Death of a Unicorn

I told Simon about the divorce at supper. I chose to do it because Terry was there and I felt a need for human contact. As far as I am concerned, although Simon is my son he might as well be an elf-child. I mean that I have no idea at all what it can be like to be him, though he has my eyes as well as the Millets nose (much more unfortunate, for some reason, on a man than a woman). He is not simply a stranger; I see plenty of strangers, doing the occasional stint of conducting a tour round the house; I make a point of studying faces, trying to imagine inner lives, and usually succeed in constructing a coherent personality, not necessarily the true one but credible to me. I cannot do the trick with Simon. He lived inside me for nine months and his birth was an immense satisfaction. A happy baby, smiling and active. A busy, inquisitive, pleasing child, enough trouble at times not to seem unnatural. And then, about seven, the first awareness on my part of this alien-ness, an only faintly worrying sense of oddness in him, a little patch, spreading in the next five years, inexorable as a disease, until the whole personality was absorbed. I suppose he was about fourteen when I gave up attempting to persuade myself that I loved him.

Now he opened his eyes wide and produced his charming but meaningless smile.

‘Poor Mums, that’s tough on you.’

‘High time, if you want my opinion,’ said Terry.

‘For Mark or for me?’

‘For the both of you. How long before you start feeling old? Ten, fifteen years, if you’re lucky. Why waste it? Sir Mark can marry this Julia who seems to think he’s the best thing since the Beatles, and that’s something you’ve never been able to do for him. Now you can stop feeling guilty about it.’

‘Is that all I get out of it?’

‘You want me to find you a man, Marge?’

‘Providing he’s a roofing specialist.’

‘An arsonist would be more to the point,’ said Simon.

Terry shook his head, as usual treating the banter as if it were in earnest.

‘Not after all the work she’s put in,’ he said. ‘Trouble is, what kind of a man would take you on?’

‘Thank you.’

‘Come off it. You know what I mean. For looks you can still knock spots off most women, and you’ve got brains and guts with it, only you expect such a hell of a lot of anyone. My theory, if you want to know, is that you were spoilt for men by somebody way back. I don’t think it was ever Sir Mark, though.’

He studied me, candid and serious. He wasn’t being inquisitive, let alone prurient, but typically just wanting to check his ideas out. I have got used to Terry and now thoroughly approve of him. If only he were a woman he could have married Simon and I could have worked on the assumption that he would take over running Cheadle when the time came. The fact that Simon is at best only faintly interested in the house would not have mattered. Not that Terry is in love with Cheadle, any more than I was thirty years ago, but he (she) would have recognised the need.

Mark, of course, cannot stand him. He says that living with Terry is like living with a mental nudist—company acceptable in a nudist camp but not where everyone else walks around with their minds fully clothed. Though he speaks with a mid-Atlantic accent he is English, one of a large family whose parents run a bakery in Doncaster. He is eight years older than Simon, his curly dark hair thinning fast, and though he and Simon jog ritually round the park every morning his weight is getting out of hand. They act the parts of footmen when the house is open, but I shall soon have to promote Terry to butler, rather than go to the expense of new livery. They spend their spare time perfecting programmes for computer games, always ending up with something far too sophisticated for commercial exploitation. Another reason why I approve of Terry is that Simon seems not to be an alien to him, nor he to me, so I still have indirect contact.

‘If it were true I wouldn’t tell you,’ I said. ‘Let’s change the subject. You might like to know that the financial outlook is suddenly a good deal rosier than it’s been for ages. I can actually see a future.’

I explained about the tax repayments, speaking to Terry because Simon always shuts off when anything serious to do with Cheadle comes up. It took me by surprise when I discovered that this time he had actually been listening.

‘Well done, Mums,’ he said. ‘You mean you could give up your smouldering heroines if you wanted, and the old place would still chug on?’

‘For a few years, yes, I think so.’

‘In that case it sounds like a good time to break it to you that I’ve decided to abdicate in favour of one of the Duncans.’

He was looking at me half-sideways. There is somebody there behind that pretty-pig mask. For an instant I experienced one of our rare occasions of almost-touching as he watched to see how I would take the suggestion—not, alas, with apprehension or eagerness, just curiosity.

‘Is he serious?’ I asked.

‘I reckon,’ said Terry.