Little Bits of Baby (25 page)

Twenty-Eight

Faber spent all the cash in his wallet taking a taxi to the hospital. If Peter offered him a ride home he would feel duty-bound to refuse it; he would need the punishment of the walk home. Although he had telephoned the ward several times almost without thinking, he found he had repeated its name over and over in his head on the journey so that it was now quite meaningless. There was a large crowd waiting for the lift so he threw himself up the emergency stairs.

‘I've come to see Marcus Carling,' he panted at the Briar Ward reception desk.

‘Ah, yes. If you follow the corridor,' he was told, ‘it's the last room on the right.'

He expected a ward or at least a bed, with Marcus in a net of drips and monitor wires. In their stead he found a pink, bedless room with a spider plant, a view, a kettle, Peter and a box of tea-bags.

‘Where is he?' he asked.

‘Faber.' Peter stood. ‘I'm afraid it's too late. I said not to rush on the phone.'

‘Where is he?'

‘I'll show you.'

Peter opened the door, then held another open across the corridor. Faber walked across and heard the door shut behind him.

The window faced the street and the noise of traffic from below was a surprise after the cushioned quiet elsewhere. He stopped at the foot of the bed.

I haven't laid eyes on you for eight whole years, he thought.

The man before him looked old enough to be his grandfather. Faber saw thin white hair, loose skin and liver spots; a bag of chicken bones with ostrich legs. He pulled up a chair and sat close to the corpse.

Why don't I feel anything? he wondered. This is a grand reunion.

He took one of the hands and pressed it to his lips then, clawlike, hard against his cheek. Feeling came now, sliding into the back of his throat and up behind his eyes. Faber wept briefly and without tears. The cruel wrenching at his lungs and face made his nose run. He had no handkerchief and someone had cleared the bedside table. He had to use the sheet. As he blew, the linen twitched off Marcus's shoulders and revealed an emaciated torso and a recent surgical scar like a long zip pattern branded on with a sizzling iron. Disgusted, Faber finished blowing his nose and pulled the sheet right up over Marcus's head. He stood, hesitated, then pulled back the sheet to kiss the old man once on the lips. Then he went to find Peter.

‘Cup of tea?' Peter offered. ‘It's all they've got.'

‘Thanks.'

Faber accepted the mug then sat heavily on one of the grey plastic armchairs. It sighed beneath him as it subsided.

‘How did you know to ring me?' he asked.

‘Marcus told me. At least, he left a note for me to open if no one had been to see him before the er … end. I found your name and number. It was a bit of a shock.'

‘What? Finding my name on the note?'

‘Well. That was, of course, but I was thinking more of Robin answering your phone, actually.'

‘Oh, that. You haven't talked with Andrea since this afternoon, then?'

‘Not really. She seemed a bit down after you'd gone. What had you told her?'

‘About Robin and me.'

‘Oh. That he was coming round?'

‘That he and I are lovers.'

‘Oh. Oh God,
sorry
,' Peter spluttered. ‘You must think me so stupid. I hadn't … Oh.'

‘Look,' Faber raised a hand. ‘Could we talk about that some other time? I'm not really …'

‘Oh yes. Of course. Sorry.'

Each sipped his tea.

‘Miss Birch,' said Peter suddenly.

‘Who's she?'

‘His assistant. I clean forgot to ring her.' Peter stood. ‘Back in a sec.'

Alone, Faber poured his tea into a small corner sink and rinsed out the mug. He walked to the window and stood with his forehead pressing against the cool glass.

‘God,' he whispered. ‘God, God, God.'

The bad day he had been expecting for so many months was incalculably worse than he had imagined, chiefly because he was finding it so hard to react. He was still Faber, father of Iras, painter of pictures. He was still falling in love with Robin. In the core of his being he was the happy man he had been this morning and yet, from the moment he had heard Peter on the phone saying ‘It's Marcus' he had known he was now a briefly tragic figure; one to be pitied, cosseted, given cushions and stiff drinks. It was this prospect of sympathy more than the stark vision of Marcus Carling, recently ill, now deceased, that caused the sadness which he could already feel spreading down from his surface thoughts like so much ink in water. I must talk now, he thought, now while I'm in this room. As soon as I step outside, I become a bereaved person.

