Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Doctor Baxter? Doctor Baxter?’
The voice pulled him up from the laptop, although he kept his eyes on the screen, waiting for the download to finish. ‘Phinn,’ he said wearily for what felt like the fiftieth time that day. ‘Please.’
Through the crowded studio his assistant, Annie, was rushing towards him, her iPad held out like a jousting lance. He idly wondered if she was mounted on a camera dolly, but no, he could hear those perpetual heels she wore clattering against the hard lino of the floor
‘Did they get the message to you? About next season — we’re greenlit for next year, isn’t that great?’
He eyed her warily. Since he’d left Yorkshire, Annie had been something of a perpetual fixture at his side, rushing him from studio to interview to photo shoot, from hotel to dubbing session with the efficiency of a very well-trained sheepdog working to an inaudible whistle; she had something of the same sharp sense of purpose and single-minded determination to get him through the gate. Phinn thought he had something of the same attitude towards her as he would have to a real dog, wary friendliness.
‘That’s great,’ he echoed. ‘Yeah. Wonderful.’ He shut the laptop screen, not wanting her to see the picture of Howe End.
‘Research?’ Her eyes were bright, fierce. She liked him, he realised, was just trying to be pleasant, it wasn’t her fault he was so unsociable. That gave him a little tremor of memory of Molly and her gentleness, which he brushed away with a sudden twitch of an elbow.
‘Just filling in some time. Checking up on the estate agent’s progress,’ he added.
‘Oh, okay, cool.’ She rested a hand on his shoulder in an attitude of possession. He wished she wouldn’t do that either, but his attempts to move away from her touch led to her hand following him almost as much as her eyes did. ‘Well . . . that’s it you’re pretty much done here.’
Phinn felt the weight of being rootless settle on him again and the image of Molly’s eyes rose like a ballcock of guilt. ‘Great. I’ll get my stuff and . . .’ And what, Phinn? Where is left for you to go?
‘Would you like to come to my place?’ Her voice, answering his unspoken question, made him frown.
‘No, really, I should . . . I mean, now that I’m selling the place in Yorkshire, I should go round some London estate agents, look for somewhere here.’
He could feel the drag at his heart even at the thought of it. Howe End passing out of his family for the first time in generations, the horrible relentlessness of London living; being at the beck and call of the BBC with only the Bristol flat to escape to, no high purple hills between him and the horizon. But what else is there? Go back and watch her living a life you can never be a part of? Sitting at a distance cursing yourself for your cowardice and your weakness?
Annie laughed. ‘Oh, nothing like that! God, no, if I wanted that we’d have to go to a hotel!’ She stepped a little closer, the palm of her hand scraping his shoulder through his shirt. ‘No. My son, you see . . . he’s seven, and he’d very much like to meet you. I told him I’d ask you, but he wasn’t to get too excited because you’re very busy. But . . . I just thought . . .’
The first touch of vulnerability Phinn could remember her ever showing crept into her voice. ‘He’s seen some of the recordings of the series . . . not meant to, of course, but I had some childcare issues and he came into the studio with me when we were showing some rough-cuts to advertisers, and . . .’ She cleared her throat, lost the fast, breathless, self-justification. ‘He thinks you’re really great,’ she said.
‘Oh.’ Oh? I stand in front of a green screen, or in a hole somewhere, and talk about physics. That doesn’t make me ‘great’, it makes me ‘employed’.
‘Plus, you keep going on about how horrible hotel tea is. I can at least make you a cup of something you’ll drink. You know, you’re getting dangerously diva about tea.’
‘Well.’ Phinn did a whistle-stop mental check of the alternatives. Yorkshire? Nothing there to hurry back for, except some ritual humiliation and the thought of having to dash to the shop after dark so as not to risk running into Molly. And Link’s awful barrage of questions that would force him into weak excuses and another step down into self-hatred . . . or another hotel room. Another night with the TV turned up too loud, staring at tablets he was too afraid to swallow down.
‘What’s his name, your son?’
‘Lucas.’
‘Then tell Lucas we’re on our way.’ It’ll be nice to meet someone who thinks I’m great and hasn’t had a chance to experience the many and varied ways in which I am a total failure of genetic material. Plus, she’s trying to be friendly, to extend something to me that no one else can be bothered to. They all see me as a commodity. At least Annie sees me as a person. And she’s right, hotel tea is awful.
* * *
My mother’s flat was beautiful. Pale grey walls and white woodwork were the perfect counterpoint to an arrangement of pink carnations which splayed from a white vase like a controlled explosion. The furniture was soft and toning and immaculate. I sat on an upright chair and tucked my feet in, legs crossed at the ankles — it was the kind of room that brought out the Finishing School even in someone whose idea of being Finished was brushing her hair.
