“Did you just come off shift?” Melissa asks him.
“Yeah,” Keith mumbles uncomfortably. Keith doesn’t talk about his work—not even to me. I know he works in the police force and that he sometimes wears a uniform and walks the beat. I also know he, more often than not, doesn’t walk the beat. Once a year, I don my finery and accompany him to the annual police ball, which is held up in London. But I couldn’t tell anyone his job title, I couldn’t give even a basic answer to what he does on a day-to-day basis. He leaves work behind when he leaves work. He refuses to carry the weight of what he has seen and experienced with him into our lives. (It’s this secretiveness that makes Leo think he’s a spy.)
“Do you think Leo will want to be a policeman when he grows up?” Melissa asks. “Take after his father in more ways than one?”
There is a puzzled pause from Keith. “Leo’s my stepson, you know that, right?” Keith asks her, his tone serious and slightly concerned. “He might act like me sometimes, but he doesn’t take after me. Not genetically.” I feel him look from her to me. “I’m right, aren’t I, Lucks, he doesn’t take after me?”
“Apart from the PlayStation obsession and the fascination with farts and fart jokes, no, he doesn’t take after you,” I supply without looking away from Leo.
“If anyone, he’s more like you, and your dad, isn’t he?” Keith says to me.
He’s more like his father, I think as I say, “I suppose.”
“Nova would never go into the Army or join the police, can’t see her father ever doing that either, so I doubt Leo would join the police, because he’s not like me.” My husband, steadfast and practical and romantic, is oblivious to the fact that Nurse Melissa obviously wishes the ground below her feet would open up and swallow her.
Any irritation I feel toward her is replaced with pity, because I know what’s coming: a riveting lecture on Keith’s theories about the types of people who feel compelled by their personality to serve their country and society, as opposed to those who find themselves forced into those jobs. I’ve heard the theory several times, but that’s what I get for living with the fantasy—along with his inability to watch a soap without judging the characters because they are flawed and he has a strong sense of right and wrong that he cannot suspend even to watch fiction; him dismissing my strong belief in the esoteric world; and him secretly believing I should be responsible for the housework because I’m a woman. Even though Nurse Melissa has been flirting with my husband, right in front of me, I decide to rescue her. No one deserves the lecture if they’re not at least going to get a shag out of him. “Thanks, Melissa, for staying with Leo,” I cut in, “we’ll see you later.”
“Oh, yes, yes, see you later,” she says eagerly and dashes out of the room.
Keith takes his seat on the opposite side of Leo’s bed. We always sit in the same places, even when the other one isn’t here; we wouldn’t dream of sitting in the other’s seat, just like at home we wouldn’t sleep on the other’s side of the bed. It would feel like an invasion, trespassing on someone else’s sacred space.
“Does he take after him?” Keith asks, tearing his eyes away from our boy to focus on me. “Does he take after his father?”
He’s never asked me this before, and it’s not something we ever talk about. When we got back together for the final time after the breakup of five years, I told him that I had a son and that he was four years old. Keith knew immediately whose son he was. It had been the reason he left me that last time: when I told him what I was going to do, Keith had thrown in the towel. It was not something he could understand, and he couldn’t watch me carry a child only to give it away, so he left me.
“Yeah,” I say to Keith, “I suppose he does.”
He never questioned why I ended up with the child when we got back together. He assumed that keeping Leo was a choice I made; that I had come to my senses and realized what he suspected about all women who agreed to have a baby for someone else: that you could never live with yourself afterwards; the guilt and the loss would be too much, so you would almost always choose to keep the baby. I never felt compelled enough to enlighten him as to what really happened.
Keith shrugs. “I suppose that’s no bad thing,” he says. “Leo could do worse than take after him. He’s a good man.”
I nod. You can believe that, I think at Keith, because you don’t know what he did.
They’re ready for launch.
He was sitting in his special seat, so he could see everything.
Moving forward, slowly. Three … two … one!
The water splashed all over their subm’ine. Everywhere! It was all over them, all around them. They were underwater and they both cheered as it happened.
