Wise Children (34 page)

The size of a warehouse, bigger, the size of a tower block, in what looked like the very same scratched, weathered flying jacket he’d worn when we first laid eyes on him when we were still pissing on the floor, splitting a grin, hair as red as paprika – not one speck of grey, evidently untouched one jot by age.

He could have telephoned from the airport, couldn’t he, to say he would be here. No doubt they even have telephones in Brazil, in this day and age. But if he’d called ahead, it would have spoiled our wonderment. It was just like Peregrine, to upstage his own brother.

Then, again, it was our Uncle Perry’s hundredth birthday, too.

I knew in my water today would be the kind of day things happen.

In on the wind that came with Perry blew dozens and dozens of butterflies, red ones, yellow ones, brown and amber ones, some most mysteriously violet and black, tiny little green ones, huge flapping marbled blue and khaki ones, swirling around the room, settling on women’s bare shoulders, men’s bald spots. Nora and I got a couple each in our hair.

Melchior dropped the sword and sat down again, abruptly, white as a sheet, and the cameras held their fire, for once, as if Peregrine had not only upstaged his brother but also plausibility. The uncut cake on its dozen legs hovered in front of Melchior uncertain what to do and there was a buzz of questions because of course nobody was left who knew who Perry was, but she and me and him and them, and perhaps Melchior even thought he’d seen a ghost.

But such a material ghost Ever heavy-footed. The chandelier shook, the lilac shed. The cake veered off to one side at Peregrine’s approach. He was wreathed in butterflies. Very, very gently, he detached a splendid, crimson one with an ethereal wingspan about six inches, offered the pulsing handful to Melchior.

‘All our daughters,’ he said. ‘I’ve named a butterfly for each one. And I’ve named
this
one after you, you miserable old sod.’

The unmistakable language of male affection. Was it: absence made the heart grow fonder? Or shall we put it down to ambivalence, perhaps? But I was glad to see them fond. Melchior looked at the butterflies, so lovely, so improbable, and then he looked up at his brother, and then he smiled. And then the butterfly curator from the zoo came in with a big net, caught up all the beauties and took them somewhere warm and snug for Peregrine had their welfare at heart. All was uproar and commotion but we pressed forward for our kisses.

‘Floradora! You haven’t changed one bit!’

I was about to say him nay, draw his attention to the crow’s-feet, the grey hairs and turkey wobblers but I saw by the look in his eye that he meant what he said, that he really, truly loved us and so he saw no difference; he saw the girls we always would be under the scrawny, wizened carapace that time had forced on us for, although promiscuous, he was also faithful, and, where he loved, he never altered, nor saw any alteration. And then I wondered, was I built the same way, too? Did I see the soul of the one I loved when I saw Perry, not his body? And was his fleshly envelope, perhaps, in reality in much the same sorry shape as those of his nieces outside the magic circle of my desire?

But when I registered I’d used those words, ‘my desire’, I stopped thinking in that direction
toot sweet
. I’d properly shocked myself and I had to knock off another glass of champagne to cool myself while Nora came in for her share of hugs and kisses and then Daisy Duck, and all the rest, because not since the Change had yours truly felt such a sudden rush of blood in that department, down there.

Saskia was standoffish and turned the cold shoulder. Imogen tried to slip away but was impeded by her headgear so he grabbed hold of her and gave her such a hug the goldfish slopped out of the bowl and she went down on her knees in a puddle to pick it up again, it was slippery as soap and gave them a fine chase all over the dancefloor while the camera crews and the photographers and the reporters didn’t know where to turn next, so much grief, joy, resentment and pursuit was going on, while the multitude babbled and got in the way until suddenly Peregrine caught sight of a certain heavily veiled figure tucked away behind a pillar and stopped short with the gasping goldfish in his hand.

‘It isn’t . . .’ he said.

‘Put it back in!’ urged Imogen, kneeling at his feet. Perry absently dropped the fish back in the bowl and a hush spread in ever-increasing circles over the crowd until there was perfect silence. All eyes were focused on the invisible Lady A. Her fingers clenched and unclenched on the arms of the wheelchair. She pushed herself backwards, as if she were trying to roll offstage back into the wings, where nobody could see her, but she banged against the wall because there was nowhere to go except here.

