by Lissa Evans
‘Robin,’ he said challengingly, placing both hands flat on the desk in front of him and leaning slightly forward, as if about to perform a handspring.
‘Yes,’ said Iris, uncertainly.
‘Bit of an enigma.’
‘Is he?’ She was disconcerted. Tom was far more of an enigma to her than Robin.
‘Something of a depressive.’
‘Depressive?’ It seemed an intense word for Robin’s brand of mild and self-indulgent melancholy. ‘I don’t think I’d describe him as a –’
‘Tends to be moody.’
‘Well… he’s quite quiet but I wouldn’t say –’
‘Mumbles.’
‘Yes, he mumbles. He definitely mumbles. It stems from lack of confidence, I think.’
‘Older or younger twin?’
‘Older. By seven minutes.’ Mr Clark frowned, and she felt as if she’d just given the wrong answer in a mental arithmetic test.
‘People always assume Tom’s the oldest,’ she said, placatingly. ‘He’s always been the leader – he was the first to speak and the first to walk, and Robin was always trotting along after him, and I think that’s why…’
Mr Clark frowned again at this excess of information, and she tailed off into silence. ‘I think the main problem,’ he continued, when the floor was once again his, ‘is that he’s lacking in confidence.’
Iris replayed the conversation in her head. ‘I just said that.’
‘What?’
‘That’s what I just said. About him mumbling.’
Mr Clark gazed at her uncomprehendingly. ‘I’m not following you, Mrs Unwin.’
‘I said he mumbles because he lacks confidence.’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I said.’
‘But…’ She began to doubt her own senses. ‘I think I said it first.’
Mr Clark looked around the room, as if for adjudication, or possibly a straitjacket, and then at his watch. ‘I think we agree, then, that he’s lacking in confidence?’
She felt herself dwindling in the chair. ‘Yes.’
‘He assumes that his opinions aren’t worth listening to.’
‘I know,’ she muttered.
‘Sorry?’
She raised her voice. ‘I said I know.’
‘Did you and your husband ever consider sending the twins to different schools?’
‘No,’ she said, startled by both the idea and the husband. ‘Why?’
‘It might have given Robin a little breathing space, so to speak. Away from the domination of his brother.’
‘But they’re in different classes.’
He gave a little moue of acknowledgement.
‘And they’ve each got their own room at home.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘And it’s not as if Robin’s ever done really badly in school. And he’s got lots of friends. And he’s never been in trouble…’ She felt like the trailer-trash single mom that she’d seen in a recent TV film, pleading to the judge after her boy had gunned down most of his classmates. Mr Clark looked at her impassively and she remembered with a surge of pleasure that Robin had described him as an ‘arsy know-all git’.
‘Do you know what he wants to do when he leaves?’
‘No, he’s – well, he’s not really too sure.’
He nodded, as if the answer confirmed something, and then pulled Robin’s file towards him. He uncapped his flash-looking fountain pen and wrote a rapid sentence or two in a script so rounded and neat that even upside down and from the other side of the table Iris could read the final word; it was ‘mother’.
‘So Tom’s sui generis and Robin’s your fault?’
‘More or less.’
Alison snorted dismissively and shoved her car seat back as far as it would go, crushing a boxful of ‘Save the Public Sector’ leaflets in the passenger footwell. The dodgy battery had been more than a conversational gambit, and they were now in the only vehicle left in the car park; Mr Clark had been the last member of staff to drive away, gunning the engine of his scarlet MG like a drag racer. It was – according to Tom – known as the Penismobile.
‘Of course, there’s a ritual element to these evenings,’ said Alison. ‘Any actual exchange of useful information is rigorously avoided. They either tell us what we already know or avoid telling us what they think we’re incapable of hearing. How many teachers, do you imagine, informed me that Lawrence is an introvert?’
‘All of them?’
‘That’s right. As if I might somehow not have noticed. And how many told you that Tom’s bone idle?’
‘All of them,’ said Iris, depressed.
