London and the South-East

17

STARING FIXEDLY AT the oncoming motorway, Paul is trying to stay awake. The swishing hum of the engine as it toils, the monotony before him, the fact that it is more or less his bedtime — quarter to twelve, a.m. — all weigh heavily on his eyelids. In the back of the car, the children have stopped making noise, are probably asleep. Nor is Heather in a talkative mood — she has said hardly a word since they set out. And next to Paul, at the wheel, Martin’s jaw — like the air in the Saab’s cramped cabin — is tensely, nervously tight. It is Easter Day, and they are off to Heather’s parents’ house for lunch.

She did not mention to Paul until last night that Martin had offered to drive them. She told him as she was going up to bed, leaving him to spend the next few hours in uncomfortable wonderment at the lengths to which Martin would go to be of service to her. Was there anything he would not do?

‘What, he’s coming to the lunch?’ Paul had said in disbelief.

‘No, of course not.’

‘What’s he going to do then — wait in the car?’

She was standing in the doorway in her dressing gown. She yawned. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. And they both laughed uneasily.

‘But he can’t do that!’ Paul said, suddenly feeling that it was in fact too much. For Martin to regrout the shower, to unblock the drains was one thing. To do this though … ‘Come on …’ There was something weird about it. Was it not slightly insane? And should Martin not be dissuaded from such insane actions? Paul was surprised, even shocked, at Heather’s willingness to make use of him.

‘He wants to,’ was all she said.

For a few moments Paul was speechless. Then he said, ‘It’s not right.’

The doorbell’s urgent exclamation sounded on the stroke of eleven. Heather was still upstairs. She seemed unusually on edge, was yelling impatiently at Marie. The doorbell sounded again. Though it was, of course, too late — he was able to see Martin’s tall shape splintered in the frosted glass panels of the door — Paul wished, as he went to open it, that he had done something to forestall this situation. He found that he was humming to himself, out of nervousness. Nobody’s dignity, he thought, twisting the mortise, is going to survive this intact. Martin was wearing a blouson jacket of greenish-blue suede, jeans and moccasins. Also sunglasses — iridescent teardrop mirrors — which he whipped off as Paul opened the door. He was blushing, his grey-blue eyes subtly evasive. ‘Morning, Martin,’ Paul said.

‘Paul.’

‘It’s really very good of you to offer to do this.’

‘It’s no trouble.’

Paul laughed — a single, flinty Ha! ‘I’m glad you think so. I’m glad you think so. Come in.’

Martin stepped warily into the hall, looking around with the air of someone who had never seen it before; with the strange air, in fact, of someone entering a famous space, the Sistine Chapel say, for the first time — there was something of the well-behaved tourist in the way he moved his head from side to side, systematically taking in his surroundings — the beige hall, the small steps, the framed print of Salisbury cathedral. ‘Um, come through,’ Paul said, holding out a hand in the direction of the sitting room. There they stood in the residual haze of the spliff smoke; and there too Martin seemed to think that he was in a museum, piously inspecting Heather’s knick-knacks, and keeping his hands safely in his pockets. ‘Coffee?’ Paul said. He hoped that Martin would want one, if only to give him an excuse to leave the lounge, where the atmosphere stung with discomfiture, with a kind of dumb imbroglio, the social ineptitude of a botched and sinking date. Martin shook his head immediately and said, ‘No, thanks.’ There followed perhaps a minute of silence, and then, unable to think of anything else to say, Paul asked him what he was planning to do while they had lunch. Martin just shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know.’ Paul was still nodding, as if weighing up this answer, his lips held in a thoughtful moue, when — preceded by the children with their newly brushed hair — Heather tumbled down the stairs. ‘Hi, Martin,’ she said, with the merest skimming look in his direction. (Paul thought her embarrassment entirely understandable.) Martin did not even say hello to her. Excited by the prospect of travelling in the yellow Saab, it was the children who did most of the talking.

Low in the sporty leather seat, Paul struggled to stay awake as they sped up the A23, through its innumerable chalky cuttings, towards London.

The traffic is light, and the sun shines through intermittently, dumping its metallic brightness on the monochrome hues of the road. Martin stares straight ahead. In the back, the children are quiet, as if drugged by the scent of leather and — used to the sluggishness of Heather’s old Vauxhall — the smooth impulsive acceleration of the vehicle. Near Reigate, still in uneasy silence, they join the M25. The stiffly generous banter of the first fifteen minutes of the journey, as they disentangled themselves from Brighton — Paul had made a particular effort, Martin was more monosyllabic — is a distant memory now. No one has said a word for an hour. At some point between junctions eight and nine, Paul finally nods off — and wakes with a start in a quiet, residential street, to the patient, measured tick of the indicator. Aware of him in his peripheral vision, he wonders how Martin must feel. Their presence in Hounslow makes the situation seem even stranger than it did in Hove. They are on the Staines Road … His head flops loosely on his exhausted neck as the synthetic voice of the GPS system says, ‘Turn. Right.’ And Martin turns the wheel. He lets them out in front of the house. Standing on the pavement, Paul fears for a moment that Heather will invite him to join them for lunch. She does not. She says she will phone him when they have finished, and — still strapped into his seat — he smiles tensely (feeling quite foolish, Paul imagines) and drives away with a defensive brusqueness, a dash of turbo, as if he has things to do.

