The People Next Door (2 page)

His awful singing, the songs he made up for Clara:

The night he drove their twelve-year-old Mini to the hospital, a raincoat over his pyjamas, going the wrong way down a street that he knew was one way, when Clara got a rash that turned out to be nothing.

The lemon cake he’d baked for Yvonne’s twentieth birthday, the beige gloop that oozed out when she cut into it.

The sprinkling of his brown shavings in the bathroom sink that she eventually gave up complaining about. His hair gel that smelled of rhubarb. The black scrap of a nail on his left little finger that he’d caught in a car door as a child. The raised mole just behind his right shoulder, the coarse hairs that sprouted from it that he refused to let her pluck. The way he read the newspaper back to front.

His mother’s face at the funeral, blotchy with angry grief. Yvonne holding Clara’s five-year-old hand, willing herself to feel, trying to push away the unspeakable relief.

The guilt that brought tears at last, when people told her they were sorry for her troubles, that he was taken from her much too young. All those hands, all that pink and brown and white and cold and warm and smooth and calloused flesh, squeezing hers: Sorry, so sorry for your loss.

At the cemetery, Yvonne pulled up behind a filthy dark blue van and switched off the engine. She waited until Clara had got out, then wound up both windows, locked the car and followed her daughter through the rusting turnstile and along the neat rows of graves.

The gold letters on his granite headstone read Brian O’Mahony, beloved only son of Jim and Peggy, husband of Yvonne, father of Clara, and listed the first and last years of his life, twenty-four apart. No sign of moss – Peggy made sure of that.

Clara bent and laid the freesias on the rectangle of gravel in front of the headstone. Their paper towel wrapping looked too casual now – why hadn’t she got some coloured tissue or a ribbon or something?

Brian had been just a year older than Clara was now, when the train he was travelling on, eighteen years ago today, had veered off the tracks and down a small embankment, killing him and an older man in the same carriage. Most of the twenty-nine other passengers had walked away; nobody else had been seriously injured. A miracle, the papers had called it.

A miracle. Yvonne’s navy and white skirt was lifted by a sudden whip of wind and she pushed it back down over her knees. She should pray, but they never did, just stood there for a while and then went home.

‘Here’s Gran and Gramps.’ Clara’s hand shielded her eyes from the low, late sun as she watched Brian’s parents walking towards them. Yvonne turned, forcing a smile onto her face.

Peggy walked ahead of Jim, as usual. She wore a grey coat and cradled a pot of dark yellow flowers.
Far more appropriate than a few bunches of already wilting freesias. Of course.

‘How are you, Peggy?’

No handshake, certainly no embrace. Peggy nodded at a place somewhere to the left of Yvonne’s ear. ‘I’m as well as can be expected, I suppose.’ And turning to Clara, she smiled and leaned towards her granddaughter, so Clara could bend and kiss her cheek. ‘How are you, pet?’

Yvonne had long since learned to ignore the unspoken insults. After Brian’s death, Peggy had distanced herself from Yvonne as much as she could and they’d met mercifully few times since then: here at the graveside every now and again, of course, and at various occasions of Clara’s – communion, confirmation, twenty-first birthday – and sometimes in town, when it wasn’t possible to pretend they hadn’t seen each other.

And every Christmas morning – on Jim’s insistence, Yvonne was sure – she spent a tortuous hour or so with Clara in Jim and Peggy’s house, sipping drinks and making small talk with a scattering of their neighbours.

Brian’s mother looked pretty much the same as ever, apart from the hair that seemed to get blonder each time Yvonne saw it. Same pale blue eyes, the usual powdery lilac shadow above them, same narrow, pointed nose. Same too-dark lipstick bleeding slightly into the deep lines above her top lip.

She handed the flowerpot to Clara. ‘Will you put these down for me? There’s a good girl.’ They watched
as Clara bent and placed the pot beside the freesias, and Yvonne wished again that her offering didn’t look so pathetic in comparison, so washed out against the much stronger yellow in the pot.

Jim limped slowly up to them. ‘Hello there, you two.’ He wore a navy sleeveless top over a white shirt and pale grey trousers. ‘Everything all right?’

He leaned heavily on the stick he’d been using since his knee operation. His severely cut white hair barely covered his blue-veined scalp. The round glasses perched, as usual, halfway down his nose. He had Brian’s, and Clara’s, brown eyes – or was it the other way around? A pale pink circle bloomed in the soft greyish folds of each cheek.

