A Friend of the Family (37 page)

‘What – Gervase? He’s just been doing some deliveries for me. Stopped by for a spot of lunch.’

Tony muttered rancorously under his breath.

‘You should give Gervase a chance, you know. I know the outside of him’s a bit… off-putting. But he’s a good bloke inside – a really good bloke.’

‘Whatever,’ said Tony, ‘but I don’t like him. He gives me the creeps.’

‘Nah,’ Gerry shook his head, ‘he’s a good man. Did you know that Gervase, he’s…’ Gerry put his hands up to his forehead and waggled his fingers.

Tony stared at him, nonplussed. ‘He’s what?’

Gerry leant closer and whispered in Tony’s ear. ‘He’s psychic.’

‘Psychic?!’
spluttered Tony. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘No. Honest. He is. He can
sense
things.
Feel
things.’

‘What
things?

‘Well, for example, a couple of months back I was thinking about selling the house…’

‘The house?! Dad! You can’t sell the house!’

‘Calm down. Don’t panic. It’s all right. I changed my mind. But I didn’t tell anyone at the time – not your
mum, not a soul. It was a financial thing, really. Big house like that in London – worth a fortune now and me and your mum don’t need all that space any more, we’ll just end up filling it up with more and more crap. So I thought, sell the bugger, cash in, buy a nice flat somewhere. But ever since I first thought about it I started fretting, feeling edgy, not sleeping.

‘Then one day, I’m sitting here with Gervase, having a cup of tea, and he suddenly grabs my hands, like this, looks into my eyes and says: “You’ve got a big decision to make. It’s causing you pain. But you don’t have to make this decision, do you? No one’s putting any pressure on you except yourself.” He said, “Whatever it is, it can wait. The time’s obviously not right yet. Wait until it feels right.” And he was spot on, you know. I’d got myself tied up in all these knots over nothing. So I took his advice and dropped the idea. And I’ve been as happy as Larry ever since.’

Tony stared at his dad, trying to look cynical and disbelieving but starting to wonder about his own unique experience with Gervase. ‘Shit,’ he said, ‘don’t you think that’s a bit…
spooky?

‘Well, yeah. I mean, it freaked me out at the time, thought it was plain old
weird.
But, in retrospect, the man was just doing me a favour, you know. Like if he’d seen me struggling with a big chest of drawers or something – he was just giving me a hand.’

Gerry stopped and looked at Tony through a haze of tobacco smoke. ‘I asked him to have a word with your mum last night.’

‘Oh yeah? What about?’

‘Try and calm her down about this, er… Ness business. She’s taken it quite bad.’

‘Yeah,’ muttered Tony, ‘I know.’

‘Don’t know if he managed to talk any sense to her or not, but thought it was worth a try. He’s a canny bloke, that one. He’s got, what is it they call it?
Emotional intelligence,
you know. And she wouldn’t listen to me.’

Tony smirked to himself. He knew full well that Dad would have made only the most cursory of efforts to talk to Mum about it. Dad didn’t like getting involved in awkward situations.

‘So – how are you? You OK?’

Tony shrugged. ‘Yeah. I’m all right.’

‘Good,’ said Gerry, stubbing out his roll-up with nicotine-stained fingertips. ‘Good.’

Gervase came back then, clutching a tray with three mugs of tea and three big slabs of Victoria sandwich on it.

‘Oh, nice work,’ said Gerry, enthusiastically eyeing up the brick-sized slices of cake and rubbing his hands together.

Oh great, thought Tony, looking at the two naturally skinny men who could easily afford to eat extraneous hunks of cake between meals. He thought about Monday evening, about the euphoria he’d felt when Jan had told him he weighed under fifteen stone. He thought about the circle of proud faces and he thought about his lovely French Connection trousers and ‘Bryan’ wading through the surf in his flowery shorts.

And then he grabbed a plate of cake and ate the whole thing, barely tasting it as it went down.

‘Right,’ said Gervase a few minutes later, gulping down the last of his tea and slapping his kneecaps. ‘I’m out of here.’

Gerry looked at Gervase and then at Tony. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I, er… I need to pop out myself for a while.’

‘Oh,’ said Tony with a note of disappointment. He’d just got himself comfortable.

‘Yeah. Sorry about that. But tell you what – Gervase, you’re off to Battersea now, aren’t you?’

Yeah. Lavender Hill.’

