Bells

by Jo Verity

  He could tell, from her flushed cheeks and shining eyes, that she’d been crying and the sight of her, surrounded by years of dashed hopes, touched him. He moved towards her, not quite knowing what he was going to do but she fended him off with an outstretched hand. ‘Don’t. You’ll get covered in dust. I’ll leave the rest until tomorrow.’ She pointed to two bulging bags, their tops firmly tied. ‘If you want to be useful, you can take those down.’

  He carried the bags downstairs to the utility room, then tidied the kitchen and, by the time Fay appeared, the newspapers were back in the recycling bin and the mugs washed and hanging on the mug tree.

  ‘Busy day, love?’ He needed a steer, a clue, as to why, on this particular Thursday afternoon in August, she had given up on their son. For five years her refusal to admit that Kingsley wasn’t coming back had sanctioned in him the tiniest glimmer of hope, but today she had snuffed that out.

  ‘I had a visitor this afternoon.’ She paused and he scampered through the roll-call of candidates who might possibly have triggered her drastic action. The police with dreadful news? His parents, telling tales? Stan Colley, blowing his cover? Laura, salving her conscience? Non—

  ‘Neil Bentley. D’you remember him? He was one of Kingsley’s crowd from school. Played in that dreadful band. I met him a few weeks ago, selling perfume in Robertson’s.’

  ‘Ooohhh.’ He relaxed, shaking his head. ‘Robertson’s are selling perfume, door-to-door now, are they?’

  She laughed. It was unusual to hear her laugh these days. ‘No, silly. He’s given that up. He was passing the house.’

  ‘He can’t have been. We live in a cul-de-sac.’

  ‘Jack. Don’t be so pedantic,’ she scolded. ‘He was soaking wet, so I asked him in to dry off.’

  He sat back and kept quiet, assuming that, at some point, the story of Neil Bentley’s visit would join up with the clearing of Kingsley’s room.

  ‘He’s a nice lad. His parents have moved to Spain and he’s more or less on his own. He’s out of work at the moment and doesn’t seem to have a clue how to go about finding a job. I said I’d keep my eye open for something suitable. Give him a hand with his CV. Help him with application forms.’

  Fay wasn’t one to take pity on waifs and strays. Teachers, he’d discovered, like policemen, were hardhearted. They’d seen it all before, in classrooms and corridors, pathetic youngsters trying to worm their way out of punishment, blaming everyone but themselves for their misfortunes. So why had this one, this Neil Bentley, breached the defences?

  She smiled again. ‘He said that he loved coming to this house. He even remembered Caitlin. Said they were terrified of her.’ She picked up the plate of fish and removed the clingfilm. ‘Nice lad. Polite. Grateful. He just needs a push in the right direction.’

  There it was, at last. A harmless, compliant young man had turned up on the doorstep and surrendered himself.

  ‘Are you sure that he’s on the level? You can’t be too careful. There are reports in the paper every day about con men, talking their way in to places.’ It had been a while since he’d had anything to lecture Fay about and he was ashamed to admit that he was enjoying it.

  After supper, Jack went upstairs. Now that most of the contents of Kingsley’s room had been displaced into bags and boxes, it looked smaller and shabbier. He sneaked in here occasionally, when things were getting to him. He’d learned to be extra vigilant on dangerous days – Christmas, birthdays, bonfire night – but sometimes, if he saw a long-haired lad juggling or heard aimless guitar chords issuing from an open window, he was caught off guard and found consolation in the room where his son had juggled and strummed.

  Kingsley had been his son. Fay, with her customary efficiency, had produced ‘one of each’. Resolved to stop at that, their third child had irritated her from his very conception. She felt nauseous throughout the nine months of the unplanned pregnancy. Her waters broke in Sainsburys, much to her embarrassment, and a long labour, culminating in an emergency Caesarean section, had been the final straw. But as the cards stacked up against the baby, Jack grew to love him more and more. Having fulfilled a teenage promise to herself and named her first children after Dylan Thomas and his wife, she’d lost interest by the time this colicky scrap of life arrived to upset the balance of the family.

  ‘I’m too tired to think,’ she’d moaned. ‘You decide.’

