Falling Off Air (14 page)

“The thing about money …” Tanya was thinking hard. “It wasn't the first thing he said. He said … I mean I said I didn't …
then … Sorry. You need the context … I open the door, this man is there. He doesn't look like a tramp. Still, I'm on my guard,
you know, he shows up unannounced, I haven't a clue who he is, he could have been anyone. People are always getting robbed
in broad daylight in this street. He says, ‘Hello, you don't remember me but I'm Gilbert, your father.’ I say, ‘Why are you
here?’ He says, ‘I just want to see you, I've never forgotten you, I want to make contact.’ I say, ‘Well you've made contact,
you've seen me, good-bye for another thirty years.’ He says he doesn't want to go. But by this point he thinks I'm about to
close the door in his face, and he starts to talk in a panicky sort of a way about how we're family, we should stick together,
and I suppose when he gets panicky, I panic too. I don't want him to come inside, I don't want him to see the children, and
I end up almost shouting at him, asking what he wants, anything to make him go away, and at last he says something like, ‘I
want help.’ And I say, ‘You want money from me?’ I mean I'm amazed at the effrontery, and he just stands there silently for
a minute and then he has this strange look in his eyes, really hard, and he says, ‘Will you give me money? To make me go away?’
And I slam the door in his face,” she made a gesture with her hands, “and that was it. I looked out the window a few minutes
later, and he was gone.”

It was pretty unambiguous. I rubbed my hands over my face, then reached down to William who was crying and clinging at my
knee, and hauled him onto my lap. He was still clutching the wooden spoon, and he bashed me on the chin with it. I removed
it from his grasp, and he yelled and wriggled to get off my lap and onto the floor again. I set him down and he grabbed another
weapon and set about my ankles.

“The whole thing's left me with a horrible taste in my mouth,” Tanya said. “I'd have felt more kindly disposed to him if I'd
never seen him again. It would be better if he'd died.”

“Tanya,” Patrick scolded. Tanya had worked hard to find a man like Patrick. He was solid, he was kind, and he would never
leave her. Sometimes I found his goodwill to all mankind hard to take, but mostly I was just glad for Tanya that she had him.

“Well it would,” she insisted.

I didn't join in the argument. I didn't want to believe in this down-and-out father.

“Tanya, could he possibly have said ‘I want
to
help,’” I put the stress on the third word, “not ‘I want help’?”

She looked at me as though I were mad.

“How could he possibly help me?”

“That's not the point. What I mean is could he have meant that? Could you have misheard?”

“No.” Tanya screwed up her face, convincing herself. “And anyway, he asked for money. You think I misheard that too?”

I threw up my hands.

“I don't know what to think,” I said to Tanya. I got up to pour myself more coffee.

I hadn't intended telling Tanya and Patrick that Adam was coming to see me that night. I had assumed that Tanya would disapprove
of any contact with Adam, just as she disapproved of contact with our father, and I didn't think I could face another prefight
analysis. But too many secrets can be a burden and so I changed my mind and told them. It came as a relief to me that Tanya
was not immediately horrified. Indeed she hardly seemed surprised.

“We all need all the help we can get.” She shrugged. “And Adam's a good man in some ways. He's funny, he's sweet, he's got
a good job. He screwed up as a lover, but you've both had time to cool off.”

“He'll fall in love with the kids,” Patrick said. “Although I keep asking Tanya why on earth we had three of the blighters.
Just don't have another.”

“There's no danger of that,” I said.

Talking to them had been a comfort, as though I'd heard the voices of reason. I felt as though this was a day of touching
base, drawing nourishment from my roots, building up my strength for the confrontation to come. I was under no illusion that
my meeting with Adam would be easy, because there were no obvious solutions to our situation, no clear objectives. My parting
with Adam had been raw with emotion and as rapid as it could be. Jane had asked me a few months afterward whether I felt we'd
achieved closure, and I hadn't even been able to grasp what she meant, let alone say yes. How could there be any sort of closure
with the twins a giggling, squirming memorial to what had been? Every time I looked at the children I saw Adam. But if there
was to be no closure, then I was left with the same old problem, which was how to coexist with him.

