‘I know what’s going on,’ she announced to Jane. They were sitting in the Friends’ Room at the Royal Academy in Piccadilly, having met to view a well-received exhibition of French painting.
‘Then you are fortunate,’ said Jane, sipping at her coffee. ‘There are few of my philosopher colleagues at Oxford who can say the same thing. I, for one, must admit quite frankly that I don’t know what’s going on. I am working on the question, but cannot truthfully say that I have yet found an answer.’
Berthea smiled. ‘As a philosopher,’ she said, ‘it’s your privilege to misinterpret what I say. But when I said I knew what was going on, I did not mean that I had achieved any insight into the meaning of things; I simply meant that I know what’s going on between you and Hubert.’
Jane put down her coffee cup. ‘Oh that,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘I thought that you meant . . .’
Berthea smiled again, more sweetly this time. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I meant the other thing.’
There was a silence. A fussy-looking man seated at a neighbouring table glanced at the two women before returning to his copy of the Burlington Magazine.
‘I don’t want you to think that I’m angry,’ said Berthea. ‘Many women would be, but in my case . . . Well, frankly, Jane, you’re welcome to him.’
Jane looked at her friend. ‘I didn’t start it,’ she said.
Berthea nodded. ‘Of course not. I’ve never taken the view that the tango requires two. Such an old-fashioned attitude to dancing.’
There was a further silence as this comment was digested.
‘So there we are,’ said Jane. She added, ‘Would you mind terribly if he moved to Oxford? He could always come back to Pimlico for . . . for the occasional weekend.’
‘Not in the slightest,’ replied Berthea. ‘But I wouldn’t want him to keep a room in town. We don’t have all that much space and I would like to use his study as a waiting room for my patients. I consult in the house, you know.’
Jane was quick to agree. She looked at Berthea appreciatively. ‘You’re being very mature about this,’ she said.
Berthea’s coffee was getting cold. She lifted the cup to her lips and drained it. ‘But that’s why he’s leaving me,’ she said. ‘Because I’m mature.’
They returned to the exhibition, still having a couple of rooms to visit. In the final gallery, where they found themselves faced with Vuillard and other post-Impressionists, Jane suddenly realised what Berthea’s remark might mean. If Hubert was leaving Berthea because she was mature, did that mean that he was coming to her because she - Jane - was immature? Or that Hubert himself was not sufficiently mature for Berthea? Either way, she was not sure that she emerged with a great deal of credit - at least in Berthea’s eyes.
They peered together at a Vuillard interior. For a brief moment they turned and glanced at one another, and smiled. What was a man, a mere man, to come between two women friends who went back a long time? Nothing, thought Berthea.
They moved on. Another interior, a Montparnasse bedroom.
‘I take it you’ve discovered that he snores,’ Berthea remarked.
13. Stevie Phones Eddie
Marcia left William in a thoughtful state. Her visits usually gave him something to reflect upon - Marcia brimmed with ideas, not all of them useful - but on this occasion he felt that what she had said was well worth considering. He had prepared himself for a show-down with Eddie over moving out, and had decided that the best tactic to adopt was to insist - and he would have to insist - that Eddie pay rent out of the small fund his grandmother had left for his benefit, but which, crucially, was entirely controlled by William. This rent would be an economic one, thus forcing Eddie to choose between a cheap rent elsewhere or an expensive rent at home. Eddie did not like to spend money - if it was his own, the money of others being a different matter - and might just prefer the cheaper option. It was a long shot, perhaps, but worth trying.
The time was ripe. A few days earlier, William had overheard the alternative offer being made over the telephone when he had picked up the receiver in his bedroom at precisely the moment Eddie had lifted it in the kitchen.
‘That you, Ed?’
He recognised the voice of Eddie’s friend, Stevie.
‘Yup.’
And it’s me too, thought William, because I live here. He was just about to put the receiver down and leave Eddie to get on with his telephone call when he heard himself mentioned. Nobody could resist that, especially when it was on his own phone in his own house.
Stevie’s nasal voice continued. ‘Your old man.’
‘Yup. What about him?’
‘Pretty fed up with him, aren’t you?’
William held his breath. And what about me? he thought.
‘Yup.’
William clenched his teeth.
‘Mine gets on my nerves too. Blah, blah, blah. On and on about getting a job and a mortgage and so on. Blah, blah, blah.’
‘Yup. Blah, blah, blah. Old-speak.’
William, on the point of interjecting ‘blah’, stopped himself in time. There was more to come.
‘Got a place at last. Found it yesterday. Kennington. Not bad at all.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yep. De Laune Street. Heard of it?’
Eddie had not. ‘Sounds posh. Not?’
‘No, not. But it’s got three bedrooms. Five hundred and sixty quid a month each. I need one other person. Maggie says she’ll take one of the rooms, but only three weeks after the lease starts. That’s a bit awkward but I said OK, that’s cool. So there’s her and me. I thought you might like the other room. Get your old man out of your hair.’
William’s eyes widened.
‘Well . . .’
Take it, thought William. I’ll pay.
‘Nice place,’ said Stevie. ‘You know that pub we went to last month with Mike? Remember? It’s round the corner.’
