Molly Fox's Birthday (21 page)

‘It was well-intentioned though, I suppose,' I said.

‘But you don't understand. It wasn't a gift for me. It was Billy's ring. They'd given it to him for his eighteenth birthday. I recognised it the minute I saw it. Billy was mad about it, he wore it all the time. He was probably wearing it when he was shot, but fortunately I didn't think of that until much later. There was a lot about the ring that didn't register with me until much later. Anyway, there we were, my father and myself, sitting at the table with this thing between us. I said, “I won't be able to wear it,” and he said, “I know that. We just want you to have it as a keepsake.”' In explanation, Andrew held up his hands to me. They were large and broad. ‘Billy was a skinny little fellow. I'd never have been able to get any ring of his past the first joint of my finger. Oh, I can't tell you how much I didn't want to have this ring, and yet I couldn't see a way out of it. It was so unexpected that apart from the obvious thing of it being too small I couldn't think of any other excuse, any other reason not to take it. So we sat there in silence for a few minutes longer and then I said, “Thanks, Da.” I picked it up and put it in my pocket. And then as far I can remember – the next bit isn't clear in my mind – he got a bit upset and went out of the room. I don't think we said goodbye to each other formally. I suppose the taxi I'd booked arrived and I just left.

‘In the train going south, I was very conscious of this thing he'd given me. It made me feel guilty. Illogical, but
there you are. I made a conscious effort not to put my hand in the pocket where the ring was.' He gave a huge sigh. ‘And then I got to Dublin and you were there and we had a great couple of days before I left for England. On the ferry I went up on deck, and it did cross my mind to get rid of it then, just throw it over the side into the wake of the ship, but even I wasn't that stupid. Even I knew that that wouldn't be the end of it. And I knew that it would be a cruel thing to do, not to Billy, because Billy was past cruelty, but to my father. So it stayed there still in the darkness of my pocket, and when I was settled in Cambridge I took it out. I tossed it into the back of a drawer without looking at it or thinking about it, the way you might put aside a handful of loose change when you come back from a foreign country: something that there's no real point in keeping but that you can't quite bring yourself to throw away either.

‘And then, although you may not believe this, I forgot all about it. I didn't forget about Billy, although to be honest I didn't think a great deal about him either. I was focused on my new life, my studies; I was completely caught up in all of that. In those early years after he was killed I didn't brood on Billy's death the way I imagine most people in my circumstances would have done; as I know my parents certainly did.' He considered this for a few moments and then went on. ‘I think what I'm saying is that I didn't properly mourn him at the time. I don't think I could understand what had happened to Billy. And yet there wasn't a day passed when there wasn't something that would bring him to mind. I might see someone in the street wearing a Manchester United shirt: that was the team he followed. Or I'd be in a café and I'd
see someone putting heaps of sugar in their tea the way he used to. But most often it was nothing at all. I'd be in the library working or walking home at dusk or maybe at some party or in a pub, and suddenly he'd come into my mind. Just the idea of him. All of this life going on, people drinking and talking and laughing, and Billy not being a part of it. Not being here. Not being anywhere. I didn't feel sorrow about it, I didn't feel anything at all, not for ages. Looking back now, that seems strange. But that's the way it was.

‘A couple of years after I moved to Cambridge I was burgled. In my heart I was disappointed when I discovered that they hadn't stolen Billy's ring. It was lying on the floor in amongst a heap of other things, because the whole room had been turned over, drawers emptied and their contents picked through. I suppose the thieves decided that to try to fence a cheap ring like that would be more trouble than it was worth. So when I tidied up, it went back in the drawer again.

‘I got together with Nicole. I finished my PhD, we moved to London and got married. Obviously I told her about Billy and what had happened to him, but she had no real interest or curiosity about the subject so we never talked much about it subsequently. It remained a very private concern of my own. I began to think a lot about the idea of brothers. When I was around you, for example, you always talked a lot about your family, in particular about that brother of yours who's a priest.'

‘Tom.'

‘Yes. Tom. Part of the problem with Billy and me had been that we were so different. I'd always thought when he was alive that we had nothing in common and that that
was why we had never got on. I could see that your life and Tom's were completely different and yet you were close. What was that like? I couldn't begin to imagine. And then something happened that began to change everything. Tony was born.'

