‘Stick in, Sean.’
‘Aye,’ I say without commitment, and leave him sitting there.
****
At home, a warm foody smell envelops me as I kick snow off my boots and hang my coat on the hook. I find Janet in the kitchen in her trackies and slippers, listening the nightly litany of bad news on Radio 4 and crying as she chops carrots. There is a large glass of red wine beside her.
‘Hey,’ she says.
‘Hey.’ I turn the radio off without asking permission. ‘You alright?’
She nods and dabs at her eyes with the tea towel. ‘Onions. Good day?’
‘Just another day in the madhouse. You?’
A one-shouldered shrug. ‘Same. Peel some spuds?’
I pick up a hefty potato and slide the peeler over it, watching a strip of red skin separate from the creamy flesh. It takes a bit of concentration to keep the peeler at just the right angle, and I feel slow and clumsy as Janet bustles around me in the small kitchen. She dumps a package of mince into the pot and breaks it up with a wooden spoon, pushes it around to brown it. Her brows creep together as she chews on her thoughts, the straight, graceful line of her nose shadowed, lines etched at the bridge.
We look nothing alike, and we have both wasted a lot of time over the years wondering about our respective fathers. She at least knows the name of hers, and carries a few shadowy memories of the laughing young man who would throw her in the air until she puked and then leave Mum to clean up the mess.
Bobby Jamieson was an apprentice bricklayer, seventeen when Mum fell pregnant and left school. They made a go of it for a couple of years, until Bobby finished his time and succumbed to the call of more lucrative building work down south. He reappeared four or five years later, wormed his way back into Mum’s bed and Janet’s affections, and lasted a couple of months before the responsibilities of family life became too heavy.
Mum always used to say she was the way she was because Bobby broke her heart, but really it was all her: the crushing lack of confidence which undermined every attempt she made to kill her habits – men, booze, tranquilizers – and which ultimately turned into a one-way ticket down self-destruction road.
There were a lot of men after Bobby, one of whom managed to hit the target and father me. Mum always told me she couldn’t pick him out in a line-up, but she would never look me in the eye when she said it.
I hand Janet a tattie and pick up another. ‘D’you never think about moving away from here?’
She looks up at me, knife in hand, trying to read the intent behind the question. ‘I used to but there’s not much point now. Where would I go, anyway?’
‘Somewhere you’ve got no history.’
She sighs. ‘I was never ashamed of Mum, Sean. She was ill, that’s all.’ Then she raises her glass and takes a large draught of wine. ‘It could happen to any of us.’
‘Speak for yourself.’
She turns her hawkish gaze on me. ‘When was the last time you drank?’
I look down at the battered toe-caps of my boots, and a shadowy memory crosses my mind, lingers for a moment: the sickly whisky afterburn, the smell of an unfamiliar bed and a nameless girl who might be young enough to accuse me of child abuse, the first squinty peek out at a street that could be anywhere in the country, sunlight like laser beams through my eyeballs. No other indication of where I was or how I got there. Blackout panic.
‘I got rat-arsed on my twenty-fifth birthday and woke up somewhere I shouldn’t have been. It was starting to get a bit . . . excessive. It was making me slow and mean. So I stopped.’ I shrug. ‘I’ve got the addict genes.’
‘So you’re saying it has to be all or nothing?’
‘I think so, for me. I scare myself.’ I shrug. ‘Maybe that’s hard to get. Mitch did. I couldn’t have stopped without him, I don’t think. When the guys were going ashore for a session, we used to just pack up and go climbing.’
She watches me peeling, then quietly reaches across and removes the peeler and spud from my hands and finishes the job off quickly herself.
I lean against the bunker, stare at the floor and say nothing.
‘Do you still . . .’ she breaks off, stares at me with a cocked head.
‘What?’
‘Does he still talk to you?’
I don’t say anything. There is dried blood down the front of my trousers and for a moment I scrabble about to recall how it might have got there.
‘Sean?’
