The Exhibitionist, page 12
Robbers
Poisoners
Clowns, obviously
Fire
Spies
Aslan
Ghosts
Whales
Tiny sharks
Giants
Caves and cavemen
Struwwelpeter
Knives
until he was reassured and could sleep, not lie terrified for hours with his big eyes glinting in the dark, listening out for the creak of her feet on the stairs: ‘Mum? Mum?’
‘Leave him!’ Ray would say, every time she peeped through the crack in the door and so, to her secret shame, she did and he grew up like this.
Given a chance, would she abandon them now?
‘No, don’t cancel them,’ says Ray. ‘It’ll be amusing.’
It’s so late and the lamb’s nowhere near ready but, because an MP is coming, everyone’s perked up. Even Gerry isn’t pretending to be unimpressed. ‘Isn’t she the one from Nottingham?’
‘No, that’s . . . the young one,’ Lucia says uncertainly.
Leah is staring at her: she is a noticer, the family’s sentry, and Lucia is blazing.
There’s plenty of wine but they’re chomping through the crisps. Ray keeps saying ‘Priya whatever’, disdainfully, as if the party selectors failed in their duty to check prospective MPs with him.
‘I have terribly low blood sugar,’ says the thin critic’s wife and Lucia, not glancing at Ray, says: ‘I’ll see if there are any more tortilla chips.’
She turns on the kitchen radio, leans her head against the Sainsbury Book of Wholemeal Home Baking. Her chest feels as if it will burst with longing; she’s so nervous that her tongue stings.
Priya is about to arrive.
Now?
Now, surely.
The seconds ripen, fall. She hasn’t thought this through, any of it: the awkwardness of delivering a guest to him, like presenting a tender fruit to a tyrant. Priya won’t charm and soothe him, be flirted with. And she must remember not to mention having met Lucia; Ray won’t like the idea of a new independent friend.
What if, under the pressure of not saying anything, Lucia starts crying, or laughing? Adulterous wives must be everywhere. Has Gillian ever? And Ray’s ex, the sacred Vivienne? They should be recognizable by their glowing skin, their shining hair.
Her chest is wet with sweat. Once, gingerly, she’d entered an online forum for women who had experiences like hers, straight into a thread about sternum cancer. She touches the hot bone.
‘No, you know,’ she hears the thin critic’s wife say, ‘she’s quite ordinary. I mean, socially. She’s Wolverhampton? Somewhere like that. Pakistani. Single parent, tower block, blah?’
‘Used to be a dinner-lady, didn’t she?’ asks Gerry. ‘Or illiterate. The mother?’
‘Well,’ says the thin critic’s wife.
Priya made herself. She is fearlessness and determination and grit and what, thinks Lucia, are all of you?
After the Chinese restaurant, Lucia would take out the facts and marvel over them from every angle, like a miser.
‘We need an agenda,’ Lucia had said. ‘There’s too much to discuss,’ and Priya grinned.
Then she said: ‘Your eyes are beautiful.’
The restaurant was trying to close around them. Lucia asked: ‘Is it true that so many MPs cheat on their wives? Are secret gamblers, drinkers, God knows?’
Priya smiled. ‘You can’t imagine. It’s power. MPs do have to be risk-takers. We stake so much on getting here, every election. Family, money, time, and the volunteers – last year was insane. And also, well, it’s interesting work, so people are drawn to you. And helping people makes us feel privileged; it can go to your head. But mainly it’s . . .’
‘What?’
‘Power. People love power. Having it and being near it.’
‘Really,’ said Lucia.
Later, Priya said: ‘You’d be amazed what a mandate does for some people. Gives them even more confidence.’
‘Are you confident?’ Lucia asked.
‘What do you think?’ said Priya, and her eyes held Lucia’s steadily: that slow look between women, which Lucia had thought she’d never see again.
19
‘Has anyone seen Patrick?’ Martyn asks, again.
Leah sighs. ‘Apparently heard foxes.’
‘Oh, Pat, Patch and his beasts,’ he says fondly. ‘Has he gone to observe them? Should I check on—’
‘It’s disrespectful,’ says their father. ‘Maybe he’s peeping at us through a little hole. Or off dogging.’
‘Dad!’ says Leah proudly.
