The Last Gift (27 page)

‘I would love to hear about your time here when you first came,’ Jamal said.

‘Do you want to include me in your research?’ Harun asked, teasing him.

‘No, no, I love hearing those stories, of how people coped, what it was like,’ Jamal said.

‘It was very exciting, coming to London,’ Harun said. ‘After all the things I had read and the pictures I had seen. All those great buildings and the quiet squares. Funnily enough, one of the things that struck me and the thought that comes unbidden when I think of first arrival, is how plump were the chickens in the butchers’ shops and how large were the eggs. The mind preserves the oddest things sometimes. Well, I made friends with one of the lecturers who taught me at the university. His class was quite late in the day, and afterwards we went out for a drink a couple of times. He was only a little older than me and had briefly lived in Cape Town as a child, so he made it seem like we had something in common. We were both Africans, he said. His name was Allan, and I liked his calm unsmiling manner. I think some of the younger students found his manner earnest and unsettling.

‘It was through Allan that I met Pat. She was his wife. He invited me to dinner at their flat and a few weeks later I stole her from him. Actually, it was she who stole me. I was very naïve about such things. I was brought up in a family that was very watchful of such matters, and to be truthful, I was a complete novice in love. I had no idea how terrible having an affair with the wife of a friend would feel. It went against everything that friendship implied to me, the treachery, the betrayal of trust, the lying, furtive arrangements. I wished the affair would end, but I also did not want the affair to end. Pat was a beautiful and passionate woman, and I felt undeservedly fortunate to have won her love. She was also very determined and obstinate, and admired herself immensely. She made me see how timorous my scruples were and how self-deluding I was to entertain them as if they were a high ethical conviction. I had a duty to fulfil my desires, she told me, which was a completely new idea to me at the time, but one that became more commonplace in the decades to come.

‘Anyway, that was how we met. And after Pat and I moved in together, I fully understood that I had lost control of my life because now I had no choice but to stay. It was a decision that caused me hardship. My father did not reply when I wrote to tell him the reason for my decision. My uncle wrote instead and said that I had best come back and explain myself in person, but I knew that if I did that I would never be able to defy them and leave. They would overwhelm me with my obligations. You do understand what I am describing, don’t you? You don’t find it too intimate and vulgar to hear these things about an old man’s life, do you? I stayed in London, and promised to return some time soon to see them and talk things over, but I never did. Over the years, whenever someone asked me how long I’d been living here, it was as if I had to confess to a crime.’

On Sunday evening Anna rang her mother as she had every night during that week. Their conversation was brief. No there was no change. He was taking his medication and eating properly, but he was still not talking. It will be a few days yet.

Oh Ma. She felt sorry about the way she had spoken the previous weekend, not about what she said, but that she was out of control. And she had not listened properly to her mother, and had not offered sympathy when she deserved it. She did not know how to tell her mother these things. Instead she gave her advice, telling her to be firm and not to miss her stint at the Refugee Centre. Oh well, she wasn’t perfect.

Don’t worry too much about us, miss, her mother said. And don’t worry about him. He’ll come out of it all right. But now I must go before he gets too stressed.

When she came off the phone, Nick said: ‘Any news of the absconder? You know, I’ve been thinking. I wonder why it doesn’t surprise me that he did that, run away, I mean.’

It took her by surprise. He had hardly said anything about her father since she came back from Norwich, and now he only spoke to make fun of him. She had done that too, calling him a bigamist, but she could do that if she wanted. He couldn’t. Her Ba was her father, not his. What did he mean it didn’t surprise him? She insisted that he explain what he meant and he winced at her voice. She saw that he was beginning to get angry, that she had irritated him again, but she was determined that he should explain the insinuation in his remark.

‘Please don’t make such a fuss about this. It’s hardly anything serious, just a flippant remark, an exaggeration, forget it,’ he said, conciliatory words spoken through tight lips. She hated the way he did that, as if he could barely control his frustration with her.

‘I want you to explain what you meant by it, however unserious it is. What do you mean that it does not surprise you?’

‘All right then,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t surprise me because running away is the kind of thing I would have expected him to do.’

‘Why would you expect that of him? Because you think he is a weak man. You despise him, don’t you?’ she said.

He gave her one of his knowing grins. ‘It’s a tough world and no intelligent person has the right to expect sympathy because they hurt. Your father always acts as if he has more right to hurt than anyone else. I didn’t say despise, you did. You are the one putting words in my mouth. Forget it. I’m sorry if I seemed to be making light of what happened to him.’

He spread his arms out helplessly, in a gesture that was meant to say let’s leave it now. Let’s not argue.

‘Anyway, I’ve just had an email from Mum,’ he said, smiling, looking to please. ‘Anthony and Laura have separated. They had a fight and he physically threw her out of the house. It’s not the first time he’s done that. She got in through the back door and he threw her out again. They had scaffolding round the house for roof repairs, and she climbed on that and tried to get in, but he made sure that every window was locked. She spent most of the night on the scaffold, and in the morning he put a couple of suitcases of her things in the drive, gave her her car keys and handbag and told her to disappear. For ever.’

‘What a monster! What does that mean? For ever.’

‘I don’t know,’ Nick said. ‘The house belongs to him. He’s a partner in the firm she works for. So I suppose he could be telling her not to return to the house or to work. He is such a beast that she might be just too intimidated to make a fuss.’

‘Is he that scary?’ Anna asked.

‘Don’t you think so? I think Laura’s scared of him. Sometimes when I see them together I feel sure that she is literally frightened of him, I mean physically frightened of him. Mum didn’t say, but I think he hits her.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘I don’t know,’ Nick said. ‘You can ask Mum when she comes. They said they’d like to come down next weekend.’

