Mothers' Boys

by Margaret Forster

  *

  Waking at dawn the next morning, Harriet lay very still. Their bed creaked terribly these days – she only had to turn over, or Sam to move, and this dreadful creaking started. Something to do with the screws attaching the wooden headboard to the sides. An awful, whining noise. She realised she’d slept well. They’d gone to bed just after eleven and she’d been asleep ever since. Five, maybe six, hours’ sleep. A record in the last two years. The boys had gone up at the same time. All of them in their beds, tucked up metaphorically if not actually, and asleep well before midnight.

  She used to love wild nights in the winter when the boys were small, wild winds bashing the house, roaring through the trees outside, rattling the window frames, and all of them safe and warm inside. She’d shiver, and turn to Sam, and there would be something exciting and yet reassuring about their security in the middle of a storm. She missed that. When Louis first went off to university she’d hated wild nights. She’d wondered where he was, if he was out in the rain and cold, and wished him back in his bed, under her roof. With Joe it was worse. He wasn’t out very often beyond ten at night, hardly ever, but when he was she couldn’t go to bed. The wind, the rain, they increased her fear for him a hundred-fold and her imagination tortured her with visions of him once more jumped on and stabbed and . . . which was silly. It had been summer. Light, not late. No wind. No rain. It was a perfect summer’s day . . . NO!

  She slipped out of bed as quietly as it allowed her and into the bathroom. She ran the cold tap and splashed her face and cleaned her teeth, then crept downstairs. Bruno stirred and growled and she went to him and patted him and he turned over and went back to sleep. So lovely, all of them asleep, safe, content, upstairs. She opened the porch door and the sun shot in, shafting itself through layers of mist to find her face. She stood, eyes closed, the sun’s warmth not yet strong, and breathed deeply. She was resolved to be happy. Today she would start consciously being happy, leaving the past alone, quite alone. If it came and tapped on the door of her memory – that insecure, flimsy, thin door, – she would run out the other way, into the future. She would think about Louis and his Charlotte. There were fantasies there aplenty. What did Charlotte look like? Louis must have given her some idea. And what did she read? Was she a scientist, like Louis? She longed for him to get up so she could ask . . .

  Today they would go on a picnic. Like old times. The boys would indulge her. They would climb something and have a picnic on the top, maybe swim when they got down, or even go to the sea, it wasn’t far. Just them, against the world. It would do Joe good. With Louis there he wouldn’t refuse and Louis, only home for four days, wouldn’t refuse either, she was sure. She began thinking of the picnic, what she had in the fridge and larder. She took bread out of the freezer, French bread, it would have defrosted by the time they were ready to set off. She would aim for half past ten. It was only half past five now. Plenty of time. At eight she would take Sam coffee and wake the boys, offer it to them. She would be happy. She would tell them to get up and greet the glorious day and make ready for a climb and a picnic. They would groan and protest, but not seriously. She’d walk between them, small among three tall men, though she was not small, and feel such pride. She was a romantic. It was true. All the ugly realism of the last year couldn’t wreck her innate romanticism. She’d let it rip today, nothing would spoil it . . .

  The lake would be busy. Holidaymakers, trippers, would stream in, choking the small town, but it didn’t matter, they knew, the locals, how to avoid the crowds. They’d leave all those sweating hordes, louts many of them, louts who had no place here, for whom there was nothing, no amusements, nothing. God knows why they came . . . She opened a window and bit her lip, hard. Key words. Louts. She had to keep off them. ‘Louts,’ she said aloud, out of the open window, looking into the circle of lawn with its spotlight of sun dead centre. ‘Louts – who cares?’ Louts, clouts, shouts – it was only a word. She would deny it power. She walked swiftly out into the garden and raised her face to the sky, now clearing of mist, the blue deepening by the minute. Birds, sheep, faint sounds of the waterfall nearby. She’d been so foolish imprisoning herself in all that pain and misery when she could have turned to this and drawn faith from it, faith that this was greater than that, that this could not be ruined by that . . .

