by S. E. Lynes
Thankful he did not have to pass the youths, he rang the buzzer. After a few minutes, he rang again, only to hear someone complain from behind the door:
‘Keep your wig on, will you? I’m coming.’
The door opened and a thin man with yellow skin and three teeth stood there. He was aged and ageless all at once. From him came a strong smell of cigarettes; other smells too that Christopher could not identify.
‘Can I help you?’ The man held onto the door. He was wearing grey jogging bottoms that were several sizes too big and a dirty green T-shirt. Despite himself, Christopher gulped, but he did not step back.
‘I’m looking for Rebecca Hurst.’
‘Who wants her?’ He lifted his T-shirt and pulled a silver packet of cigarettes from the elasticated waistband of his trousers. He opened the packet – Lambert & Butler – and pulled a cigarette and a plastic lighter from within. ‘She’s out.’ He put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it, sucked and blew smoke into Christopher’s face.
Christopher stepped back. ‘It’s urgent,’ he said. ‘I’ve got news concerning her son.’
The man appeared to flinch. ‘Who says?’
‘My name is Christopher. It’s a long story, but I have come on behalf of her son, Billy.’
‘Billy?’ This time the man blew his smoke to one side, but he was still squinting at Christopher as if he were a policeman, someone who could not be trusted. ‘Who did you say you were?’
‘Christopher. I’m a friend of Billy’s.’
The man said nothing. Moments passed. Embarrassed, Christopher looked behind him, through the slice of outside world between the waist-high wall of the walkway and the floor above, to where the white hulk of the shopping centre blocked what little sky remained. Further up, he could hear the lads larking about. They sounded as if they were fighting.
‘She’s here,’ said the man at the door.
Christopher turned back. The man nodded to him and went inside without inviting Christopher in. Christopher followed, closing the door behind him.
Inside, the flat smelled of dirt. What comprised that dirt he didn’t want to think about, but he couldn’t help his thoughts. The smell was body odour, cigarettes… really, he didn’t know what it was: food left to go off, possibly; an unclean bathroom. When he entered the lounge, he saw and understood. Plates smeared with traces of unidentifiable food, half-full cups of tea or coffee, blue balls of mould floating at their tops, ashtrays piled high, a sofa, its fabric burned away to form black lips rudely open to reveal partially melted yellow foam. Apart from the sofa, a television and something that looked like it had once been a chest of drawers, there was no other furniture.
But worse, much worse, was the sight of the woman on the sofa: thin legs splayed, head back, mouth open, eyes closed – as if she had died where she had been thrown. On her chin, a flaky trail of dried spit.
‘Bex,’ said the man, stepping over the debris that covered the floor. ‘Bex, there’s a man here says he knows Billy.’
Christopher covered his nose with his sleeve and inhaled his own fresh laundry smell. The man turned to him. He let his arm fall away.
‘Is she all right?’ he asked.
‘She’s fine. Bit out of it, that’s all.’ He turned back to the woman and bent over her. He slapped her several times, softly, across the cheek. ‘Bex,’ he said. ‘Becksy. It’s about your Billy.’
‘I can come back,’ said Christopher helplessly. If he left now, he would never come back to this place. He glanced towards the door. If he ran, he could be out of here in seconds.
At that moment, with a groan, Rebecca woke up. She looked emaciated. There were dark scabs the size of drawing pins on her hollow cheeks. She smiled and Christopher saw she had lost several teeth. It was all he could do not to shout his disgust aloud and run from that place.
‘Rebecca,’ he said. ‘I’m a friend of Billy’s. You remember you had a son?’
The woman peered at him, through what kind of narcotic haze only she could know. ‘Billy?’
‘I’m a friend of his. He’s looking for you. He wants to meet you. I can give you the place.’
‘Billy.’ This time she shouted the name. ‘I knew you’d come.’ She pushed herself forward, made to stand but could not.
The man – her boyfriend? – restrained her, gripped her by the forearms, though it seemed to Christopher he did so with care.
‘Stay there, girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t stand up quick or you’ll go arse for tit.’
‘Get off,’ she said.