It is the first time that Paul has seen Mike or Joan since starting his new job — initially its precise nature was kept from them — and he finds, to his irritation, that they now treat him as if he were seriously ill. ‘I’ve worked nights,’ Mike says sympathetically, sad-eyed, as they sip their aperitifs. ‘It’s not as bad as all that. It’s not so bad.’

‘That wasn’t in a supermarket, Dad.’

‘No,’ he says, judiciously. ‘No, it wasn’t.’

And it is not mentioned again, even when Paul dozes off over his crescent of melon and rag of Italian ham.

In the sweltering room, everything seems so slow. The successive procedures of the meal. There is an extended, inexplicable lull between the starter and the main course, during which he goes out into the garden for a cigarette to try and wake himself up. On his own, watching the planes scream over, he sees them all sitting there one cloudy Sunday, Mike with his hands over his eyes, smiling; Heather holding Marie; himself, somewhat younger, listening politely to Joan. ‘The thing is,’ she is saying, ‘you just can’t let it get to you. If you let it get to you, if you become obsessed with it, it becomes a nightmare. Doesn’t it?’

He falls asleep with a plate of roast lamb in front of him, and it is then that he is told to leave, and wanders upstairs. And he wakes, several hours later, in Heather’s old room, on her old single bed, wondering what time it is. Through the window the sky is listlessly ambiguous. Descending the stairs in his socks, he hears voices indistinctly from the lounge. And then, when he is halfway down, he hears Martin’s voice. He stops. The drive from Hove — though he knows of course that it happened — had seemed, when he woke and sat for a few fogged minutes on the edge of the bed, like an unpleasant dream. Now Martin is there — he is in the house — and Paul feels that this finally is too much.

When he appears in the doorway, frowsy and thunder-faced, Heather says, ‘Oh there you are. I was just about to wake you up. We’re going.’ She sounds drunk.

‘Well, I’m up,’ he says. ‘All right, Martin?’

Martin just nods. He is looking through some photos.

Joan brings Paul a coffee, and he sits down. Martin is looking through the photos — which are of Mike and Joan’s narrow-boat holiday — as if they were the most interesting things he has ever seen, examining each one for ten or twenty seconds. Paul enjoys his obvious unease and embarrassment. He should not have showed up there. It turns out, however, that Heather more or less invited him in. She phoned to say that they were leaving soon, and since he was sitting in his car two streets away, she suggested — with voluble encouragement from her parents — that he join them.

It is nightfall when they leave. Heather, Paul notes, is totally drunk. When they finally slip onto the M25 near Staines, it is night. Not long after this, however, they have to pull over onto the hard shoulder. Heather falls out. In silence, Oliver and Marie watch her stagger towards the undergrowth, while Paul and Martin sit in their seat belts, staring straight ahead. She has not made much of an effort to hide herself, and waves of headlights wash her squatting form. ‘Sorry about this,’ Paul mutters. Martin — keeping an impudent eye on her in the mirror — says nothing. This offish silence, and the way in which he is openly staring at her, make Paul furious. In a quiet voice he says, ‘What did you get up to this afternoon then?’ Still staring at Heather as she wobbles towards the car, Martin just shakes his head.

Thereafter, an icy silence sets in until he parks the Saab in Stoneham Road. Heather is asleep, and when Paul tries to wake her, she shrugs him off. As soon as Oliver and Marie were out, she slid into a horizontal position, and now seems intent on staying there. They wait on the pavement looking nervous while Paul, in an increasingly savage whisper, tries to persuade her to disembark. Standing next to them, Martin wears a look of extreme, sober seriousness, like a politician on TV in the midst of a natural disaster. Squashing herself into the leather of the seat, Heather shoves Paul with a stockinged foot — her shoes have fallen off — and he hisses, ‘For fuck’s sake, get out.’ He takes her arm and tries to pull her into a sitting position, but she wrestles it free and slithers further in. He sighs and stands up, with a sort of shrug. For a moment, humiliated and at a loss, he just stands there. Then he fumbles the house keys from his pocket and hands them to Oliver. ‘Mum’s not well,’ he says. ‘We’ll be along in a minute. Go inside.’ Without a word, Oliver takes the keys, and he and Marie walk away — Marie looking over her shoulder.

In the few seconds that this has taken, Martin has insinuated himself into the situation — perched on the ledge of the seat, leaning into the car, he seems to be whispering something to Heather. Paul wonders what to do. It does not seem to be Martin’s place to try and wheedle her out — except that it is his vehicle and he, Paul, has already tried and failed — and the impulse to seize his suede shoulder and say, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ quickly evaporates in the face of these observations, and of Paul’s weariness and wish to end this situation as quickly as possible. He looks along the quiet, terraced street.

