December 20
“A ROBIN.” Mum points through the patio windows at the garden, clogged with frozen slush. “There, on the handle of the spade.”
“He looks freshly arrived off a Christmas card,” says Nigel.
Dad munches broccoli. “What’s my spade doing out of the shed?”
“My fault,” I say. “I was filling the coal scuttle. I’ll put it back after. Though, first, I’ll put Alex’s plate to keep warm: Hot gossip and true love shouldn’t mean cold lunches.” I take my older brother’s plate to the new wood-burning oven and put it inside with a pan lid over it. “Hell’s bells, Mum. You could fit a witch in here.”
“If it had wheels,” says Nigel, “it’d be an Austin Metro.”
“Now that,” crap cars are one of Dad’s loves, “was a pile of.”
“What a pity you’ll miss Aunt Helena at New Year,” Mum tells me.
“It is.” I sit back down and resume my lunch. “Give her my love.”
“Right,” says Nigel. “Like you’d rather be stuck in Richmond over New Year than skiing in Switzerland. You’re mega-jammy, Hugo.”
“How many times have I told you?” says Dad. “It’s not—”
“What you know but who you know,” says Nigel. “Nine thousand, six hundred, and eight, including just now.”
“That’s why getting to a brand-name university matters,” says Dad. “To network with future big fish and not future small-fry.”
“I forgot to mention,” remembers Mum. “Julia’s covered herself in glory—again. She’s won a scholarship to study human-rights law, in Montreal.”
I’ve always had a thing for my cousin Julia, and the thought of covering her in anything is Byronically diverting.
“Lucky she takes after your side of the family, Alice,” says Dad, a dour reference to my ex-uncle Michael’s divorce ten years ago, complete with secretary and love child. “What’s Jason studying again?”
“Something psycho-linguisticky,” says Mum, “at Lancaster.”
Dad frowns. “Why do I associate him with forestry?”
“He wanted to be a forester when he was a kid,” I say.
“But now he’s settled on being a speech therapist,” says Mum.
“A st-st-stuttering sp-sp-speech therapist,” says Nigel.
I grind peppercorns over my mashed pumpkin. “Not grown-up and not clever, Nige. A stammer has to be the best possible qualification for a speech therapist. Don’t you think?”
Nigel does a guess-so face in lieu of admitting I’m right.
Mum sips her wine. “This wine is divine, Hugo.”
“Divine’s the word for Montrachet seventy-eight,” says Dad. “You shouldn’t be spending your money on us, Hugo. Really.”
“I budget carefully, Dad. The office-drone work I do at the solicitor’s adds up. And after everything you’ve done for me down the years, I ought to be able to stand you a bottle of decent plonk.”
“But we’d hate to think of you going short,” says Mum.
“Or your studies suffering,” adds Dad, “because of your job.”
“So just let us know,” says Mum, “if money’s tight. Promise?”
“I’ll come cap in hand, if that ever looks likely. Promise.”
“My money’s tight,” says Nigel, hopefully.
“You’re not living out in the big bad world.” Dad frowns at the clock. “Speaking of which, I only hope Alex’s fr?ulein’s parents know she’s calling England. It’s the middle of the day.”
“They’re Germans, Dad,” says Nigel. “Big fat Deutschmarks.”
“You say that, but reunification is going to cost the earth. My clients in Frankfurt are very jumpy about the fallout.”
Mum slices a roasted potato. “What’s Alex told you about Suzanne, Hugo?”
“Not a word.” With my knife and fork I slide trout flesh off its bones. “Sibling rivalry, remember.”
“But you and Alex are the firmest of friends, these days.”
“As long as,” says Nigel, “no one utters those six deadly words, ‘Anyone fancy a game of Monopoly?’ ”
I look hurt. “Is it my fault if I can’t seem to lose?”
Nigel snorts. “Just ’cause no one knows how you cheat—”
“Mum, Dad, you heard that hurtful, baseless aspersion.”
“—isn’t proof you don’t cheat.” Nigel wags his knife. My baby brother lost his virginity this autumn: chess magazines and Atari console out, the KLF and grooming products in. “Anyway, I know three things about Suzanne, using my powers of deduction. If she finds Alex attractive, then (a) she’s blind as a bat, (b) she’s used to dealing with toddlers, and (c) she has no sense of smell.”
