Widows & Orphans (19 page)

‘Derek must be hurt at Craig crying off.’

‘He’s cool. Some dads want their kids to have a good time.’

‘Some dads want to have a good time with their kids,’ Duncan said, affecting nonchalance.

‘Yeah, right! Still, there’s always a bad vibe when he comes round. Mum gets pissed that he refuses to eat with Rose. He says it’s like feeding time at the zoo.’

‘That’s very cruel.’

‘It’s true. Sometimes she even gets food stuck at the back of her throat. Mum has to put her fingers in her mouth to stop her choking. It’s disgusting.’

‘I’m disappointed in you,’ Duncan said, glancing at Jamie, his face aptly jaundiced by the street lights. ‘You’ve always been so good with Rose.’

‘So? People change. Are you the same guy you were when you were thirteen?’

‘I hope I’m still as loyal to my sister,’ Duncan replied, conscious that he had yet to tell her about his meeting at the bank.

‘Aunt Alison’s a tennis champion; Rose is in a wheelchair. It’s not the same. Anyhow, what are you getting at me for? I didn’t blow you off.’

‘I know, and I’m very pleased to see you. So give me a rundown on what you’ve been up to.’

‘Boring!’

‘All right. We’ll save it till we get to Granny’s.’

‘Why do we always have to go to hers?’

‘You’re the one who complains that my flat’s too cramped.’

‘It’s wrong that everyone else lives in smart houses and you’re squashed in a cubbyhole.’

‘It’s a very convenient cubbyhole; I’m never late for work. Still, I’m touched that you’re so concerned about your old dad.’

‘Who says I’m concerned? It’s just embarrassing.’

‘Try to make an effort with Granny,’ Duncan said, as they waited in a lengthy tailback on Bartholomew Road. ‘She may not always show it, but she lives for you children.’

‘She should get out more.’

‘That isn’t kind.’

‘If she lives for anyone, it’s Tim and Graham. She never stops talking about them.’

‘I’m sure she talks to them about you.’

‘When? They never come here. They’ve got more sense. She’s always criticising me. And making sly digs at Mum. “I don’t suppose that’s the way things are done in your house, is it, darling?” “Whoever taught you to use the word
serviette
? Oh, I’m sorry, was it Linda?”’

‘You’re quite right to stick up for your mother, but don’t be too hard on your grandmother. She hasn’t had the easiest life.’

‘Because her dad was a Nazi?’

‘Whatever you do, don’t say that to her! In any case he wasn’t; he was a fascist sympathiser. He was culpably naïve and he suffered the consequences. What I meant was her life
with your grandfather.’ Having previously glossed over his parents’ differences, he judged that Jamie was old enough to understand that two generations of marital discord need not lead to a third.

‘I thought he was Mr Popular.’

‘Mr Too Popular if you were his wife! When I was your age, I could never figure out why the editor of a Francombe newspaper had to spend so many nights in London.’

‘So why did he?’

‘He didn’t.’

‘Then what?’ Jamie laughed coarsely. ‘You mean he was a dirty old man?’

‘The polite word is roué.’

‘There’s always a polite word like “napkin” and “serviette”, but it’s the same thing underneath. Mum said that Granny made up half the things that were wrong with her so you’d feel sorry for her. She said if it weren’t for her, the two of you would still be together.’

‘What? That’s nonsense. I don’t believe Linda would have said that.’

‘She so did!’

‘Then you must have misunderstood. Either way it’s not true.’

‘So why did you split up? It can’t be because of the two of you. You always get on so well. You row far less than Mum and Derek.’

‘But then we see each other far less,’ Duncan said, striving to be fair.

‘Michael Phillips’s mum cut his dad out of all their wedding photos. Pete Limkin’s mum accused his dad of trying to rape her.’

‘Not all divorces are like that.’ Duncan ached for his son’s lost innocence.

‘So if it wasn’t because of Granny, then it must have been me.’

‘What?’ Duncan asked, as the lights changed and the cars surged forward.

‘Mum said you didn’t want another kid. Which means you didn’t want another one like me.’

‘Where on earth…? Who told you that?’

‘No one. They didn’t have to. I can work things out for myself.’

‘You couldn’t be more wrong. True, I didn’t want another kid. But it had nothing to do with you. I’d have had ten more if I’d known they’d turn out like you. Good and clever and healthy.’

‘What sort of healthy? You mean not like Rose?’