He fell silent at that. He drained his champagne and moved to pour more into his own glass and then mine. I realised that he'd waited years to find the right person and the right time and place to talk about all of this. I was careful to say nothing that might disturb the tenor of the moment. I sat quietly until he was ready to continue.

‘Although I had been looking forward to the baby being born, I had completely underestimated how I would feel towards him. I hadn't known that it would be so powerful. I hadn't realised that it was possible to love anyone with that degree of intensity, to care for them and for their well-being so much. But there was something about him that made all this even more peculiar. From the moment Tony was born, he looked like Billy. I can't tell you the shock that was to me. It never occurred to me that that might happen, I just hadn't thought about it. But he had Billy's ears and his nose; within a few days he was smiling at us with that same cheeky grin of Billy's. Here he was, a miniature version of the dead brother I'd never much cared for, and I'd have walked through fire for him.

‘I began to think about that ring at the back of the drawer. Still I couldn't bear to look at it, but I thought about what it meant, above all I thought about that word “son”. It began to dawn on me that I wasn't so special, that my parents had no doubt felt about Billy the way I felt about Tony. And then when I thought about what happened to Billy …' His voice trailed away; he couldn't
bear to follow through and articulate the thought. After a moment he continued. ‘One really good thing that came out of it all was that Tony brought about a kind of reconciliation between me and my parents. They were also overwhelmed by the family resemblance that was there. It endeared Tony greatly to them, but I could also see that they loved him for his own sake. They were both getting on in years by then and not in great health, so they weren't able to travel. I used to take Tony over to Belfast to visit them. That didn't go down too well with Nicole. She didn't much care for them, she thought they were vulgar and I didn't have much of a defence there, because I'd also thought the same thing for years. I didn't have too much time left with my family anyway. By the time Tony was three my mother had passed away, by the time he was five my father was also dead. My marriage was in serious trouble by then too, as you'll recall. Tony can't remember either of my parents, which is a pity, but I always remind him that they did spend time together. Just because you can't remember something doesn't mean that it never happened or it wasn't important. Those early years are crucial, and for Tony my parents had a part in them. And that means a lot to me.'

He fell silent again, and as he sat there quietly thinking about all of this, I almost did something extraordinary, something that might have ruined the delicacy of the moment. I almost closed my hand gently over his hand, where it lay resting on the table. I had actually done this once to someone many years before: an actor, a timid bore, with whom I was having a drink after a rehearsal. Molly had been there too. I hadn't been listening to what this man was saying; I was letting Molly carry the burden
of the conversation. I'd been in love with Louis at the time. I was to meet him later that evening, and I'd been thinking about him while staring absently at the actor's hand on the table, thinking about him with tenderness and a great physical longing. And then some kind of weird disassociation took over. I forgot that the man's hand on the table before me didn't belong to the man I was thinking about. I reached over and softly closed my hand over his.

As soon as I touched him I awoke to what I had done. The shock of its not being my lover's hand went through me as unpleasantly as a bolt of electricity. I heard the man's voice falter, but he went on talking. I could sense his fright. Still I didn't draw my hand away. I looked at Molly. Her eyes had gone wide and round, like the eyes of some small exotic creature, a lemur or a meerkat. I could sense the hilarity under her astonishment.
Please don't
laugh
, I pleaded with her, in my mind and with my gaze.
Whatever you do, please don't laugh
. I counted to ten and then I lifted my hand away slowly and carefully, like someone who has just finished building a house of cards. We all pretended that nothing untoward had happened. The actor said goodbye and left us a short while later. I don't think I've ever laughed so much in all my life as I did with Molly after he'd gone.

This time was different. This time I would have meant it. And this time I had the sense to keep my hands to myself.

‘I hope you don't mind me talking about all this,' he said.

‘No, not at all.'

