by Patrick Gale
‘But where?’ she asked. When he suggested a few weeks in Chicago, he had to raise his voice over Lucy’s continuing complaint. Her future was uncertain, she could not face Lawrence just yet and the offer of a temporary haven proved irresistible. She allowed him to swing the car away from Barrowcester and onto the motorway to Birmingham and the airport.
When they stopped for petrol, she climbed into the back to comfort Lucy and was overcome with sudden, stressed-out exhaustion. She fell fast asleep with the child sprawled across her lap. She had always been active, a doer not a thinker, a seizer of opportunity, but there was a certain luxury in allowing Craig to become her destiny, an irresistible force, sweeping her away from old world, old life, old troubles to the new. There she would still be beset with doubts and guilt, but she felt as entirely safe, as entirely cared for as a small child being fed soup in an enormous bed. As Craig hummed along to the radio and sped them nearer and nearer safety, she drifted in and out of sleep and dreamed of being forced to leave limbs behind, an arm caught in a closing door, a foot snatched by unseen hands as she tried to climb out from a sunless cave.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was always blithely assumed that a mother wanted nothing more than to have her son at home with her; as if all the years of dealing with cut knees, projectile vomit, tedious homework and boyish mess were an investment in the remote future possibility of having him back as a useful adult, a younger, fitter version perhaps of one’s depressingly aged husband. Certainly Lawrence had not been a planned child, but there had still been times when, like any mother, Dora had watched her growing boy and wondered what on earth the point of motherhood could be if one was only to lose the object of so much love and labour if not to another woman then to the World. With no husband to fall back on, she had dreaded empty nest syndrome more than most. He was not her entire life, but he was its largest part.
Happy that he chose to settle nearby, happier still that his wife proved so easy to love, she had nonetheless striven to fill the vacancy his departure created. Amateur dramatics had lost its charm since she could not abide to play the comic aunts of the heroines she had once embodied. Encouraged by Darius, who was a demon of the game, she took up bridge instead. She enrolled for evening classes in Italian and upholstery. She discovered the mindless pleasure of working up tapestry cushions from expensive kits. She was also diverted, one afternoon a week, by prison visiting, becoming one of a small troop of carefully vetted volunteers at HMP Barrowcester. This was a stelliform Victorian structure in red brick and white stone, now lost in the hinterland of railway sidings and industrial estates on the city’s ‘wrong’ side. There she spent two hours in a large room rank with desperation and cigarette smoke, visiting those who had no one to visit them. She had grown fond of one particular lifer, a sad wife-killer old enough to be her father. He could not read or write and refused to learn but with her encouragement, found a pen pal in Parkhurst and dictated his letters to Dora who in turn read the replies back to him. She thus became an expert in prison argot and convict politics, more startling than upholstery if less practically useful.
Bonnie’s disappearance and the public interpretation cast upon it were all the more disturbing for having coincided with one of Dora’s occasional morbid fantasies. She was always a fretter and could not help wondering what would happen if Bonnie died and Lawrence were crippled. She had never ever wanted Bonnie dead but she had entertained the possibility if only to satisfy the fantasy of having her son about the place again with the added bonus of her granddaughter. In her secret dreams, he had sometimes lost the use of his legs – his hands, she cynically told herself, were still free for odd jobs about the house and garden and spared him the ultimate degradation of going back to being spoon-fed.
As fate would have it, Lawrence was not chair-bound, but he was a kind of cripple. She said nothing to him of her brief encounter with Bonnie and Craig at Charlie’s house and he had no reason to guess at it. As far as he was concerned his wife had gone straight to a London police station on returning to the country, he was released, all charges dropped and that was that. Dora had worried that he would fight against his fate, certainly against the period of retreat at her house that renewed journalistic interest enforced. The entire traumatic episode, however, his interrogation, imprisonment, exposure and trial by press seemed to have sapped his will. He had a horror of being seen by people. It was all she could do to persuade him into the garden. The police ruse of eluding the press failed and within a day of his return a clutch of reporters and photographers returned to besiege the village.
‘I think we should go out and talk to them,’ she said, ‘or they’ll never go.’
