The Book of Evidence Read Online Free PDF Page B

but K i n g s t o w n : he had no time for the native jabber. He used to bring me here on Sunday afternoons, sometimes on weekdays too in the school holidays. It was a long drive f r o m C o o l g r a n g e . He w o u l d park on the road a b o v e the pier and give me a shilling and slope off, leaving me to what he called my o w n devices. I see myself, the f r o g prince, enthroned on the high back seat of the Morris O x f o r d , consuming a c o m e t of ice cream, licking the diminishing k n o b of g o o round and round with scientific application, and staring back at the passing promenaders, w h o blanched at the sight of my baleful eye and flickering, creamy tongue. T h e breeze f r o m the sea was a soft, salt wall of air in the open w i n d o w of the car, with a hint of 27

    smoke in it from the mailboat berthed below me. The flags on the roof of the yacht club shuddered and snapped, and a thicket of masts in the harbour swayed and tinkled like an oriental orchestra.
    My mother never accompanied us on these jaunts. They were, I know now, just an excuse for my father to visit a poppet he kept there. I do not recall him behaving furtively, or not any more so than usual. He was a slight, neatly-made man, with pale eyebrows and pale eyes, and a small, fair moustache that was faintly indecent, like a bit of body fur, soft and downy, that had found its way inadvertently on to his face from some other, secret part of his person, it made his mouth startlingly vivid, a hungry, violent, red-coloured thing, grinding and snarling. He was always more or less angry, seething with resentment and indignation. Behind the bluster, though, he was a coward, I think. He felt sorry for himself He was convinced the world had used him badly. In recompense he pampered himself, gave himself treats. He wore handmade shoes and Charvet ties, drank good claret, smoked cigarettes specially imported in airtight tins from a shop in the Burlington Arcade. 1 still have, or had, his malacca walking-cane. He was enormously proud of it. He liked to demonstrate to me how it was made, from four or was it eight pieces of rattan prepared and fitted together by a master craftsman. I could hardly keep a straight face, he was so laughably earnest. He made the mistake of imagining that his possessions were a measure of his own worth, and strutted and crowed, parading his things like a schoolboy with a champion catapult. Indeed, there was something of the eternal boy about him, something tentative and pubertal.
    When I think of us together I see him as impossibly young and me already grown-up, weary, embittered. I suspect he was a little afraid of me. By the age of twelve or thirteen I zS

    w a s as b i g as he, or as heavy5 a n y w a y , for a l t h o u g h I h a v e his f a w n c o l o u r i n g , in shape I t o o k after my m o t h e r , and already at that a g e w a s inclined t o w a r d s flab. (Yes* m i n d , y o u see b e f o r e y o u a m i d d l i n g m a n inside w h o m there is a fattie trying not to c o m e out. F o r he w a s let slip once9 w a s Bunter* j u s t once* a n d l o o k w h a t happened.) I h o p e I do n o t g i v e the impression that I disliked my father. W e did n o t converse m u c h , but w e w e r e perfectly c o m p a n i o n a b l e , in the w a y of fathers and sons. If he did fear me a little* I t o o w a s wise e n o u g h to be w a r y of him, a relation easily mistaken, even by us at times, for m u t u a l esteem^ ~Wc h a d a great distaste f o r the w o r l d generally, there w a s that m u c h in c o m m o n b e t w e e n us. I notice I h a v e inherited his laugh* that soft, nasal snicker w h i c h w a s his o n l y c o m m e n t on the large events of his time. Schisms^
    wars, catastrophes, w h a t did he care for such matters? -- the w o r l d , the o n l y w o r t h w h i l e w o r l d , h a d e n d e d with the last viceroy?$ departure f r o m these shores* after that it w a s all j u s t a w r a n g l e a m o n g