by Janet Davey
By first light, the paving slabs, after my obsessive tidying, resemble a beach swept clean by the tide. Creeping plants, trails of green set free from accumulated debris, push up through the cracks. I start to pull up last summer’s geraniums from the tubs. One or two are in flower though the scarlet of the blooms, over-wintered, has lost intensity and acquired a purplish tinge. I cut the stems and put them to one side to stick in a jug indoors. The rest go into a black plastic rubbish bag. I never got myself to Crews Hill or any other nursery to buy spring bulbs.
I keep glancing up at the house.
51
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK on Monday morning, I go in to Ross. I have had so little sleep. I move as though I have been knocked down by a slow-moving vehicle that failed to kill or injure me but left me nervously impaired. I stand over the concealed corpse in the bed and address it. There is still time, I tell the corpse. Time to compose an apology. It can be brief; handwritten or electronic. If handwritten, it can be taken along to Mr Goode’s secretary. Mr Goode need not be encountered. If electronic, fine. In both cases, getting up must take place, school clothes be put on, a journey to Lloyd-Barron Academy undertaken in the old way. The five days are up. I continue to talk as I open the curtains, find underpants, socks, shirt, tie, trousers, blazer and place them on a chair. I speak of bravery, adulthood, self-interest – and finally of necessity. I lean over to pull off the duvet but some movement in the air or perhaps my smell, the smell of mother, as I draw close causes a Moro reflex in the body, a tight monkey grip. The bedding, previously loose, convulses. It billows and hardens under my hand. I cannot wrestle this cumbersome thing into school uniform or drag it along the street. If it doesn’t budge, it doesn’t budge.
I shut the front door and set off into the ordinary morning. Dairyman’s Road, Alderman’s Hill, Palmers Green station. The air is a salve and the gardens I pass, for the first time this year, have the cool, sweet smell of spring vegetation. Every step takes me further away from home. I am glad that this is so, though I carry its inhabitants with me and am bound to return. I understand traumatic bonding, though someone more of a Puritan might call it perseverance; words and actions interminably repeated. A child does, in the end, lose interest in the power sockets. I undertake my visits, or visitations, to Ewan’s room and Ross’s room in that spirit. Here we go again. It causes less anguish than thinking afresh. I keep walking. I think of the academy – another school day – and wonder what is happening there. I should like to talk to Ginny but the tone of my last conversation with her prevents me. I am afraid of her disapproval, though I share it. I keep walking.
I have to prepare for a budget meeting on Tuesday and this occupies me. I do not get round to more mundane tasks until late in the afternoon. Among my emails, there is a message from Tony Goode.
Good morning,
After due consideration, the five days being actioned, whilst an exclusion may be an appropriate sanction, warranting the severity of the misdemeanour and bearing in mind that malicious communication is setting a precedent, the Academy takes into consideration any contributing factors that are identified after an incident of behaviour has occurred. For example, where a student has suffered bereavement, has mental health issues or has been subject to bullying. In the lenient circumstances of the object of the malicious communication being unfortunately deceased and presumably harassment, cause offence, inconvenience or needless anxiety not being applicable in the circumstances, could yourself and Ross Doig report to my office on Monday morning at 08.30
I read the message through twice. I think it means what I take it to mean. I am puzzled that it has only just reached me. It is dated today. I can only assume that the text was drafted on Friday but withheld until approved by somebody – and then forgotten about.
I call Lloyd-Barron Academy.
‘Thank you for waiting. What’s the name again? Barrie?’
‘No, Parry.’
‘Parry?’
‘Yes. But it’s about Ross Doig. DOIG. I have received the email about my son Ross Doig’s reinstatement and we’re so delighted and relieved that he can—’
‘They’ve put you through to the wrong extension. Try the other number. There’s no way back on this one. No worries.’ Me, I’ll carry on chatting or eating a banana.
I call again. The phone rings twice, followed by an out-of-office reply. Back to the switchboard. I finally get Amrita.
