Somebody's Voice Page 6

  His parents lived in Devon, which was why I’d only met them at the wedding. I said “God bless Hilary” and “God bless daddy” and wondered why he kept on smiling. Maybe he thought that meant him, unless he had something else on his mind. When I said “Amen” he joined in, and I was making to stand up when he waved at me. “Stay there for a minute,” he said, and I wondered if he was going to give me more prayers to say. “Do you like secrets, Carla?”

  “Expect so.” When he fixed me with a look that made his eyes bulge I said “Yes.”

  “Then this will be ours, all right? A secret just for us to share,” he said and lowered his hand to his trousers. “Remember how you liked the fireworks? I’ve got something just like one of them for you.” The sound of his zipper wasn’t nearly as loud as my mother’s snores, and he glanced towards the door he’d shut tight. “You’ll be helping mummy get her strength back,” he said.

  ALEX AND ALEXANDER

  “Let’s start at the beginning. What’s the first thing you remember?”

  “I want to start with Randal.”

  “What would you like to say about him?”

  “How he nearly killed my mother.” With a grimace that wriggles stubble on his cheeks Carl says “How I used to wish he’d killed me.”

  “Perhaps we could begin by saying that and then go back.”

  They’re in the office of Carl’s Cars. Carl is seated in an off-white plastic bucket chair behind the desk while Alex perches on its double. His phone lies between them on the desk, recording the conversation. Before he can prompt Carl again, the receptionist looks in. Her crimson lipstick and augmented eyelashes seem determined to proclaim that she’s the woman it’s already plain she is. “Mrs Balakrishnan wants to know if you can pick her up today instead of Friday, Carl,” she says.

  “Never a problem. What time?”

  “A bit earlier than usual. She says half five and I said I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “Tell her I’ll be there.” As the receptionist closes the door Carl says “One of our disabled fares. All the lads and lasses are reliable, but I like to deal with those.”

  “You’re making sure you’re better than your stepfather.”

  “No.” Carl’s stare adds weight to the word. “Trying to be as good as my dad.”

  “We’ll come to him, but shall we try for your earliest memory first?”

  Alex always plots his novels by starting with the earliest scene, but he’s wondering whether interviewing a biographee requires a different approach when Carl says “It’s thinking the priest lived in the church.”

  He grimaces more fiercely than Alex thinks the memory of childishness should call for. “What can you tell me about that?” Alex says.

  “I thought he did because they had the same name. Father Brendan and St Brendan’s.”

  “Did you think he was a saint?”

  “I was never that stupid.”

  Alex doesn’t feel deserving of the stare this brings. “All right,” he says in the hope of placating Carl, “you tell me how it was.”

  “I thought something when I should’ve known it wasn’t true.”

  “How old would you have been?”

  Carl frowns at the solitary photograph that stands on his desk, of himself as a toddler between a man and woman who partially resemble him. The back of the mount is so fingermarked that patches have been worn away. Eventually Carl says “Must have been three or so.”

  “No shame in getting things wrong at that age or older for that matter. My first time at school, I thought we’d have to wait all day to eat because they called the servers dinner ladies.”

  “I’m not ashamed of anything I thought. Randal tried to make me but he’s got no chance.”

  “I hope our book will help. Did you mention your idea about the church to anyone?”

  “My parents. My real ones. And him.”

  “That’s your stepfather.”

  “Not Randal.” Carl appears to have no time to leave his disgust behind as he adds “Father Brendan.”

  “Might you remember what you said?”

  “Told my parents I was sad because he lived there all alone.”

  Presumably his lingering disgust is aimed at the mistake. “I expect they said he lived with God, did they?”

  “He did.” As if he’s furious with any ambiguity Carl says “He said.”

  “As you say, you told him your idea.”

  “They did when he was waiting for us.”

  “Do you remember why he wanted you?”

  “Not just us.” Carl appears to dislike the suggestion. “Everyone who’d been at mass.”

  Alex searches for another way to bring the scene alive. “What did your parents call you?”

  “She called me Carla. My dad mostly called me princess, and she was his queen.”

  Alex makes an effort not to find any of this disconcerting. “Is your mother still alive? Perhaps I should meet her.”

  “She’s gone as well.”

  “In that case I think you’ve given me enough for now to work up.”

  “What do you mean,” Carl demands, “work up?”

  “Flesh it out for our first scene. I’ll show you everything I do before it goes anywhere near the publisher.”

  “Are you going to write it now?”

  “I don’t think my phone’s quite up to that. I’m not, at any rate.” Alex tries not to feel amused but has to keep that failure to himself. “Let’s talk until you’ve had enough,” he says, “and I’ll work on it at the hotel.”

  With some prompting Carl reminisces mostly chronologically until it’s time for him to pick up Mrs Balakrishnan. “We’ll get to Randal tomorrow,” he says like a curse.

