Me and Mr Booker (10 page)

‘Never,’ he said.

‘Nobody?’

‘My dog Nelson,’ he said. ‘He died.’

‘What was so special about Nelson?’

‘Nothing,’ said Mr Booker. ‘That was why I liked him. He had no expectations. Unlike my parents, who thought an education would see me rise out of the ranks of the great unwashed and reach the dizzying heights my cousin Andrew had reached, a job in a bank and a house in Putney.’

I asked him whether his parents were happy he was a university teacher and he smiled.

‘Not especially,’ he said. ‘Now they wish I’d stayed in the village and taken over the bakery from my uncle Neville when he asked.’

‘I could help you run it,’ I said. ‘I have retail experience.’

He looked at me then and told me that was the best idea I’d had all day, which for some reason gave me the feeling that there was a lot Mr Booker was never going to tell me, and that I was never going to tell him, but that it didn’t matter because it was only what happened from now on that had any real chance of making things better for anyone.

‘You’ve saved my life,’ he said.

‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ I said.

‘I’ve never said that to a single soul,’ he said.

He heaved himself up and I watched him get dressed.

‘What?’ he said.

‘It would be good if we could spend the whole night together,’ I said.

Mr Booker didn’t say anything until we were back in the car, then he turned to me and said I should just wait and be patient for a couple more weeks because he was trying to think of a plan.

‘Just let me get Mrs Booker settled in her new house,’ he said.

‘And then what?’ I said.

‘I’ll tell you when I know,’ he said.

‘That’s not a plan,’ I said.

He took my hand and kissed it and told me all he ever thought about was how to get us out of here and that I didn’t need to worry because everything was going to work out, and I said I thought so too, because if it didn’t I’d probably have to book in to the clinic where my father was and get some of whatever he was having.

‘That’s not funny,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ I said.

We drank some whisky from his flask and he drove me back down the hill. All the way to the bridge he held my hand and made me change the gears while we listened to Paul Simon
.
And that’s when I said to Mr Booker that the kind of mysteries I had been talking about before were all the things that happened to people by accident, like being in the car on this particular night for no real reason when this song was playing, and how you would remember that for the next twenty years because it’s who you were and what you were doing and thinking about at that exact moment, and that all these random moments eventually add up to a life.

‘Quite right,’ he said and asked me to find him a cigarette because he was gasping for a fag. ‘Or as me old grandma used to say, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’

My brother turned up the next day without telling anyone he was coming. Victor had been staying in a mental ward and refusing to leave for almost a month and my mother had decided it was probably better if Eddie didn’t know what had happened because there was nothing anyone could really do to help. And that was when Eddie must have finally got the message to come home. My mother was out. She was giving my father a lift back to his motel from the hospital because he’d phoned to tell her he didn’t have enough cash for a taxi.

‘How is he?’ said Eddie.

‘He’ll live,’ I said. ‘Unfortunately.’

He told me not to talk about my father like that.

‘I’ll talk how I like,’ I said.

He didn’t say anything. I handed him a cup of tea and asked him how long he was staying.

‘I’m not going back to New Guinea,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Time to move on,’ he said.

I watched him drink his tea with both hands around the cup as if they were cold. Eddie’s hands were like my father’s, square with strong fingers, and he had my father’s womanish mouth. I didn’t know what else to say to him after that because I hadn’t seen him in over a year and he had never been easy to talk to in the first place.

It was like he thought talking was a kind of wasted effort that he didn’t see the need for because it didn’t lead anywhere. The truth is I never liked it when Eddie came home. I always looked forward to it too much, so that when it happened I was inevitably disappointed. I asked him if he was hungry and he said he ate on the plane.

‘Mum’ll be pleased to see you,’ I said.

‘How do you know?’ he said. ‘She might not be.’

He said this with a kind of sneer as if he wanted to start an argument. With his cropped hair and sunburn he looked more dangerous than I remembered him and his green eyes had narrowed somehow, maybe because he had lost so much weight and turned rangy.

‘She thinks you’re punishing her,’ I said.

‘Why would I be punishing her?’ he said.

‘You tell me,’ I said.

When my mother came home and saw Eddie standing there she started to cry. She put her arms around him and held him and told him he should have said he was coming home so she could have been there to meet him.

‘It was a spur of the moment thing,’ he said. ‘I came to see Dad.’

‘He’s fine,’ said my mother. ‘I’ve just taken him back to his place.’

She sat Eddie down then and said she just wanted to look at him because it was so long since she’d had the chance. He sat opposite her and let her look.

‘Are you home for good?’ she said.

‘I doubt it,’ he said.

I drove him over to see my father because he’d never been there before and because I wanted the car after that to call in at the Bookers’ new house. Mrs Booker had phoned in the morning to say they had picked up their kitten and I should come over and see it when I had time because it was so sweet.

‘I’m calling her Baby,’ she said. ‘Because that’s what she is. She’s my substitute baby.’

‘I thought I was,’ I said.

‘Baby and you makes two,’ she said.

Mr Booker came on the phone then and said he didn’t think the new cat was very bright because it didn’t answer to its name.

‘Maybe it’s deaf,’ I said.

‘Quite possibly,’ he said. I could tell he had been drinking from his voice. ‘How long will you be?’ he said, which sounded like he was begging.

‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ I said.

