A Dry Spell Read online

  ‘That’s very wise,’ the man was saying. ‘Because the Bible is after all the Word of God. And there’s no arguing with that, is there?’

  ‘We-e-ell . . .’ said Guy, feeling more heretical by the second.

  Sophie and Harriet, meanwhile, tired of tormenting Stilton, had tried to push their way between Guy’s legs to get a look at the callers.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ he remonstrated, trying to hold them back with one foot.

  The man gave them an indulgent smile.

  ‘I don’t like that man,’ said Harriet loudly, from behind Guy’s knees. ‘I don’t like his trousers.’

  The smile intensified. ‘Do take this,’ he said to Guy. ‘It explains things far better than I ever could.’ There was no way Guy could avoid taking the proffered leaflet, short of putting his hands behind his back. ‘Perhaps when you’ve had a chance to read it we could come back and discuss it?’

  ‘Well, unfortunately, I don’t actually live here,’ said Guy, pouncing on this chance of escape. ‘I’m just visiting my parents.’ He was beginning to tire of this exchange now, imagining his waiting trifle. If he hadn’t confessed to being a Christian, and thus committed himself to displaying a degree of tolerance and decorum, he would have told them to bugger off by now. Instead, they had parted on the politest of terms, but the encounter had left Guy rattled, with graver doubts than ever.

  ‘You haven’t really stopped believing in God, have you?’ said Jane, beside him, trying to pick up the travel news on the car radio. As far as the horizon the traffic on their side of the motorway was stationary, red tail lights glowing through a pall of exhaust.

  ‘I don’t know. Not just like that. It’s been coming on for a while.’

  ‘You’ve never mentioned it before.’

  ‘I think it started when I took this headship. The moment faith became part of my job description it began to wear off.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure He still believes in you, anyway,’ said Jane, giving up on the radio and giving his leg a gentle squeeze. He smiled at her, surprised. She didn’t often touch him nowadays. He was suddenly struck with the suspicion that she was really only looking for somewhere to wipe her greasy fingers, but dismissed this as unworthy.

  ‘What if I ended up a rampant non-believer?’ he pondered aloud. ‘Would I have to resign?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Jane, removing her hand. She had an unwelcome vision of the four of them on the street, homeless, those unsorted boxes from the spare room on the back of a cart like the rest of their belongings. ‘They asked for a practising Christian. So just keep practising.’

  ‘I haven’t quite descended to that level of hypocrisy,’ Guy retorted. ‘Anyway, it’s not as if I’ve lost my faith altogether. It’s more like migraine – I get these sudden, blinding attacks of atheism which take a while to wear off.’

  ‘It’s that telescope,’ said Jane. ‘You thought you’d be able to see Him.’

  ‘I knew you’d work the telescope into things,’ said Guy. A recent bone of contention was the amount of time Guy spent holed up in the loft.

  ‘I’m only joking,’ said Jane. ‘Perhaps you should have a word with the Rector?’

  ‘Oh no. I couldn’t bother him with something like that.’

  ‘Why ever not? It’s his job. He’d probably be delighted to be approached on a matter of faith, instead of being asked for favours by people all the time.’

  ‘Talking about it doesn’t help. I told you: it’s like migraine. Just thinking about it can set it off.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Jane.

  ‘I didn’t mean talking to you doesn’t help. It does. You’re the only person who understands me. There’s nothing we couldn’t say to each other, is there?’

  Jane gave his knee another squeeze, and smiled at him, without committing herself to agreement with this dangerous proposition.

  Later that evening, as they prepared for bed, Guy watched Jane collect her nightclothes and disappear with them into the bathroom. He used to enjoy watching her undress: he still found her beautiful even after, what was it? eight years and two kids. But she seemed to be shyer now than when he’d met her, and a much sterner critic of her physical imperfections – to which Guy himself was oblivious. When she returned she was wearing one of the pretty silk nightdresses he had bought her over the years and which she normally shunned in favour of a baggy T-shirt with dogs on, or that shroud-thing which she wore with knickers. This was a good sign. But when he came out of the bathroom, having washed with optimistic thoroughness, he found Harriet curled up on the landing, crying.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said, nearly falling over her. ‘Why are you out of bed?’

