On Beauty (35 page)

‘Dad – you OK, man?' whispered Levi and brought his strong, massaging hand to the cleft between his father's shoulders. But Howard ducked this touch, stood up and left the church through the doors Carlene had entered.

It was bright when the service began; now the sky was overcast. The congregation were more talkative departing from the church than they had been before – sharing anecdotes and memories – but still did not know how to end conversations respectfully; how to turn the talk from the invisibles of the earth – love and death and what comes after – to its practicalities: how to get a cab and whether one was going to the cemetery, or the wake, or both. Kiki did not imagine she was welcome at either, but, as she stood by the cherry tree with Jerome and Levi, Monty Kipps came over to them and expressly invited her. Kiki was taken aback.

‘Are you sure? We really wouldn't want to
intrude
in any way whatsoever.'

Monty's response was cordial. ‘There's no question of intrusion. Any friend of my wife is welcome.'

‘I
was
her friend,' said Kiki, perhaps too keenly, for Monty's smile shrank and tightened. ‘I mean, I didn't know her real well, but what I knew . . . well, I really loved what I knew. I'm so sorry for your loss. She was an amazing person. Just so generous with people.'

‘She was, yes,' said Monty, a queer look passing over his face. ‘Of course, one worried sometimes that people would take advantage of exactly that quality.'

‘Yes!' said Kiki, and impulsively touched his hand. ‘I felt that too. But then I realized that that would always be a deadly shame on the person who
did
it, I mean, who took advantage –
never
on her.'

Monty nodded quickly. Of course he must have many other
people to speak to. Kiki drew her hand back. In his low, musical voice he gave her directions to the cemetery and to the Kippses' house, where the wake was to be, nodding briefly at Jerome to acknowledge his prior acquaintance with the place. Levi's eyes widened during the instructions. He had no idea these funeral things had second and third acts.

‘
Thank
you, really. And I'm . . . I am
so
sorry about Howard having to leave during the . . . he had a stomach . . . thing,' said Kiki, motioning unconvincingly in front of her own belly. ‘I'm really just very sorry about that.'

‘Please,' said Monty, shaking his head. He smiled again briefly and moved away into the crowd. They watched him go. He was stopped every few feet by well-wishers and dealt with each of them with the same courtesy and patience he had shown the Belseys.

‘What a big man,' said Kiki admiringly to her sons. ‘You know? He's just not
petty
,' she said, and here stopped herself, under the aegis of a new resolution not to criticize her husband in front of her children.

‘Do we have to go to all that other stuff?' asked Levi and was ignored.

‘I mean – what the hell was he
thinking
?' demanded Kiki suddenly. ‘How can you walk out of somebody's funeral? What goes on in his head? How is that a way to . . .' she stopped herself again. She took a deep breath. ‘And where in the
hell
is Zora?'

Holding hands with both her boys, Kiki walked the edge of the wall. They found Zora by the church doors talking to a shapely black girl in a cheap navy suit. She had a flapper's helmet of ironed hair, a kiss curl glued to her cheek. Both Levi and Jerome perked up at this attractive prospect.

‘Chantelle's Monty's new project,' Zora was explaining. ‘I
knew
it was you – we're in poetry class together. Mom, this is Chantelle, who I'm always telling you about?'

Both Chantelle and Kiki looked surprised by this.

‘New project?' asked Kiki.

‘Professor Kipps,' said Chantelle, barely audible, ‘attends my church. He asked me to intern for him here over the holidays.
Christmas is the busiest time – he has to get all the contributions to the islands that need them before Christmas Day – it's a real good opportunity . . .' added Chantelle, but looked miserable.

‘So you're in Green Park,' said Jerome, stepping forward as Levi hung back, for even this much acquaintance had confirmed for both that this girl was not for Levi. Despite her name and other appearances to the contrary, she was from Jerome's world.

‘Excuse me?' said Chantelle.

‘Monty's office – in Green Park. With Emily and all those guys.'

‘Oh, yeah, that's right,' said Chantelle, her lip trembling so violently that Jerome at once regretted bothering her with the question. ‘I'm just helping out a little, really . . . I mean I was
going
to help with that . . . but now it looks like I'm going home tomorrow.'

Kiki reached out and touched Chantelle's elbow. ‘Well, at least you'll be home for Christmas.'

Chantelle smiled painfully at this. One sensed that Christmas in Chantelle's house was a thing best avoided.

‘Oh, honey – it must have been a shock . . . coming here, and now this awful thing happens . . .'

It was just Kiki being Kiki, offering the simple empathy her children were so used to, but for Chantelle it was exactly too much of what she needed. She burst into tears. Kiki at once put her arms around her and brought her into her bosom.

