by C. S. Barnes
‘Mum, have you been drinking?’
‘Worse, love, I’ve been thinking.’ A high-pitched squeak followed. It later occurred to me that it was a laugh.
‘Do you want to tell me why you’ve been crying?’
Her mouth dropped, her head shook, and a small puff of air escaped from her. ‘You can’t work it out, love?’
‘Dad?’
‘What else could there possibly be to cry about?’ Although it was a question, something
about her intonation suggested that she wasn’t looking for an answer. ‘I’m struggling here, Gillian.’
‘Struggling with me?’
I thought that must have been the case. Otherwise, why tell me?
‘Struggling with…’ She paused and lifted her arms in a defeatist gesture. ‘This.’ She looked up, but I couldn’t bring myself to look back. ‘Love, are you struggling at all?’
That time I did look at her, involuntarily; a knee-jerk reaction response to her question. Biologically speaking there are occasions when certain elements of the human body react ahead of the rest of it. This was an embarrassing case of a physical reaction prefacing a vocal or mental one, and when I was looking her directly in the eye I knew that it was too late to retract the move. Continuing with the so-called natural response, my mouth fell open slightly in the prelude to speech. I hoped that an ‘Of course’ or an ‘I can’t believe you’re asking that’ would chase after the gesture, but my mother intervened before I had the chance to force the sentiment.
‘I do worry for you, Gillian.’
‘For me?’
‘With all this. With all that happened.’ She paused and puffed out her cheeks. Her head tilted slightly from one side to the other as if she were trying to gauge the physical weight of what she was about to say. ‘Maybe we should talk about this in the morning, love.’
I said nothing about the fact that my mother had stayed awake to have this conversation. Whatever ‘this’ was, I agreed with her that yes, it would be better discussed after sleep. The unanswered query regarding my mother’s alcohol intake was all too apparent when she attempted to lever herself from the seat beneath her, exhibiting the same struggle that my father had often experienced. From this angle, there was a disturbing similarity between the two of them. With one arm wrapped around her, and tucked neatly beneath her left armpit, I helped my mother up to bed. When she breathed a goodnight kiss against my cheek, the alcohol was unmistakable.
I had always hated the smell of bacon. Yet I had a distinct childhood memory of my mother cooking it the morning after my father’s binges, or his incidents, although the terms seem somewhat interchangeable given that we seldom experienced one without the other. And so the following morning when an enthusiastic sun slipped through my curtains, I made my bed, got dressed, and shifted downstairs to make breakfast for my mother. While the meat hissed in the frying pan I stood next to the open window on the other side of the kitchen, pulling in mouthful after mouthful of fresh air. With the bacon held out at arm’s length I turned it, begrudgingly, to evenly cook its surface before retreating to the safe side of the room where I buttered bread. I was midway through the second round when the door let out a small creak and my mother appeared.
‘You look dreadful.’
‘Thank you, Gillian,’ she said, rubbing her face as she spoke. ‘But I feel surprisingly chipper, all things considered.’
She made no further comment on what all these considered things were and I didn’t push the issue.
‘I thought breakfast might help.’
‘That’s nice of you, love, but I really just need some tea.’
I was midway to the table, clutching a small plate on top of which sat a bacon sandwich, when she made this announcement. She looked from the sandwich to me and flashed a thin smile before leaning away from the table.
‘Pop it down, maybe I’ll manage it after some tea.’ She looked the food over with more suspicion than seemed necessary. ‘You hate bacon, love.’
I nodded confirmation and moved to the kettle, unsure of what to do with her remark.
‘If you hate bacon, why did you cook it?’
‘You used to cook bacon for Dad when he’d had a lot to drink.’
‘Gillian, I…’ She paused there, perhaps trying to collect together enough words to construct a coherent explanation for her behaviour. ‘Sometimes you just need a drink, love.’
Animal House. 1978. John Vernon. ‘Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life.’ Not that my mother was fat.
I threw teabags into cups, added small measures of milk, and set the kettle to boil. As it did so, I turned to survey my mother and found her elbows balanced on the kitchen table, her head firmly planted in her hands. At some point the bacon sandwich had been pushed an additional ten inches away from her, which just seemed rude. I completed the task in silence and set a full mug of tea down in front of her.
‘Maybe that will make you feel better,’ I offered, although I had no memory of it ever having worked for my father. I quietly hoped it wouldn’t work for her.
She held the mug close to her face and blew over the edge of it, twice, three times, before taking a measured sip. When the liquid hit her lips, she winced.
‘Too hot?’
‘Just a little, love, yes.’
Funny that, you blew on it and everything.
‘Gillian, I want us to talk about what happened with your dad.’
I nodded but said nothing.
‘Do you have anything you’d like to say, about what happened?’
There was something – it may have been a small flicker of panic – hovering in my lower abdomen when she completed her sentence. I simply puffed my cheeks, turned down the corners of my mouth, and shook my head. A ‘Nope, nothing there’ sort of gesture, I hoped. My mother closed her eyes and shook her head. She expelled a breath. Her hands released their grip on her mug of tea and she placed them, palms down, on the table.
