door,’ Hilary said. ‘Our new neighbours. Asians. Very nice. A pair of boys and an older girl at university. I think she said Cambridge. They were all visiting this afternoon, though, aunties and cousins and all, coming over for a party in the garden. That sort of person, they keep in touch with every one of their family, having them over at the drop of a hat. Live with them, too – there’s always an old mother in the spare room, sewing away, not speaking much English.’
‘How many are they next door?’
‘Oh, I’m not talking about next door. There’s only four or five of them, less than us. Practical, professional people. Speak better English than you do. I meant the families I used to see when I was in practice – nine or ten of them, living on top of each other, you couldn’t understand how they were related to each other, happy as clams. Baffling.’
‘It’s the culture, I expect,’ Leo said.
‘Of course it’s the culture,’ Hilary said shortly. ‘I don’t think anyone would suggest it was biological necessity.’
‘I see.’
Hilary looked at him. He might have registered for the first time just which child it was who had arrived. ‘Can you get time off work like this?’ he said. ‘Don’t you have hotels to write about? Tell the readers how luxe they are? Counting the sausages at breakfast? That sort of thing?’
‘That sort of thing,’ Leo said. ‘I’ll have to take their word for the number of sausages at breakfast, though. I just go down for the day.’
‘What a wonderful way to earn a living,’ Hilary said.
Leo smiled graciously. He had made a decision, long ago, and with renewed force on the train coming up to Sheffield, that he would not respond to Hilary’s disgusted comments on his job. Of the four of them, it was only Lavinia, his younger sister, who had anything resembling a job that Hilary thought worth doing, and that not very much: she had left her job as a marketing assistant for Procter and Gamble and was now working for a medical charity. Lowest on the scale was Hugh, just out of drama school, scrabbling for parts in this and that. Blossom had four children and a colossal house in the country: she was excused, with all the glee at Hilary’s command whenever he spoke about her. Leo did not do the job that the elder son of a doctor should do. He knew that. He worked for one of the daily newspapers that Hilary never read and, between subbing the copy of grander writers, was permitted from time to time to go round the country, visiting hotels and restaurants and writing a paragraph on their pretensions. How he longed, sometimes, to be allowed to spend the night at one of these places, and be rude about it afterwards! But the hoteliers told him they were aiming to introduce a new level of luxury to Harrogate, and he went home from a long day taking detailed notes about thread counts, and wrote, ‘The Belvedere Hotel is going to introduce a new level of luxury to the already excellent Harrogate hotel scene.’ It was the job that the recently divorced son of a doctor did.
‘How’s Catherine?’ Hilary said, as if he had closely followed Leo’s train of thought into the deep morass of his failures. ‘I always liked Catherine.’
‘I always liked Catherine, too,’ Leo said. ‘Catherine’s absolutely fine. She’s staying with Blossom, in fact, as we speak.’
‘Blossom said she was going to come up soon, but I can’t imagine when,’ Hilary said. ‘I told her she didn’t need to bring the children – there’s a difference in coming if you have to bring four children.’
‘It takes some organization, I expect,’ Leo said.
His father stood up; jounced his fists in his pocket; went to the window and looked out, pretending to be very interested by something in the garden. Finally he made a casual-sounding comment.
‘I was thinking the other day,’ Hilary said, ‘what would it be like to have your family – all your family, the grown-up bits as well – all of them around all the time?’
3.
‘It must be terribly hard for your father,’ Leo’s mother used to say, ‘to spend the whole day telling people exactly what to do. And then come home and find out that he can’t do the same to us. We don’t follow doctors’ orders, do we, darling?’
Whenever Hilary said something of great import, something he had been contemplating for days and weeks, he brought it out casually, sometimes walking towards the door or turning away while he spoke. Leo supposed that it was the habit of an old GP, getting the right answer to an important question about vices or symptoms by asking it in passing. In just such a way, he had chattily said, ‘Oh, another thing – I don’t suppose you’re drinking much more than a bottle of vodka a day?’ or ‘Still taking it out on you, is he, your husband?’ just as the patient was getting up to leave his consulting room. His children had got wise to it, of course, and the words ‘Oh, by the way …’ or ‘I don’t know whether it’s of any importance, but …’ had long put them on guard. Only Hugh could imitate it convincingly, the way Hilary’s voice querulously rose in light, casual enquiry, like the happy, imperfect memory of an old song.
But this was not an enquiry: this was Hilary observing that he didn’t know what it would be like to have your family, the grown-up bits as well, around you all the time. He was not – could not be – casually suggesting that all his children uproot themselves and come and live in his house. It could only be a general observation, yet Hilary had brought it out exactly as he brought out the one significant statement of the hour, with a careful lack of weight, his voice rising a jocular octave. What would it be like to have your family, your grown-up family, living around you all the time? Leo said, ‘Ye-esss,’ and then, ‘Well …’ and then a delaying ‘Erm’ that threatened to turn into a hum. He was examining the statement from all sides. Finally he had to respond. His father had fallen silent, waiting, head slightly cocked, for the answer.
‘It would be nice,’ he said. ‘But it’s not very practical nowadays. I suppose people elsewhere marry and move in and work alongside each other. We probably wouldn’t get on, anyway.’
‘I always thought it was odd that you threw in the towel so early.’
‘Threw in the towel?’
‘With Catherine.’
‘Oh,’ Leo said. ‘We’re much better off now.’
But his father shook his head irritably, and Leo understood that he was thinking about their separation and divorce from his own point of view.
The marriage had been failing for ever – sometimes Leo felt that what had separated them permanently, put an end to whatever joy there had been, had been the long, painful and ugly preparations for their immense wedding. For eight months before the wedding, there had been something to talk about in absorbing and horrible detail, every aspect of it. They had gone on fucking – that was the thing, the way they’d fucked ceaselessly, three times a day, four, the feeling that here he’d met his match. But before the wedding you couldn’t help seeing that the fuck came at the end of a big argument. Disagreement about a choice between napkins – surprising personal remark – serious row – apology – fuck. Catherine had been swept up in the intricacies; Leo had gone along with the process and the reconciliatory fuck; and then, three days into the honeymoon, sitting on a beach in the Seychelles, facing the theatrical sunset, she had turned to him and he, unwillingly, to her. They had seen that they really had nothing more to say each other. He had got a good deal from the Seychelles Tourist Board for flights and accommodation and a couple of excursions.
So
