Conrad & Eleanor (7 page)

‘I didn't know…'

‘There's a lot you don't know. He would have walked barefoot to China for you two.'

Con pours himself another whisky. His father has killed ­himself and it is his fault. ‘Did he talk to anyone about – his money troubles?'

‘Who would he talk to?'

Nobody. He was a friendless man – no social skills. ‘D'you think he was depressed?'

‘Of course he was depressed. What'd he got to look forward to? His own grandchildren don't know him, the farm's losing money, how long till we get turfed out and dumped in a home?'

‘His grandchildren do know him. Did know him.'

Con's mother humphs. ‘They saw him twice a year. More interested in the lambs than him, more interested in shrieking and running amok.'

It is true that something gets into the kids when they visit the farm. Maybe it's the space and the dilapidated state of the place, but they do tear about, their calling voices echoing across the yard. And of course they avoid his father; what child wouldn't avoid a man who pinches your cheek too hard and bellows, ‘You need to get more pudding down you!'?

‘Mum, you know how he was with kids, he wasn't the easiest —'

‘You asked.'

‘Was he taking anything?'

‘Medicine?' She counts off on her fingers. ‘For blood pressure, cholesterol, heart —'

‘For depression?'

She snorts derisively and gets up to finish clearing the table. Her accusations are all verified by the fact that Con didn't know his father was on any medication at all. He calls the police again and is put on hold while they try to trace what has happened. It transpires that they are very stretched but should be with him any minute now, and indeed as he ends the call the dog starts barking furiously again.

It is quickly done; the dim barn jerked into horror-film brightness by flash photographs, the rope untied by gloved hands and slipped into a plastic bag. Paramedics stretcher the body to the ambulance, there is a brief spattering of questions and platitudes for his mother and himself, and then the yard is filled with the throb of engines and the sweeping lights, and they are gone. His father's awful presence is gone. Con stands in the empty darkness. He would rather be here in the drizzle than inside with his mum. He thinks about the person whose job it is to clean the bodies, in the mortuary. To peel off the clothes and wash the dead flesh. A part of him is surprised his mother didn't want to do it. He wonders if she thought of it. Would it help with the grief ?

She does not appear to be grieving, though. She is simply apportioning blame, which Ailsa will also want to do when she pitches up in the morning. They will have to organise a funeral together; they will have to sort out what happens with the farm; they will have to sort out their mother (not that she will let them). His limbs are heavy and his head a dull stone. How is he going to deal with all this?

His mother is not in the kitchen. He follows the sound of movement upstairs and finds her in his old bedroom putting sheets on the bed. ‘It's all right, Mum, I can do that.'

She brushes past him, shaking out the sheet, and he bends to help her tuck it in. When the bed is made he wants nothing but to crawl into it and bury his head, but he offers to make his mother her Horlicks and she nods. Down in the kitchen he makes up the fire. Maybe she will want to sit up and talk. Putting off going to bed alone. He wonders if his parents have ever slept apart. Many a time on opposite sides of the bed, no doubt, unspeaking, clenched and angry. But not actually in separ­ate beds. They have lived together in a state of hostility more closely entwined than all the loving couples Con knows. Mutual dislike has bound them together. They didn't talk, they didn't go anywhere; they didn't see anyone. Just followed the repetitive pattern of their respective duties, his outdoors, hers in. Any ­suggestion of change would have been regarded as criticism: any criticism would make them angry.

The only line of thought worth following now is practical. When his mother comes down her drink is on the table and Con has an old envelope and a pen and is starting a list. ‘What we need to do,' he explains. ‘Fire away.'

‘Funeral.'

‘Yes. And the farm, the running of the farm? I mean now's not the time of course but we will need to put something in place quickly —'

‘Sell it.'

Con looks at her.

‘Sell it. I'm not going to run it, am I?'

‘OK, Mum, let's talk in the morning. I was just going to make a list of things we need to think about in the short term, not try to decide big things tonight.'

‘What are we going to decide with Ailsa putting her oar in?'

