The Friendly Ones

by Philip Hensher

  Tresco stared at his uncle, incredulously. ‘That wasn’t a charming picture,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t getting on with Grandpa so well. He was just talking at me.’

  ‘What was it this time?’ Hugh said.

  ‘About how he once ran something over and thought it was a little girl with ginger hair, when he was sixteen or something.’

  ‘Oh, that one,’ Hugh said. ‘And it wasn’t a little girl with ginger hair. It turned out to be a fox.’ Tresco disgustedly nodded. To have this story inflicted on you, and for no child to be killed at the end of it – the patience and suffering was still too fresh in his mind for speech. ‘I’ve heard that one,’ Hugh said. ‘He’s told it once or twice before. Is it true what your mother’s saying?’

  ‘Is what true?’ Tresco said.

  ‘That your cousin Josh is going to live with you?’ Hugh said. ‘Is that true?’)

  ‘Enjoying where you’re living, are you?’ Hilary said, coming into the kitchen with a ham sandwich in one hand. Lavinia was loading the ancient dishwasher, and stood up, flushed. Hilary set the sandwich down on the counter, and went to the fridge in the pantry. He picked up a toffee from the bowl on the way, popping it into his mouth. It was a quarter to ten in the morning. Hilary emerged from the pantry holding a pork pie. ‘Enjoying Fulham, are you? No – Parsons Green, is that what you say? I don’t remember Parsons Green, though I know it’s got a tube stop. It’s changed a good deal, London. I know when I was there – well, it was just after the war I went there for medical training. Your grandfather said I didn’t want to stay in Sheffield, do my training here, and he was probably right. You came across better minds in London. It was dreadful, though – I took lodgings, I remember, in Earls Court. It was either there or Notting Hill but Notting Hill was dreadfully run down and poor, and it would only have been a few years later it was taken over by immigrants and went downhill even faster, God bless their souls. London, it was really a single huge bomb site, great piles of rubble and maybe one old house, standing there in a field of bricks like an old tooth, terrible. And you handed your ration card to your landlady and she did her best for you or she diddled you, one of the two. I had one of the diddlers. I was there with my friend Alan Pritchard. He’d gone through the war, too, and was at UCL with me, too, getting a medical degree. Well, Alan Pritchard said one morning to Mrs Ratbag, “This jam’s got marrow in it,” and she said, “Yes, I know. That’ll be because it’s marrow jam, Mr Pritchard, my sister Dolly in the country made it from marrows she grew herself and sent it up for me, knowing I had lodgers to feed from the ration. Do you not care for it, Mr Pritchard?” Alan Pritchard, he said, “No, Mrs Ratbag” – he didn’t call her Mrs Ratbag to her face, of course. I can’t remember her real name. Instead of this, Alan said, “I would like my friend Hilary and me to be served with this orange marmalade on our toast in the morning, thank you.” And he produced a jar of orange marmalade. Well, we were all astonished – in 1946, you simply did not see orange marmalade. And Mrs Ratbag just said, “Of course, Mr Pritchard, sir,” and beat a hasty retreat. It turned out that his grandmother had a store of it – she’d made an enormous quantity before the war, when there was no trouble getting Seville oranges and sugar, of course. So that’s why I like orange marmalade so much,’ Hilary said, taking a bite out of his pork pie and going back to his study.

  ‘I wish …’ Lavinia said, as someone came into the kitchen. She stood up and turned round to make sure it wasn’t her father, but it was Leo. ‘Have you been getting a lot of this?’

  ‘Lot of what?’

  ‘Daddy going on about the remote past. He never stops.’

  ‘No,’ Leo said vaguely. ‘I don’t think I have. I saw him talking to Blossom the other day – she said he was telling her about what summer holidays used to be like before the war.’

  ‘I don’t know – but, Leo, is what Blossom’s saying about Josh –’ Lavinia said, but just then her father’s voice came, triumphant, from the study.

  ‘Rowbotham!’ he called – it was as if he were calling to someone in particular. ‘She was called Mrs Rowbotham. That’s right. It was definitely Mrs Rowbotham.’

  ‘Has anyone started an argument in there with him?’ Leo said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Lavinia said, but a sort of mutter had succeeded Hilary’s shout. He was in there rehearsing, or going over something, or just telling for telling’s sake. There must be a bowl of acid drops on the arm of his chair.

