Facing the Tank (16 page)

Emma opened her fridge and lifted out the chocolate biscuit cake she had made that morning before school. She ran a knife around its edge then held the tin carefully over a plate and pressed on its base with her thumbs. The thick brown blend of biscuit crumbs and chocolate caramel shifted slightly then slid in a satisfactory block on to the plate. She had arranged a circle of glacé cherries and walnuts in the bottom of the tin before pouring the mixture in and, though they had drifted a fraction, these now showed decoratively through the stickiness of the cake’s upper surface. Emma cut two generous slices for Crispin and two wiser ones for herself. She left the knife on the edge of the plate to encourage Crispin to accept more, though she suspected that even the iron stomach of a thirteen-year-old would baulk at a third slice. She would give him the rest to take back to Tatham’s when he left. She had not bothered with the gesture of a bread and butter introduction. She plugged in the kettle and spooned tea leaves into a cold pot. Her hand shook on the third spoonful, scattering leaves over the kitchen table. Frowning, she swept them into her hand with a cloth. Rousillou jumped to sniff the cake and she shouted unnecessarily loudly to chase him off.

A troubled night had left her nervous and sore. She had been visited by six variations of the same unbridled dream concerning Fergus Gibson. She invited him home to meet her parents. Her mother did not appear but was definitely present. Emma’s relationship with Mr Gibson was vaguely friendly – they had met at a party in London, apparently – but in each variation of the dream became more specifically so when he opened his bags and drew out a silk dressing gown identical to her father’s. With each interruptive awakening had come a fresh stab of irritation at finding herself in Barrowcester with empty arms, and a fresh determination to sleep again in the hope of recapturing her elusive lover. When the sixth reprise was cut short by her alarm clock, she had abandoned bed as smartly as ever but, somewhere between toothbrush and bicycle, a clinging disappointment had descended. It was one of those days when Barrowcester held her too tight. Yet again it was sunny. Yet again birds sang. Yet again new flowers nodded. People smiled and asked her how she was and instead of screaming in their faces, she had smiled back and said she felt fine. Deirdre Chattock had stopped to tell her that Madeleine Merluza, a smug, lumpish girl with whom she had coincided at Tatham’s, had been made pregnant by Cardinal Fitzpatrick, and was under siege from the gutter press. Emma went out of her way to pick Madeleine a posy of flowers and to buy her a sort of Get Well Soon card.

The doorbell rang. Emma chased the cats from the kitchen and followed them into the hall. Crispin was no taller. They had made him change from his uniform into his suit for the visit.

‘Hello,’ she said, sounding as warm as she had done all day. ‘Come on in. How smart you look! Is that a new suit?’

‘Yes. We bought it in Leeds last week.’

‘Very grown up!’

He stooped to pick up Rousillou who was sniffing at his grey flannel turn-ups. The cat seemed bigger than ever in the boy’s small, scrabbling grasp. Crispin was a diminutive version of his uncle Jeremy, who was a cousin of Emma’s, an eligible London divorcé working as a literary agent. Emma had been best friends with Crispin’s eldest sister, following a shared family holiday when they were seventeen. For two years they had gone on trips together, written letters and told each other everything. Then Sarah, amiable but breathtakingly ignorant, had flunked her A-levels. As she drifted into cooking directors’ lunches and as Emma passed on to Edinburgh, their lives had painlessly separated. Emma’s godmotherhood of Sarah’s brother was their only remaining contact.

‘Shall we sit in the garden or don’t you think it’s warm enough yet?’ she asked.

‘Well, it’s not as warm as it looks.’

His voice was half-broken, so it took occasional alarming leaps up an octave or two.

‘Let’s go into Pa’s study then,’ she said, ‘because it’s in the sun at the moment.’

With a ceiling yellowed by tobacco smoke and one wall clouded with grey by an inefficient fireplace, the little study was the room in greatest need of redecoration yet, when it was ablaze with late afternoon sunshine, it was the room she least wanted to alter. It was redolent with tender memories of her father before illness drove him upstairs. She liked to sit there with her marking and a pot of bonfirish, China tea.

‘So tell me your news,’ she demanded once they were settled. ‘You started on Sunday?’