The man relented, stood and addressed Christopher. ‘Do you want a cuppa?’
He shook his head, no. ‘Thanks. I’m not staying. I have a message from Billy.’
‘Billy!’ the woman shouted again. The whole thing was becoming a farce. The urge to run threatened to overwhelm him.
‘Yes, Billy,’ he said, crouching in front of her and taking her clammy hands in his, fighting revulsion. ‘Your son. You remember Billy, don’t you?’
‘My Billy,’ she said. ‘I lost you. They made me give you away.’ Her voice, her accent retained some of the well-to-do household in which she had been brought up. How had she had come to this, this state, this place?
‘Billy, yes, Billy,’ he battled on. ‘You lost him but I’m not him, I’m his friend. They made you give him up. He went to America but he’s come back to find you, Rebecca.’
She narrowed her eyes at him, something in her body twitched and he knew she was listening, that it was going in.
‘He was in America?’
‘Yes!’ He squeezed her hands. ‘He’s come all this way. He’s going to be at the Wilsons pub at 7 p.m. tomorrow night. Is that clear? That’s Friday. Friday, 17 April, do you understand?’
‘I’ll make sure she gets there,’ said the man. With a brief nod and a frown, apparently to signal his reliability in the matter, he turned and left the room.
‘I’ll write it down.’ Christopher let go of her hands.
‘March twelfth he was born,’ she said, smiling and toothless as a carnival sideshow.
Christopher’s mouth filled with a sour taste. He swallowed and exhaled heavily.
‘Tomorrow,’ he began again. ‘Look, have you got a piece of paper?’
She smiled, laughed and collapsed against the back of the sofa. Her eyes closed.
‘Billy,’ she said, so high and quiet. ‘My Billy.’
In the kitchen, he found the man pushing at a tea bag in a dirty Kit Kat mug.
‘She’s out of it,’ he said. ‘But I’ll get her there for you.’
‘It’s not for me – it’s for her son. He’s come a long way. It’ll do her good to see him, it might help her.’
‘You think?’
‘It might.’
Christopher tried to keep his eyes on the man, tried not to see the state of the kitchen. Failed. It was like being trapped inside something decaying, a grim soup of rotten food and wasted life. There was a cooker, coated in grease, what looked like a washing machine. There was no table, no chairs, no furniture really, only the sofa and the television in the other room. One of the kitchen cupboard doors was missing. His chest tightened, the all-too-familiar rope knotting. He had to get out.
‘Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?’ he said again.
The man pushed past him into the living room. Christopher was unsure whether he’d heard, but he dug around in a box on the floor and after a moment produced a piece of card and a biro. ‘Here,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
There was nothing to lean on, nowhere to sit. Christopher pressed the card into the palm of his hand and wrote the instructions:
The Wilsons pub, old Runcorn. Friday, 7 p.m. Your son Billy will be there. He wants to see you. On Saturday he goes back to America. It is important you come, please be there. This is your only chance. Don’t let him down.
He stopped, wondered whether to sign and decided not to. He handed the note to the man.
‘Right. T
his is the situation. Billy is Rebecca’s son. They took him from her—’
‘I know that.’
‘Right. Right, well now she has a chance to see him again. Can you try and straighten her out, at least a bit? It’s very important she gets there – for her as well as Billy.’
The man nodded briskly. ‘I will. She talks about him all the time. It’d break her heart to miss him.’
‘So you understand how important this is? Do you know where the pub is? It’s in the old town, by the canal.’
‘Of course I know where it is. I’ll get her there, don’t worry.’
Christopher made to shake the man’s hand but thought better of it. He made himself walk slowly down the dark hall and out of the flat. At the door, he stopped and dug in his pockets. There was a five-pound note and a few coins.
‘Here,’ he said, pushing the money into the man’s hand. ‘Put her in a taxi. Use this, it’s all I have.’ He opened the door, stepped out into the walkway. He was about to leave but stopped and turned back. The man was still at the door, as if watching to check that he was definitely going, as if this were a place anyone would want to stay.
