I’m too flummoxed to do anything other than follow the sulking Leo into the art room.
Atalanta and Hippomenes stand on every surface. They lean against table legs and hang from window frames. They drape on chair backs and squat on the floor. There are golden figures everywhere: some recognisable only in comparison to the hundreds of others crowded round them, some almost perfect in their accuracy. Nearest me, and as fragile as gossamer, is a totem pole version of them. It is made of staggered cereal boxes sprayed, almost all over, with gold paint. The brand names shine through the metallic glaze but the set of the loo roll arms and wrapping-paper-tube legs couldn’t be anything other than the two skating figures.
The Greek lovers are clay, they are papier mâché. They wriggle in the sunshine as wire dancers hanging from mobiles, they are huge shapes cut from coloured plastic and pasted across the windows themselves.
Leo takes me to a painting, clipped onto an easel by a black bulldog clip. It has clouds of blowing grasses across the front of the scene and single yellow daisies dotted like jewels in the grass. The sky behind is dominated by a setting orange sun sending streaks of colour into the otherwise bright blue sky. In the middle is a white circle, the two figures sketched – holding hands and facing the viewer – ready to paint. It’s quite beautiful.
‘I can’t believe you got all this done today. It’s amazing.’
Leo’s stance improves slightly; he can’t resist telling me how proud he is of the painting.
It’s nothing to how proud I am of it.
‘It’s the view from my bedroom, isn’t it?’
‘It’s for your birthday,’ he says. ‘But you can’t really see it till then. I’ll have to finish it when you’re at home.’
I’m suddenly moved that the museum was the place I thought of in my panic, the place I would run to in order get Leo out of this horrible situation, out of danger. The museum is a place of safety and the gardens are the home of the beautiful sculptures that have inspired such creativity. I am on the same page as Araminta.
‘Poppy helped me.’ Leo points to the sketching in the middle. ‘I’m not good at people.’
‘Sometimes it’s about the ideas,’ says Poppy. ‘It’s the ideas that matter, the imagination.’ She’s probably not far off Leo’s age and I wonder if she’s Patch’s daughter.
‘I’m doing an Art Therapy degree,’ she tells me – as if she can read my mind. ‘And I have a placement here twice a week. It’s the best part of my course.’
‘The standard is amazing.’ I look around the room at the packed benches, the busy tables.
‘It’s the enthusiasm,’ Poppy says. ‘You can do anything if you’ve got that.’
I’m so glad Leo came here – despite his upset. I would never have thought this possible, this huge project that has obviously taken thousands of hours of other people’s time.
‘What you do here is extraordinary.’ I nod my head at Patch, try to backtrack a little on my anger.
‘Thanks.’ He smiles at me. ‘Now, we have to clear up the last bit of bad feeling, don’t we, Leo? You have to apologise to Martin.’
I steel myself for the meltdown; out of habit I look at Leo’s hands, waiting for the nervous tapping to start on his thighs. Nothing happens.
Instead he nods. ‘Is he in the coffee room?’
‘Yep,’ says Patch. ‘Go on through.’
Leo leaves the door open behind him and I step closer to the doorway so I can watch him.
Martin is tall and angular, and a little older than Leo. His arms hang from his shoulders like the cereal box sculpture and his trousers are too short for his long thin legs.
‘I’ve come to apologise.’ Leo holds his hand out. ‘I didn’t mean to hit you. It was wrong.’
‘You’re quite right it was wrong, especially as you’ve only just come here and I don’t know you and you don’t know me and you could have really hurt me. This is my favourite art club and you could have made me feel really insecure and vulnerable here and I wouldn’t like it and it would be your fault. All your fault.’ Martin speaks very rapidly and with a certain entitlement. I already get why Leo doesn’t like him – I don’t either.
Patch is watching from the doorway too. ‘When someone apologises in these circumstances, Martin, the correct thing to do is shake their hand and accept.’
