Stronger Than Skin

by Stephen May

  ‘For God’s sake, sit down man.’

  ‘I’m all right standing thanks.’

  He finished his drink and poured another, resting the neck of the bottle on the glass in an effort to disguise the shake in his hands. So transparent. Might not be alcoholism of course, not entirely. Might be early stage Parkinson’s, something like that.

  ‘What do you actually want, Mark? What are your achievable goals here?’

  ‘Getting you to apologise for a start.’

  ‘I could do that.’ A deliberate pause, a slow swallow. ‘But I wouldn’t mean it. I mean, I am sorry for your sister’s death but…’

  Yeah, I got it. He meant that he was sorry the way a soldier might be who’d blown up a kid while blowing away the enemy. From Sheldon’s point of view Eve was collateral damage. A kid caught in the crossfire.

  He meant he wasn’t sorry at all.

  But it was a good question, what were my achievable goals?

  It was then that another wasp appeared. Smaller, lighter, far livelier than the bloated semi-hornet Sheldon had squashed a moment ago, it – she I suppose, if Sheldon was right – hummed insistently against the window. Sheldon started but made no move towards it. I walked around the desk, yanked the latch of the window to open it, guided the wasp towards the shimmer of fresh air with a waving hand. For a second she looked like she’d go, but then she took a sudden swerve up towards the ceiling. Maybe she’d find a nook up there, a safe place to hibernate. Oh well.

  I returned to my side of the desk, and now I sat down.

  ‘You can meet with Anne and you can be reasonable about the divorce, you can leave Dorcas here with her for example, not go for custody.’

  ‘Really? You’re deciding what’s best for my child now?’

  ‘I’m not arguing.’

  ‘You think I don’t really want her with me. You think I’m just trying to hurt Anne.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘You’re right of course.’ Another swallow. How many units has he had now? At least eight I reckon. These are not pub measures he’s pouring. ‘I do love her though.’ He looked at me with a look both defiant and pleading.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  There was silence. The breeze outside the open window murmured to itself. You could hear the endless whoosh of traffic in the distance. Somewhere a pigeon cooed.

  ‘Sometimes I think that going to America, it’s not about the opportunities there, it’s about just getting away. And about escaping the person I’ve become here, but...’ He paused again, took another deep swallow. Nine units now. At least.

  Wherever you go, there you are.

  ‘You know there’s nothing I can do about Fluxin. It’s nothing to do with me now. It’s out there with potential side effects pointed out on the user instructions in bold type.’

  ‘Meet with Anne.’

  ‘If I do, you’ll leave me alone, there won’t be any crusade following us across the Atlantic?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I’m not promising anything. Just do the right thing as far as she’s concerned.’

  ‘Right thing. Wrong thing. Things are so very black and white when you’re young aren’t they? Must be lovely to be so goddamn righteous.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I’ll do it, okay. I’ll do it. Dorcas will stay here with Anne. She can even keep the frigging house. If she wants.’

  I stood up. He had one last parting shot. Of course he did.

  ‘You and Anne, you look ridiculous together, you should know that.’

  Which is when I left him, standing to close the window, rolling the New Scientist to act as a swat as the wasp circled the room.

  44

  The summit was arranged for the following evening and neither Mish nor I would be around when it happened. Getting the parties to agree to Mish and me being there as referees had been impossible. In fact, the ridiculousness of us being anywhere near while they thrashed out who got what, this was something Anne and Sheldon could agree on. Yes, they’d meet dammit, they’d even share a meal, but only if their respective lovers were well out of the way.

  For the whole day Anne was fretful and anxious which made her snappy with Dorcas and me.

  Neither of us could say or do anything right. In the end I took the kid into town, and when we returned we went into the kitchen and shut the door and together the two of us worked methodically on making a shepherd’s pie and apple and blackberry crumble with vanilla custard, Dorcas having first assured me that these were dishes both her parents liked.

