Sorry Isn’t Good Enough, page 31
‘What?’
I’m terrified now.
‘She got up.’
‘What?’
‘She sort of stirred and sat up. I thought she was dead. It made no sense. But she got to her feet – really wobbly, she was. Then she took a pace or two. She nearly slipped again, and she came back to shove on her shoes. She didn’t buckle them up. Or maybe they were already buckled. I don’t know, but she started to walk. She walked down by the side of the stream, and then she sort of slipped in and walked down it. All the time she was swaying. I thought she’d fall. And then she was out of sight.’
‘Where did she go?’ My knee is wobbling up and down.
‘Well, I started to follow her. I came out of hiding and watched her climb out of the stream, then, I don’t know, she went up that grassy slope towards the ruined garden … She stood at the top with her arms out, looking down at me, half-naked. I swear she said, “Come and get me”.’
I could see Dawn doing that. That’s just the sort of thing she would do, even in her dazed state.
‘But then she just disappeared. Literally. One minute she was there and then … I mean, she just vanished before my eyes. So, I climbed to the top of the bank after her, and I saw this hole in the ground. It wasn’t very big. I mean, I had no idea it was a well. I called down the hole, but there was nothing. And then I got scared. I didn’t want anyone to see me there, in case they thought I’d pushed her in. And if she was found with no clothes on … I mean … I was scared.’
He puts his hands over his face for a while. ‘You were nine,’ I say. I put my hand on his shoulder. He places a hand on it, as if to keep it there.
‘She was all over the place – like she was drunk or something. But I swear there was blood on her arm. I just thought, you know … I didn’t want to be accused of anything. For years I wondered if she could have been rescued – if I’d gone for help. I thought I’d left her there to die.’
‘I could’ve gone for help earlier,’ I say gently. ‘But she couldn’t have been saved after she fell. She was eighty feet down in nine feet of water.’
‘But I didn’t know that then … I was afraid. I was a bit afraid of her, to be honest. She was always a bit of a loose cannon. Oh, God, Stephanie. It’s haunted me all these years. I’ve never told anyone what I saw. I was such a coward! I just ran home.’
‘You were a child,’ I say.
Chapter Seventy
A Letter
He walks back to my house with me, and I offer him a lift back to his. He has come miles out of his way to catch me. His home is on the other side of town.
‘Can I see you again?’ he asks, before getting out of the car. ‘I mean, we don’t have to talk about the past and stuff. Well – the good bits.’
‘The good bits.’
‘Yeah. We used to have fun. I always liked it best when you were playing with us. You were inventive. Good company.’
‘Good company? Me?’
‘Yes, you, Townsend.’ He grins. ‘Tomorrow? Come round tomorrow and I’ll cook you dinner. And you can meet Gemma.’
‘Oh, I don’t think—’
‘Come on, she’d love to meet you. And she goes to bed at seven. We can talk some more. I think we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I’d really like to talk this through.’
‘But what about …?’ I nod towards his front door, which has been opened by an attractive young woman with dark hair, and she seems to be hovering there.
‘Oh. Oh, Sally, she won’t be there. I said I’d be home an hour ago, so she’s probably a bit hacked off. Will you come? Say, six thirty?’
Tomorrow is Saturday. Why not?
‘I’d love to.’
We exchange telephone numbers, and I drive home, churned up and exhausted.
I keep humming a Joni Mitchell song. I know why this is. My subconscious is so transparent. I’ve looked at Mr Man from both sides now. Actually, I’ve looked at him from all the angles I can think of, and I can’t bring myself to see our friendship as an illusion.
Of course, I can’t bear to think that he might have harboured sexual feelings for me or Dawn, but I really don’t believe he had any bad intentions. I don’t like to think of the panting that time at the Dingle, but maybe I exaggerated it for Dawn. Probably it was his asthma. Maybe I imagined it. Or maybe it happened, and it meant everything she wanted it to mean. I don’t like to think about that.
