by David Nobbs
Despite the lack of a note, there had been no difficulty in reaching the verdict that Barry Mottram had killed himself.
She could just see the roof of the building that housed Mottram & Caldwell. Her eyes passed on, drawn instinctively towards the uniform rooftops of Cadwallader Road. She saw, vividly, Ellie Fazackerly stuck there in her great bed.
‘Having a quiet moment?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, “Having a quiet moment?”’
‘I was, yes.’
‘Good for you.’
Sally stole a quick look at the speaker of these words. A middle-aged man was standing close to her, too close to her. He had sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, receding hair and an ominous long raincoat.
‘Does you good, sometimes, dun’t it?’ he said. ‘Stop. Listen. Have a think. Does you good.’
‘Yes. Yes. It does. Yes. A moment of reflection.’
‘In this hectic world.’
‘Quite.’
‘I think we may have met before.’
‘I don’t think so.’
She backed away from the man ever so slightly. But he noticed and moved closer ever so slightly.
‘Not a bad view, is it?’
Yes, it is. Can’t say that. Can’t be rude.
Why not be rude? He’s invading my space.
‘Not bad, no.’
‘No, there’s nowt like a spot of quiet thinking. Young folk don’t know how to do it. That’s what’s wrong wi’ t’world. Thinking. It’s a lost art.’
For you it is.
Couldn’t say it.
‘Very true.’
Oh God, Sally.
‘I’m on me own, you see. Me wife died twenty-two years ago.’
Suicide, was it? Sally! You are not nice.
‘I still talk to her.’
Suddenly Sally felt a wave of sympathy for the man in the long raincoat.
‘I can understand that.’
‘You get lonely, you see.’
‘Yes. Yes, I do see.’
There was silence for a moment. Sally found that she couldn’t just leave, not after that information. Somehow, it had become an important moment, here on the footbridge, teased by a playful easterly breeze.
‘As I say … you don’t mind my talking, do you? Cos I know I interrupted you thinking.’
‘You can think too much.’
‘I pride meself on knowing when to talk and when not to talk. I was a taxi driver, see. Tool of the trade, is that. Gauge when the passenger wants to talk, gauge when he wants to be quiet. Tool of the trade.’
I’m rather glad I never hired your taxi.
‘I bet you’re glad you never hired my taxi.’
‘No!’
She didn’t want to move on until he did. But he showed no sign of going. It was an impasse. Maybe they would stay on the footbridge for ever.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘Interrupting you. When you were thinking.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does. I’ve let meself down. I’ll be off now.’
Don’t say anything, Sally.
‘Leave you with your thoughts. And the view.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Not a bad old place. Bit of a dump, I suppose, but what somebody could do with it! What somebody could do with it, eh?’
‘Absolutely. Very true. Well, it’s been nice talking to you.’
Even he should take that hint, but she held out her hand to make the point even more positively.
They shook hands. She’d have time to wash hers before she had anything to eat.
He moved off. She was ashamed of the depth of her relief.
He was coming back!
‘I remember where I saw you.’
‘Oh?’
‘Coming out o’ kirk t’other Wednesday. I know it was Wednesday cos it wasn’t market day and I’d thought it was, silly me. You and your daughter. Pretty girl. I could see the resemblance. Lovely couple you made, if you don’t mind my saying.’
‘No. Not at all. Not at all. It was my husband’s funeral.’
‘Oh no. I’ve done it again. I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s all right, but …’
‘You want to cry. I understand. And I agree. Don’t hold it in. That’s trouble wi’ Potherthwaite. We hold too much in. Let it all out, I say.’
Long Raincoat moved away, and this time he didn’t turn back. Sally looked out over the grey town, and thought about his words. ‘Bit of a dump, I suppose, but what somebody could do with it!’ She shook her head at the impossibility, the absurdity of the sudden thought.
She looked over at the church. She thought of herself and Alice as Long Raincoat must have seen them. A lovely couple. Yes, they must have looked a lovely couple.