  From buying the ingredients to laying the table Dorcas was in charge of the preparations for the meal. We were, after all, using tried and tested recipes that she had learned that term at school.

  I hadn’t really cooked much before. Working in the pub had meant I was a master of the microwave. I could tell you instantly the power setting you needed for a potato to bake, how long you should nuke a pizza for, how many minutes a chicken pie took. What I’d never had to do was follow a recipe that wasn’t printed on the packaging of a frozen ready meal.

  I found I liked this proper cooking lark. It was soothing and – as Dorcas pointed out – there really wasn’t much that was difficult about it. You bought the right ingredients, you used the right tools – the knife that was sharp enough, the measuring jug that had both imperial measures and metric on a helpful conversion table down the side – and you followed the steps carefully. You didn’t skip any steps or try to guess any measures.

  You made sure the oven was properly pre-heated, you used a timer, you didn’t allow yourself to get distracted by something on the radio or by reading an article in the newspaper you’d bought earlier in town. You washed up as you went along so that the surfaces were always clear and ready for action.

  If you did all that, then cooking was easy, idiot-proof. Just like making an Airfix fighter plane really. Easier than that. The hardest dish to cook is easier than making a moderately tricky 1:72 scale model of a Sopwith Camel with all its bastard struts.

  Yes, I found I liked cooking. I found it was relaxing. I decided I was definitely going to do more of it.

  Dorcas and I ate early and Dorcas took herself off for a bath before going straight to bed, wisely keeping out of her mother’s way. As the day had worn on the fretful snappiness had become a brooding, charged silence that was a bit scary actually. I was glad I was going out.

  Earlier Anne had wondered what I was going to do.

  ‘I thought I might go down the rub-a-dub. Play some pool.’

  ‘An excellent plan.’

  ‘I’ll phone you though. About ten? Just to check things are going all right.’

  Anne said ‘I wonder what “all right” will mean in this context. You know I used to be able to get almost any male to do what I wanted? It’s true. You should have seen me as a schoolgirl, Marko. Always so many boys queuing up to carry my books for me. Frustrating how Philip has always been immune. Now you can sod off into town if you like. And don’t worry too much. If you’re near a phone and you remember to call me that’ll be great but I won’t expect it.’

  She kissed my nose. Smoothed the hair back from my face. Kissed me again. ‘The main thing is – don’t get too wasted. I don’t want to have to contend with brewer’s droop tonight on top of everything else. I suspect I’ll need some physical comfort after Philip has gone back to the pneumatic Mish. Not fair if he gets a post-negotiation shag and I miss out.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about that.’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose I do. I sometimes forget just how young and vigorous you are. I could bloody love you, you know. If I let myself.’ Her voice dropped. She moved her hands from my hair to my cheek. Her touch was light, her hand cool. ‘But I won’t let myself.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t want me to stay?’

  ‘No. You go and have fun. Have you got ID?’

  ‘Oh right, thanks.’

  Anne tousled my hair. ‘You’d forget your head, if it weren’t scre
wed on,’ and then, almost blushing at her uncharacteristic mumsiness, ‘What a stupid thing to say. Sorry. Go on get out of here.’

  I went to the Albion, a backstreet pub that I was quite fond of, and played pool. It was winner stays on and I stayed on for the whole evening.

  I was good at pool – let’s not forget I was brought up in a pub – and I even won some money. Fifty quid. I had a pint after every game, but it didn’t seem to affect my ability to play. As the evening progressed, calculating the angles got easier if anything. I couldn’t miss. Another message from the universe maybe. A small sign. A minor wonder. I just couldn’t work out what it meant.

  At ten I rang Anne from the payphone in the pub. She picked up but the bar was too noisy and I couldn’t hear what she was saying, and the bloke I had to play next was impatiently banging his cue on the floor in time to the music from the juke box, but at least she’d know I had called to check on her even if we didn’t have an actual conversation.

