Freeing Grace (23 page)

There was a long silence. I wondered whether to go to bed, but I wasn’t tired any more. Matt spoke first.

‘What was Mum doing out there, anyway?’

‘You’d better ask her.’

‘Huh. She coming up to see me?’

‘You could go down.’

He yawned. ‘Nah. She wants to see me, she can come up here.’

‘Suit yourself.’

He walloped the beanbag restlessly with the flat of his hand.

‘So,’ I said. ‘You’re a father.’

He sat up a little straighter. ‘Yeah. Me, a father
. Fuck.
What d’you think of that?’

‘I think the kid’s lucky.’ I had an image in my head: Matt, with his clumsy devotion, gazing down at his daughter.

He just looked at me blankly, didn’t move a muscle on his face. ‘The SS don’t agree.’

‘SS?’

‘Social services.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘They say I can’t manage by myself. And they’re right, the tossers. I mean, look at me, man.’

I looked, but I didn’t comment. He pounded the seat again. Clouds of dust.

‘I can’t do it by myself. I need Mum. She’s good at that stuff.’

‘And what about your dad? Will he be a doting grandpa, take the baby out to the park every day in her pram?’

He raised his heavy eyebrows at me, smiling unpleasantly as if I’d just said something funny.

‘No, really,’ I persisted. ‘I’ve spent weeks traipsing around the world for you lot. I found your mother and I brought her back, and now you’re going to tell me what’s going on. What
about
Perry? How come he never figures in anyone’s calculations?’

Matt was still smiling, but he didn’t look happy.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Spit it out.’

He stared up at the ceiling, hands casually behind his head. ‘Because he hasn’t left the house in years, that’s why. And I don’t suppose he ever will until the day he’s carried out in a box.’

I looked at him, my mouth open, trying to make sense of what he’d just said. He laughed foolishly, high-pitched.

‘Yeah, I’ll tell you. I’m sick of secrets. Secret, secrets, my whole life. School play? No Dad. “Couldn’t your father make it, Matthew?” Boys and fathers cricket game? No Dad. “Couldn’t your father make it, Matthew?” Biggest fucking rugby game of the decade? No Dad. “Do you actually
have
a father, Matthew?” ’ He glared with hot eyes, remembering. ‘They never told me why. I couldn’t understand why my own father didn’t want to watch me play. Or see me at all. No one told me.’

I waited, fascinated.

‘
She
still came, all right. Fussing on about how I was going to get injured. I worked it out in the end. On my twelfth birthday.’

‘How did you work it out?’

‘Mum was going to take me out to tea, so I was waiting for her in the school hall. I heard the housemaster, Gifford the Git, in his room. He was going deaf, had this loud bellowing voice even when he thought he was being quiet and discreet. He was telling Matron how he’d never met my dad. “Poor lad. I suspect the father has mental health problems.” ’

‘That was a cock-up.’

‘Yeah. Well, over scones and cream at the White Hart I had it out with Mum. She said okay, it was time I knew. She reckoned what Dad has is a most misunderstood condition. People call it agoraphobia, but that’s very misleading, it’s much more complicated, doesn’t mean he’s mad, blah blah blah. She said it had got so bad that he couldn’t go out the garden gate. He’d totally panic, like he was dying. In fact, at first they thought he
was
dying.’

‘Hell.’

‘I did lots of solemn nodding and pretending to understand, but I didn’t. Still don’t, actually. I mean, what kind of a man hasn’t the courage to go fifty miles on a weekend to watch his son captain the First Fifteen? A complete spineless weasel is the answer.’

Privately, I had to agree with him.

Matt clenched his jaw, still angry. ‘And Mum. Why didn’t she
make
him come?’

‘Well, she couldn’t really truss him up like a roast chicken and force him into the car.’

‘Why not?’

I was stumped. He was off again, anyway. Now the cork was gone from the bottle, it seemed he wanted to pour everything out.

‘She used to take us on holiday by herself. To Cornwall. Or visiting Grandma, before she died. This . . .
thing
had to be a secret, because Dad’s so ashamed about it. We were never to mention it to anyone, not ever. Not even to Dad. It was a grubby little family secret, and we had to cover it up and pretend it didn’t exist.’

‘That must have been hard.’

‘Other boys’ parents were merchant wankers, like you, or cabinet ministers and surgeons and things. But they still managed to show up for matches. The worst thing, though, was that I couldn’t bring anyone home. At school I was captain of sport, prefect, the lot. I was a bloody hero. But when I came home, I had to sit in this room by myself and play computer games.’

