by Stuart Evers
Charities thought his street something of a soft touch, and bibbed agents holding clipboards knocked seemingly most days. Ben left his letters and padded downstairs. He opened the door but there was no bib or clipboard, just his son, who walked straight past him, through the narrow hallway, into the sitting room.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t call,’ Richard said. ‘I should have called, shouldn’t I?’
Ben watched him from the still-open door. His son with his hands in his trouser pockets, his son standing in the centre of his living room. His son standing, looking at the Lowry print above the fire.
Richard had never been to his father’s house. There had been no illness to drive him there, no emergency. Ben’s visit once a year on Anna’s birthday was enough for them both. No more invitations were ever extended. When Richard thought of his father, Ben realized, he would imagine the old house. He would be thinking of a younger version of his father, sitting in a house he no longer owned.
Ben watched Richard walk through the sitting room into the kitchen. The air smelled of egg and pork-fat and detergent.
‘Would you like tea?’ Ben said.
‘Yes,’ Richard said. ‘I’d like some tea. Some tea in one of these old cups. Wow, look at them!’ Richard walked over to the drainer and picked up one of the drying cups. ‘You could get money for these now. Real money. The kids love ’em. Think they’re cute. You should try selling them.’
‘You think so?’
Ben watched Richard cross to the fridge and begin to rearrange the fridge magnets. Moving them left and right. Ben had not thought of them as having an order, but they appeared out of sorts in their sudden, new configuration. He turned away and filled the kettle.
Richard dragged back one of the chairs and sat at the table. Next to him, the chair over which Anna’s running jacket was draped. Ben watched him touch Anna’s running jacket, then the tablecloth, palm down, a wedding ring too wide and bold for his finger. Ben took the teapot from the drainer and began to warm it under the tap.
‘Did you ask if she’d told us where she was going?’
‘What was that?’ Ben said.
‘You didn’t, did you?’ Richard said. He looked through into the living room.
Ben turned off the water and turned to see Richard standing, one hand on the table as though testing its strength.
Ben laughed. ‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ he said. ‘Richard, she’s twenty-one years old and—’
‘And she lives with me and her mother and had she not, at last, answered one of my calls, had a pang of conscience, we’d all still be sitting there thinking the worst. The very worst. You’ve seen the television. You know what it’s like. And you just didn’t think. Didn’t think to ask her. Didn’t think to say something. Didn’t think just to give me a call and let me know that she was here. To ask if everything was okay. Didn’t even think enough of me to do that. Though what the hell else I should expect, I don’t know.’
The kettle agitated. There was a small pane through which to watch the water rise and level. Ben ignored it and looked out of the window, the heads and the hats, the waves of the sea. He spooned out tea leaves. Three teaspoons: one per person, one for the pot. In town Anna was shopping, trying on dresses, ordering a take-away coffee in a paper cup.
‘Why are you here, Richard?’ Ben said. ‘Really, I mean. You could have just called me if you were so worried—’
‘Listen, Dad, Anna told me she was here. I said to Sue, I said, “Sue, he’ll do the right thing, he’ll call. Call in the morning. Send a text or email or something.” And she said, “Yes. Yes, darling, he’ll do the right thing.” And there was no message. And I couldn’t sleep and there was no message, no call. Nothing. I said to Sue, “Sue,” I said, “he’s not going to call, is he?” And she just nodded, because she knew as well as I did you wouldn’t bother.’
Later, in bed with the notepad on his knees he wrote to Anna: Your father is entitled to his own opinion, of course, but I can assure you that there was no malice in my not calling or mentioning your arrival. I was too concerned about you to wonder whether you had contacted him. Your father will believe what he likes. He always has. But you don’t have to be as myopic as him.
Ben placed the teapot on the table.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ben said. ‘I’m sorry that you’re upset.’
