stop halfway down Winchelsea Avenue? You asked me what the matter was and I told you I didn’t know, that I just felt a bit dizzy. It was the feeling I had experienced at the church, and when selling Reuben’s bicycle. A darkening of vision accompanied by a kind of tingling towards the rear of my skull. Similar, I suppose, to pins and needles, only this felt warmer, as though tiny fires were raging through the dark spaces of my mind, generating sparks that wriggled and danced before losing their glow. And these fires were burning those parts of me that knew when and where I was, leaving me for a moment deprived of all identity.
I turned to see the house I had passed, number 17, and it looked as depressing as all the others on the street. I told myself to keep my head. It was only a dose of the shudders, I reasoned. A result of frayed nerves and poor sleep, nothing more. Although if you ever wondered why we never walked that way again, you have the reason.
By the time we reached Cynthia’s bungalow I was feeling much better, and quite hungry. Although of course one can never be quite hungry enough for one of Cynthia’s curries.
‘It’s an authentic Goan recipe,’ she said, as it slopped onto our plates. ‘I printed it out from the computer. It was meant to be mild but I’m worried I might have overdone it a little with the chilli.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it’s fine,’ I told her, as I tried to avert my eyes from the charcoal sketch of a nude on the table. We must have arrived before she had time to frame it. A study of creased female flesh from one of her life-drawing classes.
‘Mmm, it’s lovely,’ you said, enjoying your first mouthful. You actually sounded like you meant it.
Cynthia smiled at you, and seemed for a moment mildly entranced. ‘Oh good. Good. Not too hot?’
‘No,’ you said, although within five minutes you were in the kitchen topping up your glass of water.
‘I’ve thought about what you said,’ I told Cynthia, in a hushed tone, as you ran the tap. ‘And I think you might be right. I’m going to book a holiday.’
‘Good, Terence. Good. Have you told Bryony?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m going to keep it a surprise.’
‘Well, maybe you should consult her first.’
I shook my head. ‘She’s always loved surp—’
You were back, drinking from your glass, feeling our admiring eyes upon your neck. Two old ducks in awe of a swan.
Somehow, we made it through the curry. A feat of endurance on all our parts I imagine, and Cynthia tried to humour us with some of her old am dram stories. ‘It was on the opening night of The Glass Menagerie . . . Ray was in his toga . . . I was sitting in the green room . . . It was the third act . . . There I was, queen of the fairies . . . And someone broke wind in the audience . . . Oh, our faces!’
And then she went quiet, keeping her dark lips in position even after her smile had died. For quite a while she stared into some indeterminate space between us, as the sadness shone in her eyes.
‘It was less than a year ago, wasn’t it?’ she said, after a while. ‘When Reuben did his work experience at the theatre?’
I tried to think. Yes. It must have been. You had spent a week at the music college, arranged weeks in advance, while Reuben was still unsorted right up to the last moment. If it wasn’t for Cynthia having a word with David wotsit then he’d have been in all sorts of trouble at school.
‘Yes,’ you said. ‘It was a year ago.’
Your grandmother gave a sad laugh. ‘Poor boy. Having to do it the week of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Stuck outside looking after a donkey every day!’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes.’
‘Did you ever see it?’ Cynthia asked me. ‘You weren’t there, were you? When he was struggling to push that bloody creature on the stage?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No. I had a meeting, I think. A dealer. I can’t remember.’
You smiled a distant smile. ‘I was there.’
‘Yes,’ Cynthia nodded. ‘Yes, you were. You were.’ She saw you looking at her unframed sketch and waited for the silence to run its course. ‘Now, I must tell you what happened at life drawing . . .’
Two days before the end of your term we sat upstairs, eating breakfast together. You were in the same uniform you had been in the previous morning, your hair in an identical style, yet as you sat there eating your limp cornflakes I couldn’t help but notice that you looked transformed.
‘Dad? What’s up? You’re creeping me out.’
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t tell you that I was made numb, made petrified by your sudden beauty.
Of course, you had always been a pleasure on the eye. I had never been able to ignore the way strangers had shied away from Reuben’s frowning, birthmarked face to focus on yours. Nor had I been surprised when Mrs Weeks had wanted to paint your portrait. Yet rather than a source of pride, that morning I must confess your face triggered a startling fear.
Someone had overfilled the cup. You were never meant to look quite this way. Oh certainly, your mother had been a gorgeous creature in her youth, yet her beauty was an acquired taste. Like Bow porcelain. Or art nouveau. When I first met her she required a certain Byronic imagination to render her wholly perfect. Those slight, asymmetric flaws were part of her charm.
What troubled me was the obvious nature of your loveliness. In that tiny last skip from girlhood to womanhood, in that most subtle overnight alteration, you had bloomed from a limber elf-child into a Juliet, a Dido, a Venus. My fear was about the impact this beauty would have on the male population. After all, boys don’t acquire such taste. It is there from the start, formed in the bliss of their womb-warmed dreams, their sole incentive for being born.
I knew that this spelt trouble. I knew that you would soon be inspiring the wrong kind of attention. Boys would buzz around you and I feared you would enjoy that buzz, welcome it, walk like a novice beekeeper straight into it, unaware of any potential sting.
‘Dad. Stop staring. It’s impolite.’
Tell me, how do you respond? ‘My daughter, my darling Petal, you must never leave the house again.’
No.
‘Your eyes,’ I said. ‘Have you done something to them? Are you wearing make-up?’
‘A bit.’
‘For school?’
‘You can wear make-up to school now, Dad. It’s not 1932. It’s not a nunnery.’
‘Green eyeshadow?’
‘It’s two days before the holidays. Nobody cares.’
I knew I shouldn’t have been overly concerned. After all, there were only girls at school. But what about afterwards? What about your walk home? You must surely have crossed paths with the lowly specimens from St John’s. In my mind I saw you laughing. In my mind I saw an anonymous boy’s anonymous arm around your shoulder, steering you down a leafy, houseless path. And then the vision became less anonymous. It became him. It became that boy, Denny.
‘I will drive you to school. And I’ll pick you up.’
‘Dad, why? You haven’t driven me to school since I was twelve. It’s only up the road.’
‘I worry about you, that’s all. Please, let me drive you. And let me pick you up. Cynthia will be here to look after the shop. Please.’
I squeezed so much into that final ‘please’ that a flash of your old self returned. You probably realised I was thinking about Reuben, that I was feeling guilty for letting him slip beyond my radar so many times.
You shrugged. ‘Do whatever you like.’
In the car I told you