Another Mother's Son (16 page)

‘Where's the car?' he says.

‘I don't have the car. I came straight from work. We'll catch the little bus. It won't take long.'

‘I don't want to catch the little bus.'

‘Well, we can walk, I suppose. Why not?'

‘Can't you go and fetch the car?'

‘Yes, I could do but that seems quite a complicated thing. No one will be on the bus, Ross, at this time of day. You won't meet anyone.' I look into his face. ‘Where will you wait?'

‘You get the little bus and I'll start walking. You'll see me.'

‘That's not entirely helpful. I tend to look at the road.'

‘OK.'

‘I can't stop for you on the mini-roundabout or on Green Lanes. It's a red route.'

‘Cool. See you.'

He sets off and I stay at the bus stop. I watch him until he reaches the first curving bend of the road and disappears out of sight. I see him again from the bus about ten minutes later through smeary fingerprints on glass. He is about halfway along the interminable street. Trees are coming into leaf and there are splashes of yellow and blue in some of the front gardens: early daffodils and scillas, maybe, or grape hyacinths. I am unable to tell from the moving bus.

I have no trouble finding him. Ross was right. The black school blazer. The reddish fair hair. Scarcely anyone else is out and about. The pavements are deserted. Collecting the car is exactly the type of indulgence that Randal disapproves of but kindness is often a slow and illogical way of getting from A to B. What mothers can do to help is limited. It becomes clear after a number of years that, in spite of its basis in animal biology, the process of bringing up children is itself an immensely long detour and one that is likely to last right up until the moment of death. I wave when I see Ross and drive on to a point where I can safely execute a U-turn. I stop the car beside him, lean over and open the passenger door because the automatic unlock has stopped working. He gets in and dumps his bag at his feet. It takes up as much space as a large, sitting dog.

‘If you've forgotten anything, I'm sure Jude can bring it round,' I say.

We wait at traffic lights. ‘She does the same subjects as you, she'll be able to give you her notes. She owes you one.'

He does not respond.

‘She took the photos, didn't she? What were these captions? Tell me.' I glance at his face. He gives nothing away. ‘I hope she appreciates this,' I say in my most sarcastic voice.

We set off again.

‘Stop the car, Mum.' Ross opens the passenger door while we are still moving across the junction. I scream at him. We get to the other side. The van driver behind me leans on his hooter, as I pull in to the kerb without warning.

Ross, hanging out of the car door, retches, then swivels back into the passenger seat.

‘OK?'

‘Nothing came up.'

‘We'll go then?'

He nods.

‘Shut the door and put your seat belt back on.'

We need to get home. Distraction was the tactic I used when the boys were carsick. Songs, I-Spy. They were little.

‘That illuminated picture in reception. I wanted to ask—'

‘What illuminated picture?' he says grudgingly.

‘In reception.'

‘I never go to reception. Sorry. Went. I never went to reception.'

‘Let's wait and see, shall we? Anyway, in this photo – which is a kind of Paradise scene, as it were Princeton comes to N13 – there is a willow. A weeping willow. And a column. I've never seen either – or anywhere remotely similar in the school grounds. I mean, is there some carefully tended secret garden kept specifically, or pacifically, as we've learned to say, for advertising purposes? Somewhere they can choreograph a collection of the best-looking pupils, of varied skin colour, tell them to smile and say “Specialising in Success” or some other specious phrase? They aren't real. They look like, I don't know, embryonic alumni. Do they even come from Lloyd-Barron Academy? Maybe they were snatched from their mothers at birth and brought up in a hall of mirrors to speak in sentences that have no subject or main verb, later to be hired out as eye fodder for school brochures. Schools are actually full of decent people who do a good job. Why should they have to sell themselves, as though they are a brand of toothpaste? Every service is commodified. Where's the learning? Where's the love? One day, they'll wake up and find—' I suddenly hear myself shrieking and stop.

