by Patrick Gale
Finn the geologist might have become the great love or even the exemplary marriage, but he was a light-headed finalist when they met and had no sooner turned Will’s life and heart upside-down than he headed back to Christchurch and a summer job on a sheep farm followed by a lengthy seismology doctorate. In the years that followed he kept sporadically in touch, just enough to fuel the embers of a fantasy from which Will would unwittingly forge a romantic template. Finn remained more or less single. He pursued his rugged research unencumbered by any company but a dog. And despite the fact that in their one fortnight together they had never spoken of love, their involvement had clearly meant something to him because he seemed keen to keep in touch.
Will should, perhaps, have put his life on hold and saved for a ticket to New Zealand when he graduated or even flown out earlier. Every holiday seemed to be spent in grinding poverty, however, slaving to pay off the debts run up the previous term and, once he graduated, times were frighteningly hard so he felt compelled to accept a librarian post in Barrowcester when it was offered him. Besides, much of Finn’s attraction lay in his self-sufficiency and, in his early twenties at least, it was hard for Will to see how he could fit in to a life as ingeniously self-contained as its owner’s camping equipment. In time Finn’s letters had petered out. He had either met someone, found Jesus or gone potholing once too often.
The great marriage had failed to materialize for several reasons but the chief of these was Barrowcester. A ravishingly pretty provincial cathedral town in the country’s middle, it called itself a city but offered none of the risky subcultures implicit in the title. Perhaps the fact that its name was not pronounced as it was spelled—the correct pronunciation rhyming with rooster—should have been chintziness enough to warn him off. But he was lulled into passivity by the relative cheapness of the attractive housing, the security of his job—managing a well-financed children’s department in the city library—and the fact of its being the nearest he had to a hometown in a rootless youth. His parents had moved on every five years because of his father’s work as a prison governor but he had been a choirboy at the cathedral choir school, then a music scholar at Tatham’s, the city’s ancient college, and boarded throughout so that the place was full of youthful associations.
His parents had lived there when his father ran Barrowcester prison when Will was at choir school. Like him they retained happy memories of the place and, having scrupulously requested his permission to encroach on what they saw as his town, chose to retire to a house on its rivery fringes. They made few demands, at least until recently, and scarcely intruded on his life but they could not fail to inhibit him. He was not in the closet exactly, but he had never discussed his sexuality with them because the idea was as embarrassing as discussing theirs. And it was a small community. And people talked. And perhaps it was just an excuse but, if pressed, they and their aging would have been the reason he gave for remaining a bachelor at forty. Will had invited them today but they had declined, with characteristic tact, saying his mother found it a trial to stand for long these days and disliked being parked in a stately chair where she was expected to hold forth to the young things. They would celebrate with him later, as the obituarists had it, quietly and at home.
The party had reached the point where it would bubble on under its own social momentum. Will had slaved to produce a two-course buffet for thirty from his galley kitchen. Coffee and birthday cake had been served and the few who were still drinking were happy to fend for themselves. At last he could relax and possibly even begin to enjoy himself. He poured a glass of Chablis—having cooked all morning and much of the previous night, he had no appetite for food—and walked out on to the brightly painted fire escape which served as a terrace and led down to the garden.
Someone pressed a hand on his rear and planted a nuzzling kiss on the nape of his neck. Harriet.
“Hi, Hats.”
“Precious,” she said. “I couldn’t resist. You look about eleven with that haircut.”
“You don’t like it.”
“On the contrary, I like it too much.”
“Oh. That old thing.”
He drew her briefly to him and easily kissed the top of her head. Harriet had always refused to dance with him because, she said, the difference in their statures made them look like a pixie with a waltzing bear. Then they leaned on the railing and surveyed the guests.
“Oh God,” she sighed. “Children everywhere.”
“There are quite a lot,” he said. “It’s almost surreal.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. Only one of them’s yours. Anyway, I love children. I’ve just become a godfather again. Della and Kieran.”
“Which?”
“The solicitors from over the road. Little thing called Jemima.”
“Isn’t there some official limit?”
“Apparently not. But I’m calling a halt at six. Christmas is nightmarish enough as it is and children cost.”
“Tell me about it. Corporate Raider Barbie didn’t come cheap.”
His garden had indeed turned from a city oasis into a sort of crèche. A paddling pool had materialized beneath his fig tree. Several toddlers were lolling in it while their mothers cooled their feet. Each child, however small, appeared to have brought at least two toys, all of them in primary-colored plastic, all of them noise-producing. Vera, Harriet’s four-year-old, had acquired a scarlet plastic trumpet and was calmly circulating in the crowd parping it in the ear of any infant who came close.
“God, she’s hell,” Harriet said, doing nothing to stop her. “You know she’s all yours if I die. It’s in my will and everything.”
“Try to stay with us just a little longer. Till she can cook, say, or plaster a wall.”
Harriet laughed and kissed his shoulder. She was carrying a wine bottle in a spirit of survivalism. She topped up their glasses. “Happy birthday,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Oh, sorry. That was white in there, wasn’t it?”
“Doesn’t matter. The claret’s better.”
