The Child Inside

by Suzanne Bugler

  Jono, Jono.

  I cuddle his clothes to my chest; I feel their worn softness. I press them to my face; I breathe them in.

  I could teach. It’s the obvious thing; I’ve got a first degree in French. I could venture out again, into the world, and find something else to fill the void. But that would mean facing up to the fact that my child no longer needs me every minute of every day. It would mean allowing myself to let go, and how can I ever do that?

  I picture myself, in business clothes and with a briefcase, opening my front door. And I picture myself, stepping out into blackness. I close my eyes tight, I see myself falling into space, falling and falling, my arms and my legs spinning, Mary Poppins-like, through the air. My chest and my arms ache with my need for Jono, to hold him, to clutch him, to never let him go; but there I am, spinning away into darkness, forever spinning away.

  ELEVEN

  I tell Andrew I’m going out with my old school friend, Gina. And I say that I had told him ages ago, but that he must have forgotten.

  ‘So you’ll have to come home,’ I say. ‘To look after Jono.’

  But I still end up leaving the house before he is home on Tuesday. He rings me to say he won’t be home till eight, and my train leaves at seven-forty. So I leave Jono struggling over his maths, with strict instructions not to move till his dad gets in, and my mobile number, Andrew’s mobile number and Mrs Jeffries’ number next door written down on a piece of paper, in case of an emergency.

  ‘You’re sure you’ll be okay?’ I ask.

  And he says, ‘God, Mum! What can happen to me in half an hour? Do you think there’s going to be an earthquake or a hurricane and the house will fall down? Or do you think a meteorite is going to come crashing from the sky and land right on top of me?’

  It’s only an eight-minute walk from our house to the station and I half-expect to pass Andrew along the way, in case he did manage to get back a little earlier. I half-want to see him, so that I know Jono won’t be on his own for long, and I look out for him among the sea of grey suits disgorging themselves from the station entrance and out onto the pavement. I look out for him, but I’m ready to duck my head and dodge back behind the crowd in case I do see him. I stay on the other side of the road and walk past the station, and approach it from the far side, just in case. Not that Andrew would even notice me. He’d be in his own world, the mechanical world of the march back home. And, anyway, I am not doing anything wrong. I lied about who I’d be out with tonight, but that was just to avoid a long explanation. Had Andrew shown a little more interest in me in the first place, maybe I wouldn’t have had to lie at all.

  I phone Jono from the train.

  ‘Yes?’ he says when he answers.

  ‘Hi, darling, it’s me,’ I say.

  ‘What do you want?’ he grumbles down the line.

  ‘Just checking you’re okay. Are you still doing your homework?’

  ‘No, I’m answering the phone.’

  ‘Dad will be home in a moment,’ I say. ‘Call me if there’s any problem, or if he’s late.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says and hangs up.

  Simon is waiting for me at Waterloo. I see him before he sees me. I see him standing outside WH Smith under the clock, scanning the crowds coming from the other direction. He checks his watch; he shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

  ‘Tell me where you live,’ he said on the phone.

  And I said, ‘Oh, out in Surbiton.’

  ‘Shall I come to you?’ he asked. ‘Is there somewhere we could go for a drink perhaps? I don’t want to take up too much of your time.’

  But of course I said, ‘No, it’s fine,’ I said. ‘I could meet you at Waterloo.’

  But now I know that Waterloo isn’t his station. And I also know what a long commute he has to get back home.

  ‘Hi,’ I say now, and he turns round to me, startled, relieved.

  ‘Rachel,’ he says, ‘hi.’ He bends and kisses me on the cheek, and he half-holds me as he does so. For long seconds his cheek is against mine, his arm around my shoulders in a gentle embrace. For some reason I feel sudden tears prickling at the backs of my eyes.

  ‘We’ll just go to the South Bank,’ he says. ‘Is that okay?’ He walks fast and so I do too; I don’t want to slow his pace. I feel a sense of urgency in him, but he doesn’t say much as we walk, other than ‘How are you?’ and ‘Thank you for meeting me,’ and ‘I hope the train didn’t take too long.’ Small talk, to which I respond in kind.

