by S. E. Lynes
Steeling herself, she unlocks the bathroom door and goes out to face him. He is still on the landing, waiting. She notices now that he has two mugs of tea in one hand – his knuckles have scabbed over – and a folded copy of the Mirror in the other. He looks fresher for a few hours’ sleep. The hair on his forearms is the colour of wheat.
‘You’ve been for a paper?’ she says.
He nods. ‘Popped to that Spar shop down the road. Got bacon and eggs and stuff for a fry-up.’
‘You’ve been for food? For us?’
He nods again, gestures with the mugs towards the bedroom door. Understanding, she leads the way into her room.
‘How d’you get back in?’ she asks him.
‘Found the key on the side in the kitchen.’ He hands her a tea.
‘You’ve made me a cup of tea as well?’
‘Aye.’ He looks at her blankly, as if he hasn’t understood the question. She pictures him in the kitchen, opening cupboards to find mugs, tea bags, sugar, trying different drawers to locate the teaspoons. And that’s nothing compared to going all the way to the shop. All for her.
‘Jim, listen,’ she says, glancing towards the bag, back to him.
He is leaning against the window ledge, looking out of the window. He has on a white T-shirt that has seen better days, grey jogging bottoms and pinkish woolly socks. She realises she’s never seen him in trousers until now. He doesn’t look like a man who would have a gun. And if she asks him about it, he will know she’s been rummaging in his bag. He’s so kind, so open. But then, just like anyone, he could turn. She doesn’t know him. She doesn’t know him at all.
‘Where’s your kilt?’ she says.
He turns to her and leans on the radiator. ‘Didn’t fancy waltzing through this place in it, like. Not in broad daylight.’
‘I can see that.’ It’s chilly. She sits on the floor and pulls the duvet over her legs. It’s strange, after their time in the hotel, after last night, to feel self-conscious, but now that the day has dawned, she does. ‘When did you get your jogging bottoms then?’
‘I came in before …’
‘You came in here?’
‘Yeah, sorry. Is that OK?’
‘Yes. So – what? Was I asleep?’ Had he watched her? Had her mouth been open, dribble running down her chin?
‘Dead to the world.’ He taps the radiator. ‘Heating’s coming on – did you set the timer?’
‘Tommy did it for us.’
‘Good man.’ He joins her on the floor. Both of them sit with their tea, propped up by the wall – an imitation of being in a proper bed.
‘I put one sugar in,’ he says. ‘Just guessed. Hope that’s OK.’
‘Thanks. I seem to like it better with a bit of sugar since … these days.’
‘Well, it’s good for shock.’
She blows on the tea and draws the top layer into her mouth. ‘What time is it?’
‘Half nine.’
‘You’re joking!’ She makes to get up.
‘Carol, relax, man. It’s Saturday.’ He pulls her gently back. ‘Christ, you’re like a hen in a hot girdle.’ Under the covers, his hand looks for hers and finds it, holds it tight. ‘You’re all shattered, I bet.’
Here was a man who made tea, who did not expect it to be made for him, brought to him. Here was a man who bought food, which he seemed intent on cooking. Here was a man who saw tiredness that wasn’t his own.
‘I’m fine,’ she manages.
‘You can’t get that shite past me, so don’t even try.’
She rests her head against the wall for support. It’s true, she is not fine, but she is better with him here. If only she hadn’t looked, hadn’t seen inside his bag.
Jim blows on his tea and tries to sip it. ‘Jesus-arse, how can you drink it so hot?’
‘Asbestos gob.’ She takes a slurp to prove it, then worries she’s drunk it like a man.
He rests his head against the wall, like her. She waits for him to speak again.
‘Do you want me to stay for a bit?’ he says. ‘Help you get straight. Or not?’
Help you get straight. She will have to tell him she wants no violence, not in her name. Tears prick her eyes. She nods briskly, unable to talk.
‘A day or two, then? We don’t need to think beyond that. I’ve even brought my power tool.’ He nods towards his kitbag, then wiggles his eyebrows at her. ‘And not the one under the kilt.’
Two fat tears roll down her cheeks.
‘Hey,’ he says softly. ‘I know it wasn’t the best joke in the world, but there’s no need to cry.’ He squeezes her hand.
