by Jo Verity
Fay pushed her glass towards him. ‘I’ve been wondering…'
‘Oh, yes.'
'I told you, didn’t I, that Geoffrey Lauderdale’s leaving Isabel because he says he wants to grow old with someone who’s “a bit more homely”?’ She wiggled her index fingers, forming inverted commas in the air. ‘I think there must be more to it than that, mind you but, I was wondering… Which do you think’s more essential? Glamour or homeliness?
He looked at Fay’s patchy green eye-shadow, blobby mascara and greasy lipstick. He took in her peculiar, gravity-defying hairstyle, stiff to his touch. He caught sight of her freckled hand, gripping the stem of the glass, the ridged nails painted an unlikely iridescent orange.
He remembered peeling the vulgar underwear off her the other night. Glamorous? No. Homely? No.
He ran his finger around the collar of his new sweater, pulling the hot, itchy wool away from his neck. How would the ‘big boys’ – Sartre and the like – deal with the mess he was in? He wished that there had been a few practical examples amongst the screeds of theory. No doubt they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to end up in his position – trapped by convention, responsibility and cowardice. On the far side of the restaurant, the middle-aged waitress who had taken their order, shining black hair caught in a simple twist at the nape of her neck, moved gracefully and patiently between the tables and Non edged into his mind, for a moment filling him with resolution and he knew that, if he were to save himself, this was the moment to tell Fay everything and face the consequences. He felt exhilarated yet scared, powerful yet uncertain. A few words would sever the ropes tethering him to his humdrum existence and enable him to become the man he was meant to be. It should be a piece of cake.
‘That’s not much of a choice,’ he said.
She laughed uneasily. The silent seconds ticked by. ‘For God’s sake, Jack.’ Now she sounded panicky, as if she had strayed into quicksand.
Existentialism does not acknowledge the existence of a god or of any other determining principle – human beings are free to do as they choose and face the consequences of their action.
Was it possible to have it both ways? He wanted to retain the love and respect of his family, and he couldn’t deny that the romp with Fay the other night had been pretty amazing. At the same time, he longed to be the man who concocted rainbows and solved economic problems; whose admiration for one woman was so all-engulfing that simply being in her presence brought physical satisfaction. It didn’t stack up. Perhaps Kierkegaard and his pals were infertile orphaned bachelors, spared the anguish caused by abandoning parents, wives and children.
The waitress arrived with their food and Fay, who seemed no longer to expect an answer to her glamour-or-homeliness question, switched the conversation to school matters, telling him about one of her pupil’s homework. It had something to do with girls’ clothes and carrier bags, but he already had enough on his mind and it drifted past him.
By the time the taxi turned up to take them home, Fay had drunk too much and he was wishing he’d drunk a lot more.
30
‘How did he seem to you?’ It was Monday morning and Jack’s first opportunity to speak to Sheila since her visit to the hospital the previous afternoon.
Sheila screwed up her face, ‘A bit subdued. He didn’t say much but there were quite a lot of us there, all nattering. Vi, Dylan and Nia, some neighbours – Jenkins is it? – then Marion turned up. So I didn’t stay long.’ She patted his arm. ‘Chin up. He’s a fighter.’
A fighter? That wasn’t how he saw his father. Had he been old enough to fight in the war, Jack was sure Harry would have found a way not to. He would have stayed at home and worked a double shift in the narrowest seam, doing whatever it took to keep the home fires burning. No, his mother was the fighter – guerrilla warfare her speciality. Harry had been more of an avoider – was there no word for someone who, almost pathologically, steered clear of trouble? – slipping out into the garden whenever conflict loomed. Reticent. Restrained. Fair enough, but what happens when an avoider comes face to face with the ultimately unavoidable?
In the middle of the afternoon, his mother phoned the surgery, something which she rarely did. ‘Staff Nurse says that they’re going to send Dad home. But John, the house’ll be damp. And I’ve got no food in.’
‘Take it slowly, Mum. Tell me exactly what they said.’
In the end, unable to make sense of what she was telling him, he phoned the ward and they told him that, yes, the consultant had mentioned the possibility of sending Harry home before too long, but it was very unlikely to be before next week.
