Barefoot in the Dark

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  His father, Jack knew, was going to die. Some days he could deal with this knowledge better than others. Some days he would arrive at the nursing home and stride up the long drive, with its rose-stumps and leaf mounds and air of quiet stoicism, and feel strong and accepting and able to cope. Other days, like today, perhaps to bring him back to earth, it made him feel vulnerable in a way he rarely felt elsewhere in his life. It was an inevitability he didn’t feel remotely equipped to have to live through. It scared him. His father would be gone and there’d just be him and Ollie. Just him and his only son. Alone in the world. But thinking of Ollie always made him feel better, albeit in a frightened kind of way. That was the way it worked, having children. You had them and then you moved up to the next notch. He’d soon be the one at the top of the pile. No longer receiving but dispensing advice. Strange how a scant few years could shift the dynamic so profoundly. He and Lydia and Ollie had been a family. As had his mum and dad. But Lydia’s parents – her git of a brother, even – they had been a part of his family too. His extended family. The whole web of relationships – the tussles over Christmas, the remembering of birthdays, the inevitable rows – and now, today, it was almost all gone. He no longer hadan extended family. Sooner or later his father would die, and that would be it. His family would consist of just him and Ollie. That was all. Finite. That was it.

  He had already stopped at the Esso garage and picked up some wine gums. Jack’s father had always had a great fondness for wine gums, and as the food at the nursing home was bland, at best, and he had so little appetite now, he was always grateful for this little treat. It wasn’t much, but then his father didn’t wantmuch. He was glad that at a time in his father’s life when there was so little he could give him, he could proffer something, at least. He paused, as he habitually did, to look back across Cardiff before going in. The nursing home was set high to the south west of the city. From one side the lawns sloped gently away with views over the Bristol Channel, and to the other, the city itself was miniatured before him, the white prongs of the Millennium Stadium winking sunlight in the distance. The last time he had been a regular here – when his mother died – the Millennium Stadium had not even been built. All that construction, all that life going on. All the things and events she’d never lived to see.

  There was one nurse in the nursing home that Jack would have fancied, were it not for the fact that the whole notion of fancying someone at this time, in this place, was vaguely distasteful. Something he registered without really connecting to. Her name was Shelley, and she greeted him now.

  ‘How is he?’ he said. He always said this, even though the answer could only be ‘the same’, or ‘a little worse’, or ‘a lot worse’, or ‘dead’. He wasn’t ready for dead yet. Not ready at all. So there was always a welling of mild panic as he entered the stuffy entrance hall, that his father might actually pass away without him – a ridiculous anxiety, he knew. His dad could die at any time on any day. He could die while Jack was on air. He could die while he was away reporting on a match. He could die while he sat in the cinema with Ollie, with his phone switched off. But Jack didn’t think so. He thought – thought with some conviction, in fact – that in any of these scenarios there would be time to alert him. That there’d be a call in sufficient time that he’d be able to make it to be with him. But, irrational though it was, he had a fixation that what would actually happen was that he’d set off to visit entirely as per usual, and that his father would die while he was en route. Jack knew this was simply a manifestation of his anxiety; even so, his outbreath when Shelley said ‘comfortable’ was heavy with relief. That it wasn’t today. That it wasn’t yet.

  ‘Nice that the rain’s cleared up,’ she said next. ‘You could take him outside, perhaps.’

  ‘Yes, nice,’ agreed Jack, nodding. ‘I might.’

  Jack’s father was awake and reading the Daily Mailwhen he got to his room, sitting in the chair by the window with a blanket over his knees. Jack visited often – at least once a week, but always felt unprepared for the deterioration he saw. As if time moved more quickly here. Like cat years or dog years. As if the man beneath the face was slipping rapidly away from him, growing ever more difficult to recognise, incarcerated and fading beneath a veil of sallow skin. He held up the wine gums.

  ‘Splendid, son,’ his father said, nodding. ‘Just the jobby.’

  He always said the same thing. Splendid, son. Just the jobby. Jack, smiling, put them on the bedside table and sat down on the bed.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘How’ve you been feeling this week?’

  ‘Not great,’ he said, throwing the paper on the bed. ‘You saw it I suppose? Typical. Just threw it away.’

  Jack nodded. He was talking about football, of course. Football was in his father’s blood every bit as much as all the red cells and white cells, so it was no surprise that the performance of his teams (Portsmouth and Manchester United) acted as a barometer on any given week, indicating the state of his mood. It had ever been thus. It was the same with Jack, too. And Ollie? Yes, definitely. Jack liked the sense of continuity that gave him.

  ‘What about you?’ His father examined him. ‘You’re looking very chipper. More than you’ve a business to.’ He inspected Jack more carefully. ‘Come on, out with it, son. What’s her name?’

  * * *

  Hope. Where wasshe? What was she doing? He’d checked the answer-phone as soon as he got home, but still there was nothing. And when she hadn’t called by the time it had grown dark, Jack decided he either needed a very cold shower or a breath of fresh air. Not having a shower, there was just the one option. So he telephoned Danny to see if he fancied a pint. It was handy, he decided, him moving into the Cefn Melin flat, because both Danny and the local were only a walk away. Predictably, Danny had been up for it.

