Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

Chris half-hung there, clutching the doorpost. I thought for a moment he was going to faint. That helped me get a grip on myself.

‘Isaac, how marvellous. Just for a moment —’

‘I know, you didn’t recognise me. It’s the perm, it makes me look different.’

This information didn’t help Chris find his tongue. But he managed to swing round like a boxer lunging and clutch at Isaac with great heavy arms. The two of them did a kind of lurching dance. The leaves of the palm hissed sharply as it toppled.

‘We’d better sit down,’ I said. ‘You two are wrecking the hotel.’

I know how I sounded; cool and hard. Yet my heart hit the walls of my chest as wildly as their two bodies dipped and swerved.

At last they let go of each other. The middle-aged man that Isaac had become had suspiciously wet eyes. He seemed to see me then for the first time, and his lips pursed up into a kind of twitching navel before they suddenly unfolded again and he said, in a tone that was not complimentary, ‘Alex, hi. You haven’t changed a bit.’

I was sure he never used to say hi. It was a bit low-key after all these years.

The bar was cosmopolitan, coolly sidelit, a stage for people to perform gentle rituals and pass on, leaving no imprint. And we, who until that evening’s phone call would have entered that theatre as of right, for these were the cameo parts we knew — we suddenly didn’t fit in. I felt that there wasn’t enough room for us there, though there must have been thirty bamboo armchairs to choose from. No longer a streamlined unit of two, we had grown enormous and clumsy, dragging an ugly, helpless weight of pain.

Isaac followed his father to a seat in a window. I brought up the rear, inspecting his back as we threaded our way between the fragile tables. His small feet tripped against their bamboo legs. His thighs were big, his bottom bigger. The furniture swayed in the wind as he passed. There were hanging lanterns of simulated parchment which cast small pools of golden light. I thought about flayed human skin. Isaac’s dome, as it swam underneath a lantern, became disconcertingly brilliant. Was it normal to lose so much hair in your twenties? Why was he bald when his father was so hairy?

The window was wide, with a deep padded seat. Isaac planted himself in the middle, then spread his hands out in what began as an inviting gesture to Chris and me, as if he had meant us to sit in a line, Mummy and Daddy with their boy in between, but in the middle of the gesture he lost confidence and his plump little hands fell irresolute upon the printed velvet.

We didn’t meet his eyes as we sat down facing him on two bamboo chairs. I stared past his head at the last of the peaks, the snow on the summits still catching the sun, diamond-bright against the coming darkness. The snows would save us. I stared at them. Christopher would take me to the snows.

‘Why are you here?’ I asked him, as Chris went to order a bottle of champagne. It sounded offensive; I tried to soften it. ‘I mean, why are you in Europe?’ I’d forgotten that he lived in Europe.

He looked at me properly then. His eyes were definitely not very friendly.

‘I’m usually in Europe,’ he said. ‘Except when I’m in New York. London is in Europe, you know.’

‘Are you in New York a lot?’ I asked him. ‘How exciting. You must be doing well…’

‘Didn’t my last letter arrive?’

So that was the way things were going to be. ‘That depends what was in it,’ I stalled. ‘The post is terrible, of course. But your father is always pleased to hear.’ The truth was, I passed them on to Chris unread. He carried them round in his pocket; after a week or so, they disappeared. I never asked; he never told me. I really don’t know if he opened them.

A terrible silence fell. Isaac sulked, heavily, staring at the carpet, presenting that lid of sad polished skin. Somewhere in the background, a tiny thud and an elaborate sigh as the champagne cork eased.

‘Have you seen your sister?’ I asked. ‘I sent her orchids for her birthday. Well, not just orchids. Mainly orchids.’

‘Didn’t you get my message in Madrid?’

‘I was never going to Madrid, I went to Malaga… alone. Is something wrong?’

‘It’s because of Susy I’ve come to see you!’

‘You used to be so fond of each other as children.’ (I was trying to remember whether this was true. They had certainly fought over toys and books, but they were also a trades union of two, complaining about the employers. ‘We used to get cooked breakfast at home,’ Isaac had told me, accusingly, the week they arrived, when I was very young, but still not stupid, and Susy had nodded in bleak corroboration. I knew I had to sort them out right from the start. ‘There are eggs in the fridge if you know how to cook.’ And a dark look passed between the two of them; this is what the chapel is going to have to deal with. They were less than ten at the time. Children stick together when their parents break up… And what if their father abandons them? They had probably grown closer with us away.)

‘We aren’t children any more,’ he said. ‘We haven’t always been such good friends. There was a period when Susy objected to my lifestyle. She wouldn’t let me into her house, she and her cabal. You know about them? She wouldn’t see me, so I couldn’t help her.’

Just at that moment Chris came back, preceding the barman with an icebucket.

The ritual of pouring and waiting for the froth to settle seemed to take much longer than usual. We sat in silence, waiting to begin, watching the dextrous movements of the barman. At last he was gone. We clutched our glasses.

‘How is your sister?’ Chris asked Isaac. His voice sounded hearty, unnaturally loud.

‘Alex just asked me that. You’re not going to like the answer.’

‘No sign of her getting married?’ Chris asked. He wasn’t listening to what Isaac was saying. I tried to semaphore a warning look. It was a question about some distant relative, vaguely improper about one’s daughters. Not that I could judge the proprieties; not that I knew how to behave to daughters.

‘Why don’t you ask about me getting married?’ said Isaac, and the years seemed to slip away, we were back with sibling rivalry, his voice an amalgam of pride and resentment and something else I did not understand, a kind of excitement; come on, attack me.

‘Are you about to get married?’ Chris asked blankly, with an apologetic smile. I tried to erase the thought which flashed: but surely he’s too old to get married.

‘You don’t know anything at all about me.’

This was awful. He was an angry small boy, disguised as a middle-aged man. Neither Chris nor I could speak. I gulped my champagne; wind in the gullet.

Chris put his hand on his son’s arm. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I can guess how you feel —’

‘— I doubt it —’

‘— what’s done is done —’

‘— thanks very much —’

‘— but tell me why you’ve come to see me. Us. We can have a good evening together.’ Chris’s hand was kneading Isaac’s arm, which stayed inert on the cushion of the seat. I looked beyond them and out of the window; the longing I felt was almost muscular, as if my gaze could have carried me with it far out across the unwounded snow.

‘I must have thought it would be nice to see my father. You know how funny kids are about that. Every ten years or so, we like to touch base.’

‘Of course it’s — good to see you.’

‘You would have died without trying to see me. Us. Of course Susy’s got Jesus to keep her warm. She’s become a religious loony, you know,’ he said, with malicious emphasis. The glass of champagne was easing his tongue. He knew we were both allergic to religion. ‘Replaced her family with the Heavenly Family.’