Boys and Girls (26 page)

‘Let me make that a little less confused, Doctor Atherby. When I say I will not be here, I mean of course in the future.'

‘Uh-huh …'

‘Indeed yes. Uh-huh. This is to be the last time I shall annoy you with all my goings-on. In this session, Doctor Atherby, during the next however long it is, we have the makings of a swansong.'

‘I see. Well, Alan. That is something of a statement. And you think this wise then, do you?'

‘Oh God yes. Smartest thing I've done in ages. Professionally speaking, you ought to be pleased. Success of sorts. My dispensing with you utterly. Flushing you away. Flicking you off the lapel of my life like a mote of grit, and into the long goodnight.'

‘Why did you say, Alan, that this would be the last time that you would
annoy
me? Do you feel that you do? Are you annoying, Alan?'

‘No more so than the next quite weak and gullible chap, I shouldn't have said. Your waiting room's full of them. Maybe you should conduct a little poll – see who's the most annoying: you might even win. But did I
really
say that …? I don't recall. That I was annoying you? Well. That could be Freudian, Doctor Atherby. Jungian. Somethingian. Because the reverse is true, of course. As I recently and rather cheekily implied. Yes yes. It's you, you see, Doctor Atherby. It's you who annoy
me
. Practically unto death.'

‘I have never seen you, Alan, so openly on the offensive. Always it is there, of course, a latent animosity, but normally your way is to cover it up with attempted humour. To what do you attribute this rather more, um – forthright hostility?'

Alan sat up and just stared at him. He had hung on his face the slap of shock.

‘
Attempted
humour?
Attempted
, Doctor Atherby? My, that was harsh. What – you mean you didn't even like my
jokes
 …? I am cut. You have wounded me. This could be the very hardest thing to bear. I mean I am aware you would never go so far as to actually
laugh
at anything, Doctor Atherby – not in your nature, probably an unforgivable breach of your hypocritical oath, ho ho – but I did always feel secure in your tacit appreciation of my wilder and more inventive sallies into the balmy realms of the intensely comic. But it seems I was wrong. Sadly deluded. All that reached your ears – aside from maybe colloquial Cantonese or possibly even the greatest hits of the Spice Girls – was no more than the occasional failed quip, feebly lobbed across to you in a touching attempt to conceal the real urge, the truth that what I was really and truly experiencing, deep down in my psyche – and horribly shallowly too – was the need to snatch from your lily-white
fingers that fucking expensive pen and ram it up your bloody arse, good and hard, while simultaneously decanting over your head and shoulders a bucket of paint, preferably fluorescent, that so many times I have ached and yearned to have concealed about my person.'

‘Uh-huh. I think, Alan, in the light of this, it is time to wind up. For good, as you say.'

‘Mm, yes – but be fair, Doctor Atherby: twenty minutes on the clock. Now either this session is gratis, on the house, your little parting gift – again, I fear, just not in your nature – or else you owe me, if not the goodness to hear me out, then at least the paid-for twenty minutes in which to bear it. The grin is optional. I mean – don't you
want
to know why finally I am breaking free of you? Why I haven't taken your stupid pills for, oh – just weeks and weeks. Months, probably. I mean even in you, there must be
some
vestige of curiosity? Yes? No?'

‘Very well then, Alan. Tell me. Clearly you need to … so if you think it will help …'

‘Don't need help. Not any more. That's the whole point. Strong now.'

‘Uh-huh. I see. And can you put a finger on the turning point …?'

‘Yes I can. Absolutely. It was the day my wife got married.'