Enter the Alex: “Who’s got no sense of smell?”
“Fetch Firstborn’s dinner from the oven,” I order Nigel, “or I’ll rat you out and you’ll deserve it.” Nigel obeys, sheepishly enough.
“So how’s Suzanne?” asks Mum. “All well in Hamburg?”
“Yeah, fine.” Alex sits down. He’s a brother of few words.
“She’s a pharmacology student, you said?” states Mum.
Alex spears a brain of cauliflower from the dish. “Uh-huh.”
“And will we be meeting her at some point, do you think?”
“Hard to say,” says Alex, and I think of my own poor dear Mariangela’s vain hopes.
Nigel puts Alex’s lunch in front of our elder brother.
“What I can’t get over,” says Dad, “is how distances have shrunk. Girlfriends in Germany, ski trips to the Alps, courses in Montreal: This is all normal nowadays. The first time I left England was to go to Rome, when I was about your age, Hugo. None of my mates had ever gone so far. A pal and I got the Dover-Calais ferry, hitched a ride down to Marseille, then across to Turin, then Rome. Took us six days. It felt like the edge of the known world.”
Nigel asks, “Did the wheels come off the mail coach, Dad?”
“Funny. I didn’t go back to Rome until two years ago, when New York decided to hold the European AGM there. Off we all jetted in time for a late lunch, a few supervisions, schmoozing until midnight, then the next day we were back in London in time for—”
We hear the phone ring, back in the living room. “It’s for one of you boys,” Mum declares. “Bound to be.”
Nigel skids down the hall and into the living room; my trout gazes up with a disappointed eye. A few moments later, Nigel’s back. “Hugo, that was a Diana on the phone for you—Diana Spinster, Spankser, Spencer, didn’t quite catch it. She said you could pop over to the palace while her husband’s touring the Commonwealth … Something about Tantric plumbing? She said you’d understand.”
“There’s this operation, little brother. It would help that one-track mind of yours. Vets do it cheaply.”
“Who was on the phone, Nigel?” asks Mum. “Before you forget.”
“Mrs. Purvis at the Riverside Villas. She said to tell Hugo that the brigadier’s feeling better today, and if he’d still like to visit this afternoon, he’d be welcome to call between three and five o’clock.”
“Great. If you’re sure you can spare me, Dad …”
“Go go go. Your mother and I are very proud of how you still go to read to the brigadier, aren’t we, Alice?”
Mum says, “Very.”
“Thanks,” I shrug awkwardly, “but Brigadier Philby was so brilliant when I went to see him for my civics class at Dulwich, and so full of stories. It’s the least I can do.”
“Oh, God.” Nigel groans. “Someone’s locked me up inside an episode of Little House on the Prairie.”
“Then let me offer you a way out,” says Dad. “If Hugo’s visiting the brigadier, you can help me collect the tree.”
Nigel looks aghast. “But Jasper Farley and I are going to Tottenham Court Road this afternoon!”
“What for?” Alex loads his fork. “All you do is slobber over hi-fi gear and synthesizers you can’t afford.”
We hear a small crash out on the patio. From the corner of my eye I see a flash of black. A toppled flower pot skitters across the patio, the spade tips over, and the black flash turns into a cat with a robin in its mouth. The bird’s wings are flapping. “Oh.” Mum recoils. “That’s horrible. Can’t we do something? The cat looks so pleased with itself.”
“It’s called survival of the fittest,” says Alex.
“Why don’t I lower the blinds?” asks Nigel.
“Better let nature take its course, darling,” says Dad.
I get up and go out through the back door. The cold air shocks my skin as I go, “Shoo, shoo!” to the cat. The feline hunter leaps onto the garden shed. It watches me. Its tail sashays. The mangled bird is twitching in the black cat’s mouth.
I hear the boomy scrape of an airplane.
A twig snaps. I am intensely alive.
“ACCORDING TO MY husband,” Nurse Purvis steams along moppable carpet to the library of Riverside Villas, “the youth of today are either scroungers-on-benefits, queers, or I’m-all-right-Jacks.” The smell of pine-scented disinfectant stings my nostrils. “But as long as Great Britain breeds fine young men of your cut, Hugo, I for one say we shan’t be collapsing into barbarism any time soon, mmm?”
