A Line of Blood (13 page)

‘Nothing,’ said Max with great seriousness. ‘It’s all in good working order.’

‘Listen, small boy,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what bothers me more: the fact that you know that joke, or the fact that you seem to understand it.’

‘Mum taught it to me.’

‘Yeah, Millicent, that’s not good.’

Millicent made a gun with her hand, shot herself in the head. Max smirked. I put on a shirt and went downstairs to make coffee. While I waited for the coffee to boil I rang my mother.

My mother understood, she said, though in truth I hadn’t explained what had happened. Her breathing sounded laboured, and I was fairly certain she was crying.

‘I’m so sorry, Mum,’ I said. ‘Millicent is sorry too.’

‘Aye,’ she said, ‘aye, son, I understand.’

‘We’ll be back up as soon as we can, Mum.’

‘Aye, son. Aye.’

This wasn’t Max’s first course of therapy. After what I told you about his sister, how could it be? We have form with kiddie-shrinks.

Our very first visit to a therapist had been for ‘observation’. We had agreed that Millicent would turn up fifteen minutes after Max and me, to give Max time to settle in.

‘Hello, Max, hello, Alex,’ said the therapist, elegant in silk slacks, her grey hair modishly shaped and highlighted. Expensive, I thought, very, very expensive. Proper oil paintings on the wall. A real bronze sculpture on the table.

Max had surprised me. He walked brightly over to the toy box in the corner and began playing quietly with a wooden train. I had expected the therapist to be watching him, but once she had decided that he was content she turned her chair to face me. I talked quietly, explaining that Max’s fear of his mother was ruining our lives. We had tried everything, I said; wits’ end.

Millicent entered. Max whimpered, and shrank from her.

‘Interesting,’ said the therapist. ‘Alex, could you leave us for ten minutes?’

‘I’m not sure that’s a great idea.’

‘Perhaps not. But could you step outside?’

I stood in the waiting area, expecting to be summoned by Max’s screams. But he didn’t scream. As far as I could tell, he didn’t even cry.

After some time, the therapist called me back in. Max and Millicent were sitting in the corner, Max on Millicent’s lap. She was reading quietly to him.

‘Alex, are you aware that you flinched when Millicent walked in?’

‘I really don’t think I did.’

‘It was quite distinct. And what struck me is that Max saw that you flinched. And then he flinched in his turn.’

The therapist explained that Max was
taking his cues
from me,
looking for guidance
as to how he might react to
this curious turn of events
, by which she meant the death of our little daughter. He could
read phatic signals
in my behaviour that I didn’t know I was sending out. He was not the one who was angry with Millicent.

‘Are you saying I am?’

‘Aren’t you? After all, you weren’t there at the birth of your daughter.’

‘But it wasn’t a real birth.’
And she wasn’t a real daughter.

‘But is it possible that some unconscious part of you can’t forgive Millicent for sending you away? Or for not keeping her side of the deal, for not bringing
your
baby to term?’

‘I’m not a chauvinist.’

‘Interesting. I’m not saying you are. But many men would be angry.’

Well, it wasn’t given to me to know what my
unconscious
mind was up to. Maybe I
was
sending
phatic signals
to Max that I was
angry with Millicent
. Maybe I was – unconsciously
– instructing
Max in how to behave. It seemed unlikely to me. Then again, I didn’t have a better theory.

At home Max still screamed when Millicent entered the room. But at the therapist’s he would sit in his mother’s lap for an hour at a time, playing shyly with her hair.

We saw the therapist eight times. She explained to Max that Millicent hadn’t killed the baby; that sometimes bad things in life happen over which grown-ups have no control; that we had genuinely believed he was going to have a sister; that Millicent and I were ourselves
terribly upset
at what had happened to her.

Then the therapist charged us a grand. I could have told Max the same things myself and used the cash on something useful. But we had been desperate; we hadn’t known what else to do.

‘Give your daughter a name,’ said the therapist. ‘Have a burial service. Invite other people if you want to.’

‘Christ,’ I said, ‘what a quack.’

