open – his dad wasn’t exactly generous with anything, and that included WD40 – and his dad stood there, smiling.
‘I’m taking you into the business, son of mine. You’re ready now.’
Timothy had found nothing to say.
‘Aren’t you going to thank me?’
‘Yes, Dad. Sorry, Dad. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Timothy was too young to realise that by this his dad was trying as best he could to say, ‘I love you, son.’
They had gone inside and his father had made a pot of tea and produced a couple of scones – a rare treat, but treats came with strings at number ninety-six, and the string was that his future was going to be discussed, or rather announced, and fixed for eternity. Timothy liked Marmite on his scones: he had described the clash between sweet and sour as ‘orgasmic’ but that was before his weekend with Naomi. On this occasion he hadn’t dared get Marmite. His father disapproved. ‘Marmite on scones? What travesty is this?’
‘Well, lad, I saw you on stage and I’ll say this, you were good. Our Timothy, the product of my very own seed, playing Romeo, who’d have thought it?’ His father had his very own, idiosyncratic way of expressing himself. ‘As I say, you were good, but…but, Timothy, you weren’t that good. You are not an actor. The boards are not in your blood. The curtain has fallen on your brief career.’
‘No, Dad, I know, I agree, I don’t want to be an actor.’
‘Good. Good. That’s good. So what can you do? You’re not stupid, but…but, Timothy. We don’t want you ending up a plumber now, do we? Some say taxidermy is a dying art. Not so, my boy. Not so. More tea?’
‘Thanks.’
Timothy had never thought of not being a taxidermist, but only because it had never occurred to him that he was ever going to be one. His ambitions stretched only to avoiding certain careers. He didn’t want to be an actor, or a plumber, or a dentist, or a lavatory cleaner, or a teacher, or a racing driver. He expected that, being neither brilliant nor thick, he would go to one of the lesser universities, and if that didn’t work out there was always Coningsfield Polytechnic. In the course of his prolonged studies he might or might not discover his vocation, which might or might not be the Church. He’d had no idea that he would suddenly, even urgently, need to make a decision as to his future. He was therefore unprepared to make a decision. Therefore he made no decision. And so, on that dark afternoon in that dark house, he realised that he didn’t want to be a taxidermist five minutes after he had become one.
Later, when he looked back on that afternoon, he realised that there was no way he could have made a decision, because there was no way he could have told his lonely old father, with his failing eyesight and his sad, short marriage, that he was not going to join him and support him in his business.
‘I have a steady trade, good contacts with most zoos, sources of supply from some of the great shooting estates of Old England. I’ve done well.’
‘You certainly have, Dad.’
‘It’s not riches. Riches don’t last. The Good Lord knows that. But it’s steady. Very steady. The Pickerings are steady people, Timothy, and you, you too are, I think, steady.’
‘I hope so, Dad.’
‘Is plumbing steady? No, it isn’t. Three warm winters on the trot and they’re knackered. But the world will always need taxidermists. Youngsters aren’t going into it. Youngsters don’t see further than the ends of their noses. That Naomi! Juliet! You can bet your bottom drawer she’ll be wanting to be a film star, off to London before the frost gets into the parsnips. I’d take money on it if gambling wasn’t a sin. No, as a taxidermist, boy, you’ll be able to clean up very nicely.’
Timothy has not told his dad that he has walked out with Naomi. He has certainly not told him that he has been to London with her, fucked her, gone down on her, been sucked by her. In some ways Timothy and his father are alike, but with regard to Naomi there is a gulf between them that makes the Gulf of Mexico look like a village duck pond.
Timothy has time to recall this conversation in its entirety because he is walking up the garden path very slowly indeed. The house is dark. There is not a room in it, including the smallest room, that does not contain at least one dead animal or bird. In the smallest room it is, naturally, the smallest creature, a mouse that died of heart failure when startled by the Ascot House cat. There is stained glass round the front door, only slightly cracked. The floors are a monument to the past glories of linoleum. When he opens the front door Timothy feels that he is stepping back fifty years.
At last, though, he can delay the moment no longer. Earls Court, the Amalfi, the whole of London fades away. The door squeaks slowly open, he smells the slightly stale, utterly masculine linoleum and lavatory cleaner smell of his home and there, in the dim, narrow hall, at the bottom of the creaky stairs, stands his father, staring at him, glaring at him, pulling his braces forward and then letting them fall back onto his grimy ketchup-stained shirt with a savagery that sends a chill through Timothy’s whole body.
His father comes forward and punches him in the face. Timothy staggers back, crashes into the little table by the door, falls to the ground. The dead fox that was on the table, his father’s pride and joy, the one that the customers first see on arrival, falls onto Timothy’s face. He hates the feel of the dead fox. He screams, grabs it and flings it off him. He cowers, expecting to be hit again. Then he thinks of Naomi and how he would hate her to see him cowering, and he glares at his father and tries to stand, but it’s as though his legs are made of rubber, he falls again.
He looks up at his father who no longer seems angry.
‘Naomi’s mother met the French teacher in Stead and Simpson’s,’ says his father. ‘A most unfortunate encounter.’
In that moment Timothy realises how naive it was of them to have thought that they could get away with it, and with his recognition of his naivety and of Naomi’s naivety the whole long weekend seems to be stripped of all its joy and beauty and become a tawdry episode involving two very young schoolchildren who thought they were grown up. He hates this. He barely listens to his father. He can guess the details anyway. Naomi had told her parents the French teacher was taking a school trip to Paris. But the French teacher is not in Paris, she is in Stead and Simpson’s in Coningsfield. Naomi’s mother wonders where Naomi can be. The French teacher knows, from her friend Mr Prentice, that Naomi and Timothy are seeing each other. It might be a good idea to phone Mr Pickering. Mr Pickering tells her that his son has gone to France on a school trip.
Roly Pickering bends over, holds out his hand to his son, and pulls him gently to his feet. He kisses the top of his son’s head.
‘I’m sorry I hit you,’ he says. ‘You’re all I have.’
Naomi walks from the station to the bus station, where she catches the number twenty-eight Pouters End bus. She sits upstairs and gazes out over her home town, seeing it and not seeing it, loving it and despising it. So much has happened since she took this journey in the opposite direction just three days ago. At moments she feels too adult to be contained here, to go back to school and hockey and maths and confirmation classes, and then she feels a wave of regret for her disappearing childhood. So many wonderful things happened in London, yet in the end the joy went out of it like a pricked…she is going to think ‘balloon’, but she had been Juliet in Shakespeare
