Caryl Phillips - In the Falling Snow

‘Actually, let me tell you something, Mr Conspiracy Theorist, the truth is I don’t know that you’re not talking about me. I’m really not sure any more, okay.’

She looks around, suddenly conscious that she might have spoken too loudly.

‘Annabelle, what are you talking about?’

She returns her attention to the table and leans closer to him. ‘And so when I tell you that there’s a problem with Laurie, and you don’t bother to call me back, do you think it’s just more of the same crap that you’ve heard all your life?’

The owner appears at the table and he strikes a match against a large economy box and relights the candle. The balding man then places a glass sleeve over the candle so that the flame plumes upwards and flickers neither to the left nor to the right.

‘I’m not sure where that draught is coming from, but do let me know if it gets too nippy for you.’

The owner smiles as he thrusts the large box of matches into the pocket of his slightly feminine apron and returns to his station behind the bar. He watches as the owner lowers the open leaf of the bar back into place, and then the man picks up his notepad and continues to take inventory of the wines stacked neatly in the rack behind him.

He turns and looks again at Annabelle.

‘Listen, Annabelle, of course I know that you’re on Laurie’s side. I take whatever you have to say seriously. Anyhow, we’re here to talk about Laurie, right?’

‘And how do you think he’s going to feel when he finds out about your latest mess?’

‘My latest what?’

‘Spare me the denials, Keith. People talk.’ She pauses. ‘And don’t look at me like that. Do you want me to spell it out? I’ve never been one to ask what you’re doing for sex. Who you’re sleeping with. If you’re in a relationship. It doesn’t matter how nicely or delicately one puts it, you know it all adds up to the same thing, but as far as I’m concerned it’s simply none of my business. Until, that is, people start to talk.’

‘Who starts to talk?’

‘Does it matter, who? I mean people who enjoy seeing somebody fall flat on their face and making themselves look stupid.’

He shakes his head and takes another sip of his wine.

‘Yes, stupid. You don’t pee in your own bed, didn’t anybody ever tell you that?’

‘I’ll tell you what nobody ever told me. They never told me how vindictive and manipulative women can be, that’s what nobody ever told me.’

‘Well yippee, you’ve found out at last. Can I have some of that wine?’

He tops up her glass, and then adds an extra splash to his own, which empties the bottle. He turns it upside down and crunches it into the bucket.

‘You’ve got to protect yourself a little bit, Keith. And if you don’t want to do it for yourself, then at least have the common sense to do it for your son. Do you really want him to hear about you sleeping with girls his age?’

‘She’s twenty-six and a divorcee. She’s hardly a bloody teenager.’

‘I think you get my point.’

He stares at Annabelle, whose glass is hovering halfway between the table and her mouth. For a moment she seems unsure what to do, and then she slowly replaces the glass on the wooden table.

‘Look Keith, I know that in a sense it’s none of my business, but it matters to me.’

‘What matters to you?’

‘I don’t want you making a fool of yourself.’ She pauses. ‘People look up to you. For heaven’s sake, don’t let some desperate girl drag your name through the mud.’

‘I did nothing wrong. She’s the one who ought to take a good look at herself, but I know how it comes across. I’m older. She works for me. Apparently I’m the one with all the power. That’s what people see, isn’t it? That’s what it looks like.’

‘I don’t have to tell you what it looks like, but have you ever tried taking the word “no” for a little walk around your tongue?’ She pauses. ‘Well?’

He turns and looks out of the window as an elderly couple stroll by. They are bent into the wind, the man with an arm curled tightly around his wife’s shoulders as though trying to anchor her to the ground so she won’t blow away. That’s how it should be, he thinks. Old people with old people are not so old.

He turns from the window and looks at Annabelle, who finishes her wine and then places the empty glass back on the table.

‘Shall we go? I can drive you back.’

He calls for the bill, but continues to scrutinise Annabelle. She is still beautiful, despite the lines around her eyes, and the short, grey hair, and he has no difficulty recognising her as the courageous young woman he met over twenty-five years ago. However, he is unsure of what she sees when she looks across the table at him, for that look of respect, which he had once been accustomed to, has long since vanished from her face. He probably last saw it at her father’s funeral as they sat together, with Laurie squeezed between the two of them, in the narrow front row pew of the village’s Norman church. As the time drew closer for Annabelle to approach the altar and deliver her reading from the Old Testament, he knew that she was stealing sideways glances at him and trying to draw strength from his presence. She required his support, and he was not only proud to be there for her, he was determined that she should get through both the service and the reception at Magnolia Cottage without any unnecessary distress. He knew that his wife needed him, and so he snaked his hand behind their son’s back and gently caressed her shoulder as the captain of the local golf club finished delivering the eulogy.

Annabelle’s mother took her husband’s death badly and, according to Annabelle, within weeks of the funeral she became helpless. It could, of course, have gone the other way, and being suddenly free from the scrutiny of an overbearing husband might have provided a timely boost to her confidence, but he was surprised to hear just how difficult his mother-in-law found it to cope with the day-to-day practicalities of being by herself. Now that Annabelle’s work at the theatrical agency seemed to have dried up altogether, she was free to travel to Wiltshire as often as two or three times a week. If she chose to visit at a weekend she generally took Laurie with her, for he seemed to get a thrill from seeing his sunflowers beginning to dominate one corner of the garden and, like himself, starting to shoot up in size. These days nobody called him a ‘halfie’ any more, and his late grandfather would have been pleased to learn that if they did so they were likely to get a thumping for their impertinence. On the very few occasions that he travelled with Annabelle and Laurie, he was shocked to see for himself the degree to which his mother-in-law’s self-assurance seemed to have been eroded by her husband’s death. She hesitated over every decision, and even simple things such as where to place a vase of flowers, or whether to have tea or coffee, seemed to mire her in a haze of confusion that was soon complemented by a forgetfulness that quickly became alarming.

It was shortly after he had moved out of their house, and into Wilton Road, that Annabelle telephoned to let him know that she had made the decision to relocate her mother into an assisted living residence. Apparently the Briars was more like a cosy country hotel than an old people’s home, or at least that’s what they claimed in the advertising material, and by selling Magnolia Cottage, and carefully investing the proceeds, her mother would in all likelihood be well looked after for the rest of her life. Annabelle now had a full-time job at the BBC, so he thought it only fair to ask her what, if anything, he could do to help, but she insisted that she had it under control. She did, however, want to let him know that her mother frequently asked after him, and she always coupled her enquiries with an apology. He asked Annabelle why, but she snapped at him and told him that it was because of her father. ‘She’s not a fool, you know. She is ashamed of how Daddy behaved over the years.’ A part of him wanted to say that she should be ashamed, but he held his tongue and chose instead to ask how Laurie felt about visiting the Briars.