The Boy That Never Was (7 page)

But we became exhausted. Missing the morning light because of lack of sleep made me sick. I started taking pills either to keep me going when I woke or to get me to sleep at night so I could be up to catch that fiery dawn light I wanted in my paintings. Cozimo had a cabinet full of pills. In one pencil case, he kept the pills he needed for a week; a generous soul, he offered me pretty much what I wanted or what he thought I needed. Of course, I didn’t tell Robin about taking these pills. But to paint, to be ready for the canvas, I needed to be there; I couldn’t afford to be exhausted from lack of sleep.

The first pill I tried was a sleeping pill. I took it at half eleven at night and slept till seven a.m. Robin wasn’t suspicious. She was happy I had got some rest. ‘If only I could sleep like that,’ she said. ‘Dillon was awake half the night.’

When the lack of sleep started to take something of a toll and Robin lost weight and dark rings formed about her eyes, I thought that, rather than offering her a pill, I would get the
little man to sleep with a quarter of a pill. Then maybe she could rest. I crushed the pill up in the kitchen and poured it into a glass of warm milk. It dissolved, and Dillon never noticed. I know I should never have done that. But it felt almost as if someone else was doing it. Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice was saying,
Bad idea, very bad idea, stop
, but the other Harry, the one who moved and spoke and did things, he carried on regardless, and after that first night, when our Dillon slept properly, heavily even, and woke up with a satisfying yelp and smile, I thought, well, lucky, good, no harm done.

Then our séances became a monthly thing. Cozimo managed to contact his great-uncle and a childhood friend named Albert who he had not saved when he could have. It sounds perplexing now, but at the time it all made sense – either that or I didn’t think so much about it and went along with it. I mean, why weren’t we doing these dodgy séances in his more private, more spacious and comfortable house? But then, that first night there was an element of spontaneity about it. Anyway, one of the beings Cozimo wanted most to contact – and I am not joking when I say this – was his childhood pet beagle. That’s how our monthly meetings became known as the Order of the Golden Beagle. It sounds ludicrous now, and even then the ridiculous title and name – well, it was all a bit of fun, another excuse for a late-night party. Robin never participated, and I did not discuss the details of those supernatural evenings with her, even if she suspected something.

I didn’t administer the crushed pills to Dillon every night; I wasn’t that far gone. But I did start to give them to him more than I might have, more than I should have – I know that now. I take the responsibility, even if it is not something I found the nerve or courage to tell Robin
about. I suppose I gave them to him once a month. Cozimo became convinced that the sleeping child on the table – Dillon, in other words – was instrumental to the success of the séances. So as we got bedtime together and after I had read him his storybooks – he liked the tales from Narnia; Aslan was his favourite – I gave him his milk, with the crushed quarter pill, and deposited him on the oak table before the Order of the Golden Beagle met. Cozimo even made him an honorary member of the order and procured a special pillow, embroidered with the order’s name, and that is where Dillon’s head rested on those particular nights.

And so we got started. It was all more or less nonsense: the joining of hands, the murmuring. One of the Spanish women – Blanca, I think her name was – acted as medium. Is this something she volunteered for or Cozimo suggested? I can’t be sure, but either way she assumed the role. I remember she mumbled and hummed and told us all to close our eyes while Cozimo was relighting the candles, which had been blown out by a dry, swirling wind that had come through town. The noise from outside seemed deafening at times: footsteps, people walking, people talking, car horns blaring, and engines revving. Then something very strange happened. During the séance, the other Spanish woman started wailing. Her name, I can’t remember, but Cozimo joined in. ‘Don’t break the circle,’ Blanca said. ‘Don’t.’ But it was too late, and everyone was standing about, shifting from foot to foot, looking for another drink.

‘I felt something,’ Cozimo said. ‘Something powerful.’

