The Photograph (21 page)

Yes, my dad’s still in the flat. I mean, I’m really sorry for him, but it’s driving me crazy. Here I am, I’m thirty, and I’m apparently living with my
father
. Yes, of course I’ve tried that, the place is ankle-deep in stuff from rental agencies, he won’t even go and
look
. He says he needs to sort himself out first, get his head together. What does my dad do? You mean work-wise? Well, basically, my dad doesn’t really do anything. He talks about doing things, and messes about with ideas that might eventually lead to doing something. It wasn’t always like that. He had his own publishing company, way back. Rather successful, actually. But Dad wasn’t so hot on the money side, got overstretched or something, and it folded. And by then my mum was doing so well. . . . Actually, my dad’s lovely, in his way. I mean, he’s still about ten and a half—fifty-eight going on ten and a half. It’s always rather driven Mum round the bend, I can see that, but that’s how he is, like a sort of overgrown boy, enthusing away about this or that, and actually it’s eating me up seeing him like this. Mooching around. Not talking much. Looking
old
suddenly.

My mum? Well, frankly, I think my mum has flipped. I mean, I’m just hoping and praying it’s temporary, because my mum isn’t a person who flips. My mum is someone who has been on course since she was about five. Well, yes, of course it’s
about
something, but all this is so over the top, because what it’s about is over and done with. Long ago. I won’t go into it but . . . well, I do feel a meal is being made of it, and everyone just needs to calm down. God,
families
. . .

Ah—stepparents. No, I don’t know about stepparents. We’re the old-fashioned nuclear family.
How
many? Wow! A serial marrier, evidently, your mum.

Anyway, so there it is—my dad on the sofa and beer cans in my fridge and dirty shirts all over the bathroom and various arrangements on hold and my mum saying can we not talk about this. Plus, I’ve got some really complex client stuff going on right now. I mean, I just don’t
need
this.

Listen, I’ll have to go—oddly enough they pay me to work here. That’s another thing—I can’t really talk to people from the flat anymore. It’s not that he’s listening—it’s just that, well, I’ve lost my personal space.

Actually, no—tomorrow evening’s no good. I’m seeing this guy Andy.

Don’t
jump to conclusions. I’ve said—it’s early days. We’ll see.

 
Oh . . .
hi
! No, this is just fine. Yes, I enjoyed it too. Oh . . . No, no, that wasn’t it at all. . . . Look, this really is crossed wires.

This is so embarrassing. The thing is—I couldn’t ask you up to the flat because my
father’s
there. He’s—well, sort of staying with me at the moment. It’s a long story. That’s why. That’s absolutely why.

Oh, I
see
. You thought . . . God, no. Definitely not. I mean, yes, I’ve been in a relationship, but that’s over. Actually, this is quite a difficult time for me—nothing to do with that, that’s not a problem at all, we just weren’t going anywhere—no, this is, oh . . .
family
stuff. Look, I’m not going to load this onto you when we hardly know each other.

Are you? Well, I think that’s nice. I mean, a lot of men don’t want to, frankly. They’d rather not know. Listening’s just not their thing. Actually, that was a big problem with . . . with this person I’m not with anymore. I just felt he wasn’t there for me whenever I had something going on. Know what I mean? Oh God, I’m making myself sound like I’m in perpetual crisis, it’s not like that at all, it’s just that, well, when you’re involved with someone, you expect . . . Look, I’ll have to go—I’ve got a client meeting in half an hour.

Thursday? Yes, as it happens I could do Thursday.

 
Mum? You all right? Well, good, because everything’s not all right here. First of all, I’ve realized I can’t bring people to the flat because of Dad—well, not some people, if you see what I mean. And actually that’s really inconvenient just at the moment because . . . well, there’s this man I may be interested in.

Oh, Mum, I
told
you I’m not seeing Dan anymore.

And then last night I came home and he wasn’t here. No, no—not the man—and he’s called Andy, by the way.
Dad.
Dad wasn’t here. I mean, usually he’s just sitting in front of the telly every evening—and incidentally he’s drinking too much. I wasn’t going to mention that, except frankly I think you should know. But he wasn’t here, and at eleven o’clock I’m like some mother with a teenager out at a disco, watching the clock and thinking accidents and stuff.

