Meeting the English (27 page)

They stopped to look at an ibis, huddled at the back of his enclosure. ‘He doesn't like this weather,' observed Celia, in her little voice, ‘he's got his shoulders hunched up. And so have you, Struan.' She tucked her hand further into his arm. ‘Don't,' she murmured, ‘be sad. It's your birthday.'

And Struan probably would have kissed her, then, just because it seemed unkind not to, had they not been startled by a terrific bang from the other, wooden, side of the ibis's cage, and a cry of ‘Celia!'

The bird lifted its heavy wings, flew to another perch, and settled again. Celia let go of Struan's arm and ran on to the next enclosure, which had netting on both sides. ‘Celia,' cried the voice. The ibis opened a weary yellow eye at Struan, and closed it again. Struan followed.

Past the pond and the trees, filmic through the layers of rope and wire, was Jake Prys, perched on a green mountain bike on the towpath of the canal. Rain poured off his glossy handsome features and heavy shoulders and hunched thighs.

‘Baby,' he was saying to Celia, now clutching the netting on her side, ‘I love you. Where've you been?' A flamingo unfurled its leg, stalked to the other side of the pond. Another raised its neck from its wing, huffily.

‘For Christ's sake,' said Struan, ‘you'll set off every alarm in the place.'

‘Stru-anne,' said Jake. ‘Do go away. Celia's mine.'

‘That's grand with me,' said Struan. ‘Honest.'

‘Struan,' said Celia, unstringing herself from the wire and facing him, wee hands clasped in the soaked shawl, ‘I really care about you.'

‘Thanks,' said Struan.

‘Baby,' called Jake. ‘You know you don't love him. You love me. Tell him.'

And Struan put his hands on Celia's damp woolly shoulders. He resisted the impulse to give her a shake. He said:

‘I think Jake's a got a point.'

‘But,' whispered Celia. ‘You saved me.'

‘Aye,' said Struan. ‘But you didn't think it was me, did you? You thought it was him.' Celia dropped her eyes and he went on, not angry or anything, just saying, ‘When I came rushing up, that night in the pond, you thought I was Jake. That's why you jumped. Didn't you? You thought Jake was going to get you out, not me.' And he sighed. He'd been working that one out for weeks. It was grand, to say it at last.

Celia raised her eyes.

‘Yes,' she said, nodding, like a little girl. Struan let her go, and she staggered away.

‘Yow-zer,' carolled Jake, and he leant backwards on the bike, pulling the handlebars up to his chest. ‘She loves me!' He wheelied down the towpath. Celia pursued him the length of the enclosure, little paws catching on the netting. A large white bird flapped alongside her, until Celia and bird pulled up at the end of the aviary. There was a three-foot gap where Celia could get to the fence. She ran along it. She hung on the wire. She squeaked:

‘But you kissed her in front of me! And then you dumped me! You left me!'

Jake dropped the bike, hung on the fence on his side.

‘Celia, baby,' he called, ‘I just did it to piss you off. She's my stepmum. I wouldn't do anything to her, that would be sick.' He looked at her and grinned suddenly, boyishly. ‘You made me jealous, baby, the way you were flirting with the dickhead in the pub. You know I don't like you to flirt. I was just teaching you a little lesson. Then you pissed me off, the way you went on and on about Shirin. All day you went on about it, that and your sodding GCSEs. That's why I went off, baby. I was always coming back. I didn't know you'd jump in the pond, baby, it really messed with my head.'

In that recess of Struan's mind where lived the image of the Yewtree kitchen on the terrible night in August, the lights were going on. In the larder corner, the one you couldn't see from the stairs, the figure of Celia in her white dress appeared, mouth and eyes distended in a recognizable version of Munch's
The Scream.
And in the void where Struan's heart had been missing so long, a rose budded and bloomed in stop-motion animation, sent its intrusive bloom as far as his nostrils and fingertips.

‘I'm sorry,' the real Celia was wailing, ‘sorry.'

Jake said: ‘You're all wet, baby, I can't get you dry.' And Celia pushed her face to the netting, Jake pushed his on the other side, and Struan looked at the pair of them, trying to kiss, and felt towards Jake Prys briefly the warmth of a brother. Then off he sprinted, towards the Small Mammal House.