  Jack had reflected on it for two weeks before announcing that their second son would be called Kingsley. Not after Charles Kingsley or Kingsley Amis, as many of Fay’s more literary friends assumed, but Edward Kingsley, the eminent dentist, who, at the turn of the last century, had perfected a revolutionary procedure for root canal work.

  Jack opened the wardrobe. A selection of items hung there, neatly spaced, as if left merely to demonstrate how a wardrobe worked. A couple of shirts; trousers draped over a hanger; a black jacket. The drawers, similarly, held tokens of a young man’s presence. Two folded tee-shirts; a sweater; several pairs of balled socks. These clothes could have belonged to any eighteen-year-old but the thing was, Kingsley was twenty-three now and might no longer be that gangling, slouching boy who had slammed out of the house with a rucksack, a guitar and a passport. He lifted a tee-shirt from the drawer and buried his nose in it, hoping to catch the faintest whiff of his son, but all he could smell was wood glue.

  After the ten o’clock news, Fay went to bed and he stayed downstairs to check their email. The ‘in box’ contained three new messages. The first from Stan, with the Wicker Men’s autumn fixtures. The second from a businessman in Nigeria, offering him a share of a huge amount of cash if he would open a bank account in their joint names. And an email from Caitlin, accepting their invitation to a barbecue on Bank Holiday Monday.

  Fay took the initiative when it came to planning holidays and family events but, even so, she usually tried to give the impression that he was involved. Today, however, she had obviously dropped all such pretence and was carrying on as if he didn’t exist. Clearing Kingsley out. Inviting odd-bods in. Arranging a barbecue.

  He locked up and went upstairs. Caitlin’s door was shut but he hesitated outside and called softly, ‘’Night, love.’ There was no reply.

  This wasn’t surprising as Fay was in their room, already in bed, sitting up with a book propped on raised knees. Unsure how to interpret this, he undressed whilst she watched him over the top of her reading glasses. He felt oddly self-conscious, turning his back to her until he had put on his pyjamas. When he had finished in the bathroom, he was uncertain if he should hold his ground or retreat to Caitlin’s room. Was this the start of a nightly scramble for territory? First upstairs gets the choice of beds?

  ‘It’s much cooler tonight,’ she said and patted the space next to her, folding in the dust jacket of her book to mark the place.

  They lay side-by-side in the darkness, not quite touching, and he listened to Fay’s snufflings as she fell into a twitchy sleep. There were things that he should talk to her about, but he needed to be sure where their conversations might lead. In a short space of time, since the wedding day in fact, his life had become one of subterfuge and fantasy. Hankerings and plots. Sooner or later it must be sorted or he was going to drop some dreadful clanger and blow it. In his head he rehearsed various openings but found it difficult, more difficult than a game of chess, to follow through all of Fay’s possible responses.

  His opening:

  I’ve decided to go and live with the Evans family in Llangwm.

  Her possible replies:

  1) Don’t be ridiculous.

  2) I want you to be happy, darling. When are you thinking of going?

  3) Good riddance. I hope they can stomach Morris dancing.

  His responses:

  1) I’m not being ridiculous / I am being ridiculous.

  2) I knew you’d understand. I’m going soon / probably never / I’ll have to go and have a chat with Iolo. See whether they need an extra pair of hands at The Welcome Stranger
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br />   3) Aren’t you going to put up a fight? / Have you ever really cared about me? / You’re the only person who has a problem with my dancing

  Next game:

  I slept with Laura twenty-odd years ago because we were both unhappy

  Fay:

  1) Don’t be ridiculous

  2) That was a really altruistic act and I love you for it

  3) You complete bastard. Any ploy to get inside someone’s knickers

  His come-backs:

  1) Not all women see me as a figure of fun. / I was only joking

  2) It seemed the natural thing to do. / It meant nothing to either of us. / She was warm and giving and we both enjoyed it. She was uninhibited and bold and we did wonderful things

  3) Well you wouldn’t let me anywhere near you for months. / You seemed pretty friendly with that history teacher. What was his name? Brian

  Best of three:

  ‘I can’t forgive you for driving Kingsley away, Fay. You have to win every single battle, don’t you? We all have to do what you want. Always.'

  ‘You’re a loser Jack. This family would go to pieces if I left it up to you to. Anyway, if I remember correctly you didn’t say a word. You just stood there and let him go.