  ‘I’m very sad,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want to sleep in your bed.’

  ‘Why do you want to sleep in our bed, darling?’

  ‘Because I’m very sad.’

  He picked her up and she twined her arms and legs around him. ‘Come on. Back to your room. I’ll tuck you in.’

  ‘But I’m scared.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘My dream. The lamb ate me.’

  Guy couldn’t help laughing. Harriet’s nightmares always featured the most improbable predators. ‘No. You ate the lamb. At Granny’s, remember?’

  By the time he had settled Harriet back in bed, peeling her fingers from his neck, and watched her arrange her legions of cuddly toys according to her own arcane system, Jane’s reading light had gone off, and when he finally got back to bed she was already asleep, or pretending to be.

  8

  Nina was shaking so violently that someone on the Northern Line actually offered her a seat. It was the rush hour and she was on her way to observe a case conference about a new client: a seven-year-old whom the local authority had removed from his father and stepmother and placed with foster-parents. This affair was unlikely to be resolved without tears, but it was in her domestic rather than professional capacity that Nina was now distressed.

  James, who had been travelling with her, had got off the train at Charing Cross, on his way to a lecture at the London School of Economics, quite unaware of her condition.

  ‘You should wear a jacket and tie,’ she’d said, when he came down for breakfast that morning in jeans and a sports shirt. ‘First impressions are really important.’

  ‘It’s just some A-level lectures, not an interview,’ he replied, tipping cornflakes into a bowl with one hand and posting bread into the toaster with the other. ‘Anyway, they’ve already offered me a place.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Nina. ‘You can never be too smartly dressed.’

  ‘I’m not wearing a tie. I’ll look a complete dork.’

  ‘No you won’t. I bet everyone else will have come in suits and you’ll stick out a mile.’ Nina mashed a peppermint teabag against the side of her mug and then flipped it into the bin.

  ‘I’m only going to be sitting in an auditorium – completely anonymously. No one is going to give a toss what I’m wearing.’

  ‘So you won’t mind dressing up as a dork then.’

  ‘Stop nagging,’ he crunched, through a mouthful of cereal. ‘If it’s the sort of place that discriminates against people in jeans I don’t want to go there anyway.’

  ‘Oh, you are so unintelligent sometimes,’ snapped Nina. ‘Don’t you realize that universities are deeply conservative places. What they want are people with original minds who behave conventionally.’

  ‘Look, it’s just a one-off course for sixth-formers. I doubt if I’ll even set eyes on a tutor. I promise you if everyone else is in suits I’ll wear a striped blazer and a boater for the rest of the year if it’ll make you happy.’

  ‘No, that would be eccentric,’ said Nina. ‘What time does it start?’

  ‘Nine-thirty. But that’s just the preliminary waffle. I don’t need to get there till ten.’

  Nina rolled her eyes towards the heavens. ‘Why not just be on time for once? If
you leave with me now you can make it by nine-thirty.’ She rinsed her mug and left it on the side to drain. James had finished his cornflakes and was spreading marmalade on his toast in an unhurried manner. ‘You are such a worrier. It’s me who’s going to be late, not you, and I’m not worried.’

  ‘You are me,’ said Nina cryptically. He shook his head, but they did in the end leave the house together, Nina rather later than she would have liked; James rather earlier. He had come through the age of embarrassment and didn’t insist she walk fifty yards ahead on the other side of the road as he used to, although he did put on his dark glasses the moment they were out of doors even though the day was cloudy. And when his mobile phone rang, as it invariably did whenever he ventured into a public place, he dropped back a few paces. If it wasn’t a phone it was a Walkman, Nina thought. He always had to have something trilling in his ears. She indulged him by walking on, but couldn’t help herself tuning into his end of the conversation.

