Authors: Yvvette Edwards
The Mother
MY CUP OF TEA IS
on the bedside table. It is where he has always left it; every morning of the eighteen years we have been married he has made me a cup of tea, brought it up, and left it on the side, and normally that's all it is; a cup of tea on the side. But today is not a normal day. Today is the first day of the trial of the manâwell, boy reallyâaccused of the murder of our son and, as a result, instead of a regular cup of tea on the bedside table, it is a steaming act of phenomenal cowardice and I will not touch or drink it.
Lloydie has left the house already. I know because Sheba is lying on our bed, and if he were downstairs, she would be too, padding around her bowls, his legs, hopeful, impatient, even if she'd already been fed. He's gone to his allotment probably, or maybe the shops. The point is he has gone somewhere else and anywhere else will do so long as he doesn't have to face me, doesn't have to discuss with me again why he will not come, because he has no words to explain to my satisfaction how the loss, the loss of Ryan, has left him so impotent that he cannot support me, even by simply being at my side.
I get dressed and comb my hair, what there is left of it, what remains of the hair I had eight months ago, flatten it down as neatly as I can, a task so small it takes hardly a minute, slip the wig over it, and make my adjustments to conceal from those who do not know me that although I am not South American, I am wearing one hundred percent natural Brazilian hair on my head. I wish I had the courage to stand before the court without it, to stand before my son's killer so he could see for himself the effects of his deed, which took but a moment, no more than a few minutes, to strip me clean of not just my only child, but everything else I had and presumed was mine for keeps.
I pass Ryan's room on the landing beside ours. Often in the mornings I go in there, like I went in there when he was alive, when my son was alive, to hurry his getting ready or shoo him down to breakfast, or check he'd packed his house keys and Oyster card. I can't quite break this habit. Even though he isn't here and there is nothing for me to check, in the mornings, I still go in there. I don't today because I never really know how it will go, how I will go, where time spent in my son's room may take me. Normally it doesn't make much difference. I can just go back to bed if I'm depressed, or if I'm crying I can carry on in there, in my room, the bathroom, any room in the house really, though I try not to cry around Lloydie, because it has become my role to support him, to be careful of my own acts of emotion so they do not precipitate his, heaven forbid they should precipitate his. Even on bad days it's okay because I am confined to my home and those feelings are confined to my home and no one expects me to do anything much or function, so it's not an issue, and normally that's okay, but not today, when I must go to court
and take in evidence, listen to the presentation of facts in the language of science and law, have the worst thing that could ever have happened to Ryan, to us, taken apart and reassembled in front of a courtroom full of strangers. For that it is better I am as I am now, numb. Numb's good. I do not go into Ryan's room, because the risk of my numbness shifting is too high.
Nipa knocks on the front door like a policewoman, which is what she was before she branched off into family liaison. British-born, of Indian origin, she visited us two days after the event, has been visiting ever since. During that time she has become more a friend than an officer merely carrying out her duties, one who, never having known me at my best, has seen me at my worst. She is small in stature but tough-looking, confident, smartly dressed in civvies, with warm dark eyes that look beyond me, searching for my husband, not really surprised at his absence and with enough integrity not to make a phony pretense otherwise.
“He's not coming?”
I shake my head.
“You ready?”
“I just need to lock up.”
“Take your time, Marcia, I'll be in the car.”
Nipa is taking me to court and I am grateful; one less thing to worry about. She waits patiently as I get into the front passenger seat of the car and does the seat belt up around me without asking first, and it's one of the things I like about her, that she does not press me with unnecessary questions or to make decisions. I used to be good at making decisions, took it for
granted completely, imagined it was one of those things that because I'd always been good at it, I would continue to be good at it, and then something like what happened to Ryan comes along and you realize some things are just temporary gifts granted for part of your life only, like the headful of hair you imagined would be yours forever that you went to sleep with one night as usual and woke the following morning to find gone, clean gone.
I say, “Thank you,” though I don't have to because Nipa does not require me to remember my manners or follow decorum, which is good because I don't know where my head is anymore. So much of the time my mind is distracted or sidetracked. I thought it was a thing that happened to old people, losing their thread, going off on tangents, and here I am, middle-agedâam I even middle-aged yet? Is thirty-nine middle-aged?âand just forgetting what I was doing or the track of my thinking, and some people are good with people like that and Nipa's one of them, which is very helpful, very helpful indeed.
She has squeezed her car into a space so tight she has to go backward and forward a number of times before she can get it out. The windshield wipers are on, the sky is angry gray, the clouds weeping. Nipa moves the gear stick back and forth and her car goes back and forth, and I see a person standing in the rain on the other side of the road, a girl, inadequately dressed for the weather, in a shell suit that would be light blue if the rain had not made the hood, shoulders, and bottom of the legs dark blue, and she turns aroundâawayâwhen I spot her, and though I only catch her profile for a second I could have sworn it was her, the girl without a proper name, standing in the street outside my home, just looking. Then
Nipa maneuvers the car out of the tiny space and we are on our way and the girl is out of sight.
“How are you?” she asks.
There was a time when I had a ready template for responding to that question, a “Fine thanks. And you?” “Yes, fine, thank you.” “Lovely.” Throwaway words used and reused with almost every person I met, and that was how it was for decades, never gave it a moment's thought, never imagined that to answer something so simple could involve such a churning inside of feelings to find words for. I've stopped trying to answer that question, flippantly easy before, impossible now, and instead give the answer I have settled for, the least complicated, a shrug.
“It's going to be okay, Marcia,” she says. “We'll get through this. And I'll be with you every step of the way.”