  Alex drives through the Manchester rush hour, where every halt sees drivers take the chance to consult their phones, to a hotel overlooking a suburban park. Cyclists are circling the park while pedestrians with dogs parade counterclockwise as if they’re all components of an obscure mechanism. Alex dines at the nearest restaurant, the Nifty Bistro – beetroot and lentil soup, duck with scallops – and then returns to the Look Out hotel.

  It’s inexpensive compared to accommodation in the city centre, and not too far from Carl’s firm. His room feels obsessively feminine, the chair and dressing-table draped with lace, the bedspread dangling elongated tassels, the flowered wallpaper against which desiccated blossoms are trapped under framed glass. He sits at the dressing-table, where the gap between two stacks of drawers leaves him no space to part his legs, and uploads the interview with Carl onto his laptop, into the folder containing Malcolm Randal’s death certificate that Carl emailed him. He’s deleting the interview from his phone when the mobile rings, a sound that recalls the landlines of his childhood. “Dad,” he says, much as the phone just did.

  “Alexander.” With enough of a pause to be prompting a reply his father says “Should I ask how you are?”

  “We’re fine, thanks.”

  “Ah, you and your collaborator. You’ll be hard at it, no doubt.” As if it’s too late now for Alex to ask, his father says “Your mother and I are still enjoying our retirement.”

  “Maybe that’s because you aren’t completely retired.”

  “Retired from lecturing. We like to think we’re helping maintain standards at the magazine. Perhaps in time you may submit another essay for appraisal.”

  The essay Alex sent in – printed, since Continuity won’t accept electronic submissions – came back so wounded with red ink it looked flayed. He’d already taken months to analyse the revival of the English detective story, but even once he made all the revisions the essay was rejected. Apparently the editors prefer material more like his father’s article identifying vintage slang as a hidden subtext in novels such as Mrs Gaskell’s North and South. “I’m working on a book just now,” Alex s
ays.

  “More of the same, I take it. We gather you’re achieving your ambition.”

  This sounds no more approving than Alex knows it is. “I hope I’m on my way there,” he retorts.

  “Lord forbid you should go any further. We see how you’ve descended to offending people as a means to sell your wares.”

  “I just tried to make it true.” When the answer is a silence that feels like a denial too indisputable to need words, Alex says “I assume we’re talking about my new novel, but can I ask whether you’ve read it?”

  “We paid good money for a copy.”

  “I would have given you one. I thought neither of you had time for my work.”

  “There are so many things we no longer seem to have the time for,” his mother says at a little distance. “At our age that isn’t something you can make.”

  As though he finds this too placatory his father says “We wouldn’t have wanted to feel obliged by your gift.”

  “Well, thanks for shelling out for it. If anybody gets around to reading it— ”

  “I’ve done so.”

  Though his father’s tone discourages any response, Alex says “I hope I didn’t disappoint you too much.”

  “I suppose it’s something that you hope it. I’m afraid you exceeded expectations.”

  “I’m guessing you didn’t care much for the book.”

  “No more than it appears to care for us.”

  Alex wonders if his father’s mind is giving way to age. “What does it have to do with you and mother?”

  “Exactly.” As Alex fears his diagnosis was correct his father says “We knew you wrote popular trash, but we could never have imagined that kind. I believe we were entitled to expect better from your years at university.”

  “They do teach courses on popular fiction, Gordon,” Alex’s mother says.

  “Small cause for celebration. In fact, none at all.”

  Alex struggles not to be provoked but says “Can I ask why you object to my book so much?”

  “Obscenity is one reason. Obscene material that’s aimed at a market, whatever you’d like us to think.”

  “The subject is obscene, if you want to use that word, and I don’t think I show any more than I have to.”

  “I’m sure there are books that are more obscene than Alexander’s, Gordon.”

  “That’s even feebler than his excuse, Amy. You may be careless of your reputation, Alexander, but perhaps you might consider ours.”

  Alex feels his father has by no means retired from lecturing. With more bitterness than he’s able to contain he says “You’d rather not be associated with a popular novelist.”

  “We’ve become inured to that after fifteen years. I’m referring to the image of us your book presents.”

  “Which image?”

  “The book is full of abusive parents. Who do you suppose your readers will take them to be based on?”

  “I’m sure they’ll assume I made them up.”

  “You’ve more faith in people’s critical abilities than your mother and I have. We saw how many students lack it, never mind your class of readership. In any case you claimed just now that your book was the truth, and presumably that’s how you sell it to the public.”

  “The truth about the characters and their kind of experience, as near as I can imagine. Not about real people.” When this earns no audible reaction Alex says “If you both like I’ll post some kind of disclaimer online about you.”

  “Please don’t attempt to drive a wedge between us. You used to play that game as a child. And please refrain from publishing anything about us. We’ll content ourselves with hoping the attention dies down sooner than later. I’m sure the public has more important issues to concern it than your books.”

  As though to atone for at least some of this Alex’s mother says “What are you working on now, Alexander?”

  “A bit of a departure, but the publishers suggested it. It’s still about abuse, only this time it isn’t fiction.”

