‘Nice lad,’ Milo said.
‘Lad’ came patronisingly from someone who looked about twenty. But Archie was supposed to be my godson, and he was nice, and I was heartened to see him coming out of himself.
I forget what we talked about over lunch, except that at one point I told the girls to stop feeding Rufus under the table and that Em overruled me ('Just don’t give him chicken bones'). The atmosphere was strained throughout. But the real trouble began only afterwards, with the treasure hunt, which Archie intended as a distraction while the rest of us helped Daisy clear the table. Natalie and Bethany closed their eyes while he hid sweets for them round the garden. We heard his ‘Cold … Warmer … Very hot now’ as they searched, and their shrieks of pleasure as they found the coloured wrappers. Then they all went into the barn, from which, after some minutes, they emerged dragging the large inflatable boat I’d seen hanging from the rafters. Archie had already pumped it up and it looked in good order, despite the dust-black cobwebs clinging to its side.
‘See what we found, Daddy.’
‘Can we sail it on the sea, Daddy?’
‘You said there was a beach, Daddy.’
‘Oh, Daddy, don’t be mean.’
Picking up on the general adult reluctance to move (we were sitting in deckchairs by then, boozed out, with Ollie and Em both asleep), Archie suggested they forget the beach till later and meanwhile fill the inflatable with water ‘to make a swimming pool'. Smart boy, I thought, watching him unroll the hosepipe, hook the nozzle over the side and turn the tap on. The inflatable was slow to fill, since the sides were surprisingly deep, and the girls — now in their swimsuits — took turns spraying each other. But finally water was lapping over the side. That’s the last thing I remember. A bee-heavy torpor had descended on the day, and, despite the shrieks of excitement from the boat-cum-pool, I soon dropped off in my deckchair.
I dreamt a barber turned up at my school carrying two cutlasses, one in each hand. He’d come to cut the children’s hair for them, but insisted on cutting mine first. I sat in an infant chair, with a graduation robe around my neck, while a class of eight-year-olds sang ‘Penny Lane'. Snippets of hair fell and became snakes. Then the barber turned into Mrs Baynes, who lifted a cutlass high above her head and brought it down with a scream.
The scream was Daisy’s, as she ran across the grass to where Milo was dragging Bethany from the pool. He laid her face down on the grass, pushing down on her shoulders and turning her head to one side so he could expel the water from her lungs. Or that’s how it seemed to me, as I leapt up and hurried over. But my view was obscured by Ollie and Em running ahead of me, and it occurs to me now that it can’t have happened like that — surely the proper method would have been to lay her on her back. The question’s academic, anyway, since she was coughing and very much alive by the time I got there. And despite Daisy’s melodramatics as we stood round — ‘God, she could have died’ — Milo said she’d simply swallowed too much water (he’d pulled her out just to be on the safe side) and Bethany, coughing and sobbing, said she was all right.
‘Where’s Archie?’ Ollie said. ‘He’s meant to be in charge.’
On cue, Archie appeared through the French windows, with Natalie grasping his hand.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Ollie said.
‘Inside,’ he said, unaware of the drama, ‘obviously.’
‘I went to do pee-pees,’ Natalie said. ‘Archie was helping.’
‘How were you helping, Archie?’ Ollie said, suspiciously.
‘How do you think, Dad? I showed her where the bog was and got some lemonade.’
‘With a straw, see, Daddy,’ Natalie said, brandishing a glass.
It was then that Archie noticed Bethany, tearful by the pool.
‘You were meant to be looking after both of them, you idiot,’ Ollie said.
‘Bethany’s only little, Archie,’ Daisy said.
‘You weren’t to know she can’t swim,’ Milo said, hushing them both. ‘And she only swallowed a mouthful, didn’t you, precious? No harm done, Archie. Let’s forget it.’
‘That’s sweet of you,’ Daisy said, laying a hand on Milo’s arm.
In his daze, Archie didn’t realise what had momentarily been alleged against him — wilful neglect of one child, paedophiliac preoccupation with the other. Perhaps over the next hour or so, he did come to realise, and that explained his subsequent behaviour. All he did, in the meantime, when Milo took the two girls inside to change out of their swimsuits, was walk over to the inflatable, heave it up by the rope handle on one side, and tip it over, letting the water flood across the lawn.
