Chapter 44: Rupert - The Golden Hours

Rupert had discovered a new word: Anhedonia. It means when things which give you pleasure give you no pleasure.

I can’t go on like this, he thought. I actually can’t. Physically, mentally. Because at some stage I’m going to die, and I can’t leave it like this. I have to find a way to do . . .

To do.

To do something.

Who was it who said that each death brought back all other deaths? It might have been me, he thought. Well, at least I had a decent thought once.

So Isobel is dead, and Michèle is dead, and Hugh is dead. Death tripled; death compounded. And anybody could be next.

I have to protect myself against minding so much. If I am to have any life, anything left of me for Zoë to love, for Clary, and Juliet, and Neville, and Georgie.

I have been so blessed and yet nothing touches me.

They might be better off without me, he thought.

He thought that quite often.

He’d thought it throughout Hugh’s funeral: through the prayers, the hymns, that bloody poem. People offering him sympathy for his brother’s death, not knowing that he himself was dying inside, and had been for more than a year.

There was actually very little time when he wasn’t thinking it. So one morning, when he was meant to be teaching, he got on the Tube and went to Queen’s Square, and delivered himself into the hands of the neurological hospital.

‘There’s something very, very wrong with me,’ he said to the receptionist. ‘I don’t know what. If I knew, I would tell you. But I don’t.’

She had dark blue eyes and a biro behind her ear.

‘I think I’m dying,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I want to, but I’m not sure.’

‘What’s your name, sir?’ she asked.

‘After all, it’s not illegal any more!’ he said, and she said, ‘Take a seat, I’ll be back in a minute.’

He sat. He stood.

He left.

He took the Tube again, going he didn’t know or care where, and found himself at Holland Park. He got out: fresh air and a walk, he thought. That’s the sort of thing. But there was Ladbroke Grove. Clary and Archie.

No, not Clary and Archie. He just couldn’t.

But Juliet was living near here, he knew. He’d go and see her. He had her telephone number. Yes, Juliet.

Dialling, he doubted the wisdom of this whim. But she answered, and he slipped the coins into the slot, and she seemed pleased to hear him. ‘Dad!’ she said, her voice crackly down the line, reminding him of the address. ‘Of course, come. I’ll put the kettle on.’

She greeted him warmly, a hug, a peck on the cheek. He couldn’t really say if she was looking well or not. He stared round at her flat. It seemed very grown-up: there was a sleek modern teapot, healthy-looking house plants, her sewing machine set up in place of honour under the window.

‘You always loved making clothes,’ he said, touching a piece of cloth pinned to its paper pattern section. He pressed the end of a silvery pin with his thumb. ‘Nighties for your dolls,’ he said, and he started crying.

‘Dad?’

He couldn’t stop.

‘Dad!’

He wasn’t really aware of what was happening, just the enveloping convulsions of shame and sadness, sadness and shame. Why was he even here, inflicting himself on his poor daughter –

She was on the telephone, holding a little white card. ‘Is that Dr Stein’s office?’ she was saying.

She made him a cup of tea.

After a while, she said, ‘Come on, we’re going to see someone who’ll help you. You haven’t seen my little car, have you? I got myself a Mini, Dad, like a proper Dolly Bird. Second hand, of course. Come on – you’ll have to fold your legs up to fit in, you great long thing.’

He was still crying as they skirted the roadworks where they were knocking down whole streets to build the new flyover; then they crossed the canal, headed up Elgin Avenue, over Maida Vale and up towards the Heath.