Meeting the English (19 page)

‘But,' said Juliet, ‘I need to help with Dad.'

‘Those arrangements,' said Myfanwy, ‘are going to change.'

‘Mum,' said Juliet, ‘you've got to get real. We don't get on, you and me. Do we? I mean, don't take that all the wrong way, Mum, 'cos I think in a few years we'll get on fine and I'm really proud of what you've done with, you know, interior design, but right now we don't like each other, do we? And anyway, you've got Jake to take care of, in the flat, haven't you? And Jake and me
really
don't get on.'

But Myfanwy was shaking her head with a slow menace. ‘No,' she said, ‘I don't have Jake. That's not the arrangement as far as I know.'

‘Have you talked to him?' said Juliet.

‘We'll talk when he gets back from Edinburgh,' said Myfanwy, ‘but the Finchley Road is not the right place for him. He'll need something more independent. That's clear.'

‘But he's not in Edinburgh!' exploded Juliet. ‘You must know he's not in Edinburgh. Why are you pretending he's in Edinburgh? He's living round here. He must be staying in your flat. Why are you pretending he isn't?'

‘Jake is in Edinburgh with his company,' said Myfanwy. She still hadn't shouted and her accent was still English. None of her was wibbling. Juliet felt a little desperate.

‘But,' said Juliet, ‘I saw him last night. Jake. In Flask Walk. With Celia.' And that did go home. Myfanwy sagged, just a little, and Juliet was bracing herself to go in for the kill when Ron Fox shambled into the room, in jeans and with his bare sticking-out feet in loafers. He walked straight over to Juliet and kissed her cheek.

‘Darling,' he said, ‘I have to get to work. Can I grab a coffee?'

*   *   *

Phillip Prys was floating at last. His white hairy arms and his withered hairy legs and his sagging midsection and his ancient pink dick and its straggling pubic ornaments were all free, adrift, supported by the warm soft gloop of Hampstead Men's Pond at the poisonous dry end of the remarkable summer of 1989. His head and shoulders rested on the strong tanned breast of Struan Robertson of Cuik, who had him securely under the oxters. His agent, executor, and friend, Giles, lurked just behind with his trousers rolled up, and Bill the ex-lifeguard bobbed round his feet, just in case.

‘I think he's loving it, Struan,' said Bill. ‘Really. Don't look so worried. You're doing a beautiful thing.' Bill had been waiting for Struan, wearing an expression he recognized: the one folk wore when they came to take his dad out for a walk in his last weeks, or as they delivered a batch of scones when he'd died. The face of those intent on doing good. Bill had brought the tubular chair. He'd brought a specially fluffy towel. Struan hadn't even tried to fight it.

Even if he had, Giles wouldn't have let him. Because, though they had not previously met, Giles and Bill got on like a house on fire. They'd been at the same party, somewhere called the Lighthouse. Giles knew Bill's lover, from cottages, he said, in the fifties. This made them both laugh, and then they chatted away about someone that Bill knew, a guy called Edmund, and about something called Terence Higgins, and Bill started brandishing the chair and towel, and Giles grew so enthusiastic that Struan worried he'd take all his clothes off, too. The nudity in the pond still bothered him a lot – it was all the floating bits, in among the pond weed.

‘This could be it, Struan, you know,' he'd squeaked. ‘This could be, you know, a whole breakthrough moment for Phil!' and he'd started peeling his socks off. Thankfully, he'd stopped disrobing there. He was still hopping around in the shallows, now, calling: ‘All right there, Struan? Any sign of, you know, action?'

‘No,' said Struan, giving Phillip a bit of a swish. He thought, if there was one good thing about MS, it was that everyone knew it was incurable. People didn't turn up with snake oil and hopes too often, let alone towels and metal chairs. Strokes, on the other hand – it seemed Bill knew someone who painted Christmas cards with his teeth as well. They both had their expectations way too high.

‘Like a baptism, hey?' called Bill to Giles: and Giles nodded, more enthusiastic than ever. Quite soon, thought Struan, in two minutes, he was going to get Mr Prys out the water, and showered and dried, and then put carefully back in the wheelchair, and then he'd wheel him back home, and get himself a Pot Noodle, and
then
he was going to give a week's notice, in writing, to Myfanwy, and then after that week he was going to go home and his gran would make him a big tea. He could ask in the Home for more work, he could travel to Edinburgh, even, he could go on the dole. It might not be too late to go up to Aberdeen. He gave Phillip a last, gentle, twirl through the water:

‘Is that good for you, Mr Prys?' he said.

