Not My Brother's Keeper

by Colette McCormick

  not my

  brother’s

  keeper

  COLETTE MCCORMICK

  PROLOGUE

  As brothers went, there wasn’t much to distinguish Robert and Tom Ellis from any other set of brothers that had gone before them or since.

  With a little over two years between them, they grew up playing together, learning together, and even occasionally fighting together. As little boys they were each other’s best friend.

  As older boys the bond of brotherhood – though still strong – became stretched as new friendships were formed. By the time they were both at secondary school, they were brothers who looked out for each other’s welfare, though they had little in common.

  As adolescents, when raging hormones turned cherubs into demons, the stretched bond strengthened again; they were two boys standing together against parents who had forgotten what it was like to be young.

  As young men, they established who they really were.

  ROBERT

  I don’t know what you want me to say. I was just a normal kid.

  I liked my mates, I loved football and I hated school.

  The only thing that I liked about school was the break times, which I spent either playing footie with my mates or round the back of the gym doing whatever the girl I was with would allow me to. My kid brother was the academic one in the family and more than one teacher said that I should take a leaf out of his book. No chance. The only lesson I liked was the one that Mr Dawson taught in car mechanics but it wasn’t really a lesson at all, more of a hobby class really; a bit like chess club.

  My best mate at school was a lad called Craig Jenkins. We started on the same day and were in the same class all the way through. He was a massive lad – wide as well as tall – and he liked school even less than I did. We sometimes used to wag off and go into town together. He had a sister called Michelle who was in our Tom’s year. I think they did Maths together.

  Me and Craig lost touch a bit after we left school. He got a job on a building site and I started working for Bill Deardon who had a garage behind North Road. We made new friends and didn’t have the common bond of hating school anymore. I still saw him sometimes when I was out, especially if I was in the Big Tree on a Friday night, but we weren’t as close as we had been.

  I loved my job. I mean, I know I spent the first six months making tea and watching what the other mechanics did, but Bill said that that was the way I would learn. I think I’d been there almost a year before I got my hands on anything under the bonnet of a car but I had learned a lot from watching the others and Bill was pleased with what I could do.

  I came across Craig’s sister again in the summer of 1980 when I was twenty years old. I was in The Queens Head on Station Street one Saturday night when I saw our Tom in the corner with one of his mates. They were sitting there sipping their pints when I saw a young, blonde lass go up to him and start talking. Tom said something to her and she laughed. I had no idea who she was but, even seeing her from behind, I could tell that I wanted to find out.

  I’d been sitting at the bar waiting for Tony, one of the lads I worked with, but I thought sod Tony and slid off the stool. I grabbed my pint and made my way through the crowd.

  ‘You all right, Tom?’ I asked, though I didn’t even look at him or the lad he was sitting with. I was looking at the girl. There was something familiar about her but I couldn’t put my finger on it; I couldn’t place her. It was obvious that she could tell I was trying to work out who she was because a little smile curled only half her lip, as though she was enjoying my struggle.

  ‘You remember Michelle, don’t you,’ Tim said eventually. ‘You know, Craig’s sister.’

  Bloody hell she’d changed! I mean she’d always had a pretty enough face but the last time I’d seen her she was still gawky in that fourteen-year-old kid sort of way. She was anything but gawky now.

  I tried to sound casual as I said, ‘’Course I do,’ but anyone could tell that I was lying. ‘How are you doing, Michelle?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m fine thanks, Robert.’ She lowered her eyes as she spoke and I knew right then that I’d be walking her home that night.

  I did walk her home that night, and the one after that, and before long we were a couple. After a few weeks I even took her home, which my mum said must make it serious. I didn’t know about that, but Michelle had said she wanted to meet my parents and I thought why not? Dad liked her but Mum didn’t seem so sure. She was pleasant enough to Michelle but I couldn’t help feeling her heart wasn’t in it. If Michelle noticed it she was too polite to say.

  It was the same thing in reverse when I met her parents. I went over for my tea one Saturday night and Michelle’s mother was all over me like a rash – would you like more potatoes, Robert, have you got enough chicken, Robert? – that sort of thing. Her dad looked at me out of the corner of his eye as he ate his food and asked me what I did for a living. I felt as though he was weighing up my prospects.

  Craig wasn’t there the first time I went to the house, but when he was there on other occasions he acted a bit like his dad. I thought it was strange because he knew me, but maybe that was why he was suspicious of my intentions. He only had one sister and even when we were kids it was obvious he would have done anything for her. There was one time, just after Tom and Michelle had started secondary school, when one of the fifth years came on to Michelle and teased her about the size of her non-existent breasts. Craig heard about it and threatened that if the lad ever so much as spoke to his sister again he’d regret it. Even though he was two years younger, Craig was already bigger than the fifth year and twice as menacing. As far as I know, Michelle didn’t receive unwanted attention after that.

  Luckily for me, Michelle wanted mine.

