by Jan Ruth
Kate hugged her arms round herself, shivering in the doorway, surprised but pleased by his sudden appearance, although slightly concerned that she hadn’t had chance to glance in the mirror or run a brush through her hair.
‘Are you leaving the dogs in the car? You can bring them in, I don’t mind.’
‘I’ve only got Butter, Marge isn’t well.’
‘Oh, nothing serious?’
‘Not sure, I’ve left her in bed with a hot water bottle.’
She wondered briefly what any hovering neighbour might make of the bizarre conversation but it made her smile, and after feeling so tense, a very welcome diversion. Butter bounded in, and the dog seemed even bigger in the small space. Despite Al’s commands to sit or lie-down, the dog wouldn’t settle until every corner of the house had been explored.
‘He’s looking for Marge,’ Al said.
She poured him a glass of wine and topped up her own. After some deliberation about the lack of space, she suggested he bring a kitchen stool over to her small desk so they could sit side by side. It meant they were virtually thigh to thigh, laptop to laptop, shoulder to shoulder. His close proximity was distracting on all counts and his hand frequently brushed hers.
He watched and listened very carefully to everything she said, cigarette in place, eyes on the screen but occasionally flicking onto her profile. Two hours later and they’d covered all the basic stuff and she’d sent him an email with his book file in it, downloaded the e-reader app and gone through the publishing instructions in the store.
His face lit up when he saw the title page. ‘Hey, this is just… I can’t believe you’ve done all this.’
‘Now I know how, I can get the others done much faster. Shall we get this one on sale or do you want to wait and load them all together. And what about cover images?’
‘Hell, I don’t know, let me think about it,’ he said, then stretched and yawned. ‘You’re way ahead of me.’
Kate stared at his torso for a moment, then began to close down her computer. ‘You know, I’ve read them all now. Loved them. So, who is Jim Silver, exactly? Is much of it based on you? I couldn’t help thinking about the adoption storyline.’
He looked at her with an expression she couldn’t quite place, but he wouldn’t break the eye contact. Disconcerted, she scraped her chair back, almost landing in his lap and put a hand out to balance herself. It landed on his leg, mercifully. ‘Tea?’ she said, and he nodded ever so slightly.
On her return with two mugs, he’d shoved another log in the burner and made himself comfortable on the sofa, arms behind his head.
‘Not everyone gets them, the books.’
‘Oh, I did,’ she said, and smiled over her mug of tea.
‘In answer to your question, there’s a lot of me in there, yeah.’
He began to talk to her about his real, and his adoptive mother, and she began to reciprocate, starting to feel better at getting some of it off her chest, when her mobile rang. They both looked at it, and then at the clock. And the irony wasn’t lost when the shaky voice of her mother’s next-door neighbour came over the line.
‘Kate? So sorry to call late.’
She scrambled to her feet, blood rushing through her ears. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m sorry, love, but I’ve had to call the ambulance for your mum. She… the paramedic thought she was having another heart attack.’
‘Oh!… Mum. Which hospital?’
Al’s head shot up.
‘Bangor. I’ve tried to call your Anne but there’s no reply on any of the numbers.’
‘I’ll sort it.’
‘You will let me know how she gets on, won’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Al was already on his feet and grabbing his leather jacket. ‘I’ll drive you.’
She passed a hand over her forehead. ‘I’ve had too much to drink, do you think I could get a taxi?’
‘Kate; I’ll drive you.’
Forty minutes later, they arrived at a dark, more or less deserted car park. She struggled to get out of the car, and then Al struggled to lock it. Butter leapt up and pressed his nose to the glass.
‘He’ll be all right, he’ll just go to sleep,’ Al said, and then took hold of her hand. She’d never been so glad of the feel of someone’s hand in hers. They pushed through the revolving doors and went up to the reception desk. Her mouth was so dry, it took a couple of attempts to get the words out.
