by Paul Torday
‘The thing is, whatever Peter Robinson and his clever friends may think, this is an English gentleman’s club. Isn’t it?’
Jimmy looked at me over his fork, his eyebrows arching to emphasise his question. His face was sallow, possibly a failure on the part of his liver to keep up with its owner’s varied and considerable diet.
‘Yes, that was our founder’s idea.’
‘And he was on to a good thing. Groucher probably wasn’t much of a gentleman himself, I dare say. He made too much money too quickly, for one thing. But he knew a gentleman when he saw one and those were the sort of people he liked to have around him. We ought to remain true to his ideals.’
I nodded, waiting for Jimmy to make his point.
‘I mean, Grouchers is a way of life for some of us. We have hung on to our old-fashioned values here, even if the rest of the country is going down the tube.’
‘I don’t think things are quite that bad, Jimmy,’ I said.
‘Oh, but they are. You should look about you more, Michael. You should read the papers. Christ, just walk down Oxford Street and see if you can find anyone who actually speaks English. This club is an island of tradition. Without places like this, our English way of life would soon be a thing of the past. That’s why we have to be so careful about who we let in here. That’s why we have to stand up for what we believe in, and not be ashamed to say so.’
‘Yes, well, it’s an interesting point of view, Jimmy,’ I said.
But he hadn’t finished. He took an enormous bite of his chicken drumstick and chewed for a moment, then said, ‘It’s all very well to talk about change, and modernisation as Robinson does. But if you throw away all your traditional values, what are you left with? Nothing, or worse than nothing. That’s what’s happening to this country, Michael; we’ve got to stop it happening in Grouchers. We must remember our true identity: we are English, first and last.’ He paused, then added, ‘When I say English, I mean British, of course. I mean, you live in Scotland, don’t you?’
‘We have quite a few Scottish members, Jimmy. And some Welsh ones.’
‘Well, you see, that sort of thing is perfectly all right. But ... Patel ... I mean, really.’
I made a meaningless noise that might have been agreement or disagreement. As a matter of fact, a resolve was beginning to form within me. One day I would explain to the members of Grouchers just what being British really meant. They were unlikely to forgive me for pointing it out. My moment had not yet come, however.
‘It’s good to talk, Michael’, Jimmy said. ‘Clears the air, I always feel.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Now then, how’s the lovely Elizabeth?’ he asked, changing the subject. Before I could reply he called the waiter over, to get a further slice of tongue.
That afternoon I went home early. When I opened the door of the flat, it felt different inside: as if someone else was already there.
‘Elizabeth?’ I called, wondering whether she had returned home early. She might have done: her relationship with her mother was not always easy. ‘Rupert?’
There was no answer. For a moment I thought I could hear the soft pad of feet, and imagined Rupert was coming to greet me. No wife, no dog appeared. The flat was empty. It did not feel empty.
I went and sat in the kitchen. I felt tired. I had gone out for a long walk the previous night. I couldn’t remember where I had gone, only that it had been a starlit night and someone had been speaking to me. I had returned home at some ungodly hour and, too tired even to get into bed, had lain upon the bed fully dressed and slept until late: I had nearly been overdue for the meeting at Grouchers.
I was beginning to dislike the increasingly tricky and unrewarding job of membership secretary. A long time ago, when I had first joined the club, it had seemed like an ideal solution to the state of mind I had been in at the time. Grouchers was unchanging, rooted in its sense of itself, a place of tradition, of conservatism with a small ‘c’. Now Peter Robinson, and no doubt others, wanted to change all that. I felt sure they would succeed, but what would their success mean?
Sometimes I wondered whether it was all worth it. There was obviously the most almighty row coming. I remembered with dread that, in a few weeks’ time, there was a Grouchers golf tournament, the last of the autumn, and I would have to be present, along with Peter Robinson, David Martin and a number of others. That could turn out to be a very difficult few days, the way things were going.
But if I didn’t keep my job at Grouchers, what would I do with my life? What would the purpose of my life be? I thought I remembered someone saying to me, very recently, ‘I will find things for you to do that will change your life.’ It had been a woman’s voice speaking, but not, as far as I could remember, Elizabeth’s.
I sat at the kitchen table. A sense of purpose was what I needed. I knew that somewhere within me was the desire to achieve something; I just didn’t know what it was yet. I stood up and went to get the A4 ruled pad that normally sat by the phone, and the pen beside it. Perhaps I ought to scribble down a few notes. I began to write.
A little later I looked at my watch and saw that it was nearly 6.30. I must have been sitting at the table for hours. God knows what I had been doing. I looked down at the scribbled lists of names in front of me. What was that about a sense of purpose? I felt confused, and heady, as if I were on the edge of some revelation. I decided I would have a shower to wake myself up and, if Elizabeth had not returned by then, I would go out and walk around for a bit, then meet her at the Italian restaurant as we had agreed.
