Sing Like You Know the Words (39 page)

They remained standing a few
feet apart, as at the moment when Patricia had given him the news.
It was an awkward distance, but Matthew did not know whether to
advance or retreat. Should he embrace her now; and if he did should
he be friendly or passionate? His instinct was to shrink back, but
he remained immobile, conscious that he must look ridiculous.

-What about David, what will he
say?

-Firstly, he’ll have no idea
that the father is you, unless you do something incredibly stupid,
which you won´t, will you? Good: that´s the most important thing I
need to hear from you. Second, he’ll be a little hurt when I admit
that, once or twice when he was away, I gave in to loneliness and
temptation and consoled myself with meaningless liaisons with
strangers that were purely about physical relief. Half an hour
later he’ll be up and about painting a nursery and planning
schooling for the baby.

The part about meaningless and
purely physical hurt more than it should, though Matthew had no
idea why. I suppose that is how I should have described it myself
he thought; but even so. He knew that what she said about David was
right, but where did that leave Matthew?

He would be father to a child
that he would never see. Worse than that; he would see it all the
time, unless he changed the pattern of his life entirely and gave
up visiting Oakland Ridge. He would have to watch the he, or she,
growing up without being anything to them. Though he´d always
claimed that he never wanted children. Now he could hardly
acknowledge, let alone understand, the curious mix of emotions that
flowed inside him.

It seemed no time at all before
Patricia had her daughter. They named her for David’s mother.
Patricia seemed contented, even a little softened. Not long after
though, she returned to practice at the bar and the childminder
moved in.

The career was still going well
and motherhood did not seem to slow her down. It was not unusual to
see her name mentioned in the specialist press. There was distance
between her and Matthew now, if they had ever really been close.
Now they were almost formal with each other. She did tell him once
that she saw even less of David these days, and that she thought
that she had stopped minding. It was the natural rhythm of a
relationship between two busy people; and to be expected. It was
more important that little Evelyn should be happy.

***

Just a few weeks after Patricia
told him about the baby, Matthew met Amy.

He was always meeting girls, but
this one was different. She was younger than he was, pretty and
intelligent, but that wasn’t it either. There were a lot of clever
attractive women who were on their own and had no more sense than
to find Matthew attractive. But with Amy, he knew right from their
first conversation that some new feeling was coming into his world.
Amy told him that she felt the same way.

He couldn´t analyze his
feelings, and he was frightened to try. He found it easier to say
what Amy was not than to describe what qualities she had. She was
not talkative, and she was comfortable with silence: this was
something new in his experience.

Matthew was used to his
girlfriends doing most of the talking, but even the witty ones used
to wear him out eventually. He hadn´t realized, until the
responsibility passed to him, that it was not so easy to drive a
conversation along, particularly as neither he nor Amy liked to
talk about work. But it felt like another new thing to have someone
genuinely interested in what he had to say.

And it didn´t matter so much
what they said anyway, because she had this wonderful calm about
her, as if her own serene self possession radiated warmth to him.
She laughed at him for saying so, but Matthew could imagine that
she had never experienced a serious moment of anxiety in her
life.

Her light hair was long and
straight and seemed to be hiding something: a gentle smile with
just a hint of mischief. Whatever she happened to be smiling about
gave way to laughter quite readily, but it was soft laughter that
was not at all mocking, and there was a secret in the laughter. She
was perfect, he decided. The secret was as simple as that.

From the start they understood
each other without words. Matthew was forty years old, and felt
that maybe he had done enough talking already in his life to last
for the rest of it. To find someone with whom he could be quiet,
but still be so close, felt like - well it felt like happiness.

-We like your new friend very
much, Patricia told him. You should have come to see us before now.
I don’t know why you’ve been hiding her

-I haven’t been hiding her at
all.

-She’s just too good for you.
Very pretty girl too. You hardly stayed two minutes, but it was
obvious that you were close. She’s not like your other women. Don´t
let this one get away. You must come round to the house. We’ll have
a small dinner party. Something intimate

-Intimate for you is anything
less than twelve people. I don’t even know if Amy does dinner
parties.

-You’re worried we’ll frighten
her. Well that’s good. You´re not usually so thoughtful. Just the
four of us then. When shall we arrange it?

-I think I should ask Amy about
that.

-My god Matt, such consideration
from you. It must be serious.

***

To some, it seemed that David
Thomas was not only a new member of parliament, but a new kind of
politician. He didn´t match the usual stereotypes of the opposed
interests, and he´d won his seat in a constituency that normally
swung between conservative and liberal candidates. The media showed
some interest. Local radio asked him for an extended interview. It
would not give the same exposure as his brief television
appearances, but it would be a first opportunity to explain his
ideas in something more than a rehearsed phrase; a media baptism of
sorts. Matthew could hear David´s enthusiasm when he spoke about
the event: he felt obliged to offer his help, but wasn’t surprised
or disappointed when David assured him that everything was in hand.
It seemed that Harold claimed experience of working in radio,
however unlikely that sounded to Matthew.

-I don’t suppose anyone really
listens to this sort of programme, David told Matthew; playing it
down for his benefit. I never would, before now. How about you?

It was a fair comment: if
Matthew heard anything interesting on the radio it was usually by
accident, switching between channels when the music stations became
too irritating or repetitively programmed. However, once his mother
learned of the planned broadcast, it became something of a family
occasion. As the show would go out on a Sunday afternoon it was
arranged that Matthew and Amy would visit for lunch and afterwards
they would listen to the interview together.

