Close Your Eyes

by Robotham, Michael

  Downstairs a soft light glows from behind the curtains. Julianne must be watching TV or curled up on the sofa with a novel. Her book club meets every month, more for the wine than any literary discussion, she says.

  I shouldn’t have come. I should have booked into to a bed and breakfast or a hotel. I should have called ahead. But here I am, sitting opposite the cottage, replaying my conversation with Julianne, trying to read between the lines of her invitation to come home for the summer.

  In my mind the cottage has always been ‘home’. We moved out of London nine years ago, looking for better schools, more space and cleaner air – the usual arguments, along with the unspoken one – less stress. All that fresh country air, organic food and slow talking was going to make me a new man who could arm-wrestle Mr Parkinson and pin his skinny trembling limb to any table.

  I took a job lecturing at Bath University, teaching an introductory course in behavioural psychology and mentoring PhD students like Milo Coleman. We stumbled upon Wellow almost by accident when I drove along a narrow road looking for somewhere to turn around. The village is full of stone cottages and pretty terraces with brightly painted front doors and windowsills lined with flower boxes. Picturesque. Postcard-worthy. There is a pub, the Fox and Badger, and a village shop, a primary school and a church with a graveyard where the headstones are so weathered that most of them can’t be read.

  When Julianne and I separated I rented a smaller place around the corner where the girls could come and visit me after school. Emma would play hide and seek in a house that had four hiding places. She still managed to squeal whenever I found her. Meanwhile, Charlie would waltz in, make a sandwich, accept help with her homework and then both my daughters would go back to the cottage and their mother.

  Two years ago I moved back to London because I needed the work. Since then I’ve seen less of the girls, but once a month they come to London or I come to Wellow. Occasionally, Julianne has let me sleep on the sofa. Once she let me sleep in her bed. That’s what scares me most about her invitation – the false sense of hope that keeps ballooning in my chest no matter how hard I try to dampen my expectations.

  I am not the same person I was a decade ago. Existence has become infinitely more complex and less joyful. Mr Parkinson has become my cellmate and we’re serving ‘life’ together. Middle age is taking hold. I’m thinner, more stooped and less well dressed without Julianne’s input. Old age is no longer a foreign country that I hope to visit one day. It’s over the horizon but on the itinerary.

  During the past six years we’ve each dated other people and dipped our toes in the shrinking pond of possible partners, but I was never fishing with any bait. I can’t speak for Julianne. She hasn’t moved on. Maybe that’s the best I can hope for.

  Looking at the cottage now, I have a fierce urge to get my old life back. Julianne asked me what I would change if I could go back and do things again. My answer should have been nothing. By changing the smallest detail I might alter how Charlie and Emma have turned out. It would be like going back to prehistoric times and accidentally stepping on a butterfly – setting in train a sequence of events that could subtly alter the present.

  Even so, given a time machine, it would be so tempting to return to that rainy day at Bath University when a policeman asked me to talk a woman down from the Clifton Suspension Bridge. I could say no. He could find someone else. And that seemingly random tragedy of a woman jumping to her death would no longer trigger the series of events that cost me my marriage. And yet … yet … we are the sum total of our experiences. We are who we are because of what happened – Julianne, Charlie, Emma and even me. How could I want to change that?

  There is a small Fiat hatchback parked outside the cottage next to Julianne’s car. Maybe she has a visitor. I should have called. I should have found somewhere else to stay.

  The door of the cottage opens suddenly and Charlie emerges. She’s wearing track pants and a baggy sweater, talking to someone on her mobile. The locks trigger and lights flash on the hatchback. Charlie opens the passenger door and retrieves a folder. I slide down below the level of the steering wheel.

  Charlie is still talking. She laughs. I can’t hear what she’s saying. Her head turns. She stares at me. Crosses the road. Ends her call.

  ‘Hi, Daddy.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘What are you doing out here?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I just arrived – I was about to knock.’

