It Had to Be You. David Nobbs
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scientist, the reserved one, the cool one, intelligent rather than intuitive. He found himself waving back as if Philip was emigrating to New Zealand, not popping up to Cambridge for a few hours.
He went out into the airless garden, careful to be well in the shade this time, just in front of the jacuzzi, which had been cleverly squeezed into a corner right at the back of the garden. Those lovely moments in the jacuzzi, over the years, each with a G and T if it was before supper, a brandy if it was after, and, just occasionally, without any alcohol at all, it was known.
He carried the chair and table over, settled himself, opened the address book, stiffened his resolve, reached for the telephone, and dialled.
‘Yep?’
‘It’s me, Chuck. The despised dad.’
‘Oh, hi there.’
‘Is Charlotte there?’
‘Yep, she’s here.’
James’s desire to hear her voice was almost irresistible. She was probably only a few feet from the phone. It was awful not to know how she looked now, how she would sound now. But he didn’t ask to speak to her. She had to be the one to make the move.
‘I won’t ask to speak to her, but I have a message. The funeral’s at twelve-thirty next Thursday.’
James shuddered as he said those words for the first of many times. It brought home to him how final death was.
‘A week today.’
‘Yep.’
‘Got it.’
‘Listen to me, Chuck. I love my daughter very very much.’
‘I believe that, Mr Hollinghurst.’
‘Thank you. And please call me James. I feel I know you.’
‘OK. Cool.’
‘Chuck, her brother Max is coming back from Canada. They used to get on so well. The thing is, Max would just love to see Charlotte again. And so would I. And so would everyone in the family. She was a lovely girl.’
‘She still is, James.’
‘Yes, sorry.’
A pigeon, plumped up with pride and passion, was stalking a female very warily.
‘I’m so glad that she … that you think that she’s … anyway, all of us would love her to come to the funeral … We won’t be upset if she doesn’t, but we’d be so pleased if she did. She loved her mother once.’
‘She still does, Mr … James.’
‘Oh, Lord, that past tense again. Sorry.’
The pigeon made his move. The object of his desire flew away at top speed. He looked comically deflated.
‘Oh, and Chuck, you’ll be very welcome too.’
‘Thank you, James. That’s real neat of you.’
‘And at the house afterwards, for the wake.’
‘OK. Thanks. Cool.’
‘Oh, and Chuck?’
‘Yep?’
‘There’ll be no recriminations. What I mean is, she will be accepted for what she is and the past will not be dragged in.’
‘I know what recriminations mean, James.’
‘I’m so sorry, Chuck. Of course you do. And if she can’t face the house, just the crematorium would be fine.’
‘Cool.’
‘And vice versa. If she can’t face—’
‘I know what vice versa means, James.’
‘Sorry. Oh, dear, I seem to be having to say sorry a lot, don’t I?’
‘You sure do, yep.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I think that could be one of the problems, James.’
‘Sorry?’
‘All that bourgeois politeness thing. I think that’s one of the things Charlie could have been running away from.’
Gordon Tollington walked slowly across the lawn. The air was shimmering with heat. The afternoon was still, but not silent. A woodpecker was drumming nearby, there was the calm, soft drone of a light aircraft, and the reassuring sound of a lawnmower manicuring this safe suburb. The hot weather had brought out the butterflies. Gordon Tollington was a relieved man. And a shamed one.
Steph was half asleep over a John Grisham. She looked up as he approached. His was not a light tread. Unbeknown to them, well beneath the surface of the lawn, moles were panicking.
‘Good book?’
‘Riveting.’
‘That was James.’
‘Oh.’
‘Funeral’s a week today.’
He watched her working it out. He hadn’t married her for her brains.
‘Thursday,’ she said.
‘Yes. We don’t need to cancel the Fat Duck.’
‘You look so pleased,’ she said. ‘I’m ashamed of you, Gordon.’
‘I’m ashamed of myself, Steph,’ he said, ‘but I can’t help it.’
He tried Callum, the son of an old school friend who lived in Argentina. He liked Callum, in fact he had sponsored him to help him through art college, and not just so that he could slip a reference to it into a conversation with Charles. He had just graduated, and had been tipped, in one national newspaper, as the one to watch this year. They had been to supper with him and his much tattooed girlfriend Erica. Erica had been so beautiful that he had almost overcome his revulsion to tattoos. The vegetarian moussaka had been a revelation. Callum took his art seriously. Their crazy single-roomed beanbag-bursting sex-smelling apartment had been overflowing with avant-garde pictures and sculptures and posters, but in the surprisingly modern loo there had been just two pictures, exquisite, nicely framed still lifes, each picture consisting of just one fig, so realistic and ripe that you wanted to pluck it out and eat it. Under the pictures were the words Fig 1 and Fig 2. James had loved that.
‘Callum. Hello. It’s James.’
The story again. The shock again. Oh, God.
‘I’m devastated. I cannot believe it,’ said Callum. ‘She was so lovely, James. I shouldn’t say this, but Erica knows it. She was the only woman over thirty I’ve ever fancied. I’ve dreamt about her several times.’
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