‘Oh, honey . . . oh . . . it's OK. It's OK, honey. There you are . . . you're fine. There's no problem . . . it's OK.'

Slowly Chantelle pulled back. Levi patted her gently on the shoulder. She was the kind of girl you wanted to look out for, one way or another.

‘Are you going to the cemetery? Do you want to come along with us?'

Chantelle sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘No – thank you, ma'am – I'm gonna go home. I mean – to the hotel. I was staying at Sir Monty's house,' and she said this very carefully, emphasizing the oddity of the title to the American ear and tongue. ‘But now . . . well, I leave tomorrow anyhow, like I said.'

‘Hotel? A London hotel? Sister, that's crazy!' cried Kiki. ‘Why don't you stay with us – with our friends? It's only one night – you can't pay all that money.'

‘No, I'm not –' began Chantelle, but then stopped. ‘I have to go now,' she said. ‘Nice meeting all of you – I'm sorry about . . . Zora, guess I'll see you in January. Nice to see you. Ma'am.'

Chantelle nodded goodbye to the Belseys and hurried away towards the church gates. The Belseys followed at a slower pace, looking around themselves all the time for Howard.

‘I do
not
believe this. He's gone! Levi – give me your cell.'

‘It doesn't work here – I ain't got the right contract or whatever.'

‘Me neither,' said Jerome.

Kiki ground her court heels into the gravel. ‘He's crossed a line today. This was somebody else's day, this was
not
his day. This was somebody's
funeral
. He has just got no borders at all.'

‘Mom, calm down. Look, my cell works – but who're you going to call, exactly?' asked Zora, sensibly. Kiki phoned Adam and Rachel, but Howard was not in Hampstead. The Belseys got into a minicab the practical Kippses had thought to call, one of a long line of foreign men in foreign cars, windows down, waiting.

Twenty minutes earlier, Howard had walked out of the churchyard, turned left and kept on walking. He had no plans – or at least, his conscious mind told him he had none. His subconscious had other ideas. He was heading for Cricklewood.

By foot he completed the final quarter-mile of a journey he had started by car this morning: down that changeable North London hill, which ends in ignominy with Cricklewood Broadway. At various points along this hill, areas are known to fall in and out of gentrification, but the two extremes of Hampstead and Cricklewood do not change. Cricklewood is beyond salvation: so say the estate agents who drive by the derelict bingo halls and the trading estates
in their decorated Mini Coopers. They are mistaken. To appreciate Cricklewood you have to walk its streets, as Howard did that afternoon. Then you find out that there is more charm in a half-mile of Cricklewood's passing human faces than in all the double-fronted Georgian houses in Primrose Hill. The African women in their colourful kenti cloths, the whippet blonde with three phones tucked into the waistband of her tracksuit, the unmistakable Poles and Russians introducing the bone structure of Soviet Realism to an island of chinless, browless potato-faces, the Irish men resting on the gates of housing estates like farmers at a pig fair in Kerry . . . At this distance, walking past them all, thus itemizing them,
not having to talk to any of them
, flâneur Howard was able to love them and, more than this, to feel himself, in his own romantic fashion, to be one of them. We scum, we happy scum! From people like these he had come. To people like these he would always belong. It was an ancestry he referred to proudly at Marxist conferences and in print; it was a communion he occasionally felt on the streets of New York and in the urban outskirts of Paris. For the most part, however, Howard liked to keep his ‘working-class roots' where they flourished best: in his imagination. Whatever the fear or force that had thrust him from Carlene Kipps's funeral out on to these cold streets was what now compelled him to make this rare trip: down the Broadway, past the McDonald's, past the halal butchers, second road on the left, to arrive here, at No. 46 with the thick glass panel in the door. The last time he stood on this doorstep was almost four years ago. Four years! That was the summer when the Belsey family had considered returning to London for Levi's secondary education. After a disappointing reconnaissance of North London schools, Kiki insisted upon visiting No. 46, for old times' sake, with the kids. The visit did not go well. And since then only a few phone calls had passed between this house and 83 Langham, along with the usual cards on birthdays and anniversaries. Although Howard had visited London often in recent times, he had never stopped at this door. Four years is a long time. You don't stay away for four years without good reason. As soon as his finger pressed the bell, Howard knew he'd made a mistake. He waited – nobody
came. Radiant with relief, he turned to go. It was the perfect visit: well intended but with no one at home. Then the door opened. An elderly woman he did not know stood before him with a nasty bunch of flowers in her hand – many carnations, a few daisies, a limp fern and one wilted star-gazer lily. She smiled coquettishly like a woman a quarter of her age greeting a suitor half Howard's.

‘Hello?' said Howard.

