Playing for the Ashes

by Elizabeth George

  She expected resistance, but he followed her into the kitchen. He’d just sat at the table when the back door opened with a screech and Shar came in. She closed the door and stood with her back to it, hands reaching behind her to hold on to the knob. Her nose was red and her specs were smudged in big half circles along the bottom. She gazed at her brother, wide eyed and wordless. She gulped and Jeannie saw her lips quivering, saw her mouth the word Dad but fail to say it. Jeannie nodded her head in the direction of the stairway. Shar looked as if she meant to disobey, but at the final moment when a sob burst from her, she fled the kitchen and hurtled up the stairs.

  Jimmy slumped in his chair. Jeannie opened the tin of soup and dumped it into a pan. She set the pan on the cooker, fumbled about with a knob, and failed on two attempts to produce the required flame. She muttered, “Damn.” She knew that this moment with her son was precious. She understood that the slightest glitch in moving this precious moment forward might be all that was required to demolish it entirely. And it couldn’t be demolished. Not until she knew.

  She heard him stir. The chair pushed on the lino. She said hastily, “Got to get a new cooker sometime, huh?” to try to keep him with her. And, “It’ll be ready in a tick now, Jim,” when she thought he would leave. But instead of leaving, he went to a drawer. He brought out a box of matches. He lit one, held it to the burner, and produced the flame. The match burnt down between his fingers like it had done on Friday night. Only unlike Friday night, she was closer to him, so when the flame sizzled down the wood to his skin, she was near enough to blow it out.

  He was taller than her now, she realised. Soon he’d be as tall as his dad. It didn’t seem that long ago that she’d been able to look down into his upturned face, even less long ago that they were eye to eye. And now she lifted her chin to see him. He was only part boy and larger part man.

  “Cops didn’t hurt you?” she asked. “They didn’t mess you about?” He shook his head. He turned to go but she grasped his wrist. He tried to pull away. She held firm.

  Two days of agonising were enough, she decided. Two days of inwardly saying, No I won’t, no I can’t, had gained her no information, no understanding, and more than that, no peace of mind. She thought, How did I lose you, Jimmy? Where? When? I wanted to be strong for all of us, but I only ended up pushing you away when you needed me. I thought if I showed how much I could take the hurts of what happened and not fall to bits, the three of you’d learn to take the hurts as well. But that’s not how it was, was it, Jimmy? That’s not how it is.

  And because she knew that she’d finally reached a degree of understanding she’d not had before, she found the courage. “Tell me what you told the police,” she said.

  His face looked like it hardened, round the eyes first, then the mouth and the jaw. He didn’t attempt to pull away again, but he directed his attention from her to the wall above the cooker where for years had hung a framed piece of needlepoint. It was faded now and spotted with grease, but you could still read the words that scrolled across the green-and-white background of cricketers and wicket: The match ain’t over when the over is over, a joke-present for Kenny from his mother-in-law. Jeannie realised she should have removed it long ago.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Talk to me, Jimmy. I did things wrong. But I did them for the best. You got to know that, son. And you got to know that I love you. Always. You got to talk to me now. I got to know about you and Wednesday night.”

  He shuddered, so strong it felt like a spasm went from his shoulders down to his toes. Tentatively, she firmed her grip on his wrist. He didn’t pull away a second time. She moved her hand from his wrist, to his arm, to his shoulder. She ventured a touch against his hair.

  “You tell me,” she said. “You talk to me, son.” And then she added what she had to add but didn’t believe for a moment and didn’t know how to begin to accomplish, “I won’t let nothing hurt you, Jim. We’ll get through this somehow. But I need to know what you told them.”

  She waited for him to ask the logical question: Why? But he didn’t. The tomato soup sent up wafts of fragrance from the cooker, and she stirred it without looking, her eyes fixed on her son. Fear, knowledge, disbelief, and denial all thrashed inside her like food gone bad, but she tried to keep them from showing on her face and from echoing in the tone of her voice.

