The Friendly Ones Page 31

  Blossom and Stephen sold the big house in the country in 2004. There was no point in it any longer. The children’s ponies went as well. Blossom had thought that the house and the estate would be theirs for ever, that it would pass down the generations through Tresco and Tresco’s children and Tresco’s grandchildren. But Tresco was living with his girlfriend in an awful semi-detached house in Hereford made out of bright yellow brick and running a party business. The girlfriend was a nice, capable girl, with short hair and big hands. They were never going to take over the running of the estate. In the end she and Stephen had had it for twenty years, bought it for a song – God, it had been a wreck – and then in the end it was just a house. She didn’t care even about giving up the new carp pond. Despite all fears, it had been easy to find someone to buy it. Someone in the City who was making a packet, a partner in a derivatives business with three children. She might have been looking in the mirror twenty years ago. Blossom wondered whether this derivatives partner was going to be had up for criminal practices and barred from ever holding a job in the City again. Stephen kept out of the way.

  He had really been very lucky. He had escaped the criminal trial and the custodial sentence that had fallen over some of the others. He had been badly censured, and of course it was terrible to be told that you could never work in the City again. But he was of an age when lots of men retired. She could see the shame, but not the detail of what Stephen had done. She got Josh to sit down and talk the case through, with plenty of ‘Oh, wait,’ and ‘I think the problem with that must have been’. Josh had finished his law degree and his solicitor’s training and his articled clerkship with Bowers Jenkins in the City and was now set on a professional course. He was almost enthusiastic about it, like a half-trained puppy, only remembering halfway through that it was his uncle he was talking about. He assembled his face and tried to look on the bright side. She was grateful for Josh. He had tried to tell her what Stephen never would.

  They left most of the contents of the house in the house. She heard that the derivatives bloke was opening the place up to the public on Sundays in the summer. Most of what was on show had been built or bought by Blossom and abandoned where it could not be moved. She supposed that was what was meant by ‘heritage’. They had moved to London. Now that there were only Stephen and Blossom and Trevor, and Thomas home from Cardiff in the university holidays, there was no need to have anything but an elegant stucco house in a square in Clapham. You got your money’s worth there, and it had a coach house to the side where Tamara could live if she ever came home. There was forty feet of garden. The best pictures, such as the Guercino, came with them and probably about a quarter or even less of what Blossom thought of as the stuff – half a dozen Turkey carpets, two small sideboards, some armchairs and beds, small tables. Some things just had to be bought again, like the dining table and chairs. She didn’t suppose they were ever going to seat twenty round a rosewood table ever again. How they would fill their days defeated her.

  Stephen, after a long period of morose silence, took to going out in the mornings. Books began appearing on the bedside table with an emphatic label on the cover, and she discovered that her husband had joined the London Library. She supposed on other days he was going off for a tramp across the Common or perhaps off to Richmond Park at the end of the District Line from Sloane Square. She deduced his day from the state of his boots, whether they were dusty or thick with mud and left at the kitchen door.

  They were strange, the books he was reading. At first they were large historical works, randomly selected with nothing to connect them, lives of Napoleon, histories of the Hundred Years’ War, disquisitions on the end of the Empire. But then she was surprised to see a study of Eastern mysticism, and then another, and another. Soon Stephen was reading nothing but books about Buddhism – first about what the religion meant, then about the Buddha, his life. Books started appearing on the bedside table that were not from the London Library, that could not, she swore, be bought in any ordinary bookshop, covers bearing vividly coloured mandalas and promises of self-improvement in forty steps, inside a self-assembled computer typeface garishly shouting. Once she found a black notebook. On the first page, in Stephen’s neat, decisive, practical handwriting, was written The Book of Failure and on the next, I consider myself a failure. Failure is something I must learn to possess, to breathe in like air. Failure is my sacred (crossed out) gift to myself. ‘Does Uncle Stephen seem different to you?’ she asked Josh, when he visited one Sunday for lunch. (If Stephen was devoting his time to the path of enlightenment, she was improving her cooking. There seemed no point in sticking to game in SW4.) Josh thought there was something different about him. She decided to leave the revelation of hippie nirvana to Stephen. She supposed that the regular income from letting the Kensington flat and handling the investment from the capital in a low-risk sort of way (Josh had checked, it was all perfectly fine) would calm him; the Buddha would help. ‘Whatever else,’ she said, over the phone to Tamara in Australia, ‘I’m definitely not going on any meditative retreats. I can’t squat any more. I can’t even cross my legs when I sit on the ground.’

  ‘My housemate went to one in Thailand,’ Tamara said, across the thousands of miles. ‘She said they slept on straw mats and had wooden pillows and got up at four to meditate. She said it was awesome.’

  ‘Well, your father’s not …’ Blossom began, but, to be honest, she didn’t even know any more. She supposed it was a good thing that her husband, after nearly thirty years, was still surprising her.

