Sweets From Morocco

by Jo Verity

  When he rang Salisbury Road, Tessa answered, pleading in a low voice, ‘Help. Get me out of here. I’m going crazy,’

  ‘You’ve only been there an hour,’ Lewis said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What d’you want me to do?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ve done it already. I told them that you asked me to babysit this evening. So that you and Andrea could go out for a couple of hours. A sort of final fling before the baby. I’ll be with you by seven-thirty.’

  ‘Do you ever tell the truth?’ He couldn’t help admiring her ingenuity.

  ‘That’s what writers are supposed to do, isn’t it? Make up stories?’

  ‘Won’t they complain if you desert them?’

  ‘They can’t because I invited them to come too. Naturally, thank God, they declined. So, technically speaking, they abandoned me.’

  ‘Does that mean I can book a table for two, somewhere?’ he asked.

  ‘Now you’re talking. I prefer Indian if there’s a choice.’ She paused. ‘Only joking, Lew. Maybe we could get a takeaway. And I promise I won’t upset Andrea.’

  Tessa’s mother was impatient to show her the pile of clothes she had already knitted for the baby. ‘White and lemon. It’ll do for a girl or a boy. Lewis says they don’t mind which it is, as long as it’s all right. It would be lovely if it were a little boy, though. One of each.’ She looped the tiny matinee jackets over her forearm, stroking the fine wool as if she were calming a fretful animal.

  ‘They’re lovely, Mum.’ Talk of babies and childbirth unsettled her. And she couldn’t imagine what it must do to her mother.

  Jay had put no pressure on her to have the abortion, but she had been only twenty-two, neither ready to become a mother, nor selfless enough to bear a child for another woman. After the operation she was euphoric with relief. Then suddenly she’d plummeted into what the doctors said – rather insensitively she thought – was a form of post-natal depression induced by the fluctuation in hormone levels. For months she was low, wanting to do nothing but sleep or cry. Jay had sent money to help with the rent and food bills when she couldn’t work. Pills got her through.

  On the second occasion, unsure which of several lovers might have fathered the child and needing to finish the second book, there was no question of having the baby. Not wanting to risk another episode of ‘post-natal depression’, she had talked the doctor into prescribing something straight away and, despite feeling a bit ‘down’ she’d managed to carry on.

  Looking back she wondered if the doctor’s explanation had been correct. She’d seen how losing a baby had driven her mother mad with grief. Might her own illness have, in fact, been a form of grieving? After all, she’d ‘lost’ an unborn child. Two unborn children.

  Lewis opened the door, Sarah clinging to his leg as though she were afraid of being swept away by a flood. Tessa still had trouble believing that her brother was a father. Each time she saw him with his daughter, she had to adjust to the notion all over again.

  It was equally difficult to think of him as a husband. When Lewis and that Kirsty girl – the one whom Tessa never met – split up, he hadn’t seemed too disturbed. They had never discussed the ins and outs of it, but she imagined it was one of those schoolboy romances that had run its course. About the time of the split, the school where Lewis taught became co-educational and, the next thing Tessa knew, he was engaged to Andrea Something-or-another, the geography teacher inherited from the girls’ school. Andrea was pleasant enough. Pleasant. And reliable. And dogged. And all the other attributes that Tessa equated with geography. She was okay-looking, for those who went for freckly, redheads with watery blue eyes. And she and Tessa had loathed each other on sight.

  ‘I need a drink. An hour with Mum and Dad and I’m ready to explode.’ As she came in she tripped on the doormat. ‘Fuck.’

  Lewis frowned, pointing towards his daughter who untangled herself from her father and ran down the hall towards the breakfast room.

  ‘Sorry. Have I blotted my copybook already?’

  Andrea’s arrival let her off the hook. ‘Hello, Tessa. It’s ages since we’ve seen you. New haircut. Very trendy.’

  Tessa smiled, groping for a compliment to return. Andrea always looked pale but today her face was pasty, her freckles standing out like splatters of mud. She wore an unflattering maternity dress, the Alice in Wonderland styling – prim white collar and puffed sleeves – looking, to Tessa’s eyes, bizarre if not obscene on such a distorted body. ‘Thanks. And how are you? Remind me. When’s the baby due?’

