Mothers' Boys

by Margaret Forster

  ‘Oh, he will,’ said Sheila, ‘and then you’ll wish he wasn’t. It’s worse, when they’ve been close.’

  She wished Harriet would go. The arrival of her husband was a blessing. He drew up and sprang out of the car and kissed her. Very touching. Harriet blushed, said something to him before saying goodbye to Sheila. They looked so happy setting off together, a good-looking couple without a care in the world . . . Alan arrived soon after. He tooted the horn and she went and got into the car. ‘Carole’s all worked up,’ were his first words. ‘Says she should have been told earlier. And Peter says that’s it, it’ll have to be a home, he isn’t safe any more.’

  ‘Oh, be quiet,’ she said.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Be quiet. My head aches, I’m worn out.’

  ‘You are. I’ve done all the dashing about. . .’

  ‘In a car. I’ve done it on my legs. Anyway, just be quiet, please.’

  He was quiet. They drove home in silence. As soon as they got in – Alan threw the car keys angrily on the table and disappeared into the yard to begin watering his blessed geraniums – the telephone rang. It rang and rang and she took no notice. She had to have a cup of tea before she spoke to anyone.

  ‘Are you going to answer that?’ Alan shouted.

  ‘No. Let them ring again.’

  He came back in and said, ‘With your dad in hospital? You’re not answering, with your dad in hospital?’ and he snatched up the receiver. ‘It’s Carole,’ he said.

  She’d known it would be. Alan was gesturing wildly. She turned away. He let the receiver dangle and went back into the yard. She could hear Carole’s furious voice. ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘what’s all this shouting about? I’ve just got in and I’m worn out, you don’t know the half of it.’

  It took her five trying minutes to placate Carole, and then there was Peter to deal with, dutiful, only more concerned with plans for his father-in-law’s release than his accident. She was tired of both of them. But she acknowledged to herself that she owed something to Alan. Over their tea, she told him about Leo and about the money. He was so stunned he didn’t cross-examine her at all, just looked glazed, shook his head repeatedly. They ate, they drank their tea. Finally, he found his voice and said, ‘It doesn’t make sense, there’s no sense in it.’

  ‘There is,’ she said, feeling kinder. ‘There’s a lot of sense. It does make sense. Where would you have gone, if you’d been Leo? Here? Of course not. Couldn’t trust us. Couldn’t trust me, could he?’

  ‘No, no, it would be because he’d know the house was watched.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, they wouldn’t watch a house, not just for a boy like Leo absconding. No, he knew not to come because I’d turn him in, I’d have told him to give himself up before I turned him in. I’d have said it was for his own good. He’d have thought of all that.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t have done, you wouldn’t have turned him in, you know you wouldn’t have.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Of course you do. You’d have helped him, like you’ve always done, he knows you think the world of him.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Well, you do, always have, apple of your eye, always, the best mother any boy could have, and he knew it.’

  ‘Best isn’t always best,’ she said.

  ‘What? Don’t you talk daft.’

  She thought of Harriet Kennedy being driven home by her handsome, caring husband, and Joe waiting for them, not knowing where his mother had been, and she so pleased with her duplicity. Little plots, little subterfuges. Nothing out in the open. Mothers sure their sons were open books, sons bored by the predictability of mothers. She knew why Leo couldn’t trust her, why he hadn’t even been able to explain to her what had got into him on that terrible night. Too close to hurt, that was the trouble. Whereas his great-grandfather was, by comparison, distant, beyond the pain he could cause her. He was afraid of her closeness to him, of those years and years of openly declared love, of her very devotion to him. She expected too much of him, thought of him as incapable of true deceit or cruelty, wasn’t prepared to face the bad, the weak, in him. She’d made it unbearable for him to confide in her just by her very standards for him.

