Half-Sick of Shadows (21 page)

‘No, no, no. No need, and your mother doesn’t want you to. You’re her pride and joy, learning things at university. You leave everything to me. Why are you at university? I thought you were still at school.’

‘I am.’

‘Oh. Right.’

Some people are born with good hearts. Farmer Barry was one of those. Expressing my thanks over the phone came more easily than face to face. ‘I appreciate everything you’ve done for us over the years, Mr Barry. I wish I could repay you in some way.’

‘You work hard at your studies and make something of yourself, and that’ll be repayment aplenty.’

Between dry heaving and enduring the hammer in my head, I almost didn’t make it back to my room. I was afraid someone in authority would see me, pull up my file on a computer screen, and add to it, at the top, ‘Reject application’.

Alf wasn’t in our room. I went downstairs and asked the Chinese student if he’d seen Alf.

‘Who?’

‘Alf? My room-mate?’

‘Upstair?’ he asked. ‘No room-mate. You alone.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s so tall. Short hair …’

‘You dunk last night. Maybe he in pub with bunny labbits and pink elephants. Ha!’

I returned to Whitehead House without Alf. He’d gone. I didn’t mention him to Blinky. Nor did I tell him that Father had had another stroke and Mother had tried to kill him. When Blinky asked if North Island University had whetted my appetite, I lied, yes, very much so. In truth, my short university escapade left an unpleasant taste in my mouth: cigarettes, beer and cheeseburger mostly.

16

Mother’s Illness

The state of Mother’s health only grabbed my attention when a letter from Sophia revealed that she had paid a visit to the doctor. What? Mother never visited the doctor! Something had to be seriously wrong. I asked Sophia what ailed Mother, what the doctor said, and so on. A letter returned the following week:
The doctor wants Mother to go to the hospital for tests
. Sophia didn’t say when, where, or anything else that I might have wanted to know, such as what kinds of tests, whether Mother would have to stay overnight in hospital. Nor did she say anything about Father.

I had permission to go home for Christmas and summer holidays only. It was April and I decided to leave Whitehead House and spend Easter week, absent without leave, at home. They could punish me in a manner of their choosing when I returned – assuming someone noticed I was missing. I cared not one jot. On the train, my bravado failed. I decided to spend two nights at the Manse instead of the full week. That way, a much more real possibility existed that no one would notice I’d gone.

As always, Sophia greeted me with hugs. She said Mother was in bed, not long asleep, and I shouldn’t disturb her.

I was surprised to find Father on his usual armchair with the bible
on
his lap. From where I stood, in the doorway, he seemed to be asleep. Turning away, to leave him to it, my foot accidentally hit the door. The impact made a noise much louder than the force of the clash deserved. Father didn’t stir. Sophia had approached the room behind me clutching a bunch of daisies. She pulled a face, shook her head, and tapped a finger against her ear. ‘Since his latest stroke. He can’t go to work.’

‘What about money?’

‘He’s here all day every day,’ my twin said mournfully.

‘But what about money?’

‘The only good thing is he doesn’t move or bother me.’

‘What are you and Mother doing for money, Sophia?’

‘What?’

‘If Father isn’t working there’s no money coming in.’

‘Oh, there’s still money. Father still gets his pay, only it’s called his pension now, Mother says.’ Ah. Farmer Barry paid him a pension. ‘He prays even louder than ever, but God can’t make him out. Neither can I.’ She put her daisies in a vase, left it in the hall, and we went to play draughts in the kitchen.

‘When are Mother’s tests at the hospital?’ I asked.

‘They said they’ll send a letter.’ She placed her hands and one counter behind her back. I pointed at her left arm and she revealed her left hand empty. ‘Ha-ha. I win first move.’

Now and then, over my years at senior school, I suggested to Sophia that she might venture beyond the boundary at least as far as Bruagh. Not even chocolate from Maud’s shop tempted her. ‘I’ll be here all day tomorrow, Sophia. We should make the most of it. We can take a walk to Bruagh.’

‘No we can’t. Don’t start that again.’

‘Why not – if it’s dry? You, me and Mother could go together, if she’s up to it. She’d like that.’

‘Are you nuts? She’s too sick.’

‘Is she that sick?’

‘Any sicker and she’d be dead.’

I took that to be an exaggeration.

‘We can go on our own, then.’

