Gabriel's Gift Read online

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted her to be only mine. But she could do this remarkable thing – she knew how to make kids feel she was on their side.’

  ‘How did she do that?’

  ‘By being really on their side. By disliking authority.’ Dad was sobbing. ‘I haven’t thought about her for a long time. Can you believe it – I’m talking about more than forty years ago. Maybe in forty years, long after I’m dead, you’ll remember this moment. I often think about how you’ll remember me. Maybe you’ll put me in a film or something. Who could play me, d’you think? How about Robert De Niro?’

  ‘Won’t you be around when I’m old? I want you here for ever.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I’ll try and last as long as I can, pal. But I’ll be dead before you, I hope. You’ll have a son and you can tell him all about our adventures together. The stupid things I used to do … and how I sold your picture … and how I –’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Whatever. Shall we go and eat? Things are looking up a little. We should celebrate, eh?’

  He took Gabriel to a good Italian place where they filled themselves up with pasta and ice-cream.

  It had been a busy day but to Gabriel’s surprise Dad wasn’t depleted. The teaching had reinvigorated him. Gabriel himself had even managed to temporarily forget about the picture. It was, of course, hanging in Splitz, but Lester didn’t go there.

  Later, at the top of their road, Gabriel said, ‘Mum will be pleased.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The teaching job.’

  ‘Will you tell her?’

  ‘It would be better coming from you.’ said Gabriel. ‘She keeps saying to me that there’s something important she wants to talk about, but she never gets round to it.’

  ‘D’you know what it is?’

  Gabriel shrugged. ‘The future, I expect. Dad, why don’t you come round?’

  ‘I’ve thought about it. But I can’t go into the house … it’s heartbreaking. Even walking about this area makes me feel sick.’

  ‘Go to the bar where she works.’

  ‘Do you think she’d been happy to talk to me? She’s falling in love with someone else.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve never met a bigger idiot than that guy. She’s only trying to make you jealous.’

  ‘Yeah? I’ll think about it. My problem is, I don’t really want anyone else. But she’s been rather hard on me.’

  ‘It’s for your own good.’

  ‘Thank you, Gabriel, but I don’t feel improved by it yet.’

  Gabriel kissed his father.

  ‘See you soon, Dad.’

  ‘See you.’

  Chapter Ten

  One Sunday morning a couple of weeks later, when at last he got up, Gabriel found Hannah had bared her thick arms and donned rubber gloves, covered her head with a ragged tea towel, and put on a pair of his father’s old shoes, without laces. Gabriel wondered if she were about to tackle a pile of nuclear waste, but saw she was intending to clean the living room. Mum had had people round: the sour air was thick and muzzy, the ashtrays full, the chairs scattered, and on the table were beer and wine bottles, crisp packets and half-eaten sandwiches.

  Afraid Hannah might hand him a mop or duster, he skipped through into the kitchen. To his surprise he found his mother listening to a waltz on the radio and cooking him a fried breakfast.

  ‘Hi, Angel. It’s a lovely day. How about going to Kew Gardens?’

  The suggestion startled him; he quite liked Hannah now, but he didn’t want to spend the day in a hothouse with her.

  He said, ‘I’m going swimming with a mate.’

  Mum said, ‘I thought it would be nice for us to go out.’

  Gabriel and his parents often used to go to Kew Gardens on Sundays. They had taken many photographs there. It must have been two years since they’d last visited.

  He said, ‘You and me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No George?’

  ‘There is something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.’

  He said, ‘No Hannah, either.’

  His mother put her finger to her lips. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you. Anyhow, she’s decided to do some work.’

  During breakfast he watched his mother sceptically. He wasn’t convinced she was actually going to walk out of the door with him.

  They did, at last, say goodbye to Hannah. Gabriel was even more surprised when, taking his hand, his mother said they’d be going to Kew on the habe. He didn’t know how long it had been since she’d got on a train, but she had stopped travelling on the underground for a variety of sensible reasons: it was beneath the earth and the experience resembled being buried alive; it was polluted – killer gases and toxic odours could poison you; and only murderers and lunatics travelled on the District Line.

