Читать книгу Obstacles to Young Love - David Nobbs - Страница 5

Three mighty obstacles threaten the burgeoning love of childhood sweethearts Timothy Pickering and Naomi Walls. They are Steven Venables, a dead curlew, and God.

God it is who comes between them in Earls Court.

‘I don’t feel like it tonight, Naomi.’

She has turned towards him, sweet in her slenderness in the sagging bed beneath the print of old Whitstable. She has run her hand down his cheek and over his chin. Their roughness has pleased her. ‘You’ll need to shave again tomorrow,’ she has said. And he has stiffened, not in the manner of the night before but in a shrinking way that has shocked her to her core, and she in the eighteenth year of her life has for the first time been forced to ask the question that has been asked a billion times before by women of their men, ‘What’s wrong?’ And it is this that has drawn from him, like a wasp sting from a plump arm, the grudging admission, ‘I don’t feel like it tonight, Naomi.’

‘You felt like it last night.’ Naomi knows that her riposte is not worthy of her.

‘Last night was last night.’ Timothy is aware that his riposte is abysmal. He has spoken it sullenly, and his awareness of its inadequacy makes him feel more sullen still. He is also seventeen years old, and unaware of so much, including his own good looks. When he wakes in the mornings he feels awkward, clumsy, raw, shy, ignorant. He does not feel handsome.

They are now miles apart, their naked bodies only touching because the exhausted, abused bed sags so much that it’s impossible not to roll towards the middle.

‘We shouldn’t have done any of it,’ he says. They are speaking in little more than whispers. It’s a cheap hotel, and the soundproofing is almost non-existent. ‘We shouldn’t have come.’

‘No use regretting it now. We did come.’

She is aware of the double entendre. He isn’t. His thoughts are a million miles from sex.

‘We’ve had a great time,’ she says. ‘Whether we should have done it or not, why spoil it now? Why go home with our tails between our legs?’

She touches his tail between his legs. It’s as soft as an underdone egg.

‘Please don’t.’

‘Timothy!’ It’s both a rebuke and a wail of anguish. ‘If you’re tired, that’s all right. It’s been a long day and you must have…’ She wants to say ‘really knackered yourself last night’ but there are some words that you can’t easily say to Timothy and she comes out with the much less felicitous, ridiculously formal, ‘…taken a lot out of yourself last night.’ And put some of it into me, she thinks, shocking herself and realising for the first time that there might be quite a gulf between them.

‘It’s not that,’ he exclaims, his manhood threatened. ‘It’s just…it’s wrong.’

‘It wasn’t wrong yesterday.’

‘It was. We just forgot it was.’

‘I actually thought it was fantastic. I thought it was as good as being Juliet in front of four hundred kids.’

‘Well, it was better than being Romeo. I hated every ruddy minute of that.’

‘I know you did.’

Everyone at Coningsfield Grammar had expected that Naomi would be Juliet in the school play, but Mr Prentice chose Timothy as Romeo on a whim. Most people, and especially Mark Cosgrove and his mother, had assumed Mark Cosgrove would be Romeo. His mother has not forgiven Mr Prentice. Indeed, she has left her husband for him, run away with him, and embarked on the task of making the rest of his life miserable.

Mr Prentice’s whim wasn’t exactly a success, but it wasn’t a catastrophe either. Timothy hadn’t possessed the skills to play Romeo well, but the combination of his gawkiness, his intensity and those dark good looks of which he was so unaware moved the audience quite remarkably. The school hall became Verona.

Mr Prentice had cast them both in small parts in the previous year’s play, Peter Shaffer’s The Royal Hunt of the Sun, but they hadn’t taken much notice of each other. Now, though, he told them, ‘Feel. Feel. Feel. Feel the excitement of young love in the face of the world’s hostility. Feel the emotion. Feel the sexuality.’ They felt it. Mr Prentice, yes and Shakespeare too, must share some of the blame for what happened, for their falling in love, pretending to their parents that they were going on a school trip to Paris, and ending up in a sagging bed with thin, exhausted pillows in Earls Court.

‘Don’t you fancy me any more?’

‘Oh, Naomi!’

She is almost as disgusted by her question as he is. He doesn’t say, ‘Of course I do,’ and she doesn’t blame him.

There’s a silence, quite a long silence, but she knows that he is going to speak and that he is only silent because he’s wondering how to begin, so she doesn’t break it. A motorbike roars boastfully past. Naomi thinks of all the grown-up things that they have done in London. They’ve been to see foreign films, films with subtitles, films that don’t ever reach Coningsfield. They’ve eaten in restaurants. Well, no, only in one restaurant actually. The Pasticceria Amalfi, a cheery Italian place in Old Compton Street. It had all the easy surface friendliness of Italy. They have been frightened by London, aware of their vast ignorance of the world. They have been frightened by Soho, which they have imagined to be humming with wickedness behind the grime. They have felt very vulnerable, cowed by the vastness of London, and, despite that vastness, they have felt disturbingly visible, expecting at any moment to be spotted by someone who knows their parents. On the first day of their visit they saw some cheery young people entering the Amalfi, and were emboldened to follow in their slipstream. It turned out to be safe and warm. They have eaten there on all three days of that long, lovely, disturbing weekend.

At last Timothy speaks.

‘It was when that funny old woman came up to us at breakfast. I thought she was going to accuse us.’

‘Well, so did I.’

‘I just felt so guilty. Didn’t you?’

‘No. I felt a bit afraid that I was going to be shouted at, that’s all. Well, yes, I have been feeling guilty about lying to Mum and Dad and taking their money. But not about the sex. We’re not in the Middle Ages.’

Timothy hasn’t the words to explain how he feels. No, it isn’t just about the sex – and even he knows that to say that the sex was wrong sounds horribly prim and proper and old-fashioned even for a Coningsfield boy – but the sex is the cause of the deception, and the deception makes him feel awful in the pit of his stomach. It’s taking away all the memory of the joy, and after all they are in the middle of confirmation classes and what’s the point of all that if they don’t take it seriously?

But all he can find in himself to say is, ‘What would the Reverend Bideford say if he knew? What would Mr Cattermole say?’

‘I don’t care what they say. It’s what we say that matters. Mr Cattermole’s a lech, anyway.’

‘It’s what our parents would say.’

He has touched a nerve. Naomi’s father is an elder in the church. Her mother teaches at Sunday School. They are quietly, unshowily devout. Naomi is going to confirmation classes because it pleases them, and she likes to please them, and because Timothy is going. Timothy’s reasons are much more complex, and much less understood. His relationship with God makes him feel that he has a place in the scheme of things, that he is important, that there is a point to being alive in a house full of death. Obeying a moral code gives him a reason to avoid what frightens him. His religion tells him what is good for him. It’s the nearest he’s ever come to a mother. And now, because of Romeo and Juliet, because of Shakespeare, because of Mr Prentice, he’s in love, he’s told terrible lies, he’s received money under false pretences, there are more lies still to be told, he’s truly wretched.

If only they could talk. In the distance some drunks are trying to sing. In room eight the silence is deep.

He reaches out with a shy hand, traces the inside of her right thigh with one finger, feels the stubborn softness of his prick, and turns away slightly lest she feel it too.

‘Maybe we should get married,’ he says at last.

‘We can’t. We’re still at school.’

‘Well…engaged, then.’

She’s quite excited, but she isn’t going to show it. Besides, it’s absurd.

‘Don’t you want to get engaged?’ he persists.

‘I don’t know.’ It sounds feeble, but it’s the truth. There’s nothing else she could possibly say.

‘I thought you loved me.’

‘I do, but we’re still at school.’

‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’

Nor does she, but she isn’t going to agree. It becomes a long silence, too long, and the longer a silence lasts, the harder it is to break it. She thinks about what he did to her and what he let her do to him barely seventeen hours ago. How could he take this attitude so soon after that? She wants to talk about it, reflect on it, remember it together, as would seem natural. But it doesn’t seem natural. It was so much easier to do than to talk about. She finds that she can’t actually use the words that would describe the actions. Words could make what was beautiful sound dirty. She takes refuge in formality.

‘Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy the fellatio,’ she says.

‘Which film was that?’

‘Oh, Timothy! Fellatio’s…what I did to you this morning.’

‘Sorry. I thought he was an Italian film director. You’re always going on about films and film people that I’ve never heard of, showing me up.’

‘I don’t do it to show you up. I have to be interested in films. I’ve decided that I’m going to be an actress.’

Of all the times to drop this bombshell. Of all the times.

The train journey home is not a happy one. Timothy stares resolutely out of the window, as if the answer to their problems is going to be found out there.

‘You won’t find the answer in some passing farmyard.’

‘Farmyards don’t pass. We pass them.’

‘I know that, you cretin.’

‘You won’t get far as an actress if you use the language so sloppily.’

‘Don’t be stupid. We don’t make it up. It gets written. By writers.’

‘I know that. I was Romeo, after all.’

He continues to pretend to be very interested in the singularly dreary countryside through which they are rattling.

