The Insect Farm (13 page)

I guessed that Harriet was choosing not to talk about how she spent her free time, in order to avoid giving me any reason to become concerned. My idiotic expressions of jealousy over the years had left her in no doubt that I was capable of being totally unreasonable. Hardly surprising, then, that she would exercise the discretion of brevity or omission rather than take a risk that I would start up again.

By and large I had managed to control, if not totally to conquer the most negative of those feelings. There can be no doubt that in those days I was drinking far too much, and when I did so on my own, I had a tendency to become depressed. However it never got out of control, and I was always aware of the need to stay the right side of a line. I worked out that, as our choices had made it inevitable that we were going to be apart for so much time, if I wanted to stand any chance at all of retaining my sanity, I would simply have to find a way to deal with it.

I had made my choices, and by and large I was content with them. Roger was my priority and no one needed to remind me of that. Nonetheless, knowing what your responsibilities are and being happy to live up to them is not the same as being blind to what might have been. I think I would have been less than human if, on hearing Harriet’s tales of university life, I had not experienced the occasional pang. Of course I did,
but I became very good at keeping it all bottled up, because Harriet never seemed to notice. When she had finished her breathless account I would bring her up to date with mine, all of which was inevitably less interesting.

“We set up the mobile library on one of the dodgy estates up in Deptford on Wednesday,” I told her. “Then they left me on my own all afternoon. It was like the siege of the bloody Alamo. Dozens of kids throwing handfuls of gravel at the caravan, so that at one time it sounded like it was raining hailstones. I thought I’d have to call the police when one kid tried to release the handbrake.”

I’d tell her how Paddy the delivery driver had been told off by the branch librarian Mr Waddington, and how the Irishman had told the boss to go and fuck himself. Mr Waddington had been to see the town clerk to try to get Paddy fired, but the unions were so strong that no one could be dismissed for something as trivial as insubordination.

“And how about Roger?” she would ask. “How’s he getting on, do you think? Is he happy?”

That would be my cue to run though some of the funny things that had happened to us, usually involving the reaction of some unsuspecting bystander to the realization that Roger was not all he seemed.

On one visit, not long after the Easter concert, I told Harriet about my conversation with Roger on the subject of the insect farm. About how I had asked him whether our dad had ever suggested that he would have to get rid
of it, and how he had reacted with alarm but had given no indication that the incident had ever happened. Harriet hadn’t remembered, or maybe I hadn’t told her, that the police had raised the question when they were investigating the cause of the fire.

“You don’t think it’s possible, do you?”

“What, that Roger started the fire that killed our parents?”

I had said it. The thought that had remained unexpressed to anyone; suddenly it was out there as an idea, floating around in the airwaves.

“Yes,” said Harriet, “I suppose that’s exactly what I’m asking.”

My instinct was to answer unequivocally, but the directness of the question caused me to crystallize the niggling thoughts which must have been stored away in the corners of my mind. Suddenly I had an image of Roger crouching in the darkness of the insect farm, while the orange glow of flames cast flickering light against the window panes. I saw again the lonely figure sitting in the side ward of the hospital and playing with the stethoscope while our parents lay dead just a short distance away. And then, just as quickly, I remembered that this was Roger, and nothing that Roger did could be judged by the standards of normal behaviour. My moment of doubt had gone as quickly as it had arrived.

“No, I don’t. You know what he was like on that morning after the fire, waiting for me in the hospital casualty
department. He was sitting there in a world all of his own, completely oblivious to anything that had happened in the previous few hours. No doubt Roger is capable of some weird stuff, but never anything as weird as that.”

I saw Harriet looking beyond me, focusing on the middle distance, and after a moment I saw that she was gently nodding her head in agreement.

“Yes,” she said, “I see that. Obviously I don’t know him anything like the way that you know him, but I would swear on a stack of Bibles that he wouldn’t be capable of doing something like that. He is just so innocent; I don’t think he has the kind of mind it would take to carry it off.”

