A. Miller - The Faithful Couple

Now he did. His guilt and the fear fed on each other. The more he dwelled on Rose, the worse his pre-emptive anxiety for Ruby; the more he feared for Ruby, the fiercer his guilt over Rose, what she and her father must have been through. Worst of all was the hybrid guilt for what might ever happen to his daughter — because of him, or men like him, at least, which, morally, amounted to the same thing. The monkey-grip soles of Ruby’s pink feet, the frail, ineluctable clasp of her fingers on his, those grey eyes. The everything of her.

I hope you find out how this feels.

‘Do that one more time, Sammy, and we’re going back inside.’

Sam re-reached for the gear stick.

‘I’m serious, Sam. It’s automatic anyway, I told you.’

The boy laughed. He shifted his skin-and-bone buttocks in the triangle of leather available to him between Neil’s thighs, brushing irrelevantly against his penis.

‘Can we take the roof down?’

‘It’s raining.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘It’s going to rain.’

‘If it rains we’ll put it back. Go on.’

Neil smiled. He was an amateur; he was there for the taking. He pushed the button on the dash and the canvass retracted into the compartment behind the jump seat, a feat of puppetry that always seemed to him at once flash and already old-fashioned, retro-decadent.

‘Wave at Granddad,’ Neil said.

Brian was facing out between the net curtains, leaning forward from his armchair, his head balanced on his walking stick and cushioned by his hands, his medicines out of sight on the nest of tables in the corner. When he saw Sam waving he briefly raised an arm.

‘Okay, Sammy, both hands on the wheel. No, higher, like this. Ten and two, remember. Right. Now, don’t overdo it. Just the pedals and the steering wheel.’

‘Got it. Don’t worry.’

‘Right. Off we go.’

Neil surrendered the wheel and the pedals and put the car into gear. For want of anything better to do with his right arm he wrapped it around Sam’s waist. ‘Okay,’ he said, and they were off.

‘Like that?’

‘Bit more… Just a bit, that’s enough. You’re a natural.’

The hair on top of Sam’s head was a shade or two darker than usual, one slanting patch matted greasily like a mechanic’s. It was Saturday afternoon but Sam was wearing his school trousers and a once-white shirt.

‘Right,’ Neil said, ‘I’ll help with the corner. Just around the block and then we’re going back. No, we agreed. Someone might see us.’

‘Okay, thanks,’ Sam said. ‘Thank you.’

An eccentric kind of triumphal progress, this ride. Neil had never been very interested in cars (no cars, no football, two key indifferences he shared with Adam). The finish and the colour of the Audi, the upholstery and the stereo, were down to Jess. Sam would have made a better guess at the vehicle’s horsepower than Neil was able to. All the same he loved the car for what it represented. It was their first joint splurge, not counting their rent and the holidays and the gym membership at the boutique place in Islington. More than that, it was the first five-figure purchase he had ever made, made with his own money, the serious money, several grand after tax, which was amassing in his bank account with a wondrous monthly regularity — thanks to Farid, the second chance he gave Neil, and the deranged London property market.

If he was ever going to have a pomp to be in, Neil guessed, he was in it now.

‘I said both hands. Christ.’ He grasped the wheel where Sam had let it go to wipe his nose.

‘Okay, sorry. There. Sorry.’

They puttered past Bimal’s old house; no lights were on inside. Bimal had two kids of his own now, Neil knew, though he hadn’t yet met the second. These days they rarely saw each other, though they were on good terms, no hard feelings, like members of an amicably disbanded rock band.

‘How’s your dad?’

‘Okay I s’pose. Said I’ll have to get the bus back, though.’

Brian had shown Neil the contents of an envelope Dan had left with his son the previous evening: a tenner plus change, and a note that said Bed by 9. Go easy on the TV . He was trying.

‘I could take you if you’d rather.’

‘Nah, I’ll be fine, honest. Are they — what do you call it again? — quadraphonic? The speakers.’

‘Dunno, Sammy. Sorry.’

‘What should I do about that bump? That okay?’

Sam relaxed into Neil’s torso as he became used to the wheel, warming a patch of his uncle from the belly to the sternum. Almost four years, and Jess had never mentioned children: too proud, too committed to the performance of herself as spikily independent. Neil was allowing himself to believe that her silence meant she had no definite expectations or preferences. Perhaps this car would be their limit.

‘Into the chicane,’ Sam said. ‘He’s the youngest driver in the competition.’

‘The crowd’s gone wild,’ Neil said. Sam smiled up at him.

‘Sammy, the road.’ He gestured at the asphalt with his eyes.

An afternoon at the Tower of London, out on the M1 together to a safari park, soppy admiration for the boy’s routine cognitive leaps: Sam had laid claim to what little parental instinct Neil harboured. Sam plus Adam’s kids, Harry and the wizened newborn girl, little avatars of his friend he could cradle and spoil.

‘I told you it would rain. Bollocks.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘It is.’

‘Only spitting,’ Sam said. ‘Anyway, we’re nearly back.’

Neil left the roof down so Brian would be able to see them as they pulled up. ‘Let me…’

‘It’s okay,’ Sam said. ‘I can do it. I can.’

They rounded the final bend. Neil thought he could remember Brian indulging them in this way, he and Dan impatiently taking turns, in the beaten-up red Triumph with its indelible smell of travel-sickness puke and no seatbelts in the back. But he wasn’t sure that he trusted the memory, that it truly was one.

‘So is he looking after you all right? Granddad.’

‘S’pose so. Yeah. He’s shit hot on his maths, isn’t he? And he’s got a roll of old brown paper from his shop, covers all my books with it. School books. Loves it.’

‘Does he fry you chips?’ Brian had covered his books, too. Neil had forgotten about that. Probably he had never said thank you.

‘Pizza,’ Sam said. ‘We order it, don’t we?’ Earlier, before lunch, Brian had made Sam wash his hands in the kitchen sink. In the clasping and rubbing of the boy’s palms, Neil recognised the motion of his father’s hands beneath the tap, and his brother’s hands, and, he realised with a jolt, his own.

For his part he didn’t want to teach his nephew anything, besides steering: his job, Neil considered, was to help the child know less. There was something gratifyingly discretionary in his feelings for Sam, as if he were poised between the hard duty of family and the free choice of friendship. The stake in HappyFamilies had come to nothing, but Neil was nevertheless becoming a somebody, a man of substance. He would help Sam out, up and out, when the time came.

Sam scuffed the front wheel into the kerb as they arrived. Neil winced, but the tyre was fine. Sam stood up to wave again, arching his body over the steering wheel, but Brian had already turned away from the window. Through the net curtains Neil made out his father’s back, hunched over the walking stick.

He closed the roof. He kissed Sam’s greasy head.

‘Woz that for?’ Sam said, ruffling the kiss out of his hair and opening the car door.

At this rate Neil would soon be able to do whatever he chose. He could take one of those Caribbean cruises he used to admire in the brochures at the travel agent in Wembley, though he knew that Jess wouldn’t let him. Naff , she would say, I’d rather go to Blackpool .