by Jon Bauer
‘You’ve got some very diverse portraits up here, not all family are they?’ Senior what’s-his-face says.
‘Ha, yes. Does look funny, doesn’t it. Been rearranging them today, actually. Something to do, you know, while …’ I gesture at Mum then put my most stoic face on. ‘Mum and Dad were foster carers for years. We’ve lost count of the boys, haven’t we, Mum. Saving the world. Those are of the foster boys. And girls. Girls too. Plus their families, now they’re grown up. Quite a dynasty. Marcus there, and Patricia look, that one. Patricia. You remember Patricia, Mum.’
She turns to the officers, shaking her head, stuttering unintelligible things. The bandage unravelling further behind her. My knee keeping up its hammering, the police giving one another a look.
I step to the constable, mainly to stop my leg shaking. ‘Perhaps we should go outside, that would be better, wouldn’t it,’ the words coming out of me in that constricted rollercoaster voice — the G-force of anxiety.
I don’t wait for a yes, I just move through the room a little and Williamson has her hands on Mum’s upper arms, restraining her in a way, comforting her in another. The senior constable glances at Williamson and they pass one of those secret, partner looks.
‘That might be better,’ he says.
Williamson goes to release Mum but she drags her over to one of the portraits on the other wall, three children in it, the eldest holding a baby like it’s too heavy. My mum pointing at it, then looking at Williamson for the answer.
‘What is it, love?’ she says in her patronising, policewoman voice.
‘Just go outside, officers. Please. I’ll be right behind you. Poor thing is so confused, aren’t ya, Mum.’ And I’ve got hold of her while she’s hitting at me, trying to get away. I keep gripping on while the police leave, trying to keep my teeth from biting down on my lip in that angry shape.
The front door clicks and I march her out through the kitchen and into the back garden.
‘Listen!’ I’m facing her, an arm holding each shoulder, my lip in that shape but her eyes roll right up into her head and everything stops, her whole body, a puddle of bubbly saliva sitting in the bottom of her open mouth, her eyes just the whites.
‘Mum!’
She starts to vibrate, her teeth locking together but catching a snippet of her lips. High voltage passing through her body.
Then just as suddenly her eyes come down and she draws in this long, hurricane inhalation.
‘What the hell was that! Jeez, Mum, you scared me.’ And I’m wondering what new part of her the cancer just forced its way into, kicking in another door. Looting who she is. Her eyes all unfocused, then settling and she’s with me, her mouth still flooded with saliva.
‘You ok? Look, stay out here, just for a sec. Sit down actually.’ I fold her onto the grass. ‘Look at the clouds or something. You’re confused again today. You know you’re not well, don’t you?’
She nods, slumped on the grass with her arms wrapped round her.
‘It’ll all come back, Mum. You’ll recognise those faces again tomorrow, I promise.’ If I’m not in prison.
Her face brightens at that, searching me for confirmation. I nod gravely, looking her in the eye.
I kneel down then and take her hand, around the medication box she’s still clinging to, my thumb stroking the skin, loving her hand — her grip cool and far away but wrapped inside mine. Both of us squinting out here in the fresh brightness of the outdoors, the plum tree all forlorn at the end of the lawn. I wrap my arms around her but she doesn’t really respond, her body stiff, arms by her side. I imagine her eyes open and staring and bored over my shoulder. Mine are tightly shut though, her smell reminding me of hot baths and tea. Of Robert. And Dad. Dad especially, the loss of him coming at me now like a locomotive ache. Mum not hugging me back.
I leave her marooned in the garden brightness, barefoot and unravelled on the grass I’m always meaning to mow. It seems to take her over. I head indoors, steadying myself a moment, holding on to the kitchen surface with all the cut marks on it from where people haven’t used a chopping board, just making a quick cut of something, a hunk of cheese to tide you over before dinner.
I tease a picture of Robert up out of the Krispies on the floor and it’s him in a hospital bed a few years after the accident but it reminds me of that actual day, his real parents coming down the hospital corridor, their faces taut.
