Mother

by S. E. Lynes

  ‘Chris, man,’ Adam said, jumping up as Christopher walked in. ‘Dark horse, where’ve you been all day?’

  ‘Christopher please. I prefer Christopher.’ Did he? Was that true any more? Force of habit had made him say it, nothing more. ‘I’ve been… out.’

  ‘Out, eh? Why aye, man. What’s her name?’ Adam laughed.

  Christopher envied it, this laugh that seemed to live permanently on his room-mate’s rather pink, generous lips.

  ‘Oh, nothing that exciting, I’m afraid.’ Christopher sat on the bed, crossed his legs and recrossed them, before giving up and standing once again. He thrust his hands in his pockets, wondered what he could find to ask his room-mate about.

  ‘Lectures go all right?’ was what came to him, after a moment.

  ‘Skived the five o’clock,’ said Adam. ‘You bloody art students don’t know you’re born. We’re slaves compared to you.’ He lengthened the word slaves, rolled his head like a wolf howling at the moon when he said it.

  ‘I’m not exactly an art…’ The words fell away. An entire day off campus and he had missed but one lecture, it was true.

  ‘Valuable drinking time is being missed, Chris, man. Christopher, sorry. Speaking of which, you don’t fancy a pint, do you, by any chance? It is almost Friday.’

  ‘It is Friday.’

  ‘That’s what I said. Friday. Holy crap, is it? Jesus, where did the week go? Come on, you didn’t come out last weekend, and I’m not letting you get away with it this time. The books can have a night off, eh, what do you say?’

  Adam’s face was set in an expectant expression Christopher thought might be mischief. Going for a pint would be a normal thing to do, he thought. It was what men who knew who they were did, men who were not sticklers for the minor alteration of names, men who even had nicknames like Jonesy or Budgie or Bones. Now was no time to admit he had never seen the inside of a pub. Now was the time to come off the substitutes’ bench and claim his place in the team.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘As it’s Friday.’

  ‘Great.’ Adam looked him up and down. ‘I’ll lend you some decent jeans.’

  * * *

  Adam was already striding ahead. His hair pushed thick against his coat collar, orange as the vitamin C tablets Christopher’s mother had made him chew on winter mornings when he was a child. Shoulders high, head down, hands deep in his donkey-jacket pockets, he hugged himself against the cold. Christopher had not worn Adam’s trousers – they were too short and too small, a fact obvious just from holding them against himself. Adam had volunteered to ask around but, mortified, Christopher had said no.

  ‘It’ll be dark anyway,’ Adam had said. ‘But tomorrow we’re going into town and sorting you out with something decent. You will never get laid like that, man. Not unless she’s blind.’

  Now, Adam jabbering all the way, they headed out of the grounds and up Cumberland Road. Christopher made himself look up, notice, see. On the corner with Headingley Lane, the looming tower of City Church, its gothic arches, its blackened sandstone. He thought of Morecambe, with its semi-dilapidated funfair, its smooth pink promenade where he had roller-skated as a child, the grey sea, the pale miles of sand. Here in Leeds, sturdy sandstone walls ran along the pavements, giving the place a pleasing sense of a past solid and near enough to touch, to fall against. One that would not crumble.

  ‘We could take a bus, but it’s not that far to walk,’ Adam said, guiding Christopher to the right with a light touch to his elbow. ‘The Oak’s just down here, on the Otley Road. Work up a thirst. Put the pennies we save in the beer jar, eh?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Christopher. ‘I don’t mind walking.’

  On the way, Adam filled him in on his week. He had lectures pretty much all day, he said. Went straight to the library afterwards, knocked off the old homework, then hit the pub around nine. This was why Christopher hadn’t seen him – at least not in the evenings. He wondered where he ate, if not in the halls canteen, and how he afforded it. He didn’t appear to take his breakfast at the halls either. Mornings, the two of them had settled into a routine of grunted greetings, Christopher making his way down to breakfast, Adam – a shambles in a rather incongruous paisley silk robe – to the showers.