  He was apprehensive walking beside her on the way to the station; he could feel how afraid she was. Once they were on the train – while she read the papers with perhaps more interest than the Sunday Times merited – she glanced about nervously, but managed to keep her fear down. What she used to consider a boiling hell was an almost empty carriage rattling over the wide, beautiful, dirty Thames on a Sunday morning.

  When they got off she sighed in relief.

  ‘Brave, eh?’ she said.

  ‘Well done, Mum.’

  ‘It’ll be an aeroplane next. It’s too late to be scared of everything.’ She looked him over. ‘Pull that hood down –’

  ‘Mum –’

  ‘Pull it down! Out here people will think you’re a drug dealer!’

  For them, cool clean Kew was the countryside; it was a place to dream in.

  Mum talked thoughtfully of how the English loved gardens and their houses, and how tedious she used to find it. But when she visited a middle-class area like Kew it cleared her mind and she could see she wanted more than the weed-infested patch of concrete containing rotting bookshelves and a burnt saucepan that they had at the back of the house. When she started to earn more money they would move.

  ‘We’ll get a proper garden,’ she said. ‘It won’t be big – just the right size for the two of us to sit out.’

  They would be there, she added, until he went to university.

  She said, ‘When I was in my twenties, living off the King’s Road and knowing fashionable people, I was quite a strange girl, lonely and …’ She searched for the word. ‘Extreme. I haven’t made the most of myself. In those days I would calm myself by thinking of being sixty. A sprightly woman I’d be, always well dressed but with weak knees, bent toes and bright eyes, readingFrench novels and listening to The Seven Deadly Sins. You can bring me flowers and books. You will come, won’t you, even though you’ll have better things to do? Perhaps you will bring your own children.’

  ‘Why would I not come?’ he said.

  ‘Children have to fall out of love with their parents. It’s a terrible divorce. My own parents have nothing to say to me, as you’ve probably noticed. I left them at fifteen. And yet I will want you to come to me. What’s wrong?’

  ‘It seems funny,’ he said. ‘Waiting until you’re sixty before you do what you want to do. Why can’t you do it now?’

  ‘It’s a good question. I wish I knew.’

  As she talked, Gabriel found it odd, their being together alone. Usually, when they went on an outing, his father would be chattering, drawing attention to himself, making jokes, singing.

  Neither mother nor son mentioned him, but Gabriel kept thinking of whether his father was still in his bed in his room, or if he had enough money to go out for breakfast. Maybe he had gone for a walk? Gabriel couldn’t get rid of the idea that Dad would decide to come to Kew Gardens. He would step out from behind the pagoda and the three of them would link arms and walk together.

  On the way back to the tube they passed a little bookshop.

  ‘Would you like to go in?’

  ‘Yes. I might get something to read,’ Gabriel said, hopefully.


  ‘You can have whatever you want.’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Choose what takes your fancy – I’ll get it for you. It might surprise you, but I have been earning some money out there! Your father hasn’t been sending us any money, even though I’ve written to ask him. There’s the bills and mortgage on the house, and you’re expensive to run.’

  He took a long time but she waited, looking around herself, mostly at the self-help section. As Zak had pointed out, it was when you heard the word ‘healing’ that you knew there’d be parent trouble ahead. There’d be therapy or worse, hypnotism or other forms of weird religion. Numerous members of Zak’s clan were walking about with their arms extended in front of them, and their eyes closed, ‘realigning’ their lives.

  Among the limited selection of art books, Gabriel found a book of portraits. Mum commended his choice; it surprised her how few contemporary artists were interested in the human face and in what people were really like. It was a subject that rock ‘n’ roll couldn’t explore.

  Carrying his new book, they went to a café a few doors down and had pizza. He wondered if he could have what he’d called, as a child, a ‘curly one’ – a knickerbocker glory. She said yes and ordered a spoon for herself.

  He noticed she was looking around. ‘Don’t they serve beer here?’

  ‘It’s a café. Why do you want beer?’

