‘Shut up and leave this to me.’
‘But, Mum—’
‘If you can’t be quiet, get out.’
‘He’s only trying to help. It’s his job.’
Keeping his voice low and smooth, in contrast to Mrs Powell’s bullying screech, Jonah rose to his feet and said, ‘I think we’ve said all we need to, Mrs Powell. You’re a busy woman and we have no right to take up any more of your valuable time. Sharna, perhaps you’d show us out.’
Standing at the front door, the volume of the television in the sitting room turned up again, Sharna said, ‘Sorry about that, Sir. She loses it now and again.’
He looked at her kindly. ‘It’s okay. But, Sharna, you do have a choice in this. If you see yourself in years to come earning your living from packing tin-tacks, like your mother,’ he paused meaningfully, ‘then so be it. But if there’s the slightest chance that you might want more out of life, I’d be delighted to see you in school first thing tomorrow morning. Think it over. It’s your decision. Nobody else’s.
The law says you must attend school in one form or another, but nobody has the right to bully you into making the wrong decision.
Not me, not your mother, not even Mrs Lander here.’
The girl put a finger to her lower lip, pushed it against her teeth, chewed at it anxiously. ‘I’ll … I’ll see y’ then, Sir.’
‘Soon, I hope.’
The door closed slowly behind them, and when they were driving away, Barbara Lander said, ‘Creeping bloody ivy! So it is true what they say about you. You were as slick as an oiled eel.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Oh you know so! The moment that horrible woman started
attacking you, the daughter leaped to your defence, just as you knew she would. Me, I’d have blown it by throwing the letter of the law at the mother and getting both their backs up. But not you, you cunningly got the girl on your side. And if there isn’t a tick by her name in the register tomorrow morning, I’ll cover your lunch duty for the rest of term.’
‘And it’s two whole weeks until half-term - how very generous of you. However, the hard part will be ensuring we keep her at school.
She’ll need a lot of support to stand up to that mother of hers. And we don’t want to cause so many waves that the heavy brigade get brought in. That would be totally counter-productive.’
He slowed down to let a car pull out in front of him. It had come from the road where Jase lived, and Jonah was almost tempted to take a detour and see how he was getting on - year eleven was officially on home study leave for their GCSEs. The first of the history papers was set for next Tuesday and Jonah was giving an eleventh-hour revision lesson on Monday after school. Jase had said he would be there, but would he?
Shuffling through his collection of dusty cassettes, and not looking too impressed with his choice of music - Barbara was a country-and western devotee - she said, ‘I’m intrigued, Jonah. Where did you learn to deal so effectively with bullies?’
He smiled wryly. ‘It comes from being a coward. I don’t like confrontation. I prefer to disarm rather than mobilise the tanks of aggression.’
Of course it had nothing to do with growing up at Mermaid
House.
That evening he stayed on at school to do some marking, but instead of going home straight away when he had finished, he drove to Mermaid House. He was concerned about his father. Since the miraculous Miss Costello had moved on, Gabriel had been morose.
Only a fool would think that her influence had been restricted to overhauling an uncared-for house: Jonah knew that it had gone much further than that. She had touched Gabriel Liberty in a way that few people ever had. Amazingly, she had made him happy.
But what worried Jonah most, was that his father’s trademark fighting spirit had dwindled to nothing. He had mentioned this to Caspar on the phone, but all his brother had said was, ‘Well, it was bound to happen at some time or other. He can’t go to his grave snapping and snarling - we’d never get the lid down on him.’
‘For pity’s sake, Caspar, how can you talk like that? He’s our father.’
‘He’s also a miserable old man who won’t listen to a word of common sense, and who, I might add, took malicious pleasure in making me look a fool over that Costello woman.’
Jonah had put his brother out of his misery about their father supposedly marrying for the third time. Predictably Caspar’s anger had been cataclysmic. ‘I thought you might have been relieved,’
Jonah had reasoned.
‘Relieved he despises me so much that he had to humiliate me in front of a complete stranger? Are you mad? And why do you always have to miss the bloody point?’
Changing tack, and hoping to move on to safer ground, Jonah had said, ‘So how’s business?’
