had groaned over Dr Edelman's style, and corrected his grammar to protect himself from a superstitious fear that the book awoke in him: of finding the symptoms in himself, now he knew what they were. They certainly seemed to be present in all the more volatile, the more irascible or oddly lethargic people he knew.
The book had helpful facts in it, but it left Nick with an imaginative uncertainty, as to where Catherine was when he looked at her and spoke to her: not in the black and shiny place of her old depressions, but in some other unfeatured place, policed by Dr Edelman's heavy new dosage of lithium. She lacked the energy and motivation to describe it herself. She said she couldn't concentrate on a book, or even an article. Sometimes she acted in her quick pert way, but it was a reflex: she observed it herself with bewilderment and a kind of longing. Mostly she sat and waited, but without any colour of expectation. Nick found himself talking with awful brightness of purpose, as if to someone old and deaf; and it was more awful because she didn't find it condescending.
There were various phone calls that evening. Nick's mother rang and talked excitedly about the election, which she seized on as a chance to share in Nick's London life. He was cool and humourless with her, and saw himself, as so often, almost blaming her for not knowing the important thing he was incapable of telling her. She had never heard of Leo, and he thought if he did try to tell her they would work each other up into a state of mutual resentment at the fact. She gave an account of Gerald's performance on the local radio, as if Nick needed to hear praise of him. 'He said we don't want these, you know, lesbian workshops,' she said, not unaware of her own bravery in using the word. Then Gerald himself was on the other line, and she rang off as if she'd been caught. 'All well?' said Gerald airily, obviously wanting to talk about himself. It was the long evening's wait for the results, when his confidence was the most stretched, and he was fishing for sympathy, almost as though he'd lost. 'How did your speech go?' said Nick. 'Went down like dinner,' Gerald said. 'Which is more than I can say for dinner itself-what? God these provincial hotels.' Nick felt a punitive urge to make Gerald listen to his problem, since he'd met Leo and had even been gingerly in favour of him; but he knew he wouldn't get his attention, it was the wrong moment, the wrong week, and actually the wrong death.
Elena had prepared some cannelloni, which Nick and Catherine ate in the kitchen, under the family gallery of photographs and cartoons; this had now spread over the pantry door and down the other side, where Marc's caricature of Gerald had pride of place. Gerald had still not received the accolade of a
He said, 'Mum says there's a cartoon of Gerald in the
'Oh…' said Catherine. She looked at him steadily. 'I don't know about cartoons.'
'You love satire, darling, especially if it's of Gerald.'
'I know. Just imagine if people did look like that, though. Hydrocephalous is the word. Monstrous teeth of Gerald… ' and her hand shook. She seemed startled to recall these words.
Afterwards they went up to the drawing room, and Nick, suddenly shaky too, poured himself a large Scotch. They sat side by side on the sofa, in the heavy but unselfconscious silence she generated. He remembered the one time Leo had come to this room, and surprised him, moved him, and slightly rattled him by playing Mozart on the piano. They'd both had a glass of whisky then, the only time he'd known Leo to drink. He caught the beautiful rawness of those days again, the life of instinct opening in front of him, the pleasure of the streets and London itself unfolding in the autumn chill; everything tingling with newness and risk, glitter of frost and glow of body heat, the shock of finding and holding what he wanted among millions of strangers. His sense of the scandalous originality of making love to a man had faded week by week into the commonplace triumph of a love affair. He saw Leo crossing this room, the scene brilliant and dwindling, as if watched in a convex mirror. It was the night he had stepped warily, with many ironic looks, into Nick's deeper fantasy of possession: his lover in his house, Nick owning them both by right of taste and longing.
Now the rain had stopped, and the sky brightened a little just as the dusk was falling. Pale neutral light stretched in through the front windows, seemed to search and fail and then probe again. Nick formulated the thing, 'I had some terribly sad news today, I heard that Leo's died, you remember…'; but it stayed shut in his head, like a difficult confession.
He listened to the birdsong from the gardens, with a more analytical ear than usual for the notes of warning and protest and ruffled submission. The long neutral light grew more tender and burning as it touched the gilt handles of the fire irons and the white-marble vines beneath the mantelpiece. Then it reached the turned legs of an old wooden chair and made them glow with new and unsuspected presence, like little people, skittle-people, with bellies and collars and Punchinello hats, shining fiercely and stoically with their one truth, that they would last for centuries longer than the young live people who were looking at them.
On the nine o'clock news they were talking already about a Tory landslide. Nick had another huge whisky, and felt a familiar relief begin to smooth down the bleak edges of the day. He felt he was missing the regard that was due to the bereaved, the indulgence, like a special sad prize, that was given to boys at school when the news came through. He even wondered for a while about a toot, but he knew he didn't want the irrelevant high spirits of coke. Drink showed more respect for the night, and seemed ready to mediate, for three or four hours, between the demands of grief and current affairs.
The election unrolled at its own unsatisfactory tempo. For ages the pundits sat in the studio, waiting for results to process and pronounce on. The tedium of the four long weeks of the election reached its purest form in their attempts to summarize and predict. Various old maxims and traditions were rehearsed, with a consoling effect of pantomime. Reporters were seen, perched in a dozen town halls with nothing as yet to report. Below them, out of focus, the tellers at their long tables were racing to finish, so that another game seemed to flourish on the back of the main contest. They were going to show the Barwick declaration later on, and for five seconds Nick saw the council room in the Market Hall and the not quite familiar figures at work; then there was a film clip showing the main candidates canvassing. Gerald's style was one of crisp confidence, striding through the square with glancing 'Good morning's, like a boss coming into an office, and not listening to anything that was being said. The inexperienced Alliance woman, by contrast, got snagged in well-meaning debate with Tracey Weeks, who she was slow to realize, and on camera was reluctant to acknowledge, wasn't all there. It was sad that the Barwick electorate should be exemplified to the nation by old Tracey; Nick distanced himself from his home town with a cagey laugh, though he was very curious to see it on TV. It had a steady provincial look to it, surprised but not overwhelmed to have been noticed by the outside world. It wasn't exactly the place he knew.
Later Nick was downstairs -when Catherine called out, 'It's Polly Thing!' and he rushed back up and leant over the back of the sofa-the returning officer was already speaking. Polly Tompkins was standing for Pershore, traditionally Tory but with a strong SDP vote in '83; he couldn't be sure of getting in, and Gerald, who admired Polly, warned that his age might tell against him. Nick had read an article about young candidates-of the hundred and fifty or so under thirty the dry expectation was that half a dozen would get elected. Standing in the middle of the stage, fat and hot in a double-breasted suit, Polly could have passed for forty-five; he seemed camouflaged in his own elected future. Nick couldn't decide if he wanted him to win or not. It was a spectacle, and he looked at it with untroubled cruelty, like a boxing match. It would be good to see him smacked down. Nick supposed the candidates must know the result by now, since they'd been at the count; but perhaps not, if it was very close. Now Polly was staring out into the challenge of the lights, the invisible millions who suddenly had their eyes on him. The tiny Labour vote was announced, and he gave a heartless wince of commiseration. And now his own name was being said, 'Tompkins, Paul Frederick Gervase'-('Conservative' in murmured parenthesis)-'seventeen thousand, two hundred and thirty-eight votes': the word