I could tell at age eight they belonged to Robert. The look of the mum, the look on their faces, as if they didn’t fit into the everyday arena of society — even a hospital. They belonged on the fringes, shadow people living on the periphery. Apology written on their faces underneath the bitterness. The sweet smell of alcohol on them.
I stayed out in the disinfected hospital corridor, swallowed-up and tiny in a chair while they shuffled into intensive care. That quiet pause before the hysteria, the sound of breaking glass and shouting. Me holding my breath in the corridor and only eight and knowing that I was bad, bad, bad. Feeling like I was a stick of rock and what’d happened was written right through the middle of me. That red writing. It’s still there, written up the centre of me.
I look at the pictures of strangers hanging on our lounge wall, wanting to go and take them down and throw them over the fence but the policewoman is at the window again. I smile at her, head into the hall, stop to wipe my face then traipse out to them, my eyes struggling to readjust to the front-garden light.
‘This is obviously a difficult time,’ he’s saying and she’s smiling a little, trying to show they come in peace. ‘My mum went through a similar illness,’ he says. ‘But you understand we have to do our job and, so if you can just tell me —’
‘The pictures.’
His eyebrows go up.
‘Sorry.’ I shake my head, reddening. Idiot! Robert on the concrete behind me, one of his legs bent awkwardly underneath him. The sound of the hedge-trimmer. ‘From the speed camera,’ I say, as if it’s obvious what I meant, my hand reaching for Patricia’s phone number in my pocket. ‘I’ve got a speeding habit.’
They look at one another again. ‘We’re here about reports of a vehicle licensed to this address, registration number …’ he’s reading it out and I’m glad the Volvo is in the garage, missing window and dented door and all. ‘That would be your mother’s vehicle, sir?’
I nod.
‘And has it been out of your possession at any stage in the last twenty-four hours, borrowed maybe?’
‘No. What’s happened?’
‘I assume your mother is no longer driving.’
I give him a look.
‘If you’d just tell us what happened yesterday,’ Williamson says, saving me from Mr Agatha Christie here.
‘Yesterday?’ I say, and my hand can’t help but run itself shakily through my hair, Robert’s blood up the sides of the officer’s black, comfortable shoes. My knee hammering. ‘Well, I took my mother to the beauty place and then —’
‘Which beauty place would that be, please?’ He has his pad and pen. I tell him and he makes a note, then lets the hand with the pad drop. ‘I’m guessing you know what this is about. We’ve received allegations of someone meeting your description assaulting another driver. We have the gentleman’s statement and that of witnesses. Were you involved in an argument outside the beauty parlour?’
Williamson is walking over to inspect the garage, looking in through the window. She’s wearing tights under that skirt.
‘I regret it, officer, I really do. I was waiting for my mother and …’ I sigh. ‘She was crossing the road all dolled up and happy. It was lovely to see.’ I take out my cigarettes but I’m regretting showing him how unsteady I am. I smile again, Williamson coming back from her inspection even though they probably did that before they came in. I know their tricks. Six weeks’ training and they think they’re something.
I turn back to the senior constable and the little scab of blood on his chin, thin as a snowflake where he cut himself shaving. He’
s got one of those chins with a bum line running down it.
‘Mum was crossing the road and that guy came along in his car and, my mother really doesn’t have long and I’m looking after her on my own, a nurse comes to check up on her once a week is all and she didn’t even turn up this week. That guy in his flashy car can’t wait a few seconds for Mum to limp across the road.’ I take a drag and blow it straight out then look at the cigarette, the taste making me judder. ‘She’s not as quick as she used to be. This guy hoots at her. Not a toot, a blast. His bonnet almost up against her. She falls over because of it. I think he hit her. Not hard.’ They give each other a look. ‘She could have broken something, or run out into the main road. He could’ve seen from looking at her she was ill. You can tell, can’t you?’ Another drag, nods all round. ‘I’m not proud of myself but I saw red, I really did. He’s not hurt, is he?’