  Though this was beginning to look as if it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Jack had told his father all about Hope. At some length. Not just because he was feeling so ridiculously pleased with himself, but also because he knew it was what his father wanted to hear. That he was seeing someone. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. But at least there was a chance that he wouldn’t die and leave his son all alone. Jack’s father worried more about Jack than anything else. He worried that he needed a proper home. That he needed a family. He worried whether he’d be all right once he was no longer there. So Jack had told him. Not about the sex, of course. But much of the rest. The chipmunks. The lock-out. The cushions. He’d liked that.

  ‘She made you cushions?’ Danny said, after they’d downed their first pint and Jack had told him about Hope’s unexpected visit. Why did he do that? Why couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut? ‘Blimey,’ Danny went on. ‘You want to watch that, mate. Sounds a little cosy to me.’

  Jack knew that. He also knew that to tell Danny about the cushions had been a spectacularly grave error of judgement. Not because there was anything intrinsically wrong about Hope having made him cushions, but because telling Danny about it immediately flagged up every one of the vague discomforts that he was beginning to have about it and lobbed them back, irrefutable and set in stone, in his face. Why hadn’t he thought that before he told him? He was glad he’d decided not to tell Danny they’d had sex.

  ‘It’ll be a hearthrug next.’

  He knew.

  ‘Or she’ll start making you casseroles. Before you know it, she’ll be wanting you to get a door key cut for her.’

  He knew.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ he said, depressed by Danny’s relentless ribbing. Perhaps coming out for a drink with Danny had been an error of judgement, full stop. He was a great friend, but sometimes, particularly after he’d been with his dad, it felt all wrong. He needed to be on his own. He couldn’t talk to Danny about his dad. Not really. There were whole areas of Jack’s life that Danny simply didn’t penetrate, and that was just fine. But thinking this seemed disloyal. He was a good, supportive friend. Just wearing at times. Not least because it sometimes felt Danny ha
d taken ownership of him since his divorce. Like he was some counselling guru who always knew what was best for him. He didn’t like the inequality it had caused in their friendship. He just wanted things to get back to normal. To talk to Danny about football. Just football and sex. Though not this sex. Because that felt wrong, too.

  But Danny had been there for him when he’d needed him. That was what really mattered. Jack sipped his pint. ‘I think you’re barking up the wrong tree there, mate. It was just a gesture. A nice gesture. She’s a nice person.’

  Danny blew out his cheeks and tapped a beer mat on the table. ‘Nice. Exactly my point, mate. Make no mistake. She’s getting her claws into you. And once a woman starts getting her claws into you with cushions, it’s only a matter of time before you’re back down the slippery slope and dragged back up an aisle. Beware the power of the penis, mate. It’ll get you into trouble.’

  Danny said it with feeling. ‘Hardly,’ Jack replied. ‘She hasn’t phoned me, after all.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Danny. ‘That’ll be because you haven’t called her –’

  ‘But I can’t!’

  ‘– and now she’s sulking.’ Danny stared mournfully at his pint for a few moments. ‘They’re good at that, women.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, mate,’ Jack said again.

  When Jack got home from the pub Hope still hadn’t called, and once he’d abandoned the idea of driving to her house – where was it? He didn’t know the street name even – he remembered that he did have Hil’s number, and that Hil being Hil, she’d probably have Hope’s number in her Palm Pilot. She was efficient like that. She’d have taken her details when she came on the show. He leafed through his address book. He ought to ring Hope. Sod being circumspect and cool. He wanted to ring Hope. It was only ten. Not too late. Perhaps they could meet up in the week. Perhaps he could take her out for a meal. Go on a date. That would be novel. But if he rang Hil he’d have to submit himself to an interrogation. An in-depth interrogation. Why was it that since he had found himself single his love life was so much the plat du jour? Why did people feel they had the right to scrutinise his every move? Why was his sex life (or lack of) suddenly a matter of public record? He didn’t ask Hil, or Patti or Dave, for that matter, to keep him posted on theirs, did he? Sex. That was what it was really all about. Yes, they were anxious to see him happy again – and he did appreciate that – but there was also (and this was true of Danny as well) an element of straightforward voyeurism about it. And Hil would tell Dave and Dave would tell Patti, and Patti – bloody Patti probably wouldn’t be adverse to telling South Wales on air. She’d been bad enough over that ridiculous Cinderella nonsense.

  But it was sex. He wanted to have sex with Hope again. That was what it was really all about. The pull of his loins. Which didn’t feel particularly laudable, and reminded him of Danny’s words not half an hour earlier. He picked up the cushion on the chair beside him. Why should wanting to have sex with Hope Shepherd make him feel so anxious all of a sudden? He liked her. She liked him (oh, yes – no doubt about that), so what, precisely, was the problem? He grimaced. Probably the one he’d already had pointed out to him. That she was too nice. Certainly too nice to be messed around with. And how could he guarantee that he wouldn’t mess her around? He was a man, for God’s sake. A single man. A newly single man with newly single designs on the opposite sex. Lots of them. Unless – he picked up the receiver and cradled it in his hand – unless, hell – why was he presuming so much? Why wouldn’t she be up for it? It wasn’t as if she had told him otherwise, was it? She’d certainly been up for it last night. Where was the harm? He punched out the digits and waited.

