Hope Dies Last

by Deborah Finn

  Martin grabbed the wrist that was at his shoulder. His face was contorted. “It was you?” he said. “You’re...”

  She saw him stumbling for words, unable to finish. “Yeah,” she said right into his face. “Can you not even say it? I’m Ben’s mother. And where is Ben? You said you’d bring him.” She could hear her voice getting louder, could feel the anger rising inside her, this anger that had waited so long.

  He shook his head. “You can’t,” he said. “You can’t see him.”

  She wrenched her hand free and punched him on the shoulder. “That’s where you’re wrong, Martin. I am going to see him. And you’re going to bring him to me.”

  “No,” he said, backing away. “I’m not.”

  She stared at him. “You are,” she said, stepping closer. “You want to get back with Beth, don’t you?”

  His lips moved, finding nothing to say.

  “Oh I know,” Marilyn said. “I know about your little flat. I know she kicked you out. I’ve been watching you.”

  He shook his head. “This has got nothing to do with Ben.”

  She pressed her face close to his. She could see the stubble on his chin and smell his coffee breath. She could see the trouble in his eyes; once a liar, always a liar. “How do you think Beth will take it when I tell her about all the women you slept with?” she asked.

  “All the women? What?” he said. “I was never like that. It was just…” His voice trailed off as he felt the disgust well up in him. “I told her everything,” he said at last.

  Marilyn snorted. “Oh right! Sure.” She paced away, laughing to herself. “And what if I tell her about you and me, Martin?”

  “What?” he said. “There was no you and me.”

  “But Beth doesn’t know that, does she? For all she knows, little Ben is your child too. Mine and yours. That’s why I gave him to you. You think she wouldn’t believe that?”

  “No!” He lifted his hand, palm up, like a halt gesture. “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Wouldn’t I? Watch me.” Laughter started to bubble up inside her as she saw the sick look on his face. “You bring the kid or I’ll tell Beth all about it, and what do you think your chances are then?”

  His eyes closed. He looked like a man with a torrent of misery falling onto his head. She felt no sympathy. Let him live her life. She watched his shoulders drop in defeat.

  “You can’t have Ben,” he said at last.

  “Oh, for god’s sake, Martin,” she snapped. “I said I wanted to see him. Who said anything about having him?”

  Martin looked at her. “You just want to see him?”

  “Yes,” she said, like he was stupid. “I want to see him. I want you to bring him to the park. That’s what I’ve been saying all along.”

  “Marilyn,” he said. Then he stopped and shook his head, like he didn’t know what he was trying to say. She could see him looking her over, looking at her cheap clothes, trying to make sense of who she was, who she used to be. There was something sad in his face, something defeated that she knew.

  She felt it like a punch in the chest, the wasted years, everything lost. She had a suddenly vivid memory of that morning in the rain, of the girl she’d been.

  “He was my baby,” she said. And now there were tears in her eyes. She didn’t know what she was crying for. Maybe everything.

  He pulled his eyes away from her. “OK,” he muttered. “OK, I’ll bring him.”

  Ten

  The route from the park to his old house was so familiar that Martin could have walked it in his sleep, which was just as well as he barely saw what was in front of him at each step. Jesus Christ. Marilyn Souter. He couldn’t make sense of it. Ben must have been born just about when she left Gallagher’s place. Well yeah, that made sense, but the rest of it? He hardly knew her. Why had she picked them? Why had she done it at all?

  He pushed open the gate at the bottom of the path. You had to lift the gate before you could move it. How many years had he been meaning to fix that hinge? He looked at the bay window as he walked up the path, wondering if Beth would be watching out, but she wasn’t there. He opened the front door and stepped into the hallway. Before he’d even pulled the key from the lock, he remembered that he didn’t live here anymore; he was supposed to ring the bell. The weight of it settled on his shoulders and he lowered his head. He wasn’t going to step back outside and close the door like some penitent schoolboy. He sucked in a deep breath and reached around to the bell on the doorframe, but she was there before he pressed it.

