He drove back to Vanessa’s house slowly—gingerly, as if he’d been burnt. She was home, thank goodness. He told her he’d been involved in a minor skid, nothing very much; Englishly, she offered him a cup of tea. He felt vulnerable, breached. Defeated. Van would look after him. He knew suddenly that he didn’t want to spend another night in his hotel room. Absolutely not. He was no James Bond, not even a General Burgoyne …
She asked about Troy.
“I bet it reminded you of Newcastle.”
“Yes, that’s right. Amazing similarities. Good lord, that waterfront? Fantastic amount of empty land. Just waiting. The problem for Troy will be population decline. That’s very different from Newcastle, of course, which is still growing.” He was thinking aloud.
“Ah, Daddy, incorrigible … Maybe you should move here. So you had lunch in Troy? No Hypocrite Burger today?”
They sat at the table and drank their tea and talked about everything but Josh. About Skidmore and Van’s colleagues, about Helen and Tom (Alan said nothing about the apparent marital difficulties), and Helen’s new career (Van was full of admiration for her sister’s resolve), and the old house in Northumberland, which held so much. Van asked about her grandmother, and Alan told her he’d been over to see Mam in the Home, just before embarking on the American trip. He didn’t mention his anxieties about paying his mother’s expensive bills, or the question he kept turning in his mind—whether he should ask Mam to live with him in the big house. Troy, which reminded him so much of old Newcastle, had for the same reason reminded him of his old mother. They did not mention Candace. They talked about Cathy, but by long-unspoken agreement, Cathy only entered family conversation alive, never dead. It was always “Remember when Mummy drove the Volvo into the ditch,” as if she might conceivably drive the Volvo into the ditch again, or “Your mum and I went regularly to that hotel for a while,” as if the termination was their decision and not one made by divorce and death. He looked at Vanessa’s dear, known features—seemingly a little plainer and drier today, as if Josh’s presence had been some kind of sustaining, revivifying drug. No, he was seeing too much in everything, thinking too much. She looked just the same, maybe a bit tired after a day of teaching, the same except for her spectacles, which she’d put on because her eyes were tired and her new contacts bothering her. The spectacles restored her to him: “old Vanessa.” How he loved her blue, shortsighted eyes, her frown or squint of concentration, the tongue that slightly appeared when she became intense, her quiet voice and her soft, sidelong self-assertion. Even her complaints! How characteristic of Vanessa to moan that she missed Helen but was also glad she had gone, because “I struggle to get a word in edgeways when she’s around. Helen does manage to occupy the space around her quite tyrannically, you know.” Alan had planned to have the conversation this evening, but he felt unprepared, he was still shaken. He would wait until tomorrow. For now, he would fall into the deep embrace of familiarity; he would rest.
“So—what questions do you have from today’s adventuring? God, you made Josh laugh last night.”
“Nothing comes to mind … No, I do have one question,” said Alan, smiling. “When all these Americans, usually complete strangers, say, with apparently significant meaning, ‘How are you?’ are you actually supposed to tell them how you feel?”
“Not really. The best response is to reply with your own, slightly more intense, ‘How are you?’ at more or less exactly the same moment, so the two ideally cancel each other out.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Omelet and toast okay for dinner tonight?”
“Couldn’t be better.”
And later, after dinner:
“Van, would you mind much if I moved out of the Alexandria tonight and stayed in your guest bedroom? I’ve only got two nights left anyway.”
“Of course not, I’d love it. I’m on my own. Why? Is the hotel getting you down? It would get me down.”
“It makes me think of that old phrase ‘fancy goods.’ From my childhood—certain shops full of silly objects that no one wanted. They used to advertise ‘fancy goods.’”
“I’d hardly ever set foot in that place until you visited. So—let’s go and get your things. I’ll come along for the ride.”