  ‘Hi . . . No, I’m on my way there now . . . Oh, I dunno, about half three . . . if it’s boring I’ll leave earlier . . . (Nina bridled at that). Okay . . . I’ll come to your house . . . you too.’ He caught her up, slightly pink in the face. ‘That was Kerry. I won’t be in for a meal tonight.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Nina, wondering what she was going to do with all that lamb she’d taken out of the freezer. She would have to get into the habit of cooking for one. This wasn’t the first time it had happened. ‘When you don’t eat at home, where do you eat?’ she asked.

  ‘At Kerry’s,’ said James. ‘Where else?’

  ‘Who cooks? Her mother?’ She hadn’t forgotten that James had failed to take up her offer to have the girl round to dinner one night.

  ‘No. Bob usually. Her mother doesn’t live with them.’

  ‘Bob?’

  ‘Kerry’s dad.’

  ‘And all three of you sit down and eat together?’

  ‘Four. She’s got a younger brother, too.’

  ‘Around the table?’

  James was starting to weary of this line of questioning. ‘No. In front of the telly. Why?’

  ‘I was just wondering,’ said Nina, as they reached the underground station. ‘No reason.’ She had an image of the four of them cross-legged on one of those L-shaped sofas, plates of something microwaveable steaming on their laps, Coronation Street or something else James never watched, roaring away on a huge TV screen, and managed to feel both superior and jealous.

  ‘What does her father do?’

  ‘He’s a copper.’

  ‘Oh.’ Nina just refrained from asking his rank.

  ‘I know what you’re doing,’ said James, as they rode down the escalator. ‘You’re trying to find out all about them so you can put them in a little box with a label on. I bet you’re dying to know what sort of carpet they’ve got in the lounge.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Nina, thinking, they call it a lounge, do they? ‘I’m just interested. You don’t volunteer any information, so I have to ask.’ What she really wanted to know was why they always went to Kerry’s house rather than her own, but she could guess the answer. Bob, the laughing policeman, was evidently a much more congenial host, not given to barging into people’s bedrooms and turfing them out of bed.

  Tooting Bec station was even more crowded than usual. The platform was already packed and the escalators kept delivering fresh bodies into the crush. The bus strike, Nina remembered. Another good idea of yours, James was muttering. It’s all right for him, head and shoulders above the crush, Nina thought. I’ll be wedged under someone’s armpit. A train swept in, faces and limbs squashed against the glass like a vision of hell. The doors opened and half a dozen people fell out through each opening into the crowd, then attempted to fight their way back on. Those in the middle carriages hadn’t a hope of getting out. They were going to the West End, like it or not.

  Two more trains came through full. On the third there were spaces and Nina and James allowed themselves to be herded through the doors. The heat inside was intense, as was the smell – a combination of last night’s garlic and musty suits. Most of the passengers had their eyes closed as a defence against the indignity of it all. As the train lurched out of the station the people in the aisles swayed and clutched at each other. There wasn’t sufficient foot-space to stumble. James put a hand up to catch one of the straps, and it was then that Nina, beside him, holding on to the back pocket of his jeans for support, noticed it. There, in the small depression in the crook of his arm was a puncture mark: the hole left by a hypodermic syringe. Nina’s eyes began to smart and there was a pounding in her ears of waves crashing on rocks. As the train hurtled into a tunnel and everything went black she recognized the signs of an impending panic attack, something she had not suffered from since that experience in the desert half a lifetime ago. It was all just as before – shortness of breath, a constriction around the throat and chest, an agonizing pain down one arm, tingling fingers and an overwhelming sense of doom.

  ‘I’m off then,’ said James, as they reached Charing Cross. He squeezed past her, not noticing her glassy-eyed stare. ‘I’ll be late. Don’t wait up.’ And he was through the doors and swallowed up by the crowd before she could catch her breath.

  ‘Do you want to sit down?’ A young woman, suited and lacquered for the City, stood up and pointed at her empty seat. Nina nodded and sank into it gratefully, her hands clenched around her bag. She could feel her heart thumping: a maddened bird in the cage of her ribs. Deep Breaths, she told herself, closing her eyes and trying to visualize something soothing: green meadows, a stream, turquoise sky, pure white clouds. When she looked up they were at Tottenham Court Road. Staring at her from a poster on the opposite wall was a pale and wasted youth with black shadows under his eyes. DRUGS, it said. FIRST YOU LOSE YOUR MONEY. THEN YOUR LOOKS. THEN YOUR FRIENDS. THEN YOUR LIFE.

