Natural Flights of the Human Mind (6 page)

His day is mapped out before him. He has a timetable that he makes out every week, and he sticks to it rigidly. Parcels of time, manageable periods, attainable tasks. Breakfast; working on the garden of the keeper’s cottage, growing food that he often never eats; doing his laundry—a little every day—and hanging it out to flap in the wind behind the keeper’s cottage; rowing across to Hillingham; shopping; going to the library; writing letters.

Today he’s going to break out of his routine again so that he can check on Miss Doody’s roof. It makes him nervous, but he needs to know that the sails are still in place after the storm. He won’t stop. He’ll just pause at the gate, then go away again. When he returns he’ll revert to the timetable and write some letters, in an attempt to find more information on the school-children. The list of names doesn’t give him enough information. He has to know them. They cannot remain as a block of
anonymous children. They were real too, just as much as Maggie, Felicity—

As he goes downstairs and opens the door, Magnificent slips past with a friendly chirrup and runs up the stairs to the food bowls. Straker walks to the edge of the cliff and examines it. There are clear signs of another fall, the edges sharp and irregular, the sandstone bright and exposed.

Returning to the lighthouse, he counts his strides. His instincts were correct. A further two feet of the cliff have disappeared.

Alan Fisher sat neatly on the train, his back to the engine, pretending to read the
Telegraph
. His feet were placed together, exactly parallel with the side of the train, and he’d folded the newspaper into a manageable size so that he wouldn’t disturb his fellow-passengers. He tried not to think about his job. The job that he might not have in a few months’ time.

‘Targets, Alan,’ the men in London had said to him. ‘You must have attainable goals that are beyond your present expectations.’

‘We do have targets,’ said Alan. ‘And we reach them.’

Paul Wilson, the marketing manager, was younger than Alan, and reminded him of a schoolboy he had employed last Christmas to stock the shelves. Fair, floppy hair, glasses and a very slight lisp. But somehow he had a threatening presence, even though he talked in a calm, friendly voice, which was never raised. ‘We’re in a competitive market, Alan. If we don’t fight, we get taken over. It’s sink or swim in this game.’

Alan sighed without making a sound. He hated the language, the words that meant nothing. It was just a game to these people. He had staff who had stayed with him since he first took over the store. They liked working for him. They felt secure.

He looked out of the train window to where he could see headlights on a distant motorway, and rows of illuminated houses where families would be meeting up, eating together, talking. He turned back to his newspaper and avoided looking at the girl opposite.

She was very pretty, her long arms dropping gracefully down to her lap, but her purple skirt was far too short. He could just catch sight of the black lace edging her knickers. She wriggled slightly, trying to readjust the skirt, but it was not flexible enough and he glanced away quickly.

‘Excuse me.’

He raised his eyes and she was looking straight at him.

‘Do they have a buffet on the train?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘They do a lovely fruit cake,’ she said, in an immaculate BBC accent. ‘I saw it on the train to London. It’s yellow, packed with cherries and sultanas.’

He smiled. ‘Perhaps you should go and get some.’

‘Yes,’ she said, but she didn’t move. His eyes slid on to her legs, which were too thin, he thought.

He was hungry. He wanted to be home, away from this sharp, hard world where he didn’t belong.

‘Hello,’ he would call out, as he came through the front door.

Nobody would answer, but it wouldn’t matter because he knew where they were. Stuart would be upstairs doing his homework. Perhaps later, after supper, Alan would go up and they could worry away at maths problems together. He liked that. He would sit on Stuart’s bed and ignore the posters of Hot Gossip on the wall, understanding his need to impress his friends.

Stuart was taller than both of his parents, calm, with grey eyes, and comfortable with everyone. He was perpetually easy, a skilled rugby player, and somehow in control of his life.

They often struggled on his maths together. ‘How about the 180 degrees on a straight line?’ said Alan.

‘No,’ said Stuart. ‘It’s not a straight line.’

‘Good point,’ said Alan. He realised that, of course, but he loved to see his son working things out, untangling the threads and straightening them back into clear, logical lines.

Kieran would not hear him come in. He would be out in the back garden, absorbed by his latest project—building a run for his rabbit—and would only come in for supper if someone went to fetch him. More than once, Alan had stood unnoticed behind him, watching. He wanted to step forward, take the pliers or the hammer, and make his progress easier, but he knew he couldn’t do this, that his son had to find his own way, however tortuous it might be.

