Lis laughs. ‘I’ll risk it if cheers you up.’
When she puts it that way, how can I refuse?
The market is in full swing when we arrive, a giddying rush of colour, sound and aroma. I’ve seen so many markets this year but each one has had its own personality. Here the stallholders know Lisabeta so we are greeted like long-lost friends. It takes an hour to buy all the things she needs because each purchase comes with a slice of the latest gossip.
In a café at the edge of the market square we flop down at a table and order coffee and cinnamon sugar-dredged twists of fried dough that look like Mexican churros.
‘How are you now?’ Lis asks.
‘Better,’ I smile. ‘Thanks for bringing me.’
‘My pleasure. So, what happened earlier?’
‘I tried to call someone but they weren’t answering.’
Lis dunks a strip of doughnut in her espresso cup. ‘Your Scotsman?’
It always amuses me when she uses that name. ‘Sam, yes.’
‘Let me guess: you fell out.’
My expression must be easier to read than I thought. ‘Good guess.’
She laughs. ‘Let’s just say I recognised the signs. You know, Karl and I had to spend a year apart, not long after we met. He was two years older than me, so he went to study at Uppsala University. I was still at high school. And crazy though it sounds, twenty-five years ago not everybody had a mobile phone. I certainly didn’t.’
‘How often did you see him?’
‘During holidays. Never at weekends like my friends did with their boyfriends. In the meantime we kept in contact with letters and the occasional phone call.’
‘How did you cope?’
Her laugh garners smiles from customers gathered at a nearby table. ‘With a lot of misunderstanding and pointless arguments. I lost count of the number of times we’d run out of change for the payphone mid-conversation, or misread something in a letter. Everything took so much longer to resolve. And even your phone now, with all its clever technology, is really little better for showing you someone’s true reactions. Texts are misread, calls are cut off. It’s all the same.’
‘I spoke to Sam a week ago. I said something important and I don’t know if he heard me because our video call broke down. And now he isn’t answering his phone.’
She considers my predicament as she portions out the remainder of the doughnut sticks. The calls of the market float across to us on the warm breeze. ‘The only way you can ever know what someone’s true feelings are is to stand next to them and watch. It’s all the tiny little movements, the non-verbal communication our brain sees but our eyes don’t. The whole picture is what counts here. Text messages will never convey it fully. Calls can be misconstrued. Even video calls can be unreliable – as you’ve discovered.’
It should give me hope, but instead the distance between Sam and me stretches even further away. ‘So when will I know where he is on all of this?’
Lisabeta’s smile is sad. ‘When you breathe the same air and can see every flicker in each other’s expressions. In person. Not via a satellite or a screen. Until then, you just have to trust.’
It’s not what I wanted to hear. Do I trust Sam? And can I wait until he contacts me again to make sure he heard what I said about Frank?
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty, Sam
I have a half-sister.
And a three-month-old nephew, who is currently chewing my jumper.
I have a sister and a nephew and a very wet shoulder and right now I can’t tell how much of this is real.
I knew today was going to change my life. But I could never have predicted how. It’s like I’ve been dropped in a different universe.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Ellie asks, putting a mug of tea on the low table between us.
‘I’m fine. Just – taking it all in, you know?’
She sits on the chair opposite, hands clasped between her knees as if without a child to hold she doesn’t know what else to do with them.
‘I think Barney likes you.’
‘I think he likes my sweater.’
‘Counts as the same as far as he’s concerned. You’ve won him over. Usually he screams the place down if anyone else holds him.’ She smiles again. ‘I’m sorry I said no earlier. I wasn’t expecting anyone to come for my da – for Frank.’
‘I’m guessing you didn’t know about me? Or Callum, my – our brother?’
A wrinkle folds above her nose. ‘Two brothers? Wow.’
That’s answered my question. ‘Right. So, I’m thirty-three. Cal will be twenty-nine in July. We don’t talk at the moment. Haven’t for a while, actually. Long story.’
