by Louise Dean
‘Well. Is he even ill? Is Ken dying?’ Marina asks him sharply.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know. Could be. It makes sense of a lot of stuff.’ Dave turns round and presents his back to them, both hands on his head. They see his back rise and fall. When he turns back, he’s thin-lipped. ‘All right, Matt. All right, son. Leave it with me.’
We’re too soft on that boy, he thinks as he goes off to the shower. But he doesn’t know what to do about it. What Matt’s done, it’s just the kind of thing his brother would do, all high ideals and no common sense.
Over lunch, he snuck a look at his son and when his son snuck a look back, Dave gave him a wan smile of recognition and of love.
Dave couldn’t bear to have bad feeling in the air. It hurt him to punish his kids. It ate him up.
He offered Matt his crackling. He winked at Emily and told
Marina she looked nice.
‘That a new top, love?’
‘No, it’s old as the hills.’
‘So, Matt mate, maybe we could get tickets to go and see your, um, Chemical Romance people,’ he said, catching the drop off the spout of the gravy jug and making sure Marina saw him do it. ‘Just in time. Don’t wanna spoil the cloth.’
The best thing about Dave, as they all knew, was that he had not much in the way of pride. He didn’t want to be alone and he never would be.
Chapter 42
‘Why is she crying?’
On the Friday night, Laura cried from eight thirty to nine thirty. She couldn’t explain it, she said, she didn’t know why.
‘It’s just all so sad.’
The girl sat on her legs on the sofa in her yellow fluffy dressing gown; she looked like a canary with ruffled feathers.
Nick was standing by with eyebrows to attention. He took Astrid aside when she went to make tea. ‘Is it the, um, the er, time of the month?’
Astrid gave him a scathing look.
Ah, but it smelt like a good home! They’d had Mrs Watson’s cracked pepper sausages and mash for supper with onion gravy. He’d stopped in at the butcher’s on the way home: E. F. Watson and Sons. It was like going back in time, when you were your trade, when your living was your family’s and your family was your living. One went in through the stable door, lifting the latch and teasing apart the steel strings, and entered into 1935 – a clean humble place where everybody was addressed by their surname. Mrs Watson sat in there at the desk, feet splayed, hip on the mend, cushion in the small of her back, back to the window, preferring for a view the sight of her boys at work. Her vision of happiness was seeing fifty-year-old boys with meat cleavers hammering offal on wooden blocks, and each one coming with a smile to the counter, proud of the cut, and then the joke-fighting and shoving for a turn at the scales. And just behind them was the cold room with the biggest handle in the world, and beyond that was the back door, invariably open on to an English garden where Mr Watson’s ghost tended to the marigold borders.
‘Three pounds seventy-three, please, Mrs Watson!’ called out one son. And Nick left a few pence for the Lifeboats box and earned Mrs Watson’s warm approval.
He daydreamed on the way home, about him and Astrid having a butcher’s shop together. But things were not happy when he got in. If boys gained something at puberty, then it seemed that girls lost something. Laura was gloomy and distant. She went off after supper and Astrid went after her. They were like the hands on a clock, he thought, one always after the other. Sometimes he was jealous when he saw how they clove to each other, on the sofa or in bed. They could lie quietly, thought in thought; they wore each other at times.
He felt lonely. Roy was determined to sleep; even the rapport of the cracked pepper and pig fat, sent up from Nick’s stomach and out via the bellows of his cheeks, failed to stir the dog, who was head in paws, frowning.
Astrid wasn’t reaching Laura that evening.
‘You’re a hard person,’ she accused her mother. ‘You were hard on my dad. I know you were!’ And when Astrid disputed it, Laura said in the most piteous voice, ‘See! You’re cross with me now!’
The noise of this conflict caused Roy to prick up his ears. Nick slurped his wine shamefacedly and the dog went for a second fly-by licking of his bowl.
Glass empty, bowl clean, the man and dog exchanged looks, regretful of their consolations with all this noise and pain.
