Another Mother's Son (11 page)

The woman comes out again from behind the counter. She brings two cups of coffee and a custard tart for Dirk on a thick white plate. I thank her. Dirk nods and bites into the puff pastry. He brushes the flakes from his lips.

‘If her recollections are correct – and I have no reason to disbelieve her – I am indeed a monster. Such a person would cause unhappiness and the unhappiness would lead inevitably to Dr Fred Grabowski, a young, excessively handsome doctor who specialises in lacrimal surgery. Handsome to the point of ugliness. Or some similar man. Dr Fred Grabowski happened to be there at the right moment. The wrong moment for me. Often, it is the male who strays. When it is the woman it is doubly difficult because of the surprise element. I believed implicitly that Frances was where she said she would be. Tuesday evening at her clinic, Saturday morning with the horses. Where are people when they are not with you? Where do they go? I find I am questioning the most basic notions. Where is Mr Doig, for instance? I hope for your sake he is where he says he is. Now Dr Fred Grabowski has emerged and Frances has promised to tell the truth, however unwelcome, I believe she is where she says she is. There would be no advantage to a second layer of dishonesty at this point.'

His assertion is a form of words or comforting logic that has no bearing on the situation. He and Frances are pressed too close to it. Emotions whir like rotor blades: metal and air, false and true, are indistinguishable. When the amount of lift produced by the speed exceeds the weight of the situation, they will grow lighter and slowly leave the ground. This may take months.

I hear the semi-jocular tone which at first I mistake for comedy but soon gather is a question of intonation and excellent but non-native English – this coupled with dejection. Dirk looks through rather than at me, seeing the scenes that overwhelm him, his mind mentally stretched almost beyond endurance to a point where he cannot control the flood of words, or the pace at which he delivers them. I continue to maintain eye contact – it is the least I can do – and take comfort from the solid items that edge my field of vision. The glass-fronted counter, the paper napkins in an aluminium container, the eclairs and meringues, the little pink-and-white pyramids that are tough on the teeth and in my childhood were called coconut kisses. I resign myself to the role of sap-head and follow pretty much until the point when Dirk says ‘Mr Doig'. Then the transmission that has been coming in smoothly jerks to an unscheduled stop. Dirk Neerhoff hopes
for my sake
that Randal is where he says he is. I understand that Ross might never speak of Charmian – a name I avoid myself – but the sadness of this near-stranger believing that Ross's father still lives with us washes through me.

Dirk stirs his coffee, though he has not added sugar, and licks the spoon before repositioning it on the saucer.

He is staring at me, wanting, I can tell, more on his wife. Nothing about his daughter. Nothing about the teachers of Lloyd-Barron Academy. He hopes for an interim verdict.

I shift in my chair, aligning my spine with its back. ‘She's still at home – Frances. She hasn't left. That's a good thing.'

‘In theory, yes, but we must untie the knot when we are the knot – that is not so easy.'

‘Isn't that always the dilemma?' I put as much brightness into my voice as I can manage. ‘It's very hard for you. And very hard for Jude. How's she coping?'

‘To be honest, she is vile. To both of us. And she cries. Have you heard her cry?'

‘No.'

‘Hmm. They are unstable in that age group. It is part of the territory.' He gives himself a little shake. ‘Now we must speak of other things. I have talked only of myself and you will be thinking, Who is this selfish Dutchman? Maybe another cake would be nice.'

‘
I SAW YOUR
dad. It was nice to meet him.'

‘I knew Mum wouldn't go.'

‘No?'

Jude is thinner. The marriage staggers on, it seems; efforts are made. She does not want to speak about the situation. I do not know if she can talk to Ross. They are still finding out about each other. Their chatting is sometimes easy, sometimes sticky as they enter a zone where one of them suddenly feels undefended. I notice moments – in-between moments when the music is off and she and Ross haven't decided what to do next – when Jude looks lonely. She is whippy like a sapling but vulnerable. I worry for her.

The pattern of Jude's visits becomes more erratic. Late arrivals on Friday. Early departures on Saturday. I do not know what's going on. The old regime has changed and is not balanced by Ross taking himself off to Crews Hill. In February half-term week, Jude does not show up.

‘Is everything all right?' I ask Ross.