What I do know about Mr Man is this: for one whole spring and summer, he made me feel good about myself. He made me feel that I wasn’t a freak. He shared his synaesthesia with me, and smell memories and William Blake and birdsong and foxes and deer and belladonna and bluebells. He had a small speech impediment, ironed his own clothes, kept an untidy house and loved his dog. And this gentle man had his windows smashed, his walls daubed and all the flowers in his window box strewn down the street. On the face of it we were an unlikely pairing, but we were two lonely people. We recognised each other. And whatever people thought, for four glorious months of 1966 we saw each other, we made each other matter.
What a day this has been, I think, as I put my key in the door. But it’s not over yet.
There’s a sheaf of letters from this morning’s post on the mat. I take it through to the kitchen, plonk it on the table, fill a mug with tap water and glug it down. I go upstairs to change into some comfortable old dungarees, then I prepare a quick meal and lie back in front of the television with the bowl on my lap. I scan the post: a pamphlet about reclining chairs; a thin news-sheet from the local council – housing plans and public toilet facilities in the shopping arcade; an envelope about offers on roller blinds (it might come in handy to read if I’m desperate later); and I open a telephone bill and an invitation to have my oven cleaned. There is one brown envelope left, and when I turn it over and see the address on the front, I’m seized with shock. It’s Matt’s handwriting. This ridiculously plain brown envelope is a letter from Australia.
I stare at the envelope, laid out before me like saffron or caviar or white truffles. I breathe deeply. I’ll eat my food and save it for later. I take a mouthful or two of my avocado salad, without taking my eyes off the envelope. I watch it, as if it might get up and walk away. I’m saving it. I breathe. I chew. I open it. It is two sheets of lined A4 paper written on both sides in his loopy scrawl, and decorated in the margins with biro illustrations:
2nd May 1997
Hi Mum,
Yes, a letter from me. Don’t fall off your chair. I thought I’d write to you because some things are easier to write.
Oh, God! They’re getting married! She’s pregnant!
Well, to cut a long story short, I’ve split up with Alex. Actually, Alex split up with me, for someone else. And actually, I’m devastated. I’m writing to you because I was thinking of coming home. I’d like to come home.
I don’t mean I’m coming back to live with you (no offence) – I mean back to Blighty. I was thinking I might apply to uni. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.
I feel I’ve got all this adventuring stuff mostly out of my system now. It’s been a great year, and I keep reminding myself of that, and in some ways the split may be for the best. It’s made me ask myself what I’d really like to do, if I don’t have to align myself with someone else’s needs. And what I’d really like to do is something like Uncle Jon, you know, a design engineer or something. I’ve asked him a bit about it on the phone, and he says he’ll fill me in on some stuff when I get back.
Anyway, here’s the thing. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know how, but Alex is a man. You just kept referring to ‘her’, so it seemed easier to let you carry on. But he’s a man, and I’m gay. Telling you over the phone didn’t seem as easy as I thought it would be, and I’m sorry, but I just kept chickening out. I was afraid you’d tell me it was just a phase or something. The thing is, Mum, it isn’t.
I think I’ve known since I was really young. I’ve been out with a couple of girls, and honestly, I felt NOTHING. And that wouldn’t matter, it shouldn’t stand in the way of friendship, except that it did, because the nothing I felt was so strong it kind of acted like a barrier to anything – humour, companionship, all the other things you can have going on if it’s not The One.
Oh, darling boy! I don’t mind if you’re gay. I hope you’ve been careful about AIDS, though. But I don’t mind who you partner up with. There will never be any children, of course, and you’ve always loved children. But then, if Alex is your first experience, you never know …
Alex wasn’t my first, by the way. Just my first really meaningful relationship with a man. Although now it feels like it wasn’t really meaningful at all. Even so, you know what I mean. It was different. I can’t stay here and bump into him all over the place in Sydney with his new man. I’m not going to do that to myself.
Mum, do you mind? Do you mind if I stay with you for a bit before I get a job and a flat-share or something? I know I’m not in a position to call the shots here, but you would have to promise not to try and convert me or lament the prospect of no grandchildren or warn me about AIDS or set me up with a gay man you know or get me counselling.
