The Things We Never Said

by Wright, Susan Elliot

  Jonathan had walked over to her then and there. ‘Do you – would you fancy coming for a drink with me?’

  She turned to look at him. Her eyes were startlingly mismatched, one a conker brown, the other hazel. She flicked her gaze down his body then up again. ‘You’re a bit previous, aren’t you? What’s your name?’

  ‘Jonathan. Jonathan Robson.’ He squirmed at the eagerness in his voice.

  She’d weighed him up for a moment. ‘Go on then, Jonathan Robson; I’ll have a drink with you.’

  He feels himself colour as he remembers what had happened after that drink, and he has to shake his head to rid himself of the pornographic images that are now romping across his memory.

  ‘I put on even more weight when I got married,’ Sian was saying. ‘Everyone said it was “contentment”, but it was more down to misery.’

  ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out.’

  She shrugs. ‘Some you win; some you lose. So.’ She tucks her legs underneath her as she curls onto the sofa beside him. ‘Come on then; tell me all about it.’

  He’d forgotten how hypnotic those eyes were; when she turned them on you, you were compelled to bare your soul. First he tells her about Chloé, how he’d dragged her clear of the car, and how he’d been worried about her spine until the paramedics reassured him.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Sian uncurls herself and sits up straight, her face a study in concern. ‘You’re probably still in shock; do you want a brandy?’

  He smiles; the famous medicinal brandy again. ‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘No thanks.’ He nods towards the wine. ‘This seems to be doing the trick.’ Then he tells her about the baby, and how worried he is about being a crap father.

  ‘But I thought you didn’t want kids?’ she says, and for a moment, a silence opens up between them as each remembers the last unhappy days of their time together. ‘Anyway, sorry.’ She turns away to refill her glass. ‘You were saying.’

  Then he tells her the rest: how he’d lost his rag with Ryan, the arrest, the DNA and Hutchinson, and finally his mother’s revelation this morning – this morning? Surely not only this morning? ‘So basically, the only clues I have as to the genes I’m passing on is the fact that my father’s still wanted by the police and my mother’s name was Margaret Harrison – and she dumped me when I was a toddler.’

  ‘Wow.’ Sian lets out a slow, whistling breath. ‘That’s quite a story.’

  He takes a long swallow of the spicy wine, then twirls his glass around as he looks into its depths. ‘This afternoon,’ he says after a minute, ‘when I saw Chloé Nichols coming out of school, I felt – for a moment, anyway – I felt physically violent, like I wanted to hit her.’ He carries on twirling his glass, and then he looks up. ‘What if . . . I mean, what if I can’t control it? What if it’s an inherited trait or something?’

  ‘I think you’re reading too much into it. Everyone feels like that occasionally. And not only that, but you’re under a lot of pressure and you’ve had some almighty shocks.’ She takes a sip of her drink. ‘What are you going to do? I mean about your birth parents?’

  Threads from an unknown past are tangling together into a knot deep in his guts; he wants to reach down inside himself, tear it out and throw it into the fire. But it’s started to take hold and grow, like an oily black cancer. He empties his glass and allows Sian to refill it. ‘I don’t know.’ He sighs again. ‘I really don’t know.’

  When he was little, he’d been convinced there was a monster in his wardrobe. ‘Oh, for the love of Mike,’ his father had said, stalking across the room so the windows rattled. ‘There are no such things as monsters.’ Jonathan, curled tightly under the covers, heard the squeak and bang as his father wrenched open the wardrobe doors and flung them wide. ‘See?’ Gerald’s voice boomed. ‘Nothing but clothes. Now stop being such a sissy and go to sleep.’

  But Jonathan never did know for sure, because he’d averted his eyes at the last minute in case the dark, shapeless thing he saw there was too terrible to behold.

  ‘Hey, let’s dial out for a pizza,’ Sian says, getting to her feet. ‘No one can deal with that sort of trauma on an empty stomach.’ She stops and turns to him. ‘Or will Fiona have something ready for you?’

  ‘Actually, Fiona’s . . . she’s staying with her mum for a few days.’ He tries to laugh. ‘You know, so the grandma-to-be can fuss around her a bit.’ He avoids her gaze so she won’t see the truth. What was that he’d read about lying and body language? You look to the left if you’re recalling something, and to the right if you’re making it up. Sian pauses only briefly before picking up the phone. ‘That’s all right then,’ she says. ‘Veggie or full-on carnivore?’

