‘Oh.’ Anna’s eyes bored into mine. ‘And what surprise is that, Andy. Do tell.’
Inwardly, I groaned. Now I was really going to suffer. ‘Pat take your brother up to your room and watch a video,’ I said. The boys had to get out of the room before it got too nasty.
‘No,’ screamed Anna, ‘Stay here, both of you and I’ll show you what I do to liars.’
‘Pat, take Ryan upstairs now.’ Any authority I had was in my voice.
I watched gratefully as Pat quickly grabbed his brother’s arm and pulled him up the stairs. Ryan was screaming.
‘Look what you’ve done,’ Anna said. ‘My son is traumatised and part of your lies, all because you wanted to see your precious cunt of a mother.’
‘You’re twisting things. And don’t call my mother that.’
‘Aye, you’re right. My apologies.’ She bowed mockingly, ‘A cunt’s a useful thing.’
‘How can such a beautiful woman be so ugly?’ The words were out before I could stop them. I backed away from her. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.’
‘I’ll make you sorry you piece of scum.’ That dark light was in her eyes. The light that signalled there was no way to stop her. All I could do was curl into a ball and take my punishment. Like a man.
After what seemed hours, the blows ceased. With caution I looked up. I had to protect my eyes. Anna’s fury had dissipated. The tide of her rage had gone out, leaving her as limp as piece of seaweed on the beach. She hunched forward, fighting to catch her breath.
‘See … see … what you make me do?’
‘I’m sorry.’ I shouldn’t have driven her to this.
‘You … lie. You … meet people behind my back. Am I such an ogre that you don’t want your mother to be in my company?’ Her face was twisted with anguish.
‘It’s all my fault. I’m sorry.’
‘Am I so awful, Andy? Do you really hate me?’ A tear began its silent trail down her pale cheek.
‘I don’t hate you…’ I began to try and reassure her and stopped myself. What the hell was I doing? Just a moment ago she was bent on breaking a few of my bones and now she was making me feel sorry for her.
‘Don’t hate me, Andy. I need you. If I didn’t have you…’ Her voice tailed off as she let me imagine what she was capable of doing if I wasn’t with her.
‘Don’t … don’t,’ I said and stepped forward. Then paused. A stew of conflicting emotions swirling in my mind. She needed me, but she couldn’t stop herself from hurting me. Despite myself I stepped forward and took her into my arms. I just couldn’t stand by and watch her pain. Not when I was the cause of it.
‘This is too much, Anna.’ I stroked her hair, trying not to wince as pain flared in my side with each movement. She was tiny. Vulnerable. Her head bent forward, hair falling to either side of her face. I could see the row of vertebrae on the back of her neck.
I could break her like a twig. I imagined my hands round her throat. Squeezing for all I was worth. In my mind I saw her face go red and her eyes bulge with the agony and the desperate need to suck in some air.
Then it would all be over. All of this misery.
The image was so vivid, I brought my hands to my sides, as if part of my mind was worried I would actually carry it out.
Fingernails digging into the palms of my hands, I took a deep breath. And another. Enough about her pain. What about mine? Did I deserve this? Was I worth more?
I wasn’t sure I was.
Finally I managed to speak. ‘I need to go and see to the boys.’
Upstairs I knocked on Pat’s door. I was pretty sure they’d be in there together.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes,’ was the soft reply. They were on the bed and Pat was propped up against some pillows while Ryan was curled into his side. The TV screen was black and silent.
‘Thought you were coming up to watch a video.’ At the sound of my voice in the room Ryan jumped up. Fresh tears flowed down his face.
‘Dad.’ He ran to me, arms wide. I pulled him to me and studied his brother. Pat stayed on the bed, pulling his knees up to his chin. He had the air of an octogenarian.
‘Didn’t want to watch a video,’ Pat said, his face as blank as the TV screen.
‘Do you want to come back downstairs? I’ll make us some lunch.’
‘No, I’m not hungry.’ Something imposed itself on his face, then disappeared as quickly as it arrived.