‘Nora Allen? She was brought in by ambulance, about an hour ago?’
The usual computer consultation revealed that she’d just been moved out of A & E to ward six, third floor. Al, caught hold of her hand again and negotiated all the lifts and the bewildering directions. Then she had to leave him in the waiting area because the ward was a closed one, single family members only, all that sort of thing. She was led to a separate side room, seemingly full of hospital machinery and blinking monitors. Her mother lay beneath a single sheet, and she looked lifeless, like parchment stretched over bone. After what seemed an age, her mother opened her eyes briefly and scanned her face.
‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s Kate.’
‘I know why I’m in here, in a side room out of sight. I’ve got cancer but they won’t say, they never tell you anything, they’re all foreign.’
‘No, Mum, you haven’t got cancer. They think you’ve had an angina attack. Next door called the ambulance.’
‘Renee? She can sling her hook. She never paid me for that twin-tub, it was a good one as well.’
‘Renee was more than thirty years ago! I’m talking about Elsie next door to you at Rhos House.’
‘Why didn’t you say that, then?’
‘I’m saying it now,’ she snapped, then reeled herself in. ‘Why don’t you have a sleep, get some rest?’
‘I’m watching Family Fortunes in a bit,’ she said, then closed her eyes. There were a few more confused ramblings, the likely result of sedatives or pain-killers. Kate sat on the chair at the side of the bed and watched the shallow breath escape from her mother’s dry, parted lips. She touched the papery hand, lying claw-like on the bed, heavily bruised from drips being forced into shrivelled veins. She thought about the family photographs she’d been scanning, and how young her parents had looked in the black and white pictures and how old she used to think they were.
The carefree holidays and the endless summers of the past somehow merged with Al and the way he made her feel. She felt cheated by it, that she should be attracted to a man who was engaged to a much younger woman, expecting his child and ready to start again. Memories of her first, fairy-tale wedding floated into her mind and then the same round of parties and pony rides with her own daughter joined her landscape of regrets, lost dreams and forgotten desires.
Several hours later, she woke with a cricked neck and a mild hangover.
A hovering nurse asked her all about her mother’s current medication. There was a long list which Kate always carried around with her, and the nurse seemed grateful for the information. She couldn’t tell her very much, just that her mother was stable and that they were waiting for doctors and reports, the usual prognosis.
Kate left her contact numbers and then trailed back down the long corridor to the waiting room, surprised to find Al still there. His head was propped on his hand as he dozed, fingers splayed through his untidy hair and a light stubble shadowed his jaw. A cold plastic cup of tea, or it could have been coffee, sat on the low table in front of him.
He glanced up as she approached, and then he got slowly to his feet, looking tired and crumpled. ‘Kate?’
And that’s when the floodgates opened, it was like a dam bursting. She’d never known crying like it, real purging of the soul sobs erupting from some deep, untapped source, her eyes and nose streaming, all of it out of context to the immediate situation. Al virtually held her upright and she allowed herself to sag against him, arms around his waist, head pres
sed against his chest.
After a few moments, she became aware of staff coming and going with trolleys and visitors starting to arrive. Her tears quickly subsided and she could have, should have disentangled herself from his arms but it felt so good, like the best rush of adrenalin she’d ever had.
Chapter Nine
Al.
It was worrying, to see her so distraught when normally everything about Kate seemed contained and controlled. At first he thought her mother must have passed away, but then he quickly realised that it was mostly relief and maybe some buried stuff fighting to get out. He’d picked up on plenty of vibes as she was talking about her family earlier and coupled with what he knew about her marriage, reckoned some sort of mini meltdown had been imminent, if not necessary.
It had felt immoral though, to have her crushed against him in such a way and he knew he was on dangerous ground given the responses it triggered, to have her so deliciously close. He kept an arm around her shoulders as she blotted her face, and they went into the cafe. He ordered some breakfast, coffee and bottles of water, glancing round at her every five minutes as he stood in the queue. When he got back to the table, he was relieved to see her face break into a smile when he wrapped up the extra sausages into a napkin, for Butter.
