18

Boris took the morning off work and Juliette missed her morning lectures to take Aldous and Colette home the next day.

Juliette had geared herself up for a confrontation with Janus, but as they drove towards Fernlight Avenue they saw him walking along the street in the opposite direction. He was still wearing the suede trench coat and the panama hat, and still came the tinkling noise from the bell tied to his waist.

Julian was at home when they arrived.

‘Why aren’t you at school?’ said Colette.

‘Why weren’t you at home last night?’ her son retorted.

The house seemed more or less in order. The sink was a mess of unwashed crockery. The piano had taken no further injuries, though records and music manuscripts were scattered on the music room floor. According to Julian there had been no incidents the night before. He had come home late from a friend’s house and had gone straight to bed. He’d seen Janus in the morning, and reported that he’d seemed in very good spirits.

‘He kept saying how happy he was, how good his life was. Then he tried to borrow money off me. I didn’t have any. Is he out of work again?’

‘Let’s go and find a solicitor now,’ said Juliette.

‘Now?’ said Colette, ‘We’ve only just got in. Can’t we have a cup of tea?’

Aldous had already crept away to the front room to read the paper.

‘We’ve got to act now,’ said Juliette, ‘don’t you remember what you said last night?’

‘I was upset last night. I’d just been thrown out of my own home.’

‘And now everything’s fine again, is that what you’re saying?’

‘I’m just saying I’d like to have a cup of tea and a sit down before we go rushing into anything.’

Julian sloped off to his bedroom.

‘If you don’t do something now, you’ll never do anything. You’ll have Janus living here for the rest of your life.’

‘Of course I won’t. He’ll sort himself out eventually. He needs time. He’s a very sensitive man. Disturbance upsets him, changes to routine. Losing his job was a big blow for him. You don’t know what it’s like to lose your job, do you? I can remember how I felt when I left the buses. You don’t just lose a job, you lose your friends, you lose your skills, you lose your reason to live, almost. And Janus was in love with one of the nurses there, so he’s lost the woman he loves. That is bound to make you act strangely, surely.’

‘Mother, you must stop deluding yourself about Janus. He’s not going to sort himself out, ever, while he lives here . . .’

Juliette and her mother continued to argue. Juliette couldn’t quite believe that her mother was prevaricating yet again.

She asked Boris.

‘Boris, go and get daddy, he’s disappeared again. He needs to help me persuade mummy to go to a solicitor.’

Boris returned from the front room to announce that Aldous was refusing to come out.

‘He’s drinking a bottle of whisky.’

‘Daddy? Drinking?’

‘Neat whisky,’ added Boris.

‘So that’s where it’s gone,’ said Colette brightly, ‘I thought Janus must have found it. Boris, would you go and get the whisky for me?’

‘How can you even think about drinking after what’s been going on here for these last couple of days?’ said Juliette.

‘My nerves are shattered, Juliette, I need a drink . . .’

There then followed further discussion during which the subject of Aldous drinking in the next room was forgotten, until they heard a groan.

‘What was that noise?’

‘It sounded like someone in pain.’

Boris went to investigate, and returned to announce that Aldous had drunk almost a whole bottle of whisky.

Then Aldous appeared, flinging the door open so it banged loudly against Juliette’s hair. His face was a deep purple which made his white hair seem stupidly bright. He was grinning in rather a menacing way.

‘Have you drunk all my whisky?’ said Colette indignantly as Aldous swayed uncertainly across the kitchen towards the sink. Thoughts of Janus Brian came to Colette’s mind. That careful stagger he used to have. Aldous picked up a saucepan and a small dining knife with a loose, yellow-boned handle.

‘Come on sirrah,’ he said, brandishing the knife as a sword, the saucepan as a shield, ‘I’ll stab you up, I’ll stab you up you wench, you harlot. You do me wrong to take me out of my grave. You are a soul in bliss and I am bound upon a wheel of fire!’

He lunged with apparent playfulness at Colette with the knife, who managed to get out of her chair in time. Juliette laughed. She had not yet fully understood her father’s state and took his behaviour for welcome tomfoolery. Boris, uncertain as to how to handle the patriarch of his girlfriend’s house, moved as if to grapple the knife from him, but hesitated. Aldous swung the knife randomly.

