Ken looks surprised. Natalya confused. Tim, searching for connections, wrinkles his brow. “And?” he asks.
Alice can see how that thought led to this one, but again, it would be dangerous to attempt to express that. “I just thought you ought to know,” she says.
“Why?”
“Because you’ve known them for years. Because it’s shocking. Still, I suppose nothing lasts forever, does it? Not even an apparently solid marriage like that one.”
“Let’s go,” Ken says. “Come on. I want to be back in time for Ireland, England. You know I do.”
Well, thank God for that, Tim thinks.
Once Ken’s Megane has pulled away, Tim sets the kids up with “Bug’s Life” in Boris’ bedroom, then joins Natalya in the lounge. “Phew!” he says, chucking himself onto the sofa. “Thank God that’s over.”
Natalya shrugs. “You invite them here,” she says.
“I know. I think it’s like childbirth.”
“Childbirth?”
“Yeah,” Tim says. “People say that you always forget the pain and end up wanting more. I always forget what hard work they are. It’s weird.”
“Yes,” Natalya says. “Only is a myth. A woman never forget what childbirth is like. Believe me. Is like shitting a bus.”
“OK,” Tim laughs. “I’ll take your word on that one.”
“So why did she say that thing?” Natalya asks. “The one about Dot.”
Tim shrugs. “Mum’s mind works in mysterious ways, its wonders to perform.”
“I think she says we will split up.”
“Us?”
“Yes. I think it’s what she wants to say.”
Tim pouts and shakes his head. “Nah,” he says. “It won’t be anything as calculated as that. Being Mum, it was probably pretty straightforward. She probably just suddenly remembered that she hadn’t told me.”
“She thinks I stop you seeing her,” Natalya says. “She said this, yes? So she thinks if we split up it’s better for her. This is what I think.”
Tim shakes his head. “You’re slipping into full-blown paranoia now,” he says.
“In Russia we say that just because you feel paranoid...”
“It doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,” Tim completes. “Yes, we say that here too.”
“But it’s Russian,” Natalya says. “It’s from Soviet times.”
“OK. Sure. But Mum loves you to bits. They both do. You know that.”
Natalya pulls a face. Because, no, she doesn’t know that at all. “I can’t believe she hit Boris,” she says – a remark specifically selected to get Tim to close ranks with her.
“Yeah, well, they were very slap-happy parents,” Tim says. “My childhood was like an episode of Punch and Judy only without the crocodile.”
Natalya is looking puzzled.
“Never mind. You don’t know about Punch and Judy, do you?”
“No. What is...”
“It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I told them. We both did.”
“Yes,” Natalya says. “Thanks to you for that.”
“It will be so difficult to heat in winter,” Tim says, mocking his mother’s Brummy accent.
“You see how she cleaned the window?” Natalya says. “With her handkerchief?”
“Newspaper and vinegar,” Tim says, still mocking Alice’s accent. “That’s what you need, love, newspaper and vinegar.”
“And this soup is so pepper,” Natalya says, trying to join in but sounding more like a Russian-speaking Pakistani than she does like Tim’s mother.
Tim runs one hand over his face and groans. “I don’t know why we bother,” he says. “Really I don’t.”
And having got Tim to the conclusion she was hoping for, Natalya steps back from the precipice. Tim would never forgive her if she pushed him over the edge. If he chose, one day, to leap, on the other hand...
“Well, they’re your parents,” Natalya says. “This is what we do.”
“Indeed they are,” Tim agrees.
After half a minute of silence, Natalya moves to the kitchen. She starts to stack the dishwasher.
Tim, in the lounge, switches on the television and channel-hops for a minute until he finds a suitably soothing wildlife program. It’s about a female octopus who dies as soon as her thousands of baby octopuses have hatched. If only, Tim thinks, cruelly.
But he catches himself thinking the thought and berates himself for it. As the on-screen octopus quits this mortal coil he lets himself wonder why it is that they still have Alice and Ken over. Why they do any of it? Why, for that matter, does the lady octopus bother to have babies if she knows that doing so will kill her? Why... anything?
The answer, evidently, is unknowable. It’s the same as when he was a child and he asked Alice questions. Why was she cleaning the oven if she hated it so? Why did he have to go to school in the rain? Why couldn’t they eat dessert for every course? Alice’s answer was always, “Because!” Just, because.
And ain’t that the truth?
Tim has his parents over for the exact same reason the octopus stops eating. Because, like Natalya says, this is what we do.
Tim battles year on year to earn more money to pay for ever bigger houses because that’s what we do.
Natalya returns from the kitchen and pours herself a large glass of vodka. The perfect anaesthetic against the inevitable pain of existence, Tim thinks.
“Pour me one, would you?” he asks. “I’m gagging for a drink.”
Natalya reaches for the whisky bottle.
“Ooh, Whisky!” Tim laughs. “You know me so well, Natalya.”
***
As they drive away, Ken says, “Well it’s a big old place, that’s for sure!”
“Yes,” Alice says, doubtfully. She’s fiddling in her handbag, hunting for mints. The bag has got up-ended and they’re all mixed up with everything else. “You wouldn’t get me living there,” she says, handing Ken a mint.
