Beneath the Skin(13)
Ted Edwards asked for a quiet word first thing. ‘I have something to say to you, Helen. Perhaps a spot of lunch at the usual?’ he said, lifting his black eyebrows which no longer matched his hair and adjusting his glasses. ‘When all will be revealed!’
The reveal was unexpected but thrilling. Ted had clearly been pleased as he patted her hand.
It’s only a secondment, nothing particularly special, she now chides herself. Another professor walking the other way gives her a sidelong look beneath his varifocals and she wonders whether she has spoken the thought out loud. But it’s special to me, she continues with a shrug, an opportunity to teach and to research in America!
She looks at herself in the lavatory mirror as she washes her hands. She no longer notices the streaks of grey in her hair or the odd sprouting growth on her chin. She tried to pluck them at one time, those hairs, but they only grew back twofold, wasting time in which she could be doing something useful, like marking or reading, or chatting with Charlie.
‘Oh, Charlie!’ she says to the mirror. Her reflection looks startled, and a little downcast, as it wonders how on earth to break the news to him.
David puts his head around Charlie’s office door to wish him goodnight, but to his surprise the room is dark, cold and empty. He strolls in and swings round in Charlie’s newly upholstered chair before opening the leather-bound diary to see where he is. It’s an office rule that work diaries always stay on the premises on top of the fee earner’s desk. David regularly ‘forgets’ this rule, preferring to risk censure than be pinned down. He studies Charlie’s week: his ‘school tie’ handwriting shows he’s been busy, but the page for this afternoon is blank, which means he’s gone home early, which is unlike him, or that he’s doing something he doesn’t want the rest of the office to know about.
David gives a low whistle. The doctor. God, Charlie. He hopes he’s all right. Charlie has always looked older than his years, even at school, using his bumbling act to hide the sharp intellect behind. But he isn’t old really; David doesn’t want him to be.
He sits back and gazes at the signed painting of a Lancaster bomber that Charlie has recently acquired as he tries to steady his breath. ‘Lancaster Under Attack’, the painting’s called, and he knows how it feels. Over the last few days his heart has started to race, suddenly, without warning, like the hammer of a machine gun. Low blood pressure, high blood pressure, lack of fitness, whatever. It doesn’t last long, so it really doesn’t matter. The important thing is for him to focus. Not on the problem (which he’s finally accepted exists), nor the fucking, fucking consequences (which make him want to vomit), but on the plan. And today he has focused. He’s come up with a plan. At least a temporary one, which he now needs to put into action. Velle est posse! he remembers from school. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
It’s time to go home, but David isn’t ready to do that. He wants to avoid his wife and her watchful eyes a little longer. It’s as though Antonia knows. Her brown eyes are huge when she looks at him: perceptive, worried, knowing. ‘Robbing Peter to pay Paul?’ they say. ‘Don’t do it, David.’
Eyes like saucers, he thinks, to deflect his churning thoughts. The Tinderbox story. I have a wife with eyes like saucers. Who would have thought?
He picks up a gilt-framed photograph from the desk and smiles. It’s of three generations of Proctors: Charlie, his father and his son Rupert, with only a nose in common. He remembers Charlie’s father well. Harold, Harry to his friends, so much like Charlie, fair and genial, old fashioned to a fault. He thinks fondly of Charlie’s mother, Valerie, a horsey woman both in hobby and looks who is still going strong. Always such a warm and welcoming family, eager to draw him into the fold of their love when his parents were absent.
‘What would I have done without you, eh?’ he says to the photograph.
A memory strikes him, of being clutched to Valerie’s huge bosom. She was wearing a coat with a real fur collar and it made him sneeze. He’d been holding back the tears and the sneeze was such a relief.
‘I was only a boy,’ David mutters. The sneeze allowed him to cry.
He wonders when he last looked at a photograph of his own parents. Indeed, does he still have any? Has he ever shown one to Antonia? He doubts it; she’s never asked. Their meeting at a night club and their simple yet heady marriage only months later at the registry office was like a natural start. They’ve never looked back to a life before then. It seems to suit them both.
And yet he’d adored his parents. He can still vividly recall the frenzied beating he’d given Smith-Bates at boarding school when he’d taunted that his father shagged his mother from behind. David called him a bloody great liar, told him to shut his ugly face. His father was stern but kind. He was certain his dad would never do such a repugnant thing to his flame-haired flawless mother, but Smith-Bates refused to back down. So David struck out, fuelled by longing and need for his parents, who were in Singapore at that time. When he was forcefully peeled away from Smith-Bates, the master asked him to explain why he’d done it, but he couldn’t bear to repeat the profanity and so instead faced the consequences. Even as the lash was brought down on his small palms he was resolute. His pride at defending his mother’s honour had been worth it.
‘Live with honour. Die with pride,’ he remembers, looking at his grown-up palms and desperately wishing the adult could match those words.