by David Nobbs
‘Don’t blame Hannah, boy. She had the sense to see that it was not appropriate. Besides, I like the Cadogan. I have friends here. I’m in my element here. At number ninety-six I was a shadowy figure, surplus to requirements, a redundancy. Here I’m Roly, the retired taxidermist. Bit of a character, our Roly. Bit of an artist, too. Used to be one of the best taxidermists in the North of England. Not the most modest of men, but a bit of a card. Oh, yes. They don’t make them like Roly Pickering any more. You see. Hannah’s done me a favour, chucking me out.’
‘Dad! She didn’t chuck you out.’
‘Not in so many words, no. Just lodged the thought in my mind, and it was a good thought, otherwise it wouldn’t have lodged, would it? Don’t get me wrong, Timothy. She’s a nice girl. Big improvement on the Maggot.’
‘I don’t like you to call Maggie that.’
‘Sorry. Something you inherited from your old man, unfortunately. The curse of the genes, eh, my son?’
‘What?’
‘Bad taste in women.’
‘Dad!’
‘Quite right. That’s going too far. Nice girl. Best of the bunch.’
‘I’ve only married twice, Dad. Pretty small bunch.’
‘I was including Josie.’
Timothy believes that this may be the first time his father has ever mentioned his mother’s name to him.
‘Anyway, I can’t talk. None of your wives will abandon you for a plumber. There’s a limerick about a plumber.’
Next time, I’m going to see Dad in his room. I won’t make this mistake again. In the meantime, courage, Timothy.
‘There was a young plumber from Leigh
Who was plumbing a maid by the sea.
Said the maid, “Stop your plumbing,
There’s somebody coming.”
“I know,” said the plumber. “It’s me.”’
‘Very good, Dad. Very funny.’
Why should he worry that he’s blushing, here? None of them can see that he’s blushing.
‘I console myself with the hope that your mother’s love life was what one would expect of a plumber.’
Timothy has a sudden flash of inspiration.
‘I know what you mean, Dad. Late on the job and leaves off halfway through.’
‘Precisely. Well said, boy.’ His father’s voice drops a level, as if he is sparing his son more embarrassment, in recognition of his spirit. ‘I used to listen for sounds of marital activity. Well, an old man in a big house, lonely, with nothing to do. Sorry. Anyway, I have to say, I didn’t hear much, not after the first flush, anyway.’
The truth, Timothy. Don’t be frightened of the truth. It won’t bite you.
‘Hannah is…well…noisy, Dad.’
‘Is she, by Jove? She’s a goer? You surprise me. Always thought she was religious.’
‘I don’t think the two are always mutually exclusive, Dad. So Hannah was embarrassed to…do it…when you were around.’ Timothy lowers his voice. ‘We used to make love on Tuesday evenings, when you were out.’
Roly Pickering slaps his thigh, and laughs. He finds this really funny. Timothy is a little hurt that his father finds it so very funny.
‘Oh, my God. Oh, Timothy. That’s rich. Oh dear, oh dear. I’d have gone out to play fives and threes every night if I’d known.’
His father blows his nose, wipes his eyes, and suddenly looks serious.
‘You know the one you should have married. That one you ran off to London with.’
‘Don’t you think I don’t know that?’
‘It’s a bit late to apologise now, but I’m sorry I hit you. Only time I ever hit another person. Didn’t even hit your mother when she told me she was running off with a plumber. I want to say something about that. Do you know why I hit you?’
‘Because I lied to you?’
‘Got it in one, boy. Well said. Didn’t mind about the sex. There was sex, was there?’
Timothy finds himself telling his father about the three nights he had with Naomi, especially the second one. Then he tells him, as perhaps he should have told him long ago, about the night when he went to see Naomi in her sitcom, and later, in the Indian restaurant, spoke up for his father and the art and craft of taxidermy. The room begins to fill up, for quite soon the call to supper will come, and life and mealtimes are indivisible here, here life is as it is for birds and animals, a matter of eating and sleeping and trying to stay alive; people who once thought long and hard about the purpose of life feel that there is no purpose in worrying about whether it has a purpose now.
