He fetched her a drink and said, ‘I’ll talk to Mum about it, if you want. She might be able to help fix you up with something else — people even better than us.’
‘Would you? Oh Master Gabriel, I’d be so grateful!’
This time she kissed him.
His parents were back late. As Gabriel worked, he could hear them murmuring in the kitchen below. He was intending to go down and talk to them, but their voices grew more raucous, with sudden hushes followed by mysterious lulls. Soon, the teacups in the cupboards started to rattle. The windows would be next; a love-storm was approaching.
Chapter Sixteen
Gabriel was deputed to accompany his father to his old room. Dad hadn’t been there for a few days. He’d been staying ‘at home’.
After they’d climbed the stairs and pushed the door, Dad stood there sniffing and looking contemptuously at the familiar detritus. He took a few steps.
‘I don’t even want to touch my own things. I’d just as soon leave them. Everything seems coated in grease. Mum wants me to keep this place in case things don’t work out between us. But I think they will. She seems to be into it, don’t you think?’
‘Yeah, I think so.’
Mum had, Gabriel knew, been out with George. He could tell that George had rung because of the speed with which she’d dressed and got out of the door. The night this happened Dad had rung from the other side of London, where he was working. Gabriel had said she was at work, but Dad had already tried there. Dad kept ringing, until Gabriel went to bed and put the answering machine on. She came home late but alone, and, when he crept to her door and looked through, she was staring at the ceiling miserably. That was the end, he guessed. He knew for certain it was over when she abandoned Italian and started to wonder whether it was too late for her to become a primary school teacher.
Now Dad said, ‘Even if things don’t work out and she asks me to leave again, I’ll never live in this room again. I’d sleep on the street or stay with a student, if it came to it. There were times in here,’ he sighed, ‘when I felt everything had been taken away and I had nothing to live for. That time after we’d been to Speedy’s, and I’d sold him the picture … It was an all-time low, in my opinion. I hope nothing like this ever happens to you, Angel. It certainly reduces a man.’
‘Yeah. Dad, let’s get started.’
‘Right.’
The first thing Dad did was remove the picture of the chair Gabriel had given him. Dad folded it up neatly and put it in his inside pocket.
‘Now,’ he said in a conspiratorial voice. ‘This is how we’re going to get the stuff out.’
‘Sorry?’
Dad explained that as he wasn’t quite up to date with the rent, and didn’t intend to be, they had to make an ‘alternative exit’.
They gathered everything up, took it downstairs and, while Gabriel acted as look-out, carried it out through the back door of the house in rubbish bags. They regained the street by a side entrance. The van, driven by the old pal of Dad’s who’d taken his possessions in the other direction, arrived just as someone came out and saw them.
They collected Dad’s other things from his friend’s garage. By the afternoon, his father’s clothes, guitars and other instruments, Grateful Dead posters and books were back home. Hannah was asked to help; she shed a tear as each object was returned to its old place. The house seemed crowded and Dad’s cheerfulness was tiring.
‘I’m glad to be back here and in charge of everything again.’ he declared, slapping Mum on the arse.
‘I’ve never liked being whacked like an old donkey.’
‘Come on, Fluffy,’ he said. ‘You’re not an old donkey, you’re my wife.’
‘Wife? We’re not married.’
‘I don’t think I’m ready.’
‘That’s right. Like most men you’re too immature.’
‘It’s only that you don’t have a sense of humour.’
‘That’s because you never say anything amusing.’
‘Christine, other people laugh at my jokes.’
‘Give me their names and addresses. They’re just being polite, Rex.’
‘Why would they be?’
‘To get away from you as soon as possible. Or they’re your students, fawning over you —’
‘That’s respect. Now, listen —’
She said, ‘I think I’m getting a migraine —’
As Gabriel went to the door and out into the street, he could hear their voices growing quieter and quieter behind him. This story of his parents was one he thought he might turn into a film, in the future. If only he didn’t have to live through it first.
He went to call on Zak, who said, ‘Hey, where have you been all this time? Come in, come in!’
Gabriel almost fell through the door. ‘It’s good to be here. Fuck, I should have come before.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Oh, God, I’ve had enormous parent stuff going on.’ sighed Gabriel.
Zak knew from experience what galling work this could be. Every time his parents went out, Zak feared they’d come back with more of what he called ‘steps’. He had stepsisters, stepbrothers and step-uncles all over London, as well as half, quarter and one-eighth brothers and sisters, the mementoes of repudiated parental passion. Sometimes he wondered who in their circle he wasn’t related to. His mother, for instance, had just had a baby with a friend of her husband’s, a man she no longer saw.
‘Explains everything,’ Zak said. ‘Wounded, eh? Me too.’
They picked their way through the house. The expensive furniture was at odd angles, and there was a goldfish bowl in the middle of the floor, as if the contents of the house had only that morning been brought in by the removal men.
‘Everything’s always upside-down when the feng shui guy’s visited,’ explained Zak. ‘I’m telling you, the parents have exploded.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Blown up! They’re only human beings anyway. They don’t know anything, the bastards.’
‘Mine are back together.’
‘In the same house? The same bed?’ Zak was looking at him in fascination. ‘How come? Are they doing it for you?’
‘Sorry? Did that happen to you?’
‘Course. My mother said, “If you didn’t exist I’d never have to talk to that madman, your father, ever again.”’
‘She married him.’
‘I did point that out,’ said Zak.
‘What did she say?’
‘That’s when the psychiatrist opened his door and asked me whether I’d had any interesting dreams and sexual fantasies and I told him the thing about the fish.’
‘I don’t know.’ said Gabriel. ‘Would you like your parents to live together?’
‘That’s unlikely now, with my dad a queen and all. The kids at school never stop going on about poofs.’
‘Yeah, it’s bad. Still, it’s worse to think that we’re going to turn out like our parents, don’t you think?’
‘I’ve never thought about that,’ said Zak. ‘Christ, that’s a hell to look forward to. Never marry, I say!’
‘Never marry!’
‘Just screw and work!’
‘Screw and work!’
Zak’s place was three times bigger than Gabriel’s, with a conservatory overlooking the garden. Gabriel fetched his easel and Zak worked on the script; they both liked the company. At last Gabriel told him that he’d received his first commission, painting Speedy. As Zak was intrigued, later that day Gabriel went home to his room, retrieved the painting of Speedy, and showed Zak what he’d done so far.
Zak stood back from the painting and announced, at last, that the picture was coming up a treat. Speedy looked like a pink poodle who’d won a prize. Gabriel should paint him with a rosette on his chest, or even on his fly.
Later, as Zak read Gabriel the latest version of the script and Gabriel made drawings and notes, a girl walked in, as girls do. Ramona was the sixteen-year-old friend of one of Zak’s ‘steps’. She looked as though she could have been one of Degas’s dancers. As Gabriel would never be able to address her sanely, he consulted Archie, his own agony aunt.