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‘Aishe’s invited me to Gulliver’s concert tomorrow night.’
Chad looked across the dinner table at his wife with cautious optimism. It was the first time in three days she’d used a tone of voice that could be described as neutral. Up till now, everything addressed to him had tended to seesaw between accusatory sobs and cold threats.
‘Gulliver?’
‘Her teenage son. I use him for baby-sitting.’ Michelle stabbed her fork into a piece of chicken. ‘But then you’d know that if you’d been around.’
Chad’s tiny bubble of optimism went ‘plip’. He laid his own fork on his plate.
‘Mitch, are we ever going to be able to talk about this?’
‘What’s to talk about?’ said Michelle. ‘You’ve told me how it’s going to be.’
Chad tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. ‘Jesus.’
‘Chatted to him as well on your spiritual journey?’
‘No.’
‘Pity,’ said Michelle. ‘He could give you some great tips about manning up to your responsibilities.’
‘Look, Mitch,’ said Chad. ‘I have a right to make a request. Everyone does. And that’s all it is. A request.’
‘If it were a request, I’d have the right to say no,’ said Michelle. ‘But I’ve said no and look where that got me.’
‘But why the flat out no?’ said Chad.
‘Because I won’t like it.’
‘How do you know you won’t like it? How do you know till you try?’
‘I’m not a toddler you’re encouraging to eat broccoli,’ said Michelle. ‘I’m a grown woman and I know my own mind.’
‘And I know mine,’ said Chad quietly.
‘That,’ said Michelle, jabbing her fork for emphasis, ‘is another thing about which you are entirely wrong!’
‘Why are you so dead set against the idea?’ said Patrick. ‘A lot of people might jump at the chance to travel round the world for a year.’
Patrick and Michelle were in the café, leaving Benedict at home with Harry and Rosie.
‘Because it’s bullshit!’ said Michelle. ‘It’s not a well-considered plan! It’s a big, fat, pointless cop-out that will ruin our lives!’
‘Aren’t you being a little dramatic?’
Michelle glared at him. ‘How would Clare react if you suggested a year-long globe-trot?’
‘She’d say Tom’s too young.’ Patrick pursed his mouth. ‘Among other things.’
‘Exactly!’ said Michelle. ‘She knows it’d be a freaking pain in the arse toting a toddler on tour! And I’ve got a toddler and a baby!’
Michelle tipped a sachet of sugar into her coffee, hesitated, then tipped in another.
‘And that’s not the only way he intends to disrupt our lives,’ she said. ‘He wants to fund this fiasco by selling the house in Charlotte. It’s insane. It will set us back years financially.’
She stirred her coffee so vigorously it slopped over the sides. ‘So we’ll be broke and homeless, and for what? The children are too young to get any benefit! I won’t enjoy it! So what the hell is the point, except to give Chad yet another way to delude himself that you don’t have to be an adult if you shut your eyes, put your hands over your ears and sing la-la-la!’
‘You think Chad’s running away?’ said Patrick.
‘Yes!’ Michelle said. ‘That’s precisely what he’s doing! Don’t ask me why. I can’t even begin to fathom what’s going on in his head! It’s like at some moment during this year, his mind suddenly got its first clear look at his life and its attendant responsibilities, and it curled up into the foetal position.’
‘And you don’t think it might be because he’s played it safe all his life, and now he craves a bit of adventure?’ said Patrick.
‘He can take up bungy-jumping!’ said Michelle. ‘Or free diving! Or that weird French palaver where they leap across buildings! My point is that he does not have to involve us!’
‘Maybe he wants to experience it with you?’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Michelle. ‘You’re not helping.’
‘Haven’t you ever wanted to see Marrakech?’ Patrick was trying not to smile. ‘Or the caves in Azerbaijan?’
‘Are there caves in Azerbaijan?’
‘Dunno,’ said Patrick. ‘I really should look that up.’
‘Hola!’
Angel, Malcolm and Ron had stationed themselves at the next table. Ron, Michelle noted, was looking even more like an anxious owl. Angel and Malcolm looked their usual selves, as if they had just become privy to some highly amusing information about you. Which they probably had.
Caught between Patrick’s enquiring glance and Angel’s suggestive Groucho Marx eyebrow-jiggling one, Michelle had little choice but to introduce them.
‘And he is not my lover,’ she made a point of adding. ‘They don’t do that sort of thing in England.’
‘We get a lot of English here,’ said Angel. ‘They like the climate. Is less sweaty than in Benidorm.’
