Inglorious

by Joanna Kavenna

  She was eager to see him, though she knew why he had come. The thought of him caused her a mixed sense of love and pain. Or a sense that she was causing him pain. As she said hello he stood and kissed her. He had been hopeful for a while and now he was searching and intent. It was clear that he had come to berate her. He had come there in an old pair of cords and a worn jacket, with a blue shirt that made him look paler than usual. She saw his hair was passing from grey into a more brittle whiteness. It was like fluff, or as if spring blossom had drifted onto his head. His eyes were tired, darting glances around the room. He kept fiddling with his knife. In short, her father seemed on edge. They sat under the wings of a fan, which beat a circular progress above their heads. For a while Rosa couldn’t talk, and then she got her breath back and her father said:

  ‘How are you? What are you doing at the moment?’

  She had the menu in her hand. She understood his point. Because it was only in doing that you could prove your commitment to being. Being, alone, was insufficient. Being was a state of idle passivity – anyone could ‘be’. To ‘do’ was the thing. We do, therefore we are. And onwards, she thought, turning to her father.

  ‘You look tired,’ he added, when she didn’t reply.

  ‘So do you.’

  ‘Well, that’s the prerogative of the nearly dead. But you’re young.’

  ‘You’re not nearly dead.’

  ‘I feel half so.’

  ‘Half nearly dead, that doesn’t sound too bad. Sounds quite far from the final snuffing out to me.’

  ‘Who can say, my dear child, who can say,’ said her father.

  They smiled at each other. There was a brief pause. Would they like wine, asked the waiter. Oh they thought they would. A nice bottle of house wine, said her father, looking at the price list with an eyebrow raised. An order was dispatched, and the waiter departed. Then her father got straight back to the bone, gnawing on. For a few seconds she pitied him, this old man, consigned to a house which must be – no matter how much Sarah talked and splashed her skin with floral potions – steeped in the past. At least Rosa was away from all of that, those synecdochical horrors, everything in her mother’s taste. She hardly visited him at all, for reasons of cowardice. He had come to London, a journey of several hours, and she pictured him sitting on the train with the paper, ruination on his weathered cheeks.

  She said, ‘How have you been, Dad? How’s your health?’

  ‘Oh not too bad at all. The doctor says there’s not much to worry about. That’s a vagueness I positively encourage. I don’t want them giving me a sentence. So I see the doctor as seldom as possible, and he stays away from me. He’s told me I can drink a bit, in moderation, and that’s much better. Horrible when you have to eat yoga bars and dry biscuits. Quite takes the pleasure out of things,’ he said. His brow creased and he was smiling very slightly. These things embarrassed him.

  ‘That’s good,’ she said.

  They ruffled their napkins and sipped their drinks. The restaurant was over-lit, and the roof was high above them. It made the place like an airport lounge. It was far too fashionable for her father. Simply a bad choice, thought Rosa. He would have been happy in a pub, with a pint of lager, a steak and kidney pie. He was pawing gently at the tablecloth, brushing crumbs onto the floor. He had been well, he explained. ‘And how is Liam?’

  ‘He’s getting married, I told you.’

  ‘Oh yes, when is that?’

  ‘Friday.’

  ‘And who’s the bride to be?’

  ‘Grace, you never met her. I told you all this, Father.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I remember.’ Of course he remembered. ‘Well, and you’re going to the wedding? Or staying well away?’ He was trying to be jocund. She understood why he adopted this insouciant tone. That particular quagmire was nothing. He had dealt with much worse. He had been ill when her mother died, distraught and abandoned. Of course it had been bad for her, but for her father – her rage and despair were nothing compared to her father’s grief. For some time he been alone, just the neighbours and a few old friends for company. He had his tennis friends and a crowd of local historians. But they could hardly fill the gaping void left by his wife. So Rosa always felt guilty when she saw him because she couldn’t help him, and, still worse, she had started to worry him. For months she had been causing him pain. It was clearly unfair. She should be taking care of him. Honouring him, even.

