My Policeman (17 page)

He nods, looks at his watch. ‘Is that it, then?’

And suddenly I can’t bear for him to be in the flat. I know I won’t be able to pretend for much longer. I won’t be able to make small talk about art and schooling and the trials and tribulations of being a young police officer. I will have to touch him, and the thought of him turning away is so terrifying that before I can steady myself, I say, ‘That’s it. Same time next week?’ The words come out in a rush and I can’t look him in the eye.

‘Right,’ he says, getting to his feet, obviously a bit puzzled. ‘Right.’

As soon as I’ve said it I want to take it back, to grab him by the arm and pull him to me, but he’s heading for the sitting room, stuffing his uniform jacket into a bag and shrugging on his coat. As I show him the door he smiles and says, ‘Thanks.’ And I nod, dumbly.

SUNDAY, A DAY
I’ve always hated for its quiet respectability, seems to be the fitting time for a family visit. And so today I took the train to Godstone to see Mother. Every time I go, she is quieter. She is not, I often remind myself, alone. She has Nina, who does everything for her. Always has and always will. She has Aunt Cicely and Uncle Bertram, who visit often.

But it is – must be – three years since she’s left the house. The place is as clean, as bright, as ever, but there is a deadness, a staleness, inside those walls. Which is what, amongst other things, makes me stay away more than I ought.

It was lunchtime when I made my way up the long brick drive, past the perfectly shaped privet and along the gravel path where I once pissed up the side of the house because I knew Father had kissed our neighbour, Mrs Drewitt, at that very spot, under the high kitchen window. He’d kissed her right there and Mother knew about it but was silent, as she always was on the subject of his betrayals. Mrs Drewitt came to our house every Christmas for mince pies and Nina’s rum punch, and every Christmas my mother passed her a napkin and enquired after the health of her two appalling sons whose only interests were rugger and the stock market. It was after witnessing one of those conversations that I chose to decorate the wall of our house with an intricate pattern of my own urine.

Mother’s house is stuffed with furniture. Since the old man died, she’s been ordering it from Heal’s. It’s all modern, too – pale ash sideboards with pull-down doors, steel-legged coffee tables with smoked-glass tops, standard lamps with enormous white globes for shades. None of it blends with the house, which is pure mock-Tudor, a ghastly thirties creation, complete with leaded panes in the windows. I’ve tried to persuade Mother to move into somewhere more manageable, even (God forbid this should actually happen) a flat near me. She could easily afford Lewes Crescent, although Brunswick Terrace might be a safer distance away.

I let myself into the kitchen, where Nina had some cheese on toast under the grill and the radio on loud. Stealing up behind her, I pinched her lower arm and she jumped in the air.

‘It’s you!’

‘How are you, Nina?’

‘You gave me such a fright …’ She blinked at me a few times, catching her breath, then turned down the radio’s blare. Nina must be in her fifties herself by now. Still wears her hair in the same short bob, dyed coal black, as she did when I was a boy. Still has the same startled grey eyes and wary smile.

‘Your mother’s a bit distant today.’

‘Have you tried electro-shock therapy? I’ve heard it can do wonders.’

She laughed. ‘You always were too clever by half. Shall I do you some toast?’

‘Is that all we’re having?’

‘I didn’t know you were coming – she never said.’

‘I didn’t tell her.’

There was a pause. Nina looked at the clock. ‘Bacon and egg?’

‘Topping.’ I always revert to schoolboy phrases with Nina.

I helped myself to a banana from the fruit basket on the dresser and sat at the kitchen table to watch Nina perform her fry-up. Bacon and egg doesn’t mean just bacon and egg with Nina. It means grilled tomatoes, fried bread, possibly a devilled kidney.

‘Aren’t you going in to see her?’

‘In a bit. What did you mean, distant?’

‘You know. Not herself.’

‘Is she ill?’

Nina laid three slices of bacon ever so gently in a pan. ‘You should come more often. She misses you.’

‘I’ve been busy.’

She sliced two tomatoes in half and put them under the grill. A pause, and then she said: ‘Dr Shires says it’s nothing. Old age, that’s all.’

‘The doctor came?’

‘He says it’s nothing.’

‘When did the doctor come?’

‘Last week.’ She cracked two eggs into the pan without spilling a drop. ‘Fried bread?’

