by S. E. Lynes
‘I’m not.’ Carol feels herself being pulled into a cloud of Poison perfume. She lets her head rest on her friend’s soft bosom, lets herself be held. There’s no difference between a happy hug and a sad one, she thinks, between a hug that says hello or goodbye or you’re in the shit but here I am. ‘Do you think I should go back? I mean, he might’ve learned his lesson.’
Pauline pulls away, holds on to the tops of Carol’s arms, as if to make her stand up straight. ‘No, you should bloody not go back. No way, Jose. I’ll batter you myself if you do, d’you hear me?’
Carol laughs, sniffs, wipes her tears into her hair. ‘Shall we go and get them boxes?’
‘That’s the ticket, my love. Tell you what, I’ve collected some right treats. Ornaments, would you believe, and bad taste isn’t the word. Honest to God, you’re going to wet your knickers.’
They make their way out to Pauline’s car. On the street, there’s no sign of their rusty old Cortina, no one waiting at the corner, at least no one that looks like Ted. Ted she’d recognise anywhere, from a mile away.
They load box after box into the house. Pauline has managed to get her hands on all sorts: tea towels, matches, things Carol wouldn’t have thought of. They’re able to make a brew with an old kettle that goes on the hob.
‘Hey, look – pans.’ Carol noses in one of the boxes. ‘Oh, and plates … oh, and look, there’s cutlery too. I’ll be able to cook the tea. Where the heck did you find all this?’
Pauline holds up a painted wooden cuckoo clock. ‘This’ll cheer the place up. I’ll get you some batteries.’
At the top of a box of plates, Carol finds a small black radio. Together they unpack the rest, singing along to the music, sometimes chatting, sometimes in comfortable silence. Pauline’s friends and colleagues have spared these things for her. Charity, that’s what it is. Not that she isn’t grateful; just that she wonders if gratitude is ever free from shame, since the two seem much the same to her now.
She fights off this shame as best she can.
* * *
In the evening, Tommy brings a collapsible picnic table and four fold-up chairs, two sunloungers, sleeping bags for the kids, two quilts and two pillows for her. The gratitude, the shame makes a knot at the back of her mouth.
‘I’m sorry I’ve no mattress,’ he says.
‘Don’t be silly, I’m fine.’
He loads two bags of shopping into the kitchen cupboards, then sets the timer for the heating so that it will come on in the morning. While Pauline gets her coat, he attaches a piece of cardboard to the letter box with duct tape.
‘That should keep out the draught a bit at least.’
It’s as if he has to do one last thing to protect Carol against whatever lies outside: the night, those feral kids, those shadows. He nods to Pauline, the sign that it’s time to go. It’s late, they have a long drive, work in the morning. Their lives to live.
Pauline hugs her tightly. ‘Will you be all right tonight? Do you want me to stay?’
‘Course not,’ Carol manages. ‘I’m champion. Thanks again, love.’
She waves them off, locks and bolts the door and slides the chain across. In the kitchen, what she thinks is a crumpled bit of paper turns out to be a twenty-pound note wrapped around a tenner.
‘Oh, Pauline.’ She picks the money up and puts it in her pocket.
She unlocks and relocks the back door. There’s no bolt, no extra locks. The big window bothers her. She shades her eyes with her hand and leans into the glass. Yellow light glows in slices from between other people’s curtains. In the gardens, junk lurks in shadowy hulks. Nothing human, though, nothing that looks like a man. From out there, this place must look derelict. No lightshades, just bulbs. No blinds, no curtains. They’re alone, her and the kids. They’re scared. They’re skint. It’s like they’re advertising it.
Steeling herself, she goes into the lounge and finds Graham sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor. The main light is off. He’s smoking, watching nothing, listening to nothing in the dark. Here is another worry, perhaps the biggest: her son. He’s grown quiet, strange. He’s never once spoken about his dad since they left, even though she tried to get him to talk; he’s never answered her when she asked about his school. Now he’s left school and is on the dole, and she wonders what life will show him, whether he can make something of himself, whether this is just a phase or what he has become, who he is now. She hopes not. She should have left Ted sooner or not at all. She should have protected her son. She should show tough love, make him get a job, stop him smoking in the house. Shouldn’t let him smoke at all, at seventeen, but you have to pick your battles, and for now, getting him to speak is the biggest.
