After Brock

by Binding, Paul

  Josh stepped in, almost as if avenging an insult. ‘ Quiz show? ’ he echoed. He obviously didn’t mind being disrespectful to somebody of high reputation whom it was an honour for his sister to be taught by, ‘ High Flyers is one of the leading kite shops in the whole of the UK.’

  ‘…You must forgive me! It must have been what our forebears called “a touch of the sun”,’ said Dr Pringle.

  Then he heaved himself up, a little shakily, from the basket chair, and valiantly tried to give us all a friendly smile. ‘Here you go, Nat!’ he said, and he took from his trouser pocket a wallet, from which he extracted one of the cards he’d spoken of. He kind of lurched forward, like somebody still not feeling himself, and handed it to me.

  While the others made clumsy conversation to see him out and say goodbye-till-next-time in as ordinary a way as they could, I glanced at what I’d been given:

  Dr JULIAN PRINGLE

  B. Mus D. Mus. (Royal Academy of Music)

  M.A. Kodály Music Pedagogy (Kodály Institute)

  jul.pringle@yahoo.com

  The address below was in Walworth Road. He lived within easy reach of my own home, a convenience I knew I would act on.

  ‘Well, whatever was all that about?’ said Josh, ‘it was weird!’

  ‘Just a bit.’

  ‘Personal stuff, huh?’

  My impression too, though I wouldn’t admit this. ‘Don’t see how!’

  ‘Skeletons in the old cupboard?’

  ‘Not in mine!’ I said.

  ‘Well, these last ten minutes have been pretty fucking bizarre,’ said Josh, ‘so, Nat, why don’t we go out into the garden, and, mate, you can test me on some of my martial arts postures.’

  Though this was handy for him, I could tell he was asking to distract me. (But from what?) That’s what I like about Josh; he understands my moods, my states of mind, without prying too closely.

  Mum was engrossed in making an Indian meal for my end-of-exam celebration when I arrived back, so I decided I’d keep my day to myself. I probably would have anyway. Mum likes life to be harmonious and ‘stress-free’. South Indian food involves great quantities of tamarind and fenugreek, coconut, plantain and ginger, and the little kitchen was already smelling strongly and pleasantly of all these. The two of us, as I had guessed beforehand, were not going to eat by ourselves. Doug McBride would be coming round, as so often, as so very often. (I don’t mind this as much as that last sentence suggests. I am indifferent.) Ever since Mum, who does admin in a primary school, went on a course about actual and ideal classroom sizes, where Mr McBride was giving a lecture, it’s been Doug this and Doug that and Doug whatever. Though his head is buzzing with budgets and long-term forecasts (he’s spectacularly unlike my dad in this, as in other respects), Doug does his best with me to be a laid-back regular guy. But he gives his true anorak self away in so many ways. Like: ‘I can’t help worrying, Nat, that all three of your A Levels are what we nowadays call s oft subjects. I wonder why your teachers didn’t point that out to you. Those choices could go against you when whichever-University-it-is has to decide about its new intake.’

  ‘Even the University of Bedfordshire?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Why should that have different policies from elsewhere?’

  ‘ Bed fordshire. Beds are usually soft, aren’t they? Unless they’re futons.’

  ‘Ah, I get it! But, seriously Nat, I have reason to think a number of top universities have “black lists” of subjects (meaning the soft ones). They tend to get lumped as things that only certain kinds of students take.’

  ‘Well, I just went for the subjects I was any good at, Doug. English Language, English Literature, Media Studies. End of…!’

  But tonight he was fairly bearable, talking away about India where he went some months back on a fact-finding visit. A lot of people would have found it interesting, but I can’t say I exactly did because half the time (at least) I was aware of the rapt look on Mum’s face. She was looking very nice tonight, had taken trouble to do so after she’d finished in the kitchen. She’d tied her sandy-coloured hair in a brief pony-tail, and wore her best peacock blue top. I don’t look like either of my parents much, but I’ve inherited Mum’s wide-apart set of eyes, though hers are a green-flecked brown, not grey. Doug greatly appreciated her appearance, I could tell.