‘Also fewer Germans,’ said Malcolm, ‘so the pool towels are not so hard to come by.’
‘Spanish residential market’s taken a real dive lately,’ said Ron. He shook his head. ‘Thank God I stuck with US commercial. Though, I don’t know about Oakland any more. I’m thinking Emeryville’s a better bet. They’ve got Ikea. Maybe I should shift from Oakland? Whaddya think?’
‘Patrick’s buying a winery in Napa,’ said Michelle, with a certain amount of malice.
‘You in property?’ Ron’s eyes grew big behind his glasses.
‘Yeah, but I’m getting out,’ said Patrick, straight faced.
‘You’re getting out?’ Ron leant so far across the table that he was almost horizontal. ‘Why? Is the market bad? Which market are you in? And if you’re out, what are you getting into?’
Patrick decided to answer the last question only. ‘Marriage guidance.’
‘Ignore him,’ said Michelle. ‘He’s fibbing.’
‘Fibbing?’ said Ron. ‘Why’s he fibbing? What the hell’s fibbing anyway?’
‘You must forgive our friend, Ron,’ said Angel to Patrick. ‘He lack the benefit of good British phlegm.’
‘What do I want with phlegm?’ said Ron. ‘I got enough trouble with hives.’
‘This is about the time Malcolm tells a joke,’ said Michelle. ‘I’m not saying that’s a good thing.’
‘I learned a pretty good joke on the plane,’ said Patrick. ‘Scotsman told it to me.’
‘There’s a joke in itself,’ said Malcolm. ‘Add a rabbi and you’ll bring the house down.’
‘It’s not exactly polite,’ said Patrick.
‘Is OK,’ said Angel. ‘I cover Ron’s ears.’
‘You won’t. I need a good laugh,’ said Ron. ‘I talked to my sharebroker earlier.’
Michelle poked Patrick in the arm. ‘Well, go on!’
‘All right,’ said Patrick. ‘Guy walks into a bar with an octopus. Says, “This octopus can master any musical instrument you care to give it. In fact, I’m prepared to pay fifty bucks to anyone who finds an instrument it can’t play.” A guy walks up with a guitar. Octopus plays it like Clapton. Another guy gives it a trumpet. Plays it like Dizzy Gillespie. Then a Scotsman walks up with bagpipes. The octopus up picks the instrument, turns it over and looks confused. “Och!” says the Scotsman. “You cannae play it, can ye?” “Play it?” says the octopus. “Soon as I work out how to get its pyjamas off, I intend to screw it!”’
‘Oh, God.’ Michelle drew both palms down the side of her face. ‘That’s worse than the joke about the twins. Never thought I’d see the day.’
‘Señor,’ said Angel, spreading wide his arms. ‘No matter how far you roam, you will always be welcome back to our comunidad – our little community!’
Then his face fell, as Michelle suddenly burst into tears.
Benedict had done two things immediately upon learning about his father. First, he’d gone to the library and searched on the internet for everything he could find. He couldn’t understand why Aishe had seen nothing about his father’s death when she’d done her search, and came to the conclusion that if she’d carried it out only a few days later, she would have. One of God’s better jokes, he thought.
There was an obituary. It stated that Reginald Colin Hardy had been diagnosed with prostate cancer over a year earlier. But it seems he had told no one and had refused treatment. Even his wife had not known how ill he was until he had to be hospitalised. He had died three weeks later.
Of course, thought Benedict. He would have been convinced he would beat it, that he would win. How could it be otherwise? To his father, the idea of defeat would have been ludicrous. His behaviour made perfect sense.
The second thing Benedict did was to look up a current phone number for his mother. He found it, along with an address, which he was surprised to see wasn’t the one he had last lived at. He looked it up on the satellite map and found that his mother now lived in a small bungalow in the respectable but hardly affluent suburb of Hillingdon. Benedict could not speculate as to why that might be.
That had been on Monday. It was now Thursday, and Benedict was no nearer to being able to pick up a phone and dial his mother’s number. London was eight hours ahead and he knew his mother did not think it was civilised to phone after seven o’clock in the evening. That meant the latest he could call was eleven in the morning. Benedict was very aware, because he had been glancing at his watch compulsively for the last two hours, that it was now five minutes to.
Michelle was with Patrick at the café. Rosie was happy enough in her playpen. Harry was in front of Thomas the Tank Engine. Benedict had an international calling card that was warm from being constantly shuttled to and from his pocket.
