Redemption Road

by Lisa Ballantyne

  It was teatime, and one by one the boys playing football were called inside by their mothers, who leaned out of tenement windows shouting their names. Only when the others were gone, taking the ball with them, did George and Richard make their way back home. George carried the cat in his arms.

  ‘You can’t take that in. It might belong to someone.’

  ‘It doesn’t. It’s an orphan.’

  ‘A stray, you mean.’

  George nodded; he licked the drips from his runny nose with the point of his tongue.

  ‘Well, either way you won’t be allowed.’

  ‘It can kill the mice.’

  ‘They end up dead anyway.’

  ‘I want to keep him. I’ll keep him hidden.’

  ‘As if you could. Cats smell. They get into everything. You’ll only get into trouble.’

  ‘I just want something to love that’ll love me back.’ George went on holding the kitten in his arms like a baby.

  Richard said nothing as they opened the door and climbed upstairs, Richard trailing his fingers against the blue and white tiled wall. It was Tuesday and the stairs had been scrubbed with bleach. George tried to hide the kitten under his sweater but it clawed at the wool, pulling it out of shape.

  As soon as they entered the lobby, the brothers saw that their father was home. He was not expected this early on a weekday, but his coat was hanging in the hall, and his tackety boots were unlaced and sitting on a sheet of newspaper, waiting to be polished. They could hear their mother in the kitchen, emitting small sighs as she chopped vegetables, and then, from the sitting room, came the heavy stink of their father’s thin cigars.

  When Brendan was home, it was as if he took up more than his share of air. Richard stood in the hall, feeling the pain in his lungs. He had been playing football and then climbed three sets of stairs and now he made an effort not to breathe too hard, as he pushed his brother into their bedroom.

  George sniffed and set the cat down on the bed, where it arched its back and stared at them both.

  ‘You’ll never be able to hide it. You best take it outside again.’

  ‘No. I’m going to keep it here.’

  ‘What’ll you feed it?’

  ‘I’ll save bits from my dinner. I can give it my milk.’

  ‘Well, I’m telling you now, you’ll get found out.’

  ‘Why? Will you tell?’

  Richard looked at George, his lips pressed together. The truth was that if it was Peter’s cat, Richard would have told quickly, but then Peter would only have wanted to torment it.

  Dinner was silent, punctuated only by the sound of Brendan demanding things from their mother: more potatoes, hot tea, a sharper knife. When their father rose from the table to go to the bathroom, Richard and George made their way back to the bedroom. They had each secreted some food in a napkin: a piece of a beef and half a sausage from the stew, a boiled potato and a sliver of apple.

  As soon as they entered the room, the cat pounced on to the bed, tail up and eyes wide.

  ‘I don’t think cats eat this stuff,’ said Richard. ‘They like fish and milk.’

  ‘There’s some salmon in the cupboard.’

  ‘As if you’d be able to get that.’

  Nevertheless, when they opened up the napkins, the cat began to mew, pacing back and forth on the bed, looking at the napkin, which George held in his hands.

  ‘Whssssh,’ said Richard, tapping the cat’s head, over the sound of the toilet flushing.

  ‘Don’t hurt him.’

  ‘He’ll hear.’

  George let the napkin sit on the bed and the cat sniffed and pawed at it, then sat down on its haunches, looking at it. George held out a piece of meat, but it turned its face away, then continued to miaow, sitting up on the bed.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  The boys turned to find their father at the door, hands on his hips. Richard stood with his back to the bed, but George turned and scooped the cat into his arms, which Richard considered nothing short of stupidity.

  ‘No animals in this house.’

  ‘But…’ George began, and the rage came to Brendan’s eyes, bloodshot whites showing behind his watery transparent blue. ‘It’s my pet,’ he managed, brushing against Richard’s arm, as if for support.

  Richard said nothing.

  ‘Your pet, is it?’

  Brendan reached out and took the cat from George’s hands, taking it by the scruff of the neck between finger and thumb. He swung his arm like a cricketer and threw the cat against the wall.

  It fell to the floor, grey and limp as the string mop their mother used on the close stairs.

  Brendan turned to smile at them both. ‘Now get that dead cat out of here.’

  Richard’s eyes were hot from staring at the road and his limbs were cramping after the long drive. He had stopped twice, briefly to eat and drink coffee, but he had been staring at motorways for over nine hours and his whole body felt fatigued.

