The next day the Haxbys, who’d come up the hill for tea, stayed on for a drink and kept starting up the talk with jocular remarks when the Sparsholts had let it run down. ‘Have I got to make them dinner?’ said his mother, when Johnny joined her in the kitchen. She ran her hand through his hair and pulled him to her abstractedly as she made up her mind. ‘You don’t have to, Mum,’ Johnny said. At 7.30 it was Take It or Leave It, which she always reckoned to see. She went back into the living room, went round topping up with the gin in one hand and the tonic in the other, and then switched on the set. Clifford took his drink into the hall and shut the door; in a minute he was heard using their phone. The TV at ‘The Lookout’ was a portable, brand new, but the reception, through a long red-tipped antenna, was unsatisfactory. The problems with the picture and the sound compounded the trickiness of getting anyone to watch a programme they didn’t know; but his mother made no apology and said nothing about Robert Robinson and the rest. Johnny helped her – the thing was that touching the aerial or even standing near the set affected the picture, which tore people’s faces sideways in zigzags the moment you sat down again; or it milled mechanically downwards at two-second intervals. ‘You’ll just have to stand there,’ said Norma, lighting a cigarette.
Johnny sat on the floor against his mother’s knee; he always watched the programme with her, his father not interested or not home yet, and her love of books shown off in his absence to her son, who loved the ritual of the questions, read out by an actor from a wing-backed chair, and of his mother’s groans, hand raised as if to stop him from saying the answers himself, while she stared at the screen. Often she got them right, or it turned out she’d dismissed the right answer on her way to the wrong one. Just as the theme music started, Johnny’s father got up to pull the curtains across, since the evening sun made it harder to see; and as he did so slipped behind them through the French windows into the garden. ‘God, I never look at this,’ said Norma, as the music ended and the four contestants were revealed as if in the depths of a smoke-filled bar. Each of them was introduced in turn, stared at the camera and after a strange pause said graciously, ‘Good evening.’ ‘Oh, jolly good evening to you too!’ said Norma, and waggled her head. This week there was John Betjeman, Johnny’s favourite, who always knew a lot, and the man called John Gross from Cambridge, who made even the rare times he didn’t know the answer into darting displays of what he did know. On the other team were a man and a woman he hadn’t seen before. Bastien said, ‘Excuse me, Madame, erm . . . I am hungry,’ clutching his tummy and rocking his head, but he’d picked the wrong moment, and had to sit down. ‘Have a Twiglet,’ said Norma, pointing sternly at the bowl.
The first extract was read out by the actor. ‘Oh,’ said Johnny’s mother, ‘oh . . .’
‘What is it, Connie?’ said Norma, as if she might be ill.
‘Oh!’ she said.
The man called Freddie something in a spotted bow tie said, ‘Carlyle?’
‘No . . .’ said Robert Robinson, ‘not Carlyle; Elizabeth Jane Howard?’
‘Is it George Eliot, I almost wondered?’ she said.
‘George Eliot, Mum,’ said Johnny.
‘Not George Eliot either, I’m afraid.’
‘No . . .’ his mother said.
It was obvious as they switched to the other team that John Gross knew it, but he let old Betjeman have a go first. ‘To me it very much has the ring of Ruskin,’ he said.
‘Yes, yes, Præterita,’ said John Gross, as if applauding him.
When the next gobbet was being read out there was the jangle of phone-call ending and Clifford came back in. ‘Don’t worry, there’s nothing on,’ said Norma.
‘It’s Freddie Green,’ said Johnny’s mother. ‘David knew him at Oxford.’
Norma seemed to be watching but she said in a minute, ‘He was never at Oxford.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said his mother, putting on a silly voice, ‘he was up at the House, you know.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Norma, ‘I thought you meant Oxford University.’
‘I’m being silly,’ his mother said. ‘He did one term before he joined up.’
‘Hah . . .’ said Clifford, and looked rather put out by this fact.
‘Very good, Freddie,’ said Robert Robinson.
‘I knew it too!’ said Johnny’s mother.
‘Well, I knew Victor Dax a little,’ said Freddie Green, through the sideways drift of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s cigarette smoke. ‘I think you did too, John?’
‘A curious figure, and a fascinating writer,’ said Betjeman. ‘People were very keen on him in the twenties, when I was at Oxford.’
‘A highbrow taste, would you say, John Betjeman?’ said Robert Robinson.
‘He seemed highbrow, but I’m not sure he was really.’
‘John Gross?’
‘I’d be surprised if he was read again; but yes’ – he smiled regretfully – ‘I read them all when I was younger.’
‘There was a rather good play, at least it seemed good at the time, based on one of them,’ said Betjeman. ‘The Heart’s Achievement. With Celia Johnson.’
‘Yes,’ said John Gross, ‘of course it changed the ending.’