We sipped our tea and paddled around in our own thoughts, occasionally murmuring our continuing assent.

“Mind you,” I said, “if Roger was ever going to do anything drastic, it would be that bloody insect farm which would cause it. He’s obsessed by it, which is great for me because it gives him something absorbing to do where I know he is completely content. Whether it’s good for him or not, I don’t know.”

“It must be good for him,” said Harriet, “sorting it all out and having to organize it to make sure all his tiny creatures are fed and looked after has been incredibly stretching for him.” She seemed to think for a moment or two. “But you are wrong about one thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“If Roger was ever going to do something drastic to protect something he treasured, it would be to protect the thing he cares about more than anything else.” I looked at Harriet, wondering what she was going to say, my eyebrows raising the question. “That’s you,” she said. “And, by the way” – she leant towards me and took my hand in hers – “the same goes for me too.”

Chapter Thirteen

It was in the summer holidays before Harriet’s final year in Newcastle. I had taken off my whole holiday allocation from the job at the library to spend as much time as possible with her. Harriet would need to do quite a lot of studying, but one way or another we would have a fair amount of spare time to hang out and do the things that normal people do. To be like a married couple.

The quartet had been booked to play at one or two summer parties, and one I remember in particular was to be held in an enclosed garden in a square in a very smart area of Chelsea. The booking had come through an agency, and at first there was some secrecy about the identity of the host. Then one day Harriet took a phone call from Brendan, who told her that the event was the annual party of the TV presenter David Frost.

I was no more interested then than I am now in the world of celebrities, but even for casual observers such as myself, David Frost’s annual garden party was a well-known part of the social calendar. His was a very unusual world which took in politicians, statesmen, musicians, actors and comedians, and so a party that brought them all together was bound to be an experience.

When Harriet and I went to have a look at the venue a few days in advance, the organizers were busy erecting a marquee in case of rain. The garden was surrounded on three sides by large fine houses of red brick. Access was through a locked gate, and the whole area was bordered by shrubbery and then railings which came up to shoulder height. In the course of chatting to the caterers, I got myself hired as a waiter for the evening.

Occasions like this left us in a slight dilemma about what to do with Roger. Not that there was any problem in leaving him on his own. Roger’s disability did not make him a danger to himself or to others, and he was usually perfectly content to be left for hours at a time at the insect farm, and was happy to walk the couple of hundred yards back to the flat when he was ready. It was no real problem to leave him in the flat either, though I was never certain how he spent his time when we were away. I know that he used to sit and watch the same programmes over and over again on children’s television; sometimes when he would be viewing in the other room I could hear him laughing and speaking back to the TV presenter. I’d go in and find him sitting on the sofa, stroking Olly the cat, and watching something I knew he had seen many times before.

On the occasion I’m thinking about now, however, Roger was a bit fractious. It worried me, partly because it was a rare thing. He didn’t actually complain, but seemed more disappointed than usual when I said that Harriet and I would both be going out for the evening.

“Where are you going?”

“Harriet and the quartet have a booking in Chelsea and I’m serving drinks. It’s an open-air thing in a square. Lots of posh people. Maybe even some celebrities.” Roger shrugged his shoulders. He was one of the few people who were even less likely to be impressed by the idea of celebrities than I was. “Maybe there will be some TV producers there and they’ll want to put Harriet on the telly.” I don’t know why I said it, but I thought the idea would amuse Roger. It did.

“Yes, let’s get Harriet on the telly. She’d be wonderful.” His lighter moment was short-lived and quickly Roger’s smile faded from his face.

“What’s the matter, Roger? Won’t you want to spend the time down at the insect farm?”

Roger shrugged his shoulders. Suddenly he seemed like the eight-year-old boy that he was in his head, just fed up without any obvious reason.

“Maybe he could come with us?” It was Harriet. She had overheard our conversation. At first I didn’t quite understand what she was talking about.

“How?”

