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Epub ISBN: 9781473522145
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Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage Publishing,
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London SW1V 2SA
Chatto & Windus is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Copyright © Janet Davey 2015
Janet Davey has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Chatto & Windus in 2015
www.vintage-books.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Janet Davey
Dedication
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Copyright
English Correspondence
First Aid
The Taxi Queue
By Battersea Bridge
A WALL IS down and a small room, the receptionists’ sanctum, has been exposed. Red-and-white striped barrier tape cordons off the area. Polythene sheeting, thick with peppery plaster dust, lies under a work platform of ladders and planks. Light fittings dangle from wires. Homely objects, previously glimpsed through the hatch – an electric kettle, the more comfortable chair – have been removed. There is nothing to peer at and I suppose the bell to summon will have been discarded too.
I check my phone for messages and, since I am alone, put on some lipstick, mouthing at myself in the make-up mirror. A vanity project, I think, as I snap it shut. They cut drama from the curriculum and tart up the foyer.
Although I have attended school meetings and dos for the last ten years on behalf of one son or another, I have no grasp of the layout of Lloyd-Barron Academy and often get lost. The main school, an Edwardian building, flanked by two 1960s modernist slabs, debouches into annexes that were constructed from the cheapest available materials and named after water birds – Grebe, Shearwater, Bittern, and so on – for no known reason. The arrangement of these additions accords with no topological sense. I start from the front entrance and, via changes of level, abrupt turns and sudden plunges into open air, follow the wrong person along corridors of lino worn shiny by wear and end up in a cul-de-sac; a science prep room or a claustrophobic, bleach-scented anteroom to a set of lavatories.
A sudden rise in the temperature, a September surprise after a lousy summer, has caught me wearing the wrong clothes: black / 10 per cent Lycra / long-sleeved. A bath or shower would have been welcome but then I would have wondered what to put on in order to look as if it were a fluke that I am here at all – a last-minute decision to attend the sixth-form social evening – since part of me sides with the parents who fail to turn up on these occasions from ineptitude or sheer lack of interest. By the time I reach the sixth-form block, I am fanning myself with the evening newspaper.
They are full of goodwill, the parents who turn up at these school events, though this does not preclude whingeing. I wait for the pen to be free and write ‘Ross Doig’ on one of the blank labels provided, then add ‘Lorna Parry’ in brackets. My T-shirt is too tightly stretched for the pin so I re-fasten the label round the strap of my bag from where it immediately slides down out of sight.
‘Here we are again,’ a father says, as I approach the refreshments table. ‘Seems like ten minutes since we were doing this for Jacob and Oliver.’
‘Yes, doesn’t it? How is Jacob?’ I take a ready-poured cup of black tea and slop milk into it from a stainless-steel jug.
I cannot remember the first name of the man who has come up to me, though I must once have been told. His label, wonkily attached to a well-darned crew-necked jumper, says ‘Nina Levine’. We are all our children’s parents. He is a tall bear of a man with a neatly trimmed beard and spectacles mended with a flesh-coloured plaster. He strikes me as more normal than some of the dads.
‘I’ve no idea.’ Nina Levine’s father takes a gulp from his glass of red wine and grimaces. ‘God almighty, the wine doesn’t get any better, does it? Oh, you’re drinking tea. Wise choice. No, we never hear from him. He’s out in Guatemala. Been there since term ended. My wife goes on Facebook to check that he’s in the land of the living. Ah! There he is. Just spotted him. Hi, Jacob. Good to see you.’ He waves at a film projected onto a section of wall of the sixth-form common room. It shows students from the cohort which left in the summer and is already tinged with nostalgia. The soundtrack is switched off and the students in their white shirts and black trousers or skirts take part in noiseless discussions and conduct silent lab experiments. Teachers open and close their mouths. Chairs move as though lubricated. It is a fluid world that travels from sequence to sequence without strain – though the young people who are part of it seem vulnerable, as if on the brink of disaster.
The real-life boys and girls who hang about in small groups or perch on tables, fondling their phones, scent the air with cheap perfume and the gutsy, animal smell of their bodies. They are noisier and more brazen than those on screen. They might cope with life – not because they are stronger or more intelligent but through a plodding pedestrianism that, while not getting them far, should keep them safe. In home clothes (‘mufti’ so-called by the head) – drop-down jeans for the boys and various tight tops, little dresses, skinny jeans and leggings for the girls – they seem set fair for whatever might come their way, whether gap years, university, or NEET: the current limbo, or purgatory, of being in neither education, employment nor training.
