Waiting for Doggo (18 page)

‘Mum, I don’t think Carol’s a lesbian.’

‘Darling, don’t be so naive. They’re just as good at hiding themselves as the queers.’

At moments like this, the generation gap seems more like an unbridgeable chasm. ‘No one says queers any more.’

‘Then you pick the word. I think I’m going to start with the oysters.’

Mum has always liked a glass of wine – the pop of a cork at six o’clock is an abiding childhood memory of mine – but she throws back the Saint-Véran like she’s trying to put out a fire. When I tell her to slow down, she tells me she’s trying to. It’s a cryptic response, and the first real sign of what’s coming. I only have to wait a couple of seconds for the next, and there’s nothing cryptic about this one.

‘I lied to you about Grandpa.’ She just blurts it out.

‘About Grandpa?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Help me out.’

‘About what he said to you.’ She can’t hold my gaze. ‘Oh God. Bloody Nigel.’

‘Nigel?’

‘He said you had a right to know the truth. But he’s wrong. Nothing good can come of it and now it’s too late …’ She dabs at the welling tears with her napkin.

I feel numb yet remarkably alert, like I’ve been plunged into an icy lake. I reach blindly for Doggo down by my feet and find comfort in the rasp of his tongue against the back of my hand. Even if I could think of something to say, I’m not sure I could produce the words. I can see that Mum is struggling too.

‘I’m sorry, sweetpea,’ she finally manages to choke out.

‘Who?’ I ask.

‘I can’t say. Not yet. You see, he doesn’t know.’

‘Doesn’t know?’

‘That you’re his. I have to talk to him first.’ She shakes her head in self-reprimand. ‘I should have talked to him first. That was the idea, but looking at you there … well, it just came out.’

‘Mum, you’re going to have to give me more than that.’

She does, quietly and with a controlled dignity that’s at odds with the scandalous story she tells. It seems the University of East Anglia campus was a hotbed of sexual promiscuity during the late seventies and early eighties. I’m surprised to hear that Dad (Dad?), for all his high-minded posturing, munched freely on the forbidden fruit, which in his case usually took the form of besotted female students. Mum was expected to tolerate his many trysts – sexual possession was a bourgeois construct, don’t you know – and even indulge in some of her own. She tried it a couple of times before Emma was born, but unwillingly, almost dutifully, hoping to stir in Dad (that word again) some last vestige of decency or jealousy. Then, after Emma was born, she tried it again, not because she thought she should this time, but because she wanted to.

‘He was very special. Young. Gentle. Very handsome. And so funny.’

I can see the tendrils of memory drawing her off to another place. ‘Mum,’ I say, to bring her back.

‘You have the same profile. Men with strong profiles are rarely found wanting. Who said that?’

‘I don’t know. How young?’

‘He was studying for his PhD in the Climate Research Unit.’

‘He’s a scientist?’

‘Not any more, maybe on the side, I don’t know. He’s made a name for himself in a completely different field.’

‘Good name or bad name?’

‘That depends on your politics.’

UEA in 1982? He had to be left-wing, probably New Labour. ‘Oh God, I’m Tony Blair’s love child.’

She laughs. ‘No.’

‘Who?’

‘I told you, I can’t say, not till I’ve spoken to him. You’ve waited long enough, a little while longer won’t hurt.’

My anger rises suddenly and unexpectedly to the surface. ‘There’s a difference between waiting and being kept in the total bloody dark for thirty years.’

I’m vaguely aware of the couple at the neighbouring table reacting to my raised voice, and of Mum reaching for my hand. ‘You’re right about one thing,’ she says softly. ‘You
were
a love child. I knew exactly what I was doing. You weren’t a mistake. It was reckless – God, it was reckless – but I wanted to make a baby with him. I know he wanted the same. He wanted me to leave your father … leave Michael.’

‘So why didn’t you?’

She hesitates, searching for the answer in her wine glass. ‘I don’t know. I was scared, I suppose, scared that it would hold him back. He was just a boy, but clearly going places. And there was Emma, too. Don’t forget Emma. We were a family.’

‘She has no idea?’

‘No one does.’

‘Except Grandpa. And bloody Nigel.’

She stiffens in her chair. ‘Bloody Nigel is the reason we’re having this discussion, so it would be nice if you showed him a little more respect. I know he’s not your type, but he’s a good man, and there aren’t too many of those around, take it from me.’

