Meeting the English (9 page)

Once the Little Men were in, panelling the parlour/dining room would be a surprisingly quick job! As would stripping the floor, and putting up some curtains in Laura Ashley Regency Stripe. Myfanwy would be happy to lend back the chaise longue she had impulsively removed at the time of the divorce, and
voilà,
there it would be, a perfect little period showcase for the house, right by the door.

Myfanwy imagined it all in place – panelling, curtains, bold shade, and chaise longue – and entered the house as it were from the front door. In one went, straight past the open door to the evocative little dining parlour, then up to the staircase – the dear shining curving period staircase, in need of just a little refreshment, a new runner perhaps, and then forward again to the delightful kitchen/diner opening on to the garden … Sold! Sold without a doubt. The grandfather clock heaved wheezy applause. The quarter hour. Myfanwy's glass needed refreshing. Shirin was running late.

‘I mean,' said Juliet, ‘for instance. Look at you sitting up there on that bench. That's a really old way to sit. Get off, and come and lie here on the grass. Go on. Dad's OK.'

So Struan did, stretching himself at full length beside Juliet, clasping his hands under his head. It was more comfortable.

‘Maybe that's why you don't have any friends, either,' continued Juliet, speculatively, ‘cos you're too old for your years.'

‘I have too got friends,' said Struan, raising his head irritably. ‘I was very well respected at my school.'

‘Respected,' said Juliet.

‘Aye,' said Struan, ‘I was. Is that funny?'

‘No,' said Juliet. ‘No, that's good probably. I mean, I've got friends but definitely absolutely no one respects me.'

‘That,' said Struan, ‘is a terrible thing to say.'

‘The thing is,' said Juliet, gazing at the strange, mucky sky, ‘I'd rather be funny? Because one of the easiest ways to make people laugh is to make fun of yourself. Like as soon as ever I got to Baker Street, the very first morning, I started going on about the F-Plan diet and farting and everything and that was it really, for that school. I was a fart joke. No respect, you see?'

‘Maybe they did respect you, and didn't notice,' said Struan, reasonably, ‘because you were so busy putting yourself down.'

‘No. You don't know that school. It's a Lady Di school. Really, really Sloane Ranger. They're all twelve foot and blonde. That's why I made the fart jokes in the first place. Because I felt like a fat Welsh dwarf. Then I became a Welsh dwarf who makes fart jokes. Brilliant.'

‘Now you're trying to make me laugh,' said Struan.

‘Yeah,' said Juliet, ‘it's compulsive.'

‘Well,' said Struan, leaning up on his elbow, ‘I don't not respect you. I appreciate how friendly you've been to me here. I think the person who makes the joke, that's quite a brave person often. Breaking the ice? There was loads of ice up at home, in Cuik, you know, and not many people to break it. I often wished I had the guts to have a wee crack.'

And Juliet was suddenly terribly pleased. She sat up.

‘Do you think,' she said, ‘do you think my dad would really want me to talk to him? Really?'

‘Aye,' said Struan, ‘of course. He's your dad.'

Which was all very well. Before he was dead, Struan had probably liked
his
dad.
His
dad had probably never chucked him out of the room for being boring, or blatantly preferred his older brother. Nevertheless, being in the presence of a genuine orphan changed things. Juliet stood up and shuffled into her father's sightline.

‘Hi, Dad,' she said. Then she worried Struan would look up and be able to see her knickers through her dress. Leaning forward like that, her bum would look huge. So she knelt down by the chair and picked up her dad's hand, flaccid as a rubber glove, and gazed into his fixed jelly eyes.

‘He's not doing anything,' she said. But Struan's eyes were shut, too.

‘I would kill,' he said, ‘I would absolutely murder, for a swim. In cold water.'

‘Oh,' said Juliet, ‘didn't you know? There's the Pond, the Heath swimming ponds, there are three of them. And the Lido, that's totally freezing.'

‘Really?' said Struan, sitting up. ‘A real pool, you can really swim in?'

And right then, with the clarity and deliberation of a dirty old man in a pub, Phillip Prys winked his bloody, bleary, brown left eye at his daughter Juliet.