  There are several beats of silence. I can hear crickets chirruping in the grass and water splashing over the weir at the bottom of the hill.

  ‘Does Mummy know you’re coming?’

  ‘I was going to call her.’

  ‘But you’re here already.’

  ‘I know. Does she have a visitor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who owns the hatch?’

  ‘Oh, that’s mine.’

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘Mummy bought it for me.’

  ‘Really. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘It was going to be a surprise.’ Charlie is holding the folder against her chest. Her cotton sweater has her name embroidered above the school crest. It was personalised to celebrate her last year at school.

  ‘Are you staying the night?’ she asks.

  ‘No, I mean. I don’t think … I should go … but I have to be here in Somerset tomorrow.’

  ‘Mummy won’t mind. Come on.’

  Charlie opens the car door and drags me through the gate and towards the front door. ‘Look who I found!’ she yells, making me feel as though I’m a treasured artefact uncovered at a jumble sale.

  Julianne is in her dressing gown. She frowns and looks from face to face. ‘Is everything all right? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  We’re standing in the living room. The TV is casting flickering shadows.

  ‘I was just passing by.’

  ‘Nobody just passes by this house unless they’re driving a tractor.’

  ‘Or riding a horse,’ adds Charlie.

  ‘I needed somewhere to crash for the night. Is the sofa-bed available?’

  Julianne looks at me dubiously, wondering if Charlie and I have cooked this up together.

  ‘I’ll get some blankets and bedding,’ she says, and then to Charlie. ‘I thought you were going out?’

  ‘Change of plan.’

  ‘Well, I need to talk to your father, so scram.’

  Later when the sofa is made up and the house is quiet, Julianne makes herself a mug of peppermint tea and sits cross-legged in the armchair opposite, prepared to listen. ‘Were you sitting outside again?’ she asks. ‘I hoped that you’d grown out of that.’

  ‘I was about to call. It’s been a strange day.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Do you remember Ronnie Cray?’

  Julianne stiffens and goes quiet. I am used to such silences. They come with separation.

  ‘She wants me to look at a case.’

  ‘You told me you’d stopped doing that.’

  ‘I have. This is different. Someone has used my name to inveigle his way into an investigation. A former student, Milo Coleman, has set himself up as a criminal profiler.’

  ‘Let him do it.’

  ‘He’s compromised the investigation. Leaked confidential details.’

  ‘Which has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘He used my name. He’s telling everyone that he trained under me.’

  ‘Tell him to stop.’

  ‘I did. I don’t think he was listening.’

  She narrows her eyes. ‘You’re going to do this, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m going to review the investigation – to see if anything has been missed.’

  There is a long pause. The cottage seems to creak as it settles down for the night. Julianne slides her legs from under her and cinches her dressing gown tighter around her narrow waist. ‘Is this about that mother and dau
ghter who were killed in North Somerset?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do the police know who did it?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  She has stopped at the door, leaning her hand on the frame. ‘Do you have any pyjamas?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about a clean shirt for tomorrow?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Give me your shirt. If I wash it now it will be dry by morning.’

  ‘You really don’t have to—’

  ‘Off.’

  I stand and try to unbutton the shirt, but my left hand is shaking. Julianne steps closer and finishes the job. She also unbuckles my belt.

  ‘I’ve been here fifteen minutes and you’re trying to get into my pants.’

  ‘In your dreams.’

  If she only knew …

  Some days I wake and feel as though my life doesn’t fit me any more. It pinches like a pair of shoes that are a size too small or rides up the crack of my arse like ill-fitting underwear. Is it possible to outgrow a life? I’ve heard people say it of a job or a relationship. And it’s one of those excuses people use when they’re cheating on their partners. ‘I’ve outgrown you,’ they say. ‘I need more space.’

