by Jan Ruth
‘How do you feel?’ he asked gently.
‘Sore! And my best boots have been shredded.’
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘Some peace and quiet.’
‘Kate, I’m so, so sorry. George is as well, mortified. He should have left the bloody gun locked up. I don’t know what he was thinking.’
‘I do! Someone could have been-’
‘I know, I know…
He picked up her grazed hand and kissed her fingertips. ‘It should be me lying there instead of you. I wish it was, I really do. I don’t know what to say, what you must think.’
‘I know I’ve had a knock on the head but just tell me, did I hear right, Rebecca is your child, but all three of you pretend she’s not? And you told Helen all of this, thinking it might save your marriage?’
‘Everything I’ve ever done since, all the secrecy and subterfuge, it was to protect Becca.’
‘So why can’t you understand I was trying to protect you?’
‘I just flipped out, with all the complications.’
She exhaled shakily and continued more slowly. ‘At least I’ve got the full story. Everything makes perfect sense now. I can’t believe how badly you’ve all behaved, and yet you gave me the cold shoulder.’
‘It’s because I’m an idiot.’
He dropped his eyes from hers, not knowing where all of this left him. Above all he felt crushingly ashamed. Face to face with her, emotionally as well as physically, he felt compelled now, to accept his fate.
‘Why did you follow me to the farm, anyway?’
‘I felt we had too much unfinished business, and I was right.’
She paused to take a sip of water, and when she spoke again it was with a different tone all together, and there was a catch in her throat. ‘And, I wanted to say I loved you, I so wanted to say it truthfully. I wanted to say I loved every part of you, regardless of what had gone on with Fran. And then you go and throw another curveball with Becca, and shoot me in the foot! Have you any idea what it took to swallow your adultery? For goodness sake, Al, stuff just keeps on coming with you!’
Adultery. All of this jerked him to a stop. He’d spent several days travelling along at the speed of light, strap-hanging on a zip wire, braced before he finally plummeted to his demise. Until she said those words. Her words of love may have stopped his fall, but now he had the feeling he was swinging by his balls, hanging over a pool of man-eating crocodiles.
I wanted to say I loved you.
‘I swear there’s nothing else… just things like the heart tests, and the police interview to get through. Helen might get nasty, not gone there yet.’
‘Al, just, go away,’ she said, then turned over to face the wall.
Having nowhere to go away to, he placed the remainder of the Jelly Bears on the bedside table and settled himself into the winged-back chair by the bed.
Chapter Twenty One
Al.
The days following the accident were a lesson in patience. George collected them both from the hospital and they travelled back to Kate’s house with little conversation.
She limped up the drive in her stockinged feet, refusing any help.
‘I just want to get a shower and have some downtime,’ she said, turning the key in the lock. Al followed her inside, carrying a fifty-head bouquet of cream roses, purchased by his brother. He wished he’d thought of something like that. George waited on the drive with the engine ticking over, the rifle stowed in the boot, wrapped in a beach towel.
‘How are you going to manage?’ he said to Kate.
‘I’ll be fine, there’s even a district nurse or whatever they call them, coming in every day to change the dressings.’
‘I mean, with shopping and driving. Please, let me help.’
‘I don’t need to go anywhere and I can get groceries delivered.’
She threw her keys down onto the work surface in the kitchen and went to fill the kettle. He felt like an unwashed, unshaven spare part. A passing glance in the gents at the hospital had confirmed his suspicions; he looked like a tramp. He just wanted to hug her and look after her but it was probably pointless pursuing any of this given his grubby presentation.
She turned to face him. ‘George is waiting for you. Go and get rid of that gun.’
‘I’ll call you later, is that all right?’
‘I might be asleep.’
‘Well, you call me, then? I’ll get the landline phone connected again at the farm, and the internet.’
‘You’re going to the farm?’
‘Where else can I go?’
‘But the place is empty, where are you going to sleep?’
