Mothers' Boys

by Margaret Forster

  ‘Leo,’ she said cheerfully, and hoped she sounded cheerful, ‘come out of there, eh?’

  *

  The last thing Harriet wanted to do was fuss. She hated people who tried to throw their weight around, who tried to imply they were of some importance. She wasn’t of any importance anyway, it would be hopeless. But they had said two nights – one before the operation and one after it – and she was ready to go. She’d been ready since nine in the morning, up and dressed and absolutely ready. She’d slept well, there was no bleeding, and the dressing had been removed. But they wouldn’t let her go. The registrar, who’d done the cone biopsy, needed to see her, they said. She must wait for him and no, they didn’t know when he would come. There were various emergencies today, she might have to stay another night. Harriet said she thought there were queues for beds, this was ridiculous when she was perfectly recovered. They ignored her.

  As the day wore on, she began to suspect all kinds of things. Why did she have to be seen by the registrar? What was he going to do? What was he going to say? Had the biopsy shown cancer cells? Was that it? Would they know this, as soon as it was done? Why did they never tell you anything? Why was she being left in such ignorance? She tried to read but her mind wandered. She wanted to ring Sam but it was pointless when she had no news. It would only upset him unnecessarily. She knew she was being unfriendly, keeping herself apart from the other women. They would think her stuck up. She wondered why she’d been so biddable all her life – what was to stop her from simply announcing that she was going? Nothing. She could just go. They might not be pleased, but it would be up to them to contact her at home. So she rang Sam and told him that if the registrar hadn’t come in another hour she would leave. She’d ring him again then and tell him, and if he still insisted he could come for her. She’d just sit and wait outside. It was a beautiful evening, it would be a pleasure to sit on a bench in the sun.

  She packed her bag ostentatiously and put her book on top of it. It was half past six. She’d leave before they brought supper round, ring Sam from the reception area, that would be best, more tactful. She thought she’d check there were phones there, even though she was sure there must be. It would fill in a few minutes going to find out. She set off, pleased to find she felt perfectly steady, though she had been told the anaesthetic might take time to wear off completely. She walked down the stairs, to test her legs further. But she took a wrong turning, came not to the reception area but into another wing, an older part of the Infirmary. Here, the atmosphere was different. It seemed darker, it was darker, and dreary. She glimpsed old, very sick-looking people through the open doors. She was glad not to have old parents in need of her support. She couldn’t bear the thought of having to visit and then look after one of those pathetic aged patients she could see lying there as though dead already. Whatever feeling she had had for her parents would never have survived the strain. Briefly, she thought of Sheila Armstrong and how she had spoken of her father, with pride and affection, she thought. All her own feelings like that were for her boys. She had never felt any strong emotion for her parents. Once she was an adult she had only wanted to be free of them. She would have been dutiful, if they had lived to be old and ill, but not truly loving. And she hadn’t been devastated with grief when her parents had died. Sam, so fond of his own mother and father, even if his affection was hardly put to the test since they lived in Canada, had been rather shocked by her detachment. She couldn’t explain it. She hurried on, trying to find her way out. She could ask a nurse, but she didn’t want to, they were all so busy. She began to panic. She knew it was absurd but this part of the hospital scared her, she wanted to be back in that light, bright ward she’d been in such a hurry to leave.

  By the time she found her way there, still not having reached the reception area but now no longer caring, she didn’t feel so good. And the registrar was standing by her bed, frowning, looking at some notes.

  ‘Here she is,’ the staff nurse said. ‘Mrs Kennedy, you shouldn’t go off without telling us, doctor’s been waiting.’

  Harriet hated being in the wrong. She apologised, didn’t even suggest she’d also been waiting, all day. She sat on her bed and the registrar looked at her quizzically. ‘Had a walk?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Feeling okay?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Good. So you’re anxious to get home?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, folding his arms, yawning, then excusing his yawns. ‘We’re quite popular with some people, you’d be surprised.’

