Singled Out (15 page)

She didn't get any from Laura, who was becoming angrier and angrier. What annoyed her was not just the drivel that Emily kept spouting, but the rapt way in which Tom lapped it all up. She wouldn't have minded – or she told herself she wouldn't have minded – if she thought he was genuinely in love with the girl. Love, she knew, could sanctify for a time the most appalling personal characteristics. But the way Tom responded to Emily didn't look like love. His reaction seemed a mix of deference and eagerness to please. He certainly didn't seem relaxed with her.

‘We're going to be very responsible about our relationship,' Emily suddenly announced after a merciful lull in her monologue.

‘Ah,' said Laura, who had noticed that, unbelievably, they had still only got as far as Reading. ‘Good.'

‘Yes. We're going to get to know each other very well before we actually go to bed together.'

Tom turned scarlet and Laura felt an almost uncontrollable desire to giggle. ‘Oh,' she said, ‘you sweet old-fashioned things.'

‘I'm not sure that it's very flattering,' Emily reproved gently, ‘to speak of us as “things”. We are all people, you know.'

‘Yes,' Laura agreed, ‘yes. Aren't we just?'

‘No, people go on about the younger generation having no sense of responsibility,' Emily ploughed on, ‘but I think they misjudge us. We're certainly very concerned about issues like safe sex, aren't we, Tom?'

Surely he would try to wriggle out of the stranglehold of that “we”, thought Laura. But no. Avoiding his mother's eye, he concurred with Emily's view.

‘One interesting thing Tom said to me, Laura …'

‘Mm.'

‘He said he doesn't know who his father is.'

‘No,' Laura agreed.

‘Well, don't you think you ought to tell us?'

That ‘us' nearly did make Laura lose her temper.

‘Fuck it,' said Rob with exaggerated despair. ‘I should have got bloody AIDS. That would at least have been a lifestyle statement. God knows, no one could have tried to get it harder than I did – had I known it existed, that is. And here I am dying of bloody lung cancer instead – how too, too
shame-making
.' He dropped into a Noël Coward parody for the last few words.

‘You're not dying,' said Laura gently.

‘Huh. Well, I feel like I'm dying. Honestly,' he went on, worrying away at the idea, ‘lung cancer's so
common
, isn't it? I mean, everyone gets that. Even bloody Dennis Parker managed to die of lung cancer. I think AIDS has more dignity.'

‘I'm not sure that many of the people dying of it would agree with you.'

‘Well, from the outside it has more dignity. Looks more dignified to me.' A little cough shook his frail body. ‘Not some crap disease contracted by any Tom, Dick and Harry who's capable of smoking sixty cigarettes a day. I'd mind less if I'd actually smoked myself. There's me, Mr Clean, being a good boy through all those endless studio days and meetings while everyone else was belching out smoke like Victorian Manchester … and I bloody get the disease too. Passive smoking, that's what they call it.' A thought struck him. ‘I wonder if you can get passive AIDS if you're just a voyeur …?' He looked straight at Laura. ‘Didn't Tom come with you?'

‘Yes, he's waiting outside. He's … got someone with him.'

‘Oh?' Understanding dawned. Thin hands fluttered up to clasp his face in the old parody of surprise. ‘Oh, wonderful! Oh, positively frabjous day! Calloo, callay! You mean he's got a boyfriend?'

‘No. A girlfriend.'

‘Aah.' The deep lines of his mouth dragged comically downwards. ‘Well, there's a let-down. Has this been going on for long?'

‘Pretty recent, I gather.'

‘I'm sure it'll end in tears.'

‘No, I don't think tears come into the scenario Emily has in mind.' Laura had tried to avoid saying anything judgemental about the girl, but knew from the sharp look in Rob's eye that she had failed.

‘I see,' he said. ‘Bit of a little madam, is she?'

‘Well … Let's say she seems to be the one who's running the show.'

Rob gave her a teasing interrogative grin. Laura was tempted to say more. It would be very relaxing to slip back into one of their bitching sessions. But no, that wouldn't be fair. Rob hadn't even met the girl yet, for God's sake. She mustn't prejudice him against her.

