Out on a Limb

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘I think one of her is quite enough to live with,’ I say ruefully. ‘Though I guess at least this one wouldn’t get through so much sherry.’ Which piece of nonsense reminds me that I have once again forgotten my manners. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Can I get you a drink of something? Tea? Coffee?’ And in saying so, it occurs to me that I seem to spend all our encounters engaged in the preparation of unexciting beverages. ‘Um…glass of Amaretto?’ I point to the bottle on the kitchen table. ‘From the airport. It’s very nice.’

  He consults his watch at this point, for some reason. Though it could of course be some other sort of wrist-wear. A blood sugar monitor? A portable temperance lecture?’

  He hesitates, so possibly the latter. ‘Go on, then,’ he says eventually. ‘ Why not? Yes, I will.’

  He pulls out a chair while I go and fetch another glass from the cupboard. I don’t actually have two liqueur glasses that match. I did once have a set of sherry glasses I got with petrol station tokens, but they’re all long since gone. In fact, I only have one glass that could be properly classed as a liqueur glass anyway. And I’ve only got that because Rob and I pinched it from a Plymouth-Roscoff ferry. We pinched a Guinness glass too. And an ashtray. Though in my defence it was only because our ferry had broken down and they’d billeted us on one that didn’t have enough berths. If you have to spend the night on the floor of a saloon, then reparations need to be made. And I’m already using that one. So I plop his into a wine glass, add an ice cube and hand it to him.

  ‘So,’ he says, sipping it gingerly. ‘More than enough dramas for one week, eh?’

  I sip my own and eye my grinning mother. ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘Did you get to see anything of Venice while you were there?’

  ‘I wish. No, tell a lie. I did catch a glimpse from the plane. And it looked, well, like it does in pictures, I guess.’

  ‘You’ve never been?’ I shake my head. He takes another sip. ‘It’s worth a visit.’

  ‘Well, when I say I’ve never been, that’s not strictly true. I was conceived there. While my mother was at some film festival or other. And then I was supposed to be going there on my honeymoon.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘I was scuppered by circumstance. Our car blew up. We decided to put it on hold. We went to Padstow instead.’

  ‘So,’ he says, twiddling his glass stem. ‘When is your son coming home?’

  ‘Oh, God, not till after Christmas now. He’s due back mid February.’

  ‘You must miss him.’

  I nod. ‘Pathetically so. I’m trying to get used to it. But do you ever?’ A thought occurs to me. ‘You must miss your daughter, too. How often do you get to see her?’

  ‘Not often enough. About four times a year.’

  I think guilty thoughts about Rob. ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, nodding. ‘Yes, it is.’

  He adds nothing more, and I reach to top my glass up, the silence edging its way out of the comfort zone. Little by little, I am beginning to get the distinct impression that, having come to my house entirely of his own volition, he is beginning to wish he had gone somewhere else. Either that or he is engaged in conversation with me while simultaneously trying to get to the bottom of an incredibly complex mathematical theorem, and can thus only commit one neurone in five to the task. Or that he’s still wearing his earpiece from doing his last forecast and there’s news coming in of a dust storm in Barry.

  Or perhaps he’s just got other stuff playing on his mind. His father? His fiancé? His far distant daughter? Something, at any rate. He looks awkward. I recall our last stilted encounter in my kitchen. That sense that if he was given half a chance, he’d sit down and tell me his life story. People do all the time. I think I’m that sort of type. Probably goes with the territory. Except he’s not sure he should. It’s a curious thing. Or perhaps I really am just plain boring. ‘And how are the wedding preparations coming along?’ I offer up. ‘Any progress on the fur front at all?’ This, too, however, fails to engage his full attention. He smiles and says ‘hmm, hem,’ then ‘no, hmm, not really,’ but he seems more taken with the chip in the base of his glass.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ I say. ‘In my experience, teenagers’ principles are much more robust than they’re given credit for. And quite rightly so.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ he agrees. He sips some more Amaretto, but in the manner of someone who’s got something to get to and needs to get it down in a hurry. I don’t think he likes it.

  ‘But you’ll work something out.’

