This Much is True: How far will a mother go to protect her shocking secret?

by Jane Sanderson

  Annie could feel Andrew’s eyes on her, and she knew that Michael’s eyebrows were rising up, up, up in disbelief.

  ‘He was a doting father, and a loving husband; a family man in every sense of that well-used term. He was no angel, though …’ Marjorie paused, a twinkle in her eyes.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Andrew, very, very softly.

  ‘… No, he liked a pint or two of stout with a whisky chaser, and he spent longer in the bookie’s than his wife was always happy with …’

  Another compassionate smile. Annie looked down at her shoes.

  ‘But,’ Marjorie continued, ‘Vince knew that home is where the heart is, and until he became ill, that was where he was always glad to return after long weeks on the road.’

  ‘What utter bollocks,’ Michael said, in a voice that was entirely audible, but valiant Marjorie soldiered on.

  ‘And so at this point in our service, I’m offering you all the opportunity to step forward, if you feel you’d like to, to share with everyone your happy memories about Vince.’

  She waited, and the silence was awful. No one moved. Andrew looked as though he might be about to, out of sheer embarrassment, but Annie clutched at his arm and kept him beside her.

  ‘No, we wouldn’t like to, thank you all the same,’ she said, looking directly into Marjorie’s empathetic eyes and very firmly handing back the awkwardness to the person who’d created it. In a matter of seconds Marjorie registered her faux pas, fleetingly lost her composure, then recovered with admirable speed and good grace.

  ‘Can I ask you all now to simply take a few moments for quiet reflection?’ she said, as if her previous request had never been uttered. ‘Think privately about what Vince meant to you, perhaps give thanks for the time you had together, and take comfort from the knowledge that his death came as a release from suffering.’

  Marjorie bowed her head. Michael had his arms folded and he was staring balefully at the coffin but everyone else dutifully hung their heads, even if it was more out of relief than respect. Annie could hear Michael breathing hard through his nostrils like a bull. She felt an icy chill around her ankles, a sudden bitter draught, and she wondered if it was Vince on his way down, nipping at her heels, taking his final leave of her with one last moment of spitefulness. She closed her eyes and tried to pray, but found she had nothing to say, even to herself, so she let her mind drift instead to a moment in time, long, long ago, when Vincent Doyle smiled upon her on a sunny day in a busy Coventry street and asked her to go dancing at the Locarno.

  25

  So Martha was as good as her word. She wrote a letter to Vince, and posted it by hand through the letterbox, on the second morning of his next visit home. He found it on the doormat and immediately rushed outside; worse, he rushed down the street, first one way and then the other, barefoot, in his vest and trousers, with the braces dangling in two long loops at either side. Annie had never seen him so distressed. He was driven half-mad by the knowledge that Martha had been here, outside his own front door. But anyway, she’d gone again, and Vince took out his frustration on Annie, waving the letter in her face and pelting her with ugly words. Annie was as certain as she could be that Vince already had another woman – he never brought dirty laundry home and his clothes smelled of something other than Omo; this was her proof. But it was still Martha he wanted, the one woman that he apparently couldn’t have. Oh, the desirability of the unobtainable! Annie knew all about that. She bowed her head in the face of his fury and waited for it to subside. There was no return address on the letter and Martha made it plain she wanted nothing to do with Vincent; all she wanted was Robert. She said she’d be in touch regarding the handover: that there’d be further instructions.

  Annie laughed wildly and said Martha was crazy. ‘She sounds like she’s talking about a briefcase full of money, not a living, breathing boy,’ she said. She was desperate that Vince, for once, should take her side. Hadn’t she been a devoted mother to Andrew? Wasn’t it obvious how much she loved him, and he her?

  But no, apparently it was not; Vince thought Martha should have him.

  ‘It’s cruel, what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘Standing between a mother and her child.’

  He was smiling, that curl of the lip he called a smile. Annie, who knew him so well, was newly shocked by his villainy. ‘Cruel!’ she said, ‘I’ll tell you what’s cruel – wrenching me and that child apart now, after all this time.’

  ‘Oh, spare me the melodrama. He was on loan, you knew that.’

