Cousins

by Salley Vickers

  All of which is my roundabout way of confessing that I didn’t try to argue with Cele over her decision to leave the flat. In fact I thought it might be as well to let whatever there was between them cool down. When Cele left, all she said, to my light enquiry, was that she was going ‘to live with a friend’. And because I felt that I had no right to press her, I never had any idea of who this ‘friend’ might be.

  There was one potentially positive thing about this whole period. Will had the musical gene that comes from Mum’s mother’s family, and he was a very gifted flautist before he took up the sax. A couple of times, when he was younger, we’d played together on those rare occasions when I was at a family gathering. But the sax was better suited than the flute to his present mood.

  Will had lost his bar work over the Colin fracas but his jazz band, Black Tye Boys, he kept going. And one evening – Graham had gone to bed and Will and I were still up – I said, ‘Have you considered maybe chucking Cambridge and sticking with the band?’

  He laughed and said, quite sweetly, ‘Don’t let my parents hear you say that. Dad’s already got his knickers in a twist that I might not be allowed back to King’s.’

  Trying to be fair, I said something like, ‘He only wants you to have all the opportunities you can.’

  And I recall very clearly what Will said to that. ‘Dad’s scared I’ll escape the cage.’

  He said it quite affectionately but it brought to my mind how, when he was a boy, I used to call him ‘Panther’ for the way he would climb trees and drape himself, darkly elegant, along the boughs. You shouldn’t shut up a panther in a cage. Will was a free spirit. A troubled one, for sure, but a free spirit nonetheless. And he was dead right about poor old Beetle being scared.

  At the time we had this conversation I wasn’t sure that King’s was prepared to have Will back, which is partly why I made encouraging noises about the band. And he might even have taken my advice, and made his name as a musician, were it not for Harvey.

  Harvey was Will’s version of Colin. I don’t mean they were lovers, though Harvey might have hoped for that. I don’t want to indict Beetle and Susan, who, God knows, have undergone enough, but were I to indict them it would be for Harvey. That puritan mental habitat which Will was raised in deprived him of the speck of moral dirt that confers an immunity on a child. Syd’s lack of imagination protected her, and I would say that Hetta’s wide reading, or good luck, has done the same. But Will, with his missing skin, was perfect prey for a despoiler.

  Into the gap left by Cele, Harvey poured his soothing-seeming slime. That’s how I read it. Will needed attention and admiration, and without Cele to provide it Harvey made himself indispensable.

  Although I’ve thought about him often I only met Harvey twice. The first time was on a return from Staresnest, where I’d sloped off for a week’s ‘solitary’, as I called it. It wasn’t actually solitary. I’d cheered myself up by starting a not too serious affair with Anthony Li. Anthony was a GP at the practice where Graham was registered. Not my own doctor, Anthony was too professional and too canny for that, and anyway I’d made sure to sign on at a different practice from Graham.

  I met him at one of Graham’s grisly fund-raising dos – and if you ask me what it was that Graham actually did I’m afraid I couldn’t give you an answer. I was frankly bored to tears and Anthony must have spotted this and came over to talk to me. He made me laugh and saved the evening. He was Anglo-Chinese and very bright, which I found terribly attractive, especially after Graham. I was missing Robert, I guess. And while I was never in love with Anthony, nor he with me, he was a good conversationalist. He was also ten years younger than me, which was a boost. And in that uncomplicated way, which can be restful, we enjoyed each other’s company, especially in bed.

  But driving home, I was looking forward to a quiet evening with Graham in front of the telly, and was annoyed to find a stranger lolling on my sofa. Will introduced him to me and from the first I could tell that he disliked me.

  Not that I gave a hoot about Harvey’s dislike. But I noted it and I felt alarm. It wasn’t too hard to account for the alarm since Will had one of Graham’s massive crystal tumblers in his hand and had plainly been downing the contents. Since the court case, he’d tempered his drinking pretty well and, as far as I could tell, the excessive drug-taking. And while I occasionally caught a whiff of dope from his room I wasn’t averse to the odd joint myself and saw no serious harm in it. So I turned a blind eye.

