Authors: David Nobbs
‘Honestly?’ asked Charlotte.
‘Honestly.’
She smiled again. This smile looked a little more natural, as if she was beginning to remember how to do it. Her teeth looked reassuring. He realised that when he had last seen them they had had braces on them. James felt – it seemed inexplicable at this moment – a sense of optimism. If it was too strong to call it a moment of hope, it was at least a moment when hope was a possibility, when there could be hope of hope.
‘I want to see you again,’ he said. ‘I want to see you again very soon. Max doesn’t go back till Tuesday week. He’d love to see you properly.’
‘I’d like to see him.’
He was pleased to hear this, but he noted that she had not echoed his use of ‘love’. He ought to go slowly.
He couldn’t go slowly. He wasn’t that sort of man.
‘Darling … oh, Charlotte. Oh, Charlotte … what made you leave us? Can you tell me?’
Chuck frowned. James sensed that all the colour would have drained out of Charlotte’s face, if there had been any colour there.
Chuck put his arm round Charlotte’s tiny waist. James could see that he had to do it very gently, so as not to crush her. She was so thin.
‘It’s all right, Chuck,’ she said. ‘I saw you in Porthcawl, Dad.’
James reeled.
‘Porthcawl?’
‘With that woman. On the beach.’
James was too astonished to feel shame.
‘In the sea.’
‘Oh, God.’ James had a vision of Charlotte in all her youthful innocence. Oh, God. ‘Were you one of those children building sandcastles?’
Charlotte gave a much more adult smile.
‘Not quite. I was fifteen.’
‘Well, what
were
you doing in Porthcawl?’
‘What were
you
doing in Porthcawl?’
‘I was on business.’
‘It didn’t look like business.’
James sighed.
‘She’s called Helen. She was the only person I was ever unfaithful to your mother with. We … I’ve known her for five years. I broke it off this week. Oh, Charlotte, I’m sorry.’
Charlotte shrugged. It wasn’t a nice shrug. There was a long way to go.
‘But what
were
you doing in Porthcawl?’
Charlotte smiled, and, like the shrug, it wasn’t very nice.
‘The father lived there.’
James felt as if there was no air left on that hot afternoon. He had the greatest difficulty continuing to breathe. Slowly the shock subsided. Chuck caught his eye, and gave a sympathetic wince. He raised his great eyebrows at Chuck, asking the question. Chuck shook his head emphatically and looked shocked.
‘I was three months pregnant, Dad, and neither you nor Mum noticed. You didn’t really care, did you?’
‘Charlotte!’
‘Oh, you did, but you didn’t. You know what I mean. Your fucking packaging. Mum’s fucking gallery. Your fucking friends. Mum’s fucking golden girls. Mum’s fucking bridge. Your fucking meals. Your fucking claret that you sniffed like a dirty old man. Our fucking holidays with all that fucking sightseeing.’
Chuck winced at each swear word. James didn’t mind the swear words. He winced at each truth.
‘That’s how I saw it, Dad. I was fifteen and horrid. I still am.’
‘Horrid?’
‘Fifteen. I couldn’t talk to you. You hadn’t even noticed I wasn’t still a little girl.’
‘Oh, Charlotte. This is … this is … What happened … to the …?’
‘I had an abortion. I so wish I hadn’t. I so wish I hadn’t, Dad.’
Charlotte met his gaze, defiantly.
‘Well, that’s it. That’s it. That’s your precious little daughter.’
All the care Helen and I took within thirty miles of the house, within thirty miles of Guildford, within thirty miles of all the places that might trap us, and we got caught out in bloody Porthcawl.
James looked round. The last mourners were drifting away, and the last mourners for the next funeral were drifting in. Soon they would be alone, in the sunshine.
‘I ought to go,’ he said. ‘I have a houseful of mourners to contend with. My fucking friends, Charlotte, and their fucking friends. Oh, God, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave you now I’ve found you. I won’t go. Let’s go and have a drink. Who cares about them? I’m one cool dude, after all.’
He met Chuck’s eyes and they almost shared a smile.
‘You gotta go,’ said Chuck. ‘We’ll see you again, now we’ve seen you, won’t we, Charlie?’