  We stop at a bar by Queen Elizabeth Hall.

  ‘Will this do?’ he asks. ‘I realize you probably don’t have long.’

  ‘This is fine,’ I say. ‘But you’re probably in more of a hurry than I am. You’ve got to go all the way back to Kingham.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ he says. ‘That’s just at the weekends. I stay in town most of the week.’

  I sit at a small table and watch him as he goes to the bar to order our drinks. And I think how naive of me to imagine him slapping back and forth all the way to Kingham twice a day, two hours here and two hours back again. Of course he wouldn’t do that every day. I picture myself, sitting at my computer and studying his route, working out how long it would take him, what time he would have to leave each morning, and I wonder why it is that I have to be so obsessive.

  ‘Where do you stay, then, in town?’ I ask when he comes back with our wine.

  ‘I’ve got a flat just along the river,’ he says, and I think, Of course; someone like Simon would have a flat. People from his sphere so often do; they hole the wife and kids up in some idyllic house in the country, which they themselves will visit at weekends, and keep a flat for themselves in the city. To live like that is just normal for someone from Simon’s world. I think of the other boys I knew back then in the Vanessa days; the ones who idled through her house with their cotton shirts and their public-school accents, with their constant supply of dope and their easy expectation of sex. I think of the ones who survived and the ones who didn’t, as though their teenage years were a sort of weeding-out process. I try to imagine the men that the survivors will have become now, and into my head pops an image of all those fathers at Jono’s Christmas concert, all those alpha-men with their alpha-families living their golden, alpha-lives.

  Would I recognize any of those boys if I walked into them now? Would I have recognized Simon? He is from a different world from me; I see it clearly. I see it, and it thrills me, it draws me. It is the same world that Vanessa would move in now too, had she lived. Picture it: the house in the country, the beautiful children, the trips into town. I imagine the clothes she’d wear, the ease with which she’d walk into the kind of shops that I would never dare enter. And the shop assistants wouldn’t sneer at her; they’d flock around her, it would make their day just to serve her. The differences between Vanessa and me would be even starker now than they were back then, and, just as I was back then, I would still be looking on: envious, infatuated, enthralled.

  And yet here I am now, with Simon, getting glimpses of that world again. He tells me how Isobel, his wife, wanted space and fresh air in which to bring up the children, and yet ironically their eldest, Theo, will soon go away to school. ‘And eventually the others will join him, and there will just be Isobel and her horses at home all week,’ he says and I hear the cynicism in his voice, but it is a cultivated, world-weary cynicism at odds with his nervousness. Behind his apparent ease and his smooth manners he is coiled, pent-up. ‘What about you?’ he asks. ‘Tell me about your life.’

  But I find that I can’t. I don’t want to talk about it; my life seems all too mundane. ‘I’m married; I have a son, Jono. He’ll be thirteen soon.’ That’s all I can say. Meeting Simon is a step out of my world; the two cannot cross, or meet. And anyway, I’m sure he only asked out of politeness.

  But now he says, ‘I hope I didn’t make things difficult for you, asking you to meet me like this.’

  ‘No, no of course not,’ I reply, and to steer us away from A
ndrew and Jono and all things home, I go on, ‘I wanted to see you. I can’t stop thinking about what you said, about your mother, about her pretending she never had a daughter. Simon, it’s heartbreaking.’

  Simon smiles at me, but it’s a sad smile of acknowledgement. ‘It is,’ he says, simply. He picks up his wine glass and drinks, and again I notice the bitten skin around his nails, in such contrast to the rest of his appearance, which is so immaculately groomed. When he puts his glass back down he continues, ‘I adored my sister.’ And, as though even he finds it hard to believe now, And so, once, did my mother.’ The sarcasm in his voice does nothing to conceal his pain.

  ‘Simon, everyone loved Vanessa,’ I say. ‘Your mother most of all, surely.’

