Silver Rain

by Jan Ruth

  She was seeing someone else, but he felt removed from any sense of injustice. He’d not even been especially angry with her, more dismayed and betrayed.

  ‘I’m just so fucking glad you didn’t have an abortion, but I’m so fucking mad you kept it from me! Why?’

  ‘I just, changed my mind. Some of the stuff you said, it got to me.’

  She’d cried torrents of over-emotional tears, totally out of character, but that was maybe hormonal and anyway, none of it mattered. She’d dealt with the medical news in her usual calm, practical way and the whole visit had been easier than he’d been expecting, although his complacency soon flew out of the window, replaced by the dread of telling his children they needed to get tested for something possibly life-threatening.

  He’d bottled out with Tom, calling him by phone rather than be faced with the wrath of Bernice and the bubbly excitement of the boys. Maisie had allowed him to book an instant appointment at a private clinic for an ECG and some other tests. Maisie’s fiance, Simon, had looked into it all and researched it more thoroughly, his medical brain quickly assimilating the facts and understanding what it meant.

  ‘Al, I know it’s scary, but it’s doubtful Tom and Maisie are affected. It tends to show up in teenage years. And given how active they’ve both been, I don’t think we need to panic.’

  ‘But it can jump generations. What about Barney and Rupe?’

  ‘They can get tested, the treatment’s simple enough.’

  Personally, he felt this was over-simplifying but he tried not to dwell on it too much as the tension was unbearable. And now he was home. He pulled up outside the farm and clambered out of the car, then stood for a moment, drinking it all in, inhaling the scented earth and willing the serenity of it to somehow get under his skin. He knew it would in time, but right now he needed some kind of intravenous drip. If he stopped to think about everything, he felt physically sick.

  He slipped a cigarette between his dry lips and looked across to the house. All the doors and windows were wide open and his old bedroom curtains were billowing out, flapping in the breeze. It looked better for the clear-out if he was honest, and he felt a faint stir of enthusiasm at the thought of breathing some life into it, something fresh and untarnished.

  First though, he needed to have a conversation. George was in there somewhere. He walked through the hall and into the study - straight into the business end of his father’s old rifle. He jerked his head back an inch. It had the lingering smell of cordite about it, or was that his imagination?

  ‘Go on then, pull the trigger. Fire another blank.’

  George looked down the sights and followed him around the room, until Al knocked the barrel away.

  ‘You’ve done this before, when I beat you at orienteering, and again when Clare Edwards said she didn’t want to go out with you.’

  ‘Lucky for you, it’s not loaded.’

  ‘Load it then, go on. The bullets are right there. I’m not even a moving target.’

  He walked around the small space. Everything was piled into the middle of the room, all the stuff they didn’t know what to do with; boxes of old school books and reports, china pigs and dried-up fountain pens. The old gun cabinet was off the wall, exposing a square of old-fashioned wallpaper and some childish scribbles.

  ‘Do you remember Dad teaching us how to shoot with this?’ George said, running his hand along the smooth beechwood stock, then he lifted it to his shoulder and followed the path of a lone blackbird flitting past the window. ‘The old rimfire eh? Point twenty-two bolt-action. Boom!’

  He made a poor imitation of the gun being fired, then lowered it and sneered. ‘You were always better at hitting a moving target than I was. Better at everything, in fact.’

  Al heaved a deep sigh. ‘Can we get past this, move it on a bit?’

  ‘To now, you mean? To why you want to keep Chathill and rub my nose in it, huh? Dangle it in front of Fran? For it to be a constant fucking reminder of what you did?’

  He couldn’t believe George was still trotting out the old argument, it was as if he’d committed the act single-handed. ‘Fran was there as a willing accomplice, you know?’

  ‘Leave Fran out of this.’

  ‘Why? You pushed her to the brink of desperation!’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘You promised children, knowing you were virtually sterile, just like Dad. You put her through all of that, all the tests, and then you refused to adopt. She was heartbroken, you selfish bastard!’

