Widows & Orphans

by Michael Arditti

  ‘Maybe he’d like to stay to dinner?’ Duncan asked, to be met by three distinct looks of horror.

  ‘That’s very kind but I wouldn’t want to muscle in,’ Chris said. ‘Mrs Neville doesn’t see this handsome young man often enough.’

  ‘True,’ Duncan said, trusting that his smile would offset Jamie’s glower. ‘How are things, Chris? I haven’t seen you since the Metropole.’

  ‘Now that really was a night to remember. I told you all about it,’ Chris said to Adele, who smiled indulgently. ‘Miss Lyndon – she said to call her Charlie, but we couldn’t – was everything you’d expect and more. I never knew you were such good friends.’

  ‘She stayed here several times,’ Adele said. ‘Scruffy little thing. She wore her bra outside her blouse.’

  ‘That was the fashion, Mother.’

  ‘Telling no tales, but she said you’d had an affair.’

  ‘You had an affair with Charlie Lyndon?’ Jamie asked incredulously.

  ‘It was a long time ago. I was still in my teens … that is I was nearly twenty –’

  ‘Do you have any proof?’

  ‘Why would I want proof?’

  ‘For me to show to the guys at school when they take the piss out of you and your lame paper. How many of their dads have slept with a celebrity?’

  ‘She wasn’t a celebrity then.’

  ‘So?’

  Chris stood up to leave and Duncan accompanied him into the hall, where he could scarcely refrain from thanking him. While trusting that a thirty-year-old fling would not be his sole claim on his son’s respect, he had not seen Jamie so proud of him since they launched their home-made rocket two years ago. Chris, meanwhile, intimated that he had something on his mind.

  ‘I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but I’m worried about your mother.’

  ‘In general or something specific?’

  ‘She’s getting so morbid: always quizzing me about my gran’s dementia. When the doc came yesterday, he wanted to give her a pneumonia jab but she refused. She said the first sign she was losing her marbles and she’d be sitting outside in the rain with “Do Not Resuscitate” pinned to her chest.’

  ‘The fact she can talk that way shows that her mind is as sharp as ever, but I’ll have a word with her and see what I can find out. Now you go home and relax. Be sure to give my best to Paul.’

  After sending Chris off with a handshake that would not have disgraced Geoffrey Weedon, Duncan returned to the drawing room to find Jamie holding up a hank of yarn that Adele was winding into a ball.

  ‘I hope he hasn’t been giving away any secrets,’ she said suspiciously.

  ‘Not at all,’ Duncan replied, flushing. ‘He’s just concerned about you.’

  ‘He’s a very sensitive young man. Well, they all are.’

  ‘Who’s they, Granny?’ Jamie asked.

  ‘Gay homosexuals … Don’t snigger, Jamie. That’s what they like to be called. He says I remind him of his grandmother. Before she went cuckoo, of course. He still visits her twice a week in the bin.’

  ‘It’s a very well-run residential home, Mother.’

  ‘Says who? He’s had to stop taking her out ever since she had a turn in Jubilee Park, screaming that he was kidnapping her and’ – she looked at Jamie – ‘another time. The keeper rang the police, who arrested him. But he’s devoted to her.’

  ‘She brought him up,’ Duncan said.

  ‘Still, I don’t know many young men who’d do as much for their grandmothers.’

  ‘You’re embarrassing Jamie.’

  ‘Oh darling, nothing could be further from my mind. I’m well aware what a busy life you lead. I’m just grateful you can still spare an evening for the old girl.’

  ‘Shall we eat, Mother?’ Duncan said firmly. ‘I don’t know about you two, but I’m famished.’

  He led the way into the dining room where he and Jamie sat on either side of Adele at the long Biedermeier table she had inherited from her grandparents. He pretended not to notice Jamie’s frown when Adele, who never thought to ask whether his tastes had changed, pointed to the prawn-topped avocados laid out in their moulded glass dishes and declared them to be his favourite.

  ‘How’s your poor little stepsister, darling?’ she asked after a few mouthfuls.

  ‘She’s my half-sister, Granny.’

  ‘Isn’t it the same thing?’