Ben poured milk into his cup and then tea. He looked at his son. For some reason, he wrote in bed, later, your father is convinced of my badness. For want of a better word. He has listened too long to his mother, ignored me for too long. I fear it is too late for us. Too many years have passed. I will not do him the discourtesy of recounting what he said in the kitchen this afternoon. But it was uncalled for and untrue, this is all you need know.
‘Do you remember,’ Richard said, pouring his own tea, ‘when we took that day trip to Portsmouth?’
Ben picked up his cup and looked at his son. His son was watching him.
‘You don’t remember?’
‘I forget a lot, Richard—’
‘I’m not surprised you don’t remember, because we never went,’ Richard said. ‘I was ten and I wanted to see HMS Victory. This ringing any bells? You said you would take me. Just the two of us. The pair of us, driving down to the coast together. Remember that? And then we weren’t going. It was such a long way. And you had things to do. And we could go some other time. And you said the same then. I’m sorry you’re upset. Not sorry for something you’ve done; but sorry for its effect.’
Ben pushed away his cup. He stood and switched on the lamp under the hood of the oven. It made little difference. He switched on the main lights. Three of the eight halogen bulbs were dead. The empty part of the kitchen was lit as though for a stage.
‘Are we going to argue about something that happened forty-odd years ago? Is that why you’re here?’
‘Do you realize,’ Richard said, ‘that this is the first time we’ve been alone in a room together for almost fifteen years? And that this is the first time I’ve ever seen this place? You know that, don’t you?’
Ben said nothing. Richard went back to the fridge magnets. The lights hummed slightly.
‘Would you like some cake, I have—’
‘No I don’t want any fucking cake.’
‘I don’t know what you want from me, Richard. I was concerned only for Anna. She’s a grown woman, she doesn’t need to run everything past you, you know. You were always like this, even as a child. Had to know everyone’s business—’
‘I read your letters,’ he said. He laughed. ‘Oh yes. All the letters you sent to Anna. Did you know that? She left them lying around. She wanted me to read them, I think. So I read them all. What nice handwriting you have. And what a selective memory!’
The stories, the tales of his son. Yes. So many in those letters. How the son that Ben had treated with such love had betrayed him so. How this son had so relished the breakdown of his mother and father’s marriage. How he had revelled in telling his father about his mother’s new-found happiness with a civil engineer, how his son had barred any real relationship with Anna. How this cruelty had affected Ben, how though he was not angry with this son, he was incapable of being so, he remained wounded every day by his behaviour. They were such good, such truthful letters.
Ben smiled at his son, big and broad.
‘You knew?’ Richard asked. ‘You knew?’
Later that night, with the notepad on his knees Ben wrote: Your father now believes that my letters are little more than poison directed at him, through you. How was I to know that he would betray your trust and read your personal letters? How was I to know that he would be so invasive? All I have tried to do is be honest about my past, and my present, give you, perhaps, the benefit of my experiences. Also perhaps an understanding of why your father is the way that he is.
The doorbell rang. Ben got up and let Anna in. She had three bags: Cancer Research, British Heart Foundation, Scope. She saw her father and put down the bags. She k
issed her grandfather on the cheek.
‘Has he been here long?’ she said.
‘Hello, love. We’ve been—’
‘What did I tell you?’ Anna said, turning towards her father. ‘You promised you’d leave me alone. You promised.’
The two of them argued. Loud and quiet, mad and silent. These are the days of miracle and wonder. Ben watched as he melted into the furniture, as ignored as a hat-stand. Anna calling her father a controlling, manipulative, hateful man. Anna pointing her finger and Richard trying to interrupt without success. Anna telling him that she was never coming home and would never live with him again. That he was a terrible father and a terrible man without a shred of dignity. There was tea left in the pot and Ben poured some out into his cup, listening to the consistency and heat of Anna’s anger. He watched his son say no, you don’t understand, I never meant, and lose his temper and accuse her of being a terrible daughter, a burden on her mother, on the whole family. Selfish, arrogant. And he watched Anna say, me? Arrogant, coming from you? And Ben sipped his cooling tea and watched them as their voices grew louder and louder, his son’s face becoming redder, and he wondered if his son would be able to keep his anger checked. Ben watched his son throw a teacup at the wall.
