Mothers' Boys

by Margaret Forster

  She’d like him to invite a few friends for a meal, a barbecue if he wanted, though she hated barbecues, anything, so long as there was something. ‘Which friends?’ he’d asked. ‘There’s no one I like enough.’ Timidly, she’d mentioned a few names, especially the names of two girls in his class who occasionally rang up. ‘No,’ he said, ‘we’re not really friends, it’s all their idea, they just feel sorry for me. Anyway, Mum, nobody does anything on their seventeenth, none of the boys, it’s only the girls.’ So she tried for a family lunch, in the garden, maybe Ginny and his cousins . . . He groaned. Finally, they compromised: a Sunday lunch on his birthday but not for his birthday. And he wasn’t going to stay in the whole afternoon, only for the meal itself, it was all he could stand.

  Still, it pleased her, especially now, when things were difficult again.

  *

  When Sheila arrived on the next visit she was asked by the prison officer who checked her pass to go to the Deputy Governor’s office. She felt only resignation. Leo might be refusing to see her now, not just Alan. Slowly, she followed the prison officer down the corridor, wondering what she should say. What were her rights? She didn’t know. Even if she could insist on having Leo frogmarched into facing her, what would be the point, if he didn’t want to see her? She felt tired, drained. All this worrying about him, for nothing. No real response.

  The Deputy Governor was friendly. She had always liked him better than the policeman. He was older, less pompous, she felt easier with him. He asked her to sit down and offered her tea, which she took, apologising for the thick, white mug it was in. He had some papers spread out in front of him. They’d be about Leo.

  ‘Now then, Mrs Armstrong,’ he said, ‘we’ve got a problem here with your lad.’ She said nothing. What a waste to state the obvious. ‘He’s a good lad,’ the man went on, ‘no trouble, works hard, but he’s taken a vow of silence somewhere along the road which makes things a bit tough, for himself too. He’ll reply in monosyllables when he absolutely has to, but otherwise not a peep.’ He waited, as though expecting her to say something, but she had no comment to make. ‘You’ll have heard about Gary Robinson being identified?’ She nodded. ‘Well, seems there may be a chance, a more than reasonable chance, that your lad wasn’t more than a spectator.’

  ‘Bad enough,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes, bad enough, but not bad enough for the length of the sentence, that’s the point. If Leo would tell us he was as intimidated as the victim . . .’

  ‘He was drugged,’ she said, ‘he’d been taking LSD, he was out of his head.’

  ‘I know that, but how did it happen? We don’t know what he did and didn’t do, so it was assumed he did the lot. Not fair, was it?’

  ‘It was his own fault.’

  ‘True, but it still doesn’t make it fair.’

  ‘Is that what you wanted to see me about, then?’ She knew she sounded hard, truculent, but she was sick of this, she wanted to be done with it and either to be seeing Leo or on her way home. It was becoming too much, these ordeals. She couldn’t stand another question.

  ‘Partly. But there’s another thing. Leo’s soon to be released. I thought maybe I should remind you.’

  ‘It isn’t reminding,’ Sheila flashed. ‘I never knew. I wasn’t given any release date. I’ve tried not to think about it.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to come to you, you know, there’s . . .’

  ‘Of course he does!’ She felt her face redden. ‘We’re his family, he hasn’t got any other.’

  ‘It might be a bit much for you.’

  ‘Yes, it will, but there’s no use dodging that. It’s always been a bit much but it’s too late to think about that, he’s my responsibility for a while yet.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to go home.’

  She stared at him, at last surprised. He looked embarrassed, shuffled his papers around. She felt a combination of distress and anger rising within her and didn’t know which was the stronger until she heard herself speak. ‘Don’t talk silly,’ she almost shouted. ‘Of course he wants to come home!’

  ‘He’s adamant he doesn’t.’

  ‘That’s shame talking, that’s all shame at last. He thinks he can’t face us. He’s nowhere else to go, nowhere, what would he do? He’d get into even worse habits, he’d have no stability, it would be the end of him . . .’