CRASH! Captain Leo jumped as a big wave hit the top of their subm’ine. They both cheered again.
“Go forward!” Captain Leo shouted, as another big white foam wave hit them.
“Aye, aye, Cap’n,” she shouted back. “Going forward.”
“Dive!” Captain Leo shouted over the sound of the water. “Dive! We need to dive!”
“I cannae change the laws of physics, Cap’n,” she said.
“You can!” Captain Leo replied. “Dive!”
“OK, here we go …” she said. “Three … two … one!”
They both screamed as more water splashed over them, and then they laughed. And screamed. And laughed. And screamed. Even as they came out of the water, and then they were being dried off, they continued to laugh and scream. And at the end, they were free. They were on dry land again and their subm’ine could work on the ground. And he wasn’t a captain, and she didn’t have a silly voice.
“Can we go again?” he asked her.
“No, sweetheart. We can go again next week.”
“OK,” he said, staring out of the window at the other people who wanted to go play subm’ines as well. None of theirs was as good as theirs. And no one was as good a captain as he was. Ever.
Leo, age 4 years
PART TWO
CHAPTER 6
I hate leaving him.
Every night, when Keith can convince me to go home and get some sleep, I always linger over his bed, saying goodnight, looking for change, wondering if I should stay a little bit longer. But I need to be there during the day, and sleeping on the bed that folds down from one of the panels in the wall of his hospital room is not viable every night. Every night, when I kiss him goodnight and wish silently for him to wake up, I leave the hospital with a deep, throbbing ache in the center of my soul that only Leo can soothe by getting better.
I sit in my car in the dark, partially empty car park, with the doors locked—Keith would murder me himself if he thought I didn’t first check the car was empty before I got in and didn’t immediately lock the doors—but I don’t reach for the ignition. I leave my keys in my lap and rest my forehead on the padded leather steering wheel.
I want to call him.
I want to pick up the phone and call him.
He most likely won’t be awake, he most likely won’t be alone, and he most likely won’t answer my call, but I want to call him. I want to hear his voice, I want to slip into that warm comfortable place in the world where I used to fit, where he used to talk to me and the most confusing things would suddenly make sense.
Even now, after all this time, I want to call him. Tell him what’s happened, tell him about the dreams, and tell him without having to tell him that he has to make everything all right. Even now, after everything, Mal, Leo’s father, is the one person I want to be with. When I should theoretically hate him, most of the time, all I can do is miss him. I hate myself for it sometimes.
Today’s the day Malvolio’s daddy is coming home. For real.
My mummy said that he had been working far, far away from home and that was why we had never seen him in real, proper life. Malvolio’s mummy, Aunty Merry, had lots of pictures and we looked at them all the time. Sometimes Malvolio looked like his daddy when Malvolio frowned really hard
.
My mummy told me Malvolio’s daddy had seen us both when we were little babies and just borned—he came to the hospital and had a look at us. There’s a picture of Malvolio’s daddy holding him and looking at Malvolio instead of at the camera like everyone else did in photos. Right behind him there was a man with a hat and clothes like a policeman who looked very cross and had a big mustache that covered the whole of his top lip. When I asked who that was, Aunty Merry started crying and Mummy said it was a friend of Uncle Victor’s. I didn’t understand why that made Aunty Merry cry, but I think it was because she didn’t like Uncle Victor having friends who weren’t her friend as well.
My mummy said it was five years ago that Malvolio’s daddy had seen us.
I was allowed to wear my special church dress. It was red with a white collar and buttons all the way up to the top at the back. And I had white socks that Mummy kept telling me to pull up—it wasn’t my fault they kept falling down—and my favorite black, shiny church shoes. Mummy had plaited my hair into four, which was my favorite, and told me not to mess it up. Uncle Victor probably didn’t like children to look messy. Cordelia was only two but she had the same dress as me but hers was blue. She was sitting on the floor by the table that we had put in Aunty Merry’s front room and she was playing with Malvolio’s favorite car. He didn’t mind. He let Cordelia play with all his toys because he said she was only a little baby and it didn’t matter. “Not baby!” Cordelia always said. “Big girl.”