‘Nobody could be that interested in pylons.’

‘What?’

‘You’re pretending you’re looking at things. You’re not. You’re just eaten up by jealousy.’

They aren’t speaking too loudly. There’s a nun in a seat across the corridor.

‘I’m not jealous.’ Now it begins to pour out of him. ‘I’m not jealous. I’m just astounded. You’re religious.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Actors are all immoral. The men are all as bent as West End Lane.’

‘What’s West End Lane?’

‘I don’t know. It’s a road somewhere, I suppose, and I suppose it must be as bent as actors. It’s what my dad always says, anyway. And I expect the girls are all thespians.’

‘Thespians means actors.’ She can’t keep a sliver of scorn out of her voice. ‘You mean lesbians.’

‘You see.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know anything about it. You do. We’ll drift apart.’

‘We won’t drift apart. We don’t need to drift apart. I love you, Timothy.’

‘Good on you, lass,’ says the ticket collector, arriving at Naomi’s shoulder like a steamer appearing out of the fog. ‘That’s what I like to hear. Tickets, please.’

They show him their tickets.

‘I’m frightened,’ says Timothy softly.

Naomi recognises the truth of this and touches him on the arm. The ticket inspector sees the gesture and smiles. The nun can’t find her ticket and blushes.

‘You’ll be a huge success. You’ll go and live in London.’

‘I needn’t. I can come home between jobs.’

There’s a problem with the nun’s ticket. The nun blushes again. Her face is smooth, serene, almost aggressively serene. Yet how she blushes.

‘Besides, you could come to London. You can stuff animals in London, can’t you?’

‘I’ll be working for my dad. He hates London. He has a name for it. “The smoke”.’

Naomi wants to tell him that everyone calls it ‘The Smoke’, but she judges it to be unwise.

‘Anyway, we don’t stuff animals. That shows that you’re ignorant too. We’re just ignorant about different things.’

The business with the nun is sorted, but the ticket inspector turns to have a word with them. They both know that he does this because he fancies Naomi.

‘Ticket for the wrong train. Had to let her off,’ he says in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Drive me up the wall they do. Always say they’re so unworldly that they don’t understand the ticketing restrictions. Same thing last week with a monk. Let him off too. Must be becoming a habit.’

Naomi recognises that this is a joke and laughs politely. Timothy doesn’t.

‘It was a joke, lad. Monk, habit. A joke,’ says the ticket inspector.

It is now Timothy’s turn to blush.

‘He’s not good enough for you,’ says the ticket inspector with a jovial, hateful wink.

What a journey this is for blushing. Now it’s Naomi’s turn. She blazes with embarrassment and anger. The ticket inspector looks from one to the other, realises he’s put his foot in it, and digs the hole that he has made.

‘I think I’ve put my foot in it,’ he says, as he departs.

‘You see,’ says Timothy miserably. ‘That’s what everyone’ll say.’

‘Bollocks,’ says Naomi more loudly than she intended.

Timothy looks shocked. The nun buries herself in her book.

‘Quiet. She’ll hear,’ says Timothy.

‘You’re always so worried what people will think. She isn’t listening. She isn’t interested in us. She’s reading her devotions or whatever it is they have to read.’

‘You’ll spend five months filming in Caracas.’

‘If I do, I’ll dream of you.’

‘You won’t. You’ll fall for Nigel Havers.’

‘I won’t fall for Nigel Havers. God, how many pylons are there in Britain?’

‘You shouldn’t use God’s name in vain.’

‘That wasn’t God’s name. It was just an expression. I love you. I really do.’

‘You do now, but when you’re famous…’

‘I won’t be famous and if I am it won’t change me. “She comes in the shop and she’s just like one of us,” says attractive olive-skinned assistant Val Pogson.’

‘What?’

‘It’s what they say about nice actresses who haven’t let their fame go to their heads. She enjoys the glamour of filming in exotic places, but she’s always thrilled to get back to her modest terrace home in Battersea and her taxidermist husband.’

‘You won’t want children.’

She is silent for just a moment.

‘I can’t say I’ve thought about it, but…I think I’d really love to have your child. Honestly, Timothy.’

He leans across and kisses her. His tongue explores her mouth. He didn’t mean to do this, but he can’t help it.

The nun develops a sudden interest in pylons.

Let them be happy in their kisses. They have no idea of the storm that is about to break over their heads.

Timothy’s steps never quicken as he approaches number ninety-six, but today they slow even more than usual. His father is not an unkindly man, he does his best, but it is not a happy house for Timothy. It’s a square, stone, Victorian house on the gentle hill that takes the dual carriageway out of town in what was once one of the better areas of Coningsfield, but it’s an area that’s blighted by traffic and is slowly going down. Number ninety-four is a B & B called Ascot House. Number ninety-eight is lived in by an old man, Mr Lewis, and his wife, Mrs Taylor. Well, this is how Mr Lewis introduces them to people, on the increasingly rare occasions when he needs to introduce them. Timothy laughs because as the years pass and their health declines, Mr Lewis walks further and further behind Mrs Taylor on trips to the shops that are becoming slower and more hazardous by the month. Timothy’s father, Roly, rebukes his only son for laughing at the elderly.

Timothy walks past the shaved lawn of Ascot House – ‘Quality outside is the harbinger of quality inside, in the world of the B & B,’ says the proprietress, Miss de Beauvoir, whose real name is Mrs Smith. In fact, she says this all too frequently. Her remark does not impress Timothy. He has been inside.

The lawn of number ninety-six is long and dotted with dandelions and docks. Last month, after a good rain, a post was hammered into the ground, and a board was hammered onto the post, bearing a message that alarmed Timothy. It says, ‘R. Pickering and Son – Taxidermists’. Timothy’s heart does not swell with pride as his legs lead him leadenly past it. He has been Romeo on stage and in life. Now he is again the only son of a taxidermist whose wife ran off with a plumber when Timothy was two and has never so much as sent him a birthday card since. ‘A plumber!’ his dad occasionally says, shaking his head in disbelief, as if the man’s occupation is a greater blow to his self-esteem than his wife’s abandonment of him.

As Timothy sees the board, he recalls that moment a month ago when he came home from school and first saw it. As he stared at it, the front door squeaked open – his dad wasn’t exactly generous with anything, and that included WD40 – and his dad stood there, smiling.

‘I’m taking you into the business, son of mine. You’re ready now.’

Timothy had found nothing to say.

‘Aren’t you going to thank me?’

‘Yes, Dad. Sorry, Dad. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Timothy was too young to realise that by this his dad was trying as best he could to say, ‘I love you, son.’

They had gone inside and his father had made a pot of tea and produced a couple of scones – a rare treat, but treats came with strings at number ninety-six, and the string was that his future was going to be discussed, or rather announced, and fixed for eternity. Timothy liked Marmite on his scones: he had described the clash between sweet and sour as ‘orgasmic’ but that was before his weekend with Naomi. On this occasion he hadn’t dared get Marmite. His father disapproved. ‘Marmite on scones? What travesty is this?’

‘Well, lad, I saw you on stage and I’ll say this, you were good. Our Timothy, the product of my very own seed, playing Romeo, who’d have thought it?’ His father had his very own, idiosyncratic way of expressing himself. ‘As I say, you were good, but…but, Timothy, you weren’t that good. You are not an actor. The boards are not in your blood. The curtain has fallen on your brief career.’

‘No, Dad, I know, I agree, I don’t want to be an actor.’

‘Good. Good. That’s good. So what can you do? You’re not stupid, but…but, Timothy. We don’t want you ending up a plumber now, do we? Some say taxidermy is a dying art. Not so, my boy. Not so. More tea?’

‘Thanks.’

Timothy had never thought of not being a taxidermist, but only because it had never occurred to him that he was ever going to be one. His ambitions stretched only to avoiding certain careers. He didn’t want to be an actor, or a plumber, or a dentist, or a lavatory cleaner, or a teacher, or a racing driver. He expected that, being neither brilliant nor thick, he would go to one of the lesser universities, and if that didn’t work out there was always Coningsfield Polytechnic. In the course of his prolonged studies he might or might not discover his vocation, which might or might not be the Church. He’d had no idea that he would suddenly, even urgently, need to make a decision as to his future. He was therefore unprepared to make a decision. Therefore he made no decision. And so, on that dark afternoon in that dark house, he realised that he didn’t want to be a taxidermist five minutes after he had become one.

Later, when he looked back on that afternoon, he realised that there was no way he could have made a decision, because there was no way he could have told his lonely old father, with his failing eyesight and his sad, short marriage, that he was not going to join him and support him in his business.

‘I have a steady trade, good contacts with most zoos, sources of supply from some of the great shooting estates of Old England. I’ve done well.’

‘You certainly have, Dad.’

‘It’s not riches. Riches don’t last. The Good Lord knows that. But it’s steady. Very steady. The Pickerings are steady people, Timothy, and you, you too are, I think, steady.’

‘I hope so, Dad.’

