Another Mother's Son (6 page)

Whenever I come to this place, I feel as if I have never left. It all runs into one long evening. I send Ross another text. On the far side of the room Mr Frost guffaws.

ON THE RIDGEWAY,
as we head in the direction of Crews Hill, the traffic slows.

‘Could be an accident. We might be here for a while.' I glance in the wing mirror at an approaching police motorbike and then shift my gaze to the driver's mirror. ‘How did you get on, Jude? Ross seems not to be a shining beacon of excellence.'

‘I never saw anyone,' Jude says. ‘When I heard that Mum wasn't coming I gave up.'

They are framed by the mirror's edge. Ross has his arm round her. He is wearing Jude's scarf and she is wearing his beanie. The black woolly hat is pulled down over her eyebrows.

‘Did something happen? I'm sorry I didn't get to meet her.'

‘We're tired, Mum. Can you please stop talking,' Ross says.

The motorbike speeds past the line of traffic, lights winking.

‘I've no idea why you're tired. I did all the work
and
had to make excuses for you. It was extremely exhausting. Where were you all that time?'

‘In the study space. Jude was too. We were reading
Hamlet
.'

‘Admirable. I think I managed to speak to everyone – apart from Mr Child. Deborah Lupton was much exercised that he hadn't shown up – though it doesn't take much to get Deborah excited. Was he also in the study space? Perhaps taking the part of Voltemand. “I have found the very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.”'

‘Hang on – Doigy, move your hand. Look at this, Lorna.' Jude passes her phone to me through the gap between the front seats. My sons never let me near their phones. They are pirate chests marked ‘secret'.

I glance at the screen. A figure in a doorway. The shot is from behind.

‘Who are we looking at?'

‘Mr Child. Don't you recognise him?'

‘He seems to be wearing a small rucksack. We're moving again. I must concentrate on the road, Jude.'

‘He went into this cupboard place on the first floor of Old School yesterday lunch-time. He was carrying a chair. I don't know how long he stayed there. Mr Frost came past and I had to go.'

‘Furtive behaviour,' I say. ‘What's in the cupboard?'

‘I'll find out. What do you think he was doing?'

‘Maybe mindfulness training. He sits and meditates?'

‘Weird place to choose.'

‘Hmm,' I say. ‘The lure of tight spaces. Where I work, a man – Chris Orrick – was doing some research into a wartime civilian disaster at Bethnal Green Tube station. March 1943. Hundreds of people poured down the stairs in terror at what they thought was a bomb but turned out to be a British anti-aircraft rocket fired from Victoria Park. A woman tripped and everyone fell on top of each other. The government played the incident down and failed to give a proper account.'

‘What's she on about?' Ross says.

One hostile. The other friendly.

‘Someone called Yorick. Aren't you listening?'

‘So what's new?' I continue. ‘Something similar happened at the Hillsborough Stadium in 1989. Do the powers that be learn from previous botched cover-ups? No, they do not. Covering up is one of their specialities. Together with, we now learn, widespread surveillance. Why am I talking about this? Oh yes, Chris Orrick appeared to be unnaturally interested in the
crush
aspect of the episode.' I give a brief impersonation of Mr Orrick's self-strangulation – mostly sound effects, since I have to steer the car. ‘I fear it may be a fetish,' I say.

I am aware of hushed fumbling sounds of cloth brushing cloth. The retirement project of a stranger. There is no reason why they should be interested.

The intervals between street lamps become further apart. Each lamp is circled in white mist. I have no idea where I am going.

‘Jude. You're going to have to direct me.'

A pause for disengagement. ‘Oh, are we at the roundabout? Thank you for driving me home. It's really out of your way. I didn't know we'd get stuck.'

‘I'm glad to do it.'

Jude gives me instructions for the last half-mile. We arrive at a lane that goes nowhere and hers is the last cottage in the row. I see a sign to a riding school. Beyond are dark fields.

I stare ahead through the purposeful silence of a kiss. Jude says goodbye and gets out of the car. Cold air rushes in. I wait with the engine running while she walks up the front path. She puts her key in the lock. As Jude opens the door, I hear barking and see a dog rush towards her. It slithers at the last moment across a black-and-white tiled floor.

