A Line of Blood

by McPherson, Ben

  My telephone rang. Work. I switched it off and put it back in my pocket.

  ‘What are you thinking, Alex?’

  ‘That we really should stop smoking.’

  ‘Really? That’s it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK, so the day I lost the bracelet was about six weeks ago when you were away. Bryce came round and said he’d been expecting company and been let down, and he had an open bottle of wine, and some cold cuts that needed to be eaten. And I told him that I already ate, and that Max was in bed, and that I had to be there in the house.

  ‘And he said the wine was too good to waste, that he paid £65 for it, and he could bring the meat over, and we could eat it here in our garden, and that way I wouldn’t have to leave Max; and I said sure; I mean, why not? Guy got stood up, I thought. He’s lonely. He doesn’t do women. He bought a $100 bottle of wine. Where’s the harm?’

  I turned over and lay on my back, looked up at our bedroom window. Even from here you could see the paint was peeling from the frame. Other people – my father – would notice that window and do something about it. Me, I noticed it and forgot it again. We would do nothing about it, and in five years we would have to replace the whole thing.

  ‘So,’ said Millicent, ‘so we drank the wine and ate the food, and then he said he had a heater in his garden, and it was getting a little cold, so why didn’t we go there and drink some more wine. And I said no, but he was really persistent. And I guess I kind of thought maybe he wanted more than company, but I was just a little drunk and I was missing you and he was kind of funny and sharp, and I still pretty much thought he was gay. And I figured if I left Max’s door open, and opened the bathroom window that I would pretty much hear if anything was wrong.’

  ‘You left Max on his own?’

  ‘Please, Alex. Let me get to the end, and then if you want to hate me you can.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Deal.’

  ‘So I was sitting there in his garden, and he starts to say some nice things to me, about how he thinks I’m pretty and kind, and about the way I dress, and how he’s always liked Americans more than English people, and how I seem like so much more to him than just a wife and mother; and I still haven’t figured out that he’s interested, which makes me a klutz, I know. Because as soon as I say it out loud I can see it’s a pretty obvious come-on.

  ‘And then he goes indoors and comes out with a bottle of Calvados and I ask him why he hasn’t brought glasses and he says we can drink it from the bottle, and I know then that it’s really time to leave. And I get up, and he tries to kiss me, and I step back, and I trip over, and he puts his hand out and grabs my wrist, and pulls me back to my feet. And then he tries to kiss me again, and I let him.’

  I turned to look at her. She uprooted a small handful of grass. She didn’t want to look at me, but I could tell she expected me to say something. I watched her pull up another handful of grass, then I turned away.

  ‘I kissed him. Not for long. But I kissed him. That’s the bad thing that I did, and for that I’m so very sorry, Alex. But I did no more. I did nothing more than kiss him. And then he touched me and I broke away from him.’

  ‘So what sort of signal was he getting from you before this happened?’

  ‘Alex, I don’t know what sort of signal he was getting from me. I was drunk, and confused, and he was drunk too. If I told you nothing happened, I’d be lying to you.’

  I went upstairs and peed. Washed and dried my hands very precisely, trying to still the thoughts that arced across my mind. I looked out through the open bathroom window.

  Bryce’s bedroom and bathroom faced the back too. If he’d wanted to, he could have seen a lot of Millicent from his freshly painted windows. I wondered darkly if he had coveted his neighbour’s wife, or more specifically his neighbour’s wife’s ass.

  When I came down Millicent was sitting in exactly the same position. It looked for all the world as if nothing was wrong. She was telling me the truth: I saw that now. I wanted to take her in my arms, hold her and tell her just how much I loved her. We could get through this. A drunken kiss and a flash of flesh on flesh were tiny pricks of light in the cosmic chart of infidelity.

  After some time, I said, ‘You have an alibi.’

  ‘I mean, I was at the radio station. Is that an alibi? Why would they even be thinking that way, Alex? They never once used the word alibi.’

