Thicker Than Soup (29 page)

“You're here!” Geoffrey's rounded girth emerged from the front door. “Good-oh! I was watching out for you. Filthy weather. Come on in. Fire's lit. Tea's almost ready. I got some scones from the WI stall. Ate one already!” he guffawed. Two fat cats sat on piles of papers and books in the warm and dusty, cluttered sitting room. “So good you can stay a night too, John. Don't know how you can get away these days. How's business?” Before John could reply, he continued. “Booked a table at The Boathouse for tonight. Good traditional pub grub; beef casserole, treacle sponge. That sort of thing. Nice place, though a bit quiet.” He passed the scones to Michael. “Not John's posh nosh, eh?”

Michael was already beginning to brighten. “Suits me, Geoffrey. I'm glad you're not going to ask John to cook for us.”

John wasn't offended; it was small talk, and meant nothing. He retorted, “Sounds good to me, too. I'm glad you're not asking my Dad to cook, either.”

*

As it can in spring, Friday's winter weather preceded the kind of day that promises the start of summer, when city dwellers covet houses on green hillsides and non-gardeners don their Wellington boots. John savoured the warmth as he drove home, and imagined customers flocking to a new, pretty, canal fronted restaurant. The previous evening's visit to The Boathouse had been disappointing. Until, that is, John saw the opportunity. Few customers wanted the flat beer, dull wine, or ‘homemade' food from the freezer, and the nicotine décor and stained false oak bar wasted the pub's privileged location. As worn as the pub, the owner revealed a recent 65th birthday and a desire to retire, and John asked not if it was the right time or place for his fourth restaurant, but how he would make it his. In terms of timing, it was foolproof. The government had officially declared Britain out of this latest recession, and optimism and spending were increasing. There'd never been a better time to launch a new restaurant. With ownership of the Bathampton and Bristol properties and a long lease on the Cider Barn, funding wasn't going to be difficult. With his mother's legacy, he was now a rich man and wondered if he should keep his mother's portfolio and raise funds from investors or sell shares and invest the proceeds in Seagrams Ltd? The former would spread the risk but the latter would give him controlling share of the company. He laughed out loud; it had never occurred to him that he would wonder, one day, what to do with money! The risk on The Boathouse lay not in its location but in its distance from Somerset. Oxford appeared vibrant, and had a sizeable middleclass and student population, so it was promising. But its distance from the Seagrams hub presented challenges. He did a mental pros and cons exercise. Ticks; ripe for development, perfect position, keep Frick and move him to Oxford. Crosses; distance, unknown market. When the ideas dried up he began a new list, this time of questions. 1. How to fund. 2. Management – will existing structures expand. 3. Julia – Need her views. 4. Alain. He wants to retire soon. The list grew so that he couldn't remember what all the questions were, but the now familiar and addictive buzz of a new project was humming along with the car engine. He'd need to do some groundwork to present the project to the group who formed Seagrams' official sounding but casually informal Board of Directors; Alain, Julia and Trevor, the Bathampton chef. The other director had been his mother.

*

Taking advantage of the light spring morning John emerged from his flat in shorts and new running shoes and loped self-consciously along the pavement, nodding complicitly at a fellow jogger and hoping that he didn't look like the (slightly) tubby novice that he was. Within minutes his breath rasped and he slowed, regulating his pace to his breathing as it became clear that even on this fourth outing, he was still a beginner. The running regime had started after losing several squash matches. Forty-five wasn't young, but it wasn't old, either, and with new determination, he'd resolved to be a non-smoker. He looked intently at Bath's glorious Royal Crescent as if his slowed pace had been determined by an urge to study the grandeur, then moved on, round The Circle and retraced his steps towards the park. This, he knew, was where he'd find the real runners, and where, on his first few outings, he'd felt himself to be an impostor amongst the knotty calved men and pony tailed women who'd overtaken him with ease. But already there was a glow of companionship as he joined in, looking he believed, like a jock. In just two weeks as a non-smoker he felt fitter, and had even begun to appreciate subtle flavours and aromas. Just this morning there'd been a new richness in his coffee, and the fragrance of newly cut grass in the park was as sweet as when, as a boy, he'd thrown grass trimmings at his father. Remembering that reminded him that his father's lawn would need cutting whilst he was away. He checked his watch. He still had time before his session at Bristol to call at the house, cut the lawn, and check all was well.

