Cuckoo

by Julia Crouch

  ‘Look,’ Polly said, drawing the blanket around her, ‘I’m sorry. I know I’m being a bit spiky. I’m really grateful for all this. You’re being really generous. I can’t begin to thank you . . .’

  ‘Then don’t start,’ Rose said, sitting next to her. ‘I know you’d do the same for me if—’ She looked over at Gareth, and she couldn’t go on. ‘God, Polly, I can’t imagine what it must be like for you.’

  ‘It’s like having your arm torn off,’ she said. ‘Without your consent. How dare he? How dare he go and leave us?’

  Gareth got up and fetched what they called the drugs box, which they kept on the top shelf of the dresser, above Anna’s nest of eggs. He sat down again and started to roll a joint.

  ‘There was no one to talk to there. His mother was awful,’ Polly went on. ‘She blamed me. Said I’d driven him to it. She even had the gall to suggest that I’d tampered with the truck.’

  ‘No!’ Rose said.

  ‘I mean, do I look like I’d know my way around the mechanics of a pick-up truck? She’s always hated me. If you haven’t been on the island for ten generations you’re an outsider, and there was no room for me. After he died. I had to go.’

  ‘How did it happen exactly?’ Gareth asked.

  ‘Christos and I had this argument. It was serious, but not out of the ordinary. I told him to fuck off, so he did the usual and drove off down to the town, to George’s taverna – remember that friend of Christos’s?’ she asked Rose.

  ‘The impossibly handsome one?’ Rose said.

  ‘Yep. Anyway, apparently he spent hours in there, drinking beer and Raki with his cronies, no doubt telling them all what a witch I was. Then, instead of coming home, he drove right up to the top of the island, up the new road, into the mountains. I don’t know why. Sometimes he’d go up there and spend the night – he never told me much about it and I wasn’t all that interested. But he was going too fast. And he was drunk, of course. Then he just took a bend badly, one of those hairpins up a mountain, and instead of going up, he went right over the side. The truck was mangled, and so was he.’

  ‘He died instantly?’ Gareth asked.

  ‘They think so. But it was a while till he was found. By a shepherd, who, coincidentally, was a distant cousin. Hence the brainless gossip about tampering.

  ‘The night it happened, I’d gone to bed and didn’t realise that he hadn’t returned till I woke up the next morning. I thought perhaps he’d stayed at George’s down in the town. As I said, it wasn’t unusual for him to spend a night or two away. Later on in the evening of the next day, when there was still no sign of him, I got a taxi down to the town to find him. I was furious by then, of course. But no one knew where he was. We weren’t all that concerned. He had set a precedent for disappearing, after all.’

  Rose passed the joint to Polly, who drew deeply on it and exhaled slowly.

  ‘Then, five days later, they found him. What remained of him. The wolves had got there first. We didn’t have much to bury,’ she said.

  ‘Oh God, Polly,’ Rose said, taking her hand.

  ‘The worst part, though, was that during those five days, I got more and more angry at him for staying away. I never imagined . . . You’d think you’d know, wouldn’t you? Somewhere in your heart, if . . . Anyway, I was so mad that by the time they found him, my first reaction was that dying served him right.’

  Gareth blew out his cheeks, and Polly sat back and looked at Rose. There was something terrible in her eyes, some sort of glimmer of triumph. Rose felt herself shiver.

  ‘He fucked other women,’ Polly said, smoke trailing out through her nostrils. Lost in her story, she hadn’t passed the joint on.

  ‘I know,’ Rose said, her eyes level. Gareth kept very still, very quiet.

  ‘All the time,’ Polly went on. ‘All through our marriage. But until that last time, he always came back to me in the end.’ She fell quiet. Then she smiled and looked up. ‘Not that I was an angel, of course. Don’t feel sorry for me. I got what I deserved.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Gareth said, leaning over and touching her arm. A sudden draught pushed the candles and the flames guttered, threatening darkness. But as quickly as it appeared it passed.

  Rose got up. ‘I’d better go and tuck the children in,’ she said. ‘If I can make it up the stairs. Polly, do you want to come and say goodnight to the boys?’

  ‘I think I’ll pass tonight,’ she said, taking a final draw on the joint and handing it over to Gareth. ‘Nico’ll just smell my breath and tell me off. He hates me smoking. Thinks he’ll lose me too. Give them a kiss from me, will you?’

  Rose tiptoed up to see Anna first, who was fast asleep, buried in a mound of teddies, her duvet cocooned around her. Then she went to the boys in the spare room. Nico was reading a comic, and Yannis was lying curled under his bedding.

  ‘I said I’d stay up till he went to sleep,’ Nico said.

  ‘He’s lucky to have a brother like you,’ Rose said, leaning down to give him a kiss on the head. She then went over to Yannis, who pulled her close to him.

  ‘I wish you were my mama,’ he whispered in her ear.

  ‘Shhh. You mustn’t say that,’ she said, putting her finger over his lips. ‘Now, go to sleep, you.’ And, as she kissed him on the cheek, he closed his eyes and smiled.

