Another Mother's Son (19 page)

William and Jane rise and cross the living room in a series of fussy movements. I cover the dining table with a cloth and leave a heap of cutlery at the far end for hasty distribution in case anyone should join us. The last thing I want is to sit staring at empty place settings. I seat William at the head of the table with Jane round the corner next to him. That way, if no one else turns up we can be cosy together at one end. I use the word though I feel as cosy as a cat in a bucket of water. I remain standing.

‘Well, you'll never guess where we went on Friday, or whom we saw.' William chuckles as he settles himself. ‘Peterborough. We went to Peterborough. Jane wanted to look round the cathedral. In particular, she wanted to see the rood. Who was the sculptor of the Christ figure, Jane?'

‘Frank Roper. Roper as in rope,' Jane says.

‘It's done in gilded aluminium. Immense. Very glittery, very modern. Jane liked it. We saw Hugh. What do you think of that?'

‘Astonishing. How was he?'

‘He was on good form. I rang him up. On Thursday evening, after I'd spoken to you. And I got him! That was quite something, wasn't it?'

‘It was,' I say.

‘We caught the three minutes past ten from King's Cross and were in Peterborough forty-seven minutes later. It was one of these new-fangled trains with the seats all facing the same way, like an aeroplane. And fast. It belted along. We arrived in time for a cup of coffee and a leisurely look round the cathedral. Hugh drove into town and met us for one o'clock lunch at a Chinese place in the Broadway. He gave good instructions and we found it with no trouble. A former Nat West bank. You could still make out the lettering on the façade.'

I last saw my brother at Helena's funeral. He had shaved his head. He wore a diagonally striped tie and smelled faintly of lemongrass.

‘What was his news?' I ask.

‘He's been in Kuala Lumpur. Combined it with a holiday in Penang. Jet-skiing and parasailing. Apparently you wear some harness contraption and get pulled a thousand feet in the air by a hydraulic winch. I must say it wouldn't suit me.'

‘Who did he go with?'

‘As far as I know, he was on his own. He enjoys these sporting activities.'

Jane sips her wine. She holds back – graciously – her gaze fixed on a point somewhere in the middle of the room below the central light fitting; the spot where house flies circle on a hot summer's day. Let him say his piece, her expression says. I can be patient.

I have to admit that William is his normal self. Although he participates in uncharacteristic behaviour – going to
Sweeney Todd
and regimental exhibitions – his speech and manner are the same. Jane has introduced new pastimes but nothing else is different and so far she has not modified his wardrobe. If she's made him a present of a Nehru jacket or a Fair Isle tank top, he does not wear it.

Had my mother been with us, the conversation would at this moment have branched out into speculation about Hugh's personal life; the mystery of it. Who or what he is concealing. In her discourse with my brother, her sharp ears listened out for a first-person plural but Hugh never slipped up, or only when speaking of himself and others in a collective predicament; stuck in a traffic jam or held up on the tarmac. Did he go to the cinema on his own, go-karting, paragliding –
every
time? Even tennis appeared to be solo. It wasn't possible to play tennis alone – unless against a wall – my mother said. Surely even Hugh didn't play tennis with a wall.

William hung back on the subject of his son. He neither disapproved nor joined in when my mother probed the situation. In the face of his tolerance, I am unable to pursue further details of the life and happiness of my brother.

William starts to tell of the town museum in Peterborough.

Jane Brims interrupts. ‘I was disappointed not to see the mural decoration at Longthorpe Tower. The Wheel of Life and the Wheel of the Five Senses. In particular, I should like to have seen the frieze of birds.' Her mouth forms words with little munching motions.

‘Longthorpe Tower is shut during the week. Open at weekends and on bank holidays. It couldn't be helped,' William chips in.

‘Paintings of local birds from the Fenland. Bittern, curlew, swans and various kinds of geese.'

‘Excuse me for interrupting, Jane. I need to tell the others that lunch is ready – and rescue the food.'

I go halfway up the staircase and call out. A smell of burnt oil hangs in the air. No one replies. I loathe everyone currently in the house. My sons, my father, Jude, Jane Brims. I should have said no to William. I do not want an extra person here. It is not a question of cooking: I cannot sustain the semi-formality imposed by this woman. I cannot be the hybrid beast of polite hostess with a friendly wagging tail. Not this weekend.

I consider escape – out and away down Dairyman's Road – but go on up to the bathroom and examine my grim face in the mirror. In youth any old expression will do but by the time you get to my age the mind in the eyes and the set of the jaw are more significant than any beauty regime and these, together with an air of tranquillity, are what mark out the girls from the soon-to-be fruitcakes. As I pencil lines around my eyes and rub this and that into my flesh, I become a little more colourful but fail the test. I look older than Jane Brims.

