Turn Us Again (9 page)

That evening Sam himself appeared at the door just as Anne was powdering herself in preparation for the evening. Louise was lying on the bed and lifted a languid hand in welcome.

“Do come in. This is really Cambridge's central bus station disguised as a bedroom.”

Anne finished her face in a hurry, quelling her irritation at being caught putting her powder on. When she turned around she saw that Sam was not alone. A handsome young man was sitting on her bed, as nonchalantly as if he had been born there. This must be Philip. She drew near with shining eyes, infatuated before she had even met him by all the things Sam had told her. He jumped courteously to his feet as she approached and held out his hand.

“You must be Anne. I've heard so much about you.”

“And I you. Sam talks about you all the time.”

They gazed into each other's eyes, while Sam chortled and rubbed his hands together with merriment, turning from one to the other and addressing them both.

“Is she not as beautiful as I described? Is he not a splendid specimen of a man?”

Anne looked at Sam's happy, red face and laughed at his naiveté. “I can't wait to see if he is as brilliant as you say, Sam — a man who reputedly gets firsts in all his subjects without the need to study!” Anne looked at Philip as she said this, but he didn't bat an eyelid. Indeed, he assumed a look of bashful modesty.

“Your looks exceed my expectations. How did such a bear of a chap get a woman like you?”

Anne didn't quite like the way Philip said this. It was all right for her to be affectionately superior to her boyfriend, but nobody else should slight him.

“I don't know! I don't know!” Sam almost crowed in exultation. “I'm a lucky man. Let's all go and get a drink down at the pub.”

Philip glanced at the languorous Louise, still stretched without moving on her bed. “And your friend?” he asked Anne.

Sam clapped a hand to his huge forehead and knelt down beside Louise's bed like a penitent. “How remiss of me! I'm traipsing through your bedroom with strangers while you are at death's door. How are you?”

Louise looked at him with incomprehension. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

Anne had no idea what he was talking about either, having forgotten the events of the night before. “Come on Sam. Drink time,” she said, taking his sleeve and trying to pull him towards the door. He shook her off with one of the rough gestures she found so unpleasant and foreign.

“Didn't Anne look after you last night?”

Louise could not hide her look of surprise. “Why would she have been looking after me?”

Sam whirled around and barked at Anne, “Where were you last night?”

Anne stared at him with a combination of fear and contempt. She was humiliated that he should speak to her like that in front of his friend, and did not answer.

Sam took hold of her shoulder as though he meant to shake her. Philip's well-bred voice cut through the atmosphere like a reminder from a different world, “Come, come Sam. You have to learn to control these little outbursts. It doesn't do.”

Sam dropped his hands and bellowed, “You arrived an hour late for our rendezvous last night. If you were not nursing Louise, what were you doing?”

“I was at a party. I drank a bit too much and lost track of time.”

“So everything you said last night was a complete lie?”

Anne felt confused. What had she said? ‘Lie' was such an unpleasant word. It didn't illustrate what she had done at all. She had simply said the first thing that came into her head. Yet somehow this sounded too weak to use as a defence in the teeth of Sam's outrage. So she said nothing.

“Do you realize how repugnant lying is? If you are incapable of telling the truth about an unimportant matter like this, then how can there be trust between us over important issues? Can't you see how fundamental honesty is to a successful relationship?” And Sam turned and walked out the door.

“Insufferable prig,” Louise spat out from her bed. “Who does he think he is, moralizing about the wickedness of lying one minute and all set to belt a woman the next?”

“His behaviour is regrettable,” Philip interjected smoothly, “but he would never hit a woman. He is a Cambridge student!”

“Oh well, that's all right then,” Louise answered sarcastically.

Philip took Anne's arm and said in the gentlest tones, “Why don't we go and have a drink? We deserve it.”

They sat side by side in a corner of a quiet pub.

“Do you know that Sam described you as beautiful, sweet and very spiritual?”

The dimples reappeared in Anne's cheeks, and she felt beautiful and spiritual, just like she had felt like a liar when Sam had yelled at her.

“Talk to me about Sam. I want to understand him better. His behaviour often bewilders me … his excitability and the way he yells. In my home, nobody ever raises their voice.”