‘Is plumbing steady? No, it isn’t. Three warm winters on the trot and they’re knackered. But the world will always need taxidermists. Youngsters aren’t going into it. Youngsters don’t see further than the ends of their noses. That Naomi! Juliet! You can bet your bottom drawer she’ll be wanting to be a film star, off to London before the frost gets into the parsnips. I’d take money on it if gambling wasn’t a sin. No, as a taxidermist, boy, you’ll be able to clean up very nicely.’

Timothy has not told his dad that he has walked out with Naomi. He has certainly not told him that he has been to London with her, fucked her, gone down on her, been sucked by her. In some ways Timothy and his father are alike, but with regard to Naomi there is a gulf between them that makes the Gulf of Mexico look like a village duck pond.

Timothy has time to recall this conversation in its entirety because he is walking up the garden path very slowly indeed. The house is dark. There is not a room in it, including the smallest room, that does not contain at least one dead animal or bird. In the smallest room it is, naturally, the smallest creature, a mouse that died of heart failure when startled by the Ascot House cat. There is stained glass round the front door, only slightly cracked. The floors are a monument to the past glories of linoleum. When he opens the front door Timothy feels that he is stepping back fifty years.

At last, though, he can delay the moment no longer. Earls Court, the Amalfi, the whole of London fades away. The door squeaks slowly open, he smells the slightly stale, utterly masculine linoleum and lavatory cleaner smell of his home and there, in the dim, narrow hall, at the bottom of the creaky stairs, stands his father, staring at him, glaring at him, pulling his braces forward and then letting them fall back onto his grimy ketchup-stained shirt with a savagery that sends a chill through Timothy’s whole body.

His father comes forward and punches him in the face. Timothy staggers back, crashes into the little table by the door, falls to the ground. The dead fox that was on the table, his father’s pride and joy, the one that the customers first see on arrival, falls onto Timothy’s face. He hates the feel of the dead fox. He screams, grabs it and flings it off him. He cowers, expecting to be hit again. Then he thinks of Naomi and how he would hate her to see him cowering, and he glares at his father and tries to stand, but it’s as though his legs are made of rubber, he falls again.

He looks up at his father who no longer seems angry.

‘Naomi’s mother met the French teacher in Stead and Simpson’s,’ says his father. ‘A most unfortunate encounter.’

In that moment Timothy realises how naive it was of them to have thought that they could get away with it, and with his recognition of his naivety and of Naomi’s naivety the whole long weekend seems to be stripped of all its joy and beauty and become a tawdry episode involving two very young schoolchildren who thought they were grown up. He hates this. He barely listens to his father. He can guess the details anyway. Naomi had told her parents the French teacher was taking a school trip to Paris. But the French teacher is not in Paris, she is in Stead and Simpson’s in Coningsfield. Naomi’s mother wonders where Naomi can be. The French teacher knows, from her friend Mr Prentice, that Naomi and Timothy are seeing each other. It might be a good idea to phone Mr Pickering. Mr Pickering tells her that his son has gone to France on a school trip.

Roly Pickering bends over, holds out his hand to his son, and pulls him gently to his feet. He kisses the top of his son’s head.

‘I’m sorry I hit you,’ he says. ‘You’re all I have.’

Naomi walks from the station to the bus station, where she catches the number twenty-eight Pouters End bus. She sits upstairs and gazes out over her home town, seeing it and not seeing it, loving it and despising it. So much has happened since she took this journey in the opposite direction just three days ago. At moments she feels too adult to be contained here, to go back to school and hockey and maths and confirmation classes, and then she feels a wave of regret for her disappearing childhood. So many wonderful things happened in London, yet in the end the joy went out of it like a pricked…she is going to think ‘balloon’, but she had been Juliet in Shakespeare and clichés just won’t do. Like a shocked prick. And she feels shocked to be thinking about pricks, and in particular Timothy’s prick, on the twenty-eight bus, in her home town. But the sex had been a revelation, and it was sex born of love, and she just can’t think of any of it as in any way smutty or dirty or degrading. She holds her legs tightly together, as if the beautiful memory of it might slide out from between them. And then an earthquake of loneliness cracks her body and she shudders with the fear of the days without Timothy beside her in bed. She thinks about his lovely sullen darkness, his rough stubble, his occasional devastating shy smile. She loves him. She thinks about praying to God to arrange for her to leave school and live with him and marry him. But God would be too busy and people just didn’t pray on the twenty-eight bus and in any case she isn’t certain…no, she isn’t yet ready to admit to herself that she has doubts about the existence of God. That’s too frightening. That would make home life too difficult.

She is thinking so many things that she almost forgets to get off the bus at Cragley Road. She rings the bell and lugs her case down the stairs in a rush, trips, almost falls, almost tumbles out of the bus into the cool of the autumn evening.

She gazes up the hill towards the big houses of the old textile magnates in Upper Cragley Road, but her path takes her down past the pleasant detached but less impressive houses of Lower Cragley Road. It’s still posh enough to have only names on the houses, though, the numbers being a secret known only to the beleaguered postmen.

L’Ancresse. A pleasant 1930s house with simple lines and a square bay window in the lounge. It had been Laburnum Villa but her parents had renamed it after their favourite bay in Guernsey, where they used to take their seaside holidays. Unlike Timothy, Naomi has always hurried happily to the warmth, safety and sheer good spirits of her family home, but today…today she cannot believe that it is sitting there so calm, so quiet, so sure of itself, as if nothing has changed in the three days since she was last there, and of course, inside the house, now that her elder brothers have fled the nest, nothing will have changed.

And she realises, with a flash of horror, that she has forgotten to make any preparations for the questions that she will be asked about Paris. And hers is a family that asks about everything, shares everything, demands that you share everything.

She stands stock still beside the old English rose bush which is still in glorious flower. Well, it’s too late now. She marches to the front door, gets her key from her handbag, and opens the door, which does not squeak. There is no shortage of everyday essentials in the Walls household, and that includes WD40.

The house is quiet, strangely quiet, but Naomi is too nervous to notice this. Besides, she is not actually always very sensitive to atmosphere. Her teachers at drama school will soon be working on this.

‘Hello!’ she calls out. ‘I’m back. Je suis retournée.’

Her mother and her father emerge slowly from the kitchen and the study respectively. Her mother is smiling. Naomi does not notice that the smile is strained. Her father is not smiling. There is nothing unusual about this. He is not a smiler.

Her mother kisses her, and says, ‘So. How was Paris? Come through and tell us.’

Her father does not kiss her. There is nothing unusual in this. He is not a kisser.

The evening sun is slanting across the kitchen, lighting up the oranges in the Japanese bowl. There’s a smell that Naomi recognises and loves, yet today, for the first time, it seems to smell of the past. It’s a shepherd’s pie, browning in the oven.

She doesn’t know where to begin.

‘It was lovely,’ she says.

‘What did you see?’ asks her father. Naomi is too terrified to notice that he is being a schoolmaster now, not a father.

‘Er…well, the Champs Élysées. Notre Dame.’ She thinks hard, desperately. ‘Les Halles.’

There is silence. She has run out of sights.

‘Not a lot, in three days.’

Her father’s voice is quietly, regretfully merciless. Her mother is moved to try to rescue her daughter, even though she knows that the rescue will itself make matters worse.

‘So, what about the food?’ she asks brightly, but as she pauses her mouth continues to work in that way she has that reveals her inner tension. ‘The French are famous for their food, aren’t they? Where did they take you to eat? Nice bistros?’

Naomi’s heart is beating like the wings of a trapped moth. Her throat is dry.

‘Yes. Exactly. Nice bistros.’

She is afraid that she will blush. She strives so hard not to blush. Her brain is whirring and she even considers the possibility of confessing.

‘One of them was called the Blue Oyster.’

‘What a strange name,’ says her mother.

‘Surely you remember it in French,’ says her father.

‘L’huître bleu.’ The girl’s a fighter.

‘And what did you have? Let’s hear all about it.’

Her mother’s chattiness is terrible for Naomi.

‘Er…not oysters. Miss Malmaison had oysters, and so did two of the girls. Sammy Foster’ll eat anything. I just had steak and chips.’

‘Oh, dear,’ says her mother, falsely bright. ‘I was so hoping to hear details of really local Parisian dishes that I might make.’

Her mother, whose name is Penny – well, it’s Penelope, but nobody ever uses that – is known for good plain cooking. She teaches domestic science and sometimes takes Sunday School at church.

‘I quite thought I might have something new to teach my girls.’

Naomi knows that she has to get away from the question of food. The only food she can think of is the food at the Amalfi, and she hasn’t the wit, in her anxiety, to say that they went to an Italian restaurant. Besides, the food at the Amalfi is a secret between her and her lover.

Inspiration strikes.

‘We went to the Louvre. We saw the Mona Lisa.’

‘Ah,’ says her father. His name is William. He teaches Classics and he’s going bald. There is not necessarily any connection between these two facts. ‘What did you think of her?’

Naomi dredges up something that she has read somewhere.

