Her face was still there, and still pretty, too (same lean lips and strong teeth, the eyes rather more domelike and unblinking), but you had to seek all this out within the face that had subsumed and imprisoned it (the original chin seemed no bigger than a thimble). And now as he neared the foot of the bed, both faces disappeared, blotted out by the hard fact of her mass (and it was hard, her mass. There was no give in it). He sat, and they smiled. Yes, Phoebe was a novelistic kind of character; and she knew that such people had their allotted tasks…She wouldn’t give him closure – because that comes only with death (and nobody ever gets over anything). Still, she would do what she could with what she had and with what she was.
He said, ‘Well, my dear old friend. There’s my father.’ And there’s yours, he thought.
‘Okay. You went off to Durham to betray me with that Lily. Consider my situation. I was trapped in Kingsley’s house and I obviously had to sleep with someone. And who else was there? So what could I do except get flopsy on Parfait Amour and squirm around till he made a pass. In the end he did give a rather flowery speech – that bit was true. And I immediately complied. There.’ She stared at him with growing accusation. ‘Don’t you mind?’
He said, ‘Nah, I really don’t. When it’s safely in the past, who cares about infidelity?’
‘Women do.’
‘So I’m told. You can smell them.’
‘Yes, we can smell them. And we remember that smell for the rest of our lives.’
‘Mm. With men, or with me anyway, now, I just think – the more the merrier. A contribution to the gaiety of nations. La ronde, Phoebe. Here’s another example. I wish to Christ I’d slept with you and your suntan when you got back from Corsica. That time. It would’ve made a nice memory. To add to all the others.’
She acknowledged his words with dissimulated pleasure, though she said, ‘Oh, I hated you for that.’
‘I hated me too. Why didn’t I? Chances are I’d’ve got away with it.’
‘You can put your mind at rest on that one, Martin. You would not’ve got away with it. Trust me.’
‘Oh well. But you looked so…I should’ve made a real pig of myself.’
‘And you didn’t! Absolutely inexcusable. Apart from Lily it was the main reason I spun you that line about Larkin. Uh, did it work, by the way?’
‘You mean did it bother me? Oh yes.’
She said fervently, ‘God, what a relief. How long did it work for?’
‘Five years. Ridiculous. And it worked in a way I’m sure you didn’t reckon on. For five years all it did was darken my…See, Phoebe, when I look back on my lovelife I mainly feel happy and proud, and grateful, and incredibly lucky. All those episodes of passionate fascination. All those wonderful women, very much including you – or even starring you. But for five years what I remembered was all my sins. My conscience turned on me, Phoebe. Every last instance of ruthlessness and coarseness – even just insensitivity, even plain bad manners. I…’
‘Do you good,’ she said. ‘Uh no, I didn’t reckon on that. I suppose you were just reliving it with the thought that you were useless with women. All thumbs and getting everything wrong…Don Juan in Hull. Five years. What made it stop?’
‘It hasn’t stopped, not entirely. Things keep emerging. Like a very flirtatious, even salacious, letter to Philip from Mum. Dated 1950.’
‘When you were safely born.’
‘Mm. And recently I’ve come to like the idea of them having a little affair. Do them good. Anyway. One day, in 2006, I saw a photo of Dad not long after the war, and I looked across the room at Nat – my older boy – and I thought, Jesus, they’re the same person. The continuity. Essence and aura, and not just looks.’
‘You look just like Kingsley too, you bloody fool. And you are a bloody fool. It’s what stops you being a total pill…You see, Martin, the thing is – you’re in the flow, you’re in the tide. You loved your parents and now you love your children. And I hate you for it. I’m like some nutter on the internet. Because me, I’m outside the flow. I’m outside. I’m the one that’s like Larkin. Fetch the book, if you would. It’s on the fridge. And while you’re at it bring me two choc ices, the ones in the dark wrappers. I want four but they melt.’
‘I’ll bring a couple more before I go…Which poem? Is it “Love Again”?’
‘No. “Faith Healing”. Here. “In everyone there sleeps / A sense of life lived according to love.” Which is all there is to say. “That nothing cures. An immense slackening ache…” He was an unusually determined man, Father Gabriel.’
‘Mm. I suppose they all are, people like him.’ After a silence he said, ‘I think the consequences of that are entitled to be infinite. I think you’ve had a very hard road, Phoebe.’
‘Ah, so someone’s finally said it. Unusually determined, and unusually exacting too. Don’t loll, girlie, keep your hands busy, keep working little one…He even tried it on again later, after that thing with Timmy. He was rearoused, you see, by the idea of teachers and pupils. That’s when I got my first inkling of the other half of it.’
‘The other half of it.’
Don’t even change my name
There was a knock. Meg, with a