  ‘I’m going up to bed,’ she said, and when Alan looked aggrieved, and she knew was about to say it was only nine o’clock, still light, she added, ‘I’m tired, done in, I can’t think straight, and I’ll have to be up at the Infirmary tomorrow, first thing, before Carole barges in, before she gets to Dad and wears him out. I want him on my own, get some matters straight before it’s too late.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  IN MID-AUGUST, just before Harriet and Sam went to Edinburgh, Joe passed his driving test, first time. He came home, face flushed, trying to contain his euphoria, and failing. Looking at him, seeing his excitement, his sense of triumph, Harriet felt more shaken than happy. So little, had it really taken so little? A driving test passed and there was Joe, more himself than he had been for a whole year. Or so it seemed. A transformation and yet it could not be one, surely. Inside, he must still suffer, still be scarred . . .

  The agitation to have his own car began at once. He had a few hundred pounds in National Savings Certificates, left to him by his grandparents. He wanted to cash them, buy a second-hand car. On and on the persuading went, the pleading, the passionate advancing of his cause. All he wanted in life was a car, a car he wouldn’t be able to afford to tax or license, or run. Sam told him straight that all six hundred pounds would buy would be a load of trouble, the kind of trouble which they would have to bail him out of. And then Ginny played into his hands. She was buying a new car, would get very little for her five-year-old Fiesta and yet it was a good car, had never had anything wrong with it. She would accept Joe’s six hundred pounds.

  So he got his car and there was nothing Harriet could do about it. He said she spoiled everything with her anxious expression. ‘You don’t want me to be happy,’ he said, and then, seeing her stricken face, ‘Well, that’s what it looks like.’ She tried hard to share his delight but could not suppress all the warnings of danger, the dangers of driving. ‘It’s not your driving I worry about,’ she said (though this was not true), ‘it’s other people’s.’ He ignored her. Day after day he drove to the boat yard where he now had a full-time holiday job, loving his car, always impatient to get into it. Then he began talking of going on tour in it, just for the pleasure of driving. He wanted to drive round the whole of the British Isles on secondary roads, on his own, just him and his car. Luckily, lack of money stopped him. Everything he had had gone into purchasing the car, and all the boat yard pay gave him was petrol and pocket money for each week. It was a relief for Harriet to know he couldn’t yet do what he wanted to do, couldn’t cut loose and go off.

  But it made going to Edinburgh harder, knowing Joe had a car and was never out of it. Suppose he had an accident while they were away? Harriet expected an accident daily. He was such an aggressive driver, he terrified her. She could hardly bear to watch him drive off, accelerating far too fast as he turned from the drive into the road. Sam said he was in fact a good driver, confident and in control, though he conceded that for someone inexperienced he had too much confidence. The trouble was, she could see him crashing. Quite clearly. She could see the front of the Fiesta smashed in and Joe’s body slumped over the wheel and blood everywhere . . . It was hard to say nothing and sometimes a small protest escaped her. ‘That van almost hit you this morning,’ she would say. ‘I saw it, I saw it coming round the corner and you hadn’t seen it, had you? You must always watch out for that corner . . .’

  ‘I do,’ he said, annoyed.

  ‘You swerved really wide,’ she said, ‘and if another car had been coming . . .’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t.’

  ‘But if!’

  ‘Oh God, Mum, I can’t go on through life on “if”s. It didn’t, no other car came along, and if it had I’d have coped.’

  ‘That’s what you think but . . .’
Then she stopped.

  ‘But what? You think I can’t cope, don’t you?’

  ‘No, it’s just that . . . oh, it’s all so dangerous, things do happen . . .’

  ‘And I’m not supposed to know that? You think I don’t know that?’

  ‘Of course you do . . .’

  ‘Of course I bloody do, so shut up.’

  He was so savage, so furious with her, and she saw he was right. Louis was thousands of miles away, driving in a strange continent, and yet she didn’t daily agonise over him or fantasise about accidents. Joe was right, she had fallen into the habit of thinking of him as doomed, a person over whom disaster would always hang, an unlucky traveller in life. And it was so unfair, so silly. He was no more likely to have an accident than any other teenager who had just learned how to drive . . . but the moment she had reassured herself like this she couldn’t help registering that it was little comfort because accidents were so high in this age bracket.