There was silence. William imagined Eddie doing the calculation. Currently he lived rent-free in a better area. He also received free food and heating, and paid no discernible taxes. If anything went wrong and a tradesman was required, then it was William who made the arrangements. And Eddie, as far as his father could remember, had never used the vacuum cleaner, nor washed up, nor even loaded the dishwasher, in spite of frequent hints and requests. Eventually William had tired of piles of unwashed crockery and accepted that he would have to do everything himself - in a tight-lipped way, of course, but keeping before him, like the prospect of release from servitude, that glorious moment when his son would announce that he had found a flat and was moving out. Durance vile, though, was proving to be drawn out.
Eddie spoke. ‘Can you give me time to think? There’s quite a lot going on round here that I have to sort out.’
‘Next week, Ed,’ said Stevie. ‘Next week, max. I have to tell the guy next week or he gives to it to somebody else. Students, I think. He doesn’t really want students, but he says they’re offering to pay a bit more rent and he has to know.’
‘Students are bad news,’ said Eddie.
William slipped the handset back into its cradle. He had heard enough - too much, in fact. Eddie had said that there was a lot going on - but what exactly did he mean by that? And as for the comment about students . . . One has to laugh, he thought, and he did then; looking up at the ceiling, he laughed at his son’s sheer effrontery. One had to like the young man, one really did. Perhaps he should just let him stay, resign himself to the fact that some people were meant to stay at home, like those Victorian and Edwardian women who never married but lived at home to look after their parents. And then, when the parents were no more, they became companions to other women, richer ones, and lived in that beholden state for the rest of their days.
But there was a difference. Those daughters looked after their parents, whereas it was he who was looking after Eddie. That was a major difference. And then those women busied themselves with all sorts of activities - sewing, making things - whereas Edd
ie . . .
No, the decision was made. And now, sitting in his office, staring at the empty chair recently occupied by Marcia, he realised that the endless rehearsal of options could be just that - endless. Upon reflection, the rent scheme looked less and less likely to achieve its objective. Eddie would simply refuse to pay up, and even though William controlled the purse-strings of the grandmother fund, he doubted whether he would be able to stand up to a furious Eddie should he turn off the monetary tap. No, he would have to be more subtle, and Marcia’s idea of obtaining a dog under a dog-share scheme seemed the perfect answer. Eddie hated dogs. He was scared of them in an utterly irrational way. And there was a physical reaction too: dogs made his eyes water - not uncontrollably, but at least to the point of irritation. And if a dog licked him, his skin itched.
He picked up the telephone and dialled the number Marcia had left. Would this dog be licky? he wondered. He hoped so.
A voice answered at the other end: a slightly impatient voice, the voice of one who rather resents being telephoned by a caller who will almost certainly be less significant.
‘Look,’ said William, ‘I’m sorry to phone out of the blue, but I was given your number by Marcia. She did some catering for you recently and she said that—’
The voice cut him short. ‘If you’re wanting to sell me something, I’m afraid—’
‘No, I’m not. Not at all. It’s just about your dog.’
There was a surprised silence at the other end of the line. Then: ‘My dog? Freddie de la Hay. Do you know him?’
14. The Names of Dogs
William had treated himself to a taxi - this was, after all, a special mission and he needed time to think. He would need to come back by taxi too, since he was unsure about taking a dog on the tube. William reflected on the fact that while dog-owners notice the dogs of others and what they are doing, non-dog-owners tend not to be aware of what dogs are up to and what rules, if any, they obey. Had he seen dogs on the tube? There was a guide dog who travelled regularly on the Victoria Line; William had once spoken to its owner, breaking the rule of silence that made strangers of multitudes, and had heard how this intelligent dog could distinguish the various lines by their smell. The Victoria Line, the owner claimed, smelled quite different from the Northern Line or the District and Circle Lines; but only a dog would know.
Guide dogs, of course, were different, and usually not subject to the same rules as lesser dogs, but when it came to recalling whether he had seen ordinary dogs travelling on the tube, he was not sure. But then he remembered: he had seen a dog on the Northern Line a while back, being carried by its owner, a middle-aged woman in a low-waisted green dress who had talked to the dog throughout the journey. William remembered this because he had been struck by the conversation between woman and canine. The woman had looked into the dog’s eyes as she addressed it, and it had looked back at her with every indication of understanding and agreement. He had thought: she yearns for conversation, here in this great city, and only the dog will oblige.
But even if the dog-sharing arrangement were agreed that day, he would not want to travel back on the tube with a dog who would still be a stranger. And what if one had to pick up one’s dog to travel on an escalator? He was not sure he would be able to lift this Freddie de la Hay, who could for all he knew be a very large dog, the size of a Rottweiler perhaps and with a disposition to match, who would respond to William’s attempts to pick him up by savaging him, right there in the tube station, at the foot of the escalator beside the admonitory notice, Dogs Must Be Carried. What a scene that would be, as the crowds, anxious not to be delayed, stepped around the scene of carnage, one or two muttering, ‘Well, you shouldn’t bring large dogs on the tube.’
