Nicholas Royle - First Novel

‘Come on, Jonny. We’re going to get some shopping for Nana and Grandad. You don’t want them to go hungry, do you? And anyway, we’re staying with them for the weekend, so if we don’t get any shopping there’ll be nothing for us to eat either.’

But Jonny turned his back on the car and crossed his arms.

‘Come on, Jonny,’ Nicholas said, trying to turn him around and push him lightly in the direction of the car.

His face wore that mask of concentration that Nicholas had seen at the breakfast table. He seemed quite determined not to get in the car. Nicholas released his pressure and knelt down in front of his son.

‘What’s up, mate? Why don’t you want to get in the car?’

‘No,’ Jonny said, stamping his foot. ‘No no no no no no no.’

‘What’s the matter?’

Jonny started screaming. ‘No! No! No!’

‘Look, this is ridiculous,’ Nicholas said, getting cross. ‘I think you’re a bit old for tantrums, sunshine. You are five, remember. Five-year-olds don’t generally behave like this. If they don’t want to do something, they give you a reason and they do it without screaming. Also, if Daddy wants you to get in the car, I really think you should just, you know, get in the car, don’t you?’

Jonny screamed.

Nicholas took hold of his shoulders and the boy squirmed and fought to get free. Nicholas tried to keep hold of him, but the boy bit his hand and managed to break away, running back to the front door and when he found it closed he tried to get around the side of the house.

‘Jonny,’ Nicholas shouted, ‘Jonny. Stop it. Forget the car. I’m not going to make you get in the car, OK, but you have to stop screaming and fighting and especially biting. Right? You have to stop all that right now.’

The front door opened and Nana appeared.

‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ Nicholas said to her. ‘I opened the car door and he went ballistic. I don’t think we’ll be going in the car.’

When Jonny saw that Nana had appeared, he ran to her and threw his arms around her legs. Nicholas caught his breath when he saw her rest her hand instinctively on top of Jonny’s head.

Jonny eventually calmed down, but he stayed in the house with Liz and Nana and Grandad, while Nicholas drove off on his own, puzzling over what had happened and feeling depressed by the incident.

Later, when they were in bed and Jonny was asleep, Nicholas talked to Liz about Nana and her various tablets, those she was taking and those she was not.

‘It’s true what she says, that warfarin can interact with what she’s taking for her arthritis,’ Liz said, ‘and it’s also true that taking her off it increases the risk she’ll get an arterial thrombosis. She could have a stroke. But she could have one whether she sits on a train to London or not. That seems a bit odd.’

‘Really?’

‘I suppose if she’s got bad arthritis, she can’t really be getting up for a walk around while on the train, so maybe it makes a kind of sense. But still…’

‘Is it worth her asking for a second opinion?’

‘It depends. I’m sure she doesn’t want to get the GP’s back up.’

‘Yes, but how often do people die because they don’t question the advice they are given? Because they don’t ask for a second opinion?’

‘Only once.’

‘Very funny.’

‘Sorry. I don’t know, but not often, I wouldn’t think,’ Liz said. ‘If you’re worried I can ask around about him.’

‘Thanks. Just to set my mind at rest.’

Liz did ask around — making a number of phone calls first thing in the morning while Nicholas was getting Jonny up and dressed — and most of the feedback was good. The doctor was well liked by patients, maybe less so by colleagues, one or two of whom thought him a little odd. But these were people who didn’t work with him closely, other Manchester GPs who did occasional locum work at the surgery.

They were due to return to London in the afternoon. Nicholas proposed that they drive out towards the Peaks and find a nice pub for lunch, but there was the question of whether his nana and grandad would want to, and, more to the point, whether Jonny could be persuaded to get in the car without another screaming fit. In the end, Nicholas’ nana suggested that Nicholas and Liz take Jonny for a walk in the park while she prepared a salad for lunch.

The boy ran off and seemed to enjoy having the freedom of the place — a windswept scrap of land on the side of a hill. A couple of swings and a rusting roundabout. No railings.

While Jonny played, Nicholas and Liz talked. They decided there was no particular justification for questioning the judgement of the GP.

The year turned: I was glad to see the back of 1992 but I had no cause to believe that 1993 would be an improvement. Veronica was no more than civil to me; the marriage was over, in all eyes but those of the law. She made no attempt to restrict my access to the children. She was too clever to present my legal team with useful ammunition. Legal team. A university friend specialising in conveyancing and operating out of store-front premises between a charity shop and a bookmaker’s in Basingstoke.

I took the children to nursery and picked them up most days. I wasn’t trying to rack up credit; I knew there was no point. I was just trying to maximise the amount of time I spent with them. I knew I would always have photographs, but I didn’t want to forget what they smelt like. I didn’t want to forget the touch of their skin. The sound of their breathing as they slept.

I kept up appearances, but when I was alone I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I couldn’t read or write. If I put a CD on, I took it off again before the end of the first track. I would put the radio on, but it could have been broadcasting static for all I took in. I went for long walks. I walked on different routes out of London, each time in a straight line — Uxbridge Road, the A5, the A1. I just kept going until exhaustion forced me to stop and then I would catch a bus or the Tube to get back. I thought about nothing other than the upcoming case and the twins. Their faces went round and round in front of my eyes until they started to blur and I had to get their picture out of my wallet to fix their faces in my mind again.

There was a chance, or so I believed at that stage, before the case reached the courts, that I’d get visitation rights. A good chance. But I felt that chance receding once the case began and Veronica’s lawyer, predictably, went to town on the dogging angle. My own counsel just ended up sounding pathetic as he objected that we had not been dogging because we had not been deliberately performing for the entertainment of others.

‘They had sex — let’s not put too fine a point on it,’ said Veronica’s lawyer, ‘they had sex in Ms Ashton’s vehicle in full view of other car-park users and hundreds, if not thousands, of airline passengers coming in to land. Those with window seats, anyway.’

A titter ran through the courtroom.

The case did not reach a conclusion on the first day.

‘I think we still have a good chance of visitation rights,’ my lawyer friend said to me.

I looked at the defeated slope of his shoulders in his ill-fitting suit.

The following morning, Veronica left the house first. The idea that we should have travelled to court together was, of course, absurd. She was going to drop the twins off at nursery and I was to leave the house shortly afterwards. Instead I sat in the kitchen, staring out of the window at the brick wall that separated our house from our neighbours’. I made a cup of tea, but didn’t drink it. A greasy film formed on the surface of the tea.