Do anything you like. Go and hide behind the moon if you want. It makes no difference, Eliza. I’ll come and get you when I’m ready.
“BUT WHAT ABOUT YOU?” SHE ASKS HIM LATER WHEN THE SUN has moved into the clouds and out again and he’s asked for the bill and the air is alive with the sound of bottles being chucked in a bin.
“Me?”
“You and Deborah. Do you think you’ll have kids?”
He sighs. “She’s thirty-eight, you know.”
“That’s not old. It’s not old at all.”
“All right, but she doesn’t want to. Never has. Says she’s not maternal, whatever that means.” He rubs at his face. “And I already have one. So I can’t really complain, can I?”
Now Mary stares at him.
“You? You have a child?”
He doesn’t look at her. Flattening the curling paper on the metal dish. Peering at it for a moment. Taking out his wallet.
“That’s right. I do. A boy. He lives with his mother. In London.”
“You were married before?”
He shakes his head. “Not married. Just someone I— An accident. Not quite a one-night stand, but, well, I didn’t know a thing about it till after he was born.”
She tries to think about this. Watching as he places some money on top of the bill. Pushing it to the edge of the table.
“What? You genuinely had no idea?”
He shakes his head. “She wasn’t someone I—we didn’t keep in touch. I found out in the end because she sent me a text.”
“A text? You mean just like that? Right after he was born?”
“He was about four months old.”
“My God.”
He smiles.
“It was a shock, I suppose.”
She shifts on the seat.
“But—so, what’s his name?”
He frowns. “My boy? Ollie. His name is Oliver. Oliver Edward John. Her choice.”
“You don’t like it?”
“It’s OK. It suits him,” he adds, delight briefly flashing over his face.
“And how old is he now?”
“Ten. He’s ten. Well—eleven in October.”
Ten, she can’t help thinking. Ten springs and summers, ten Christmases. His mother has managed to keep him safe for a whole decade.
“And what’s her name?” she says. “His mother, I mean.”
“Ollie’s mother? Tricia. She’s called Trish.”
“And does she—is she a good mother?”
He glances at her.
“That’s a funny question.”
“It’s the only question.”
He hesitates.
“Yes. Yes, I think so. She wanted him, if that’s what you’re asking. Why?”
She takes a breath.
“I suppose I’m trying to imagine it, that’s all. You with a son. I’m quite surprised.”
“Yes, well, that makes two of us.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“And what’s he like?”
“Ollie?” Eddie’s face brightens again. “What’s he like? Bloody hell. I don’t know. Much like any other ten-year-old boy, I suppose. Noisy. Unstoppable. Impossible. A bit out of control sometimes. Won’t eat anything but white food. Glued to a screen for much of the day—far too much of it, in my view, not that I have much say.” He sighs. “I don’t get to see him very much.”
“Why not?”
He hesitates.
“Oh, look. It’s complicated. It’s a long story. And before you go jumping to any conclusions, I should warn you I don’t come out of it very well.”
Mary thinks about this.
“But if you didn’t even know he existed?”
“I guess what his mother would say is, I didn’t behave so very well once I did know.”
“Why not?”
He begins to laugh, stops himself.
“Why didn’t I behave well? Oh, I don’t know. Why do people do things? It’s always complicated, isn’t it? I was rattled, I suppose.”
“Scared?”
“It wasn’t as simple as that.”
“What, then?”
He is silent.
“I don’t know,” he says at last. “You’re the only person ever to have asked me that and I suppose I haven’t questioned myself too hard about it.” He breaks off, thinking again. “I didn’t think I’d be any good as a father. I didn’t really know how to be one. My own father—well, it wasn’t like I’d made a choice—”
“You didn’t get on with your father?”
He looks at her, his face softening. “You don’t really want to know all this.”
“Yes, I do.”
He takes off his glasses, rubs at his eyes.
“My mother died when I was ten. A car crash. My father—well, I suppose he couldn’t cope. He fell apart. These days I imagine he’d have been offered counseling or whatever. But, well, he was grieving and he couldn’t cope, so he sent me away.”
She stares at him.
“Away? Away where?”
He sighs. Looking at his glasses, turning them over in his hands.
“His sister. My aunt. A widow, she had no kids. I don’t know if she ever wanted any. But she was OK; she was willing enough. I suppose she brought me up, really. And then, years later, my father married again and he sent for me.”
“Sent for you?”
He makes a face.
“I know. It sounds like something out of some novel, doesn’t it? Yes, he decided he wanted me after all, couldn’t live without me, in fact. And so he had me move back in. But his new wife—she was barely even into her twenties, this young girl—she didn’t want some spotty, truculent adolescent boy ruining things.” He looks at her. “Basically, she made my life hell.”
She stares at him.
“How did she do that?”
He blinks.
“Oh God, Mary. Let’s not even go there.”
“I’m sorry,” Mary says.
He sighs.
“It’s stuff I haven’t thought about in years—don’t want to think about. And it was all a very long time ago. Water under the bridge and all that.”
Mary thinks about this.
“And then what?”
