by Gary Fry
The most important thing was that Olivia and I had decided to have only one child and I’d never again have to endure any complex, soul-searing traumas like those of my blighted youth.
4
Later, once the other children had been collected by their parents (most considerably posher than we and only a few agreeing to stay for a drink), I left Olivia to clean up the party’s remnants and approached my mum about her plans for the rest of the evening.
“You know you’re welcome to stay. We do still have a spare bedroom and you’re no burden.”
“Thanks, love. But I have my comforts back home. And there’s not so many stairs to climb in a bungalow. These things matter as you get on, you’ll see.”
I watched her cross to Eva, who was still seated at the dining table, basking in the afterglow of her successful seventh birthday party.
“Give me a big kiss,” said my mother, the wine having freed her up for such an expression of emotion.
Eva did as she’d been bidden, rising from her chair and standing on tiptoe as her aging relative (only fifty-five, but seeming older) stooped her way.
“Thanks for coming, Nana,” said Eva, perhaps regretful that her other surviving grandparents hadn’t been able to make it. “And thanks for my yummy chocolates.”
Despite this unspectacular gift, my mum certainly had money. But she survived without seeking employment by being cautious—the way she’d once had to, of course, during marriage to a gambling man.
“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” she said, and then turned tipsily to address Olivia, who’d just returned from the kitchen, where she’d been dropping leftovers in the trash. After embracing Olivia and giving her a kiss, she added, “That was a lovely party, my dear. You did us all proud.”
“Thanks, Glenda. We’re glad you could come.”
A cold wind rushed at the patio doors, making the glass tremble in its frames. It was now pitch-dark outside, with a threat of all the snow the media had claimed was on its way.
“Are you sure we can’t persuade you to stay overnight, Mum?” I asked, and wasn’t sure what my motivation was: making her feel welcome or avoiding the potentially tricky ten-mile drive across the city.
But with another wave to her granddaughter, she said, “No, I understand how busy you are, what with Eva back to school in the morning and the pair of you at work. And so I’ll love you and leave you. Besides, I have something chilling in my fridge—just a nightcap—and then plan to turn in early, to sleep the sleep of the…well, you know, as the saying goes: of the dead.”
On my daughter’s special day, I didn’t find that an appropriate word to end with, and so decided to hurry things along. If my mother wanted to drink even more than she had already (surely this alone had resulted in her morbid turn of phrase), there was little I could do about that. I’d decided to share my family life with her, but I couldn’t solve all her problems. Hell, I often had enough of my own to worry about.
After promising to read Eva a story before bedtime when I returned, I crossed to kiss Olivia, who looked as if she had unfinished business with me best reserved for later, once we were alone together. I chose not to push the issue so soon and quickly accompanied my mother outside to the car.
It was a foul evening, frost biting at my cheeks and hands with ragged-toothed spite. Once I’d backed out of the drive and switched on the dashboard heater, I headed down our respectable cul-de-sac, observing many private dwellings like my own, all sheltering from the world at large.
We hadn’t been poor as children, Dexter and me; our dad had at least been in permanent employment, holding down a job in York to which he’d travelled on a daily basis and which commonly involved overnight shifts. We’d lived in a reasonably large detached house amid countryside, in a tiny village called Dwelham near Middlesbrough. This was back when property had been relatively cheap. I’d always suspected that a modest inheritance my mother received from her late parents had helped to secure its purchase, but as secrets ran deep in our family, I couldn’t know that for certain.
This was the property in which my brother still lived, having bought it from our parents when they’d separated about fifteen years earlier (a courageous decision made by our mother on the basis of her husband’s persistent mental cruelty). Just as in many pursuits, Dexter was a whiz on the stock market and had made good money early in his adult life. The risk-taking trait he’d clearly inherited from our dad had helped here, while I’d always been more like my mother: cautious, frugal, willing to defer gratification.
That house was also the one to which my brother had asked me to travel first thing tomorrow.
I’d already tried keeping this information from Olivia (she’d never cared for Dex and was unlikely to approve of me getting involved with him again) and I didn’t think it would do my mother much good either. She and her younger son hadn’t spoken for even longer than my period of estrangement from him, and in her current drink-befuddled state, the news might ruin her weekend.
We drove on in pleasing silence, watching the suburbs of Leeds roll by in the darkness. I think we both enjoyed living in a city because it lacked the associations of any rural landscape, all the violence and unrest that had once blighted our family life. I remembered most vividly the way Dad had taken a rolled-up newspaper to us boys, but most commonly to Dexter.
My brother hadn’t been sociable, preferring solitary pursuits like art and conducting experiments in his bedroom and our cellar, which he’d sequestered for his purposes, mainly because nobody else had cared for it. I could recall our lascivious dad asking Dex why he didn’t get a girlfriend like “normal lads” did. In fact, Dad often said similar to me, taking issue with my academic interests, calling me a “swot” and other playground terms of abuse. But this hadn’t been as savage as it had with my brother. I have no idea why he seemed to prefer me, but I shouldn’t flatter myself: when I say “prefer,” I simply mean that Dad hit me less often with those makeshift weapons made of newspaper.
