by S. E. Lynes
‘What did I tell you?’ she said once she’d swallowed. ‘You are daft sometimes.’
He could not eat. The sight of her and all she meant had stopped his appetite.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, and to his mortification he felt his eyes prickle.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s delicious, but I suppose I’m not hungry.’
‘What did you have for lunch?’
‘That’s the thing. I didn’t eat lunch either.’ He laid his knife and fork on his plate. Suddenly the thought of food or wine made him feel sick. ‘I’m so sorry, but I feel very out of sorts. I think I’m going to have to go to bed.’
* * *
He did not sleep. How could he? How could anyone? When he did drift off, he saw Benjamin Bradbury, his assassin’s grin. Benjamin Bradbury, in his pale cotton slacks, pushing his way into Christopher’s home. Benjamin Bradbury, his hand flat against Christopher’s chest: I am Martin – get out of my way. Christopher watched himself, as if from a distance, disintegrate into black dust. The dust hovered a moment before dropping to the floor…
‘I am Martin.’
He was sitting up, drenched in sweat, breathing heavily. Who had said that? He looked around the room. There was no one. The voice had been his own. A moment later, Phyllis appeared at his door, her shoulders square and white beneath the thin straps of her cotton nightdress.
‘Are you all right, love?’ she said. ‘You were shouting.’
‘Sorry. Bad dream, that’s all.’
‘Shall I bring you some water?’
‘No, it’s OK. I’m OK.’
From the door, she blew him a kiss. ‘Sleep well, my love.’
He lay back, but his mind would not be still. What business had this smooth American, with his easy grin and firm handshake, what business had he to turn up like that out of nowhere and ruin people’s lives – ruin his, Christopher’s, life? The mistake was evidently at the convent. Nuns were women of God, not professional administrators. The people at the council had systems in place, procedures, bodies set up to deal with precisely this sort of thing. Samantha Jackson was the kind of woman who knew what she was doing. She had short grey hair, no-nonsense hair, efficient hair. She wore a suit.
But if he went to the council, they would contact the convent, they would contact the Registrar, they would contact Phyllis. They would contact Benjamin Bradbury and bring him crashing into the picture. A meeting would have to take place, all parties involved. No, no. That could not be allowed to happen. He would have to take matters into his own hands. In the meantime, he would be vigilant. Whatever communication came from Ben, he must intercept it.
At dawn, sore-eyed and punch-drunk with exhaustion, he went downstairs to the kitchen. If Ben delivered that letter, he could not afford for Phyllis to pick it up.
He was still in the kitchen when at eight he heard the upstairs toilet flush, heard the water run, the squeak of Phyllis’s bedroom door. He listened for her footsteps on the stairs, watched the kitchen door, waited for her to fill it. She did, her dressing gown open to reveal her thin white nightdress. She stumbled past him, ruffled his hair.
‘Your tea’s cold.’ She yawned as she spoke. ‘I’ll make a pot, eh? How’re you feeling?’
‘Not well,’ he said.
‘Still? Oh dear.’
The tap ran, the kettle boiled, the toast popped out of the toaster. She slid a fresh mug of tea across the table to him. ‘That’s no good. I was going to go over to your grandma and grandad’s today, was going to ask if you wanted to come with me.’
‘You go,’ he said. ‘I think I might go back to bed.’
He sipped his tea, hovering on the kitchen chair nearest the door, waiting for the crash of letters on the hall mat. If Ben had written back, he had to grab the letter before she saw it but without jumping like a gun dog. He was vaguely aware of Phyllis eating her breakfast, leaving the kitchen, the rushing of the shower. The post did not come. Minutes, maybe half an hour later, Phyllis was at the kitchen door once more, her eyes emboldened with eyeshadow, her lips pinky red, her brown hair pushed into its customary ponytail.
‘I’m off then, love, all right?’ She hesitated, then came forward and kissed him on the head. At the touch of her lips, he closed his eyes. Her perfume was flowery, a happy spring smell. ‘Keep warm. I’ll see you later.’
