Road Ends

by Mary Lawson

  It turned out that Peter hadn’t yet unbooked the table they’d booked, so after the tour the four of them went out for dinner. Megan sat in a haze of happiness, watching these three people she loved so much. Peter and Andrew got onto the subject of old cars: if it didn’t have a solid chassis it didn’t rate as old, they agreed.

  “How about the Jowett Jupiter?” Peter said. “Now that was a great, great car.”

  “It was,” Andrew agreed, “but it was ugly.”

  “Ugly!”

  “All right, not ugly. But put it alongside the Morgan Plus 4, for instance. Poetry in motion.”

  “If you two don’t stop,” Annabelle said, “Megan and I will go elsewhere. Won’t we?”

  “Yes,” Megan said. But she would have gladly stayed there forever, watching them, basking in the wonderfulness of them getting on so instantly and so well. They could talk about whatever they liked.

  “Megan, he’s one of the nicest men I ever met,” Annabelle said afterwards, “but promise me you won’t fall in love with him. You do know he’s homosexual, don’t you?”

  Fortunately Megan was hanging up her coat, so Annabelle couldn’t see her face.

  You’re too late, she wanted to say. Just as Andrew himself had been too late that day in Bradgate Park, when he’d said he didn’t want her to get “the wrong idea.” Love was not an idea; you couldn’t choose to get it or not get it any more than you could choose to catch or not catch flu.

  She’d hoped they could spend Christmas together but Andrew said he’d be going home. His parents had a big house and always hosted a family Christmas. His brother and his brother’s wife and three kids and his sister and her husband and a one-year old and another on the way—they all stayed over and it was four days of bedlam.

  “Do you enjoy it?” Megan asked.

  “Mostly. It’s great seeing them all. Though the past few years it’s been a little … awkward at times. You know parents. They keep wondering when I’m going to bring home a girl.”

  “Don’t they know?” Megan asked cautiously. It was the first time they’d mentioned the subject since Bradgate Park.

  “My brother and sister do. Not my parents.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell them?”

  He smiled at her, the same strained smile he’d had that day. “No. I love them and it would hurt them. They wouldn’t understand. Their generation grew up thinking it was something you chose to be.” He changed the subject. “How about you? Do you miss your family at Christmas—your parents and all those brothers of yours?”

  Megan thought about it. Christmases had always gone by in a haze. From the moment she got out of bed on Christmas morning, she’d been either in the kitchen or whirling around tidying up. With hindsight she could see that it had been her own fault. She remembered coming into the living room—it was her last Christmas at home and Tom had arrived back from university the night before—to find it once again strewn with paper and discarded presents and dirty plates and half-empty cups of coffee, standing with her hands on her hips and saying, “I don’t know why I bother.” Tom, who was sitting on the sofa fiddling with a 3-D puzzle the twins had given him, looked up and said, “I don’t know why you bother either, Meg. Nobody else cares if it’s a mess. Sit down, why don’t you?” He’d patted the empty seat beside him. “Tell me what you’ve been doing lately. How’s life treating you?”

  She’d snapped at him, saying he’d be the first to complain if the turkey didn’t get cooked, and he’d said cheerfully, “No, I wouldn’t. I’d have another piece of Christmas cake.”

  But of course she’d gone back to the turkey.

  If she could do it again, she thought, she’d sit down and talk to him. She’d always admired Tom, although he’d driven her at least as mad as the others, but she’d never really got to know him and she regretted that.

  The only thing she’d actively enjoyed that Christmas was Adam, whose first real Christmas it had been. He’d loved the noise and the fuss and had chewed his way through quantities of wrapping paper and grinned like a maniac the whole day long. She’d carried him about with her, quite unnecessarily—he was perfectly happy on the floor—because she’d known by then that she’d be leaving home soon and wanted to store up the feel of him. She had no idea what it was about Adam that tugged at her so hard; at that age the others had left her cold.