  She waited. She wasn’t going to chat. If he had something to tell her she wished he would get it over with . . .

  On her way out, relieved that she’d been told the biopsy had shown no cause for concern but that they’d like her to have smears every six months for the next three years, just to keep an eye on her, she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. She’d done it, managed this little subterfuge so discreetly that Joe would never know a thing about it. He had been saved from even the smallest pang of anxiety, and that was how she wanted it. She swept out of the Infirmary and looked for a seat. Sam was on his way. She sat down, facing the late sun, and breathed deeply. Heaven to be out, to be free. A car stopped just in front of her. ‘Wait, wait,’ the driver was saying to the woman in the passenger seat, who was trying to get out before he’d stopped. She saw it was Sheila Armstrong.

  *

  He wasn’t there. But he had been. There were tell-tale signs everywhere in the house. Toothpaste and toothbrush in the bathroom, when Eric James had had false teeth for thirty years; socks drying in the airing cupboard, socks of a size and type which made them definitely not her father’s; screwed-up Mars Bar wrappers in the wastepaper-basket when chocolate of any kind was never brought into the house. He’d been there. His shape was still on the bed, still imprinted on the cotton cover, as clear to see as though he’d been lying in sand. She could even smell him in the air, a mixture of that odd shampoo he used on his hair and something else, something indefinable. He’d been there and left in a hurry. There were crumbs on the bed cover and a plate on the floor. She ran a finger-tip round the plate. Toast. Toast and marmalade, her own home-made marmalade which she made every year and gave to her father, three jars to himself. A wet towel was thrown over the towel rail in the bathroom, thrown carelessly, as Eric James would never have thrown it. Soap suds were still warm in the bottom of the bath. He’d set off clean, then, clean and fed. That was something. What had he taken with him?

  She didn’t want to look. She wouldn’t know how much Eric James had once more accumulated. It was a year since Carole had found and banked the last lot. Who could tell how many races he’d bet on since then, how many winners he’d had? He was incorrigible. Nearly ninety and still tottering down to put bets on, then denying he went near the betting shop. He always had denied it. ‘Going to see a man about a dog,’ he’d say, when they were young, and she’d always believed him, waited patiently to see this dog one day. It was harmless, kept him happy, gave him an interest. But it was dangerous keeping his winnings under the mattress. Carole had had a fit when she came to make his bed and found all the ten-pound notes. She’d had to confront him. He said it was his pension. Carole asked him what he’d been living on then, if that was his pension. Then there was the bedroom carpet. Carole had swept it – he didn’t have a vacuum cleaner – and found the carpet all bumpy. She thought he was pressing something under it. More money, more bundles of tenners. They’d been amazed, how could he have so much money? He must have had winners at 100–1 several times over.

  She didn’t dare look. Even if there were nothing, it wouldn’t prove Leo had taken it. Only her father would know, and even he was unlikely to know how much. He hadn’t the faintest idea how much he had tucked away, she was sure. She didn’t know how she would feel if it turned out that Leo had taken money. Relieved? Glad to know he wasn’t penniless? Or sorry he was now also a thief? Not
that her father would see it as stealing, she was sure. Hesitantly, she went into his bedroom and lifted the counterpane, a faded blue affair which had ‘seen better days’ as Carole put it. It needed washing but Eric James couldn’t bear a night without it for some unfathomable reason. She turned back the eiderdown and the flannelette sheets – he must be roasting with all this on his bed in summer – and slid her hand under the lumpy old mattress. Nothing. Bolder, she lifted the mattress right up and peered underneath it. There was one bundle of notes there, kept together with an elastic band. She withdrew it carefully, as though it were burning, and let the mattress flop back into place.

