Not My Brother's Keeper

by Colette McCormick

  Things worked out pretty well for a while, but after six or eight months I could sense a sea-change with Diane. When we were out shopping she would slow down as we passed jewellers’ shops and eye the rings in the window. She would say that she was looking at earrings or something but she wasn’t and it seemed like one or other of her friends was getting engaged every other week.

  We split up before Christmas.

  Angela came to work at The Bull the following year.

  She’d turned up for her interview wearing a pair of jeans and a tight red T-shirt so she immediately stood out from the two people I’d seen before her who had both turned up dressed like they were going to a funeral, you know, dark business suits. They were after a job in a back-street pub for God’s sake, not a bank.

  I call it a back-street pub but, without making it sound like I’m blowing my own trumpet, it had come on a lot since Gloria and Phil had handed the reins over to me. I’d sorted out the back room, which had been little more than a store room before, and turned it into the function room that I told you about. We’d started to do more food, which was bringing in extra revenue, and I’d renegotiated with the brewery which meant that the margins were better. All right, I am blowing my own trumpet, but why the hell not? I was good at my job.

  Anyway, getting back to the point, we were taking on extra staff and Angela stood out from the other two. Her first shift was a Wednesday evening and after we’d locked up we tidied up and I asked her if she’d like a coffee or something. She laughed and suggested that we should probably have done that before we’d loaded the dirty dishes into the dishwasher.

  ‘I’ve got cups upstairs,’ I told her.

  Would you believe me if I told you that we drank coffee and talked? You should, because it’s the truth. She was so easy to talk to and she seemed to want to talk as much as I wanted to listen. She had long blonde hair and a figure that most girls would kill for and so I don’t suppose she was used to blokes just wanting to talk to her.

  ‘You not from round here, are you,’ she said. It was a comment, not a question, something that she was certain of and I guessed that my accent was a giveaway.

  ‘No,’ I admitted as I handed her a mug of instant coffee. She didn’t strike me as a coffee snob so I didn’t think she’d mind. She had cosied herself into the corner of the sofa with her feet tucked underneath her. I noticed that she’d kicked her trainers off and made herself at home. She took a sip of her coffee and smiled as if it was the best thing that she had ever tasted.

  She asked things like, ‘How long you been here?’ and, ‘Do you like it?’ before she asked the sixteen-million- dollar question of, ‘Why did you come here?’

  How to answer that one? I shrugged my shoulders to give myself a bit of thinking time and decided to tell her, ‘There was a traffic jam on the A1.’

  She did that thing with her eyebrows where they almost join in the middle, what’s it called, furrowing? I smiled to myself because I thought my answer was clever. Needless to say, she asked what I meant.

  ‘I wasn’t sure where I was going,’ I said, ‘but I was on the A1 and there was a traffic jam. I sat there for a while and then I realised that the turnoff to here was just up the road so I nipped onto the hard shoulder, turned right at the roundabout, and here I am.’

  She sipped her coffee and studied me a while. ‘What made you leave?’ she looked me straight in the eye though I noticed that her head was tilted slightly to one side.

  I thought carefully before I answered.

  ‘There was nothing for me there.’ It wasn’t like I was lying to her but I wasn’t ready to tell her the truth, not the whole truth anyway. She asked me if I had a family and before I’d realised what I was doing I’d said, ‘No.’ Later on, I would think long and hard about why I’d said that and all I could come up with was that it made things easier to explain. No excuse, I know, but I’d said it and I was glad when she then started to tell me a bit about herself.

  She was twenty three years old, which of course I already knew, and she had lived in the town all her life. She’d moved back in to live with her mum the previous year after her dad had died suddenly in a late-night car crash. ‘I’ll move out again,’ she told me before she finished the dregs of her coffee, ‘but I just needed to make sure that Mum was OK.’

  ‘And is she?’ I asked.

  On reflection it was a stupid question, which Angela confirmed when she answered, ‘As OK as she’ll ever be.’

  She looked off into a space behind my shoulder for a second and I guessed that she was thinking about her dad so I let her do that for as long as she wanted to.

  ‘They were childhood sweethearts,’ she told me, ‘and neither of them ever had another partner. They were only nineteen when they got married and my eldest brother was born six month later.’

  The maths wasn’t lost on me but I didn’t say anything.

  By the time she left, just before two in the morning, we’d had two more mugs of coffee and I’d discovered that in addition to her eldest brother there were two more, both older, and a younger sister. I also knew that she preferred cats to dogs, apples to oranges, and that she’d tried vegetarianism for a week before the call of a bacon sandwich defeated her.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to walk you home?’ I asked as she threw her jacket over her head and slid it over her arms.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll be home in five minutes.’

  I conceded and took her downstairs. I opened the back door and let her out and she laughed saying that she’d be home in four minutes now because she’d cut the corner off.

  We stood in the doorway and she looked up into my face. Was I supposed to kiss her? I wanted to, but before I could make a move she made hers and pecked me on the cheek.