  At closing time I walked back through quiet streets, my stomach fizzy with cheap beer and my head woolly. I felt pretty chipper though. It was a dry night. Wind whispering and sniggering in the trees, but otherwise the weather kept its trap shut. The weather steered well clear. Even the traffic disappeared for a while.

  45

  Lulu and I are walking slowly through the neatly planned, mostly well-kept Victorian streets of the town looking for a hotel or a guest house where we can rest up and it takes a while because Lulu has to stop at the windows of all the estate agents of which there are a surprising number. She gasps at what you can get for your money here and her mood seems to darken. By the time we’ve looked in the windows of the fifth agency she’s as angry as Jezebel’s mum.

  ‘You can get a six-bed mansion here for the price of a garage in London. You get a garden and you get to live by the sea. It’s mental.’

  She falls into a brooding silence.

  Just off the main drag I spot a likely place. It’s a guest house called The Limes, though there is only one tree in the garden and it’s a dead elm anyway.

  ‘Let’s try this one,’ I say.

  Lulu is still thinking about houses. ‘You know what they should do?’

  ‘No, Lulu what should they do?’

  ‘They should offer the right-to-buy to private tenants. If you’ve been living in a private house for a while, three years say, you should be able to buy the house at a massive discount.’

  ‘Won’t that mean that people just stop renting out their houses? They’ll just leave them empty.’

  She thinks about this. ‘Well, in that case we’ll just take the blinking houses. We’ll say to landlords, look you’ve got spare property so decide which one you want to live in and we’ll have the rest – and we’ll give them to people who need them. Simple as.’

  I think maybe she’s right. Maybe it is that simple. Take what you need. No argument.

  The lady at the reception of The Limes looks at us dubiously and she gets more suspicious when I ask if she’s got two rooms. She says she has just one room.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ says Lulu. ‘We’ll take that one. How much is it?’

  ‘Forty-five pounds including breakfast.’

  ‘Forty-five pounds each?’

  The receptionist is baffled. ‘No dear, forty-five pounds for the room.’

  ‘And there’s an en-suite?’

  ‘Yes. All our rooms are en-suite. There are tea and coffee making facilities and satellite TV. Free Wi-Fi of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Lulu. ‘We’ll take it.’

  As the receptionist gets us to fill out a form – she doesn’t ask for ID I notice – she asks if we really don’t have any bags.

  ‘Oh we both have baggage,’ says Lulu. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

  ‘In the car, is it?’

  Lulu doesn’t answer and the receptionist doesn’t push it.

  As we walk to the room. Lulu says, ‘Forty-five pounds a night.’ There is wonder in her voice. ‘That works out less than our rent.’

  ‘Don’t forget the free tea and coffee making facilities,’ I say. ‘The satellite TV, the free Wi-Fi.’

  ‘The someone else doing your cleaning every day.’

  ‘That too. And the breakfast.’

  ‘Yes, let’s not forget the breakfast. Come and sit by the window.’

  ‘You’re not taking my picture.’

  ‘Yeah, I am.’

  She does. I don’t even argue about it all that much. Like Jake said, Lulu is a girl who gets what she wants. You don’t have to be with her very long to realise that.

  As a portrait photographer she’s professional and she’s quick, radiates competence. Turns my head this way and that with firm fingers, makes adjustments to my posture. Gives instructions in a precise, clipped tone.

  ‘Photo probably won’t come out anyway,’ I say.

  ‘Why, you a vampire?’ she says.

  I go onto the landing, unwrap another of my Cashcon phones and call the children. I call Jack first. I refuse to get my hopes up. Their phones will have been confiscated, there will be another police hand ready to answer for them, or they’ll simply be out of charge, so I’m not surprised when there’s no response. Still, I call Ella anyway but I’m just going through the motions really, so when her excited hello bubbles into my ear I am almost too surprised to speak.

  ‘Daddy? Daddy? Is that you?’