  I have heard all of these pathetic self-justifications and glib explanations. I feel trapped. It’s not you – it’s me. Things aren’t like they used to be. You deserve better. I feel suffocated. You’ve changed. You left me before I left you. You work too much. You don’t listen to me. I’m tired of having to do everything around here. You’ve grown fat. I don’t fancy you any more. Sex isn’t fun. You were never there for me when I needed you.

  Some men will tell you that adultery is about meeting a need. It’s not really their fault. It’s biological. Monogamy is easier for a woman. The male sex drive is greater. Men eat when they’re hungry, sleep when they’re tired, fuck when they’re frisky – simple needs for simple minds.

  ‘It didn’t mean anything,’ they’ll say. ‘It was nothing – a one-night stand. Over before it started. I was drunk. We didn’t kiss. I don’t love her like I love you…’

  Particular men will try to redefine the word ‘affair’ or say that sex and love are two different things because one is physical and the other emotional.

  Pathetic, self-serving bullshit! Nothing absolves. Nothing exonerates. My father taught me that. He beat it into me, cursing my mother’s name.

  ‘Put your hands through the stair railings,’ he’d say. ‘Hold your elbows.’ He unbuckled his belt and pulled it from his trouser loops. Doubling the leather in his fist, he swung it from behind his back in the widest possible arc so that it whistled through the air before it landed.

  If you saw my father now you wouldn’t recognise the monster that once lived behind his watery blue eyes, not when you see him flirting with the nurses, making cheeky comments about their sex-lives, acting as though he’s in with a chance.

  He shows them his old tattoos, which seem to be melting and leaking down his arms. He used to works as docker for the Bristol Port Company at Avonmouth. Tough work. Man’s work. But most of his thirty-five years were spent as a union rep, avoiding each round of redundancies and telling his ‘comrades’ that he had fought the good fight, but now it was about ‘limiting the losses’ and ‘protecting as many jobs as possible’ – most notably his own.

  Meanwhile he propped up the bar of the Three Kings on the waterfront, preaching about the evils of capitalism and Margaret Thatcher, who he called the wicked witch and vowed he would ‘piss on her grave’. Now he’s doesn’t even know she’s dead. How ironic! My old man and Margaret Thatcher, both afflicted by dementia – a disease with no regard for class or fairness or old hatreds.

  Most days he doesn’t recognise me. He calls me Stevie and thinks I’m his best mate from fifty years ago. He keeps telling me the same story – how he and Stevie stowed away on a ship to America, but it was only going as far as Glasgow.

  I visit him after work and take him out of the nursing home for long walks. He can power along for miles, following the coastal footpath with his odd, shuffling gait, until I tell him to turn back. Sometimes I think I might let him keep going. He’d walk all the way to John O’Groats if nobody stopped him. Some dementia patients get anxious, but my old man’s emotions are blunted and stultified. Children fascinate him – they’re like mini-people – and tears are just water leaking from a person’s eyes.

  I should hate him. I should want to punish him, but he wouldn’t understand why. Instead I feel a peculiar kind of loneliness – as though someone who should love me has forgotten my birthday.

  Sometimes I write letters to him in my head – not the man he is now but the one he was then. I tell him that I’ve tried to understand why he did those things and quite honestly, given what’s happened since, I think I do. He was an alcoholic, but his addiction wasn’t an addiction – it was a hobby or a pastime. He was being sociable. He was being a man. He couldn’t let his mates drink alone, could he? Many of these same mates also drank too much and beat their wives, but didn’t see their behaviour as a compulsion or something beyond their control. Drinking was just drinking, never addiction.

  It wasn’t until my mother died that my father lost himself completely in the bottle – and it wasn’t her dying so much as the circumstances of her death. And it wasn’t the car accident so much as the man behind the wheel. And it wasn’t so much the man driving as the fact that his severed penis was found in my mother’s mouth.