‘Hello, dear,' she replied serenely, and pressed on with her smile. Her hair, in the manner of old English ladies, was both voluminous and transparent, each golden curl (blue rinses having recently vanished from these isles) like gauze through which Howard could see the hallway behind.

‘Sorry – is Harold in? Harold Belsey?'

‘Harry? Yes, 'course. These are his,' she said, shaking the flowers, rather roughly. ‘Come in, dear.'

‘
Carol
,' Howard heard his father call from the little lounge they were swiftly approaching, ‘
who is that? Tell them
no
.'

He was in his armchair, as usual. With the telly on, as usual. The room was, as ever, very clean and, in its way, very beautiful. It never changed. It was still frowsty and badly lit, with only one double-glazed window facing the street, but everywhere there was colour. Bright and brazen yellow daisies on the cushions, a green sofa, and three dining chairs painted pillar-box red. The wallpaper was an elaborate, almost Italianate paisley swirl of pinks and browns, like Neapolitan ice-cream. The carpet was hexagons of orange and brown and, in each hexagon, circles and diamonds had been drawn in black. A three-bar fire, portable, tall, like a little robot, had its metal back painted blue, bright as the Virgin's cloak. There was probably something richly comic about all this 1970s exuberance (left by the previous tenant) settling itself around the present, grey-suited, elderly tenant, but Howard couldn't laugh. It hurt his heart to note the unchanging details. How circumscribed must a life have become when a candy-coloured postcard of Mevagissey Harbour, Cornwall, is able to hold its place on the mantelpiece for four years! The pictures of Howard's mother, Joan, were likewise
unmoved. A series of photos of Joan at London Zoo remained gathered in the one frame, overlapping each other. The one of her holding a pot of sunflowers still rested on top of the television. The one of her being blown about with her bridesmaids, veil flapping in the wind, remained hanging right by the light switch. She had been dead forty-six years, but every time Harold switched the light on, he saw her again.

Now Harold looked up at Howard. The older man was already crying. His hands shook with emotion. He struggled to get up from his chair and, when he did, embraced his son delicately around his middle, for Howard towered above him, now more than ever. Over his father's shoulder. Howard read the little notes resting on the mantelpiece, written on scraps of paper in a faltering hand.

Gone to Ed's for my haircut. Back soon.
To the Co-op to return kettle. Back in 15 mins.
Gone shopping for nails. Back in 20 mins.

‘I'll make the tea, then. Put these in a vase,' said Carol shyly behind them, and went off to the kitchen.

Howard put his hands on Harold's. He felt the little rough patches of psoriasis. He felt the ancient wedding ring embedded in skin.

‘Dad, sit down.'

‘Sit down? How can I sit
down
?'

‘Just . . .' said Howard, pressing him back softly into his chair and taking the sofa for himself. ‘Just, sit down.'

‘Are the family with you?'

Howard shook his head. Harold assumed his vanquished position, hands in lap, head bowed, eyes closed.

‘Who's that woman?' asked Howard. ‘That's not the nurse, surely. Who are those notes for?'

Harold sighed profoundly. ‘You didn't bring the family. Well . . . there it is. They didn't want to come, I'm sure . . .'

‘Harry, that woman in there – who
is
that?'

‘Carol?' repeated Harold, his face the usual mix of perplexity and persecution. ‘But that's Carol.'

‘Right. And who's Carol?'

‘She's just a lady who comes by. What does it matter?'

Howard sighed and sat down on the green sofa. The moment his head connected with the velvet he felt like he'd been sitting here with Harry these forty years, the both of them still tied up in the terrible incommunicable grief of Joan's death. For they fell into the same patterns at once, as if Howard had never gone to university (against Harry's advice), never left this piss-poor country, never married outside his colour and nation. He'd never gone anywhere or done anything. He was still a butcher's son and it was still just the two of them, still making do, squabbling in a railway cottage in Dalston. Two Englishmen stranded together with nothing in common except a dead woman they had both loved.

‘Anyway, I don't want to talk about
Carol
,' said Harry anxiously. ‘You're here! I want to talk about that! You're
here
.'

‘I'm just
asking
you who she
is
!'

Now Harold was exasperated. He was a little deaf and when troubled his voice could suddenly get very loud, without his realizing it. ‘She's church-GOING. Pops round few times a week for tea. Just looks in, SEE IF I'M ALL RIGHT. Nice woman. Now, but how are
you
?' he said, adopting an anxiously jovial smile. ‘That's what we're all wanting to know, aren't we? How's New York?'

Howard clenched his jaw. ‘We pay for a nurse, Harry.'

‘What, son?'

‘I said
we pay for a nurse
. Why do you let these bloody people in? They're just bloody proselytizers.'

