A Line of Blood (11 page)

‘I know I could have waited until you came,’ my mother said, ‘but I don’t think your father would have wanted you to see him like that. I could tell that the spirit was gone from him.’

My mother insisted on driving home from the hospital. It took her some time to find a parking space, and in the end we had to walk for five minutes to reach the flat. Dark sandstone loomed behind monumental trees. No chickenshops or foot pursuits here. Residents’ associations and doors in approved colours. Pragmatic elegance.

My mother took the stairs briskly when we arrived, installed herself at the dining table still wearing her coat; she filled two tiny crystal glasses with gin, topped them off with vermouth, and handed one to me.

‘To your father.’ She drained her glass, set it back on the table. Then she exhaled heavily, seemed to become a little shorter, a little older.

‘Fifty years married,’ she said. ‘Do you know, I thought I was too old.’ She gave a sad little laugh. ‘I was twenty-eight.’

I reached across and took her hand. ‘I know, Mum.’

‘Well, that
was
old.’ She poured herself another drink. ‘He was a good man, but he never loved me in quite the way I loved him.’

She gave a little half-sob, then pulled a handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed at her eye.

The walls were the same as they’d ever been: dark salmon pink and country-house green, white skirtings and door frames. It showed off the pictures, my mother always said.

‘You’re wrong, Mum. He cherished you.’

‘No. No, Alex, I’m not wrong. I wasn’t his first.’

I took her hand. ‘Come on, Mum.’

She went into the living room. When she came back, she had a photograph in her hand.

‘That’s her.’

A woman, strikingly beautiful, her mirror-black hair in a single braid, a calligraphic downstroke across the white cotton shirt. Behind her a light grey ocean. A darker grey sky. Cloudless.

Japan, I thought. My father had been stationed in Japan before Korea. They had sent him out in a troop ship. Taught him to drive and fire large ordnance.

‘Noriko,’ said my mother. ‘That was her name.’

The woman’s pose was Western but formal, unsmiling; all the same there was a warmth in her eyes, a secret shared with the man behind the camera.

‘Did Dad take this?’

‘Yes.’

I looked at my mother. She was watching me for my reaction; there was no anger, no sadness now, just a resigned patience.

‘She’s beautiful, is she not?’ she said at last.

There was a searching look in her eyes. I fought the urge to say something soothing.

‘Yes, Mum, she is beautiful.’

‘Thank you, Alexander.’ A little smile of satisfaction. My mother set great store by honesty. She didn’t want me to protect her.

‘He told me all about her. He wanted me to have all the facts at my disposal. Before I said yes to marriage.’ She nodded, as if to herself. ‘They were very much in love, you know. They wrote to each other, all through the war in Korea, and when he got home he kept writing, and so did Noriko. Then suddenly her letters stopped, and your father could only assume that she had ended the relationship. A terrible blow to him.’

She refilled my glass, then refilled her own. ‘And of course your father’s misfortune was my good fortune. He was a very handsome man, and a very honest man. He loved me, and he adored you, son. He really did. More than anything in the world.’

‘Dad loved you most of all, Mum.’

‘No, Alexander, no.’ She took my hand in hers, catching me in the lie. ‘I’m seventy-eight, son. I’m not afraid of the truth.’

‘OK, Mum.’

‘Anyhow, one day your father received a letter from Japan. It was from Noriko, and it troubled him greatly. She asked why he had stopped writing. Your father showed me the letter, because he thought I ought to know; and then he burned it, because he was a good man and he had made his choice.

‘And then … and then he went to his mother, and he asked why she had hidden Noriko’s letters from him. And at first she denied it, but eventually she admitted that she had burned them. A cruel thing to have done, do you not think?’ She left the question hanging for a moment. ‘But I have her to thank, I suppose, because without her there would be none of this.’

My mother went to bed shortly afterwards. I wandered around the flat for a while, trying to understand what I should be feeling. My father was everywhere here: his books, his records, the rack of pipes and the stacked ashtrays; his keen eyes staring out from silver-framed photos, never less than immaculately turned-out. The sharpness of those collars.

