by Annie Murray
‘Mom all right?’ Ian’s thoughts seem to have travelled in the same direction.
‘Yeah. She is . . .’
His eyebrows lift at the reservation in my voice. At last our eyes meet for a second. ‘I mean, she is. But she’s frailer, isn’t she? Shaky. It was a job for her just holding her mug today. It’s a good thing we’re nearer – specially as I’m not at work at the moment.’
‘Yeah.’ Ian puts down his knife and fork, the plate cleared, picks up his can of lager. ‘It’s a godsend, that is. You do a lot for her.’
‘She’s more than worth it,’ I say.
He gives me a quick, nervous smile, then looks away.
Now we are in the new house, things are supposed to ease, to click into something different.
Our old pine bed came with us but I bought a new duvet cover, patterned with spring meadow flowers in green and yellow. I felt guilty going shopping, as if I was being trivial and letting Paul down – again. The top of the chest of drawers in the corner looks unnaturally tidy without the normal piles of bits and pieces that never quite get cleared away.
When I come out of the ensuite bathroom, already in my nightshirt, Ian’s sitting on the side of the bed, bare to the waist, staring ahead of him as if he’s forgotten what he was supposed to be doing. I stop in the doorway and he doesn’t seem to hear me. The sight of him catches my breath. Ian. My husband. He doesn’t usually just sit like this and it’s as if I haven’t seen him, not looked at him, for years and years.
We’re middle-aged, I realize suddenly. We know in theory, of course. Both of us are on the wrong side of fifty-five – though me only by a few months. Ian’s fifty-eight now. During these two hellish years, we have noticed nothing, forgotten ourselves, each other.
Now in front of me I see a fleshy man, sallow-skinned, with good muscle tone. Yet in both his face and body I can see a look of such extreme weariness, a sort of inner exhaustion, that I start to panic. Is he ill?
He senses me looking and turns his head. So many times when we were young, those eyes used to fix on me full of Ian’s mischief, his desire. ‘A pair of brown eyes,’ I used to sing to him, tumbling into his arms. Now he doesn’t seem to see me, as if he’s staring straight through me. Just for a second he focuses, then, as if looking into a light that’s too bright, he closes down again, warily. I feel so alone, more alone than if he wasn’t here.
‘Ian?’ My voice comes out high, begging almost.
Our eyes meet for several seconds before he looks down. It feels as though we have both been pushed right out to the edges of ourselves, away from each other, as if we are moving round a vortex that has opened in the ground between us. We exist day to day, apart. But now he seems so afraid of me and I feel terribly guilty, until I realize how frightened I feel as well.
I force myself forward, barefoot, towards this stranger. It seems to take great effort, like pushing through some opposing force. I stop in front of him, just beyond the V of his legs. He looks up at me and I try to fix him, to keep him with me.
‘I’m sorry.’
Pain fills his face. For a moment I think he is going to cry, but instead he just wipes his hand across his forehead. ‘Yeah. Me too.’
Even now, his voice is flat. I feel flat as well. Neither of us can reach our feelings. What I want, I realize, desperately want, is for us to make love. It’s hardly happened, since Paul. I can barely remember when we last did anything physical – so few times in the past two years. Isn’t this somewhere where we can find each other again, be close, lose the terrible barriers between us?
I step closer, between his thighs. Putting my hands on his shoulders, I start to stroke him, his neck, his strong, straight hair, clean after his shower earlier. I can see his scalp showing through where the hair has thinned on top. There are only a few white hairs among the dark brown even now. Ian closes his eyes. All at once his arms are round me, pulling me to him so he can rest his cheek against my belly. My hands move down his back, stroking, soothing, myself as much as him. Gradually I slide down until I’m kneeling in his embrace, adjusting my arms under his so I can hold him and his arms tighten round my shoulders.
‘D’you mean it?’ he whispers. He’s frightened to give in to it. We’ve both switched off the physical part of ourselves for so long and now it’s hard to trust it.
‘Yes,’ I say, trying to, wanting comfort and closeness and release.
‘It’s just . . . It’s been so long. I hope I can . . .’