  ‘Or the beginning. Maybe he knows best, eh?’

  ‘He’s only seventeen, he doesn’t know best about anything, they never do at that age.’

  ‘It isn’t that young, seventeen,’ the Deputy Governor said, thoughtfully, ‘and he’s mature for his years.’

  ‘Not so mature he doesn’t do daft things like take drugs.’

  ‘Lots of adolescents experiment with drugs, Mrs Armstrong.’

  ‘Yes, and look where it lands them.’

  ‘My point is, he wasn’t a drug addict. That was the trouble, his system couldn’t take it, and he’d been drinking, and he didn’t know that . . .’

  ‘He knew he was taking a drug.’

  She could see the man eyeing her warily. She knew he thought she was unforgiving, a cold woman full of self-righteous venom. He’d be thinking that if he was Leo he wouldn’t want to go back to this grandmother either. He’d run a mile. It was her father coming out in her, Eric James arising unchecked. And he must be checked, this was no good. ‘We can get over this,’ she said, striving for a reasonable tone, though her voice shook. ‘We can forget the drugs, everything. I didn’t mean to sound as if I were holding it against him for ever. He’s everything to me, Leo is. I’d love him to death whatever he did.’ She swallowed hard. She hated talking like this, spilling out such intimate words to a stranger, hated mentioning love. ‘He’s just ashamed,’ she repeated, ‘and it’s his way of showing it, not wanting to come home. We’ve never been able to talk about when he comes out, that’s the trouble, never. It was too much, for both of us. I’ve never been alone with him since he was arrested, never. There’s never been a chance.’

  The Deputy Governor sighed. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You’ve all my sympathy, Mrs Armstrong.’

  ‘Can I see him?’ she said.

  ‘He doesn’t want any visitors.’

  ‘But I’m his mother – his grandmother.’

  ‘We can’t force him.’

  The humiliation was utterly weakening. She didn’t seem able to move or speak. She felt like a jelly, wobbling all over the place as she tried to stand. He came round his desk to help her. ‘Have another cup of tea,’ he urged, but she shook her head. Sooner she was home the better, if she wasn’t going to see Leo. He asked if anyone was waiting for her and she lied and said yes, her husband, in the car. He took her to the door and would have come with her all the way out, but a prison officer came along, wanting his attention. She stood waiting for ages for the first bus. There was still half an hour to go. There was nowhere to sit. It was hot and the bus stop was full in the sun. She thought she ought to put the time in by walking around, but she hadn’t the energy and her vision seemed blurred. It was such a relief to get on the empty bus the moment it arrived.

  She didn’t know what she was going to tell Alan. Or her father. The thought of Leo rejecting all of them, choosing to go his own way and never, ever come home . . . What was the matter with them that they had earned this? What had they done? What had she done, or not done? It hurt more than the discovery that Leo had taken part in all that violence, more than the pain of discovering he had had, must have had, some kind of secret life. She’d thought she’d known him through and through and she hadn’t. The bond she’d thought so impossible to sever had broken at the first sign of strain. He was now strange to her – not a stranger, never that, but strange to her. And if he never came home he always would be. No answers, ever. No chance to understand. No opportunity to show her love and devotion could rise to the need, his need.

  The anger had gone, anyway. She noticed that. Sitting on the second bus in particular, she noticed
that. No anger. Distress had won hands down. And panic, she felt panic-stricken. The irony did not escape her – there she’d been, dreading him coming out, and all the time he’d no intention of coming to her. Now the dread was far greater and of a different kind. She might have dreaded the struggle to rehabilitate Leo once he was home, the struggle both to recover him, regain his trust, find the way back to him, and to help him face the future, but she was good at struggles, they brought out the best in her. Those sort of struggles, at least. But if he cut himself off, would not come home or speak to her, there would only be loss and bewilderment to cope with. She didn’t think she could bear it.