My father’s life had been a series of tickets out: the army; Edinburgh; my mother. He had entered the forces as a welder, and left as an engineer; he had taken a second degree at Edinburgh University, met my mother at a dance. He had
come up
. A sharp-looking man with quick wits and an easy charm, by the time he had left the army he had erased the Govan shipyard from his voice. He had
made good
. His parents lived an hour down the road. Tower-block folk, he called them. We never visited my grandmother.
The Noriko story, of course.
It made sense now.

My father had taken me to a war film once, at a cinema on the outskirts of town.

Later, at home, he had sat for hours, silent in his chair, smoking his pipe. And though he would often boast to his friends about having had ‘a good war’, I had seen him crying at the cinema.

I could hear my mother sobbing from the room that she and my father had shared. I thought of knocking on the door, of entering the room and sitting there, holding my mother’s hand over the blue silk counterpane. But it would mortify my mother to know that I could hear her in her grief. It would bring her no comfort.

Now was the time I should have cried: for my father, for my mother, for what was lost. All those decisions my mother had taken, alone, in her demure desolation.

Could you not have waited, Mum?

I paced through the flat, my teenage self again, skirting the walls, trying not to cross my own path, trying not to hear my mother’s sobs.

I tried to ring Millicent. Four rings, then voicemail. It was three o’clock, but she must have known that I would need to call her. I called again. Four rings, voicemail.

My parents’ flat was unchanged from the day I left home twenty-two years ago. Same fridge, same photographs on the walls, same furniture. It wasn’t for lack of money. They’d done well for themselves. But they had known what they liked back then, and they had never stopped liking it. Continuity. Restraint.

Where is Millicent?

I rang our home phone. It rang for the longest time.

There was a worn patch on the carpet by the side of the sofa where my mother liked to sit, and another by my father’s smoking chair.

Answer the phone.

Two decades of pipe smoke had gently curled across the flat, coating every white surface in a warm sepia, damping down the pillar-box red of the living-room curtains, the cobalt blue of the silk counterpanes in the bedrooms with which my mother had, rebelliously, accented their home.
Answer the phone, Millicent.

It was Max who answered.

‘Max, it’s Dad.’

‘You woke me up. Is Grandpa dead?’

‘It was peaceful, Max. He died in his sleep.’

‘Oh,’ said Max.

‘Are you OK, Max?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I love you very much, Max.’

‘I love you too, Dad,’ he said dutifully.

‘Can you get Mum?’

I heard him put the receiver down, could make out the sound of his footsteps as he went back upstairs to wake Millicent.
How can you sleep at a time like this?

I looked out into the night. Large windows, wide streets, sandstone solidity. Safe, I thought. Very safe.

‘Dad?’

‘Yes, Max.’

‘Dad, she’s not here.’

‘Have you checked in the garden? She could be in the garden.’

‘It’s raining.’

‘Can you check in the garden, please, Max?’

‘But why would she be in the garden? It’s raining.’

‘Please check the garden, Max. Now.’

‘But what if she’s not there, Dad? What if something’s happened to her?’ I was scaring him. This wasn’t good.

‘We’ll figure it out, Max. She might have gone to the shops.’

‘OK.’ Max put down the receiver again. Of course Millicent hadn’t gone to the shops. I shouldn’t be exposing my son to my fears like this.

Where was she?

Max picked up the phone again.

‘Dad, Dad, she’s not here. She’s not in the garden. Dad, can you come home?’

It’s happening again, I thought.
Please God, don’t let it happen again.
I considered ringing Fab5 and asking him to go round, but Millicent would view it as a betrayal. She would hate me for exposing her like that. Who could I ring, though? Certainly not the police.

I had to keep the fear out of my voice. ‘Max,’ I said. ‘Max, listen to me. I want you to do something for me.’
Measure your words.
‘I want you to go back to bed, and I want you to make sure your alarm clock is set for half past seven, and at exactly half past seven I want you to wake up and go into our bedroom, and you’ll find that Mum is there and everything is OK.’

‘Can’t I go and stay with Tarek?’ said Max.

‘No, love, no.’ Tarek’s parents might call the police. ‘I need you to do what I say, Max-Man. OK?’

‘I swear on my life I won’t say why.’

