The Boy Who Fell to Earth (32 page)

The living room was festooned in Christmas decorations, classical music was wafting and there was a smell of hot coffee and warm mince pies. Jeremy and Merlin were sitting arm in arm on the couch whilst a photographer snapped, crackled and popped around them. Jeremy looked up, laughing.

‘Oh gosh, Lucy. My secret is out. Yes, I admit it. I’m a closet sentimentalist. Don’t tell anyone though! I want some snaps for my office desk. I’m so proud of Merlin. And I want hundreds of photos of you both to make up for all the years I lost,’ he said, coaxing me into the family portrait.

I sat between the two men in my life and felt book-ended by happiness.

‘Are you okay, darling?’ I asked Merlin, kissing his cheek.

‘I Am Having A Great Time.’ Merlin said it that way too, with each word capitalized.

‘Nothing but good times ahead!’ Jeremy said, clasping our hands and, once more, I experienced the euphoric joy of yielding. Nothing more was needed to enhance my mood of utter contentment. I felt a tingling sense of well-being surge through my veins, almost frightening in its physicality.

My mother and sister had promised to bury the hatchet for Christmas day, though I felt sure it was only buried in a shallow grave, right next to a shovel. But I now had another family hearth where I could warm myself.

I squeezed Jeremy’s hand back. ‘Nothing but good times ahead,’ I chorused. ‘Good-times-aheadie-poos!’

24

Testicle Carpaccio on the Disorient Express

A FIRST-CLASS UPGRADE
is the third best thing that can happen to you, after going up two bra-cup sizes and falling back in love with the father of your child. Having someone to help shoulder the responsibility of Merlin felt like a bank error in my favour. Weatherwise, Christmas, New Year and January were as bleak as
Wuthering Heights
, colder than Pip’s Estella, but I was cosy with contentment.

February 12th, ringed in my diary, marked the West of England Chamber of Commerce function in the terrace pavilion, which Jeremy was hosting. Happily ensconced with him, I’d hardly spoken to my feuding family over the last six weeks but hoped they would turn up to celebrate his success.

His aftershave invaded the Commons bar first. I turned to see Jeremy striding towards me as if on invisible cross-country skis. With his sharp suit, perfectly knotted tie and well-groomed coiff, it was no wonder the press had dubbed
him
‘The Silver Fox’. Brainy, powerful, charismatic, he exuded that naughty-but-nice Cary Grant, Clintonesque appeal. He kissed my hand, his fingernails professionally polished to a porcelain sheen.

‘Where’s Merlin?’ I asked, peering over his shoulder. ‘He told me you were picking him up from school.’

‘But he told me
you
were.’ Jeremy
tsk
’ed his tongue. ‘Oh, no. Don’t tell me he’s run away again. Not today,’ he sighed in his most mellifluous tones. Taking my arm, we glided across the mint-green carpet and down the oak-panelled stairs towards the terrace. People were pumping Jeremy’s hand, as usual, and slapping his back in recognition of his meteoric rise within the coalition.

My lips stretched over my teeth in what I felt resembled a smile, but my mind was clattering. What had happened to Merlin this time? One thing was clear, I had given birth to a soap opera. My heart pounded out panicked beats. Don’t overreact, I told myself stoutly. But whenever my son went missing, a thick, dark, clammy dread would creep up from my innards into my throat. The function was in full flight, as though celebs had been ordered by the metric tonne. I secreted myself in the corner, trying to suppress the brutal fear taking hold of me. My voice jagged with alarm, I instinctively rang first Phoebe, who was already on her way to Jeremy’s function, and then my mother, who was mid book club. Despite my aloofness of late, they both immediately set off to search Merlin’s favourite haunts. I wore off my own fingerprint pressing ‘redial’ on my son’s number, willing him to pick up. I dialled my finger to the bone. I was nervously gulping down an entire plate of hors d’oeuvres that had just passed by when my phone trilled. I pressed the answer button and an unexpected voice barked back.

‘The whole world may think of me as a washed-up, arrogant, has-been bastard—’

‘That’s not true, Archie. The whole world hasn’t had the pleasure of your company yet,’ I replied mockingly.

‘Hey, to know me is to love me,’ he drawled.

‘I can’t talk now. I’ve lost Merlin.’

‘That’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you, if you’d just can the third-degree sarcasm. The whole world may think of me as a washed-up, arrogant, has-been bastard … but not your son. He’s here with me. At the pub.’