  The meal was delicious, as Doug said at least a hundred times. First we had sambar or vegetable stew, with aubergines, tomatoes and yellow cucumbers; then rasam, a soup made from tamarind juice and lentils, but Mum serves it up with rice and yoghurt-soaked fritters. Before we tucked into all this though, Doug produced a bottle of champagne to toast me and my results. So there we go! I still can’t see why Mum prefers (at least I assume she does) a nerd like Doug to my dad. But then of course it was Dad who wouldn’t stay with her/us, wasn’t it?

  Once I was by myself again and in my own room, I knew what I would do – I would go to the bookshelf on which stands the omnibus edition of Sherlock Holmes Short Stories which was Dad’s as a boy. I knew I’d never thrown away that scrap of paper marking the whereabouts of that awesome story, ‘The Speckled Band’. Quite yellowed with time it is. I took it out, and you might have thought I was deciphering code.

  November 30 & Dec 7 1973

  Violin lessons to Julian Kempsey given at

  ‘Woodgarth’, Etnam Street, Leominster

  £7

  Received with thanks Dec 7th 1973

  Gregory Pringle L.R.A.M.

  The idea that comes to me is, to quote Josh, ‘pretty fucking bizarre’, and I don’t know how I will get to sleep with it pressing on my mind. But I no longer have an exam to wake up early for. So why not, once Doug has left, and Mum is in her room, creep out of the flat, out of the whole building, and follow one of our local foxes – or better, a pair of them? Sleuth them to their dens, or stopping places? I love their slinking gait, their graceful muscular jumps of walls and defiance of gates or fences, their capacity for rapid movement while completely keeping their cool. There’s nothing London foxes like better (this is hard fact) than fish and chips, so a good place to wait for them is the qui-etest spot near a chippie you can find. If you’re properly patient, a pair will emerge from somewhere you’ve never suspected any creatures could be hiding, and – snap! – like lightning they’ve snatched a bit of batter-soaked cod or a few greasy congealing chips spilled from some wrapping. Then off they dance with their finds into the recesses of Herne Hill and Camberwell gardens and backyards. And I like to go with them.

  Next morning, I didn’t celebrate No School by dawdling over breakfast in the kitchen after Mum had left for work. Instead I left the building, crossed the road, and made for the 68 bus stop. Amazingly a bus came along as soon as I arrived. But traffic was heavier than normal and was held up for so long at Camberwell Green that I was tempted to get off and walk. But it’s a long haul to where Camberwell Road becomes Walworth Road, and Dr Pringle, I knew from the number on his card, lives at least halfway up. And I didn’t want to arrive at his home sweaty and breathless, but cool and collected, with both my curiosity and my social skills intact.

  I could, of course, have rung him beforehand to check he’d be at home, but I hate speaking on the phone to someone I don’t know well. And though I had his email address, I’d no idea how often the doctor looked at his messages. Mine might hang around in cyberspace a long time, possibly for the rest of the week, which wouldn’t suit me at all.

  His house was in a perfectly ordinary terrace on the Kennington side of the street, less well looked after than its immediate neighbours and, like every other in the row, divided up into flats. I guessed the doctor went out to teach pupils rather than saw them in this unprepossessing place. I felt nervous and bold, both together, as I walked up to the door. Above the second bell from the bottom I saw the name PRINGLE in handwriting, tacked on with a piece of sellotape.

  ‘Yes? Hullo? Who is that?’ came the voice through the speaker. It didn’t sound quite like the voice I�
�d heard at Josh’s yesterday, as it was speaking in a whisper, but on the other hand it didn’t not sound like it either.

  ‘It’s Nat Kempsey!’ Considering his reaction to my name yesterday, I couldn’t rule out a strong response today. Perhaps he’d give a strange cry and faint dead away up there in his flat… But in fact his disembodied voice betrayed no surprise that it was me down there on his doorstep, which I found odd in itself.

  ‘Nat?’ he repeated, and this time he sounded, like, pleased. ‘Well, you must come on up? I’m on the first floor.’

  And seconds later the door gave a little squeaky sob, and opened for me.

  The hall and stairs were as depressing as I’d expected from the house’s exterior: lino and cheap drugget, and a faded brown wallpaper, torn in places, with a pattern of cream leaves.