  Nina staggered to her feet and on to the platform, clawing her way through the crowds as if swimming through treacle, and up, up from the heat and stench of that infernal pit into the open air.

  James sat in the canteen at LSE eating a plate of lamb curry, cauliflower cheese and chips and enjoying a sense of contentment he couldn’t quite source. The woman behind the counter at the servery had kept ladling food on to his plate as if the sooner she’d emptied her tins the quicker she could go home. James had had to restrain her from topping the whole lot off with a piece of cod. He had taken his tray to an empty table as he was half-expecting Kerry to call and felt self-conscious talking on the phone in crowded public places. In any case, he wouldn’t be able to make himself heard above the clamour of conversation from the two hundred or so other sixth-formers also attending the course, every one of them tie-less, except for that one poor loser in a grey suit.

  University was going to be all right, he decided. The academics who had addressed the various lectures he had attended in the morning were all encouragingly normal; some even showed traces of humour. There would be enormous helpings of simple food, cheap beer, and, if he got organized, a room of his own in the heart of London to which he could bring Kerry. At the thought of Kerry, James went to check his back pocket to reassure himself that the letter from the clinic was still there. His face broke into a smile; that was the origin of that feeling of self-satisfaction that had been with him all day. Tonight he and Kerry were going to have Unsafe Sex for the first time, and no slimy, squeaking bit of rubber was going to come between them. James swallowed a mouthful of lamb: a bad choice, curry. He would have to remember to buy some extra minty chewing gum later.

  ‘Is anyone sitting here?’ Greysuit was hovering at the edge of the table, tray in hand. A domed meniscus of custard quivered above the rim of his bowl. His plate was also dangerously awash with gravy. James shook his head as neutrally as possible. He didn’t want to offer the bloke any grounds for starting a conversation. Greysuit lowered his tray thankfully and then retreated, returning with a wad of paper serviettes with which he attempted to contain the spillage
. It was rather a tight squeeze between the tables; after some apologizing and chair-shifting Greysuit finally installed himself James watched his discomfiture with sympathy. And that was how Mum would have had me dressed, he thought. Really, she had no idea. A half-smile died on his lips, for suddenly there was his mother, standing in the doorway, scanning the faces before her with that funny, short-sighted frown of hers. It was too late to duck – she’d seen him and was making her way towards him, tucking chairs back under tables as she approached.

  Nina stood in the doorway of the refectory trying to pick James out in the crowd. Oh good, she thought, as she finally caught sight of him, he’s found a friend. Once when he was small, not more than five or six, she had gone up to his school to spy on him, and had spotted him standing at the far end of the playground all alone, while the rest of the children ran around together, laughing and having fun. She’d hurried away, her stomach churning, and from that moment on had made a point of asking a series of his classmates back to play. Those with glasses or speech impediments were her favourites.

  When she had emerged from the subway at the corner of Tottenham Court Road she had stood, clutching at the kerbside railings, dazed by the noise of the traffic, trying to fight off the sense of paranoia that had assailed her in the underground. If only I was at home I would know what to do, she thought. If there was only someone I could ring. Irene – until recently a fount of sympathy and wise counsel on the subject of her grandson – was no longer a possibility. She considered and dismissed several close friends. No: this wasn’t something she particularly wanted anyone to know about – especially people who would be certain to meet James at a later date and judge him according to this lapse. My son, the heroin addict, she would say, introducing him. There was James himself, of course. He could be contacted on his mobile, but this wasn’t an inquiry that Nina cared to conduct over the phone. He might hang up; he might not come home. An ungenerous thought came into her head: It’s that Girl. Then she remembered. She had Kerry’s number in her diary. James had grudgingly passed it on when the two of them had started going out. For emergencies only, he had warned. She would call and ask to speak to Mr Whatwashisname? If his daughter was involved he had a right to know.