  George pushed his face up close. ‘Oh, so you stepped in and saved her, did you? Got her up the duff for me? It’s a good job Becca looks like Fran and not you.’

  ‘Consider this. If it hadn’t happened, Becca wouldn’t be here now and Fran would likely have gone off and met someone else.’

  ‘Oh, so you did me a favour?’

  ‘It’s one way of looking at it.’

  ‘So long as you come up smelling of roses, eh?’

  ‘I kept your grubby secret from Fran for years!’

  ‘Maybe, but then you went and told Helen didn’t you? The three of us had a pact and you broke it!’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  Al went to the dirty window and looked across the greening paddocks to the outline of Snowdon’s foothills, disappearing to a distant haze beneath a sharp blue sky. Closer to home, the broken concrete yard was full of weeds, but they were flowering and it managed to soften all the edges of neglect. Elderflower was especially profuse, foaming over the walls and fences, highlighted with long tendrils of wild honeysuckle and old roses.

  There was a pile of miscellaneous rubbish too, a towering bonfire of hacked-up beds, old rickety furniture and animal pens. He wondered if it would be cathartic to set fire to it. Some of the memories would do well going up into smoke.

  ‘I’ll talk to Helen, but to be honest, we might have to tell Becca anyway.’

  ‘What? Over my dead body!’

  ‘It might not be down to you.’

  ‘She’s my daughter!’

  ‘Totally. I’ve never disputed it and I never will,’ he said, then ran out of steam, tired of all the angst. He turned to face his brother and dropped his voice. They both needed to be calm. ‘Sit down, will you? There’s something you need to know.’

  Al knew he was about to stick the knife back in, but there was a bigger issue at stake. He had to reopen the wound, and if it dripped with tainted blood, then so be it. He took the crumpled sheet of paper from his back pocket and studied the words again, as if they might miraculously change.

  ‘What shit are you going to sling at me now, huh?’ George scowled.

  ‘You need to read this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ruby left me an unusual condition in her will.’

  His brother sank onto a packing case with the rifle across his legs, his fat finger still curled through the trigger, as if it made him feel the bigger man. He took the sheet of paper, taking a moment to glare warily at Al before he began to read. As George studied the medical print-out, all he could think about was the way Becca had complained about feeling ill on Boxing Day after the exertions of the hunt. She’d been so white-faced too. That wasn’t normal for a teenager, not after a day in the fresh air, surely? Simon might have a valid point about Tom and Maisie, but he had a horrible feeling of inevitability about Becca.

  He watched his brother’s expression as some of the repercussions sank in.

  ‘The problem is,’ Al began, ‘The problem is, she’ll want to know why. If we suggest all these tests… won’t she? And then if Maisie or Tom, or the boys get diagnosed with the same, she’s going to ask another question, isn’t she? I mean, she knows we’re not blood-related.’

  George seemed to be panting, he was breathing so heavily. He shook his head and pursed his lips, going over and over the information. Then he dropped the sheet of paper and staggered slightly as he got to his feet. With no warning then, he rushed t
owards Al like a charging bull, pinning him to the wall with the rifle hard across his chest, his fist still balled clumsily around the mid-section of the rifle.

  The element of surprise was fully engaged. It was like they were teenagers again, only George was a lot bigger and heavier, and he was incandescent with years of pent-up anger. Al no longer had the energy to retaliate but since it was under his nose, he could see the rotating bolt of the rifle chamber, clearly pushed forward. From what he remembered, that could mean there was a bullet in there and the rifle was ready to fire.

  ‘Put the fucking thing down!’

  ‘Scared, eh?’

  ‘Only of your stupidity.’

  A touch of insanity crept across his brother’s face which Al had never seen before, and then he heard a noise outside the room, like a soft foot shuffle. There was someone in the hallway, he could sense it. Maybe George heard something too, because his attention wandered for a split second.

