‘Ticket for the wrong train. Had to let her off,’ he says in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Drive me up the wall they do. Always say they’re so unworldly that they don’t understand the ticketing restrictions. Same thing last week with a monk. Let him off too. Must be becoming a habit.’
Naomi recognises that this is a joke and laughs politely. Timothy doesn’t.
‘It was a joke, lad. Monk, habit. A joke,’ says the ticket inspector.
It is now Timothy’s turn to blush.
‘He’s not good enough for you,’ says the ticket inspector with a jovial, hateful wink.
What a journey this is for blushing. Now it’s Naomi’s turn. She blazes with embarrassment and anger. The ticket inspector looks from one to the other, realises he’s put his foot in it, and digs the hole that he has made.
‘I think I’ve put my foot in it,’ he says, as he departs.
‘You see,’ says Timothy miserably. ‘That’s what everyone’ll say.’
‘Bollocks,’ says Naomi more loudly than she intended.
Timothy looks shocked. The nun buries herself in her book.
‘Quiet. She’ll hear,’ says Timothy.
‘You’re always so worried what people will think. She isn’t listening. She isn’t interested in us. She’s reading her devotions or whatever it is they have to read.’
‘You’ll spend five months filming in Caracas.’
‘If I do, I’ll dream of you.’
‘You won’t. You’ll fall for Nigel Havers.’
‘I won’t fall for Nigel Havers. God, how many pylons are there in Britain?’
‘You shouldn’t use God’s name in vain.’
‘That wasn’t God’s name. It was just an expression. I love you. I really do.’
‘You do now, but when you’re famous…’
‘I won’t be famous and if I am it won’t change me. “She comes in the shop and she’s just like one of us,” says attractive olive-skinned assistant Val Pogson.’
‘What?’
‘It’s what they say about nice actresses who haven’t let their fame go to their heads. She enjoys the glamour of filming in exotic places, but she’s always thrilled to get back to her modest terrace home in Battersea and her taxidermist husband.’
‘You won’t want children.’
She is silent for just a moment.
‘I can’t say I’ve thought about it, but…I think I’d really love to have your child. Honestly, Timothy.’
He leans across and kisses her. His tongue explores her mouth. He didn’t mean to do this, but he can’t help it.
The nun develops a sudden interest in pylons.
Let them be happy in their kisses. They have no idea of the storm that is about to break over their heads.
Timothy’s steps never quicken as he approaches number ninety-six, but today they slow even more than usual. His father is not an unkindly man, he does his best, but it is not a happy house for Timothy. It’s a square, stone, Victorian house on the gentle hill that takes the dual carriageway out of town in what was once one of the better areas of Coningsfield, but it’s an area that’s blighted by traffic and is slowly going down. Number ninety-four is a B & B called Ascot House. Number ninety-eight is lived in by an old man, Mr Lewis, and his wife, Mrs Taylor. Well, this is how Mr Lewis introduces them to people, on the increasingly rare occasions when he needs to introduce them. Timothy laughs because as the years pass and their health declines, Mr Lewis walks further and further behind Mrs Taylor on trips to the shops that are becoming slower and more hazardous by the month. Timothy’s father, Roly, rebukes his only son for laughing at the elderly.
Timothy walks past the shaved lawn of Ascot House – ‘Quality outside is the harbinger of quality inside, in the world of the B & B,’ says the proprietress, Miss de Beauvoir, whose real name is Mrs Smith. In fact, she says this all too frequently. Her remark does not impress Timothy. He has been inside.
The lawn of number ninety-six is long and dotted with dandelions and docks. Last month, after a good rain, a post was hammered into the ground, and a board was hammered onto the post, bearing a message that alarmed Timothy. It says, ‘R. Pickering and Son – Taxidermists’. Timothy’s heart does not swell with pride as his legs lead him leadenly past it. He has been Romeo on stage and in life. Now he is again the only son of a taxidermist whose wife ran off with a plumber when Timothy was two and has never so much as sent him a birthday card since. ‘A plumber!’ his dad occasionally says, shaking his head in disbelief, as if the man’s occupation is a greater blow to his self-esteem than his wife’s abandonment of him.
As Timothy sees the board, he recalls that moment a month ago when he came home from school and first saw it. As he stared at it, the front door squeaked open – his dad wasn’t exactly generous with anything, and that included WD40 – and his dad stood there, smiling.
‘I’m taking you into the business, son of mine. You’re ready now.’
Timothy had found nothing to say.
‘Aren’t you going to thank me?’
‘Yes, Dad. Sorry, Dad. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Timothy was too young to realise that by this his dad was trying as best he could to say, ‘I love you, son.’
They had gone inside and his father had made a pot of tea and produced a couple of scones – a rare treat, but treats came with strings at number ninety-six, and the string was that his future was going to be discussed, or rather announced, and fixed for eternity. Timothy liked Marmite on his scones: he had described the clash between sweet and sour as ‘orgasmic’ but that was before his weekend with Naomi. On this occasion he hadn’t dared get Marmite. His father disapproved. ‘Marmite on scones? What travesty is this?’
‘Well, lad, I saw you on stage and I’ll say this, you were good. Our Timothy, the product of my very own seed, playing Romeo, who’d have thought it?’ His father had his very own, idiosyncratic way of expressing himself. ‘As I say, you were good, but…but, Timothy, you weren’t that good. You are not an actor. The boards are not in your blood. The curtain has fallen on your brief career.’
‘No, Dad, I know, I agree, I don’t want to be an actor.’
‘Good. Good. That’s good. So what can you do? You’re not stupid, but…but, Timothy. We don’t want you ending up a plumber now, do we? Some say taxidermy is a dying art. Not so, my boy. Not so. More tea?’
‘Thanks.’
Timothy had never thought of not being a taxidermist, but only because it had never occurred to him that he was ever going to be one. His ambitions stretched only to avoiding certain careers. He didn’t want to be an actor, or a plumber, or a dentist, or a lavatory cleaner, or a teacher, or a racing driver. He expected that, being neither brilliant nor thick, he would go to one of the lesser universities, and if that didn’t work out there was always Coningsfield Polytechnic. In the course of his prolonged studies he might or might not discover his vocation, which might or might not be the Church. He’d had no idea that he would suddenly, even urgently, need to make a decision as to his future. He was therefore unprepared to make a decision. Therefore he made no decision. And so, on that dark afternoon in that dark house, he realised that he didn’t want to be a taxidermist five minutes after he had become one.
Later, when he looked back