Saturday (23 page)

‘You're in!'

As they embrace, he makes a low, sighing, growling noise, the way he used to greet her when she was five. And it is the child's body he feels as he almost lifts her clear off the floor, the smoothness of muscle under the clothes, the springiness he can feel in her joints, the sexless kisses. Even her breath is like a child's. She doesn't smoke, she rarely drinks, and she's about to become a published poet. His own breath smells richly of red wine. What abstemious children he's fathered.

‘So. Let me have a look at you.'

Six months is the longest she's ever been away from her family. The Perownes, though permissive to a high degree, are also possessive parents. Holding her at arm's length, he hopes she doesn't notice the glistening in his eyes or the little struggle in his throat. His moment of pathos rises and falls in a single smooth wave, and is gone. He's still only in rehearsal as an old fool, a mere beginner. Despite his fantasies, this is no child. She's an independent young woman, gazing back at him with head cocked – so like her grandmother in that tilted look – lips smiling but unparted, her intelligence like warmth in her face. This is the pain-pleasure of having newly adult children; they're innocent and ruth
less in forgetting their sweet old dependence. But perhaps she's been reminding him – during their embrace she half rubbed, half patted his back, a familiar maternal gesture of hers. Even when she was five she liked to mother him, and admonish him whenever he worked too late or drank wine or failed to win the London Marathon. She was one of those finger-wagging, imperious little girls. Her daddy belonged to her. Now she rubs and pats other men, at least half a dozen in the past year, if
My Saucy Bark
and its ‘Six Short Songs' are a guide. It's the bracing existence of these fellows that helps him control his single tear.

She wears an unbuttoned scuffed leather trenchcoat of dark green. A Russian fur hat dangles from her right hand. Beneath the coat, grey leather boots at knee height, a dark grey woollen skirt, a thick, loose sweater and a grey and white silk scarf. The stab at Parisian chic doesn't extend to her luggage – her old student backpack is on its side at her feet. He's still holding her by the shoulders, trying to place what's changed in six months. An unfamiliar scent, a little heavier perhaps, a little wiser around the eyes, the delicate face set a little more firmly. Most of her life is a mystery to him now. He sometimes wonders if Rosalind knows things about their daughter that he does not.

Under his scrutiny, the pressure of her smile is growing, until she laughs and says, ‘Come on, Doctor. You can be straight with me. I've become an old hag.'

‘You're looking gorgeous, and way too grown up for my taste.'

‘I'm bound to regress while I'm here.' She points behind her at the sitting room and mouths, ‘Is Granddad here?'

‘Not yet.'

She wriggles clear of his hold, loops her arms around his shoulders and kisses him on the nose. ‘I love you and I'm so happy to be back.'

‘I love you too.'

Something else is different. She's no longer merely pretty,
she's beautiful, and perhaps also, so her eyes tell him, a little preoccupied. She's in love and can't bear to be parted. He pushes the thought away. Whatever it is, she's likely to tell Rosalind first.

For a few seconds they enter one of those mute, vacuous moments that follow an enthusiastic reunion – too much to be said, and a gentle resettling needed, a resumption of ordinary business. Daisy is gazing about her as she takes off her coat. The movement releases more of her unfamiliar perfume. A gift from her lover. He'll have to try harder to rid himself of this gloomy fixation. She's bound to love a man other than himself. It would be easier for him if her poems weren't so wanton – it isn't only wild sex they celebrate, but restless novelty, the rooms and beds visited once and left at dawn, the walk home down wet Parisian streets whose efficient cleansing by the city authorities is the occasion for various metaphors. The same fresh start purification was in her Newdigate launderette poem. Perowne knows the old arguments about double standards, but don't some liberal-minded women now argue for the power and value of reticence? Is it only fatherly soft-headedness that makes him suspect that a girl who sleeps around too earnestly has an improved chance of ending up with a lower-grade male, an inadequate, a loser? Or is his own peculiarity in this field, his own lack of exploratory vigour, making for another problem of reference?