THE KITCHEN SMELLS
strongly of bleach and seafood, like a fish market at the end of the day. I am making more effort with the cleaning, and trying out new recipes. I put random ingredients into the search bar and the Internet concocts something more or less edible. Pistachio-crust salmon with spaghetti. It is dead simple. If you don't have any Thai fish sauce, it says, just use Worcestershire which is fine by me.

When I look at Jude, with her unmade-up face and downward-turning eyes, I want to throw away the demeaning aspects of adulthood. Ugly clothes, shoes, bags, stub ends of make-up, rancid perfumes. She has a spectacular effect on Ross. It is like the weather clearing once a front has moved on. His smile follows her around the room. She communicates in gusts and wears Ross's skull-print sweatshirt. They have bought matching ear cuffs.

‘What's this?' Ross asks.

‘Salmon.'

‘Stick to the pasta, Jude. I'll put some ketchup on and we'll take it upstairs.' Ross holds out two plates. He gives her a surreptitious grin. His Spider-Man sleeping bag is rolled out on the floor above us. For my sake, I suppose; or for his, on my behalf. It is Friday evening and Jude is with us again for the weekend. Without any explanation, Ross has stopped going to Crews Hill.

‘No, you won't,' I say, as I dole out the portions. ‘You eat down here.'

I tip the fish onto the dishes in such a way that the crust is underneath. The nutty bit looks like greeny particles of burnt mould I am trying to hide.

‘Why?' Ross says.

‘House rule.'

‘With exceptions,' he says, a hint of bitterness in his voice.

‘If you're at home at twenty-one, I'll reconsider.'

‘No way. No way will I be at home then.'

‘We'll eat in the kitchen, Doigy. It's OK. Sit down.' Jude is already at the table. She breaks up the fish and distributes flakes into the pasta with artistic precision. She tucks her hair behind her ears to eat. Her skin is as smooth as new soap.

‘I'm afraid my presentation skills lack finesse,' I say.

‘Don't worry about it.' Jude pauses. ‘Doesn't Ross's brother ever eat with you?'

‘Ewan? Very seldom,' I say.

‘Does he leave his room?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘The house?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where does he go?' Jude takes neat mouthfuls in between questions. She twirls the spaghetti and tucks in the loose ends with a flourish.

‘Who knows? Along the streets, through Grovelands Park, Broomfield Park? I suppose he might get a train into town.'

‘You give him money, then?'

‘Yes. Not much.'

‘Does he have a girlfriend?'

‘Probably not. I don't know.'

‘Has he ever had one?'

‘I expect so.'

‘They haven't come here?'

‘No, Jude. But I don't know that I read much into that. Lola from nursery school used to come round to play. But since then there has been a dearth of—'

‘What does he do all day long?'

‘Draws, does stuff on the computer, goes out. I don't know exactly.'

‘He should get a job.' She pronounces her consonants as if biting on them.

‘Quite.'

‘There are jobs if you're not too fussy. Baristas, shop assistants …'

I stand up, pick up my plate and tip what remains in the bin.

‘Finesse,' Ross mutters. ‘Fuck.'

I CAN'T FACE
speaking about Ewan. Has he thought of seeing a therapist / getting an internship / learning Mandarin or web design? The recommendations are eased into speech with kindness. I dread the ‘What do your children do?' question. Other people seem to think I exist in a mental fog so soupy and thick that the simplest solutions have failed to occur to me. I expect it's a phase. They've been saying this for two years. It never occurs to them that the last person said it and the one before. ‘Phase' is used in the sense of a period one's son passes through, never to return, though to me the word, commonly associated with the movement of the moon and the planets, defines a recurring thing. If Ewan's torpor turns out to be a recurring thing, some other woman can deal with it.