I grimaced. ‘That’s rough.’

‘Then I got the injury, and that was a fucking disaster.’ Matt glowered in disgust. ‘I don’t
have
anything else. Without the game, I’m nobody. Nothing. Just a boy with weird parents. So I started smoking quite a lot of hooch.’ He looked at me and then away. ‘I got a bit careless. Gifford the Git caught me selling some to one of the gardeners.’

‘Jeez, Matt. Dealing!’

He waved a hand. ‘It’s okay, keep your hair on. Mum came down, just about sat on the headmaster’s lap. Come to think of it, she was in his office for ages. I expect she got down under his desk and gave him a Lewinsky.’

I frowned. He’d gone too far. ‘Watch it, mate.’

He looked vaguely guilty. ‘Well, whatever she did, it worked. The police weren’t called. I wasn’t even expelled. Officially, I agreed to leave the same day. It was all hushed up, like everything else in this family.’

‘So that’s why you started school here?’

‘Yep.’

‘Big change. Posh boarding to local high.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s a well-known fact that all teachers are morons —doesn’t matter where you go, they’re all the same. I’ve stopped bothering with coursework and I’m going to fail the next lot of exams. I mean, what’s the point? Serve my parents right. I sit at the back. Have a laugh. The teachers hate me, and the feeling’s mutual.’

‘I was like that.’

‘I seriously doubt it, Jacko . . . Cherie was in detention with me quite a few times. The guys all claimed to have had her. They said she was anyone’s. There was even a rumour going around that she’d walked into the boys’ changing rooms, climbed up on a bench and auctioned herself. They said four of them clubbed together and put in the winning bid. I didn’t believe that one, though. Some of them were horrible to her, you know?’

‘Mm. I do know.’

‘They used to make hand signals at her when the teacher wasn’t looking. Really disgusting. I saw one of them put his hand up her skirt, and his mates were laughing. She was trying to pretend she thought it was funny, but I could tell she didn’t. And I didn’t do anything to stop them. I felt sick about it. So I started talking to her, just chatting. Carried her books. Sat with her in the canteen when nobody else would.’ The knight in shining armour jerked himself out of his beanbag, slouched to the door and punched it. I winced.

He stood there, examining his knuckles. ‘Cherie was a loose unit, but she was worth ten of those stupid giggling girls in her class. Had a hell of a rough life, violent stepdad and a bitch of a mother. Makes my family sound almost normal.’ He scowled thoughtfully. ‘She couldn’t believe I wasn’t just trying to get her kit off. I wasn’t, honestly. I mean, we used to snog at the bus stop, but I didn’t want to be like
them
. I wanted to show her I was different. I wanted to let her know there was one male in the world who respected her.’

He jammed his fists into his pockets, balancing on the balls of his feet like a boxer. ‘You’re wondering how I managed to get her knocked up if I’m such a gentleman?’

‘No, I’m not.’ I was, actually.

He began to stride up and down the room like a leopard at the zoo, pacing, pacing.

‘We started on her sixteenth birthday. A year ago yesterday.’

‘Yesterday was her birthday?’

He nodded bleakly. ‘We took a blanket up into the woods. I bought her a ring for her birthday, an eternity ring, and a little birthday cake. She said she loved me. I thought . . .’ He broke off. ‘Well, never mind. We were using contraception, I’m not bloody stupid.’

I smirked. ‘
Every
time? I was seventeen once.’

‘Well, most times.’ He looked slightly red-faced. ‘Unless I’d run out.’

‘Ah.’

‘They’re hard to get, in a pissy little place like this. People know you. They know your
mum
. My old Sunday school teacher works in the local pharmacy—can you imagine strolling up to the counter and asking . . .’ He giggled, embarrassed by the image. ‘I used to get them from a machine in the bogs at the station. But we ran out sometimes, so we had to—’

I held up my hands. ‘Mate, that’s more than enough information.’

‘It’s okay, that’s the end of the story. One day Cherie told me she was pregnant. I nearly had a heart attack. But then I thought, no, this is okay. I was proud.’

He gave the poor old door another clout. ‘We had plans. We were going to move in together and look after it.’

‘You
wanted
to be a father? If I’d got a girl pregnant at the age of seventeen, there’d be smoke coming off my trainers.’