The car? Yes, of course the car was gone. And he doesn’t understand about parking in London—he leaves it on yellow lines and gets a ticket just about every day. And by the way he was really pissed off you weren’t there when he went to get it—that was the point of going, if you ask me. Seeing you, not getting the car.

Oh, he came back, yes. Nearly one o’clock. By which time I’m climbing the wall, about to start reaching for the police. He’s been out of London, he says. Someone he had to see. And it was a long drive and he stopped off on the way back and he got a bit lost. And then he went to bed, and of course I’m so wound up I can’t go to sleep, and now I’m wiped out today, just when I’ve got a panic on with a job that’s overdue.

No, he wasn’t drunk.

Mum, don’t mind me saying so, but if you need to know whether he’s remembered that the car is due for its MOT, I think you should ask him yourself.

“ No!” Oliver abandons his screen, swivels round in his chair. “I’m not here!”

Sandra is unsympathetic—downright uncooperative, in fact. “Mr. Hammond rang earlier,” she says, the receiver held out at arm’s length. Does she realize who Mr. Hammond
is,
by any chance?

Oliver attempts to face her down, and fails. He crosses the room, takes the phone. “Ah. Nick. Hello there.”

He is in a lather. Not more of this blasted business? First Glyn. Now Nick. Heaven preserve him from Elaine. He can hardly follow what Nick is saying. Nick rattles away. Something about wanting to catch up, out of touch for far too long. Must meet.

“I’m pretty tied up just now,” says Oliver. He talks of deadlines, urgent schedules. “Maybe in the autumn.” Sandra is listening with interest.

Nick forges on. He talks in broken sentences. He seems to be saying that he is not at home right now, that he has had a few problems recently, that he’d like to have a talk about the old days. He sounds slightly manic.

No! wails Oliver—speechless, defenseless. Nick is saying that he’s got nothing much on today, as it happens, so he’ll drive over. Be with you about six, OK? Pick you up at your office—I’ve got the address. Take you out for a meal.

Well, unfortunately . . . protests Oliver. This evening I . . . But Nick is no longer there. And Sandra is gazing at him, speculative: “Remind me just who this Nick Hammond is?”

When Nick walks into the room Oliver is horrified. This is not Nick, surely? This paunchy figure with thinning hair? With melting jawline and bags under his eyes. Yes, we’ve all of us matured, some rather more than others, but Nick? Nick was eternally young, it seemed, stuck forever at about twenty-eight, as the rest of them hit forty and edged towards the big five-oh. Well, evidently even Nick is not exempt.

Nick is talking as soon as he is in the room, without preliminaries—a feverish account of his drive, and some difficulty with a recalcitrant clutch, and being jinxed by the one-way system. He is on edge—that is immediately apparent.

Oliver gathers himself. Sandra is observing intently; she has found that for some reason she needs to work late and thus is still there when Nick arrives. “Well,
hello
,” Oliver says, genial but not overintimate, for Sandra’s benefit—the greeting appropriate to an associate. “Good to see you. Sandra Chalcott—my partner.” He turns to Sandra: “We’ll be off, then. See you later.”

“Is a curry all right with you?” he says to Nick. “There’s a place just near.” He steers Nick along the street. Nick talks. At least in that sense he is the old Nick, but his talk skitters off in all directions, it is doglegged, herringboned, it leaps from one unconsidered trifle to another. He is in London a lot these days, he says; possibly he may do a book on London squares—fascinating subject, London squares; Polly sends greetings, at least Polly would if she knew he was seeing Oliver, but come to think of it she doesn’t; Elaine is extraordinarily busy these days—one doesn’t seem to set eyes on her from one week to the next; he has been thinking of writing something on Brunel, but is finding it hard to get down to it, things get in the way so. . . .

Eventually, over a plateful of chicken tikka masala, he falls silent. He stares at his plate. His hair no longer flops over one eye, Oliver notes; it has somehow peeled back from the front. Without that pelt, Nick seems exposed, laid bare.

Nick looks up. He puts down his fork, picks up his beer, drinks deeply. “The fact is, I’m a bit bothered about something.”

He shoots Oliver a wild look. He seems now like a schoolboy in disgrace; a chastened sixteen-year-old peers out from the softened jowls and the pouchy eyes.

