After You Left

by Carol Mason

  ‘That’s so touching.’ I look at his bulky hand resting on the gear stick. He says some of the sweetest things! ‘It’s lovely that you see it like that. Most men – well, their minds wouldn’t work that way.’

  ‘I’m not really a fully evolved man.’ He switches channels, and leaves it on a static-y Nina Simone singing ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’. ‘Remember, I grew up with four sisters. I have a large girly side, apparently.’

  I feel so close to him. It’s like I’ve known him forever instead of just a few weeks. ‘So do you really think a person can forget everything, Michael? I mean, you must have thought about it quite a bit. Surely, if you’ve loved someone very much, some small memory of them must stay with you? Even if you can’t connect the person your eyes see to the person who is there dimly in your heart?’

  I’d give anything for Eddy to remember Evelyn. Even if it was just for a minute. I shake my head, dismayed, already fearing the answer.

  ‘I don’t know, Alice.’ His kind eyes scan my face. ‘I gave you all that stuff to read . . . I wish I knew. I’ve read a lot of conflicting things. Some of it I want to believe, and other stuff I’m afraid to believe. So I’ve sort of made my own belief out of it. I’d like to think that our memories, where they concern love, anyway, are stored forever in a special vault that can never be touched by anything bad. Even if we can’t completely associate them with the person or thing we see before us. We know we are loved, and that we have loved, and we take that with us to our grave.’

  Why do all these utterances always lead me to thoughts of Justin? And then I remember what Evelyn once said. About how we place ourselves in the context of meaningful things: the family we have loved, and the people we have loved, and without that we are nothing. We have no context. And that’s what I feel like now. Like I have no context.

  I cannot push the feeling away. For the rest of the journey, I can’t drag conversation out of myself; I speak only when he wants directions.

  Somehow, given that he now has a small window on to my life, I sense he knows why.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I am either going to be brave, and do this, or I must put the entire idea out of my mind for good. But even with the exercise of giving myself these two options, I know which it’s going to be.

  I park across the street, fifty metres back from the front gate – pretty much where I parked those other times. Twenty minutes, then I’m leaving. Knowing my luck, I’ll raise the suspicions of a zealot of the neighbourhood watch committee – they’ll be saying, There goes that weird woman who was asking the plumber and the man next door about who lives here . . . I pretend to mess about on my phone and look businesslike and purposeful. Behind my sunglasses, I manage to turn my head one way while looking the other, though it’s painful.

  The thought that Lisa is probably inside that house with Justin’s child is something I can hardly comprehend; Justin’s baby, Justin’s future, right behind that red front door.

  I stare at the house until my eyes burn. I am still not sure what I expect to see. Justin coming home? Lisa running out for groceries with the baby? Perhaps nothing. Justin might be working late. He could be at the gym. Or perhaps he doesn’t do that now that he has an ill son to hurry home for.

  Am I going to knock on the door again? Now that I’m actually sitting here, I know that Evelyn was right. What would we even say? I am just readying myself to leave when I see movement at the window. My stomach lifts and drops. I can see the outline of a woman. She’s standing in profile. She appears to be chatting on the phone. I realise that if I can see her, she can possibly see me. Does she even know what I look like? Do I ever cross her mind? Is she capable of feeling pity or even a note of guilt toward me? Would she think, God, that’s poor, long-faced Alice! Justin’s actual wife of a few days. Then would she fly into a panic and ring him? Would Justin phone the police, worrying there was going to be some sort of standoff? I realise this is just my overactive imagination at work, but nonetheless, no, I’m definitely not going to knock on the door.

  It could be that I’m staring so intently I’m seeing movements that aren’t even there. I blink, look away to refocus and look again. She’s gone.

  Come back! I say, under my breath. But nobody comes to the window again. I suddenly realise my fingers are clenched in my lap and my back is saturated. I wouldn’t make a very good private eye.

  I sit here until 6:30 – already ten minutes longer than planned – thinking, Come on, let something happen, give me a bit more than this! Because now I don’t know why I’m fixated on seeing her, but I am.

