Drybread: A Novel (15 page)

'I want to go running,' said Nicholas, two evenings later. 'I
need that adrenalin rush, or endorphin high, or whatever.
I'm stale and overworked, I've eaten too much — I'm
bored fucking silly.' He'd been drinking, of course. His
voice wasn't slurred on the phone: Nicholas never became
falling-down drunk. He was contemptuous of people who
took refuge in drink, who lost self-control, who couldn't
face whatever was handed out to them. But he had drunk
enough to make it natural to ring Theo at nightfall and
want to go running.

'You're too old, and too unfit,' said Theo.

'You don't know what old is. I gave a talk to a Probus
club today, and the experience terrified me. Row after row
of geriatrics with necks like cabbage stalks, bright, nylon
hair, and denture-swollen grins. I think they were all on
medication. Really old people will applaud anything: have
you noticed that? I gave them of my worst and they were
spellbound. I think what they're really celebrating when
they clap is the confirmation of their own existence as an
audience, that they're still alive, that the address has come
from someone other than the grim reaper.'

'You couldn't keep up on a run, but if you like I'll come
round in half an hour and we'll have a walk.'

'Thanks,' said Nicholas with false humbleness. 'Will
it be a brisk walk? There's something very English and
bracing about a brisk walk.'

Theo almost reset his desk layout trap for the parson,
before recalling his talk with Erskine in Nice. The search
for Penny and Ben was no longer a priority for anyone.

Nicholas had a ground-floor apartment and a small
enclosed courtyard close to the town hall. He'd made
preparations for the walk by rooting out a pair of cheap,
barely worn sneakers with such garish colours that they
glowed in the dusk. Apart from these he seemed exactly
as he would appear at his desk in the reporters' room. 'I'm
going to start an exercise regime,' he told Theo as they
headed past the floral clock and towards the river.

'Do Probus pay well?' asked Theo.

'No. Wine and flowers seem to be the thing. It's not
lucrative at all. I've had to say no to a swag of other Probus
clubs, Rotary, drop-in centres, even Grey Power. It's those
stories I did on the third age that started it all. There's a
whole world out there of people past their use-by date;
and a different language of joint operations, protheses,
magnetic underblankets, reverse mortgages, memory aids,
and risk-free minor activities for physical and mental
prolongation.'

Nicholas wasn't a great walker, and his speed was in
inverse proportion to the amount of talking he did and its
significance. While dismissing old people he maintained
a reasonably steady pace, but when he came to discuss
women he was reduced to a stroll. He wanted to know
how things were between Penny and Theo. Theo was quite
open, and told him of his hopes once the custody thing was
out of the way. There was one thing he didn't mention: he
said nothing about Penny's father and her childhood. He
didn't know enough, but more than that, he felt a strong
repugnance for what might lie there.

'Do you think about her a lot?' asked Nicholas.

'I do,' said Theo. 'I think about being with her, and I
wish I could do more to help. I grizzle about my life, and
here's Penny's going through some sort of hell.'

'It's important you think about her so much. It's a sign
when someone inhabits you even when absent.'

'Sometimes I dream about her,' said Theo.

'Oh, yes.'

'No, not sex usually. More about being with her when
she's happy again. Most of the time I've had this feeling
that everything I talk about is unimportant compared with
the devastation of her own life.'

'I dream about my boys,' said Nicholas. 'And they still
have the same voices, they're the same size, as when we
were a family. Trish is never there — I suppose there's some
Freudian explanation for that.'

Theo remembered Trish as being just as intelligent
as Nicholas, and with greater warmth. They'd seemed
compatible. Maybe some issue of principle had driven
them apart; maybe just a trivial trait of character, grown
rampant and insupportable. Nicholas always spoke of their
split as if it had been an act of God, like an avalanche, or
a meteor strike. Theo wasn't surprised that Nicholas often
thought of his family past: nostalgia is a harmless form of
depression.

They turned into one of the lesser streets, which was
still well lit, but much quieter, with spaced young rowan
trees along the grass strip where they walked. The line of
streetlights played tricks with their shadows, and when
they were half way between two poles, Theo and Nicholas
had multiplied, with equal-density shadows both behind
them and before.