Anne remembered one day when her father had failed to come home from the pub at all. She and her mother had sat in silence for hours until there was a knock on the door. A neighbour informed Mary that there was a ‘drunken person' in the gutter down the road who resembled her husband. “Thank you,” Mary said, and shut the door in the neighbour's face.

Four men brought Eddie home, carrying him into Mary's neat parlour and laying him on the sofa. When he awoke, much later, he looked up at Mary with a foolish smile and his bright blue sailor's eyes. All she said to him was, “You're pickled, man. Look at yourself.”

To scream at someone because they invented excuses for their tardiness was ludicrous.

Philip began to talk about Sam. He smoothed away the feeling that Sam was strange. He just had strong feelings that were hard to control. “You need to guide him towards restraint through gentle remonstrance.”

Anne gave him a blank look.

“Your gentleness is enough,” he amended. “Perhaps you don't need to remonstrate. The constant example of your moderate behaviour will mould Sam's reactions in spite of himself. Try to see him as a young, impetuous boy.”

Anne smiled in relief. This description regulated him to something understandable and controllable. His behaviour was regrettable, not terrifying. Philip was intuitive and intelligent, a gentleman in every sense of the word, and he had had known Sam for a long time.

Yet she could not help comparing the way Philip talked of Sam with the way Sam had described Philip. Delight versus deprecation. Sophistication versus innocence. A tiny part of her felt that Sam's conduct in this area, at least, was more honourable.

FOUR

M
y father's handwriting snakes down the side of the page, beside my mother's typed lines. He has highlighted the words ‘Insufferable prig, who does he think he is, moralizing about the wickedness of lying one minute and all set to belt a woman the next?' and written in the margin:

Both here and on page 77 when Louse says Sam has “an overpowering need to be loved,” Madelyn is projecting her conclusions — reached after eighteen years of marriage — into Louise's mouth. It is her opinion that my judgmental attitude towards others and my need to be loved constitute a blend of security and insecurity. Louise did not know me well enough to utter such a statement.

It is the first comment he has introduced, and it surprises me because I had forgotten that my father gave me this manuscript so that we could discuss it together.

I glance at the clock and am horrified to see it is after 4 a.m. That means it's midnight my time. Anxiety rushes through me. Am I expected to make an appearance by a certain hour in the mornings? I recall my father's suggestion to amuse myself during the day and meet him in the evenings, and try to breathe in order to relax. My eyelids close.

I wake up refreshed after a seven-hour sleep. Leaping out of bed, I draw the curtains and sunlight spills in, filling the room. What a difference the sun makes. Pleasure fills me — I am on holiday.

I dress and make my way downstairs, clutching the manuscript in one hand. I am no longer worried about topics of conversation. I am bursting with comments and ideas, memories that the manuscript has evoked. I pop my head in the kitchen, but my father is not there. I creep to the door of his room and notice almost objectively that my body is tense. Jenny would be pleased. She is always telling me to watch my body from a distance, in order to gain awareness. ‘Pretend you are a fly on the wall, looking at yourself,' she would say in the middle of an argument, just when I'm about to open my mouth and scream with rage.

‘Oh fuck off with your Freudian Jungian crap!' I scream anyway, but against my will I catch a glimpse of my red, furious face. And the fight begins to look a little silly, not worth the anger at all.

So why am I filled with trepidation? I dither outside his door, incapable of knocking. A closed door means ‘keep out.' Ignoring this rule will produce a bull-like roar of rage. Yes, I do remember that. The holy sanctuary of my father's room, which prevented us from knocking on the door, and even forced us to tiptoe and whisper in the adjoining rooms.

Maybe his sickness doesn't allow him to sleep well at nights, and he is resting. It would be a shame to wake him, so I creep back to the kitchen and make myself a cup of tea and some toast.

When I am finished, he still has not put in an appearance, so I prop a note on the kitchen table and walk out into the sunshine. It is glorious walking along Green Street without my heavy bags, and I gaze at passing faces, averted from my scrutiny. I feel excited as memories of previous visits to London come back to me. Madame Tussauds — I must go there. And the Changing of the Guards, and the Horse Guards outside St. James's Palace. I remember pulling faces in front of the soldiers to see if they would change their expression. Well, perhaps I won't do that now that I'm an adult. I'll go to Trafalgar Square to watch kids climb on the backs of the lions like I did when I was young. And to feed the pigeons, which Jenny thinks are as revolting as rats with their dirt and stupidity and little bits of shit everywhere.