  Dr Pringle, dressed as yesterday, was on the landing outside his private front door, to greet me. In the stairwell’s half light he looked younger than yesterday, but then, of course, he’d just finished playing, which must be tiring. ‘I thought you’d come and see me,’ he said quietly (and very nicely), ‘but I hadn’t, I must admit, predicted it would be first thing this morning.’

  ‘Sorry about that!’ I said, ‘but there’s no time like the present, is there?’

  ‘Very true!’ said Dr Pringle, ‘and I wish more people acted on that principle… But – please come inside.’

  After a hall with four other doors opening off it, we walked into a large sitting-room, not exactly cluttered, but as full as could be before that becomes the right word. It was plainly a practice room too. There were two music stands (well, maybe Dr Pringle did sometimes give lessons at his home). A net-curtained bay window looked out onto Walworth Road itself, the panes dusty. Otherwise the room, considering all the stuff it contained, was in good enough order. The walls were almost entirely covered by shelves holding books, CDs, vinyl records and scores, there was a shabby but comfortable-looking sofa and armchairs, a large desk stood by the window and on top of it were papers stacked in piles held down by glass paperweights, half-a-dozen framed photos and two potted yuccas.

  ‘I can make you some coffee if you’d like some, Nat?’ said Dr Pringle, ‘and then we can talk. But we shall have to do so in a low voice. My wife is ill, you see.’ He gestured to the wall. ‘She’s had a bad night. I’m afraid she often does!’

  My mum’s mum was ill for over six months; it was horrible. I should be less scared of ill people than I am.

  ‘Sorry to hear it, Dr Pringle,’ I said, ‘yes, coffee’d be great.’

  While he was out of the room, I went over to the desk and looked at the framed pictures. Two, wording at the bottom told me, were of the Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music, Kecskemét, Hungary. One showed a long, curved, whitewashed building approached by a walled flight of steps standing by which was Dr Pringle himself, even younger than now. The other was of a corridor inside, whitewashed, cool-seeming, particularly to a Londoner on a hot day like today, its arches revealing views of greenery. The music teacher was in this picture too, and, as if to prove his status, was actually carrying his violin case. This was the place, the institute, the degree on his card came from, I supposed. A third photograph showed the great man himself, Zoltán Kodály (I must Google his biography!), and a very nice face he had. Obviously the face of someone who cared about children having their natural musical her-itage. Old and bearded and wise, eyes half-closed, right hand resting on the coat of a fair, charming-looking young woman. I guessed her to be, despite the immense gap in their ages, his wife, partly because, before all the rupture, my dad would sometimes put his hand on my mum’s sleeve in just that contented way. Dad loved Mum at such times, I feel sure, but it’s difficult to sort this stuff out.

  A fourth photo showed a different woman, dark, plump-faced, sallow, in a black, high-collared coat. Though she looked many years older than him, I had no sooner turned my gaze on it than I reckoned this was the woman in the next-door room, the wife who was ‘ill, you see’, and who had just had a bad night, as she often does, he was afraid. For Mr Kodály a many-years-younger wife, for Dr Pringle a many-years-older one. I surprise myself with my intuitions quite often.

  The sixth photograph was of a large old church, of dark pink stone, with a square tower. Underneath it, in old-fashioned, sloping, imitation script sprawled the words ‘Priory Church, Leominster’.

  Leominster, where Dad had been born, where he had spent his early years, but where he never (I’d noticed) wanted to go, even though he now lived and had a business not far away. He rarely spoke of his life there. When I’d told Josh I didn’t know of any likely skeletons in the family cupboards, I wasn’t being quite honest. My dad, unlike my mum, is a secretive person.

  And having seen the photo I knew what my first remark to Dr Pringle should be when he returned. It was brilliant. After it everything would have to be revealed.

  Coffee was certainly taking its time. I stood there by the desk looking again at each picture, and planning how the conversation might go after my opening gambit. But when eventually Dr Julian Pringle did come back into the room, with a tray holding two steaming mugs, a sugar bowl and a plateful of dark chocolate digestive biscuits, he started asking me about how many sugars I took – and, ridiculously, that threw me.