But the ground had opened up beneath him. ‘And what the hell do you care about my business?’ Caspar had sniped. ‘Since when have you ever cared about anything I do?’
‘Hey, I’m only asking.’
‘Well, don’t! Take your snivelling civility and stick it—’
Jonah had ended the conversation by putting the phone down quietly. There was nothing to be gained from talking with his brother when he was in that kind of mood. He didn’t hear from Caspar in the following weeks, which meant that he was no longer under any pressure to do his bidding. There had been no further mention of selling Mermaid House - their father had made it clear that there would be no question of it - but privately Jonah still thought it was the right thing to do.
It was still light when he arrived at Mermaid House, and he found his father in the gun room, locking the glass-fronted cabinet. ‘Bloody crows,’ he said, pocketing the key. ‘They’ve been at the lambs again.
Vermin. Should be wiped off the face of the earth. What brings you here? And what’s that smell?’
‘It’s this.’ He held up a paper carrier-bag. ‘Indian takeaway.
Thought you might fancy a change from your usual bean-feast.’
Gabriel eyed the bag suspiciously. ‘You did, did you?’
‘It’ll need heating up in the oven for a short while. Shall I see to it?’
‘Feel free.’
A week had passed since Jonah had last called in and he was relieved to see, as he slid the foil packages inside the oven, that his father was still keeping the place relatively clean and tidy. There were no feminine touches of flowers or tablecloths, but the kitchen was still hygienically sound. ‘Any luck with finding a cleaner?’ he asked, bending down to a cupboard for two plates, then opening the cutlery drawer. He knew that Gabriel had placed an advert in the local paper.
‘No. Word’s probably gone round the whole of Derbyshire that I’m a no-go area. Drink?’
‘Thanks. But only a small one. I’ll add some water.’ Despite his father’s look of disapproval, he took the tumbler of whisky over to the sink. He ran the cold tap for a while then added an inch to the glass. He noticed the postcards lined up along the windowsill and looked at the latest addition. He picked it up and turned it over to see where it had come from. ‘I see the Costellos are in Whitby,’ he said, his back still to Gabriel. ‘Didn’t you go there with your father when you were a boy?’
‘How much longer is this meal going to take?’
Acknowledging that prising any information out of his father about the past was as productive as trying to squeeze blood out of a stone, he replaced the card on the sill. ‘Another five minutes should do it.’ He raised his glass. ‘Cheers.’
While they ate, Jonah kept up the conversation as well as he could, but it was hard going. His father was even more uncommunicative and morose than usual. For something to say, he told him about Sharna and her mother.
‘Sounds like you’re wasting your time there,’ Gabriel said, picking at his food uninterestedly. ‘If people don’t want help, you can’t force it on them.’
Jonah looked up from his chicken korma. ‘So you think they should be left to dig themselves a deeper hole from which there’s no hope of them ever climbing out?’
Gabriel lowered his gaze. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘So what did you mean?’
‘You have to wait until people are ready to accept your help. Or ask for it. Go blundering in as a self-appointed champion of the underdog with scant regard for anyone’s feelings and you’ll find yourself up against a brick wall.’
‘But not everyone knows how to ask for help.’
‘True. But maybe in the end they do.’ His father pushed away his plate.
Jonah hadn’t expected the conversation to take this turn and he steeled himself to ask, ‘Dad, who are we really talking about here?
Disadvantaged teenagers or … or you?’
As soon as the words were out, he regretted them. Gabriel
glowered at him, his thick eyebrows drawn together, his mouth set so firmly that his lips had all but disappeared. Oh, God, he recognised that look. He had seen it a million times and felt the consequences.
Why couldn’t he have kept quiet?
But when his father spoke his voice was anything but firm anything but recognisable. It shook almost as much as the knobbly
hand that reached clumsily for the glass of whisky. ‘I … I would have thought that was patently obvious, Jonah.’
It was madness to go any further, but with the thought of Miss Costello’s parting words echoing in his head - about the shotgun approach and laying out one’s demands - he felt compelled to force his father, just once, to be honest with him. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying? That you want my help but don’t know how to ask for it?’