Nick was at the window, looking out for them when they arrived on Saturday afternoon. They saw the Volvo drive slowly past looking for a parking space. They went out on the pavement to meet them and Anna saw Beverley next door at her window. She waved to her. Beverley waved back but did not move, evidently curious to know what was going on out there.

Nick put his arm around her shoulder and drew her near, possessing her. Then when his parents were on the pavement and walking towards them, he left her to hurry towards them. Jill had brought them a beautiful blue vase.
To go with your door, my dear
, she said to Anna as she hugged her.

‘Did you notice the colour of the front door, Ralph? Did it remind you of anything?’ Jill asked, glancing at Anna with a knowing smile. Anna had told Jill some time ago that the blue reminded her of the colours of the doors in Tunis that Ralph had described the first time she met them. Ralph looked slightly alarmed at the questions, not sure what he was being tested on. ‘Didn’t the colour remind you of Tunis?’ Jill asked, nodding at him, helping him out.

‘Oh yes, oh yes indeed,’ Ralph said without conviction, distracted. Anna thought he looked weary, sagging a little inside his blazer, and without his usual decorous sparkle. Jill’s smile faltered slightly, and Ralph took the prod and visibly straightened himself. Jill asked Anna to show her round the house, and Anna laughed and said that would only take a minute. When they were in the upstairs back room, Jill paused suddenly as if she was about to say something, and then shook her head and smiled.

That evening Jill and Ralph took them out to dinner at an expensive restaurant, which they had already researched and where they had booked a table. Ralph could not resist telling them about the restaurant’s renown and how fortunate they were to get a table at such short notice. The prices were, of course, ridiculous, but the fare was apparently exceptional. He gave the wine list a cursory glance and signalled for the wine waiter. He ordered something in an undertone, and from the waiter’s slight bow Anna guessed it was something very expensive. She heard the date
1954
. In recent times Ralph’s baronial manner had begun to irritate her, and she thought they were in for another long evening. After everyone was well settled and he was reasonably watered, Ralph began to talk about Laura and Anthony. Anna had wondered if that was what was bothering him earlier.

‘Laura was such an energetic and fearless child,’ he said. ‘It made you wonder where she got it from. Of course, she will have got some of her steel from her mother. They are, on her side, descended from a line of forge masters, so it is reasonable to expect that some of that iron will have found its way into the ancestral veins. She would not have much of that kind of thing from our side of the family. We were slothful prelates, good for nothing much but observing the norm and making God’s word sound pompous. You have seen our beloved Digby at work with your own eyes, Anna.

‘Her fearlessness was like one of those questing children in Blake, who go wandering into the dark night and lie with lions and serpents without any knowledge of terror. She learned everything so easily and so swiftly, unaware at first of these skills that came to her so naturally. This was as true of physical skills as it was of school work. She learned to swim in minutes and a few days afterwards she was darting about in the water like a little seal. From a young age she could climb a tree with perfect poise, and come safely down again. To her teachers or to the parents of her little friends it must have seemed like recklessness, and I can imagine they had to keep a sharp eye on her in case she got the other children into a scrape. But she was not reckless. Sometimes she misjudged her strength, or the strength of what she had pitted herself against. I don’t know where the line is between recklessness and boldness, but at worst she was somewhere on that line. You saw this in the way she chose her ambitions. At first she was going to be a trapeze artiste, then a pilot, then a bridge builder and finally an architect. They were all achievable ambitions, finally bringing her down to earth, designing houses rather than flying through the air.

‘Then she went to university and changed. We did not see it immediately, or only saw small things of no importance but we slowly realised she was losing that sureness of touch. It was like watching a batsman misjudging the length of a ball and playing and missing repeatedly, or a footballer failing to control a string of passes from his team mates. I don’t mean that she became clumsy. Her judgement no longer seemed natural and assured. She was quarrelsome and aggressive with people in shops and restaurants. She was vehement in her opinions, and she was reckless now when she had not been before, driving too fast, crossing the road dangerously, walking too near the edge of the cliff.’

Ralph glanced at Jill for a moment, perhaps to check that he was not exaggerating. She nodded, and Anna discerned something slightly impatient in the gesture, as if she thought that Ralph was exaggerating and Laura was not like that at all, and above all that she wished Ralph would hurry on with the story so they could talk about something else. Anna wished he would too, pick up speed and get it over with, and so she did not mind making Jill party to this line of thought. Something in his voice was grating on her more than usual, and she was not sure if it was its magisterial tone or its warm egotism. He looked at Nick and finally at Anna, his face still sombre but his eyes beginning to sparkle with the wine. He took a sip, anticipating no interruption, and Anna marvelled at his assurance that his audience would remain obedient. He continued:

‘It was meeting men that changed her, I think. Jill and I have talked about these things so much over the years. It’s what parents do among themselves, talk endlessly about their children, and after all that talking, it may be that their conclusions become a summary of their conversations. So when I say it was meeting men that changed her, that may well be one of those glib summaries. In any case, she chose men who were a challenge to her, men who made her do risky things. I expect she was a challenge to them too. I expect she provoked them. She told us some of this herself, drinking binges, risky scrapes in the countryside, and perhaps she told you other things that she did not tell us, Nick. That would only be natural.’

‘She didn’t tell me much about anything,’ Nick said shortly. Perhaps he too was getting edgy.

‘We only really knew one of the men before Anthony,’ Ralph said, looking away from Nick’s unhelpful interruption. ‘His name was Justin, and she was with him for a long time, a big gangly young man with a huge appetite. I hope I am not being too cruel in describing him that way. An awkward, shy chap, very good mannered. They went everywhere together, travelling, riding, climbing, skiing. Even when they came visiting us, within hours they were off on a long hike to somewhere. Maybe they tired each other out, because after they finished their studies – and architects study for a long time – they went their separate ways as if they had planned it that way all along.