Obstacles to Young Love Read online

  ‘Nice one,’ he says.

  What else can he say?

  ‘Belter,’ says Tommo.

  They pick Dave up next. His van is in the drive, white, dirty. On the side of the van is the legend, ‘Dave Kent. Garden of England – 66, East Street, Coningsfield.’

  Timothy waits in the car. He hears Tommo say, ‘Your lads like biscuits, Mrs Kent?’

  Dave has dressed down, jeans and a T-shirt and a campaign jacket. He has four shops now, and has to take care still to seem like a simple greengrocer.

  Dave squeezes Timothy affectionately, almost breaking his collar-bone.

  ‘Got your drinking boots on?’ he asks.

  Timothy doesn’t have the energy to reply. It occurs to him that he would quite like to be dead.

  Tommo appears to be chasing the world ‘Castlebridge Road to the Spelsby Roundabout’ record. The suburbs of Coningsfield rarely witness such driving.

  ‘This feller meets this bird in this pub,’ says Tommo.

  ‘Tommo’s off,’ says Dave proudly.

  ‘Tim’s heard it, but it’s a belter,’ says Tommo. Only Tommo ever calls Timothy Tim. ‘Motherly type, not in the first…’

  They will pick up Steven Venables last. This gives them a bit of time, after the joke, to discuss him, pool their knowledge, try to crack the mystery.

  ‘What exactly does he do?’ asks Dave.

  ‘He was with some big firm in shipping,’ says Tommo. ‘Really big. Floats on the stock exchange. Anyway, he’s lost his job. Sacked. Don’t waste your sympathy, though. He got a pay-off. The best part of a million.’

  ‘That’s Steven,’ says Dave, shaking his head in mystification.

  Timothy says nothing. He will say nothing for as long as he can.

  Tommo doesn’t have to look at his bit of paper to check Steven’s mother’s number. It’s the only house in the street with a Jaguar in the drive. Steven is back for two or three days to look after his mother while she has a minor operation, because, although he shows very little warmth to anyone else, he’s good to his mother.

  Tommo pulls up with a screech of brakes, and begins to get out of the car.

  ‘You don’t need to get out. The whole neighbourhood’s heard,’ says Dave.

  ‘Want to give Mrs V some biscuits,’ explains Tommo.

  ‘Tommo’s a sound type,’ says Dave, while they wait in the car. It might not be the deepest analysis ever made of a man’s character, but Timothy finds that there’s not much to add. He’s glad of this. He feels so very tired.

  ‘Good old Tommo,’ he says.

  Steven bounces out of the house, his confidence untouched by the minor detail of his sacking. He’s thinner than ever, though.

  ‘Make sure he has some of them pies they have in those pubs,’ his mother calls after them. ‘They don’t know how to feed them properly in that City of theirs. Look at him. I’ve a garden rake with more flesh on it. Oh, and thank you for the biccies, Tommo.’

  ‘Pleasure, Mrs V,’ calls out Tommo.

  The tyres scream in protest as Tommo does the fastest U-turn in the history of the West – well, West Coningsfield, anyway.

  ‘Sniffy gave me a bell,’ says Steven meaningfully.

  ‘Oh!’ says Tommo, equally meaningfully.

  People are often meaningful about Sniffy.

  ‘Yep,’ says Steven. ‘Sniffing around. He must sense something. I wish I hadn’t told him I was up, but I’m seeing him tomorrow. He obviously knows we’ll be doing something tonight.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you just tell him?’ asks Timothy, quite relieved at having thought of something to say.

  Tommo, Dave and Steve look shocked.

  ‘Sniffy wants to be in on everything,’ explains Dave. ‘Wouldn’t be any kind of club if we let people like that in.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was a club,’ says Timothy.

  ‘It’s an unstated club,’ says Steven. ‘Very exclusive.’

  ‘What’s the point of its being a club if it’s unstated?’ asks Timothy.

  ‘To keep people like Sniffy out,’ explains Dave.

  ‘What’s wrong with Sniffy?’ persists Timothy. He doesn’t really want to know, but the evening will be less awful if he occasionally finds things to say. If he’s silent, they will all try to take him out of himself. He couldn’t bear that. If they think he’s fine, they may leave him in peace.