‘I can put the sofa cushions on the floor. I’ll recreate Snowdon Base Camp,’ he said, with a lot more enthusiasm than he felt. ‘It’s a game George and I used to play. Funny, the stuff you remember.’
‘I’m glad you’re both acting like adults.’
He wasn’t sure if she was making a point about their brotherly love or just being sarcastic about base camp, so he made for the door. ‘Call me if you need anything?’
A cool, imperceptible nod.
The police station was next. It was easier than he’d imagined because somewhere along the line, Kate had waived any accusation. He let George do all the talking and form-filling, and then they handed the rifle over, and that was that.
‘Did you take Becca to the doctor’s?’ he asked George as they headed back down the valley.
‘Give us chance. It’s tonight, after school. Fran’s at work till five or maybe later, there’s a glut of abandoned hedgehogs.’
‘Right. Let me know as soon as you know anything.’
‘They’ll likely do a blood test and then we’ll have to wait a fortnight for any results. I can’t hurry it up without blowing our cover, can I?’
‘No, I guess not.’
Back at Chathill and alone, time passed as if the hands on his watch were rotating anti-clockwise. Sleeping on the floor in the sitting room was just about passable but only because he was exhausted. At least the phone got sorted out quickly and it was altogether a better prospect, having a reliable link to the world. He called Kate, pretending he was testing the line but she saw right through him.
‘How are you, do you need anything?’
‘I’m fine. No thanks.’
‘Phone sounds good, I’ve turned the ringtone up as loud as it will go, so I can hear it outside. Unless I’m at the back of the paddocks, can’t hear it then.’
‘Al… I just want some space, is that all right?’
The second he put the receiver down it rang again. Maisie had been trying to track him down. She blurted out her news first.
‘I told you it was only indigestion!’
A tsunami of relief, he slid down the wall and sat on the floor. There was a small bloodstain on the door frame. Kate. The time he’d spent with her in New Zealand seemed a lifetime away, and the current cavernous void was especially acute at times like this. He wanted to call her again, he wanted to share something good with her, but she’d withdrawn from him big style.
He couldn’t really blame her, she was a Capricorn after all. What would a sensible goat want with a bloody scorpion? She was standing, aloof and surefooted on a cliff face and he was running about in circles on the beach below, snapping his claws, then having to crawl into his shell.
Maisie cut into his thoughts. ‘Dad? Are you still there?’
He told her about his plans for Chathill, what had happened with Jo and all sorts of stuff she wasn’t really interested in, aware that he was talking gibberish half the time. He arranged to collect his dogs, including Fran’s collie, Fig.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Four dogs in here is a bit nuts.’
‘Nuts feature a lot for me lately, both meanings. Saturated in the sweet stuff one minute then dipped into neat cocoa,’ he went on, thinking he should write that down for Jim Silver. ‘So,
has Tom had any news?’
‘Er, yeah, but he wants to tell you himself. Don’t worry, it’s kind of bitter-sweet.’
Galvanised into positive action by Maisie’s news, the day passed in a more normal timescale. He set fire to the mountain of rubbish out the back. It went up like a tinder box, probably down to all the dry wood. He threw Freddie’s pants and wig on there as well and the hair melted to a red blob along with the plastic ring out of the trousers and a few other bits and pieces.
At the back of the cattle shed in an old lean-to, he unearthed his father’s toolbox and was wondering about dismantling the kitchen, when Tom’s BMW swung onto the drive. This could only mean bad news. Tom had to have an official pass from Bernice to visit at random. If it was good news about the tests, he’d just call, wouldn’t he? And why wasn’t he at work? Tom was always at work.
He waited impatiently on the doorstep while his son grabbed a huge holdall from the boot and a six-pack of beer.
‘What is it… is it the boys?’ Al yelled, unable to contain himself.
As Tom walked towards him, he looked drawn, positively grim. ‘No, me and the boys are mostly fine, tests came back mostly as a negative.’