  After they’ve eaten, he puts his head back against the sofa and closes his eyes. He can hear the fire spitting and crackling in the hearth, and he can smell Sian’s perfume, a familiar, woody scent – sandalwood. She always used to put sandalwood oil in her bath; so that hasn’t changed. But Sian has; she’s softer, less prickly than he remembers. She moves closer and leans back. Her hair touches his cheek and then he feels the warm weight of her head on his shoulder. He takes a breath. ‘I should make a move.’

  ‘In this weather?’ she says. ‘Don’t talk bollocks.’

  Now that’s more like the old Sian. He opens his eyes. She’s sitting forward now, looking at him, the glow of firelight on her cheek and a golden flame dancing in each of her eyes. She lays her hand on his thigh. ‘It’s been so nice,’ she murmurs. ‘Why not stay? I mean,’ she moves closer, ‘with me?’

  More images tumble through his brain. He wonders if she still sleeps naked, even in the winter; if she still checks under the bed for spiders every night; if she still occasionally cries in her sleep.

  ‘Sian, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.’ He starts to get to his feet. ‘It was thoughtless of me, coming here, dumping all this on you. I – I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to stay, it’s just that . . .’ He knocks his glass over. ‘Shit, sorry. I’m an idiot. I hope you don’t think—’

  ‘Don’t worry. It was empty.’

  ‘No, I meant—’

  ‘Oh, put a sock in it, for fuck’s sake,’ she says, standing up. Her voice is clipped and hard now. She goes out of the room.

  Why had he come here? He looks around. This was once his home, but he has no connection with it any more; nor with Sian.

  When she returns, her voice has softened. ‘Here.’ She throws a bundled-up duvet onto the sofa. ‘You’ve had a bottle of wine; you shouldn’t drive. That thing pulls out into a bed.’

  ‘No, look, I’m sorry. I’ll get a cab—’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing. Get some kip and I promise I won’t creep in and take advantage of you.’

  He smiles. ‘Thanks, Sian.’

  *

  Ten past three and he hasn’t slept a wink. The fire’s gone out now and the room is freezing. How can he face Sian in the morning? Yet again, he’s managed to think only about himself; turning up on her doorstep, accepting wine and food and virtually crying on her shoulder in the flickering firelight; what did he expect? He gets up, pulls on his jeans and sweatshirt and then scrabbles around the room for a pen and paper.

  Feel very sober and very stupid. Sorry for turning up out of the blue and behaving like a twat. Thanks for letting me talk. Jon He puts the note on the coffee table, then folds up the sofa bed and duvet. Before he leaves, he goes back and adds a kiss after Jon, and as he clicks the front door shut behind him, he wonders whether he should have done that.

  With the moonlight and the vast expanse of snow on the fields opposite the flat, it is almost like daylight outside. A line from a poem pops into his head: The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave the lustre of midday to objects below. As he walks to the car, his footsteps squeak in the powdery snow. When he stops, there is no sound or movement, just him, incongruous, clumsily dark and uneven against a smooth white background. Not part of it, but alien; an interloper.

  CHAPT
ER THIRTY-FOUR

  Maggie hadn’t planned to go back to Hastings, not so soon anyway. But there’s no alternative. Leonard drives up in early February to collect them. The drive takes twice as long as usual because of the snow. It’s even worse in the south, he says. They’ve had drifts fifteen feet deep, and the sea froze last week. It’s a record, according to the BBC.

  The twins, now twelve weeks old, are sleeping at either end of their extra-large carrycot, which is wedged on the back seat of Leonard’s packed-to-bursting Morris Traveller. Vanda leans in and kisses them, slipping a five-pound note under the coverlet when she thinks Maggie isn’t looking. Maggie tries not to cry as she hugs Vanda goodbye. This wasn’t the plan; this wasn’t what was supposed to happen.

  Everything had been all right before Christmas – that was when the snow started. It had seemed magical at first, and late on Christmas night, Maggie had stood at the back door, blowing her cigarette smoke out into the freezing night and watching the lacy flakes float down, fast and silent like a moving Christmas card. The world seemed to quieten by the second, a soft white hush settling over the little back yard and on the rooftops beyond. Someday, she would take her children out into their own back garden and show them how to build a snowman.

