Afterwards

by Rachel Seiffert

  The place was filling up, smelled of wet coats and fag smoke. Arthur lost his game but Joseph’s dad was going strong. All the tables were busy and more people waiting, the nodding bloke from earlier among them: he was standing by the far wall and kept looking over, Joseph was sure of it. He watched Eve to see if she’d noticed, maybe she knew who he was. But Eve was still talking to Alice, and Arthur was in the next room up at the bar, so Joseph read the names chalked on the board to see if one of them matched: Michael, Martin, Trevor. Nothing coming back.

  Arthur put his tray full of drinks down on the table, said the women next door had a line dance going:

  – Slapping thighs, all wobbling chins and arses.

  He shook his head and Eve laughed, told him not to be so rude: they were probably friends of hers from school. Alice smiled her thanks for the pint he’d bought her.

  – Reckon this is one too many.

  She raised her glass to Joseph, then pressed it against her cheeks, grinning, a bit pink-faced: alcohol or nerves, most likely both. She’d been chatting to Eve on and off for a while, all quite friendly, so maybe it was relief. The party next door was getting louder, and some joker had put the jukebox on to try and drown it out. Joseph’s dad was still playing and the bloke was still by the far wall, watching, a couple of mates with him now, and they had their heads leant in close and talking. Joseph had met one of them before, he couldn’t remember when exactly, but it was definitely at Malky’s. After he left the army, and before he went to Portugal: not a good time to have known him. Joseph tried to stop looking, keep his mind on how things were going with Alice and his sister. Arthur was talking about going back to the house: Ben would be up by now, and it was about time Joseph’s mum came out. Eve said she’d finish her drink and follow on, and Joseph thought maybe he and Alice should call a cab and go home. Getting dark out now, his bladder was full, the table covered in empty glasses. He leaned over them to Alice:

  – How long do you want to stay?

  – I’d like to buy a drink for your Mum when she comes.

  – I’ll get it just now. One for my Dad too and then we’ll get off, eh?

  – Okay.

  He hadn’t talked to her all afternoon, wondered what sort of a time she’d been having. Both been drinking for hours, wine at lunch and then however many pints in here. Joseph stacked the glasses. Arthur was gone, his mum would be here soon, and they were serving up at the bar again now, so he stood up to get the drinks in. Steering himself between the tables towards the toilets first. Had to walk past the bloke to get there, hadn’t thought it through before he started. Too late to change his course because the bloke had seen him now, stepping away from the wall.

  – You alright?

  Not a friendly question. Joseph tried to keep his head down and keep moving, but he couldn’t get far. Stupid. Wall and bar stools and too many people. Shouldn’t have come this way. Bloke between him and the door and Joseph had to stop.

  – Malky’s psycho pal, aren’t you?

  Still a couple of feet away, but that was too close. In range of feet and fists, and Joseph didn’t want anything to start: not today, not now with Alice there behind him. They were laughing at him, the bloke and his mates, and the men around them were turning to see what it was all about.

  – You come to have another go?

  – No.

  – Leave him alone, Trev, it’s his Dad’s birthday.

  Joseph didn’t look to see who that was. Someone behind him, another familiar voice. Someone else moved aside and Joseph pushed his way through the gap. Past Trevor’s laughing, angry face and into the bogs.

  No one followed. Quieter in there, it smelt of spliff and piss, and two little boys in wedding suits were over by the sinks. Bored with the party, they were running the taps, stuffing the plug holes with paper towels, first basin in the row already flowing over. Joseph went into the cubicle and locked the door, still no one following, but he still couldn’t piss, thinking how much of that Alice might have seen, his dad too. He’d have been used to that kind of thing a few years back. Never said anything about it to Joseph, but it stung to think about all the sly nods and elbows in the bar. Tommy Mason’s boy, he’s lost it, headcase. Joseph knew half the people in there would have a story about him, only most of them liked his dad too much to tell.

  Trev. Trevor. Joseph still couldn’t remember, but it was some kind of trouble from back then, must have been. Gave him a kicking once, or got one himself, most likely. A half-memory of pain in his ribs and fingers, but he had plenty of them, couldn’t be sure if that was the right one. Nothing he’d want Alice to hear about, anyway.

  She watched him come back across the room to the table, her face still red, but worried now, not laughing. Trevor was gone, and Joseph’s dad and Eve were at the table. Both stood up when they saw him, and both of them wanted to ask, but not with Alice there, and she could tell. Joseph didn’t want her embarrassed like that, but he had no explanation, nothing he could say that would cover the situation.

  – I’ll go and get that drink for your Mum.

  She got up and Joseph left it a minute before he followed her. They stood together up at the bar and Alice said:

  – You okay?

  – Yeah. You?

  She nodded. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She said the barmaid had called a cab for them.