‘Hey up, Confucius,’ she says, feigning lightness. ‘You meditating or what?’
When he doesn’t answer, she tries again.
‘My mum used to say, “We could have bacon and eggs if we had some bacon. But we don’t have any eggs.”’
The tip of Graham’s cigarette moves up towards his mouth and glows brighter, fades as it falls.
‘I was thinking we could shut the curtains and watch the telly,’ she adds, still at the doorway. ‘You know, if we had any curtains, but we haven’t got a telly, have we?’
‘No.’ There’s no hint of a laugh, but no sign of his voice shaking either. Not crying, then, just wanting to be in the dark, and to be silent.
She steps a bit further in. ‘We’ve got our bums to sit on, anyway, even if it does look like we’ve had burglars, and there’s a sofa coming tomorrow. Is our Nicky asleep, d’you know?’
‘I ch-checked on her. Dead to the world.’ Few words, but she’s grateful for them. He speaks as if he were Nicky’s dad.
‘I’m off up anyway,’ she says.
‘I’ll l-lock up.’ Now he sounds like a husband.
‘It’s all right, love, I’ve done it.’
‘I’ll ch-check.’ Like a husband all right – not trusting her to do anything right.
She makes to go but changes her mind, needing to touch him – to scratch his back, squeeze his shoulder, whatever, make physical contact after the day they’ve had. She crosses the lounge on the pretext of checking the windows, puts her hand flat to the spikes on the top of his head. Gently, just enough to feel the baby hedgehog prickle. Any longer and his hair will start to round off, to be thick and black, like his dad’s.
‘Pauline said she’ll bring her portable,’ she says. ‘It’s only black and white, but it’s better than nowt.’ She gives his earlobe a pinch. On the edge of her thumb, his stubble is soft, not yet coarse from years of shaving. He’s still a boy.
He tips his head back to look at her. ‘Have you h-heard? F-f-from him?’
Unease fizzes in her belly. ‘Your dad, d’you mean? No. Why? Have you?’
He shakes his head, puts out his cigarette in a saucer on the floor. ‘Just thought P-Pauline m-might’ve said something.’
‘He doesn’t know where we are,’ she says simply.
‘No.’
‘He doesn’t.’
‘I know. I j-just …’
‘Just what?’
‘D-d-dunno.’ Graham shrugs.
‘Did you want to see him?’
‘N-no.’
She wonders whether she should say more, ask him how he feels about it all, but doesn’t want to break what counts these days as a long conversation. She’ll leave it there. That way he might start talking to her again. It might come trickling out if she doesn’t push him. Her silent boy, dark circles under his eyes, eyes that never meet hers anymore. He doesn’t have to look at her, doesn’t have to say anything for her to know he hated it at that school. He’s come out without much in the way of qualifications, but it’s not that that worries her. There’s something else these days, something darker she can’t name. It’s too soon to ask him about going to college, about turning his life around. He’s not ready to think about any of that. None of them are. So for now he draws the dole. More charity, but here they
are, both of them at the bottom of the heap. Pauline would tell her that at least there was only one way, and that was up, but Carol knows better. No matter how low you sink, there’s always further to go.
* * *
Upstairs, Nicola is flat out, arms up out of her sleeping bag. Carol holds her face a moment against her daughter’s slumbering breath, catches the vanilla whiff of Malted Milk biscuits. Her eyelashes, in their thick black arc, look false – an innocent doll-child, ignorant of her father, of what he’s capable of, what he’s done, could still do. Carol has cut this child off from him with one swipe of an axe, without any real explanation. That her children will never see Ted again is a possibility she didn’t reckon on. She only thought as far as getting out. She never thought she’d be this lonely. She never pictured this house, herself checking the locks every five minutes, looking out of the windows like a fugitive. That she’d feel this weight of guilt, like she’d killed him somehow, abandoned him to his misery, robbed the kids of their father. And Graham. That Graham would take it so hard. There are so many things she didn’t reckon on.