‘You don’t mind giving Tony a lift back to Clapham do you? It’s only five minutes out of your way.’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘No. Honestly. It’ll be fine,’ said Tony. ‘I can get a cab. Honestly.’

‘What do you want to waste money on a cab for? Gervase will take you.’

Gerry threw Tony one of his ‘and that’s final’ glances.

‘OK,’ he said, compliantly, ‘whatever.’

Tony looked round Dad’s van in disgust. Old Lottery tickets, bits of packaging, sweet wrappers, lumps of grubby tissue paper, empty bottles. The upholstery was threadbare and tatty, there were wires hanging out of everything and the floor-mats were long gone, leaving just bare metal. Gervase stubbed out a cigarette in an
ashtray full of Chesterfields and roll-up stubs and then jammed it shut.

‘So, Tony,’ said Gervase, ‘you’ve been having a bit of a week, by all accounts.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘you could say that.’

‘For what it’s worth, Tone, I think you did the right thing.’

Tony threw him a surprised look.

‘Yeah – it was obvious she wasn’t making you happy. Life’s too short. There’s no point dragging things out.’

‘Exactly!’ said Tony, feeling slightly dizzy with the relief of human empathy.

‘And she’ll be fine, that Ness. Happy-go-lucky girl like that – she’ll bounce back in no time. Find someone to make her happy.’

‘I know she will. Exactly. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to everyone. She’ll be much better off without me. She was way too good for me.’

‘Oh, now, Tone. Don’t put yourself down. You’re a fine bloke. Ness just wasn’t right for you. That’s all. Maybe she was too…
uncomplicated?

‘Yeah,’ Tony pounced on Gervase’s verbalization of exactly what was wrong with Ness. ‘Yeah. That’s it. I like a bit of conflict in my life, you know, a bit of drama. I need someone to keep me on my toes, stop me from getting my own way and behaving like a spoilt brat. Ness was too
accommodating,
you know? Too easy-going.’

Gervase chuckled. ‘Well – takes all sorts, I suppose. Most men could only dream about a girl who was too accommodating.’

‘I know. But I’m different. I’ve got different needs. I’ve learnt a lot about myself in the past few weeks and one thing I’ve realized is that I’m spoilt. We all are – all three of us boys – in our own ways. It’s not Mum and Dad’s fault; they just love us so much, they never questioned our decisions or our lifestyles – as long as we were healthy and close at hand that was all that mattered to them. They never pushed us to do anything we didn’t want to do and if I’d ended up with someone like Mum – someone like
Ness –
I’d just have ended up more and more spoilt. I need someone to keep me in check, to tell me when I’m being self-indulgent, someone prepared to wear the trousers. You know?’

Gervase nodded thoughtfully and pulled a stick of gum out of a packet on the dashboard. ‘And I see you’ve knocked the unhealthy obsession on the head.’

‘What?’

‘The last time we met. You were infatuated with something or other. I told you to knock it on the head. And you have.’

Tony shook his head from side to side in amazement. ‘What
is
it with you?’ he said. ‘Where d’you get this stuff from?’

Gervase shrugged. ‘Dunno. My mum, apparently. She had a gift. She died and then I had a gift. It was like her inheritance to me. Just as well, really, ‘cause she left me fuck all else.’ He chuckled again. ‘And I tell you what – it’s come in fucking handy with you London boys.’

‘What – you mean you’ve seen stuff about my brothers?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, noncommittally, ‘there’s stuff going in their lives too. Stuff they’d rather not talk about to the family. So they talk to me. And I help them.’

‘What sort of stuff?’

Gervase grinned and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing goes any further than me. Ever. So – this obsession – what happened?’

Tony shrugged. ‘Just saw the light, I guess. Realized I wanted to be her friend, that I was getting it all confused in my head. Realized it had more to do with someone else than the woman I was interested in. I was just displacing my frustration and jealousy.’

Gervase nodded and folded his gum into his mouth. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘I’m glad. Looks like you really have learnt a lot of stuff these last few weeks.’

Tony nodded. ‘Yeah. I’ve worked out a bit more about what makes me tick. You know.’

Gervase threw him a look. ‘You’re still not happy, though, are you, Tone?’

Tony gulped and looked at his hands. ‘No,’ he said in a small voice. ‘No. I’m not.’

‘You know, Tony – maybe what you need isn’t another girl. Yeah? Maybe what you need is another
life.’

‘What – you mean dip my fingertips in acid and change my identity?’