  That’s tough to swallow (and I use that sentence with no pun intended). The Sunday Sport ran the story on the front page. You can imagine the quips. My father didn’t go to the pub so much after that. He drank at home, lecturing his children just as he once lectured his mates. A new sort of anger burned in him, a cold hard gemlike flame, and it felt as though a line had been crossed and he’d lost even the faintest spark of paternal love.

  When he wasn’t drinking, he pumped iron. He made himself a weight bench in the garage, welding a cradle to take the bar. He made me spot for him. I was only eight and couldn’t have lifted the bar off him had it slipped. All I could do was steer it to the cradle when it rose on his rubbery ink-stained arms, his eyes bulging and veins popping. I know what he was doing – punishing himself, enjoying the pain.

  Afterwards he would make me lift. ‘See if you can beat your old man,’ he’d say, grinning maliciously.

  I couldn’t hope to lift the same weight. It crushed my chest and he bleated in my ear about being a pansy and a ‘nancy boy’. Twice he cracked my ribs, which was before my broken arm and dislocated elbow; before I was taken into care.

  The first few drinks seemed to mellow him and clear his head, but soon he’d be looking to pick a fight with someone – usually my brother, or sister, or me. The slightest thing would set him off: a knife scraping on a plate or a tap left dripping. I felt sorriest for Agatha, my sister. She didn’t get physically abused. I didn’t see my father touch her once – to hug her or hit her – but he punished her in hundreds of other ways.

  ‘Are you on the rag?’ he’d say. ‘I can smell you. Have another shower … You get any fatter I’ll have to widen the doors … If that skirt was any shorter you’d be arrested for selling crack.’

  My father believed that women were to blame for the first sin and all that followed. With shaking hands and drool drying on his chin, he would lecture me about adultery, sitting in his armchair, his penis resembling a turtle’s head, poking from his yellowing Y-fronts. Women were sluts and witches and devious betrayers. A vagina was like a Venus flytrap that could snap shut and trap a man.

  The first time I sat next to a girl at school I was surprised at how sweet she smelled. Her shampoo. Her breath. Her skin. Her name was Sandra Martin and I followed her home that day because she made me feel light-headed and strange. Sandra was one of the popular girls who knew she was pretty and didn’t need to try hard to make friends or turn heads. Other girls who were less attractive seemed to crave affection almost as m
uch as I did. One of them, Karen Basing, who had greasy hair and a runny nose, would pull her knickers down and show boys her slot, but only if they bought her a Mars Bar. That’s what it reminded me of, her vagina, the pink slot in a piggybank.

  We were caught one day by one of the nuns. Nothing happened to Karen Basing, but I was sent to the priest, who said he was very disappointed. ‘How would you feel if that was your mother?’ he said. ‘Or your sister?’

  I wanted to tell him that my mother died with a penis in her mouth and that my sister had left home by then and could do what she damn well pleased. They could all go to hell. My family. The Church. Karen Basing.

  Normally when children go missing people rally around and search, fanning out across the fields and vacant ground from where the bicycle or schoolbag was found. Emotionally they adopt the child, saying prayers for his safe return and wondering what sort of sick pervert would snatch an innocent from their midst. Meanwhile, they eye their neighbours suspiciously, the drifters and single men and midlife pensioners.

  That didn’t happen to me. Nobody bothered to search or to pray for me because I’d been taken by one of my own. I’d gone missing in my own family.

  7

  Awake. Bleary. Trembling. For a moment I wonder if I’m dreaming. Emma has climbed on to the sofa bed next to me, dressed in her pyjamas, which are covered in cartoon polar bears.

  ‘When did you come?’ she asks excitedly. ‘Why didn’t you wake me? Did you bring me something? Are you staying? Can we go to the cinema? Will you make me pancakes for breakfast? Do you like my new pyjamas? Mummy bought them when we went to London. We saw Matilda. The little girl who played Matilda was the spitting image of Maddie Hayes, a girl in my class, only Maddie has darker hair and she can’t sing. Not even a note. You should take your pills. Your arm has gone all jerky.’