‘I was on the 97 today,’ Mac informed her when he came back one afternoon. Summer term had just started. ‘It goes right past me folks’ place.’ He sat down in an armchair, threw his busman’s cap on to the mantelpiece and stretched out his legs in their busman’s trousers that her efforts to taper had only made odder. ‘Shitting bricks, I was, that someone I knew would get on board.’
‘Why?’
‘It’d get to the old man, wouldn’t it.’
‘What, that you’re a bus conductor? Would he be terribly upset?’
‘He was pleased as hell I got into Design School. If he knew, like, I’d quit …’
‘Why did you?’ She felt like prodding again this shy subject.
‘I told you. It was a real rat race. All closed in.’
Oh well, she supposed he must be right. It just seemed a bit sad.
‘It froze up me painting, you see,’ he said.
‘Yes, but when’s it going to unfreeze?’ She kept her voice pleasant but she felt impatience creeping in round the edges. For some reason she’d been feeling it creeping in quite often since the episode with the Morris. Or perhaps it had existed before and the car thing had just put a name to it. ‘I’ve known you three months and all you’ve done is one drawing of me in the bath and two Airfix model bi-planes.’ She added: ‘You never finished the drawing, either.’
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ he said, unrattled. He never got rattled. So mild, he was; sometimes it disarmed her, sometimes it didn’t. ‘I thought we might saunter down that way this afternoon and fetch the rest of my stuff. Some canvases and suchlike. I’ve got a couple of stretched canvases in my room.’
His old bedroom! She perked up. ‘And I can come?’
‘Why not? My mum’ll like you because you’re so classy.’ He stood up, reached for his jeans and started undoing his busman’s trousers. ‘But I’m still at Design School, remember.’
They took the bus because the Morris was still in London being repaired. The conductor, who knew Mac, sat down beside them, produced a battered copy of the Sun and started reading out the jokes. Laura, laughing, saw the grey university buildings slide past the window. Much better to be here in the bus, she thought. Amongst real people, not suspended up there above it all, sealed into rooms full of billions of words, windows closed on the street outside, doors closed on life itself. She gazed out at the shop fronts. Ron Balls, Turf Accountant said one, Tyres 40% Off! said another, Retreads Our Speciality. Life itself! This was life, wasn’t it? This rumbling bus, these busy streets, this marvellously free feeling – well, not quite free because that clock said 3.30 and she ought to be at a lecture now. Still, the guilt was just part of her bones nowadays; something to be lived with, rather than the hot sediment in the stomach that she’d felt in those early weeks of seminar-dodging. She could ignore it if she tried.
It was quite a suburban street actually, Mac’s. Not as romantically working-class as she’d expected it to be. A good deal of crazy-paving about and flowerbeds edged with alternate clumps of white and blue flowers. Gnome country. Mac’s house was particularly neat, its windows veiled by net curtains of a dazzling white.
After a pause the door was opened.
‘Why, John,’ said his father. Although she knew it existed, she had a jolt hearing Mac’s real and more boring name. ‘This is a surprise.’
‘Just, like, thought we’d drop by. Get some stuff.’
‘Come in, come in the two of you.’ He looked as if he’d just woken up. As she passed him she smelt, stale on his breath, a lifetime of smoking. ‘Just having my little nap,’ he said. ‘I’ll call Mother.’
They sat in the front room while he stood in the hall. ‘It’s John, Mother, and a young lady come to see us.’ In a moment he returned. ‘Just making the tea, she says. Make yourselves at home.’
He looked at Laura expectantly and for once Mac remembered to introduce her. He shook her hand. ‘And what’s your line of business, Laura?’
‘I’m at the university.’
‘Ah, a college girl. Like our John here. We’re very proud of him, his mother and I. And what is it, may I ask, that you study?’
‘Psychology.’ There was a pause and she felt awkward, knowing that he must be longing to talk to his son.
The silence was broken by Mrs MacDonald entering with the trolley. Odd to see Mac’s features sunk into a softer, altogether more ample face. ‘Nice to see you, Johnny,’ she said. ‘And your friend.’
