Now That You're Back

by A. L. Kennedy

  Feet hurried in a slither over the gravel towards him, close and then closer. Hands settled on his shoulders and something happened.

  ‘Tom? How’s stuff, sir? Speak to me.’ The hands fastened into a grip and something was changed. ‘You set for a cup of tea, maybe? Billy fixed the gas, it’s working again. Tom? Come back to me, Tom.’

  Phil started another sentence, then sighed it away again, no more he could say, and Tom felt himself turned softly and held. Phil patted his back, set one palm, cool and still at the base of his neck, eased Tom in tight so he wouldn’t fall while he snagged in the last breath he needed before he could cry.

  At first, Tom didn’t know what it was, the crying. He only felt something snap loose around his heart, like a big spring bursting and a pain in his forehead and a thickness in his mouth. It seemed as if he was trying to get out from inside himself while Phil kept him hugged and steady and thought God knew what – his brother’s face running down over his shirt for no good reason at all.

  ‘Come on and we’ll sit. Tom? We’re heading for the grass over there, sir. If you open your eyes, you’ll see.’

  Tom lifted his head and bleared out at the bright sky in the water. He noticed a pair of little grey birds with long tails – they had a funny, short way of whistling, as if they were worried over something. Phil was steering him round the waterside, slightly unsteady. They wove and stumbled with their arms round each other’s shoulders and from a distance they must look like unfamiliar lovers, or drunks.

  An unexpected tussock defeated them both and Tom allowed himself to fall, suddenly as loose and easy as a lamb, as a baby, as mindless elastic. He was surprised when he landed and didn’t bounce.

  Phil dropped with him, but then broke the contact as he rolled. He sat up, looking for his cap, found it mashed under one hand, grinned and snugged it back in place.

  Tom didn’t want to do anything other than lie – a clump of what he guessed were primroses was shining by his face and the grass was very soft here. This was undoubtedly the softest grass he had ever lain in.

  ‘You’re going to stay there, then?’

  ‘Uh hu.’

  ‘Well at least you’re smiling again.’

  ‘Am I?’ Tom had been out of touch with his face, but now he thought about it, he felt as though he was indeed smiling. Phil reached down to nudge him.

  ‘What was all that about? If you don’t mind my asking.’

  ‘I don’t mind. You got a handkerchief?’

  ‘Not that I’d give it to you. What was it?’

  Tom pulled up his sweater in both hands and rubbed his face.

  ‘Unkempt bugger – always were. Tell your Uncle Phil, just between us boys . . .’

  ‘I don’t know. I promise. If I knew, I’d tell you – I’d tell anyone around. I mean, it’s nothing special, I’m just shaky, jumpy.’

  ‘I’d never have guessed. Shaky or not you’re looking well, though.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be hard to look better than I did.’

  Phil took off his hat again and gripped it while he tipped his face up to the sun.

  ‘I thought you were on the way out that time, you know. Some state you were in. You were on top of a car when they found you, but they didn’t know why.’

  ‘Beats me.’

  ‘I’d have guessed you fell out of a plane from the way you were looking. Some state.’

  ‘That was at the hospital, I remember that bit. Some of it. I was glad you came.’

  ‘Pa would have, but he couldn’t. He was worried.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You were the wee one – he always worried about you. He’d be glad to see you now. Your eyes are different.’

  ‘Uh hu.’

  ‘I mean, I don’t want to know what you’re doing, or how you’re doing it, but I hope you keep on. And Pa would, too. So any help you need . . . are you listening?’

  Tom was whistling quietly through his teeth, trying not to feel anything else. He knew he would cry again, if he let what his brother was saying reach in to him. Enough was enough, even if he was shaky – he couldn’t be crying all the time. He coughed and sat up, pinching a little dampness away from his nose. For a moment, he heard the blood boom in his ears – a definite sign of life as usual. He tapped Phil’s hand.

  ‘I am listening. Leave it for a bit, though, eh? And see that bloody hat?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That ancient fucking monument you’ve got held in your hands.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Well, here it goes.’

