Landed (9 page)

 

Sara were born in 1990. Can't imagine there were ever a prouder father. Nor better husband, let me say. Turn his hand to anything. Never claimed there's a job a man shouldn't do: he'd stay up late, ironing all of our clothes, ready for the morning. Polished shoes, laid them out in their pairs, in a row in the hallway of the flat. Then he'd sit in the corner of the living room, smoke his last fake of the day, wonder how his life were turning out so good.

When she were a toddler, Sara wouldn't let me help her walk. She'd stumble, little mite, she'd bash herself, but push me away. If Owen were there, though, she'd hold on to one of his rough tattooed fingers, grasp it tight in her tiny hand. He'd walk behind her, bent right over, guide her along. The look on Sara's face: happy, proud.

Sara seemed to have inherited self-confidence from each of us, Owen's with the natural world and mine with people. We couldn't see our weaknesses in her, like it were a miracle. Maybe
they would have emerged in time. Or maybe not. You just don't know.

After Sara we had Josh, who were just like his father. Born shy, my little prince. Hardly look his own mum in the eye, never mind other people. Deliberate like his dad. Hated to be rushed into anything. We moved from the flat to the house, with its own garden, a tip what Owen transformed into a jungle playground.

 

Soon as Sara were born I says to Owen we have to visit his mother. Owen cleaned out his car the night before, put his tools in the lock-up garage; I made sandwiches and put them in the fridge. We got up early in the morning and drove east. Liz lived in a block of flats on the outskirts of King's Lynn. We took her out for the day, a picnic up around the coast.

Liz were all made up and waiting. She give us a big hug that smelled of sandalwood and Polo mints. She were in her mid-fifties, worked in a shop. She wore hippyish clothes, though when you looked closer often there were just one paisley-pattern blouse or orange Indian trousers. The rest were normal highstreet stuff had somehow adapted itself to her. She looked like a funky grandma, a little glamorous, a little doolally. After that we did it regular, three, four times a year. It's spectacular over there, them great flat beaches and marshes and dunes, that high wide sky; though she lived so close it were as much a novelty for Liz as it were for us Brum dwellers.

She were great with the kids, nuzzled and nudged them, spoke baby language like she'd been relearning it at evening class, just for their visits. As they grew she'd sit in the back of the car between Sara and Josh, ask them questions, then lean back with a smile on her face and let them natter at her from either side.

After our picnic Owen would wander off with Sara. He'd
found a telescope in some charity shop, must have been about the only thing he ever bought for his self, and he'd keep one eye on Sara and watch birds with the other. Thousands of them on mudflats at Snettisham, pushed by high tides into the lagoons. Harriers flying low over reed beds at Titchwell Marsh.

While I fed Josh, Liz and I would talk. She told me how it had been with Owen's dad, how hard she'd tried to cling on to him.

‘Nothing like Owen,' was her words. You couldn't quite tell which were the one she were most fond of. There was other men. One brung her to King's Lynn, then drifted off and left her there.

Once or twice it were mizzly weather and we'd mooch about the town, more often it were glorious. One spring visit, Sara were six, end of March, we braved a trip to Holkham Bay. With the tide out all you can see is sand. Pine trees behind. Take you hours to walk from one side to the other. Can't be a finer beach in the whole world, not that I've been. There were no wind that day, the sky was nothing but blue stretched over us.

She were sweet-natured like her son, were Liz. Owen always packed a bottle of white wine. I didn't drink none, and the most he supped were one can of beer. Liz worked her way through the bottle, getting slightly more barmy, till she'd fall asleep on the rug. She were lovely with the children and they was fond of her, but you knew you wouldn't leave them with her. She weren't equipped to take care of people. I told myself to talk to Owen about getting her over to live with us.

Josh were snoozing on one side of me, my mother-in-law on the other. I thought, This is what a family can be like. I weren't looking for a mother, but Owen had given me one. I could see Owen and Sara in the distance, the air were shimmering the way it does on a beach. They walked back across the sand, hand in hand. We'd just discovered I were pregnant with our
third child. I thought, People come together, the born and the unborn, it's a sort of survival unit. One scar, then another, begins to heal.

