by John Clanchy
‘Look, Tony,’ I say. ‘I know where you’re headed, but it’s no go. Not at the moment anyway. I’ve got too much on my plate.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Bad pun, Phil,’ he says.
I smile, but I don’t want him to get the wrong idea.
‘I know you’re sick of the firm,’ I say. ‘I know you want out. I know what you think of the partners.’
‘Mortlock’s a mental defective, and Jameson couldn’t find his own butt with both hands. In a lighted room.’
I laugh. I can’t help liking Tony. Despite.
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘And what are you going to do after lunch?’ ‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you think I mean? You’re going to go back to the office, put your feet on the desk for an hour, get the switch to say, ‘‘I’m sorry, Mr Ryle’s in a conference right now, can I take a message?’’ and when you wake in an hour you’re going to flick through your files and bung eight times seven minutes on some poor bozo’s bill and call it legislative research and conferencing with a colleague: three hundred and fifty bucks. And you know and I know that if we were out there on hard street, having to hand over an account, personally, to a client, instead of sitting behind a wall of secretaries and accountants and the Certainly I’ll ask him and I’ll get back to you on that one, all protected by the big chairs and waiting rooms and the musak in the lifts and the thick carpets and the silence of Shyster, Shyster & Quack, we’d maybe make a fortune and we’d maybe be out on the streets chasing ambulances or doing Legal Aid with blacking over the holes in our socks and the arse out of our pants –’
‘Jesus, Phil, this isn’t like you.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Risk aversion. What’s the matter with you? You wouldn’t have taken on MP & Tart if you weren’t keen on a punt.’
‘Sure, but how often does a case like that come along? And you think media moguls are going to be tramping along to Trent & Ryle –?’
‘I was thinking more Ryle & Trent.’
‘… who have a shop front on the High Street over Beagle Bros and next to the Lebanese takeaway in Liverpool West? Or are they going to be here, downtown, CBD point spot, with Mortlock & Jameson –’
‘Shyster, Shyster & Quack,’ Tony says, laughing. Pouring again. For me. But not himself, I notice.
‘Of course,’ he says, ‘I realize all that’s true. At first. And it means we’ve got to cover the spread. At first. You can’t specialize –’
‘But I like to specialize. And I like the money I’m earning.’
‘Chicken feed. Three hundred thou., Phil – more. Just think about it, will you?’
‘Tony, look,’ I say. ‘I need to tell you. I’ve got more problems than I can handle at the moment. Right?’
‘Woo-hoo,’ he says. ‘Domestic, right?’
‘Yeah, but not the way you think. It’s not me and Miriam. Not primarily, that is.’
‘But secondarily?’
‘It’s Mother.’
‘Mother? But I thought –’
‘Not my mother. Miriam’s.’
And you call her Mother?’
‘Tony, this isn’t helpful.’
‘Tell me.’
I can see him resolving to be silent. While he finishes the veal. The salad looks as though it walked from the fridge through the weekend.
‘Miriam’s mother,’ I say. ‘I thought you knew.’
He shrugs. Eats.
‘She’s got Alzheimer’s.’
‘And you don’t remember you haven’t told me?’
‘I thought you were going to be quiet … ?’
‘Okay, okay.’ He holds up a hand.
‘Everything’s on hold at the moment,’ I say, ‘that’s all. Life, fun, travel, peace, sleep, you name it.’
‘Sex,’ he names.
‘Don’t get smart, Tony.’
Again the hand, signalling coffee this time. We’re through Mains. I’ve hardly touched mine, but as the wine hits, I know I should have. I realize I’m not feeling that good. Not physical, just down. But I don’t want to go down with Tony.
‘So what? Miriam’s holding out? What does she want?’
How, I wonder, do I respond to this. I don’t know what Miriam wants, I don’t think she knows what she wants, what she feels about what’s happening, to her, to Mother. I don’t want to share this with Tony. I want to go back to my office and ring Miriam. Just hear her voice.
‘It’s not like that,’ I say. ‘We’re just pretty stretched. Neither of us wants more pressure at the moment, that’s all.’
‘Phil, I’m not saying tomorrow. I’m a patient man.’
‘Yes, that’s what I worry about. That you think you are.’
He leans across, punches me on the arm as coffee comes, and I feel like I have to confide. Something at least. Since he’s taken the trouble.
‘Things can’t go on as they are,’ I tell him. ‘She went wandering again, Friday night.’
‘Miriam did? Or Mother?’
‘We still don’t know how she got out. She wanted the police. Something to do with her sitter, Mrs Johnson.’
‘Your mother-in-law’s a painter?’
‘Miriam’s nearly out of her head with worry as usual. The neighbourhood’s up. Mother’s missing.’
‘I thought Miriam didn’t much take to her mother?’
‘Ten o’clock there’s a knock on the door, blue lights winking in the driveway, no siren, but you know …’
‘Brother John to the rescue –’
‘I hear all this from the sitting room. Katie gets to the door first, then Miriam, then Laura. I hear the rumble of the policeman’s voice. He’s being pleasant, jokey, and then Katie’s shrieking, ‘‘But she isn’t our Granny at all’’ – And then what sounds like ‘‘Fuck’’ from the policeman. Then Miriam at the door saying, ‘‘That’s right, Officer, she’s not my mother.’’ And as I come through the hallway to help out, there’s another blue light pulls into the drive –’
‘Police Benefit at the Trents,’ Tony says.
