“What’re you reading?” I asked him.
“Atlas Shrugged. The speech.”
“Again?” I shuddered. “No wonder you dropped off.”
“What I’ve always wanted to know is…” He yawned again and stretched his arms above his head. He absently scratched at the sparce hair growing in the shape of a feather from his navel to his chest. He looked bonier than ever.
“What you’ve wondered?” I prompted.
“How long would it take a bloke to talk for sixty-three pages?”
“Any bloke who needs sixty-three pages to make his point isn’t worth listening to,” I said. I laid my pencil on the table and concentrated hard on making both hands fists. “‘Who is John Galt?’ isn’t the question unless the answer is ‘Who cares?’”
Chris chuckled. He came to my chair and said, “Scooting forward here,” and he moved me towards the edge and slipped in behind me.
“I’ll fall,” I said.
“I’ve got you. Lean back.” He pulled me against him and locked his arms round my waist. He rested his chin on my shoulder. I could feel him breathing against my neck. I touched my head to his. “Go to bed,” I said. “I can cope.”
He kept one arm round me, holding me on the chair. He stroked the side of my neck with his other hand. “I was dreaming,” he murmured. “I was back in school with Lloyd-George Marley.”
“Distant relation of Bob?”
“So he claimed. We were facing off a pack of yobs used to hang about the taxi rank near our comprehensive. National Front blokes, these were. Metal-toed boots, the whole bit.” His voice was soft. His fingers worked the stiff muscles at the base of my neck. “We came round a corner—Lloyd-George and I—and we saw these blokes, see? And I knew they wanted a dust-up. Not with me, with Lloyd-George. They wanted to bloody him, send a message to his kind. Go back to where you came from, you fucking jungle bunnies. You’re polluting the river of our pure English blood. They had knuckle-dusters on. They were swinging chains. I knew we were in for it.”
“What’d you do?”
“I tried to yell for Lloyd-George to run, like you do in dreams. But nothing came out. He just kept walking towards them. And they kept coming on. I caught him up and grabbed him. I said let’s go, let’s go. I wanted to run. He wanted to fight.”
“And?”
“I woke up.”
“Lucky you.”
“That’s not it.”
“Why?”
I felt his arm tighten round me. “I was glad not to have to decide, Livie.”
I twisted to look at him. His nighttime stubble was the colour of cinnamon against his skin. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It was a dream. You woke up.”
“It matters.”
I could feel his heart beating against me. “It’s okay,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “All this. What it costs.”
“Everything costs something.”
“But not this much.”
“I don’t know about that.” I patted his hand and let my eyes close. The galley light was bright as a flare against my eyelids. Still, I fell asleep.
Chris held me the while. When the cramps woke me up, he slid off the chair and saw to my legs. Sometimes I say to him when this is all over he can find a job as a professional masseur. He says either that or a bread maker. “Good at kneading, I am,” Chris says. “So am I,” I say. And there’s the truth of it. Disease makes one conscious of need. It wipes out any thought of independence, of I’ll-show-them, of here’s-my-life-in-your-face.
Which brings me to Mother.
It was one thing to make the decision to tell Mother about ALS. It was another to do the actual telling. After I decided to do it that night with Chris and Max on the barge, I put it off for a month. I drifted from one scenario to another. I thought I’d ask her to meet me in a public place, perhaps that Italian restaurant on Argyll Road. I’d order risotto—which would give me the least trouble from plate to mouth—and drink two glasses of wine to loosen up. Perhaps I’d order a whole bottle and share it with her. When she was mildly lit, I’d break the news. I’d get there early, before her, and ask the waiter to put my walker out of sight. She’d be miffed that I didn’t get to my feet when I saw her, but once she knew why, she’d forgive the affront.
