by Andrew Cowan
Often there were people to stay – friends of my father, other artists – and from time to time there were girlfriends, usually younger than he was. A month after my first holiday at Jeannie’s he introduced me to Zoë. She came down late to our kitchen one morning, blonde-haired and freckled, her eyes puffy with sleep. She stretched out her arms and yawned. My father stroked her back and she smiled. A few moments later he tipped away the remains of his breakfast and lit up a cigarette. He told Zoë that I would look after her – he had work to do – and as he went out to the yard I felt the cold in the breeze and heard a door slamming upstairs on the draught. Zoë patted her buttocks. Tea, she said brightly, and busied about at the sink, opening drawers and cupboards, finding things, humming. I sat at the table and watched her. There was a rip in the seat of her jeans. Her vest was patterned with daisies. When she sat down she tucked one leg beneath her, tossed her head and pushed back her hair. She poured a mug of weak tea, which she held in both hands. She rested her elbows on the table. Its surface was cracked and uneven, the wood inscribed here and there with the names of our visitors. My father had carved out my own name, with my birthdate beside it; my mother’s initials were there next to his. For a short while Zoë gazed down at them, tilting her head, then sipped from her drink and looked up. Is that your kite in the hall? she asked me. I used to love flying kites, she said; when I was a girl. We could take it over the park if you like? It’s a nice windy day. She smiled, and I looked to the door. I’ve got to go now, I told her, and carefully got down from my chair.
But I was bored on my own in my bedroom, and curious, and when later I smelled cooking I came out to the landing and stood with my face to the banisters. Below in the half-light I could see the balsawood beams of my kite. Slowly I descended the staircase. A pot was simmering on the stove and a fire burned in the grate, but the long wide kitchen was empty. I found Zoë outside in the yard, repotting a few of the plants. She was wearing an oversized jumper that belonged to my father. It’s such a shame, she said, standing up; they’re desperate for water. The wind flapped in her hair, rustled the leaves on the trellis. Have you come to help me? she said. There was a spillage of soil on the concrete. I gathered it into my hands and solemnly passed it to hers. Thank you, she said, and I backed away to the doorstep. I wiped my hands on my t-shirt and sat down to watch her.
Zoë talked as she worked, describing things from her own childhood, asking questions I didn’t reply to, but when she said the shrubs needed pruning I went and fetched her some scissors. I tugged the branches from the bushes as she clipped them. Together we watered the garden. She was making a stew, she told me, and we pinched out some herbs for the saucepan. I followed her into the kitchen and we stood by the fire. Her face was flushed, and when finally she pulled off the jumper I saw there was another beneath it – one my mother had worn. When Zoë removed this she dragged her vest upwards. I glimpsed her breasts then, so small and pale the nipples seemed all of them. She tucked herself into her jeans, but I continued to stare. What is it, Paul? she asked me. Are you going to stay? I demanded. I don’t know, she replied; we’ll have to see. Then she smiled, and crouched down before me, a hand on each thigh. Would you like me to? she asked. Her eyes were level with mine, unblinking. I shook my head. No, I said firmly, and went to look for my father.
EIGHT
The walk home to my flat would take me six minutes – just time enough to roll up one cigarette and smoke it – and as I leave the college now, a sudden salt wind scouring my face at the corner, I fumble with my tobacco and papers as I often did then, my hands again clumsy, already tight with the cold. I cross towards the chemist’s where Ruth bought our contraceptives – the darkened windows grizzled with tinsel, still pasted with ads for suncreams and Kodak – and turn down an alleyway, my shortcut, where I huddle into the wall and cup a hand round my lighter. The flame barely sparks, dies as soon as it catches. When I try again there is nothing, and my feeling, so soon, is to return to our car. You would by now be complaining, wanting to ride on my shoulders.