  I’m just about to give up when, oh, look at this . . . The woman has returned to the window, this time with the baby. I’m given only the briefest glimpse before they disappear again. But then, miraculously, a few seconds later, the front door opens.

  Right there, standing on the doorstep, as though deliberately presenting themselves for my benefit, is Lisa, with Justin’s little boy.

  Seeing them is more unsettling than I anticipated. Lisa isn’t what I imagined, though I had no reason to imagine anything, given he said so little about her. She’s average height and sporty thin. She is wearing tight, pale jeans and a loose-fitting, flesh-toned T-shirt. Curtains of ebony hair hang past her shoulders from a severe, 1970s-style centre parting, like a young Ali MacGraw. When Sally had said the woman she saw with Justin in the car was pretty with long dark hair, his other girlfriend had sprung to mind: Jemima – the one we crossed paths with in town. Lisa holds Dylan preciously, as he gazes somewhat flaccidly over her right shoulder. He’s a large baby – though it’s possible he’s bloated from medication. Yes, that’s what it must be. I can’t stop the sting of my tears.

  It happens all too quickly. I’m so focussed on the baby and Lisa that I barely register the arrival of a car. I’m only conscious of someone walking up the path when I realise that Lisa is walking down it. She has come out to greet someone.

  Justin.

  My breath catches. I cannot take my eyes off him. Justin always walks tall, like a very confident person, yet nothing about it is put on. He’s just naturally rather graceful for a man. He’s wearing his mid-grey suit and a mauve shirt open two buttons at the neck, his tie dangling out of a pocket – his purple Gucci one; last time I’d seen it, I’d packed it in the suitcase. To any passing observer it’s a Kodak moment. Dad comes home from work and is greeted at the door by Mum and big bouncing baby. Baby is passed through the air, from Mum, to Dad’s waiting arms. Dad lifts baby high; baby is suspended there above Dad’s head. Dad pulls him close and plants a kiss on him. I’m certain I can hear the smack of that kiss from the car.

  I am transfixed. It’s like rewinding to the time before I knew him, when I had just caught sight of him in the bar, waving to catch the barman’s attention. In that split second of my objectivity, as he lifts his son gently into the air, I recognise him for exactly what it seems he now is: an attractive family man who belongs to someone else.

  I should go. Must go.

  I can’t. I can’t rally myself to leave.

  I just want to sit here and watch them until the end of time.

  The baby’s colour isn’t good. I see that quite clearly now. He’s pale and he’s definitely bloated. But he looks happy. Or is that my imagination?

  He looked happy the second he saw his dad.

  I watch Justin say something to Lisa, and then I watch them walk back to the house. Then Lisa looks across the street, though not at me. Oddly, though, it’s a look of melancholic finality, or something else I can’t pinpoint. Or perhaps I just think it is. Then she follows them inside. The door closes.

  I did notice one thing, though. Justin didn’t kiss her. I’m not sure if he even touched her; I don’t think he did. His focus was all on his little boy.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I’d forgotten about the envelope. Evelyn had said open it when you’re alone and feeling a little brighter, though I’m not sure I can claim to be that. I think I’ve obser
ved a pattern. The worse I feel about my own life, the more I seek escape in Evelyn’s.

  I sit cross-legged on my bed, the last of the evening sun streaming in through the bare window. I’m the woman in Hopper’s Morning Sun. After a moment or two of enjoying the warmth and the peace, I open the envelope.

  It’s not a letter. Intriguingly, it’s an old newspaper cutting dated March 18, 1984. It has been folded into quarters. The fold lines are fragile, so I take care when opening it out.

  My eyes go straight to the headline: Newcastle Man in Coma after Bar Brawl.

  On the left-hand side of the page is a photograph, maybe two square inches in size: a face I instantly recognise.

  And then I see the name.

  THIRTY-SIX

  ‘Eddy is my father.’

  I only have to look at Evelyn for the tears to roll down my face.

  She nods, and tries to say something, but is at a loss for words. Instead, she steps aside to let me in. I walk into her living room and drop into the nearest chair. Since reading the article, I’ve been suspended in a state of shock – like jumping from an airplane and hovering sixty feet above earth, bracing yourself to land, but puzzled as to why you’re not moving.