Blanca told him that he should not have broken the circle. But the séance was over, and we started drinking more. Coz
imo had a great record collection. He had a wonderful old record player made in the shape of an old gramophone, and that is where you could usually find him after the séances had ended, bent over his old records, both classical and jazz. But he was too moved by this experience, he told us, while pouring more wine into everyone’s glass. Instead, I knelt by the player and changed the record.

Cozimo looked over. While it was now our place, mine and Robin’s, he still felt possessive about his vinyl. He eyed me suspiciously and made some comment about being careful as to what I chose. Then there was more music, more dancing, more talking. The song I remember from that séance was ‘Turn Out the Stars’. I remember swaying to its languid rhythms, my eyes closing slowly to its lulling beat. I remember the song for another reason too: it was playing in the apartment the last time I saw Dillon.

He had been asleep, his head sinking into the embroidered pillow, which he had taken into his bedroom. How still he looked, lying there, eyes closed, long lashes dark against his skin. And vulnerable too, with his hands thrown up above his head, fingers curled. I looked at him and felt the slow burn of love.

And then there was my foolish dash to Cozimo’s and the devastating earthquake. All the time, the music ghosted through my head; the slow syncopation of jazz played counterpoint to my panic, to the fires, to the hissing gas, to the falling dust and shuddering buildings, to my frantic race back to the apartment.

The night it happened, Robin was working late. It’s ironic, but that week, that month, Robin had come round; her doubts and worry had somehow dissipated in the weeks leading up to that fateful night. She was more resolute about staying in
Tangier – not for ever, that was not the plan, but for a time, the time it took to finish another show, one I was calling
The Tangier Manifesto.
It was her birthday. On her break, we had spoken briefly on the phone – a casual conversation, no hint of the great drama that was just around the corner for us, a drama that would come to be the central point of our lives. Afterwards, she would have returned to the bar and continued serving the scattering of customers there that night; perhaps some of them might have commented upon the strange stillness in the air, the charged atmosphere that lingered in the streets that night. And then she would have felt the tremors, been caught up in the commotion, seen the growing and distressed crowds, the shifting buildings, the smoke, the rising flames. She would have left the bar, run through the streets of our neighbourhood, passed the pharmacy, the leather shop, the launderette, raced down the dip to the bakery, and then she would have seen me.

I say ‘would’, because to be honest, I can’t truly or completely remember that night. So much of it is a blank. Shock, rage, panic, fear, grief, disbelief – they all swelled together to numb my mind and blacken out the last parts of the night as if the stars themselves were extinguished.

What I do remember is her calm and even voice asking me, ‘Where is Dillon? Harry, where is he? Where is Dillon? Where is our son?’

That’s it. How the night ended? I can’t tell you, because I don’t know.

But let me tell you this, let me tell you something I do know: I have the same dream again and again. I am asking Dillon to close his eyes. He is not sleeping. I am trying to get him to sleep. His warm body is next to mine. We are lying together in his little bed. It is Tangier. His arm is cradled
about my neck. A feather has escaped his pillow and is resting in his hair. I turn the bedside lamp on. Close your eyes, I say to him, and in the dim blur of the light, I see that his eyes are closed and that he is sleeping after all.

And then I wake.

Two days later, I stood in the kitchen of my oldest friend, Liz, and listened as she pulled apart two screaming six-year-olds who were trying to maul each other to death in the next room. On the floor by my feet, four-month-old Charlotte cooed to herself and sucked her fingers, a wide necklace of drool soaking into her bib. She gazed up at me with a curious stare as I made tea and listened to her mother shrieking at her brother.

‘For Christ’s sake, Isaac! If I have to come in here one more time to sort you boys out, I will take those light sabres and bin them! Do you understand?’

Sounds of muted disgruntlement followed in her wake as Liz returned to the kitchen, a look of weary exasperation on her face.

‘Give me strength,’ she said dramatically, approaching the table and throwing herself into the chair opposite mine. ‘I don’t know what possessed me when I bought those light sabres.’