  Joseph’s mum came and Eve went home. She kissed Joseph goodbye, and told Alice it had been nice to meet her, properly this time. The doors to the function room were flung wide open, wedding guests and regulars spilling over, winner stays on the tables, and the groom was beating all comers. The taxi was a long time coming, and Joseph and Alice stayed up at the bar, waiting, his mum and dad with them, watching the spectacle. Girls running about in gangs with balloons tied round their fingers; boys keeping busy swiping drinks off tables; men smoking and women dancing, jigging clumps of colourful blouses. The father of the bride put on a slow number and then talked all over it. Stood on the dance-floor hogging the microphone, remembering his wedding day and crooning out of tune with the chorus. Alice was watching the old man and smiling and Joseph put his arms around her. Couldn’t really hear what she was saying, just that she thought it was funny. Felt the hum of her voice, face pressed against his shoulder. Held her too long or too hard or something, because Alice shifted, uncomfortable, and he had to let go.

  Ten

  Three days without a phone call. It had been Alice’s choice. Sitting in Joseph’s kitchen, the night they’d been to the snooker club. Sobering up by then, asking him and still getting nothing.

  – I think I had a fight with him. I don’t know. Years ago. Seven or eight maybe.

  That’s all he’d been able to tell her, and Alice didn’t know if she could believe him, that he didn’t remember. It didn’t feel like a lie, not the way Joseph had said it, but it still didn’t make sense to her. Nothing much had happened in the bar that evening, an exchange of words, but it felt like there was much more to it.

  – Seems like a long time for someone to stay angry.

  She couldn’t forget the way Joseph’s father and sister had reacted either: they were so protective, Alice could understand that part, but then they hadn’t asked him anything about it. Whatever it was, they must have known already, that was the only way to explain it. But Alice still didn’t know why Joseph couldn’t tell her, sitting across the table from her, wordless: another gap he was just going to leave wide open. She felt as though she was still too drunk or too tired to make the right connections, couldn’t find the right questions.

  – What was it about? The fight you had?

  Alice had tried again, and then Joseph put his hands over his face. She didn’t know what that meant. Humiliating being asked, perhaps, when he really didn’t remember. Or he just didn’t want to tell her. It wasn’t only the fight, of course. The longer they sat there, the more she saw it as confirmation: there was too much she didn’t know, that Joseph hadn’t told her.

/>   So then she’d decided. It wasn’t final, that wasn’t what she wanted, but she couldn’t have those hands in front of his face either.

  – It’s not fair.

  She was being humiliated now and she told Joseph that’s how it felt.

  – Not just now, or last night.

  It happened whenever she asked him something and he shut her out.

  – Feels like all the time now.

  Joseph had listened to it all. Dry-eyed and quiet. Alice couldn’t cry either, not even later, when she’d wanted to. Cycling home while it was getting light, drifting on the empty road, feeling sick with lack of sleep and what she’d just done. Shocked at how little he’d said, how little reaction she’d got. Joseph hadn’t even asked her how long she wanted. Alice didn’t know. It felt as though he’d been waiting for her to say something like this, the whole night they spent sitting in his kitchen.

  She could remember reading about someone a while back, a young Irishman who lived in the North but worked in another town, a couple of miles away in the Republic. He had to cross the border every morning and evening, and Alice didn’t know what had made the police or the army suspicious of him at first. The article she’d read was an interview with his brother: he said they were from a Nationalist family, but the way he described it, the young man had done nothing, other than maybe go through the checkpoint at the edge of their estate too often. His car would be taken apart, and he’d have to remove his coat and shoes in the road, his lunchbox would be searched with bare fingers, and he was told he’d be late for work. He made complaints, through his union first, then his priest and finally the press, and the intimidation got worse. They stood on his throat at one point, the soldiers who stopped him, and another patrol told his father they had a bullet waiting for his son. He was killed walking to the football ground one afternoon. The army claimed the shot was an accidental discharge, the soldier was cleaning his rifle. Alice remembered how incredulous his brother was at this story, and that no one had ever faced charges. The interview had been part of a series, to mark the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, one illustration of the human cost of the Troubles. She couldn’t connect events like those with Joseph, but she was aware of testing them out against him somehow. Going through what she could remember, searching and comparing. When would that have been? No, he wasn’t there then. It made her angry: didn’t know what she was doing, scaring herself or looking for reassurance. It was ridiculous. Thirty years, tens of thousands of soldiers. Wasn’t likely she’d have heard about Joseph on the radio.

  In Heathrow, a few years back, when Alice was going through customs, a group of young men in front of her were all pulled aside, all of them with Irish accents. They hadn’t seemed surprised, it was as though they were used to it. The queue moved along, no one else was stopped, and Alice passed them as they were emptying their pockets. For all that they were happening in the same country, the Troubles had been distant from her: there for so long they’d just become part of the background, maybe. Telephoned warnings, wrongful convictions, strangely dubbed voices on the news, sealed postboxes in central London, no more lockers at any of the stations. She’d been interested, appalled sometimes, but never felt it involved her until now.