For myself, I think the blame lay with Milo. If Bethany couldn’t swim, why wasn’t she wearing armbands? When kids from our school are taken to the swimming baths, we follow strict rules. You can’t afford to take risks as Milo had done, chatting inanely to Daisy then dozing off while his daughter’s life was at risk. And yet he’d managed to emerge as a hero, at least in Daisy’s eyes. Arsehole.
Representing the likes of Milo makes Daisy’s a busy job. I’ve heard her talk about it so often I know what’s involved: the employers who call her up, hungry for good designers and art directors; the illustrators fresh out of art college who plague her with their portfolios; the talented all-female team she has assembled. It’s frothy media stuff, not work of the kind that Em and I do. But when Daisy places someone with a company, 20 per cent of their first year’s salary goes to her, and there are people on her books she has placed four or five times. I wouldn’t be surprised if she earns as much as Ollie does.
Once, on impulse, I went to her office. The entrance lobby had a high ceiling and bare brick wall, with a red leather sofa for visitors. Through the opaque glass door I could see figures drifting like ghosts. Daisy and her team, just feet away.
The girl on reception — who really was a girl, about sixteen at a guess, doing work experience — asked what my business was.
‘I’m here to see Daisy Brabant,’ I said.
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘No, but she’s an old friend.’
‘Sorry, Ms Brabant’s fully booked today.’
Where do girls that age get to be so confident? It’s not just a middle-class London thing. We’ve had girls leave our primary school and before you know it they’re waiting on tables in Sydney, playing gigs in New York, or getting their kit off in men’s magazines. This girl looked as if she’d done all that already. She wore a headset, with a microphone under her chin.
‘I’m sure Daisy will want to see me,’ I said.
The girl examined what I was wearing. Especially the shoes, which I’d shoved on in a hurry as I left home. They were black leather, scuffed from hours spent monitoring school playgrounds. Not artist shoes. Not CEO shoes. Not ethical design company shoes.
‘She’s out at the moment,’ the girl said.
If that was the case, why not say it in the first place? Till then Daisy hadn’t been absent, not in so many words.
‘I don’t mind waiting.’
She punched some keys and looked at the screen, tilting it away from me as she did.
‘She’s busy with appointments till after six.’
‘I’m a friend. She’ll squeeze me in.’
‘They’re out-of-the-office appointments. She won’t be back.’
It would have been easy to bully the girl into submission. But I had my pride.
‘Just tell her Ian called,’ I said.
‘Is there a surname?’
Is there a surname? The cheek of it. Was it likely I’d been born without one?
‘Just tell her Ian — she’ll know who.’
She looked interested at last, sizing me up as an ex-boyfriend or lover. Perhaps if I’d waited she would have found a gap in Daisy’s diary. But I was gone, slamming the door behind me. The poor girl would be in trouble when Daisy found out.
It briefly occurred to me that Daisy was hiding out back. That she’d seen me enter
the building. That the girl was being given instructions from her headset or on the computer screen. But that way lay paranoia.
In a cafe down the street, with a clear view of the entrance, I waited till six thirty. Daisy neither arrived nor departed during that time. The girl must have been telling the truth.
It was raining when I left the cafe and the streets near the Tube were crowded. At one point, my umbrella knocked into someone’s coming the other way. ‘Sorry,’ I said, but whoever it was had already disappeared into the crowd. A click of spokes, a boff of fabric, then nothing — two passing strangers who’d briefly collided then moved on.
I was surprised when Daisy didn’t call me next day. Apparently she never got the message, because when I told her, some months later, she was mortified. You must come another time, she said, I’m in the office every day except Friday, when I work from home. Ollie raised his eyebrows: get real, why would Ian make a special trip just to see your office? We were in the living room of their house in Primrose Hill at the time; I’d come down for Archie’s second birthday — he was playing with Lego on the floor. Daisy had cut her hair, which, disappointingly, fell only to her shoulders. By then I’d moved in with Em but wasn’t ready to introduce her to them. We’d been a trio. How would they feel about becoming a quartet?
