Homecoming

by Susie Steiner

  ‘Not far enough?’

  Ann laughs.

  ‘It’s always the way,’ says Lauren.

  ‘Joe says we have to support Max, pay him enough so he can start a family. But we haven’t got a brass farthing. We don’t draw salaries ourselves.’

  ‘Well good for Joe,’ says Lauren. ‘You were always a mean beggar.’

  ‘I am tight, it’s true. But why can’t Max go and find other work – shearing or labouring or summat? Supplement his income? Joe glories in it – you know, that Max is working the farm with him when most sons would wash their hands of it – but where’s the glory in a son as can’t think for himself?’

  ‘Arh, he loves those boys, Ann,’ says Lauren, glancing at her then back to the road. ‘Your Joe, he loves those boys more than any father I’ve seen. Bartholomew’s doing well, in’t he? And you liked that girlfriend of his, Ruby, when he brought her back.’

  ‘I s’pose. He’s my great white hope, is Bartholomew. But he doesn’t tell us anything.’

  ‘That’s boys,’ says Lauren.

  ‘Ruby’s smashing – Joe and I both think so – but he’s not marrying her. They’ve been together a year now and to start with it were all love’s young dream but they seem to have gone off the boil.’

  ‘These things do. He’s still young.’

  ‘Thirty-two? I had two boys by that age. This generation, they don’t commit to anything.’

  They have pulled into Lauren’s drive and she is pulling on the handbrake. Neither makes a move to get out of the car.

  ‘Well, it’s different now. Harder for ’em,’ says Lauren.

  ‘And as for Max, I don’t know how that marriage works. She’s such a pudding.’

  ‘Raw sexual chemistry I expect,’ says Lauren and Ann laughs.

  ‘On that note, I think I’ll get off. Thanks for the lift.’

  ‘Thursday night for flower-arranging?’ says Lauren.

  Ann has heaved herself out of the passenger seat. She is stooping to look at her friend who is still seated, gathering her handbag and keys.

  ‘It’s a date,’ says Ann, then closes the passenger door.

  *

  Ruby stumbles on the cobbles of Cathedral Way, under the orange street lamps. Stumbles over and into him, and then drags on his arm. He marches her purposefully up the High Street and past the Theatre Royal. There are still plenty of people about – it’s not yet 10 p.m. They’ve not eaten, apart from a steady flow of crisps and peanuts. No wonder Ruby is rolling.

  ‘I couldn’t do it,’ she says, hanging on his arm.

  ‘Do what?’ he asks. He puts his hand in his pocket so his arm becomes a loop for her to hold onto.

  ‘Set up on my own. Don’t think I’m brave enough.’

  ‘Well, it’s not for everyone,’ he says.

  ‘What are you saying? You think it’s beyond me? Good for nothing ’cept serving sandwiches?’ Black spidery flicks of mascara have smudged onto her cheekbones, among the brown freckles.

  ‘Course not. What would you do – if you left the café?’ he says.

  ‘Dunno. Cooking.’

  ‘You’re good at that.’

  They walk on, Bartholomew setting the pace. She’s a dead weight on his arm, uncomfortable and tiring. They reach Theobald Road.

  ‘Give us your key,’ he says and she feels about in her bag for what seems like minutes. She has her feet apart to steady her, but her body sways. She gives him the key and they walk further up Theobald Road.

  ‘So that’s what the café idea was all about,’ he says.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘A café at my place – for you to run?’

  ‘I didn’t think of that,’ she says. ‘You want to go into business w’ me cos I’m so clever!’ She puts her arms around his neck while he tries to open her front door with her key.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he says, low and stern. ‘I’m not going into business with anyone. I’m on me own. That’s how I like it.’

  ‘Jeeeeez, alright,’ says Ruby and they fall in, tumbling into her dark hallway.

  In the echo of the hall as they clatter up the communal stairs to her flat, he says, ‘Watch yourself, Rube.’

  She stops on the stairs, looking at her shoes, with one arm on the banister. He is behind her.

  ‘Why are you so paranoid?’ she says, suddenly sober and angry. ‘You always think I want something from ye, like I’ll be sticking a pin in the condoms next. You’re not that much of a catch Bartholomew.’

