Guilty One

by Lisa Ballantyne

  The football was on, but he muted the sound and picked up her address book, turning again to the page with Jane Flynn’s number and Hounslow address. He looked at his watch. It was just after nine – not too late for a call.

  Daniel dialled the number which Minnie had written carefully in blue biro. He did not remember Minnie being in contact with Jane, but maybe this number had been recorded while Norman was still alive.

  Daniel listened to the ring as he sipped his drink. The very smell of the drink reminded him of Minnie.

  ‘Hello?’ The voice sounded echoey, lonely, as if spoken in a dark hall.

  ‘Hello, I wanted to talk to … Jane Flynn?’

  ‘Speaking. Who is this?’

  ‘My name’s Daniel Hunter. I was … Minnie Flynn was my … If I’m right she was your brother’s wife?’

  ‘You know Minnie?’

  ‘Yes, can you talk right now?’

  ‘Yes, but … how can I help you? How is Minnie? I often think of her.’

  ‘Well, she … died this year.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. That’s awful. How did you say you knew her …?’

  ‘I’m her … son. She adopted me.’ The words took the breath from him and he leaned back against the sofa, winded.

  ‘How awful,’ she said again. ‘God … thank you so much for letting me know. What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Danny …’

  ‘Danny,’ Jane repeated. Daniel could hear children screaming with laughter in the background, above the sound of the television, and wondered if these were her grandchildren.

  ‘Did you know her well?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, we all used to go out together in London when we were young. She and Norman met down here. We would go dancing, have fish and chips. After she and Norman moved back to Cumbria – not so much.’

  ‘You and Norman were from up there originally?’

  ‘Yes, but I rarely went back. Norman missed it, missed the life, but I’ve always liked the city. When is the funeral?’

  ‘It was a few months ago. I’m late in calling round …’ Daniel coloured slightly: assuming the guise of the dutiful son. ‘She left me her address book and I saw your number in it. I thought I’d ring, just in case you were still there … in case you wanted to know.’

  ‘I appreciate it. Such sad news, but … God bless her, she didn’t have an easy life, did she?’

  ‘Do you know what happened to them – Delia and Norman?’ Daniel could still feel his cheeks burning.

  ‘It took me years to get over it. Part of me was always angry with Minnie … That must sound awful to you, I’m sorry, but of course now I realise that was wrong of me. It’s just how you feel when something like that happens. You want to blame someone, and you can’t blame your brother. I think that was why we didn’t keep in touch. I know you must think I’m awful …’

  ‘I understand,’ said Daniel, quietly. ‘What happened to Norman?’

  ‘Well, when Delia died, Norman took a shotgun into the garden and … put it into his mouth. Minnie wasn’t home. The neighbours found him. It was in all the papers. I understood him being … He loved that little one, but it wasn’t his fault … Their marriage was ruined, you see. I think they went through a really black period. He blamed Minnie for it, you see …’

  ‘I think Minnie blamed herself.’

  ‘She was driving after all … He made it to the hospital to see her one last time: he was with the little one when she died but he … he never recovered. It was just a few months after she died that he killed himself.

  ‘I hope you never have to go through that, Danny. I was up in Cumbria for my niece’s funeral, then back three months later for my brother’s. Is it any wonder I don’t care to go back there now?’

  ‘What was Minnie like, at Delia’s funeral, I mean?’

  ‘She did well. She had us all back to the house and she’d made a spread. She didn’t shed a tear. We were all in bits, but the pair of them had it together. I remember something though …’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘We were done. The priest had said his bit. The gravediggers were filling in the hole, but then Minnie twisted away from Norman and ran back and threw herself down in the mud by the grave. She was wearing a pale grey flowery dress. She threw herself down on her knees by Delia’s grave and reached in over the edge. We had to pull her back. Norman had to pull her back. She would have gone into that grave with her. That was the only sign really, that she was, that she was … When we were back at the house she had made sponge cakes. Fresh sponge cakes, not bought, her own. She must have been up baking the night before. And I remember her passing them around with a smile on her face and her eyes dry … but with those two brown circles of mud on her dress.’

  Daniel didn’t know what to say. There was silence as he imagined the scene that Jane had described.

  ‘When Norman died, she didn’t try to throw herself into his grave. She hadn’t even changed her clothes, from what I could see. She was in her housecoat. She wasn’t even wearing stockings. There were no sponges at Norman’s funeral. Minnie just waited until it was over and then left. At the time I didn’t think kindly of her, but now I don’t blame her. She had reached her limit. We all have our limits, you know. She was very angry with him. God, I was too, after I got over the shock.’

  Silence again.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Daniel.

  ‘I know – it was a terrible business. Minnie and I didn’t keep in touch because I blamed her for causing Norman’s death, but the truth is … and I tell you, it’s only recently I’ve managed to admit this to myself … it was his choice, not hers, and it was a cowardly choice. We all die, after all. Nothing surer. He just couldn’t bear it. I knew Minnie, she would have hated that … cowardice … especially since she braved it out, and her loss must have been even harder to bear.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Why, because she was driving. She must’ve thought, what if the little one had been in the front with the seatbelt on … what if she’d swerved in a slightly different direction. It would send you mad. She did well to remain sane. I trust she did … ?’