Still with his eyes closed, he listened for the swish of her shoes on the nylon of her tights, the rush of her coat sleeves, the jingle of her keys, the bang of the front door. The hollow trot of her footsteps receding down the drive to the street, where she’d parked her Nissan. And then – not quite silence. The hum of the fridge, the click of the heating as the radiators cooled.
At half past nine, Christopher was still in the kitchen, still in his dressing gown, on the chair near the door, when from the hallway came the rustle of post and the clank of the letter box. He stood stiffly. His body had grown cold and set and he half-limped down the hall. There was nothing from Ben – only bills, circulars and the like – and the momentary relief made him sigh. He climbed the stairs and washed at the bathroom sink, put on his clothes and came back downstairs. Feigning illness had, he thought, made him feel ill. He put a teaspoon of Nescafé into a mug and flicked the kettle switch.
Another clank. He turned to see the pale blue envelope drop onto the mat, skirt along it for a moment with a soft shush. He hurried through the kitchen and back into the hall. Through the textured glass of the front door, the black figure of a man distorted into pools. The pools separated, dispersed, disappeared. Ben. Christopher made to open the door but thought better of it. He picked up the letter and held it in his hands. Outside, a car revved, pulled away, the rise and fall of the gears then silence. He tore open the letter.
16 April 1981
Dear Phyllis,
I appreciate your reticence about seeing me. It is one hundred per cent understandable. But trust me, I have no desire to intervene in any way with your family. I met your older son, Christopher – he seems like a nice guy and I’m sure he treats you well. I’m not asking to move in or anything, I just want to make a connection with you, you who gave birth to me all those years ago. Life is a gift; I don’t take it for granted. I have that at least to thank you for.
I never really connected with my adoptive parents, you see. They are good people and they have been more than generous with me, and any problems I have had I could easily have had with my own flesh and blood. I could have been a better son to them. I was spoilt and I have treated them unfairly. I intend to put this right.
I am asking you to reconsider. I have asked at the hotel if there are any pubs near where you live and they have suggested the bar here at the hotel. It’s quiet here. We could talk. Today is Thursday. You need time – I appreciate that. I will be there tomorrow evening (Friday) from 7 p.m. until they close. Think about it. I ask only that you have a drink with me. I have come all this way to see you. I have questions, but not too many, and I believe I have a right to know the answers. I don’t want to have to park outside your house and wait for you. Please don’t make me do that.
The Crest Hotel. Please come. Even for an hour. It would mean a lot.
Your son,
Benjamin (Martin)
In Christopher’s chest, an old fear, a knot tying itself around his heart. I don’t want to have to park outside your house… The line rang loud in his head and pulled the rope tight.
‘Bastard,’ he said, to no one. ‘Bastard!’
He screwed the letter into a ball and squeezed it in his hands. He threw it into the bin but minutes later took it out again. Phyllis might find it there. Not that she would look for it but she might see, she might wonder and that might make her reach, make her open it up and read. And then it would all be over. He put the crumpled paper in his coat pocket. Realising he had left the other letter in his room, he ran up the stairs, grabbed it from his desk and put it in the pocket too.
‘There,’ he said, though his heart bat
tered. He went back to his room, sat at the desk and took out his writing pad. If the bastard was going to force his hand, he would bloody well force it right back.
Dear Ben,
I will meet you. I would prefer somewhere nearer to home as I can only spare an hour. I will tell my family I am going to the neighbour’s or something. Meet me on Friday at the Wilsons pub in the old town. Ask at the hotel, they can give you directions. Or get a taxi. I will be there at seven. Until tomorrow evening,
Phyllis
Christopher told me he dropped the letter at the hotel and continued straight on to Railton. He said he arrived at the convent at around midday. The old red-brick building was separated from the street by a five-foot wall, also of red brick. He parked in the lane opposite and made his way back down the lane, over the road. He found the iron gates, which he had expected to be locked, but when he pushed, they opened. The convent itself was 1800s, in the Gothic style, the windows and doors thin pointed arches, buttresses and cross-shaped cut-outs in the bricks. At the dark, arched wooden door, he rang the bell. A young nun answered.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘My name is Christopher Harris. Could I speak to the mother superior? It’s extremely urgent.’