‘And then, through the front door I see Mother getting out of the second car, and Katie’s shrieking, ‘‘That’s her, that’s our Granny.’’ And I hear the first cop saying to the second as they pass, ‘‘Well, who the fuck’s granny is this one?’’
‘You’ve got to admit, Phil –’ Tony says. He’s having trouble with his coffee.
‘Yeah, okay. Objectively it’s funny. But Jesus, I reckon we’ve had one decent night’s sleep in six months. Miriam’s strung like a wire.’
‘So, why’s she still working?’
‘Because, without it, she claims she’d have twanged by now.’ ‘Jesus, Phil, okay, I understand, that’s tough. I don’t suppose there’s anything –?’
‘No, but thanks for the offer. It’s Miriam’s decision.’
‘Even if you all go under?’
‘She’ll decide before that. For the sake of the girls.’
‘Women,’ Tony says. And I think yes, but I also think how apart he and I are, and I want to talk to Miriam. I signal for the bill.
‘No, it’s mine,’ Tony says. ‘I ask, so I pay. Even if I don’t get the result.’
We chat then, waiting for the bill. Back to chat. So that no business is carried back to the office. It’s a rule as well. It’s how you keep friends.
‘This Laura –’ Tony starts again. Chatty, but obsessed.
‘Yes,’ I say, as the bill comes. I’ve got to exchange, offer something. ‘She’s a really unusual girl. She certainly pulls me up.’
‘She could pull me up any time.’
‘I have this stupid school story,’ I say. ‘I’ve been telling it for years now, and it’s always got a laugh out of Laura. Since the time she was nine. Her and her friends. It’s nothing really. It’s about this teacher I used to have, that I had some liking for, but all the kids laughed at him, and so I got to doing it as well. I was telling the story again recently, a week or so back. It’s dopey r
eally. This guy Rifka – he was our French teacher – he used to take half the lesson to get the kids into the classroom, and we always thought we had him under control. Anyway this last time I tell it, Laura doesn’t laugh. I say, ‘‘What’s the matter, it’s no longer funny? You’ve heard it too often?’’ ‘‘No,’’ she says. ‘‘I’ve been thinking, that’s all. About Mr Rifka,’’ she says, ‘‘and how he must have gone along with it all the time.’’ ‘‘Gone along?’’ I said. ‘‘Well, he must have known,’’ she said, ‘‘and he must have gone along.’’ ‘‘But why?’’ I said. ‘‘Why would he?’’ ‘‘Well, if he had only half the period left to teach, it must have halved the agony for him too, mustn’t it?’’ And you know, all these years I’d never thought of it that way. That he was the puppet master all along, not us. But she saw it.’
‘Eyes like that,’ Tony says. Signing the bill.
Laura
This family is weird, and I don’t mean just a little bit but seriously weird.
We had this project from school in Communication and the way people speak in different social groups and registers and everything. Or if they’re men or women. We had to do a family first. And it’s strange how in a family you don’t listen to what people say, you just kind of go Oh-yeah-oh-yeah inside your head like you do with radio talkback and you only take any notice if you hear something different. But if you actually listen to it and then analyse it like we’ve got to do for this project, then you realize what rubbish people mostly talk.
We had to set up a recorder somewhere in the house where people spend a lot of time, like in the living room or the kitchen or somewhere, and tape what they said – except it couldn’t be sex or violence, and Toni said that wouldn’t leave much to tape in her house, and Miss Temple said she was just attention-seeking. And then after we’d taped it we had to listen to it and take some bits out and transcribe them, which means write them out, which takes about four million years and you get to hate the people who talk the most.
Anyway I put my recorder in the kitchen behind our bread tin because that’s the room everybody goes through to get to other parts of the house, and I set it to start at six-thirty because that’s when Mum’s normally cooking and Philip often comes home then, and even Grandma Vera sometimes comes out. It’s like people live in caves in our house and only come out when they smell food.
But this night when I set up the recorder, Mum was late for once and Philip was early. And so I got Philip and Grandma Vera instead of everyone together, but then something brilliant happened because Philip got sick of talking to Grandma Vera and left her in the kitchen and then Mum came home and had exactly the same conversation with Grandma as Philip had just had, and Miss Temple said you mightn’t get this in a century of taping, you’d have to script it with actors or something, though Philip’s always saying everyone has the same conversation with Grandma all the time.
It was only later – when I was writing the whole thing out – that I realized it wasn’t the same conversation at all. It only seemed like it was. And I had to do parts of it again and set it out like a play. Miss Temple said I shouldn’t keep saying And then Philip goes, or And then Grandma Vera goes, because saying people go something is a speech form not a written form of discourse. Everything’s a form of discourse to Miss Temple, even photos from the paper, or the way you dress – she even thinks chops from the butchers can be a form of discourse and Toni of course can’t help herself and goes I’d like to see dat course and gets sent out.