‘Well, you – we – have another brother, too. Matthew. He’s in the States, so I don’t talk much to him, either. I’m twenty, Matt’s twenty-two.’
‘Welcome to the family,’ I joke, hoping my nervous laugh conceals the stab of pain in my chest. So Frank would have fathered a new family less than two years after leaving us. Did he abandon them, too?
‘I was told council records had Frank registered here,’ I begin, careful to keep any hint of emotion from my voice.
‘That’s right. He was here until late February.’ Her head drops and she gives a long breath. ‘He hadn’t been in my life for a long time. Just walked out one night when I was fourteen and Matt was sixteen. Mum never knew where he’d gone. And so, you know, we grew up thinking he’d left us and didn’t matter to him.’
I nod, not trusting myself to reply.
‘And then he turned up, out of the blue, a year and a half ago. I was working at a garage just up the road and he strolled in. Brought his car in for a new exhaust. I saw him through the workshop window and I just knew.’ She shrugs, her eyes meeting mine. I notice they are a slightly paler shade of my own. Frank’s eyes. Did our poor mothers get a look in when it came to our genetic characteristics? ‘He didn’t know what to do. I don’t know if he was more surprised to see his daughter again or that I was elbow deep in oil fixing cars. Bit of a traditionalist, our father. Anyway, I agreed to meet him for a drink and over the next few weeks we talked. I called him a bastard for leaving; he accepted it. Russ and I – my fiancé – were buying this place and Frank had just been chucked out of his own, so he moved in with us. He helped me around the house when I was expecting Barney and we thought he’d just be part of the family. Mum wouldn’t see him, of course, but she has her new fella now so I think we decided we could work round each other for the little one’s sake.’
I sense something coming. Ellie isn’t speaking of Frank in the present tense and there’s no sign of him in the neat interior of her home.
‘What happened?’
‘He left. Right before I was due to have Barney. No note, no explanation. I was sick with worry, furious with him for leaving me again, you know? And then the police came.’
No…
‘Was he—?’
‘He’d been hit by a car. A glancing blow, they told us, but he was pretty drunk and walking down the central reservation of a dual carriageway. Hadn’t a clue where he was. They took him to hospital, patched him up, did some tests.’ She rubs her knees, suddenly looking more like a child than a mother. ‘I am so sorry to hit you with all this, Sam. It must be so much to take in.’
‘It is. But please, go on.’
‘He’d had a stroke. A mini one they reckon when he fell in the road and a much larger one when he reached hospital. He lost his speech, didn’t recognise any of us. At this time I went into labour and had Barney so Russ visited Dad in between visiting us. By the time we were ready to come home, he’d been moved into a hospice. They reckoned he had cancers, too, that had never been diagnosed. It’s possible they caused the strokes, but nobody’s been able to tell us for certain.’
I think of the capable, mischievous man in the photo, the one who’d jump on tables to play his fiddle, the one who slept his way around the Island before proposing to Ma. All that life, all
that energy, reduced to a hospice bed and bewilderment. Some would say that was a fair end for the way he’d paralysed not just one but two families with his leaving.
But holding my half-nephew and staring at the sister I never knew I had, I can’t feel like that. I thought I’d be angry, jealous of the time Ellie and her brother had with Frank when he should have spent it with us. But all I feel is a deep sadness.
What a waste.
At least he’d tried to make things right with his daughter, even if he’d been caught on the back foot by meeting her again. He rebuilt their relationship to the point where she was happy to have him under the same roof. And although she’s not said it specifically, it sounds like he was excited by the prospect of getting to know his first grandchild.
What made him walk out when he’d repaired so much in his life?
I have another question. I don’t want to ask. But I can’t escape it.
‘When did he die?’
Ellie blinks at me. I hope she doesn’t cry. I might be holding her baby but I have no idea of the protocol of hugging your half-sister when you’ve only just discovered she exists. The gap before she speaks is excruciating, so much so that I wish I could grab the question and stuff it back inside my gullet. I watch the rise and fall of her chest, the first glimpse of tears glisten in her eyes.
