Not My Brother's Keeper

by Colette McCormick

  She’s a good listener and Angie watched and waited until I was ready to talk some more. She’s been in the pub trade long enough to know when someone needs to talk.You have to be a good listener and she was one of the best.

  The thing about someone waiting for you to talk, you know, just sitting there waiting is that eventually you talk. ‘If you’d been a fly on the wall,’ I said, ‘you’d think I sounded bitter. I know I sounded bitter. Thinking about it now, I know that’s how I sounded but that’s really not how I’d meant to come across. I made a comment when I went to buy a drink that I wish I hadn’t.’ I could feel Angie’s eyes on me all of time but I mainly kept mine on the floor. Now that I’d started talking I wanted to tell her everything and I couldn’t get the words out quickly enough.

  ‘I made a snarky comment about him being very responsible because he didn’t want to drink and drive.’ I think I might have smiled at that point because, on the inside, I was laughing at myself and my own stupidity. ‘I didn’t leave it at that though,’ I told her. ‘No, I had to make this clever comment about it being just like him to take on another man’s child. And then, I went further. I said, “especially when that other man is your brother”.’

  I felt pretty ashamed once the story of how I’d behaved was out there, and I didn’t dare to look at Angie in case I saw disappointment in her eyes. I was disappointed enough in myself; to my dying day I’ll never know why I said what I did to Tom that day. He didn’t deserve it.

  I went to the cupboard that we kept the whisky in, poured myself a double measure and added the tiniest drop of water. I poured Angie a Bailey’s and carried the drinks back to where she was still sitting.

  As I handed her the glass she asked, ‘Why did you say it?’

  ‘Honestly?’ I asked as I sat down. ‘I was trying to be funny.’ The whisky felt good in my mouth. ‘You know me, Angie,’ I said, ‘I’m a confident bloke, always have been. I know who I am and I know what I want, but this afternoon my confidence deserted me.’ I took another sip of whisky as I told her, ‘I was trying to make a joke but it just came out sounding spiteful.’

  ‘Did you apologise?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I admitted. ‘I think that was when Michelle said that she didn’t know what she’d ever seen in me and I don’t blame her.’

  ‘You were a different person then,’ Angie said, though it did little to make me feel better.

  ‘What the hell’s wrong with me?’ I waved my hands about as I asked the question. ‘My brother is happy, I should be pleased for him.’

  ‘You’ve just found out that you have a son,’ Angie pointed out but I knew that was no excuse.

  ‘A son I didn’t want anything to do with.’ Even I could hear the flatness in my voice. ‘I’d hate me too.’

  That was the eureka moment. I realised I was jealous.

  TOM

  ‘He says he wants to meet Simon,’ I said quietly. Dad and I were sitting together in the living room but I had an idea that Mum might be listening just outside the door, waiting for the right time to make her entrance. She’d said she was making tea but she was taking her time about it.

  She chose that exact moment to come through the door carrying a tray so I’m pretty sure that my guess was right.

  ‘What are you two whispering about?’ she said as she put a mug in front of each of us. She placed the tray on the floor, picked up her own mug and asked, ‘So how’d it go then?’

  I looked at Dad and then I looked at her. She was sipping her drink but she couldn’t hide the smile on her lips. Why was she smiling? I didn’t understand it. What was she hoping I would say? That we had mended fences and buried hatchets? I could tell her where I’d like to bury the hatchet but I didn’t think she’d like it. If she’d been hoping for reconciliation over a pint of bitter she was going to be sorely disappointed.

  I couldn’t help looking at the photo above the fireplace as I repeated, ‘He wants to meet Simon.’

  ‘Oh?’ she said, lowering her mug and resting it on her knees. ‘And how do you feel about that?’

  ‘How do you think?’ I snapped. .

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘Well,’ Mum said, sipping at her tea again, ‘it’s only to be expected I suppose.’