  After a silence long enough to let his parents exchange more than a glance, his father says “And how do you propose to achieve that?”

  “They’ve linked me up with someone who wants their story told.”

  “Whose name will be on the book?”

  “Both of ours, the publishers are saying.”

  “You’ll make it clear whose story it is,” his mother says, “won’t you, Alexander?”

  “I’m sure that will be obvious. I’ll see it is.”

  “Perhaps the best course,” his father says, “will be to let us have sight of the book before it sees print.”

  “I don’t really think I can do that when it isn’t my story.”

  “I assume your lady friend will have a preview of the book.”

  “She always does. It’s her job, as you know.”

  “But you’re determined to withhold it from your own family.” His father pauses, no doubt giving Alex a chance to change his mind. “One might think,” his father says, “you’re anxious to keep something hidden.”

  This is untypically imprecise, and Alex has a sense of talking to someone he doesn’t altogether know. Before he can reply, the line is dead. He would like to speak to Lee, but he has already called her once today, and she doesn’t need to hear about his unsatisfactory conversation with his parents. Instead he lingers in the bath and dons a robe as plump and white as the bath towel and its baby sibling. Now he’s too relaxed to work, and goes to bed.

  Ideas waken him well before dawn. He recalls how his childhood mistake about dinner ladies prompted Carl to recall a similar incident. This brings Carl’s account of his first day at school alive in his mind, and he shrugs the bathrobe on before heading for his laptop. Beyond the window orange streetlamps on the park road illuminate a few trees like expansive flares arrested in the gloom. As he types, his thoughts grow almost too rapid for his fingers to keep pace, and he feels he’s not just engaging with Carl’s memories but inhabiting them. He types until his fingertips ache, and continues typing. The sun has put the streetlamps out by the time he finishes, and once he returns from breakfast he reads through the chapter before driving to Carl’s office. My stepfather nearly killed my mother, and I used to wish he’d killed me.…

  CARLA

  It wasn’t long after my tenth birthday that Mr Randal threw my mother down the stairs. By now he was putting me to bed every night while she stayed in her chair. Her goodnight hug and kiss felt like a duty she was having to perform. Maybe sending me upstairs with him made them feel that way, and at first I tried pleading with her. “Won’t you come and tuck me in like you and daddy used to?”

  “You’ve still got your father. You let him see to you like a good girl.”

  I couldn’t believe she’d misunderstood who I meant. Did she still hope I might call him by the name I’d saved for my real father? “I want you as well,” I begged.

  “Don’t make my head hurt, child. I’m in enough pain without that. I’m up and down those stairs half the time as it is.”

  “Let your mother rest now, Carla. Her life’s hard enough.”

  Sometimes he only kissed me on the mouth after I’d said my prayers and retreated under the sheets, but it threatened worse. Whenever I had to watch his face descend towards me it blotted out the rest of the world, yet at the same time his features seemed to bunch smaller as I shrank inside myself. Sometimes I’d hear sirens racing away from the police station up the road. I used to hate the sound, because it reminded me of the car that had killed my father, but now I wished they were coming to rescue me from Mr Randal. Maybe he guessed my wish, because he said “They’re off to catch bad people. Nobody like that in my house, is there? You’re the good girl your mother wants and I do.”

  By now he wasn’t just showing me what he called a firework, he was having me hold it to ma
ke it explode. I ended up loathing Guy Fawkes Night and any other firework displays too, and had to tell my mother I didn’t like the noise. “I wish you’d told me sooner, child,” she said. “I’ve never liked it either. Your father only takes us for your benefit, so that’s one less task on his plate.”

  Every time he finished displaying his firework he reminded me it was our secret and how we were saving my mother from having to make some kind of effort that he never specified, and I convinced myself that if it stopped her crying out because of him I was doing some good, however much I didn’t like it. He told me how letting her into the secret would only make her feel guilty for needing my help, though she never seemed to feel that way about the other chores I had to do, and then he would hurry to the bathroom to flush a wad of paper. I kept hoping my mother would wonder why he needed to, but the nearest she came to asking was the time I overheard her say “You were up there a long time with her.”

  “Just seeing she said all her prayers, my pet.”

  “There must have been a lot of them.”

  “That’s how good a girl she is.”

  Was I committing a sin of omission by concealing from my mother what actually happened? He did make me say prayers, but not the ones he heard. They were inside my head, and I hid in them while I waited for the firework to blow up in my hands. While I couldn’t tell my mother any of this, I thought the complaint she’d made was my excuse to mention something Mr Randal hadn’t warned me to keep secret. The next time we were alone I said “Mummy, I don’t like it when he comes in the bathroom.”

  “And who’s he supposed to be when he’s at home?”

  “Mr Randal.” When her face let me know this was unacceptable I said “Dad.”

  “That’s who he is, and don’t you ever forget how much we owe to him. Now what are you trying to make out is a problem?”

  “He keeps coming in when I’m in the bath.”