‘Oliver’s away at Porthkerris in Cornwall,’ I say. ‘Night diving this time. My father paid for him to have lessons. He feels the lure of the ocean. He carries on wanting things, of course – wetsuit, masks, fins, BCDs, whatever they are, the latest pieces of electronic kit. Money, money, money. An ever-rolling stream.’
‘At least they didn’t have gap years. What are they for? Private-school kids have them, don’t they? On the whole, I disapprove. They’re a hybrid of finishing school and a bloody long holiday.’
‘It would be more of an adventure to ditch the mobile and go to Rotherham and live with a landlady.’
Nina’s father guffaws. ‘They conform. That’s probably the sole point. You’ve got a third son, haven’t you? Still at uni, is he? How’s he doing?’
‘Ewan? He’s OK. Trundling along.’
My companion sloshes the wine around in his glass, getting a small eddy going into which he stares. ‘It’s a shame Miss Bhimji left. She was great. Ross is doing English, isn’t he?’
‘Yup. I don’t know who they’ve got. Ross doesn’t speak to me.’
‘Alan Child, apparently. Nina says he’s been here a year. This will be his first go with the sixth form. They like to give the young staff a turn. Watch the results go down. Could that be him?’ He indicates a man standing alone in front of the lockers.
‘He’s the right age. Too young to be an Alan, don’t you think? I wonder whether he has adopted the name to give himself gravitas in the staffroom. He doesn’t look overly inspiring, does he? A bit of a tit? He keeps rolling his shoulders. Oh dear. I hope he’s not going to take time off for physiotherapy. The jacket’s too big for him. It slips about like a borrowed silk dressing gown.’
‘Enough, Lorna! You’re as bad as Nina. Well, I suppose we’d better mingle. Meet the teachers. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?’ Nina’s father grins and shambles away.
Groups are beginning to cluster around individual members of staff. Unworldly Mrs Anstey with her grey hair loose about her shoulders and floor-length wraparound skirt. Mr Frost, whose bloodshot eyes become more vacant with every year that passes. Though the occasion is billed as social, and it is less than two weeks into the new term, parents cannot stop themselves from lining up and asking about Harry’s progress. Douglas Milner, head of sixth form and pastoral mainstay, has been trapped by Deborah Lupton. She talks and gesticulates while he nods slowly above her, his wine glass empty. The older members of staff are teachers through and through. Line them up in an identity parade and anyone would guess their profession. It is all those days of virtual imprisonment without the opportunity to pop out to the shops, breathe fresh air or go for a decent lunch. Schools are, more often than not, away from society, at the far end of long, meandering roads, served by only one bus. They have this in common with municipal cemeteries. To whatever teachers suffer in the way of a commute can be added this extra leg that takes them from a recognisable landscape through increasingly surreal terrain that seems to go on for miles. Somehow it affects the psyche. They become different people from the ones who set out.
Grace Lu’s mother has taken up a position behind the refreshments table and is serving coffee. She belongs to the inner circle of parents who take part in fund-raising activities. They know each other and understand the urn.
‘Sorry. The chocolate biscuits have all gone,’ she says.
Another mother finds this sublimely funny and bursts out laughing.
THE ENGINE IS running and the passenger door wide open. Ross hops from foot to foot on the driver’s side and makes signs to me to open the window.
‘For God’s sake, Ross, just get in. Where were you all evening?’
At one point, I saw him walking aimlessly between the display boards but failed to nab him. In his school uniform, he stood out among the mufti-wearers. ‘Are you coping, man?’ his friend Hunter called out, his teeth embedded in a sandwich. When I signalled to Ross that I was keen to leave he held up a hand, fingers spread, and mouthed that he would meet me in the car park in five. He wandered out again through a different door. I waited in the car, listening without much attention to a medical programme on Radio 4 about a link between taking sleeping pills and early death.
Ross leans forward as the window slides down. ‘Mum, is it all right if I go home with Jude?’
He peers in at me. He can be polite when he wants something, stubborn as the lid of a vacuum-sealed jar for the rest of the time. It still comes as a surprise that his face above the loosened collar and skewed school tie is no longer round and chubby – though he can put on the unblinking stare of childhood at will. The arc of one eyebrow is visible, the other masked by a mop of reddish fair hair the size of a small cauliflower. With head shaved to the back and sides, he is growing out his former hedgehog haircut selectively.
