by Robert Webb
Bill patiently scrubbed a roasting tray. ‘Oh gawd, you must have heard it a thousand times over.’
‘I think I’ve heard it twice. Go on. I like the way you tell it.’
He did an impression of a Northern Irish stand-up which was reassuringly dated even for 1992. ‘It’s the way I tell ’em! It’s a cracker!’
‘Go on.’
He didn’t need any more encouragement. ‘Well, it was a Saturday night down the Mecca in Hammersmith. The Palais de Danse, no less. Joe Loss & His Orchestra, hundreds of youngsters. Packed, it was. Magic. And I see this lovely-looking girl sitting on her own. Beautiful light green dress she was wearing, classy as you like. You’d think she’d be getting a lot of attention but nobody dared – half of us thought it was flamin’ Princess Margaret. Anyway, I go up and ask if she’d mind me spending a few moments telling her all about my new boots. Shoes, actually. Creepers. Bloody stupid idea but I couldn’t think of anything better to say. But I did know that beautiful women never want to hear that they’re beautiful because either they know already or they don’t agree. Either way, they’ve heard it all before. As you probably know, love. Anyway, she says she’d been admiring my new shoes from a distance and couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to come and tell her all about them. Cool as a cucumber, she was, and I nearly wet myself. Anyway, we get talking. She must have liked the look of me, or more likely felt sorry for me. And then I can’t remember how but we get on to politics and she asks if I’m Labour and I say yeah. And to my great surprise she says that she’s just joined her local Labour club, mainly to stick it to her old man but she’s a proper Wilson fan. And I tell her that, no offence, but that comes as a bit of a surprise, what with her sounding quite posh. She laughs at this and then says, “People say I’m this and people say I’m that … but I know that I’m just Madeleine Theroux.” And I say, “Yeah, we’re all just muddling through, love. Anyway, let’s have a fuckin’ dance.”’
Kate cackled at this. But had never understood whether Bill had misheard Madeleine in the noisy dance hall or whether his reply had been a deliberate joke. The tea towel in her hand slowed its journey around the rim of a saucepan as she realised this might be her last chance to ask.
She decided against it. Some stories shouldn’t be explained. They should be left alive with their own mysteries and contradictions. But it prompted another question. ‘Do you believe in fate, then?’
Bill raised his eyebrows at the soapy water. ‘What, as in me and your mother?’
‘Yeah. Do you think two people are ever meant for each other? Or is that just what couples tell themselves when they get too old to go dancing?’
‘Cheeky mare! We can still dance! You should have seen us at Keith’s fiftieth.’
‘You know what I mean.’
Amused, Bill took his hands out of the water and leaned on the sink. He looked up through the window at the clouds. ‘Nah, not really.’
Kate burst out laughing. ‘You old romantic, you!’
‘Well, you did ask.’
‘No, that’s good. It’s honest, anyway.’
Still smiling, Bill entered a reverie and unconsciously twisted at his wedding ring. ‘It’s not fate that counts, Katie. It’s love. Could she have ended up marrying someone else if I hadn’t gone out that night? Yeah, ’course she could.’
‘Could you?’
Bill looked at her.
‘I mean, if you hadn’t been in that place at that time. If you’d gone out the next Saturday. Or even if you’d been in a different corner of the Palais on the same night … It could all have been different, couldn’t it? There’s no law that says it had to be you and Mother.’
‘No, ’course not. No, there’s no law exactly. But … you don’t tend to think about it like that. At least I don’t anyway. It’s … I know you’re a bright one, Kate, but it’s hard to explain to someone young who’s never been married.’
Kate nodded carefully. ‘Yeah, I’m just interested. I suppose I’m thinking about the future.’
‘Well, all right – so you meet someone. Maybe it’s random, but the point is you met them and there’s no going back. You can’t go back. You all right, love? Don’t worry, that’s a quality saucepan – I’m always dropping stuff.’
Kate silently picked up her saucepan and placed it gently on the draining board. Bill went on.
‘Like I say, you can never go back. And you wouldn’t want to, usually. It would be weird. And then if you get married … well, that’s a choice. That’s not fate, that’s a choice. You marry them because you love them. And marriage … well, it’s a long game, at least if you’re lucky. You take the rough with the smooth, no doubt about it.’
Kate had to insist. ‘Yeah, I know all that, but—’
‘Well, you say that you know all that, but—’
‘I mean, I can imagine all that, but … what if you did have to go back? What if you had what you thought was a good marriage and a good life but then you’re back in Hammersmith Palais and there’s some other girl that you didn’t notice properly the first time? And she’s amazing. Not like some shrinking violet who’s good at looking like a shrinking violet but is obviously a massively confident English rose – but an actual shrinking violet …’ The national flower metaphor was not helping Kate; there was very little in her latest experience of Toby Harker that involved any shrinking. ‘I mean, more like a lovely thistle really, but a lot less prickly than you thought, and anyway some prickles are good so …’
She took a breath. ‘But I’m saying that it’s possible to get it right the first time but then, when you know what you know now – which you didn’t know then – you still think you were right the first time, but now in the second time there’s a whole new first time, and this time something different is definitely right.’ She looked at her dad and optimistically added, ‘Surely.’