‘Max, it’s the middle of the night. I need you to go back to bed. I need you to promise me that.’
There is no one to call.

‘Why should I?’

‘Because in the morning this will all be OK. Trust me, Max-Man.’

‘Can you come home, Dad?’

‘I’ll take the first train. That’s a promise. Stay at home till I get there. I’ll walk you to school and explain to Mr Sharpe.’

‘But you said Mum would be there.’

‘She will.’

‘But then you said to wait until you come, so you think she might not come.’

‘She will come, Max.’
Please God, let her be there.

‘Can’t you take a plane, Dad?’

‘The train is quicker. I’ll be there as soon as I can, Max.’

‘All right.’

‘I love you very much, Max,’ I said, but he had gone.

I sat staring at my phone for a time. Then I texted Millicent.

Max is scared. Where are you?

This looks bad, I know. This looks like grounds for divorce, with automatic custody awarded to the father. Believe me, it isn’t that straightforward.

Max was three. Millicent was pregnant again. Six months.

We had devoted the pregnancy to a propaganda offensive. We talked about how much fun it would be for Max to have a new brother or sister, how much that child would look up to Max, how it would adore him and come to him for help and advice throughout its life. Max, we told him, was going to be a great older brother. He would love the baby, and the baby would love him.

Max and I used to lie beside Millicent on the living-room floor, each with an ear to her belly, listening, exploring with our hands, feeling for the tiny kicks and punches. We talked about the ultrasound pictures, about where the baby was lying inside Millicent, how its hands and feet were arranged, how it was fully formed now, how it looked like a proper baby now, how all it had to do was get a little bigger now. Just a little bigger.

Max wanted a sister, he told us, but a brother would probably be OK too. Guess what, we said, you’re in luck: it’s not a brother, it’s a sister.

Max had marched around the house chanting ‘baby sister, baby sister, baby sister’, until he collapsed exhausted on the living-room floor and had to be carried to bed. He began to make his own preparations: he gave up drinking milk from a bottle, decided he no longer needed a nappy at night.

We bought him a baby of his own, an anatomically correct girl doll that he used to carry around the house by one arm. He would fall asleep with the doll cradled to his chest.

We had done our job well; his baby sister had become a reality for him.

One day the baby’s heart stopped beating. There was no warning, and we never found out the reason; it just died there in Millicent’s womb in the small hours of a Wednesday morning. Millicent woke early, felt an absence, dressed without waking me, and took a minicab to the hospital.

At seven thirty she rang me. She was talking so quietly I could barely make out what she was saying. There was no detectable heartbeat. Our little girl was gone. The hospital was going to induce a delivery. A birth that wasn’t a birth.

‘I’ll come.’

‘Don’t, Alex.’

‘Millicent …’

‘To have you here would be unbearable to me, Alex. It’s a parody of what it should have been.’

‘I love you, Millicent …’

‘I have to go.’

I left Max with Fab5. I bought flowers and fruit and chocolates; I bought a cream silk dressing gown; I bought a mountain of books.

I went to the hospital. I sat at my wife’s side until she woke. I held her hand, wanting the first words she heard to be mine.

‘I love you, Millicent … I love you so very much.’

My words brought her no comfort. She sat silently for over an hour. Babies screamed in nearby wards. She sent me away.

She came home two days later looking drawn and stricken. I had done what I could to prepare Max, had tried to explain what had happened, but when Millicent came through the door he looked confused. He didn’t greet her, but stood watching her suspiciously.

‘Where’s the baby?’

‘The baby isn’t coming, Max,’ said Millicent.

‘Where’s the baby?’

‘Honey, sweetheart, the baby died. I’m so sorry, Max.’

Max stood for a very long time, the doll in his arms, rocking it gently back and forth. That evening he refused to speak to Millicent and insisted I put him to bed. And the next evening. The evening after that he screamed when Millicent picked him up.

It got worse. Max would run from the room if Millicent appeared. I would find him in his bedroom, hyperventilating. Once when he seemed to have disappeared completely from our tiny house I found him under the sofa in the living room, his face streaked with snot, shaking and sobbing silently. At night he would cry for hours on end until, despairing, Millicent and I decided that I should sleep on a camp bed in his room.