  ‘I’m going to stay with friends today,’ said Rosa. ‘There’s no point discussing Liam. I’m pretty much indifferent.’

  ‘Indifference seems unlikely in this situation,’ said her father.

  ‘That’s why I qualified it with “pretty much”,’ said Rosa, pertly.

  ‘Yes, I understand.’

  ‘How is Sarah?’

  ‘Oh, she’s very well. She’s redecorated the kitchen. And she likes teaching the neighbours Spanish.’

  ‘What are you doing now, father? Are you writing things?’

  ‘No no, not at the moment. But I have an idea. I wanted to write a history of the Avon Gorge, from the first settlers to the Suspension Bridge and then perhaps even to the present day.’

  ‘That would be interesting,’ said Rosa.

  Perhaps it was something about authority. Her father never really had any. Still, here they were, in this smoke-strewn room which Rosa had inexplicably chosen. He had come to see her, finding his way here. Probably he had printed a street map off the Internet, an X marking the spot. He had brought her an article of his to read, a piece on local shipping which had been printed in an obscure journal. He had neatly stapled the pages and put them in a plastic folder. He had stapled the pages and packed them to show her. Oh God, thought Rosa. There was no need to pity him. Her father was fine. On the brink of death, so old his hands trembled when he grasped the handle of a knife, but he was fine. It didn’t work; life simply couldn’t wander along if you assumed everyone was in despair. So she took the folder and said it looked enthralling.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  The rest was undistilled palaver. She palavered on through the menu, musing on the specials, listening to her father talk about the quality of the wine. The table next door laughed uproariously. There were two bald men in suits trading jokes and two women screaming with laughter. The women were dressed in plumage and bright colours, little heels. Virtuously, they had won the coveted plume, and now they were being fed and watered. The men had their ties in their food. Now they all laughed again, and someone to Rosa’s left scraped a chair across the floor. Then a knife clattered on a plate.

  ‘Loud in here,’ she said. ‘My fault. Bad choice.’

  ‘Shall we order?’ said her father.

  The waiter had arrived. They ordered. They had to raise their voices and as the waiter wrote things down the women laughed again. How polite they were! Or perhaps they are simply happy, thought Rosa. The waiter said, ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Yes, the pea soup,’ she said. Pea soup, everything is fine, just a nice bowl of pea soup, a bit of conversation with your father, then you’ll go and visit some friends, forget the TEMP, that word that you are investing with unjustifiable significance, as if to compensate you for your failed schemes, and you will return and go into service for Brazier, if she wants you. That’s that, she thought. That is damn well that. Now, on with lunch!

  Another couple sat down at an empty table to Rosa’s right. The man bellowed as he sat down. Now they were cornered. Trapped in a crowd of people talking loudly, all of them certain, somehow, of the justice and solidity of their speech.

  ‘You have to grip life, or it all collapses into chaos,’ said her father.

  ‘But that’s the question, isn’t it?’ said Rosa. ‘It’s a question of courage.’

  ‘… Like your sweater,’ said the woman to the man on the next table.

  ‘Thanks, thanks. I did my seasonal shop.’

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘Courage about what?’ said her father.

&
nbsp; ‘And Barry said, look, love, why not just leave your knickers here …’ said one of the bald men at the other table. The women screamed.

  ‘How about jobwise?’ said the man with the nice sweater.

  ‘Kind of OK. I do need to do more. I’ve applied for two jobs. One at CEA. The other was agency work. But I didn’t get interviews in either.’

  ‘Bad luck.’

  ‘I need a sideways move somewhere,’ said the woman.

  ‘HA HA HA HA HA HA HA,’ said the women on the next table.

  ‘And then I said what’s the fucking problem? And you know what Barry’s like with ten pints down him!’

  HA HA HA HA HA HA

  ‘I wonder,’ her father said, ‘what is behind your … your …’ Then poignant ellipsis. She was meant to fill it.

  Trying to be helpful, she said, ‘Father, I waste whole days in self-analysis. Don’t start wasting your time too.’