  Beth stopped in the doorway from the front room and stared at him. Her skin looked grey, her lips clamped shut in a tight line.

  “I’m sorry,” Martin mumbled, gesturing towards the door. “I forgot.”

  Beth’s brow furrowed. “What did she say?” she hissed impatiently.

  “Oh, well,” he sighed, rubbing his hand over his eyes. What should he say? He should have thought this through.

  “Did you tell her? Did you make her understand?”

  He dropped his hand from his eyes and looked at her. Her whole tightly wound body was like a question mark. Have you fucked up again, she was asking.

  “I sorted it out,” he said. “It’ll be OK.”

  He saw her shoulders drop, just a fraction. She blinked several times. “Really?” she asked, her face loosening with hope.

  He nodded. Her hand went to her mouth, clamping down her relief. “Oh Martin. Thank God.” She looked like she was going to cry.

  He walked towards her, pulled by the urge to touch her, knowing he had to resist. He stopped a couple of feet away. “Are you OK?”

  She let out a shaky breath of laughter and stepped towards him. She lifted her hands and pressed them against his shoulders. Her eyes were shining, unclouded by mistrust and suspicion. “I am now,” she said.

  He felt the power flooding through him. She could love him. He could see it in her eyes. She could believe in him again. And then the smack of his own stupidity, taking him down. It was all lies. He was lying to her again.

  She turned away suddenly, heading towards the kitchen.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ll make some coffee. Let’s go into the back. I need you to tell me everything.”

  Her heels clicked on the hard wood floor as she walked away, and with each click he felt more stupid. What would he say?

  “There are some... err... things,” he mumbled.

  A sharp look as she put the coffee in the machine. “Close the door,” she told him.

  “Who’s he got up there?” he asked as he closed the door, his head nodding towards the sound of boys yelling upstairs.

  “David and Ian. What things?”

  He watched the way she set out the coffee cups, tiny coffee spoons at matching angles in the china saucers. She turned to face him. Her fingernails cantered impatiently on the marble worktop. “What things?”

  He blew out a sigh. “Oh nothing bad, nothing unreasonable.”

  “Like what?”

  “Just... she wants...”

  “What?”

  He closed his eyes against her tone. It was sharp enough to draw blood, like a scratch down his face. He shook his head, trying to find the words. “Photos,” he said at last. “She wants to see photos, and err... she wants, you know, just to know stuff.”

  “Stuff?” she prompted, but her tone was softer now.

  “Yeah, like, stories you know, and what he’s like, and... well, how he’s been.”

  She nodded, considering it. “I guess... I guess that’s OK. You told her that was OK, did you?”

  He shrugged, wondering which lie was best. “I said I thought it was OK. I said I’d talk to you.”

  She turned away to the machine. Martin closed his eyes. Another fine mess.

  “So, how’s that going to work?” she asked.

  “I said I’d copy her some pictures.”

  “And you’ll take them to her?”

  “I guess.”

  “Sh
e doesn’t want to see me?”

  “No,” he said, a little too quickly.

  She looked up. “I thought you’d want to keep out of it,” he added. “I tried to keep you out of it. Was that right?”

  She poured the coffee.

  “You don’t need to worry about it, Beth,” he said. “Really, I can handle it.”

  She put a coffee cup down on the worktop next to him and studied his face. “You’ll tell me everything?”

  He felt the weight of it, the last two years of growing mistrust. Even now, she didn’t know everything, and she knew she didn’t know everything. That was why she couldn’t live with him anymore.

  “Of course I will.” He reached out, saw the size of his hands against her slender arms. She was studying his face. He looked back, willing her to see nothing but love.

  She nodded, as if accepting what she saw. She turned away and picked up her own coffee cup and headed towards the conservatory. “Come on. Let’s talk out here.”

