Restless by William Boyd Read Free Book Online

saw Jochen, Mr Scott being constantly well supplied with mints of various sorts and brands. As he backed out of the drive we walked down the alley at the side of the house to 'our stepway', as Jochen called it, set at the back, a wrought-iron staircase that gave us our own private access to our flat on the first floor. The disadvantage was that any visitor had to come through the kitchen but it was better than going through the dentist's below with its strange pervasive smells – all mouthwash, dentifrice and carpet shampoo.
    We ate cheese on toast and baked beans for supper and watched a documentary about a small round orange submarine exploring the ocean floor. I put Jochen to bed and went through to my study and found my file where I kept my unfinished thesis: 'Revolution in Germany, 1918-1923'. I opened the last chapter – 'The Five-Front War of Gustav von Kahr' – and, trying to concentrate, scanned a few paragraphs. I hadn't written anything for months and it was as if I was reading a stranger's writing. I was fortunate that I had the laziest supervisor in Oxford – a term could go by without any communication between us – and all I did was teach English as a Foreign Language, look after my son and visit my mother, it seemed. I was caught in the EFL trap, all too familiar a pitfall to many an Oxford postgraduate. I made £7 an hour tax-free and, if I wanted, I could teach eight hours a day, fifty-two weeks of the year. Even with the constraints on my time imposed by Jochen I would still make, this year, more than £8,000, net. The last job I had applied for, and failed to get, as a history lecturer at the University of East Anglia was offering a salary (gross) of approximately half what I earned teaching for Oxford English Plus. I should have been pleased at my solvency: rent paid, newish car, school fees paid, credit card under control, some money in the bank – but instead I felt a sudden surge of self-pity and frustrated resentment: resentment at Karl-Heinz, resentment at having to return to Oxford, resentment at having to teach English to foreign students for easy money, (guilty) resentment at the constraints my little son imposed on my freedom, resentment at my mother suddenly deciding to tell me the astonishing story about her past… It had not been planned this way: this was not the direction my life was supposed to have taken. I was twenty-eight years old – what had happened?
    I called my mother. A strange deep voice replied.
    'Yes.'
    'Mummy? Sal? – It's me.'
    'Is everything all right?'
    'Yes.'
    'Call me right back.'
    I did. The phone rang four times before she picked it up.
    'You can come next Saturday,' she said, 'and it'll be fine to leave Jochen – he can stay the night, if you like. Sorry about last weekend.'
    'What's that clicking noise?'
    'That's me – I was tapping the receiver with a pencil.'
    'Why on earth?'
    'It's a trick. It confuses people. Sorry, I'll stop.' She paused. 'Did you read what I gave you?'
    'Yes, I would have called earlier but I had to take it all in. Needed some time… Bit of a shock, as you can imagine.'
    'Yes, of course.' She was silent for a while. 'But I wanted you to know. It was the right time to tell you.'
    'Is it true?'
    'Of course, every word.'
    'So that means I'm half Russian.'
    'I'm afraid so, darling. But only a quarter, actually. My mother, your grandmother, was English, remember?'
    'We have to talk about this.'
    'There's much more to come. Much more. You'll understand everything when you hear the rest.'
    Then she changed the subject and asked about Jochen and how his day had been and had he said anything amusing, so I told her, all the 'while sensing a kind of weakening in my bowels – as if I needed to shit – provoked by a sudden and growing worry about what was lying up ahead for me and a small nagging fear that I wouldn't be able to cope. There was more to come, she had said, much more – what was that 'everything' that I would eventually understand?