by Penny Kline
He looked up, surprised. ‘Oh, there was no fixed arrangement. Mum and Dad never had to go to court or anything. It was all quite — what’s the word?’ ‘Amicable?’
‘Yes. I mean… Anyway, I just turned up at Mum’s when I felt like it. Phoned first in case she had her boyfriend with her or something.’
‘She had a particular friend?’
‘What?’
He was right to look a little wary. What was I doing? Finding out as much information as I could about the family, or trying to help him come to terms with his loss? Perhaps it amounted to much the same thing, at this early stage, when we were still getting to know each other. The apparent ease with which he chatted about his dead mother was quite unnerving. Was he putting on an act or had he managed to block out his grief, almost persuade himself the fire had never happened and Maggie was still there, in the house in Bishopston, waiting for his next visit?
‘She had a lot of friends,’ he said, using his foot to drag an empty crisp bag from under the bed. ‘At least I think she did. But I never met anyone who seemed that important to her. Actually I think she preferred the company of women.’
I wanted to ask him about his parents’ separation. How he had felt at the time, whether he had blamed one or other of them. It was all relevant to his reaction to his mother’s death but I had to tread carefully, choose the right words, allow him to lower his defences in his own time. Already I was regretting that I had agreed to talk to him in his bedroom, rather than downstairs. The atmosphere was too intimate, too oppressive, and to counteract it I was keeping him at arm’s length, metaphorically as well as literally. I kept listening for sounds that would mean Bill had returned to the house. So far there were none.
Ian had his back to me, straightening the papers on his desk. He had a nasty spot on his neck, almost like a boil. He had smeared cream on it, which was likely to make it worse. I wanted to advise him to talk to his doctor, ask for a prescription for some benzoyl peroxide and possibly an antibiotic. But I doubted if he would appreciate my concern for his physical well-being.
‘Ian,’ I said cautiously, causing him to spin round, banging his elbow on the wall. ‘When your parents decided to live apart did it come as a shock to you or was it something you’d been expecting?’
‘Oh, no, not a shock at all. I could see they weren’t happy together.’
‘And you understood the problems between them. I mean, they explained why they’d made the decision.’
He hesitated. ‘I tell you what,’ he said slowly, ‘if you ask my father he could probably give you a more objective account of what happened. If you get a chance I’d quite like you to talk to him, just to set the record straight.’
I was wondering if Ian had any idea why Maggie would have made an appointment to come and see me. Had she been feeling guilty about leaving her teenage son with his father? Had she wanted to discuss how she and Bill could get back together again? A fan heater was filling the room with warm air. Pushed into a corner just below the window, a waste-paper basket overflowed with screwed-up file paper, an empty tube of antiseptic cream, and a curled-up banana skin that probably accounted for the sweet, putrid smell. In any case I preferred to think it was the banana rather than dirty socks that had come off in bed and worked themselves down to the bottom. No, that was more Owen’s style. His flat in Cotham had been unspeakable the first time I saw it, although he had sworn he had spent several hours tidying up before my visit.
‘I’m sorry I had to change the time of your appointment,’ I said. ‘It won’t happen again. I had this first-aid class I’d forgotten about. Your father did give you the message?’
‘Yes, of course. That’s quite all right. Whatever suits you best.’
I adjusted the cushion that was slipping off my chair. ‘How have you been feeling?’ I asked. ‘I expect it’s difficult to put into words.’
He smiled politely. ‘Oh, not too bad considering. I had football practice at four o’clock. Should have had a shower, changed out of this lot, but I got started on my work and forgot the time.’
‘You play much football? I expect the routine of school helps.’
‘Yes, I think that’s right.’ He fiddled with the comer of his duvet, then smoothed it back into place. ‘The police seem to think it was racists, getting back at Mum for helping at the Saturday club. Stupid really, she’d only been working there for a few months and as far as I could tell all she did was mix paint and clear up the mess afterwards.’
‘Did you ever go there with her?’
‘Me? God, no. I don’t really believe in that kind of thing. If you help people it just makes them feel indebted. Like in the nineteenth century. People with plenty of material goods making themselves feel better by handing some of it over to the poor.’