  ‘Goodnight, Rob,’ she said. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘’Night Angela,’ I said.

  She took a step or two and then she stopped and looked over her shoulder.

  ‘Call me Angie,’ she said before she disappeared into the darkness.

  TOM

  Two years later we had another portrait of our sons done except this time there were three of them. Michael had been born three months earlier.

  Simon, who was almost six sat with the baby on his lap resting against his chest. Anthony sat to the side of them holding the baby’s hand. All three of them smiled at the camera though, in all honesty, Michael’s smile was probably down to wind rather than the faces that I was pulling from my position behind the photographer.

  When we got the canvas back, we took a copy to Michelle’s parents and then went to Mum and Dad’s to drop one off for them.

  ‘You’ve got three fine looking boys, Tom,’ Dad said, in a matter of fact sort of way. He had replaced the original portrait above the fireplace with the new one and he was looking at it as he spoke. I looked at it too and I knew that he was speaking the truth. They were beautiful boys. They all had their father’s blond hair and their mother’s brown eyes.

  Michael had been asleep on Michelle’s lap but he started to stir. He opened his eyes briefly but it was like there was nothing to interest him going on so he closed them again. Anthony was on the floor building a tower with oversized building blocks and Simon was running a car along the arm of the chair that my mother was sitting in.

  ‘Do you like cars, Simon?’ my mum asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied without looking at her.

  ‘Your daddy always liked cars,’ she said and, as she brushed his fringe away from his eyes, I noticed a look on her face that was sort of far away, distant. Michelle didn’t lift her eyes from Michael, and Dad was helping Anthony to balance the tower that was probably a couple of bricks too tall. Either I was the only one to hear what my mother had said or they were both making a point of ignoring it.

  ‘Did you, Daddy? Did you like cars?’ Simon’s eyes were bright and there was an excitement in his voice.

  I looked at Mum but she didn’t look at me.
I got the feeling that she was deliberately not meeting my gaze so I let it go and looked at Simon.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I did always like cars, but I liked trains more.’

  Mum looked up at me then, and I could tell that she was trying to say something with her eyes. The trouble was that I didn’t know what it was but I doubted it was anything resembling an apology.

  Michelle asked me about it later that evening. The boys had been in bed for a while and we were settled on the sofa. I was sitting on one end and Michelle had her feet up and her back to me as my arm rested over her shoulder. It was our default position for watching television.

  When she started stroking my hand that was resting on her chest, I knew that there was something that she wanted to say. We’d been married long enough for me to know the signs.

  ‘What happened earlier?’ she asked. I asked her what she meant, though I thought I knew what she was referring to. She pushed herself up and swivelled on the seat so that she could see me. She looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘What happened at your mum’s?’

  I didn’t bother pretending that I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I did try to dismiss it and said, ‘It was nothing.’

  She did that thing where she raises one eyebrow as if to say do I look stupid? and I couldn’t help laughing because I’ve asked her a thousand times how she does it. She didn’t laugh though, and it was obvious there was no way I was getting out of telling her.

  ‘She was confused, that was all.’ I tried to make it sound insignificant.

  ‘What about?’ her eyebrow had dropped but she still looked sceptical.

  ‘She told Simon that his daddy used to like cars,’ I said.

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ It was a simple enough question and there was only one answer to it.

  ‘It was Robert who liked cars.’

  I knew that she was looking at me but I couldn’t look at her – I focused on her knee... of all places! Out of the corner of my eye I saw her move her hand and then felt it on the side of my face. Her thumb stroked my ear. ‘Like you said, she just got a bit confused.’ She spoke softly, the way I’d heard her speak to the boys a thousand times before.

  I tried to smile but it wasn’t until she smiled at me that I managed it.

  ‘You’re right,’ I admitted.

  ‘If she needs us to remind her who Simon’s father is,’ she said as she settled back into position, resting on my chest, ‘I can always take his birth certificate over for her to see.’

  I kissed the top of her head but I wished that I could see her face.

  The phone rang an hour or two later and I jumped up to answer it as quickly as I could. The last thing we needed was one of the boys waking up.

  ‘Hello,’ I said almost under my breath so that I didn’t make too much noise. I was surprised when I heard my mother’s voice and instantly wondered what the problem was. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked and I could hear the concern in my own voice.

  ‘I want to see you,’ she said.

  ‘What about?’

  I’d asked what I thought was a perfectly sensible question but Mum got a bit snappy and said, ‘Does a mother need a reason to see her son?’

  I heard her give a big sigh and then say, ‘I just need to see you, Tom,’ in a much calmer voice.

  The fact that she said need the second time rather than want wasn’t lost on me. I asked her if it would keep and when she said that it could I told her that I’d call round the following day after work.

  ‘Who was that?’ Michelle asked as she leaned forward to allow me to get back into position.

  ‘Mum,’ I said simply.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Dunno,’ I admitted as I settled back down. ‘I’ll find out tomorrow. I’m popping over after work.’

