by S. J. Watson
Dr Nash looked down to scratch the top of his head. Through his hair I could see his scalp, more obvious in a circle at the crown. He won’t have noticed that yet, I thought, but one day he will. He will see a photograph of himself taken from behind, or surprise himself in a changing room, or his hairdresser will make a comment, or his girlfriend. Age catches us all out, I thought as he looked up. In differing ways.
‘Oh,’ he said, with a cheeriness that sounded forced. ‘I brought you something. A gift. Well, not really a gift, just something you might like to have.’ He reached down and retrieved his briefcase from the floor. ‘You’ve probably already got a copy,’ he said, opening it. He took out a package. ‘Here you go.’
I knew what it was even as I took it. What else could it be? It felt heavy in my hand. He had wrapped it in a padded envelope, sealed it with tape. My name was written in heavy black marker pen. Christine. ‘It’s your novel,’ he said. ‘The one you wrote.’
I didn’t know what to feel. Evidence, I thought. Proof that what I had written was true, should I need it tomorrow.
Inside the envelope was a single copy of a book. I took it out. It was a paperback, not new. There was a coffee ring on the front and the edges of the pages were yellowed with age. I wondered if Dr Nash had given me his own copy, whether it was even still in print. As I held it I saw myself again as I had the other day; younger, much younger, reaching for this novel in an effort to find a way into the next. Somehow I knew it hadn’t worked – the second novel had never been completed.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
He smiled. ‘Don’t mention it.’
I put it underneath my coat, where, all the way home, it beat like a heart.
As soon as I got back to the house I looked at my novel, but only quickly. I wanted to write as much as I could remember in my journal before Ben came home, but once I’d finished and put it away I hurried back downstairs to look properly at what I had been given.
I turned the book over. On the cover was a pastel drawing of a desk, upon which sat a typewriter. A crow was perched on its carriage, its head cocked to one side, almost as if it were reading the paper threaded there. Above the crow was written my name, and above that, the title.
For the Morning Birds, it said. Christine Lucas.
My hands began to shake as I opened the book. Inside was a title page, a dedication, For my father, and then the words I miss you.
I closed my eyes. A fluttering of memory. I saw my father, lying in a bed under bright white lights, his skin translucent, filmed with sweat so that he almost shone. I saw a tube in his arm, a bag of clear liquid hung from an IV stand, a cardboard tray and a tub of pills. A nurse, checking his pulse, his blood pressure, and he not waking up. My mother, sitting on the other side of his bed, trying not to cry while I tried to force the tears to come.
A smell came then. Cut flowers and low, dirty earth. Sweet and sickly. I saw the day we cremated him. Me wearing black – which I somehow know is not unusual – but this time without make-up. My mother, sitting next to my grandmother. The curtains open, the coffin slides away, and I cry, picturing my father turning to dust. My mother squeezing my hand, and then we go home and drink cheap, fizzy wine and eat sandwiches as the sun goes down and she dissolves in the half-light.
I sighed. The image disappeared, and I opened my eyes. My novel, in front of me.
I turned to the title page, the opening line. It was then, I had written, with the engine whining and her right foot pressed hard against the accelerator pedal, that she let go of the wheel and closed her eyes. She knew what would happen. She knew where it would lead. She always had.
I flicked to the middle of the novel. I read a paragraph there, and then one from near the end.
I had written about a woman called Lou, a man – her husband, I guessed – called George, and the novel seemed to be rooted in a war. I felt disappointed. I don’t know what I had been hoping for – autobiography perhaps? – but it seemed any answers this novel could give me would be limited.
Still, I thought as I turned it over to look at the back cover, I had at least written it, got it published.
Where there might have been an author photograph there was none. Instead there was a short biography.
Christine Lucas was born in 1960, in the north of England, it said. She read English at University College London, and has now settled in that city. This is her first novel.