I hang my head. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re forgiven.
I
don’t expect to be. Not yet. Maybe someday.’

I know I’m in shock, not thinking straight, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard my mother speak like this, with such feeling, such searing honesty. She even looks different. It’s as if the lie has lain over her like a veil all these years and only now can I see her as she really is.

All okay. Nothing to report. Feel like a total arse.

That’s the basic thrust of the text I promised to send Edie. I can’t face telling her the truth. She’ll want to talk it through, maybe even meet up after her lunch out in Richmond, whereas I just want to walk, feel the ground beneath my feet, because that at least is solid, reliable.

Edie’s reply lands in my phone as Doggo and I are entering Hyde Park at Speakers’ Corner:
That’s good, but bad for my mother who was hoping for more! X

I can’t think of anything to say in return, so I listen instead – to the usual smattering of religious nuts and other harmless crackpots holding forth from their soapboxes and stepladders. Is it really possible that JFK was assassinated because he was about to reveal the truth about the Roswell UFO crash? The evidence is a little patchy. The best of the bunch is a young man, surprisingly articulate, who claims to have it on good authority that Simon Cowell has recently been elevated to the ranks of the New World Order, the sinister cabal of Freemasons, Illuminati, Jews, Jesuits, bankers and other undesirables who for centuries have been running world affairs from the shadows. He somehow manages to work 9/11 and global warming into the mix.

There’s something invigorating about this cat’s cradle of conspiracy theories. To the truly paranoid, anything is possible. Better still, my own story, the one just sprung on me, seems dull and commonplace by comparison.

Doggo and I are skirting the Serpentine when I’m taken by a sudden urge to lie down. Spread-eagled on my back in the shade of a large oak, I search for meaningful patterns in the canopy of boughs and branches. Doggo nudges me with his snout and bounces around. This is a first. Does he really want me to play with him? Maybe he senses my black mood and is trying to shake me out of it. If so, he doesn’t succeed.

‘Excuse me. Is that your dog?’

The words don’t mean anything, not at first, not until I wake to see a woman with long auburn hair staring down at me. She doesn’t look happy. I force myself into a sitting position. ‘Sorry?’

She points. ‘That dog, is he yours? He’s stolen our ball.’

I see two young girls standing with a Welsh terrier, and a man (presumably the girls’ father) edging closer to Doggo, who does indeed have a tennis ball in his mouth.

‘There’s a good dog now, drop it, drop the ball.’ Doggo darts off out of range. ‘Bloody mongrel!’

I let the insult go – just. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it back.’

Famous last words. I finally persuade Doggo to release the ball, but as I reach for it, he suddenly snatches it up again and shoots between my legs. The man lunges, misses, ends up on his knees. ‘Doggo!’ I yell, chasing after him.

He gives us the runaround for a good few minutes before he finally relinquishes his prize. My apologies fall on deaf ears.

‘You should learn to control him,’ says the man.

I turn to his daughters. ‘Was that fun?’

‘Yes,’ they chime in unison, delighted to have watched two grown men brought low by a small dog.

I hand the man the moist tennis ball. ‘Not a total waste of time, then.’

Doggo only approaches me once they’ve moved on. He steps carefully, cautiously, but when I drop to my knees, he hurries forward and allows himself to be swept off his feet.

‘It’s okay, I’m back now. Thank you, you sweet thing.’

He licks my face and I blow a raspberry into his neck.

T
HE CARTOON IS
waiting for me on my desk when I show up for work on Monday morning, along with a note from Josh:
Had another bash at it over the weekend.

I have to laugh. He has stuck with the same three frames – M-m-m-m … D-d-d-d … McDonald’s! – but he has added a dog at the table, a dog clearly modelled on Doggo! He has also tweaked the expressions of the parents so that it’s now the dog’s reaction that draws the eye. There’s something brilliantly world-weary in its look of incredulity when the baby blurts out ‘McDonald’s’. It’s a stroke of genius; the gag still works, but the dog has now become the story. You’re left with a sense that the poor wise creature has been lumbered with this modish young couple (the father’s designer spectacles are another great addition) for whom life will never quite go as planned.

Edie loves it. Tristan claims to. He seems a little out of sorts, and when he collars me at the coffee machine, I understand why.

