Afterwards

by Rachel Seiffert

  – Just a second. Sorry.

  She was pale, wearing eyeliner, but it looked like yesterday’s. Alice wondered if Joseph was at her house now, and whether Arthur was with him, what he was doing, and if Eve had those same thoughts all the time now. Eve put her hands in her lap, and then she asked:

  – He’s never said anything to you?

  Alice shook her head. Eve sat a moment and then she leaned forward a little.

  – You say you want it to stop. Of course you do, we all do. But you want to know if he did something wrong too, don’t you? While he was in Ireland.

  Eve looked at her, she was speaking quietly.

  – You know about some of the things soldiers have done there, and you were hoping I could tell you Joseph isn’t one of them.

  – No. I wasn’t. I’m trying not to presume anything.

  It wasn’t pleasant, the way Eve had recognised what she was frightened of hearing. Maybe his sister had had the same fears: she would have been familiar with the same news stories. Eve looked at Alice and shrugged, as if to say Joseph hadn’t told her. She couldn’t provide reassurance or confirmation. Alice nodded, and then Eve said:

  – I never liked Joseph being in the army. He knows that. I could understand it, if that’s the way you feel too. Because of the things soldiers have to do sometimes. I wouldn’t blame you. We’re never going to like it, but what we think doesn’t matter, that’s not the point.

  She stopped for a moment, and Alice watched her face. Of course Eve was right: whatever it was that Joseph didn’t want to tell them, it didn’t have to be criminal to be troubling, he could have been following the rules of engagement. Alice wasn’t sure that made her feel any better. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to.

  – The way I see it. He was in the army. Chances are, he’s done something or seen something done. What kind of person comes away from that with peace of mind?

  Eve seemed to weigh them equally, these possibilities: Joseph as witness or perpetrator, either or. Alice couldn’t believe that’s how she really felt. She knew which of the two she found easier to bear, couldn’t imagine it would be so different for his sister.

  Eve was watching her now, frowning.

  – Why do you have to know? You talk like you’ve got a right to know or something.

  She wasn’t being unfriendly.

  – You want to know. But that’s different.

  Eve looked away again after that, her eyes on the table, thumbnail tracing the rough grain of the wood.

  – Even if he did get treatment. Even if that helped. He still might never say. Only to a psychologist, or a group. I don’t think that would be enough for you, would it?

  Alice wanted to deny it, but Eve was talking so quietly, not accusing. And it was true, so it would have been pointless to contradict her.

  Alice spent a long time thinking over the conversation. He’s never said anything? For all she insisted, Eve was still curious. Alice remembered her expression, once Eve was sure Joseph hadn’t told Alice either: the way she’d nodded, satisfied, somehow. Or maybe that was unkind. It would have hurt, probably, if she had known more than Eve, his own sister. Alice could understand that.

  You want to know, but that’s different. Joseph didn’t have to tell her, Eve was adamant. Even though it seemed like she was the one who took him in each time, put up with the fighting, the going missing. He didn’t owe her any explanation. It was almost admirable, Alice thought, to allow someone so much latitude: must take a lot of tolerance. If he could cope with it, then Eve would too. Perhaps Joseph didn’t give her any choice, but Alice still couldn’t understand it: how Eve could put herself aside like that, and all her questions, the misgivings she must have had.

  Alice left later than they’d arranged: it was well after two by the time they’d finished talking, but Eve didn’t hurry her out. She walked with Alice as far as the road and then she said:

  – Much worse for him than it is for any of us, you know?

  Later, Alice thought maybe that was how Eve did it: she put her brother’s behaviour down to a guilty conscience. Alice could even follow her logic, although it made her uncomfortable: Eve could accept his absences and anger if they were his penance. It meant Joseph was in some way culpable, of course, not just a witness. What he did may have been sanctioned, but he still thought himself responsible. He had to live with it, and Eve wasn’t going to interfere.

  It seemed bleak to Alice, lonely for Joseph, and it was unfair, surely, to make such an assumption. She thought of her grandfather, the bombs exploding up into the plane, and the engineer bleeding to death on the too-long flight back to Nairobi. Joseph might have seen any number of terrible things while he was in the province, legitimate or otherwise, and not only done by soldiers. He had no physical scars: Alice caught herself, looking for marks on the body she remembered. Wasn’t it still possible that he’d been harmed? Eve didn’t seem to allow room for that.

  But then Joseph wasn’t telling, and Alice knew how hard that was to live with. His sister had gone looking for what she needed, and Alice couldn’t blame her. She could see the consolation in what Eve had found too. What kind of a person comes away with peace of mind? Far better to know he feels something than nothing.

  Fifteen

  Before Joseph moved back to the flat, he painted the walls. Eve came to see him on the last day, to admire his work, brought an indian with her, a late Sunday lunch, with a can of lager each to toast the job. She stood the bag in the kitchen and went through the flat with him first. The sun was already going down, so Joseph turned on the lights. Still bare bulbs in every room, and the floorboards still needed varnish, but he was getting there.