Or I’d ask her to the barge and have Chris and Max there so she could see how my life had changed in recent years. Max would engage her in conversation about cricket, about the pressing responsibilities of factory management, about Victoriana and his passionate attachment to things antique, which he would cooperatively manufacture for the occasion. Chris would be Chris, sitting on the bottom step of the stairs feeding a bit of banana to Panda, which Pan would cooperatively munch while all the time wondering why she was being given such an unexpected treat. I’d have Toast on one side of me and Beans on the other. They’d rather be with Chris but I’d put dog biscuits into my pockets and slip them onto the floor between their paws every now and again when Mother glanced away. We’d present ourselves as a picture of harmony: friends, fellows, compatriots. We’d win her support.
Or I’d have my doctor phone. “Mrs. Whitelaw,” he’d say, “this is Stewart Alderson. I’m phoning about your daughter Olivia. May we arrange an appointment?” She’d want to know what it was about. He’d tell her he didn’t wish to go into it over the phone. I’d already be in his office when she arrived. She’d see the walker next to my chair. She’d say, “My God. Olivia. What is this, Olivia?” The doctor would speak as I kept my eyes lowered.
I played out each one of these fantasy reconciliations to its logical conclusion. But every time, the conclusion was the same. Mother won, I lost. The circumstances of the meeting itself put me at a disadvantage. The only way I could come out the winner was to meet with Mother under conditions in which she would be forced to shine with compassion, love, and forgiveness. She had to want to look good. Since I couldn’t reasonably hope that she’d have any desire of looking good for my benefit, I knew that when she and I finally met, Kenneth Fleming would have to be there. So I would have to go to Kensington.
Chris wanted to accompany me, but since I’d lied to him about already having phoned Mother, I couldn’t have him with me when she and I met for the first time. So I waited until I knew he had an assault planned, and that same night was the night I chose to announce over dinner that Mother was expecting me at half past ten. He could drop me off in Kensington, I told him, on his way to the research lab in Northampton. I went on hastily to say that it didn’t matter if he didn’t come for me until the early hours of the morning, as would be necessary if he was out on ARM business. Mother and I had plenty to discuss and she, I said, was as eager to mend our fences as was I. It wasn’t an encounter that could be got through in a single hour or two. We had ten years of estrangement to make up for, didn’t we?
He said with some reluctance, “I don’t know, Livie. I don’t like the idea of you being stranded there. What if things don’t work out?”
I’d already broken the ice, I told him. What wasn’t to work out? I was hardly in a position to start a row with Mother. I was going to see her hat in hand. I was the beggar. She was the chooser. Etcetera, etcetera.
“And if she wants to get nasty?”
“She’s not likely to brawl with a cripple, is she? Not in front of her toyboy.”
But Fleming might encourage her, Chris pointed out. Fleming might not want to see their situation disturbed as it was likely to be disturbed if Mother and I were to make peace with each other.
“If Kenneth wants to brawl with a cripple,” I said, “I’ll just phone Max. He can fetch me. All right?”
Chris agreed without liking it.
At twenty-five past ten, we rattled into Staffordshire Terrace. As usual, there wasn’t a vacant parking space anywhere, so Chris left the motor running and came round to help me out. He stood the walker in the street, lifted me down to it, said, “Steady?” To which I lied brightly, “As Gibraltar in a
gale.”
There were seven steps to be managed to get to the door. Together we managed them. We stood on the porch. There were lights on in the dining room. The bay window glowed. Above it, in the drawing room, more lights shone. Chris reached past me to push the bell.
I said, “Wait,” and flashed him a smile. “Want to catch my breath.” And build my courage. We waited.
I could hear music coming from an open window somewhere above us, nearby. Mother had planted star jasmine in the window box outside the dining room, and it draped a curtain of long, blooming tendrils to overhang the ground-floor windows beneath it. I took a deep breath of the flowers’ fragrance and said, “Listen, Chris. I can manage the rest alone. You go on.”
“I’ll just get you settled.”
“No need to trouble. Mother’ll do that herself.”
“Don’t be difficult, Livie.” He patted my shoulder, reached past me, and rang the bell.
I thought, That cuts it. I wondered what on earth I was going to say to smooth over Mother’s shock when she saw me, uninvited, unexpected, and unforeseen. Chris wasn’t going to like having been lied to.