‘Yes, I know what you mean.’
He had been looking down at his trainers. His head shot up. ‘I wasn’t implying Mum was like that. She just hated the way people judge other people by how they look or how they talk.’
‘Yes.’ We sat in silence for a few moments. Ian was staring at a poster, a picture of a giant panda that looked as if it had been up on the wall for several years. I tried to picture how the room might have looked when Maggie was still living in the house. Everything carefully chosen, but for a younger child: the duvet cover with its pattern of parrots and tropical plants, the green rug with a racing car woven into the design. A pin-board, screwed to the wall, was bare apart from a card with the address and visiting times of a local health centre.
‘I was thinking,’ said Ian at last. ‘You may not like it much, being up here in my room. I mean, you might be thinking… ’ He broke off, struggling to find the right words. ‘Only you needn’t worry.’
We both began to laugh. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘To tell you the truth, I was wondering if you found it a bit oppressive, but if you’re OK, I certainly am.’
‘Oh good, that’s all right then. Better than freezing to death downstairs.’ He glanced at the open door. ‘Dad never talks that much. I mean, he tells me about school and one of the teachers he can’t stand the sight of but… Anyway, I don’t suppose there is that much to say really.’
‘It’s very hard for you,’ I said. ‘As well as feeling so sad you must have all kinds of other feelings. If your mother had died it would have been bad enough, but knowing the fire was arson… ’
To my surprise his face lit up. ‘Do you know, you’re the first person who’s used that word. “Passed away, Gone to heaven”, you’d be amazed the cretinous things people say.’ With the nail of his index finger he lifted the edge of a scab at the side of his mouth. When he spoke again his mood had changed and, for the first time, he sounded incredibly sad. ‘After Mum left I used to try and get Dad to talk about it but he always changed the subject. It was like as long as you didn’t mention her nothing had changed, any minute now she might walk through the front door.’ ‘She used to visit you here?’
He shook his head vigorously. ‘No, I didn’t mean it literally. It’s just something people say, isn’t it? I think Dad felt a bit guilty.’
‘Your father thought the separation was his fault?’
Ian shrugged. ‘He did and he didn’t. If people don’t get on there’s no point in them staying together, not just for the sake of the neighbours.’
Outside someone was chopping up wood. That’s what it sounded like but surely it was a smokeless zone, no open fires allowed.
‘That’ll be Dave,’ said Ian, kneeling on the bed to look out of the window. ‘Lives two doors down. DIY bloke. Drives his wife crazy.’ He grinned, and for the first time he seemed like a normal fifteen-year-old schoolboy. ‘In the summer he put up a greenhouse. Tried to!’ The tears were running down his face. ‘Whole bloody thing collapsed — and it was raining!’ Taking a screwed-up tissue from under his pillow he wiped his eyes, blew his nose. ‘Sorry. If you’d seen him. God, what an idiot!’ He was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling beneath his blue tr
ack-suit top. I thought about the first-aid class. The pink dummy. Heather’s friend, Kieran, who had seemed so keen to look for Max.
Ian was looking slightly ashamed, the way people often do when a bout of hysterical laughter suddenly ends and they start wondering what it was that had seemed so funny.
‘I was going to ask you something,’ he said, talking in a deliberately casual voice but ending up licking his lips and fingering the spot on his neck. ‘If you saw a picture of someone you knew — on television or I suppose it could be a wanted poster, would you tell the police?’
‘Someone who’d committed a serious crime? A friend, you mean?’
He nodded. ‘I was watching this programme last night and it occurred to me — well, supposing it was your son or your brother or something?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I suppose it would depend on the crime.’
‘Yes.’ He thought about this for a moment. ‘Sorry. I just wondered. In General Studies we have these discussions about morals, ethics. Most of the kids think it’s a good excuse to ask questions about condoms and stuff but Dad told me all that when I was eight or nine. No, it wasn’t Dad. Must have been Mum.’