‘This is Laura.’ Mr MacDonald patted her knee as if he’d just discovered her.
‘Pleased to meet you, dear.’ She leant across the trolley. ‘You know, we haven’t seen our John for such a long time. Four months is it, or five, Johnny? He’s so busy at his Art College he never has any time for his old parents any more. Do you, dear?’ Mac muttered something. ‘They do the funniest things,’ she went on, ‘though you probably think it’s quite normal, Laura, but I mean to say, when Johnny was living here, the things he used to put up in his room! Once it was sort of cobwebby things, wasn’t it, Johnny, all made out of string. Yours truly had quite a surprise, I can tell you.’
That must have been Mac’s first, enthusiastic term, before he went … well, limp. The word shook her.
‘These students,’ said his father, gazing fondly at Mac.
Oh, but he’s not one any more, thought Laura, feeling embarrassed and avoiding everyone’s eyes.
‘Please help yourself,’ said Mrs MacDonald. ‘There’s Maries here and Digestives. If I’d known you were coming we would have had a better spread.’ She passed the plate to Mac. ‘Go on, Johnny, I know you love the Digestives.’ She leant over to Laura. ‘Shall I tell you something, dear? When John here was little there was no stopping him once he’d got hold of a packet of Digestives. He loved them, didn’t he, Father! Diggies, he called them, and he’d crumble them up and then mash them with his tea and –’
‘Hey!’ Mac was roused to protest.
‘– a greedy little scamp, he was.’
A greedy little scamp! How different from now. Laura tried to picture a smaller greedier Mac stuffing himself with soggy biscuits. Things had altered since then; less consuming of Diggies, more consuming of booze. She looked at him. What else had altered?
Mr MacDonald settled back with his cup and asked: ‘How’s it going at College then, John?’
Laura stiffened.
‘Fine, fine,’ answered Mac.
‘Getting on all right then?’
‘Uh-huh.’
Laura shifted in her seat. It was dreadful, this pretending. This non-communication too, for when she looked at Mac’s face she saw it was closed; shut off from his parents.
Mr MacDonald put his cup carefully back on its saucer and felt in his pocket for his cigarettes. ‘You know, John, your mother and I are very proud of you. We’re not the ones to make a song and dance about it, but I think you know our feelings.’ Laura felt a stab. She looked out of the window at the neat, painfully neat garden. ‘I know we don’t see too much of you nowadays, it’s only natural, of course. I can appreciate that you’ve got your diploma in a few months, all sorts of possibilities coming up … I know that Mother will back me up when I say we don’t expect a lot from you, but …’ Obviously not one for long speeches, he paused, gazing at his smouldering cigarette. ‘It’s just that, well, with Jeannie gone off to New Zealand I know your mother would appreciate it, she misses her a lot, you see, I know she’d appreciate it if you saw your way to paying us a visit a little more often.’
‘OK. OK.’
‘After all, it’s not as if we’re very far away. It doesn’t take long –’
‘OK. I said OK.’
The conversation trailed off into silence. Laura felt awkward, urging Mac to say something, anything rather than just sit there like – yes, like a moody adolescent. Glum but prickly with it, definitely adolescent. She’d never seen him look like this before; but then of course she’d never seen him in his home.
Goodness, she thought, he’s just like I am at home. How very surprising. She looked at him; he was frowning at the carpet in an irked, inward, put-upon way. How young he looked now he was here! Home seemed to change how people looked; he’d never seemed adolescent before, he’d always seemed so free, what with all his weird and careless friends, his general irreverence and his belongings tied up in a hanky. Rootless.
Ah, but he had roots and here they were, his parents, sitting staring into the fire grate in a silent, subsided sort of way. Her own parents flashed through her mind. She turned to Mr MacDonald. ‘Will you show me your garden after tea?’ She at least could say something.
‘I’d be delighted,’ he said.
But Mac, she could see, was already standing up looking restless. Past the age for Diggies, he was rolling a cigarette with those supple hands, bending over as he stood with that concentration that had once so moved her. Once? All she could think today was: He smokes too much.
