Teresa appeared at his door a few minutes later, not looking groggy at all, though the edges of her hair were wet from where she’d washed her face. She asked about Pip and he told her about the trip to the lawyer.
‘Poor old Pip,’ she said. ‘She can stay with me. When do we go to the hospital again?’ There wasn’t a trace of the aggression she’d shown at lunch.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to go.’ She’d spoken evenly, a flat declaration.
‘I think it would be a good idea to have the scan.’
‘I don’t feel anything any more. My head feels normal. I think I’m going to be all right. Tomorrow is my day with the girls. I’m booked.’
All her r’s were guttural, the uvula giving its series of taps as the larynx vibrated and the back of her tongue rose towards the soft palate. With effort he prevented himself from staring at this hidden miracle. He had to get used to it. ‘I’m sure Steph will understand.’
‘It’s a real nuisance, Paddy.’ She smiled at him. ‘I bet you’re cursing the day you told me the place next door was for sale.’
‘With neighbours, it’s all luck, isn’t it.’ He stood up to open the front door for her. ‘I think it’s very cool having a French mother.’
‘Cool? The word seems too young for you, Paddy. Cool.’
He kissed her lightly on the cheek. Her skin was dry, vaguely powdery, impossibly soft, velvety, and for a moment he rested his own cheek against hers. She let him do this. They’d not touched much. It was for Stephanie to kiss and hold their mother, to rub the back of her hand, to feel the lined and pale instep of her bare foot—he’d watched this the previous summer, when Teresa was complaining of the pinch of a new pair of sandals. Somehow Stephanie had always had this job, this right. She’d held a finger down just below their mother’s ankle. ‘It’s your pulse! Look, your life-source,’ she said. Then she’d quickly taken her finger off. ‘Don’t really like to know that.’
He couldn’t sleep. Helena shifted slightly beside him as he got out of bed but she didn’t wake up. They’d finished a bottle of wine between them, which was more than they usually drank. This was by way of a mini-celebration. As far as anyone could tell, the day with Trish Gibbons had gone off smoothly, amicably, though the word ‘successful’ was banned. There were no on-the-spot results and Helena had of course not been present when the interviews of students, past and present, were taking place. But unless Trish was especially duplicitous and tricky, and there’d been some left-field report from a previously silent complainer, Helena thought her school would come out okay. Now she was tired in an altogether new way, relief-tired, and she’d fallen asleep on the sofa, more or less in the middle of a conversation. He’d had to wake her to get her to the bedroom. He helped her take off her shoes and her clothes. She slurred at him. Touching her body, he felt something that must have been close to what he’d read described as a twinge of sadness. It occurred in his penis. So that’s what they meant!
He went into his office and tried to read a book but his concentration wasn’t there. He read Julie’s poem again. He thought, I’ll put this on the wall instead of the missing cartoon portrait. This is much better. He put a coat over his boxer shorts and teeshirt and left the apartment barefoot. He stopped outside his mother’s door, and then, hearing nothing, walked along the corridor in the direction of the lift. It was just after 11pm. He considered going for a bike ride but his gear was in the bedroom and the noise might wake Helena. There was an unreleased energy in him, something spring-loaded. It wasn’t wholly connected with his sleeping beauty.
He was just turning at the end of the corridor, to head back to the apartment, when the doors of the lift opened and Geoff Harley stepped out. He was carrying a solid black case, a little like something used for musical instruments, brass perhaps. It was Thursday night. Geoff’s mystery outing. He’d moved a step back at first, trying to take in Paddy’s form. The corridor was dimly lit. The lift door closed on his case and he pulled it free, the doors opening and shutting again.
‘Hello, Geoff. Sorry for creeping around, couldn’t sleep.’
‘Thought I was going to be mugged for a second there, Paddy. You almost got this swung at your privates.’ He held up the case. ‘The lift saved you an injury. Are you worried about the people in the alley?’
‘The drug dealers? Life’s rich tapestry I think. Until they mug me. So far so good.’ He gestured towards the case. ‘Do you play?’
