After Brock (7 page)

‘Yes? Hullo? Who is that?' came the voice through the speaker. It didn't sound quite like the voice I'd heard at Josh's yesterday, as it was speaking in a whisper, but on the other hand it didn't
not
sound like it either.

‘It's Nat Kempsey!' Considering his reaction to my name yesterday, I couldn't rule out a strong response today. Perhaps he'd give a strange cry and faint dead away up there in his flat… But in fact his disembodied voice betrayed no surprise that it was me down there on his doorstep, which I found odd in itself.

‘Nat?' he repeated, and this time he sounded, like, pleased. ‘Well, you must come on up? I'm on the first floor.'

And seconds later the door gave a little squeaky sob, and opened for me.

The hall and stairs were as depressing as I'd expected from the house's exterior: lino and cheap drugget, and a faded brown wallpaper, torn in places, with a pattern of cream leaves.

Dr Pringle, dressed as yesterday, was on the landing outside his private front door, to greet me. In the stairwell's half light he looked younger than yesterday, but then, of course, he'd just finished playing, which must be tiring. ‘I
thought
you'd come and see me,' he said quietly (and very nicely), ‘but I hadn't, I must admit, predicted it would be first thing this morning.'

‘Sorry about that!' I said, ‘but there's no time like the present, is there?'

‘Very true!' said Dr Pringle, ‘and I wish more people acted on that principle… But – please come inside.'

After a hall with four other doors opening off it, we walked into a large sitting-room, not exactly cluttered, but as full as could be before that becomes the right word. It was plainly a practice room too. There were two music stands (well, maybe Dr Pringle did sometimes give lessons at his home). A net-curtained bay window looked out onto Walworth Road itself, the panes dusty. Otherwise the room, considering all the stuff it contained, was in good enough order. The walls were almost entirely covered by shelves holding books, CDs, vinyl records and scores, there was a shabby but comfortable-looking sofa and armchairs, a large desk stood by the window and on top of it were papers stacked in piles held down by glass paperweights, half-a-dozen framed photos and two potted yuccas.

‘I can make you some coffee if you'd like some, Nat?' said Dr Pringle, ‘and then we can talk. But we shall have to do so in a low voice. My wife is ill, you see.' He gestured to the wall. ‘She's had a bad night. I'm afraid she often does!'

My mum's mum was ill for over six months; it was horrible. I should be less scared of ill people than I am.

‘Sorry to hear it, Dr Pringle,' I said, ‘yes, coffee'd be great.'

While he was out of the room, I went over to the desk and looked at the framed pictures. Two, wording at the bottom told me, were of the Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music, Kecskemét, Hungary. One showed a long, curved, whitewashed building approached by a walled flight of steps standing by which was Dr Pringle himself, even younger than now. The other was of a corridor inside, whitewashed, cool-seeming, particularly to a Londoner on a hot day like today, its arches revealing views of greenery. The music teacher was in
this
picture too, and, as if to prove his status, was actually carrying his violin case. This was the place, the institute, the degree on his card came from, I supposed. A third photograph showed the great man himself, Zoltán Kodály (I must Google his biography!), and a very nice face he had. Obviously the face of someone who cared about children having their natural musical her-itage. Old and bearded and wise, eyes half-closed, right hand resting on the coat of a fair, charming-looking young woman. I guessed her to be, despite the immense gap in their ages, his wife, partly because, before all the rupture, my dad would sometimes put his hand on my mum's sleeve in just that contented way. Dad loved Mum at such times, I feel sure, but it's difficult to sort this stuff out.

A fourth photo showed a different woman, dark, plump-faced, sallow, in a black, high-collared coat. Though she looked many years older than him, I had no sooner turned my gaze on it than I reckoned this was the woman in the next-door room, the wife who was ‘ill, you see', and who had just had a bad night, as she often does, he was afraid. For Mr Kodály a many-years-younger wife, for Dr Pringle a many-years-older one. I surprise myself with my intuitions quite often.

The sixth photograph was of a large old church, of dark pink stone, with a square tower. Underneath it, in old-fashioned, sloping, imitation script sprawled the words ‘Priory Church, Leominster'.

