Not the End of the World

by Kate Atkinson

  The door was a massy, ornate affair in heavily varnished wood and it reminded Addison of the bank in town that his mother took him to sometimes. Shirley, as with many other things in her life, went into the bank with high hopes and invariably came out with them dashed. She would inquire of one of the blank-faced cashiers in a tight, strained voice—a sorry attempt at refinement—as to whether any money had “come into her account” and when the answer was no (Addison had never known it to be yes), she would storm out, ranting and cursing in language that passersby seemed to find shocking beyond belief, although it sounded fairly run-of-the-mill to Addison’s ears.

  Shirley tilted her head to one side as if listening for something. Unconsciously, Addison imitated her pose. He heard people close by, people who seemed to be enjoying themselves—the booming, bass laughter of a man, the pleasant, melodious voices of women, quite different from Shirley’s gravelly smoker’s timbre. And, farther off, the high notes of children playing, a noise that made Addison perk up like an eager dog.

  They followed the thread of voices along a narrow stone-chip path that took them round the corner of the pink sandstone wall of the house. The house had a small tower and what looked like battlements and Addison wondered if it was a castle. Shirley hesitated in front of yet another door—a planked wooden one set into a wall. The house might as well have had a moat, drawbridge, and portcullis for all the difficulties it seemed intent on throwing in her path.

  The voices that had lured them were coming from the other side of the wall. Addison noticed the clinking of glasses and the ambrosial scent of food. His stomach groaned. “Sh,” his mother whispered, as if his hunger was something under his control. She gave Addison a critical look and then searched for a handkerchief in her handbag, spat on it, and rubbed Addison’s face. She flattened his unruly hair with the palm of her hand, knocking him off balance as she did so. Shirley frowned, unable to see much improvement. She bent down to speak in Addison’s ear, an action that made him take an involuntary step backwards.

  “Remember,” she cautioned, as if they had discussed the subject beforehand (which Addison was sure they hadn’t), “stand up straight and look him in the eye when he speaks to you. OK?”

  “OK,” Addison agreed.

  From beyond the wall, there was a sudden burst of laughter as if the punch line of a joke had just been delivered. Shirley took a fortifying breath. “Right then,” she said, “time to confront his majesty in all his glory,” and she pushed open the wooden door.

  THREE SEEMED TO be a consensus amongst the nuns in the orphanage that Addison’s mother was in hell, an idea so horrifying that Addison tried never to think about it. Now, now that the nuns’ brainwashing had (more or less) left his system, he knew Shirley was neither in hell nor in heaven—she was nowhere, she was dead. In some ways he preferred the idea that she was in hell because then at least she would exist.

  It was only after Clare’s belly began to swell in the months following the wedding (“I’m too old to hang about, Addison”) that Addison’s own childhood—what little there was of it—began to occupy his mind. If his father had accepted his responsibilities that day, if he had welcomed Addison into his home, how different Addison’s life would have been. He would have inhabited a world of golf and dinner dances and good Edinburgh schools. He would have had brothers and sisters and a sense of belonging to something instead of always feeling like an outsider, an observer of other people’s lives. He had thought that having Clare—and now this unknown, unimaginable baby—would change all that. But it didn’t. Addison was still on the outside looking in.

  ADDISON FOLLOWED HIS mother and found himself standing on a lawn. Unless you counted the grass on Leith Links, Addison didn’t think he’d ever stood on lawn before and his instinct was to kneel down and touch it. Instead, he pressed himself into Shirley’s skirts and inhaled her smoky fragrance and silently took in the prospect before them, which, to Addison, looked like a picture from one of his mother’s magazines—well-dressed people smoking and drinking and throwing their heads back in easy laughter. The women were sipping delicately from little glasses (“Sherry,” his mother said dismissively under her breath) while the men drank from big cut-glass tumblers.

