And then he slams the phone down and walks out.
‘Aren’t you going to talk to him?’ I ask David.
‘What am I going to say?’
‘I don’t know. Try to make him feel better.’
‘He shouldn’t have said that. I’m very disappointed in him. We’re supposed to be above all that.’
‘But we’re not, are we?’
‘I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about me and him.’
‘That’s the trouble, isn’t it? You were human all the time. You just forgot.’
I go to talk to him. He’s lying on his bed, chewing furiously, staring at the ceiling.
‘I’m sorry I swore in front of the kids.’
‘That’s OK. They’ve heard that word a lot from their father.’
‘In the old days?’
‘Yeah, that’s right. In the old days.’ It had never occurred to me that David no longer swears in front of the children. That’s a good thing, surely? OK, some would argue that this has been a Pyrrhic victory, achieved only by having a man with turtles for eyebrows coming to live with us for what seems like years, and at a cost to all semblance of a normal family life, but I choose to accentuate the positive.
‘You shouldn’t beat yourself up about it,’ I tell him. ‘I mean, I only heard your side of the argument, but she seems pretty unreasonable. What was all that stuff about seventy pence?’
‘Her bloody Simon LeBon poster. She’s never forgotten it.’
‘I gathered that.’
‘Katie, I can’t stand her. She’s awful. Always has been, always will be. Cantata! What a bloody idiot.’
With enormous self-control I pass up the opportunity for first-name-calling.
‘It’s OK.’
‘No it’s not. She’s my sister.’
‘But she’s doing OK without you.’
‘I don’t know that.’
‘If she needed you, you would have heard from her. Despite the unfortunate Simon LeBon poster incident.’
‘Do you think?’
‘Of course.’
‘I still feel I’m a failure though. You know, it’s love this, and love that, and I fucking hate her. Excuse my language.’
And in my opinion, he’s right. He is a failure, and self-interest requires that I let him know. Who are these people, that they want to save the world and yet they are incapable of forming proper relationships with anybody? As GoodNews so eloquently puts it, it’s love this and love that, but of course it’s so easy to love someone you don’t know, whether it’s George Clooney or Monkey. Staying civil to someone with whom you’ve ever shared Christmas turkey—now there’s a miracle. If GoodNews could pull that one off with his warm hands, he could live with us for ever.
‘But think of all the people you help who do need you,’ I tell him. ‘Isn’t that worth more?’
‘D’you think?’
‘Of course.’
And thus GoodNews is encouraged to wreak yet more havoc, by someone who should know better. But—irony upon irony—I know I’m doing the right thing.
It is easy to track Nigel down. David is a member of his Old Boys’ Association, and within minutes he has a mobile phone number.
We are all allowed to listen to the subsequent conversation, so confident is David of a warm and possibly even tearful welcome.
‘Hello, is that Nigel?’
‘—‘
‘This is David Grant.’ He gives a small smile of anticipation.
‘—‘
‘David Grant. From school.’
‘—‘
‘Yes. That’s right. Ha ha. How are you?’
‘—‘
‘Good, good.’
‘—‘
‘Fine, thank you. What are you up to these days?’
‘—‘
‘Right, right. Excellent.’
‘—‘
‘Gosh.’
‘—‘
‘Wow.’
‘—‘
‘Really? Well done. Listen—’
‘—‘
‘That’s a lot of megabytes.’
‘—‘
‘That’s a lot of turnover.’
‘—‘
‘That’s a lot of airmiles. Listen—’
‘—‘
‘Really? Congratulations.’
‘—‘
‘No, fifteen years is nothing nowadays. Look at Michael Douglas and…’
‘—‘
‘Is she?’
‘—‘
‘Does she?’
‘—‘
‘That’s a lot of magazine covers.’
‘—‘
‘Did she? Well, I’m sure Rod must be heartbroken. He probably doesn’t want to talk about it, ha ha… Anyway, I just wanted to catch up. And now I have. Bye, Nigel!’
And he hangs up. I look at him, and for a moment I see a flash of the man I used to know: angry, contemptuous, eaten up with envy and discontent.
‘You didn’t invite him to dinner.’
‘No. I’m not sure it’s much of a thing for him any more, the bullying.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. And I didn’t know whether he’d get on with Barmy Brian.’
‘Right.’
‘And he’s a pig. I’d have ended up thumping him again if he came round here.’
‘Like I thumped Christopher?’ says Tom cheerfully.
‘Exactly,’ David says.
‘There are some people you just have to hit, aren’t there?’ says Tom. ‘You just can’t help it.’
David doesn’t say anything, but the absence of an anguished correction is, I can’t help feeling, significant. It seems a shame that some sort of epiphanic moment should come during a conversation between my husband and my son about perpetrating violence, but I’ll take epiphanic moments where I can find them.
‘Who are you going to try next?’ I ask David as we are getting ready for bed.
‘I dunno,’ he says morosely. ‘Because that didn’t work, did it?’
‘I’m not entirely sure what it was intended to achieve. But probably it didn’t, no.’
David sits down heavily on the not-quite dirty clothes that cover our bedroom chair. There are so many clothes that he ends up all lop-sided, slanting towards the window like a house-plant starved of light.
‘I know you think it’s all stupid.’
‘What? Phoning people up who don’t remember you to apologize for something they’ve forgotten you ever did?’
‘Not just Nigel Richards. All of it.’
I don’t say anything. I just sigh, which is as good a way of answering the question as any.
‘Well, so do I,’ he says. ‘I think it’s incredibly stupid. Pointless. Pathetic.’
‘You’re just feeling discouraged. You’ve had a knockback. Apologize to someone else. That poor bastard whose life you used to make a misery on the local paper. That friend of your mum’s you refused to invite to our wedding.’
‘I’m not talking about apologies. I’m talking about everything. Feeding the poor. Telling everyone to give their money away. Writing that book. It’s all mad, I know that. I’ve known it for a while. I just haven’t let on.’
When GoodNews and David got on the phone earlier in the evening, it seemed like just another sweet, misguided and totally pointless scheme, and now it is clear that it was in fact a pivotal moment in familial history. It’s like the Berlin Wall coming down: you couldn’t see it happening, but then it seems clear that all the internal contradictions made the fall inevitable. It was always going to happen, just as David was eventually going to see that it was all mad. It feels strange, thinking that we are on the verge of returning to our old life. Sarcasm, bitterness, bad novels, a spare bedroom and one less mouth to feed… I have mixed feelings about it, if I am honest. For a while, things were interesting, special even.
‘GoodNews told me about your flat battery,’ says David. ‘Well, I’ve got one, too. There’s nothing there. That first flush I felt… It’s all disappeared, and now I just feel nothing. That’s why I can see how stupid it all looks. Like you can. And everybody else who’s depressed and can’t understand what they’re supposed to be doing with their lives.’
I don’t say anything. Tomorrow maybe I’ll try to find a phone number for the organization that provides counselling for people who have been brainwashed by cults; I’m sure that depression of this kind is an entirely normal consequence of having your whole reason for living taken away from you.
‘That’s why I’m not going to give up,’ David continues. ‘I can’t afford to. What am I going to do? Go back to writing nasty columns for the local newspaper about old people on buses? Ha! I don’t think so. No, it’s like a… well, it’s like a marriage. You’ve got to work at it and hope the feeling comes back. And even if it doesn’t, I know I’m doing something. Not just sitting around moaning and being mean.’