  He didn’t care a jot about Andrew, thought Annie. Or rather, he believed he’d have Andrew anyway, because he’d win back Martha. That was what he thought.

  ‘You’d use him, a three-year-old child,’ she said, hissing the words, mindful that the boy was only upstairs, and the bedroom door was always open. ‘You’d use him to get back to her.’

  He smiled a private smile; he was full of secrets.

  ‘She doesn’t want you, Vince. She couldn’t be plainer about that.’

  ‘Ah, but she’ll not be able to resist me,’ he said, and Annie wanted to tear with her nails at his complacent face, but instead she turned away and ran upstairs to Andrew’s room to be within reach of him. He was playing with all the cogs and wheels of Michael’s Spirograph, which he’d taken from the landing cupboard and tipped out of the box onto the floor. Andrew couldn’t manage the pins and the pens and the paper; what he was doing was running the serrated edges of the wheels up and down through the deep pile of the carpet, leaving tracks that zigzagged and criss-crossed around him. Michael wouldn’t like it, thought Annie at once; it was in everyone’s interests to pack it all away again before the little tyrant discovered the desecration. Andrew looked up at her.

  ‘It’s roads, Mummy, roads for worms, but I need some worms now.’

  Just hearing his voice was fortifying; his solidity, the incontrovertible reality of him, reassured her that under no circumstances could he leave this life for a new one with Martha Hancock. It wouldn’t happen, because Annie wouldn’t let it. If necessary, she’d vanish with him, to a distant town: another country, if need be. The practicalities of such a plan when she depended entirely on Vince for money and when she couldn’t drive a car didn’t trouble her at the moment; nor what she’d do with Michael, whom she didn’t see when she pictured the getaway. Not that she would ever leave him at the mercy of Vince, who, when he didn’t ignore the child altogether, met his odd ways with angry impatience.

  ‘We make roads for worms in the garden, pet,’ she said. ‘Not in the house.’

  His face fell.

  ‘Remember?’ she said. ‘We were playing in the soil outside, weren’t we? That’s why we had worms. They don’t like it inside.’

  ‘Oh,’ Andrew said. He looked down at the tracks and trails he’d made on the dark red carpet and sighed in that accepting way he had, so different from his brother. Annie felt almost calm again, although she knew this was only temporary. She could hear Vince stalking about downstairs as if he was caged, and Annie knew – hoped, anyway – that he’d go out, to the pub or to the bookie’s, seeking the company of men. There was no problem in Vince’s world that couldn’t be alleviated by a nicotine fug or a pint of Guinness. Michael was keeping a low profile in his bedroom, as he always did when Vince was about, and Annie crouched down to Andrew’s height and said, ‘Shall we tidy this up quickly, before Michael sees it?’

  Her voice was hushed and conspiratorial, and Andrew recognised it at once, from many a time before. It signalled a game that had to be taken very seriously.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered, and he handed her the wheel that he was holding, then twisted round onto all fours to reach the others, which were scattered about.

  ‘Watch you don’t kneel on anything,’ Annie said.

  It was skilled work, re-packing the Spirograph into its box in such a way that Michael wouldn’t know it’d been disturbed. There were separate sections for the wheels, cogs and pens, and the ridged cardboard into whic
h Michael pinned his paper must be stacked neatly back too, with the special pins stashed underneath. It had to be done swiftly, but it couldn’t be rushed.

  Downstairs, the front door slammed, which meant Vince had gone out.

  So, thought Annie; time was short now. Andrew handed her three more cogs, and she aligned them with the others and slotted them in the box.

  ‘Chop chop,’ she said, trying to keep her voice light. ‘Double-quick time.’

  Andrew grinned at her, but there was anxiety in his smile because he sensed it in her. He pushed himself up into a standing position, the better to check for rogue bits and pieces, and a small cog dropped off his knee, leaving a hard red circle on his skin. He peered at the mark, fascinated.

  ‘Look, see there, I said don’t kneel on the pieces,’ Annie said, but the cog was intact, not even cracked, so she brightened her tone to make up for the reprimand.

