Sweet Sorrow

by David Nicholls

  ‘You’re moving in with—’

  ‘Jonathan. For the time being, yes.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Don’t know. We’ll see.’

  ‘And me and Billie are staying with Dad.’

  ‘Well …’ She chewed her lip and looked to the wall and, with some precision and care, spoke. ‘The current thinking is that Billie will come and live with me and you will stay with Dad.’

  A moment passed, a held breath, before I could speak again.

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘—with you and Billie.’

  ‘Oh, Charlie—’

  ‘I’m serious! Take me.’

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘Because I’ll go nuts if I stay there.’

  ‘Jonathan’s got a family, he’s got twin girls.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘There’s no bedroom.’

  ‘I’m all right on the sofa.’

  ‘Charlie, I need you to stay with your dad!’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because … you’re the oldest—’

  ‘No, you’re the oldest!’

  ‘You’ve always been close to your dad—’

  ‘No, we’re not close, you like to think we’re close because it’s easier for you.’

  ‘When you were little, you were close—’

  ‘I’m not little!’

  ‘No, but you can get that back, get close again.’

  ‘I’m closer to you, I want to come with you and Billie!’ I had tried hard not to panic, to keep fear from my voice but to my embarrassment, I now found that I was crying –

  ‘Charlie, I’m not emigrating, I’m only going up the road, I’ll be around! You’ll see Billie at school every day!’

  – crying like I was four or five, jagged and breathless. ‘You won’t be there when we wake up, you won’t be there nights—’

  ‘You’ll be fine, the two of you. Your dad loves being with you—’

  ‘It’ll be horrible! I want to be with you!’

  She was crying too now, trying to hold me as I tried to push her away. ‘But what can I do, Charlie? I love you but I’m so unhappy, you have no idea, you think because we’re grown-ups – I know I’m being selfish and I know you’ll hate me for it now but I’ve got to try something. I’ve got to do this and see what happens—’

  Suddenly she lurched towards me, propelled by someone shoving at the store cupboard door. ‘Who’s in there?’ shouted a male voice.

  ‘Greg, go away!’ said Mum, struggling to hold the door closed.

  ‘Amy? I need a roll of towel for the dispenser!’

  ‘Go. Away!’

  ‘You got someone in there with you? Saucy wench—’

  She slapped the door hard with the flat of her hand. ‘Greg, I beg you, please, just … fuck off!’ then mouthed to me, ‘Sorry!’

  We waited for a moment, tangled on the floor as if the small room were a lift that had plunged to the basement. I couldn’t quite tell which limb was mine, which my mother’s, but somewhere in the mess she found my hand, squeezed the fingertips and tried to smile. We stumbled to our feet. Rolls of fluff like fat caterpillars were clinging to her pencil skirt and she began swatting at them with the back of her hand. ‘Christ, look at me. How’s my –?’ She indicated her eyes.

  ‘Panda,’ I said and she grabbed a whole toilet roll from the catering pack and blotted at one eye, then the other.

  ‘I’ll get money to you, and you can phone anytime, and I’ll call in once a week or so, check that you’re surviving. Not just surviving, I mean check that you’re happy, you’re eating.’ She tossed the roll like a netball onto the top of the metal shelving. ‘I really don’t think it’ll be that different. It might even be better for you. Boys together! You can do your schoolwork, revise in peace. Or I’ll help you! The timing’s horrible, I know, but at least you won’t be living in a battlefield.’

  ‘I’ll be living in a mental hospi—’

  ‘Stop that!’ she snapped. ‘Stop it now!’ and, turning quickly from me, she reached high for a cylinder of towelling and, brisk now, as if I’d failed the interview, she tucked the drum under her arm.

  ‘You’re old enough for all this now, Charlie.’ She held the door open. ‘And if you’re not – well. Time to grow up.’

  Corners

  In the days immediately after their departure I had a vision, clear and inevitable, of our domestic future: the house as cave, animal bones scattered on the floor like the opening of 2001, my father and me communicating in grunts and howls. It would require effort on my part if we were to avoid this descent into total degradation, and an unexpected desire for order kicked in. Quickly, I learnt what an airing cupboard did, how a thermostat worked, how to restart the pilot light on a boiler. The first batch of pale pink school shirts taught me the importance of separating the colours from the whites, the growing pile of unopened post, still largely in my mother’s name, taught me how to forge her signature.

