Freeing Grace

by Charity Norman

  ‘You know what? I think you’re flaunting your freedom on purpose. It’s completely immoral anyway, thumping across Africa in a gas-guzzling truck, roaring past people who don’t even have enough water. It’s voyeuristic and obscene. Why don’t you go on a bicycle? Why don’t you find some voluntary work and do something useful for once in your life?’

  ‘Ha! I don’t need a lecture in morality from you.’

  ‘Frankly, I don’t care whether the pair of you go to Timbuktu or the devil.’

  ‘Feeling’s mutual.’ I knew I was behaving like a child. I scribbled a couple of addresses and then glanced over my shoulder. ‘You’re still here, are you?’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ she said. ‘We’re all trapped in hell. The lot of us. I dream about burning the place down and killing us all.’

  ‘Well, I’d appreciate it if you’d wait until I’ve left.’

  And then she was standing at my shoulder. Citrus and cloves. I could feel her. I still can. It was like leaning against an electric fence.

  ‘Don’t be cross, Jake.’ She reached out a forefinger, ran it along the line of my jaw.

  I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe.

  ‘You have an extraordinary mouth,’ she said quietly. ‘Did you know? It’s a work of art.’

  The fingertip lingered on my bottom lip.

  ‘Sulky,’ she whispered. ‘I love it.’

  That did it. I shoved her hand away. Stood up. My head felt like a pressure cooker. ‘Sod off,’ I muttered through bared teeth. ‘Just sod off.’

  She dropped her hand. ‘No,’ she said calmly. ‘You can’t help. How can you set me free?’ She turned away.

  The door clicked shut behind her. Two minutes later, I heard her car swing out of the garage and accelerate down the lane.

  I spent another hour staring at the screen before I shut it down and walked out to my own car. I pressed the lever to open the boot and then stood, gnawing at my knuckles, trying to work up the motivation to cart all my gear out of the garage.

  ‘Stupid tart,’ I grumbled, but without much conviction. ‘Bloody mad as a March hare.’ In the end, I went into the garage and lugged the first cardboard box out to my car. When I came out with my third load, Matt was waiting.

  I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

  ‘Study day.’

  ‘Yeah? Your school seems very keen on study days.’

  He shoved his hands even further into his pockets, doing a convincing imitation of a stroppy young bull. ‘Friggin’ study day.’

  ‘Fine by me, mate. You can give me a hand.’

  He watched as I dumped a duvet onto the passenger seat. ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘I’m leaving. Time for me to be off. I’ve got things to organise, you’ve got a baby on the way, and I think your mother’s had more than enough of me.’

  He didn’t say anything, just lowered his eyebrows by about two inches and sunk his head between his shoulders. God knows how long he would have stood there, snorting and pawing the ground, if Deborah’s car hadn’t reappeared, looming up the drive like a red ghost in the mist.

  She parked just behind me and hopped out, looking perfectly normal, as if I hadn’t recently told her to sod off; meanwhile I whistled tunelessly under my breath as if her touch wasn’t still setting fire to my lip.

  She spotted the gear piled into the boot of my car. ‘Jake! You’re not leaving us?’

  Something had got hold of me around the throat. I shoved a pile of pillows on top of the duvet, trying to stay angry. She shot a glance at Matt and then swiftly moved to stand between me and the garage.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, Jake. I behaved like a bitch. I was jealous of your freedom, jealous of who you are . . . jealous because you can go back to Africa, and I can’t. I had no right. Please forgive me.’

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ I mumbled. I probably looked a bit like a wounded bull myself. ‘But it’s time for me to move on. I have to camp on the doorsteps of all these embassies. You’ve got assessment people on the way.’

  ‘I don’t give a toss about them,’ growled Matt. He grabbed the pillows and headed stubbornly into the garage with them.

  Deborah leaned into the boot and retrieved a suitcase. ‘Please, Jake? Stay until after the weekend at least. And leave your things here.’ She glanced unhappily towards the blind, brooding windows of the house. ‘We need your sanity.’