Malvolio was wearing his church suit, which was dark blue and had a white shirt and red tie that looked like two triangles with the points stuck together. He looked hasome, Mummy said when he came down earlier. Just like a little man. Aunty Merry had put special stuff on his hair and combed it so it looked like his daddy’s.
Mummy and Daddy and Aunty Merry were all wearing their church clothes, too. And my mummy made lots and lots of food for Uncle Victor. I helped. I put ray-suns in the bowl so Mummy could make her big, big, big hot cross buns. And I put the new-meg in the cake so it would taste like Mummy’s cake. It was her secret, she told me. All the food was all on the big table in the front room, and there was a white tablecloth Mummy had crow-chayed. We weren’t allowed to have anything, not even cherryade, until Malvolio’s daddy came home.
We were all in the front room waiting for Malvolio’s daddy to come home. I didn’t know the time, but Mummy and Daddy kept looking at each other. I knew they were worried about him. Maybe he missed the bus. Sometimes when my daddy’s car wouldn’t work properly, he had to catch the bus and he was cross when he missed it because it made him late for his work. Malvolio was sitting next to his mummy and she kept kissing his hand and saying, “My beautiful boy,” and looking out the window to see if Uncle Victor was coming.
I kept looking at the sandwiches. I wanted one. Mummy put Sandwich Spread on them. That was my favorite. I was so hungry. I moved closer to the table. I could take a bite from one of the sandwiches and put it back. Mummy and Daddy and Aunty Merry wouldn’t see. I stood next to the table and slowly put my hand near the sandwiches. I was going to get a bite really soon. My mouth was all wet inside. I pulled the sandwich off the plate, and pulled it toward me. I would only take one bite. Then I would put it back. Just one bite. I licked my lips as I lifted the sandwich to my mouth.
“NOVA!” Mummy shouted. “What are you doing?!”
I was so scared I dropped the sandwich. My eyes were really wide as I looked at Mummy. She was frowning at me. I was in so much trouble. I would probably have to go home and go straight to bed. Or face the wall in the corridor. Daddy was frowning at me, too. Aunty Merry was looking at me but she wasn’t frowning. Malvolio looked scared like me. He knew how much trouble I was in. It wasn’t my fault, I was hungry.
The front door closed really loud. We all looked at the door and Uncle Victor was there. He was really, really tall. Taller than my daddy. But he didn’t look like he did in the photos. He was much skinnier, as skinny as a rake, Mummy said about people who looked like him. Tall and skinny as a rake. He had lots of lines on his face and he had a beard. It was dark and it was thick and all round his mouth and cheeks and chin. His hair wasn’t combed like Malvolio’s was now, it was like Malvolio’s usually was—all messy. “Like he’s been dragged through a bush, backwards,” Mummy said when she was combing the twigs and leaves out of Malvolio’s hair.
Uncle Victor looked at me and I smiled and waved. He looked at Mummy. He looked at Daddy. He looked at Cordelia for a bit longer, because she was new. Then he looked at Aunty Merry for even longer. He looked longest at Malvolio. He looked and looked and looked at Malvolio. My daddy looked at his pools coupon like that. When he said if he had written down the numbers properly, he had won ten pounds. My daddy would look happy but then wasn’t sure if he should be happy in case he had written the numbers down wrong when the man on the television had been saying them. That’s how Uncle Victor looked at Malvolio: like he was happy but he was not sure if he should be yet.
“I need a bath,” Uncle Victor said and then went up the stairs. Nobody was talking or anything while Uncle Victor was having his bath upstairs. It was very quiet for a long, long time. Then he came downstairs again. He was wearing different clothes. He had a big thick blue sweater on, and he had tucked it into his black trousers. His black trousers looked like ones he would normally wear to church. I didn’t know if Uncle Victor ever went to church. His hair was combed like it was in the pictures and he had no beard anymore. He looked like the man in the pictures except old and skinny as a rake.
