New World in the Morning (23 page)

At Dover Priory there was a further long delay. But count your blessings, I told myself. At least this afternoon there's no one working on the line. At least this afternoon these other passengers and I aren't waiting for some wet and trundling godforsaken bus.

There were six of us in all.

But it was easier counting my fellow passengers than counting my blessings, which were right now as mist-hidden as those bluebirds above the cliffs: those bluebirds promised to us by Vera Lynn, whose name, coincidentally, had briefly occurred to me some five hours earlier. (Now, you see, I had no problem about believing in coincidence.) Promised to us, with such patriotic fervor, about eighteen years before my birth.

The depressing thing was…although I still felt reluctant to readmit that word into my vocabulary…the depressing thing was I knew there'd been a glut in the vicinity even as recently as last Friday. Forty-eight hours ago! The sky had been awash.

I tried to convince myself that they'd be back. Already
were
back. It was only because I was so very tired all of a sudden. I couldn't see them through the gloom.

The five others on the platform were all young and laughing and together. College students? I felt that I'd have given a lot to be one of them. Out with my friends; going off somewhere nice. All bouncy and naïve and pleased to play the fool.

I finally got home at around seven. The house was dark; car not there. I'd forgotten. Junie and the children would still be at Jalna (the Dovecote). Still be celebrating Ted and Yvonne's anniversary.

But
this
Sunday they wouldn't have been sitting in the garden. I felt sorry about that.

Without fully understanding my intention, and without even taking off my mack, I went into the larder and started to eat. I wasn't particularly hungry but—I wanted food. I ate handfuls of Harvest Crunch and tore open a packet of biscuits. I moved to the fridge and found cooked drumsticks; devoured all four. There were three pineapple rings on a saucer and a triangle of blue cheese. I followed these with a flavourless tomato.

At last, returning to the hall, I threw my raincoat on a chair, picked up my holdall from the mat. I was walking heavily up the stairs, meaning to lie down, when something occurred to me. I was at once deflected from the thought of sleep.

I ran back to the kitchen.

Susie's basket wasn't there. It wasn't there in any part of it.

Bewilderedly, I made headlong for the dining room, stood in the centre and scrutinized the base of every wall—as though the business of locating a dog's basket, even with the light on, would require swivelling feet, untypically sharp eyesight, an attention to detail.

Nor was it beneath the table.

I half-ran, half-strode, into the sitting room…the TV room…conservatory. Kitchen again. Larder and the outside loo. Went back into the hall. Whirled round and must have caught the brolly stand. It clattered onto varnished floorboards, cannoned into Junie's piano. I raced upstairs and into every bedroom, even the couple seldom used, one smelling now of paint and boobytrapped with decorating clutter. I fell on my knees and looked beneath the beds. Looked inside the bathroom. The lavatory. Stood on a ladder and shone our torch—kept handy for emergencies—into every corner of the loft.

Giddiness shook hands with paranoia.

I headed for the telephone.

Picked up, at the other end, by Pim.

“Get Junie,” I commanded. Neither greeted him nor told him who I was.

He started to mumble something but I cut across him with a question.

“Listen—is Susie there? I can't find her basket anywhere! I've searched through every room and can't find her basket anywhere! Is Susie with you? Is she there?”

He didn't answer.

“Oh, for God's sake,” I was going to say, “don't you understand plain English?”

But then I heard the receiver being thrown down and instead I broke wind. That wasn't very pleasant, either, but I realized I was past minding.

After what seemed like a long time I finally heard Junie's voice in the background—along with other voices, or maybe only one other, I wasn't sure. A man's. Jake's? Oh, probably the whole family was now filing into the hallway, taking seats. But I couldn't catch the words.

“Hello!” I said. “Hello! Hello! Hello! What the hell is going on over there? Will somebody pick up the phone!”

And somebody did. Somebody female.

“And where have
you
been since last Friday?”

But it certainly wasn't Junie.

“What?”

