Afterwards (26 page)

Eve turned round slowly, carrying the mugs across the room. She set them down on the table before she spoke again.

– He’ll find his own way.

The other chair was in front of her, but Eve stayed on her feet. Her arms were folded, but it looked more like she was cold than on the defensive. Her tone was different too, and Alice thought she was trying. Eve said:

– He managed it before.

– But won’t the same thing just happen again? If he doesn’t get some kind of support. Professional, I mean.

Eve looked at her. Alice didn’t stop.

– Isn’t that harder for Joseph? To have to start again, every time. For you too. Everyone.

No response.

– I’m sure you and Arthur are doing a lot for him. I don’t want to offend you.

– None taken.

Eve was matter of fact, but it seemed genuine. She went on:

– It’s just we’ve been over all this with him before, you know?

Eve shifted her weight, and Alice wished she would sit down. Too hard to have this conversation already, and it was as though Eve wanted to keep three paces between them.

– I thought the same when it started, I wanted to get him help. Professional, quick as possible. I knew that people who leave the army have trouble sometimes, end up homeless and everything. I phoned all the right organisations. Art got leaflets out of the library. I thought that’s what Joey needed: he had to make the adjustment and we could find the right people for him to go to.

Eve smiled a little, and Alice thought she might be making fun of herself: that she could have presumed it would be so simple.

– I know he’s not alright. Doesn’t take a genius, does it? I’ve talked to so many people about Joey, I can’t count. There was this one place I visited, I wanted him to go. You get individual treatment, but they have a group too, therapy. They meet every week, and people go as long as they need. A lot of them are ex-service, but you don’t have to be, just need to get your doctor to refer
you. They had a waiting list, months if you were lucky, but it sounded good. Worth it. He’d been gone for a while and when Art went and got him, Joey promised me he’d talk to the doctor about it, but I don’t think he did.

– You never asked?

Eve blinked at her.

– Yes. Course I did. I made the appointments for him at the surgery. Got shouted at enough times about it, or he just blanked me out. What am I going to do? Strap him into the car and drive him there like I do Ben?

Alice thought maybe she should have. Eve said:

– He’s the one has to live with it. Not for me to decide how he does it.

Alice felt herself shifting forward.
With what?
She saw Eve retreat: too obvious, what she was about to ask. She wouldn’t get an answer that way. Alice started again:

– Joseph’s spent a lot of time with my grandfather over the last few months. Grandad was in the services too, in the RAF. I’m sure they’ve spoken to each other, but I don’t know what about. My Grandad won’t say. I thought you might be able to tell me.

– Sorry.

Eve shook her head. Alice didn’t know what that meant. That she didn’t want to say, or Joseph had told her not to. Maybe he knew Alice would come asking.

– He smashed a window at my Grandad’s house. Trashed the hallway. I’m pretty certain of that. And I know he’s done worse.

Eve nodded, she held Alice’s gaze, but she still wouldn’t speak.

– I’d like to know why. I’m sure you can understand that. And I want it to stop. For Joseph too.

– I can’t tell you because I don’t know.

A calm statement. It took Alice a while to take in. Eve said:

– I’m sorry.

Alice didn’t know whether to believe her. She’d come here to find out, or at least to make a start, but she wasn’t even going to be able to do that. Alice said:

– I tried asking him.

Eve nodded again, but it was irritable this time. Alice thought she had to carry on, try to get something out of her. She didn’t know what she could do if this didn’t go anywhere, and she wanted Eve to know how painful it was too, being shut out.

– He wouldn’t answer the door last time I went round.

– Didn’t you want some time away from him?

Alice stopped.

– This all started before that, Eve. I’m not responsible for what’s happened.

She wasn’t, logic told her so. She’d been over and over that ground herself, but Alice heard her denial come out too strong, and she was embarrassed by it. Eve looked away.

– No. That’s what Joey says too.

She put her mug on the table first, and then she sat down opposite Alice, rubbed her face. Fingers over her eyes, her nails blue-pink with the cold. Alice waited, struck that Joseph had been defending her, arguing with his sister and taking her side. He was self-willed, Alice knew that, and so maybe Eve was telling the truth: she didn’t know what Joseph had been holding back, and she couldn’t tell Alice why because Joseph wouldn’t speak to her either. Eve said:

– Just a second. Sorry.

