Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

Chris was reeling from the blow. I think he had expected a veneer of politeness which might slowly wear through as the evening progressed. But this was immediate; knives at two paces. He filled up his own glass, splattering a little, not offering any to Isaac or me. ‘She wasn’t even confirmed.’ He was bewildered. ‘Isaac, you’re having us on.’

‘That’s why she had to be born again. The house was a headquarters for some kind of cult. Plymouth Brethers, or Sisters, or Mormons, or worse.’

‘Do you mean your sister is living with people?’

‘Precisely. Was, at any rate.’ There was suddenly a sense of near-complicity. Isaac filled up his own glass, and mine. Then he seemed to regret being on our side. ‘She must have been lonely, don’t you think. She was only seventeen when you went away. That’s not the best age to be abandoned.’

‘She was just off to college,’ I put in, knowing how weak it sounded. ‘We didn’t abandon her. I wrote. Your father made sure she had plenty of money…’

‘Which she spends on nutters, and abortions!’

‘— We kept in close touch after her abortion.’ I heard my voice, shrill, hollow.

‘Which abortion?’ he asked, triumphant. ‘You are just a teensy bit out of touch.’

Chris was looking very old. He hadn’t said a word for some time. His second glass was already empty. ‘You’re saying your sister had another abortion.’ His tone was dull. He reached for the bottle. The napkin flopped on to the floor, a defeated square of white.

‘Susy had two abortions. At least, those are the ones I know about. Then she decided to sort herself out. Joining a cult seemed like a good solution. And they had a lot to say about abortion, these guys. She got very keen on the sacredness of life. She thought everyone should rear their Mongol. But she seems to have changed her mind, because… Maybe I should give you this a step at a time.’

(Who was he, this quick-tongued, spiteful man? What was so changed about his style? His tone was monotonous, downbeat, falling intonations that indicated life was a joke, he had it sewn up, this was how things were, you had to stay one step ahead of the bastards, you had to make the bastards pay. We were the bastards. We sat and paid. He had all the power of his terrible knowledge.)

‘Shall I get another bottle?’ Chris asked.

‘I think we should go and eat,’ I said. I was feeling faint, my thoughts spun wildly. Besides, the night might break his spell.

‘Are there any decent restaurants here?’

(He never used to be a gourmet.)

‘Yes,’ said Chris, trying to rally. ‘But we’re a bit early…’

Isaac jumped in. ‘We could have another bottle…’

‘No,’ I said. I had beaten him before, I had saved Chris before, I would save him again. ‘I’ll have to eat or I’m going to fall over.’

We walked through the streets. Clear sky, bright stars. It felt intensely cold, though it was early summer.

‘It’s hard to believe it gets colder than this,’ I said to the air ahead of me, for I was leading the way; my limbs still functioned normally. I glimpsed the men following in single file in the glass of the expensive shop windows, mechanical dummies on blind manoeuvres.

‘You could have worn your mink,’ Isaac said. ‘I assume you’re travelling avec les fourrures. ’

That was new too, the Franglais tag inserted with arch emphasis. I told him he was fifteen years out of date. ‘No one is wearing real fur any more.’ I noticed as he drew briefly abreast that he himself wore a long leather overcoat, bulging slightly at the middle buttons, a black leather coat turned up at the collar. How strange he looked, with his tonsured head and his little feet in pale tan moccasins.

The table we sat at was too small. It was Sunday night and we hadn’t booked. All the other tables seemed to have decent Swiss families of several harmonious generations. The children were blonde and quiet and good. The grandparents lorded it over the parents. Although I had spent my whole life attempting to escape this stereotype, for a second I saw it in a different light. How admirable they seemed compared to us, two guilty people with a childless son.

The restaurant was efficient and brightly-lit, which depressed Isaac’s level of malice somewhat. We all avoided the topic of Susy, though I could think of nothing else. For the first two courses and a bottle of wine Isaac managed to converse almost normally, asking us about the places we’d been, not exactly admiring the details we gave him but certainly listening, and filing them away. He seemed to have learned a lot about art. He made waspish comments about international galleries.

The dessert came, thickly piped with Chantilly, gentle, luscious, indulgent cream. The wine had moved fear further away. I thought it might be time to risk being nice, slipping in a little bit of flattery; it had always worked well when he was a teenager.

‘Good idea to give up the glasses,’ I said, appraising him as if he weren’t ugly. ‘You always had very nice eyes.’ In truth they looked larger than when I used to meet him charging blindly to the bathroom on schoolday mornings.

‘Are they soft or hard?’ Chris asked. He himself had worn contact lenses since the divorce. I suggested it, and he conceded.

‘You know what they say,’ Isaac smiled, and at first I thought the flirtation had worked. ‘Girls don’t make passes at guys who wear glasses.’

— At least, that’s what I thought he said, which was why I was astonished by Chris’s reaction, for he paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth, and the cream began to slip down his chin till he scooped it back up with an angry movement. Something important seemed to have happened, for Isaac’s face blazed with colour, and Chris was staring blankly at his plate as if he was concussed. I tried to smooth things over.

‘Of course they do,’ I said. ‘I ought to know. I made a pass at your father…’

Somehow I had made things worse with this. Isaac gobbled at me like a drowning turkey. He took a great swig of wine. Chris was picking at his cuticle.

‘Well, you and Dad aren’t gay,’ he blurted.

‘Of course we’re not. What has that got to do with it? What have glasses got to do with being gay?’ I started to realise as I finished the sentence, but my brain had given orders, the words kept coming.

‘He’s making some joke,’ said Christopher. ‘I think Alex misheard you. Gays don’t make passes at guys who wear glasses is what Isaac said, my dear.’ He sounded as if he was talking in his sleep.

Suddenly everything fitted, the voice, the clothes, the manner, the perm. I was flabbergasted, but I started to smile, I started to grin, I started to laugh.

‘Oh Isaac. You must have thought us terribly dim.’

‘He’s having us on,’ Chris insisted, dully. ‘He’s playing some awfully unfunny joke. How can you be gay? You were never gay. You don’t suddenly turn gay, just like that.’

‘Don’t be stupid, darling,’ I said. ‘Don’t take any notice of your father, Isaac. He’s a bit surprised, that’s all.’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Isaac, with venom. ‘Don’t interfere. It’s Dad I came to talk to, not you.’

‘Don’t be rude to her,’ Chris said. ‘She’s always been polite to you children.’

‘Polite is just about it,’ said Isaac. I suddenly realised that he was quite drunk, at the stage where frankness seems a glorious option. ‘Polite is all she ever managed to be.’

(I smiled, but I was afraid. I had taken in a breath, but it wouldn’t leak away again, it stayed in my chest, a hard, small fist.)

‘She never loved us. You never loved us. ’ He turned his sharp blue eyes on me. Despite my fear, I observed it was makeup which made his eyes look bigger, less ordinary.