I’ll Go To Bed At Noon

by Gerard Woodward

  ‘Yes, okay Janus. Do you want me to bring you anything? Anything from the house?’

  ‘No, just yourself.’

  Colette managed to add, ‘Are you sure Brimstone Park’s more than half a mile away?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve checked on the A to Z.’

  ‘You don’t have to look so miserable,’ she said to Aldous, having recounted the conversation, ‘He’s got no intention of coming round here. He’s fully aware of the terms of his eviction.’

  ‘It’s just the thought that he’s out there, roaming free. I can’t relax any more.’

  ‘But he won’t be coming round.’

  ‘That’s what he says now. What happens when he gets drunk? He won’t care about his eviction order then. He could do anything. Well, it was nice while it lasted, this time of peace. It was a wonderful Christmas, but now it’s all over.’

  ‘You can’t have your son in prison for ever. And I’m sure he’s changed. His voice, it was so different. So sensible sounding. Efficient. I’ve never heard him talk like that before.’

  But Aldous wouldn’t drive her to Brimstone Park. She had to take a bus.

  The café in Brimstone Park was at the back of the odd little Tudor mansion that housed the art gallery and museum. On weekdays it was used only by mums and au pairs, who chatted dolefully over cups of strong tea while their swaddled charges slept or sucked at teated bottles of milk. As Colette entered, stooping first beneath the low bower of dead wisteria, then through the little, white, glass-panelled door with a brass handle, she immediately saw Janus sitting uncomfortably between prams, hunched over a cup of tea.

  He was wearing unfamiliar clothes. A black duffel coat with the hood down, a pair of jeans. Expensive-looking walking boots. It was the first time she’d ever seen him in jeans. She found herself rushing over to him, bending down to hug him before he’d even had time to realize she was there.

  It was an unusual sensation. She couldn’t recall ever having hugged Janus, even as a child. If she ever tried he pushed her away, telling her not to be ridiculous. But this time he yielded, and even ventured to return the gesture, reaching up to pat his mother comfortingly on the back. Her face buried in the depths of his duffel coat, Colette felt she was looking at her son down a long dark tunnel. It must have been the months in prison that had introduced these new, alien layers of odour. The scent she recognized as her son was somewhere underneath it all, remote and fragile.

  The embrace lasted longer than she sensed Janus felt comfortable with, and she sat down on the seat opposite him. She wiped the tears from her eyes with a piece of tissue paper she took from her cuff.

  Janus was thinner. His face had sunken a little and he had a dull white pallor. His hair was longer than when she last saw him, but unkempt and greasy. He still had a moustache.

  They didn’t know what to say for a few minutes, muttering stupid pleasantries. Colette told Janus how well he looked. He returned with his usual gauche honesty by saying she looked awful.

  ‘You’re so thin,’ he said.

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘But you’re abnormally thin. You look ill.’

  ‘I’ve grown thin worrying about you.’ She made a sudden attempt to change the subject, ‘What was it like in prison?’

  Colette felt immediately the question had been silly. How could he be expected to sum up the extraordinary experience of prison life in a chat over tea? She sensed a shyness in him, amongst the young mothers, an embarrassment. She didn’t probe further. He’d survived. But then she suddenly snapped.

  ‘Janus, this is all wrong. This is terrible.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘This situation. Me having to meet you like this, like we’re spies passing secret documents. We might as well be in Berlin.’

  Janus shrugged, as though the situation was nothing to do with him. Then he asked, ‘Will I never be allowed home?’

  The voice came from the little child she remembered from thirty years ago.

  ‘I don’t know, Janus. I wouldn’t say “never”. But not now, and not for a long time.’

  ‘I know not now,’ the familiar, sardonic voice had returned, ‘But how long will I have to wait?’

  ‘Don’t ask, Janus. It’s far too early to think about that. You’ve got a hell of a long way to go before you can even think about coming home. Daddy didn’t even want me to see you today. I had to get the bus, he wouldn’t give me a lift. Do you think we went through all this just so that you could come home again? This is serious, Janus. You’ve got no choice but to pull yourself together. Now tell me about where you’re living.’