  Having explained the difference to her countless times, Duncan suspected that she wanted to dissociate her grandson from any blood link with Rose’s disability.

  ‘No, it’s not. And she’s fine. Great,’ Jamie said, as always playing down Rose’s problems to outsiders. ‘Mum’s taking her for some Botox injections.’

  ‘Really? I know she’s no beauty, but isn’t that rather drastic?’

  ‘They’re not for her face! She has a lovely face. They’re to relax the muscles in her arms and legs. She still won’t be able to walk but they may help her hold things better. Otherwise she’d have to have an operation.’

  ‘Such a tragedy,’ Adele said, chewing.

  ‘She’s already got to have one on her salivary glands so that the drool runs the right way down her throat.’

  ‘That’s not a word to use at the dinner table, darling.’

  ‘What word, Granny?’ Jamie asked disingenuously.

  ‘Drool.’

  ‘I’m sorry. So much slobber – is that better? – pours out of her that the skin around her mouth and on her neck and chin is really raw.’

  ‘That’s enough now, Jamie. Tell your grandmother what’s going on in your life while I clear these dishes and fetch the pie.’

  A debilitating mixture of arthritis and affectation exempted Adele from serving the dinners over which she presided. Duncan was happy to fill in, not least because it offered a temporary respite from both his mother’s chatter and the ghosts who surrounded him at the table. Depositing the avocado dishes in the sink, he drained the peas and took the chicken-and-ham pie out of the oven, its golden-brown crust a testament to the care that Chris had lavished on the baking. He loaded the trolley and pushed it into the dining room, where his mother’s face presaged trouble.

  ‘Did you know about this, Duncan?’ she asked the moment he stepped through the door.

  ‘About what, Mother?’

  ‘That the children at Jamie’s council school are going to be taught in Arabic and Kurdish as well as English?’

  ‘What?’ Duncan turned to Jamie, who was the picture of innocence. ‘He’s pulling your leg, Mother.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘It’s a joke, Granny.’

  ‘Not to those of us who knew Francombe in the old days. Enid Marshall told me last week that Wavell’s has been replaced by a halal food store.’

  ‘Pie, Mother?’

  ‘Just a small – not that small, dear! An inch more. I’ll leave what I can’t manage.’

  Duncan served Jamie and himself, and sat down to eat. ‘This is delicious,’ he said after a couple of bites. ‘Chris is an excellent cook.’

  ‘The pastry’s a touch soggy, but he does his best.’

  ‘What do you think, Jamie?’ Duncan asked, hoping for greater enthusiasm.

  ‘I’m eating it, aren’t I? Do I have to write an essay on it as well?’

  ‘Don’t snap, darling,’ Adele said. ‘Your father’s entitled to ask. And do take your elbows off the table. As my old nanny used to say: “All joints on the table should be carved.”’

  ‘Why? Was her father a butcher?’

  ‘Jamie!’

  ‘I’m surprised Linda allows it. Though I don’t suppose she notices.’

  ‘Mother…’ Duncan said, longing to give up the role of family conciliator.

  ‘When she has to devote so much time to Rose,’ Adele said sweetly. ‘What did you think I meant?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. May we just enjoy the meal?’

  They each concentrated on eating.

  ‘You could learn a thing or two from y
our cousins,’ Adele said to Jamie, breaking the silence. ‘They have perfect manners.’

  ‘It’s not the be-all and end-all, Mother,’ Duncan said, remembering the time she told a one-armed salesman to take his hand out of his pocket. ‘It’s what’s inside that counts.’

  ‘Not that I’m blaming you. One of the worst mistakes of your father’s life – and there’ve been many – was not sending you away to school.’

  ‘How often do I have to explain? I didn’t want Jamie being taught to repress his emotions.’

  ‘You always were a cold fish, dear. You can’t blame that on Lancing.’

  ‘No? What about the letter I wrote you from the Prep? I was all of nine years old and threatening suicide.’

  ‘You’re still here, aren’t you?’

  ‘Only it was spelt “s o o y s i d e”. Alison told me you read it out over breakfast and said that, if nothing else, school would teach me to spell!’

  ‘Go ahead. Blame me if it makes you happy. I’m the one who ought to kill myself, then you’d all heave a sigh of relief.’ She whimpered.