‘Well, there we must leave it. Our next extract . . .’
‘Silly old fool,’ said Clifford.
‘Who’s that, Cliff?’ said Norma, ready to agree.
‘Bloody Betjeman . . . .’
‘I like him,’ said Johnny.
‘I used to love A. V. Dax’s books,’ his mother said, to no one in particular. The actor was reading out the next gobbet when Johnny’s father came back in from the hall.
‘So you knew that man, David?’ Norma said, Johnny wishing she’d shut up.
‘Who’s that?’ He peered at the little screen as if thinking it unlikely, and it took a few seconds for him to work it out. ‘Oh, God, old Freddie Green, is it?’ He got closer and the picture lurched sideways like stretched knitting until he stood back. ‘We were in the same college. He was a fair bit older than me.’
‘He looks about twenty years older!’ said Norma, glancing round for agreement.
‘I say, David,’ said Clifford, ‘was your friend Freddie a bit of a fruit?’
His father laughed quickly but there was some lingering annoyance in him as he went for a moment into the kitchen. ‘He had a bloody great girlfriend, Cliff,’ he said, ‘I can tell you that.’
‘He looks like a fruit,’ said Clifford.
‘Con met him as well, you know.’
‘Did you, Mum?’ said Johnny.
‘Don’t tell me you were up at Oxford too,’ said Norma, as if it was getting beyond a joke.
‘Not really – not at the university’
‘You know my wife was a spy, of course,’ said his father.
‘You weren’t, Con . . . ?’ said Norma.
‘Well, hardly,’ said his mother, though she seemed not to mind the suggestion. ‘We did the spies’ typing.’
‘I see . . .’
‘Typing and filing.’
‘You must have seen quite a lot then.’
‘Well, we signed the Official Secrets Act,’ said his mother, her eyes to the screen.
‘You’ll not get a thing out of her,’ said his father. ‘I never have.’
‘I can keep a secret if I have to,’ said his mother.
‘Oh, so can I,’ said Norma, and looked round rather fretfully for her cardigan.
*
By the time they finished dinner, everyone but Johnny was drunk. His mother had drunk enough, it seemed, to forget her annoyance at having to make them all dinner in the first place. Bastien had wangled a glass of red wine, and topped it up when he refilled Norma’s glass. Then Johnny’s father had got out a bottle of brandy. Johnny helped clear the pudding plates and took them to the kitchen. In the other room the TV had been switched on again. ‘Turn it up a bit,’ said Norma, ‘I like this.’ Johnny heard and saw, as he went back through with a quick rush of the pulse, that it was Tom Jones, smiling and nodding, hips, knees and shoulders starting up like sliding pistons as the music started, tight black trousers with a huge-buckled belt like a cowboy’s crowning the famous unmentionable bulge, which the set made it hard to see in enough detail. The top three buttons of his shirt were open, a cross glinted in black chest hair as he danced. He was singing ‘It’s Not Unusual’ as he swayed and swung about, girls in the audience screaming and staring, Johnny knowing all the words and feeling them slide like hands around Bastien, and also a little bit around Tom Jones himself. He blushed at his thrusts, and looked away blankly. Clifford was sitting forward, peering mockingly at the little screen. ‘Ah, that’s what the ladies like . . . !’ he said, and knocked back the rest of his brandy.
Johnny took the wine glasses and the crumby cheese plate into the kitchen, regretting every missed second of the song. When he came back he saw his father, with a little mock-serious bow, trying to dance with Norma. ‘Ooh, David,’ she said, ‘you’ll have my husband after you.’ But Clifford only tutted, as if he had better things to worry about. She looked down to make sure of her footing. ‘Cliff never takes me dancing.’ She laid her hand, as she must have been taught, along his upper arm, and her right was swallowed up almost in his left. They moved off quite fast round the end of the dining table and out on to the lit square of the patio, where he steered her with a pilot’s skill between the white chairs.
‘Oh, David’s a good dancer,’ said Connie, rather irritably, and looking let down. There was a sort of implication that Clifford should ask her to dance, though a quick cold smile passed between them as they agreed to avoid it. The song ended, to studio applause, and Tom Jones started on ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’, the girls screaming dementedly as they heard the first phrase. It was then that Bastien came forward, swaying from the hips and with his arms raised in front of him, clowning, but not entirely. He stopped by Connie’s chair.
‘You like to dance?’ he said, with a welcome glimpse of nerves in his big grin.
‘No, you cheeky monkey,’ said Connie. Bastien, still grinning, not wanting to show he minded, kept up his jiggling movements round her chair, his thighs in trousers almost as tight as Tom Jones’s. ‘Oh, come on, then,’ she said, and got up and fitted herself to him – ‘And not too close!’ as his hand went round her waist and Johnny sat down at the far end of the sofa from Clifford, and they watched, each with his own thin smile.