  Hil’s number rang and rang, but Hil herself clearly wasn’t home. Bollocks. He put the phone down again and flipped the cover shut on his address book. He was kidding himself anyway. It was simply wishful thinking. If he’d worked out one thing about Hope, it was that she was emphatically not the sort of person who’d be interested in recreational sex. She’d be interested in sex as a part of a monogamous relationship. She was fragile. Vulnerable. She’d made a point of saying so. In fact, she was probably waiting for him to phone her right now. Quite possibly she was sulking because he hadn’t done so, which was all the more reason not to, perhaps. He couldn’t in any case, could he?

  Women. He pushed the address book back into the drawer. He’d ring her from work in the morning.

  Chapter 15

  It was about ten minutes before Hope stopped crying, and she felt much better for it.

  When she’d got in from her run, the answer-phone light had been flashing, and, deciding to save the message till she was out of her kit, she’d run upstairs for her shower feeling suddenly invigorated and light of heart. It would be him. She just knew it. What did it matter who he’d gone out with before he’d met her? In any case, she wasn’t sure Simon didn’t have his own agenda where Jack was concerned. The way he called him ‘our man’ when he really meant ‘your man’, almost as if by professing joint ownership he was challenging her to tell him he was wrong.

  But then she’d come down and pressed the play button, and it had only been Iain, to let her know he’d be half an hour late with the children.

  They’d come in then, and she’d spent another half an hour in her fortnightly Purgatory, listening to how lovely their weekend had been. How much fun it had been compared to boring life at home, how they’d been (oh, how wicked!) to TGI Friday’s, how (oh, the sweetheart!) he’d taken them ice skating, how (oh, go on, then) he had let Tom borrow his Saving Private Ryan DVD, despite all the gore at the start. And also how they’d gone to have lunch with Daddy’s new girlfriend, who was called Rhiannon, and who (oh, how lovely!) had a really lush Mini and bright red, mega-lush hair.

  It might have been partly listening to that, she reasoned. Not because she cared; she was through all that – he could do what he liked now. But because it was an uncomfortable reminder of how cruelly compartmentalised all their lives had become. There were parts of her children’s lives that weren’t part of hers now. They were peopled by Rhiannons and Emmas and Ffions and whoever else he hung on his treacherous arm.

  But maybe not. The phone had started up again while she was tucking Tom in and this time it was Suze, with her interminable wittering – this time about how she’d batch-cooked some chilli which Hope could pop in to collect the next day. Not ‘might like to pop in’. Oh, no. ‘Could pop in’. Which meant would pop in. Or expect retribution, you ungrateful cow. Suze hadn’t been any more irritating than usual, but nevertheless, as Hope had put down the receiver, the tears started and they just wouldn’t stop.

  Having stopped crying now, Hope could see her tears for exactly what they were. The fall-out from an infatuation. Yes. All that pent-up sexual tension. That and feeling so shameful. Only to be expected, really. There was the sex itself – there must be some hormonal component to that, mustn’t there? But it wasn’t like her heart was broken or anything. Just that it was so painful to recall how stupidly she’d behaved. That and the fact that Jack Valentine had been the first man who had shown the least interest in her since she had left Iain. (If you didn’t count Simon, and she definitely didn’t.) The first person she’d allowed herself to imagine she could have a romantic relationship with. What a fool. What an idiot. She was thirty-nine, for God’s sake. What business did she have becoming infatuated with the first man who paid her the compliment of fancying her? What the hell was she doing crying?

  She went into the kitchen on heavy legs and ripped a piece of kitchen roll from the holder on the wall. God, why didn’t she just phone him and be done with it? It had to be better than all this juvenile snivelling. At least it would put an end to all this wretched speculation. But she couldn’t. She mustn’t. She absolutely knew it was the one thing she must not do. She’d had quite enough humiliation for one weekend, and ringing him now would only make things worse. Suppose he wasn’t alone? Suppose he was alone but sounded like he wasn’t pleased to hear from her? And ev
en supposing he did sound pleased to hear from her – it would still feel all wrong. It would be all wrong. Would she actually believe it when he hadn’t already phoned her? Surely, surely, if he liked her, phoning her would have been the very first thing he’d have done this morning. And he hadn’t. So there was no point in phoning at all. The only way forward was to wait. Wait and see. God, but the world was a cruel place to be in. Why did men wield so much power over women?

  She blew her nose aggressively on the piece of kitchen roll. No. She wouldn’t phone him. She’d slept with him and she couldn’t undo that. All she could do now was limit the damage. That and learn from her mistake. Good luck to him. Let him go screw every woman in Cardiff if he liked. She’d walked away from the situation. That was what mattered.