll have that look on your face right now that you had when you were a little girl. Cross and obstinate and disbelieving.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say, although I know I am not looking like that. I’m sure, if I saw myself, that I would be looking a tiny bit hopeful.

  ‘You were lovely as a child and you are lovely now,’ he says softly. ‘And that’s the end of it.’

  He feels for my hand and I take his – like a lifeline – and hold it tight, then he slips it from me and holds his arms out, as best he can, with the cane, and, in front of the Shard, as bemused and smiling pedestrians goldfish around us and restrain from saying ‘Bless you’, we hug. We haven’t hugged for a very long time. I need this hug. Maybe he does, too. I hang on to my dad for dear life, here on the street, and it is a dear life we have been given, if we choose to see it, and we should make the most of it, while we are here, and not waste it sitting silently in the dark, with our eyes closed.

  Eventually, Dad laughs, in my ear, a laugh of relief and of a little joy, I hope, and I laugh too and he takes my elbow and rights his cane and we set off again around the perimeter of the Shard, in the summer sun.

  CHAPTER 26

  ‘I left my sunglasses.’

  Kemp is at the door this morning. I’ve just seen him from the window – Converse, jeans and a white T-shirt, standing on the pavement, hands in his back pockets – and now I am at the door I am continuing to ignore how the sight of him makes me feel, as I can’t even begin to qualify it. Nostalgia, probably. Muscle memory for the potential of us, long expired? I expect so. I shouldn’t get this slight jolt to the heart when I see him, I shouldn’t be immediately remembering how he once made me feel. For goodness’ sake, I have the memory of a hot man’s warm lips on me that is mere days old and the excitement of an upcoming lunch date! I should be sticking to those things like a bloody limpet and nothing should be jolting.

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d come back for them.’

  ‘They’re my varifocal ones,’ he says. ‘Ha, I sound old.’

  ‘You are old.’

  There’s a noise from the stairs, behind me.

  ‘Prue?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here, Dad.’

  Dad is clanking slowly down the metal steps, his hand on the railing. He insisted he didn’t need my help. He insisted he was ready for the next trip on the list.

  ‘Where’re you off to now?’ asks Kemp.

  ‘Kenwood House, at Hampstead,’ I mutter, looking at the ground.

  ‘Oh, right. In that case, I can get them on the way back. My sunglasses.’

  ‘The way back?’ I snap my head up.

  ‘Well, I’ll come with you, shall I?’ says Kemp. He’s grinning at me and his eyes are all twinkly and mischievous. I know that look. It usually preceded a trilogy on the karaoke in the pub: Def Leppard, Aerosmith and Guns N’ Roses. ‘I could do with the walk.’

  ‘It’s about fifty minutes,’ I say. I have worked out the route, with Dad. We’re going to walk there and get the tube back. It’s another beautiful day and I have been looking forward to it. Since we hugged, at the Shard, I’ve felt closer to him. I’ve felt that we can be there for each other. I hope for better days, and that this sunny Tuesday will be one of them.

  ‘I know,’ he says, and I have to look away. ‘A nice long walk!’ He’s as excited as a three-month-old puppy, and just as bouncy. He’s hopping from one foot to the other, in his Converse. ‘Well, if that’s OK with you, Prue? Vince?’

  ‘Fine with me,’ says Dad. ‘And I’m sure Prue will be glad of the extra company,’ he adds. ‘Not just stuck with the blind old goat.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Well …’ says Dad, doing an exaggerated shrug, but it is not the ‘blind old goat’ I am objecting to. I don’t want Kemp to come. I don’t want to have to look at him for nearly an hour. Talk to him. Be reminded of all I felt for him. And that’s just on the way … How am I going to feel when I get there?

  ‘Great!’ repeats Kemp.

  I lock the door and we set off up the road, the three of us: Dad holding my arm as usual, Kemp the other side of me.

  ‘It’s a beautiful morning,’ Kemp says.

  ‘Yes.’

  I begin describing things en route to Dad but, because of what he said to me at the Shard, because of his confession, there in the midday sun, I’m careful to talk about shapes and the detailed form of things and I don’t take for granted when I say ‘a sparrow’ or ‘a post box’ that he automatically remembers what I’m talking about. I paint a picture as best I can of people’s houses and gardens and birds sitting on overhead cables. I describe the shredded cotton wool of clouds, in the distance. The shop fronts. People out of earshot who look mildly eccentric or interesting. I’m worried about Dad but he seems OK. He nods and smiles. I’m also self-conscious because Kemp is here. I become slightly monotone. I sound like I’m reading from a political party’s manifesto leaflet.

  ‘It’s fantastic,’ says Kemp. ‘You two, coming out on these trips. Enjoying this wonderful summer in London together. You had an occasional sense of adventure, didn’t you, Prue?’