“I don’t think they invited you, love,” Ken jokes.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. It reminded me a bit of the council offices to be honest,” Ken says. “It’s all that concrete everywhere.”
Alice smiles wryly. “That’s exactly it,” she says. “It’s all very showy. It’s all very expensive. But it’s not actually very comfortable, is it? It’s not very cosy.”
“Nope,” Ken agrees. “Cosy, it is not.”
“And I may have already said it three times, but it really is going to be a bugger to heat in winter.”
“They look like they can pay the heating bill though.”
“Tim looks like he can pay the heating bill,” Alice points out, “It’s Tim not Natalya paying for it all. Natalya just does the spending.”
“Yes,” Ken says, a little proudly. “You’re not wrong there. He’s done OK, our little Tim has.”
“And all these gadgets everywhere,” Alice says. “What’s that all about? The thingy that heats the frying pan by radio waves or whatever it was. The computer in the armrest...”
“That contraption didn’t have your song, though, did it, eh? You got him there.”
“Is this the way?” Alice asks, turning her head to look back at the junction behind them. “I though we went left there.”
“I thought I’d try the 442,” Ken says. “Avoid all those roadworks.”
“Oh, OK. And I wasn’t trying to catch him out,” Alice says. “It was the first song that came to mind. That’s all.”
“The second.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The first was Old Man River. But that wasn’t good enough for him, was it? Nor was bleedin’ Madonna.”
“We didn’t bring them up to be like that, did we?” Alice asks.
Ken glances in the rearview mirror, then switches on the indicators before replying, “Like what?”
“To be so... you know... materialistic.”
“Dunno,” Ken says. “I’m certainly not t
hat way inclined.”
Alice snorts indignantly. “Well neither am I.”
“You like to shop more than I do, love.”
“If I didn’t shop, we’d starve to death,” Alice says. “But I’m not out buying expensive computer thingies every day, am I?”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with an expensive computer thingie.”
“I could buy other things. I could buy clothes and makeup and perfume...”
“Only I wouldn’t let you.”
“That’s not... oh never mind,” Alice says. She sighs. Ken, as so often, is missing the point. She has spent most of her marriage feeling like she and Ken are having two different conversations about the same thing. It’s like their brains live on different floors most of the time.
“I think it’s Natalya’s influence,” Alice says. “Did you see those shirts the boys had on?”
Ken frowns and looks at her a little too long for comfort. “The road, Ken,” Alice prompts.
“The check ones?” Ken says, turning back.
“Yes. By Dolce & Gabbana, they were. God knows how much they cost!”
“They’ll grow out of them in a couple of months, too.”
“Exactly! It’s like every single thing they have needs to be brand new. Every single thing needs to be the most expensive one. And I’m sure we didn’t bring them up to be like that.”
“Nah, it can’t be our fault,” Ken says. “Because the other one sure isn’t that way inclined.”
“No...” Alice agrees thoughtfully. “No, I suppose not.”
“I don’t think Matt even had a decent pair of socks the last time he came. They all had bloody holes in them.”
“His jeans, too,” Alice says.
“His arse was hanging out when we met him in London,” Ken says. “Do you remember that?”
“I do. I was so embarrassed, I wanted to buy him a pair of jeans, right there. That lovely restaurant, and there he was with his underpants showing.”
“Wasn’t having it, though, was he?” Ken says. “Thought he was the bees knees with his ripped jeans.”
They drive on in silence for a while, and Alice thinks about Matt and feels that familiar flutter of concern in her chest for her second son’s wellbeing. For all Tim’s faults, at least they never have to worry about him. With his pretty wife and his boisterous boys, with his big house and their two cars, he has life pretty much sewn up.
She had tried so hard to instil some kind of thirst for success into Matt, too, but like seeds on stoney ground, nothing would ever take root. She remembers telling Matt off for his report cards. Ken had threatened to disown him at one point if they didn’t improve, that’s how bad they were. She remembers pushing him to do his homework, remembers telling him that he could move up to a better stream if he only tried harder. She had tried bribing him and Ken had tried punishing him – they had used both the carrot and the stick liberally – but it was all to no avail. She remembers trying to convince Matt to take a paper-round like Tim had. “Wouldn’t you like to be able to buy nice things, like Tim can?” she had asked him. “Wouldn’t you like to have a Walkman too?”
Matt had just shrugged at her as if she was speaking to him, perhaps, in Japanese. “I use Tim’s when he’s not around,” Matt had replied. “Why would I want one?”
Once they had accepted that Matt wasn’t going to shine at school, they had pushed him to do better at sport. He had been a promising swimmer at one point, but again, the more they pushed him, the harder he had pushed back. Eventually, Ken had promised him a music centre if he made the second grade swim team, and as if simply to rile them, Matt had dropped out completely. They hadn’t realised this until the competitions at the end of the year though, so well had Matt dissimulated the fact. For the entire school year, he had arrived home with wet hair and wet trunks wrapped up in a towel, when in fact he had spent every evening smoking behind the bike shed with that tarty Judy Musselbrooke’s lad. Ken had taken his belt off to the boy, but again, it hadn’t done any good.
