In the Falling Snow (19 page)

He gets up from the sofa and lines his shoes up neatly. Then he turns down the volume of the Peter Tosh CD before making his way into the kitchen. Come on, Annabelle, he’s not just
your
son. She should at least have the courtesy to put him out of his misery and tell him that Laurie is all right. He takes the solitary bottle of Pouilly-Fumé from the fridge and twists a corkscrew into it, before wrestling both cork and instrument clear. He pours the wine into a tumbler and then puts the bottle back into the fridge. As he slumps down on to the sofa he picks up his phone and dials quickly from memory. He can tell from her voice that she is in bed and probably about to go to sleep.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up. I can call tomorrow if it’s better for you.’

For a moment there is silence as she takes in just who it is that is speaking. Then Yvette laughs slightly.

‘Have you lost it? Or have you been drinking, is that it?’

‘What do you mean “drinking”?’

‘You shouldn’t be calling me. Not with things being the way they are.’

‘Well things are only the way they are because you want it like that.’ He pauses. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Listen, we can’t work together because of what went on between us. You know that, right?’ She waits. ‘Well?’

‘We can’t work together because you seem to think that it’s all right to go putting our business out where everyone can see it.’

‘I don’t have anything to hide.’

‘Certain things are private, Yvette. Don’t you realise how bad you’re making yourself look?’

She laughs. ‘I don’t believe it, you
have
been drinking, haven’t you? You know what, why don’t we just pretend that this phone call never happened?’

‘Why don’t we pretend that things between us never happened? That’ll make it easier for everyone. I mean, this is all messed up. Where do you get off telling people that I’ve been harassing you?’

‘I’ll tell you what’s messed up, Keith. The fact that if I don’t pretend that this phone call never happened then I’ll have to tell my solicitor and it’s going to sound suspiciously like you were bullying me. So just go to sleep and leave me alone, all right?’

‘So you don’t see us working together again?’

‘Get a grip, Keith. It’s gone way too far and you know it. Maybe if they gave me a settlement of some kind then I’d leave, but according to my solicitor they won’t. It’s easier for them if you step down because it doesn’t cost them anything.’

‘I see.’ He pauses. ‘Yvette, why are you doing this? We got on just fine, didn’t we?’

‘Women don’t like being dumped, or didn’t anyone tell you that? Maybe I’ve saved some other poor sod from feeling used and then chucked.’

‘You weren’t used and you weren’t chucked. Things end, Yvette. That’s just life.’

The phone goes dead. She has hung up on him, so he closes the phone and puts it down on the glass-topped table with a click. Then he picks up the tumbler of wine. He knows that he shouldn’t have called her, but at least he’s sure now. He knows where he stands.

Annabelle opens the door. She is still in her dressing gown, and she looks him up and down as though he is a salesman who is attempting to press some unwanted household products upon her. His former wife simply shakes her head.

‘You look like shit, Keith. You’re not taking care of yourself, are you?’

‘Yes, well I didn’t come around here at eight o’clock in the morning for your opinion on how I look.’

‘Really? Well, I didn’t open the door and expect to find a vagrant on my doorstep. So, are you coming in?’

She moves to one side to let him pass, but he does not move.

‘Well, are you coming in or not?’

‘Is Laurie here?’

‘He’s asleep. Come on, I don’t want to talk to you while you’re outside.’

He moves past her and into the kitchen where he sits on a tall stool by the breakfast bar.

‘Why didn’t you call me yesterday? I left messages. In fact, by the end of the day I was worried sick.’

‘I know, it’s my fault. I should have called you, but my mobile needed charging.’ Annabelle sighs, and then she pulls out a chair and sits. ‘And there’s something else.’ She pauses. ‘Look, Laurie got himself in a bit of bother with some boys from school.’

‘What kind of bother?’

‘Shoplifting. I had to go and pick him up from Mr Hughes’s office. Don’t worry, I gave him a pretty serious talking to, but he claims that it was all a big mistake, and maybe it’s true because the school let all of them off with a warning.’

‘All of them? How many kids are we talking about? You make it sound like something out of
Oliver Twist
.’

