Grasshopper Read online

  More buses at the other end. A taxi there would have been far more than £15. The third bus dropped me in our village four hours after I had left Silver’s and I was very late for Mum’s lunch. Conversation at first centred on the extraordinary circumstance of my still living in Russia Road and only next door but one to Max. This led to a digression on the subject of Max. Mum was sure he must be ill, possibly mentally ill – she subscribes to the ancient theory of psychiatric problems being the result of overloading the brain – but even that could hardly excuse accusing me of theft and being an accomplice to murder and turning me out of the house. I was quite willing to talk about this for as long as they liked. It postponed what I had to tell them, what I had really come here to tell them. The moment wasn’t long delayed.

  Dad began bemoaning the fact that I’d dropped out of GUP. I had told them I was working. Working at what? I took a deep breath, said I was living with my boyfriend and had a job as a part-time gardener.

  They had grown up in the sixties, so the idea of cohabiting with a man didn’t upset them the way it would have upset their own parents. They didn’t like it. They’d rather I’d been married – oddly enough, they’d rather I had been engaged – but they accepted, my mother saying what a pity it wasn’t Guy. It was my occupation that really troubled them. Jobs, training, courses, in my parents’ estimation, should always lead to something. ‘Leading to something’ was their touchstone, and this, I think, was why when I decided to become an electrician they gave grudging approval. It so plainly would lead to something. Artisan’s calling it might be, it was in fact my own grandfather’s occupation, and Dad muttered things about clogs to clogs in three generations, but at least it led to security and a reasonable income. Gardening was something else entirely. Gardening was dirty, weather-dependent, notoriously badly paid and a dead end. It wasn’t a trade you could go back to after you were married and had a couple of babies.

  ‘It’s a stopgap,’ I said. ‘I needed the money.’

  The afternoon was unpleasant, as I knew it would be. There was, of course, little else to talk about. Nothing had happened to them, nothing ever did, and that was the way they liked it. The last big event in their lives, apart from my departure, was what had happened on the pylon. That was referred to, Mum expressing the opinion that everything which had gone wrong for me, and she evidently felt that nothing had gone right, dated from the pylon. It was, as she put it rather poetically, the top rung on the downward ladder. She and Dad talked exhaustively on the subject of what was I going to do next? Wouldn’t it be better for me to come home and start again? Had I considered retaking my A-levels? Then followed a series of comparisons with the children of people they knew. One who had been a ‘late starter’ like me, had at twenty-two gone into the City and was reputedly making £200,000 a year. Another, whose first degree had been taken at a ‘humble’ (Dad’s word) polytechnic, was now studying for a DPhil at Oxford. It wasn’t for themselves they were worried, they insisted, but for me, my future, my personal happiness. To this end Mum lay awake at night, worrying.

  Sometimes I contrast this with the way we are now. I saw them at the weekend, I went down to stay a couple of nights. I truly believe they have forgotten those worries they had, those sleepless nights, dead-end jobs, clogs to clogs, and everything that was said and thought. They have forgotten the pylon. We are the best of friends. We are approaching the situation of a mutual admiration society. Two particular activities take place during my visits, they have become routine, expected, almost rites. I take Mum and Dad out to dinner on the Saturday night at the best restaurant the neighbourhood has to offer, a very grand converted manor-house in which the dining room is the former banqueting hall with an outlook on deer grazing on parkland, and I undertake some small electrical job for them. This may only be to mend the kettle or it may be rather more complex, putting in a new power outlet, for instance, or servicing the lawnmower. I think they save up these little tasks for me, probably denying themselves for weeks the use of some appliance, refusing to call in the local man, so that they can have the pleasure of watching me perform the job for which I’m trained.

  But all this was a long way off that day in early September eleven years ago. We came close to quarrelling. I couldn’t stand two rows in a week with the people I cared for most in the world, so I left early. More buses, a very slow train that kept stopping because of signalling failure, two more buses. It was nearly eleven before I got home.

  Silver had been out most of the day, shopping around for flights to Sydney. He was in a dilemma. In one way he wanted the cheapest possible seats, especially for himself, as while he thought that, ethically, Andrew and Alison ought to pay for his round-trip flights, he knew they wouldn’t. Or, rather, Andrew would argue about it and plead poverty, which he couldn’t stand. On the other hand, he had determined that this was the starting point of ridding himself of his grandmother’s legacy. So wouldn’t the most straightforward thing be to buy the most expensive seats possible, even buy first-class seats, a method that would use up everything he had at one swoop?

  ‘Why are you getting rid of it anyway?’ I said.

  He looked me straight in the eye. I couldn’t read his expression, which was blank and calm, the way he could often make himself look.

  ‘You’ll lose this place. You won’t be able to pay your parents rent. Unless you ask them to let you stay on rent-free. After all, they’re hardly ever here. They’ve only been here once since I came.’

  ‘No, I’ll lose this flat,’ he said. ‘I’ve thought of that. I think I’ve thought of everything. The funny thing is, I feel quite excited at the prospect. Of not having it, I mean, the income, this place, private means.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Well, since you ask, for you.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘You don’t like it. And I like you too much to keep on doing something you don’t like. Or maybe I should say I love you too much for that.’

