Invisible. Jonathan Buckley

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СКАЧАТЬ Discarding the shirt, she regards the protruberant collarbone, the scatter of moles below the neck, the heavy breasts, the swell of the belly. It is like looking through a window at somebody else. She turns her hands over, palms up, then back. The fingers do not taper like her mother’s and the knuckles are more bulbous. On her wrist hangs the bracelet that her father sent her. ‘Typical,’ her mother kept saying, appalled that he’d given his daughter something second-hand for Christmas. Cheap and ugly and thoughtless, her mother said it was – worse than the tokens he usually sent. But she knew right away that it wasn’t cheap, even if it was ugly. She kept it in a box under the bed, and at night she would sometimes take it from its case and examine the waves that ran round it, and the things shaped like seeds of corn, and the weird little boggle-eyed man with the boxer’s broken nose, wondering what had made her father buy it for her, where he had bought it, what its story was. One day, at school, she saw a similar thing in a history book. Perhaps it was after seeing the picture that she began to look at the bracelet carefully and see that it wasn’t ugly. And the fact that her mother despised the thing had become part of its attraction. She smiles at the half-naked girl in the mirror, remembering the evening she had worn it, at a dinner for that boozy old bastard Mr Girtin and his pointless wife. She was thinner then, and could jam the bracelet nearly up to her elbow, but when she passed a bowl to Mrs Girtin it slipped out of her sleeve and her mother saw it before she could shove it back. From the look her mother gave her anyone would have thought she’d let rip with a fart. Buttoning the shirt, she goes back into her parents’ bedroom. She sits on the bed, pummels a pillow on her lap, deposits the phone on the pillow, and dials.

      

      Malcolm takes a call from reception, telling him that there’s a Stephanie Tindall for him on line two.

      ‘Hello?’ he says. ‘Stephanie?’ He hears a clumsiness in the pronunciation of her name, as though his mouth were recovering from an anaesthetic.

      ‘Hi,’ says his daughter.

      ‘My God,’ he responds, too theatrically. ‘It’s you.’

      ‘Yeah,’ she says coolly, and pauses, as if he had been the one who had phoned and she is waiting to hear what he wants.

      ‘This is – I’m –’

      ‘Surprised?’

      ‘You could say that.’

      ‘Yes. You sound surprised,’ she confirms. There is a shade of an accent in her voice, ‘yis’ rather than ‘yes’.

      ‘Surprised and very pleased,’ he says. He stretches out a foot to push the door shut. ‘I thought I’d hear from your mother first.’

      Stephanie gives a small grunt, perhaps of amusement. ‘Well, it’s me.’

      ‘After all this time.’

      ‘All this time,’ she copies.

      ‘So, how are you?’

      ‘I’m OK. How are you?’

      ‘I’m fine.’

      ‘Good.’

      Having waited for her to say more, he prompts: ‘You didn’t sound altogether OK in your letter.’

      ‘I’m OK,’ she repeats expressionlessly, and again does not continue.

      He makes a non-committal sound, hoping that she will speak. ‘You’re not, are you? Not really,’ he says at last.

      She sighs loudly, then tells him: ‘We don’t get on. You spoke to her. You must have got the picture.’

      ‘Well, no. I don’t understand the situation. If the problem –’

      ‘The problem is that she’s who she is and he’s who he is and I’m who I am.’

      ‘Robert.’

      ‘The dentist. Yes.’

      ‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met the man.’

      ‘What, never?’

      ‘Not ever.’

      ‘Count your blessings. I’m telling you. He’s dull. Dull dull dull.’

      ‘Dull isn’t so bad. One can live with dull. I don’t see why –’ ‘He’s worse than dull.

      He’s dullness to the power of ten. Dullness de luxe. And she’s awful. They’re driving me mental.’

      ‘She’s not awful. Stephanie. She can be difficult. I know she can be difficult. I can be difficult. We all can be. But I don’t think she’s –’

      ‘But you wouldn’t know, would you?’

      ‘Well, I think –’

      ‘No,’ she persists with the aggression of a prosecutor, ‘you wouldn’t know. More than ten years ago you two split up.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And a lot can change in that time.’

      ‘Of course.’

      ‘You ought to try living here. It’s a police state. A cross between a police state and the Ideal Home Exhibition. That’s exactly what it is. Everything by the book. Everything in its place. All friends to be vetted, all homework to be signed off. Probably got my room bugged.’

      ‘Stephanie.’

      ‘Wouldn’t put it past her. She opens my letters –’

      ‘That wasn’t good. We had words about it.’

      ‘A fucking outrage is what it was.’

      ‘Stephanie, please.’

      ‘Please what?’

      ‘Don’t use language like that.’

      ‘Like what?’

      ‘No, come on. We’re talking about your mother. There’s no need –’

      ‘We’re talking about my mother and you’re starting to sound like her.’

      ‘No, just tone it down a little. I want to understand, but abusing her doesn’t help.’

      ‘It helps me,’ she retorts.

      A silence fills the line between them. ‘So did you talk to her?’ he asks. ‘Did you talk to your mother about coming down here?’

      ‘Oh yeah. We had a talk, as recommended.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘And what?’

      ‘What did she say?’

      ‘It was brilliant. She wanted to know what I was doing writing to you, like I need official permission before putting pen to paper. So I wanted to know what she СКАЧАТЬ