‘Five or six, according to Mr Hughes. Look, maybe you could try getting through to Laurie again. He’s staying at home and revising today, so why don’t you come back in a few hours and maybe take him out for lunch. But for heaven’s sake, smarten yourself up a bit.’

‘You know, Annabelle, sometimes you’re not real. Laurie is hauled into the headmaster’s office and accused of shoplifting, and all you want to talk about is how I look?’

‘Mr Hughes is worried about him.’

‘And I’m worried about Mr Hughes.’

‘And given how you look, I’m worried about you. Did you get any sleep?’

Over the past three years, Annabelle has mastered the art of irritating him with a well-placed comment, or even a look, and he has had to teach himself carefully how not to rise to her bait. He takes a deep breath.

‘Look, Annabelle, we’re talking about Laurie. This could be serious, okay?’

‘I’ve been trying to tell you for some time now that there’s a problem. Laurie’s getting by with his work, but no more than that.
But
those kids he runs around with, I don’t like it. Mr Hughes confirmed to me that some of them are binge drinkers, buying their cider and their alcopops by the case and puking up in the street every day. Jesus, they go to school either drunk or hung over, and you know these kids can buy the stuff twenty-four hours a day in the supermarket and it’s cheaper than fizzy water. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing Laurie to his so-called friends. I can’t fight it alone and quite frankly you don’t even seem to be trying.’

‘Annabelle, I’m hearing you, and I am concerned about him, but I’ve got a lot going on, okay? And, to be honest, you know what I think about Mr Hughes and that school. Most of the kids there learn by downloading information from Wikipedia and all the teachers do is just help them to organise the facts that they’ve gathered. Don’t you remember when he was doing his GCSEs, and the Religious Studies teacher showed them
Spiderman
because it was about “making choices”, and then
The Nutty Professor
because it was about “prejudice”. I mean, what chance do the kids stand if their headmaster lets teachers get away with lazy crap like that? Hughes is full of it.’

‘But it doesn’t matter what Mr Hughes says, it’s me Annabelle who’s telling you that Laurie is in with a bad set. I’m sorry, but those kids that he fraternises with are just not our type of people, and I don’t mean anything by it but I can’t put it any simpler than that.’

He looks closely at her and begins to shake his head.

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

‘I’m serious about my son and his welfare, and to my mind that’s all that matters. I’m sorry, but I wish I sensed that you feel the same way. I know you’ve got a lot going on, but I don’t think that I can deal with his attitude by myself for much longer.’

He stares at her and swallows deeply. Then he silently counts
to
five. Are these really her opinions? ‘Our type of people’? He hasn’t seen or heard of Bruce in a while, but he assumes that the film editor is still in the picture.

‘I’ll come back later for Laurie. Just tell him to be ready, okay?’

As he climbs from the stool and turns to leave, he can feel her eyes upon him. He knows that she will say nothing further. She has said enough.

Laurie looks bored as the London Eye first hoists, then spins them skyward with its slow circular movement. His son stares down at the pod beneath them where a group of city businessmen are tucking into crustless sandwiches and champagne that is being served to them from a large hamper by two pretty young women in white aprons. Apparently, his son seems to think that the corporate outing is more fascinating than observing the tight switchback patterns of the River Thames, or looking out at the vast panoramic sprawl that is south London. However, now that they near the top, Laurie finally deigns to look interested in the view and he points to the newly refurbished Wembley Stadium in the north.

‘Check it out, Dad. You can almost see right into it.’

It does look impressive, particularly the high graceful arch which rises over the whole arena, but he wants to talk with his son about things other than sport. He points east towards the mouth of the Thames.

‘You know, if you look over there you can get a really good idea of how London developed as a great port city.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, fifty years ago, on either bank of the river there was nothing but docks and warehouses, and this river would have been filled with ships from all over the world. Cities have to make money in order to survive and grow, and London made its money out of shipping. That was its business.’

Laurie shrugs his shoulders. ‘Well, the business is all mashed up now, right?’

‘Well, there’s no shipping industry, as such, but there’s still business. Banking, insurance, high technology. I mean, London’s business infrastructure is pretty diversified these days.’