  ‘Very sane,’ said Daniel, allowing himself a small smile. ‘Saner than most.’

  He exhaled: half-sigh and half-laugh.

  ‘What do you do now, Danny? Where are you calling from?’

  ‘I’m a lawyer, I’m in London too. In the East End.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss, pet.’

  ‘Thanks for talking to me. I just …’

  ‘No, thanks for letting me know. I would’ve come to the funeral if I’d known. She was a good woman. All the best …’

  Daniel hung up.

  A good woman.

  He finished his gin, thinking of the mud on her dress.

  24

  Minnie was on her knees in the dirt, planting flowers in the front garden. She pressed the cuttings down and then knuckled the earth around them. She sat up when Carol-Ann and Daniel walked past, school bags hanging off their shoulders, school shirts hanging out of their trousers.

  ‘A’right, Min’?’ said Carol-Ann.

  Minnie got up and walked towards them, dusting the dirt from her hands on her skirt.

  ‘How did it go then?’

  ‘A’right,’ said Danny, throwing his school bag down on the grass. ‘Another five next week though.’

  ‘But these went well,’ Minnie prompted, taking Blitz by the scruff of his neck to stop him sniffing at Carol-Ann. ‘You feel confident …’

  ‘Who knows,’ said Daniel. He was taller than she was now, but even though she looked up at him when he spoke somehow he still felt smaller. ‘It was OK. We’ll know soon enough.’

  ‘OK is good. Carol-Ann, are you staying for your tea, pet? It’s Friday, I bought some fish.’

  ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘That’d be great, like, Min’.’

  *

  The pair fell on to the grass beside Minnie, chatting and teasing each o
ther, as she continued with her planting. Daniel had changed out of his school clothes. Carol-Ann screamed as Daniel tickled her, and Minnie looked over at them both, smiling. They flopped back on to the grass. Carol-Ann rolled over and then threw her leg over Daniel. She leaned over his face, pinning each of his wrists to the grass.

  ‘Prisoner?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said, trying to tickle him as he glued his arms to his sides and swatted her hands away.

  A white butterfly floated, blind and charming, over Daniel’s face. He watched its dizzy flight.

  ‘Hold still,’ cried Carol-Ann, suddenly. ‘It’s on your hair. I want to catch it. I’ll give it to you as a present.’

  Daniel lay still, watching as Carol-Ann reached above his head and cupped her hands around the butterfly.

  ‘Enough!’ Minnie was standing above them, her voice raised.

  Daniel was confused. He raised himself up on his elbows, and Carol-Ann, still astride him with her hands cupped around the butterfly, turned.

  ‘Let it go right now,’ said Minnie.

  Carol-Ann opened her hands immediately. She climbed to her feet and put a hand on Minnie’s arm.

  ‘I’m sorry, Min’,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean to upset you, like.’

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ said Minnie, turning away, a hand on her forehead. ‘It’s just if you hold them, you can take the powder off their wings. They won’t be able to fly and they’ll die.’

  Carol-Ann rubbed breadcrumbs on to the haddock, while Daniel cut the potatoes into thick chips, dropped them into the wire sieve and lowered them into the deep fat fryer. Minnie fed the animals and then they sat at the kitchen table, three spaces cleared amid the old newspapers and spaghetti jars. Daniel had just turned sixteen.

  Carol-Ann would stay for dinner two or three nights a week. It was time for their GCSEs and Minnie had been fraught for weeks: asking him if he shouldn’t study first before going out to play football, buying him a new desk for his bedroom and telling him to take long baths to relax and go to bed early.

  ‘You don’t realise it and it won’t feel like it,’ she kept saying to him, biting her top lip between sentences, ‘but this is an important time. You’re at the doorway between one life and another. It’s your choice what you do, but I want you to go to university. I want you to have choices. I want you to see just what’s on offer.’

  She helped him with his biology and chemistry and told him to eat more because it would feed his brain.

  ‘This is good, Minnie,’ said Carol-Ann, squeezing a spot of ketchup on to the corner of her plate. Blitz watched them intently, a thin string of saliva stretching from his lower jaw towards the floor.

  ‘Eat up then, love.’ She passed a chip to Blitz, who snapped it from her fingers, hungrily.

  Daniel was eating with one elbow on the table and the fingers of his right hand in his hair.

  ‘So, basically, what you’re telling me is that it was no problem. There was nothing that you couldn’t do, and you had time to check it all through before you left?’

  ‘Aye, it were fine,’ he said, his mouth full and his gaze on the fresh flakes of fish on his fork.

  ‘What’s that, love?’ she said, brushing the hair out of his eyes with her left hand.

  He sat up and pulled away from her gently. He didn’t like it when she touched him like that when his friends were here. When they were on their own, he would allow it.