‘No, it isn’t all right. It’s a school night. Tuesday. What’s the matter with you?’
‘We’ve got this project.’ His voice is adolescent husky.
‘And?’
‘We’re supposed to do it in pairs.’ He steps back from the car and looks over his shoulder.
‘Well, make a start on it at the weekend.’
His face looms in the window frame again. ‘That’s too late, Mum. We need a working plan by tomorrow morning.’
‘Do it by phone.’
‘No-o.’ Ross sounds anguished. ‘We need to discuss and Jude’s got all this good stuff.’
‘Who is this supposed to be for?’ I ask.
‘Mr Chi-ald. That’s the trouble.’
‘Mr Child.’ I sigh. ‘I met him briefly. He seems—’
‘Thanks, Mum. See you tomorrow.’
I stare into the space he had occupied. I have never heard of Jude. He must be new. There are always fresh faces in Year 12. Lloyd-Barron Academy recruits vigorously for its sixth form. ‘Specialising in Success’ is the slogan.
In the driver’s mirror, I have an obscure view through the sloping glass of the back windscreen to the cars lined up behind. Here and there streams of light appear as engines and headlamps are switched on. Among them is a car containing Ross and Jude and driven by one of Jude’s parents. Alternatively, the story is a pack of lies and my son will shortly be a missing person.
Using repeater triangulation, we locate Ross’s mobile number in a rural area in the West Midlands. Since then there has been no roaming signal. That will be £2,000 plus VAT. Please try the repeater triangulation again. Where are the rural areas in the West Midlands?
His photo will appear, smudged and out of focus, on the back pages of the Big Issue. Ross never stands still long enough to get a clear print. Like a ballboy on a tennis court, he is poised, ready to move. He is seventeen, not an especially grown-up seventeen; one of the oldest in his year group, which some studies suggest is an educational advantage, though I have yet to see proof of this. He is slighter than Ewan and Oliver were at that age – more of an urchin – but, I assume, capable of looking after himself. I am disinclined to cosset my boys. I have never been a taxi service. All the same, it is odd that I have no idea where and with whom he will be spending the night. The catchment area for Lloyd-Barron Academy is large and extends northwards into the Enfield suburbs as far as the M25.
Having thought that Ross’s decision not to wear home clothes was a non-conformity-in-conformity thing, I now realise that he planned to stay away and purposely kept his school uniform on in order to wear it on Wednesday morning. I should have kept saying no. ‘No, no, no’ to everything he said. Instead I said, ‘Mr Child.’
I lean across the empty passenger seat and shut the door. I switch on the headlamps and ease the car forward.
THE LIGHTS ARE off when I return home. I bump against the cardboard cartons that stand stacked in the narrow hall and set a clock inside chiming. I put my bag down. The day’s warmth is trapped inside the walls.
This house used to feel like a moving boat when the boys ran in and out of rooms and up and down the stairs. These days it is becalmed. I go up to the half landing, then to the first floor, switching on lights along the way. My sons keep their bedroom doors shut. They close them when they are in situ and also when they leave. The woodwork, defaced by old torn-off stickers in shards of colour, resembles the site of a butterfly massacre. The walls are pitted by missiles launched from catapults.
I continue up to Ewan’s room at the top of the house. I do this every day. I appear in the converted loft and tell him bits of news – though I sound to myself like a broadcaster reading from an autocue. If he does not instantly tell me to go away, I wander about, pick up wet towels from the floor, lower or raise the blind, depending on the time of day. I venture as far as the desk and look to see if he has been drawing; adding to the strange, painstaking, intricate designs, spoiled from the start by being executed in biro. I touch his hair.
I no longer ask, Why don’t you …? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to …? What’s the matter? How can I help? Frequently asked questions that are as useless as the kind dreamt up by some minor marketing person for a product website.
I push the door open. Ewan is a mound in the bed. From where I stand, the cocoon of duvet conceals even the top of his head.
‘Hi, darling. Are you OK? Whew! It’s hot in here under the roof. Surely you don’t need the duvet on. Shall I fetch you a sheet? Crazy weather. Cold and wet all summer and now baking in September. Have you had anything to eat?’ I pause. ‘Well, the sixth-form do was boring, as expected, and your brother has disappeared into the night with someone called Jude. Fingers crossed he reappears one day. Oh, since he’s not here, you could sleep in his room – or in Oliver’s. It will be cooler down there. Why don’t you do that?’