  “When I was fourteen, I first started messing about with your dad,” she said. “I wanted to be like my sisters and they messed about with blokes regular enough so I thought why shouldn’t I do the same, I’m as good as them any day of the week.” Jimmy kept his gaze on the needlepoint. Jeannie stirred the soup and went on. “We had our fun, we did, only my dad found out because your auntie Lynn told him. So Dad took off his belt one night when I got home from messing with Kenny and he made me take off every stitch I was wearing and he beat me proper while the family watched. I didn’t cry. But I hated him. I wanted him dead. I would of been glad if he’d dropped on the spot. Maybe I would of done something myself to help him along.”

  She reached for a bowl from the cupboard. She ventured a glance at her son as she ladled soup from the pot into the bowl. “Smells good, this. You want toast with it, Jim?”

  His expression was something between wary and confused. She wasn’t describing it like she wanted to, that mix of rage and humiliation that made her for a single blind instant will her father to die a thousand times. Jimmy didn’t understand. Perhaps because their rages were different, hers a brief firestorm, his a single smouldering coal that burned on and on.

  She took the soup to the table. She poured him milk. She made him toast. She laid the meal out and gestured him to it. He stayed where he was by the cooker.

  She made the only remark there was left to make, one she didn’t believe, but one she had to persuade him to accept if she was ever to know the truth. “What matters is what’s left of us,” she said. “You and me, Stan and Shar. That’s how it is, Jim.”

  He looked from her to the soup. She motioned to the bowl welcomingly and sat at the table herself, in a place that would put her opposite him should he decide to join her. He wiped his hands along the seams of his blue jeans. His fingers curled.

  “Bastard,” he said conversationally. “He started fucking her last October, and she kept him running round proper, she did. He said they were just friends because she was married to that rich bloke, but I knew, didn’t I? Shar would ask him when he was coming home, and he’d say in a while, in a month or two, when I know who I am, when I know how things are. He’d say don’t you worry about nothing, luv. But all the time, he meant to have her when he could. He’d put his hand on her bum when he thought no one was looking. If he hugged her, she’d rub up against his cock. And all the time you could tell what they really wanted which was for us to be gone so that they could do it.”

  Jeannie wanted to stop up her ears. This wasn’t the recitation she had been seeking. But she forced herself to listen. She kept her face blank and said to herself that she didn’t care. She already knew, didn’t she, and this portion of the truth could not touch her further.

  “He wasn’t Dad any longer,” Jimmy said. “He was only in a twist about her. She’d phone and he’d be off to sniff her up. She’d say leave me be, Ken, and he’d punch his fist into walls. She’d say I need or I want and he’d rush right there, doing whatever’d make her happy. And when he was through with her, he’d—” Jimmy stopped himself but kept staring at the soup, as if he saw the history of the tired affair playing out in the bowl.

  “And when he was through with her…” Jeannie spoke past the spear-pain that she’d grown to know well.

  Her son gave a derisive snort. “You know, Mum.” He finally came across the kitchen and sat at the table, opposite her. “He was a liar. He was a bastard. And a bleeding cheat.” He dipped his spoon into the soup. He held it at the height of his chin. He met her eyes for the first time since coming home. “And you wanted him dead. You wanted him dead more ’n anything, Mum. We both know
that, don’t we?”

  OLIVIA

  From where I’m sitting, I can see the glow of Chris’s reading light. I can hear him turn pages every so often. He ought to have gone to bed long ago, but he’s reading in his room, waiting for me to finish my writing. The dogs are with him. I can hear Toast snoring. Beans is chewing on a rawhide bone. Panda came in to keep me company half an hour ago. She started off in my lap, but now she’s curled on the dresser in her special place—on top of the day’s post, which she has rearranged to her liking. She pretends to be asleep, but she isn’t fooling me. Every time I flip another sheet of the pad, her ears turn my way like radar.