Yvonne bent to touch his cheek with her lips. ‘Hello, Jim. We’re grand – isn’t the weather amazing?’

Was he eighty yet? He was a few years older than Peggy, and she must be well into her seventies. After Brian’s funeral, back in their house, Jim had taken Clara onto his knee and read her
Green Eggs and Ham
while Peggy and Yvonne looked after the small crowd of mourners, refilling glasses, pouring tea, passing around sandwiches and trying not to be in the same room together.

And after Clara had been put to bed, when most of the callers had left, Yvonne had passed the half-open kitchen door and heard a peculiar snuffling noise. She’d peered in to see Jim hunched on a wooden chair, head bent, shoulders shaking under his charcoal jacket. She’d stood for a moment, watching him, and then she’d walked back into the sitting room, feeling completely unable to help.

Watching Jim now, standing over his only child’s grave, both hands curved tightly around his stick, Yvonne wondered how much longer the dinners could go on. How many more times would Jim be able to battle across town on the second Saturday of every month, simply to make a point of having dinner with his daughter-in-law and grandchild, to show that whatever might have happened in the past was forgotten and forgiven – by him, at least?

Jim bowed his head then and blessed himself, and the four of them stood in a silent semi-circle for a few minutes. Yvonne could feel the heat of the sun on the back of her neck. Imagine – almost eight o’clock and still so hot. The best May they’d had in years. A bead of sweat ran down her back and settled into the waistband of her skirt. Under her arms, her blouse felt unpleasantly damp; she couldn’t wait to peel it off when they got home. She thought longingly of a cool shower and hoped Clara wasn’t planning one of her extended sessions in the bathroom.

Eventually Peggy made the sign of the cross and turned to her husband. ‘Ready?’ She nodded once in the general direction of Yvonne’s shoulder – ‘We’ll be off then’ – and smiled again at Clara. ‘Come and see us soon, pet.’

She may as well have looked directly at Yvonne and said, ‘Not you. Don’t you come near my house.’

Jim blessed himself and put his free hand on Clara’s arm – ‘Take care, my dear’ – and smiled at Yvonne. ‘Bye now.’

‘Mind yourself, Jim.’

Of course they didn’t mention the next dinner, in just over two weeks’ time. Yvonne occasionally wondered if Jim was punished for those dinners. Did he get the silent treatment when he got home? Did Peggy rant at him before he went? Or did she just ignore the fact that her husband made regular visits to the enemy? Somehow that didn’t seem very likely, knowing Peggy.

Clara watched them walk away. ‘She’s such a cow.’

Yvonne frowned at the pot of flowers. They were the dark orangey-yellow of duck egg yolks. ‘Ah, don’t, love.’

‘Well, she is – you know she is. I hate the way she makes a point of treating you like dirt. Does she think I don’t notice?’ Clara’s pretty face twisted as she scowled in Peggy’s direction. ‘And Gramps is such a pet. I can’t understand how he puts up with her.’

Yvonne smiled. ‘For better or worse, I suppose.’ She bent and unwrapped the freesias, pulling away the damp paper. She tried to prop the little flowers against the headstone, but as soon as she let go, they tumbled apart in a green and pale yellow spatter.

No point in saying, again, that Peggy couldn’t help it, that she needed someone to blame for Brian’s death – and Yvonne, who, as far as Peggy was concerned, had already ruined his life by trapping him at eighteen, was the obvious choice. No point in trotting out those awful half-truths again – Clara had been fed them often enough.

She didn’t remember her father at all. She hadn’t a single memory of the made-up songs she’d refused to go to bed without, correcting him sternly if he got a line wrong, or the endless games of snakes and ladders
or the sock-puppet shows he put on when she had measles and, later, chicken pox. Clara had no idea what a wonderful father she’d had for the first five years of her life.

And, naturally, she hadn’t a clue about how her mother had been planning to leave him, in the weeks and days before he died. And that was the problem, of course – Yvonne had no idea if Brian had said anything to his parents, if he’d confided in them about the awful little scene in the kitchen, late one night after Clara was in bed …

‘Peace at last – she’s gone off.’ He’d poured his can of Bulmers into the glass Yvonne insisted on and walked towards the television.

‘Hang on.’ Her mouth was painfully dry. She could still taste the sardines they’d had for dinner. ‘Don’t turn it on a minute.’