Thirty seconds passed. Chris rang the bell again. Another thirty seconds and he said, “I thought you told me—”
“She’s probably in the loo,” I said. I took the key from my pocket and prayed that she hadn’t changed the lock on the door. She hadn’t.
Once inside the entry, with Chris standing behind me in the doorway, I called, “Mother? It’s Olivia. I’m here.”
The music we’d heard from the porch was coming from upstairs. Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” Old Blue Eyes crooning was enough to cause someone up above to miss the front doorbell as well as my voice.
Chris said, “She’s above. Shall I fetch her, then?”
“She’s never seen you, Chris. You’ll scare her to death.”
“If she knows you’re coming—”
“She thinks I’m coming alone. No! Chris, don’t!” as he made for the stairway at the end of the corridor.
He called out, “Mrs. Whitelaw?” as he began to climb. “It’s Chris Faraday. I’ve brought Livie. Mrs. Whitelaw? I’ve brought Livie.”
He disappeared where the stairs turn at the first mezzanine. I groaned and hobbled into the dining room. There was nothing for it now but to face the music, which wasn’t going to be supplied by Frank Sinatra and wasn’t going to play sweetly for anyone.
I had to place myself in a position of relative power. I shuffled through the adjoining door into the morning room where against one wall my great-grandmother’s ghastly double spoon-backed settee has sat in velvet-and-walnut elegance since the 1850s. This would do.
By the time I had myself arranged upon it with the walker lying on its side and conveniently out of view, Chris had returned.
“She’s not here,” he said. “Not upstairs at least. God, this place gives me the willies, Livie. It feels like a museum. All this stuff everywhere.”
“Her bedroom? Was the door closed?” When he shook his head, I said, “Try the kitchen. Down the corridor, through the door, down the stairs. She wouldn’t have heard us if she’s in there.”
But she would, of course, have heard the doorbell. I didn’t mention this as Chris went off again on a search. A minute passed. Frank Sinatra moved on to “Luck Be a Lady,” which I thought was a prescient sort of piece.
Below me, I heard the opening of the back door that led onto the garden and I thought, Here she is. I took a calming breath, squirmed for a better position on the settee, and hoped Chris didn’t scare her to death when they ran into each other outside the kitchen. But a moment later, I heard Chris calling, “Mrs. Whitelaw?” outside, and I knew he had been the one to open the door. I strained to listen but heard nothing more from him. He seemed to be crossing the garden. I waited impatiently for his return.
She wasn’t anywhere, he told me as he re-entered the morning room some three minutes later. But there was a car in the garage, a white BMW, would that be hers?
I had no idea what sort of car she drove, so I said, “It must be. She’s probably just stepped out to a neighbour’s.”
“What about Fleming?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps he’s gone with her. It doesn’t matter. She’ll be back in a moment. She knows I’m coming.” I concentrated on picking at the fringe of an oriental shawl that lay across the back of the settee. “You’ve left the van running,” I reminded him as gently as I could, considering how anxious I was becoming that he leave the house before my mother returned. “You go on. I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t like to leave you alone like this.”
“I’m not alone, Chris. Come on. Don’t be difficult. I’m not an infant. I’ll cope.”
He crossed his arms and studied my face from his position by the door. I knew he was taking a seismic reading to measure the veracity of what I was saying, but in the truth-and-lie department, Chris Faraday had never been a match for me.
“Go,” I said. “The assault unit’s waiting for you.”
“You’ll phone Max if there’s trouble?”
“There won’t be trouble.”
“But if there is?”
“I’ll phone Max. Now go. You’ve got business to attend to.”
He came to the settee, bent, kissed my cheek. “Right,” he said. “I’m off, then.” Still he hesitated. I thought he was about to guess the truth, to say, “Your mum doesn’t know a thing about all this, does she, Livie?” when instead he chewed for a moment at his upper lip before saying, “I’ve let you down.”
“Cock,” I said. I touched his fingers with my fist. “Go. Please. What’s going to be said between Mother and me needs to be said without you here.”
