Playing for the Ashes (57 page)

She set the pot on the kitchen table where earlier she’d removed the old red oilcloth, spreading out in its place a green cotton tablecloth speckled with violets. On top of this she’d already laid the rest of the teaset: lettuce leaf plates and the bunny-shaped milk jug with its matching sugar bowl. On the rabbit-family platter in the centre of the table, she’d stacked the liver paste sandwiches. She’d cut off the crusts, alternated the sandwiches with plain bread and butter, and surrounded the lot with Custard Cremes.

Stan and Sharon were in the sitting room. Stan was watching the telly, across whose screen a giant eel was swimming hypnotically to the rhythm of a background voice saying, “The habitat of the moray eel…” while Sharon bent over her bird notebook, using coloured pencils to fill in the markings on a gull she’d sketched yesterday afternoon. Her glasses had slipped to the end of her nose and her breathing was laboured and loud, like she had a bad head cold.

“Tea’s ready,” Jeannie said. “Shar, fetch Jimmy.”

Sharon raised her head and snuf
fle
d. She used the back of her hand to push her spectacles into place. She said, “He won’t come down.”

“You don’t know that, do you? Now fetch him like I said.”

Jimmy had spent the day in his bedroom. He’d wanted to go out earlier, around half past eleven that morning. He’d slouched into the kitchen with his windcheater on, opened the fridge, and pulled out the remains of a take-away pizza. This he rolled up, wrapped in tinfoil, and stuffed into his pocket. Jeannie watched him from the sink where she turned from washing the breakfast dishes. She said, “What’re you about then, Jim?” to which he replied with the single word
nothing
. She said that it looked to her like he was planning on going out. He said what if he was? He wasn’t about to hang round the house all day like a two-year-old. Besides, he had plans to meet a mate at Millwall Outer Dock. What mate is that, Jeannie had wanted to know. Just a mate, that’s all, he said. She didn’t know him and she didn’t need to know him. Was it Brian Jones, Jeannie had asked next. Jimmy had said, Brian Jones? Who the hell…He didn’t know any Bri— Then he’d recognised the trap. Jeannie remarked with innocence that he remembered, didn’t he, Brian Jones…from Deptford? Him Jimmy was with all day on Friday instead of going to school?

Jimmy had shoved the refrigerator door closed. He’d headed for the back door, saying he was off. Jeannie had said that he best come have a look out the window, first. She had said she meant it and if he knew what was good for him, he was to do like she asked.

He’d stood with one hand on the doorknob and his eyes shifting uneasily from her to the cooker and back to her. She said for him to come. She wanted him to see. He’d asked what, with that curl of the lip which she always wanted to slap from his face. She’d said he was just to come here, Jim. He was to have a good long look outside.

She could tell the boy thought her request was a trick, so she moved away from the window to give him room. He sidled across the floor as if expecting her to pounce upon him, and he looked out the window as she had bidden.

He’d seen the reporters. It was hard to miss them, lounging against their Escort across the street. He’d said, So what, they were there yesterday, to which she’d replied, Not there, Jim. He was to look in front of the Cowpers’ house, she told him. Who did he think those blokes were, the ones sitting in the black Nova?

He’d shrugged, indifferent. She’d said, The police. So he could go out if he wanted, she told him. But he wasn’t to expect to be going out alone. The police would follow him.

He’d grappled with this information physically as well as mentally, his hands clenching into fists at his side. He’d asked what the police wanted. She’d told him they wanted to know about his dad. About what happened to him. About who was with him on Wednesday night. About why he died.

And then she waited. She watched him watching them, the police and the reporters. He tried to look uncaring, but he couldn’t fool her. There were subtle signs that gave him away: the rapid shift of weight from one foot to the other, one fist driven into the pocket of the jeans. He threw his head back and lifted his chin and demanded to know who gave a shit anyway, but he shifted his weight uneasily once more, and Jeannie could imagine that his palms were sweating and his stomach was quivering like jelly.