  He watched her back. What was wrong with him? He was lying to her still. Lying to get her back, when the problem was lying in the first place. But he couldn’t tell her. It would be the end, he knew it, if she found out that he knew Marilyn; that all along he’d known that woman, that stranger who’d come and handed Beth the thing she wanted most in all the world. It wouldn’t matter that he said he didn’t know, that he’d only just found out, that the baby was nothing to do with him. She wouldn’t believe him. She had every reason not to believe him.

  He followed her into the conservatory. He was just about to close the door glass when a syncopated pounding from the stairs announced the imminent arrival of boys. The kitchen door burst open, and there was Ben, his solid little chest full of air as he prepared to belt out his message.

  “Mum!” he yelled, and then his face opened with delight. “Dad! What you doing here?” He did a little impromptu dance on the tiled floor, pulling up his t shirt like a footballer celebrating a goal.

  Martin laughed. “I’m just talking over some stuff with your Mum.”

  “O-K,” Ben announced in the style of game show host, then his manner shifted suddenly to earnest. “Mum, can we get some crisps? We’re STARVING!”

  Beth nodded. “One bag each. No more.”

  “YES!” Ben wiggled his dance again before racing to the snack cupboard. He grabbed three bags and then ran back to the door. “Laters,” he waved at them, before slamming the door behind him.

  Martin looked down at his coffee cup. Ben’s red hair. He felt it like an accusation. It was just like hers. The pale skin and red hair; he got that from her. Not the eyes though. Ben’s eyes were blue; a blue so startling against his red hair that people had actually gasped when he was a toddler. What a beautiful child, they’d whisper. And then they’d look at his parents, both dark haired, dark eyed, dark skinned. For a while Martin and Beth had been so anxious to shut them up that one or other of them would blurt out: he’s adopted. Later on, they’d hardened themselves against the inquisitive, made jokes about the milkman, stared them down. Martin realised he was gripping the saucer too hard when he heard the cup starting to rattle. He put it down on the side table and sat next to Beth.

  “She looks like him, doesn’t she?”

  It was as if she’d read his mind. He nodded. “A bit.”

  “It’s the hair.”

  “Uh huh.”

  He felt her turn away. It was a sharp, brittle movement. She loved Ben. He knew that she loved him as well as she could ever have loved a child she’d given birth to. But somehow it mattered to her in a way that it had never mattered to him. She had wanted to get pregnant, carry a child, give birth.

  He knew that had been the start of the rot; when she couldn’t get pregnant. She thought her body had failed her. She thought she had failed. Perhaps if he had been able to understand, if he’d said something different, she wouldn’t have shut him out. But whatever he said was wrong. She looked at him like she despised him. Her body had become the war zone of their marriage. No touching, no warmth, no sex, no togetherness.

  He had felt so alone. He knew she was suffering, but he was suffering too. And for the first time, he saw the pattern he’d fallen into. He’d always been such a disappointment to his cold mother, and when Beth had shown up, when she’d turned her face to him, it felt like she turned on the sunshine. There was all the love, all the approval he’d ever needed. And when she turned it off, it was like he was back to the start – needing to be loved. But he was a man now, not a kid. And instead of sticking it out, like a real man, instead of waiting for her, he’d slunk off into the easy comfort of some other woman’s bed. The only thing he could say in his defence was that he’d stopped. As soon as she found out, he stopped. And she had seemed to forgive him. But ten years later, on her fortieth birthday, suddenly it all came back. No doubt it had been building in her mind for a while, but it all came spilling out on her birthday. She couldn’t keep forgiving him. It was as if his sins were all new, come back to life, and this time she couldn’t forgive. But the difference was that this time he’d stick it out. He’d learned from his mistakes. He was a better man, a better husband. A father. He knew it wasn’t supposed to be that way round, but Ben gave him strength.

  “He’s more ours than he’ll ever be hers, Beth.”

  “I know,” she snapped.

  Wrong again. Everything he said was wrong.

  But then he felt her hand on his. He looked down in surprise and there it was. Her small hand, the fingers long and elegant; piano player’s fingers.

