That Was Then Read online

  ‘Wise woman,’ commented Mrs Rymer.

  I knew that on a sauce-for-the-goose basis I should be able to pose an equally direct question to her about Gerhardt, but because I wanted to know everything, I couldn’t formulate the question quickly enough.

  ‘My son,’ she went on, ‘ has never been able to accept the fact that his offspring have biological urges. On those occasions when the subject’s reared its head in my presence I’ve told him he should be jolly glad that they do, but he seems to regard it as a hanging offence.’

  ‘I expect he feels protective,’ I suggested.

  ‘Hm … the jury is out. However, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being. Tell me, do you enjoy your work?’

  I talked to her about Bouvier’s and we drank our tea. She was an extremely attentive audience with, I was sure, excellent recall. She had a way of listening with downcast eyes, as though to cut out all extraneous visual distractions. Then when she spoke she’d look up and startle you with the intense, unblinking brightness of her gaze.

  When I got up to go, she said: ‘Excuse me if I don’t come with you to the door, I have to hobble and clutch, and I prefer it to be with someone who’s paid to be clutched. Old age is a grim business.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘I’m sure.’

  She laughed drily and said: ‘Perhaps you’d like to come again?’

  ‘I would.’ Something occurred to me. ‘Or would you like to come out? My flat has a million stairs, but we could have lunch somewhere, a pub or a—’

  ‘What a good idea, I’d like to,’ she said firmly, and once again held out that commanding hand. ‘ So it’s farewell and not good-bye.’

  I left Whitegates with a lighter heart, not because I had done a good deed, but because I had made a friend.

  Ben came with me to meet Mel at the station the following morning. I wasn’t planning on waking him, but on hearing me in the kitchen he must have pitched out of bed straight into his jeans and boots, and now appeared, heavily shadowed from a late night, in the doorway.

  ‘I’ll come.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Is that tea?’

  He held the mug in both hands and drank in long gulps, eyes closed the greater to experience the relief. ‘Thanks.’

  It was a cool, damp morning with the high tide making irritable little rushes at the sea wall. The car was slow to start, but Ben sat placidly in the passenger seat, still half asleep while the engine whinnied abortively a few times before lurching into life.

  After a couple of minutes he cleared this throat and asked: ‘So what’s the Melon been up to in town, then?’

  ‘Don’t call her that. Some meeting or other, she didn’t go into details.’

  ‘So what’s she been doing for fun?’

  ‘I know she met her father for lunch yesterday. Him and his new lady friend.’

  ‘OK,’ said Ben. ‘But no bloke in her life – that she’s admitting to?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t get it.’

  It was becoming increasingly obvious that no one shared my feelings about Julia of the Nursing Times, or what Mel thought of her. To everyone else it was just a simple, inevitable, humdrum next-step sort of thing which should not concern anyone much, least of all me. But as we pulled up in the station car park, Ben remarked:

  ‘I wonder if he’s likely to bring her to the cricket.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t have thought—’ I began, but he’d got out of the car to pay into the machine. I backed into a space and watched him return with a great feeling of tenderness. He did understand.

  Mel’s train was fifteen minutes late, and almost empty. She hopped down from it with characteristic briskness, somehow conveying the impression that BR’s inefficiency would have been even greater had it not been for her personal intervention. She wore jeans, elastic-sided boots, a crisp white shirt and a blue blazer, and carried no case except for a small black rucksack on her back. She was nothing if not casual but next to her I felt rumpled and unkempt. As her cool lips brushed my cheek I smelt some light, fresh, girl-about-town scent.

  ‘Good God,’ she said, looking Ben up and down. ‘What brought this on?’

  ‘I thought I would. Nothing else to do. Good trip?’

  ‘Yes, I played a blinder.’ It was typical of each of them that he’d been enquiring about the travel, and she’d replied concerning her work.

  We began walking back towards the exit. Ben laid a hand on the strap of the rucksack. ‘Shall I take that?’

  ‘No thank you. It was one of the best day’s work I ever did, buying this, it makes overnighting a doddle.’

  Ben paused to light a cigarette and she glanced over her shoulder. ‘He’s not still doing that.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘I hope you ban it in your flat.’ She never called it ‘home’.