Those were the magic words. I held my breath until I heard the front door shut behind him. I leaned back against the heavy walnut scrolling that fanned along the top of the old settee and tried to listen for the gunning of the mini-van’s motor. Over Frank Sinatra, who was going on about luck with ever growing intensity, I couldn’t hear street sounds. But as the minutes ticked by, I felt my body relax against the velvet upholstery, and I knew I’d managed to carry off at least one part of my plan without discovery.
The car was in the garage, Chris had said. The lights were on. The CD was playing. They were somewhere nearby—Kenneth Fleming and my mother. I had the advantage of being inside the house without their knowledge, so I had attained for myself the benefit of surprise. Now, to think of how best to use it.
I began to plan. How to hold myself, what to say, where to ask them to sit, whether to say ALS or merely talk vaguely about my “condition.” Frank Sinatra went on: from “New York, New York,” to “Cabaret,” to “Anything Goes.” Then came silence. I thought, This is it, oh God they were in the house all along, Chris didn’t check the top floor did he, they were in my old room, here they come, on the stairs, in a moment we’ll be face to face, I must—
A tenor began to sing. It was opera, Italian, and the singer’s voice climbed notes dramatically. Each number put the tenor through such rigourous paces that I knew I had to be listening to an operatic version of some composer’s greatest hits. Verdi, perhaps. Who else wrote Italian operas? I wondered about this and tried to come up with names. Eventually another silence fell. Then it was Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, doing Phantom. I looked at my watch. Sinatra and the tenor had sung for more than an hour. It was quarter to twelve.
The lights in the dining room suddenly went out. I started. Had I dozed without realising and missed Mother’s return? I called out, “Mother? Is that you? Hello?” to no response. My heart began to thump. I was saying, “Mother? It’s Olivia. I’m here in the morning—” when the morning room lamp switched off as well. It was on a table in the bay window that overlooks the back garden. It had been lit when I entered the room, and I hadn’t switched on another, so now I sat in absolute darkness and tried to decide what the hell was going on.
For the next five or ten minutes—which
seemed to crawl by at the speed of months—nothing more happened. Crawford and Brightman completed their duet of “All I Ask of You” and Crawford made his way into “The Music of the Night.” Some ten bars along, the singing stopped, midnote, as if someone said, “Enough of this wailing!” and pulled the flex out of the socket. Once the music stopped, the silence swept in like autumn leaves blown from a tree to the ground. I waited for another sound—footsteps, hushed laughter, a sigh, the squeak of furniture springs—that would betray a human presence. Nothing followed. It was as if the ghosts of Kenneth Fleming and my mother had taken themselves off to bed.
I called out, “Mother? Are you here? It’s Olivia,” and my voice seemed to fade among the scarves that hung from the fireplace mantel, against the iron and bronze firescreen with its one-legged pelicans gazing at each other upon it, among the hundred and one prints on the walls, within the monstrous arrangements of dried flowers on the table-tops, against the Victorian clutter of that claustrophobic room that seemed, for some reason, to grow more claustrophobic as I sat there in the darkness and told myself to breathe breathe breathe, Livie, breathe.
It was the house, of course. Being thrust into unexpected darkness inside that creepy mausoleum was enough for anyone to forget common sense.
I tried to remember where the closest lamp was to the settee. The light that filtered into the dining room from the street lamps on Staffordshire Terrace formed a wedge of illumination against the carpet of the morning room. Objects began to take shape: a guitar on the wall, a clock on the mantelpiece, the pseudo-Greek sculptures on their marble pedestals in two corners of the room, that hideous floor lamp with the tasselled shade….
Yes. There it was, standing at the other end of the settee. I dragged myself towards it, leaned out, and informed my arms that they would grab it. Which they did. I switched it on.
I pulled myself back to my original position and craned my neck to see past an oversized chesterfield to the table in the bay window on which the lamp sat. I followed the flex with my eyes. It looped to the carpet and climbed to an electrical socket at the edge of the curtains. There I could see the flex was not plugged into the socket but into a timer that was itself plugged into the socket.