  This was all it took to set Andrea off, slogging through tedious details, as if nothing in the world could be more fascinating than the birth of her child. Tessa fixed her face in a sympathetic smile and tuned out.

  A fleeting look around the breakfast room reassured her that Lewis hadn’t been tempted to replicate Mrs Channing’s eclectic dècor. The furnishings were from Habitat or somewhere similar. Wooden-framed chairs with washable cushion covers stood around a pale, clean-lined table; paper lampshades hung where there had once been elaborate glass shades; bright prints – Monet, Van Gogh, Lautrec – decorated the cheery yellow walls; fitted carpet running up to white woodwork replaced threadbare rugs on squeaking floorboards. Bright and hygienic and modern. Tessa was glad. The old people and their world had faded away leaving only her and Lewis to remember the magic that they had woven amongst the over-stuffed furniture and dusty knick-knacks.

  Catching Lewis’s eye, she glanced towards the corner and smiled, knowing that he, too, was encouraging Blanche’s contented murmurings to drown out the monotony of Andrea’s voice.

  Chapter 19

  ‘I’ll be fine on my bike,’ Tessa insisted.

  Andrea was plumping the cushions on the sofa, a hint that she should leave.

  ‘But you haven’t got lights,’ Lewis countered. ‘And you’re tipsy. I’ll drive you back.’

  ‘True. On both counts.’ Having made the gesture, she felt able to accept Lewis’s offer and with it the opportunity to have him to herself.

  ‘You go on up, love,’ Lewis suggested to his wife. ‘You look whacked.’

  Tessa kissed Andrea and pointed at the ungainly bulge. ‘Good luck with… Hope it all goes well.’

  Tessa was struck by the immaculate state of Lewis’s car. Blanket neatly folded on the back seat, sunglasses located in a clip on the dashboard, map book and driving gloves in the pocket on the door. Not a toy, sweet wrapper or discarded apple core to be seen. The vehicle could have belonged to an elderly widower.

  ‘Is this how you thought it would be?’ Tessa asked as he started the car.

  ‘Is what how I thought it would be?’

  ‘This.’ She circled her hand in the air, indicating the inside of the car, the semi-detached houses outside and the world beyond. ‘Everything. Work. Marriage. Fatherhood. Everything.’

  He drove on in silence, as though she hadn’t spoken.

  Swivelling in her seat, she faced him. ‘Stop.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop the car. If you’re going to keep up this everything in the garden’s lovely charade, I’ll walk the rest of the way.’ She reached down, grabbing the door handle and opening the door several inches.

  Lewis pulled in to the kerb. ‘Go on then.’ He stared ahead, turning to look at her only when she had shut the door again. He sighed. ‘Why d’you do this? You breeze in, trot out a load of hurtful statements then breeze out again. D’you get a kick out of upsetting everyone?’

  Tessa grinned. ‘Backbone detected in suburban man. Three cheers.’

  ‘It’s not funny.’ He spoke quietly and calmly. ‘Anyway, is your life so perfect? You live in a pokey little flat, lurching from one sad fuck to the next. You refuse to take on any sort of responsibility. You’re selfish and inconsiderate. You kid yourself that you’re a writer when what you actually did was steal an old lady’s life and sensationalise it. Is this how you thought it would be?’

  Tessa got out of the
car and started running along Medway Avenue. Behind her the car door slammed and she heard Lewis calling her name, running after her. She slowed.

  ‘Sorry, Tess. I lost it. I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Oh, I think you did. That was quite some speech. You must have been working on it for years.’

  Had her brother’s tirade been directed at anyone else, she would have been delighted to discover him capable of such vehemence, but his outburst wounded her.

  Someone opened a front door and milk bottles clinked on the step. Distracted by the noise, Tessa and Lewis turned to see where it was coming from.

  ‘God. Look, it’s our old house,’ Tessa whispered.