‘She’s a lot smaller than I expected.’

‘That’s strange,’ says her father. ‘Since you clearly read that somewhere, it’s odd that you should not have expected it.’

‘What?’ She is confused.

‘You haven’t been to Paris, Naomi, so you must have read that.’

His voice is not cruel. His message is devastating, so he would have no need to be cruel, even if he was capable of it. His voice is pained, and that is worse than cruelty to Naomi.

She is free to blush now. All the blushes that she has fought come pouring out. Her cheeks blaze.

‘I met Miss Malmaison in Stead and Simpson’s,’ says her mother quietly.

Naomi is amazed to find that it’s a relief to be found out. She will lie about it no more. In fact, she will never tell another lie in her life, even if she should live to be a hundred. She promises that now in a quick newsflash to God, who does exist after all, it seems.

‘I went to London with Timothy Pickering,’ she says. ‘We had sex together and I love him.’

She bursts into tears. Her mother comes to her and lets her fall into her arms. Her father wishes he was on his boat in the middle of the ocean.

‘We’re engaged,’ sobs Naomi.

She feels as if she is nine, going on thirty-two.

‘I’m so happy,’ she wails.

Her sobs begin to subside.

‘It’s all right,’ she mumbles into her mother’s blouse. ‘We know it’s a sin, and we’ve both apologised to God, but, oh Mum, oh Dad, I’m sorry, but it was so lovely.’

She bursts into tears again. She sobs and sobs. Her nose runs. Her eyes water. Her body shakes.

Her mother, still holding her, looks across at William. Just for a moment there is the old rapport between the two, they both want to laugh but realise that it is not appropriate. Then the shutters come down and her father is paralysed by embarrassment and bewilderment. He can deal with life’s personal crises in the poems of Catullus, but not in the cosy kitchen of L’Ancresse, where the knives and forks and the National Trust mats are on the formica-topped table and the shepherd’s pie will be done to a turn in ten minutes.

In her mother’s eyes there is shock, sadness, love, compassion, fear, pain and – yes, it’s unmistakable even to William – a touch of pride.

Timothy, in goal for Germany against the might of England, at Wembley Stadium, just behind the abattoir, tries to concentrate but can only think of tomorrow. Tomorrow scares him.

Barnes squares the ball to Keegan, who shoots. He scuffs his shot slightly, but Timothy is slow to move and it dribbles just inside his left-hand post. Well, no, there isn’t actually a post. It dribbles just inside the left-hand school blazer.

‘What’s wrong with you today, cabbage-bonce?’ cries Keegan (Tommo). ‘You’re all over the place.’

‘It’s Naomi’s eighteenth tomorrow and I’m scared,’ he admits.

‘Are you really engaged?’

‘Yep.’

It’s Timothy’s ability at sport that has saved him from the mockery that would otherwise be the lot of an awkward, shy only child whose father is a taxidermist and whose mother ran off with a plumber when he was two. Football, cricket, boxing, darts, shove halfpenny, he can do them all. But his engagement is also gaining him a bit of grudging extra respect. The others have all done it with girls, or say they have, but none of them are engaged. They are children. Timothy is a man. He must remember that, and not be scared about tomorrow.

Barnes (Steven Venables) has the ball on the left wing, he tears down the field, he’s a tornado, his trickery and ball control leave three dog turds, an empty bottle of Tizer and a used condom helpless in his wake. He sends in a curling, tempting centre. It hangs in the air. Brooking (Dave Kent) rises gloriously to meet it, remembers how big and heavy the ball is, and hesitates for just a moment. The ball passes within inches of his sweaty forehead. Steven and Tommo shout their derision.

‘Try heading your dad’s oranges,’ yells Tommo. ‘They won’t hurt.’

‘He couldn’t head a tomato,’ cries Steven scornfully. Steven Venables does scorn well.

Dave Kent doesn’t mind their mockery. It washes off him like water off a carrot’s back. Mockery is his lot. Being happy to be mocked is his salvation. Tommo intends to be a gynaecologist because he likes women’s bodies. Steven intends to become a banker because he likes money and is confident enough not to worry about the rhyming slang. Steven oozes confidence. Dave is quite confident too, but only because he knows he’ll never be anything but a greengrocer, and, luckily, he doesn’t want to be anything but a greengrocer.

‘Come on, English swine. You can’t beat me,’ shouts Timothy.

And they can’t. The shots rain in. He dives, sprawls, climbs, hurls himself to left and right, grabs the ball, punches it, tips it round the post (Tommo’s manky blazer). He cannot be beaten.

If he remains unbeaten until they tire of it and go home, everything will go brilliantly tomorrow.

Then Tommo is bearing down on him, getting closer, which way will his shot go? Timothy hesitates for just a second, Tommo twists his heavy but surprisingly lithe body one way, slips the ball the other way. Timothy twists, flings himself towards the ball, touches it but cannot stop it.

‘Goal!’ cries Tommo. He whirls around the waste ground, turns with his arms outstretched towards the fans packed into the great Abattoir Stand in their thousands. ‘King Kev is unstoppable,’ he cries. His suicide is still many years away.

Stupid though he knows it is, Timothy cannot help thinking that failing to save Tommo’s shot is a bad omen for tomorrow.

Sniffy Arkwright is scurrying towards them on his splay feet, which might as well carry a health warning, so unsuitable are they for football. Coningsfield Grammar isn’t nickname territory, by and large, but Sniffy has always been Sniffy and nobody even knows his Christian name. Besides, his voice, hard though he tries to conceal it, reveals with every sentence that he belongs in the world of nicknames and is at Coningsfield Grammar by mistake. He’s sniffing out the possibility of a game, his eagerness to join in setting up waves of instinctive resistance. The fun is over.

‘We’re just going,’ says Timothy.

Sniffy Arkwright isn’t surprised. People are always just going when he approaches. And, since this is what life is like, he doesn’t resent it.

As they walk away, Sniffy following like an exhausted dog, Steven says, ‘It must be awful to be engaged and not be allowed to do it.’

‘Awful,’ echoes Dave, who is much given to echoing.

‘I couldn’t stop myself if I was with Naomi. Christ almighty,’ says Steven.

‘Careful,’ says Tommo. ‘Timothy thinks Christ is almighty.’

They climb the gate at the end of the waste ground, and drop down into the ginnel that runs behind the new industrial estate down to the stinking river. Sniffy still follows, even though he has no idea where they are going or why.

Suddenly Timothy can hold his secret in no longer.

‘We did it when we went to London that time when we were supposed to be in Paris,’ he says. ‘We did it four times in one night and we did other things.’

‘Yes, and I’m the Archbishop of Canterbury,’ says Tommo.

Timothy suddenly longs most desperately for Naomi’s body. He will pray for strength when he gets home. He will pray for strength and patience, and he will ask God to make sure that Naomi likes the very special present that he is giving her for her eighteenth birthday.

Timothy walks slowly down Lower Cragley Road, clutching his brown paper parcel. He is deeply ashamed of its inelegance. Of course a dead curlew is not an easy thing to wrap, the beak has proved a nightmare, but he still feels that he should have done better. The paper is crumpled. Pieces of tape hang from it like plasters left too long unchanged on cuts and warts. He has never been a dab hand at wrapping presents. Paper is never obedient under his fingers. Tape never sticks properly. String simply refuses to be tied. God knows what struggles he will have in his slow mastery of the art of taxidermy. Well, God knows everything, or so Timothy thinks.

‘It’ll just be a quiet little supper party,’ Naomi’s mother Penny has told him. ‘Just us and you and Naomi’s best friend Isobel, and her brothers and their girlfriends. That’s all. She’s having her own party on Saturday.’

Timothy likes Naomi’s mother and he quite likes her father but is utterly tongue-tied in his presence. He has good reason to be wary of Isobel, and the thought of meeting both of Naomi’s brothers and their girlfriends for the first time all at once terrifies him. Oh, please, please, God, if you love me, as you say you do, move the clocks on and let it all have happened already.

God does not respond. Maybe Wednesday is his busy night. Timothy has to force himself to turn right into the garden of L’Ancresse. He has forgotten that yesterday he was a man. He is in psychological short trousers today.

He rings the bell. The door opens and Naomi stands before him in all her assumed purity. She is dressed in white, and has a pink bow in her hair.

He kisses her awkwardly, mumbles, ‘Happy Birthday,’ and thrusts the parcel rather too firmly towards her. She fumbles for it and almost drops it.

‘You squashed my breasts,’ she says.

‘Sorry.’

A bad start. Don’t panic, though.

‘What on earth is it?’ she says, examining it with, it has to be said, an element of disbelief.

‘Open it,’ he says.

He has hopes of getting this bit over in private, but his hopes are dashed.

‘Not yet,’ she says. ‘We’re having presents later.’

He has spent ages getting ready. He has brushed his hair five times. He’s wearing his best suit, which is also his only suit. Luckily, he is unaware that his tie clashes with his shirt. Unfortunately, he has no colour sense, and unfortunately, he has no sense that he has no colour sense.