She helped him write a careful statement to read out and led him down the drive to face them at the gates, her hand shaking as much as his. He departed from the statement however.
‘The police made an erroneous arrest,’ he said, ‘but I was treated well at all times. I was feeling bad about my treatment of Bonnie and in a way I started to feel being locked up was a punishment I deserved. I can’t expect her to forgive me but I still love her wherever she is and– ’
‘She’s in America,’ a small woman muttered from the front of the crowd. There was a ripple of interest as Lawrence froze. ‘She’s in the States,’ the woman went on flatly. ‘She’s with Craig McBride. We got a photo of them boarding their flight.’
Dora took a more protective hold on Lawrence’s arm, hating the beady eyes and ill-mannered microphones ranged about them. Now that he was not a murderer, they were determined to make him an unpaid soap opera star instead.
‘We had a letter from her this morning,’ she told them, willing Lawrence not to interrupt her. ‘Lawrence hasn’t had time to read it. He’s had so many letters of support, people have been so kind. Just amazing.’
‘What do you plan to do now, Larry?’ a man called out but Lawrence had broken away from Dora’s support and was walking back to the house.
‘I think Lawrence plans to take things gently for a while,’ Dora told them. ‘As you can imagine, he’s been under a terrible strain lately. As … As has Bonnie. The best thing would be for you to just leave them alone to rebuild their lives.’
They took pictures as she closed the gates against them. One photograph of her rejoining Lawrence and placing her arm through his won a photojournalism prize later that year and was widely reproduced, long after its sad context had been forgotten.
He rounded on her savagely when they were back indoors.
‘What was that crap about letters?’ he asked. ‘We haven’t had any letters, least of all from her.’
Then he retreated into his room and a forbidding silence.
They had received letters however. Hate mail arrived every day, ludicrous and corrosive, but Dora took care to intercept and burn it. Before he came home she had been torn between shame and pity but now that he was sleeping in his boyhood room again, she found herself protective as a she-bear. Her lie became truth two days later when a slim airmail letter arrived from Bonnie. There was a covering letter to Dora wrapped around a folded envelope addressed to Lawrence. Dora unfolded the single, onionskin sheet and read it, trembling, on the porch.
Dearest Dora,
You’ll be pleased to hear, I know, that Craig has effectively kidnapped us for a few weeks. I wanted to see Lawrence but Craig was adamant. In a strange way it’s a huge relief being able to relinquish all control. I have never felt so passive in my life. I miss him – Lawrence, I mean – miss him so much I can’t sleep but I know it’s like a drug and I must break my habit. You were so right. But I miss you too!! As does Lucy. She adores Craig but I think she finds him a bit grown up and serious sometimes. You’ve been like a mother and a sister to me and suddenly I feel orphaned. I thought it better to send L’s letter via you in case people were messing with his post or he wasn’t at home. Don’t let him see this. I’ll write again soon. Maybe even ring if I can trust myself not to go all weepy on you. Do write. Tell Dad I’m
okay.
Kisses.
B xx.
Dora wryly noticed that she gave a P.O. box in Chicago as an address, apparently not trusting a mother’s weak resolve.
Lawrence’s envelope was sealed. He was still in bed having drunk most of a bottle of wine the night before. She knocked. There was no reply. She let herself in. He had pushed the bedding half off him in his restless slumbers. He had not pulled the curtains properly so a broad shaft of morning light fell across the mattress. She had not seen him naked since she had stumbled in on him in the bathroom when he was fifteen. She was amazed at how lean and gnarled his body looked and how many cuts and scratches it had received, presumably in the course of his work. She gently pulled the quilt up over his shoulders again then left the envelope on his bedside table. He woke as she was leaving the room.
‘She’s written to you,’ she told him and gestured awkwardly towards the letter. She made to go.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Hang on.’
So she sat on the edge of the bed while he tore open the envelope and read. Bonnie had written barely one side of paper. He read it again, frowning, then passed her the letter.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Read it.’
The words were not laid out like a letter but ran together in a small block of prose. There were no crossings out. Dora pictured the cluster of discarded rough drafts, scrumpled up and tossed in some tastefully architectural receptacle.