  The Original Oak was crowded – Christ, it’s heaving, Adam said – and so hot, Christopher’s glasses steamed up the moment they stepped inside. The thick air made his eyes sting and he blinked over and over, almost glad of his momentarily opaque lenses. Slowly his glasses cleared. The place was full of students – distinguishable by their scruffy clothes, the bold burgundy and white of Leeds University scarves on some of them, and their age too. He wondered how they had the money to drink, to smoke, on the maintenance grant before remembering that of course not all of them would have such a thing – that it was their parents who were paying. There was no one Christopher recognised from his course or from the halls, but then since his arrival, he had been mostly lost in daydreams.

  Adam, the ends of his fingers dipped into the tight pockets of his faded denim jeans, was looking around intently as if to take some sort of inventory, and rocking back and forth on his heels.

  ‘So I guess we just go to the bar?’ said Christopher.

  ‘That is where they sell the beer, mate. You have been in a pub before, haven’t you?’

  ‘Of course. Lots of times.’

  Adam made no move.

  ‘What would you like to drink?’ Christopher said, after a moment.

  ‘Very kind of you to offer, sir. A gin fizz… no, a dry martini, shaken not stirred.’

  ‘Dry martini. Right.’ Christopher took a step towards the bar.

  ‘Hold it!’ Adam caught him by the arm. ‘I’m kidding. Jesus! Who do you think I am, James Bond? I’ll have a pint of Tetley’s, if you please, and a packet of pork scratchings if you can stretch to it.’ He turned and strode towards the window, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out his packet of cigarettes.

  Christopher stood a moment, fighting off nascent panic. At the thought of going to the bar, his chest constricted. He had hoped to watch Adam, see how it was done, and was overcome now by something else, something darker, like anger but not anger – not exactly. His father came into his mind, coming home late one night, soundlessly placing his tool bag on the kitchen table like a burglar, creeping across the linoleum in his stockinged feet. Christopher, no older than ten, up for a glass of water, had watched the pantomime of him from the kitchen door.

  ‘Hello, Dad,’ he had whispered, only to see his father leap into the air, clapping himself on the chest.

  ‘Sweet Mary and Joseph, Christopher, what the dickens are you doing there, son?’

  His father’s pub was the Time and Tide, near the bay. He went every Friday after work – payday. He had done this ever since Christopher could remember. Why had his father not taken him, once he came of age? All right, so Christopher did not know how to fix a broken flush or fit a tap, had little time for The Sun newspaper and the shouting headlines his father favoured, but would it have been so terrible to spend an hour drinking beer, as men, as father and son? He, Christopher, would have been so much more comfortable now, had his father done this small thing. Perhaps, he thought then, this ritual had failed to happen due to the lack of rope tethering one flesh generation to the next, the lack of blood. That his brother Jack would be taken to the Time and Tide the moment the icing on his eighteenth birthday cake had set, Christopher had no doubt.

  Steeling himself, he approached the bar. There was a cigarette machine on the right, near the Gents. He considered buying some, had noticed that Adam smoked Players No. 6, but had no idea of brand or strength; the passed-round fags behind the school lavvies another ritual in which he had not been included. The barman was dropping change into the hand of another man, young enough to be a fellow student. Christopher raised his eyebrows, then, on seeing the barman engage with a bearded chap at the far end, coughed and studied his feet.

  ‘Yes, sir, what can
I get you?’ The barman appeared before him.

  Christopher felt himself blush to the roots of his hair, but, eyes fixed to the dark wood of the bar, pressed on. ‘Yes. Thank you. May I please have two pints of Tetley’s beer and two packets of pork scratchings, please, if you have them?’

  ‘Right you are, sir.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you kindly.’

  And like that, it was done. The tightness in his chest eased. It was with some small shock that he witnessed the exchange of a pound note from his own hand for two cool pints of ale, snacks and a little change. He pocketed the change, hung the two packets of scratchings from his mouth and, fighting the urge to grin at his small and private victory, carried the drinks over to Adam.

  He found his room-mate sitting between two women on a sofa near the window at the front of the pub. Both women had long straight brown hair; one wore flared jeans and what his mother called one of them pouffy blouses, the other had glasses – hexagons rimmed in thin gold – and was dressed in denim dungarees and a tight brown T-shirt. Her eyebrows were no more than thin lines, the lenses in her glasses looked to be tinted, but only a little, and behind them her eyes were dark – and looking directly at Christopher. His face grew hot, and for one horrifying moment he imagined upending the glasses and pouring beer all over the table.