  Janus passed a scrap of paper across the table.

  ‘I’ve written the address down. It’s quite a nice place. It’s a hostel for people who come out of prison and haven’t got anywhere to live. A big old Victorian house. Hackney’s nice. I’ve never really been there before . . .’

  ‘And what have you got, just a room?’

  ‘Yes. A room. I share a kitchen and a bathroom with about four other people . . .’

  ‘And they’re all ex-prisoners?’

  ‘Yes. There’s Jim, he’s a burglar. Keith, a pickpocket. Maurice, I think he murdered someone about thirty years ago. It’s funny, he was wondering what had happened to all the trams, he’s been inside so long. He’s got no idea about prices. He thought a loaf of bread should cost about half a shilling. When he got his first dole cheque he thought there had been a mistake there was so much money in it, he came over and said Janus, they’ve given me twenty-three pounds . . . he was going to take us all out for a slap up meal at the Savoy.’

  Janus looked disappointed when his mother failed to laugh at this.

  ‘Janus, why couldn’t you just be a normal child, a normal man, why did you have to turn out like this?’

  ‘How could I be normal with a mother like you?’

  ‘What do you mean? You’re trying to blame me? But Juliette and James and Julian have all had the same mother, and they’re fairly normal . . .’

  Janus shook his head.

  ‘But I knew you as a young woman. How old were you when you had me?’

  Colette had to think, but Janus answered before she could do the calculation.

  ‘You were twenty-four. A sweet young woman. A girl, almost. That’s how you were when we first met. How old were you when you had Julian? Forty-two. He has only ever known you as an alcoholic, drug-addicted old bag. He hasn’t witnessed the decline that I have. He hasn’t seen the way you fell from grace like I have. You’re a fallen angel, mother, and I’ve had to witness not only your physical decay but your psychological disintegration and moral self-neglect as well, all in one package . . .’

  ‘The others have had it much worse than you. You were nearly a man by the time I went off the rails. The others were still children, they hadn’t formed their shells yet. You should have been stronger, it should have had less effect on you . . .’

  Janus didn’t answer, but looked hurtfully at his empty cup of tea. Colette felt inclined to accept his argument.

  ‘Okay Janus. I don’t care if you want to blame me. Everyone else does, I’m sure. But that doesn’t alter anything. We’re still stuck here, in this little café, and you’ve let your life drift away from you. You need to think how you are going to get it back. You could start by admitting that everything you’ve done to make us throw you out was your own fault in the end, and if you apologized that would help . . .’

  Still Janus managed to find his tea interesting.

  ‘What about if we both apologize? I’ll say sorry for being a lousy mother if you say sorry for being a lousy son.’

  Janus gave a hopeless laugh, though still looking into his cup.

  ‘You are sorry, aren’t you, Janus?’

  ‘Of course I am. I said all that in my letters didn’t I? Or didn’t you read them?’

  ‘Of course I read them.’

  ‘And did daddy read them?’

  ‘Yes.’ This was only partly true. Al
dous had read only the first of Janus’s explicatory letters.

  ‘And what did he think?’

  ‘Not much, to be honest Janus. Daddy will need a lot more time. It’s hard to convince him of your sincerity.’

  ‘But are you convinced?’

  ‘Of what?’ Colette felt cautious.

  ‘Of my sincerity.’

  ‘Yes, of course Janus.’

  ‘Then why the hell do you keep me away from my own home?’ Janus suddenly cried, banging the table with his fist. The mothers behind him turned their heads. A baby that had been asleep throughout opened its eyes. Janus, as though taken aback by his own outburst, continued in a loud whisper, ‘I come out of prison and find that I’m still in prison. That’s what it’s like. I’d just love to see my room again, to be able to look at my things, to play the piano . . .’

  Janus broke off as Colette began weeping.