  ‘Did I? Oh, mind, Dad – wheelie bag oncoming!’ The three of us migrate to the right of the pavement to let an old man with a battered tartan trolley bag past. He smiles his thanks at me, and I smile back.

  ‘Yeah, I like to think so.’ I ignore Kemp’s inflection, keep my eye on the road ahead. ‘My last trip was to America,’ he continues, as we walk. ‘To the wind farms of Arizona. It was really quite beautiful.’

  ‘I know,’ I admit. ‘I saw the pictures.’

  ‘She subscribes,’ says Dad, and I want to dig him in the ribs, though I should never have said anything in the first place. Do I really want to confess to Kemp that I’ve been obsessing over his work for the past seven years?

  ‘To National Geographic? That’s cool.’

  Oh God, I’m obsessing now about whether he’s wondering where I keep them all. He wouldn’t have seen them in the sitting room or the hall or the kitchen of The Palladian, when he and Ryan visited, because I keep them in stacks under my bed, like a love-struck teenager hoarding every copy of Smash Hits with Adam Ant on the cover.

  ‘I’ve always been interested in wildlife and remote tribes,’ I say breezily. ‘I just never told you.’

  ‘Right. Well, brilliant,’ says Kemp, looking at me oddly. I see his odd look and I raise him an arched eyebrow. He counters it with an exaggeratedly furrowed brow, which can’t help but make me laugh, then starts talking animatedly to Dad about the wind farms of Arizona and how he had the best hamburger ever in a little shack of a restaurant just outside Phoenix …

  We finally get to Hampstead, then Hampstead Lane, and turn into the stone gateway for Kenwood House. It’s a relief to get out of the sun and on to the wide shady paths of the grounds. It’s a relief to be nearly there. Walking the streets of North London with a smiley bouncy Tigger you’ve always hidden your feelings from has been a bit of a challenge. I concentrated on Salvi, in the end. Re-conjured the feeling when he gazed upon me like a precious doll. Wondered if I would ever get to sleep with him. It helped me not to stare at Kemp’s beard and despair at how handsome it makes him look. It helped me not to remember.

  It’s busy in the grounds of Kenwood House. There are families, and joggers – both lone and in packs – and couples young and old, strolling and pushing buggies and children running ahead of their parents, in shorts and sandals and T-shirts, tripping over, and blowing bubbles from those plastic tubes, and everybody looks content, or happy, even. They are enjoying a nice day out, in the summer sun. They are at leisure. At ease. They are making the most of the long hot summer because this is England and, like Dad says, who knows when we’ll get one like this again?

  ‘I haven’t been here for a long ti
me,’ says Dad, as I tell him we have reached the house. We are now crunching on gravel the colour of pearls. ‘About forty years, I think.’

  ‘Yep,’ I say. ‘I reckon you last brought Angela and me here when I was eight or nine.’

  ‘And has it changed?’

  ‘Not a jot.’

  I describe the huge white Georgian house to him, with the pillars and the porch and the massive windows with their tiny panes Angela and I used to peer into. Its roof and its gables. How the expansive lawn rolls from the house, a green carpet, down to the large pond where Angela and I once trailed our fingers in the water and fed the ducks. How the good people of London are again on tartan waterproof-backed blankets, with their picnics and their snacks: families gathered to loll and laugh; couples entwined on the grass, a tangle of limbs and phones in back pockets and headphones and half-drunk bottles of water.

  ‘Family, love and food,’ says Dad. ‘A great combination.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agree.

  ‘And has it changed since we were here last, Bertie?’ asks Kemp.

  My heart stops. Just for a second. I hoped he wasn’t going to bring it up. I hoped he wasn’t going to say anything. But he has. Why wouldn’t he? It’s a night that means absolutely nothing to him, apart from a good laugh he once had, with a friend. A night about a million years ago.

  ‘Remember how we climbed the wall, in the moonlight? Broke in? Walked up to the house?’

  ‘We were really drunk,’ I say, ‘so not really.’

  I look away from him, away from the house we sat in front of that night – as my heart broke into its final pieces – and down to the pond, where a man is having his photo taken with a gaggle of ducks. Of course, I remember everything about that night. Every tiny detail. We were in the King’s Arms, as usual, when Kemp suddenly cried, ‘Hey, let’s get the bus to Hampstead Heath! It’s Bonfire Night, isn’t it? There’ll be fireworks.’ And I immediately got my coat from the back of my chair, as I would have gone anywhere with him. We ran up the street to the bus stop and waited ages for the bus and by the time we got to Hampstead Heath the fireworks had finished but Kemp declared he wanted to look at Kenwood House, in the moonlight, so we climbed the gate – very clumsily – and infiltrated the grounds, and made our way up the deserted winding paths to the house while Kemp told me elaborate ghost stories that became so funny and preposterous they ended with us both crying with laughter and shushing each other as the steam of our breath escaped into the cold night air.