‘Someone,’ Ray says, ‘go and fetch him.’
‘I will,’ Martyn says.
It’s cold out here, and shadowy; it smells of violence. He hurries through the warped gate; down the side return, fashioned by Patrick into a home-made cloister. It is roofed with corrugated plastic jaundiced by sunlight, grey and green with dirt. He squeezes past deceased bike frames and cracked chimney pots, the rusted skeleton of a roof rack, weed killer, faded skittles, a lichenous cool-box, logs so mossy and sodden they could be used as fire extinguishers. Raindrops darken his shirt, making it tricky to look casual; still, at least it’s not sweat.
Where is Patrick?
Of course he’s not overinterested, whatever Jess claims. Patrick is interesting, one of those fascinatingly talented yet vocationless men. Apparently, he can paint and draw; he is, or was, an amazing swimmer, which Martyn would give money to see. With that pure profile, and narrow considering eyes, the height, he could have been anything he wanted.
Will he, Martyn wonders, let him into his caravan?
‘Patrick?’
Martyn edges closer.
The roar of nature is all around him; even in winter, it creeps with life. There’s a stink of moss and rust. The lawn glistens, crowded with trees; black branches, reckless fresh young leaves.
Leah and Ray are convinced that Patrick needs a girlfriend. They urge him to look up Leah’s old school friends, most of whom live only streets away from, if not actually in, their childhood home. He must long for coupledom.
‘If not, why not?’ Ray always says. ‘What’s wrong with him? I don’t believe in a sexless man.’
But Patrick is so blinky and twitchy, so hypervigilant, observes Martyn, who has always suspected he’d be a good doctor. And, as he’ll explain once again to Jess, dragging her brother to Edinburgh would be destructive, not only for him but for the family, the organism that is the Hanrahans. Much, much better if the Edinburgh faction move down here.
Because of the cold, he’s trembling. He can’t call loudly, lest he scare off the foxes. It’s moving to think of Patrick at night in his, presumably, narrow bed, alert to nature.
There’s a sound behind him and Martyn jumps. Buck up, he tells himself, peering into bosky undergrowth, the impenetrable shrubbery. He retucks his shirt. No sign of Patrick; the caravan looks dark and still; not, in close up, quite so tempting. Could Patch have nipped out? Would he be on the Heath, alone? He and Martyn have so much to chat about.
‘Anyone out here?’ he calls softly, just to be sure.
A dead leaf falls wetly against his hand. Patrick is on all fours in his improvised knee-protectors, head-torch on, reattaching a vine eye. The dogtooth border of the herb bed, an ill-judged birthday present for Ray last year, digs painfully into his thigh. Even now he scrabbles for ways to please Ray, telling him about repairs he’s done and savings made, as if his stepfather’s disdain could be staunched. He has spent his life doing this, growing more irritating, like grit in a shoe.
He hears something.
Too much blood thumps in his ears. He dropped something in the dark dank must of twigs and mould by the side return, but even the thought of trudging back makes him emit little moans; being met again by whatever it was that he sensed last night. He’s too white and weak for them, like a root under a stone. He cannot do it. Like a failed hide-and-seeker he sits on his heels, waiting.
Then, somewhere behind him, he hears a movement, or sees a sound and he’s about to lose control of his most dignity-preserving muscles when he realizes it’s Martyn.
Martyn feels weightless. ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘It’s freezing out here. How are you doing, er, mate?’
Patrick, looking extremely flustered, makes a small sound of welcome.
‘I thought you’d nipped over to the Gallery. I could help right now,’ says Martyn. He’d hoped that this evening, everything sorted for tomorrow, they could be standing around drinking tea from big mugs, befriending the carpenters and chatting about Patrick’s early life. ‘How’s . . . work?’
‘Oh! I’m doing one on the Avenue, lawyers,’ says Patrick, wiping his hands on his hips. ‘They want a knot . . . thing.’
‘Uh oh.’
‘Yes. And my old judo teacher. He’s getting on and their garden’s mad.’
‘As mad as this?’
‘Well, no.’ Patrick gives an amused snuffle.
‘You must have been snowed under. The exhibition, I mean. But what a relief that it’s all under control. I bet . . . Ray isn’t . . . it needs to be just right, doesn’t it.’ Now they’re knee deep in revelation, all the wrong emotions are surging up: curiosity, the urge to confess. ‘You still in the caravan?’
