‘If you’d like,’ my mother says as she sets foot on the sticky floorboards, ‘I’m sure Claude will make you a sandwich.’
This innocent offer conceals many barbs: it’s inappropriate to the occasion; Claude has never made a sandwich in his life; there’s no bread in the house; nothing to set between two slabs but the dust of salted nuts. And who could safely eat a sandwich from such a kitchen? Pointedly, she doesn’t propose making it herself; pointedly, she casts Elodie and Claude together, distinct from herself. It’s an accusation, a rejection, a cold withdrawal bundled into a hospitable gesture. Even as I disapprove, I’m impressed. Such refinements can’t be learned from podcasts.
Trudy’s hostility has a beneficial effect on Elodie’s syntax. ‘I couldn’t eat a thing, thank you.’
‘You could drink a thing,’ says Claude.
‘I could.’
There follows the familiar suite of sounds – the fridge door, a careless chink of corkscrew against bottle, the cork’s sonorous withdrawal, last night’s glasses sluiced under the tap. Pouilly. Just across the river from Sancerre. Why not? It’s almost seven thirty. The little grapes with their misty grey bloom should suit us well on another hot and airless London evening. But I want more. It seems to me that Trudy and I have not eaten in a week. Stirred by Claude’s phone order, I crave as accompaniment an overlooked, old-fashioned dish, harengs pommes à l’huile. Slippery smoked herring, waxy new potatoes, the first pressing of the finest olives, onion, chopped parsley – I pine for such an entrée. How elegantly a Pouilly-Fumé would set it off. But how to persuade my mother? I could as easily slit my uncle’s throat. The graceful country of my third choice has never seemed so far away.
All of us are at the table now. Claude pours, glasses are raised in sombre tribute to the dead.
Into the silence, Elodie says in an awed whisper, ‘But suicide. It just seems so … so unlike him.’
‘Oh well,’ says Trudy, and lets that hang. She’s seen an opportunity. ‘How long have you known him?’
‘Two years. When he taught—’
‘Then you wouldn’t know about the depressions.’
My mother’s quiet voice pushes against my heart. What solace for her, to have faith in a coherent tale of mental illness and suicide.
‘My brother wasn’t exactly one for the primrose path.’
Claude, I begin to understand, is not a liar of the first rank.
‘I didn’t know,’ Elodie says in a small voice. ‘He was always so generous. Especially to us, you know, younger generation who—’
‘A whole other side.’ Trudy sets this down firmly. ‘I’m glad his students never saw it.’
‘Even as a child,’ says Claude. ‘He once took a hammer to our—’
‘This isn’t the time for that story.’ Trudy has made it more interesting by cutting it short.
‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘We loved him anyway.’
I feel my mother’s hand go up to her face to cover it or brush away a tear. ‘But he’d never get treatment. He couldn’t accept that he was ill.’
There’s protest, or complaint, in Elodie’s voice that my mother and uncle won’t like. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. He was on his way to Luton, to pay the printer. In cash. He was so happy to be settling a debt. And he was reading tonight. King’s College Poetry Society. Three of us were like, you know, the supporting band.’
‘He loved his poems,’ Claude says.
Elodie’s tone rises with her anguish. ‘Why would he pull over and …? Just like that. When he’d finished his book. And been shortlisted for the Auden Prize.’
‘Depression’s a brute.’ Claude surprises me with this insight. ‘All the good things in life vanish from your—’
My mother cuts in. Her voice is hard. She’s had enough. ‘I know you’re younger than me. But do I really have to spell it out for you? Company in debt. Personally in debt. Unhappy with his work. Child on the way he didn’t want. Wife fucking his brother. Chronic skin complaint. And depression. Is that clear? You think it isn’t bad enough without your theatrics, without your poetry readings and prizes and telling me it doesn’t make sense? You got into his bed. Count yourself lucky.’
Trudy in turn is cut off. By a shriek and the smack of a chair tipping backwards to the floor.
I note at this point that my father has receded. Like a particle in physics, he escapes definition in his flight from us; the assertive, successful poet-teacher-publisher, calmly intent on repossessing his house, his father’s house; or the hapless, put-upon cuckold, the unworldly fool cramped by debt and misery and lack of talent. The more we hear of one, the less we believe of the other.
Elodie’s first uttered sound is both a word and a sob. ‘Never!’
A silence, through which I sense Claude, then my mother, reaching for their drinks.
‘I didn’t know what he was going to say last night. All untrue! He wanted you back. He was trying to make you jealous. He was never going to throw you out.’
Her voice dips as she bends to right the chair. ‘That’s why I’m here. To tell you, and you better get this right. Nothing! Nothing happened between us. John Cairncross was my editor and friend and teacher. He helped me become a writer. Is that clear?’
I’m heartlessly suspicious, but they believe her. That she was not my father’s lover should be a deliverance for them, but I think it raises other possibilities. An inconvenient woman bearing witness to all the reasons my father had to live. How unfortunate.
‘Sit down,’ Trudy says quietly. ‘I believe you. No more shouting please.’
Claude refills the glasses. The Pouilly-Fumé seems to me too thin, too piercing. Too young, perhaps, not right for the occasion. Summer-evening heat aside, a muscular Pomerol might suit us better when strong emotions are on display. If only there was a cellar, if I could go down there now, into the dusty gloom to pull a bottle off the racks. Stand quietly with it a moment, squint at its label, nod wisely to myself as I bring it up. Adult life, a faraway oasis. Not even a mirage.
I imagine my mother’s bare arms folded on the table, eyes steady and clear. No one could guess at her torment. John loved only her. His invocation of Dubrovnik was sincere, his declaration of hatred, his dreams of strangling her, his love for Elodie – all hopeful lies. But she mustn’t go down, she must be staunch. She’s putting herself in a mode, a mood, of serious probing, seemingly not unfriendly.
‘You identified the body.’
Elodie is also calmer. ‘They tried to get hold of you. No reply. They had his phone, they saw his calls to me. About the reading tonight – nothing else. I asked my fiancé to go with me, I was so scared.’
‘How did he look?’
‘She means John,’ Claude says.
‘I was surprised. He looked peaceful. Except …’ She draws a sharp, inward sigh. ‘Except his mouth. It was so long, so wide, stretched almost ear to ear, like an insane smile. It was closed though. I was glad about that.’
Around me, in the walls and through the crimson chambers that lie beyond them, I feel my mother tremble. One more physical detail like this will undo her.
FIFTEEN