I nod then look out the window because I know she will be, that I can depend on her support, but she's wrong about the possibility of this ever being okay. All mums say their baby was the best and the smartest, I know they do, I've heard them, but Ryan really was. He smiled so much, and laughed all the time, even when he was teething, even when he was hot and the dribble was a constant flow and his poor gums so hard and red and swollen he smiled, as if he knew how much his pain distressed me and was trying to make it okay for me, even then. I close my eyes, see him again at that adorable age; sausage arms and legs and fat cheeks so delicious. It washes over me again, a familiar rolling wave of grief, never smaller, or less, or more manageable, regular and constant as the tide. What has happened can never be undone and it is the fact that it can never be undone that means it will never be okay. No, this will never be okay.
“Marcia, there'll be reporters and cameramen outside the court taking photos.” I look at her, the engine is off. “Hopefully, that's all they'll do. Leave any talking to me. Just stay close, okay?”
I say, “Okay,” touch the hundred percent Brazilian hair on my head, make sure it is properly in place, gather myself.
“Ready?” she asks.
I nod. She gets out of the car and comes around to my side, and I step out and underneath the protection of her umbrella as she locks the car then takes my arm, walking faster as we near the main court entrance and she puts the umbrella down; the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey. How many times have I seen this building in the papers, on the news, in films and series and dramas, so famous? Never once did I dream I would be visiting one day in person, wearing a wig on my head, to listen to evidence about my baby, my boy, never once.
She's right about the reporters and cameramen. They are gathered around a couple I do not recognize, who look as though they've just finished making a statement and have begun heading toward the building's entrance.
We went with Ryan to Montserrat two years ago to visit my mother, and as we were in that neck of the woods, we visited Lloydie's older sister in Jamaica as well. She kept chickens, for eggs and jerk, lots of them, about twenty maybe, and Ryan fed them in the mornings while we were there, went down to the coop with a basket of seeds and grain and any leftover bits and pieces from dinner the day before including bones, because chickens will eat anything so there was nothing my sister-in-law did not feed them. As he approached the coop,
the chickens would start working themselves up, and by the time he entered they were clucking, pecking, flapping, feathered desperadoes in such a feeding frenzy you could never imagine that they had eaten quite recently and well. That's what is in my mind as we enter the media scrum.
It is actually terrifying, a scene of chaos and aggression, pushing, shouting, jostling, thrusting microphones into my face, cameras flashing, a roar of voices and lenses, and thank God there are a couple of police officers helping us, herding them aside, clearing a path for Nipa to steer me through, which she does, pulling me along behind her with one arm and pushing them out of the way with the other, till we are through the entrance and, as if we had stepped through the wardrobe and found ourselves in Narnia, we are in the court reception area, where it is calm and order prevails and my sister is waiting. As she embraces me tightly I look over her shoulder to check if that really did just happen, see the police directing the disappointed journalists back, back, back, still can't quite believe that it did.
“Bastards,” Lorna says, checking my face, neatening my hair. “Are you okay?”
I nod.
“Bloody bastards!” she says.
“I'm sorry,” Nipa says, “I'll see that doesn't happen again. We were unlucky with our timing. It must be a quiet news day.”
“I think a sixteen-year-old boy being killed for no reason whatsoever is pretty big news,” Lorna says.
“Of course it is,” Nipa says. “I'm sorry. I used the wrong words.”
Nipa steps over to the reception window, speaks through
the glass to the woman on the other side, and Lorna whispers in my ear, which I knew was the point she was making, “Even if he is black.”
We navigate through the security checks and scans and searches, enter the large waiting area. It is half past nine and although the area is fairly packed with people, they are talking confidentially in whispers, moving around slowly, and it is as quiet as a full church hall during service. We head toward Court 16. It strikes me again, the irony of us being in Court 16 for the trial of a boy who was himself sixteen when he allegedly killed my sixteen-year-old son; stabbed and killed him dead.
We greet our solicitor, whom I know well now, Isabelle Rhodes, and our barrister, Jane Quigg, whom I have met only once before, in normal apparel, at her offices in Islington. She looks like a different person today, gowned and wigged like meâthough I hope my wig is considerably less obvious. We shake hands and exchange greetings. Quigg introduces us to the black man in his early thirties who stands to her side and slightly behind her, who is also gowned and white-wigged, supporting a mass of folders with one arm, holding the other out to shake mine. His name is Henry Taylor-Myles and he is to be Quigg's junior throughout this trial.
“I'm truly sorry for your loss,” he says, and he looks as though he sincerely means it. What a nice young man. His mother must be so proud.
“Thank you,” I say.
We settle on the benches with Quigg, who explains to us that nothing much will happen this morning. There are legal discussions that need to take place about admissions, submissions, and agreed facts. She estimates these will probably go on
for an hour or so after the jury selection has been completed. I am glad Lorna is here, my only sister, one year younger. She has been at my side throughout everything, attended every meeting, every hearing, the legal appointments. It was she who arranged Ryan's funeral really. I couldn't, and between me and Lloydie, I am the one coping best, so it goes without saying he played no part in it either. She has waded through the masses of paperwork and managed to get her head around it all when I simply could not. When we were younger, much younger, small girls, when our mother was on nights, I used to sing to her because she was even more afraid of the dark when it was just us two, and couldn't otherwise get to sleep. Then for a time, as adults, we became equals. Since Ryan, this stuff, our roles have become reversed. She watches over me and makes sure I am all right and that she keeps on top of everything. She is holding my hand. I realize I am squeezing hers, relax my grip. I have to ask the thing I want to know, and when I unintentionally interrupt Quigg, everyone allows it.
“Will he be there, from the start?”
No one asks who I mean.
Henry answers. So softly spoken. A gentle man. Lucky, lucky mum. “Yes, he will. He'll be behind a wall of glass where he can see and hear everything that's going on, and you'll be able to see him. Would you like to have a look at the courtroom while we're waiting? I'm sure it'll be okay.”