  I wish I could say that I learnt how to cook. Rather, I learnt how to order food. A varied and balanced diet meant ensuring the strict rotation of Indian, Chinese and Italian, meaning pizza, which we ordered on a three-day cycle, the fourth day given over to ‘leftover day’, a sort of reheated global buffet. I knew the phone numbers by heart, but even the pleasures of cheap, bad food were soon beyond our means and so the great world cuisines were supplemented with something called Dad’s Pasta Bol, a great saucepan of undercooked spaghetti, stuck together in sections like the mighty cables on a suspension bridge, stirred in the saucepan with an Oxo cube and half a tube of tomato puree or sometimes, very late at night, a teaspoon of curry paste, which transformed it into Dad’s Pasta Madras. There were, I’m sure, Elizabethan sailors who ate healthier, more balanced diets and though we were never hungry – we forced food into our mouths even before our plates hit our laps, as if it were a competition – we soon developed the coated tongue and greasy, sallow complexions of those who pass off pesto as a vegetable. We were slipping into a life that was unhealthy in every respect, but I won’t deny there was a squalid pleasure in it too. ‘Use a plate,’ Dad would say if he found me eating cold curry from the foil container, ‘we’re not cavemen.’ Not yet, but we weren’t far off.

  Occasionally we would rebel against this life, walk the extra mile to the superstore and throw lentils, apples, onions, celery, in amongst the white sliced loaf and economy meat. We’d stride home, full of plans for hearty soups, stews with barley, food we’d seen made on TV: tagines, paellas, risottos. Dad would put on some mad helter-skelter blast by Gene Krupa or Buddy Rich. ‘Let’s get this place ship-shape,’ he’d say, just as he used to when I was small and Mum was due home, and there’d be the same sense of collaboration and defiance as we wiped out the fruit bowl and loaded it up with pears, peaches, kiwis and pineapples. The last few cigarettes would go in the bin – I’d fish them out later – and the ashtrays were rinsed and stashed on the top shelf.

  ‘We do all right, don’t we?’ Dad would say. ‘Boys together. We manage,’ and he’d put another record on. Music was as clear and reliable an indication of Dad’s mood as the temperature on a thermometer. I’d be obliged to listen – no, really listen, sitting up straight, no newspaper, no distraction – to A Love Supreme or The Amazing Bud Powell, both sides, because ‘you wouldn’t watch half a great film.’ He’d stand at the stereo, bopping his head, raising a finger – ‘listen to this, here it comes!’ – and watching my face to see if I’d heard it too. And sometimes, very occasionally, as if feeling the tug of a tidal current, I’d almost, almost be carried along. Mostly, though, it was an exercise in indulgence, straining to love something that he loved too. ‘It’s really good!’ I’d say, but I couldn’t tell good from bad, could only hear the generic cymbal-wash that I thought of, secretly, as Pink Panther music.

  But Dad’s optimism was a preca
rious state and I soon learnt that such highs were temporary and paid for with an equivalent low. Gloom rolled back in like a fog, the music replaced by great slabs of TV, watched without engagement or enjoyment. The pears would remain as hard as stones while the peaches turned to pulp. Kiwis would fizz and burst, the pineapples shrivel, an unnameable sticky black liquid pooling in the bottom of the bowl. My father would empty it into the bin, ashamed once more of another failed initiative to restore some decency to how we lived, how we moved through the world. Then he’d go out for cigarettes.

  As for Mum, I still hated her for leaving us but there was something theoretical about the hatred now, as if it was something that, like a marriage, had to be worked on and maintained. More instinctive was the stab of betrayal that felt sharper every time I saw her, the humiliation of not being picked for her team.

