Your mother wrote to me.
Her father’s voice. Her mother, Janet, had written him a letter — from Spain, of all places. He showed Glade the envelope to prove it. ‘España,’ he said, and shook his head in a display of wonderment. Then he touched the stamps and said, ‘Pesetas.’ The estate agent owned a flat on the Costa del Sol, apparently, and they were thinking of living there all year round.
‘I don’t blame them, do you? The sunshine, the maracas …’
Her father’s mouth gaped wide, and she could see the teeth perched high up in the dark like bats in a cave. His laughter had a strained, wild sound. It was the laughter of a man unused to company, a man who could no longer see himself in the mirror of another person’s face.
‘It’s castanets, isn’t it?’ she said.
Her father thinking, his eyes lifting to the ceiling.
‘Perhaps you’re right.’
He handled the envelope the way a conjuror might handle a pack of cards, only in her father’s case she knew there was no point waiting for a trick. He just turned it and turned it, trying to see it from a new angle, hoping to learn more. He had the hapless, artificial grin of someone who’s been told a joke he doesn’t understand.
‘Sometimes I think it was the best thing. You know, her going.’ He placed the envelope on the table — deliberately, as if he’d been asked to put it down. He couldn’t stop looking at it, though. ‘Sometimes it surprises me that we were together in the first place.’
He eyed her expectantly. Yes, he wanted her to say, I know what you mean. It always surprised me too. Instead, she looked past him, out of the window. Light from the caravan fell on part of the tall hedge that separated the farmer’s garden from his land. The leaves were small and glossy, the shape of fingernails. She could feel cold air reaching through a gap in the wall, pushing against her face.
‘España,’ her father said again, his eyes unnaturally bright, almost glittering, as if they had been given a coat of varnish.
She didn’t understand why he seemed so excited.
The bus swayed through the draughty darkness. Sunday evening. She leaned her forehead against the window, the glass shuddering, and faintly greasy. The lights of unknown houses, unknown towns. She thought of her father stretched out on his narrow bed, the curtains drawn, the field quiet and still. At least the caravan would be clean tonight. She’d spent most of Saturday with a damp cloth in her hand, wiping the fuzz of dust off everything she saw. She’d washed all the kitchen surfaces — the shelves, the cooker, the inside of the fridge. She’d swept the floor as well, pushing rolls of fluff out through the door and down into the field, where they lay looking odd, astonished, the way snow would look if you saw it in a library or on a plane. While she was cleaning, her father mended the table he’d broken the night before, his hands moving tenderly over the formica and the wood, as if they were bruised. He kneeled on the carpet with his tool-box, hair swirling on the crown of his head like a nest, an oblong plaster taped over one eyebrow. She liked being with him most when they both had something to do. Then he didn’t try so hard. She could talk if she felt like it. Or she could let her mind drift. There was none of the usual pressure on her to think of things to say. She imagined he’d be eating beans on toast for supper. A little whisky in his blue-and-white hooped mug. She hoped he found a radio programme to listen to — an opera, or a play. She hoped he didn’t feel too lonely.
At Edgware Road she had to change from the Circle Line to the Hammersmith & City. Pale men stood on the platform in raincoats; one of them stared at her sideways, his eyes urgent, strangely shiny. She could smell ashes and burnt rubber. The clock on the wall said ten to nine. She didn’t think she’d ever felt so tired.
The train came at last. She stepped into the nearest carriage and sat down. A black girl in wrinkled leather trousers was playing the guitar. Everyone ignored her, pretending to be fascinated by something high up or low down; the dread Glade saw on their faces seemed out of all proportion to the threat. She gave the girl a pound coin, which was more than she could afford, and the girl smiled at her in the gap between two lines of a song. When the girl left the tube at Ladbroke Grove, Glade followed her. Down the gritty steps and out into the street. The girl slung her guitar over her shoulder, then stepped on to the zebra crossing. Glade noticed how she lifted one hand at hip-level to thank the car that stopped for her. On the far side of the road, the girl glanced round. Saw Glade watching her. She gave Glade another smile, broader this time, quicker, and then walked on, taking a right turn into Cambridge Gardens.
Glade turned left, away from Ladbroke Grove, the girl’s smile staying with her as she hurried home. When she unlocked the front door, though, a chill settled on her skin. She called Sally’s name. The word hung in the damp, slightly sticky air; for a moment she felt as if everybody in the world had disappeared except for her. She climbed the stairs, dropping her coat and backpack on the floor. In the bathroom she turned on the taps. While the bath was running, she looked for Giacometti. He was sprawled full-length on her white bed, his huge yellow eyes half-open, the one flaw in his camouflage.
She undressed and wrapped a towel round her, then walked back down the corridor to the bathroom. She lay in the hot water for half an hour, not thinking of anything. By ten o’clock, she was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of raspberry tea. It was so quiet, she could hear the fridge change gear. If Sally had been in the room, she would have turned the radio on. Sally always said that silence was depressing.
On Saturday night, when they had drunk half the whisky in the bottle, her father had put some music on. It was the first time he’d ever done anything like that, and Glade felt faintly uneasy. He must have noticed the look on her face because he said, ‘Saturday night,’ and then he grinned and lifted his arms away from his sides, his way of signalling that he couldn’t help it, there was nothing he could do.
He bent close to his battered ghetto-blaster and pushed a tape into the slot. ‘Something new I found,’ he said. ‘Something to cheer us up.’
She asked him what it was.
‘Flamenco.’
He looked at her as if she ought to understand, as if this was something a father and daughter might be expected to have in common. She’d heard the word before, of course, but she had no idea what the music would sound like.
Then it began. An acoustic guitar played very fast, a kind of frantic, rhythmic strumming that was difficult to listen to. She felt as if the inside of her head was made of knitted fabric and somebody with nimble fingers was trying to unravel it. She wondered what flamenco meant in Spanish.
‘Do you like it?’
She twisted her face to one side. ‘Kind of.’
‘You can dance to it. Look.’
And he started to dance. Her father. His arms up near his head. Like candlesticks, she thought. Or antlers. His fingers snapped and clicked in the air beside his ears. She stared at his feet as they stamped on the floor, stamped in time to the guitar.
‘If you were a proper audience,’ he panted, ‘if you were a flamenco audience, you’d be clapping now.’
Clapping? She gazed at him anxiously, confused.