“Well, there’s no reason why not. Lots of musical groups have their own road manager. Roger can help to carry our instruments and put up our stuff. It’ll make us look more professional.”

Whatever were the possible consequences of taking Roger to the garden party, making the quartet seem more professional
was unlikely to be one of them. However, as I reflected on it, I couldn’t think of any serious reason why Roger shouldn’t be able to go along as a helper of sorts. Undoubtedly there would be a whole range of flunkies of one kind or another, and it seemed perfectly plausible that he could come in with us and remain unnoticed.

Roger was delighted by the idea; indeed, he was a little bit too delighted, to an extent that quickly made me worry about whether we had made the right decision. I have said before that one of the big things about Roger was that he looked perfectly normal, and you could easily think he
was
perfectly normal until you spoke to him. Even then, on his best days it might take a few minutes to realize. However, if he was nervous or overexcited, and especially when his usual routine was thrown too far out of the norm, he could easily get a bit overwhelmed.

A little while later I heard Harriet speaking on the phone to the others to let them know what we planned. The conversations with Martin and Jed – both of whom were at Martin’s parents’ house in Pimlico – seemed to be fairly uncontroversial. I wondered if it was significant that Harriet left telling Brendan until last, and I thought I detected some nervousness in her when she was about to make the call. She stood for a moment with her hand on the receiver and took a few deep breaths. As she dialled the number, I asked her if she was all right. She nodded without pausing, as if now psyched up for the conversation and not wanting to be diverted.

I couldn’t hear much of the dialogue, but I could tell that Harriet’s voice was more strained than it had been when she spoke to the others. The discussion took longer, and it was clear that Harriet was getting some resistance. Most of her conversation was muffled and indistinct, but there was no mistaking her closing words before she hung up the phone: “If he isn’t allowed to come, I won’t be coming either.” She returned to the living room and sat down hard on the sofa. “Sometimes that Brendan can be a total tosser,” she said.

Of the two of us, it was unusual for Harriet to be the one who was irritated by Brendan, so my mind started working overtime to think how to perpetuate her mood. If I joined in, I suspected that she would soon move to his defence.

“Well, maybe he’s got a point. It’s an exclusive party full of politicians and rock stars. They’ve probably got all the halfwits they need already.”

Harriet’s expression could have frozen me to the spot. “It’s not funny, Jonathan. Sometimes that Brendan gets right up my nose. He’s such an arse.”

I loved it when Harriet used words like “arse”. Bad language came so unnaturally to her that it sounded as though she was dealing with a sour taste in her mouth.

“I’ve been telling you that for years.” I saw in her expression the realization that she was getting on to, and potentially feeding, one of my pet subjects. Suddenly the conversation was at an end.

The weather was a bit growly and overcast all day, and we wondered whether we would be playing inside or outside of the marquee. By late afternoon though, the skies had started to clear and it looked as though the rain would stay away.

We were due to arrive an hour or so ahead of the guests in order to set up the seats and music stands, and so there was no special security on the gate when we went in. I had borrowed a Ford Transit from my mate Paddy at the library, and probably we looked a bit incongruous turning up in a van with London Borough of Lewisham Library Service emblazoned in bold letters on the side. Half a dozen photographers from newspapers and society magazines were already in position at the north end of the square, but they took no notice of us as we unloaded music stands and instruments. To give him something to do, and to avoid awkward questions, we told Roger to take one end of the cello, and once he was in, he was in.

It took only a few minutes for us to get set up, and the plan was to leave Roger with Harriet until there were enough people milling around for him to seem less conspicuous. I was due to report to the catering tent half an hour before 6 p.m., when the first guests were expected to begin arriving.

At about 5.15, we could see David Frost himself appear at the top of the garden square and begin to make his way in our general direction. He seemed to be full of very natural bonhomie, and greeted everyone he saw with a smile and a handshake. I could hear his familiar nasal tones as he spoke
and the big laugh seemed very genuine. You could tell that all the waiters and waitresses were thrilled to meet him.