  In the kitchen she sat down. She wasn’t going to stay, so there was no point making more tea. There was a slip of paper tucked inside the elastic band on top of the money. It was a note from Leo. ‘Dear Grandad,’ it said, ‘You said you wanted to give me all your money, so I hope it is all right to take some of it. I have taken £500 and left £200. I will repay all of it. I am sorry to go like this, but I can’t stay for ever. Thank you for everything. I am sorry about everything. Give Mam my love and tell her one day I’ll come back. Sorry.’ There was a row of kisses. No signature. Five hundred pounds. Not a small sum, not an absolute fortune. He didn’t have a passport, it wouldn’t get him out of the country. It would get him to London, though, and keep him there for a while. Leo was clever, hard-working. With £500 he might have a chance. A chance to do what? She wished she knew.

  She smiled slightly to herself. Leo had never known of his great-grandfather’s loss of faith. He had probably imagined that Eric James stood by him whatever he had or hadn’t done. They wouldn’t have talked about that, of course. Leo would have been able to depend on that – no discussion. A few grunts and that would have been all. He hadn’t had to fear cross-examination from Eric James, only from her. The minute he’d appeared at the door, the minute he’d whispered his name when his great-grandfather asked who was there, he’d have been impossible to resist. What kind of love was that, if it was love? Maybe the sort a mother should have and she’d been incapable of. Maybe it was mother love, uncritical, limitless . . .

  Oh nonsense. She shook her head angrily and sighed. Well, that was that. Gone again. Eric James would be pleased he hadn’t been caught, yet. She’d have to tell him about the money. That would please him too, it would make him feel useful. He’d boast about it within the family. Boast, too, that Leo had trusted him, not her. He’d known where to come, whom he could depend on. She washed the mug she’d used, checked the gas was off, looked around. Everything was so shabby. The cooker was fifty-odd years old, it was a museum-piece. Maybe while Eric James was in hospital Alan could decorate this kitchen. Her father would be furious but it would be worth it. A nice, cheerful yellow perhaps. And some new lino. This stuff was cracked and split to bits. All it did was harbour germs. Leo could have laid it for him, he could have done all kinds of things. She wondered how long he’d been here, she wondered if he had talked to his great-grandfather, did Eric James now know the whole story? Did he know Leo’s plans, where he might go, what he might do? . . . Suddenly it seemed urgent to see her father again, get as much out of him as she could. Maybe she could make a bargain: she would promise not to go to the police, not to say a word, if he told her all he knew.

  She locked the back door behind her and hurried home. She needed Alan. She couldn’t dash on her own to the Infirmary again, he would have to drive her, then she’d send him to tell Carole in person, get him out of the way while she dealt with her father. She couldn’t decide what she wanted to know most, the past or the future, what Leo could remember of that night, or what he was proposing to do. The past. It was true what was past was past, but if it was unknown it never seemed to be over. The future she could cope with. It would be a strain, but she could train herself. As they said, there was always hope where the future was concerned. She could hope Leo would make good and return. She could hope he would find a way, perhaps quite quickly, to get messages to her. Yes, she could cope with the future now, it didn’t terrify her. This little note, it was a link. She’d keep it and get it out and read it when she was most down, she’d notice all over again that Leo had written ‘Sorry’ three times. It was all there, his remorse, his regret for what he had done to her. Others might not interpret his words to mean that, Alan certainly wouldn’t, but she could and did. Better still if he’d left a note for her too, but she understood that that was asking too much at the moment, he couldn’t trust himself, not yet.

  She had Alan in the car in two minutes, bewildered and complaining, but in the car all the same. He tried to ask questions, but she had no patience with them, told him she’d explain later, told him just to drop her at the Infirmary. She didn’t see Harriet Kennedy. As she got out of the car, Alan shouting at her to wait, she heard a woman’s voice say her name, but she couldn’t quite take in who it was, only vaguely acknowledged the greeting and rushed on, anxious to get to her father’s bedside. She’d no time to be polite.