Across the table sat my mother. Thin wisps of newly greying hair showed underneath the scarf she wore, tastefully wound around her head, her face looked softer somehow, for the adornment.
‘Well,’ she said. It was practically the first thing she’d said at all, since I’d turned up at the door. ‘I suppose Tim told you, then.’
‘Should I make some tea?’ I stood up, nearly crippling myself because the deep pile carpet hadn’t allowed the chair to slide back far enough to clear the table, and I caught both thighs on its Louis Quinze underside.
My mother did something surprising then. She smiled. ‘No. I think we should have a talk, don’t you?’ There was still a teacherly tone to her voice, one that made the word ‘detention’ flash in front of my eyes, and made me want to apologise for whatever it was that I’d done, but I stopped myself. This is just how she is. She’s as lost in the situation as you are, it’s nothing personal.
‘Yes. I think we should.’ And my answer obviously surprised her. Maybe she’d been expecting tantrums, although having a vase of flowers nearby wouldn’t have been the smartest move if I had lost my temper. Maybe, given the way I’d behaved whilst growing up, I’d given her cause to expect overreaction. ‘Properly. I’m sorry, Mum.’
And she was surprised again. ‘I should have thought it was I who must apologise. We never meant to hurt you, Molly, it was . . .’ A head shake, momentary doubt in a woman who’d never shown a second’s hesitation in my entire life. ‘It was wrong. And yet.’ She smiled a smile that showed me the woman that she must have been all along. Underneath. ‘Some things are just meant to be.’
And then we talked.
There was no breaking down in tears on either side, neither of us was ready for that. But there were explanations, of a sort.
‘I never wanted children,’ my mother said. ‘But that didn’t mean that I never wanted you .’ And that pretty well summed up her side of the conversation, she didn’t try to excuse my upbringing but she did make me understand how it was to find yourself living a life you’d never asked for and trying to make the best of it.
And, in return, I tried . . . I really tried, to tell her that I understood. Neither of us really had the words or the experience to say what we truly felt, but I no longer blamed her for my older-man fixations, my teenage rebellions, or tried to pin a deprived childhood on her. I’d had riding lessons for God’s sake, how had I ever thought I’d been deprived? I’d never gone hungry, never had to wear outgrown shoes . . . and if she’d been distant and always working, well, now I was starting to realise, that’s what she’d had to do to keep us both. She’d really had little more understanding of the situation than I had, barely more than a child herself when I’d arrived and thrown her life plan out of the window.
I left when Tim came home. We might have reached a stage of tentative forgiveness but that was going to take a while to get over. My mother and I weren’t exactly falling into one another’s arms, but I no longer felt as though she resented me and, hopefully, she now knew that my off the rails behaviour was over. Done with. She’d even managed to mutter, albeit between slightly gritted teeth, that she’d read the book that won the Anderson Award, and appreciated my part in it.
I looked back when I got to the car. Up at the window of the flat that Tim had bought her. She’d retired from teaching when the cancer had returned, and was now doing a little exam marking and tutoring from home. Her home, all tasteful and soft and very much Tim’s style. The key rattled in the Micra as I started the engine, on petrol I’d had to borrow the money from Caro for, and it was my turn to grit my teeth. And yet . . . even the chilly cavernousness that was Howe End felt more welcoming than all those squishy cushions and colour-co-ordinated furniture. Maybe she deserved it, maybe she and Tim deserved each other?
I looked up again. The lights were just coming on in this carefully middle-class south London suburb, evening settling around everything like a blanket, everyone all tucked up and cosy in their certainties and their lifestyles. None of it belonged to me. Perhaps it was the place my mother had fought for, this comfortable existence in a colour-coded environment with a man who obviously cared about her. Maybe this was what she’d wanted all those years, just someone to love her and a life where she didn’t have to get up at six to get me to the childminder before the first teacher’s meeting.
And me? What did I want?
I sat in the Micra, which smelled more of chickens than any car should do, and leaned my head back against the seat. London isn’t mine any more. I’ve got used to the countryside, to shops where they know you, a pub that has your ‘usual’ on the bar even before you get there. Lovely, velvet-muzzled Stan trying to eat my head . . . and I want Phinn. As he is, all ridiculously over-dramatic and emotional, not as some micromanaging bossy alpha male. But he’s never going to let me tell him so, because he thinks that’s what he should be, even when he knows he can’t.
