‘No. Me neither. You can’t make this shit up.’
‘I am not trying to steal you away.’
‘Thanks for the heads-up!’
‘Why are you being so hostile?’
‘You brought me my mother’s past, all that stuff I didn’t need to know about, that fucking journal.’
‘I don’t want you to have the regrets that your mother had.’
‘What regrets?’
‘About losing someone.’
‘Look, just go back to London. That person in Cuba, he doesn’t exist.’ I sound angry even though I’m not. I just feel exhausted, defeated, as if I’ve felt the first breeze of old age.
‘You have to talk to me!’
She’s still talking as I cross the garden to the back door. The night’s stumbled in, bunker-like. Those first evenings back after Cuba, mid-September, warm as it gets up here on the moor. But all I remember is a chill emptiness and a lack of colour. A flatness, a lack of her.
Apparently email was a swine to access in Cuba so snail-mail it was. I set up the PO Box, as agreed. I wrote her a letter. I said I missed her, loved her, my dodgy poetics scavenged from JC’s songs and fuck the embarrassment. Then I wrote one more. She’s right, I told her the situation was impossible and just stopped. I think I’d been back for a couple of months.
There was no great revelation behind the decision. The present had quietly re-imposed, simple as that. The rhythms of this place are carefully programmed to avoid alternatives, at least none that might be deemed serious. Fantasy’s fine, we might be trying to live someone else’s life but that doesn’t mean we’ll choose it. I turned into David the Frenchman after all, the same ridiculous promises and disappearing act. Why didn’t I close the PO Box down? Maybe I was leaving the door open to possibility. Maybe I just couldn’t be arsed.
It’s Adelina’s turn to grab and pull at me as I open the kitchen door. There’s a whiney edge to her voice, a high-pitched noise like the condensers make when we drain the pipes. As I lock the door behind me I remember her son Floriano. Did she find him, did she manage to bring him to London? She’s hammering at the door, her figure vague behind the frosted glass, dematerialising in front of me. I switch off the kitchen light and she disappears into black.
My father leans forward on his chair. He wants to know what I’m burning. Maggie the carer looks fit to burst, desperate to ask who that woman was but too much of a stranger to know how I’ll react.
Unread or read, Adelina’s letters burn all the same. I can make out sentences, blue lettering darkening to purple as the pages brown and curl, still legible until the sudden flame. I throw on more pages, angling my body so there’s no chance of the words being read over my shoulder. Thinking of long mornings . . . do you remember the cycle . . . if only life did not create such sad. . . . I read and I remember, for as long as it takes the paper to become ash.
Some people look back on their past and don’t recognise themselves, as if we’re different people at different times. I’ve never bought into that idea. Seems like an abdication of responsibility, a way to absolve your conscience by blaming failure on a less-evolved self.
Me? As I was then, so am I now. That may be the problem, what if I’m unable to evolve, locked by self-built parameters into flawed mediocrity? Still, I’m glad I’m not sitting here fretting about another self, a man in my position. It all comes down to what gimpy face you’re happy to see in the mirror, the latest model of smiling confidence who’ll one day be cast out in embarrassment, or the same old mug worn like a shapeless jumper you can’t bring yourself to get rid of. That’s not to say I haven’t changed. No siree, I’m on the move all the time, if you walk in circles you’ll find yourself back the start. There’s a song in there, I should tell JC.
‘What are you burning?’ says my father.
I turn round.
The old man points at the fire, the last of the letters lying like black feathers across a smouldering log. ‘What have you been burning? I know you, what have you been up to, eh?’
The same questions as I’m helping him into bed. What was it, what were you burning? A more coaxing tone of voice. He knows I’m preoccupied, the old bugger’s always been a psychic barometer. Not that this is necessarily borne of concern, more his lifelong quest for full-spectrum control. He used to find things out surreptitiously. Now he wheedles like a child.
