Snow Angels (37 page)

His daytime dream was that Edward would come to him, forgive him, that everything would be made right, but when it happened it was not the lovely summer day that his mind built into it, it was late at night in a billiard hall and even though Edward must have been fully aware of Gil, he ignored him just as though he did not exist. Toby was with him, even came across, greeted him.

‘My brother?’ was all Gil could say.

‘I don’t think he wants to talk to you.’

‘What is he doing here?’

‘He comes here a lot, we always did.’

‘With you?’

‘Who else?’

‘But … your family.’

‘Don’t be silly, old boy, they aren’t old enough to play billiards,’ and Toby departed, smiling.

‘Do you want to go?’ John asked, seeing his expression.

‘Yes.’

‘Mrs Fitzpatrick’s?’ John said when they got outside into the street.

‘My God, yes.’

With Chloe in his arms, Gil felt happy.

*

‘He didn’t kill your mother, Matthew,’ Abby had said. ‘How could you think such a thing?’

‘Grandfather said so.’

‘Your father has looked after you all those years. Who are you going to believe first?’

‘Grandfather and Grandmother have wanted to see me but my father wouldn’t let me. You know that’s true. Grandfather says that my father is a bad man.’

‘He has done many good things,’ Abby said. ‘He helps people who have nothing. He gives them shelter and food and he gives thousands of jobs to men in Newcastle.’

‘He doesn’t like me.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Then why do I not see him?’

‘He’s very busy.’

‘He’s very busy going out to the pub with that man,’ Matthew said.

‘This must stop,’ Abby said, ‘and you must not go and see your grandfather and grandmother again. Do you hear me? If you disobey me I shall smack your bottom until you can’t sit down. Do you understand me?’

‘You can’t do that!’

‘Try,’ Abby threatened.

She went to see Charlotte and she could see by the look on Charlotte’s face that she knew Abby had found out. The house was tiny and gloomy and William upstairs in bed.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know, he just isn’t well.’

Charlotte’s furniture, what she had left of it, was far too big for such a house and dwarfed each room. It looked incongruous, towering there. The walls were painted brown; the fire smoked; the windows were tiny and from next door came the sound through the thin walls of somebody having an argument. How had Charlotte come so low and did Gil really want his parents like this? She couldn’t believe that he did, that he had brought them to this and would let them survive there as best they could. She took Abby upstairs and Abby had to go even though she didn’t want to see William. The man in the bed looked old and grey and smaller but he said, ‘What are you doing letting his whore in here?’ and closed his eyes.

Abby said nothing until they had gone back down the steep, narrow stairs again.

‘Do you think that of me?’

‘Everybody does,’ Charlotte said.

‘It’s not true. Just because we’re living in the same house … You know why I’m here. Matthew is not to come here again. If Gil finds out, I don’t know what will happen.’

‘What more can he do to us?’ Charlotte said simply. ‘We love the boy. We have nothing.’

‘I have told him that he is not to come back and if he does it will be the worse for him. If he does turn up here, you are to send him home. Are you listening to me, Charlotte?’

‘No, why should I?’

‘William has poisoned his mind against Gil and Gil doesn’t deserve that.’

‘It was only the truth. He won’t let us see Matthew, has told him stories about us.’

‘That’s not true. You must send him home.’

The following Sunday Abby tried not to let Matthew out. Unfortunately he went anyway, but she followed him and banged on Charlotte’s door. When nobody answered she walked in, searched the lower storey and, finding nothing there, went upstairs and dragged Matthew out of William’s bedroom. They couldn’t stop her. William couldn’t get out of bed and Charlotte wept. Matthew resisted. He twisted and turned, he kicked her and thumped her and when she got him into the street it was worse. It took her a long time to get him home and her patience and temper were worn out by then. She smacked him until he howled.

Unfortunately Gil chose that precise time to come home. Sober as water and neat as a new penny he looked gravely at her as she walloped his child, the first time that anybody had done so, Abby knew. He didn’t interfere; he left her to it on the sofa in the sitting-room. She sent Matthew to bed, put him there herself and then she went downstairs, listening to Matthew’s sobs
beginning to quieten. She went back into the sitting-room, hoping that Georgina’s presence would protect her but Gil came in.