Lawrence, she read, I’m in America now with Craig. I don’t know how long for. Lucy is well. She misses you but I didn’t see what else I could do. I had to bring her. Maybe we can come to some arrangement in a few months but for now you have to understand that I can’t see you so that means she can’t see you. I was going to say I was sorry for getting you involved with the police and the press like that but now that I’m here and I can see more clearly, I can’t. I’m too angry. You fucked up, Lawrence, and I won’t be made to feel bad for your mistakes. I’ve done with feeling bad. Now it’s your turn. Look after Dora. She’s more than you deserve. Steer clear of Dad. He might kill you. Bonnie.
Dora was astonished that the tone of this indignant paragraph and that of the tender, nostalgic letter she had received should be so crudely polarized. She began to read it again then realized that, at long last, Lawrence had broken down into wracked, tearless weeping, his sobs like bitter mirth.
‘I drove her to him,’ he said. ‘I made it happen.’
She held him to her, hands flat against his hot back, thinking how she too had played her part and imagining the anguish of having her child taken from her as a punishment for wrongdoing.
He seemed quite calm when he came down. He ate breakfast and pleased her by taking a saw out to the little orchard and tidying her fruit trees. He spurned all offers of mid-morning coffee but came inside for lunch, then announced that he was returning to his house.
‘Would you drive me over?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ she said, bewildered. ‘But you don’t think it’s a bit soon? I mean, the press– ’
‘Fuck the press.’
‘You’re welcome to stay on here.’
‘I want to go. I’ve got to get working again, even without John. There’ll be bills to pay.’ He scowled. ‘I’ll go in a taxi if you’d rather.’
‘Don’t be silly. Just let me finish my coffee.’
She had always faintly envied them their farmhouse. An old place, mainly eighteenth century, it was set at the end of a winding track at one corner of what had been the local great estate before hard times and death duties forced Bonnie’s former beau, the young Lord Barrow, to sell up two-thirds of his birthright and see his ancestral home converted into a management training centre. From the upper windows of the farmhouse one could watch business people tackling a distant assault course where two centuries of pedigree cattle had grazed. Bonnie had planted an attractive garden on two sides, which one could enter by French windows from the sitting room. There were a yard and stable block to the rear where Lucy had been promised she could house a pony once she was old enough and provided horsehair did not make her wheeze the way that cat fur did. It was a house where one could imagine a young family growing older. There was room for two more children. Dora, normally so independent, had never left it after a visit without an unguarded pang of covetousness, less of the building than of the snug, ordinary domesticity it encompassed.
Returning there now she fancied the house had lost its heart and become a melancholy shell, its brightly painted windows mere sockets onto a void. She helped Lawrence in with the two cardboard boxes of bagged up ‘evidence’ the police had returned. While he sorted through a great fistful of letters and free newspapers, she discreetly replaced the chainsaw in the back of the pick-up then unloaded a bag of groceries she had brought from her own kitchen – bread, milk, cheese, eggs, bacon and a bag of crisp New Zealand apples. The house felt freezing and unlived-in already. She glanced at the sink, remembering the tabloids’ stories of blood, violence and uprooted hair.
‘Call me if you need anything, darling,’ she said and hugged him as he perused a bank statement.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fine. Thanks.’
Perhaps he would be. Divorces were commonplace now. Lucy would travel between them for double the holidays. He might remarry. He might have more children. It was always possible, she told herself. Anything was possible. She could not, however, suppress the thought that her son was marked now, branded unweddable and unapproachable as a village outcast. He would have no second chances. He would not be fine.
She had just made herself an eggy supper to eat with a glass of sherry in front of a television programme on antiques, when the telephone rang making her start and slop sherry on her skirt. Cursing, mopping herself with a napkin, she was in no hurry to answer it.
‘Mrs Frost?’ A woman’s voice.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Hecate Murray here. Your son’s neighbour.’
‘Oh yes. Hello.’
‘I thought I’d better ring you. Oh dear.’ The woman sounded distracted. ‘Only there’s been a bit of an accident. Don’t worry. He’s fine. But his van needs fixing and, well, I think you’d better– ’
‘Thank you. You’re very kind. I’ll be right over.’