‘No. Don’t keep going on. Mother knows I can’t go. She used to coax me all the time. Even to get the train to town. It took ages to get it into her head that I can’t.’

‘That’s news to me.’

Sophia had been here every day for years. Obviously, Mother would at least want to take her shopping occasionally. How self-absorbed I had been to overlook that fact.

‘Didn’t Mother get fed up and order you to go with her?’

‘Huh! She tried.’

‘And?’

‘I kicked up such a fuss she didn’t try for long.’

I stared at the draughts board without making a move, and without seeing a move to make. I should have been here while all this Manse-related drama went on. I should have been here to support Mother and coax Sophia out into the world. The fact that my twin remained in the shadow of her promise was, at least in part, my fault.

‘What about the boundary? Did you tell Mother?’

She shrugged. ‘What’s there to tell?’

‘Listen, Sophia: promises, boundaries and curses are child things that adults grow out of. One day, they no longer apply.’

‘Mother thought I would grow out of it,’ said Sophia, ‘but I never did. You can’t grow out of a promise, silly.’

‘Give me one good reason why not?’

‘Because promises are for keeps.’ She jumped one of her counters over two of mine – clip-clip on the board – and, landing on the last row, won a crowner – and it wasn’t her go.

I placed one of her captured counters on top of the victor.

‘I’m going to win again,’ she said in sing-song.

‘You’ll never lose if you keep cheating,’ I replied, raising a hand over the board to make my move.

Sophia beat me to it.

Clip-clip on the board. ‘I win again! I win again!’ cried the little cheat. ‘I’m the draughts champion of the universe!’ She was indeed. She did a little dance around the kitchen.

It was time to go upstairs and see Mother.

‘Where’s Gregory?’ I asked, standing and stretching my draught-hunched shoulders.

‘He was here this morning, but he’s taken off. He comes and goes as he pleases. Sometimes he’s gone for days.’ I knew; she’d already told me about Gregory’s comings and goings.

She followed me to the foot of the stairs, but I wanted to be alone with Mother. ‘I’d love a cup of tea. Would you make it? I’ll come down when it’s ready.’

Happily, she trotted off to make tea.

Mother had moved into Granny Hazel’s old room to get away from Father.

Half sick in the stomach with the smell of urine, I found Mother half sitting and half lying, half facing me and half facing the window, half sleeping, her upper half hanging off the chair. I had half a mind to turn away and go back downstairs. She supported her head with a spidery hand that hid half her face.

I had never known her to fall asleep on the bedroom chair. A brush, a damp towel, and a bowl of dirty water sat on the dressing table. Sophia had washed and dried her hair that afternoon. I saw the chair-back, and the back of Mother’s head hanging askew, in the mirror: thin white strands and pink, liver-spotted scalp. She looked like something spat out of Hell. To my mind’s eye came William Blake’s engraving depicting Satan’s fall.

‘Mother?’

She woke slowly. I crouched before her, holding the chair arms at either side of her frail body, unsure whether she recognized me.

‘Hello, sleepyhead. I came to visit you.’

She stretched weakly, and as she let out a sigh I smelled the staleness of her breath. Even the most beautiful things are a mirror’s reflection away from ugliness. Mother’s voice came from her grave.

‘Is that you, Edward?’

‘Don’t tell me you didn’t recognize my voice,’ I said, taking her spectacles from the table and slipping the stems under her hair and over her ears. ‘There. Am I less fuzzy now?’ She looked up at me the way cats do, interested but uncomprehending. If I’d dangled a string in front of her face, she might have cocked her head slightly for a second, then tried to clutch it with claws that couldn’t fold to make a fist. Her eyes were green. How long had they been green? Maybe it was the light from the window.

‘What are you doing home from school? Is it Christmas?’

‘I thought I’d pay you all a visit, that’s all.’

A panic hit her and, agitated, she struggled so hastily to get up that, involuntarily, I stepped back from the chair. ‘Are you okay?’ I should have helped her, but feared she might rip my face with her claws. Too weak to get up at the first attempt, she stopped struggling.

‘He’ll be home soon. I have to make your father’s dinner.’

She made a second attempt to get up, but I restrained her.

‘It’s all right. Father doesn’t … He’s home already and Sophia’s seeing to him.’ My words were enough to pacify Mother. She relaxed into the chair, breathless after the struggle.

