Parents’ weekend, thought Claire’s younger son, Oliver, in Wandsworth on Friday, flinging a few crumpled things into a sports bag. Wonder if I need petrol. Trip to the bank machine. No need for condoms, anyway, all by myself. Might step out and buy some real flowers for Ma, not petrol-station ones. Saturday morning.
He was happy to be going to see his mother and trying not to face the fact that he was happier because he was going alone. Vanessa, at present snarling and snapping incisively into the sitting-room phone, was off in a moment to her own parents in Bournemouth. They arranged these filial visits every other month, Oliver ringing his mother every week to check up on her diabetes, Vanessa ringing hers, who was hale and hearty, every three. When Vanessa was not about, Oliver sometimes rang Claire in between times from station platforms, airports, or the forecourt of the Wandsworth supermarket. He had premonitions about his vague and undemonstrative mother and found it hard to look at the advertisements in the papers showing resigned old women with bells round their necks like Swiss cattle lying waiting for rescue, or for the end. He knew that, should his mother fall over, she would never ring for help, but would lie there, thinking. Thus she would be avenged for his believing her immortal. Another part of him said that his mother was a cynic, even a torturer. Then he thought: And I am a swine, and don’t believe in selflessness. He adored her.
Vanessa was brisker. The three-weekly call to Bournemouth was always made at 6 p.m. sharp on a Friday, and she set aside half an hour. She was a Barrister in Shipping Chambers, a prestigious area and rare for a woman. She had had to swim enjoyably hard to keep up with the tide. She was respected in the Chambers and held in awe in Bournemouth where her parents knew nothing of the Bar except what they saw on television. She regaled them, third Fridays, with accounts of her daily round—from the 7 a.m. orange juice in the super-nova kitchen, to her reading Briefs last thing at night. (“A case you’ll be seeing in the papers.”) Her Opinions were not usually complete before midnight.
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know how you fit it all in,” her mother said. “How do you do your housework and shopping and cooking? And laundry?” (And where are the children?)
Vanessa ignored her. Work first. No philosophising.
“Whenever do you see your friends?” asked her mother. (Or us?)
“Oliver and I have it all under control. We eat out. Friends at weekends. We probably see more friends than you do.”
“I miss your friends, Vanessa,” said her mother. “Every weekend we saw your friends, all through school and Cambridge, they used to come. I miss your friends.” (And I miss you, too. I don’t know this sharp-faced, black-suited, almost bald-headed, lap-top sprite.)
“I ring you every three weeks.”
“Yes.”
“Last time I couldn’t get through. You were engaged.”
“Yes. We do occasionally have another phone-call.”
“And what about this?” Vanessa said now, marching into the hall as Oliver picked up his sports bag en-route for a work-out. “They’re not going to be there.”
“What? Your parents?”
“My consistent and saintly parents say they’d no idea I was coming down this weekend. They’re going to a Fortieth Wedding Anniversary on the Isle of Wight. They said they told me. They’re going senile. Parents of some of my primary-school friends I’ve not seen for twenty years. They said why don’t I go, too, for goodness sake!”
“Well, why don’t you?” Oliver saw, and his spirits fell, the way things would now develop. “Better come with me and visit my Ma,” he said, not looking at her.
“Half-way to Scotland? On a Saturday morning? And there’s only a single bed. No thanks.”
“We could go to a hotel. Stay in Cambridge if you like.”
She wavered while he kept his balance. He loved her. They would have a nice time. It was just that alone, with his mother, he could slop about with his shoes and socks off. Read the tabloids. Pick his nose.
“And what do I do there to pass the time?”
“In Cambridge?”
“No, fool. In your mother’s house looking out at nothing and nothing looking in. All that silence as she sits and smiles.”
“At least she never asks when we’re getting married.”
“Well, neither does mine.”
“Your father does.”
“Oh—does he? I’m surprised.”
“Because he doesn’t like me? You’re right. He asks in order to smirk when I say not yet. You’re too close to your aged P, dear, it’s unhealthy.”
She frowned and began to bustle about. He thought her tiny waist and neck miraculously beautiful. He’d have liked her in a silk kimono and little silk shoes. They’d been together six years and she was thirty-two and as rich as he was. She could stop work tomorrow and . . .
“Come on,” she said. “We’re at it again. I’m sorry. It’s just the bloody Isle of Wight. They could have said: I’ll come with you.”
“And it’s all right,” she said, “I’ll behave. I won’t sulk. I won’t go and lie down with a headache. I won’t say ‘Thanks, I’m fine’ when she offers me another fish finger.”
“I’ll ring and tell her,” said Oliver. “And I’ll book a hotel for tomorrow night. Or you could go in the spare bed and I could have the sofa? OK, OK, I didn’t mean it.”
“Fine,” he said ten minutes later. “I’ve booked the George at Stamford and I’ve told Ma. Turns out we couldn’t have stayed with her anyway. She’s got an old chum there.”
“Oh no! She’s going the same way as mine.”
“No, he’s all right. Sort of cousin. She fancies him. Family solicitor or something down in the West Country. Nice.”
“Solicitor? Oh well then, we can’t go. He’ll be all over me. Oliver, let’s get the Eurostar to Paris.”
But he had had enough. “If you don’t want to come, stay here. That’s it. I shan’t come back here if you won’t come with me now.”
She looked hard at him, thinking things over. He was big. And good. He was clever. He was loyal. He could be as ruthless as his mother. I don’t like his mother, but I do like him.
“Coming then?” he asked on Saturday morning—he had slept on the sofa bed in the study. “Coming for a spin to see the Mater in the motor?”
“OK,” she said. “Agreed. Can’t wait to meet the family solicitor.”