  She takes her key off him roughly and opens the front door to her flat, leaving it open for him to follow.

  Her place is dark, except for the fairy lights which she never turns off. In the gloom, the purples, pinks and oranges from the cushions and rugs glow, as if they’ve stumbled into some over-stuffed grotto. She throws her bag down on the sofa and takes her coat off. She is shambling towards the bedroom, prising off her shoes as she goes. He steadies her and leads her to the bed. She sits, then lies her head on the pillow and he lifts her stockinged legs. Her eyes are shut. He hears a snore ring out.

  Bartholomew wants to go home but doesn’t feel he can leave her just yet. He’s been experiencing this more and more lately – a gap between what he should do and what he wants to do – and he wonders if this is how love ought to feel. He goes to sit in the wicker chair in the corner of the room, beside the window where net curtains are filtering the orange of a street lamp, its massive bulb just beyond the glass. He watches Ruby sleep, one hand to his chin, the other on his knee. He sees her turn over with all her body, hip up, face down, and as she does so, she farts.

  He’d met Ruby a year ago, at the tea room on Market Street where she works as a waitress. He’d begun to stop there on his way home from the garden centre in a bid to avoid his cold empty flat.

  Bartholomew had sat at a table in the darkest corner and watched her as she served the other customers.

  Everything about her was rounded: her little belly; the soft slopes of her arms; the milky skin on her chest which rose high with her breath. He was magnetised by the fullness of her. When she came to his table and said – in a gentle Leeds accent which he hadn’t been expecting – ‘What can I get ye?’ he’d said, involuntarily, ‘Can I take you out?’

  She had laughed, her apple face creasing up with kindness and delight. ‘Let’s just deal with your lunch order first, shall we?’

  ‘Where do you live?’ she’d asked later, when she’d joined him at his table.

  ‘Theobald Road.’

  ‘Now you’re being creepy.’

  ‘Why? You asked me where I live!’

  ‘You can’t live on Theobald Road,’ she said.

  ‘Erm, I can and I do.’

  The sight of his frown appeared to make her laugh and this, in turn, seemed to make him happy.

  ‘You are talking about Theobald Road, as in off the London Road?’

  ‘Is there another one?’ he’d said.

  ‘Oh Lord.’

  ‘Why, where do you live?’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘Theobald Road?’ he asked.

  She nodded and they both burst into laughter, not because it was especially funny – he found it scary – but in part he thought they were laughing because they hadn’t even mentioned their Yorkshire accents, that they were two people from another place, a shared landscape, and here they were in a southern cathedral town and living on the same street, and that their voices were each a homecoming.

  ‘What number are you?’ she said when they’d stopped laughing.

  ‘Twenty-two. And you?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Next to Mr Shah!’

  ‘My new best friend,’ she’d said.

  ‘Not just the same street but the same side of the same street.’

  ‘Are you sure you still want to take me out?’

  What had surprised him most about their early courtship was its wholeheartedness. He drank her in, unstintingly, telling her he wanted her all the time and
she, to his surprise, was neither terrified nor repulsed. She reciprocated and this reciprocity, together with the ease with which she accepted her appetites, was a revelation to him.

  In those early weeks, on days when he didn’t stop at the café because he was working late, he would get off his bicycle at the bottom of Theobald Road and wheel up the street, wondering if her light would be on. He found himself filled with nervous excitement as he looked up at the second-floor window and then he’d see it lit yellow and the excitement in his stomach would bubble up higher, until he laughed at himself and partly at his own happiness because why would seeing a light on in an upstairs window make him feel so overjoyed?

  They didn’t spend many nights apart in those days. More often than not, Bartholomew would wheel his bicycle up to his own flat at number 22, prop it in the hallway and go in to get changed, all the while telling himself he was tired: it would be great to read a book or watch some television alone after so much time together. But he’d find himself putting on a clean pair of cords and carefully selecting a shirt and sweater. Then he’d momentarily sit on his sofa, his hands on his knees.

  Five minutes later he’d be lolloping down the street. The bell would jangle as he opened the door to Mr Shah’s shop. You had to inch sideways through the excessively packed shelves because Mr Shah stocked everything that human existence had ever required: nail clippers; bake-in-the-oven croissants; Phillips-head screwdrivers; fabric conditioner; dog food; nappies.

