I looked for a connection. ‘Who are Willie and – Pat, is it?’
‘Willie French, the journalist, and his … Patty Reynolds. She’s a very old friend of mine. She…’
Reynolds. I put my hand over the receiver and shouted, ‘Father?’ The conversation above ceased, and then, more quietly, resumed. I listened. Mother was still lost in monologue when my father’s head appeared over the banisters. I held up the telephone for him to see.
‘I’ve got mother here. I think she wants to know whether you’re bringing’ – I waved my head – ‘her, up for the weekend.’
He descended to the bathroom landing. ‘Yes. You see …’ He began down the stairs towards me, ‘Vanessa’s sister is —’
‘You are? Right. Yes, mother, Pat will be bringing her sister.’
‘… oh. Well, I’ll… there’ll probably—’
‘I’m sorry, mother, I can’t talk just now … Yes, I might come. No one will be using my room, will they ? I’ll ring if I am. Bye now.’
My father stood half-way down the stairs. ‘You will come, Charles, won’t you. Old Sir Herbert is coming along and I think you should be there. He can —’
‘Next time,’ I said, ‘next time, let her know, okay? There’s enough room to sleep an army in that fucking house. Let her know. So she won’t have to go through this pathetic charade to see if she can find a bed for your girl. Okay?’
‘Oh, come on, Charles, pull yourself together. Your mother and myself have already discussed the matter. And nothing whatever is going to happen with my “girl” in “that fucking house”. Do you understand me. Do you understand me?’
I turned away and then back again. He was managing to look quite elegant and plausible, there on the stairs. I nodded.
‘Charles, you’re such a …’ he laughed, ‘you’re such a prude.’
I felt ashamed. All worked up and nowhere to go. I looked down at the telephone, breathing deeply.
‘Come back upstairs.’
I went.
‘Gordon,’ said Vanessa, in an outraged voice, ‘Rachel is Eliza Noyes’s girl – Harry Seth-Smith’s step-daughter.’
I followed my father into the room.
‘Really,’ he said, steering past Jenny’s legs to the tea-tray where, with rock-like hands, he filled his cup. ‘Well, in that case you must come this weekend also. Charles, why don’t you bring Rachel ? I’m sure there’ll be plenty of room.’
Rachel looked at me blankly.
‘I saw Harry only the other week. He does regular work for us, very old friend of mine. Do come.’
Rachel shrugged in my direction.
I had had no intention of going. ‘Can you?’ I asked.
‘Well, Mummy might —’
‘Nonsense,’ said my father. ‘I shall ring her myself this evening. Charles, have you started at the Tutors yet?’
‘Yes. Beginning of last week.’
‘Good man.’
I took Rachel to a French film, La Rupture, as an oblique way of indicating to her how good in bed I was going to turn out to be.
I realized that there were plenty of sound, indeed urgent, reasons for hating French films: the impression the directors gave that the shoddier and less co-ordinated their products were, the more like life, and therefore the better, they were; that habit of lapsing into statement whenever suggestion got too difficult or ambiguous. And my critical sense told me that the English-American tradition of exploratory narrative had obvious strengths. Yet I preferred the more rickety and personal conventions of French – and, occasionally, Eyetie -cinema: the more radical attitude to experience, the scrutiny of the small detail and the single moment.
I said as much to Rachel, I told Rachel so, as we walked up to Notting Hill Gate. She agreed.
At one point Rachel took my hand. (Relax, I told myself; you don’t have to do all this. She just fancies you.) She said, ‘What happened when you called your father out of the room ?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘Do you get on with him ? You seemed, I don’t know, frightfully tense.’
Rather flattering. I said: ‘It’s funny. I hate him all right, but it doesn’t feel like hatred. Even at home. If I was sitting in the kitchen reading, and he came through the room, I’d look up and think, Oh, there he goes, I hate him, and return quite happily to my book. I’m not sure what it is.’