This is the Life

‘I love Louis so much and want to have his babies.’

‘Well, you’ll need to speak to Louis about that. I don’t know where he stands on babies. That’s something you’ll need to discuss.’

‘I am coming to see him.’

‘Chancelle—’

‘I am getting on the bus.’

‘Chancelle, you don’t even know—’

‘Your mother gave me your address. I’ll be there tonight. Tell Louis I love him.’

The phone went dead.

‘Who was that?’ Iona said.

‘Chancelle,’ I explained. ‘Louis’ ex from Canada. She’s landed at Heathrow.’

‘What does she want?’

‘She wants to have his babies.’

Iona gave me a strange and narrow-eyed look. I didn’t know then that she wanted to have my babies. But I didn’t want any babies at that time in my life. Eventually despairing of never having any babies, Iona went off to have them with somebody else.

‘Well, is he expecting her?’

‘I don’t think he’s heard from her in years.’

I found Louis down at the docks, chewing the fat with his neighbours. Wherever you go in the world you will find men with boats chewing the fat. They rarely venture anywhere. Their boats are usually out of the water and need something doing to them. There’s some rubbing down going on, or some filling in, or they’re painting the hull in de-fouling liquid. The maintenance is long and the voyages are few. But that’s not the point. The point is the old boats and the tea and the bacon sandwiches and a place to go come the Bank Holidays and the empty vacation times and the long, hot, eternal summer days, when you can take your shirt off and let your belly hang out and show the passers-by your tattoos.

‘Louis,’ I said. ‘I just got a phone call. It’s Chancelle and she’s landed at Heathrow and she’s coming down here to have your babies.’

Louis looked panic-stricken.

‘She’s coming here?’

‘Right now. Even as we speak she’s on the bus and throwing her birth-control devices out of the window.’

‘Jesus,’ Louis said.

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘I’m going to have to go,’ Louis said. And he went on board his boat and started packing a bag. He had bought an old rusty car by now. He got it cheap as it had three hundred thousand miles on the clock.

‘Louis,’ I said, following him. ‘You can’t just disappear and leave me to deal with her. What am I going to say? She wants to have your babies.’

‘Well, I don’t want to have her babies.’

‘You what?’

He threw a grey towel into a bag.

‘That is I don’t want her to have mine. I haven’t heard from her in years. She’s crazy.’

‘I guess the separatist politics must have gone wrong.’

‘I’m not seeing her.’

‘Louis, where are you going?’

‘Walking,’ he said. ‘In Wales.’

‘Louis,’ I said. ‘You can’t just run off and disappear and leave me to deal with a woman who’s travelled six thousand miles or however far it is to have your babies.’

‘Watch me.’

‘Louis, it isn’t fair.’

He paused in packing his bag.

‘Remember the school bus? When you got arrested?’

‘Maybe, Louis. But who’s the delinquent now?’

‘Blood’s thicker,’ he said.

‘Louis—’

‘It’s your turn to do me a favour,’ he said.

‘Louis, I’ve done you favours. You’ve spent the whole winter in front of my portable gas fire and my girlfriend sewed your trousers up.’

He zipped the holdall and squared up to me. He was no taller than I was, but he was a stone or two heavier, and it wasn’t fat, it was muscle. Though when it came to a fight we were fairly equal, for though he was the stronger, I was the more desperate man. I think I had discovered that when we were children. And the reason I was more desperate and fought more ferociously was because I knew I was the weaker.

‘It’s little to ask from your only brother. It’s little to ask. I’d do it for you.’

‘You wouldn’t, Louis. You’d tell me to face up to my responsibilities.’

‘I’m going walking in the Black Mountains,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back Thursday or when she’s gone, whichever is the sooner. I’ll call.’ He hustled me out of the boat and locked it. Then he had a thought.

‘You want to come with me?’ he said. ‘You like walking, don’t you?’

‘Louis, I have to go to work. And how come you can take time off?’

‘They owe me holidays.’

‘Louis, what am I going to say to Chancelle about your babies?’