  I wondered about her definition of sanity. I wondered when mine had deserted me. And—most of all—I wondered what the hell I thought I was doing, lifting my gear back out of the car.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Deborah and Perry spent the next few days rushing about like a couple of hyperactive beavers. They sorted out their script; after a run of twenty years, the play was pretty polished. I heard them discussing it. Perry was going to be completely open about his condition, and sorry he hadn’t come clean before. Deborah looked out some of her magazine articles just to back up her own story.

  They thought of everything. Perry got up into the attic and chucked down a couple of cobwebby cardboard boxes full of old baby clothes and toys. Deborah said she’d put them up there when Matt grew out of them, meaning to send them to a jumble sale one day. It made me laugh, the idea of Big Matt fitting into those diddy little scraps. Deborah reckoned they smelled musty, and tipped all the clothes into the machine with about a pint of that disgusting stuff that’s supposed to smell of spring flowers.

  I caught her scattering what she called ‘a few homely touches’ around her bedroom. Trashy novels, magazines, slippers. Contraceptive pills artlessly left on the dressing table. The baby clothes were sitting in clean, fluffy piles on top of the chest of drawers, smelling gently of springtime.

  ‘D’you think it looks a bit too Home and Garden, Jake?’ she asked, spreading a hideous patchwork quilt on the bed.

  ‘More like The Simpsons,’ I told her.

  Perry and I dumped the toys in the sink and scrubbed them, and then stacked them in a wooden toy box he’d been using to store seeds. I gave it a new coat of paint. On Sunday night he put on the breadmaker and set the timer for eight-thirty so as to flood the house with homely smells. It was a slick operation, I’ll say that for them.

  Monday came around at last, almost non-existent in another of those stifling sea mists. I was beginning to yearn for the sight of an honest frost and a clear blue sky. I offered to drop Matt at school on my way out through town, and he seemed happy about the idea.

  It felt a bit weird, leaving. I reckon I’d become institutionalised. I needed to get away.

  Perry came to the door to see me off. The smell of baking bread and coffee bubbled out from behind him, as though his home was a haven of warmth in a chilled, damp world. He was looking gaunt, with shadowy gullies in his cheeks.

  He shook my hand. ‘You won’t be in London long, will you, Jake?’

  ‘About two weeks, I should think. Depends on the visas, really.’

  He nodded gloomily. ‘Well, don’t stay away on our account. There’s always a bed for you here.’

  Debs walked me to the car. ‘Like my cardigan?’ She held out her arms. She was wearing something seriously frumpy.

  ‘No.’ I threw my bag into the boot, then took a second look at the shapeless sack. ‘Did you nick that off a scarecrow?’

  She laughed anxiously. ‘I keep it for gardening. It’s supposed to be mumsy.’

  I slammed down the boot lid. ‘That’s just bloody ridiculous.’

  She poked her hair behind her ear. ‘I’ve seen you watching all the rehearsals and painting of scenery with that twisted smile of yours, Jake Kelly. It’s probably no bad thing you’re not going to be here for the performance. It’d be like having a schoolboy standing in the wings. You’d keep making rude noises and giggling during all my most moving speeches.’

  ‘And pretending to chuck up into the fire bucket.’

  ‘Mm. Make me fluff my lines. You’re unhealthily honest, you know
that?’

  I folded myself into the driver’s seat, and she stood at the window. ‘I’ll miss my conscience, though.’

  I smiled at her. ‘You can always phone, if you want. Dial-a-conscience. You’ve got my number.’

  ‘I might even write. It’s what I do, write to people. School friends, aunts, even my old German teacher.’ She kicked my front tyre. ‘Five letters to Rod, trying to explain why I won’t be coming back to him. Haven’t posted any of ’em.’

  ‘Write to me, then,’ I said. ‘Good old snail mail.’ I started the car up while Matt came sauntering out of the house and piled enthusiastically into the passenger seat. He was wittering on about V8 engines and torque. Then he pressed the button to make the roof slide down.

  Suddenly I didn’t want to leave. I looked up at Deborah, but there was nothing to be said. She kissed me on the cheek before straightening up and stepping away. I scrunched past her, through the gates and into a vague and misty world.

  We nudged along for a few miles with the lid off, our road twisting through Coptree Woods. Cheerless vapour rolled around our faces, and the feeble beams of my fog lamps were throttled at birth. It was kind of spooky. I could smell leaf mould and rotting wood and, very faintly, a salty tang that I thought must be the sea. Eventually, the chill got through to my hands.