  Who could ask for a fairer commitment?

  The following day we both spent phoning airlines and calling at the kind of travel agents that looked as if their only reason for existing was to undercut each other’s prices. I’d managed to persuade Silver that wasting his money, throwing it away on first-class seats for people who’d be too worried to appreciate them, wouldn’t be an ethical way of getting rid of it. Give it to the charity you think the most worthy cause, I said. You used to tell people who stole or cheated to get money that they should give a tithe to the poor.

  ‘I don’t tell them that any more,’ he said. ‘If it wouldn’t sound moralistic beyond belief, I’d tell them not to do it at all.’

  ‘Give it to something worthwhile.’

  He did. After we had parted. It was a long time before I heard that he had given half of what remained to the famine relief organization he now works for. But that day we went shopping for cheap seats to Sydney and in the end managed to get three singles and one return for rather more but not much more than Silver gave for the passports. Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th were impossible. We had to settle for midweek, less popular days for travel, when seats were cheaper. September 22nd and 23rd, the Wednesday and Thursday. The woman in the travel agent pointed out that if we had booked Apex flights three months ahead, the price would have come down far more. We even talked of it. But there were too many imponderables. Would Andrew stand being cooped up in there for a further three months? By December it would be cold. Would the heating in 4E function for the winter without servicing? And what of the woman who had seen Andrew shopping in Westbourne Grove? We had heard no more of this but that didn’t mean nothing more had happened. The police would certainly have questioned her. They might even know by now that it was likely their quarry was living in the Bayswater – Paddington area. The obvious best thing was to get them away as soon as possible.

  Then there was Sean Francis. We went to see him that evening in Judy’s company. Sounding him out carefully, calculating the kind of man he was, she ha
d decided that taking the risk of telling him was a very small risk. He had reacted to the news with surprise but not enormous astonishment, having believed for a long time that something fishy was going on up there. But he was unable to give Judy the unqualified approval of our support for Andrew and Alison and our activities on their behalf she had hoped for. He was older than we were and perhaps the seven years between us made him less impulsive, less passionate for a cause and more inclined to see the law as good.

  ‘I’m only saying you don’t know all the facts. You only know what they say and what the media say. They may not be the ideal parents they think they are. From what Judy says he’s a selfish bastard and she’s a nervous wreck.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t do anything to get in the way, would you, Sean?’ Judy was sitting next to him and he had his arm round her. ‘You wouldn’t sort of tell anyone? I mean, the law, the police?’

  ‘I’ve already told you that as far as anyone who inquires is concerned, I don’t know anything about it. If they come downstairs or I hear them leave, I’ll stay inside here.’

  ‘But you won’t lie for us?’ said Silver. ‘You won’t help if we need you?’

  ‘That’s right. I’ll be shooting my new series the week before and from the 20th to the 24th anyway. And by the 22nd I’ll be too knackered to notice what’s going on.’ Sean smiled. To show something or other, I suppose. That he enjoyed his uninvolved status, maybe, or that he was lazy. Judy smiled too and I could see that he already meant much more to her than the fate of the people in 4E.

  We went back to see them, ringing the doorbell in code and finding them about to go to bed, Alison in a dressing gown, shivering from the cold shower she’d just taken. Their water heater had gone wrong again. It made us see even more strongly how right we had been not to consider postponing their escape till the winter. The weather was warm still and washing in cold water would be possible for ten days without too much anguish. Andrew also saw it that way. They must go as soon as it could be arranged and he made less fuss about the cost of the flights than I had expected. That didn’t mean he could give us the money there and then, though. They kept their money, he said, in a safe in Jason’s room. Jason was asleep and mustn’t be disturbed. Confirming what I had suspected, Alison said she’d have been quite willing to stop there till December. They had been there for six months, they could stay another three. Showing a touching faith in us, she said she was sure we could find someone to mend the water heater. We had found a photographer, so why not an electrician?

  ‘We’re going,’ Andrew said. ‘Jason’s going on the 22nd and we’re going on the 23rd and that’s all there is to it. If I don’t get out of here soon, I’ll go out head-first and they can pick my body up off the pavement.’

  He flew into a rage when Silver told them Sean Francis knew. Knew and would keep quiet, but not deny them and defend them if circumstances came to that. They wouldn’t have a quiet moment, he shouted, they’d not sleep. Every ring at the door, every time the phone rang

  ‘But we often can’t hear the doorbell, darling, and the phone never rings.’

  ‘That’s just it. That’s what I’m worried about. How we’re going to be when it does ring, when the phone does go.’

  She told him, very gently, to calm down and, surprisingly, he did. We said good night to them and went home by way of the roofs. The scaffolding between the last terrace in Torrington Gardens and the first in Peterborough Avenue was still there, though weeks had gone by since the builders had last used it, and no scaffolding had yet gone up by the burnt houses. We examined the tarpaulin once more. It was untouched, apparently, since we were last there, unmarked except by the grey-white splashes of pigeon droppings. Silver asked if we should try the crossing again. I nodded. We both crossed the tarpaulin with no more to worry us than a few creaks from below and a showering sound that was probably powdered plaster falling from a crack we had caused to shift a little.