I smiled to myself, feeling a swell of happiness and pride. I did this. I wanted to read it, to unlock its secrets, but at the same time I did not. I was worried the reality might take my happiness away. Either I would like the novel and feel sad that I would never write another, or I would not, and feel frustrated that I never developed my talent. I couldn’t say which was more likely, but I knew that one day, unable to resist the pull of my only achievement, I would find out. I would make that discovery.
But not today. Today I had something else to discover, something far worse than sadness, more damaging than mere frustration. Something that might rip me apart.
I tried to slip the book back in the envelope. There was something else in there. A note, folded into four, the edges crisp. Dr Nash had written on it: I thought this might interest you!
I unfolded the paper. Across the top he’d written Standard, 1986. Beneath it was a copy of a newspaper article, next to a photograph. I looked at the page for a second or two before I realized that the article was a review of my novel and the picture was of me.
I shook as I held the page. I didn’t know why. This was an artefact from years ago; good or bad, whatever its effects had been they were long gone. It was history now, its ripples vanished completely. But it was important to me. How was my work received, all those years ago? Had I been successful?
I scanned the article, hoping to understand its tone before being forced to analyse the specifics. Words jumped out at me. Positive mostly. Studied. Perceptive. Skilled. Humanity. Brutal.
I looked at the photograph. Black and white, it showed me sitting at a desk, my body angled towards the camera. I am holding myself awkwardly. Something is making me uncomfortable, and I wondered if it was the person behind the camera or the position I am sitting in. Despite this I am smiling. My hair is long and loose, and although the photograph is black and white it seems darker than it is now, as if I have dyed it black, or it is damp. Behind me there are patio doors, and through them, just visible in the corner of the frame, is a leafless tree. There is a caption beneath the photograph. Christine Lucas, at her north London home.
I realized it must be the house I had visited with Dr Nash. For a second I had an almost overwhelming desire to go back there, to take this photograph with me and convince myself that yes, it was true; I had existed, then. It had been me.
But I knew that already, of course. Though I couldn’t remember it any more, I knew that there, standing in the kitchen, I had remembered Ben. Ben, and his bobbing erection.
I smiled and touched the photograph, running my fingertips over it, looking for hidden clues as a blind man might. I traced the edge of my hair, ran my fingers over my face. In the photograph I look uncomfortable, but also radiant in some way. It is as if I am keeping a secret, holding it like a charm. My novel has been published, yes, but there is something else, something more than that.
I looked closely. I could see the swell of my breasts in the loose dress I am wearing, the way I am holding one arm across my stomach. A memory bubbles up from nowhere – me, sitting for the picture, the photographer in front of me behind his tripod, the journalist with whom I have just discussed my work hovering in the kitchen. She calls through, asking how it’s going, and both of us reply with a cheery ‘Fine!’ and laugh. ‘Not long now,’ he says, changing his film. The journalist has lit a cigarette and calls to ask, not if I mind but whether we have an ashtray. I feel annoyed, but only slightly. The truth is I am yearning for a cigarette myself, but I have given up, ever since I found out that—
I l
ooked at the picture again, and I knew. In it, I am pregnant.
My mind stopped for a moment, and then began to race. It tripped over itself, caught on the sharp edges of the realization, the fact that, not only had I been carrying a baby as I sat in the dining room and had my picture taken, but I had known it, was happy about it.
It did not make sense. What had happened? The child ought to be – how old now? Eighteen? Nineteen? Twenty?
But there is no child, I thought. Where is my son?
I felt my world tip again. That word: son. I had thought it, said it to myself with certainty. Somehow, from somewhere deep within me, I knew that the child I had been carrying was a boy.
I gripped the edge of the chair to try to steady myself, and as I did so another word bubbled to the surface and exploded. Adam. I felt my world slip out of one groove and into another.
I had had the child. We called him Adam.