  ‘Christopher, so glad you could finally join us,’ said Adam.

  Christopher set down the drinks. Join them? Wasn’t he already part of the arrangement? Whatever, Adam lunged forward and grabbed one of the beers, pushing the glass against his open mouth. He drank deeply. So deeply that when he set down his glass, half the pint had gone, industrially suctioned into the tank of his belly. He wiped the back of his mouth with his hand and said, ‘Cheers, man.’

  All this happened in seconds.

  Christopher was about to speak but could not think of anything to say. He realised he was still standing and so slid into the armchair opposite. He picked up his own glass and sniffed it, smelled malt but in the same moment realised to his shame that this drink sniffing would not be considered normal behaviour. He sniffed again, more loudly this time and not near the glass, as if his nose were running a little after the outdoors. After a second or two, when the interval felt right, he took a sip. The foam tickled his top lip and he licked it away. The cool beer washed down his throat. The taste was neither sweet nor savoury, he thought, taking another short gulp. Not bitter either, as the name suggested. Creamy, perhaps, a taste of yeast or bread, yet sharper, and liquid obviously.

  Adam had taken off his coat and his Aran sweater, and the tight black T-shirt he wore underneath revealed him to be thin and taut. He lit a cigarette for both the women, then lit his own and shook the match.

  ‘Shouldn’t light three fags with one match.’ He winked at the women. ‘Bad luck. Comes from the trenches, get your head blown off. Anyway, Christopher, let me introduce you to these two lovely ladies.’

  ‘Women,’ said the one in the glasses, once she’d taken the cigarette from her mouth and blown the smoke towards the ceiling.

  Adam raised his hands. ‘Sorry. Women.’ He slapped the back of his own hand. ‘No more condescending patriarchy bullshit from you, boy.’

  ‘I’m Alison Jones,’ said the one without the glasses, ignoring Adam. ‘And this is Angela Greaves. Angie. We’re both reading English. Pleased to meet you…’

  The women seemed educated – they had that sound to their vowels. Christopher was about to introduce himself, say what he was ‘reading’, when Adam spoke again.

  ‘And this luscious god of a man is Christopher Harris. He’s tall, as you can see, he’s reading history so he must love the past, but don’t call him Chris because he doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Hello,’ Christopher said. ‘Delighted to meet you both.’ He held out his hand, as his mother had taught him to do. The first woman, Alison, shook it, then exchanged glances with her friend and smiled. He wondered what that meant, that smile, if anything.

  ‘Christopher,’ said Adam, picking up his already empty pint glass and wiggling it. ‘Are you going to offer these women a drink or what?’

  ‘Oh golly. Of course, so sorry.’

  ‘Actually, I’ll have another while you’re there. This one seems to have gone down without touching the sides.’

  * * *

  Adam did eventually, as Alison put it, break the seal on his wallet, adding that he should be careful he didn’t kill a family of spiders just by opening it. Perhaps feeling slighted and wishing to prove himself generous, he added food to his turn: two packets of KP peanuts, which he threw on the low table, announcing, ‘Dinner,’ with a stifled belch. He did keep the conversation going, however, asking everyone how they’d celebrated the Queen’s Jubilee during the summer. To much appreciative giggling from the women, he told the story of the disaster of a street party in his road in which two of his neighbours had come to blows over an egg-and-spoon race, and a kid had hit himself in the face with a Swingball bat and had had to be taken to hospital.

  ‘Wrong choice of uni though,’ said Alison, once the laughter had died down. The statement appeared designed to elicit a question, perhaps from Adam, who was by now apparently glued to her side.

  ‘How can you say that?’ he obliged. ‘You’ve met me now, what’s wrong about that?’ He grinned.

  ‘Meeting you’s one thing,’ said Alison. ‘It’s him I don’t want to meet.’

  ‘The Ripper,’ Angie qualified. ‘Two women killed since we finished sixth form. One of them last month – that Jean Jordan. It’s terrifying.’