‘I’m not bloody cross, Laura!’
The dog panted with hopeful idiocy. In mimicry, Nick put his own tongue out. The dog put his tongue away and stood back as if in review of his opinion of the man.
Nick topped up his glass.
Astrid came downstairs, her face thunderous. She went straight to the computer. Ten minutes later, she had all she needed and by way of evidence showed Nick the email Danny had sent Laura. He put his reading glasses on slowly since his wine glass was balancing on his tummy.
‘Oh, don’t bother then,’ she said.
‘Now, just a minute, Astrid, now don’t get pissy with me . . .’ She ripped the page away from him.
The dog shrank back in retreat and Nick heard the conservatory door shutting softly in his wake.
‘Astrid. Let me read it, please, and calm down.’
She sat, perching again, biting her fingernails while he reviewed it. When he paused to take another sip of his wine, she bristled and was about to remove the paper from him again until he stopped her.
‘Well,’ he said, in conclusion, setting it aside.
‘That’s it! She’s not going to him any more!’
‘Astrid.’
‘Did you read it?’
‘Yes. I must say that in circumstances where . . .’
‘Oh, Nick! Don’t give me the solicitor bollocks, just be bloody
Ken, will you?’
He twitched his nose, took another sip, put the wine glass down, took a moment before swallowing. ‘Well,’ he said, in a different way, allowing time for ill will to develop, as Ken might, ‘he’s an arsehole, isn’t he?’
‘Thank you! What are we going to do about it all?’
‘I’m going to go and see him.’
‘What are you going to say?’
‘I’ll tell him to lay off all of this.’ He read out the offending sentences. ‘“The doctor says that I’m very ill, Laura. This is just between us, and don’t tell Mummy as she won’t understand. She’s a very hard person. It means the world to me to see you, Laura. Life is pretty empty without you. Remember our song, I teach it to all the birds that pass my window . . .”’ He changed voice here. ‘Talk about overegging the pudding! How did you get tangled up with this joker anyway? “Tell Laura I love her . . .”’ he warbled with great pathos.
‘Don’t! She’ll hear you. I don’t want her to know about this. She’s supposed to have a “private correspondence”, as she puts it.’ Astrid was vibrating with anger. Such passion, so close to the surface; she and Danny were now both in love with the same person, he thought. They’d gone from lovers to competitors.
‘Maybe she’s too young for anything private, Bunny,’ he said, folding his glasses. ‘She’s not as grown-up as you think. This is a big burden to carry. I mean, for God’s sake let the kid have a life . . . “Tell Laura I nee-eed her.” He’s making some sort of girlfriend out of her, isn’t he? If only people would not make lovers out of their kids. Dear me. Or if they love them, can’t they do it a bit quietly, a bit privately, and keep it under their hats, so to speak? That’s how it used to be. A bit more indifference would go a long way.’
There came from upstairs an elongated sob.
‘I’ll go,’ he said.
‘Don’t say anything!’ she hissed.
Nick got up and went out of the room and, passing by him, gave the dog a look, raising his eyebrows at him. The dog returned a bloodshot look as it put its nose up its tail. ‘Coward,’ said Nick.
He went upstairs to find Laura poring over a picture book of fairy tales her father had given her, wiping the tears from her chin with the ba
ck of her nightie sleeve.
‘It’s a sad story, this one, Nick, isn’t it? “The Little Match Girl”.’
‘Yes, baby, but why do you keep reading it then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Does it help in some way?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see. Does it help you feel sad, and you want to feel sad – or you feel you ought to?’ He was a little pie-eyed for this stuff, admittedly, but catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he thought he looked rather good.
‘Yes.’
‘Hmmm.’ He forgot where he was going, thrown off course by the effects of the third glass of wine and catching sight of the photo-booth pictures of Laura’s mother and father canoodling and, in the last one, Astrid with her tongue out.
Laura followed his eyes. ‘Sorry, Nick,’ she said.