  Then he met Claire. All because of the car, because of having a car. Claire, new friend of Natasha’s, new to the area. He met her at Ginny’s house and drove her home and after that he was with her all the time that he wasn’t at the boat yard. He brought her home, full of himself, boastful because she was so pretty, such a catch (but a catch of his car, not of Joe, Harriet meanly thought). Claire couldn’t have been more wrong for him. She was bold and brassy, Harriet decided . . . brassy, that old-fashioned term used about barmaids, and a barmaid was what Claire looked like. Blonde out-of-a-bottle, orangey blonde, dried-out-looking thick hair, lots of it. Large breasts barely contained in halter tops. Big, big smile showing irregular teeth. And very affectionate, touching Joe all the time, arm round his shoulders, arm linking his, hand ruffling his hair . . . He didn’t push her off, not once. What were they doing in the car when he came in so late? ‘What do you think?’ said Sam, witheringly, and apparently unworried. ‘He’s seventeen,’ Sam said to every objection Harriet raised. ‘He’s seventeen, Harriet.’ He was indeed seventeen and she’d always longed for him to have a girlfriend, but not Claire, not someone like Claire who would ditch him when she had access to a better car. She began to issue more warnings, more muttered threats, or words that sounded like threats, because of how she spoke them. Joe ignored her. The more she went on about being careful, the more she suggested he should have other girlfriends apart from Claire, the more he blanked her. He, too, began to say, ‘I am seventeen,’ only he said it angrily.

  To go away leaving Joe in an empty house with Claire around was folly. ‘We can’t go,’ she said to Sam.

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘Think,’ she urged. ‘Think.’

  ‘I am thinking. I’m thinking we haven’t been away alone together for . . .’

  ‘Oh I know that, it isn’t what I meant, you know what I meant. Claire would just move in.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So? Are you mad? They’d end up in bed together, God knows what would happen . . .’

  ‘What usually happens in bed, I expect, though it hasn’t happened so much in ours for the last year.’

  ‘I’m going to ignore that.’

  ‘Of course you are, you usually do, you ignore anything . . .’

  ‘Don’t be so smart, it’s Joe I’m worried about.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think it, to listen to you.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t listen to yourself, because . . .’

  ‘Oh be quiet.’

  ‘. . . if you did you’d hear how stupid you sound, like a caricature, a caricature of, of. . .’

  ‘Of what? Go on.’

  ‘I can’t think. You sound jealous, as though you can’t stand the thought of Joe having fun . . .’

  ‘Having fun? That’s what it would be, is it? When this Claire dumps him? It would shatter him, he couldn’t survive another blow, any more bad luck, he isn’t ready for someone like Claire, it isn’t fun he’d be having. She’s having the fun . . .’

  Sam was staring at her, pity in every line of his face.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she shouted.

  He shrugged, turned away. ‘I’m going, anyway,’ he said, ‘to Edinburgh, I mean. I want to go. I need a break. Even if you stay, I’m going.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, think how it would look.’

  ‘To whom? Joe?’

  ‘Yes, Joe, everyone.’

  ‘It would look how it is, that I’m fed up with your crazy ideas.’

  ‘And what would that do to Joe, if he saw we’d quarrelled over him and you’d gone off. . .?’

  ‘What would it do to Joe? Make him laugh, I should hope. You need to be laughed at, only I haven’t the energy. Anyway, Joe wouldn’t care if I went off without you. He’d probably be glad. You’ve made yourself into the indispensable one and me into nothing. I don’t count.’

  ‘Oh God, more self-pity, more whingeing, you’re just so sorry for yourself these days, acting as though you’ve been somehow framed. It disgusts me.’ She paused, but Sam said nothing, only smiled, and she picked up on his smile at once. ‘There you are, you see, everything is a joke to you, everything has to be light-hearted, nothing is ever taken seriously. I haven’t made you into anything, you’ve made yourself.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense. What have I made myself into?’

  ‘A coward, you’re scared of Joe, you have been ever since he was attacked, you’re scared of his distress and he knows it, he knows you can’t bear it and he has to bear it, you just want to forget all the time –’

  ‘Whereas you want to remember, and that’s brave, is it? Revelling in the past is brave?’