  He stares at me, and the intensity of his eyes is so unnerving, so blue, so like his sister’s. He holds his hand out across the table towards me, palm up. Without even thinking, I respond, and place my hand in his. He closes his fingers around mine, warm, strong.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘For your incredible understanding.’

  Tears prickle the backs of my eyes. For a moment we are silent, but he holds my hand, and he stares at me. And then he says, ‘You cannot imagine what it means for me to be here with you. It is such a long time since I have been able to speak to anyone about my sister, and to someone who remembers her, too. I am so glad that you got back in touch.’

  I cannot break his gaze, though there is a lump burning in my throat now and my eyes are starting to swim. He squeezes my hand.

  ‘I’m sorry to upset you,’ he says. ‘Please, forgive me.’

  Forgive me.

  Again I see him as a boy, drunk and tender, and always there in the background, basking in the light of his sister. She never told him to go away. She never said, Get lost, or shut him out. She loved him, as he loved her. A tear spills over and slides down my cheek, followed by another. With my free hand I wipe them away.

  Simon leans towards me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again.

  I try to smile, but I cannot speak and the tears are coming thick and fast. I sit there, feeling slightly ridiculous, unable to help myself, and he was the one who was supposed to be upset.

  ‘Rachel,’ he says now. ‘Will you come to my flat? It’s not far. We could be there in five minutes.’

  And so we leave. After all, we cannot stay there, with me crying my eyes out. I think what an embarrassment I am, but he walks with his hand across my back, caring, protective. Such gentleness makes me want to cry all the more, but I try to pull myself together. We walk fast in the cold, clean air, further up the South Bank towards the Tate Modern. It is hard to talk when we are walking; I feel we are suspended somehow, out of all time, out of all grounding.

  He says to me, ‘Are you okay?’ And again, ‘I’m sorry.’

  And at last I am able to say, ‘Simon, I’m sorry. Really, I didn’t mean to cry all over you.’

  His hand stays on my back.

  His flat is in a newish block above some shops by the Oxo Tower. We walk into the steel foyer and he presses the button for the lifts. I have the strangest feeling of having slipped outside one life and into another. I am looking down. I am looking down and seeing everything in microscopic detail; I am taking it all in, making notes, colouring it all in, not missing a thing.

  We emerge from the lift. The corridor is surprisingly short and contained; just three doors lead from a cream-carpeted, cream-walled hall. He puts a key into one and we enter an open room, half-kitchen, half-living room, divided by a sort of marble breakfast bar, and beyond that, a huge, wall-sized window looking out across the Thames to St Paul’s and the City. I think of the view from my kitchen window at 117 London Road, Surbiton. I think of Jono, grumbling over his maths and recoiling from my affection, and of Andrew coming in from work, tired, impassive, remote. I cannot believe that I am here.

  I stand there, staring at that incredible landscape, while Simon goes straight to the fridge and takes out a bottle of wine, and then to a cupboard from which he fetches two glasses.

  ‘Rachel,’ he says when he hands me a glass, ‘the last thing I want to do is upset you. I really am sorry.’ He takes a sip from his glass, then puts it down there on the counter, so that he is standing opposite me empty-handed, vulnerable. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you went home tonight and I didn’t hear from you again.’

  I smile at him, but it is a wonky, watery smile. Carefully I put my own glass down next to his. He is looking at me so seriously, so anxiously, and my heart is stretched tight inside my chest. I cannot think what to say, except, ‘You’re Vanessa’s brother. I am hardly going to let you go.’ And then my eyes are welling up with tears again, and slowly, very slowly, he reaches out an arm and puts it around my shoulders. A little awkwardly I move closer to him, and he puts his other arm out so that I am held there, within the circle of his embrace. He holds me gently, tentatively, and I hear the restrained sigh of his breathing. At first I am not sure what I ought to do, but gradually I ease towards him; I put my arms around his back and rest my head against his chest. His arms tighten around me. I feel the soft cotton of his shirt against my cheek, and I can smell his aftershave, warm and vaguely familiar, like the scent of expensive leather. His heart is thumping under my ear. I feel him dip his head and kiss my hair, and I close my eyes.