Was I imagining it or was something making him afraid? Losing your mother was frightening enough but it didn’t produce the kind of fear that made your forehead shiny with sweat.
‘You and your father,’ I said, ‘you get on quite well?’
‘Oh, yes, definitely. Yes, very well.’ He had answered my question too fast but that didn’t mean he was lying. ‘You see, we’re both interested in much the same things. Football, cricket, foreign affairs, the Second World War, that kind of thing.’
‘The reason I asked, sometimes when someone dies the other members of the family find it difficult to comfort each other. Instead of talking about how they feel they seem to withdraw into their own private worlds.’
‘Yes.’ He thought about this for several moments. ‘But you can tell how a person feels without them actually spelling it all out. Dad used to say Mum leaving him was worse than if she’d died.’
‘Worse?’
‘I suppose he meant if she’d died it wouldn’t have been anyone’s fault. I mean, it wouldn’t have meant she didn’t … Oh, by the way.’ He frowned a little. ‘When I said
I didn’t approve of do-gooders I wouldn’t like you to think I meant people like you. It’s your job, you get paid for it. That’s completely different, isn’t it? Not the same thing at all.’
Chapter Seven
‘Heather?’ I opened the door a couple of inches to make sure she had finished on the phone. ‘Guess who I met yesterday evening?’
‘I know.’ She was trying to keep a straight face. ‘Kieran told me all about it. How he’d let you down, how bad he felt.’
‘It wasn’t funny. This guy had perfected his act. A pink vinyl woman lying flat on her back and a captive audience to watch how he touched her up.’
‘Disgusting.’ Heather hoisted herself on to the edge of the desk and sat, swinging her large but surprisingly shapely legs. ‘So what did you think of him? No, not the first-aid instructor. Kieran.’
‘Looks a bit like Richard Gere.’
‘Do me a favour. We met at a car boot sale. I was looking for a garden rake. Kieran tripped over my feet.’
‘How romantic.’
‘Oh, we’d bumped into each other before, he lives quite close by, but it was the first time we’d introduced ourselves properly, if you know what I mean. You think he’s too young for me? Yes, you do. Older than he looks as a matter of fact. Been married and divorced. Oh, I nearly forgot,’ she reached for a slip of paper in her tray, ‘someone rang. Something about a car. She’s not on the phone and she’s going to be out this evening but she said if you could pop round tomorrow.’
‘Her name?’
‘That’s just it. You’re going to kill me but it was so difficult to hear. She was ringing from a call box and it sounded like they were mending the road outside. Peggy?’
‘Paddy?’
‘Could’ve been. Sorry about that, Anna, only the money ran out so I couldn’t ask her to repeat it. Yes — Paddy — yes, I’m sure that’s what it was.’ She lowered her eyes and started fiddling with the buttons on the front of her skirt. ‘I haven’t told the girls yet — about you-know-who. Serena’ll have a fit.’
‘Let her.’
‘Yes, you’re right. Not that there’s much to tell. As I say we’ve only known each other properly for a couple of weeks.’ Imogen Nash was in the waiting room. She looked pretty desperate but as soon as she saw me she sprang up, laughing, and snatched at her red bag, missing one of the handles so that most of the contents slid out on to the floor. I knelt down to help her collect up files, books, comb, address book — and a bottle of a hundred aspirin. ‘Headache?’
‘Sorry?’ Her voice was so loud I made an involuntary movement, putting my hands over my ears. ‘Oh, I keep those for the other students. That way people always know where to come.’
Up in my room she leaned back in her chair, crossed one long leg over the other, and gave me one of her brightest smiles. ‘Are you a feminist?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to sound rude but I’m afraid I can’t stand feminists. I mean, they want everything, don’t they?’
When I made no comment she looked at me, questioningly, then decided to change the subject. ‘Did you talk to Jon?’
‘Jon Turle? Yes, I did. He told me a little about you — where your parents live, where you went to school, that you’re an only child — but not very much else.’ ‘Actually that’s about all there is. Will you be phoning him again?’
