Darke

by Rick Gekoski

  ‘That was generous indeed,’ said Suzy.

  ‘Extremely,’ I said.

  Sam was a bit sniffy about the Mercedes – if one had to buy German, he was an unregenerate Beetle man – but Rudy was enchanted by it.

  ‘It’s like an aeroplane, Gampy! You’re like a pilot! Can I sit up front with him, Mummy? Then I could be a co-pilot with all the instruments!’

  It was easier to give in, and Rudy joined me in the cockpit, gazing at the controls intently. Once we were on the road, he subsided somewhat, peering over the edge of the window in the hope that one of his school friends might see him. In a Mercedes! In the front!

  As we pulled into the dirt lay-by in front of the church, Rudy started to giggle.

  ‘I did something,’ he said.

  In a second it was clear enough what, as a foul smell filled the car.

  ‘Rudy!’ said Lucy. ‘There’s nothing funny about that. Push the button and let down your window.’

  ‘It was a smelly one,’ he announced happily.

  ‘It’s no wonder you’re named Rudy, is it?’

  ‘Why, Gampy?’

  ‘Because you are rude.’

  ‘Like the BFG, right? He’s always doing farts! He’s funny. And you’re called Gampy because you are – ’ He thought for a moment. ‘Grumpy! You know, like Mr Grumpy in my book! Grumpy and Rudy like in a cartoon. You know, like Itchy and Scratchy!’

  ‘I suppose so.’ I pulled the car over and opened my door gratefully.

  ‘Rudy, enough!’ said Lucy crossly. ‘That’s quite enough of that.’

  As Rudy ran off into the churchyard, with Sam in his wake, Lucy took my arm. ‘I’m so sorry, this is hard on you. He’s very over-excited, he’s not usually this demanding. I guess he feels he has to catch up on all that lost time.’

  ‘It is rather exhausting. I’m not used to it. Not used to anything really. Bit like putting a mole on the beach – everything is too bright and intrusive.’

  ‘Like Rudy.’

  ‘He is very bright, isn’t he? Never mind, he’ll settle down, and I’ll settle in, just bear with me, please. I’m not as young as I used to be.’

  ‘Dad! Why do you keep calling yourself old? You’re basically still middle-aged.’

  ‘I won’t argue the semantics of it. I feel like an old man. I am an old man.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous! It upsets me when you say that.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, I have a Senior Railcard!’

  ‘But you’re still in your sixties! That is not old!’

  ‘We won’t argue about it.’

  There was a stone vase, filled with withered flowers for Rudy to take away and replace with his cut Queen of the Night tulips. As if in an Italian cemetery, they had placed framed pictures on the graveside: one of Suzy in her Indian parrot shirt, another with one of Rudy’s angels with ‘Granny’ in his handwriting underneath. Another had a framed quote from Kahlil Gibran, done on creamy parchment paper in thick black type:

  For what is it to die

  but to stand naked in the wind

  and to melt into the sun.

  ‘Sam chose it,’ said Lucy quietly. ‘He loves that quotation.’

  ‘Mum would have loved it too,’ Sam said, proudly and solemnly. ‘She was arty, wasn’t she?’

  ‘It’s very striking, and it moves me,’ I said. ‘Might I take it home with me? I know just where to put it.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ said Sam heartily, pleased that his choice had my approval.

  We stood there for some time, Lucy at my side, hand in hand, while Rudy renewed the flowers and filled the vase from a plastic bottle of water, with great care and gentleness.

  I left him standing there, helping Sam to clip the grass around the headstone, and walked abruptly round to the other side of the great tree.

  ‘Mummy,’ I heard Rudy ask, ‘why is Gampy crying?’

  I tried to still my tears, and failed.

  ‘Because he misses Granny.’

  Rudy was quiet for a few moments.

  ‘So do I.’

  Sam walked towards me quickly, a bashful look on his face, and took me in his arms. I allowed it, surprised and inexplicably moved.

  ‘It’s all right, James,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, releasing myself gently from his arms.

  Lucy came closer and put her arm on my shoulder. ‘Dad,’ she said, ‘Sam and I have something to tell you.’

  ‘Yes, Gampy! Listen, it’s so exciting!’

