‘This is his house, after all,’ I point out. ‘He is entitled to come.’
I live about two miles away and visit every couple of days. It’s a duty I perform at the request of my mother, Angelica’s younger sister. (‘I’m so sorry to put this onto you, David, but I really need you to do it for me. Angelica needs a lot of support, but for all kinds of reasons to do with our childhood relationship – don’t worry, darling, I won’t bore you with it now! – I’m just not up to taking it on.’)
‘He might be entitled to come here in a legal sense,’ Aunt Angelica says. ‘But that’s entirely beside the point. Why does he need to come, that’s what I want to know?’
As in the rest of the building, there’s a faint whiff of decay in Angelica’s flat. She adds considerably to the general dinginess by keeping the curtains drawn and the windows firmly closed, but it’s all very genteel. There’s a three-piece suite in a slightly threadbare floral print, a dresser with a dinner set on display, and a china shepherdess on the mantelpiece above the small gas fire.
‘He must know how much it upsets me,’ she says. ‘And it unsettles the others too, particularly that poor old Doug who of course he should never have taken on in the first place.’
Angelica sees herself, among other things, as Doug’s protector. He comes up to her flat quite often, and she meets him at her door to dispense handfuls of coins as grandly as if she was the lady of the manor and he was some kind of grateful peasant. But as far as I’ve been able to gather, neither Doug nor the other two tenants are troubled in any way by their landlord’s visits. Quite the contrary, in fact: James enjoys the contact with another educated man, Sheila thinks he’s ‘lovely’ and ‘a perfect gent’, and, perhaps because of his institutional background, Doug is quite obsessed with him, to the point where much of his conversation seems to revolve around what the Doctor said last time, what he said in reply, and what he’s going to say to the Doctor when he visits next. None of this, however, is of any interest to Angelica.
‘There’s no real reason for him to come,’ she insists. ‘It’s not as if he works in this town any more.’
Like her eyes, her mouth is very large in comparison to her tiny face and frame and is tremendously expressive in an almost cartoon-like way.
‘And in any case,’ she adds quickly, before I can point out that in fact he does still have academic commitments down here, even if he is based in Scotland, ‘there are such things as hotels, and the man is absolutely made of money. I really don’t see why I should endure this, year after year after year!’
Anxiety eats at her constantly, and almost literally so, for it’s anxiety that burns up the calories and makes her so painfully thin. But Aunt Angelica is much too proud to ever speak of fear, and so she talks instead about irritation and displeasure, about feelings trampled, and rights infringed.
‘You don’t have to see him, though, Aunty,’ I point out. ‘He’ll stay downstairs. He won’t call on you. Remember we agreed that with him? He won’t disturb you in any way.’
My aunt lowers her cup, her large eyes bright, her large lips curling in patrician scorn.
‘He won’t call on me, you say? Oh really, is that so? Honestly, David, how can I be expected to believe that, in view of the history? Have you forgotten that he once came right up here – right up! – expecting to be invited in?’
‘Yes he did, but that was five years ago. And I spoke to him afterwards, if you remember. I explained to him that you didn’t like it, and that you wanted to be left alone. If you recall, he was very apologetic. He told me that he was just trying to be friendly, as he is with his other three tenants, and he hadn’t understood how you felt. And, as you know, he promised faithfully he’d never do it again.’
‘“Oh Angelica! Angelica!”’ Angelica distorts her whole face as she mocks Dr Hodgson’s soft voice, making it sound not just mild and tentative, as it certainly is in reality, but weak and wheedling too. ‘“I wondered if I might pop in for a chat?” And it was three years ago, anyway. Get your facts right, David. Three years, nine months and twenty days, to be exact.’
‘Okay, three years then, Aunt Angelica. That’s still a long time. And that was all he said. He didn’t come into the flat. He didn’t ask anything of you. And when you told him to go, he went. It’s just that he owns the house, and he thought it was a shame that you and he couldn’t be on friendly terms as you used to be. It’s not as if—’
‘It’s not as if what? It’s not as if he ever returned my feelings? Is that what you’re going to say? That it was all in my head? Ha! Some chance, David! Some chance! By all means believe that if it makes you happy, but he and I both know that’s a lie, even if he’s not man enough to admit it! That man was positively slavering over me, David, positively slavering! But he’s had his chance, and he’s not getting another.’
Angelica laughs grimly.
‘And then of course there was that time I heard him shouting. Do you remember? Shouting and crying down there, late at night, all by himself.’
‘He apologised for that too, if you remember. You asked me to speak to him and he apologised. He’s only human, Aunt Angelica. Life is hard for him as it is for most of us. He was upset with himself about something and he started shouting. It wasn’t aimed at you. It was about something else entirely.’
‘Or so he says, anyway. Or so he says. I’m not quite so trusting as you are, David, I’m afraid. Not so trusting at all. But who cares anyway? I don’t want him here, and there’s an end to it. If he’s really got business in this town, which I very much doubt, why can’t he just stay in a hotel?’
‘But like I keep saying, it’s his house. If you really don’t want anything to do with him, you could move somewhere else yourself, but you’ve always—’
‘You’re always nagging me to move, aren’t you? Somewhere cheaper, perhaps, is that the idea? So I won’t use up your inheritance?’
This is a preposterous charge. There’s absolutely no chance of her finding anything cheaper than her present flat, whose rent hasn’t increased for a decade, but there’s no point in my saying that, so I keep quiet.
‘This may be his house,’ Angelica adds, ‘but it’s my home.’ She must know that the thing about my inheritance is nonsense. She has very little money, and will have none before she’s through. ‘Why should I move out because of him?’
When I next visit, Angelica is fretful.
‘When will he arrive? You must tell me, David. I must know in advance, so I can be quite sure I won’t have anything whatever to do with him.’
She gives a characteristic sniff, contemptuous and haughty. My aunt seldom ventures beyond the door of her flat, but she acts like the queen of the world.
‘Not that I won’t know anyway,’ she adds. ‘You are your mother’s son, David, completely rhinocerosskinned, and you don’t have my sensitivity at all. But I can feel things, and I always sense his presence through the floor. The weight of him plodding around, and those big slow clunky thoughts going round and round in his head!’
‘Listen, Angelica. Listen. You mustn’t distress yourself, but he—’
‘He’s what? He’s what? Oh dear God, David, you’re not telling me he’s here already?’
‘Yes, he arrived when—’
‘He’s here and you didn’t tell me! How could you! How could—’
She breaks off. She is so transparent. It’s just occurred to her that, if she admits to not knowing he’s here already, she’ll be undermining her own claim to be able to detect his presence and sense his thoughts.