The passage opens to a terrace of bay-fronted lodgings, cars parked up on the kerbs, streaks of grit on the pavement, and everything seems smaller, the distances shorter. In a phone booth I see cards for taxis and call-girls, no longer handwritten but printed. On winter nights the traffic round here was constant, slow-moving; women appeared in the glare of the headlamps, slipped back into darkness. Down each of these side-streets there were bedsits, shared houses, people we knew. I trail past bed-and-breakfasts called Spindrift, Ocean Spray, and Trafalgar – my reflection briefly there in the windows, flecks of snow falling, my eyes rheumy with cold – and I remember the couples, older than our parents, sitting out on these patios in summer. Every weekend there’d be suitcases, waiting on doorsteps, blocking the pathways. Cabs gleamed in the sunshine; Hoovers droned from the guesthouses. We sometimes drank in the pub on this corner, bought our chips over the road, and thought we belonged here.
My own street begins at the next junction, the buildings much grander, two and three storeys taller. The road slopes lengthily upwards, tree-lined and empty, a belt of brown sludge down its middle. I lived at the end of this first row, directly facing the off-licence. A chalked board on the pavement says, 20% Off Whisky, and as I walk slowly towards it, fresh snow swirling about me, I toss my lighter aside and turn up my collar. I take out my cough sweets and stand in the doorway and gaze across to my building. It is derelict now. The stuccoed exterior is blistering, daubed ELEC CUT in red paint by the porch. The upper windows are broken, the lower ones boarded, and the door, which I never knew to be locked, is bolted and chained. A tower of scaffolding supports the end wall, a scraggy bush hangs over the guttering, and the joists of my attic are visible now through the gaps in the roof-tiles. The snow, as it thickens, will settle on the floor of my room.
Yet long before I moved out the white of my ceiling was tidemarked with damp. Sudden showers would drip through the plaster. Where once there’d been cracks on the landing, in the end there were rents. I began to find the fissures in my own walls; the tilt in my window-frame, always apparent, came to seem ominous. But when I reported all this to the agency I received no reply. My landlady, I knew – from the builder who worked on our drains – was elderly, a spinster, and senile. I suppose she is dead now. Her property looks as though it has never been lived in.
And I feel nothing, though I would like to, and sense that I ought to. I remember the noises: the pace and weight of Ruth’s tread on the stairs, the high screech in her voice when she shouted. I woke to the sound of her coughing in the bathroom, hacking her phlegm in the sink. In summer we caught the muffled boom of the funfair. Her bangles clacked when we made love, the bed rocked and squeaked, and our voices were thick in the darkness. But now there is silence, or not even that. A bus goes by at the top of the hill, somewhere a door slams. I hear a chinking of bottles, muffled footsteps approaching, a cough. But my presence here gives no significance to these things. I left nine years ago, and took with me no more than I’d brought – the rucksack on my back, a plastic bag in each hand. Everything I’d made at the college was discarded; my flat was more bare than I’d found it. Ruth had been gone for three days – our time in this place was over – and I was happy enough then to think I would never return here.
NINE
My father was grinding a sculpture. He stood braced at the knee, the tool tucked close to his groin, and rocked back and forth from the hip. A black rubber cord trailed behind him, flexed as he moved. Sparks shot to the floor in a furious cascade, scattering over the concrete, and the noise was deafening, skirling back from the ceiling. A cigarette burned in the side of his mouth; sweat shone from his forehead. He was wearing goggles and earphones, the straps tufting his hair, and he wasn’t aware of me, or seemed not to be. I sat in his chair – an army-surplus fold-out – and slowly swung my legs to and fro. A strip of taut canvas supported my head; my hands were limp on the arm-rests. Sit up, he might say when he saw me, or e
lse point with his thumb to the doors. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, in the place where he worked.
The sculpture was rusted and covered in chalk marks. Two giant girders rose from a tangle of car parts; a length of undulating steel descended like drapery. In time there would be others just like it, untitled, separately numbered. They stand now in hospital courtyards, shopping precincts, museums. But I was always more interested in the things that surrounded him – in the ladders and gantries and gas cylinders, his chemicals and tools. On a paint tin beside me sat a crocodile clip as big as my hand, and a mug of old coffee, furry with mould. I leaned over and touched the fur with my finger. The grinding wheel spun freely and stopped. The wind was blustering outside. You’re here, then? he said, removing his earphones. He pinched the cigarette from his lips and pushed back his goggles. Zoë’s making a stew, I told him. Good, he nodded. That’s good. He tugged off his gauntlets. In a moment he might tell me to leave. Why did Mum die? I asked him.
