Raking the Ashes (8 page)

And suddenly, whether I could talk to him about his father mattered less.

IT WAS MINNA
who first mentioned ‘Mummy’s Bump’ one weekend morning. I can’t remember why she came out with it, but the expression struck me at once.

‘You don’t suppose she’s pregnant?’ I whispered to Geoff as I passed him a cereal box to put back in the cupboard.

‘Who?’

‘Frances, of course. Weren’t you listening? Minna said she has a “bump”.’

Just at that moment, Harry came back in the kitchen to pick up his radio-controlled rat. Sensing that we were having a private conversation, he hung around, so it was quite a while before Geoff picked up the topic again. ‘Of course she wouldn’t be pregnant. Frances is far too old to start again.’

‘Geoff, she’s barely scraped forty! And Minna is only nine. It’s perfectly possible.’

‘Nonsense. Whose baby would she be having?’

‘Terence’s, of course.’

‘But they’ve split up again.’

News to me. But at that moment the notion of Frances having a ‘bump’ intrigued me far more than the fact that Geoff evidently hadn’t bothered to keep me abreast of yet another milestone in his family. ‘Perhaps that’s why. Maybe Terence didn’t fancy being a father.’

‘Tilly, you’re mad.’

Not mad. Just wrong. The real facts of the matter came home to us only a couple of Wednesday visits later, when Harry dumped a bigger load of stuff than usual on the hall floor. ‘Mum wants us to sleep over here, and for you to take us to school in the morning.’

‘Brilliant!’ said Geoffrey.

‘Is there a reason?’ I couldn’t help asking.

Harry looked grave. ‘She’s seeing someone early about her lump.’

‘Oh,
lump
,’ I said, caught off guard. Harry gave me a look. ‘I thought it was “bump”,’ I admitted.

‘No. Lump,’ said Harry. He seemed a hair’s breadth away from tears. I took it he’d picked up more than just the word, so put a warning hand on Geoffrey’s arm as I said cheerfully, ‘It’s good the two of you are
sleeping
over. Your dad was hoping you could stay a bit later tonight. He thought it would make a nice change to go to a film.’

We all switch moods in an instant, but only children are honest enough not to try to conceal it. ‘Film?’ Harry was already bouncing up and down. ‘What, in town? Can we go to
Ghost Train
? Please! Everyone in my class has seen it already.’

‘Is it too scary for Minna?’

We watched the struggle between longing and honesty. I let him off the hook. ‘I thought, if Minna stayed here with me, I could help her bake chocolate fingers to take to school tomorrow.’

Minna looked up. ‘Or fairy cakes? Like the ones you made with Harry when I had the flu?’

‘Whichever you like.’

So that was settled. Harry was distracted from his worries, and Minna, busy with her wooden spoon, turned really chatty. First, I heard all about her myriad little feuds in school. Then all about her triumph at the gym club. Finally, she mentioned how cross her mother had been when the oven packed in twice in one week, and I took the chance to drop the little question. ‘So where’s this lump of hers, then?’

Minna let go of the mixing bowl to reach up and touch the side of her neck. I leaned across to wipe off the butter smear before it ran down to her collar. ‘Is it big?’

‘It’s getting bigger.’

‘Has she seen the doctor?’

‘She’s seen …’ Minna laid down the spoon to tick them off on her fingers. ‘Three doctors and two special doctors and a puncturist.’

‘
Acu
puncturist?’

‘Yes.’ Out came the bombshell. ‘And now she’s going to America and we’re to come and stay with you till she gets better.’

‘Really?’

‘Next week, when Terence has it sorted.’ She reached for the egg I’d been holding out, and fell silent with concentration for the time it took to crack it in the cup and whisk it creamy. I thought I might have to prompt her, but as soon as she’d tipped the first slither of beaten egg into her batter she came back to the subject of her own accord. ‘Terence’s cousin is a …’

She stopped and stared at me with that old haunted, agonized look.

‘Surgeon?’

She shook her head.

‘Specialist?’

It finally came to her. ‘Oncologist.’

‘That’s some word to remember!’

She gave me one of her rare smiles. ‘Want to know how I do it? I think of pigs.’ She saw my blank look. ‘Oink, oink! Oinkologist!’

It seemed as good a time as any to exit the conversation. I led her off the topic by going on to chat about two of Geoffrey’s own animal imitation specialities (braying like a donkey and mooing like a cow) and other matters. I knew the rest of the story would filter in when Frances rang, and it was comforting to feel that, just this once, I knew a little more than Geoffrey about what was happening in his family.