“Ah . . .” Oliver assumes an expression of neutral interest: Continue if you must.

“Elaine’s got herself into a terrible state about a photo. Do you remember a photo of me and Kath?”

Oliver contemplates his lamb korma. “Yes,” he says, at last.

Nick pushes his plate to one side. “There’s the most awful fuss, actually.”

“I know,” says Oliver.

“You know?”

Oliver sighs. Bugger it all! “Glyn came to see me.”

Now panic flies across Nick’s face. “Oh Christ! What did he want?”

“He wanted to know if Kath went in for . . . for that sort of thing. For having affairs with people.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I didn’t know. What would you have said?”

Nick hesitates. He seems to be reflecting—not a process Oliver associates with Nick. “I’d have said the same.”

Silence. “All very unfortunate,” says Oliver, at last. “But I don’t see what I—” He starts to eat again, determinedly. No doubt he is going to be picking up the tab, so why let a good meal go to waste?

Nick now lets fly. He bursts out with a spasmodic, incoherent litany of concerns. Well, of course Kath must have had affairs, he says; I mean—there were always men around, weren’t there? After all, she was
so
pretty. But not for the sake of it. Not in a
frivolous
way, right? Any more than I did. Frankly, Olly, I don’t know what got into me. Or her, come to that. Crazy. Stupid. But the point is, it’s over and done with, so why, now, all this? I mean, it’s so unfair. Elaine’s being . . . Well, I won’t go on about it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I weren’t heading for some sort of breakdown. I’m in a terrible state. Someone’s got to do something.

Oliver is barely listening. He is thinking of Kath. She has become like some mythical figure, trawled up at will to fit other people’s narratives. Everyone has their way with her, everyone decides what she was, how things were. It seems to him unjust that in the midst of this to-do she is denied a voice.

He interrupts. “Did you love her?”

Nick’s spiel is chopped off. He looks shocked. “Well, of course I—” he begins. “Naturally, one . . . I mean, when you’re caught up in this sort of thing that’s not quite—” He retrieves his plate and picks up his fork.

No, thinks Oliver, sadly. You didn’t.

Nick has recovered himself, insofar as this is possible. “The thing is, it might help if you had a word with Elaine.”

Oliver stares. “What about?”

Nick sighs—a nervous, juddering, confessional sigh. “She’s thrown me out, Olly, that’s the long and the short of it.”

Startled, Oliver considers this. He is surprised at such emphatic action on Elaine’s part. Time was, he had always thought that Elaine rather let Nick get away with things. Admittedly, this must have been quite a bombshell.

“I want to go home,” says Nick. He sounds like a querulous eight-year-old.

Oliver is now seized with desperation. He would like to snap at Nick that he is not in the marriage-guidance business, but he is held back by some irritable sense of responsibility that he recognizes from their former partnership. But, for Christ’s sake, he is no longer responsible for Nick or anything that Nick does or has done.

“After all,” says Nick, “you took that photograph.”

Oliver bounces in his chair. “No!” he cries. The people at the next table turn and look at them.

“But you did.”

“I mean—no, you can’t start blaming me for all this.”

“I’m not blaming you,” says Nick, in tones of sweet reason. He seems now very much in control of himself. He is shoveling down his food, and pauses to finish a mouthful. “I’m just saying that you are involved, after all.”

“I am not,” says Oliver sullenly.

“Elaine always liked you.”

“I haven’t seen her for years.”

“She was always going on about how sensible and levelheaded you were. As opposed to me. I think she used to feel sometimes she’d be better off married to you than to me.” Nick grins. “It’s OK—I didn’t mind. I could always sort things out with Elaine then.”

So sort this out, thinks Oliver sourly.

“But she seems to have gone completely off the rails about this. All it needs is someone to sit down with her and have a friendly talk. You, Olly.”

Oliver glowers.

“It’s just a question of getting her to see that I don’t
deserve
this,” says Nick plaintively. “Right? I mean—OK, it was silly and wrong, but that’s
all
it was. There’s absolutely no point in everyone going berserk, Glyn charging around, Elaine behaving as though I’d robbed a bank.”

“
No
.”

“No, what?”

“No, I won’t talk to Elaine.”