  ‘Yes, I did. I was pathetic. And there’s not been a single day when I haven’t regretted it and wished that I’d run down the street after him. Maybe even have gone with him.

  He pictured the empty room across the landing, the bin bags of clothes awaiting dispersal to the charity shop or landfill site. Fay stirred and turned towards him and he rolled away from her.

  14

  There would be nine of them altogether – Caitlin, Dylan and Nia, Jack’s parents, Neil Bentley, Sheila, Jack and herself. It was supposed to be an informal get together, but she’d been writing lists for several days and they now hung in neat strips on the fridge door, held in place by Shakespeare, Byron, Dickens and someone whom she assumed was T S Eliot. She disliked the studenty air fridge magnets gave to the kitchen, but it kept the lists in full view and demonstrated to Sheila Pearce that her last year’s Christmas present was indispensable. Fay had even had the foresight to push the freshly-opened gift box right to the bottom of the bin, where it wouldn’t be spotted.

  They were going to be lucky with the weather. After several stormy days and drenching downpours, yesterday had been warm and dry and now the sky was cloudless. From the kitchen window she watched Jack setting extra chairs out on the decking. He’d spent yesterday afternoon cleaning grease and rust off the barbecue and Dylan was bringing their state-of-the-art model – one of the wedding presents.

  She phoned him but after several rings the answer machine cut in. ‘Dylan? It’s Mum. You’ll need to be here in good time with the barbecue… We have to light it at least half-hour before we start cooking…and don’t forget you’re picking Sheila up… but you’d better drop it off first. You’re not still in bed, by any chance?’

  Jack came in and they sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and running over the schedule. ‘I don’t quite understand why you invited this lad. Neil, is it?’

  ‘For the same reason you invited Sheila,’ she countered.

  ‘Come on, love. Sheila is virtually part of the family. Won’t this Neil feel a bit awkward?’

  ‘I can’t see why. He knows me. And Caitlin. And you, despite your insistence that you’ve never met him.’

  ‘Well, it was about ten years ago…’

  ‘Six. Six years. And anyway, you wouldn’t like to think of him spending Bank Holiday on his own, would you?’ She stood up, signalling the end of the conversation, and began wrapping cutlery in paper napkins, placing them alongside the plates on one of the many trays lined up on the worktops.

  Why had she invited Neil? He would, as Jack pointed out, be the odd one out but he was a very nice young man. No, not ‘nice’ exactly. Grateful, that was it. And malleable.

  Family gatherings had become games or, more accurately, battles in the long, low-key war which had broken out almost without them noticing. The most recent major offensive had been the wedding, followed by a skirmish when she uncovered Jack’s sneaky visits to his parents. She marshalled her troops for the coming offensive. Dylan was definitely on her side, along with Nia, who appeared to be grafted to her new husband both mentally and physically. Caitlin always played it cool, keeping a foot in each camp, removing herself if things came to a head. But Sheila was Jack’s, as were his parents, obviously.

  Neil had phoned a couple of times since Thursday, thanking her for her hospitality and asking advice about an advertisement that he’d seen for trainee managers at Tesco. And when she’d asked if he’d like to come to the barbecue, he’d jumped at the invitation. ‘That’s so kind, Mrs Waterfield. Fay. It’ll be great to meet Mr Waterfield again. And Caitlin, of course. Can I bring anything?’ Nice lad that he was, she’d have to make it quite clear that Caitlin was out of bounds.

  ‘Jack.’ She tapped on the kitchen window to attract his attention. He was standing in the shed, reading a newspaper. She opened the window and shouted, ‘Jack. It’s getting on for twelve o’clock.’

  ‘D’you think I should light the barbecue before I go?’

  She sighed. ‘We went over that yesterday. You’ll be gone at least an hour, won’t you? Longer if your parents dither around. Didn’t we decide that Dylan should light both barbecues and then he can pop and collect Sheila? I think we should aim to start cooking at one-thirty. Eat about two.’

  ‘Okay. Everything’s organised outside. I might as well be on my way.’

  It was a relief to hear the car pulling out of the drive. She had an hour to put the finishing touches to the salads and whip the cream for the trifle.

