‘Well, I’d say you’re doing pretty well then,’ Alice laughs.
‘And you?’ Bruno asks. ‘Tell me about you.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Alice says. ‘There’s really not much to tell.’
‘OK then,’ Bruno says mockingly, ‘let’s talk about me again. I’ve got masses to tell. Salad number two?’ He points the second Tupperware container at Alice.
‘Yes,’ Alice says. ‘Thank you.’ As Bruno serves her with tomato and mozzarella, she smiles. It’s strange, but in fact this bad-natured sparring is shifting to good-natured sparring, and she’s starting, despite herself, to enjoy it. It’s been so long since she has found herself opposite someone quick enough to fight back. ‘So I like to read,’ Alice says, ‘if that counts.’
‘Sure. What kind of thing?’
‘Anything. Fiction, non-fiction, biographies, everything. I just devour books.’
‘Like Matt then?’
‘If you say so. And black pudding. And fish and chips. I know it’s not haute cuisine or anything, but I do like fish and chips. And asparagus. God, I love asparagus.’
‘It’s nice, but it makes your . . .’ Bruno’s voice fades out.
‘Yes?’
‘Never mind,’ Bruno says. ‘It’s not, you know . . . tactful dinner conversation.’
‘It makes your pee smell?’ Alice laughs. ‘Was that it?’
‘Yeah,’ Bruno says. ‘You know about that then?’
‘It would be hard to like the stuff as much as I do and not know that really.’
‘Eww,’ Bruno says.
‘Hey,’ Alice says. ‘You started it.’
Alice and Bruno spar on into the night. Around them, the light fades, the temperature falls, and the mosquitos appear, prompting Bruno to fetch and light a huge yellow citronella candle from Virginie’s larder.
The cats, ever-present, take it in turns to attempt an invasion of Alice’s lap, but she’s not having it.
‘You’ll give in eventually,’ Bruno tells her. ‘Cats are incredibly tenacious.’
‘So am I,’ Alice tells him. ‘They’ve met their match.’
By the time they’ve polished off the bottle of rosé, Alice is feeling tipsy and cocooned, as if wrapped in cotton wool. She’s also surprised to find herself feeling something approaching happiness. At some point, the sparring has ceased and the conversation has become pleasant, intimate even.
Right now, Bruno is telling Alice about his parents, about their move to France, about the gallery in Aix and his suspicions that his mother merely pretends to sell his work. He’s explaining about the Japanese technique called raku – he’s describing the pots that he’s trying to make, groups of smooth, perfectly formed cylinders, mounted on a base, each designed to hold a single flower. His eyes are sparkling in the candlelight. His pottery, Alice can see, really is a passion.
At some point, Alice checks her watch. She’s surprised to see that it’s almost half past eleven. ‘At least it’s cooler now,’ she says.
‘That’s what’s so great about living up here,’ Bruno replies. ‘Even in the hottest part of summer, you can still sleep properly. It’s horrific down on the coast. In Aix, I used to get up to take cold showers every couple of hours, otherwise I couldn’t sleep at all.’
‘That must be horrible,’ Alice agrees.
‘So how are you feeling about everything?’ Bruno asks. ‘We’ve talked about just about everything except you, really.’
‘That’s true,’ Alice admits. ‘But I think it’s done me good, to be honest. I almost forgot for a moment what a mess I’m in. It’s been quite restful.’
‘Are you in a mess?’ Bruno asks.
‘Yes,’ Alice says. ‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Matt’s incredibly proud of you, you know. For not going back.’
‘Ha,’ Alice laughs. ‘For not going back yet.’
‘Do you really think you might?’
She shrugs. ‘I struggle to see what other options I have, to be honest, Bruno. But we’ll see.’
Bruno nods thoughtfully. ‘You could stay here,’ he says. ‘You could rent a little place like this one. Rents are dirt cheap around here.’
Alice laughs. ‘Matt would love that,’ she says.
‘I guess that depends how easy you make it for him. Or how difficult.’
‘You know, I did go back,’ Alice says, fulfilling a sudden desire to tell Bruno something real about herself. He has shared so much with her this evening, after all.
Bruno frowns. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘After it happened, I stayed with my friend for a few days. And then I got up one morning and decided I was being silly. So I packed my bag and went home.’