It must be unnerving, the dementia leaving ever-larger blank spaces where every piece of flotsam is grabbed at. I can’t think of anything reassuring to say and leave him wide-eyed in the pyramid glare of the bedside lamp. In my own bed I realise I’m mirroring how I left him lying in the next room, the duvet pulled right up to my neck, fingers of both hands gripping the fabric. If he’s not my father how come I’ve got the full-face frown and chickeny jowls? How does that work? Either proximity triggers biological convergence or my mother was a deluded fantasist. The one thing we’ve never had in common is temperament. Unlike him my own old-age caricature will be totalitarian indifference, my wife too awed by its impenetrable defences to complain any more about my lack of interest in her life.
It’s just after 3am when I hear her getting in, back from the Hen Day. She takes an incredibly long time on the stairs, which means she’s pissed, trying to be quiet. When she opens the bedroom door she’s got a pair of high heels in her hand and her orange and white mini-dress has ridden up her thighs. She smiles, lascivious, and puts a finger to her lips, blowing a shhh.
‘I was hoping you’d be awake.’
The crappy strip-tease takes a while, the dress gets stuck on her head and she can’t undo the bra, fingers clawing as she giggles on the end of the bed. I’m surprised by my reaction. Both of us are. She wants me faster, harder Jim, and I’m trying to stay in this moment, trying not to think about Adelina, standing by the fence, hammering on the door, looking up at the window through lilting snow to catch sight of me. And sudden as you like I’m not thinking at all. The world takes on a fish-eye perspective and I feel a spreading lightness, as if I’m underwater, effortlessly moving, knowing I can go on all night if I want to, if she wants me to.
* * *
Tuesday, 2pm. A convoy of Audis sweeps up the distillery road. Malky tipped me off. At lunchtime he leaned over the fence to say he’d been told to snowplough the road. Slinky’s orders, big-wigs must be comin. He was near bursting to speculate, but Malky would cheat at Chinese Whispers to see what shite the final person comes out with. He lures you into these rapid, staccato conversations. Probably nothing, said I. Shit storm, said he. You reckon? said I. Telling you, said he. Wonder if the crows will come back with them, said I. Eh? says he.
There’s only one crow sitting on the telephone wires strung across the road as the six Audis pass underneath. A bit different from the vast flock that had followed the same cars out of the distillery a few weeks back. The crow looks bored, as uninterested as the gossip will be fevered when word spreads that the suits are back. Jack’s said nothing. Sure as shit he would’ve told us if he knew a board meeting had been called. He’s bound to be pissed off. I make myself a cuppa, thinking I’ll have a custard cream too. Accusations of complacency could be levelled against me, sure. But I’m with the crow. The world happens, regardless.
And it happens around me. For the next three days I seem to stand in the middle of the kitchen drinking the same cup of tea as the world around me accelerates, a blur of doors opening, people coming, going, the table set for breakfast, cleared, dinner, cleared, my wife gesticulating and my daughter anxious, happy, my father leaning on his stick by the door, by the sink, the Boy making Maggie laugh, the Boy getting shouted at, three days happening in the ten minutes it takes to sip my tea and eat my biscuit, the last three days of wedding build-up.
My wife tells me to stay out of things. My solitary task is to pick up the hire kilts and the champagne that’ll have me on OT for months because it just has to be champagne not bloody cava, ok? Not that I escape as lightly as that. Twenty-four hour
s to go and she corners me in the Den. Pete, deal with him. There’s no other information, just a wild-eyed stare.
I find Pete on the living room couch, opposite my father. He looks crestfallen. Maggie glances from me to Pete and scarpers. The Boy’s in the window seat, headphones in.
It’s not that I don’t love her, Peter says. It’s a wonder it took so long but that doesn’t make the inevitability any less depressing. I mean, he’s called Sneaky Pete, it was fated that he’d revert to the unreliability and cowardice witnessed across the years. Not for the first time I realise how much I distrust him. He’s a man rehearsed, impossible to read. I can’t help thinking that this is a deliberate attempt to impress me, to seek my wisdom, to allow me to change his mind, some kind of bonding moment that he wants us to look back on and laugh about.
‘Pete?’
