Summary
Tony emails Veronica again to apologize for talking so much about himself the last time. He suggests meeting in the same place, but Veronica replies—to his thrill—with a mysterious rendezvous at an Underground station far on the Northern Line. While he waits for the meeting, Tony tries to bring up more memories of his relationship with Veronica. He considers how his feelings of rejection at the time led him to color the relationship as wholly negative. He reflects on how having renewed memories of the past is like having time go in reverse, as if the river is running upstream.
Tony arrives early and reads a newspaper until Veronica arrives. She brings him to her car—coincidentally a Volkswagen Polo, the same car he drives. He tries to engage her in conversation, but she replies, tersely, that she is driving. He realizes she is the more nervous of the two of them. Eventually, she stops and tells him to look. Out on the sidewalk is a group of developmentally disabled adults walking with a care worker. The people discuss, in monosyllables, whether they are going to the pub or a shop.
Veronica watches in silence. Tony asks what’s wrong with them. She asks what’s wrong with him, then accelerates abruptly and goes around the block, parking with her wheels on the curb. The group comes around the corner. Tony overhears the care worker saying they go to the pub on Fridays. Veronica tells Tony to stay in the car while she gets out and speaks with the group, who all appear to know her. A man in tweed bows formally to her, while another rests his head on her shoulder. She says goodbye, and Tony hears them call her Mary. She drives on, neglecting to answer any of Tony’s questions. Her driving style is aggressive. Eventually, she parks and commands Tony to get out.
The next week is the loneliest of Tony’s life. He emails his lawyer to pursue the diary and asks Jack if he has any knowledge about the care-in-the-community group Veronica introduced him to. Jack doesn’t reply. Eventually Tony drives to where he’d been in Northern London with Veronica. He goes to the area hoping to see the developmentally disabled people so frequently that he becomes a regular at the local shop. He then remembers that Friday is pub night for them, and so starts having dinner at the pub on Friday. Weeks go by and he becomes a regular there too.
Finally, the group comes in and has half-pints. Veronica is not with them. Tony gets up and goes to their table, addressing them with a friendly good evening. He goes over again later. This time, a shy, gangly six-foot-tall man in his forties removes his thick-lensed glasses and looks Tony in the eye. He begins to smile. Tony says he’s a friend of Mary’s, which causes the man to shrink away. The care worker with them speaks separately with Tony. Tony apologizes and explains that he met them recently with Mary. The woman says it’s not good to startle him, especially now. She says if he’s a friend of Mary’s, then he’ll understand.
Tony doesn’t ask for an explanation because he can see it now. It is in the man’s face. He is Adrian’s son—there was no question. Tony recalls, with remorse, the cruelty of his letter, in which he’d said he hopes they have a child because he’s a believer in time’s revenge. His words are like an ancient curse he’d forgotten uttering. He doesn’t believe in curses, but there’s a “shiver of the otherworldly” when you predict in words something that happens in reality. Time’s revenge on the innocent fetus.
Tony reflects on how the trauma of Adrian’s suicide might have infected the child in her womb. She’d given birth to a son who needed care. She’d had to raise him alone. He feels remorse for all the unkind things he has thought or said about her. He remembers how she sent him out of her car after she took him to see her son and he didn’t get it. In an apology email to Veronica, Tony says his letter from forty years prior was unforgivable. He wishes her and her son a peaceful life and invites her to get in touch if there is anything he can do for her. She replies, telling him he still doesn’t get it, and he never will, so he should stop trying.
One Friday Tony returns to the North London pub. The group comes in and goes to a table, with Adrian’s son shielding himself from Tony’s gaze, as if to ward off bad luck. Eventually the young carer with them joins Tony’s table and asks to have a word. He says Tony’s presence upsets Adrian. Tony realizes Adrian’s son is also called Adrian. Tony apologizes and says he doesn’t want to upset anyone ever again, so he will leave as soon as he eats and they will never see him again.