‘Yep.’
‘I’ve never seen inside it.’
‘Right.’
‘So . . .’
‘Can I?’ he asks brightly.
‘What?’
‘See inside?’
The scrumpling in Patrick’s chest, the sense of holding himself small and still inside a faulty container, grips him even here, outside. He’s starting to feel sick. He never knows how to extricate himself from talking; only Martyn can cut them free. But Martyn won’t stop. What does he want? His task is to make Jess happy, keep her away from here.
The soil is clotted with beautiful worm-casts. Patrick’s fingers paddle in the soil; he used to find bits of starfish, pounded into fertilizer. He’s never been alone with Martyn before, close enough to punch.
‘Are you,’ Martyn says suddenly, as if someone’s behind him, pushing, ‘still cooking?’
‘What?’
‘I just happened to remember you’re interested. Didn’t you do a what-are-they-called, City and . . .’
‘A bit,’ says Patrick. The old unworthiness unfurls. ‘At the Vincent Rooms.’
‘Jess says you almost completed. That you were really good. I’m sure she . . .’
‘I wanted to do Patisserie,’ he blurts out, ‘but that wasn’t . . . Ray said it wasn’t. Financially viable.’ He swallows. ‘I think.’
‘I see.’ Martyn leans closer, squats down. He’s staring at Patrick’s big knees. ‘Did you not have some kind of, ah, crisis?’
‘A breakdown,’ Patrick says, to end this. He eyes the cherry tree hopefully; he hasn’t survived this family without a deep acquaintance with the garden, its undergrowth and damp corners. ‘I had a nervous breakdown. They said.’
Martyn frowns, moves his mouth, flushes. ‘Who’s they?’
‘The team.’
‘Oh. Hmm. But you still cook, don’t you?’
‘Well. It’s not . . . I made the cake.’
‘Which looks delicious!’ Martyn says. ‘Really . . . zesty.’
‘I’d better go.’
‘Of course,’ says Martyn. ‘Course.’ This is almost the end of the conversation. Then the air ripples, as if they’ve both glanced down and found themselves on the brink of a precipice.
‘Sometimes . . .’ Martyn says.
‘What?’
‘Your . . . old Ray, he can be a bit . . . you know. Unencouraging.’
Patrick’s mouth dries. Three decades and he has never discussed his stepfather; it’s barely crossed his mind that he could. Ray’s power, the fear of upsetting him, is like an unbreakable spell. He takes a deep breath. He nods. ‘It’s . . .’
‘You should stand up for yourself,’ says Martyn. ‘Say what you want. What’s the worst he could do?’
20
Jess loves this house. No, she hates it. Lurking on the pavement feels like adolescence: light glinting from the living room upstairs through the fat yew-hedge, the laughter. If he’s cheerful, you can always hear her father. Her head throbs with the effort of listening.
Like a small animal scuttling towards destruction, she’s breathing too quickly, clenching her hands. No wonder she’s so tired. At Dalziel’s she strides down the corridors, dodges the Head’s guiding hand, keeps the shoutier boys in check. But her father paralyses her.
The garden gate hangs by a single hinge, bleeding rust. There is a smear of stars, a moon like ice. Her skull is heavy. Parakeets scream past on their way to the reservoir; the Overground train screeches towards Upper Holloway. Dear God, please let Martyn not have pissed Dad off already, or be too happy. Lord, make him just miserable enough . . .
For what?
To decide that something must change.
The front door has been left on the latch, like it’s 1950. Inside the hall is worse than she’d remembered: stuff piled everywhere, people clattering about upstairs, a smell of fags and burning meat. Motes of madness fall through the air. She’s holding her breath, almost daring to run for it, when she sees her sister looking up from the kitchen stairs.
‘Oho,’ says Leah. ‘It’s Stinky.’
‘God! Didn’t see you. Nearly had a heart attack,’ says Jess, taking off her backpack as if she was about to anyway. ‘Were you lurking at the spy hole?’
‘Ha,’ says Leah. ‘No. Too busy. And don’t expect a smile. If you’d bloody come yesterday . . .’
‘Don’t start,’ Jess says.