‘Get out,’ Anna said. ‘Get out of this house now.’
Richard looked at his daughter, and then at his father. Ben smiled.
‘Go on,’ Anna said. ‘Out.’
She pushed him. His son. Richard. Anna pushed her father and he put his arms up. He looked at his father. Ben smiled. Richard left the house; his car leaving quickly.
Ben looked at the smashed cup. Ben looked at Anna, crying.
‘You sit down,’ Ben said. ‘Anna, you sit down and I’ll clean all of this up.’
WINGS
In the parlour window her face is reflected; behind it a photograph of an extended forearm, gothic script running from elbow to wrist: Only God Can Judge Me. The photograph is laminated, its edges bleached by sunlight, but the tattoo’s ink remains a deep greenblack, the surrounding skin a tight, painful red. She looks away, to the pavement, then back to the other photographs.
A back-bound Madonna; a blood-wristed Christ on a well-built pectoral; a knifed skull ablaze on an upper thigh; a young man’s neck, the tattoo beginning at the lobe of his left ear and ending at his clavicle. No faces shown.
She’d once known a man with a swallow inked on his neck; he’d bothered them both: yes. Her and Gwen. Years ago now, in a pub that no longer exists. The pair of them laughing as they ran away, the tattooed man shouting the names they’d invented from the doorway.
The bell rings, last-orders-like, as she enters. Two men behind a scrubbed chrome counter, arms like advertisements, play cards for matchsticks. The turn of the next card determines who will rise and greet Maria. The card falls and the thinner of the two – neatly bearded, ear-ringed, a Hawaiian shirt over the tattoos – rises from his chair.
‘Can I help?’ he says.
‘I hope so,’ she says. ‘I was wondering. Do I need an appointment? Or can you fit me in now?’
‘That all depends,’ he says. ‘Depends entirely on what you want.’
‘I want wings,’ she says. ‘I want a pair of wings on my back, just here.’
With her thumb, she points to her shoulder blade and catches her reflection in the mirrored walls; posed, her thumb out, like hitching a lift, disastrous camping holiday, Scotland, 1991.
‘Wings?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Wings.’
This is how she has imagined it:
Tattooist: Listen, lady – the tattooist’s voice is American, Deep South, Alabama perhaps – wings are a lot a ink. You can’t have ’em small, can you, Hutch?
The other tattooist shakes his head and sucks on a straw spiked into a Big Gulp cup.
Maria: I’m aware of that – her speaking voice has become icy British, just at the public-school end of Received Pronunciation – I’ve done my research. Can I see your designs, please?
Tattooist: We do about fifteen different kinds a wing. Which kind were you thinking? You have a picture or something?
Maria: No. I’d just like to see the designs, please.
Tattooist: No picture?
Maria: Just show me the wings.
Tattooist: I ain’t showing you nothing, lady.
Maria: I have money—
Tattooist: It ain’t about the money, lady. Same thing happened to a buddy a mine. This stuck-up chick comes into his parlour, she hands over her black Amex card and he inks her. Month later she’s suing him for taking advantage of her weakened psychological state. You see what I’m saying?
Maria bristles at the grammatical confusion.
Maria: It’s my sister’s birthday. My sister, Gwen. She would have been forty today – Maria takes two thousand pounds from her handbag and places it on the counter. It is a paper-bound brick like those used in exchange for kidnapped children –this is important.
The tattooist says nothing and takes out a large port-folio from under the desk, stops on a page and turns it to face Maria. The page is full of wings. He points his finger at a design in the bottom right-hand corner. It is hand-drawn, beautiful; two small wings just as she imagined them.
Tattooist: They’re the only ones I’ll ink. Not too big, not too detailed, fine for when you want them removed.