  Michelle didn’t speculate, at least out loud, about why Mum had called and asked to see me but I’m sure she did in her head and I’m sure that she reached the same conclusion that I had: that it had something to do with what had happened earlier that afternoon.

  So the following evening, instead of going home after work, I went to my parents’ house. Dad wasn’t home yet but Mum was in the kitchen and she called for me to join her before I was even through the door. She asked me if I wanted a cup of tea and I nodded. I sat at the table and watched her as she went about the business of preparing the tea and, trust me, it was a bit of a performance. She had only given up using tea leaves a couple of years before but she still insisted on using a teapot even if she was only making one cup. She put some boiled water into the empty pot, swirled it round a bit and then emptied that water down the sink. Then the tea bags were dropped in the pot and the boiled water poured on top of them. Three minutes later she poured some tea into a china mug and added milk to it before passing it to me. She only ever uses china for tea. She reckons tea tastes better out of china but, to be honest, I’ve never noticed any difference. She poured herself a cup and then sat in the chair opposite me.

  I watched her looking into her mug of tea for a few seconds and then I asked, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Who said anything’s wrong?’ she asked, without raising her eyes.

  I took a sip of tea and then reminded her that she’d asked to see me.

  She took a couple of deep breaths and a sip of tea then made a heavy sigh before she said, ‘I want to tell you something.’

  ‘That sounds serious.’ The thought that one of them was ill went through my mind.

  Her mug was back on the table and she twisted it as she spoke. ‘I wanted to say that I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  I didn’t need to ask her what she was sorry for but I did anyway.

  ‘For yesterday.’

  I knew I was being an arse but that didn’t stop me asking, ‘What about yesterday?’ I just needed to hear her say it.

  She looked uncomfortable as she said, ‘When I told Simon that his daddy liked to play with cars.’

  ‘I did like playing with cars,’ I told her, ‘I just liked playing with trains more.’ Our eyes met and I vowed that I wasn’t going to be the first to look away. I guess I wanted to prove a point.

  She lowered her eyes and I think she nodded her head just a little bit. ‘I should have known that,’ she admitted.

  Part of me wanted to say that she did know that but instead I said, ‘You got confused, that’s all.’

  As I drove home I replayed the conversation in my head. Mum was the only person who hadn’t fully accepted that I was Simon’s father. Even after all these years she hadn’t come to terms with the situation. As usual, she said and did all the right things but, in her heart of hearts, I knew that she still thought of Simon as Robert’s son despite what it said on his birth certificate. Her uncharacteristic slip the day before was her subconscious mind working when it shouldn’t have been and I imagined that was what she was sorry for.

  I didn’t blame her, not really. I mean, I was angry with her for thinking the way that she did but, thinking as a father and not as her son, I could understand it. At the end of the day Robert was still her son and she would always love him. I would feel the same way about my sons – all three of them. What hurt me though was that I was her son too and, even after everything that had happened, I knew that she still loved Robert more.

  It sounds stupid when I say it – I was a grown man after all – but it was just the way I felt.

  ROBERT

  Angie and I became what we used to call ‘an item’ and saw each other not only at work but also on our days off. Being the one who did the rotas for myself and the other three people that worked at the pub, I could have made sure that we were always off together, but I didn’t do that. I knew that Danny and Colin were pretty laid back but I was sure even they had their limits, especially Colin. I’d seen him in a temper once and I wouldn’t like to think that I might be on the wrong end of it. Plus, Angie and I weren’t joined at the hip and I needed some time to myself even if she didn’t.

&
nbsp; Angie wasn’t needy in the way that Diane had been. We would go out to the cinema or for a meal and from time to time she would spend the night, but she never left as much as a toothbrush in my flat.

  One night, must have been around November I think, we went to a wedding at the Castle – a hotel overlooking the sea. We only went to the night reception but it was still a good do. You’d want it to be though, wouldn’t you, if you paying what they were to hire that place? Even in the off season I bet it was costing an arm and a leg.

  The beer wasn’t much to write home about considering it was the best part of three quid a pint but, lucky for me, the bride’s father was a generous man and spent most of the night propping up the bar dipping into his wallet. He allowed me to buy him one drink later on but he must have bought us half a dozen or more. More probably, because I can take my drink, but by the time we walked home I was well and truly sozzled. Angie was staying at mine that night and once we were home we decided to have a night cap.

  We went into the bar and, while Angie sat at the one table that the street light caught, I nipped behind the bar to get us a couple of drinks. I poured myself a whisky with a dash of water and got one of those Irish cream things for Angie. I scribbled an IOU on a beer mat, propped it up against the till and carried the drinks to where Angie was now tipping her chair so the back was against the wall behind her. She straightened up when I put the drink in front of her and after I’d sat down she held her glass up in a toast though she didn’t say what she was toasting.

  We both took a sip and Angie rested the back of her chair against the wall again. After a couple of minutes, she lifted the glass towards her lips and I noticed that she held it just short of her mouth. I looked at her and saw that she was looking at me.