  “I do miss them,” she admitted now to Andrew. “Some of them more than others.”

  “Have you thought of going home for Christmas?”

  “I’ve thought of it, but I can’t go now because my mother’s expecting another baby and if I went home I know I’d get sucked into it all again.”

  As usual she spent Christmas Day with Annabelle and Peter. They had Christmas lunch out (a different restaurant every year) and opened their presents over coffee, and it was easy and uncomplicated. After lunch the three of them returned to the hotel to pass around mince pies and Champagne to the guests, and that was fine too. At four p.m. Megan phoned home—the one bit of Christmas she dreaded. She could have gone back to her flat to make the call—there was a pay phone in the hall on the ground floor of the house—but it felt too public for such a conversation and it was simpler to use the phone in the office. On her father’s instructions she reversed the charges but then spent the call counting the seconds because she knew he’d be counting them too.

  Her mother answered the phone. She sounded serene rather than flustered, which meant the baby was going to arrive any day—Megan knew the signs. She was so calm she didn’t even ask when Megan was coming home. Everyone was well, she said. Yes, yes, she had everything ready for the birth.

  Megan asked how Adam was; her mother said he was fine, just fine.

  “Has he opened my present to him yet?” She’d been hoping to hear the sound of Matchbox-sized collisions in the background but there was only the distant sound of Peter and Corey fighting.

  “I don’t think so,” her mother said vaguely.

  “What do you mean you don’t think so, Mum? Have the rest of you opened my presents?”

  “I’m not sure who’s opened what …” Her mother’s voice trailed off.

  This was what she was like before a baby and wasn’t in itself a cause for concern, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating.

  Next Megan spoke to her father, who wasn’t sure her mother had got around to the presents yet. Megan wanted to yell, What do you mean you’re not sure? Either you’ve opened your presents or you haven’t opened your presents. You live there, you’re not unconscious, you must know! She controlled herself and thanked him for the cheque he’d sent—the only Christmas present she’d received from her family, but at least it was a generous one.

  Next she asked to speak to Adam, who turned out to be asleep although it was eleven in the morning their time. So Megan asked to speak to Tom, who was out on the snowplough—there’d been another blizzard, and Christmas or not, the main roads had to be kept open. Then she spoke to Peter, who said Merry Christmas and vanished before she could reply, and finally the phone was passed to Corey, who was eating toffee and couldn’t disengage his teeth. Nobody mentioned her presents, which was absolutely par for the course.

  When she’d put down the phone Megan went up to the linen cupboard, shut the door behind her and cried, another thing she did every year now. Then she washed her face and redid her hair and went down to make coffee and be pleasant to the guests.

  For 364 days of the year, her family seemed so far away and long ago they might have been characters in a book she’d once read, and yet the minute she heard their voices they became so painfully, infuriatingly, achingly close she might as well not have left home at all.

  Early in the New Year Annabelle and Peter found a hotel they liked the look of and, rather to her surprise, Megan liked it too. It was very different from the Montrose—art nouveau rather than Victorian, according to Peter. It had tall stained glass windows and sculpted cornices and a curling wrought iron staircase spir
alling up the four flights of stairs. It also had collapsed ceilings in half the rooms and wallpaper hanging off the walls in great damp sheets.

  “That’s the only reason we can afford it,” Peter said. “There was a leak—more like a flood, in fact—in the water tank in the loft. It’s too big a job to do ourselves, we’d need help, so the first step is a structural survey and then we’ll get some quotes from builders. Then we’ll decide if it makes sense to take it on.”

  Megan found herself hoping that it would make sense. For her the Montrose would always be special, but the idea of a new challenge was growing on her too. Conveniently, the new hotel was only a mile away from her bedsit; she wouldn’t even have to move to be near it.

  She talked about it with Andrew—in fact, they all did—they went out as a foursome from time to time. He demanded another grand tour, so they took him to see it.