  But I also felt, I think, a certain pride in being her representative in the house. I’d never been a prefect but perhaps I might fulfil the role at home, which was why I liked to know that she was coming, so that I could create the impression of wholesome orderliness, plump the cushions, empty the fridge of foil containers, make sure Dad was either presentable and fully dressed or, if that was not achievable on that day, then fully absent. Given notice, her visits had the quality of an inspection. I’d watch her eyes take it all in. No plates in the sink, good; clean tea towels, clean washing snapping on the line, nice to see. Her guilt was essential to me; I wanted to stoke it like a furnace because I wanted her back. But I did not want her back because we were incapable. Even while I strained to hate her, it seemed important that she should be proud of me.

  On the day I met Fran Fisher, Mum was already in the kitchen, loading the shelves with groceries. I watched her, standing in the open doorway, as she used her fingernails to lift a mouldy crust from the breadbin and drop it into a bin-bag. Somewhere in the house a fat bluebottle patted its head against a window in the afternoon light, and she muttered to herself as she unpacked, a private commentary of minor criticisms and complaints.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  She glanced over her shoulder. ‘Where have you been?’

  None of your business. Our conversation carried a commentary as easily read as the subtitles on a foreign film. ‘Just out. Went for a bike ride.’

  ‘Dad’s out too?’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Thank God he’s not here.

  ‘Any idea where?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ Some mad walk.

  ‘Is he sleeping much?’

  ‘I think so.’ Not at night. The sofa, in the afternoons. Your fault.

  ‘Seeing people?’

  ‘Only me.’ Also your fault.

  ‘Looking after himself?’

  ‘Same as always.’ He doesn’t shave and drinks too much; he wears the same clothes for days. Your fault.

  ‘Has he mentioned the possibility of looking for work?’

  ‘He has, yeah.’

  This was only partly true. On days when our joint presence in the house became unbearable, Dad would grab pens and paper and turn the TV over to the Situations Vacant pages of Ceefax. Could either of us be a gas fitter? Insurance salesman? Diver on an oil rig? We contemplated new professions in the same way that children do: train driver, cowboy, astronaut, could we fit our faces to the role? The answer was invariably no and the exercise was both dispiriting and deeply uncomfortable. Looking for work was not something father and son should do together, the discomfort greater even than when watching sex scenes, and soon we’d snap back to the programme, change the subject, mention it no more. I changed the subject now.

  ‘How’s Jonathan?’ Jonathan is a perfectly nice name, hard to say with derision.

  ‘All good, thank you for asking,’ said Mum levelly, slamming the cupboard door closed with the flat of her hand, then doing so again and again until it finally remained shut. Bang-bang-bang. She rested for a moment, both hands on the counter. ‘You know the best thing about living there? No jazz and all those lovely corners!’

  ‘Well, as long as you’re happy, Mum,’ I said, but I knew that if she’d given the word, I’d have run upstairs and packed a bag in a heartbeat. Perhaps she knew this too, because now she changed the subject.

  ‘What are you doing with the summer? In general, I mean.’

  ‘Riding my bike. Reading.’

  ‘Reading? You were never much of a reader.’

  ‘Well. I am now.’

  ‘All those years we went on at you to read …’

  ‘Well, maybe that was the problem, you going on at me.’

  ‘Hm. Yes, I see now that it was my fault. At least you’re outdoors. Are you spending time with other people?’

  I’ve just met this amazing girl; could I ever have said that? I had heard tell that there were people who could talk openly and honestly with their parents, in conversations that were not simply long volleys of sarcasm and self-righteousness. But honestly, who were these freaks? Even if I’d found the words, it was impossible now. We could hear my father’s voice outside, artificially bright and loud. ‘Hey, Billie! What are you doing here?!’

  Bracing herself, my mother turned back to the cupboards. ‘Don’t fight,’ I whispered but Dad was leaning in the doorway, his face set into a look of proud defiance that he couldn’t quite pull off.

  ‘Still here, are you?’ said Dad.

  ‘No, Brian, I left fifteen minutes ago.’

  ‘I only came back because I thought you’d be gone.’

  ‘Did you not see my car in front of the house? It’s not a big car but still I thought you’d notice it.’

  ‘What are you taking this time?’

  ‘Actually, I was bringing stuff – food, something not served in a foil tray. I can always take it back.’