Kieran was small for his age and wore glasses. He looked clever and bookish, but he wasn’t. He never seemed to make the right connections in any part of his life. Reading, maths, friendships. They all slipped away from his grasp, leaving him lost, bewildered, confused. Alan pictured him now, the curly hair that resisted any kind of control, the shirt that never stayed tucked into his trousers, the quick, nervous movements of his fingers as he fiddled with a piece of wire.

Eventually, Alan would speak: ‘Hi, Kieran. I’m back.’

And Kieran would turn round, smile at him, his eyes crinkling. ‘Great, Dad. What’s for supper?’ Alan couldn’t bear to think of him becoming a teenager.

The girl opposite Alan on the train kept opening her briefcase and reading something inside, her lips moving silently. He thought she could be really pretty if she made more effort—softer clothes, calmer makeup and better hair. Whatever had made her shave away most of her hair and dye it purple and green? It looked very odd. Guiltily he realised that she probably had cancer. The chemotherapy did that to hair, he remembered, and maybe the colour was a protest.

She met his gaze again and smiled, her large eyes luminous and beautiful. ‘I’ve just got a contract,’ she said.

‘Really?’

She must have been waiting for an invitation to talk. ‘It’s for a cosmetics company. My mum always wanted me to be The Face. Modelling tights wasn’t good enough for her. “Go for
the top,” she said. It’s with
Parrot
.’ She looked at him as if she expected him to know the name.

‘Parrot?’
he said.

She nodded. ‘Yes. Do you know it? I’ve just done a photoshoot. I had to put grey on my cheeks to highlight the cheekbones and green mascara. They made me stand in a sandpit with a parrot on my shoulder, and there was a wind machine to make my clothes all wild.’

‘Goodness,’ he said.

She smiled again and looked out of the window, folding her hands neatly on her lap.

‘Look, Alan,’ said Paul, ‘cards on the table. You have six months to improve your profits.’

‘And then what?’ said Alan, knowing what he was going to say.

‘Then we have to review your position.’ Paul smiled, opened his hands wide. ‘But we both know there isn’t going to be a problem, don’t we?’

Alan would have liked to resign there, on the spot, and walk out of this world of profit-margins, share-holders, management jargon. But he had a family.

‘One other thing, Alan.’

Alan held his breath.

‘You’re going to have to hot things up for your staff. Set them individual targets. You need to isolate those who are slacking, marginalise them. Give them the message that they have to deliver the goods or leave.’

Alan had never given anyone the sack in his life. ‘I have good staff,’ he said. ‘Loyal, hard-working—’

‘But not hard-working enough. You could be more efficient with less staff, and that’s where I want you to start. You need to lose ten per cent.’

Lose? How do you lose people? Drop them into the big
freezer at the back of the shop and put the lid down? Send them out on the motorway for a non-existent delivery? He tried not to say this because he knew he would have to try. He couldn’t afford to be sacked. He and Harriet had been talking about schools this morning.

Harriet had finally put it into words: ‘Kieran is not going to get into the grammar school.’ She bent her head over her morning cornflakes and refused to look him in the eye.

The top of her head is beautiful, he thought. He knew its shape: the low smooth forehead, the unusual bump at the back, the way the strands of hair fell away from the centre parting, light brown and turning gently grey.

‘He won’t survive in Trinity Road comprehensive,’ she said, still not looking at him.

‘No.’ He sipped his coffee. He thought of Kieran’s enthusiasms. Building impossible edifices for his pets, kicking a football around in the back garden, longing to be in a team, believing he could get there if he practised hard enough.

‘We have to look for a private school,’ she said.

It was inevitable. He couldn’t send his cheerful, untidy, vulnerable son to a place where older boys beat up younger boys when they wouldn’t hand over their bus passes or dinner money. He had seen them come out of school, smoking openly, aggressive with anyone who gave them more than a passing glance: ‘Who d’you think you’re looking at?’

He sat on the train, opposite the girl with the long, classic neck and perfect teeth, and rehearsed his speech to his staff. Targets, incentives, the least efficient ten per cent out in a month’s time. Orders from above. Everything inside him reacted against it, but there was no choice. He had to pay for Kieran’s education.

Harriet would not have started to cook supper, he knew. She always waited for him. ‘You’re so much better at it than me,’ she would say, with a smile.

He loved to come in and find her sitting in the living room, knitting in her lap, a book open on the side-table, Barry Manilow playing on the record player. He would kiss the top of her head, that centre parting. ‘How are you today?’ he would say.

