Obstacles to Young Love
David Nobbs

In memory of Father John Medcalf

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

PART ONE Obstacles to Young Love 1978

PART TWO The Other Side of the World 1982

PART THREE The Rocky Road to Seville 1991–1993

PART FOUR Get Stuffed 1995

PART FIVE Second Time Around 1995–1999

PART SIX A Glorious Summer’s Day 1999

PART SEVEN Farewells 1999–2002

PART EIGHT They Say You Should Never Go Back 2003–2004

PART NINE Wide Skies 2008

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PART ONE Obstacles to Young Love 1978

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.

PART TWO The Other Side of the World 1982

They climb for well over an hour, high into the parched hills. At last they see a crowd of people standing outside a simple house. The best man claps Simon warmly on the shoulder and beams at Naomi. They shake hands with all the guests, even with some tiny toddlers. Everyone smiles. These are real mestizo people, a mixture of Spanish and Indian.

They say – translated by Paul, of course – that they are very grateful to Simon and Naomi for having honoured them with their presence on this great day. Simon and Naomi look instinctively for mockery. There is none. These people’s hard lives leave no room for mockery.

Paul – Padre Pablo to his parishioners – is Simon’s uncle. He has been a parish priest in Peru for thirteen years, and has invited them to visit before he returns to England next month. He found the climb difficult. He likes his rum and is somewhat overweight. Simon and Naomi, however, have no problems with the altitude. They are fit. After all, it was at Simon’s gym that they met.

The little house is no more than a small barn. It’s built of mud reinforced by lines of stones. The roof is tiled. Paul explains that one day it will be a two-storey house, but Naomi wonders if the second floor will ever become more than an intention.

There’s no toilet, no running water, no electric light, and no possibility of their ever having those things.

Normally the only decoration on the walls is a small mat, rather like the mat Naomi bought on a reed island in Lake Titicaca. Hers told the story of the life of the woman who wove it. She will give it to her mother, who will love it. She thinks for a moment of her mother, and is suddenly homesick for L’Ancresse.

Today, the house has been turned into a church, and there are decorations hanging from the beams, pictures of buses, condors, rabbits, pumas, a fish, a dog and some dancers. There is a table covered by a white cloth, and a simple homemade shrine to the Virgin. The simplicity overwhelms Naomi. She’s afraid that she will burst into tears. Hastily, she pretends that she’s an actress in a film, that she’s being directed by John Huston, that he has told her that if she cries she will never work for him again.

Round the walls on two sides of the dirt floor are low benches. A cloth covers one of the benches.

‘The cloth is there for our privileged, first-world arses to park themselves on,’ explains Father Paul with a gleam.

Padre Pablo dons a long, beautiful white robe and stole, and the ceremony begins. Naomi and Simon feel extraordinarily privileged to be able to witness the wedding of Marcelina Mosquiera Teatino and Alberto Cerquin Chuqchukan. Paul has explained that they had a natural wedding many years ago, when they worshipped the Sun God, but now they have converted to Catholicism. They’ve had eight children, three of whom have died. ‘It’s par for the course in these parts, I’m afraid.’

Naomi feels so happy for them in their happiness, and yet so sad, for she is convinced that they are deluded, and she cannot think it good to be deluded. Yet she realises that her reactions are more suited to Coningsfield than to the village of Tartar Chico, high above the Cajamarca Valley in the mighty Andes.

The service is very simple. One woman breastfeeds throughout. A dog drifts in, decides that there’s nothing for him, and wanders out. Paul’s voice is low and warm and kind. The groom repeats his vows strongly. The bride repeats hers shyly, almost inaudibly. Some things are the same the world over. Father Paul puts the stole over them both, and they take communion. Their intense pride is heartbreaking. There is absolute silence in this simple home. Naomi feels the desperate heat of the faith that is warming this cold room. Again, she fears that she may cry. She fights the emotion by becoming a government inspector, directed by Stanley Kubrick, who will bully her if she breaks down.

After the ceremony, everyone goes outside. A vast pot of boiled maize appears, and they offer some to Paul, Simon and Naomi.

‘We must accept,’ says Father Paul. ‘It would be a great insult not to.’

The three of them go back inside, but the other guests don’t follow. Naomi lowers her privileged, much-admired, occasionally kissed, first-world backside onto the cloth that saves it from coming into contact with the hard, rough bench beneath.

Paul explains that nobody will eat until they have eaten.

‘You may hate it, Naomi, but it has to be like this. I tried to change it, and it didn’t work. Believing that all men are equal is one of the privileges enjoyed by those who are more equal than others. These people have incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.’

A tray, with a cloth on it, is brought in. On it are two vast bowls of maize, one with one spoon, one with two. Married people eat out of the same bowl. It is the custom.

A bowl of sauce is brought. Paul warns that it will be very fiery.

‘These people wouldn’t be so poor if they were allowed to practise birth control,’ says Naomi.

‘Naomi!’ hisses Simon. ‘This is not the time.’

‘No, no. Feel free to say what you think, my friends,’ says Paul, ‘but say it casually, as if we’re discussing the weather. Don’t let these good people see that we are arguing. They would be very upset.’

‘I don’t know that I’m up to that,’ says Naomi.

‘Really? I thought you’d just left drama school,’ says Simon. ‘I thought you were a fully fledged actress now.’

The remark hits Naomi just as she is experiencing her first taste of the sauce. The fire burns right down her throat. She can’t breathe.

‘That wasn’t very nice, Simon,’ she gasps.

‘Children, please. We’re on show. Don’t spoil their day,’ warns Paul again.

The maize is palatable, if not exciting.

‘This will be their permanent diet,’ Paul tells them. ‘Ten years ago, there’d probably have been a little meat. Not now, even for a wedding. These people are cut off from everything except the effects of recession. Prices for their pathetic little crops remain stable, while inflation rises.’ His voice remains calm, he is smiling, only his eyes show his anger. ‘And these are the people with whom, in markets and railway stations, tourists think it clever to haggle.’

Paul’s little history lesson defuses the situation, but Naomi is still shocked by the tartness in Simon’s remark about her. It seems as if in the tension and embarrassment of the occasion some deeper, less pleasant aspect of his personality has been revealed.

The sauce is fearsome, but in tiny quantities, worked very thinly into the maize, it makes a tolerable meal – if you don’t have to eat it every day.

Their bowls hardly seem to empty, and there is a whole wedding reception out there, waiting patiently. Patience is sprinkled over this land like a condiment.

‘In Cajamarca,’ Paul continues, ‘there’s a room called El Cuarto del Rescarte – the Ransom Chamber. After he’d been defeated and captured by Pizarro and his little band of conquistadores in 1532, Atahualpa realised how greedy for gold the Spaniards were.’

Naomi thinks back to Peter Shaffer’s play, and wonders, briefly, what Timothy is doing at this moment.

‘So Atahualpa offered to fill a large room with gold and silver in exchange for his release. But Pizarro had no intention of releasing him. Realising this, Atahualpa tried to escape. Pizarro wanted to keep him alive, but was overruled. He was led out into the Plaza de Armas, to be burnt at the stake. He accepted baptism, and the sentence was commuted to strangulation.’

Naomi winces and mutters, ‘Fear. Always fear,’ through a mouthful of recalcitrant maize.

‘I took an American economist to the Ransom Chamber a few years ago,’ continues Father Paul. ‘He looked at it in deep awe, and said, in tones of wonderment, “I’ve always been telling my students that inflation began in this room in Cajamarca, and now I’m here.” I really think he was almost on the point of having an orgasm about inflation.’

‘Have you ever had an orgasm, Paul?’

Naomi says this to shock Simon. She is sorry to have to shock Padre Pablo, but there is something about Simon today that makes her really want to shock him.

Simon is shocked, but Paul isn’t, not remotely. He smiles, and replies very casually, so that the waiting guests might think he was saying, ‘Jolly good maize, this,’ or, ‘Pity England didn’t qualify for the World Cup finals.’

‘Hundreds,’ he gleams. ‘Not that I’ve kept count. Nobody ever pretended that celibacy was easy, or that priests are sexless freaks. Each time I have one I remind myself that if I hadn’t taken Holy Vows I might be doing it with a beautiful woman and not just with my veined old hand.’

A small child enters with a bowl, a child much too small to realise that they are superior beings who eat alone and undisturbed. Several appalled adults rush in and remove the child, who doesn’t cry. They learn to accept life’s restrictions at an early age in this land.

‘Actually, Naomi, I have grave doubts about celibacy. It’s too difficult except for saints. And it separates us from our parishioners and makes us less able to understand their problems.’ He smiles at her and there is naughtiness in those deep, understanding eyes. ‘Besides, you remind me of what I have missed.’

Simon raises his eyebrows in surprise but Naomi knows that there is no lechery in the remark, and accepts the compliment gracefully.