  As Richard drove into Cornwall it was lunchtime and his empty stomach contracted. There was a bitter taste in his mouth, but Cornwall was a relief after the monotony of the road. As the grey flank of the English Channel came into view, he remembered how crushed George had been after the kitten died. He had been white-faced before their father, but had not shed a tear until bedtime, when Richard had heard him crying in the darkness, whispering: ‘I only wanted something to love.’

  Something to love. Richard slowed down as he drove past cottages with terracotta roofs and whitewashed stone walls. He pulled up and rolled down the window, taking a long breath of the sea air and listening to the peal of seagulls, as he considered where to go first in search of George. He took the map out of the glove compartment and glanced at it and the road signs around him.

  Outside the newsagent’s, a man was standing, spreading a map out over the bonnet of his car. There was a breeze, which lifted the scant hairs from the man’s head, and also the corners of the map. The man fidgeted, smoothing the hair over his scalp only to lose control of the map, which flapped in his face.

  Despite himself, Richard smiled at the man’s struggle, because even from this distance he could tell the man was annoyed and his movements were funny, trying his best to control the large, unruly map with his short arms.

  Finally, the man began to fold the map. In the wind, this also took some time as he made an effort to refold it along the original creases. Watching was a rare meditation for Richard: it took him out of himself.

  It was only when the short man tossed the map into the car and straightened his shirt and tie that Richard realised he had seen him somewhere before. As the man climbed into his old Ford, Richard recognised the journalist Tam Driscoll had been whispering to. Richard had been on the desk when he came to pay his bill, insisting on a receipt with his twitching eyes and mouth.

  As the old Ford pulled away, Richard tossed his own map on to the floor and began to follow.

  31

  Margaret Holloway

  Thursday 26 December, 2013

  Maxwell’s strong hand tightened around Margaret’s wrist. She pulled away from him but he was holding her fast. She looked around the ward, but the nurses had vanished.

  ‘You really are hurting me,’ she said firmly, quietly.

  His perfect blue eyes were wide and she found that it was his eyes more than his scarred appearance that terrified her. He was holding her wrist at an angle, so that pain shot up her forearm. He looked straight up into Margaret’s eyes and she saw that he was trying to speak. His lips were dry and cracked, and he blinked and a tear flashed over his shiny, poreless face.

  ‘Please,’ she said again, but then realised he was urging to get her to sit down or move closer to him.

  There was a plastic chair near the bed and she pulled it over. As soon as she sat down, he released her.

  She exhaled, holding on to the side of the bed, as he turned to face her. His mouth opened and shut.

  ‘Would you like some water?’ sh
e asked.

  He nodded, his blue eyes following her as she stood and poured a little water into a plastic beaker. She placed the glass in his hand, but he struggled to hold it, in turn gripping too hard and then not strongly enough.

  ‘It’s all right, let me.’ She raised the glass to his lips and he took a sip. When he drank again, a little water ran over his chin and down his neck. She reached for a tissue and dabbed it away.

  Just the act of drinking seemed to exhaust him. His head fell back on to the pillow and he closed his eyes, his bare chest rising and falling. She watched him. The water had made his lips pink. Finally, he opened his eyes and scrutinised her again. Now that she looked at him calmly, she was once again flooded with gratitude. She felt a rare kinship towards him.

  He reached for her hand again, and she hesitated but then gave it to him. He rested his palm over her fingers, patting and then stroking, his eyes closed. Margaret swallowed, unsure what to say. His hands were cool and smooth as alabaster.

  ‘It is so good to… see you,’ he said, speaking slowly, as if each word was an effort.

  Margaret smiled. ‘And you. Thank you, once again.’

  ‘Don’t you know me?’ he said, turning to her slowly, the scarred skin on his neck twisting like rope. ‘I know you.’

  Margaret said nothing, feeling a flush on her cheek. She opened her lips to speak.

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ he said. ‘You taught me to read.’ The words came with dry choking coughs. ‘You taught me how to read and write.’ He rose up a little on the bed and Margaret patted his shoulder and then helped him again to more water. He drank it audibly, sucking and gulping, as a child might.

  He rested back against the pillow. While he recovered, Margaret put a hand on his arm. ‘I saw… I saw that you had my work telephone number on you. I wondered then… did we meet at school? You’re too old to be a pupil – a parent perhaps?’