Half an hour later I left the flat. After walking around for a while I turned into the road where the Italian restaurant was. As I rounded the corner a sudden gust of wind struck me, an updraught between two tall blocks of flats. A crumpled newspaper flew into the air and danced against an orange sky before falling back towards the ground. Then the wind dropped and I was inside the restaurant, smoothing down my hair and straightening my tie.
‘Just you tonight, sir?’ Alfredo fussed about me.
‘No, my wife will be here soon,’ I told him.
‘In any case, your usual table.’
‘Bring me a bottle of white wine and open it, Alfredo,’ I told him. ‘I will have a drink while I am waiting.’
‘Ah, the beautiful ladies, the beautiful ladies - they keep us waiting, no?’
I waved Alfredo away. He came back quickly with an open bottle of Pinot Grigio and poured me a glass. I tasted it. It was chilled enough, so I nodded and Alfredo left me to myself. A silvery voice beside me said, ‘May I sit down for a moment?’
I looked up. It was the girl from the train. Was that where I had last seen her? I wasn’t sure. I stared at her in surprise, and yet somehow I was not really that astonished. What was her name? Something odd: Lamia, that was it. Lamia.
‘I saw you come in here,’ she told me, ‘so I thought I would follow you and speak to you for a moment.’
This sounded so unlikely that I smiled. She smiled back and again I felt the intense sense of connection with her that I had felt before, as if I had known her for ever. I half stood up and gestured to her to be seated.
‘Do sit down,’ I said. ‘How are you? Let me pour you a glass of wine.’
She was more beautiful than I had remembered, dark haired, pale olive skin and round dark eyes that were almost black. She was still wearing her dark green dress and ruby earrings. She had no coat, despite the chill of the evening outside. She pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down, and I filled her glass. She went on smiling as I did so, looking into my eyes with a disconcerting directness that I remembered from our previous meeting. She did not pick up her glass.
‘How strange that we should meet again,’ I said. ‘You left rather suddenly on the train.’
‘It is not strange,’ she replied. ‘There are things I need to tell you. It isn’t chance that brings me here. There is work to be done. Don’t you feel that yourself?’
I could not imagine w
hat she meant. We had met only once, for a few minutes, on the train. I let her comment go unanswered, and instead asked, ‘What are you doing in London? Have you found somewhere to live?’
She said, ‘I am not far away now. We will talk again, soon enough.’
Another remark I found unsettling, and hard to follow. Should I ask her to stay to dinner? I couldn’t see Elizabeth putting up with someone as cryptic as this. Then Lamia was standing up once more, and looking towards the doorway.
‘Someone is coming,’ she said. I followed her glance and saw Elizabeth in the entrance handing her coat to Alfredo.
‘It’s my wife Elizabeth,’ I explained, ‘we’re having dinner together.’ As I spoke Lamia glanced towards Elizabeth and I saw a peculiar expression on her face: longing, almost hunger. Then she started to move away.
‘Won’t you stay and have a drink with us?’ I asked. Lamia shook her head and then turned away from me, weaving between the members of a small group who had just arrived and were seating themselves at a nearby table.
Then I could no longer see where she had gone and Elizabeth was occupying my attention, allowing Alfredo to pull her chair out for her and generally make a fuss.
‘Hi, darling,’ I said. ‘Great to see you.’ I kissed her on the cheek, and saw a look of surprise on her face as I did so. I suppose my normal greeting these days was often more in the way of a nod. I felt confused and wondered whether anyone had seen Lamia sitting at the table with me. It could only have been a few moments ago. Alfredo said nothing and neither did Elizabeth, so I took a sip from my glass and said, ‘God, I’ve had the most absurd set of conversations at Grouchers. I’ve been longing to tell you.’
I thought I ought to make an effort to entertain Elizabeth. She was always exhausted after a few days of her mother’s company. She looked as if she thought nothing was less likely to be amusing than anecdotes about Grouchers, but before she could say anything I picked up the menu and said, ‘Let’s choose something to eat, and then I’ll tell you all about it.’
9
‘Nothing I can’t handle’
I would have thought I was more likely to laugh while reading a Great North Eastern Railway timetable than listening to Michael relating tales about Grouchers. But he did make me laugh: he gave imitations of Verey-Jones and Jimmy, another of the club bores I had met, that had me in stitches. As I laughed, a part of me was thinking: Michael’s such a good mimic, why have I never noticed that before? Then another thought came in answer to the first: Because we never laugh, we barely even talk. We were laughing now, or at least I was, and Michael was smiling, that curious expression I had noticed recently in his eyes: something unfamiliar, something new.
Then he made me tell him about my stay with my mother, and although I say it myself I in turn gave a fairly good imitation of Charlie Summers, my mother’s new-found love and dog-food salesman extraordinaire. I had finally met him, the evening before I came back home, and he was just as I had pictured him: sandy haired, clusters of broken veins on his cheeks, and watery blue eyes. He was clad in a dark blue blazer with a rich crop of dandruff on the shoulders and crested brass buttons, and a striped tie that suggested military origins without any precise regimental definition. He wore very dirty brown suede shoes that peeped out from baggy corduroys. Rupert had a stomach upset after trying out the new dog food, and I had taken great pleasure in telling Mr Summers all about it.