‘No, not like me. We really can’t have this conversation now,’ Duncan said, in response to a salvo of hooting from behind.

‘You’re driving too slow, Dad.’

‘The needle’s dead on thirty.’

‘So? There aren’t any speed cameras around.’

‘That’s not a reason for breaking the law. Look, forget the cameras. I’m talking about you, or rather me. You know I was born with a slight – very slight – chromosomal imbalance?’

‘Whatever.’

‘And you know you haven’t inherited it?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘But if you’d had a brother, he mightn’t have been so lucky. I’m very low on the KS spectrum. Some men who have it are born with learning difficulties and grow such large breasts that they have to go for regular mammograms.’

‘Dad, please! I don’t want to talk about it. All right?’

‘It’s not my favourite topic of conversation either. But if there’s one thing I want you to remember – if it’s the only thing you ever remember – it’s that you’re in no way to blame for what went wrong between your mother and me. On the contrary, you were the best thing we had then and you’re still the best thing we have now. Do you believe me?’

‘Suppose.’

‘“Suppose” isn’t enough.’ Duncan parked the car at the bottom of the Ridgemount drive. ‘I’m not going to let you out until you promise that you believe me.’

‘I promise, OK? I’m hungry.’

‘And not a word of this to your grandmother. She’d be mortified to think that you or your mother or anyone else blamed her for my divorce. I tell you what: you be on your best behaviour tonight and next week I’ll book us a table at Vivien’s. I’ll ask her to make us her seafood pasta. Deal?’

‘Deal.’

For all that he disapproved of bribing children to do what they should do willingly, Duncan was prepared to make an exception. With a spring in his step, he walked up to the house, past the algae-choked pond and the clump of chestnut trees, their conkers rotting on the ground like a mockery of childhood. Standing beside his son in the cluttered porch, he tentatively placed a hand on his shoulder and, to his delight, it was not shrugged off. Chris answered the door, scuttling back inside to warn Adele of their arrival.

‘You didn’t say he’d be here,’ Jamie hissed.

‘Is it a problem? He’s a big-hearted man, devoted to Granny.’

‘He gives me the creeps.’

They crossed the beeswax-scented hall to the drawing room, where Adele was crocheting a giant bedspread for Alison and Malcolm’s silver wedding in June. ‘I’ll never have the energy to make another one,’ she had said to Duncan. ‘So it’s some comfort to know I won’t have to.’

Bending to kiss her cheek, Duncan caught whisky fumes on her breath, but any hope that the drink might have mellowed her was quickly dashed.

‘I thought I must have muddled the day,’ she said.

‘No, Mother, the new counter-flow system on Bartholomew Road caused a massive snarl-up.’

‘Don’t blame me if the dinner’s burnt.’

‘We won’t,’ he said, making way for Jamie whom she greeted with heartening enthusiasm.

‘I invited Chris to join me for a small scotch after all his hard work,’ Adele said, as if to justify his presence in the room.

‘Maybe he’d like to stay to dinner?’ Duncan asked, to be met by three distinct looks of horror.

‘That’s very kind but I wouldn’t want to muscle in,’ Chris said. ‘Mrs Neville doesn’t see this handsome young man often enough.’

‘True,’ Duncan said, trusting that his smile would offset Jamie’s glower. ‘How are things, Chris? I haven’t seen you since the Metropole.’

‘Now that really was a night to remember. I told you all about it,’ Chris said to Adele, who smiled indulgently. ‘Miss Lyndon – she said to call her Charlie, but we couldn’t – was everything you’d expect and more. I never knew you were such good friends.’

‘She stayed here several times,’ Adele said. ‘Scruffy little thing. She wore her bra outside her blouse.’

‘That was the fashion, Mother.’

‘Telling no tales, but she said you’d had an affair.’

‘You had an affair with Charlie Lyndon?’ Jamie asked incredulously.

‘It was a long time ago. I was still in my teens … that is I was nearly twenty –’

‘Do you have any proof?’

‘Why would I want proof?’

‘For me to show to the guys at school when they take the piss out of you and your lame paper. How many of their dads have slept with a celebrity?’

‘She wasn’t a celebrity then.’

‘So?’

Chris stood up to leave and Duncan accompanied him into the hall, where he could scarcely refrain from thanking him. While trusting that a thirty-year-old fling would not be his
sole claim on his son’s respect, he had not seen Jamie so proud of him since they launched their home-made rocket two years ago. Chris, meanwhile, intimated that he had something on his mind.

