‘I’m not hearing this.’
‘You’d better, my love, because I mean it. And no more phone calls, either.’
He shook his head, as stubborn as ever, refusing to concede an inch. His sperm, he said. His baby. His rights. I took him by the arm, angry again, but a different kind of anger, quieter, calmer, more resolved. By the front door, desperate, he made one more lunge at what he’d come to tell me. He’d learned a great deal. It would be different this time round. And I was right, dead right, about the money. The three million quid didn’t matter a fuck. Not compared to us. Not compared to me.
I had the door open. The biggest of the builders was sawing a length of timber in the hall. Brendan stepped around the pile of sawdust, looking back at me.
‘It’s my baby,’ he said. ‘I’ve got rights here.’
My hand was behind the door, feeling for the deadlock.
‘I’m not a programme idea,’ I smiled ‘You have no rights.”
Tom phoned back that night. It was nearly ten o’clock. I settled on the floor beside the receiver. Tom was talking about Gilbert. He’d called his brother, as he’d promised, and he’d learned what he could about what he termed ‘the works in hand’.
‘Meaning?’
‘Your roof,’ he chuckled. ‘It turns out Gillie wants to put a big telescope up there. Foolish boy, he’s always had his head in the clouds.’
‘He wants what?’
‘He wants to build himself an observatory. Actually, it’s something he’s always been after. May I ask you a question?’
I was still thinking about the roof. Gilbert had used exactly the same word, ‘observatory’.
Tom was waiting for an answer.
‘By all means,’ I said. ‘Ask away.’
‘How well do you know Gillie?’
I pulled my dressing-gown a little more tightly around me. Tom was a stranger. How candid was I supposed to be?
‘I know him moderately well,’ I said. ‘As you would, sharing a house with someone.’
‘You’re friends?’
‘Yes, I’d say so.’
‘Good friends?’
‘Er… yes.’
My hesitation drew another chuckle. The next bit took me by surprise.
‘I expect you’ve had your little upsets,’ he said. ‘Most people seem to. Gillie isn’t always the easiest person to live with.’
I thought at once of Kevin Witcher. I told Tom what I knew, based on what Frankie had told me. Had Gilbert really put him in hospital?
‘I believe there was some kind of altercation,’ Tom said carefully. ‘Some unpleasantness.’
‘Why?’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Yes .. . please.’
‘I understand this man… Witcher… made advances to Gillie. Physical advances. Gillie wouldn’t have liked that. Not at all. In fact he was very upset.’
‘So he hit him?’
‘My dear, I’ve honestly no notion of what happened. I don’t believe Witcher went to the police, if that’s what you’re saying. It’s inexcusable, of course, physical violence, but I suppose you have to draw the line somewhere. Gillie’s lines have always been a little different to ours, that’s all.’
I frowned, wondering quite how far to push my curiosity. For whatever reason, Tom seemed to trust me.
‘Has Gilbert ever been under treatment?’ I asked.
‘For what?’
‘For any kind of upset. Mental upset. Maybe a breakdown of some kind?’
‘What makes you ask that?’
‘I just wondered. Sometimes…’ I drew a deep breath, trying to gauge how long my credit with this man would last, ‘… you’re right, he can be difficult. I don’t think he means it, I don’t think he’s wicked, or evil, or anything like that, but just sometimes he’s been a little… strange.’
There. I’d said it. There was a long silence at the other end. Then Tom returned to the phone. He’d had to see to the dog. She was wrecking the tassels on one of the chairs.
‘Now, my dear, where were we?’
‘Your brother,’ I repeated. ‘I was just saying he can be odd sometimes. Not altogether normal.’
‘You mean looney? Go on, say it.’ He roared with laughter. ‘Veritas vincit omnia. Truth conquers all. A spade’s a spade, my dear, and we do Gillie no favours by pretending he’s normal. He isn’t.’