It was never easy to tell what Eddie was thinking. He was so quiet in the car it was like sitting next to a corpse, except that a corpse doesn’t make a point of not saying anything. Eddie made a point of not saying anything about our mother and father splitting up. Maybe he wished it hadn’t happened. He probably thought it was a shameful thing and an embarrassment. I asked him his opinion on the way to Victor’s, as a way to break the deathly silence. I said I thought it was for the best in the long run because they were making each other so unhappy.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ was all Eddie said. And then he went back to being a corpse and I kept driving in the slow lane like we were going to a funeral.

I sat next to Eddie in my father’s room and we watched him make some coffee at the small hand basin in the corner. He still had his ear bandaged but otherwise he looked better than he had for a while because they had made him wash at the hospital and he’d had his hair cut.

‘At the insistence of my new squeeze,’ he said.

‘You gave us a fright,’ said my brother. My father had hardly looked at him since we’d arrived. It was like he didn’t remember who he was.

‘Not half the fright I gave myself,’ said my father.

Then he told me again about Aggie, so Eddie would know who she was, and about how they’d met and how he’d since had the pleasure of meeting her two children.

‘Bethany and Blaine,’ he said. ‘Real cuties.’ He turned to my brother then and grinned in a twisted kind of way. ‘If they were any older I’d introduce you.’

Eddie pretended he hadn’t heard. He stared at the photographs my father had on his wall. None of them were of us or our mother. They were snapshots of my father standing in front of planes he had flown, looking smart in his uniform.

‘Are you going to marry her?’ I said.

‘God no,’ said my father. ‘I’m not going to make that mistake twice. What do you take me for?’ He winked at my brother then and gave him a grin as if there was some kind of understanding between them. My brother just looked at him without saying anything.

‘She probably thinks you’re quite a catch,’ I said.

‘No doubt,’ said my father. ‘I’ll have to let her down slowly.’

I didn’t stay after that. I told my father I was on my way to visit friends and that I was glad he was feeling better.

‘I suppose you and your mother thought you’d got rid of me?’ he said.

‘Next time learn to shoot straight,’ I said.

I waved to Eddie and shut the door behind me. It was late morning. I heard my father laugh as I walked away down the musty corridor where there were voices behind the walls and music playing and the sound of running water where the showers and toilets were. I couldn’t get out of the place fast enough. It was just like the hospital only worse because here they were all in rooms on their own, with nobody taking care of them.

we can’t go on. we must go on.

The cat was black except for its front paws, which were white, and a little white patch on its chest. Wiry and long-limbed, it sat on the floor and stared at me out of its pretty eyes with the tip of its tail hovering like the head of a snake about to strike.

‘I don’t think she likes me,’ I said.

‘She doesn’t like anybody,’ said Mr Booker. He handed me a glass and poured some wine into it, then helped himself to some more.

‘Have another one, Mr Booker,’ he said to himself. ‘I don’t mind if I do.’

‘You all right?’ I said.

He stared at me and puckered his lips and blew me a kiss in the air, which I pretended to catch and eat.

‘Fuck me,’ he said.

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ I said.

Mrs Booker was in the new kitchen making some lunch. I went in to see if there was anything I could do to help.

‘Light me a fag,’ she said, pushing her hair off her face.

She had been drinking too. I could tell by the way her eyes wavered when she smiled at me. I took her cigarettes off the bench and lit one for her then took over stirring the spaghetti sauce, while she leaned next to me and smoked.

‘Do you like your new house?’ I said.

‘I love it,’ she said. ‘It’s my dream come true. We’ve never owned a house before.’

‘We won’t own this one for another twenty-five years,’ said Mr Booker. He was standing in the doorway watching us. ‘By which time, with any luck, we’ll all be dead.’

‘Miserable sod,’ said Mrs Booker.

‘Birth, and copulation, and death. That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks,’ said Mr Booker in his actor’s voice.

Mrs Booker told him where she had put the knives and forks and asked him to take them out to the deck.

‘Aye aye,’ he said, clicking his heels together and saluting. He paused to watch the cat slide past his legs then roll onto its side in the middle of the kitchen floor where it stretched out its whole length and tried to make a straight line on the tiles.

‘Hi Baby,’ said Mrs Booker, reaching out her painted toe to tickle the cat in the ribs, which it didn’t seem to like because it hit out with its claws bared and scratched her foot.

‘Ungrateful little bitch,’ said Mr Booker. ‘Biting the foot that feeds you.’

We sat on the timber deck at the back of the house and ate our lunch and Mrs Booker asked me if I was looking forward to going back to school.

‘I try not to think about it,’ I said.

‘Who are your friends?’ she said.

‘I don’t have any,’ I said.

It was true. Since Alice had left to go to boarding school I hadn’t made any new friends at school. There were girls I sat next to in class and ate lunch with, but there was nobody I thought I would ever want to see again once school finished.

‘What’s your favourite subject?’ said Mrs Booker. It sounded like she was interviewing me for some kind of survey, but it was just that she was drunk and trying to give the impression that she wasn’t. Mr Booker watched her, then turned and smiled at me with his eyes half-closed, trying to make me laugh.

‘French,’ I said.

‘Naturellement,’
said Mr Booker.

‘Why French?’ said Mrs Booker, ignoring him.

‘Pourquoi pas?’
I said.

Mrs Booker said she and Mr Booker had gone to France for their honeymoon for a week and come back with food poisoning.

‘Les moules,’
said Mr Booker, which for some reason made all three of us start to laugh so hard that soon Mrs Booker was crying with laughter, her mascara making little rivers down her cheeks.

Mr Booker went inside to get her some water and I followed him because I needed to go to the toilet. I asked him the way to the bathroom. He showed me and then followed me in, locked the door and fell back against it, pulling me to him and pinning me there so that I couldn’t move.