We start to tip back on the bed, trying to find echoes of our old rhythms, awkward. I push up on one arm, looking down at him, bend to kiss his cheek, then his lips, deeply, as if breathing life into him. But he is passive, not like my old Ian, as if something in him is frozen and he can’t allow himself to trust or let go.
Tears sting my eyes. I have to break through this somehow, have to save us. Reaching out my hand I start to caress his thigh, very slowly, circling my hand, keeping my eyes fixed on his.
We make love, but I do not cry and do not come. Ian, at first seeming to hold back, suddenly lets go in a frantic way, moving almost roughly in me as if he has to prove something. Afterwards we lie silently in each other’s arms for a while. It’s sad and I still feel alone – none of the talking or laughter of closeness that we used to have. But it is warm and I have to seize my mind and stop it going down that frozen track where everything is about loss.
We are both still here, we have each other’s warmth – it’s something.
Four
Waking in a new room again there is the feeling of strangeness. But the next morning, I have energy and a thread of hope. Ian kisses me goodbye, stiffly, but at least he kisses me. And standing in the kitchen, absent-mindedly eating toast after he has gone, I remind myself that this is how the days go. On one I’ll be jumpy with an almost crazed energy, as if a crack into the future has opened, filled with light and possibility. The next, everything slams shut and I’m cast back into darkness – like yesterday afternoon – and can’t do a thing.
Today is a good day. Best make the most of it.
There are several boxes of things left to unpack, but I know that there is one that I am not going to touch. Paul’s things. A life in a box. I drag it along the hall, turning my mind away from the objects inside – our young man’s few possessions. Today I want to keep my energy. I will find a time for this, but today I push it into the cupboard under the stairs.
I spend the morning sitting on the carpet in the living room with Radio 2 on for company – some of the time. I keep the radio close to me and click it off if music comes on that’s too much for me. It’s progress being able to stand hearing anything. I pull things out of the other two big boxes. Books go on the waist-high shelves – cookbooks and a few favourite novels, Ian’s manuals on photography and DIY. A couple more cushions come to light, a small lamp with a shade to go in the hall, the book with phone numbers written in it.
At the bottom of the second box I find the photo albums: one brown, the other navy blue. I kneel with them resting on my legs, hands hesitating on the covers, thinking maybe I’ll put them under the stairs as well. How eager I was to fill these albums. I used to spend evenings arranging and rearranging the photos. Shared memories, the adoption people told us. It’s one of the most vital things in making a family. Build up lots of shared experiences you can all look back on. It’s how you bond as a family. And it was true.
If I open the first page of the blue one I know I’ll see the picture of Ian and me on the day we were finally allowed to bring Paul home. One of the advisors, a nice woman called Karen, offered to take it. Ian and I squatted down, Ian holding Paul sitting on his knees, his little legs dangling in his snowsuit. You can see Ian’s hands, which look huge holding Paul’s body, padded out by the little blue suit. Paul’s treacle-brown hair was all curls then. He was fourteen months old, barely even standing, and he sat perched there solemnly, not hostile, just unsure, too young to understand. But we were both beaming, hardly able to
believe it after all this time, both full of ecstatic, terrified joy.
And then on the next page and the next and all the others, that growing, smiling little boy . . . And in the brown album, more of the same. I can’t open them, but I don’t want to hide them under the stairs either, as if burying our whole life. I lay them sideways along the bottom of the bookshelf.
A papery clatter comes from the hall and I get up, stiff-legged, to look. A sheaf of garish leaflets on the door mat in a slanting patch of light. Ads for pizza delivery. Someone calls a greeting to the postman outside.
‘More flaming junk.’ I pick it up to go into the recycling box at the back and head off to put the kettle on.
‘Hello, Dorrie!’
Once again the door is unlocked.
‘Hello, love. Come in.’
‘Brought you a bit more fresh milk – it’s nicer than the powder, eh?’ In a rush of fondness, I go to kiss Dorrie’s cheek, soft as a rose petal. She seems a bit bemused by this as we’re not all over each other usually. The cat looks lazily up at me.