  I lift the mug from which I drank my Gunpowder tea, and I examine the speckling of leaves that managed to escape the strainer. They’ve arranged themselves into a pattern that resembles a rainbow overhung with a bolt of lightning. I touch my pencil tip to the lightning to straighten it, and I wonder what a fortune teller would make of such a combination of auspicious and inauspicious signs.

  Last week when Max and I were playing poker—using dog kibble to make our wagers—he set his cards facedown on the table, leaned back in his chair, and running his hand over his bald pate, said, “It’s a dunghill, girlie. No doubt about that.”

  “Hmm. Precisely.”

  “But there are distinct advantages to a dunghill, you know.”

  “Which I imagine you’re about to reveal.”

  “Used properly, dung helps flowers grow.”

  “As does bat guano, but I’d rather not roll around in it.”

  “Not to mention crops. It enriches the soil from which life springs.”

  “I’ll treasure that thought.” I moved my cards about, as if a new arrangement would change the single pair of fours to something better.

  “Knowing when, girlie. Have you thought about the power of knowing when?”

  I said, throwing two kibbles between us for my ante, “I don’t know when. I know how. There’s a difference.”

  “But you’ve more idea than most.”

  “What kind of satisfaction is there supposed to be in that? I’d be glad to trade knowledge for ignorance and bliss.”

  “What would you do differently, if you were ignorant like the rest of us?”

  I fanned out my cards and wondered about the statistical possibility of rejecting three of them and ending up with a full house. Slim to none, I decided. I discarded. Max dealt. I rearranged. I decided to bluff. I flicked six more kibbles onto the table between us, saying, “Okay, baby. Let’s play.”

  “Well?” he asked. “What would you do? If you were ignorant like the rest of us.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’d still be here. But things would be different because I could compete.”

  “With Chris? Why in God’s name would you ever feel the need—”

  “Not with Chris. With her.”

  Max puffed out his lips. He picked up his cards. He rearranged them. At last he looked over the tops of them at me, his single eye unusually bright. He had the kindness not to feign lack of knowledge. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you were aware. He doesn’t mean to be cruel.”

  “He isn’t being cruel. He’s being discreet. He’s never even mentioned her name.”

  “Chris cares for you, girlie.”

  I shot him a look that said, “Wither, you berk.”

  He said, “You know I’m speaking the truth.”

  “That doesn’t exactly make despair go down easier. Chris cares for the animals as well.”

  Max and I looked long and hard at each other. I could tell what he was thinking. If he’d spoken the truth, so had I.

  I never thought it would be this way. I thought I’d stop wanting. I thought I’d give up. I thought I’d say, “Well, that’s that, isn’t it,” and accept this rotten poker hand without trying to shift the cards. But I’ve managed nothing more than hiding hunger and anger. I realise this is more than I would have managed at one time, but it’s small enough cause for celebration.

  One stumble. That’s what started the descent. One minor stumble just a year ago as I was getting out of the mini-van. At first I put it down to being in a hurry. I opened the van door, took a step, and stumbled trying to negotiate the distance from the level of the street to the height of the kerb. Before I realised what had happened, I was sprawled on the pavement with a cut on my chin, tasting blood where my teeth had sunk into my lip. Beans was sniffing my hair in some concern, and Toast was nosing through the oranges that had rolled from my grocery bag into the gutter.

  I thought, “Clumsy oaf,” and pushed myself to my knees. Everything felt bruised but nothing felt broken. I pressed the arm of my jersey to my chin, brought it away streaked with blood, and said, “Damn.” I gathered up the oranges, told the dogs to come along, and picked my way down the steps to the tow path along the canal.

  When I was crossing the workroom that night with the dogs leaping round, eager for their nighttime run, Chris said, “What’ve you done to yourself, Livie?”

  “Done?”

  “You’re limping.”

  I’d taken a fall, I told him. It was nothing much. I must have pulled a muscle.

  “You won’t want to run, then. Have a rest. I’ll take the dogs out when I finish here.”

