The Undertow (41 page)

He’d like to have something of her in the house. He’d like to have
one of her pictures. Even a tiny sketch. He could get it framed. One of those inked life studies. A fat, wrinkled nude. Carole might even like it, so long as it didn’t clash with anything.

He’s never mentioned it to Billie, but her work sometimes reminds him of Blake. Her pen-and-ink stuff does. She’d love Blake’s work, he thinks. This is something they could have in common.

“I’ll put them in the attic,” Will says. “Till we get the chance.”

IT’S BRIGHT INSIDE
the café, loud with conversation and the hiss of the espresso machine. The room is shabby and ramshackle, paperedover plywood and mismatched chairs. She sips her tea, which is getting cold. She glances at her watch. She’ll give it three more minutes and then she’s leaving.

Outside, the crowds thin for a moment and she catches sight again of the butcher’s stall across the way. Three deer and half a dozen hares hang by their back legs, tendons stretched as if running at full tilt. Their heads have been cut off; white plastic bags have been tied round the stumps to catch the dripping blood. It keeps catching her eye: the row of carcasses, the translucent whiteness of the butchers’ bags, the blood darkening and stretching them with its weight. That’s what’s obscene about it, she thinks. Not the bloodshed, but those bags.

She’s wasting her time, really. Dad phoned last night; he can’t make it this time, has to pick up Carole’s parents in Reading. She’d wanted to say, actually, Dad, I do mind. But instead, she’d been nice, been accommodating, and now she’s here, waiting for Matty, and Matty’s late, and he probably won’t turn up at all, not without Dad to drag him along, and it’s for the best, really, because if she does find something to say to him he’ll only answer in grunts and refuse to make eye contact.

She digs her fist into the small of her back. Double shift at the bookshop: Christmas rush. Her feet throb in her boots. And her arms are sore too, the muscles rigid from lugging books: ferrying deliveries out of the stock room, shunting stacks of paperbacks into display bins and onto tables, slipping purchases into black plastic bags. She should just give up on this. Go back to Mum’s, have a bath, try and ease some of the aches out of her body. She watches her second hand tick round.
He’ll be coming down from home; if she dodges out the other side of the market, chances are she’ll miss him. Put the parcels in the post.

She lifts her cup to drain it.

Over the thick ceramic edge, she notices him. He stands at the counter profiled, sifting through the change in his palm. Matty. With his curls all cut off. He looks so different.

She chinks the teacup down into the saucer.

He speaks to the stout woman behind the counter, and she smiles and nods, arranges things on his tray: the little metal teapot, strainer, milk jug. Billie watches as he turns towards the room and scans it, looking for her. When he spots her, his expression shifts into a grin of recognition. It’s unexpected and sweet. He nudges past a pair of teenage girls, all nail polish and hair, who stop talking and watch him as he passes. He’s got that knack, it seems, like his dad, of making women interested, though he doesn’t seem to have noticed it yet.

He’s at her table now, and sets down the tray.

“Hey,” he says.

Last time she saw him he was a surly thirteen-year-old. Six months on and he’s smiling, looking her right in the eye.

“Hey.”

“Sorry it’s just me.”

“That’s all right.”

She pushes the seat opposite out for him with a foot, watches as he drops his bag in under the table, sits down, then shuffles the bag around so that it lies between his feet. He straightens up and sits back in his chair. His jaw has strengthened and squared off: his face has planes and angles now. She watches his hand, the broad back of it, as it lifts the teapot lid, picks up a spoon, stirs his tea. She can’t get used to him.

“I like this place,” he says.

“I’ve always liked it too. It’s got a kind of cobbled-together feel.”

“Like little kids playing at cafés.”

“Like an allotment shed.”

He stabs his teaspoon into the crusted sugar bowl. It makes a sound like snow. He shovels two, three spoonfuls of sugar into his tea, stirs. She wants to say, You’ll rot your teeth, but stops herself in time. He sets his spoon down in the saucer. Even these tiny moves are confident, poised: he’s hit his stride, somehow.

“How is he then?” she says, after a moment.

“Dad? You know. Working hard. Spends a lot of time up at College.”

Will’s in one of those phases then, when you lose track of him for months. It must have been hard on her mum, Billie realises, because she’d never really know. Could be work, could be women; she’d only find out afterwards.

