Nor All Your Tears (10 page)

She opened her mouth but shut it again when I looked at her warningly. Masson, meanwhile, was doing an ace impression of a boiled lobster being inflated by an air pump, although he said nothing. I deliberately took my time finding the ice tray in the freezer, not wanting to go back out to our guest alone; Max came into the kitchen and said, ‘It's your father. He wants to talk to you.'

Part of me was asking silently,
What now?
Another part was highly delighted that I could delay returning to Masson and thus give him a little time to calm down a bit. The heavy Bakelite of the handset was, for a moment at least, a small pool of coolness in an otherwise sweltering world. ‘Dad?'

‘Is that you, Lance?'

It was my father's habit to ask questions such as this, questions that invited acidic sarcasm, that required the forbearance of a saint not to answer through painfully gritted teeth. Through long practice, I enquired of him, ‘Is everything all right?'

‘Slight hitch in the plans, that's all.'

Which could have meant anything, everything or nothing. ‘What's happened?'

‘The car's broken down, just outside Crawley.'

‘What's the problem?'

‘Have you ever been to Crawley? Dreadful place. Absolutely horrid. I remember visiting it just after the war with your mother and it was delightful little village. Now they've turned it into a giant concrete necropolis; it's got about as much soul as a prefabricated garage.'

‘Dad, what's wrong with the car?'

‘I think the water pump's gone west.'

‘Have you phoned the AA?'

‘They said they might be some time; a lot of calls because of overheating.'

‘Are you and Ada all right?'

‘Oh, yes. Don't worry about us. We've found a very agreeable pub, but that's not the point . . .' And here, I knew, was coming the crux of the issue; I knew also that, as it was my father talking, I was probably in for at the least perplexity, quite possibly embarrassment, conceivably some pain. ‘I was wondering if you were going to be in tonight.'

‘What time?' I asked this not because I was going out, but because my father would have been quite capable of turning up at one in the morning, completely oblivious of the fact that he was waking not only me but also, because of his car, most of the neighbourhood.

‘Well, that rather depends on the AA. Do you know, I'm paying them fifteen pounds a year, and for what? They don't even salute any more . . .'

‘Why don't you let us know when you're on the road again? Then you'll be able to give us a better idea of when you're likely to get here.'

‘Will Max be there?' He asked this in a tone that was difficult for me to read; Dad had mixed feelings about my girlfriend, sometimes succumbing to her charms, at other times . . .

‘Probably.'

‘Good,' he said at once, and put the phone down.

It was not unusual for me to emerge from a conversation with my father feeling slightly winded, as if I had been exposed to a weakly hallucinogenic gas, but I had a guest to take care of and could not bother about such things. Accordingly, I strove to overcome the slight dyspnoea that was sometimes an inevitable consequence of contact with my father; conversations with him could on occasion prove to be similar to being punched in the stomach.

Masson had abandoned his rather pained survey of my cooking and, now upright, was looking intently at the wilting hydrangea bush, wreathed in the grey, sinuous tendrils of cigarette smoke. The airless, still heat not only allowed them existence but seemed almost to animate them. His back was to the house and behind him Max had cleared the table. She looked at me and raised her eyebrows, to which I shrugged. I went back into the kitchen and brought out from the oven the dessert. Putting it on the table, I called to him, ‘Would you care for some pudding, Inspector?'

He turned, then spotted my creation. ‘What is that?' he asked, and sounded partly genuinely puzzled, partly wary and partly horrified.

‘It's rice pudding,' was Max's stout and rather touching defence. I could see his point, though; I had put all the ingredients in that the recipe promised would turn into rice pudding but, somehow, somewhere along the line, it had become something that looked as though it had been born in the slime pits of the Jurassic period and survived undisturbed in my oven until the present day. There was a dark brown, focally burned skin on the top that strange ripples and bubbles from the depths occasionally disturbed. It hinted at things from beyond the great abyss, as Lovecraft might have put it.

Masson continued to stare at the pudding. ‘No, thanks. I have to get going.'

