Molly Fox's Birthday (17 page)

The taxi was stifling. The driver had the heat turned up full-blast against the raw chill of the night, and there was a smell of artificial coconut, some kind of air-freshener that was supposed to sweeten the atmosphere but was actually most unpleasant. I squeezed Molly's hand tightly and gave precise directions to the driver as we drew near to the house. I paid him and we got out of the car, stood
for a moment on the pavement with my bags while the taxi turned and drove off. Molly stared at her own dark house, at the dripping garden with its lank plants, and then she said to me, ‘I can only cope with her by being false. What sort of a relationship is that?' I put my case down in a puddle and took her in my arms. She was stiff and resistant, but I held her all the same.

It was strange to remember all this now. It made me shiver, in spite of the heat of summer. As I drew near to the house I noticed a man walking a short distance ahead of me, and to my surprise he turned in at Molly's place. He closed the gate precisely behind him, and I had to push it open again with my hip. He was ringing the doorbell as I walked up the path; he heard my footsteps and turned around. I recognised him immediately, even though it was years since we had met.

‘Hello, Fergus.' He stared at me in dismay. He recognised me too, uttered my name aloud as though it were the most disappointing word possible in any language. And then he said, ‘I don't believe this. I'm so stupid. Molly told me. Molly told me and I forgot. She said she was going to New York and that you'd be staying here. I'm stupid, stupid, stupid.' Fumbling for the keys, I told him not to worry, it was a happy accident; I was glad to have the company, as I was a bit lonely here on my own. I said this out of politeness but realised as I spoke that it was actually true. Would he not come in for a few moments? It was all I could do to persuade him, but he was confused and despondent, and that made him more tractable. As he stepped into the hall the long-case clock struck four with its deep, soft chime. I closed the front
door, and suddenly he seemed to relax a little, as the peace and beauty of Molly's house enfolded us.

I led him down to the kitchen and dumped my bags of shopping on the table. Unfortunately there was an opened bottle of wine on the counter, only a glass or so of it gone. While Fergus isn't an alcoholic, drink has periodically been one of the problems in his life. ‘What can I get you, Fergus? What would you like?' I saw him looking at the bottle. I moved ever so slightly to the left, so as to block it from his view, and gave him what I hoped was an engaging smile. ‘Coffee? Tea?'

‘I'll tell you what I'd love. I'd love a drink.' I said nothing, but I kept smiling at him. ‘I'd love a drink of water. Big glass. Nice and cold.' I realised then that he'd been teasing me, he'd known what I'd been thinking.

‘That's all? Nothing else?'

‘Could we sit in the garden?' he said timidly. ‘I'd like a cigarette, and Molly doesn't let me smoke in the house.'

I unlocked the back door, and he went outside while I filled a jug at the kitchen sink. As I was adding some ice cubes I could see him wandering about on the grass. By the time I joined him in the garden, he was sitting on a bench looking at the ground and dragging on a cigarette.

‘Thanks awfully. It's a hot day.' I agreed and for a few moments we made small talk about the weather, about the solstice, about heat and light. He looked very like Molly, but Molly at her most nondescript, Molly as she was when she didn't want to be recognised and refused to project her personality. Fergus was incapable of that transformation that could make his sister such an electrifying presence on stage, and indeed in her private life, when she so desired. He was a small man, lightly built, with brown hair and the
same olive complexion as Molly. He reminded me of nothing so much as a little wild bird, a sparrow or a dunnock, and in dealing with him I always felt I had to behave as if he were indeed such a creature. Anything sudden or abrupt would startle him; he needed stillness and calm. He took out a packet of cigarettes and lit a new one off the stub of the one he had just finished. ‘Isn't the cow dreadful?' he remarked unexpectedly, indicating it with a toss of his head. ‘I said to Molly, “What possessed you? It ruins the whole garden.” But she just laughed.'

