‘I’ll ring the bank. I’ll say there’s been an accident.’
He has gone back in his mind, to a warm place where he’s taken care of and the rain beating on the bathroom window has nothing to do with him. I see him shrug the warmth away, and take on what has to be done.
‘No, it’s all right. I’ll keep Matt off school. He can cope for a couple of hours. He’s got plenty of sense when he wants to use it.’
A nightmare image of the boys flashes over me, faster than thought. They are bored, arguing, tumbling over one another, Matt on top of Joe. Joe’s head wound gapes wide and blood pours. Matt opens his mouth to scream for help then closes it again, knowing there is no one to help. My body aches with desire to stay with them.
‘They’ll be fine,’ says Donald.
I leave him and go in to the boys. They both turn when I open the door, and their wide, dark gazes are identical. I sit on the bed and put my arms around them both. Matt stiffens, resisting me, resisting the boy he was only a year ago, when belief in me and in Donald was as easy for him as breathing. As if I haven’t noticed their tension, I say cheerfully, ‘Dad’s got to go in to the bank, Matt, just for a couple of hours. I want you to stay at home this morning and take care of Joe.’
He looks at me, his face closed against me. ‘I’ve got to go to school this morning. Mrs Rogers is giving our projects back.’
‘Matt, I can’t leave Joe here on his own.’
He slides me a quick, unreadable look, and mumbles something, deliberately too low for me to hear. I stand up.
‘Come out here a minute, Matt. I need to talk to you.’ He follows me onto the landing.
‘What did you say?’ I ask, bending down so his face is level with mine.
‘Why can’t you stay at home?’
‘What do you mean, why can’t I stay at home? You know why. I’ve got to be in court. There are people waiting.’
He shrugs minutely, looking exactly like Donald, and says, ‘I don’t see why it always has to be Dad who stays at home. It’s not fair on Dad.’
Before I know what I’m doing, I have seized Matt by the shoulders. My fingers dig into his sweatshirt. He is mute, not looking at me, resisting. With an effort, I relax my hands. ‘If I don’t go to work, Matt, there will be no job, and no house, and no food in the fridge, and no car. All I’m asking you to do is to look after your brother for two hours. That’s not long, is it? You often watch TV together longer than that. You can watch TV the whole time.’
‘I don’t want this house, anyway,’ says Matt. ‘I’ll be glad if we have to leave it. So will Dad.’
‘Will you.’ I take a deep breath. I want to slap the look off his face. My lips hurt with the effort of holding in everything that Matt must never hear. ‘Will you,’ I repeat, and my anger hisses into Matt like a snake into its hole.
‘Mum! Mum, you’re hurting me.’
‘What?’
‘Your hands are pinching me.’
I look at him. He is my son. He is nine years old. His face is pale, his soft mouth a little open. His eyes watch me, wary and scared. I take my hands off his shoulders. I want to cry, but I smile. He doesn’t smile back. He doesn’t look shocked.
He looks as if he is mutely reckoning how long this will go on, how soon he will be able to get away from me.
‘I’m sorry, Matt. I didn’t mean to pinch you. Listen. How about if I give you some extra pocket money for looking after Joe? What about two pounds? I think it’s worth two pounds, don’t you?’
He stares at me in silence. He wants the money, of course he does. He’ll do it. Then his face quivers and he says, ‘I don’t want two pounds. I’ll stay with Joe. You don’t have to – ’
‘What?’
‘Be so angry. You’re always so angry.’
I reach to hug him, but suddenly he’s not close enough. I would have moved, I would have hugged him, he would have sat on my lap and I would have cried and he would have cried too and it would have all been different. But just then the phone rings, and Joe cries out from the bedroom. The tension breaks, and Matt turns and runs, his trainers slapping on the stairs. I know that he doesn’t want me to follow him. I straighten myself and go in to Joe, and hold him tight in my arms, rocking him as the phone rings and rings. After a long time it stops. I don’t know if Donald has answered it, or the caller has given up.
‘Don’t go to work, Mum,’ says Joe, his hands twining in the hair at my neck.
‘You know I’ve got to. I’m late already,’ I say, as gently as I can. ‘Listen, I’ll bring you back a little surprise for being good. What about that?’ Donald is yelling from downstairs, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. I reach behind my neck and unclasp Joe’s tight, hot hands. ‘I’ll have to see what Dad wants. Back in a minute, all right?’
I look down from the landing and there is Donald at the bottom of the stairs, holding out the phone. ‘It’s for you.’
‘Get the number and say I’ll call back.’
‘He’s calling from America. Just come down, can’t you?’
A charge of fear jolts through me. My legs stiffen. I put a careful hand on the banister and walk down the stairs to where Donald stands, holding the phone. I take it, and clear my throat.
‘Hello? Hello? Who is that?’
The silence sighs and sings. Is he holding his breath?
‘Hello? Are you there?’
The phone says nothing. ‘Hello?’ I say for the last time. I think he has a tape machine running. I think he is collecting my voice, putting it somewhere I can never get it back. I feel the tug, the suction of myself disappearing towards the past. And then, loud in my ear, there is a click. He has hung up.
‘Who was it?’ asks Donald.