‘Play? Yes, I do. Though not quite what you think.’
Paddy had started to move off. ‘Okay. Well, good night.’
‘Is your mother well? I hope she’s better.’
Paddy turned back. He said she was and he thanked him for bringing her to the apartment. ‘It all went a bit crazy for a while. But we’re sorted now.’
‘I’m so glad to hear that. No problem.’ Geoff Harley stood in the same spot, waiting for something. This was what he wanted in exchange for helping his mother, curiosity about his own life. In the stories Paddy and Helena had invented to explain these Thursdays, Geoff Harley was a Mason attending lodge meetings, a preacher in some small evangelical church, a card-player off to a back room filled with other architects, the father of an illegitimate child who had secret assignations, which was why his wife couldn’t know.
They’d not seen the black case except from a distance—once they’d come out of their apartment as Geoff was disappearing into the lift. He was some sort of doctor in an occult medicine.
‘My guess is the trumpet,’ said Paddy, motioning towards the case.
‘Sorry,’ said Geoff, smiling.
‘Clarinet? I don’t know.’
‘Barking up the wrong tree, I’m afraid.’
He wanted this curiosity endlessly deferred, toyed with, extended.
‘You carry a gun in there.’
‘Ha!’
‘A pool cue, with screw-in parts.’
‘Used to play at my uncle’s place, but no.’
‘Some sort of equipment for measuring the light coming off buildings at night.’
‘Oh, it’s not work in here, believe me. No.’
Paddy smiled. Geoff Harley was Sam Covenay’s inverse image, the speaker who wanted it never to end. ‘So nothing medical? A stethoscope? Instruments of torture?’
‘I love this! Torture?’
‘Okay, okay. There’s nothing in there at all, Geoff, you walk around for three hours pretending you have something in there so people think you’re a mysterious person but really the thing is empty.’
Geoff touched his chin with a finger pensively. ‘Mmm, I quite like that notion.’
They stood in the gloom of the corridor, a wave of tiredness finally passing through Paddy. Immediately he felt sluggish, weak, ready for sleep. ‘Will you show me?’ he said.
Geoff placed the case on the floor and flicked open the silver latches. ‘I warn you, this is something that Rebecca, for instance, finds rather objectionable. You might too. Maybe I shouldn’t show you.’ He looked up at Paddy, seeming to notice for the first time the coat, his bare feet. ‘How often do you walk these corridors at night?’
‘Never. First time.’
‘Okay. I was just wondering whether I was missing out on something.’
‘Nope.’
He lifted the lid of the case and shifted it around so that Paddy could see inside. There were four compartments. In one of them was some sort of electrical transformer, with a cord and plug. Another held a console with dials and switches, and the other two contained toy cars, about eight inches long, fitted into cushioned slots, their sides visible.
‘I can see Rebecca’s point,’ said Paddy.
‘You understand now?’
‘Yes, I do.’ Paddy bent down on his haunches. He was side by side with Geoff, looking into the case. ‘May I?’
‘Let me,’ said Geoff. He gently pulled at one of the cars and it came out of its slot. He handed it to Paddy with some care.
; It was heavier than he expected, solid, the body metal, the little tyres appeared to be rubber, not plastic. The blue and gold paintwork shiny and thick, enamel. Expensive, no doubt. Crafted. Obsessed over. He was aware that Geoff was studying his face, gauging his reaction. It was the sort of look new parents gave you when they agreed you could handle their baby for the first time.
‘Quite heavy, isn’t she?’ said Geoff.
They might have been discussing birth weights. Paddy said, ‘You go to a club of some kind.’
‘A club of some kind.’ Geoff considered this.
‘Maybe you’re even the president of this club.’
‘Ha, not bad. Treasurer in fact.’ He leaned over and touched the roof of the car Paddy held.
The windows of the car were blacked out. ‘You’re a sick man, Harley.’
‘I know, I know. Do you want to see her run?’
‘Of course.’
He removed the console from the case and asked Paddy to place the car on the floor. He moved some switches and then, with his thumb, pressed the central toggle button and the car went forward with slight whirring. He was lining it up. Both men stood up, looking at the car. ‘This won’t be all-out, you understand.’