‘Mr Goode is in a meeting,’ she says in a hushed voice.
I say that perhaps she, Amrita, can help me. I have received the email about my son Ross Doig’s reinstatement.
‘Please hold the line,’ she says.
I hear scratching, rustling sounds like hens moving about in a coop, then a long silence.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello.’
I am on the point of giving up when Amrita comes back.
I begin again, determined to keep going this time even if I am communing with chickens. I say that I am delighted and relieved that Ross can continue his studies in the school that has done so much for him and where he’s been so happy. He and his brothers. It has been a long association. He really has learned his lesson and the academy won’t regret the decision. I am only sorry that we didn’t get the message in time for Ross and me to keep the appointment at eight-thirty. Obviously, I’ve been checking my emails on an hourly basis but for some inexplicable reason it has only just shown up. We’ll be there first thing tomorrow and I’m really sorry for any mix-up.
I hear the scratching sound, followed by a whisper. Someone coughs.
‘Oh, have you only just got the email? I’ll let Mr Goode know. I’m looking at Tuesday’s agenda … bear with me … No, Mr Goode has an appointment tomorrow morning. Tell Ross to be here for registration as usual. I’ll revert to you if Mr Goode wishes to arrange a meeting.’
I thank Amrita – excessively.
52
I FEEL HOPEFUL as I travel home. When I enter the house I call out hello. I am a mother with children at home. Two of them. A double bill for my performance as actor nurse. Nurse Actor. The hall smells rancid, of fishy broccoli like an unappetising hospital lunch.
I go upstairs. Ross’s door is shut. I stare at the old torn-off stickers, the shards of colour like fragments of butterfly wings, and try to recall what was once depicted. I practise a few of Professor Martinez’s expressions. Confidently unexpectant. Unexpectantly confident. Bland as hell. I open the door.
‘Did you get my text?’
Ross is sitting on the floor, squashed in a space between his bed and the chest of drawers. His shoulders are draped in a green fringed silk shawl that belonged to my grandmother. In his hands is a carved wooden tortoise and on the floor next to him two more tortoises in diminishing sizes. He has been rummaging through the boxes. He is a child.
‘Good news, isn’t it?’ I say.
The sound he makes is not the full nuh-hah; it is closer to no.
It’s all right, Ross. You can go back. I stuck to what was simple and important. I did not suggest that he can put the grim episode behind him, or that he has got off lightly. I made no reference to normality. We/you can get back to normal. I never use the expression as I know that boys fear what mothers consider normal. I was careful with the words because the smallest mistake can turn text into a pretext.
He did not reply and he is not replying now but that is not significant. I am amazed that Mr Goode has not insisted on the written apology. He must have forgotten he demanded one. Ross is bloody lucky.
I am on the point of leaving when he opens his mouth.
‘It isn’t all right.’
‘Sorry, darling?’
‘You said, “It’s all right.”’
‘Yes? Are you making an objection?’
‘It’s a lie. It isn’t all right and never will be.’
I tell him not to be absurd. I say I’m sorry that I put a foot wrong. He’s been punished and it’s over. I tell him not to get entrenched in a foolish position
and that I’m not even listening any longer. He is wrapped in green silk and sitting cross-legged. His expression is not that of the Buddha. I say that he will see things differently by the morning. I am tired.
Tuesday is the day of the budget meeting. I immerse myself in work. I have no idea whether Ross will see sense during the course of the day. I do not communicate with him. I stay in the office until seven o’clock and am glad when the Victoria line train waits at Euston so that the service can be regulated and again in the tunnel outside Highbury and Islington for a platform to become available. I stop off at the supermarket to buy extra food because Ross cleared the fridge yesterday. I choose the longest queue at the checkout. My capacity to distance myself has the staying power of a dandelion clock. As soon as I step into Ross’s room, I see from the taut muscles in his neck, the rigid set of his head on his shoulders, that he has not relented. I wear myself out with cajoling and threatening. I speak of prosecution and parenting orders. I tell him I will not cover up for him. On the contrary, I will inform the school of his stupidity. This is motherhood as extreme sport. It is one of the vilest evenings of my life.