‘I don’t know. They didn’t say anything.’
‘Must have got cut off.’
But he is looking at me closely. He knows me too well. He’ll always spot the circle of shadow under my eyes, from a headache I deny.
‘Why did you say it was someone calling from America?’ I ask him.
‘That’s what he said.’
‘What, he said I’m calling from America?’
‘No. But he was an American.’
‘He might have been over here.’
‘I don’t think so. The call didn’t sound like that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Simone, you know what I mean. Calls from overseas sound different. There’s that tiny gap before the other person says something. What is this anyway? What’s the matter? Who is he?’
‘Nothing’s the matter. I just can’t think who it could be, that’s all.’
‘He’ll call again if it’s anything important,’ says Donald, still watching me.
As I walk to the car I look back at the house. Joe is at the bedroom window, not waving or smiling, just looking out where I am. I have the feeling that Matt is watching me too, from wherever he has hidden himself. Donald is at the door. He lifts a hand, turns away, closes the door. The house folds in on itself, hunched down against the weather coming in from the sea. The front door looks as if it’s been shut for ever. The windows peer, reflecting the dark sky, giving out nothing of what happens inside. A wave of senseless panic makes me fumble the car-keys as I fit them into the lock. I won’t look back. I force myself into the car.
You left me. But when you say that you have to be precise. I bought the plane ticket and I walked through Customs without looking back. I carried the same bag I brought to camp at the start of the summer.
‘You can keep the rest of my stuff,’ I said. ‘It’s not worth taking.’
I went down to the boathouse and watched the grey waves tossing up weed from the bottom of the sea. I wanted to turn to you, I wanted to spit at you.
‘Old buddy Calvin is your way of leaving.’
I would go away and I would never be that shiny girl any more. I’d known better when I was a child, before I got stupefied by love. You never believed in the shine
anyway. You saw the fight in me, the scratches coming up from beneath.
NINE
‘Madam.’ I jump. It echoes as if this is the third or fourth time he’s said it.
‘Madam. If I might just –’ He plants a forefinger on the list. ‘The appellant in this case has been taken unwell in the waiting-area. Stress,’ he murmurs confidentially, his eyebrows derisive.
‘Oh, dear.’
‘There’ll be a taxi coming for him any minute now.’
Usually I am grateful for any break in the list, but today I want to work myself blind.
‘It gives you about thirty-five minutes before the emergency injunction, Madam.’ He lingers. Surely he can’t be wanting to talk? He’s always making such a point of how busy he is.
‘Very different from how it used to be,’ he remarks, twitching the blind cords into position.
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘Yes, in the old days, Madam, when it was the registrars we had here, before they called them district judges, it was a bit more of a gentleman’s agreement, if you get my meaning. Sitting in the morning, a nice lunch, a couple more cases, then off home. They’d have been most surprised if they’d come in to find a list like this waiting for them. These days you’ll see a district judge sitting in chambers, sandwiches on the table, crumbs all over an affidavit. Not that it isn’t the way it should be,’ he adds, with the air of having suddenly remembered my own quirky preference for cheese salad rolls and satsumas. ‘The pressure on the judiciary these days, Madam; well, you know it as well as I do, what with litigation coming at us like a fountain. It’s only a wonder they’ve still got people willing to take on the responsibility.’
His eyes light on mine, malicious, satirical, their quickness at odds with his menacing physical bulk. What does he get paid? I’m sure he knows my salary to the penny. But he doesn’t know that seventy per cent of it goes into servicing debt. Let him think it’s eccentricity that makes me carry a battered briefcase and alternate my two plain suits week after week. But I am sure he knows better. On my birthday my sister sent me a handbag. A beautifully plain envelope of soft, dull, supple leather. I left it on a table at work, and he picked it up and came hurrying after me with it.
‘You never know what might happen, Madam. There are some very light fingers in the most unexpected places. Inside a bag like this, if I might say so, Madam, a thief might expect to find rich pickings.’
‘It’s a birthday present from my sister,’ I said. ‘She won the lottery.’
He laughed politely, but it was true. Jenny works in a residential home for autistic children, and she has no money. She buys her lottery ticket each week. When she won £2,458.46, she planted six beech trees in new forest in memory of our parents, and started building society accounts for the children, with a hundred pounds in each. And she bought me the bag. Jenny is the only person I’ve told the truth about our debts, and the collapse of Donald’s partnership. I wanted her to know what was really going on. Lucky Simone, that’s what the rest of the family think I am. Simone with her law degree and her handsome architect husband. Think of all the money they must be making. It’s all right for some.
He is still fiddling with the chairs. Why hasn’t he got the sense to go away and let me look through the rest of the list? I stare at the back of his head, his broad, spreading haunches. He turns round, catches my look, and wipes the conspiratorial smirk off his face. How do you think I got here, I say silently, looking him in the eye. If I was as soft as you think, I’d still be filling in green forms.
The usher goes out of the room. Slowly, deliberately, I relax the muscles of my face. I make my shoulders drop. There are a lot of ways in which an usher can make your life difficult, and no doubt he’ll run through them all, after this. But he should be more careful about how he lets his thoughts show.