When I left Tanya's house I dropped the car off for its inspection at her local garage, then unloaded the children, put them
in the double stroller, and walked from the garage to my mother's house. A watery sun was in the sky and the exercise helped
to keep my anxiety about the evening ahead at bay. What's more the movement lulled both the children to sleep, so that when
I arrived I had the rare luxury of parking them in the hallway and settling down to a cup of tea and the newspapers at the
kitchen table. As long as I can remember, which means since the departure of my father, my mother has never felt the need
for her house to be a show home. Her idea of interior design is sheer self-indulgence. Food sits in cupboards and in the fridge
until it is capable of speech and can ask to be put out of its misery. Mounds of books and magazines cover every surface.
If she sees something she likes, whether it is an essay on international relations or a cartoon or a photograph, she sticks
it in a clip frame and puts it on the wall. Her house is like a giant scrapbook.

“Did you see this?” My mother had folded the diary section of the
Guardian
and marked a small item with a cross. I read:

After a series of scandals about editorial standards in daytime talk shows and months of spirited resistance, the Corporation
has finally given in to government pressure and appointed its first Ethics Czar, former award-winning television producer,
Robin Ballantyne. Industry insiders say the appointment is tantamount to an admission by the Corporation that it has a problem.
But Maeve Tandy, head of television, last night told this diarist that it was “a simple restatement of our commitment to high-quality
programming. I would be very surprised if Robin Ballantyne finds that we are not fulfilling our editorial standards.” Robin
Ballantyne has kept a low profile for the past year, and is believed to be taking up her high-visibility position at a time
of personal strain.

My heart sank. I hadn't expected Maeve to be so quick off the mark, but I imagined she wanted to get the newspapers off her
back. I knew it was only propaganda, but still, the tiny article sounded like a death knell for my career.

“A girl's got to do what a girl's got to do,” I told my mother, handing the article back to her, and turning to the other
papers to see what was happening in the Carmichael case.

I'd noticed that the mourners making a pilgrimage to the house had thinned to almost nothing, and the newspapers, like Finney,
seemed to have few new leads to go on. Jane's suggestion that Richard Carmichael must be a suspect had come to nothing. The
initial debate about what would become of the Carmichaelite charities had been largely settled by Paula Carmichael's deputy,
a woman called Rachel Colby, who had made a public statement saying that their work would continue and expand. Already, she
said, sadness over Paula's death had galvanized more people to become involved in the work she had pioneered. However, the
news coverage had discovered a new lease on life because Carmichael's funeral was taking place that afternoon.

“Why didn't anyone tell me?” I looked up from the newspaper in alarm.

“What do you mean?” said my mother from the stove, where she was boiling tortellini for lunch and heating a ready-made carbonara
sauce.

“This woman watched me out of her window, she wrote about me in her diaries, and then I watched her die. I can't not go to
her funeral,” I said with a wail. “Why didn't Finney tell me?”

“Isn't it in Birmingham?” my mother said. “That's where she was from.”

“Well, Birmingham's hardly the end of the earth,” I grumbled. “I could have got on a train.”

I went back to reading. There were endless column inches filled with who would attend and who would not. In particular there
was the question of whether the prime minister would be there. The commentators suggested that he could make political capital
out of going. Soon I realized that my mother was wrong. The funeral was to take place in London. Paula Carmichael had been
Roman Catholic, at least in name, and her funeral was to take place at a local church right there in south London.

“Ma?” I took a deep breath. “Would you mind taking the children for a couple of hours?”

I
arrived with fifteen minutes to spare, but the overflow from the church was spilling onto the street, and there was a move
under way to set up speakers outside so that the funeral service could be heard there. I dug out my Corporation pass and convinced
the man at the door that I belonged to a television crew.