  She went out onto the landing and put on the night-light. Anna was scared of the dark and, if Rose was honest, so was she.

  On the way downstairs, Rose realised that the story of Christos’s death had not contained one single reference to the boys. It was all about Polly. She had made it her story. But then it was one thing, Rose thought, to stand on the shore thinking how Polly should be swimming to save herself. It was another thing altogether to be in the water, flailing against the current, trying not to be pulled under.

  She paused on the landing to look down at Polly and Gareth, who were deep in conversation, handing another spliff backwards and forwards. This was good.

  As she went down the stairs into the kitchen, Gareth held out his hand for her to come and sit next to him.

  ‘We were just sharing memories of Christos,’ Gareth said. ‘He was quite a guy.’

  ‘He certainly was,’ Rose said.

  Polly, who was beginning to shake, took a couple of pills from one of the rattling bottles in her bag and knocked them back with the remains of her glass of wine.

  ‘I really must be going,’ she said, glancing at the clock.

  ‘But it’s only ten,’ Rose said.

  ‘I have my pharmaceutical schedule to keep to,’ Polly said, getting up and glancing out of the window over the sink, the one that looked up towards the Annexe. Something seemed to have caught her attention up there.

  ‘OK, then,’ Rose said, getting up. ‘You sure you’re all right? I’ll come up the path with you, if you want.’

  ‘No, I’m fine and dandy,’ Polly said. ‘Just tired. Look, thanks for tonight. It was good to talk. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘Don’t get up early,’ Rose said.

  ‘As if.’ Polly left quickly, with the throw still wrapped around her.

  ‘That was a bit hasty,’ Rose said, puzzled. Then she noticed that Polly had left her bag on the table. ‘I’d better take this up for her. It’s got her pills in.’

  ‘She can do without them tonight,’ Gareth said. He had got up and was looking out of the window. ‘Come and see.’

  He took Rose’s arm, blew out the candles and pointed up through the window to the Annexe. There, in the shadows, waiting for Polly, was a tall, male figure that was unmistakably Simon. He and Polly exchanged a few words in the doorway. She seemed not to be too pleased to see him, but after a few moments she went in and he followed her. Very shortly after that, the lights went out in the Annexe.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Gareth said. ‘I’d forgotten quite what a fast mover our Polly is.’

  Fourteen

  The rest of the week fell into an easy pattern, with the boys sleepi
ng in the big house, and Polly joining everyone for supper. As far as Rose could tell, Simon hadn’t visited Polly again after that night. He certainly hadn’t been stopping for morning coffee. He had a deadline, he told Rose, as he hurried home after the school run each day. She missed their chats, and she couldn’t help wondering what had gone on between the two of them. But whatever had happened seemed to have had a good effect on Polly. She seemed more relaxed, less barbed. And she was working during her hours up in the Annexe. Sometimes, on the way to the car, Rose would catch a snatch of guitar and Polly’s unmistakable voice picking its way around a new tune.

  The boys’ new Tesco clothes only lasted a couple of days and then they were all caked in mud. Rose couldn’t wash and dry them quickly enough. So, on the Friday, she decided to take them into Bath to extend their English wardrobes.

  She picked them up from school in the Galaxy. It was the first time the boys had been in the car since that first journey from Heathrow, and it took a good deal of bargaining to organise who was sitting where. They both wanted to be next to Anna, but on the very back row, where there were only two seats. Then there was a long argument about why they should wear seatbelts. Finally they set off, bombing down the narrow, banked country lanes through the drizzling afternoon. In a month or so, the cow parsley would be dwarfing them, but right now they were able to see the fields and the hills beyond.

  ‘All this green – it hurts my eyes,’ Yannis said.

  ‘It gets worse, believe me,’ Rose smiled over to him. In losing the back-seat argument, he had won the not inconsiderable consolation prize of sitting in the front, next to Rose. Flossie, backwards facing in the middle row was being watched over by Anna who was whispering and giggling with Nico in the row behind.

  ‘I want to be in the back,’ Yannis moaned, looking over at the two of them.

  ‘On the way home you can,’ Rose said. Only partly satisfied by this, Yannis turned again to look out of his window.

  ‘Back home it’s all brown, blue and grey,’ Yannis said. ‘We get flowers in the spring, but then the sun comes and kills them all.’

  ‘We get flowers here all through to the end of the summer.’

  ‘Really?’ He considered this, twirling his long hair round his index finger.

  ‘And, hey, Yannis. You could start thinking about this all as your home now, too.’ Rose put her hand on his knee.

  ‘It’s too cold here.’ He scowled, looking out of the window at the fields as they streaked past.

  Rose parked in the multi-storey and filed them all out into the street. There was a lovely shop called Jabberwocky which sold really good quality, rugged clothes for middle-class country children. It was a little more expensive than Tesco, but Rose thought the cut was better, and the clothes lasted longer.