Maria: I’m never going to have them removed – she puts her hand over the image, strokes the design – they’re perfect. Just perfect.
It is nothing like she imagined. There are over sixty different pairs of wings in the portfolio and the tattooist is all too helpful in picking out a design. Many come with a little background, a summary of how long they take to ink, whether he feels it is a good design for her. It reminds her of looking at carpet swatches and kitchen counter tops she couldn’t afford; salesmen pitching the longevity, the luxury of their product. Like those men, the tattooist repeats that at the end of the day the choice is hers. She sees so many pairs inked on so many backs she develops a kind of wing blindness. They blur and flounder, seem ready to stretch and flap away.
By the turn of the fifth page, she understands that no one will tell her no. No one is going to find her mental health wanting, refuse her payment, finally ask for someone else’s permission. Who would be able to grant such permission, anyway? Would there need to be a consensus of friends and family as a safeguard against such action? Or references, perhaps? Would she be forced to forge her husband’s signature? In his handwriting state: I have been married to Maria Carlton for sixteen years and I can confirm that she has always wanted and admired tattoos?
Maria momentarily notices herself in the mirrors: the stiffness of her clothes, the age-appropriate hairstyle, the messy casualness of a working mother, the redness around her eyes.
‘My sister died,’ she says as he points to a pair of wings that cover the entirety of a man’s back. ‘It’s her birthday today.’
‘A tattoo’s a good way to remember someone,’ he says. ‘The earliest tattoos were for remembrance, you know?’
He sticks out his forearm and in amongst the swirls and curlicues are a man’s name, a date of birth and a date of death, roses like bindweed surrounding the lettering.
‘She said, Gwen that is, my younger sister, she said that when she was forty we’d both get tattoos. Both of us,’ Maria says as the tattooist turns the page again. ‘So, here I am. Alone, but not, if you see what I’m saying.’
‘Yes. So you are,’ he says, and turns the portfolio fully to Maria.
‘These,’ he says tapping the bottom right of the page. ‘These ones.’
It is a pencil-drawn image on tracing paper, thin and brittle grey. The wings are delicate and subtle; spindly lines, slightly crooked, suggestive rather than fully downed and feathered: still able to pinch at her shoulder blades though, still able to beat and lift her into the night air.
‘What do you think?’ he says.
‘Gwen would have lo
ved them.’
‘Gwen doesn’t have to live with them,’ he says. He smiles and they share a small laugh; a moment’s warmth and understanding.
‘I want them,’ she says. ‘They’re perfect.’
‘I’m glad,’ he says. ‘So, okay. Just a couple of things to go through before we get started.’
He picks up a sheet of A4 from both of the wire-mesh baskets under the counter. He asks her to read and sign them and she scans them in panic. They are nothing to worry about, some legal documentation and certifications of consent. Still, her signatures on the dotted lines are not her own. She writes Gwen’s name instead. The other tattooist asks if she would like something to drink.
‘Wine, if you have it,’ she says. ‘Red wine.’
‘I was thinking more of coffee, or perhaps a tea. No booze, you see,’ he says shaking his head. ‘It’s against the law.’
‘Don’t be such a spoilsport,’ the other tattooist says. ‘I can get some wine from upstairs if you really want some.’
‘It’s all right,’ the other man says, ‘I’ll go.’
She watches him disappear through a door, no doubt calling a friend as he lumbers up the stairs – you’ll never guess what – beginning a dissection of the woman taking off her working clothes, hanging up her jacket and blouse, wrapping a towel around herself and lying front-ways on the large black tattooing chair.
The tattooist’s fingers are thin and cold on her back; he talks and she remembers to reply. There is music softly playing and beneath that the softer hum of the ink gun and even lower, even softer than that, once he begins, the pain. The pain is inconstant. As the wings begin to take shape, she concentrates on the buzzing etch of the needle and the brief pauses while he wipes away her blood.