Your Father Sends His Love (19 page)

Outside, the house was impressive: stuccoed walls, wrought-iron gates, a driveway crazy-paved. Daimler and Rolls-Royce in the garages. Personalized number plates;
as clichéd as you could hope. He let himself in through the back of the house, along the pathway. Were Bob and Jaq in they would be there to greet whoever he was; always a smile for a contractor, a workman, a caterer. Always a smile and a joke and kind word.

The first time he'd been to the new house – what he called new though they had lived there for over two decades – was for his father's birthday. He cannot recall which. The whole family, save for Simon's mum, Simon's mum now replaced by Jaq, sitting in the dining room. Simon sitting down, looking at his brother. In silence, always silence, chair-bound and still blessed. Simon beside him, left hand on the tyre of the wheelchair. The handsome fucking spastic. The whole family – spastic Gary, unwanted Simon, the stepmother – gathered in the large dining room, the father and husband opening a package. A present from Simon, bought by Jaq, wrapped by Jaq.

Bob took an age, saving the paper. A pair of socks, racing green, silk.

‘Thank you, Simon,' Bob said and shook Simon by the hand. ‘Is this your way of saying put a sock in it?'

Jaq laughed and Simon drank the last of the wine. The handsome spastic shifted in his chair.

‘What's that, Gary?' Bob said.

‘He says he wishes you'd put a sock in it,' Simon said. ‘Even the deaf are sick of your voice.'

Bob laughed and picked up another present from the pile. It was a pair of leather gloves bought by Jaq, wrapped by Jaq, the tag saying with love from Gary.

‘Oh now these are perfect, Gary,' Bob says. ‘Just the ticket for when I strangle your brother.'

His father opened the last present, the one from Jaq. It was a long, thick tube wrapped in brown paper, tied off with ribbon. He put it to his lips. ‘But, Jaq, I told you I was giving up.'

Bob struggled with the tape. Eventually the paper came away. An architect's tube, metal and plastic. Bob raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to one side.

Bob took the cap from the tube and shuffled out blueprints. They half unrolled and Jaq used ornaments as paperweights on the dining-room table. Simon joined them. He looked down as Bob hugged Jaq, hugged her tight and squeezed.

‘What is it?' he asked Jaq.

‘It's an annexe,' she said. ‘Like an outhouse where he can watch all his films and things. A place where he can write. A place just for him.'

Simon looked down at the plans. Electricity and a flushing toilet. Shelves everywhere, an arched window looking out over the garden and pond.

‘Like a sanctuary?' he said.

‘Yes,' Jaq said, surprised. ‘Yes, I suppose that's what it is.'

Looking at it then, low and squat, too white in the garden, too modern beside the mock-Tudor of the main house, Simon imagined what it would be like to have such a place at one's disposal. Such space, such quiet. A place only for you. His father took to calling it that, his sanctuary. Simon smoked a cigarette and watched the annexe. Strong door. Strong roof. The light was strong too, even at the last of the day, strong and almost purple.

He picked up the bag of kerosene and matches and walked the path. The key was snug in the lock and opened the door with a soft click, wood shushing over deep carpet as he pushed. Inside it was hushed, cool. A video recorder spooling. A television guide open on the sofa, programmes underlined, programmes ringed. The bathroom door ajar, the extractor silent, the stillness of it all. He sat at the desk. There were papers and correspondence. He would have read the letter here. It had got into his sanctuary.

Anya had ended it and his father had dismissed him. Sometime in 1988, the second summer of love. It was a litany, the letter. His failings as father and as man, all laid out, all the vitriol.
Anya said that you exist to be hated. You wish for love, but you do not deserve it, I am ashamed
to be your son, ashamed to share your name. You only have one son, now, father. One son. And look at the state of him.

Simon looked through the papers, wondering if the letter was there, still steaming in the stacks. There was no sign of it. Nothing. Simon stood and drank Bob's Scotch from the bottle. He cut out a line on the desk and then another. Above the desk was a dreadful portrait of his father's wife. Art as personalized number plate. All of this better-looking burned.