‘Mostly? Tom, come on!’
His face dropped. ‘Okay, they think Rupert’s got a bit of a murmur.’
‘Oh, shit, so there was something?’
‘Still looking into it, you know what’s it like. They’re not even sure if it’s related to the thing that Ruby had, but good that we got in early.’
‘Anything you need for him, I’ll pay.’
‘Dad, I know. It’s all under control. Can I come in?’
They went into the sitting room, Al desperate to ask a lot more questions but Tom wasn’t like Maisie, and since Bernice had come to office, so much had changed with his son. At least he’d stopped calling him Father.
Tom looked around at the bare rooms and the makeshift bed on the floor with borderline despair. Cans swinging from his fingertips, he dropped the holdall to the floor and ran a hand through his hair.
‘It won’t be like this for long,’ Al said. ‘When the money comes through from Ruby, I can kit it all out. The boys can have bunk-beds, whatever they want.’
‘Do you think you could put that axe down?’
‘I was just going to smash up the kitchen.’
‘Can it wait?’
They sat face to face on the shell of the sofa frame and the one remaining chair, the lager and the axe sitting like cryptic clues in the middle of the floor.
‘Thing is, Dad, I’ve left her. I’ve left Bernie. I was wondering if you could put me up for a bit?’
He tried very, very hard, not to grin.
‘It’s just, well, I just can’t stand living with her another minute.’
Al flipped open a can of lager and passed it to Tom, who swigged it straight from the can - something he’d not done in years so far as Al knew.
‘I mean, she was always a bit domineering, but when our sex life is reduced to me being tied-up at the office-’
‘Come again?’
Tom flapped his hand at this and continued ticking off a long list of faults, with detailed scenarios of conversations as back-up evidence.
‘And now she’s started on the garden. I’m not even allowed sole residency of the shed anymore, it’s intolerable…’
Al knew Tom had to get it all out of his system but he was simply repeating what he and Maisie had always imagined, laughed about, even. He could fully imagine Bernice with a whip and a pair of secateurs. No, no he couldn’t.
Kate had surprised him. The way she’d initiated them sharing a room in Auckland had been the first hint that there were many layers to Kate’s personality, most of them not on public show. The first time they’d made love had been quietly intense. It remained etched in his mind, and not for the reasons sex usually haunted him with.
It had him in mind of spring flowers and autumn fruits, how madly romantic was that? Wild white flowers growing into ripe purple berries had always struck a chord of sensuality in himself. On reflection, it probably had lots to do with her fragility, the way she’d trusted him with her failing - as she saw it - femininity. Trust was a big issue, more than a magazine for the homeless.
Once Helen had lost her trust in him, it had sounded the death toll but it came to him that he’d maybe, subconsciously, used his confession of adultery to get closure on an already failing relationship. Looking at Tom prompted a sudden, heartfelt regret for the passing of his marriage, but he was so completely in love with Kate that it obliterated most of what was happening under his nose, because the memory of being with her was eclipsed by the pain of being without her. The desire to drive to her house and plead for his stupidity, grew more urgent on a daily basis.
In comparison, his son was beginning to sound increasingly upbeat, as if he’d had an early prison release. Al knew he’d crash and burn, probably when the alcohol wore off. Tom waved a third can of lager in front of him, like a hypnotist’s pendant.
‘Hey! Should there be flames outside like that?’
‘Huh?’ It took him a moment to come back to earth, then Al turned to see leaping flames outside the window. ‘Fucking fuck. The bonfire!’
Tom leapt to his feet and made a run for the hosepipe while Al just slung buckets of water at it until it was reduced to a sodden, smouldering heap of timber decorated with bright pools of plastic. The surrounding area was a mass of blackened grass and foliage, even the window frames were singed.
‘Honestly, Dad, even at your age you’re not safe with a box of matches! Why did you set fire to it so close to the house? And why have you chucked metal and plastic on it?’ Tom said angrily, back to scolding him.
