Sex and Stravinsky (37 page)

‘Let me look at you,’ Josh is saying. ‘You look so different. Well, maybe you don’t. Maybe you look just the same?’ It is as Josh says this that he notices the ears. Jack has Hattie’s own dear little ears; those ears with almost no lobes. And could it be that these same darling ears are to be seen attached to the head of the odious James? James Alexander Marchmont-Thomas, who stole his guitar once, at school? ‘But how the hell did you get to be so tall?’ he says. ‘Good God, how did that happen?’

‘DNA,’ Hattie interjects. ‘My father and my brother are both very tall. My mother’s family as well. I’m the blip; the aberration. Foetal disadvantage. We’re twins, you see. James and I are twins. And once we were born my mother reinforced the disadvantage by always feeding James first. She did it without thinking.’ Then she pauses and she smiles at the tenant. ‘Giacomo,’ she says, ‘forgive me. I’ve actually met you before, but it was so long ago that you wouldn’t remember. This has been the weirdest day, but – please don’t think me too objectionable – I have reason to believe that I’m your aunt.’ Her words are met with general silence. ‘My brother’s son,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ Jack says.

‘
What?!?
’ Josh says. ‘You mean Jack is –? Christ Almighty, how weird!’ Then, after quite a while, he says, ‘Since we are talking weirdness right now – can anyone explain to me how Caroline comes to be here?’

‘Who’s Caroline?’ Hattie says.

And then the paramedics are at the wide French windows, with Hattie’s brother on a plastic stretcher. They move briefly indoors, into the light, in order to examine him before conveying him to the ambulance. Hattie, as the next of kin, agrees to travel with her brother. Josh and Jack, on the pistachio-green Vespa, follow the ambulance close behind. Each has his own separate reason for making the journey to the hospital. Josh cannot bear to leave Hattie to cope with the ghastly business on her own. Jack, dreaming of an EU passport, is in hopes that his moment may have come. His landlady, without a doubt, has ‘settler English’ written all over her. He is confident that there will be a paternal grandparent born within the British Isles. And the stinking drunkard – God willing, his own male parent – is just as surely on his last legs, so Jack doesn’t wish to waste time. He is reassured because, given that the drunkard and the landlady are twins, her DNA will probably serve his purpose, should the drunkard breathe his last. He knows that he needs to choose his moment with care, but he’s determined to approach her within the hour.

In the peaceful aftermath of the hospital party’s departure, Herman, Cat and Caroline have made their way back to the main house, where the two women sit down at the kitchen table.

‘Well,’ Caroline says with a smile. ‘That was a bit of excitement. So the wino turns out to be family?’

Herman hisses quietly through his teeth as he sorts out glasses and drinks.

‘Don’t ask,’ he says. ‘The wife’s relations. You’d know all about relations.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Caroline says.

‘Grandpa Ghoul and Old Mother Dribble,’ Cat says confidingly to Caroline. Having recovered her confidence, she senses a felicitous bond. ‘That’s my mom’s parents,’ she says, and she giggles. ‘They’re real pains, aren’t they, Dad? Hey, Dad? Was that stinky old
bergie
really Mom’s brother? I mean seriously. Was that Unmentionable James?’

‘ “Was” should be about right, my
skattjie
,’ Herman says, with a somewhat harsh laugh. ‘Brother James won’t trouble us for long. I’d say that he was heading smartly for the great cardboard city in the sky.’

But Cat has just remembered something.

‘Hey, Dad,’ she says, in agitation. ‘I’ve left my portfolio in there. I need it. Please, Dad, I really need it. I’ve got to have it now.’

‘I’ll go,’ Herman says. ‘But, baby, what were you doing in there, all alone in the dark? Not trespassing, I hope?’

‘I was returning a book,’ Cat says. ‘And that’s the honest truth. It was for my art project. And then I needed to wee. And then I saw this, this – Dad! Don’t look at me like that! I’m telling you the truth.’

‘I’ll go,’ Caroline says quickly. ‘You two stay right here.’

‘You’re a doll,’ Herman says, without thinking, but Cat appears not to mind.

‘Great!’ she says. ‘It’s not very big. It’s A3-size. It’s kind of shiny black plastic with a red handle. I left it by that silver desk.’