‘Saturday. Boarders had to arrive on Saturday afternoon. There was a sort of welcoming tea party.’ Crispin pushed back a lock of black hair that was bothering him. It dropped back into his eyes within seconds.

‘How grim.’

‘Yes. It was. Ma came but she had to leave almost straight away.’

‘Have you got a nice study?’

‘I haven’t got one at all.’

‘No?’

‘Not a proper one. I share a
burrow
with a nice girl called Jermyn and eight other boys.’

‘
Men
,’ she corrected him with a smile.

‘Blast. Yes,
men
. And I have to sleep in a huge dormitory upstairs.’

‘Nice bed?’

‘Not very. It sinks in the middle so it’s hard to roll over on.’

‘Oh dear. Who’s your form
god?
’

‘We’ve got two. Officially it’s Dr Brightstone.’

‘She’s nice.’

‘Is she? We share her with 5Bii so Mr Hart comes in for English and to set our Saturday essays.’

‘
Weekenders
,’ she corrected him again.

‘Yes.’

‘When’s your
Lingua
exam?’

‘Two weekends away.’ Crispin pulled a face. ‘I’ve only got as far as the first two pages of that little guide they hand out. It’s all so illogical. Why can’t we call a book a book like everyone else? It feels silly calling it a
tablet
and a teacher’s a teacher, not a
god
. Didn’t you find it hard?’

‘Quite. But I’d had a head start by growing up here and hearing
Lingua
all the time. Anyway, as girls had only just been let in, they were too busy building us changing rooms and deciding on our uniform to make sure we learned official slang.’

There was a pause as Crispin stood to peer at a cluster of family photographs on the desk. There were the late Dean and his new bride grinning at the entrance to the Glurry. There was Emma, enchantingly plain and gap-toothed at six, in a bobble hat and pulling a sledge. There was Emma aged seventeen, tanned and smiling in a shapeless cotton jumper amid her equally smiling cousins. Sarah, Crispin’s sister number one, then rather stout and a worry to her mother, stood beside Emma with an arm slung round her narrow shoulders. Behind them, Crispin’s Uncle Jeremy, ever the exhibitionist, posed with a wreath of bladderwrack on his brow and a long, lean leg protruding from a skimpy white beach wrap. Crispin’s parents, Joan and Harry, framed the group. Harry, tubby in a silly hat, held young Crispin on his hairy shoulders. Joan, Jeremy’s eldest sister, with the best figure in the group, stood with sun-streaked hair plastered back off her head and grimaced because her batwing sunglasses were less efficient than fashionable. Crispin’s other sister, Polly, then a stringy thing of twelve, was adding to her mother’s irritation by tugging on one of her arms.

Crispin walked with the photograph back to the sofa. He touched his tongue on his upper lip.

‘Your ma sounded so well on the phone,’ Emma said. ‘She told me all about Sarah getting engaged. What’s he like?’

‘OK,’ said Crispin.

‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’

‘He’s a bit old.’

‘Oh. But he’s nice?’

‘He’s OK. I think Ma finds him rather dull but Sarah’s over the moon so she’s happy for her sake.’

‘Ah.’ Emma stood. ‘I’ll go and make the tea. Is cake all right or do you want bread and butter too?’

‘Cake’s lovely,’ he said. Finally she had made him smile. A watery smile, but a smile none the less.

When she came back with the cake and tea things on a tray, he was crying.

He had dropped the picture on to the sofa beside him, drawn his knees up, and was grinding his fists against wet, scarlet cheeks.

‘Crispin, don’t. Please don’t,’ she begged. She set the tray down as fast as she could and hurried over. She sat beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He flinched and, trying to stop, slid his feet back to the carpet.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, swollen lips groping for the words. ‘It’s just … So sorry.’

‘Ssh,’ she urged.

He felt roughly in his jacket pockets then stood, lurching, and felt in the pockets of his trousers, sniffing the while. The only handkerchief she had on her was Fergus Gibson’s which she had washed and ironed the night before. She had pushed it, like a talisman, into her cardigan pocket as she left the house that morning.

‘Here,’ she said, passing the pressed white square to Crispin’s grasp.