Naomi leads him into the living room. A log fire is burning brightly. The family stand in front of it like a firing squad. Above them is a painting of a heavily reefed sloop in high seas off Harwich. On the chaise longue in the bay window there is a pile of elegantly shaped presents, all wrapped in attractive gift paper, most of them tied with gossamer knots. Naomi places Timothy’s parcel on top of the pile. It sits there like a deformed weathervane.

‘We’ll have the presents after supper,’ explains Naomi.

Introductions are made. Timothy meets Naomi’s elder brother Julian and his fiancée Teresa. Julian is solid and smiling. Shaking hands with him is like holding a sweaty sea bass. Teresa is tall, cool and beaky. Her handshake is wristy and malevolent. They both look at Timothy as if he is an interruption. He then meets Naomi’s other brother Clive and his girlfriend, who turns out to be a boyfriend, named Antoine. Clive is slight, boyish, wry. He presses Timothy’s hand sympathetically. Antoine is tall and good-looking in a rather stately way. He is wearing a thick bottle-green corduroy suit and is the only man in the room without a tie. His handshake is brisk. Timothy runs his hand down his trousers in an involuntary gesture of shock. He has never shaken hands with a homosexual before.

Timothy also shakes hands very warily with Isobel. No one else in the room, and certainly not Naomi, knows that Isobel once leant across and pinched his prick with savage envy during geography. He has never felt quite the same about glacial moraines since. Or indeed about Isobel. Perhaps it’s the name, he thinks. Isobel is not a suitable name for a child. You’d have to spend the first thirty years of your life waiting to grow into it.

He feels very uneasy. He’s sure that his suit is badly cut. He worries that, even though he has chewed so much gum that his jaw aches, his breath may be tainted by fear. He is certain that he is unshapely, drab, ugly, the human equivalent of his parcel, which will sit on top of the pile on the chaise longue like a stinging rebuke all evening. If only he knew, if only Naomi could tell him, that, while her engagement to a taxidermist’s son who has helped her lose her virginity in a cheap hotel in Earls Court is not the stuff of her parents’ dreams, it is as nothing compared to their first meeting with Antoine this evening. They’d had no idea that Clive’s girlfriend was a boyfriend. They’d not been told that he was French. They’d had not the slightest inkling that he was a struggling artist with no money who sometimes rode a bicycle over pools of paint to achieve his unruly effects. In the Undesirable Partner Stakes, Timothy is an also-ran.

And all the time, the badly wrapped curlew sits there, impossible to ignore.

‘What on earth can it be?’ asks Julian.

‘Something with a spout?’ suggests Teresa.

‘A teapot, perhaps. Though why should Timothy give Naomi a teapot? Unless…’ Clive smiles. ‘Unless they are about to set up home together. Has a date been fixed?’

‘Hardly. They’re very young,’ says Naomi’s father hastily.

Naomi looks across at Timothy and smiles uneasily. Something about her smile worries him, but he soon forgets it because he has a far greater worry. He’s terrified that someone will successfully guess the parcel’s secret.

Luckily, before this can happen, they are called in to supper, which is served in the rather bare dining room. It smells of not being used often enough. The oblong table is simply laid, with the usual National Trust mats and no tablecloth. The meal, too, is simple – melon, roast chicken and trifle. Naomi’s parents do not have sophisticated tastes. But the melon will be juicy, the chicken tasty, the trifle first rate. There is also wine – a rarity at the Walls table. Only white, no red. Timothy refuses to try it. Julian takes a sip, looks at Teresa, then at the label, and nods. Antoine comments, in his almost showily immaculate English, that if he painted blue nuns the bourgeoisie would have kittens. Timothy remembers the nun on the train and catches Naomi’s eye. She smiles. There is a brief moment of complicity across the table. But then she turns to talk to Clive. It is clear that she adores Clive.

Timothy is sitting between Julian and Antoine. He wishes that he was next to Naomi, but he understands that her brothers must have that privilege. He’s relieved that he’s not next to Isobel. The vicious little cow might squeeze his balls in mid-trifle. He sometimes wonders if Naomi is a good judge of character.

Julian turns to him with the air of a man dispensing charity, but his words are bombs that will explode if Timothy understands the subtext.

‘I have to say, and this will probably amaze you, that in the whole of my life I have never met a taxidermist,’ he says, smiling deceptively.

‘Oh. Well, perhaps you could come and meet my dad some time,’ says Timothy.

‘An offer it would be hard to refuse,’ says Julian. ‘Tell me, I’m intrigued, is your house full of stuffed birds and animals or does your father see as much as he can stand of them during his working hours?’

Timothy understands enough to realise that this is one person who will not go into raptures of delight at the unveiling of the curlew.

‘We don’t actually stuff them,’ he says rather stiffly. ‘That’s a popular misconception.’

‘I sit corrected. I apologise for my ignorance,’ says Julian stuffily, and turns away.

Antoine turns to Timothy and asks him if he’s ever been to France.

‘No,’ says Timothy. He knows that his reply is short to the point of being brusque. He tries desperately to think of something to embellish it, but he is hopelessly incapable of dealing with Antoine. ‘Never,’ he says.

‘Do you like art?’ asks Antoine.

‘Oh, yes. My dad says what we do is a kind of art.’

‘Are there any particular artists that you admire?’

‘I like Peter Scott,’ offers Timothy after some thought.

‘I do not know this Peter Scott,’ says Antoine.

‘He does birds. Geese. Ducks. That sort of thing.’

‘I see.’

‘They look, you know, just…er…’

‘Just like real live birds, ducks, geese?’

‘Yes. Exactly.’

‘Oh, dear.’

Timothy feels humiliated, but Antoine continues.

‘When we get to know you all, Clive and I will take you under our wing. We’ll go to exhibitions. We’ll show you true art. Good art. Great art. Oh, and bad art. That’s always fun too.’

Timothy finds the prospect daunting. He isn’t ready for this. He’d almost prefer humiliation. It’s easier to deal with. Less emotionally demanding. He finds himself staring at a painting on the wall above the hostess trolley. It shows a ketch beating up the Deben towards a stormy sunset.

Antoine knows what he is thinking.

‘No,’ he says. ‘Not good.’

‘Bad?’ ventures Timothy.

‘No. Not bad. But what use is “not bad”? Not bad is no use. Why are all the paintings in this house pictures of boats?’

‘Naomi’s father sails.’

‘And her mother?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. That’s bad.’

‘Well, I think she gets sick. Very sick.’

‘No, no. I don’t mean it’s bad that she doesn’t sail. I mean it’s bad that all the pictures are of boats when she doesn’t sail.’

The conversation stops there. Antoine is perfectly happy for it to stop but Timothy thinks that it’s entirely his fault.

Now Penny calls across the table to Antoine and asks him questions about France, about his background, about his painting. Then she looks across at her husband, seeking help.

William, who has been staring wistfully at the schooner that is bowling along up the Solent above the bulky Victorian sideboard handed down from his family and impossible to sell until they’re all dead, gives Penny a slight nod, turns to Antoine, and says, ‘I believe quite a large proportion of people in French cities live in flats and apartments.’

‘Yes,’ says Antoine, as if it has been just the question he was expecting. ‘Probably more than here, I think. We do not all see the need to own a house. We are not quite such a nation of gardeners.’

‘Yes. So I’ve heard,’ says William. ‘I sometimes think only our gardens save us from mass outbreaks of insanity. You must have other escapes.’

Antoine doesn’t rise to this.

‘How did you and Clive meet?’ asks Penny brightly, oh, so brightly.

‘On the train,’ says Clive. ‘I was going back to college. I’d popped up to Edinburgh to see an exhibition. And there was this impossibly handsome man strolling sexily down the carriage. Naturally I followed him.’

There is a brief silence. Naomi cannot believe how bravely her parents are taking this. If only she’d known, maybe she and Timothy could have been honest with them. Too late now.

‘Your food is very different from ours, isn’t it?’ continues Penny remorselessly.

‘They eat frogs’ legs,’ says Isobel savagely. It is the only thing she says during the entire meal.

‘We eat all sorts of other things as well,’ says Antoine. ‘You should try our cassoulet.’

Poor Timothy. He can think of nothing to say. He assumes that what he is hearing is sparkling repartee. He hasn’t the experience to realise that this is one of the most stilted conversations he’ll ever hear. He feels out of his depth. He wants to talk to Naomi, but she is sailing down memory lane with her brothers and he has the feeling that she has forgotten she has a fiancé. And all the time his present sits there, in the lounge, waiting. He clings to the thought that, because it has been so wretchedly tied up, it will be all the more of a sensation when it is revealed. But he is not entirely convinced. How slowly time passes. That wretched ketch seems to have been sailing towards that bloody sunset (he apologises to God for his language) for hours, and they still aren’t onto the trifle.

Julian gets to his feet.

‘We must have a toast,’ he announces. ‘Is there any more wine? Everyone must have wine.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ says William. ‘We aren’t wine people, I’m afraid.’

