by Gee, Maurice
His father was sleeping in a bed. Sunlight fell across his hands, making the knuckles shine like a row of bald heads. His face was in shade and was turned to one side. What if I’m the one who finds him dead? He went into the room – a sunroom with a polished floor and sliding windows nudged a little open for the air – and stood at the bed, beside a kitchen chair for visitors. He did not want to wake the old man, who might, he thought, be frightened to find a stranger in his room, but wanted to make sure he had the right person. There was nothing in the face he could recognise. The tugmaster features were gone, melted away. Skin lay glazed on bone or was sucked into hollows. Alan should feel pity, he supposed, but could not. He recognised a final state.
He read the name on a bottle of pills on the bedside table: Mr R. Macpherson. It gave him the jolt the old man’s face had failed to bring. ‘Okay, Dad,’ he whispered. He felt that he might pray for him now, although not with any feeling of kinship – but touch his hand, establish contact, and ask forgiveness for them both. Yet words would not come. There was too great a stretch of time to cross. He wanted to see his father’s eyes and hear his voice. He returned to the sitting room, where the book still flicked its pages on the chair.
A toilet flushed in another part of the house. His mind switched from the old man to May but he had almost nothing to base expectations on: the memory of a child, a woman’s voice. She must be washing her hands. Touching up her lipstick, tidying her hair? He was unsure of what women did. Steps sounded in the hall and someone small in trousers and a shirt came into the room. ‘Who are you? Don’t you knock?’ she said.
‘I did. But I didn’t want to wake …’ He indicated his father’s room. ‘Are you May?’
‘No, I’m Freda. I suppose you must be Alan. You’ve made good time.’
‘Where’s May?’
‘You won’t see her unless you go to Golden Bay.’
‘Golden Bay?’
‘Over the hill. That’s where she lives. She doesn’t live here.’
‘I thought …’
‘Sit down, why don’t you?’ She shifted the book from the arm of the chair and smiled at him. ‘I’ll make you something to drink. Is tea all right? I can make coffee. Or do you want to have a look at your father?’
‘I had a look. I thought May would be nursing him.’
‘I’m the nurse. For a while. You don’t know who I am, do you?’
‘No, I’m sorry …’
‘Your sister-in-law. I’m David’s wife. But not Freda Macpherson, I’m Freda Prentiss. David and I are getting a divorce.’
‘I’m sorry …’
‘Don’t be. I don’t know how long you’re staying, Alan. You are Alan, aren’t you? I suppose I’m right?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s just that I hadn’t heard of you. Well, I guess I had, David brought you up a couple of times. But not as someone who might come here. Robert asked for you.’
‘May said.’ He was disconcerted by her quickness; could not take her in. ‘Why is she in Golden Bay?’
‘She lives there with her partner. Evan Yates. Have you heard of him?’
‘No.’
‘What a family.’ Turning her face like a knife. ‘They’ve got a pottery. You know, make pots.’ Her hands shaped one. ‘You should go and see. How long since you saw May, anyway?’
‘Thirty-five years.’
She laughed, flashing her eyes. ‘And the same for your dad?’
‘No –’
‘Don’t you want to know how he is?’
‘I looked in. I can see he’s ill. May said old age. She said it wasn’t cancer.’
‘He says cancer but that’s just because he wants the best. What it is is congestive heart failure. And general debility. He’s running down, I don’t know, like a washing machine. I hope you didn’t come here to try and save his life. I’m not offending you, am I? I mean, thirty-five years.’
‘You’re not offending me.’ She was disturbing him: a thin quick woman, hair drawn back for action, teeth filed sharp, a glittering alertness in her eyes. He could see her, somehow, in the prow of a boat. Yet she seemed to be wanting to project friendliness.
‘That’s good. I do sometimes. Come in the kitchen while I put the kettle on. You didn’t see Heather on your way in, I suppose?’
‘Is that May’s daughter?’ He followed her out of the sitting room.