  ‘But you haven’t worked for such a long time. It worries me. It must worry you. I wonder …’ That was her father. As elliptical as anything. Always when he spoke about things that really mattered, he faltered. It was Grace’s old fatal caesura, except with her father it was less a caesura than total silence. Once he slipped into a pause there was nothing on the other side. That made her talk, of nothing much, and after she had presented him with a series of small things, cast and re-cast, pearled and knitted together, she paused for a sip of wine. Then the food arrived and they raised their forks. Her father said: ‘I don’t know what you live on. Why don’t you come home for a while?’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m not insolvent,’ lied Rosa. That was her congested lie, and now she would have to stick to it. That meant, and now she was furious with herself, that she couldn’t ask him for a loan. Failure of mission! Abort! Abort! Once more her cravenness made her fidget. She had her hands in her lap, and she scraped her nails together. Nothing to be said, she thought. Now you must sustain the illusion you have fostered. Even though he didn’t seem to believe it. ‘You must be living off your friends,’ he said, with a touch of scorn. He put a hand to his fringe. He had abundant curls – they softened his hard, thin face. His hands were covered in liver spots. They weren’t a long-lived family. Her grandparents had faded out long before seventy. They put in respectable performances. They dragged themselves towards the mean. Then the women became demented and the men dropped dead. Her mother had seemed to be robust and vital, with her bright eyes, her clear skin. She moved gracefully and well, and at fifty she had run in a local marathon. She played tennis with friends, even when she was sixty-three. She had good legs, fine broad shoulders. Now Rosa was saying, ‘I understand you’re worried. But I’m quite certain it’ll be all right. I’ll find a way to solve it, a way to live.’

  ‘None of us knows how to live. The quest for psychological perfection, for the right “state”, for “happiness” – my dear, we never troubled ourselves with this sort of thing,’ said her father. ‘We just got on with it.’

  ‘What was “it”, precisely?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This “it” with which you were getting on?’

  Her father paused. ‘It was a job, a wife, a family, money, work. A life.’

  ‘Whose life?’

  ‘One’s own. The lives of one’s family. Your generation drifts towards forty without putting down roots.’

  ‘Who’s that, Dad?’

  ‘You, your friends.’

  ‘Don’t worry, they’re all putting down roots.’

  Oh how they are putting down roots. All implanting themselves nicely. They do it well. Very well, thought Rosa. You don’t see the strain. It’s apparently effortless. Liam, for instance, look at the man. An indeterminate span of months with Grace – if we believe their story three months, if we believe intuition, rumour, more like nine – and already they’re going up for the legal bind, the holy blessing at the altar, till death do ’em part, and may they live long and prosper and the rest.

  Tell your father. Ask him for help.

  This is something you must do now. There was not much time left. The hour was slipping away. She had another course and coffee in which to marshal herself. Could she do it? That was the question hovering over Rosa as she sat there with a fork in her mouth. ‘Good food,’ said her father.

  ‘I mean, perhaps, that it is only when we are aware of the grounds of fear and hope, only when we really understand the nature of the problem, that we can really judge how to behave,’ said Rosa. Verbiage! Really she was thinking, Go on! Get him to lend you money. He is your father. It won’t kill him. Will it?

  ‘But that’s too much to ask. You want to understand before you enter into things. That’s quite impossible. You’ll never understand,’ said her father.

  ‘Yes, yes, I know.’

  Her father said quietly, ‘Rosa. I don’t want to put pressure on you to behave in a certain way. Equally I don’t want you to throw your life away. Of course I want you to be happy. But there are sacrifices. Some things we have to do because they are necessary, not because we want to do them. This requires strength of character. You have to arm yourself.’

  ‘I want you to understand that I have been trying to get a job,’ said Rosa.

  ‘Somehow your generation got spoilt. We must have been too eager to please.’

  HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

  ‘For once I agree,’ said Rosa.

  ‘Really?’ said her father.

  ‘Not with you,’ she said, nodding in the direction of the laughter.