‘He is actually. Pretty scratched up and bruised. Shaken. His key was broken off in the ignition.’
‘Is that right?’ I drop my cigarette and hide my face in stubbing it out.
‘That is right. Plus there’s the car he reversed into to consider. The damage to the driver’s own car. The expenses mount up. Why did you leave the scene when there’d been an accident?’
‘Why did I leave the scene?’ Thinking time, thinking time. ‘I’m not duty-bound to remain at an accident I wasn’t a driver in, am I? Plus I suppose I wanted to get Mum home. She was very upset by the man and —’
‘And by your actions, I would imagine?’ the policewoman says.
‘I expect she was, yes. I was upset too, as it happens. Didn’t sleep a wink last night. What can I say. He frightened a dying lady. Driving without due care and attention. Stop sign. She was crossing the road. I’m happy to apologise to the driver. I regret it totally.’
‘It’s not really about apologies, it’s about assault.’
There’s Robert, fitting on the ground. There he is with the sky in his eyes.
The policeman-man looks at Williamson again and she says, ‘The driver hasn’t pressed charges at this stage. He’s aware of your mum’s poor health. It’s up to us.’
Yesss!
I nod at her, really look at her for a moment, then down at my feet.
‘We can still press charges though, even if the driver doesn’t,’ the constable says.
I’m feeling better by the second. Exponentially. Relief is probably the best of all emotions. That’s all happiness is anyway, isn’t it? Relief from sadness.
‘I see.’
Now the police-people are waiting to see how that affects me when it sinks in. I try to hold on to my look of regret, hide my delight. They want to watch me realise they have power. But they’re just public servants. And yet most of them spend their whole careers trying to believe otherwise. That’s why they hate witnessing official documents; why they hate the beat; why they hate people asking for directions, picture opportunities. But they are just public servants. I should get them to mow the lawn.
‘I understand,’ I say, looking down like I’m nine years old and in the headmaster’s office of whichever school I was in at that time. I went to a lot of different schools after Robert’s accident. We went to church a lot too after Robert, Mum and me. Dad didn’t do much after Robert, except wallow and eat. Digging his grave with his teeth.
‘But considering the circumstances, we’re not going to do that this time,’ he says, hungry for my gratitude. ‘I’ve decided to caution you.’ And his voice and posture change as if with the weight of upholding the law. He goes into that formal spiel in which he cautions me and points out all the small print and how if there’s another offence this one can be brought into consideration along with the new one.
He gets through it then says, ‘Do you understand?’
‘I do. Thank you. You’ve been more than fair.’
He nods, satisfied, goes to his car and Williamson paces away a little, turning up her radio again and cocking an ear into it, eyeing me occasionally. I give her my best grin.
Senior bum-face comes back with a pad from which he tears a printed piece of paper and it’s the caution speech he gave me and numbers to call for advice and to appeal, and headings like What if I think I have been treated unfairly?
I take it but I’m not quite here anymore because I’m just relieved, and all I want to do is eat and smoke and — all the things you do when you’ve been scared. I’ll ring Patricia soon as I get a second.
‘There’s a chance the driver will press civil charges to get his money back.’ And he shrugs. ‘But on a personal note, I do wish you all the best for you and your mother.’ He looks me in the eye when he says it and it’s the first time his face has really lost its police-officer mask. Williamson is softening too. Suddenly they’re people rather than police-people, as if a formal ceremony has just happened and now we can all relax.
They say their goodbyes and make their way past the hedges.
‘These are getting big ideas, aren’t they,’ he says, pointing to them. Doing his ‘and finally’ bit like it’s the end of the nightly news.
‘Yes,’ I say, my hands ready to gesture to Williamson as soon as her partner isn’t looking. ‘You want to cut them for me, officer?’
He smiles and turns to unlock the car, Williamson’s head looking at me over the roof. I make the phone sign at my ear then the writing sign, my eyebrows up, questioning. A grin spreads over my face but she’s confused for a moment, then the penny drops and she looks round at her colleague who’s getting in the car, oblivious.