But there never would be an answer to that, not from my father, however often I pressed him. We don’t talk about it, he’d say; it’s happened, it’s passed – or else he’d ignore me, as though his mind was elsewhere, as if I’d not spoken. He lit a fresh cigarette now and rummaged about in a toolbox. He found a spanner and removed the wheel from the grinder; he spooled the cord round his arm and hung it over a coat-hook. He examined his sculpture, smoothed a hand where he’d been working, and then brushed some debris into a corner. Finally he nodded. Right, Paul, he said, and lifted me into his arms; let’s see about this stew, shall we? He hoisted me on to his shoulders, and as we came from the barn I saw that Zoë was sitting out on our doorstep, hugging herself in the cold. The wind flayed her hair. She didn’t smile till we reached her.
She was pretty, I thought. I watched her all through that dinnertime; and later, as she washed up, I fetched my kite from the hall and stood by her side, silently waiting. We went to the park, and I remember the agitated grey of the duck pond, the clouds shredding above us and the flick of her legs as she ran. The kite repeatedly crashed, but when at last it was airborne and the line fully out she crouched behind me, her chin on my shoulder, and passed me the winch. She closed her hands around mine. The kite dipped and rose, looped back on itself, and I looked to her face. She was smiling, the tiniest of gaps between her front teeth. Perhaps I smiled too. She suddenly laughed and attempted to hug me, but the kite fell again, flipped over and plummeted. When it struck the ground it bounced twice and broke. Zoë said she would buy me a new one. I told her I wanted a budgie.
Zoë came often that autumn and winter, though I never knew when to expect her. Some days she worked in the barn with my father, dressed in a pair of his overalls, the sleeves thickly rolled to her elbows. Then in the evenings, as he sat poking the fire and smoking, a bottle of red wine on the hearth, she helped me to build things – monsters from Plasticine, robots from cartons. Once I said, Pretend you’re my sister, and she looked to his armchair. What do you think, Dad? she asked him. He shrugged and sipped from his wine, but I could see he was smiling. Some mornings she walked me to school. Most weekends they slept late. I knew I mustn’t disturb them. I sat at the top of the stairs and waited, listening for his murmurous voice, her giggling, then crept down to the kitchen. I placed the breakfast bowls and the spoons on the table. Sooner or later they’d join me.
My father had long since moved all his things to our guestroom. In the room he’d vacated my mother’s dresses and blouses still hung in the wardrobe, her woollens beneath them. There was a tangle of dry musty tights in a drawer; her shoes were piled in their boxes. The scent that lingered in the cupboards was hers. Over the year and more since her funeral I’d often been in there. I’d dressed in her clothes, played with her makeup. I’d spoken to myself in her mirror. But as the weather worsened that winter – the barn too cold, my father complained, for his work – he packed all these things into a suitcase and repainted the room. He moved the bed to a different wall and lifted the suitcase on to the wardrobe. Eventually I managed to reach it, balancing a stool on a chair, some cushions on top of the stool. The case wasn’t locked but the ceiling was low. I raised the lid as far as it would go – a couple of inches – and touched the spikes of her high heels, pulled out her polka-dot headscarf. It didn’t occur to me then, nor for years afterwards, that a single case wasn’t enough to contain all that there had been.
I kept the scarf under my bed, and added to this her camera, her sunglasses, a wallet of photos. Our house was always untidy, filled with too many things, but I would find little else that belonged to her. My father had already given her jewellery to Aunt Jeannie, her sketchbooks to my grandparents. A few of her paintings, mostly of boats, were stacked in our boxroom, signed McCrory – my grandparents’ name – and dated before I was born. But she herself had burned all her papers, the letters and notepads and report cards that she’d kept in her bureau, whilst her paints, she had told me, were too dry to use, her brushes worn out. She had tipped them into the bin and hadn’t allowed me to retrieve them. When she’d been angry she’d smashed things – her vases and bowls, the blue-hooped mugs she’d collected, whatever was closest to hand. A photograph of my parents on holiday had gone from its place in the hall. Their wedding album, white-bound and boxed, had disappeared from its shelf in the living room – though this, I felt sure, hadn’t happened until Zoë had come.