There is an uncanny silence inside the car. Outside, traffic passes on the opposite carriageway. The bus ahead wheezes to a stop. I brake and wait while passengers get on and off. A woman bumps a twin buggy from bus platform to kerb. Scaffolding is going up on a nearby building. Metal tubes clang and clink. Men shout as they work. What are those mans doing? Ross used to say, up to the age of three, though his language was mostly accurate. A coupler falls to the ground. I glance at Ross. His head is turned away. His hands lie still on his lap; an empty space where his phone used to be.

I MUST HAVE
rehearsed what I would say if my father ever suggested that Jane Brims might join us for Sunday lunch because the moment he does so I have a faint memory of ripostes that are far from fit for purpose. My reply is neither trenchant, as per the mental rehearsals, nor gracious, nor kind. ‘Sunday week? There's a lot going on, Dad. Oh God. Oh, OK. The more the merrier, I suppose.'

His slight but detectable embarrassment in the context of the day's events strikes me as paltry. How absurd to have minor emotions. I have to stop myself from telling him to leave me alone.

I put the handset down. I am shaking. I close my eyes and try to calm myself. My father will be sitting, glum, in his chair. He will turn on the radio and hope for trumpets. My hands pick up the phone again and I call Liz.

‘I don't believe she's one of my mother's cousins. She targeted him. She reads the obits and then shows up at funerals waving bogus pieces of paper. And Dad fell for it – the innocent. Do you know what else? God, I can't believe this, Liz. She made him go to
Sweeney Todd
the other afternoon.' I am on a strange kind of high, not far off hysteria. I hear the strain in my voice.

‘That's OK. If they can put up with being surrounded by kids texting and eating, good for them. They are elderly, Lorna.'

‘I'm not complaining about the time of day – though, I agree, matinees are hell. A West End musical? He's never been to one in his life. I mean, it's so remote from his usual fare of television sport and Radio Three. And Jane's not truly elderly. She would shudder to hear you say the word. I told you, didn't I, she's younger than Dad? She still thinks of herself as peachy. She sort of preens. If we were on Skype I could show you.' I begin to do the legs business – Jane's sock-revealing cabaret. My mouth is small and simpering.

‘I get the picture. Not too attractive. Don't make a habit of it, Lorna. The wind might change.'

I feel ill imitating Jane Brims. ‘And another thing. When I said, “Gory!” – about
Sweeney Todd
– Dad said in the mildest voice without a hint of apology, “Jane likes Steven Sondheim.”'

‘Fair enough,' Liz says. ‘It's not a crime.'

‘But he didn't add, “apparently”. That shocked me.'

‘I think he must sense your hostility. I can feel it now,' Liz says.

‘If you spend all your life being gently ironic and suddenly that goes … I have this picture of him with his bony knees pressed into the seat in front, clinging to the overcoat folded on his lap, as he swooshes down the rake of the upper circle in some nightmare funfair ride.'

‘It's possible he's harboured a secret love of musicals all this time and suppressed it because of your mother. She was very clear about her likes and dislikes. I felt completely crushed when I told her that my favourite novel was
Jonathan Livingstone Seagull
.'

‘She hadn't heard of it.'

‘Exactly. She was right too! It was utter rubbish. Don't get obsessed with this Jane woman. She's not important.'

‘What shall I give her to eat though, Liz? My mind's gone blank.'

‘Does she have special dietary requirements?'

‘I don't think so. Dad would have said, wouldn't he?'

‘You'd better ask. If she's not allergic to nuts, you could make the seared salmon with pistachio crust you told me about. I made it the other day. It's dead simple. If you don't have any Thai fish sauce in your larder, just use good old Worcestershire.'

‘I'm touched that you think I have a larder, Liz. You obviously don't remember my kitchen. Not sure about the salmon thing. I mean, even though you say it's not effortful it will look as if I've been trying. I suppose I could just tip it onto the plates, kind of upside down, so that it bears no resemblance to a cookery photo.'

‘Plonk a bottle labelled “Poison” on the table, why don't you? You may be grateful one day that William has someone to take care of him. Pull out the long curly bits from his eyebrows – and far worse, as the years go by. Change his nappies. It will take the burden from you. Your brother won't be any bloody use, will he?'