‘I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but I’m worried about your mother.’

‘In general or something specific?’

‘She’s getting so morbid: always quizzing me about my gran’s dementia. When the doc came yesterday, he wanted to give her a pneumonia jab but she refused. She said the first sign she was losing her marbles and she’d be sitting outside in the rain with “Do Not Resuscitate” pinned to her chest.’

‘The fact she can talk that way shows that her mind is as sharp as ever, but I’ll have a word with her and see what I can find out. Now you go home and relax. Be sure to give my best to Paul.’

After sending Chris off with a handshake that would not have disgraced Geoffrey Weedon, Duncan returned to the drawing room to find Jamie holding up a hank of yarn that Adele was winding into a ball.

‘I hope he hasn’t been giving away any secrets,’ she said suspiciously.

‘Not at all,’ Duncan replied, flushing. ‘He’s just concerned about you.’

‘He’s a very sensitive young man. Well, they all are.’

‘Who’s they, Granny?’ Jamie asked.

‘Gay homosexuals … Don’t snigger, Jamie. That’s what they like to be called. He says I remind him of his grandmother. Before she went cuckoo, of course. He still visits her twice a week in the bin.’

‘It’s a very well-run residential home, Mother.’

‘Says who? He’s had to stop taking her out ever since she had a turn in Jubilee Park, screaming that he was kidnapping her and’ – she looked at Jamie – ‘another time. The keeper rang the police, who arrested him. But he’s devoted to her.’

‘She brought him up,’ Duncan said.

‘Still, I don’t know many young men who’d do as much for their grandmothers.’

‘You’re embarrassing Jamie.’

‘Oh darling, nothing could be further from my mind. I’m well aware what a busy life you lead. I’m just grateful you can still spare an evening for the old girl.’

‘Shall we eat, Mother?’ Duncan said firmly. ‘I don’t know about you two, but I’m famished.’

He led the way into the dining room where he and Jamie sat on either side of Adele at the long Biedermeier table she had inherited from her grandparents. He pretended not to notice Jamie’s frown when Adele, who never thought to ask whether his tastes had changed, pointed to the prawn-topped avocados laid out in their moulded glass dishes and declared them to be his favourite.

‘How’s your poor little stepsister, darling?’ she asked after a few mouthfuls.

‘She’s my half-sister, Granny.’

‘Isn’t it the same thing?’

Having explained the difference to her countless times, Duncan suspected that she wanted to dissociate her grandson from any blood link with Rose’s disability.

‘No, it’s not. And she’s fine. Great,’ Jamie said, as always playing down Rose’s problems to outsiders. ‘Mum’s taking her for some Botox injections.’

‘Really? I know she’s no beauty, but isn’t that rather drastic?’

‘They’re not for her face! She has a lovely face. They’re to relax the muscles in her arms and legs. She still won’t be able to walk but they may help her hold things better. Otherwise she’d have to have an operation.’

‘Such a tragedy,’ Adele said, chewing.

‘She’s already got to have one on her salivary glands so that the drool runs the right way down her throat.’

‘That’s not a word to use at the dinner table, darling.’

‘What word, Granny?’ Jamie asked disingenuously.

‘Drool.’

‘I’m sorry. So much slobber – is that better? – pours out of her that the skin around her mouth and on her neck and chin is really raw.’

‘That’s enough now, Jamie. Tell your grandmother what’s going on in your life while I clear these dishes and fetch the pie.’

A debilitating mixture of arthritis and affectation exempted Adele from serving the dinners over which she presided. Duncan was happy to fill in, not least because it offered a temporary respite from both his mother’s chatter and the ghosts who surrounded him at the table. Depositing the avocado dishes in the sink, he drained the peas and took the chicken-and-ham pie out of the oven, its golden-brown crust a testament to the care that Chris had lavished on the baking. He loaded the trolley and pushed it into the dining room, where his mother’s face presaged trouble.

‘Did you know about this, Duncan?’ she asked the moment he stepped through the door.

‘About what, Mother?’

‘That the children at Jamie’s council school are going to be taught in Arabic and Kurdish as well as English?’

‘What?’ Duncan turned to Jamie, who was the picture of innocence. ‘He’s pulling your leg, Mother.’

‘What for?’

‘It’s a joke, Granny.’

‘Not to those of us who knew Francombe in the old days. Enid Marshall told me last week that Wavell’s has been replaced by a halal food store.’