  So what I came out with wasn’t this piece of brilliance at all. But not all that bad. ‘You said just now you thought I would come round to see you today?’

  ‘I did, yes! And if you hadn’t in some way got in touch with me, then I was going to contact Emily’s parents this evening and ask for your phone number or email. But I’m very pleased it’s you wanting to see me.’

  I merely asked: ‘Why are you pleased?’

  Dr Pringle looked away from me. Balancing his mug a little awkwardly he sat himself down in the armchair nearest the window, then gestured me to take a seat opposite him. ‘Surely you don’t need to ask that, Nat? I would like to get to know you. You responded to the Bach so well, and the ideas of the Kodály method.’ And he gave a quick nod in the direction of the photo of the composer with his young wife.

  That can’t be the real, let alone the principal, reason for him wanting to know me? I thought, somewhat put off my stride. Best for one of us at least to be more direct.

  ‘I think you know my dad?’

  ‘Know?’ repeated Dr Pringle, now looking me full in the face, ‘no, I’m sorry to say I do not.’

  I was shoved even further off my stride now, and this made me oddly agitated. I stirred my mug with unnecessary vigour. ‘But…’ I began, then other words failing me, ‘Leominster,’ I said. And this time it was my turn to nod in the direction of a photo, of the great Priory in the Herefordshire market town.

  Dr Pringle was, I now saw, every bit as ill-at-ease as myself. ‘I said I don’t know him. But I knew him. Of course I knew him – years and years ago, it all was.’

  ‘I was sure of it.’

  ‘How is Peter?’

  Dad’s always called Pete, he’s quite insistent about this. He even wants me to call him Pete now. Well, he’s better at being a mate than a parent, which is why Josh got on so well with him. So for a split second or two I didn’t know who Dr Pringle was talking about. ‘He’s very well,’ I said lamely, then remembering how the kite business was limping along, ‘he’s got worries, of course. Business ones, I don’t know about any others. He and my mum separated six years back,’ I added, in case he wasn’t aware. Which he plainly wasn’t.

  ‘That must have meant hard times for them both,’ he said diplomatically, after a pause. ‘I heard you were born, of course, but otherwise – well – I have had no news about Peter’s married or domestic life. Why should I?’ Yes, why should you? I thought to myself. But again, why shouldn’t you?

  ‘Are you the only one?’

  I didn’t follow him.

  ‘Only…?’

  ‘Peter’s only child?’

  I gave a laugh as well as another over-energetic stir of
the coffee-mug. ‘As far as I know, yup! And I’m quite definitely my mum’s only one too!’

  For at least half my life I have regretted this. I’ve often envied Josh his brothers and sisters. Mine’s been a lonely lot. I’ve never even had what I once pined for even more than siblings, the company of an animal in my home. Perhaps this explains my present habit of tracking of foxes in the night.

  ‘And Peter’s business in Shropshire? A kite shop, isn’t it? Apologies to you and Josh for not having heard of it. Sometimes it’s hard for me to know anything much beyond my music.’ This I found easy to believe. ‘And my wife and her sad condition,’ he added quickly. ‘But Peter’s shop – is it really called High Flyers?’

  There was a strange smile, or, more accurately, shadow of a smile, playing on his face. Which made it seem youthful. Now I could imagine he’d been a small boy once.

  ‘Has been called that for five and a half years – since it started,’ I said, a bit defensively.

  ‘I suppose he named it after the quiz show?’

  That was the second time Julian Pringle had mentioned this subject, and there was something about his manner that made me uncomfortable.

  ‘I think that “high flyer” about describes a kite,’ I said. ‘There’s a well-known kite shop in Chester, which Dad is in regular touch with, called Kites Aloft. Well, the name he chose for his shop follows the same idea.’

  ‘But it was also the name of a highly successful radio programme in the early seventies,’ said Dr Pringle.

  First I’d heard of this.

  ‘And was my dad connected with the programme?’

  ‘ Connected?’ Dr Pringle looked positively aghast at my question, ‘well, of course! A star, you might say. And can you be surprised when he was such an astonishing, precocious storehouse of knowledge? But surely you know about all this?’