We both glance round at the Boy. ‘Aye?’
‘If you don’t marry my sister I’m going to batter fuck out of you.’
Pete squirms in his seat. ‘There’s no need for – ’
The Boy gets up and stands in front of him. ‘I mean it. I’ll take you outside and batter fuck out of you, you cunt.’
‘Jim?’
I put my latest mug of tea down on the floor. I must’ve drunk more tea in the last three days than I have in three years. My father’s lost in the flames. He didn’t even twitch when the Boy swore. Thirty years ago I’d have felt the old man’s hand before I got beyond the ‘f’ of the first fuck. Jim? Peter repeats. Daylight is quickly slipping into the black and white of dusk. There’s no more sound, just the crackle of the fire. No-one moves. We’re waiting for a shout of cut that doesn’t come, the silent sequence stretching on and on. In a moment John Tannehill enters the frame and sits beside me, John Tannehill as he was in that photo I found in my mother’s wooden box in Havana, heavy sailor’s jumper and a smell of tobacco. He seems intrigued by how I intend to deal with this situation and I’m going to impress him with a high-falutin’ monologue that’ll shine a powerful, universal light on the hackneyed theme of a groom with cold feet. But when I clear my throat to begin he’s gone. Just the old man in profile, staring into the fire. I want to shake him, make him tell me what he sees.
‘You sorted it then?’
I pull the kitchen door closed behind me and lean back against it. ‘Just a minor bump in the road.’
‘A minor bump . . . I’ve had Amber sitting in tears for the last hour. You know Pete’s hardly spoken to her for days?’
‘I know where he’s coming from though.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Before our wedding. I had second thoughts too.’
‘So he was having second thoughts.’
‘No, I mean – ’
‘You breathe one word of this to Amber and I’ll kill you, right?’
‘Why would I even – ’
‘I mean it Jim, I’ve even given her a Prozac to take the edge off.’
‘Prozac?’
‘Yes. One of mine.’
‘Eh, since when have you been on Prozac?’
‘Oh for God’s sake.’ Her voice is rising and she takes a breath, reigns it in. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter, we can talk about this later.’
‘When were you going to tell me?
‘Why do I have to tell you? Do you think that’d help?’
‘It’d help me.’
‘How’s that, how can it help you? What’s it even got to do with you Jim?’
‘I’m your husband.’
‘And?’
‘We should share things like that.’
She looks at me as if I’m insane. ‘Yes Jim, we should share things like that. Because you’re such a tremendous support.’
She knocks back the rest of her glass of red wine and shoves past me. The bathroom door slams a moment later. There’s still a puffiness to her eyes when I get into bed a few hours later. She’s in that pose, sat up with the pillow behind her, staring into space. Once upon a less compromised time I’d easily have found the right words to deflate the treacly atmosphere and leave her giggling like a little girl. Now I can’t be bothered and neither can she.
‘What did you mean by having second thoughts about our wedding?’
I stand there with my slippers in my hand. When did I start wearing tartan slippers? ‘I’ve told you that before.’
‘No you haven’t.’ Still that flatness to her tone.
‘Well it wasn’t a major panic or anything. I just wondered if we were doing the right thing.’
‘And were we?’
‘Course we were.’ But I’m too quick to say it and sound too sure. The words hang in the air, synthetic.
‘I think so too.’
Her words ring even less true than mine. This isn’t a subject to broach, not now, perhaps never. It’d be too easy to read our own thoughts in the other’s eyes. I stare down at my stomach that droops further towards the crotch every day. ‘How’s he getting on with that ice sculpture?’
‘That’s all he’s been doing apparently, holed up in his shed with that bloody swan.’
‘I thought you liked the idea?’
‘Not now Jim, I’m not going to fight with you the night before the wedding. Let’s make sure it’s a good day.’
Like ours? Luckily I hold back from saying it. That would be the tin lid, far too ambiguous given the context, a high-tech suggestion-bomb scattering shrapnel in all directions.