  I was trying to turn a blind eye that evening until Will got up to refill his glass and Graham made one of his rare objections. It was his Talisker they were making free with, after all.

  Graham said, very mildly, ‘Will, old chap, if you drink any more you’ll be drunk.’

  Will turned and I could tell by his eyes that he was on the edge. What I called his necromancer’s eyes. ‘I want to get drunk.’

  ‘Actually, Will,’ I said, ‘you are drunk.’

  Harvey sniggered.

  Will said, in that over-deliberate way which is a sign of drunkenness, ‘You are not exactly being polite to my friend, Aunt.’ I was always ‘Bell’ to Will. Never ‘Aunt’ or ‘Aunty’.

  Harvey sniggered again. I could put up with a fair bit of aggro from Will but not from a stranger I didn’t like the look of.

  ‘I don’t know your friend,’ I said, coldly, ‘but from where I’m sitting the pair of you have had enough. It’s Graham’s Talisker you’re drinking, not supermarket plonk.’ Because I’d just come from my escapade with Anthony I was unusually defensive of my husband.

  Will, who was barely upright, lurched towards me. I suppose it might have seemed as if he was going to hit me, though I’m perfectly sure that that is not what he planned. Graham, who drove me mad by desperately trying to take care of me, leapt up and began to manhandle Will.

  I snapped, ‘Leave it, Graham, for Christ’s sake’ but Will had already wrestled himself out of Graham’s grasp.

  He threw the tumbler on the carpet, shouted, ‘Right, we’re off. See you some time!’ and rushed out of the room.

  Graham picked up the tumbler and started tutting about the carpet. Harvey just sat there, looking pleased as Punch and I waited a few minutes, then went after Will. He looked pale and angry and was stuffing things into a bag.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘calm down, for God’s sake. Graham was only doing his knight-in-armour thing. It didn’t mean anything.’

  ‘He’s got no fucking right to touch me.’

  ‘I know, but I’m his wife, it’s his flat and, by the way, it is, or was, his whisky. And you can’t leave or you’ll be breaking probation.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So that’s serious, as you’ll remember in the morning, so shut up, sober up and go to sleep.’

  I pushed him firmly down on the bed and he had already passed out before I returned to the sitting room, where I was relieved to see that Graham had got rid of the repulsive Harvey. He had touched Graham for cash for a taxi. Graham was always a soft touch and I expect the money went on more drink. Or drugs, more likely.

  4

  All this happened the winter after Will had been sent down, which was when? 91? 92? You can check. I’ll say this: I never saw Will so obviously drunk again. My impression, wise after the event, is that part of him wanted to go to the devil with Harvey and another part wanted to get back with Cele. And maybe everything would have worked itself out in time had it not been for what she did next.

  I said I had no idea where she was living. She was a dark horse, my daughter, and I was more in touch with Will’s social life than with hers. I assumed her temporary home was with some female friend from school, or someone she’d met since coming to London.

  We still met occasionally, though she never came to the flat. If there was a concert I fancied, I would invite her and we would have a polite but not too spontaneous evening with nothing of importance said. But one day she rang and asked if we could meet f
or dinner.

  Aware of my past neglect, I was always a little nervous of Cele and flattered when she took the initiative over our meetings. But I could tell when we met at a restaurant in Primrose Hill that she was nervous herself. She looked older, but older to her advantage. If anything she looked more beautiful, more poised.

  We exchanged superficialities, she asked after Graham, I asked after her work and neither of us mentioned Will. And we had ordered before she came to the point, which was completely, but completely, astounding.

  This was some time in late March and it was cold still, but she must have been sweating slightly because I remember that she took a white lawn hanky out of her bag and patted her face. I remember it because there was a C embroidered in the corner and I recognized it as being from a boxed set Kenny and I had once bought her in Switzerland. A pretty dull present, quite insulting if you think about it, and in her shoes I’d have chucked it out long since.