  He seemed to smile. It was a garish stretching of his face, to reveal teeth that were straight but yellowed. ‘I am your pupil,’ he said, still labouring to speak. ‘Maybe your first.’

  As if it were a game, Margaret sat back, smiling, looking up at the ceiling as she thought back to a time when they could have met. She remembered the first classes she had taught. She had volunteered as a tutor of illiterate adults when she was applying to teacher training college.

  ‘Was it the volunteer centre in Tower Hamlets?’

  Again the face stretched into a smile. He was teasing her, she realised.

  ‘Your name: Maxwell Brown – I would have remembered it. I don’t believe I’ve ever known any Maxwells, until now.’

  He turned to her again. His blue eyes were fierce as truth. He tried to rise, but couldn’t and instead settled for twisting towards her on the bed. ‘That’s not my real name,’ he said, licking his lips and staring at her, unblinking, so that, despite herself, she had to look away.

  Margaret began to feel very hot. The person in the adjacent bed was vomiting again and the acrid scent of it drifted across to them, until nurses came and briskly drew the curtain.

  She clasped her hands and leaned towards him, whispering, ‘Really? The hospital has records for you going right back. You were unconscious but they must have found your wallet or something…’

  He nodded, looking up at the ceiling. From the side, even though the tip of his nose had been burned, there was something about the structure of his face that resonated in her memory.

  ‘I’ve been going as Maxwell, with that date of birth, for some time, for as long as I’ve…’ he turned to her, ‘been like this.’

  A second spasm of coughs racked his body.

  ‘I like it,’ he continued. ‘It suits me. Maxwell is a grand-sounding name, I think, and Brown is nothing, ten a penny.’ He placed one of his palms against the other. ‘Put together, that’s just about right. That’s who I am.’

  Now that he had been speaking for longer, sentences and idioms, she realised that there was a subtle but noticeable Scottish lilt in his voice, not unlike her own. She had lived down south since her late teens and had been to university, teaching college and then worked in England. Ben teased her when her old accent crept into their conversation. When she was in pure emotional states – anger, love, joy – her childhood accent was more noticeable.

  ‘So, who are you then?’ she asked, leaning towards his face.

  Although the skin around his eyes was immobile, unable to wrinkle in appreciation, it seemed as if his blue eyes were smiling at her.

  ‘You know,’ he said, nodding, letting his eyelids close.

  Margaret put a hand in her hair. She didn’t know who he was. She was frustrated with the game now and only wanted him to tell her. She put a palm on the bedsheets covering his stomach, worried that he was about to go to sleep.

  He opened his eyes.

  ‘What do you mean? I really don’t. I need you to tell me.’

  He closed his eyes again, as if her chatter was tiring him. He took a deep breath – his expansive, scarred chest rising up, buoyed by it. She thought he was sighing, preparing for sleep, but then he cleared his throat and began to sing.

  It was not really a song. His voice was dry and weak, and it was more of a passionate whisper.

  Margaret listened, politely at first, smiling, nodding her head to an imagined beat.

  Then she heard him and the words and melody assaulted her deep inside. Her nose stung, and tears flashed over her cheeks.

  ‘And I love you so,’ he sang.

  ‘The people ask me how,’ she said, louder than she had meant, but the tears in her throat made it difficult to speak.

  They looked at each other.

  Suddenly she knew the flames that had engulfed him, searing his skin before her very eyes. She blinked and blinked again, remembering an explosion and the sound of metal bending, breaking. She could hear his screams, so loud that they seemed to rip through the very core of her. For years afterwards, they were the only thing she could hear inside her head. It had made her unable to speak, unable to think of anything else. But she had methodically bedded the memories down, as her mother had boxed her scraps, notes and articles – storing them safely away – so that they might move forward.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ she whispered. ‘I watched you burn.’

  ‘I burned, but I didn’t die, although I felt like I was dead,’ said Maxwell. ‘For years to come, I wished that I had died.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘But for the joy of seeing you again…’

  ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘You saved mine first.’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘It was easy. There’s the internet now. I looked you up. I found out where you worked, where you lived even – your husband is Ben, he writes articles for the New Statesman, the Guardian sometimes. Your children are Paula – and she looks so like you, I think – and Eliot. You work too hard and you go home late. It was like that the day of the crash. You shouldn’t have been out at that time, driving in that weather. You should have gone home earlier or taken the train.’