‘A bit tired.’ She would move the wheelchair past him and head for the kitchen.

‘It’s all right,’ he would say. ‘I’ll do supper.’

He was tired, but he knew that she would be more tired. Supper wouldn’t take long. Half an hour for the potatoes and carrots, twenty minutes to grill the lamb cutlets. He was pleased that she always waited for him to come home, that they still sat down together every evening for a family meal.

He checked his watch. Ten past seven. Only another twelve minutes on the train.

‘Jonathan. It’s Imogen. Listen. You know the roof?’

‘What roof?’

Voices in the background are arguing about how to cook pasta. ‘I’m talking about the cottage.’

‘I’ve got friends here, Imogen.’

He’s always got friends there. They hang around in the kitchen and cook together—arguing most of the time. ‘Right. Well, I brought a tile home with me, so I could get some more, but it’s not the same.’

‘The same as what?’

‘The same as the tiles in B&Q. Any idea where I can get old ones?’

Murmuring in the background—‘The oil needs to be hotter.’

Doody leans forward tensely, putting pressure on her swollen ankle. Reacting to the pain, she eases back into the sofa and places her foot on the chair opposite. ‘Jonathan, are you still there?’

‘Yes, yes.’ She can hear the effort he makes to talk to her. He’d rather go back to his cooking, but it’s impossible to find a good time to talk to him.

‘You must know the right place to go.’

‘I’ve no idea. I haven’t got much experience with these things.’

If only he wouldn’t sound so pathetic. ‘Rubbish. You’ve got all the tools. You built your own kitchen, for goodness’ sake, and you were right about the book.’ He probably paid someone to do the kitchen and didn’t tell her.

‘It’s not the same as doing a roof.’

‘Come on, Jonathan, help me.’ She hates begging, but she needs his advice. He’s the only man she knows well enough to ask. She could ask Philip Hollyhead, the headmaster at her school, but she can already hear his response: ‘Fixing roofs, now, Doody? Is there no end to your talents?’

Which means that he sees her as a little woman, a caretaker with no intellect, who wouldn’t even contemplate writing a book. People with powerful brains don’t do practical things. They pay someone else to do them while they make money. Philip likes to believe he knows her. He hasn’t even got to the front door.

‘You’re going to have to get someone to do it,’ says Jonathan.

‘No. I want to do it myself.’

‘It doesn’t sound as if you can. Where are you going to find antique tiles?’

‘They’re not antique. They’re just old.’ Maybe he’s right and they’re worth a fortune. How does she find out?

‘Whatever. Meanwhile, I imagine the only solution is to remove all the existing tiles and start again.’

‘There has to be a better way.’

‘Not that I can think of. I keep telling you, I’m not an expert. You need someone who knows about these things.’

She imagines his friends round the kitchen table, chopping mushrooms and carrots together. They probably have whisky in front of them, their lap-tops open so that they can fiddle with finances between courses. Jonathan doesn’t like wasting time.

‘It would cost a fortune to buy new tiles.’

‘Yes. You should get some quotes, but don’t take the cheapest. Ask for qualifications, experience, references.’

She’s heard this before. If a job’s worth doing, it should be done well, says Jonathan. Never mind the expense. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she says. ‘I can’t afford to pay someone.’

‘Look,’ says Jonathan, and the tone of his voice indicates
that his eyes are being drawn back to the garlic sauce on the hob, ‘if you really want to do this, I’ll help with the cost.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘I’ll sell it. I could do with the money.’

‘OK,’ he says. ‘Let me know if you change your mind.’

She puts the phone down hard and catches her nail under the receiver. She sucks it miserably. She knows Jonathan. He starts by offering her money. By next week he’ll have reduced it by half. By the following week it will be an offer to lend her a fraction of what she needs. He means to be generous, but his lifelong association with money makes it impossible for him to share.

When Jonathan was six and Imogen was fourteen, he first revealed his fascination with finance. He sat next to her at their father’s funeral and whispered in her ear, ‘What happens to Daddy’s money?’

‘What money?’ Imogen was watching her mother sitting unmovingly in front of her, wondering why she didn’t cry. Surely everyone cried at funerals. Especially if they were married to the corpse. Why did she sit so still, her face so composed, so controlled in the heather tweed suit that she always wore on smart occasions?

‘He must have made a will.’

