The Steep Approach to Garbadale (39 page)

He’d managed to push the incident to the back of his mind very successfully and very quickly, within a day, by the simple expedient of getting utterly mashed on a cocktail of drink and dubious drugs with Fielding. As a way of forgetting what had happened between him and Sophie, of smearing it into something too vague to be made out in his memory, it had worked almost too well. The incident was so close to the demented swirl of humid day-glo idiocy he and Fielding had indulged in that it seemed, in retrospect, like part of it; not wholly real, and the tatters of what seemed like genuine memories associated with it themselves not completely reliable either.

Had Sophie told Win? Was she that cruel, did she want to humiliate him that much? Or did he mean so little to her that she hadn’t even thought about how telling Win what he’d said to her would hurt, even shame him?

Tell a half-truth. They were the easiest lies to defend. ‘Win,’ he said, smiling, and sounding, he hoped, eminently reasonable, ‘Sophie’s always going to mean something to me. I mean, she was my first love. Puppy love if you want to call it that, but it still felt intense at the time.’

‘Yes, so I saw,’ Win said acidly.

He knew they were talking about that last evening at Lydcombe, and Win and James discovering Sophie and him in the grass. That feeling of old shame - and an anger at feeling it - built up in him again. He controlled his breathing, tried to think his heart calm. Jesus, he’d thought this was long since brushed under the carpet; ancient history not worth raking over, by mutual consent.

‘Anyway,’ he said, puffing out his lower lip, sitting back and gesturing with his hands, spreading them a little before clasping them again. ‘Water under the bridge.’

‘It’s one of those things you’re not supposed to say these days, apparently; people just sneer at you or simply laugh, but it really was for your own good.’ She raised her head to him a fraction, defiant, as though daring him either to sneer or laugh. ‘I knew that then and I know it now. You must have hated me, Alban, I understand that.’ A wintry smile. ‘I suspect somewhere deep inside, you still hate me.’

Deep inside? Just under the surface, actually. And all the way through
. ‘Oh, Win, really—’ he started.

‘It would only be natural. I’m not stupid, Alban.’

‘But I did it for the good of both of you, no matter what you might think. I’m sorry it seemed so brutal at the time. James overreacted, arguably. On the other hand, that was the worst of it over with.’

Oh no it fucking wasn’t
.
You have no idea
.

‘Well, it’s history now,’ he told her.

She arched one eyebrow. ‘Yes, as though history doesn’t matter.’

‘Henry Ford thought it was bunk.’

‘Yes, but then that remark has become part of history.’ Win shrugged delicately. ‘He may not have meant what he appears to have meant, but if he did then he was a fool.’ Alban looked appropriately surprised. Win smiled. ‘Oh, I’ve met plenty of rich and successful fools, Alban. You must have encountered one or two yourself. Usually one of the things that shows how stupid they are is that they don’t understand how big a part luck played in their success.’

From which I’m meant to take the point that you’re no fool
. ‘History matters,’ he agreed. ‘But I am over Sophie.’ He looked her in the eyes and thought,
I’m lying. I am so not over Sophie. I hate you for getting me right. I hate you for reading me like a fucking poster, you old hag. Are you reading this now? I still hate you. I’ll always hate you just as I’ll always love her. Call it balance
. He thought it very carefully, articulating the thoughts, the words in his mind, as though daring her to read the truth through his eyes or somehow telepathically intuit what he was thinking.

‘Well, perhaps that’s the reason, then,’ Win said. ‘But I can see a change in you, Alban.’

‘Well, we’re all getting older. Everybody changes.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Win said, one hand waving dismissively, ‘but as well as that.’

Hell’s teeth, maybe he should just come clean. Maybe the right thing to do was just to admit it, get it out in the open and say yes, he had changed, he was different, he didn’t feel the same any more and he was already thinking about quitting. Maybe he should just say all this and hand in his resignation now, here. He’d probably have to say it some time, why not now?

Because he’d always feel he’d been bounced into it by Win, that was why. He’d never be entirely certain that it had really all been of his own volition. Well, he refused to surrender control to her. She’d taken over that time at Lydcombe, making him feel humiliated, ashamed and powerless, and he wasn’t going to let her do it again. He wanted to make the decision himself and go in his own time.