  ‘I can’t say I do.’

  ‘Mother – honestly.’

  Ben caught up with us. ‘What are you two griping about?’

  ‘This.’ She tweaked the cigarette out of his hand, dropped it on the ground and trod on it.

  ‘Hey, Mel, fuck off …’ He was gently plaintive rather than angry.

  ‘I’m not sitting in a car inhaling your filthy smoke,’ she said calmly.

  He took out another. ‘ I’ll have one before I get in then.’

  ‘Suit yourself. But if you want to do away with yourself there are cheaper and less antisocial ways of doing it.’

  By the time we got into the car I was almost in tears. Why, when we only had twenty-four hours together, when Ben had got out of bed to come and meet her, why did she have to be like this, so censorious, so contentious? I told myself she was an adult, too old to reprimand, but in my craven heart I knew that much as I admired my daughter, I was also a little afraid of her. Ben wasn’t, and what I feared more than anything was his capacity, not used since childhood, to wound his sister. I knew in my heart that her formidable competence was a carapace developed against the world – but it was a brittle carapace, and I dreaded what might be revealed if it was shattered.

  For now, however, the bad moment blew over, along with Ben’s smoke.

  ‘Did you enjoy the show?’ I asked.

  ‘The play itself was rubbish,’ she declared, ‘but the production and the acting were so good that you could enjoy it anyway. It must have been reasonably entertaining because I stayed awake through the whole thing.’ This was no affectation, she was one of those preternaturally busy people to whom sitting still and watching is simply an opportunity to recharge the batteries.

  ‘How was Dad?’ asked Ben from the back.

  I stared tensely, smilingly at the road ahead.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘ We only went to a wine bar off the Gloucester Road, but they had some historic Australian whites and the food was a lot better than I feared.’

  ‘Well,’ I commented with awful brightness, ‘they do say London’s the best city in the world now for eating out.’

  ‘But has the metropolitan influence spread to Littelsea, that’s what I want to know,’ said Mel. ‘Is there anywhere I can take you people which won’t be death by gravy?’

  ‘Now don’t you go patronising us,’ I began, but Ben chimed in again.

  ‘What about the woman?’

  ‘Darling,’ I said, ‘ don’t let’s—’

  ‘Oh, fine,’ replied Mel. ‘Perfectly normal and nice, size sixteen, all her own teeth.’

  I ground the gears.

  Ben leaned forward so that his head was by my shoulder, but he was facing Mel. There was something in his manner that suggested he was interrogating his sister on my behalf. Which in a sense he was, because although my knuckles were white on the wheel I didn’t tell him to shut up.

  ‘How old?’ asked Ben

  ‘God, I don’t know, no one looks their age these days, fortyish?’

  ‘Forty-one,’ I said.

  ‘Blonde, brunette?’
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  ‘Mid brown. Smart but not drop-dead. Neat but not gaudy. On the quiet side—’

  ‘Don’t suppose she had much choice there,’ said Ben, leaning back sharply to avoid his sister’s swiping hand.

  So Julia was nice, neat, quiet, mid brown and size sixteen, was she? Damn her eyes, I might have known. Her unexceptionable ordinariness, which Mel, to be fair, had subtly presented as slightly dull, was gall and wormwood to my soul. What could it all mean? That beneath that spotless, well-pressed exterior there seethed a volcano of ungovernable lust and sexual know-how, that was what.

  ‘Does she wear glasses?’ I asked.

  ‘Not all the time, but she put them on to read the menu, like you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  My worst fears were confirmed. Take off your glasses, Miss X, and here, let me unpin your hair. My God, but you’re beautiful and I never saw it.…

  ‘Glasses apart, she was nothing like you,’ added Mel. ‘And she didn’t look to me like someone good at the net.’

  Back at the flat Mel watched me put my popular boned and stuffed shoulder of lamb in the oven and said in that case a) she wouldn’t bother about taking us out in the evening and b) she was going to go for a brisk walk by the sea and pick up a couple of bottles of something amusing at the off-licence on the way back. She changed out of the blazer and cowboy boots into Nikes and a Ralph Lauren sweatshirt, and leaned in passing into the kitchen.