‘I went down to the car a couple of times, he was fine.’
‘I didn’t expect you to wait all night for me.’
‘Why not? You’ve done plenty for me.’
He was thinking about his books; not just the work she’d put into the old manuscripts but the way she talked about them. Her insight had completely caught him out, fired him up and focused his thoughts, made him determined to carry on and write the final episode.
They talked about mothers. She felt guilty for getting exasperated with Nora. She asked him about his blood mother, full of curiosity. He didn’t want to dwell too much on Ruby and was scant on the detail. It was easy to be scant, he could sum it all up in two sentences and after all, she was the most un-motherly person he’d ever come across, and so moved the conversation around to his adoptive mother instead. Within minutes, Kate had picked up on his reticence and the comfort role was almost reversed.
When he thought about Kate and how short a time he’d known her, it didn’t seem possible to have any sort of feelings for her, but then who was he kidding? He fell in like, love or lust at the drop of a hat and he’d had a lifetime of trouble follow him as proof. From now on, e-mail would have to suffice. After breakfast, he dropped her back home and watched her run up to the front door without so much as a backward glance.
*
Relations with Jo continued to be borderline warm throughout November and into a wet December; a significant drop in temperature to when they’d met by chance in The Forest pub at Delamere the summer just passed. He’d bought her a drink and she’d listened to him moaning about Helen and his marriage breakdown with more than polite interest. Al went out of his way to impress that he was a bad catch and practically insolvent, and she’d pursued him relentlessly. She must have imagined he was after sex with no strings - which would have suited her - but the reality was that he loved the strings as well.
He was even fake at being a bad guy, well most of the time.
Jo had kept her promise, the one about giving herself time to consider her pregnancy, and the closer Christmas advanced with all its family and child- related connotations, the more ground Al felt he’d gained. He loved Christmas, couldn’t understand why anyone would feel turned off by it. Of course, children were the epicentre of the festivities and he used to look forward to it with manic devotion, whipping children and dogs into a frenzy of over-excitement.
Despite her reservations about everything, Jo announced she wanted to go into London for shopping.
‘No way,’ Al said. ‘Can’t stand the place, let’s go local.’
‘We can soak up the phoney atmosphere, go on the train and stay over.’
‘I haven’t got that sort of cash, I’m trying to be sensible.’
‘I’ll pay. You can go in The Disney Shop.’
They travelled first class, and Jo had booked what she called a modest hotel. Once there, she insisted on kitting him out with shirts and trousers, and then chose a new mobile phone for him. When they were in Liberty, she pointed out a silk scarf she fancied, dropping hints as big as incendiary bombs. So far as Al was concerned, it took all the pleasure and surprise out of Christmas Day, but when he told her this, she rounded on him.
‘I’ve had enough surprises to last me a lifetime thank you very much!’
‘All right, no need to bite my head off!’
The evidence of morning sickness expelled any niggling doubt that she may have had a private termination behind his back. Her body was clearly adjusting to the pregnancy whether she liked it or not; although her mind wavered from being still set against the whole idea, to being maybe on-the-fence.
‘I feel shit,’ she said, on the morning they were due to catch the train home.
‘It doesn’t last long,’ he said, catching hold of her hand. ‘Twelve weeks, I think.’
‘Twelve weeks? I have to go to New York in January I can’t be in this fucking state!’
She began to throw things into her case with unnecessary force, and Al wondered how much longer they could exist in a relationship where he was keeping her sweet because he wanted the baby, and she was keeping him sweet with the baby, because she was in love with him. That he’d admitted to this in his head, was increasingly uncomfortable.
They struggled home on the train, Al carrying an enormous amount of toys and a single silk scarf. Jo spent most of the journey locked in the toilet. If he could have suffered all the discomfort for her, he would have done so, but there seemed little point in saying this, since she batted away his offers of drinks and cuddles with a brooding silence.