  3.

  The road had always been a favourite with driving instructors. It was quiet, and broad. Nervous teenagers could be brought there by their tutors to practise the horrors of the three-point turn and the reversing around corners (into Bradleigh Road) without much fear of their being interrupted by traffic. Those who lived in the solid Victorian villas down the street paid no attention. The A1 Driving School would be gone in twenty minutes. Hilary, in the front drive, washing his car, paid no attention to the Austin Metro that had stopped by his front gate. It was only when a woman got out and came up the driveway – a tanned, even leathery, face, brilliant blue eyes and a lick of glossy gingery-blonde hair – that he looked up.

  ‘You all right there,’ the woman said. ‘It’s your son I’m after.’ She had a strong, perhaps artificial Sheffield accent. ‘Your son Leo. I heard he’s back home for a bit.’

  ‘Leo’s not back,’ Hilary said shortly. ‘He’s just visiting for a few days. He’s around, I believe. Go and give him – hey, I know you. You’re that girl he used to hang around with.’

  ‘That’s going back a bit,’ the woman confirmed. ‘I’m Helen. We used to go running together. I heard Leo’s back home – my girlfriend Andrea told me she saw him mooching down Banner Cross. Well, she said she saw him, she was sure it was Leo Spinster. She was at school two years below us – we’ve got to know each other since. So I said to Andrea, “Are you sure it was him? What was he doing?” And it was then she said, “Well, he were just mooching.” So I knew it must be Leo.’

  ‘I’m sure he was …’ Hilary said – he was seized with embarrassment. A boy next door was standing there, idly following the conversation. ‘This is Raja,’ he said more briskly. ‘Our new neighbours’ son. I couldn’t tell the difference between him and his twin until two weeks ago. His twin’s called Omith. You’re not going to be mistaken any more, are you, Raja?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Raja said. ‘Oh, this.’ He brought his thumb and forefinger up to his throat, bandaged white. ‘It’s only got to stay on another ten days, Dr Spinster.’

  ‘The boy’ll be scarred,’ Hilary said to Helen, not lowering his voice or speaking confidentially; he had got her off the subject of lesbianism. ‘No two ways about it. It was really a stroke of luck. I was in the back garden, a couple of weekends ago, trimming the conifers against the hedge – they’re slow growers, but every so often they do need a trim or they’ll take over the whole damned place. Raja’s mum and dad, next door, they were going to have a party for their cousins, sisters and brothers and everything. I was just up a ladder in my garden, minding my own business. Looked as though it was going to be a nice sort of party. The people who had the house before, they were called Tillotson, never liked them.’

  ‘You didn’t like the Tillotsons?’ the boy said, from over the fence, with some interest.

  ‘It was a welcoming party,’ Hilary went on, gathering some energy as he went on talking. ‘Of course their father and mother have been there for a few months now, but they’ve taken their time in organizing something. The children are in the garden out of the way, and the boys have noticed something. There’s some fruit to be eaten, growing on a tree in the back, just there by the fence. It’s a Tillotson addition. Like the rest of us, I suppose, it didn’t much care for the Tillotsons. It’s waited until the Tillotsons have gone altogether before it’s prepared to produce any fruit worth eating. I don’t blame it in the slightest.’

  ‘Oh, Dr Spinster,’ a voice said, from the side of the house next door – an adm
iring, humorous voice, and in a moment a handsome woman in a dark green skirt and sweater came forward from the shadows, dangling the car keys from her forefinger. She was shaking her head and smiling, and came up to her son, wrapping her arm round his neck. He might be too old for the possessive gesture, but he put up with it.

  ‘We ate forty fruit,’ the boy said. Behind him, his father stood in the doorway.

  The visitor – Helen – looked unimpressed. She moved her hand up to her glossy head in a smoothing gesture, not actually touching the immaculate hair at all. As if the end of the story had been reached, she said, ‘So Leo’s inside, is he?’