“Please, Nurse Purvis, my head won’t fit through the library door.” We turn the corner and find a resident clinging to the handrail. She’s frowning at the wintry garden, as if she’s left something out there. A string of drool connects her lower lip to her spearmint-green cardigan.
“Standards, Mrs. Bolitho,” says the nurse, hipping out a tissue from her sleeve. “What do we watch? Our standards, mmm?” She scoops up the saliva stalactite and deposits the tissue in the bin. “You’ll remember Hugo, Mrs. Bolitho—the brigadier’s young friend.”
Mrs. Bolitho turns her head; I think of my trout at lunch.
“Great to see you again, Mrs. Bolitho,” I say cheerfully.
“Say hello to Hugo, Mrs. Bolitho. Hugo’s a guest.”
She looks from me to Nurse Purvis and whimpers.
“What’s that? Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is on the television, in the lounge. The flying car. Why don’t we go and join them, mmm?”
A fox’s head watches us from the wall with a faint smile.
“Stay here,” Nurse Purvis tells Mrs. Bolitho, “while I take Hugo to the library. Then we’ll go to the residents’ room together.”
I wish Mrs. Bolitho a Merry Christmas but the chances are low.
“She has four sons,” Nurse Purvis leads me on, “all with a London post code, but they never visit. You’d think old age was a criminal offense, not a destination we’re all heading to.”
I consider airing my theory that our culture’s coping strategy towards death is to bury it under consumerism and Sansara, that the Riverside Villas of the world are screens that enable this self-deception, and that the elderly are guilty: guilty of proving to us that our willful myopia about death is exactly that.
But, no, let’s not complicate Nurse Purvis’s opinion of me. We reach the library where my guide continues sotto voce: “I know you won’t be put out, Hugo, if the brigadier doesn’t recognize you.”
“Not at all. Does he still suffer from the postage stamp … delusion?”
“It rears its head from time to time, yes. Oh, here’s Mariangela—Mariangela!”
Mariangela approaches with a stack of neatly folded bed linen. “Yugo! Nurse Purvis, she told me you visit today. How is Norwitch?”
“Hugo is at Cambridge University, Mariangela.” Nurse Purvis shivers. “Cambridge. Not Norwich. Quite different.”
“Pardon, Yugo.” Mariangela’s puckish Brazilian eyes arouse not only my hopes. “My geography of England, still a bit rubbish.”
“Mariangela, perhaps you’d bring some coffee to the library for Hugo and the brigadier. I ought to be getting back to Mrs. Bolitho.”
“Of course. It’s been wonderful catching up, Nurse Purvis.”
“Be sure to say goodbye before you leave.” Off she marches.
I ask Mariangela, “What’s she actually like to work for?”
“We are accustomed to dictators in my continent.”
“Does she sleep at night or plug herself into the mains?”
“Is not a bad boss, if you agree with her always. At the least, she is dependable. At the least, she says what she is thinking, honestly.”
I’d describe Mariangela as pouty but not vitriolic. “Look, Angel, we both needed some space.”
“Eight weeks, Yugo. Two letters, two calls, two messages on my answer machine. I need contact, not space.” Okay, so she’s between pouty and wronged woman. “You not an expert on what I need.”
Tell her it’s over, Hugo the Wise advises, but Hugo the Horny loves a uniform. “I’m not an expert on you, Mariangela. Or any other woman. Or myself, even. I had two or three girlfriends before you—but … you’re different. By the end of last summer, the inside of my eyelids was a TV station showing Mariangela Pinto-Pereira, all day, all night. It freaked me out. The only way I could handle it was space. So often, I nearly phoned … but … but … I was an inexperienced boy, Angel, not a malicious one.” I open the library door. “Thanks for some great memories, I’m sorry my insensitivity hurt you. Really.”
Her foot’s in the door. Pouty and sultry. “Nurse Purvis ask I bring you and the brigadier coffee. Is still dark, with one sugar?”
“Yes, please. But no Amazonian voodoo stuff that shrivels up testicles, if that’s okay.”
“Sharp knife is better than voodoo.” She scowls. “Milk or Coffee-mate in your coffee, like you drink it at Came-bridge University?”
“White coffee brings me out in a nasty rash.”
“So if—if—I find you real Brazilian coffee, you drink?”
“Mariangela. Once you’ve tasted the real thing, everything else is a cheap imitation.”