‘Danks,’ said Crispin in a rush, and hiccoughed. ‘Sorry.’

‘Ssh. Poor boy. I shouldn’t have let you see the photograph. I had no idea.’ He sat back and blew his nose hard while she rubbed his back and made sounds of encouragement. When he seemed to be rallying, she left his side to pour their tea and to slide a slice of chocolate biscuit cake on to a plate for him. Rousillou had left the room to watch her collect the tea and so had missed Crispin’s tears. He returned now with his mother and jumped on to the sofa. He settled there in a peculiarly canine pose with his chin resting on the boy’s nearest thigh. Blanquette watched him from the vantage of Emma’s lap.

‘It’s so silly,’ Crispin muttered. ‘I’m not homesick, not in the least. It was just being here with carpet and flowers and the photographs. I was starting to forget. I sort of melted.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No. I’m sorry.’ The telephone rang on the desk. ‘Shall I?’ he asked. She nodded, so he answered it. ‘Hello? … Yes of course. Who’s calling? … Jeremy, hi!…Yes it is. Emma’s asked me to tea here … Yes. How are you?’

Crispin’s face lit up. Jeremy was obviously a favourite uncle. Never exactly a he-man, he was, Emma supposed, still handsome, funny and sophisticated enough to inspire the admiration of an undersized thirteen-year-old. He was precisely the sort of older male relative whose influence, while likely to be bad in large doses, was held to exert a usefully maturing effect on growing sons with no brothers of their own. Emma sipped her tea and watched with Blanquette as the gloom evaporated from Crispin’s bright, round face.

‘Do you want to speak to Emma now?’ Crispin asked finally and she stood to take the receiver from him. ‘I’ll hand you over.’

‘Emma darling,’ said Jeremy.

‘Jeremy. Hello. How are you?’ She could hear a word processor’s electronic scything in the background.

‘I’m fine. How are … Oh, wait a second, Emma.’

He held the receiver away from his face and she heard the languid tones of one of Jeremy’s armada of plummy assistants. Emma wondered if he were ringing to ask her to the theatre. He did so sometimes. She would go to his office in Bloomsbury, via a potter in the Hellenic rooms of the British Museum, and a plummy assistant would offer her tea or a glass of delicious, cold wine. Jeremy would emerge, briefly introducing her to the client who was leaving and who was often someone whose name or work she knew, then steer her to a taxi and off to a play or opera. The evening would end with an elegant meal on his company credit card. She entertained no fond illusions about him, sensing that his brand of woman would be at once less earnest and more worldly than she, and that, while their cousinship was distant, it still set a bar on any emotional engagement beyond the familial. Yes, Emma hoped he were ringing to invite her to London.

‘Emma.’

‘Hello again.’

‘Sorry about that.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘I’m fine. Are you?’

‘Yes. Perfectly. I’ve got Crispin here.’

‘Yes. Lovely.’ She could hear him nodding at an assistant to leave something on his desk or to ask someone else to hold on. ‘Emma darling, can you do me a huge favour?’

‘Of course,’ she said, disappointed, yet curious because the request was so rare. ‘What?’

‘Well a client of mine is staying in Barrowcester for a week to do some research in the libraries. Evan Kirby.’

‘Oh yes. I heard that talk of his on the radio last month.’

‘Lovely. Well, could you ask him to tea or something, ’cause he’s American and won’t know anyone there and he might be feeling a bit low seeing as his divorce has just come through.’

‘Of course. Is he at the Gladstone?’

‘No. He’s staying with … Hang on … Yup, he’s staying at a Mrs Merluza’s. I’ve got the number here.’

‘It’s OK. I know her. Sort of.’ Emma mouthed ‘more tea?’ at Crispin, who poured them both a second cupful. ‘What fun!’ she went on. ‘I’ll drop him a note.’

‘You are sweet. He’s there for about a week. Emma, I’ve got to dash as I’ve got some wretched novelist on the other line, but look, I’m glad you’re so well and that young Crispin’s keeping an eye on you. And look, you must come up again soon. Maybe
Billy Budd
. Would you like to see
Billy Budd?
’

‘Love to.’