‘You couldn’t go and calm my mother down, could you nurse? Tell her to hang on there and I’ll come in as soon as I can.’
She promised to do her best.
How speedily they’d incorporated Harry’s hospitalisation into their routines. Having his mother with them wasn’t ideal but they were working around it, thanks, in no small part, to Neil who was turning out to be an asset to the household. Visiting was tedious but the hospital was handy and, to be fair, his mother had born the brunt of it. The unexpected news that his father might be sent home soon, panicked him. Which home did they mean anyway? He shuddered. It was unthinkable that Harry should come to them but, if he went home home, would his mother be able to cope? She wasn’t a young woman – seventy-seven, in fact – but it wasn’t her age that concerned him, it was her dependence on Harry to deal with anything which wasn’t ‘woman’s work’. She could churn out beef tea by the gallon, and make sure the bathroom was spotless but could she unblock a drain or sort out a problem at the bank? It would be best if Harry Waterfield stayed where he was, at least until he was fit enough to climb a ladder and clear leaves from the guttering.
Harry was asleep and his mother folding and re-folding towels when he arrived in the ward. She couldn’t wait to ask, ‘Could you pop me to the supermarket tonight? Then up to the house?’
‘Hello, Mum.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘Don’t start fretting about that. Didn’t the nurse explain that he won’t be discharged just yet? I know he’s been sitting out in the chair, but they’ll have to be certain that he can get himself to the toilet – his mother disliked ‘lavatory’ – and things like that. We don’t want them to send him home until he’s—’
‘Yes, but I need time to air the house and do some baking.’
He let her babble on, spewing out the disjointed and trivial thoughts that cluttered her mind. Not for the first time, he wondered whether, even hoped that, he’d been adopted and that his real mother was a member of Mensa.
He turned to the sleeping man, watching a pulse flicker in the soft depression where scrawny neck met frail breastbone. Harry’s battered hands rested outside the sheet, on his chest, one covering the other, as though he were ashamed of them and was trying to conceal the damage done when he hacked and shoved and heaved coal, hundreds of feet beneath the Valley floor. Jack spread his owns hands – pale and soft, the nails short and clean – on the blue cotton blanket and compared them with his father’s. But, slight though they were, he detected similarities in the way their thumbs bent back and the oddly undersized nails on their little fingers. No question about it, whoever may have borne him, this man was his father.
He stooped to retrieve a wad of cotton wool from beneath the bed and, as he straightened up, he saw that his father’s eyelids were a fraction open. Harry was watching him. The crafty bugger was taking avoiding action again. One eyelid closed and opened again, in a nano-signal of collusion.
‘So Grandad’s coming home?’ Caitlin smiled and patted the back of her grandmother’s hand. ‘That’s wonderful.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know how we’ll manage.’ Vi whizzed the teaspoon around, generating a whirlpool in her cup.
‘You’ll be fine, Gran. You’ve got great neighbours, and Dad can be with you in twenty minutes.’
Jack had managed, between the front door and the sitting room, to brief Caitlin that her grandpa
rents would be returning to their own home when Harry was discharged. ‘They’ll be better off. Everything’s how they like it. They can suit themselves. Grandad’s sure to want to get out in his greenhouse—’
‘How was London?’ Fay was showing remarkably little interest in the approaching departure of one of their house-guests. ‘Have a good time?’
Caitlin flushed. ‘Great. It was good. Very interesting.’
‘Did you learn a lot about furniture? Can you tell a dovetail from a tenon? Teak from mahogany?’ Fay’s tone was belligerent.
Caitlin ignored her mother’s odd questions. ‘We saw Sadie and Joe on Saturday night. Had a meal together. We were reminiscing. The last time I saw her, she was sitting on our sofa, refusing to speak.’
‘She always was a drama queen,’ Fay said. ‘Laura’s had a dreadful time with her.’
‘Well, she seems pretty normal now, apart from the body piercings. And Joe is such a lovely guy.’
Jack was relieved that his mother had fallen asleep in the armchair, head back, upper dentures dropped on to her lower lip, and they could escape a post-mortem on the current fad for self-mutilation.