On Wednesday, as usual, I have a stack of emails. There is one from Chris Orrick. I haven’t seen or heard from him for months but it is clear from the message that he believes he is in the forefront of my mind.
Hi Lorna, you must be wondering why you haven’t been sent a copy of my book. Joking. No, actually, I’m thinking the Stratford Tube Crash of 8th April 1953 has better potential. I’ve figured out how it’s going to work. A damaged signal on permanent red, the train driver’s vision obscured by a cloud of dust. A similar accident happened at that precise location seven years previously. Perfect ingredients. I’m the driver, right. Suddenly everything feels weird, different. In front of the cab is a jagged hole, belching out smoke. An eerie light I’ve never seen before …
I leave a message on the academy’s answerphone, saying that Ross has flu. This is despicable but buys us a little time. He has imposed an additional ordeal on himself, some made-up, painful thing that he has to go through and that I have to go through because we are connected and I am responsible for him.
I visit the page of the Lloyd-Barron Academy website that deals with attendance and absenteeism. Zero tolerance, written in bold, jumps from the screen. I laugh. I could have predicted the term, embraced by New York cops and petty office tyrants the world over, though my cynicism has a masochistic kick to it that strengthens when, delving further, I find that support and help for vulnerable students can be obtained from the LBA Family Advocate, Mary de Silva, by appointment. I laugh like a madwoman.
I check my diary. A virulent strain of flu, followed by post-viral fatigue, should take us to the Easter holidays. I also see that Oliver’s term is about to end. I had forgotten about Oliver. I send him a text saying that I can pick him up next Saturday, or Sunday. Name a time. The prospect of setting off alone along the A23 is blissful.
The rest of the week goes by more temperately. I am amazed as I have been in the past that adjustments to new, undesirable circumstances can be made. My appetite is reduced and my sleep pattern poor but I go to work, prepare food, stick laundry in the washing machine and dishes in the dishwasher, shove a damp cloth over the kitchen surfaces. I communicate with my sons. I do not hate them. I touch their hair and share a joke. I raise blinds and open curtains. I pick up used mugs from the floor.
Ross tries to take a plate of beef stew out of the kitchen. I forbid it. On this I am firm. I cannot allow him to eat his dinner in his bedroom. We wrestle over the full plate, tugging in opposite directions as the contents slop and slide. Ross shouts obscenities and I yell, ‘Did you feel good when you wrote that bile?’ Globs of meat and carrot land on the floor. My phone beeps. It is a text from Oliver. He will go straight from Brighton to Cornwall. Night diving again. The details that I looked up in September return to me. The dead men’s fingers, the chimney cave, the cauldron with vertical sides, the former MoD range station where the divers set out from. I recall the word ‘gully’. I think of entanglements with nets and lines, torch failure, the perils of getting lost in the dark. Seawater is bone cold in spring. I begin to cry. Ross leaves the room. I hold onto the edge of the table while I heave and sob. Then stop. I cannot bring my middle son home. I wipe my face, pick up the phone and call Randal. As soon as I hear his evening-at-home voice, I realise I could have managed alone. I sense that I have made a bad situation worse but, having spoken, I can’t go back. He will set off directly after lunch tomorrow. For the first time since he left I have asked for his help.
53
‘EWAN’S OUT. ROSS is here, though.’
‘He’s the one I’ve come to see.’ Randal’s expression is purposeful as he places his helmet on the floor and removes his motorcycling jacket. ‘Better have a word with you first before I go up. I need the full picture.’
‘OK.’
Randal has had a new, boyish haircut. Classy. I am wearing crystal dangly earrings and a top that I discarded and then rescued from the bag destined for the charity shop. The top is black with a silver thread running through it. Randal’s surprised glance when he straightens up confirms that I look like a half-decorated Christmas tree.