  I shut my eyes against the sudden tears welling there.

  ‘Yes, sweetheart. Yes, it’s me.’

  I ask her what she’s doing right now and she says she’s not doing anything, she’s just chilling and so I say well, maybe she could use the time productively, play the guitar or draw a picture, read a book or something and she is instantly cross.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Dad.’

  She’s right to be irritated. I’m irritated myself. I can’t believe I’ve opened with this pompous teachery stuff. I don’t even mean it, I was just feeling my way into the conversation. I try to row back. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I can’t help myself.’

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘It’s not your fault, it’s just who you are.’ There’s warmth back in her voice. Is it? I think. Is that who I am? I need to make some changes. Do some work on myself.

  I ask how Mum is and she sighs. ‘She’s okay. Bit mardy. On the phone a lot.’

  Is she now? And mardy is a new word.

  I tell Ella that this is a difficult time for Mummy and she’s got to be grown up and helpful. I ask if she’s excited about the new baby coming. ‘You know it’ll be soon now,’ I say.

  I can practically hear her eyes rolling down the phone.

  ‘Yeah. I’m ecstatic,’ she says. She sounds every inch the adolescent wearied by the stupidity of the parental world.

  ‘Is your brother there?’

  ‘Yeah. Of course he’s here. He’s always here.’

  ‘Can you put him on please?’

  A pause. Then Ella is back. ‘He says he doesn’t want to speak to you.’

  ‘Tell him he’s got to.’

  There’s a pause full of frantic whispering. I can’t hear the actual words though I can get the sense of it.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Jack. You didn’t answer your phone, bud.’

  ‘I know.’

  I ask him what’s new in his life. I ask about football and school and his friends and am answered in grunts. In desperation I ask if he’s got any got new facts for me. I tell him one of my own. I tell him that when a town has -stowe on the end it means holy place.

  ‘Dad, I said I didn’t want to speak to you and I meant it.’

  The phone goes dead.

  I phone the landline. I’m just going to leave a message, just going to say that I’m still their dad, that wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, whatever they hear, I’m still on their side, that they are still the most important people in my life, and that they must never forget how beautiful they are. Really, they must never forget that. />
  Only, I can’t say any of this because someone picks up.

  ‘Mark?’

  ‘Katy?’

  The last time we spoke we said horrible things to each other. Awful things. Things that you would imagine would kill any relationship. Words dipped in poison and all the more venomous for being delivered in bitter whispers so as not to disturb the children. Katy had closed the door on me with a terrible cold finality and I had left Haverstock Road blinded by a searing rage. Almost walking into the path of a passing van and not caring.

  But twenty-three years steeped in the steady routines and shared responsibilities of a more or less happy family life means that we can absorb a lot of damage. Take a lot of punishment. That’s the hope anyway.

  Katy’s voice is low and scratchy and she tells me why. She’s got the beginnings of a heavy fucking cold and not only that, she’s going mad, the kids are driving her nuts.

  ‘Acting up, are they?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  Turns out that over the last few days our lovely well-mannered kids have taken to answering back, to complaining about the food that’s offered to them, to making a fuss about judo and guitar and homework. They’ve been late to get ready for things, they’ve been losing things, they’ve been fighting, they’ve been fractious and tearful.

  I know better than to say that this is because they’re missing me. Know better than to remind her that until now I’ve not spent more than a single night away from them since they were born. That I’ve always been around.

  ‘You didn’t say any of this yesterday,’ I say.

  ‘I had other things I wanted to talk about.’

  ‘I’m sorting it, Katy.’

  There’s a long silence. I can hear her awkward, mucusy breathing.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not sure you can, Mark.’ She tells me that maybe I shouldn’t call again. She tells me that she’ll need to report that I’ve phoned her to the police.

  ‘I have to play it absolutely safe. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mark. Take care.’

  ‘No wait. Katy!’ I want to keep her on the line. It feels really important that I do that.