  ‘Please, do.’

  ‘It’s for Charlie, mainly—’

  ‘Charlie’s fine. We both are, thank you.’

  Without looking away from the cupboard, she held above her head an open jar of raspberry jam, tufts of white mould like candy-floss sprouting from its neck. She tossed the jar into the sink with a clatter.

  I already knew how this one ended, the volume increasing then snapping off with the slam of the door, and so I left and walked out to Mum’s car where Billie sat, head down, reading with her hand pressed to her mouth like a gag. The day was still hot but the window was up, so I had to rap twice with my knuckle, and this alone saddened me more than anything else that had happened that day. Were we close? When we lived together we’d nipped and provoked each other in the expected ways, but in the dark days of our parents’ transformation the bickering had been exchanged for a weary solidarity, whispering between bunks like squaddies under the command of drunk and incompetent officers. Now the alliance had been broken and even the most inane domestic conversation seemed loaded. Happiness in her new home would be a betrayal, unhappiness just one more thing to be angry about.

  Billie waited for the window to come all the way down. ‘All right?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘They arguing?’

  ‘Just starting now,’ I said and looked at my watch as if the event was scheduled.

  ‘How’s it here?’

  ‘Same as before. How is it over there?’

  ‘Bizarre.’

  ‘How are “the twins”?’ Casting Billie in the role of Cinderella was the sole small amusement that we could find in her new situation.

  ‘The twins? They’re very sporty. You open a cupboard and there’s this rain of footballs and hockey sticks and badminton nets. They keep trying to get me involved, like I’m this sickly orphan and they’re trying to make me feel at home, so we can be pals or something, bond over lacrosse. They’re all “Billie, come out and play lacrosse with us!” And I’m all “What is this, school? I don’t do games unless it’s on the timetable.” Every time I look up, they’re in their sports bras, warming up or down or whatever. Their dad’s the same, can’t stop chucking stuff. “Billie! Catch!” “No – just pass it to me.”
When he’s not chucking stuff at people, they sit and watch cricket, days and days of it.’

  ‘What, Mum too?’

  ‘Yeah, though you can tell she’s glazing over after three minutes. She calls it making an effort, I call it collaboration. She even played golf. Talk about crossing to the dark side. “While we’re guests here, it’s important that we make an effort.” I mean, fuckin’ hell – golf!’ Billie’s swearing was a new innovation, self-conscious and furtive. Like a toddler pretending to smoke, it seemed wrong to me and, awkwardly, we both looked towards the house.

  ‘Want to come in?’

  ‘Nah. Leave them to it. Dad still Mad Dad?’

  Opening the car door, I slipped into the backseat furtively like an informer. ‘He’s all right mostly, then he goes a bit manic, stays up late and drinks, which he’s not meant to do on his pills. Some days I don’t see him at all.’ From inside the house, we heard Mum’s raised voice, the clatter of cupboards. ‘I hate it here. I mean I hated it before, but I really hate it now.’

  Billie reached back and patted my hand. ‘Be strong, my brother,’ she said in a portentous, Star Wars voice. We both laughed, and I tried something for the first time. ‘Miss you.’

  ‘Oh puh-lease,’ she said, and then, ‘You too.’

  But now my mother was out of the house, slamming the door, my father opening it immediately so that he might slam it himself later. For now, he would stand in the doorway, arms crossed, a rancher protecting his land. I jumped from the car, slammed that door too – would we ever close a door gently again? – and immediately Mum was in stunt-driver mode, spinning the wheels, over-revving as she reversed the car and then drove away.

  I glimpsed Billie, sticking out her chin and screwing her index finger into her temple, and I raised my hand and went back inside, back to my own team.

  The Name Game

  For the first time in weeks, I set my alarm.

  But for some reason sleep escaped me (shape of nose, shade of blue, great curve of, precise constellation) and in the restless hours, I made a plan: I would turn up at nine thirty, join in with whatever the hell they did up there, approach Fran casually at tea-break, lunchtime at the latest, ask for her number, then, once I had it in my hand, run like Indiana Jones runs from that boulder.