‘Jude?’ he says.
He climbs out of the biker’s trousers, more adeptly this time though I detect a certain geriatric stiffness in his right knee.
‘Not here.’
‘Any particular reason? I thought she stayed over at the weekend.’
‘She didn’t turn up.’
‘Right.’ He shepherds me into the living room and closes the door behind him. ‘Sit down, Lorna. We need to do this properly.’
He indicates the dining table and we sit down opposite each other. He has arrived from North Hertfordshire and is sorting out our problems.
I have already given a brief outline of events on the phone but I go over them again. He lets me speak without interrupting and his expression becomes increasingly stern.
‘When exactly did they exclude him?’
I give him the date.
‘You should have involved me right away.’
‘Would it have made any difference?’
‘Well, yes. It might have done. But we don’t know now, do we? We’re another stage on.’
‘We are.’
‘Does he say why he won’t go back to school?’
‘No.’
‘Have you any idea why not?’
‘Pride, humiliation, shame – those kinds of things.’
‘He’ll have to get over them, won’t he? I’ll go and speak to him.’ Randal stands up. ‘Is there anything else I should know?’
‘I don’t think so. Oh, he asked me not to tell you.’
‘I bet he did. And does he now know I know?’
I shake my head.
‘Good. Did you know there’s a scratch there?’ He points at a particular spot on the table.
‘There are probably several. I haven’t counted recently.’
‘Pity. It was a good table.’
He goes upstairs. I hear the knock and then the door shuts. I get up, close the living-room door and turn on the television. I do not want to hear the muffled sound of Randal’s voice, or Ross’s indecipherable replies, or failures to reply – or shouting. Raised male voices that explode and reverberate like a cathedral organ in a space suited to a harmonium. A woman in Edwardian-style drag is playing a tack piano. Her hands shimmy up and down the keyboard. The tinny music is insistent enough to overcome normal levels of talk from upstairs though not an uproar. Then she starts to sing. I thought as I bedecked myself in the crystal earrings that the day might end up in Accident and Emergency at North Middlesex University Hospital. A huge motorbike in the front garden, chained to the gatepost. A defiant son in the back bedroom.
‘Oh, the TV’s on. Is this a documentary?’
‘Probably,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t look like drama.’
Randal comes over and sits down next to
me on the sofa. The leather squeaks and I feel a slight rebound on my side. For a couple of minutes we both stare at the screen. The entertainer bashes out the chorus of ‘My Old Man Said Follow the Van’. Her audience is a small and unresponsive audience of old folk. One ancient lady begins to tap the arm of her wheelchair.
‘Actually, I think I might have seen this before.’ I click the remote and kill the scene dead. ‘So, how did you get on?’
‘He says he’s got a headache. I didn’t get much out of him.’
‘You said your bit and he said nothing?’
‘That’s about it. But, hey, I might have done some good. I’ll go up again and have another go. See if anything I said has sunk in.’
I nod.
‘What about you? Are you still sleeping badly?’ He takes a good look at me.
‘Oh, it got better, then it came back. It’s not bad sleep. I just wake at half-past four. I get up. It’s dark.’
‘Of course it is. Stop in bed. You’ll never break the pattern if you keep getting up. Don’t open your eyes. What do you do, anyway, at that time in the morning?’
‘I come downstairs and read. Sit in front of the oven. I’m getting through a lot of books.’
‘I don’t care how many books you’re getting through. You’ll turn into a ghost.’
We sit in silence, thinking our own thoughts, I suppose, but each also conscious that the other is there.
‘Sad words when they’ll never go home again, drunk or sober,’ I say. ‘The song,’ I add, since Randal looks baffled.
‘Oh, that. Yes. Why do people always assume that when you get to a hundred you’ll develop a liking for old-time music hall? It’s more likely that our current centenarians listened to Tommy Steele and Danny Kaye, isn’t it?’