  We stand there like that for ages, as if neither of us can bear to move, for fear of breaking the moment. I feel the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, and the warmth of his mouth, still pressed against my hair. I open my eyes, and my eyelashes catch on his shirt; I close them again. Vaguely, in some distant part of my mind, I am thinking, What now? What next? But I cannot answer. I do not dare to answer.

  Eventually he says, ‘I want to show you something.’ And he moves just fractionally, and as he does so I drop my arms and pull away a little, aware suddenly that I had been clinging to him. He loosens his own hold more slowly, leaving his hands on my arms for a moment longer, as if reluctant to let me go. ‘Please,’ he says then. ‘Sit down. Make yourself at home. I won’t be a moment.’

  The room is open-plan. Apart from the door we came in by, there is only one other door, across the far side of the room. This is where Simon goes now, and for a few minutes I am alone. I wander into the centre of the room, all the while looking out of that window. You could look at that view forever. If you lived here, that’s what you would do; you’d spend your whole time looking out. For some reason I think of that claustrophobic and poky room at the back of Mrs Reiber’s house; I think of the contrast. And as I sit myself down on one of the two soft leather sofas, I think of myself sitting down on her cracked old sofa, and again I have that feeling that I am little more than an impostor, inching in on their lives.

  Just go, Mrs Reiber said. Who are you?

  I sit on Simon’s sofa, and I wait for him to reappear. I am facing the window, and I look at all those lights, hazy against the night sky. Between me and the window is a long, low table, on which are what I take to be work papers, roughly stacked, and the sports section of the weekend paper. I look around now; the wall on which there is neither window nor door is lined with asymmetrical shelves, most of which are piled with ring binders and box files and loose, dog-eared sheets of paper, untidily shoved in. The hi-fi is there too, and a pile of CDs, and there is a glass box-shaped photo holder, one of those ones that holds a picture on each of its sides and you can turn it over and turn it around; the picture facing the front at the moment is of a couple of small children playing outside somewhere: his children, I assume. For some reason I don’t want to see these photos, and anyway I don’t like those photo frames. They remind me of a toy Jono had when he was small, a sort of Rubik’s cube for toddlers with pictures of animals on, and you could twist it and move the picture around. Jono hated it because whenever he put it down, he was putting it down on some animal’s face. He couldn’t put it down without picking a loser. I wonder whose photo is on the underneath side of Simon’s picture box, and if, like
Jono, he can’t sleep unless he religiously turns it around each day.

  This is very much a man’s flat. I wonder how long he has lived here, if ‘lived’ is the word you would use, for a place you stay in half the week. More than half. He must spend most of his life here, but there is nothing like a home about it. I wonder how it feels for him to be here while his wife and children are somewhere else. I wonder if his wife visits when she is in town. I picture her, breezing in, dumping her shopping on the floor and collapsing down onto the very sofa on which I am sitting now. I imagine her, somewhat cold-hearted, somewhat aloof, preferring her horses to her children. Ghastly view, she might say, looking out as I am now across the skyscape of concrete and brick and steel, the Thames down below a dirty, inky streak. How do you stand it up here? Can’t wait to get back home. Pull the blinds, won’t you, darling? And fix me a drink?

  I have her voice, I have her eyes, I have everything about her inside my head.

  The door in the wall opens now and Simon comes back in, carrying something small and protected in his hands, much like you might carry a small animal, a bird maybe, something delicate and precious.

  ‘Sorry to be so long,’ he says, and I watch as he walks towards me. I watch the way he walks, the studied ease, the smooth movement of his body inside his well-cut, expensive clothes. I notice the way the hems of his trousers perfectly cover the laces on his hand-made shoes, even as he walks. Yet as he sits down beside me I immediately sense his tension again. ‘Look,’ he says, and very carefully, apprehensively almost, he opens one hand to reveal what he is holding in the other: a photograph. Three photographs; he gently spreads them, fan-like, to show me there are three, and then closes them back together. He holds them out now, so that I can see that first one.