  ‘They asked me not to leave the country.’

  ‘You’re not serious.’

  I took out the police photograph of the bracelet.

  ‘Right there. Look. A little tag with a number on it. Looks to me like an evidence tag. I’m guessing the reason they gave you the picture and not the bracelet itself is that the bracelet is evidence in case they decide that they want to bring someone to trial. And given that they’ve asked me not to leave the country, I suspect the person they would be thinking of bringing to trial would be me.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, Alex.’

  ‘Isn’t that what they call reasonable suspicion or just cause in American TV series? What do they call it here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘No, neither do I. So, what are you thinking right now, Millicent? Because right now I’m thinking things aren’t good. Because I seem to be implicated in our next-door neighbour’s suicide. How did your bracelet get there?’

  She shook her head. That same sad look again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I need to get a lawyer, don’t I?’

  ‘Seems weird that you can’t leave the country. I guess a lawyer would be a good idea.’

  I searched the bare patch in the grass. The ladybird had disappeared, and a few ants could be seen ambling around.

  She moved towards me, took my hand and placed it on her thigh. I let it rest there. ‘The truth is,’ she said, ‘the truth is I get lonely when you go away, Alex.’ I let her put her head on my shoulder, reached up and rubbed the nape of her neck. ‘It’s like since Sarah you sublimated something,’ she said, ‘like your energy’s all in your work.’

  We went inside, climbed the stairs, failed to fuck. Millicent fell asleep nestled against my chest. I lay on my back and cradled her to me like a child, but knew that I would not find sleep.

  Sarah, the little girl we almost had; Millicent, the wife who would not discuss losing Sarah.

  At three fifteen someone rang the doorbell and knocked on the door. I stayed where I was; I didn’t want to disturb Millicent.

  We love each other: of that there is no doubt. It isn’t love that’s the problem here.

  7

  Millicent’s phone rang. After four rings it stopped. I went downstairs, found the phone on the kitchen table and checked the screen. A missed call from Aileen Mercer. A bolt of guilt. Why hadn’t I called my mother? I found my own phone. It was lying face down on the living-room sofa, hidden against the black leather. Two missed calls. I rang her back.

  ‘Alexander, it’s about your father.’ My mother was one of those women who still had a telephone voice; her staccato formality made it hard to know how she was.

  ‘What’s happened, Mum?’

  ‘Ach, it’ll turn out to be nothing, I’m sure.’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘I’ve some concerns about him. He’s been hospitalised. Mainly tests.’

  ‘What do you mean, mainly tests?’

  ‘An electrocardiogram. Some blood samples.’

  ‘Mum, that doesn’t sound like nothing.’

  ‘He took a little fall, Alexander. I’d to call an ambulance.’

  ‘Do you want me to come up, Mum?’

  ‘Ach, no, you’re awfully busy down there, son.’

  Millicent was awake when I went back upstairs. I told her about the call.

  ‘I should ring her,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t need to do that.’

  ‘Sure I do.’

  I lay on the bed. Downstairs Millicent spoke to my mother for ten minutes. I could hear the coaxing softness in her v
oice, the gentle laughter, the long silences she left for my mother to fill. Why are you so good at this?

  Something deep within me had feared that Millicent and my mother would hate each other. But a year into our marriage, when I had started to trust that there was a reality to our love, that I genuinely was more than a work permit to my wife, I had rung my parents in Edinburgh to tell them my old news.

  I suspected my mother minded terribly that I hadn’t wanted her at the wedding, and I wondered whether her long pauses on the phone were because she was crying. She had asked to speak to Millicent, and with great formality welcomed her to the family.

  Millicent was very touched, and profoundly embarrassed: even more so when my mother sent her the little gold bracelet that had belonged to my grandmother. She wrote back to her in the kind of flowing copperplate handwriting that they only teach in American schools, a long letter that she refused to let me read.