At last Paul thinks that they have eaten enough, even though their bowls are far from empty. They mime their delight, and the fullness of their stomachs, and there is laughter.

They shake hands again with every single person, and every adult thanks them for coming.

And every adult is glad that they are going.

They walk down the great hills in silence.

That afternoon, in the warm sunshine, Naomi, Simon, Paul and Greta sit in the garden of the Parish House, the Parroquia. Greta is German. She’s training to be a nun. She is of medium height and slim, with straight, sandy hair. She has a disappointed face and strikingly good legs.

The Parish House is on the little main square of the village of Baños del Inca. On the other side of the square are the hot baths. The water in the streams round the village is so hot that every morning Simon has to collect a bucket of hot water from one of them, carry it home and mix it with at least the same amount of cold, before he can shave with it. Simon and Naomi go over to the public baths every morning, and have a hot bath together in a space big enough for a football team. Twice they’ve made love in the hot baths. It’s their delayed honeymoon, after all. But today for the first time Naomi doesn’t feel that it’s quite like a honeymoon. Today for the first time Naomi is not in paradise. Today for the first time she cannot be content with small talk.

‘You Catholics are so caring about the poor,’ she says. Simon glares but she takes no notice. ‘How much better their lives might be if there weren’t so many of them.’

‘To which of them would you deny the joy and excitement of existence?’

‘That’s nonsense, Paul. A person doesn’t exist until they’re conceived. Birth control doesn’t deny any actual person life. It just makes life better for those who are conceived. The arguments for birth control are overwhelming. How can you not see it?’

Simon thinks how young she looks. She hopes his uncle will forgive her because of this.

‘Of course I think about these things,’ says Paul. ‘And I’m not unsympathetic to your views. I’m what they sometimes call a worker priest, Naomi, and as such not always entirely popular with my superiors. I have to tread carefully, but I can assure you, I and many others of my kind turn a blind eye.’

‘For…’ She is going to say, ‘For God’s sake,’ but she stops. Simon smiles to himself as he witnesses the battle between her passion and her manners. ‘Sorry, Paul, but I just don’t think a blind eye’s enough,’ she says quietly. ‘The message needs to be shouted from the rooftops.’

Paul smiles. Suddenly he looks weary. Perhaps he has faced enough of the world’s poverty.

Greta, who has listened intently, moving her gaze back and forth like a spectator at Wimbledon, crosses her legs. Her skirt is tight and the stretched material makes just the faintest rasp. Simon turns to look at her legs, and Naomi notices, recalling suddenly how Timothy had only ever had eyes for her.

She hasn’t given a thought to Timothy for months, and now she’s thought of him twice in one day.

She wonders where he is.

She would be shocked if she knew. He is also on his honeymoon, and he is also in Peru. He was married eight days ago, in Coningsfield, in the church where he was confirmed and from which Naomi ran so dramatically. Tommo, who failed to get into medical school and so had little hope of becoming a gynaecologist, was his best man, and was surprisingly nervous when making his speech. Dave Kent managed an afternoon off from his dad’s greengrocer’s. Steven Venables was amazed to be invited, but Timothy explained that Christians believe in forgiveness. He suggested Peru for their honeymoon. Peter Shaffer’s play had given him an interest in the country, and Maggie hadn’t needed much persuasion. She wasn’t one for lying around on beaches. Her naked body was known only to her and her Maker, and she was having a bit of difficulty in letting even Timothy in on the secret.

And now here they are on a train from Puno to Cusco. The train has run along the shore to the head of Lake Titicaca, which died gently in a salt-bed of mud and reeds. There were wading birds everywhere, including egrets and birds that looked like a South American species of curlew. Timothy thought briefly about Naomi’s curlew. He wondered if she still kept it on display. He wondered who the handsome young man in the photograph in her room had been, and why she had refused to tell the truth about him. He wondered if she ever thought of him, of Romeo and Juliet, of their nights is Earls Court. But it was only a passing thought. He has long ago recovered from his Naomi-itis. In all probability he will never see her again.

They have found the great Andean Altiplano breathtakingly lovely. The emptiness of the land, the great wide skies, the bare hills, the thatched adobe villages, the silver ribbon of river in the plain.

There have been cheese sandwiches for elevenses. A three-course lunch of avocado, beef stew and a banana has been served throughout the train. As they ate, the train had still been in sunshine, but dark clouds had sat on the high peaks like cowboys’ hats. And one lone cowboy had stood in the empty land, miles from anywhere, and watched the train go by just as every passenger had been eating a banana. Timothy has wondered if the man had ever seen a trainload of people all eating bananas before, and what he had thought of it. But he hasn’t mentioned it to Maggie. It wasn’t the sort of thing that interested her.

Now the train is descending into the valley of the Vilcanota, which becomes the Upper Urubamba, which becomes the Lower Urubamba, which becomes the Vilcanota again. Anyway, they are all tributaries of the mighty Amazon. Timothy and Maggie are going to visit the Amazon before they return home. Well, Roly Pickering is not too well, and his eyesight is bad. One day quite soon the board in the garden of number ninety-six will state ‘T. Pickering – Taxidermist’, and then Timothy is going to be busy. They may never get another chance.

More cheese sandwiches appear throughout the train. The countryside is much more fertile now. There are picturesque, tightly grouped villages, huddled against the hostility of the world. There are eucalyptus trees in abundance. And all the way the river rushes with them.

Twilight falls. The train stops. Somebody gives them the unwelcome news that on this very train last week, forty-six people were killed by bandits.

The delay is interminable. It’s now dark outside, and the lights inside are dim and unencouraging. More cheese sandwiches appear. An American further up the carriage calls out that they will not be allowed to move until all the cheese sandwiches have been eaten. The laughter is distinctly hysterical. Maggie doesn’t laugh. Timothy suddenly realises that she almost never laughs. Not that he wants her to. They are dedicated to seriousness. They face life sternly, hand in hand.

An American lady wants to go to the toilet but is told that the door at the end of the carriage is locked, so that thugs can’t get at them. This locked door will hardly save them from bandits, though. It has a huge glass pane running almost its entire length. Or appears to have. When the conductor steps right through it, they realise that there is no glass.

‘Don’t worry,’ says the conductor. ‘We have armed guards protecting you.’

This does not reassure them.

Suddenly, stubby fingers scrabble at a window. Timothy’s heart almost stops. Goose pimples run right down his back. He holds out his hand to comfort his bride. Are they to die after eight days of wedlock?

But Maggie doesn’t need comforting. She’s facing her Maker with a grim face, set in the granite of her courage. She is a sight to discourage all but the most desperate of bandits.

But the stubby fingers do not belong to a bandit. Somebody manages to hoist the owner of the fingers up until she can see into the train. The fingers belong to a short, stubby Indian lady. She is possibly the world’s unluckiest seller of cheese sandwiches.

There is laughter throughout the crowded, tense carriage. Timothy and Maggie are outraged by the cruelty of the laughter, but even Timothy cannot avoid a slight amused tremor. He looks out of the window, lest Maggie spots it.

The explanation for the delay turns out to be extremely banal. The engine has broken down.

Naomi sits in the bar of the Hotel de Turismo in Cajamarca. She has been buying little knick-knacks for her friends at drama school. Simon wants her to get presents for his friends too. He’s happy to pay but can’t be bothered to look. It’s just one more little stain discovered on the shining surface of his perfection.

The bar has dim lights, bare tables and one other customer. He smiles at her.

‘May I join you?’ he asks politely.

‘I’m expecting my husband,’ she says hurriedly.

‘Oh no, I am not trying to…I am German. I am a travel agent. I am on a fact-finding mission to improve services to my clients.’

‘Well…fine…I hope I can help.’

He moves over to her table, bringing his beer. He is tall, stiff, flaxen-haired, quite good-looking in a rather inanimate way. He looks like a well-made waxwork of himself.

‘The North of Peru is neglected,’ he begins. It’s his idea of introductory small talk. ‘But it is much more interesting than the South. Most of the South is very overrated. Lake Titicaca, for instance, is very boring. Don’t go there.’

‘We’ve been there.’

‘What did you think of the Chullpas of Sillustani?’

She has never heard of them. What are they? People? Liked him, hated her? ‘I…er…I haven’t actually heard of the Chullpas of Sillustani.’

He jerks his head upward like a frightened thoroughbred. He is astounded. He is contemptuous.

‘What?? But they are the most interesting of all the funerary towers in which the Aymara buried their nobles.’

‘We didn’t actually see any funerary towers,’ she admits.

‘What? But the funerary towers are the only thing of interest in the whole area around Lake Titicaca.’

‘We missed them.’

He is shocked, but he rallies.

‘You didn’t get a boat to one of the reed islands, did you? They are tourist traps.’

‘We did.’

Her coffee arrives, with three slices of sweet apple on a separate saucer. There has been some little extra gift everywhere they have been in Peru.

‘But not the first island? That is a complete sham.’

‘We went to the first island.’