  “Ah, the old amber nectar, Bill,” one of the men said and they touched glasses, making a ringing sound like crystalline bells. Addison regarded “Bill” with interest. He was a big man, bigger than the others, with the kind of imposing stature that intimidated other men. On the other hand, he didn’t seem awfully heroic to Addison—the skin on his cheeks was pouchy and slack and his thinning hair was plastered to his scalp. In contrast, his face sported a huge beard.

  There were children racing around the garden, playing a high-spirited game of catch. A boy held a toy airplane aloft as he ran and Addison watched its metal wings flashing in the sunshine and wondered if he would be allowed to join in.

  For all the notice anyone was taking of Addison and his mother they might as well have been cloaked by an invisibility spell. Only one person seemed to see them—a small girl, two or three years old, who was sitting contentedly on a rug on the grass, playing with a doll. When she saw Addison she smiled and waved a clean, plump hand at him, almost as if she’d been expecting him. All the small children of Addison’s acquaintance were grubby, snotty, bawling creatures who always smelled rank, but this girl was like a creature from another world. She was wearing a pristine pink dress that spread out around her on the rug like petals and looked as if she smelled of cake and sweets and flowers and other good things that Addison dreamed of.

  Addison wondered if she had come from Fairyland—a place Addison knew about because his Primary One teacher, Miss Cameron, had read a story about it to her class (although she had felt it necessary to add the caveat that Fairyland didn’t actually exist and was in contravention of all biblical teaching).

  “Don’t look so glaikit, Addison,” his mother hissed at him.

  Afterwards, a long time afterwards, Addison came to see this scene for what it was. A family gathered for Sunday lunch, enjoying a preprandial drink in the sunshine. At the time, however, it was as if that wooden door had opened on a vision of an unearthly kingdom, peopled by heavenly creatures, and, more than anything he had ever known, Addison wanted to step into that divine world and be a part of it.

  A woman appeared at the French windows of the house and came out onto the patio. She was wearing an apron and was holding a wooden spoon in her hand as if she had been tasting something. She called out gaily to the assembled company, “Lunch is ready, everyone,” but then the cloak of invisibility must have dropped from their shoulders because the woman spotted Addison and Shirley and her hostess smile froze on her lips and her conviviality was replaced by a glacial mask that seemed to Addison to chill the air around him. Still clutching the wooden spoon in one hand, but now brandishing it like a weapon, she called to the little girl (“Susan!”) and when Susan didn’t respond she hurried to scoop her up protectively, keeping her eyes fixed on Shirley, as if she was a dangerous wild animal that might pounce at any moment.

  The woman called out sharply to her other children—“Douglas! Andrew! Pamela!”—and three of the children who had been playing catch obediently detached themselves from the others and ran towards their mother. All three were older than Addison. The elder boy still had the toy airplane clutched in his hand and Susan, perched against her mother’s chest, reached out to grab it. Addison suddenly felt the siren call of cells and DNA and blood and had to resist an almost overwhelming urge to walk across the lawn and shoulder his way into the middle of this little group and become part of Bill Addison’s family.

  “It’s all right, Marjorie,” Bill Addison said, striding across the lawn like a man intent on defending his property. A great cloud passed suddenly over the face of the sun and Addison shivered.

  If you ignored the increasingly absurd wooden spoon that Marjorie Addison was holding aloft, she struck an imperious maternal figure. Addison feared that
Shirley would stand little chance of victory in any contest with her. There was such cruel fury in her eyes that it seemed to Addison that at any moment she might turn his mother into some helpless creature—a cow or a bear, or worse.

  “Now look here,” Bill Addison said angrily to Shirley, “I don’t know what you want, but this is a private house.” There was a murmur of agreement from the assembled guests. The dark cloud grew darker. Addison felt a drop of rain splash on his cheek.

  “You don’t know what I want?” Shirley said, her voice cracking with disbelief. Addison saw a streak of lightning fracture the sky and almost immediately thunder banged so loudly that he felt his heart give an answering thump. Susan began to cry. Addison reached for his mother’s hand for reassurance but she pulled herself away from him, advancing aggressively on a glowering Bill Addison. Addison followed his mother across the lawn.

