Based on a True Story (16 page)

thirty

When Charlie was a newborn, Augusta sat for the first few weeks, stared at him, and wondered:
Who do you remind me of?
All he really resembled was an angry baby crocodile, with his open wailing jaws and rubbery thrashing. She picked him up, he cried; she put him down, he cried louder.

Every day she wished for her mother, her ineffectual, hand-wringing mother, but her mother had followed her father to the grave after only eight months. Eight months’ peace the woman got, after two and a half decades of torment. A tumour had appeared in her mother’s abdomen not long after her father died, one toxic guest moving in to replace another.

So Augusta patted and prodded Charlie, and tried slipping her battered nipple into his frantic mouth, but nothing calmed him. She felt as if she were trying to knit a sweater while wearing oven mitts. No one she knew was any help. Who did she know? Notting Hill coke dealers and cross-dressing performance artists; selfish bastard actors who were babies themselves; and women like Alma who’d had terminations all through their lives and now couldn’t bear to look at babies because babies were the road not taken. Soon she realized who her friends were — really, who her friends were not. She had no one.

She had Ken. The last person she imagined would come to her aid, a tough Salford lad from a family where only women looked after babies. But he arrived at her flat one day, a little more than a week after Charlie was born. The longest ten days of Augusta’s life. Each day had a hundred hours in it, and in each of those hundred hours she’d been awake holding an egg in both hands. Or so it seemed.

When he arrived, she was too tired to cry. She’d taken the final Darvon the doctor had given her to dull the pain of her stitches, a supply that was supposed to last the month. Luscious pink pills, fat as raspberries, why did they make them so enticing if they didn’t want you to take them all at once? She opened the door to find Kenneth in a pirate shirt and knee-high suede boots, his arrival heralded by a cloud of scented hairspray: Midnight Oleander. He’d been given what he regarded as a promotion at the
BBC
, from rewriting news to producing segments on up-and-coming pop bands. Augusta thought it wasn’t much of a job for a grown man, and told him so.

His new position seemed to require fancy dress. She tugged on his sleeve as he came in. “You off to audition for
Bluebeard’s World
, Ken?” She was quite proud of herself for mustering the energy.

“Oh, ha,” he said. “I hear they’re looking for wenches. But you’ll want to wipe the sick off yourself first.”

Charlie had thrown up on her that morning and a crust marked the sleeve of her shapeless tunic. Ken leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, and she felt him inhale greedily. Even when she was rancid, he couldn’t get enough.

“Give us the baby, Augusta.”

He took the squawling, starving crocodile from her arms and held him up to the light, as if he were a diamond and this would reveal his facets. Charlie’s face was covered in an angry scurf of baby eczema. His umbilical cord had not yet fallen off and hung from his belly like a tiny, desiccated sausage-end. Ken looked up at him and an enormous smile broke across his face.

“Bless,” he said.

To Augusta’s astonishment, the baby quieted, perhaps out of terror, for he was now seven feet in the air and all that stood between him and the hard floor was a wild-haired pirate.

Kenneth headed for the sofa, the baby tucked under his arm. He sat, carefully placing two hands behind Charlie’s head, and looked at him closely.

Finally, he tore his gaze away from the baby, and his eyes caught the light in the gloom of the flat. “Is he mine, Augusta?”

“Absolutely, he’s yours,” she said, reaching for her cigarettes. “Just give me a minute to pack his things.”

“Because he looks like me,” Kenneth said, peering down at the baby’s mouth. “Born with a tooth, just like me. My mother used to say I nearly sawed her in half.”

She flopped back in her chair, happy to have her arms to herself for just a moment. Was he Ken’s? Without much heart in it, she’d tried to do the math but that month, the crucial month, was a blur. The
ayahuasca
had punched a week out of it, possibly two. For a moment, she was glad her parents were dead. Her father would have never spoken to her again, except to remind her of the shame she’d brought on the family. She would have a better chance of identifying next year’s Grand National winner than her baby’s father. Would it be so bad if it were Ken?

Over the next decade the question rarely came up; they were both afraid of the answer. Instead, they settled into a routine that suited them. Kenneth became a permanent fixture in her life, a father to Charlie, doggedly ignoring her taunts when she tried to drive him away. For months they would be at opposite poles, their only connection the boy, and then they would hurtle back together in passion, two magnets with no will of their own. He was a good parent, far better than she was, and no other candidate had ever come forward.

At first, he’d ignored her waywardness and its effect on the boy. It was easy enough when Charlie was a child, with a child’s fuzzy grasp of the world.