She was pale, wearing eyeliner, but it looked like yesterday’s. Alice wondered if Joseph was at her house now, and whether Arthur was with him, what he was doing, and if Eve had those same thoughts all the time now. Eve put her hands in her lap, and then she asked:

– He’s never said anything to you?

Alice shook her head. Eve sat a moment and then she leaned forward a little.

– You say you want it to stop. Of course you do, we all do. But you want to know if he did something wrong too, don’t you? While he was in Ireland.

Eve looked at her, she was speaking quietly.

– You know about some of the things soldiers have done there, and you were hoping I could tell you Joseph isn’t one of them.

– No. I wasn’t. I’m trying not to presume anything.

It wasn’t pleasant, the way Eve had recognised what she was frightened of hearing. Maybe his sister had had the same fears: she would have been familiar with the same news stories. Eve looked at Alice and shrugged, as if to say Joseph hadn’t told her. She couldn’t provide reassurance or confirmation. Alice nodded, and then Eve said:

– I never liked Joseph being in the army. He knows that. I could understand it, if that’s the way you feel too. Because of the things soldiers have to do sometimes. I wouldn’t blame you. We’re never going to like it, but what we think doesn’t matter, that’s not the point.

She stopped for a moment, and Alice watched her face. Of course Eve was right: whatever it was that Joseph didn’t want to tell them, it didn’t have to be criminal to be troubling, he could have been following the rules of engagement. Alice wasn’t sure that made her feel any better. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to.

– The way I see it. He was in the army. Chances are, he’s done something or seen something done. What kind of person comes away from that with peace of mind?

Eve seemed to weigh them equally, these possibilities: Joseph as witness or perpetrator, either or. Alice couldn’t believe that’s how she really felt. She knew which of the
two she found easier to bear, couldn’t imagine it would be so different for his sister.

Eve was watching her now, frowning.

– Why do you have to know? You talk like you’ve got a right to know or something.

She wasn’t being unfriendly.

– You want to know. But that’s different.

Eve looked away again after that, her eyes on the table, thumbnail tracing the rough grain of the wood.

– Even if he did get treatment. Even if that helped. He still might never say. Only to a psychologist, or a group. I don’t think that would be enough for you, would it?

Alice wanted to deny it, but Eve was talking so quietly, not accusing. And it was true, so it would have been pointless to contradict her.

Alice spent a long time thinking over the conversation.
He’s never said anything?
For all she insisted, Eve was still curious. Alice remembered her expression, once Eve was sure Joseph hadn’t told Alice either: the way she’d nodded, satisfied, somehow. Or maybe that was unkind. It would have hurt, probably, if she had known more than Eve, his own sister. Alice could understand that.

You want to know, but that’s different.
Joseph didn’t have to tell her, Eve was adamant. Even though it seemed like she was the one who took him in each time, put
up with the fighting, the going missing. He didn’t owe her any explanation. It was almost admirable, Alice thought, to allow someone so much latitude: must take a lot of tolerance. If he could cope with it, then Eve would too. Perhaps Joseph didn’t give her any choice, but Alice still couldn’t understand it: how Eve could put herself aside like that, and all her questions, the misgivings she must have had.

Alice left later than they’d arranged: it was well after two by the time they’d finished talking, but Eve didn’t hurry her out. She walked with Alice as far as the road and then she said:

– Much worse for him than it is for any of us, you know?

Later, Alice thought maybe that was how Eve did it: she put her brother’s behaviour down to a guilty conscience. Alice could even follow her logic, although it made her uncomfortable: Eve could accept his absences and anger if they were his penance. It meant Joseph was in some way culpable, of course, not just a witness. What he did may have been sanctioned, but he still thought himself responsible. He had to live with it, and Eve wasn’t going to interfere.