Michael listened with enjoyment to this story, and I found we were sharing a second bottle of wine. By this time of the evening Michael would normally be looking at his watch and saying, ‘Don’t want to miss News at Ten, I think we ought to be getting back to the flat,’ but now he didn’t even look at his watch. He looked at me, all the time, and now and again a small smile crossed his face. Michael could really be quite good looking when he smiled. For most of our married life, he had had rather a dazed look, as if he had just been woken out of a deep sleep; or else it was a hollow look, like a house that is empty on the inside. I had learned to put up with it; I had known what I was getting into when we were married.
But now Michael was smiling at me, and I saw again something I had half noticed from time to time in recent weeks: he had lost some weight about the face. It made him look younger, and I was reminded of the photograph I had seen in Mrs McLeish’s sitting room, of the young boy holding up a fish to the camera, his gaze full of charm and excitement.
‘I went and had a cup of tea with Mrs McLeish,’ I told him, ‘while we were putting the big house to bed. I saw a photograph of you when you were a teenager, standing on a jetty by a lake. She said you were a very mischievous child, always up to something. You looked like it, in the picture. She said you used to be called Mikey.’
Michael sat back in his chair, then held his glass up in front of the candle and looked into it.
‘Yes,’ he said after a moment, ‘some people used to call me Mikey, I remember now.’
‘Mrs McLeish wouldn’t tell me a thing about what you used to get up to when you were that age. She was frightfully discreet.’
‘Well, perhaps one day I’ll tell you,’ said Michael. For some reason bringing the conversation round to Caorrun and Glen Gala made him fall silent again, and I wished I had not brought the subject up. But why should I not? What memories had I triggered: thoughts of his parents, perhaps?
A few minutes later he called for the bill and we walked back to the flat in silence. It was not, however, a grim silence, and as we turned the corner into our street Michael linked arms with me: another first. Inside we took our coats off. I suddenly remembered the sheets of paper that I had found lying on the kitchen table.
‘Michael, I hope you don’t mind, but I tidied away some ...’
Then I stopped speaking. I found that I was in Michael’s arms and he was kissing me: at first tenderly, all over my face, and then more passionately. ‘Michael, what’s going on?’ I said, or tried to say, but after a few more moments it was blindingly obvious what was going on, and I was lying across the bed in our bedroom half naked, with Michael first beside me, and then inside me. We made love from time to time during our marriage: had sexual relations anyway. When Michael took me to bed on those previous occasions, neither numerous nor memorable, his expression was always exactly the same, and one night I remembered where I had seen it before: when he was practising his golf swing on the driving range. This time could not have been more different, and when at last it was over, I found that I was in tears. I didn’t really know why I was crying. Perhaps it was the sense of release I had felt, the sense of oneness, and the feeling that I had waited a very long time for a moment like this one.
‘Darling, why couldn’t it always have been like that?’ I said to him, sniffing slightly into the duvet.
‘You can call me Mikey, now,’ he said, not answering my question. We were both naked and properly in bed now, our clothes scattered all over the bedroom floor. I rolled over and punched Michael lightly in the chest.
‘Is that what you got up to when you were sixteen?’
He smiled and stroked my hair.
‘I can’t remember what I was like when I was sixteen.’
‘You looked like one of those people who lives among the trees - a faun, I mean.’
‘Ah, the people in the trees,’ he said. ‘I used to hear them sometimes.’
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this, but then he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He took his dressing gown from the hook on the door, and as he put it on I looked at him critically. He was thinner.
‘I’m going to have a glass of whisky,’ he said.
‘After all that wine? Won’t you have a splitting head in the morning?’
He looked at me and said, ‘I’m afraid I have a splitting head often enough, anyway. The whisky will do more good than harm.’
He went back into the sitting room. I sat at my dressing table and put my face to bed, then I put on my nightdress and came and sat next to him on the sofa
.
‘Can’t the doctor give you something to stop your headaches? ’ I asked.
‘He has given me something, but I’m not sure it does me any good.’
Then, with a touch of his old self, he picked up the TV remote, flicked on Newsnight, and the conversation was over for the time being.
That night, while Michael slept quietly beside me, I thought things over for a long time. The more I thought, the less I understood. I slipped seamlessly into a dream without realising it. Mikey and I were standing by the rhododendrons that surrounded the house at Caorrun, and he had that curious half-smile on his face, the one I had seen for a moment in the restaurant.
‘Forgotten but not gone,’ he said, looking into my eyes.
Once, when my parents were still together, we went to stay with some relatives of my father who had a villa in Tuscany. We put the car on the train to Nice, where my father had some business (we later found out that the business was my father’s newest squeeze, Marie-Claire Billancourt), and then drove on into Italy. I was about fifteen, I suppose, and it was my first holiday abroad. I knelt on the back seat looking out of the back window of the car, fascinated by every detail of this strange new landscape.