8

Phillip hated the long tracking shots, the lights in the eyes, the lurching forward at the last minute. He hated the way he had to sit silent so much, and watch the rushes. Undoubtedly, they were overusing the extreme close-up, the face from the odd angle, underneath. The grainy stubble of underchin of the Scottish boy. The spot on his Adam's apple.

He had to remind himself: it was that kind of film. Art house. Phillip had written it that way. It was modern, and that was why it took you so long to realize what was going on. Phillip had scripted this one, he should know. He remembered why the boy was Scottish – it was because the film boys had said they couldn't do another Welsh Lad in black and white, and the North of England was pretty much taken too, what with Bleasdale and so forth—

But the Scottish Boy was tremendous, he thought, grainy and sensitive in the big close-ups, always bending over him for notes. He'd tried to applaud, that scene about the heat, and the dead father, and it had got stuck in his head, a long singing note like the alarm on his mother's kettle. As if Phillip were that kettle and all the words were the steam. All the words running through him mouth to arse, and leaking out the bottom. Because that kept happening. That had happened again. He hated that.

*   *   *

In Highgate, late at night, Juliet advanced into Celia's room with a futon in her arms.

‘Don't start, Seal,' she said, ‘OK? I mean, just don't start? Because I am staying the bloody night, OK? Your mum says it's OK, and I also have basically no choice. I was out on the Heath, yeah? With Struan and my dad, and my dad winked, my mum doesn't believe me, but he did, it was just when I said about the ponds, you know swimming? Well, he wanted to go the ponds, it was obvious, and I said to Struan, OK, let's go along there, we can go right now, it's just over there, yeah? And so we went, and we got a bit lost basically, and we were a bit late, and my dad kind of went to sleep and, what was really bad but not exactly his fault because he'd had a suppository, he crapped himself, and then we belted back over the Heath, and we were late for the nurse, and my mum was there, still in my dad's house, and Shirin was still there, and there were these estate agent's pictures, Mum's cottages, thrown all over the place, so obviously they were having a row, but it's no excuse really, because she went mental, like totally ballistic, she said I had to go home, go back to the Finchley Road, and she went mental at Struan as well, which is totally out of order, he is really nice and his dad is dead, Seal, did you know that? And so out we went, me and Mum, and we were going to the car and I said I've changed my mind I'm going to Celia's, and my mum said you're not, and I said actually I'm too heavy to lift, Mum, and I started walking and she tried following me and I said I'll do you for soliciting, Mum, and she was really angry but basically too embarrassed to do anything about it and here I am and I'm staying, no matter how many lovers are coming up your garden, Celia, because I need a place to stay and you used to be my friend. Are you wearing eyeliner, Seal, you shouldn't you'll muss the pillow.' Then Juliet unrolled the futon and sat on it, fatly, and started to peel off her jeans.

Celia was lying on her front. She raised herself on her long thin arms, eyes burning fashionably from her minimal face.

‘That's OK,' she said, her cheekbones glowing in the last evening light. ‘He's already been.'

*   *   *

In Hampstead, in the boiling study, Phillip Prys lay under a cotton blanket on the raised surgical bed, remembering the film.
Shallowcast.
That was the name. He had written in it '69, just after the film of
The Pit,
back when they still made decent films in black and white about kestrels and rugby and working men. He could see the pages of the script, scattered over his study floor, and smell the carbon paper and feeling of disappointment that went with them: it had all come to nothing, the whole damn thing.

But now the pages were flying back into his hands, one by one. Now they were making it, really making it, that film, and how splendid that was. Giles would be delighted. They were still at the rushes stage, and that accounted for all the bad editing and jump cuts; but it would all come out in the wash. And to think Juliet was in it too, playing the girl lead, or was it the girlfriend left behind in Scotland, anyway, the girlfriend who wanted the boy to go down the shallow-cast mine, or along it, maybe. The girl who got pregnant just to hold on to him, the boy, that was right, she was
shallow-cast,
that was part of the meaning of the title.

Because it was good to have Juliet around now, he was glad of it. He had to admit he'd never liked her much, from a baby, she was noisy and an awful bore too, so much around Myfanwy's neck and looked besides exactly like his own mother. And she cried so, a terrible thing, she cried every time he roared at her and she couldn't grasp at all that that made the whole thing worse, it practically forced him to shout at her, little wet thing, so clammy and ice-creamy and smelling of wee. But she was finding herself now, though, he could see that, she was shining in this film, in the part he had made for her. Funny how it came through, eh, the writing gift?