A phone is lying on the shelf above the basin. Jude's. I pick it up. There are times when the hand is out of step with the brain.

THE CHAIR, OF
the standard polypropylene type ubiquitous in schools, featured in Jude's first photograph. I sat on one in the IT suite the other afternoon. Single mould on a welded frame with a window at the sitter's lower-back position. A window, not for looking through, but to provide a hand-hold for easier carrying and stacking. There would be other ways of carrying the chair; by the seat and held in front like a tea tray, by the top and dragged behind along the floor. I had not known which it was. Jude showed the latest picture to Randal. I did not want to see it. I do not want to see it now. Alan Child drags the chair.

Every day this scene is acted out. The detail varies and the setting. A hotel room. A cliff. A bridge. Preceded by other actions. Sometimes an entry in a newspaper states what happened. Usually not, unless the person is famous. I should have told Jude to delete the chair; to delete all the pictures on her phone of the former stationery cupboard and Alan Child going into it. I am sick at what my son has done.

My finger slithers over the screen and suddenly I see Jude in her home clothes – scarf, jumper, jeans, socks – sitting cross-legged on the floor with her back against a bed, Ewan beside her. The background is evening dark. I feel as light as a shuttlecock, wildly hit, that flies out of a game. It is as if I have seen a pair of ghosts. The faces, lit by a white-tinged glare, are pale. The eyes stare out. The scarf wound round and round Jude's neck is like a protective cowl. I let the glow of the screen die in my hand. The phone goes back on the shelf.

If I had not touched the phone this would not have happened, I think, as I creep downstairs to the kitchen. I dish up and unsteadily carry plates of salmon, potato and broccoli through to the living room.

I announce that we should begin without the children. ‘Bon appétit,' I say. ‘It's lovely you're here. Do begin.'

‘Begin a meal, start a car. Quite right,' my father says.

He reaches inside his jacket pocket for his reading glasses, raises them to his face and puts them on aslant with the earpieces not around his ears but jammed higher up his head. I look at them in bewilderment. They are chunky, green framed, and turn my father into a pantomime dame.

‘They're Mum's, aren't they?' I say.

‘Mislaid mine. These do,' he says.

‘I like your plum-coloured walls,' Jane said. ‘I like strong colour in a dining room.' She treats me to a brisk smile and picks up her knife and fork. She separates particles of nut from the fish and moves them to the side of her plate. They form a little heap.

We talk but I take nothing in. We have reached the pudding stage when I hear Ross's bedroom door close and footsteps on the stairs.

‘That's Ross and Jude,' I say. ‘Jude will be leaving. She never stops for Sunday lunch.'

‘They'll say hello,' my father says. ‘Then Ross will join us.'

It is not a question. Though much has changed since he was young, William considers it unthinkable that a child of a family, or the child's guest, will walk straight through a hall and out of the door, without looking in. I see both points of view but come down on the side of old manners.

‘Come and say hello,' I call – without conviction.

I hear a hushed scuffle and then silence.

‘Ross?'

He appears. He nods through the greetings.

‘Jude's going,' he says.

‘Is she there?' Jane asks. ‘We'd like to see her.' She puts on her smile.

Ross takes a step back. ‘Jude?' he says.

We wait. Through the gap of the door jamb, I see the shadow of Jude's coat.

The delay is long but then Ross re-enters and Jude is next to him.

‘You're not stopping to eat with us, Jude? The crumble is really delicious,' Jane says.

She questions the young people about their studies and intentions, oblivious to the blank panic on their faces. If she is aware, she proceeds cruelly. The single-word replies that Ross gives do not lead to conversation. Jude is silent. At one point, Ross reaches for her hand but she does not take it.

‘Do you have brothers or sisters, Jude?' Jane asks.

‘A half-sister,' Jude whispers.

William leans forward and cups a hand around his ear.

‘She lives in Barcelona?' I say.

‘No. No, she doesn't. She lives in Vancouver. Her boyfriend's Canadian. She's older than me. My father was married before.' Jude speaks quickly. ‘Now history's repeating itself.'

‘Really?' Jane Brims leans forward eagerly. ‘Well!' she says when it becomes clear that there is to be no further information.

‘There's food in the kitchen. The fish might be a bit cold but it can soon be heated up. Veg. Pudding. Help yourselves,' I say.

‘I have to go,' Jude says.

Ross follows her.