  ‘Nearly done!’ she said, and they really nearly were, they’d made excellent progress, but were not alas quite finished when Michael’s bedroom door creaked open and he tiptoed down the landing to look in on them. He stepped with infinite caution into Andrew’s room, toe then heel, as if the carpet might be wet, or muddy, or charged with electricity. His unreadable eyes swivelled across the room, taking in everything at a glance. Annie followed his gaze, tried to see what he saw. Nothing was cracked, nothing was torn, but there were still a few papers strewn on the floor, blank sheets as well as treasured designs of fabulous intricacy in red, green and black biro, and – and this was unfortunate – Andrew had chosen just this moment to press a wheel hard against his face so that his little nose and part of his mouth were squished through the centre.

  ‘Hello, Michael,’ Andrew said, through the porthole.

  Michael’s expression blackened.

  ‘Now, Michael,’ Annie said, as softly as if she was coaxing a fawn to come and eat from her hand. ‘Don’t worry, it’s nearly back in, look.’ She offered the open box, showed him its near-perfect orderliness. ‘Take a deep breath, love, like I showed you.’

  He glowered at her, but he did take a breath, although it was only to fuel a roar at Andrew.

  ‘Get off my stuff !’ he screamed, in a voice so loud it must have hurt his throat. Andrew dropped the Spirograph wheel and clapped his hands over his ears. He looked round at Annie in panic, because he knew from past experience that he wasn’t safe. She reached for him, and if he’d moved towards her at the same time she would have hauled him to safety, but he was rooted to the spot with fright and she just couldn’t snatch him up in time. Michael had picked up a glass-domed snow globe, a miniature magical kingdom of dancing penguins and top-hatted snowmen. Upside down it felt hard and cold, perfect in the curve of his palm, and he allowed himself a fraction of a second to shiver with pleasure at its beautiful weight before hurling it directly at his little brother, striking him with a splintering thud on the side of his head. Andrew dropped to the floor like a puppet with cut strings. The globe had split into small, lethal shards around him and there were flakes of artificial snow in his hair and plastered to his cheek. Annie lunged at Michael but he was quicker than her. He jumped backwards and she missed, lunged again, missed again. His eyes never left her face, and they were wide with interest at what he’d unleashed in his mother. At the third lunge she caught him, digging her nails into his skinny arm and bringing him down to his knees onto broken glass. She slapped him twice around the face, and the imprint of her palm bloomed white and red on his cheek. Behind her Andrew said, ‘Mummy, I blooding,’ and his voice shook with heart-rending fear.

  Annie, shocked at her own red-hot fury, tried to speak levelly to Michael as she turned to attend to Andrew, but her voice sounded jagged and sharp. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘Go to your room.’ But when she turned away to lift Andrew into her arms, Michael poked out his tongue and stayed in the room, pushing himself backwards on his bottom until he reached the wall, from where he could watch his mother croon over Andrew and dab at the gash on his temple with a clean white handkerchief. There was a cut on Michael’s right knee too, just a small one, but he worked at it with his fingers, trying to widen it, trying to make it hurt.

  She should probably have taken Andrew to the hospital for stitches, but her instinct was to stay away from authority figures who pressed her for answers, so in the green first-aid tin she found a packet of sterile strips, which she used to pull together the two sides of the cleaned wound. It started just above his temple and continued in a jagged line to the corner of his left eye. Imagine, she thought, if one of those glass shards had pierced … oh God! She shuddered, and held him to her while he sucked his thumb and basked in her love.

  Michael was sloping about on the fringes. He’d been asked to apologise to Andrew, but he couldn’t. Sorry was one of the things he didn’t say and, over time, the word had become simply impossible to utter. It didn’t always mean that he wasn’t sorry – although right now, he really wasn’t – but rather that he didn’t like the word, just couldn’t bring himself to form the syllables. Other things he didn’t say were porridge, needle and bless you, but his mother hadn’t noticed the absence of these; sorry was the only one that grown-ups seemed to care about.

