The Other Son

by Alexander, Nick

  She tries to think about her conversation with Bruno, but she’s feeling stunned. Her brain seems devoid of sensible thoughts about it, or even any kind of emotion, yet his words – many of which are her words – are running, as if on a loop, through her head. Nothing but negatives... driven for five hours... who would choose to live in a place like this?

  And yes, she had said that to Matt in the car. She had asked him exactly that question. And yes, perhaps she had been tactless. But then who would choose to live up the top of a mountain? Who would look at a map of the world and choose somewhere without a shop, or a restaurant, or a bar? It was hardly unreasonable to point out that most single young men did not actively search out this kind of isolation. But then Matt, she remembers, isn’t single. And he’s not really young anymore either. As a parent, one tends to forget that. As a parent, one often tries to forget that.

  And this Bruno – the way he spoke to her! No wonder she’s in shock. Because, frankly, how dare he? He’s nothing to me, Alice thinks. He’s not my son. He’s not my friend. So how come he dares give me lessons in etiquette?

  Some feelings, finally, are surfacing. Alice is starting to feel angry. The heat of it is rising up from deep within like the uncomfortable rush of a blush. It sweeps through her body like that scorching wind they have in Spain. The Scirocco, isn’t that the one? “How dare he,” she whispers, as her skin prickles with the heat.

  Bruno is young enough to be her grandchild, for God’s sake. “You might want to work on your positives,” indeed. The impertinence of it, that’s what gets her, an impertinence so typical of all these new world cultures, these people from places where no one ever learned how to speak to an elder, where deference and tact are unknown values, where only brashness and newness have any worth, where so-called honesty trumps politesse every day of the week.

  The form of it, that’s part of why she’s feeling so shocked, she realises. No one has ever spoken to her like that before. Yes, she’s seen people have these heartfelt ‘for your own benefit’ conversations in American films, but it’s not the English way. It’s not the English way at all.

  We prefer to say nothing, Alice thinks. We bottle it up until we’re so upset that we cry. Or we bottle it up until we’re so angry, we punch our partners in the face. That’s one thing she has always understood about Ken’s anger, for example. That the punch was never the result of whatever had just happened, but the culmination of a thousand unmanaged slights. Or perceived slights, anyway. Ken’s punches were always expressions of an entire life of bottled up disappointments, that’s why there was no sensible way to deal with them. Alice meets the revelation that she is crying again with a sense of exhaustion. Will the tears ever end?

  She wonders if Bruno talks to Matt in the same patronising tone he used with her. She wonders how he copes with it. Perhaps he has learned to talk like an American, too. But no, because when Alice, in the car, had asked why anyone would live here, Matt hadn’t asked her why she had said it, had he? He hadn't pointed out that it wasn’t a very nice thing to say, either. He had smiled at her blandly and then bitched to Bruno about it behind her back. Like Alice herself, English to the core.

  Alice pulls a handkerchief from her pocket and wipes at her eyes. So why had she said that? She runs the rest of the conversation through her mind and decides that, no, it was not an unreasonable question to ask. But all the same, why would a mother complain about the heat, complain about the bends, about the distance, about the isolation? Why would a mother choose these things to say to her son rather than thanking him for driving for five hours? Simple habit, perhaps? Simple bad habit?

  She thinks about being (supposedly) the first ever person not to comment on how pretty the log cabin is. It’s not something to be proud of. And yes, now she thinks about it, it is pretty. So why hadn’t she said so?

  At the time, she simply hadn’t noticed, she decides. But then that begs the question, why hadn’t she noticed?

  She thinks about the river that Bruno tried to get her to look at. Because she hadn’t been able to ‘see’ that either. Yes, she had looked at it. And yes, like the house, once she had looked at it, she had perceived that it was pretty, that, in a logical, rational way, it was something worth looking at. But she’d had no emotional response to the river or the cabin. She’s had no positive emotional response to anything for a long time. Perhaps I’m clinically depressed, she thinks. Perhaps this is what it feels like.

