Читать книгу Childish Things - Robin Jenkins - Страница 10

2

After the funeral, Madge and Jean sought me out in my study, where, to tell the truth, I was looking at photographs of Kate. They wanted to know my plans for the future. They had promised their mother that they would look after me.

Kate must have been much amused.

Madge, aged 45, was tall and fair, like her mother in appearance. She had an honours degree in Economics. Her views were right-wing. She had met her American husband Frank in London, where they were both working, she at the Treasury and he at the British branch of his Californian bank. They had a son and a daughter. Madge had acquired a transatlantic drawl.

‘Dad, Madge and I would like to know what you intend doing,’ said Jean, her eyes still red from weeping. ‘We know that you think you can look after yourself. Perhaps you can now but soon you’ll not be able to.’

‘We don’t think you should stay on in this house,’ said Madge. ‘It’s too big. You’d feel lonely. You’d be haunted by memories of Mom. You’d be happier in a small flat downtown.’

‘You wouldn’t need a car if you lived there,’ said Jean. ‘You could walk to anywhere you wanted. You could take a taxi to the golf club, But in any case you’ll soon have to think about giving up golf.’

It was time to torpedo this well-meaning but mistaken solicitude.

‘I’m thinking of going to India,’ I said.

‘India!’ they cried, aghast.

‘Where the Taj Mahal is.’

That magnificent monument to a beloved wife.

‘To one of those ashrams?’ said Jean.

‘Yes, Jean, to an ashram.’

‘Are you serious, Dad?’ asked Madge.

Well, was I? I had good reason to be serious. I had just lost the woman I had been married to for 46 years. In an ashram, where humility was encouraged, I might be better able to cope with my grief.

‘I’ve read about them,’ said Jean. ‘Frauds, many of them. Always on the look-out for gullible old fools who’ll give them all their money.’

‘Thanks very much, Jean,’ I said.

‘But, Dad, you’ve never been religious. You used to grumble when Mum let us go to the Sunday school.’

‘I was young then and prejudiced.’

Madge then spoke, or rather, made an announcement. ‘If you feel the need for the comfort that religion can give, you do not have to go as far as India to find it.’

Jean, sly besom, then hit on what she considered an incontestable argument. ‘You’d have to shave off your hair and your moustache.’

She knew I would never sacrifice my abundant, wavy, snow-white locks and moustache to match for all the gurus in India.

Madge had another announcement to make. ‘You may like to know,’ she said, haughtily, ‘that Frank and I recently gave ourselves to Jesus.’

I was horrified but not surprised. I had met the minister of their local church in San Diego: a fat, bald, evangelical clown, who kept crying, ‘Hosannah!’

Jean took the news coolly. ‘That’s your privilege, Madge,’ she said.

Just then, Frank, straightening his black bow tie, came into the study to say in his soft voice that the taxi to take him and Madge to the airport was at the door. He had already shaken my hand, soulfully, at least eight times in the past three days, but he did it again.

‘I hope Madge has told you, Dad,’ he said, ‘that you will be very welcome in San Diego if ever you should choose to pay us a visit.’

‘Robert and I will always be glad to see you in Edinburgh,’ said Jean.

‘They often ask about you at the Country Club,’ said Frank. ‘Don’t they, Madge?’

Madge did not answer.

‘Mrs Birkenberger – you remember her, Dad? – asked me just the other day when you were coming back.’

‘Didn’t she used to be the actress, Linda Blossom, in black-and-white films?’ said Jean. ‘Married and divorced four times.’

‘Five’ said Madge.

‘But she’s very very rich’, said Frank, fervently. ‘Our bank handles a lot of her affairs. She owns the land on which the Country Club is situated.’

‘And she thinks it gives her a right to behave disgracefully,’ said Madge.

I well remembered the redoubtable Mrs Birkenberger. As Linda Blossom, she had been an internationally famed beauty. I had met her at the Poinsettia Country Club. Impressed by my graceful golf swing, and by my ducal demeanour, she had invited, or rather, commanded me to play a few holes with her. I had enjoyed it, though she had played very badly and used language unfit for a golf course. ‘Fuck it!’ she had cried after every duffed shot, and there had been many. Afterwards, members had whispered congratulations into my ears. I had been in a cage with a lioness of unreliable temper and had emerged unscathed. She was small and stout, with her face heavily made up and her hair dyed jet black. She had laughed often and randily. It was rumoured that she hired young athletes to pleasure her in bed. I hadn’t been attracted to her sexually, thinking her too old and uncouth, but I had had Kate to be faithful to and keep me in line. It could be different now. If, after a lifetime of sleazy amours, the lady was looking for a mature gentleman, cultured, handsome, witty, knowledgable, and (fingers crossed) an able enough lover, given the right encouragement, why shouldn’t I toss my Panama into the ring?

As for Kate, she, good sport, herself out of the game, would cheer me on. Hadn’t she, on her death-bed in the hospital, too weak to wink, whispered that I was not to grieve too long but was to try and enjoy what little was left of my life?

Some may think me a monster, one minute talking of retreating to an ashram, and the next dreaming of a dalliance with a foul-tongued elderly millionairess. But that is how human beings are. No one is surprised to learn that the keeper of the gas chambers was a loving husband and indulgent father.