Melchior, sensing something was up, craned forward, leaning heavily on Margarine, so he got a good view when Perry plucked off the veil. Then came a bewildered pause. Melchior sank back on his throne, again, with a puzzled look, quite grey with exhaustion, although things were only just livening up. I don’t think he’d got the foggiest who the lady in the wheelchair was. You could hear Margarine going: ‘Who’s that? Who’s that?’ But Saskia and Imogen backed off aghast, as well they might.

Perry said softly, ‘Hi, there, bright eyes.’

The Lady A. said, ‘Why! It’s Peregrine!’ and twinkled.

He wheeled her round to face the crowd.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘the Lady Atalanta Hazard. The most beautiful woman of her time.’

Suddenly she looked her old self again, but, due to her white curls, even more like a sheep, to my way of thinking, but it would seem that sheep are irresistible; everybody gasped. Perry led the applause that followed. She scrabbled at her veil, as if half-inclined to cover up again, but I could tell she was pleased. Melchior gave a jump.

‘Attie!’

So now all three Lady Hazards were together in one room and I wondered if our mother’s ghost was somewhere here, too, floating in the smoky air above the cake, which was waving about, a bit, because its arms were getting tired.

‘I’ve brought you something special, in my trunk,’ said Peregrine to Melchior. ‘Give us a little light on the subject, if you please.’ The little pages dashed up and down relighting everything until the room was brilliant.

Perry must have tipped the baroque trumpets because they let loose another fanfare as half a dozen stocky wee brown men in penis sheaths and feathers, friends of Perry’s from Brazil, evidently, heaved in a cabin trunk covered with labels of hotels that had long since ceased trading, shipping lines long since defunct, railways long since torn up. They hauled it into the middle of the ballroom, set it down on the parquet. Peregrine spat on his hands and rubbed, strode boldly forth and first of all I thought: He’s going to do a conjuring trick, because he put on his conjuring manner that I hadn’t seen for years: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have nothing up my sleeve.’ He was a sprightly walker. A hundred? Never!

‘He’s made a pact,’ said Nora in a whisper.

He addressed Melchior. He gave as low a bow as his paunch permitted.

‘Melchior, my dear brother,’ he said, ‘I give you . . . the future of the Hazard family.’

He lifted up the lid of the trunk.

‘If,’ he added, ‘she’ll have you.’

We had an intuition who it was.

Out of that trunk stepped our little Tiff, as fresh as paint, not a tad the worse for wear except her eyes were no longer those of a dove, stabbed or whole, and she looked sound in mind and body almost to a fault. She’d changed her clothes; she’d got on a pair of overalls and those big boots, Doc Marten’s, but she looked lovelier than ever, enough to make you blink. Our Tiff as ever was, our heart’s delight.

We were all tears and laughter. We skidded across that skating rink of a floor on our ridiculous heels and held her as if we’d never let her go while the baroque trumpets went on and on until I thought: perhaps we’ve died and gone to heaven. But the first paroxysm subsided and there we still were.

I’ll say this for Tristram’s reflexes, he was down on his knees in front of her in a flash, laughing and crying at the same time or doing a fair simulacrum thereof.

‘I love you, Tiffany,’ he said. ‘Forgive me.’

She stared down at him as if sunk deep in thought, which I was glad to see in itself – she’d never been one for reflection, before. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, she’d picked up a dreadful cold, somewhere, though not at the bottom of the river, as it turned out.

‘Fat chance,’ she announced at last.

Tristram was stunned. He sat back on his heels.

‘But, Tiffany, I’ll marry you!’

‘Not on your life, you bastard,’ she said, right out in front of all those people. God, I was proud of her at that moment! ‘Not after what you did to me in public. I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man in the world. Marry your auntie, instead.’

A palpable hit. Saskia turned white and dropped her glass. Poor old Melchior was at sea, couldn’t make head nor tail of
this
bit of cut and thrust, of course, but he was pierced to the heart by the riveting sight of his son’s rejection.

‘Oh, my dear,’ he murmured in that thick, rich, vintage port voice. ‘Take pity on him; have pity on your own unborn child.’

I felt quite sorry for Melchior, having his grandchild given and taken away before it was so much as born. He looked so pitiful, and, after all, it
was
his birthday, that Tiff might have wavered but Tristram spoiled it all. He waxed histrionic.

‘My baby! Think of my baby!’ He tore his hair, he gnashed his teeth.