Charlotte nodded.
‘OK. But …’ Should he say it? He wanted to, but did he mean it? He had to say it, and say it now, for fear that later he wouldn’t mean it.
‘Would you consider coming to live with me?’
They looked at him in astonishment.
‘Both of you, of course.’
They looked speechless.
‘Don’t answer. It’s far too soon.’
‘Are you serious?’ asked Chuck.
‘Utterly. I wouldn’t ask it otherwise. My offer. My promise. No questions about Chuck’s past. No questions about Charlotte’s missing years. No snide remarks about tattoos or rings through noses. You can eat with me when you want or on your own when you want or not at all though I don’t recommend it.’ He gave them a stern look. A serious tone entered his voice. ‘Now. Your promise. Well, two promises. The first is for both of you. No drugs in the house at all. I know what drugs do. I don’t want you to have any anywhere. I probably can’t stop you outside but I can in the house, and, believe me, I will. Break that rule, and you’re out. The second rule is for you only, Chuck.’
James looked very stern. Chuck looked slightly anxious.
‘What’s coming?’
‘Never call her Charlie. Her name’s Charlotte. She’s a beautiful girl. She’s my beautiful daughter, and she has a beautiful name.’ He had hoped to finish the sentence without emotion, as a cool dude would, but his voice gasped into tears, and he turned away, sobbing.
As he walked away, he raised one hand in farewell. He didn’t turn round.
He walked briskly, glad of the exercise, the physical activity releasing at least some of his tension. He couldn’t believe what he had just offered. Not that he regretted it. He was shaken as he thought of how his life might be disrupted. Shaken but not frightened. He felt that he would be able to rise to the challenge. He felt a little flicker of optimism again, a feeling that he was going to be able to make a new start, a feeling that he might at last, rather late in the day, be able to fulfil the full obligations of fatherhood.
He had passed through the gates of the crematorium now. A taxi passed him, and he didn’t hail it. Another one was coming. He didn’t hail that one either. He didn’t want to go to the wake. He didn’t think he could face all those people today.
He had to. Whoever heard of a widower not attending his wife’s wake? His three great worries had been about his eulogy, about Helen and about Charlotte. He had nothing left to fear.
All over the house people would be wondering where he was. And they were all his friends, there to comfort him, there to share what at last he had recognised as his grief.
He looked round for a taxi, but now, when he needed one, there were none to be seen. He began to feel desperate. He began to want to run. He began to break out into a sweat. He needed to get home.
At last a taxi appeared.
At the house, only two people noticed that he wasn’t there. Dwight Schenkman the Third wanted to drown him in long sentences of sympathy and admiration. Marcia wanted to offer him her body without actually saying so. But otherwise, those crowded into the living room might have thought he was among those who had slid inexorably into the kitchen, as certain people always do at gatherings, there to linger in what they thought of as the heartbeat of the house. And the people in the kitchen, grabbing the canapés before anyone else, might have thought he was among those spilling out into the elegant little garden. The caterers were dispensing drinks and canapés very efficiently, people were huddling among their own kind. Some of them would continue to huddle, others, as the drink began to ease their tension, would start to circulate and introduce themselves to people they didn’t know. Everything was exactly as it would have been if James had arrived.
The man who today was not wearing a white linen suit was listening as Gordon Tollington described in every detail the tasting menu at the Fat Duck. He omitted no herb, he ignored no spice. His listener felt so full just listening that he waved away the offer of a smoked salmon blini. But he was listening with only half his mind. The other half was busy trying to remember where he had seen a particular woman before. She was middle-aged, vaguely shabbily dressed, shapeless and charmless rather than ugly. He felt that she had the aura of a woman who had never gone to bed with a man. She was in among the Harcourts standing at the far end of the narrow garden, beside a statue of Pan that Deborah had been unable to resist in Winchester, and she was staring at him, which was disturbing. He really did feel vaguely alarmed, and all the more worried because the feeling was so vague. He associated her with an unappetising smell of overcooked meat. The remembered or imagined smell of the meat was all the more unpleasant when compared with the delights still being described so eloquently by Gordon Tollington.