He goes out and comes back with another, differently shaped bottle.

‘It’s not the same, I’m afraid,’ he says.

‘That’s a relief,’ says Julian.

‘Oh, Lord, wasn’t it good? Sorry. Maybe this’ll be better. Not doing my job, eh? Out of touch.’

Julian opens the bottle and makes no comment.

Antoine says. ‘I’d be on safer ground painting black towers.’

‘Right,’ says Julian. ‘All got a drop?’

‘Timothy hasn’t,’ says Antoine.

‘I don’t drink,’ protests Timothy.

‘Got to have a drop to toast our Naomi,’ insists Clive.

Antoine fills a quarter of a glass with wine and hands it to Timothy.

‘Right. The toast. To my dear sister on her eighteenth birthday. How pretty you are, Naomi. Hasn’t she grown pretty, Clive?’

‘Every inch a Juliet.’

‘To our lovely sister Naomi. Happy birthday,’ say the brothers in unison.

‘To Naomi,’ they all cry, raising their glasses.

Timothy takes a sip and almost chokes, but it doesn’t taste too bad, it’s reasonably sweet and warm, he can’t think what all the fuss is about.

Clive leads them into singing ‘Happy Birthday to You’.

William moves his lips but he is so embarrassed that no sounds emerge, Antoine doesn’t know the words, Penny sings too loudly to drown the silence, Julian growls like a stag in rut, Isobel performs as if she’s in an opera but goes too fast and gets ahead of everybody else, Teresa smiles blankly, coolly, beakily, and Timothy succumbs to his choking fit and turns purple. It cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as a musical triumph, and, after they have all sat down, there is another moment of silence.

Naomi stands.

‘I think I should make a speech,’ she says.

There are cheers and cries of ‘Hurrah’. William hunches himself against further embarrassment and dreams of sailing sweetly into St Peter Port harbour on the evening breeze.

‘Thank you all for coming,’ says his daughter. ‘Thanks for the lovely chicken, Mum, it was really great, and for the wine, Dad, very nice. It’s really great to have my best friend Isobel here, and I’m thrilled that my dear brothers could make it, and it’s really great to meet their partners. But above all it’s great to have my fiancé here tonight. I’m really looking forward to that intriguingly shaped present. I’m sure he’s got me something really great.’

There is warm applause.

‘And now a great English delicacy – trifle,’ Penny tells Antoine.

‘I’m enchanted,’ says Antoine.

Three people have seconds, and all the while Timothy’s tension grows.

As at last they leave the dining room, Timothy finds himself walking just in front of Julian and Teresa, who have not been able to discuss matters with each other during the meal.

‘All right?’ whispers Julian.

‘Just about,’ comes Teresa’s answering whisper, ‘for one who’s been completely ignored because they’re all fawning over the Frog poofter to show they aren’t prejudiced, and if that girl had said “really great” once more I’d have thrown up.’

Timothy is surprised by this, but he supposes that it’s impossible to please everyone.

He has decided that he hates Julian, so he is slightly discomfited when Julian whispers, ‘“That girl”, as you call her, is my lovely sister. What did I ever see in you?’

But now they are in the lounge and he can hear no more.

Even now it isn’t time for the presents. There’s coffee first.

‘Now. The presents,’ says Naomi at last. ‘I can’t wait another moment. Julian?’

Nobody knows quite why it has always been Julian who hands out the parcels, but the family sees no reason to change its traditions now.

‘Er…just before Julian plays his part in what is obviously some cosy family ritual that I know nothing about,’ says Teresa, ‘I’ve got a bit of a headache. I’m off to bed if nobody minds.’

Nobody minds, nobody would miss Teresa if she jumped off a cliff, and that now includes Julian. But there is a little awkward feeling in the room, which affects everyone except Timothy.

When Julian had told his parents that he was bringing Teresa, there had been a brief discussion between Penny and William. They had both agreed that Julian and Teresa should not sleep together under their roof. Penny had thought that William should tell them. William had hoped that Penny would.

‘You’ve so much more rapport,’ he had said.

‘And why is that?’ she had retorted. ‘Because you don’t try, and because you sail for a month every August and miss most of our holidays.’

This had shocked William, who had felt that after eleven years of silence on the matter the sore had healed. He had immediately agreed to tackle the issue.

He had felt awkward talking on the phone to Julian about this. He always felt rather awkward talking on the phone, he always felt rather awkward talking to Julian, and he always felt very awkward talking about anything relating to sex.

‘Julian, old chap, how are you? Look, it’s like this. Um…bit of a problem over the…um…the sleeping arrangements. You’ll probably think we’re desperately old-fashioned, and probably we are, but there it is, and I am an elder in the church and your mother does teach at the Sunday School and we…what you do in your lives is up to you, you’re adults, but…um…I’m afraid we can’t condone sex before…um…before…um…marriage under our roof. I mean, sex under our roof, not marriage. I’m sorry, old thing, but that’s all there is to it. If Teresa comes, you must share a bed with Clive like old times…nice, eh, memories of camping, memories of Guernsey, happy times?…you are still there, are you?…Oh, good…and Teresa will just have to muck in with Clive’s girlfriend and hope they get on. Or, I mean, one lot could go to a B & B, we have recommendations.’ He had realised that this sounded a bit dry, so had added, ‘But we hope you’ll stay. Be nice to have all the family under one roof.’

He had been so exhausted, after the emotional challenge of the longest speech he had made in his life outside weddings, classrooms and yachts, that he had entirely forgotten that the job was only half done and that he hadn’t rung Clive.

Julian and Teresa had agreed, Teresa very reluctantly, and then Clive had turned up with Antoine. Clearly Teresa couldn’t sleep with Antoine. That would solve nothing.

Penny had given William a bit of an ear-bashing for not phoning Clive to discuss the arrangements. ‘Never face more awkward moments than you have to, do you?’

‘I just assumed Clive would fall in with the plans. How was I to know his partner was a…’ He had pulled back from using a derogatory term.

There had been talk of trying the B & Bs, but time had been short and in the end Naomi’s parents had agreed that the two couples could sleep together.

‘But we agree under duress,’ William had said. ‘And…er…’ He had looked even more embarrassed than usual. ‘I don’t think I need to say more, but…’

‘But you will,’ Julian had interrupted.

‘Yes. Yes, I will. I think and hope that I can trust all four of you to respect our family home and not…um…try any…um…funny business.’

Teresa had looked furious, but had said nothing. Antoine had looked amused, but had said nothing.

Clive had said, ‘Please don’t stay awake all night listening, Dad, especially to us, wondering what we get up to, as if you didn’t know. After all, even Catullus did it.’

‘I find that attitude unhelpful, frankly, Clive. If you had told us in the first place that Antoine was a man, none of this need have happened.’

‘If I had told you Antoine was a man, it would have suggested that I thought it something I needed to apologise about. Let’s leave it there, shall we, Dad?’

They had left it there. Only now, as Teresa leaves the room, is there any need to think about the matter and recall how difficult the early part of the evening has been.

‘Right,’ says Julian brightly, to show that he isn’t upset by Teresa’s departure. ‘The presents.’

He picks up Timothy’s misshapen offering and carries it over to Naomi as if it might explode.

She begins to tear at the paper, but the parcel proves almost as difficult to unwrap as it was to wrap.

If you have a dead curlew handy, try wrapping it and then unwrapping it bit by bit. It will not reveal the secret of its identity easily. For quite a while nobody can tell what on earth it is. Everybody feels the tension, but nobody more than Timothy.

At last the curlew is fully revealed, its magnificent curved beak, its barred grey-brown plumage, and its eyes. Its eyes look out at the group, sharp, inquisitive, dead. Naomi holds the dead curlew in her hands. She goes cold all over. She is in shock. She hates the lifeless feel of its feathers in her fingers. She heard a curlew trill one morning on the moors and thought that she had never heard a more beautiful sound. She hates it dead. Hates it.

She cannot tell Timothy this.

There is silence in the room.

‘It’s a curlew,’ explains Timothy.

‘Yes, I know,’ says Naomi. ‘I’ve seen them. But not dead.’

‘We didn’t kill it,’ says Timothy. ‘It crashed into a greenhouse up beyond Tangley Ghyll. It’s mine. My very first effort. I did it for you. Dad let me.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ says Naomi.

She is staring at Timothy. He doesn’t know why. He wishes she wouldn’t stare at him. But she has to, for fear that she will catch someone else’s eye. Anyone’s eye. If she does, she’ll succumb to hysterics.

‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘Thank you, darling.’ Saying ‘darling’ makes her feel about eighty, but she doesn’t know what else to call him. ‘It’s…it’s lovely, Timothy.’

She puts the curlew down on an occasional table. She feels so much better now that she’s no longer holding it. She moves back and surveys it.

‘Really lovely,’ she says. ‘Oh, Timothy. You did all that for me.’

She goes over to him and hugs him.

He beams.

