by Neil Cross
Sam swallowed the tablets. In the semi-darkness he lay on the floor, listening to the distant rattle and clashing of the hospital. The migraine beat time with his heart. He prayed for sleep.
Eventually it came. He woke to discover the migraine had gone, leaving behind a strange hollowness in one side of his skull, and a sense of dislocation, like being mildly stoned. There would be a floating, greasy smear across his vision for the rest of the shift.
He drew the curtains in the staffroom, letting in the thundery light, then shuffled to the male staff lavatory. He stood at the small sink in the corner and splashed cold water on his face. His hair was a mess. He wetted his hands and ran them through it. His right eye was violently bloodshot, like a cherry tomato. He pressed it, tenderly, with two fingers. He examined his tongue, scowled, and sucked it back into his mouth. In the staffroom, he drank several cups of icy cold water.
Steve poked his head round the door.
‘You all right, mate?’
Sam spoke quietly, scared the pain might come back as soon as he opened his mouth. It had happened before.
‘Much better. Thanks.’
‘Christ,’ said Steve. ‘I thought you were having an embolism.’
Sam drank off another cup of water. He knew his thirst would be unslakeable. He poured another cup, pressed it to his forehead.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
‘How often does it happen?’
‘Never,’ said Sam. ‘Well, hardly ever. That’s the first I’ve had in years. The first proper one, you know. I get warnings. But not the Full Monty.’
‘You want to go home? We’ll cover.’
He smiled and said no, he was fine. Steve worked hard to hide his relief.
‘Are you sure you’re all right? You look pretty shaky.’
‘Really,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll be fine. Just give me one minute.’
In three, he was on the ward.
He offered to make up the hours, but his colleagues knew he was a single parent and insisted he go home on time. He didn’t suppose they’d be so tolerant if it happened again.
He stood at the bus stop with the wind puffing at his overcoat. He wished, irritably, for some proper weather, something to drive away the oppressive wintry fug that had settled over the city. The bus was late, and crowded. He perched on the edge of a seat on the lower deck and tried to read the paperback, by now much-travelled but still unread. Pages fell in clumps from its creased and fractured spine.
Even with the lights on, an unoccupied house obtrudes its emptiness. Before the key scratched the lock, he knew Jamie wasn’t home. Entering, he said, ‘Hello?’ anyway, and hung his coat over the banister. The walls soaked up the word. There was not the faintest echo. He checked the answer machine. No messages. Again, he called Jamie’s mobile. It was still switched off.
Shortly after eight, the phone rang.
‘Hello,’ he said, before the second ring.
It was Mel.
She said, ‘Sam? Jamie’s here. He wants to know if he can have his tea.’
‘Jesus, Mel, it’s gone eight. How long has he been there?’
‘He’s just arrived.’
‘Then where’s he been?’
Distantly, he heard:
‘Jamie, lamb, your dad’s asking where you’ve been.’ There was a pause. Then Mel said, ‘He’s been at Stuart’s.’
Second-hand, he couldn’t be sure that Jamie was lying.
He sighed.
He said, ‘Fine. Fine. Whatever. Tell him to come home when he’s ready.’
He replaced the phone in its cradle, then returned to the living room and switched on the television. There was nothing on.
6
Two weeks before the Christmas holidays, the weather broke. The city was buffeted by powerful winds and heavy rain.
Sam thought the weather would drive Jamie to school. If he was still spending time on the streets, he would have come home soaked. If not, he’d be spending time with a friend—and, to Sam’s knowledge, he had only one of those. A couple of times, Sam interrogated Stuart. But if Jamie was going anywhere, it wasn’t to Stuart’s house. Stuart’s parents had made him so neurotically determined to do well in his GCSEs, he would not voluntarily miss a day’s school.
So if Jamie had found somewhere to go, it was without Stuart. Although Sam knew it shouldn’t, the thought came as a relief. Perhaps Jamie had made another friend. Perhaps, at this stage, friends of the wrong kind were better than no friends at all.