  I still haven’t landed.

  ‘He’s my dad,’ I say, as though repeating it might make it more real.

  ‘Yes.’ Evelyn finally speaks. ‘He is.’

  It takes me a while to compose myself, to be able to get all this out. ‘I wondered why you went into such detail . . .’ I try to swallow the blockage of emotion in my throat. ‘I thought maybe it was just the writer in you. You more than painted a picture of him, Evelyn. You took me there. You made me know him. I felt I was you. I felt I knew him like I was you.’ I frown. ‘That was all deliberate.’

  She mops tears with her knuckles, and nods. A silver bracelet slides down her arm. On it is a single charm of a tiny woman wearing a top hat and sitting on a silver horse. I stare at it, and at the pale-blue veins against her papery pink skin. I can’t reconcile the Evelyn I thought I knew with the person whose actions broke up my parents’ marriage and cost me a father. They could almost be two different people. Or perhaps I’m the one who has changed. I don’t know who I am any more.

  ‘I wanted you to know about him; as much as I could tell you, anyway. I wanted you to know the truth – that he didn’t abandon you. Events didn’t happen the way you were possibly told – or not told. I realise there is probably a lot you weren’t told.’

  She meets my eyes, and I glimpse the tender yet determined streak that I’d observed from day one.

  ‘He would have wanted you to know that. More than anything in the world, he would have hated you living the rest of your life believing he ran off with some woman and didn’t give a damn about you because he didn’t love you.’

  I listen, but am reaching ahead. ‘In all your conversations you never mentioned his daughter’s name, or his wife’s, for that matter. That must have been quite a feat! I’m not sure how I didn’t twig.’

  Or had I perhaps had an idea? When I saw Eddy that first day in the gallery, I’d likened his good looks to those of the matinee idols I grew up watching. But could I have possibly remembered him? Did one’s memory even stretch that far back?

  I just keep revisiting that moment when I read Eddy’s full name. The complete slap of impossibility and disbelief.

  ‘I haven’t really thought of myself as April Alice Fairchild in years.’

  ‘You hated the name April. Your father told me. It was one of the first things he ever said about you, actually. No one you knew was called April, you see. You were only five years old, and yet you knew your own mind enough to know you wanted to be called a popular name.’

  She speaks about me as though she was there, witnessing my childhood. Then I think, But in a way she was. At the reference to my father in this context, though, a feeling of pleasure tries to surface, amidst the confusion. ‘I did hate my name. It was a little too Doris Day . . . Some silly kids in my class used to call me March or November . . . When I went to Uni I started going by Alice – my grandmother’s name. I felt I suited it better. It was just way more me.’

  ‘I know. I saw the roll call of honours graduates. I saw you in your graduation gown.’ A note of pride appears on her face. ‘The alumni magazine listed that you’d taken a position here in Newcastle. That’s how I knew.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Were you keeping track of me?’ This, too, is only dawning on me now. ‘You must have been! I mean, how did you orchestrate it all?’

  ‘There wasn’t much to orchestrate. I think I must have had a little help from forces beyond our control. Forces of right.’ She briefly looks up at the ceiling. ‘I kept in touch with Stanley, as you know, simply because I couldn’t sever the link to Eddy entirely. I knew that your mother had moved away. I knew about the terrible thing that happened in the bar . . . Stanley was aware how much I blamed myself.’

  She appears to wilt. I’ve seen this before – where something she’s thinking seems to bring her to her knees. ‘Stanley died last year. He was eighty-FOUR. He was a good man. He was a fine friend.’

  After a moment, she regains her train of thought. ‘As for other details . . . it was quite easy for me to find things out. I was a journalist, remember? Even if you had worked in Timbuktu, I’d have found you and told you what I felt you needed to know. But, as it was, it ended up being a lot easier than that. The exhibition was just a perfect opportunity that presented itself – pure fluke. When I saw the picture of Christina’s World in the newspaper, it brought back so many memories of my own yearnings for Holy Island and my home. I just thought that if there was anything that could get through to Eddy, turn on a light in his mind, perhaps that image of Christina could . . . And there, at the heart of it, was you.’