But Millicent insisted we do it, so we did. Just the three of us. We reassembled Max’s doll, dressed it and packed it in tissue paper, and buried it in a shoe-box in the garden. Max had asked if she could be called Sarah, and we didn’t have a better alternative. Max cried. Millicent cried. I cried too, hugging my wife and son so very tight.

This was ridiculous. A shoe-box and a doll called Sarah Mercer, for the love of God. Still we cried, our unhappy little tribe united in our grief.

And I hated to admit it, but the doll-burial changed something. Max was wary of Millicent, but he no longer screamed when she picked him up; he stopped crying when she tried to brush his teeth; he started to sleep through the night again. He began to let her read him stories in his bedroom; then finally he allowed her to get into the bath with him. I moved out of my son’s room and back into the marriage bed.

For a long time my reaction was one of bewildered acceptance. I didn’t understand what had happened to us, but knew that it had changed us all. We didn’t have another child; we didn’t even try.

We had come down a path at the side of a big house near Highbury Fields, rung a bell on the back door. The stainless steel plate by the door said Nora Å, PhD. After a moment, the therapist answered. Bit young to be called Nora: about my age, tall, mid-brown hair streaked with grey.

‘Hello, Max,’ she said, opening the door wide. ‘Would you like to take a seat?’

The door opened directly into a large white-walled room. There were three simple plywood chairs on the far wall, and another padded seat facing them.

‘Is that your chair?’ asked Max.

‘Yes. I get the nice chair because I’m here all day.’ Some very slight accent – not British, but hard to pin down.

I had expected Max to sit between us, but he chose the chair on the right. I sat on the chair on the left, leaving room for Millicent to sit in the middle. The therapist sat opposite us, and smiled at Max.

‘So,’ said Millicent, ‘the reason we’re here is that Alex and I are a little concerned.’

The therapist held up a finger.

‘And I’m just going to stop you there.’

There was a long pause. The therapist smiled at Max. Max smiled at the therapist.

I tried to take Millicent’s hand, let my fingers trail against hers, but she didn’t seem to notice. The room was very bare. There were no curtains, and the floorboards had been painted a light grey. Behind the therapist light streamed in through the glass door and two full-height sash windows.

‘Max, what would you like to talk about?’

Max looked thoughtful. ‘Mum said you weren’t a doctor. But you are.’

‘Not a medical doctor.’

‘I know that. What’s the A for?’

‘It’s not really an A. It’s got a little circle over it, and it’s the last letter in the Norwegian alphabet. It’s pronounced “Oh”.’

‘So your name is Dr N. Oh. Like Dr No?’

‘If you like.’

Max smiled. ‘You’re not very scary.’

‘Å is a place in Norway, and that’s where my family’s from. We’re called Å. That’s it.’

‘Is your dad called Mr Oh?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is your mum called Mrs Oh?’

‘No, she’s called Dr Å. She’s a proper doctor. She works in a hospital.’

‘Oh,’ said Max, and smiled again. ‘Oh.’

‘Why do you think you’re here, Max?’

The smile left Max’s face. ‘Mum and Dad are
concerned
about me.’

‘And why do you think that is?’

He sighed, looked first at Millicent, then at me. I tried to smile at him, but he frowned and turned back to the therapist.

‘I don’t know. I saw the neighbour’s
penis
, and it was a boner.’

‘OK.’

‘And I know that if a man with a boner tries to touch you, then that’s bad. But it’s not like he was a paedo, and he was dead so he couldn’t touch me.’

The therapist nodded. She looked a little taken aback.

‘It would be useful to know the events leading up to this, Max. It’ll help me to understand a little better.’

‘We found him together, didn’t we, Max?’ I said. ‘When I’d come out to find Max and get him into bed. You jumped down into the next-door neighbour’s garden, didn’t you?’ I turned to the therapist. ‘Max was looking for the cat.’

‘And I’d like to hear about it from Max, please.’ Again that raised finger.

‘Sorry, Max.’

Max went very quiet. He sat looking out of the window at the trees. Millicent seemed pained. I looked at the clock on the wall behind her. Ten past six. Ten minutes we’d been here. One minute of talk, nine of pauses. At two pounds per minute that was eighteen pounds’ worth of pauses.