Leominster, where Dad had been born, where he had spent his early years, but where he never (I'd noticed) wanted to go, even though he now lived and had a business not far away. He rarely spoke of his life there. When I'd told Josh I didn't know of any likely skeletons in the family cupboards, I wasn't being quite honest. My dad, unlike my mum, is a secretive person.

And having seen the photo I knew what my first remark to Dr Pringle should be when he returned. It was brilliant. After it everything would have to be revealed.

Coffee was certainly taking its time. I stood there by the desk looking again at each picture, and planning how the conversation might go after my opening gambit. But when eventually Dr Julian Pringle did come back into the room, with a tray holding two steaming mugs, a sugar bowl and a plateful of dark chocolate digestive biscuits, he started asking me about how many sugars I took – and, ridiculously, that threw me.

So what I came out with wasn't this piece of brilliance at all. But not all that bad. ‘You said just now you
thought
I would come round to see you today?'

‘I did, yes! And if
you
hadn't in some way got in touch with
me
, then I was going to contact Emily's parents this evening and ask for your phone number or email. But I'm very pleased it's
you
wanting to see
me
.'

I merely asked: ‘Why are you pleased?'

Dr Pringle looked away from me. Balancing his mug a little awkwardly he sat himself down in the armchair nearest the window, then gestured me to take a seat opposite him. ‘Surely you don't need to ask that, Nat? I would like to get to know you. You responded to the Bach so well, and the ideas of the Kodály method.' And he gave a quick nod in the direction of the photo of the composer with his young wife.

That can't be the real, let alone the principal, reason for him wanting to know me? I thought, somewhat put off my stride. Best for one of us at least to be more direct.

‘I think you know my dad?'

‘Know?' repeated Dr Pringle, now looking me full in the face, ‘no, I'm sorry to say I do not.'

I was shoved even further off my stride now, and this made me oddly agitated. I stirred my mug with unnecessary vigour. ‘But…' I began, then other words failing me, ‘Leominster,' I said. And this time it was my turn to nod in the direction of a photo, of the great Priory in the Herefordshire market town.

Dr Pringle was, I now saw, every bit as ill-at-ease as myself. ‘I said I don't
know
him. But I
knew
him. Of course I
knew
him – years and years ago, it all was.'

‘I was sure of it.'

‘How
is
Peter?'

Dad's always called Pete, he's quite insistent about this. He even wants
me
to call him Pete now. Well, he's better at being a mate than a parent, which is why Josh got on so well with him. So for a split second or two I didn't know who Dr Pringle was talking about. ‘He's very well,' I said lamely, then remembering how the kite business was limping along, ‘he's got worries, of course. Business ones, I don't know about any others. He and my mum separated six years back,' I added, in case he wasn't aware. Which he plainly wasn't.

‘That must have meant hard times for them both,' he said diplomatically, after a pause. ‘I heard you were born, of course, but otherwise – well – I have had no news about Peter's married or domestic life. Why should I?' Yes, why should you? I thought to myself. But again, why
shouldn't
you?

‘Are you the only one?'

I didn't follow him.

‘Only…?'

‘Peter's only child?'

I gave a laugh as well as another over-energetic stir of the coffee-mug. ‘As far as I know, yup! And I'm quite definitely my mum's only one too!'

For at least half my life I have regretted this. I've often envied Josh his brothers and sisters. Mine's been a lonely lot. I've never even had what I once pined for even more than siblings, the company of an animal in my home. Perhaps this explains my present habit of tracking of foxes in the night.

‘And Peter's business in Shropshire? A kite shop, isn't it? Apologies to you and Josh for not having heard of it. Sometimes it's hard for me to know anything much beyond my music.' This I found easy to believe. ‘And my wife and her sad condition,' he added quickly. ‘But Peter's shop – is it really called High Flyers?'

There was a strange smile, or, more accurately, shadow of a smile, playing on his face. Which made it seem youthful. Now I could imagine he'd been a small boy once.

‘Has been called that for five and a half years – since it started,' I said, a bit defensively.