‘Mm.
She's
a bit of a handful,' Jane says before the front door slams shut.

William looks baffled.

‘I don't know what's going on,' I say.

Some kind of altercation is taking place outside. Jude is shouting that Ross should leave her alone. I look through the back window, as though that will deflect attention from what is plainly audible at the front. I survey the bikes haphazardly parked against the fence and their spokes full of leaves. I give the garden my full attention. Jane and my father start talking again. I join in and by then, whatever is happening in the street has stopped or moved on.

We finish the meal and get through coffee without an announcement of impending marriage. I remain keyed up; hardly able to concentrate. I have already dropped and broken the cream jug, cut myself with a paring knife and burnt my wrist taking a dish from the oven at the wrong angle. Luckily all three incidents took place out of sight in the kitchen but the pain from the burn continues.

AT LEAST THEY
had their clothes on. The words once lodged in my head return like an irritating refrain, ba-dah, ba-dah, ba-dah-ba, bereft of meaning or consolation. Dissociated from any world I recognise, Jude and Ewan rested against a bed; Jude's expression neither happy, sad, forced, surprised nor intent – frankly inscrutable. She was the one with the arm out holding the phone. He smiled at the lens. Smiled. They sat pressed up against each other, every part of their sides touching, a situation that can happen in a posed photo. Move in, move in, the photographer says and I am hip to hip with the girl in my class I most dislike, or a besuited stranger who sports a pale carnation and smells of beer. I go back and forth, trying to work out when, how, how often, Ross? – and the hours pass. Is it possible that this was an isolated event? Is anything, ever? They chose to be close together. The bed had a white cover. It was not Ewan's bed. Something multicoloured intruded on a corner of the frame. It could have been a cushion or a discarded towel. Whatever it was, I did not recognise it.

The image of Ewan and Jude, like the image of the chair, fills a cinema screen in my mind. The next moment it becomes as tiny and potent as a letter on the bottom line of an optician's chart. I have no control over its size or focus.

Jude was shocked to overhear me talking to my son, my voice warm but somehow disembodied; the intonation of a mother talking to a baby and with the same lack of expectation of receiving a reply. Cleaning her teeth in the bathroom, she did not catch all the words. I seemed, at one point, to be saying something about a sick cat. She thought Ewan was dead and his room a shrine. Did she go and look, unglueing those parts of her body that adhered to Ross and easing herself out of bed? She would have hesitated at the foot of the space-saver stairs. Ewan's life was invisible to me. Up in the loft room. Out in the street. But invisibility is different from nothing. I assumed that his life consisted of nothing. I want normality for my sons; a mix, in proportions of conformity and non-conformity that most people arrive at. I am glad, in a way, that in his self-imposed exile at the top of the house Ewan has stayed in the flow. The toehold also seems to diminish him.

I flick through mental pictures. Ewan. Ewan and Jude. Ross. Ross and Jude. Ewan. In a train. On a park bench. Under a tree. Fast as animation. Enough. Two brothers. One girl.

I have kept all the children's books, those belonging to the boys and a few that have survived from my childhood. The story of Lieutenant Kijé is not among them. The book was borrowed and re-borrowed from the public library which is currently closed for the next fourteen months, possibly indefinitely, while the building it is part of – Southgate Town Hall – is redeveloped to accommodate private residential apartments. We used to go once a week. The boys pulled books out of the boxes, turned pages right to left, or left to right, and looked at the pictures. If we were not in a rush, I read whole stories to them. We sat on low benches. Ross on my knee, the other two, either side, pressed against me. Ross was obsessed by Lieutenant Kijé. I had a lot of explaining to do. Tsars, hussars, troikas, banishment, Siberia, pardons, promotions, heroes' funerals. My little boy took it all in. He knew about soldiers and writing words that come out wrong and making mistakes and dancing. He accepted falling in love and weddings and dying. But what tormented him was the trick of portraying a story that is a lie, inside a story. Lieutenant Kijé was there, plainly there, in the illustrations, but he did not exist. The pictures showed the life of a clerical error. Ross was outraged by Kijé with his pink cheeks, brown waif-like eyes and black curly hair. His bride decked out like a Russian doll. A snowy wasteland. The barred prison window. A gnawed crust of bread. He wanted pictures to depict what really happened. Might not that be dull, I suggested, page after page of Tsar Paul and his trusted group of soldiers in conversation about Kijé, the lieutenant who never existed and whose life they invented. Ross admitted it would be a bit boring, but better dull than
those
pictures. Had he known the words ‘trumped up', he would have used them.