For a moment I didn’t know quite how to respond. Tom’s language, to say the least, was picturesque. It somehow conjured images of a big country house, with huge sash windows and vast views. There’d be stables, and horses, and a long curl of gravel drive, and over the front door, in fading gilt, would be the family crest. Veritas whatever. Truth conquers all.
I smiled, visualising this chocolate box vision of an England that had passed most of us by. Was this where Gilbert belonged? And if so, what on earth was he doing in N17?
‘Going back to your roofing, my dear,’ Tom was saying. ‘I get the impression it’s not quite as dramatic as you think. Gillie says he’s taken advice. That could mean anything, of course, but let’s hope he’s seen someone useful. Like an architect. Damn.’ The dog again. The curtains this time. Tom was back on the phone. ‘I really must go, my dear. I do hope I’ve been of some use. Was there anything else?’
Quickly, I mentioned the freeholder again. This time, the name made an impact.
‘Peter Clewson? You talked to Peter?’
I blinked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Good Lord, yes. Peter’s an old chum. He’s been representing the family forever. He and the bloody dog go back years, generations probably.’
I pictured him reaching for the dog. Probably a spaniel, I thought. Probably liver and white.
‘But he’s our landlord.” I said. ‘Or that’s what I thought.’
‘You’re probably right. He very probably is. The old man wouldn’t leave the bloody house to Gillie, not in a million years. Oh no, get the lawyers involved, keep poor Gillie in line. I can hear the old man saying it. Typical.’
‘He’s dead? Your father?’
‘Heavens, yes. Years back.’
I wondered whether I ought to be taking notes. Each fresh answer triggered a new question in my head, taking me an inch or two closer to the man upstairs. I thought I could hear the dog in the background now, though it might have been my imagination.
‘If I phoned again,’ I said quickly, ‘might that be OK ?’
‘Good Lord, yes, whenever you like. What was the name again?’
‘Julie. Julie Emerson.’
‘Phone any time, Julie,’ he chuckled. ‘It’ll be a pleasure, an absolute pleasure.’
The roof was fixed by the end of the week. To the naked eye it was simplicity itself, a long glass panel set in a rather nice wooden frame, much like any rooflight. The following week a United Parcels van delivered something long and bulky which I took - correctly - to be the telescope. Within an hour, Gilbert had it up in the loft and, when I next checked from the road, the glass panel had slipped back to reveal a big glass eye on the end of a long, black barrel.
It was dusk, still light, but Gilbert must have been up there getting himself ready for the first twinkle in the night sky because the telescope moved from time to time, traversing left and right on some kind of tripod. Watching him, before returning inside, I thought again about the contents of the audio cassette he’d left under my pillow, the weekend he’d slept in my bed. The gist of the message was simple: we were all facing oblivion, either economic, or spiritual, or - most likely of all - as a result of some enormous onrushing asteroid. I remembered, too, Gilbert’s strange obsession with what he called The Dark. Was this why he’d installed the telescope? To get on closer terms?
Later that evening I shared the thought in a
nother conversation with his brother, Tom. I’d phoned out of courtesy to say that my earlier fears had been entirely misplaced. It was, I thought, the very least I owed him.
‘He gets terribly involved, doesn’t he?’ I ventured. ‘And terribly upset, too.’
I mentioned Gilbert’s convictions about impending disaster. His brother agreed at once. He said he knew exactly what I meant, not simply about Gilbert’s pessimism but the sheer effort he put into believing that everything, sooner or later, would go wrong.
‘Obsessive, some of it,’ he said.
‘It takes him over,’ I agreed. ‘You can see it happening. He loses touch, loses perspective.’
‘Exactly. Then the bloody thing gets the better of him, and then we’ve all got a problem. Dear God, you’re very shrewd, aren’t you?’
I told him that was the last thing I was. Shrewd people can spot a problem a thousand miles away. Me? I opened the door and invited it in. In Gilbert’s case, quite literally.
‘Hasn’t disgraced himself I hope?’
‘Not really. I just… it took a bit of getting used to.’
