The Boy That Never Was

by Karen Perry

  I rang Harry, but it went through to his voicemail.

  ‘Hey there, you. Hope all’s going well in London. I’m sitting here in the cold and dark in the middle of a blackout. It really is the eighties all over again. Hope it’s luminous where you are. Anyway. I miss you. Ring me if you get a chance.’

  I hung up and thought about my message, hoping I sounded upbeat and not needy or lonely. Harry would hate that.

  The power cut meant I couldn’t cook, so I grazed on stuff from the fridge – a yogurt, the ends of different cheeses, a slice of melon that was almost dried out, a couple of squares of chocolate. There was nothing much else to eat in the house, and it left me feeling light and insubstantial. But the snow made me reluctant to venture out again, and I couldn’t be bothered getting a pizza delivered. I sat at the kitchen table, feeling restless.

  What happened next was not planned. It was the restlessness that started it. I browsed the Internet until the battery of my laptop ran out. Then I tried reading, but the candle kept wavering, and I had to squint to make out the text, so pretty soon I gave up, sat back and looked about. I looked at the old cupboards, at the paint peeling off them. I looked at the long tube of the fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling, which was coated in the grime of generations but was dark now, the kitchen strangely silent without its constant buzzing or the sibilant hum of the fridge. I looked around at everything I wanted to get rid of, to peel off and strip away, to throw out and paint over, and then my eyes came to rest on the door to the garage.

  As I sat there staring at it, I began to think of the distance that had sprung up between me and Harry lately. He’d seemed harsh in recent days – surly and morose. And I was skittish with nerves. There was a coolness between us, a sensitivity that seemed to cling to our conversations, so that I felt the need to tread carefully, that each word spoken between us was laden with meaning, that the most innocent facial expression or casual gesture could be misread out of all proportion. I don’t know why, but the thought came to me then that all of it could be made right if I were to go into the garage now, into the space that was becoming his studio. I had a half-formed notion that if I were to spend some time there alone, among his work, among the things he created his art with, I would gain some new understanding of him, some feeling of empathy that would soften things between us. Perhaps it was snooping. And certainly there was an air of distrust between us that might have driven me in there. Or maybe it was just curiosity. Either way, it got me out of my chair, holding on to my candle in a jar as I pushed the door open, flicking the light switch out of habit, and stepped down into that cold concrete room.

  I don’t know what it was I went looking for. I really don’t. And standing there with my candle held aloft, looking about at the heaped-up pile of junk in one corner and the spread of contents from Harry’s studio sprawled all over the ground like a spillage, I said to myself, Robin, this is ridiculous. You are being ridiculous.

  But instead of backing out of the room, I stepped in further and found a place to rest my candle. It was freezing in there. I took Harry’s jacket from its hook on the back of the door and slipped my arms into the sleeves. Then, hands on hips, I looked around, trying to work out where to start. There were some plastic crates stacked against one wall, and it was to these I went first. One contained the fax machine. Another held coils and coils of wires and cables, and batteries that skittered and rolled as I lifted the crate and put it to one side. The crate underneath contained paperwork, and I sat down cross-legged on an old roll of carpet and set about going through it, anxiously scanning each receipt, each fax and letter and bill, anything that might give me some clue as to why my husband was behaving in such a strange manner. I must have spent a half-hour going through it, growing colder and more exasperated with each minute. And guilty. The shade of guilt grew darker the more I looked. At this stage, I was snooping. I could admit that much to myself. And at the end of it all, I’d barely turned up anything. A receipt for a night out at La Cave that amounted to almost three hundred euros was the only incriminating thing. Well, that and a cryptic fax from Diane: ‘What a night! A triumph! You were really something … as always. Dx.’

  I sat there looking at it. ‘Bitch,’ I said aloud to the empty room. ‘Poisonous bitch.’ And taken with a cold rage, I held the corner of the fax to the flame of my candle and watched it blacken and crinkle, the flame eating up the page. There was a bucket in the corner by the stack of canvases, and I took the smoking page over and dropped it there, watching the last of it shrivel and burn against the cold enamel. There was some satisfaction in that, but still the restlessness lingered, and as I looked about I saw a wooden box, the corners sealed with hammered metal. It was half-hidden by a roll of canvas, stashed away beneath some storage shelves. Drawn to it, I set my candle down on the ground beside it, moved the canvas to one side and slid the crate out from beneath the shelf. As I pulled it towards me, I felt the roll of the bottle within, heard the clink of the glass against something metal. I reached inside and, from among the rolled-up sketches, pulled out an almost empty bottle of Lagavulin. I stared at the honey-coloured liquid gleaming in the light of the candle. It was so obvious and expected, it made me suddenly depressed. Why had I gone looking through all this stuff? What had I hoped to find? I should have known that nothing good would have come of it, that all I could possibly find was something else to cause me pain. With a heavy heart, I put the bottle back, and it was as I leaned forwards to push the crate back into its hiding place that I caught sight of it. It made me stop cold. I held my breath.