A fresh sensation of unease sweeps through Alice’s stomach in this instant, born of the fact that she has spotted an error in her own logic. For how can she blame Matt for being so resistant to their efforts to make him strive harder? How can she blame Matt for failing to work harder, for not wanting success and status and nice things and yet still exonerate herself for any responsibility in Tim’s constant, determined, pushy pursuit of those same goals?
The thought makes her so uncomfortable that she closes it down with a simple, All we ever wanted was for them to be happy. But she has not quite managed to convince herself – it feels like a lie, or at least a half-lie – so she says it out loud. “All we ever wanted was for them to be happy, wasn’t it?”
“Of course,” Ken says. “And Tim’s certainly done OK for himself, hasn’t he?”
Still a little unsettled from the experience of feeling dissatisfied in both her children and her own parenting, she turns her thoughts to Natalya who seems like a far easier target.
“I must say, I’m getting pretty bored with that Russian soup,” she says. “Aren’t you?”
“Oh, you know me,” Ken says. “As long as it fills a hole.”
“I swear the principal ingredient is pepper.”
“I thought it was all-right,” Ken says. “And that Stroganoff thing was very nice.”
“Yes,” Alice agrees. “It was good. A little too good, actually. I think Vladlena probably made that one.”
“That’s not what Natalya said.”
“No,” Alice says. “Well. You know what I think about a lot of what Natalya says.”
PART THREE – JOAN OF ARC
MAY
Alice wakes up to the sound of drumming rain on the kitchen roof beneath her bedroom window.
Ken, she knows, will be fretting about the roof leak. She’s not particularly thrilled about it herself and is more than a little fed up with mopping the bathroom floor. But left to her own devices, she would have phoned a roofing company from the Yellow Pages months ago. Only Ken’s stubbornness prevents that particular problem from being fixed.
She dozes for a while, soothed by the sound of the rain yet depressed a little by the thought of being trapped indoors all day with Ken. But when she finally does get up she finds him pulling on his overcoat.
“Where are you off to in this downpour?” she asks.
“To the bookies,” Ken says. “I fancy a little flutter.”
“Oh, OK then,” Alice says, trying to mask any expression of relief at this unexpected good fortune, at the joy of anticipating a lazy morning listening to Radio Four. “Will you be back for lunch?”
Ken freezes for a moment. He’s staring through Alice as he thinks about his options. He looks like someone has pulled his plug out of the wall socket. “Maybe not,” he says, when he lurches back to life. “I think I’ll pop into the offices and check how things are going without me. I’ll probably go for a pub lunch with Michael.”
Alice nods. Michael is the new managing director of Ken’s remould business. He won’t be thrilled to have Ken interfering, but rather him than me, Alice thinks. “So I won’t make you lunch, then?”
“Nope. I guess not. See you later.”
“Yes, see you later.”
Once Ken has pulled the front door closed on the whooshing of cars driving past in the rain, Alice moves to the kitchen. Beyond the window, the back garden looks almost like it does at twilight. Rain is bouncing off the bird-bath, but rain or no rain, it’s a good day. Today is the kind of day that makes all the other days bearable. Alice can slouch around drinking tea and eating biscuits. She can listen to Book Of The Week without Ken turning the sound down every time he walks past. She switches on the kettle, then the radio, and settles to stare out at the rain.
The postman passes just as she’s pouring the milk, so she replaces the carton in the refrigerator and scoops the post from the doormat before returning to the kitchen table.
She’s s
hocked to find a letter from the Nationwide Building Society addressed to her. She glances a little nervously back at the kitchen door and then rips the envelope open.
The letter informs her that her new cash-card is ready to be picked up from the branch. It contains her new PIN code, a completely unmemorable sequence of numbers hidden under a little flap of waxy paper. She must not write these down, the letter says. But she must not forget them either. As if those two things were compatible.
She shakes her head in dismay at the malfunctioning nature of the modern world. For what is the point in specifying that you don’t want the card delivered to the house if they then send a letter telling you it’s ready? She thanks her lucky stars that Ken was out when it arrived.
She taps the back of the letter as she argues with herself – perhaps she can’t spend the morning lazing around after all. Perhaps she needs to go and pick up the card. That way she can make sure they don’t send any more letters to her home address. Ever.
Sitting on the toilet some twenty minutes later, she makes a more radical decision. She’ll return to the bank and she’ll close the damned account. The stupid money can simply go back in the tin. The whole thing was a silly idea anyway – she had been pushed into it by Dot – and this way at least she can be sure that they’ll never send her another letter. This way, at least she can be sure that Ken won’t–.
She freezes. Her eyes widen. Her heart begins to race. Because downstairs, someone is opening the front door. Someone is stepping inside. Ken is back, and the letter, the damned letter, is sitting on the kitchen table. How stupid could she be?
She wipes herself dry and flushes the toilet. She returns downstairs as fast as she possibly can without looking panicked.
“It’s just me,” Ken says. “I forgot my bloody wallet.”
The Other Son Page 16