Drift Stumble Fall

by M. Jonathan Lee

  “Er, yeah. I did.”

  I have no idea what they are talking about. Although I have to suffer this show for at least one quarter of the year, I take little interest. Unfortunately, it is not something I can escape altogether. Some time ago I did remove myself from the lounge when the television came on, but Lisa told me that I should sit with her and Hannah for ‘family time’. Since then, under sufferance, I have endured the show. A conscientious objector, if you like.

  Also, the people in my office talk about it in great detail every Monday. Just like Lisa, I nod at the right times. I have to accept that the programme is inescapable. What I do know is that last year a dog won it. The show looks for talent the length and breadth of this country and from sixty million humans the judges decided that a dog had the most talent. A dog. God help us.

  Lisa takes advantage of the advert break to go into the kitchen and fill up her glass of wine. Hannah munches on a Jaffa cake.

  “Which do you think will win, Dad?” she says. Chocolate-coloured grout joins her teeth.

  “Hmm…” I say, buying a little time. “The singer.”

  There must be one. There’s always a singer.

  “Do you?” She sounds surprised. “Yep. What about you?”

  Lisa sits back down and takes a drink of her wine. “What are you two talking about?” she says.

  “Who will win. Dad thinks that it’ll be Alex.”

  Lisa pulls a face that suggests a victory for Alex is less than likely. “Do you?” she says. I cannot believe that she has been so focused on the television as to not notice that I haven’t paid any attention at any time for the last eleven Saturdays. “I reckon it’ll be Blind Ambition.”

  I’ve heard of these contestants. They are a group of twenty or so sightless acrobats who perform a series of stunts to a backdrop of fire. I suppose the heat keeps them away from danger even though they can’t see the flames.

  “So do I,” says Hannah.

  Lisa shushes us again as the programme restarts.

  I turn back to my atlas to read a little more about Omaha, which I am soon to find out is the largest city in Nebraska.

  sunday 16th

  CHAPTER_SEVENTEEN

  It’s getting colder. Quicker.

  The doorbell rings.

  “I’ll go,” I say.

  I already know who stands between the two panes of glass and me. There was a time earlier this morning when there was a minim of hope that the snow would deter their visit. I heard Lisa on the telephone seemingly dissuading them, but it seems that they were happy to risk their lives to come.

  “Hello,” I say. “Come on in.”

  I breathe in, to allow them to pass, and they make their way through the porch and into the hall. The snow is falling more heavily than yesterday. The sky is a swirl of white and grey. It reminds me of ice-cream. It looks endless, like the snow will never stop. As I close the front door, I notice Bill standing in the warmth of his lounge. I wave. He bows his head slightly and holds up a finger of acknowledgement.

  “So, how are you?” I say, taking Dina’s coat. As always, she looks fantastic. Her make-up is flawless; thick foundation covers whatever wrinkles lie beneath. If there are any: I’ve never seen her without make-up. Her chestnut-brown hair is set to perfection. I wonder what colour her hair really is. My memory fails me. That time seems like a lifetime ago.

  “Oh, we’re fine,” she smiles, leaning in to kiss my cheek, “apart from this weather.”

  “And the train,” says Kenneth. “How are you, son?”

  He has called me ‘son’ since Lisa and I got married. A few weeks after our wedding he approached me and took me to one side. He had a serious look on his face and I was worried that he was about to tell me some horrific family secret. You know, like he was a murderer or Lisa used to be a man. Instead, he looked at me solemnly and took my hand in his and asked me whether he could call me son. “As a replacement for the son that we never had,” he said. I agreed. At the time I remember being honoured.

  “I’m good, thanks,” I lie. “What happened with the train?” “Well, it was running late.”

  I glance outside to confirm that I’m not losing my mind and I did see their car arrive. A thin layer of flakes already obscures the red paint. I’m confused by how a train could possibly have affected them.

  I’m non-committal. “Right,” I say. “Because of the snow,” interrupts Dina.

  “Because it’s so heavy. Must have got in the electrics,” says Kenneth.

  “So, we had to wait for half an hour.”