“Fancy a pint down the pub, Frank?” Uncle Victor said to my daddy. He didn’t look at any of us this time, just Daddy.
Daddy looked at Mum, then at Aunty Merry. My daddy never went to pubs. The people at school said their daddies went to pubs, and when I asked Mummy why my daddy didn’t go to pubs, Mummy said men like my daddy didn’t go to pubs; he didn’t fit in at pubs.
“OK,” Daddy said. “I have to stop off at home to pick up my wallet.”
Daddy said goodbye to us, Uncle Victor didn’t.
As soon as the door shut behind them, Aunty Merry started crying, really loudly. She jumped up from the sofa and ran out of the room and upstairs, crying and crying, tears all over her face.
“You have to give him time,” Mummy said as she followed Aunty Merry. “This is all new to him.”
Malvolio kept sitting on the sofa, hitting his feet on the bottom of the sofa, and staring at the carpet. I went and sat next to him. I did the same with my feet until we were doing it at the same time so our feet made a loud noise.
“My daddy doesn’t like me,” Malvolio said.
His daddy didn’t like him. My daddy had never looked at me or Cordelia or Malvolio like that and then went away to the pub. And my daddy liked us all the time. “You have to give him time,” I said to Malvolio. “This is all new to him.”
“I wanted my daddy to be my best friend when he comes home,” Malvolio said. “You’re my bestest ever friend. And so’s Cordelia. I wanted my daddy to be my bestest friend, too.”
I patted Malvolio on the shoulder. That’s what you had to do when someone cried. I saw it: Mummy did it to Aunty Merry when she cried and Daddy did it to Mummy when she cried. Malvolio was going to cry so I had to pat his shoulder.
“NICE!” Cordelia shouted.
I was in so much trouble. Cordelia had opened the sandwich I had dropped. She had put some under Malvolio’s car and run the car over it again and again and again so it was all squishy and stuck to the carpet. She tried to eat some of it and her face was shiny from the Sandwich Spread, orange and green and yellow and red bits of it were stuck all over her face. Some of it was in her hair.
“NICE!” Cordelia shouted again. She was waving the car in one hand and some sandwich in the other.
“I’m going to get in so much trouble,” I said to Malvolio.
And because he was so sad and because his daddy didn’t like him, I didn’t get very cross when Malvolio sta
rted laughing.
There’s a peculiar type of silence that hits you when you come into a Leo-less house. It’s like a short, sharp blast of extremely cold air that takes your breath away the second you step over the threshold. Then the eerie, unnatural cold seeps slowly into your body and mind as you walk around turning on lights, checking the post, checking the answer machine messages, and finally ending up in the kitchen, where you flick on the kettle to make a cup of coffee, only to realize it’s empty and you’re probably going to burn down the house, but you listen to it crackle and complain on its stand, unable to move. Unable to do what is necessary because you feel so powerless. In all things, frozen and powerless. Unable to create or effect change in any way.
As the kettle’s fizzing becomes louder, something in me snaps to attention and I reach out and flick it off. That’d be great, wouldn’t it, for Leo to come home to a blackened, charred shell of a home? Actually, he’d probably think it was really cool. He’d probably tell me that I was the coolest mum in the world for giving him a burnt-down house as a welcome-home present—until he discovered all his toys, his books and the precious PlayStation had gone up in the blaze. Then he and Keith would probably join forces in having me prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
I massage my eyes; I can’t get Mal out of my mind. Maybe I should call him. My eyes flick to the kitchen clock: midnight. Yeah, maybe I should call, get the stunned silence on the end of the phone, then the mouthful, then the dialing tone as he hangs up. Then maybe I’d be able to concentrate on something else. Maybe I’d be able to sit down and think how I’m going to tell my family that Leo isn’t being kept in for routine observation. That he’s actually very ill. That although the doctors haven’t said this to me directly, they’re very worried about him. Maybe if I can shift Mal from my mind, I can get on with the stuff that needs to be done in the present.
Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel Page 5