  There was really no reason for his getting the bus that morning. The company had supplied drivers, or said they had, to get Hugh to the rehearsal rooms in the morning. He took them for a few days. But then he told them, with a sad and embarrassed smile, that he would actually rather not. It was a BBC production of Little Dorrit, and he was the star. Strangely, what he wanted in the morning was not comfort and the driver’s flattering conversation. He wanted a brisk walk and then the silent crowds of public transport. He worked much better like that, he told Carla. He was never recognized. He could stand there with a baseball cap on, watching the way that a young man stood when he was consumed with happiness, stood in the year 2005, just as he had stood in the year 1855. That morning he had shouted that he was a bit late, he’d see her this evening, and the front door was slammed. He usually said he loved her: had he specifically said it that morning? It was a glorious day. In her mind’s eye Carla for ever afterwards saw her beautiful tiny husband, walking along with his face under a baseball cap into the bright morning. His face: those queer triangular eyes, neither sad nor happy, like a puffin’s. She saw him, getting on a bus at King’s Cross that was inexplicably crowded, looking about him at the interesting London faces.

  When Josh heard the news he was sitting at his desk in the City. He read it on a celebrity update page that he was mildly addicted to; he googled his uncle’s name, and found, all over the internet, that the English actor Hugh Spinster was among the dead. For some reason he knew straight away that he was the first of them to know. He had a client meeting coming up in twenty minutes with one of the partners – the papers were in a block in front of him ready to go. He didn’t think even the solicitors’ firm he worked for would begrudge him this. He phoned Tresco first, who would be at home – party planners weren’t like solicitors with their nine-to-five. (‘Eight-to-eight,’ Josh sadly responded.) The baby and the two little ones were screaming in the background. ‘Oh, Christ,’ he said. ‘Does Mummy know?’

  Thomas was showing a flat in a new development in Kennington – he kept up the business-like tones. In the end Josh said, ‘I’ll speak to Aunt Blossom. I don’t know if she’d have heard yet. I’ve only seen it online.’

  ‘If it’s not in the paper yet she won’t know about it,’ Thomas said. ‘Got to go. Have you spoken to your dad?’ But Josh had not.

  ‘Have you heard?’ Blossom said. Her voice was steady. ‘Josh just phoned. He’s seen it reported on the in
ternet.’

  ‘It was on the radio just now,’ Lavinia said. ‘I’ve had it on. I’m at work. I don’t know why – I just felt immediately that Hugh – Oh, God, Blossom – like a crack in the universe opening up, it felt like.’

  ‘Were they nice about him?’ Blossom said.

  ‘A big hole suddenly being in the place where Hugh always was. Were they nice to him? I don’t think they’d quite got as far as –’ Lavinia said, her words spilling over each other.

  ‘He didn’t suffer,’ Blossom said. ‘I’m sure he didn’t suffer.’

  ‘He wanted to live in a big square house in the country. With a path down the middle of two lawns and a cherry tree. I could have seen him in it and now he’ll never be old.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Blossom said, not trying to make sense of this.

  ‘I haven’t seen him for years,’ Lavinia said. ‘Oh, Blossom. I went round there, five years ago – it was before Russell was born. I was going to tell him about it and then I saw there was no point. So I went upstairs and I had a bath in his house and then I came downstairs clean and I went.’

  ‘Just get a taxi home. There’ll be time for everything,’ Blossom said.

  When Sharif heard, he reached out and took his wife’s arm, laying his hand on her forearm in an awkward and unfamiliar gesture. He had been attempting to take her hand, just there in the sitting room where the television news was spooling on. But her arm was there and he had to grasp her, somehow. She felt the strangeness of the gesture and looked round at him. In her face was concern but she had not at first registered the closeness of the news. Only when she saw what must be his wide eyes did she understand. She said the name again, repeating what the television had said.

  ‘Hugh Spinster,’ she said.

  ‘I saw him come out of the house this afternoon,’ Sharif said. ‘I saw him come out and sit down on the chair. I wondered if he was all right. He was just sitting there without moving. I must go over.’

  ‘What is there that you can say?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sharif said. He patted her arm; he tried again and now squeezed her hand. He got up. ‘Whatever there is, it must be said. He can’t be alone.’

  ‘This will kill him,’ Nazia said. ‘Kill him. He’s nearly ninety.’

  ‘He’s in good health. We’ll see him through this.’

  ‘Those bombers – those men – the murderers – they were …’

  ‘Say it,’ Sharif said, seeing the historical necessity, it might have been. ‘Just once and then never again.’

  ‘They were Pakistanis,’ Nazia said.

  ‘I know,’ Sharif said.

  ‘They were –’

  ‘That’s enough now, Nazia,’ Sharif said. ‘That’s enough historical wrongs.’

  Sharif left the house. Sometimes when he went round to Hilary’s he stepped nimbly over the little fence between their front gardens. Today he walked to the end of his drive, and back the full length of Hilary’s. There was no response to the doorbell, but Hilary was growing a little deaf, and often did not hear it if he was in the garden. He shyly pushed open the wooden gate to the side of the house. It felt like a liberty. Deep down he had known the possibility that Hilary would not want to see his brown face. An obligation might lie on Sharif to renounce any connection with the murderers. And they were Pakistanis. They were the people who had murdered Rafiq, the people who had murdered Professor Anisul. That was what Sharif knew and Nazia knew and what Hilary would never know.