  They froze, still and silent, until the door closed and the hall light went out.

  ‘Come on.’ Tessa tugged the sleeve of her brother’s jacket, pulling him towards the driveway.

  To avoid the light cast by the street lamps, she kept in the dense shadow of the boundary hedge, tiptoeing up the drive, in no doubt that Lewis would follow. A wrought iron gate now replaced the old wooden one between the garage and the side wall of the house. Running her hand across its cold curlicues, she found the latch.

  ‘Let’s hope they don’t have a dog,’ she murmured, pausing to see whether the scrape of the latch had alerted anyone in the house. But no lights came on, no dog barked.

  They slipped through the gate and into the past, the moonlight revealing the stone steps leading up from the backyard to the lawn; the cherry tree, its branches silhouetted against the night sky; the privet hedges dividing the back garden from the ones on either side. They were standing close to where their den had been and, peering into the shadows, Tessa saw two happy children playing at make-believe.

  She caught Lewis’s hand and squeezed it. ‘You can feel us, can’t you?’

  ‘Tessa, please. Let’s get out of here before we’re arrested.’ He tried to pull her away.

  ‘Don’t be such a wimp,’ she said, ‘this is … important.’ A breeze blew across her neck and she shivered. ‘I need to pee.’

  ‘Tessa,’ Lewis groaned.

  ‘It’s okay. No one’s watching. I’ll go behind the garage.’

  She pulled her tights and pants down and squatted, steadying herself with a hand against the garage wall. ‘It’s only what cats do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cats. They mark their territory with pee.’

  She finished and stood up, tidying her clothes. ‘Your turn.’

  She heard his stifled laugh. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Please. You must. It will make this place forever ours.’ She pointed towards the dark form of the cherry tree. ‘Over there. Under your tree.’

  She expected him to argue but he didn’t and, as he walked towards the tree, she was shaken to realise the power she had over him and consequently the responsibility she had for him.

  ‘I can’t believe I did that,’ Lewis said when they were back in the car.

  She leaned across and kissed his cheek. ‘But I bet you’re glad you did.’

  ‘You talk such bullshit,’ he laughed.

  Tessa wound down the window and lit a cigarette. ‘So, are you ready to answer my question? You’ve had plenty of time to think about it.’

  ‘Which one is that?’

  ‘Don’t play silly buggers with me.’

  He drew in a deep breath. ‘No. I don’t know what I thought it would be like – but not like this.’

  ‘Me, neither.’ She offered the cigarette to him but he shook his head. ‘I only come back to see you. You must know that. It’s hard to believe that Peggy and Richard Swinburne are anything to do with me. I don’t even feel pity for them any more. Christ, I’m a cow. But I’m an honest cow.’ She took a deep drag on the cigarette, blowing the smoke expertly out of the car window then cleared her throat. ‘D’you think about him at all?’

  This time he did not plead ignorance. ‘Yes. I think about him most days. It’s a nasty habit I’ve slipped into.’

  ‘D’you think he’s dead?’

  ‘Probably.’ He paused. ‘But I kid myself that he’s living a great life somewhere – the life I’d like to have lived, I suppose.’

  Lewis was clasping the steering wheel of the stationary car, as if by doing so he was keeping the world on course.

  Tessa laid her hand on his forearm. ‘Blimey. That’s a bit heavy.’

  ‘Things don’t get much heavier than having your baby brother snatched away. Do you think about him?’

  ‘Of course I do. Maybe not every day. But sometimes I see a lad in the street or in a bar, who looks a bit like you, a bit like us, and I … wonder.’ She flicked the cigarette butt out of the window, its tip still glowing as it rolled across the pavement. ‘Once, years ago, when my first book came out, I was doing a signing at W H Smith’s in the Strand, and a blonde woman, middle-aged, smartly dressed, came up to the table. She had a boy with her – fifteen or sixteen I suppose – and, I don’t know, the age was right and there was something about him – his eyes, his smile – made me think, that’s got to be him. He looked very happy.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I signed the woman’s book.’