  ‘You’re really very well-brought-up, aren’t you, Millicent?’

  ‘What were you expecting, rube-face?’

  ‘Someone less nuanced, I suppose.’

  ‘And yet here you are with me.’

  My mother called Millicent Lassie, and occasionally Girl, and Millicent called my mother Mrs Mercer. They would write each other weekly letters that again neither of them ever let me read; they even spoke regularly on the telephone, which mystified me. My mother hated the telephone. Strange that they should have this bond: what could Millicent know of my mother, or my mother of Millicent?

  My father would openly disparage America at every opportunity, and Millicent would laugh gently, and quietly put him right. ‘No, sir, we really are no more stupid than anyone else. Education may not be fairly distributed, but that is because wealth is concentrated in a very small number of hands, sir. Surely we can agree on that?’

  They never agreed, but my father liked the fact that Millicent called him sir.

  Would I have worked as hard with her parents as she did with mine? It’s a question I’ve never had to answer: Millicent has never allowed me to meet them.

  I heard Millicent end the call, heard her toss the phone on to the table, heard her feet cross the living-room floor and climb the stairs.

  She came in and sat down on the bed.

  ‘OK, so I think maybe you have to face the possibility that this situation is worse than your mother is saying, Alex. I think maybe she really needs you there. She even cried a little.’

  ‘The timing couldn’t be worse, could it?’

  ‘Honey, listen to me: I think your dad had a stroke. That’s pretty much what your mom told me. They didn’t say it to her yet, I guess, because they’re still doing tests, but I think she already read between the lines. She’s scared and you need to be there.’

  The fall. The electrocardiogram. It made sense.

  ‘Millicent?’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’d be lost without you.’

  ‘Sure.’

  The grinding sadness of that last Edinburgh train, all shouting children and glowering men, Fruit Shoots, crisps, six-packs of beer. Millicent had bought my ticket for me; she had sent me out into the London evening, an overnight bag in my hand, long before I needed to go. Now I glowered too, alone at my table, hoping no one would sit down opposite me, hoping people could read it all in my expression. Stay away. All is not well here.

  My thoughts would not settle. My father was seriously ill – Millicent was always right about these things – and my mother would be out of her mind with worry. But when I tried to picture my mother at my father’s bedside I saw only the neighbour: the swollen tongue, the red-encrusted nostril. Please, I thought, don’t let that be my father’s fate.

  That blue-red tongue, I thought, pushing at my wife’s lips. That milk-white hand seeking out her breast.

  She as good as pushed you out of the front door.

  I sat, trying to feel the moment again. Did she want me gone? No. No, she had held me very tightly, her cheek pressed against mine. She hadn’t broken the embrace. I was the one who had pulled gently away from her.

  Millicent had thrown her arms around me then, kissed me very deeply. Her eyes did not flick to some imagined lover somewhere just out of sight.

  And yet, I thought. That pawing hand, that searching tongue. I worried at them; I couldn’t leave them alone.

  She as good as pushed you out of the door.

  My mother was not at the station. I rang her. There was no answer so I took a taxi to the hospital. Millicent had written the number of the ward on the train ticket that she had printed for me. For a moment I saw myself running from one end of the building to another, hopelessly lost, but the hospital was modern and the signs were clear.

  I was surprised to find two nurses at the Gerontology desk. It was almost one.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Hello,’ said the younger of the two.

  ‘Alex Mercer,’ I said. ‘That’s my name, and it’s also my father’s name.’

  The older nurse whispered something to the younger nurse.

  ‘Alex Mercer is a patient here,’ I said. ‘Just to be clear.’

  The younger nurse was looking not at me but past me. She stood up, and put a hand on my shoulder. So much kindness. Then she put her other hand on my other shoulder and turned me. How very gentle she was.

  It was then that I saw my mother, stiff-backed on a white plastic chair, immaculate in her dark blue fitted jacket and skirt. On a little table beside her was a cup of tea, two pink wafers crossed on a napkin beside it.