Al had no answer, other than it had felt good at the time. They were both wet and filthy. Tom wiped his face on an arm, his smart tailored shirt looking distinctly grubby. ‘I remember burying Granddad’s dog somewhere here, me and Maisie made a daisy chain to put round her neck, do you remember that?’
‘Audrey, yeah.’
‘What are you going to do with all this space out here, anyway?’
‘Make it into an amazing garden. Grow things in it, you know?’
‘Seriously?’ he said, sniffing. He poked at the remains of the fire with a stick. ‘Is that Freddie’s stuff there?’
‘Yeah… the flowers were dead and the pants were getting too tight, I think I put it through the wrong wash.’
‘But the kids loved it.’
‘Bernice hated it.’
‘She hates everything!’
At this point, he had actual tears streaking down his grimy face, and there was a catch in his throat. It was maybe nonsensical but this was the one thing Tom had said since his arrival, that held any conviction. He realised, of course, that this outburst of emotion had nothing much to do with Freddie and everything to do with leaving Bernice, the effect it would have on the boys and the diagnosis on Rupert.
He put an arm across his son’s shoulders and he seemed to sag against him, wiping his face with a sooty hand. Even though he was nearly thirty, it made little difference to the way it made Al feel.
‘I’m just gutted about Rupert and Barney,’ Tom said, as if he had to explain. ‘What will they think of me? They already think I’m a rubbish dad, thanks to Bernie. She tells them on a regular basis.’
Al was quietly incensed by this. He made a mental note to buy some more pants, bigger, louder and brighter ones. ‘When the boys come here, they’ll see that we’re the best dads in the world.’
Tom nodded sagely, but a little half-heartedly.
The back porch and the kitchen door were both open and the partially dismantled kitchen was likely filled with smoke as well. Coupled with the outside scene, the effect was not so much quiet rural escape, but more along the lines of Apocalypse Now.
*
For a while, it was like a permanent lad’s night out. Take-away cartons and can
s littered the floor, a huge television bolted to the wall, courtesy of Tom. Encouraged by his son’s return to normal behaviour and fuelled by copious amounts of beer, Al told Tom about his love-child with Jo and his complicated love-affair with Kate. When it was all strung together, following on from his separation and subsequent divorce from Helen, it sounded more and more like the life and times of Jim Silver. They laughed about their current predicaments in a laddish way, but he sensed Tom’s real opinion hovered between admiration, and disbelief. And this was discounting the loss of Kate’s job, the accident with the rifle and the family skeleton’s day out. When it was all laid on the line, he could fully understand Kate’s reticence to take up with him again.
In the meantime, the dogs came home. Lard was enormous. Marge was worn out by him and frequently crawled into the airing cupboard. Butter and Fig had formed an alliance of sorts, which created a snarling atmosphere of jealousy. It was a canine love triangle.
In-between supervising dog fights and moaning about women, Tom ripped out the old kitchen cupboards with a manic energy, and Al somehow finished the last Jim Silver book. What he really needed at this point though, was Kate’s input and opinion. Logging on to Facebook for the first time in weeks he saw that she and Maisie were friends. There was a request from Tia. He accepted it and a message popped up more or less straight away.
‘Hi, have you spoken to Mum? She’s blanking everyone, she’s being proper childish lol.’
He asked Tom for advice about this. Tom puffed out his cheeks. ‘No idea. I cancelled my account on there because everything I said seemed to upset someone, somewhere, you know? I’m amazed you even bother with it.’
He explained then about the Jim Silver books and there was a spark of interest, but nothing like the genuine connection he had with Kate over this character he’d created, his escapades and most importantly, the accuracy and understanding of the decade it was set in.
Talking to Kate was the sexiest thing ever.
He decided to take the bull by the horns and responded to Tia thus, ‘Hi. No, I’m in the dog house lol.’
A row of smiley faces came back.