‘Listen,’ Christopher said. ‘This Billy. Her son. I know it won’t make any difference to her, but he’s not short of a bob or two, if you know what I mean. There’s money, is what I’m saying.’
The man said nothing but pushed his bottom lip up against the top and shut the door.
* * *
By the time he got home, Phyllis’s car was already on the driveway. He parked on the road and sat for a moment in the silent car. He made himself breathe in and out, anxious to erase any trace of anxiety before going in to her, his family, his home. He had spent the day in the library… no, he had been for a walk on the hill. He sniffed at his clothes. Did they smell of that awful place? Was it possible the smell would stay on him forever, no matter how many times he washed himself, his clothes? Certainly the sight would remain, branded on his memory for the rest of his life. Poor Billy. To have come so far, to have spent a whole life wondering, as he, Christopher, had done, only to be faced with that, with her.
He pulled at his sweater and sniffed himself again but was not sure. Cigarette smoke – and he no longer smoked. Maybe he smelled like he’d been in a pub. He could say he’d been for a walk on the hill and called in at the Traveller’s Rest for a pint on the way home. Yes, that would do. He would go in, say he needed a bath. Tonight he would be calm; he would be normal. For the next twenty-four hours he would find things to do. Keep busy, that was all he had to do. He feared he would not be able to look at her now, not until this was over. Tomorrow morning he would go with her to Good Friday Mass. Then in the evening he would meet with Billy and hopefully Rebecca would get herself together enough to come. He would reunite them and leave them to whatever conversation they needed to have. He would do this. And he would be free.
As he made his way towards the house, he saw a young lad walking towards him. Something in his gait, the way he held his head… Christopher stopped dead. His skin prickled, his breath caught in his throat.
Jack Junior. Here, where he had no business to be.
Forcing himself to his senses, Christopher continued past his own driveway.
‘Jack!’ he called out, and waved.
Jack’s face was a scowl. He had worn it since he was a small boy – the sullen scowl of a spoilt child, and it had evidently taken up residence on his face and, like a cuckoo, booted all the other expressions out of their own nest.
‘Christopher,’ he said. They were close enough now to stop, to talk. They did not embrace.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Came to see you, didn’t I?’
‘What are you… I mean how did you find me?’
Jack dug into his pocket, but before he withdrew his hand, Christopher knew what would be in it. He was right. Still scowling, Jack pulled out the letter Christopher had written to Phyllis four years earlier.
‘What’s this?’
‘Have you opened it? That’s none of your business.’
‘Who’s Phyllis?’
So the little shit had opened it, of course he had. Shit. Christopher fought to remember what he had written. Had there been any mention of Phyllis being his mother?
‘Who is she?’ Jack drew the letter from the envelope.
‘She’s no one,’ Christopher said. ‘Look, is something wrong? Has something happened? Are you with Dad?’
Jack shrugged, screwed up his piggy little eyes. ‘If she’s no one, then why are you living with her?’
Jack. Scowling, spoilt, snot-nose Jack. He was fourteen. Christopher searched his face. Was it possible he didn’t understand? What the hell had he written in that letter?
‘She’s… she was my girlfriend, that’s all.’ It was worth a punt. He looked up, as if he’d spotted something in the sky. When Jack looked too, Christopher seized the letter from his brother’s hand – oldest trick in the book.
‘Oi, give that back.’
He held it high, skim-read it. I realised on the train that I had quite forgotten to wish you a Merry Christmas… There was no overt mention of Phyllis being his mother. He handed the letter back to Jack
‘Take it, since you’re so interested,’ he said. ‘She’s just a friend. We’d been corresponding. She was my pen pal. It’s really none of your business.’
‘So are you married to her?’
‘Don’t be stupid. We’re friends.’
Jack’s eyes widened. ‘So you’re living in sin? Mum’ll kill you.’ Poor boy. Thinking to threaten him, when instead he was throwing him a lifeline.
‘Grow up, Jack. What are you going to do, tell tales? We’re not kids any more. The only person you’ll hurt is Mum.’
‘Why don’t we go to yours then?’
