What Becomes (4 page)

‘Yes, well, you have said now.' It occurs to her that he'll be an appalling teenager. Quite possibly Ray was, too. ‘He's much smaller than you and you mustn't hit him –' They maybe had bad genes on both sides, then, her poor boys.

‘See!' Jimbo crowing this and grasping a piece of toast in his wounded, filthy hand.

‘And you, little man, mustn't annoy him until he hits you. Sam is your brother and you have to take care of each other.'

‘I hate him.'

‘No, you don't. Wash your hands.
Now
. Don't put that toast back on the plate. We don't want it. Come and sit down and join us, Sam. Jimbo, you do go and wash. I mean it. And both of you behave. Da will be very upset if the last thing he sees of you is two dirty boys who can't be at peace. Let's have a good morning. Before your mother starts to scream and doesn't stop and has to be taken away to the hospital for screaming people. Who would make your breakfasts then?'

Her sons showed no sign of having heard her and she wondered again which of her threats they would remember, which would be useful and which would scar. It never was easy to tell, she supposed, if your parenting was mostly beneficial, or bound to harm.

Ray, there was something in Ray which was nearly dangerous. She'd found him with Jimbo last night – the child with his hair curled and damp from the bath, clean pyjamas, the face she strokes without thinking, cups with her palm while she stands behind him and he leans his shoulders back on her knees and she finds the narrow jolts of his vertebrae, rubs them up and down for luck, reassurance, delight. (She does the same with Sam when he'll let her, has no favourite. They are her two boys. Inescapable. Irreplaceable. Inescapable.) His father was sitting beside him on the bed, Jimbo's chest rising and sagging with too hard, too uneven breaths, showing every sign of wanting to run up into a crying bout, a full-blown, wailing fit of it.

But Ray had blocked him, snapped him to a stop. ‘You wouldn't want to have no food, would you? Or no house? And none of your things. Juggy the bear over there . . .'

‘He's not a bear.' Jimbo using his smallest voice, the one to make you think he was still much younger.

‘Well, Juggy, anyway – there would have been no money to buy him if I didn't go off and work. Your mother doesn't earn any money, she just works here. So I give her money and she spends some of that on you and
I
spend money on you and . . .' He'd smiled as if he'd just worked out something important and complicated and now he could show it off. ‘Your brother and you are both very expensive.' Ray lifted Jimbo's chin with his finger so that he could concentrate on the boy's eyes: the soft, large target they made. ‘Would you want to be a homeless boy with nothing?'

Jimbo with no answer to this.

‘Would you want to be cold and hungry?'

Again there was no possible reply.

And she wanted to feel this kind of bullying might simply be what males did with each other – men with men, men with boys, boys among themselves. She aimed for the hope that it was natural, normal, a minor way of hardening the heart against later misfortunes.

‘That's why I go away, Jimbo. For you.'

Something in Jimbo, she could tell, decided then that his father left him, because of his needing toys and wanting to play with Juggy. Jimbo's hurt was delicately, irrevocably becoming Jimbo's fault while she watched: there it went, slipping, stealing in. Another year or so and he'd have noticed what Sam has already figured out – that love and pain are names for the same thing. Give one, mean the other. Get one, want the other. Mean one, get the other back for it. Want one, want the other, want both.

‘Don't tell them that.' She'd had to mention it in the evening. Although she was all for a quiet life – still, it wasn't right, to fortify the heart by killing it. ‘I said, don't tell them that – don't make it seem like their fault that you go away.'

‘Well, it's true.'

‘Then particularly don't say it to them.'

Ray looked out of the bedroom window, tilted his chin, opened his mouth just a touch and tapped his fingernail against his bottom teeth. This meant he wouldn't answer.

She changed direction. ‘What are you going to do about the wasps . . .' And that sounded like nagging, when she absolutely didn't want to nag – this their last night – last night together before he's off – the two of them making the memory he'll take with him. ‘I mean, they're still coming in. It's odd.'

