The Only Story(25)

I keep saying that I was nineteen. But sometimes, in what I’ve told you so far, I was twenty or twenty-one. These events happened over a period of two years and more, usually during my student vacations. In term time, Susan would often come and visit me in Sussex, or I would go up and stay at the Macleods’. Six minutes’ drive from my parents, yet I never told them I was there. I would get off the train at a previous station, and Susan would pick me up in the Austin. I slept on the sofa bed, and Mr Macleod seemed to tolerate my presence. I never went into the Village, though I did occasionally think of burning down the tennis club, just for old times’ sake.

Susan got to know my circle of friends at Sussex – Eric, Ian, Barney and Sam – and from time to time one or more of them would also stay at the Macleods’. Perhaps they were another kind of cover story – at this distance, I can’t remember. They all considered my relationship with Susan an excellent thing. We were on one another’s side when it came to relationships – any relationship, really. They also liked the freewheelingness of Susan’s household. She used to cook big meals, and they liked that too. We always seemed to be hungry back then; also, pathetically incapable of making a meal for ourselves.

One Friday – well, it was probably a Friday – Mr Macleod was chomping on his spring onions, I was playing with my knife and fork and Susan was bringing in the food, when he asked, with more than the usual edge of sarcasm,

‘And how many fancy boys are you providing yourself with this weekend, if I may make so bold as to ask?’

‘Let me see,’ Susan replied, holding the stew dish in front of her as she appeared to ponder, ‘I think it’s just Ian and Eric this weekend. And Paul of course. Unless the others turn up as well.’

I thought this amazingly cool of her. And then we ate dinner normally.

But in the car the next day, I asked her, ‘Does he always call me that? Us that?’

‘Yes. You’re my fancy boy.’

‘I’m not that fancy. I’m a bit penny plain at times, I think.’

But the word hurt. Hurt me for her, you understand. For myself, I didn’t care. No, really: perhaps I was even pleased. To be noticed – even to be insulted – was better than to be ignored. And a young man needed a reputation, after all.

I tried to assemble what I knew about Macleod. I could no longer think of him as Mr E.P. than I could as Old Adam or the Head of the Table. He was called Gordon, though Susan only used that name when speaking of the distant past. He looked a few years older than her, so must have been in his mid-fifties. He worked as a civil servant, though I had no idea in which department, nor was I interested. He hadn’t had sex with his wife for many years, though in the old days, when he was Gordon, he had done so, and two daughters were the proof of this. He had declared his wife frigid. He might, or might not, fancy the front half of a pantomime elephant. He believed that rioting mobs of Communists should be shot by the police or army. His wife hadn’t seen his eyes, or not properly, for many years. He played golf, and hit the ball as if he hated it. He liked Gilbert and Sullivan. He was good at disguising himself as a shabby but efficient gardener; though according to his own father he could be a difficult row to hoe. He didn’t like or take holidays. He liked to drink. He didn’t like going to concerts. He was good at crosswords and had pedantic handwriting. He didn’t have any friends in the Village, except, presumably, at the golf club, a place I had never entered, and had no intention of doing so. He didn’t go to church. He read The Times and the Telegraph. He had been friendly and polite with me, but also sarcastic and rude; mainly, I would say, indifferent. He seemed to be cross with life. And was part of what may or may not have been a played-out generation.

But there was another thing about him, which I felt rather than observed. It seemed to me – I’m sure Macleod wasn’t conscious of it, hadn’t given it a thought – but it felt to me as if he – he in particular – was somehow standing in the way of me growing up. He wasn’t at all like my parents or their friends, but he represented even more than they did the adulthood I regarded with some horror.

A few stray thoughts and memories:

– Shortly after the Sharpeville Incident, Susan reported that Macleod had called me ‘a very acceptable young man’. Desperate for praise, like anyone else of my age, I took it at face value. Perhaps more than that: because he had first shouted at me, then later come to sober judgement, I considered the comment all the more valuable.

– I realize that I had absolutely no notion how the Macleods behaved with one another when I was not there. I was probably too absolutist to give it a thought.

– I also realize that, in comparing the two households, I might have made it sound as if at home we ate peas off a knife while scratching our bottoms. No, we were well brought-up. Our standard of table behaviour was on the whole better than that on display at the Macleods’.

– Also, not all my parents’ friends were as passively disapproving of my generation as I may have portrayed them. Some were actively so. One holiday weekend, we all went over to Sutton for dinner with the Spencers. The wife had known my mother since training college days; the husband was a small, aggressive mining engineer, of Belgian origin, who specialized in locating and appropriating the mineral wealth of Africa on behalf of some international company. It must have been a sunny day (though not necessarily) because, peeking from my top pocket, was a recently acquired pair of mirrored sunglasses. I had bought them from Barney, who specialized in the bulk purchase and import of exotic items for resale to those wishing to quietly demonstrate their essential hipsterdom. He had sourced the glasses from somewhere behind the Iron Curtain – Hungary, I think. Anyway, we had scarcely got out of the car when Mine Tiny Host approached me and, ignoring my outstretched hand, ripped the sunglasses from my pocket with the words, ‘These are a piece of shit.’ Unlike, say, his own cable-knit sweater, corduroy trousers, signet ring and deaf aid.