I see a Tesco's supermarket and grab a basket. Of course, this is the best part of revisiting a once-beloved country. All the food that I can't get at home. Pastries and cakes with real cream. Yogurt in flavours like toffee and gooseberry and blackberry crumble. Double cream, almost as thick as butter, exquisitely delicious — supposedly the natural cream scooped off the top of a Jersey cow's produce. What do they do with it in Canada, chuck it out because people wouldn't want to eat natural fatty stuff like that?

I reach the Marks and Sparks section, with its mouth-watering ready-made food. Fish pies, shepherds pie, pork pies, scallops wrapped in bacon. My father won't have to cook anymore. I hope he will regard this as a treat. The sandwiches have names like roast beef and horseradish and prawn mayonaise.

And of course the sweets. Lindt chocolates are all the rage in Canada right now, and they're quite nice, especially the truffles. But they do not compare to Thornton's chocolate and toffee. Oh God, Thornton's toffee.

Clutching my purchases, I find a bench in the sun and sample a cream cake, savouring the taste of fresh cream and pretending that it doesn't make me feel vaguely nauseous.

I remember the bits about food in my mother's diary. We have a lot in common.

Eventually I wend my way homewards, stopping for a drink in a pub on the way. Despite the clement weather, there is a fire in the hearth and the homey atmosphere that belongs to the English pub.

My father is waiting for me and glad to see me. I made the right decision, disappearing for the day. That's what he wants. I prepare our Marks and Sparks repast, and he enjoys it as much as I do. He does not mention the manuscript, and I guess that it has caused him great unhappiness. The decision to let me read it must have been difficult, born of his belief that it was the right thing to do, rather than his inclination. I do not know what will be revealed, but I can reassure him at this point, at least.

“I couldn't put Mum's manuscript down last night. I got to the point where she had met Philip for the first time.”

“Ah yes, her first lie.”

This irritates me and I lash out: “The first time you showed a streak of violence. But not the last, eh Father?”

“A novel handpicks specific events and elaborates their details. As a result, the emerging picture is limited to the knowledge of those events. I would like to rise above the narrow analysis of ‘she said, I said,' but it's difficult, because our marriage is presented as a series of events in the manuscript. Do you understand?”

Man, my father speaks like a character in a nineteenth-century novel. “What's that got to do with your violence?”

“Looking back over our marriage, I want to weep over what might have been if I had been calmer, less paranoid, and yes, less violent. My faults smite me in the face every time I think of your mother. I suffer over the unhappiness I caused her and torture myself with visions of how I would do it differently, if I had another chance. Still the nature of my role here forces me to justify myself all the time.”

“What role?”

My father looks annoyed. “Let's go into the sitting room.” He brings two beers, two pint glasses, a bowl of olives and a bowl of chips, or crisps as they call them here. Prawn cocktail flavour. We sit on either side of the small electric fire.

“Maybe ‘role' is the wrong word. I want to present the other side of the coin while you are reading. To do this, I am forced to counter or explain details of events that happened over thirty years ago. I sound like I am self-justifying, but I'm not sure how to do it differently. I loved your mother. I was a flawed husband. But when you ask me why I reacted so strongly the first time she lied to me, I want to present the other side of the coin for the small details of that event.”

“It's okay, Dad, you don't have to explain yourself all the time. Justify to your heart's content.”

“The deceit issue worried me. I have no antenna telling me when somebody is lying. I believe everybody always until I catch them in a lie. Then I doubt them always, because I don't understand the purpose of lying.”

“Well, she explains it. She told a little white lie to escape your wrath.”

“That wasn't the only time.”

I am silent for a minute, lighting a cigarette to give me time to think. I have inherited this honesty from my father. I too, cannot lie. Some woman will come into the office with a bad haircut, and everybody will be saying, “I love your haircut!” I try to hide, but they always catch me. “Haven't you noticed that I got my hair cut, Gabriel?”