‘Struan,' said Bill, ‘look.' Struan followed the direction of Bill's gaze. Phillip's little finger on his left hand, like a tiny shark, was parting the water and sinking again, an unmistakable signal. Duty opened its vast tentacles for Struan Robertson: a giant squid.

‘Oh,' said Struan, ‘oh aye. You see. The wee finger. Like I said. I was wondering about that.'

*   *   *

Juliet Prys took a breath and said to her mother, on the subject of the unshaven short man unexpectedly in the parlour wearing loafers on his bare feet: ‘What are you going to do about that, then? Aren't you pleased? How many times have you told me about when you were sixteen and playing Polly Prostitute in
Milkweed?
Huh? You haven't got a leg to bloody stand on, so don't try, you'll fall over.'

And Myfanwy said, ‘Coffee? Mr? What is your name? Coffee, Juliet, darling? Let's all have one!'

‘Anyway,' muttered Juliet, ‘we only frotted.'

*   *   *

What Phillip would really have liked to have conveyed to Giles – who seemed all at once so interested, who was suddenly filling the tarnished circle of his vision with his round red face, whose name he could now clearly remember, together with the word ‘Soho' – was the weight of the meniscus. Because that was what was actually wrong with Phillip, it had come to him in the pond. Phillip was at all times trapped under a foot of transparent liquid, a liquid which was a good deal heavier than water – something like mercury. The weight had most of his body pinned down, naturally enough, but – this was the great discovery of the pond, and he could repeat it here on the bank, it seemed, though it was harder – if he thought very hard about raising something, something like a tent, say, something also happened in the region of his hand, and Giles and the team were able to see it. It was a much better mechanism than the eyelid thing, because those weights and chains were rusted up, it was entirely hit or miss if they worked.

Giles, of course, was getting all Boy Scout about it, wanted him to signal ‘yes' or ‘no', one lift for ‘yes' and two for ‘no'. And Phillip was resolved to help him out, limited though the exercise was, since it was good to see Giles, dear old chap, they went way back.

*   *   *

In the kitchen, Myfanwy said, ‘Goodness! What a mess! All these teenagers with Pot Noodles,' and smiled at Ron and started grinding the beans in the little yellow gadget, asking Ron about his job, and saying super, how super, until really, you'd have thought she was nice.

Ron was ghastly too, he said, mmm, mmm, about the coffee beans, and their smell, and what a gorgeous kitchen, he did like crockery mismatched, and chairs, and Myfanwy said how she had bought the table at Portobello market when Portobello really was Portobello, and Ron said he knew exactly what she meant, and Juliet knew, looking at him, that he was at least eight years older than her. Juliet couldn't think of a thing to say. The sweat went drip drip into the armpits of the stained pink dress in which she looked thin from the side.

Myfanwy warmed the milk in a little pan and filled the cafetière and everyone had a coffee and Ron Fox raised the cup to his lips – Juliet hoped he had washed his hand – and said:

‘And a beautifully mismatched family, too. To go with the chairs!'

‘What do you mean?' said Myfanwy, slightly prim, of a sudden.

‘Just,' said Ron gesturing at the crockery, ‘that it's a beautiful thing to see the post-nuclear family in action. Here you are, your marriage with Phillip Prys at an end – a famous marriage, a wild beauty and a genius – but you don't invest in those years, oh no. You move on. Here you are, still in his life and his children's life in this beautiful way, and Jake and Juliet living in a fluid way, his house, your house – who cares? Just fluid, you know? And room for strangers along the way. Young Struan. Me. It's been sort of a dream of mine, to find real Bohemia? And here it is.' He lifted his coffee cup. ‘Cheers!' Myfanwy said:

‘Jake? What do you mean, Jake?' And Juliet said:

‘I failed all my GCSEs, Ron, that's why she's here. She's not usually here.'

‘Except RE,' said Myfanwy.

‘And she doesn't know Jake's in London,' added Juliet, ‘she thinks he's in Edinburgh. But he was in the pub with us last night, wasn't he, Ron?'

‘I don't need to monitor my grown-up son,' said Myfanwy, smiling. ‘Do I, Ron?'