  Alice struggles to look afresh at her immediate surroundings, and again rationally, she can see that the vines are pretty, that the dappled shadow beneath them is picturesque. She looks at the mint in the corner of the rockery – vibrant, almost fluorescent in the sunshine – and her words come back to her. Cat pee, she thinks, shamefully. That was the only thing she had found to say. Cat pee!

  Perhaps I can’t see beauty anymore, she thinks. Perhaps I’m dead inside. Perhaps fifty years with Ken killed me.

  The tears are flowing freely now and Alice lowers her head into her hands and lets herself sob. She’s been busy, that’s the thing. She’s been very very busy for a very long time – busy avoiding conflict. She’s spent her life not mentioning things, not noticing things. She’s had to become an expert at not thinking about things, at not having emotional responses, just to survive. Yes, she understands that now. It’s not really her fault. She’s just been too busy surviving to even think about smelling the bloody roses.

  When Alice’s tears run dry, she feels exhausted and a little hopeless. So, coming here was a bad idea after all! The problem is that wherever you go people expect things from you. No matter what’s happening in your life people have expectations of how you’re supposed to behave. And Alice has nothing left to give. Not tonight at any rate. Perhaps not ever again.

  A car drives past, the first one she has seen since she got here, and suddenly aware of the fact that other people must live here, and fearing a challenging conversation with one of the French locals (a conversation which she really doesn’t have the energy for) she returns to the interior of the house. She locks the front door behind her.

  She looks around at the hard chairs of the kitchen, two of which are occupied by cats, then climbs the stairs to the lounge. Here, she opens the windows and shutters. A strip of sunshine falls across the sofa. “Huh!” she thinks. “So, I finally get my sofa in the sun.”

  An image of Dot’s place comes to mind, and then Dot herself, and Alice remembers that she is supposed to phone her. But she doesn’t have the energy right now to fulfil Dot’s expectations of her either, so she fishes her mobile from her bag and sends a text message instead. She’s not sure if the message sends or not. Do they work from France? She’ll have to check with Matt later.

  She pushes Virginie’s cat-hair covered cushions onto the floor, then retrieves the cleanest one as a pillow. She stretches out on the sofa so that the sunlight falls across her face (it feels heavenly) and then, listening to the sound of the crickets outside the window, she falls into a deep sleep.

  By the time she wakes up again, the sunlight has moved from her face to her feet. She’s groggy from sleep and initially unsure as to what woke her. One of the cats has installed itself between her ankles but when she moves her legs, it instantly jumps down.

  The noise, a noise she now realises she had integrated into her dream, sounds again. Tock, tock, tock: knuckles on a window. She lies still for a moment. She holds her breath. But then she hears Bruno’s voice. “Alice? Alice? Heloooo?”

  Alice doesn’t want to see Bruno right now. Alice isn’t sure if she wants to see Bruno ever. And if not seeing Bruno means that she doesn’t get to eat, this evening, then she’d really rather not eat. She’s easily tired enough to sleep right through anyway.

  But the rapping gets louder. Bruno’s cries become more strident. And Alice realises that she’s not going to get away with just hiding here, so, deciding she’ll simply send him away (she can do it tactlessly; she can do it with fully-fledged Canadian honesty, a
fter all), she drags herself from the sofa and on down the stairs.

  When she reaches the sombre kitchen, Alice realises that she must have slept for longer than she thought. She crosses to the door where Bruno’s face, framed by his cupped hands, is peering in.

  “Ah, thank God,” he says, through the glass.

  Alice unlocks the door and opens it.

  “I thought I’d done all of this for nothing,” Bruno says. “I thought you’d phoned a taxi and gone home or something.”

  “Wishful thinking, maybe?” Alice offers.

  Bruno gestures behind him, so Alice glances at the tiled garden table upon which Bruno, bless him, has laid out a dinner party for two. “Oh!” Alice exclaims, her mood instantly shifting. “Gosh.”

  “Dinner is served, Madam,” Bruno says through a grin.

  “Yes... yes... I can see that! I... I was asleep, that’s all.”

  “And I can see that,” Bruno says with meaning.

  “Do I look awful?” Alice asks, one hand fluttering to her hair.

  “No. But you do look like someone who just woke up from a siesta,” Bruno says. “Anyway, take your time. I need to cuddle Paloma here anyway.”