She sips her tea. His words sink in.
‘What d’you mean, your power tool?’ she asks, after a moment.
He hands her his mug and reaches over to his bag. As he does so, some foggy understanding of what she saw in there begins to dawn. But he is already holding up what she thought was a—
‘Oh for crying out loud,’ she says. ‘I thought that was a gun.’
His face breaks into an expression of childlike joy. ‘You’re joking? It’s a drill. Black and Decker don’t make guns, you numpty.’
A minute ago, she was almost crying. Now she’s laughing. She is all over the shop. She’s halfway to crackers. A gun. Wait until Pauline hears that one. He’s from Scotland, not the piggin’ Bronx, Carol hears her say. Who did you think he was, Al friggin’ Capone?
‘I’ll get started on that bathroom today,’ Jim is saying. ‘You’ve made a right arse of it.’
‘That’s two arses I’ve counted,’ she replies, recovering. ‘There’s a lady present, you know.’
‘Oh aye? Where’s she, then?’
He puts the drill on the floor, crouches down in one swift move and pushes his head under the covers. Her belly tenses as he pulls up her vest and stretches it over his head.
‘There’s definitely a lady here.’ His lips tickle her skin. He burrows his face in her stomach, his stubble the sweetest scratch.
A scuffling sound comes from the next bedroom.
‘Jim,’ she whispers, lifting the duvet. ‘The kids.’
The door opens.
‘Mum?’ Nicola, bleary as a guinea pig.
Shit. Carol pulls the quilt up to her chest while Jim struggles to get his head out of her top. His breath comes in warm bursts on her abdomen; he grips her thighs as he pulls himself free. This is not how she wanted to do the introductions; it isn’t right. Why else has she bothered to make him sleep in the lounge? All she’s done is forget herself for five sodding seconds.
‘Mum,’ says Nicola. ‘Whose are them feet?’
Two fluffy heels stick out of the end of the bed: Jim’s stupid pink socks.
‘Mummy, who’s that?’
It’s a man with his hand between my legs, she thinks, trying to get his head out of my top. Jim moves his hand. She almost squeals. He lets his forehead drop onto her belly and she can tell he is giggling. Nicola is still looking at her, twirling from side to side. Bugger, bugger, bugger. Jim’s head appears, his shoulders. His arm shoots out.
‘Found it,’ he says. ‘My watch.’
She meets his eye, sees mischief. ‘Oh good. Thanks heavens for that, eh.’ She turns to her daughter. ‘This is Tommy’s cousin Jim.’
Jim smiles and rolls out from under the covers. Thank God he is dressed. ‘Hello,’ he says, grinning quite naturally. ‘You must be Nicola.’
‘Hello.’ Nicola looks at them both for a long while. ‘Were you doing sex?’
If there’d been tea left to spit, she would have hit the wardrobe with the spray. ‘Don’t be silly.’ Her mind flails. ‘Jim’s Tommy’s cousin.’ Oh, she’s just said that, and it’s not like it explains anything. ‘He had to sleep in the lounge, what with us having no spare room yet, and he just brought me a cuppa and then he lost his watch.’ She straightens her back. ‘Anyway, miss, what do you mean, sex?’
Jim is by the window. He snorts into his tea and takes a gulp.
‘OK
to drink now, is it?’ she says under her breath.
‘Just right.’
‘Come on,’ she says to Nicola, bolder. ‘What do you mean, missy?’
Nicola sways from side to side, smacks her lips and looks at the floor. When she finally speaks, it’s with her bottom teeth hooked over her top lip.
‘It’s when you kiss and cuddle and stuff.’
‘Is it now?’ Carol stands up and puts her cardigan around her shoulders.
‘Jim’s Tommy’s cousin.’ Bugger. Change the record, Carol. ‘He’s brought us some bacon and eggs from the Spar. How do you fancy that for breakfast? Eh? Bit of a treat? Bacon and eggs?’
‘Yeah!’ Nicola runs out and down the landing. ‘Gray!’ they hear her call out, exchanging a glance. ‘We’re having cooked breakfast. There’s a man called Jim here. He’s Tommy’s cousin. He talks funny.’