  Hilary was sitting in one of the wooden chairs on the patio, his hair a white shock, like the splash of a stone thrown into a pond. Sharif coughed gently, and Hilary turned. He looked alert, interested, a little irritated, but that was what he always looked like.

  ‘That was a very discreet noise,’ Hilary said. ‘How are you, young man?’

  ‘I thought I would pop over,’ Sharif said.

  ‘You’re always very welcome,’ Hilary said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea or something? I’ve just had one.’

  ‘No, nothing,’ Sharif said.

  Hilary motioned at the chair by him, quite grandly.

  ‘I wondered if you wanted to come over and spend the day with us,’ Sharif said. ‘With Nazia mostly – I’ve got to go to the faculty this afternoon.’

  ‘That’s awfully kind of you,’ Hilary said. ‘Very kind.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Hilary said. ‘I was just thinking – he was the one I saw most often of all of them. I don’t know what Leo would look like now. But I saw Hugh all the time.’

  ‘When was …’ Sharif said, puzzled, and then realized what Hilary meant. He was delving into his own pain, he could see that.

  ‘On the telly,’ Hilary said. ‘The last time was last month. He had that part in Offices and Chambers. Did you see it? Jolly good. I don’t suppose he looks like that in reality – they’d aged him up somehow, with latex and a wig of some sort. He looked older than me. And then one day I got to the end of the episode and turned over and there he was on ITV, looking about twenty-five, selling Sainsbury or something. No escaping him, I said to myself. With a wry chuckle, you understand, a wry chuckle. Do you think they’ll take it off now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sharif said helplessly.

  ‘His poor wife – his widow, I mean. Just turning on the telly to escape a little bit and then suddenly, without warning, ta-da, there he is, holding up a tin of beans in a quizzical manner. Holding it up with his right arm. That arm must be lying in bits halfway across Tavistock Square, a hundred yards from his head.’

  ‘You mustn’t think too much about it,’ Sharif said.

  ‘I’ve made a terrible mess of things, really,’ Hilary said, but quite calmly. ‘I hadn’t seen Hugh since before Celia died. I haven’t seen Lavinia for two years and Blossom longer than that. They’re always very sorry about not being able to make it up. You’re very lucky with the boys and Aisha. I wish I knew how it was done.’

  ‘It’s just luck,’ Sharif said. ‘There’s no way of knowing.’

  ‘But things change, don’t they?’ Hilary said. ‘Sometimes people decide they don’t want to kill everyone because they don’t have the same religion.’

  ‘That must be true,’ Sharif said. ‘And sometimes the religion changes. My grandfather –’

  Sharif stopped. There was a noise just behind him, the noise of a tapping on glass, quite urgent. Someone was knocking on the glass door of the patio from inside. Sharif found himself thinking, idiotically, that it must be Hilary’s wife, as if all these years he had kept a wife hidden inside, away from Sharif, and now she was trying to attract his attention. Sharif turned and at first saw nothing in the gloom of the room. A movement at the bottom of the glass caught his eye. It was that animal Hilary kept that he called Gertrude. Its head was butting the glass window. It looked like a stone when it did not move, greenish-grey and encrusted with age. It did not know what glass was. It hit its head against the barrier, retreated, paused, forgot, hit it again with its stony head, and again. Hilary could see as well as Sharif could, but he did nothing.

  ‘What about your grandfather?’ Hilary said.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ Sharif said. He had been about to start telling a story about himself, and about his family. He remembered just in time what Nazia had said, that he was not to start talking about himself in the usual way he had.

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘It’s silly, in fact,’ Sharif said. ‘My grandfather, he married polygamously. He had two wives. I don’t really know which one was my father’s mother, he just called them both mother. Big-mother, small-mother, he used to say. That’s gone now.’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter,’ Hilary said. ‘Things change, and at the end there is the son of your eighty-eight-year-old neighbour, being scraped from the tarmac by patient workers with knives and dustpans.’

  ‘My grandfather had two wives; but my father and I would never think of that. Things change and things sometimes
get better. Come over and sit with Nazia, just today,’ Sharif said.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Hilary said. ‘Not very good company for anyone.’

  ‘We don’t care about that,’ Sharif said.

  Even a year later, Lavinia could not prevent herself from reading everything she could about what was now called 7/7. She found herself moving from the coverage of her brother, who was, in death, often considered much more famous than he ever had been in life, to the ordinary folk who had been in the tube trains or the bus. She knew about the things those ordinary people had done on behalf of the injured and the dead; she had heard their voices. Once she went to a meeting of survivors and the bereaved, with Jeremy. It was not a success. At one point a survivor started telling his story – he was a man in a wheelchair, both legs amputated above the knee – and she could hear in his voice the tension and restraint. His eyes flickered round the room. He had survived; there were those whose wives, children, brothers had not. A curious etiquette had evolved here, that the survivors would not describe their success in full if the bereaved victims were in the room. Jeremy held her hand tightly. He was always tender, but he was tender only to her and, in a formal, decent way, towards Hugh.