‘You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, as full of grief as age . . .’

‘Get the knife off him Boris,’ said Colette, sheltering behind her daughter. Aldous was so drunk he seemed unable to see anything, and continued to take swipes at the empty chair where Colette had been. Boris was still nervous about manhandling Aldous, and made only tentative efforts to take the knife.

‘Spit, fire, spout rain, I never gave you kingdom, called you children . . .’

Aldous was at the sink again, swishing his knife clumsily at the broken crockery. He turned the tap on full, splish-splashed in the dirty water, sent spray everywhere. Boris again made an effort to grapple with Aldous, but he was a small man against Aldous’s lumbering bulk, and he took a knock from the base of a saucepan that felled him briefly.

‘The art of our necessities is strange that can make vile things precious . . .’

The words were barely intelligible amid the slurred growling of Aldous’s drunken locution. Plates fell to the floor and broke. The stacked dishes in the sink fell with a clatter. Aldous’s flailing saucepan hit a light bulb and shattered it. He stumbled forward, fell against the cooker on which a pan of water for Colette’s tea was boiling. Bubbles were just beginning to form. He picked the steaming saucepan up.

The others gave little screams, and felt terror at seeing boiling water in the hands of a drunk. The pot tipped back and forth, and some scalding water spilt. Bubbling water splashed onto Aldous’s wrists but he seemed not to feel it. Colette and Juliette ran for shelter, ducking down beneath the kitchen table as Aldous wildly threw the water across the room. It landed on the table, and dripped to the floor on all sides, surrounding Colette and her daughter.

Then a pause in the activity. Colette and her daughter emerged from under the table to see Aldous standing in the middle of the room. He was frowning, his head lowered, as though concentrating deeply. A hand felt blindly for the chair behind him, Colette’s chair by the boiler space, and Aldous sank slowly backwards into it, still frowning, his eyes closed, a hand to his brow, concentrating deeply. Finally he said ‘oh dear’ and slumped forwards, then sideways, a loose arm flopping out.

‘I have never seen my father drunk in my entire life,’ said Juliette, thoughtfully. Colette went over to her husband and slapped his cheeks. There was no response other than a deep groan, confirming that he was alive.

‘You can see what you’ve done to him,’ said Juliette.

‘What I’ve done to him?’

‘What you and Janus in combination have done to him. You’ve driven him to drink. You’ve driven him to the depths. Can’t you see? You’ve driven him over the edge.’

Colette was shocked into contrition by Aldous’s behaviour. She had not seen Aldous drunk before.

‘Alright,’ she said finally, sitting down, ‘we’ll go to a solicitor, but not today.’

‘Let me go, mother,’ said Juliette, ‘You and daddy won’t have to do anything except sign some papers. We’ll sort it all out for you. Me and Boris can sort it out this morning.’

‘Do what you must,’ said Colette, ‘just leave us in peace for a while.’

So Juliette and Boris left the house, Colette sitting in the armchair opposite her unconscious husband. She watched him for a long time. She pondered for a while how rarely she had had the opportunity of observing Aldous asleep. Not since she’d begun taking sleeping pills had she been conscious while Aldous dozed. But now she was awake and he was asleep. How he frowned in his sleep. Did he always frown like that when asleep, she wondered. He must be having terribly serious dreams. He must be dreaming he was a high court judge with a complex and difficult case to sum up. He must be dreaming he was a scientist pondering a new theory of gravity. Or a composer wrangling with the development section of the third movement of his fifth symphony. That was it. With his furrowed brow and sternly set mouth, and his wild coif of white hair, he looked like Beethoven. But only when he slept.

After a while he stirred. And then he said something.

‘What was that?’ said Colette, bending near, ‘what did you say?’

‘Let me not be like Janus Brian,’ Aldous gasped, his eyes still closed, still asleep, ‘Not Janus Brian. I don’t want to be like Janus Brian. I don’t want to see the golf courses of Spain.’