Before I Knew You

by Amanda Brookfield

  Outside it was too cold to stand and smoke, so he set off at a brisk pace, his face shrouded in a mix of smoke and the steam of his own breath. Curlew Street came into sight a few minutes later, without any feeling that he had planned it. Number twenty-four took only a few strides to reach. A panel of buttons offered communication with the occupants of flats A, B and C, which meant D had to be the grey, ill-lit windows at the bottom of the wrought-iron stairwell to his left. William peered down into blackness. A bunch of junk mail was sticking out of the letterbox. What looked like a bed sheet had been clumsily pinned across the main window; through a break in its folds he could make out two lit, drooling candle stumps in a saucer, close to drowning in the hardening pool of their own wax.

  William started down the steps, but then turned and strode away, not looking back – barely breathing – until he had reached the far end of the street. To doorstep the child at midnight, rouse him from sleep, a drunken stupor or something worse – what was he thinking? With such a start, no dialogue would have a hope in hell of success. And yet the need to see his eldest son now burnt like a fire in his chest – not just to set things straight but to pull him into his arms in a way that he once had so mindlessly, so easily, during all those early, careless years, when fatherhood had seemed more of a chore than a privilege. Close to tears, feeling like some desperate stalker, William pulled out his phone to seek consolation from Beth, only to remember that she would have embarked on her ‘girls’ night out’ – a movie and a pizza, ‘If that won’t break the bank,’ she had quipped, with the arch tone she now adopted for any subject relating to money, a masquerade of humour, designed, William knew, to stop him saying anything stern.

  Standing alone in the street, fumbling with frozen fingers for a pocket in which to stow his phone, a wave of total desolation broke over him, squeezing the air from his lungs, making his heart pound till it hurt. Money, happiness, certainty … was it all slipping away again? No, God, no, he wouldn’t let it. Not again. He tried to put the phone into his pocket, but missed. It clattered to the pavement, splitting in two as the back fell off. William dropped to his knees with a groan, scrabbling to retrieve the pieces. Glancing up, he saw an approaching woman avert her eyes and then hurry to cross the road. William hastily got to his feet, reassembled the phone and carefully put it away. He was just ‘dog-tired’, he consoled himself, conjuring – by way of some comfort – a phrase Beth might have used. In his own parlance he was jet-lagged, juggling too many uncertainties, fire-fighting events in his life instead of taking charge of them. But it would pass. All things did in the end.

  As his surroundings came back into focus, so did the pink neon sign of a bar some twenty yards further down the street. William plunged towards it, digging into his trouser pocket for his wallet well before he reached the entrance.

  ‘Double whisky,’ he growled, waving a ten-pound note once he had elbowed his way through the throng at the bar. Only after the first gulp of alcohol was safely tracking down his throat to his stomach, replacing the fire of despair with something altogether more bearable, did he turn to scan the room properly. And there – suddenly, unbelievably – was Harry. Or, at least, a version of Harry – skeletal in black drain-pipes, his hair so long it was a mess of curls, a thick silver ring stapled through one eyebrow. He was leaning against a far wall, engaged in what looked like an intense conversation with two girls, one slim and blonde, the other more rounded, with short, spiky auburn hair.

  William’s first knee-jerk reaction was a lightning bolt of pure joy, followed closely by something more akin to terror as it dawned on him that this encounter wouldn’t do either – cramping Harry’s style, making him feel cornered. Christ, the child might even think he had followed him from the dingy basement flat. Setting down the glass of whisky, William pushed off from the bar with the intention of edging his way discreetly back out into the street. But Harry, perhaps compelled by some sixth sense, was already looking over his shoulder. A moment later, ensnared in the slow-motion inevitability of all things disastrous but unavoidable, their eyes met. Disarmed, afraid, embarrassed, happy, William tried out a smile – a flimsy white flag of an effort that withered under the reply of his son’s expressionless, remorseless gaze.