The interest that his mother
showed in the progress of Matthew´s friends was touching,
reflecting a life lived at one remove he thought. He was nervous
about the broadcast for that reason. He had every reason to fear
that his mother´s high expectations for David´s public debut would
not be met. Amy could see that he was tense: he wasn´t sure that he
could explain the reasons clearly.

-My mum thinks that everyone
should say what they mean, he told her. She´s heard me and David
putting the world to rights over the years, and now maybe she
thinks he´ll say some of those things on air. She´s always said
what a good speaker he was, and she thinks such a lot of all our
abilities. It might hurt her to hear what he actually comes out
with.

But there was no help for it,
and that Sunday found them seated around a portable radio that was
balanced on the television set, digesting a traditional lunch and
waiting expectantly, like a wartime family from another age
gathered to hear the wireless broadcast of news on the Home Front.
Perhaps a crackling voice would inform them that rationing was
about to end. Amy and Matthew sat together on the sofa and he was
grateful for her hand in his.

Mrs James sat smiling through
the brief introduction and description of David´s career to date,
but as the interview progressed she became more pensive, as if she
was waiting for something. She didn´t say anything, she only became
more still and erect in the high backed chair that she preferred to
the armchair. David spoke about continuity and something that he
called an inclusive vision, which seemed to mean not changing very
much. The longer it went on the more unsettled they all seemed to
become. Even Amy, who was not paying much attention to the words,
picked up the mood.

The final straw came when David
was asked to comment on the Thatcher years. He responded that his
party disagreed with much of what she stood for, but given she had
been the most successful prime minister of modern times,
electorally, it would be foolish to deny that there was much to
admire and learn from her career. She had led the nation through
difficult times and seen through some painful, but necessary,
changes.

-Mrs James stood up and clicked
off the radio.

-Time for a cup of tea, she
announced firmly. Amy you don´t take sugar do you?

And with that she retreated to
the kitchen.

David was at his new London flat
when Matthew next caught up with him, by telephone. He was spending
a few days a week down there now, getting back home as often as he
could.

-Do you remember, Matthew asked
him, you telling me that Margaret Thatcher was an evil witch,
simple minded and wrong on every issue and deserved to boil in her
own cauldron? Seemed like you´d changed your views when we heard
you on the radio.

-Don´t be intentionally stupid
Matt. How do you think your media colleagues would have served me
up if I´d said what I really thought? Half the country´s still in
love with the image of that woman; more than ever now that she’s
safely out of the way.

-So you don’t really believe
what you said?

-You can’t deny she could win
elections

-Yes, she convinced me that a
mass of people who prefer not to think can be persuaded to agree
with a small-minded, simplistic, ignorant view of the world. I
never really doubted it. It´s more difficult I suppose to show them
another way, but I thought that´s what you were about.

-Exactly my point. You and I are
always saying the same thing in different ways. We only disagree on
what to do about it. People are selfish and weak. They´d rather
have easy answers to difficult problems. So you want me to stand on
my soapbox and preach that they should all be better human beings,
and where does that get us? The way I see it Matt, we either leave
things as they are or we should lead. Leading means starting from
the place where we are, not from where you’d have liked to be in
nineteen seventy nine. Leading means feeding people some of what
they already like, and then little by little drawing them after
you, in a new direction. Wherever people stand, they have to think
that it´s only common sense to be there. You change them by
shifting the ground under their feet, not by telling them they’ve
been deluded for the last eighteen years.

-But that’s not the same as what
I was saying at all. I’m talking about inspiring people with a
vision. You’re talking about herding them like sheep.

-Most people are sheep, they
just need better shepherds.

-Like you? Who made you the good
shepherd?

Matthew imagined David standing
in his half empty flat, the phone in one hand and his face upturned
to the invisible sky.

-One of the differences between
us Matt, he replied; is that I believe in some things that are
fixed, beyond ourselves. Goodness is unchanging.

-History would suggest
otherwise.

-Matt you want everything to be
more complicated than it really is. There´s a simple choice. We can
all cling tightly to our principles like you. Maybe it makes you
feel better but it achieves nothing. Or we can act. If we do
nothing, how many bad things happen that maybe we could have
stopped? You can never stop all of them. Does that mean you
shouldn´t even try? But to act, you have to deal with the world as
it is.

-You know, your mother wrote me
a letter about what I said. I respect your mother, but most
ordinary people are not like her. They don’t see themselves as a
class in society, needing to stick together to struggle against
being exploited. They don’t see that they belong to any group
bigger than their own family. Society does exist, but it´s
invisible. Our own people look for the chance to get something by
being smart: buying shares in a government sell off, or investing
in a building society that goes public. Sod thy neighbour. No one
works in heavy industries now; sharing the same work as their mates
and their lives defined by it. Industries have gone. All that’s
left of them is nostalgia of people like you.

-Do nothing and it´ll be more of
the same. We’ll go further and further down that slope of not
caring about each other, until there’s no way back. So if I have to
tell some lies now to help steer the ship off on a different
course, I´ll do that.

-Doing good by stealth?

-If you like. Why not?

-You´re telling me that people
are so awful that you have to trick them into being good. So what´s
the point of them? You may as well let them go. I could be having
this conversation with Patricia but about the church. I suppose the
Pope tells himself he has to keep up all the bullshit otherwise the
poor blind sheep won’t know good from bad and the world will come
crashing down.

-Do you think God would want it
to come crashing down?

-I don´t know what god would
want. I don´t believe in him. And I´m not sure I know what you
believe in any more.