Then one afternoon Kenneth had walked into the kitchen where Charlie, aged eight, was carefully straightening lines of laundry detergent on the counter in front of a school friend. They each had a drinking straw in their hands. Charlie’s friend was just leaning forward to snort when Ken, with a bellow, launched himself across the kitchen.

“What?” said Charlie, angry and in tears, after the friend had been sent home. “It’s just fun. I’ve seen loads of grown-ups do it. They do it and they laugh.”

By the next month, Ken had found the school in Sussex, progressive and welcoming to unorthodox parents. Augusta feigned sadness — rather well, she thought — when she said goodbye to Charlie at the school gates.

“You go in with him and get him settled,” she said to Ken. “I don’t want to cry.”

More than fifteen years later, she sat with the young man who was now a stranger and tried to keep the tears back. The blanket of tequila had slipped away, and she felt as naked and miserable as she ever had. How in God’s name did people cope with these emotions all the time?

Charles sat staring out the window at the traffic that streamed past in the night. He hadn’t said much on the way to the café, smiling tightly at her babbled apologies, catching her arm once as she pitched sideways on her broken heel. Frances had skulked back to the motel, her face a crimson beacon of shame.

“Do you need a few more minutes?” Augusta looked up, startled, at the waitress. She had fine, elfin features under a severe dark bob, and a smile aimed at one of the people at the table. Charles shook his head, and ordered coffee and two slices of lemon meringue pie. The menu held no welcome for the alcohol-starved; Augusta had already checked. With a grimace, she ordered a coffee. The waitress gathered their menus, her dark eyes on the boy. He didn’t notice, or pretended not to.

Her son sat across the Formica table, silently shredding a paper napkin. Had he always been so beautiful, or had the alchemy of the sun changed him in some profound way? Most men grew coarser when they left their teens behind, but Charlie — Charles, he had already reminded her once — was refined, his features more sculpted, golden skin drawn across high cheekbones. His freckles had almost faded. Whose freckles, exactly? She should tell him how handsome he was.

“When did you lose your accent, then?”

He looked up at her, eyes narrowed. Kenneth’s eyes? Possibly.

“That’s what you want to know? We haven’t talked in how long?”

“Seven years.”

“Six and a half, actually.”

“Well,” said Augusta, “it seems longer.”

The silence stretched between them. Augusta was framing apologies a thousand different ways when the waitress returned with their coffee. She poured one sugar into her cup, a second, a third. The boy took his black.

Caffeine and tequila, the poor woman’s speedball. When she laughed under her breath, her son scowled.

“I’m glad you think it’s funny,” he said. “Making a spectacle of yourself like that.”

This was something she had always found both endearing and mystifying, his deep seriousness. There was a formality to the way he spoke, even when he was a child, that charmed adults.

She said, “Do you know the joke about the man who went to a party and drank half the liquor?” He shook his head, fingers working steadily at the napkin. “Well, he also took half the drugs and tried to shag half the women.” She paused. “He made a complete monocle of himself.”

The boy grunted, but didn’t look up at her.

“Oh, come on Charli— Charles. I saw that smile. A mother can always tell.”

“Really?” he said, quick as a flash. “Then how would you know?”

She took a deep breath, and bit back a retort. He was entitled to at least one cheap shot. The waitress arrived to break the silence, sliding two plates onto the table.

“I remembered that you like lemon pie,” the boy said. “Or at least you used to.” He handed her a fork, handle first. “There was that time I went to Morrison’s to get one for your birthday, and the manager wanted to call the police because he thought I was too young to be out on my own.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. Which birthday? A day so important to him it had lodged in his memory for years, and she had no recollection.

“I’ve felt guilty from that day to this,” she said. “And I still adore lemon pie.” Half-heartedly, she poked the meringue. “I’m sorry, Charles.”

He had stopped in mid-bite, and she realized how ambiguous that statement was, and how woefully inadequate.

“For this evening, I mean. Embarrassing you was not part of my plan.”

The boy looked at her as if she’d promised an elaborate trick and instead had produced a dead rabbit. After a moment he said, “I apologize as well, Augusta. It was a cruel thing I just said.”

He bent toward his plate, and she knew, in a sudden rush, that she’d only have this time with him. This short evening, already half-ruined. The paralyzing weight of seven years’ silence crushed her. Building a bridge toward him, that’s what she should be doing. But she couldn’t let go of the furious impulse that had driven her here, the gnawing worry that hollowed her.

She reached into her purse for her lipstick and compact. “Are you seeing anyone, Charles? God knows loads of girls must fancy you.”

“Mmm.” He shook his head. “Too busy.”