She hadn’t felt lovely, that day. She’d hardly slept. She’d felt that she looked haggard. The service had been a total embarrassment. So much was said. So much wasn’t said. The Revd Dominic Otley had spoken without conviction. The funerals of people who have killed themselves are hell.
And Alice. She had been lovely. She had grown into a really lovely woman, a proud mother of two lovely little boys. It was lovely that she had such lovely photos of them, and if perhaps she showed them slightly too often, well, it was good at a funeral to dwell on things that cheered, it would be wrong to criticize her for that. No, the only thing that had disappointed her about Alice was the thing she hadn’t said. She hadn’t suggested that Sally move to New Zealand. She understood why, it made sense. She had her own life. She had the boys. She didn’t know whether, if Alice had asked her, she would have gone. Some people said New Zealand was a paradise. Others said it was boring. Perhaps it was in the ineluctable nature of things that paradises were boring. No, she didn’t know if she would have gone, but it would have been nice to have been asked.
Sam hadn’t sung the praises of Barnet, either.
She took one more look at the roofs of her home town, at a faint sheen from the emerging sun on the one tiny glimpse she could get of the Potherthwaite Arm of the Rackstraw and Sladfield Canal.
Beyond and above the canal and the Quays, on the moor at the other side of the valley, Potherthwaite Hall stood arrogant guard over the town. It had only occurred to her well after Barry’s death that this year they hadn’t been invited to Councillor Stratton’s party.
She set off at last, slowly wheeling her two suitcases to the northern end of the footbridge. She pressed for the lift. It arrived slowly. ‘Footbridge level,’ exclaimed the bossy lady. Sally manoeuvred her cases into the lift. ‘Going down.’ She went down.
She wheeled her cases towards the ramshackle buffet, then hesitated. She didn’t want to go into the buffet, in case Long Raincoat would be there.
But there was another reason too. She didn’t need a vat of tea or a cauldron of coffee. She didn’t need a Danish pastry or a slice of fruit cake.
She didn’t need anything. She was going south, to the Land of Plenty.
TEN
A small flat in Barnet
Beth’s lasagne wasn’t exactly bad. She was an inexperienced cook – they lived mainly on ready meals and takeaways – but it was clear to Sally that Sam had told her that his mother would expect real cooking. She wished he hadn’t done that. She had quite lost her appetite since Barry’s death, and she knew that she had to eat up all her lasagne. It was a neat reversal of her relationship with her son. She had spent hours getting him to eat up, in the happy years.
‘The happy years’! What did she mean? Hadn’t she been happy throughout her marriage? She had thought that Barry had been too, but … consulting a psychoanalyst? Killing himself? And why oh why had he not left her a suicide note? To go, to hurt her so, without a word.
This was awful. This was not why she had come to stay with Sam and Beth. She had come to begin to recover from her trauma. She had come, with Barry dead and Alice in New Zealand, to find some family feeling, some family warmt
h.
‘Lovely.’
‘Do you mean that?’ asked Beth naively.
‘It’s very good.’
‘It is, Beth,’ said Sam. ‘Really. Beth has no confidence, Mum.’
Beth gave Sam a glare, which she turned into a comedy glare to try to hide the fact that it was a real glare. She wasn’t unattractive, but you couldn’t say she was beautiful. She’s a bit like her lasagne, thought Sally, and then she wished that she hadn’t, but you can’t unthink a thought.
She was ashamed of herself for wishing that her son had found somebody more glamorous. She was ashamed of herself for wishing that he had got a better degree from a better university and had a better job.
They were sitting on wooden chairs at a square, battered table in a corner of the small lounge/diner of their tiny rented flat in a street of small pre-war houses in Barnet. There were two round marks on the tabletop, where hot mugs had been put down without protection. Sally found herself wondering which of them had left the careless marks. She hoped it wasn’t her son, he had been well brought up.