And it’s weird you know because, although I wasn’t there at the time or anything but just listening to the tape later in my room, it is like a play and I can tell just from Philip’s voice that he’s reading the paper or his mail while he’s talking and he’s only pretending to listen to Grandma Vera. He’s such a hypocrite, Philip – I bet he doesn’t speak like that when he’s at work or in a restaurant with all his mates and that, and you can tell Grandma Vera’s really upset. She’s on this one track all the time at the moment:
Grandma V:
I wouldn’t like it in a home.
Philip:
What’s that, Mother?
Grandma V:
I wouldn’t like it. You couldn’t have things.
Philip:
Uh-huh.
Grandma V:
Like Yogi. Cats aren’t allowed.
Philip:
No, I haven’t, Mother. It must be around somewhere.
[At this point, Miss Temple says, it’s actually hard to tell which one has the Alzheimer’s, but she said I wasn’t to tell Philip that.]
Grandma V:
And what if you went there and were too small?
Philip:
Hmm? Too small? I’m sure they could add something on for you.
Grandma V:
Noooo – You were, I said. If you were.
Philip:
Were what?
Grandma V:
Too sma-ll.
Philip:
Too small? [I think Philip must have been between letters at this point.] Mother, what are you talking about? Too small for what?
Grandma V:
For the home.
Philip:
Oh, God, Mother. Look, no one has said you’re going to a home.
Grandma V:
And you couldn’t see over the mat and had to share.
Philip:
Share?
Grandma V:
With a mouse …?
Philip:
Well, at least there’d be something for the cat to do. [ The tape’s terrific because you can hear him say this even though he’s muttering it to himself. Then you hear him chuckling, and you can almost see him telling himself to remember this for later,.]
Grandma V:
Or a rabbit.
Philip:
Jesus. Excuse me for a for a few minutes, will you, Mother? [You hear his footsteps on the kitchen tiles.] Miriam should be home in a little while. And please don’t go anywhere near the stove. We wouldn’t want you to injure yourself. [And, as he passes the biscuit tin, you can just hear] Unless it’s serious. [And then nothing – he must have moved onto the carpet in the hall, and only the softest word comes back] Nutter –
There’s nothing on the tape for a while then, just some shuffling – Grandma Vera must be in her slippers – and some slight muttering that you can’t make out any words from, like mice scrabbling behind a wall. Then just some odd words, with lots of pauses between them:
Grandma V:
Cat’s in the corner … corner … in the corner … bad cat … can’t … can’tmat can’t mat can’t … mat can’t … Vera can’t matcan’t … mat … [and then a word that makes no sense but is said very brightly like it’s a surprise, and sounds like] Prick! [It can’t be that, Miss Temple says, and tells me I should write Ind, which is short for Indecipherable, and that means a word or phrase on the tape you can’t understand even if you listen to it a hundred times and every time it sounds more and more to you like Prick! Then Mum comes in, and I write out the bit where we’ve controlled for the variable of topic, and all that blah.]
Grandma V:
I wouldn’t like it in a home.
Miriam:
You’re not going in a home, Mother.
‘You can see the immediate difference,’ Miss Temple says later. ‘Not only in gender-mediated discourse receptivity …’ (which means Mum’s listening and Philip’s not) … ‘but in intention. Miriam says, You’re not going in a home, Mother, while Philip says, No one has said you’re going in a home. Is there a possible ambivalence there, do you think, Laura?’
This is the problem with teachers. You spend five minutes talking to them and you’ve got to spend the next five years with your head in a dictionary trying to figure out what they’ve said. But when I do, I can see what she means, and I’m slowly starting to think there might be something in this discourse thing, but I still don’t see how a dress can be discourse, or chops.
Grandma V:
>
You couldn’t have things.
Miriam:
What things, Mother? What things do you mean?
Grandma V:
Like Yogi. Cats have to go to the corner.
Miriam:
There’s no point worrying about it, Mother. Yogi’s not going to a home, and neither are you.
[ Then there’s a few minutes when Philip comes back and he and Mum are smooching and yuk – and I think we can omit that, Miss Temple decides quickly – and Grandma Vera’s still muttering, and the next thing you can hear really clearly is Philip over by the sink whispering. ]
Philip:
And so I said at least the cat’d have something to do.
Miriam:
[Mum laughs a bit but not much, and you can tell she doesn’t really think it’s that funny.] But what did she mean?
Philip:
Mean? Christ knows. Something about the home being too small –
Grandma V:
No, no. [GV’s shouting, much louder than anyone else on the tape.] I’m too small. What if I’m too small?
Miriam:
Mother, please don’t upset yourself. Too small, too big, it doesn’t matter. You’re not going anywhere. This is your home.
Philip:
No one mentioned a home. No one said …
Miriam:
Philip, get me a drink, please? That’s a pet. Now, Mother, sit. No, come and sit over here near me while I’m fixing the salad …
Grandma V:
Too small. I’m too small. What if I’m too small …?
Miriam:
Mother, please – ? Ah, Katie, darling, where have you been? Come here and talk to Grandma and me.
Katie:
[This is my sister who’s just come in from the TV room.] Hello, Grandma.