I forgot to mention the voice. Like his sister, Fergus is blessed with a magically beautiful voice. Deep and nuanced, it has that same breaking quality in moments of emotion that makes Molly's voice so affecting; it gives weight and resonance to his most inconsequential remarks. When she talks to me about his life and how things haven't worked out for him, his voice is something that she comes back to again and again.
I know actors
who would sell their own grandmothers for a voice like
that
. I think that it would pain her to see any such gift not being used to its full effect, never mind the grief for her brother that is implicated in this particular case. He is also a very fine singer. Once, Molly was appearing in a play that called for an unaccompanied male voice to be heard singing a verse of a hymn offstage. She managed to coax Fergus into making a tape, which she then played for the director, who listened to it simply to humour her, but was won over immediately. And so it came to pass that it was Fergus's voice that was heard as Molly stood alone and immobile in a pool of light that slowly faded to blackness as the singing ended. It was a thrilling moment, but Fergus never got to experience it himself. By the time
the play went up his life had gone into a serious tailspin, yet again, and for several months he was once more incapacitated. I was never sure that it wasn't his involvement in the play that had actually provoked the crisis, but I never said that to Molly.

He was still smoking and gazing out over the garden. ‘I told her she should have got a dog rather than a fake cow. A real dog, I mean.'

‘She's away a lot. It's impossible to look after a dog properly when you're all over the place the way Molly is.'

‘That's what she said, but I told her I'd look after it. I'd mind it at my place, or I'd come over here every day if she preferred. Feed it. Take it for walks. I know she was tempted. She likes dogs.'

‘She does,' I agreed.

‘We always had dogs when we were children,' Fergus said. ‘We had a spaniel called Bingo. Gorgeous creature, she was, so gentle. Sort of toffee-coloured. I still remember the feel of her ears, like silk they were …' His voice trailed away.

‘Why “Bingo”?'

‘Do you know, I have absolutely no idea. I can't remember now.' Unusually, he looked me straight in the eye as he said this, and he smiled. I was the one who glanced away, overwhelmed by the combination of the lost child in him with his memories, and that haunting voice. How did Molly bear it? I picked up my glass and drank some of the icy cold water.

‘Are you writing a new play?' he asked me shyly, and I said that I was attempting to do so. ‘Will there be a part in it for Molly?'

‘I'm not sure yet. It would be good if it turned out that
way. I'd love to work with her again. But it's early days yet. All I know is that it's about a hare.' He stared at me, astonished, and then I realised that he'd misunderstood. ‘That's H-A-R-E,' I added, and we both laughed.

‘You had me worried there for a minute. And how does the hare fit in? Is it a character? Will you have a real live animal there on the stage?'

‘I don't know. I'm still playing about with the idea, I haven't actually started writing it yet.' I don't usually talk to people about work in progress; that I did so today was a sign of my desperation. I had hoped that spoken of aloud it would impress me too, but that trick hadn't worked.

‘Molly's going to London after New York, isn't she?' he said. ‘She's making one of those book things, tapes that people listen to in the car. I've got all of them.
The Mayor
of Casterbridge. Wuthering Heights. Jane Eyre
. She's amazing on that one.
There was no possibility of taking a
walk that day
. I listen to them at night when I can't get to sleep.'

I take back any impression I may have given that Fergus lacks his sister's charisma. He may not have her ability to transform herself, to project dramatically, but his quiet charms are powerfully beguiling. The intimate and confiding manner, together with his gentleness, his sweet nature, is quite a combination. If he knew what he was about you'd call him the most subtle of seducers. That he doesn't know – and he really doesn't – almost beggars belief. This lack of self-knowledge, and its consequences, exasperates Molly no end.

‘This is how it works,' she'd explained to me once. ‘Fergus meets a woman. He reels her in without even trying.
She thinks he's the sweetest, kindest man she's ever met, and he may well be. Fergus thinks that at last he's found what he's wanted all his life, someone who loves him. He doesn't pick up on the fact that she doesn't know him. For a while things bowl along well enough, and Fergus thinks he's happy. And then it begins to unravel. Women pay a lot of lip service to the idea of romantic love, but it's all nonsense. They're generally looking for money and security, for social power.' I protested the cynicism of this. ‘Maybe you're right,' she replied ironically. ‘Maybe there are plenty of women out there who'd be happy to share their life with one of the most endearing men you could ever meet, who'd overlook the problems he has through no fault of his own, but wherever these women are, Fergus never seems to meet them.'