“All right, love, but don't make a racket,” he whispered, as he pushed open the heavy door for me. Inside, the organ was playing
Bach, and there was the softest rustle of low conversation from the congregation. The pews were full, and extra benches and
chairs had been brought in at the back of the church. I spied a small empty space in a pew near the front and walked quietly
along the side aisle until I reached it, glad that I had taken time before I rushed out of my mother's house to borrow a black
skirt and jacket. Luckily we were about the same size, my mother and I, but she wasn't as tall, and I was uncomfortably aware
that the skirt was shorter than was ideal for a funeral.

In the side chapels hundreds of candles had been lit under representations of the Madonna in paint and stone. I reached the
pew and only then did I see that the space I had identified was smaller than I had expected and it was next to Detective Chief
Inspector Finney in a black suit and tie. I hesitated and he glanced up at me, his eyebrows raised in recognition. I gestured
weakly at the space and he and his neighbor moved along a few inches to make more room. It was still a tight squeeze, my hips
pressed against the end of the pew on one side and against Finney on the other. I could feel the warmth of him through the
layers of fabric that were between us. My skirt rode up over my thighs. I tugged it down, but to little effect.

Beside me I felt Finney tense and I looked up. Richard Carmichael had arrived, and was walking down the central aisle with
his stepsons trailing behind. All wore black, even the youngest was in a black polo neck sweater and blazer over black jeans.
Carmichael himself looked grim, his mouth tight, jaw muscle working. He was holding hands with the elder son, who nevertheless
did not walk at his father's side but a step behind. Carmichael nodded in acknowledgment at the murmurs of condolence that
followed his progress.

I did not see his elder son's face, but the younger one had clearly been crying. His eyes were red, his face puffy, and his
hands were clenched into fists at his side as though he was holding on for dear life. His ear was multiply pierced and the
row of silver rings caught the light that trickled down from the small circular windows in the dome above us. The Carmichaels
were ushered into a reserved pew at the front of the church next to an elderly woman who I assumed was Paula Carmichael's
mother. I saw that the prime minister had made a low-profile entrance and was being guided in from a side door to take his
place just behind the family.

I spotted other familiar faces and realized that Finney had positioned himself carefully, not for a view of the pulpit, which
was partly obscured, but for a view of the congregation. I saw Suzette and Adam a row apart on the other side of the church.
I had expected Adam to be there and felt at peace with his presence. We would go to battle later. We exchanged smiles. Many
of the pews were filled not with politicians or media, or even with family, but with the Carmichaelites themselves. They were
mostly women, but that was the only generalization one could make about the gathering. In other ways—race, status, wealth—my
impression was that all the world was there. Two pews had been removed to make space for a row of wheelchairs. Without exception
everyone looked grim, as though they would never smile again.

The organ ceased and the silence took on the quality of expectation. Paula Carmichael's coffin seemed very distant, on a trestle
to the left of the altar, and piled high with wreaths. I thought of her body, all broken, her hair soaked around her head.

The priest, Father Joe Riberra, was a young American with spectacles and a goatee, who spoke as though he was at the dinner
table, quietly and conversationally. He talked as though he had known Paula Carmichael well, and at points his voice was so
low that I could only just make out what he was saying. The congregation was silent, straining to hear every word.

He told us that the only possible response to Paula Carmichael's death was grief, but that we were also there to celebrate
the life of a woman who had given birth to a great movement for social regeneration. He described Paula's life. She was not,
he said, born to a privileged family. Her father was a trade unionist, her mother a teacher. It was from them that she had
learned of the importance of principle and social activism. He had visited Paula's home and seen that her bookshelves were
full of the biographies of those who had tried to change the world.

“Paula wasn't terribly good at modesty. I'd have said she wanted her own biography up there next to the great men of history,
and I'd say she may yet get it, that she probably should. But towards the end, she wasn't happy. Things changed, none of us
really knows why. She told me she didn't want to be remembered. Well, I hate to contradict her even in death, but we're here
because she made an impact on our lives.