  The pain of this silent exchange felt endless and beyond anything William could ever have imagined. It was broken only by the bar’s double-doors swinging open and a fair-haired woman wearing a red anorak and clutching a large unfashionable handbag barging into the crowded room. Jaw set and eyes flashing, she made straight for the girls talking to Harry, tapping her watch, waving her phone – so clearly and unashamedly lost to the unsightly role of furious parent that William’s heart instinctively went out to her. A few minutes later all three left the bar, the girls trailing behind, heads and bags hanging in defeat. At the same time, William found his heart going out to Harry too – purely as one man to another – for the public humiliation of the scene and the appalling ill-luck of having one’s father there to witness it. He was still pondering how to express such sympathies, as well as the niggling sense that he had seen both the blonde girl and her mother somewhere before, when he glanced up to find Harry at his side.

  ‘I know why you’re here,’ he snarled, before William could speak.

  ‘Yes, Harry, I hope you do.’ William tried to touch his shoulder, but he twisted away, flinching.

  ‘I’ve got to work. I was on a break.’

  ‘You work … here? I mean … Wow … great. Good for you,’ William gabbled. ‘All I want is to make sure you’re all right.’

  Harry’s scowl deepened. ‘Don’t pretend, okay? Don’t pretend you’ve come all this way just to make sure I’m all right.’ He put disdainful quotation marks round the words with his fingers.

  ‘But I have,’ William exclaimed eagerly, reading a tendril of hope in the sneering tone – a tone that seemed to suggest his son was still just a sulky kid feeling hard-done-by, that behind the ugly face-piercing and the posturing and the painfully bad complexion (where had that come from?) all he really wanted was to be cared about.

  ‘You’re here, I assume, because of Mum,’ Harry growled, ignoring the interjection.

  ‘Mum?’ William bent his head nearer as the noise around them swelled. He thought suddenly of the fatherson embrace he had envisaged, feeling the possibility of it recede like a silly dream. ‘Mum?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yeah, because of her being ill.’

  ‘No, Harry, I’m here because I couldn’t bear another moment of letting you throw your life away. Because … What do you mean, “ill”?’

  Harry had caught someone’s eye over his shoulder and was gesturing with a thumbs-up sign and what struck William as a hurtfully cheery grin. ‘Gotta go, Dad,’ he hissed, returning his attention to his father, the scowl dropping back over his features like a mask. ‘See you around.’

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t.’ William squeezed Harry’s arm as he had tried to dive away, taking heart from the memory of the mother, guns blazing as she frog-marched her daughters into the street. ‘Tell me what you meant – this instant. In what way exactly is your mother ill?’

  Harry stopped struggling and lowered his eyes. ‘I thought you knew,’ he muttered. ‘She said she was going to tell you. Seeing you here, I thought she must have.’

  The hubbub seemed to shrink suddenly to a background hum. There were just the two of them and Harry looking at him properly at last, his face inflicted with a pain that William realized now had nothing to do with him. ‘For fuck’s sake, Harry, spit it out.’

  Harry shook his head miserably. ‘She’s got cancer, hasn’t she? She said she was going to tell you … That’s why I … Look, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘What sort?’ Harry was starting to move away so William grabbed his arm again. ‘What sort of cancer?’

  ‘Breast.’

  ‘Christ …’ William released his grip, shaking his head in wonderment. ‘But, Harry, I’ve still got to see you … talk to you …’

&nb
sp; ‘I’m moving back home this weekend.’

  ‘Moving home?’ A spark of delight flew out of William before he could stop it.

  ‘Yeah, but it’s hardly for the greatest of reasons, is it, Dad? You might think I’m a waste of space but I figured someone should be around, shouldn’t they?’

  ‘Jesus, Harry, if I could …’

  But this time he made good his escape before William could stop him. He reappeared a couple of moments later behind the bar with a tea-towel hanging out of the waistband of his jeans and a cocktail shaker tossing between his hands. William spent several minutes trying to catch his eye, but Harry merely blinked, keeping his expression blank, as if there was nothing to register, let alone avoid.

