After Brock by Paul Binding Page A

end-of-exam celebration when I arrived back, so I decided I’d keep my day to myself. I probably would have anyway. Mum likes life to be harmonious and ‘stress-free’. South Indian food involves great quantities of tamarind and fenugreek, coconut, plantain and ginger, and the little kitchen was already smelling strongly and pleasantly of all these. The two of us, as I had guessed beforehand, were not going to eat by ourselves. Doug McBride would be coming round, as so often, as so very often. (I don’t mind this as much as that last sentence suggests. I am indifferent.) Ever since Mum, who does admin in a primary school, went on a course about actual and ideal classroom sizes, where Mr McBride was giving a lecture, it’s been Doug this and Doug that and Doug whatever. Though his head is buzzing with budgets and long-term forecasts (he’s spectacularly unlike my dad in this, as in other respects), Doug does his best with me to be a laid-back regular guy. But he gives his true anorak self away in so many ways. Like: ‘I can’t help worrying, Nat, that all three of your A Levels are what we nowadays call s oft subjects. I wonder why your teachers didn’t point that out to you. Those choices could go against you when whichever-University-it-is has to decide about its new intake.’
    â€˜Even the University of Bedfordshire?’
    â€˜I’m sorry. Why should that have different policies from elsewhere?’
    â€˜ Bed fordshire. Beds are usually soft, aren’t they? Unless they’re futons.’
    â€˜Ah, I get it! But, seriously Nat, I have reason to think a number of top universities have “black lists” of subjects (meaning the soft ones). They tend to get lumped as things that only certain kinds of students take.’
    â€˜Well, I just went for the subjects I was any good at, Doug. English Language, English Literature, Media Studies. End of…!’
    But tonight he was fairly bearable, talking away about India where he went some months back on a fact-finding visit. A lot of people would have found it interesting, but I can’t say I exactly did because half the time (at least) I was aware of the rapt look on Mum’s face. She was looking very nice tonight, had taken trouble to do so after she’d finished in the kitchen. She’d tied her sandy-coloured hair in a brief pony-tail, and wore her best peacock blue top. I don’t look like either of my parents much, but I’ve inherited Mum’s wide-apart set of eyes, though hers are a green-flecked brown, not grey. Doug greatly appreciated her appearance, I could tell.
    The meal was delicious, as Doug said at least a hundred times. First we had sambar or vegetable stew, with aubergines, tomatoes and yellow cucumbers; then rasam, a soup made from tamarind juice and lentils, but Mum serves it up with rice and yoghurt-soaked fritters. Before we tucked into all this though, Doug produced a bottle of champagne to toast me and my results. So there we go! I still can’t see why Mum prefers (at least I assume she does) a nerd like Doug to my dad. But then of course it was Dad who wouldn’t stay with her/us, wasn’t it?
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    Once I was by myself again and in my own room, I knew what I would do – I would go to the bookshelf on which stands the omnibus edition of Sherlock Holmes Short Stories which was Dad’s as a boy. I knew I’d never thrown away that scrap of paper marking the whereabouts of that awesome story, ‘The Speckled Band’. Quite yellowed with time it is. I took it out, and you might have thought I was deciphering code.
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    November 30 & Dec 7 1973
    Violin lessons to Julian Kempsey given at
    â€˜Woodgarth’, Etnam Street, Leominster
    Â£7
    Received with thanks Dec 7th 1973
    Gregory Pringle L.R.A.M.
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    The idea that comes to me is, to quote Josh, ‘pretty fucking bizarre’, and I don’t know how I