After that he inveigled Phoebe into a Parfait Amour only once, and she was so very poorly, for nearly a week, that he reluctantly swore off Parfait Amour – sobered, or so he thought, by the interminable business with the trays and the tomato soups and the lightly buttered toast, and by all the recriminations. But as he poured the Parfait Amour down the kitchen sink he felt pleased and proud in an unfamiliar way. His sense of honour – or of minimal decency – was not quite defunct; it could still twitch and throb…
Martin got up from the dining table and fetched a bottle of Scotch, and then, reckoning he still had a few minutes, went out through the back door for a stoical cigarette. He could hear Elena veering off into another room on her way down.
…As he was getting himself ready to fly to Newcastle (and take a train on to Durham) Phoebe caught up with him in the hall and said,
‘So you’re off are you then.’
‘Phoebe, I can’t possibly not do this. She’s my oldest friend.’
‘I see. I see. You’re going all the way to Hadrian’s Wall for a thankyou fuck.’
‘What?’ She was one step ahead of him. ‘How d’you mean?’
‘Come on. You’ve gone to John o’Groats to save her bacon. You’ll be up on stage seeming chivalrous and clever. There’ll be a dinner. She’s an ex-girlfriend. You’re both in hotels. Beyond any doubt there’ll be a thankyou fuck.’
He said, ‘Lily and I broke up at university. There won’t be a thankyou fuck, I swear. Anyway, thank you for tending to Dad tonight. He trusts you, Phoebe.’
‘…I can’t believe it! You’ve trapped me here just for a thankyou fuck!’
She refused his kiss and he turned and pulled open the door and went down the garden path with his bag.
The storyteller
‘Eliza,’ he now said (he had naturally recognised Eliza’s cry).
‘Eliza,’ said Elena. ‘She just wanted her water refilled and a chat. All fine. You’ll have to do Inez.’ His wife settled. ‘When was this? How old was he?’
‘Uh, Kingsley was in his mid-fifties.’
‘How old was she? How old were you?’
‘I was twenty-eight. Phoebe was thirty-five.’
‘Oh. An old slag. No wonder she didn’t want children,’ said Elena (who was the same age when she had Inez). ‘She didn’t dare…At what point was it? I mean in your eon together?’
‘About eighteen months in.’
‘How attractive was she? Wasn’t she a ginge?’
‘No – dark auburn. At first glance you’d say she was a brunette. Not pale. She had a kind of rusty colouring.’
‘A ginge, in short. Right. Your father then made a verbal pass at me that went on for half an hour. I’ve never known anything like it. It was like a flood of praise, and he was very eloquent, being a poet of course and not just a storyteller.’ Elena gave a comfortable grunt and said, ‘So, a poet’s pass. Not just a novelist’s. As these things go it was pretty painless. No bullying and no whining. I always liked your father – he, for one, knew how to be attentive to a woman. New para. Well I don’t need to tell you how “tolerant” that particular drink makes me, and I have to confess I was quite tempted in a way. He was still fairly slim and handsome, then, and beyond all else by far it would have been a reasonably good way of paying you back for Lily.
‘New para. I can’t remember how he phrased the actual proposition, but I’ll never forget how he rounded it all off. He said, “It’s a faint hope, I realise. But I do want you to feel secure in my admiration.” ’
‘That’s Kingsley, that is. I can hear him saying it. That’s his style.’
‘And was it his style’, asked Elena, ‘to drug, rape, and poison his sons’ girlfriends?’
‘…When he was younger, there was no limit to how reckless he could be with women. Much more reckless than I ever was. Here’s an example. You’ll have to concentrate, Elena.’
‘I’m listening,’ she said and reluctantly raised her eyes from the page.
‘Okay. I’ll be quick. Hilly and Kingsley are asked to dinner by some old friends – call them Joan and John. Now Kingsley’s been having an affair with Joan and nobody knows. And there’s another couple there – Jill and Jim. You’d think Kingsley’d have his hands full, keeping Mum in the dark and giving Joan the odd stroke. But guess what. He goes and makes a pass at Jill.’
‘That’s…that’s ambitious. And Jill’s keen?’
‘Yeah. So he ups and has an affair with Jill. As well as Joan. He goes on about it in the novels – with girls, he says, he was like a frantic adolescent. See, they tended to say yes. He must’ve felt infallible – inerrant. Like the Koran.’
‘Never mind the Koran…In the end I just said, “Look, Kingsley, come on. This is all very well but you’re Martin’s father!” New para.’ Elena’s eyes widened. ‘Then he really shocked me. He said –’
The baby monitor again sounded – not with the preparatory cough but with a convulsive splat of alarm. Immediately followed by the ratcheting wail.
‘Inez. “D’you think I’d be talking to you like this this if I were Martin’s father?” ’
‘Stop! Wait,’ he said as he made for the stairs.
‘Why? You already know what she’s going to say.’
‘I still need to watch your face,’ he called out…But Elena had already settled into it, looking ahead to see how much more there was to go.
It