Imogen looked down at his earnest little face. He was wearing the short grey trousers and maroon blazer of his school uniform and a tiny maroon and gold striped tie. Even when he was six, it was easy to see where he was going. He was very serious. He wasn’t interested in having fun.

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I suppose he has.’

She thought they should all be dressed in black. Her mother should have a black veil over her face and break into tears as she threw a clod of earth on to the coffin. They should stand around the grave on a bleak November day to remember their
father. Rooks should be circling in the bare branches of the trees, cawing bleakly in the bitter wind.

‘He might have left everything to me. I’m the only son.’

‘Ssh.’ People were turning slightly towards them, sympathetic, but unwilling to tolerate much whispering.

‘He told me he wanted me to take over from him. The man of the family. I’ll need the money.’

‘Don’t be silly. Mummy will have the money.’

He looked so sweet sitting there, his eyebrows crushed as he worried about money, his solemn eyes framed by his first pair of glasses. He had amused people then because he looked like a miniature man. They had always wanted to hug him. Nobody had wanted to hug Imogen.

There wasn’t a grave. Daddy was cremated and Mummy never shed a tear. She even asked people not to send flowers. ‘Such a waste,’ she said. ‘Send the money to a charity.’

It might have been better if someone had recognised that they were in need of charity.

‘I’ve already made my will,’ said Jonathan later, following Imogen with a plate of chocolate biscuits as she carried cups of tea to the people who came back to the house. He kept eating them himself when he thought nobody was looking. Everyone was out in the garden, talking cheerfully among the lavender, the yellow roses and the box hedges. It was June and a very hot day. Every now and again bursts of laughter broke out, and they all seemed to be having a good time. Imogen couldn’t understand it. She’d always thought that funerals were meant to be sad.

‘Go away,’ she said crossly.

‘I won’t put you in my will.’

‘You haven’t got anything to leave.’

‘That’s what you think.’

A tall man with dark crinkly hair and hazel eyes bent towards them. ‘Best to make an early start on your financial affairs,’ he said. Hugh Mandleson, a colleague of her father. His voice was deep and solemn.

Imogen could feel a deep flush creeping up her face and she stared intently at his feet—large, in laced tan-leather shoes. She had not been able to look at him directly since she had heard her parents discussing the fact that he used to be a pilot before he became a solicitor. A real live hero, a man who flew aeroplanes, who knew how it felt to fly.

‘That’s what I’ve been telling Imogen,’ said Jonathan, in his usual clear, confident tone.

‘Terrific,’ said Hugh Mandleson, and wandered off to talk to someone else. Imogen watched his long back and despised herself for not being able to talk to him.

Celia came up to them. ‘Mummy wants you in the kitchen,’ she said to Imogen. Her clever green eyes looked out from under her fringe. She was wearing her ash-blonde hair down and it was long and completely straight. She disappeared every fifteen minutes to comb it. Imogen hated that hair. She wanted to creep through the house at night and cut it off while Celia was asleep. For a time, this was her favourite daydream.

She was pleased to go and leave Jonathan and Celia together. They would enjoy plotting about money. They had a lot in common.

The only recollection she has now of Jonathan being truly happy is when he was winning at Monopoly. He glowed. He made no concessions, no easy terms if you landed on Mayfair with a hotel, or if someone wanted to buy Bond Street from him. He asked outrageous prices, so no one except him ever had complete sets for houses. He was born to be a moneymaker.

Doody knows that she can’t afford to keep the cottage.

It doesn’t matter. Six months ago she didn’t have it, and in six months’ time she won’t have it again. She’ll just return to where she was. When her ankle’s better, she’ll go down and find an estate agent. The land must be worth something. The
cottage is too neglected anyway, and probably needs to be knocked down. Why would she want something that’s going to drain her limited money supply? What’s the point?

She hobbles around the house irritably, frustrated by her limitations. She’s been to the hospital and had her foot X-rayed, but it’s not broken, just sprained. It still hurts, though, and she left the car in Hillingham, so she can’t go out much. Normally at half-term she goes round the second-hand bookshops, looking for first editions. She’s wasting all her free time—

She’s concerned about the car. Did she lock it securely? There’ll be vandals in Hillingham—people aren’t more honest because they live in the country. She spends time with her Biggles collection, taking the books out and dusting them, holding them, reading random sections. It’s so much easier to like an unreal person than a real one. There’s no mess. You can be sure that he won’t just disappear when you’re not looking.