Jake was jealous, thought Phillip, that was the problem. That was why he only came in at night, and looked at him without smiling. When Dad favoured Juliet, when he bought her an ice-cream, Jake was jealous. That would be why Jake was angry, why he rifled the desk, looking for something. Probably, he wanted the part the Scottish Boy had, maybe his accent hadn't come up right at the auditions.

Well, Phillip would write Jake his own film, that was what. Phillip's star was rising now, that was clear. He could do whatever he wanted, the film boys would be after his used hankies after this one came out. Everyone had been so excited, out there under the lights, it was a huge event. Tomorrow, Phillip would start the new film, the film for Jake. Tomorrow, after the scene at the Ponds.

*   *   *

Upstairs, in his hot bed, Struan reflected that he should have stopped Juliet at Phillip's wink. Because up to then, everything was OK, even quite nice, and only after that was the disaster. He could have stopped it, if he'd tried, that was true enough. He did, just as Mrs Prys said, know better than to let Juliet set off across the Heath in search of the Mixed Bathing Pond. He did know she'd get lost, and that they'd get back late and miss the evening nurse, because, just as Myfanwy had said, all of that was typical of Juliet. But it was not fair to say that he knew that Mr Prys would soil himself, or go to sleep, or that he was lying or ‘sentimentalizing' when he confirmed the wink. It really was not right of Myfanwy to have said that.

Actually, Struan thought the two Mrs Prys were maybe having a wee ding-dong themselves, when they got in, something about Cricklewood, which was where the Goodies came from, as far as Struan was concerned.
Lassies' business,
his father would have said, shaking his head. After all, Struan reminded himself, he'd never known anyone divorced, and no doubt it did leave you awful angry.

But not as angry as that, surely. Struan sat up in the bed, remembering the scene: Juliet shouting, ‘Mum, he winked, right at me.' Myfanwy shouting back, ‘I have had enough of your fucking Florence Nightingale fantasies, and if Struan can't stop pandering to them, he can go back to Scotland.' On and on they went, the language was terrible, and then Myfanwy had taken Juliet off back to their flat in the Finchley Road. Struan couldn't think what good that was supposed to do. He had been intending to talk to Shirin about it, but she had appeared for only a moment in a blue shining full-length dress, and gone out the front door. ‘My opening,' she said, ‘Cork Street. I am late. Sorry.' He didn't think she was back yet. He thought he was all alone in the house with Mr Prys, and he was not at all sure, suddenly, that this was a safe or usual arrangement for a stroke patient.

Struan checked his watch: eleven o'clock at night, and him still awake in his bed. His sheet was a damp rag across his chest, and if he lifted his hand to the sagging ceiling, he could feel its heat too, steady as a radiator. He'd removed his pyjamas already, something he had never previously had occasion to do at night, and had taken the precaution of leaning Jake's guitar case against the door, under the lock, in case anyone should come in and catch him like that.

He was too hungry to sleep, that was the truth. In all the rush across the Heath, there'd been no chips. There was a can of tuna, he knew, in the larder downstairs, on the top shelf. A square gold one instead of a round steel one, but it definitely said tuna. He would just eat that, and if there was trouble, he'd replace it tomorrow. If he could find a shop. There must be a shop. He could ask Juliet where one was. He could take Phillip, even, swing the chair down air-conditioned aisles. He might enjoy it. Struan could fill a wee wire basket with pilchards, baked beans, Mother's Pride, Frosties, eggs. There were things you could do with eggs—

At that moment, the Velux window fell straight down from its frame and struck Struan across the knees with its edge, then fell forward across his stomach and lungs, taking all the air out of them. He couldn't even yell. It felt like a rugby tackle, a vicious one, in the corner of the field, away from the ref's eye: a pure insult.

It changed Struan's mind. Suddenly, he was perfectly certain he was entitled to the tuna. When he got his breath, he stowed the window behind the bed, put on the shorts from the wardrobe, and went downstairs.