  She had to wait for the lift, not trusting herself to climb the stairs in her present agitated state. She must calm down. People would look at her if her face went all red and sweaty. She felt it was already. This excitement, this terrible kind of excitement, that was all she could think of to call it, but the word wasn’t quite accurate, this feeling made her ill. She liked life to be quiet, uneventful. She had never liked shocks, drama. And now everything seemed too dramatic, she shrank from this turn in her life. All drama. Pat would have relished it. She’d liked everything to be unpredictable, though she wouldn’t of course have liked the drama to be because her son was in trouble. No, she wouldn’t have liked that, no mother did. But Pat had had no time to know what it was like to be a mother, she hadn’t even begun on motherhood. Mothering for the first three years was nothing, nothing . . .

  The lift finally came. Sheila stepped in. It was full of doctors and nurses, there was hardly room for her. She felt apologetic. They were all talking but not about anything medical. Food, it seemed to be about food, who had last had any, who had had what and when. At least this time she knew where to go, that was some small comfort. But the door into Eric James’s room was closed. She supposed it meant he was asleep, she’d be disturbing him, the staff nurse might be cross. She opened the door very, very quietly. The room was in darkness, semi-darkness, anyway. She could hear Eric James’s heavy breathing. It was a shame to waken him, perhaps they’d drugged him and she wouldn’t be able to. ‘Dad,’ she whispered, but there was no pause in the rhythm of his breathing. It would be cruel to shake him. She gave a little moan of exasperation, she’d have to wait until tomorrow, obviously. By then Carole would be here and it would be awkward trying to get time on her own. But it was pointless staying. She left the room and started guiltily as the staff nurse saw her. ‘I just wanted to say goodnight,’ she said, afraid she’d broken the rules. The staff nurse smiled; said her father had been given a sedative.

  So she was out of the place in half an hour, not the hour she’d told Alan, who would be at Carole’s house. She’d have to hang about, lucky it was fine. She looked for a seat. It was such a busy place this, cars forever drawing up, crowds forever coming in and out of the building. All action, all drama. She could never stand working in a hospital, it would be too much. Then she saw Harriet Kennedy smiling at her, waving.

  ‘We seem doomed to meet on benches,’ Harriet said. She looked radiant, pale but happy. Sheila knew how she must look. She sank down on the bench and couldn’t prevent a great sigh. Really, everything was beyond her. She closed her eyes, tried to compose herself, heard Harriet ask, ‘Have you been visiting?’

  Sheila nodded, managed to say, ‘My father, he fell.’ She must be careful what she said. She mustn’t even think about mentioning Leo, nothing whatsoever to do with Leo, especially not to Harriet. She’d just have to pretend the state she was in was due to worry over her father. Easy enough. Harriet was sympathetic, most concerned, but Sheila wished she would go away. She coul
dn’t attempt a conversation, any conversation; she just sat there.

  ‘Is your husband picking you up?’ Harriet asked.

  Sheila nodded.

  ‘You’re sure? Because if not we can drop you off, it would be no trouble. Sam will be here any minute.’

  ‘No, thank you. Alan is coming. I don’t mind waiting, it’s warm enough, he’d wonder where I was . . .’

  ‘Yes, it is warm. I’ve enjoyed waiting. It’s lovely to get out of a hospital, isn’t it? I hated being in there.’

  Normally, Sheila would have asked how she did come to have been in there, but she was too tired to be curious. Harriet was volunteering the information anyway. ‘. . . small op. . . .’ Sheila caught, and tried to concentrate, ‘. . . but everything was fine, thank God. I don’t think Joe could have stood anything being wrong with me. I didn’t tell him. You’ll think it silly, but I kept it a secret. He thinks I’m visiting an aunt. Awful, isn’t it? I mean, my lying like this, keeping secrets from my own son.’

  ‘I expect,’ Sheila said, her voice a croak, ‘he keeps some from you.’ Why had she said that? She couldn’t think.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Harriet said, ‘but I doubt it. He’s an open book to me. Sometimes I wish he wasn’t. He needs to stand on his own feet, we’re too close. He’s seventeen, Louis was separate by then. I don’t think Joe ever will be.’