  The first one I drew from the box was dated April 2005. Barely a month after Dillon had died. It was a pencil sketch, and the likeness was so clear and immediate it caused a tightening around my heart. Those eyes so black and luminous in the round saucers of sockets. Harry had used a pencil with a soft nib, and this softness made Dillon’s eyes seem dreamy and plaintive, as though they were looking out from beneath a film of water. His mouth was open a little, a smudge on the lips giving them the appearance of wetness, as if he had just licked them. A faint flick of the pencil had given his chin a cleft – the chin dimple I had worried so much about. His hair was tousled, as if he’d just been woken from sleep. I stared hard at the sketch. It was a mask of innocence.

  The next one was dated November 2005. We would have been back in Ireland by then, trying desperately to piece together a life for ourselves from the shards and fragments left in his absence. Harry had drawn this one as if Dillon had been caught by surprise. His body was facing one way; only his head turned to stare back at the artist. And in this sketch the pencil used had been harder, darker. Sharp lines carved out the hollow stare, picking out the questioning shine of his eyes, the straight line of his closed mouth. His hair was a little longer; it curled under at the nape of his neck.

  May 2006 then. Again, the same hard pencil, the same sharp lines. This time Dillon was facing the artist full-on. And there was something angry about his face. His eyes seemed flatter, colder. A feeling of distance had come into this drawing, and I couldn’t tell exactly how. The hair was even longer, more dishevelled. It had a grubbiness that suggested a tougher existence, mirrored in the look in Dillon’s eyes. A defensive look.

  The sketches continued. They went on and on. Year after year. And each one showed him a little older. Each one showed him a little more distant, a little harder. Something about his face seemed to be closing itself off, shutting itself down, so that by the time I reached the last one – dated July 2010 – it was as if the very spirit of my son had been extinguished. A hard, sharp face stared out at me. All the softness had been erased; the innocence had disappeared. I saw a tough, angry boy. A boy who looked like Dillon. But not the Dillon I knew, not the Dillon I remembered, not the Dillon I loved.

  The light came on, and I gave a little cry of shock. With the electricity restored, I was plunged into the stark brightness and, looking around, I saw that I was kneeling in a corner of the garage surrounded by all the
sketches of Dillon. Under the harsh light of the bare bulb, with all those portraits scattered in a semi-circle around me, as though they were closing in, I experienced a tightening under my ribs like panic.

  ‘Why?’ I said aloud. ‘Why has he done this?’

  All these sketches, all these years. The labour and the longing that must have gone into them. I looked at the wooden box he had shoved in under the shelves – that he had hidden – and thought of all the pain he kept squirrelled away, hidden from my view, and it filled me with sadness and that age-old remorse. Slowly, I gathered the pictures together and put them in their box, pushing it back in place and returning the roll of canvas so that the box was once more obscured. It was as if I had never touched them.

  I couldn’t sleep. For hours, I tossed and turned, trying to find a cool spot on the pillow. My limbs kept creeping across the mattress, trying to find Harry’s sleeping form. I have always found it difficult to sleep when alone. I stared up at the dark ceiling and tried to drag my mind out of the corridors it kept travelling down. Ancient, dusty passages filled with shadows. Tangier. Old memories, old faces – Cozimo, Raul, Garrick … One memory I kept returning to was a night in Tangier during the time when Harry and I were separated. It was not a long separation – three or four weeks. Long enough to feel lonely. Long enough for my anger to bloom and then wither. Dillon was three years old at the time – I mention this, because he was the cause of our estrangement. Or, rather, it was what Harry did to him that prompted my furious response, that caused me to snap and throw him out of our house.

  Those pills.

  I can still remember it. The horrible plunging feeling when I held them in my hand and realized what Harry had been doing.

  Cozimo had taken him in, of course. Cozimo, his friend and ally. An accomplice of sorts. And it was Cozimo who came to me after three or four weeks to plead Harry’s case and ask me to take him back.

  I remember the night. The alleys dark and quiet. The soft sounds of Dillon playing quietly with toys in his bed. Cozimo sprawled on the couch, languorously sipping the martini I had grudgingly made for him. All the while I sat opposite him, my arms folded across my chest, unsmiling and staring implacably at him, quietly enraged by his presence – the gall of the man.

  ‘You know you won’t be able to keep this up for ever,’ he remarked.

  ‘Won’t I?’

  ‘No, of course not, my dear. You are angry, and that is fine. You have every right to be.’

  ‘Yes, I am aware of that, Cozimo.’

  He ignored the pointed remark and continued: ‘But such anger is exhausting. It will wear you down. And the single unalterable fact remains that you love Harry and Harry loves you, and that, as they say, is that.’

  He raised his eyebrows as if to say, end of argument, and sipped his drink, sinking a little deeper into the sofa.

  ‘I would question the “unalterable” part of your statement.’

  He smiled and gave a little wheeze of a laugh.

  ‘Your love for each other has been tested, granted.’

  ‘Tested?’

  ‘But such trifles are not the stuff that breaks a marriage.’

  ‘Trifles?’ I unfolded my arms and pushed myself forwards so that I was perched on the edge of my chair.

  ‘Yes. Trifles,’ he replied, unfazed.

