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Authors: Kingsley Amis

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About
six miles, I reckoned later, a couple of them noticeably uphill. Steve had no
estimate or anything else to offer. He stood there on the pavement like
somebody at the start of a long wait, not facing me quite head-on. His manner
was not so much cold or off-hand as completely devoid of the friendly
concentration on whoever he was talking to that he had always shown as long as
I could remember. Suddenly I felt an absolute fool, a wash-out as a parent,
nosey, pernickety, dull, only wanting to ask tiresome questions about taxis and
buses, phoning, luggage and things like that. My head was full of some tougher
questions about my son’s state of mind, but they were going to have to keep
likewise.

‘Shall
we go inside?’ I said it very casually, as though the last thing on earth I
wanted was to put pressure on anyone — I had no idea why.

‘All
right.’

We met
Susan in the hall. ‘I was just… Oh hallo Steve, it was you then, how super,
darling,’ she said. ‘We thought you were meant to be away. She seemed to notice
nothing out of the ordinary, I was glad to see, not even when she went to hug him
and he held back for a moment at first. She went on, ‘Dad and I were just
having a last drink upstairs. You did get to Spain in the end, did you? Where
was it, not that bloody place all the Brits go, what’s it called, not Torremolinos?
Well, that’s a comfort, anyway. They tell me it’s all frightfully cheap over
there now.’

More of
that kind of thing got us to our seats upstairs and Steve answered up, not in
his old way but enough like it to make me begin to tell myself he was only
tired, or had been feeling embarrassed about something he would let out to us
as soon as he felt relaxed enough, not that he had ever been particularly easy
either to tire or to embarrass. Then Susan turned to him in a way that could
have meant nothing to anybody but that she was going to move nearer home, and I
saw him shut himself in.

She said,
‘Tell me, Steve, is Mandy still reading
The French Lieutenant’s Woman?
I
remember you saying she was never without it. Quite a read for anybody, of
course.’ She sounded and looked like a very expensive nurse, being very good
with him, so good you would hardly have noticed. I suppose there was quite a
lot for her to be good with him about, his accent, for instance, which was
considerably worse than mine. I was very much aware of it when after a long
uncomfortable silence he started to speak.

‘Mandy
and I don’t have an amazing amount to say to each other, know what I mean? I
mean we do talk all right, but we don’t seem to communicate. So I thought,
well, we’re not getting anywhere, it doesn’t really mean anything, it didn’t
really happen, so I thought I’d better try and get my head together, you know,
try and get things sorted out, so I could decide what I was going to do. I mean
you’ve got to do it for yourself, like sort out what you…’

He took
some time over saying this because he put more silences in. There was a sort of
comic contrast between the importance Susan and I had been attaching to his
account of himself before it came and what he had actually said, but I thought
that as regards things like originality and clearness and compared with almost
anything else from one of his generation his statement was not too bad. What
had made it hard to listen to or sit through was nothing in the words
themselves, not even in the way he delivered them, which was lackadaisical
enough but no more so than would have been natural for somebody rather bored at
having to explain himself or merely ready for bed after a long walk. No, he
just left out completely all the small movements of face and body and
inarticulate sounds that you get from people talking, all the familiar signs of
an interest in being understood. I would never have thought that a negative
change could be so noticeable, and certainly not that having noticed it I was
going to take something like half a minute making up my mind exactly what it
was. I did notice that he frowned once as he was speaking, but very briefly and
not at anything in particular that I could see. Otherwise he was completely
without expression, even when he said what he did about getting his head
together and I had been so sure he would remember he had said it before,
outside in the street, and would let me have some signal that he knew I was
thinking it was funny or awful of him to say it again. That was the worst part.

Susan
said, quite rightly, ‘Do I gather you’re not seeing Mandy at the moment?’

‘Well,
you know, not much going for it.’

‘Is she
staying behind in Spain for a bit?’

‘Decide
what I’m going to do.’

There
was another silence. I was very relieved when he got up, sprang to his feet in
fact with no sign at all of being tired any more, but then in another second he
had gone back to his lifeless, wrapped-up style. He muttered something about a
drink of water.

‘Of
course,’ I said, looking across to where we kept the tray with the bottles of
Malvern and Perrier, but it had gone downstairs with the rest of the stuff. ‘Sorry,
there doesn’t —’

‘It’s
okay, I’ll get it.’

‘What’s
the matter with him?’ asked Susan when he had gone out.

‘He’s
exhausted. He walked all the way from Victoria, or so he said.’

As
though we had both been dying for the chance we had moved instantly into what
sounded like accusation on one side and excuse on the other. We kept it up
while Susan went on about why no bus or taxi — I came back with queues at the
station, why no phone-call — all his generation were like that, and why no
luggage — well, nothing much to say there. Neither of us turned anywhere near
fervent but it was odd just the same, especially since she had taken a lot of
trouble over Steve and they seemed to like each other. Perhaps not so odd on
second thoughts, merely a result of being a stepmother and a father and not one
hundred per cent cool. I stepped out of the pattern when she mentioned his
passport.

‘No,’ I
said. ‘I can’t believe he’s got it on him. Nor any cash either.’

‘Well,
you could …’ She stopped. ‘So he can’t have come from Spain. Where has he
been?’

‘I don’t
know. I think I’ll go and get a beer.’

‘I don’t
blame you,’ she said, meaning for wanting to keep an eye on Steve.