He walked along the stacks of tapes, the miles of cassettes, the neat handwriting, the chronological and thematic ordering. All this plastic to burn, tape bubbling, casing blistering, nothing left, nothing to salvage, atomizing into an acrid cloud billowing upwards. He took the kerosene and matches from his bag. He put them on the desk. He drank more Scotch and watched the light-sensitive lamps come on outside. The garden green and sculpted.

He ties off, shoots and lies down. The sounds from the cafeteria, the smells. He remembers the feeling. An ice line from neck to sternum, sitting in that annexe, a life surrounding him. He felt as executioner. He could take everything from his father. Every last thing. All that tilting at immortality, gone.

He remembers the moment of temptation. Imagining how it would actually feel to burn the place down. It had never been the plan. Just to seed the idea that he was capable of it. Just to leave the kerosene and the matches. To say: look at what I could do. But at that moment, in the annexe, the temptation. The devil on both shoulders. You will be caught, but do it anyway. You will be committing the ultimate betrayal, but do it anyway. You could run from the blaze laughing. Naked even. Yes. Naked and laughing, the annexe afire. You could run out naked and shouting, get yourself committed. You could drink more Scotch. All of his Scotch and fan the flames.

He looked at the clock. He checked his watch. He checked the clock again. He picked up the desk telephone and dialled his father's number.

‘Dad,' he said. ‘Dad, it's me.'

He could hear voices and shouting. The signal was poor and Bob sounded very far away, a small man at the bottom of a well.

‘Simon?'

‘Dad, I've done something, Dad.'

‘What? What's that?'

‘I couldn't do it, Dad.'

‘What couldn't you do? Simon, what's going on?'

Simon started to cry. Good tears, well cried. Right on
cue. The runner closed in on Bob as he talked into the mobile telephone. Bob was pacing the corridor outside the dressing room. The runner took the notebooks from the open briefcase and walked away.

‘I'm sitting here and I just couldn't, I didn't know what to do,' Simon said. He looked at his watch. Three minutes. He barely understood what he had been saying. He had been crying. He mentioned Anya. Yes. He mentioned Anya. He did not apologize. He's certain of that. He never apologized. Three minutes thirty and he hung up the phone. He drank the last of his Scotch and picked up the empty bag. He headed home with the annexe door wide, wide open.

A courier came the following day. Simon signed the chit and handed over the money in an envelope. Pick up and drop off. He took the notebooks and sat on the sofa. The untouchable books. Hidden on high shelves, dialled into wall safes, locked inside attaché cases. He liked the way they felt in his hand. The solidity of them. All the colours of ink, all the cartoons and doodles. He did not laugh. No laughter. Page after page, line after line, not one single laugh. It became a test of endurance. Two volumes to get through. He succeeded. A day or so and not a laugh.

His father's loss was on the television, in the news-
papers. The heist of the century. The headline writers loved it. Bob was distraught, he made an appeal, as if a child was missing. It was the funniest thing Simon had ever seen him do. It still makes him laugh. Ten grand for the books. A reward! Ten grand for their safe return. Not for ten million. No. Not for a billion.

He sits up in bed and takes some water; his father is standing in the corner of the room.

‘I have no regrets,' Simon says. ‘Don't think I do.'

Bob pats his forehead with a pocket square.

‘I'm not one for regrets, but I have one or two,' Bob said. ‘I mean I bitterly regret that at seventy-four I can no longer have regular sex. These days I have to walk all the way to number eighty-nine.'

Simon lies on the slender bed, laughs silently.