He heard Peter come back in. He heard a chair subside. He turned and found himself sitting on the floor where he could relax.

‘I'm sorry I snapped just now,' he said.

‘Don't be,' said Peter. ‘I feel such a fool.'

‘I need to talk,' Faber went on. ‘Ask me things. Ask anything you like. Or don't like.'

‘How long have you known him?'

‘Just since the baptism.'

‘I meant Marcus.'

Needing to, they laughed out of all proportion.

‘Years and years,' said Faber at last. ‘I can't think of the date. Longer than I've known you and Andrea.'

‘And when did you split up?'

‘I haven't … hadn't seen him. Just now was the first time I'd seen him for ten years.'

‘And you'd been together long before then?'

Faber grinned, despite the heaviness that was seeping through him.

‘Er, Peter … I think you've crossed wires again.'

‘I don't quite see.'

‘Marcus was my father. My adoptive father. How well did
you
know him, for Chrissakes?'

‘Oh, me? I've only know him since he fell ill. I was sent to him by the hospital because … He had no visitors.'

‘Well,' Faber smiled wryly. ‘I'm glad I was instrumental in a beautiful friendship.' Peter looked hurt.

‘I have to go on. I don't care,' Faber thought.

‘He was an Old Barrowcesterian,' he told Peter. ‘A group of them clubbed together to adopt and educate a poor African from their overseas diocese and I was the “little Piccanniny”, bright enough and oh so photogenic. So I was uprooted from the family and sent to the heart of provincial England. To a fourteenth century school with its own goddamn language.' He sighed with the effort of saying so much so fast. Peter paused, digesting facts.

‘Andrea never told me,' he said, at last.

‘I never told Andrea. She's never asked and it's not the sort of thing I talk about. That's why I'm telling you now.'

‘Go on.'

‘Marcus and the others would take it in turns to have me to stay for holidays but the other two got married, and their wives disapproved or their own children made trouble so Marcus took me on completely.'

‘What about your family?'

‘Marcus became my family. We got on. I adored him. He loved educating me. He took me on wildly exciting trips. He took me to Florence, to Rome, to Venice, to Athens, to Cairo, to Madrid. Then he suggested I go on to the Slade. Great idea I thought, as I was keen on painting already and I wanted to stay at home in London with Marcus. But he never even paid my first term's bill.'

‘Why not?'

‘I left home. He tried. He … Well, he thought the time had come for him to be more to me than family and I couldn't cope.'

‘Why not?'

‘He was my fucking father, that's why not.'

‘Sorry.'

‘So we didn't meet for ten years. I got myself a scholarship and hid from him all the time I was at the Slade. He was a creature of habit so it was easy enough. I lived in bits of London he never went to, with people he wouldn't like, then, as soon as that was done, I ran away to America. Lots of painting, lots of uncomplicated sex and no “family”.'

‘Where you found Iras.'

‘Where I found Iras.'

‘You didn't need to hide, you know. He was in America all that time. He ran away too.'

‘Where in America exactly?'

‘He lived in San Francisco.'

‘Like father, like son.'

‘He went to the opera a lot.'

‘I bet that wasn't his only entertainment. Jesus! He might have started picking me up in a bar.'

‘Surely he would have recognised you.'

‘Of course he'd have fucking recognised me!' Faber snapped, incredulous. ‘I was joking, you jerk. Sorry.' He snatched some tissues and blew his nose. He continued more quietly. ‘Why am I telling you all this?'

‘You seem to want to.'

‘Sorry, Peter. Yes. I “seem to want to”.'

A nurse laughed loudly in the corridor. There was a lull. Peter stood.

‘More tea?' he asked with all the nervous deference of an aide at a grand masters' tournament.

‘No, thanks.' Faber watched him make himself another cup of tea. ‘So, tell me truthfully,' he asked him. ‘Since we're in the sort of place where we can be frank. How do you feel about Robin?'

Peter frowned then turned back to the kettle to speak.

