Authors: David Nobbs
‘All right.’
Charles ate more slowly with each passing year, and every mouthful of this was worth savouring. The carrots were bursting with flavour, the meat clung gelatinously to the bone, the sauce was rich and deep. The thought of five concerts in six days in Europe, planned by a madman, faded. And then, three days’ holiday in lovely, much-mocked Belgium, in Ghent, which was Bruges without the crowds, the reflections of the spires and gables shimmering on the canals, the choice of cold beers, the marvellous food, French quality, German quantity. His first break for four months. He could hardly wait. Poor Valerie. She didn’t really like cities. Poor Valerie, she found his long meals tedious. She was still itching to listen to their message. He chewed even more slowly, and he was going to have seconds.
It wasn’t that he was cruel, but this was his day, his space, his renewal.
Valerie didn’t understand.
Deborah would understand.
Sometimes – how James would laugh if he mentioned it – he envied his youngest brother.
Philip, the middle brother, was sitting outside the little wooden summer house in his pleasant garden on the outskirts of Leighton Buzzard, reading in the evening sunshine. He had taken his massage chair outside and was gently manipulating himself on it as he read. He was finding it hard to concentrate this evening, in this heat, and the book was hardly a page turner. It was a comparative study of acidity in the oceans.
The cordless phone sounded shrill and invasive in this suburban setting. It gave him quite a shock.
Not as great a shock as James’s news, though.
‘Deborah!’
‘I know.’
‘Of all people.’
‘Exactly.’
‘How?’
Philip listened to the story of the car crash in silence. Then he said, ‘Oh, James, I am so sorry. Bloody bastard young men with too much money. Bloody Jeremy Clarkson has a lot to answer for.’
‘Oh, Philip, that’s so unfair. That’s ridiculous. Why drag him in? Anyway, who cares? She’s dead, Philip.’
‘Shall I come over?’
‘This sounds awful, Philip, but … I don’t think I could cope … not tonight.’
‘No, no. No problem. Tomorrow, maybe. I’m supposed to be at work, but I can come any time if you’d like it.’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know, Philip.’
Philip said that he would ring in the morning about eight, before he set off, to see if James needed him.
‘Thanks.’
‘James?’
‘Yes?’
‘Love you.’
Who next? Mum? Oh, God. She’d blame him. I knew something like this would happen. You haven’t looked after her.
He went to the gin bottle, held it over his glass, thought of his mum listening for signs of thickening in his speech, sighed deeply, put it down again, and, on an impulse, phoned Deborah’s sister.
‘Fliss Parkington-Baines.’
‘Hello, Fliss, it’s James.’
‘Hello, James!!’ This in her two-exclamation-marks voice, as if she was really delighted to hear from him, as if there was nobody in the world she’d rather hear from, and perhaps there wasn’t, except the Queen, David Cameron and James Blunt.
Her good cheer didn’t make James’s task any easier.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got bad news, Fliss.’ Already the words were beginning to hang heavy, burdened by all the repetition that was to come. ‘Very bad news. Um …’ How could he say the monstrous words, cut through her good cheer, with Dominic in Indonesia on business as he suddenly remembered. He swallowed. ‘Deborah’s dead.’
‘No!’
It was a cry of pain from a wounded animal, a yell of protest from a middle-class sister, a scream of disbelief and yet of instant understanding.
He started telling her about the car crash, the driver of the Porsche, the fact that it had happened near Diss.
‘Diss? We don’t know anyone near Diss. Do you?’
It was as if she was clinging to the hope that, since the location was unbelievable, the whole story was untrue.
When he had finished his sad tale, Fliss asked if there was anything she could do, and he asked her if she could break the news to the Harcourt clan. She agreed, but reluctantly.
‘No, look, Fliss,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to, it’ll be very difficult, it was unfair to ask, I’ll do it.’
‘I’ll do it, James,’ she said grimly, through gritted teeth. ‘I said I’ll do it and I’ll do it.’
He groaned inwardly. Why did so many of their conversations end with gritted teeth?
‘Oh, dear,’ said Fliss. ‘Oh, dear. I think I’m going to cry.’
‘Do. Do, Fliss. I have.’
How many lies was he going to have to tell in the days ahead?
Mum. Mum next.
He looked at the gin bottle on the sideboard, but didn’t dare go near it.