Bill had been frowning through this and dried his hands on a tea towel. ‘Katie,’ he said calmly, ‘what’s this all about?’
‘What?’
‘Why are you here, love?’
‘I just came back to collect a few things.’
‘Come on.’
Kate turned slowly and walked to the other side of the room.
It is the ambition of many parents that the phrase ‘come on’, said in the right tone at the right moment, will elicit from their teenaged children an outpouring of truth. All previous evasions and secrets will fall away and there will follow an unbridled sharing of souls in which the parents will have the opportunity to divest themselves of their considerable wisdom and thereby not only make the lives of their children happier but also make their own lives less full of guilt and inadequacy. This was no such moment.
Bill had earned it – he had put the hours in with his daughter – but Kate knew there was no way she could give him even the most general outline of what was going on. She felt her throat beginning to constrict and wiped her eyes as if to warn them to behave. ‘There’s just some slightly complicated stuff going on and I needed a break.’
‘Sweetheart, what is it? You’ve been there one day.’
As a diversion, as much as anything else, Kate said, ‘A lot can happen in one day. Look at Grandad Marsden.’
‘Y’what?’
‘Grandad Marsden at the Battle of Cable Street.’
‘What the bloody hell has he got to do with it?’
‘I mean, what if he hadn’t been there? Seeing off Mosley’s fascists. It could all have been different, couldn’t it?’
Bill turned his back and looked out of the window. Kate frowned at her father from the end of the kitchen and persisted. ‘I mean, that could have changed the course of history, right? It only takes one person to do something different and … well, maybe I’m not meant to be at uni. Maybe I should be here spending time with you and I should … I dunno, get a job at Our Price. I mean, not Our Price obviously, because they won’t last another five minutes, but—’
Bill turned to face her. ‘Y
ou’re not jacking-in your education!’
‘Why are you so angry? Why d’you always get like this when anyone mentions your dad?’
‘I wasn’t talking about—’
‘Is it just a story? Was he not there?’
‘Yes, he was there!’
‘So why—’
‘Because he was there all right, but he was on the wrong bloody side, wasn’t he?’
Kate gawped. The only sound in the room was from the washing machine going through a rinse cycle. Bill noted her reaction. ‘Oh yeah, that’s right. The great hero of Cable Street.’ Keeping his voice under control because he didn’t want to wake Madeleine, Bill broke into a bizarre on-the-spot dance routine to the tune of ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’.
‘My old man’s a Blackshirt! He wears a Blackshirt’s hat! He puts on Nazi trousers, and he goosesteps like a twat!’
Kate gazed at her father as he recovered his breath, recognising the typically English defence against personal humiliation – making a joke of it. She felt a fraction of the pain Bill had been carrying around all this time. Breaking the silence, she said, ‘Did you make up some verses too?’
‘Several.’
Wordlessly she crossed the room and hugged her dad. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, you silly old sod?’ she said into his shoulder.
‘Nobody wants an arsehole for a grandad, do they?’
‘I wouldn’t have cared.’
‘Oh yes, you would’ve.’
She thought of the white lies she had told Luke about his book in order to protect him; and about the truth she had told him yesterday – memories that had left him not so much rescued as hospitalised. There was no way of knowing if she’d done the right thing. And Madeleine … ‘Mother’s always known, then?’
Bill disengaged and looked sheepishly at his daughter, his hands slipping down to find hers. ‘Yeah, ’course she knows. It was part of the reason we got on so well, to be honest. Daddy Theroux was a bit of a shocking bastard an’ all.’ Kate adapted to this new reality as best she could. She quite liked the idea that her parents’ relationship was partly founded as an anti-fascist alliance.
‘Anyway,’ Bill said, ‘they’re both gone now. But I won’t lie, it was horrible growing up knowing the old man had been one of those people. Yobs on London streets, shouting the odds. Waving their Union Flags, looking for someone to blame. Daily Mail egging them on, police not knowing what to do with them. Horrible.’
‘Well,’ said Kate, almost to herself and with some bitter-ness, ‘those days are gone, aren’t they?’
‘Maybe,’ said Bill, ‘but you’ve always got to keep your eye out.’ He went to the kettle and tested its weight. ‘They don’t come with a calling card any more, not since the war. They don’t kick the door down and say, “’Allo, we’re the Nazis.”’ He took the kettle to the sink and filled it. ‘But they’ll be back – one way or another.’
Kate watched him replace the kettle and reach for a couple of mugs. She said, ‘Because people are always going to go through hard times and there’s always going to be scared politicians.’
‘Yeah,’ said Bill. ‘That, and the fact that some people are just arseholes.’
She laughed and he joined in. He leaned back on the sink and folded his arms. ‘You’ve always got to be on the lookout. You’ve always got to do your bit.’
Kate thought of the memory stick she had posted back to Charles Hunt.
‘Look, love, I won’t go on if you don’t want to talk about it. And I’m not exactly in a position to give you a bollocking about keeping secrets.’
‘You’d be on a bit of a sticky wicket with that one, Dad.’