“And your mum? How is she?”

He tucks his lips in, shakes his head. “Mental.”

“You’ve got a houseful for Christmas, then?”

“She loves it really. But she always does her nut.”

This is fine, Billie thinks. This is actually really nice. If there hadn’t been all those years between them, if there hadn’t been all that mess, perhaps it would always have been like this.

“Hang on a tick.”

She ducks down and lifts up the silvery gift bag from where she’d stowed it underneath the table. She passes it across the tabletop.

Matty peers into the gift bag. “You get me a CD?”

“Dad said you were into your tunes now, so I …”

He fishes out the silver-wrapped square, looks up. “Can I open it?”

“Go on then.”

He rips off the paper. It’s a Gram Parsons album.
Grievous Angel
. He turns the CD round to look at the back, frowns at the tiny print.

“I took a punt,” she says. “You can always change it, if you want.”

He shakes his head, still reading.

“I mean, you’d be mad to. There are songs on there, the duets with Emmylou Harris, they’re just amazing. ‘Hickory Wind.’ God, that song’ll haunt you.”

He glances up, grins. “You’re a total muso. I didn’t know that.”

She smiles. Shrugs. “Well, there you go.”

She watches Matty as he opens the case and scuffs out the cover-notes. She drinks her tea. The noise of the café is dense and white. He’s completely absorbed in his reading. She feels a new tenderness for him: his unfurrowed forehead, the clear lines of his features, the silky fuzz of his hair over an eggshell skull. She feels a flush of warmth for the little boy he was, now that he’s leaving it behind.

“Thanks,” he says, after a while.

“No problem. Seriously. You tell me if you like it and I’ll have a think about other stuff you might get into.”

“Thanks, sis.” He lifts his bag back onto his lap and goes to stash the album away. She smiles.

And then, for no reason in particular, she asks, “What’s with the hair?”

“Eh?”

“You’ve gone all, you know, minimalist.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He rubs at his shorn skull. “It’s been a while now. I don’t notice it really any more. It’s for cadets.”

“Cadets?”

“Officer cadets.”

“You mean like scouts?”

“More like junior army.”

“Woah. And what does Dad make of that?”

He drinks, sets down his cup, pinches the wet away from his lips. “He hates it.”

She laughs.

“What?”

“I dunno. I used to just let him catch me smoking.”

“I’m not doing it to piss him off.”

“Why, then?”

“I’m serious. I’m joining up. When I’m old enough.”

“What? The army?”

He nods.

All the laughter’s gone. “God.”

The clink of china, the hiss of the espresso machine, the blur of voices. A woman at the next table is talking about perfume. Billie wants to say, you can’t do this. This isn’t fair. Not now. Don’t turn out lovely and then go and join the army.

“I was banking on you,” he says. Clears his throat.

“What?”

“I thought you’d understand. You must know what it’s like.”

“I have no idea.”

“But it’s the same thing. Your painting, it’s the same as this. It’s what you have to do with your life.”

She sits back, baffled. Is this how he sees her? She’s never even considered it till now. All these years, locked up in her own preoccupations. How distant has she seemed, how disconnected?

“Art’s your thing,” he says. “This is mine.”

“Matty,” she says. And then, “Matty, it’s not the same thing at all.”

“I want it, though, the same way you want yours.” He gives her a small smile.

“The worst I’m going to get is a paper cut.”

“It happens. I know. People get hurt. I’m not stupid. But I’m not going into the infantry. I’m thinking engineers, maybe gunners. And it’s not like there’s even a war on.”

But there will be. Give it time and there will be. There always is. She remembers what he is too young to remember: the grey southern islands and the men in fatigues going up the hill, and the men on stretchers coming back down, and her mum getting up to change the channel, and her dad saying,
No, leave it on, she should see this
. She doubts he was even aware of the wars of his lifetime. When Yugoslavia exploded into flame he was still a kid. And his parents would have kept it from him, the way Granddad had suffered, the way he’d carried the war around with him for a lifetime. Not just his sunny stories, his medals in a box. At the end, the truth of it had come leaching back. Those nightmares. All the darkness. All the things he’d left out, never said.

“It matters to you then,” she says. “That much?”