“This is Mrs Fletcher speaking. You've been off somewhere with a woman—haven't you, Groves? And I mean to tell you how I feel about it. I'm afraid there aren't words strong enough to tell you how I feel about it. There! Did you hear me? You were never one of us. I've always known you were a mealy-mouthed hypocrite, thinking all the time you were taking everybody in, pretending to be so much better than the rest of us, pretending even butter wouldn't melt—”

“Fuck off,” I said. “I want to hear about my dog.”

“Oh, you do, do you? Well, your dog is dead. Your dog has been put down. Dead,” she repeated.

Then she severed the connection.

24

I immediately rang back.

The line was engaged.

If they'd left the receiver off I should have to charge right over—
now
, while my adrenalin was still racing, the small supply of it I had. At least the dizziness had gone but I would need to husband that adrenalin. I was fighting for my life and I wanted all the energy there was.

Almost at our gate, I remembered that I didn't have a car. Damn it, then—a bike. But on my way to the back porch, two things happened. First, it occurred to me it might be wiser to wait until Junie and the kids came home; my own territory—no heckling from the grandstand; and second… the telephone rang. That might be Junie now.

It wasn't.

“Hello, Sam. This is Jake. I've been deputized.”

“Deputized?”

“Yes. To let you know the lie of the land. In fact, I volunteered. I thought you'd rather have me do it than…well, any of the girls, let's say. You know what all these Fletchers can be like. I gather you said something slightly naughty to Mama.”

“How the hell did it happen, Jake?”

“Apparently Junie tried to reach you in Lincoln. Spoke to some woman whom she didn't know and who didn't appear to know her. Or anything about her. Or anything about you, either.”

“Oh, God.”

“Sammy,” he said, “in some ways you're an astute and erudite fellow. Yet if only you could have been a fraction more astute over the plotting of all this…! You idiot. You might always have come to me if you'd wanted some sound, practical advice. Either to me or—I suspect—to Robert. But as it is, old lad, you've landed in the shit. And it's going to be a long time, too, before you manage to climb out of it in
this
neck of the woods. If indeed you ever do.”

“I couldn't care less about that. It's only Junie that matters. Junie and the children. And as soon as… Do the children know what's happened?”

“Do the children know what's happened? Whose children are we talking of? Some that live outside the county? Sam, you really are the weirdest mix!”

“Then how do they both seem?”

“It's hard to say. Matt's been mainly very quiet. Ella…well, Ella's been fairly brassy. Getting it out of her system, I think is what it's called. They'll be okay. I've been trying to make them see—the family at large, I mean, not simply Ella and Matt—that this sort of thing isn't really such a big deal. And just so long as you're not aiming to go skipping off again (because if you are, old chum, your days are numbered and the end is nigh) and just so long as you're willing to dance attendance for a year or six I reckon they'll all come round in the end. All of them. Even Myrtle. Even Junie.”

“
Even
Junie?”

There was a slight pause. “That's unexpected?”

I gave a non-committal grunt; contented myself with informing him tersely of the one requirement: to prise my wife loose from the five thousand tentacles of my wife's interfering mother.

“No, but it isn't that straightforward. I don't think you realize how hard she's taken this. A girl of hidden depths, is Junie.”

He added: “Not that, of course, I need tell
you
that.”

“If you want to do me a favour, Jake, you'll just get her to come home as quickly as you can.”

“But that's why I rang. To say that neither she nor the children will be coming home tonight. They slept here last night, too. She's even spoken about… To be honest, you've
both
taken me a little by surprise.”

“Spoken about what?”

“About not coming home at all. I mean—not while you're there.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “Only give me ten minutes alone with her. That's all it needs.”

“Well, I certainly hope so, Sam.”

We went on talking but not to much purpose. Tiredness redescended. I picked up the umbrella stand and went wearily to bed. Let tomorrow take care of itself, let tomorrow play any little joke that it felt like. But why had she had to take it out on Susie? Why? What harm had poor old Susie ever done her?

