The Eunuch's Ward (The String Quartet) (12 page)

‘Bless you,’ he shouted after me as I was leaving the building.

The doorman ushered me into the company car. ‘Take Miss Ganis home, Peter, or wherever she wants to go.’

I texted Mother to tell her that I’d seen my dad and that he promised to be home soon. I left out the dishevelled look, the dark rings under his eyes and the unshaven face. And the tears. ‘He wants me to tell you how much he loves you,’ I added before signing off with an X.

A text came in just as I was sending mine off.

‘I’m home. Fancy a glass of iced tea?’

‘Take me home, Peter, please,’ I said into the mike. If Hugh was at home there was nowhere else where I would have rather been.

* * *

I waited for the Pontiac to drive past the first set of traffic lights before walking to the entrance of the building next door to ours. I pressed the button marked ‘Penthouse’.

‘What, no cloak and dagger today?’ Hugh looked fresh and cool in his desert tank shorts and a pale denim short-sleeved shirt.

‘Something has changed,’ I whispered.

The iced tea tasted of apples and honey. We were sitting in cushioned rattan armchairs just inside the sitting room, away from the glare of the sun.

‘I can close the doors and switch air conditioning back on,’ he offered.

‘No, thanks. Not on my account. We don’t get enough sunshine anyhow. I want to enjoy every last bit if it while it lasts.’ I took a sip of my drink. ‘Something has changed,’ I repeated.

He waited for me to continue.

‘My father went to the office straight from the airport. Something very serious is going on. I went to see him at the bank today. He looked haggard and exhausted...’

Hugh raised his hand. ‘No, Nat, no. Don’t tell me anything else.’

It was my turn to wait for him to explain himself.

‘Your father is a prominent personality. He’s in a sensitive line of business. Public confidence drops at just a hint of any trouble...’

I nodded. ‘You’re right. I’m an idiot. There’s too much at stake... Plus, if anything that I say ever comes out, you could never prove that it wasn’t you who leaked it. No, not fair on you,’ I smiled. ‘I promise to grow up one day soon and stop thinking that the world revolves around me.’

His landline rang and he walked over to the phone answer it.

I looked around.

Not much thought could have possibly gone into the interior design. The same as in our flat, the Victorian architectural features were faithfully preserved, but after that someone must have made a list of essentials, followed it to the letter and stopped. Which wasn’t a bad thing. The room was airy, spacious and sparse. An ultra-modern music centre held a place of honour at the far end, next to is was a quite well stocked bookcase. I loved the two standard lamps, one at each end of a well used, comfortable sofa. Both stands were made of bronze and topped with frosted glass shades, art deco style. A high winged chair and three mismatched armchairs surrounded the occasional table, made of the same bronze as the lamps. I decided to have a closer look at the paintings on the far wall later. Mostly abstract, from what I could see from here.

‘Your choices?’ I asked Hugh when he returned, encompassing the room with the stretch of my arm.

He shook his head. ‘Some of it. The paintings and books are mine, and so are the lamps and the table. The rest was already here when I moved in. The family who lived here before left quite a bit behind. I had to get rid of a baby cot, a seriously oversized bed, two more sofas of about the same size as this one, and a japanned dining suite next door. The rest will do for the moment.’ He added more ice to our glasses. ‘The bronzes, I inherited those from my wife.’

My head shot up and my throat dried out in an instant.

‘My late wife,’ he added. ‘She died over two years ago.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I managed pitifully.

‘A stupid accident.’ Hugh resumed his seat opposite me, as far away as he could go.

I wanted to take his hand in mine, but that wasn’t a good time for intimacy. ‘Must be very painful. You don’t have to explain anything to me.’