It was, you know. And I don't have to say that it was extraordinary. I mean – dreadful in many ways, as I suppose we all of us had really to expect, given the singular (if that's the right word?) and tortured circumstances. Now look: you've been to weddings, haven't you? Seen them in films. Everything from the pomp and magnificence of Westminster Abbey to the brisk good sense of the Marylebone Registry Office – yes yes, we know them all by heart, and every
variation in between; well strike out all such visions from your mind. Big white dresses, sweet little bridesmaids, emotional mothers, a ridiculous cake and carnations buttonholed by Baco-Foil. No no. None of that. The only traditional element, I believe, were the tears. To say the event was low-key, then, would be to severely over-represent it – though the looming threat of the highest drama was never too far in the offing. The marriage, you see, had been over-hastily arranged (Susan again – 'twere well 'twere done quickly, you know what she's like) and although the intended venue was to have been a marble-floored and sun-filled atrium in a Georgian house in Richmond, surrounded by lawn and trees, it turned out instead to be a building site. Susan's fault. All would have been fine if she hadn't been so bloody impatient – but that's rather like saying, isn't it really, that a picnic might so have been perfect, had it not been for the rain and hornets: we were dealing, simply, with the nature of the beast – it all just had to be now now now.

Blackie, you see, had bought this house. Sold his old one and got this great big pile instead. First I knew of it was when he asked me to drive him out there one morning – Richmond, as I say, just outside, stupendous place really. Pretty much a wreck, though – but with most of the eighteenth-century bits that make you just faint largely present and correct, or at least restorable. It was just everything else: rot, wiring, plumbing – oh God: everything. Well anyway, the architect had briefed the project manager who had instructed the site foreman who had contracted all the subcontractors who had conveyed all relevant specifications to the suppliers and the workforce was in place. Because the plan, you see, had been for the lot of us to live in the Richmond house – God knows it's big enough for
an army – but that all the very basic work should be carried out first. Well Christ obviously: you just had to look at the place. Now immediately there were problems – well dozens, actually, but it's people problems I'm talking about now. The sticking points that appeared to be key were roughly as follows: Amanda … well, Amanda, she's a story in herself, and one I've got to get on to in the fullness of time (must be faced, can't be ducked, more's the bloody pity) … but initially Amanda's main contention was that she didn't even know where bloody Richmond
was
, all her friends and her school were round
here
and why should we all pack up and go and live in this
Richmond
place with some old
man
? Mm, well – problems, as I say, but hardly her fault. Susan weighed in then with all of her tedious and mawkish nonsense about it not being just some old
man
, is it Amanda? Hm? He's going to be Mummy's new
husband
, isn't he? And your Daddy's new
friend
 – and we're all jolly lucky that he owns such a big and beautiful house and that he's asked us all to share it … on and on. Whereupon Amanda would sullenly reiterate all of her objections, and Susan would more or less repeat to her verbatim the same old screed (as in please see above) … and so all of that filled in a fair bit of time. Oh yes – Amanda had also suddenly decided that she loved our house, our lovely old house – had always, she told and told us, always always always loved every brick and tile of the place (that she'd never before even mentioned it, well you have to let that ride). It then emerged that Susan too had evolved a great and enduring passion for the place, and did not want to see it go. For myself, a house is a house; when you've lived over a kebab shop in the iffiest part of Kentish Town, you learn to be grateful for what you can get. There was, however, my secret seaside to consider – that was
paining me, the thought of abandoning it, permitting it to be reclaimed by nature. Neither Susan nor Amanda, of course, even knew of its existence (why it remained so pure) – but one evening, Blackie and I were downstairs, quite late, everyone else in bed – he was actually staying in a hotel at this stage, but he used to pop over all the time, and very welcome too. We were building a house of cards, drinking whisky and smoking away (one of the golden evenings, really) and I sort of let it slip into the general drift of the chat, kind of thing. I think we were both of us always aware that what we really ought to have been discussing were the looming nuptials, the practical application – physical arrangements (nuts and bolts of the new machine) – but somehow we always seemed to be talking of other things entirely. And I don't think deliberately or evasively – it's just that there seem to be so many varied mutualities, you see: so many (other) things in common. Anyway: my beach – you could tell he was immediately interested, as I had known he would be (or else why would I mention it?).

‘How perfectly extraordinary, Alan – what, sand and everything, do you mean?'

‘Well naturally, Blackie. Hardly be seaside without the sand, would it old man? You just have to ask yourself. Everything else as well, of course. Up to a point. I tell you what – here's a tester … oh here, Blackie: top you up.'

‘Shouldn't, really. Go on, then. What do you mean: tester?'