‘Yes, the boss around here. She runs the orchard. Girl with a head scarf and a taste for command.’
‘I didn’t see her. I didn’t know May had a daughter until she rang.’
‘She’s the only grandchild the old man’s got. Unless you’ve got kids?’
‘No.’
‘You married?’
‘No.’
She was quick with kettle, cups, milk – at the sink, at the fridge, back again – and her conversation jumped about. He wanted to hold her in one place.
‘Tell me about David. If that’s all right.’
‘Is it thirty-five years for him and you too?’
‘Yes.’
‘You just walked out and never came back?’
‘I had my life to get on with,’ he said.
‘You Macphersons. All looking for a life. I hope you found one. The army, wasn’t it? Lieutenant-colonel? That’s probably where Heather gets it from.’
He sat down at the table, keeping his resentment in control. The woman was a specialist in needling, that was plain, and yet good-humoured with it, and interested too. If she had married into the Macphersons and survived she had earned some respect.
‘I’d like to know about David,’ he said.
‘So would I. Okay, smart talk. Let’s see. You know he was a policeman, I suppose?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘He wanted to be in the CIB but he never made it. Then he was – internally disciplined.’ She flashed a grin. ‘It sounds like they gave him a twist in his bowel.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Hit someone too hard. There was no way he was going anywhere after that. So he got out. He tried, God, I don’t know, this and that. I wasn’t around. I didn’t marry him until a couple of years ago. Milk and sugar?’
‘Milk. What went wrong?’
‘What didn’t? May introduced us, did you know? I’ve known May since we were at school. She came up with this nice-looking brother – he looks like John Wayne, except he gets rosacea, and he’s a bit mean in his eye. Still, passable. Nice laugh, you know, and he splashed his money around. He was no slouch in bed either. I’m pretty big on that.’
The woman was still hurting, Alan saw, but hurting, perhaps, at what she had done to herself. ‘What did he do for his money? What’s his job?’
‘He owned a car yard. In Richmond. He sold it when we split up. What he works at now is getting me back. He doesn’t like wives who get away.’
‘Did he have others?’
‘Girlfriends. He played the field. That’s why marrying was such a big deal for him. Contracts, you know. Property. I was the one who was married before.’
‘Yes?’
‘To a man called Bill Prentiss, until he died. He had what old Robert in there thinks he’s got.’
‘Were there any children?’
‘Nope. I couldn’t. Because – none of your business. Hey, I’m confessing. Are you sure you’re not a priest?’
For a moment, in the pause she made, she’d dropped into a hole, and he admired her agility in scrambling out. He sipped his tea and took a biscuit from the tin she offered.
‘Tell me about May.’
‘Ah, she’s too tough. You’ll have to go and see her for yourself.’
‘Won’t she come here? Does she come and see –’ he found the word hard to say – ‘Dad?’
‘Not if she can help it. I won’t be staying long myself. I came to pick apples and I got shoved into this.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’m getting paid. It’s not for love. Nursing is my job. One of them. He
ar that? Listen.’
‘Dad?’
‘Banging his walking stick on the floor. Maybe you could buy him a bell.’ She went to the door, but stopped. ‘One thing, Alan –’
‘Yes?’
‘About David. He doesn’t know I’m here and I don’t want him to.’ She grinned. ‘I’m on the run.’
‘He doesn’t come either?’
‘Not for months. He’s – he gets violent. I’ve had to take an order out. Non-molestation. So …’
‘Yes. I won’t tell him. If I see him.’
‘Thanks. I’ll get Robert ready. Pour yourself another cup of tea.’
She padded off – pump soles – and he put more milk in his tea and swallowed it lukewarm, thinking that what he needed after all that was a Scotch. A managing woman, sharp and cross – which was her nature, he supposed – and a good deal hurt. He hoped he would not have much to do with her. Why was May not here?
He stood up and looked out the window – and all those even-featured trees, all of one size, were not so much an orchard as a factory for making apples. He felt like an alien, he felt civilised; and he told himself that he would get away as soon as he could. Decently could. See May. See David. Talk with his father. Get away. That was the plan.