  She passed her hand over her face. ‘You make things hard for me.’

  ‘Thought it might be my fault.’

  ‘No, Gabriel.’

  He was eating intently; it was a while before he realized she was watching him.

  ‘You used to be such a noisy little boy.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Or perhaps I found you difficult. I was suffering, for other reasons. You’ve become quite thoughtful. What were you thinking about just then?’

  He replied, ‘Whether Dad prefers chocolate or coffee ice-cream.’ Gabriel, Dad and Mum had kept a row of ice-creams in the freezer and often enthusiastically debated the subject of their favourite flavour. ‘Chocolate, I think. Dad could be eating one now … at the same time as us.’

  She handed Gabriel her handkerchief. ‘Wipe your face, big boy. You miss him? He’s not dead, Gabriel darling.’

  ‘No, he’s living in a bedsit.’

  ‘It’s not a catastrophe. He was unhappy, your father. He didn’t even know it. Now he’s been made to see its effect on others.’

  ‘You’ve done him a favour?’ He whispered, ‘It’d be the first.’

  ‘Don’t mumble. I knew there was something wrong when he stopped hating everything. He didn’t complain about what he watched, ate or heard. He was moving far away from us – or me, at least. Sorry for leaving you with Hannah – as my mother used to say, she’s got a face like a bag of hammers. But I had to get things going. The petrification – that means things staying the same – was killing me. I have my faults, but I haven’t given up.’ She stood up, raised her arms and sat down. ‘Look at me, don’t I have some energy? Even more now, since he’s gone.’

  ‘Dad could be at work right now.’

  ‘Work? Gabriel, apart from everything else, it’s Sunday.’

  ‘He’s started to teach.’

  ‘Teach, did you say? What sort of teaching is it?’

  When he saw she wasn’t about to be sarcastic, Gabriel explained that Dad had been teaching guitar to a boy, who had, in turn, recommended him to another, less spiky, kid whom Dad had enjoyed being with. He had signed up to teach them both for a few weeks. ‘When I’m teaching,’ Dad had said, ‘it’s strange, but I don’t get stuck in one particular state of mind. It shakes me up good.’

  Gabriel could see that Mum wanted to talk about Rex, his father – to someone who knew him, who would understand. At the same time, she knew she couldn’t say all she felt.

  ‘Gabriel, I can imagine him teaching. He’s bad-tempered and testy, your father, and he’d be surprised that his pupils don’t know everything already But he understands music. In certain moods, he likes to … lecture. I haven’t talked to Lester for years, but he was always incredibly alive and energetic. Maybe he’s inspired Dad. It’s obviously done him good.’

  In this was some surprising generosity.

  Gabriel said, ‘Grandma – Dad’s mum – was a teacher.’

  Her face brightened. ‘Oh yes, that’s right. She’d take you to the library.’

  ‘Didn’t she teach me to read?’

  ‘Yes, with my help.’

  Gabriel said, ‘Dad and I did stuff together, but you were always shouting at him about the sticky patch on the living-room floor.’

  ‘Weeks it was there, that sticky patch. I kept getting glued to the floor. I thought I’d never move again.’

  ‘He got discouraged.’ Gabriel had read somewhere that people say this when they are angry: ‘Anyhow, I can’t forgive you for it.’

  She was shocked. ‘What made you say that?’

  ‘Archie.’

  ‘Archie? You’re talking about your brother now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She said, ‘My son’s dead. It nearly drove me mad. I was on medication for a long time –’

  ‘Archie’s almost dead.’

  ‘Almost! What are you saying? Gabriel –’

  ‘He’s a part of me. He talks to me.’

  ‘Archie talks to you? What does he say?’

  ‘He gives me advice.’

  ‘That’s odd, seeing as he never became much of a talker. Now you’re saying he’s having conversations. Gabriel you had better watch out – the psychiatrists’ll be round tapping your knees with hammers and asking you your own name. Does your father know anything about this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I should talk to him about it. Except we’re not talking.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘I might have to. I can’t believe it. Christ Almighty, what’s happened to you? What a strange little boy you are!’