  I’d collected myself by then. ‘Yes, darlings, what’s that?’

  ‘You! You’d never have guessed, would you?’

  ‘Yes, Gampy! Guess! Guess!’

  ‘I’m terrible at guessing games. I always get things wrong. Even when we used to play charades in Dorset, I was always the one – ’

  ‘Oh do be quiet, Daddy,’ said Lucy. ‘You’re right, you’d never guess.’

  ‘So what’s the big news?’

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.

  Rudy gave a whoop. ‘We’re having a baby! I’m going to be a brother!’

  Well, I’ll be damned. Never saw it coming, never expected it. Thought she’d got fat, let herself go. I fear my response was insufficiently enthusiastic.

  ‘That is a surprise! Are you sure you can afford it?’

  ‘Dad!’ said Lucy, perhaps more crossly than she would have wished. ‘We thought you would be thrilled.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. I am. Yes. I just want to make sure it’s practical. Can you extend your leave of absence from the Housing Department?’

  ‘No. When I knew I was pregnant, I decided to quit.’

  ‘Are you sure that was wise?’

  ‘Well, we’ll have the money Mummy left me, after we finish that probate stuff. We’ll be OK.’

  ‘Please let me help. I know you won’t let me hire a nanny after the birth, but could I help you out during the – ’

  Sam put his hand on my arm, and I came to a full stop. ‘Dad,’ he said. ‘This is an emotional moment, not a financial one. Can’t we just celebrate together? After all, since Mum died – ’

  ‘You can produce an immediate replacement? Call her Suzy if it’s a girl, right? Well, I’m not at all sure that – ’

  ‘Stop,’ said Lucy. ‘Stop right now. It’s time we got home. No more talking.’

  ‘Can I be co-pilot again? Please, please!’ said Rudy.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Lucy, who turned and walked to the car stiffly.

  I dropped them off without going back into the house myself, conscious after the silent ride home from the churchyard – even Rudy had subsided, aware of the cool air flowing around the car – that we were all anxious to be done with the experience. It had been too much, too soon, and, whatever Lucy felt about my relative youthfulness, had made me feel doddery and bruised.

  I have never entered the lobby of a hotel more gratefully and, ignoring the greetings – ‘Good afternoon, Dr Darke!’ – retreated to my room, drew the curtains – darkness, blessed gloom – and lay down on the bedspread. Within a few minutes I was asleep.

  When I woke, my head ached as if filled with cotton wool infused with cayenne pepper. I tried to go back to sleep, but failed, then got up, took three ibuprofen and staggered into a hot then cold shower. I dressed myself in fresh clothes, crisper and cleaner after the hotel’s laundering – jacket, tie. No reason, save to feel more presentable.

  To whom though? Myself? It was pitiful, making this kind of fatuous effort after the fiasco we’d been through. I ought to have known better. I was never a good father, barely a willing one at first. And when Rudy was born, I left all the feeding and burping and nappy-changing and cuddling and bonding to Suzy, who loved it even more than she had when she was a young mum. Presumably she’d missed that nurturing stuff, though she was relieved that it had time limits imposed on it, that she could hand the baby back after a few hours, arise, and go home.

  I have no memorie
s, no sense traces even, nothing in my brain or skin or heart can recall having been cherished in such a fashion, and so it didn’t come naturally to me. It didn’t come at all, really. I was a stiff father, who tried hard not to be, and only seemed more so.

  As a grandfather I was quite prepared to beam and nod, I rather liked that. I felt distinctly beamish and noddish, like an Edward Lear character, but anything more visceral made me recoil. Not with disgust, though there was some of that in the face of the shit and mucus storm of the new-born, but simply because I was being tried out for a role which didn’t fit me, for which I hadn’t auditioned, and which I could not ad lib with the slightest degree of confidence.

  As he grew older, and became a toddler, little Rudy sensed this, and with the perverse generosity of the rejected, favoured me more than his adoring grandmother, as a cat or dog will inevitably hurl itself upon a visitor who dislikes cats or dogs.

  ‘It has no significance,’ I said. ‘He adores you, does everything with you, goes out in the pram to the park, smiles up at you . . .’