As I trudged wearily down the stairs with Ryan tight against my chest, I tried to decipher Pat’s expression. Was it disappointment? Was it pity?
6
Following the ‘Ganny’ incident, we had a couple of weeks of calm. Anna apologised several times for ‘punishing’ me in front of the boys, and I vowed not to drive her to such an extreme ever again. In fact I steeled myself to do whatever I could to placate Anna. Whatever it took to help her keep control of her temper, I would do. My motivation was not fear of the pain that she could and would inflict, but the mental image of me with my hands round her neck. That and the look on Pat’s face after the fighting had died down.
The following evening, I shouted through to Pat in the bedroom to bring me a towel while I bathed Ryan. He ignored me and continued to watch Scooby Doo.
‘Pat. Will you bring me a towel, please.’ I wasn’t the most patient person that day. Still he ignored me. Bundling Ryan, dripping wet, into my arms, I walked through to the bedroom, stood in front of Pat’s eyeline and switched off the TV.
‘Daaaad.’
‘Will you go and get me a clean towel?’ I couldn’t control my wife but I there was no way I was going to let my son walk all over me.
‘I was watching Scooby,’ he protested.
‘And I asked you to help me. Now go and get me a towel or the TV stays off for the rest of the day.’
When he brought me the towel, he threw it at my feet.
‘Can I put Scooby Doo back on?’ he asked, his eyebrows drawn tightly together. Without waiting for my reply, he walked back into his bedroom and the cartoon noises filled my ears.
For the remainder of that evening and over the course of the next few days, this behaviour was repeated each time our purposes crossed.
He would defer to Anna but completely ignore any requests I made of him. Friendly queries became shouted demands, became lost causes. My son seemed to have lost all respect for me.
Talking to him won nothing but silent reproval. He quickly became articulate with face and body language: crossed arms, a glance to the floor, and other signals became his mode of contact with me. Words were used only with Ryan and Anna. At a loss as to how I could win back his affection, I did nothing, hoping that time would return the real Pat to me. A fight with his younger brother, however, made me act.
The boys were in the back garden playing. Anna had popped out to the shop to buy dessert for our dinner, and I was in the kitchen peeling potatoes. Any parent can quickly recognise the message loud in their child’s cries: hunger, boredom, I want attention, can eventually all be recognised by their pitch and intensity. The cry Ryan issued that afternoon was about pain and lots of it. Dropping the knife, I was out the kitchen and in the garden as fast as I could move.
‘What the…’ was all I managed to say before Ryan flew into my arms. His small face was purple and dripping with tears. Teeth and tonsils were exposed as he fought to show me just how upset he was.
Pat stood defiantly over Ryan’s bike.
‘He wouldn’t let me sit on it,’ Pat said.
‘It is his.’ I was bewildered at the change in him. Normally where Ryan was concerned, he displayed the patience of a she-lion as its cubs trampled all over it.
‘I just wanted to sit on his stupid bike…’
‘Go to your room, Pat.’ I controlled my anger.
‘All he kept saying was ‘mine, mine’.
‘Go to your room, Pat.’ Ryan was still screaming in my ear.
‘I don’t want his stupid bike…’
&nb
sp; I lost it. ‘Pat, go to your fucking room.’
Stunned, he was silent for a moment. I had never spoken to him like that before. Then tears swamped him as he ran into the house and up to his bedroom. This display of tears from Pat quietened Ryan. His screams were now quiet sobs. Just then Anna’s face appeared at the door. Her expression one big question mark.
‘Honestly, I’m out of the house five minutes and World War Three breaks out. What’s going on?’ she asked.
Ryan heard her and freshened his sobs. More sympathy from Mum was what was required obviously. I handed him to her and feeling like a spare pair of underpants at a wedding where all the men wore kilts, I stood and watched as Anna rocked Ryan, his face returning to a healthy pink.
What had happened to my adorable eldest son? I couldn’t just let this go on any longer, I needed to speak with him.
