by Nigel Packer
‘Looking back, I now realise that Dad must have hit upon some idea for his work. Inspiration sometimes struck him like that. He would become completely immersed in something apparently trivial and lose all interest in everything around him.’
‘Yes, I know that expression.’
‘He meant nothing by it. Dad doesn’t have a cruel bone in his body, as you know. It’s just his way. But at the time, when I was a young child, it would upset me. On that occasion, it was particularly bad. I suppose, in retrospect, it made me realise just how much architecture meant to him. It also made me understand it was the only means of getting his attention.’
‘So, when you became an architect, you were looking to win his approval?’
‘To some extent. Life is never that simple, of course, and I’m sure there must have been a wide range of factors. But the incident at the penguin pool, and a few others like it, must have played their part.’
* * *
Late that afternoon, Otto woke once more. The first face he saw was his son’s.
‘Daniel,’ he managed to say.
‘How are you feeling, Dad?’
‘Not bad. A little tired, perhaps. And my head is rather sore. I think I may have done something foolish.’
‘Not at all.’
Daniel was looking down at him with filial concern. Otto thought for a moment.
‘It’s good of you to come.’
‘It’s good to see you again. I received your letter.’
Otto smiled, weakly.
‘I’m glad that you did. I almost didn’t post it. Did it make any sense at all? I’m afraid I’m a little confused these days.’
Daniel reached down and took Otto’s hand, for the first time since the days of the kite and the penguin pool.
‘We’ll talk things over when you’re feeling better. You need to build up your strength.’
With Otto sleeping once more, Anika and Daniel prepared to leave for the evening. Pulling on his overcoat, he turned towards her.
‘Would you like to come back to the house for dinner this evening?’
‘Dinner? Really?’
‘It must be lonely for you, stuck in that hotel. Suzie and the kids would love to see you.’
Anika looked touched, suddenly, beneath the usual reserve.
‘That would be very nice, Daniel. Thank you.’
Thirty-Three
The blackberries were fattening once more in the hedgerows, but Otto waited his moment to begin their gathering. He circled them at distance for a day or two, choosing instead to focus on the flower beds. Once these were done, he raked and replenished the compost heap in a corner of the garden, barely glancing over at the ripening harvest in the hedgerows. From the top of the heap of sweet-smelling compost, he stood and gazed at the milky haze over the lake. Splinters of light illuminated the distant vineyards. He seemed to forget for an instant where he was. Such moments aside, however, his mental faculties had grown no worse in the year or so since leaving hospital in London. If anything, they seemed to have slightly improved.
One day, while Anika was out shopping in town, he decided that the blackberries could wait no longer. They might rot or burst if left ungathered. Anika always encouraged him to wear gloves when working in the garden, but the battered old pair he usually wore lay discarded down by the rose bushes. This happened when she was not around to keep an eye on him. Otto didn’t mind the thorns and brambles pricking his fingertips. They made him feel strangely alive.
Having reached a decision, he made his way to the bottom of the garden with the help of his wooden cane. He had regained some strength in the fifteen months since his last episode of surgery, and carried the walking stick as a precaution, these days, rather than from necessity. Once he was close enough to properly view the hedgerows, he noted how abundant the blackberries were this year. Setting aside the cane and reaching upwards, he plucked one of them and tasted it cautiously, wondering if the memories would assail him. But nothing came. Instead he found himself savouring an intense sweetness.
‘They’re just blackberries,’ he said, with a lick of his fingers, settling down on his haunches to begin work.
He had filled two plastic bags when he heard the distant trilling of the telephone from the villa. Anika had turned up the volume on the handset before heading into town, one of countless small acts of thoughtfulness she performed on any given day. By the time Otto had raised himself to his feet and made his way up to the villa, the ringing had stopped. He pressed the playback button on the answering machine, which was also turned up to maximum volume, and listened to the message as he went through to the kitchen. There he washed the juice from his fingers and dried his hands on his old corduroy trousers. He kept forgetting, these days, that there were things called towels.
Returning to the living room, he picked up the receiver and dialled ‘return’.
‘Daniel? It’s your father.’
‘Hello, Dad. I thought you’d be out with Anika at your Pilates class.’
‘No, that’s on Wednesday … every other Wednesday, to be precise. This new health regime she has devised for me is more merciful than I had feared.’
‘I’m glad I caught you at home, anyway. I thought I should let you know the sad news. The demolition of Marlowe House began as planned this morning. We did all that we could … I’m sorry.’
Otto paused a second before replying with a note of resignation.
‘It’s a great shame, but the news isn’t exactly unexpected.’
‘There are some disappointed people in the profession today. I heard Jorge on the radio just now and he was railing against the decision. Wanted to know why one of our finest living architects wasn’t receiving the respect he deserved.’
‘Jorge said that? Clearly he’s mellowed with age. The last time I saw him – must be ten years ago now – he called me a prick to my face.’
Daniel smiled, despite himself.
‘He’s by no means the only one who feels that way. Many others are echoing his sentiments. An important building is an important building, whatever the prevailing Zeitgeist. It’s frustrating that we couldn’t get the authorities to see this.’