  ‘Something for Ruby?’ Mr Shah would say. The word Ruby sounded even more beautiful when curled around Mr Shah’s rich voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bartholomew.

  ‘She likes the Turkish Delight,’ said Mr Shah, leaning forward and over the counter and pointing downward at the chocolate section. ‘Fry’s.’

  ‘Right, thank you.’ Bartholomew grabbed three bars and a bottle of white wine and headed for Ruby’s front door.

  He was always welcomed, back then. Her face, when she opened the door, was gentle and quietly amused.

  ‘Thought you might need sustenance,’ he’d say, or some such other opening gambit. On this occasion, he opened his carrier bag and she’d peered over at what was inside.

  ‘You’ll be wanting a hand with those,’ she’d said.

  ‘That’s why I came to you.’

  ‘You’d best come in.’

  She was so unlike his last girlfriend, Maud, who liked to swim in cold rivers in her Speedo suit. ‘Show me a river, even in the dead of winter,’ she’d say, ‘and I want to dive in. So bracing.’ He remembered Maud’s supermarket own-brand face cream and shower gel. ‘It’s all the same stuff,’ she’d lectured. ‘You just pay for the packaging.’

  Ruby, though, was all for warmth and pretty packaging. ‘Ooh look,’ she’d cry, pulling him back as they strolled past a department-store window, her happy face reflected among pink and gold lettering and stripes. ‘Lovely! I’m just going to nip in.’

  In the heat of his new feelings, when they had been together about three months, he took her out to dinner and over the poppadoms said, ‘Rube, I think we should move in together,’ and she had clapped her hands and stroked his face with her palm.

  Meeting Ruby, it had provoked life’s force in him. There were suddenly no limits to his potential. He wanted to see exhibitions, new films, to try new foods. He found himself loving her with every fibre that he had, like he’d been dunked in it and it was like a pulse, or the rolling forward of an ocean wave.

  They visited her family in Leeds, and his school friend Alan, who’d moved there with his new wife Bridget. ‘Blimey, you’re a changed man,’ Al had said, lying on the sofa with his arms behind his head. ‘It’s the real thing, in’t it?’ In Winstanton, he and Ruby clung to each other, their social lives embryonic. She had her book group, he joined the squash club at the leisure centre; all of it, at times, a strain. Their intimacy became a lifeboat and even this he came to resent, as if his dependency were some fault of hers.

  The moving in had never happened. She’d been so excited, she’d started slowing in front of estate agents’ windows, her arm looped through his. Talking about where they’d put the Christmas tree. Maybe it was her enthusiasm that made him pull back, as if someone had to stop them both. Gradually, it became part of the dynamic between them, flaring up at every turn, when she would say ‘When?’ and ‘I might not wait for ye, ye know’ and ‘Who d’ye think ye are, George Clooney?’ in a mock-teasing way. Or else she’d look really sad and he felt he was failing her. He would say ‘Soon’ and ‘When things are more settled’ or ‘One day’. Occasionally, they really fought about it. He would find himself shouting, ‘Stop pushing. You’re always pushing!’ And he could see he was breaking her heart.

  At any rate, after that first forward impulse, something had simply stopped. His caution returned, like the desire to stay in a small room because the big room’s just too big.

  She has been snoring for half an hour. He lets himself out of her flat and walks back to his.

  *

  That could be me, thinks Max, watching the auction hands hefting sheep into pens. Sweating it for tuppence, or breaking my back on another man’s land. But instead here he is, flat-capped like Joe, stood next to him at the Slingsby fence, with one foot on the lower rung. He can’t stop smiling on the inside. Because everything’s set to change. The prospect of telling Joe his news is all before him, that sweetness undented. He can hardly hold himself back, but he’s also savouring the anticipation of it. He tries to pull the corner of his mouth down, but it seems to make the smile more purposeful. The cap shields him at least.

  ‘Here, what are you so pleased about?’ Joe asks. ‘These prices aren’t funny.’

  ‘Not funny at all,’ says Max.

  ‘Tell us now,’ says Joe. ‘If you’ve won the lottery, I’d like my share.’