‘Wow. And what happened?’
‘Ken wasn’t in,’ Alice says. ‘I don’t know where he was, but he wasn’t in, thank God. But he’d left me a note. On the kitchen table. Do you know what it said?’
Bruno almost indiscernibly shakes his head.
‘It said, “Alice. If you come back while I’m out, can you iron me some shirts?”’ Alice starts to laugh, but her moist eyes bely the complex mix of emotions that she’s feeling.
Bruno, opposite, stares at her wide-eyed. ‘And that was it?’ he asks, grinning in disbelief. ‘He was worried about his shirts?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Oh my God, Alice,’ Bruno says. His hand, on the table, reaches forward and momentarily cups Alice’s own. She can’t remember the last time someone touched her hand across a table and it feels lovely but also surprisingly, shockingly intimate. Reaching for her glass of water as an alibi, she quickly pulls it away.
‘Can you believe that?’ she says, swiping at a tear in the corner of her eye with her free hand.
‘So you turned around and walked out, eh?’
‘Yes. I packed some clothes in a bit of a panic. I was scared he’d come back.’
‘I bet. And then you just left – good for you.’
‘I wrote a note first. And then I left.’
Bruno raises one eyebrow. ‘What did you write?’ he asks.
‘You really want to know?’ Alice asks, restraining a smirk.
‘Uh huh.’
‘It’s a bit rude. You might be shocked.’
‘Go ahead,’ Bruno says. ‘Knock me out.’
‘I wrote . . . You’re really sure you want to hear this?’
Bruno blinks slowly. ‘Yes,’ he says.
‘OK. I wrote, “Iron your own fucking shirts”,’ Alice says. She raises one hand to cover her mouth and glances left and right as if checking for eavesdroppers.
Bruno starts to laugh. ‘Iron your own fucking shirts?’ he repeats.
Alice nods and laughs (and cries a little) all over again. ‘Iron your own fucking shirts,’ she whispers again. ‘That’s the only thing I wrote.’
Once the dirty dishes have been moved to the kitchen and Bruno has once again walked jauntily off down the road, Alice returns to the courtyard.
The temperature now is just on the cool side of comfortable, so she goes inside for a pullover and the round cushion she spotted, before returning to the cast-iron chair.
The sky here is as deep and dark as she has ever seen, and as she sits and stares at it, hundreds and then thousands of stars come into view. She’s never seen so many stars. It’s stunning, simply stunning.
A flashing light in the corner of the garden catches her eye. It looks like one of those green LED lights and for a moment she thinks that Bruno must have left his phone on the wall. But when she crosses to retrieve it, it surprisingly takes off and drifts away.
Alice gasps. She’s never seen a firefly before and it really is the most shockingly beautiful thing, if somehow a little silly. She sniffs at the air, then realises that she’s picking up a hint of mint. Still watching the fading flashing light of the firefly, like some distant erratic aeroplane now, she brushes her hand through the leaves which release a pungent burst of minty air. She pulls a leaf from the plant and
hesitantly places it in her mouth, then returns to the garden chair and looks back up at the night sky.
She thinks about Bruno talking about his pots, how animated he’d been, how excited. She asks herself if she isn’t a little in love with him and wonders if that’s wrong. He is her son’s boyfriend, after all. What a strange concept that is. Her son’s boyfriend! It’s amazing how times can change, how suddenly you can decide to date a man or a woman and everyone thinks that’s just fine. Still, that’s better, she supposes. Compared with all the suffering of the past, that’s got to be progress, hasn’t it?
What a lovely evening, Alice thinks, and she’s surprised at herself for the thought. But, yes, despite the circumstances and against all expectation, she has spent a lovely evening. And who would have thought that could still happen?
A tiny gust of breeze makes her shiver, so she blows out the candle and turns towards the house. There, in the doorway, is the ancient grey cat. Paloma, Bruno had called her, hadn’t he? He had said that she wouldn’t be around much longer.
‘What do you want, old cat?’ Alice asks it. Because the cat is clearly waiting for something.
‘Food? Water?’ Alice asks. But when Alice reaches the doorway, the cat trots ahead. It waits for her on the fourth step, tracking her movements as she moves around the kitchen. And when finally Alice switches the light out and crosses the room, it runs upstairs and waits for her, purring, on the bed. ‘You just want company then?’ Alice asks, and the cat rolls on her back and squirms a little in reply.