  On the way there, she realised how unaware Yannis and Nico were of the traffic. She had to intervene more than a couple of times to stop them stepping out without looking. In the end, she made them hold on to the buggy, one each side. It was, she thought, better to force passers-by off the pavement than risk these loose cannons careering off into the road. It wasn’t that they were just looking the wrong way when they crossed the road. It was more that they had no idea of danger. Nor, it seemed, did they possess the ability to follow her instructions.

  They piled into the shop, and the children sat in the play area with Flossie, while Rose went around building a pile of possible outfits for the boys to try on. The shop was pretty child-friendly, but even so she had to mediate a couple of times: once to pull Yannis off Nico, the second to tell him to tone the language down. She wasn’t used to shopping trips being so wearing. Yannis, who was normally the easiest of the boys, was proving to be quite a handful today.

  They crammed into the changing room. Yannis immediately stripped down to his underpants, slipped his way past Rose and ran back into the shop.

  ‘I’m a weirdo!’ he cried out, turning a couple of cartwheels across the shop floor.

  ‘I’m a weirdo!’ He bounced and lunged his face into that of a nice little girl with plaits and the straw-boatered uniform of a private girls’ day school. She shied away and buried her face in her mother’s heavy floral linen skirt.

  Rose darted across the shop to catch Yannis and finally managed to corner him by the shoe department.

  ‘Come on, Yannis,’ she said, holding him by the arm. ‘You’ve got to act a bit more grown up. It’s like being with a toddler.’

  ‘But I’m a weirdo.’ He stood there, panting and glaring at her. ‘I’m a weirdo. They all said!’ Sniggers racked him until, like a tap running dry, it all stopped and his wiry little body, at first so tense and fizzing, seemed to fold before her eyes. She followed him to the ground, still holding him.

  ‘Who said, Yannis?’

  ‘The kids at school. I hate them.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ she said. ‘They can’t do that.’

  At last, the tears came.

  ‘I hate that school. I want to go home, Rose. I want it all back how it was,’ he wailed.

  The shop was, thankfully, fairly empty, and the few other customers and sales staff kept a discreet distance from Rose and the melting, wild little boy.

  She folded him up in her arms, pressing his hot head into her breast. ‘There, there, Yannis. It’s OK, shhh, it’s OK.’

  ‘I want my papa,’ he sobbed.

  ‘I know,’ Rose whispered into his hair. ‘I know, Yann.’

  It was horrible to think, but in a way she was glad that he was reaching out for her like this. The poor boy had to go through this grief. Even a child had to reach the bottom, before they could move on. She felt privileged that he had chosen her for his witness.

  ‘And Mama’s just rubbish.’

  ‘Shh,’ Rose said. ‘She just misses him too, and it’s making her sad, like you. But she’ll be better soon. And I’m here, and whatever happens, I promise, promise, promise that I will never, ever let you down.’

  He looked up at her, his eyes red.

  ‘Look, Yannis, Gareth and I – well, we love you. As if you were our own sons. And Christos – your papa – he loves you too. He’s up there, looking down and giving you all his love.’

  ‘In heaven?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But Mama says that’s just bollocks. I heard her tell Yaya that, when they were at the funeral.’

  ‘Do you think it’s bollocks?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well then, nor do I.’

  ‘I talk to him sometimes.’

  ‘Do you know what? So do I.’ She smiled at Yannis. She hadn’t noticed before, but he really had the eyes of his father. ‘I can see him right there, inside you, right now.’

  ‘How can he be up there and in me at the same time, though?’

  ‘Well, nothing’s impossible. Your dad is on an awfully big adventure. One we can’t even begin to imagine.’

  ‘And that’s a good thing?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ She gave him another hug. ‘Here,’ she said, breaking away a little. ‘I know what’ll make you feel better. There’s this place round the corner that serves the most amazing hot chocolate. It’s so thick you can stand your spoon up in it.’

  ‘Really?’ he said, the cloud passing as quickly as it had descended.

  ‘Yes, but come on, first we’ve got to get you kitted out,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Buy you some clothes, I mean. Come on.’ And she led him back to the changing room.

  Behind the curtain, a scene of calm and order confronted her. Nico was sitting playing with Flossie, who was awake in her buggy.

  ‘Those are the ones Nico wants,’ Anna said, pointing to a pile of clothes that were neatly folded on a chair. ‘And these,’ she said, putting the final pair of trousers back on a hanger, ‘don’t fit or they look rubbish.’

  Nico smiled up at Rose. ‘They’re really cool clothes. Thanks, Rose.’

  ‘That’s nothing, Nico. I’m glad you’re
happy. Now then, Yannis, let’s get you sorted.’

  And she set to helping him into the lovely, German-made trousers and Swedish fleeces she had piled up, ready for him to try on.

  She ended up spending over £300 in the shop, but she felt Jabberwocky had earned it, having had to bear witness to Yannis’s moment. The boys insisted on wearing their new clothes and she paraded her freshly smart crew into the special hot chocolate café. They emerged half an hour later, happy but somewhat less well-groomed, with chocolate moustaches and splatters on their new tops. The children, sugar riding high in their bodies, skipped and chattered all the way back to the car park. Yannis seemed to have entirely forgotten his earlier outburst.