Fifty-Minute Hour (42 page)

‘Buy yourself a present, Mother.' He could afford to be generous just once in his cramped life. If he was going to leave his Mother alone in Ivy Close, build a nest with Mary, then at least he should provide some compensation. ‘Buy anything you like,' he urged. ‘Don't fuss about the price.' He knew he was quite safe. Lena had never been extravagant in half a century's shopping; was so used to penny-pinching she would never dream of squandering his precious hard-earned cash, but would horde it in a biscuit tin, or save it for the groceries. He himself would do the squandering – buy a new silk tie to dazzle Mary. He stopped just inside the largest store, which appeared to offer everything from the
Daily Mail
and
Playboy
to huge slabs of chilled smoked salmon. ‘You stay here, Mother, and pick out a scarf or something. I'll meet you by these teddy bears in exactly half an hour.'

Bryan mooched back from the tie shop, exhausted, empty-handed. Impossible to choose a tie in twenty-seven minutes. It had been known to take him months, as he'd keep returning and returning to the same shop or rack or counter, weighing up grey-blue against blue-grey, comparing stripes with squiggles, or dry-clean versus washable. He stood now amidst the teddy bears, searching for his Mother, couldn't see her anywhere, only sixty furry bodies, sixty pairs of brown glass eyes, most of which were mocking his alarm. He plunged the other way, darted up and down the aisles, fighting down the urge to cry ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!' like the lost and frightened child he felt inside.

‘Mother!' He'd tracked her down, at last, at a counter labelled Travel Goods, which was loaded with appliances and gadgets – things he'd never dreamed existed: body-safes and siren-lights, combined mini-fans and mosquito-killers, a water-treatment system which claimed to kill every germ known to man and some still unclassified. Lena's hands were full, her trolley piled with packages – a trolley big enough to bankrupt him, if she continued in this fashion. He glanced around him fearfully. There were still racks and racks of other things she probably hadn't even noticed yet: jewels and scarves and dolls and scents, sunglasses and cameras, cassettes and Wedgwood china, tins of tea, jars of … No, he mustn't make his lists, not even in his head. John-Paul would disapprove.

Lena had moved on to the travel-irons, comparing prices, assessing weights and sizes.

‘Stop!' he almost shouted. ‘I've packed an iron already.'

‘But
I
did all the packing, Bryan, and anyway …'

‘I mean, they've got one in the seminary.'

‘Seminary? What's that?'

‘The … er … hotel. They're called seminaries in Rome.'

‘Well, still best to have our own, dear. I expect Italian irons are dangerous, like their government. And I'm sure we need one of these big …'

‘No,' he hissed. ‘We don't need anything. Except a cup of tea.' Tea would be much cheaper than a Ten-Way Torch or Tropical First-Aid Kit, or a foldaway umbrella which doubled as a walking stick and camping stool. He'd even offer her a bun, the nutty chewy kind which would take a while to masticate and so keep her from the shops. He helped her up the stairs to the Plaza on the floor above, where the restaurants were all clustered; stopped in shock as he heard his name booming over the Tannoy.

‘Would Mr Bryan Payne, travelling to Rome, please report immediately to the Airport Information Desk. Mr Bryan Payne, please, to Airport Information.'

He gripped his Mother's arm, the blood draining from his face. John-Paul had summoned him back home, discovered some huge error in the last cheque he'd posted off. He could well have written seven pounds in place of seven hundred – even though he'd checked it twenty times. John-Paul would interpret that as an act of sheer contempt – his services, his expertise, worth peanuts. Or he'd start repeating all that stuff again about his fixation at the anal stage, which meant he wasn't just obsessional, but also parsimonious. An image of blocked faeces was poisoning his whole mind now. He tried to pull the plug on it, think less insalubriously. Of course John-Paul hadn't called him. The doctor was in Rome himself, had been there a full week. It was James who'd had him paged, a James crazed with murderous jealousy, now waiting at that desk with loaded pistols, or a Travel Muggers' Outfit disguised as a First-Aid Kit.

‘Mother, you sit here. Promise not to move till I come back. This may well be urgent, a matter of life and death.'

‘But what's happened? Why …?'