  ‘He gave our son sleeping pills, Cozimo. Your sleeping pills, I might add, and you think that is a trifle?’ My voice rose with anger, driven by the infuriating little smile on his lined face, his shrugging manner. ‘The two of you drugging a little boy. I ought to report you.’

  ‘Ah, now there I must correct you, my dear. I never drugged anyone. I merely supplied the pills, and it was up to Harry what he chose to do with them.’

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  ‘You slippery old sod,’ I said. ‘The way you oil your way through life, allowing responsibility to slide off you –’

  ‘It is my life, Robin, and one of the things I like most about it is the precise lack of responsibility. I have never understood why any man would want to shackle himself to another person – I certainly have never felt the urge. And it is no concern of yours how I choose to live my life.’

  ‘It is when you start interfering in mine.’

  His eyes squeezed shut for a few seconds, and when he opened them again, he seemed more composed, colder perhaps.

  ‘We are straying from the point, my dear.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The fact remains that you are still here, in Tangier, and that more than anything else tells me that you still love Harry and there remains the distinct possibility that you will take him back and thus relieve me of my houseguest. Much as I love him, one must have one’s own space, after all.’

  ‘Bothering you, is he? Cramping your style?’ I was beginning to enjoy myself.

  ‘Oh, Robin, what kind of debauched life do you imagine I lead in my little palace?’ He gave me a wistful smile. ‘In truth, I lead a simple life. No, Harry is not cramping my style. In all seriousness, it pains me to see him so sad, so morose. He is bereft without you, and distraught over what he has done. If you would only see him, talk to him, listen to what he has to say –’

  ‘What is the point, Cozimo? It’s all just talk. Words and more words. Promises and apologies, but underneath it all, something has been broken that cannot be fixed.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘Trust.’

  He stared at me across the distance of the room, and the word seemed to hang in the silence between us.

  Slowly, he got to his feet, putting the glass down on the table. A thoughtful look came over him as he moved towards the window and gazed down at the alley below.

  ‘Trust,’ he repeated softly, his gaze caught by something outside that I couldn’t see.

  Turning back towards me, hands behind his back, still with that pensive look on his face, he said, ‘I have always thought that trust is a funny thing – a curious thing. The weight people put on it. The immense proportions it takes on in a relationship. And what strikes me is that we all have a great desire to trust others. We want to trust the ones we love even when we know we shouldn’t, even when past experience has taught us not to. We say, “I can never trust him again,” but then time passes, and we let them back into our hearts. We forgive, and we get on with things.’

  He moved towards the door, and I watched him, feeling that he was working up to something.

  ‘And then there are those who we trust because we have no reason not to. But who knows? Perhaps there is a reason we shouldn’t trust them, but we are unaware of it? After all, none of us are saints, are we? Even the most saintly among us can slip.’

  He fixed me then with a piercing gaze, and I saw something in those hard little eyes – something dangerous.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  He straightened up and smiled.

  ‘Haven’t you ever committed a misdemeanour, my dear? Hmm? Are you quite sure Harry can trust you?’

  He held me in his gaze, and I felt the cold plunge of fear in my heart.

  ‘Giving a pill to a fractious child to help him sleep might not be the worst crime in the world, don’t you think? You and I both know that there are far greater breaches of trust.’

  His eyes, in that moment, seemed as grey as gunmetal, and I felt the cold glare of the threat coming off him.

  Then he smiled, and I knew he had accomplished what he’d come here to do.

  ‘I’ll let myself out,’ he said, and I listened to the shush of his leather slippers all the way down the stairs.

  Now, across the distance of years, I could still hear the drag of his slippered feet, even as I lay alone in my bed in the dark, snow outside the window, Dillon, Cozimo and Tangier all long gone. Don’t go there, I told myself. Leave those thoughts where they belong – in the past.

  I turned over once more, resolved to fall asleep, and it was then that I felt it. A bubble bursting inside me. A pocket of liqu
id suddenly voiding itself. It gushed from me, warm and wet against my thighs. Panic came quickly as I reached to touch the dampness of my pyjamas and then hurriedly groped for the light.

  The first thing I saw was the bloody handprint I had left on the sheet.

  ‘No!’ I cried out, ripping back the covers.

  The sudden violence of it was shocking. So much blood, so quickly – it did not seem possible. Flinging myself from the bed, I raced to the bathroom, crying, and there I was confronted by my reflection in the mirror: tears streaming down my face, pale as a sheet, the blood below my waist a violent contrast.

  ‘No,’ I said again, a plaintive cry to an empty house.

  I felt like I had been punched. Everything drained away inside me. I sat on the edge of the bath, the dampness of my pyjamas clinging to me like a bad conscience.

  ‘It isn’t fair!’ I cried. ‘It’s not fucking fair.’

  And I knew then, in that moment of loss, how badly I had wanted it. The baby. I understood then that I had come to think of it as more than just a second chance. I had come to think of it as a redemption.

  I waited until after dawn to go to the hospital. It hardly seemed worth a mad dash into Holles Street in the middle of the night just to have confirmed what I already knew. I spent the night on the couch, wrapped in the duvet, trying to comfort myself.