His mother was shocked, very shocked. With every telling the irresponsibility of the driver of the Porsche grew slightly greater. With every telling the fact of Deborah’s having been near Diss grew more mysterious. When he had finished, she said, ‘I’m so sorry, James. First Philip and now this.’
Philip’s wife had died three years ago. James felt a spasm of irritation, swiftly quenched. It was natural for his mother to see it all from her point of view. That’s two sons who’ve put me through pain and suffering because I love them so much. It’ll be Charles next, you mark my words. Valerie’ll fall off a cliff path on one of their walks or something.
Sometimes James felt that he could see right into his mother’s subconscious.
‘I loved her, James,’ she said. ‘I hope you know that. Well, how could you not love her?’
He was already beginning to ask himself that question. Although he did, didn’t he, in his…
‘Am I interrupting a programme?’ he asked, hoping to find an excuse to ring off.
‘No. It’s all right. I’ve lost the thread. Another girl’s been strangled while we’ve been talking, but I won’t know who or why.’
They talked on for a bit, both of them coming slowly to terms with the enormity of what had happened, and then his mother suddenly came out with one of those devastating remarks of hers which showed that she was incapable of believing that her youngest son was not responsible to some extent for whatever had happened.
‘You had had her car properly serviced, hadn’t you?’ she asked.
‘You are going to ring him, aren’t you?’
Charles knew that to a certain extent it was his fault that Valerie was like this. He went away so much and she didn’t like travelling. She was quite pleased that he was famous but she had no desire to move in the world of celebrity.
‘I’m going to speak to him the moment I’ve finished this wine, which is bursting with hints of vanilla and raspberry and even, dare I say, a distant intimation of saffron?’
He took another sip. She gave the faintest sigh because his sip had been so small. He decided to speed up, without giving her the satisfaction of seeing that he was speeding up. But it would be cruel to tease her any more.
At last the glass was finished, and he went to the phone, and dialled James’s number.
‘Hello, James, it’s me. Got your message. What’s up? …’
Valerie saw Charles’s face go very serious. Suddenly she felt cold all over. She walked slowly towards him, as if by being closer to him she might divine what had happened.
‘No. Oh, James, James. How … Oh, my God … Oh, James … Diss? … No, nor do we … That’ll be it. Oh, James, this is so terrible.’
He turned towards Valerie and mouthed, ‘Deborah.’
‘I’d say I’d come over, James … oh, I do wish Surrey wasn’t the wrong side of London … but the awful thing is … well, I suppose death is never exactly convenient, but I’m off to Copenhagen first thing in the morning, I’ve got this ridiculous six-day tour, so here I am completely unable to even provide a shoulder to cry on … Well, the last concert’s Tuesday night in Dresden but then next Wednesday … no … no, nothing … Well, I was going to say that Valerie and I were going to have a couple of days in Ghent … Ghent. You know, where they took the bad news to from Aix … No, a long time ago, and in a poem, nothing to worry about. Look, I can get back Wednesday, so Thursday or Friday next week would be fine … It was only a couple of days, little chance to relax, it’s no big deal … Well it
is
actually a bigger shame that your wife has died. And James, have you been drinking? … Not slurring exactly, but I can tell … Don’t get upset, James, I’m saying it because I think you’d be sorry if you felt you hadn’t been dignified throughout … Yes, goodb … Wait a minute, Valerie’s waving.’
‘What is it?’ he whispered.
‘Ask him if I can do anything. Anything.’
‘You know he’ll say no.’
‘Ask.’
‘Hello. Yes, Valerie wonders if she can do anything … anything … I thought that’s what you’d say but don’t try to be a hero. Well, she’s here, waiting, ready … Fine. James, I’ll phone every day. And James. I’m doing the Schumann in Helsinki, the one she loves, the piano concerto. I’ll be dedicating it to her now.’
Charles put the phone down abruptly and burst into tears. Valerie went to him and held him tight. They stood there, motionless, sharing silent tears as they had rarely shared anything in recent years. Behind them, unnoticed, beyond the mullioned windows, the horizon rose slowly towards the evening sun.
James didn’t want to phone Helen from the living room. It would be tactless, tonight, to speak to her with Deborah’s radiant wedding photo smiling at him from the top of the piano. Also, the sight of his two older brothers, one at each side of the wedding photo, would have unnerved him. He decided to use the main guest bedroom, which he regarded as neutral ground.
