Sweet William

by Iain Maitland

  I have to be tough. And hard. For William’s sake, because that’s what’s important. That’s what matters. Really matters.

  William. My little boy.

  That’s all.

  Nothing else.

  “Would you like to come back with us and have a cup of tea?” is what she says next.

  And I look up at her, my eyes still full of tears. And she smiles at me. And I smile at her. And, unexpectedly, I find myself nodding and saying, “Yes, yes please, that would be really nice.”

  And you know what? As we get up together, it suddenly occurs to me straight out of the blue that she – Julia – almost certainly has a car and money and just about anything else I could want to get William away from here nice and safely.

  Perfect. Just fucking perfect.

  Safe? Of course she’s safe. What do you mean, safe?

  What the fuck do you think I’m going to do next?

  5.00pm SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER

  “How long do you let him sleep for?” asked the old man, sipping his cup of tea.

  “Usually for about an hour or so after his lunch. It’s a bit hit and miss today, though,” the younger woman replied from across the room. “But if he doesn’t have a nap now, he’ll get tired and edgy at the fair and we’ll pay for it later. He’ll fight going to sleep tonight.”

  “It can’t be an easy life,” replied the man. He turned and listened for the old woman and the younger man who had gone through the kitchen into the back garden. In a quieter voice, he added, “She doesn’t mean it . . . what she says . . . Will was too young to understand how to play anyway. That’s all. It’s just the way it comes out.”

  The younger woman thought for a few moments as she packed the snakes and ladders game away for him. She had always liked the old man, thinking he had a softness about him that balanced the sharpness of the old woman. She could talk to him. She debated whether she should share some of her thoughts.

  “Are you coming to the funfair with us?” she asked eventually.

  “We’ll see,” he answered. “We’ll see what she wants to do. I struggle after a while, what with the standing about. I had to sit down for ages this morning when I went to the shops. Old age, I’m afraid. I’d hold everyone up. And the crowds . . .” He sighed.

  “You’re not so old,” she smiled at him. “And you could walk with Will. See who’s quickest.”

  He smiled back. “She changed so much when Roger died and then his Laura took the girlies back to her parents. New Zealand. We’ve not seen them since. Just cards. It’s made her . . .” He searched for the right word.

  “Demanding? Controlling?”

  “No, no . . . not intentionally anyway . . . losing Roger nearly destroyed her. And she thinks the two girls were taken away from her and it has made her rather bitter. She wants everything to be just so. Perfect. She can’t handle toddler tantrums. We never had any of that when ours were small.”

  He paused, looking at the younger woman for her encouragement to say more. “It’s the way it comes out. She doesn’t mean to be nasty. It’s not so much demanding as . . . disappointed. Everything just seems to disappoint her these days. Everyone . . . it’s not about you or Will.”

  “And Rick disappoints her? Because he’s not as perfect as Roger was?” she answered back.

  “No, I didn’t mean that either, Natalie, not like that. I meant losing her son. Either son. She’d have been the same if it had been Richard. That’s what I meant.”

  The younger woman shook her head, “She wanted a perfect grandson. Rick’s son.”

  He shrugged. “No, not exactly. I mean, you know . . . we know things haven’t been easy for you . . . for you both. What you did was wonderful, really. Marvellous. The poor lamb. He’s a good little lad really. She just doesn’t cope well with anything that’s not just so. And this diabetes thing and all that goes with it unsettles her. Hypo-this and hyper-that. She doesn’t know what to say or do. She doesn’t know what to talk to you about. She feels helpless.”

  The younger woman looked sceptical. She remembered glances and looks and the casual words of hurt from the old woman over the years. From way back, well before Roger had died. It was true, she thought, that the old woman had got worse since then, but the sense of superiority, the controlling nature and the nastiness when everyone and everything wasn’t as she wanted, had always been there, she thought.

  “Rick doesn’t stand up to her, that’s the problem,” she responded at last.

  “No, well no. That’s not it really. No, that’s not fair. It’s not a matter of being hard with her, she needs sympathy. That’s the thing to do. It’s not always easy, I know. I find it . . . a challenge at times. There are moments when I could just . . . but she needs to be jollied along, not have some sort of confrontation.” He shook his head, not sure whether this conversation had gone as he had hoped; to calm a tense atmosphere, to soothe things over. He hesitated for a moment or two.

  “If you don’t mind me saying, Natalie, I don’t think you . . .” the old man started to say something else and then stopped as the back door was opened and he heard the old woman and the younger man coming back into the kitchen.

  The little boy called out from upstairs, “Mama?”

  “Here we go again,” said the younger woman brushing past the older one on her way to the staircase.

  5.12pm SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER

  You know what I’ve got? Right now?

  Options, that’s what.

  Big fat fucking options.

  They told us all about options in the annexe, those of us with a chance of getting out of there, that is. How option one could take us one way (and not a very nice way if I remember) and how option two could take us to happy ever after.

  Mind you, working in a supermarket and living in a bedsit for the rest of your life seemed to be the basis of option two, which isn’t my idea of happy ever after, I can tell you.