Ewan stays in his room for hours at a time. He watches television on his laptop and draws bizarre and beautiful illuminated letters; a calligraphy that is undermined by the use of biro. The content is fairly wide-ranging. ‘A', for example, incorporates an arsehole as well as Aztecs and an arum lily. The basic colours of blue, black and red intertwine on a jotter pad and produce, from a distance, the effect of a fantasy map or engraving. He comes down to the kitchen for food and to make tea or coffee, mostly in my absence. Sometimes he exchanges a few words with me or his brothers if he meets us on the landing; at others he slips past; a tall, sad-faced youth with hunched shoulders. Once or twice a week, I am aware that he leaves the house. I hear the front door click shut and later the key in the lock as he lets himself in. He goes straight upstairs. He can be away for as little as twenty minutes, or as long as four or five hours.

He is usually dressed in the daytime: jeans, sweatshirts, jumpers – normal clothes, though they hang off him. He keeps his hair washed and must from time to time have it cut because it never grows longer than collar length. He is lanky, hollowed out under his ribs, but I know he eats. He takes food up to his room. Used plates and bowls end up on the floor. It is squalid to leave them there but they come back down in the end. I am not a chambermaid. He has the run of the house and I like to think that he makes use of the extra space when I am at work; that he sits in the kitchen, or the living room, watches television, spreads himself about a bit. I have no idea what he does. He completed two terms of a BA Hons degree in Film and Literature. He has no job. He makes no contribution to the household or to society.

I look at his face. I am so used to it that I do not know what to make of it. I saw it at the beginning. If I had to recreate it I would use clay rather than wood because its changes are subtle. I would have to feel them under my fingers. He becomes watchful, distracted, alert, forgetful with a gradual dawning, and often I quake seeing the look on his face.

At least he goes out, I said to Randal, soon after Ewan abandoned his degree course. That has to be a good sign. He has fresh air and takes some exercise. He wears trainers and appears fit. We don't need to know what he's doing; he is an adult. Let's assume he meets up with friends, I said. I hope that's right, Randal said, though he was usually the positive one. Well, why not? I said. He has his phone, he can fix things up. I hope that's right, Randal said. Please stop saying that, I said. It rattles me. I understood what Randal implied. I had looked up the classic signs of depression, though I already knew what they were; a slippery list that applies to most people some of the time. The experts seem to agree that in the tick-box five is the key number, the same that they recommend for daily consumption of fruit and vegetables.

‘
HELLO. ONLY ME,'
I call out.

I am holding the keys that I use to let myself into William's flat. The living-room door is ajar.

‘This is Jane Brims,' my father says as I enter. ‘She's one of Helena's cousins. She was passing by and called in to see me.'

Jane Brims acknowledges me with a dull smile. She is tucked into the corner of the sofa, holding a tumbler that rattles with ice. Old ice it must be, frozen into cubes many years ago. My mother had cold-sensitive teeth and William, my father, dislikes his gin and French diluted.

‘Help yourself to a drink, Lorna,' he says. ‘There's a bottle of red open in the kitchen.'

‘No, thanks.'

He looks at his watch. ‘It's coming up to five o'clock. I thought we might stretch a point.' He turns to the woman. ‘Lorna drops by to see if I'm all in one piece. Generally, I am.'

Jane Brims crosses her legs. She is wearing tapered black trousers, floral-patterned socks and red pumps. She takes a sip from the glass.

‘Aren't I, Lorna?' my father says.

He is sitting in the hoop-backed chair that my mother, Helena, reupholstered. It faces the three floor-to-ceiling windows that take up one whole side of the room and let in the sky. There is little wall space for furniture and bookshelves. Even after the great cull that took place when William left the old house, what remains is packed in tightly and the arrangement, though artful, is not a complete success. A stranger, walking in, would guess correctly: elderly person or persons in a contemporary apartment.

‘Sorry, Dad?'

‘Generally in one piece?'

‘Yes. Yes, you are.' I am usually more encouraging – and would add that he is doing really well, or some such phrase – but I am inhibited by the presence of the woman on the sofa.

‘You're hovering,' my father says. ‘Sit down. Or are you rushing off immediately? Quite often she's rushing off.' He speaks in a kindly voice without resentment.

I drop the keys into my bag and sit on the arm of his chair, surprised, as I always am when I first arrive, by being at a standstill. Once I cross the threshold and perch myself, the day that has moved along stops.