  “Paloma?”

  Bruno steps towards the windowsill on which the old grey cat is sitting. “This is Paloma,” Bruno explains. “She’s not going to be with us much longer, I don’t think. She’s very ancient, aren’t you Paloma?”

  Alice returns inside the house and washes at the kitchen sink. She checks her face in the mirror. Her hair is squashed to one side and she has the seam of the cushion embossed across her cheek, so she squashes her hair back into shape and then massages her cheek a little before returning to the courtyard. “You really didn’t have to do all of this,” Alice says, taking in the three Tupperware containers of salad and the quiche Bruno is busy slicing. “And you carried it all here, too!”

  “Well, I waited for a while,” Bruno says, “But then I got hungry!” He crosses to the doorway. “Now, I just need plates and shit,” he says, “and we’re ready to go. Sit down. I’ll bring them.”

  Alice rubs at her eyes and attempts to wake up, attempts to feel present right here, right now, but it’s hard. This tiled table, this unexpected meal, is all so far away from Dot’s apartment where she was this morning, after all. It’s all a bit surreal, this air-travel lark.

  “Here,” Bruno says, handing her a plate and dumping a handful of cutlery in the middle of the table.

  “Thanks,” Alice says, constraining a yawn.

  “That’s beetroot and quinoa and mackerel,” Bruno says, pointing. “That’s Matt’s favourite.”

  “Really?” Alice asks. “I could never get either of them to touch beetroot.”

  Bruno shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “But when?”

  “When?”

  “Yeah, I mean, how long ago?”

  “Ah,” Alice says. “Yes, I see your point. It was a very long time ago.”

  “And that one’s tomato, mozza, basil, and that one’s taboulé and mint. Oh, and before you ask, yes, I washed the mint. And the basil!”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything about the mint,” Alice protests.

  “Well, good,” Bruno laughs. “We’re making progress here.”

  “I wasn’t aware that I needed to make progress,” Alice replies, drily. She’s a little surprised at herself for the spunky reply, but then again, why not? She’s spent enough years sparring with Ken, after all. Even if he never once noticed.

  “Touché,” Bruno says.

  “Touché yourself,” Alice retorts.

  Bruno picks up the beetroot salad and points it at Alice. “Some salad number one, Mrs Hodgetts?” he asks. “I take it you still go by Hodgetts?”

  “I suppose so,” Alice says. “And yes, thank-you, Mr...” She frowns. “And your surname is?”

  “Campbell,” Bruno says. “Like the soup, unfortunately.”

  “Then yes, Mister Campbell. Some soup would be lovely.”

  “Some salad?”

  “Sorry, yes, of course. Some salad would be lovely.”

  “Gosh,” Bruno says. “More positivity.”

  “You’re a very rude young man,” Alice says. Her tone of voice implies that she’s vaguely amused by his rudeness. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

  Bruno shakes his head. “Not till now,” he says, slopping wine into their glasses. He raises his. “To honesty, then,” he toasts.

  “To tact,” Alice offers, raising her own.

  “Tact’s overrated,” Bruno says.

  “But nowhere near as overrated as honesty.” Alice sips her rosé – it’s cool, and fruity and delicious. She forks some beetroot salad to her mouth. “This is nice,” she says. “I can see why Matt likes it.”

  “Tact or honesty?” Bruno asks.

  Alice shrugs. “A bit of both, maybe? If that’s possible.”

  “I reckon,” Bruno says.

  “So tell me something else I don’t know about Matt.”

  “Something else?”

  “Well I didn’t know about him being... you know...”

  “Gay?” Bruno asks.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s OK,” Bruno says. “You’re allowed to say it these days. They changed the rules.”

  “I know that, it’s just... Anyway. So I didn’t know he liked beetroot either. What other surprises have you got for me?”

  Bruno shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not sure what stuff you know already.”

  “Not much to be honest,” Alice says. “He was always very secretive.”

  “He likes dance music,” Bruno says. “Techno and trance, and really boppy electronica.”

  “He used to like the Smiths and The Cure.”

  “He still does. But he DJs now, so he listens to dance music, too.”

  “He DJs?”

  “Yeah, at parties and stuff.”