‘But you didn’t buy a mat?’ he asks with dimishing hope. ‘Those mats are phoney. The women tell you that they represent, in pictures, their life story. They do not.’

‘We bought a mat.’

He is silent. This is too difficult for him to bear.

Where is Simon? He should be here by now.

She begins to talk non-stop. It’s the only way to avoid being lectured by him. She talks about Cusco, about the poverty she has seen: an old woman asleep on a pavement beside her wares, which consisted entirely of spring onions; a little boy selling cigarettes one by one; a sweet, pale girl, aged about nine, trying to make a sale in a café, holding out her complete stock on a tray – two toilet rolls. She contrasts these scenes with a description of a treasure she saw in the magnificent La Merced church in the city. It was a representation of the sun, with topazes, emeralds and pearl mermaids, and, at its shining centre, fifteen hundred diamonds.

‘These contrasts are all too easy to make,’ says the German dismissively.

‘But true and obscene just the same.’

He shrugs. He is not pleased. Where is Simon?

He asks her where they are going next.

‘We’re going on a bit of a farewell tour with Simon’s uncle, who is a priest, and then Simon and I hope to be off to the Amazon.’

‘Don’t. It is a very boring river.’ He pauses. ‘But if you do go, don’t go to Iquitos. It is a very boring town.’ He pauses again. ‘But if you do go to Iquitos, don’t go on a trip to any of the jungle lodges. They are a real waste of time.’ He pauses again. Naomi glances out of the window, and an icy blast runs through her veins. She barely hears the last piece of the travel agent’s advice. ‘But if you do go to a jungle lodge, don’t go to the first one. That is a very boring lodge.’

Simon has walked into view with Greta. He kisses her cheek. She walks on, he turns and approaches the hotel.

He orders drinks – a beer for himself, an Inca Cola for Naomi. The German refuses the offer of a beer and says that he has to go. Even when he has gone, Simon doesn’t mention Greta.

‘Had a nice time with Greta?’

Naomi doesn’t like this new sound in her voice. She wishes she could swallow the words back.

‘What do you mean? I met her, that’s all. We walked a bit.’

‘Do you usually kiss nuns you hardly know?’

‘Yes, I’m the secret nun kisser of Basingstoke. I give myself ten points per nun, and fifty for a Mother Superior. No, of course I don’t. But she showed me one or two things and I was grateful and…I kissed her.’

‘You fancy her.’

‘I do not. What the fuck is all this? What’s got into you?’

Doubt. That’s what’s got into her. Not a very serious doubt. Just the very slightest dent in her conviction that she has done the right thing in marrying him.

A minibus collects Naomi and Simon from their hotel in Iquitos at nine twenty-five. Already, the heat and humidity are stifling.

There are three other passengers on the bus – Timothy, Maggie and the German travel agent.

Naomi is stunned. So is Timothy.

So is the German travel agent.

‘What are you doing in Iquitos?’ he says. ‘I told you not to come here. It is too hot, the hotels are too expensive, the town is dull, and it closes at weekends.’

At first, Naomi and Timothy are too shocked to speak. At last Naomi says, ‘What are you doing in Peru?’

‘I’m on my honeymoon. This is Maggie.’

These words, spoken so innocently, are bullets that fly straight to Naomi’s heart. She is astounded to find that this is so, utterly unprepared for her sudden yearning for Timothy’s body beside her in a sagging bed.

‘You?’ he asks.

‘The same. This is Simon.’

Introductions and explanations follow. Timothy’s eyes are making a desperate appeal to Naomi, and she realises what it is. Don’t mention our three nights together, especially the second one.

‘So, this is a happy coincidence,’ says the German travel agent.

‘Happy, yes,’ lies Naomi. ‘Coincidence? Not entirely. We were both in a play about Peru at school. I think something of its magic touched us.’

The minibus turns off the road onto a wide track that leads down towards the river. It pulls up by a locked gate. The driver hoots several times, then gets out and bangs on the gate.

‘Why are you going to the first jungle lodge?’ asks the travel agent, almost angrily. ‘I told you this was not interesting.’

‘We only have time for one, and we did want to see the Amazon,’ says Naomi lamely.

At last an elderly unshaven man, with a touch of the salt about him, shambles up and unlocks the gate.

The passengers proceed down a flight of steep wooden steps to a small pontoon alongside which lies a long, narrow, thatched boat. It seats about a hundred. They are the only five customers.

‘Tourism has died here this year. It is because of the Falklands War. People are frightened. The Falklands are thousands of miles away. European people are idiots,’ says the German travel agent.

The boat eases slowly out into the stream, and chugs off on its two-and-a-half-hour journey to the jungle lodge. Everybody wants to admire the scenery. Nobody wants to talk. There is going to be plenty of time for talking at the lodge.

Naomi links arms with Simon. She hopes he is unaware that she is doing this for Timothy and Maggie to see.

Outside the town they pass a great confusion of ships, shipbuilders’ yards, half-finished boats, abandoned boats, rubbish dumps, timber yards, and rusty cargo vessels.

Three tankers, the Tupa, the Rio June and the Alamo, are moored at a large petroleum installation. They’re all registered at Manaus.

Naomi gives a little sigh.

‘Something wrong?’ asks Simon.

‘Not at all.’ If only he was better at understanding her thought processes. ‘The registrations on ships excite me. All the way from Manaus. Suddenly the Amazon all makes sense. I mean, wouldn’t you be excited if you saw a ship registered at Valparaiso?’

Simon smiles and oh my God it’s the smile of someone attempting to pacify a child. How will they get through their night in the lodge with Timothy so close? This is devastating. Only a week ago, Simon was Mr Perfection. Julian had told her that he had wandering eyes, that he loved his own body, hence all that keep fit. Always quick to see the worst in anyone, Julian. He’ll have a very successful career as a lawyer.

They meet thatched boats coming upstream, heavily laden, mainly with bananas. People in canoes are hauling in their nets. And all the while there is the rainforest on both banks, punctuated by small villages of thatched houses on stilts. One village looks very much like another. One house looks very much like another. One stilt looks very much like another.

‘I told you,’ says the travel agent. ‘It is a very boring river.’

‘And how very brown it is. How very, very brown,’ says Naomi in a Noel Coward voice.

There is a question she has to ask of the German.

‘You say Iquitos is boring. You say the Amazon’s boring. You say the first jungle lodge is boring. Why are you here?’

He snorts like a horse approaching a jump which frightens it.

‘For research for my clients. My clients demand these places. They are cowards.’

They see two large kingfishers. How beautiful they are. Simon, give him credit, loves birds. She points to them, and he smiles and squeezes her arm. Maybe things will still be all right. She certainly doesn’t want Julian to be proved right. It’s his hobby.

‘Beautiful,’ he murmurs.

Yes. Beautiful. But Maggie is so ugly. How can Timothy possibly fancy somebody so ugly?

A lady with a bright pink parasol rides in a canoe towards the green grass and well-tended fields of yet another thatched village. She carries more of an aura of Henley than of the jungle.

Ugly is putting it far too strongly. She has to admit that. The nose is a little too wide, but not horrendously so. The lips, though on the thick side, are reasonably shapely. Some people probably find bushy eyebrows attractive.

Maggie’s skin, though white and lifeless, is not much marked. Except for the mole on the right cheek, of course. But the mole is really quite small and it’s only when the sun strikes it that you can see the two thin hairs that are attached to it. Naomi turns now, and sees them in the sunshine. No, to her regret, they aren’t horrendous.

She is appalled by her feelings. What sort of woman is she?

A big diving bird with a white head and a long, forked tail is hunting for food. Vultures and large hawks wheel slowly overhead. They see a small tern with a black head, birds like sand martins, birds like sooty chubby swallows.

Simon shakes his head. ‘If only we’d brought a bird book.’

‘Never mind. They’re lovely.’

They kiss. It becomes quite a long kiss. Their tongues are two snakes mating.

Naomi turns round, hoping that Timothy and Maggie will have seen, but they are busy looking out over the water and Maggie is making notes. Only the travel agent has noticed, and he looks very wistful.

‘Maggie?’ asks Naomi, feeling strange to be actually talking to her and addressing her by name.

‘Yes?’

‘Can you identify any of these birds?’

‘Sorry? What birds?’

How could a taxidermist fall for a girl who didn’t like birds? Maybe taxidermists only like dead birds. Naomi is comforted by this thought.

No, Simon is great. What does it matter if he isn’t interested in the registrations of ships? They will watch birds together, jog together, do yoga together, do Pilates together, ride bicycles together, use rowing machines together, make babies together. Life will be good.

Babies? Where did that thought come from? How would that square up with her career?

They swing round to nose upstream to a little landing stage. They step out into a Turkish bath, and walk slowly to the thatched lodge.

The five of them go for lunch in the large, thatched dining room, which seats a hundred. They had assumed that they would be joining other visitors, but they are the only five.