‘Match of the Day
is—’

‘I know, but just a minute.’ She’d forgotten Match of the Day, the one programme he couldn’t live without. No matter – she’d started now. ‘I – need to talk to you.’

He perched on the arm of the sofa. ‘Go on so, if you’re quick. You have three minutes.’

She watched his throat move as the cider went down, heard the wet glugs of his swallows. What made a man’s Adam’s apple look so heartbreakingly vulnerable?

She waited until he’d lowered the drink, pushing her nails into the couch. She said, ‘It’s about us.’ Now. No going back now.

‘Us?’ He looked at her. His lips were wet. ‘What about us?’ He started to smile. ‘Is this one of those talks where you tell me I don’t spend enough time with you?’ He glanced towards the clock on the mantelpiece, a lightning movement she didn’t miss.

‘Brian …’ There was a small, almost perfectly round bruise on the back of his left hand. It was yellow and dark blue. ‘We … I think …’ All her practising, and she couldn’t think how to say it.

He looked more carefully at her and said, ‘What’s up? Tell me. Did I forget our anniversary or something?’

She’d had no idea it would be so hard. She hadn’t planned on crying – that hadn’t been part of it at all – yet her eyes filled suddenly with tears. ‘I – I— This isn’t working.’ She dipped her head and brushed away the tears before they had a chance to roll down her face. ‘We – us. We’re not working.’ There was salt at the back of her throat. She kept her eyes down, not daring to look at his face.

He laughed. The sound startled her into lifting her head. He was grinning at her. ‘You’re having me on, aren’t you? This is April fool or something.’ He slid down in to the sofa, reached for his glass again. ‘Jesus, you nearly had—’

‘Stop.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘Brian, I mean it. I’m not joking.’ His skin felt cool against her fingers. ‘We’ve made a mistake. We should never have … We made a mistake, that’s all. Clara was coming and – we couldn’t see beyond that.’

His smile began to fade. ‘What are you talking about?’ He looked from her face to the hand that was
still on his arm, and back to her face. He stared at her. ‘What are you saying?’

She struggled for the words again. ‘I’m trying – I don’t want …’ Tiny bubbles floated to the top of the cider and burst there. She imagined them hitting her skin with minuscule damp pops. ‘I don’t—’ She couldn’t say it. She waited for him.

‘Do you not love me any more?’

He’d whispered it. She could hardly hear him. Do you not love me any more? Because of course she’d loved him once. Hadn’t she?

She shook her head, scattering fresh tears. ‘I’m sorry.’ She started to reach for his hand and he pulled it away from her.

He lunged for his glass and drained it, gulping it down as if he’d die of thirst otherwise. Then he belched, deliberately loudly.

She closed her eyes, whispered ‘I’m sorry’ again. Her head began to ache.

‘Look.’ His voice was stronger. She heard the creak of the sofa as he turned towards her. She kept her eyes closed. ‘Look, you’re tired. You’re worn out with that job – I told you not to …’ He grabbed her hand, held onto it tightly. ‘You don’t know what—’

‘No.’ She shook her head again, forced herself to open her eyes and look at him. ‘I do. Please believe me. I mean what I say. It’s not tiredness, I’m not tired.’ A pulse of pain thumped gently in her head.

He searched her face, still holding tightly to her hand. ‘So what are you saying? What are you really saying?

‘It’s over.’ She had to push the words out. They felt too big to get past her lips. ‘We can’t stay together.’

His face crumpled. ‘No.’ He leaned towards her and pushed his face into her neck. ‘No, don’t say that. No, no, please—’ She felt the hot wetness of his tears, smelled the hair gel he’d refused to change, even for her. Smelled the apple tang of cider. ‘I love you, you know how much I—’ He slid his arms around her and pressed her against him. ‘I love you.’ He lowered his head until it nestled between her breasts. ‘Please.’ He pressed his lips to her skin, just above the V of her T-shirt. ‘I love you so much.’

She wanted to push him away, but his body shuddered with sobs and she couldn’t. She sat trapped in his arms, damp with his tears, until he lifted his head and ran a hand under his nose and said rapidly, ‘Look, just hang on – don’t rush into anything. I can take a few days off – I can do it next week, we can go someplace. I don’t know, we can get a B and B, my parents will mind Clara, or yours – and we can just talk about it.’ He pushed the heel of his hand into each of his eye sockets in turn. ‘Will you just do that, will you just … please? Will you?’