The Best of Friends (24 page)

The letter was lying on the kitchen table at High Place. Gina had plainly laid it down carefully, marked by the wooden salt and pepper mills and parallel to the edge of the table. Sophy didn't think she had ever had a letter from Fergus before, not in all her sixteen years. There had been no excuse to write, after all, no reason. They'd seen each other every single day, except when Fergus was off at an auction which was never for more than a few nights, every one of which he telephoned. Gina would talk to him for a few minutes, and then she would hand Sophy the receiver and say, invariably, ‘Daddy wants you.'

Gina had gone out early, to Vi's. She said she didn't want Vi going through Dan's things alone, or eating and drinking nothing all day followed by a whole pot of strong tea and a whole packet of biscuits. Sophy was amazed that Gina didn't mind doing this, after all the years in which she had grown accustomed to hearing Vi spoken of in a tone of faint complaint, as a responsibility Gina was going to bear, but not with particularly good grace. And, Sophy suspected, Fergus had been a little afraid of Vi. He was perfectly civil to her, but from a safe distance like someone circling with circumspection around an unpredictable animal. When Sophy thought of the way they both lived, her father and her grandmother, she saw them as creatures off different planets. It was that way too, just a little, between her mother and grandmother, which was what made it so odd to see Gina, with apparent cheerfulness, setting off each day to Orchard Close. But then Gina was different. Gina had come out, almost entirely, of her shell of introverted grief and rage, and was smiling. Amazing, really, if that's what a few weeks of what Vi called psycho-shrink could do for you.

She picked up Fergus's letter. It was fat, in one of the
long wallet envelopes of cream paper that he had always used to match the cream writing paper with the letterhead stamped dramatically in black. She looked at it for a bit, wondering if she dreaded opening it, or longed to, and then put her thumb under the flap and ripped it open so roughly that the whole envelope tore apart. Fergus would have hated that. Fergus used a paper knife.

Sophy sat down at the kitchen table and unfolded the thick pages.

‘Sophy, my dearest,' the letter began.

She put the letter down and tilted her chair back. If he was going to write guff like that, using all the endearments he had never used in their life together, she wasn't going to believe a word of the letter. She had decided she hated words like ‘darling', anyhow, that they meant nothing, that they were a kind of cop-out formula to delude you into thinking people loved you, verbally, while the things they actually did showed quite the opposite. Sophy had begun to take a lot of notice of action lately, had begun to think not only that most actions spoke louder than any words, but also that they were a way of achieving some control of your own. That was why she had had sex with George. She had wanted someone in her power that afternoon, someone to be surprised into looking at her differently, seeing her as a person who could affect things, not just be affected by them. The sex itself had been strange, hot and jerky and very quick. But she had quite liked it, to her surprise, and what had surprised her even more was that having done it hadn't haunted her afterwards at all. In fact, rather the contrary. She thought she might do it again in the not too distant future, if not necessarily with George. George looked at her differently now, as if wanting something from her, but she was not inclined to
respond. She wasn't playing games, she just couldn't tell him – by word or deed – that she felt something she didn't. Her parents' behaviour had taught her that, if she had any say in it, she'd never do that in all her life; she'd rather be brutal than untruthfully, misleadingly kind.

She picked up the letter again and glared at it:

Sophy stopped reading the letter at arm's length in order to show it how much she mistrusted it, and laid it flat on the table. Fergus's writing was clear, bold and black, written with an italic nib:

The thing I wish to tell you is about Tony. I know what you thought, and I curse myself for not preparing you. The facts are these. I have known Tony for six years, first as a business acquaintance, then as a friend. He is the only person to whom I ever confided my unhappiness with your mother. I love him but I am not in love with him. I owe him a great deal both emotionally and practically, but I am not in his thrall. What is private between us remains private – as I hope you will feel about your own private life, when you have one in years to come – but is not a stealthy secret. I'm your father, and I love you, but I have to have my own life as well.

For all that, although I don't regret what I have done, I regret the way I've done it very much. I didn't think things through and I miscalculated a lot of other things. I owe you an apology and also a recompense. lam moved to do this from the bottom of my heart because your coming here made me feel my loss of you keenly, and your behaviour demonstrated that I hadn't tried to see things sufficiently from your point of view.