  “Whoa,” he said, looking at the sagging ceiling in the main reception room. “Looks as if an elephant sat on it. You’re sure about this, are you?”

  “Well no,” Peter said. “Not sure. We’re waiting for the results of the survey.”

  “Will you sell the Montrose to finance it?”

  “We thought we’d have to but now we’re wondering if maybe we could keep it—get another mortgage on the strength of it.”

  They adjourned to the pub on the corner and spent the evening talking about bankruptcy. Peter seemed to find the subject funny, which made Megan anxious. Sometimes it seemed to her that Peter treated the whole business of money as a joke.

  Andrew didn’t. At heart Andrew was quite a serious person. It was another thing she loved about him.

  Later Annabelle said, “Megan, I know it’s none of my business but I’m worried about you. Because it looks to me as if you’re in love with Andrew.”

  Megan felt herself flushing but she said calmly, “He’s just a good friend. A very good friend.”

  “Good,” Annabelle said, still sounding doubtful. “Because it wouldn’t work, you know.”

  It was the first time Megan had ever been cross with her. Who was she to say what would or would not work, as if there were rules?

  On a Wednesday morning towards the end of January a letter arrived from Megan’s father telling her that she had another brother. His name was Dominic John. He and his mother were both doing well.

  Megan phoned and spoke to her mother, who said everything was fine, just fine.

  “Brother number eight,” Megan said, tight-lipped, to Andrew that evening. “Though Henry died when he was a baby, so there are only seven.”

  Weeks ago she’d bought a tiny Babygro—yellow to allow for either sex—and wrapped it and stuck it in an envelope. Now she was wrapping two Matchbox cars for Adam, to enclose in the package—or at least she would be if Andrew would stop playing with them.

  “Are they Catholic?” Andrew asked, opening and closing a car door.

  “No. They have no excuse whatsoever. Our doctor told them after Adam was born that there were to be no more babies—I heard him, I was there. But here we are. It’s irresponsible and it’s disgraceful.”

  Andrew grinned.

  “It’s not funny,” Megan said.

  Andrew blew his nose and hid the grin in his handkerchief. “Sorry. It’s just that you do disapproval so well. Why does it make you angry?”

  “Because they’re not capable of looking after the ones they have and I know what’s going to happen. The house is going to fall apart and my mother is going to write and ask me to come home and sort it out, and I’m not going.”

  “Well, why be angry about it? Just tell her no.”

  “You don’t understand,” Megan said.

  “The graveyards are full of indispensable people, Meg. You’ve been away three years and they’ve managed without you all that time. Things change in three years—people change.”

  “Not my parents,” Megan said.

  “I bet they have. In fact, I literally bet they have. I’ll bet you five pounds your mother doesn’t write that letter.”

  “Done,” Megan said.

  In a sense he won the bet. The weeks ticked by and no letter arrived, and Megan was getting ready to pay up when the phone in the office rang one evening towards the end of March and Tom’s voice said, “Hi, Meg. It’s Tom.”

  “Tom,” Megan said, instantly gripped by an icy dread. Tom had never phoned her, never so much as written to her. Nothing but a catastrophe would drive him to this.

  “How are you?” Tom said. “How’re things?”

  “Is it Mum?” Megan said, seeing her mother dead, herself not there with her at the end.

  “What?” Tom said. “Oh. No, Mum’s fine. At least, not exactly fine, but she’s not sick.”

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “I don’t really know. Maybe nothing …”

  Megan’s hands were shaking. “Tom, what is this phone call about?”

  “Well, I guess it’s mainly about Adam.”

  Her heart seemed to stop beating altogether. “Is he sick?”

  “No, but things haven’t been great here lately, Meg. Mum’s kind of … lost it. Nothing’s getting done.”

  “She’s always like that after a baby. Tell me about Adam. List every single thing that is wrong with Adam, starting now.”

