“Sorry to trouble you at the weekend. Is it a bad time?”
“I’m cooking.”
“Oh well, if you’re busy…”
“No, it’s something that’s going to take so long to cook, I can leave it for whole half-hours. It’s for this evening.”
“A dinner party?”
“Rather low on personnel to qualify as a dinner party. There’ll just be two of us.”
“Oh?”
“What I hope will be the original hot date, Jude.”
“Good luck.”
“I don’t rely on luck. Just a visit to the hairdresser’s first thing this morning, this rather spectacular fish dish, lots of Pinot Grigio and…” she giggled “…my natural charms.”
“Sounds an infallible combination.”
“I’m hoping so. Anyway, what can I do for you this steamy July morning?”
Jude was once again aware of the boundaries in her relationship with Sally. They would share a certain amount about their private lives, but always in general terms. No named individuals. It was a system that suited both of them very well.
“I was ringing about Viggo…”
“Up at Copsedown Hall?”
“Yes.” And briefly Jude told the social worker about the young man’s sudden metamorphosis.
Sally Monks registered no surprise at the news. “That’s very much in character. Viggo was part of my caseload for a while, and he was always very suggestible. His sense of his own identity is very weak, so he identifies with other people. He feels safer if he’s dressed like other people. Doesn’t want to stick out in the crowd, and as a result really does stick out in the crowd. Because he’s never part of that crowd. Always on the periphery. It’s a stage most of us go through to some extent, usually in adolescence. You know, “The reason why my life is so terrible, why I’m so out of joint with the rest of the world, is that I haven’t got the right clothes, the right hair style, the right make-up, I’m not listening to the right music…” You recognize what I’m talking about?”
“I certainly do.” Despite her exterior serenity, there were still memories of her teenage years which could make Jude cringe with agony.
“Anyway,” Sally went on, “as I say, most of us grow out of it. Most of us at some level come to terms with what we are, and home in on a style of behaviour, a look, which we think suits us. Someone like Viggo, though, is still searching. And it’s not just his appearance he changes. His name too. He hasn’t been Viggo that long. He was Rambo when I first met him, then Conan for a while. I think he got Viggo from that actor in
“And do the characters and names he takes on have anything in common?”
“Well, I suppose they all tend to be heroic at some level. Men of action. Secret agents. Heroes, even superheroes. ‘Aspirational role models’ might be the technical jargon. Though, since most of them are famous for fighting and causing mayhem, I’m not sure that they are particularly good role models.”
“And where does he get the role models from? Are they people he meets?”
“Some are.”
“So he might meet someone, a man who impresses him with his masculinity, his toughness-, and then Viggo will try to turn himself into a clone of that person?”
“I guess it could happen like that, but I don’t think he meets that many people. Most of his heroes are people he sees on television, or in movies. Rambo – Viggo has always had an obsession with action movies. The more blood and violence, the more he likes them.”
“And do you think they’d have the effect of making him violent?”
Sally Monks hmmed at the other end of the line as she thought about her answer. “I’m not absolutely sure about that. He’s certainly suggestible, so I suppose he might fit the profile of the kind of young men who become suicide bombers. But I can’t really see him going that far. I’d have to check out the psychiatrist’s reports in the office, but my recollection is that he wouldn’t be violent…unless under great provocation. Certainly he has no police record and I can’t remember him being reported for violence at any of the institutions where he’s been over the years.”
“Has he been in some kind of care a long time?”
“Most of his life. Fractured family background, the usual story. Viggo’s the kind of person who’s always going to need special help. God knows what’ll happen to him if Copsedown Hall is closed down, and he’s thrown out to the tender mercies of ‘the community’.”
“Has he got a job?”
“No.”
“Ever had a job?”
“He’s been tried at various things, but it’s never worked out. Even tried to join the army at one point, but he could never have hacked it. He’s got very poor concentration. Starts things, but can’t see them through.”
“So what does he live on?”
“That catch-all word ‘benefits’.”
“Ah. I was just thinking…”
“Yes, Jude?”
“…that this habit – or obsession – he has for sudden makeovers…well, it can’t come cheap, can it?”
“We’re just talking about clothes, aren’t we? Not too expensive.”
“Well, I don’t know if it is just clothes. I mean, when he was a biker, would he have felt he needed to have a Harley Davidson too?”
“I’d be surprised if he got one. I’m fairly sure he doesn’t have any kind of driving licence. He’s – .” There was a sudden shriek down the line. “Must go, Jude! My sauce is separating!”
“Well, bless you for talking. And good luck with the hot date!”
¦
Carole arrived at her son’s Fulham house promptly in time for lunch. Stephen seemed more relaxed than usual. Marriage and fatherhood had diluted the seriousness with which he took life, a characteristic which Carole knew he had inherited from her. Motherhood suited Gaby too. She hadn’t lost all of the weight the pregnancy had put on, but was as effervescently cheerful as ever. And they both patently adored Lily.
Which was a feeling with which her grandmother could empathize. There was something so uncomplicated about the emotion engendered by that tiny little bundle of flesh. Her relationship to her son, Carole had always felt, had been made stressful by her own anxieties, but her reaction to Lily was much simpler. The little girl was easy to love.
Over lunch Gaby talked about the new laptop she was planning to buy that afternoon, and Stephen generously suggested that his mother might like to have the one it was replacing. “Nothing wrong with it, just not as state-of-the-art as Gaby feels is necessary for a twenty-first-century woman like her.”
“You can talk, Steve. You change computers more often than I change my knickers.”
This badinage relaxed Carole even more. To be with a daughter-in-law who talked like that, and called her son ‘Steve’…well, it must be almost like being in a normal family.
“That’s because it’s my work, Gabs darling. Anyway, Mum, it’s a good offer.” Even better, Stephen had called her ‘Mum’. “If you want to have the old laptop, you can take it with you today.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. You know me and computers…” Carole had always had a resistance to them.
As usual with her, it was a fear of the unknown. She was not yet ready to take on a Faustian contract with Information Technology.
“Up to you,” said Gaby. “But if you change your mind, it’s all set up and switched on in the study.”
That afternoon, while Lily slept and her parents were off at PC World, to her surprise Carole did find herself drawn towards the study. And, rather tentatively, touching the keys of the laptop.
¦
Jude sat that afternoon in the garden of Woodside Cottage under the shade of an apple tree. The clouds had rolled away, removing the pressure-cooker feeling of the day, but it was still unbearably hot.
Unusually for her, Jude was feeling restless. Though never quite as serene as she appeared to outsiders, she