‘I’m going to stay with your aunt Jackie for a few days. Why don’t you come with me?’
I hadn’t seen Jackie since we had moved into this house some eleven years ago. She was particularly vocal about her disapproval of my parents’ marriage. Because of that, my father had been particularly vocal about us having nothing more to do with her.
‘I didn’t realise that you were in touch with her.’
‘I called her last night, before you came home.’
She paused, leaving a beat that I felt obliged to fill.
‘How is she?’
‘Concerned, mostly, love.’
‘About you?’
My mother rolled her eyes, creating an expression that I suspected I wasn’t meant to notice, before confirming that yes, Jackie was concerned about her. Between the two of us we managed to construct a coherent enough chat regarding Jackie and her current whereabouts – Cornwall, it turned out, had been her hideaway after the fall-out with Mum, and she now couldn’t bring herself to leave the place. We even covered the brief details of what she had been doing with herself more generally over the last decade or so. I won’t bore you with the specifics of that. The quick explanation is: not much.
‘You’re not talking about what happened with your dad, Gillian, and you’re obviously not keen on talking about it either. And, well, it worries me, love. Jackie, she’s always been good at the talking thing, you know, being the big sister and all.’
It felt like a tenuous link but with a flick of my hand and an enquiring expression, I encouraged her to continue.
‘I think a few days away might help. We can talk, really talk, about what happened, and how you’re feeling about it, and how we move forward from here. And I know you haven’t seen Jackie in a long time, but she’s a good talker, like I said, and she’d like to help us.’ She paused, sighed, and then finished off with: ‘What do you think?’
I remember thinking lots of things at that moment in time. But above all, I remember thinking that I should have expected this. I s
hould have seen this sort of intervention perched on the horizon; I should have seen it hurtling towards me. Perhaps noting this hesitation, my mother pressed forward with yet another helpful comment:
‘You need to talk about what happened, love, and if you can’t talk to family then who can you talk to?’
The question, it transpired, was largely rhetorical. So, when I said, ‘A healthcare professional?’ my mother was, perhaps, quite within her rights to be so surprised.
‘You’d prefer to see someone?’
Having a heart to heart with a stranger was a favourable alternative to having a heart to heart with my misshapen mother and her estranged sister, yes. Of course it was.
‘I think so, yes,’ I replied.
‘But you realise there are only certain things you can say to a stranger.’
I stifled a smile. It had been some time since my mother had spoken to me like a child.
‘Mum, what are you really worrying about here?’
The silence held up for just shy of eight seconds before she answered.
‘You’ve been involved with a terrible accident, and you aren’t saying anything about it.’ Her careful phrasing had done nothing to dissuade me from seeing someone. Not if the only real alternative was to discuss it with her (and Jackie?) instead. I promised that I would see a professional. The pledge was so convincing that it was only a minute later that my mother was discussing her plans to visit Jackie again.
‘It hardly seems fair to leave you on your own, love. It’s not right, is it.’
It was a statement but she looked for an answer. I was familiar with the tactic so offered: ‘I think it’s a difficult time for both of us, Mum, and if you feel like you’d benefit from visiting Jackie for a few days, then I’ll support your decision.’ I smiled, and then added: ‘Just like you’re supporting my decision not to.’
My mother disappeared to pack a small suitcase. She was taking the train down to Cornwall so that she could leave the car – my car, I assumed, given she hadn’t driven my father’s at all since his death – with me, in case I needed it. I thanked her, despite not feeling altogether sure why I was doing so, and then offered to drive her to the train station. We remained comfortably quiet with each other until we arrived at the station’s designated drop-off zone.
‘You will see someone about this, love, soon?’ she said, before she slid out of the passenger seat.
I nodded. ‘Of course, Mum.’
‘You really need to, Gillian.’ She leaned back in and planted a small kiss on my cheek. ‘And you will be okay for a couple of days?’
The question seemed redundant now given that she had already decided to leave.
‘I’ll be fine. I just want you to concentrate on looking after yourself for a change, Mum.’ I couldn’t recall which film I had borrowed the sentiment from, but I felt certain that it was one of the most sincere things I had ever said to her.
Chapter 8
There was something unsettling about the house after she’d left. I felt like I was trespassing behind enemy lines, waiting to be caught. An average twenty-two-year-old would probably have felt delighted by this freedom, but I was not average, and even the proposed period of time left me feeling anxious. How long was a few days, precisely? This concern, combined with a cavalcade of others – was she seeing Jackie? What had she told her? Would she even come back? – meant that it just slipped my mind to feel excited.
I filled the new silence by boiling the kettle, toasting bread, slicing cheese. The doorbell chimed in then as well.
‘Morning, Gillian dear!’
The words hit my ears before the door was fully opened. Number 34’s smile was too wide, too bright, but the slumped-up mass of teenage hormones that hovered behind her went some way towards counteracting it.
‘I’m surprised to see you,’ she said, in a tone that sounded authentic, although I couldn’t fathom why – I did live there, after all. ‘You remember my son?’
How could I forget?
‘Of course,’ I replied.
‘Is your mother about, dear?’
