Then there’s the weather. The forecast is for the hot weather to continue, so Laura’s first thought is to eat out on the terrace. But by nine in the evening it can get quite cool. Should she make a hot main dish, say, a roast leg of lamb, to bring warmth as the air cools? Or should she go for a cold main dish, say, Thai beef salad, to acknowledge the alfresco nature of the evening? Or is it is madness to plan to eat outdoors when the temperature may plummet and the wind get up? July can be so unpredictable. Everyone is saying the hot weather must break soon.
She thinks then that it would be nice to make a summer pudding. There are still redcurrants and blackcurrants in the fruit cage, and though the crop of raspberries is just about over she has some frozen from last year. If she’s to make summer pudding she’ll have to buy the white bread today or tomorrow to give it time to go stale. If the bread isn’t stale it forms a gluey rind and fails to soak up the juices of the fruits. The bulk of the shopping will have to be done on Friday, for maximum freshness.
When the sun is shining the garden looks lovely in the early evening. The light falls on the great brow of Mount Caburn, rising up behind the house like a guardian rampart. Laura visualizes her guests moving about the terrace, drinks in hand, enjoying the warm summer air, chatting to each other in a relaxed manner. So a starter that can be eaten standing up, then. Not canapés, this isn’t a drinks party. But something bite-sized, that doesn’t require a plate. Bruschetta?
Each decision affects the rest. If the main dish is elaborate, the starter should be simple, even homely. Perhaps a sardine pâté, made with fresh sardines, she could make that in the morning, it’s just fish paste really, but no one would think it was bought pre-made from M&S. The whole trick is to present food that is easy to deliver on the day, but which requires skill and originality in the making beforehand. The art that conceals art.
Laura catches herself thinking this, and realizes she’s smiling in that way you smile when you want to deflect attention. And it’s true that she would never reveal to anyone just how much the success of a dinner party matters to her. It’s as if it’s a secret addiction. And as with all drug habits, it’s not the narcotic that’s shameful, but the neurosis that drives the user to reach for the drug. In her case, the need to project a certain self-image. The need for control.
Why should this be a source of shame? No one accuses a businessman of being neurotic when he plans his appointments and ticks off his objectives. But have a few friends round for a meal and it’s supposed to happen in some spontaneous manner, without forethought. Like sex, which is supposed to be the result of the passion of the moment. You don’t schedule sex. Except quite often that’s exactly what she and Henry do. He’ll say to her, “Carrie is going to be out on Friday evening, let’s have some time to ourselves.” That way they can both look forward to it, and make the time, and enjoy it. But she’d never tell any of her friends this. Somehow the acts in the arena of private happiness are not supposed to be rehearsed. Home life is natural, it’s organic, it’s free range. Why? Because it’s our refuge from the disciplines and efforts of the world of work. We come home not to do, but to be.
When they have friends round for a meal, she often says to Henry, “What shall I cook?” He usually replies, “Don’t do anything grand. Just a bowl of pasta.” He too lives in this dream world where home life follows a natural rhythm like the seasons, and good things grow and ripen in their time, and have only to be plucked and enjoyed. To be fair he does cook from time to time, and in what he would call an “instinctive” way. This means he never uses recipe books, and he picks from the ingredients he finds in the larder and the fridge. No making of lists, no thinking ahead, no shopping. When he lays his triumphant dish on the table there’s a look in his eye that says, “There, no need for all the fuss.”
Laura goes in secretly for a considerable amount of fuss. Perhaps if she exposed the process to Henry he’d be more grateful. But something in her wants to protect the illusion that her excellent meals are a last-minute improvisation; as indeed they sometimes are. The vanity of the expert. The hours of practice kept out of sight, so that the public performance will be nonchalant, without signs of strain, graceful. Like the way she ticked the box for Yes when he asked her to marry him.
She blushes a little as she remembers. There’s something here of which she is still ashamed.