The thought made William worry. In his eagerness to enter into this arrangement, he had forgotten to ask for any information about Freddie de la Hay. All he knew was that he was a Pimlico Terrier, a breed that he had never seen, nor indeed heard of before. And as for his name . . . He looked out of the taxi window as he mused on the subject of canine names. From one point of view, the name of a dog said nothing about the dog itself and everything about the owner. But then, mutatis mutandis, that was the case with human names too, except in those comparatively rare cases where people chose to call themselves something other than the name imposed on them by their parents. John Wayne was really Marion Morrison - not a name by which a macho film star might wish to be known. And Harry Webb, had he sung under that name, might never have been as successful as he was as Cliff Richard. Such changes were understandable and necessary, perhaps, if creativity were to flourish. Of course, the new names chosen were usually much more suitable than those given at birth. John Wayne was clearly a John Wayne rather than a Marion Morrison. And the same must be felt by those boys who were called Beverley but became something else, out of sheer self-defence.
William remembered one such from school, a small boy with an intensely freckled face whose second initial was B. When it was discovered that this was for Beverley, a name that is technically available for both boys and girls, his life had become a torment of derision. Such is the cruelty of children, and of boys in particular, displayed in full vigour when difference or weakness is discovered. William tried to dredge the full name out of his memory: George Beverley Jones. That was it. And this George Beverley Jones had suddenly disappeared one day, absent from school - driven out, no doubt, sent somewhere else where the name might not follow him. Even now, in his taxi to Highgate, William felt a flush of embarrassment and regret at the ancient childhood cruelty. He had been one of those who had called out Beverley! in the corridors; everybody had.
Of course it was easy for parents to make a mistake, even if they chose popular names. What is unexceptional at one time might at another be ludicrous, or simply unfashionable. Elderly ladies called Euphemia - and there must be very few left - had been nothing unusual as girls, and no doubt never dreamed that their name would later come to be regarded as quaint. In fifty years’ time, the same conceivably might be said of the legions of Kylies, who already might be feeling a certain suspicion that they were touched with the mark of a particular decade. While Euphemia could be shortened to Effie or even Ef, there was not much that one could drop from Kylie. One might become Ky, perhaps, he mused; there was a certain ring to that.
River Phoenix, thought William. Now there was a name! Rover Phoenix would be the canine version, and it was just as effective, just as redolent of whatever it was that made River Phoenix such a desirable name. Rover Phoenix would be a good-looking dog; compact, decisive, with a baritone bark and a light in his eye. An American dog, no doubt; certainly a dog who would go down well in California, in the back of an open-topped car, his ears catching the wind. Rover Phoenix.
Mind you, he reflected, there are traffic jams in California, and we should not imagine that open-topped cars there proceed with much greater dispatch than London taxis, caught, as William’s taxi now was, in a slow-moving line of grumbling, irritable humanity. Even so, he was nearing his destination, and he felt a curious sense of anticipation, tinged with the realisation that what he was doing was somewhat absurd. Why should he be forced to get a dog in order to persuade his son to move out? It seemed quite ridiculous. It was Marcia, again. He always allowed himself to be persuaded by her to do things he really should not be doing.
He should stop the taxi; he should ask the driver to turn it round and go home. He could phone the dog’s owner and explain that he had decided that they should not go ahead with the whole ridiculous scheme. He could so easily do that.
But then the taxi driver half turned in his seat and said, ‘Number eight, wasn’t it?’ And William said yes, it was.
As they stopped at the front gate, somewhere inside the house a dog barked.
15. An Experiment
‘This way,’ said Manfred James. ‘We’ll go into my study, I think.’
William looked at Manfred. The columnist was a tall man somewhere in his forties, wearing a s
mall pair of unframed glasses and with a slightly distracted, scholarly air to him. The disdain that William had picked up on the telephone was present in the flesh, he thought; his host’s aquiline nose was carried at such an angle as to look down on his guest, as if slightly displeased - if noses can express such things. He had welcomed William at the front door and led him into a book-lined room off the small entrance hall. As William stood there, glancing at the bookshelves, the barking that had greeted his arrival abated. That would be Freddie de la Hay, shut away in some room at the back. Dogs barked, of course; he had not thought of the implications of that for Corduroy Mansions. Would Freddie de la Hay’s barking carry to the flat downstairs and disturb the girls? Eddie would not like it, but then that was the whole point of the exercise. The more Freddie de la Hay and Eddie got on each other’s nerves, the better.
‘Tea?’ asked Manfred.
William accepted, and Manfred went out of the room, gesturing casually for his guest to sit on the small leather sofa backed up against a wall of shelves. As he sat down, William glanced at the books behind him. They seemed to be arranged in no particular order: Poland’s Past rubbed shoulders on one side with Schopenhauer Delineated and on the other with a small book on the history of rope-making in Bridport. Then came Garner’s Modern American Usage and a line of vintage Graham Greenes, as tatty and desolate as the territory they described.
A few minutes later Manfred came in with two mugs of tea. ‘You may conclude only one thing from my shelves,’ he said, noticing the direction of his guest’s gaze, ‘and that is that I have not bothered to organise the books according to any of the accepted patterns.’
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