  ‘I intend keeping out.’

  I sip some more of mine. It is a girl’s drink, after all. And I wonder if I should press things a little. It’s so difficult to judge him.

  ‘How is Lucy?’ I ask him.

  ‘Oh, she’s fine,’ he says, nodding. ‘Away filming right now.’ He drinks some more Amaretto. Then he puts his glass down. Then he nods towards the effigy of Dancing Diana. ‘Any progress on finding your mum somewhere to live?’

  Clearly not, then. ‘God,’ I say, with feeling. ‘Don’t start me on that.’

  ‘Like that, eh?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘I won’t then.’

  ‘Won’t what?’

  ‘Won’t start you on that.’

  I laugh. But it’s a pathetic little excuse for a laugh, and is immediately swallowed by a much bigger silence. He seems lost for things to say. And now I am as well. Fancy! Me! ‘Okay,’ I say, trying not to sound desperate about it. ‘So how about you start me on something else instead.’

  ‘On what?’

  I spread my palms. ‘Some other conversational avenue. Something not involving my mother. Something that won’t make me sound like a spiteful old baggage. “Have you read any good books lately?” Something like that.’

  He blinks at me, confused and also, I think, a bit horrified. He doesn’t know many physiotherapists, clearly. Banal conversation is our stock in trade. Then he clears his throat. ‘Er…so have you?’

  ‘Yes, I have, as it happens. I’ve just finished Serious. John McEnroe’s autobiography. Been sitting on my pile for ages, but I’ve literally just finished it. On the plane. It’s a thumping good read. You can borrow it if you like.’

  ‘I’ve already read it.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘He’s really good, isn’t he?’

  ‘At tennis?’

  ‘I meant at writing. Though he’s very good at both. How’s your leg?’

  He looks down at it as if he’d forgotten it existed. But then, perhaps he has. ‘Actually, it’s much better, thank you.’

  ‘Are you going to book some more physio for it?’

  ‘D’you think I should?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I will.’ He picks up his glass again and peers at the contents. Then peers at me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘But this is vile.’

  Spike, at this point, having presumably noticed that our chat has limped to an absolute last straw of excruciating-ness, begins scratching at the back door in a point-making sort of way.

  Now it’s me that’s checking the time. Poor Spike must be cross-eyed by now. I push my chair back and stand up. ‘He’s waiting for his walk,’ I say.

  ‘Oh,’ says Gabriel Ash, pinging up from his own chair as if ejected via a slingshot. ‘I’m sorry. I’m holding you up. I’d better get off and let you get on, hadn’t I?’

  Had he? He now doesn’t seem at all sure. God, why are men so useless at communicating? His discomfort is becoming louder than my mother’s purple lycra. And, like my mother, is just crying out to be noticed, it seems. ‘There’s no need,’ I say, wondering quite why that should be. Is he just plain old lonely while Lucy’s away? I must remember he’s only recently been bereaved too. I get the impression he and his sister aren’t close. Perhaps he’s just
in need of a friend. Like I am right now. I bend down and pick Spike up, decided. ‘You know, you could always come with us. We’d like that, Spike, wouldn’t we?’

  He hovers by his chair, and once again I have a powerful sense that though he doesn’t want to stay he doesn’t want to go either. Then he leaves it and comes across to stroke the top of Spike’s head. Nothing like a dog to help things along. ‘He has interesting fur,’ he says, leaning closer to inspect it. ‘Kind of wavy. What breed is he, exactly?’

  ‘We’re not entirely sure. So we’ve decided he’s the bastard love child of Hairy McClary from Donaldson’s Dairy and Madame Fifi La Bucket, who escaped from the circus.’

  ‘That so?’

  ‘We like to think so. He does speak the most beautiful French. His mother was a Bichon Frise, you see. Used to ride a small bicycle round a big top in Fréjus. Go on. Come with us, why don’t you? If you’ve nowhere else to be, that is. You can keep me company.’

  ‘I thought you talked to the dog.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I say. ‘I only speak English.’

  A version of it, at any rate. Though not, perhaps, his.