‘Then you’d better not fidget,’ Alice tells it. ‘You’d better not keep me awake or I will kick you out, Paloma.’
The next morning, Alice steps out of the tiny bathroom to find Matt in the process of tying Jarvis to the railings. ‘Morning, Mum,’ he says. ‘I thought we should bring you some breakfast.’
‘We?’ Alice queries, looking around for Bruno.
‘Me and Jarvis,’ Matt explains. ‘Bruno’s pottering today.’
‘Isn’t it potting?’
‘Not sure,’ Matt says. ‘Potting sounds like gardening, doesn’t it? Like potting compost? And potting shed.’
‘Maybe,’ Alice admits, pulling her wet hair back into a ponytail and tying it with a band. ‘It’s not like you to be up this early.’
‘The dog wakes me up,’ Matt says, ‘which is tough, because I didn’t get back till two.’
‘A hard night?’
‘A birthday party for thirty,’ Matt says. ‘I thought they’d never go to bed. And the worst music ever – “La Bamba” and the bloody Gipsy Kings and stuff like that. It was horrific. Did you sleep OK?’
‘Like a log, actually,’ Alice admits. ‘I woke up covered in cats though.’
‘Ah!’ Matt laughs, heading into the kitchen and filling the kettle. ‘And how are you getting on with the mogs?’
‘They’re very undisciplined,’ Alice says, following him inside. ‘I think Virginie must let them run riot.’
‘They’re cats,’ Matt laughs.
‘I just mean that they go everywhere,’ Alice says. ‘On the counters, on the furniture, on the bed. I don’t think there’s a single place they consider out of bounds. One of them tried to follow me into the bathroom.’
‘Yes,’ Matt says. ‘That’s what cats do.’
‘Well, I intend to train them,’ Alice tells him.
Matt laughs. ‘Good luck with that,’ he says.
Alice crosses to the kitchen table and peers into the paper bag Matt has placed there. ‘Ooh, hot croissants!’ she exclaims. ‘Where did you get those from? I didn’t think there was even a shop up here.’
‘There isn’t,’ Matt says. ‘They’re from the hotel. I warmed them in the oven, that’s all. They’re leftovers from yesterday, but they’re fine warmed up.’
‘Can I?’ Alice asks, reaching tentatively towards the bag. ‘I’m a bit hungry.’
‘Sure,’ Matt says. ‘It’s what they’re for.’
‘So how did you get on with Bruno?’ Matt asks, once the coffee’s made and they’re seated at the garden table.
‘He’s quite strange, isn’t he?’ Alice says. She watches Matt frown and hears her own words and wonders why she said it. Perhaps she does need to watch her negatives. ‘I meant that in a good way. He’s very surprising,’ she adds. ‘And shockingly direct.’
‘I think it’s a Canadian thing,’ Matt says.
‘But I liked him,’ Alice admits. She wonders why it costs her to admit this. Because it does. She can feel the cost as she says it. ‘I liked him a lot, actually.’
‘He liked you too,’ Matt says. He sounds almost as surprised at this as Alice feels at learning it. ‘He said you talked till midnight or something?’
‘We did.’
‘About?’
‘Pretty much everything, really. I blame the wine.’
Matt grins. ‘He got you drunk then? Figures.’
‘Not quite drunk. But, you know . . .’
Matt clears his throat. ‘I suppose we need to talk too.’
‘Do we?’ Alice asks, sipping at her coffee, then feeding another chunk of buttery croissant to her lips.
‘I think so, Mum,’ Matt says. ‘I mean, what happened? And what are you going to do?’
Alice stops chewing for a moment. Matt, opposite, looks at her expectantly.
‘Can we leave it for a few days?’ Alice says finally. ‘Would that be possible? Only it’s all a bit fresh. And I only got here yesterday, after all.’
‘Sure,’ Matt says, relieved. ‘But just so you know, I think you should leave him. I mean . . . you have left him, but I think you should stay away. Definitively. Make a new start.’
‘Yes,’ Alice says, sounding distant. ‘Like I say, can we leave it for a few days? I need some time to get my thoughts together.’