Henry managed the proposal in such a Henry-ish way. They were having lunch in a pub, nothing grand, the Dove, by the river in Hammersmith. He was telling her about the research he was doing at the time, which was all about the history of tests and examinations. He was explaining the terms used in multiple choice tests, the stem, the key, and the distractor, most of all the distractors, the false answers designed to be so plausible that you might be fooled into picking them. To illustrate what he was saying he pulled out a paper napkin from the holder on the table and wrote her an example.
Even before he had begun to write on the napkin she knew what was coming. This is the part she doesn’t want to think about: how she was able to respond so seemingly without hesitation. All the calculation and the compromise had taken place earlier, out of sight.
He wrote on the napkin: Will you marry me? Next to this he drew two little boxes, with the choice of answers beside them.
Yes and No. No distractors after all. He then turned the napkin round to face her, held out the pen, and fixed her with his hesitant smile.
She ticked Yes.
She kept the paper napkin, of course, but she can no longer remember what she did with it. She’s looked through the bottom left-hand drawer of her desk where she keeps all her personal and family papers, but it’s not there. She tries to remember when she last saw it. She remembers taking it from the pub table all those years ago and putting it in her handbag, but after that there’s nothing. This makes her feel guilty, as if she has deliberately airbrushed the history of Henry’s proposal from her past.
She hears Carrie and Toby come downstairs and is struck by a sudden thought.
“Carrie!” she calls out, catching them as they’re crossing the hall. “Are you going to be in on Saturday evening? And will Toby still be here?”
“Don’t know,” says Carrie.
“But I need to know.”
“It’s Monday, Mum! We could all be dead by Saturday.”
With that she goes out, and Toby follows her, and the door shuts after them.
This is unacceptable, surely? The very least Carrie owes her is information about when she expects a meal to appear before her. If she and Toby are to join the dinner party, that means she’s shopping and cooking for ten, which is quite different to eight. What if Toby has some quirky faddishness over what he eats? It seems to Laura to be highly likely. In which case she needs to know. Carrie is not being fair, or grateful.
Henry appears with that look on his face that says his mind is elsewhere. He’s come to make himself a mug of coffee, and to filch a Maryland cookie. In theory he has given up eating cookies mid-morning, as part of a program to lose his paunch; also in theory he goes for a run twice a week. The intention remains, and is honored by his secretive pocketing of the cookies, as if taking them without being seen means he can eat them without gaining weight. In the same spirit, while never actually going for a run, he has a way of talking as if he’s always on the point of it. “I’ll see if I can find time for a run after lunch,” he says. Or, “It’s just too bloody hot to go running today.”
“About Saturday evening,” he says. “We shouldn’t be having people round. It should just be you and me. It’s our anniversary.”
“Too late now.”
“We can tell them not to come.”
“No, darling. We can’t. Diana and Roddy are coming down for the weekend. People make plans. You can’t just ring up and say you’ve changed your mind.”
“What if there was some crisis?”
“But there isn’t.”
Henry takes two biscuits in a way that shows he thinks she can’t s
ee, and turns to head back to his study.
“Carrie won’t tell me if she and Toby are going to be eating with us on Saturday night,” Laura says. “How on earth am I supposed to plan my menu?”
“Two more can’t make that much difference,” says Henry.
This makes Laura even more cross.
“What utterly stupid things you say, Henry. If there are ten guests and I’ve bought eight fillet steaks, what are the other two supposed to eat?”
“Don’t buy fillet steaks. Make a stew or something.”
“A stew! In July!”
“Well, I don’t know, Laura.”
He retreats.
Alone in the kitchen she pulls out recipe books and spreads them across the table to begin the long process of deciding on a menu.
Maybe I’m neurotic, she thinks to herself. Maybe I’m a control freak. Too bad. That’s just how I am.