'So you quite liked Nice?' enquired Nicholas.

'I did. Mainly I suppose because things worked out
okay.'

'And the Maine-King husband coughed up for all
expenses?'

'Yep.'

'Lucky bastard,' said Nicholas. He meant Theo, not
Erskine Maine-King, though wealth impresses most of us.
'I've never been to Nice,' he said, 'but I spent a week in
Arles years ago. An interesting river, Roman ruins and all
that exploitation of the Van Gogh connection, although
they despised the poor bastard when he lived there. There
were begging dogs there, I remember, and when we were
waiting to leave at the small railway station, a taxi driver
was discovered dead in his cab. I had a glimpse of his face
and it was very restful. You must be getting pretty close
to Penny Maine-King in all of this support you're giving.
You're not screwing her, are you?'

'No,' said Theo. From anyone else the remark would
have angered him, but it was just his friend's way.

'I have a good feeling about it, about it all working out
the way you and Penny deserve,' said Nicholas.

They walked along the river, then into Bealey Avenue
with its central divide of large, dark trees, and traffic lights
gleaming ahead. Nicholas said his two sons were coming to
stay with him during the term holidays. He saw them only
once or twice a year, when he paid for them to fly over.
Charles was seventeen and Morgan two years younger.
'They just go gadding when they're here,' said Nicholas.
'They never say anything personal, so neither do I. It's as
if the set-up is the most normal in the world, or too fucked
up to talk about.'

'It's the same for a lot of kids now.'

'They'd never tell me anything about themselves if
I didn't ask. I've been paying maintenance all these years,
and Trish never even sends me a copy of their school
reports. I know nothing about them. Two strangers come
and call me dad. They eat a lot and go to movies and the
beach, watch crap television. The little buggers never say
thank you for anything, and they never seem to wash.
They're like a war party of two: arriving, laying waste, then
shooting through.'

'Well, you're not part of their real lives, are you? You're
the holiday man.'

'Exactly,' said Nicholas morosely. They had turned into
Colombo Street, back towards the central city. His cheap,
firefly sneakers glinted as they passed under the spreading
trees, and he peered into the darkness.

'You're just an old bugger of no account to them,' said
Theo. He was determined to be realistic in the appraisal of
his own life, so why shouldn't such pragmatism extend to
his friends.

'Mind you,' said Nicholas, 'it would have happened
anyway, even if Trish and I hadn't split. Boys cast off their
parents, and resist parenthood themselves for as long as
they can.'

Theo didn't answer, but he thought about his own move
from home, the sense of expansion, the lack of homesickness
and the disregard of subsequent communication. If he'd
had children he would be in the same situation as Nicholas.
Maybe daughters were different, but then their natural
sympathy in a separation would be with their mother.

'You know what was just about the worst part of it all
for me,' said Nicholas. He didn't expect a response, didn't
wait for one. 'It was clearing out the bloody house where
we'd lived as a family. All the junk that nevertheless meant
something and was so painful to jettison. Especially the
kids' stuff.' Theo could understand that. He'd experienced
it, except that it must be worse with children's things. He
sensed Nicholas's fear as all the trivial, physical totems of
his family life were scattered and lost their potency. The
trike hanging in the basement recess with small blisters of
rust showing through the dusty red paint, and on the same
hook a pair of ice-skates, the white leather of the boots
brittle and contorted. The board games in the bottom
drawer, with ludo counters, play money, pencil stubs and
small dice in a chocolate box on which one of the boys
had written 'Crap' in black felt pen in the pique of defeat.
The battery men with shiny, carapace torsos and macho
expressions, but with their source of power gone and an
arm or leg missing. Discarded cellphones with which the
boys had mimicked their parents, and the favourite books
worn almost to disintegration. Theo imagined Nicholas in
the desperate disposal of a haphazard accumulation which
was the archaeology of his family life.