  “You’ve taken off your ring,” he said. He’d noticed it some time ago.

  “It was getting too loose,” she said. “I was afraid I’d lose it.”

  He bit his lip. At least she was afraid of that. Only a few months ago he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d thrown it in the bin.

  “How can it get too loose?” he puzzled, his brow in furrows as he stared at her hand.

  She sighed. “I’ve lost weight. But obviously you haven’t noticed.”

  “You lost weight off your hands?”

  She pulled her hand away, and he heard an exasperated click of her tongue.

  “I was joking,” he said. “I had noticed actually. You look good. But then you always looked good, Beth.”

  “Well, you’re easy to please, aren’t you?”

  He tried to let it wash over him. He deserved it.

  “I’ll choose the photographs,” she told him.

  “If you like,” he said. Maybe he’d even give Marilyn the photographs. Maybe it would help.

  “And then that’s it? Is she going to keep coming back for more?”

  He shrugged expansively. “I don’t know, Beth.”

  “So we’re no further forward, really?”

  “Beth,” he said gently. “There’s no rulebook for this. We have to play it by ear.”

  “Play along with what she wants, you mean.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe we have to do that.”

  “And what if she wants too much?”

  “Then we deal with that when it happens.”

  She leaned forward suddenly, putting her face in her hands. “I can’t bear it. I can’t do this.”

  “Then let me do it, Beth. Let me do it. I can cope. I can handle this.”

  She looked up at him, scanning his face, looking for signs of the man she once loved.

  “Trust me, Beth.”

  “How can I trust you?” she whispered.

  He held her gaze. He would win her back, even if it meant more lies to get there. “I promise, you can trust me.”

  Eleven

  Half of the shops in the row were empty. Even the ones that were still operating didn’t bother to take down the metal security shutters in the daytime. You had to know what was inside before you shuffled into the darkened interiors.

  “Looks like fucking Russia,” Lester Gallagher grunted as he pulled his car up in front of the flat roofed 1970s concrete block
. He rooted through the glove box and found the keys to what had once been a greengrocer’s. He pressed the lock button on his car as he walked towards the shop. A skinny twelve year old with an unlit roll up stuck to his lip got in his way.

  “I’ll mind your car.”

  Gallagher laughed. “You’ll fuck off, is what you’ll do,” he said. But there was no malice in his tone. The kid reminded him of himself at that age, in a dead end estate, with nothing but a bit of nerve to hustle his way through.

  The kid’s eyes narrowed, his gaze swivelling between Gallagher and his beamer.

  “Here.” Gallagher peeled off a fiver and handed it to the kid. “What’s your name?”

  “Dez.”

  “Alright Dez, anything happens to that car, it’s on your head.”

  Gallagher walked towards the shop, feeling the kid’s eyes still on him. His skin was prickling all over. He rolled his head to the side, hearing the crack and crunch inside the skull. He opened the metal security door and unlocked the inner door. It was dark inside. You could just make out the sloping shelving that had once held carrots and onions and turnips and marrows and potatoes. No one ate that anymore. Not when you could get a pack of burgers for a quid.

  He found the light switch and pulled out his phone, checked the messages. More shit from central office. He’d met that arse: Rafe, he called himself. What kind of name was that? Always sending him these poncy reminders about what to say, what to do. Just keeping you on message, Lester.

  Gallagher pocketed the phone. Where was Jango and his halfwit mate? He walked to the back of the shop and rattled the back door. There was a wet patch on the concrete floor and he looked up. The ceiling was damp too. A leak through the flat roof. Whole thing needed pulling down. No one wanted shops like this anymore. He could sell this block for apartments. He just needed to get it through the committee.

  “Boss? You in there?”

  Gallagher sighed as he walked towards the open front door. “No, Jango, I’m on the roof doing a paso doble. What do you fucking think? Of course I’m in here.”

  “Oh right.” Jango stepped inside, squinting into the darkness.