‘No thanks. Why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘She didn’t want a fuss.’

‘But I don’t understand. What’s wrong with her?’

She put the food on a plate and looked me in the eye. ‘Something happened, Patrick. The other week. We were playing Scrabble and she says to me, “Nina,” she says, “I can’t see the words.” And she’s all of a panic.’

I stared at her, unable to respond.

‘I thought maybe she’d just had a few too many glasses, the night before,’ Nina continued. ‘You know how she likes her wine. But it happened again, yesterday. The newspaper
this
time. “It’s gone all bleary,” she says. I told her the print was funny, but I don’t think she believed me.’

‘The doctor will have to come back. I’ll call him, this afternoon.’

When Nina looked at me, there were tears in her eyes. ‘That would be good. Now eat your lunch,’ she said. ‘Or it’ll get cold.’

I took Mother her cheese on toast in the conservatory. The sun had warmed the furniture and I could smell the earth of the large potted fern by the door. She was asleep in her wicker chair – her head hadn’t drooped, but it was resting at an angle I recognised. She didn’t stir, so I stood for a moment and looked out at the garden. Some roses were still hanging on and there were a few dried-out purple chrysanthemums, but the overall impression was one of bareness. We moved here when I was sixteen, so I don’t feel very attached to the place. It was Father’s way of starting again after the incident with the girl who worked at his tailor’s, whom he was careless enough to impregnate. Mother cried for a week, so by way of atonement he allowed her to move back to Surrey.

She stirred. My sigh may have disturbed her.

‘Tricky.’

‘Hello, Mother.’

I bent to kiss her hair. She caught my cheek in her hand. ‘Have you eaten?’

‘Nina says you’ve been distant.’

With a tut, she let go of my cheek. ‘Let me look at you.’

I stood in front of her, my back to the garden.

She sat up in her chair. Her skin is not as wrinkled as a sixty-five-year-old’s should be, and her green eyes are clear. Her hair, rolled up on top of her head, is still thick, although
now
it’s prison grey. She was wearing her usual ruby necklace. Her Sunday jewels. They used to come out for church, and then drinks, followed by lunch with friends and neighbours. At the time I hated all that, but just then I felt a sudden stab of nostalgia for the clink of ice in gin, the smell of roast lamb, the murmur of conversation in the sitting room. Now it’s cheese on toast with Nina.

‘You look well,’ she said. ‘Better than for a long time. Am I right?’

‘You always are.’

She ignored this. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’

I placed her lunch tray on the table before her.

‘Mother, Nina says you’ve been distant …’

She waved a hand in front of her face. ‘Tricky, dear. Do I look distant to you?’

‘No, Mother. You look quite close enough.’

‘Good. Now what’s going on in filthy old Brighton? Are you behaving yourself?’

‘Certainly not.’

She uncurled her best devilish smile. ‘Marvellous. Let’s have a drink and you can tell me all about it.’

‘Lunch first. Then I’m calling Dr Shires out to see you.’

She blinked. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I know all about these episodes you’ve been having. And I want him to come and see you.’

‘It would be a complete waste of time. He’s been already.’ Her voice was quiet. She looked away from me, out into the garden.

‘And what was his diagnosis?’

‘I’m suffering from a common disease known as old age. These things happen. And they will happen, more and more.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Tricky, darling. It’s true.’

‘If it happens again, you’re to telephone me. Immediately.’ I caught her hand. Held it fast. ‘All right?’

She gave my fingers a squeeze. ‘If you insist.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Now let’s have that drink. I can’t bear cheese on toast without a glass of claret.’

We left it at that. I spent the next couple of hours entertaining Mother with tales of my clashes with Houghton, my handling of Jackie, and even with the story of the lady on the bike, although I minimised my policeman’s role in the incident.

Mother has never mentioned my minority status to me, and I have never brought it up with her. I doubt the subject will ever be broached by either of us, but I do feel she understands my situation in some vague, subconscious way. Not once, for example, has she asked when I am going to bring a nice girl home to meet her. When I was twenty-one, I overheard her field Mrs Drewitt’s annual enquiry into my marital status with the words, ‘Tricky’s not made that way.’

Amen to that.