Something seems to be happening, some sort of movement, and for a nightmarish moment he thinks that Martin is kissing her. Then he withdraws slowly from the interior and sighs. ‘She’s been sick,’ he says.

They stand there.

‘Look, I’m sorry, Martin,’ Paul says. Martin, touching his palms tenderly together, seems to be pondering something. Paul assumes — wrongly — that it is something to do with the vomit in his spotless Saab. ‘I really am,’ he says. ‘We’ll pay for it to be valet-cleaned. You know …’ Seemingly lost in thought, Martin shakes his head. Paul wonders whether he is dismissing the offer. Martin sighs again — a great heaved sigh; he is shaking his head with a sort of weighty sorrow. Suddenly wanting a cigarette, Paul takes one out of his pocket, and is about to light it, when it occurs to him that Martin’s pensive, sorrowful immobility may just be a matter of waiting for him to deal with the situation, so he shoves the cigarette into his pocket and hurriedly inserts his head into the now sourly unpleasant-smelling interior of the Saab. ‘Come on, Heather,’ he says. ‘Let’s go. You’ve puked up in Martin’s car.’

Very pale, she sits up. For a moment she does not move. Her face is expressionless and at the same time utterly miserable. Slowly, in silence, she manoeuvres her way to the open door and steps out, moving past Paul as though he were not there. ‘Your shoes …’ he says.

She is already walking away, tiptoeing with drunken single-mindedness in a wavy line up Lennox Road. It is Paul’s turn to sigh now, fiercely. He stoops into the car and takes her shoes. One of them has vomit in it. While he is doing this, Martin is watching Heather walk away. And he is about to speak, to say something, when standing up, holding her soiled shoes, Paul speaks first. He says, ‘I’m sorry, Martin. I really am. We’ll be in touch, all right?’

Martin just nods, and Paul starts to walk away.

‘Paul.’

He turns. ‘What?’

Martin is not even looking at him. He is staring at a spot on the pavement, with a strange little smile on his face.

‘Look, we’ll be in touch,’ Paul says, and walks on, only stopping momentarily when he is some way off to turn and shout, ‘Thanks for the lift.’

He waits for Heather in the kitchen from first light. In fact, he is in the garden when she emerges. Through the window, he sees her enter the kitchen with her tawny hair trailing over her face. Her face is lifeless and ugly. With a final leaf through the notes in his head — fizzing with indignation, he has spent the night preparing this talk — he opens the door and steps inside.

‘I’m frightened of him, Paul,’ she says.

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m frightened of him.’

‘Who?’ She says nothing. ‘Martin?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you mean you’re frightened of him?’

‘He won’t leave me alone,’ she says, her eyes shining. This is not what he expected. ‘He won’t stop pestering me! I don’t know what to do. I told him he shouldn’t take us to London. He wouldn’t listen. He’s mad.’

Paul steals a look at the text of his speech; it seems to have been overtaken by events.

‘He just won’t leave me alone. He won’t stop phoning me.’

‘You shouldn’t encourage him.’

‘I know. I know.’ She starts to sob.

‘You encourage him.’

‘I know. I don’t know what to do.’

‘What do you mean he won’t stop phoning you?’

‘He phones me ten times a day. I have to switch my phone off. He wants to see me all the time …’

‘He wants to see you?’

‘Yes!’ She is tearful. ‘Why do you think he took us to London? He just wanted to see me. I said I couldn’t. So he said he’d drive us to London. He insisted.’

‘Why didn’t you tell him you didn’t want him to?’

‘I did. He wouldn’t listen. He’s mad. He’s mad …’

‘What about Friday night?’ Paul says.

‘Friday night?’ She doesn’t seem to follow.

‘He drove you home from the Metropole.’

‘Yes?’

‘You said he was there with someone else …’

‘No, that’s not true! He wasn’t there. He phoned me. He wanted to see me. I told him he couldn’t. He asked me where I was — he said he’d come and get me when I wanted to leave. I told him not to. But he came anyway. I’m frightened of him, Paul.’

‘What do you mean you’re frightened? Why are you frightened? What’s he done?’

‘It’s not what he’s done …’

‘Why are you frightened?’

‘He’s … He’s …’ She is shaking her head.

‘Has he threatened you?’

‘No. No.’ She wipes her eyes. ‘Maybe I’m just being silly.’

‘You should just ignore him,’ Paul says.

‘I know.’

‘Stop encouraging him. Tell him you don’t want to see him.’

She nods.

‘And if he still won’t leave you alone …’ She is staring at the floor. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘we might have to …’ Hearing one of the doors open upstairs, he stops. ‘You know.’ She looks up haggardly for a moment. Then, wiping her eyes on the rose towelling of her sleeve, starts to take things out of the fridge and transfer them to the table.

‘You should just ignore him,’ Paul says.

She ignores him.

‘Do you want me to have a word with him?’

She says nothing.

Smoking in the garden once more, he feels shamed and furious with himself for ignoring his instinct, throughout Sunday, to punch Martin in the mouth. Yes, he should have punched him in the mouth, and sod the consequences. Should have done something. Next time, he promises himself, he will.