‘My God, this place is even larger than I remember.' She's peering up through the banisters at the chandelier hanging from the remote second-floor ceiling. Without thinking, he takes her coat, laughs and hands it back.

‘What am I doing?' he says. ‘You live here. You can hang it up yourself.'

She follows him down to the kitchen, and when he turns to offer her a drink, she hugs him again, then strides away with a little stagey skip into the dining room, and beyond, into the conservatory.

‘I love it here,' she calls to him. ‘Look at this tropical tree! I love this tree. What have I been thinking of, staying away so long?'

‘Exactly my question.'

The tree has been there nine years. He's never seen her in this mood. She's walking back towards him, arms outstretched as though on a tightrope, pretending to wobble – it's the sort of thing a character in an American soap might do when she wants important good news wrung from her. Next thing, she'll be turning pirouettes around him and humming show tunes. I feel pretty. He takes two glasses from a cupboard and a bottle of champagne from the fridge and twists the cork off.

‘Here,' he says. ‘There's no reason to wait for the others.'

‘I love you,' she says again, raising her glass.

‘Welcome home my darling.'

She drinks and he notices, with some relief, that it isn't deeply. Barely a sip – no change there. He's in watchful mode, trying to figure her out. She can't keep still. She wanders with her glass around the central island.

‘Guess where I went on my way from the station,' she says as she comes back towards him.

‘Um. Hyde Park?'

‘You knew! Daddy, why weren't you there? It was simply amazing.'

‘I don't know. Playing squash, visiting Granny, cooking the dinner, lack of certainty. That sort of thing.'

‘But it's completely barbaric, what they're about to do. Everyone knows that.'

‘It might be. So might doing nothing. I honestly don't know. Tell me how it was in the park.'

‘I know that if you'd been there you wouldn't have any doubts.'

He says, wanting to be helpful, ‘I watched them set off this morning. All very good natured.'

She grimaces, as though in pain. She's home at last, they
have their champagne, and she can't bear it that he doesn't see it her way. She puts a hand on his arm. Unlike her father's or brother's, it's a tiny hand with tapering fingers, each with a remnant of a childish dimple at the base. While she speaks he's looking at her fingernails, gratified to see them in good condition. Longish, smooth, clean, glazed, not painted. You can tell a lot from a person's nails. When a life starts to unravel, they're among the first to go. He takes her hand and squeezes it.

She's beseeching him. Her head is as crammed with this stuff as his own. The speech she gives is a collation of everything she heard in the park, of everything they've both heard and read a hundred times, the worst-case guesses that become facts through repetition, the sweet raptures of pessimism. He hears again the UN's half-million Iraqi dead through famine and bombing, the three million refugees, the death of the UN, the collapse of the world order if America goes it alone, Baghdad entirely destroyed as it's taken street by street from the Republican Guard, Turks invading from the north, Iranians from the east, Israelis making excursions from the west, the whole region in flames, Saddam backed into a corner unleashing his chemical and biological weapons – if he has them, because no one's really proved it convincingly, and nor have they shown the connection to Al-Qaeda – and when the Americans have invaded, they won't be interested in democracy, they won't spend any money on Iraq, they'll take the oil and build their military bases and run the place like a colony.

While she speaks he gazes at her with warmth and some surprise. They're about to have one of their set-pieces – and so soon. She doesn't usually talk politics, it's not one of her subjects. Is this the source of her agitated happiness? The colour rises from her neck, and every extra reason she gives for not going to war gathers weight from the one before and lifts her towards her triumph. The dark outcomes she believes in are making her euphoric, she's slaying a dragon with every
stroke. When she's done she gives a little affectionate push on his forearm, as though to shake him awake. Then she makes a face of mock sorrow. She longs for him to see what's true.