He stepped on his cigarette and started forward, then paused. He resumed progress after a moment but appeared to want to keep as far away from the table as possible as he moved back into the house. As I showed him out, he said, ‘Sergeant Abelson will be in contact to take a formal statement.'

When I returned to the garden, Max had dished up the rice pudding. Even before I started to eat it, I could see that it possessed interesting properties, possibly ones previously unknown to science. It flowed slowly, but for all its torpor, it seemed to possess a curious animus, as if it were slowly disassembling itself and exploring its environment. I hesitated before plunging my spoon in, half expecting it to react badly to such an indignity. As I put it slowly in my mouth my eyes met Max's; she was watching me, her own spoonful poised at about chin level, her eyes filled with curiosity. The taste was
interesting
, being almost like rice pudding, which was good. What wasn't so good was that it had the adhesive properties of wallpaper paste, which made speech impossible for some little time, and made swallowing an exercise in suppression of the gag reflex.

By mutual agreement we soon abandoned any attempt at mastication and ingurgitation, and finished the wine instead. ‘What did your father want?'

‘The Red Hornet's broken down in Crawley.'

‘Are they all right?'

‘They're fine. All he wanted to tell me was that he doesn't like Crawley New Town. Apparently they've taken a delightful village and turned it into a blot on England's green and pleasant face.'

She smiled. ‘He's on good form, then.'

‘He's calling in when they finally get back.'

‘That's nice.'

I had to wonder about that; if I knew my father, he was up to something.

SIXTEEN

M
ourning takes many forms, and if it is not dealt with (much as if dry rot is not dealt with) it spreads without obvious movement, certainly without purpose and without outward sign. Yet this thing that does not move, does not bother, does not raise its head and does not appear to be in any way menacing, this thing will destroy as surely as acid and as completely as a fusion blast, without any of the fuss, any of the bother, just all of the devastation. Yet all of us have to deal with it; sometimes when we are young, sometimes when we are old; sometimes many times, sometimes on just one, completely overwhelming occasion. And for each of us, there is a different way of dealing with it. Nowadays there are advice lines (many different kinds), counsellors (many different kinds) and therapists (even more different kinds). In the nineteen sixties, there were only the now alien concepts of friends and family, and nothing else; if you didn't have those (and Dad and I didn't), society provided only one other resource.

Yourself.

Don't get me wrong. Dad and I loved each other, but each of us found our grief for the loss of my mother, his wife, too personal and intense to be shared by anyone. We both knew her so well, yet we knew her in entirely different ways; his memories could not be mine, nor mine his. We both had intimate remembrances, but they would always be completely personal to each of us; and we both understood that, even without saying anything about it. Perhaps it was because nothing was said – and that was because nothing needed to be said – that we drew so close without any wailing, or gnashing of teeth, or tears when we were in each other's company. We had lived through the experience, perhaps even grown through it, because learning to live with a disability (and the scar that bereavement leaves is, believe me, a disability) empowers you.

Yet it also tethers you.

Without saying a word, without ever acknowledging our bond, we had become conjoined as completely as any pair of stage Siamese twins, as irrevocably within each other's orbit as binary stars. We had a common centre of gravity around which we spun, trying to live our present lives; it was one that was an absence, as dark and as powerful as a black hole, and just as inescapable.

That night, something happened to disturb the harmony of our system, though.

Dad and Ada arrived at about eight thirty that evening, tired either from the weekend or the journey home, or both; they wasted no time in announcing their engagement.

The following morning Jane, our practice nurse, seemed oddly compassionate when I told her my news. She said, ‘Never mind,' and said it in a tone full of sympathy, which struck me as odd as I didn't think I was in need of sympathy.

‘Never mind what?'

She looked nonplussed, as if it was all obvious; it was not an unfamiliar situation to be in when Jane and I talked things over. She saw things in a different way from me; I hesitate to say that she saw them with greater clarity, or greater depth, but she certainly always brought a refreshingly insightful and novel view with her. Then she took a deep breath in and, with a slow nod of her head, sighed, ‘Oh, I see.'