‘Good, good. Trusting girl like you… doesn’t do, does it?’
He mentioned the baby and hoped I was keeping fit. He was far too polite to be explicit but when he asked whether the flat would be big enough for the three of us, I knew exactly what he really meant.
‘Two of us,’ I said. ‘Just me and the baby.’
‘Oh dear, I am sorry.’
‘No need.’
‘Is it a joint decision? Do you mind if I ask?’
‘Whose?’
‘Yours and the father’s? Not to live together?’
I began to warm to this man even more. When he chose to, he could be very direct indeed.
‘Not really,’ I told him. ‘It was more my decision than his.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘Of course.’ I hesitated, realising the importance of the answer, not just to Tom but to me as well. ‘It’s to do with courage,’ I said. ‘And priorities. We faced a kind of test, I suppose.’
‘And you’re saying you failed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Personally?’
At this, I began to withdraw. When it came to the test, I certainly hadn’t failed but the question of blame was quite separate. That, we had to share. I tried to explain it as best I could to Tom. He said at once that he understood.
‘Might he come back? The father?’
‘No.’
‘Might he try?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Would you want him to try?’
That was a very perceptive question. I’d hated having Brendan in my kitchen. I’d hated the way he’d provoked me, aroused me, made me angry. Yet he’d cared enough to come and that, I suppose, was a kind of compliment.
‘It’s over,’ I told Tom for the second time. ‘You get one chance in life, one chance to make it work, one chance to find out whether it’s real or not.’
‘And after that?’
‘You have the answer.’
‘My thoughts entirely, my dear.’ I could hear the smile in his voice. ‘Veritas vincit omnia.’
Out of the blue, the following week, I got the offer of a job. It was nothing permanent, a couple of months at the very most, but it would nicely bridge the autumn months, put money in the bank, and return me to Napier Road just in time to give birth.
The company I was to join ran a cable news operation from a converted warehouse in Rotherhithe. They’d acquired the funds to expand and they wanted someone to sort out a production schedule that would give them as much crew time as possible for their money. It was a one-off job - hence the short contract - but mine was one of the names that had come up at the execs meeting and because I happened to be by the phone that morning, yours truly was first to appear for interview.
The latter, as so often in television, was a formality. I turned up in time for coffee and Danish. The Head of News was nursing a hangover and his PA, who clearly ran the show, had a sister who was nearly as pregnant as me. Over a second helping of pastries, we discussed the merits of breast feeding and by noon the job was mine.
I started the following week, joining the early morning queue at the bus stop at the head of the road. On a good day, the ride across to Docklands took forty minutes, plenty of time for me to absorb the lighter articles in the paper and brace myself for the frenzy of snatched interviews, ten-second sound bites, and longer featurettes on three-legged dogs that masqueraded as hard news.
Over the weekend I’d had a chance to sample the feed from Metro, and I had absolutely no illusions about what I was in for. The stuff I watched, in pretty much every respect, was truly dire: underfunded, under-resourced, and horribly tacky when it came to content. On most of the stories, they even had a problem with focus, something I put down to a decision to operate without lights. Even at university we’d always had access to a couple of redheads, or a hand lamp, but at Metro, all too obviously, the emphasis was on natural light. Natural light, in the upside-down world of telly, is what you rely on when you can’t afford the real thing. To make up for the soupy look of the pictures, you normally bang on about ‘grittiness’ and ‘realism’ and - on a really dark night - ‘ultra-realism’. At Metro, the technical coverage had got so bad that even the technicians had started talking about ‘Bat TV’.
It was fun, though, over in Rotherhithe and I settled in behind my PC, in a bid to unpick the tangle of scheduling arrangements that had taken root since the station had been transmitting. Like weeding, it had its compensations and it was nice to sit on the bus home, knowing that I’d at least made a start in teasing some kind of logistical sense into Metro’s news gathering. Best of all, as I spaded deeper and deeper, I began to suspect that I could come up with cost savings that might - just might - make it possible for each news crew to carry a decent set of lights. This proposal, dangerously radical at management level, gave me hero status amongst Metro’s army of young camera-men, and it was over coffee with one of them - a dry New Zealander called Angus - that I caught up. with events at Doubleact.