‘Well listen. Association. Say anything that comes into your mind when the word “seaside” is mentioned. Go on.'

‘Seaside, hey? Anything that, ah …?'

‘Yup. Anything. Just say anything to do with the seaside. First thing that pops into your head.'

‘Yes, I see. Right, then. Fine. Jolly good.'

‘Well then? Go on.'

‘Yes well I will. Oh God – you know me, Alan. Complete blank. Absolutely nothing. Hopeless, isn't it? You say anything that pops into my mind and just look at me. Good God. Number of times I've nipped down to Brighton for a bit of a weekend, you know. Some woman or other. Going back a bit. But you'd think, wouldn't you, I could come up with
something
. I like Brighton. You like Brighton? Love it. No sand, though. That's the only problem with Brighton – no sand. Oh yes – there we are:
sand
. How's that?'

‘No, Blackie, no. We've got sand. We've done sand.'

‘Have we? Have we really? Oh well bugger me.'

‘Look – I'll start you off. All right? Seagulls …'

‘Oh yes – seagulls. Very good. Christ, Alan – you don't mean to say—?'

‘No. Just recordings of the noise they make.'

‘That's a relief. Nasty brute, your seagull. Knew a sailor once – captain or something. Said they'd have your eye out.'

‘And he did, did he? Have his eye out? Captain Hook, was it?'

‘Hey? No no. That wasn't his name. Could have been Wilkinson. Needn't have been …'

‘Knew someone else though, did he? Who'd had his eye out from a seagull?'

‘Didn't mention it, no …'

‘Mm. Think we can take it as gospel, then. Well listen, Blackie – I'll tell you. Be here all night otherwise. Deckchair, blue skies, fishing nets, sea breezes, water to paddle in …!'

‘Really?
Really
, Alan? I say. That's topping. What about, um … I don't know – ice cream?'

‘Yes! Little fridge-freezer sort of a thing. Sunlamp. Everything. Do you, um … want to see it? Blackie? It's just that … no one ever has.'

‘Half of me does.'

‘What does that mean? Half of you …?'

‘Mm. It's just the thought of those bloody stairs. You couldn't bring it down here, could you? No no, Alan – just fooling with you. Of course I'd love to see it. Course I would. What a treat. Honour. Just help me up then, would you? This may well be an easy chair in your book, but for me I can tell you – it's actually bloody
difficult
 …'

There was a moment of doubt, a shard of fear that went right through me, as I leant into turning the key in the lock – the tumblers had not quite clunked into submission when I quickly glanced over to him with I think it must have been a tremor of anxiety – hesitance, yes, and playing about my ankles the draught, chilly and unmistakable, of rawness and vulnerability. He smiled at me, you know, just as a father would: not my father, obviously, but the sort of father a man really needed, and particularly when poised and nervous upon the very thin rim of not just disclosure, but the hope of true confluence – though still with all the attendant risk of so many carefully placed and pointed blocks toppling over in ruin, and dashing the future of the solid tower that might have been, the air above just waiting. I hung back in the doorway as he tottered on in (he has a strange way of walking – think it could be down to the shoes, which always look to be somehow, I don't know, just not quite right in some way).

‘Oh I
say
, Alan. Oh I
say
. This is … oh this is just prime. Prime, this is. And how very inventive. The detail – the detail!'

Alan rushed in, and locked the door behind him. He excitedly darted about, flicking switches and minutely
repositioning the sunlounger, gently nudging just to one side a cluster of starfish, reconfiguring the fan of scallop shells in the shadow of the suntrap and idly stroking a red-and-white lifebelt.

‘You see – you see, when everything's
on
, it's really quite … and when it warms up, you know – and this heater, well it really does the business, I can assure you of that. Quite Mediterranean in no time flat. And the dimmer – you can do sunset and dawn as well as the full-on noonday dazzle. Completely adaptable. And the gulls – hear them? I won't put the breeze on because it's actually quite chilly at the moment. And there's old-fashioned organ music, if you want it. Music hall. All the old songs …' Alan petered out, and went on nodding with eagerness.