“Soon be time for your presents.”
“But I said no presents. I hate presents.”
“You’re so controlling. You hate the thought of being given something hideous and having to sound convincingly grateful.”
“Well, don’t you?”
“You can trust me.” She grinned. “I always give you something that doesn’t hang around. Like opera tickets. Or Calvados. And after that difficult waistcoat thing Poppy gave you last year we had words and she knows to do the same.”
“God, you didn’t tell her I didn’t like it?”
“No, no. I just said you were going off material things in your old age and preferred presents that came and went.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“I still haven’t got you anything yet. Can’t make up my mind. But her present’s rather brilliant. For her.”
“They haven’t gone mad, have they?”
“Only a little. I’m planning on treating you to something spectacular.”
“Hats,” he groaned.
“Humor me. I earn more than you and I had another raise last month.”
After years of high-stress, low-pay jobs as press officer for various publishers and publicist for an opera company, Harriet had quietly stepped into a high-stress, high-pay one containing press crises on behalf of the prison service. When there was a breakout at Camp Hill or a riot in Strangeways, she faced the cameras and fired off the press releases or spoon-fed them to the appropriate minister and pushed them into the firing line. Almost stealthily she had gone from being mad, sad Hats who drank too much at parties and could never hold down a man to being sane, wryly amused Hats who now had a nanny to pick up Vera from school but frequently canceled dates in favor of ministerial briefings.
“I suppose someone I know has to become a Dame,” Will joked.
Short and vampy, still drawing heavily on Cabaret for her style references,
she had gatecrashed his life when they were students. Enrolled in the year below him, she appeared during his period of mourning for Finn and sniffed out his insecurity amid the hall of residence hearties as a tidy match for her own. A notoriously easy lay with a notoriously acid morning-after tongue, she would drop in on his room to borrow his steam iron or his purple braces, to split a facepack or a bottle of wine and to ask his advice on how to keep a man. Advice she then pointedly ignored. Whenever he found a lover, she caustically disapproved. Whenever she found one, she became unavailable for the duration of the liaison. He forgave her, however, because she was the only person who knew when he was lying and because long after he had acquired a modicum of maturity and style, she continued to remember him living off cottage cheese and pining for a geologist with no dress sense which, however galling, made him feel young again.
They had always joked that they would marry if they reached forty and were still unclaimed. What had started out as an oft-repeated jest came increasingly to resemble a threat as they remained outwardly single and more and more of their contemporaries married. When Harriet elected, amid some mystery, to reproduce, even his mother had suggested it would be tidier if he made an honest woman of her. Harriet had no intention of marrying anyone, or so she maintained, least of all her oldest friend, but there were times when he wished she would at least set up home with someone, to give her somebody else to needle. He hoped she was going to have the sensitivity not to remind him of the pact today.
“So,” she crowed. “The big four-ho-ho.”
“Don’t,” he murmured.
“Oh spare me. You’re aging better than I am. You defy gravity. You’ve got cheekbones.”
“So’ve you.”
“Make-up.”
“Oh.”
“So you’re probably still not ready to steer me up the register office.”
“I’m answered for.”
“Master Mystery.” Her eyes narrowed. “It’s a bit convenient, saying you’ve got someone but not letting anyone meet him.”
“I’ve told you before; he’s married. He’s not sortable.”
“Is he going to leave her for you?”
“I sincerely hope not.” Will did his best to look airily at no one in particular but she caught him.
“He’s here!” she gasped.
“No he’s not. What do you take me for?”
“A shameless home-wrecker. Which is it? The love-rat bastard!” She scanned the men below them. “Paddy? No. George? I’ve always had my suspicions …”
“Stop it.”
“It is. It’s George!”
“No, it’s not. George has childbearing hips.”
“Then it’s one of these people I don’t know. Who are they all?”
“People from the shop. Neighbors. Kieran and Della. Simon the nice vet.”
“The Nice Vet. It’s him!”
“He’s straight,” Will sighed. “Brought his girlfriend. See? In the blue with the hair.”
“So?”
As Harriet continued to scrutinize the crowd, the erring husband in question, who was there of course, caught Will’s eye over a child’s shoulder, grinned and might have given the game away by waving had Vera not saved the day by causing a violent diversion, slamming another child over the head with her toy trumpet. The child screamed and Vera watched it with her customary analytical coolness and a ghost of a smile.
“Oh look,” Harriet sighed before walking down to dispense a weary reprimand, “I made a psychopath.”
Will’s sister bore the wailing child, one of his nephews, up the fire escape and Will bribed him back to silence if not quite happiness with a home-made Tia Maria truffle.
“Sorry,” he said, catching the soft reproof in Poppy’s gaze. “It’s what uncles are for.”
“You know we don’t give them sweets.”
“Why do you think he likes me so much? It’s not for my conversation. Little boys need sugar so they can stand up to Vera and her kind.”
“Could I have another, do you think, please, Will?” Oscar the nephew asked with measured innocence.
“Not now, dumpling,” Will told him. “Your mum and I want to talk. Have a strawberry. Look. Tasty? Go and ask Daddy for a piggyback ride. He needs the exercise.”