  ‘Look what you’ve done!’ Jamie said to Duncan. ‘Don’t cry, Granny; Dad didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Thank you, darling. I knew you’d understand.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Duncan said, as she clasped Jamie’s hand, proving that while not quite Ellen’s ‘common enemy’, grandmother and grandson shared a common scapegoat. Refusing to sit and watch, he jumped up, grabbed their plates and piled them on the trolley.

  ‘I wanted seconds,’ Jamie said.

  ‘There’s a pudding.’

  Duncan wheeled the trolley into the kitchen. After loading the dishwasher and taking the trifle out of the fridge, he returned to discover Adele and Jamie comparing notes on The Simpsons, of which Adele was an unlikely fan. ‘I’ve always found cartoon characters more engaging than actors,’ she said. ‘At least they don’t have their squalid private lives splashed all over the newspapers.’ Duncan spooned out the trifle, which Adele devoured with her customary relish.

  ‘Are you enjoying it, darling?’ she asked Jamie.

  ‘It’s sickening.’

  ‘Don’t be so rude, Jamie!’ Duncan said, thinking much the same himself.

  ‘That means it’s good!’

  ‘Really? How are we supposed to know?’ Adele asked.

  ‘We’re not,’ Duncan said. ‘The Tower of Babel has nothing on Jamie and his friends. They treat words like the Keep Out stickers on their bedroom doors.’

  ‘So? They’re our words.’

  ‘Tell that to Shakespeare and Milton and Dickens.’

  ‘Words change, don’t they? We have to look up half of Julius Caesar at the back.’

  ‘Yes, but gradually, by a process of association. Not by turning the richest language in the world into a series of private codes.’

  ‘Give me a break!’

  ‘There are districts of Francombe where you no longer hear English spoken,’ Adele said. ‘Soon we’ll all be left talking to ourselves.’

  ‘First sign of madness,’ Jamie said smugly. ‘Can I have some more? It’s spiffing,’ he added with cut-glass vowels.

  ‘That’s better,’ Adele said. ‘Of course.’

  No sooner had Duncan spooned out Jamie’s second helping than his phone rang. Ignoring his mother’s admonitory sniff, he answered it to find Ellen in a panic about Neil who, having come home from school with his face bruised and blazer torn, had rushed straight to his room, where he was lying in the dark refusing to speak to her.

  Touched that she should appeal to him, he offered to go round at once. For all his concern about Neil, it was the ideal opportunity to prove himself to Ellen, whose fears for her children constituted the greatest threat to their relationship. Bidding a hasty goodnight to his mother, who in return extracted his promise to come again on Thursday, he bundled Jamie into the car and drove him home.

  ‘I wanted to stay longer,’ Jamie said petulantly.

  ‘Two hours ago you didn’t want to come.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be spending the evening with me, not Neil Nugent.’

  ‘What do you have against him? He seems a perfectly pleasant boy to me. He’s just finding it hard to settle. I wish you’d try to be friends.’

  ‘Why? There are a hundred and fifty kids in my year. I can’t be friends with all of them.’

  ‘I can’t go into details – I promised his mother – but Neil hasn’t had things easy these past couple of years.’

  ‘You mean cos his dad’s in jail?’

  ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘Sue told Craig. It’s not like he was a kiddie fiddler or a rapist. He stole some money from the NHS.’

  ‘Several million pounds to be precise.’ Duncan realised that there was no longer any call for reticence.

  ‘Craig thinks it’s cool. Everyone steals from the state. He just did it big-time.’

  ‘Till he was caught. Now he’s in prison for five years.’

  ‘Which means he’ll be out in two. And they only made him pay back a couple of hundred thou. So he’ll be rolling in it.’

  ‘I’m speechless! You’re thirteen years old. How did you become so cynical?’

  ‘Practice!’

  Duncan fell silent. While aware that Jamie was goading him, just as he had done Adele over the Arabic lessons, he feared that contact with the Weedons was warping his values.

  ‘Are people picking on Neil because of his father?’ he asked as he turned into Granary Lane.

  ‘Who’s picking on him?’

  ‘His mother said that he came home in a dreadful state but wouldn’t tell her why.’