Maybe hostility toward my brother was because he was the younger male sibling. I’ve always had the impression (a conclusion supported by my mum’s enthusiastic engagement with my daughter) that she and Dad had wanted a girl as well as a boy, which meant that Dex had started life as a disappointment and, on account of all his peculiar behavior later, had remained one. Whenever I’d returned home from university with my first serious girlfriend (Olivia, as it happens), Dad had taken a surprising interest in her, and although my future wife had claimed to feel uncomfortable in his company, I wasn’t sure that lechery was his motivation.
By that time, Dad was much older, a little of the old Adam squeezed out of him by unforgiving time, and later still, when Olivia fell pregnant after we’d both got jobs (having a child prior to ensuring financial stability would, in my view, have amounted to economic suicide), he’d been genuinely drawn to the imminent child, but had died only five years after Eva had been born. “Too late,” he’d said one day when I’d taken the three-year-old girl to his divorcee’s flat near Newcastle. “All too late now.”
Maybe this was why I felt a bit more forgiving about my parents’ messy marriage and its aftermath than my brother ever had. It was a sad situation, but ultimately, we all respond to what has been done to us, regardless of wider circumstances. I could understand Dexter’s bitterness about everything that had happened in our lives, but also thought there had to come a time to let it go. The only alternative was ending up alone in some empty house, howling at the indifferent universe—just like Dex was.
I had no idea what Dex wanted and guessed I’d find out soon. All he’d said on the phone was that he’d located “something significant” and wanted to discuss it with me. Feeling too intrigued and involved to refuse, I’d agreed to venture north tomorrow, when I had a lecture-free day at work. Any other duties I fell down on could be made up for later.
As I pulled the car into my mum’s driveway, I turned to her in the passenger seat, observing gray hai
r she no longer persuaded with dye to cling to its former blonde, along with a badly wrinkled face that a fondness for drink had done little to preserve for advanced age.
“Here we are,” I said, realizing these were the first words I’d spoken during the ten-minute journey. But we’d always been content to relish trouble-free silences; after our previous experiences, neither of us ever had to make excuses for that.
“Thanks, love,” she said, in a warm way that suggested I was every bit her child as Eva was now mine. This didn’t mean she hadn’t loved Dexter, but I suspect every parent will tell you that, deep in their heart, they always have a favorite. That was maybe another reason why, after my daughter’s birth, I’d wanted to stop at only one.
“When will we next see you?” I asked as she opened her door and let in a gust of cold wind.
“Whenever you’re happy to have me over.”
“We’re always happy, Mum. You know that.”
She smiled, her blue eyes looking like her granddaughter’s, innocent and yet disarmingly canny. “I do know that, Harry. You’re a good boy. I just don’t like to intrude. I mean, you all have your lives to lead.”
“And you’re very much part of them,” I replied, feeling tempted to mention Dexter’s call earlier. Perhaps my brother was seeking reconciliation; after all, our dad had been dead for two years, surely long enough to induce a change of focus. But then I decided to hold back on this matter, at least until I’d had a chance to find out what my brother wanted. “I’ll call you in a few days, shall I? Maybe you could come over next weekend for a meal.”
“That would be nice,” she said, and then, possibly even withholding tears, she exited the car and made a meandering beeline for her home. I watched her enter the bungalow, turn in the hallway, wave at me, and finally shut the door.
I saw my mother much sooner than either one of us could have expected…and certainly not in another of those pleasing silences.
5
It was eight o’clock when I returned home, and as I hadn’t had a drink all day, I poured myself a glass of red and then wandered upstairs.
My wife and daughter had taken themselves off to bed, exhausted after such an exciting day. I entered the master bedroom first, to check all was well with Olivia. She’d insisted on taking care of all the party arrangements—in these matters, I was “more a hindrance than a help,”—but as she was back at work tomorrow on campus in Bradford, it was only fair for me to tend to her needs now.
“Hi, darling,” I said, standing close to the doorway with my already half-emptied glass. “Can I get you a drink?”
“I’m okay, thanks.” Olivia was dressed in pajamas and tucked up in our large bed. She also had her e-reader propped up in front of her. “I had a coffee while you were gone and could now do with a bit of me-time.”
I smiled at her use of the informal phrase, which had probably arisen from hearing students saying it. But that was dangerous territory for me, and so, putting my glass down on our dressing table, I quickly went on.
“Okay. I’ll go and read Eva that story I promised, shall I?”
“Yes, the sooner she’s asleep, the better.”
Surely Olivia only meant that the girl needed to rest in advance of school the next day, even though the look she gave me—one which propelled me backward, onto the landing and toward our daughter’s room next door—hinted at a specific reason for wanting Eva unable to hear through the dividing wall.
But I pushed that out of mind and then entered to greet my daughter, who still appeared radiant in the wake of all the fun and games today. She was seven years old, by God—how was it possible to make time flow more slowly? Before I knew it, she’d be a young adult, and her blissful childhood—which had helped me believe that such a thing wasn’t simply a media-manufactured myth—would be gone for good, commemorated only by fading memories, along with inadequate substitutes like photographs and camcorder footage.
