I’m close to my mother’s heart and know its rhythms and sudden turns. And now! It accelerates at her husband’s voice, and there’s an added sound, a disturbance in the chambers, like the distant rattling of maracas, or gravel shuffled softly in a tin. From down here I’d say it’s a semilunar valve whose cusps are snapping shut too hard and sticking. Or it could be her teeth.
But to the world my mother appears serene. She remains the liege and mistress of her voice, which is even and doesn’t stoop to whispers.
‘He’s a poet. He never locks the car. When I give you the sign, go out there with the stuff.’
NINE
DEAR FATHER, Before you die, I’d like a word. We haven’t much time. Far less than you think, so forgive me for coming to the point. I need to tap your memory. There was a morning in your library, a Sunday of unusual summer rain when the air for once was clean of dust. The windows were open, we heard the pattering on the leaves. You and my mother almost resembled a happy couple. There was a poem you recited then, too good for one of yours, I think you’d be the first to concede. Short, dense, bitter to the point of resignation, difficult to understand. The sort that hits you, hurts you, before you’ve followed exactly what was said. It addressed a careless, indifferent reader, a lost lover, a real person, I should think. In fourteen lines it talked of hopeless attachment, wretched preoccupation, longing unresolved and unacknowledged. It summoned a rival, mighty in talent or social rank or both, and it bowed in self-effacement. Eventually, time would have its revenge, but no one would care or even remember, unless they chanced to read these lines.
The person the poem addressed I think of as the world I’m about to meet. Already, I love it too hard. I don’t know what it will make of me, whether it will care for me or even notice me. From here it seems unkind, careless of life, of lives. The news is brutal, unreal, a nightmare we can’t wake from. I listen with my mother, rapt and glum. Enslaved teenage girls, prayed over then raped. Barrels used as bombs over cities, children used as bombs in marketplaces. We heard from Austria about a locked roadside truck and seventy-one migrants left to panic, suffocate and rot. Only the brave would send their imaginations inside the final moments. These are new times. Perhaps they’re ancient. But also, that poem makes me think of you and your speech last night and how you won’t or can’t return my love. From where I am, you and my mother and the world are all one. Hyperbole, I know. The world is also full of wonders, which is why I’m foolishly in love with it. And I love and admire you both. What I’m saying is, I’m fearful of rejection.
So say it again to me, this poem, with your dying breath and I’ll say it back to you. Let it be the last thing you ever hear. Then you’ll know what I mean. Or take the kinder course, live rather than die, accept your son, hold me in your arms, claim me for your own. In return I’ll give you some advice. Don’t come down the stairs. Call out a carefree goodbye, get in your car and go. Or if you must come down, decline the fruit drink, stay only long enough to say your farewells. I’ll explain later. Until then, I remain your obedient son …
We’re sitting at the kitchen table, attending in silence to the intermittent thumps of my father’s footfalls above as he brings in boxes of books and leaves them in the sitting room. Murderers before the deed find small talk a burden. Dry mouth, thready pulse, whirling thoughts. Even Claude is stumped. He and Trudy drink more black coffee. At each mouthful they put their cups down without a sound. They’re not using saucers. There’s a clock I haven’t noticed before, ticking in thoughtful iambs. Along the street, a delivery van’s pop music approaches and recedes with a faint Doppler effect, the cheerless band lifting and dipping a microtone but staying in tune with itself. There’s a message in there for me, just out of reach. The painkillers are coming on, but the gain is mere clarity where numbness would suit me better. They’ve been through it twice and everything is in order. The cups, the potion, the ‘thing’, something from the bank, the hat and gloves and receipt, the plastic bag. I’m baffled. I should have listened last night. I won’t know if the plan is going well or about to unravel.
‘I could go up and help him,’ Claude says at last. ‘You know, many hands make—’
‘OK, OK. Wait.’ My mother can’t bear to hear the rest. She and I have much in common.
We hear the front door close, and seconds later those same shoes – old-style leather soles – making the sound on the stairs they made last night when he came down with his lover and settled his fate. He whistles tunelessly as he comes, more Schoenberg than Schubert, a projection of ease rather than the thing itself. Nervous then, despite the lordly speech. No easy matter, to evict your brother and the woman you hate who bears your child from the house you love. He’s nearer now. Again, my ear is stuck to the gluey wall. There’s no inflection or pause or swallowed word I’d care to miss.
My informal family dispenses with greetings.
‘I was hoping to see your suitcase by the door.’ He says it humorously and, as usual, ignores his brother.
‘Not a chance,’ my mother smoothly says. ‘Sit down and have a coffee.’
He sits. A pouring sound, a teaspoon clinks.
Then my father. ‘A contractor’s coming to remove the appalling mess that’s in the hall.’
‘It’s not a mess. It’s a statement.’
‘Of what?’
‘Protest.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘At your neglect.’
‘Hah!’
‘Of me. And our baby.’
This could be in the noble cause of realism, of the plausible. An oily welcome might raise his guard. And recalling him to his paternal duty – brava!
‘They’ll be here at twelve. Pest control are coming too. They’ll be fumigating the place.’
‘Not while we’re here they won’t.’
‘That’s up to you. They start at midday.’
‘They’ll have to wait a month or two.’
‘I’ve paid them double to ignore you. And they have a key.’
‘Oh,’ says Trudy, with an appearance of true regret. ‘I’m sorry you’ve wasted so much money. A poet’s money at that.’
Claude leaps in, too soon for Trudy. ‘I’ve made this delicious—’
‘Dearest, everyone needs more coffee.’
The man who obliterates my mother between the sheets obeys like a dog. Sex, I begin to understand, is its own mountain kingdom, secret and intact. In the valley below we know only rumours.
As Claude stoops over the machine on the far side of the room, my mother says pleasantly to her husband, ‘While we’re on it, I hear your brother was very kind to you. Five thousand pounds! Lucky boy. Did you thank him?’
‘He’ll get it back, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Like the last lot.’
‘He’ll get that too.’
‘I hate to think of you spending it all on fumigators.’
My father laughs in genuine delight. ‘Trudy! I can almost remember why I loved you. By the way, you’re looking beautiful.’
‘A little unkempt,’ she says. ‘But thank you.’ Theatrically, she lowers her voice, as though to exclude Claude. ‘After you left we partied. All night long.’
‘Celebrating your eviction.’
‘You could say that.’
We lean forward, she and I, me feet first, and my impression is that she’s put her hand on his. He’s closer now to the sweet disorder of her braids, the wide green look, the pink-perfect skin perfumed with the scent he bought her long ago in the Dubrovnik duty-free. How she thinks ahead.
‘We had a glass or two and we talked. We decided. You’re right. Time to go our separate ways. Claude’s place is nice and St John’s Wood is a dump compared to Primrose Hill. And I’m so happy about your new friend. Threnody.’
‘Elodie. She’s lovely. We had a terrible fight when we got in last night.’
‘But you looked so happy together.’ I note the lift in my mother’s tone.
‘She’s decided that I’m still in love with you.’
This too has an effect on Trudy. ‘But you said it yourself. We hate each other.’
‘Quite. She thinks I protest too much.’
‘John! Should I phone her? Tell her how much I loathe you?’