‘I heard you.’ Now I remember: wood stain, mahogany brown. ‘What do you want me to say, Janet? Yes, he still talks to me. That’s Mitch . . . he talks a lot.’
She dumps the last sliced pieces of potato into the pot and chews on her lower lip. ‘I thought it might have got better, now that you’re working.’
‘Why would that make a difference?’
‘I don’t know. Something else to occupy your mind.’
‘I’m not making him up out of boredom.’
‘I wish you’d go back to the psychiatrist.’
‘So he can fill me up with drugs just like Mum? No fucking way. If it’s a choice between crazy and wasted, I’ll take crazy.’ The steam from the potato pot is condensing on the window and the little kitchen is uncomfortably hot. I start to hear the pulse at my temples.
‘You’re not crazy, just . . . damaged.’
‘Damaged goods, aye.’ The balloon in my chest starts to inflate and my volume rises with it. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, the only ones who aren’t damaged by it are the psychopaths, and there are a few of those out there, I promise you.’
‘Alright, Sean. Please lower your voice.’
‘Lower my voice.’ I laugh. ‘Naebody wants to hear it, right? That’s the fucking truth.’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake.’
I stare at her, waiting for her to say something else. ‘What?’
She stands there breathing heavily for a moment, then reaches her hand toward my arm but stops short of actually touching me. ‘You have to let Mitch go, sweetie. He’s dead.’
‘Not something I’m likely to forget, is it? What was left of the bottom half of him would have gone into that pot.’ I glance in at the greasy mince and onions. ‘Add about seven pints of blood and you get the idea.’
‘That’s not fucking necessary!’ She slams down her spoon and leaves the room.
The tattie pot has started to boil furiously, a froth rising to the brim and quivering there. I turn it down and stir it with a fork to kill the froth, then open the back door and face the night. Clouds cross quick time in and out of the moon’s glare, fleeing for the safety of darkness.
‘I’m sorry.’
I turn and we face off from opposing doorways.
‘Too much information, huh?’
She nods. ‘I can’t even begin to . . .’ She breaks off, blinks, picks up her wine and takes three or four hard swallows. ‘What are you going to do?’
I shrug. ‘Live with it.’
‘How can you?’
I think about this for a moment. A curling breath of wind carries memory over the frozen fields. Burrowed like lemmings into the snow, the Norwegian winter screaming above us. Both of us close to hypothermia, we borrow heat from each other’s bodies, hands tucked under oxters. His beard twitches against my cheek as he shivers. No embarrassment, just knowledge that survival requires you to be greater than yourself. You share what you have to share to keep each other alive.
‘You remember Jamie Laidlaw? He still feels pain in a leg he lost seven years ago. He says he wakes up at night and it feels like he’s lying there with his leg broken and bent the wrong way. He has to look down and remind himself it’s not there. Maybe that’s what Mitch is. My phantom limb.’
‘Losing a person isn’t the same as losing a part of your body. It’s different.’
I pull the kitchen door closed and feel the blood flood into my face with the sudden heat. ‘Not really.’
‘Sean . . .’
I hold up my hand. ‘L
eave it, Janet. I can’t explain and I’m tired of trying.’
‘I worry about you.’
‘I never asked you to.’
IX
After a couple of days the roads are clear again and daffodils lift their white and yellow heads clear of the slushy layer of snow on the fields. I finish my round of deliveries and uplifts by early afternoon so before Harry has a chance to ask about it, I steel myself and take a drive out to Cauldhill Farm. The sight of Molly’s Volvo in the drive brings on a flutter of butterflies in my gut. She could tell me to get stuffed or come at me with a knife, or even worse, try to get me into bed again.
A momentary notion to drive past brings on a mini-torrent of Welsh-accented abuse (You miserable spineless piece of excrement, Nic, you little yellow chicken turd, etc), and I would rather face the wrath of a living woman than a dead bootneck. Without further hesitation I park the van and jog up the steps, ring the bell and take a deep breath as I wait.
She opens the door and stands there looking at me, face passive. It seems to take her a moment to recognise me, a moment which spins out painfully while I stand there with a sheepish grin. Eventually she shakes her head, returns the smile.