‘You’re kind, but I suspect the disappointment is far from universal. Plenty of people will welcome the decision, I’m sure. The real shame is that some of the residents wanted to stay in their homes. I wish we could have done something more, for their sakes.’
Otto was keen to know what had happened to the tenants he met during his stay there. Mrs Pham, he had heard from; they wrote to each other, occasionally. A few months earlier, she had returned to Ho Chi Minh City, to live with the eldest of her sons. She was readjusting well to life in Vietnam, she had told him.
But what about the others, he wondered – Joe and Roz, Ravi and the young lad Mikey?
‘Did you manage to make any of those enquiries I mentioned?’ he asked.
‘I did, but I’m afraid I drew a blank.’
‘Blast. I should have asked you to look into it much earlier. Everything I do is behind the pace, nowadays.’
‘I spoke to someone from the local authority, who confirmed they had all moved on some time ago. But nobody was able to give any indication where.’
‘Thanks for trying. I imagine they will be okay. It would have been nice to know for certain, that’s all.’
Otto reflected for a moment.
‘And they never even broadcast the documentary.’
‘I know. I’m sorry, Dad. I spoke to Chloe about it a short while back.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She was embarrassed, naturally, and very apologetic. She tried to persuade her producers to treat it more kindly, but they said the footage was less exciting than they had hoped. “Nothing much happened on camera,” they told her. “The old boy didn’t give much away.” And so they decided to shelve the film altogether. Ran something on a new comedy festival instead.’
‘Oh well,’ said Otto. ‘I never was a great f
an of television … although Anika, as you can guess, was none too happy about their decision. Nevertheless, all things considered, it was a more productive experience than I’d anticipated.’
Daniel, at this point, seemed to read his father’s thoughts.
‘That reminds me. Suzie asked me to confirm it with you. We’re still planning to make it over with the children for half-term, if that’s okay?’
‘Absolutely. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. We’re both looking forward to it greatly.’
Once the call had finished, Otto returned to the kitchen and emptied the blackberries into several airtight containers, colour-coded according to their degree of ripeness. He was following Anika’s instructions to the letter.
‘I think I’ll make us a nice pie this weekend,’ he said aloud.
Walking slowly down the corridor to his study, and leaning on his cane a little more lightly than was once the case, he pushed open the door and took his seat at the desk beside the window to study the trees. The soft morning light gave them an autumnal sheen. The forest had shaken off summer’s uniformity and wore its multicoloured garb with some style.
Otto paused to observe the orange-yellow patterning of the leaves.
She used to wear bright dresses dyed with henna.
Balancing his spectacles on the tip of his nose, he searched out some notepaper in the drawer, unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen and settled down to begin writing. One elbow rested on the surface of the desk, his fingers touching gently to his temple. His other hand moved across the page in long and sweeping strokes, sketching out the music of his thoughts.
Thirty-Four
Dear Cynthia,
This is the first time I have written to you since your death. Clearly it is an unusual thing to do, but unusual letters seem to be my speciality. I hope it doesn’t trouble you that I trouble you again.
Would it upset you, perhaps, to know that I write such a letter – destined for no eyes but my own? You might think of it as evidence of a deteriorating mind, but this is not the only possibility. For if that were the case, then how does one explain those other, earlier letters – written to you in life but not passed on? This character trait, you see, is not a new one.
I wrote a few of them, as far as I recall, completed and then crumpled them into oblivion. Clarifications, confessions, attempts to explain or justify my behaviour. If retrieved and flattened out by a curious hand, they would doubtless make for rather awkward reading. Other letters, too, less specific in purpose, offered you expressions of my love. One of these I composed during the early years of our marriage, in the first flush of discovery and wonder. Another was written in those blissful years before your illness; a third, in the days immediately after.
As they were written when I was at liberty to express my views in person, what did the creation of these letters signify? Emotional repression, I suspect, dating back to childhood. A wish not to make too much noise. Those conversations in the cellar, now I think of it, were always conducted at a whisper.
The truth is I was never too good at expressing my emotions. There were things I should have said to you more often. Haunting the space between heart and tongue are the ghosts of many delicate feelings; experienced, sometimes intensely, but never uttered. The temptation in writing to you now is to pour out those feelings with abandon, to record each moment you made my spirit soar. Your gestures, looks, words, caresses: all had the potential to transport me. Even outwardly trivial events could spark this inner alchemy. Listening together to Beethoven’s Sixth, or pruning the flowers in the garden; watching the rise and fall of your breathing as you dozed with your back to the warm sand.
Attempting to list each meaningful moment would border on the absurd, like seeking to isolate drops within an ocean. I could fill a thousand pages without pause. But time is short and I must move on to other, more pressing matters. One thing in particular I have to discuss with you.
Back in 1987, in the weeks before losing your ability to reason, you mentioned something that Daniel and I should do once you were gone. Several times you repeated yourself; at the time I put it down to your deteriorating condition, but in fact you knew exactly what you were doing. You spoke to us calmly, but with an underlying urgency, aware of the dangers that your advice might go unheeded.