  Eve dished up while Joseph washed his brushes, and then they ate in the kitchen, looking out over the courtyard. His neighbours had fairy lights in their windows, snowspray and tinsel. His fourth Christmas there and some of the decorations were familiar by now. He and Eve drank their beers and talked about what to buy Arthur and their dad, and all the time Joseph watched his sister and wondered. What she’d been thinking these past weeks, while he was staying back at her place. If she’d ever wanted to know, the way Alice did. Joseph had thought it might happen this time, Eve might ask him what was going on and why, but here she was, eating curry with him and talking about Christmas.

  She’d always kept her door open and never seemed to need an explanation: Joseph was grateful to his sister for that. Hard to talk to anyone about it, and Eve made it easy not to. It had worked for him before. Might do again. Except that Alice wouldn’t have him back, not on those terms.

  Weeks went by, most of the winter. Martha got pregnant, and after many rows with Keith, she told Alice one morning they’d decided to keep the baby.

  – Good.

  – Really?

  They were both sitting at the kitchen table, both meant to be leaving for work, but they’d taken to having an extra cup of tea together lately. The windows were steamed up against the morning, and Alice thought Martha was pleased, even though her flatmate was doing her best to sound otherwise.

  – There’s one bad thing about it. Apart from Keith I mean.

  – You’re giving me notice, aren’t you?

  – I am. Sorry.

  – That’s okay. I’ve started looking.

  Her grandmother’s will had come through in January, and it made a mortgage just about possible. Instead of visiting her grandfather at weekends, Alice had been looking at flats with him. He’d drive, because they could never get round more than one or two on public transport, and then they’d find a café or a garden centre to browse through between appointments. It was strange at first, the idea of buying so near to where she’d grown up, but Alice couldn’t afford anything closer to work, and then she got to like the prospect of living a few streets away from her grandad again. He started scanning the property pages of the local papers, and sent his recommendations, red-ringed, through the post.

  – I can separate the wheat from the chaff for you at
least.

  He tended towards ground floor, with a garden, and space enough for the piano. Her grandmother had left it to her, but Alice had thought it should stay at her grandad’s: removing it would leave such a hole in the living room they’d shared. It pleased her that he insisted she should have it, wouldn’t listen to arguments against. On a Saturday afternoon, over mugs of tea in a greasy spoon together, waiting for an estate agent to show up, he suggested hiring specialist removers and contacting her grandmother’s tuner for advice.

  – You can play for me when I visit.

  – I’m nowhere near as good as Gran.

  – You’ll have to practise.

  Said in the same dry tone she remembered from when he’d got to know Joseph, and she’d seen what her grandfather could be like, when he enjoyed someone’s company. Perhaps he’d been like that with Gran too, when the rest of the family wasn’t around. This tone came out more often in their conversations now: still new to her, but Alice liked being teased every once in a while by her grandad.

  They sorted through Gran’s papers together. Alice took two days’ holiday at the end of February and they slowly emptied the drawers of her grandmother’s desk onto the dining room table. Dental records and bank statements, her divorce papers, the order of service from her father’s funeral. Scraps of ribbon and folded wrapping paper, stored for re-use, spare notelets and envelopes, a pocket calendar from 1962 with friends’ and family birthdays marked. Her grandfather said he wanted to keep that.

  – I’ll try and remember to use it too.

  He’d brought two boxes down from the attic when Alice arrived the second morning. Mostly personal letters, and nothing he wanted to throw away: he’d been through them already, but he showed them to Alice anyway. In small piles, ordered by date, and neatly tied with string. Alice recognised her grandfather’s handiwork: she knew the birthday cake parcels her gran had sent were always tied by him. Beautiful, and it felt like sabotage to use scissors, but the knots were impossible. He left Alice with the letters and went to put on the kettle.

  The postmarks ran across the decades. Most were from the fifties, with Kenyan as well as British stamps: her grandparents’ love letters. Fewer of them later, but they continued well into the nineties, and Alice wondered that they’d been apart long enough during those years to warrant sending letters. While Gran was up in York maybe, or visiting Aunt Celie, and Grandad stayed in London: a week away at most, but they’d still found things to write. Her grandfather had sorted them into pairs, wherever he could, and for almost every letter, there was a reply.

  – I wanted you to know where they are.

  Her grandfather was back in the room. He smiled at her, hesitant:

  – You can read them, but you might have to wait until I’m gone, I’m afraid.

  He set a cup down beside her, and went to drink his by the window. He knew she was disappointed, Alice could see that: to have to defer the untying and opening, the reading. They stayed like that for long minutes, the width of the room between them, and then Alice slotted the letters back into their box. Reluctant but careful, in order of date, just as her grandfather had done. Conscious he was unlikely to be with her the next time she saw them.

  They’d started a list the day before, subscriptions to cancel, charities to contact, standing orders to stop or transfer, and they went through this together, dividing the tasks between them. Many were already months overdue: Alice was ashamed not to have offered her grandfather help earlier, and that she hadn’t thought he might need her to. It was lunchtime before they’d finished. Alice had cycled past the deli on her way over, and she went into the kitchen to put everything onto plates for them. Her grandfather had cleared a space on the table when she returned with the tray, and he’d also laid two envelopes in front of her chair.