‘Pull yourself together and be a man, or try to,’ said Tiffany sharply. ‘You’ve not got what it takes to be a father. There’s more to fathering than fucking, you know.’

We each squeezed the hand we held, she squeezed back. I thought, we’ll teach the baby tap and ballet, when the time comes. Then came another banging on the door.

‘That’ll be my mum and dad,’ she announced confidently. All the help was in the ballroom, now, transfixed by all this real-life drama, nobody to let in the new arrivals, but a splintering crash indicated that the locked front door posed no problems to a ranked light-heavyweight. Tiff let off her parting shot.

‘Not that your old man and mother aren’t perfectly welcome to take a peek at the baby when it’s born but don’t you come sniffing around until you’ve dried off behind the ears, Tristram.’

He was too stunned to get up off his knees as Bren and Leroy stepped round him to embrace their daughter in a fusillade of flashes. The lutes started up again, Lord Somebody or Other’s Puff, I think Perry slipped them a couple of quid. Quite like old times, lights, music, action. There was a patter of applause as Tiff and Bren and Leroy departed for their cab and were followed by no photographers after Leroy sent one of them downstairs on his ear.

Perry said he found our little Tiff by chance, wandering in the street the previous night, on his way from the airport; his taxi nearly ran her over.

‘So I took her back with me to the Travellers’ Club –’

‘Oh, Peregrine!’ I cried, struck by an awful thought. ‘You never!’

‘I most certainly did not,’ he huffed. ‘What a suggestion! There was a damsel in distress, if ever I saw one.’

Tristram was crying on Saskia’s shoulder. I could tell by the look in his mother’s eye she’d no love lost for Saskia, either, even if they
had
been best friends at Ro-de-o-do back in the year dot. And here was bloody Saskia now, elbowing her out of her big scene with her own son. Margarine blazed away with thwarted mother love and snatched up a lump of cake, that had sunk down to the ground out of sheer weariness, pulled off a candle that had burned down to a stump, and pressed the cake into her son’s hand.

‘Eat something, my dear,’ she said. ‘Just a mouthful, to give you strength.’

There was a piercing screech and crumbs everywhere because Saskia dashed the cake from Tristram’s lips and collapsed in a fit in the arms of her sister, who promptly commenced her celebrated goldfish imitation again, her lips opened, her lips closed, oh! oh! oh! but no sound came out. Perry, ever quick off the mark, seized Imogen’s goldfish bowl and dashed the water over Saskia, shocking her out of her fit and into you never saw such a shimmy as she shook that goldfish out of her vee-neck.

Yes, she confessed; she
had
slipped something into the cake she’d baked with her own hands for her father’s birthday, though whether it would have made him rather ill or very ill or finished him off altogether I never found out because now such a hullabaloo broke out, lights, cameras, the wailing of that poor old man, the recriminations of his wife, the exclamations of his son, and everybody else putting their vocal tuppence ha’p’orth in as well. Even Perry looked grave and as if he were to blame, stricken with compunction, possibly for the first time in a century. He and the Lady A. drew close together, the guilty parties, when Saskia wailed to Melchior:

‘You never loved us!’

It was high time that Saskia got wise. Remember Gorgeous George on Brighton Pier long ago, and the punch line of his joke? I couldn’t resist, I came out with it:

‘Don’t worry, darlin’,
’e
’s not your father!’

What if Horatio had whispered that to Hamlet in Act I, Scene i? And think what a difference it might have made to Cordelia. On the other hand, those last comedies would darken considerably in tone, don’t you think, if Marina and, especially, Perdita weren’t really the daughters of . . .

Comedy is tragedy that happens to
other
people.

Brighton Pier broke up with mirth when Gorgeous George said, ‘
’e
’s not your father’; when I said the same thing in the Hazard residence, you could have heard a pin drop. Then I wished I’d held my peace and let the world wag on its old, unconscious way, for after that split second of silent, suspended time while they all took it in, if all had been hullabaloo before now it was pandemonium as Saskia sprang at Peregrine and pummelled him with her fists while the Lady A., quick as her wheels allowed, interposed her body, crying out piteously, while Imogen, now aquarium-less, thank God, trotted after the Lady A. begging for full details of the entire scenario and giggling in a hysterically retarded manner but Nora and Daisy Duck, having evidently copiously refreshed themselves from Daisy’s hip flask, were clinging to one another for dear life and, I’m sorry to say, laughing fit to bust a gut.