She was being disingenuous and she knew it. Fergus's problems were no small thing, and fretting about them had blighted Molly's own life for years. The heavy drinking and the bouts of depression, the serious medication and the inability to have a real career, his general helplessness and haplessness: you would have had to wonder about the woman who would have willingly chosen to take all of this on board and engage with it. I said as much to Molly.

‘But
I
engage with it!' she said with sudden passion. ‘I love Fergus and I'll never let him down.' I backed off at that point. Close as I was to Molly, the conversation was moving into a place where I had no business being and didn't want to go. I looked at Fergus sitting beside me, quietly smoking his cigarette. Heartbreaking, it must be, to have such a brother. Suddenly I felt that if I were Molly, I might well have cut Fergus out of my life. I
knew she'd thought of it occasionally. There were periods when she distanced herself from him, when he was well enough to be left to get on with his life while she got on with hers. But there were also crises time and time again that wore her down emotionally and mentally. She told me of a recurrent nightmare she had, crudely simple in its psychology but none the less powerful for that, none the less terrifying, of trying to save Fergus from drowning and realising that they were both going to go under. Terrifying, yes, that's what he was, this gentle, broken man who sat before me in the scented summer garden, drinking iced water and making banal conversation. At this precise moment I couldn't imagine a more unnerving sibling. To look at him and to see yourself, the same physique, the same rare gift, and to see what had become of him, and to know that it could so easily have happened to you. Molly was heroic, saintly, I thought. Her circumstances would have defeated most people: they would certainly have defeated me. Fergus was a dangerous man, with his tenderness and his charm and the deep and unending darkness of his mind that was an abyss into which Molly might also vanish one day if she wasn't strong enough. There was no knowing when, if ever, she might reach tipping point. He repelled me even as my heart went out to him for all he had suffered and lost.

‘Do you know what she's doing in New York?' I asked him.

‘It's just a holiday, as far as I'm aware. You know Molly. She loves cities and the bigger the better. She likes to be alone while knowing that there are lots of people around her.'

‘That's true,' I agreed, remembering the first time I ever saw Molly, sitting reading her book in a café, with that great rope of dark hair draped over her shoulder.

‘She seems to be having a great time,' Fergus went on. ‘She's got a ticket for the opera for tonight.'

‘You've spoken to her recently?'

‘She called me yesterday. It wouldn't be possible for Molly to go more than a couple of days without speaking to me.' I was struck by the unconscious egotism of this, and he noticed me noticing. My unspoken objection to what he had said hung in the air between us. It seemed to amuse him faintly, for he gave a little smile but said nothing. After a moment or two, to break a silence that was becoming increasingly awkward, I asked him, ‘How's your job going these days?'

‘Oh, much as ever. It's incredibly boring, just basic office stuff, but at least it's a job. They're very understanding when I'm stretchered off, and that counts for a lot.'

‘Architect's office, isn't it?'

‘No, a solicitor's. I had to leave the architect's a few years back. The boss was so aggressive; I just couldn't take it.
Fergus, you did this. Fergus, you did that
. Always shouting at me. I hate aggressive people. It was a pity because the job itself was more interesting than where I am now.' I saw in his eyes a flash of that vulnerability and fear I always expected to find in him; and I realised that it had been strikingly absent today, up until this moment. He drew hard on his cigarette. ‘The solicitor's is all right, they're decent to me. I'm lucky to have work. And I like the place where I'm living. I can walk into town in twenty minutes, and it's on a direct bus route to here, so it's handy for when I want to come and see Molly.
Obviously it's nothing like this,' and he gestured towards the garden, the house. ‘It's a flat and it's small, but it gets a lot of light and the landlord's nice. I was lucky to find it.'