My proposal is this. That when my share of the proceeds from High Place comes through, you and I use it to buy a flat together, a two-bedroomed flat for us to live in until your education is finished and for you to have after that. I'd move out of this house, and find a lodger for my half of it to pay the mortgage. I've discussed this all with Tony and although he would be very sad, and he has no children, he accepts that you are my priority. I told you he was a nice man.

Ring me when you can. No-one ever seems to be at home these days and the answerphone is never on, either. But I gather that the Pughs had a survey done and the result was satisfactory. So we can begin to do something quite soon. Certainly in time for Christmas. And we can start looking at sixth-form colleges in London.

With my love as ever
,
Daddy

Sophy dropped the letter and the pages slid apart and scattered across the table. She stared at them, at the black words on the cream paper, and then she picked up the nearest sheet, and kissed it.

A little later, the envelope hidden between the mattress and the divan base of her bed on the side against the
wall, Sophy changed into her waitress clothes and went round to The Bee House. She went in, as she always did, through the kitchen, which was oddly quiet except for cooking noises. Laurence was bent over something in a steel bowl and he glanced up only briefly to say, ‘Morning, Sophy,' before going back to whatever it was with fierce concentration. Kevin and Steve, with elaborate grimaces, caught her eye to indicate that Laurence was in some fearful mood and was not to be spoken to. Sophy looked puzzled. Laurence was never in a fearful mood, he wasn't that kind of man. She opened her mouth to say something but Kevin, flailing his arms like a windmill and then signalling a cut throat with his forefinger, silenced her. She shrugged, walked past them all and up the short flight of stairs outside the kitchen to the bar.

Hilary and Don were leaning one either side of the bar, over several computer-printed invoice sheets. Hilary looked much the same as normal, if tired, and was wearing her usual hotel uniform of straight navy-blue skirt and cream shirt, with a red belt and her red spectacles. Adam had said not long ago that she looked like an air hostess and she had said sharply that that was fine by her since her job was not in the least dissimilar, clearing up after adults behaving like wayward toddlers, in a confined space.

‘Hello, Sophy,' Hilary said. She looked up from the invoice sheets. She did not appear, Sophy thought, to have slept very well. Perhaps she and Laurence had had one of their quarrels, the ones George had told her about.

‘Morning—'

‘You look cheerful,' Don said to Sophy. He wore a green bow-tie patterned with yellow dinosaurs. ‘Makes a change round here.'

‘Thank you,' Hilary said. She turned to Sophy. ‘I'd
forgotten I'd put you on the rota for lunchtime.'

‘Oh,' Sophy said. ‘Shall I—'

‘No. You stay.' She paused a second and then she said, ‘How is Vi?'

‘Brave,' Sophy said. ‘Very brave. She's not a bit like she was when he was ill. She's stopped wanting to blame everybody. She's going to have all his favourite hymns at the funeral, all the ones about the sea.'

‘Good for her,' Hilary said. Her voice wasn't quite steady. ‘We'll all come of course. Sophy—'

‘Yes?'

‘See if you can find Gus for me, would you? I've got a job for him. Then check the tables. I want them all laid, but only a third with lunch menus.' She gave Sophy a sudden smile, a smile that much startled her since it was not the kind of smile one associated with Hilary but a smile of real sweetness, almost of affection. ‘You're a good girl, Sophy,' Hilary said.

Gus was not in the flat. Nobody was, except Lotte who was trying to subdue the chaos.

‘Truly, the way these people live, the way these boys are allowed to be so untidy. Look at these clothes. You can't even walk the floor. When I was growing up, we had to clean our own bedrooms, my mother insisted on it, and of course we always wore slippers in the house because of the dirt. The dirt in Sweden stays outside houses, on outside shoes. Never inside, like here. Have you seen this bedroom, where you sleep sometimes? It is a disgrace. It looks as if ten people had a fight—'

‘Have you seen George?' Sophy said.

‘He is working. He has gone to his new job at the garden centre. He said to me, “Lotte, would you—”'

‘Or Gus?'