  ‘You’ll know soon enough. I promised Prim.’

  Joe rubs Max’s back. ‘You’re a good lad,’ he says, and he doesn’t ask more.

  Up and down the pens, men stand talking, looking down at the lots. And beyond them, the fields roll away, the mustard-yellow leaves on the trees now starting to shed.

  Max and Joe stand together in the circle of men surrounding the auctioneer, and he thinks he can see the other farmers regarding them. Father and son. It was a rare thing to see these days, something to envy. He’s puffed up, standing next to his father, because Joe is admired among farmers. Has the knack for breeding sheep, everyone round these parts said so. Always did well at the shows and he’s had his share of prize tups that could go for thousands – the ones with strong legs and a sweet head. At least, they did when times were better.

  Joe has his eyes on the sheep that are being herded into the pen before them, where the auctioneer stands in his white coat. They run, whipped along occasionally by the auctioneer’s assistant.

  The auctioneer starts his song of numbers: ‘37, 37, 37 bid, 39, where are you 39? 39 bid, 39, 39. Sign away.’

  A ripple goes around the group. Joe shakes his head.

  ‘Thirty-nine quid. Jesus,’ he says. ‘Beauties they were, too. Did ye see? That’s bad luck, Dugmore.’

  ‘Never seen it so bad,’ says Dugmore, who farms over in Westerdale. ‘There were store lambs selling last week for eighteen pound. Eighteen pound! Not worth the feed.’

  The sold sheep are whipped out through the gate, some jumping three feet in the air as they run.

  ‘Ours is next,’ says Max. ‘I’ll go round.’

  He stands beside the pens of their mule gimmers, ready to usher them in. They will run around the perimeter fence, auctioneer at their centre in his doctor’s coat, while the farmers along the fence judge them, bidding with a tiny nudge of a forefinger, which the auctioneer won’t miss. And Max knows that Joe will feel it in every fibre – the murmuring between his fellow farmers while his animals run the fence.

  ‘That’s a bad lot,’ says Joe an hour or more later, when the cheques are out and they’re settli
ng themselves in the Land Rover.

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t ha’ bought them new tups,’ ventures Max.

  ‘Arh, but they were beauties, weren’t they? And going for a song. Let’s hope the mule stores do better next week,’ says Joe, lifting himself off the seat and adjusting his trousers. He sighs as he puts the key in the ignition. ‘If we can get thirty pound a lamb for the stores then at least the rent’s covered.’

  Max looks out of the passenger window while Joe takes off his cap and turns to throw it on the back seat.

  ‘In’t it glorious, the day?’ Max says.

  ‘Are you on the happy pills or summat?’

  And the smile bursts out of Max once more, breaking up his face with its unruly joy.

  ‘Come on, lad. Spill the beans.’

  And then he can’t wait. Not a moment longer. Even though he’d promised Prim. This moment, here with Joe, matters more.

  ‘Prim’s going to have a baby.’

  ‘Ha ha!’ Joe shouts, leaning over the handbrake to clap him on the shoulder, shaking him. ‘Hee hee! Really? Is it true?’

  ‘It is, dad.’

  Joe pulls Max’s body over roughly for a hug.

  ‘Well done you, lad. Well done you. Wait till I tell your mother.’

  ‘It’s early days,’ says Max in a half-hearted attempt to dampen Joe’s cheer when in fact he’s bathing in it. ‘I promised Prim I wouldn’t say owt.’ Joe is beaming at him, and this time, for the first time, it’s for something he’s done, not because the beet got lifted or the weather was in their favour.

  ‘Ah, that’s grand,’ Joe is saying, leaning back in his seat. ‘A bairn. Best time of your life. It were the best time of my life, when you two were tiddlers.’

  He ruffles Max’s hair again, gently this time, and Max thinks to remember this moment. He has never before felt such warmth spread through him, right from his belly. For the first time, he’s won himself an accolade. All those average school reports; and him never breaking out, like Bartholomew did, to get a job elsewhere – Max had begun to feel lost in the smallness and sameness of his life and now, here was his father, the man who mattered more than any on earth, pinning a rosette to his chest like he was the prize tup. This is what I’ve been missing, he thinks: the sun on my face.