It’d be pretty big to get the phone number of an on-duty officer — bed her while she’s still in uniform.
I’ve had so many of these moments, waiting for the stamp of approval, but in my mind she’s already half out of her uniform, her back arched. I want to kiss the long arm of the law.
He’s in the car and she’s slowly opening her door, those black letters on the roof of the car, for helicopters I guess. Or so birds know which cars to crap on.
She shakes her head at me, but I think she wants to, which is probably enough – her radio talking and she cocks her head at it, then she’s in the car too, her colleague glancing at me, this strange look on his cut, bum face.
They leave me here between the hedges, my hand coming up to wave as the powerful engine takes hold.
Then that silence after they’ve gone, a breeze rustling the garden. A little more emptiness waking up in my insides. I look up at the sky, our patch of sky, the clouds looking like fancy French loaves.
I walk in and shut the door, my eyes cauterised of colour after the glare, the house dim and stagnant — dank with heaviness. I look at those photos of strangers, Alfie on the table licking up the milk, her cancerous nose making greedy pig sounds.
I take out Patricia’s number and flatten it on the little table by the phone, wipe my hands on my trousers and pick up the receiver. I dial, my heart thumping when I look at the stolen pictures on the wall, remembering the way Williamson stared and stared at them while she was here.
I might get her back to my place, after all.
People have voicemail voices just like they have telephone-number-reciting voices. I listen to Patricia’s, all the effort she’s put in, the number of takes she must have gone through before she was satisfied. I leave a message, which I don’t usually do. I give her my number, ask her to call.
It was a good message. Calm. Kind. Self-possessed, under the circumstances.
I walk through the lounge and give Alfie a stroke, leaving her to her free lunch. In the back garden the plum tree has its summer look — that waspy hairdo. More of the insects busying themselves with the fallen fruit rotting on the ground.
As a boy I loved to chuck the plums with wasps still inside, watching for whether the insect would survive the impact against the shed wall. Sometimes the wasp would fly woozily out of the wreckage, sometimes it would be scrabbling among the sticky goo, dying slowly — Dad telling me off for the stains on the shed. I can s
till almost see them.
Mum isn’t in the garden but there are her odd socks and discarded bandage on the grass, sticking up like worms’ tails. I sit down heavily.
There she is, there’s the old lady. ‘What you doing, Mum? I can see you.’ Her face moves from the dirty windows, into the shadows. ‘Why are you hiding in the shed?’
I lie back on the grass, my lower spine giving me that long, breathtaking pull as it lets go.
Since I last looked, some unseen wind has shuffled the clouds out of all that uniformity. They’re elongated now, some of them billowing up into the air, hundreds of feet tall. Those are the storm clouds — cumulonimbus. The high wispy ones are cirrus. There are names for different types of clouds the way Eskimos have names for snow. I turn my neck and strain to see the shed, Mum’s eyes on me.
‘Come outside, Mum.’ I point upwards at a cloud, as if I’ve seen something in it. ‘Look!’ and she leans forward but bumps the window with her face, pulls away again, a smudge left in the dust and cobwebs on the glass. I can still faintly see her in there, comforting her forehead.
I get up, waiting for the stars to leave my eyes, then head through the sunlight and into the shed. She’s at the back now, her arms wrapped around some of the real pictures of our family.
‘Well done, Mother. You recognise those people?’
She nods slowly, backing away into gardening tools at the rear of the shed.
‘Are you planning to stay in here all day?’
‘No.’
She sees the electric shock that simple utterance gives my face.
‘No.’ She says it again, pressing the button again, shocking me again. She looks just as surprised the button works. ‘No!’ Her chin comes thrusting out at me.
Here we go. ‘Did you take a bucketload of steroids this morning?’
‘No!’ she says, not visibly referring to what I’m asking, she’s just loving the word. Such an important word for our safety — no. The hardest word when you’re a child. The most impossible word, in fact, when you’re as powerless as a child. Whereas these days — these days yes must be the hardest for me to say. My adulthood this overcompensation for my childhood.
