The Memory Artists (40 page)

It was unrecognisable. An unfamiliar van sat in the driveway; the garden had grown wild; drainpipes and gutters were clogged. Inside, dust accumulated, dishes were unwashed, odours unchecked. Mrs. Pettybone no longer rushed about, no longer wore a jogging suit, no longer rose at dawn. The gong was gone. During the day she could be found lounging on a daybed, reading or singing or raving about Ganymede or Maxwell Montes or the Bay of Rainbows; at night she mysteriously disappeared, climbing up the creaking back stairway, sitting atop the unmotivated steps for hours.

To all appearances, Mrs. Pettybone was finally over the edge, finally bereft of her scant remaining faculties. Or perhaps, thought the neighbours, she’d given up the war on germs because her daughter had died. But the neighbours were wrong: about the war and about Teresa too.

While Norval was away in London, on a day when Mrs. Pettybone did her errands in town, Galahad Santlal arrived at her house for the first time in twenty-two years—with putty knife, lead hammer, glass pliers, glazing sprigs, beam compass, glass cutter. With Teresa supervising from below, Gally climbed the unmotivated steps, cut a round hole in the ceiling and installed a pivoting skylight. As well as a chair, a tripod supporting Norval’s gift, and a shelf for two books on the galaxies, from his own collection. He then waited for Mrs. Pettybone’s return.

Minutes ticked by as Noel fidgeted and Norval drank. “OK, so don’t tell me the story,” said Noel. “Whatever happened, I’m sure you behaved like a bastard—an unromantic, unsentimental, unthoughtful bastard.”

Norval’s head was bowed, uncharacteristically. He was on to his fourth double Irish. “Dead on.”

“Were you in love with Terry? Did she leave you? Is that why you were in love with her? Because nobody else has ever dumped you, ever broken your heart?”

Norval swirled the dregs of his Connemara. “I am not my father. I decamped,
point final
. I thought about what I was doing, then boarded the first plane to Canada.”

“But why? I mean if you—”

“I was at an age—not that I’ve outgrown it—when I couldn’t deal with being in … never mind.”

“Being in what? In love? Is that what you were going to say?”

“It’s like measles—I had it once and now I’m immune.”

I
knew
it! Noel exclaimed, to himself. “But is it … too late? Can’t you go back and—”

“It’s too late.”

“Why? Is she married? Did she die? Tell me the story.”

“No.” He glared at Noel with drunken hostility. “You’ll never hear it.” He rose from the table unsteadily. From his back pocket he extracted a crumpled note of massive denomination and flung it on the table. “At least not from me.”

Norval stayed two months at Mrs. Pettybone’s B & B. The proprietor assigned him the finest room in the house, which happened to be across the hall from her daughter’s. Gally had also been assigned a room, on the ground floor, next to Mrs. Pettybone. But Gally stayed longer than Norval; in fact, he never left. A week after installing the skylight and telescope he proposed to Mrs. Pettybone, for the second time in twenty-two years, and this time was accepted. The wedding was to be held in the spring, a civil wedding at The Orangery at Newstead Abbey.

A double wedding? thought Norval. The idea was so preposterous, so antithetical to everything that he—the very symbol of bachelorhood— believed in that he suggested it to Teresa. It had the right touch of the absurd, the anachronistic, the harebrained. She hasn’t long to live, a few years maybe (and who knows how long
I’ve
got?), so why not seize the Christly day, do something shockingly, uncharacteristically unselfish? But that’s not even the right word, he thought. It
is
selfish—I want to spend every last second with her. And maybe they’ll find a cure …

Teresa, after realising Norval wasn’t kidding about the proposal, said no. “Don’t be mad. It’s just … not done anymore.”

“Must I arrange it with your mother? A forced union? And what if you’re pregnant? Gally will come after me with a shotgun. Or putty knife.”

Teresa laughed. “A marriage
would
make my mother happy, deliriously happy. But a double wedding? Not in a million years. I wouldn’t want to steal her thunder, and I don’t want to deal with old relatives and friends. But … if you’re absolutely sure about this, Norval, if you’re not doing it out of some Florence Nightingale motive or to obtain a Boy Scout badge, then I
will
elope. Anywhere you like, any time.”

For Norval, it was the first time he’d been happy since the age of nine. He was in his first relationship that lasted more than a week, a place he never thought he’d be. He could scarcely believe what was happening— he was
falling in love
, for Christ’s sake, something he thought was impossible, an emotional state he had ridiculed his entire life. But that was pre-Teresa ...

They arranged to marry in London, in Camden, partly because Norval had to be there to reshoot the ending of
Rimbaud in London
. The two left on the train together but Teresa, who had been feeling ill all morning, complained of double vision. Norval had noticed that one of her eyes wandered, and that she seemed to be tilting her head to the right. So she got off the train to see her doctor in Nottingham, insisting that Norval ride on without her. They would meet up the next day, she promised, on the steps of the Camden Town Hall.

The following day, an hour before they were scheduled to meet, Norval was there waiting, worried, his back against the wall of the building, sheltered from the pouring rain. He waited two hours, checking his watch every five minutes, peering out from behind a rain-battered column. I had a feeling she wouldn’t come. How could I think she would come? She’s changed her mind, can’t go through with it. Or is there someone else? Her ex? Craig Slandon, beer-guzzling imbecile, aged twenty-one? Another hour passed, maybe more, before he phoned Mrs. Pettybone’s B & B. No, she wasn’t there. We thought she was with you in London. Oh dear.

