Sofka Zinovieff - Putney

‘Speech! Speech!’ someone called and Edmund stood up, one hand on the table steadying himself, his glass held out towards the gathering.

‘My friends. Friends and family. Margaret. Thank you for making me feel such a phenomenally lucky bugger and turning this into such a marvellous day for me. I never imagined I’d reach fourscore years, and I can’t say I feel any different from how I did at twenty – leaving aside a few unmentionables.’ There were some polite titters. ‘As a young man, I thought old age would be like going to a different country and changing nationality, but actually it’s only the way other people see you that changes. And the awful thing is, you only discover that once it’s too late. Trotsky was on to something when he said, “Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.”’ Several people grunted in agreement. ‘There’s that terrible first time when you smile at a pretty girl and she looks through you as if you were a ghost – as if you already didn’t exist.’

Looking around the table from his place in the shadows, Ralph tried to identify the diners. He spotted Daphne – the terrible, old Daphne, a middle-aged harridan who wanted him in prison, who wouldn’t open her door to him, who led him down to the stinking riverbed and left him for dead. Nearby was her pale-haired daughter. And on the other side, a woman, who after all these years was clearly recognisable as Jane. She was like a sinewy witch disguised with a severe haircut and ugly librarian’s specs. Perhaps she was the hateful inspiration behind the plot for his downfall.

Edmund finished his speech to yet more clapping and whistling and, during the moment of quiet immediately afterwards, Ralph walked into the room and approached the head of the table. Edmund was holding a large knife, ready to cut the cake, and the quiet became like the pause after an explosion, when air has been sucked away.

‘Many happy returns of the day, Edmund.’ Ralph’s voice came out as a crow’s croak and he noted Edmund’s double take of shock and pleasure. The stretched out arm became an ambiguous gesture, somewhere between a consecration and an order to halt. The knife remained in the other hand. ‘Happy birthday!’ Ralph added, bowing slightly as if addressing royalty. The ominous buzz of bees swarming was the muttering and whispering around the table.

Edmund overcame his hesitation and held out his free hand and Ralph pulled himself into an embrace he then realised hadn’t been on offer. There was a physical reluctance in Edmund’s sinewy arms, one of which was holding the knife away from Ralph’s back.

‘Oh Ralph. What on earth is going on? The world is going mad. I’m too old for all this.’ Edmund’s voice was still the whinny of an anxious horse. As he moved to sit back in his chair, he stumbled slightly and thrust out a hand, which landed in the centre of the candle-covered cake. ‘Bugger!’ He let out a yelp of laughter that released some of the room’s tension and there was a sympathetic echo amongst the guests.

A waiter brought some large napkins with which Edmund cleaned his hands, and he licked off the chocolate fondant with the expression of a naughty child. The cake was taken away for repairs and another waiter fetched a chair for Ralph and placed it next to Ed. ‘Edmund. I merely came to…’ His words emerged skewed, as if someone else was speaking, reminding him of being stoned in the ancient days of smoking joints together. He wasn’t even clear what he wanted to say. ‘To wish you many happy returns of the day. Marvellous! Eighty!’

‘Thank you, Ralph. I can’t believe… all this time.’

Ralph interrupted. ‘I also came to say I’m dying. I wanted to tell you myself.’

‘Come now, dear boy. I realise that you’re in a difficult… But as to dying, well we all are.’

‘No, really dying. Dust and ashes. I’ll soon be dead.’ Ralph raised his voice to emphasise the point, as if reminding himself, and noticed that everyone was turned towards him. ‘Cancer.’ He wanted to use the word riddled, to say that the tumours were swelling and creeping through his blood and bones, that his body had become his enemy. Instead, he said, ‘They’ve stopped the treatment. There’s nothing left. I came to say goodbye.’ He glanced over towards Daphne, hoping to see a change of expression – some softening in her face, perhaps, after hearing his terrible news – but her eyes were turned away from him towards her daughter and her tight-lipped silence was not encouraging.

He caught the eye of a man who looked familiar. ‘Hello, Ralph.’ It was the voice that enabled Ralph to recognise him – the tone of detached calm that had been there even as a teenager. This grey-haired, professorial type was Daphne’s brother, not seen for half a lifetime, since he was scrawny young Theo, with his electrical devices and genius for numbers. A professor now. Ralph had occasionally heard the updates.

‘A surprise to see you here,’ old Theo continued. He had the hunched and watchful look of a raptor, while the angular, mouse-faced woman by his side must be his American wife.

‘Hello, Theo. How are you?’ He’s still got a beady, suspicious eye, Ralph thought.

Theo never liked Ralph, and regularly made that apparent in the old days. Ralph once drove halfway across Greece for a few hours alone with Daphne. It was August, hot as hell. He and Nina were staying in Pelion with the children, while Daphne was with her aunt on Poros. He fabricated a whole story for Nina involving a prospective concert, then borrowed his father-in-law’s car and drove the four or five hours down to Athens. Daphne told her aunt she wanted to visit a friend in Athens for the day and took the ferry to Piraeus. At the last minute, Theo insisted on going with her – he wanted to buy something in the city – and, by the time Ralph spotted the gawky nineteen-year-old walking down the boat’s gangplank alongside Daphne, it was too late to hide. The disapproving, lopsided smile on the boy’s face said, ‘I know.’ Ralph improvised a tangled tale about having dropped a friend at a nearby ferry, but it was less than convincing.

‘OK, have a nice time,’ Theo called, setting off towards the electric train, shoulders stooped, skinny legs protruding from baggy shorts.

They sat on the same bench as a year earlier, before their trip to Aegina. It must have been soon before he left for New York – he remembered feeling frantic, out of control. There was a sordid little hotel in a stinking back street where they took a room for a few hours, both so miserable about the prospect of his American future that even the moments of bliss were soured. They lunched in a canteen-style place filled with port workers and old men and then she caught her boat and he drove all the way back to Pelion in tears, arriving in the night like a ghost.

Ralph didn’t catch ageing Professor Theo’s reply as it was cut off by a sharp bark. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’ Jane, the arch bitch, was standing right behind his chair so he had to twist awkwardly to see her. She wore a hideous dress and her pale eyes were like something frozen behind the black-rimmed glasses. ‘It would be better if you left quietly,’ she said with the air of an outraged headmistress. It sounded like a threat of violence and he wouldn’t put anything past her, the brute. ‘I don’t want to call the police, but I will if you stay.’

From behind her came another female voice. ‘She’s right, Ed. He should go.’ A Canadian twang: Margaret – desiccated as a dried fig.

Hags unite, he thought. Kick me while I’m down. ‘I won’t stay long. Don’t worry.’ He tried to laugh at them, hoping this would be the best form of punishment for these Furies that looked ready to tear him apart. ‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but a man is innocent until proved otherwise. I’ve done nothing wrong.’