‘Oh no, no,’ he said in his solicitor’s voice, ‘don’t be. Don’t be.’ She put a small hand on his. ‘You’re always a bit left out, aren’t you?’
‘Now don’t start worrying about me! I’m a big boy!’ He sat tall, wobbling. ‘Look, baby, if you’re feeling sad about your daddy . . .’
‘I am!’ she said with vehemence, pressing his hand.
‘Then why don’t I take you to see him tomorrow?’
‘It’s not his weekend!’
‘It doesn’t matter, this once. Mummy won’t mind.’
‘She’ll be angry.’
‘No, she won’t. Look, you sleep tight, sweetie-pie, and I’ll arrange it all and drive you up there tomorrow morning.’
‘OK then.’
She slipped down into her covers and gave him a grateful look. He put the covers close around her chin.
‘All right, petal. Now sleep tight. And by the way, that match girl thing, it’s just a story some twisted horrible stepfather invented to make his stepdaughter be a good girl.’
‘Oh,’ she said, and gave him a look that was right out of her mother’s collection. ‘Night, Nick. Don’t get too drunk.’
Chapter 43
Closeted in the bathroom before bed, he found himself talking to the mirror, just to speak with another man, ‘It really is like two steps forward three steps back, this whole business, of relationships.’
‘These women are ’ard work, mate,’ he heard his father say.
‘And can’t they talk!’
When he looked in the mirror, in the keen light, he stood a moment, looking at the nose they shared, he and his father.
And then he remembered a very strange thing, how one Christmas Eve, just before the old man left home, Ken had insisted on walking over the fields, in the dark, over to the church for midnight mass. They’d never done it before, they’d never do it again. Dave hadn’t gone, nor had his mum, it was just the two of them. Coming home afterwards, in the near pitch-darkness of the lanes, they’d trudged over the field and at the high point, underneath the moon and stars, his father had faced him and said that he had to tell him something. He had to tell him that there was no such thing as death, that his own father had come back to him to tell him so, and that one day he’d be with his old dad again, just as Nick would be with him.
‘And your mum,’ he’d put in for the sake of fairness. ‘You’ll be starting out on your own life soon, son, and I want you to know this because it’s something that means a lot to me. He came to me to tell me it one night. It weren’t a dream. It was him, I promise you. I’m not daft. I know he was there because I could smell him . . .’
He could remember standing there, listening with baited breath, excited by the apprehension that this was something important, vital, memorable and secret.
And he did believe him, for a child will trust his parent long after he pretends not to.
‘He smelt good. I could smell the way his jacket smelt from the boozer and from the rain, tweed it was. Right in my nose it was. There ain’t no death, son. That’s what he said to me and now I’m telling it to you. I’m handing it on. He was there beside me like I’m standing ’ere with you now. Now you remember that. You remember what your dad told you one Christmas Day.’
* * *
Ken called just as they were dropping off to sleep.
‘How am I to get to Pearl’s Sund’y? Dave ain’t got the space in ’is car.’
‘Yes, he does.’
‘Oooh?’
‘Dave. Dave does.’
‘Dave? I’ll be dead before I get there if I have to go with ’im. Naargh.’
‘You’ll be OK.’
‘Oooh?’
‘YOU’LL BE OK.’
‘Yes. That’s right. You’ll have to fetch me, son. See you at nine sharp.’
‘What? Look, that’s too early. We don’t have to be there until lunchtime.’
‘Listen, son, I feel a bit down, to tell you the truth. I think I’ll check into an ’otel for the night tomorrow. Can’t bear it ’ere. I’m rattlin’ around in ’ere like old bones. Nothing on the telly. It’s giving me the willies. Anything to have a bit of youman comp’ny.’
Astrid opened an eye and murmured, ‘Let him come and stay with us for Saturday night. I’ll go and get him tomorrow when you take Laura to London.’
Nick put his hand over the receiver and looked at her. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Why not?’
After he hung up, he said, ‘Shit.’
‘What?’
‘We’ve got dinner with your parents tomorrow night.’