He realises his mother is old enough and tough enough to need to pay no heed to the niceties of grief. Does she feel anything? He indulges for a moment in the shameful fantasy of his own death, of El's stricken face; of her striding blindly from the house, refusing to speak to anyone, until she can contain her sorrow. He knows this is true. She would have to wrestle with it on her own, she wouldn't want people to see, and inside she would be an open wound. As would he, if she died. They will never ever be like his parents.

His mother is staring at him. ‘I don't know,' he admits. ‘But it's a big decision, selling the farm.'

‘I've thought about it before. I'll buy a house in the village. There's one opposite the co-op been on the market eighteen months.'

‘But —'

‘We could have sold up years ago, for me. It was that awkward old sod hanging on to the place like a drowning man with a log.'

‘Did he know you wanted to move?'

‘Of course he did. Why would anybody want to be mopping mud off a stone floor twice a day for the rest of her life? Dragging in buckets of coal, and keeping three empty bedrooms clean and aired? You think this is a good place to grow old?'

Of course he doesn't; he and El have discussed a hundred times the problem of his parents, and concluded helplessly each time that they could never be persuaded to leave the farm.

‘Women live longer than men,' she says. ‘I thought I'd get a little village house in the end.'

Con has abandoned his list. His mother is in full flow. ‘We'll sell the farm at auction, that's the only way to shift it quick. Break up the land – Fieldings will be after everything their side of the river. And you might get planning permission for the paddock and lambing pens. If they knock down the farm and barn as well, there's a good-sized plot.'

She is looking at him so he nods. ‘Right.' His father is an obstacle disposed of. If Con is honest, that is precisely what he feels; why should he be such a hypocrite as to expect his mother to feel differently? But something is churning inside him, and he has to bank up the fire and bid her goodnight. He has to sit on the edge of his saggy boyhood bed and examine the memory which has threatened to unhinge him, which comes with a bittersweet wash of relief, as at impending tears, which due must be paid by someone on this day, someone other than Ailsa whose tears are crocodile-easy and only ever about herself.

His father picked him up from school one day when he'd been in a fight. Christopher Boyle had taken his dinner money twice, and had made a grab for his new calculator. Con had lashed out and, amazingly, given Chris a bloody nose before Chris hammered him. Con was blamed for starting the fight. The teacher phoned his parents and his dad came to get him. Con eased himself into the car. He hurt all over and his lip was oozing metallic blood into his mouth, which he wanted to spit out and had to force himself to swallow, though it rose in his throat like sick. His father didn't say anything to the teacher, which was a mercy. He never hit Con, there was no fear of violence, just the horror of embarrassment and misery at the impending lecture. Ethan drove them to the top field and left Con sitting in the car while he walked across and opened the gate to the next pasture for grazing. Con sat catching his breath, surreptitiously holding the door open and spitting blood onto the grass, running his tongue around his teeth and finding them all present. When his father came back he just sat in the driver's seat without turning the ignition.

‘All right then?' he said eventually.

‘Yes, Dad.'

The two of them sat there, side by side, staring into the field of sheep which began to raise their heads and stare about and make their way, in gathering speed and numbers, towards the open gateway. They were like iron filings, Con thought, drawn together by a magnet underneath the grass. When the last one was in his father got out again and shut the gate, and they drove home in silence.

Con can cry for this version of his father. It seems like his only clear memory of him, but there must have been other moments. He was not always that pushy loudmouth. The tears when they come are for the man that Ethan's wife and children did not allow him to be. And now Con's mother is glad his father is dead. And so is Con. Glad the man they knew is dead, while the unknown man they might have had has never even had a chance to live.

When Con thinks of his children – who love him, who run squealing to the door to greet him when he comes home, who bring him gifts of paintings and cooking and crumbling play-dough animals, who run to him with stories or hurt knees to kiss, or for explanations of electricity or rainbows, or with tales of friends' betrayals – when he thinks of his children who create him daily with their hot, needy love, his heart breaks for his father, who could not be loved. No wonder his father killed himself. If Con spends the rest of his life giving thanks for his own life, it will not be enough.

This, he remembers, in the chill drizzle of Bologna. Shame.