  Anyway, she looked at me very steadily as if she’d been practising this moment and said, in an ultra-calm voice, ‘I wanted to see you because you and Granny should be the first to know that I’m married. I’ve written to tell Granny. She’ll have got the letter today.’

  I didn’t quite spill wine down my front because I was wearing my cream cashmere and even when shocked I’m careful. But I came damn close to it.

  ‘Christ!’ I said. ‘Who to?’ My immediate horrified thought was, Please, God, not Colin!

  ‘You don’t know him. He’s the doctor I work for.’

  Hetta had described the doctor at whose surgery Cele worked.

  ‘The badgery one?’

  This clearly annoyed her. ‘I don’t know what you mean by that. He’s called Alec. He’s Scottish.’

  I remembered then how Hetta had described the other partner. ‘The one with no eyelashes?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by that either. Alec has all the normal body parts.’

  This was such a bizarre thing to say I was silenced.

  Cele fiddled with some doughy balls she was plucking from her bread roll. The silence became awkward so I said, ‘When was this? When did you two marry?’ God knows why I said ‘you two’. It isn’t my style at all.

  She said, very casually, sounding almost bored, ‘A couple of weeks ago or something. We went to a registry office. It wasn’t fancy.’

  ‘So you’re living with him?’

  ‘I’ve been living with him since …’ She trailed off and fiddled some more with the bread balls and this was the closest she came to making any reference to Will.

  I honoured her reticence until it came to settling the bill, which she refused to allow me to pay, ‘No, please let me. I asked you.’

  I knew I must be gracious so I said, ‘Thank you. But you must tell me what you’d like as a wedding present.’

  She smiled a little and began to shake her head, indicating she needed no present, which was one of her ways of punishing me, so I risked, ‘Does Will know?’ It took some courage to ask.

  She hadn’t, she said, told Will. She maintained she was waiting to tell me and Mum first but although she didn’t voice this my hunch was that she was hoping either I or Mum would convey the news to Will.

  When later Mum and I conferred on the phone it was agreed that I would tell Will because, as Mum said, ‘It ought to come from someone in person and definitely not in writing.’ Mum appeared to have taken the news more calmly than me but I could hear from her voice she was bothered.

  I have not been asked to do many hard things in my life so perhaps it doesn’t mean all that much that conveying this extraordinary outcome seemed to me impossibly hard. I rang Cele and told her that if she had not already told Will I felt that someone should, which is the nearest I have ever come to a reproach.

  ‘Yes, by all means, you tell him.’ She sounded relieved.

  Still I procrastinated, not wanting to ruin a good mood in Will and in dread of exacerbating a bad one. And just simply not wanting to have to deliver this bombshell. In the end I managed it one evening after pouring us both a drink, which was cowardly.

  ‘Will, I’m not sure if you know’ – I was quite sure he didn’t – ‘but Cele has got married.’

  He didn’t rant or rave, as I’d feared he might. He didn’t in fact express much emotion at all. He just stared at me, with that unnerving, unblinking stare of his, and after some seconds said, ‘Who to?’

  ‘Not to Colin anyway.’ I shouldn’t have mentioned Colin. ‘It’s the doctor she works for … with.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure. I’ve not met him. She’s only recently told me. I …’

  ‘OK. I get the message.’

  She should have told him. I don’t, I couldn’t blame her – I’ve hardly been a model of moral rectitude. But she should have told him, for her own sake as much as for his. Because, after that, it was inevitable that she held herself responsible for all that transpired.

  5

  Mum rang me shortly after we had the surprise of Cele’s marriage to say that her friend Bev’s son was coming to London and could we put him up at the flat for a couple of nights. I dimly recalled Eddie from our days at Dowlands. He’d been a pal of Jack’s and it goes without saying I was eager to meet him again.