  ‘It’s a bit cold, mate,’ I said, and pulled into the verge, narrowly missing a treacherous ditch the council had put there as a trap. Matt pressed the button again, then laughed delightedly as the roof unfolded itself and slid over our heads.

  Letting out the clutch, I glanced sideways at him. ‘You seem all bright eyes and two tails,’ I said suspiciously. I’d never seen him so alert at any time of day, let alone at eight-fifteen in the morning.

  Matt was examining the dashboard. ‘The old folks made me bury my dope in the garden. I wasn’t allowed to smoke any last night. Had to sleep in a howling gale to get rid of the smell. What does this do?’ He jabbed at a button.

  ‘Headlight wipers. Leave them alone.’

  ‘What about this?’ Jab, poke.

  ‘Seat warmer, so you don’t get a cold butt.’

  ‘Wow! Look at this! That’s so cool.’ He leaned forwards, concentrating, and started messing with the music system. He twiddled various knobs and then flicked through my discs. ‘Yeuch! Pink Floyd! Bob Dylan—you are sad, old man!’

  I was stung. ‘It’s good stuff,’ I protested. ‘Put on some Dylan. Go on.’

  He made an almighty fuss, but he did it, and I’d like to think he saw my point. As we puttered into the outskirts of town he pointed to a truck stop called Dana’s Diner, perched on a roundabout.

  ‘They do the best sausages you’ll ever taste,’ he announced hopefully. ‘Wanna try them?’

  ‘It’s coming up to eight-thirty. Won’t you be late for school?’

  ‘Nah. I’ve got a free period first. Don’t have to be there until ten. Anyway, I’ll concentrate better with some of Dana’s fabulous world-famous saussies inside me.’

  He was certainly lying about his free period, I thought, but it wasn’t my problem; so I turned in alongside the lorries. I could have driven clean under some of them.

  ‘This,’ Matt enthused as he hopped out, ‘is a taste experience you will never forget. Her brother’s a butcher, and he does them specially to his own unique recipe.’

  It was one of those cafés you don’t get anywhere else but in Blighty: a Formica haven, where they serve your tea in mugs. The sugar’s in a bowl, not jammed into little paper tubes, and you don’t need to worry about whether your boots are muddy or your overalls oily. A woman bustled out from the kitchen, holding a metal tray. She had an improbably blonde beehive hairdo and blue eye shadow, and she beamed tenderly at Matt.

  ‘Be with you in a minute, Matt, love. The usual?’

  ‘Yes, please, Dana, and the same for Jake here.’

  She nodded and patted her beehive. ‘You sit yourselves down. I’ll be there in a jiffy.’

  We found a table among the truck drivers, who slumped in various states of weariness. Dana slopped a couple of mugs of tea in front of us, hovering longingly over Matt for a few seconds before heading back to the kitchen. Matt watched her go, a wistful expression on his face.

  ‘I used to bring Cherie in here.’

  ‘Does Dana know about . . . ?’

  ‘Grace? Yeah, I told her. She thinks I’ve got lovely eyes.’ He smiled, faintly. ‘Her husband’s a stevedore down at Felixstowe docks. He’s the Suffolk heavyweight champion.’

  ‘Best you don’t take her down the woods with a blanket, then.’

  Matt chortled, ladling sugar into his tea. I watched him. The more I saw of Matt, the more he reminded me of me.

  ‘You doing your A-levels next year, mate?’

  He burped disdainfully, and I felt a little twinge of envy. I used to be able to do that to order, too. Gives me heartburn nowadays. Eventually he muttered, ‘S’pose so. Might not even bother.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘God, you’re a nosy bastard. French, English, history, Latin.’

  I nearly spat out my tea. ‘Latin?’

  ‘They were hot on it at my last school.’ He scowled, embarrassed.

  I started to laugh. ‘I’m sorry,’ I spluttered, ‘it just doesn’t quite gel with your hard man image, somehow.’ I straightened my face out. ‘So . . . how’s it all going?’

  ‘It’s not. They’re all wankers, and education’s a waste of my sodding life.’

  ‘When did you decide it was a waste of your sodding life?’