‘Not a good idea,’ said Christopher. ‘You can come another time, when I’ve given her some warning. Look, I’ve got my car. I’ll take you into town and we can go for a cup of tea. You can have some cake.’ He was already walking back towards the car. ‘Besides, there’ll be too many people in the house now. The other student teachers, you know. They’ll be using the kitchen, it’ll be chaos.’
‘Doesn’t look like chaos to me,’ said Jack as they passed the front gate.
‘Aye, well, that’s how chaos works sometimes. You can’t always tell from the outside, can you?’
They got into the car and Christopher did a three-point turn and drove back the way he’d come, took a right down Ivy Street, left onto the bottom of Heath Road. Phyllis would be wondering where he was. But there was no question of taking Jack Junior into the house. He would not let his snot-nosed little brother, of all people, sabotage things now.
‘There’s a café by the canal,’ he said. ‘We can go there.’
They drove in silence. Under the expressway, and on towards the old town. The road swung left and down. To the right, they passed the Wilsons. Christopher kept his eyes on the road. The old swimming baths, then the drab parade of shops: a chemist’s, the post office, a nightclub: like all nightclubs, by day nothing but dead. He turned left, parked up by the canalside.
‘Why don’t you ever come home?’ Jack said, as if to fill the silence.
Christopher switched off the ignition and got out. ‘Lock your door,’ he said over the roof of the car, once Jack had dragged himself upright. ‘Squeeze the handle while you shut it, then it’ll stay locked.’
‘I know how to shut a car door, you know.’
Christopher walked ahead. ‘There’s a place at the top of Ellesmere Street does a cheap cup of tea.’
‘I don’t want tea,’ said Jack, in that sulky voice he had. ‘I came to ask you why you never come home. Mum’s not herself.’
‘All right, let’s walk. We can go along the canal.’ Christopher walked up towards the water. Having no choice, Jack followed, half a step behind. They stepped onto the hump of the grass verge. ‘What do you mean, not herself?’
‘Dad says she’s got depression. He said you dropping us like stones hasn’t helped. He said you don’t want to know us any more now you’ve got educated.’
They had reached the gravel path. Beyond, willows wept, reflected in the flat brown surface of the water. Ducks bobbed along, oblivious. An empty 7 Up bottle cruised behind them like a bald imposter hoping to pass as one of the brood. Christopher shook his head, as if he could shake his thoughts away, and looked from left to right, and left again. Further up, to the left ran the road they had driven along to get here – a bridge now, at this level, arching over the canal. He headed for it.
‘I haven’t dropped you,’ he said to Jack, who half-ran to keep up with him. ‘I haven’t dropped anyone. That’s simply not true.’ The heat of the lie burned his insides, cut a sharp edge on his voice. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me or education or anything else. I’ve grown up, that’s all. Found my place in the world. That’s what happens. People get qualifications, they get jobs, they buy a house where their job is and they live there. They have kids and those kids grow up and get their training or their education or whatever it is and then they leave and have kids of their own. It’s the way it is. And it’ll be your turn next, Jackie boy.’
‘Don’t call me Jackie. That’s a girl’s name.’
They had reached the bridge. In its shadow, more litter huddled, concentrated here, substantial: not Coke cans and crisp packets but the dented remains of a rusted oil drum and a grimy tarpaulin. Among the dog shit and the domestic rubbish cast down by walkers, a length of rope blackened with grease, an old anchor that looked as though, if polished, it might be worth something. A mooring post lay at the water’s edge where something – a barge, of course, what else? – had clearly bumped it off its foundation. Christopher turned to look at Jack. The boy’s scowl had given way to confusion; fear possibly. He had never heard Christopher talk this way – with force or any kind of strength. He must think he had become someone else. And in a way, he had. He was Martin, known as Christopher, but Martin nonetheless. He was Martin because Martin was who he had chosen to be.
‘Grow up,’ he said to Jack, though more kindly. ‘You’re Margaret’s son. More than I can ever be. I’m not blood. I’m not a Harris.’ He was about to add, I am a Curtiss and I have another family, my family, but he stopped himself and said instead, ‘You look after her. You’re fourteen. You and Louise can take care of her. Look, does she even know you’re here?’