  Tom snatched for the cap – a waxy green object, probably as old as he was – and lurched up with it into a run. When he was clear of Phil, he threw the thing in a spin, clean out across the water and felt the day somehow slip out of time as the hat hovered ridiculously, lazy drops of water yawning, aimless, away from it, wherever it sheared the pool. Phil’s shout was elongated into something almost musical, all mixed in with the huge, slow rush of Tom’s pulse, exploding and exploding.

  Then the world fell back to normal while Phil tore at the grass in his scramble to stand, a duck clattered up out of nothing and Tom came to the edge of being afraid again. He couldn’t think why he’d done what he’d done, only that it felt good. Phil’s face was shouting at him.

  ‘What the hell are you playing at? Crazy fucking bastard. Don’t just stand there smiling. That’s my hat. Jesus God. That’s my outdoors hat, there.’

  The cap had landed and was bobbing quietly, its waxiness allowing it to float.

  ‘Uh hu, that’ll be it, then. Outdoors.’

  ‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Do about it?’

  ‘Yes, you stupid bastard. What are going to do about it?’

  ‘About it?’

  ‘It!’

  ‘You want a new one?’

  ‘No I do not.’

  ‘You want that one?’

  ‘Well of course I bloody do.’

  ‘OK.’

  And it seemed right that Tom should put his hands in his pockets and walk out into the pool, very slowly, easing his way as the shock of the water crept up his legs. It took almost a minute before his feet felt wet.

  ‘What the fuck are you up to now?’

  ‘Getting your hat.’

  ‘Come out of there.’

  ‘No.’

  He turned, staggering slightly at the resistance around his legs.

  ‘Come out.’

  ‘No, I’m busy.’

  Phil was leaning forward, his fingers twisted together over his stomach in a kind of bunch. He was frowning and wincing and shaking his head. He didn’t look especially dangerous, only odd.

  ‘You don’t understand. Tom?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, you don’t understand. There’s a responsibility . . .’

  ‘Can’t hear you.’

  ‘Responsibility. With a hat . . . it’s like . . .’ The frowns had eased now and the whites of his eyes were flaring. There was a tremble in his legs. ‘It’s like as if you had a pet.’ His hands freed each other and lifted to his face. ‘Oh, Jesus.’

  ‘Can’t hear you.’

  Tom felt his stomach tense, wanted to run, but knew that the water would trip him and make him fall. He stared while Phil, still cradling his own head, but also now barking softly with laughter, stepped off to join him in the pool. Phil’s legs sunk unevenly and he flailed his arms while he shouted, ‘A fucking pet . . . As if it was a pet. Bloody pet hat. I’m as cracked as you. Bloody cracked.’

  Tom found himself shouting almost painfully, although his brother was hardly any space away and getting much closer, ‘Yes. Cracked. The two of us.’

  While they made for the cap together, they could hear themselves laughing and swashing, easing in whimpering breaths, only to howl them all out again. The hat danced off from them a little as they stalked up nearer to it, waist high in the water, chilled senseless.

  ‘You want one, Phil?’

>   Billy broke his lager open with a liquid hiss. He took a little sip from the can then tapped it down on the folding-table he’d set out for them all in the caravan’s biggest room. He was smiling, still wiping the last of the washing-up damp from his forearms.

  ‘You’ll be having coffee, Tom?’

  It had been meant as a question, Tom knew that, but he felt the words as an order, as something to single him out. He was going to have a mood if he wasn’t careful, he could feel one on the way. Perhaps it would be best to get out to the kitchen and look through that window, it had the calmest view – nothing but wet, moving colours and no land, like the pictures his mind could paint when he was happy. He stretched to ease his tension, gain some time. Billy kept on smiling in a way Tom couldn’t like. He aimed his voice straight at the smile.

  ‘I’ll have some tea and I’ll make it.’ Now that sounded rude, that sounded as if he was edgy when he really wasn’t anything much, except a tiny bit away from himself, constricted. He tried to say, ‘Would anyone else like one?’ as if it were no kind of threat. Didn’t manage.