I know this probably seems cowardly, writing to you, but the thing is, this will give you time to digest it all, and decide if you’re okay with it, and me coming back, and not trying to talk me out of it (not that I think you will or anything, just if you did, I’d feel such a disappointment to you, and I want you to be proud of me). What you think matters to me more than anything.
Anyhow, that’s me done. That’s me news. Hey-ho.
Ring me one evening (from 7 p.m. here is okay). I’m in most evenings now.
Love you, Mum.
Matt XXX
P.S.
Actually, I won’t mind if you set me up with a really fit guy. Just so you know.
He’s coming home! He loves me! Matt! My little Matty!
My heart is all over the place, skipping beats, adding beats, whatever it’s doing, it’s not steady. I’m dizzy with excitement. What sort of mother have I been that he was afraid to tell me? It reminds me of when Katie died and he didn’t want to upset me any more, so he didn’t tell me he’d grazed the whole side of his hip and ribs in a fall. He was pushed. He was bullied a lot when he was young. Now that makes more sense. Or maybe the whole Katie thing changed him. He always wanted a sister so much. Maybe he thought I was disappointed that he wasn’t a girl after she died? That he wasn’t enough? Stop it, I tell myself. He’s gay because he’s gay. I should have picked it up, but I didn’t. It makes sense now. I can see how it all fits into place.
I read the letter again, seeing how difficult it has been for him in every line, spotting my own terrible inadequacies and presumptions as a mother. I need to clear away some more baggage, but I’ll keep trying. I finish my food, the fork trembling in my hand. Then I read it again. What you think matters to me more than anything.
Matthew!
I have a surprise for you, too. You wait until you see your old room. You won’t recognise it.
I delight in you.
Chapter Seventy-One
Unravelled
Gareth’s house is ordinary-looking. A semi-detached with a front garden that needs some tending. There are some pretty, fragrant roses around the door, but they clearly haven’t been pruned for a few years, and the row of standing pots along the paths are full of weeds and clumps of dried grass.
When he answers the door with smiling eyes, I step into a hallway smelling of delicious food.
‘Something smells yummy,’ I say, handing him a bottle and a bunch of sweet peas from my garden. He takes them from me and puts them in a jam jar, like the ones Mr Spruce used to have on his desk, and fills it with water.
‘Must be your flowers! By the way,’ he says, ‘I forgot to ask you – is there anything you don’t eat?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I eat anything.’
‘Of course you do.’ He holds my eye for a while. He’s analysing me again, I know. A pleaser, he is thinking. ‘I’d like to say I’m experimenting, but this is a safe favourite. Chicken Bourguignon. Or “Chicken Boggy None”, as Gemma calls it.’
‘Chicken Boggy None!’ comes an excited voice from the kitchen doorway. There, standing in a little red all-in-one pyjama suit, is a small girl with a big grin and a mass of brown curls, not unlike Katie’s head of hair when she was … I catch my breath.
‘Well, hello!’ I manage. I crouch down next to her. ‘I like these pussycats on your pyjamas.’
She bows her head to look at them too, and to point out her favourite. Then her second favourite. Then her third.
‘Are you the special guest tonight, Gemma?’
She nods happily.
‘The special sleeping guest,’ says Gareth, putting some pepper into his pot on the stove. ‘This is my friend Stephanie, Gemma. And you’re supposed to be in bed.’
‘I want a stooo-ry.’
‘Well, you go up to bed, and I’ll come up in a minute.’
Suddenly, without warning, she takes my hand and leans her cheek against it. ‘I want Seffany to read me.’ She smiles up at me, and I look over at Gareth, hoping he can see my desperation. I can’t do this. Surely he can read my angst, but he doesn’t. He continues to stir his casserole dish, smiling, and says, ‘I think Stephanie likes to read to little girls who are already in bed.’
Gemma does an excited little run on the spot. Then she lets go of my hand and rushes to clamber up the stairs.
Gareth turns to face me and smiles. I smile back, to show him my appreciation of his charming daughter. ‘I assume her mum has curly hair?’
‘She does.’