  Chapter Eleven

  HARRIET SAT IN the waiting-room reflecting how little, as a family, they had had to do with doctors. Their notes must be wafer-thin. She saw people being handed such bulky packages by the receptionist before they went in to the doctor and marvelled at all the things that the size of these records would indicate had been wrong with them. Sam had been a few times with his back, strained playing tennis, Louis not at all, except for injections, given by the nurse; Joe only twice, once when he was four and broke his arm and, of course, after the attack, several times. Under duress, though, his dislike and suspicion of doctors almost matching his hatred of the police. Strange, really. When all the doctors had done was patch him up and heal him. This doctor, Dr Fenwick, had made a fatal mistake when he came to the house the day Joe was discharged from hospital. ‘I think,’ he had said, all jovial, ‘your mother is in a worse state than you.’

  Joe was contemptuous. ‘How can he say that? How could you be in a worse state?’ She’d agreed with him quickly. It was tactless of Dr Fenwick, though she understood very well why he’d said what he’d said. Any mention of him afterwards was always made by Joe with disdain – ‘that stupid doctor’. Getting him to go to the surgery was a lengthy process, a huge fuss. It was lucky that the practice had a nurse whom Joe at least did not despise. Harriet preferred Jennifer herself. Jennifer did all the minor injuries, the taking out of stitches, the vaccinations and injections. She was gentle and cheerful and, however pressed, always seemed to have time. She was good with Joe, understood his embarrassment and, of course, knew all about what had happened. Harriet was glad not to have to see any of the doctors today, to have just Jennifer attending to her, Jennifer doing the routine but always unpleasant smear test and breast examination.

  Jennifer was so clever at talking while she was putting on the thin rubber gloves and cutting open sterile packets, it all seemed so friendly and unthreatening, even the moment when she said to open your legs and spread your knees sideways, and her fingers were slow and careful as she slid the instrument in, whatever it was. She took the smear without giving the slightest pain. It wasn’t even particularly uncomfortable. And then she made you feel you’d been so brave when no bravery had been called for. While she was popping the slide into a packet to send to the hospital lab, she asked about Joe. Harriet told her about the arrest of Gary Robinson and how difficult things were with another trial looming just as Joe had seemed to be coping better. ‘When he gets off to college,’ Jennifer said soothingly, ‘that will help, I’m sure, with the trial over and the whole awful business . . .’ She was stopped by the door of her little surgery crashing open and the receptionist rushing in holding a baby who seemed to be literally spouting blood, with blood arcing over the woman’s shoulder, and behind, screaming, both hands held to her face, a young woman already herself covered in blood running in great dark crimson streaks down her pale blue dress. Harriet froze, shrank back into a corner as Jennifer took the baby and shouted out commands to the receptionist who ran from the room. Harriet couldn’t see what was being done. She knew she should get out of the way, and began edging towards the door, still open. The mother of the baby was crouched near it, sobbing. She would have to pass her. Dr Fenwick rushed into the room, almost tripping over the mother and saying, ‘Get her out of here, for God’s sake, someone.’

  Harriet put her arm round the young woman and murmured things in her ear, pointless things, untrue things, such as, ‘Everything is going to be all right,’ and, ‘Don’t worry,’ and tried to lift her up. She was only a girl, slight, easy to manoeuvre. Her hands were still over the face from which the sobbing came, the awful tearing, hiccuping sobs. She let Harriet pull her upright and lead her away into the reception area where waiting patients sat transfixed. The receptionist who’d crashed into Jennifer’s surgery was shouting down the telephone, her hand sticky with blood, the white receiver smeared with it. Harriet steered the girl in her arms towards the little cubby-hole where she knew the receptionist made tea and managed to lower her into the one chair and then to boil a kettle. She heard the siren of an ambulance. ‘There,’ she said, ‘there’s the ambulance arriving. I’m sure everything will be all right, try and drink this, just a sip, it will help . . .’