  Phil tried to change the subject, help him out. ‘What I would like is to take myself out for a walk, get some air. I don’t know how you can stick this, Billy.’

  ‘Well, I’m usually here on my own, so there’s too much room for me. Sleep in a different bed every night.’ Billy dug in and deepened his grin.

  ‘And you always were the boy for that.’ Phil gave a larger than usual wince and tugged his hand through the fine hairs at the crown of his head. He would be bald there, soon, you could tell. ‘I meant that we must be something of an imposition.’

  ‘I like the company. All the brothers together. Especially young Tommy, eh?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Just what you’d expect, Tom, just what you’d expect.’

  ‘Well, I’m going for a fucking walk myself now. I’ll see you. Phil. Billy.’

  Knowing he should take a jacket, knowing he didn’t want to go, knowing he ought to say he was sorry and not be the way he was, he pushed past Billy and walked through his brothers’ silence to the door. No one would follow him, he felt that. They would let him be cold and on his own and walking for the sake of moving until his brains could settle.

  He glanced down and remembered he was wearing trainers because his good shoes were still drying out after the pool. Now he would have to pick his way through the mud. Fuck it, they were clean, his trainers.

  The headland track wasn’t too bad – an island of grass snaked fairly reliably between the twin channels cut in by occasional tyres. Theirs had been the last car up here – Billy’s Cavalier. He kept it nice, his motor, immaculate bodywork and the engine in good nick, too. Usually Tom didn’t like to be in cars, it reminded him he couldn’t drive any more, wound him up, but Billy made it easier. He had a confident way about him that let you appreciate what he was doing, a natural driver – good tapes playing, an air freshener thing that didn’t make the whole place smell like a toilet. Healthy, that’s what it was, a healthy car.

  A ewe lifted her head and watched him quietly, chewing.

  ‘And fuck you, too.’ But he could hear the anger was out of his voice. ‘No, that would be fuck ewe, wouldn’t it. Geddit? Fuck ewe.’ His ears were a little too full of the breeze for him to hear his laugh, because it was only a small one, but he felt it. The ewe twitched an ear and went back to her grass.

  Tom pushed both his hands into the pockets of his jeans, beginning to feel the cold. His own fault, shouldn’t be out here in the first place, never mind having no coat. If he kept his speed up, he would manage all right, stoke his circulation round, but that was still making the best of a stupid job. Screwed up again.

  It wasn’t as if he’d expected paradise. The last time he really spoke to Phil and Billy would have been the funeral, maybe five years ago, or six. Somebody told him later he’d punched Billy after the service, but he couldn’t remember and Billy had never mentioned it. Looking at it that way, things were going pretty well. Nobody punched so far. Still, he couldn’t think why they’d asked him up, why to stay so close together with nothing to do but be inside and stare at each other or be outside and stare at that.

  Which was no bad deal. Outside had been very impressive, before they’d come even half of the way. Tom had sat in the front seat, next to Billy, followed the line of the road, and seen and seen until his eyebrows ached. He’d looked at mountains on postcards, calendars, even been up here once before, or somewhere fairly similar, but it had never seemed like this. Now there was nothing between him and all this sight, all this everything with just a little snow flashed high and close under the sky to make it entirely perfect.

  ‘What’s up?’

  Billy had nudged his attention from a particularly monumental assembly of light and rock.

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘What’s the matter, you feel sick, or something?’

  ‘No. I’m fine. Why?’

  ‘Just, you were making these wee noises. Are you an OK boy?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘You sounded like a dog having its ears scratched.’

  Phil leaned his head forward between the front seats. ‘Having its where scratched?’

  ‘Ears. Ears I said and ears I meant. If I’d wanted to say arse, I would have. But as I would have remarked, before I was interrupted, probably our brother is happy. Favourably affected by the view.’

  ‘That right, Tommy?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s right.’

  Tom remembered being disappointed with himself Everything he’d said seemed flat when inside he had this big shining feeling that he wanted to turn into good words, or singing, or just some kind of expression, for God’s sake. All he could manage was sounding like a mildly happy dog.