We was lulled. We never considered things could blast apart.

 

There were life before the accident, and life after. They are two different lives.

I tried not to blame Owen. I tried to look after Josh. I tried to think about the child I were carrying.

I couldn't get why she were sitting in the front. He were driving her home from her dance class. Why weren't she in the back? I tried not to blame him. You go numb. You breathe deep, you think, I'll wait for it to pass over me. Owen did three things. First he were numb too. Then he tried to tough it out. Then he fell apart. I said people don't change, but Owen did. A bitterness appeared what hadn't been there before. Both the loss and his part in it. The falling apart that's not what I blame him for.

 

It were his right hand he lost, his dominant hand, the one he used to operate a tool, to write his name, to shake hands with.

He hated people staring at the hook. People thought he were cool with it cos Owen were the first to mention it, wave it around, make a joke. That were an act. They didn't know him like I did. He says to me, ‘I wish we was living after World War One, Mel, when there was loads of blokes had amputations. It were a common sight. No one thought nothing about it.' A mixture of guilt and rage were in him but he tried to hide it, it were like a toxic cocktail in his gut.

 

There was two court cases, one after the other, on top of everything else. It's the last thing you want after what happened,
whether you're in the dock or on the other side, and Owen had to do both.

 

We'd lost Sara then I had Holly. Owen tried to help, he wanted to do like we'd done it before. But you can't scoop up a baby with a split hook. Owen couldn't hardly prepare her bottle, never mind hold her in the bath, or change her nappy. You could see the frustration building in him.

 

He wanted sex. He needed to be reassured. I couldn't do it. When he took his hook off, I couldn't stand to be touched by that stump. He says we have to find new positions, that's all, we have to adapt. I told him to keep away from me. I didn't want to hurt him. It were like Sara's death right there in front of me.

 

Then the pain in his hand what weren't there started. He never drank bad till then. It were like someone had given him this magical potion: Owen drank and the pain were drowned, for the hours of oblivion.

He kept pulling his self together, says, ‘I'm all right now, I'll not let go again.' He couldn't help it, you could see the pain and the thirst build up. Like his fingers on the hand that were left was trembling to get round a bottle. He'd slump on the settee, a man whose heart had stopped. Still stagger up in the morning, make his self presentable. But then he'd slip out the back door and be gone on a bender, two or three days at a time, return like a dog, stinking of mud and stale liquor.

I were left to look after the kids. It were like I were watching two people I used to know. We was holding on and hitting out. Shifting apart. I wanted to help him but I couldn't. What could I do? No one told me. Does anybody know? I were so mardy
with Owen, so mean. Never hit no one before. I'm not proud of it, especially what Josh saw, don't nobody think I am.

 

Owen tried dope, it only made him feel the pain more keenly. The doctor at the rehabilitation centre prescribed drugs for him. You know about the amitriptyline. They only give him side effects. Don't give me none. You can't tell the doctor I've not taken this serious. You can't say I haven't talked.

Nothing worked for Owen like alcohol. The cheapest booze he could get his hands on, drank till he couldn't feel.

We kept seeing Liz, she come to stay with us. She couldn't say nothing to him.

 

We got used to not having money, but the thing people don't realise about poverty is that it can always get worse. He got a few months sickness benefit but not disability living allowance – you need to lose a leg for that, he 'd say. He were self-employed. After the accident he couldn't work. Said he could still use the tools with his hook, but he had no way to get with all his kit to the houses. Refused to drive. I says to him, Go for a job with the council. Parks Department. It weren't no use. Claimed he couldn't work for no one else, have some gaffer tell him what to do. Like he weren't working for them blasted rich folk whose flower beds he tickled and lawns he mowed. There was one or two close by he could walk or bike to, spade strapped to the crossbar. Reckon they liked having a one-armed gardener. Novelty value.