‘And how many told you that in a secret poll conducted last month, Robin was voted “sexiest boy in the year” for the second year running?’
‘He wasn’t, was he?’
‘It’s that brooding shyness, you see. Mr Clark may think it’s held him back but he’s quite wrong. Apparently, when he split up from Stephanie Young last month he was utterly besieged by young women. Tom does quite nicely, of course, but Robin’s the one. The current phrase is “babe-magnet”, I believe.’
‘This is Robin we’re talking about?’
‘Yes.’
‘A babe-magnet.’ The term was half-familiar to her.
‘Swept the vote. Tom came second.’
It was one of those moments, occasional but recurrent in her life, when Iris felt that she’d been issued a seat with restricted view. On her side of the pillar she could see the familiar Robin – affectionate, gentle, somewhat lacking in impetus, Tom’s loyal and admiring sidekick – while the rest of the audience was being treated to the full picture, that of a Lothario. She shook her head to dispel the vision. ‘They didn’t say a word to me about it.’
‘Most adolescents wouldn’t, would they?’
‘But how did you know?’
‘Because Lawrence doesn’t come under the category “most adolescents”,’ said Alison, bluntly. ‘He comes under “utter geek” and therefore has no idea that it’s infra dig to tell me things. I can’t imagine who he gets it from,’ she added, ironically.
Iris glanced involuntarily at a photo blu-tacked to the dashboard. Against a background of sea and sky, Alison stood smiling beside two beaky bespectacled men in identical orange cagoules; it looked less like a family portrait than an illustration of male cloning. The cagoules suddenly flared more brightly, and she turned to see the headlights of Dov Steiner’s lovingly restored Alvis rounding the corner to the car park.
‘Aha, talking of geeks…’ said Alison fondly, raising a hand to greet her husband.
They stayed in the car and watched in comfortable silence as Dov, his long face taut with concentration, crouched by the headlights of the Alvis and started to disentangle the jump leads. The night was crisping up with early frost, and he tried for quite some time to open the crocodile clips without first removing his gloves, until Alison banged on the windscreen and mouthed ‘take them off’ at him. She shook her head and tutted good-humouredly, and Iris wondered what it would be like to see one’s child’s future incarnate; Alison would never have to worry about the source of her son’s peculiarities, wouldn’t have to torture herself as to whether they might be the result of maternal inadequacy, or environmental deprivation, or genetic inheritance. Neither would she have to fret long into the night about how he’d eventually turn out. For better or worse, one glance at Dov was all that was needed.
Whereas she herself…
‘I’ve never asked you this before,’ said Alison, suddenly, as if jump leads were present inside the car as well as outside, ‘and of course you don’t have to answer, it’s sheer idle curiosity on my part – but are the twins much like their father?’
Iris blushed. Incredibly, automatically (autonomically for that matter), after all this time, the thought of Conrad still made her blush. She ducked her head, embarrassed.
‘None of my business, of course,’ said Alison.
‘No it’s all right,’
said Iris. ‘I was just thinking…. thinking along similar lines.’ He had been eighteen when she’d last seen him – exactly the twins’ current age. She could remember the long chain of lampshades down the corridor of the hall of residence, each one swinging where his head had knocked it in passing; she could almost trace the dust on the spines of his textbooks, almost hear the midnight music from his room, vibrating the wall between them. The phrase in those days had been ‘chick-magnet’. She smiled, a little bleakly. ‘Yes, I think they probably are.’
12
There was something about the quintessential wrongness of green gravy that prevented Spencer from actually lifting the fork to his mouth. The pie looked all right – the pastry nicely crusty and brown, the meat in recognizable chunks – and the mash appeared to be normal mash, but the whole plateful swam in the virid sauce which the man behind the counter had scooped straight from the eel barrel with a ladle. ‘What’s that?’ Spencer had asked, revolted.
‘Licker,’ the man had said, with an edge of contempt.
‘Licker?’
‘Yeah. It’s traditional.’