‘Good weekend?’ he asks.

‘Not bad. You?’

‘What did you get up to?’

He’s not the sort to make small talk about my weekend; he clearly knows and is trying to catch me out. I fill him in on our expedition to the dogs home.

‘Whose idea was it?’ he demands.

‘Mine.’

‘Edie says it was hers.’

‘It was my idea to go. She asked if she could tag along. Tristan, why are we even having this conversation?’

He edges closer, invading my space. ‘I just want to know we’re singing from the same hymn sheet.’ He’s so sure of himself, so convinced of his ability to intimidate me.

‘Hey,’ I say, ‘I’m your wing man.’

He likes that – the craven reply, the knowing nod to
Top Gun
– and he lays a hand on my shoulder, anointing me with his forgiveness. ‘Okay. Just checking.’

There were a couple of times over the weekend when I doubted my decision to tip Ralph the wink about Tristan. I have no regrets now. I hope the cogs are turning and he’s headed for a fall. Edie claims to know another side to him, and maybe it’s there somewhere, but the truth is, I think less of her because of him.

I don’t put it quite like that to her; I tell her she’s going to have to start filling me in on what she has and hasn’t told him. ‘That’s twice now he’s warned me off you.’

‘Twice?’

‘I didn’t say before. My lunch with him was the first time.’

She seems amused by the thought. ‘What did he say?’

‘You really want to know?’

‘I do.’

‘If you fuck her, I’ll fire you.’

‘He said that?’

‘Poetic, huh?’

She swivels in her desk chair to face me. ‘Dan, I’m not responsible for his neuroses.’

‘I just want to be left alone. I don’t want him shoving his face in mine while I’m making a coffee. Is that too much to ask?’

‘No.’

‘It’s probably best if we don’t socialise any more.’

‘Okay,’ she replies.

‘Strictly professional.’

‘I can do strictly professional.’

‘Good.’

Despite Doggo’s best efforts, I’ve been wound tight as a drum since my lunch with Mum yesterday, and Edie isn’t the first to feel the sting of my irritability. When I offered up my seat on the bus this morning, I was rewarded with a sneer and a question: ‘Why, because I’m a woman?’

‘No, because I’m a gentleman. But if you’re happy standing, that’s just fine by us, isn’t it, Doggo?’

He gave a little yap by way of reply.

‘I won’t tell you what he said.’

This drew some satisfying chuckles from our fellow passengers.

The call from Patrick Ellory comes just after lunch. I know it’s him because Edie suddenly morphs into Annabelle Theakston from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home. The gist of their conversation is this: Ellory has only just spotted the missed calls on his mobile because he was abroad until this morning; and he’s more than happy to talk to Mikey’s new owner, although Mikey was his aunt’s dog so he’s not sure how helpful he’ll be. Wisely, Edie keeps it simple, curbing her curiosity; Annabelle Theakston would surely have all these details, and possibly more, at her fingertips.

She scribbles down Ellory’s number. ‘Over to you,’ she says, handing me the Post-it, and I can tell from her tone that she’s still smarting from our frosty exchange earlier.

‘Not now. Later.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ she says pointedly.

‘I’m sorry. Thanks. You were scarily convincing again.’

She shrugs. ‘Maybe I’m wrong, but I got the feeling the aunt is dead.’ She has lowered her voice for Doggo’s benefit, and we both now glance at him on his sofa.

Later, at home, I research dogs and grief on the Internet. The most graphic evidence that our four-legged friends can feel a very real sense of loss is a video I find on YouTube of a Siberian husky sobbing like a human on the grave of its dead mistress. Maybe Doggo was denied even that, it occurs to me. The sight of the gravestone serves as a reminder to call my mother.

Nigel picks up in their hotel room.

‘Hi, Nigel, it’s me.’

‘Daniel,’ he replies guardedly.

‘Listen, thanks for persuading Mum to come clean with me.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. I appreciate it.’

‘
De nada, amigo
.’

When Mum comes on the line, I ask her how the funeral went today.

‘Have you ever been to a crematorium? Poor Pat. It was ghastly. A factory. In and out. Barely time to change the music. Some people scatter the ashes in the memorial garden. Ashes!? I saw bits of bone in the rose borders!’ She asks me how I’m feeling.