Much good it did me. Geoffrey took the call. I stayed out of sight but, this time, I was listening hard. And when he came to find me and report, it was as clear as paint that he was telling only the half of it. I offered him the chance to come clean. ‘So Frances didn’t give you any idea how long she’d be gone? That seems a little strange.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t expect she knows. From what I gather, it’s some sort of weird experimental place. You know, organic berries, yoga, imagining your red blood cells busy chewing up the cancer.’

‘White blood cells,’ I corrected automatically.

‘Whatever. Anyhow, I got the feeling the whole idea was that she let go of all her troubles and responsibilities to give her body a clear run to get better.’

I made a face. I had no way of proving that all the assurances I’d overheard Geoff making had any relevance. (Yes, he’d make sure they had their dental inspections. No, he wouldn’t forget to pay next term’s
gym
-club fees.) But I was certainly suspicious enough to turn mean-spirited. ‘Still, sending your children round to someone else’s house indefinitely …’

‘I’m not just “someone else”.’

‘It’s not your house.’

He bridled. ‘Are you suggesting I should have said no to offering a home to my own children?’

‘No. I just think it would have been nicer if you had said, at some point in the call, “I can’t for a moment imagine there’ll be a problem. But I will of course have to check with Tilly.”’

‘I think I did say something like that at one point.’

‘Geoff, as it happens, I was listening. And I know for a fact you didn’t.’

Now he was getting ratty. ‘Well, if there’s no problem, why on earth should I have gone to the trouble of bothering to say it?’

It was the careless little ‘bothering to’ that riled me. ‘Because this is
my house
. And I think you and Frances have a really bad habit of taking me too much for granted.’

‘For God’s sake, Tilly! The mother of my kids turns out to have cancer, and you’re just on about who owns this house!’

And, put like that, it did sound very petty. But I was seething. For it did seem to me that there was always some great highfalutin reason why the two of them
could
act as if I didn’t count for anything whenever it suited them. I didn’t push the issue. Clearly it wasn’t the time. And Geoff was quite sincerely upset at the news about Frances. The children moved in only a few days later, and my suspicion that they’d be staying a whole lot longer than Geoff was actually letting on was strengthened by his wistful hint that I might let him dismantle the bunk bed and move Harry’s half into the room I’d always used as an office. (I turned a deaf ear.)

The children started off as usual, with that same somewhat distant ‘politesse’ they’d always shown under our roof. But there’s a deal of difference between visiting and living, and as the days went by I saw a different side of both. Minna, for example, was still as quiet and undemanding as before, and it was the usual effort to get her to commit herself to even the smallest decision. But I began to notice that she could make her feelings clear by taking her time. I’d ask her, ‘Would you like to come with me to pick up the supper?’ Half an hour later the restaurant would ring. ‘Is there a problem? Your order’s sitting waiting,’ and Minna would still be sitting on the bottom stair, taking an age to pull on a sock or button up a shoe. I’d ask her to set for lunch, and though, each time I looked round, she’d be moving obediently between the cutlery drawer and the table, still, when the meal was ready, however long
that
took, her job was only half done. She ate at a snail’s pace. She took so long to get into her pyjamas that there was never time for a story. She never complained, never said no, never failed to agree about anything. But still she couldn’t have made her feelings about staying in our house more obvious. It was like living with a child who walked through glue.

Harry, by contrast, shifted tirelessly from one room to another, a thin tuneless whistle seeping from between clenched teeth. He started every single one of the books Frances had sent along with him, and finished none. He fiddled with the controls on the radio till I could have slapped his fingers. He took to tormenting his sister. And shadows deepened round his eyes.

‘Talk to him, Geoff. He’s probably got it in his head his mother’s dying.’

‘What am I supposed to say?’

We sat in mutual bafflement. What are the words for someone whose mother feels herself to be – probably is – in such great peril that she’s gone to Arizona for a ‘miracle cure’?

‘Tell him …’ I hesitated. Nothing seemed right. ‘Just get him talking.’

‘It’s not that easy, Til.’

And yet it was. Night after night I woke to hear the struts of the bunk bed creaking like a galleon at sea. I’d
pad
through to pull the covers back over his thrashing limbs, and end up staying till I froze while Harry kept me, clinging to company by explaining in pitiless detail why he had woken, or how he couldn’t sleep.

It’s not surprising that in the end I cracked. ‘All
right
. Unfasten the bloody bunk bed and put his half in my study. At least that way I won’t be standing half the night.’

