Spencer's List Part 34

He felt his mouth curve into a smile.

'What?' she said, intrigued. 'What did I miss?'

'I never told you about that, did I?' He had wanted to keep that evening to himself for a while, to mull over its implications in private, and then he had got in the way of a spade and the moment for sharing had been postponed.

'What?'

'I met the Hypothetical Blinking Man again.'

She dropped both oars. 'f.u.c.k getting to the other side. Tell me about it. When? Where? What was it like?'

'Well...' He leaned back against the gunwale and looked at her eager face. 'I think there might be rather more than ten minutes' worth.' He checked his watch. 'Five now.'

'Summarize.' she ordered. 'Stick to the facts. Keep it concise. Where did you meet him the first time?'

'On a London Pride tour-bus.'

'How did you get talking?'

He wondered how to put it. 'We shared a nun,' he said.

Questions boiled on Fran's lips.

'Four minutes,' said Spencer, meanly.

'All right, we'll do that later.' She made a visible effort. 'Who got back in touch first?'

'A friend of his did. An American who'd been there at the.... the nun incident. He told me to meet them in the c.o.c.kney Pub.'

'And?'

'I went to the wrong one.'

'And then?'

'I went to the right one.'

'How long now?'

'Three and a half minutes.'

'OK, you can take this bit more slowly. All yours.' She folded her arms and waited to be entertained.

Spencer ran through the events in his head. The first few minutes had been a cavalcade of embarra.s.sment, the thought of which still made him blush. 'You've got to picture the scene,' he said. 'It's not like a pub at all it's more like a theatre, and there's a box office outside. It costs ten pounds for a ticket.' The woman in the feathered hat who had taken the money had said to him with open derision, 'It's all coach parties in there, you know, it's not a club.' His ticket had been torn by a man in a bowler hat and braces and then Spencer had walked through a swing-door and found himself in h.e.l.l.

'They pick on late-comers,' he said. 'Or they picked on me, anyway. There's a little stage with tables all around, and waitresses dressed as pearly queens, and when I went in there were two men singing "Any Old Iron"...' The noise had been gigantic, cacophonous in the confined s.p.a.ce, and it had taken him a few seconds to realize that everyone had turned round to look at him. 'And then ' He baulked at the next bit.

'Tell me tell me,' said Fran.

'They made me get up on stage.' He remembered feebly bleating, 'I've come to meet some friends,' and then stumbling up a couple of steps and finding himself facing a wall of heat and light and dimly discernible faces.

'To do what? Sing?'

'No. I had to push a pram full of sc.r.a.p metal round the stage. And wear a hat. And every time they sang "you look sweet, talk about a treat" I had to throw toffees into the audience.' It had been like some acid nightmare of his youth and had gone on for at least five verses. The sight of Reuben dancing into the footlights shouting, 'He's with us, give the poor man back to us!' had been a vision more beautiful than he could express and he had been led like a lamb through the applauding audience to the mercifully secluded table at the back of the room. 'Us' had been Reuben and Greg and Miles, the latter still amiably blinking, his moustache now nearer Groucho than Orwell an improvement, oddly enough.

'So what happened then?' asked Fran. 'Did you meet him your man?'

'Yes, I met him. We had a nice evening.'

'And? Is there an and?'

'Well. That's the funny thing.' It had been a nice evening inevitably dominated by Reuben, still vibrating with the thrill of having given evidence in a real live courtroom earlier that day ('They wear wigs, they really and truly wear wigs!') a friendly, flirty, silly evening, a perfect way to dip a toe into something which might become deeper. 'I liked him very much, I really did.'

'But? Not fanciable?'

'It's not that. It's just he's quiet and sweet and un.o.btrusive, and ' he shrugged, a little embarra.s.sed at the admission ' I realized I don't want someone like that. Maybe I did when Mark was around, maybe I could only look for a contrast. But now he's gone I want...' not another Mark. Mark was irreplaceable he had his own stained-gla.s.s window in Spencer's head through which the world would always be coloured and G.o.d knows he didn't want a repeat of the tearing jealousy that had shot through their relations.h.i.+p, but he wanted... ' someone I can't ignore. Someone who changes everything. Someone bigger than me.'

Fran lifted an oar and clopped it onto the water again.

'Where are you going to find someone like that, Spence?'

'I don't know. Do you think I'm making life difficult for myself?'

'Life is difficult,' she said. 'Nothing's ever as simple as you think it's going to be.'

Watching her start to row again, Spencer thought that that was probably as much philosophy as he would ever hear from Fran and, like her, it was short and to the point.

'So what about you?' he asked, as the jetty and the small, bouncing figure of Nina came into view. 'What are you looking for? What do you want?'