This last is delivered quietly, but they hear it all the same and it makes them both smile.
Carol pulls on her jeans and heads out onto the landing, where she almost crashes into Graham. She has to grab him by the arm to prevent a full collision.
‘Who’s here?’ He strains to look over her shoulder.
‘No one, love.’ Why did she say that?
He pushes past and continues into her room.
‘Wh-who are y-you?’ He’s standing, hands on hips, at the doorway. Beyond the black shape of his head, Jim runs a hand through his messy hair.
‘Graham, love. Hold your horses.’ She lays her hand on his shoulder, grips his waist so she can make her way round the side of him and back into the bedroom. If she can just get where he can see her, she can speak to him. ‘Jim’s come to give us a hand.’
Graham is not looking at her. He is staring at Jim. ‘We d-d-don’t need a h-hand.’
‘Love.’ She grabs for his arm, but he shakes her off.
‘Graham.’ Jim lifts his palms, spreads his fingers.
‘It’s OK, Jim.’ She puts her hand up to shush him. ‘Graham, look at me, love.’ Her son is too tall. Has he grown in the night? He won’t look at her. She has to get him to look at her. ‘Graham.’
He looks at her at last, but just as quickly to the floor.
‘Jim’s here to help us, love.’
‘I c-can look after us.’
She fights to find words. ‘You’ve done a brilliant job, you’re doing a brilliant job and I need you to carry on. I didn’t know Jim was coming; it’s not like I phoned him.’
‘S-s-so wh-why’s he h-here?’ He is still talking to the floor, tracing arcs back and forth across the carpet with his bare feet. His toenails want cutting.
‘I met him at Tommy and Pauline’s wedding. He’s from Scotland.’
Slowly Graham looks up, his head at an odd slant, like he’s cricked his neck. Come on, son, she thinks. Meet me halfway.
‘He was at the wedding,’ she carries on. ‘This is the chap who cut his leg, d’you remember me telling you? And I had to take him to hospital ’cos everyone else was plastered. I told you. And then when I got home, that was when your dad … that was when we, you know, left.’
Her cheeks burn. She’s using what happened to try to win her son round. No matter what she tries to say or do, the spectre of Ted invades it somehow. But there’s nothing to do but press on, cover her tracks. ‘I know you’ve not met Jim before, but that’s because he works on the rigs up in the North Sea. He only came down because of the wedding, and then I helped him with his leg, and so when he heard we were, you know, struggling a bit, he very kindly thought he could return the favour, like. When he’s not on the rig, he’s free, aren’t you, Jim?’
‘Graham,’ says Jim. ‘I’ll go right now if that’s what you want. It’s your house.’ He holds out his hand to shake. ‘But we can at least introduce ourselves properly, as men.’
‘H-how d-did he know we were h-here?’ Graham asks, ignoring Jim.
‘I don’t know,’ she lies. ‘Probably through Tommy and Pauline.’
‘I th-thought this was supposed to be a s-s-secret address.’
‘It is. But Tommy and Pauline know, don’t they? And Jim lives a long way from here and he doesn’t know your dad, so there’s no harm done.’
‘Tommy was only trying to help,’ Jim adds, joining her in the lie.
Her son unwinds by one microscopic turn. He raises his gaze as far as her chin. His neck straightens a bit, his hands drop to his sides, shift, find his pockets. Carol rubs his arm, dips her head to try to get him to look at her.
‘Eh? Love?’
He flicks his eyes up to hers.
Jim coughs into his arm, then shoots out his hand once more. ‘I’m Jim MacKay, anyway,’ he says. ‘Pleased to meet you, Graham.’
Even Jim’s friendliness confuses her now. She doesn’t know why, but it feels like he’s browbeating Graham in some way, forcing him to accept something he doesn’t want, forcing him to be a man, almost, when he is just a boy.
Still ignoring him, Graham raises his eyes again to hers. His dark stare bores through her, as if he’s speaking without words, sharing everything they both know, every covered bruise, every failure, every lie. No one knows her like he does – this is what he seems to be saying to her now. Will he know she’s just lied to him, covered up the truth as she has his whole life? Probably.