  She was a lovely girl and I liked her a lot but I couldn’t help realising she wanted more. I just wanted something casual; she wanted me to tell her that I loved her. And eventually I told her I did simply because I knew it was what she wanted to hear.

  At that point, we hadn’t slept together – she’d said she wanted to save herself for the right person. But, as far as she was concerned, I now loved her, so that made me the right person. I took her virginity in the back of a Mini Clubman Estate that I’d parked behind the old ironworks. She cried.

  I did want to love her but it just wasn’t in me; it wasn’t in me to love anyone. I was twenty one years old and much too young for any of that crap.

  Soon, my telling her that I loved her wasn’t enough and every other week she told me about some friend or other that was getting engaged. One of them even got married.

  My twenty second birthday was at the beginning of February, and Michelle said she had a special birthday present for me. I met her at the hospital gate just after eight o’clock – she was training to be a nurse and had a placement at the General Hospital. I saw her come out of a door with a couple of other people but she said goodbye to them quickly and came trotting over to me. She was wearing a Trench coat tied tightly at the waist and her collar was turned up against the cold. I’d been wondering all day what this special birthday present could be and – it sounds daft now – as I watched her coming towards me I hoped it involved her being naked underneath her coat.

  It didn’t.

  To be fair to her, I think she actually believed I’d be happy to hear her say it.

  ‘Robert, I’m pregnant.’

  I wasn’t.

  TOM

  I was two years and four days younger than him, and when I was a child, my brother Robert was my hero. He was confident and outgoing; he was popular and had loads of friends. He was everything that I wasn’t.

  He’d left school as soon as he finished his O Levels and got a j
ob as a mechanic in a back-street garage. Mum wasn’t very happy about that because she said he should have stopped on at school and done better for himself. The trouble was that he didn’t want to better himself – he was happy with the way he was. That was one of the things that I loved the most about Robert; he knew who he was and he was happy with it.

  Me? I hadn’t a clue who I was.

  I left school after my O Levels too but I didn’t get a job. When I was sixteen I wasn’t ready for the real world. The real world terrified me. I enrolled in art college with the hope of doing God knows what. Mum and Dad would have preferred me to stay on at school but they seemed pleased that I was at least furthering my education.

  ‘Don’t know what good it’ll do you,’ my dad said when I told him what I was doing – he didn’t think of art as a real subject. If I’m honest, I probably agreed with him but, like I said, I just wasn’t ready for reality.

  I met my first girlfriend at college, a girl called Carol- Anne Dempsey. She was a petite brunette with long eyelashes and a very loud laugh. We spent a couple of months together in the summer of ’79 before she gave me the elbow. When I realised that I wasn’t bothered, I decided she’d done me a favour. That laugh really did grate on you after a bit.

  By that time, I had nothing in common with Robert other than our shared parentage. Pretty much the only thing we ever did together was be in the same pub on a Friday night occasionally. I’d see Robert at the bar, laughing with his mates and chatting up girls and, God help me, despite everything I couldn’t help admiring him. Once someone caught me looking at him and asked me who he was.

  ‘That’s my brother,’ I said and even I could hear the pride in my voice.

  I never heard anyone say that he talked about me in the same way.

  This thing between me and Robert started when I was with my mate Alan in that pub at the top of Station Street one Friday night in 1980. I couldn’t tell you exactly when but I know it was summer because it was still light well into the evening. Anyway, we were just sitting there minding our own business when I heard someone say my name. I turned around and saw a blonde girl standing beside me.

  ‘I knew it was you,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages. How are you? What are doing to these days?’

  I recognised her instantly. Michelle Jenkins wasn’t the sort of girl that you forget. Like every other lad in our year I’d admired her from afar when were at school but I hadn’t seen her since we’d left. Her face was the same as it had always been but in the intervening years her body had developed and changed her from a skinny kid into a curvy woman.

  I said that I was fine and asked how she was and what she was up to. She told me she was training to be a nurse, which impressed me no end.

  We chatted for a few minutes about nothing specific and I was about to ask her if I could buy her a drink when, out of the blue, our Robert appeared. He asked me if I was all right but he didn’t even look at me: he only had eyes for Michelle.

  I can’t even tell you how pissed off I was by that. Robert had nodded a greeting when he’d come in about an hour earlier but he hadn’t shown the slightest bit of interest in me since then. Until he saw a pretty girl talking to me that is – then he was there like a rat up a drainpipe.

  I didn’t blame Michelle for giving her attention to Robert rather than me. It’s just the way it always was. I was used to it – but it didn’t make it any easier to stomach.

  As I watched them walk away together I finished my pint and told Alan that I’d had enough and was going home. By the time I got outside, Robert and Michelle were climbing into the back seat of a taxi.