‘Was it dreadfully horrid, doing it? You know, putting your fingers up it and…whatever it is you do. Was it awful?’

‘You don’t put your fingers up it. There is no up to put your fingers up. You build a form, with papier mâché, and wire to hold the legs and beak and stuff. It’s like sculpture. You don’t stuff a bird, because you put the skin on at the end, over what you’ve built. It’s an art. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m going to do with my life. It’s my job. Of course it wasn’t horrid.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ she says again, weakly. ‘Well, thank you.’ And she kisses him on the cheek.

‘Well…follow that,’ says Julian, strolling over to the pile of presents.

‘A most original present and a most personal gift,’ says Antoine firmly to Naomi. ‘And Timothy, as a fellow artist I would love to come and see your father’s workshop.’ He looks at the curlew critically. ‘Not at all a bad first effort, Timothy.’

‘Thank you,’ says Timothy. ‘My dad says if you’ve done it really well its eye will follow you wherever you move.’

Naomi tries to hide her horror at this prospect.

Naomi and Timothy are only a few feet away from each other in the great, dark, solemn church. Only Darren Pont, Lindsay East and Sally Lever are between them. All the others in the class, except for Sally Lever, are younger than Naomi and Timothy, who have both rather enjoyed setting an example, and pretending to be mature.

With its fine hammer roof and fifteenth-century font cover, the church is one of only two buildings in Coningsfield to merit a complimentary mention in Pevsner, and the other has now gone to make room for a monstrously ugly multistorey car park whose entrances and exits snake so sharply that few motorists venture into it. The Poles have rebuilt their major cities in all their historical glory, but this is England.

Naomi is not thinking about Poles or the hammer roof. She is thinking of the hammering of her heart. Why does it hammer so? Could it be because she has realised that she and Timothy are poles apart?

She has a pit in her stomach and several moths are flying round there, trying to escape. She is uncomfortably aware of Timothy. She loves him, of course. She is supposed to be going to marry him. But…there is that distance between them.

It’s the curlew. How could he give her such a dreadful thing? How could there be such a chasm between their sensibilities? She keeps it in a cupboard, so that she never has to look at its reproachful eye following her round the room saying, ‘Why did you humiliate me in this way?’ but she is still aware that it is there, in her home, polluting it. She tells Timothy that she keeps it in her bedroom beside her photograph of him. This means that, when he calls round, she has to bring it out in her gloved hands and put it there, in case he pops upstairs and peeps, to see how his proud creation sits, how fine it looks, how happy Naomi must be to wake up from her beauty sleep and see it there, reminding her of him.

It isn’t just the curlew. It’s God. Timothy looks so fervent, so exalted. She cannot feel either fervent or exalted. Why is she here? Because her parents are Christians, her father is an elder, her mother teaches at Sunday School, she sings hymns in school assembly, she prays in school assembly, she writes ‘C of E’ on forms, she tells the careers officer she is C of E. To write ‘agnostic’, to keep her lips clamped during hymns, to keep her head defiantly unbowed during prayers, to upset her parents, what a burden that would be. No, when it comes to religion, the playing field is not level. Oh, there is so much more than just Darren Pont, Lindsay East and Sally Lever between them. Will today bring them closer together? Once they have eaten the body of Christ and drunk the blood of Christ, will they be able to reignite their love?

She recalls the last time he had visited L’Ancresse, a week or so ago. She had felt obliged to take him up to her room, to show him the curlew that she had taken out of the cupboard that morning.

‘There it is,’ she had said, hating herself. ‘In pride of place.’

‘Who’s that?’

His eye had fallen on a sepia photograph, beautifully framed, sitting in the centre of her dressing table. It showed a very handsome young man, with perfect features and a trim moustache. She had found that she didn’t want to tell him, which had surprised her. He was her secret, her harmless secret.

‘Just…a family friend,’ she had said evasively.

She thinks about her evasion now. Her desire to evade seems significant to her. She tries to concentrate on the Bishop’s words, spoken with such uninspired solemnity.

‘To the end that Confirmation may be ministered to the more edifying of such as shall receive it…’

What a strange way to put it. Nice to be thought of among the more edifying, but still…odd.

More words, but she isn’t listening. A dreadful truth has assailed her. It isn’t just God and the curlew. It’s Steven Venables. He’s asked her out. She finds him attractive. He’s so self-contained, so confident, so sure of himself. If she went out with him, he would tell her where he was taking her. Timothy asks her where she wants to go. And then says, ‘Are you sure?’ and they fuss about it till she doesn’t know where she wants to go any more.

‘…which order is very convenient to be observed; to the end, that children, being now come to the years of discretion…’

Discretion, is that what I’ve come to, it doesn’t seem like it to me, thinks Naomi. I’m light years away from discretion.

‘…and having learned what their godfathers and godmothers promised for them in Baptism…’

Auntie Flo is my godmother, but who the hell is my godfather? Oops, language, Naomi. I should be scared, using the word ‘hell’ in my thoughts in church, in the presence of the Bishop. But I’m not. Hell, hell, hell. Not frightening, because there is no hell except the one we humans make.

She’s drifted away from the Bishop’s words again. He really is a very dull bishop. Concentrate, Naomi.

‘…may themselves, with their own mouth and consent, openly before the Church, ratify and confirm the same; and also promise, that by the grace of God, they will evermore endeavour themselves faithfully to observe such things, as they, by their own confession, have assented unto.’

She looks across at Timothy. He looks swollen with good intentions, of consenting, of ratifying, of confirming, of evermore endeavouring, of faithfulness and of assenting unto.

Now the candidates for confirmation move forward towards the altar. They become more than a congregation now. They become active participants in the ceremony.

‘Our help is in the Name of the Lord,’ says the Bishop.

‘Who hath made heaven and earth,’ cry Timothy, Darren, Lindsay, Sally and all the others except Naomi.

‘Blessed be the Name of the Lord,’ exclaims the Bishop.

‘Henceforth, world without end,’ whispers Naomi, trying to join in, knowing that her feelings towards Timothy and God are inextricably and perhaps senselessly joined together on this oh, so solemn day. In a few moments she will be confirmed. It’s too late now to do anything about it.

‘Lord, hear our prayer,’ thunders the Bishop.

‘And let our cry come unto thee.’ Naomi can hear Timothy’s voice above all the others. She senses that he feels nearer to God than the others, and therefore further away from her.

‘Almighty and everliving God, who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy servants by Water and the Holy Ghost…’ the Bishop finds extra reserves of solemnity, ‘and hast given unto them forgiveness of all their sins…’

No longer to have to be ashamed of those three nights in Earls Court, especially the second one, and all those lies to Mum and Dad, but what’s the point of forgiveness if you can’t forgive yourself?

‘…Strengthen them, we beseech thee, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost, the Comforter; and daily increase in them thy manifold gifts of grace…’

Steven Venables has a sister called Grace.

‘…the spirit of wisdom and understanding…’

The dentist thinks I may be going to have a bit of trouble from a wisdom tooth.

‘…the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength, the spirit of knowledge and true godliness…’

The abstract words plop meaninglessly into Naomi’s abstracted brain.

‘…and fill them, O Lord, with the spirit of thy holy fear, now and for ever. Amen.’

The word ‘fear’ horrifies Naomi. She gasps so loudly that Darren Pont turns to look at her in amazement. The fear of God. It crystallises all her doubts in a second.

They are kneeling before the Bishop now, and he begins to lay his hand upon the head of every one of them, saying, ‘Defend, O Lord…’

She can’t go through with it.

She must. It’s too late.

She can’t. It’s never too late.

She doesn’t.

She stands, turns, runs from the church, flees, flees from the Bishop, from God, from Timothy.

‘…this thy child with Thy heavenly…’ In his astonishment the Bishop hesitates for just a moment, then recovers. ‘…grace, that he may continue thine for ever…’

Timothy sees Naomi go, he wants to follow, he wants to rush out and say, ‘Naomi, my darling, what’s wrong? Don’t cry.’ For he knows that she is crying. ‘I am with you. God is with you.’

But he doesn’t. He has come so far and he wants to be confirmed. He is exalted. The ritual is both exhilarating and comforting. He cannot let down his godparents, dear Uncle Percy Pickering and Auntie May Treadwell, whom he has neglected so shamelessly. He wishes to enter this hallowed world, in which the sons of taxidermists are equal to dukes in the eyes of God.

He will see her afterwards, when he is fully with God and is therefore able to help her better. That makes sense.

He is troubled, but the shared solemnity begins to comfort him, it’s so exciting to share the ritual and be as one not only with God but also with Darren Pont, Lindsay East, Sally Lever and all the other confirmees.

If he had followed her, maybe their lives would have been very different.

She walks slowly past Ascot House, where Miss de Beauvoir (Mrs Smith) is deadheading roses. She tries to smile at Miss de Beauvoir, but her face is stiff with tension. She opens the gate of number ninety-six. It squeaks. Supplies of WD40 have still not been replenished. She passes the notice with its unwelcome message, ‘R. Pickering and Son – Taxidermists’. She walks slowly, fearfully up the gravel drive, past the lawn that is so lank and studded with weeds. Weeds are beginning to force their way through the gravel on the path.