She checks Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s suggestions for July in The River Cottage Year. Baby courgette salad. Beetroot salad. Not at all what she’s looking for. She looks in Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries. Red mullet—far too much anxiety at the last minute. Lamb rolls—what on earth are lamb rolls? Vietnamese beef salad—which turns out to be Thai beef salad under another name—but grilling the beef would be such a last-minute worry. The barbecue is simply not reliable.
Why not do the obvious? July is the time for new-season lamb. Can I get enough for eight out of a leg of lamb?
12
Alan understands Cas doesn’t want him hanging round watching him in the skateboard park, though he doesn’t say so. He takes his skateboard through the gate and closes the gate behind him, not looking back. Alan lingers for a moment watching his son’s lithe body twist and turn on the board, until he’s lost to sight in the crowd of other boys. All boys here, on bikes and boards. A male environment, the concrete ramps bright with graffiti, jagged letters that spell out illegible tags.
He crosses the grass to the riverside path and follows it, walking slowly, killing time. On the far side of the river, glimpsed between trees, stands a line of abandoned industrial buildings, gray corrugated iron, fading signs. Ahead on the hillside a tall phone mast poking through the treetops. The tarmac of the path is uneven like the blankets on an unmade bed. He feels the ground with his feet as he walks, half-expecting it to respond to the pressure of his weight. He finds himself thinking about ground, how we presume it to be solid, sustaining, the base and foundation of all things. And yet it’s only a layer on a layer on a layer. Much like blankets on a bed.
There are gulls on the grass of the little park, moving about, stabbing at the earth. Gulls are supposed to be seabirds, they’re supposed to catch fish. Nowadays they live on garbage.
Above the park rises the whaleback hump of Malling Hill. Further south, further east, and the Downs meet the sea in the ripple of cliffs called the Seven Sisters. Here above the meander of Cuckmere Haven the film unit is shooting the opening scene of Rockefeller. Everything about this project has caused Alan grief. It began as a gentle fable about a banker who abandons the high-stress world of the City to become a shepherd. Now it’s a comedy about a talking sheepdog who becomes a successful City trader. The biggest joke in the screenplay comes when the dog, under pressure at the trading desk, starts shouting “Fuck!” This is supposedly Alan’s creation.
My big moment. A dog that says “Fuck!”
He’s ashamed and he’s angry, without quite knowing where to direct his anger. At himself, obviously, for colluding in this nonsense. But also at his producer, and the studio above her, for having such a low estimate of their public. And maybe, if they turn out to be right, at the public, for living down to such cynical estimations.
Then again, the situation is more complicated than that. There are one or two moments, one or two lines, that he’s proud of. And there’s the dog.
Throughout the two years Alan has been working on Rockefeller, the eponymous dog has slowly become real to him. When the decision was made—not by him, though he didn’t fight it—to give the dog the power of speech, some deep buried knowledge woke within Alan. He knew just how Rocky would speak. The lines flowed. The character was already there.
Rocky is smart and cynical. He is permanently amused by the way those round him underestimate him. He rarely troubles himself to correct them, because he has no interest in their approval. He finds the antics of most humans absurd, in particular their infantile pursuit of immediate gratification. When introduced to the trading desks of a City bank he can see at once how to win at the game they play there, but he has no interest in becoming rich. He loves his master, Hector, but he can’t help treating him, as he treats everyone, as he treats the sheep at the start of the film, as foolish creatures incapable of knowing what’s good for them.
Alan loves Rocky. This is another reason why he doesn’t want to visit the set. The Rocky in his head and in his heart can never be matched by any performing-dog reality.
Finally, truth to tell, he knows he’s not wanted. Jane Langridge, the producer, extended a half-hearted invitation. Come any time, Alan, it’s always chaos on set, don’t mind if I don’t stop for a chat. Gorgeous Flora actually took the trouble to warn him off. Don’t bother, Alan. You’ll hate it.
He hasn’t told Liz this. A man is entitled to keep one small corner of the world where he gets respect.
