After Brock (8 page)

I was surprised at the amount of meaty things on offer, stuff my mum and I, as vegetarians, would refuse. My disgust that so many dead animals and birds had been thought necessary for all these, mostly very well-heeled, guests gave me a sudden feeling of licence to behave exactly as I wanted. I helped myself from as many bottles as I could, as well as from the jugs of Pimm's, and opened more cans of both ice-cold lager and blood-temperature beer than I care to count. I discovered a tremendous pleasurable recklessness the further into doing this I got. In addition, I snatched people's glasses or beer cans when they weren't looking. Considering the length of time I was there, you will realise that I put inside me a mighty river, if not a great lake, of alcohol. I can't say when it was I understood this myself, but I thought it a spiritual condition more than anything else.

‘Hi Em!'

As if it took her a moment to recognise me, ‘Oh hullo, Nat!'

‘Decided what you're going to do, Em, when this party comes to an end? Like all good things do.'

‘Do you know, Nat, that you've said both those sentences to me already tonight?'

I was a bit taken aback to hear this, but wasn't going to show it. ‘Worth asking twice, though, 'cos I badly want to know the answer.'

She looked heart-melting in her white dress which glinted in mesmerising places thanks to the play of the lights that I personally had put up in this particular section of the garden.

‘We're only halfway through the party, at the very most. I can't think why you're bothering at this stage about what people should be doing in a couple of hours' time (or more). And, by the way, my name is Emily. Only Rollo calls me Em and it's a sort of private joke between us.'

Rollo – I didn't like that guy at all. ‘Well, he calls
me
Matt,' I informed her, ‘and that's even less
my
name than Em is yours. Fucking arrogant of him, I think.'

‘Don't you think you should lay off the alcohol from now on?'

‘Kind of you to suggest that, but no!'

With this I swung myself away from her, to appropriate the glass of white wine that a very tall man with a distinguished beard had unwisely put down behind him, on top of the rockery.

   

‘There are some matters too sad for words, Nat, and this (I admit
defeat) is one of them. I got, on our two brief but (to me) immensely
valuable and welcome meetings, the strongest impression that, whatever the differences you've had with him, whatever the regret you
doubtless felt when he and your mother separated, you have a lively,
ongoing, essentially affectionate relationship with Peter. So please
understand and respect me when I say that I have chosen (once and
for all) not to disclose the history of those early years in which Peter
played so important a part in my life. And that, I am one hundred
per cent sure, is how Peter himself would want it, in fact how he does
want it, considering how much in the dark he seems to have kept you.

‘In other words I prefer Peter to stay up on his Heights, and not to
drag him back down into the lows we all, sadly, have to dwell in.

‘That Ilona and I could have no children (or adopt them, for that
matter) has been a great source of sadness to us both. We always have
liked the company of young people. Well, I must do, mustn't I? – my
work being what it is. If you can accept the above qualifications, I
would be so pleased if we could both see you. Ilona's health is such a
problem that it's difficult to make any forward plans. We have a
system of minders, but even so it might be best for the two of us to
meet somewhere away from Walworth Road at the end of some lesson
of mine. I shall be here, I think, for the best part of the summer, then
in September I shall go to Hungary, for my annual (at the very least)
visit and, God willing, Ilona will be well enough to accompany me,
and enjoy the landscape and music.

My good wishes to you, Nat…'

   

Music here in Tulse Hill was represented tonight by a Cajun group, reminder of a ‘fantastic' visit to Louisiana and the Bayou country that Josh's parents had made after a ‘fantastic' confer-ence at a major New Orleans hospital (where they'd been called in to pronounce as experts on improvements after the city's great flood disaster). Well, the players suited the hot, strangely still evening all right: accordion swelling and subsiding in volume like someone half crying his heart out, half just letting himself go quiet, a fiddle singing alongside him, plangent (the right word?) in its vibrations, and guitar throbbing with the kind of pent-up sexiness I could feel there in my body for Em/Emily – and probably for a number of other girls here, like the one Josh had been talking to most of the evening. Over and again the Cajun melodies swooped and sighed: ‘Allons à Lafayette'. ‘Allons danser Colinda'. ‘Jolie Blonde', streaming through all the garden's greenery and rousing many people old and young to dance, including the very white, very glinting Emily (with Rollo – of course, with Rollo). But not me, I wouldn't risk it, I'm a shit dancer. But tears came into my eyes and a lump into my throat. Sentimental, stupid. When the musicians paused, I went over to them, after having gulped another nicked glass of wine (red this time), and said: ‘Why the fuck can't you guys play music from the UK?'