I never did get to see Daisy’s office — unlike Milo, who must have been there many times. That was natural enough. He was on her books. Keeping up with his work was important to her. But as we sat in the garden at Badingley, with Daisy fussing over him, I imagined them in her office late at night, her colleagues having long departed. There he sits, playing his new artwork on a laptop, an eleven-minute video of bodily fluids (blood, sweat, semen) as seen under a microscope, a homage to the light shows once associated with sixties rock groups, but technologically far in advance of them, more sensuous too, and with gentler music. Daisy, watching, is a consummate professional well aware that Milo is married. But with artists, of course, that never counts for much. And she can’t help but be aroused by the intimacy — Milo is sitting right next to her, his thigh touching hers, the hairs on the back of his wrist catching late gold sunlight as he rotates the mouse and the video climaxes with a fountain of fluid.
Sometimes I get carried away, or my mind does, in spite of me. But without some basis in reality, where would such images have come from? I’m an ordinary bloke, a teacher, with a meagre fantasy life. So when something starts up in me like that, unwilled, I have to trust it.
Think the best of folk, my dad says, and they let you down. Think the worst and they can’t hurt you. Even my dad sometimes gets things right.
‘Forty—love,’ Ollie called as my mis-hit backhand landed six feet long. Three set points. I hadn’t intended the first set to be surrendered so quickly. Still, I can’t pretend I was giving the game my all. Any displeasure in losing was offset by the sight of Ollie finally enjoying himself. I’d been worried whether he could play at all. But here he was, destroying me.
He hit the next serve down the middle, on the line — an ace. First set, 6—1. What was that nonsense yesterday on the golf course about the tumour wrecking his powers of concentration? His game this afternoon was faultless.
‘Best of three sets?’ he said, walking towards the net.
‘That’s what we agreed,’ I said.
He had arrived in a strop, annoyed at having our contest postponed, and his bad mood continued through the opening games. But now, a set up after only twenty minutes, he allowed himself a smile.
‘You don’t want to change sides?’ he said.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
‘To make it fairer.’
‘What do you think, Milo?’ I said.
‘I vote we stay as we are. I’m just warming up.’
‘Hear that, Ollie?’ I said. ‘Don’t write us off just yet.’
‘What’s it fucking matter who wins anyway?’ Archie said.
‘Less of the language,’ Ollie said.
‘Piss off, Dad. You’re not my keeper.’
If I’d been quicker-witted, I would have accepted Ollie’s offer — or seen the unwisdom of lining up as Milo had suggested: ‘The visitors versus the Moores.’ Most tennis players fall out with their opponents, but when a father is playing with a son, or a husband with a wife, odds are that any falling-out will be between partners. So far the only hint of trouble had been Ollie’s reluctance to acknowledge Archie and vice versa. I hadn’t expected the hand-slapping-after-every-point camaraderie you see in doubles at Wimbledon, but their mutual avoidance strategies were eerie. If they were this glum with each other when ahead, what would happen should they start to lose?
For now there was no danger of that. It was my turn to serve again. Last time I’d hit six serves in succession into the net then left a lob from Ollie which landed in.
I didn’t make the same mistakes this time. My first two serves landed in the tramlines. Love—fifteen.
Though they weren’t here to watch, it was Daisy and Em who had got us playing doubles. When Ollie announced, after the pool mishap, that he and I were off to play tennis in Frissingfold, Daisy insisted we take Milo with us, since she knew he enjoyed a game of tennis, too. That she knew this added to my suspicions: surely hobbies weren’t something they’d have discussed if their relationship was strictly business. Perhaps the same thought had occurred to Ollie, but what really irritated him was having Round Two of our contest further delayed. Milo looked embarrassed — he must have seen that Ollie was unhappy at the proposal — and said he would stay with the girls. Oh, Em and I will look after the girls, Daisy said. That’s kind, Milo said, but three’s an awkward number and I mustn’t intrude. For a moment there was stalemate. Then Em intervened: How about Archie making up a four? You used to play a lot of tennis, didn’t you, Archie? Neither Daisy nor Ollie seemed interested in this suggestion; it was as if Em hadn’t spoken. But Em kept pushing and Archie — for whom his parents’ opposition was probably a spur — said sure, cool, he’d not played tennis in a while.