  ‘Not a lot. Not really. I can take him,’ says Steven. ‘I mean, I’m seeing him tomorrow.’

  ‘But he wants to be in on everything,’ explains Dave for the second time.

  ‘This evening’s for you,’ says Tommo.

  Oh, hell. What a burden that is. Don’t you think I have enough burdens, you idiots? Thank you for your evening. I don’t want it.

  ‘Wouldn’t be for you if we asked all and sundry, would it?’

  ‘We’re the Gang of Four,’ says Dave.

  ‘Precisely. Can’t have five in a gang of four,’ says Steven.

  There’s a moment’s silence in the speeding car. Timothy knows that he should say something, sound grateful for being included in the gang. He can’t. He wants to get out, walk alone over the stark hills in the dark, never come back.

  ‘This feller meets this bird in this pub,’ says Tommo.

  ‘Tommo’s off,’ says Steven with relief.

  ‘Tim and Dave have heard it,’ says Tommo, ‘but it’s a belter.’

  After the joke, as they growl up onto the moors, Tommo, Dave and Steven begin on rugby songs. Tommo played wing three-quarter for Coningsfield Rovers for eleven years till his speed finally went. Even though he’s still the life and soul of the party, even when there is no party, everyone agrees that just a little went out of him when he retired. ‘Tommo’s a lad.’ ‘You should have known him in his Rugby League days.’

  Timothy feels that he has to join in, but there are bits in the songs where you fall silent, traps for the ignorant, and he leaps into every one of these traps. Still, it amuses the others, and that’s something.

  First stop is the obscure Mill House in the hamlet of Bugginsby Far Bottom. The beer’s drawn straight from the barrel. The landlord has a long face, and doesn’t smile, but he’s a card. The beer’s wonderful. Tommo doesn’t drink – ‘Never do when I’m driving’ – but Steven and Dave have two pints each. Timothy manages one. He isn’t used to beer. The top quarter of the glass tastes a bit horrid, the middle quarter is better, the third quarter is really rather nice, the fourth quarter is a struggle as he has to hurry it.

  He wants a pee.

  ‘We don’t pee till we get to the Lord Nelson,’ says Tommo. ‘Club rules.’

  Luckily, the Lord Nelson in Osfinklethwaite is not far away. The landlord is small and has a gammy leg and a hump, but he’s a card. The fire’s lit, mixed coal and logs, even though it’s June. The beer’s wonderful. Steven and Dave have two more pints each. Timothy struggles with one. They initiate him into the skills and mysteries of fives and threes. ‘The only domino game worth playing,’ says Tommo.

  Pretending to care which domino he should play is agony to Timothy, but it’s preferable to conversation. He partners Tommo and they win the first game. Winning and not giving a damn is an unpleasant experience. ‘Well played, Timothy,’ says Steven. How much more cheering up can he take? Then they lose the next game, and losing is even worse, and that makes him feel deeply ashamed. Why should he care, what does it matter, what does any of it matter?

  Tommo tells some quickies. ‘This man rushes to the doctor’s, bursts in. He says, “Doctor, doctor, I’ve got a domino stuck up my arse.” The doctor says, “Don’t you ever knock?” Another man rushes to the doctor. He says, “Doctor, doctor, I’ve got a cricket ball stuck up my arse.” The doctor says, “How’s that?”’ Timothy understands the jokes and knows when they are over. He laughs at the same thing as the others. Nobody watching would realise that he was a million miles away, separated from his friends by the very activities that were intended to bring them together.
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  The third port of call is the Black Swan at Cold Heptonwick.

  ‘Hello,’ says Sniffy. ‘I thought I might meet you here.’

  He shows no sign of resentment at his exclusion from the plans. He is affability itself. The pub is cheery. The beer is wonderful. The landlord is obese and not overly clean, but he’s a card. Yet somehow, the evening is never quite the same to Tommo, Steven and Dave, and the only reason it doesn’t get any worse for Timothy is that it couldn’t.

  They play more dominoes but, with five of them, one always has to stand down. Timothy struggles a bit with his third beer. It’s beginning to dawn on him that the evening, whose end he has so longed for, is already more than half over, and that now he is dreading its end.