Norval took the first express train north, to Nottingham, then a taxi to Queen’s Hospital. Yes, a receptionist informed him, Teresa spent the night here, but went home this morning … He flew out the door to hail another cab. At the train station, a tree down at Newstead kept him waiting for another murderous hour. After standing the entire way, chain-smoking between carriages, he jumped off the moving train at Hucknall, and ran with bursting lungs through fields of decaying vegetation and stagnant pools of water, to Mrs. Pettybone’s B & B.

Teresa was not there. Norval raced up and down steps, opened up doors and closets of rooms that hadn’t been used in years, madly, rampageously, even climbing up to the attics. “Teresa!” he shouted repeatedly. “Terry!” The three of them—Mrs. Pettybone, Gally and Norval— scoured her bedroom for a sign, a farewell message, a suicide note. Nothing. She had vanished and clearly did not want to be found.
⁵⁴

Chapter 19

Norval & Company

L
iszt’s
Symphonic Poem No.
2 was starting as Noel placed a fake log on the fire. Lounging in Mr. Burun’s La-Z-Boy, his right cheek and sandwashed Nepalese silk shirt uncharacteristically smudged with black, Norval observed his new environment while cracking nuts and inhaling Armagnac.

“Fish rule in effect,” said Norval.

“Fish rule?”

“An old Danish proverb: ‘Fish, like guests, begin to stink after three days.’ On second thought, I’ll get a hotel.” In his head Norval began to rewind the evening, scarcely able to believe he was sitting where he was. He had taken a taxi home from the bar less than an hour before, seen something there that sobered him up at once, took another cab to Noel’s. Where for the first time in his life he was admitted—by Mrs. Burun.

“You can stay here,” said Noel, “as long as you want—especially after what you’ve just been through.”

Norval paused to listen to the cellos and double bass evoke the spirit of Byron’s Tasso. “Got any cigarettes? Where’s JJ and Sam, by the way? Upstairs shagging? Oh, hello Mrs. Burun.”

Mrs. Burun had returned from the bathroom. “Call me Stella,” she said, while reaching for a cigarette case on the mantel. “Noel, I think this gentleman will be a bad influence on you.”

“Everyone needs a bad influence from time to time, wouldn’t you agree, Stella?”

“That’s how I fell in love with my husband.”

Norval laughed. “Shall I pour you one of these?”

“Yes, why not? Would you like one of these?” She opened up the silver and cloisonné enamel box, a birthday gift to her husband.

“You’re too kind. Say when.”

“Mom, I’m not sure if …” Noel paused, distracted by a coppery head that popped through the doorway then withdrew behind a wall, like a tortoise into its shell. “
Salut,
Jean-Jacques.”

JJ gradually materialised, squinting in the direction of Norval. He was wearing shiny pyjamas of interstellar blue, covered with planets and stars and smiling moons. A cell phone protruded from his pocket. “Nor? Is that you?” He rubbed his eyes, like a bad actor seeing a miracle. “A-yo, dude! What brings you here at one in the morning?”

Norval reached over for a toss cushion on the sofa, examined its running wave border. “It’s two in the morning.”

“Norval’s place was torched,” said Noel. “He’s going to be staying here for a while. For three days.”

“Not another arson! Jesus Cockadoodle Christ! This is getting scary. This time we’ve got to report it, I’m sorry.” JJ pulled out his cell and punched in zero. “Hello, operator? Get me the number for 911. I mean the number—”

“JJ, put your phone away,” said Norval, with an indulgent half-smile. “Everything’s been taken care of.”

“Everything’s been taken of, operator,” JJ repeated into the line. “Sorry.” He snapped his phone shut, all atwitter, then fumbled it onto the floor. “Do you know who did it, Nor? Is everything OK? Are you OK?”

“Everything’s fine. We’ll talk about it in the morning, all right?”

“Any damage? Do you know who could’ve done it? You sure we shouldn’t report it? I really think—”

Here Norval got up and walked towards him, carrying the toss cushion. To Noel’s surprise, instead of stuffing it in JJ’s mouth, he tossed it back onto the sofa and stooped to pick up the cell phone. He slipped it into JJ’s breast pocket, put his hand on JJ’s shoulder. “I appreciate your concern, JJ. I’m just going to the bathroom now and then to bed. I’m dead. I’ll fill in the blanks tomorrow.”

“I’ll show you where the bathroom is,” said Mrs. Burun. “Then I’m off to bed myself.”

“Good night, guys!” said JJ as the two disappeared down the hall. “Oh, Noel, I almost forgot. The sun is square to Saturn. Mars and Jupiter in your fourth house. Buy no new footwear.”

“Got it,” said Noel.

Noel fixed his eyes on the multicoloured flames, which fluttered like a school of tropical fish. Orpiment, nacarat, aurora, cinnabar, ultramarine … He sipped his cranberry juice, not tasting a thing, wondering what he had just done. Norval and Sam here, together?
My mother and Norval?
Not good combinations, not good at all …

Norval settled back into his chair, reached for the Boingnères Folle Blanche 1994. “Nice bathroom, Noel.” He poured out the biggest glass of brandy Noel had ever seen or heard of. “Just what I always wanted when taking a crap—an instruction manual.”