She calculated that she was now more than halfway through her lasagne. She could make it through to the end. And there came to her at that moment a sudden memory of Potherthwaite, the last thing she wanted to remember. Hadn’t she in part come here to forget? Marigold had suggested, at the funeral wake of all places, that they go out to lunch together, damsels in distress, to cheer themselves up. There was a special Pensioners’ Lunch Offer at the Weavers’ Arms on Thursdays, and they had decided to cheer themselves up by going there and perhaps being the youngest people in the room.
Seated at the next table had been Jill and Arnold Buss, with their new neighbours, Olive and Harry Patterson. Jill, who knew Sally, had introduced Olive and Harry. At the end of the meal, Harry and Arnold had gone to the bar to dissect the bill, Jill had gone to the loo, and Sally and Olive had met at the coats, and as Sally had helped Olive on with her coat, she had praised the beef casserole, and Olive had told her about having to finish the beef casserole at Jill and Arnold’s when it was too spicy for her. ‘I shouldn’t have told you. They were very kind. Please don’t mention it,’ Olive had said hastily as the men returned. Sally had thought this a very trivial story, but now she was beginning to sympathize with Olive.
Thinking back to Potherthwaite led her inexorably back to Barry. Oh God, she missed him. Had he not known, how could he not have known, how much she would miss him? How could he do it to her?
‘Really lovely.’
It would have been better not to say that. It would draw their attention to the slow speed of her consumption, the almost desperate working of her jaw.
She felt guilty about wishing that Sam didn’t look so pale and thin. It made him look too tall, a beanpole. It made his nose look too long and too serious. She felt uneasy about being so disappointed that Beth wasn’t taller, and had such heavy breasts. She told herself that it was unreasonable of her to hope that they would soon move to somewhere more exciting than Barnet. Poor Barnet, how could it live up to her picture of ‘The South’, that mythical place she had missed so badly for twenty-four years? Every now and then she made some kind of reply to some kind of remark, but afterwards she couldn’t remember what they had talked about, she could only remember what she had thought. It wasn’t that Barnet was ugly exactly, it was just … commonplace. Ordinary. Rather like Beth and the lasagne, really.
Beth had left the lasagne in the oven too long, perhaps less than two minutes too long. But that was the trouble with pasta, leave it a smidgen too long and it went heavy, solid, stolid. As she chewed, she saw Olive chewing, and she was back in Potherthwaite again. This was terrible. Oh, why hadn’t he left a note?
Each mouthful was a hurdle, but now she was in the final straight. Chomp chomp. Finished! Good girl! She’s eaten all her dinner! Who’s a clever Sally?
‘Delicious.’
She longed for something sweet. How humiliating to long so much for something so unimportant.
Sam was clearing up, and soon Beth rose to help.
‘I’m afraid we don’t do desserts,’ said Sam.
‘We’ve turned our backs on sugar,’ said Beth.
‘That’s fine,’ lied Sally. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to eat another mouthful anyway.’
They refused to let her into the kitchen to help. It was too small.
‘You go and sit down and relax,’ said Sam.
Relax!
It wasn’t only the kitchen that was too small. So was the lounge/diner, and her bedroom, and the bathroom. She longed to leave, and she was committed to staying for four whole days. She couldn’t leave early. Sam was her son.
She felt at a loss, having no fire to sit by. There were just two armchairs, depressingly dark green and past their best. They were arranged facing the television set, the open fire of modern living. The central heating made the flat warm, almost stuffily so, but it wasn’t the same as a fire. How spoilt she had been with her nice house in the best road in Potherthwaite. How could she not have fully appreciated it until she was on the point of losing it? She hadn’t had a bad life, until Barry’s death of course, but it had been … ordinary.
Rather like Barnet. And Beth. And the lasagne.
When they had washed up, Sam and Beth joined her. Sam plonked himself into the other armchair. Beth pulled a wooden chair over and sat between them. Sally wished she sat more gracefully. She also wished that her son had been more polite.