  They are halfway to the Cross Keys at Fothergill-under-Snapsdon before any of them realise that Sniffy is in the car with them.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘You’ve got your car.’

  ‘I left it at the Black Swan. I’m over the limit. You can drive me home, can’t you, and I thought, Steven, when we meet tomorrow you could bring me back and pick it up.’

  Sniffy can get away with things like this. What can they do? They can’t exclude him. He is already excluded.

  The Cross Keys has changed hands. The new landlord is smart, polite and smiley, but he is not a card. It’s quite full, but only with people eating. Timothy thinks that if he had come here Before he would have thought it quite nice, but he doesn’t understand. The others are appalled. They have seen a glimpse of the future. They are on borrowed time.

  Timothy thinks that the drive back will give him time to sober up, but he starts to feel drunker and drunker. He wants the drive to go on for ever. He doesn’t want to go home.

  Tommo drops him at the gate. He doesn’t want to have to think of something to say to Maggie again.

  Timothy lurches to his front door. He’s there all too soon. He hates his front door. It leads to his house.

  ‘You’re drunk, Timothy.’

  ‘Not very.’

  ‘You’re disgusting. Go to bed.’

  ‘All right. I am.’

  ‘And don’t wake Liam.’

  As he passes Liam’s bedroom, he hears the beginning of a scream, rapidly stifled. His son is dreaming.

  He begins the long process of sobering up.

  The gardens are quiet and peaceful. One or two of the early trees are just beginning to bud. A blackbird is singing. Spring is coming. Her mother will not live to see it.

  Naomi walks slowly and quietly through the reception area. Silence reigns. The receptionist smiles. Smiles are the currency of communications here.

  Death is everywhere, and death is usually violent. The news bulletins are studded with violent death. The world is not hurtling towards utopia. But in St Hilda’s Hospice, death is not violent, and Naomi feels that it would be selfish to be too sad. She should be happy that, after a long, brave fight, her mother is ready to die, peacefully, in this peaceful place, surrounded by kind people who care about her. There are worse fates.

  Penny is sitting in an armchair, by the window. Her smile as she sees Naomi is a smile of pure joy.

  How frail she looks, but there is a new kind of beauty in her frailty. Her bone structure is fine. Naomi kisses her very delicately, for fear that she will fall to bits.

  There can be no small talk between them now. No ‘How are you?’ and ‘I’m fine.’

  Her mother asks about her sitcom.

  ‘So, Thursday week is the great day, eh?’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘I’m sure you needn’t be.’

  She knows that it is unlikely but not impossible that her mother will live to see it. Should she lie? Should she let her mother die with the illusion that she is going to be a star? Supposing she lies and her mother does see it and realises that she has lied? It might seem that she has been patronising. That would be intolerable.

  The truth. Always, the truth is better.

  ‘Mum, the family silence over Nappy Ever After has been stultifying. It was awful, and everyone should have said so, because that would have got it over with, and there was no harm in saying it anyway, because it wasn’t my fault that it was awful. It was a bad part in a bad comedy, and that was all there was to it. We made it into a mountain by our good manners. Did Dad ever watch it?’

  Her mother laughs. It is a laugh full of affection for, and frustration with, her dear, dear imperfect William.

  ‘I put the clock on him. He lasted eight minutes.’

  ‘Oh, Lord.’

  ‘No, that’s good. Comedy on television embarrasses him. He only lasted four minutes of Fawlty Towers. Your poor father is so kind-hearted, and so easily made uncomfortable by cruelty or unhappiness or innuendo. He goes into his study and either works on his book or reads P.G. Wodehouse.’

  ‘His book?’

  ‘He’s planning a History of Ancient Greece, for his retirement.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Is it? I suspect half the Classics masters in England plan to write histories of Ancient Greece when they retire. The other half plan histories of the Roman Empire. So, tell me about Cobblers in Koblenz?’

  The truth. Always, the truth is better.

  She smiles, pushes her hand forward towards her mother’s, to leave her mother with the actual gesture of holding it and faintly stroking it.