When I
got to the foot of the stairs it was like being in a Channel steamer with the
drumming and shuddering of the water-system in the walls and all about. In the
kitchen the sound of the water itself as it hit the sink was more noticeable.
There were pools of it, not very large or deep ones, on the floor and on the
various work-surfaces near by. As I came in Steve was adding to them with what
was bouncing off the glass in his hand. This he seemed keen to rinse as
thoroughly as possible. Feeling ridiculously self-conscious I went past him not
too quickly to the refrigerator and took out and opened a can of Carlsberg
lager. He knew I was there, of course, but he took no notice of me, or perhaps
he did, because he turned off the tap and turned it on again just long enough
to fill the glass, which he drained and refilled the same way, all at top speed
as though he had taken a bet, and without any signs of pleasure or of anything
else. Obviously I had no way of knowing how many glasses he had drunk before I
arrived.

By the
time he was starting the fourth round of the process I had got a glass for
myself, poured my beer and thrown the can away, so that from then on I was
hanging about. I tried to force myself to stroll out of the room. Perhaps I
ought to say something. I was sure I remembered reading somewhere that children
could actually welcome discipline.

‘Come
and have a spot of Scotch,’ I said, and tried to infiltrate lightness into the
way I said it. ‘All that water can’t be the best —He looked at me for the first
time. It was a glare that lasted less than a second. ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ he
shouted, so loudly that I jumped. After a weird moment of hesitation he hurled
the half-full glass on to the floor and rushed out. Finally I heard the faint
slam of the door of his old bedroom at the top of the house.

Susan
found me brushing the pieces of glass into the dustpan. I tried to make what
had happened sound more ordinary than it had been, but without getting anywhere
much. She listened carefully and said in a reasonable tone that no one in fact
wanted or needed so much water. I agreed with her.

‘He’s
not normally given to throwing glasses on the floor, is he?’ she asked. ‘No,
that’s just it.’ He had always been a quiet, easy-going sort of fellow, rather
apt to walk out of situations when he felt cross or frustrated, but less so
lately than as a boy, and never inclined to violence in any form.

‘He
doesn’t seem to be… Something’s upset him.’

‘Something
certainly has,’ said Susan, nodding her head several times. She clearly thought
there was more in the phrase than I had reckoned with. ‘I bet you I know where
that young man has just come from, and it’s a long way from Spain. Unless of
course
she
happens to have been there, which would explain a good deal,
I suggest.’

The
person referred to was my former wife and Steve’s mother, Nowell by name, now
married to somebody called Hutchinson. She had left me for him in 1974 and
since then, or rather since the end of the legal hassle, we had not met more
than a couple of times. Steve hardly ever mentioned her and I had stopped asking
him about her. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he sees her much
these days.’

‘What
about the time he appeared out of the blue after that cricket match and didn’t
speak the whole evening? And it turned out she was stoned in the Shepherd’s Bush
flat the entire time he was there. You remember.’

If
other things had been different I would have enjoyed as usual her tone of voice
for talking about Nowell, not a bit hostile, better than objective, sort of
interested,
putting the expression in like someone reading aloud in the family circle. ‘Yes,
but that was years ago.’ I wondered if she would still be able to go on like
that having met Nowell even for five minutes.

‘And
the school outing.’ Susan glanced at me and went on in her usual way, though quieter.
‘Tell me what you think is wrong.’

‘I don’t
know what I think is wrong. He could have had a row with Mandy. They haven’t
been going together very long, but …’

‘Three
months? I expect that’s quite a long time in their world, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

Having
turned off lights and locked windows we got to our bedroom on the second floor.
Steve’s room was up a curving flight of stairs at the far end of this floor,
and for a moment I tried to remember if the bed in it would be made up before
telling myself that there were plenty of blankets within reach and that anyway
he was not five years old any longer. I shut our door behind us. Susan came
over and put her arms round me.

After a
couple of minutes she said, ‘You’re upset too, aren’t you? In a different way.’

‘I
suppose I am. I didn’t think I was.’

‘Have
one of my sleepers. Quick and no hangover.’

 

 

The next morning things
had settled back into proportion. The main event of last night had of course
been the dashing and enjoyable dinner party. Steve would probably have slept
off whatever had been bothering him and might be talked into staying on for a
couple of days. He had always got up late and it came as no surprise that he
was still out of sight when I cleared off my Blue Danube coffee and boiled egg in
the kitchen and checked my stuff before leaving for the office. Susan appeared
in a white terry robe just as I was on my way to the door. She had never been a
great early riser either and had her hair hanging down loose round her face.
There were faint brownish blotches on the fine skin near her eyes.

‘I’m
off this morning,’ she said.

‘I
thought as much.’

‘You
haven’t forgotten mummy’s coming to lunch?’

‘I had.
Or else you forgot to tell me.’

‘Perhaps
I did. Anyway, can you come? Please? I know it’s a nuisance but she does like
to see you.’

Susan
did it just right, appealing to me without putting the pressure on, making her
mother out to be fond of her own way but in an amount I could probably put up
with or not far off. In fact I was a long way from clear whether the old girl
did like to see me in quite the usual sense of the words, but I was as ready as
I ever was to see her any time, that is any time bar a Friday lunchtime, my
preferred procedure being to take a sandwich at work midday and then beat the weekend
rush-hour. Susan knew that perfectly well, and I was just going to remind her
of it when I realized she had not tried to use my perhaps difficult son as an
extra reason why I ought to be around. I thought that was excellent.

‘All
right then,’ I said, ‘I may be a bit late but if I am I’m still slated to
attend.’

‘Oh
Stanley, you are gorgeous.’

She
came round the table and began kissing me in a very friendly way. In a moment I
tried to put my hand in under the terry robe, but she prevented me.

‘Later,’
she said. ‘I’m not awake yet.’

BOOK: Stanley and the Women
4.71Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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