The oars rose and fell twice more while she considered the question, her eyes intent upon some inner list. 'I want a big garden,' she said at last, with decision. 'A really huge garden. South facing. And someone to dig it with.'

'Anyone in particular?'

She shook her head. 'I'm going to find the garden first. One thing at a time, Spence.'

From the window of her bedroom, a half-opened bill in her hand, Iris watched her father show Tammy his new fence, put up to forestall any boundary discussions or indeed, any casual intercourse whatsoever with the new neighbours. Mr Hickey, once he was deemed sane enough to be discharged from the local psychiatric hospital, was being moved to somewhere less controversial, but her father wanted to take no chances. He tested a section with his hand, and then inspected it dourly while Tammy chattered and bobbed next to him, a robin beside a stump; they looked oddly comfortable together. Tammy had confided in Iris recently that she had always gone for 'serious men'. 'I like them to have a dark side, dear,' she'd said cosily, over the was.h.i.+ng-up, 'a little bit of mystery. I never knew what my Hammy was thinking and it kept me on my toes. So to speak.' She had actually winked at that point and Iris had resisted the temptation to run from the kitchen with her hands over her ears shouting 'please, please don't tell me any more' and instead had smiled back.

The inspection finished, her father turned towards the house and, glancing upwards, caught Iris's eye. His expression softened, and Tammy offered a little wave, and they disappeared from her field of vision.

She had come upstairs partly to escape that expression, the huge leaping excess of joy with which he had greeted her inchoate plan, and which even the boys had noticed. 'No pressure there, Mum,' as Tom had remarked sardonically when her father hurried off to phone Tammy with the news.

'I might not get in,' Iris had said, almost to herself, and Robin had laughed.

'You sound just like me, Mum. Of course you'll get in.'

'But what if I don't?' Like an old, familiar satchel, she had felt the weight of her father's expectations.

'Well...' He'd shrugged, untroubled by that particular burden. 'You could go and do something else, couldn't you?'

'Like juggling,' Tom had suggested.

She finished unfolding the bill, glanced at the total and set it to one side with the rest of the post. Only the package from Bethesda College and the slim grey envelope remained to be opened; she hesitated between one unknown and another and then, bracing herself, picked up the former, unpeeled the flap, and slowly withdrew the contents as though they might bite if roughly handled. It took her a moment to a.s.similate what she was holding, and then she was swept by a wave of relief, followed by one of disappointment. What she had half hoped for, half dreaded was a specific answer to her general question an address, a telephone number, a cheery letter from Lyle Kravitz promising to ring up his old buddy Conrad with the news that she'd been asking about him. Here, instead, was a cheaply produced magazine and stapled to it a compliments slip which suggested, in perky handwriting, that the Bethesda alumnus a.s.sociation (most recent copy of the journal enclosed) might help her with her enquiry. She detached the slip and flattened out the creased cover of The Valedictorian. 'Jesus is Lord' it said, in smaller letters under the t.i.tle, as if crediting the proprietor. The cover photograph was captioned 'White Water Bonding' and showed a group of middle-aged people old Bethusians, presumably propelling a raft along a churning gorge. The contents page listed accounts of weddings and christenings, dances and fund-raising evenings, and the message from the editor was a paeon to the latest triumph of the college football team.

With mild curiosity she began to flick through the magazine. The Old Bethusian social calendar was crowded with healthy pursuits, many of which she would have a.s.sumed had died with Mark Twain: cook outs, hay rides, dinner dances with charity raffles, frog-jumping contests, Christmas Concerts and covered-pie parties. Paging slowly through, she looked carefully at the faces in the crowded snapshots, their features blasted to pale uniformity by the flashgun. None seemed even vaguely familiar, but then of course Conrad might have changed out of all recognition, he might be fat, bald, pony-tailed, bearded, it was even possible he might be dead; she turned the penultimate page and saw, with an impact that seemed to scoop the air from her lungs, that he was none of those things. A little more jowly, perhaps, his hair thinner, the odd crow's-foot pinching the corner of his eyes, but fundamentally unchanged. 'Afterword' said the headline 'last page thoughts with the Reverend Blett'. Fundamentally unchanged apart, that is, from the dog collar. It was a byline photograph, a head and shoulders that took up nearly a quarter of the page, and Conrad was smiling slightly, his eyes fixed on a high and distant horizon. 'I spent last week at a conference' ran the text ' no, don't yawn, don't turn away, because it was a vital conference, centering on one of the most important issues that our church can deal with a Bible-centered approach to family planning.'