  – These are for now. If you’d like them.

  They were addressed to her grandparents, both of the letters, but the handwriting was unfamiliar. Dated a few weeks apart, in 1972, a couple of months before she was born.

  – I don’t have the letters we sent them, of course, but they may have kept them.

  Alice turned the first envelope over and recognised the return address: her father’s parents. She’d written to him there, the first letter, and he’d told her they had sent it on. Her grandfather left his plate untouched while she read the handwritten pages. Both full of concern for her mother and what life with a child but no husband would hold for her. In both they also expressed their regret that their son did not want to stay in contact. We still hope he will change his mind. The second letter referred to a meeting, and confirmed the date, with directions from the A-road that passed their village.

  – You went to see them?

  – Yes.

  – You and Gran?

  – Yes.

  – Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?

  Her grandfather looked at her, shocked. She hadn’t shouted, but she had raised her voice. It was the first time Alice had felt angry with him in months. Not since Joseph had smashed the window. She’d only felt protective. But then he said:

  – I presumed Isobel. I thought. I’m not sure now.

  He looked at the letters, frowning. Old eyes flickering.

  – You should have known. Of course you should. I’m sorry.

  He was squinting a little. Alice said:

  – What did you talk about?

  – Practicalities. The different options.

  He looked at her, almost embarrassed.

  – I mean marriage, adoption. Financial considerations.

  Then he smiled a little.

  – Not that we had much influence, of course. Our children were both stubborn. A good thing Sarah was.

  Gran had known that she’d started writing to her father. Alice thought about all her grandparents’ letters and was certain Gran would have told him.

  – He stopped writing to me. Almost two years ago now.

  – Yes. We did think. We assumed something must have happened.

  Alice thought her grandad was reddening.

  – I liked them, your other grandparents. I’ve often wondered. That they never knew you. I’m sure they would have liked to.

  Alice remembered the letter she’d sent her father, the first one, and that his reply had come so quickly. They must have forwarded it immediately, the same day perhaps. Did they think it was from her? Addressed by hand. They can’t have got many letters for their son, not thirty-odd years since he left home.

  The first Alice heard of Joseph again was when she went round to see Clare. It was sometime early in March, not long after Stan’s birthday, and Alice brought round a bottle for Clare to pass on to him. Their extension still wasn’t finished, but the kitchen cabinets had finally arrived and the walls were plastered too. Clare saw her looking at them and then apologised.

  – Joseph. He insisted.

  Alice nodded. Thought about how Joseph had insisted on doing her grandad’s house too. I wouldn’t want paying. Maybe he’d seen it as a way to make up, for disappearing on her, the first time. She said:

  – You don’t have to be sorry.

  – No. I know. Stan wants to give him another go.

  Clare still sounded apologetic, but Alice surprised herself by feeling pleased. The regret came after she left, slowed her limbs and her breath, and was much more familiar. Later, she described how those autumn weeks had felt, on the phone to her mother:

  – As though he wanted me to split up with him. Be the one to give up. I thought he was willing me to do it. Even before that business at Grandad’s.

  Alice sometimes thought she’d complied too easily: remembered how cowardly it had felt, not to include a message in the letter her grandfather had written him. But her mother said it wasn’t her fault it had ended. The way she saw it, the break would have come anyway.

  – I mean, I don’t really know Joseph. I liked him when he came up here, and Dad seems determined to defend him. But he was shutting you out, even before th
e autumn. You can’t expect to be with someone and do that to them, not in my book. Not if you want them to be happy with you, anyway.

  It made Alice feel better, talking to her mother, but after she’d hung up, she wasn’t sure she agreed.

  There was an old conversation with Clare, one they’d had often over the years. About Stan, and how he’d so wanted to get away from Poland. All the things that never happened, and the things that were done wrong. That’s how he put it, and it was all he would say. It used to frustrate Clare, that he wouldn’t tell her more, and yet when friends or family came over from Wroslaw, and the wine came out, that’s all they talked about. Hours and hours, whole nights, in a broken-up mixture of Polish and English, so it was difficult to follow.

  – I make the most of those evenings, get what I can. It’s still frustrating. But Stan has to talk about it with them, you know? He has to, and I think he hates it. He’s always jumpy for days after they’ve gone. Has a really short fuse. He can forget about it with me and the kids. I might not like it, but he does.

  It wasn’t the same: Stan was running from an economic situation that had become unbearable, parents who were too bitter about the past, and the changes that hadn’t made enough of a difference to their lives. It didn’t compare, but Alice thought she was still trying to imagine a way she could let Joseph have his silence.

  She went to Stan and Clare’s party: a late birthday do, and a sort of warming for their new rooms. The place was crowded with people she hadn’t seen in ages, and there was so much to catch up on, it took her the best part of an hour to make her way across the party to where Clare was standing. For months now, Alice had been avoiding places she thought Joseph might be, and she was relieved when Clare said he’d been and gone already, much earlier in the evening. But it also made her wonder when it was going to stop. They had friends and places in common. She didn’t want to pretend she’d never known him.