Redemption Road

by Lisa Ballantyne

  The pulses of the heart machine quickened. George pressed his lips together again and again.

  ‘Do you need more water?’

  He looked away and closed his eyes. She poured some for him anyway, an inch in the plastic beaker beside of the bed. He took it into his hand but then spilled it right away. Ben leaned over and brushed the water off the top sheet.

  ‘He’s too tired,’ Margaret said. ‘We should go.’

  ‘We should,’ Ben whispered. ‘And your dad’s with the kids.’

  George’s eyes opened wide. ‘I’m her dad,’ he said loudly, although it seemed to cost him all his strength. Ben nodded.

  ‘They wrote such lies about me,’ George said. The word lies forced open his lips, revealing his purple gums. ‘They said I hurt you and I never. I never would…’

  ‘I know,’ said Margaret, stroking the back of his hand. ‘Don’t let yourself get upset. It’s all over now. I’m here.’

  ‘When I got out of hospital and I got set up, I started taking classes. When I rented that first flat I was able to write Maxwell Brown. I knew how. We…’ he broke off to cough again, ‘we are both left-handed.’ He held up his left hand and Margaret put her left hand against his.

  ‘We are,’ she said.

  His eyes were now half closed, and Margaret got to her feet. She was worried that he would not feel it were she to kiss the waxy skin of his forehead, so she leaned forward and kissed the palm of his hand.

  ‘I love you so,’ he was still whispering, as if trying to sing again.

  Ben rubbed Margaret’s shoulders and then they left him.

  Walking along the corridor, Margaret felt enervated, depleted. She walked with her fingers loosely laced through Ben’s.

  When they got home, it was late and the children were in bed, but Margaret was in time to say good night. Her father had done all the dishes by hand and stacked them on the kitchen table. The cutlery was shining: little regiments of teaspoons, knives and forks.

  ‘We have a dishwasher, Dad.’

  ‘Oh, they’re a waste of money. It gave me something to do.’

  Margaret went to him and kissed his cheekbone. He smiled and dipped his head a little in response. She had called him while Ben was driving back, to say they were on their way.

  Her father folded the tea towel he had been using. ‘I told them to go to bed. I thought it best, when it was nearly ten. They gave me no argument. They’re a credit to you.’

  Margaret pressed her lips together in a smile. Ben had gone upstairs to kiss the children good night.

  ‘Let’s sit down for a moment,’ she said, putting a hand on her father’s elbow.

  She sat down at the table opposite him. She was exhausted, but there was more to say. She remembered the words that she had said to him before she ran out of the house. His face was pale, his eyes saddened. She took a deep breath.

  ‘I need to tell you about what’s been going on with me since the car crash.’

  The skin on John’s high forehead wrinkled.

  ‘I don’t want to upset you, I…’

  His fingers fluttered on the table, as if his feelings were of no consequence. The stacked spoons trembled audibly.

  ‘A few weeks ago, I found the man who had pulled me out of the car on the M11. He had a head injury too, and… he was put in a coma, so that when I found him I couldn’t thank him, but I kept on visiting.’ Margaret wiped a hand across her eyes. She was deeply tired, yet there was a bright, crackling wakefulness in her veins. ‘I was in shock after the crash and, sitting quietly with him, I guess I did a lot of thinking. That was when all that stuff… all that stuff… started to come back to me… or not come back to me exactly, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wanted to know.’

  John nodded gravely.

  ‘Mum’s things… that box of cuttings and photographs, letters… it was so hard for me to go through, but I had to do it. And it was harder because she’s not here,’ her throat clotted with hurt, ‘and she had collected all of it.’

  John licked his lips, as if tasting the grief one more time.

  ‘And tonight, when I ran out, I went to the hospital again to see the man, the man who saved me on the motorway. I didn’t know when I left, but he had woken up from his coma and then I started to understand why I’d been so drawn to him.’

  She paused and looked across the table at her father. He was frowning, as if anticipating what she was going to say. She swallowed, once again wondering what it had been like for John – searching for her, thinking she was dead. She had been stolen from him – the man who had always loved her, from her earliest memories.

  She wasn’t sure how he would react if she told him she had been visiting George McLaughlin – a gangster who had been her mother’s first love, and had taken her away from home as a seven-year-old child.

  He would be angry. He would be angry at the man who he thought had hurt his little girl. If he knew that the person who had taken her was her real father it might devastate him.

  He was sitting waiting for her to speak. She reached over and clasped his hand in hers.

  She cleared her throat and struggled to reform her thoughts. ‘I was drawn to him because he saved my life and I realised that I was so glad to be alive.’

  Her hands were warm inside her father’s. ‘I’m so sorry… about what I said to you at dinner.’

  John nodded with his eyes closed.

  ‘I think everything suddenly came into focus. The car crash… they said I was in shock, but it seemed like the opposite was going on. Suddenly things became clear to me – where I was from, who I was, what had happened to me and… it made me miss Mum.’

  A thin tear flashed over John’s grey face.

  She took a deep breath. ‘You’re my dad and you always will be.’

