The Child in Time (13 page)

Canham shifted from one foot to the other while keeping his left hand on his tie knot. He made a few steps into the room as if to re-arrange the furniture, then changed his mind and returned to the door. Finally there was a stir of muffled ‘no’s around the table. Of course there were no objections. Committee members were making small adjustments to dress, tucking in shirts, patting hair, fiddling with make-up. Colonel Tackle was putting his tweed jacket back on.

Two men in blue blazers shouldered into the room,
scanning faces with a neutral glare as they made their way to the windows. Here they took up positions with their backs to the room, scowling out at a couple of lounging off-duty chauffeurs who turned away unconcernedly and went on smoking. Thirty seconds passed before three tired men in rumpled suits came in and nodded at the committee. Immediately after them came the Prime Minister, and behind, more aides, some of whom could not find enough space and remained in the doorway. There was a stir round the table to rise which Lord Parmenter quelled with a movement of his hand. Canham was silently, earnestly offering a chair, but he was ignored. The Prime Minister preferred to stand, and took up a position just to one side of the chairman, deftly usurping him.

Directly opposite, at the far end of the table, stood the man who resembled an ape, whose gaze expressed friendly curiosity. His disposition represented to Canham a violation of protocol. He was waving and mouthing at the stranger to stand aside or sit down, but again he was ignored, and now Lord Parmenter was beginning the introductions.

Stephen had heard that there was a convention in the higher reaches of the Civil Service never to reveal, by the use of personal pronouns or other means, any opinion as to the gender of the Prime Minister. The convention undoubtedly had its origins in insult, but over many years it had passed into a mark of respect, as well as being a test of verbal dexterity and a display of good taste. It was his impression now that Lord Parmenter was following form in his impeccable welcoming remarks in which he paid tribute to the fact that the current examination of childcare practices by numerous expert committees was due entirely to the personal interest taken in these matters by their distinguished visitor to whom generations of parents and children were certain to be grateful.

He then introduced the members in turn, never faltering
for a moment in his recall of Christian and surnames, titles or background. At each name the Prime Minister inclined minimally. Stephen was the last to be introduced and had time to notice how Rachael Murray blushed when her name was spoken. Colonel Jack Tackle snapped to attention in his seat. Stephen discovered that the stranger’s name was Professor Brody from the Institute of Development, and that one member, Mrs Hermione Sleep, had been introduced before but was not remembered. The fan of tendons round the neck of Emma Carew, a cheerful, anorexic headmistress, tightened like umbrella struts when her name was remembered and spoken aloud.

Every member of the committee, however worldly-wise, was a little awed. For years, Stephen had dealt only scathing or derisive words, imputed only the most cynical intentions, and had declared on a number of occasions feelings of pure hatred. But the figure standing before him now, unlit by studio lights, unframed by a television set, was neither institution nor legend, and bore little resemblance to the caricatures of political cartoonists. Even the nose was much like any other. This was a neat, stooped, sixty-five-year-old with a collapsing face and filmy stare, a courteous rather than an authoritative presence, disconcertingly vulnerable. Stephen wanted to disguise himself. His impulse was to be civil, to be liked, to protect the Prime Minister from his critical opinions. This was the nation’s parent, after all, a repository of collective fantasy. And so when the time came for Parmenter to announce his name, he found himself bobbing and even smiling eagerly, like an attendant lord in a Shakespeare play. Because he was last to be introduced he was honoured with a question.

‘Are you the writer of children’s books?’

Speechless, he nodded.

‘The Foreign Secretary’s grandchildren are avid readers.’

He said thank you before he had time to appreciate that no compliment had been paid. The Prime Minister
addressed a few expressionless remarks to the committee, reminding it of the importance of the undertaking and to keep up the good work.

The men in blue blazers were stepping back from the windows, and the aides and two of the men in creased suits were moving towards the door which was held wide open. The committee heard coughing and shuffling in the corridors from those who had been waiting outside. The third man was edging his way round the chairs with a message for Stephen. The envoy’s breath smelled of chocolate. ‘The Prime Minister would like a word with you in the corridor, if you wouldn’t mind.’

Watched by his colleagues, Stephen followed the man out. Most of the retinue were moving away in the direction of the stairs at the far end of the corridor. Those remaining stood in a huddle several feet away, waiting. A senior-looking civil servant who was offering a document for signature received a set of instructions. He made a humming noise at each one. Finally the document was signed and he withdrew. The chocolate eater pushed Stephen forwards. There was no handshake or introductory remark.

‘I understand you are a close personal friend of Charles Darke’s.’

Stephen said, ‘That’s right.’ Because his words sounded too direct, he added, ‘I’ve known him since he was in publishing.’

They had turned and were moving along the corridor at a ruminative pace. The tread of the two bodyguards was close behind.

The next question was slow in coming. ‘And what news do you have of him?’

‘He’s moved to the country with his wife. They sold their house.’

‘Yes, yes. But has he had a breakdown, is he ill?’

Stephen resisted an urge to make himself important by
telling everything of the little he knew. ‘His wife sent me a postcard inviting me down. She said they were happy.’

‘Was it his wife who made him resign?’

They arrived at the head of the stairs and stood, flanked by the two bodyguards, looking down into the broad marbled stairwell.

For a moment he looked straight into the Prime Minister’s face. He did not know whether this conversation was important or trivial. He shook his head. ‘Charles spent a long time in public life.’

‘Quite. No one gives it up without a very good reason.’

On the way back to the committee door the tone changed. ‘I liked Charles Darke. More than most people imagined. He’s a talented man, and I had hopes for him.’ They were almost within earshot of the waiting aides and their pace slowed. ‘Personal information becomes rather bland by the time it reaches me, do you see what I mean?’