  “Stop right there, son.” Bill Addison loomed above him, so close that Addison smelled the alien male scent of pipe tobacco and Brylcreem and malt whisky. Addison was terrified, but he had heard that one word—son. This must be the moment (quite different from the one in his imagination) when his father was going to claim him as his own. Addison stood up straight and tried to look Bill Addison in the eye, an impossibility given the way his father was towering over him. Addison tried to think of the right thing to say but only one word came to his mind. “Father,” he said, hearing how tinny and useless his voice sounded. Before he had a chance to compose anything else Bill Addison unleashed a blow like a thunderbolt (for a moment Addison wondered if he had actually been struck by lightning) and he found himself sprawled, full-length, on the lawn.

  All Addison could see was a great bowl of purple, rain-darkened sky above his head. He could hear his mother spitting out obscenities. His father roared, “Whore!” at her in an enraged, apoplectic tone and one of the women screamed in horror at the word, although not nearly as much as when his mother yelled back at his father that he was “a fucking, cunting whoremaister.” The words sounded fuzzy to Addison; it was only later in the hospital that he discovered his eardrum had burst. Blood ran down his face from his nose and dripped onto the grass and when he tried to turn his head a spasm of hot pain shot through it. Tears started to roll down his face and mingle with the blood. The lawn, he noticed, was not as green close-up as it had looked from a distance.

  Then his mother screamed, “Fucking rapist!” and Bill Addison began to hit Shirley. Addison heard someone say, “Hang on there, Bill,” and get thumped for their trouble. A bolt of lightning rent a fissure across the sky. A thunderclap exploded above his head and Addison decided he was dead.

  He was brought to life again by a deluge of rain. The smell of wet earth and grass was oddly comforting, although for the rest of his life a sudden summer downpour would make Addison’s heart contract with an unnameable grief.

  A pair of small feet appeared by his head. The feet were encased in frilled white socks and white Clark’s sandals. Addison had never seen socks that white. The owner of the feet dropped to their knees by his side. Addison found himself looking up into Susan’s solemn face. Her hair had been turned to wet strings by the rain and her pink dress now clung damply to her body. Silently, she placed the toy airplane on the grass next to him. Addison licked his dry lips and tried to form a word of thanks but then Susan was dragged away by her mother.

  ADDISON HAD JUST arrived at an accident on the M9 when Clare went into premature labor. It was raining and they’d had a call on the radio to say “the VA looks as if it’s going to prove” (the “fatal” was always left off the end of this sentence—Addison sometimes wondered if it was out of a kind of delicacy). By the time they had got there it was all over and there was nothing to do but stand around helplessly looking at the smashed-up Audi A4 and somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother lying all broken up on the road. Addison wished his own wife wouldn’t drive so fast. That was when Robbie got the call to say that Clare had been taken into hospital and Addison thought there was something weird about that—the one life just ended, the other about to begin. What if the soul of this dead woman had flown into the body of his own child? They didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl because Clare wanted to be surprised. Addison wasn’t so keen on surprises himself. He hoped it was a girl. Clare laughed and said she just hoped it was a baby.

  It turned out that the one thing that Clare didn’t do quickly was give birth. There were “complications” but no one made it very clear what they were and Addison was left stranded in a small waiting room on his own. Addison was used to being in charge at accidents (this felt like an accident) and didn’t know what to do with this powerlessness. He stared at the floor in front of his feet and found himself wondering if it was going to prove.

  They nearly lost the baby, then they nearly lost Clare. Was that what she had been doing—racing against life, trying to keep one step ahead of the open grave? Eventually, Addison was taken in to see her. She looked a strange green color but she was all right. She smiled at him as if it was her role to cheer him up. Addison couldn’t think of anything to say so he just sat by the bed holding her hand and must have fallen asleep because a nurse was shaking him gently awake and asking him if he’d like to see his son. For a minute Addison had no idea what she was talking about.