*

Cheap, glossy junk mail protruded from the letterbox, and as he unlocked his father's front door, he tugged the post through. He'd let himself in many times before but this time felt different. Alone with the old curtain smell and a silence he could hear he gathered mail from the floor. Dust motes danced in yellow light cast by the door's stained glass panel and his eyes, distorted to an alien roundness by the gilt framed convex mirror, took in the regency-stripe wallpaper and faded Constable prints. Like the curtain, they belonged to a bygone time. The door to the kitchen door stood open and he could see the red Formica table, naked except for a cake tin. He hadn't been prepared for the lifelessness. This, he thought, was what death felt like; memory created expectations that reality failed to deliver. The kitchen had been a family room, a warm retreat and gathering point. He saw himself at the table, aged eleven, with his childhood friend Rick. Rick, who hated peas. Frances had cooked peas and they'd giggled helplessly as Rick flicked them, one by one, on to his plate and the room echoed momentarily with ghostly laughter. Dropping the post on the table, he opened the cake tin and found the remains of one of Linda's banana cakes robed in green fur. In a pot on the windowsill, dead daffodils sulked and hung their shrivelled heads, and outside, fallen forsythia blossom patterned the paving slabs and drifted against the wall. He made to go outside to cut the grass. But he stopped. If he cut the grass what would Michael have to do when he returned? Instead, he wrapped the remains of the banana cake in an unread paper, washed the tin, and replaced it in the larder. Tablecloths were kept in the drawer. Moving the letters aside he spread a bright cloth over the table and put the letters on top. Then he saw the blue airmail envelope, stamped in Pakistan.

He resisted opening it several times before doing so. Smoothing the tissue-thin paper flat on the table he looked at Sally's handwriting, very little changed despite the passage of almost twelve years. ‘
Dear Michael'.
Sally expressed her sorrow at the news of Frances, and hoped that Michael and the family were finding solace. John spluttered. “The family!” He, John, was ‘the family
'
. Why couldn't she have written
and John
? He skimmed the letter, seeking news of Sammy.
It comes as a surprise to learn of a trust fund for Sammy, and I'm deeply touched that you considered such a thing.
He raced on; Sally planned to travel to London at Christmas with Sammy and Hiba,
and
she
would write to the solicitor as Michael had asked.
He read more slowly,
Though it is important we discuss Sammy's future together before we can accept such generosity.
She went on to say she hoped to be able to see Michael in December and would telephone when she arrived in London. John swallowed. December! Almost nine months away. Sammy would be twelve. He'd been a baby when he left England. There was an address was at the top of the letter; Abbottabad. He had no idea where Abbottabad was, this place where his son was growing up. He considered writing soon, then decided it would be better later, nearer the time. Noting the address in his diary, he slipped the letter back into its envelope and scribbled a note on the envelope,
Sorry, Dad, hope you don't mind me opening Sally's letter.
Then he
left the house to its ghosts.

But ghosts stayed with him and thoughts of the visit tempted him to write sooner. Letters formed in his head.
Dear Sally
.
Many years have passed since
…., or,
I was pleased to read your letter….
A thought, so basic, stopped him short. Did Sally want him as Sammy's father? She must – it was a fundamental truth. Over the years, her affair had faded into relative obscurity against the certainty of fatherhood, and though it had hurt deeply, time had softened memories and diminished the consequences. Whatever had happened between Sally and another man wasn't a part of Sammy and all he wanted was to be acknowledged and have some kind of reconciliation with his son.
Dear Sally
, he started again, and getting no further, shelved the problem for another day.

*

When Frick arrived back at work, John was keen to hear the result of the Belfast interview. “Hey, how did it go?”

“Ah, it was a good job, so it was,” Frick fastened his apron and began to work alongside him. “But there were better than me for it.”