And at the end of it, there’s a moment’s true, peaceful, close silence between the two men, and then Roly says something he’s never said before.
‘I’m proud of you, boy.’
And then Timothy feels free to tell his father that the business, though sound enough, is nothing like what it was in the old days.
‘You were an artist, Dad. I’m a craftsman.’
Roly drinks this compliment in silence.
‘Hannah wants to make some changes to the house.’
‘Quite right, too. Drag it into the twentieth century just before the century ends and you’ll have another ruddy century to drag it into. Quite right, boy. Not a bad girl, on the whole. Doesn’t want children, eh?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Smelt it, son. The blind see things that others cannot see. Bit of a career woman on the QV, eh? Dare I mention the dreaded word “hypocrite”? She won’t run off with a plumber. She’ll run off with that boss of hers.’
‘Dad!’
‘That Mr Tit.’
‘Finch.’
‘Whatever. I could hear it in her eyes when she spoke of him.’ Roly leans forward and touches his son’s arm, affectionately. ‘Said too much. Fault of those with too much time on their hands. May not happen like that. Probably won’t. If it does, though, if it does, you go after that other one. That Naomi. One in a million, that one. Girl with sense. Couldn’t understand why you didn’t marry her. What came between you?’
‘God, Dad.’
Roly digests this in silence.
‘Suppertime. Time you were off. Timothy?’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘We look forward to our meals here. Highlight of our lives. I’ve enjoyed your visit. Today, supper will be an anticlimax.’
‘Wow! Thanks, Dad.’
‘Come again soon.’
I will, thinks Timothy. And, do you know, I haven’t felt at all embarrassed for the last hour. I completely forgot there was anyone else in the room. Maybe I won’t bother to ask to see you in private, in your room, after all.
Where on earth is Naomi? It’s past ten o’clock. Why hasn’t she phoned? Colin is always slightly worried when she’s gone out in her car. She’s not the most reliable of drivers. And her car is a very old Ford Sierra, nearing the end of its safe life. They can’t afford anything better. She has found no acting work since being written out of Get Stuffed, and Colin isn’t confident about his future, he’s clinging onto a dying sitcom. He suspects that this will be the final series, and he hasn’t an idea in his head for what he’ll write next.
The thought keeps going through his mind. If she was all right, and knowing that she was at least four hours later than expected, she would have phoned. Naomi is not an inconsiderate person. So something must have happened.
But even as he thinks this, he knows that he isn’t sure that he truly knows Naomi any more. She has promised to try other methods, but can he trust her any more to keep her promises? There’s a secretive, devious side to her now. He’s unable to follow her to all the places that she goes to in her mind. Besides, he has realised that ‘trying other methods’ can mean anything she likes. The minor victory that he thought he had achieved in Starbucks may be a complete illusion.
He doesn’t know what to do about Emily. She has school tomorrow and her bedtime is looming. She says she’s done her homework, but he hasn’t seen much evidence of it. The truth is that he
doesn’t know how to talk to her. He can see that she’s worried, but he’s helpless. She’s always been so close to her mother. He minded that at first, he felt excluded, a gooseberry in his own household. But he’s honest enough to realise that their closeness lets him off the hook, for he has no idea how he could be close to her. He’s also happy, to a certain extent, that she gets on so well with her father and his second wife. Again, it lets him off the hook. It allows him to keep his distance, be pleasant to her, be good to her, help to bring her up as well as he can, but remain uninvolved. ‘We’d better ask your mother,’ that’s the catchphrase in the sitcom of their life together.
This evening he suddenly knows that all this is not enough. This evening they both need to be close to each other. But neither of them can do it. The tick-tock of the grandfather clock that once stood in the hall in L’Ancresse usually sounds so mellow and reassuring. Tonight it is saying, ‘Another two seconds gone, another two seconds gone, another two seconds gone.’