Angus had only just joined Metro. Before that, he’d been pushing a big Sony at the studios used by Doubleact. Members Only was two programmes into its second series, and rumours on the studio floor suggested that Doubleact was in trouble.
‘How come?’
‘Seems they were after a flotation, you know, cashing in the chips.’
I said I knew about that. It had been on the cards for a while. Angus shook his head.
‘Cancelled,’ he said flatly. ‘No can do.’
‘Who says?’
‘The City boys. Doubleact’s a partnership. His and hers. Mummy and Daddy have fallen out. The merchant bankers don’t like it.’
‘You mean they’ve split up? Brendan and Sandra?’
‘Finito’
‘Since when?’
‘Last week.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Yeah. The marriage is history. Ditto the company.’ He grinned, drawing a finger across his windpipe. ‘They’ve kissed goodbye to nine million quid. Can you believe that? Not toughing it out? Making a go of it? Just a couple more months?’
I agreed it sounded incomprehensible. While Angus fetched more coffee from the machine, I rubbed thoughtfully at the stains on the formica table top, wondering about Brendan. Had he precipitated this wild act of commercial suicide? Or had Sandra finally had enough?
Angus returned with more news.
‘She’s suing him for everything,’ he said. ‘And vice versa. Isn’t it fun when the rich fall out?’
I was still thinking about Brendan.
‘They’re getting divorced?’ I said. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Sure,’ he nodded. ‘And it’s one of those times when yo
u can actually put a figure on the grief. Nine million quid’s worth of marital fucking guilt? Can you imagine that?’
As it happens, I could but I didn’t let on about Sandra. Working with her was enough for most people. Having to sleep with her was obviously a seven-figure nightmare.
‘Singleact,’ I mused fondly. ‘Doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it?’
By now, we were close to the end of October. The nights were drawing in and I was more than happy to spend my evenings at home in Napier Road. The installation of the telescope in the attic had effectively put an empty floor between me and Gilbert, and it was odd to be without his music, and the back and forth pacing of his footsteps overhead. He’d somehow fixed a camera to his telescope and sometimes he came down with handfuls of the photos he’d taken. The quality wasn’t brilliant but a month at Metro had revised my expectations to the point where anything in focus was a real treat.
I was admiring the latest nightscape when the phone went. It was Tom, Gilbert’s brother. Gilbert had disappeared back upstairs only minutes earlier.
Tom sounded cheerful, if slightly out of breath. He was phoning, sweet man, to check on my well-being.
‘I’m fine,’ I told him. ‘Just fine.’
‘And baby?’
‘Kicking for England.’
‘Marvellous, marvellous.’
I told him a bit more about how things were going. Twice a week I took the afternoon off for ante-natal classes at the local sports centre. I’d thought I was reasonably fit but some of the exercises were finding me out.
‘I ache,’ I told him, ‘in the most extraordinary places.’
Tom thought that was very funny and I elaborated a bit, describing some of the conversations we had afterwards, us mothers-to-be. A lot of the girls were black and some of their personal circumstances made my own situation seem very tame indeed.
‘How’s all that going?’ Tom inquired.
‘All what, Tom?’
‘Your partner, the father.’
‘I haven’t heard a word, not for at least a month.’
‘Is that good?’
‘It’s very good;’
I meant it. Back in September, just the mention of Brendan’s name made me practically seize up. I dreaded him coming round or phoning. I dreaded another scene. Now, though, much of the angst had simply dropped away. Snug and safe in Napier Road, mention of Brendan Quayle would arouse, at most, feelings of mild curiosity. Had I really wasted so much of myself on a forty-five-year-old cokehead? Someone else’s husband? Was that really me in all those fading mental snapshots?
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