Matt looked surly, heavy eyebrows lowered. ‘It was my kid. My duty.’ He stopped pacing for a moment and rumpled his bleached mop, thinking, trying to explain. ‘Neither of us had anything to lose, you see. We had nothing better to do. Our lives were going absolutely nowhere. I’m a cripple, can’t play rugby, good for nothing, and Cherie had fuck-all going for her, too.’

He was off again, the caged leopard. ‘One day I felt Grace move. We were sitting in the woods.’ He smiled lopsidedly. ‘I even remember there were daffodils all around us.’

‘Really? You actually felt her moving?’

He nodded, wide-eyed, still amazed. ‘Like Cherie had a fish living in there. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever felt.’

‘And that was Grace! Who chose the name?’

‘Both of us. We went through the baby book.’ He picked up two rolled-up pairs of socks from the top of his dresser, and started juggling them. ‘You ever seen an ultrasound photo, Jacko?’

‘Certainly not, except on telly, and I hope I never have to.’

He dropped one of the sock balls, stooped smoothly to flick it up, and continued to juggle. ‘It’s pretty clever, what they can do.’

One ball flew out of his reach, so I caught it and chucked it back.

Then he threw me another one, and we tossed them backwards and forwards, two at a time. Matt had fast reactions, all right.

‘You should try out for the RAF,’ I suggested seriously. ‘Be a jet pilot.’

He didn’t pause in the rhythm of his catching and throwing. ‘They don’t take people with buggered necks.’

‘Oh.’

‘I asked them.’

‘Oh.’

‘They told me to sod off.’ He caught both balls in one hand, lobbed them into an open drawer, and began to roll a joint. ‘Look at this.’ He paused in his rolling and reached into the drawer, pulling out a thin, shiny scrap of paper. ‘This’ll blow you away.’

I took it out of his hand and squinted at it; then I turned it the other way up and tried again. It wasn’t anything. Just a black square, with a sort of grey smudged triangle across it, like a grubby windscreen after the wipers have been on. I looked at the back, hoping for a clue.

‘Really clever, isn’t it?’ Matt said, happily. He was craning his neck to look. ‘See how she’s sucking her thumb?’

Light began to dawn. I focused on the thing again, and suddenly I got the point. It was astonishing. The ghostly white outline was—quite clearly, I now saw—the profile of a baby’s face. And, with a little imagination, I could believe that the blur beside her mouth was a fist. It was like that mountain with Jesus’s face in it. Once you’ve got it, it’s obvious.

‘Wow
,
’ I gasped, as more and more of the grey patches formed into bits of baby. ‘Unbelievable.’ I looked up and caught Matt watching me.

‘That’s my daughter, four months into her life.’ He took the flimsy image back with poker-faced pride. Slid it carefully into the drawer, underneath his socks. ‘We broke up just after that. I took another girl out to the cinema—just a friend, really, but Cherie heard about it from the girlies’ gossip network. She went berserk! Slashed herself all down her arms with a pair of nail scissors.’

‘Shit! How bad?’

‘She had to go and get stitches. Complete loose unit, you see? She finished with me. Said I was no better than all the others. She was obsessed with this idea that I’d been laughing at her behind her back. Maybe I could have got her to come round, but I was too scared and stupid.’

He raised an eyebrow, pretending to concentrate on his handiwork.

‘She might still be alive if . . . Darcy Fox. What a total cretin.’

‘Who?’

‘I knew him at school.’ Matt bared his teeth. ‘Lucky he got killed too, or I’d be doing life for him right now.’

‘What happened?’

‘He picked her up from hospital. Out of his head on speed. Showing off. Another driver called the police, but they were too fuckin’ slow. Fox takes a roundabout the wrong way. Hits a lorry’—he smashed his fist into his palm—‘head on. My girl ends up in the hospital morgue, with our baby upstairs in maternity.’

I couldn’t think of any words.

‘I’ll regret that trip to the cinema as long as I live,’ he muttered.

‘Wouldn’t have made any difference, mate.’

‘It would. She’d have phoned me instead of Darcy friggin’ Fox.’ He licked the Rizla very carefully, as if giving himself time. His hands were shaking.

‘I went to her funeral,’ he said. ‘Never been to a funeral before.’

‘I hate ’em.’

‘I went and touched her coffin. Promised her I’d look after Grace.’

That’s a responsibility, I thought. You shouldn’t make promises to dead people. He stuck the joint behind one ear and began to rootle in the treasure trove again, dislodging socks and boxer shorts, spilling them onto the floor. Eventually he dragged out a crumpled wad of A4 paper.