‘Is there anything you want to watch?’ asked Sam hopefully.
Yes. The movement of the hands of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece as it leads me slowly but reliably towards the moment in four days’ time when I can leave this prison. Sally, that is not worthy of you. Pull yourself together – isn’t that what this trip is all about?
‘Not really, thank you. I’m not a great telly watcher.’
‘I’ll open another bottle of wine,’ said Sam, standing up.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Beth hastily.
Beth didn’t want to be alone with her! Come on, Sally. Be bright and friendly. Let Beth in.
‘Nice of you to bring all that wine, Mum.’
I brought it for myself, in case I needed it, but we don’t need to go into motive, do we?
‘I want us to be cheery, Sam. I want us to start to get over what’s happened together. We need each other.’
Beth brought the wine and they all made an effort and really the conversation wasn’t too bad at all, but all the time Sally was aware of Sam’s anxiety.
Then Beth stood up.
‘I’m a bit tired,’ she said. ‘I’m off to bed.’
She kissed Sam. Sally moved to stand up but Beth said ‘Don’t get up’ and bent down and kissed her. Sally realized that Beth wanted to say something. What could it be? ‘It’s great to have you here’? ‘Sam and I both hope you’ll move down near us’? ‘Let’s have a lovely four days’?
‘I’ve put you two towels and there’s a glass of water by your bed,’ said Beth.
When Beth had gone, Sally asked, ‘Is she being tactful?’
‘What?’
‘Going to bed early. Leaving us alone together.’
‘Ah. Oh, I see. No, no. Beth always goes to bed early.’
‘Right. Well, anyway, Sam … um … we may as well kill this bottle.’
‘Oh. Right. Yes.’
Sam poured and they clinked glasses.
‘Good to have you here, Mum.’
‘Thanks. Good to be here. Sam?’
‘Yes?’ said Sam warily.
‘Um … I hope I’m not going to put my foot in it …’
‘You couldn’t, Mum.’
‘No, but seriously, I must ask you … I know you, you can’t hide things from me. Something’s worrying you, and that worries me. Is there anything … is there something … on your mind?’
‘Well … I mean … Mum, I’m twenty-three, you’ve had a terrible experience, I don’t want to burden you with my worries.’
>
‘I want you to burden me, Sam. It’s what I’m for.’
‘OK. OK. They say every problem is about sex or money.’
He paused.
‘Go on.’
‘You don’t need to be Einstein to know that my problem’s money. I’m sorry you’ve noticed, I’ve really tried not to show it, but … I’m scared shitless, Mum.’
‘Right, so … why are you … scared shitless?’
‘I’m a fairly junior accountant, Beth’s a dentist’s receptionist and she isn’t the pushy type, so neither of us is very well paid, our degrees haven’t been much of a passport to anything, and at this moment of time we owe between us a small matter of sixty-eight thousand pounds.’
‘Oh my God. That’s awful. You poor boy. Poor Beth.’ She turned angry. ‘It’s a scandal that young people have this enormous pressure. Doesn’t this nation value education?’
‘Not enough, obviously. Beth knows two girls with violent anorexia because of their worries, and a bloke I knew at Keele topped … Oh God, I’m sorry, Mum. Mum, I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten, and I’m sorry too. Poor bloke.’
‘No, but that phrase, it’s …’
‘It’s what people say. Words don’t hurt compared to … what’s happened.’
‘No. Sorry.’
‘What did Beth take her degree in?’
Sam blushed slightly. He looked better when he had a bit of colour.
‘Conservation.’
‘I see.’
‘Mum, this is going to sound awful, but … now that we’ve started … I don’t know how to put it … I’m embarrassed.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘Well … I mean, don’t think Beth and I have ever been wildly extravagant.’
Sally couldn’t avoid taking a little look around the room. The walls were bare except for two posters.
‘I’ve never thought that.’
‘Good. But … I hope in a way this is a compliment, but … we’ve regarded you as a kind of a safety net.’