“Great to see you again, Mrs. Bolitho,” I say cheerfully.
“Say hello to Hugo, Mrs. Bolitho. Hugo’s a guest.”
She looks from me to Nurse Purvis and whimpers.
“What’s that? Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is on the television, in the lounge. The flying car. Why don’t we go and join them, mmm?”
A fox’s head watches us from the wall with a faint smile.
“Stay here,” Nurse Purvis tells Mrs. Bolitho, “while I take Hugo to the library. Then we’ll go to the residents’ room together.”
I wish Mrs. Bolitho a Merry Christmas but the chances are low.
“She has four sons,” Nurse Purvis leads me on, “all with a London post code, but they never visit. You’d think old age was a criminal offense, not a destination we’re all heading to.”
I consider airing my theory that our culture’s coping strategy towards death is to bury it under consumerism and Sansara, that the Riverside Villas of the world are screens that enable this self-deception, and that the elderly are guilty: guilty of proving to us that our willful myopia about death is exactly that.
But, no, let’s not complicate Nurse Purvis’s opinion of me. We reach the library where my guide continues sotto voce: “I know you won’t be put out, Hugo, if the brigadier doesn’t recognize you.”
“Not at all. Does he still suffer from the postage stamp … delusion?”
“It rears its head from time to time, yes. Oh, here’s Mariângela—Mariângela!”
Mariângela approaches with a stack of neatly folded bed linen. “Yugo! Nurse Purvis, she told me you visit today. How is Norwitch?”
“Hugo is at Cambridge University, Mariângela.” Nurse Purvis shivers. “Cambridge. Not Norwich. Quite different.”
“Pardon, Yugo.” Mariângela’s puckish Brazilian eyes arouse not only my hopes. “My geography of England, still a bit rubbish.”
“Mariângela, perhaps you’d bring some coffee to the library for Hugo and the brigadier. I ought to be getting back to Mrs. Bolitho.”
“Of course. It’s been wonderful catching up, Nurse Purvis.”
“Be sure to say goodbye before you leave.” Off she marches.
I ask Mariângela, “What’s she actually like to work for?”
“We are accustomed to dictators in my continent.”
“Does she sleep at night or plug herself into the mains?”
“Is not a bad boss, if you agree with her always. At the least, she is dependable. At the least, she says what she is thinking, honestly.”
I’d describe Mariângela as pouty but not vitriolic. “Look, Angel, we both needed some space.”
“Eight weeks, Yugo. Two letters, two calls, two messages on my answer machine. I need contact, not space.” Okay, so she’s between pouty and wronged woman. “You not an expert on what I need.”
Tell her it’s over, Hugo the Wise advises, but Hugo the Horny loves a uniform. “I’m not an expert on you, Mariângela. Or any other woman. Or myself, even. I had two or three girlfriends before you—but … you’re different. By the end of last summer, the inside of my eyelids was a TV station showing Mariângela Pinto-Pereira, all day, all night. It freaked me out. The only way I could handle it was space. So often, I nearly phoned … but … but … I was an inexperienced boy, Angel, not a malicious one.” I open the library door. “Thanks for some great memories, I’m sorry my insensitivity hurt you. Really.”
Her foot’s in the door. Pouty and sultry. “Nurse Purvis ask I bring you and the brigadier coffee. Is still dark, with one sugar?”
“Yes, please. But no Amazonian voodoo stuff that shrivels up testicles, if that’s okay.”
“Sharp knife is better than voodoo.” She scowls. “Milk or Coffee-mate in your coffee, like you drink it at Came-bridge University?”
“White coffee brings me out in a nasty rash.”
“So if—if—I find you real Brazilian coffee, you drink?”
“Mariângela. Once you’ve tasted the real thing, everything else is a cheap imitation.”