  I find myself once again in a rush to talk and a rush to listen. ‘I don’t know what to comment on first, Evelyn! My head is spinning! I feel so terrible because I just assumed my father was a shyster. Because my mother led me to believe that.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for me, you’d have grown up with him in your life, and you’d have known what a good man he was. And Eddy wouldn’t have ended up with a brain injury and then dementia!’ She cups her mouth for a second or two in a soundless gasp.

  I suddenly think of the burden of guilt. And, of course, this makes me think of Justin; Justin and his guilt about his gene pool. I feel so desperately sad.

  ‘I can’t imagine what it’s like for you to learn all this, or how I would react if I were you, Alice. Or what you must think of me. I hope you don’t feel manipulated. I wasn’t trying to get close to you to somehow make it easier to drop this on you. I felt a genuine bond with you, and I still do.’

  ‘I don’t know, Evelyn.’ I honestly don’t know how I feel toward Evelyn right now. ‘I think the magnitude of it all is hitting me in waves. I suppose I’m just taking it all in and waiting for the next thing to hit.’

  ‘The one thing I have always wondered,’ she ventures, ‘the thing I couldn’t possibly have guessed at – did you come back up here to work because you knew you were from here originally? I’ve always wondered what you knew about your roots.’

  For a moment, I almost forget what I knew. ‘It’s all a bit confusing, really. I have no memories of having lived anywhere other than Stockport. My mother had a North East accent, and my gran used to come to visit us, but we never came up here, oddly – though I’m not sure if it was odd to me at the time; it was just what we did. I think we may have gone once, to Whitley Bay – which was where my gran lived.’ Memories have been trying to refresh themselves before my eyes. ‘She would mostly come to us, and we’d go on beach holidays – sometimes with Alan; mostly without. We’d go to Wales and Cornwall; my mum loved it there.’

  Saying it now, it did seem odd indeed. But there was a lot that I hadn’t questioned because my mother never gave me room to. ‘Moving up here for work was pure coincidence. After Uni, I applied to
public galleries all across the country. Newcastle was the only one to offer me a job.’ I narrow my eyes. ‘You didn’t have a hand in that, did you?’

  ‘Good heavens!’ She places a hand on her heart. ‘Now you’re giving me a little too much credit!’

  For the first time, I smile.

  ‘It’s weird, but you know when you were telling me about how Eddy was supposed to wait until after Christmas to tell his wife, but he jumped the gun? Well, I remember that shitty Christmas! I remember suddenly being palmed off to go stay with Gran, then when I came home, my dad wasn’t there. I remember it was Christmas morning, and I wanted to open my presents, but not without him. I kept asking my mother, and she finally said I had to just do it because he wasn’t coming home.’ I frown. I can see her. ‘She was very . . . changed. Distant. Somewhat indifferent to me. I opened my presents and I remember thinking no one cared that my Christmas was spoilt.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Alice,’ Evelyn says.

  ‘I think he might have come to my house in Stockport once, too. I can’t be sure . . .’

  I had taken the bus home from school with my friend, Trish. I must have been about eight years old. Right as I walked into the house, I heard Alan’s voice, and my mother’s, and that of a stranger. A man.

  They stopped talking as I came in. They were in what my mother called the posh room, the one that rarely got used, except when I practised piano. There was a tall, dark-haired man sitting near the piano stool. All he could do was look at me for what felt like a very long time, then he said, ‘Hello, April.’

  ‘This is your stepfather’s friend, my mother said. I can’t recall what she said his name was.’

  This friend shook my hand. No one had ever shaken my hand before. I remember saying, ‘Can I go play now?’

  He stayed for dinner. My mother seemed springy and tense. I remember thinking my stepfather and his friend didn’t talk very much – for friends. He did ask me lots of questions, though. About school, my friends, my subjects, my piano. He was very interested in the fact that I could play. At one point, my foot caught his foot under the table, and I pulled both of mine back, determined to keep them out of the way. I didn’t eat much of my dinner, and I thought I would die if anyone suggested I play the piano, but thankfully no one did.