She found herself wanting to be the victor in this situation, wanting to ask him casually if he still planned to go out and about on this
fin
e Sunday morning. She found herself wanting to press the issue, to open the door, to bid him be on his way just to force him to admit to his grief, to his fear, to a need for her help, to whatever the truth was, to anything. But she’d kept silent, remembering at the last moment—and with a clarity that cut—just what it was like to be sixteen years old and facing a crisis. She let him leave the kitchen and pound up the stairs, and she hadn’t invaded his privacy since.

Now, as Sharon climbed up to fetch him, Jeannie said to Stan, “Into the kitchen. Look sharp, all right? Time for tea.” He didn’t reply. She saw that he was scouring the inside of his nose with his little
fin
ger, and she said, “You! Stan! That’s disgusting! Stop it!” and the
fin
ger was hastily removed. Stan ducked his head and thrust his hands well beneath his arse. Jeannie said in a gentler voice, “Come on with you, luv. I’ve made us some tea.”

She directed him to the sink to wash while she poured the tea into their carrot cups. He came to her side and mumbled, “Got the special plates today, Mum,” and he slipped his hand—still damp from the washing—into hers.

She said, “Yeah. I thought we could do with some cheering up.”

“Jimmy coming downstairs?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

Stan pulled his chair away from the table and plopped onto it. He chose a Custard Creme, a slice of buttered bread, and a liver paste sandwich for his plate. This latter he opened, holding each half flat in either of his palms. He said, “Jimmy was cryin’ last night, Mum.”

Jeannie’s interest quickened, but she said only, “Cryin’s natural. Don’t you go hard on your brother over that.”

Stan licked the liver paste from the bread. “He d’n’t think I heard him cos I didn’t say. But I heard all right. He had his head in the pillow and he was hitting the mattress and saying, fuck it, just fuck it.” Stan shrank back as Jeannie lifted a quick disciplinary hand. “It’s what I
heard
, Mum. I’m not saying it myself.”

“Well, mind that you don’t.” Jeannie
fil
led the other cups. “What else?” she asked quietly.

Having divested it of its liver paste, Stan was chewing the bread. “More naughty words.”

“Such as?”

“Bastard. Fuck it, just fuck it, you bastard. That’s what he said. While he was crying.” Stan licked the liver paste from the bread slice in his other palm. “I ’spect he was crying about Dad. I ’spect he was talking about Dad as well. He broke them sailing boats of his, did you know?”

“I saw that, Stan.”

“And he said fuck you fuck you fuck you, when he did it.”

Jeannie sat opposite her youngest child. She closed her thumb and index
fin
ger round his thin wrist. She said, “You aren’t telling tales to tell tales, are you, Stan? That’s a nasty habit if you are.”

“I wouldn’t—”

“Good. Because Jimmy’s your brother and you’re meant to love him. He’s in a bad patch now, but he’ll come round all right.” Even as she said it, Jeannie felt the spear, the one that kept up the pressure beneath her left breast without ever once breaking the skin. Kenny had been in a bad patch as well, a patch that started out bad and only got worse.

“Jimmy says he doesn’t want any bleeding tea. Only he didn’t say
bleeding
. He said something else.” Shar fluttered into the kitchen like one of her birds, with sheets of drawing paper for wings. She pushed Jimmy’s plate, cup, and saucer to one side and smoothed the paper on top of the tablecloth. She picked up a sandwich delicately and took a ladylike bite as she surveyed her work, a bald eagle soaring above pine trees, with the pine trees so small that the eagle looked like he was a second cousin to King Kong.

“He said
fucking
, didn’t he?” Stan pinched the edges of his bread and butter, scalloping them.

“That’s enough of that word,” Jeannie said. “And wipe your mouth. Shar, see to your brother’s table manners, please. I’ll see to Jim.”

She rummaged in the cupboard next to the sink and brought out a chipped plastic tray. It had been a long ago wedding present to her and Kenny, lime green decorated with sprays of forget-me-nots. Just the thing, she had thought, for passing round scones and sandwiches at tea. She’d never used it for that, however, just for lugging one meal after another upstairs, catering to a child with a cold or flu. She put Jimmy’s teacup on it, adding sugar and milk the way he liked it. She picked among the sandwiches, the bread and butter, and the Custard Cremes.