The fiddler (it was to his face I'd delivered the words) said, with a surprised, indignant look; ‘Anything in mind, asshole?'

‘Something in the nature of “Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road”!' I said. And walked away towards where the beer cans were on the nearest trestle table.

   

‘There are some matters too sad for words, Nat, and this (I admit
defeat) is one of them.'

Well, maybe I won't bother with any more of the party. I'll just record the way it ended for me. No, I will just add one more thing. When Josh's step-dad and I literally bumped into each other and I nearly sent him flying, he asked: ‘Where the hell do you think you're aiming?'

And I replied: ‘At becoming a professional newshound! I'm a news-freak, you see!'

‘Certainly a freak!' he mumbled, ‘dead on the nail there!'

‘Careful who you're insulting!' I called after him, ‘I'm the son of a quiz-show star who was an astonishing, precocious storehouse of knowledge.'

He obviously heard. I waited a moment or two then crept along after him to where he met up with his wife. ‘Joanne, darling,' he said. ‘What's the name of that unappealing boy who's a friend of Josh's, who often hangs about our house? You know, the one with the grey eyes and greyish hair, and a crowded mouthful of teeth? He's just been saying pretty loony things to me…'

   

Some time after this I sat myself down (with a bump and a thud) on the grass beneath the fine horse chestnut onto whose boughs, hours back, I'd tied the strings of red and green lights now indistin-guishable from any exotic flowers that might have sprung up on this very English, very London tree. Josh came over to me and sort of knelt down beside me: ‘You're pretty tanked up, you know, Nat.'

‘I'm pretty tanked up, you know, Josh,' I said, ‘and what are you going to do about it?'

‘It's not me who's going to do anything,' said Josh, ‘if I were you, I'd take yourself to the remotest corner of the garden – keeping out of the way of any couples – and start sleeping it off. I'll see to it you're left alone.'

‘Remote corner of the garden?' I echoed, ‘that's just given me an idea. There's a nearby fox I'd like to visit. Lives under a garden shed four doors away. We saw him last week, remember?'

‘How could I forget? You're a bit of a fox yourself, Nat. Except a fox is quiet and stealthy and unobtrusive, whereas you've broken your usual party habits tonight. Badmouthing Rollo to his sister –'

‘
Your
sister.
His
stepsister.'

‘Step, then, and that's none of your fucking business, even if you do fancy her. A fox wouldn't deliberately collide with our dad and talk about freaks either.'

‘It was him who called me one!'

Josh paused, crouched a fraction closer to me, and said: ‘This is all about Dr Pringle, isn't it?'

Have I already written in this journal that Josh is perceptive as well as understanding about feelings? In hard factual terms I'd recounted very little to him of what passed between Emily's music teacher and myself in his Walworth Road flat. But I must have said enough for him to realise it'd had a strong effect on me. I quoted:

   

‘In other words I prefer Peter to stay up on his Heights, and not to
drag him back down into the lows we all, sadly, have to dwell in.'

   

‘What's that supposed to mean? Who's Peter?'

‘My dad. You and me know him as Pete.'

‘Yes, I do. And Pete would give you the same advice as I just have, Nat. To take yourself off, and hide…'

‘But I don't want to do that just yet, I want to visit my friend the fox,' I said, ‘preferably not alone. I'd like to go see him in the company of a beautiful girl just like the one standing behind you now, wondering just what a jerk you've got for a friend. But then your step-dad thinks I'm unappealing.'