  ‘First of all, I was called back in twice before they gave me the part. Mum, I have to tell you that I play a sex-mad German chiropodist with a foot fetish.’

  Penny winces and smiles at the same time.

  ‘Well, it sounds more entertaining than your last one.’

  ‘Oh, I think it may be better than Nappy Ever After, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. First of all, there’s the accent. They liked my reading but they didn’t like my accent.’

  ‘But you studied the accent.’

  ‘I know. They said it was unlike everyone else’s accents. They were all doing cod middle European. I had to do it too to sound like them. “Has anyone ever told you your foot is beautiful, Herr Beckenmeister?”’

  Her mother laughs, then looks puzzled.

  ‘His foot? Only one?’

  ‘Yes. Injured in the war. No tragedy is so bad that it can’t be laughed at in Cobblers in Koblenz. They told us they wanted to explore the tensions of living in a country that had been our enemy. They wanted to explore our similarities with the Germans and suggest that perhaps it was the French we should have been fighting. They said they wanted it to be a more thoughtful Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, a peacetime ’Allo ’Allo!. I’m afraid when I read the scripts I suggested that the title should be changed to either Auf Wiedersehen, Comedy or Goodbye, Goodbye. After I’d got the part, of course.’

  ‘You’re terrible.’

  ‘I know. I can’t help myself. Anyway, those were their ambitions, and what did they end up with? Every old joke in the book. All of them. “We won the war.” “Well, we didn’t do too badly. We came second.” “Have you ever been to Dresden?” “Not by day.” “Look at those retired shoemakers in that lorry. What a load of old cobblers.” Even, and this is the killer, the English cobbler, Stan Ormerod, who has a dog, comes home to find dog turds all over the carpet. “What’s happened?” “They think it’s all Rover.” Then they find the dog, dead. “It is now.”’

  ‘That’s terrible. It’s not even logical.’

  ‘I know. It doesn’t work on any level. And it’s heartless. But I suppose some of it’s not entirely unfunny, in an obvious way. Anyway, there is it, Mum. Sorry.’

  ‘Naomi?’

  A major change of tone.

  ‘Yes, Mum?’

  A certain wariness.

  ‘Do you remember the woman you chatted to on the Rhine steamer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She gave you a card.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you ever go and see her?’

/>   ‘No. She said if I was ever near Bingen…Well, I never was.’

  ‘Have you ever – I hope you don’t think I’m being too nosy, but I want to know you before I go – have you ever – because we aren’t as narrow as perhaps we were, not after Clive and Antoine who are so lovely – have you ever – I suppose I am a bit narrow still, well, we’re church people and they are narrow, because I’m finding this a bit difficult to put, but have you ever…?’

  ‘Let me put you out of your misery, Mum. I’ve never had any lesbian experience whatsoever.’

  ‘I want to say “good”, but I don’t know if it is good, because I think loneliness is the worst sexual experience there is.’

  ‘Is loneliness a sexual experience?’

  ‘Usually.’

  The truth. Always, the truth is better.

  ‘I think if you hadn’t been there I might very well have gone to Bingen with her. But I also think I’m glad you were there.’

  A smiling nurse brings Naomi a cup of tea. Like her mother, it’s weaker than she would wish.

  ‘Is there anyone?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Have you ever seen – what was his name? – the boy who played Romeo? The taxidermist’s son.’

  ‘Timothy. No. Well, we met in Peru. We were both on our honeymoons. I hated his wife. Why?’

  ‘Your father said the other day that it was rather a pity you hadn’t married him.’

  ‘I didn’t know he liked him.’

  ‘You never do know with your father. But I think he only meant, “as opposed to Simon”.’

  ‘If I hadn’t married Simon, we wouldn’t have Emily.’

  Naomi takes a sip of the weak tea. It’s nauseatingly milky. She has three choices. To leave it, which is not an option, because the nurse is kind and does a difficult job. To drink it while it’s still hot, which means it will have to be in smallish sips. To let it go cold, when it will taste even worse but can be drunk quickly.

  She chooses the third option, not without commenting wryly to herself that it’s absurd to worry over such trifles when in the presence of something as momentous as your mother’s imminent death.