Tomorrow by Graham Swift Read Free Book Online

Steps. I’d called in, on my way, at the sandwich bar in Crown Passage. We walked down the steps and across the Mall to the park.
    That simple thing: a picnic, lunch in the park. Not celebratory, nor on the other hand so solemn. Once upon a time, before you were around, your dad and I quite often used to meet “under the Duke of York”—it was one of our places—and walking to meet him today I had the feeling, though you won’t especially want to know this, that I was twenty years younger.
    Your dad was there first, his jacket hooked in one finger, patrolling that odd stage of a place like an actor silently rehearsing. I saw him first, then he saw me. The strange little quivering interval when that happens. I remembered that too. He smiled and waved. I smiled and waved and I lifted up my sandwich bag like a trophy.
    We had lunch today rather like you did, I imagine, sprawled with your friends on the grass, in a state of post-exam languor, in some corner of the playing fields at your respective schools. Perhaps you’ll always remember doing that. The warm grass under your bellies. You’ll see yourselves locked in the sunny amber of one exam-taking June.
    But your dad and I allowed ourselves the dignity of two deckchairs, our exams are still to come.
    I said, “I stood up Simon for this,” handing your dad a baguette. He said, “I hope you’d have stood up anyone.” Sunshine poured through the plane trees. The deckchairs and the lunchtime crowds around us made me think, despite the greenness, of Brighton beach, and I wondered if he was having the same thought. I’m all in favour of synchronicity. He said, almost with a little catch of apology, “I just needed to see you.” As if we hadn’t been married for twenty-five years and sleeping together for nearly thirty, as if we’d met only last week and still couldn’t bear to be out of each other’s sight for more than two hours. But I remembered that feeling too.

7
    HE CAME CLEAN about the champagne. It hadn’t cost him a penny. I didn’t think any the less of him, nor, I think, did Linda and Judy. It even made the day go better (
could
it have gone better?), since it was rapidly and unanimously agreed that if it was his birthday champagne, then it must be his birthday. His birthday had been in January, but it was still his birthday or it was his birthday all over again. Or rather, if no one said this at the time, it was
our
birthday, it was your dad’s and my birthday, if such a thing can be, which I’ll confirm it can. You two aren’t the only ones to have had a joint inauguration. That day—March 19 th, 1966 —was our birthday, it was our launch party, celebrated, appropriately enough, by the edge of the sea. The ship of our future, which now includes sixteen years of your past, was launched that day and was christened, of course, with champagne.
    Will you have such days in your life, will each of you have such days? I hope so. Nothing could make me happier than the knowledge that you will. It’s a stupid and a superstitious thought—a very stupid one to be having tonight—but there must be stored up for us all only so many possible happy days, and my fear is that your dad and I will have taken more than our share, we haven’t left enough for you.
    “A bottle for each of you,” your father said, having sped through the streets of Brighton on his bicycle. By now, Linda, Judy and I were fully dressed, even a little over-dressed it could be said (a great deal of Biba) for a Saturday lunchtime. But what do you wear exactly for such an unexpected party? We stood in a row like prize winners while your dad unloaded his duffel bag onto the kitchen table.
    “Spare some for me,” he said.
    He could do no wrong. Outside, the clouds had dissolved and the sun shone approvingly. Second birthdays definitely occur, lives begin all over again. I was a little in love with Doctor Pope? I admit it. No disrespect to your father. And I was a little in love, as