‘I’m sorry, Til.’

Not sorry enough to get the boy talking himself, of course. And how I hated what I had to listen to, because poor Harry was consumed with foul intrusive thoughts. Every black tale he’d heard at school, every warped headline he’d seen in papers, ran riot through his brain.

‘So there was this murderer—’

‘Who told you this one, Harry?’

‘Kevin. His brother told him.’

I’d sigh. Harry would pick up the story. ‘It’s true, Tilly. He murdered this girl on the beach, then turned her face down with her arms stuck in the sand as if she was doing press-ups. And when the police pulled her out, they found she only had stumps.’

‘Stumps?’

‘The murderer had cut her hands off.’

My stomach churned. ‘Christ, Harry! Who feeds you this crap?’

‘Don’t say “crap”, Tilly. It’s rude. I
told
you. It was Kevin’s brother.’

‘He made it up.’

‘No, honestly. It really happened.’

Night after night. A merciless stream of grim stories. Crucified children. Set-on-fire dogs. Disembowelled horses. Girls chained for years in cellars. What can you find to say to comfort a child when your own heart is thumping?

I spoke to Geoffrey. ‘That boy needs help.’

‘Help?’

‘Someone professional to talk to. His brain is swimming in this crap. He’s drowning in horrors.’

‘I’m sure it’ll pass.’

‘Why? Because that’s an easier thing to think?’

‘That’s a bit spiteful, Tilly.’

‘Hit home, did it? Maybe you should consider if there’s a bit of truth to it.’

And out it came on cue, the perennial whitewashing claim: ‘I think I know my own child.’ With no spare bed to sulk in, I simply turned my back. But only the dead drunk and the born insomniac can share a mattress with someone they’re busy despising, and after a couple of sleepless nights I made my offer. ‘Let me pay for it. Let me find someone who can help him. He needn’t even know it’s therapy. He’s only eleven, for God’s sake. We can probably kid him that
he
’s helping out with some survey, or something.’

‘No, Tilly.’ I saw Geoff’s face brighten as a notion came to let him off the hook. ‘It wouldn’t be right unless I asked Frances.’

Smart way to kick that ball straight into touch. Who’s going to phone a woman who is eating Mexican weeds and practising ‘positive visual imagery’, and tell her that her son’s so frightened she’s going to die that every dark thought in the world is camped in his brain?

Not even me.

I took a break from the whole boiling. First, I phoned Donald. ‘Pass the word,’ I said. ‘Anything. Anywhere.’ Within hours, the first call came in. ‘Tilly? Donald says you’ll trade a week on rig for time later in the year.’

‘Spot on.’

‘Trouble at home?’

‘Just need a bit of space.’

‘I’ll take it! Shall I tell Luis you’re in the market for the weekend as well? His wife’s going through the wringer with this new baby.’

See? Easy-peasy. But when I came home, nothing was any better. In fact, things were worse. I got in far too late to see the children on the Sunday night, but when I came down in the morning it was to find Minna already in tears, barricaded behind cereal
packets
. ‘Harry’s being mean. He keeps on saying I’ve got such big nostrils that everyone can see up to my brain.’

‘He can’t help being a halfwit.’

She used her pyjama sleeve to wipe off slug trails. ‘And he keeps saying my knickers smell and everyone talks about it.’

I turned to Harry. ‘Out!’

She took some comforting. I held her close and patted while she hiccuped and snivelled. Gradually, out spilled the horrid things he’d said and done, and got in trouble for at school. ‘They’ve even sent a letter.’

‘Here?’

‘Arif’s mother
made
them. Arif told everyone. Didn’t Dad tell you?’

I played it loyal, muttering something inane. ‘Oh,
that
letter. I thought you meant some other letter.’ But Minna’s litany of her brother’s sins had at least had the cheering effect of reminding her he was the one in deep trouble. Wiping her nose upward with spread palm, she now declared herself recovered enough to slip off my knee and go back up the stairs for her school bag. I sat hearing the thump of her footfalls overhead and asking myself if I could possibly have failed to register Geoff’s mention of any letter from the school, and wondering if he had any intentions at all of saying anything about it in the future. Even as I was
laying
my psychic money on ‘no’, I heard the rattle of post through the letterbox and onto the mat fell a letter addressed to Mr and Mrs Anderson. Even with Minna’s warning uppermost in mind, I opened it without a thought, simply assuming that, as usual with such letters, it was a special offer from a garage he had visited, or a suggestion that we switch some household bill that was under Geoff’s name over to some other system of payment.