‘I suppose…er…maybe the four of us should share a table,’ suggests Timothy.

‘It would be awfully British not to,’ says Naomi.

‘I think we have to, really,’ says Maggie.

What a charming way of putting things she has, thinks Naomi.

The travel agent has gone straight to another table and is already sitting down. He is immaculate in shorts and sneakers.

‘What about the Kraut?’ hisses Simon.

Naomi glares at him.

‘He looks happy enough,’ she whispers.

‘I suspect he’s a bit of a bore,’ whispers Timothy.

That’s rich from someone married to Maggie, thinks Naomi.

The German is aware of what they are hissing and whispering. They might just as well have talked normally.

‘No, I am fine,’ he says. ‘I am used to my own company. You will have much to catch up on.’

It’s a buffet lunch, with fried fish, fried rice, spicy kidney beans, French beans, tomato and avocado.

‘So, how are things, Naomi?’ asks Timothy.

‘Yes, fine. Really good, thanks. Yes, really good. Simon and I got married eight months ago. He runs the gym where I go.’

‘Oh. So you’ll both be pretty fit.’

Naomi reminds herself that Timothy was never known for his sparkling repartee.

‘Things didn’t work out with Steven then?’

‘No. You were right. He isn’t very nice.’

‘And how about work?’

‘Well, I’ve only just left drama school, but I’ve got my first job.’

‘Great!’

She realises that his enthusiasm is utterly genuine.

‘We go into rehearsal the first day back.’

‘Oh, I’m thrilled for you.’ The sullen look leaves his face and he smiles with boyish excitement. Naomi had forgotten how handsome he was.

‘Yes, that’s really good news,’ says Maggie, and Naomi has to admit to herself that she sounds pretty genuine too.

‘So what’s the part?’ asks Timothy. ‘Not Juliet?’

‘No. Sadly I have to learn my lines. It’s an Ayckbourn play.’

‘A what?’

‘You must have heard of Alan Ayckbourn, Timothy. He writes comedies. He’s very famous and very good.’

‘I’ve heard of him, of course,’ says Maggie. Naomi puts the ‘of course’ into the debit column of her newly opened mental ‘Is Maggie nice?’ ledger. ‘But I’m afraid we’re really rather serious in our theatrical tastes.’ Debit. ‘I wish I’d seen your Juliet. People still talk about it.’ Credit. No, double credit.

‘This food’s good, isn’t it?’ says Simon, just so as not to be left out really.

‘I suppose it is,’ says Maggie. ‘I’m afraid I’m one of those people who get talking and thinking and forget to taste what they’ve eaten and suddenly find it’s all gone and wish they’d concentrated on it a bit more.’ Debit. ‘But it’s difficult. I have a lot of responsibilities in my life.’ Debit. They’re piling up.

‘Maggie teaches RE at Coningsfield Grammar.’ Debit. Massive debit. Oh, Timothy, you should have gone for somebody who brings light into your shady life. No. Don’t think like that. He’s happy. He’s in love. It’s touching to see. Fucking irritating as well, though.

‘Food’s good, isn’t it,’ Simon calls out to the travel agent, in the hope that he won’t feel left out. Naomi is pleased. It reminds her that there are pleasant sides to his personality.

‘Very palatable. Did you know that until fifteen years ago, Peru was a net exporter of rice. Now it imports. Why? Because the Velasques government broke up the haciendas and gave the land to the peasants. When it’s theirs, they don’t expect to get their fingers dirty any more.’

They are glad they didn’t invite him to join them, on the whole.

‘So, how about you, Timothy? How’s the taxidermy going?’ asks Naomi.

‘Oh, very well. Very well. Dad’s leaving it to me more and more.’

‘How is he?’

‘Oh, he’s very well, but his eyesight’s failing.’

‘Give him my best wishes.’

‘I will. He’ll be pleased. He really liked you. He was…’ Timothy stops. Naomi knows he was going to say that his father was upset they split up. So does Maggie. ‘He really likes you too, of course, Maggie,’ continues Timothy unwisely. He turns to Naomi. ‘The first day back will be exciting for both of us. You’ll be meeting all the other actors and rehearsing for your play. I’ll be going to Kilmarnock Zoo to collect a tiger that lost its will to live.’

‘I’d lose my will to live if I was in Kilmarnock Zoo,’ says Simon.

‘I hate zoos,’ says Maggie. Credit. ‘And if you think that puts me in a difficult position over taxidermy, it doesn’t. Timothy’s the most ethical person I know. He would never have anything healthy and happy killed to further his business.’ Easy to mock, but, actually, rather reluctantly, credit.

After lunch, they have a walk in the jungle. Their guide, Basilio, is young, even boyish, and quite small. He takes his terrier with him, which gives it the feel of a Sunday walk in the park rather than an intrepid voyage of discovery. He shows them an achiote tree, picks a fruit from it and opens it up to demonstrate how the Indians paint their faces red. He thinks he hears rain.

‘We are not having the jungle walk cancelled,’ hisses the German. ‘I will not accept short measure.’

The rain holds off. They see many kinds of trees, and some ants, but no animals. Basilio apologises for the lack of animal life. There are too many people here. Clearly, to see the animals of the jungle you have to go where you aren’t.

The skies darken. The trees murmur their indignation at the increasing wind, and begin to shake anxiously. The walk ends forty minutes early.

‘Short measure,’ whispers the travel agent.

The next item on the agenda is a nocturnal canoe trip. It gets dark early here.

‘They will try to cancel it because of the rain,’ says their new friend. ‘We must insist. I will not accept short measure.’

But the rain stops. They go to the creek and climb into a canoe. Their guide for the trip is Basilio. They drift down the creek beneath the mudbanks, in the dark. They hear the noises of the jungle – crickets, more crickets, and then…Can it be? It is. More crickets. They also see the tail of a young anaconda. Well, they’re told that it’s the tail of a young anaconda, and choose to believe it. They hear a bullfrog. And more crickets. Suddenly the moon shines brightly. Basilio explains that it is now too light for alligators. Presumably, you can only see them when it’s too dark to see them. They are beginning to get the hang of this jungle travel.

The trip is abandoned.

‘Short measure,’ whispers the travel agent.

They invite him to join their table for the candlelit dinner. He is delighted.

They sit right in the middle of the huge, empty, candlelit room. Dinner is served by Basilio. It begins with a beetroot salad.

Their German friend asks Naomi and Simon where they have been since he last met them.

‘We went to Chiclayo,’ says Naomi.

‘Ah! What did you think of the Bruning Museum?’

‘The what?’

‘The Bruning Museum at Lambayeque.’

‘We didn’t go there.’

‘But it’s a marvellous museum, and the wacas between there and Chiclayo are also very interesting.’

‘We missed the wacas.’

‘But there is nothing else to see around Chiclayo.’

‘We went with Simon’s uncle, who is a parish priest, for him to say farewell to some Canadian nuns. We liked Chiclayo, its stubby cathedral covered in vultures, its friendliness, names like the Bang Bang Amusement Arcade. We spent a lovely evening in the nuns’ Parish House. They didn’t know how to mix gin and tonics, though. Either that, or there’s a great shortage of tonic in Peru.’

Naomi is trying to get a reaction from Timothy and Maggie. Even a slight sniff of disapproval would do. But they are impervious. So very disappointing.

The beetroot salad is followed by soup with a fried egg in it, tasty highly spiced chicken with poor fried rice, and a fruit salad. With so few people there the meal is finished in under an hour. Never mind. That will give them all the more time to enjoy the promised traditional local cabaret in the bar.

The cabaret is an embarrassed Basilio with a guitar. He plays quite nicely. Timothy holds Maggie’s hand. Not to be outdone, Naomi holds Simon’s hand as if they are walking down the Ramblas in Barcelona and it’s her wallet. The poor travel agent tries to look as if he is delighted to have no hand to hold.

Basilio doesn’t play all that long, to be honest, and the four English visitors can’t blame him, but the German whispers, ‘Short measure. Always short measure.’

Basilio now has a few words to say to them.

‘Tomorrow we will visit an Indian village. They do not use money. They have nice things to buy, and you will need to barter. The best thing to use is cigarettes. They like cigarettes. If you want to buy things tomorrow, get some cigarettes at the bar tonight.’

Simon fetches more drinks – beer for him and the German, red wine for Naomi, bottled water for Timothy and Maggie. He also buys cigarettes.

‘I will not spread this noxious weed,’ says the German. ‘I have fish hooks with me. Many fish hooks. I will barter with fish hooks.’

Timothy and Maggie also refuse to buy cigarettes. The travel agent offers to sell them some of his fish hooks.

‘I don’t think so, thank you very much,’ says Timothy loftily. ‘I don’t honestly anticipate that there’ll be anything we want to buy.’

By the time they have finished their drinks, the barman is asleep. It’s almost ten o’clock.

