Cushing's Crusade (22 page)

The man expressed polite interest and looked at his watch.
People left London every day, by road, rail and air, some by crematoriums.

The man said, ‘Would Thursday morning be all right?’ Measurements and other details for a description of the flat, he explained. Yes, Thursday morning would be fine. The
Institute
shut four days before Christmas.

On his way home Derek bought a reel of green cotton for his father. Aims were of the essence; aims immediate and distant. Derek decided to visit Angela and stay the night. He would take books out of the local library about market gardening. Discover in action what cannot be discovered in the head. Margaret saying: But, Derek, how can you say you don’t like artichokes when you won’t try them.

In the hall of the flat Derek prepared to tell his father about his visit to the estate agent’s. As he walked towards Gilbert’s room, Derek heard the sound of gentle snoring; the old man was having a late afternoon sleep.

Derek lay down on the sofa in the sitting-room and tried to imagine what he might say. Dear father, in a life too exclusively mental, without sufficient immediate contact with the earth from which all our nourishment is drawn, I have decided to make amends, to be precise I intend to begin a small market garden; this will mean selling this flat. I made the decision with the same ease, or difficulty, as I have when forcing myself to get out of a bath on a cold morning. I was unaware of the precise moment of choice and do not intend to make myself aware of it, just as I am never aware of making the decision to get out of the bath. I am not being flippant, or if I am, I consider it essential. I intend to
construct
a future for myself, since I have recently found it impossible to see one coming in the normal way. The ebb and flow of the seasons and the part played by them in vegetable production attract me, since in them quiescence is as important as growth. You will say that it is typical of me that, at a time when even the most unimaginative farm worker will do anything in his power to get into the nearest town on his day off, I should be thinking of going to live in the country. I shall not argue with you, nor will I do so if you say that my new venture is no more
likely to succeed than my earlier attempt to become interested in stamp collecting. For my immediate purposes it is enough to have set in motion a series of events likely to change almost everything I do. By choosing one course, I am refusing others; and the rejections may be as important as the acceptance. Only a fool would consider East African history to be more important than vegetables. But such comparisons, as I am sure you understand, are beside the point. Did you know that many explorers
discovered
that natives thought they had no feet? The reason was of course their boots, which being non-existent in most tribes, were hard to ‘see’. Having no foreknowledge of my vegetable life I will not attempt to form an idea of it with words and symbols from my past. The prosecution of such substantial change demands this caution.

Over an hour later, Derek was aware that he had gone to sleep; aware because the room was dark and the bell was ringing.

When Derek opened the door there was nobody outside. A moment later he heard a cat crying and looked down to see Kalulu’s basket on the landing. Kneeling, he could see the cat through the gaps in the cane-work. Then, a few feet in front of him, he saw Giles’s face rise slowly above the brown carpet as the lift clanked and juddered to a stop. The boy was holding a
suitcase
.

‘I thought you’d gone to Turkey,’ said Derek, feeling a strange weakness in his legs.

‘We weren’t going till tomorrow,’ replied Giles, picking up Kalulu’s basket and taking it into the flat.

‘Are you going to go?’ asked Derek, following his son and shutting the door behind them. Giles bent down and unfastened the straps of the basket.

‘No,’ he said after a pause.

The cat jumped out and began prowling and sniffing; moving stealthily along the skirting-board.

‘The taxi driver didn’t want to take Kalulu so I had to give him more. It cost over a pound.’ Giles walked into the sitting-room and saw the Christmas tree. ‘Did you get it just for yourself?’ he asked.

‘Your grandfather bought it.’

‘Where’s the stuff to go on it?’

‘In that box.’

Giles examined the decorations in silence and then turned abruptly.

‘Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?’

‘If you want to tell me.’ Derek was afraid to assume that the boy had come back to him, scared of possible disappointment, unwilling to jump to the emotional conclusion that Giles had selflessly returned to brighten his lonely father’s Christmas.

Giles sat down in a chair and moved around as though unable to make himself comfortable. At last he said hurriedly, ‘You’ll probably find it hard to believe, but this morning she said we weren’t going to Turkey on our own and that it would be a good opportunity to get to know the person, because we’d be going to live with him when we got back.’

‘A bit sudden, wasn’t it? What did you say?’

‘Asked her who it was, of course. I wouldn’t have minded somebody else coming if they’d been all right.’ Giles sounded angry and upset. ‘You’ll never bloody well guess who she’s fallen for.’

‘I may not know him.’ Derek was surprised to feel so detached; as though he were listening to the doings of a stranger.

‘You know him. We only stayed with him. Smoothy Charles. Incredible, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ replied Derek.

‘Aren’t you angry?’ asked Giles indignantly; he seemed genuinely shocked by his father’s passivity.

‘I don’t think so. I don’t know what I feel.’

‘You ought to smash his teeth in,’ said Giles.

For a moment Derek felt relief rather than anger or sorrow; relief that he hadn’t been so entirely deluded. His timing had been at fault but not his general thesis. Several seconds later he jumped to his feet with sudden horror. His timing
might
have been correct, she might have been having her affair right from the beginning just as he had thought, every word that she had
uttered to convince him that he had been wrong could have been a lie.

‘Are you OK?’ asked an anxious Giles.

‘I want you to think hard,’ said Derek intently. ‘I want you to think when it started. In Cornwall? Before I left? After I left? In London? When, Giles, when?’

Giles screwed up his face with perplexity.

‘What the hell does it matter? She’s moving in with him. Isn’t that what counts?’

‘I want to know,’ shouted Derek.