“NEAR THE END now, Brigadier,” I tell the old man, and turn the page. “ ‘But for me all the East is contained in that vision of my youth. It is all on that moment when I opened my young eyes on it. I came upon it from a tussle with the sea—and I was young—and I saw it looking at me. And this is all that is left of it! Only a moment; a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour—of youth!… A flick of sunshine upon a strange shore, the time to remember, the time for a sigh, and—goodbye!—Night—Goodbye …’ ” I slurp lukewarm coffee: Brigadier Philby’s cup remains untouched. The vital, witty man I knew five years ago is one and the same as the wheelchair-bound husk. Back in 1986 he was seventy going on fifty, living in a big old place in Kew with his devoted widowed sister, Mrs. Hatter. The brigadier was an old friend of my headmaster, and although I was supposed to be mowing his lawn while his broken leg recovered, he recognized a kindred spirit and we ended up spending my civics-class hours on poker, cribbage, and blackjack. Even after his leg had healed I’d go round most Thursday evenings. Mrs. Hatter would “fatten me up” and we’d retire to the card table, where he taught me ways to “Entice Lady Luck to drop her bloomers” that not even Toad guesses at. A dapper dresser and quite the ladies’ man in his day, an obsessive philatelist, linguist, and raconteur. After a glass of port he would talk about days in the Special Boat Section in wartime Norway, and later in the Korean War. He insisted I read Conrad and Chekhov, and taught me how to get a fake passport by finding a name in a graveyard and writing off to Somerset House for a birth certificate. I knew this but pretended I didn’t.
Brigadier Philby hardly stirs nowadays. His head sways now and then, like Stevie Wonder’s at the piano, and dandruff gathers in the furrows of his jacket. His shave was done by a male nurse with a mind on other matters and the old man wears an incontinence nappy. A few malformed words escape the brigadier’s mouth from time to time, but he’s otherwise nonverbal. I’ve no idea whether Conrad’s Youth is bringing him the pleasure it used to, or whether it’s a torment to be reminded of happier days. Or perhaps he has no idea what I’m saying, or even who I am.
Still. Mariângela says that the best way to work with dementia is to act as if the person you knew is still inside the wreckage. If you’re wrong, and the person you knew is gone, then no damage is done but the standards of care stay high; if you’re right, and the person you knew is still bricked up inside, then you are the lifeline. “On to the final page, now, Brigadier. ‘By all that’s wonderful it is the sea, I believe, the sea itself—or is it youth alone? Who can tell? But you here—you all had something out of life: money, love—whatever one gets on shore—and, tell me, wasn’t that the best time, that time we were young at sea; young and had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks—and sometimes a chance to feel your strength—that only—what you all regret?’ ”
Something flutters in the brigadier’s throat.
A sigh? Or just air, strumming vocal cords?
Through a gap in the trees at the end of the garden I see the Thames, silver and gunmetal.
A five-man boat flits from left to right. Blink and you miss it.
The flat-capped gardener gathers leaves with a rake.
Last paragraph in the dying light: “ ‘And we all nodded at him: the man of finance, the man of accounts, the man of law, we all nodded at him over the polished table that like a still sheet of brown water reflected our faces, lined, wrinkled; our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by love. Our weary eyes looking still, looking always, looking anxiously for something out of life, that while it is expected is already gone—has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash—together with the youth, with the strength, with the romance of illusions.’ ”
I shut the book, and put on the lamp. My watch says 4:15. I rise, and draw the curtains. “Well, sir.” It feels like I’m addressing an empty room. “I shouldn’t tire you out too much, I guess.”
Unexpectedly, the brigadier
’s face tautens with alertness and his mouth opens, and although his voice is ghostly and stroke-slurred, I can discern his words: “My … bloody … stamps …”
“Brigadier Philby—it’s Hugo, sir. Hugo Lamb.”
His shaky hand tries to clutch my sleeve. “Police …”
“Which stamps, Brigadier? Which do you mean?”
“Small … fortune …” Intelligence enters his eyes and, for a moment, I think he’s ready to fire off an accusation, but the moment goes. In the corridor outside, a trolley squeaks by. The brigadier I knew has left his bombed-out face, leaving me alone with the clock, shelves of handsome books nobody ever reads, and one certainty: that whatever I do with my life, however much power, wealth, experience, knowledge, or beauty I’ll accrue, I, too, will end up like this vulnerable old man. When I look at Brigadier Reginald Philby, I’m looking down time’s telescope at myself.