“Don’t he have to come down, Mum?” Stan asked as she headed for the stairs.

“Doesn’t,” Shar corrected absently as she added more colour to the wings of her eagle.

“Cos you always say that if we’re not feeling grumpy, we got to eat down here,” Stan persisted.

“Yeah,” Jeannie said. “Well, Jim feels grumpy. You said so yourself.”

Shar had not closed Jimmy’s bedroom door completely behind her, so after saying, “Jim?” Jeannie used her bum to push the door open. “I brought you your tea.”

He’d been sitting on his bed, his back against the headboard, and as she walked into the room with the tray, he stuffed something under the pillow and followed this action with hastily sliding shut the drawer of the bedside table. Jeannie pretended to ignore both movements. She’d been through that drawer more than once in the past few months. She knew what he kept there. She’d spoken to Kenny about the photographs, and he’d been concerned enough to come by the house when Jimmy was at school. He’d gone through them himself, careful to keep them in the order Jimmy had them arranged, sitting on the edge of his oldest boy’s bed with his long legs stretched out against the worn carpet squares. He’d given a chuckle at the sight of the women, at their choice of clothing or the lack thereof, at their positions, at their pouting expressions, at the spread of their legs and the arch of their backs and the size of their perfectly, unnaturally proportioned breasts. He’d said, “It’s nothing to worry over, Jean.” She’d asked him what in the hell he meant. His son had a drawerful of dirty pictures and if that wasn’t something to worry over, could he tell her what was? Kenny’d said, “These aren’t dirty. They aren’t pornography. He’s curious, that’s all,” and he’d added, “I can find you some of the real stuff if you want to have something to worry over.” The real stuff, he told her, featured more than one subject—male and female, male and male, adult and child, child and child, female and female, female and animal, male and animal. He said, “It’s nothing like this, girl. This is what young blokes look at while they’re still wondering what it’s like to feel a woman beneath them. It’s natural, it is. It’s part of growing up.” She asked him if he’d had pictures like these—pictures he hid away from his family like a nasty secret—if it was so much a part of growing up. He’d replaced the photographs carefully and shut the drawer. “No,” he said after a moment and not looking at her when he said it. “I had you, didn’t I? I didn’t have to wonder what it would be like when it finally happened. I always knew.” Then he’d turned his head and smiled and she’d felt like her heart was
flo
oding open. How he’d make her feel, that Kenny Fleming. How always always he could make her feel.

She spoke past the ache in her throat. “I’ve done some liver sandwiches for you. Move your legs, Jim, so I can put the tray down.”

“I tol’ Shar. I ain’t hungry.” His voice was defiant, but his eyes were wary. Still, he moved his legs as his mother had asked, and Jeannie grasped on to this as a hopeful sign. She set the tray on the bed, near his knees. He was wearing a pair of filthy jeans. He hadn’t removed his windcheater or his shoes, as if he still expected to be going out when the police grew tired of watching the house. Jeannie wanted to tell him how unlikely it was that the police would grow weary of maintaining surveillance. There were dozens of them, hundreds, perhaps thousands, and all they had to do was keep replacing each other out on the street.

“I forgot to say ta for yesterday,” Jeannie said.

Jimmy shoved his
fin
gers back through his hair. He looked at the tray without reacting to the sight of the special tea-set. He looked back at her.

“Stan and Shar,” she said. “Keeping them busy like you did. It was good of you, Jim. Your dad—”

“Bugger him.”

She took a steady breath and continued. “Your dad would of been real proud to see you acting so good to your brother and sister.”

“Yeah? What did Dad know about acting good?”

“Stan and Shar, they’ll be looking to you now. You got to be like a dad, ’specially to Stan.”

“Stan’d do better to look after himself. He depend on anyone, he’ll just get himself bashed.”

“Not if he depends on you.”

Jimmy adjusted his position, backing up closer against the headboard, to ease his spine or to get distance from her. He reached for a half-smashed packet of cigarettes and screwed one into his mouth. He lit it and blew the smoke through his nostrils in a quick, fierce stream.