He couldn't stop to answer, hurtled down the stairs, scanned the signs for Airport Information, found it almost opposite, joined the dawdling queue, every muscle tense as he jigged and fumed and cursed behind the loiterers.

‘Payne,' he gasped at last, as he reached the counter, sweat pouring off his face.

‘You're in pain, sir? Where's the pain? Look, you'd better take a seat here and I'll phone through to a doctor.'

‘No, my
name
. Bryan Payne. Mr Payne. B.V. Payne. B. Vernon Payne …' He tried to stop the tide of names, heard his doctor's stern rebuke grating in his head. ‘You wanted me. You called me – on the Tannoy.'

‘No, I don't think that we did, sir, but let me check a moment.'

Bryan could feel his heart thump-thumping as the girl turned to scan her notepad. Perhaps it was Mary who had summoned him, disguised not as Mother Christmas, but as a pager or announcer. This could be the start of his new life. Any breathless minute her ardent message would be relayed to him by the freckled Miss in uniform still checking through her list. ‘I love you, Bryan. I know it now. I'm leaving James – I have to. Meet me by the …'

‘No, sir. We called a Mr Brian
Baines
, who's already reported here, in fact.'

‘Are you absolutely sure? I mean there wasn't any message from a … lady?'

The young girl shook her head. ‘No. Mr Baines had simply lost his spectacles, and we asked him to reclaim them from the desk.'

Bryan slunk away, suspicious. Baines could be a rival who had claimed not just his spectacles, but a crucial private message addressed to Mr Payne. The entire airport was swarming with his rivals, all bigger, broader, stiffer men, with larger bank accounts. And Rome would be far worse – hordes of Latin lovers with bold black eyes and dark-furred chests ogling his own blonde and smooth-skinned Mary. And they wouldn't all be swathed in thermal underwear, which hardly helped his chances. His Mother had insisted he wear a long-sleeved vest and knee-length underpants in Thermolactyl Double Force, a thick and prickly fabric which fretted at his skin. The underwear was advertised for Arctic expeditions and assaults on Everest, not for modern airports heated to a sweltering over-eighty. He'd put it on quite eagerly that morning because he liked its virile promise, ‘Double Force', especially when in contact with his groin, but it had let him down – of course. The only thing which had doubled (tripled, quadrupled) was his feverish sweaty heat.

He passed a vinyl-covered bench, miraculously empty as a whole family decamped from it: children, Grandma, Mum and Dad, trailing off together for their flight. He lurched into their place, now faint from hyperthermia; stretched out semi-supine, tried to turn the vinyl into John-Paul's stylish leather, begged his absent doctor to slip into his usual seat just behind his head. How could he have criticised John-Paul, panted for the blessed month when there would be no more appointments? It was already nine whole days since his last session on the couch, and he was missing them increasingly. Yet he'd wasted those last sessions, said hardly more than fifty words in each fifty-minute hour. John-Paul had interpreted the silence as being due to his mounting fears about the break. He'd never been away so long before, especially not at Christmas, and Bryan must clearly feel abandoned, and was perhaps even reliving the experience of his father's early death – an ‘abandonment' so critical it had affected all his subsequent relationships, or lack of them.

‘I
do
have a relationship,' he'd shouted
sotto voce
. ‘I'm about to live with Mary, rescue her in Rome and secrete her back to England, buy a little cottage in Northumberland or Yorkshire or Hants or Wilts or …' John-Paul couldn't hear, nor his next remark that the sooner his psychiatrist pushed off to Rome himself, the happier he'd be. Since he could mention neither Mary nor his relief at John-Paul's imminent departure, he'd spent the remaining nineteen minutes imagining Mary's thighs. Were they white or tan, he'd wondered, voluptuous or slim, dusted with gold hairs or smooth as marble?

‘What are you thinking, Bryan?' John-Paul had asked, at last, as perhaps his final offering before he said goodbye.

‘Thighs,' he'd answered dreamily, as his hand crept higher, higher, inching slowly upwards towards Mary's moistening groin.

‘Thighs?'

‘Er, chicken thighs.' He'd bought some just last night – Sainsbury's frozen chicken thighs in egg and breadcrumb coating.

‘You realise, Bryan, that “chicken” is the colloquial word for coward. It appears you're feeling cowardly today – weak, perhaps, and scared, worried by the fact I'm going away.'