I ALWAYS KNOW
there’s going to be trouble when Houghton pops his gleaming pate around my door and trills, ‘Luncheon, Hazlewood? The East Street?’ The last time the two of us luncheoned he demanded I display more local watercolours. I agreed, but have managed to ignore the demand thus far.

The East Street Dining Room is very Houghton: large white plates, silver gravy boats, knocking-on-a-bit waiters with crumbling smiles and no hurry to get your food to you, everything boiled. But the wine is usually passable and they do a good pud. Gooseberry pie, treacle sponge, spotted dick, that sort of thing.

Following a long wait for any service at all, we finally finished our main courses (a rather chewy Sussex lamb chop with what I’m sure were potatoes out of a tin, dressed up with a few sprigs of parsley). Only after this did Houghton announce he’d decided to give my art-appreciation afternoons for schoolchildren the go-ahead. However, he could not, on any account, agree to the lunchtime concerts. ‘We’re in the business of the visual, not the aural,’ he pointed out, polishing off his third glass of claret.

I’d had a couple of glasses, too, so I countered: ‘Does that matter? It would be a way of encouraging the aurally inclined towards the visual.’

He nodded slowly and took a deep breath, as if this was just the sort of challenge he’d expected from the likes of me
and
he was, in fact, glad I’d responded in a way for which he was fully prepared. ‘It seems to me, Hazlewood, that your job is to ensure the continuing excellence of our collection of European art. The excellence of the collection – not some musical gimmick – is what will bring the public into the museum.’ After a pause, he added, ‘Do you mind if we skip pudding? I’m in rather a rush.’

Pudding, I wanted to say, was the only thing that would have made this experience worthwhile. But, of course, his question required no answer. He asked for the bill. Then, fiddling with his wallet, he made the following little speech: ‘You reformers always push things too far. Take a tip from me and let it rest. It’s all very well steaming in with new ideas, but you need to let a place settle around you before asking too much of it, d’you see?’

I said that I did. And I mentioned that I’d now been at the museum for almost four years, which, I thought, gave me the right to feel fairly settled.

‘That’s nothing,’ he said, waving his hand. ‘Been there twenty myself and the board still think I’m a newcomer. It takes time to allow your colleagues to get the real
measure
of you.’

Very politely, I requested he clarify this statement.

He looked at his watch. ‘I didn’t mean to bring this up now, but’ – and I understood this was actually where our lunch had been heading all along – ‘I was talking to Miss Butters the other day and she mentioned a project of yours about which I knew absolutely nothing. Which was rather odd. She said it involved portraits of ordinary townsfolk.’

Jackie. What on earth was Jackie doing in Houghton’s office?

‘Now, of course I don’t listen to the prittle-prattle of office girls – at least one tries to block it out …’

On cue, I gave a laugh.

‘… but on this occasion my ears were, as they say, pricked.’ He looked at me, his blue eyes steady and clear. ‘And so I’m asking you, Hazlewood, to please observe museum protocol. Each new project must be approved by me, and, if I think fit, by the board. Proper channels must be utilised. Otherwise, chaos reigns. Do you see?’

Didn’t you ever ignore protocol, I wanted to ask, when you were an aesthete at Cambridge? I tried to imagine Houghton in a punt on the Cam, some dark-haired mystery of a boy resting his head on his knee. Did he ever follow through? Or was it merely a flirtation with him, like leftist politics and foreign food? Something to be experimented with at the Varsity and swiftly discarded upon entrance to the real world of adult male employment.

‘Now. We’ll take a walk back, and you can tell me what this portrait thingummy is all about.’

Out in the street, I insisted that Jackie must have got the wrong end of the stick. ‘It’s just an idea at the moment. I haven’t taken any action.’

‘Well, if you have an idea, for Christ’s sake tell me and not the office girl, will you? Damned embarrassing, being wrong-footed by your Miss Butters.’

And then something quite beautiful happened. As we were crossing North Street, the Duchess of Argyle swanned past. And he
did
look like a swan. Gauzy white neckerchief. Tight-fitting cream jacket and trousers. Shoes the colour of a setting sun, with lipstick to match. My heart gave a big DUM-de, but I needn’t have feared. The Duchess didn’t throw me so much as a glance. I should’ve known the Argyle would never employ the type to scream at you in the street.