I know we’re both lying here thinking about our wedding day. That’s the thing about weddings, they’re a bugger for making you think. My father’ll be doing the same; my mother’s blue dress and his scuffed shoes, he’s obsessed with shoes. 7am the next day he orders me to polish his brogues again. Afterwards he inspects them, close enough to blacken his nose. He wets a thumb and starts rubbing away at an invisible mark. The Boy and I stand in matching kilt and dicky-bow, watching him, listening to the squeaky sound made by his thumb.
‘Think he’ll turn up then?’ asks the Boy.
‘Pete?’
‘Pete’s a pussy. I mean Mad Bazza.’
I’d forgotten about Barry. ‘I doubt it.’
‘He’s been sending Pete texts as well. Wouldn’t put it past him.’ The Boy sounds almost gleeful about the prospect of Amber’s ex-boyfriend putting in an appearance. ‘I can handle Pete, not Bazza.’
It’s my fault. I bought him that Bruce Lee box-set for his birthday and now his bedroom’s a shrine to Kung Fu. He’s even started lifting weights. Factor in the ninja moves he’s always doing and on some level the Boy believes he is Bruce Lee. He stares at his squeaky thumbed grandfather who may not be his grandfather, a second generation of obsessive alienation in the same room and me to make three. A Trinity! All those years the old man rammed God down our throats and we end up haunted by the Unholy Ghosts of each other. When Jack calls my mobile for the fourth time this morning I’m almost eager finally to answer him.
‘I take it you’ve got the letter?’
‘What do you mean? I haven’t checked the post. It’s a bit busy here, Jack.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m just calling round everyone because this is important, they’ve – ’
‘Look, Jack. Not now ok? I’ll see you at the reception.’
‘It’ll just take a minute Jim, have – ’
‘Columba’s View’ does funerals too. Next time I’m here it might be my father’s turn, the old man on the terminal trolley, angled towards the windows for the final view. Now and again I’ve thought of his eulogy, what I might say. Is this morbid, does it cross the mind of every son?
The mourners, they’ll be expecting mumbled, bumbled and brief. I want to see the looks on their faces when I deliver words of such perfectly measured poignancy that they splutter their free drams all over each other. You’ve got to give the punters something to remember, it’s the lesson to be taken from the sheer banality of most funerals. But banal is the one thing death isn’t. Death’s waaay out there, such an exaggeration that a bit
of artistic licence is obligatory. I’m not talking Four Weddings and a Funeral-type bollocks, but something a little bit rehearsed but not obviously so. A few choice lines for people to chew on, something they won’t expect from me. Something they’ll know is truly meant.
What would you call it, this entrance with Amber? It can’t be walking up the aisle because we’re not in a church. And to call it ‘crossing the sticky floor’ hardly fits the ambience. Aye, she looked right bonny crossing the sticky floor. How about approaching the window or seeking the bureaucrat? I swear the registrar just checked her watch. That smile must have been grafted on by a surgeon with the DTs. Then I clock the old man in the front row and start thinking about his funeral again. I can’t help it, there must be something wrong with me.
What would all the guests think if they could peer inside my head? Would they be more embarrassed by my creepy thought processes or the fact that it is indeed Somewhere Over the Rainbow on the PA? The old man doesn’t seem to hear anything, he’s almost completely absent, staring out the big semi-circular conservatory into the snow. There’s no reason for me to hate him, I know. He’s bound to have considered the Tannehill Factor. When did he let it go? How long did it take for him to accept that in the absence of John Tannehill and my mother there was no way of ever finding out, no way of proving it one way or the other?
I hand my daughter to the polyester registrar and sit down beside my wife. She’s crying already, dabbing at her eyes. She pats me on my hand as if I’m a child who’s done a good job. My father blinks, blinks, but sees nothing. Peter sweats through his simplified vows. Amber’s eyes are wide. She looks terrified; the implications of a life with Peter the Chip have finally detonated. But there’s no freak out and flee. It’s almost disappointing. I glance across the rows of smiling guests as we stand to clap and cheer after the declaration of husband and wife.
The Stillman Page 22