‘I don’t see why I should – I’m still very upset and that might have lots of ongoing effects for me because I am very sensitive to any kind of upset like this. I might not be able to come back to group and that would mean that all my Thursdays have to be different because I can’t come here and that would not be good for my self-esteem or my balance.’ Martin takes a long breath, clearly anticipating another long speech, but Patch cuts him off.
‘You’ll be fine, as long as you let Leo apologise. Otherwise you might not be able to come back to group because your name will be in the incident book too. You are not entirely blameless here.’
Martin reluctantly shakes Leo’s hand: he doesn’t make eye contact while he does it but I don’t know if that’s deliberate. ‘Right, that’s it – forgotten. You don’t have to be friends, gentlemen, but if you want to carry on at Art Club, you have to be civilised adults. And that means no thumping people and . . .’ He looks from Leo to Martin. ‘No making things up about other people.’
‘Can I finish my painting now?’ Leo is subdued.
‘It’s home time anyway,’ says Patch, his voice deliberately buoyant to head off any protests. ‘Cate, I will need to get you to sign a couple of incident reports when Poppy and I have written them up. Could I bring them up with me when I’m next drawing in the gardens?’
I didn’t know he’d been doing that, but it makes sense. All these startling sculptures and pictures have come from somewhere. I try to focus on the wall behind him and see if that keeps the blood from rushing up my cheeks. ‘That’s fine. I mean, please do.’ I’m not certain if my burning cheeks are teenaged angst or a hot flush. I am stumbling over my words. ‘But we don’t have a doorbell. We live right up on the top floor. Can I give you my mobile number?’ It sounds awful, like some sort of come-on. ‘To let me know when you get there, I mean.’
And he nods and gets a pen as if it had never occurred to him that it could be anything else.
I want the ground to swallow me.
*
Leo is quiet in the car. I can’t get him to engage in conversation. In the end, I let him choose a track from his phone and play it as loud as it will go through the car stereo. It’s hideous making my way home to the thrashing Death Metal track, but it makes me smile that someone walking past might look up and see a middle-aged woman driving a very ordinary family car instead of the weed-smoking boy-racer they’d expected. Weed-smoking boy-racers make me think of Curtis. I wonder if I should send him a text via Leo’s phone to say sorry. Maybe all the bigger people today are the ones who know how to apologise.
Our evening is a subdued one. Leo doesn’t want to cook and, after we’ve eaten, stays in his room for most of the time. I can judge most of his feelings by the tracks that he’s playing – there is no chance I can miss them at this volume but I haven’t the heart to ask him to turn it down.
I try and email a few old friends but I don’t know what to tell them. That my nineteen-year-old son is caught in his first love triangle? That I have a crush on a total stranger that would make a nun blush? It is sheer fantasy and I’ve been ridiculous to let it go this far.
I don’t deserve to be happy. I’ve had two chances at love: been in love – I think – with two people. Each time, something has crept in from left field and stolen it away. Why would I think this Patch would be any different?
*
Simon stayed with Richard and me for a year. We moved into the rented flat that became home. It was hard and sad but it was a roof over our heads, safety. As Richard became more and more distant, Simon moved in closer, propping me up when I felt I really couldn’t carry on.
It
was lonely, watching the man I loved fade and grow hazy, muted inside a facsimile of his physical self – a self that grew ever thinner and more angular.
Richard spent more and more time inside his own head: physically with us but with thoughts that were far away, the light in his eyes dialled down to almost nothing. We nursed him, took him out for walks, talked to him. We helped him with his medication, explained to him – at great length – why he had to take it on those darker days when he would have rather given up.
If we had got him safely to bed, Simon and I would sit together – mostly in silence – exhausted by another day’s worry, another day’s fear. When we did speak, it was in low voices, discussing Richard’s treatment, Leo’s school days. Occasionally, we would reminisce about what things had been, the good times, hoping with every heartbeat that we would all have that again.
I leant on Simon heavily in those days, and him me. And it was probably inevitable that our feelings would get clouded, that the edges of our friendship would blur into something else. From this distance, and in an attempt to forgive myself, I see the innocence in it, the way we confused closeness with comfort – but that changes nothing.