‘I suppose he named it
after
the quiz show?'

That was the second time Julian Pringle had mentioned this subject, and there was something about his manner that made me uncomfortable.

‘I think that “high flyer” about describes a kite,' I said. ‘There's a well-known kite shop in Chester, which Dad is in regular touch with, called Kites Aloft. Well, the name he chose for his shop follows the same idea.'

‘But it was also the name of a highly successful radio programme in the early seventies,' said Dr Pringle.

First I'd heard of this.

‘And was my dad connected with the programme?'

‘
Connected
?' Dr Pringle looked positively aghast at my question, ‘well, of course! A star, you might say. And can you be surprised when he was such an astonishing, precocious storehouse of knowledge? But surely you know about all this?'

Surely I did not.

But, as we were both searching for what to say next, a bell sounded – a harsh sort of ring, from the other side of the book-covered wall opposite me.

‘Ilona, my wife!' said Dr Pringle, ‘I shall absolutely have to go and see to her.' Indeed he would, for again the bell came, like an urgent cry, only seconds after its first clang. ‘But this is a difficult conversation, Nat, difficult in the extreme – and for both of us. I'm a clumsy man in this sort of respect. Scribble your postal address down on the pad on my desk, and then let yourself out, would you? And I promise you that I shall write you a proper letter this very day.
Not
an email, definitely not that, for it must be a
really
private communication that nobody could spy on a screen or hack into. No, I shall send you an old-fashioned letter, even if computer written.'

And the bell rang a third time, loudly and more agitatedly.

   

I felt as though, if in the kindest, gentlest way, I'd been expelled from the Pringles', slung out of the premises by that awful pitched bell and, just when I was on the brink of knowing more, of having an evening and a night's disturbing speculations confirmed. I didn't feel like going back to an empty house – I almost regretted the lack of any exam to ‘look forward to' – so instead, with this heavy, let-down sort of feeling in my stomach, I cut across from Walworth Road towards the Old Kent Road where I knew a good place to have (another) coffee and a pastry or two.

And all at once I remembered Oliver Merchant, Uncle Oliver as he was to me being my godfather, who had a habit of singing me some song about the Old Kent Road on his rare visits during my childhood to the Camberwell house we lived in then. Uncle Oliver was fattish with a protruding tummy and a mane of white hair, and a habit of wearing fancy waistcoats (which showed the tummy to bad advantage) and quite often a spotted bow tie. Uncle Oliver had been Dad's godfather too, and the founder of Sunbeam Press itself. So this was a song, in more ways than one, from pre-history, but somehow remembering it helped banish the disappointment and sadness left me by my call on Dr Pringle.

   

Well – Josh had his mega-party last night (Saturday, but it was two hours into Sunday before I got home). I'm writing this now in my journal book on the train journey up to Shropshire, despite a horrible headache, like I've had slithers of iron rammed behind and above the eyes. Easy to understand why they talk of headaches as
‘splitting'
because my head really does feel it might break into two pieces (at least). Every now and again, like when the train lurches fast round a bend, I almost believe that's what it's going to do. Mouth and throat seem clogged with furry stuff yet extremely dry too. When that trolley comes round again, with that friendly guy not so much older than me wheeling it, I'll buy a
third
bottle of sparkling water, and hope it does more to rehy-drate me than the previous two.

Josh called it, before, during (and probably after – though didn't see him after)
his
mega-party, to celebrate the end of his (our) school years, but really it was a family event with Josh's mother trailing through house and garden in a scarlet gown with a red rose in her hair, cooing at everybody, and his step-dad in shorts strolling from group to group like a man who thinks he's at once the wisest and the sexiest thing going. I went round to Josh's early to help set things up. There was to be a barbecue, lights strung through and between the horse chestnut and the crab apple trees, and a platform for the band; also long trestle tables had to be carried out of the house and placed on the lawn (looking pretty parched after so much relentless sunshine). Rollo, naturally, put himself in charge of operations. ‘No,
not
at that angle, Matt, we should position it quite a bit further to the right. No, not that much further, airhead, that'd block access to the drinks table.'