‘D’you remember, Mum, when we were at Laura’s a couple of weeks ago and we were looking at that photograph of Sadie? I said she reminded me of someone?’ Caitlin paused and Jack thought how beautiful she was, in an unconventional way. Her green eyes were a little too far apart, her nose too long and her teeth too big, but these imperfect features came together in a bold, intelligent face, made all the more striking by unruly hair, the colour of paprika. She shook her head and shrugged. ‘It’s Kingsley. I don’t know why I didn’t twig at the time. She sounds like him, too. All evening I felt as if he were in the room with us.’
Jack choked. Kingsley. Sadie. Sadie. Laura. His heart-rate tripled. Sadie. Laura. Laura. Jack. He felt perspiration springing out of his armpits, streaming down his back. Do something. He tipped the contents of his cup into his lap, then watched the small quantity of orangey-brown tea quadruple in volume as it dripped between his thighs, forming a puddle shaped vaguely like a map of Africa, beneath his seat.
Fay exploded. ‘What is the matter with you, Jack? It’s worse than living with a three-year-old. Here. Let me.’
Sadie’s reported resemblance to Kingsley was lost in a frenzy of mopping and swearing . Even if his ‘bloody clumsiness’ meant buying new trousers and replacing the pale carpet; even if he suffered third-degree burns to his inner thighs, it was preferable to an in-depth discussion about Sadie’s parentage.
While Fay and Vi argued about the best way to deal with the spreading stain, he slunk off to change his trousers. Sitting on the edge of their bed, he took slow, deep breaths but his thoughts were bouncing from one unanswerable question to the next. How old was Sadie? Exactly how old? When had they made that visit to see Laura after David died? Exactly when? Fay was the expert on that sort of stuff – birthdays and anniversaries, knowing which year they went on which holiday – but obviously he couldn’t ask her outright.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Fay appeared in the study where Jack, having sneaked downstairs, was rooting through the desk drawers.
‘Ummm. Looking for our insurance policy. I wanted to check that the carpet was covered for accidental damage.’ He was pleased that he’d come up with such a credible reply, doubting whether even old Camus would have had the guts to say, ‘Actually I’m looking for my old diaries, on the off chance that I made a note of when I made love to Laura Ford.’
‘For goodness sake. You know we don’t keep that sort of thing in the desk.’ She pointed to the two-drawer filing cabinet in the corner. ‘It’ll be in there. But can’t you leave that until tomorrow? Caitlin’s just leaving.’
When they finally got to bed, he was unable to sleep. Fay, too, seemed restless and they talked for a while about the practicalities of Harry’s return home. ‘It’s going to involve you in a lot more running around,’ Fay warned. ‘There’s bound to be out-patient’s appointments and things like that.’
‘Let’s see how it goes,’ he muttered. He pictured Non, brushing her thick, black hair before slipping in to bed. Iolo would be preparing sweet cocoa for the guests and Zena – she was surely back from her sister’s – would be setting out the breakfast places.
‘What d’you make of that peculiar stuff about Sadie?’
It had been too much to hope that Caitlin’s revelation would be forgotten. He might be panicking unnecessarily. If it turned out that he were in the clear, he would be happy to discuss the phenomenon but, first, he needed to establish the facts.
He rolled across the bed until he encountered Fay’s body, warm and soft against his. ‘Hello.’ He kissed her, gently at first, then harder.
‘Hello, yourself.’ She sounded surprised but not displeased.
The same act of love that was causing him such disquiet, rescued him – for the time being, at least.
Jack slept fitfully and, at six o’clock, sneaked out of bed and crept down to the study. He’d hung on to all his pocket diaries, supplied annually by the British Dental Association, and made them into neat bundles, encircled by stout rubber bands. They were fiddly things, all fancy cover and useless information about airports and average rainfalls, in print that was too small to read. There was barely space to write more than a key word against each date. ‘Seminar’, ‘Docs. 9.45’, ‘F’s b’day’. Very occasionally he referred back to them for a phone number or date of a particular meeting.