Naomi has been wondering about Timothy’s sex life. Maggie doesn’t look sexy. Not that they will be likely to be having sex tonight. The chalets have single beds underneath mosquito nets. It’s not conducive.

‘I love your breasts,’ whispers Simon from his single bed. ‘I wish I was fondling and kissing them now. Imagine kissing hers. He’s got a job on. They’re enormous.’

‘I must say they did remind me of some old English burial mounds I saw once in Dorset,’ says Naomi.

‘You’re a terrible woman,’ says Simon affectionately.

In the morning they’re scheduled to walk to a village of the Yagua Indians. Basilio meets them outside the lodge. He bangs a big drum five times with a gong, explaining that this is an Indian method of communicating.

Their walk takes them about an hour. Animals seen amount to a slightly disappointing total of one iguana.

The German astounds them by saying, ‘I know a German joke about the British.’

‘Oh, do tell us,’ says Naomi.

‘There were two Englishmen who met at work.’

They wait to enjoy the rest of his joke, then realise, to their horror, that he has finished. They don’t get it.

‘They work at the same place, but they have never met, because one or the other of them was always on strike,’ he explains. ‘German jokes are subtle.’

After about three-quarters of an hour the little party cross a creek on a high bridge. They find themselves in a small village of thatched houses on stilts. There are two houses filled with people hiding. They can dimly see that they are wearing jeans and T-shirts. Basilio hurries them past these houses.

Waiting for them on a bench are four Yagua Indians, three men in grass skirts and a woman in a large green kerchief that doesn’t quite hide her breasts, which look two decades past their suck-by date. It’s difficult to say which group seems the more embarrassed by this travesty of tourism.

In front of them, on a wire, are rows of beads, necklaces adorned with alligator heads, and other delights.

The German decides to buy something, and the bartering begins, translated by Basilio.

‘I give you two fish hooks.’

‘Packet of cigarettes.’

‘Four fish hooks.’

‘Packet of cigarettes.’

It’s the only currency they want, and they only want whole packets so they can sell them in town. Of course they use money. The German buys a packet off Simon, says, ‘I can’t think why they want this noxious weed,’ and with the packet settles on a bracelet of alligator teeth. Who is it for? wonders Naomi.

Nobody else buys anything.

Naomi wonders if bartering with cigarettes is the derivation of the phrase, ‘It costs a packet.’ She must remember to find out when she gets home.

Home. Why does the word send a shiver through her? Is she no longer looking forward to home life with Simon?

There’s some embarrassing fooling around with blow darts, and the charade is over. The travel agent, in generous mood, offers the villagers all his fish hooks. They don’t want them. They use nets. He shows for the first time a softer side. He seems genuinely disappointed. Not hurt, just sad. Naomi wonders if there is a woman in his life, or if the alligator teeth are for his mother.

The walk back is slow, as the heat and humidity rise. Naomi and Timothy find themselves walking side by side. Whether they have planned this or whether it’s chance is not obvious even to them.

‘I want to thank you for having the courage to come and tell me that dreadful day,’ says Timothy. ‘I think it really made a difference. Left me with a bit of self-respect.’

‘I hope you got over it quickly.’ But not too quickly, perhaps.

‘I didn’t. It took months.’

‘How long after…me, did you meet Maggie?’

‘Best part of two years.’

‘And how are you now? Really happy? You seem it.’

‘Oh, yes. Maggie’s lovely. You? Everything all right?’

‘Absolutely. Can’t you tell?’

‘Er…yes.’ He hesitates. He wants to confess something. Naomi isn’t sure if she wants to hear it. ‘The…er…not everything is…I mean, it’s different from you and me. It’s…’ His dark face colours slightly, and seems to swell with embarrassment. ‘I mean, we do have sex. I mean, it is our honeymoon. But not…’

‘Everything we did?’

‘No. That was actually a bit special, Naomi.’

‘Well, thank you, but…it was one night.’

‘I know, but still it was a bit…you know. In fact, I can’t believe what I did. I don’t expect I’ll ever do it again. It seems, somehow, with Maggie, you know, something we just wouldn’t do.’

She wants to blurt out, ‘Can’t say I’m surprised,’ but keeps it to herself.

‘…Anyway, I suppose our relationship is more…spiritual.’

Why on earth is he telling her all this? He obviously needs to. She finds that very encouraging. This worries her. Why should she be encouraged by it?

‘Talking about spirituality, how about you? Are you…do you still not believe?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t not believe or you do not believe?

‘I don’t believe.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why should you be sorry?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Why the hell should you be sorry?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t be flippant about hell.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

‘And God.’

‘Oh, Timothy. Loosen up.’

‘I’m not good at that. Sorry, but what have I done wrong?’

‘You’ve patronised me because I’m an atheist.’

‘Oh, you’re not even an agnostic any more. That’s a bit arrogant, isn’t it? Being so certain that you know.’

Naomi has never called herself an atheist before. She has believed that she is an agnostic. But she wants to make Timothy angry. She needs to make him angry.

‘I don’t believe this,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe you people. What are you if not being so certain that you know? That’s what pisses me off about you. You think I desperately want to believe and have failed. I don’t particularly want not to believe, but it doesn’t put me in some sad class of disappointed failures. The reason I don’t believe is that I can find no evidence of a compassionate pattern in life, and it doesn’t mean that I’m any more wicked than you or any less sodding spiritual than you. Oh, what a fucking good decision I made walking out on you, you fucking prig.’

She charges angrily after Simon, but he is disappearing at a fast sulk.

Soon they are back at another perilous narrow bridge, high above the piranhas. Ahead of them is the lodge. It has taken less than five minutes. They realise that the village is almost right opposite the lodge. The five bangs on the gong meant, ‘There are only five of them. No need to try too hard.’

At the lodge, Simon is waiting with a face like the thunder that is beginning to threaten once again.

‘Rather an argument, I see,’ says Simon. ‘Bit of tension.’

‘So?’

‘I didn’t know you still cared enough about him to bother to be angry. I see that I was wrong.’

He is right, of course, which annoys her. She has been feeling pleased with herself for managing to end the meeting with Timothy angrily. It was sad for him, but necessary for her. She wished that she hadn’t sworn, but the future would be difficult to bear if she’d ended on friendly terms with him.

After an early lunch they set off for the boat back. The German, who is staying for another night and is scheduled to have a four-hour jungle walk that afternoon, shames them by walking with them to their boat to see them off.

‘I expect there will be a few more people on today’s boat,’ he says hopefully, ‘and some of them will probably be taking the four-hour walk with me.’

As they watch today’s thatched boat nosing towards the landing stage, he says a rather strange thing.

‘Don’t think too badly of Peru.’

Naomi likes him for that as much as for anything.

There are no tourists on the boat, none. He will be alone for his four-hour walk, alone for his second candlelit dinner, alone for Basilio’s limited repertoire on the guitar all over again. Naomi’s heart goes out to him, and she never even found out his name.

They shake hands with him, politely. His handshake is perfect, firm yet not too firm.

They enter the boat.

He stands on the landing stage, a stiff, erect figure, curiously forlorn and vulnerable.

The boat begins to move. He waves as if they are old friends whom he is going to miss. They wave back.

Just before he is out of earshot, they see him shout. A moment later, his words arrive over the brown water.

‘I will insist on the full four hours. I will not accept short measure.’

Timothy and Maggie move to a seat near the front of the boat.

Naomi sits down quite far from them, in the middle of the boat.

Simon marches right to the back of the boat, and plonks himself defiantly into a seat. God, he’d be cross if he knew how young it makes him look, thinks Naomi.

The journey back, against the flow, takes longer than two and a half hours and feels as if it takes for ever. None of them would have wished not to see the Amazon, but none of them will ever go for a week’s cruise on it. It just rolls on and on for ever, a slow, brown streak among the endless rainforests.

As they make their way off the boat to get onto the minibus back to their hotels, Timothy approaches Naomi.

‘So,’ he says, ‘this is goodbye.’

‘Yep. Sorry it ended in a row.’

‘One last kiss:’

‘It’ll have to be a very quick, casual one. Simon’s furious.’

‘Really? Maggie won’t mind at all. She hasn’t got a sensitive bone in her whole body.’

He means it as a compliment.

At the last moment Naomi relents, holds her cheek against his, tries to put a real feeling of warmth and affection into it. After all, it will probably be the last kiss they ever have.

PART THREE The Rocky Road to Seville 1991–1993

They’re late. Lunch is ready. It’s annoying.

William offers a second glass of sherry. This is very unusual, but they can’t just sit around with empty glasses, waiting. It embarrasses him to have to do it, he’s not a drinker, so he has to pass a little comment. ‘It is New Year’s Day, after all,’ he says. When he’s finished pouring he stops for a moment in front of the picture over the piano. It shows a Norfolk wherry sailing away from the staithe at Wells-Next-the-Sea. Naomi knows that, just for a moment, her father is sailing away from a staithe somewhere, and is happy. This worries her. She has become more sensitive to atmosphere over the years, and senses that something is afoot today. She feels uneasy, edgy, tense.