Wondering why Sophia had not cleared away the towel and the bowl of dirty water – she was usually meticulous about that sort of thing – I crossed the room to the dressing table.

‘Don’t get up yet; I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Don’t go, Edward. What time is it?’

‘About five o’clock.’

Her eyes flickered around the room for something familiar to catch hold of.

‘Are the lights from the new motorway bothering you? Sophia said they keep Father awake, tossing, turning and shouting, and that keeps
you
awake too.’ The lights were bright, although they were dots in the distance, and curtains kept them out of the bedroom at night.

‘You get used to his shouting,’ she said. ‘I have to get up. Your father likes his dinner to be ready for the table as soon as he gets home. It isn’t easy keeping it hot when he’s late. He gets bad-tempered if his dinner isn’t ready.’ This time, she did not struggle to get up. Her words made no connection with the action they promised. She looked as if she needed to remember something that time had tipped over memory’s rim and rendered unreachable.

‘And how is Father?’ I asked, innocently enough, for something to say. I should have held my tongue.

Mother snapped, ‘Your bloody father? Ha!’ She said no more.

‘I’ll take these things away.’

About to kiss her cheek and escape the bedroom, I stayed; her open mouth and held breath froze me.

Mother exhaled. I got the impression that she had given up trying to say whatever it was she wanted to. Instead, she regrouped her hostilities. ‘Ask me how your father is? How should I know?’ She turned her head aside. Then her head lolled back to me, a sweep that brought her chin down to her chest. Her eyes were lucid on mine.

‘I wanted to die and leave you never knowing.’

‘Never knowing what?’

‘I can’t. You should know.’

Did she think me someone else?

‘You think you’re so clever, don’t you? You’ve always been like that. Always different.’ That sounded like me. Then, clearly, she knew Edward stood before her, the twin. ‘You think you know it all and that makes you better than everybody else. Well, I’m telling you, you don’t know anything. You haven’t a clue inside that complicated head of yours.’ Pausing to catch her breath and gather her thoughts, she chewed saliva in an off-putting way that I had never seen in her before. Her white eyebrows were down and she looked angry. This woman was pretending to be my mother. I had lost my mother.

‘If only you’d been there at the start. I mean the very start: your start. I wasn’t always like this, you know, worn down. No man ever looked at me and saw a beauty, I dare say, but whether they were mad or just drunk they saw something they wanted when they looked at me.’

Who, I wondered? She had never known any men. Her life had been here, as much a prisoner as Sophia.

‘I remember well the night you were started on your way. I’ll never forget it. You could see lightning over the heath, great sheets of it flickering for seconds at a time, flashing globules of lightning through the window and the rain coming down in buckets. It’s stamped on my mind. Me looking up at it. I’d been knocked on the floor, you see. That’s the memory I have: on the floor looking up. Looking away. On my back. That’s how you got started. Pinned to the floor, crying. I screamed, No! No! Stop! Stop? Hah! Expect a man to stop? Your father paying no heed. At least, I think I screamed; I know I wanted to, but at the same time there’s Gregory and Edgar upstairs in bed and I didn’t want to wake them. How’s that for a fool, eh? You’re being brutalized and you’re afraid to scream in case you wake the babies. Well, maybe I did scream, it’s too long ago to remember. And your mother’s thinking don’t wake the babies at the same time as she’s thinking you don’t want cuts and scratches or worse; you don’t want anything that’ll show. So maybe it’s best just to take it.’

‘What? What are you talking about? Do you mean this is how I … how I came to be … how I came to be conceived?’

Father raped her? My head spun.

‘Your mother’s arms flailing like windmills, pummelling his chest without making any difference. Scratching his eyes. What good’s that? A woman hasn’t the strength. Your father with his dungarees round his ankles and his knees burning on the rug, thrusting and heaving and breathing his rotten breath in my face. Strings of spit hanging from his mouth and me weeping, giving up. Him finishing in me, standing over me, smiling down, pulling up his dungarees, leaving me
there
on the floor with my knees wide apart and up in the air. And there’s you and your sister slithering out of me grey, wet and wrinkled some months later. Jesus Christ, I hated you pair at first. And what does your mother say when her husband wonders why you’ve a nose, mouth and eyes that are somebody else’s, somebody he doesn’t know? Yet he’s thinking, Maybe this rat-like progeny will grow to look like me, but no one in the family has ears that size.’