‘Is that what you want me to do?’ ‘Only if you think it’ll help. No, I don’t suppose it’ll be necessary. I had a wonderful childhood, absolutely idyllic.’ Suddenly her expression changed. ‘Of course they say people forget the parts they don’t want to remember. I was talking to Rachel, my flatmate, about whether it’s best to pretend. People have to, don’t they? You can’t go around saying what you really think. That’s what dogs would do, if they could talk.’
I smiled and she stared at me, as if she had no idea she had said anything even mildly amusing.
‘My mother’s got a dog,’ she said. ‘A little white thing with pointed ears.’ She held out her hands to indicate the size. ‘She’s called Puffball. Mummy absolutely adores her.’
The cheerful expression had returned. She sat up straight, waiting for me to ask her a question. When it didn’t come she started talking in a light, brittle voice, and at the same time inspecting the sole of her shoe. ‘Actually I can’t remember much before I was five. I was sent to a school in South Kensington. We had to wear grey pleated skirts and hats with yellow bands. Oh, and black patent leather shoes that pinched your toes. Actually, it was my own fault, I’ve got terrible feet, size double E or something, only these days it’s easier, you can wear great clumping things and nobody seems to care. There was a girl at school called Felicity who used to pull my hair. Still, I’m sure I gave her as good as I got.’
Did she really think delving into her early childhood would give her confidence in seminars? It was quite difficult to believe she was incapable of speaking in public. Perhaps she could manage a one-to-one relationship all right, but found a roomful of people intimidating. In any case, what mattered was how she saw herself, the gap between what she was and what she felt she ought to be.
‘You say you find it difficult to talk in seminars,’ I said, trying to steer her back to the present, ‘and you seem to feel your anxiety goes back to childhood. Perhaps you set very high standards for yourself and it’s difficult to live up to them.’
She nodded vaguely but seemed to be thinking of something else. ‘People think I’m the life and soul of the party. I suppose I am in a way, but it’s only an act. Really I’m an absolute mess.’
‘Why do you say that? You mean, you don’t feel you can let anyone know how you really feel?’
‘No, well, you can’t go
round like a wet weekend. Nobody’d want to have anything to do with you and who could blame them.’
‘What about Rachel?’
‘Rachel?’ She clasped her hands against her chin. ‘Oh, she’s out most evenings, with her boyfriend. Just as well, really, the flat’s far too small for both of us, we’d only get on top of each other and that always leads to trouble.’ She laughed as if what she had just said was really funny. ‘Do you think being obsessed is the same as falling in love?’
‘I suppose it can be. Who were you thinking about?’
‘Oh, not me, just someone I know. Her boyfriend’s older than her. About ten years older, actually.’
‘And she’s so obsessed with him she makes you feel left out?’
She stared at me in astonishment. ‘Oh, no, I didn’t mean Rachel. I was just interested. They were talking about it in a seminar. Tess of the d’Urbervilles, have you read it? Some people think being obsessed is nothing to do with love, but I can’t see that.’
She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, holding her breath for several moments then letting it out in a long, dramatic sigh. The features of her face were large but perfectly proportioned, like a beautiful racehorse with a mane of long fair hair.
‘When I saw you in the waiting room,’ I said, hoping if I spoke quietly it would help her to relax, not stay so keyed up. ‘I felt quite worried about you, you looked so depressed.’
Her eyes opened wide. ‘Me? Oh, no, I don’t think so. I’m so lucky. Luckier than almost anyone I know. No money worries, quite intelligent — well, good enough to do what’s required, apart from the seminars, I mean — and my parents are fantastic, and they aren’t even divorced. That’s quite something these days.’
After she left I felt uneasy. It was nothing out of the ordinary, seeing a client who gave the impression of being extremely unhappy but denied it adamantly. Others talked about their clinical depression but seemed fed-up with their lives rather than depressed in any serious sense. The bottle of aspirin meant nothing. Buying them by the hundred is far cheaper than buying foil packets of a dozen with a well-advertised brand name, and Imogen’s bag falling open had been typical, in keeping with all the hearty laughter and the expansive uncoordinated gestures.