At the end of the path he turns round and walks back. Now he has the Tesco clocktower ahead. A crowd of boys on bikes comes clattering past him, making for the skateboard park. He follows them with his eyes, searching to pick out his own son in the melée.
Odd to think that his screenplay is actually being shot. He has come of age as a screenwriter. Now when people say, “Oh, what would I have seen of yours?” he’ll have an answer. Even if it’s an answer given with a shrug that says, Yes, I know, it’s not exactly great art. That won’t stop people being impressed. It stars Colin Firth. It’s a real movie. No one cares if movies are good any more. All they’ll want to know is what it was like meeting Colin Firth. How to explain that he’s never actually met him?
He can see Cas now, in the middle of a cluster of bigger boys on bikes. Good to see him talking with other boys, he doesn’t get out enough with his friends. That’s one of the disadvantages of sending him to a posh little school like Underhill. There’s no neighborhood. His classmates all live in country houses scattered round an area twenty miles wide, and all social contacts have to be fixed up in advance. So much driving!
Cas, who loves animals, knows all about Rocky. “Put on your Rocky voice,” he says. So Alan makes his voice gruff. “Baa! Baa! That’s all I hear all day! Where’s a fellow to go to get a decent conversation?” But Cas has never asked to be taken to the filming. It’s as if he senses his father’s fear and doesn’t want to expose him to pain. Or is that ridiculous? Cas is only eight.
He’s watching Cas as he approaches, seeing his skinny frame and his innocent serious face listening to the big boys.
For this child I would do anything in the world.
Alan loves his son so much it scares him. He knows Cas believes in him, with that baseless admiration small children have for their fathers, and it hurts him deeply to think how little he deserves to be admired. But even in the time to come, even after his son has learned to see his littleness, Alan knows he won’t be able to stop loving him.
Something’s not right about the group of boys. They’re pushing closer to Cas, and he’s moving back against the railings. Alan increases his speed, walking fast now toward them. He senses that Cas is frightened. He can hear voices, but he can’t make out words. One of the boys has his hand out, gesturing at Cas. Cas is looking from side to side, as if seeking escape. What are the big boys doing? They’re not so big, maybe eleven, twelve years old. There’s four of them.
“Cas!” Alan calls. “You okay?”
The boys turn to look.
“What’s going on?” says Alan, coming up on the far side of the railings.
“Nothing,” says one of the boys.
“It’s okay, Dad,” says Cas.
“Your dad, is he?” says the boy. He’s quite tall, with black short-cropped hair and a narrow face. He wears a navy-blue T-shirt and jeans. Cas gives a nod.
“You can ask him, then, can’t you?”
The other boys grin at this.
“Ask me what?” says Alan.
“Nothing,” says Cas.
“You play, you pay. Pound a go. That’s right, an’t it, boys?”
“Right,” they say, nodding and grinning. “You tell him, Chipper.”
“Of course he doesn’t have to pay,” says Alan angrily. “This is a council park. It’s free.”
“Not any more it’s not,” says Chipper. “It’s a quid a go. So who’s going to pay, you or him?”
The other boys look from their leader to Alan and back, ecstatic at his boldness.
“No one’s paying anything,” says Alan. “Come on, Cas. Let’s go.”
But Chipper and the boys on bikes are blocking Cas’s exit.
“He’s had his go,” says Chipper. “He has to pay.”
Alan jumps the railing and storms forward.
“You get out of the way or else!”
“Or else what, Mister? You going to hit me? You going to assault me?” But he and the others are backing away. “You a paedo? You a dirty old man?”
“Yes, I’ll hit you, you little fuckers!”
He raises a threatening fist. He wants to hit the boy called Chipper. He wants to smash his grinning face in.
They back off, but not very far. They know he won’t hurt them.
“He’s a paedo,” says Chipper. “Watch out, Darren. He’ll have your trousers down.”