‘Oh Sam…’
‘I’m sorry, Ellie. I—’
She reaches her hand across the table and I grasp it, holding on as if an earthquake is about to rip a chasm in the ground between us.
‘Frank’s not dead.’
‘What?’ My question is a whisper in the cacophony of my brain.
‘He’s still in the hospice. Over in Trinity? St Columba’s.’
Barney stirs against my shoulder where he’s napping, as a sob escapes me.
‘How long…?’
‘Last we were told, about four weeks. It’s hard to tell. He’s stabilised for now although he was poorly last week. Pneumonia, they said.’ She gives my hand a gentle squeeze. ‘I’m going to see him later. Do you want to come?’
I don’t know what to say.
* * *
The hospice is brighter than I expected. I’d imagined dark, grey rooms with dim light painting everything sombre monochrome. This place is light and airy and ironically full of life. There’s soothing music and colour and it’s not at all a place of grief.
I don’t know if I should be grieving for Frank. I’m not sure what to feel.
He’s dying, of course. He wouldn’t be in this place if he weren’t. But the man I have only the vaguest recollection of died twenty-three years ago, so will I even recognise the person I’m about to meet?
I feel like a vagabond, schlepping in with my holdall and the fiddle on my back. I’ll be catching a taxi from here to the station after this. I’m still not sure why I brought my violin, only that it goes everywhere with me. It felt right that it accompanied me back to the city where I first fell in love with music.
Ellie thought there might be somewhere we could leave my stuff, but all the nurses were busy elsewhere when we arrived. They have far more important demands on their time than my luggage. So, Ellie, my bag, my violin and me make the journey towards the man who connects us. As we walk, I’m suddenly struck by the thought that I’m carrying similar things to those Frank must have taken the day he left us: his bag and his fiddle.
Am I like him? Ailish said I was running away before.
And I can’t deny it: I have packed a bag, picked up my fiddle and run away, many times.
But I’m not running today.
The corridor seems to stretch for miles and though we move quickly, our destination at the end of it – the final room on the left – takes forever to reach.
His room.
All the miles that have separated us, all the years he remained out of my life, out of reach, are now being closed. Distance has caught up with Frank, just as time has. He can no longer run, but now I’m moving towards him.
And then, we arrive. The door is already open, the air from the open window at the end of the corridor fresh as it moves in. Ellie smiles at me, risks a squeeze of my arm. Then she enters. Cautiously, I let the breeze blow me in too.
I don’t know the man in the bed. He looks old, although I’m guessing the strokes have aged him. He seems sunken beneath the white bed sheets. His hands rest, palms up, on the green wool blanket draped over his body. It might be many years since he last played, but the callouses on the tips of his fingers are unmistakable. A fiddle-player’s hands. Long slender fingers, toughened at the ends, the muscles taut from years of moving over a fingerboard.
He’s sleeping. That’s a relief. A sleeping old man I can deal with. Perhaps he won’t wake at all while I’m here. Ellie prepared me for this in the taxi over. The meds he’s on make him sleepy, apparently, a deliberate act to ease his suffering and confusion. I think they hope if they steadily increase the morphine he’ll gently slip away when he’s ready. It seems altogether more humane than forcing him to stay awake in a world he no longer recognises.
I drop my stuff in the corner by the window and we fetch a dull green plastic chair each from the stack by the wall. Ellie plants a kiss on Frank’s forehead. I look away.
‘They’ve given him a shave since yesterday,’ Ellie says as she sits. ‘He won’t be happy about that.’
‘Likes the haggard look, does he?’
‘Dad’s no hipster but he never likes to look too tidy,’ she laughs, her smile fading as soon as she looks at me. ‘Oh – Sam – I’m sorry.’
‘No. It’s okay. It’s good you know stuff like that about him.’
‘Did your mum never tell you what he was like?’
I shake my head. ‘She was too angry. Hard to talk about the amusing quirks of the person who destroyed your life.’
‘Sure.’
