‘No, indeed.’ I stared at the smiling mouth and the tired eyes. I found myself hoping it had been a really happy day, that last outing with her beloved child. I glanced around for newspaper pictures of the story. Even after all he’d said, I was surprised there weren’t any. ‘And there was no coverage at all? I still don’t understand how you kept it out of the papers completely. Even the local ones?’
He looked uncomfortable. ‘There were a few squibs, but not much.’
‘I couldn’t find anything on Google. There was really nothing about her at all, once you’d separated.’
Kieran knew why. ‘She used my real name after the divorce. That was the name on everything in her bag when they found her. I managed to stop them making the connection.’ He hesitated. ‘You can read the coverage if you punch in Joanna Futtock.’
‘Futtock?’ I was so glad to know that I could still find something funny.
He looked rather sheepish. ‘Why do you think I never gave up “de Yong”?’
‘I did wonder. What was your mother’s maiden name?’
‘Cock.’ He gave a despairing sigh. ‘I ask you.’
‘Some people have all the luck,’ I said. Then we both did laugh.
I’d started to look round the other walls of this little star chamber. There were pictures of Joanna with Kieran, a young Kieran with his awful blond mop and an apparently endless supply of the ugliest clothes in the world. Then grown-up Kieran; Kieran successful; Kieran shaking hands with presidents and kings; even Kieran in better and better suits. And alongside Kieran, everywhere you looked, there were more and more pictures of the boy. Malcolm in the school photograph from pre-prep; Malcolm swimming; Malcolm on a bicycle; Malcolm on a horse; Malcolm the public schoolboy, with both parents, one on either side of the sulking child, resisting his role at some Speech Day celebration. Malcolm skiing; Malcolm at university; Malcolm graduating with a very serious face; Malcolm backpacking. ‘What’s he up to now?’ I asked.
Kieran was silent for a second, then he spoke in as pleasant a manner as he could manage. ‘He’s dead, too.’
‘What?’ I did not know the boy at all and the father only slightly, but I felt as if I were being pistol-whipped.
‘Nothing bad. Not like his mother.’ This time I could see his eyes filling, even while he remained in admirable control of his voice. ‘He was perfectly well, twenty-three, just starting at Warburg’s and he couldn’t shake off a bout of flu, so we thought he should be looked at.’ He stopped to breathe, back in that terrible moment. ‘I took him to hospital for some tests and he was dead seven weeks later.’ He rubbed his nose swiftly with his left hand, trying unsuccessfully to push back the tears. He talked on, more to steady himself than to give me any information. ‘And that was it, really. I didn’t quite take in what had happened. Not at first. Not for a while. A few years afterwards I even married again.’ He shook his head at life’s absurdity. ‘Of course, it was ridiculous and it didn’t last long. I made a mistake, you see.’ He looked back at me. ‘I thought I could still go on living. Anyway,’ he sighed, as if this at least was understood between us, ‘after I’d got rid of Jeanne I sold the houses and everything else, and came here. I did bring a lot of stuff with me, as you can see. I hadn’t signed off completely.’
‘How do you spend your time?’
‘Oh.’ He thought for a second, as if this was rather a curious query and difficult to answer. ‘I’ve still got quite a lot of things on the boil and I take a bit of interest in financing research, into cancer, mainly. I’d like to think that it might help to prevent it happening to someone else. And I do worry about education these days, or rather the lack of it. If I’d been born now, I’d have ended up pulling pints in a bar in Chelmsford. I mind about those kids who’ll never have a chance, the way things are.’ He seemed pleased to think about these issues and glad of his role in them. Which he deserved to be. ‘Apart from that I read. I watch a lot of television and I enjoy it, which nobody admits to. You see,’ he tried to smile but gave up, ‘the thing is, when your only child is dead, you’re dead.’ He paused as if to mark the rightness of this sentence to himself. ‘Your life is finished. You’re not a parent any more. You’re nothing. It’s over. You’re just waiting for your body to catch up with your soul.’
He stopped talking and we just stood there in that holy place of love. Kieran was weeping quite openly by this stage, with tears coursing down his cheeks, leaving a dark trail of water marks on his expensive lapels, and I freely confess that I was, too. We didn’t say anything more and for a few minutes we didn’t even move. It would have been a strange sight if anyone had interrupted us. Two rather overweight men in late middle age, standing motionless in their Savile Row suits, crying.
Terry
ELEVEN
Not very surprisingly, after an evening like that I decided I needed some air. Kieran offered to get his driver to take me home but I wanted to walk, just for a bit, and he didn’t insist. So we shook hands in that funny English way, as if we hadn’t been through an emotional trauma together, as though the whole thing hadn’t really happened and the stains of our tears had some other, more banal and more acceptable explanation. We made the usual murmurings about meeting again, which one always says. Unusually, I rather hope it will happen, but I expect not. After that I set off down the Embankment.
It was a long walk home and quite cold, but it did not seem so. I strolled along, both reliving and then laying to rest my memories of Joanna. I was glad to have had a chance to revalue Kieran, even while I knew he was far beyond help, and I felt that I had been allowed to look into a soul that was worth looking into. Filled with these melancholy thoughts, I had just turned off Gloucester Road into Hereford Square when there was a scream, then laughter, then shouting, then the sound of someone being sick. I wish I could write that I was astonished to hear what sounded like a large Indian takeaway being splashily deposited on to the pavement, but these days it would require a Martian, and one only recently arrived from outer space, to be surprised at these charming goings-on. A group of young men and women in their early twenties, I would guess, were loitering on the corner of the square, perhaps recent refugees from the Hereford Arms on the other side of the road, perhaps not. One woman, in a short leather skirt and trainers, was throwing up and another, with suspiciously black hair, was tending to her. The rest just stood around, waiting for the next act in their evening’s entertainment. Foolishly, I paused to study them. ‘Got a problem?’ said a man with a shaved head and a whole array of piercings down the edge of his right ear. I wondered the weight didn’t throw him off balance.