  ‘Fickle little bugger!’ said Suzy. ‘I wonder why I bother? This always happens to the woman. You give everything, put your own concerns comprehensively to the side, and they still head for their fathers and grandfathers as if they were magnetised. No wonder God is such a shit . . .’

  ‘I’m not quite sure I follow that.’

  ‘Of course you fucking can’t. No man could.’

  That was all right. It was manageable. She was. She adored Rudy, and the pleasure of his company sustained her until she grew too weak to tolerate more than a brief smiling glance, no longer even a cuddle. Then no smile at all.

  But she is gone, and if anyone is going to do some grandparenting, it will have to be me. I fear I am not up to it, not now.

  The Mercedes is gone, thank God. I never bonded with it, nasty, cramped taxicab. I have instructed my classic car dealers to pick up the 3.8 and do what’s necessary. Full service, valeting: get that beautiful British racing green back to showroom condition. I might just be ready to take it for a spin.

  It’s a relief to be home again. I’m as light-averse as ever I was: the curtains stay closed, occasional lamps light my way. I made a resolution, strolling around Oxford, home of the clever and the industrious – though fewer of either than might be supposed, most dons being indolent and self-satisfied – that I might just return to my Dickens monograph. Though I have been ‘at work’ on it for years, there is nothing to show for it. At all. George is aware I am a little blocked on my jeu d’esprit, and Suzy encouraged me regularly until I begged her to shut up. But the monograph itself is as unwritten as it is over-contemplated.

  I don’t even know, quite, what to call it, aside from a pain in the arse. Charles Dickens and the Rhetoric of Indignation is still at the top of the page, whatever snappy alternative title George may have foisted on me. Best to write the damn thing first, that’s the usual way. In the meantime I might return to the works, making notes, finding examples, seeking and citing, though I feel no inclination to do so. I have a notebook full of examples of whatever they are: indignations, outrages, disgusts. What I care about, after all, is how angry he is. I admire that – he’s a perfect role model. He is angry because his heart is breaking, constantly, it’s a capacious heart and there is an ocean of good in it. In that respect we are different. I’ll settle for more anger and less goodness. Can’t have everything, can I?

  I suppose I have Bronya to thank for this, after our conversations in the kitchen? Or rather, not Bronya but Lucy. Because – as Lucy explained to me at exasperated length – Bronya’s apparently gratuitous discovery of Dickens, and her sly enquiries about him, were prompted by Lucy, who had introduced herself one Thursday afternoon as Bronya walked to the Tube.

  ‘I knew you would need a cleaner. So it would be on Thursday, because you know that’s my therapy day, so I can’t go to London. And I know how fastidious you are. You might be knee-deep in despair, but you’d still want your hoovering and dusting done. I’ll bet you got dressed elegantly every day, never missed a shower or a shave. You never let yourself go, do you? Just Mummy – and me and my family. You’re like the captain of the Titanic dressing formally, waiting to drown.’

  It was hard to deny any of this, from the trivial to the damning.

  ‘I told her why you were behaving so peculiarly, boarded up in your mole-hole, and she was interested and sympathetic. Told her that you’d had a breakdown, and that since she was the only person who had access to you, perhaps she could help in some way? But she couldn’t imagine what she could possibly do, given that you barely came out of your study when she was there.’

  I was astonished to hear this, but as Lucy went on, it began to make sense.

  ‘Well, I hardly knew what to suggest. It was going to have to be a gradual thing. I knew that you would try to walk all over her and that, if she allowed it, she wouldn’t last long. She had to put up some resistance, establish herself as someone with rights. Even tiny ones, that’s how you cope with bullies. She suggested that she insist on opening the curtains while she worked, even if you came down to close them. That wouldn’t be too threatening, but it would establish her as someone with a will of her own, and rights. Otherwise she was prepared to act the ninny, to make you comfortable.’

  ‘Ninny? What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, all that cod Bulgarian ignorance. The crema on the coffee, the funny tomatoes. I’ll bet you thought her a right idiot.’

  That was unfair. Isn’t it appalling how wrongly people can perceive each other? I remonstrated briefly, as Lucy refilled my tea cup, but she flicked me off with what sounded rather like a harrumph.