I can’t expect Ellie to understand this. Her good memories are as valid and valuable as my bad ones. Neither of us shares one clear image of who Frank Mullins was.
He stirs and my heart leaps to my mouth.
Ellie leans close to his ear. ‘Hey, Pa. It’s Ellie.’
Frank mumbles something. I can’t hear the words.
‘Barney’s at Mum’s. I have someone else to visit you today.’
I watch Frank’s sleep-crusted eyelids split open and eyes the colour of mine are revealed.
Twenty-three years since they last focused on me.
I hold my breath. I don’t know why. My chest aches from the effort.
My father is staring at me – the son he abandoned a lifetime ago. And there is nothing there. No flicker of recognition. No glimpse of remorse, or shock, or… anything.
The 9-year-old me wants to run out of the room, out of the too-bright corridor with its soothing pictures and hopeful sunlight, out of the building into the real world. This isn’t real, is it? It’s a place of soon-to-be loss; heavy sadness and fear carefully tucked out of view in the colourful interior. The man lying in this bed might as well be a mirage.
I feel like I should cry, or yell, or say something that could make him remember me – because he should remember me. He shouldn’t be allowed to forget – again.
A hand gently rests on my knee. I look up and see Ellie’s concern. ‘Talk to him.’
The eyes-like-mine stare back from the bed.
What do I say?
‘Um… Hey… Hello, Frank. I’m Sam.’
The eyelids flicker, don’t quite close.
‘I’m your son. Jean’s boy? Jean from Mull?’
Nothing.
‘Go on, Sam.’ Ellie’s voice is soft and low, the voice Ma used when Cal and I woke with nightmares in the Dumbiedykes flat, months after leaving Grandma’s. ‘He can hear you.’
‘Can he?’
She nods. I’m not certain I believe her.
‘I live in London now. I’m a musician. Er – I play the fiddle, funnily enough. I’ve played all over the world and made records, too. And I’ve a
studio – I own it with a friend…’
Not even a blink.
‘When we… when Ma took us to Edinburgh – Cal and me – I met a fiddle player called Jonas. He taught me how to play.’ My voice cracks and I can’t tell if it’s because I’ve mentioned Jonas, who was everything Frank Mullins should have been, or because I’m finally sharing the details of my fatherless childhood with the man who abandoned us. I swallow hard. I won’t grant him the privilege of seeing my tears. ‘I just wanted you to know. I understand. The music. What it means.’
Frank stares ahead.
His face reveals no emotion, no cognition, no life at all.
But his left hand twitches.
I look down. His fingers are beginning to curl over. Their progress is so slow it’s painful to watch every muscle’s laboured move. Is he making a fist?
No – his wrist is curling, too.
And I see it. Playing position. Fingers bowed ready to dance across strings, thumb ready to support the fiddle’s neck, wrist held low beneath.
‘Wait,’ I say, jumping to my feet. I grab my violin case and unzip it. The instrument glows, its conker-brown varnished body warm and reassuring as ever. Always there. Always the same. The single steady constant in my chaotic life. And at that moment, I understand. Music saved me because it was there when I needed it. The way Frank chose not to be.
With no hesitation, I lay my fiddle across his palm, slotting it with care between his curled finger and thumb. A sob sounds from Ellie beside me but I keep my eyes on the fiddle and Frank’s hand.
His fingers find the strings, the neck strong and sure beneath. I watch them flex across the four strings and I wonder which tune is playing in his mind right now.
A knock at the open door makes me jump.
‘Hi, Ellie, just need to do Frank’s obs. Won’t take a – oh.’ The nurse stops halfway between the doorway and Frank’s bed. Her mouth forms a perfect ‘O’. ‘Is he holding that violin?’
Ellie wipes her eyes. ‘Yes. Sam gave it to him – this is Sam, Frank’s son.’
The nurse rushes over and pats my shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry, forgive me. I’m Sheila Martin, the ward sister. I didn’t know Frank had another son.’
The Day We Meet Again Page 19