‘Is everything all right?' he repeats in a speeded-up voice like a chipmunk.

‘Well, is something wrong?'

‘Nuh-hah.'

‘What does that mean?'

Ross half in, half out of his room, jiggles the door to and fro while I talk so that for part of the time he disappears and I am speaking to chipped paint on wood. The light from inside comes and goes and this adds to the strange visual effect. I endure these background distractions without comment though I often feel like Trilby to the boys' Svengali and perform the role of mother in an amnesiac trance.

‘Have you seen Jude? Are you going to Crews Hill?'

‘Nuh-hah.'

‘So you're not seeing her this weekend?'

‘Nuh-hah.'

‘Why's that?'

‘She's got coursework.'

‘And have you not got coursework? I haven't noticed you doing any.'

I spend too much time on the landings, talking at or through doors. This is one reason why nothing gets done in the house. Twenty years ago, I painted the walls teal, mustard and plum. The surfaces are scarred from fights and indoor ball games. The colours have faded. Randal and I bought the walnut-veneered table at an antiques fair at Hatfield and later a red leatherette, stubby-legged sofa. After that we did not make much effort with the thirties look. I uncovered a parquet floor in the hall and passage when I took up the previous owners' carpet and then we inflicted damage on it in various ways. Although they were told not to, the boys used to race their toy cars down the stairs and, on different occasions, I dropped a hammer, a bottle of wine and a cast-iron pan of beef stew.

About a year before he left, Randal began to speak of plans for the house. A side-return extension. Replacement windows. They were little cameos of a distant moneyed future, made possible by the new job. He dropped them into the conversation. On one occasion, he mentioned adaptations to the house post-retirement – whether it would be possible to fit a stairlift when the stairs were so narrow. We were in the middle of dealing with a starling that had fallen down the living-room chimney. I love this house, he said. I don't want to leave it. What are you talking about? I said. We're years off retirement. Let's just get this poor bird out of the hall. The flapping is intolerable. The front door was open and the back door but the bird kept flying up, up and then down again, with a strong, direct flight. Its wingspan widened in the confined space. I could not bear the mad flying. I thought it would never end and that the half-crazed creature would carry on long into the evening; a perverted, one-bird version of the aeronautic starling displays that form ever-changing shapes and darken the sky.

Frances Bennet is forty-six. She is having or has had an affair with Dr Fred Grabowski. I see her, I do not know why, with her hair hidden under a towel arranged like a turban. I subtract from Jude's face those elements that belong to Dirk Neerhoff and am left with the nose and the cheekbones.

ONE FRIDAY, JUDE
is back. She comes down for supper in a white blouse, black skirt and cardigan. Her hair is brushed and shiny. I never see her in her school uniform. She looks young. Though the clothes are the regulation monochrome, and abide by the sixth-form dress code, I can see that they are not the same as the other girls'. The shirt is made of stretchy fabric and Jude does up the buttons. This emphasises her breasts. The skirt is pleated. She displays a lot of leg, choosing to wear ankle socks in winter. She is exotic. She has not conformed.

‘School attire. What's going on?' I say.

‘Oh, I couldn't be bothered to go home and change.'

She appears in the kitchen the next morning, identically dressed. I put down the book I am reading, tighten the belt of the old towelling dressing gown with loops hanging off it and sit up straight. It is seven-thirty in the morning.

‘Saturday, isn't it?' I say.

‘Detention.' Jude takes two bowls out of the cupboard and pours cornflakes into them, then milk to the brim of each bowl.

‘Aren't you too old for that?' I get up to put the kettle on again.

She is preoccupied and does not respond. She sits down on a chair with her back to me.

‘Jude?'

‘They've added consolidation to the Performance framework. It's the new commitment policy. It runs all the way through the academy like a golden thread.'

‘Their words, obviously?'

‘What's she on about? Stop talking. We're in a rush.' Ross comes in, also in school uniform, shirt buttons undone, tie hanging loose round his neck. He pushes past me.

I notice a charred patch of tomatoey stuff on the stove. The seeds have turned into burnt ants. I begin to scrub at them with a cloth. ‘Which part of the golden thread have you severed? Sit down, Ross.' I hand him a spoon.

‘We haven't done anything wrong,' Jude says. ‘It's work catch-up. We've got behind.'