  Alice had a patient once from Manchester: Irene, Reenie, who’d gone shopping with her daughters the day the IRA bombed the Arndale Centre. Showed Alice the scars, visible through her tights: three long cuts in her thigh where some shards of glass had lodged. Deep enough for stitches, but she told Alice she couldn’t remember it hurting at the time. Said she spent the whole ambulance journey crying about her girls, even though the paramedic kept reassuring her. She could see them, unharmed, there in the ambulance with her, but just couldn’t trust her eyes. Only three and four at the time. Alice treated her a couple of years later, when Reenie was pregnant with her third child, a boy this time. She liked to talk, said she was lonely after moving down to London, and told Alice a few times about the blast. How it felt like being hit by a plank, smack on her back, and then all the glass flew out, way beyond the police cordon. The shock of that was still obvious to Alice when Reenie talked, or lifted the hem of her maternity dress to look again at the scars. But Irene had been a bystander, not a participant, only involved by accident. So despite the marks, it hadn’t come as close to Alice somehow, not the way it was with Joseph. Always more of it, relentless. She could feel herself pulling away, and she didn’t like that.

  Four days, another, the weekend. Alice went swimming on Saturday afternoon, stayed in and watched a video with Martha. She called her grandad and said she could come over early tomorrow.

  – Before lunch, do some work in the garden again. Dig over that patch at the back we cleared.

  – It can wait. It’s a good thought, but I’m quite tired.

  He sounded it too. Alice tried Joseph after that but hung up when she got the machine. She hadn’t seen so much of him lately but he’d rarely left it more than twenty-four hours without saying hello. Difficult to go for days like this, and it was hard not to think about that week he’d cut her off last summer. Not to look at the past month or two as some kind of withdrawal. More gradual, but he’d been removing himself nonetheless, she was sure.

  It hadn’t happened yet. But she wasn’t going to stay with him unless he came up with something. He’d sat there with her, all those hours into the morning, and he couldn’t remember what he’d thought, when they first started seeing each other. That it wouldn’t come up? No questions asked? Should have just left it that first time, that week, early in the summer when he couldn’t see her, that would have been better than this: too soon to do so much harm.

  Pointless thinking. Joseph knew that. He didn’t want it to be over, but the whole week after she left, he felt like he was getting ready. Up every morning and working, home every night, late sometimes, but still no message from her.

  Clive called him on Thursday: Joseph was in the van, on his way back to the flat. The job Clive was meant to be doing had been postponed, so he was thinking of going down to Brighton to get some work done on his house.

  – Bathroom’s just about ready for plastering, and the small bedroom, if you’re not busy. Short notice, but I could drive you down there in the morning, back up on Monday, first thing.

  Joseph said he was sorry, he had too much on, needed to stay at home. He didn’t want to be miles away if Alice phoned. But after he’d spent another evening waiting, he called Clive back and said he would come. Didn’t think about Stan until the morning. Just gone seven and Clive was due in about ten minutes, so Joseph called in sick. He’d never done that before, in over three years working for him, and it took Stan a few seconds to catch up, surprised, or maybe just not awake yet. He believed him anyway, and that made Joseph feel worse. He saw Clive’s headlights coming into the courtyard, but he hung around the flat, delaying. Thinking he could still go to work, leave it a couple of hours, say he went back to bed and then he felt better. Couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought. Shouldn’t be doing this. It was all getting away from him, and Joseph knew he shouldn’t let it. Clive beeped again and Joseph locked up and took his bag downstairs.

  Clare asked after Joseph at work on Monday. She was surprised Alice didn’t know he was ill. The morning clinic was full, and Alice had been glad of it, but then Clare arrived at lunchtime with her news: Joseph hadn’t been at work at the end of last week or this morning either. She’d brought coffees with her from the canteen, and they stood awkward in the doorway together after Alice said she hadn’t seen him for a few days.

  – Oh, right.

  Clare looked at her, checking, Alice shook her head. Too many people coming in and out to go into details. Clare covered the silence by telling her that Stan was juggling three jobs at the moment: a bit risky, but there would be a few slack months after, and they’d need the money then.

  – It’s our fault really, taking on too much. I thought you might be able to tell us when to expect him back.

  �
�� Sorry.

  No answer when she phoned, but that didn’t mean much. Alice didn’t leave a message, didn’t want to feel like she was being screened. She cycled over to Joseph’s instead, when the clinic was over. Early evening and his van was in the courtyard, so she locked her bike to the railings and went upstairs. No answer when she knocked.

  If he was sick, maybe he was sleeping. She pressed her hands up to the rippled glass in the door, but she couldn’t see anything inside. Didn’t feel like he was there. Too still somehow. The light in the big room was on, and it fell into the hall through the open doorway, but then she knew Joseph often left a light on when he went out: two of the flats below had been broken into earlier in the year. Alice called his name through the letterbox, twice, and she waited, but there was still no response.

  She was relieved to get back on her bicycle, away from the dark of the walkway and the quiet her voice left behind. Angry too: Alice didn’t think he was ill. She didn’t know what he was doing. Making himself unreachable.

  She left it another day, but then Clare was off work on Wednesday, and their manager said she was using up her annual leave to sort out some mess for Stan. Alice went round to see her at lunchtime, after she’d finished her shift. Thought if Clare had heard something, she would have phoned, but the mess had to be caused by Joseph.

  Clare made her tea, and didn’t seem surprised to see her. Said she hadn’t heard from Joseph, without prompting, and it didn’t sound like she was expecting any news from Alice. They sat down in the kitchen and the phone started ringing, but Clare didn’t get up, she just nodded.