Jarvis, still tied to the railings, starts to whimper now, so Matt crosses the courtyard and unties him, then returns to the table with the writhing dog in his arms. ‘He tends to chase the cats,’ Matt says as he reties him to the chair. ‘I think he only wants to be friends, but they don’t seem to know that.’
Alice looks around, but the three cats present in the courtyard have already vanished. ‘That’s one way to get rid of the cats,’ she says. ‘Maybe you can lend me the dog tonight.’
‘Only you’re not much keener on dogs, are you?’
‘I’ve never had anything against dogs,’ Alice says indignantly. ‘Well, except the big dangerous ones. The ones that bite your face off.’
Matt shrugs. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘OK.’ He nuzzles the dog’s head with his nose.
‘I . . .’ Alice starts. She clears her throat. ‘I’m glad you got your dog,’ she says. ‘Finally, I mean.’
Matt swallows and looks soulfully up at her. ‘Thanks. It was a huge surprise. I burst into tears actually.’
Alice nods thoughtfully. ‘I can imagine,’ she says. ‘I am sorry about . . . you know . . . when you were little.’
‘It’s OK, Mum. It’s all in the past now.’
‘But I am sorry,’ Alice says again. ‘I want you to know that. And we’ve never spoken about it. I . . . I was sad for you. I was so sad for you. I felt I had really let you down.’
Matt sighs and looks back up at Alice, his expression pained. ‘It’s OK, Mum,’ he says again. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘I tried,’ Alice says, her voice starting to break. ‘I don’t think you ever knew that, but I really did try. But your father . . . he was always so stubborn.’
‘I know. I always knew that,’ Matt says softly.
‘Really?’ Alice asks. ‘Because I always felt you blamed me.’
Matt shakes his head. ‘I never blamed you. I heard everything, after all.’
‘You did?’
‘He nearly killed you, Mum. What more could you do?’
Alice tips her head sideways. ‘I don’t think it was quite that bad, but . . .’
Matt pulls a face and clears his throat. ‘OK . .
.’ he says.
For a minute, they sit in silence, the mother and the son. They’re both wondering the same thing. They’re both asking themselves why Alice has always done this, why she has always understated Ken’s violence. It’s just a reflex, Alice is thinking. It’s just another bad habit, one designed to make the whole situation just a tiny bit less unbearable. But what if making the unbearable bearable turns out to be counterproductive? What if it only makes the unbearable last longer?
Matt plays with the dog’s floppy ears, folding them across the top of his head like a hat, while he debates attempting to get Alice to admit the truth of what took place that night. He’s wondering if she needs to be forced to face up to things if she’s to avoid doing them all over again.
But Alice gets there first. ‘You’re right,’ she admits, her voice squeaky and strange to her. ‘He did nearly kill me that night. I thought he’d broken my nose. I had to go to the hospital.’ Tears start to roll down her cheeks.
‘Shit, Mum,’ Matt says. ‘I’m sorry. You said you didn’t want to talk about it. I should have listened.’
‘It’s fine,’ Alice says, looking bravely up at her son, seemingly accepting the past, accepting all of it simply by not hiding her tears from him. ‘This is fine. This is good. I think it’s what your Bruno would call a “healthy process”.’
The days come and go without form or reason, their progression marked only by Alice’s progressive surrender to the law of the cats and an ever-increasing number of fireflies at night.
Some days Matt appears with breakfast and some evenings Bruno prepares supper, but as often as not Alice finds herself alone with some bread and cheese, reading – her Kindle propped up against a misty bottle of wine. The cats, untrainable, are ever-present.
Occasionally Alice tries to think about the future and on such occasions she inevitably cries a little. And sometimes, lying on the sofa in the sunshine with Paloma between her ankles, she finds herself feeling unexpectedly happy; surprisingly, shockingly contented.
She goes for daytime walks with Matt and Jarvis around the magnificent lake behind their house, and at nights, when Matt’s working, on ‘firefly’ expeditions with Bruno. They’re called lucioles in French, he tells her. It’s such a beautiful word that she writes it down when she gets back. Near the lake, the countryside flashes and glitters with them so madly that it looks as if someone has strewn disco lights across the land.
The Other Son Page 28