Lawrence had made himself falling-down drunk then somehow made it into his van and driven down the drive and onto the Barrowcester Road. Driving on the wrong side, he had swerved to avoid an oncoming car and ended up in a ditch. The other vehicle was Hecate Murray’s Morris 1000 Traveller. Its headlamps were lighting the scene as Dora pulled up. Lawrence was slumped in the back of the Morris, wrapped in a yellow tartan rug. A small woman in a duffel coat hurried over to greet her. One knew from her apologetic manner and unmade-up face precisely what sort of ten-year-old she must have been four decades or so before.
‘Mrs Frost? Hecate Murray. So sorry to call you out.’
‘Not at all. God!’
‘Don’t worry. The van’s not too bad; just a light gone and a tyre and, well, the front end doesn’t look too good does it? Still. We can get it towed out tomorrow. My other neighbour can do it with her tractor if we ask her nicely. He was very lucky.’
‘So were you. He might have killed you.’
‘Oh. I don’t think so.’ She seemed entirely certain. ‘He’s just woken up. He hit his head. I thought we should drive him to the hospital in case he’s concussed.’
‘Really?’
‘I think so. Don’t worry about the police or anything. We can just say he got drunk at home and fell over. That’s it. If you get in that side– ’
‘Oh but I can drive him.’
‘Actually it was quite a job getting him where he is,’ Mrs Murray said firmly. ‘I think we should leave him be. Really it’s no bother.’
Dora winced as she opened the door, smelling the alcohol. And something else. An old-fashioned, inefficient sort of odour. Paraffin. Lawrence half opened his eyes and mumbled as she re
ached out to touch his jacket.
‘That’s the other thing,’ Mrs Murray said, starting the car. ‘He’s soaked in the stuff so don’t go smoking. Heaven knows what he was doing. Funny how smells take one back. We always had to get dressed by a paraffin stove in the bathroom. Warm undies on winter mornings. Very cosy. Sorry. Here.’ She tugged another rug from behind her seat and settled it across Dora’s lap. ‘You’re probably a bit shocked. Have this.’
‘Thank you.’
Hecate Murray gave off a powerful aura of capability which enveloped Dora as warmly as the rug.
‘You’ve been going through a very dark valley,’ she said. ‘I’ve been praying for you.’
‘I should never have let him go home. He could have killed himself. He could have killed someone else!’ Dora imagined the police, the papers, fresh scandal.
‘Prayer is amazingly efficacious,’ Hecate Murray continued. ‘Even for non-believers. You’d be surprised.’
Oh it’s never really been my thing. Lawrence? Lawrence, can you hear me? Darling, everything’s going to be fine. You’re safe now.’
‘Let’s pray now. It will still your thoughts so you can be strong for him. Say after me. Eternal Father.’
‘Eternal father,’ Dora repeated thoughtlessly.
‘Whose cleansing flames smote Babel and the Cities of the Plain.’ Mrs Murray was a small woman but her voice was sternly compelling as an archangel’s. ‘Whose fire burned before Moses in the bush and came to Gideon’s aid against the infidel, whose burning coals purified Isaiah’s lips …’
The two of them prayed aloud all the way into the hospital car park. Inexorable as a dentist’s probe, Hecate Murray named the unnameable: alcohol, scars, violence, broken families, maternal insufficiency, lost grandchildren, secrets. Her complete lack of diplomacy burned off all Dora’s inhibitions so that Dora cried, wailed even, as she stumblingly repeated the near-stranger’s solemn sentences. Still profoundly drunk but picking up the religious tone like a radio signal, Lawrence began to half-mumble, half-sing Eternal Father Strong to Save as he lolled from side to side on the back seat. Dora wanted to laugh, felt drunk herself. Any passing policeman would surely have flagged them down. She felt considerably stronger when she stepped out again into the chill night air. Hecate Murray gently took the rug, which Dora had forgotten was still wrapped about her. Dora assumed she would leave them there but Mrs Murray, who was plainly quite mad, tugged Lawrence out of the car and threw one of his arms over Dora’s shoulder while she took the other across her own.