They’re having curry, in the English style, quite hot but not fearsomely so, and sweetened with sultanas and slices of apple. On the side there will be mango chutney, slices of banana and finely minced coconut. The curry can be held quite easily in the Hostess trolley, but the rice may dry out. It’s annoying that they are late.

‘Where are they?’ Penny cries.

‘They’ll have got utterly and totally arseholed last night,’ says Julian. ‘No discipline, artists.’

He’s very grumpy today.

‘Please, Julian, not in front of the child,’ says his mother.

‘I don’t like that expression, “the child”, Mum,’ says Naomi. ‘She does have a name.’ The words are a rebuke, but Naomi speaks them very gently and without any hostility. Penny is tense today. There’s that telltale working of her mouth when she isn’t speaking.

‘What’s “arseholed”?’ asks Emily.

‘It’s not a word you need to know, dear. It’s a word silly lawyers who’ve never quite grown up and still want to shock their parents use. It means having too much to drink.’

‘Dad used to get “arseholed” sometimes, didn’t he? He still gets “arseholed” sometimes when he takes me out for a meal. He has a double gin and then a whole bottle of wine and then he drives me home.’

‘Yes, yes, Emily. That’s enough. And does he indeed? Right.’

‘I prefer Dad when he isn’t “arseholed”. He’s much nicer. I don’t intend to get “arseholed” at all when I’m grown up.’

‘Yes, Emily, thank you, good, I’m really glad, you stick to that, but we’ve had enough of that word, thank you.’

Emily is six. She isn’t usually annoying, though sometimes she comes out with awkward things, the way children do. Once Auntie Constance, whom she doesn’t like – you can’t be made to like people just because they’re your auntie – had said, ‘You’re as bright as a button, aren’t you?’ and Emily had drawn herself up to her full height, which at the time was two foot eleven, and said, ‘I’m much brighter than a button, excuse me. I never saw a button do anything clever.’ Pink spots had appeared on both of Auntie Constance’s cheeks.

There’s a welcome crunch of gravel.

‘They’re here!’

Relief sweeps over Penny’s face. Emily dances up and down. She loves Uncle Clive and Uncle Antoine. She takes them completely for granted and has never seen anything funny in their being two men together, but then she has no concept of the idea of a lover. Long may she not have.

But it’s the delight on the faces of Penny and William that amazes Naomi. She hasn’t realised how far they have travelled since they first met Antoine over twelve years ago, when she was eighteen. How embarrassed they had been in 1978. How affectionate they are in 1991. Clive and Antoine enter with beaming smiles and exciting parcels. The whole mood lifts. Well, no, not quite. Julian’s mood doesn’t lift. He never exchanged another word with Teresa after Naomi’s eighteenth birthday supper, but to him Antoine will always be what Teresa called him, ‘That Frog poofter.’ On the surface it’s prejudice, but deep down it’s even sadder than prejudice. Deep down it’s a defence mechanism against the sight of a man being so much more at ease with himself than he is.

There’s a round of kissing in the French style, on both cheeks and slightly formal. Even William, not a natural kisser, manages to kiss both Clive and Antoine, and does it with a bit of panache. ‘You’ve turned us all French now, Antoine,’ he says with shy pride.

Clive and Antoine don’t kiss Julian, though. His face is set in unkissable mode. His face is like a Pennine crag.

And almost immediately Antoine is on the floor, level with Emily, in front of the cosy, crackling winter fire.

‘So, Emily, do you want me to help you with the jigsaw or do you want to finish it on your own?’

‘Help me, please, Uncle Antoine.’

Naomi and Clive give each other a long, loving hug. Julian pours himself another sherry. Antoine finds a piece of sky. Emily squeals with delight. Penny’s mouth moves anxiously. Something is up.

‘What about the presents?’ asks Emily from the floor.

‘After lunch,’ says Penny.

‘Are you sure, Penny?’ asks William.

‘Well, no. Yes, now.’

Naomi realises that this exchange is meaningful. She just doesn’t know what the meaning is.

‘Julian,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘The day you don’t hand round the presents, this house won’t be L’Ancresse any more.’

Julian pretends not to be pleased.

Clive and Antoine have brought lovely presents for everyone, they’re really good at presents, and living in Paris does help, though how they get them all on the plane is a mystery. But things like weight restrictions don’t matter to Antoine. He charms his way through.

In their turn, Clive and Antoine express great delight at the presents they have been given.

‘Late night last night?’ asks Julian.

‘Yes,’ says Clive. ‘Good party. Francis Bacon was there.’

‘Name dropper.’

‘Excuse me, we hate name dropping,’ says Antoine from the floor, where he has just found the piece that completes the funnel. ‘I was saying so to Brigitte Bardot only yesterday.’

‘Who’s Brigitte Bardot?’ asks Emily.

‘A beautiful French actress who was better treated by animals than by people,’ says Naomi.

‘But that’s not why we’re late, Julian,’ says Clive. ‘We set off in good time. Had a problem with the ruddy car. Hire cars!’

‘Right,’ says Penny firmly, finding a suitable cue at last. ‘Well, you’re here anyway. Lunch.’

They take their seats at the table. The dining room smells even more of disuse now that all the children have left home. The table is plainly laid, as ever, but there are crackers.

‘I know it’s not Christmas,’ says Penny, ‘but Emily loves them.’

‘Uncle Antoine loves them too,’ says Emily.

They pull their crackers, with much laughter as Julian is left without any of the insides of either of the two crackers he’s pulled, laughter which is killed stone dead when he says, ‘You see. Can’t even pull crackers.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood for paper hats,’ he says, but Naomi says, ‘Julian!’ and she can wind this gruff, awkward brother of hers round her little finger. He puts on his paper hat – it’s a bright yellow crown – without protest.

‘What do you get if you cross a fish with two elephants?’ reads out Clive.

‘A very large bouillabaisse?’ suggests Antoine.

‘No. Swimming trunks.’

There is a loud, communal groan, but Emily laughs with delight.

Penny begins to serve the meal. She has made a special curry, not quite so hot, for Emily. Naomi waits for her to make some kind of disparaging remark to Antoine about the food. If only her mother had more self-confidence. The remark duly comes.

‘It’s only curry, I’m afraid, Antoine. Well, the food over Christmas has been rather rich and a bit bland, I mean, let’s face it, turkey is bland, there’s no getting away from it, so I thought it might make a nice change.’

‘It’s perfect, Penny. I like your curry. It’s one thing we French are not good at.’

‘Charming as ever, Antoine.’ William beams as he says this, trying to show that he’s not being sarcastic. But it doesn’t quite work. Everything he says sounds at least faintly sarcastic. It’s the schoolmaster in him.

‘Antoine’s charm is his weakness,’ says Clive. ‘You should see him in Paris. He makes Maurice Chevalier look like a yob. People have to meet him at least five times before they realise he’s sincere. It’s held him back enormously in the art world.’

‘How is business?’ asks William.

‘Not good. We struggle on. Couldn’t do it without Clive’s regular earning.’

Clive teaches English, and teaches it well. He has inherited his father’s talent.

‘He’s a strange one, isn’t he?’ says Clive. ‘The more way out his art gets – I mean, he’s letting the cat walk over the paint now – the more he dresses like a bank manager.’

Clive is in jeans and an open-necked shirt. Antoine is wearing a suit and tie.

‘Too many artists live their art instead of painting it,’ says Antoine.

‘What do you mean about the cat, Uncle Clive?’ asks Emily, who loves cats.

‘I slosh wet paint on a canvas and let her walk over it,’ explains Antoine. ‘The marks she makes become incorporated into the structure of the painting. She does it brilliantly. Sasha’s very artistic. She’s a natural. It’s the element of chance in life that I need, you see. You can have too much composition. There is no composition in life. Sacha is therefore an essential element in my work, and doesn’t she know it? She doesn’t even mind too much when I have to use turps to wipe her feet.’

Emily laughs. She is so happy about the cat.

‘I thought you were bringing your girlfriend, Julian,’ says Clive.

‘Just noticed, have you?’

‘Well, no, I noticed when we arrived but I thought maybe she was in the bathroom or something. It was only when we were all sat down and there was no empty chair that I was sure. It’s not easy, Julian, to broach the question of your love life with you. One usually finds one has touched on a sensitive spot.’

‘Well, this time it’s not sensitive at all, because it’s good riddance.’

‘Oh!’

‘She was coming. We had a row in the station.’

‘Terminal?’

‘Yes. King’s Cross.’

It’s not often that Julian makes a joke, so everyone laughs a little too much at it, and then realises that it’s rather heartless to laugh at his predicament, so they all stop laughing rather suddenly.

‘But you’re getting on all right with your partners at work, are you, Julian?’ asks William.