MARINGELA’S DREAM-CATCHER SWINGS when I biff it, and I find my lover’s crucifix among her boingy curls. I hold the Son of God in my mouth, and imagine him dissolving on my tongue. Sex may be the antidote to death but it offers life everlasting only to the species, not the individual. On the CD player, Ella Fitzgerald forgets the words to “Mac the Knife” one broiling night in Berlin over forty summers ago. A District Line train rumbles down below. Mariângela kisses the fleshy underside of my forearm, then bites, hard. “Ow,” I complain, enjoying the pain. “Is that Portuguese for ‘the Earth moved for me, my lord and master, how was it for you?’ ”
“Is Portuguese for ‘I hate you, you liar, you cheat, you monster, psycho, pervert, go to rot in the hell, you son of the bitch.’ ”
My erect bishop is unburying itself; the anticipation makes us both laugh, which squishes me out prematurely. I rescue the condom before its gluey viscera stains her purple sheets, and wrap it in a tissue shroud. Coupling is frenzy; decoupling is farce. Mariângela squirms around to face me and I wonder why women are uglier once they’re unpeeled, encrusted, and had. She sits up and sips some water from the glass guarded by Jesus of Rio. “You want?” She brings the glass to my lips. Mariângela guides my hand over her heart: Love love love love love love love, it beats.
Ah, I should have listened to Hugo the Wise …
• • •
“YUGO, WHEN CAN I meet your family?”
I’m putting on my boxers. I’d like a shower, but the Aston Martin dealership is closing soon so I need to hurry. “Why do you want to meet my family?”
“Is normal I want. We see each other six months now. June twenty-first, when you come here first. Tomorrow is December twenty-first.”
God, an anniversary counter. “Let’s go for a meal to celebrate, Angel, but let’s leave my family out of it, hey?”
“I want meet your parents, your brothers …”
Right: Mum, Dad, Nigel, Alex; may I present Mariângela. She hails from a nondescript suburb of Rio, works at Riverside House as a geriatric nurse, and after visiting Brigadier Philby, I shag her scarlet. So: What’s for dinner? I find my T-shirt down the side of her bed. “I don’t really take girlfriends home, to be honest.”
“So, I will be number one. Is very nice.”
“Separate areas of my life”—jeans, zip, belt—“I keep separate.”
“I am your girlfriend, not an ‘area.’ You shamed of me?”
What a sweet stab at emotional blackmail. “You know I’m not.”
Mariângela’s brain knows she should let this drop, but her heart has seized the wheel. “So, you shamed of your family?”
“No more than an average middle son of three.”
“Then … you shamed I am too older than you?”
“You’re twenty-six, Angel. That’s hardly old.”
“So … I am not white enough for your parents?”
I button up my Paul Smith shirt. “Not a factor.”
“So for why I cannot meet my boyfriend’s family?”
Sock one, sock two. “We’re just … not at that stage.”
“Is bool-shit, Yugo. In relationships, you share more than just bodies, yes? When you in Cambridge, drinking shit coffee with all the PhD white girls, I don’t sit here, praying you call, waiting for letters. No. One guy is consultant at private clinic, he ask for date at Japanese restaurant in Mayfair. My friends say, ‘You crazy to say no!’ But I say no—for you.”
I try not to smile at her amateurishness.
“So what am I for? Just for sex when you on vacation?”
Okay, my coat’s over by the door, ditto cowboy boots; she’s still naked as a snowman and no weapons within easy reach. “You’re a friend, Mariângela. Today you’re an intimate friend. But do I want to introduce you to my parents? No. Move in with you? No. Plan a future, fold laundry with you, get a cat? No.”
Another train passes below the window and cue crying scene: a scene as old as hominids and tear glands. It’s happening all over Planet Earth, right now, in all the languages there are. Mariângela wipes her face and looks away, and the Olly Quinns of the world sink to their knees, promising to make things right. I put on my coat and boots. She notices and the tears stop. “You are leaving? Now?”
“If this is our big goodbye, Angel, why prolong the agony?”
Hurt to hatred in five seconds. “Sai da minha frente! Vai pra puta que pariu!”
Good. It’s a cleaner ending if she hates me. With one foot over her threshold, I tell her, “If that consultant of yours wants lessons on Mariângela Pinto-Pereira, tell him I’ll give him a few pointers.”
One murderous scowl, one flash of muscular arm, and one glimpse of prime Brazilian breast later, Jesus of Rio is hurtling my way at meteor velocity; I react with a tenth of a second to spare, and Jesus hits the door and turns into a thousand plaster hailstones.