‘There’s nothing to explain. Our wedding was a very modest, registry office affair, followed by a lunch for ten in an Italian restaurant in Covent Garden. The year after we were financially a bit better off and decided to go scuba diving off the Pacific coast of South America. The two of us and the same four couples who’d attended our wedding. We found a small, cheap, family run hotel and we had everything we wanted. They gave us an old-fashioned rowing boat with an outboard motor attached to it and we used that all the time. We’d spend two or three hours a day diving, then find a nice spot for swimming, fishing, reading, sleeping... you know what I mean. We all worked hard all the year round. What we needed was to chill out, eat well and have a lot of sex. Which was exactly what we were doing. That day the two non-divers caught a plateful of fish by dragging a tiny little net behind the boat. Later, we all built the fire and started fashioning the sticks to cook the fish and the sweet potato and corn on the cob that we’d brought with us. Emily climbed up the rocks to find wild garlic.’ He buried his face in his hands. ‘I’ve never found out if there is any wild garlic growing in South America. I’d just shouted something idiotic, like be careful, when her foot slipped and she tumbled down, skidding from one rock to another.’

I heard myself gasp.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to shock you.’

‘I’m fine. Go on.’

‘We used our first aid kit to fix the injuries that we could see. It was the internal bleeding that we couldn’t stem. We were a long way from anywhere and the boat was slow. When we finally brought her to hospital, she got the best care possible. They couldn’t do enough for her. All the same, she’d never regained consciousness. She died the following day.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘You and me, both.’ He smiled at me. ‘If only I...’

‘
If only
is no good. But, you know that, don’t you?’

Another phone call saved him the answer. This time it came to his mobile. He excused himself and walked out on the terrace. I was left leafing through a magazine devoted to small aircraft. The glossy pictures of deep blue skies and aerial views of waterfalls and African planes couldn’t shift the images that he’d left in my mind. How can anyone get over something like that? Emily could never go away. She was always to remain the love of his life.

The day was getting on top of me. First my father, close to a breakdown but not giving up. My father, crying in public, unashamed by his emotions and his possible collapse. Then me, for the first time in my life, allowed to walk about on my own, like any other adult. An exhilarating, intoxicating, and yet very scary experience. And all that topped by the story of a much loved dead wife told with emotion and restraint by one of the best looking men that I’d ever seen. And the most amusing when he wasn’t thinking of her.

‘Sorry,’ he said and returned the phone to his pocket.

We were saying
sorry
a lot. Both of us.

‘What about you?’

I wasn’t sure what he meant.

‘Have you ever been in love?’

I’ve never asked that question of myself. Not like that.

‘You don’t have to answer,’ he smiled again. ‘I don’t want to pry.’

‘You’re not,’ I said slowly. ‘I just don’t know the answer. There was someone a couple of years ago. I don’t know if that was love. I’ve got nothing to compare it to.’

‘What happened?’

‘I was too young, he was too decent.’

If he were sitting closer to me he would have probably given me a hug. But, for some reason he’d decided to give us time to get to know each other.

‘You’re still too young,’ he said quietly in answer to so much that I hadn’t said.

I nodded. ‘Probably. I tried to contact him later. Once I was above the age of consent and all that nonsense. I’m not sure any longer what I was really after. I thought sex, but it may not have been.’

‘Closure?’

‘How can you seek closure to something that’s never happened?’

‘Will you get into trouble for coming here?’

‘
Unchaperoned?
’ I smiled. ‘Don’t know. Don’t know anything any longer. I may be making a mountain out of a molehill, but it doesn’t feel like that.’

Chapter 11

Before I left, Hugh said that he was flying to Calais tomorrow, but he expected to be back by 7 pm. If I had nothing better to do and needed company and all that...

‘I may be wanted at home tomorrow. He, my father, he can’t stay in the office forever. He’ll probably have things to tell us. I’ll text you.’

I could have taken the shortcut over the terrace, but I didn’t think it wise to alert anyone to that route just yet. Besides, I wanted to savour the novelty of coming and going through proper doors all on my own.

‘You had me worried,’ Bakir grumbled as he was taking potato salad out of the fridge. ‘Ham or cheese?’

I realised that I was ravenously hungry. ‘Both. Any rotten eggs left?’

He pushed his hands into the padded double oven glove, reached into the aga and retrieved an old, shabby looking enamel saucepan with a tight-fitting lid. Amidst a mass of red onion peels, there were some ten or so eggs in there, covered in dark brown water. They’d been stewing at the slow end of the oven for weeks until the shells acquired the same colour as the water around them. I was very young when I tried them for the first time. Looking as vile as they did no one had expected me to want them. They were right. At the age of five, I could hardly bear to look at them. But, my father had two of those on his plate and I was looking for approval. Admiration.