  ‘They’re prozzies though, aren’t they?’ said Adam. ‘Don’t think he goes for ladies like you two – sorry, women.’

  ‘Prostitutes are women.’ Angie shot Adam a narrow look thick with disdain. ‘And anyway, the one in June wasn’t a prostitute. You know, this is the reason why the police aren’t getting on top of it. This they’re only working girls bullshit. You watch, he’ll kill someone you’d refer to as a normal woman and there’ll be all hell to pay. It’s sexist bullshit, the whole thing.’

  Bullshit was the word of the evening, it seemed. Having never heard the term before outside American television dramas, Christopher enjoyed hearing the women say it. Bullshit. The word made him want to cheer and laugh. Fly, even. But the topic of the murderer seemed to have made them all rather serious.

  ‘We’re like prisoners,’ said Alison after a moment. ‘We’re having to organise ourselves into groups just so we can go to the pub. It’s ridiculous. We need a comprehensive minibus service. I daren’t even take a taxi.’ She looked at all of them in turn. ‘I mean, what if he’s a cabbie?’

  Talk slowly returned to the safer ground of music. Alison became more and more engrossed in Adam’s apparently encyclopaedic knowledge of bands. In wonder, Christopher watched his new friend’s arm manoeuvre its way around her shoulder, watched him break the flow only to laugh as her head flew back in amusement at something he whispered into her ear. Christopher’s own head felt strange: as if all the internal parts of it had come loose – his teeth, his tubes, his tongue – and were sliding about inside every time he moved. He worried he had become silent.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Angie was looking at him, still with the expression of ironic amusement she had worn at the beginning of the evening. Her eyes were brown, he thought. Like his. ‘You’ve gone quite white, you know. Green actually.’

  The urge to vomit came then, as if in response.

  ‘Excuse me.’ He stood, but stumbled. His head spun, the loose components no longer rattling but suctioned fast to the walls of his head, like teenagers on the wheel of death back home. A pressure at his elbow. Angie, two-handed, was steering him through the thick smog towards the doors.

  ‘Just keep putting one foot in front of the other,’ she said, and it seemed to Christopher that her low voice was kind. ‘That’s it. You’re doing really well. Soon be there.’

  Outside, the fresh air hit him like cold water. He felt it splash
on his forehead and down the collar of his shirt.

  ‘My coat,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got it here,’ said Angie, urging him to sit on the pavement.

  ‘I’m going to meet my mother.’ He felt the pavement, cold under his buttocks.

  ‘Oh yes, what, tomorrow?’

  ‘No, not tomorrow. One day. Never mind.’ He sighed, pushed his head into his hands. Possibly his imagination, but it seemed that Angie had her arm around him. Then not. She lifted his arm and he felt his jacket being coaxed onto his body, the warmth as it lay across his back. The need to be sick abated.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Not used to this, are you?’ he heard her say.

  ‘Yes,’ he protested. ‘Just haven’t eaten today, thassall.’

  ‘Do you think you could eat something? There’s a chippy not far away.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s kind, but no. Not chips. Where are you from, by the way? I missed it earlier.’

  ‘Blackpool.’

  ‘You don’t sound like you’re from there.’

  ‘Ah, no, well I went to school… elsewhere. But my family home is there.’

  ‘I’m from Morecambe,’ he said. His own voice struck him as sad. ‘We have illuminums… illuminames… you know, lights. Like Blackpool. Down along the prom.’ Watching from the back of the car as a child, thighs stuck with sweat to the black vinyl seat, his siblings, in their separate world, scrapping over something or other. The cold of the window pressed against his nose, rainbow colours haloed against the dark Atlantic sky.

  ‘Oh yes, Blackpool Illuminations,’ said Angie.

  ‘Angie,’ he said. Angie. She was lovely, he thought. But she might be mocking him.

  Angie helped him up. Her hands were soft, her fingernails pink as potted shrimps on the ends of her long thin fingers.

  ‘Thank you, Angie. Angel Angie.’

  ‘Oopla, that’s it. Watch your step.’

  He stopped. ‘Angie, this is all wrong. I should be walking you home.’

  ‘And here was I thinking you were different from your friend.’