“I ran away. Left home, I suppose you’d call it. Well, I was old enough, just about.”
“How old?”
“Seventeen. Just. I lived on the streets for a while.”
“On the streets? But that’s terrible.” She takes a breath. Unable to imagine it. “But what about your aunt?”
“What about her?”
“She didn’t want you to come back?”
“Who knows. I never heard from her. In fact, I never saw her again. I don’t know. Maybe she imagined I was still with my father. I suppose at that age you don’t really think about these things. I was OK, though. I got a place at a hostel. I worked in bars and so on. I was even on the bins for a time—”
“A bin man?”
He makes a face.
“I can tell you it wasn’t the worst job I ever did.”
“What was the worst?”
“Yarden’s fish factory, down by the docks. Disgusting. Wet and cold, the scales stuck inside your fingernails, you could never get the smell off. Far worse than the dirt of the bins—” He breaks off, smiling at her. “Anyway, all of this, I suppose it explains a lot about me, doesn’t it?”
The sun has moved around the garden and is in Mary’s face. She turns her chair, shields her eyes, trying to see him.
“Why? What does it explain?”
“I don’t know. What I’m like, I suppose. Why I’m such a waste of space.”
She stares at him.
“What do you mean you’re a waste of space? That’s a terrible thing to say about yourself.”
He sighs.
“I’m sure it’s how Deborah sees me.”
Mary shakes her head.
“Deborah loves you.�
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“Does she?”
“Oh, come on. It’s obvious that she does.”
“Is it?”
For a moment, Mary just stares at him.
“I can’t imagine Deborah ever thinking anyone was a waste of space,” she says at last.
He smiles.
“Well, it’s what I’d think if I were her. I’m aimless, aren’t I? A drifter.”
“A drifter? What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t see you like that at all.”
“You don’t? You don’t think I’m unreliable and aimless and—well, a complete tosser in many ways?”
Mary sits up in her chair.
“Eddie, it’s not true. You’re not aimless at all. Why are you so hard on yourself? You have a job, for God’s sake, a wife, you have a home . . .”
He shakes his head.
“You don’t know the truth, Mary. It’s not the way it looks. I was always like this, you know, always. I can’t really even blame my mother. Even as a young child, I could never settle.”
“Settle to what?”
“I don’t know. My concentration span, it was just—zilch.”
“Well, that was hardly your fault—”
“And afterward, long after I’d left my aunt’s, for a long time I did just that. I drifted. From job to job. Even from woman to woman.”
“You had a lot of women?”
He smiles.
“You find that hard to imagine?”
Mary shakes her head, even though she does.
“This whole story, all of it, it sounds so incredible.”
His face tightens.
“It’s not a story.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know you didn’t.”
He sighs. Taps his fingers on the edge of the table.
“I’m not sure I should have told you any of it anyway,” he says.
“It’s all right. I promise you it won’t go any further.”
“It’s not that. It’s just—I’m afraid you’ll never be able to think well of me again.”
“Don’t be silly. This doesn’t change anything. In fact, I feel very sorry to think of everything you’ve been through.”
“I don’t want to be pitied.”
“I don’t pity you. I’m sad for you. It’s not the same at all.”
He lifts his head, looks at her.
“You still like me?”
“For goodness’ sake, Eddie. Of course I do.”
“You promise? You’re not just saying it?”
Mary laughs, realizing that he’s playing with her. She looks away.
“But what about now?” she says at last.
“What about it?”
“Your life now. Isn’t that what matters?”
“There’s only one now I’m interested in and that’s sitting here at this moment in this garden with you.”
Mary hesitates, avoiding his gaze.
“But—are you saying you’re not happy?”
He sighs.
“I don’t know about happy. I suppose I think of myself as pretty lucky, the way things have worked out. But . . .” She watches as he takes off his glasses again, pinches at the space between his eyes, puts them back on. “Well, there’s always some fallout, isn’t there?”
“Is there?”
“I don’t get to be with my kid, do I?” He says nothing for a moment and neither does Mary. Both of them sitting there, not speaking. At last he looks at her. “Once I knew about him, that was it. It was astonishing, how everything changed. It’s not that I’m surprised that I love him—”
“Love him?” Mary feels the blood rise in her cheeks. “Of course you love him.”
“All right, but that it would take up so much of my head, that I would have no choice, that it would be so overwhelming—well, I suppose I never expected that.”
Mary says nothing. Under the table, she knits her hands together. Watching the faint movement of his face as he looks out across the garden, to the fields, the wide sweep of the sky.
The waitress comes, picks up the bill and the money, walks away. He watches her go.
“Every day I feel the loss of him, you know. Every single day—” He stops, breaking off suddenly and looking at her. “Oh God, Mary, I’m sorry.”
He puts a hand on her arm. Gives her the one unused paper napkin. She stares at it for a moment, then she puts it to her eyes. She hadn’t even known she was crying.
For a moment he just sits there. Then, when she doesn’t do anything, he leans forward and touches her hand with his and, when she doesn’t pull away, he covers it, puts his whole hand on hers and he leaves it there.