‘I can hardly wait!' he didn't say, just swung his legs rudely off the couch, even banged his shoes about as he tugged them on, decamped.

He groaned now, closed his eyes, did indeed feel orphaned and abandoned, in need of some support. He longed to hear his doctor's measured voice, investing things with causes, reasons, meaning. John-Paul had explained to him just a week or so ago how every time he gave himself some treat, he had to pay for it with still more guilt and worry; how he
needed
pain and problems to afford himself the punishment dictated by his stringent super-ego. John-Paul was right, as usual. He'd booked himself a holiday, and had never felt so vulnerable, so stricken.

He sat bolt upright on the bench. Was he in the right terminal at all? Perhaps he'd come, mistakenly, to what they called ‘long haul', which would explain the Japs and Indians. Any minute now he'd be jetting off to Tokyo, or Delhi, or Peking. How would he find Mary in an Indian bazaar or Chinese opium den? The agent had said Terminal Two, but supposing he'd misheard, as he'd mistaken Baines for Payne? Even his own language was foil of traps and terrors: words not meaning what they said, people taking liberties with grammar, punctuation. A comma in the wrong place could initiate a tragedy. He was meant to be travelling with two hundred pious Catholics, yet he hadn't spied a rosary or missal; seen no one looking prayerful or accompanied by a priest. He checked his watch again. He'd been told to join his party half an hour before the flight, meet them by the departure gate at five. It was still only half past ten, but wouldn't
some
of them come early, be worriers like he was?

He zigzagged down the hall, searching for a dog collar, maddened now by the constant Tannoy messages which were telling other people where they were (and who); giving them instructions, clear direct instructions about flights and routes and schedules; finding things they'd lost; making them feel wanted, loved, secure. No one wanted
him
, or regarded him as important enough to call him to the desk, present him with a dossier confirming all his vital personal details: his name, his job, his blood-group, the colour of his eyes.

He trailed back to the Plaza, still nervous and confused, found his Mother studying a placard which offered a full English breakfast at a price so wildly high it must include diamond-studded eggs, and caviare to start with, instead of Sugar Puffs. He tried to steer her past the notice, ignore her anxious questions about why he'd been so long, why they'd summoned him at all.

‘Oh, just a business matter. BRB find it hard to cope when I'm not there to man the office. Now, I think it's time we … we … changed some money, Mother.' He had changed it twenty times – sterling into lire, then back again, when his panic got so all-embracing he'd decide to cancel the whole holiday and claim on his insurance. Then hotfoot to the bank once more, praying for a different clerk who wouldn't recognise him when he passed the form across
(again)
, requesting – yes, more lire.

‘But we haven't had our breakfast, Bryan.'

That was his fault, too. He'd insisted they depart the minute they were dressed; had booked the car for dawn.

‘And that restaurant looks quite pleasant, dear.'

It looked far more than pleasant – it looked completely ruinous. He could see it from the entrance, black with bowing waiters, jungled with exotic plants, which were bound to go straight on the bill, under ‘cover charge' or ‘extras'.

‘It's never wise to eat before you fly, Mother – nothing heavy, anyway.'

‘How d' you know? You've never flown.'

‘I read it in a book.'

‘You read too many books, Bryan. That's half your trouble really. Reading softens the brain. It isn't natural. Animals don't read. And it's mining your sight. You'll be wearing glasses before you're thirty-five – and losing them continually, if I know anything about you. “I'm sure I put them here, Mother.” Or there. Or …'

He felt a wave of sweet relief. His Mother was becoming her old self. He'd reward her with a cup of tea, a bun. He swept her past the blue-chip, five-star restaurant into the self-service one beside it, cringing as he saw its name; ‘CHOICES'. The choices were impossible: a dozen different counters with a hundred different foods – even the drinks baffling and exotic. Every sort of tea from his Mother's standard brew to herb teas, fruit teas, and a range called ‘Speciality', which included names like ‘Sunrise', ‘Country Way' and ‘English Garden' – all fecund rural names reminding him of Mary. The sandwiches were hers, as well, crustless and refined; the fresh fruits plump and swollen like her breasts. He arrived at the cash-desk with Mary in his mind still, but nothing on his tray.