‘He’ll have to come too.’
‘That will be bad.’
‘They have to meet at some point.’
‘Why?’
She sighed.
* * *
Getting up first thing, Nick watched the sunrise, from his throne. The firmament was swollen, it was black and blue like a great bruise. The dark was in retreat and on the rim of the hill there was a rim of gold, the promise of a fair day. The noise from down below the window and across the valley was a hubbub of birds, some in tune, some tuning up, the noise one hears in a theatre before the curtains open: a buzz and mutter, some discordant notes, a few bars of real harmony emerging, the hum of anticipation.
A pale saintly Laura was up and at the cereal at first light. He and Laura were both washed, dressed and breakfasted by nine, and earnest and scrubbed when they went up the garden path to the car. Astrid watched them duck in and out of the elderflower trees, then she heard the engine start and the gravel snap. And when next she looked, the parking space was bare and the elderflower was nodding and reaching to shake hands with the cow parsley, bobbing in the car’s wake.
Inside, with Roy sitting on her feet, Astrid called Danny to tell him Laura would be with him at midday. Evidently she woke him. He sounded put out. He said he had plans and would have to cancel them. Tersely, she told him that Laura was worried about him.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Do you?’
‘No-o . . .’ he said, but he let the ‘o’ sound too long.
‘Well, she’s on her way to see that you’re still in one piece. It’s a lot for a little girl to handle, this kind of worry.’
As Nick observed, once parted, parents were locked in combat to claim their children’s hearts. There was a silly notion knocking about that love was like a bar of soap – not so good shared. Short of anything else, they resorted to cant about ‘values’. With parents together ‘values’ were unnecessary; no child ever knew they had any, until his parents divorced, then he must have them coming at him from every quarter, day and night.
‘No one ever wants a step-parent,’ Nick said to Laura as they came into Dulwich. ‘And that’s something that a step-parent just has to accept. But I hope you can think of me as a good friend, Laura.’
She shrugged and sucked noisily on the stripy straw to evacuate the remaining vanilla from the two-pint milkshake cup, then she rummaged through the fries to find the little cartoon character that groaned when you pressed its stomach and said in an American accent: ‘Oh, boy, I got gas.’ She pressed it once
or twice and nibbled the batter off a cold chicken nugget.
Divorces were OK. Everyone knew there was an upside. It was called shopping. Step-parents were OK. Everyone knew there was an upside. It was called McDonald’s.
Chapter 44
Ken would not go in the house, no matter how she entreated him. The best she could do was take him out a chair from the kitchen. He sat outside, training his eyes on the movements of a robin redbreast while ruffling Roy’s head. In the distance, a muffled gunshot went off every fifteen minutes in the cherry orchard to scare the birds off the new fruit. Ken jumped every time, but that was the only movement he appeared to make. Astrid brought him out a cup of tea. Her small talk in the car had amounted to nothing; it had been a one-way exercise, more to reassure herself than him.
When she gave him the cup of tea, a meek smile came to his face as if seeing her for the first time.
Nick called her from his mobile later in the afternoon. He’d dropped Laura off and been introduced to a scrawny woman, keen to demonstrate her intimate knowledge of the place and her rights to it by asking him in and making the coffee in her nightie. Laura had rolled her sleeves up and gone to clear the sink, and Danny had stood, gauche as a boy, allowing Nick to talk traffic and miles per gallon and the congestion charge and agreeing with almost anything he said. He asked what time he should pick Laura up and Danny had looked so open to suggestion as to imply now would be a good time. And when Laura, mid-ashtray-emptying, had looked round at her father and said, ‘Aren’t I staying the night?’ the woman had reminded Danny they were going to a party, and when Laura had said, ‘Cool,’ Danny decided to be the grown-up and tell her it wasn’t the sort of thing a little girl could go to.
Nick took a stroll through the park and returned for Laura after an hour, finding her more than ready to go.
On the way home, she commented on her father liking really skinny women. ‘Like boys, I mean,’ she chattered on candidly.