Well, they’d circled round this enough. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry if I gave you any . . .’ He smiled. ‘Just cause to doubt me. That wasn’t my intention.’
And that
, he thought,
is as close to an apology as you’re going to get, old girl
.

Win looked momentarily very old, he thought. It was just for a second or so - as though some mask of will had slipped briefly from her face, only to be snatched back into place again - then the image of constructed self was back, the calculated, calculating façade all accounted for once more. He wondered if she’d seen something similar happen with him. He wondered if that was what she saw all the time, and if this explained her uncanny - and also deeply canny - ability to read people the way she did.

‘Accepted,’ she said.

He waved at two silvery pots. ‘Tea or coffee?’

 
He’d decided to do Business Studies fully expecting to change his course. He’d come to the conclusion that he had to compromise with his family and their expectations of him. He’d seem to go along with what they expected and then change tack when they’d been bought off. If he started with Business Studies, gave it a good enough go and then switched to something that actually interested him - English, history, even art - then at least he’d have shown willing. That ought to keep them off his back until he graduated. This seemed like a good plan and a not remotely crazy way of making one of life’s more important decisions.

Then, a few months into his course, when he was almost enjoying it and even getting reasonable marks for a couple of essays, just because he knew he wouldn’t be doing this for very much longer, he heard that Sophie had changed her mind about her own academic course. She was doing Business Studies, too. She was committed to a commercial career, with the family firm if the right opening was there.

Jeez, he’d thought. Was she doing this just because he was doing something similar? Was this a kind of public yet hidden signal? They hadn’t been in touch since the sweet and wonderful but also mildly disastrous time in San Francisco, months earlier. He sat in his room in Bristol, looking out at the unleaved trees of Castle Park and the slow grey swirlings on the broad curve of the Floating Harbour, the river that was barely a river, its surface brown and pewter under a low fleet of clouds dragging long trains of rain under their ragged hems.

He remembered the startling desert brightness of the Mojave, the pore-sapping dryness of the air, the squinting glare of the rows and rows of pale, abandoned jets under the peeled-open sky, the little plane landing, Sophie - albeit an altered, mutated Sophie, a Sophie making a sort of phase change of herself - stepping out of the plane. He remembered Dan’s apartment, the crackly noises from the old vinyl records, the feel of her dancing up close to him, the smell and feel of her hair, the sheer naked pleasure of bedding the girl after so many al fresco couplings. He tried to forget about the scene in the laundry, the weak sun and the artificial smell of fabric conditioner.

For a moment or two, in the hazy San Franciscan morning chill, in the taxi heading for the railway station, he’d felt pretty good about it all. He’d seen her again, after all; he’d won at last, eventually surmounting all the obstacles the family had put in his way (even if it had happened by chance - that didn’t matter) and finally got to meet her again. And they hadn’t fought, they hadn’t blamed each other for everything that had gone wrong and the years they’d been forced to spend apart; they’d connected, they’d made love again.

She’d wanted him. It didn’t matter that she’d later said it had been a mistake, it didn’t matter that she was with another guy; these things happened. She’d wanted him. He hadn’t forced himself on her, he hadn’t seduced her. It had been mutual. Unpressured. And she had suggested dancing, not him.

Still, she’d more or less thrown him out. He believed her that she wasn’t a good liar and it would be easier to deceive Dan if he wasn’t there, but all the same. Ejected again; torn apart once more. It wasn’t a good pattern.

There was an early train leaving for LA just twenty minutes after he arrived at the station. By the time he’d bought his ticket and found the right train - surprisingly busy, full of suits and families - he was away from the city almost before he knew he’d been there.

Gulls moved over the Floating Harbour, banking and wheeling across the banked-up, cradled waters.

Now and again, just sometimes, if he’s really drunk or stoned and feeling nostalgic or soppy or whatever you might want to call it, he still whispers to himself: They’ve all bloody gone, Fell off me ’oss, didn’ I?, Blimey, I didn’t enjoy it that much, and - now - Not a flippin’ fing.

