Dying to Know You (20 page)

Now I took the jug, which I’ve always treasured and never used in case it was broken, went to the pub up the road, and brought it back full of beer for Karl.

I was halfway home when I remembered that I’d said something to Karl’s mother during his crisis about how writing helped me to survive. Maybe Mrs. W. had told him this. Maybe he wasn’t so clever after all. Maybe he was only repeating what his mother had told him I’d said.

But then I thought, So what? Which of us ever has an original thought, however clever we are? I haven’t. Everything I say that’s worth saying I’ve come across somewhere else—have heard it or read it. Why should I think any the less of Karl for doing the same? At least he’d remembered and said it on an appropriate occasion. That’s clever enough. Or maybe, maybe after all, he hadn’t been told it by his mother and really had thought it for himself.

I served Karl some of the beer, gratified by his pleasure at what I’d done. And while he finished cooking, I excused
myself—extending the break and the silence—went to my workroom and fiddled with some papers, shelved a few stray books, returning to the kitchen when Karl shouted up the stairs that our meal was ready.

By unspoken mutual agreement we said no more then about art or his plans.

I was tempted to ask him about Fiorella. I was dying to know why he had treated her the way she described and to hear his side of the story. I hoped he might bring it up. But he didn’t and I couldn’t find a way of mentioning her without him wondering why and it being obvious she had been in touch.

So the evening ended with questions secluded in the air.

THAT NIGHT, BEFORE SHUTTING DOWN THE COMPUTER ON THE
way to bed, I checked my emails.

Another from Fiorella:

Did you receive my email this afternoon? In case you didn’t, here it is again.

On the spur of the moment and without giving it a second thought, I clicked Reply and wrote:

Think artefact.

If she was as keen a reader of my books as she said she was, she wouldn’t have much trouble working out what I meant.

FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS I HEARD NOTHING FROM KARL.

Mrs. W. phoned every two or three days to ask after me, and keep me up to date. Karl was plumbing full-time now, eating “like there was no tomorrow,” sleeping “like a baby.” A complete change from the bad times. He spent his evenings in his workshop. He said nothing about what he was doing. On Sundays he went fishing. But he wasn’t seeing friends or anyone and she was worried in case he became reclusive and too self-absorbed. As someone who prefers to be on my own I had nothing to offer by way of advice or sympathy.

Fiorella hadn’t shown up again. Karl hadn’t mentioned her. But that didn’t mean they hadn’t been in touch by what Mrs. W. called “virtual chat.”

Late in the morning of the fourth Sunday after our fish
supper, Karl phoned. Could he come over and show me something?

He arrived on his bike at two. He had his backpack. When he came inside, he took out a cardboard box, which he set down on the kitchen table and out of which he took what I knew at once was the model of the sculpture for my front garden.

Attached to the base was a little paper plaque on which was written “Fishing for Words.”

I could see what he intended. Wires that would be metal rods rose up from various irregular points round the circular base. The wires were shaped like lines cast from fishing rods, curving up into the air at irregular heights, some caught in mid-flight and some turning down into the base. By their overlapping they formed a kind of net. Inside the base was a bowl, which, as I looked, Karl filled with water. Then I saw how the ends of some of the lines dipped into the water.

“It’s only to give you an idea,” Karl said. “I’ll make the lines of different metals, like black rods and stainless steel and copper so they catch the light differently. That’ll give it some colour. And I’m going to cut letters out of a sheet of metal, and I’ll burnish them to give them different tones as well, and scatter them in the bottom of the pool. And you see? The pool will be a birdbath. I thought of including a fountain coming up from the middle that would burst over the top of the lines so that there was a spray of lines of water as well, and that would make everything
shine wet in the sunlight. I could plumb in the water supply.”

I said, “It’s brilliant!” And I meant it.

The model was only a hint. But I could imagine the finished thing and was touched and excited by the way he’d combined his love of fishing with my love of words, and the idea of writing being like fishing, and how he’d given the sculpture a practical use that included natural life. In a way, the thing was like a birdcage without being a cage. He’d planned the way the lines crossed and crisscrossed to leave plenty of spaces for smaller birds to get in and out without feeling trapped.

I said, “A lot will depend how big the real one is, and the proportions, don’t you think?”

“I wondered if we could work out how big it should be?”

We talked this over and ended up in the front garden with a couple of kitchen chairs, arranging them on top of each other and on their sides and upside down and all such combinations, measuring the results with a tape measure, trying to work out the best dimensions. Finally, we got some sticks of bamboo I used for runner beans and did what we could to mock up a grid the height and footprint we thought would be about right for the sculpture.

We were at it for over an hour. But at last felt we had cracked it. We’d agreed the precise spot on the lawn, the height and diameter, the area and depth of the birdbath and how to construct it. And came back inside after clearing
up, feeling cold from the chill of the winter evening but sparkling with excitement.