‘Nice of you to pop in.’
‘Course I’ll pop in. I can come every day for now – whenever you need anything. You can phone as well.’ It’s not as if I know anyone else in the area. It’s a relief to have someone to visit. ‘You all right?’ I keep my tone light.
‘Oh, I’m all right. As I’ll ever be, anyhow.’ She grins gamely. ‘I’ll be even more all right if you get that kettle on, bab. I’m not so quick off the mark these days.’
I fill the kettle, wash mugs and busy myself with tea-making. Despite the gas fire pumping out, Dorrie has a blanket over her knees, a fuzzy mohair thing in dusty blue. Sweep is curled on the mat in front of the fire as usual, nose tucked in.
Again, we sit each side of the fire. Dorrie’s armchairs are rather austere things, brown fabric and wooden arms, a bit like something out of a hospital. The faces gaze down at us from the photographs – my younger self, Ian, Paul . . .
‘Heard from Cynthia?’ I ask, for something to say.
Dorrie nods, cradling her mug. ‘She phoned as usual. They’re all right.’ Her hands look steadier today but she seems withdrawn, despite the warm welcome. Is she tired, I wonder, or is it something more?
‘Would you like me to get you any bits of shopping? I’m going up Sainsbury’s later.’
‘Oh, yes, please, bab. I’ve done a little list. Look – there. A couple of tins of food for His Majesty here –’ she nods at the basking cat – ‘and . . . well, you’ll see.’
A sheet of lined paper is on the table by the kettle.
We sit quiet for a moment, then Dorrie says, a little stiffly, ‘I don’t s’pose you’ve had time for any reading?’
‘Your memoir?’ I say, regretting that I haven’t got round to it.
Dorrie chuckles. ‘Oh, is that what it is?’
‘I’m sorry, Dorrie, I haven’t, I must confess. It’s been a bit busy.’
‘Don’t you worry – just a few of my meanderings,’ Dorrie says. ‘I just thought . . . Well, anyway, they’re not finished.’
There’s something in the way she says it.
‘How d’you mean?’
Dorrie strains to lean down and stroke Sweep, who rolls luxuriously on to his back. ‘’Ello, boy – ooh, you’re a lazy old thing, aren’t you? I just mean, I haven’t written all of it,’ she says, still looking down. ‘I only got so far, like.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘All right. Well, I’ll have a read. I’m looking forward to it.’
Dorrie straightens up and changing tack abruptly, says, ‘And what are you going to do with yourself, now you’ve got the house unpacked? You can’t spend your time sitting about with an old broiler hen like me.’
‘Oh, Dorrie!’ I manage a little laugh. ‘You’re so rude about yourself – I like your company! But yes – I’m going to go out and have a look around. Join something. Get my hair cut.’
‘Umm,’ Dorrie says, eyeing me. ‘Well, that’s a good idea.’
A quick online session turns up three hair salons within walking distance, the Maypole Dental Clinic and a promise of various classes in one of the church halls.
What I am trying to do is to see my guilt at having a life, at still being here, as a black cloud following me around. Several times a day now I find it hovering over me and I catch it in a big fisherman’s net and force it down into a box which I close and padlock shut. Life has to go on. Clichés have an annoying way of being true, whatever you might feel about it.
So in the afternoon I go out, squinting in the bright sunlight, nose cuddled into a scarf in the wind. The immediate neighbourhood is residential; road upon road of houses shoulder to shoulder, all built in the past forty years, many with their frontages completely covered in tarmac or paving slabs, mostly very neat and well kept up. But we are the last fringe at the south edge of Birmingham and once I’m on the main road, there’s a wooden fence on the other side and beyond it, farmland stretching into the distance. Narrow, rural roads leading off it have interesting names, like Dumblepit and Baccabox Lanes.
We’ve been here often enough to visit Dorrie, but we mainly went to her house, or occasionally to the park with Paul when he was small: even that feels a lifetime ago. I catch myself in the thought. A lifetime – Paul’s lifetime. But the unfamiliarity of much of the area is a relief.