My words are normal, the tone bright but less bright than I intend. Too monotonous – too plangent. I am like a musician who becomes note perfect but ceases to breathe life into the sound she makes.
I go down the stairs and along the passage to the kitchen, through the door frame with its jagged gaps where the hinges used to be. I removed the door years ago to stop the interminable banging.
A lamp stands on the sill among dog-eared paperbacks with the shade touching its reflection in the window. I switch it on. Nothing in the house keeps its own space. Objects overlap like memos on a crowded noticeboard.
I write a text to Ross: This must not happen again. I erase it and send: Where are you?
I open the fridge door and look inside, shut it again. The bread bin contains half a granary loaf. I take two slices and slot them into the toaster.
There have been too many parts to the day, each element differentiated and with its own particular hue. All they have in common is myself – and that is not enough to bind them together. On the contrary, my presence obstructs the flow. Deborah Lupton bounces along full of good cheer. She sutures the lives of the twins, the younger Luptons and Mr Lupton, the Lloyd-Barron Academy Parents’ Association, the drop-in centre for the over seventies, the Woodcraft Folk – and in the process makes a seamless whole of her own life. Ginny Lu, in a quieter way, is the same. These women are not merely good sorts, they are organising principles. The episodes that make up their days and weeks, whatever the contents, are all stamped by the Lupton/Lu in-house franking machine whereas I scrabble around guessing the correct postage for each and every item. When I get it wrong I imagine a scrawl across the outside of the package indicating the insufficiency or a recommendation that the mail be returned to sender.
I still see myself as a student type, a kind of girl hoodlum, though, apart from the tattoo of a snail shell on my left shoulder and the naturally back-combed hair, that notion hardly stands up. Some wised-up friend said I looked like Patty Hearst and, once I had found out who Patty Hearst was, it pleased me to be linked to someone who had been kidnapped by an urban guerrilla group and taken part in a San Francisco bank robbery. A London girl with a short upper lip and wide-apart eyes, I liked the conjured-up image of glamorous instability and, before the days of Wikipedia, went to the trouble of looking up Stockholm syndrome.
I have an ex-husband, Randal Doig, and an insecure job working as an archivist in the Corporate Archives of Transport for London. I am the mother of three sons. We live together in Dairyman’s Road, Palmers Green, in a thirties house with small-paned bay windows up and down, red tiles and a roof light, invisible from the street, that looks slantwise up to the sky.
In my lunch hour, in fine weather, I lie on the grass in St James’s Park. The sun feels the same on my skin as it did when I was nineteen, my eyes shut behind a pair of sunglasses.
The toaster emits a sooty smell and switches itself off. The popping-up mechanism has not worked since Ross forced in a whole hot cross bun. I look around for the meat skewer.
MY SONS WERE all born during John Major’s government and I often wonder whether that has had an effect on them. The privatisation of British Rail, the introduction of Sunday trading, the Dangerous Dogs Act, the Cones Hotline, Back to Basics – the tone of that administration seeped into their minds and made them obstructive. As a predictor, someone’s birth prime minister must be as good as an astrological sign. Bonar Law 1922–3: Renowned for your excellent memory and business acumen, you may be depressed at losing your grip. Don’t worry. Soon you will be ready for the next step. Try growing a moustache.
Liz Savaris, my best schoolfriend, who now lives in Aberystwyth, does not think much of my theory. Birthwise, we both scraped into Alec Douglas-Home’s term of office and so far have not come up with any points of reference, though The Way the Wind Blows, the title of A.D.-H.’s autobiography, is sufficiently fatalistic to suit most circumstances. Certainly, my own life has seen the odd twister. I call Liz whenever I need to clamour for sympathy, which she gives wholeheartedly in a real crisis but hardly at all up until that point. I rely on her, in a sense, to gauge the severity of a situation and am almost pleased to be put down because it means that, according to Liz, I am making a fuss about nothing. All kinds of awful things have happened to her and, although she never brings them up in conversation, they hover like warning angels as I prattle on.