Sam bought a car, a twelve-year-old Rover estate. When he could, he drove Jamie to school in the morning, sometimes making a detour to pick up Stuart. Then he waited behind the wheel and watched them walk through the gates. He assumed it was harder actually to leave the school grounds than it was simply never to arrive, if only because teachers were on patrol for stragglers and truants. He watched until Jamie’s head was lost in the surge of uniforms, then drove to work.
He asked Mel to coax from Jamie what he might want for Christmas. But Jamie had withdrawn even from her, and her attempts were futile.
He was sullen even when he turned up at her house, unannounced, expecting to be fed and looked after.
The week before Christmas, Mel came round to help Sam put up the decorations. He’d bought a tree from a street trader who was selling them from the back of a white Transit parked on a corner near the Dolphin Centre. On foot, he’d hauled the tree all the way home. In the wind and cold, his seasonal enthusiasm quickly deserted him. He became breathless and irritable and, when he finally arrived at the house on Balaarat Street, he forced the tree through the door with unnecessary violence. When Mel arrived, he was on his third whisky and ginger. The Christmas tree was propped against the banister in the hallway, surrounded by a mat of pine needles.
She squeezed past it and came into the living room. Her cheeks were red with cold. She dumped at Sam’s feet a cardboard box full of old decorations. Then she removed her woolly gloves, and blew into her hands.
She said, ‘Are you going to make me a drink, then?’
She fell into the armchair.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘I’m gagging.’
Reluctantly, he stood. He went to the kitchen and made her a vodka and tonic. First a handful of ice cracking in a long glass. Then half a lemon, squeezed over the ice, followed by a large measure of vodka, poured straight from the freezer. Then a splash of tonic and a slice of lemon. Mel never seemed to notice the care he took over her drinks. But he didn’t mind.
Slightly drunk, they dressed the tree, draping it with threadbare tinsel and decorations from which the dye had faded, the glitter had fallen and the paint had chipped. Sam discovered the fairy, hidden by a broken snowman in the bottom corner of the box. He remembered it from his early childhood. The paint on the fairy’s face was long gone, her wand was missing and the coarse net of her voluminous skirt was faintly musty with the smell of attic. Through force of habit, he surreptitiously glanced up her skirt.
He was on tiptoes, hooking the fairy on top of the tree when the door slammed and Jamie walked in.
Mel and Sam had learnt their lesson. Neither responded to Jamie’s arrival. Sam stretching up and Mel was on her knees, rooting through the box of decorations. They tensed, but continued about their business. They exchanged a look, the kind of glance that, as children, they had shared across the dinner-table when a parental argument became imminent.
Jamie looked at the tree. They continued to ignore him. They played a stupid tug-of-war with the last piece of tinsel. It was little more than a foil-fringed length of string. But there was much laughter and hand-slapping. Jamie radiated disgust. It was a relief when he went upstairs.
Sam had been to Woolworth’s to buy some fairy lights. He and Mel wrapped them round the tree. He plugged them in and dimmed the lights, then linked arms with his sister. Drinks in hand, they
wished each other a Merry Christmas.
They enjoyed a shared moment of acute loneliness.
Sam kept the lights dimmed, made them fresh drinks. Alone on the sofa, they watched a repeat of Only Fools and Horses. In the corner, the twinkling fairy lights cast shifting shadows on the tatty decorations that had been with them every Christmas since they were children. Since before they were born.
From habit, Sam woke early on Christmas Day. And from habit, he lay in bed and waited for Jamie to come and wake him.
But Jamie didn’t come and wake him. And neither did Justine.
He stared at the ceiling. It was a matter of hopeless pride not to be up first. It would be a terrible kind of defeat, an acknowledgement that something between them had changed for ever.
He was still in bed when Mel arrived. She rang the bell once before letting herself in. He pulled on his dressing-gown and went downstairs. She was wearing her best clothes. Dressing up on Christmas Day was another family tradition. She had with her a Woolworth’s carrier bag that bulged with the corners of wrapped presents.