‘It’s OK,’ Max said at last. ‘Dad can tell you.’

‘He could, Max. But we all remember things in our own way.’

Max got up out of his chair and went to look out of the window. Eventually he turned and said, ‘Can they go?’

‘Do you mean that you’d like your parents to leave?’

Max nodded.

‘Normally they would be here for the first session. But I can ask them if they’re prepared to leave you here.’

‘Sure,’ said Millicent.

‘Why not?’ I said.

‘Before you go, I should say that I normally don’t tell parents the details of my conversations with their children. Because of Max’s age, if there’s anything I think you need to know, I will tell you. Or anything I have a legal duty to disclose. Can we proceed on that basis?’

‘OK,’ I said. Millicent nodded.

‘Max?’

‘OK, Dr Å,’ said Max.

Millicent and I went for a walk around Highbury Fields. Well-heeled men and women in their forties emerged from Georgian houses with their perfectly turned-out children, walked their perfect dogs, met their perfect friends.

‘What do you reckon these houses cost?’ I said.

‘Seven million? Twelve? I have no idea.’

‘Who has that kind of money?’

‘Bad people. I want to believe they’re bad, bad people.’

An orange Datsun drew up on the other side of the road. As Millicent and I watched, the grey-black glass of the driver’s door wound down. A child emerged through the window, naked below the waist, held firmly by stout adult arms. One arm lifted the child’s feet so its legs were parallel with the road below. The child shat vigorously. The arms retracted the child, the window closed, and the car drove off.

‘I guess they must not come from this neighbourhood,’ said Millicent.

‘I guess not.’

‘That’s funny, right?’

‘Yes, why is that funny?’

I took Millicent’s hand in mine. I wanted to tell her about everything that had happened in Edinburgh. I wanted to tell her about my mother crying through the wall, about how alone and how frail she had seemed. I wanted to suggest that we call my mother together.

I’m not sure why I didn’t.

From Max’s room I heard the fridge wind down and stop. The hum of the motor must have been with me for a while, pushing, gently abrasive, at the edge of my conscious mind.
Following me around the house.

Only hear it when it stops.

How quiet it was in our little house now. I undressed Max and laid the covers over him. I went downstairs.

Millicent was asleep on the couch.

All the sounds that you hear but never register: all that evidence of life, all around you, and you don’t feel it until it comes to an end.

Sound of nothing.

Nothing from the street.

Nothing from the neighbouring houses.

A motor cutting out.

Newcomers look away from the street after nightfall. The steroidal fightdog in studded collar:
don’t look
. The footfall of trainer on tarmac:
don’t look
. The needled arm convulsing in the chickenshop doorway:
don’t look
. Months pass, and they
don’t look
, and nothing happens.

The streets hold their side of the bargain. Keep your head down and you can walk from the bus stop to your front door; don’t open that door after seven, don’t open your curtains after dark: don’t lock eyes with the neighbourhood and the neighbourhood won’t lock eyes with you. Let Crappy be Crappy, and Crappy will let you be.

With time it’s not fear but minor anxiety that drives the new North Londoners: what colours are floorboards being painted this year? Why do stripped doors bleed around the joints? You could drive an armoured car through the sodium light and the dog shit, and as long as it didn’t knock down the crumbling walls of their tiny front gardens, the Crappy middle classes wouldn’t notice. They’re passing through and they don’t want trouble: let them maximise value and move on.

This is what success looks like for people like us. Seventy-three square metres, with the option of extending into the loft. This is two incomes, jobs in the media. This is me away one month in three; this is Millicent at her computer seventy hours a week.

This house is us at the top of our game. I don’t know what failure would look like, but the thought terrifies me.

Three sixteen-year-olds were working the other side of the street, fingering locks on the parked cars: the North-London whiteboy’s crime of choice, half-brick in hand and coat-hanger up sleeve, pockets jammed with chisels and wrenches. I guessed their only interest in me was whether I’d call the Plod.

‘All right, lads?’ I called out, and waved. ‘How’s the twocking tonight?’ They clustered for a moment, then left at a slow saunter. I watched them go.