He looked down at the floor between them and shook his head at the thought of the ‘scene’ they had just had. Kate and Bill didn’t do drama; not usually. ‘Yeah, fair enough. But look, whatever’s going on at uni – whatever trouble you’re in – if it really is trouble, I’ll help if I can. You know I will. But at the end of the day you’re eighteen years old. You’re a woman. Whatever’s going on, you need to face it.’
‘I know,’ she said quietly.
‘All this talk of the past, stories about me and your mum … I don’t see how it helps you, love. Now, if you want to stay here then nothing would make me happier. But I gotta tell you, Kate – you’d only be dreaming. This will always be your home, love, but it’s not where you belong any more. Not really, not you. Don’t you think it’s time to go back to the real world? Your own life?’
Something inside Kate changed. She felt a clarity blow through her mind like an autumn breeze dispersing the seeds of a dandelion.
She only said, ‘Give me another lift to the station?’
Bill nodded in a sad kind of satisfaction. ‘Let’s have this cup of tea before we say cheerio again.’
‘Yeah,’ said Kate. ‘Let’s.’
Chapter 18
Kate jumped off the bus and ran through the amber-lit city towards the hospital. ‘Good Yorkshire rain,’ Amy would probably call it. Kate, collar up, head down, feeling the downpour batter her scalp, wondered where they got it from, these Yorkshire lads and lasses. What was good about it? Where was the ‘good London rain’? And the ‘famous London sense of humour’? Why did the Mersey stir more passions than the Thames? Apart from the Kinks, she conceded, dodging into the hospital’s main entrance. The Kinks had written the only song about the Thames that most people can whistle. Missing her dirty old river, she slowed to a walk and pushed her fingers back through her hair. She sniffed up the rain-mingled snot and tried to compose herself. The warm fug of antiseptic and controlled defeat was there to greet her: it was Yorkshire rain, but this was a hospital like any other.
At the reception desk she claimed to be a friend of Luke Fairbright. There was the usual benign and slow-moving NHS buggering around with software that didn’t properly work. The fact that it still wouldn’t properly work in twenty-eight years’ time felt oddly reassuring.
Luke was out of intensive care and Kate took the lift to his ward. She had no idea what she was going to say but didn’t expect him to be conscious. The point was to be there. That’s what friends/wives/widows do. Also mothers, Kate remembered, as she rounded a corner and nearly walked into Barbara Fairbright.
Luke’s mum had been helping a nurse clear some coffee cups. Barbara stood in the corridor and set down a stack of tessellating porcelain. She was a short, round woman with thick glasses and a knitted cardigan the colours of a subdued rainbow – Kate had to resist a powerful urge to hug her. She approached tentatively. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Are you Mrs Fairbright?’
Barbara looked up in alarm. There was something prematurely fragile and old lady-ish about her but then, Kate figured, she’d had a hell of a day. ‘Yes?’ she said.
‘My name’s Kate. I’m the girl who phoned last night and—’
‘Oh, you’re Kate!’ Barbara interrupted. The laugh-lines around her eyes materialised with warmth. ‘Luke’s been asking for you.’
‘Luke’s been … how is he?’
‘They’re saying he’s going to make a full recovery, Kate. A full recovery.’
Now Kate really did hug her. Barbara accepted the embrace with a soothing chuckle and rubbed her back. ‘Oh, you’re soaked through, you poor thing,’ she said.
‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to get you all damp.’
‘Gosh, I didn’t even know it was raining. Poor Richard – he hates driving in the rain.’
Kate tried to cock her head as if that name needed explanation.
‘Luke’s dad,’ Barbara said in her mild Wiltshire twang. ‘Off back home. He’s got patients in the morning, and now that Luke’s out of danger – come on, you’ll want to see him. Me, wittering on. Come on.’
She led Kate into the subdued light and troubled peace of a night-time hospital ward. There were six beds, five of which were occupied by grey men in their fifties variously reading, coughing, snoring or somehow doing all three. The sixth was at the end of the room, enclo
sed by the wrap-around curtain. Barbara quietly drew it aside for Kate to enter.
Luke never slept on his back and that was the first thing Kate noticed – that, and the clean bandage covering most of his head above the eyes. For some reason he looked more like the Luke she knew in his early thirties – and then she realised: the top of his head was shaved. Barbara replaced the curtain and Kate turned to her. ‘He’s had an operation?’ The other woman nodded and drew up a couple of chairs.
‘Yes, dear,’ she said as they both sat. ‘A craniotomy. The doctor said it was a “depressed fracture”, which is very serious. They were worried that there might be bits of broken bone – well, swimming around near his brain and causing a nuisance.’ Barbara crossed her legs and took her glasses off to clean them. She looked like she hadn’t slept for a week. ‘Well, they gave him a scan and they found an “abnormality”. Something they said could be a tumour. They said it was probably just a bit of gristle but had the potential to turn nasty. They would normally leave it be and keep an eye on it for the next few years, but since they were “poking around in there anyway” – I mean, it’s like the Dark Ages when it comes to brains, if you ask me – the specialist, when he finally turned up, the neuro-oncologist – he said he might as well whip it out.’
