father had shaken his head irritably. For Hilary, the crisis had come at that moment when, in fact, Leo and Catherine’s marriage – their divorce, rather, it was so much more permanent, dynamic and long-running – had gone beyond the new lacerations of contempt and insult and into a curious cosy zone where the whole thing was the topic of despairing, rueful, shared jokes, mock generosity about awarding custody of the household’s colossal Lego collection, the occasional absurd, almost ironic fuck, with Leo not bothering to take his socks off, and the important question of who would have the more successful divorce party when it was all done. Catherine had not come to break the news. It was for Leo alone to see the collapse of his mother’s face, his father turning to him with what looked very much like irritation. He had quite enjoyed it, actually.
‘People stay married all the time,’ Hilary said.
‘Don’t they just,’ Leo said. ‘Do you mind if I turn the lights on?’
‘Do as you please,’ Hilary said. He watched him closely as he moved about the room, turning on the two standard lamps, the other table lamps; there was a central light, a brass construction, but no one ever lit it: it cast too brilliant a light over everything. ‘No one else planning a divorce, I don’t suppose.’
‘Not that …’ Leo began, but Hilary didn’t expect or need a response.
‘I rather thought – I don’t know, but I rather thought’ – his voice went up in that querulous, amused, treble way again – ‘it might be my turn.’
‘Your turn?’
‘My turn to get a divorce,’ Hilary said.
‘That would be interesting,’ Leo said.
‘After all,’ Hilary said, ‘it’s now or never, you might say.’
‘No time like the present,’ Leo said. ‘You might even find it an interesting way to fill the time, you and Mummy.’
‘Oh, I haven’t told your mother yet,’ Hilary said. ‘I’m just going to present her with it when it’s all …’
‘What?’
‘When it’s all …’
‘When it’s all …’
There were questions that, in the past, Leo’s father had raised with him in exactly this way, at exactly this time of day, when there was nobody else in the house. When Leo’s life had run away from Oxford, the conversation about his future had begun here – they had, surely, been in the same chairs. Hilary was sitting and, in his light-serious voice, talking about getting a divorce in the same incontrovertible way. Hilary gazed, half smiling, patiently, into the middle distance, waiting for Leo’s slow understanding to catch up.
‘Are you serious? You’re not saying …’
‘Am I serious?’ Hilary said. ‘About getting a divorce?’
‘A divorce from Mummy?’ Leo said.
‘A divorce from Mummy,’ Hilary said. He sat back; he might have been enjoying himself. ‘Why wouldn’t I be serious?’
Leo stared.
‘I should have done it years ago,’ Hilary said. ‘Actually, I was going to do it five years ago. Perfect time. You’d all left home. Then you waltz in with your news. That was that. Couldn’t possibly have two divorces in the family at the same time, would look absurd. So there you are. It has to be now, really.’
‘You’re not serious,’ Leo said.
‘I wish you’d stop asking me if I’m serious.’
‘But Mummy –’
‘Oh, Mummy,’ Hilary said, in a full, satisfied voice: it was the voice of parody, but also of warmly amused affection for something almost beyond recall. ‘Well, I’ll tell Mummy myself. You can leave that to me.’
But that was not what Leo had meant. He did not see how he could point out what he had wanted to say. The urgent point that first presented itself to Leo was that the situation would solve itself: that a man who wanted an end to his marriage could, in Hilary’s position, save himself the trouble of a divorce by waiting six months and burying his wife. It was only in a secondary way that the humane point cropped up, that his mother might, at the end, be spared something. Silence had fallen between them. His father, surely, had never said what he had said.
‘You shouldn’t even say such a thing,’ Leo said.
‘Oh?’ Hilary said. ‘Why? Is it forbidden now?’
‘You’re …’ Leo waved in the air.
‘I’m?’ Hilary said. ‘Or we are? Are you trying to allude to something unmentionable? Oh – I think I see. You think divorce shouldn’t happen after the age of, what, seventy? Or sixty? Or is it the length of marriage that’s in question? One isn’t permitted to think of divorce after forty years of unhappiness? The thing I don’t believe you quite understand is that I am still a free person, able to take my own decisions, and your mother has a degree of freedom, too. I am under no illusions. She deserves to have a future without being shackled to me. There should be an end to this ‒ this punishment.’
‘But she’s dying,’ Leo said, forced into it. He looked away.
‘Well,’ Hilary said. ‘Well. Yes. That’s why there’s some urgency about the matter.’
‘You must be mad,’ Leo said. With that he hit, apparently, the right answer. His father sank back in his chair, almost smiling. He had been waiting for exactly this. He might have started the whole conversation to lead Leo to say that he was mad.
‘You might like to reflect whether you have ever changed anyone’s course of action by calling them mad. Worth thinking about, that one. And here comes Gertrude,’ his father said, with sardonic pleasure.
Gertrude must have been approaching for some time, and now she stood in the doorway. Her scaled neck reached upwards, swaying to and fro: she placed first her left foot, then her right foot, on the carpet, with almost angry determination, as if making a point. No, she appeared to be saying, not this, but this, here, here, you see, and her right foot stomped down. It should have banged with the determination of Gertrude’s movement, but there was no sound, and Gertrude walked forward to inspect what was going on. Did she know who anyone was? Had she recognized Leo and come forward with her greenish-grey, flexible but hard features bent downwards in angry disapproval to inspect him at close quarters? Gertrude had been here for ever; she had been bought when Lavinia was born to give the older children something to take an interest in. Sometimes Leo, greatly daring, had called her Gertie, but, somehow, never when she was in the room; her look of firm inspection and silent disapproval was too much. Now she came forward in her silent stomp, the almost agonized way her fat little legs held her up in the air. How did she pass the days? Was the arrival of Leo the cause of unbearable excitement, or just another flittingly trivial occurrence in the smooth passage of seasons from waking to sleeping and back again?
‘Dear old Gertrude,’ Hilary said, with relaxed warmth. ‘Here she comes, dear old thing. I gave her some hibiscus yesterday. My goodness, she enjoyed that. Come to say hello to Leo, have we?’
‘Blossom never carried out her threat, then?’