  After downing a second whisky William gave up and stumbled outside. Stepping past the huddle of smokers at the entrance, he stopped to leave a hoarse, emotional message for Beth, saying how much he missed her but refraining from reporting the latest horrible twist to the situation in England. He had dug out his own, crumpled pack of cigarettes and was on the point of lighting up when he noticed that the car parked at the kerbside in front of him, whose ignition had been grinding in a series of failed attempts to fire, contained the fierce mother in the red anorak and the two dejected girls. A moment later the driver’s window slid down and the woman stuck her head out in his direction.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re parked nearby with a handy set of jump leads, by any chance?’ She tugged with evident irritation at the strands of hair that the wind was gusting across her face.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ William approached, putting his cigarettes away. ‘Flat battery?’

  ‘I suppose … although it got me here, which is odd. And Volvos are so reliable normally, aren’t they? And why do these things always have to happen at the most inconvenient times?’

  ‘I wish I could help,’ William offered lamely, deciding that it would do no good to confess his relationship to the boy from whom she had just extricated her daughters, but then proceeding to do so anyway. ‘I only hope he hasn’t been leading them astray … Oh, God, he has,’ he groaned, seeing the rapid change in her expression.

  ‘No … that is, I had these two on a promise, that’s all – midnight tonight, two o’clock tomorrow night. Holidays are different but I like to try and keep a few rules for term time.’ The blonde girl was murmuring something to her mother and leaning across to get a better look out of the open window. They had the same strong high cheekbones and wide blue eyes, except that the younger one’s were set among heavily lacquered lashes and smears of dark eye-shadow. ‘Sorry to have bothered you. I’ll call the AA, or maybe a taxi,’ she added, winding the window back up.

  Dismissed, William stepped back. She tried the ignition again and this time the car started. He waved and she nodded. It was only as the Volvo pulled out of its parking space, revealing the small deep dent above the rear light and the memorable first three digits of its number-plate, WOO – he had joked to Beth about it – that William finally recognized the vehicle he had spent four weeks driving that summer. The Chapmans, then. The mother and two daughters – or had the red-headed one been a friend? Yes, that was the more likely scenario, he decided, hurrying to the roadside to beckon the car back, but then losing heart.

  The world was small – so what? William traipsed back in the direction of his hotel, fighting – amid all the other tumult in his heart – a faint sense of rejection that the revelation of his identity should have caused Sophie Chapman to flee rather than make conversation. Who could blame her? If he had daughters, would he want them to mix with Harry?

  Sleeping fitfully under the thin duvet, it was this sad truth that haunted William the most, together with images of his son’s altered angry, sickly, suffering face. Junk food, drugs – there was almost certainly something sinister going on. Pot? Ecstasy? He was too old and dumb even to know what there was out there, William reflected miserably, let alone what they called it.

  And yet, most poignantly of all, the boy was moving back home, to be there for his sick mother. Tears seeped from William’s closed eyelids, wetting the pillow so thoroughly that eventually, moaning in his sleep, he turned it over and hugged it to his chest instead. He woke with a start four hours later, his mind alert: two days simply wouldn’t be enough. Even before he tackled the business of calling Susan he needed to get on to the airline and see about changing his return flight.

  Greeted by the comforting warmth of the central heating and the still lingering aromas of that day’s baking as she let herself back into the house, Beth breathed a heavy sigh of relief. She had been so dreading William leaving – being on her own, without even Dido now – and yet here she was, back from a thoroughly pleasant evening with her new friends, and all the good, positive thinking of the last few weeks still feeling safely intact inside. In fact, not long after William’s departure, studying her calendar and the lists of things she had to do in his absence, she had momentarily set aside her loneliness to acknowledge a slow-burn glow of satisfaction in prospect. How much easier the Thanksgiving preparations would be without William parading his dry English wit in the background, teasing her for caring so much, conveniently overlooking the fact that it was precisely that care that produced so many of the things he loved.