So it was that the four of us headed off in Ollie’s MGB, with Archie and me crammed in the back. The only cars we passed were vintage cars (there must have been some rally going on) and the countryside lay stunned in the heat: meadows, hedgerows, moated farms with dung-brown outbuildings, all sleeping the sleep of an earlier century. But once we reached the main road, the landscape changed. Sprayed acres of agri-glut sweated under plastic. And despite the blue sky, a pesticidal gloom seemed to infect everything, even the shoppers on Frissingfold’s busy main street.
Archie’s return was too pacy for me. Love—thirty. Then Ollie caught the net tape and the ball dropped on our side.
The courts were in the Municipal Country Park, behind high walls, in what had once been Frissingfold Hall. There were three of them, laid end to end, but no one was playing on the other two.
Archie sliced a backhand down the middle. Milo politely left it for me and I left it for Milo. Game to them.
Ollie had had the foresight to bring water and we stood swigging it at the edge of the court.
‘Shall I take the forehand side this set?’ Milo said.
‘Sure,’ I said.
My backhand is no better than my forehand, but I didn’t like losing so comprehensively and anything was worth a try.
The switch had an immediate effect. Milo passed Ollie with a forehand return from Archie’s serve, Ollie netted my lob, and though we missed the first break point at 15—40, a wayward volley from Ollie gave us the game. Encouraged, I went up to the net on Milo’s serve and put away a couple of smashes — we won that game too. Ollie had seemed to welcome us drawing level but he was cross at falling behind. His mood darkened on his own service game, which he lost to love, with Milo punishing two weak serves and Archie wildly misjudging two topspin drives. Father and son exchanged looks at that point. In truth Archie wasn’t playing badly, especially for someone who looked as if he’d spent the past year in bed, and Milo kept shouting ‘W
ell done’ in encouragement. But that wasn’t the same as his father saying it. If nothing else, a bit of praise beforehand might have made Archie readier to ignore Ollie’s reaction when his attempted lob sailed high over the fence into the next court and put them 3—1 down. It was only a look, a rolling of the eye, but still.
‘What did you say?’ Archie said.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ Ollie said.
‘Yeah, well, piss off, you’re not so fucking brilliant yourself.’
‘Go and fetch the ball, will you?’ Ollie said.
‘No one’s going to steal it, Dad. We’ve plenty more.’
It was my turn to serve, and I used the moment to defuse the situation, pretending I hadn’t heard the exchange.
‘Ready?’ I shouted from the baseline. ‘Or do you want to concede now?’
Like me, Ollie had doubtless assumed that Milo would be a hopeless tennis player, on the grounds that no artist can be good at sport. But now his eye was in, Milo hit some decent shots. Might he and I have gone on to win the set? Probably not — my own contribution was erratic, and all it needed was for Ollie and Archie to regain their composure. But in the event we didn’t find out.
It happened with the score at 15—30. My serve fell short, asking to be hit, and Archie, moving in, drove a topspin deep to my backhand. I did well to reach it, stumbling as I made contact and scraping my knees and left palm on the ground as I fell. If the high lob I clawed back was more luck than judgement, I enjoyed the sight of our opponents — both up at the net, waiting for the kill — coming to terms with the fact that the ball would land behind them. They dithered a moment, unsure whose task it was to retrieve it, till Ollie, with an impatient huff, turned back and ran to mid-court, where the ball was coming down. I’d hoisted it so high that he still had time to get behind it, let it drop, wait, steady himself and hammer it back. But he was thrown by having to play it at all and, rushing, tried to smash it at the height of its bounce. It wasn’t that he failed to connect — no shot that afternoon was hit with more venom. But instead of hitting it short to Milo’s left, where I was marooned behind the baseline, on my bum, and effectively out of the game, he belted it to Milo’s right. Which would have been fine, and have made a spectacular winner, but for the fact that Archie was standing at the net. He turned to see where the ball had got to (its flight and bounce having taken an eternity) and discovered the answer as it slammed into his temple just above the right eye.
The Last Weekend Page 11