In my mother’s absence I frequently dreamt of her. Sometimes she would be there in our kitchen, searching the cupboards and drawers, unable to find what she wanted, and I would take her upstairs to my bedroom and show her what I’d kept of her things, not merely her scarf but all of her clothes, her jewellery, her papers. Whatever she’d destroyed or discarded was restored; her life had not ended and nothing had changed. She is still your mum, Aunt Jeannie had told me; and she’ll always be that. You only get one. And in my games I continued to speak to her. Her face would come to me often, her gestures, the sound of her voice. I pretended she watched as I drew things, or practised my writing, or got myself dressed in the morning. In my imagination she became all patience and sympathy, happier than she had been, and prettier – like Zoë – and when my father shouted at me now, or hit me, I no longer cried for my mother but ran to Zoë instead. And in time it was Zoë that I took to my bedroom. I revealed to her what remained of my mother’s belongings; together we looked through her photos. I showed her the suitcase on top of the wardrobe and the paintings of boats in the boxroom. Downstairs I pointed to my mother’s place on the sofa, and told Zoë she could sit there now if she wanted. I repeated to her whatever stories I’d heard in my relatives’ houses, and made up what I couldn’t remember, for Zoë always seemed interested. She asked questions – about my mother, my father, their marriage – far more in the end than I knew how to answer. They just argued, I told her; they shouted.
Zoë and my father didn’t have arguments – not like I was used to – but increasingly our meals passed in silence. My father began drinking earlier each day. In the evenings he stared at the television; often he returned to the barn with a bottle. Zoë never went after him, and gave no sign that she’d noticed his leaving. Whatever his mood, she remained cheerful with me. His work, she explained, wasn’t going too well, so we mustn’t upset him. But it seemed she couldn’t find enough things to do, and her visits became shorter, less frequent. My father had no use for her now in his studio. Why waste your time? he shrugged. Why waste yours? she replied; you can’t force it. She pressed him to come out with us, and suggested places we might go to. But still he said nothing – he wouldn’t be persuaded – and I was glad when Zoë stopped trying. I sensed he was becoming impatient; soon enough he’d get angry.
Then finally, in February, she bought me a budgie. It was there in the kitchen when I came in from school, blue-breasted, white-faced, its wings rippled grey. It sat as if clipped to its perch, a blue dot on each cheek, a red metal ring on its ankle. We stood and admired it. The cage, Zoë told me, had
belonged to her grandmother. My father had made the stand that afternoon. He placed an arm round my shoulder, the other round Zoë’s, and wondered aloud what we should call it. Mickey, I said, which was my grandfather’s name, what his friends called him. Mickey, he confirmed. Then, constricting his voice, he trilled to the bird, Mickey Michael! Mickey Michael! Mickey Michael! The budgie didn’t move and he started to laugh. Zoë bit her fingernail. She didn’t look happy. There had been other gifts – small wooden toys, a kite with long trailing ribbons, and a multicoloured hat that she’d knitted herself – but this, I told her, was my favourite. Good, she said, nodding; I’m glad. Then she turned and went from the room.
A few nights after that I woke to the sound of her crying. I thought for a moment I was hearing my mother, and disorientated, I climbed from the wrong side of my bed. I couldn’t find my way to the door and stood still in the darkness. I listened. I’m not hap-py! Zoë yelled; I’ve already told you! Her footsteps crossed the landing below me, the bathroom door slammed and she fastened the latch. A little while later my father rattled the handle, whispered her name. He knocked, and called louder, and then he shouted, You are not! and forced the door open, I suppose with his shoulder. I got back into bed and burrowed under my blankets. I covered my head with a pillow.
The next morning there were splinters in the door-frame; the bolt-bracket and screws still lay on the floor. I picked them up to give to my father. The only sounds at breakfast came from the budgie, pecking at the bars of its cage, constantly chirping. Zoë collected her bag and said she’d better be going. My father followed her out to the hall; and then Zoë hurried back in to hug me. But none of this was unusual – Zoë, I knew, had her own place to go to – and weeks would pass before I realised she wouldn’t be coming again. A pair of her earrings remained in the kitchen. When finally I showed them to my father he nodded. Keep them in your bedroom, he said, and went out to his studio. I hung them in the cage for the budgie to play with.