‘Sleep deprivation does strange things to a person.’

The lull in the next room exploded as the two pint-sized Jedis resumed their brawl, but this time, Liz made no effort to move.

‘Let them kill each other,’ she said with an air of surrender.

‘Boys,’ I said sympathetically, pouring tea into her cup.

‘They always play at killing each other. At least my boys do.’

Liz and I went way back. We had been at school together, our friendship enduring the teenage years, when she was a
Goth and I was a boho bookish sort, and then through college, when I studied art and she read history. The years I spent in Tangier, she spent getting married to Andrew, buying a large house in Mount Merrion and filling it with a succession of boys before finally having Charlotte, a chubby, wide-eyed baby who smiled and gurgled, oblivious to the clamour and chaos that whirled around her brothers.

‘Biscuit?’ I said, offering Liz the open packet of Rich Tea I had found.

‘Sod that. There’s a Toblerone on top of the fridge.’

I reached for the giant-sized bar and whistled.

‘The size of this thing. You could club a small child to death with this.’

‘Don’t put ideas in my head!’ Liz laughed, before adding, ‘Andrew gave it to me as a peace offering.’

‘A peace offering?’

‘Oh, we had this massive argument on Tuesday evening. He accused me of being more interested in drinking a glass of wine while watching
Grey’s Anatomy
than in having sex with him.’

‘Is he right?’

‘Of course he’s bloody right, but I’m hardly going to admit to it. And besides, that’s not the point.’

‘The point being …?’

‘I have four children under the age of eight! Two of them I seriously suspect have ADHD or Asperger’s or some bloody thing. And one of them is waking up twice in the night for a feed. What does he expect? That I sit around daydreaming about jumping his bones? Please. All I want to do is sleep.’

‘Or eat chocolate,’ I said, snapping off another triangle.

‘It’s depressing,’ she said. ‘One time he would have come home with Chanel. Now I get a bloody Toblerone.’

‘At least you get something.’

‘That’s true. And how
is
Harry?’

I felt the barb in her comment and chose to let it go.

‘He’s fine.’

Liz sat and watched with an impassive expression as I explained how he had moved out of his studio and set up in the garage. There was no love lost between my husband and my best friend. Liz had always been protective of me, suspicious of any man I showed an interest in. ‘Where men are concerned, you have terrible taste and rotten judgement,’ she told me once by way of explanation. Harry provoked a kind of wary curiosity in her. That is, until Tangier, which she thought was madness. I still recall that heated phone call between us when she called him a selfish sod and told me that I was a fool to allow myself to be dragged to some seedy shithole for the sake of our art and I accused her of selling out, with her big house in the suburbs and her middle-class snobbery. It took some months before I was able to speak to her again. And yet, after Dillon she was one of the few people I could really talk to. Over the years, I had sat in her kitchen more nights than I can remember, drinking wine and reminiscing about him, crying about him, opening up to her about my deepest wound. And yes, I had told her things about Harry that perhaps I shouldn’t have. But there was no one else I might have turned to. And when I thought about all the things I had said in this kitchen – about Harry, about his be haviour, about my suspicions, about how sometimes he frightened me – a wave of regret came over me, so strong that I felt physically weakened by it.

‘Steady on,’ Liz said, taking the Toblerone from my hands. ‘The way you’re working through that, anyone would think you were pregnant.’

I blinked with surprise and stared at her, and she stared back, her eyes widening.

‘You are? You bloody
are
pregnant! I don’t believe it.’

‘Oh God. Is it that obvious?’

‘Only to a trained eye. How far gone are you?’

‘About five minutes. Shit, Liz, you can’t tell anyone. I haven’t even told my mother yet.’

‘Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe.’

Her eyes, ringed with tiredness, were suddenly lively, and her voice dropped to a whisper as she leaned over the table and drew me into a conspiratorial hush.

‘So, tell me all. Come on, I want details.’