  ‘I’m not little any more! You should open your eyes!’

  Mum was looking at Gabriel in puzzlement. She snatched back her handkerchief. She said, ‘Oh, you don’t understand how people can make one another crazy. Gabriel, don’t you dare try to make me feel guilty. Parents always feel they fail. It’s a losing game, parenthood. I’m a woman on her own, without a useful husband, trying to make a living for us both! A single mother!’

  ‘Single mother,’ he imitated her.

  ‘What do you expect me to do? It’s no party at work!’

  ‘You have plenty of parties!’

  ‘And why not?’ She shook herself, flinging off agitation like rainwater. ‘I’ve got to tell you – I’ve been offered a new job …’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘By a man called Speedy.’

  ‘Speedy?’

  ‘Yes. What’s it to you?’

  He said, ‘Strange name.’

  ‘He’s always in a hurry. I ran into him at a party in the Portobello Road a little while ago. We were friends in the old days. He had a villa near Marrakech where we all stayed. He always wore shiny shirts. Many of the people are dead now, or mad, or have moved to Wales. But Speedy owns hamburger places full of rock and pop stuff. He knows my situation with Dad, and he’s sympathetic. I think he’s going to employ me. At first I’ll do some waitressing. Then he’ll promote me. I’m pretty sure I’ll get to manage one of the places. It’s a good start. What do you say?’

  ‘Er … I’ll have to think about it.’

  ‘Why? It’s not a philosophical problem! Aren’t you pleased at my new job?’

  He nodded and said, ‘Have you been to this hamburger place?’

  ‘Oh, I used to go there, only for parties, not for the food, of course. I’d rather eat my feet. But I told you.’ she said impatiently ‘Don’t you listen? I ran into Speedy at a party. I was thinking, too,’ she went on, ‘that we should show Lester’s picture to Speedy.’

  ‘Lester’s picture?’

  ‘Yes.�
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  ‘What for?’

  ‘He might be interested. Anyway, even if we don’t do that, I think we should have it framed. I’m going to see to that next week. Before I start the new job, I thought we might go to Italy.’

  ‘To see George’s castle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gabriel said, ‘I don’t like castles.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you?’

  ‘They’re too draughty. I want to work on my film.’

  ‘Good. You can do it there. Oh, Gabriel, it’ll be wonderful for us to have some sun and sea. It’s been so long since things were good!’

  ‘I can only work in London. It’s the environment in which I feel most comfortable.’

  ‘Oh really? You’re a cussed devil. You’ll have to stay with Hannah, then.’

  ‘I’ll stay with Dad, I think.’

  She snorted, ‘He won’t be able to look after you.’

  ‘I can look after myself.’

  I’m not sure that you can, yet, ‘she said.’ But soon you’ll have to. I haven’t been with you much lately, but I’ve been thinking a lot about your future.’

  ‘Have you?’ he said enthusiastically.

  ‘I know you love movies and directors and actors and all that –’

  ‘Yes, yes – I’ve been having so many ideas recently. Have you ever written down your dreams? Maybe one day there’ll be a method for photographing them!’

  ‘That’ll be interesting,’ she said sarcastically ‘Now, we need to get real, you and I. George has been very helpful on the subject of your career. He is a practising artist, after all. Don’t laugh like that.’

  Gabriel murmured, ‘He needs the practice!’

  ‘Gabriel, you’ve got to learn to listen!’

  ‘I can listen and talk at the same time.’

  ‘George lives with the difficulties. He says that the point is to combine what you’re interested in with the ability to make a living for the rest of your life. You could be a show-business lawyer.’ She was looking at him.

  ‘Sorry?’

  She went on, ‘These lawyers deal with creative people. Not only that – they make creative things happen. But they’re never unemployed or out of fashion. They never get bad reviews. I want you to think about it. Meanwhile, I’m going to research a university where you can study Law and carry on with your drama stuff, too, if you still want to do it. Then you’re going to see a lawyer friend of George’s. He’s got money coming out of his ears. He’ll explain it all to you. What’s that funny face for?’