  ‘There’s no purpose in misanthropy,’ said her father. ‘It’s too easy to feel remote from your kind. You judge them from what they show to you, not from what they are.’

  ‘How can I find out the difference?’

  HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

  ‘I’ve always believed in patience,’ said her father. ‘No one is superior to anyone. It’s just circumstances and luck that differentiate between people. You have to understand.’

  ‘Dessert?’ said the waiter. A slice of tiramisu, to go with your existential crisis? They ordered dessert. Rosa was mentally calculating the cost, wondering if her father knew he was paying. Only one more course to go and how could she supplicate? If she implored him would he help? Just a thousand, nothing more, and by the time that ran out she would certainly have a job. She would take whatever came first, Brazier or whoever else she could persuade to pay her for her time. They were silent, while Rosa struggled with her native spinelessness and her father finished the wine. All she had to do was phrase the question. Still she couldn’t. She was quite chilled by the thought of it.

  ‘And is there anything else you would like to do?’ said her father.

  ‘Alchemy? Necromancy? Automatic writing?’

  ‘No dear, not those.’

  ‘And Bob said shut up, darling, I’m trying to make a fucking JOKE,’ added a man to her left.

  HA HA HA HA HA HA.

  HA HA HA HA HA HA.

  ‘I was on a frigging roller coaster,’ said the man.

  ‘Dad perhaps I will come and stay with you some time? I won’t come for ever. Just for a few days,’ asked Rosa.

  ‘Of course, I’d love you to come. You should come soon,’ said her father. ‘Before winter sweeps along the Gorge.’

  ‘I’d really like to, thanks.’

  He wouldn’t be alive much longer, thought Rosa. And lying wouldn’t hurt for a while. It wasn’t fair. He had done enough already. She felt this was true – he had reared her, consoled her, supported her for many years, and he had always been kind. But was this cowardice? She had generally concealed from him her failures and small humiliations. She was his only child; of course she felt he had tried hard and she should strive to repay that. Why trouble him now with the truth? So they took their spoons and ate. Father, she thought. What have you discovered, in your long life? Anything to impart? All my other relatives went quietly to the grave, without spilling any secrets. My mother simply vanished one day, leaving no cl
ues. Do you have anything further to say? She imagined a scene in the future, a few years hence, not long, she thought, looking over at her father’s hollow cheeks, his shrivelled hands. One day she would regret her lack of resolve. So much would go unsaid. It was that sort of family. Why rattle the cage? Her father had waved off his parents without saying anything violent or unpalatable. They just talked in careful phrases, too worried about bruising each other with anything like the truth. Grandfather Don and grandmother Mary had vanished into the dark. Grandfather Don had been dying – he knew it, his wife knew it, his son knew it. Yet none of them mentioned it to the other. They all kept it quiet, fastidiously. The way you should. It drove her wild. Yet it wasn’t her father’s fault. His love for Rosa was so unobtrusive, so unassuming, that it had always made her crave his attention. He had been aloof, hiding in his study, at work on another book he would never finish. He was a master of inconclusive prose. Then he spent hours marking essays, his glasses on his nose. Rosa’s mother was the garrulous one, and she was always talking to Rosa. Her father would spread the newspapers across the breakfast table, brew up a great cylinder of coffee, and pass the morning engrossed, answering Rosa’s questions in terse sentences. ‘The chairman of the Tory party, Rosa. You should know that.’ ‘He’s the Minister for Education, a vicious man.’ ‘That’s the Chief Whip.’ She had only ever really talked to her father about politics and battles. She liked to see him animated – he had a good memory, and he talked of cause and consequence, the origins of the House of Tudor, the Restoration, the World Wars. Always she had been careful when she spoke to him. No wonder she couldn’t ask him for a loan! But it was ridiculous. He had the money. He would be angry that she hadn’t asked. When she was finally taken off to debtor’s jail, there to rot with the shopaholic and the incontinent and plain unlucky, the much unluckier than her, he would tell her she should have asked for help. But she couldn’t anyway, and that was the end of it. She simply couldn’t phrase the words.