‘I may have given you the impression,' he said, ‘that
after Tony was born I began to come to terms with what had happened to Billy, but that wasn't the case. Something else happened, years later, that brought it all to a head. Nicole and I had been living apart for about five years, so Tony would have been about ten by then. It happened in Paris. I had gone there for a month that summer, to do some research for the project that I was working on at the time; there were drawings there that I needed to see. I had taken a small apartment near the Observatory as a sub-let, but I didn't know the person who owned it. It belonged to a friend of a colleague of mine, and the rental was arranged through him: a fine apartment, in one of the old Haussmann buildings, with high ceilings and lovely plasterwork. There was stained glass in the stairwell and one of those marvellous old lifts with a metal gate. You could see each of the floors pass as you creaked your way up and down. I was at the top of the building, and there were chestnut trees just beyond all the windows.

‘Not long after I got there, I realised that I didn't know anybody in Paris. That is, I had a few contacts through my work, formal professional contacts: a man I had met at a conference in Rome some years earlier, a woman who worked in the Louvre whom I had helped when she came to London. Perfectly pleasant, good colleagues, but not people I knew well. It didn't bother me in the slightest because I was extremely busy while I was there, and when I wasn't working I was never at a loss for things to do. I wasn't lonely. To be honest, it was a relief to be completely alone for a while, and there's no better city for it than Paris. You get treated decently, you can sit alone in a café for hours and no one will think anything of it. From time
to time I would fall into conversation with people, locals or people like myself who were just passing through. No,' he said, as though I had contradicted him on this, although I had said nothing at all, ‘I was happy during those weeks, and had it not been for what then happened, it would have remained in my memory as a good time.

‘On the day in question,' he went on, ‘I had wrapped up a particular piece of work around lunchtime and decided to take the rest of the day off. I had been in town just wandering about, reading in cafés, looking in bookshops. It was late afternoon, early evening when it happened. I was tired and beginning to think about going back to the apartment. I had salad at home, and a chicken; I would buy some bread and wine. I was passing a baker's and thought I'd get the bread there. I remember there was a café next door to the baker's, with tables and chairs outside on the terrace, and I stood for a moment looking in through the window at all the cakes.' For the first time since he started speaking he suddenly seemed hesitant and shy, as though what he was about to say embarrassed him. ‘Just before it happened, I was thinking about you.' He laughed, but forced himself to follow through and say exactly what this meant. ‘I almost died, and if I had, you would have been the person I was thinking of as it happened. There were some of those typical French
pâtisseries
, you know, open flans with strawberries piled up on them, lemon pies and the like. There were apple pastries, with slices of fruit overlapping like slates on a roof, and all glazed; and they reminded me of you because you like apples more than anyone else I know. I thought of how my earliest memories of you have to do with apples, of how, when we were at Trinity, you used to carry your stuff
around in a green cord bag and you always had apples in it. You often used to skip meals. A cup of coffee and cigarettes and a few apples, and that would be your lunch, do you remember? After looking at the cakes I changed my mind, and decided I'd buy the bread nearer home. I turned away from the baker's window, took three steps past the café and then the bomb went off.

‘It was out of sync – it blew me off my feet, and only then did I hear the sound of the explosion. As I went down I hit my head on either a chair or the edge of a table. Either way it knocked me out, but just for a split second, and it probably saved me from worse harm, because I fell at an angle on my shoulder, and as a result didn't hit my head on the pavement. I came to almost immediately, but I didn't know where I was nor what the hell had happened. I was lying on the pavement looking up at the sky, and I could see the legs of the café chairs and the metal feet of the round tables just inches from where I lay. Looking in the other direction, I was at the bottom of a big tree, with a great circle of decorative cast iron over its roots. It was this that reminded me that I was in Paris. It wasn't that I was comfortable there, far from it, but the energy required to get myself up off the ground seemed more than I was capable of at that moment. I wanted to stay there, but people were running past screaming, and someone almost kicked me in the head, so I hauled myself up and sat on one of the chairs. My trousers were torn but I felt OK, no pain, just sort of numb. My ears were really sore from the noise of the blast and I couldn't hear properly. I suppose I was in shock, though I didn't realise it at the time. As far as I was concerned I was just exhausted, like I hadn't had a night's sleep in a month and I wanted to stay sitting
there. The emergency services seemed to kick in almost immediately. The place was swarming with policemen, there were ambulances, sirens, flashing lights all over the place. A helicopter came in to land near Notre-Dame, and I realised then how very near I'd been to the bomb itself.