She nodded and let him inside, gesturing towards a stone bench and leaving him there in the foyer. He waited, trying not to stare at the replica pietà in the recessed arch in the opposite wall, the Virgin larger than life so that Christ lay small upon her lap like a child sick or dead. There was a smell of old, cold stone, of damp perhaps, but what struck him most was the silence. It occurred to him that the nun had not spoken. And yet he knew he was to wait, that she would be back. After no more than a few minutes, she returned and gestured for him to follow her down a long corridor that smelled faintly of varnish.
Maintaining her silence, she opened another wide arched wooden door to reveal an elderly nun sitting behind a mahogany desk with a green leather top. Behind her, the wall was lined with bookshelves – he was pretty sure they were the same bookshelves from the photocopied photograph Ben had sent with his letter, and he felt the rope tighten within him.
Upon seeing Christopher, the nun stood and held out her hand.
‘Christopher Harris, is that right?’
He shook her hand. ‘Yes, that’s right. Thank you for seeing me.’
She gestured for him to sit down and sat herself, clasping her hands together on the desktop. ‘You said it was urgent.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll come straight to the point. There’s been a terrible mistake.’
* * *
He came out of the convent around midday, he said. He was worried sick by now, but there was still time to do what he needed to do. It was as he’d thought. There had been another boy born on March 12th, 1959, to a woman called Rebecca Hurst. A boy named William but whom his mother had called Billy.
He studied the map, compared it to the address in his hand. Whitefield Road, in a place called Stockton Heath. The town lay almost equidistant, on the other side of Runcorn, from where he had come. At the realisation, he gave a sigh but continued to study the map, noting down directions for himself on the back of the piece of paper the mother superior had given him. Stockton Heath lay south of the Manchester Ship Canal – Christopher was pretty sure that was the canal that ran along the edge of the Mersey – and north of the Bridgewater Canal, the same canal that had its basin in his home town, Runcorn. It was a wonder Billy wasn’t born on a barge, he thought, and for a moment he wondered if this might be the case. He imagined himself and Billy, both born on different barges, one heading up the Manchester Ship Canal and one up the Bridgewater, like Vikings en route to Avalon.
Forty-five minutes later, he turned into Whitefield Road, surprised to find it so well-to-do. He parked outside a particularly imposing Victorian house, not daring to pull into the driveway, which, he calculated, could probably have held four or five cars. As it was, there was a new BMW parked there. It looked clean enough to perform surgery on the bonnet. Breathing deeply and as regularly as he could, he made his way to the door. A cord hung next to it. He pulled on it and heard a sombre chime ring out from the depths of the house.
He waited, checked his watch. It was 1 p.m. He still hoped to be back before Phyllis.
At the sound of footsteps, he straightened his shoulders, coughed into his hand and threw back his head. The door opened. A tall, rather elegant-looking man with silver hair stood on the threshold.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said. He wore round tortoiseshell glasses, a pale red knitted waistcoat over a beige and brown checked shirt. On his feet were tartan slippers.
‘Good afternoon,’ Christopher began, all the words he had rehearsed in the car disappearing at once from his mind. ‘My name is Christopher Harris. I’m looking for Rebecca Hurst.’
‘Rebecca doesn’t live here, I’m afraid.’ The man made to close the door.
‘Wait a moment.’ Ben’s story came back to him. ‘She’s a friend of my mother’s, or was – a close friend. My mother received a phone call from her the other day – well, in truth, I did. I didn’t realise how important she was to my mother and I’m afraid I didn’t take her number. My mother was very cross and I was keen to put it right. To cut a long story short, she knew where Rebecca lived when they were teenagers and so she gave me this address.’ He saw something flicker in the old man’s face. He was a decent chap, kind, gentle, of that there was no doubt. ‘But perhaps I’m mistaken. I’ll let you go.’