Already down to my underpants I ran downstairs again. Discovered that besides the basket, with its blanket and cushions, Junie appeared to have disposed of Susie's collar and lead; of her much-chewed rubber ball and bone; even of the packet of Bob Martins. The insecticidal shampoo. The brush. Large bag of biscuits. Junie had seldom fed her out of tins.

I felt inclined to search the dustbin for a souvenir. But what was the point? At least we had the snapshots. I decided I must look for snapshots—if only to keep me from further depredations on the larder. Tomorrow my thinking would need to be unclogged.

Amongst the quantities of snapshots we hadn't yet got round to sorting, I found two: two of Susie on her own. Probably taken by myself. One showed the splayed paws, the dipped trunk, the pricked-up ears…all eager for the pitched ball. The other, the characteristic tilt of the head: someone out of camera had been telling her to stay and, almost certainly, speaking of engrossing possibilities. Both pictures smacked of melty-eyed devotion.

I studied them. I tore them savagely across.

Four pieces. Eight. I hurled them at the ceiling. Let them lie where they had fallen: carpet, coffee table, shelves.

Then I whipped off my underpants…but after half a minute's frenzied abuse…well, anyway, who was I trying to punish?

I left them where they were. Along with the remains of Susie. Trailed back up to bed.

The house felt cold, unwelcoming. This was only the second time I'd slept in it alone. That other occasion, more than fifteen years ago: Junie giving birth to Ella. (When we had both been twenty-one! Dear God. The blessing of being twenty-one!) My grandmother hadn't as yet sold up or moved in with us.

Slept
in it? I may have done, that first time. But now? Despite my father I had turned into a crybaby. (To spite my father I had turned into a crybaby?) At first I brushed away the tears but then permitted them to fall unimpeded.

Those tears weren't just for me. Partly I cried for Junie, who had picked up a telephone in a fault-free world and then had it torn away from her in an earthquake. Partly I cried for Ella and Matt, who—whether loud and cynical or chiefly silent—were now having to negotiate a quicksand which the best damned dad on record had unthinkingly led them to. Partly I cried for Moira, who had booked tickets for the Palladium and a table at the Ritz, given me the keys to her Morgan and travelled with me all the way to Samarkand and back. And partly for Susie, whom also I had failed—as badly as any living creature
could
be failed.

I even cried for my parents: for the cancer in the body and the cancer in the soul and for the legacy of weakness which had disguised itself as strength. And this time I really did cry for my father. I could imagine how he must have suffered—suffered not merely during those two days prior to his suicide but during all the long, anxious months when he must have known my mother was about to die.

But in the end, of course, it was mainly for myself I cried. Cried because I no longer seemed to understand so many of the things which had once appeared so simple. Because I'd started out with such an abundance of blessings and finished up with… What had I finished up with? And because I didn't know how I was going to restore stability and trust…when trust was virtually synonymous with respect.

Or how I was going to restore even the will to try. Even the will to carry on.

25

Early next day I walked to Jalna. All my adrenalin had drained away. Also, my stomach was troubling me…no great surprise. In truth—through the exercise of much precarious self-control—I'd even had to stop myself from entering the kitchen. That put the kibosh on a cup of tea.

The journey took an hour and twenty minutes. It wasn't right without a dog; without the feel of all that keen companionship at the end of a leash. I arrived there shortly after ten. I had chosen not to cycle, supposing a walk might better clarify my thoughts, expel my sluggishness, provide me with some plan of argument.

Give me more time.

In all but the last I'd been mistaken.

It was Pim who came to the door. I was grateful for that; intended to apologize for my appalling brusqueness on the phone. Indeed, I experienced an uncustomary rush of warm affection—a sort of fellow feeling perhaps, as though I had never been quite fair to him; had underrated, patronized him. Had neither understood his problems nor made any attempt to.

Suffering produces strange bedfellows.

I don't think he realized he was suffering. Or cared much whether I was.

“Oh,” he said, after a pause. “It's you! We didn't think you'd have the nerve to show your face.”