Harry and Mother put down their knives and forks.
‘Even I can’t eat any more,’ she said.
‘Nor me.’
He asked for the bill.
*
He parked outside the house and walked her to the door.
She made her milky tea. With a plate of chocolate biscuits beside her, she took her seat in front of the television.
The television was talking at her. She would sit there until bedtime.
He kissed her.
‘Goodbye, dear.’ She dipped her biscuit in her tea. ‘Thank you for a lovely day.’
‘What are you going to do now? Nothing?’
‘Have a little rest. It’s not much of a life, is it?’
He noticed a travel agent’s brochure on the table.
He said, ‘I’ll send you a cheque, shall I, for the Venice trip?’
‘That would be lovely.’
‘When will you be going?’
‘As soon as possible. There’s nothing to keep me here.’
*
While Heather was at home, Alexandra rang, but Harry didn’t say she was there. It was part of what a man sometimes did, he thought, to be a buffer between the children and their mother.
In the morning, before she left, Heather said she wanted him to listen to a poem she had written.
He listened, trying not to weep. He could hear the love in it.
Heather had come to cheer him up, to make him feel that his love worked, that it could make her feel better.
*
After Alexandra had rung from the beach, Harry rang Gerald and told him about the ‘imaging’, about the ‘visualisation’, the ‘healing’, the whole thing. Gerald, convalescing, took his call.
‘I used to know a psychoanalyst,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ve always fancied talking about myself for a long time to someone. But it’s not what the chaps do. It’s good business, though, people buying into their own pasts — if Alexandra can think like that. Before, women wanted to be nurses. Now, they want to be therapists.’
‘It’s harmless, you’re saying.’
Gerald said, ‘And sometimes useful.’ He laughed. ‘Turning dreams into money for all of you, almost literally.’
Gerald imagined it was almost the only way that Harry could grasp what Alexandra was doing.
But it wasn’t true.
*
Harry drove around the old places after leaving Mother. He wanted to buy a notebook and return to write down the thoughts his memories inspired. Maybe he would do it tonight, his last evening alone, using different-coloured markers.
It started to rain. He thought of himself on the street in the rain as a teenager, hanging around outside chip shops and pubs — not bored, that would underestimate what he felt, but unable to spit out or swallow the amount of experience coming at him.
It had been a good day.
Walking along a row of shops he remembered from forty years ago, he recalled a remark of some philosopher that he had never let go. The gist of it was: happiness is wanting one thing. The thing was love, if that was not too pallid a word. Passion, or wanting someone, might be better. In the end, all that would remain of one’s years would be the quality of one’s link with others, of how far one had gone with them.
Harry turned the car and headed away from his childhood. He had to go to the supermarket. He would buy flowers, cakes, champagne and whatever attracted his attention. He would attempt to tidy the house; he would work in the garden, clearing the leaves. He would do the thing he dreaded: sit down alone and think.
The next morning, he would pick up Alexandra at the airport, and if the weather was good they would eat and talk in the garden. She would be healthy, tanned and full of ideas.
He had to phone Heather to check whether she was all right. It occurred to him to write to her. If he knew little of her day-to-day life, she knew practically nothing of him, his past and what he did most of the time. Parents wanted to know everything of their children, but withheld themselves.
He thought of Father under the earth, and of Mother watching television; he thought of Alexandra and his children. He was happy.
Straight
For days he had been fearful of this night but wanted to believe he was ready.
However, when he arrived at the party, bearing a bottle of champagne, he started to feel afraid that people would notice, that they would be able to tell right away what had happened to him, and how he had changed. He wondered whether his friends would think badly of him. He considered who would be hostile, who envious and who sympathetic.
His friends were modernising the house. The floorboards were still bare and some walls unpainted. Wires hung from their sockets; tinsel hung from the wires. The hostess hurried past, wearing antlers. The host, bearing a tray of mince pies, either didn’t recognise Brett or took him for granted.
Brett sidled in, shocked that his paranoia hadn’t diminished with age, even as his reasonable side told him how unlikely it was that anyone would be in any state to take a close interest in him.
‘Brett, Brett!’ someone shouted.
‘Hallo there!’ he replied. ‘Whoever you are!’
He had deliberately left it late; the room was crowded. He knew most of the revellers, who were of his age. Now he was able to think about it, he had known some of them for more than twenty years.
He kissed and greeted those near by and went into the kitchen. These were well-off people; they would give a good party. The trestle table was bent with the weight of bottles, cans and food. He added the champagne to the load and looked around.
He wasn’t about to drink lemonade. Someone put a glass of wine in his hand. It was a good idea, the perfect cover.
Recently he had been going to the theatre and cinema, and had stayed to the end; he had read at least three books all the way through. This was the first party he’d been to since the incident by the river, as he called it. He had made up his mind to stay a while. There were things it would do him good to look straight at.
He returned to the living room. To his relief, a sombre male friend joined him and began to talk. From where Brett sat, occasionally asking a question, he could observe the other people.
He watched a man trying to zip up his top. The zip stuck; it wouldn’t budge. The man pulled it apart and began again. He couldn’t get the serrated edges together, and when they did click, they wouldn’t move. This went on for some time. Finally the man took the thing off, joined the parts together on his lap and tried to pull it over his head, where it lodged. Others joined in then, tugging the garment and the man in different directions.
Brett was distracted from this by a wet-eyed acquaintance who was dribbling already; his head was bent. Walking like an old man, he looked as though he might collapse. Another friend pulled Brett up, stood close to him, and shouted in first one ear and then the other. When it was obvious that Brett didn’t understand, the friend brought a companion over and together they yelled at Brett, or, it seemed, yelled into him, laughing at one another.
Brett was nodding his head. ‘I see, I see now.’
‘That’s it!’ said the first friend. ‘Brett is with us! Hello, Brett!’
Brett didn’t know why they had to stand so near, or why they kept plucking at him. The only thing to do was to have a drink. That was the key to things here; then he would understand. But he couldn’t have a drink.
Luckily, Francine fell into the sofa on the other side of him.
‘There you are, Brett darling. Thank God you’re here. Some of these bloody people are boring fuckers!’
‘Are they?’