They had almost done a circuit, and were heading
towards the town hall and the river from a different
direction, through the mainly one-storey shops and premises
of modest commercial firms. Only the restaurants
were open, their light spilling weakly onto the footpath,
and the few diners glimpsed hunched over their food as
if they feared dispossession. Nicholas had finished with
his trials as a separated father, and was becoming almost
cheerful in detailing the vicissitudes that had beset the
university journalism department since his resignation. No
one is indispensable, but to have your replacements suffer
misfortune, or the consequences of their inadequacies,
is heartening. 'I could see it coming all along,' said
Nicholas. 'Too many pointy heads, too much ideology and
wankerism.'

His perspicacity did not extend to random physical
threat, however, and he was unlucky enough to laugh
while passing one of the few parked cars, and the only one
that was occupied. 'Who are you laughing at, fuckface?'
and Theo and Nicholas were abruptly aware of the elbows
jutting from the car's open windows, and behind them a
bobbing agitation of faces like pantomime masks on sticks.
Without thinking, Nicholas and Theo paused, when they
should have carried on.

'What?' said Nicholas.

'Don't fucking what me, you shithead.' The car seemed
to erupt bodies: young guys with shaved hair and big boots,
all suddenly in violent movement within the poor light
and shadows. They weren't tall, or bulky, but seemed to
burn with the necessity to oppose — not anything specific,
just what was there. And Theo and Nicholas were there.
They were on P or something, surely, or they were so bored
they were going to pound their way out of it.

'Steady on, mate,' said Theo, though there were four of
them, their faces pushing into his personal space.

'Not so funny now, is it.'

'You gutless old cunts.'

'Yeah, not so funny now, you useless old fuckers.'

It was the accusation of being old that Theo resented
most. He was thirty-eight after all, though admittedly
Nicholas was forty-six. He had a momentary macho flare
in which he thought of challenging one of the four to have
a go, but he knew it didn't work like that, and what might
they have as well as their fists and boots: short, straight
knives, probably, and their thick foreheads full into your
face. Besides, his last physical response, to the parson,
had been a signal failure. He and Nicholas began backing
towards the nearest open door, which was the entrance of a
Chinese restaurant bold with rampant dragons in red and
gold, but humble in internal dimensions.

Theo was aware that both he and Nicholas were
placatory, even abject, in what they said. Sentences about
no need for this, about no offence meant, remonstrances
about the wrong end of the stick and cooling down, and
taking it easy. Nicholas had the palm of one hand up like a
traffic controller as the guys pushed closer. They closed in
as a sudden, violent flurry when Theo and Nicholas were
pushing open the restaurant door. The most painful blow
Theo got was below his ear on the left side. It felt as if it
had been delivered by an elbow rather than a fist. Theo was
surprised a slight man could hit so hard. He and Nicholas
were injected into the restaurant, stumbling upon a girl
coming to see what the ruckus was. 'Call the police,' said
Theo. He glanced at the three diners; a couple at one table,
a older man in a bush shirt at another. He wasn't so much
checking the level of protection, as ensuring that there was
no one who would recognise him, no one to carry forth a
description of his indignity.

'I'm dialling,' said the waitress, and she picked up a
mobile phone from beside the till, waved it in admonition.

She wasn't Chinese, and she wasn't distraught. She was
thin and contourless, perhaps still a schoolgirl. A shorter,
bland-faced Chinese man appeared at her side from the
kitchen curtain, anxiety widening his smile.

The four young buggers gathered in the doorway briefly,
shouting and swearing in a fury of triumph, but they didn't
enter. It was as if they recognised that their habitat was
after-hours streets and gathered cars, garage piss-ups or a
sand dune fracas. They withdrew with self-congratulatory
shrieks, and then their car laboured into the night.

It took time for the thudding of the words at the wall
and window to die away, for the small restaurant to empty
of such virulent, ugly language, and while it did no one
moved. Then the three customers began again to eat, the
schoolgirl put down the phone, and the proprietor waggled
his fingers and smiled to minimise what had happened.
Nicholas was bleeding from the nose. There were drops
of surprising vividness on his jacket, his striped shirt and
the pale gloss of the floor. The Chinese man offered wet
paper napkins, and Theo and Nicholas stood between the
counter and the curtain — not quite within the private
domain of the kitchen, but territorially removed from the
dining area though still in view.