  John cleared his throat. ‘You were trapped and the car was burning. The fire,’ her father wiped his eye with his forefinger, ‘the fire… I know what that must have meant to you.’

  Margaret heard Ben’s footsteps on the stairs. They got to their feet, expecting the membrane of their conversation to be broken.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ her father said, hurriedly.

  ‘Don’t be silly. It’s me who should apologise for running out like that – causing a scene.’

  ‘No, I mean, I’m sorry, back then… I could have been better. Your mother and I, we both could have been better.’

  ‘Thanks for coming, Dad,’ she said. ‘That’s all that matters.’

  He patted her shoulder. ‘I should turn in now. Early start back.’

  His hand stayed on her shoulder for a moment, and then he clung to the wool, balling up her cardigan in his fist. He covered both eyes with forefinger and thumb. Margaret put her arms around his waist.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Ben, ‘not more tears, just when I’m ready to get the party started.’

  ‘We’re fine,’ said Margaret.

  ‘An excellent bit of dishwashing, Pater,’ said Ben, motioning to the table. ‘You can come back.’

  ‘I shall look forward to it,’ said John, his face puckering into a smile.

  Ben and Margaret sat up past midnight, with glasses of wine, talking. The fire was on, but Margaret was shivering, so much that Ben put a blanket around her shoulders. She sat with her feet in his lap as he rubbed them.

  ‘Moll,’ he said, and then again, ‘Moll,’ as if trying it out on her. ‘Should I start to call you that?’

  Margaret laughed. ‘It was my baby name. Just before I started high school, I decided I wanted to be called my full name. Maybe even my name was a reminder…’

  It was not until later, when she was in bed lying curled into Ben, that she fully remembered the very first day she met George. She remembered the smell of his aftershave and the clear sparkle in his eyes as he knelt, one knee on the pavement as he unbuttoned his shirt, showing her the name written on his chest.

  Margaret blinked in the darkness of their bedroom. She could taste black smoke at the bac
k of her throat. She could hear him screaming but she couldn’t get to him.

  When they took her to the hospital they had stripped her and inspected her for harm. She had deep, purple bruises on her arms, which the doctors and her parents all decided had been inflicted on her by the tall dark man who had kidnapped her. Margaret had not said a word – she had been unable, but she knew that the journalist who had arrived at the scene and tried to hold her back had made the bruises. She still remembered the pain – wanting to protect her father, sure she could help him, but unable to get free. It had been this shame that had so overwhelmed her later: that she had not been able to save him.

  She turned again, her mind bright despite her need for rest. Ben was sound asleep, his breaths low and rhythmic. Down the hall, she could hear the intermittent long inhalation of her father’s snores.

  She was unaware, but at the Royal London Hospital the senior charge nurse was looking up Margaret’s telephone number. George had had a stroke after a blood clot formed in his brain. He died as Maxwell Brown, at 01.25, leaving no known next of kin.

  She had been drinking, and her mind was scorched with tiredness, but Margaret smelled burning in the bedroom. It wasn’t a fire, or a cooking smell, and after a moment, lifting her head off the pillow, she realised that it was a cigarette. She frowned, wondering about Ben, her father or, God forbid – the kids. She turned over and inhaled again. It was unmistakable, at the back of her throat, mixed in with a briny whiff of aftershave. Margaret looked up, and George was standing at the foot of the bed. He was in his dark blue suit, like the day when he had met her after school. He was smiling at her, all clear skin and stubble and bad blue eyes. ‘You go to sleep now, angel’ was all he said.

  Calm flooded her. She lay down and began to drift off to sleep.

  The telephone rang and Ben was startled, jumping out of bed to answer it, palm pressed against the wall. He tried to turn on the light but knocked it clean off the bedside table. The lamp crashed to the floor as he answered the phone. Margaret lay, eyes wide open, as lights went on down the hall, first Paula’s room and then her father’s.

  Ben hung up and came round to her side of the bed, smoothing her hair and taking her hand.

  ‘Listen…’ he said, frowning.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘I know.’

  She smiled, knowing that she was, for the first time in her life, whole again, present. She was ready to go back to work, ready to look after her family. He was with her, and he always would be.

  SONGS

  ‘And I love you so, the people ask me how’, by Don McLean, 1970 debut album, Tapestry, writer Don McLean, label Mediarts.

  ‘Kisses for me, save all your kisses for me’, by Brotherhood of Man, 1976, Love and Kisses from Brotherhood of Man, writers Tony Hiller, Lee Sheriden, Martin Lee, label Pye Records.

  ‘Sweet Caroline’, by Neil Diamond, 1968, Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show, writer Neil Diamond, label Uni Records.

  ‘Song Sung Blue’, by Neil Diamond, 1972, Hot August Night, writers Neil Diamond, Leon Russell, label MCA, Universal.

  ‘I’ve Been Loving You Too Long’, by Otis Redding, 1965, Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul, writers Otis Redding, Jerry Butler, label Volt/Atco.

  Have you read Lisa Ballantyne’s extraordinary debut, The Guilty One?

  Chosen for the Richard and Judy Book Club, Autumn 2012

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