Harold rubbed his hand over his forehead. It took almost nothing to work him into a state of physical and mental panic, the kind normal people suffer when they can't find their child and then a policeman comes to the door.

‘Prosler-what? What are you SAYING?'

‘Christian nutters – pushing their crap on you.'

‘But she doesn't mean anything by it! She's just a nice woman!
Besides, I didn't like the nurse! She was a harpy – mean and bony. Bit feminist, you know. She wasn't nice to me, son. She was unhinged . . .' A few tears, here. Wiping them sloppily with the sleeve of his cardigan. ‘But I stopped the service – last year I stopped it. Your Kiki did it for me. It's in me little book. You ain't paying for it. There's no . . . no . . . bugger, WHAT
IS
THE NAME OF IT? Debit . . . my mind goes . . . debit . . .'

‘
Direct debit
,' supplied Howard, raising his own voice and hating himself now. ‘It's not the bloody money, is it, Dad? It's about a standard of care.'

‘I care for meself!' And then, under his breath, ‘
I bloody have to
. . .'

So how long was that? Eight minutes? Harry on the edge of his seat, pleading, and always pleading with the wrong words. Howard already incensed, looking at the rose in the ceiling. A stranger could come in now and think them both completely insane. And neither man would be able to give an account of why what had just happened had happened, or at least no account that would be shorter than sitting down with the stranger and taking them through an oral history – with slides – of the past fifty-seven years, day by day. They didn't mean it to be like this. But it
was
like this. Both had other intentions. Howard had knocked on the door eight minutes ago filled with hope, his heart loosened by music, his mind stunned and opened by the appalling proximity of death. He was a big malleable ball of potential change, waiting on the doorstep. Eight minutes ago. But once inside, everything was the same as it had always been. He didn't mean to be so aggressive, or to raise his voice or to pick fights. He meant to be kind and tolerant. Equally, four years ago, Harry surely hadn't meant to tell his only son that you couldn't expect black people to develop mentally like white people do. He had
meant
to say: I love you, I love my grandchildren, please stay another day.

‘Here you are,' sang Carol, and put two unappetizing milky teas before the Belseys. ‘No, I won't stay. I'll be going.'

Harold wiped yet another tear away. ‘Carol, don't go! This is my son. Howard, I've told you about him.'

‘Charmed, I'm sure,' said Carol, but she did not look charmed and now Howard regretted having spoken so loudly.

‘Dr Howard Belsey.'

‘Doctor!' cried Carol, without smiling. She crossed her arms across her chest, waiting to be impressed.

‘No, no . . . not medical,' clarified Harold and looked defeated. ‘He didn't have the patience for medical.'

‘Oh, well,' said Carol, ‘we can't all save lives. Nice, though. Nice to meet you, Howard. Next week, Harry. May the good Lord go with you. Otherwise known as, don't do nothing I wouldn't. Now you won't, will you?'

‘Chance'd be a fine thing!'

They laughed – Harry still wiping tears – and walked to the front door together, continuing with these banal little English catchphrases that never failed to drive Howard up the bleeding wall. His childhood had been shot through with this meaningless noise, just so many substitutes for real conversation.
Brass monkeys out there. Don't mind if I do. I don't fancy yours much
. And on. And on. This was what he had been running from when he escaped to Oxford and every year since Oxford. Half-lived life.
The unexamined life is not worth living
. That had been Howard's callow teenage dictum. Nobody tells you, at seventeen, that examining it will be half the trouble.

‘Now: how much do you want to put on it as a reserve?' asked the man on the television. ‘Forty quid?'

Howard wandered into the golden-yellow galley kitchen to pour his tea down the sink and make an instant coffee. He hunted in the cupboards for a biscuit (when did he ever eat biscuits? Only here! Only with this man!) and found a couple of HobNobs. He filled his cup and heard Harold settling back into his chair. Howard turned round in the tiny space allowed him and knocked something off the sideboard with his elbow. A book. He picked it up and brought it through.

‘This yours?'

He could hear his own accent climbing down the class ladder a few rungs to where it used to be.

‘Oh, bloody hell . . . look at him. He
is
a right ponce,' said Harold, referring to the television. He tuned in to Howard: ‘I dunno. What is it?'

‘A book. Unbelievably.'

‘A book? One of mine?' said Harold blithely, as if this room housed half the Bodleian rather than three
A–Z
s of varying sizes and a free Koran that had come in the post. It was a hardback royal blue library book that had been relieved of its dust jacket. Howard looked at the spine.

‘A
Room with a View
. Forster.' Howard smiled sadly. ‘Can't stand Forster. Enjoying it?'

Harold screwed up his face in distaste. ‘Ooh, no, not mine. Carol's I should think. She's always got a book on the go.'