‘No, wait.’ The man stood aside. ‘She did live here. Come inside a moment. I have an address.’
As Christopher stepped into the enormous hallway, the man continued to talk. The hallway was bigger than Phyllis’s living room, with a staircase that doubled back on itself, walls that continued up beyond the second flight. An antique telephone table, what he thought was called an occasional chair, and on the wall opposite, an ornate cross covered in polished coloured stones.
‘She’s our daughter. She did live here but she doesn’t any longer. I’m afraid we’ve had very little contact with her for a few years now.’ The man opened the drawer of the hall table and pulled out a leather-bound address book. ‘Let’s see. Do you have a pen and paper?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t. What an idiot.’
‘Not at all. Let’s not be hard on ourselves.’ The man smiled. Really, he was so very nice. Classy, Phyllis would say. Margaret would no doubt have remarked on his lovely way of speaking, his quiet manners. ‘I’ve a notepad here somewhere.’ He dug about in the drawer, found the notepad and a Bic biro. ‘There. Hardly a Sheaffer, but it will do.’ He handed the pen and the paper to Christopher. ‘Come through.’
Christopher followed the man, Rebecca’s father, down the hall, to where there was effectively a T-junction, one way leading left, the other right. He turned right and opened a door with a frosted window in it. Christopher followed him into a spacious kitchen, which smelled of cinnamon, he thought, and sugar. He wondered if the man’s wife was baking, like Phyllis, for the Easter celebrations.
‘Now, if you take a seat at that table, you’ll be able to write down what you need.’ The man nodded towards an old oak table, large enough to seat ten or twelve without a squeeze. Beneath it was a rug worn thin, pinks and reds long faded, flowers almost indiscernible in the flattened pile.
‘Thank you,’ said Christopher, and sat to copy the address.
‘Tea?’ said the man. ‘I’m Claud, by the way. Claud Hurst. Pleased to meet you…’
‘Christopher.’
‘Christopher, of course, you said.’ Claud was staring at him. ‘Have we met?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Christopher averted his gaze. He wanted to study the man and not, all at the same time. It was like looking into the steam-clouded mirror when he was a boy.
He scribbled down the address. He recognised the name of the estate, if not the address itself, and his chest tightened at the thought of going there. Southgate was a Lego-style block of flats in the new part of
the town, next to the white hulk of the Shopping City, a commercial centre full of shops, as the name suggested. The estate had a reputation for drugs, for violence. The commercial centre was where the kids he was teaching went to hang out on Saturdays. Neither place was anywhere he wanted to go.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Actually, if you wouldn’t mind taking down our telephone number?’
‘Not at all.’
Claud recited the number, which Christopher duly wrote alongside Rebecca’s address.
‘Rebecca may not be there,’ said Claud. ‘But it is the last address we have for her. I wonder, would you mind calling and letting me know how you find her? She’s not well; she’s never been well. We did our best, but…’ He smiled but with an expression of sadness so deep as to be fathomless.
‘Of course,’ Christopher replied, thinking that sometimes a smile was the saddest expression of all.
* * *
It took him another forty minutes to find the housing estate; the road systems surrounding Runcorn were no less than a labyrinth. He parked the car on the far side of what was once a children’s play area and made his way over broken glass, cigarette butts, crisp packets, takeaway wrappers. A used condom, what looked like a syringe.
Forcing himself to look up, he headed towards the brightly coloured blocks – some architect’s idea of cheerful living, though he doubted the architect in question would find it cheerful to live here. The stairwell smelled of urine, as he had anticipated. More litter here – a smashed Coke bottle, its sticky brown contents dried on the concrete steps. He reached the first floor and read the numbers. Rebecca’s flat was on this level, to the right. Further along the walkway, a group of teenagers dressed in tracksuits were kicking something back and forth, expletives shouted into the grey air, words that even now made Christopher wince.