  Jack swung into the street where his parents lived and jammed on the brakes. Two small boys, no more than four or five years old, held a rope across the road. He wound down the window to speak to a third, who was pointing a twig, roughly shaped like a gun, at his head.

  ‘Yoomunnyooyoolife, mistuh.’

  ‘It’s really not a good idea to play on the road, lads. If I’d been going any faster…’

  ‘Yoomunnyooyoolife,’ The boy rested the thorny twig on the bonnet of the car and stared straight at Jack. His oversized tee-shirt, proclaiming ‘I’m With This Bitch’, coupled with his near-shaven head and insolent gaze gave him the appearence of a malevolent dwarf.

  Jack, needing to divert the boy from his criminal intent, began quoting one of the few poems he could dredge up from his school days—

  ‘The wind was a torrent of darkness de-dum-de-dum-de-dum,

  The moon was a ghostly galleon dum-de-dum-de-dum,

  Dum-de-dum-de-dum-de, dum-de-dum-de-dum

  And the highwayman came riding – riding – riding –

  The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.’

  The mini-thug stared at him and drew the stick lightly across the paintwork. Jack plunged into his pocket and drew out a handful of change. ‘Here, lads. Get yourself an ice cream.’ The boy examined the coins and, apparently satisfied, withdrew his weapon and signalled to the rope-holders to lower their barrier.

  Outside the house, he pulled hard on the handbrake and wondered what life held in store for the boys. Presumably the parents weren’t aware that their sons were demanding money with menaces. Or maybe they were. Either way he wasn’t optimistic about their future. But being brought up by educated parents was no guarantee of success. Look at the mess they’d made of rearing Kingsley.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked when his father came to the door.

  ‘Tell him to come in a minute.’ His mother’s voice came from the kitchen.

  ‘You’d better come in.’

  His heart lurched at the sight of his father dressed in grey flannel trousers, blazer and highly polished black shoes, more appropriate for the chapel choir than a barbecue.

  ‘It’s only an informal get-together, Dad. Just family. No need to dress up.’

  His mother, too, was i
n her Sunday best – flowery dress and white cardigan – and she’d done something to her hair that had turned it into a white scouring pad. She sat at the table. In front of her was a large paper bag which he knew held tomatoes, a bunch of washed beetroot and a box of thin chocolate mints. A lump of love and pity rose in his throat but, nevertheless, he wished that they weren’t coming. ‘Ready for the off, Mum?’

  She stayed where she was. ‘Before we go anywhere, there’s something I have to say…’

  ‘Leave it, Vi.’ Harry put a hand on his wife’s shoulder.

  ‘No. I want to clear the air. John would prefer me to speak my mind.’

  Jack, sick with apprehension, smiled and nodded, ‘Come on then Mum. Spit it out.’

  She wiped the tiny hanky which she was clutching across her mouth. ‘It’s very nice of you to ask us to this “do”, but we’d rather not come if Fay doesn’t want us.’

  ‘Don’t be daft—’

  ‘No. Let me finish. We don’t want to make things awkward for you, but you have to see it from our side, too. I know we’re not well-educated and we can’t keep up with all your clever friends—’

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘Just hear me out, please. We have our pride, too, and if Fay is going to ignore us, like she did at the wedding, p’raps it would be better if we didn’t come.’ She turned to her husband for his support. ‘I’ve got a bit of pork in the fridge so we won’t go without.’

  Jack wanted to take the cast-iron frying pan from on top of the gas stove and beat Fay over the head with it. He wanted to gather his parents in his arms and tell them how sorry he was for all his wife’s snubs and cold-shouldering; all her tutting and eye-rolling. But he’d been there when it had gone on, hadn’t he? He’d stood by and allowed it to happen. To be truthful, there were times when he, too, had wanted to hide them away in a dark corner, where he couldn’t hear their accent and their ignorance.

  He pulled out a chair and sat next to his mother, massaging his forehead as he summoned up the right words. ‘I know Fay can be difficult. Impatient. And I know that, if we’re being honest, you don’t like her much. A lot of it’s my fault. I should have tried much harder in the beginning. Maybe if we’d all spent more time together…’ He looked up to see if he was making headway. His mother was fiddling with her sleeve. ‘Please come, Mum. For me. And the kids.’ It was below the belt but he knew that mention of Caitlin and Dylan would sway her.