  He shoved him backwards then, using the length of the rifle for leverage - when it suddenly fired. Within the small confines of the stone-walled room, the ear-splitting noise was like an exploding bomb, followed by an inconsequential puff of acrid smoke.

  George dropped the weapon as if it were neat explosive. For a long, startled moment he stood motionless, every breath sucked from his body. Al could see his mouth moving but his ears were ringing from the blast and he could only make out random words.

  ‘I swear I didn’t know it was loaded, I swear I didn’t know, Al.’

  He spotted her hair first. A red flare crept in to the far left of his vision. When he finally drew his eyes from his brother’s gaping mouth, when he dared to incline his head, it was to see Kate slumped over in the doorway.

  ‘It was an accident,’ George kept saying, over and over.

  The fear was indescribable. He was petrified, everything seemed set in stone as he eyeballed his brother, one hand across his mouth as the taste of cordite hit the back of his throat.

  It was possibly the longest thirty-seconds of his life as he contemplated the fact that his brother may have shot the woman he loved. One of them must have shifted their weight because breaking through the roaring silence, the bullet rolled across the uneven floorboards, and came to rest in a film of sunlit dust.

  His legs moved, finally, and he crawled to where she was sat in a tangled heap on the floor. She was dazed, or maybe unconscious. He picked up her warm, limp hand and rubbed it carefully. ‘Kate?’

  There was a rip across her boot at calf level, but of more concern was the bloodied bash at the back of her head. It looked like she’d collided with the doorjamb where it met a ragged edge of stone. He lifted her hair from her beautiful face and noticed her eyelids flickering, caught a whisper of her perfume.

  ‘Kate… come on, wake up, love.’

  All the time he knelt next to her, George was hovering, blabbering in his ear. ‘I mean, you know how Dad was, at the end? He used to leave it loaded all over the show, didn’t he? Remember when he shot himself in the foot? He was hopping mad, wasn’t he, Al?’

  ‘Will you shut-up and go and call an ambulance?’

  He watched his brother slope outside to get a mobile signal, then turned his attention back to Kate. What the hell had they done? How long had she been there, and why? She was in an awkward position but he didn’t dare move her. A trickle of blood crept down the side of her face and he rubbed it away with his thumb, then carefully snaked an arm around her shoulders and kissed her hair.

  Her eyes opened but she looked unfocused and deathly white. By the time the ambulance trailed to a stop outside, full-on siren, lights flashing, the works, she was more or less fully conscious but shaking with shock. The small room filled with strangers and medical equipment, blankets and blood pressure cuffs, and Al had to stand aside.

  ‘What the hell?’ she mumbled, then winced when one of the paramedics carefully moved her leg and began to inspect the damage on the back of her head.

  ‘What happened then?’ number two medic said, looking pointedly at the rifle, clipboard and pen at the ready. George began a convoluted explanation, then tempered it and looked to Al for confirmation. ‘We were clearing up, didn’t know it was even loaded. It… it fired, just went off! She got caught in the leg and must have fallen. Isn’t that right, Al?’

  ‘Yeah. And tomorrow, he’s taking that rifle to the police and handing it in personally. Isn’t that right, George?’

  ‘That’s right, yes.’

  In the face of this brotherly collusion, George looked like he’d experienced some sort of epiphany and kept trying to catch his eye. Medic number one gently lifted away the flap of singed material from Kate’s shin.

  ‘Nasty flesh wound that, but I’m more concerned about the bang on the head, she’s going to have one hell of a headache,’ he said and slipped an oxygen mask over her face. Kate looked out over the top, and her eyes seemed full of pain and shock. It was quite possibly the worst moment of his life.

  He was allowed to travel in the ambulance but she didn’t want any contact with him. George followed behind. Throughout the journey to Bangor they asked a lot of questions, most of which were directed at Kate and designed, he suspected, to keep her lucid and awake. Most of the time, he stared at the floor. What more could he put this woman through?

  At the hospital they were made to sit in a waiting room, presumably while they cut off the remains of her boot, then cleaned and dressed the wounds.