  ‘Why is it?’ She opened her mouth but I didn’t give her time to say anything. ‘He gave up any chance of being Simon’s dad when he pissed off and left Michelle high and dry.’ I didn’t apologise for the bad language.

  ‘All I meant, Tom,’ her tone was more gentle after my outburst, ‘is that you can understand it.’

  I opened my mouth to speak but this time it was her turn to silence me. She held her hand up in that way that says shut up. ‘Of course you’re Simon’s dad, but all I’m saying is that you can understand Robert wanting to meet him. You’d want to if it was you who...’

  ‘I would never have left in the first place,’ I said, cutting her off in mid-sentence. ‘He had his chance to be a father to Simon but he didn’t want that. He hasn’t given a stuff about his child for sixteen years but now that he’s decided that he wants to meet him, we’re supposed to go along with what he wants.’ I paused just long enough to breathe. ‘And we have to go along with it, don’t we?’ I heard my voice getting louder with each word. ‘Because if we don’t, he might turn up on our doorstep one day and introduce himself.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that,’ Mum said. She took a sip of tea and looked at me over the rim of her mug. She lowered the mug without breaking the eye contact. It was like she was defying me to disagree with her.

  Her plan worked and I backed down, on the outside at least. Inside I was still as mad as hell. ‘To be fair to him,’ I said, though God knows why I should be fair to him, ‘he said he wanted to meet all of the boys... but I’m not sure he meant it.’

  ‘Of course he meant it, they’re his nephews,’ she said cheerily. I wondered if she actually believed what she was saying.

  ‘Like it or not son,’ Dad, as usual, was the voice of reason, ‘he’s back now. He knows about you and Michelle and he knows about Simon. You have done nothing to be ashamed of. You and Michelle are happy and you have made a lovely family together. If you want my opinion I’d say get the thing over and done with.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ I said. I took a sip of my tea and turned to my mother as I set the mug down. I deliberately ignored the coaster and put it straight on the table. I saw her eyes flick towards it and her lips pursed tightly. ‘Ring him,’ it wasn’t a request, ‘he can meet them here next Saturday.’

  ‘Wouldn’t Sunday be better?’ she suggested. ‘I mean, he might busy in the pub on a Saturday. He’s already missed one Saturday at work.’ I didn’t trust myself to say anything so I just looked at her. ‘I’ll ring him,’ she conceded.

  As I drove home, Mum’s words echoed in my head, ‘Of course you’re Simon’s father,’ she had said. She’d even sounded like she meant it.

  The smell of pork roasting in the oven welcomed me home, followed quickly by Michelle.

  ‘Well?’ she kissed me briefly and stepped away so that she could look at my face. She always said that my eyes give me away when I’m lying.

  I gave a non-committal shrug. ‘I told Mum to ring him and say that he can meet the boys at their house next Saturday.’

  ‘Who?’

  We turned at the sound of Anthony’s voice. We hadn’t realised that he was on his way downstairs.

  ‘Who are we going to meet?’

  ‘Just your uncle Robert,’ I tried to make light of it. ‘Really?’ He sounded excited by the prospect. Then he laughed and said, ‘I didn’t think he really existed,’ before disappearing towards the kitchen and asking, ‘How long till dinner?’

  I’d felt Michelle tense up when Anthony appeared but she recovered enough to say, ‘Half an hour.’

  Anthony shared his news with his brothers when they assembled around the dinner table.

  Michael was more interested in
the plate that his mum had just put in front of him, but Simon asked, ‘Why?’ ‘Because he wants to meet you.’ I didn’t elaborate.

  ‘No, what I meant was,’ Simon held the gravy boat in one hand as he asked, ‘why now? Where’s he been and why’s he back all of a sudden?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said lightly, ‘he decided that he wanted to come back so he did. Maybe he was missing us.’ I tried to make it sound like it was nothing special.

  ‘Couldn’t have missed us that much,’ Simon said as he drenched his food with gravy, ‘or he wouldn’t have stayed away so long.’

  The talking stopped when we all had full plates in front of us and I was glad of that.