Have you started dating? she asked when Ewan gave up university after two terms. Sometimes boys don’t like that. Well, there was Richard Watson but … Richard Watson, she shrieked, have you gone mad, Lorna? It’s either someone you already know, or a stranger, I said. Both have their pluses and minuses. He works at the Office for Budget Responsibility. But Richard Watson? she said. Ewan wouldn’t have known, I said, unless he was a fly on the wall of The Albert in Victoria Street or Richard’s grim flat off Fulham Palace Road. Another explanation might be the birth of Stefan, Liz said, referring to my ex-husband’s new son. This has all happened so bloody fast – gestation like rats – though the baby would mainly affect Ross, as he is the one who has lost his position. Ewan is still the firstborn. We would have gone off the rails among our own age group, I said. Universities tolerate time-wasters and they have their own counselling services. Why has he come home?
The middle son, too drunk on the dark and the mystery of the sea to reply to his mother’s messages, or just too drunk, returns from Cornwall in time for me to drive him to Brighton for the start of Freshers’ Week. The journey passes without much conversation. Oliver listens to music, and I, who dislike the A23, concentrate on the road. He sits with the passenger seat pushed back in semi-recline. From my sit-up-and-beg position, I see mainly his legs, the tear in his jeans at the knee, and his thumbs as they move over his phone. The clouds are high and grey and gusts of wind buffet the side of the car with hollow sounding thuds.
At one point, Oliver starts talking about wreck tours off the south coast, then, as suddenly as he began, he replaces the earpiece under a lock of blond hair and falls silent again. This leads me to believe that his mind is on diving and that starting university is an irrelevance and not in any way momentous to him. Only time will tell whether he too will return home before or after graduation and live in his bedroom.
As far as I know, Oliver has no girlfriend. He hangs out with a group of friends, and who within that group is paired off with whom I have no idea. He is free. He won’t be making those complicated weekend train journeys that Ben Allardyce and I went in for, having ended up in mutually inaccessible university towns. We used to go on three-and-a-half-hour journeys from Colchester to Nottingham, or Nottingham to Colchester, via two quite separate London terminals and sometimes Grantham as well.
I keep my thoughts to myself. They come and go, like traffic flow. It feels peaceful to be in the car occasionally smacked by the wind, Oliver beside me, the tinny beat from his music a constant accompaniment.
London suburban landscape repeats itself. Detached, mansion-sized roadside pubs with banner advertisements for Sunday roast, garden centres flanked by banks of shopping trolleys, superstores, ditto. Glimpsed countryside vanishes as fast as the good parts of dreams. I sing at one point because we are on the road and moving but Oliver catches sight of my lips and gestures to me to cut it out.
We drive towards the South Downs but instead of speeding on towards the sea – the desire for which is quickened by the sight of the coastal hills rising in a long, grey-green line – we turn eastwards at the Patcham interchange, head for the Brighton suburb of Coldean and arrive at the university campus at around midday.
I park the car while Oliver collects a key from the site manager of the halls of residence. As I wait for him to return, I smile at a couple who are lifting a television from the back of their people-carrier while their son yells instructions. More items are removed from the boot. A small fridge, a microwave oven, a rail of clothes. Shadows appear on the tarmac, generous splashes of black, as the sun breaks through cloud.
A girl poses with wide-apart arms and an open-mouthed Hollywood smile by the entrance to the block. Her father aims his phone at her. Another family stands by, luggage piled up beside them, waiting their turn for the celebrity shoot. Out come the phones and cameras. There is something sick-making about photography.
A SINGLE BED, desk and cupboard, all of the same blonde imitation wood, are arranged along the length of two walls and stand on a mottled brown carpet. Like a hotel bedroom, Room 8 offers a blank page on which unconnected strangers can write. I feel overwhelmed by everything that might happen to Oliver here and also by the dullness of dull student days. I put down the bags I am carrying and go over to the square, metal-framed window that overlooks the car park.
A middle-aged man trundles two vast suitcases along the paving, his paunch thrust into prominence by the backward drag. The suitcase wheels make a noise like horses clopping in rhythm until they collide. He stops to unlock them, then sets off again. A girl follows. She struggles with an armful of garments, some loose, some enclosed in plastic covers that balloon in the breeze.
‘Are there enough days in the term to wear all those clothes?’ I say.
I turn round and see a tall youth wearing my son’s grey marl fleece and blue jeans. He is hunched over his phone. Sun-bleached hair flops forwards. He is oblivious to his surroundings. Neither man nor boy, he is in some significant way nothing to do with me, though Oliver’s possessions are everywhere – his backpack and bags on the floor, his parka flung on the bed.
The front door bangs again and on the other side of the wall something clatters to the ground. ‘Da-ad. Help me.’
‘She’s dropped the lot,’ Oliver says and the slip-sliding youth vanishes.