  ‘Tell her I’m so very, very sorry, will you?’ George said to the staff nurse.

  ‘Can’t I sit with her?’ Al whined.

  ‘I’m sorry, she’s indicated very clearly that you are both to wait out here.’

  ‘They must think we’re a liability,’ George said, after she’d gone, then punched a fist into his hand. ‘Shit!’

  ‘Agreed. Sit down, can’t you?’

  They both sat and folded their arms, staring at the pile of dog-eared magazines on the plastic table, until George got to his feet and began to pace, jingling his keys and loose change.

  ‘Do you think Kate heard anything, I mean, what we were discussing?’

  Al shrugged. ‘You know what? I don’t give a fuck anymore. Bottom of the scare list right now.’

  George grunted. ‘Agreed. I mean, she’s not the sort to be indiscreet is she? I’ll tell you something,’ he said, stabbing his finger in Al’s direction, ‘she’s too bloody good for you.’

  ‘Agreed. I’ve totally messed up there.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy.’

  ‘It’s called being a twat. I know this, because I’ve got the same badge.’

  Al shot him a look of acknowledgement. Another minute of intense quiet, then George said, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t stop thinking about this… this condition. What are we going to do about Becca?’

  ‘Depends if you’re ready to listen to reason.’

  His brother took a seat on the opposite side of the room, drumming on the wooden chair arms with his fingers. ‘She’s been feeling tired, looks pale all the time. Have you noticed? When I read that list of symptoms…’

  Al’s stomach tightened. ‘Right. Doctor’s first, then. Just a check-up, nothing too scary.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Shall I be telling Fran? I mean, she’s doing really well at the moment.’

  ‘No need is there? Not till we know.’

  ‘That’s agreed then.’

  There was an unspoken, united strength in this, and Al hoped it was some kind of turning point. Maybe their relationship had needed to get to rock bottom before it could be rebuilt, but it was a sad indication of how messed up they were, that it had taken a near fatality to reach something approaching a genuine truce.

  ‘Anyway, what about yourself?’ George said. ‘Did you get checked out?’

  A beat. ‘Me?’

  ‘You haven’t, have you? Idiot!’

&nb
sp; ‘Didn’t know you cared.’

  ‘Well, I do.’

  Another epiphany, two in the same day had to be some sort of record. Despite this, the afternoon dragged on and George eventually left to collect Becca from school. Al hunted through his pockets for some cigarettes but found only Freddie’s orange wig. He pulled it on and looked at his crazy reflection in the vending machine. A leather-jacketed man with bags the size of potato sacks under his eyes, and bright orange hair.

  ‘Idiot,’ he said, and studied the row of chocolate bars, held in a wire rack before they fell to their death in the tray below. Who knew what the hand of fate would choose; B3 or B4? It was all a lottery.

  An hour, half a family-size pack of Jelly Bears and two chocolate bars later, he was allowed to see her. It was only an overnight stay because of the head injury, but he couldn’t get much information out of the staff nurse because she was mostly transfixed by his hair and looked at him as if he were about to run amok with a deadly weapon, or laugh himself into a straitjacket.

  ‘The police will want a word, we have to report bullet wounds.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all sorted out, amnesty day’s tomorrow.’

  ‘A day too late. And it depends on whether this poor lady wants to file charges.’

  He began to protest his innocence, but knowing he was probably punch drunk with tiredness and quite possibly borderline irrational - down to the astonishing amount of e-numbers in Jelly Bears - he decided to postpone all communications with officials and take the easy route.

  ‘You’re absolutely right. I agree.’

  The nurse shot him a warning look, then turned to go, heels clacking down the ward. The woman in the next cubicle yanked the dividing curtain across.

  Finally, he sank onto the edge of Kate’s bed and kissed her cheek. She had a huge dressing covering the back of her head and a swathe of her beautiful hair had been shaved off. On the point of closing her eyes, she gave him the onceover and he bitterly regretted not removing the wig, but it seemed too late now.