  “Then that’s a thing I didn’t know.”

  “He loves dogs,” Bruno says. “All dogs. Any dog. Every dog.”

  “Oh, your puppy,” Alice says. “Where is he?”

  “He’s at home. He’s fine. He sleeps a lot.”

  Alice forks a chunk of mackerel from the salad. “I knew about the dogs, of course,” Alice says. “He drove us mad for one when he was little.”

  “Yes,” Bruno says. “He told me about that.”

  “Oh, did he?”

  “Yes... Um, moving quickly on,” Bruno laughs, “He hates rosé. And capers. And anchovies.”

  “Not keen myself,” Alice says.

  “Careful now,” Bruno laughs, tapping the neck of the bottle.

  “The anchovies, I meant. The wine’s lovely.”

  “So it’s genetic then? The anchovy thing?”

  “Possibly,” Alice says.

  “He’s scared of motorbikes.”

  “Fearless Matt?” Alice asks. “Scared of something?”

  “Not-so-fearless Matt,” Bruno laughs. “But then that might just be my driving. I don’t think I’m very good.”

  “Well that’s lots of things I didn’t know. And you? Tell me some things about Bruno Campbell.”

  “Er... I’m Canadian. I make pots,” Bruno says.

  “And you like beetroot.”

  Bruno wrinkles his nose. “It’s OK,” he says. “I like cooking. And gardening. Especially growing vegetables. I get really excited when they start to form. Things you can eat, sprouting from nowhere. It’s like magic.”

  “I could never get anything much to grow,” Alice admits. “I’ve never had green fingers, me.”

  “Matt’s not much cop either,” Bruno tells her. “He lacks patience. But he’s good at other stuff.”

  “Such as?”

  “DIY.”

  “Really?!”

  Bruno nods. “Really,” he says. “He can build pretty much anything. And he’s very good at his job, apparently.”

  “Washing up?”

  “Yes. Well, clearing tables a
nd stacking the dishwasher.”

  Alice sighs. “OK, there’s a thing where you can maybe enlighten me, Bruno. Why does Matt always do such silly jobs?”

  “Silly?” Bruno repeats.

  “He’s got an art degree, for God’s sake!”

  “He has?”

  “Well, almost,” Alice says. “He did four years. I mean, he dropped out before the end. But it really was just before the end.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Ah!” Alice says. “You see. We can trade secrets.”

  “But to answer your question, I guess he doesn’t think that they’re silly.”

  Alice looks doubtful.

  “Don’t you eat in restaurants?” Bruno asks. “Don’t you stay in hotels?”

  “Well, yes,” Alice says. “Not as much as I’d like to, but...”

  “So someone has to deal with the dishes.”

  “But Matt’s so clever,” Alice says. “He could be so much more.”

  “He is so much more.”

  Alice squints at Bruno as she thinks about this. And just for an instant, she thinks she knows what he means. But like some complex mathematical problem, her comprehension has vanished almost before she has finished grasping it. “It still seems such a waste to me,” she says. “That’s all.”

  “I thought we were watching our negatives.”

  “You said that, not me,” Alice replies. “Why don’t you watch your own?”

  “I do,” Bruno says. “All the time. But anyway, getting back to Matt, I’m just saying that he’s happy. So maybe you could try to concentrate on that instead.”

  Alice nods. “OK,” she says. “I’ll try. But you really are a very strange young man.”

  “Strange is good,” Bruno says. “Strange is what we strive for.”

  “Well, I’d say you’re doing pretty well, then,” Alice laughs.

  “And you?” Bruno asks. “Tell me about you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Alice says. “There’s really not much to tell.”

  “OK then,” Bruno says, mockingly. “Let’s talk about me again. I’ve got masses to tell. Salad number two?” He points the second Tupperware container at Alice.

  “Yes,” Alice says. “Thank you.” As Bruno serves her with tomato and mozzarella, she smiles. It’s strange, but in fact, this bad-natured sparring is shifting to good-natured sparring, and she’s starting, despite herself, to enjoy it. It’s been so long since she has found herself opposite someone quick enough to fight back. “So, I like to read,” Alice says. “If that counts.”