‘There’s really nothing to tell.’

‘Oh bollocks to that! Planned or accident?’

‘Accident.’

‘Yikes! I bet Harry was pissed off.’

‘Not really. Actually, he seems happy about it. Elated, in fact.’

‘Really?’ She raised an eyebrow, and I felt the scrutiny of her gaze and shrank from it.

‘Okay, I admit it – he was surprised.’

‘In a good way?’

‘Yes, in a good way.’

‘What did he say when you told him?’

I remembered again his blank expression, his voice as he said,
I can’t believe it.

‘He’d had a crappy day, and my news came out of left field, so he was taken aback. For a minute he couldn’t speak.’

‘And when he found his voice?’ Liz prompted, her tone acidic.

‘He was thrilled. And ever since he’s been so excited about the baby, about the pregnancy. He can’t stop talking about it. Can’t do enough for me.’

‘Well, good. So he should.’

‘Please, Liz,’ I said then, suddenly tired of this. ‘Don’t be like that, okay? He’s changed. Whatever you may think, I know this baby is going to make all the difference. I don’t know why, but I feel like we’ve been waiting for something like this to happen for a very long time.’

‘I just want him to realize what he’s got,’ Liz replied, her tone lightening. ‘I don’t want him retreating into that artistic solipsism of his – “Oh, woe is me” and all that. Not now. Not after all that’s happened.’

‘He won’t,’ I said firmly. ‘I know he won’t.’

Her eyes flared briefly with concern, then softened.

‘Good.’ She reached out and put her hand over mine. ‘I’m happy for you, Rob. Really I am.’

‘Thanks, Liz. I am, too.’

I felt her eyes on me, her lingering concern, and experienced a little stab of guilt over what I’d said about Harry, his enthusiasm for the baby, his elation.

‘Now tell me you’re not about to run off into the desert to have this baby, are you?’

‘No!’ I laughed, and she grinned back. ‘No, not this time.’

When I got home, I could hear Harry at work in the garage. I had decided, on the drive home from Liz’s, that I would not tell him that I had shared our news. Somehow, I knew that it would bother him, get under his skin. Besides, I had the sense that he needed a little more time himself to digest this development, and I was more than willing to grant him that.

I closed the door behind me, hung my bag on the newel post and went down the steps and opened the door to the garage. I didn’t knock, didn’t call out his name, and when I went in, he looked up at me, startled, and I had the impression that I was interrupting something.

‘Hey there,’ I said, walking over to him and kissing him lightly. ‘What’re you doing?’

‘Getting set up,’ he replied, and I saw on the floor behind him the boxes and crates filled with his paints and pigments, his brushes, knives, canvases, sketch pads. In another corner he had stacked against the wall all the unsold paintings. He had laid a rug on the ground underneath them – a small touch of tenderness in this cold, hard space.

‘The light in here is terrible,’ he said, reaching up to flick a finger at the bare bulb hanging from a wire. A puff of dust came away as he left the bulb swinging.

‘That’s what you said about Spencer’s basement, remember? But you sorted it out, didn’t you?’

‘It’s bloody freezing in here.’

‘You can take the plug-in heater from the office to warm things up.’

He gave a sound that might have been agreement or a grunt of disapproval. He seemed prickly and moody, distracted, but I wouldn’t allow my optimism to be dented.

‘So-o-o,’ I said, drawing out the syllable as I leaned against the table and faced him, my smile surfacing again, ‘I’ve been doing some thinking, and I’ve decided to have the baby in Holles Street and split my care between Dr O’Rourke and a consultant at the maternity hospital.’

‘Great. Sounds like you have it all worked out.’ He fixed his gaze on the wall opposite. ‘I think I’ll put shelves there. To tidy up the clutter a bit. And this stuff has got to go.’

He turned and indicated with a sweep of his arm the pile of junk that had accumulated over the years, gathering and filling the space, growing like a living organism.