  ‘Are you happy, Mother? Or am I a rat leaving the proverbial …?’ She hated cooking, and was no good at it.

  ‘Quite happy, darling. I’ve done the complicated bit.’

  ‘Would it be impertinent to ask if it’s bread and butter pud for afters?’

  ‘It wouldn’t and it is.’

  ‘Tops. And by the way—’ she came and laid a hand on my back as I sliced courgettes— ‘ after the feast you and I are going to sit down and have a proper talk.’

  ‘A threat or a promise?’

  She ignored this. ‘ I’m going to take Ben with me, he looks as if he could use some fresh air and exercise.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  He was on the phone talking to Sophie, but in less than a minute the receiver went down and I heard him say ‘All right already, but only if I can smoke …’ Then from the kitchen doorway: ‘Would it be OK if Sophie came to lunch?’

  ‘Sure, liberty hall.’

  ‘Cheers, because as a matter of fact I already asked her.’

  They left and I made myself coffee – aromatic blended grounds in the cafétière, not instant, because I’d taken to heart all the written advice about indulging oneself. It was good that Sophie was coming because it would ease any possible friction between brother and sister, and I suspected she would be perfectly capable of fighting her corner should the need arise.

  About an hour later I was laying the table, and thinking how nice it was to be doing that, and for four people, when the bell rang.

  I pressed the button in the hall but all I could hear was heavy breathing. Sexual harassment was thin on the ground in Littelsea (more’s the pity as Sabine would have said), especially on a Sunday morning, but at Cliff Mansions we did occasionally get kids mucking about with the doorbells, so after a token ‘hello’ I released it. At once the bell sounded again.

  ‘Yes? Who is it?’

  There followed a series of accelerating gasps culminating in ‘Eve—!’

  ‘Who is that?’

  More gasps. ‘ It’s Clive—!’

  ‘Clive, for goodness sake, are you all right?’

  The gasping turned into a coughing fit, which diminuendoed as Clive stepped back, or bent over, and then crescendoed once more before he croaked: ‘Can you come down?’

  ‘I’m on my way!’

  ‘Eve—’ a huge intake of breath – ‘water!’

  I put the front door on the latch, rushed into the kitchen, filled a beer tankard from the cold tap and ran down the stairs, carrying the slopping glass out in front of me.

  I opened the front door on a strange little tableau. Clive, wearing a pale blue, sweat-soaked singlet and shorts, was standing bent over with his hands on his knees, in some physical distress; his legs were trembling and his shoulders and neck were mottled. On either side of him, in the role of comforters, were Peggy Whiteley, one of the ground-floor residents, returning from the Methodist Chapel, and Sophie.

  ‘Poor man,’ said Peggy, busily chafing Clive’s back with her gloved hand. ‘He has got himself in a state.’

  Sophie spoke to Clive slowly and clearly: ‘Eve’s here with some water. Why don’t you sit down?’

  He allowed himself to be manoeuvred so that his back was to the step, and Peggy and Sophie bravely placed their hands beneath his armpits to take the strain as he went down.

  ‘Here,’ I said, like someone in a soap opera. ‘Drink this.’

  He took a few gulps, and then thrust his hand into the tankard and splashed water on top of his head.

  ‘Poor man,’ murmured Peggy again. ‘Should I call a doctor do you think?’

  I stared helplessly at Clive, who looked no better physically, but did seem to be regaining his composure. ‘ I don’t know.’

  Sophie sat down next to Clive and put her arm across his shoulders. She looked up at me and mouthed: ‘ What’s his name?’

  ‘Clive Robinson.’

  ‘Clive,’ she said firmly, ‘ have you got any pains?’

  He drew a long breath and then shook his head, sending drops of sweat flying on to Peggy’s showerproof.

  ‘Are you sure? Arms and legs all working?’

  ‘Yes …’ He made a few awkward, jerky running movements.

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘Yes.’

  In a trice the showerproof was off and draped about him and Peggy pointed into the hall where her husband Bernard now stood with a copy of the Sunday Express and a baffled expression.

  ‘Bernard dear,’ she said threateningly, ‘put the kettle on, we’re coming in.’