I stood up and the package containing the novel skidded to the floor. My mind raced like a whirring engine that has at last caught, energy ricocheted within me as if desperate for release. He was absent from the scrapbook in the living room. I knew that. I would have remembered seeing a picture of my own child as I leafed through it this morning. I would have asked Ben who he was. I would have written about it in my journal. I crammed the cutting back into the envelope along with the book and ran upstairs. In the bathroom I stood in front of the mirror. I didn’t even glance at my face but looked around it, at the pictures of the past, the photographs that I must use to construct myself when I don’t have memory.
Me and Ben. Me, alone, and Ben, alone. The two of us with another couple, older, who I take to be his parents. Me, much younger, wearing a scarf, petting a dog, smiling happily. But there is no Adam. No baby, no toddler. No photos taken on his first day of school, or at sports day, or on holiday. No pictures of him building castles in the sand. Nothing.
It didn’t make sense. Surely these are pictures that every parent takes and none discards?
They must be here, I thought. I lifted pictures up to see if there were others taped beneath them, layers of history overlain like strata. There was nothing. Nothing but the pale blue tiles on the wall, the smooth glass of the mirror. A blank.
Adam. The name spun in my head. My eyes closed and more memories hit, each one striking violently, shimmering for a moment before disappearing, triggering the next. I saw Adam, his blond hair that I knew would one day turn brown, the Spiderman T-shirt that he insisted on wearing until it was far too small for him and had to be thrown out. I saw him in a pram, sleeping, and remember thinking that he was the most perfect baby, the most perfect thing I had ever seen. I saw him riding a blue bike – a plastic tricycle – and somehow knew that we had bought it for him on his birthday, and that he would ride it everywhere. I saw him in a park, his head hunched over handlebars, grinning as he flew down an incline towards me and, a second later, tipping forward and slamming to the ground as the bike hit something on the path and twisted beneath him. I saw myself holding him as he cried, mopping blood from his face, finding one of his teeth on the ground next to a still-spinning wheel. I saw him showing me a picture he’d painted – a blue strip for the sky, green for the ground and between them three blobby figures and a tiny house – and I saw the toy rabbit that he carried everywhere.
I snapped back to the present, to the bathroom in which I stood, but closed my eyes again. I wanted to remember him at school, or as a teenager, or to picture him with me or his father. But I could not. When I tried to organize my memories they fluttered and vanished, like a feather caught on the wind that changes direction whenever a hand snatches at it. Instead I saw him holding a dripping ice cream, then with liquorice over his face, then sleeping in the back seat of a car. All I could do was watch as these memories came, and then went, just as quickly.
It took all my strength not to tear at the photos in front of me. I wanted to rip them from the wall, looking for evidence of my son. Instead, as if fearing that any movement at all might result in my limbs betraying me, I stood perfectly still in front of the mirror, every muscle in my body tensed.
No photographs on the mantelpiece. No teenage bedroom with posters of pop stars on the wall. No T-shirts in the laundry or amongst the piles of ironing. No tattered training shoes in the cupboard under the stairs. Even if he had left home there would still be some evidence of his existence, surely? Some trace?
But no, he isn’t in this house. With a chill I realized it was as if he didn’t exist, and never had.
I don’t know how long I stood there in the bathroom, looking at his absence. Ten minutes? Twenty? An hour? At some point I heard a key in the front door, the swoosh as Ben wiped his feet on the mat. I didn’t move. He went into the kitchen, then the dining room, and then called upstairs, asking if everything was all right. He sounded anxious, his voice had a nervous fluting to it that I had not heard this morning, but I only mumbled that, yes, yes I was OK. I heard him go into the living room, the television flick on.
Time stopped. My mind emptied of everything. Everything except the need to know what had happened to my son balanced perfectly with a dread of what I might find out.
I hid my novel in the wardrobe and went downstairs.
I stood outside the living-room door. I tried to slow down my breathing but could not; it came in hot gasps. I didn’t know what to say to Ben: how I could tell him that I knew about Adam. He would ask me how, and what would I say then?