Matty nods, solemn. Matty is fourteen years old, and therefore still immortal. And there’s no arguing with that.

“Okay, then,” she says. “Do you want me to, I don’t know, talk to them—to Dad, I mean, sometime?”

He smiles. A big smile that makes his face brighten. “I was hoping you’d say that. Thanks.” Then he remembers: “Oh, yeah. Right.” He reaches into his bag, drags a giftwrapped parcel out and heaves it up onto the tabletop. “This is for you.”

It’s a book. She can tell by the weight and shape of it that it’s one of the recently published art books she’s been selling in bucketloads in the run-up to Christmas. It’s wrapped in plain red wrapping paper. It’s been nicely done by whoever was on that day at the Oxford branch.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Dad usually says that it’s from both of us,” Matty says. “But that’s just because I’m usually so crap. It’s just from him.”

“Don’t worry about it, Matty. I don’t expect anything.”

“Well, anyway.” He scrambles out a roughly bundled package. “Here.”

It’s last year’s paper, creased and white where the print is worn away. It’s clearly a mug.

“Mum broke one of them,” he says. “So I thought you should have this.”

He’s waiting for her to open it. But she knows already, by the heft
of the package, what’s inside. She covers her mouth. Not sad. And not because of the thing itself. Simply, that he understands. He knows the weight of this.

“Thank you.”

“You haven’t opened it.”

“Okay.” She peels off the Sellotape, unfurls the paper. Glossy brown aeroplanes skim across a cream sky. She nods, can’t speak.

“Is that okay?”

“Yes. Thank you. That’s—thank you.”

“No worries.” He grins, then shunts his chair back, makes to stand up.

“Are we off?” she’s wrong-footed. Overwhelmed.

“I said I’d meet up with Josh and Sam.”

“Okay,” Billie says. “Well.” She clears her throat.

She slips the aeroplane mug into her bag, slides out from behind the table. She wants to say, Come down to London sometime soon, come and stay at the flat: Norah will make a pet of you. She wants to ask if their dad taught him to ride a bike. She wants to say sorry for not being ready for him all these years. She wants to tell him that when their father had put him in her arms, a raw and purblind baby, she’d been too furious to love him. Her world had peeled apart, fallen away, because of him. And that now she’s not furious, not any more. She wants to tell him that she loves him, and that she’s terrified.

For a moment he’s just standing there, waiting as she gathers up her things. He’s so young, and, for that moment, sublimely unselfconscious, with his big coat hanging loose around him, his hands in his pockets, half a smile. She opens her arms. Without a thought he steps in closer, leans against her, and wraps his arms around her, bumping his bag against her back. They’re almost of a height. He gives her a bit of a squeeze. Then he lets her go. She manages not to say how much he’s grown.

“You got to head on straightaway?” he asks.

“No,” she says, and brushes her hair back from her face. “No rush.”

He gives her a sideways, cheeky look. “Do me a favour then?”

“Of course, yes. Whatever you need.”

“Come down the offie with me; buy me some beers?”

“
THE OLD CROWD
and the hangers-on. Ciaran’s bringing this girl Petra, and Norah’s still seeing Daniel, and then Luke of course.”

“Sounds nice.”

“We’re cooking dinner at ours, then the fireworks—that whole river-of-fire thing, then Luke and I are going on to his friends’ party.”

“Petra. Wasn’t that one of the Blue Peter dogs?”

“Dunno. Maybe.” Billie watches her mum’s hands as she lifts a Brussels sprout, slices off its base, peels the ragged outer leaves from off the shiny inner globe. “She’s posh, though. So. That kind of thing’s okay if you’re posh. He met her on an assignment.”

Petra: the girl in an oyster-coloured gown, who did some modelling for pocket money; who’d taken his camera off him and fired off some shots and, when she handed it back, asked for his phone number. Billie wishes that she had that kind of nerve.

Billie shifts on her seat. “He just looks kind of stunned.”

“Well, you know, maybe she’s stunning.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. I’ve just never seen it before.”

The window is filmed with condensation. The oven glows and hums. The kitchen is warm and close and tiny, so that Billie perches in the doorway, on the solitary kitchen stool, at a slight forward tilt: its back legs sit on the carpet in the dining area.