‘That’s the face I remember.’
‘I’ll . . . ehm . . . finish the job if you haven’t got anyone else.’
She steps aside to let me in, then turns away from me and fills the kettle. ‘I haven’t. I haven’t done anything about it. I’ve been in bed since the snow started.’
‘Are you alright?’
‘Yes.’ A soft laugh. ‘It just seemed the best place to be. Somewhere warm and dark, where I didn’t have to think about anything.’
‘Oh . . . right.’
‘I’m fine, Sean. Are you?’
I shrug, pull out a chair and sit down at the kitchen table without having been invited to. She doesn’t say anything so I clear my throat and spread my fingers on the wood. ‘I’m sorry about the other day.’
She sits down across from me, face creased with uncertainty. ‘Me too. I’ve made a fool of myself, haven’t I?’
I shift uncomfortably on the creaky wooden chair. ‘No, that was me. I shouldn’t have let that happen. I haven’t . . . you know . . . been with anyone for a long time. I’ve spent the last couple of years living mostly inside my own head, if that makes any sense.’
Her face softens and the lines flatten out a bit. ‘It does. I suppose in a way, I’ve been doing the same. I guess I just needed someone to put their arms around me.’
‘Can’t your husband come up and help?’
‘Can’t . . . won’t. Is it awful to admit that I wouldn’t even want him to?’
‘That’s not really for me to say.’
She looks away. ‘I suppose not.’
I stare at a spot somewhere on the far wall and a muscle in my cheek starts to twitch. I stand up abruptly. ‘Look, don’t bother with the coffee. Where do you want me to start?’
‘Oh . . . ehm . . . just . . . wherever. Just pick a room.’
‘Molly, I . . .’ I hesitate for a minute, feeling uncomfortably implicated in yet another conflict that should have nothing do with me. She waits curiously, eyes wide, and I scratch my cheek.
‘Whatever’s going on with you and your man, I don’t want to be named as the final straw.’
She laughs out loud. ‘Honestly, Sean? This particular camel has so many straws on its back, you hardly rate a mention. Maybe if . . . well . . .’
‘If I’d been able to finish the job? Is that you want to say?’
‘No!’ Her cheeks flush. ‘I was going to say, maybe if you’d felt differently about me.’
‘All the same, I don’t want to be your excuse. Alright?’
Her face tightens with hurt. ‘You’re not, I promise. I am going home, anyway. I have no intention of staying in this horrid, freezing house with no furniture.’
‘Right,’ I say slowly, only half believing her. ‘I’ll get going then.’
She nods sharply. ‘Sure.’
I head out to the van for a stack of flattened boxes, and carry them back through the kitchen without stopping to talk. Molly opens a drawer and withdraws a box of papers, obviously trying not to look at me as I pass her, and lets me go through toward the stairwell.
Upstairs, I avoid the bedroom she’s been using and select the one at the far end of the long corridor: a dreary wee chamber with pink-painted woodchip and a flowery wallpaper dado strip. There is dust everywhere, lying in a thick layer on the furniture and along the tops of the heavy red curtains, as well as a slight whiff of damp. The single bed is covered by a thin quilt and the floorboards creak suspiciously under the stained carpet. This might have been Molly’s room once, but now it’s so cold and sad it seems like a little pink prison cell. The room seems half a rugby pitch away from the bedroom where her parents must have slept, and I catch a hazy glimpse of a little girl curled in this bed as the wind swept down off the moors and rattled the old sash windows. Not a nice place to be if you’re troubled by ghosts.
Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to hang around here for eternity. The wallpaper is godawful.
I can’t imagine the décor inside my head is much better.
You’re right about that, Sunshine. It’s pretty black in here. You should try cleaning the place sometime.
No amount of bleach is going to get rid of you, though, is it? What do I have to do?
Ah now, that would be telling.