  “Just sitting in the car.”

  “Watching them try to get the road open again.”

  Kenneth shakes his head like a father at a funeral. Unless you knew him, you’d expect that this incident has affected him deeply. It hasn’t. He would react in this way if he found a discarded crisp packet in his flower bed.

  “They couldn’t get the bollards up, you see,” Dina says, touching my hand.

  “The bollards?”

  “You know, dear, the bollards. Across the road.” “At the railway crossing,” interjects Kenneth.

  “Oh,” I say, giving the impression that it now all makes sense. I resist a never-mind-the-bollards joke on the basis it will only ramp up the confusion.

  I am saved by Lisa’s entrance from the kitchen. She arrives in the hall with her arms outstretched. Her smile is wide and beautiful. For a moment I feel very proud. She has curled her hair and she wears a giant yellow button as a clip to keep it out of her eyes. She is wearing an apron which has the words ‘KEEP CLAM I’M A COOK’ on the front. Her mother designed it online and gave it to her last Christmas. I still don’t know if the misspelling was a clever pun on her part. I suspect not. Lisa greets her parents with a hug and informs them that lunch will be in an hour.

  “We’re sorry we’re late, dear. We were just telling Richard about the train.”

  “The train?”

  “Yes, and the bollards,” I say to Lisa. I raise my eyebrows. “The bollards?” she says.

  “Yes,” says Dina – she sounds a little harried – “the bollards.

  The stripy poles. You know, like outside a barber’s shop.” “The barriers?”

  “Oh, yes, barriers.” A look of relief flashes across her face, as if she’s finally placed her order in a foreign restaurant. “What about them?” Lisa says.

  “They weren’t working,” says Kenneth.

  The marauding feet of my children interrupt the smallest of pregnant pauses, saving my in-laws from too much embarrassment for telling the world’s most tedious story.

  “Granny! Bompa!” Hannah shouts as she bounds down the stairs.

  “Careful,” I say.

  Oscar makes his way downstairs more carefully, taking one step at a time, using the bannister to help him.

  Moments later the children are wrapped around Lisa’s parents. As usual, Dina has something special inside her bag for them. She smiles mischievously, her eyes shine, and for a moment she is the same age as Hannah. She tells them to follow her into the dining room to see what it is and they scurry after her like hungry rats.

  “Right, back to the kitchen,” Lisa says.

  “I’ll make drinks,” I offer and follow her into the kitchen.

  For a moment Kenneth stands alone, the hall seemingly offering too much choice for him.

  CHAPTER_EIGHTEEN

  “Have you seen it out there?” Bill said, appearing at the kitchen door.

  Rosie stopped chopping the vegetables and looked up. The snow was endless. “It reminds me of the winter when the girls were little,” she said.

  “The one when we got snowed in?” Bill said.

  “Yes.”

  She smiled and slowly shook her head. She held a knife suspended in mid-air above the broccoli.

  “Careful with that,” Bill warned.

  “I will.”

  “How long until dinner?” he asked. “It’ll be about half an hour,” she said. “Okay.”r />
  Bill made his way along the hall. He flicked on the light; Rosie insisted on keeping the adjoining doors closed, which made the hall permanently dark. He wasn’t sure why but he felt the need to go into Victoria’s room at that very moment. He didn’t know whether it was what Rosie had said to him. He could remember that winter perfectly. The snow came down unrelentingly for days on end. He had tried but simply couldn’t get the car out onto the road. In the end, he had missed four days of work, at home with Rosie and Samantha and Victoria. Four days of having everything.

  He stood outside the bedroom door for a moment and then pulled down the handle and pushed it open. It creaked as it always did. He wasn’t about to oil it, though. He wanted it to sound the same as it always had. He had discussed it with Rosie and she felt the same.

  The feeling that he had was unusual. When it first happened, he and Rosie would spend hours and hours on end in Victoria’s room. Just sitting in silence. But over the years they had agreed that they had to curb the time they spent there; it was consuming too much of their lives. Of course, not a day, even an hour, would pass when they weren’t reminded.