  “Okay. Well, for a start, sometimes there isn’t any food in the house and I think a couple of times he’s actually gone hungry. And also, he’s started wetting his bed and nobody’s done anything about it, so he’s been sleeping in a wet bed for weeks and he really stinks. And Mum’s completely wrapped up in the new baby and Dad’s at work and even when he’s home he’s not at home—you know how he is. And I’m at work, so Adam’s on his own a lot and he’s … unhappy, I think. He seems kind of … lost. So basically that’s the state of things. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Megan was so angry her jaws were locked. The phone line hummed back and forth across the Atlantic.

  “Meg? You there?”

  She drew a breath. “You thought I’d want to know that Adam’s been hungry because there isn’t any food in the house and he’s been sleeping in a wet bed for weeks?”

  “Megan—”

  “There are three adults in that house, Tom! Three adults! And you’ve phoned to tell me that none of them can be bothered to see to the basic needs of one four-year-old boy!”

  “Stop yelling at me, Meg. I’ve been doing my best, but I’m going to be leaving in a few weeks’ time. I just called to tell you that things really aren’t good here. Mum’s genuinely kind of nuts, and Dad doesn’t want to know. We even had the cops here the other night—well, Sergeant Moynihan—because it turns out Peter and Corey have been setting fire to things. The cleaning lady hasn’t been in months and Mum got someone else to come who was completely crap and I’ve just thrown her out. Like, literally thrown her out. I’ve also had to throw out the mattress on Adam’s bed because it was saturated with piss—all the sheets and blankets, everything’s soaked. So I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you, but I thought you’d want to know. In fact, I thought you’d be extremely upset if nobody told you. That’s why I phoned.”

  The phone line hummed.

  “Megan?”

  “Where’s Dad in all this?” Her hands were still shaking.

  “In his study. Where else?”

  “It’s his responsibility.”

  “Maybe you could phone and tell him that. I’ve tried.”

  “You want me to come home—three thousand miles—and sort it out. That’s why you phoned, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t, I—”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Look, obviously it would be great if you came home, Meg, even if you just came for a week or two, but I don’t expect you to do it. Why should you? You did it for years, and now you’ve got your own life to live. Adam will survive. I’ll get in lots of biscuits and stuff before I leave—stuff he can open by himself. But I’ve been wondering about this bed-wetting b
usiness. Can kids put on their own diapers? ’Cause that’s going to be a tricky one.”

  “I’m going to kill him,” Megan said. “It would be worth going home just to kill him.”

  Annabelle said, “Megan, we can manage here, you know. Janet’s very capable. Why don’t you go for a week or two?”

  “There are three adults in that house. There isn’t a single thing I could do that they couldn’t do just as easily. I am not going.”

  “He’s trying to blackmail me,” she said to Andrew. “He’s trying to make me so worried about Adam that I’ll have to go home.”

  “I get the feeling he’s succeeding,” Andrew said.

  “No, he isn’t. He is not.”

  “That’s okay, then,” Andrew said. “Anyway, I thought you said he said he didn’t expect you to come.”

  “That’s because he’s smart. Tom is very smart.”

  “You could go just for a week or two. For your own peace of mind.”

  “It wouldn’t give me peace of mind because I’d see how useless they all are and I’d never be able to leave.”

  “Buy a return ticket. Tell them from the outset that you aren’t staying. Go for two weeks, sort things out and then come back … Megan, are you crying?”

  He got up and came around the table and put his arms around her, the first time he had ever done such a thing, and she was too upset to savour it.

  “I’m just so mad,” she said between sobs. “The idea of Adam sleeping for weeks in a soaking wet bed. And being actually hungry. I’m just so furious with them all.”

  “I’ll meet you at the airport when you get back,” Andrew said. “You can come home and have a nap and then in the evening we’ll go out for dinner and you can rage about them to your heart’s content.”

  “I’m not going,” Megan said. “I am not going.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Edward