Cleaning her teeth in the bathroom, she thinks of Jim. He has become her secret habit. She has thought of him every day since that night. Even sent him her new address, like some kind of silly schoolgirl. No word from him, obviously. Just because he’s been on her mind doesn’t mean she’s been on his, does it? Probably won’t even remember her name. She’s been a daft cow, that’s what she’s been. Her mum would have killed her. Throwing herself at him, she would have called it. And at that thought, she misses her mum too, despite everything.
She’d meant to try again with her parents once things settled after Graham. But the years went by, as years do. Ted started on her. Nicola came along. It became too difficult to pick up the phone – because she hadn’t done it sooner and then later because by then what could she have said? You were right, Ted’s a wrong ’un, my life is a mess? And then last year, in the refuge, she’d been scanning the obituary pages as she did every day, looking for Ted, and read: Ralph Green. Died after a short illness. Gone to join his beloved Shirley. Rest in peace.
She’d had no idea her mother had passed, let alone her father, and so just like that, when she was half expecting to become a widow, she’d become an orphan. All of which reminds her that she should contact Johnny. He would have read about them both, wanted to tell her. But if she tells him where she is, he’d only have to tell one other person and that person might tell another person. And before too long someone would let slip something to someone and on it would go until her whereabouts reached Ted. Not yet then. She’ll drop Johnny a line soon. When she’s up to it. Like Pauline said, no rush.
She closes the bathroom cabinet. In the rusted mirrored door, the face she’s tried to avoid flashes in the cold light: bluey-white, purple bags under red-rimmed eyes. She pinches her nose, pulls it from left to right. It still hurts where Ted held her under the water. He must have broken it. Behind her, the wallpaper curls away from the wall. Mould grows black on the horrid little window frames. This bathroom is like her: wrecked, rotten, bits flaking off. She turns from her reflection and switches off the light.
In her bedroom, she looks out of the window. No one about. Not even a gang of kids. They’ll be on the scrubland behind the Spar or sat in the railway sidings smoking funny stuff, sniffing glue or whatever it is they do. Graham will be drawn to them, she knows that much.
She lies down in the bedding Tommy brought. The floor is hard. The quilt smells of Pauline’s house. She presses it to her nose and breathes it in. On the bedroom ceiling, the naked bulb grows out of the gloom, hanging on its wire like despair. She must get some shades, even paper ones. Her eyes prickle and she presses her fingertips to them.
Home. She misses her home. Her kitchen, her lounge, her bathroom. Her bathroom was her haven: soft apricot, spotless, clean towels, lovely soaps. And with Ted so often out, she was able to take a bath more or less when she wanted. Ted wasn’t bad all the time. It was just the drink and what it did to him. He could still make them all laugh when he was in the right mood, and the kids loved him. The kids loved him and she stole them from him. He would be worse without them, lost. And if they hadn’t left, Graham wouldn’t have retreated into that terrible silence. A stuttering boy is better than one who doesn’t talk at all. She can’t remember when he last made a joke. She should face facts, get back home and fix what she had instead of lying here with her shoulder blades knocking against the floor. If she had anything about her, anything at all, she’d pack up and go. Things would be different now that Ted had had the shock of her actually upping and leaving, had had a chance to see what he had to lose. They could get some help for him, have counselling, be a family again, instead of this, this mess.
‘Ted,’ she whispers, picturing herself walking through the door, Ted all tearful and sorry. Carol, oh Caz, I’m so sorry. I love you, Caz, come here.
She sits up, eyes stinging in the fuzzy half-light. With the cash Pauline left, she could go back. While the kids are at school, she could take the bus. If she goes on her own, they could talk things through. He’s in a bad way, she knows that from what Pauline won’t say. He’ll be so sorry now. She’s never left him like that, and now he knows that she will, that she can, he’ll be different. She’ll go to him. They can be a family, start again. She has to try. She owes it to the kids.