  Dana shimmied over, humming, and plonked a plate of heart disease in front of each of us. ‘There you are, my love,’ she said, ‘and an extra sausage for my favourite customer.’

  Matt picked up a knife and fork and dug in. His appetite was truly mesmerising; it was second only to that of my brother in his younger days. We were reverentially quiet for a good five minutes. Those sausages were the stuff of legend, I have to say.

  Just outside the window a truck roared into life, and the table shivered. Matt swallowed a mouthful and mumbled, ‘I was planning on being a journalist, once.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I used to run our school newspaper.’

  ‘Really? Sounds fun.’ I reached for the mustard.

  ‘It was a bloody good newspaper. Honestly. Won awards. Anyway, I was all lined up to spend a year in Canada, working on a local rag. We actually had it all teed up through a contact of my old headmaster. I was going to play rugby for a Canadian team. I was everybody’s golden boy.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It all fell through when I got kicked out. Being a journalist was my big ambition—and don’t you dare say I’d be following in my mother’s footsteps. This is my thing, not hers. I wanted to be the best, you know? Incisive, questioning, all that stuff. There isn’t enough of it. I was going to travel the world, make it my business to understand what makes it tick and who’s messing it up. But it’s all bollocks.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Fucking look at me, man! I’m not the golden boy any more.’

  ‘You’re not?’

  He dropped the knife and fork, and began to tick off a list on his powerful fingers. ‘One: buggered neck. Cripple. Can’t use rugby to get me into a decent university. Two: drug dealer. Serious blot on copybook. Three: haven’t bothered to go to any lessons this term. Not one. Teachers don’t even know what I look like. If I did darken their doors they’d think I was a gatecrasher. Four: I’m permanently stoned and it’s screwed my head.’

  He pressed both hands on top of his hair and sighed resignedly. ‘Five: got my girlfriend banged up and now I have a daughter. So school’s even more fucking irrelevant than ever.’ He retrieved his fork and stabbed a sausage. ‘Sound like Britain’s finest to you, Jacko? La crème de la crème?’

  I looked at him, and then I put up a finger. ‘One: you don’t need rugby. You’ve got plenty going for you. Two: you sold a bit of hooch—but
you didn’t get nicked by the police, jammy sod. You got away with it, due to the intervention of your beautiful, charming and devoted mother to whom you should be very grateful.’

  He laughed unkindly. ‘You poor bastard! You’re in love with my mother!’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Oh yes, you are.’

  I ignored him. ‘Three . . .’ I hesitated. He’d put me off. What was three? ‘Oh, yes. School. You’ve got plenty of time to catch up, if you pull your finger out and stop making excuses. Four: you weren’t stoned last night, and look at you. Your eyes are actually open!’

  His eyes really were like hers, I thought. Sea-coloured, with tawny flames around the pupils, and curving up at the outer edges when he smiled. Dana was right.

  I don’t know what made me do it. I put down my tea and leaned forward, tapping the table bossily. ‘Sort yourself out, mate,’ I scolded. ‘And then, if you want to, you can fly out and travel with me as long as you like. But only if you’ve passed your exams with flying bloody colours. I’ll pay.’

  He looked doubtful. ‘Where will you be by next summer?’

  ‘If I leave in the New Year and piss about, stop off and do a few things on the way, I’ll have got to . . .’ I counted the months in my head, ‘about Tanzania, I should think.’

  He stared at me from under his dolly-bird eyelashes. I laid both hands flat down on the table. Believe it or not, I felt as though I could actually do something for Matt. I felt like an uncle. It was a new sensation, I can tell you.

  ‘Look. I promise you,’ I insisted seriously. ‘If you stop messing about and sort out your life, we’ll travel together for a bit until you head off to college or wherever. You can text me in the meantime. Let me know how you’re getting on.’

  ‘Okay. Deal.’ He pushed his plate away. ‘You’re off your trolley,’ he said and looked out of the window. ‘But you’ve got a nice car.’

  ‘Not much good in the desert. I’m selling it this morning.’

  ‘No! You can’t!’

  ‘I can. And I need you to come along and help.’

  For a wonderful moment, he looked as though a weight had lifted off him. Then his face fell. ‘And five?’