“Even though you’ve got a professional matchmaker right by your side?” She tried to keep her voice casual. “I’m sure Kenneth could help.”

“I’m sure he’d like to.”

The compact opened with a snap. She kept her eyes on him above the mirror.

“I hear Ken’s quite busy these days. The radio show. His new book.”

“Busier than ever, I should think.”

“It’s fascinating to me,” said Augusta, rolling bright crimson over her bottom lip. “One minute he’s a journalist in England, the next minute he’s here and he’s an expert on romance. Which is a bit of a joke, of course.”

“Do you think so?” the boy said, his face blank.

“Darling, I know so. Having been on the receiving end, so to speak.” Augusta pressed her lips together. “Unless of course the book he’s writing isn’t about romance at all. Maybe it’s about his own life. Lessons he’s learned. People he’s known. Lies he now believes.”

Charles shrugged.

“Oh, Christ’s sweaty bollocks, Charlie! Charles.” His obstinacy was a goad. “Because he’s going to write what he thinks he knows, isn’t he, no matter how wrong —”

“As if,” the boy said, suddenly fierce. “As if he’d do that. That’s your territory.”

She tried to think of something wounding to say.

Charles lifted his shoulders. “Why do you think he’d even write about you?”

She stared at him.

“I mean, you didn’t write about him, did you? In your book.” He sat up straighter, and his wet palms squeaked against the vinyl. “Or me.”

“I was trying to protect you,” she said, stricken.

“The time to protect me was when I was sixteen, and you made me choose between the two of you.”

The deadly calm of his voice pinned her back against the booth. She was immobile, but her thoughts raced:
What is he talking about? Made him choose between us?
She fished blindly for a memory but there was only darkness.

Finally she managed to whisper, “I never.”

He pressed on, as if he hadn’t heard her. “You told me if I chose to live with Ken, I’d be betraying you and you didn’t want to see me again. We were at your flat in King’s Cross. I’d been staying with you since school ended, and there was a row . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t even remember what it was about now, but you told me I had to choose between the two of you. I said I wouldn’t, so you handed me a bin liner and told me to put my clothes in it.” Charles’s eyes never left hers. “Then you gave me cab fare to Ken’s. I must have rang you ten times the next week, Augusta, and no word.”

She sat staring at him, his words whirling in her head. “I don’t remember.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” her son said. His voice was flat and cold; he might have been telling her about an operation he’d had long ago.

She couldn’t speak; the angry rush of words that had been there a moment ago lay dry in her mouth. She would never have banished him. Such a thing was unimaginable.

The waitress came to the table, nervously dropping the bill into the hostile silence. Charles reached for it.

“Do you know what it was like, reading your book? It was like looking at old photos and I’d been removed from every one. Like looking at your own family pictures, and wondering who the hell those people are.”

thirty-one

There was no reason for Stanley to answer his phone. Now that he’d been sacked, he was most likely sitting at the pub watching Queens Park Rangers lose, his phone face-down in a pool of beer on the bar. He might even be happier that way.

He might be too embarrassed to speak to me
, Frances thought, leaning into the motel mirror, its surface dotted and dashed with human effluent. She put on another coat of mascara. He doesn’t want a reminder of our mutual failure society.

Augusta’s head poked through the bathroom door. She had, with the diligence of a master spackler, repaired the damage to her hangover-ravaged face. She had lain in bed most of the day, nursing head and heart after last night’s debacle at the bookstore. But as the light had leached from their motel room, she’d risen from the coffin of threadbare sheets and begun to prepare for the night.

“My God,” said Frances. “You look like a picture.”

“An X-rated picture, I hope.” She ducked in front of Frances to check herself in the mirror and lifted her breasts so they sat higher in the red halter-necked dress. “This frock had better serve its purpose. It’s my nuclear option.”

Frances started to ask why she was dressed for battle, but Augusta held up a finger. “All will be revealed in good time, darling. What I can tell you is that you should be prepared for action. You might want to have your bag packed.”

And then she was gone, stopping at the bedside table to scoop her cigarettes and a small bottle of pills into her bag. Frances watched her shut the door, feeling a curious emptiness in the air.

Frances looked at the time on her phone. It was almost the end of the drinking night in London. It was too late to call. She called anyway. Hitting the Skype button with one shaking finger, she waited for the transatlantic beeping to subside. Stanley answered on the first ring, and she thought:
Desperate for a call from anyone, or just from me?

“Hello, wanderer,” he said, and she almost burst into tears. The tiny screen was kind to a man in crisis: it blurred the shadows under his eyes and the lines on his brow. Frances hoped the screen lied for her as well.