One night, after a particularly difficult day where Richard had not wanted to be near Leo but couldn’t verbalise his feelings or find any logic for them, Simon and I sat close together in the sitting room, perched on the very edge of the sofa, knowing either or both of us could be called upstairs at any moment. Simon leant forward, his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees: I wasn’t sure whether he was crying or not. It didn’t matter. There were no words that could cover what we were feeling: the freefall of dread we were living with. I put my head against his, my chin resting on his shoulder.
The lights were out, both of us simply too exhausted to get up and switch on the tasteful standard lamps in each corner of the room. The light came in like a wedge from the hallway and sucked the colour from us.
Simon turned, his face close to mine, I could feel the human warmth of him. There was a silent moment that stretched between us, expanding and contracting with the power of a black hole. It dwarfed us. Our breath mingled and our bodies stayed as still as statues. The silence was huge between us.
And then we kissed. I kissed Simon. Simon kissed me. We betrayed Richard at his – our – very darkest hour. We gave in to the fears that haunted him at night, let the terror that stalked our hallways become flesh: we kissed like people about to die. The taste of him was like the taste of life, sparks jumped inside my hollow drained heart. I felt the warmth of his face under my palms, the strength of his firm body as I slid my hands down over his shoulders.
And then, slowly, I opened my eyes.
Richard stood silhouetted in the doorway, his hair wild and his clothes limp on his emaciated frame, the light coming through him from behind like a ghost.
Simon left the next day and, within a week, Richard was dead. We killed my husband, Simon and I, as surely as if we had put a bullet through his chest.
Chapter Thirteen
Leo is wearing his ‘party’ glasses. They have square black frames made of plastic, and the bits over his nose and behind his ears are shiny silver. They have the name of the designer down each arm, running from his eyebrows to his ears, and that’s why he bought them: no matter that they are ridiculous. I insisted that the other pair of the ‘buy one get one free’ deal be more suitable for everyday wear but those are now held together with a piece of blue sticking plaster.
‘Those will get broken if you wear them all the time,’ I say to him – motherspeak for ‘I cannot abide your taste or fashion.’
‘I can’t wear the other ones. Martin broke them.’
I’m not getting into a discussion about blame right now – it’s too early – though I’m well aware that’s a coward’s way out.
The opticians can fit Leo in at lunchtime: it’s a good way to get him into town to help me put up posters for the weekend. I am being proactive: I am setting up next Saturday as a ‘relaunch’ of the museum and gardens. My logic is that if people have never been, they won’t complain about the lack of change. Araminta has grudgingly agreed to go along with the – what could be called – deception.
Leo and I are walking along the outside of the sweeping wall that lines the gardens. The wall is old and the bricks slightly crumbled in places but it’s still a magnificent thing. Leo trails his fingers along it.
‘You’ll get a splinter,’ I warn him. ‘Or whatever the brick equivalent is.’
He doesn’t look round at me. ‘I don’t like Martin.’
I’m surprised that he’s opened the dialogue but I don’t let that show. ‘But you still want to do Art Club?’
‘Yes. All my friends are there. And I left my picture.’ He turns slightly towards me, keeping his fingers on the wall as we walk. ‘It’s not finished.’
‘No, I remember. It’s very good though. Did Poppy help you with it?’
‘No.’ He flakes a shard of red brick off the wall, turns it round and round in his fingers, concentrating hard. He is terrible at making eye contact when he’s lying.
‘And Martin. What about next time you see him?’
‘Sophie isn’t his girlfriend.’
‘So you said. What does Sophie say about it?’
He breaks the little red shard in half and drops the two fragments on the pavement in lieu of answering. He walks with his chin held exaggeratedly high, facing forward and willing me to go away.
‘She must have said something.’
Leo starts to hum. He pats his thigh with one palm in rhythm to his – barely recognisable – tune. ‘I’m singing,’ he says in a pause between lines. ‘I can’t talk about this at the moment.’