Fay was out cold but, nevertheless, he felt vulnerable in the house and, salvaging a discarded carrier bag from the waste paper basket, he gathered the diaries and took them out to the shed. It had been a clear, cold night and droplets of condensation had formed on the rafters, then dripped onto the floor. He shivered and pulled on his old gardening fleece before perching on the arm of the grubby old chair and settling to his task. All night he’d been going over and over it, struggling to pinpoint the date. They’d visited Laura a few months after David died. What year was that? It must have been when Cassidy was about five and Caitlin, what, two? It was summer, anyway, and definitely before Dylan was born.
He found the diaries for 1976 and 1977 and began flicking through the thin pages. The entries weren’t easy to decipher but he limited his efforts to weekends in the summer months and within a few minutes he’d found it. ‘L. to visit L.’ London to visit Laura. Saturday 3rd August 1976. He took the calendar off its hook next to the window and counted forwards nine months. The 3rd May. A child conceived on 3rd August should be born on or around the 3rd May the following year, unless something out of the ordinary had happened.
Fay was late down for breakfast and they had little time for conversation as they prepared for work. ‘I can’t believe they’re talking about sending your father home. He’s no better than when he went in.’ She gave him a distracted peck on the cheek as he left for the surgery. ‘You’d better get hold of someone and find out what’s going on.’
Pushing dates and calculations to the back of his mind, he joined the procession of cars heading into the city centre. It was a perfect September morning, the low sun bringing out the colours of the leaves as they took on the yellows and oranges of autumn. Along his route he passed youngsters in groups of two or three, weighed down by oversized school bags, meandering towards the local school. Despite their loads, they looked cheerful and he wondered whether this generation of schoolchildren suffered from the ‘back to school’ nerves that had afflicted him at the beginning of every year. When he was thirteen or fourteen, his mother had taken him to the doctor, firmly convinced that he had a stomach ulcer, or worse, but the griping pains always subsided a week or so into the new term. What had been the cause of his anxiety in those miserable, adolescent days? Caustic teachers? Communal showers? Acne? Quadratic equations? Or the ultimate nightmare, that he might die a virgin, which, in retrospect, would have solved all his problems.
For once he was content to be crawling along in the morning traff
ic, cocooned in the car, temporarily disconnected from his difficulties. This sense of remoteness was reinforced by a humming in his ears, as if he were at the far end of a tunnel. Probably lack of sleep. Were he in charge of a heavy goods vehicle, he would be declared a danger to himself and everyone else on the road, so why on earth did he think he was capable of performing delicate procedures inside the human mouth?
He took the next turn off the dual carriageway and parked in a street of terraced houses. He needed to think and it might be easier here, away from everything that was making his life so shitty and, getting out of the car, he started walking, taking random turns to the left or right. The schoolchildren milling along the pavements here were more of a mixed bag than those he’d seen earlier. The girls wore cheap jewellery and make-up. The boys walked three abreast, insolently forcing him off the pavement. Many of them were smoking. Snatches of conversation that he caught were punctuated with obscenities. One lanky girl, in the sketchiest version of school uniform, shrieked at her dawdling friends to ‘get a fucking move on’. They joined her and began taunting the boys on the other side of the road. Individually, trapped in the dental chair, they were harmless enough but, in these little mobs and on their own territory, they made him nervous and he hoped he’d locked the car.
He checked his watch. The first patient would be arriving at the surgery in about twenty minutes. He stood in the doorway of a boarded-up shop and phoned Sheila. ‘It’s me. Look, I’m feeling really ropey this morning. Dizzy. Queasy. Could you cancel my patients? Apologise to those that you can’t catch.’ As an afterthought, he added, ‘I’m going to unplug the phone and go back to bed. I’ll ring again this afternoon. Thanks, Sheila.’
On the opposite corner there was a shop selling pies, sandwiches and hot drinks. He bought a coffee and sat on a high stool at the counter near the window. It was years since he’d been ill enough to take time off work, which was astounding considering the number of germs that he inhaled every day. He felt rotten about cancelling his patients, some of whom would make a fruitless journey, and he felt worse about lying to his faithful friend, leaving her to field any complaints.
