At the time, the four of us had speculated on what Robson’s girl must have been like – from prim virgin to clap-riddled whore. None of us had thought about the child, or the future. Now, for the first time, I wondered what had happened to Robson’s girl, and to their child. The mother would be about my age, and quite probably still alive, while the child would be nearing fifty. Did it still believe that ‘Dad’ had died in an accident? Perhaps it had been sent for adoption, and grew up thinking itself unwanted. But nowadays adoptees have the right to trace their birth mothers. I imagined this happening, and the awkward, poignant reunion it might have led to. I found myself wanting, even at this distance, to apologise to Robson’s girl for the idle way we had discussed her, without reckoning her pain and shame. Part of me wanted to get in touch and ask her to excuse our faults of long ago – even though she had been quite unaware of them at the time.
But thinking about Robson, and Robson’s girl, was just a way of avoiding what was now the truth about Adrian. Robson had been fifteen, sixteen? Still living at home, with parents who no doubt weren’t exactly liberals. And if his girl had been under sixteen, there might have been a rape charge too. So there was really no comparison. Adrian had grown up, had left home, and was far more intelligent than poor Robson. Besides, back then, if you got a girl pregnant, and if she didn’t want to have an abortion, you married her: those were the rules. Yet Adrian couldn’t even face this conventional solution. ‘Do you think it was because he was too clever?’ my mother had irritatingly asked. No, nothing to do with cleverness; and even less with moral courage. He didn’t grandly refuse an existential gift; he was afraid of the pram in the hall.
What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain? Well, there was all this to reflect upon, while I endured a special kind of remorse: a hurt inflicted at long last on one who always thought he knew how to avoid being hurt – and inflicted for precisely that reason.
‘Out!’ Veronica had instructed, having mounted the kerb at twenty miles an hour. Now I gave the word its wider resonance: Out of my life, I never wanted you near it again in the first place. I should never have agreed to meet, let alone have lunch, let alone take you to see my son. Out, out!
If I’d had an address for her, I would have sent a proper letter. I headed my email ‘Apology’, then changed it to ‘APOLOGY’, but that looked too screamy, so I changed it back again. I could only be straightforward.
Dear Veronica,
I realise that I am probably the last person you want to hear from, but I hope you will read this message through to the end. I don’t expect you to reply to it. But I have spent some time re-evaluating things, and would like to apologise to you. I don’t expect you to think better of me – but then, you could hardly think any worse. That letter of mine was unforgiveable. All I can say is that my vile words were the expression of a moment. They were a genuine shock for me to read again after all these years.
I don’t expect you to hand over Adrian’s diary. If you’ve burnt it, there’s an end to it. If you haven’t, then obviously, as it was written by the father of your son, it belongs to you. I’m puzzled why your mother left it to me in the first place, but that’s no matter.
I’m sorry to have been so vexatious. You were trying to show me something and I was too crass to understand. I would like to wish you and your son a peaceful life, as far as that’s possible in the circumstances. And if at any time I can do anything for either of you, I hope you won’t hesitate to get in touch.
Yours, Tony
It was the best I could do. It wasn’t as good as I’d wanted, but at least I meant every word of it. I had no hidden agenda. I didn’t secretly hope for anything out of it. Not a diary, not Veronica’s good opinion, not even an acceptance of my apology.
I can’t say whether I felt better or worse after sending it. I felt not very much. Exhausted, emptied-out. I had no desire to tell Margaret about what had happened. I thought more often of Susie, and of the luck any parent has when a child is born with four limbs, a normal brain, and the emotional make-up that allows the child, the girl, the woman to lead any sort of life. May you be ordinary, as the poet once wished the new-born baby.
My life continued. I recommended books to the sick, the recovering, the dying. I read a book or two myself. I put out my recycling. I wrote to Mr Gunnell and asked him not to pursue the matter of the diary. One late afternoon, on a whim, I drove round the North Circular, did some shopping and had supper at the William IV. I was asked if I’d been away on holiday. In the shop I said yes, in the pub I said no. The answers hardly seemed of consequence. Not much did. I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.
At first I assumed it was an old email, mistakenly re-sent. But my heading had been left there: ‘Apology’. Below, my message was undeleted. Her reply went: ‘You still don’t get it. You never did, and you never will. So stop even trying.’
I left the exchange in my inbox and occasionally reread it. If I hadn’t decided on cremation and a scattering, I could have used the phrase as an epitaph on a chunk of stone or marble: ‘Tony Webster – He Never Got It’. But that would be too melodramatic, even self-pitying. How about ‘He’s On His Own Now’? That would be better, truer. Or maybe I’ll stick with: ‘Every Day is Sunday’.
Occasionally, I would drive over to the shop and the pub again. They were places where I always felt a sense of calm, odd as that may sound; also, a sense of purpose, perhaps the last proper purpose of my life. As before, I never thought I was wasting my time. This was what my time might as well be for. And both were friendly places – at least, friendlier than their equivalents where I lived. I had no plan: so what else is new? I hadn’t had a ‘plan’ for years. And my revival of feeling – if that’s what it had been – towards Veronica could scarcely be counted as a plan. More of a brief, morbid impulse, an appendix to a short history of humiliation.
One day, I said to the barman, ‘Do you think you could do me thin chips for a change?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You know, like in France – the thin ones.’
‘No, we don’t do them.’
‘But it says on the menu your chips are hand-cut.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, can’t you cut them thinner?’
The barman’s normal affableness took a pause. He looked at me as if he wasn’t sure whether I was a pedant or an idiot, or quite possibly both.
‘Hand-cut chips means fat chips.’
‘But if you handcut chips, couldn’t you cut them thinner?’