That silence on the phone. I know it was Michael. I have got to stop thinking about what he’s doing, and think about why he is doing it. He has got photographs. He knows where I am and who I am.
Home, marriage, career, kids. You’ve done it all, haven’t you, Simone? I can’t begin to tell you what I’ve done.
You never could tell me much, Michael. You left me to guess. What you and Calvin talked about, those nights when I stayed with you and Calvin stayed late too, drinking and smoking grass, and I heard you murmuring while I slept, I don’t know. I would listen to your voices, the breaks, the laughter. But any two people heard through a wall sound as if they are sharing the deepest secrets.
Then you would come in to me, stumbling over your shoes and clothes so I woke up. You wanted me to wake, because it was so hard for you to get to sleep. You’d unzip the double sleeping-bag and crawl in beside me and you’d be cold against me. I’d start to say something and you’d put your mouth over mine and I’d taste the beer you’d drunk and the grass you’d smoked and the apple you’d eaten just before coming to bed. You always did that instead of brushing your teeth. I’d taste you with disgust and joy and soon your cold would melt into my sleep warmth. I would swallow your smoky breath as if it was sweet as marzipan. There was so little room that the seams of the sleeping-bag creaked as we moved. You liked it that way. You didn’t like sleeping out in the open. The day was for sprawling and the night was for lying wrapped tight against the dark.
You frightened me sometimes. It didn’t feel like sex, it felt like burial. You buried yourself in me, deep, in the double dark of the night room and the thick quilting of the bag. I’d be hazy afterwards, sliding in and out of sleep, but you couldn’t turn off your mind. You lay there on the knife-edge of sleep, and it cut you to the bone. So I understood why you kept awake. Your dreams weren’t like dreams. They were another life, rippling under the surface of this one, waiting to recapture you as soon as you dipped beneath the skin of sleep. It wasn’t until I had the children that I understood about night terrors. There was a year when Matt would wake crying once a week or so, unable to come up to the surface of sleep. His breath sobbed like the breath of a diver running out of air. He would stare at me, whimpering with fear, and no matter how I soothed and murmured I couldn’t make him realize that it was me and he was safe. The health visitor told me not to try and wake him. He’s still asleep. He can’t see you, he’s still seeing the nightmare. Just wait with him until it passes.
One night you did begin to talk, in the dark.
‘I don’t dream about the things you think I dream about,’ you said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean it wouldn’t sound like a whole lot if I told you.’
‘What did you dream about tonight?’
‘Jesus, Simone, why do you ask me these things? Why do you think I don’t tell you?’
‘Because you don’t trust me.’
‘It’s not that. I don’t want you to be like me, Simone, do you understand that? I don’t want you to have the thoughts I have. I don’t want you to have the dreams I have.’
‘But I want to –’
‘OK. Last night I dreamed about a closet.’
‘A closet?’
‘A closet with a door. I had to watch it all the time. If I stopped, what was in there would come out.’
‘What was it?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see it. I don’t know.’
‘So you kept your eyes open all night.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did.’ You were silent for a long while. Then you said with a bubble in your voice which might have been laughter: ‘The thing you don’t know about that place I was in, Simone, is it’s so boring you could die. Except when you’re dying.’
You were a hostage in the daylight world: you didn’t belong there. That’s what the hours of drinking and smoking grass with Calvin were about, but they didn’t work. Sex didn’t work either, not after the first few times when I felt your slack, grateful face against mine in the sun coming through the morning window. I had no idea what it meant to you that you’d slept the whole night through. Even in your dreams I t
hink you had your eyes closed those nights. But then it stopped working. I lost the touch.
You’d lie awake, straining into the darkness, until you couldn’t lie awake any more. You’d slump against me, then jolt, as if someone was passing an electric current through you. You’d scream out. You’d thrash and beat at the air and I’d wriggle out of the sleeping-bag as fast as I could because I was afraid of getting hurt. Your eyes would be open but I don’t think you were awake. It was a babble of stuff I didn’t understand. Names, mostly. Screaming out people’s names. I never knew them, and you never spoke of them when you were awake. Once I woke to find the quilting hot and wet round us. You’d pissed yourself in your sleep. I got up and showered and wondered if I should wake you, but I didn’t. I rolled myself up in a blanket and slept beside you, and pretended to stay asleep when you woke and climbed out of the sleeping-bag.
‘I took the bag to the Laundromat,’ you said the next day, your eyes on me, hard and challenging.
‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘I meant to do it last week, but I forgot.’
The worst thing was when you went out at night. I’d be lying there, listening to you being awake, keeping still so you’d think I was asleep. Sometimes you’d breathe fast, as if you’d been running. You would sweat, and it would smell different from the sweat of running. A sharp, acrid stink. You’d unzip the sleeping-bag almost noiselessly, and slide out. It was dark, but rarely quite dark. If the moon was on the sea I could watch you easily, as you pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and kicked around for your sneakers. You hardly made a sound. You’d go out, and I’d tell myself it was stupid to stay awake, but it was hard to sleep again, not knowing when the door would open. I was afraid you’d go down to the water and start swimming. You liked to swim at night, but you were never a good swimmer.