  ‘He’d better not grass!’

  ‘Come on, Jamie, there are more important things at stake here than the schoolboy code.’

  ‘Like what? Even his sister makes fun of him. He’s so gay!’

  ‘Really? Of course. It’s all starting to make sense.’ Having blamed Jamie’s contempt for Chris on his insecurity, he could not ignore its extension to one of his classmates, least of all Neil. ‘But that’s why it’s even more important you stand up for him against the bigots.’

  ‘Let me out, Dad, please!’

  ‘We’re not home yet,’ Duncan said, reducing speed.

  ‘I’ll walk; I’ll crawl! I thought you were in a rush.’

  ‘I want to tell you a story.’

  ‘I’m not listening,’ Jamie said, sticking his fingers in his ears.

  ‘Yes you are,’ Duncan said, pulling away his right hand. ‘There was a boy in my dorm at Lancing, an unpopular, unprepossessing boy, whose one passion in life was ornithology. He had a large collection of birds’ eggs, which for some unfathomable reason he brought to school. But – and you’ll have guessed the rest already – not everybody shared his enthusiasm. Three boys from the year above – mini Flashmans – came in after lights out and smashed the eggs one by one in front of him, while the rest of us looked on. Whether it was that we disliked the boy or feared the bullies or were simply mesmerised by the violence I don’t know. It was thirty-odd years ago and I’ve had much to regret in my life since then but nothing that’s left me with such an acute sense of shame.’

  ‘Yeah, well, just because you bottled it doesn’t mean I will. You wanted to know why I was in detention this afternoon. OK then, it was because Mr Grieve caught me scrapping with two blokes who called you a loser on account of what you wrote about us all being druggies and hoodies.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have fought them, Jamie. There are other ways to make your point,’ Duncan said, dumbfounded by the news that his son had defended him.

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t do it again. Not for you and certainly not for Neil fucking Nugent,’ Jamie said, wrenching open the car door and running up to the house.

  Duncan resisted the urge to follow, but as he gingerly reversed down the lane, he resolved to ring at lunchtime and thank him for the support. After a short drive he arrived at Ellen’s, to find her wait
ing at the front door. ‘What it is to be wanted!’ he said, hurrying towards her.

  ‘I’m keeping an eye out for Sue. She should have been home half an hour ago. But I’m very pleased all the same,’ she said, returning his kiss distractedly. ‘I feel awful; I didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner.’

  ‘There are compensations.’

  ‘What? Oh don’t.’ She ran her fingers through her hair. ‘I’m a mess. Come into the sitting room. What can I get you to drink?’

  ‘Nothing. Honestly.’

  ‘Please, I’ve dragged you all this way.’

  ‘Well then, a brandy. Just a small one if I’m driving home.’

  Ignoring the hint, she busied herself at the sideboard. Then, after handing him a glass, she explained about Neil. ‘He’s still not settled in at school. At first I thought it was teething trouble but it’s been two months. His head of year rang to ask me why he wasn’t doing any homework, but I’ve supervised him myself. When I challenged him, he clammed up. Finally he admitted that some of the boys in his class were stealing it. Why? He made me promise not to tell anyone. He said he’d … do something dreadful. It terrified me. But I can’t stand idly by. I went to see the headmistress, who clearly thought I was blowing things out of proportion. She all but accused me of being clingy. Why are they doing it, Duncan? Is it because he’s new? Because his accent’s different? I know he’s not the easiest of boys. I’ve told him that if he wants to make friends, then he has to make an effort. But even if he’s a misfit, surely with so many kids in his year there must be other misfits for him to latch on to?’

  With Jamie’s words fresh in his mind, Duncan feared that Neil had been targeted on account of his sexuality. He had no idea whether he were innately gay or going through an adolescent phase – if such a thing were still possible in a world where sex had become a branch of marketing. Either way he should be free to experiment without adult intervention, however well-intentioned. So he resolved to say nothing to Ellen. Instead, he would ring the headmistress in his professional capacity, claiming to have heard of several homophobic incidents at the school and demanding that she put her anti-discrimination policy into effect or face exposure in the press.

  ‘Duncan?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t you have anything to say?’