Playing for the Ashes (24 page)

What was there left to say to them? she wondered. She’d tried to return their father to her children for the last four years. What could she tell them now?

He’d said, “We’ve been apart more than long enough, Jean. We can get a divorce with no fault on either side.”

“I been true to you, Kenny,” had been her reply. She’d stayed across the kitchen, as far away from him as possible with the edge of the sink pressing hard into her back. It was the first time he’d used the word she’d been fearing since the day he left them. “I never did another bloke but you. Never. Not once in my life.”

“I haven’t expected you to be faithful to me. I never asked that once I moved out of here, did I?”

“I made vows, Kenny. I said till death. I said that whatever you wanted of me, I’d give you open-hearted. And you can’t say I ever held back a thing.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Then you tell me why. And be straight with me, Kenny. No more of this rot ’bout finding the self of yourself. Let’s get down to business. Who’re you fucking on the side that you want to fuck legal and proper now?”

“Come on, girl. This isn’t about fucking.”

“No? Then why’ve you gone all red at the ears? Who’s it that you’re doing the job on now? How ’bout Mrs. Whitelaw? She got you changing her oil twice a week?”

“Don’t be daft, all right?”

“We went to a church, you and me. We said till death do us part.”

“We were seventeen years old. People change. They can’t help it.”

“I don’t change.” She drew a breath against the feeling of rawness at the back of her mouth. The worst, she thought, was not knowing what you already knew, not having a name and a face towards which you could direct the force of your hatred. “I been true to you, Kenny. So you owe me truth in return. Who is it you’re fucking now you’re not fucking me?”

“Jean…”

“Only that’s not putting it quite right, is it?”

“What’s wrong between us isn’t the sex part. It never was and you know it.”

“We got three kids. We got a life here. Least, we had one till Mrs. Whitelaw took it over.”

“This isn’t about Miriam.”

“She’s
Miriam
now? How long’s she been Miriam? Is she Miriam in the light or is it just in the dark when you don’t have to look at the piece of dough you’re kneading?”

“For fuck’s sake, Jean. Have a brain, won’t you? I’m not sleeping with Miriam Whitelaw. She’s a flipping old lady.”

“Then who? Tell me. Who?”

“You aren’t listening to me. This isn’t about sex.”

“Oh, too right. What is it, then? You taken to religion? You find someone you can sing hymns with on Sunday mornings?”

“There’s been a gap between us where there shouldn’t be. That’s always been the case.”

“What gap? What?”

“You don’t see it, do you? That’s most of the trouble.”

She laughed, although even to herself the sound was high and nervous. “You’re off your head, Kenny Fleming. You tell me one other couple who’s got half what we’ve had since we was twelve years old.”

He shook his head. He looked tired and resigned. “I’m not twelve years old any longer. I need something more. I need a woman I can share with. You and me…you and I…we’re good in some ways but not in others. And not in the ways that count for something outside the bedroom.”

Jeannie felt the edge of the sink bruising flesh and bone. She stood taller against it. “There’s men out there would crawl across coals to have someone like me.”

“I know that.”

“So how’m I not good?”

“I didn’t say you weren’t good.”

“You said you and me’re good in some ways but not in others. How? Tell me. Now.”

“Our interests. What we do. What we care about. What we talk about. What our plans are. What we want for our lives.”

“We always had that. You know we did.”

“We did at first. But we’ve grown apart. You see that. You just don’t want to admit it.”

“Who’s telling you we didn’t have it good? Is it her? Is Mrs. Whitelaw filling your head with this muck? Because she hates me, Kenny. She always has done.”

“I’ve already told you this isn’t about Miriam.”

“She blames me for taking you away from school. She came to Billingsgate when I was pregnant with Jimmy.”

“This’s got nothing to do with all that.”

“She said I’d ruin your life if you and me got married.”

“That’s in the past. Forget it.”

“She said you’d be nothing if I let you leave school.”

“She’s our friend. She was only worried about us.”

“Our
friend
, you say? She wanted me to give up my baby. She wanted me to kill it. She wanted me to die. She’s always had it in for me, Kenny. She’s always—”

“Stow it!” His hand hit the table. The ceramic salt shaker—shaped like a polar bear to match the panther pepper—fell to the
flo
or, hitting a leg of the table. It cracked, and spilled salt in a silent dribble of white against the old green lino. Kenny picked it up. It broke in two pieces in his hand. More salt fell like bleached sand between his fingers. He said, looking at the salt, not at her, “You’re dead wrong about Miriam. She’s been good to me. She’s been good to us. You. The kids.”

“Then tell me who’s better’n me for you.”

He drew a pattern of squiggles in the salt. He brushed his hand across the pattern,
fla
ttened it out. He began to redraw. He said, “Hear me, girl. It’s not about fucking,” and he spoke to the salt and not to her. From the tone of his voice, she could see he’d made up his mind to tell the truth. From the set of his head and his shoulders she knew that the truth was going to be worse than her worst imaginings. “It’s not about sex at all,” he repeated. “Understand?”

“Oh,” she said with a lightness she didn’t feel. “So it’s not about sex. You a priest now, Kenny?”

“All right. I’ve been to bed with her. Yes. We’ve been to bed. But it’s not about sex. It’s bigger than that. It’s about…” He shoved the heel of his hand into the salt. He rubbed it back and forth. He scraped it against the broken edge of the shaker, lodging the salt loose and watching it fall and driving his hand back into it again. “It’s about wanting,” he said.

“And that’s not about sex? Come on, Kenny.”

He looked at her and she felt her
fin
gers getting icy. She’d never seen his face so torn. “I’ve never felt like this before,” he said. “I want to know her in every way that I can. I want to own her. I want to be her. That’s what it’s like.”