  ‘All right,’ he went on, irritably, ‘I don’t mean . . . look, I am sorry. Very sorry for everything I’ve done. I just want to know how long you’re going to go on punishing me.’

  ‘I’ve told you. You can’t come home yet. Not for a long time. I don’t know how long,’ Colette lifted her spectacles and wiped the tears that were gathered on her lower eyelids, ‘as long as it takes for you to convince me and daddy that you aren’t going to carry on the way you have been for the last ten years or so . . .’

  ‘But what do I need to do? Give up drink? I’ve given up drink. I haven’t had a drop since I went inside.’

  ‘There are other things you need to do as well,’ Colette said, but was thankful when this line of conversation gradually petered out, and Janus stopped making her feel guilty about his exile.

  They passed another hour chatting over tea. Janus told her more about his time in prison, which he managed to make sound like fun. He told her about his job, which was in a shoe factory. That was where the new walking boots had come from, unsaleable due to scratches on the leather. And then Colette declared it was time she got back.

  They walked together through the chilly, flowerless park. Janus wrapped a scarf around his neck so that it covered his mouth, and put on a pair of woollen gloves. Colette could not recall her son ever wearing these items before – a scarf and gloves. That was clothing too thoughtful, too cautious for the old Janus. This was the new Janus, she hoped, who now worried about catching a chill. Who could feel the cold.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Janus when they reached the main road at the Triangle, ‘this is as far as I can come. I’ve measured it very carefully on a map. If I walk another hundred yards or so up that road,’ he nodded in the direction of Green Lanes as it headed towards Palmers Green Cathedral, ‘I could be arrested.’

  So they stopped and faced each other. Janus then did another thing Colette couldn’t remember him ever having done. He kissed her on the cheek, the abrasive bristles of his moustache scraping her skin.

  ‘Could you do me a favour?’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I need some things from the house. There’s a pair of shoes I left there, and some books I’d like. I suppose you could post them to me,’ he added quietly.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll meet again. I’ll bring them with me. Write down what you want me to bring.’

  Janus produced a pencil and notepad from the pocket of his duffel coat.

  ‘Shall we meet next Saturday?’ he said, handing her the list.

  ‘Perhaps not that soon. Give it a couple of weeks. You mustn’t start getting reliant on me. Let’s say two weeks . . .’

  ‘But not in that café. I didn’t like that café. There’s a café just over there,’ he pointed across the traffic lights to The Bread Basket, a little bakery that had a café at the back. ‘We could meet there.’

  At home Aldous seemed only to half-listen to Colette’s account of her meeting, refusing to lower his newspaper as they talked.

  ‘It’s a trick,’ he said.

  ‘What’s a trick?’

  ‘Asking for those things. If he needed them why didn’t he ask you for them when he phoned?’

  Juliette thought it was a trick as well. Colette had hoped to keep her meeting with Janus secret from her daughter, but Aldous had told her. She was disgusted.

  ‘But you can’t expect me never to see him again . . .’

  ‘And now he’s already trapped you into meeting him again,’ her daughter snapped, ‘you’ve fallen for it straight away. Soon you’ll be meeting every week and then, before you know it . . .’ She made a walking gesture with her fingers that struck Colette as oddly uncharacteristic.

  ‘You’re so suspicious, both of you, so cynical. I think this time he’s really changed. He said he hasn’t had a drink since he’s come out of prison, and I believe him. And he’s got a job, and he’s wearing normal clothes, I think he’s really changed . . .’

  She looked at the pencilled list her son had given her.

  Bach B Minor Mass score – should be by my bed.

  Pair of brown shoes somewhere in my room

  And that was all.

  Colette had never been to The Bread Basket before. It wasn’t very nice. A long, narrow, windowless space behind a bakery. Janus was early again, sitting at one of the small, beige Formica tables. The customers this time were mainly old men in caps sitting alone over cups of tea and shrunken little cakes.

  ‘Do you have any other clothes?’ she said to Janus, who was wearing exactly the same garments as two weeks before. He still had his gloves on.

  ‘Did you bring the things?’ he asked.