It was when she turned to smile at somebody – insincerely, it seemed to him – that he saw her double chin and remembered. When he had last seen it there had been a splodge of tiramisu upon it, in a hotel restaurant near Diss. He had noticed what a sloppy eater she was. He disliked sloppy eaters.
She was walking towards him. She had a strange smile on her face. There was no humour in the smile. He felt a stab of fear.
‘Excuse me, Gordon,’ he said. ‘Fantastic, amazing stuff, beautifully described, I almost feel as if I don’t need to go there now, but I just have to speak to this lady. Sorry about this, I’ll catch you later, I’d love to hear about the puddings.’
‘No problem. They’re worth hearing about, I can assure you.’
He turned away from Gordon and faced the woman. He felt an irrational dislike of her, her slightly plump face, her baggy body. This feeling made him uneasy. He was a civilised man, a quietly generous man. He didn’t have irrational dislikes.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘It is what?’
‘You are … him.’
He wasn’t going to make it easy for her.
‘Well, yes, I’m me, if that’s what you mean.’
Nothing pleasant could come out of this.
‘No, I mean, it’s you. You are who I think you are.’
‘Madam, how can I have any idea who you think I am?’
‘You’re the man I saw in that hotel, near Diss.’
‘I was in a hotel near Diss, yes, and I remember you now. You had a blob of tiramisu on your chin.’
She flushed slightly.
‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘I was …’ A strange expression flitted across her face like the shadow of a bird. ‘I was lunching with my friend.’
She spoke the word ‘friend’ rather coyly, and he realised that he had been wrong in thinking that her bitterness was in part because she had never been to bed with a man. It was because she had never been to bed with a woman.
‘I had the impression you were waiting for somebody,’ she said.
‘Oh?’
‘I wondered if it could have been a woman.’
‘Don’t you think that’s my business?’
‘Well, I just wondered if it might have been Deborah. It was on the road close to the hotel, and on that very morning, that she had her crash. It occurred to me, when I heard about the accident, that you might have been waiting for her. But then, although I thought I recognised you, I couldn’t place you. Then today it all clicked. We met at Felicity and Dominic’s twentieth wedding anniversary party, in Guildford.’
He didn’t remember, but he decided to pretend that he did.
‘Yes. I didn’t like you then either.’
Unwise, he thought, as he walked abruptly away from her.
But it isn’t always possible to be wise.
James didn’t enter the house by the front door. He didn’t want anyone to witness his late arrival. He scurried along the path on the eastern side of the house, and drifted into the garden, hoping that he would look as if he had just drifted out of the house. He appeared to have been successful, and was soon mingling with the throng. At least forty people were standing around among the ferns and grasses and statues, most drinking wine, one or two beer, a few tea or coffee. Two smart young ladies were taking round trays of canapés. Already, the buzz of conversation was such that it was hard to believe that this was a funeral wake. The reception was going well. It was everything he had hoped it would be. Because he had missed that first half-hour – the thawing solemnity, the cautious return to some kind of normality after the service – its aura of good cheer stabbed him in the heart.
Dwight Schenkman the Third had spotted his late arrival, and now he and Claire tacked through the throng to greet him.
‘James, I have to say this to you,’ said Dwight. ‘You probably won’t welcome it. You English tend to shrink from praise, and you think we Americans overdo it.’
‘Not at all. Not at all.’
‘But I have to say it. You’ll have to take it on the chin. I have realised, these last few difficult days, what a man of integrity you are.’
‘Thank you, Dwight.’
‘We have to be going in a minute.’
Hurrah!
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘A man of rare integrity, James. I have so admired your commitment to your people in Bridgend and Kilmarnock.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I hope with all my heart that you will be able to come up with evidence that will enable me to pursue a policy which will give you gratification in this matter.’
Was he right to detect an underlying threat there? Was he right to find significance in the fact that Dwight had said ‘your people’ and not ‘our people’?
‘I hope so too.’
‘But enough of Globpack. Today is all about Deborah. We are going to miss her so much, James.’
‘So much.’
‘But we know that our grief, painful though it is, is but a trivial thing compared to the immensity of your grief. I want you to know that we are with you all the way, James.’