by John Harvey
Last year he’d sent Luke and Sarah a postcard from Corsica.
She’d torn it up before they came home from school. What did they want to know about him and that po-faced pound of string beans he’d married, sunning themselves in Corsica? The water is clear and warm but you have to keep in the shade in the afternoons. If he had that much cash to throw away, he could pay for Luke’s new shoes, a winter coat for Sarah, one of those recorder things they both kept pestering her about.
“Luke!”
It was starting to get dark already, you could see the street lights clearly. Shapes of the cars parked on either side beginning to blur. She hated it when the nights started drawing in so fast.
“Luke!”
She’d told him, she’d told him half-a-dozen times if she’d told him once: back indoors by half-past four. What if I don’t know the time, he’d said? What do you think that watch is for? It’s bust. What do you mean, it’s bust? It won’t work any more. Look. Then ask somebody. You’ve got a tongue in your head, haven’t you?
Oh, Christ!
She rocked back against the edge of the open door. She shouldn’t…that wasn’t…what was she doing, telling him to go up to some stranger and ask the time? Telling him. All the air seemed to be sucked from her body. Her stomach cramped. Skin was cold to the touch. Goose pimples. Telling him. Please, can you tell me…can you tell me…can you tell me the time?
Pictures formed at the backs of her eyes and wouldn’t go away.
“Mummy. Mummy! What’s the matter?”
She forced herself to breathe, to smile at four-year-old Sarah pulling at the side of her skirt.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing. Come and have your tea.”
“Luke’s not here.”
Pushing the child through to the back room. “That’s all right. We don’t have to wait. You can have yours now. Luke eats twice as fast as you do anyway. He’ll soon catch up.”
“Mummy…”
She sat the child down in front of a plate, bread and butter cut, spaghetti hoops on the stove, bubbling up the sides of the pan. Six fish fingers under the grill, two for Sarah and…
Mary’s legs went at the knees, a moment, nothing more, enough to spill her across the narrow room; her hand, catching out, catching at anything, caught the handle of the kettle and sent it clattering across the floor.
Water pooled about her feet, luke warm.
She was at the sink, squeezing out a cloth before she realized that Sarah was pressed against the door jamb, tears on her face, staring.
“It’s all right, darling. Mummy just spilt the water. You go back and get on with your tea and I’ll clean this up. It won’t take a minute.”
She gave the girl a quick hug, felt her own tears pricking at her eyes. Ask somebody. You’ve got a tongue in your head, haven’t you? Mary bent low with the cloth; the water seemed to have got everywhere. On the third trip back to the sink, she switched on the gas over the grill, tipped half of the spaghetti out on to a plate.
“Mummy?”
“Mmm?”
“Here’s Luke.”
She spun round and saw him across the room. The street door had been open and he had come running in to stand there, still a little out of breath, head held to one side and a lick of brown hair falling, across it.
“I’m not late, I…”
The flat of her hand struck sharp across his face. There were seconds when he seemed not to have realized what had happened, rocked back against the wall, feeling needling back to his cheeks, stinging him to screams and tears.
At the table Sarah sat with her head bowed, not looking, not wanting to look, crying too.
“Whatever’s the matter with them?”
“With who?”
“The children?”
“Nothing.”
“Mary, you can’t tell me…”
“Mother, nothing’s the matter with them.”
“They’ve scarce said a word since they got here.”
“That was only ten minutes back. Give them a chance.”
“You were here at close to six as…”
“Oh, what does it matter what time we got here? What possible difference does it make?”
“Mary, it’s not the time I’m concerned with.”
“Then…then don’t go on about it so.”
“I am not going on about the time.”
“All right, you’re not…”
“It’s my grandchildren that…” If Vera Barnett had been able to get from her chair quickly enough, she would have caught hold of her daughter’s arm and kept her physically in the room. As it was, all she could do was stare at her, will her not to leave, to do as she wanted, just as she had done when Mary had been herself a child of small unvoiced regrets and sullen silences.
A moment later, the sound of water splashing back from the inside of the kettle, cups and saucers being shuffled along the draining board. Luke knelt before the television, too close to images of black-and-white outlaws waiting for the overland stage, the sound turned too low to hear. Wedged into the corner of the two-seater settee, Sarah gazed at her grandmother’s face, the sucked-in cheeks, the collapse of curls, gray against the gray of her neck.
When Mary came back into the living-room, it was with the tea things on a patterned metal tray, biscuits tipped out on to a cracked bone china plate. Avoiding her mother’s eyes, she sat on the settee and held saucer in one hand, cup in the other. Over Luke’s shoulder she watched the stage-coach passengers dropping money and valuables into a sack. Sarah, cuddling up alongside her, spilt milky tea on to the flowers of her dress.
“Well, this is very nice, I must say.”
Mary tried not to react to her mother’s voice, the cold challenge of its irony.
“Nobody visits me for over a week and when they do it’s like a morgue.”
For a moment, Mary closed her eyes and slipped an arm around her daughter, drawing her closer still. It was enough.