Spencer stood by the gla.s.s wall of the Bat Zone and watched chunks of darkness detach themselves from the ceiling and fly in great loops around the interior. He was trying to remember something that Mark had once said about bats, some caustic comment about the size of their ears and their resemblance to an ex-lover of Spencer's, but the exact phrase, and what had prompted it, kept slipping from his mind; whether it was due to time or concussion he wasn't sure, but he realized that he could no longer rely on Mark's internal commentary, running like a ba.s.s line under every thought. It was as if he were further away now, shouting through cupped hands, and only some of his words were audible. Big ears, he thought, no chin, high-pitched squeaks. Perhaps it had been Reinhardt.

He heard the rumble of a buggy and turned to see Nick and a sleeping Nina approaching.

'We've found it,' whispered Nick. 'It's in the other wing. And it's much bigger than I thought.'

It wasn't until the afternoon that Iris remembered the grey envelope. She had not read any more of Conrad's article had not tried to find out where a split condom slotted into the Reverend Blett's world view but instead had smuggled The Valedictorian out of the house in a shopping bag and buried it deep within a skip half a mile from Alma Road, safely removed from where the products of a non-Bible-centered approach to family planning could ever see it. Her lovely, accidental boys.

If they ever decided that they wanted to know more, then she could point them in the right direction, but for now she thought they could probably amble on without him; the idea of using Conrad as an example a lure to lead them towards academia seemed ridiculous now, a panicky manoeuvre from another era. In any case, they had always done exactly as they wanted, had walked their own path in matching size thirteens and used their combined charm and weight to shoulder down any door they fancied opening.

The house was empty when she returned from the skip, Tammy and her father out at an antique fair, the kitchen still littered with the remains of her lovely boys' breakfast. They had left her a note commenting on the lack of cheese in the fridge, and pointing out that she still owed Robin 2.50 for a milk bill from the week before. She did the was.h.i.+ng-up, removed three pairs of shoes from the hall, turned off an idly running bath tap and retreated to the bedroom again.

The envelope was still on the desk and with little antic.i.p.ation she ran a finger under the gummed flap. There was a postcard inside, a painting of a large-featured, plain woman, who nevertheless gazed at the viewer with the slightly pleased air of one who knew herself to be attractive. Iris checked the caption; George Eliot. The message was spa.r.s.e, and neatly written in black ink.

Dear Iris, I wonder if you would care to visit the original of this, in the National Portrait Gallery. If so, I would be delighted to accompany you.

Yours sincerely, Vincent Jayaram.

There was a telephone number under his name.

She read the postcard a second time, smiling at its courtly formality, and then a third because she still couldn't quite believe it, and then she placed it, picture upwards, on the desk and wondered if she would ever grow out of the habit of blus.h.i.+ng.

The sloth hung in semi-darkness, looking to an inattentive eye like an old doormat caught on a branch.

'Do you realize,' said Niall, after looking at it for a while, 'that it's actually got mould growing on it?'

'It's algae,' said Fran.

'They're different, are they?'

'Yes, one's a chlorophyll-producing plant and the other's a saprophytic one's green and one's brown,' she amended.

'Oh right. But it's safe to say that neither of them grows on anything that's likely to go jogging?'

'Yup.'

'So, Spencer, what was Mark really trying to say here?'

'Hmm?' Spencer had been looking at the list of sponsors framed beside the cage. Aside from his own name there was a pleasingly apposite firm of bed manufacturers. 'Well... I think he was trying to tell me to get up earlier and stop sagging round the house, both of which I've had a stab at. On the other hand, his first choice was an elephant, so you can make of that what you will.'

There was a heavily m.u.f.fled pop from the corner and a spattering sound as Nick, hidden from the surveillance camera, juggled a half-bottle of champagne and a set of plastic gla.s.ses.

'He did say I was to treat it like a brother.'

'Can't help you there,' said Niall, 'I'm an only son. Nick ' he took a gla.s.s from his partner ' Spencer's supposed to treat this creature like a brother. Any tips?'

'Er ' Nick topped up Spencer's gla.s.s before handing it over ' it depends whether he's older or younger than you. Older, offer to play in goal in the back garden. Younger ' he checked to see that his daughter was still asleep ' tell him on Christmas Eve that Santa just died in a horrific sleigh accident.'

Niall's jaw dropped. 'You didn't.'

'Right, thanks,' said Spencer. 'Fran? Suggestions?'

'Burn his cage down,' she said firmly. 'He'll thank you for it in the end.'

'Well, I'll er... think about it.' He raised his gla.s.s. 'Here's to Mark's list, anyway.'

'Done, dusted, and eaten by Bill with just a soupcon of anti-fungal powder,' added Niall.

'Mark's list.' They drank, a little solemnly.

'You don't think,' said Spencer, after a moment, 'that Nina would like a spider for her birthday?'

end.