‘Maybe not two to start with,’ my mother was utterly amazed at the request. ‘Maybe Daddy could give you a piece of his egg to try first?’

‘If you take a whole egg you’ll have to eat the whole egg,’ added my father. ‘If you take two, you’ll eat two if it takes you till Christmas.’ He bypassed the option of sharing.

I was too obtuse to retreat.

The yolk was greenish-black, the whites around were much the same, but a little lighter and with a tinge of red. In a five-year old’s experience they were the colours of wicked witches and Halloween. Risking the sneers, I scrunched my eyes and shoved a small forkful into my mouth and tasted pure heaven. I could have been eating very smooth hazelnut cream that melted quickly on my tongue. I put away both eggs in record time.

‘As I always say, it’s nurture not nature that makes a difference,’ said my farther.

I had no idea whether that was praise or censure, but as he didn’t sound angry I decided on the former.

‘You’ve been to see him this morning, haven’t you?’ Bakir was adding samphire and baby spinach to the plate. He then picked up the tray and headed for the table under the umbrella on the terrace.

‘He cried,’ I said quietly. ‘And he said that he loved us.’ I felt that a little embellishment was in order.

Mother texted saying that her stylist had a cancellation and that she was about to have a trim. Did I want to join her for a West End matinee?

I asked her to mail me the ‘after’ picture and claimed a non-existent prior arrangement. If she asked me I could always say that Asha wanted to talk about her archaeological assignment somewhere at the back of beyond. If I said it right she’d feel guilty for trying to obstruct my best mate duties. I was dying to talk to Rosie, but as Hugh had reminded me, I was duty-bound to keep the family business under wraps and there would have been no way of telling Rosie about the events of today without bringing my father into it. I refrained from logging on Skype. Instead, I returned to my press watch. As before, Ganis Bank was getting very little notice. Banks had a bad time of it for a while anyhow, news about another one getting its knickers in a twist wasn’t news. Besides, it was just an investment bank, lending money to people who didn’t need it.

In the end it turned out that I’d missed the point of my mother’s invitations. She lost her patience and phoned.

‘I’ll be home soon to change. Got two seats in Sir Frederick’s box for a concert tonight. Hope you’ve got something suitable to wear.’

‘What’s on?’ As if it mattered. This was hardly the time to wear something suitable for Sir Frederick’s box, whoever he might have been.

‘Something German and modern. Tell you when I see you. Can’t reach my bag right now.’

I sighed. ‘I think I’ll give it a miss. There are a few DVDs that I want to see and I should call Asha back. She needs a chat...’

‘Sonata!’

I winced. She’d ever called me by my full name a few times in my life and those were the occasions that I didn’t like to remember. Like that one time when I left a slice of eggy bread on a chair in my school room at Hartsfield and forgot about it. My French tutor wasn’t impressed. She was a devotee of retro clothing and the rag that she was wearing that day cost a bomb.

‘Sonata! The right thing to do right now is act normally. Doll yourself up, put on a smile and clap your heart out when it’s done.’

Accompanying my mother to a classical music concert wasn’t exactly acting as normal, but she was bound to join the dots for the uninitiated, talk at length about my mock exams, and my ambition to study economics.

She might add something like ‘Nat is aiming at Durham, if they’ll have her. A grand university, no doubt, but I think that she’s chosen it to get as far from us as she can.’

The concert was atrocious and poorly attended. No one wanted to know about my ambitions. People rushed out to grab a drink before heading home.

At home, Bakir just shook his head.

I managed to get to sleep only after I convinced myself that no news was good news. Father was fighting because there was still something to fight for. Or against.

As everyone was busy pointing out, I was young. I needed my sleep, so I slept.

My first thought in the morning was that Hugh was in Calais and planning to return in the evening. I was moved and flattered that he’d bothered to tell me exactly where he was going and plans for the evening. It was even more flattering that his plans focused exclusively on me. I checked my mobile, the secret one. It was always on silent. Two voicemails came in overnight. The one from Ela reminded me about the Milan trip. The other one was from Rosie saying that she was joining Ela and me for the rest of the summer. I shook my head in annoyance. Rosie always assumed too much. It had never been less certain that I was going anywhere than right now.