‘Not starting anything. No time.’
‘Good. It’s weird to be . . . How is he?’
‘Well. Obviously he misses you.’
‘Really?’
‘Come on, then,’ says Leah. ‘Let’s try to find a use for you,’ and Jess scowls. She mustn’t talk about her job, because hearing about people’s careers makes Leah feel bad; relationships, ditto. Anything could cause a sinking into despair. ‘How’s Mum?’
‘Your fucking mother doesn’t think. She’s totally vague, even more than usual. She’s just announced yet another person’s invited tonight, some MP. What about how Dad would feel?’
Their hug backfires; Leah’s scratchy wool embrace goes from loose to tight, like a trap. Despite everything, Jess closes her eyes and breathes in. She is beautiful, Jess’s sister, with her small mouth, small head, hair curled around her ears pointing to the neatness of her jawline. The Virgin Queen. It would be easy to hate her.
‘How are you?’ Jess, held like a wrestler, waits for her chance to pull free.
‘Fine. Fine. Are you coming to see Dad? He’s drowning in sucker-uppers.’
Jess says: ‘There must be stuff to organize. Are you on track?’
Leah’d had hopes. She’d been sure that, up there in Scotland, her sister would quickly remember how lucky she is, unlike those she’d left behind, and want to help them.
‘Everything’s fine,’ Leah tells her. ‘So aren’t you coming to talk to Dad? What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you desperate to?’
Jess shrugs. She was a great child shrugger: plenty of shoulder action, hands twirling in the air like a New Yorker. Now she seems subdued. It’s like with their dad, all over again; she turns against them.
She doesn’t look happy, Leah thinks, and she should be. She needs to understand that it’s getting urgent. I can’t wait.
‘I still can’t believe he’s really doing a show,’ says Jess tentatively. Leah already has that heart-sinking aggrieved look. Her small arched brows are drawn together. ‘Do you think he’s . . . It will be good, won’t it?’
Leah dodges. She’s a pro. ‘You didn’t let Paise out, did you?’
Allegedly Paisley has emotional difficulties. He was rescued from a wicked shopkeeper. He’s afraid of snow, mice, men: ‘Asian men,’ Ray says, ‘particularly. Sorry, my cat’s a racist.’
Jess always tells him, ‘Dad, you can’t say that,’ and he claims he doesn’t understand why.
He insists Leah has a gift for feline communication. ‘She should have been a telly vet. If not a model.’
‘I’m handling the whole thing,’ Leah tells Jess, ‘for him. It’s going to be major. OK? Life does go on without you.’
‘Fine.’ Jess glances at the stairs, delays a moment longer. ‘I’ll help, though, if you need, if . . .’
‘Dad did say you’d make it all about you. Don’t trip on the step.’
‘I know,’ Jess says, gritting her teeth so hard her molars creak. ‘I did live here.’
‘You still do,’ says Leah. ‘In your soul.’
Jess takes a deep breath through her nose. Martyn says she should shrug off Leah’s digs, her father’s put-downs. He thinks it’s funny that Jess cannot bear to be teased, that she cannot endure these childish things.
Should she leave her bag? She takes off her damp coat. ‘Is Martyn . . . ?’
‘Martyn’s so good with him,’ says Leah. ‘You’re very lucky.’
The living room is heaving. For a second, two, their father feigns not noticing her in the doorway.
Then he turns. ‘And you are?’
Everyone else laughs. Her eyes feel dusty; the sockets itch. They behave as if squalor is normal; the broken picture frames balanced against the skirting board, the dying yucca, grotty bookshelves like museums of junk: keys, icons, chess pieces, impossibly small pencil stubs, what her father calls his artefacts, mostly corks with needle legs. When someone drops a book, the Hanrahans inhale sharply. But Ray is grinning, opening his arms like a head waiter, although he does his trick of pretending he can’t quite pronounce her name: ‘Yessica!’
‘Hi, Dad.’
‘Here she is,’ he says. ‘The wee prodigal.’
‘I’m not—’
‘What do you think of my haircut?’
‘It’s very . . .’ she stops herself saying handsome. This is life as Ray’s other daughter; the meting out of his pleasures, denying his ego its nasty thrills. ‘Neat,’ and, instantly, his welcome cools.
