A Cupboard Full of Coats

by Yvvette Edwards

  It came down then like a guillotine, the coldness in my heart, and deliberately I turned my back on any possibility of owning up. Maybe he would beat me, but he would beat me with what little energy he had left after he’d finished with her. Something like glee began to swell inside me then.

  Good! Now she’ll know how I felt.

  On my way out of the kitchen I turned off the lights Berris had left on, then went to my room. I changed into my pyjamas, turned the light off there too, and lay down in the darkness on top of my bed. I felt too awake to fall asleep. So I sat up, hugged my knees and pressed my back against the headboard, listening out for the first sound of my mother arriving home.

  ‘She never stopped him from beating me. Never said a word to me after. Never kissed me or said, “Try and be good, Jinxy”, or “My God! He did that?” He could’ve killed me! If he’d had the energy he could’ve beat me to death and she wouldn’t have stopped him. She heard me screaming, she heard me and she did nothing. She would have let me die.’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘For years after I wondered, what if he’d been trying to kill me? What if it was me he was stabbing? Would she have tried to stop him then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But she didn’t stop him,’ I said. ‘I loved her and she let him hurt me.’

  ‘Maybe he told her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The things I said. About you being…womanish. Maybe she thought you needed it.’

  ‘Needed that?’

  ‘A little hard discipline early, stop you turning out loose. Maybe she thought she was protecting you.’

  He was trying to make good of an impossible wrong. And if it had been that alone, maybe I could have gone for it like a grateful sucker, accepted his words with a smile, wiped my eyes and moved on with the rest of my life. But it was more. Always more.

  ‘She didn’t even try to stop him killing her. She didn’t struggle or fight, she didn’t raise a finger to defend her own life. Even for me. Even if she didn’t care that she’d be dead, didn’t she care about leaving me alone for ever?’

  ‘She musta been scared outta her mind.’

  ‘She promised me she would always be there for me. She promised.’

  ‘She wanted that. You mother loved you.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘Mothers love their kids. All of them. Even the bad ones.’

  ‘It’s my fault she’s dead.’

  ‘It’s Berris kill her, not you.’

  ‘But if I’d given him the address, he would’ve gone to the party late. He would’ve been vex, but she would’ve been alive. I didn’t. That’s why he killed her and I think I wanted him to. What kind of a person am I? What kind of person wishes their own mother dead?’

  ‘Even if you had given him the address, it wouldna made no difference. He would still have done it.’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘Berris wasn’t making it to no party that night. We came and left and he wasn’t coming, whether you gave him the address or not.’

  ‘But if I’d given him the note he would’ve gotten dressed and gone looking for her.’

  ‘Maybe, but he wouldna found her. Not that night. It was always going to come back to him here waiting for her to come in, and when she did, he would have done what he did. Note or not.’

  ‘How do you know that? How can you say that? How can you be so sure?’

  ‘That was my night, our night, me and her. I never meant from the start for him to come. I told him the wrong time. I got here before he did and took her and left. And when he came in, I knew he would be out to track her down, to link up with us and take her from me. So just to be on the safe side, I did the last thing I knew would ensure he never made it, unless he was gonna search the whole of south London that night; I writ down the wrong address.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘So you see, whatever you did, that night woulda ended the same way. It was her time, and when it’s your time, it’s your time.’

  14

  When I awoke, it was dark outside, the day. The early-morning sounds from the street were familiar; closing front and car doors, engines starting, the neighbours setting out as if this Monday was just another ordinary day.

  I felt nothing. Lemon had told me what he had told me and I wasn’t hurt or angry or relieved or disgusted or amazed or released; I felt nothing. Nonetheless, last night I had vomited, hunched over the toilet bowl. Violently. Alone. Hoping he’d be gone by the time I came out, and when he wasn’t, hoping maybe he’d leave during the night. Even though the house was silent, he was still here. I knew it.