  We do the same route most days, if we’ve time, Spike and I. We walk to the end of my road, down the next and round the corner. Then up Cathedral Road and into Sophia Gardens. Where we mess around a bit with his little rubber bone.

  T he trees that line the river are becoming smudged with patches of banana and mustard, but it’s still a green summer sward that greets us in the park. Gaggles of after school teenagers mess about with balls and eat crisps, while lone joggers weave their way around them.

  Having to w alk as well as talk seems to be good for Gabriel Ash. He’s left his jacket in my kitchen and has rolled up his sleeves, and thus unbuttoned he looks altogether more, well, unbuttoned. Though only marginally, it seems; when I ask him about his father’s stash of memorabilia and how he feels about it all, he tells me quick as you like that it doesn’t change anything, and in tones that suggest that it isn’t about to, either, so there seems little else to be said. So I move on to his daughter, about whom he’s much more talkative, and ascertain that he wasn’t ever married to her mother; they had a brief fling that wasn’t ever going to be going anywhere, and she didn’t know she was pregnant till after they split. But he supported her through it and has done so ever since. And when I comment that a lot of men would have made a bolt for the hills at that point, he seems genuinely shocked that I might assume he’d do likewise. How could he look himself in the eye if he abandoned his own flesh and blood?

  ‘Plus,’ he adds, ruefully. ‘You haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her terrifying Italian Grand Mama.’

  Or the pleasure of having your own father abandon you, which I imagine is much more the point. ‘So this is a first, then?’ I ask him. ‘Getting married?’

  ‘Indeed,’ he says, pushing a hand across his hair.

  ‘Exciting.’

  ‘If stressful.’

  ‘Oh, they’re always that, aren’t they?’ I pull Spike’s bone from my pocket and reach down to unclip his lead.

  ‘So I’m told,’ he says qui etly, watching me. ‘So I’m told.’

  Walking dogs, on the whole, is not a dangerous pastime. But e ven before it does, I can see, without a doubt, that on this occasion anyway, it’s going to break with tradition. That it’s an accident waiting to happen. I think people in my line of work do tend to have a bigger visual vocabulary about such things – all those years and years of listening to excitably recounted traumas. Or perhaps it’s just because people who deal daily with the fall-out from injuries are more aware than most of how readily accidents do happen.

  But I clearly don’t see it soon enough. I throw the bone a few times, and Spike, legs like little pistons, races joyfully to catch it. And then, just as I lob the bone into the air again, out of the corner of my eye, I see him. An Airedale, the Airedale; the scourge of the park. He wears a heavy leather collar and he travels alone. I don’t know who he belongs to because I’ve never seen his owner. I suspect they let him off the leash and then tootle off and go shopping.

  Leaving him to terrorise the likes of my dog. ‘That bloody Airedale!’ I say, already now in motion, following the trajectory of the now airborne bone. There’s no question that the Airedale’s going to reach it before him, but possession is not always nine-tenths of the law. Not in the dog world, at any rate. But because Spike doesn’t realise he’s not an Alsatian, once the Airedale takes possession he’s ready to do battle, and charges across the park in pursuit.

  Gabriel, whose legs are much longer than mine, sees what’s happening and starts running too, and soon – quelle surprise – overtakes me. But just as he’s closing in on the rogue canine, Spike, clearly keen to go for safety in numbers, suddenly changes course and runs right across his path.

  And I know, I just know someone’s going to get hurt. I’d like to think it might be a some thing – that bloody Airedale, to be specific – but as he’s already a good ten metres clear by this time, I know that it will be the some one today. And I’m absolutely right. Because three seconds after my premonition hits me, Gabriel, though vaulting Spike with the grace of an Olympian, makes a miscalculation by forgetting that he isn’t one, and collapses heavily, awkwardly, down onto the grass.

  The Airedale, by this time, is cantering away with Spike’s bone, and Spike himself, all out of puff now, can do nothing more useful than yap out a tirade of doggy abuse. I reach Gabriel a scant five seconds or so later, by which time all the colour has drained from his face. He’s lying on the ground in an embryonic crescent, rolling back and forth and clutching his knee. Were he playing for Liverpool, he’d be yellow card impressive. Except today there are no free kicks on offer and hence no dramatics; this is real. He’s hurt, that much is obvious. I drop down to my knees beside him.