‘I know exactly,’ Caroline says and she steps out once more into that magical garden, where the little earthbound stars of light click on wherever she treads. Then, having retrieved the item and returned with it to the house, she places the portfolio on the kitchen table and looks invitingly at the girl.

‘Now then, Catherine,’ she says. ‘May I take a look? You are “Catherine”, I take it?’

‘I’m Kate,’ Cat says.

‘Kate?’ says Herman, planting a kiss on the crown of his daughter’s head. ‘Since when did Cat become Kate, may I ask? And what’s with the short black hair? What happened to my beautiful blonde bombshell?’

Cat prances a bit and giggles.

‘Lettie helped me,’ she says. ‘Isn’t it great? And she bought me these jeans. Do you think I look thin? Say you think I look thin. It’s magic pants. Lettie’s got some too. Only it’s quite hard to hitch them up.’

Herman laughs. He watches with pleasure as his daughter brings up a chair alongside the lovely Caroline. Both are women who are right now tugging at his heart.

‘Takeout pizza?’ he suggests.

He is met with unanimous approval. Cat asks for bananas on hers; a local peculiarity that causes Caroline to blink. They order extra for Zoe, though the girl is still sound asleep.

Cat’s drawings are fabulous. Caroline is dead impressed. The girl has always been able to draw and these are the best she’s ever done. Plus the photocopies and the sections of calligraphy look great.

‘It’s for my art project,’ Cat says to her admirer. ‘It’s all about Dogon mask dances in Mali. It has to be African, you see. This one’s the tree mask and this is the antelope. And this fancy one here with the four figures is the healer. It says all about it in the text that I’ve done. I’m doing it all in handwriting, which is maybe a bit showy-off, do you think?’

‘Kate,’ Caroline says. ‘Shall I tell you something? I’m a headmistress, so I’ve seen a lot of projects in my time and this one is the absolute tops. It’s the best.’ And then she starts doing that ‘entering-into-the-spirit’ thing; that eagerness routine in the face of a project that has always driven Zoe up the wall. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ she says. ‘If I were you, I’d take one or two of these amazing drawings and I’d make them three-dimensional. Scanning them into your dad’s computer could be a good way to start. Have you ever done any 3D art work with folding and crumpling paper? And, do you know what? This project deserves really five-star presentation. Good paper, for a start. You want large sheets of handmade paper that you can bind into a book.’ She gestures something the size of the A3 portfolio. ‘Japanese bookbinding will give you a great look,’ she says. ‘And it’s terribly easy, you know. Have you ever had the chance to try it?’

Cat is staring at her in wonder. She’s thinking that being with Caroline is like having Lettie all to yourself, only combined with that brilliant guy on the TV who shows you how to do your own animation.

‘No,’ she says. ‘But will you show me?’

‘Sure,’ Caroline says. ‘How about we leave it until morning? Let’s put it all away for now and make sure none of it gets damaged. But, gosh, Kate, you could get some brilliant textures in here, and the quality of your drawings is just superb. You could always make a matching box file as a sort of companion piece, you know. That’s to accommodate any 3D construction. Oh, Kate, this is so exciting. Herman, I’m just mad about this girl.’

‘Me too,’ Herman says. He’s uncorking a bottle of sparkling Pinot Grigio that emanates from his brother-in-law’s estate.

That is to say, from the estate of one of his sister’s husbands. Not from that of the brother-in-law, who has, meanwhile, been conveyed to a nearby private hospital where Hattie has proffered her Visa Card at reception. He has been stripped of his stinking, peed-on clothes, tagged, bathed and diagnosed as having suffered no more than a minor fracture to his left forearm. The examining doctor is far more concerned about the mass of ominous lesions on the patient’s hands and face. The man’s breathing is terrible, he notes, and, furthermore, on the out-breath he can hear a whistle which is definitely emanating from the back of James’s chest. This is something the doctor has encountered before and he’s confident he knows the cause. James will have advanced lung cancer. And the cancer will have spread, beyond the lungs, into the flesh and bone of the upper spinal region. The whistle is quite literally coming from a hole in the back of the patient’s chest. This is an informed speculation, which, for the moment, he keeps from the patient’s sister. James, in the mean time, has proffered the DNA swab, which Hattie has requested in response to Jack’s request.