  Michael had a plaster on his knee now, but he’d had to put it on himself. His mother wouldn’t look at him, although Andrew did, gazing over the top of his thumb, which he sucked and sucked like a baby with a bottle. Michael concentrated hard on telling Andrew, silently, how much he hated him and perhaps the younger boy understood, because he blinked and looked away.

  The lock on the front door rattled with Vince’s key, and all three of them were in the kitchen, with no means of escape. His heavy footfall crossed the hallway, then he pushed open the kitchen door and propelled himself in, belligerent with beer. Andrew, still fairly impervious to the knife-edge ups and downs of Vince’s moods, took out his thumb and sat forwards on Annie’s lap.

  ‘Mine head,’ he said. ‘Look, Dad.’

  He twisted his neck, presenting Vince with the injury.

  ‘Huh?’ Vince grunted. He stooped to peer more closely. The strips across the gash were close together, but there was blood seeping through, and the visible skin around the wound was scarlet. ‘What the devil happened?’ Vince said. He looked at Annie.

  ‘Accident,’ she said.

  ‘That’ll leave a scar, that will.’ He leaned closer still; the smell of the taproom was pungent and Annie drew back, pulling Andrew away from the fumes. ‘What kind of accident?’ Vince asked. Michael watched from under his thatch of black hair, waiting for developments. His father would be angry with him, but he wasn’t scared, or even apprehensive. In fact he welcomed the sensation of steady coolness he felt in the face of another person’s hot anger. It made him feel strong, heightened his sense of separateness. But this time his mother chose to protect him.

  ‘He fell against the sideboard,’ she said. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’

  Michael darted a triumphant smile at Andrew, who smiled back guilelessly. There was a heavy silence while Vince decided whether he wanted to make something of it, but then he straightened up and belched, and patted his stomach with both hands.

  ‘What’s for dinner?’ he said. So, Annie wondered, are we forgetting about Andrew’s head then, and all that Martha business? She stole a look at her husband’s expression, and it was patently unconcerned. It was as if none of it had ever happened.

  ‘Fish and chips,’ she said, which was the first thing that popped into her head. But it was a good idea, because Vince seemed pleased and the atmosphere in the kitchen lightened. ‘I’ll pop out with the boys,’ she said. She felt desperate, suddenly, to get some air. She’d like to go on her own, but that was out of the question. She might come back with the wrapped fish suppers to find Andrew gone. She didn’t trust Vince an inch.

  ‘I’ll have a haddock,’ Vince said, ‘and some peas.’ Then he ambled through to the living room to watch television, and sleep off the beer. Annie settled Andre
w into his pushchair and waited for Michael to fasten his shoes and every toggle of his duffel coat, then off they set for the chip shop.

  26

  Sandra had Fritz in her handbag, she said. She meant his ashes, of course, collected this morning from the vet. They were in a plastic Ziploc bag, which in turn was stuffed into a Tupperware food saver. She wouldn’t have mentioned it on the day of Vince’s cremation, but she was encouraged to speak up by Annie’s carefree demeanour. The post-funeral tea and sandwiches at her little house in Beech Street had been positively festive; really quite noisy, with the two little Australian boys leaping off the stairs into the hallway from ever more daring heights and shouting ‘Geronimo!’ with every go, and Andrew regaling Marjorie Bevin and the Glebe Hall nurses with tales of his father’s scurrilous past. Andrew was being wonderful – had been since the day began. He was so sociable and charming, Annie thought; so debonair. He was handsome too, in his dark blue suit and white shirt, although he wore these formal clothes as casually as he possibly could: no tie, shirt flap untucked on one side, jacket loose on his shoulders as though he’d got distracted part way through putting it on. The impression was one of boyish charm; Moira and Brenda were lapping him up. Now and again, Annie couldn’t help noticing, Bailey gave his backside a proprietorial pat and he winked at her and smiled. Bailey called him ‘hon’ and Andrew called her ‘babe’. They reached for each other from time to time, clasping hands or circling each other’s waist, and once, very swiftly, they sneaked a kiss. Annie marvelled at their open, easy affection, and when Bailey caught her staring, Annie beamed at her daughter-in-law to show she didn’t disapprove.