  Sam surprised her. He came down, in his tracksuit, an hour later, as she was drinking coffee, sitting outside under the pear tree. He didn’t speak. He smiled, waved a hand, and went running off, Bruno with him. Half past six and Sam out running! Even happier, she went and had a shower and dressed. She’d aged. She knew that. All that had happened had aged her. Not white hair, nothing like that, not even a matter of more lines. No. She had aged as Joe had aged, by something disappearing. There was a deadness in her face, a lack of light and movement. Always afraid to be overtaken yet again by sudden grief she kept a curtain of inscrutability over her face. She must draw this curtain aside, not be so wary of expression. Otherwise she’d suffered no irreparable damage. The loss of weight was no bad thing.

  Joe could do the same. She knew he could. He was younger, much younger, and it should be easier.

  But then, when Sam came back, all red-faced and pleased with himself, when he’d showered and was outside with her, hair still wet, face still hot, she cried. Again. She’d made more coffee, heated croissants, set everything out prettily on a tray, as she liked to do, taken it and put it on the small white, iron table under the tree and sat herself down and heard Sam say, mockingly, but meaning it, ‘Ah, this is the life,’ and then she wept. All her promises gone in a moment.

  ‘No!’ she sobbed, as Sam put his arms round her. ‘No, no. I’m not crying, I’m not, I’m happy, really. I don’t know what it is.’

  ‘Hay fever?’ said Sam, and she started to laugh.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘that’s it, hay fever.’

  *

  Sheila wasn’t sure what to do. There would be a report, after a commotion like that. Questions would be asked and, doubtless, if Detective Sergeant Graham was at this time wanting access to Leo, he’d be told what had happened. Except nobody could possibly have heard her say Gary Robinson’s name, nobody except Leo. She should ring Graham but she didn’t want to, and what, after all, did she have to tell him? Only that Leo had been startled by the name and all too obviously recognised it. But where was her proof? She had none. Leo hadn’t spoken. She couldn’t see that she had anything worthwhile to tell Graham.

  Her father was in when she got back, the last person she wanted to see. He was sitting in her kitchen, scowling at the cat. ‘Wants putting down,’ he said, nodding at the cat, ‘put out of its misery.’

  ‘She isn’t miserable.’

  ‘Course she is. A cat wi’ three legs not miserable?’

  She didn’t rise to that. He knew perfectly well that their cat had long since adapted to the loss of its leg. Every now and again he did this, picked on the cat. It was code for something, doing this, but she couldn’t be bothered to decipher what.

  ‘Where’ve you been, then?’ he asked, watching her, both hands resting on his stick and then his chin on his hands.

  ‘Out.’

  He smiled, or gave what passed as a smile. His sour old face resisted smiling as usual. ‘Out where?’

  ‘Visiting.’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to say it was none of his bloody business.

  ‘Who? Carole?’

  ‘Yes, Carole,’ she lied.

  He was delighted. ‘That’s funny,’ he said, banging his stick, ‘I’ve just come from Carole’s and I niver saw yer. Funny, eh?’

  ‘Very funny.’ She got on with making some tea, for him too, of course, though it was unlikely he’d drink it. A cup with his breakfast, a cup for his midday meal, and that was the end of tea for Eric James. He could bore people for hours telling them how once he’d also had a cup with his supper, but had given it up to control what he claimed was his night-time incontinence. He loved that ‘incontinence’ wor
d, pronounced it perfectly and with a flourish.

  ‘What brings you here on a Saturday?’ she risked asking. Since he was the King of Routine she felt the question not just permissible but expected.

  ‘I’m wanting Alan. My mower’s stuck and I can’t git it to move. Tried all afternoon and I can’t, so I’ve come for Alan to lend a hand.’

  A likely story, as likely as her own about visiting Carole. ‘Well you’ll have a long wait,’ she said, complacently, ‘because he’s gone fishing.’

  ‘Oh aye, I forgot.’

  Liar. He never forgot anything, unfortunately.

  ‘Ring Peter,’ she advised. ‘Shall I ring him now?’

  ‘No, no, Peter’s no good wi’ machines, doesn’t like getting his hands dirty.’