Conscious of taking up a position, girding himself for combat, he says, ‘But this is all speculation about the future. Why should I feel any certainty about it? How about a short war, the UN doesn't fall apart, no famine, no refugees or invasions by neighbours, no flattened Baghdad and fewer deaths than Saddam causes his own people in an average year? What if the Americans try to organise a democracy, pump in the billions and leave because the President wants to get himself re-elected next year? I think you'd still be against it, and you haven't told me why.'

She pulls away from him and faces him with a look of anxious surprise. ‘Daddy, you're not
for
the war, are you?'

He shrugs. ‘No rational person is for war. But in five years we might not regret it. I'd love to see the end of Saddam. You're right, it could be a disaster. But it could be the end of a disaster and the beginning of something better. It's all about outcomes, and no one knows what they'll be. That's why I can't imagine marching in the streets.'

Her surprise has turned to distaste. He raises the bottle and offers to top up her glass but she shakes her head and sets her champagne down and moves further away. She isn't drinking with the enemy.

‘You hate Saddam, but he's a creation of the Americans. They backed him, and armed him.'

‘Yes, and the French, and Russians and British did too. A big mistake. The Iraqis were betrayed, especially in 1991 when they were encouraged to rise against the Ba'athists who cut them down. This could be a chance to put that right.'

‘So you're for the war?'

‘Like I said, I'm not for any war. But this one could be the lesser evil. In five years we'll know.'

‘That's so typical.'

He smiles uneasily. ‘Of what?'

‘Of you.'

This isn't quite the reunion he imagined, and as sometimes happens, their dispute is getting personal. He's not used to it, he's lost his touch. He feels a tightness above his heart. Or is it the bruise on his sternum? He's well into his second glass of champagne, she's hardly touched her first. Her dancing impulses have vanished. She leans by the doorway, arms folded squarely, the little elfin face tight with anger. She responds to his raised eyebrows.

‘You're saying let the war go ahead, and in five years if it works out you're for it, and if doesn't, you're not responsible. You're an educated person living in what we like to call a mature democracy, and our government's taking us to war. If you think that's a good idea, fine, say so, make the argument, but don't hedge your bets. Are we sending the troops in or not? It's happening now. And making guesses about the future is what you do sometimes when you make a moral choice. It's called thinking through the consequences. I'm against this war because I think terrible things are going to happen. You seem to think good will come of it, but you won't stand by what you believe.'

He considers, and says, ‘It's true. I honestly think I could be wrong.'

This admission, and his pliant manner, make her angrier. ‘Then why take the risk? Where's the cautionary principle you're always going on about? If you're sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the Middle East, you better know what you're doing. And these bullying greedy fools in the White House don't know what they're doing, they've no idea where they're leading us, and I can't believe you're on their side.'

Perowne wonders if they're really talking about something else. Her ‘so typical' still bothers him. Perhaps her months in Paris have given her time to discover fresh perspectives on her father, and she doesn't like them. He turns
the thought away. It's good, it's healthy to have one of their old head-to-head arguments, it's family life resumed. And the world matters. He eases himself onto one of the high stools by the centre island, and gestures for her to do the same. She ignores him and remains by the door, arms still crossed, face still closed. It doesn't help that he becomes calmer as she grows more agitated, but that's his habit, professionally ingrained.

‘Look Daisy, if it was down to me, those troops wouldn't be on the Iraq border. This is hardly the best time for the West to be going to war with an Arab nation. And no plan in sight for the Palestinians. But the war's going to happen, with or without the UN, whatever any government says or any mass demonstrations. The hidden weapons, whether they exist or not, they're irrelevant. The invasion's going to happen, and militarily it's bound to succeed. It'll be the end of Saddam and one of the most odious regimes ever known, and I'll be glad.'

‘So ordinary Iraqis get it from Saddam, and now they have to take it from American missiles, but it's all fine because you'll be glad.'

He doesn't recognise the rhetorical sourness, the harshness in her throat. He says, ‘Hang on,' but she doesn't hear him.

‘Do you think we're going to be any safer at the end of all this? We'll be hated right across the Arab world. All those bored young guys will be queuing up to become terrorists…'