  ‘I said it were fine,’ he said, not loud, but meeting her eyes this time.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that with your baby browns.’ She raised her eyes at Carol-Ann. ‘I was only asking, so I was.’ She smiled at him defiantly and gave another chip to the dog.

  Later, after Carol-Ann had gone home, he got his books out again and sat at the big oak desk she had bought for him. She brought him hot chocolate and home-made treacle scones thick with butter for his supper.

  ‘Don’t work too much longer, love,’ she said, rubbing the space between his shoulder blades. ‘You don’t want to get overtired.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Will I run your bath now? Get a good soak and then come and talk to me.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I know you did well today.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just know. My Irish sixth sense. This is going to be the start of something great for you. You had some rough luck when you were little but this is you on your way.’ She made a fist and held it up to her face, smiling. ‘I can see you in a sharp suit one day. Maybe you’ll be in London, or maybe Paris or something, earning the big bucks. And I’ll come and visit you … Will you take me out for lunch?’

  ‘Aye, I suppose so. A slap-up lunch, anything you fancy.’

  Minnie threw back her head and laughed. He liked her laugh. It bubbled up from her stomach. She put a hand on the desk to steady herself.

  ‘You’re a card, so you are, but I’ll hold you to it.’

  Again she wiped the hair back from his face and planted a wet kiss on his forehead. He smiled and pulled away from her again.

  ‘Your bath’ll be ready in ten minutes. You be sure and get finished by then, or it’ll get cold.’

  Daniel listened as she made her way downstairs, the floorboards and banister protesting under her weight. Blitz barked once as she neared the foot of the stairs, irked that she should think to leave him for so long. He heard the living-room door creak shut and the muffled sound of the television making its way up through the floorboards. Outside it was still light and early summer birds were springing from tree to tree. A part of him still felt out of place: wanted the city with all its distrust and unassuming freedom. But at the same time, he felt at home with her.

  It had been over three years since she had adopted him, and yes, he did feel different. He felt looked-after. It was this which was perhaps most strange to him. When he stopped fighting her, she had lavished him with care and attention. Even when she embarrassed him, kissing him in front of Carol-Ann or praising him to the other stallholders at the market, he felt warmed by her. She told him that she loved him, and he believed her.

  In the bath, he let himself sink down so that his shoulders were under water. He was now five feet ten and a half, over half a foot taller than Minnie. He could no longer stretch out in the bath. He was too thin, though. He made a fist and pulled his forearm towards his face, so that he could inspect his bicep. In addition to his football training, he had started to do weights. The television became louder when the living-room door opened. He heard Minnie pad back and forth to the kitchen. The bathroom was steamy, although he had the window open three inches – enough for him to see out into the yard. The rowan was like a tendonous, skeletal hand stretching out of the earth against the night sky.

  On the shelf in the bathroom was the butterfly, placed just to the side the way Minnie liked it. He wiped sweat off his face and watched the butterfly, imagining the small child placing it on the shelf. Daniel swallowed and then looked away.

  He dried himself and dressed in tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt. He towelled his hair dry and pushed it off his face. It was getting long at the front. He wiped a hand across his jaw, inspecting it for signs of a beard. It was smooth and clean and hairless.

  In the kitchen he made himself toast and poured a glass of milk, then went into the living room to sit with her.

  ‘Do you want some toast? I’ll make you some.’

  ‘No, love, I’m grand. Are you hungry again? You have a bottomless pit for a stomach, so you do. I wish I could eat like you.’

  She tried to put her elbow on the edge of the armchair but missed and spilled some of her drink on to the floor.

  ‘There I go again,’ she said, dabbing the spill with the heel of her sock.

  Daniel gave Blitz the last of his toast, then finished his milk as he listened to Minnie rant at the news. The Prime Minister, John Major, was talking about the potential for economic recovery.

  ‘Yer arse in parsley,�
�� Minnie railed at the screen. ‘They’ll not be satisfied ’till they have this country on its knees … God, I hated that woman, but he’s not much better.’

  She wasn’t expecting an answer from Daniel and so he said nothing. He put a piece of coal on the fire.

  ‘How was your bath, love?’ she asked him, her cheeks wet as if with fresh tears. She leaned over the arm of her chair, a smile on her face and her eyes merry. ‘Did you get your work finished?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her, seeing her wipe her face again.

  ‘I’m grand, love. I’m just incensed by the sight of that bloody man. Turn that news over. Turn it off. I can’t even stomach the sight of him.’

  Daniel got up and changed the channel. It was sport and he glanced at her to see if she would allow it. Usually she would ask him to watch it on the black and white in the kitchen, or she would say yes but then lose patience. Tonight her eyes wavered before the screen, then closed for a long blink.

  As Daniel sat down to watch the game, her eyes closed and her head twice bobbed down sharply, waking her. When her eyes began to close again, he got up and gently took the glass from her hand and carried it through to the kitchen. The dog wanted out and so he opened the back door. He washed up the dishes from dinner and wiped the portion of the kitchen table from which they had eaten.

  When Blitz came back inside, Daniel locked up, closing the windows and bolting the back door. The dog settled into his basket, as the house warmed to Minnie’s snores.