  Despite the tubes and dials that adorned his ICU cot, the baby looked healthier than his mother. The nurse told Addison that he was going to pull through, in a way that seemed absurdly confident to Addison. Clare didn’t seem so convinced either when he went back to her single-bedded room. Addison knew it wasn’t a good sign that she was in a room on her own. He wondered if it would be better if he was more optimistic or would that be like asking for trouble?

  Clare wanted to give the baby a name straightaway but as neither of them wanted religion involved she suggested they put an announcement in the paper. Clare insisted that Addison decide on a name—they had already drawn up a shortlist of five—and Addison finally settled on Ewan because it seemed Scottish but not too Scottish. The outside world—wet and cold—hit Addison like a blow when he left the overheated bubble of the hospital. He really didn’t know if he could take the lifetime of worry that lay ahead of him now that he had a child.

  The next day Addison bought a copy of the Evening News to check that the announcement was in. It was and it looked solid and certain. The baby existed, it had a name, a name in print. Addison had never in his life read the Births and Deaths column but now it took on a personal interest and he glanced idly through the list of names, vaguely curious about the children who shared a birth date with his own son—a Connor and an Amelia. His eye was caught by the first announcement in the Deaths column—“Addison.” For a paranoid moment Addison thought it was some kind of foretelling of his own death and then he realized it was his father. His father was dead.

  The funeral was in the crematorium. Addison sat in the back row, near the door. Marjorie Addison, now a bent and shriveled figure, was seated at the front, nearest to the coffin. She had had to be supported into the crematorium by her two sons, Douglas and Andrew, one on either side of her, but now that she was seated it was her daughters who sat with her. Pam, frumpy in washed-out black, dabbed her eyes from time to time. Next to her Susan remained dry-eyed throughout, staring at the coffin with a kind of defiance.

  Thanks to a short obituary piece in the Evening News, Addison knew that his father had handed on the garage empire to Douglas and Andrew ten years ago but right up to the end had interfered in the running of it (“never quite let go of the reins”). Addison’s brothers sat with their heads bowed, unwaveringly solemn expressions fixed on their faces. Halfway through the service, Douglas glanced at his watch. They were both big, built like rugby players, but close-up he could see they looked too paunchy to be really fit. Addison reckoned he could take both of them if he had to—not that he was planning to, but the last time he had made a claim to his birthright (“Father—”), it had ended in violence and there was no guarantee it
wouldn’t go the same way this time.

  The service was a perfunctory sort of affair, lacking in emotion and built out of clichés—“pillar of the business community,” “stalwart of the Rotary Club,” “an Olympian.” Addison hoped that he wouldn’t have a funeral service. Perhaps he could persuade Clare to take his body to some cliff top somewhere and build him a funeral pyre and set it alight in one last blaze of glory so that he could rise up into the atmosphere and circle the earth as dust and ashes. His father’s body, on the other hand, encased in polyester satin and ash veneer, disappeared discreetly behind a blue velvet curtain to be incinerated out of sight.

  As the mourners filed out, the minister took up a position by the door, like a good maitre d’, and Addison had to suppress an urge to tip him.

  Addison followed the family back to the house. He found it hard to believe how much smaller it was than the baronial construct of his memory—no more than a detached Edinburgh villa with a few architectural curlicues.

  As Addison started walking up the path, his heart began to beat very fast and he found himself sweating inside his overcoat. He was gripped by an irrational fear that if he stepped over the threshold of his father’s house he would be struck dead and it was only an act of sheer willpower that got him up the steps and through the glass doors of the porch.

  The mourners were congregated in a large drawing room at the back of the house where a mock-Tudor bay looked out onto the garden, on which a winter gloom had already descended even though it was still early afternoon. The funeral tea was catered and the waitstaff moved quietly around the room, their expressions respectfully neutral. The atmosphere was that of a muted cocktail party.