The carer asks Tony who he is. Tony replies that he used to be friends with Adrian’s father, and his mother Veronica. He says he and Veronica lost touch, but have been seeing each other often over the past few weeks and months. The carer says he can’t discuss clients’ histories, but what Tony has said makes no sense. Tony realizes his error and says Veronica is the woman Adrian refers to as Mary, her second name. The carer says Mary is his sister, not his mother. His mother died six months earlier and Adrian is taking it very badly.
At home, going over everything, Tony pieces it together. Why Mrs. Ford had Adrian’s diary. Why she wrote that he was happy in the last months of his life. What Veronica meant by blood money. Tony realizes also that Adrian’s equation used integers that stood in for their names. A2 was Anthony, his full name, which Adrian also called him. B was baby—a baby born to a mother of an advanced age, the child “damaged as a result.” Tony looks at the chain of responsibility in the equation. “So, for instance, if Tony…” now makes sense. But he knows he can’t change or mend anything now. He imagines Veronica’s mother making a secret gesture toward Adrian beneath a sunlit wisteria plant. He thinks of the wave crashing upstream, chased by the beams of flashlights. The novel ends with Tony commenting that there is accumulation, responsibility, and beyond these, there is great unrest.
Analysis
Tony continues to find Veronica’s indirect communication exciting and intriguing as he apologizes yet again for how their last in-person meeting went. He is thrilled to have her suggest a meeting at a Tube station in North London, a rendezvous that provokes fantasies of grand romantic gestures from the world of cinema. Tony reflects on how his victimhood influenced his memory of his relationship with Veronica, and how it is invigorating to repopulate his memory with a broader picture. He brings up the Severn river appearing to move in reverse, speaking of it as a symbol for the peculiar phenomenon of time moving backward as his memory is refreshed.
In contrast to Tony’s excitement is Veronica’s unfriendly, passive-aggressive manner as she drives him around. It seems clear that she is reconnecting with him for reasons other than those he has for reconnecting with her. The theme of reticence arises again as she declines to explain why she has brought him to North London. Instead, she shows him a group of developmentally disabled adults walking in a small group. They all know her somehow, and for some reason call her Mary instead of Veronica. After she gets back in the car, Veronica is angry with Tony for not understanding the significance of what she has shown him.
With nothing more to go on from Veronica, Tony is left to return to pursuing the diary. However, his lawyer cannot retrieve it for him. Deflated by his odd third encounter with Veronica, Tony stews in his loneliness until it occurs to him to return to the area of North London she showed him. Knowing there must be some significance to the developmentally disabled men, he seeks them out, eventually running into them. However, Tony’s mention of Mary upsets one of the men.
Tony believes he has solved the mystery when he realizes that the tall, gangly man with thick glasses resembles his dead friend Adrian. The theme of remorse returns as Tony reflects on the grim prophecy laid out in his letter to Adrian and Veronica. Just as he wished, Tony believes that Veronica and Adrian had a child together—a child whose developmental disability is a curse upon their innocent offspring. Tony speculates that the stress of having to live through Adrian’s suicide may have even induced the disability in Veronica’s son.
Believing he has finally understood everything Veronica tried to explain, in her cryptic way, Tony writes an email of apology. However, Veronica’s terse response implies that he still hasn’t pieced it together and may as well give up. It is only once Tony returns to the pub once more that Adrian Junior’s careworker enlightens him: Veronica is the man’s sister, not mother. His mother died recently, and that is why he has been upset.
In the last paragraphs of the book, Tony realizes his letter was not just prophetic, it was directly destructive. Thinking back to Adrian’s diary equation, Tony understands now that Adrian had considered Tony as being involved in a “chain of responsibility” that led to his death. If Tony had never recommended that Adrian visit Veronica’s mother privately to discuss her “damage,” Sarah might never have started an affair with Adrian, never gotten pregnant, and Adrian might never have committed suicide. Ultimately, Tony must sit with the remorse of knowing his single act of cruelty was the catalyst for a series of destructive events—just as he claimed to wish for when he sent the letter.