‘Georgina would you mind going to your room for a little while?’ he said.

‘Have I done something too?’

‘No, I just want to talk to your mother. You can go to the kitchen if you would rather and see Hannah.’

‘She isn’t there,’ Georgina pointed out as she left the room.

Abby wished she could go to her room too.

‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ she said.

‘Obviously.’

‘It wouldn’t have made any difference. He knew what would happen, I had already told him.’

‘He’s seven,’ Gil said.

‘He understood perfectly.’

‘Are you going to tell me what he did?’

‘Why, are you going to unsmack him if you don’t agree?’

Gil looked hard at her.

‘Tell me.’

Abby gave in.

‘He went to see your parents, not once but several times and I told him not to do it again. He lied to me and then he disobeyed me and your father has told him that you killed Helen and he hates you. Is that enough?’

‘It’s ample,’ Gil said.

‘I thought it might be. However, if you spent less time screwing women and drinking whisky and playing billiards, I daresay things might not have come to this.’

Abby had to leave the room because she had never smacked a child before in her life and she felt sick and wanted to cry. She was bruised and battered from trying to get Matthew home while he kicked and punched her. Luckily there was nobody in the kitchen, it being Sunday afternoon, so she busied about there, instead of crying. She made some tea and sat quietly at the table,
pretending to eat chocolate cake which had been made early that day and was still fresh, and drinking three cups of tea before she could even think of moving anywhere.

After a while Gil came in. She made more tea and cut him a piece of chocolate cake and they sat in the kitchen as they had never done before. He ate his cake. Men were so insensitive; they could eat even if somebody was dying.

‘Did you see my father?’

‘He called me your whore.’

‘How did he look?’

‘He looked defeated. He’s old and tired and you’ve beaten him and now I’ve beaten your child. No wonder we are all so happy.’

‘You think I ought to take Matthew to see them?’

‘I think you ought to allow him to go. I think you should arrange for Helen’s parents to see him if they want to. You could write to them. After all, they can hardly blame Matthew for what happened. He is the only grandchild any of them has. How could they not want to see him?’

‘Because he’s mine?’

‘That’s not his fault.’

Gil took a deep breath.

‘All right, I’ll let him go. Will you take him?’

‘There’s nobody else,’ Abby said.

*

Gil didn’t write. He went to Durham the following day to see whether he could locate Helen’s parents, but it was as he had feared. They had moved. The people who were living in their house didn’t know where they had gone and neither did anybody else that Gil could find. Determined, he travelled to Oxford but they had not gone back there and he knew that if they were in London he was wasting his time because they could be anywhere. He came home and went back to work. He tried to talk to Matthew but every time he walked into the room, his child got
up and walked out. He caught hold of Matthew once and tried to get the child to talk to him but Matthew just looked past him.

‘I have said that you can go. What more do you want me to do?’

Matthew continued looking past him, so Gil let him loose.

*

On the Sunday Georgina stayed at home. Gil made sure he was there to stay with her and Abby took a silent Matthew across the streets of Jesmond to where his grandparents were living. Abby had sent a note to say that he could come and had received nothing in reply, but she assumed that Charlotte would be agreeable. Where else did they have to go on Sundays? She would have left him at the door when Charlotte opened it, but Charlotte’s distressed face told her this would not do. She ushered them inside to the fire and then she looked tearfully at Abby.

‘William died last night,’ she said.

Life could not be so unkind, Abby thought. It could not do this to them. Matthew ran to his grandmother and huddled in against her skirts and she held him there with one pudgy hand.

‘Oh Charlotte, I am sorry.’ Abby’s mind did swirling things. How on earth could she ever tell Gil that his father had died without seeing him and that he had given his permission too late.

‘Did Edward see his father before he died?’

‘Of course. He lives just around the corner. He’s so good. He comes every day. He has a good position, you know, he works for Blade’s. They aren’t as big a firm as we were, but they turn out solid ships, William always said so.’

‘You didn’t think that perhaps—’

‘Abby, you know William. I did suggest that he ought to see Gil but he wouldn’t. They’re so alike, so unforgiving. What am I to do?’

‘I’ll talk to Gil.’

‘No. I couldn’t. I shall manage.’

‘You have a family.’

Charlotte managed a wry smile.