Emily’s all right for the moment. She’s watching television. No problem about that. She’s no couch potato. She has no interest in organised sport, but she loves to be outside, enjoys walking even on her own, adores swimming in the sea, cycles enthusiastically whenever it’s considered safe enough. No, he can leave her in front of the television with a clear conscience.
He goes back to his tiny study and sits again in front of episode five. He’ll make one more effort to wrestle with the awkward scene in which one of the taxidermists is suspected of having sex with the other’s wife. This scene contains the ninety-seventh stuffing joke of the series. Even when one couple went to Greece on holiday, there was no respite. They went to Paxos. And he has been painfully aware, ever since he met Timothy, that taxidermists don’t stuff. The whole thing’s a mess.
He has realised more than ever, during this long, anxious evening, that working on the series is no way to try to stop thinking about Naomi. Her absence from it is palpable. She is making more impact on him now that she’s written out than she was when he was struggling to find ways to avoid her having to be kissed by her rival’s son. He has never admitted to anybody that writing those scenes made him feel very jealous. Watching them, seeing that self-satisfied streak of egotistical piss sticking his snaky, conceited tongue into Naomi’s mouth, was pretty unpleasant, but the real feeling of being cuckolded by a sitcom came to him not as he watched them, but as he wrote them. He hated them, but was drawn irresistibly towards them. Then, gradually, it had all changed. He had begun to want her to be kissed by him, because he needed to feel jealous, because otherwise he would feel nothing. He hadn’t entirely understood this, he hadn’t yet been aware that his love for Naomi was dying, but tonight, all these thoughts and half-thoughts are churning around somewhere near the edge of his consciousness, and still the clock ticks, and still Naomi doesn’t appear.
He goes downstairs, stands by the door, watches Emily. She really is growing into a beautiful girl, now that she no longer has the braces on her teeth.
He wants to go up to her, and put his arms round her, and hug her. He wants to hold her close and comfort her. But can he, at the end of the twentieth century, the century in which innocence died? Can he? Might she not think he was making advances? Might she not twist her way out of his embraces? Might she not accuse him of attempted rape? He’d read about such things. Not Emily, surely? Not Emily. Not Naomi’s little girl. And yet, how well does he know Emily? How well has he tried to get to know Emily? What does she really think of him? What is she thinking on this tense night?
He moves further into the room. Now he is standing some six feet away from her, yet he is continents away. She is a young girl, growing up and troubled, her hormones developing, her thoughts turning to…to what? Her thoughts are so far away from him that if she tried to transmit them to him, they would have to stop in Singapore to refuel.
And she is beautiful. What a gift. What a curse. Can he…can he be sure, can he be absolutely sure, totally sure, that if he kissed her…away, away, oh, Colin, you do not want to think these thoughts, but how can you unthink a thought that you have thought?…and maybe innocence has died in you too…can he be absolutely sure that he wouldn’t…wouldn’t…he can’t frame the words, even to himself. He walks out of the room, quietly. She doesn’t even know he’s been there. He stands in the lounge and listens to the ticking of the clock. ‘Another two seconds gone. Another two seconds gone.’
They are together in the house, and surely they can comfort each other? But no. There is no comfort to be had.
If Naomi is safe, if she’s all right, he will never raise his voice to her again. They will make a new start. He hasn’t been a bad man, just selfish and inadequate and insensitive, but he can be a good man, he will be, he will be a perfect husband.
Emily enters the room, and it’s the schoolgirl, not the stepfather, who has the courage to raise the subject.
‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Something bad.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘There’s something wrong with Mum, isn’t there?’
‘I think perhaps there is, Emily.’
The impossible hug. It dominates the room. They both want it. They both fear it. And still the clock ticks.
‘If there is, Emily, we’ll sort it out.’
Emily doesn’t reply.
Are they being hysterical? It’s only a woman coming home late.
Very late.
‘Don’t you think you ought to try to get to bed? You’ve school tomorrow.’
‘I’m not going to school if Mum’s not back.’