‘We don’t cut them. That’s how they arrive.’
‘You don’t cut them on the premises?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘So what you call “hand-cut chips” are actually cut elsewhere, and quite probably by a machine?’
‘Are you from the council or something?’
‘Not in the least. I’m just puzzled. I never realised that “hand-cut” meant “fat” rather than “necessarily cut by hand”.’
‘Well, you do now.’
‘I’m sorry. I just didn’t get it.’
I retired to my table and waited for my supper.
And then, just like that, the five of them came in, accompanied by the young minder I’d seen from Veronica’s car. The badge man stopped as he passed my table, and gave me his bow from the neck; a couple of the badges on his deerstalker chinked quietly together. The others followed. When Adrian’s son saw me, he turned his shoulder as if to keep me – and bad luck – away. The five of them crossed to the far wall but didn’t sit down. The care work
er went to the bar and ordered drinks.
My hake and hand-cut chips arrived, the latter served in a metal pot lined with newspaper. Perhaps I had been smiling to myself when the young man arrived at my table.
‘Do you mind if I have a word?’
‘Not at all.’
I gestured to the chair opposite. As he sat down I noticed, over his shoulder, the five of them looking across at me, holding on to their glasses, not drinking.
‘I’m Terry.’
‘Tony.’
We shook hands in that awkward, elbow-high way that being seated imposes. He was silent at first.
‘Chip?’ I suggested.
‘No thanks.’
‘Did you know that when they put “hand-cut” chips on a menu, it just means “fat”, it doesn’t mean they’re actually cut by hand?’
He looked at me rather as the barman had.
‘It’s about Adrian.’
‘Adrian,’ I repeated. Why had I never wondered about his name? And what else could he have possibly been called?
‘Your presence upsets him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I replied. ‘The last thing I want to do is upset him. I don’t want to upset anyone any more. Ever.’ He looked at me as if he suspected irony. ‘It’s all right. He won’t see me again. I’ll finish my food and be off, and none of you will ever see me again.’
He nodded. ‘Do you mind me asking who you are?’
Who I am? ‘Of course not. My name’s Tony Webster. Many years ago I was a friend of Adrian’s father. I was at school with him. I used to know Adrian’s mother – Veronica – too. Quite well. Then we lost touch. But we’ve seen quite a bit of one another over the last weeks. No, months, I should say.’
‘Weeks and months?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Though I shan’t be seeing Veronica again either. She doesn’t want to know me any more.’ I tried to make it sound factual rather than pathetic.
He looked at me. ‘You understand that we can’t discuss our clients’ histories. It’s a matter of confidentiality.’
‘Of course.’
‘But what you’ve just said doesn’t make any sense.’
I thought about this. ‘Oh – Veronica – yes, I’m sorry. I remember he – Adrian – called her Mary. I suppose that’s what she calls herself with him. It’s her second name. But I knew her – know her – as Veronica.’
Over his shoulder I could see the five of them standing anxiously, still not drinking, watching us. I felt ashamed that my presence bothered them.
‘If you were a friend of his father’s –’
‘And his mother’s.’
‘Then I think you don’t understand.’ At least he put it differently from others.
‘I don’t?’
‘Mary isn’t his mother. Mary’s his sister. Adrian’s mother died about six months ago. He took it very badly. That’s why he’s been … having problems lately.’
Automatically, I ate a chip. Then another. There wasn’t enough salt on them. That’s the disadvantage of fat chips. They have too much potatoey inside. With thin chips, not only is there more crispy outside, but the salt is better distributed too.
All I could do was offer Terry my hand and a repeat of my promise. ‘And I hope he’ll be all right. I’m sure you look after him very well. They all seem to get on, the five of them.’
He stood up. ‘Well, we do our best, but we get hit by budget cuts almost every year.’
‘Good luck to you all,’ I said.
‘Thanks.’
When I paid, I left twice the normal tip. At least that was one way of being useful.
And later, at home, going over it all, after some time, I understood. I got it. Why Mrs Ford had Adrian’s diary in the first place. Why she had written: ‘P.S. It may sound odd, but I think the last months of his life were happy.’ What the second carer meant when she said, ‘Especially now.’ Even what Veronica meant by ‘blood money’. And finally, what Adrian was talking about on the page I’d been permitted to see. ‘Thus, how might you express an accumulation containing the integers b, a1, a2, s, v?’ And then a couple of formulae expressing possible accumulations. It was obvious now. The first a was Adrian; and the other was me, Anthony – as he used to address me when he wanted to call me to seriousness. And b signified ‘baby’. One born to a mother – ‘The Mother’ – at a dangerously late age. A child damaged as a result. Who was now a man of forty, lost in grief. And who called his sister Mary. I looked at the chain of responsibility. I saw my initial in there. I remembered that in my ugly letter I had urged Adrian to consult Veronica’s mother. I replayed the words that would forever haunt me. As would Adrian’s unfinished sentence. ‘So, for instance, if Tony …’ I knew I couldn’t change, or mend, anything now.
You get towards the end of life – no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong? I thought of a bunch of kids in Trafalgar Square. I thought of a young woman dancing, for once in her life. I thought of what I couldn’t know or understand now, of all that couldn’t ever be known or understood. I thought of Adrian’s definition of history. I thought of his son cramming his face into a shelf of quilted toilet tissue in order to avoid me. I thought of a woman frying eggs in a carefree, slapdash way, untroubled when one of them broke in the pan; then the same woman, later, making a secret, horizontal gesture beneath a sunlit wisteria. And I thought of a cresting wave of water, lit by a moon, rushing past and vanishing upstream, pursued by a band of yelping students whose torchbeams criss-crossed in the dark.
There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest.
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Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
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