The Fall (9 page)

I felt a small tug of envy. Whoever Jamie was now, wherever he was, whoever that collective
we
signified, he had achieved something of that ambition we had casually discussed years earlier: to climb mountains. I had
only slogged up Snowdon in mist and rain, and spent a miserable weekend camped in the Lake District with a school group. But
Jamie had done the real thing: the Jungfrau.

When I went home for the holidays, I searched in vain through my mother’s address book for the Matthewson’s telephone number.
“I don’t think I ever wrote it down,” she said. “Anyway, why do you want to go chasing around to find him?”

“He was good fun. And he wrote to me. I mean, Christ, Mum, he was a
mate
.”

But the name Matthewson did not even appear in the telephone book. Matthews, yes, many of them. But no Matthewson. “Ex-directory,
I suppose,” Mother said, her tone suggesting that being listed in the telephone book went with moral purity while deliberately
keeping oneself out was a sure sign of turpitude. “Typical of Meg.”

So I went to find him. I took the train to Llanbedr once again, and at the station I had to wait half an hour for a bus, and
even then I wasn’t sure that it was the right one.
Gwytherin,
I remembered. The bus crawled through the town, past a church and a cinema and the cattle market, and soon the road was climbing
up, winding past drystone walls, past fields of luminous green where sheep grazed, past woods of a green so dark that it was
almost black. A fox sloped across a hillside. And there, suddenly and surprisingly, was the place that I more or less recalled
but with a new sign now, the name engraved on a slab of slate:

In the drive, incongruous on the Welsh hillside, was a large white Mercedes.

As I pushed open the gate and walked up to the house, it began to rain, a mere drizzle out of the slate-gray sky. I rang the
doorbell. There was a long pause before I heard noises on the far side. The door opened, and a face peered out at me, a suspicious
female Welsh face with dark eyes and dark hair. “Yes?”

“Is James in?”

“James?” A lilt of surprise. “No.” The vowel drawn out, exaggerated, given a short life of meaning: disappointment, amusement,
faint ridicule. I almost apologized and went away; I almost turned tail.

“Mrs. Matthewson then?”

“Who shall I say it is wants her?”

A voice came from behind, from out of sight in the shadows of the hallway. “Who is it, Mary?”

Mary looked over her shoulder. “It’s a young man wants Master James, ma’am.” Master James. A good, servile touch, that.

“Well, what’s his name?” said the voice from behind. She came forward, stepping out of memory just as Mary stepped aside.
She was smaller than I recalled. The relativity of age. Of course she was exactly the same height, but I had grown taller;
taller than her by a head now, looking down at her standing there in the doorway in her tight white-cotton trousers and pink
denim shirt. But it was she who seemed to have grown smaller and somehow — but I was uncertain of such things — younger. She had
done her hair differently, the spirit of the times catching even the adults now. It no longer had that shiny nylon look, but
appeared darker and more natural. Wheat colored: the same streaks, the same darks and lights, as a field of wheat. I blushed.
“I was looking for James.”

“Oh?” She hadn’t recognized me. She smiled vaguely as though trying to assemble an appearance of hospitality and wondering
whether the effort was worthwhile.

“I’m Robert.”

“Robert?” And the expression changed, shifted, lightened into a true smile, a slow and remarkable metamorphosis. “Robert,
of course. Diana’s son. How” — a breath’s pause as she looked at me with something like recognition — “remarkable. My goodness,
how you’ve grown!”

“I thought —”

“You thought you might find Jamie? What a shame. He was here last Easter. I told him to try and contact you, but you know
what he’s like. Come in anyway. Let me get you something. Why didn’t you telephone?”

I noticed things as I followed her inside: paintings, objects, particular pieces of furniture, the kinds of things that you
collect to make a place yours. The jawbone of something, perhaps a shark, hanging there on the wall: it had the shape of an
hourglass, rimmed with ivory daggers. Since I had looked around it on that previous visit, Gilead House had become something
that our house never really was: a home.

“Mary, can you get us some coffee or tea, which would you prefer?” Mrs. Matthewson’s question slid easily from the maid to
me as I stood there looking up at the curious object. “Oh, that? Yes, that’s my trophy. I fished it off Nantucket. Yes, I
caught it myself while the men jeered and told me I could never do it and all that sort of crap.” The word
crap.
My mother would have been appalled. “But I did, and there it is.” She laughed, and I had a brief and fugitive glimpse of
gold. I followed her up the stairs past the stained-glass window of a medieval knight and his lady and into what she called
the morning room, which was actually a sitting room looking out over the top garden and the woods at the back of the house.
There was an oil painting on the wall, a portrait of a girl with a blank face and eyes like black pebbles.

“Is that you?” I asked.

She laughed delightedly. No, it was something she had picked up at a flea market. The
phase flea market
struck me. It may have been the first time I’d heard it. I imagined a kind of rummage sale, like they had in the local church:
stalls selling old clothes that hummed with insect life. “I think it may be an original. Do you know Laurencin?”

I didn’t. Together we examined the painting, the heavy layers of paint, the signature scrawled along the bottom:
Marie Laurencin.
And as we looked, Mrs. Matthewson’s scent came to me, an insidious blend of things I couldn’t put names to: musk and orange
and sandalwood and jasmine, perhaps those, something far more subtle and convincing than any painting by Marie Laurencin,
whether original or copy. “The trouble is,” she said (and the scent was on her breath as well), “I don’t dare have an expert
look at it. In case it isn’t.”