‘Stru-anne,' yelled Jake from the fence, ‘I need to talk to you. There's things I have to say.' Struan waved.

‘Be seeing you, Jake,' he called, ‘you know where I'm staying.'

‘I forgive you,' yelled Jake, and Struan stopped, and stared, gave him, on due consideration, the finger, and then rushed on, through the double doors of the Moonlit World.

It was dark in there, and quiet, and smelled of hamsters. The creatures lived in large concrete caves with glass fronts, like aquariums, each in their own forest of pot plants. Glittering nocturnal eyes, like sequins, caught his own as Struan strode along the smooth, sloping concrete floors, looking. Bill and Giles were in front of a big cage, Phillip between them, and Giles was pointing out favourite tamarinds, ones with whiskers and worried expressions just like his own.

Shirin was round the corner, the low lights shining on her mackintosh, staring into the depths of a cage that seemed to be empty. She looked very sad, and somehow, Struan found it easy to walk up beside her, and say:

‘Shirin, I made a mistake. That night. The night before it all kicked off, before Myfanwy, the night Jake took the car.'

Shirin raised her head, looked at him, and nodded. He blundered on.

‘I was coming down the stair, and I saw Jake kissing you in the kitchen and I thought – I thought stupid things.'

Shirin bent her head away. In the reflection of the double glass, Struan saw her flowerlike mouth open and close. Behind that, he saw, the cage wasn't empty at all. On its central tree was a dark-furred creature with a round head and bald, much-jointed hands, gazing at Shirin with its circular eyes. After a long while, Shirin said:

‘Well, that was a very terrible thing to think.'

‘Aye,' said Struan, ‘aye, I know. I'm sorry. I'm saying sorry. Forgive me.'

‘No,' said Shirin, still looking back at the creature, which was a marmoset, said the notice, ‘I was thinking, you have to forgive me, Struan.'

Slowly, the marmoset unfurled one hieratic finger and pointed it at Struan. Struan gulped.

‘Why?' he asked.

Shirin stared harder into the cage.

‘Because you were right. Not right about Jake, but right to doubt me. I
am
going to leave Phillip. I find I can't take care of him as I should. I don't love him, you see.'

Blood flooded into Struan's ears and nose. His chest constricted. Narrowly, he breathed:

‘Where will you go?'

‘Abroad,' said Shirin, ‘for a while. Iran, if I can. Then I will come back to London, buy that studio, the one everyone imagines for me. I have taken some money, Struan. I want you to know this too. All the things we have moved from the collection rooms? I have spent some for Phillip, but most I have kept so I can leave. I have put it in my account. The Sylvia Plath sold for four hundred pounds.'

‘Uh huh,' said Struan. The marmoset's finger was still stretched out, still pointing, controlled and theatrical as a mime artist's. Shirin said,

‘Now you should reproach me, Struan. Please. Get on with it.'

Struan said, ‘No. I think you should do that. Take the money. I think you should do your painting. Your paintings are awful good.'

‘But,' said Shirin, ‘you're the man who doesn't take things.'

Struan nearly laughed. He said:

‘I said that, didn't I? What a prick.' And she looked up at him, then.

‘I think,' she said, ‘I called you a prig.'

‘You did,' said Struan. ‘Prick. Prig. You were right. I was way above myself. Because I'd take the things I really want, the things I need, same as anyone else. Because I'd take you, Shirin, if you wanted me. I'd take you away from Phillip. I'd do that in a minute.'

And in the vast relief, the great splitting and budding of saying this, Struan sank to his knees on the smooth concrete floor of the Small Mammal House, and folded his arms on the concrete rim of the cage. Next to his nose, there was a second marmoset with a baby on her back the size of a mouse. It clutched its mother's back with its wee doll's hands.

Above him, Shirin said:

‘Struan, you should go. Go first. Leave London tomorrow. I'll stay with Phillip until we have made a better arrangement. Don't worry about him.'

And Struan nodded. In the double glazing of the cage, superimposed on the marmoset's miniature, desolate face, he watched Juliet and Mr Fox, arm in arm, walking towards him, and, in duplicate, Shirin moving smartly away.

They had the birthday tea in the covered picnic area, in the wet and sudden dusk. Celia had made the cake: an elaborate, chocolate confection complete with icing swirls. Not that Celia herself was there, of course (Where did she go, Struan, Juliet kept hissing, what the bloody hell happened?) and the
Happy
of the white, swirly inscription had somehow got rather squashed.