It was two minutes to eleven. Benedict grabbed the calling card and dialled.
The ringtone sounded fuzzy, distorted in Benedict’s ears by the pounding of his heartbeat. There was a click and Benedict heard his mother say, ‘Hello?’
The silence prompted her to repeat herself, this time with a wary impatience. Benedict found his voice.
‘Mother, it’s — it’s me.’
This time, the silence was all on the other end.
Benedict tightened his grip on the receiver. He was dismayed to find that the tears that had threatened to humiliate him earlier in the week were again close. They were being prompted not only by grief, but also by a sense of hopelessness, waste, regret and, worst of all, a profound sense of failure. The gap signified by his mother’s silence seemed vast, impassable, and for the first time Benedict felt the full, acute pain of the cost of the past nine years. He had survived. He was intact bodily. But right now, that seemed nowhere near worth it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he managed to say. ‘I don’t . . . I . . .’
‘He lost everything, you know. Chasing you.’
Benedict thought his mother’s voice sounded cool, but not bitter. But he might be clutching at straws, desperate for even the most gossamer-thin thread of kindness.
‘He took his eye off the ball,’ his mother went on. ‘Let others run his business affairs. That was a mistake. Lost it all.’
‘There wasn’t anything on the internet about him losing his fortune,’ said Benedict.
He was surprised to hear his mother laugh. ‘What’s built by stealth can be dismantled the same way,’ she said. ‘Especially if you’re not as alert as you should be.’
‘Are you all right?’ Benedict said. ‘For money, I mean.’
Not that he was in any position to help.
‘I manage,’ his mother said. ‘I never took anything for granted, even in his heyday. Always knew there was a risk it could all come crashing down. In a way I’m glad he was ill when it did crash. Meant I could hide the worst from him.’
Then she said, ‘Why did you do it, Benedict? Why did you run?’
The answer Benedict held firmly in his head, that he’d been convinced was true since he was ten years old, began to flicker a little, like an ageing neon light. But there was evidence for it, events that he did not imagine, no matter what Aishe might think. And besides, what other reason could there be?
‘I thought he wanted to hurt me.’
His mother was silent for a moment.
‘I tried to tell him that,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t believe me.’
‘What are you saying?’ said Benedict. ‘That he didn’t want to hurt me? Mother, he left notes with pictures of guns on them!’
‘He said it was a joke between you.’
‘How could it be a joke?’ Benedict knew he should not raise his voice. But the concept was so unutterably bizarre that he couldn’t help it. ‘How could it ever be seen as even faintly amusing?’
‘He said he gave you the same kind of joke gun once. The kind with the flag that pops out that says “Bang”. He insisted you would make the connection.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘I tried to tell him.’
Benedict recalled the gun on his bedroom bookshelf, and what he’d done with it, which was to pick it up gingerly and take it out to the garage, wrap it in layers and layers of newspaper and shove it deep into the rubbish bin.
That gun had looked very real. But, as Aishe pointed out, he was only ten. If it had been a joke gun, what was the point of it? A reminder of his failure with the real gun? Benedict supposed that was in keeping with his father’s character. He could never have been described as a nice man.
‘But if I knew it was a joke, then why would I run?’ said Benedict. ‘What could he possibly have thought my reasons for running were?’
His mother paused. ‘He thought you were playing a game with him. Catch me if you can. He thought you’d set him a challenge.’
Benedict was shaking his head, partly in disbelief, and partly as if the movement could help rearrange his scattered thoughts, like so many Scrabble tiles, into some kind of pattern.
‘Mother, that’s absurd. That’s – delusional.’
‘He thought you’d finally found your independent streak.’ His mother sounded weary now. ‘He thought that after being such a good, quiet boy all your life, you’d finally decided to be adventurous. He loved the fact that you did so well at school, but he was worried that you would spend your life being a follower. That you’d drift along, always playing by other people’s rules. He was worried you’d never break out and discover who you were or what you were capable of. He said he’d tried lots of time when you were young to provoke you into showing some kind of spirit. So when you finally did break out and show some gumption, as he put it, he thought it was marvellous.’
‘How could he have believed that?’ Benedict voice sounded distant. ‘That’s absurd . . . ’
And yet – hadn’t he been equally obsessed with what now seemed a mad fiction? Like father, like son?
‘Your father always saw just what he wanted to see,’ said Benedict’s mother. ‘And the thing is, you’d be amazed at how often whatever he saw became real.’