He took his glass with him, topped up with a little gin and quite a lot of tonic. He’d been shaken by Charles’s knowing that he’d been drinking. It didn’t matter so much with Helen, but still … he didn’t want to seem weak. He did feel weak, though. He needed the glass at his side.
The sky was beginning to turn a soft, faint, misty pink. He went into the guest bedroom. It smelt of emptiness and perfection. Over the bed there was a beautiful long mirror which made the room look quite large. The walls were salmon pink. On the bed there was a profusion of cushions, and beside the bed there was a carefully chosen selection of books. How Charlotte would snort. He flinched at the thought of Charlotte snorting. The thought of what she might be snorting terrified him.
His heart was pumping. What a day this had been for the pumping of his heart.
He thought, just for a few seconds, about taking all his clothes off. It was a habit they had, to talk on the phone stark naked. It was one of the things that turned them on. There popped into his mind unbidden and unwelcome, the picture of that time, in his office, under the Hammersmith Flyover, when he’d stayed late to plan his polystyrene presentation and had taken all his clothes off and sat there starkers in the dark, the slatted blinds down on his windows and only the faint sodium glow from the street lamps shining on the filing cabinets, and he had phoned her and they had chatted and he’d had the most enormous hard-on, and suddenly the office had been flooded with light and there had been Marcia staring at him and blushing like a beetroot, and she had said, ‘Oh, sorry. I’ve left my diary somewhere. Golly.’
His erection had slowly subsided, and he had said, ‘Sorry, Marcia. It’s a thing Deborah and I do to keep our marriage exciting,’ and she had repeated, ‘Golly.’
How could he sack the only woman in England who still said ‘Golly’?
He abandoned the thought immediately. Helen wouldn’t be expecting him to ring so she wouldn’t be naked, and, in any case, it would be utterly bad form, it wouldn’t be – that word again – seemly. He broke out into a cold sweat at the very thought of it, took a steadying sip of his drink, and dialled Helen’s number.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello, darling, it’s me.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘You sound … I don’t know … breathless. Tense. Shaky.’
It always amazed him how sensitive she was to every nuance of his existence.
‘Yes, well … something’s happened, Helen.’ Adjectives flew through his mind like a flock of starlings. Good news. Bad news. Sad news. Amazing news. Shocking news. Startling news. Incredible news. None of them suitable, none of them quite right. Stick to the facts. ‘Helen, Deborah’s dead.’
Silence. Words whirring through her mind. Thoughts and emotions churning uncontrollably. No social formula in which to clothe her naked feelings. He sensed it all, and he felt for her. He knew what it was like.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes, sorry, I … I’m dumbfounded, James. Deborah, dead? How?’
‘Car crash. Head on. Instant.’
‘Well, I’m glad of that.’
‘Yes, so am I. That it was instant.’
‘Yes, that’s good.’
‘She won’t have suffered.’
‘No, that’s good.’
‘I don’t expect she even had time to know it was happening.’
‘Well, I hope not.’
It was the only aspect of the thing on which they could express any pleasure or agreement, so it wasn’t surprising that they laboured the point.
He didn’t know what else to say, and it was clear that she didn’t either. Well, what could she say? That she was sorry? That she was glad?
‘How exactly did it happen?’
She didn’t want to know. It was irrelevant. And he didn’t want to tell her. It was pointless. But there was no other way to deal with it, and he heard himself starting off on the tale yet again. The Porsche. Diss.
‘One odd thing, she—’
Suddenly he realised that he didn’t want to tell Helen about the mystery of the red Prada shoes.
‘She what?’
‘Nothing.’
To tell her would seem like a betrayal of Deborah, a revelation of a secret. This surprised him.
‘It doesn’t sound like nothing.’
Oh, God.
‘No, I was just going to say that she always thought East Anglia was flat and boring, so I’m surprised she was going there.’
It sounded lame, but he just couldn’t mention the shoes.
‘Oh. Right.’
She knew that he hadn’t been going to say that. He could hear it in her voice. He could even sense that she was thinking of saying, ‘Maybe she has a lover there,’ but had decided not to say it. And, in thinking that she was thinking of saying that, he articulated the thought to himself for the first time. There really was no other explanation for the red shoes.