‘See what?'

‘You're not bothered, then?'

‘Why should I be bothered? If the silly old fool wants to plunge into the deep end of the matrimonial pool for a second time, why is it anything to me?'

The body language of my father and Ada had been instructive and told me at once that something had changed. They sat in my living room on the sofa, perhaps a little bit closer than they ever had previously, whilst on my father's face was a slight but noticeable smirk, one that I always associated with him when he had achieved some success in one of his lunatic schemes. Little did I know how lunatic this particular scheme was, although there was the usual kerfuffle that is associated with my dad and his doings before Max and I were released from our state of naive ignorance.

‘We got a lift with the AA man. Very nice, he was,' he said, sipping some red wine. Ada nodded; she was on sherry, and I have to admit that she looked every inch a sherry woman. ‘He said how much he admired the lines of a Hillman Avenger.'

‘Beats a Maserati any day,' I agreed, although Dad didn't seem to hear the sarcasm that dripped from every syllable.

‘We had a nice time, waiting for him, didn't we, Ada?'

She nodded and finished her sherry; well, I reasoned as I refilled it, it was only a small schooner. ‘What's wrong with it? Was it the water pump as you said?'

‘Eric – that's the man from the AA – was fairly sure it was the starter motor.' He spoke as if he suspected Eric was a charlatan, clearly not up to the job. ‘Maybe it is,' he added generously. ‘Whatever it is, she's certainly fairly poorly at the moment.' He said these words sadly, as if he were talking about the family pooch that kept getting a variety of minor and annoying ailments but was really loved by all.

‘When can you get it fixed?'

‘I'll phone the garage tomorrow. Hopefully they'll be able to fit me in this week.'

Max asked, ‘How will you get to the school to look after your vegetables?'

I kind of wished she hadn't made that enquiry because it would be just like Dad to assume that I would be able to provide a free, on-demand taxi service, but I need not have fretted. ‘I shouldn't need to go over there until the end of the week. I know the children will keep up with the watering, which is the most important thing at this time of year.'

The conversation waned, a lull into which Dad jumped with both heavily shod feet. ‘Ada has kindly consented to be my lady wife,' he announced pompously, while she stared at the side of his face as an enigmatic smile played around her thin lips and I was uncomfortably reminded of the Mona Lisa, or perhaps of the way a cat will stare at a small, unknowing mouse that is trapped in a corner.

I opened my mouth, aware that I was expected to pronounce something and that it had to be something politic and at least vaguely enthusiastic. All I could find in the locker, though, was, ‘Wow.'

Max, so often my cavalry in social situations, said quickly, ‘Congratulations to you both. We had been wondering, hadn't we, Lance?'

Had we? But everyone was looking at me and I agreed effusively.

‘Have we got any champagne?' asked Max.

Well, of course we didn't, so we had to make do with a bottle of hock that I had been saving for a special occasion. We toasted the happy couple whilst I felt immersed in a sense of surreal disconnection. Max did the talking. ‘When's the happy day?'

‘We haven't decided, have we, Ada?'

Ada said, no, they hadn't. ‘We haven't yet told my son.' Her voice was thin and slightly nasal.

‘But we're not going to hang about,' he assured us.

‘Well, no,' I said without thinking. ‘You wouldn't want to . . .' There was an uncomfortable silence whilst the unintended meaning of my response hung about the room. ‘. . . I didn't mean . . .'

‘Any more wine?' asked Max.

It hadn't been the best of evenings.

And now Jane wasn't quite smiling, but then she wasn't quite
not
smiling either. I felt as I used to do when sitting in medical viva-voce examinations and I was trying to convince the learned professors that I knew what I was talking about; I nearly always failed and they nearly always had that smile on their faces when I did so. We were standing in the receptionists' area, Sheila and Jean pulling notes in preparation for evening surgery, not listening to what we were saying, honest. Jane nodded in faux agreement. ‘Absolutely. It'll be nothing to you at all.'