‘Generally, you mean?'

‘Yes.'

‘Guilty.'

‘Why? What could you do?'

Peter abandoned his tea and paced.

‘I could have been around more,' he said. ‘And had more influence, not been so bloody non-committal. Confronted him, even.'

‘You think that would have stopped him going to Whelm?'

‘I think it might have stopped him being homosexual.'

The scientific term dangled in the anaesthetic air between them. Challenged, Faber spoke up after a moment's thought.

‘I had no idea you felt that way,' he said.

‘You did ask for the truth,' said Peter as though by way of apology.

An orderly opened the door abruptly, apologised and tiptoed away again.

‘I think we've sat here long enough,' Peter said.

‘Quite. There might be a queue of the newly-bereaved waiting to use the place.'

They paused at the door to Marcus's room.

‘Hang on,' said Faber.

‘Of course,' Peter agreed. ‘I'll wait for you by the lift.'

He walked on down the corridor, which was busy now with the arrival of the evening meal-trolley.

Faber opened the door. The bed was empty. Stripped. The chain of Get Well cards had been removed too.

There's tact, he mused.

The room was hot and airless. He tugged back the sliding panels of the window to let anything left of Marcus out into the night. This would be one of the rare nights when he dreamt of Africa. He stared briefly at the orange-lit view then went to join Peter at the lift.

‘I think these are yours, now,' Peter said, holding out an overnight bag gaudy with international flight labels.

‘I don't want them, whatever they are.'

‘Take them,' Peter told him, pressing the handle into Faber's hand. ‘They're Marcus's.'

Offered a lift back to Clapham, Faber refused. On Battersea Bridge he stopped to open the bag and found, amongst carefully folded clothes, a portable compact disc player, headphones and numerous discs. He moved on into the light from an off-licence window in Battersea then stopped again to read the titles. It took him a few moments to see how the machine worked, then he walked the few miles home listening to his father's favourite music.

Twenty-Nine

Andrea was pacing her study with a dog-eared paperback swinging in her hand.

‘Why swell'st thou then?' she asked in rhythm with her pacing. ‘One short sleep past we … We …' She paused to cheat then thrust the book back at her side. ‘One short sleep past we wake eternally, And death shall go … Death shall …' She stopped, glanced at the page a second then tossed the book aside and left the room.

When she came home, hot and frightened from her disastrous call on Candida, she had found that Peter was still not back from visiting Marcus. She had made a hasty, pulse-heavy supper, which was drying out now on top of the oven. She had helped herself to a couple of drinks, which she quite often did when he was not there, since it seemed unfair to drink much in his presence. She had rung Faber to tell him what she had done but there was no reply. She had tried ringing one of her older friends, a woman with whom she used to be close, but had lost courage and hung up when her husband answered. Driven by nerves, she had washed an indignant Brevity with insecticidal shampoo and conditioner. Newly bathed, Brevity was always wildly excited. While she danced from room to room, yapping and shaking dry her now absurdly fluffy pelt, her mistress went on to attack the master bedroom with hoover, dusters and lavendered beeswax. Her dressing table glowed and their shoes lay in rows of tidy pairs under either side of the cleanly sheeted bed. She wanted to change Robin's sheets too, which surely needed it by now, but his door was still firmly locked. He always locked it and rarely answered her knocking so she could never be sure if he was in or out. She left his room in peace, then came across her copy of Donne's poems and was sidetracked into carrying out Peter's rather beautiful request that she learn one. Brevity had calmed down and was now trying to make a nest in the bundle of dirty sheets Andrea had dropped on the landing.

‘Shoo!' Andrea shouted. ‘Shoo, you silly thing!'

She picked up the bundle and carried it down to the kitchen, hugging it close.

Supper had not been thrilling to start with, and now it was ruined. She shoved the saucepan under a running tap. The brownish stew mixture sizzled a second then was swamped. She dug around in the freezer, burning her fingers on the ice as she looked for something else. Peter came in at the back door.

‘Hi, darling,' she began, ‘Where have you ..?' then stopped, seeing that something was wrong. ‘What is it?'