5

The wine's pale burn in shimmer glass; the shatter glass of breaking waves. Bob and Jaq wintering in Barbados. Their favourite restaurant. He was standing by the large barbecue grill, the smoke beneath and the char on top of steaks and shrimp. Wine in hand, talking to the chef. The chef in the chef's hat, white teeth, dark skin – so
long as they laugh, what do I care? – laughed and the boy waiters laughed with him, laughed at jokes old before their grandparents were born. The chef turned the meat and turned the shrimp and Bob was telling a joke about the Chinese. The maître d' waited for the punchline and, as the chef laughed, whispered in Bob's ear. Bob followed the maître d' to the telephone. His agent had the number, a few others. A boat horn blew, deep and baleful, a perfect summer's sound.

‘Hi, Bob.'

‘Pete?'

‘I don't quite know how to tell you this.'

‘Is everything okay?'

‘The thing is, Bob. They found them. The notebooks. Someone's come forward. I'm at the police station now.'

‘Have you seen them? Are they—?'

‘They're yours, no question.'

‘I don't believe it.'

‘There's more to it than that though, Bob. Much more to it.'

Above him the clouds, sparse, and further out, the boat-horn sound of summer. What to say? Peter was speaking. He saw Jaq at the table, alone and looking out to sea. His chair pulled out, a waiter dancing past it. He listened to Peter and told him what to do. What he thought was best, what was best for Bob.

6

He gets money, he goes to the bar, he has a beer and he scores. This day, every day. This day he checks his balance. This day his balance is not as healthy as he had hoped. It puts the hex on him for the morning and he walks rather than goes back to the small plain room. He walks and there's too much spooling in his head. Too many things seen and unseen, faces poking out from behind bushes, legs and arms familiar but tanned. He walks until the bone itch is too much and then he is so far from home he feels he needs to shoot right there, but doesn't. Manages to keep the shakes and inner shits from taking over. Back to the room.
Tak tak tak
of voices, clanks of pans.

‘Let's talk about shame,' Anya says in the bed. ‘Is there any shame possible in this world? Any true shame? Does anything matter enough to feel shame about? You've read the Romantics. To feel shame, you need that surfeit of emotion. We feel guilty, we sense regret, but
shame
? Isn't this something we have lost?'

The needle is still in his arm, wagging. Shame, yes. Redemption, yes.

In a charity-shop suit, in the lobby of the police station, hair swept back into a lank ponytail. The specific smell of civic buildings: the same plants, same disinfectant, same chairs and tables. Simon sitting waiting for DC Watt. There are posters on a noticeboard. Message: you will be caught. Message: do report this. Message: we do believe you.

‘Mr Connelly?' And so to.

He was taken into an interview room. Green walls, a blind, a tape recorder. The PC in uniform offered him coffee, which Simon declined. The suit smelled musty, but better than his own stink. He took the notebooks from the bag and put them on the table. The story. Run through.

Well, you see, I volunteer at a charity shop. You know, the Oxfam in Lambeth –
true this
– and we have deliveries all the time. People come in, yeah. They come in and they leave the stuff by the door. So I was sorting the stuff out and I came across this box of books and other stuff and I saw these two notebooks. And I was going to throw them out, because who'd want some old notebooks, and then I looked inside and I saw. And I remembered. And I remembered the reward.

The clock on the wall. White face, red sweeping second hand. Three grand by nine p.m. Eleven-thirty-six. In
the a.m. This was shame. Ah yes, Anya, this was shame. His own fault. Brought on himself. A bad weekend. A bad couple of weeks. A bad month. On tick. Good for it. Always good for it. Not good for it. No more overdraft, no more credit. Bad debts to bad people. Not supposed to happen. Not to me. Others yes. Not to me. And the voice: there is always. No. Yes. The last thing. The only thing worth owning. The only things left not in hock. They were the very last things left. Not for £10 million, no. Not for a million, but for £10,000. For 10, of which he'd see only 7.

Two men entered the room. DC Watt and Sergeant Hoggart. They sat down. They pressed record on the tape recorder. They stated their names, job titles, and time. Eleven thirty-nine.

‘Are these them?' Watt said. Simon nodded.