The heavily loaded question trapped them in a long, silent pause, and they stared at each other across the table. It was as if they were frozen with fear. Then, to Jonah’s horror, his father’s eyes were swimming with tears.
‘Dad?’ Jonah rose from his chair uncertainly. He could cope with irate, booze-sodden parents threatening him and thuggish students disparaging him. That was a breeze. But this? His father crying? Dear God, what had he done? He moved slowly round the table, every step filling him with alarm and confusion. His father’s tears were flowing freely now, his body had slumped forward, his head was in his hands, and his breathing was coming in sharp, noisy gulps.
Jonah bent down to him cautiously, and for the first time in his life, he placed a tentative hand on his father’s shoulder, expecting it to be pushed away roughly, to be told, ‘Don’t touch me!’
But there was no rejection. Gabriel turned into him, rested his head against his shoulder, and continued to weep. Words streamed out of him, but Jonah could make no sense of them. It didn’t matter, though. Understanding would come later. For now, comforting his father was all that was needed.
Gabriel woke with a start. There was someone - something - in his room! He sat bolt upright. A shadowy figure was coming towards him.
‘Dad, are you all right?’
‘Jonah?’
‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea. How are you feeling? Did you sleep okay?’
The painful rush of adrenaline that had coursed through his veins now abandoned him and a heaviness, not unlike a hangover, pushed Gabriel back against the pillows. Through dry, gritty eyes he watched Jonah draw the curtains, letting sunlight spill into the room.
He blinked at the brightness. ‘Why are you here?’ he croaked. His throat felt as if it had been sandblasted and his voice sounded distant, not like it normally did. Nothing made sense, and forcing his brain to battle its way through the lethargy that was consuming him, he wondered if he had been drugged. But who would have done that to him?
Jonah came and sat on the bed. There was an expression on his face that made him look different somehow. Something in the eyes, the mouth too. It was something oddly familiar … something that made Gabriel’s heart miss a beat and made him, inexplicably, want to cry. Overwhelmed, confusion closed in and he felt as weak as a baby. He swallowed hard but his mouth was so parched he couldn’t.
Panic-stricken, he was terrified suddenly that something awful had happened to him while he had slept. He sat forward so that he was eye to eye with Jonah. He gripped his son’s hands, and drew a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Jonah, has something happened to me? Tell me the truth. Have I had a stroke? I feel different. Strange. Not myself.
Am I making sense to you?’
‘Dad, calm down, you’re fine.’
But the frown on Jonah’s face only made him think he was being lied to. ‘The truth,’ he demanded. ‘Tell me why I feel so strange and why you’re here.’
‘Don’t you remember last night?’
‘What about last night?’
‘You were … you were very upset.’
‘Was I? What about?’
The frowned deepened. ‘We were having supper together, we were talking and … Dad, do you really not remember?’
But suddenly Gabriel did have a glimmer of recall. ‘You brought an Indian meal … we were talking about somebody called
Charlene—’
‘Sharna. She’s one of my pupils.’
He waved aside the interruption. His befuddled brain had started to piece together the bits of the jigsaw and he didn’t want it to be put off by unnecessary details. Not when he could feel a new, disturbing emotion growing inside him. Finally, like a wreck being raised out of the water, it surfaced and he recognised it as shame. He groaned, remembering vaguely that something had caused him to lose control in the kitchen. Appalled, he closed his eyes. How had that happened?
He concentrated hard, and saw himself bent over the table, heard himself howling. Then he recalled his younger son holding him, and later helping him upstairs to bed. And all the while he was blethering like a lunatic. But even as he felt the debilitating shame of what he had done, and could recall the reasons why, he sensed a closeness to Jonah that he couldn’t explain. He knew though that he could never talk to him about it. He would never be able to find the right words.
And there was always the danger that if he tried he might lose control again.
He jerked his eyes open, and said, in his firmest voice, ‘I think it would be better all round if neither of us referred to last night again.’
He saw hesitation in Jonah’s face. What was left of his dignity lay in his son’s hands and Gabriel willed him to do as he had asked. Do this small thing for me, Jonah, he urged.