‘He went out,' Lotte said. She picked up a bucket of
hot water from which fumes of disinfectant rose chokingly. ‘He is not supervised, Gus. At his age he should be in a summer camp, with other boys, like in Sweden.'

‘We don't have them here. Where did he go?'

‘He said something about the garden. He said he might climb a tree. Climb a tree! At his age.'

‘His mother wants him—'

‘Now she does not look well, Mrs Wood. Nor Mr Wood. They are both quite exhausted.' She turned towards the bathroom, holding the bucket and a sponge. ‘It is as well I have a steady Swedish temperament, the things I am asked to do.'

Sophy went back down the stairs to the ground floor, and out past Hilary's office through the door to the garden. It was basically a pretty garden, an old, unpretentious, traditional garden of grass and rose beds with, at the far end, a wilder patch with apple trees and a swing and climbing frame for the children of hotel guests, with a slide and ladders. It all looked very neglected. The lawn hadn't seen a mower recently, there were thick ruffs of groundsel under the roses and the roses themselves needed dead-heading. In the borders along the wall where the bee boles were, all the tall flowers like delphiniums and hollyhocks had faded and fallen over, like long corpses among the smaller things still struggling to live and bloom.

‘Gus?' Sophy called. ‘Gus?'

There was no reply. She walked down the grass, past the tables and benches set out for summer drinks, to the apple trees. She peered up into the bigger ones.

‘Gus?'

Silence. She went through the trees to the very far end of the garden where another wall divided it from some neglected allotments and then the car-park to an
office building and, hitching up her waitress skirt, hauled herself on to the top.

‘I'm here,' he said.

She turned. He was astride the wall, at the far left-hand side, almost hidden under the stiff dark branches of an old yew tree that hung over it.

‘Why didn't you come?' Sophy said. ‘You heard me—'

‘I didn't want to,' Gus said. ‘I'm better here.'

‘Hilary wants you.'

‘What for?'

‘I don't know. A job, she said.'

Gus said, ‘I haven't seen you for ages.'

Sophy swung herself on to the wall and edged towards him astride it.

‘Four days, I should think. Come on, Gus. She said to come—'

‘I can't.'

‘What d'you mean, you can't?'

‘I can't go back in there.'

‘Oh
Gus
,' Sophy said in exasperation, ‘don't be so stupid. What's the matter with you?'

Gus said nothing. Sophy couldn't see his face, only his long thin legs in jeans with the carefully ripped knees, and the Russian-army belt George had found for him at a Birmingham flea market, and an inch or two of greyish-white T-shirt.

‘Come out,' Sophy said. ‘Come out so I can see you.' He didn't move.

‘Well, I'm going then. I'll tell Hilary you won't budge.'

‘Wait—'

She leaned back along the wall, her hands behind her for support.

‘I haven't got all day.'

Slowly, Gus emerged. He came towards her, dragging himself astride out of the whispering branches.
His face was filthy, streaked with dark smears from the yew bark. When he was about a foot away, he stopped, and looked at her. Sophy saw that he'd been crying. She sat bolt upright.

‘Hey, Gus—'

He stared at her, as mournful as a chastised puppy.

‘Gus, what is it?'

‘Don't you know?'

‘Know what?'

Gus sighed, a huge, shuddering sigh. He put up one grimy hand as if to hide his face and then he said from behind it, ‘Don't you know that my father wants to leave my mother and marry your mother instead?'

THE CHURCH WAS
a riot of flowers. Vi had done a deal with her flower-seller friend in Whittingbourne market and had come away with armfuls of dahlias and spray chrysanthemums. Vi loved dahlias. She loved the precision of them and their clear, strong, unabashed colours. The first flowers Dan had ever given her had been dahlias, grown on the allotment he then had at the back of The Bee House, where he grew them in a tidy row, just like his rows of peas and beans and carrots. He'd grown them to enter for the Whittingbourne Flower Show, in one of the pensioner classes, but had decided to give them to Vi instead. She could see them now, the huge, symmetrical, well-defined heads, scarlet and purple and orange and yellow, encased in a cone of newspaper, and behind them Dan's face, quite a small, pale thing by comparison, full of anxious pleasure.