Naomi has never seen her father taking such an active role in the conversation. Something is definitely up.

‘Oh, yes,’ replies Julian. ‘Well, they’re all men. I don’t have problems with men.’

William goes round the table, pouring more wine. This is without precedent, not because he’s mean, he isn’t, but because he never even thinks about drink. But today he is drinking as well. Naomi’s anxiety grows.

Penny offers seconds, again with, to Naomi’s mind, an unnecessary verbal accompaniment. ‘I didn’t give you too much first time around, in case you all felt you’d been eating too much over the holiday period, or in case it was too hot for you. But I thought, you can always come back for more.’

Everyone comes back for more.

‘It is very good, Penny. No more self-criticism, please,’ says Antoine sternly.

Her father raises his glass. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I think we ought to drink to Naomi, and wish her good luck with her sitcom.’

He’s ticking off the conversational boxes one by one, thinks Naomi, smiling with a modesty that, sadly, is not false, as they toast the success of her upcoming sitcom, which goes into production in a couple of weeks and will be on the screens in April.

‘Yes,’ says her father. ‘We’re very proud of our little girl.’

‘Dad, I’m thirty.’

‘That’s young. Only thirty, and a starring role in a sitcom.’

‘What is this sitcom?’ asks Clive.

‘It’s about a couple who keep having children. It’s about how the mother has to do all the work. It’s about the stresses of motherhood and of marriage, only it’s funny.’

‘Well, that sounds a good part,’ says Julian encouragingly. Only on matters to do with Naomi does he brighten in the family these days. Naomi almost wishes that he wasn’t so loyal to her. It makes it hard for her to criticise him for the rest of his unsatisfactory life.

‘I don’t play the mother,’ says Naomi. ‘I play the neighbour.’

‘But you’re regular,’ says her father. ‘You’re in it every week. Aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a start. You’ll be back at the Coningsfield Grand. “Starring Naomi Walls from…”. What’s your series called?’

She doesn’t want to tell them. She still hopes the title may change.

‘It’s not quite decided.’

‘It’s a pity you boys couldn’t come over from Paris to see her in the touring production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Grand,’ says her father. She has never known him anything like so talkative.

‘She was wonderful,’ admits her mother. ‘She really was the Queen of Egypt. I couldn’t believe it was my little girl.’

‘Mum!’

‘Well. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.’

‘The drama group from the school went. And most of the teachers,’ says her father.

‘She’s had her ups and downs,’ says her mother. ‘Her bits of bad luck. A broken foot when she was down to play a lady footballer. A play cancelled when the leading man dropped dead in the dress rehearsal. Casting directors, if I’ve got the title right, who couldn’t recognise talent if they fell over it. But she’s come through. She’s going to be a star.’

‘Mum!’

Naomi is deeply embarrassed, not least because Emily is believing it.

‘Are you really, Mum? Are you really going to be a star?’

‘We’ll see, Emily. We’ll see.’

‘That’s my girl,’ says her father. ‘Modest to a fault.’

No, Dad. I don’t think so.

Over the apple pie and custard her father, who has undoubtedly drunk more wine than ever before, raises yet another new subject.

‘Do you ever see Simon at all?’

‘When he takes Emily and brings her back, on his days, if I can’t avoid him.’

‘Oh, dear. Still…still bitter, then?’

‘Dad, he’s Emily’s father. I don’t want to talk about him in front of her.’

‘I was on the stairs when you talked about him to Felicity the other day,’ says Emily. ‘I heard what you said.’

‘Oh, my Lord, what did I say? Or should I not know?’

‘You said when you went away on holiday he was…I didn’t really understand it ‘cause I didn’t know what it was, but you said something about he was a cornflakes adult.’

‘What? Oh! Oh, yes. Oh, Lord. I said he used to look round in hotels even during breakfast to see if there were any girls he could try to seduce later that day. I described him as a cereal adulterer. Cereal as in cornflakes.’

‘Yes, we did get it,’ says Clive.

‘I hope the jokes in your sitcom are better than that,’ says Julian.

I hope so too. I ha’e me doots.

‘What’s an adulterer?’ asks Emily.

‘It’s a childerer who’s grown up,’ says Antoine.

Emily giggles. Antoine can always make her giggle.

‘No, what is it really?’

‘It’s a person who’s married who goes off with someone else and spends time with them when he should be spending time with his wife,’ says Naomi.

‘Or husband, as the case may be,’ says Julian.

‘Was Dad an adulterer when he went to the gym then, ‘cause he went to the gym nearly every day?’

Very probably he may have been, Emily, but we won’t go into that.

‘No. Not every time, Emily. Some of the times he was supposed to go to the gym. He works there.’

Emily is still a bit puzzled, but William leaps up, rubs his hands together, and says, ‘Come on, Emily. I’ve got a job for you. Well, it’s a game really.’

Immediately, Penny leaps up too and says, ‘I’ll make coffee. Coffee everyone?’

Emily, William and Penny all leave the room.

‘What’s going on?’ asks Clive.

‘I don’t know,’ says Naomi, ‘but something is.’

Penny enters with a tray of cups but no coffee. William returns from the garden.

‘I’ve got her collecting twenty different kinds of leaf,’ he says. ‘That should give us time. Sorry, everyone, I don’t want to spoil your day, and it’s a bad start to the year, but there’s no way of telling you this except very directly, and there it is, but…well…the fact is…er…’

‘I’ve got cancer,’ says Penny.

There’s a shocked silence. It’s a remark that people hear all too often in their lives, but rarely when they are all wearing paper hats.

‘How long have you known?’ asks Clive.

‘About a fortnight.’

‘We didn’t want to spoil Christmas, especially for Emily,’ says William.

There’s another moment of silence. Naomi can’t bring herself to speak.

‘What’s the…er…the diagnosis?’ asks Julian.

‘Terminal, I’m afraid, Julian.’

Julian blushes, regretting his earlier joke, though there is no reason for him to.

‘I don’t believe that,’ says Antoine. ‘With a family like yours, and a medical service like yours – Coningsfield General has a good reputation, no…?’

No. Everybody thinks it, but nobody says it.

‘…And with a spirit like yours, I’m sure you can prove this diagnosis wrong. Come on. You are British. You are fighters.’

Emily enters with a bunch of leaves.

‘Twenty-two different leaves,’ she cries, with proud excitement.

Her innocence bruises their souls.

Maggie has been up since six o’clock, cleaning. She does two rooms every morning. There are fourteen rooms in the house if you include bathrooms and lavatories, so this means that she cleans each room once a week. That might not sound too bad, but this is no ordinary clean. This is a spring clean every week. Maggie has slowly become obsessive over the years. From her first waking moment – at six, with the alarm, meaning Timothy wakes up too and never drops off properly again – she is planning her battle against germs. It’s May, a lovely spring morning, the first morning of the year on which none of the good people of Coningsfield, or indeed the bad people, of whom there are plenty, dream of being on the Algarve or in Southern Spain. Maggie goes round the house opening windows, letting the stale air out, but she doesn’t have time to pause to breathe in the scents of yesterday’s first mowing of the ragged lawn at number ninety-two and of the massed daffodils which are not yet quite dead all along the central reservation of the main road. Maggie never has time to smell the flowers.

Timothy reaches out sleepily and runs his hand gently over Naomi’s soft, sleepy, still-slender body. His prick is as stiff as a dead curlew. But this can’t go on. It’s wrong. It’s an invasion of her privacy, even though she will never know. He drags himself out of bed, kneels at the side of the bed, and prays to God to save him from his desires. O Lord, I know it’s wrong. And, as you know, because I’ve told you, which of course I didn’t really need to do, because you know everything, I must not covet my neighbour’s wife or Simon Prendergast’s wife. Prendergast. How can his precious Naomi now be Mrs Prendergast, which is what he assumes she still is. Oh, blow. He’s lost his place in his prayer. Where was I, Lord? The Lord doesn’t prompt him. Maybe Tuesday mornings are busy. Oh, yes. Not coveting her. Please, O Lord, give me the strength to have only clean thoughts, for I am ashamed of my wickedness.

He wishes he could just get dressed and go next door straight away, past the board which actually still says ‘R. Pickering and Son – Taxidermists’, for they are keeping up the pretence that his father still takes a major part in the work. Yes, they are living in Ascot House, formerly a B & B run by Miss de Beauvoir (Mrs Smith). Charlie Smith ran off eighteen years ago after falling head over heels for a physiotherapist. This has long been a sore point with Timothy’s father, who regards it as less disgraceful than being abandoned for a plumber. Mrs Smith decided that Mrs Smith was no sort of name for the owner of a B & B with pretensions towards being select (she hated the word ‘posh’), and became Miss de Beauvoir. She sold up five years ago. ‘I’m getting out while the going’s good. Mrs Percival at the Mount has been forced to take in people sent by social workers. She’ll end up with immigrants, you mark my words. I’d hate to be young. What chance have the young got of running select B & Bs?’