‘No, I mean get away for a while. See a bit of the world.’

Tony smiled and shook his head. ‘That’s exactly what Ness said,’ he said, ‘but I can’t. No way. I’ve got a business to run…’

‘But have you, Tone? Have you really? Haven’t you got partners? Assistants? People you could delegate to? Or you could sell the business.’

‘
Sell it?
’

‘Yeah. Why not? Sell your shares. Become a director – a figurehead, you know? But you wouldn’t have to be there every day.’

‘Yes, but, my job – my company – it’s my
life.’

‘Exactly, Tone. Exactly. What sort of life is that, then? Eh? You’ve done the graft, now get some pleasure out of it. Seriously, Tone – that’s what I’d do if I were you. Sell up and go and have a fucking long holiday somewhere. You’ve been through a lot these past few years. You deserve it…’ Gervase nodded decisively and then hit his hand on the horn when a courier on a big crackling bike tried to cut him up at a junction.

Tony looked sideways at Gervase and tried to read his expression. He looked sincere enough, he reckoned; he looked genuine, like he had Tony’s best interests at heart. He looked like he cared. Properly. Like people don’t tend to care in this day and age.

‘Who
are
you?’ he found himself saying before he had a chance to stop himself.

‘Who – me?’ said Gervase. ‘I’m just a friend. A friend of the family – that’s all.’

He turned to Tony and winked at him and Tony smiled at him briefly before turning to stare out of the window and wonder when the hell Skeletor had turned into the only person in the whole world who really understood him.

A Very Important Appointment

Sean heard the printer fall silent at the other side of the room and pulled the last few pages of text off the rack. He added them to the small pile on his desk and flicked through them, enjoying the feeling of substance. And then he went and sat on his balcony and read through the first 150 pages of his book, trying to see it from Millie’s perspective, wondering how she would react to his musings on the condition of unwanted fatherhood, hoping she wouldn’t read too much into the chapter when the protagonist goes home with an eighteen-year-old girl, wanting her to find it enlightening and entertaining, not threatening and upsetting.

He looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. Time to leave. He slipped the pages of his book into a plastic folder, dropped it into a Salisbury’s carrier bag, threw on his jacket and then headed for the train station and his eleven-fifteen appointment to meet his unborn child.

Sean watched the nurse rubbing gel over Millie’s bare belly and looked at it in amazement. Millie’s usually ironing-board-flat stomach was all curved. She had a
bump.
Not a big bump, but a definite, discernible,
Hello Daddy bump. When the hell had that happened?

Sean gulped and smiled at Millie, who responded with a tight upturn of the furthest corners of her mouth. He looked round the room and made mental notes. For his book. Because this had to go in, obviously. He absorbed the atmosphere and the detail and the mood. He breathed in deep to record the smells and traced a fingertip across the gel on the side of Millie’s stomach to make a note of the texture.

And then he stopped for just a moment, blanked out the endless chatter of the nurse and the noises from the corridor outside and looked into himself, trying to internally verbalize the way he was feeling, sitting here in an antenatal clinic with a woman who could hardly look him in the eye, about to see the barely formed person who’d ruined his relationship and not knowing what the hell happened next.

He bandied words about in his head:

Scared.

Stupid.

Unknowledgeable.

Pathetic.

Confused.

Angry.

Excited…

That last one surprised him, but then he listened to the adrenaline in his ears, the thumping of his heart in his chest, and he knew it was true. He was excited. Impatient.
Hurry up,
he wanted to say to the nurse, switch it on, get it up there, I want to see this thing, this
thing that’s brought out the very worst in me and turned me into a person I really don’t like very much.

Let’s have a face-to-face.

A one-to-one.

Let me at ’im.

The nurse switched on a machine that emitted a high-pitched buzz and then brought out a gun-type thing which she proceeded to rub over Millie’s glossy stomach while staring at a screen. And as she moved the camera across Millie’s stomach, shapes began to appear on the monitor. Monochrome, ghostly almost. Like something from a Fritz Lang film.

The nurse started pointing at the screen, identifying shapes and body parts, and in among the inky blotches and swirls on the screen Sean could make out a kid. It really was. A proper kid. Arms, legs, fingers, toes, eyes, a mouth. Everything. Sean stared at the screen in wonder. This was so sci-fi, so unreal. It even had a face – a kind, gentle face with a hint of a smile. Its left arm was tucked up towards its face and it was… was it…?