  Lewis glanced at his watch. ‘I really ought to—’

  ‘Please, Lewis, just a bit longer. We never get to talk.’ She clapped her hands. ‘I know, drive us somewhere.’

  ‘Where?’ His very question signified acquiescence.

  It was in her power to save them both. They could abandon everything, here and now, and together they could drive through the night to … anywhere. Lewis was such an old woman, worried about breaking rules and desperate to be liked. But he was the only person in the world upon whom she could count. Even Jay, in the end, had turned out to be a bastard. Despite all that ‘open relationship’ crap, not long after the pregnancy he’d converted to monogamy and, the last time she heard, he and Liza had moved somewhere exotic – Tunisia? Turkey? – and had produced two more children. Perhaps Lewis wasn’t ready to be saved. He would need to admit that he was shackled hand, foot and soul before he stood a chance of making his heroic escape.

  ‘I don’t know. Yes, I do. Gran’s house.’

  They drove across town and over the bridge that spanned the muddy river, darkness concealing the shabbiness of the wharf buildings along the waterfront. The Saturday evening picture-goers were coming out of the Odeon, some of them hurrying to the pub across the road for a drink before ‘last orders’. Others swelled the queue at the bus stop. They drove on. Past the chip shop. Past the inelegant stone church. Past the launderette. As children, they had made this journey dozens of times, in their father’s car or on the top deck of the bus. And, as they turned into the narrow street, Tessa yearned to find Gran in the draughty little house, waiting to feed them boiled eggs and scold them for talking with their mouths full.

  ‘What exactly are we doing here?’ Lewis asked as they drew up outside the familiar house. ‘And I don’t mean that in a metaphysical sense.’

  Their grandmother’s house was in darkness. Whoever now occupied it was in bed or enjoying a Saturday night out. ‘I don’t know. It was either come here or the school – we never went anywhere else.’

  Lewis laughed. ‘Rubbish. You’re so choosy with your memories. We went to loads of places.’

  ‘Okay. Where else did we go?’

  ‘We went to the seaside—’

  ‘Well you aren’t up for driving to Weymouth tonight, are you?’

  ‘I’m surprised you’d let a little thing like that deter you. Okay. Let’s think. We used to go to Uncle Frank’s—’

  ‘Yes, but not often. In any case, he never lived in the same place for more than five minutes. What’s he doing now? I’ve lost track. Is he still “in ladies underwear”, or whatever it was he used to flog?’

  ‘Insurance. And you know it. Yep. He turns up now and again. He’s got a bedsit somewhere near the hospital.’

  Tessa fiddled with the handle on the glove compartme
nt. ‘Has it ever struck you that Uncle Frank’s … a bit … weird? That dodgy job. Living alone in a bedsit when you’re fifty-something.’ She paused. ‘D’you think there was something … I don’t know … something iffy going on. Between him and Mum.’

  ‘For Christ sake, Tessa—’

  ‘Don’t you remember how chirpy she was whenever he was around? He was such a show-off. I thought it was for our benefit but maybe… Dad used to be so bad-tempered when Uncle Frank got us laughing. Perhaps it was because he was jealous.’

  ‘Whilst you’ve been doing all this thinking, have you ever thought what Dad’s had to deal with in his life? What if you’d been crippled when you were fourteen? How would you feel if one day you’d been playing football, the next parked on the sidelines? If a girl went out with him, he must have wondered if it was out of pity. The mortification of watching his brother go off to the war whilst he was stuck in an office full of girls and old men. Then, just when things were looking up and he’d regained some self-respect, the Gordon thing. We can’t even begin to imagine what he went through – is still going through. Every time he looks at Mum he must—’

  ‘I know all that. But what about Mum and Uncle Frank?’ Tessa persisted.

  ‘You’re sick.’

  Neither of them spoke on the way back to Salisbury Road but when they were pulling up outside, Tessa reminded her brother that she had, as far as their parents were concerned, been babysitting that evening.

  ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’ she asked, getting out of the car.

  ‘I’m not sure what we’re doing.’ His voice was cool.