  ‘Throwing the things down their throats, they were,’ Hilary went on. He turned to his neighbour, the woman, and spread his hands in a what-can-you-do gesture. She was enjoying this story, or making a good pretence of it. ‘But even teenage boys – well, this one, suddenly, he starts choking, faints. His brother’s seen the thing that you do, the Heimlich manoeuvre, the punch in the stomach from behind. But it doesn’t work. I knew immediately what I had to do. I haven’t been a doctor for forty years for nothing. I’m there straight away. I’ve got a knife, and open up the airways. That saves him. Then he’s off to the hospital and I wouldn’t have thought he would ever go near that tree again. Learnt his lesson. You see, the thing is, first aid, it will get you so far. But in a serious situation, what you want is a doctor. For instance, there was once, years ago, I was driving along one Sunday afternoon with wife and kids, when all at once, I saw a woman in near hysterics, running along waving her hands to stop anyone. She had no idea I was a doctor, or there would be a doctor in any of the cars approaching. This would be on the –’

  ‘Helen,’ Leo said. He was standing in the front door, his arms stretched up like an ape’s in the frame, and grinning. ‘What the –’

  ‘Just a second,’ Helen said curtly to Hilary before turning to Leo. ‘I’ve come to take you away. The pub’s open.’

  ‘The thing was,’ Hilary went on, laying his hand on Helen’s sleeve, ‘the thing was that this woman’s husband, he was –’

  ‘Thanks,’ Helen said. ‘I’m here to see Leo. Come on, lad.’

  Hilary was still talking as they got into the car, a note of complaint and resentment creeping in.

  ‘Your mum’s in hospital, isn’t she? Probably enjoying the peace and quiet,’ Helen said, reversing. Somewhere back there, a brother or something was trying to put a jacket on to follow Leo and escape with them; he was being detained by Hilary, introducing him to the charming neighbours. ‘I’m sorry. I could never stand your dad. I don’t mean any disrespect to your mum, naturally.’

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Leo said. ‘A brown Austin? What came over you?’

  ‘My mother’s got an unacceptable turn of phrase for the shade,’ Helen said tranquilly. ‘I’m not convinced it wasn’t the original name for it, fifteen years back.’

  4.

  Sharif shut the front door behind them; Raja went upstairs. They might have been counting until he was out of earshot.

  ‘The way that boy walked away,’ Nazia said.

  ‘It’s just how some families are,’ Sharif said.

  ‘His father was still talking,’ Nazia said. ‘And the grandson, too – Dr Spinster was just saying who we were and who the grandson was. It was very nice of him. And the grandson just walked away before he was finished.’

  ‘Learnt it from his father, I expect.’

  ‘Well, I just don’t understand it,’ Nazia said. ‘And I can’t understand why Dr Spinster doesn’t do something about it, his own family being like that.’

  ‘I think he’s used to it,’ Sharif said. He rubbed his nose with the flat of his palm, made the snorting noise he made when they were unheard. ‘He went on talking until there was no one left to listen to him. I just don’t understand them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘People. People in this country, really. If the boys ever –’

  ‘They won’t.’

  ‘Now I understand him. Dr Spinster. It’s like a rotary engine running on and on without anything to slow it down. No belt, no friction, just spinning on and on. He’s talking and they look at him and walk away. He’d do anything to get them to listen. I don’t know how things get like that in a family.’

  ‘Someone’s told the children they don’t need to listen to their father.’

  ‘She wouldn’t do that,’ Sharif said. ‘Nobody would say that to their children. I can’t believe it of her.’

  ‘You don’t know her,’ Nazia said.

  The pub Leo and Helen went to was the pub they were always going to go to. It was a 1930s brick roadhouse, built at the edge of the city and clinging to a steep collapse of moor behind. The front of the pub had two storeys; the back had four, a now unused dining room and a deep cellar filling the gap. It had never been very successful: built to catch travellers going to Manchester, or arriving from there, it had discovered that travellers rarely wanted to fill up with one last chance before heading off on the thirty or so miles to the next city, or were so desperate on arriving that they couldn’t go a little further. Leo was touched that Helen had come here without asking. They went to the Tyler Arms because that was where they had always gone.