  ‘The key was that she had to get you engaged. You were not likely to be interested in her – her country, background, education, travels, life in England, plans and dreams – none of the above. No, she would have to get you going, subtly, on one of your enthusiasms. Cooking? Hardly. Wine or cigars? Nope. Vintage Jags. Hardly. But what about reading? What about Dickens?

  ‘Bronya is not stupid, she’s actually well educated in the sciences, but she is relatively new to England, and had never heard of Dickens. But I assured her she would like him, and offered to lend her the books, and perhaps also a biography. Her reading English is much better than her spoken. Dickens? Duck! Water! She loved it all, and now and again we would meet to have a discussion. I decided she should start simply, with Oliver Twist, and then to slowly tempt you with themes from Dickens’s life: what he got angry about. How he tried to do good. And then, for the coup de grâce, which would draw you out and her in, the final playing card. What a total shit he was to abandon his wife and children. Bang! You have enough opinions on this topic to fill a bathtub, and you’re a top-class abandoner!’

  Throughout this sad and seedy disclosure I went entirely quiet. Inert. I ceased to sip from my tea as a signal of my disapprobation, though Lucy did not notice. I tinkled the cup in the saucer to draw her attention to its untouched plenitude. She didn’t look. She was enjoying this, all of it, full disclosure: her clever intervention, Bronya’s studious beneficence, my gullible predictability.

  ‘Well,’ I admitted, ‘I fell for it.’

  ‘Hook, line and sinker.’

  ‘I think it was impertinent of you. I cannot see what right you have to – ’

  ‘Dad,’ she said, ‘fuck off!’

  I was astonished to be addressed with such disdain. When her mother told me to fuck off, it had the merest trace elements of contempt, mostly it was just a reflex, a harmless trope that meant stop bothering me. It was almost fond. Lucy’s iteration was a step well beyond casual disrespect.

  ‘I object to being manipulated like some sort of a puppet.’

  ‘Come off it. You’re not as smart as a puppet. Manipulated! What, you think you’re subtle? Mummy used to run you like a train, she’d say. She knew how to make the schedule, where to make you stop and go, what speed you could run at, how tired you would get if you ran out of ste
am . . . She used to laugh about it. Oh, don’t you worry, she’d say, I can manage him!’

  So they managed me. Then, Suzy. Now, Lucy. And Bronya the cleaner. It was a plot worthy of Dickens himself, which is to say, not all that subtle, a trace sentimental, a wee bit melodramatic, that any reader of the slightest prescience could see through quickly enough.

  It had taken a few days to let this settle in and down, and I was no longer angry, only a little humiliated to have been so malleable. Mostly I was impressed – by Lucy’s ingenuity and Bronya’s good will. Bronya – how clever of her. How stupid of me. It’s rather touching to have been duped so felicitously.

  ‘And he is bad man, Dickens. Leaves poor wife and childrens.’

  The line, Lucy happily acknowledged, originated with her. She knew I thought poor fat Catherine a walking baby factory, unworthy of any part of Dickens, save the one. It is astonishing he stayed as loyal as he did, though I rather suspect that his fascination with prostitutes was not entirely unresearched. Call it field work perhaps.

  For a moment I had an impulse to try to get back in touch with Bronya, perhaps to resume our talks about Mr D. Her interest was not feigned, and perhaps we might read together . . .

  I know, I know. The time had passed, the incidents stuck in their right time and place. But if Bronya was gone, Lucy was most certainly present, and threatening a visit. I could no longer hold her off – she had my phone number (but I don’t answer) and my email (and I have to, eventually). She knows I am sometimes out, and that gives me some leeway in responding. And she is pleased that I am slowly re-entering the world.

  It had been less difficult than I had imagined. The 3.8 was back, purring and glistening. It missed me, and I took us out for little trips, avoiding too much strenuous contact with my fellow creatures. I made a visit to Kew Gardens, and had a light and indifferent lunch at their café. If they can make good plants, why can’t they make vegetable soup? Or a decent salade niçoise? In general I prefer eating plants to visiting them, but I have – like so many of my kind, or perhaps I should say sensibility – rather a weakness for orchids. Orchidaceous. A lovely term coined by Cyril Connolly. In reference to Ronald Firbank, I believe.