Cuz, cuz, sweet cuz
.

He’d tried getting back in touch with Sophie after meeting her in California, but without much success. He’d got her address in New York from cousin Fabiole, sent her a carefully considered letter - friendly, even loving, but not weird or anything - and received in return a terse note saying that she was very busy and didn’t think it was a good idea they stayed in touch. She was sorry if she’d hurt him.

That had been two months ago. Now this news that she was doing Business Studies.

He decided that probably it wasn’t a deliberate thing, Sophie taking up the same kind of course as him, but that possibly it indicated a desire that she might not know she had herself to somehow track him, keep parallel with him. That would do, he guessed.

He stuck in. He determined that he’d do his best to enjoy the course he’d embarked upon. He made new friends, had various relationships - never really committing, often talking to his girlfriends about Sophie, his childhood sweetheart (that was how he had started to refer to her) - and spent a year during the four-year degree course working for the family firm on Product Development. He’d kind of hoped that being at Bristol, so close to Lydcombe, he might be invited back - he’d like to see how the gardens were doing, apart from anything else - but he never was.

At the next family gathering - Grandpa Bert’s funeral, at Garbadale, in the early spring of 1990 - he’d asked Aunt Lauren about Sophie not receiving his letters. Again, she professed to be as surprised as he was. She had certainly forwarded the letters. She’d suggested that maybe Sophie telling him that she hadn’t received them was just her way of trying to protect his feelings.

He’d hoped Sophie would be there for the funeral, but she’d been too busy with her studies in the States and everybody agreed that it was a long way to ask somebody to come just to pay their last respects to an old fellow who’d been little better than a vegetable for the past decade anyway.

‘And how was he?’ Grandma Win said when he mentioned seeing Blake in Hong Kong. She was dressed all in black and looked, Alban thought, like a crow. She carried a handkerchief balled up in one hand and her eyes looked a little red. She looked hurt, now. He was already starting to regret telling her he’d seen Blake; another painful memory, dragging up the past of a familial black sheep. He’d only done so for something to say. He’d rather not have talked to her at all but his parents had insisted. He was so relieved she didn’t ignore him or say something horrible about him and Sophie that he’d relaxed, never imagining he might upset her by telling her he’d paid a visit to her son.

‘He was fine,’ he told her.

‘And what did he want?’

‘Nothing. Didn’t want anything. I mean, he’s really rich. Honest, he was okay, Gran. He showed me around Hong Kong. It was brilliant. And he gave me money.’

‘I bet he did,’ Win said, sounding unimpressed. ‘And? So? What did he have to say for himself?’

Alban had to think. ‘Nothing in particular. He just showed me around, introduced me to people. He seems to know everybody. I met the Governor and everything. Uncle Blake’s seriously rich, Gran. He’s got this skyscraper. I mean, it’s really his.’

‘Well, bully for him. How much money did he give you?’

‘I can’t remember,’ Alban lied.

‘Did he talk about the family?’

‘A bit. He was okay, Gran. Honestly. I think he’d like to see, well, everybody -’

‘Indeed. Well, I don’t want to see him again,’ Win told him.

‘Oh,’ Alban said. ‘Okay. I’m sorry.’

‘Yes,’ Win said, with a tone of finality, and turned away.

 
‘And so I had a look for myself, but of course everything Bunty had said was a complete and utter fib: instead, there the fellow was with a
Playboy
in one hand and his John Thomas, thoroughly engorged, in the other. So I closed the door pronto and turned round to find Sister glowering down at me, saying, “Yes?
And?
” and I naturally didn’t have the first idea what to say until suddenly I had a brainwave and said, “Well, Sister, I think he’s preparing to discharge himself!” Ha ha ha!’

‘Ha ha!’ agreed Doris, after a modest delay.

Fielding paused as he poured the last of the dessert wine into Beryl’s glass, smiling broadly at first and then joining in the laughter when it showed no particular sign of subsiding especially quickly. He sat back in his seat, sighing mightily and taking a surreptitious glance at his watch as he lifted his water glass to his lips. Still not even eleven. He’d hoped it might be close to midnight.