‘Mm.' He rubbed hard at his hair, made it stay lifted, disordered, so that when his hand fell he seemed softer, seemed perfectly and precisely lovable. He turned to her. ‘I'm sorry – What?' His expression was polite. Yes, that was the word for it – polite. ‘Wasps . . .'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, I did check. You saw me. I checked. And there wasn't a nest, a colony, something like that. Not anywhere near. There was nothing.'

‘I wondered where they come from, that's all.'

‘They're getting in through a closed window – that's what I don't understand. All shut up tight, but still they get in at me. It shouldn't be possible.'

‘But it is.'

And this the point where it had happened again –
still they get in at me –
a safe conversation becoming unwieldy, changing its face. She'd tried not to consider if he thought this when he met the women, when he first saw in them whatever it was that he needed, wanted, and began the process, the arrangements, the exchanges he found necessary. Did he look at them and decide, was there hesitation, wonderment? –
still they get in at me.

Ray had grinned at her, winked. ‘Never mind the wasps, though. Let's say goodbye.'

‘Goodbye.' His right to make this mean hardly anything, or everything –
goodbyegoodbyegoodbye
– and her right to not know.

‘You know what I mean.'

When she does not.

His grin wider. ‘You do know.' It touches her, cold on her forehead and in her hair, lifting.

He'd extended his arms, very tender, easy, warm – the husband who wants to hug his wife and then take her to bed and croon damp words in her ear, small encouragements, as if she were an animal in need of guidance, maybe liable to shy away at the more demanding drops and slopes and jumps. ‘Come on, love. It'll all be okay.'

And she did step in, did almost tumble towards him – his long arms wrapping round her, friendly.

‘Hello.' Cheery, he'd sounded.

She hadn't answered, not being especially cheery herself.

Now she waited for him in the kitchen as the boys hacked at their food and took too much ketchup because they could tell when she wasn't paying enough attention to make them stop. In the garden, wind was clawing at the flowers, breaking things, the trees wild with it beyond the fence.

‘All right, then.' Behind her, Ray was standing, very neat. She shifted her chair round and saw the business suit – which she'd expected – and the coat – which wasn't entirely unanticipated, either. He was already wearing his coat. He never did like hanging around. Sam understood the situation as quickly as she did, shoving his chair back and rushing to hold his father's legs. Jimbo followed, but was more hesitant – as if he might have the power to carelessly make something worse.

‘You're not going yet.' Sam muffled, his face pressed hard to Ray's trench coat. ‘Too soon.'

She heard herself having to ask, ‘Yes, couldn't you eat something? With us?'

‘Sorry.' He took hold of his children's collars and began to tug them back and forth, play-fighting, casual strength in the thin forearms, wiry cunning. The boys squealed and he shook them more, going slightly too hard at it, the way that he usually did, until their faces were still pleased, but their eyes were very mildly afraid.

Ray shrugged at her. ‘Slept in. You should have woken me. I'll be racing all the way now.' He glanced down at Sam and Jimbo. ‘Racing . . . yes I will be . . .' His own eyes comfortable, ready to see other faces, other people.

She cannot tell him, because they have resolved this issue, ‘You should have let them be with you longer. You know how they'll get, once you've left. Actually, no, you don't – you're not here.'

She cannot suggest, because this would be picking a fight, ‘I do believe that you still love me and I would have thought that would be the most important thing, but in fact you no longer respect me and that is the worst, is the very worst. You love me, but I do not matter.'

She cannot say, because they have agreed this would be manipulative and inexcusable, ‘This doesn't work. You can't keep telling me about the women, because this doesn't work. You can't say that I'm happy with your money and the house and that it's easier for me this way and I get to stay with the children and everything is familiar and stable and fine and you'll always come home and you'll never stay, but you'll always come home, but you'll never stay and I am here doing many, many things for which I do not respect myself. And you want impossible things and I can't do them.'

She does say, ‘Well, if you have to go.' A draught from somewhere touches her face.