He heard the stick strike the floor again. It made a sound like a branch snapping in the jungle: the woman, Freda, must be doing that. It would have been good manners to come and fetch him.
He rinsed his cup and put it on the bench; then he smoothed his hair, obeyed the call.
ALAN AGAIN
It was late afternoon before Alan was able to leave the house. His father had talked, and had a rest, then talked again, pointing with his knotted hand at things he plainly thought were obvious; and Alan, learning them, had found his thoughts not easily contained. It was like being in a debriefing room, except that he, the listener, was the one being debriefed, discovering dangers he had passed through and never known.
Freda put a stop to it. ‘Enough,’ she said, ‘there’s always tomorrow.’
‘I’m not finished,’ Robert Macpherson said.
‘You are for now.’ She put his stick out of reach to stop him hitting her, then brought it back and fitted its handle in his palm. ‘I’m taking you to the lavatory. Don’t argue, Robert. I want you done before Heather gets here.’
‘Alan,’ Robert Macpherson said, ‘it’s like I told you. You’re a gone goose when they get in charge.’
Alan walked on the dusty road to the packing shed. A woman halfway across the yard stopped in midstride to watch him approach. Heather, no doubt. Heather in the headscarf, who was so far unexplained. Was her father the Evan Yates who was May’s partner? She looked too young to be running an orchard – looked like a schoolgirl standing in a playground. He raised his hand, acknowledging their relationship, and turned into the trees. He did not want to take on another person yet, or more information.
The apples were a sort not grown in his day: Royal Gala. Stupid name. He picked one and rubbed it with his handkerchief. Took a bite, which he enjoyed. Sweeter than a Cox’s Orange, less tough than a Granny. Not a bad invention at all. Perhaps it deserved its place in nature. Today might be a day for letting new things take their place. He considered that. Old things, more accurately. Unsuspected things. He was not troubled by them – not too much – but was overloaded, suffering a kind of input stress. When he had them settled down he would discover what they meant.
Voices called back and forth: pickers in the trees half a dozen rows away. He saw their aluminium ladders flash, and saw down a long tube made by leaves and apples a woman’s bare arm reaching out of sight. A tuft of black hair gleamed in her armpit. He was several folds of reality away, in a world where faces came at him as though from under water and white arms reached out from the dark. Okay, so how do I get out? There was no need to be helpless, there were things that he could do. The story his father had told him he might have worked out for himself, so there was no need to be shaken up. Could he really, though, have worked out love?
‘Your mother was the one,’ Robert Macpherson said. ‘There was never any other woman for me. All the rest … I’m a man with strong needs, Alan. I had to have a woman in my bed. I still need one, not that they’ll let me, bloody nurses … but there’s got to be an outlet for a man. No use being namby-pamby, I needed to get my end in regular. That girl’s mother, what’s-her-name’s mother …’
‘May?’ Alan said.
‘May. Fay it was. She was hot stuff. I hadn’t got her here a couple of days and she was climbing all over me. Good for a while. Couldn’t last. I had to get rid of her. A wife’s the thing for regular. But my wives got sick. Both of them. A sick woman is no good to a man.’
‘What did you ask me down here for?’ Alan said.
‘Her.’
‘My mother?’
‘Because she’s the one. The others, all the others – second best.’
‘Did she love you?’
‘I don’t use that word. That’s a woman’s word.’ He spoke with difficulty, wheezing. His big nose, drooping, had run all its flesh down to the tip.
‘How did she feel about you, then?’
‘Don’t like feel either. Your mother and me – there’s ways a woman lets you know. You never had a wife, did you?’
‘No.’
‘So you wouldn’t know. She made it plain.’