‘Of course not,’ said Paddy.
‘Don’t want to wake the neighbours.’
‘I am the neighbours.’
‘And your mother, remember she lives here now. Is she French?’
‘Partly.’
‘How wonderful. What a gift for you. Here we are then.’ Geoff fiddled again with the console. He moved his thumb again and the car shot off. It was much faster than Paddy had been expecting and he laughed. The car was already nearing the far end of the corridor, difficult to see from where they were. It stopped just short of the wall. Geoff turned it around with a few deft flicks of his thumb. ‘Naughty me,’ he said. He hit a button and the car’s headlights came on. ‘I don’t know if you want to do this but—’ Geoff lay down on his stomach, the console in front of him. He was looking along the floor in the direction of the car.
What was there to do?
Paddy lay down beside him, and they watched at eye-level as the car sped back along the grass matting floor straight at them. The tiny headlights came jerkily through the dimness. Geoff kept his thumb pressed forward on the controls. Paddy stared into the lights. The car wasn’t slowing. He felt it was going to smash into his face. But he kept still.
At the final moment, the car stopped dead. It was an inch from Paddy’s nose.
Geoff picked up the car and inspected it. He blew on the wheels and rubbed lightly against a spot on the bonnet. They stood up. ‘That wasn’t all-out.’
‘Goodnight,’ said Paddy, and he walked back to his apartment.
8
His mother didn’t want to be watched and didn’t need to be looked after while she was having the MRI. No tremors this time, no sedatives. She would have to wear earplugs because of the noise as the magnets crunched around. Paddy warned her about this in the car on their way to the hospital and she nodded. Fine. She was in a new state of composure and resolve. ‘Go and have a coffee,’ she told them once they’d delivered her to the right room. She was filling in forms.
Blanchford wasn’t there. He’d phoned to say that he’d look at the images as soon as he could. His casual approach helped them all now.
She sent them away, even Pip, and they had to go, no matter what they said.
They went to one of the cafés across the road from the hospital. Pip was asking Stephanie about her children, showing again a genuine delight in any subject connected with her cousin. She heard about ballet and gym and teeth. Steph talked about their mother’s involvement in the kids’ lives, how important she’d been, really things would have collapsed in a heap without her, she said, and then she started crying. Pip put her hand on Stephanie’s arm. ‘You’ve given her that joy,’ she said.
Stephanie shivered, as if shaking off this idea. ‘I try to look at her life, to work out whether she’s had one, a life. I mean something separate from us. Even this morning when I woke up, I remembered I had an appointment and I thought immediately of dropping the two youngest ones with Mummy. And then I remembered the appointment was this!’ She looked at her watch. ‘And look, soon I need to go again, pick them up. But I feel terrible leaving you here, leaving her.’
Paddy told her it would be okay, and that they’d call her later. She could speak to Teresa, who was obviously stronger today, properly rested and full of determination. He turned to Pip and said, ‘Your visit has really helped.’
‘Yes!’ said Stephanie.
‘No, I was never able to influence your mother a single bit.’
This was said without a trace of irritation or regret, which made Paddy think there’d been influence on both sides. The cousins shared an instinct for facts. Pip was more demonstrative, that was clear. But both of them were clear-eyed to the point of starkness.
‘She’s so hard to know,’ he said, almost thoughtlessly. It came out. His starkness was different—it was the stuff of frustrated feeling. He sounded churlish.
‘Impossible to know,’ said Pip, quite cheerfully.
Stephanie leaned forward. ‘You can’t know her, but you can know how she affects you.’
A waitress had come to clean the table. She took their cups.
Branch-to-branch style, and perhaps to escape the previous topic, Stephanie started asking Pip about Zimbabwe. Did she miss it? Yes. Would she go back? Maybe one day to visit. Paddy asked about her meeting with the lawyer and whether things were going to be put into action regarding her land.
‘It’s wait and see, I’m afraid.’