  Confessing as much to Patty and Cathy while they had waited in the theatre for the movie to start, large paper tubs of popcorn parked between their thighs, both women had laughingly chipped in with the shared opinion that husbands in general were a lot easier to love when they weren’t around. But then it was great to get them back again too – especially for you-know-what, Patty had whispered, spraying sticky white crumbs as she giggled and casting a special look at Beth because of the thing they all knew about her now, the thing that made them like her so well.

  Happiness was the weirdest, most wilful commodity, Beth reflected, enjoying the stillness of the house as she prepared for bed, recalling with some wonderment the low point she had reached just a few weeks before, on the day when the small disappointments of Sophie Chapman’s robust email and the arrival of the ugly dress and tasselled boots had somehow snowballed into what had felt, for the first time, like a fight she might not win. With William choosing that night of all nights to lecture her about money and then to put communicating with his children above both her needs and that of their overcooked dinner, she had felt as if the world was tipping again, taking her balance with it.

  But then, whoosh, something had happened – empowerment, determination, self-belief, something – triggered not so much by the sex on the chair in William’s study (inexpressibly wonderful though that had been – beyond accurate recollection as it turned out, in spite of her efforts) as the onrush of sheer power that accompanied it; a power heightened by the occasional glimpses of William’s computer screen throughout their sexual athletics – the flat, out-of-date family snap, twitching like a faded ensign. Her husband was hers, all hers. He wanted not just her body now but her kid as well. The hunger of that – the need in William – wasn’t something Beth had fully appreciated until that night. It was raw, electrifying, addictive – a new level of connection that felt blissfully beyond the clutches of the ugly shed skin of their pasts. They had been getting along so much better ever since – almost like the old earliest days at times, when having enough of each other had felt joyously impossible and the future something to embrace rather than fear. Beth knew it was no coincidence that Uncle Hal had dropped from view in recent weeks too, along with any further urges to stir anxiety in the heart of Sophie Chapman. How could ‘luck’ be stolen, or space ‘corrupted’? And as for feeling so envious and angry that she wanted to teach the woman some kind of lesson – the idea was so crazy in retrospect that she laughed to recall it.

  Once safely in bed, Beth reached for her cell to listen again to William’s late-night message from London, thrilling as she had the first time at the cracking intensity of his voice, the romantic growl of the final, treasured declaration of his love. She th
ought suddenly how wonderful it would be to collect all the lovely things he had ever said and store them in a box, just like the letters under the Chapmans’ double bed: love in black and white – something to hang on to or consult if ever faith needed to be restored. Instead all she had was her head, Beth reflected wistfully, such a vast, unsafe place compared to a cardboard box, being full of closed avenues and spaces where things could be lost … She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, focusing on opening her ribs in the way Erica always reminded them in class. Calm … there it was. Easy when you knew how. She blinked her eyes open and dialled her mother, from whom a missed call had registered while she was in the movie theatre.

  ‘Beth … hello, honey.’

  ‘You sound sleepy, did I wake you? It’s only nine with you, isn’t it, or did I get the math wrong?’

  ‘No … I mean, yes, it is only nine, but I’m afraid I’m already tucked up with my cocoa. I get so tired, these days, but then I wake real early too, which I hate. Old age sucks, I can tell you … but I’m so looking forward to my trip, dear.’

  ‘Good, so am I, Mom. And everything is okay, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes, everything’s perfect.’

  ‘So when you tried to ring me it was because …?’

  ‘Because they’re saying there might be some early snow – in time for Thanksgiving. Did you see that?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘In which case there could be a problem with my flight. Last winter they closed JFK for a couple of days, didn’t they?’

  ‘That was December and I think it was just a few hours. Look, Mom, I’m sure there won’t be a problem, but I’ll check out the long-range forecast tomorrow and email you, okay?’