She leaned in as she spoke, taking a peek about inside the doorway like she expected my mother to be loitering, just waiting for her arrival.
‘Was she expecting you?’
It seemed a fair question but her expression became puzzled.
‘Well, no, she wasn’t. You’re quite right. This is ever so rude of me.’
I was right: this was rude of her. But I was sure that I hadn’t actually said that.
‘It’s nothing important – why I wanted to see her, I mean; it’s just that I brought this over,’ she said, handing me a fabric bag that was packed to bursting. ‘I’ve made up some more food, you see, after you said how much you liked the casserole. It’s just a few bits and pieces, different things that you can pop in the microwave. You have a microwave?’
What sort of household did she think this was?
‘Yes, we have a microwave.’
She played at wiping her forehead before she spoke again.
‘Phew. And your mother isn’t around at all?’
‘She has been struggling lately. I’m sure you can understand.’
She answered me with a thin-lipped smile and a ‘Mm.’
‘She’s actually away visiting my aunt at the moment. She left this morning. I’ll mention you when I speak to her, and pass on your concerns.’
Number 34 hovered, as if I hadn’t quite provided enough information yet. An exhale of genuine relief flooded from me when the house phone started to ring somewhere in the background. With a faux apology from myself and an overtly polite ‘Oh, of course, dear,’ from Number 34, I was finally able to excuse myself from the situation.
It was my mother. My still-inquisitive mother, it seemed. We talked briefly about whether I was coping alone, whether I needed her to come home, whether I was okay, and, two minutes later, whether I was still okay. It had been a day, I reminded her, and I was managing just fine, even though I expressed the sentiment with underwhelming conviction. She had never asked so many questions and I had never felt so bitter about having to supply any one person with quite so many answers. I was relieved to say goodbye to her. The conversation was hardly deep, merely repetitive, but the emotion she forced down me had become clogged in my throat somehow during my attempts to digest it. I needed a change of scenery, a walk, and perhaps something else.
Years of making meticulous observations had allowed me to determine that the afternoon dog walk was typically the household responsibility of the woman. That afternoon there was a vast array of so-called designer dogs around Runner’s Route, with their designer owners in tow, both constructed to be petite, pleasant to look at, but utterly insignificant. I wandered along the path as a woman in a purple velour tracksuit jogged ahead of me. Her tracksuit was a perfect match for the purple of her Labradoodle’s collar, and I wondered how much money it had cost her husband to make that coincidence happen – whether he even knew that was what he was paying his wife for.
I walked further, trying to shake off the medley of feelings sitting in my stomach. I thought of my father, my mother, of Daniel – why Daniel? – as I walked, and, thankfully, after thirty-four minutes of observing the same woman on repeat, divine intervention struck. The dog – accompanied by its male owner – rounded the corner unexpectedly and caught my attention within seconds.
It was a spectacular-looking animal, and it far surpassed the standards set by those around it. Its legs were strong, with distinct thigh muscles that suggested remarkable physical ability, and it boasted a heavyset jaw that looked equipped to crush the animals that surrounded it. The dog’s owner paused for breath in what had apparently been a furious run for them both, and that’s when the teeth appeared. It broke into an exhausted pant, revealing a set of well-maintained fangs that belonged to a hunting animal.
They settled on a bench some nineteen feet away from my own and enjoyed a moment of rest. The man removed a small sports bottle fro
m the support band around his waist and took three measured mouthfuls from the container. Without hesitation, he up-ended the bottle and held the dripping mouthpiece out towards the animal in front of him; it maintained its military stance but extended its neck towards the bottle, creating an audible slap each time its tongue caught the liquid. The surrounding women appeared to find the whole display endearing; they illustrated this with a string of stares and coos that became more pronounced. One woman even attempted to make contact; she laid a patronising pat on the animal’s head before saying something to the owner and laughing. His face remained steady, unimpressed.
It really was remarkable. I had never seen something so well-built. It would never fit in the box; it had enough strength to fight back; it would be missed. And yet, it was undeniably attractive to me. The dog’s tongue hung limp from the side of its mouth while it panted, gulping down air and pausing only to slap its top and bottom jaw together long enough to wet its mouth, before the jaw dropped open again. It fidgeted a little, while remaining seated, its leg muscles contracting from the intense exercise. Sweat dripped from his forehead and a hand rose up to wipe away the liquid, rub at the back of a damp neck, and then pat the equally exhausted dog.
I had no idea which one of them I had been watching.
They remained seated for five minutes and thirty-two seconds. As they both attempted to regulate their breathing I found myself wondering how long they had been running for – how often they ran. The animal remained seated, panting, its tongue hanging limply from the left side of its mouth, creating an altogether less intimidating expression than the one it had started with. It threw occasional glances in the direction of its owner before eventually clambering back to its feet, to indicate that now would be a good time to leave. The owner smiled in recognition, which said he had been expecting this.
The man patted the dog on the head – presumably to illustrate affection? – before placing one hand on each muscular knee and heaving himself up from the bench, releasing an unexpectedly loud groan as he did so. He underwent a series of quick but deliberate stretches; I half-expected the animal to do the same.