  Bernard shuffled off.

  ‘This is very kind of you,’ I said, ‘I’d take him up to my place, but he’d never make it up the stairs in this condition.’

  ‘We’re going inside,’ said Sophie to Clive. Peggy bustled past us, probably glad of an excuse not to reacquaint herself with the patient’s armpit, and we hauled him to the vertical. His colour drained for a moment, and he swayed groggily before rallying, and announcing.

  ‘It’s not a heart attack … but I am a stupid sod.’

  We were saved from having to agree with him by the arrival of Mel and Ben, carrying respectively two bottles of red and a slab of 4X. Their faces reflected the strangeness of finding me in my gorilla pinny, Sophie in black bell-bottoms and a bare midriff, and Clive in baby-blue briefs and a lady’s showerproof, posed like the three graces on the front doorstep.

  ‘Mother!’ said Mel. ‘And I thought you led a quiet life …’

  Chapter Ten

  Eventually, we had lunch, the five of us. The shoulder of lamb turned out Peking-style, as Mel remarked, falling apart into thin, dry strips, the stuffing – which contained sultanas – reduced to something that looked like sheep droppings. But the vegetables, produced at speed in the microwave, could have done useful service in a six-gun. Only the bread and butter pudding, thrown together at the last minute and cooked as we ate our first course, was perfect – light, creamy, and crisp on the top.

  Whatever its shortcomings, all the food was extremely welcome after the vicissitudes of the previous hour. We had remained chez Whitely while Clive recovered. Peggy had insisted we all have a glass of amontillado (‘Sorry you young ones, no beer’) and Clive sipped at a large Bovril. Bernard, a big, pear-shaped man had produced a diamond-patterned sweater in turquoise and lemon and some Sta-prest beige slacks in which Clive looked completely out of place but seemed happy enough. I thought he’d want a lift home, but the casual mention of staying for lunch caused him to perk up no end and declare that he could manage the stairs if hel
ped by two attractive young ladies. I fully expected him to get a rap over the knuckles from Mel for this flirtatious sally, but none was forthcoming and since it was already two-thirty I left them to it and went to parboil the veg and lay another place.

  Actually, Clive was just what we needed. He was a strange shape and colour for a lightning conductor, but he fulfilled the role to a T. We all sat round with eyes and ears for no one but him, and listened as he explained himself. It was a story in which, like all the best stories, tragedy and comedy were inextricably mingled.

  ‘There’s a girl in Social Sciences with whom I’ve struck up a friendship,’ he told us, adding: ‘No more than a friendship, mind, but she’s a great believer in the links between physical and mental health – she does yoga, Alexander technique, more things than are dreamt of in our philosophy … As you know we – Helen and I – are – were—’ he blushed – ‘ not in the least interested in exercise for exercise’s sake, but Catherine does radiate this air of wellbeing and I began to wonder if it wasn’t a sort of arrogance on my part to ignore the obvious benefits. I mean my dear wife has always been blessed with whatever it is that keeps you thin, but I arrived too late when it was being handed out … In short I took a look at myself and decided that I represented a rather dismaying sight, a man in late middle age, losing his hair, gaining in girth, unable to run for the hypothetical bus, or even to go upstairs without needing something medicinal at the top. By the way, Eve, this is perfectly deicious—’

  Everyone endorsed this remark without taking their eyes off him. In spite of his monologue he was getting through his food twice as fast as the rest of us. I’d scarcely begun mine, but two glasses of chianti on top of the Whiteleys’ amontillado was having a deleterious effect on my self-control. I kept on having to haul my jaw back into place and refocus my gaze.

  ‘So anyway,’ went on Clive, ‘I suppose I underwent a Damascene conversion, of which Catherine was the unwitting agent, and decided to make some moves in the direction of cardiovascular fitness. Sports revolt me – sorry, Eve – and I’ve never been able to swim. I couldn’t countenance anything involving equipment. I looked at a gym and it resembled nothing so much as a mediaeval torture chamber run by a terrifying harpie with more muscles than I could ever aspire to … jogging, as it is misleadingly called, seemed the answer. I bought the clothes and a pair of shoes, and here I am.’