‘You want to persuade him to come back?’ But it was not in order for Stephen to ask the questions.

The Prime Minister raised a small hand on one finger of which was a plain gold ring. An aide detached himself from the group. ‘Perhaps after your visit you could let me know how you found him?’ The aide had reached into a leather document holder and was passing a small card to Stephen.

He was about to say that he could not promise much, but a signal had gone out that their interview was at an end. Another of the retinue was at the Prime Minister’s side and was opening an appointment diary as they and all the others headed back at speed towards the stairs.

Stephen found his seat amid silence. Only Lord Parmenter seemed genuinely uninterested, even mildly irritated at the interruption. He waited until Stephen was settled then suggested that Professor Brody might like to speak again.

The gaunt young man nodded and with a deft, barely conscious movement of his fingers tucked away some black
strands between his shirt buttons before clasping his hands before him and announcing that if the committee did not mind, he would take the points in the order in which they were raised.

Restrictions on water use had reduced the front gardens of suburban West London to dust. The interminable privets were crackling brown. The only flowers Stephen saw on the long walk from the tube station – the end of the line – were surreptitious geraniums on window ledges. The little squares of lawn were baked earth from which even the dried grass had flaked away. One wag had planted out a row of cacti. Stronger representations of pastoral were to be found in those gardens which had been cemented over and painted green. The little men in red coats and rolled-up sleeves who turned the windmills were motionless, sunstruck.

The street in which his parents lived ran straight and shop-less for a mile and a half, part of a single nineteen-thirties development, once despised by those who preferred Victorian terraces, and made desirable now by migrations from the inner city. They were squat, grubbily rendered houses dreaming under their hot roofs of open seas; there was a porthole by each front door, and the upper windows, cased in metal, attempted to suggest the bridge of an ocean liner. He walked slowly through the hazy silence towards number seven hundred and sixty-three. A lozenge of dog turd crumbled underfoot. He wondered, as he did each time he came, how there could be so little activity in a street where there were so many houses close together – no kids kicking a ball around or playing hopscotch on the pavement, no one stripping down a gear box, no one even leaving or entering a house.

Twenty minutes later he was sitting on a shaded patio with his father drinking a beer from the fridge and feeling
quite at home. The orderliness of cleaned, sharpened garden tools stowed in their proper place, the pink flagstones recently swept and the hard brush hanging between its rightful pegs on the wall, the garden hose neatly and tightly wound on to its drum and the proscribed garden tap with its hint of brass polish – details which had oppressed him as an adolescent now cleared the mind and left it uncluttered for more essential things. Indoors and out, there was an orderly concern for objects, their cleanliness and disposition, which he no longer took to be the exact antithesis of all that was human, creative, fertile – keywords in his furious teenage notebooks. From where they sat with their beers there was a view of similarly ordered gardens, brown lawns, creosoted fences, orange roofs and right above, against a bluish-black sky, just two arms of a pylon whose body was out of sight, straddling the unfortunate house next door.

The mind was freed to talk about the weather.

‘Son,’ his father said, reaching from his folding chair with a gasp to top up Stephen’s beer, ‘I don’t remember a hotter summer than this in seventy-four years. It’s hot. In fact, I’d say it was too hot.’

Stephen said that that was better than too wet and his father agreed.

‘I’d have this any time, whatever they’re saying about the reservoirs or what’s happened to our lawn. You can sit out. All right, in the shade if need be, but you’re sitting outside, not indoors. Those wet summers we had, when you get to our age, your Mum and I, they’re no good for anything but an ache in the bones. Give me the heat any time.’ Stephen was about to speak, but his father continued a little irritably. ‘The fact is, people are never satisfied. It’s too hot, it’s too cold, it’s too wet, it’s too dry. They’re never bloody satisfied. They don’t know what they want. No, this will do me. We never complained about weather like this in the old days, eh? On the beach there every day, beautiful water, swimming.’
And with his usual good humour restored he raised his glass and took a long pull while he tapped out with his slippered feet a triumphant rhythm.

They sat for a few minutes in homely, unawkward silence. From the kitchen where Stephen’s mother was cooking a roast came the lulling sounds of the oven door being opened and closed, a heavy spoon ladling from a saucepan. Later, at his father’s insistence, she came out to join them and drink her sherry. She removed her apron before sitting down and folded it carefully across her lap. The numerous small anxieties associated with preparing a three-course meal animated her face. She kept her head tilted towards the kitchen window, listening out for the vegetables.

The conversation about the weather resumed, this time with reference to its effect on the garden, her special love.

‘It’s such a shame,’ she said. ‘We had so much in, didn’t we. It was going to be beautiful.’

Stephen’s father was shaking his head. ‘I was just saying to Stephen. It’s better than sitting indoors all day watching it tip down and saying to yourself, maybe it will be all right tomorrow. And then it isn’t.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I like to see things grow. I don’t like to see them die.’ She finished her sherry and said, ‘How long are you two going to be?’ Stephen’s father glanced at his watch. ‘We’ll have another beer.’

‘So shall I serve up at half past?’

He nodded.

Frowning at a stab of pain as she rose from her chair, she said, ‘Good. As long as I know what I’m doing.’ She patted her son’s knee and walked quickly back indoors.

His father followed her and returned with two fresh cans of beer. The loud groan he gave after he had lowered himself into his chair was less an expression of pain than self-mockery. Supporting the cans on the arm rests, he slumped down and smiled, pretending for a moment to be worn out
by his exertions. After they had refilled their glasses, he asked Stephen about the committee and listened patiently to an account of the meetings.