  As quietly as I could, I left my room and went into the bathroom. Ignoring the dirty bathtub, I brushed my teeth, rinsed my mouth, then splashed my face with icy water. I dried and studied it, my face, in the bathroom mirror, looking for signs, searching my eyes for change, a subtle shift or clue, some physical evidence of what had happened to me; finding none.

  Dressed, I went running. In the biting cold. Pausing first to stretch muscles that still ached from Friday, shaking them out before I began, knowing I had taken them to the extreme so recently, wanting to limit further damage if I could. This time I took it slowly. A single circuit of the park, pacing myself like I’d seen other joggers do, but not from any design or plan; it felt natural. It had gone, the drive, the push, the need to flee. I was going through the motions only, feeling nothing. On the second lap of the park, I realized I no longer even felt the cold.

  It had been her time.

  Had Lemon meant when he said it that it had been my mother’s destiny to die at Berris’s hands? That it had nothing to do with me or him, that from the moment she’d met Berris and moved him in, she’d purchased a non-transferable ticket to being a murder victim? It went against the little I believed in to accept that. Every person made their own fate. Hadn’t I made mine? Lemon his? If my mum had thrown Berris out the first time he’d hit her, she would still have been alive today.

  Or would she?

  Suddenly I wasn’t sure. If she had insisted he went, would he have quietly accepted, packed his bags, wished her a good life and left?

  It was on the third lap of the park that something shifted, something inside me.

  I felt it.

  My feet were no longer pounding the ground, my arms no longer jerking back and forth at my sides, nothing jarred. It was as if my whole body had become an efficient machine, my limbs pistons, and my head cleared so sharply the world and every detail came into focus. I smelled the cold, heard the sounds of schoolchildren’s voices and yapping dogs and traffic. Before my eyes the brittle clay landscape fragmented into one thousand different shades of grey and brown. I tasted the salt of my perspiration against my tongue, felt its heat. It seemed at once as if everything was possible and without limits. Like I might gallop or fly. I felt it. And I ran.

  My new body showered and dressed, I made my way back down the stairs to where he sat, fully clothed, on the sofa, like a visitor, a neighbour stopping by for a quick cuppa, family passing through. The room was dark and he had turned on no lights. I opened the blinds at the windows. The greenness of the foliage in the garden was intense, wet-vivid.

  ‘Can I get you anything? Coffee?’ I asked, and he nodded.

  I made it for us both. Four sugars in his, none in mine; poured them into cappuccino cups like bowls, placed them on saucers, and carried them back in. He glanced up at me as I handed him his. His hands shook and the cup rattled against the saucer as he raised it to his mouth and began to sip, even though it was too hot, sucking in air alongside the scalding droplets, making a sound like a percolator.

  I waited.

  ‘You decide what you gonna do about the boy?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered, honestly. I hadn’t a clue. Somehow I had hemmed myself into a tight corner and whittled my choices down to two: Citizen’s Advice or letting Ben go. Become a real mum or forget it. Two options, each with i
ts own unique set of fears. ‘I really don’t know.’

  He looked at me, his yellowed whites red. He had been talking non-stop for three days, taken me with him, up and down and around it all.

  That stuff.

  Trying to clear things up while there was still time. Working to build up the merits. Did he believe that fate had brought him to where he sat now? That this was meant to be? What about his son, his grandchildren, his family? ‘And you?’ I asked.

  ‘Ain’t got no hard plans.’

  He started to raise the cup to his mouth again. This time the rattling was even worse. He changed his mind, and put it down on the floor beside the settee.

  ‘What about John?’ I asked, and he shrugged. I watched him as he rummaged through his pockets, found the cigarette box, his lighter.

  ‘Did you ask Berris why he said the things he’d said about Mavis?’

  ‘Didn’t have to ask. That was one of the reasons he came to see me. He had things to clear up too.’

  ‘And?’