She left the painting and settled into an armchair, and watched me with interest, curiosity almost, as if she was trying to
work something out and would come up with the answer in a moment. Her feet were bare, the toes pinched from wearing pointed
shoes. Her feet were the only thing that betrayed her age. “So, Robert, what a pleasant surprise this is. And how you’ve grown!
I would say quite a man, but that would be patronizing, wouldn’t it? So I won’t.” She smiled. Even white teeth.
Capped,
I could hear my mother saying. “And how’s Diana? I really should get over and see her, but it’s finding the time. And I’m
not here very often, with the house in London.”

It wasn’t finding the time, I knew that. This woman was a different being altogether from my mother, almost a different gender.
I couldn’t imagine them doing anything together, couldn’t imagine them having exchanged clothes or confidences or boyfriends,
or any of the usual currency of girlhood. But whatever might have happened in the past, nowadays they certainly had no point
in common. “I’m sure she’d love to see you again, Mrs. Matthewson.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,
Caroline
.” She smiled. “But not, I repeat not,
Meg.
I don’t think your mother is quite as fond of me now as she used to be.”

I protested eternal affection on the part of my mother. Caroline smiled knowingly and changed the subject with that lack of
guile that adults believe children will fall for. “So you came all this way to find Jamie? What a shame.”

“He sent me a postcard from the Alps.”

“He was there with friends of his father.”

“But he posted it from America.”

“Dear Jamie, so typical of him. To write a card in one place and post it in another. He’s in the Bahamas now, I think. Sailing.
He doesn’t really like sailing. I don’t imagine he’s enjoying himself very much. This autumn he’s off to Scotland.”

“Scotland?”

“He’s going to university there. Saint Andrews. For me he’s barely out of knickers and already he’s off to university. He’s
only just seventeen. And you must be, what, sixteen?” She looked at me thoughtfully, as though searching for a way to rid
herself of this uninteresting child. I shifted in my seat.

“Nearly,” I said. “Nearly sixteen.” I was conscious of her disconcerting eyes on me.

“So tell me. Tell me all about you. What are you doing now?”

I told her anyway, although I knew she couldn’t possibly be interested — about school mainly, about lessons and exams and sports.
And I watched her, seeing shadows of Jamie there — the same coloring, of course, and something about the shape of her face,
the curve of her jaw — but seeing other things that she had lent no one: the strange mobility of her mouth, whose lips I last
saw mouthing the words
Did you have a good time?
on the station platform, a mouth that seemed small when composed but large when she smiled, a sudden, surprising change of
expression that almost ambushed you.

“And at school?”

“I said, I’ve just done my exams.”

“Of course. You said.” She was looking around the room in that way people do when they are searching for something further
to say. She’d lost interest. I felt myself redden, and I cursed the sensation. I half rose from my chair. “Perhaps I’d better…”

She lifted a hand. “Surely you’ll stay for lunch? It’s a long way to come just for a cup of coffee.” “I —”

“Of course you will. I tell you what…” And now there was an uncertain quality to her smile, as if she wasn’t sure of what
she would tell me, or exactly how. “You wouldn’t like to earn some pocket money, would you? I need someone, and it’s difficult
to get people out here. Someone to do some clearing out for me. We’re doing some alterations, you see. This was Guy’s house,”
she said, “his great love —”

“Guy?”

“Jamie’s father. He wanted to live here, but of course I preferred London. He used to make me feel quite disloyal. Dear Guy…”

“He was a mountaineer, wasn’t he? Jamie told me.”

“Oh, yes, he was a great mountaineer. A regular British hero.” Irony or a plain statement of truth? I couldn’t tell. She seemed
to speak of the man she had married as though he were still there, as though he was a fool, as though she was still in love
with him, as though she rather despised him. All these things in the few occasions she referred to him. “And now we want to
make the place livable, so I need some help. Of course you don’t have to say yes straightaway. Of course not. Let me show
you, and then we’ll have some lunch and you can tell me what you think. I’m sure a boy like you would like to earn a little
extra, and I’m sure your mother would be delighted. I know what it’s like shelling out pocket money all the time. Let me show
you round.”

So we did a tour of the house, peering into rooms, edging through doors, tripping over steps. Unlike its owner, the place
seemed awkward, a body that had been assembled out of different ill-fitting parts, with corridors from one part to another
that warranted extra steps to make the join, with right-angle corners, and alcoves and crannies and doors that only half opened
because of a wall in the way. Around the abrupt turn of one particular corner, we came to what she called the “games room.”
It was long and wide, occupying the whole width of that wing of the house. We looked at the rubbish left by previous occupants:
a broken sofa, an old table, empty trunks, an ancient mattress, that kind of thing. There was an open fireplace with a mantelpiece
of cast iron. The only evidence of games was a full-size snooker table — she referred to it as
pool
— with its baize torn and rotten. “We’ve not touched anything here, as you can see, but now the plan is to convert it into
guest rooms. I just need someone to do the clearing out. And then there could be other things you could do. You know what
it’s like without a man about the house. There’s always the garden.”

Afterward we ate lunch together in the cold dining room — and of course when she asked me about the work, I said yes, I’d do
it. A few quid would come in handy. And she smiled quickly, as if that was good but not so important really; doubtless she
could always have found a lad from the village.

Mother was suspicious when I told her. “Why?” she asked. “Why?”

“Why not? It’ll give me something to do, never mind the money.”

Perhaps the money was what swayed her from outright proscription. “Do what you like,” she said. “Don’t take any notice of
me.”

“But why shouldn’t I?”

“I haven’t said you shouldn’t.”

“Then what have you got against her?”

“Nothing, my dear. I’ve nothing against Meg. I’m just disappointed in her, that’s all. Her horrid flashiness, the way she
seems to think herself so much
better.
The way she…” Her disapprobation died away into a vague and impatient gesture, a kind of childish petulance. It was one of
those moments when I understood something for the first time, or thought I did: that adults could operate on the same level
as children, that they could have dislikes that were based on nothing more than irrational prejudice.