She was flushed and happy.
She said, ‘Aren’t you up?’
He smiled sheepishly and told her he had a hangover.
She rooted round in the carrier bag and withdrew from it a CD badly wrapped in Wallace and Gromit paper.
She said, ‘You lazy sod. Merry Christmas.’
He kissed her cheek and thanked her. They wandered into the kitchen. Mel turned on the radio. To the accompaniment of carols from King’s College, he made them each a buck’s fizz with Asti spumante and fresh orange juice. They touched glasses and said, ‘Cheers.’
Mel went to watch TV while Sam cooked breakfast. He made three plates of poached eggs, toasted wholemeal bread and ham, a pot of tea and a pot of coffee. He and Mel ate breakfast on their knees, the plates balanced on holly-decorated paper napkins. Jamie’s went cold in the kitchen.
As soon as breakfast was finished, they began to prepare lunch. Sam opened a bottle of wine. He was still barefoot in his dressing-gown and hadn’t cleaned his teeth or shaved. His feet were cold on the tiled kitchen floor. Mel poured herself the first of several Bailey’s Irish Creams on ice. In the kitchen they weaved expertly around each other, opening drawers, extracting kitchen knives or pots and pans, a familiarity born of many years and many such Christmas meals.
By the time the vegetables were prepared and the turkey was in the oven, they were singing Motown Christmas songs. But when Mel pointed out that Jamie was still in bed, Sam’s jolly face went taut. He looked at her blankly.
‘Leave him,’ he said. ‘He’ll be down when he’s hungry.’
Unka Frank arrived in time for the Queen’s speech. Mel greeted him at the door. They exchanged a hug that lingered just too long to qualify as platonic.
Then Frank came in. For several minutes, he did nothing but complain about the wet and the cold. Sam poured him a whisky—half an inch of Laphroaig in a heavy tumbler, no ice, no water—and pressed the glass into his still-gauntleted hand. Unka Frank swallowed the whisky and set the tumbler down heavily, like a gavel. Then he wished Sam a Merry Christmas and offered his hand. Sam shook it, then he and Unka Frank hugged. His leathers were shockingly wet and cold. Sam yelped and retreated.
‘I told you it was bloody freezing,’ said Unka Frank, removing the gloves. He took off his army-surplus rucksack and, after removing from it his rolled-up sleeping bag, he searched round inside. Eventually he discovered three dog-eared Christmas cards, a bottle of champagne and a pack of slim panatellas. Then he unzipped and removed himself from his leathers, dumping them in a pile in the corner of the kitchen. Underneath, he wore torn jeans and a leather waistcoat over a grey, much-faded Jaws T-shirt. His arms were sinuous and ropy with muscle.
Five minutes later, Jamie came downstairs. He wore track-suit trousers and the T-shirt he’d slept in. His hair needed cutting and washing. He wished Frank a Merry Christmas. Frank ruffled his hair and wished it back.
They opened their presents in the front room, with the Queen’s speech in the background. Jamie seemed by several orders of magnitude more excited by the ten-pound record token Frank gave him than the mountain bike Sam had hidden in the cupboard beneath the stairs, and taken a long morning to wrap.
Frank was embarrassed and praised the mountain bike too fulsomely. Even then, Jamie was able to generate little interest in it. He fiddled with the derailleur and the brakes and said he’d go for a ride when the weather was better.
Sam scratched the back of his neck and topped up his wine glass.
They sat down for lunch at four, and made it last two hours. At Frank’s suggestion, Jamie carved the turkey. Like Frank, he asked for dark meat. They pulled crackers and wore paper hats. Jamie was allowed two glasses of wine. It quickly made him tired. He left the table and curled up on the sofa, in front of the TV. Soon he was asleep.
Unka Frank lit a panatella and blew smoke through his straggly, salt-and-pepper moustaches. He sat back in his seat.