SIX
FRANK DIED. THEY THOUGHT HE WAS BETTER BUT HE WASN’T better. He had a fever and a prickling scarlet rash and the rash got worse in the night and the first doctor was called back and this time he said the Ipswich doctor had got it all wrong. It wasn’t because of the horse kicking him or the whooping cough but a bad infection that had got inside his bones and there was nothing to be done.
My mother wept. She’d lost the two or three babies after I was born, but we’d never known them, so it didn’t matter. And then after that she’d had a lucky run of it and all her children had stayed sturdy and bonny and alive.
Until now.
I don’t believe it, my father said after the doctor had packed up and gone. He could be wrong. He’s had it wrong before. Remember poor old Mrs. Hancy, how he had them ordering up her coffin, but she went along quite well for another two years?
My mother said nothing.
For a while Frank seemed peaceful. His breath went in and out just as if he was having any normal kind of sleep. I began to wonder if my father might be right and he’d recover. But then, as the dawn broke and morning sunshine flooded the room, he seemed to change. His face looked like a stranger’s face and his breath came harder and louder and he looked like he was fighting some startling and terrible presence in the room that none of us could see.
My mother covered her face with her hands.
No, she said. No.
Frank’s eyes rolled back in his head as if he was just playing a joke on us, and then he stopped breathing.
No! my mother screamed.
I stared at him. He still looked like my brother and not at all like a dead person. He looked like he’d just forgotten to take another breath. I found I was holding my own breath, waiting for him to do it.
Is he all right? I said at last.
My father had been swearing and cursing but now I saw that he was crying as well. There was a string of nose-blow hanging from his face. He lifted Frank up a bit and held him and kissed him and rubbed at his chest.
Is that it? my mother sobbed. Is that it? Are you telling me he’s gone?
My father said nothing. He lowered Frank back down onto the bed. Upstairs the baby started crying, but my mother ignored him. She bit down hard on her clenched-up fist. Her eyes were closed tight and there was a sound happening right in her throat but it didn’t seem to want to come out.
I looked at Frank again. It still seemed to me that he might change his mind and take another breath, but he didn’t. The more I watched, the more he stayed there just exactly as he was, eyes and mouth open, staring at the foot of the bed.
My father reached out and put his fingers on his eyes to shut them.
HE TOLD ME TO SIT WITH HIM WHILE HE WENT TO FETCH THE undertaker and my mother went up to the baby. He said I shouldn’t touch him and at first I didn’t mind because I didn’t want to. But then as I sat there with the morning noises and normal sunshine going on outside, my courage began to come back to me. It was only our Frank, after all. Also I was curious to know what a dead person felt like. I stretched out a hand and put a finger on his poor, bare arm.
Hello, Frank, I whispered.
I put one finger on him very lightly and then I put another. He wasn’t even cold, but he was hard as dead meat and for a moment the warm firmness of him made me wan
t to heave. I took my hand off and sat there, taking little breaths and waiting for the feeling to pass.
My father came back in.
He said he’d told James and sent him off to milk the animals. He said we weren’t telling the kiddies yet, but I was to wake them and make them get dressed and send them into the orchard to play while the undertaker came.
Why? said Charlie when I went up there.
Yes, why? Minnie said.
Because Father says so, that’s why.
But what’s the reason? Jazzy demanded, picking up her kitten and trying to make it stay in her apron pocket. Why does he want us out of the house? You can’t just say that and not tell us the reason.
I know the reason, Lottie said.
You don’t know anything, Jazzy told her, struggling with the kitten as it mewed and scuffled to get out. You don’t even know how to tie up your own shoe, you little twot.
Lottie looked at me with hard black eyes.
Is it because of Frank?
What about him? Jazzy said.
I looked at Lottie.
We’ll talk about it later, I said.
THE UNDERTAKER CAME. HE WAS A HORRIBLE MAN. HE LAID Frank out on the kitchen table because he said he needed a steady surface to work on. The table still had some grease and crumbs on it, so I got a cloth and wiped them away. I didn’t think it right that Lottie’s mess left over from breakfast should be all over Frank.
The undertaker washed him and cut his hair, which didn’t need cutting, and he put him in the good Sunday clothes my mother had given him, twisting his poor arms back and forward a bit too roughly to get them in the sleeves and not really caring that much what he did to him. Then when he’d finished he put the coffin next to Frank on the kitchen table and lifted him into it with our father’s help.
Father went upstairs to comfort my mother. He asked if she wanted to see him but she said she didn’t and that she would not come down till the man was gone.
The undertaker asked to use the privy then, so I had to take him out the back and show him where it was. He smiled at me a bit too hard and asked would I like to wait to escort him back after he’d used it?
No, thanks, I said.
And he stood there still looking at me and not going in the privy and saying what a pretty young girl I was, how sweet and fresh-faced, and was I courting any lads yet?
I told him that was none of his business. And he stared at me then and said I had a very overly sharp tongue for someone whose little brother had just died and I ought to have a bit more respect.
The Stopped Heart Page 17