“That’s right, you don’t have to pay any attention to me. Why should you? Bring the children round for tea and sit watching some stupid thing on television. I don’t know why you bother.”
Mary was up from the settee quickly, leaning past Luke so that he flinched, clicking the set off.
“That’s not fair,” Luke’s protest started but got no further.
Vera Barnett’s head was angled towards her daughter in a look of petty triumph.
“There’s no winning with you, is there?” Mary was unable to keep silent.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If we don’t come to see you, that’s wrong, and if we do, that’s wrong too.”
“I don’t sit here to be ignored.”
“Nobody’s ignoring you.”
“That’s not what it looks like.”
“You can’t expect to be made a fuss of all the time.”
“Fuss! A civil word would be something. A kiss from my own grandchildren.”
“Mother, they kissed you when they got here. You know very well.”
“A peck.”
“Oh, now you’re being ridiculous!”
“Ridiculous, am I? Well, at least I know how to behave.”
Mary couldn’t believe it. She was starting this all over again. “Perhaps behaving’s easy when you never get out of your chair from morning till night.”
“How dare you!”
Oh, God! thought Mary. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that.”
Whether she had meant it or not didn’t matter.
“I suppose you think I like to sit here every day, day after day? I suppose you think I do it on purpose?”
Mary shook her head slowly. “No, Mother.”
Luke switched the television back on in time to see one of the posse tumble sideways from his horse and cartwheel through sagebrush and dust.
“These bones of mine-you think I’m a cripple through choice?”
“Mother, you a
re not a cripple!” Mary was on her feet, standing over her mother, staring down at her. Sarah pushed back against the cushions, watching and listening, making herself small. “I know you have a lot of pain, I know it’s difficult for you to move around, but you are not a cripple.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean, you’re sorry?”
“That I’m not ill enough for you to do what you’ve been wanting to do ever since…ever since…”
“Mother!” She had hold of her arms, lifting her forwards in the chair. She could see the envelopes of skin, like chicken flesh, spreading out from the corners of her eyes. After some moments she was conscious of the narrow hardness of her mother’s bones beneath her finger ends.
Sarah was sucking in air noisily, not quite crying, while Luke pretended to be watching a man with a badge walk into a crowded, brightly lit saloon.
Mary straightened and looked at her mother, daughter, mother again. She turned away and began to put the cups back on the tray. “I suppose you’ll be going out later,” said her mother, as Mary went towards the kitchen.
“Yes, Mother, I shall be going out later.”
Mary smoothed down her gray skirt and reached around behind to lower the toilet seat. Sitting, she lifted her heeled shoes from the plastic bag she had been carrying and wiped a scuff mark from the upper of one of them with a sheet of toilet paper. Wriggling her feet down into them, she squashed the soft-soled flatties she’d been wearing into her handbag; the striped plastic bag she stuffed down behind the pipe that ran from the cistern to the bowl. She stood then, wincing as the back of her left shoe bit into her skin. Why hadn’t she remembered to bring a plaster that she could have put on beneath her tights? Now she would have to hope that whatever they did, she wouldn’t have to walk too far.
She flushed the toilet and unbolted the cubicle door.
Makeup bag resting on the narrow ledge-How did they expect you to balance anything on something that wasn’t wide enough for a cat to walk along? — Mary applied some blusher, wondering again how it was she could still have freckles around her nose this far into autumn.
Lipstick.
At least, she hadn’t had to go through this with her mother; the questioning she had had to endure all the time she was at secondary school and beyond. Where are you going? Who are you going to meet? Which pictures? And the hand that would reach out to smear Miners makeup across her face: don’t imagine that’s going to wash with me, young lady, you don’t cover yourself in this just to go to the Odeon with a girlfriend.
True or false, true or false, it had never mattered.
You can’t lie to me, I’m your mother.
Yes, mother. She pressed her lips together tightly and then pulled them apart, making a soft popping sound. Well, it’s just as well you no longer ask.
An ageless woman in a bulked-out coat like tinted sacking came in, pushing a small boy before her. “In there. Go in. In there, stupid!” The door slammed shut.
Mary slid the black brush into the mascara and lifted up her eyelid with a finger. That’s what she’d have me looking like, done-for and sexless. Like her. God, she’s not yet sixty herself. Doesn’t she ever think about it? Ever? Mary clicked the mascara shut, pulled a comb a few more times through the ends of her hair. Not that that was why she went with them. Men. It wasn’t for the sex, which was just as well because half the time there wasn’t much sex at all. Oh, there was the talk, that and a bit of last-minute poking and grabbing when it was all too late and any interest she might have had had fallen away somewhere between the awkward silences and obvious lies.
“So,” she addressed her reflection aloud, “it’s a good thing I’m not desperate for it, isn’t it?”
Behind her a toilet flushed, a door banged, and for a moment the woman’s eyes caught hers in the mirror.
“Look where you’re going,” she said to the boy. “You’re always under my feet.”