  ‘I don’t revel.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘In what exactly?’

  ‘Suffering. You love it.’

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘No, you are, now you mention it, you’re deranged half the time. You have no sense of proportion, you won’t let life go on, every bloody thing is pulled back to the attack, as if –’

  ‘As if? I warn you, Sam –’

  ‘You warn me? I should have warned you long ago.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About how ridiculous you’ve become, how bitter, and about how much damage you’re doing, and how I’m sick of this tragedy queen stuff. I’m sick of it and I couldn’t care less whether you come with me to Edinburgh, I don’t even know if I want you to come, you’d kill the weekend before it started. I’m going because I want to enjoy myself – yes, that filthy word, enjoy, have some pleasure again, and I’m not ashamed of wanting to do it. You can do what you like.’

  And he left the house, banging the door, leaving Harriet with a frightening sick feeling in her stomach and the dreadful conviction, one she had never entertained before, that perhaps Sam’s love for her was not as utterly solid and overwhelming as she had always believed.

  *

  In mid-August, Eric James died. Heart failure, nothing to do with his injuries, except in so far as the shock had weakened his strong, old heart. Only two days short of his ninetieth birthday. What a pity, Sheila found herself thinking, that he couldn’t have hung on another forty-eight hours . . . it would so have pleased him to die, with such neatness, on the very day he was born. But he died on a hot, sunny day, two days before, two weeks after he’d come out of the Infirmary. It was the reminders which did for him, she was sure, coming home to the empty house where, for that short but thrilling time, he had sheltered Leo. He moped as soon as he came home, trudged round the small rooms, looking helpless, lost, picking things up and putting them down in a pointless way, and gathering up anything that Leo had used. Only he and Sheila, and of course Alan, knew why his own house suddenly seemed a mere empty shell for which he no longer had any affection. Carole, watching him, vowed he was ready to move into a Home. She said she was sure he’d realised he couldn’t manage any more and he’d be happier surrounded by
others. ‘Rubbish,’ Sheila said, and that was all.

  She brought her father’s dinner round every day and tried to talk to him about Leo. It took time, and a great deal of being glared at, to convince him that Leo had gone of his own volition and she had not betrayed him. ‘He wasn’t there, Dad,’ she said again and again. ‘Remember? I came straight to you in the Infirmary, only you were asleep, and then again the next day, and I told you he wasn’t there. And I’d promised, hadn’t I, to do nothing that night? I’d promised. And I didn’t. He wasn’t there, he’d gone already.’ Over and over it they went and finally he’d believed her. But believing her hadn’t helped much. He wondered aloud endlessly to her, when they were alone together, as to why Leo had gone at that particular time on that particular day. ‘He said nowt,’ Eric James protested, ‘not a dicky bird, said nowt about moving on.’

  ‘He wouldn’t want you to know,’ Sheila sighed. ‘He’d know you’d be upset and it would make it harder for him to go and he had to go in the end.’

  ‘He could’ve stopped a while longer.’

  ‘How long had he been shut up here anyway?’ Sheila probed. For some reason Eric James held on to this piece of trivial information as though it were precious, and it annoyed her. ‘How long exactly?’

  ‘Hard to say.’

  ‘Hard to say? You mean you didn’t notice? Don’t be daft.’

  ‘You watch your lip. Daft I’m not, else why’d he come to me, eh? Me, not you.’

  He held that over her in a childish way all the time – me-not-you, me-not-you – until it sounded like bird song, that shrill, irritating cheep of an undistinguished sparrow.

  ‘How did he look? How did he seem?’ She was nevertheless obliged to ask, overcoming her resentment. And he liked her to ask that, it pleased him, gave him power.

  ‘Champion,’ he said. ‘He looked champion, hadn’t teken any harm in spite of wandering. Once he’d had a bath and got some clean clothes on he looked champion, even if there were no trousers to fit him, too short in the leg mine were, but we got ower that with . . .’