“Yes, yes I did,”

“Do you like it?”

And I go purple with embarrassment, because for some weird reason God has screwed me over big time by denying me the ability to lie.

“Well, do you like it?”

“It … it will grow out soon.”

Or opening presents with Jenny's family. Horrors! They never let me get away with “Oh wow, what a kind thought” as I open some over-sized sweater. It's always: “Do you like it?”

“U-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh” I blub, nodding and blushing.

My father leans forward and taps me on the knee. “For her it was nothing to say she was doing this when she was doing that, or staying at home when she was seeing John Drake. But because I have no ability to understand the reasoning behind a lie, it undermined my whole trust system. I had no idea when she might be lying or not, and therefore I distrusted her relationships with other men. If she slept with others, why wouldn't she lie about it?”

“I'm sure she never slept with anybody else.”

“I was very jealous, and I kept imagining it. I couldn't ask her because I didn't trust her, so I asked Philip. Not at the time you are reading about, much later. He just laughed and said, “Ignorance is bliss, old boy.”

“I'm sure she didn't.”

“Maybe not. Philip was jealous of our relationship, and he might have been ambiguous in order to annoy me. Still, I think trust is fundamental in a marriage, and she undermined mine. It wasn't a small thing and my reaction absurd, as the manuscript suggests.”

A memory pops into my head.

I was thirteen years old, and it was the day after Halloween. My friends and I had gone nuts the night before, smashing store windows with rocks and driving nails into the tires of parked cars. A teacher from our school had seen us. That night I woke up in a sweat. I cornered my mother at the first opportunity and told her what we'd done.

“Don't you worry, sweetie. We'll sort this out. I'll phone the parents of your friends and see what they plan to do.”

“Will our teacher call the police?”

“Maybe, but you're a minor. Just let me make a few calls.”

That night at the dinner table Mum winks at me conspiratorially. Dad wasn't supposed to see it, but he did.

“Is there some secret I'm not privy to?”

“Just something between us,” my mother answered.

My father didn't pursue it, but I felt he should know as well. “I got in a bit of trouble last night, Dad. Broke some windows and stuff. Mum has been phoning the parents of the others to see how they're going to handle it.”

“What bloody stupid behaviour. I don't see why your mother has to hob-nob with others about your punishment — I think you should be grounded for a month.”

“We're not talking about punishment,” Mum scoffed. “The police have been notified.”

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“Well then, the police will handle it. If you do things like this, you must realize there are consequences. I hope they give you community work, but if it's a fine you'll have do chores for us to make the money. I'm not paying for it.”

“What if it's jail?” I asked in a wobbly voice, hating my father.

“I don't think it will come to that.”

“It certainly won't!' Mum interjected. “All the other kids are pleading not guilty.”

“But they are guilty.”

“That's hard to prove. It was dark and most of them were wearing costumes.”

“It's not a question of proof. Gabriel did something wrong, and now he must own up to it.”

“That's not how the law works!”

My father slammed down his fist. “That's how this family works! Those are the principles I will pass on to my son! Truth, among them.”

In the end I pleaded guilty, and when the other kids saw how lightly I got off they changed their minds and pleaded guilty too.

I was angry with my father at the time, but later on I understood that he could be counted on to try and do the right thing, always. I came to him if I wanted to seek the truth in the complications of a teenager's life. I came to him if I wanted to know the honourable way to behave.

I want to tell him that, but he is tapping his beer mug on the table in impatience. When I look up he holds out his hand.

“Can I see the manuscript for a moment? I'm sure I made an earlier mark somewhere.”

He ruffles through the pages. “Yes, here. I'm telling her about my family and she writes:

As Samuel described his disillusionment with his family, Anne felt relieved. His attitude almost seemed to corroborate her own assumptions and prejudices about Jews. His family seemed vulgar and money-loving — evidently common faults among the Jews — but it did not matter because Samuel had escaped from all of that. He had come to Cambridge and mixed with a different sort of being, until he was hardly a Jew at all. This was satisfying to Anne, because she could wallow in her friends' surprise and admiration at her daring, while going out with a typical Cambridge student. If his language seemed too virulent on occasion, she put it down to his individualism.