I am shocked that Liz has deposited Jane in The Heronry as if the deal were done. I take a few moments to recover. ‘You're right. Hugh will be hopeless but it won't come to that. I expect Dad will peg out. Women rot slowly and men drop down dead. Mum was an exception. I'll get left looking after Jane Brims! It's because men go through a testosterone storm in adolescence. The memory of it kills them like a thunderbolt.'

‘Lorna, that is so unscientific. Their hormones make them drive too fast or stab each other. They die then and there in their late teens or early twenties and affect the statistics. It has no bearing on the way they age. How are your testosterone-fuelled lot?'

‘Thank you. They're well.'

‘Ewan?'

‘Nothing new.'

There is more give in Liz than is sometimes the case. I wonder whether to tell her about Ross. Liz can be severe. She never flinches from attacking me on the subject of Ewan. At some level, she grasps the nub of the matter. My spinelessness. Ewan's spinelessness. In the department of philology and applied linguistics at Aberystwyth University, they must hold meetings at which it is decided that certain procedures are fruitless and should be discontinued. What these might be, I have no idea because, although I ask, the place and its workings are a mystery to me. Liz will be the leading light of such meetings and cut through the crap and tell them in no uncertain terms to change their ways. They will mosey back to their desks, or scurry – I really do not know how they behave there – and it will all be new for about five minutes.

‘Well, you know what I think,' Liz says.

‘Yes, I do,' I say.

‘All this pairing that's going on … how does that affect you?'

‘Cutbacks at work? Thank you for asking. It's a disaster. I'm running the place on a shoestring.'

‘What are you talking about, Lorna?'

‘What are
you
talking about? The recession? The chancellor says we're out of it.'

‘I'm lost. You do have a tendency to divert a personal question. I was thinking of William and Ross both at it like rabbits, one presumes. Richard Watson, is he in the picture?'

‘Like rabbits? Oh God. Don't let's go there. No. No, I told you before.'

There is a brief pause. Liz suspects something which in one sense is a fair response as I see Richard most weeks now. She is, however, wrong about the picture. Mine, an amateur daub, is now overprinted with Judge Jeffrey's courtroom. I am answering the question that lies behind the question. Take into consideration the frame or the mount. No, avoid the word ‘mount'.

‘You should find yourself a man. A proper one this time.'

‘Oh, a proper one? Yes, of course, I must ask around.'

‘Libby's come in,' she says.

I begin peeling potatoes and cannot stop. The repetitive strokes of the peeler, the digging out of eyes, the clean reveal – I am in the flow and end up preparing enough food for a family of six. Jude does not turn up at the usual time. Seven, seven-thirty, eight, nine. She does not turn up.

THE WEEKEND IS
like a pressure headache that goes on and on. There is nothing to take and no relief. Every few hours, I look in on Ross who remains in his room. He is in bed or he is crouching on the floor, playing a game on his old Xbox. I try to get him to talk but he is as terse as he was in the IT suite. I detect both stoicism and recklessness in the front he presents. His sole contribution is to ask if I am going to tell his dad. I say that it is his choice. I won't mention anything if he doesn't want me to. ‘Same applies to Grandad,' I say. ‘He doesn't need to know anything at this stage, does he?'

‘What do you mean, at this stage?' Ross says.

‘Your five days of exclusion.'

‘That's not what you meant. You think there's going to be a next stage.'

There is a strong smell of boy in the unventilated bedroom.

I go on up to Ewan. I tell him what has happened to Ross. ‘Be nice to him,' I say. ‘You're both at home. It's an opportunity for brotherly love in action. A little rapprochement is in order. Have a word. Try to find out what he's done.'

Ewan sits at his desk. He half-turns his head and nods.

‘Ewan? Please say something.'

‘What a mess. I'm sorry,' he says.

‘Thank you,' I say. ‘Thank you for speaking to me.'

On the commute into London on Monday morning, a new light-headedness distances me from delays to the First Capital Connect train service. I stand on the platform at Palmers Green station, cold but strangely unconcerned. Noise is hyper-loud. The interminable train announcements, telephones breaking into snatches of tunes and recorded animal noises open into echo chambers of pain. It is a relief to get to the office and sit at my desk.