Laurie seems unconvinced and he shakes his head. ‘There ain’t no business. I know plenty of people who can’t get a job doing anything.’

‘Maybe they don’t want a job.’

‘Or maybe somebody doesn’t want to give them a job. It’s not always as simple as it looks.’

‘Is this your way of telling me that you still don’t know what kind of career you want?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Nothing, I suppose. But have you thought any further about what you might do after you finish at university?’

‘I’ve got to get in first.’

‘Are you worried about your exams?’

‘No, I’m not worried. Are you? Anyhow, it’s only November and I haven’t even done my mocks yet. The real thing’s not for another six months.’

‘I remember.’ He pauses. ‘I did them too, although it was a while ago.’

Laurie sucks his teeth. ‘You’re telling me.’ His son turns away from him and from the expanse of the river to the east, and re-focuses his attention on Wembley Stadium.

He looks to the west, where the sudden bend of the river creates the illusion that Battersea Power Station is floating on the water. A camera flashes and he realises that their photograph has been taken, and then a voice on the speaker system announces that at the end of the ‘flight’ they will be able to purchase a souvenir snapshot. He looks again at Laurie, whose eyes remain firmly fixed on
the
football stadium to the north, and he resists the urge to continue his history lecture, which is of course a veiled attempt to persuade Laurie that this is his city too. And then it occurs to him that it’s possible that his son already knows this, and that there is no reason for him to acquaint Laurie with what he already possesses. His son is probably quite at home with the Tower of London and the Palace of Westminster and Waterloo station and St Paul’s Cathedral, all of which are clearly visible from this vantage point. In fact, Laurie is most likely circling in the London Eye wondering why his old man is banging on like some demented tour guide about his city, the city of his birth. He looks again at his son, whose deep brown eyes remind him of Annabelle’s, and he wants to give the boy a reassuring hug, but he knows better than to spoil the moment. He is also, if truth be told, unsure as to which one of them is in need of reassurance.

Earlier in the afternoon, when he returned to Annabelle’s house, a sheepish-looking Laurie was already sitting downstairs and waiting for him. His son glanced up and muttered ‘What’s up?’ but when he asked the sprawling boy what he wanted to do for the afternoon, Laurie shrugged his shoulders and avoided taking any decision-making responsibility. He suggested to Laurie that it might be relaxing for them to go into central London and walk by the river, and so the pair of them ambled silently to the end of the street where he flagged down a taxi. He thought about saving some money and taking the tube, but Laurie seemed impatient and he had no desire to waste time ambling to and from train stations with a reluctant son. The taxi had only just pulled away from the kerb when Laurie stopped fiddling with his seat belt and began to mumble an apology for not having shown up at the football.

‘We got into some bother at school, but it was nothing. Some guys jumped us and there was a bit of a ruck.’

‘I thought it was shoplifting.’

‘The guy who runs the mini-mart near the school complained about us to the head. He said we’d been nicking stuff, but that wasn’t the main thing. Mr Hughes wanted to talk to us about the fighting, but it was nothing.’

‘What do you mean it was nothing? Why didn’t you just walk away?’

‘Walk away? Look Dad, you can’t walk away if somebody jumps you. It’s too late. It’s all over, right?’

‘So this was nothing to do with shoplifting?’

‘Like I said, the guy from the mini-mart made a complaint but Mr Hughes would have suspended us if we’d been shoplifting. He was more concerned about the ruck.’

‘Did the other gang hurt you?’

‘What do you mean “other gang”? I’m not in a gang.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I’ve just got a few bruises and stuff, but it was handbags.’

‘Handbags?’

‘A bit of name-calling and thumping and all done. The other kids were muppets, but Hughes is a real drama queen.’

He was suddenly conscious that the driver was listening to their private conversation, for he could see the man’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. He decided that for the moment it was probably best to say nothing further. Fifteen minutes later they stepped out of the taxi at the back of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and he turned to his son and asked him if he’d like to go up in the London Eye before they set off on their walk. Laurie shrugged, which meant that there was no serious opposition to the idea.