He was in the foetal position on his bed when I entered his room.
‘Can I speak to you, son?’
‘Go away.’ His voice was muffled by a pillow, but his meaning was clear enough.
‘We need to talk, son. You know that it’s not fair to hit your wee brother.’
‘He hit me first.’ He sat bolt upright, like an exclamation mark.
‘Was it sore?’
‘Yes.’
‘Pat, Pat.’ I sat beside him. ‘Look at the size of him compared to you. You’re twice as big as him.’
‘It was still sore. Look…’ He rolled up his trouser leg. His shin was an angry red and looked badly swollen.
‘How did that happen?’
‘Ryan hit me with a stick.’
‘It does look sore,’ I thought aloud.
‘So I was right to hit him back.’ Pat seized on my words.
‘No, no, no. You could do him some real damage if you hit him hard. He’s only small.’
His eyes met mine for the first time. He said nothing, but his expression betrayed that he was processing my argument. He looked as if he was about to speak. Changed his mind.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Is that why you don’t hit Mum back?’
‘Yes.’ My heart was a lump of stone. ‘Compared to me she is only small.’
‘And you could really hurt her if you hit her back.’
‘Yes.’
‘But, was it sore when she hit you?’ I saw this as one last attempt at vindication of his own actions.
‘Yes, it was sore, really sore.’ I rubbed the side of my face as remembered pain echoed there.
‘But you didn’t hit her back because you could hurt her more than she could hurt you.’ He affirmed and crawled onto my lap, where he curled up, thumb in his mouth.
7
Friday morning and there was a memo on my desk. Anna wasn’t going to like this. My presence was requested in the Campbeltown branch. It was from the Regional Manager’s office; I could no more disobey it than I could choose Pat over Ryan.
Anna would not be happy.
There had been an emergency, the staff couldn’t cope, it was a flagship branch for the area, it couldn’t be allowed to get any worse and I had performed so well on my last visit … Some emergency, I thought. A phone call was the usual method of communication in this event. The memo filled the page with inanities and corporate clichés that were supposed to motivate and impress. A curling lip was my response.
Who wrote this drivel? The word ‘clearly’ prefixed every statement and the phrase ‘going forward’ indicated, several times, that I was needed to help build a branch for the future. A snort erupted from my pursed lips at ‘show the staff there what good looks like’. I would have to do all this in three weeks.
I was to be accompanied by Sheila Hunter. Flight tickets were included. The shrill ring of the phone interrupted my reading. Sheila’s voice filled my ear.
‘I take it you’ve spoken with Roy about Campbeltown?’ she asked.
‘No, was he supposed to call me? I’ve received a memo about it though. What the hell’s going on? And why did I have to find out about it in a bloody memo.’
‘I’m sorry, Andy. Roy was supposed to phone you at the beginning of the week. Probably too busy.’
‘Probably couldn’t be arsed.’
‘You were over there a couple of years ago, weren’t you?’ Sheila asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, the guy that you helped get organised…’
‘Sandy?’
‘Yeah, him. Well apparently, he’s had some sort of a brainstorm. He’s informed the local press that he’s setting up on his own; some sort of consultancy for business customers to help them get the most out of the financial market place. He told the local rag that the bank were happy for their customers to shop about and that he was the right man to help them do it.’
‘What?’ I was astounded. What a strange thing to say. And to hope that the bank would hear nothing about it. ‘I didn’t think Campbeltown was known for its wacky baccy.’
‘Well, he’s certainly been taking something. Mushrooms maybe.’
‘And you and I have to clear up his mess.’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Why the memo?’ I thought aloud.
‘Dunno,’ said Sheila. ‘A phone call’s the way we usually do things.’ She paused; something had just occurred to her. ‘Anna won’t be too happy.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked – too quickly.
‘Well,’ Sheila answered, ‘she’ll be on her own with two boys. That’s a lot of work.’
‘I know.’ I groaned inwardly at my defensive response. What must Sheila think?