  They wouldn’t tell me what option three was and got quite pissy when I began asking about it, but there you go – that’s counsellors for you. Mad as bollocks the lot of them.

  Of course, the nutters – the Sprakes and the Ainsleys of this world – don’t have options. No fucking options at all; neither one, two or a non-existent three. They’ll just spend the rest of their lives in the annexe, twitching and jerking and biting each other when Spink isn’t looking.

  But the rest of us – the normal, ordinary Joes who shouldn’t really be there – do have options. And I am making the most of mine right now. I’m about to start exercising my very own option three – having a fucking good rest of my life.

  I’m sitting here in the mother’s house – Julia’s house now, I guess – like a pig in shit. Well, in one of those fold-back recliner chairs, as a matter of fact. (Not that I have reclined it, that would be rather rude, wouldn’t it?) I’ve a cup of tea in one hand and a shortbread finger in the other.

  She’s now doing something in the kitchen, feeding the dog and tidying around by the sound of it. I think she’s got herself all embarrassed. She was alright on the seafront - rather nice actually – but walking back she went quiet as it got darker, like she might just be regretting inviting me. As though she were having second thoughts. Can’t blame her, really. I’m a normal guy, your regular man about town, but I’m still a stranger to her, aren’t I?

  So I started talking, to cover her embarrassment. I said I’d come up for the day (I didn’t say where from, well you can’t, can you?) and that I was seeing my little boy William later (that took a bit of explaining because she thought I didn’t have any children, but I managed to talk myself around that alright).

  I talked on and on, much more than I’d normally do, quite chatty really, and she smiled and nodded and made the right comments at the right times and I said – to reassure her, like –how I’d just stop for a cup of tea and be on my way as I had to go to fetch William from his auntie’s at 6 o’clock.

  And that seemed to make her feel easier, but she’s st
ill given me tea and a biscuit and then shut herself away in the kitchen with the dog, tidying and straightening up and I don’t know what to do now.

  So I’ve been sitting here, nice and calm (as I always am), just thinking about my options and what I’m going to do next. I was going to snatch the little man from the seafront when it was really dark and crowded, make a dash for the car at the other end of the beach and then drive to Thurrock and blag my way on to a family coach trip to Disneyland in Paris.

  I told you that, didn’t I?

  Remember?

  Easy peasy.

  But I’d be driving that woman’s car, wouldn’t I? The one in the kitchen back in that house in Nottingham? And maybe, just maybe, the cops would be on to it by now.

  And possibly, just possibly, I might not actually get very far.

  If I’m honest, really honest, it might all turn a bit nasty, with me and the little chap being chased across fields.

  I can’t have that, can I?

  It’s all a bit chancy, isn’t it?

  Not so pissing easy, in fact, when I really give it some thought.

  And I haven’t got any money. Not much anyway, only the loose change I snatched from that woman’s house. It would probably be enough to get me and the little one on the train from Ipswich station, but it would hardly get us far or give us enough to go all the way to a new life in the south of France. And I can’t really be doing with hanging about a railway station, not with CCTV and all they have nowadays.

  You can’t get far without proper folding money in your back pocket and that’s a fact.

  So this is where my option three comes in, see? This woman, Julia, has a car – one of those Japanese cars - parked out front. I can see it now, from where I’m sitting. A nice little car – nondescript you’d call it. No one would know I’d be driving that, now would they? No one would look twice or think of stopping me. And she’d not be too out of sorts if I took it – she’d have insurance and stuff like that, for sure.

  And money – I reckon Julia wouldn’t be short of a bob or two. Not if her mother has just died. So she’d have a purse full of cash. And if there wasn’t enough in that, well, she’d have a card. Put one of them in a machine, with the right number, of course, and I could be looking at maybe £250 in tenners; even more depending on the limit she has on it. £500 would see me off to a good start, very nice indeed.

  I’d probably have enough money to get to the south of France and maybe rent a place while I got myself a job. In fact, maybe she’d have a lot of money in the account and I could just keep dipping into it as and when we needed it. Maybe, if she is really shitbag rich, she’d not notice it and even if she did, well, the bank would probably repay her anyway. All in all, I don’t think it would be a big deal for her at all, any of this car and money malarkey.

  But it would make a massive difference to me.

  And William.

  And little William is all that matters to me.

  But I’ve been thinking. Because she’s a very nice lady and I don’t want to let her down, I’ve been thinking of different ways of doing this. It’s not easy, is it? After all, you can’t just take someone’s car and their cash card and all that without them noticing and you can’t really say I’m on the run with my little boy, so do you mind awfully but can I borrow your car to make a getaway? And by the way, can I have your cash card at the same time?

  No, you can’t say that.

  You can’t say that at all, nor anything like it.

  No way.

  I can’t just take them. It’s not right, especially as she’s been so kind to me. The thought has occurred to me, if I’m honest with you. A half-hour or so’s chat and then, just as I’m leaving, I say excuse me while I pop to the loo. That’s alright in someone’s house, so long as you’re just in there for a few moments. You can’t go in for the other, obviously. That wouldn’t be nice. Not when you’re a guest.