  He inhaled deeply. Blew the smoke out slowly. Answered when he was good and ready. ‘You know, after what he done, I thought for a long time he was the hardest-hearted man alive, the coldest, the evilest. But after I spoke to him last time, watching him, listening, not how I done most of my life but kind of fair-like, not squeezing him into the way I wanted to think of him, but looking hard to see who he really was, what he was, after all that I come to the conclusion he was just sensitive. Oversensitive. Even small things that wasn’t meant to be no slight hurt him. I tried to imagine how it felt to be in his shoes, and they was small and tight and uncomfortable…’

  ‘I can’t think of him like that. I don’t want to,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not telling you what to think. Just saying how it was for me. That it was the first time I saw him proper.’

  ‘So what did he say?’

  ‘You know Berris, for a long time nothing, just bawling. Made a hard drink and gave it to him. Made one for meself and the old legs, to keep them straight and strong under me. Watched him cry and thought hard on the way my life had shaped, about Mavis, the things we coulda done, how our lives coulda been. What Berris told me all them years back set us in a direction that was some kinda one-way street; straight ahead only, no u-turns, no reversing; how could ita been anything else?’

  ‘But what did he say?’

  ‘Berris say he couldn’t remember a single bad thing I ever done him, how in prison he pass time counting up every good thing, every favour, every kindness from me. He said I was the best friend he ever had, the truest, even more than a brother. To be fair was mostly things I’d heard him say before, but always before was kinda said in jest-like, whereas this time, Berris’ voice was so solemn, you woulda think is the Lord’s Prayer him ah recite. Listening to them thanks made me feel low.’

  The coffee had cooled a bit. Carefully, I sipped it and waited.

  ‘All that stuff about Mavis, the things he’d said, none of them was true. “Man, she loved you.” That’s what he told me. “She loved you. Only you.” Maybe I need to go prison, to learn to speak the truth. He confessed all to me and I couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t do the same. How could I, with me mouth dry like cassava bread? Didn’t know where to begin, or end. Couldn’t say a word to him about the things I done to him all those years back, not a peep.’

  ‘So he lied? Trashed your marriage on a whim?’

  ‘Seems so.’

  ‘And about ruining decades of your life, what did he say about that? Please tell me he didn’t say sorry.’

  ‘He asked me to forgive him.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes. Can you?’

  It was as if the world’s axis shifted for an instant, and I felt something like the panic and confusion of missing a step. Berris had taken so much from me. Altered the shape, the potential of my life from everything that had been possible, left me to survive making do with what little was left over afterwards. Forgive him? I could not.

  ‘It’s too much. Too soon. Maybe one day I’ll be able to forgive him, Lemon, but not today. Not now.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking about him. I’m asking you to forgive me.’

  And again the tilt.

  I wanted to say yes to him but I couldn’t, because suddenly it felt like forgiving him and forgiving Berris were one and the same. They were both responsible. They had both done it; killed my mum. Only one of the four hands between them had held the knife, but they were both guilty. Either I forgave the two of them, or neither.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said and he nodded. He expected no more. ‘I want to,’ I said, ‘but I can’t.’

  He nodded again.

  I took my cup into the kitchen and put it down on the side. There were dirty glasses there and a couple of empty bottles of wine. I ignored them. Three days it had taken, but it was clear now, the reason he had come. I had a strange feeling, a tightness in my chest that was getting harder to contain. I needed to do something, go somewhere, get out. I went upstairs and pulled on some old boots, found my handbag and took out the keys to the car. I couldn’t face Lemon again. Not just now.

  ‘I’ll be back in a bit!’ I shouted as I left.

  Inside the car I studied the A–Z, plotting out a route before setting off. On the tail-end of rush hour, it took just over half an hour to get there. Not days or weeks or months. Half an hour to get to a place I had been to the one time and never gone back.

  Nothing looked familiar. But then I could hardly remember anything about the funeral. It had been for me as if all memory was concentrated in the fine detail leading up to her death and beyond that there were just snatches here and there for years. I must have been in shock. The thought made me smile. Why should that surprise me? Hadn’t I been in shock ever since?