He nods, agreeing. ‘Come on, then.' Hustling the boys along with him up the passage and half turned so that he can see her, reassure, ‘I'll call you.' She stands, follows.

The door swipes open against him when he unlocks it, bangs Jimbo on his head so that he starts crying, howling. The hall full of weather.

‘No damage done, brave lad. Gotta go. Bye now.' Ray kisses Sam's forehead and reaches down for Jimbo, but the boy pulls away, runs to her and grabs her sweatshirt.

She has to fight her son's weight to reach the door, set a hand on Sam's shoulder, accept the brief squeeze of her arm that her husband leaves her.

Ray stands clear of them all on the path for a moment and waves, then spins, leans forward to the storm. It buffets him, live in his hair, punches his tie against his face, slaps under his coat and she watches him struggle and thinks this is how it should start – the timely intervention of some higher authority: the real force of everything: the rage. The coming rain should swing down like a blade while the storm takes him high and sets him right by shaking him apart.

She stands on the doorstep preparing herself. This is a way to be ready when he finally doesn't come back.

EDINBURGH

Peter's back was sore, maybe from lifting potatoes – not the big sacks, you prepared yourself for them and bent your knees the way you should, did what the Health and Safety poster told you. But there were little sacks, too – heritage varieties with comforting names and credentials from the Soil Association – and you'd take them in your stride, not thinking: two or three to either hand so you could fill up your display, and you'd be careless and you'd do yourself in. That's what always knackered you, lack of foresight.

Although today that wasn't fair, because the potatoes had done him no harm.

Peter dodged behind the counter and rang up three sharon fruit and a packet of energising tea for a man he vaguely recognised.

Doesn't even say ‘Hello' though, or ‘Good morning' or ‘Thanks for not shoving your thumb into one of my sharon fruit while I'm distracted by fishing out a ten-pound note.' Fat wallet and a very crisp tenner – as if someone's starched it for him – good haircut, nice jacket – not really a shopper: more like a man who is pissing about in a break away from work. The sharon fruit will rot in the bag and he'll never drink the tea, because he's not healthy at heart. Bet his wife buys the food and keeps house, irons all his money. His wife, or his girlfriend. Maybe both.

Peter gave his customer a plastic bag that wouldn't be recycled, because said customer was a cunt, the sort of cunt who's barely aware of you, because you do not matter and who does not say goodbye.

Cunt.

Really.

It's a harsh word, but the only one that fits.

At the back of his shop there was a cork board shaggy with leaflets that advertised books about Spirit Guides and retreats that would heal you with horses and every other sort of shite. Sell organic food and imitation bacon and suddenly folk thought you'd tolerate anything. Poorly looking lunatics would rush at you from miles around with news of whatever had saved them from themselves.

I haven't got an Inner Child, I'd have known it by now if I did. Likewise with the Spirit Animals – I am not playing host to some interior bloody zoo. And a Spinning Trance would not bring me insight and Reiki would not make me glad. Reiki – that's the one where someone thinks about touching you and you think about it too and then you presumably
both
have to keep thinking that all your thinking isn't an utter waste of time. It's like paying an electrician for thinking he might fix your lights.

A man with patchy hair loss and no shame had turned up yesterday with a poster about seeing angels. Peter did not wish to live in a world where tutors could help you learn how to see angels – not even during a weekend of supportive workshops engendering an atmosphere of loving fellowship and with a former Buddhist monk on hand.

I don't want to see angels. How fucking terrified would you be, if you ever did?

Not that he'd object to being healthy, not at all. He'd lost weight lately, for example – was looking scrawny, sparse. But that was to do with boredom, or mango fatigue, or something else – it certainly wasn't a sign of disease. He didn't really eat much, that was the problem. Trapped with fruit and vegetables for hours every working day, it wasn't fair to expect he should then go home and cook them, force them down. All of that peeling and cutting and fussing and boiling and chewing and swallowing, it was too much. So now he just bought this powdered stuff and drank it.