  And then, let’s say, I simply find her handbag in the bedroom while she’s standing there waiting for me in the hall. I lift out her keys and her purse and I’m away. But I reckon maybe you’re up to speed with me here. Say she goes to her bag for something or other the moment after I’ve gone, notices, and reports it to the police straightaway. I might be stopped in the car before I got 500 yards out of town.

  But I need another car to get away safely – and one that’s not been reported as stolen.

  And I need money, proper money, to help me and the little man to start over. And I can’t have that reported either.

  So, unless you have a better idea and you won’t because I’ve been sitting here thinking it all through like Albert fucking Einstein, I don’t know what I’m going to do – I need Julia’s car and I need Julia’s money, and I can’t have Julia running to the cops two minutes later. That would fuck me and the little fellow straight off.

  So you tell me – what do I do?

  Can you think?

  Are you thinking of something I might do?

  5.20pm SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER

  “We need to leave, Rick, this is too much,” the young woman hissed under her breath.

  “We can’t,” he whispered back. “It’ll upset them, my mother especially.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  The little boy, sat between them, pulled away from his mama every time she tried to take a prick of blood from a finger.

  “No, Mama, no.”

  She stopped, feeling increasingly flustered as she could hear the old woman and the man in the kitchen, preparing tea, neither of them speaking and making hardly any noise. She knew they were standing there listening to what was happening, and could hear the boy.

  “Let me try . . . William, look at me . . . listen to me, listen to Papa.”

  The little boy turned away from the man and tried to hug his mama. She pushed him back upright, holding his hand firmly and offering it up to his papa. The boy clenched his fist and opened it flat, fingers splayed, and then clenched it again, this time harder, an intense look of concentration on his face.

  Once more and his mama and papa both burst out laughing. The young man said, “That’s just how he used to look when he was doing a poo when he was a baby.” She nodded back as the little boy stopped and looked curiously from one to the other. They both wiped their eyes. He smiled at them, now turning from one to the other, suddenly peaceful.

  “Will,” said the man. “We need to do the tickle on your finger. Be a good boy now and we can go to the funfair. Come on, sit up straight.”

  The little boy sat up. “Fair?” he asked, as his papa pricked the side of one of his fingers.

  “Yes, we’ll go to the funfair and you can go on all of the rides and we’ll watch the procession and do everything. If you’re really good, we can get a balloon and you can let it go over the sea.”

  The little boy turned to his mama, “Mama? Balloon?”

  “Yes,” she replied, “later, after tea. If you’re good. We can get you a red balloon if you like . . . or blue . . . or a bright yellow one. What would you like?”

  The boy thought for a moment as his papa busied about with the blood-testing equipment. “Tea?” he asked.

  She laughed, lifting him up and moving towards the kitchen. “Rick?”

  He frowned, “Not so good. Still too high. Higher actually. We need to get this under control as soon as we can.”

  5.21pm SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER

  She comes back into the room, all calm and mannered, and sits down over by the window. She smiles tightly – nervously, I reckon – as she rests her cup of tea on the table at her side.

  The table is unsteady and she spills the tea into the saucer but doesn’t seem to notice.

  I smile that big reassuring smile I’ve told you about. The one I give at the annual review. She doesn’t look at me.

  She leans back into her chair, moving to get comfortable among the propped-up cushions to either side.

  I smile again. I’m not really sure what to say. This is all new t
o me, this is.

  She looks at me at last and our eyes meet. She has a distant, way-off look about her as though she is thinking.

  “That was my mother’s favourite chair,” she says eventually. “She liked to sit there and do her needlework.”

  I smile once more, ready to make polite conversation while I’m thinking what to do next. “It’s nice,” I say. “Comfy.”

  Now what?

  She reaches into a pocket, takes out a lighter and packet of cigarettes, gesturing them towards me. I shake my head, no, I’ve never smoked. She takes a cigarette, struggling to get it out of the packet. I go to help her, but she waves me back down and I watch as she lights the cigarette, slipping the lighter and packet back into her pocket.

  She leans back again, her head turned to her left as she looks out of the window. She pulls on the cigarette. I can see she is thinking. After a moment or two, she turns to look at me again.

  “So, what are you here for?”

  I go to tell her about William, and how he’s been staying with his auntie for a little holiday and how I’ve come up to get him at six o’clock but she waves her hand to silence me.

  “No,” she says, her voice with a sharper edge to it. “What are you here for?” and she points to the floor; here, this cottage, this room, this chair. What am I doing here right now, here in this cottage?

  I smile at her, not sure what to say.

  “I’ll tell you what you’re here for,” she says. “I’ll tell you why you’re here.” And she looks at me, nodding, with a knowing look on her face.

  I wait for her to go on. To say, or maybe mouth, the words she’s thinking. But she doesn’t. She just sits there looking at me.

  I smile back. Can feel myself blushing. And stirring again. I know what she means. And she knows I know what she means. Is this how it happens? How people do things these days? It’s all unfamiliar to me. I’m not sure what to say.

  All I want, all I really want right now is to be gone from here, to get away and go for William. But I need those keys and some money. And maybe, just maybe, I need something else from her too.