‘You know what it means though, eh, Struan?' said Bill, flattening down the cardboard box to make a sort of plate.

Bill's cagoule had got thoroughly soaked during his visit to the giraffes, and large drops from his hood kept dropping onto the icing. Delicately, with his large hands, he coaxed the candle to sit up.

‘Charge your glasses!' he said, meaning the plastic cups, and the bubbly, courtesy of Giles.

‘Anyone got a light?' he asked, and Mr Fox stepped forward with a Zippo and lit the single flame.

‘There,' said Bill. ‘Now, I'm from the Antipodes, and as you all know, we like to speak our minds there, so I'm going to make all you folks do something very embarrassing and say something nice about Struan here. You're all English and it will take you a while to break through your inhibitions, so I'm going to start and say, I met Struan at a very lonely, hard time in my life and he showed me something beautiful about patience, and hope. That day we put Phil here in Hampstead Pond, Struan – well, my life began again.'

He grinned, embarrassingly, straight at Giles, who blushed scarlet and said:

‘Struan, yes. Struan is a very wise young man. I think, well, at least Struan will understand when I say I was, how to put this,
over-suspicious
about certain things. Having a Lord Peter Wimsey moment. And he set me on the right track. About that and – other things.'

There was a pause, and Giles took Bill's hand. Juliet gave Ron Fox a big nudge and he said:

‘A beautiful thing about Struan is, well for me, it vindicates a year of my life. I had to leave Cuik to be Cuik, but I got Struan Robertson out.'

And Juliet said, hurriedly:

‘That candle's going to burn out. Struan taught me loads about my dad. He's a really good person.'

They all looked at Phillip then, prone in his chair, eyes open. Juliet reached for his hand.

‘Dad says so too, Struan, I'm sure of that.'

And Shirin, who had stood perfectly still through all this, holding her umbrella like another candle, said:

‘Yes. Now blow, Struan.'

Struan looked round at them all, his English friends. He said:

‘You're all under a grand misapprehension,' and they laughed, and he blew out the candle and it came back into flame, and he blew it out again and it reflamed again. It was a joke candle, you see, a novelty of 1989, and they were all very surprised about it, and laughed a great deal, but it got Struan down, to tell the truth, the way you couldn't get it out, couldn't end the moment the way you ought, with a wick and a wish and a smell of wax.

26

Juliet consented to visit Mr Fox's rented room, after the zoo, and remove all her clothes. Then she visited Celia, to confirm the worst about Jake. When she finally got home, Struan was packing. The cards from his birthday were already folded together and laid aside, and he was carefully wrapping a painting in layers of tissue paper and corrugated cardboard.

‘Is that one of Shirin's?' she asked.

‘Aye,' said Struan, ‘she gave it me for my birthday. It's of Scotland.'

‘She doesn't paint Scotland,' said Juliet, ‘she's never been there.'

‘It's sort of an imaginary Scotland,' said Struan, ‘golden eagles and that. It's a braw painting all right. I just hope I willnae squash it in my bag.' He started to tape the corrugated parcel in between two hardback books – a copy of
Huis Clos
and one of
The Waves.

‘The tape'll ruin the books,' said Juliet.

‘Mebbe,' said Struan, ‘but they're neither of them my favourites. And look, brown paper.'

Juliet came over and sat on the bed beside Struan. The Burberry raincoat was hung between them from the Velux, drying. The Adidas sports bag was open on the floor.

‘Struan,' she said, ‘are you going away because Shirin doesn't love you? Were you telling her today, in the Mammal House?'

Struan stopped taping and folded his big hands.

‘Aye,' he said, ‘that's about the size of it.'

‘But,' said Juliet, ‘I love you. So does Dad.'

Struan smiled at her.

‘I know,' he said, ‘but it's not the same, is it?' He stood up. ‘Come on,' he said, ‘we'll go for a wee walk, and I'll tell you all about it.'

So they went, out in the cold dark towards the Heath. The rain had stopped and the pavements shone in the street lights.

‘I thought,' said Struan, ‘I'd go to Germany. Berlin. My gran sent me some money for my birthday, and I've saved up a bit more.'