 

A brown mongrel dog run across the road. Chasing something, he said. No one else saw it, this hound of hell.

 

I never wanted another man. Never wanted no one else but him. But you don't know what lonely is till you're sharing your
house with a ghost, disappearing, and when he reappears all you do is fight. Johnny was his friend more than mine, he come round to see Owen. ‘He's out,' I says. ‘Don't know where. You're welcome to wait. Kettle's on.'

‘You all right?' he asks, and it all come out. I never planned it. Don't think I did. None of it was what I wanted.

Owen had to leave. I thought that might shake him back together. Then it all got legal, and took on a life of its own. I weren't trying to do nothing but look after Josh and Holly. Probably messed that up too but you tell me what else I should have done.

 

He were homeless for a while. Moved into a slummy flat in an old high-rise. Refused to discuss a divorce. When he come to pick the children up I could smell the drink on his breath but he were smart. Josh told me his father had one other white shirt and pair of black trousers hung up just like the ones he were wearing. His wardrobe. Josh and Holly stayed the night there once. When they woke up in the morning all their clothes was washed and ironed, folded on the table beside their dad's.

Physically Owen changed. Filled out. The sugar in the alcohol. His clothes didn't hang off his wiry frame the way they had. His tough tanned gardener's face took on another colour, the ruddiness of a drinker, which made him look not old, exactly, but more, I know it's stupid, wiser. Alcohol give his face that look of wisdom more than suffering. I was the one marked sad, not him, and I weren't the one driving the car. They say sorrow steals your looks quicker than time itself. Heads no longer turn. But I don't dwell on me.

The children was always confused after they'd seen him. Josh all silent, moody, rude to Johnny and angry with me like it were my idea for his dad to be broken. I had to put a stop to
it, it weren't good for no one. Everyone agreed. May have been underhand, the way we done it, but I were trying to get things stable.

Owen's complied with all the court orders. I've took care not to embarrass him. I don't talk to old friends, or tell Liz. Never said nothing to the school. If he's humiliated it's not by me.

 

Even now he phones. Isn't meant to but he does. Now Johnny's not around I let him talk. You wouldn't believe it was that shy, proud man he used to be. Begging me to get back together, to bring the children round, to let him see them. What can I say? I know I can't say yes. Then he goes all silent. ‘You still there?' I says. No reply, but you can sense him. Brooding. Sobbing to his self, his hand over the mouthpiece.

Me just as bad at the other end, after I've put down the phone.

 

I don't see what he's got left. He's got nothing, has he? I'm worried sick he might do something bad. Something terrible. It makes me feel sick in my stomach.

Truth is I don't know if I want him to or not.

Snow

I
t was one of the last long, cold winters. First the rain, on the edge of frozen, cutting into buildings, clothes, skin. In the high exposed places the wind collected the rain, whirled it around and hurled it, endless frozen arrowheads of water, flying in horizontally. It hit the old man's face in stabs of pain. It drove into the last of the stone walls criss-crossing the hillside: at night the water, turning to ice, expanded; a section of wall would explode in a distant unheard rumble.

 

Owen had come out at Christmas. Some man, with young children of his own, had invited his mother, Owen a complication who anyhow had no wish to get to know another man's brood. He was fifteen now. ‘I'll go to the hill,' he said.

A memorable visit, it was when he learned to swing an axe. Mild days at the end of December Owen hitched a trailer to his grandfather's tractor and the two of them scoured the locale for fallen trees. For other men it was a summer job, but Gwyn Ithell had his own ideas. The old man chainsawed trunks and thick branches into logs, which Owen piled in the trailer; the boy drove back to the farmstead, emptied the logs into a pile by the woodshed – green wood to one side – returned. His grandfather wore neither goggles nor earmuffs. The angry whine of the power saw assailed him; occasional sharp chips flew at his face, drawing blood, like shaving nicks; clothes, hair, eyebrows became coated in sawdust.