  Afterwards, walking home, she couldn’t believe she’d said any of this. So banal, so trite. She ought to have known better, she did know better, of course she did, she of all people. To tell that poor, hysterical young mother that everything would be all right! To tell her not to worry! To tell her she’d feel better if she had some tea! All things said to her, a year ago, said and found at worst so offensive she couldn’t bear to hear them and at best so useless they might as well have been in a foreign language. She hadn’t realised how shocking other people’s intense distress can be. She didn’t know this girl and yet she’d been so shaken by the drama, so horrified by the blood, so upset by the screaming . . . As others had been. Those, especially, who saw Joe first. Michael, she hadn’t ever taken into consideration Michael’s feelings, seeing his nephew lying there, naked, bleeding, unconscious, filthy . . . All she’d done was hate Michael for seeing him, and the policemen who arrived on the scene with the ambulance men. She remembered all of them, the young policeman, the two ambulance crew, going to the trouble of seeking her out in the hospital and expressing their sympathy. She’d thanked them and cut them off.

  She didn’t know what was wrong with the baby. The other receptionist had come in and taken the young mother to the hospital. Everyone had been too distraught and busy to offer explanations. Harriet thought how she’d never realised that minor characters, people on the fringe in these kinds of scenes, could experience such turmoil. She felt sick and weak as she opened her front door and was never so glad in her life to get into her kitchen and fiddle about making coffee. She saw her hands were shaking. She’d heard someone in the doctor’s waiting-room say, ‘It was just a freak thing . . .’ What was a freak thing? What were they talking about? What had happened to that baby to cause such blood? It was dreadful not to know, she would have to ring the receptionist later, tomorrow . . .

  Joe came in, hanging about, watching her. She felt irritated that he couldn’t see her hands were shaking as she measured the coffee. Why didn’t he take charge? Why didn’t he put his arm round her and make her sit down and ask her what had happened? If he hadn’t noticed the state she was in, she wasn’t going to point it out, he ought to see. She made the coffee without speaking. She ignored him, took her coffee into the garden and sat on the bench beside the south wall. She closed her eyes, tilting her face to the sun, taking deliberately exaggerated breaths. She hoped to hear Joe coming in search of her, but he didn’t. She opened her eyes and looked for him. He’d stayed in the house. Well, perhaps she’d dissembled better than she suspected. Perhaps she’d appeared perfectly normal, the shaking of her hands imperceptible. Perhaps.

  Yet two hours later, when Sam came home, and they were all eating, Sam said, ‘You’re very pale, do you feel all right?’

  Joe went on stuffing bread into his mouth and toying with the fish.

  ‘No,’ she said, watching Joe all the time, ‘no, I don’t feel all right. I feel terrible.’ Not a flicker from Joe, instant concern from Sam. ‘I had such a shock,’ she said, and she described the incident at the doctor’s surgery, finishing with, ‘. . . the poor mother wa
s terrified, she was in a terrible state. I felt so sorry for her.’

  She saw Joe smile, very slightly.

  ‘Is that funny, Joe?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice light.

  ‘Course it isn’t funny,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t laughing.’

  ‘You smirked,’ she said.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Why?’ she persisted.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘that’s if I did. I didn’t know I did.’

  She let it go, but when they were getting ready for bed she said to Sam, ‘He did smirk, didn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t know, I was watching you.’

  ‘He did. Was I being pompous or something?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I wonder why then. Maybe he thought I was glorying in it, enjoying the telling . . .’

  Sam didn’t reply. They both remembered too well the time Joe had heard his aunt, Ginny, describing what had happened to him. He’d caught her on the telephone relaying the horror of it with what he claimed was gusto. Nothing would convince him otherwise.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I don’t like Joe. It’s horrible.’

  ‘Sometimes I don’t like him myself,’ Sam said. ‘He can be quite cruel.’

  ‘It isn’t that. It’s feeling he doesn’t care about anyone. Not any more. It’s as if he thinks he’s the only one who can ever suffer, or something. What’s going to happen to him, if he’s like that?’

  ‘He’ll change,’ Sam said and, as ever, attempted a joke. ‘The love of a good woman will change him, sooner or later.’