  ‘I’ll tell Alan to come round when he gets in. Or tomorrow.’

  ‘Might rain tomorrow.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I want my grass cut.’

  ‘All right, I’ll send him later.’

  Still he went on sitting there. She hated him looking at her, scrutinising her. It must be wonderful, she thought, as she often did, to have a father who was wise, to whom one could turn. Old and wise and ready to impart his wisdom. Eric James was just old. Not wise. Life had taught him nothing, so far as she could fathom. There were no obvious benefits to his almost ninety years. His attitudes – you couldn’t call them principles – were exactly the same, she was sure, as when he had been a boy. Maturity had no meaning other than in the strictly physical sense. All experience of life, such as it was, seemed to have glanced off him. He had proved impervious to it.

  ‘You’ve been to see that lad,’ Eric James said, glaring at her, making a statement, not asking a question.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘It’s not time, you’d just been.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘It isn’t allowed, two visits in a week.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was special, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know what you want to know for,’ she said, quite aggressively. ‘You said you’ve washed your hands of him . . .’

  ‘Of him maybe, but I didn’t say owt about you.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, ’tisn’t same at all.’

  ‘It feels like it to me. You can’t separate us that easy, he’s my grandson and always will be, whatever he’s done. Not like you, you said . . .’

  ‘I know what I said. Now then, I know what I said all right.’

  He’d shouted. He was trying to browbeat her, as he always did, the habit of a lifetime. But he was upset. That was what always puzzled her, that she could see through the bluster that he was upset and that she immediately didn’t want him to be. His distress in turn upset her and it had no right to. He was old, old, vulnerably old, and it made all the difference.

  ‘Look, Dad,’ she said, ‘I told you what’s happened, you saw the policeman here. I went to mention a name to Leo and watch for his reaction. It was a special visit with a special purpose. And I’m tired, I want to put my feet up.’

  ‘Put them up, I’m not stopping yer.’

  She went into the living-room and sat in an armchair and did indeed put her feet up on a stool and closed her eyes. She heard him shuffling about and felt mean, leaving him there.

  ‘I’d best be off,’ he said, calling from the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll send Alan,’ she called back. She hoped Alan would be a long time. She wanted the house to herself, she wanted rid of both men. She heard the back door close and then the clang of the gate and sighed. Peace. Peace to wonder what she should do. Her conscience was such a plague, she was always wanting to do the right thing. That’s how she’d brought Leo up, to want to do the right thing. So had Alan, if not as forceful in his example. Only her father, wicked old Eric James Armstrong, had relished directing Leo the other way. But who could blame an old man? Nobody, not she anyway. He hadn’t been an evil influence on Leo, far from it, he’d made the boy feel loved. She had been the influence, she knew it.

  Once, Leo had said to her, cheekily, that she was too good to be true and added she didn’t know the real world out there. He’d come back from the supermarket with change for a twenty-pound note and not the ten-pound note she’d given him for the jar of honey and six eggs. He liked to go shopping for her, in fact he loved shops, especially supermarkets. How old had he been? Maybe ten, maybe younger, desperate to go on errands, and so she’d sent him for the honey and eggs, and though it was ridiculous, with a perfectly adequate shop on the corner, had agreed he could take the bus and get them at the supermarket. He’d laughed, been thrilled, at the mistake with the change. She’d made him go back. What a struggle that had been. He’d said he’d look silly, it was a supermarket, they would think he was mad, the girl wouldn’t even remember. She’d gone with him full of moral virtue, and watched him go into the supermarket and up to the check-out. Only later, much later, she’d found the money in a tin of draughts in his cupboard. He’d somehow tricked her and kept the change and all she could do was console herself with the thought that at least he hadn’t spent it, it had become tainted money.