  On Boxing Day, Una, Jimmy and a few of the others had turned up. Maggie hadn’t expected to see any of them again, yet here they were, treating her like an old friend. No one called her ‘Little Mags’ now. With the tree lights twinkling and Christmas records playing on the radiogram, they’d sipped whisky, eaten Maggie’s mince pies and played endless games that no one but Jimmy seemed to have heard of. Una volunteered to give Elizabeth her top-up bottle, but swiftly handed her back when she regurgitated most of it. ‘Darling! I’m so sorry,’ Una said, holding Elizabeth at arm’s length. ‘I appear to have spilt your baby.’

  Later, after they’d all gone, Maggie and Vanda watched the Dick Van Dyke show on television. Maggie took out her sewing box to finish repairing Vanda’s costume. She and Vanda made a good team, she thought. Money was tight now, but once the twins were older, she’d be able to bring more in.

  When the show finished, Vanda stood up, stretched, and turned the set off. Maggie watched the white dot shrink and disappear while Vanda wandered over to the window and lifted the net curtain. ‘It’s getting heavy; I’d better go and get ready – it’s going to be a bugger getting across town in this.’

  Maggie folded the sequinned costume and packed it along with the green shoes and the heavy bag of make-up. Then she tidied up a bit, made a turkey sandwich for Vanda to take with her and put more coal on the fire. She’d just begun to wonder why Vanda was taking so long when she heard her footsteps on the stairs, slow, one step at a time, not the way Vanda usually clattered up and down stairs at all.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Maggie said. ‘You’ll be—’

  ‘He’s dead. Boris is dead.’

  *

  Vanda cried for two days.

  ‘It’s only a bloody snake,’ Leonard said when Maggie rang him on New Year’s Eve. ‘I mean, I could understand her being upset about losing a faithful old dog, but—’

  ‘Boris was a faithful old snake. It was probably old age, but she thinks he froze to death because she forgot to check the bulbs on Christmas Day. And don’t forget he’s been her livelihood for seventeen years. In fact, without Boris . . .’

  ‘So what’s she going to do for money now? What are you going to do?’

  *

  As they drive slowly out of the still-frozen city, she is struck by how unfamiliar the town looks. The snow changes the shape of the buildings and trees, makes everything bigger and startling white against the inky sky. On her way into Sheffield just over a year ago, she’d noticed the dark stone buildings, blackened by smoke from the steelworks, and the giant furnaces, casting an orange glow on the skyline. At twenty-one, ambitious and eager to make her mark, that view had symbolised industry, the busy-ness of getting on with life rather than waiting for it to start.

  Now it’s as though that Maggie was another person. She turns and looks over into the back seat; the twins look different somehow. There’s something vivid about their faces; something more demanding, more real.

  They’ve only travelled about thirty miles when it starts again. At first, there are big, heavy flakes that fall straight to the ground, but then the wind gets up and soon they’re driving through a blizzard, snow flying at them horizontally then swirling in front of the car so they can’t see more than a few feet ahead. After three hours, they’re still only just past Chesterfield. They pull into a roadside café so that Maggie can feed the babies. Leonard goes inside to get their bottles warmed while Maggie attempts to give them their breastfeed. Elizabeth won’t latch on, so Maggie ignores her pathetic little mewling noises while she feeds Jonathan instead. Mercifully, he takes his feed, burps, and goes back to sleep. She tries Elizabeth again, but although she roots frantically for the nipple, as soon as she finds it, she spits it out in disgust. ‘Come on, darling,’ Maggie coos. ‘Have some of Mummy’s milk.’ But Elizabeth’s bottom lip juts forward and she starts to howl.

  Maggie is on the verge of tears when Leonard comes back to the car. He averts his eyes as he climbs into the front seat.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ she takes one of the bottles. ‘Here you are, sweetheart. Is this what you wanted?’ But Elizabeth twists and pulls away, her crying reaching an even higher pitch.

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake,’ Leonard says after a few moments. ‘Give her here and go and warm yourself up a bit.’

  Elizabeth stops crying almost as soon as Leonard takes her. ‘See,’ he smiles, as Elizabeth settles immediately to her bottle. ‘You just need the magic touch.’