Laura reproved herself for slipping so readily into the over-protective, no-woman's-good-enough-for-my-son stereotype of a mother. Perhaps her sourness was menopausal, she wondered. Seemed strange to think of that. She had always known it would come, seen it happen to friends and, in a detached way, she was aware now of it happening to her. It wasn't worrying, just seemed strange. She had that recurrent feeling of not being grown-up enough to be as old as she was.

She ignored the prompt in Rob's eye and said primly, ‘There are a few decisions we've got to make about the studios. I think we should talk those through quickly before the others come in.'

‘Spoil-sport.' Rob lay back in his bed, unable to get comfortable. He coughed again. ‘Keep the character assassination until after I've met the little charmer, eh?'

There was no opportunity for the promised bitchery, since Laura, Tom and Emily all left the ward together. Laura reflected that this was probably just as well. Tempting though the prospect was, she must not pander to her worst instincts. And if Tom and Emily being an ‘item' – in crook-fingered quotation marks – was going to become a fact of life, then it was one that Laura must come to terms with.

Rob's first comment on being introduced to Emily had been enigmatic. ‘Your mother casts a long shadow, Tom,' he had said. In response to Laura's puzzled expression, he explained, ‘I meant that you should be flattered.'

‘Why?'

‘Because Tom's chosen a girlfriend who looks so like you.'

‘What!' Laura and Emily had spoken the word together, both equally affronted by the suggestion.

‘I don't think we look anything alike,' said Laura.

‘Nor do I,' Emily agreed hotly.

‘Oh yes, there's definitely something about the colouring,' Rob insisted.

‘No. My eyes are hazel and Emily's are blue.' Pale blue, Laura thought, very pale, very diluted blue. Almost as pale as Denise's.

‘Still something about the contrast between the dark hair and the light eyes. And the way you hold your heads. No, you look very like Laura did at your age, Emily.'

The girl's expression was dubious, not flattered by the comparison, but unwilling to be outright rude.

‘Laura was an absolute stunner then,' Rob reassured. ‘All the men on the
Newsviews
team were desperate to get inside her knickers. Not many succeeded, though, did they, Laura …?'

She recognized this as another of Rob's periodic probes about the identity of Tom's father, but didn't respond to it. In spite of considerable pressure over the years, she had never told even Rob anything about the man. Laura Fisher was the only person in the world who knew that her son's father had been a murderer.

‘Anyway, how're you feeling, Rob?' asked Tom, clumsily redirecting the conversation.

‘Oh, you know, pretty good,' the emaciated figure in the bed replied with a bland grin. ‘As good as you'd expect someone to feel when they're rotting away from the inside out.'

‘There are great advances in the treatment of cancer these days,' said Emily seriously. ‘Even lung cancer's no longer the death sentence it used to be.'

‘Oh, thank you, dear. That's very comforting.'

Rob caught Laura's eye and she had to look away. There were a few other similar moments during the visit … like when Emily announced that she had no prejudice against people whose sexual orientation was different from her own … or whenever she referred to Tom as her ‘partner'.

The first time this happened, Rob had asked ingenuously, ‘Sorry, are you a firm of solicitors?' and Laura had had to convert her chortle into a cough.

Emily seemed not to notice that she was being sent up – or if she did, the knowledge didn't faze her. Laura realized that the girl was totally impervious to irony. Tom said little, apparently quite happy to pass over all conversational initiative to his girlfriend.

When the bell for the end of visiting sounded, everyone was quite relieved. As Laura kissed Rob goodbye, smelling the staleness of decay on his breath, he said, ‘Do ring me tomorrow,
won't
you, Laura darling? I'm sure we'll have
so
much to talk about.' And, as she drew away, one of his sunken, exhausted eyes winked at her.

The prospect of her debriefing call to Rob the following day saw Laura through the interminable pontification of the journey back to Bristol.

Dear Laura,

I have thought many times about whether or not I should write to you, and will fully understand if you have no wish to make contact with me again after all this time.