‘Anyway, I’ve booked us in at The Ardsheil. Is that okay with you?’
‘Aye, that’s fine. It’s a nice wee hotel. Has one of the best selections of whisky you’re likely to find.’
Knowing how negatively Anna would react, I waited until the boys were asleep that night before telling her.
‘Bloody bank,’ she said. ‘Why you? Is there no one else in that shit organisation?’
She was standing facing me wearing one of my t-shirts. I was sitting up in bed. I shrugged in response to her question. When I saw her standing there, anger tight in her jaw, the idea of going away for a few weeks was quite appealing. She folded her arms.
‘You didn’t ask for this did you?’ Suspicion filled her hard stare.
‘No. No of course I didn’t.’ I’d better make this convincing, I thought. ‘Why the fuck would I want to go to that shit hole?’ The lies dripped easily from my tongue. ‘It has one pub, the hotel’s a dump, and the folk there are the unfriendliest bunch you’re ever likely to meet.’
She was on the bed quickly and tugged at some of my chest hair until she elicited a response. ‘If I ever find out that you volunteered for this…’ The threat was stark in her tone and all the more frightening for going unsaid. How would she react, I wondered, if she knew that I was going over with a female member of staff – an attractive one at that?
The flight to Campbeltown was at the ridiculously early time of 6.55 a.m. Sheila admitted her unease at the first sight of our aircraft.
‘God, it’s tiny. I hope you’re not frightened of flying.’
As I climbed the half-dozen stairs into the plane, I answered, ‘No, not at all.’
Bending over to avoid bouncing my head off the roof and noticing that it looked even smaller inside, I considered that I may have to review this opinion. The craft had two seats lining one side and one seat on the other. When I sat down on a two-seater, it was obvious that only a two-year-old could accompany me with any degree of comfort.
Sheila and I were the only passengers and we received the full attentions of the flight crew, who were equal in number.
‘First time flying to Campbeltown?’ asked the pilot. He was sitting at the wheel, looking over his shoulder at us. The knot of his tie was all but concealed by the right wing of his collar and his hair obeyed its own set of rules as it skewered the air around it.
‘Yes,’ I answered, confidence falling a
s the door was shut. The last time I went there I drove and at this point the pleasures of the road were definitely calling.
‘Don’t worry, old son. These wee planes have a great safety record.’ He beamed at me. ‘Right.’ The pilot clapped his hands. ‘We’ll soon be in the air. There’s the exit.’ He pointed over our heads at the way we had just come in. ‘And your lifejacket is under the seat. Any questions? No, good. Enjoy the flight.’ He turned around and strapped himself in.
‘This should be fun.’ Sheila smiled. She had chosen the seat in front of me. We could both see every move the pilot made.
We were quickly airborne and I looked around me, trying to get my bearings. Wings cutting through the crisp early-morning sky, we followed the River Clyde through Glasgow’s urban sprawl, out to the Firth of Clyde and the sea. From there our flight path was Bute, Arran and down the length of Kintyre to Campbeltown.
When we arrived at the branch, the staff were almost pathetically grateful that someone with authority was there to help out. The erstwhile manager had obviously been planning his escape for some time; it looked like he had done nothing for months. Some borrowing propositions were dangerously late, cheques had been paid that were piling some customers deeper and deeper into debt, and his customer files were a disgrace.
There was a lot of work to be done and I, apparently, was the man to do it. The bonus was that I was free from the distractions of home and able to get a full night’s sleep, and subsequently do a full day’s work.
There was one distraction from home, however. Every evening at around nine o’clock, once the boys were in bed, Anna would phone. She insisted that she phone me as it would save on my hotel bill. I didn’t have the energy to point out that the bank would be picking up the tab for the telephone. Besides knowing how jealous Anna could be, I was fairly certain that she wanted to phone me to make sure that I was where I said I was.
‘Is the pub shut, then?’ was her typical greeting.
‘Been chatting up the local slappers?’ was another.
A Suitable Lie Page 19