My head was heavy and my eyes were tired, it had been a long drive down from Yorkshire. And now I was driving up to North London to stay with Mike and his wired family — oh, I’m sure my mother would have offered me the spare bedroom, all maroon and cream, very tasteful if you liked the feeling that you were sleeping in someone’s lower intestine. If I’d asked. But truthfully, I didn’t think I could bear being that close to her and Tim, they’d cheated on me after all, however understandable it might have been, however much I thought I knew how their relationship felt, they’d still cheated, and I didn’t think good manners and tea would get me through an entire night without wanting to throw something. And Mike had offered his sofa bed and a chat about my future with Miles to Go magazine. So. I let my head fall onto the steering wheel, then lifted it slowly, raising my eyes again for one last look at the life I no longer wanted.
And there they were. Hazy, as though reflected on the cloud from a distance, almost like a projection; dancing their carefree fandango on that boundary where the night was shifting in to ease out the daylight. The lights. There for a moment, a ghost of a dream, and then gone on a gust, like the party candles of an impatient child.
I didn’t even wonder this time. I knew now where I had to go. Home.
* * *
‘Lucas, this is Doctor Baxter.’
Annie ushered Phinn through into a surprisingly cluttered living space. He’d imagined that her home would have been as sparsely fashionable as her appearance, as organised and consciously stylish as she was. But it was a turmoil of Lego and clothing, an ironing board set up near the window and boxes of toys overflowing as though a tsunami of plastic had just passed. ‘Mum! I’m back.’
An older woman emerged, wiping her hands on a tea towel, but Phinn barely had time to register her presence before his hand was grasped surprisingly firmly, and shaken, by a small blond boy wearing a green velvet jacket and huge glasses. ‘I am very pleased to meet you, Doctor Baxter.’
Phinn blinked for a moment. Was this really a child, or had a professor of restricted growth somehow just introduced himself. ‘Er, hello . . . Lucas?’ he said, tentatively. At least he’s small. And I’m cleverer than him. He took in the velvet jacket and glasses. Probably. I’m better dressed, anyway.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ the vision asked him, solemnly. ‘I’m not allowed to boil the kettle, but Grandma can do it for me.’ This was followed by a huge, face-splitting grin that turned the miniature don into a proper boy again. ‘I can’t really believe that the Doctor Baxter is in my living room! Can you make a Lego Death Star?’
And so, Phinn Baxter, PhD, Lecturer in Astrophysics and BBC4’s ‘Great Hope’ in the viewings war, found himself on his knees in a cluttered living room in Chiswick, piecing together Lego bricks with a list of his greatest achievements chattering into his ear.
This is some kind of brainwashing attempt, got to be. He slotted another set of bricks together, whilst hearing about how ‘excellent’ he’d been at making a joke about plasma. But fun though, actually. Why did I never get to make Lego Death Stars when I was seven? Oh yes, too busy getting my A* GCSEs in Physics and Maths. He glanced around the room quickly. The two women were sitting on the newspaper strewn sofa, chatting quietly while in front of him a little boy dressed as though he was auditioning to be the next Doctor Who gave a precis of the bits he’d seen of the new show. Is this what I missed? Mum and Grandma making tea, the smell of old toast and seven Christmases worth of plastic toys?
Yes. His heart gave an uncomfortable double-beat. This is what should have been. How I should have been. Why did they never let me be a child? Why have I always had to be so fucking grown up? It’s not fair!
He only realised he said the last bit aloud when Annie and her mother glanced up at him, their chattering temporarily interrupted. Lucas reached over and patted him gently on the shoulder. ‘I know,’ he said, gravely. ‘But life’s not fair, Doctor Baxter. We just have to do what we can with what we’ve got.’ A nod towards the Lego and a confidentially lowered voice. ‘I really wanted a Diagon Alley set, but . . . this was what I got.’
Phinn looked down at the growing model in his hands. And I wanted Molly. But I’ve settled for not having her, because . . . why? Because I let being clever dictate who I am? Because I’m afraid I’m not . . . Death Star enough for her?
A sudden flicker outside the window caught his attention and snagged it away from the plastic model. It drew him over to the washed-grey of the net curtains across the glass, which he tugged aside to reveal the thin strip of sky visible between the brick gables and satellite dishes, with his heart pounding his chest like an internal Tarzan. There, dimpling the darkening sky, pricking at the night as though to incite it to action, were the lights. His lights. His and Molly’s.
‘Doctor Baxter?’ Lucas was standing beside him.
He reached out a hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Lucas put his hand in Phinn’s.
‘Is there a good toyshop near here?’ Phinn found himself asking.
‘There’s a Toymaster just down the road, near the Italian Deli,’ Annie said, frowning.
‘Good.’ Phinn headed towards the door, Lucas trotting along with him. ‘Because we need a Diagon Alley, and we need one right now !’