‘We can get a skip,’ I said. ‘Do a big clear-out. It’s about time we tackled it.’

He began shifting things around, hauling sacks towards the door. A toolbox fell on the ground, its contents clattering across the concrete floor.

‘I have to register at the hospital this week. Do you want to come?’

‘Do you need me to come?’

‘No, but –’

‘It’s just filling out forms, isn’t it?’

‘I guess so. It’s too early for anything else.’

‘Well, you don’t need me to do that.’

I looked carefully at him.

‘I’ll come for the scans and the check-ups and that.’

That was all perfectly reasonable. Perhaps I was just imagining the hint of aggression in his voice.

I let it go.

He began piling chairs up in a corner, clearing a space in the middle of the floor.

‘Want me to help?’

‘What? Have my pregnant wife haul some furniture about?’ he asked, flashing a grin at me. ‘What kind of a dick would that make me?’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’

It was giving up the studio that had brought it about – this minor estrangement of ours. He had always been sensitive to his environment, his work space in particular. I had expected him to react badly to the move. It needled me a little that he could not accept it with good grace, but the argument was not worth having.

I filled the coffee pot with water and spooned the coffee into the basket and wondered how long this little rift would continue. His moods could sometimes last for days. It was as
I set the coffee to boil on the hob that he stepped into the kitchen. He stood by the doorway, his hands in his pockets, looking sheepish. His tousled hair, the way his eyes swept over the floorboards – he was a little boy again, ready to confess, needing to be forgiven, and I felt a tug on the thread that held us together, pulling me back to him.

‘I am happy about the baby, Robin,’ he began quietly. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he went on, ‘now that I’m working here in the house, and now that you’ve a shorter working week and will be at home more, I think we should have some ground rules.’

‘Ground rules?’ I said, confused.

‘Yes.’

And I realized that what I had thought was sheepishness was something other than that. He looked shifty. He looked sly.

‘I need my space, Robin. I need privacy in order to work. You can’t just walk in for a chat whenever you’re feeling bored or lonely.’

Anger began to rise inside me like mercury in a thermometer.

‘So what should I do?’ I asked, keeping my voice cool and level. ‘Should I knock first? Make an appointment for coffee? Tiptoe around my own house?’

‘Come on, Robin, don’t be like that.’

‘I’m not being like anything. You’re the one who’s acting weird.’

‘Look, all I’m asking is that you treat my work space here the way you treated the studio in town.’

‘Like a sanctum, you mean?’

‘Not a bloody sanctum,’ he snapped. ‘You never popped in for coffee there, did you? Never just dropped by for a quick chat.’

‘You never let me.’

He stared at me. ‘Why do you do that? Say things like that.
I never let you
. Making me out to be some kind of control freak.’

The coffee pot was spitting and hissing, and I turned and removed it from the heat, placing the cups on the counter with a clatter.

‘You don’t have to make this into a big thing, Robin,’ he said.

I felt those words, the accusation they held, release into the air like a tiny puff of poison. Something snapped within me, and I knew I was going to ask him one of the questions I had never asked but always wondered about.

‘Why didn’t I have a key to your studio?’

‘What?’ He looked wary, confused.

‘A key. You never gave me one.’

‘Why would you need –’

‘Diane had one.’

Her name hung between us like a threat. Her name in my mouth felt sharp. Everything about Diane is sharp, from the pointed tips of her Cupid’s bow mouth down to the spike of her heels.

‘That’s different,’ he said softly, stepping past me and pouring coffee into his cup.

‘How is it different?’

Raising his voice and speaking slowly, as though talking to a child, he said, ‘She needed to have access to my paintings when I wasn’t there, that’s why.’

‘Does this mean she’ll have a key to this house?’

‘Of course not. What the fuck is wrong with you today, Robin?’

My eyes flared and I felt my heart thrum with fury.

‘What’s wrong with
me
?’