THE SIX O’CLOCK gloom promises snow. I put on my possum-hair hat. All’s well in Richmond’s prosperous backstreets. House owners draw curtains on middle-class rooms lined with books, hung with art, lit by Christmas trees. I make my short detour via Red Lion Street. The girl at reception in the Aston Martin dealership has curves as pert as the cars’ but facially she’s an out-and-out ET. She’s gossiping on the phone as I stroll by—I give her a curt your-boss-is-expecting-me nod and cross the showroom floor to the open door of VINCENT COSTELLO, SALES TEAM. The occupant looks to be in his early thirties, has a gelled mullet, an off-the-peg suit from a mid-range high-street outfitter, and is making a dog’s dinner of wrapping a big box of Scalextric. “Hi,” he says to me. “Can I help you?” Jack-the-lad accent, east London; a photo of him and a little boy on his desk, but no mummy and no wedding ring.
“Vincent Costello, I presume?”
“Yes. Like it says on the door.”
“I’d like to inquire about the resale value of an Aston Martin Coda. But first,” I peer at the half-wrapped box, “you need an extra thumb.”
“No, no, really, you’re fine.”
“I am, yes, but you are not. Let me help.”
“Okay, cheers. It’s for my five-year-old.”
“Formula One fan, then, is he?”
“Crazy about cars, motorbikes, anything with engines. His mother does the wrapping normally but …” A tongue of Sellotape tears off a strip of paper, and Costello refines an “Oh, shit” into “Oh, sugar.”
“Wrap boxes diagonally.” Before he can argue, I nudge him away. “Get the little squares of Sellotape ready beforehand, persuade the paper to fold, and …” A few seconds later, a perfectly gift-wrapped box sits on his desk. “Good to go.”
Vincent Costello’s duly impressed. “Where d’you learn that?”
“My aunt runs a small chain of upmarket gift shops. It has been known for her wayward nephew to lend a hand.”
“Lucky her. So. Aston Martin Coda, you say?”
“1969, hundred and ten on the clock, one careful owner.”
“Very low mileage for such a mature specimen.” He takes out an A4 sheet of numbers from a drawer in his desk. “May I ask who this careful ow
ner is? ’Cause you haven’t been driving since 1969.”
“No, a friend inherited from his father. I’m Hugo, by the way, Hugo Lamb, and my friend’s one of the Penzance Penhaligons.” We shake hands. “When my friend’s father passed away, he left his family one ungodly financial mess and a humongous bill for inheritance tax.”
Vincent Costello makes a sympathetic grimace. “Right.”
“My friend’s mother’s a lovely woman, but hasn’t got a financial bone in her body. And, to cap it all, their family solicitor cum financial adviser’s just been banged up for fraud.”
“Blimey, it’s one thing after another, isn’t it?”
“Just so. Now, when I last spoke with Jonny, I offered to mention his Aston Martin to our local dealer—you. My parents live on Chislehurst Road. Cowboys outnumber sheriffs in the vintage motor business and I’m guessing a London dealer like yourself could offer a degree of discretion that my friend wouldn’t enjoy if he went to someone in Devon or Cornwall.”
“Your instinct is bang-on, Hugo. Let me consult an up-to-date price list …” Costello opens a file. “Is your own father a client here?”
“Dad’s a BMW man at present, but he may be in the market for something niftier. Beamers are such a yuppie cliché. I’ll mention how helpful you’ve been.”
“I’d appreciate that. Rightio, Hugo. Tell your friend that the ballpark figure for a 1969 Aston Martin Coda with around a hundred K on the clock, all things being equal, is …” Vincent Costello runs his finger down a column, “… in the region of twenty-two thousand. However, London weighting’d work in his favor—I’m thinking of an Arab collector on my client list, a gentleman who’ll pay a bit extra, knowing we sell a sound vehicle, so I could stretch to twenty-five K. We’d need to have our in-house mechanic inspect the vehicle, and Mr. Penhaligon’d need to bring in the paperwork himself.”
“Naturally, we want everything to be aboveboard.”
“Here’s my card, then—I’ll be ready if he calls.”
“Excellent.” I put it in my snakeskin wallet and we shake hands as I leave. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Costello.”