‘No problem,’ she tells him. ‘I’ll say it’s for me.’ To the doctor, by way of explanation, she says, ‘I haven’t seen my brother in nearly twenty years and, frankly, I’d like to be sure.’

The doctor is understanding and elicits James’s consent. She then reports back her success to Jack, who arranges for his own test.

Josh and Jack have been sitting for an hour, side by side in a corridor on matching plastic chairs, during which time the former has been striving to fill in some gaps.

But Jack is economical when it comes to autobiography.

‘Senegal,’ he says. ‘Via Mozambique and Dar es Salaam.’ Then, reluctantly, he adds, ‘Look. I couldn’t write. It would have blown my cover.’

‘Cover?’ Josh says, trying not to think of how Bernie and Ida died not knowing what had become of him.

Jack sighs as a prelude to having to state a thing so obvious.

‘I was travelling on a false passport,’ he says. ‘It was the passport of a dead French national. Jacques Moreau.’

‘Giacomo Moroni?’ Josh says. ‘So where does Milan fit in?’

Jack has little taste for personal disclosure. He feels no need to give account of his felicitous meeting with a kindly Italian art dealer and his two small sons, on a white beach made all of shells, beside a pink lake that, at sunset, turns to purple.

‘Dario Fo,’ he says. ‘And, no, I never heard from Gertrude. Well, you were about to ask me, weren’t you?’

Once Hattie returns from James’s bedside, she telephones Herman to say that she may well be at the hospital all night, causing Jack, on cue, to rise from his chair.

‘I ought to be getting back,’ he says. ‘Can I –?’

‘You go,’ Hattie says. ‘Really. Josh and I will arrange a cab.’

On his way out Jack takes a brief look at James Alexander Marchmont-Thomas, who, sluiced and shaven, in laundered clothes, helped on his way by painkilling drugs, is deeply asleep between stiff clean sheets, having previously partaken of a little toast and tea.

A nurse comments, in a whisper, that the patient has clearly been managing quite impossible levels of pain.

‘Probably for years, poor soul,’ she says.

‘Marijuana,’ Jack says. ‘Lots of it, and often.’ He smiles his sweetest smile at her before making his way towards the lifts.

Marijuana would be the reason why his unlovely and addle-brained parent had come staggering into his private space for a way-back wad of stolen money he’d once secreted in the wall. Jack experiences a surge of pleasure as he reflects upon how far he has moved from either one of his dead-end parents. He sees that the pistachio-green Vespa is waiting for him in the moonlight. Way up; way out. Jack feels that his life is on the move.

Once Jack has gone, Hattie and Josh arrange for a cab.

‘Where to?’ says the driver. Neither is particularly keen to head back to Marchmont House.

‘South Beach,’ Josh says, aware that he still has rights to his hotel room for what remains of this one night. ‘Just off Gillespie Street,’ he says.

And then, next morning, as they’re about to enter the kitchen, what Hattie sees from just beyond the doorway is Caroline and Cat, who are sitting side by side at the far end of that long kitchen table with the brass measure running down one side. They are wrapped, after an early-morning swim, in two identical kangas got from the swimming-pool changing room, each fixed, halter-style, at the nape of the wearer’s neck. Before them, on the table, is the spread of Cat’s beautiful drawings, alongside which are scissors and paper clippings from Caroline’s demonstrations of three-dimensional effects. She has achieved these via damping, crumpling and folding, and Herman, who has been busy at the worktop, has approached to watch them at it.

‘Christ, babe,’ Hattie hears him say. ‘Where did you learn to do that?’

‘Paper engineering,’ Caroline says. ‘I learnt it from a book. There’s this guy at the art school in Tel Aviv. Paper artist. He runs origami workshops for Israeli and Palestinian children. His graduates make these amazing paper clothes for their degree shows. Ball gowns to die for. Beautiful puckered shirts.’

Herman has yet to appreciate that Caroline can teach herself anything from a book: upholstery and binomial equations; organic-vegetable growing; the Farsi language and pattern cutting; the preparation of gravadlax and the making of Roman blinds; drystone walling and how to espalier trees; advanced computer technology and how to make a boat; Japanese bookbinding and a range of electrical repairs.