She ate three Digestives to make up for him. Parents, she thought. Poor parents, all of them.
‘C’mon, Laura,’ he said. ‘Let’s get the stuff.’
‘But I must see the garden.’
‘OK, I’ll get it while you see the garden.’
Laura hesitated, torn. She ought to see the garden. Yet how she longed to see Mac’s room and, above all, his paintings! She paused. ‘Oh,’ she looked at Mac. ‘I’ll come with you, then.’
As they left the room she looked back at his parents as they sat, one to the right and one to the left of the tea trolley. ‘Do we have to go now?’ she hissed, following Mac up the stairs.
‘Yeah, we’ll get the stuff and go. This place gets on my nerves.’
‘But your parents are so nice,’ she said tentatively. They were.
‘They depress me. Their dismal lives. Their nagging.’
‘But they didn’t nag. They only wanted to see you more often.’
‘Huh.’
‘But it seems quite reasonable really.’
‘Hey, don’t you start.’
She watched him going up ahead of her, up the narrow stairs flanked with wallpaper of a bamboo pattern. Hunched and moody he looked, even from the back. She felt disappointed. Somehow she’d expected him to be better than her about this. But he’d just sat there, with that look. And yet he felt so much for other people, children he met in the street, old dears in the pubs with their halves of stout, for dogs even … why then couldn’t he feel for the two humans who above all others were closest to him? It must be because they were closest to him. Funny, that.
‘Here we are then.’ Mac’s voice. ‘Me masterpieces.’
Thoughts of parents vanished. Laura sat down on the bed, cast a swift look around the room (bare really, no sign of Mac’s past, she was sorry to see), and concentrated. This was it then. Mac’s inner essence was about to be revealed.
Mac started pulling canvases out of a cupboard. He leant them against the wall. She clasped her arms round her knees and looked.
She looked at one and then at the next. She looked at the next. She looked all the way along the row. She felt just the faintest sinking feeling. She could ignore it if she tried.
Mac finished propping them up and stood to one side. She could feel him watching her. She kept her eyes on the paintings. She looked at them, one after the other, again.
Heavens, they must be good! They were good, weren’t they? They must be!
Round and round went the words in her brain. For some reason she’d always presumed they’d be good. She looked at them again. She hadn’t realized how important it was that they were.
And yet the first thing about them that struck her – oh, but quickly she stifled it. They weren’t bad. Well, not exactly. They were very neat, and painstaking. Not wildly original, no, but in-offensive. Abstracts, they were; tidy, planned-looking abstracts of big bright shapes, some straight, some curly, all edged with thick black lines. They reminded her of something. What was it? Yes: those Swedish tablecloths one finds at places like Heal’s.
Mac was watching. ‘Well?’ he asked at last. She could tell by his humble look that he thought they were good.
She paused. ‘Hmm. Yes, well, they’re rather nice.’ She clenched her fingernails into her knees. ‘You know, I can never think of what to say about paintings. It always sounds stupid.’
‘Sound stupid. It won’t bother me, my sonner.’
The trouble was, she could only think of negatives. They weren’t offensive, or vulgar … nothing positive sprang to mind at all. Somehow there wasn’t enough in them to be positive.
‘Er, they’re very, you know, neat.’ She cleared her throat, aeons away from her beloved Mac.
‘Right. I was trying to purify things. Like bring them down to basics. No fuss.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’ She spoke slowly and considerately, for this was worrying. She’d always presumed that he’d be good or, if not strictly good, at least innovative and unexpected. Not boring and predictable.
There! Now she’d admitted it. His pictures were boring and predictable. As boring and predictable as Daddy’s – actually, even more so, if she was absolutely fair. Daddy at least could draw.
‘Glad you liked them.’ Mac started stacking them back in the cupboard. Then he selected unused canvases for them to take back with them. She watched him, watching a certain substance and mystery drain from him. He seemed so ordinary all of a sudden, here in the ordinary room with its bamboo wallpaper.