Everything in the shop was traditional: the green and white tiles, the absence of a customer toilet, the almost theatrical surliness of the staff, and the orange tea, so strong that after half a mugful he felt as if someone had smacked him round the head.
He was sitting on his own at a marble table in the corner, tucked away from the draught of the door, but with an unrestricted view of the other customers. Three o’clock was an odd time to be having lunch, and besides Spencer there was only a quartet of yellow-jacketed construction workers, eating two pies apiece, and a very old man, bent low over his sponge pudding and custard. Sleet and a cold snap had left a pattern of lacy streaks across the window, through which could be glimpsed the shabby bustle of the Kingsland Road. The roofs of the cars were spattered with white and the pavement was a slab of pitted, grey ice across which the older passers-by walked with tiny steps and even the loping black youths halved their stride.
The morning Casualty shift had been a conveyor belt of textbook fall injuries – hips, wrists, collarbones and tailbones, wheeled out of the ambulances, into X-ray and thence to the winding queue for the plaster room. Mrs Spelko had attempted to speed things up by zoning the waiting area according to injuries. Spencer had heard her shouting ‘wrists to the left, to the left’ at a bewildered porter, and had shortly afterwards come across Vincent, his friend the psychiatrist, watching the scene with quiet wonder. ‘Evidence is mounting,’ he’d muttered to Spencer. ‘Recurrent grandiosity and delusional behaviour – in this case she obviously thinks she’s an air traffic controller. My file is building and I hope soon to have her removed under Section 4 of the Mental Health Act.’
There were now only six weeks left of Spencer’s contract, and he was experiencing the unfamiliar sensation of looking forward to something – to several things, actually. To waving goodbye to Mrs Spelko, for a start; to the end of the relentless shift system to which his body clock had never really adjusted; to the impersonality of Casualty, through which patients passed with the speed and anonymity of car factory components – a door bolted on here, a wing mirror there – but most of all he was looking forward to leaving hospitals behind him; God knows he had spent too much time in those places in recent years. That smell, compounded of antiseptics and air fresheners and bedpans, that atmosphere of fear and boredom and desperate hope, the terrible rattling sweep of curtains drawn around beds, the colours never seen elsewhere – jaundiced skin under fluorescent light, iodine splotches on bleached sheets – he never wanted to hear, see, feel any of it again.
‘Is there somefing wrong with that?’ It took a moment for Spencer to realize who was speaking. The man behind the counter had his back to him, and was using a large knife on something that crunched unpleasantly, but in the long mirror that lined the wall, his heavy-lidded eyes were focused on Spencer’s plate.
‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘I’m talking to you with the books. Is there somefing wrong with your meal?’
‘I haven’t tried it yet,’ said Spencer.
‘Well if you don’t like it hot, you won’t like it cold.’
‘It’s good food, that,’ said the old man with the pudding, pointing with his spoon. ‘Put hairs on your chest, that will.’
‘Right,’ said Spencer.
‘He doesn’t like the licker,’ said the man behind the counter.
‘It’s full of goodness, that.’
‘I told him it’s traditional.’
‘Licker’s the best bit. Go on, son, try it.’
‘It’s normally ladies who won’t try the licker.’
‘Go on, son,’ said the old man, as if urging a slow but willing horse.
The construction workers, having reached the fags and Sun portion of the meal, were watching with what looked like mild contempt, and Spencer could feel that the number of comments might soon multiply and darken. He reloaded his fork with as much pie and as little green stuff as possible, and raised it to his mouth.
‘Good?’ asked the old man, keenly, before he’d swallowed.
Spencer nodded, smiling, and gave a thumbs-up. The atmosphere lightened, and the construction workers went back to their paper.
‘You fought it would taste fishy, din’t yer?’ The man behind the counter had turned, and Spencer could see he was holding a decapitated eel in one hand. He nodded, still unable to speak.
‘And it don’t, does it?’