  Later, when the meal was over and the boys had disappeared, Michelle and I stood in the kitchen doing the dishes. She washed them carefully and I dried them slowly.

  ‘Are we still going to tell him?’ Michelle asked as she handed me a plate.

  I nodded my head and said, ‘We have no choice. He should hear it from us.’

  ‘Maybe Robert wouldn’t tell him.’ I think she said it more in hope than expectation.

  I put the plate I’d been drying down, put my hand on her shoulder and said. ‘We can’t take the chance.’

  She nodded her head slowly but didn’t say anything. She knew Robert almost as well as I did. He would do anything if he thought it was to his advantage.

  The GCSE results were due out that Thursday so we decided to wait until after that before we said anything.

  Thursday brought nine A stars, an A, and a B. The results were beyond what any of us had expected and I think I can include Simon in that. He seemed as amazed as we were. And proud. We let him have Thursday, but the following day Michelle’s mum and dad took the younger two to the pictures and we prepared for the conversation.

  Simon sat between us on the sofa and looked at each of us suspiciously. ‘Are you two getting divorced?’ he asked.

  I could see that Michelle was as surprised as I was by that question and we both laughed and said, ‘No,’ at the same time.

  ‘So, what’s this about then?’ he asked. ‘Why am I sitting here while they’re at the cinema with gran and grand-dad? Obviously there’s something going on.’

  Michelle had already said that she didn’t think she could say it, so I took a deep breath and dove in. ‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘there is something that we wanted to say to you.’

  I realised that I should maybe have started the conversation with something different, something that didn’t sound quite so serious. I should just have said that we wanted a chat but I hadn’t, so I had to deal with it.

  ‘What...?’ he lengthened the word and he looked really worried.

  Now that the time had arrived I wasn’t sure that I could do it. No, that’s not right, I knew that I could do it because I had to, I just didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t know the right words to use. ‘It’s about your uncle Robert,’ I said, giving myself a little time to think.

  ‘What about him?’ he still sounded suspicious. ‘Is this where you’re going to tell me he’s been in the nick for the last seventeen years?’

  I laughed at that and wondered where that idea had come from. ‘No,’ I said, though part of me wished that it was. It would have been easier.

  ‘What then?’ He looked at each of us in turn, ‘Oh, come on,’ he said, ‘just tell me. It can’t be that bad.’

  Sometimes there is nothing to do but just spit it out and, for me, this was one of those times. I watched for his reaction as I said, ‘He’s not your uncle.’

  He looked more intently at us and then it was as if a lightbulb had gone on in his head and he turned to his mother and asked, ‘What’s he talking about?’ I couldn’t help thinking that he emphasised the word ‘he’ a bit too much.

  Michelle looked over his head at me. She was pale and there were tears forming in her eyes. I could see her swallowing hard. I tried to send confidence through the air to her and it must have reached her because she gave a little nod of her head and then spoke slowly. ‘I used to go out with Robert and we’d been together for a little over a year when I discovered that I was pregnant... with you.’ When she paused I could see that her lips were trembling. ‘The day after I’d told him, I came home from work to a letter... a letter from Robert. He said that we would both be better off without him.’ She couldn’t hold the tears back any longer and one escaped and rolled down her cheek. Simon turned to me. ‘What does she mean?’ he asked. ‘She means exactly what she said,’ I told him. ‘Robert left a note for your mum, another for me, and one for your gran and grand-dad. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going. Your grandparents and I didn’t even know why he had gone at first; he just left. We didn’t see him or hear from him until a few weeks ago.’

  Something had occurred to Simon and his eyes screwed up as he thought it through. ‘Is that why you went to gran’s house late that night?’ he asked. He didn’t get all those A stars without being a bright lad.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  My heart went out to him as he stared at the floor. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said slowly. ‘I thought you were my dad.’

  I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘I am your dad, Si.’ My head was close to his and I spoke directly into his ear. ‘Always have been, always will be.’