  The landscape had calmed down a little until they were almost at the caravan. For a few miles the road had curled between banks and low trees, cosy. Then Billy slowed to a stop.

  ‘OK Tom. You close your eyes now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Close your eyes. I did this with Phil the first time he was here, don’t worry. It’s the best way, you’ll thank me. Eh, Phil?’

  ‘Are we that far already? Sure. Sure, you should do it, Tom. We’ll not explain, it’ll only spoil it, but we’re not winding you up, I promise. Go on and close your eyes.’

  Billy let the car ease forward and Tom felt a turn and the beginning of a blind descent, everything slightly exaggerated so that he found it reassuring to brace his hands against the dashboard. Their motion smoothed down to nothing again and he heard the handbrake bite, then Phil speaking close to his head.

  ‘A prize for our Tom coming with us. Want to take a look?’

  They were perched over the brow of a hill and for half a breath the grey fall of the road drew his eye away to the right. Then he saw, forgot his breathing, drifted beyond his smile.

  The valley paused while he blinked down along it, smoke-coloured slopes stepping out in strict perspective on to a dove-blue finger of loch. Like a scene for a shadow play with Balinese curls in the black of the highest pines.

  He didn’t think he’d known about Balinese curls, but in his mind they appeared to be quite at home here.

  A noise broke his attention. It was Phil and Billy, both groaning like happy dogs. Or happy people – they’d been trying to make him feel at home and he’d suddenly found himself noticing what very good men they were and wondering why it hadn’t been clear before, and if he should tell them.

  ‘How’s that suit you then, sir?’

  He’d cleared his throat carefully and heard himself say, ‘Not bad, is it?’ which made Phil and Billy break out laughing, not being polite or even making fun of him, just big, daft laughter, to do with what he’d said. It was the first time he could remember having really made someone laugh that way which was why he’d been laughing, too, until his vision blurred.

  He was beginning to feel content again now, sliding his way over the l
ong twist of indestructible flotsam some high tide had left on the pale shore grass. Plastic from all over the world, maybe – or just across the Sound. Not very romantic, either way. He tried not to let it spoil his mood and lifted his face to the wind that could have rolled in all the miles from America, over the backs of sharks and submarines and undersea cables dreaming.

  He was fast exhausting the final yards of land, heading for a tiny buckled jetty, heaped together out of oddly small stones. The whole thing twisted down to nothing like a ruined roof set on the waves. He sprinted the last distance, pushing himself right to the unsteady edge, enjoying the little flutter every move in the loosened cobbles gave his heart. The rocks were bound round with a single strip of rusty metal. There was something brave about that, he liked it.

  In any direction, whatever he saw seemed like the end of everything – the grey numbed air, the cold blue suck of the water, or the high, mad spines of stone that raced up out of the grass clear along the promontory as if God had planted a terrible city there and then thought better of it. He shut his eyes and listened, unsteadied, smiling, fractionally hypnotised by the constant boiling hiss at his feet and the buffeting sky. They must have been some people, the ones who lived here, who built the church and raised the cross on the little hill. But he was here now, so he must be some people, too.

  The warmth in the caravan was almost shocking, it rushed into his lungs and between his fingers with a kind of sour, friendly damp.

  ‘Is that you, then?’ Billy darted his head out from behind the living-room curtain. There was something hesitant about him, enquiring. ‘You look cold.’

  ‘Didn’t take my jacket, did I? In too much of a hurry. Daft. Sorry.’

  ‘Well, I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘I can do it.’

  ‘I know you can. But . . .’

  Billy moved forward and began to organise his galley; finding, adjusting, spooning, wiping whatever was needed, just so. There was something very comfortable about the way he moved, with now and then a flickered look at Tom.

  ‘Even though you can, I would like to.’

  ‘No, fine. That’s fine. You’ve just been running about, you know – being the housewife for us.’

  ‘But I’m used to that. I have to look after myself all the time. Phil’s got Mary and you . . . well, I don’t remember you being very domestic.’