What else might happen? The ringing of the phone recalled him to his study. “Dad,” the voice said, “I’m glad I reached you. I’m having some kind of trouble with these three guys.”
“Where are you?”
“Broadwick Street, I think. It’s about a mile southwest of Oxford Street.” He had difficulty catching his breath.
“I’ll come for you in the car,” he said, though once made, he regretted the offer, felt exploited.
“You don’t have to if you’re busy,” Tom said. “It may not be anything at all. These three punks — they’re just kids really — have been following me for over an hour. I don’t know what they want and I don’t think I want to find out. They’re rather horrendous looking actually.” He laughed his nervous laugh.
“Why don’t you call the police?”
“I can’t do that. I think you understand what I’m saying.”
Terman couldn’t admit that he didn’t. “I’ll come down in the car and get you. At this time of day, it’ll take at least twenty minutes.”
“I didn’t mean for you to come after me. I mean, that wasn’t the reason I called.”
“You don’t want me to come or you do?”
“The phone booth I’m in is in front of a pub called The Wycherly Arms. There’s a Pizza Land and a Sketchley’s down the street on the same side and a Chinese Restauant with these skinned ducks hanging in the window across the street. If you don’t see me, I’ll be moving around. Look for me in front of the pub or in the phone box. Okay?”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can, Tom. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
“So in about twenty minutes, right? I’m depending on it.”
What he felt before, what he had named as rage, was nothing to the bloodstorm in his head as he unlocked the door of the car, as he climbed in behind the wheel, as he fought the key into the ignition. What he didn’t know was whether his anger was directed at Tom for getting into trouble or at the thugs harassing him.
He was off, debating the unmoving traffic, rushing and stopping to no useful purpose, unforeseen obstructions at every turn. Attempting to circumvent the worst of the traffic, he took himself further and further out of the way, wanting above all to keep moving. The trip would take longer than estimated, perhaps twice as long, and he could imagine Tom thinking that he wasn’t coming or that he had intentionally delayed. He found his son’s distrust unforgivable.
Terman drove down Holland Park Avenue, which turned into Not-ting Hill Gate, then turned south on Kensington Church but the traffic was so dense it seemed preferable to make his way on narrow side streets. Each new route seemed less felicitous than its predecessor and so he rued his choices, his judgment awry. The more frustrated he became the more he resented his errand. He could readily imagine Tom, accosted in the phone box by the toughs, pulling out his father’s revolver in a moment of desperation. What would follow? If the gun were loaded, and if there were no other choice, Tom might wound one of the boys to frighten them away. More than likely nothing exceptional would happen. It was not impossible that Tom had made up the story about being followed or had exaggerated an ordinary street confrontation into melodrama. It was melodrama, however, that teased Terman’s imagination, the pleasures of the improbable.
I watched them huddle together in front of a record shop, looking over toward me as they conspired. They wanted trouble, were addicted to it, and they had fixed on me as their target. So I knew when they walked off that it was only a ruse and that they would be back, hoping to catch me off-guard. What I didn’t expect was that they would show up again as quickly as they did. One of them, the one with the purple streaks in his hair, showed his head from around the corner opposite the street they had turned up. When he saw that I was watching him he scuttled back. They had concocted some cretinous plan, had split up and were laying for me, supposedly out of sight, in three different spots. A dessicated woman, about my mother’s age, who had been standing outside the booth, knocked on the glass with a key. I opened the door without thinking. “Do you mind, luv?” she said, squeezing past me.
It was hot in the car, his shirt sticking to his back, and he unrolled the window while waiting for the light to change. The light defied anticipation, stayed red for a prolonged time. Terman took the occasion to open the street guide on the seat next to him, to check again where he had to go. The light was still red when he looked up and he thought just my luck to get stopped indefinitely at a broken light. A horn honked from behind, a mild squawk. Even after three years in England, he tended not to understand, or pretended not to, the mysteries of London traffic. He drove like an American, he thought, justifying his negligence.
The light was still red. He remembered, or had the illusion of remembering, the day he announced to Kate and Tom that he was moving away. He had put it off as long as he could, awaiting a moment when such unsettling news might be given with grace and reassurance. It was when he recognized that no such moment would ever arrive, that there never had been and never would be an appropriate moment to tell his children he was leaving them, that he was able to tell them at all. Kate, who was seven and a half, went to her room and closed the door, saying she didn’t think she wanted to talk about it now. He remembered her marching out of the living room like an adult, like the person she might imagine herself becoming fifteen years later. He called after her to say he would visit on weekends, that it wasn’t as if he were leaving forever. “Don’t lie to her,” Magda said. “Once he steps out that door we’ll never see him again.” Tom, who was four, for whom none of it made much sense, was sitting on his lap. “Would you read me a book?” he asked. Terman said he would but first he wanted to see if Kate was all right. “It’s not fair,” Tom said. (Even then, particularly when his own wants were at issue, he had a passion for invoking justice.) Terman said, “You pick out a book and I’ll come right back and read it to you.” When he came into Kate’s room she was lying on her bed, facing the wall. She was stoney, had willed herself into an inanimate state. “It’ll be all right, Kate,” he said in a weary voice. “I promise you.” He put his hand on her shoulder, tried to turn her toward him. She was so rigid there was no moving her without the use of force. She was still immobile when he gave up and left the room. Perhaps if he had stayed with her, it would have made a difference in both their lives. In the living room, on the yellow corduroy couch, Magda was reading to Tom from The Wizard of Oz. He offered to take over but Magda said nothing doing. “We’d like you to go,” she said. He stood his ground, thwarted. “See you soon, Tom,” he said. There was no answer or none he remembered, neither wave nor nod. “Read,” he said to his mother and Magda repeated in an overly inflected voice the sentence she had read when he entered the room.
The light was still red. He was thinking it was odd how rarely he went to the movies in London during the past year. Once a month on the average and more often than not to the National Film Theater or the ICA. It was particularly odd because he used to go all the time, an insatiable witness, addicted to images in the dark, finding miraculous accidents in the most commonplace work. The light was green (finally), but the cross street was backed up and the light came red again before he could move through. Terman turned the car around and went the other way, took a left and then another left. A woman he thought he knew — it was odd how familiar and unfamiliar she was at the same time — was walking on the right side of the street, rapt in self-absorption. He rolled down the passenger window and called her by the first name that came to mind.