It seemed bleak to Alice, lonely for Joseph, and it was unfair, surely, to make such an assumption. She thought of her grandfather, the bombs exploding up into the plane, and the engineer bleeding to death on the too-long flight back to Nairobi. Joseph might have seen any number of terrible things while he was in the province, legitimate or otherwise, and not only done by soldiers. He had no physical scars: Alice caught herself, looking
for marks on the body she remembered. Wasn’t it still possible that he’d been harmed? Eve didn’t seem to allow room for that.

But then Joseph wasn’t telling, and Alice knew how hard that was to live with. His sister had gone looking for what she needed, and Alice couldn’t blame her. She could see the consolation in what Eve had found too.
What kind of a person comes away with peace of mind?
Far better to know he feels something than nothing.

Before Joseph moved back to the flat, he painted the walls. Eve came to see him on the last day, to admire his work, brought an indian with her, a late Sunday lunch, with a can of lager each to toast the job. She stood the bag in the kitchen and went through the flat with him first. The sun was already going down, so Joseph turned on the lights. Still bare bulbs in every room, and the floorboards still needed varnish, but he was getting there.

Eve dished up while Joseph washed his brushes, and then they ate in the kitchen, looking out over the courtyard. His neighbours had fairy lights in their windows, snowspray and tinsel. His fourth Christmas there and some of the decorations were familiar by now. He and Eve drank their beers and talked about what to buy Arthur and their dad, and all the time Joseph watched his sister and wondered. What she’d been thinking these past weeks, while he was staying back at her place. If she’d ever wanted to know, the way Alice did. Joseph had thought it might happen this time, Eve might ask him what was going on and why, but here she was, eating curry with him and talking about Christmas.

She’d always kept her door open and never seemed to need an explanation: Joseph was grateful to his sister for that. Hard to talk to anyone about it, and Eve made it
easy not to. It had worked for him before. Might do again. Except that Alice wouldn’t have him back, not on those terms.

Weeks went by, most of the winter. Martha got pregnant, and after many rows with Keith, she told Alice one morning they’d decided to keep the baby.

– Good.

– Really?

They were both sitting at the kitchen table, both meant to be leaving for work, but they’d taken to having an extra cup of tea together lately. The windows were steamed up against the morning, and Alice thought Martha was pleased, even though her flatmate was doing her best to sound otherwise.

– There’s one bad thing about it. Apart from Keith I mean.

– You’re giving me notice, aren’t you?

– I am. Sorry.

– That’s okay. I’ve started looking.

Her grandmother’s will had come through in January, and it made a mortgage just about possible. Instead of visiting her grandfather at weekends, Alice had been looking at flats with him. He’d drive, because they could never get round more than one or two on public transport, and then they’d find a café or a garden centre to browse through between appointments. It was strange at first, the idea of buying so near to where she’d grown
up, but Alice couldn’t afford anything closer to work, and then she got to like the prospect of living a few streets away from her grandad again. He started scanning the property pages of the local papers, and sent his recommendations, red-ringed, through the post.

– I can separate the wheat from the chaff for you at least.

He tended towards ground floor, with a garden, and space enough for the piano. Her grandmother had left it to her, but Alice had thought it should stay at her grandad’s: removing it would leave such a hole in the living room they’d shared. It pleased her that he insisted she should have it, wouldn’t listen to arguments against. On a Saturday afternoon, over mugs of tea in a greasy spoon together, waiting for an estate agent to show up, he suggested hiring specialist removers and contacting her grandmother’s tuner for advice.

– You can play for me when I visit.

– I’m nowhere near as good as Gran.

– You’ll have to practise.

Said in the same dry tone she remembered from when he’d got to know Joseph, and she’d seen what her grandfather could be like, when he enjoyed someone’s company. Perhaps he’d been like that with Gran too, when the rest of the family wasn’t around. This tone came out more often in their conversations now: still new to her, but Alice liked being teased every once in a while by her grandad.

They sorted through Gran’s papers together. Alice took two days’ holiday at the end of February and they slowly
emptied the drawers of her grandmother’s desk onto the dining room table. Dental records and bank statements, her divorce papers, the order of service from her father’s funeral. Scraps of ribbon and folded wrapping paper, stored for re-use, spare notelets and envelopes, a pocket calendar from 1962 with friends’ and family birthdays marked. Her grandfather said he wanted to keep that.