  She hates me, Maggie thinks as she makes her way carefully across the café’s frozen forecourt. She doesn’t want me as her mother.

  The warmth of the café is cheering, even though the place is empty. Maggie lights a cigarette and drinks her tea, ignoring the lipstick mark and sugar crystals around the edge of the cup. With each sip, and each puff of her cigarette, she is further revived.

  Vanda hadn’t had the heart to train a new snake. She’d worked a few extra shifts at the pub, but it wasn’t enough. Maybe if it hadn’t been for this endless snow . . .

  One night soon after Christmas, Vanda had set off for work as usual, dressed in a fur coat and hat, leather gloves, a knitted scarf and gumboots with two pairs of thick socks over her stockings. Less than half an hour later, she was back. Maggie had been huddled in front of the gas stove trying to warm her chapped hands when the back door opened and Vanda leapt in, a flurry of snow blowing in after her. ‘The beer’s frozen,’ she said. ‘First time in living memory, apparently. They’re closing until the weather lets up.’ She stomped her feet to get the snow off her boots. ‘So there’ll be no wages for a while.’

  Maggie filled the kettle for tea. ‘I’ve still got a bit in the post office,’ she offered.

  ‘That’s if we can get to the bloody post office.’ Vanda peeled off her gloves and blew into her hands. ‘It’s probably closed. Everything else is.’

  Even when the pub reopened, the takings were down and the landlord cut Vanda’s shifts to four a week, then two. So she started at the sweet factory. Maggie smiles at this memory. Poor Vanda. At the end of her first day, she’d stumbled home through the snow, reeling and giggling as though drunk. ‘God, I feel peculiar,’ she said as she fell into the house. Then her skin turned pale and she passed out on the back-room floor.

  ‘Vanda!’ Maggie knelt next to her and shook her. ‘Vanda, are you all right?’

  Vanda stirred, burped, and then scrabbled to her feet, only just making it to the back door to be violently sick. When Maggie asked if it might have been something she ate, she admitted to having consumed a lot of uncooked sweets at work. ‘My supervisor said I could eat as many as I liked – perks of the job. I was preparing them for the oven, see, and they were so soft and gooey, I just kept popping them into my mouth.�
�� She paused and her skin seemed to fade again. ‘God, I must have eaten about thirty or forty of the things.’ She groaned. ‘I need to go to bed. My head’s going to come off.’

  Although she still felt rough the next day, she went to the factory, but was only out of the house for two hours before she was back, looking a delicate shade of green. Maggie fetched her a glass of water and a blanket so she could lie on the settee.

  ‘You’ll never guess,’ Vanda said in a feeble voice. ‘You know I told you how I ate all those raw sweets? They were Victory Vs; seems they contain ether – and chloroform. All right when they’re cooked, but . . .’

  ‘No wonder you were ill. Isn’t that what they use to knock people out?’

  Vanda nodded, closing her eyes.

  ‘You didn’t eat more today, surely?’

  ‘No, it’s the fumes. They make the mixture in these huge vats and even the smell makes me ill.’ She let out a weak groan. ‘Can you bring me a bucket?’

  Vanda didn’t return to the factory. Three weeks later, she took a job at the Picture House as an usherette, permanent, but badly paid, and so when she came into Maggie’s room a week or so later and said, ‘I need to talk to you,’ Maggie knew what was coming.

  ‘I’m behind with the rent already and it could take months to find a better-paid job. I’m . . .’ She sighed. ‘I’m going to have to take a room instead. I’m sorry, Maggie.’ She looked at the floor. ‘You’ll be able to go back to Hastings, won’t you?’

  *

  They make three more stops along the way, twice so Maggie can feed the twins and once so Leonard can buy another pair of socks because his feet are so cold he can no longer feel them. The twins, huddled together under the patchwork coverlet Vanda knitted, are warm as toast and by some miracle, or perhaps lulled by the movement of the car, they are quiet. Jonathan sleeps peacefully, the odd windy smile pulling up the corners of his mouth, but Elizabeth’s eyes are wide open. ‘Hello, darling,’ Maggie whispers. Elizabeth blinks, but does not return Maggie’s smile. She’s watching me, Maggie thinks; weighing me up.