‘As if!' said the girl – her name was Katey, I recalled. Josh had mentioned her to me long before tonight, which he'd spent talking to her for hours among the shrubs and even dancing with her on the lawn. She was not dark like Emily, she was fair, extremely fair, a blonde, ‘Jolie blonde', like the Cajun song the band was striking up again, the fiddler double-stopping and bow-scraping like he'd soon go mad with longing for love. Katey went on: ‘I know what a nice guy you are, Nat. But maybe you ought to sober up a teeny bit. Try getting on to your feet.'

‘Easy!' I said, doing what she had suggested, ‘in fact nothing could be easier.'

Adrenalin sped through me. Accordingly my legs felt steadier than they had for at least an hour. I seized Katey by the right hand and pulled her towards the nearest garden wall, and she, thinking it best to humour me, allowed herself to be pulled. We reached the wall's base. ‘I'm going to climb up,' I told her releasing my hold of her, ‘most direct route to Mr Fox.'

She made some genteel noise of protest, but I wasn't having any, and, surprising myself with my neat, effortless movements, leapfrogged onto the top of the wall. I half-cheered when I succeeded in my action.

‘It's great up here,' I called down, ‘why don't you join me? The two of us can run along the tops of several garden walls until we've reached his den. Hope the noise of the party hasn't driven him away, but they're pretty resilient, foxes.' Also, of course, it was late, well gone midnight, and my fox, like many another, would be out searching for food more likely than not. ‘He may not be at home, I will admit,' I went on, ‘probably round and about scavenging at this hour, but we may get a glimpse of him on his way back. Foxes are much more scavengers than hunters, you know. People get them wrong. Of course they
do
take chickens and rabbits, and personally I wish they wouldn't. But truly foxes prefer finding things to killing. They mean us well, and we should mean them well.'

‘I'm sure we should,' said Katey, ‘but I don't think you should go looking for any foxes the way you are at the moment.'

‘Leave him be,' said Josh, ‘Nat always does what he fucking wants. He's not much of a one for reasoning.'

‘No, I hate reasoning,' I agreed, and began to move away from the pair along the wall, swaying rather more than I liked, I have to confess, and some wide wobbles brought my heart into my mouth. But by fifty yards I had stabilised myself. Really the garden of the house wasn't so enormous as all their pride in their property made you think. I was out of it and onto their neighbours' wall in a remarkably short time. And, now I had left my hosts behind, I felt a new, most curious energy possess me.

I began to run along the wall, and then the wall after that. Fucking exhilarating, better than any dream, looking down from a height of more than three feet into gardens full of shrubs and brick-sided pools, and rose bushes, with bedroom lights shining down onto the darkened lawns, and a dog (or two?) barking up at me, but nobody anywhere taking a blind bit of notice of my moving presence. I might have had a Kalashnikov with me, after all. Above me London's lights met the night sky in what looked like a huge static barrage balloon and, all in all, though I knew I would pay for it all and in the near future, like now, it was the best night walk I have ever had.

But I must have taken a wrong turning, or a wall too many; I hadn't been counting. I looked around me. The garden shed underneath which the fox lived – sheds are foxes' favourite habitat – was nowhere in sight. Been dismantled? Or maybe I'd got the location slightly but significantly wrong. Four doors away, I had told Josh, but I was now looking down on an alleyway. I would have to jump down into it, and cross over if I were to make for any next garden. And the only one I could see into from my eminence, on which my stance was decidedly shaky, was an extremely tidy place, with a big shrub, brilliantly blue in flowers, like a score of little alternatives to the darker night. No shed of any sort whatever. Far too regulated a garden for even the most Londonised fox.

I turned round to see if by any chance Josh or Katey had worried about me sufficiently to have followed me out of the press of people onto my wall-walk. However long had I taken to make it to here? Five minutes? Five hours? Five years? The party was still audible, though muffled, well beyond immediate hailing. Well, even if what was coming towards me wasn't the happy couple,
some
interest had been taken in me; I was definitely being followed along the wall. Nearby house lights were showing me a moving streak of sandy hair, attached to which were two little bright living lights: a pair of eyes without doubt, advancing towards me. Katey on all fours, maybe?