I book an appointment in the first hairdresser’s I come to. They treat me kindly and manage not to look too disapprovingly at my straggly locks as if to say, Yes, well, it really is about time, isn’t it?
The church, a few streets away, is a modern brick building with a wooden-walled hall built on the side. I hesitate outside. I’ve never been a churchgoer and I’m not really sure what to do or how to behave with religion. But I’ve got to do it. What’s the worst that can happen? I haven’t come about religion – and they’re supposed to be Christians these people, aren’t they?
Something seems to be going on in the hall – some kind of sing-song. There are outer doors at the end which are standing open, and glass inner doors the other side of a little lobby, noticeboards on the walls and signs pointing to toilets.
As I go to look at the posters on the noticeboard, the piano starts up in the hall and the singing begins again. I vaguely recognize the song: something from the 1940s.
‘Yoga with Lauren,’ one poster says, showing an ink outline of a woman sitting in an improbable position. The class is at seven-thirty on a Tuesday evening. I can’t see myself turning out of an evening at the moment. It’s the days I need to fill. And the poster is intimidating.
I am just heading for a scruffier sheet of paper held on by rusting drawing pins, when someone comes out of the ladies’ toilet, an energetic-looking lady, probably in her late sixties with short, styled grey hair and a tomato-red jumper hanging long over dark blue, straight-legged jeans. She tugs the back edge of the jumper down in a businesslike fashion.
‘Hello, love – can I help you with anything?’
‘I’m just having a look . . .’ My voice seems faint and weak, which is suddenly how I feel. ‘I’m new to the area and I wondered about joining a yoga class.’
‘Ah – well, we can help you there. Day or evening?’ The woman has a vaguely bossy manner but is friendly and seems eager to help.
‘Day, I think.’
‘That,’ the woman says confidentially, ‘is a very good choice. So you see, here –’ she points at the first poster – ‘we have Lauren’s group. The Lycra Lot, we call them. All very accomplished.’ This is said drily, with a roll of the eyes. ‘And then, here, on a Tuesday morning, we have the other mortals – the Creak and Groaners.’
I can’t help laughing. ‘That sounds more like me.’
‘Yes – me too.’ She smiles. She’s not pushy about it, but kind. ‘I’m Sheila – I go to that class. It’s a very nice group, small, but perfectly formed. Kim who runs it is a lovely girl – used to be a midwife. Very caring. We meet most of the time except the school holidays.
And it’s not expensive – five pounds a session. We’ll be here this week, if you fancy it.’
‘Thanks – I might do that. I suppose I need a mat?’
‘Yes – I don’t think there are any spares although someone might be able to help you the first time. The supermarkets sometimes have them but buying one online’s the easiest, really.’
‘Oh. Right. OK.’ Sheila is evidently one of those silver-surfer types.
‘Best get back in.’ She nods towards the hall. ‘Singing for the brain. You know – dementia. Marvellous. They’ll want their tea soon.’ She makes another comical face as if to say, Woe betide me if we’re late with tea, and backs into the door to push it open. ‘Hope to see you on Tuesday.’
Five
It’s a strange feeling, getting back to the house, to those new rooms. Home is where you come back to over and over again. A place where you have to sleep and wake night after day after night until it is your known habitat. It all takes time, like building a nest, twig by twig. And home is somewhere visited by the people you know. As yet, not one familiar person has stepped inside except Ian and me – not even Dorrie. In the old days she would have been straight round. She was like that with our first house, having a good look and poke around, making suggestions.
I push the key into this strange lock, pressing on the white handle. Everything feels alien and that swelling feeling comes back. I breathe, trying to force it away. It’s going to take time. That’s what everyone says. Don’t I know it. It is two years and almost two weeks since I last saw my son. The past must recede further and further away – what choice is there?
And yet, since that one night, there come rip-tides of pain which can almost knock me down. Something, a tune, the thought of a key turning in a lock, a head of hair that looks like his from the back, can make me want to run screaming along the street. Look, look, I beg you – see all this that’s inside me! Take it away, help me! How could anyone tell, otherwise, just by looking at me, that I have a cauldron of agony in me, seething, threatening to boil up over the sides?