It didn’t matter, though. Nothing did. Nothing other than knowing about my son. I closed my eyes and, when I felt as calm as I thought I would ever feel, gently pushed the door open. I felt it slide against the rough carpet.
Ben didn’t hear me. He was sitting on the sofa, watching television, a plate balanced on his lap, half a biscuit on it. I felt a wave of anger. He looked so relaxed and happy, a smile played across his mouth. He began to laugh. I wanted to rush over, to grab him and shout until he told me everything, told me why he had kept my novel from me, why he had hidden evidence of my son. I wanted to demand he give back to me everything that I had lost.
But I knew that would do no good. Instead, I coughed. A tiny, delicate cough. A cough that said I don’t want to disturb you, but …
He saw me and smiled. ‘Darling!’ he said. ‘There you are!’
I stepped into the room. ‘Ben?’ I said. My voice was strained. It sounded alien to me. ‘Ben, I need to talk to you.’
His face melted to anxiety. He stood up and came towards me, the plate sliding to the floor. ‘What is it, love? Are you all right?’
‘No,’ I said. He stopped a metre or so from where I stood. He held out his arms for me to fall into, but I did not.
‘Whatever’s wrong?’
I looked at my husband, at his face. He appeared to be in control, as if he had been here before, was used to these moments of hysteria.
I could go no longer without saying the name of my son. ‘Where’s Adam?’ I said. The words came out in a gasp. ‘Where is he?’
Ben’s expression changed. Surprise? Or shock? He swallowed.
‘Tell me!’ I said.
He took me in his arms. I wanted to push him away, but did not. ‘Christine,’ he said. ‘Please. Calm down. I can explain everything. OK?’
I wanted to tell him that, no, things weren’t OK at all, but I said nothing. I hid my face from him, burying it in the folds of his shirt.
I began to shake. ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Please, tell me now.’
We sat on the sofa. Me at one end. Him at the other. It was as close as I wanted us to be.
We’d been talking. For minutes. Hours. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t want him to speak, to say it again, but he did.
‘Adam is dead.’
I felt myself clench. Tight as a mollusc. His words, sharp as razor wire.
I thought of the fly on the windscreen on the way home from my grandmother’s house.
He spoke again. ‘Christine, love. I’m so sorry.’
I forced myself to speak. ‘How?’
He sighed. ‘Adam was in the army.’
I went numb. Everything receded, until I was left with pain and nothing else. Pain. Reduced to a single point.
A son I did not even know that I had, and he had become a soldier. A thought ran through me. Absurd. What will my mother think?
Ben spoke again, in staccato bursts. ‘He was a Royal Marine. He was stationed in Afghanistan. He was killed. Last year.’
I swallowed, my throat dry.
‘Why?’ I said, and then, ‘How?’
‘Christine—’
‘I want to know,’ I said. ‘I need to know.’
He reached across to take my hand, and I let him, though I was relieved when he moved no closer on the sofa.
‘You don’t want to know everything, surely?’
My anger surged. I couldn’t help it. Anger, and panic. ‘He was my son!’
He looked away, towards the window.
‘He was travelling in an armoured vehicle,’ he said. He spoke slowly, almost whispering. ‘They were escorting troops. There was a bomb, on the roadside. One soldier survived. Adam and one other didn’t.’
I closed my eyes, and my voice dropped to a whisper too. ‘Did he die straight away? Did he suffer?’
Ben sighed. ‘No,’ he said, after a moment. ‘He didn’t suffer. They think it would have been very quick.’
I looked across to where he sat. He didn’t look at me.
You’re lying, I thought.
I saw Adam bleeding to death by a roadside, and pushed the thought out, focusing instead on nothing, on blankness.
My mind began to spin. Questions. Questions that I dared not ask in case the answers killed me. What was he like as a boy, a teenager, a man? Were we close? Did we argue? Was he happy? Was I a good mother?