Alan walked out of the apple trees and stood at the edge of the cliff. The road below him was hidden by trees. He heard cars whining up, and saw caravans and housetrucks and camper vans arranged in rows like boxes beyond the second fall of cliff. He looked out as though from a cave, and wanted to go there, into the camp, across the sea, away into the distance. Colour and light would free him; but he could make no connection. He walked along the cliff to a stand of pines left, he supposed, to hold the edge from eroding, and sat down with his back to one. He finished his apple and threw the core away. Over the Royal Gala trees he saw the red roof of the packing shed, and the roof and windows of the house. The woman Freda, his sister-in-law, walked onto the patio, only her top half showing, and raised her hand to shield her eyes as she looked west towards the mountains. Then she turned his way, but did not see him, for she scratched her ribs and yawned, working her shoulders one way then the other. She went inside again. Like her he shielded his eyes and looked at the mountains – shapes so familiar once that he could have drawn their profiles without looking: the two jags of the Twins, filed teeth, Arthur with its leftwards slant, flat-topped Crusader, a military hill. They had been his west: pale in the morning, black at night. Now they were too distant to reach. He was tangled here.
‘Do I have to spell it out? Your mother was a tiger, she couldn’t get enough. I sometimes think getting sick was a punishment. I don’t forgive her, leaving me alone.’
‘So why,’ he managed to say, ‘do you want me here? To tell me this?’
‘You’re her son, that’s why. The others are – they’re useless. You’re an army man. I knew we’d have a good son, always knew it, Noeline and me.’
‘I see.’
‘You got her looks. She was a looker. The others were fatties, skinnies, you remember. I’ve said enough. I’m not letting you think I’ve gone soft. But every man should have a woman once. And a son with her.’
Love story, Alan thought, sitting with his back to the tree. He supposed he should be pleased. His mother had loved his father; and his father, in spite of his disclaimer, had loved her, he made it plain. It had been more than carnal, that was plain too. Alan laughed. He felt a little sick – but maybe that came from the apple. He closed his eyes, letting go the mother he had kept since she had died. She had been unreal for most of that time. He hoped he would be pleased to be rid of her. But who was the woman in her place? She was no one he would want for himself. Yet it seemed that she had loved. That made her mysterious, it kept her from coming clear.
The mountains grew darker and seemed to squat. Higher than Ben Alder. H
igher than Ben Nevis. May was over there, on the other side, making pots. It seemed the muddy sort of thing she’d do, the child who went barefoot with road-dust on her ankles, the child with ringworm.
‘She’s still a fatty,’ Robert Macpherson said. ‘She hasn’t changed. I’ve never been sure she’s really mine. That Fay could’ve been in pod before she ever got here. There’s no way for a man to know. But I gave her a home – twelve years it was. Until she took off with a picker. Same as her mum: after anything that had a dong. But I treated her right, Alan. I put her to school. I fed her and paid for her and I never had a word of thanks. The only good thing that ever came out of her was that girl –’ gesturing at the packing shed.
‘I took off too,’ Alan said.
‘You’re a man. A man’s got to make his way. The thing you did wrong was quitting the army. You could’ve been a general if you’d stayed.’
‘We don’t have many generals. I got as far as I wanted.’
‘David quit too but I never had any hopes for him.’
‘You shouldn’t have had any for me. What is it you want me here for, Dad?’
‘Water. Give me some water.’ He drank. ‘You know I’ve got this cancer?’
‘I heard. What sort?’
‘Doesn’t matter what sort. It’s spreading all over me. I’m not complaining. A man’s got to die of something and I still got my brain.’
‘Yes.’
‘I won’t let them do surgery. Or chemicals or X-rays, all that muck.’
‘Good for you.’
‘So – this Heather. What do you think of her?’
‘I haven’t met her yet.’
‘Go down the shed and have a look. She’s no oil painting, but by God she’s got some go. She came in here one night, just walked in off the bus, told me, “You’re my gran’pa. Can I have a bed?” I sent her down the pickers’ hut, told her to stay there. And then we were short so she stayed on picking. Six years ago and she’s still here. She’s learned the orchard business better than a man. That girl. She’s good.’
