The Friendly Ones. Philip Hensher

had come round to him, the female half of the species. He’d known, after Victoria, what the secret was – not to beg, not to apologize, just to know with perfect certainty that the girl, the woman you had brought within your orbit and decided to fuck, was going to want to fuck you. They were already persuaded or they were not going to be persuaded. After Victoria he never had to wear anyone down; he did not pester, was always aloof, his gaze moving steadily over the surface of an irresistible girl as if he had hardly registered her. When his parents and his sisters and his brother were out of the house, for three years, his life and the house he lived in were alive with cunt. That was how it was. Once on the stairs, even.

      And then when he had come back from Oxford after that disastrous four months. He had had to try it out. The outrageous line had failed in Oxford. Even the level gaze had failed in Oxford. It had been greeted, once or twice, by its challenging partner, a level gaze in return. He could not understand it. It was as if they all knew what it was he had said. And soon it was his gaze that shyly dropped, in a college bar facing a girl who knew that, two years before, she wouldn’t have been let in here, across a table in a seminar room, in the faculty library. The women had scented blood and, instead of going after him, had laughed and turned and gone elsewhere. The way Oxford had misread him, and that last night in January with that man Tom Dick outside his room with half a dozen drunk cronies, hammering on the door at three a.m. and shouting, ‘Shy boy! Shy boy!’ Had he ever been a success with women? He had returned to Sheffield in failure and misery at the beginning of February. It had been a month before he had raised his gaze in a bar, and made sure it did not quail, waited for his gaze to stay level and draw a woman to him. It had worked again, as it had not worked in Oxford. He had brought the woman home; she had stayed the night. She was called Lynne. It was a month after that that he had met Catherine. That had been a triumph, too. Framed by a life of accustomed triumph, by the ability to get whatever he wanted, however, there were those four months in Oxford.

      He was at the foot of the stairs. He ought to phone Lavinia – no, Hugh, no, Lavinia – and find out whether their mad father had said anything to either of them about divorcing Mummy. Lavinia would be in the office; Hugh would be at home, and quite possibly still asleep. He thought. This was always the dark part of the house, the wood panelling and the lack of windows seeing to that, but also, outside the front door, the heavy growth of wisteria casting a shade over the porch. There was a figure outside in the gloom. It might be peering in, or just deciding whether to ring the doorbell. Leo came to his senses. He opened the door.

      ‘I think it must be your father,’ the small person said.

      ‘I mean,’ she went on. ‘I came round to say thank you – it must be your father I was going to thank.

      ‘It is your father – I mean, you’re his son, aren’t you?’ she said. She was very young, her tiny hands fluttering a little as she talked. She had known that it would be him answering the door and not his father. She had started talking, unprepared, as soon as Leo had opened the door, her eyelids half closing defensively, and had begun to explain things starting with the wrong end.

      ‘Yes, that’s my dad,’ Leo said. ‘Did you want him? He’s down at the hospital with my mum.’

      ‘Oh,’ the woman said. ‘Only to –’ She flapped, not knowing what else to do.

      Leo hung on to the side of the front door. She had given some thought about what to wear: the grey skirt and paler grey sweater were new, and the burst of orange in a little silver and plastic brooch her only concession to a colour she had been told she ought to wear more of. It was the brooch that made Leo decide he ought to help her out. ‘You live next door, don’t you?’ he said.

      Perhaps she thought she had already explained, had ventured into detailed conversation. ‘I’m Aisha,’ she said. ‘I’m not living next door – I’m just visiting for the weekend and a day or two more.’

      ‘Come in,’ Leo said. ‘I can do you a cup of tea and perhaps a biscuit, but more than that – anyway, come in. It’s nice to meet you. You’re in the –’

      ‘Everyone says it’s the Tillotsons’ house,’ the girl said. ‘I never met the Tillotsons. I expect they’re sitting somewhere everyone describes them as the new family living in the Smiths’ house.’

      They were in the kitchen now.

      ‘Your dad is astonishing – a genius. Yesterday. He was straight over the fence and putting Raja right in no time at all. My brother, Raja. Mummy hardly had time to scream, even. Your dad was as cool as a cucumber. Raja’s back home now, with nothing to show for it but a gauze bandage round his neck. His brother keeps on at him to take the bandage off but he only wants to see the hole in his neck.’

      ‘You’d have to ask my father,’ Leo said, smiling, ‘but I don’t think he should do that. Probably.’

      ‘I haven’t been in here before,’ Aisha said. She looked around her at the kitchen. She might have been observing it with the weight of evidence and experience, comparing it as Leo had to the kitchen he had known, groaning under the weight of six adults or near-adults with bellies to fill. ‘I haven’t been in any of the neighbours’ houses – well, only as far as the hallway of one. I’m Aisha – I’m so sorry I didn’t introduce myself.’

      ‘Aisha,’ Leo said. He had got it the first time. Then he realized what she meant, and said, ‘I’m Leo Spinster. I don’t live here either.’

      ‘Well, there you are,’ Aisha said. She almost glowed. She might have prepared all this, and at the last, when it came to getting it out, found that there was something on her tongue that was keeping her from saying it in the right order. ‘Your kitchen’s nice,’ she said. ‘It’s so nice to come somewhere just next door where, you know, that oven’s been there for ever, and the kettle and the toaster.’

      ‘The toaster doesn’t work,’ Leo said. ‘It wasn’t working at Christmas and it still isn’t working.’

      ‘You should see our house,’ Aisha said. ‘Mummy’s gone mental. Every single thing is new – well, not quite everything, but she said she’s not going into a new house with all the old things. She’s got a fridge that opens the wrong way because of where she wanted to put it in the kitchen. She’s got her own money, the houses in Wincobank she lets out, and she’s spending like a Rothschild on new stuff just now.’

      Leo’s face must have responded somehow to this; he had, he understood, been wandering about the house touching things in wonderment and alarming fulfilment, picking up objects that had always been there: a piece of rock crystal on a shelf, not seen through years of dull observation, had possessed the deep shock of a truth recognized immediately, as if for the first time. He had picked up object after object, turning them round and inspecting them in the familiar light of the empty house, letting them lead to the memory of one fuck after another.

      ‘Not even the bloody clock’s telling the time,’ Leo said. ‘Nothing works in this house.’

      Aisha looked up at the Swiss railway clock that hung over the stripped-pine door to the hallway. She flicked her wrist upwards for Leo to see; she wore a man’s heavy watch. Now Leo looked at the clock, he didn’t know why he’d thought it had stopped: it was ticking solidly, reliably, just as it ever had. It was twenty to two.

      ‘What time is it?’ Leo said. ‘I didn’t put my watch on this morning.’

      ‘Twenty to two,’ Aisha said. ‘Have you got to be somewhere?’

      ‘I thought it was about ten o’clock,’ Leo said. ‘I’m supposed to be at the hospital. Oh, God, I was supposed to book a taxi and everything.’

      ‘Which hospital? I can take you. Mummy’s not using her car. Don’t you drive?’

      5.

      Aisha told him to wait there, just at the end of the drive, and dashed off – scampered, you could almost say. Leo could meet them all another day, she called over her shoulder. Mummy’s car was a red Fiat, a little run-around for town. Aisha briefly opened her front door, shouted something,