  Colette handed him a plastic carrier bag.

  Janus looked at it eagerly, brought out the shoes, a brown suede pair with elasticated slip-ons, and examined them all over carefully. He smelt them, knocked them against each other and laid them on the table. Then he took out the music score and treated it in a similar way, opening the book, putting his nose in and sniffing, shutting the book loudly. He was behaving like someone who’d not seen many books recently.

  Then he said he was hungry.

  The only hot food available was things in pastry, sausage rolls, meat pies, Cornish pasties, and chips. Colette bought Janus a Cornish pasty and chips, which he ate in the same way as he’d examined his shoes – thoroughly.

  They spent a little while laughing quietly at the other customers, the old man whose toothlessness was giving him problems with a sausage roll, another old man who was drinking his boiling-hot tea with such a relishingly loud slurp.

  Colette witnessed, at another table, an odd act of involuntary ventriloquism. A sour-faced, dour-looking couple, she in a purple overcoat and green turban, he in a shabby suit with a tattered combover, were deep in conversation, yet their talk was so lively and bubbly, so full of humour and intrigue, much of it concerning the sexual machinations of certain third parties (Colette could only catch the odd word), that she felt curiously heartened that such lively minds could inhabit such spent, forsaken bodies. But when the couple got up to leave, the true owners of the voices were revealed. At the table beyond, completely hidden from Colette’s view by the old couple, were two teenagers, a boy and a girl, deep in a gossipy conversation. The familiar disappointment in people and their predictable ways returned.

  ‘I’ve been going to Wigmore Street,’ said Janus, who’d been silent throughout his swift devouring of the Cornish pasty, ‘to play the pianos.’

  ‘They have pianos in Wigmore Street?’

  ‘The Steinway showrooms. You can go in and wander around, play the best pianos in the world. I spent all last Saturday afternoon in there. They’re such exquisite instruments. Such lightness of touch. You just have to drop a finger onto a key and this wonderful sound reverberates round the whole showroom. It’s like paradise.’

  Colette pondered the thought of heaven as an endless vista of pianos.

  ‘Anyway,’ Janus went on, ‘the manager was so smitten by my playing he said I could come in any day I liked and play the pianos. He said he’d pa
y me.’

  ‘Janus, that’s wonderful – perhaps you could get a proper job there, it could lead to all sorts of things . . .’

  Janus made a restraining gesture with his hands, as if to say ‘one step at a time’.

  ‘It has to be better than working in a shoe factory,’ said Colette.

  ‘Cobblers,’ said Janus, ‘I’m quite enjoying it there actually. I’ve progressed from sandals to brogues. I’m learning how to operate the stitching machine. I was on the conveyor belt before, and I can have all the free shoes I want.’

  ‘Then why did you want these shoes I brought you from home?’

  Janus seemed not to know for a moment.

  ‘Because they’re from home,’ he said, eventually, ‘They remind me of it. And I can remember all the good times I had in these shoes, all the places I walked, all the steps I danced. By the way, could you bring my green corduroy jacket with you next time?’

  And so Colette committed herself to another meeting soon.

  It became a regular part of her life, Colette’s meetings, roughly once a fortnight, with her son in The Bread Basket. Colette hated the café with its windowlessness and its aged clientele, but Janus seemed to like it. She realized it was the nearest café to home. Even Aldous and Juliette began to accept their assignations. Once the weeks and months built up and Janus had shown no sign of breaking his eviction order, they began to think that the situation might work out. Just as in the house there had been invisible boundaries across which Janus usually never strayed, now these had been established in their surrounding neighbourhood.

  Colette enjoyed seeing Janus. Once their routine was established their meetings lost the nervous edginess they’d had at first. Janus stopped asking about home, he stopped pressurizing her into making a decision as to when he could return. He seemed to accept that if he ever returned, it would only be as a visitor, that he could never live there again. Then one day he said, ‘Mum. The man at Steinways has offered me a full-time job starting from next week – demonstrator and sales person.’