He takes his hands from his pockets, squares his shoulders and slowly turns away from her.
‘All right?’ He shakes Jim’s hand. He is no longer looking at her, but even from the side, it seems his face has hardened: his jaw clenched, his eyes smaller.
‘Now then.’ She claps her hands. ‘Shall I get some breakfast for us all? Jim’s been and fetched some bacon and eggs.’
Graham shakes his head. ‘Not hungry.’
‘Come on. Surely you can manage a bacon butty?’
‘Nah.’ He wrinkles his nose. She wants to pull him to her and hold him, but knows that, in front of Jim, he’ll push her away.
‘You love bacon butties,’ she coaxes, glancing at Jim, smiling an apology before turning back to her son. ‘Come on, love. They’re your favourite.’
Without a word, Graham walks out of the room. Instinct tells her to leave him, but she follows him down the landing. ‘Graham?’
He goes into his room and shuts the door. She wants to open it but instead stands with her fingers clasped over the door handle.
Something bad has just happened, she feels sure of it. But she doesn’t know what.
Twenty-One
Nicola
2019
I remember Jim coming to that house. He was not there when I went to bed, and in the morning, there he was. Mum told me I found them in bed together but that they weren’t up to anything, as she put it. I have no memory of that. I remember him from that time as a stranger who spoke in a funny voice, a big man with reddish-blonde hair, a man who was not our dad. His presence in the house made my mother happy but made my stomach hurt. I realise now that kids don’t like a lack of clarity. I had no idea who this person was nor what he meant to my mother. She said he was her friend. That didn’t make sense to me, but I was not sophisticated enough to know why. My mother had never had a male friend. Her one friend at the time was Pauline. I knew she hadn’t met a man or had a boyfriend while we’d been in the refuge, and I could not fathom how she could have met someone while she was married to my dad. My dad was so suspicious of her, so constantly malevolent, that she would never have dared have a male friend, let alone an affair. I only found out about what happened with Jim later, when I was an adult, and at that moment another small piece of my life fell into place along with the others.
While Jim was staying at the house, Graham came into my room to say goodnight and instead of going away immediately, like he usually did, he stayed. He had stopped talking by then, even to me. But perhaps Jim’s presence forced him back to me, however temporarily. Perhaps he, like me, was wondering what was going on. What is certain is that whatever the reason, I was thrilled. I idolised my b
rother, of course I did – he was six years older than me and had always been kind, not to mention fiercely protective. That night, with the muffled bass notes of my mum and Jim talking downstairs, Graham lay next to me on the sunlounger that was my bed, the two of us squashed up, spooning, me in a sleeping bag that smelled of Tommy and Pauline’s house.
‘You’re never at home anymore,’ I said to my brother in the dark. It was easy to say it because he was behind me. I didn’t have to look into his eyes.
He reached over and held my hand.
‘This isn’t my home,’ he said.
‘I know, but …’
‘Do you like Jim?’ he asked.
I shrugged. ‘I dunno. I don’t know him. He seems nice. And he does jobs. Dad never did jobs.’
Graham was silent.
‘D-do you miss Dad?’ he asked after a minute, squeezing my hand.
I nodded. ‘But I didn’t like it when he shouted. And … I didn’t like it when he hit her.’
Graham’s body tensed against mine. ‘How d-do you know about that?’
‘I just … I just know. And once, when I went in the bathroom, I saw Mum in the bath and she had this massive bruise on her leg and when I asked her how she’d done it she went all funny and said she’d bumped it on the sideboard and I could tell she wasn’t telling the truth.’
Again my brother fell silent.
‘He never hit you, though,’ he said after a moment. ‘He never hurt you, did he?’
‘No,’ I whispered, hot and tense with an urgent need to keep my brother with me as long as I could. ‘But he shouted. And he shouted at you. He was scary.’
‘He was.’ Graham held me tight. I wanted to ask him to play Name That Tune. I thought that maybe if I hummed a few notes, he might join in, try to guess the song. I knew I couldn’t, that he wouldn’t, but I hoped that we might be able to do it the next night or the next or one day soon like we used to before, when we lived at home. For now, it was enough that he was my big brother again, the one I could chat to about secret things all snuggled up in the dark.