‘It’s wait and see everywhere, isn’t it,’ said Stephanie, gesturing in the direction of the hospital, sounding as though she might start crying again. She managed to hold it off, converting her emotion into a short gulped laugh. She stood up suddenly, and tried to unhook her shoulder bag from the back of the seat. Its strap was tangled; she pulled and the chair fell over with a loud clatter. ‘Fuck,’ she said. ‘Excuse me, sorry.’ Paddy was straightening the chair and releasing her bag.
Pip was also standing. ‘Darling Stephanie, darling Patrick. How proud she is of you. And Margaret. How she loves you and wishes that you go on and achieve all the things you hope for. Yes. You’re what she speaks about when she talks to me. You’re the great subject. That’s a life, Steph. That’s a large life. But I think this too. There’s always something else. Don’t you think? There’s always more. Of course there is. That’s the mystery of us all.’
The speech stopped them from saying anything more as they left the café and crossed the road back to the hospital. Paddy had found Pip’s presence vaguely irritating. It was also unusual for Stephanie to be silent for long. She was walking slightly ahead of them, a stiffness in her body that he recognised as upset of a peculiarly humiliating sort.
Their mother’s cousin, he thought, was both a stranger and not one at all. She was hard to place finally, knowing a little too much about them and not knowing anything, at least through direct experience of their lives. All she’d experienced had come through their mother. That was one reason to resist. Something too in the word ‘mystery’ perhaps, which suggested Philippa from Africa was on the point of claiming spiritual properties for truth. Was she, endlessly mild and kind and strong, meeting all this through some unannounced attachment to a church? Well, did it matter? She’d been through a real hell in Zimbabwe. The murder, the blindfold, the chicken coop. She’d seen Robert Mugabe on a bicycle. And it wasn’t only God she was calling on now; she had a lawyer.
They arranged to bring Teresa home in a taxi.
Mystery, the word still bothered him. He thought of Geoff Harley lying on his stomach, watching his toy car race along the corridor. Was that Geoff’s ‘mystery’ uncovered? Or had it just been the aspect of himself he was prepared to show at 11pm, in a moment of shared weakness, to a barefoot man in a coat and pyjamas?
Of co
urse playing on them all was the terrible anxiety of what was happening in the building in front of them, from which they’d been banished. Their mother in a cylinder of noise, her head fastened in place.
Suddenly he missed Margie.
A few weeks after their father’s death all those years ago, a man had come to the house with a box for their mother, who wasn’t there. Margie had answered the door. She must have been seventeen. The man asked if he could leave the box for Teresa. It was his doctoral thesis, he said, and their mother had agreed to type it up for him. Inside the box was also an envelope, with the first instalment of his payment for the work. Paddy was standing behind his sister.
They both remembered the period before Stephanie was born, when their mother had taken on typing work at home. She would close the door of the little study, put on the headset, and then for an hour, two hours, three, the only sound they heard was the snapping of the typewriter, the bell sounding at the end of each line, followed by the creak of the paper as it was pulled up across the roller, then the resumed clack. They both loathed this noise. It was as though their mother had become a machine, was remaking herself with the hateful little hammers of each letter behind the closed door, composing a message of fury. Yet when she stepped out of the room, she was the same mild person. She was ready to cook them dinner.
Margie looked at the box in the man’s hands. He wore glasses, a blue-black suit jacket greasy around the shoulders. Paddy had no idea what a doctoral thesis was—the word ‘thesis’ sounded close to faeces which he knew was shit. ‘It’s all in here,’ he said, ‘my baby. Three years’ hard labour.’
Did they both imagine a foetus in the box?
And then Margie said, ‘No, sorry, our mother changed her mind. Perhaps you didn’t get her message. She’s too busy. Can’t do it. Very sorry. Goodbye.’ And she closed the door. They could see the shape of the man’s head behind the frosted glass panel. He waited a moment and then he left.
They’d come in Stephanie’s car, which was in the hospital car park. ‘Stupid!’ she said. ‘We should have brought two cars. Paddy, why didn’t we bring your car too?’
Somebody Loves Us All Page 35