  And Jack the landlord was still there. Leo had to suppress an inclination to walk in with artificially rigid arm-swings. This was the pub they’d come to because the landlord would serve even a fifteen-year-old. It was some years later that they realized the pub was so short of custom that it thought it could spot a policeman, and take a risk. In the early seventies, it was more important to impersonate a grown-up. They didn’t know the landlord’s name was Jack. He just looked like a Jack, and J was his initial in the licence over the door. There was nobody there, in the afternoon.

  ‘Andrea saw you,’ Helen said. They were settled with a pint each. ‘You remember Andrea? We’ve been together six years now. She’s pregnant – in fact, she was on her way to her six-month check-up when she saw you.’

  ‘How does that work, then?’ Leo said. ‘The impregnation, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Leo,’ Helen said. ‘It’s none of your fucking business. We just did it with the aid of some sperm, all right?’

  ‘Yeah, but fresh sperm – it’s not exactly lying about on the street, is it? What did you do?’

  ‘Leo,’ Helen said. ‘You can ask whatever questions you like. I am not going to take you through the process in detail.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Leo said. ‘You’ve taken your time. I was twenty-two when Catherine had Josh. He’s twelve now.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t have to plan and organize like we did,’ Helen said. ‘Actually, no, we were lucky, we just found a jar of top-quality sperm on the street and thought, That’s as good as any. What’s up with Catherine?’

  ‘We split up years ago,’ Leo said. ‘You wake up one morning and you look at the other person, and you think, I don’t know about this any more. I had this real moment of generosity. I thought, You could do better with someone other than me.’

  ‘Has she got someone else, then?’

  ‘No. She’s not. She says it’s tough out there for a woman with a child. No one’s interested. It’s unfair – women like a man with a kid, left on his own. Other way round – brings out the maternal.’

  ‘This conversation is exactly why I never had the slightest regret in putting men like you behind me,’ Helen said.

  ‘I just can’t understand why you went lesbian,’ Leo said. ‘I’d never have thought it while we were together.’

  ‘We were never together, Leo,’ Helen said. ‘We had it off five times. That was it. Another pint?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  Helen, he saw, had a distinctive way of standing at the bar, not masculine but head up and elbows out. She had bought the last round, too.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ Leo said, when she came back.

  ‘And you,’ Helen said. ‘You want to come up to Sheffield more often
. We’d ask you to be the godfather to our child, except that obviously we’re not going to ask someone who abandoned his own child.’

  ‘I’ve not abandoned my own child.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? What’s going on with your dad? Where’s your mum? She always used to be able to shut him up.’

  ‘She’s dying, love,’ Leo said. He was oddly pleased to be able to say something so abrupt, something that would change the whole conversation. He had noticed this in himself before, the eagerness to carry news, whether some public catastrophe, a bombing or the death of a celebrity, or some family event. He deplored it in himself, the wish to place himself at the centre of events, as the first bearer of news. But he had to tell Helen that his mother was dying.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Helen said formally. She took a swig of beer; she continued in exactly the same tone of voice. Leo recognized Helen, the way she had of refusing to be embarrassed or put in the wrong. ‘I always liked your mum. Is she in hospital?’

  ‘In the Northern General,’ Leo said. ‘She was supposed to come home, but she’s developed an infection – it’s cancer of the bowel. She could come out of this and carry on for a while and come home. Or you never know.’

  ‘You’re all up here, then,’ Helen said. ‘Your brother and sister – both your sisters. Your dad, though.’

  ‘Sometimes I wish my mum and dad had married different people. What size children did they think the pair of them were going to produce? My sister’s four foot eleven.’

  ‘And you’re five foot one,’ Helen said. ‘On a good day. The grandchildren are all right, though. They’re up to normal, the ones I’ve seen.’

  The bar of the pub was unchanged in nearly twenty years. Even the spider plant on the windowsill, dead and dusty, had not been moved, and the horse brasses in a vertical line on the wooden panelling between the two leaded windows made the same claim to hearty gentility. Jack, in his usual brown cardigan, had poured their pints, and now returned to his usual occupation, working with a much-sucked biro at the Telegraph crossword, bent over underneath the long run of empty glasses, suspended in their wooden cage above his head. The television was on, and showing some curious sport from where it hung above the dangling dartboard; two men carefully stood on a green expanse, judged, calculated, then sent a ball spinning forward to come to rest through momentum where they had planned or, disappointingly, some distance from where they had wished it to come to rest.