  ‘So... why...?’ He didn’t appear to have the words to say what was on his mind so I helped him out.

  ‘The thing is that my brother is, well, a bit of a knob if I’m honest and he always does what’s best for him. Once he discovered that me and your mum were together he worked out that you were the baby that your mum had been expecting when he left. I’m not just saying this, but if he thought it would benefit him somehow he’d put an advert in the paper announcing that he was your dad. We didn’t want you to find out that way.’ My hand was still on his shoulder and I pulled him close to me as I said, ‘ We wanted to be the ones to tell you.’

  Normally I would have met at least a little resistance when I hugged him, but not that day. He just leaned his head against my chest and asked, ‘Why didn’t he want me?’ His voice had become childlike.

  ‘He didn’t know you,’ Michelle said. She had regained some of her composure and she put her hand on Simon’s knee. I couldn’t see it but I think her other arm was around his back. It was like we had formed a barrier around him. ‘You weren’t a person to him,’ she said, ‘you were something that he didn’t want to be involved with at that moment.’

  ‘And what about now?’ Fear had replaced the child in his voice. ‘Does he want to be involved with me now?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Michelle said, ‘but he has asked to meet you.’

  ‘Just me?’ More fear.

  ‘All of you,’ I told him. ‘He said that he wants to meet all of you.’

  ‘When did he say that?’

  Michelle and I looked at each other. There was no point hiding anything from him, not now, we’d gone too far for that.

  ‘When we met him last weekend.’

  Simon’s mouth formed a W but I didn’t give him chance to ask why, where, or whatever else he was thinking of.

  ‘ When you and Matt were staying over with Philip, we asked gran and grand-dad if Michael and Anthony could stay with them so that we could meet him in the afternoon.’

  He was quiet for a few seconds. His breathing was heavy like he was struggling within himself. Hardly surprising, I suppose. It’s not every day that you get news like we had just given him. Obviously Simon had to be the one to lead the conversation, so we waited until he was ready to speak.

  ‘How did you feel when you saw him?’ he asked Michelle eventually.

  The question took her by surprise and she gave some thought to her answer. ‘Weird,’ was what she came up with. She stared at the top of Simon’s head as she tried to explain. ‘I trusted him way back then, but he showed me that he couldn’t be trusted. So when I saw him again I saw someone who had let me down and, more importantly, let you
down. It was like meeting up with someone I used to know, but someone that I would happily never have seen again.’

  ‘Did you love him?’ I thought that the question was a bit intrusive but Michelle took it in her stride.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘once upon a time I loved him very much.’

  ‘Do you still love him?’

  ‘No.’ Her answer came without hesitation, ‘I haven’t loved him for a very long time.’

  ‘And what about Dad? Do you love him?’

  I couldn’t help noticing that he had called me dad. Habit?

  ‘Yes,’ she stroked his hair but she looked at me. ‘I love him very much.’

  Simon’s head twisted under his mother’s hand. ‘Do you love Mum?’

  ‘More than I can tell you,’ I said. I let that sink in a second and added, ‘And I love you too.’

  ‘Even th—?’

  I cut him off before he could ask the question. ‘Even though anything,’ I said.

  The look in his eyes suggested he wasn’t sure if he believed me or not.

  ‘Look,’ I told him. ‘I knew your mum while we were at school. When Robert left the way that he did, I went to gran and grand-dad’s house to check how she was and we started to spend time together. We found that we enjoyed each other’s company and the more time we spent together, the more I liked her. It didn’t matter to me that she was pregnant. I once told her that you were a baby and not a spare head.’ I looked at Michelle as I paused to draw breath and she encouraged me with a look and a smile. ‘I loved her as a person,’ I said, looking at Simon again, ‘and I asked her to marry me because I loved her. You made us complete.’

  ‘But I...’

  I think I know what he was going to say, but he didn’t get the chance. ‘You were my son,’ I said, ‘from the minute you were born.’

  He stood up slowly and left the room without looking at either of us.