But first there’s the kids to be got ready. Sam is seven and Liam five. Why on earth did they call him Liam? Everyone will think he’s Irish. Oh, well, too late now, and he doesn’t seem to mind. Liam is cheeky, a bright spark, freckly, could almost be mistaken for Irish. Sam is dark like his father, serious like his father, showing real promise at his lessons, like his father. Maybe in his case the promise can come to fulfilment. His teachers think Sam could be clever. He isn’t as quick as little Liam, but there’s a solidity there, an understanding of all his subjects, which is rare in a boy so young. Timothy in truth doesn’t know either of his boys very well; he loves them, of course, loves them utterly in their good and bad moments alike, but he leaves them mainly to their mother; he isn’t awfully good with smaller children, his time will come when they are stronger and they can play football properly together and play card games and board games and go to visit beautiful places together. That is when his time will come, when he can show them the world.

He has to supervise their dressing and get their breakfast and make them eat it and make sure they clean their teeth because Maggie has been so busy cleaning that she only just has time to get herself dressed and tidied and ready for school.

At last she’s ready and the kids are ready and she leaves the house with them. It’s a short walk across the park, and she passes the junior school on her way to the senior school where she still teaches, so it’s all very convenient.

The most wonderful sound in the world is that bang of the front door closing. She has gone. The house is his. He knows he should go next door. He’s got a fox to finish. But first he goes right round the house, opening the door of every room, savouring the emptiness of every room.

Now Timothy is at peace. Now he can face his work. At weekends and during the long, long school holidays he loves his work, it’s an escape, but during the week he resents every moment that he cannot spend in his gloriously empty home.

He enters number ninety-six. The front door no longer squeaks. He has bought ample supplies of WD40.

He is surprised, as he is every morning, by the darkness of the house. Roly is standing in the cold vault of a kitchen, waiting. Whatever time Timothy enters in the morning, his father has had his breakfast and washed up and is standing in the kitchen, waiting.

‘What are we doing today?’

The ‘we’ is royal, though Roly doesn’t realise it.

‘There’s the fox to finish, and then I thought we might tackle Mrs Lewington’s lurcher.’

‘Righty ho. Anchors away.’

‘Absolutely.’

Roly won’t do much except fetch a few things that Timothy has deliberately left in the wrong place so that his father can fetch them and think he is useful. He can still see to move around the house, in which no piece of furniture has been moved for at least twelve years, but he can’t see to do useful work any more. He has a blind stick for when he goes out on his own, but he never uses it, because he never goes out on his own. Maggie is a treasure, taking him to do all his shopping for the week at Tesco’s every Saturday.

Timothy’s spirits droop at the thought of Mrs Lewington’s lurcher. He has tried to turn the business more in the direction of wild life taxidermy, but the location is against him. People knock on the door and buttonhole him in the street. ‘He’s seventeen, Mr Pickering. We’ve had him seventeen years. If Cecil hadn’t been taken by the good Lord I know he’d want me to keep him. I’m going to put him where he always loved to sit, in his old basket, just to the left of the grate.’ Timothy hates doing pets, asks three times the normal price, and the silly people accept the estimate without a tremor, in the hopelessness of their love.

‘I’ll be out for an hour or so late morning,’ he hears himself say.

His father looks surprised, and so does he. He hadn’t known he was going out. But suddenly the urge is irresistible.

‘I’m sure there was nothing in the diary.’

His father can’t actually read the diary any more, but he can see enough to know if a day is blank.

‘No, it’s not in the diary. It’s just cropped up.’

It’s not the sort of thing you can put in a diary. ‘12.15. Drive past Naomi’s house. 12.20. Drive back past Naomi’s house.’

For that is what he is going to do. It’s something he has never done before, and it’s a serious escalation of what could easily become an obsession. Maybe he needs an obsession too, to challenge Maggie. The thought of driving down Lower Cragley Road, past L’Ancresse, in both directions, excites him. It’s naughty. It’s dangerous. It’s blissfully futile.

It’s the sitcom what’s done it, he thinks. Seeing her, every Thursday, on BBC1, in his lounge. Awful to see. Nappy Ever After is a stinker. A stinker full of jokes about stinking, as the critic in his paper gleefully pointed out. How many jokes can there be about potty training? Hundreds, according to the writers of Nappy Ever After. And what a dreary part. What miscasting. The neighbour! Always coming round to borrow sugar, but really to hear the latest gossip and to drool over the babies because her own life is so sterile. Naomi, sterile, drooling, using baby talk, silly. How dare they? He’d use a very naughty word to describe them if he wasn’t religious. The humiliation of watching it. The impossibility of not watching it. No wonder his thoughts have turned to her.

The fox is finished all too soon and he has to make a start on the lurcher. At ten to twelve he can bear it no longer and breaks off.

‘You’ll be back for your sandwich?’

‘Of course, Dad. Wouldn’t miss my sandwich.’

‘That’s my boy.’

Roly makes them a sandwich every lunchtime. It’s his task. Just occasionally Timothy has lunch with a client. ‘Lunches with clients! I don’t know! What’s next? Buckingham Palace?’ exclaims his father. But this is rare. Nineteen times out of twenty, his dad makes a sandwich for him. It’s his task. It’s his life.

‘Well then, off you go, boy, if you’re going. Chocks away.’

Timothy drives along the route of the twenty-eight bus. He’s so excited that he has to take great care not to cause an accident, whether on the road or in his trousers, or both. This is madness. He knows it, and loves it.

He turns into Lower Cragley Road. Bliss. And nobody is following. He can drive really slowly.

There it is, across the road on his right as he slips slowly down the hill. L’Ancresse. Solid. Really rather attractive. Serene. So serene. There’s the bay window of the lounge. That’s where the curlew was, on top of the chaise longue. He wonders if she still has the curlew, if it’s still in the house, or if she has taken it away with her. He wonders if she is still in their flat in…West Hampstead, was it? Strangely, it doesn’t cross his mind that she might no longer be with Simon. When he watches her in Nappy Ever After he feels jealous of Simon, so Simon remains, in his eyes, a part of her life.

He wishes that he could go back and have her eighteenth birthday again because this time he wouldn’t be nervous about the curlew, this time it would be simply the most wonderful evening of his life. But of course you can’t go back.

But he can go back up Lower Cragley Road, and he does. It doesn’t look as if there is anybody in L’Ancresse. It’ll be quite safe.

There’s no traffic at all this morning. Well, afternoon now, let’s be pedantic. What a lovely day. Words come into his mind in Ken Dodd’s voice. ‘What a lovely day for looking up an old lover.’ Careful. He doesn’t want to sound like Nappy Ever After.

He becomes very bold and pulls up right outside the house. His heart is racing. Supposing she’s there. She might be visiting. There’s no sign of a car, but maybe she hasn’t got a car. Actresses are probably funny that way. Maybe she can’t afford a car.

He is safe. Nobody goes in or out. He should leave. It would be better to leave. But he doesn’t.

He thinks about the last time he spoke to her, nine years ago, in Iquitos. He thinks about the last time he saw her in the flesh. A year ago, at the Coningsfield Grand, as Cleopatra. He’d had to go with Maggie. It had been a dreadful evening, because suddenly, seeing her on the stage, he had realised that he no longer adored Maggie, he had only been pretending to do so for a long time now, she had become obsessive about cleaning, she bravely tolerated occasional sex, it was her duty, and she lived for her thirty-four children, the two that were her own and the thirty-two that were her duty.

He had thought, as they had sat waiting for the curtain to go up – well, not the curtain exactly, he could remember every detail, they hadn’t used a curtain – as they had waited for the lights to go down, he had realised that it would be very difficult for him to break away from Maggie, present himself at the stage door, and say, ‘I’d like to see Miss Walls, please. I’m an old friend and I want to tell her how marvellous she was.’

But that had been the worst thing of all about that awful evening. She hadn’t been marvellous. She hadn’t been bad, of course she hadn’t, in fact she’d been quite good, but it was no good being quite good, not as Cleopatra; she had never for one moment been the Queen of Egypt, she had been Naomi Walls bravely portraying the Queen of Egypt. The stillness, the power that she had shown as Juliet, it hadn’t been there. Of course she was as good an actress as ever, you couldn’t lose abilities like that; there must have been some other explanation, anything, a dislike of the actor playing Antony, an unsympathetic director whose vision had clashed with hers, an illness perhaps from which she had only just been recovering, or perhaps, even for the best of them, in long runs, there were performances where you’d got it, and performances where you hadn’t. It had let his emotions off the hook about going round to see her, because he couldn’t have gone if he couldn’t have told her that she had been marvellous, but it had been terrible to witness. At the end, the applause had risen when Antony had come on for his solo bow. It hadn’t dipped for her, but it hadn’t risen further, and it should have done, and she had known it, and he had known that she had known it.

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