He is wet now and realises that he has no clothes to change into. It's 4.30. Get a room. Go shopping. But these are the wrong sort of shops, tiny local supermarkets with boxes of fruit and veg on the pavement. Where are the real shops? Here is a hotel with a modestly small sign. Two stars. The nightly rate is cheap. He is given a key to a room up three narrow flights of stairs. It has been badly partitioned so it gives the appearance of being higher than it is wide, a kind of upended coffin, but there is room for a single bed, a narrow wardrobe, a tiny sink and a red plastic chair. The shared toilet is on the floor below. The window looks out over the street, it's fine. He asks the receptionist where he can buy clothes and tries to explain that his case is lost. The man draws some arrows on a little tourist map, but it seems a distance away. Maybe he should get a taxi? Perhaps he can buy an umbrella at the little supermarket?

The corner supermarket, on closer inspection, turns out to sell many things: toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, soap, deodorant, umbrella, socks and an extra large T shirt with a yellow smiley face on it, which will serve as a nightshirt. He takes the bag of shopping back to the
pensione
, changes his socks and sets out with the umbrella to follow his map.

He is tired now and the street names are high up and difficult to read – he has to peer up through the slanting rain, then down at his quickly sodden map. He tries to dodge his way through the increasing numbers of people on the pavements. All are carrying umbrellas, many holding them in front of their faces so they are unable to see or avoid collisions.

In a row of expensive-looking shops he locates a window featuring three artistically lit sweaters. Inside he finds that nothing has a price tag under 200 euros. Outside again he peers at the other shops but none sell clothes. He sets off again, wet map in one hand, umbrella in the other, into darkness that seems to congeal between each pair of inadequate streetlamps. Cars crawl along the narrow streets, splashing pedestrians, emitting smoking exhaust. Now there are no shops. But a bar, on the opposite side of the road. He waits, dodges through the traffic, and enters a place of blissfully steamy warmth. It is full of men talking; it is easy to slip into a corner table and absorb the heat and amiability. He has a coffee and then a red wine, and then a curling cardboard slice of pizza from a heat cabinet. It is not good but it puts new heart in him. Shops on the Continent stay open late, he reminds himself. He asks the barman for new directions, to a big shop, department store, for clothes, and tries to memorise the route, but once he is out in the dark again there's a small alley off to the right, which may be where he's supposed to turn, or it may be he should continue to the next road on the right. He walks past the alley and takes the road, takes lefts and rights obediently, and finds himself, where he judges the shop should be, outside a school. The crowds on the pavements have thinned. A church bell strikes 8. People are going home to dinner; he won't find the clothes shop now. All he must do is go home to his hotel, put on his big smiley T shirt, and sleep.

Turning a corner off the main thoroughfare (a corner he remembers passing on his way from the bar) a shadow scurries ahead of him. Quite suddenly he remembers Maddy. Is she here? Has she followed him? Did she see him get out at Bologna? He has been traipsing about the streets for hours, on display for all to see. As if he were taunting her, if she's here; flaunting himself. The shadow that reminded him – is she up ahead, lying in wait?

He turns and hurries on down the main street. It will be possible to turn right later; the bar is not even necessarily on his best route back to the hotel. But he could probably retrace his route from the bar. Maybe. In fact he's lost. He moves quickly for a while, putting distance between himself and that shadow. But his feet are wet again, and his trousers too, and the hand holding the umbrella is icy. The name of the hotel is not springing to his mind. He pulls his plastic tagged key from his pocket but it simply bears the room number, 7.

There's nothing to do but keep going in the direction he imagines is the right one, keeping his eyes open for stragglers (hardly anyone out in these wet dark streets now) and hoping to recognise something. Eventually a sign for
Stazione
. He has to get all the way to the station before he can locate the route he took away from it, and follow it through puddle-coated streets, through memories of the farm, back to his starting point. Pensione Arditti. He is here. When he locks his door and strips off his wet things he is shivering uncontrollably and his feet are yellow and bloodless like the feet of a drowned man. He dips them, one at a time, into hot water in the little sink, then curls up on the shelf of a bed and clutches the blankets tight around him. She did not follow him here. There is no reason for her to know where he is.