I stooped to the side of Eva’s bed, observing how sleepy she looked. A single lamp in one corner was switched on, lending the room a soporific glow. To each side of Eva was a menagerie of soft toys: cows and sheep and donkeys and elephants, each gazing on with unblinking, fixed-grin amusement. I examined what she’d been reading, a hardback collection of fairy stories whose cover displayed some huge, fire-breathing beast.
“I hope that’s not the…book you want me to read from, pet,” I said, with a slight hesitation in my voice that I ascribed to tiredness.
“Some of the stories are really nice, Daddy. I’d like one about a princess, if that’s okay.”
She passed me the book, which was already open at the tale she wanted me to read, a harmless sounding fable called “The Girl Who Reached the Top.” That put me in mind of Eva’s struggle to hit the highest notes of her song earlier, but things were much quieter now with no tangible threat. There was only myself and my daughter. Even the dark outside was excluded from the room by thick curtains.
I read the story to her—it was sweet and playful, with a moral concerning the importance of being nice to others to get what you desired—and once I’d finished, Eva’s eyelids were drooping while her smile remained untouched.
“Thanks, Daddy. That’s my favorite,” she said, holding out her arms for a hug, which I offered her at once. “I’m sure that will give me nice dreams tonight.”
I pulled away, unable to help myself. After looking once more at the now-closed book with its frightening cover, I felt compelled to ask, “Are you saying that some of the other tales in here give you…well, nightmares?”
Her eyes opened wider, perhaps responding to the stiffness of my tone. “No, not really. But…but…”
“But what, Eva?”
She looked away, at the conspiracy of stuffed animals around her bed. I recalled all the farmyard noises she and her friends had made earlier, but then focused on Eva’s thoughtful response.
“Sometimes I do have nightmares,” she said, looking so embarrassed that I suspected my fretfulness had made her uncomfortable. “Sometimes I dream about giant creatures coming down to earth and crushing everything flat.”
“Creatures? What kind of creatures?” I asked, wondering why I’d never been aware of this and if Olivia knew about it.
Eva sat up a little, fanning her hands on the sheets. “I don’t know exactly, Daddy. They’re hard to see. I think I notice them in my sleep but…but forget them when I wake up—all their details, I mean.”
“But what details can you recall?”
“Just…just horrid fat bodies, and lots of eyes everywhere, and wings—great wings they use to move quickly through the sky.”
A memory returned to me, one perhaps hinted at by my brother’s call earlier and now completed by my daughter’s description. It involved pictures Dexter had once drawn, of monsters he’d claimed had once existed on earth, long before people had first occupied this country. When my brother had started sketching the beasts, I was at a vulnerable age and they’d frightened me. But there needn’t be any connection between these separate images. I surely couldn’t have unwittingly communicated such fears to my unspoiled girl, could I?
No, I told myself, looking away from the bed. Monstrous imaginings were common to many children, especially those with a sensitive nature. Eva possessed that characteristic, and despite his faults, Dex had been similar in the past, before our dad had knocked it out of him.
I returned my gaze to my daughter, rifling my mind for the one thing I’d always found useful in challenging situations: my academic knowledge, which I sometimes believed I’d acquired with the purpose of dealing with my fractious past.
“Do you know what a clever man called David Hume once said about people’s imaginations, Eva?”
“No, Daddy, I don’t.”
How could she? She was seven years old, for Christ’s sake. Nevertheless, I went quickly on, pointing at the stuffed toys to our left and right.
“He said that everything we can ever picture in our heads—dragons,
angels, monsters, and all others that don’t exist in the real world—we put together by using bits of things we’ve actually seen. And so a dragon might be a giant lizard combined with the wings of a bird and the mouth of a crocodile.”
The girl thought for a moment, scrutinizing this information. “And an angel is…is just a person with a butterfly’s wings?”
“Yes, that’s right.” I paused and swallowed, and then added, “And that monster you’ve dreamed about, the one you just described—that’s the same. It doesn’t really exist. But all its elements do. They’re simply drawn from other creatures you’ve seen”—I pointed again at the toy animals standing around us—“and brought together into a picture by your imagination.”
“So you mean that…” Eva hesitated, clearly trying to absorb this new knowledge. “You mean that it’s only my imagination that scares me some nights?”
I wasn’t sure I cared for this conclusion—it surely suggested that Eva was frightening herself, and that there might even be something wrong with her—but I had to accept that she’d drawn a logical conclusion.
“I suppose so, darling,” I said, refusing to lie to her, but now holding back something to overrule even this concession. Then I simply mentioned it: “Just remember one thing, Eva. There’s nothing any of us can witness—either deep in our minds or out in the world—that can’t be controlled by thinking about it in particular ways. Our minds might sometimes be the source of our fears, but they’re also our way of overcoming them. Do you understand that?”
“I…I think so, Daddy.”
I backed off a little, realizing I was getting a bit heavy with her, especially on her birthday. “Good girl,” I said, and stooped to kiss her, before climbing to my feet and placing the book of fairy tales on her bedside table. “Night night, darling.”
“Night night, Daddy.”