He said to Yaffa, “You and Mum… the same book discussion group, is it?”
She blushed more deeply. “Not exactly,” she admitted. “I work in the bookshop. I make recommendations to the group. Your mum and I… we were talking… I mean, the way people do, you know.”
Oh how he knew. And above all the things he knew was the fact that he knew exactly how Susanna Benjamin operated. He could picture the conversation: the sly questions and the trusting replies. He wondered how old the poor girl was and whether his mother had managed to work her fertility into the equation.
He said, “I wager you didn’t expect to find she even had a son.”
“She didn’t say. Only now things’re a bit difficult because— ”
“Zed, darling,” his mother sang out from the kitchen. “Darjeeling’s fine? Tea cake as well? What about a scone, dear? Yaffa, you’ll have more tea, yes? You young people will want to chat, I know.”
That was exactly what Zed didn’t want. What he wanted was time to think and to weigh the pros and cons of going into debt to take himself up to Cumbria for the time needed to sex up his story. And when in Cumbria, if he actually went there, he was going to have to determine exactly what constituted the sex: the zing, the snap, the whatever it was supposed to be to excite the readers of The Source, who, it was highly probable, had the collective intelligence of gravestones. How to excite a gravestone? Give it a corpse. Zed chuckled inwardly at the extended metaphor. He was only glad he hadn’t used it in conversation with Rodney Aronson.
“Here we are, my dears!” Susanna Benjamin rejoined them, bearing a tray of fresh tea, scones, butter, and jam. “My Zedekiah’s a big boy, isn’t he, Yaffa? I don’t know where he got his height. What is it, exactly, dear heart?” This last to Zed. He was six feet eight inches tall and his mother knew that as well as she knew where the height came from, which was his paternal grandfather, who’d been only three inches shorter. When he didn’t reply, she went blithely on with, “And what feet he has. Look at those feet, Yaffa. And hands the size of rugby balls. And you know what they say…” She winked. “Milk and sugar, Zedekiah? You want both, yes?” And to Yaffa, “Two years on the kibbutz, he was, this son of mine. Then two years in the army.”
“Mum,” Zed said.
“Oh, don’t be so bashful.” She poured more tea into Yaffa’s cup. “The Israeli army, Yaffa. What do you think of that? He likes to hide everything. Such a humble boy. He’s always been that way. Yaffa’s like that, too, Zedekiah. Every bit of information must be dragged out of the girl. Born in Tel Aviv, father a surgeon, two brothers working in cancer research, mother a clothing designer, my boy. Clothing designer! Isn’t that wonderful? Of course, I couldn’t afford a single thing she designs because her clothes are sold in… What did you call them, Yaffa dear?”
“Boutiques,” Yaffa said, although she’d gone so red in the face that Zed feared a stroke or seizure was in the offing.
“Knightsbridge, Zed,” his mother intoned. “Just think of it. She designs all the way in Israel, and the clothing comes here.”
Zed sought a way to interrupt the flow, so he said to Yaffa, “What brought you to London?”
“Studies!” Susanna Benjamin replied. “She’s going to university here. Science, Zedekiah. Biology.”
“Chemistry,” Yaffa said.
“Chemistry, biology, geology… it’s all the same because think of the brain in this sweet head of hers, Zed. And isn’t she pretty? Have you ever seen a prettier little thing than our Yaffa sitting here?”
“Not recently,” Zed said with a meaningful look at his mother. He added, “It’s been at least six weeks,” in the hope that the sheer embarrassment of having her intentions brought out into the open would force her to wind down.
That was not to be. Susanna added, “He likes to make fun of his mother, Yaffa. He’s a tease, my Zedekiah. You’ll get used to that.”
Used to that? Zed cast a look at Yaffa, who was shifting uneasily in her chair. This told him there was more to be revealed and his mother revealed it forthwith.
“Yaffa’s taking your sister’s old bedroom,” Susanna said to her son. “She’s come to look at it and she’s said it’s just what she needs now she’s having to move from her other lodgings. Won’t it be lovely to have another young face in the flat? She’ll be joining us tomorrow. And you must tell me what you like for breakfast, Yaffa. Starting the day out with a proper meal is going to help you with your studies. It did for Zedekiah, didn’t it, Zed? First-class degree in literature, my son. Did I tell you he writes poetry, Yaffa? Something tells me he’s likely to write a poem about you.”
Zed stood abruptly. He’d forgotten he had his teacup in hand, and the Darjeeling sloshed out. Thankfully, most of it went onto his shoes, saving his mother’s carpet. But he would have liked to dump it onto her neatly coifed grey head.
His final decision was as instantaneous as it was necessary. He said, “I’m off to Cumbria, Mum.”
She blinked. “Cumbria? But didn’t you just— ”
“More to the story and I’ve got to go after it. Very time-sensitive as things turn out.”
“But when are you leaving?”
“Soon as I pack my bag.”
Which, he decided, ought to take him five minutes or less.
EN ROUTE TO
CUMBRIA
The fact that he wanted and needed to leave posthaste before his mother built the chuppah right in the lounge forced Zed to catch a train that would get him to Cumbria by a most circuitous route. That couldn’t be helped. Once he packed his bag and tucked his laptop into its case, he was gone, effectuating a very clean getaway. The bus; the Tube; Euston Station; slapping down a credit card to pay for his ticket, four sandwiches, a copy of The Economist, The Times, and the Guardian; wondering how long it was going to take him to find something— anything— to sex up his story; wondering even more how long it was going to take him to break his mother of bringing women in off the street like his procurer… By the time he was able to board the train, he was ready for the distraction of work. He opened up his laptop and as the train left the station, he began to search through his notes, which he’d meticulously recorded during every interview, which he’d meticulously typed into the laptop every night. He also had with him a set of handwritten notes. He would check those as well. For there had to be something, and he would find it.
He reviewed the subject of his story first: Nicholas Fairclough, thirty-two years old, the formerly dissolute son of Bernard Fairclough, first Baron of Ireleth in the county of Cumbria. Born into wealth and privilege— there was that silver spoon— he’d squandered throughout his youth the good fortune that he’d been handed by Fate. He was a man graced with the face of an angel but in possession of the inclinations of Lot’s next-door neighbour. A series of rehabilitation programmes had seen him as an unwilling participant from his fourteenth year onward. They read like a travelogue as progressively more exotic— and remote— locations were chosen by his parents in an attempt to entice him into healthy living. When he wasn’t taking the cure somewhere, he was using his father’s money to travel in a life-owes-me-a-living style that led him time and again directly back into addiction. Everyone threw in the towel on the bloke, after wiping their washed hands upon it. Father, mother, sisters, even a cousin cum brother had—
Now that was something he hadn’t thought about, Zed realised. The cousin-cum-brother angle. It had seemed a nonstory, and Nicholas himself had certainly emphasized that during interviews, but there was a chance that Zed might have missed something he could now use… He flipped through his notebook first and found the name: Ian Cresswell, employed by Fairclough Industries in a position of some quite serious responsibility, first cousin to Nicholas, eight years older, born in Kenya but come to England in late childhood to be a resident in the Fairclough home… Now that was something, wasn’t it, something that could be moulded somehow?