‘He’s not himself.’
Sam rested his forearms on the table. It was a wasteland of half-empty plates, torn crackers and joke-scrolls, exploded party-poppers. He belched, sipped wine.
‘He’s having a few teething problems at school.’
Frank tipped a dogtooth of ash on to the edge of his dinner-plate.
‘Have you talked to him?’
Mel loosened a button on her skirt.
‘He’s tried,’ she said. ‘Believe me.’
Sam acknowledged her with a dutiful smile.
‘We’ve both tried,’ he said.
Frank flicked a trailing lock of grey hair from his bony shoulder.
‘You be careful,’ he said. ‘Keep a close eye on him. Don’t forget what it’s like, being a boy.’
Sam grunted a monosyllable. He stood and began to gather dirty plates, scraping greasy remains into the gaping turkey carcass (‘Oh, gross,’ said Mel, and looked away.) He carried the stacked plates to the cool of the kitchen. Rain drummed on the windows. He slotted the plates in the dishwasher, then opened the kitchen door and stood there for a while, on the threshold, letting the wind and the rain blow the fug from his eyes.
He swallowed a couple of painkillers and took a healthy swig from an almost-empty wine bottle.
He returned to the dinner-table to find Frank topping up Mel’s glass, cackling at something or other. His gold tooth shone in the Christmas lights.
Mel twiddled one of the earrings that had been her gift from Sam.
‘We should drink a toast,’ she said.
Sam looked down at the remaining chaos on the table.
‘To what?’
‘To family.’
Sam smiled.
‘To what family?’
‘To us,’ said Mel. ‘We’re a family.’
‘I suppose we are,’ said Sam. ‘After a fashion.’
Unka Frank raised his glass. His eyes locked with Mel’s.
‘To family,’ he said.
They stood and clinked glasses over the table.
Sam lifted the glass to his lips and glanced at his sleeping son. Jamie’s eyelids were flawless, like daisies, a vestige of the perfect baby Sam had once wanted to crush with the ferocity of his love, whose first, gummy smile had made him weep with elemental joy and sadness and terror. That seemed like a long time ago, in a different life.
7
During the Christmas holidays, Jamie rarely went outside. Once or twice, at Mel’s request, he ventured to the chip shop. He and Sam seemed to exist in worlds that ran parallel and never bisected, like ghosts from different eras haunting a single house.
Unmentioned and untouched, Jamie’s new mountain bike stood propped in the hallway. Slowly, it gathered articles of clothing. By January, it was hung with coats and carrier bags and sweaters. Eventually, Sam forgot i
t was there.
Jamie went back to school a week into the new year. Sam was on the early shift and was getting ready to leave as Jamie came downstairs.
‘Eat breakfast,’ he said.
Jamie looked at him.
‘I’ll be back by teatime,’ said Sam.
Jamie looked away. Through the window, he seemed to be following the progress of a distant jet. Sam fought an urge to grab him by the shoulders, to shout something into his face. Instead, he laid a half-eaten slice of buttered toast and Marmite on a crumby plate and drained his big mug of milky tea.
‘Well. Have a good day.’
Jamie muttered something.
Sam slung his briefcase over his shoulder. He stood in the doorway, as if waiting for something. But whatever it was, it didn’t come. He smiled for the futility of it and went to work.
Three weeks into the spring term, as it was promisingly called, Sam took another call from Jamie’s form tutor.
‘Mr Greene?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Gerry Ashford. We spoke a few months ago about Jamie.’
‘I remember.’
‘Do you think you could come in? As soon as possible?’
Sam and Ashford made the arrangements, then Sam said goodbye, turned off the mobile and sat with head in hands. He opened the staffroom window and lit a cigarette, grinding it out eventually on the windowsill. For the rest of the afternoon he was distracted and of little use. At 3 p.m., he sneaked off the ward and called Mel. He asked if she could be at Balaarat Street to meet Jamie when he got home from school.