  It was right, her duty, to inform Detective Sergeant Graham of Leo’s reaction, however slender her evidence of his registering the name. She ought to tell him before this identity parade he’d mentioned, before Joe Kennedy was put through that ordeal. She wondered if they would make Leo go too, whether he was willing or not, so they could see his reaction for themselves. But Leo would not now react. He was forewarned and would give nothing away. Unless, of course, fear betrayed him, his own possible fear of this Gary Robinson. If they made him go, she would insist on going too. Could they stop her? She ought to try to make a bargain with them while she was in a position to do so. She’d been there when Leo was put on parade himself, put in that line-up of eight others. She’d stood by him, waited with him, felt the humiliation acutely. There was no doubt, of course, he’d already made his statement, but for some reason they weren’t satisfied and wanted him in the line. He was so much more presentable than any of those other eight. He stood straight, tall, apparently unafraid. Hard, they called it. ‘He’s a hard one,’ a policeman had murmured. ‘Doesn’t give a toss.’ But he was wrong, she knew he was. Leo was not hard. Whatever he’d done or not done – he would not enlighten them, beyond confirming that he had been there, and Joe Kennedy himself was not clear who exactly had done what – he was not hard. He had the trick of being able to make himself seem not there, but that wasn’t hardness. At moments of stress or grief he could do it, make his inner self disappear, go quite remote from everyone, even her. He’d had it from a small boy, right from when she’d claimed him. It was his secret weapon, this ability to go into a kind of trance, become untouchable.

  She missed Pat. Sitting there, she missed her so much she ached. If only Leo had been a girl, none of this might have happened. She could have stayed close, as she’d done with Pat, even when they were so far apart. Pat never retreated from her like this. Nothing she’d suffered on Pat’s account had been like this pain with Leo. She’d always felt she knew Pat, however much she changed, and she didn’t know Leo at all. It was wrong to blame this on what had happened. That had made everything worse, but it hadn’t been the cause. Maybe, in fact, the cause had been Leo’s own sense of having broken loose, of drifting, of looking for something she could no longer give him? Maybe the cause was her? Maybe that would make the sense Alan had always been looking for? It was somehow all her fault, this muddle.

  Chapter Nine

  LOUIS ANSWERED THE telephone, offhand, annoyed it wasn’t Charlotte ringing. He left the receiver dangling and shouted, ‘Mum, for you,’ and Harriet went to it without an idea who it would be, quite unconcerned and in a hurry, because she wanted to get things ready for the morning. Sheila Armstrong’s voice took her by complete surprise. At first, even given the name, it meant nothing to her and then she realised and apologised, and immediately she felt all the tension which ha
d drained away during this happy weekend return. ‘How nice to hear from you,’ she said, automatically.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you . . .’

  ‘No, no, not at all. I wasn’t doing anything, really.’ How strange the woman’s voice sounded, the local accent so strong, and yet when she’d visited her she’d never noticed that it was so pronounced.

  ‘It’s just I wondered if you could spare me a few minutes . . . if you can’t it doesn’t matter, I’ll manage.’

  It was the ‘I’ll manage’, the evident embarrassment, that caught Harriet’s attention. ‘Of course I can,’ she said, ‘you carry on.’

  ‘I was hoping we might be able to meet, soon, only it would be easier to talk, but if you’re busy, or don’t fancy it . . .’

  ‘That would be fine. When were you thinking of?’

  ‘Well, today, if possible. . .’

  ‘Oh, today’s a bit difficult, and tomorrow . . .’

  ‘I know. It’s that parade. He told me, the police chap. It’s about that, about the identity thing, I wanted to pass on something, but not to him. It’s nothing, really. I’d just like to pass it on . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

  Harriet felt dismayed at her own agitation. She didn’t want to see Sheila, she didn’t even like talking on the telephone now that she’d decided to put all that behind her. Sheila Armstrong was part of ‘that’. But she’d started it, she couldn’t be hostile when the other woman had not been hostile to her. And there was this ‘thing’ she wanted to pass on.

  ‘We could meet half-way,’ Sheila was saying, naming a town. ‘I have to go there anyway, I’m going by train, we could meet at the station, if you could get there.’

  ‘If it’s important . . .’

  ‘I don’t know if it is. Oh, maybe forget it, I shouldn’t bother you. I can ring that policeman . . .’