Out of the Blackout by Robert Barnard

Author:Robert Barnard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

CHAPTER 11

‘I’m expecting Teddy round next week,’ said Len to Simon one evening when, quite exceptionally, they met on the first-floor landing.

Simon had in fact heard Len’s footsteps coming up and going into his bedroom for something, and he had chosen that time to go down to the lavatory. He had not seen Len for some time, having failed to coincide either with his morning or his evening shifts. There was a nagging feeling inside him that he needed to see Len from time to time, that he had to check his impressions of him, to see if they cohered with what he was learning about him. He is my father, he said to himself. And he added: and I want to know what he did to my mother.

So when he met Len on the first landing he stopped on the pretext of asking about the old lady. Len shook his head, with an expression of concern.

‘I’m afraid she’s failing,’ he said. ‘Very much so.’ He tapped his head. ‘Up here, too. Pitiful to watch. And yet she won’t give up, you know. Still thinks she ought to make the decisions, like she always has. Even though she hasn’t got the concentration any longer. Tragic. Still—I’m expecting Teddy round next week. That ought to perk her up a bit.’

‘That’s your brother, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. The baby of the family. Teddy always keeps people amused. It’s a sort of gift—I haven’t got it. I’m more the serious type. But Teddy’s got it and to spare—don’t know where it comes from. I hope he’ll do Ma a bit of good, though I realize it can’t be permanent. He’ll notice the difference in her. To be perfectly frank, I can see the writing on the wall . . .’

Simon sensed a deeply buried undertone of relish.

It meant that Simon, in the next week, haunted the Colonel Monk. Teddy might not relax from his duty of cheering up the Aged P. sufficiently long to pop along there as he apparently usually did, but there again, those duties were likely to prove tiring . . . The landlord at the pub, faced with a nightly visit from Simon, did not relax from his surly gloom. In fact one evening he came close to suggesting he’d be happier if he went elsewhere.

‘Seeing a lot of you lately,’ he said. Casting a dispirited eye around his elderly and miserable clientèle, he added: ‘Most of the young people go down the road.’

‘Oh, I like a quiet pub,’ said Simon.

In fact, the odd young person did come in, sometimes just to buy crisps or a pork pie, sometimes to down a single drink and then take himself out. On the Wednesday night, chirpy and glowing in the prevailing gloom, the girl from next door popped in for a bottle of stout.

‘Hello,’ said Simon. ‘Let me buy you a drink.’

‘Well, I don’t know. I shouldn’t. I’m getting this for my landlady—she’s got one of those heavy head colds. Can’t understand how anybody can drink this stuff, cold or not.

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