  Mum didn’t specify why Eddie was coming to London, she has this rather exaggerated thing about not divulging other people’s business, but when Eddie rang to thank us, very politely, for our hospitality he explained it was for a job interview. He was a chemical engineer by training, about which I knew nothing at all, but it was an executive position he was in for and he was clearly a high flyer as I recognized the name of the international firm he was hoping to join. Alastair had once had something to do with it.

  It was a mild jolt to come face to face with a grey-haired man in late middle age but after only a little while in Eddie’s company I recognized the boy I’d seen with Jack. He was tall, over six foot, and his face well preserved and with the pleasant open smile I’d remembered. He smelt nice too. I set a lot of store by how a man smells but I sensed at once that Eddie had no sexual response to me.

  It’s not that I’m so vain, though the family think I am, that I imagine every man I meet is lusting after me. It’s that sex lingers on in us, longer than people think, and there’s always a vestige of something, somewhere, in any interaction. I can always tell if there’s that glint of ‘might have been’. Eddie was gay, I knew it at once. Not a misogynist gay like Harvey, but gay for sure.

  He was a bit stiff at first. The evening of his arrival we spent in conventional chit-chat. Graham served some of his fine wine (I encouraged him in his wine obsession because it entailed trips abroad to Wine Society vineyards on which I didn’t accompany him) and I managed not to overcook or undercook the steak. It was an OK evening, nothing to write home about. But the following day – Eddie was staying on for a second interview, which he thought a promising sign – was Wednesday, Graham’s regular evening to visit his mother, so I was hopeful of a more revealing conversation.

  I wanted to hear about Jack.

  It helped that for us both he was ‘Jack’ rather than Nat and my impression was that Eddie shared my relief at Graham’s absence. I wined him liberally with more of Graham’s claret and he took off his tie, which I teased him over. I liked getting him to smile.

  He’d already asked after Mum and Beetle, but it was Mum he was more interested in.

  ‘She was great, like a second mother to me when I was a kid. I remember her and my mum dancing together, and your mum got on our kitchen table once and did a can-can. She was a laugh. My mum missed her when she left. She used to make her laugh like no one else.’

  This laughing, dancing person was new to me. Mum was never grim but I’d never had her down as the life and soul. ‘Did you know Jack wasn’t Mum’s son?’

  I was afraid that was maybe too quick off the mark because he flushed.

 
‘Not then. I did later.’

  ‘Did your mother tell you?’

  ‘I don’t think she knew. I was with him when he found out.’

  ‘That must have been quite something.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  I thought maybe I was pressing too hard so I poured him some more wine. I was desperate for him to go on.

  We sat there and I said, trying to be a good hostess, ‘You don’t have to …’

  And he shook his head and said, ‘No, it’s that I was remembering. We’d been off climbing, you know we used to climb together? And we’d gone on to Vienna – Jack’s idea. There was this exhibition which I wanted to go to – my idea that was. Funny when you think of it that if I hadn’t … Anyway, there was this photo of Jack as a baby and his name there beside it. It was the name that did it, you see.’

  ‘How extraordinary.’

  ‘It took a while before he got hold of the whole story. You didn’t know?’

  ‘I knew that he found out before they’d told him that Mum wasn’t his mother – but not all this. Did it upset him?’

  I knew it had. That much I’d been told.

  ‘He was very cut up for a while,’ Eddie said. The public school phrase sounded funny coming from him. ‘Well, you can guess.’

  ‘What did he say? Can you remember?’

  ‘We talked about it a lot. A real lot. It was a shock, as you’d guess. Not realizing he was Jewish, that was what got to him mostly. That and not knowing about all his family dying. And his mum, you know. Dying like that.’

  Quite suddenly I thought, You were in love with Jack.

  ‘You must have missed him.’ Maybe this was wrong of me, pushing him back to what must have been upsetting feelings. But I was angry that I’d been left so much in the dark.