As you will see from the address, I'm currently living in London. How long I will be staying here depends on a variety of factors.

To bring you up to date with my news … Two years ago, after a struggle that was very hard for me to bear, Julie died. My feelings about her are still very complex. I admired her enormously, we brought up two lovely children together, and in many ways it was a good marriage. Her death was a very draining experience for me, and perhaps I have blamed myself more than I should for betraying her with you, at first in reality, and since then many, many times in my imagination. If, as the Bible says, the guilt for adultery in the heart is as great as that for the real thing, I am still a very guilty man.

I'm sorry. Probably the last thing you want to read at the moment is the romantic maunderings of an old man in his late fifties. If so, just stop reading this letter now, throw it away, forget we ever met.

Practical details about my current life … Very soon after Julie's death I took – or was gracefully but firmly encouraged to take – early retirement from the company. I'd served my time all right and ended up as a kind of New Zealand guru of television documentaries. I could happily have filled my days giving lectures, doing workshops, talking at symposia and conferences for the rest of my life. And in the early months of my retirement I did quite a lot of that sort of thing. It was fine, but I still felt restless.

I started work on a long-term project which I've been nursing for some time, a kind of world history of broadcasting. I don't think such a book exists and I would like to leave behind something a bit less ephemeral than a television documentary. I did what research I could in Auckland, but obviously taking on such a massive subject I need to consult sources in other countries – in particular in America and England. But I kept dithering about what I should do – go for an extended trip abroad, pull up sticks completely, I didn't know. I ended up making the compromise I usually make, and did nothing. The world history of broadcasting was put on ice.

What polarized the intention to change my circumstances was Tammy remarrying. Her first marriage was a pretty total disaster – I won't bore you with the details, but sadly worries about it cast a cloud over Julie's last months. And I'm only sorry that she died before Tammy met her new man, who is everything the other wasn't. His name's Derek, they have a six-month-old baby called Katie and are deliriously happy.

But the main point is that Derek is a Brit. A cricket commentator, of all things. They met when he was over in New Zealand covering a Test series. So, although he still travels a lot, their base is now London. Since Paul and I have grown apart – again I won't go into details about all that – and since Tammy and I have remained very close through all the upheavals we've endured, there seemed a logic to my coming to London, at least to see how things worked out.

I've now been here eight months – I wanted to be in England for the birth of my first grandchild. I've been doing some quite useful research for my book in the British Library and the newspaper library at Colindale, but there hasn't been a day since I arrived when I haven't contemplated contacting you. Finally today, as you see, I have plucked up my courage and written this letter – with a kind of devil-may-care attitude that the worst you could say is ‘No' – though that apparent insouciance is not an accurate reflection of my real feelings.

I'm sorry. I'm not finding this easy to write and I know I'm getting bogged down in syntax and parentheses. Basically, all I'm saying, Laura, is that if you do want to see me again, please call me at the above number. I have no real expectations about what would happen if we did meet. I just feel that you and I once shared something which, certainly in my life, has never been matched or replaced. And it seems to me a pity that we should go to our graves without having at least seen each other again, to discover, I suppose, whether anything of what was once there remains. Though probably there won't be anything, but I'm sure we could at least still be polite to each other, if we met for lunch or something.

I'm not going to read this letter through. I know it's an incoherent mess, and if I did look back over it, I'm sure I'd just tear the thing up and throw it away.

But I hope what I'm saying is clear. I know nothing about your domestic circumstances. For all I know, you may have been married or in a permanent relationship for years. If so, I apologize and hope that this letter doesn't cause you or your partner any awkwardness or embarrassment.

But if you do want to meet, call me.

Love, Philip

It was so characteristic of him that Laura almost felt he was in the room with her. The halting style, the continual qualification of everything, the earnestness, the constant feeling of pressure to ‘do the right thing', those were the ingredients that made up the only man she had ever loved. And of course it was those same qualities – in particular his at times infuriating decency – that had kept Philip apart from her for nearly twenty-five years.