In all our times together so far, this was the first time I felt we were enjoying ourselves, without strain or any sense of difference of age or of deference, concession or inequality. It was, I thought afterwards, the first time we had met as ourselves, untrammelled, unguarded and in tune.

I was glad Karl set off for home as soon as we finished planning. To have gone on would have risked blemish.

THE IDEA FOR THE PARTY WAS MRS. WILLIAMSON’S. SHE SAID
it was to celebrate the installation of Karl’s first sculpture. I’m sure she meant it, but I’m also sure she used it as an excuse to bring together with Karl some of the friends he’d neglected since the onset of his crisis six months ago.

His pals from the rugby club came, and his boss from work, Mr. Cooksley, and, I was surprised to find, Fiorella, who brought her friend Becky, no doubt for moral support, though it crossed my mind that the typical combination of pretty (Fiorella) and plain (Becky) was meant to work to Fiorella’s advantage.

When Mrs. W. first mooted it, I wasn’t keen. My energy sank to zero at the prospect of the preparations as well as the party itself. But in order to please her, I agreed, assuming that Karl in his present mood wouldn’t. When she told me he had, I swore to myself and asked how she’d
done it. To which I received an enigmatic “mothers have their ways.”

I didn’t find out till the day of the party what her mother’s way was. A midday event so that there’d be enough daylight for inspection of the installation before the winter evening set in. Mrs. W. was titivating the food and drink in the kitchen. I was hovering with Karl in the sitting room. Karl was upset because he hadn’t had time to fix the sculpture permanently. The rods were still loose, supporting each other just enough to keep them in place. (“And hope to heaven there isn’t a strong puff of wind or the whole shebang will collapse,” Karl said.) He planned to come back the next day to fix it permanently.

To add to the stress and strain, we were both suffering those awkward moments before a party when everything is ready and you’re waiting for the guests to arrive, wondering if any will turn up and how you’ll get through it, when Karl said, “Why did you let her do this?”

“Me?” I said. “It’s not my fault! Why did you?”

“I thought you’d say no.”

“And I thought you would.”

“What? You said yes because you thought I’d say no?”

“And you said yes because you thought I’d say no?”

Pause for computation of one and one.

“When did she ask you?” Karl said.

I told him.

“That was before she asked me.”

“And she didn’t tell you I’d said yes?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“And if she had?”

“I’d have said no way!”

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!”

Karl grinned at me. “You still haven’t cottoned on to my mother, have you?”

“What d’you mean?”

“You think she’s as nice as pie, straight as a die, and wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”

“Do I?”

“But it’s a front. My dad used to say she was more canny than a con man and trickier than a conjuror. As innocent as a dove, he said, and as cunning as a serpent.”

“Are you saying she’s unscrupulous?”

“Wouldn’t go as far as that. She’s clever at getting what she wants. But she does have her limits.”

“Does she?”

“She knows how to twist you round her little finger, that’s for sure. Plays the fading flower and you fall for it.”

“Me naïve? I’m shocked!”

“You fall for it because you want to. I can tell by the way you look at her.”

“So this is a day for telling truths.”

“She’s just as bad about you. I’d go for it, if I was you.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous.”

“I wouldn’t mind, if that’s what’s holding you back.”

“Nothing is holding me back. But even if you’re right,
which you’re not, think of your mother’s age and mine. She could be my daughter.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“More than you can yet know, young man.”

“Yes, Granddad.”

Luckily at that moment the first guests arrived. A scrummage of Karl’s rugger pals.

So we had a party.

To adapt a well-known quotation: All happy parties are the same, each unhappy party is unhappy in its own way.

At the time, this seemed to me to be a happy party. As I am not making things up and it is not a novel but an account of events in real life, all I can say is that during the party everyone seemed to me to behave well, so far as behaving well at parties goes. Karl’s sculpture was admired, though not without some teasing by his rugger pals, and the guests departed without over-staying their welcome and before the food and drink ran out.

That said, there was one incident that might have marred the proceedings. We were all out in the garden viewing the sculpture. Mrs. W. insisted, much to Karl’s discomfit, that we “raise a glass to Karl’s work.” We did as instructed. At that moment a gang of young men were sloping by on the road, tins of beer in their hands, and well oiled with booze. I recognised them at once: the same four who sat next to us in the pub and riled Karl the night of the fracas. They
saw us, stopped, jeered, blew raspberries, and indicated by various gestures what we should do with ourselves.

Karl bridled at this. As did his rugger pals. War would undoubtedly have been declared were it not for the intervention of Karl’s boss, Mr. Cooksley, who announced in the stentorian tones of a sergeant major on the parade ground, which outclassed the baying of the yobs by a good margin of decibels, “Steady, the Buffs!”
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