  My mother’s dark eyes were on me, and she smiled as I approached. ‘The nurses have been very good,’ she said. ‘Tea in a porcelain cup. Hello, Laddie.’

  I took her in my arms, felt her crumple a little. Then she stiffened again. She would not cry. Not yet; not here.

  ‘I had to, you see. They told me he wasn’t coming back.’

  The young nurse touched my elbow gently.

  ‘Would you like me to find you a chair, Mr Mercer? A cup of tea perhaps? And for you, Mrs Mercer?’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Yes, please.’ Why so kind?

  ‘I had to, Alex, son,’ said my mother. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  My father had suffered a massive stroke. Millicent had been right. ‘I didn’t want to worry you unduly, son,’ said my mother. ‘Then they told me that he wasn’t coming back. I mean, there was a theoretical chance, or some such, but it was awfully small. And I made the consultant tell me what the percentages meant, and she said your father would never return to me, not as himself. So I took a decision. I’m so very sorry, son.

  ‘I know I could have waited until you came,’ my mother said, ‘but I don’t think your father would have wanted you to see him like that. I could tell that the spirit was gone from him.’

  My mother insisted on driving home from the hospital. It took her some time to find a parking space, and in the end we had to walk for five minutes to reach the flat. Dark sandstone loomed behind monumental trees. No chickenshops or foot pursuits here. Residents’ associations and doors in approved colours. Pragmatic elegance.

  My mother took the stairs briskly when we arrived, installed herself at the dining table still wearing her coat; she filled two tiny crystal glasses with gin, topped them off with vermouth, and handed one to me.

  ‘To your father.’ She drained her glass, set it back on the table. Then she exhaled heavily, seemed to become a little shorter, a little older.

  ‘Fifty years married,’ she said. ‘Do you know, I thought I was too old.’ She gave a sad little laugh. ‘I was twenty-eight.’

  I reached across and took her hand. ‘I know, Mum.’

  ‘Well, that was old.’ She poured herself another drink. ‘He was a good man, but he never loved me in quite the way I loved him.’

  She gave a little half-sob, then pulled a handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed at her eye.

  The walls were the
same as they’d ever been: dark salmon pink and country-house green, white skirtings and door frames. It showed off the pictures, my mother always said.

  ‘You’re wrong, Mum. He cherished you.’

  ‘No. No, Alex, I’m not wrong. I wasn’t his first.’

  I took her hand. ‘Come on, Mum.’

  She went into the living room. When she came back, she had a photograph in her hand.

  ‘That’s her.’

  A woman, strikingly beautiful, her mirror-black hair in a single braid, a calligraphic downstroke across the white cotton shirt. Behind her a light grey ocean. A darker grey sky. Cloudless.

  Japan, I thought. My father had been stationed in Japan before Korea. They had sent him out in a troop ship. Taught him to drive and fire large ordnance.

  ‘Noriko,’ said my mother. ‘That was her name.’

  The woman’s pose was Western but formal, unsmiling; all the same there was a warmth in her eyes, a secret shared with the man behind the camera.

  ‘Did Dad take this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I looked at my mother. She was watching me for my reaction; there was no anger, no sadness now, just a resigned patience.

  ‘She’s beautiful, is she not?’ she said at last.

  There was a searching look in her eyes. I fought the urge to say something soothing.

  ‘Yes, Mum, she is beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you, Alexander.’ A little smile of satisfaction. My mother set great store by honesty. She didn’t want me to protect her.

  ‘He told me all about her. He wanted me to have all the facts at my disposal. Before I said yes to marriage.’ She nodded, as if to herself. ‘They were very much in love, you know. They wrote to each other, all through the war in Korea, and when he got home he kept writing, and so did Noriko. Then suddenly her letters stopped, and your father could only assume that she had ended the relationship. A terrible blow to him.’