  I was surprised when Robert brought Michelle home for tea; I couldn’t think of any other girl he’d brought home before. Dad was OK but Mum sort of glared at her all the way through whatever we were eating. Mum wasn’t much of a cook so, whatever it was, I’m sure Michelle was underwhelmed. Mum made some effort and was perfectly polite but you could just tell that it wasn’t genuine. Dad seemed to like Michelle though and they chatted together quite easily. I didn’t stay long. I just ate as much as I could get away with and then made an excuse that I had somewhere to be.

  I couldn’t quite get my head around them as a couple and I wasn’t sure of the reason why. I think it was jealousy.

  Of what, you ask – of Robert, of course – he’d had the confidence to just walk up to Michelle and start talking, whereas I’d fumbled through asking her what she was doing for a living. She hadn’t taken a lot of persuading to turn her attention to him but I didn’t hold it against her. Robert was a catch, people were always telling me so.

  ROBERT

  I just looked at her and stuttered, ‘Are you sure?’

  I hoped that she’d start laughing and tell me she was joking but she didn’t. She just looked at me with those big eyes of hers and nodded her head, slowly.

  A couple of girls walked past us and shouted things like, ‘goodnight’ and ‘see you tomorrow,’ to Michelle. She looked at them but didn’t say anything. Then she looked back at me, but I still didn’t have anything to say to her.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  She asked me what I was thinking.

  I was thinking how the hell could you be pregnant? But I knew that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. I was asking myself how it could have happened. Had she forgotten to take her pill? I was wondering what she would want to do, what she would want me to do.

  ‘Robert?’

  I looked at her and saw that tears had formed and were pooling at the edges of her eyes.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  All I could do was look at her.

  She looked away and sucked in a deep breath which she let out in stages. Her hand was shaking as she brought it up to her cheeks and brushed away a tear that had escaped. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked as she sniffed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, finally. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘I want to go home,’ she said, brushing my arm as she walked past me.

  I went after her of course, I wasn’t going to let her walk home on her own but we didn’t say anything else, not a word. Occasionally I felt her looking at me as I looked at my feet.

  I walked her to the door of her parents’ house. She had her hand on the door knob and was about to turn it when I touched her arm. She turned around and looked at me.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘Everything will be all right.’

  Even as I said the words I didn’t believe what I was saying. How could everything be all right? I didn’t want a kid. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted Michelle anymore.

  I hardly slept a wink that night and spent most of the time lying on my back looking at the ceiling. I wondered if Michelle was doing the same.

  I wondered, too, about how long Michelle had known, how far along she was and would she want to keep it? Surely she wasn’t any more ready to be a parent than I was; she wasn’t even twenty years old yet. It occurred to me that she might be able to get something from the hospital – you know, some potion or other that she could take that would make the problem go away – but I doubted that she would have taken it even if such a thing had existed. Perhaps she’d consider adoption but I doubted that too so I guessed she was going to be a parent whether she was ready or not.

  At some point during the night I wondered if she had told her parents but I thought that she probably hadn’t, because if she had, their Craig would have been round to tell me when I had to be at the altar.

  The altar.

  That was when it hit me. Michelle would want to get married.

  Shit! The word echoed around my head and I remember covering my eyes with my hands, forcing my fingertips into the sockets.

  I spent the rest of the night lying on one side and then the other in the hope that I could get at least a little sleep, though I spent half the time looking at a wall and the rest of it looking at the clock.

  Eventually I came up with a plan.

 
Mum was in the kitchen when I went downstairs the following morning.

  ‘You all right, love?’ she asked in that chirpy way she always had in the mornings. She was making packed lunches, just like she did every morning, one for my dad and one for me. I mustn’t have answered her quickly enough because she asked the question again.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I snapped. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  She asked me what I wanted for breakfast, the choice was probably toast or cereal, neither of which I was that keen on but I usually managed to choke at least one of them down. I couldn’t face food that morning so I told her that I had to get to work early. She handed me the box that she’d just filled with my lunch and I took it, not because I wanted it but because I couldn’t be bothered with the inquisition that would follow if I didn’t. Food was the last thing on my mind but my mother didn’t need to know why.

  I spent most of the first hour at work lying on a trolley underneath a Ford Escort that had a dodgy crank shaft. After the first ten minutes I stopped even bothering to pretend to fix it and lay there thinking. I’d spent the past fifteen hours thinking. There was a radio playing in the background and the hum of conversation but none of that concerned me.

  I hadn’t noticed that there was anyone anywhere near me until I heard Brian, one of the other mechanics, say, ‘I know mate. But divorce?’

  ‘It’s the only way,’ came the reply, in Martin’s thick, Glaswegian accent.

  I held my breath and listened. I wasn’t sure who would have been more embarrassed if they’d realised that I was nearby.

  ‘How long have you been married?’ Brian asked, and Martin said that it had been ten years. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds and then Brian asked him why. Someone, Martin presumably, let out a long sigh. ‘We were too young,’ he said, ‘and she was pregnant.’

  They walked away a few minutes later and I stayed where I was for a good ten minutes after that.