‘In English?'

‘Yes, but Mr Goode organised it.'

‘A penile collection.' Ross shovels cereal into his mouth. ‘They have them at Oxford colleges.'

‘Penal, surely?' I say. ‘Does Mr Goode claim to have gone to Balliol?'

Ross has raised his head and is looking at Jude with a gaze that would disturb an animal. Then he catches me watching. ‘For God's sake. Are you so ignorant?' he snaps.

‘What time are you supposed to be there?' I say.

‘Jude.' Ross gestures towards the door.

She stands up.

‘See you later,' I say as she follows Ross out of the kitchen.

I hear the front door bang shut. I go upstairs and into the bathroom, carrying a mug of tea. The air is as wet and hot as a tropical greenhouse. It takes me a few seconds to register ‘FUCK GOODE', written in the steam that has formed on the mirror. The words have already begun to drip so that the letters resemble the piratical writing of a message traced in blood.

I take off my dressing gown and hang it on the hook on the back of the door. I appear as a smudged red-and-grey blur in my winter pyjamas, more a colour palette than a person, with chinks of realism in the cleared spaces of lettering. I have never seen Jude's handwriting. It could be hers. The D resembles Ewan's D, a shallow backward C with a line that fails to meet the sides of the curve. Ross's is different, all joined up. They have carved out distinctive styles in the repeated writing of Doig. I swish away the sudsy mound over the shower drain, pick up the towels that lie in a heap on the floor and open the window. The steam clears in the draught.

ON MY FIRST
inspection of the archive in Cheshire, I fantasised about a cavern with the documents shelved between salt pillars, since Winsford Rock Salt Mine used the ‘room and pillar' method of mining that involved leaving supports to hold up the roof before the ‘room' was relinquished and the miners moved on to a new area. In reality, the underground facility lacks romance. The store in the worked-out part of the mine houses not only the London Transport archive but also confidential government files, hospital patient records, business gen from private companies and part of the Bodleian Library. It has the benefit of naturally constant levels of humidity and temperature but is otherwise mundane, with walls, floors and ceilings no different from any other warehouse space. Boxes are stacked on high metal shelves and conform to British Standards. Although the mine was shut down in the late nineteenth century because of over-capacity in the salt industry, it reopened in the 1920s and is still operational. It stretches five kilometres east to west, and three kilometres north to south, and supplies rock salt to de-ice the roads of Britain in winter.

Storage is costly and I am gradually transferring data onto digital files. For the moment, tangible, musty-smelling proof of the past, including the heavy, bound staff registers that date back to 1863, remains in hard copy. So much has gone missing – from the ancient library of Alexandria to yesterday's travelcard dropped on the pavement; lost, discarded, burnt, blown up. The ordered shelving gives me pleasure.

I make the trip in a day. A two-hour train journey each way with a change at Crewe followed by a cab ride to and from the station out of town, along the River Weaver. Gradually, as the train travels further from London, the level of light rises and, looking out into the wash of grey, I feel as though I have taken a drug that allows me to see the unexceptional nature of the English landscape.

In the quiet zone, noise is at a minimum. Passengers tap on their electronic equipment in silent mode. From time to time, announcements over the intercom break in. I take out a book and when the train comes to a halt at a set of signals I look up. A tractor is moving slowly across a field.

There is no trolley service on the return journey so I go to the bar to buy a cup of tea. The train is packed with people visiting London or returning there for the weekend. While I wait in the queue, I check my phone and find a voice message from my father and a text from Ginny Lu. Both ask me to call them. I start with William. He is flustered. He says he won't be coming for lunch on Sunday. He apologises for giving such short notice and hopes I haven't already bought the food. The explanation he gives is that he is going to the National Army Museum to see ‘a small exhibition on the Battle of Inkerman'. He clears his throat and adds, ‘With Jane.' After the unenthusiastic, Oh, OK, with which I respond, he goes on to say that an ancestor of Jane's, of the 47th Regiment, distinguished himself on that occasion. I try to cut him short, fearing that what Ginny has to say involves Ross, but my father ploughs on, telling me of various outings that he and Jane have been on together. I interrupt him again. He gets the wrong end of the stick and seems to think I am on my way to a school do.