The wardrobe is empty apart from a few bent wire hangers. In the top drawer of the dresser I find a ratty cloth doll with a yellowed frilly apron and red yarn hair. I raise the doll to my nose; she smells of dust and mildew and sawdust. Then I place her on top of the chest of drawers and begin removing the covers from the bed and folding them into the boxes. When the bed is stripped, I pull the mattress off the bedframe, half hoping to find some long forgotten diary stashed there. But all I find are saggy metal springs, dust many years thick and a single grey sock.
Having cleared the room of everything except the furniture, I stack one box on top of another and carry them down the stairs again, back through the kitchen past Molly, who is sitting at the kitchen table reading something on brown paper with a pair of small dark-framed specs perched on her nose. I carry the boxes outside and load them into the van.
‘That’s the wee pink room done,’ I say, kicking mud off my boots before re-entering.
She looks up. ‘That was my room.’
‘Aye . . . I found a little doll. Maybe you want it.’
A forceful reply. ‘I don’t want anything from that room.’ Then she softens. ‘I’m glad you’ve done that one. I’ve been avoiding it.’
‘Why’s that?’
She takes off her glasses and folds the bit of paper, then stands up and fills the kettle. ‘My abiding memory of childhood is of lying in that little bed, listening to my parents argue and crying myself to sleep. Nights were really fucking long in that room.’
‘It’s funny, I . . .’ I pause, rubbing my fingers over my chin, still surprised to find smooth skin there instead of coarse hair, ‘I was imagining just that. Wee Molly curled in the bed, crying.’
‘Oh, don’t.’ She laughs sadly. ‘Fat ugly Molly, who thought everyone hated her. Don’t remind me. I was such a freak.’
‘You’re talking to the king of the freaks.’
‘You aren’t. You weren’t then either.’
‘I was. Or I thought I was.’
‘You were aloof. That’s what I remember most about you. You never gave anything away.’
‘I don’t know about aloof. Scared and embarrassed, maybe.’
‘Wasn’t everybody though?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe not.’ She smiles sadly, eyes flickering over my face. Then she clears her throat. ‘So I . . . ehm . . . I’ve been reading those letters you found. You were right, they are from a woman.’
‘H.B. Starling of New York City. So . . . who is she, then?’
The k
ettle boils and she pours the coffee. ‘Harriet Belle Starling. A singer. A blues singer from Harlem.’
She hands me a steaming mug. ‘He washed up over there after the war and took up with her for a while. They wrote to each other for a long time after he came back here.’
‘Why’d he leave her?’
‘She was black.’ She says it like it’s an entirely obvious and rational explanation. ‘Anyway, he didn’t exactly waste away for want of company. Mum was his third wife, and he had mistresses.’
‘You’re the only child?’
‘No. I have two half sisters in Australia, and another half sister down south.’ She pauses, shakes her head. ‘I’m the only one who was still on speaking terms with Dad by the end. He fell out with more or less everybody. So . . . I guess I get this place as a reward for my perseverance.’
‘What about your mum?’
‘She lives in the south of France with her second husband, Patrice. They make wine and run holiday gites. We don’t talk much. Happy families, eh?’
‘Is there any such thing?’
‘Yeah, there is. Just, not for me. I don’t think I know how. Dad was a miserable, twisted old tyrant. He never said much, he couldn’t stand noise, he never showed affection to anyone. He used to give Mum orders like she was a dog, and he ignored me as far as possible. Mum used to say it was the war. That doing what he did in the war made it impossible for him to be close to anyone.’
‘Maybe she was right.’
‘Maybe.’ Her eyes move across my face. ‘Have you ever been close to anyone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who was she?’
‘Not a woman.’
‘Oh.’
‘Just a mate, Molly.’
She clears her throat and smiles. ‘It wouldn’t have bothered me. I’m not like that.’
‘Neither am I, in case you’re wondering.’
‘Well. It’s not really my business. But you’re not like him. He was just . . . cold. Arrogant and stone-faced. Quite honestly, I don’t think he gave a second thought about the people of Dresden, or wherever. Brilliant with horses, absolutely shocking with humans.’
‘You’d better hope he’s not listening.’
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