He shook his head. The man looked satisfied and slapped the eel back on the counter. It flipped its tail and Spencer turned away hastily. To be honest, the bolus of flavours in his mouth – gravy browning, cheap stewing steak, unbuttered, unsalted, lukewarm mash – seemed strangely familiar, almost comforting. He swallowed and remembered: school dinners.
He opened Microbiology for the General Practitioner at the chapter on food poisoning, and started to read, mechanically inserting forkfuls with his left hand and making notes in the margin with his right. He had brought his textbooks to the shop as part of a new regime, instituted out of desperation. Faced with failing both his exams and his promise to Mark, he had started combining the two disciplines. Thus, within recent weeks he had revised obstetrics at the oyster bar in Harrods’ food hall, sexually transmitted diseases while sheltering in a doorway during the ceaseless rain that accompanied the Lord Mayor’s Show, and paediatrics while queuing to see Santa at the Hanley Cross Shopping Centre. The latter wasn’t actually on Mark’s list, but constituted a long-held promise to his god-daughter. Nina had been so excited at the prospect of seeing Father Christmas that she had sung ‘Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ throughout the car journey and then fallen asleep in her buggy for the entire forty-five minutes it took to inch through the Pixie Glen. Spencer had found a textbook in his bag and been pleasantly surprised by the degree of concentration he’d achieved, shuffling along with the book held in front of him while a tapeloop of ‘Jingle Bells’ boomed from the tannoy. He’d woken Nina just before they reached the grotto and she’d been understandably cross and sleepy, refusing to give her name or even look at Santa, although she’d taken the present with a disdainful hand. The chief pixie helper had greeted Spencer by name, and he’d been startled to recognize a two-day relationship from a couple of years back, now minus a moustache, but sporting a little pointed hat and matching tunic. The helper (Simon? Stuart?) had been busy fending off the next child in line who was trying to punch him, so hadn’t had time to chat, but he’d looked well; it was always a grim relief when someone you hadn’t seen for a while looked well.
The really odd thing about that afternoon was that now, whenever Spencer heard ‘Jingle Bells’, he instantly recalled the five commonest causes of non-haemorrhagic childhood rash. It was a pity he couldn’t bring a tapedeck into the exam.
‘Enjoy that then?’ The counter man was removing his plate, and Spencer realized that he’d eaten the lot, green gravy and all.
‘Yes it was lovely,
’ he said mendaciously.
‘Spotted dick?’
‘No thanks.’ He felt a pang at the missed opportunity of the question; Mark could have come up with half a dozen replies, each cheaper than the last.
‘More tea?’
‘No thanks, I’d better be going.’ He checked his watch and saw that it was much later than he thought; Dr Petty had suggested he arrived at four thirty and it was already twenty past. He grabbed his books and coat, and hurried out into the cold.
The Christmassy decor at the Sarum Road Practice began in the car park, where someone had spray-painted fake-snow holly leaves onto the surgery wall, continued in a small way at the door (plastic Yule wreath), the doormat (‘Merry Xmas’ in Gothic script) and the umbrella stand (dangly Santa) and achieved full glory in the waiting room where no inch of wall was free of tinsel, no surface of beaming snowmen, and even the receptionist wore three-inch earrings in the shape of Christmas trees. She was on the phone when Spencer entered, and gave him a raking stare before pointing to a chair and resuming her conversation.
‘Like I said, there’s nothing in the book until Tuesday.’ She was in her very early twenties, black, slightly buck-toothed and strikingly well-dressed for the job in a fuchsia crossover top and black lycra trousers, her hair teased into an elaborate weave dotted with pink and white flowers. Even her nails continued the theme, each one a deep pink, encrusted with white dots like a mini-snowstorm. As she listened to the person on the other end of the line, she examined them one by one, first from a couple of inches away and then from arm’s length. ‘Like I told you, there’s totally nothing I can do about it,’ she said, scratching an invisible stain from her thumbnail. Her tone was mildly sympathetic with an undercurrent of deep boredom. She leaned across the counter towards Spencer and put her hand over the mouthpiece.