But then, she thought, perhaps I’ve been unfair to him all this time, making him what I want him to be. Filling him with my own longings and glossing over the bits that don’t fit. Claire wouldn’t do that; she’d love somebody for themselves, she’s clear and honest. But I can think anybody into anything. If I think them into being fascinating I bet I can find it interesting even when they’re saying things like ‘two sugars please’.
Laura got up, dismayed that from now on she would have to keep a secret from him. Beastly pictures; she wished she’d never seen them. She went over to the window. Below her the gardens stretched out side by side, narrow, neat, the furthest portion studded with vegetables. She really should have gone to look at his father’s flowers with him; it would have given such pleasure and she would have avoided all this. But that was an escapist notion and, anyway, wasn’t she being a bit histrionic? As if it mattered whether someone was a genius or not!
But it did matter a bit because it had exempted him from certain things. She realized that now. Parts of Mac that had disappointed her, like his not getting things done and being a bit feeble sometimes and not even doing his bus conducting very well – these she’d seen not as failings but as the sort of thing one put up with when one lived with talent. The price of his Art. She’d presumed that he’d been sapped by his genius.
But then, couldn’t one be just as preoccupied with bad pictures as with good? She was getting into awful tangles here. Perhaps, when she’d finished her psychology course, she’d be better at this sort of thing.
As they walked home a clock struck her eye. 5.30. One double-period lecture sunk without trace. Panic. She could rush over to the department and ask somebody for their notes. But would she ever be able to catch up? Just for a moment work seemed more important than it had done for weeks.
But they didn’t take the way home past the university. They went another way and her worries, like the buildings themselves, started to recede. She could feel them draining away the further she walked. She had always been able to close her eyes to things she didn’t want to think about. Soon, when she turned her head she could see that the department roof had become blotted out.
In front of them loomed the docks. They decided to go home that way. Past warehouses, echoing and empty, they found themselves walking; along narrow streets at times shadowed by walls and at times open to the glinting water. Cranes reared up above them, motionless; to one side rose a building desolate with its broken windows.
Suddenly she shivered, thrilled by
the huge shapes and empty spaces; all at once they were changed into outlaws, for around stood notices saying KEEP OUT. Her petty muddles dwindled away, dwarfed by such vastness. Silly to be worried by things like that.
At that moment Mac took her hand and put it with his into his pocket. That felt nice and warm. No, she wouldn’t go back to the department. He looked down at her and smiled, hitching his canvases under his other arm. Against this background, so romantic and forbidden, so reminiscent of a film set, he looked different from the way he’d looked back in that house. His wild hair, his smile, those KEEP OUT notices behind him, the way he was now clasping her hand in his pocket and starting to run … they were jumping now over some planks that lay strewn over the cobblestones. She kept close to him; he tightened his grip. She was flooded with love. Her laughter echoed back at them from the high buildings.
They were alone, but through gaps in the warehouses she could see cars and people streaming home after their hard day’s work. She laughed again.
twenty-four
ONE DAY IN June Great-Aunt Josie died. Mac gave Laura the telegram in the garden; she was sitting beside the lettuces. She looked at the dancing letters and tried to concentrate.
She’d been weeding. At least, she’d been sort of weeding but it was rather a struggle because she was stoned. Zonked. Really and quite definitely zonked. Definitely and definitively zonked. It was funny how long it took to get the weeds out. They kept on moving about before she could catch them. It made her laugh when they did that. Sometimes she did get hold of them, and then how funny it was when the whole plant came out with a nice rustling noise. All its tentacle roots came out with it, too.
Whoops! Looked like a lettuce. That was even funnier. Never mind. You could hold it up to the sun and shake it so the roots rustled again and all those little showers of earth came down. If you shook it over your hand, it tickled it. It speckled it with black. Such nice speckles.
She giggled. Do Mummy a power of good, it would, to have a drag or two of Afghani Black before she ventured into the old flowerbeds. It’d get things going with her dahlias all right. They’d all, well, sort of welcome her. My weeds welcome me, giving them their little shake.