‘Was that her, yesterday?’
‘No. Sarah has her two days every fortnight – when she can. That was Sally, the childminder.’ I must look confused, because he adds, ‘Sarah left me for another man, and he’s not keen on fathering, and she’s very career-driven, very successful, and if I’m honest, I was the one who pushed for children. So …’
‘How old was she?’
‘Thirty-seven.’
‘No, I mean Gemma – when you split up.’
‘Oh, she was only about eighteen months when her mum left. She’s three now.’
I feel the blood drain from me, and I sink down on a chair.
‘Yes, it was terrible. Gemma didn’t understand, but she missed her so badly, because she didn’t see her for about three months – she was in New York. She sees her every couple of weeks now, of course, but she still latches onto women who are kind to her.’ Oh, no you don’t, Gareth Hooper. Don’t think I’m going to slip in here and replace your wife. I have no wish to be anybody’s wife. I’m quite, quite happy on my own, thank you very much. And I would be a hopeless mother to a little girl, if that’s what you’re thinking. Hopeless. I wouldn’t have a clue how to even keep her safe. ‘I have to be careful. I don’t normally bring any women back. Except Sally, of course, the childminder.’
I remember the young woman at the door. I see now why she was desperate to go: because Gareth was late home and she was running late.
‘So maybe it’s not such a good idea if I read to her.’ I don’t think I can do it. The little girl not much younger than my daughter was when I lost her.
‘She’ll love it.’ He sees my hesitation now. ‘Please.’
He must know. He must have guessed. Perhaps he’s forgotten my ‘two’ children.
‘I had a little girl,’ I find myself blurting out. He comes to sit next to me at the kitchen table. ‘She was four. I’m sorry – I can’t do it. I’m sorry.’
‘No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have … you hinted that there had been another child. It was insensitive of me. I’m so sorry, Stephanie.’ He strokes my hand so gently that I want to hold him. I want him to hold me. I can feel the lid of my grief pushing open an inch or two, and I don’t know if I want it to fling open completely or go back into its box. I’m straddling the possibilities. I’m afraid of what else might come out. He’ll work deftly on the knots like he used to with the old washing line, and unravel me. He must stop stroking my hand. ‘Look,’ he says gently, ‘I’ll pop up and read to her. I won’t be long.’
As he gets up from the table, I feel bereaved. ‘No, don’t go.’ He looks back at me, and I get up from my chair. ‘I’ll go. It’ll be good for me. I’ll go.’
Gemma is sitting up in bed, whispering something to her fluffy penguin. She informs me that Dudley wants the one about the fish and the mermaid. It’s called Haddock, and is about a haddock who falls in love with a mermaid, but has to compete with a fisherman for her affections. I do the voices of the sad haddock, and the lusty fisherman, and the fisherman’s bullying wife. I really get into my stride, and begin to like it. Gemma falls about laughing. I’m enjoying myself.
When it’s over, she asks me to read her another.
‘Daddy said just one, didn’t he?’ I ask, weakening already.
‘Please!’
‘Well, just one more, then. A short one.’
She hands me a book about a naughty cat, and I read it with the same enthusiasm, giving the main cat a cockney accent, and another one a Cornish accent. She giggles and giggles until she’s out of breath, and has to take in great gulps of air to stabilise herself. I can’t quite believe that I have done this. It’s been so easy. I close the book and say goodnight, and she holds her arms up to me.
It takes me just a moment to realise that she wants a cuddle, so I bend down and hug her. She squeezes me tight, seeming reluctant to let go. It’s a good feeling. Then, without thinking, I kiss her on the forehead.
‘Night night, poppet,’ I say.
‘What’s “poppet”?’
I have to think. ‘A poppet is actually a little doll, but it’s what you call someone you care for very much. Like your penguin. It’s like saying “sweetheart”.’
She smiles, pleased.
‘Snuggle?’ she says. She wants it to be more of an instruction than a question, but there is an unmistakable note of pleading. I recognise it, hesitate, but I want nothing more than to lie down next to her for a bit, like I used to with Katie, like I did with Matthew before her.