‘Thank God!’ I felt winded with relief. ‘But why’s he with you?’ My mother had told me that Archie had moved into a room above one of Camden’s Ye Olde Bucolic-Plague-riddled pubs.

‘I reckon you’d better ask him that.’

‘Archie, I know it’s a big favour, especially after the way I treated you, but can you bring him to me? I can’t leave. I’m at the Houses of Parliament. It’s Jeremy’s big day. I’ll put your name on the guest list. Bring ID – say, a passport or a driver’s licence or something – okay?’ I hung up quickly so I could call off the family bloodhounds. I left separate voicemails for Phoebe and my mother telling them that Merlin had been found, added Archie’s name to the guest list, then dived into a glass of champagne.

When Archie sidled into the cocktail function forty minutes later, totally sartorially out of place in Stetson, cowboy boots and black jeans, my eyes raked the space behind him. When I saw my bedraggled son in tow, I practically gazelled across the room. I hugged Merlin to me hard. His hair smelled like daylight. I was so angry but love blurred my vision. Even though I was still deep in Merlin-land, for a moment my senses were enhanced by the spicy, wild, warm scent of sweat
mixed
in with a musky tang of petrol and cigarettes that is Archie. The dolorous tug at my heart-strings surprised me. I put it down to indigestion from hors d’oeuvre overload.

‘Nice tan,’ Archie drawled.

‘Really?’ I asked, surprised.

‘Yeah. Must be from baskin’ in your ex’s reflected glory.’

‘Oh, ha ha.’ I would have bantered some more but just then Jeremy disengaged himself from the admiring throng in awed orbit around him and draped his arm across Merlin’s shoulders. ‘Merlin. You had us worried sick. Are you all right, old chap?’

Merlin smiled, but his eyes didn’t relax. They jumped around the room. His denim jacket looked as though it were wearing him, and not the other way round.

‘So, why did you go to Archie’s place?’ Jeremy persisted. ‘Did he lure you away?’ he demanded darkly.

Archie’s fury was tight and monumental. Although livid with each other, because the marquee was journalist-infested the men said what they had to say in even, conversational tones.

‘The kid needed some fatherly advice,’ Archie sotto-voced, his voice heavy with weary exasperation.

‘Are you implying that I’m not a good father?’ Jeremy quietly seethed in reply. ‘My son’s very happy.’

‘Yeah … you haven’t done him any damage – where the self-harmin’ comes from, I just can’t fathom,’ retaliated Archie sarcastically.

‘It’s totally unscrupulous to use the child as a way of wheedling your way back into Lucy’s life and affections,’ Jeremy fumed.

‘Is that right?’ Archie replied with cool thoughtfulness.

‘
Is
it right?’ I asked Archie suspiciously, not knowing what to think.

The watery February sunlight flickering through the riverside windows cast a mosaic of light and shadow on to Archie’s face so that I couldn’t read his expression. ‘I think your mum might have somethin’ to say about that, Lou.’

‘You’ve been talking to my mother?’ I cross-examined him, surprised.

‘I rang to let her know Merlin was okay. She’s on her way. In fact, there she is.’

In crimson culottes, my mother was arriving. She picked her way through the sea of grey pinstripe towards us. She had an exultant look on her face but said nothing as she thrust some kind of pamphlet at me. It took me a moment to focus. Then the photo of Jeremy, Merlin and me took shape. It was one of the photos taken in Jeremy’s living room before Christmas; the photos he’d wanted for his office desk and private album.

‘A friend I met through the National Trust mailed this to me from your constituency, Jeremy. I suppose you thought we’d never see it. Let me read you the caption. “
Family matters. Where would one be without them?
” Perhaps not being shoved through some stranger’s letterbox for a start.’ My mother yowled with derision. ‘“
My son has special needs, which makes him even more special
,”’ she read on. ‘“
It’s my job to look after the little people
.” ’

I stared at Jeremy, consumed by doubts. ‘Why didn’t you clear this with me?’

‘Oh Lucy, I’m so sorry. I meant to, darling. I’ve been so frantically busy that it slipped my mind. The photos were so charming that the party spindoctor was desperately keen to use them on the pamphlet. Look how handsome Merlin is! I just wanted to show my son how proud I am of him.’ He placed a protective arm around Merlin’s tense shoulders.

‘Very fuckin’ touchin’,’ Archie drawled. ‘So it’s got nothin’ to do with the fact that a politician with no children is about as popular as a Japanese whaling harpoonist.’

‘Don’t waste your breath,’ my mother told Archie. ‘You can’t shame or humiliate a politician. What used to be called humiliation and shame is now called “getting a high profile”.’