Fifteen
Richard
1992
The three men Richard speaks to that morning are candid; their stories pour from them like polluted streams. Andrew used to chide him about so many things – his silence, his reticence, his passivity – but he always told him he was a good listener. And listen is what Richard has done, for hours. The men fascinate him. They pain him, fill him with melancholy and hope, disgust, love. Some of them, he knows, are capable of terrible violence. Some of them, it seems, are no more than hapless, daft.
He is about to return to the office when the boy from earlier appears at the door.
‘Hello?’ Richard says.
The lad gives a perfunctory nod. ‘G-Graham G-Green.’
‘All right,’ Richard replies carefully. ‘I have a Graham Watson here. Could that be you?’
He nods again. ‘I go by G-Green. I p-p-p-prefer it.’
‘Graham Green. Like the author. Does your surname have an e on the end?’
The lad narrows his eyes and shakes his head, as if he has no idea what Richard is talking about. It was a stupid thing to say. Richard resolves to do better.
‘Come in,’ he says. ‘Don’t be shy.’
The young man steps inside, stops, seems to wonder about turning away, then appears to change his mind again and shambles across the room. He sits down on the plastic chair opposite Richard. Stands up, moves the chair back a little and sits down again. He coughs, glances at Richard, rubs his hands on his knees as if to wipe the sweat from his palms. His upper lip looks conspicuously bare, as if he has recently shaved off a moustache, and close up, he appears to be somewhere in his twenties. Around ten years younger, give or take, than Richard. There is a scar under his left eye.
Richard holds out his hand. ‘Richard,’ he says. ‘Pleased to meet you, Graham.’
‘All right?’ His accent is strong Liverpudlian. He doesn’t acknowledge Richard’s hand, choosing instead to look over to the window, though the blinds are down.
Richard retrieves his hand and wedges his fingers under his Bible. ‘I’m well, thanks. How are you?’
Graham gives a mirthless laugh. ‘I’m very w-well, thank you f-for asking.’ The g on the end of ‘asking’ is hard, a scathing consonant, if such a thing is possible. He glances at Richard, meeting his eye for a second. The short flash of a smile.
Richard returns the smile. He had planned to ask the usual ice-breaking questions, questions that he learnt on the counselling course and which he has barely needed all day, but as he frames them in his mind – What brings you here today? What’s on your mind? – they sound inane, h
is every word and gesture weighed down by the absurdity of the context. An absurdity pointed out moments ago by Graham Green himself.
The room hums, a cocoon of quiet within the larger continuous din of the prison. It is difficult to surrender to the silence after the garrulous men of the morning. Richard tries to get comfortable in his hard chair, to no avail. Seconds pass. He waits for eye contact, which doesn’t come. Closing his fingers around the spine of the Bible, he wonders how to proceed. He appears to have met someone who finds talking more difficult even than he himself does. And yet this man has come here to talk.
‘Why Green?’ he asks, for the sake of asking something. ‘Why not Watson?’
Graham stares at his legs, draped in grey prison-issue sweatpants. Richard tries not to think about the irony of inmates dressed in this uniform of leisurewear.
He is about to ask another question when Graham says, ‘Green is m-my m-mum’s m-maiden n-name. We w-went back to it after my f-f-f … after my f-f-f …’ His eyelids hover, almost close. Richard holds his breath, wills the word out of the boy. ‘After my d-dad d-died.’
A wave of relief and pity washes over Richard. How much it costs this poor man to speak. The death of his father is the first thing he has mentioned. Richard makes a mental note.
‘I’m n-n-not Catholic or n-n-nothin’.’ Graham stares at the floor. Beneath the brutal black spikes of hair, his scalp is grey.
‘That’s OK,’ Richard replies. ‘God doesn’t mind who or what you are.’
Graham looks up, that screwed-up expression again. He stops short of meeting Richard’s eye before looking back down to his knees. ‘I d-don’t b-b-believe in G-God, if you want the truth, like.’
A clanging sound rings through the ceiling. Startled, Richard ducks his head into his shoulders and looks up. Above them, someone whistles tunelessly. The whistle recedes. Richard refocuses his attention on Graham. The uninvited noise seems, oddly, to have settled the young man, but Richard’s instinct tells him he must not rush him, not at any cost.