  Things were calm and peaceful in the flat. Niall was somewhere playing music, but very softly. Liv’s door was shut but we guessed that she and Wim were on the other side of it. Glasses they had been drinking from stood on the table with an empty bottle of Bulgarian red and a carton of orange juice. Silver closed the windows. No one would come. It had begun to rain.

  He had a bath, I wrote my diary. Niall’s music stopped. I’d never known it so quiet at the top of 15 Russia Road. No voices from the flat or the street, no unearthly cries some people seem impelled to make once midnight is past, no wind blowing, only the gentle regular patting of rain on the leads. I listened but could detect no traffic sound, sea-like, from the Edgware Road. The silence was heavy, as if night itself slept.

  29

  He’s not in any danger but I worry when I haven’t heard for a week. It was a double bonus when his letter came this morning and at eight he phoned. In just a bit less than two weeks he’ll be home. I don’t want him ever to go away again but I know I lack the will or the nerve to stop him if he needs to go.

  When I started writing this I said I didn’t know any poetry. I don’, but he does. This is what he wrote to me, a quotation from I don’t know what, except that it’s by Browning and he used to live in Maida Vale.

  So, I shall see her in three days

  And just one night, but nights are short,

  Then two long hours, and that is morn –

  See how I come, unchanged, unworn!

  Feel, where my life broke off from thine,

  How fresh the splinters keep and fine, –

  Only a touch and we combine!

  I must finish before he comes home and I have quite a long way to go. And I have to come soon to the dreadful thing that I can never think of even now without a shudder and a twisting and turning inside me.

  When Silver went to collect the passports, he asked Jonny for the keys to 15 Russia Road. Jonny, after all, came there no more, he’d a home of sorts of his own and probably could have bought himself something far better. But Silver said nothing of any of that, he made no excuses for asking for the keys back nor tried to justify himself and his request just because Jonny had produced those passports. He had been well paid for that, it wasn’t a favour. Jonny didn’t argue. He gave Silver the keys without hesitation, which made Silver wonder if he had had copies cut. It was the day after we had bought the airline tickets that Silver asked me if he should have the locks changed. If he did this, he’d have to explain matters to his parents. He’d have to tell them some approximation to the truth, which was that he had invited a burglar into the house, let him have a bed in his flat and permitted him to bring his girlfriend with him.

  September 22nd and 23rd were a watershed in our lives, until which we hoped everything would pass in a calm and serene manner, quietly leading up to those two days. Afterwards all would be changed. But the changes we didn’t foresee were enormous, monumental cataclysms in our lives, against which the small ones, such as Jack and Erica Silverman returning to the house some weekends as they did in winter, Liv’s departure either with or without Wim, Niall’s three-month tenancy (a grand word for it), were insignificant. We did a lot of sitting about in the flat or on the roofs or in canalside cafés in those days, talking about the double escape and about what we’d do after it had been successfully accomplished. We started calling it the Exodus.

  Silver had made a booking for two single rooms at a hotel in Sydney. He found it among the cheaper one-star hotels in a guide book called Australia on a Shoestring. On Wednesday 22nd he’d go to the taxi rank in Warwick Avenue and take a taxi round to 4 Torrington Gardens. He wouldn’t have Andrew or Alison bring Jason down but would go up himself to fetch him. We still had no idea when the Nylands would be back, Sean didn’t know, but it was most likely they would be home by the 22nd, Exodus Day One. I know this sounds ageist, but there’s no doubt it’s much easier dealing with old people in this sort of situation than with young ones. Mr and Mrs Nyland’s eyesight and hearing would be less good than ours, they would probably nee
d to rest at times during the day, they would move far more slowly than we did, be less quick to react and less vigorous. Taking Jason downstairs must involve passing their front door but Silver would hear their footsteps inside that door, hear the no-longer-quite-steady hand fumble at the catch, and either race Jason down or pull him back up. They were not a hazard.

  Sean would be away shooting his series. In any case, he had more or less undertaken a passive role. We hoped for a wet day or a foggy day. Darkness would be even better but the flight was a mid-afternoon one. It was a pity we had to take a taxi but we knew no one with a motor vehicle we could take into our confidence except Jonny and we both thought he was far enough into our confidence already. Morna could drive. We decided to ask Morna if she could borrow her mother’s car and drive it to Heathrow; it would be a better idea than the taxi.

  The biggest danger was passing through passport control. Silver thought a lot depended on keeping one’s cool while the man or the woman scrutinized Jason’s passport, looked them both up and down, and maybe went away briefly into some inner office. He could only do his best, he said. Once they were through and on that plane, most of their troubles were over. My task was to get Andrew and Alison out on Exodus Day Two, and I must first check that they looked like their passport photos, then that the baggage they were taking wasn’t over the weight limit. We hoped that nothing untoward would happen, such as assessing how much extra they had to pay on the surplus kilos, which might draw attention to them.