Jeremy’s mother, champagne flute in hand, barged into our gathering with all the grace of an ocean liner colliding with an iceberg. ‘Oh, it’s so splendid to be back on one’s old stomping ground,’ she gushed. ‘And I’ve just heard that the PM’s definitely popping by!’

My mother’s smile narrowed with combative disapproval. She brandished the pamphlet, shoving it into Veronica’s drink-flushed face. ‘Did you know about this, Veronica?’

Veronica calmed her tweed skirt with her free hand as if it were an unruly pet. ‘Of course I did. It was my idea. Politicians must play the family, preferably the family sympathy card, to appeal to some middle-class demographic. It makes us look more’ – she searched for the right word, a word that was obviously foreign to her tongue – ‘human.’

‘But surely there’s nothing less human than talking about your child’s problems with strangers for political gains?’ My mother shot off a thin-lipped look of scorn in the Beauforts’ joint direction.

Veronica’s strained Queen’s Christmas message accent became even more pronounced. ‘Various polls have shown Jeremy to be deemed lacking in compassion. The party spindoctor suggested he do a photoshoot at a local special needs school. “We can do one better than that,” I told the spindoctor. “We have a special needs
child
!!!”’ She lunged at a passing waiter to nab a chicken skewer. ‘Sarah Palin had her pregnant teen daughter. Cameron had his handicapped child
who
died …’ The subject matter made her so animated, she began aimlessly to conduct an unseen string orchestra with her kebab, totally oblivious to the fact that we were all staring at her aghast. ‘Joe Biden’s wife died in a car crash, I believe …’

‘But political sympathy wasn’t my motivation,’ Jeremy interrupted quickly, his expression locked on to diplomatic cruise control. ‘Merlin’s my son and I want to show him off to the world because I love him,’ he said in a monotone which belied his apparent joy.

I glanced down at the photo again. The way Jeremy was bent over Merlin reminded me of a documentary I’d seen on ‘Night Predators in the Kalahari’.

‘And we discussed it first, didn’t we, Merlin? You’re happy to be in Daddy’s pamphlet, aren’t you?’ Merlin’s knee jacked up and down, as if working an invisible pump. ‘Merlin wants to play a role in helping achieve wider understanding of special needs in the community.’

Archie was so angry he was rocking from one foot to the other, almost stamping, like a dancer or a boxer. ‘You know, there are two things I’ve always disliked about you, Beaufort.’

‘Oh yes. And what are they?’

‘Your face,’ Archie growled.

‘Merlin, darling, did Dad clear this with you first?’

Merlin gazed reflectively at me. He had the glassy-eyed look of a teddy bear. His shoulders were now up around his ears. A mental snapshot of him the day the photos were taken popped into my mind. ‘I Am Having A Great Time,’ he’d said, but each word had been eerily capitalized. ‘Darling, why are you so quiet?’ I asked him gently. He was holding himself very still, as if he were an overful glass of wine which might spill at any moment.

‘He’s quiet because your bastard of an ex told Merlin that
he’s
the reason you two broke up.’ Archie was now using the kind of voice Moses would have used to part the Dead Sea. ‘He also told the poor kid that if he wants you two to get back together then he has to do everythin’ Jeremy says, includin’ press interviews and photoshoots. And that he couldn’t tell you about their conversation … Which is why he came to tell me.’

I shook my head as though I had water lodged in my ears. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘You told Merlin our divorce was his fault? Jeremy! How could you say that to a child suffering from anxiety and low self-esteem?’

‘Of course I didn’t say that. It’s preposterous.’ Jeremy’s voice, which I had always loved, suddenly had the sound of something grinding away unoiled with no maintenance. It grated on my ears.

Merlin’s expression was one of disoriented incredulity. He’d developed the charisma of a crash dummy. He covered his ears and started to rock back and forth.

‘If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again,’ Archie snorted with contempt. He then looked me right in the eye. ‘Merlin cannot lie. You know that.’

‘No, but he can misunderstand …’ Jeremy ran his hands through his hair in a practised, poised gesture perfected before hundreds of mirrors. He gave a calculating smile – the smile of a puppeteer, a man who knows exactly how to pull the strings. ‘I was only trying to explain to Merlin the good we can do by publicizing his plight. In the beginning, yes, I was, I suppose, mourning the loss of the son I would never have. Nothing can assuage your disappointment in the universe and the gods. Then you realize that this is the hand fate has dealt you and you just have to play it.’