  “I can cope.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I wouldn’t say so if I wasn’t.”

  I climbed the stairs and went out. I spent a few minutes gingerly stretching. Nothing actually hurt, which seemed rather odd, because if I’d pulled a muscle, torn a ligament, or broken a bone, I’d feel it, wouldn’t I? I felt nothing, other than the limp itself when it occurred each time I tried to move my right leg.

  I must have looked like Toast that night, attempting to jog along the canal with the dogs in front of me. All I could manage was the short distance to the bridge. When the dogs scrambled up the steps to head as usual down Maida Avenue towards Lisson Grove and the Grand Union Canal, I called them back. They hesitated, clearly confused, caught between tradition and cooperation.

  “Come on, you two,” I said. “Not tonight.”

  And not any night that succeeded it. The next day my right foot wasn’t working properly. I was helping the zoo’s ultrasound team move their equipment into a tapir’s enclosure where they were going to monitor her pregnancy. I had the bucket of apples and carrots. The team had the trolley with the machine. One of them said to me, “What’s gone wrong with you, Livie?” which was the first indication I had that I was dragging my foot behind me in a movement that looked like step-shuffle-bob-step.

  What caused me disquiet was the fact that both times—with the limp and with the foot dragging—I’d not realised I was doing it.

  “Could be a pinched nerve,” Chris said that night. “That’d cut off feeling.” He took my foot in his hand and turned it right and left.

  I watched his fingers probe. “Wouldn’t it feel worse if it was nerves? Wouldn’t it tingle or ache or something?”

  He lowered my foot to the floor. “Could be something else.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll speak to Max, shall we?”

  Max tapped against the sole and the ball of my foot. He ran a wheel with tiny serrations along my flesh and asked me to describe what I felt. He pulled at his nose and knocked his index finger against his chin. He suggested we take ourselves to a doctor.

  He said, “How long has it been like this?”

  I said, “Nearly a week.”

  He talked about Harley Street, a specialist there, and the need to have some definitive answers.

  “What is it?” I asked. “You know, don’t you? You don’t want to say. God, is it cancer? D’you think I’ve got a tumour?”

  “A vet has no real expertise in human disease, girlie.”

  I said, “Disease. Disease. What is it?”

  He said he didn’t know. He said it looked to him like something might be affecting my neurons.

  I recalled Chris’s amateur diagn
osis. “Pinched nerve?”

  Chris murmured, “Central nervous system, Livie.”

  The walls seemed to shimmy in my direction. “What?” I asked. “Central nervous system? What?”

  Max said, “The neurons are cells: body, axon, and dendrites. They conduct impulses to the brain. If they’re—”

  “A brain tumour?” I grasped his arm. “Max, d’you think I’ve got a brain tumour?”

  He squeezed my hand. “What you’ve got is a case of the panics,” he said. “You need to have some tests and put your mind at ease. Now, what about that game of chess we left unfinished, Christopher?”

  Max sounded breezy but when he left that night, I heard him talking to Chris on the tow path. I couldn’t make out any of the words, just the single time he said my name. When Chris came back inside to fetch the dogs for their final run, I said, “He knows what the problem is, doesn’t he? He knows it’s serious. Why won’t he tell me? I heard him talking about me. I heard him tell you. You tell me, Chris. Because if you don’t—”

  Chris came to my chair and held my head against his stomach for a moment, his hand warm against my ear. He jiggled me playfully. “Hedgehog,” he said. “You’re getting too prickly. What he said was that he can ring some friends to ring some friends to get you in quick to see this Harley Street bloke. I told him to go ahead and make the calls. I think that’s best. Okay?”

  I pulled away. “Look at me, Chris.”

  “What?” His face was composed.

  “He told you something else.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because he called me Olivia.”

  Chris shook his head in exasperation. He tilted mine. He bent and brushed a kiss against my lips. He’d never kissed me before. He’s never kissed me since. The dry, fleeting pressure of his mouth against mine told me more than I wanted to know.