  I entered the small building on the right, just inside the gates. Waited till the old guy working there was free and asked him, ‘Can you tell me how I’d find a particular grave?’

  He pointed to a building opposite. ‘Try the office. If you’ve got the details you can have a look through the register yourself. Or you can pay and they’ll do it for you.’ He looked at me. ‘When’d they die?’ he asked.

  ‘Nineteen eighty-three.’

  He pointed straight ahead down the road towards a chapel. ‘If you wanna take a look yourself just keep going that way. Straight ahead.’

  How many people had died in nineteen eighty-three? How many graves would I have to search before I found hers? It seemed easier to return to the office and pay them to tell me where she was, my mother, buried here for fourteen years and I had not visited, even once. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t ask anyone for help. This was a private disgrace.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said and, headed in the direction he had pointed, started walking.

  There were hardly any people about. The only sounds I heard were birds and the occasional plane. I passed tombs that were ancient. Some said the occupant just ‘fell asleep’ and I found myself unbearably moved. It sounded such a gentle way to die, having lived first, fully, to simply get into bed one night and not wake up the following day. The way death ought to be. I wondered what had been written on my mum’s to explain how she had gone. She hadn’t fallen asleep or passed away. She had been wrenched into death. Murdered in hot blood. Did people put things like that on stones?

  Beloved mother. Dragged screaming from life.

  Past the Chapel of Rest to the end of the road I walked. At the top, I studied the gravestones in front of me. People who died in 1977. Masses of them. To the right there were more flowers in front of the stones than in any other area I had yet passed, the graves being more recent. My mum was buried in 1983. I headed off to the left where the flowers were fewer and the rows of gravestones stretched like incisors into the distance.

  I found the graves for the right year but not hers, though I walked the length of the rows slowly, checking every stone. Hers was black. I remembered that. I could tell the plots of those who were trul
y ‘never forgotten’ from the ones who had been; the graves visited regularly by the loved ones left behind, flowers brought, notes left. I was searching for the one with the black headstone that looked the most neglected, and that stung.

  I turned around when the dates of death went down to 1982. Walked back even slower to the path, then along it. At a junction, there was a triangle of grass with the largest oak tree in it I had ever seen, five or six metres circumference, with a bench beneath it, which I sat on.

  It was so quiet.

  And peaceful.

  That the branches were stripped of leaves made no difference. The tree was majestic. In the summer, was it possible that anywhere in the world there was a more beautiful place to sit and contemplate? Why had it taken so long for me to find it when it had been in that spot for hundreds of years, only thirty minutes away from where I lived? I was bitterly disappointed that I hadn’t found her, that I would have to go back to the office and plough through the register like a researcher, felt the disgrace of that weighing on me heavily, that I should need to do something like that in order to find the grave of my family.

  My family.

  Excited, I stood up.

  Directly in front of me were graves from 1967. I walked through a few rows watching the years roll on to 1969. Then I began to walk the rows again. Masses of stones and only the occasional flower here. The too-long dead. Searching and searching and searching. As soon as I stepped into the third row I saw it.

  A black heart chiselled from marble. Dulled gold stencilling: In loving memory of a devoted husband and father, Linville Jackson; the dates, and below, in brighter golden letters, my mother’s name:

  who died 1st May 1983

  To know her was to love her.

  The adjacent grave had a slab of concrete on the ground in front of it. One end had sunk and the earth had risen over it, the grass grown back to cover the earth, and it was as though, in time, even the grave itself would end up buried along with its occupant. But the grave of my dad and my mum was like a garden. The black heart was wrapped in a large red bow. There was a wicker basket in front of it filled with four different plants, the kind of basket you might give someone as a gift. In front of the basket, a band of earth had been cleared and was freshly planted tight with flowering pansies. A sunken vase contained five lily stalks, the buds at different stages of flowering. Two gaped wide in exotic exhibition. The grass before the grave was indented, as if someone had visited regularly and kneeled on that spot. Not Berris. This was the work of years not weeks.