The Family Upstairs(19)
Neither had we been to Germany. We usually went for a week or two to stay with my grandmother in her big airy house in the Black Forest with its dank above-ground swimming pool and silken pine needles underfoot. But this summer we could not afford it, apparently, and if we couldn’t afford to fly to Germany then how on earth, I wondered, were we going to be able to afford school fees?
By the beginning of September my parents were making applications to local state schools and putting our names on to waiting lists. They never specifically said that we had financial problems, but it was obvious that we did. I had a stomach ache for days, worrying about being bullied at a rough comprehensive.
Oh, such petty, tiny concerns. Such trifling worries. I look back at eleven-year-old me: a slightly odd boy of average height, skinny build, my mother’s blue eyes, my father’s chestnut hair, knees like potatoes wedged on to sticks, a disapproving tightness to my narrow lips, a slightly haughty demeanour, a spoiled boy convinced that the chapters of his life had already been neatly written out and would follow accordingly; I look back at him and I want to slap his stupid, supercilious, starry-eyed little face.
Justin was crouched in the garden fingering the plants he’d been growing out there.
‘Apothecarial herbs; the planting of, growing of and use of,’ he explained to me in his almost comatose drawl. ‘The big pharmaceutical companies are out to corrupt the planet. In twenty years’ time we’ll be a nation of prescription drug addicts and the NHS will be on its knees trying to pay for a sick nation’s candy. I want to turn back the clock and use what the soil provides to treat everyday ailments. You don’t need eight different types of chemical to cure a headache. Your mother says she wants to stop using pills and start using my tinctures.’
I gazed at him. We were a family of pill takers. Pills for hay fever, pills for colds, pills for tummy aches and headaches and growing pains and hangovers. My mum even had some pills for what she called her ‘sad feelings’. My dad had pills for his heart and pills to stop his hair falling out. Pills everywhere. And now we were, apparently, to grow herbs and make our own medicine. It beggared belief.
My father had had a small stroke during the summer holidays. It left him with a limp and a slight slur and no longer himself in some kind of barely definable way. To see him diminished in this way made me feel strangely unprotected, as though there was now a small but significant gap in the family’s defences.
His physician, a dry-as-they-come man of indeterminate age called Dr Broughton who lived and ran his practice in a six-storey house around the corner, came to visit after my father got back from an overnight stay in hospital. He and my father smoked cigars in the garden and talked about his prognosis. ‘I’d say, Henry, that what you need are the services of a really good rehabilitation physiotherapist. Unfortunately, all the rehabilitation physiotherapists I know are bloody awful.’
They laughed and my father said, ‘I’m not sure, any more, I’m not sure about anything. But I’d happily try it. Try anything really, just to get myself back to myself.’
Birdie was tending Justin’s herb garden. It was hot and she was wearing a muslin top through which her nipples were plainly visible. She took off a floppy canvas hat and stood in front of my father and his doctor.
‘I know someone,’ she said, her hands on her hips. ‘I know someone amazing. He’s a miracle worker. He uses energy. He can move chi around people’s bodies. He’s cured people I know of bad backs. Of migraines. I’ll get him to come and visit.’
I heard my father begin to protest. But Birdie just said, ‘No. Honestly, Henry. It’s the least I can do. The very least. I’ll call him right now. His name’s David. David Thomsen.’
I was in the kitchen with my mother watching her make cheese scones when the doorbell chimed that morning. My mother wiped her hands on her apron, nervously adjusted the ends of her permed and scrunch-dried bob and said, ‘Ah, that must be the Thomsens.’
‘Who’, I asked, not remembering Birdie’s recommendation of the week before, ‘are the Thomsens?’
‘Friends,’ she said brightly. ‘Of Birdie and Justin. The husband is a physiotherapist. He’s going to work with your father, try and get him back into shape. And the mother is a trained teacher. She’s going to home school you both, just for a short while. Isn’t that good?’
I had no chance to ask my mother to expand on this rapidly introduced and rather shocking development before she’d pulled open the door.
With my jaw slightly ajar, I watched them troop in.
First, a girl, around nine or ten. Black hair cut into a bob, cut-off dungarees, scratched-up knees, a blob of chocolate swept across her cheek, a faint air of pent-up energy. Her name, apparently, was Clemency.
And then a boy, my age, maybe older, blond, tall, dark feathered lashes that swept the edges of steel-cut cheekbones, hands in the pockets of smart blue shorts, a fringe flicked out of his eyes effortlessly and with more than a little attitude. His name was Phineas. Phin, we were told, for short.
Their mother followed next. Big-boned, pale, flat-chested, with long blond hair and a slightly nervous demeanour. This, I was to discover, was Sally Thomsen.
And behind them all, tall, broad-shouldered, slim, tanned, with short black hair, intense blue eyes and a full mouth, was the father. David Thomsen. He gripped my hand hard inside his and cupped it with the other. ‘Good to meet you, young man,’ he said in a low, smooth voice.