Mary zipped up her makeup bag and put it away. Checking her watch, she saw that she still had twenty minutes, which was as well for she always liked to be there first and waiting. That way she had the advantage: she was always the one to pick them out, make the approach. That was the only way she would have it. That bit of control. Besides which, if she didn’t like the look of them-the least little thing-she’d walk right off and leave them there. Wandering up and down, walk and turn, walk and stop, check the watch, the clock across the square, walk some more.
Once she’d come back more than two hours later and this whippet of a bloke had still been there, eyes glazed over, cigarette cupped in his hand, waiting in the slow fall of rain.
Tonight, though-Mary stepped out on to the street, pressing the button at the pedestrian crossing-she had a feeling it was going to be all right. The way he’d written, that had convinced her of that. Not full of himself, the way some were, making out like they were a cross between Sylvester Stallone and Shakespeare. He wasn’t a wimp, either-some of them sounded as if they’d gone down on their hands and knees before they set pen to paper.
And that was another thing. She turned down past the post office, thankful she didn’t have far to go, there was a blister coming up over her heel already. His writing. Sophisticated, that’s what she’d have to call it. Ink, too, real ink, not biro. Almost fancy. Well, nothing wrong with a man who was a bit fancy. Maybe he’d fancy her.
Crossing the square between the lager drinkers and the pigeons, Mary smiled: her fancy man.
She asked for a port and brandy and took it to her usual place, moving a stool along to the curve of the bar so that she had a good view of the door without being right on top of it. That way she had plenty of time to be sure. Behind her the drummer was unfastening his cases, beginning to assemble his kit. Mary sipped her drink and tried to ignore the faint itch of sweat just below her hairline. Relax, she told herself. Relax: you’ll know him when he comes.
Twelve
You didn’t only find dust in disused rooms: once, pulling out the empty whitewood chest, he had found a baby bird. Cocooned in a spider’s web and resting back on outspread wings, its beak and belly gave it the look of some prehistoric creature here in miniature. Days old, only hours. Carefully, he had prized the web from round about it, closed his mouth, and blown away the dust; when he cupped his hand beneath the bird and lifted it up, the wings disintegrated at his touch. Between the pages of a book he found a letter from his former wife which contained the words for ever. Tonight, searching for Bud, who had not appeared at the sound of cat food being scraped into bowls, he had picked from between some old magazines a picture postcard from Ben Riley.
Come on in, the message had read, the water’s fine!
On the front of the card, an expanse of land pushed back towards a range of mountains, snow at their peaks; the moon rising pale through a lot of sky. Not a sign of water anywhere the eye could see.
Resnick and Ben Riley had walked the beat together for the best part of two years. One Saturday in four they would walk down through the Meadows and over Trent Bridge, stand on the terraces, and watch their colleagues sitting below, helmets off and on the ground beside them. On the way back, Ben would drop into the cycle shop and discuss the comparative merits of machines and gears, while Resnick flipped through the new releases in the jazz specialists along the street. Now Arkwright Street had been pulled down and most of the small rows of adjoining terraces along with it. Where they used to stand to watch the Reds, others now sat in executive boxes with the televisions tuned to the racing. Resnick had started watching the team on the other side of the river. And Ben Riley was out in Montana.
Resnick supposed that was where he was.
At first there had been letters, postcards from trips Ben had made-Custer’s Battlefields; the Breaks of the Missouri; Glacier National Park; Chicago-and then, inevitably, Christmas greetings that arrived mid-January and for the past few years nothing at all.
On the way past the bathroom, Resnick heard a familiar, pathetic mewing. Pe
pper was curled asleep around the top of the laundry basket and, somehow, Bud had managed to get trapped inside it, pitifully tangled amongst Resnick’s soiled shirts.
On the way to the kitchen, the cat purring, nuzzling the crook of his arm, Resnick lifted the stylus back on to Johnny Hodges. Ben Riley, he was thinking, had been the best man at his wedding. Resnick set the cat down by his bowl and smiled: just as well somebody was.
He broke a couple of eggs into a bowl, added milk, forked butter into the bottom of a pan. He grated in some parmesan and opened the cupboard for the Tabasco sauce. Do you ever do anything in the way of exercise? You’re starting to look a little plump. Resnick tore the health club’s free offer into four and dropped the pieces into the bin. When the butter was beginning to sizzle up, he tipped in the egg mixture, stirred it round a couple of times and then, taking a carton of cream from the fridge, added a more than generous helping.
It was still only mid-evening and there was no point in getting to the club before eleven. At a sudden thought, he gave the eggs a stir, turned the gas low, and went to the phone.
Chris Phillips answered.
Resnick imagined that was who it was. He said: “Is Rachel there?”
“No, she’s at a meeting,” Phillips said.
Resnick said, “Oh,” wondering whether he should leave a message and ask her to call him, meet him later.
“Can I take a message?” Phillips said.
“No, it’s okay. Thanks.”
“Who shall I say called?”
“Em, Resnick. Charlie Resnick.”