“So,” he said. “How’s the madwoman? Not you, the other one.”

Frances curled herself at the top of the bed. “She just left. I think she’s heading for a fistfight with an old flame. And the panel she came out here to do was a complete disaster, because she insulted the other guests. And she nearly got arrested by the airport police.”

“A typical day at the office, then.” He cupped his cheek in his hand, as if they were back at the pub, separated by a table and not an ocean.

It was a relief to be able to talk to someone about the precipitous spiral her life now described. “She’s like a baby,” Frances said. “A big, drunken baby who needs constant attention, and always wants an audience. It’s making me feel weirdly maternal. She just does what she wants and damn the consequences. I’ve never met anyone like her.”

“Well, there was Aleister Crowley,” said Stanley. “‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.’”

“She’s not actually a dark wizard,” Frances said. “Though it might explain why I keep doing what she says.” She stretched out on the bed, propping the phone next to her. “It’s very odd, being with her. She’s screwed up so many times and she doesn’t seem to care. I can’t imagine what it’s like not to worry about falling down, and down . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Frances.” His voice was gentle. “Everyone’s terrified of that.”

They sat staring at each other for a moment until Frances sat up suddenly. She turned the camera to face the rocky shoreline of empty bottles on the sidetable. “Oh, and she’s turning me into an alcoholic.”

“That’s supposed to be my job,” he said, “if you’d just come home.”

Frances sucked in a deep breath. Even sitting down, her legs felt weak. She wanted to reach through the phone and touch his unshaven cheek.

She said, unsteadily, “I’m not sure where home is anymore, Stanley.”

From his kitchen in Clapham he scowled at her. “Don’t be so wet, Frances. You’ve had one tiny fall at a fence. You’ll pick yourself back up.” He leaned closer to the screen and lowered his voice: “Let’s hear more about you. What you’ve been doing. What you’re wearing.”

“You can see what I’m wearing.”

“I know. Horribly pervy question. Sorry.”

She aimed for a sultry voice: “Why, what are you wearing?”

“The usual,” he said. “Red thong under my cardinal’s robes.”

“Ah,” said Frances. “That explains why they fired you.”

As soon as the words were out, she wished she could pull them back. He forced a laugh, and the compressed sound of it made her feel sick.

“Now I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“We could apologize until the end of time, Frances. It’s my fault we’re both out of jobs.”

She blurted, “It’s only because of you that I ever had a job in the first place. But I’ve been thinking, it might be a good thing . . .” Her eye was caught by a dark shape on the table in front of him: a pack of cigarettes. “You’re still smoking, Stanley.”

“It’s a good thing I’m still smoking? Premature death will mean a shorter stay in the poorhouse, it’s true.” He smiled at her, the funny sideways smile she’d been longing to see.

“No, you idiot. I meant it’s a good thing we’re not working together anymore. If you’re not at the paper anymore, and I’m not . . .” She paused, willing him to understand. To step into the breach.

He leaned closer to his screen and said softly, “You’re not my slave anymore, is that it? I’d be happy to wear the slave toga for a bit, if you’d like.”

She brought one finger up to the screen, and he did the same, so that their fingers touched. “You are a tonic, Frances,” he said. “And I wish you weren’t a bloody continent away. You could come sit in my kitchen and help me stick pins in my oligarch doll.”

A sudden sound from outside made her look toward the window: the whirring of gears, a muted curse. The local call girl must be heading to work.

She turned back to the phone, suddenly giddy. It was as if the miasma of the past few days had lifted and burst, leaving something bright behind. “You’ve never been to Los Angeles, have you?”

“I’ve never been further west than Swansea, and I regretted even that.”

“Then I’m going to show you around.”

For the next ten minutes she gave Stanley a tour of her world, holding the phone in front of her like a candle. She showed him the unfilled pool, the cut-price liquor store across the street, the tracksuit-clad prostitute gliding off to work on her mobility scooter.

“It really is a city of dreams,” he said once she’d brought him back inside.

“Astonishing that anyone ever leaves,” she said. Gathering her courage, she blurted: “You look wonderful, Stanley. You look ten years younger. Leaving that place has saved your life.”

“I’m just wearing a lot of makeup,” he said, but she could swear he was pleased. “To be honest, things aren’t entirely pear-shaped. I do have something exciting happening.”

She felt her heart tumble down her ribcage. He was going to tell her he’d fallen in love. A woman had saved him from despair.

“It’s actually a marvellous professional opportunity for me. And I was thinking, it could be great for you, too, if you wanted to come on board.” His face was suddenly serious. “Frances, how do you feel about cats?”