We have left the long wall now and are walking down the main road towards the town. In the distance, the silver sea glitters: more romantic at this distance than the brownish grey it will be, close to. On the verges of the road, the grass is short and yellowed by this long hot summer; patches of dusty brown show through, here and there, where footsteps have scuffed up the turf.
‘Shall we have a look in the charity shops after the opticians?’ I need more tools in my arsenal if I’m to get anywhere with Leo. He is firmly locked down on the subject of Martin: prising anything out of him will require bribery and corruption. Looking in charity shops for clothes and records is one of his favourite things.
Leo points to his mouth and sings louder. He raises his eyebrows slightly to show me that interrupting his singing is rude, and his ridiculous glasses wobble up and down on his nose.
‘And I wondered if you might like to invite Curtis to supper. You could cook for him.’ I had, genuinely, wondered this – in fact, I thought about it quite a lot during a long worried night with little sleep. Curtis may not be the ally I would choose but he seems to be genuinely fond of Leo and he was there when Leo needed him which, unfortunately, is more than can be said for me.
We send the text in the optician’s waiting room and Curtis’s reply comes back almost instantly. ‘Okay. What do you want me to bring?’
I’m still marvelling at this unexpected dinner party etiquette when Leo tells me to help him text back.
‘Red Warning 4 and Tank Tour Commando.’
*
Leo is doing baked potatoes and chilli, one of his favourites and a dish that he needs no help with. I’ve said they can eat in the sitting room – their plates on the coffee table and Red Warning 4 at full volume on the games console.
I’m debating trying to get more out of him – anything out of him – about the Martin debacle when my phone pings a text. It’s Patch.
Am combining my evening walk with bringing the accident form up to you. Is now a good time? Patch Samson
I look around the chaos of the kitchen. My son is opening a second can of kidney beans, tongue between his teeth for concentration. His friend with the criminal record and the neck tattoos will be here to eat with us any second.
There is a crash as L
eo’s elbow shoots out and knocks a jug from the side. The jug breaks into four neat pieces, opening like a flower to show me its smooth white interior. I don’t have to touch it to see the delicacy of the porcelain, the faint translucent blue of its broken edges. I can see a number written on the upturned base. It is – was – significant enough to have its own identity in the firing.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ says Leo and pours the beans into a colander to drain: sludgy purple water splashes onto the shards of china on the floor.
‘Now’s great,’ I text back. And then I add, because I realise it’s the truth: ‘It’s as good a time as any.’
*
‘I brought wine.’ Patch holds out the wine bottle and smiles. ‘It seemed like a good idea.’
He is wearing shorts, and a faded blue linen jacket over a band T-shirt. He has a light paisley scarf wrapped, just once, round his neck: one end of it falls forward over his lapel. On anyone else, this outfit would look ridiculous. On Patch, with his dirty blond hair and tan suede desert boots, it looks like effortless charm. His eyes are bluer than I remember.
‘It’s such a good idea.’ I smile at him and my stomach flips.
I lead the way through to the kitchen. Leo is serving up his masterpiece, grating cheese over the heaped plates. Curtis leans with his back against the enamel work surface, his hood pushed down and the blue bloom around his neck more visible. I think it’s a word but the edges are blurred and his chin, as usual, is folded down towards his chest so I can’t make out what it says.
‘You met Curtis, Patch.’
‘How’s it going?’ Curtis speaks more loudly than I’ve heard him before. Patch leans forward to shake hands with both young men. Leo has to wipe his hands down his apron before he can take the large hand that Patch offers.
‘We’re taking these upstairs. I already took the drinks up.’ Leo fusses around the plates, wiping the edges clean with a tea towel while the floor and walls where he’s cooked are coated with a fine film of spattered orange fat. He and Curtis organise cutlery, salt and pepper, and – with the careless disregard for mess that only a teenaged boy can muster – they are gone.
Where We Belong Page 13