‘I hope it won’t be too noisy living so close to the entrance,’ I say. ‘Drunken revellers. People knocking on the window if they’ve lost their key. I remember—’
Oliver interrupts. ‘It doesn’t make any difference. They’re just rooms.’
This is the case. I am struck by his attitude – and proud of it – though aware that the realism is caused more by his attachment to his phone than by the taking up of a considered philosophical position. One day, the external world and the inner world will vanish, replaced by a series of beeps.
‘What do you want to do?’ I try out the lighting; open and shut cupboards and drawers. Raw dust of cut chipboard has settled in crevices. I pick out a long dark hair from a drawer and drop it in the wastepaper basket.
‘I dunno. Unpack. See who’s around.’
‘What about eating? Shall we go into town and find some lunch?’
‘No, it’s all right. You go home if you like.’
‘Really? You must be hungry, aren’t you? We could get fish and chips and brave the beach.’
He shakes his head.
‘Let’s go and find the kitchen,’ I say. ‘Case the joint.’
‘What? Oh, it’ll be obvious.’
I think of my own mother placing a potted scented geranium on the windowsill of my first room at university, the one that looked out onto a brick wall. Later, she folded up the drab bedcover and hid it in a cupboard.
‘OK, then. I may as well go,’ I say.
It is only after I have slung my bag over my shoulder and stand dangling the car keys that Oliver comes to and registers what is happening. ‘You leaving, Mum?’ He appears perplexed. He puts his phone in the back pocket of his jeans.
‘We could—’
‘I’ll see you off.’
I take a last look at the room. I imprint it on my mind for future reference. On the way out, I stoop and pick up a flyer that had been pushed under the door. ‘CEOs and Corporate Hoes,’ it says. ‘Come and get raped!’ The accompanying line drawing shows a be-suited man with his hand splayed over one of the spherical breasts that tumbles out of a girl’s low-cut top. Two champagne flutes brimming with bubbles complete the picture.
‘Charming,’ I say, flapping the paper at Oliver. ‘Women’s emancipation was for this? We’re heading back to the Palaeolithic era. You should report it.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Mum. It’s just fun.’
We leave the building and make our way between the parked vehicles, Oliver a few paces behind me. When we reach the car I open the boot to check that nothing has been left behind. I turn to Oliver and stretch out my arms for a hug. The goodbye is over. I get in the car, start the engine and reverse between the two large, shiny cars on either side. Oliver stands and watches. As the wheels go forward again, I see him in the rear-view mirror. He is waving; a side-to-side arm wave that would be visible from a departing cruise ship.
I head for London, aware of rain clouds coming from the west and the first drops on the windscreen. The South Downs shrink when approached from the south. Fast cars streak past, their engine noise amplified, trapped between hills. High above, a group of ramblers – tiny figures in brightly coloured cagoules – cross the road bridge. I fiddle with the radio and fail to get a signal. I know what I am going back to. It’s as if Ewan hates what’s out there, Randal, my ex-husband, said on one occasion. Out where? The world. What? As it is today; to some extent, you hate it. You make no bones about it. Certain aspects, yes, I agreed. Are you blaming me? You’re quite negative, Lorna, Randal said. Thanks, I said. Where are you in all this?
I SHOULD NEVER have mentioned the three poses to Randal. It was a joke, really. Our son, Ewan, sits, head bent, with the angled lamp casting a tight circle of light onto the desk; or, in the same circle of light, with his head resting on his arms; or he lies, a mound in the bed.
For Christ’s sake, Lorna, Randal said. Are you suggesting that Ewan deliberately arranges himself in one of these tableaux whenever he hears you coming upstairs? OK, I said. Let’s leave it. I was trying for humour. You are, Randal said. I am what? When I come to the house you are, let’s say, by the stove, by the sink, or getting stuff out of the washing machine. Thanks, I said. I’m doing all this on my own, don’t forget. I always was, even when we lived together. When I came into the front room you were sitting on the sofa sanding the hard skin off your feet. It doesn’t prove anything beyond my failure to prick your sluggish conscience. I only did that once, Randal said. Just once and there was a good reason. I was about to run a half-marathon. Where’s your father when you go to see him on Saturday? In his chair, I replied. Exactly, Randal said. That’s just how people are; boring and predictable. We are copies of ourselves.
He did not convince me. There is more to language than words. Ewan could be saying something to me, though I have no idea what.