  Bill preferred to have his time in Victoria’s room in the evening. Just fifteen minutes alone with his own thoughts. Six thirty every single evening, like clockwork. He needn’t even look at his watch now. He just knew. The time was unmissable. Since the day that she left, he had returned to her room at this time. And after all this time, he hadn’t once missed this appointment with his thoughts. Not once.

  Today, though, was different. He was compelled to go in. By a force that he couldn’t discern.

  He sat down on Victoria’s bed and smoothed the creases on the blanket beneath him. The room was just as it had been on the day that Victoria left. Small cuddly toys sat obediently, forming a line across the foot of the two plump white pillows. Bill lifted the head of a solemn-looking bear so it faced out into the room. On the bedside table was Victoria’s watch, just where she’d left it, along with an almost unused journal. Bill had read the only entry hundreds and hundreds of times. In neat curved blue handwriting it simply said:

  Hello, Dear Diary. Today is the beginning of my life. And I’m going to tell you all about it.

  He couldn’t remember the amount of times that he had carefully leafed through the journal, looking for a clue. Something else that would make this torment just a little more bearable. Just one more sentence. One more word.

  He stared across the room. In the corner was Victoria’s dressing table. A square white chest, with three oval mirrors on the top. The middle one was the biggest, flanked on either side by two smaller mirrors. Necklaces and bracelets hung from each. There were three drawers on either side of a space where Victoria could put her legs. In that space was a white padded stool.

  Bill could almost see the shape of Victoria sitting at the dressing table, brushing her hair. A clear shadow moving the dust around her as she pulled the brush through her hair. He’d seen it a hundred times before as he popped his head around her door after a day at work. He hadn’t been home from work on the night that she left. It was Rosie that had told him she was sure that it was exactly six thirty when Victoria had kissed her mother goodbye and disappeared through the front door.

  On the walls were posters that Bill hadn’t approved of when Victoria had originally put them up. Men in make-up stared out at him: Duran Duran, Adam Ant. He remembered the night he first saw the Madonna poster on the wall. Lying there in bed in lace underwear. Wearing practically nothing. ‘Like a Virgin.’

  Rosie had told him that he shouldn’t create a fuss about it, that Victoria would grow out of her obsession – that it was ‘a teenage thing’. And so Bill had bitten his tongue and not commented on the ‘phase’ his eldest daughter was going through. And now, more than thirty years later, the posters still hung from the walls, partially faded by the sun, staring at him every day.

  There was a wooden chair beneath the window. Across the seat lay two brown skirts, freshly ironed by Rosie all those years before. Waiting to be hung in the wardrobe. Around the back of the chair was a lemon-coloured cardigan. Never to be worn again.

  Bill moved to the foot of Victoria’s bed and sat on the wicker ottoman. He watched as huge flakes of snow fell and added to the pile on the windowsill. About a quarter of the window was now covered. Bill hoped that it would continue to fall until the bungalow was lost in the blizzard. Buried forever. Never to be seen again, just like Victoria.

  Just he and Rosie, frozen in time together.

  He heard the creak of the door handle and turned.

  “Lunch, dear,” Rosie said quietly.

  “Thank you,” Bill smiled. “I’ll be through in a moment.”

  Rosie smiled and disappeared from sight.

  Bill wondered whatever he would have done without her.

  CHAPTER_NINETEEN

  Did I really sign up for this?

  Lisa pushes the hot trolley through from the kitchen into the dining room. The smell of gravy follows her.

  Her parents and our children sit patiently at the table waiting to be fed. I help Lisa unload the glass dishes filled with vegetables. I place them, one by one, in the centre of the table and remove the lids. Today we have sweetcorn, peas, cauliflower, broccoli, runner beans and carrots.

  “I don’t like beans,” says Hannah.

  I’m not entirely sure why it is that children seem to identify the one negative and point it out.

  “Urrgh!” replies Oscar, making a motion of putting his fingers down his throat. Dina giggles. Oscar does it again.

  “Oscar! Stop, please,” says Lisa firmly.

  “Well, what about the things you do like?” I say to him.