‘Take care of each other,’ you told us.
Twenty-five years later, we are finally doing what you asked. Ridiculous, isn’t it, that it’s taken us so long? Yet during that time I somehow convinced myself that I was taking care of Daniel. In a sense, I suppose, one could argue that I was. Economically, professionally – I was a model father in all things practical. Yet my responsibilities towards him were also emotional. And that is the one thing I failed to comprehend. I should have reached out to him, in the period after your passing. My mad retreat to the mountains opened a breach that was hard to close. Daniel played his part in what followed, as the years went by and he became older himself. But I should have taken the initiative in clearing the air much sooner. And so a tale of slow estrangement that began in early childhood, with lions unseen and boomerangs unthrown, came to a head some forty years later with my offer to ‘correct’ a design on which he was working. Could a worse word have been chosen – the mood been more poorly judged? After the years of coolness, the constant miscommunication, my comment finally pushed poor Daniel over the edge.
There was a falling-out, and for almost three years we didn’t speak a word. But recently, things have greatly improved between us. Thanks to a letter (posted), a mishap and an unplanned reunion, he and I have become rather good friends. Furthermore, I’ve learned a great deal about the changing nature of parenthood. With the passing of time, there’s a levelling-out in father–son relations. Not a reversal of roles, exactly, but a gaining of equilibrium – a balance between one’s waxing and the other’s waning. Strange as it sounds, I have only just grasped this, only just begun to treat my son as an equal. I am thankful for his patience in this matter. He is certainly a better parent than me, and probably a better architect, so it is time for me to abandon my sorry attempts to play the patriarch.
Daniel and the family visit us regularly now in Switzerland. The grandchildren love the views of the lake and the flowers in the garden. I wish you could have known Gillian and Michael. You would all have had such fun together. They have the same boundless curiosity and love of life as their Grandma. Michael’s a very practical boy, a dab hand at Meccano and always making something new. He’s quite a sportsman, too, something clearly not inherited from our side of the family. He tells me he wants to open the batting for England, or maybe become a famous architect. He hasn’t yet decided between the two. Daniel, I am sure, will not discourage him in either ambition.
Gillian is more studious – top of the class at just about everything and with a boundless sense of fun. She started at her new school a short while ago, and already she has made lots of friends. She has a particular flair for languages, her command of German is exceptional, and she plans one day to teach herself Ancient Greek. When she told me this, I immediately thought of someone who might have helped her.
Both Gillian and Michael are always asking questions about you. Daniel recently made them an album of old photographs. They brought it over to show me, the last time they visited, and we spent a couple of pleasant hours leafing through it. A most affecting experience, as you can imagine. Some of those pictures I hadn’t seen in years. There was one in particular, taken on our honeymoon, which seemed to be a favourite of Gillian’s. I wonder if you remember it. You are wearing a pale-blue trouser suit, perched on the edge of a broken stump of column. You’ve just removed your sunglasses and your eyes are filled with laughter. Gillian thinks you look like Audrey Hepburn!
You left another message, as you lay upon your sickbed, and this is something else we should discuss.
‘Find someone,’ you told me. ‘Don’t waste what time you have. Try, if you can, to live happily and well.’
In th
is regard I’ve been very fortunate, in the decades since you left us. Anika, my wife, is a wonderful woman. I’ll forever be grateful that she coveted my binoculars. She gets on well with the grandchildren, and she and Daniel are perfectly friendly, these days. That’s something I never thought I’d be able to say. What is more, Anika has struck up a bond with Suzie, Daniel’s wife. The two of them are always talking on the phone. You would like Suzie, a serene sort of presence, a perfect foil for Daniel’s nervous energy. They have, it is clear, such a stable, loving marriage. I wish you could have lived to see him settled.
By the way, while I remember, there’s another piece of news I should tell you. A building we once designed together has been condemned to the wrecking ball. Marlowe House, our one-time ‘home of the future’, is at this very moment being demolished. We did our best to save it, but our efforts proved to be in vain. Time, I’m afraid, has been unkind to so much that you and I held dear.
How strange it was to wander the empty corridors, to inhabit those spaces we created together. Rediscovering the spatial logic of the structure was like unearthing the thought patterns of our younger selves. I was constantly reminded of those discussions we all had, round a table in our office in Fitzrovia.
At a personal level, it has all been rather painful, seeing the demise and destruction of something we cared for. But the experience has also restored my sense of resolve. They can knock down people’s homes, you see, but they cannot so easily break their spirit. The residents I met were proof of that. These days, as a consequence, I try to write more useful letters: to politicians, newspapers and the like. Who knows if anyone has the patience to read them? I’m not very good at sticking to the point. But it’s important, I think, even when one’s mental powers are in decline, to try to stay engaged with the outside world.
Well, Cyn, it looks as though our time together is drawing to a close. I must leave you now, for Anika is coming. I see her ride her bicycle past my study window. Soon I will hear the creak of the back door and the sound of her tyres upon the flagstones. She will be weary, after her journey to town, and I must restore her with a lunch of scrambled eggs. Cooking a meal for Anika has become my greatest joy.