  ‘Oh, Lord, Gabriel! Your knee ! That bloody dog.’

  ‘I’m okay,’ he says. He’s still short of breath as he speaks. And he patently isn’t okay.

  ‘No you’re not. Where does it hurt, exactly? And did you feel anything? Did you feel a popping sound?’

  He shakes his head. Manages a grim smile. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No. Thank God. I’ve been there already. No. Just a medium sized dagger up the thigh. God, I’m so stupid.’

  ‘No. I’m the stupid one. I don’t know what I was thinking, letting you charge off after them like that.’ I cast my eyes around. ‘On this wet bloody grass. It’s lethal.’

  He pushes himself up into a sitting position and gingerly flexes and unflexes his leg. ‘It’ll be okay,’ he says, exploring the area with his fingers. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, worrying anyway. ‘We need to get you sorted out.’ I swivel to look around me. ‘That’ll do,’ I say, gesturing to the rank of benches that flank the path at the edge of the park. ‘Let’s get you up and over there, and then I can run back and fetch my car.’

  He shakes his head. ‘There’s no need. I can walk.’

  ‘You absolutely can’t. If you’ve torn that ligament again – and I suspect you might well have – I’m certainly not going to allow you to walk back.’

  ‘Really,’ he persists. He’s looking less pale now and his expression is determined. ‘I walked a good deal further when I ruptured the thing in the first place, believe me. Come on. Give me a hand up and let’s see how we’re doing.’

  I help haul him up and he grunts as I do so. ‘Gabriel, it is really no bother whatsoever for me to go and fetch my car. It’ll only take me five minutes, and –’

  ‘No need,’ he says firmly. ‘Look, let’s give it a go, eh? If I can lean on you, I can avoid putting too much weight on it. It’ll be fine. Come on. If I can get as far as that bench, I can get back to yours. Come on.’ He grins. ‘And if it turns out I can’t, then you can give me a piggyback, can’t you?’

  Spike, by now, has given up all hope of getting his bone back, and doesn’t kick up his
usual fuss when I clip his lead back on.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ Gabriel says to him, having got the hang of including Spike in the conversation, which is sweet of him. ‘I did my best.’

  ‘Woof,’ says Spike. ‘Bloody Airedale.’

  That bloody Airedale, I decide, has a great deal to answer for. Though, at that point, I have no idea how much.

  Chapter 22

  ‘SO THIS IS HOW we do it, okay? You put your right arm around my shoulder, okay? That’s it. And I’ll put my left around your waist –’

  ‘And then we do the hokey-cokey and we turn around, right?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Concentrate. And then we walk in synchrony.’

  ‘Dancing now, is it?’ He took a step. ‘Ow!’

  ‘Right. This is no good, is it? I’m going to get the car.’

  ‘No, no. Sorry. Sorry, miss. We walk in synchrony. Okay.’

  ‘So go on, then. Take it more carefully this time. Put your weight on me. That’s it. How does that feel?’

  ‘Er. Like I’ve torn my anterior cruciate ligament. Again.’

  ‘Yes, I think I knew that. But how does it feel? How much does it hurt? Can you actually put any weight on it at all?’ We took a step. ‘How was that?’

  ‘Not too bad.’ We took another. ‘That’s okay. No, that’s fine. See? No problems. Mind you, you must get sick of doing this, don’t you?’

  ‘What ?’

  ‘Living on a perpetual busman’s holiday. First your mother, and now me. What a pair.’

  I laughed. ‘ There is zero comparison. You may be heavier on the back but believe me, Gabriel, you are infinitely lighter on the ears.’

  ‘Like that, is it?’

  ‘It tends to get that way, yes. When it’s twenty -four / seven.’

  ‘But hopefully not for too much longer, though. Yes?’

  We had to stop then, so Spike could make the acquaintance of a slug that was slithering across the pavement and into the road. Where it would surely die a horrible death.

  ‘In theory,’ I said. ‘But the trouble is that she has absolutely no interest in leaving.’