‘They’re as badly off as I am in that great tomb of a house they have. I never thought to go back there. The house takes everything and it’s so uncomfortable and so cold and … I don’t want to go there.’

Abby gave her some money. Charlotte tried to refuse it, but it was only politeness.

‘Leave the boy with me a little while. I’ll bring him back. Gil isn’t there, is he?’

‘He is at the moment but—’

‘I’ll bring him to the back door and then I don’t have to see him.’

Abby walked slowly home, wishing that it was four times as far. She even went round by the dene but she knew that Gil was expecting her just to drop Matthew off and come back, so she could not be too long. Even so, she lingered. Gil was not a happy man, she knew that. Happy men did not behave like he was behaving. Happy men, Abby thought savagely, did not go to bed with whores. She had a sure idea that if a man was bedding a woman at home, a woman he liked and desired, he would not go out to pay for it, not unless there was something seriously wrong with him. And that was her fault. He was a man. If she had gone to bed with him he would have stayed with her. Men were not so complicated. All they needed was warmth and time, like bread. Robert had taken everything from her, at least that was how it felt. She had nothing left for Gil and he had desperately needed somebody. She didn’t want to be touched, not in that way. Comfort would have been nice, but men were not much good at comfort alone, not until they were very old presumably. He had gone to his work, like her father had done, but he was much younger than her father and had found time to fit in whisky, billiards and women. What would he do when he found out that his father was dead?

She went reluctantly home and he was hovering in the hall.

‘You were a hell of a long time. What were you doing? What did my father say? Were they pleased? How long is Matthew staying?’

‘Come into the sitting-room.’

What difference that would make she couldn’t think, but somehow it seemed better than the hall. She knew Gil very well, but she didn’t know how he was going to react.

‘Gil—’ She looked up at him and she didn’t have to tell him. ‘Your father—’

‘No. No, not now, not now. No.’

‘He died last night.’

‘Of what?’ Gil said, as though this was important, as though it could not have happened.

‘I don’t know, he just did.’

‘No, he can’t have done, not like that. He would fight, he would—’

‘He’s been ill for some time.’

‘Nobody told me. I didn’t know. No, I did know. I didn’t think … Couldn’t I have seen him? Would my mother have let me see him?’

Abby lied valiantly.

‘I think the end was very quick.’

‘No. You said he had been ill for some time. It couldn’t have been. Was my brother there?’

Abby cursed Gil’s quick mind.

‘Was Edward there?’ he persisted.

‘I really don’t know.’

‘Yes, you do.’ He was watching her closely. ‘My brother was there. My father said goodbye to him. My brother was there. He didn’t want me there, did he? He didn’t want me there. And my mother … my mother didn’t.’

Abby tried to take him into her arms but he wouldn’t let her.

‘What about Matthew?’

‘Your mother wanted him to stay and it seemed sensible,’ Abby said, trying to be normal.

‘Are you going for him?’

‘In a little while, yes. You were going out with John, weren’t you? Why don’t you go?’

*

Gil went. There seemed nothing else to do, she was right. But when they went to the pub he wasn’t thirsty and, although John talked to him and especially about his father, Gil couldn’t hear. They went to Mrs Fitzpatrick’s, but he walked out. All he wanted to do was go home, but when he got there he didn’t want to be there either. Abby was still up, she was sitting by the fire.

‘Matthew came home?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about my mother? I was thinking about her. What will she do?’

‘Edward will take care of her.’

‘Edward?’

‘Yes. He has a house you know, not far away.’

‘I’m sure he does. I see him sometimes, in the billiard hall. He’s got very fat. He takes after my mother.’

Gil went to bed. He stole into Matthew’s room and watched his son sleeping. He knew now all the things that were unholy to know, all the things that if God had cared about anybody, he would have told them before they were born instead of letting them go crashing about destroying everything. The trouble was that you had to live a life and lose everything, to suffer and then to die, yet you didn’t know that when you set out. You didn’t know how to lose everything, so God demonstrated it to you. This was the last thing he had to lose, the very last person, so he made a bargain with God: if Matthew should leave him he would die, he would deliberately die. He would take away the gift that God had given him; he would take it away to punish God for expecting so very much of anybody. He would cut off that life so that he would never again see the tide full on Bamburgh beach.