“That’s daft.” Jeannie tried to sound scornful. She only sounded afraid.

“I’ve been reduced, Jean. Like I’ve been in a pot on the cooker and all of me’s boiled away. What’s left is this core. And the core is wanting. Her. Wanting her. I can’t even think of anything else.”

“You’re talking rot, Kenny.”

He turned his head away. “I didn’t think you’d understand.”

“But I expect she does. Miss Whoever-sheis.”

“Yeah. She does.”

“Who is it, then? Who’s this her that you want to
be
so much?”

“What difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference to me. And you owe me the name. If it’s over between us like you want it to be.”

So he’d told her, saying only “Gabriella” in a low voice, repeating it on a breath with his head against his fists and the salt from the oilcloth speckling his wrists like tiny white freckles.

Jeannie didn’t need to hear more. No surname was necessary. She felt as if he’d taken a cleaver to her like a butcher chops meat. She walked to the table, dazed. She said, “Gabriella Patten’s who you want to know in every way? To own? To be?” She sank into a chair. “I won’t let you do it.”

“You don’t see…you don’t know…I can’t explain what it’s like.” He tapped his
fis
t to his forehead lightly, like he wanted her to peer right into his brain.

“Oh, I know what it’s like. And I’ll die
fir
st, Kenny, before I see you with her.”

Only it hadn’t happened that way. The dying had come. But they had the wrong corpse. Jeannie squeezed her eyes shut until she saw flicks of light against the back of her eyelids. When she knew she could speak in a normal voice if she had to—which she prayed she did not—she left the bathroom.

Sharon wasn’t asleep. Jeannie cracked open her bedroom door and saw that she was sitting up in her bed next to the window. She was knitting. She hadn’t put on a light. She was bent over like a hunchback, clicking needles together and twisting yarn, whispering, “Purl’s like
this
. Knit’s like this. Yes. And again.” Across the blankets snaked the muf
fle
r she’d begun working on last month. It was meant for her dad, an out-of-season birthday present that Kenny would have worn to please his daughter, regardless of the weather, from the moment he opened the gift in late June.

When Jeannie pushed the door fully open, Sharon didn’t look her way. Her small face was pinched with the effort at concentration, but since she didn’t have her spectacles on, she was making a real hash of her work.

The spectacles lay on the bedside table next to the binoculars through which Sharon watched her birds. Jeannie picked them up, smoothed the pads of her fingers over the ear pieces, and thought about how old her daughter would have to be before she allowed her to start wearing lenses. She’d meant to ask Kenny about it once she’d discovered there were three yobs at the school who were ragging Sharon and calling her Frog Eyes. Not that the asking would have made any difference, because Jeannie knew what the answer would have been. Kenny’d have whisked Sharon off for the lenses at once, helped her learn how to use them, and made her go giggly at the thickheadedness of boys who only feel like toffs when they’re poking fun at fourteen-year-old girls.

“Purl, purl, purl,” Sharon whispered. “Knit, purl, purl, purl.”

Jeannie offered her the spectacles. “Need these, Shar? You want the light? Can’t see what you’re doing in the dark like that, can you?”

Sharon shook her head furiously. “Knit,” she said. “Purl, purl, purl.” The needles made a sound like pecking birds.

Jeannie sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed. She
fin
gered the muffler. It was lumpy in the middle and misshapen on the edges. It was worse near the needles where tonight’s work spewed forth in knots.

“Dad would of liked this, luv,” Jeannie said. “It would of made him proud.” She lifted her hand to touch her daughter’s hair but
fin
ished the gesture by straightening the blankets. “You best try to sleep. You want to come in with me?”

Sharon shook her head. “Knit,” she muttered. “Purl, purl, knit.”

“Want me to stay here? If you scoot over, I can sit with you some.” She wanted to say, “The first night’s going t’be the worst, I think, when the hurting makes you want to punch your hand through the window.” Instead she said, “P’rhaps we’ll go to the river tomorrow. What you think of that? We’ll try to see one of those birds you been looking for. What’re they called, Shar?”

“Knit,” Sharon whispered. “Knit, knit, purl.”

“Odd name, it was. Sandwich something.”

Sharon uncoiled more yarn from the ball. She twisted it round her hand. She didn’t look at it, or even at her knitting. Her back was hunched over her work, but her eyes were vacantly fastened on the wall where she’d pinned up dozens of her bird sketchings.

“You want to go to the river, luv? Try to see some more birds? Take your sketch pad with us? Take a lunch as well?”

Sharon didn’t reply. She merely eased herself onto her side, her back to her mother, and continued the knitting. Jeannie watched her for a moment. Her hand lingered over her, tracing the curve of her shoulder without touching it. She said, “Yeah. Well. That’s a good idea. You try to sleep, luv,” and went to her sons’ room across the corridor.

It smelled of cigarette smoke, unwashed bodies, and dirty clothes. In one of the beds, Stan lay quietly, protected on all sides by a rank of stuffed animals set up to guard him. Cocooned in the middle of these, he slept with the covers round his ankles and his hand tucked into his pyjama bottoms.

“Wanks off every night, Stan does. He don’t need a best friend. He’s got his dong.”

Jimmy’s words came from the darkest corner of the room where the smell was strongest and where a fleeting red glow illuminated a fragment of lip and the knuckle of a
fin
ger. She left Stan’s hand where it was and pulled up the blankets to cover him again. She said quietly, “How many times’ve we talked about smoking in bed, Jim?”

“Don’t remember.”

“You going t’be satisfied when you burn the house down?”

He snorted for reply.

She opened the curtains at the window and cranked at the casement to let in some fresh air. Moonlight fell across the brown carpet squares, making a path that led to the wreck of a clipper ship lying on its side with its three masts snapped off and a foot-size cavity smashed into its bow.