Ron waved his cup.

‘Of course not!' he said. ‘You're so calm! Juliet, I'm in love with your mother! I'm in love with this house.'

‘She's not calm,' said Juliet, ‘she's threatening me with the fucking convent.'

‘That's a suggestion,' said Myfanwy. ‘Juliet has all Ds and Es at GCSE, Ron, you see. It is disappointing.'

‘She should resit,' said Ron. ‘She's obviously very intelligent. I've seen lives turned round with an extra year, Myfanwy, just turned round.'

‘Well, I'm not going back to school,' said Juliet, ‘I'm going to go on Enterprise Allowance, I just decided. I'm going to have this business where I'm going to shop for people. What I'm going to do is, I'll get the person's size, busy people who don't have time to shop, and I'll go to Selfridges and choose them ten outfits, then I'll take them round, and they can decide what fits and what doesn't and then I'll take the other outfits back.'

‘Don't,' said Myfanwy, ‘be completely stupid.'

‘No,' said Juliet, ‘and what I'm going to do is specialize in people who think they're fat, when they're not. I'm going to get clothes like jackets and stuff that really suit them, but they'd never have tried them on because they think they're fat, so they'll be really pleased when they can wear them.' Ron said:

‘Juliet, don't turn your back on literature yet. There are so many books I'd love to show you.' Myfanwy said:

‘And where do you think you might stay while you start up this business? Because I have to warn you, Juliet, that Yewtree Row may not be available.'

‘Bloody hell,' said Juliet, ‘enough of the portentous remarks. What are you planning to do to Yewtree, Mum? Bomb it?'

*   *   *

‘Mr Prys is going to get tired,' said Strewn, at the edge of Phillip's hearing. ‘Don't go on too much, OK?'

‘Right,' said Giles.

‘And,' said Struan, ‘I'm really confident he's only got vision in the one side. Look – just stick your head round there, on the left—'

Giles' head came back into focus, in a grubby halo of sky. ‘Hello, old chap,' he said, ‘I've just got one question, really. Your rights, you know? Are you happy to have Shirin take power of attorney? To, you know, make sales and so forth? One lift for yes, two for no.' Shirin. Shirin going forth to the sales. Phillip thought of her that morning, or had it been yesterday – recently at any rate – turning her ankle for him, saying, ‘Look, Phillip, these shoes, from the sales.' Little golden shoes, like a divine tiny slave girl. Clearly, Shirin should go to the sales, as many as she liked. Laboriously, Phillip visualized lifting his hand. No go, so he tried the image of the tent again – the damp canvas one he'd used on National Service. Up it heaved on the poles, and up went his finger. Splendid.

‘There,' said another voice – this one, strangely, seeming to come from the Colonies, probably from the World Service – ‘that's a yes.' Giles mumbled something Phillip couldn't hear. ‘Just give us your opinion, Phil,' added the Antipodean announcer – it would help if they turned the radio off, World Service or no World Service. ‘Being specific here. Can Shirin Zelda Pitt?' Extraordinary question. Zelda Pitt, star of vaudeville, was dead, everyone knew that. One turn too many on the vaudeville stage. Shirin didn't do vaudeville, certainly not in Australia.

‘Are you happy for her to be in charge?' urged Giles. Phillip was clearly going to have to come up with an answer, or Giles would never go away. What he wanted was for Shirin to go shopping, and to come back covered in bags, little coloured carrier bags with bright string handles, and then for her to put on the outfits, one by one, before him in the Vaseline'd camera of his gaze, so he could remember her for ever.

‘Mr Prys,' said Strewn, in his ear, Scottish and dour, ‘are you happy for Mrs Prys, for Shirin, to go ahead and make that sale?'

And one last time, Phillip raised the damp tent of his National Service experience, and this time got inside it, stretched the khaki cover out on the army cot, and went to sleep.

*   *   *

Myfanwy raised a painted eyebrow. ‘These are hard economic times, Juliet,' she said. ‘We have to think practically. The arrangement at Yewtree is coming to the end of its practical life.'

‘I am,' said Juliet, ‘thinking practically. I can go on Enterprise Allowance. It's a really good idea. Loads of people think they're fat and don't even dare go into shops, you'd be surprised.' Myfanwy said:

‘And in this scenario you'd be living with your boyfriend here, would you? Do you have a squat, Ron?' And Ron said: