Саймон Ингс - The Smoke

‘Anyway,’ said Jim, overcome with fellow feeling, ‘you live here. You people are half of this city. You’d have a few words to say if anyone dropped rocks on you!’

Chernoy beamed at him. ‘No one’s dropping anything. No one’s throwing anything.’

Bob, joining in, raised his bottle. ‘And to hell with the red-tops!’

‘The tabloids. The papers,’ Stella explained, seeing Georgy’s confusion.

At that, Georgy raised his own bottle. The bottle surprised me, the label even more: now he, too, was drinking Pils. ‘Well, yes, to hell with them ,’ he exclaimed, and drank.

Fel was working hard to ignore her father and so had managed to strike up a conversation with mine. Bob had that poleaxed look I had noticed men got when they talked to Fel for the first time – as though he was being truly understood for the first time. ‘Pumps, in the main,’ he was telling her. ‘The pipework for pumps. They made me a checker.’

‘It’s a big deal,’ I told her, chipping in.

Bob shot me an angry glance. ‘It’s shift work, as always.’

‘On spaceships.’

‘The parts for spaceships.’ Poor Bob: he was trapped. Whatever he said about it, his work carried the smack of glamour.

Georgy drew the back of his hand across his lips, stood up and crossed to the fridge. He wanted people to notice him. Above all, he wanted Fel to notice him. He pulled out two bottles of Pils from the door, unscrewed them both as he returned to the table and handed one to Bob. Fel was still managing to ignore him, but Stella wasn’t. I sensed that this was new: that she had not seen Georgy drink till now.

‘An engineer is an engineer,’ Georgy announced, and raised his bottle to Bob to chink.

Bob stared at him.

‘Whatever the engine,’ Georgy added, and took a deep draught of his fresh beer.

Bob frowned. It was all very well him putting his own work down, but what was Georgy about? I could practically see the clockwork turning in him: should he be offended or not? How I hated that about him: that old pendulum inside him forever swinging between pride and fear.

‘God, Daddy,’ said Fel, ‘don’t tell us you’re an engineer now.’

Georgy sucked at his bottle. ‘Well, what would you call it?’

‘Medicine isn’t an engineering problem.’

‘Everything is an engineering problem.’

‘Really.’

‘You’ll discover this in time.’

‘Here we go.’

The pair of them, father and daughter, each nursing their bottles of forbidden alcohol, had been building up to a row ever since Georgy came through the door.

‘What?’ Georgy smiled a combative smile. ‘You think all that art and music you’re so fond of aren’t engineering problems? Talk to any painter! Any composer!’

‘You don’t know any composers.’

‘What, you think you’re the first to step outside the Bund? Stuart, tell her: is there anything you studied at that school of yours that wasn’t an engineering problem?’

‘Well.’ I was painfully aware what his likely opinion of me was. ‘Yes.’

‘ Yes? ’ Georgy laughed, incredulous. ‘In that case, remind me to bring a hard hat and good insurance next time I visit any structure of yours.’

It was such a clumsy attack, I couldn’t help myself: ‘An open mind will do.’

Georgy was delighted, or made a good show of seeming so. ‘Oh, bravo!’ He raised his bottle in a toast. While he drank, he kept his eyes on Fel. He was showing her how little her trivial dietary rebellion mattered. It would take more than a bottle or two of beer to count as secession. Measure for measure, Daddy could match his brat of a girl. Only it was apparent that he could not match her: his eyes had already acquired a dangerous glassiness.

I expected Stella to head the conversation into calmer waters, but she sat there in absolute silence. In the end, it was Jim who poured oil on troubled waters by offering a little homespun philosophy of his own.

‘Now hang on, Doctor Chernoy. I mean to say, there wouldn’t be much point in good engineering, would there, in making something well, or doing anything well, if others didn’t stand back once in a while and say it was well done? Would there? And isn’t that what art is?’

Georgy clapped, rather slowly. ‘There you are! “Lonely on a peak in Darien”!’ He winked grotesquely, at me or at Fel or maybe at both of us, it was hard to tell. ‘Poetry.’

‘Silent.’ Fel’s voice was taut with anger. ‘“Silent, upon a peak in Darien.” Though what Keats has to do with anything beats me.’ She reached for the pitcher of Vimto Stella had prepared. It was still full, the ice almost melted.

‘I’ll have a sup of that,’ Jim announced, ever the diplomat, and thrust out his water glass. Fel poured for him. ‘And–’ he drank it off ‘–and I’ll be off home. No, no, I’d better,’ he insisted, gathering himself. Sobriety, or a decent impression of it, had become like a jacket he shrugged on at will. ‘Reveille’s at five a.m.’ He got out of his seat and in one swift, elegant move that made Stella squeal, he gathered her into his arms and brought her out of her chair in a hug tight enough to wind her. ‘Auntie!’

‘Give over! Oaf!’

‘Thank you so much for tonight.’ He planted kisses on both her cheeks. ‘Such a terrific send-off.’

‘Great fool,’ Stella cried, flushing with pleasure.

It was clear enough, whatever we said, that Jim was determined to leave, so one by one we got out of our chairs and hugged him.

‘Till tomorrow.’ Stella sighed, kissing him. ‘Get some good sleep.’

Jim hugged me, kissed Fel on the cheek and came around the table and into Bob’s arms. Neither man smiled as they held each other, and the party fell silent a moment, solemn suddenly at this parting of father and son.

‘Here,’ Jim said, pressing something into Bob’s hand. The moment went by so fleetingly, I didn’t take it in. It was only much later, when I returned to Yorkshire, that Bob showed me what he had been given: a wristwatch from the rocketry school in Peenemünde, the logo from the film Frau im Mond surfing starlight on its engraved underside.

Georgy had the sense to hold himself back in this moment of leave-taking; or perhaps, rising from his seat, he had suddenly felt the effects of the evening’s alcohol. Jim and Georgy shook hands, more formally than before, their smiling eyes locking. For all Georgy’s earlier nonsense about reconciliation, the evening had, if anything, drawn the lines between our races even more clearly. Georgy said: ‘We’ll see you when you get there.’

He meant the Moon. Jim’s grin at the challenge was without mirth. ‘Your machines will. Have them prepare our supper for us.’

‘Don’t be late,’ said Georgy, still holding his hand.

Bob and I saw Jim to the door. When we came back in, we found Fel and Georgy staring daggers at each other across the table while Stella gathered up the empty plates. Georgy wheeled around in his seat. ‘Robert!’

Fel, a desperate expression on her face, looked from her father to me and back again.

‘Robert, tell Fel what it is you actually do.’

Stella passed me bearing plates into the kitchen. For all her doubt and her little-girl-lost routine, the meal had been a success. We had demolished every dish; there was barely anything but sauce in the serving bowls. Only Bob’s plate remained full. He took his seat and began picking at his dinner again, his face drawn. ‘Well—’ he began.

Chernoy interrupted him. ‘Robert measures the widths of holes, Fel. Day in, day out. Imagine that.’

I felt Stella come back into the room beside me, felt more than heard the breath she drew.