“Well, they missed their chance with you.” John commiserated, suppressing his relief that Frick wouldn't be leaving just yet. Planning approval for the Oxford pub was by no means secured and he didn't want to raise Frick's hopes with the prospect of something that might not happen. “Things ok at home though?”

“Oh, ay. Jenny's upset. She wants away, but I'll not go on the Nat King.”

“Nat King?”

“Dole. Nat King Cole. You no heard o' that?”

He shook his head. “Anything from the police?”

“We'll be waiting for it.” Frick never used a definitive yes or no, and in this instance John took his answer to be no. “The trouble is there're so many of ‘em blowing in and we never see the same gard twice. But they're all the same, so they are. They say it'll be some chancer trying his arm, so unless they catch him rotten we've no chance.”

All this had been said at a pace so rapid that John stopped preparing his lamb crowns to keep up. “Well it's good nothing else has happened. Given time, it might settle down. Are you sure that moving to Ireland is the right thing to do?”

Frick leaned on the back of his knife to crush garlic cloves. “I know what you're saying John, but Jenny's got it into her head, and it needs some neck to argue with that one. Right now, she's jumpy as a fiddler's bow. She won't let the kids out of her sight. They're truly fed up, so they are, and they're kicking off most of the time. I tell you, John, I'm glad to be here, so I am! If you're ever after having kids yourself, be warned. Your life'll never be the same again.”

*

John pushed away the racks of lamb, now chined, and left the kitchen. It was difficult to comprehend how Sammy, in his life for so short a time, had had such impact. Blood thicker than water? That, and the parallel ripples of his own childhood, which had prompted a great deal of soul searching over the years. He recalled something someone had once said. Andy Warhol he thought it was. Time, he'd said, didn't change anything. You had to do the change yourself. He was both right and wrong, John thought. Time did change things. Time had sent his father to the grave before he got round to finding him and it made him determined to find a way to establish a relationship with his own son before it was too late. He declared too, that he would find Gillian Crowson, before time changed that too.

*

It was the worst kind of winter's day. A late dawn had hidden itself behind grey drizzle so that vehicles on the road loomed like phantoms and headlights wavered, ghoul-like. In front of John's car a lorry load of gravel dribbled water. It smeared greyness across his windscreen and John worried about having sufficient washer water for the journey. It was a slow drive. He'd left home shortly after five, and at almost ten he was still thirty miles from Wisbech. Time he'd allowed for a break to garner himself and gather his thoughts before meeting Gillian Crowson was diminishing. Her letter lay on the passenger seat but he didn't need it.
You have always been in my thoughts, and the prospect of meeting you again is beyond my dreams.
His heart had thumped and his eyes had brimmed with tears when he'd first read it, until the old voices had intervened.
Always?
If that were true, how could she have handed him over to a stranger? She'd mothered him for a year and a half before she'd given him away, and for more than thirty years he'd sought and never found reason other than, like Sally, she'd deceived her husband. In which case, Jack Crowson would not have been his father. A tangled web, indeed. But, unlike fatherhood, motherhood couldn't be compromised. A photograph, taken on holiday somewhere warm, had been in the envelope and he'd stared and stared at it, seeking a likeness in the low resolution picture and wondering if she'd stared the same, at the photograph he'd sent her.

There'd been two telephone conversations since the letter. The first had been stilted, and she'd cried. John hadn't; he'd forced himself to think of her giving him away, and later feared she'd thought him unfeeling. The second call had been longer. She'd asked about his work and he'd told her about Seagrams. She'd said she liked cooking too, especially baking. And she'd told him she didn't share her son's home as he'd thought she did. The son lived near, but she lived alone. Then they'd made the arrangements for the day that was unfolding.

The gravel lorry in front slowed to let a van turn right and John saw the Little Chef café he'd stopped at five years earlier. He'd had bacon and beans then; overcooked and cold. But the coffee had been hot and strong, and that's what he wanted now. His watch said ten-forty. If he stopped he'd be late. But the temptation of coffee was great and he reasoned that if it had been forty-three and a half years since Gillian Crowson had last seen her him, another ten minutes wasn't going to make much difference.