‘She will be.’
She gives a wan smile. She knows that his words are empty.
‘Goodnight, Colin.’
‘Goodnight, Emily.’
The hurried, perfunctory goodnight kiss, the contact of the two cheeks so thin it’s almost imperceptible. The shadow of the hug that’s not to be.
Two policemen bring her back in a Crimestoppers car. She’s deathly pale, her hair is bedraggled, her eyes are staring, her cheekbones look very prominent. Suddenly Colin sees for the first time that she has become terribly thin. She is grey and gaunt.
Emily comes rushing down and hugs her, but the answering hug is mechanical, the love in it is but a memory of love past.
The story the police tell is not so terrible. The older one reads it out of his notebook, as if they’re in court.
‘We had complaints from the Warrender Estate that a woman had been knocking on doors and causing a nuisance. She was saying to householders, “My name is Naomi Coppinger, née Walls. I have reason to believe that there is no God.”’
‘I didn’t put it like that.’
‘Please, madam, if you don’t mind.’
‘Let him finish, Naomi.’
‘Thank you. “…to believe that there is no God, and I would like to come in and talk to you about it.”’
‘Exactly! I was being perfectly polite. What’s wrong with that? I was enthusiastic. I was cheery. I told them that I was bringing good news.’
‘She was forcing leaflets on people, and was excited in a manner that made people uneasy. They felt that she was…well…’ The officer is embarrassed. ‘…not quite right.’
‘Tell them what I said to you,’ cries Naomi.
Her mother’s shrillness alarms Emily, who moves towards Colin, as if for protection.
‘Mrs Coppinger…’
‘I don’t like that name.’
‘Naomi, please!’
Colin speaks quite sharply. Emily looks anxiously from one to the other.
‘Mrs Coppinger was telling people that she wanted to banish fear from the world, but her manner was making people afraid,’ continued the officer. ‘We decided that this amounted to causing a nuisance. We didn’t want to charge her, she told us where she lived, and we decided that she was unfit to drive herself, and brought her home.’
‘You don’t stop the Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ says Naomi fiercely.
‘That’s different,’ says the officer.
‘What’s different about it?’
‘They have faith.’
‘I have faith. Faith that I’m right. You see, the world’s weighted against us.’
‘Don’t shout, Mum. I hate it when you shout.’
Emily grabs Colin’s hand and huddles into him. He doesn’t want this now. It’s unnatural.
The officers look at each other uncertainly.
‘Can you handle this situation if we leave her with you, sir?’ the younger officer asks Colin.
‘Of course I can,’ says Colin. ‘She’s my wife. I love her.’
The words seem to have no effect on Naomi.
The officers give each other doubtful glances.
‘Well, all right, sir,’ says the older officer.
The three of them go to the window, to watch the officers drive away. A curtain across the road twitches as they walk to their car.
Colin tries to kiss Naomi but she backs away. All his good intentions melt away.
‘You’ve got to stop this nonsense,’ he shouts.
‘You too,’ she cries. ‘You too. You’re just like them all.’
She rushes out of the room.
‘Where are you going?’ he screams.
He hastens after her, trips, falls, cracks his head on an occasional table. Even as he falls he remembers a silly joke – ‘What’s an occasional table the rest of the time?’ – but this is no time for jokes, he really ought to find another job, being a comedy writer is unhinging him. By the time he’s scrambled to his feet she’s out of the door. Emily is rushing to the door, screaming, ‘Don’t go, Mum.’ Colin grabs Emily, holds her firmly, says, ‘This is for grown-ups, sweetheart,’ pushes her into a chair as gently as he can, hurries to the door, and hurls himself down the steps and onto the pavement, just in time to see Naomi driving off in his car, her pale face hunched over the steering wheel.
She turns right at the end of their road at such a speed that the tyres squeal their pain.
Colin has no car in which to give chase. He goes slowly back into the house. Emily begins to cry. Colin puts out a hand towards her. She turns and runs upstairs. He picks up the phone to ring the police.