In her anxious state she can’t decide whether to ring the bell or rap the knocker. Juliet, reduced to this. She really does consider running away, writing a letter. It’s her last chance.

She presses the bell. She doesn’t hear it ring. She presses again. Again, she doesn’t hear it ring. Well, it’s their fault if their bell doesn’t ring. Call it a business, R. Pickering and Son? Can’t maintain a lawn or a gravel path, can’t be bothered to make sure the bell rings, what sort of business is this? She would be well within her rights to run away.

But she doesn’t. To tell the truth, she has such happy memories of those three nights in Earls Court, especially the second one, that she doesn’t want to run away.

So she tries the knocker. Sharply. Three times. Rat tat tat.

Roly Pickering comes to the door, shirtsleeves rolled up, hair unwashed, morning gunge still in the corners of his bloodshot eyes.

‘Naomi!’ He smiles a careful welcome. ‘How’s tricks, then, eh, Naomi?’

He casts a very quick look down towards her crotch. He always does this. She doesn’t mind. It’s irrelevant, and sad. His face approaches hers, slowing down, like a train nearing the buffers. He makes gentle contact with her cheek, apologetically, mournfully.

‘Is Timothy in?’

‘He most certainly is. You’ve caught us in mid-squirrel, he really is shaping up, but he’ll be thrilled to see you.’

Wrong.

‘Could I have a word with him?’

‘Course you can. Let’s go and find him.’

They walk up the stairs, Roly leading the way. At the top of the stairs, a moose regards them balefully.

‘All the way from Canada,’ says Roly Pickering. ‘That’s the kind of business my boy’s inheriting.’

Naomi can think of nothing to say. Her legs are weak. She feels sick. She finds herself being led up another flight of narrower, rickety stairs, past two jays and a sparrowhawk in glass cases.

By the door to the workshop there is a peregrine falcon in full flight, about to catch a goldfinch.

‘Look at that,’ says Timothy’s father. ‘See those rocks. I climbed Gormley Crag to take an impression of the cliff face, so that those rocks would be authentic. They say pride’s a sin, but I’m proud of that. Couldn’t bear to let it go. Couldn’t sell it. It wings its way straight to my heart, every time I clap eyes on it.’

Naomi realises that Timothy’s father is incapable of doing anything as ordinary as seeing something. He has to clap eyes on it. She feels guilty about this thought. Timothy has told her that before many years have passed his father will not be able to clap eyes on anything any more. But oh, how she wishes he’d be quiet.

Roly opens the workshop door, which squeaks.

‘Young lass to see you, Timothy my lad,’ he says with dreadful good cheer.

Timothy smiles. It’s the smile of a proud, professional young man interrupted in his work.

His father points to an assembly of three sculptured forms with wire sticking out of them.

‘Going to be three puffins,’ he says. ‘Just waiting for them to come from Iceland.’

Timothy sees the horror on Naomi’s face.

‘They’re pests there,’ he says. ‘They cull them. We don’t use anything that has been killed illegally.’

‘They’re made of brand new stuff,’ says Roly Pickering proudly. ‘Rigid polyurethane foam. Far more flexible and workable than papier mâché.’

Naomi doesn’t want to know. Not now of all days.

But Roly Pickering is unstoppable. Now he is showing her the large board to the right of the tiny window. Here hang the many tools of his trade – wire cutters, bolt cutters, pliers, scissors, and sinister things that she doesn’t recognise. The words ‘Scalpel, nurse’ float inappropriately into her mind.

‘I didn’t realise.’

She can see how elaborate the work is, how clever. It is indeed an art, as Timothy had claimed. Her curlew didn’t feel stiff because of rigor mortis, as she had believed, but because it was solid, a sculpture, the feathers spread over the sculpted form so neatly that she should have been proud of Timothy. But it’s too late. She was wrong when she thought that it is never too late. It’s almost always too late.

His father opens a series of small drawers. They are full of eyes, foxes’ eyes, badgers’ eyes, jays’ eyes, stags’ eyes.

‘All from Germany,’ he says. ‘We get all our eyes from Germany.’

They aren’t frightening. They’re like buttons. And yet…the eyes of her curlew had sparkled with alertness. She appreciates now what a miracle of skill her curlew is, what an illusion it is. It’s not a dead bird, it’s a work of art.

‘I didn’t realise,’ she repeats feebly, and then she pulls herself together. ‘Mr Pickering, can I see Timothy in private?’

Timothy suddenly looks serious. Has he an intimation?

‘Yes, of course. You could use the office. Crowded, but clean.’

Timothy looks at her questioningly, then leads the way down the narrow stairs to the landing.

‘He uses one of the bedrooms. We never have guests,’ says Timothy. ‘Nobody ever comes.’

This door squeaks too. Naomi just wouldn’t be able to stand it. If she lived here, the first thing she’d do would be to invest in a huge supply of WD40. If she lived here. She surprises herself even thinking it.

They enter a small room with a desk piled high with unruly invoices and calendars from zoos. There’s an unwelcoming hard wooden chair of the most basic kind, and a black leather chair which desperately needs a taxidermist’s skill to patch up its bursting insides. A dead badger lies on the wide windowsill, which needs painting.

Naomi chooses the hard chair. It wobbles. The right-hand rear leg is wonky.

‘Sit down, Timothy.’

It’s a command.

He has gone white. He sits down. He knows. He’s not quite such an innocent, after all.

‘I’m really sorry, Timothy.’

His mouth opens but no sound emerges.

‘I can’t marry you.’

‘Naomi!’ He may have known but the confirmation of it destroys him. He cowers. ‘What?’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t love you.’

‘You said you did!’

‘I did, and now I don’t. I’ve…there’s someone else.’

Timothy crumples. He bursts into tears. He is pathetic. Tears stream down his face and he whimpers like a dog. She despises him and sympathises with him and hates herself and loves Steven all at the same time.

‘Don’t be so pathetic.’

She doesn’t mean to be cruel, but she hates the scene, the horrid room, the badger judgemental even in death, her former lover sobbing like a baby. She is repulsed. What a good move she is making in freeing herself from this wretch, and yet…and yet…she still recalls those three nights, especially the second one, and she cannot leave him while he is like this.

She goes over and stands by the chair, holds her hand out, touches his wet cheek. His sobs slowly subside.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘It’s the shock.’

‘I know. Timothy, I’ve got to tell you.’ She swallows. She longs for a pint of cool water. ‘It’s Steven.’

‘Steven! No!’ It’s a scream of fury, and she’s pleased to hear it, after all this whimpering. ‘Not Steven!’

‘I know.’

‘He’s…he’s…he’s not even nice, Naomi.’

‘I know. I know.’

‘Do you love him?’

‘I don’t know.’

He clutches at this.

‘Well, then. You loved me. You said you did. Give it another go. I’ll be different. I promise. I can. I promise.’

‘It isn’t a case of your being different. It’s just…it hasn’t worked.’

‘It’s the curlew, isn’t it?’

‘No. I wouldn’t break it off over a present.’

‘I knew you didn’t like it. I just couldn’t accept the fact. I fooled myself.’

‘I do like it. I understand it now. I thought all its old insides were still there, liver and kidneys and things, preserved. I can appreciate it now. It will always be one of my most treasured possessions.’

She took it to the municipal dump yesterday. And this is the young lady who promised God only a few months ago that she would never tell a lie if she lived to be a hundred. But she doesn’t believe in God any more, and besides, she has learned already that it isn’t always bad to tell lies.

‘Is it…religion?’

‘Well…it hasn’t helped.’

‘I’ll never ever try to convert you. I promise.’

‘You mean it, but Christians always do try. They can’t help it. And you will. You won’t be able to help yourself.’

‘I won’t. I promise. Naomi, I’ll do anything. Anything you want.’

‘That’s just silly. Don’t be silly. I don’t want to remember you as silly. Who knows…one day…’ No! She curses herself for saying this. She needs to be totally definite.

She picks the badger up. Now that she understands a bit about taxidermy she feels no fear of it. It isn’t a dead badger. It’s a badger brought to eternal life by art. She turns it round so that it won’t see the last embers of their love, and lowers it onto the windowsill with the respect its life deserves.

‘One last kiss,’ she says.

‘I can’t bear this.’

‘Yes, you can.’

They hold each other, hug each other. She kisses his wet cheek. He moves his mouth towards her, but she turns her mouth away.

‘Thank you for having the courage to come and tell me,’ he mumbles.

‘Thank you for loving me,’ she says.

She breaks away, goes to the door, turns, gives him a painful smile, and leaves. A moment later, he hears the squeak of the front door.

Tears stream down his face, but he doesn’t crumple. He walks over to the badger, picks it up, turns it round, and lays it down again almost as gently as she had. There is no reason for his father ever to know any of the details of what happened.