  Lisa looks at me and pulls a face that makes me immediately stop that line of questioning. She reaches into the trolley and pulls out a huge silver tray, which she places in front of me on the table. The air is immediately filled with the smell of roast pork. Golden crackling covers the top of the enormous roast, on which tiny bubbles of fat spit and burst. Surrounding the meat are roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings seasoned with rosemary. My mouth instantly waters.

  “Mmm. This looks nice,” I say. “Say thank you to Mummy.”

  “Urrgh, beans!” says Oscar. His eyes are on Dina, his fingers back in his mouth. She smiles and then puts her fingers in her mouth. Oscar laughs loudly.

  I am near-certain that this mealtime will turn into an unprecedented disaster. I can just feel it.

  “Oscar! Mum! Enough,” Lisa snaps.

  They both giggle and Dina pulls a serious face. Oscar copies her.

  “So, who’s for some lovely pork?” I say, picking up the carving knife and fork. Nobody answers, and I stand and begin to work out the best way to cut into the meat. I hate this part of dinnertime. I would like to point out that I have never received any formal training in carving animal carcasses. If there had been training on offer, I would have been leading the queue. But there wasn’t, and so I am likely to be embarrassed once again.

  The entire family watches in anticipation. Kenneth sits alongside me and I can feel his eyes burning into me as I push the fork into the succulent meat to hold it in place. I push the tip of the knife through the crackling and begin to carve. The crackling immediately fractures and small shards of pig skittle across the table. I manage to carve off a piece of meat which is ten times as thick at the bottom than at the top. It resembles a doorstop or a piece of supermarket cheddar. Kenneth coughs slightly. I push my knife in again and carve; the next piece is similar to the last. Kenneth coughs again. The next piece is different. Thin at each end, fat in the middle. Kenneth makes a noise that sounds a little like ‘ahem’.

  I am sure I see Lisa give Kenneth a faint nod, and he is on his feet.

  “Do you want a little help?” he says.

  I have no time to answer before I feel his arms around me. His hands on top of mine, like a golf professional correcting my swing. We carve together. In perfect harmony. Beautifully cut,
even pieces of pork. Although I am embarrassed, I am especially impressed by the fact that Kenneth is much smaller than me and therefore he is effectively ‘carving blind’.

  Lisa adds a Yorkshire pudding to each plate of meat and then the vegetables and potatoes. When we are all served, Kenneth returns to his seat and I place the silver tray back into the hot trolley. The pieces I originally carved remain in the trolley for now. More than likely for Cliff.

  We all begin to eat.

  “You’d think by now they’d have meat that was already cut, wouldn’t you?” says Dina.

  Lisa shakes her head. “They do.”

  “Do they?” Dina says. A pea slides down her chin and drops onto her plate.

  “Of course they do. Pork chops?” “Pork shops?” laughs Hannah. “Chops,” I correct.

  “Do they really have shops that just sell pork?”

  “Chops. It’s pork chops, Hannah. Not shops.” I suspect that she already knows this.

  “Oh yes, of course,” says Dina. “Funny they don’t have any other chops.”

  Lisa screws up her face, flashing a look that screams that her mother is an idiot. She can’t resist answering her. “What do you mean, Mother?”

  Dina swallows. “Well,” she begins, “you don’t have chicken chops or beef chops, do you?”

  Lisa screws her face up further. “Yes. You do. Chicken breasts. Steak.”

  “Well, they’re not chops, are they?” “They’re still pre-cut meat, Mother. Jesus.” “What about lamb chops?” I say.

  “Ooh, that’s a good one,” says Dina, reaching across to touch my hand. She shoots a look at Lisa. “See!” she says.

  “What do you mean, ‘see’?” Lisa snaps back.

  “See. There are other types of chops.” “I know.”

  “Well, why argue then?”

  “I’m not. It was me who said that there were other chops.”

  “I’m afraid it wasn’t, dear.” “Yes, it was.”

  “Lisa!” says Kenneth. He uses the same tone I expect he used thirty years earlier. The same one Lisa uses on our children.