Poppy caressed the boy’s red hair as she set him down, gently pushing him back into the fray. “So hey,” she said, once they were alone, and gently mimed punching Will’s arm.
Always so free in her gestures of affection with others—husband, children, friends—she remained oddly shy toward him and the inhibition was catching. However pleased Will was to see her, they rarely advanced beyond the formal frigidity of a single cheek-kiss. They remained alike in many ways. They were both tall and each had failed to lose the stooping self-consciousness of the beanpole adolescent. Their voices and accents were similar too—an approximation of Will’s mother’s low, amused speech. These resemblances only served to highlight their dissimilarity however. With auburn hair, freckles and eyes so pale they seemed almost bleached of color, she could look more her husband Sandy’s sister than dark-haired Will’s. She was cheerfully dim, not a reader and gave every appearance of finding marriage and motherhood entirely fulfillling. If she entered his shop as a customer it was to buy books for the children or to ask his suggestions for presents to friends. Though prepared to tolerate each other for Will’s sake, she and Harriet shared their narrow common ground with reliable frostiness. She claimed to find Harriet “rather sad and brave” while Harriet maintained that, for all her amenability and affection, Poppy was a mistress of passive aggression.
Will had given up defending Poppy long ago as it only encouraged Harriet’s spite. It was enough that he knew there was more to Poppy than she betrayed. He knew the affection and amenability were genuine. He knew that it was Poppy’s conventional dress and manner, precisely those qualities that irritated Harriet most, that were a mask. Only when she was alone with him, as now, and sometimes when she was playing with the boys, unaware that she was watched, did Poppy allow her blunter, quirkier self to emerge.
“So. Many happies, big boy.”
“Thanks. How’s things?”
“Oh. Fine,” she said, pushing her sunglasses up on her hair then pulling them down again when her weak blue eyes could not face the sun. “Sandy’s working too hard as usual. Loads of late nights. The boys have both had mumps, which was a relief to get out of the way. They really suffered though. We all make light of the kids’ illnesses; it’s easy to forget how scary it is at the time. Poor Oz actually thought he was dying at one point.”
“But how are you?”
“Oh. Fine. You know me. Terminally placid. No worries. No illnesses.” She sounded like their mother. “Sandy says I should take a lover to give my life some interesting tension.” She laughed and they both looked at Sandy, who now had a son on his back and was racing two other fathers in a piggyback derby. “I think I might just take up squash,” she said.
“Great. I’ll play with you if you like. I’ve always meant to learn.”
“Don’t be stupid. You can hardly catch. I’ll join a club. Play with whoever I can find there.”
“Find yourself some fun among the coaches.”
“Will!”
“Only kidding.”
“As if I’d have time,” she sighed. “How are the Aged Ps?”
“He’s coping, I suppose.” Will drank and grimly contemplated the image of their parents a moment.
The nice vet and the luscious proof of his straightness came to make their early farewells, oppressed in their nascent coupledom, perhaps, by so many children. Will marveled at the finesse with which Poppy admired the girl’s pretty dress. She fooled everyone. She almost fooled him. He wondered if she had reached the point where it was no longer an effort. Of course she never took a job; being herself was employment with overtime.
“No problem with an empty retirement,” he told her when the vet had left. “Mum’s going to become Dad�
��s work-substitute. It seems to come and go. The stroke didn’t help. She’s showing most of the early symptoms and it depresses her which makes her spiteful to him. But they won’t talk about it. They’re not ready to face the reality. Not really.”
“Who can blame them? Jude Farson didn’t offer any hope at all, and he’s a specialist. Mind you, when I got her to fill out that questionnaire of Sandy’s the results seemed fine. Well, fine-ish. Oh shit. It just makes me feel useless and I hate that. I should see more of them, shouldn’t I?”
“Don’t be daft. You’ve got your three to care for. At least I’m dependant-free. I go over there every Wednesday now to give him a day off and try to get her over one night at weekends too so he can escape. She still loves the cinema but videos are easier because she gets restless if she has to sit too long.”
“Maybe you should spend more time with him rather than her?”
“I couldn’t. We’ve got nothing to say to each other. We never did. I just take her off his hands and let him pretend it’s because she and I have lots to talk about or that she can still play cards with me, which she can on her good days. He goes for walks and visits museums or sits in a pub nursing a half. I ought to break the habit of a lifetime and take the two of them on holiday somewhere.”
Her face lit up. “Oh good!” She made an effort to backtrack. “I mean … really?”
“What?” He smiled.
Looking confused, she glanced around them and called out to Sandy but he was now embroiled in a conversation with the other fathers and already distracted by Oscar who was swinging irritably on his arm.
“Well I might as well tell you,” she sighed. “It’s our present to you. Not a holiday with the Aged Ps but a holiday, anyway.”
“That’s so sweet.”
“We’ve rented you a cottage in Cornwall. Right on a little beach. First two weeks of August. We were meant to tell you together. I mean, you could take the Aged Ps if you like but I think the idea was to take, well, you know, someone special. If you had anyone in mind. Harriet seemed to think you might.”