The next hurdle was where and how to spend Christmas. Back at Jo’s flat, they had an unsatisfactory conversation about it all. Jo wanted to go away, Al couldn’t bear the thought. Christmas was about family. In the midst of locked horns, it seemed uncanny that his daughter-in-law called him about arrangements. Bernice had a hugely patronising tone, and the way she came up with a regimented plan over any social engagement, added to his irritation. ‘I thought Boxing Day, for lunch. Did you want to bring someone?’
Clearly, he no longer qualified for Christmas Day. ‘I’ve got a big pile of pressies for the kids, how about I pop round Christmas Eve?’
‘Pop round? I’m not sure we’ll be here, Alastair. It’s a very busy day, what with the school fair and then the Christingle service.’
‘Yeah? Count me in, I can help. Totally my thing.’
‘Well, the thing is… gosh, this is awkward! We’ve got friends staying and Rupert and Barnaby will want to play with their children you see. So, I thought… Boxing day, lunch. Shall we see you at twelve, for drinks?’
‘Is Tom there? Or maybe I can talk to the kids?’
‘Tom’s at work and the children are at their music clubs, sorry. Look, can I ask what you’ve bought this time? It’s just that, well we’ve got a list this year. Those rats you acquired last year were completely unsuitable.’
‘Bernice, Bernice… I’d like to see the kids either on or before Christmas Day, surely you get that? It’s all done by Boxing Day!’
‘The thing is, Alastair… Oh, I do wish you wouldn’t argue with me! I’m simply calling to invite you to lunch and-’
He lowered the phone, and weighed it in his hand for a moment before flinging it across the room. It fell to pieces instantly. The noise brought Jo out of the kitchen. She glanced at the bits of plastic against the cast iron grate and then at his apathetic position on the sofa.
‘What did you say about not needing a new phone?’
He watched her legs walk towards him, and she cradled his head against her stomach, kissing the top of his head as she did so, and he was ashamed to find tears spring to his eye
s.
*
A couple of days later, he called up Maisie on his complicated Internet phone. His daughter was the only person in the world who understood his frustration with Bernice and shared the opinion that basically, she was a bitch.
‘She’s such a control freak,’ he said, and wandered over to the window for a stronger signal. Outside, the sky was like old pewter and a steady drizzle was turning everything underfoot to liquid mud. Fran was scurrying about in wellingtons and a huge ungainly overcoat, carrying buckets.
‘Look,’ Maisie said. ‘Here’s a thought. I’ve been scheduled in on the day before Christmas Eve, that’s only next Monday isn’t it? I’m taking the boys to see Mum. When I’m done with that I could come over there with them?’
Yes! He explained about Fran’s worming programme and she laughed. ‘Oh well, I can kill two birds with one stone in that case.’
‘The kids can help, they’d love that. I’d love it.’
‘What, worming the goats? You need to get out more, Dad! If Bernice knew what we had planned she’d be on to social services.’
Al grunted in agreement, then Maisie took a deep breath. ‘Anyway… less of that, I have some news!’
‘Will it make me smile?’
‘Lots. But I’m not telling you till I come over.’
He tried his best to persuade her to spill the beans but she wasn’t having any of it. As they exchanged banter he grinned to himself and moved the curtain back from the window. Fran was struggling with three horses in the yard as they pulled her over the slippery cobbles. The retired nags from the local riding school had arrived via a huge lorry, and not for the first time Al wondered where the hell she was going to put them. In the blink of an eye, something spooked one of them and they all leapt in different directions. Fran, taken by surprise, was like flotsam on the end of a charging rhino. She quickly saw sense in letting go, but then tripped over and for a few seconds her slight frame seemed to merge with the hooves on the ground. Cutting his conversation, Al lobbed the phone onto the bed and ran outside.