‘He started being all mushy and sympathetic after you’d gone. How awful for her, such a shock and lots of sentimental muck like that. Never said how awful it was for me or you or anybody else. Then when he found the flat for us, Mum was always droning on about how kind and good he was.’ Giles twisted his fingers together and frowned. ‘That evening I dashed off—he’d arranged tickets for a musical and we had to go because of all he’d done; paid the deposit on the flat, lent Mum his car, things like that.’

Derek sat hunched on the arm of his son’s chair and shut his eyes. She’d not asked
him
for the deposit but had gone to Charles; the helpless woman in distress out to arouse Charles’s chivalrous instincts, making him plume himself with protective importance. It occurred to Derek that Diana had left him simply to improve her chances with Charles. And in the end, as Giles had said, what did it matter
when
it had started? What indeed, since it was now perfectly clear that his attempt to stop their affair had merely brought about what he had hoped to prevent. If he hadn’t argued with Charles, Diana wouldn’t have had a chance. Charles had been a model of loyalty until accused of the very sin which he had in fact so virtuously avoided.

‘Do you think they’ll get married?’ asked Giles in a flat
unemotional
voice.

‘Possibly.’

‘Will you try and stop them?’

To Giles’s amazement Derek started laughing uncontrollably until tears brimmed over his lids. When he could speak, Derek
murmured weakly, ‘I would have tried once. But not now, dear God, not now.’ He took off his glasses and dabbed at his eyes with the corner of his unbuttoned cuff. ‘They can commit bigamy or live in a polygamous commune for all I care.’ As he stopped speaking he realized that he had meant precisely what he had said; there had been no posturing bravado, no dignified stoicism about it, no self-deceiving attempt to stave off possible bitterness or panic. Whether he had been cured of his chronic acquiescence when Diana left, or when he went to Ramsgate, or in the
tea-room
watching the old man dragged out by his wife, or in the instant that he entered the estate agents, he had no idea, but cured he must have been; that was a certain fact. It was not a method for resolving personal problems that ought to be recommended to many marital appeasers, too violent a therapy for most, but in his case, and with hindsight, apparently effective.

Giles looked as confused as ever when Derek said, ‘Do you think they’ll ask me to be the best man?’

Giles didn’t smile but bit his lower lip. ‘Nothing she did ever made you angry, she could have …’

‘Hit me on the head with a frying-pan?’ cut in Derek.

‘Worse than that; tried to poison you, cut off your nose.’ The glumness with which the boy said this made Derek want to laugh again, but he managed to say calmly, ‘I was angry once; very angry. About a dentist she went to.’

‘What?’ came back Giles angrily, suspecting he was being made fun of.

‘I know it sounds stupid now. But
then
it was different.’

Derek was smiling to himself until he saw the tears glistening on Giles’s cheeks.

‘She doesn’t know I’m here…. I don’t even know if you want me here, you seem so strange. I can’t live in Charles’s flat. I won’t.’

Shame engulfed Derek like a breaking wave. ‘But of course I want you here,’ he said, taking his son’s hands and squeezing them. ‘She can’t force you to go back. Nobody can.’

Giles began fumbling in his pockets for a handkerchief.

‘I do hate crying too,’ he said, drying his eyes and breathing
deeply to stop his chest and diaphragm trembling.

‘You’ll have to get used to me again,’ said Derek softly. ‘I’m going to be a lot more selfish now. I want you to make demands too, we’ve all got to make demands, lots of demands, understand.’ Giles sniffed a couple of times and smiled weakly as he nodded assent. ‘People who don’t get angry aren’t really such saints. They may be no better than ivy clinging to a tree; parasites using other people’s feelings and emotions because they’re too
apathetic
or tired to have their own; because it’s always easier to say yes than no, because they’re frightened for no good reason. Then it becomes a habit and
no
becomes impossible and so there’s no alternative but agreement.’

Giles looked away and whispered, ‘Please can you ring Mummy when she gets in? She should be back in half an hour.’

‘Of course I will.’

‘We’ve been doing parasites in biology, but I can’t think straight today.’

‘Why should you?’ asked Derek. ‘Think crooked. Think any way you like.’

Giles smiled gratefully and said, as though it were the first thing that came into his head, ‘Isn’t your sweater a bit bright?’

‘Should I wear drab and dirty colours? I like it; makes me look like a canary.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘Is it?’ asked Derek flapping his arms and executing little jumps, in imitation of a bird about to take off. Giles broke out laughing, and, encouraged, Derek flapped harder and jumped higher. He turned to see Gilbert standing in the doorway
nodding
in his direction and tapping his head with a resigned
expression
. The cotton Derek had bought on his way back from the estate agent’s must have fallen out while he had been leaping, because Gilbert bent down and picked up a reel of green thread. He examined it in the palm of his hand and then said in a slow thoughtful voice, ‘Do you know, that is exactly what I was
looking
for.’

Gilbert broke off a length of thread and picked up a silver bell from the box on the table. As the old man moved towards the
Christmas tree, Derek knew that his father had never made a better purchase than his small and derided tree. Gilbert paused for several seconds as though on the verge of a momentous
decision
, and then, like an artist making the first mark on a virgin canvas, he leant forward and tied the bell to one of the lower branches. Moving back a couple of steps to admire the effect, he said with quiet confidence, ‘I have a feeling I am going to do this uncommonly well.’

Giles caught Derek’s eye and they smiled at each other, but neither laughed or contradicted Gilbert. Of course he would do it well. It went without saying. There was no reason to suppose him capable of doing it badly; no reason at all.