She concentrates on her writing. By now, Mandles has crashed into the sea and swum to a deserted beach, somewhere on the Devon coast. He is limping badly, having sprained his ankle in the wreckage.

The sun was at its yenith, a brilliant, pulsating art of suffocating heat—

Outside, it’s grey and windy, thick clouds lowering over the school, the poplar trees on the edge of the playground twisting furiously in the gale. She worries about the rain coming into her cottage through the holes in the roof.

Every now and again, tiny traces of doubt tiptoe into her mind. Should she be doing something more useful with her time? But she loves the way her mind works when she writes—clearly, logically—and that she can organise everything. People do what she wants them to do. It gives her a control that she has never managed to master in her own life, however hard she tries, or angry she gets. Surely writing children’s books is a legitimate occupation.

Philip Hollyhead, the headmaster, eventually comes to see her. He hovers on the doorstep. ‘Just came to see how you are, Doody.’

Instant caring. It’s taken him nearly a week to walk the hundred yards from his house to hers. ‘Come in,’ she says, and hobbles into the kitchen ahead of him. ‘I’ll make you some tea.’

‘It’s not necessary.’ He talks to her with a detached indifference, as if she doesn’t matter.

‘What’s that got to do with it? Just sit down.’

He sits down. She should have been a teacher. She likes telling people what to do—especially if they obey—and Philip is usually compliant because he’s used to it. His wife, Doris the Lion Tamer, gives orders all the time, and he slips easily into a nonchalant resignation to her demands. It infuriates Doody and makes her more determined to annoy him.

‘So, how’s the leg?’

‘It hurts,’ she says. ‘That’s why I’m limping.’

He pauses, but she won’t say any more if he doesn’t ask.

He looks uncomfortable at the kitchen table. He rarely comes into her house, and she knows how much he would like to examine the evidence of her existence, but she won’t let him. She watches him steadily, and he’s nervous about letting his eyes wander while he is being watched. He’s about fifty-five, and probably contemplating an early retirement. His hair is receding towards its own retirement, and the strands left at the back are an unrealistic solid brown. He probably gives it a rinse once a week, somehow avoiding dyeing the bald bits.

‘I’ve inherited a cottage,’ Doody says, as she plugs in the kettle.

He looks pleased to have something to talk about. ‘What good news. Where is it?’

‘In Devon, on the coast, near the village of Hillingham. I expect you know it.’

He doesn’t, of course, but she likes to make him feel
ignorant. ‘How exciting. Will you move down there?’ He lays his hands in front of him on the table and examines his fingernails. She can see that he’s wondering if she’ll give up her job.

‘No,’ she says. ‘I’ll sell it.’

‘Oh.’

They’ve worked together for the last seven years, since Philip took over as headmaster. He’s been there longer than his predecessors, and Doody knows him better than she did any of the others, but he is no good at conversation. He treats her as if she’s not his intellectual equal. She’s tempted to prove him wrong, but it’s more fun to let him believe she’s stupid. That way, she keeps the element of surprise, the excitement of knowing she can shock him at any time.

‘How many sugars, Philip?’

‘None for me,’ he says, with a faint grimace. ‘Doris never allows it.’

He once asked Doody to call him ‘Headmaster’ or ‘Mr Hollyhead’ in front of the children. ‘It’s a matter of respect,’ he said. ‘For the children’s benefit.’

‘All right, Philip. I’ll think about it.’ Now she makes a point of calling him Philip wherever they are.

She hops to the kettle as it boils and pours the water into the teapot. ‘It was nice of you to come and see me.’

‘It’s always a pleasure to see you, Imogen.’

‘You’ll have to take the teapot to the table. I’ll probably spill it.’

‘Yes, of course.’ He gets to his feet immediately. ‘How did you hurt your leg, did you say?’

‘I fell off the roof.’ It sounds better than getting caught in hawthorn. She hasn’t told him the details yet. He hasn’t seemed interested.

‘Oh,’ he says, and she knows he isn’t listening.

She pours his cup of tea and pushes it over to him.

‘I was wondering,’ he says, after a pause, ‘are you going to
be able to mow the field in the next few weeks? The children like playing out on the grass now the weather’s better. Should I find someone else to do it?’

‘No, I’ll be fine soon.’ She fiddles with the spoon in the sugar bowl, scooping up the sugar and letting it all fall out. She wants to distract him. ‘Is that Charlie Miller out there?’ she says, peering past him with a worried expression.