Black Chalk (28 page)

‘Hmm, hmm.'

Her fingers worked on.

‘He didn't want to see me,' I said.

She started on my shoulder blades, and my head swam with pleasure. James was a distant presence.

‘Why do you think that is?' she said.

James sprang back to the forefront of my mind: I'd bloody abandoned him for eight years, and now what, I wanted it to be just like before? Please…

‘You are tense,' she said. ‘You see, it's good we're doing this now.'

I couldn't say anything. Start on James and it'd lead somewhere, everywhere. And there was Amanda to consider.

‘What are you thinking?' she asked.

‘Nothing.' I could feel her waiting; she could wait and wait, always kindly, lovingly. ‘It doesn't have to be big,' I let out. ‘Even a small thing is enough sometimes, to drift apart.'

‘Yeah.' She sounded thoughtful. ‘What do you think that was?'

I shrugged, lifting her hands with my shoulders.

‘Take a guess.'

The initial bout of pleasure was gone. Now, I was all resolve.

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘What do you think?'

She rested her chin on my collar-bone, and I could feel her voice gathering, vibrations spreading with her thoughts. She leaned back and her hands went back to massaging me.

‘I think he wants to see you. You know him, he's not good at talking, but inside he's got so much heart.'

Her fingers were soothing. They were working up and down my spine, threading and pinching, up to my neck, brushing my hair.

‘What do you think I should do?' I asked her.

She answered straightaway, and I could hear how happy my question had made her.

‘Let's invite him for lunch. I'll call Brian. He'll cover for me. Can we? Please?'

***

Darkened by the sun, I couldn't make out his face. All I could see was a shape, somewhat like my own, on the other side of the doorsill. We'd never hugged when we were little, but that's what loving brothers were meant to do. That, or like the French, a kiss on both cheeks.

‘Hello!' I smiled and extended my arm. I could barely reach him.

‘Nate, thanks.' He came closer, and my hand had something to latch on to. An elbow, and then, for I wasn't a politician, it hovered in the air. He glanced at it and, as if it were the last thing standing between him and upstairs, he shook it with three damp fingers. ‘Where's Leona?' he said.

‘Upstairs, come. Close the door behind you.'

Leona was wiping her hands with a tea towel as I walked in, giving them a final rub on her apron as James followed. She saw him, and she was on tiptoes, smiling, already laughing, her arms outstretched. For a minute, there was their London chatter, a host of questions gone unanswered, until she took a step back, and looked around to see where I was. She'd forgotten me.

She looped her arm in mine.

‘I'm almost done. Just finishing the salad. You two talk. You must have so much to say to each other. Give me five minutes and I'll be with you.'

In the indoor light, I could see him better. He stood in my kitchen, one bent knee poking through a hole in his faded jeans, Zola's ‘
J'accuse
' printed all over a blue t-shirt. Except for his eyes, he looked just like my father. Like me too, I guessed. But there was something foreign in the blurred outline around them, in the lazy way he looked around.

‘Nice place,' he said. ‘Your stuff?'

I shook my head:

‘It came furnished.'

‘Leona,' he called, ‘did you help him decorate?'

She turned around and grinned at him.

‘No, no, it was all here, except for your grandma's paintings.'

He chuckled.

‘Give me five minutes and I'll be with you,' she said. ‘I'm not good with knives.'

She turned around, and it was once again just the two of us.

‘So you're in town just for the day?' I asked.

‘Yeah.'

‘Oh, how come?'

‘I had to pick up some stuff.'

He looked around the room as if he were casting for something more interesting.

‘Have you seen Mum and Dad?' I asked.

‘No.'

‘Are you going to see them?'

‘Mum said she has a lecture until three.' He spoke slowly, with plenty of careless pauses. ‘If I'm still here, I might say hello.'

He pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

‘Do you mind if I smoke here?' he asked me.

‘Well, I don't mind, but it's not my place, you see…'

He looked at me, smoke rising to the ceiling.

‘It might leave a smell,' I said. He looked at me still. Leona was chopping cucumbers, her back to us. ‘It'd be better if you went outside.'

‘Fair enough,' he said, and he left the flat, a trail of smoke following him.

When he closed the door, I felt the same burst of anger I used to feel when he'd pretend he'd nicked the ball onto his legs, and that he therefore wasn't out. I turned towards Leona like I'd turned towards my mother, wanting her to be both witness and jury. She looked so cheerful that I ignored her sympathy:

‘Oh, come on, I'm trying,' I said.

‘You are, I didn't say anything.'

‘It's not like he's making it easy.'

‘He's shy around you.'

‘Forgiveness and all that, does that mean I'm meant to have him smoke up the place?' I asked.

She left her chopping board and shuffled towards me until she was close enough that I couldn't take in both her eyes and her mouth at once.

‘Try to talk to him. Go see him outside now.'

‘You saw him,' I said. ‘He's not going to say anything to me.'

‘Talk first then. Tell him things.'

I yanked my head back. My body followed and I could see the whole of her:

‘Like what? I haven't seen you for eight years, sorry, but now I think we ought to act like nothing happened.'

‘Don't make fun!' she said, hurt.

‘I'm not.'

She stepped closer – there was the bedroom wall to my back – and her nose was brushing my lips.

‘Don't think, just open up.'

‘Open up,' I repeated with a mocking smile. The irony of it! Open up…

‘Yes, open up first. You'll see. Come on, go and see him.' She ushered me towards the door. ‘When you come back, lunch will be ready.'

Open up. It was the first time she put it into words and it cut straight to the heart of my worries: immediately, I understood that it was what she wanted from me, and that it was what Amanda and common sense forbade me.

James was on the street, looking decidedly dodgy, as if the years he'd spent making Oxford his own had rubbed away with London and his drugs. I thought of Leona's Russian philosopher, and I tried to clear my mind, to embrace forgiveness.

‘Leona's almost finished,' I told him. ‘She told me to keep you company for a few minutes. She likes being alone in the kitchen, you know?'

He took another puff of his cigarette. Another minute, and it'd be finished.

‘She's special, Leona,' I said. ‘Always trying to help everyone, don't you think?'

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘She came to most of our gigs.' He trailed off, and looked at a car driving past.

I sensed an opening:

‘Are you still in a band?'

He turned to me and shook his head.

‘Oh, actually, I am in one,' he corrected. ‘But I haven't seen the guys for a couple of months.'

‘What are you called?' I said.

‘Gabriel's Drones, I think. That or Suffolk Stoneheads. Can't remember what we agreed on.'

I laughed but he didn't seem to find it funny. He studied the cigarette butt in his fingers, twisting it this way and that, before he flicked it towards a gutter. We went upstairs. I didn't speak much after that. Leona managed the conversation well enough: a laugh, a serious look, even an admonishment, James accepted them all. I did the dishes.

When he left us, she gave me her understanding look. It was almost appreciative, certainly condescending.

‘For fuck's sake!' I said. ‘It's not my fault!'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Spare me the rubbish about taking him in my heart!'

Her eyes went moist, and my anger was gone.

‘Don't…' I put my hand out but she didn't take it. My fingers hung in the air for a second. Then I blotted the tears off her cheeks.

‘It's just…' she sobbed, and I hugged her. ‘It's just that you could… Sometimes… just a little… open up.'

‘For fuck's sake…'

‘Sorry,' she said. ‘Not often, but sometimes I want to …' she hesitated, ‘… know more.'

‘I'm a quiet bloke,' I said.

‘I know.'

***

One morning at her parents' house, after I'd spent three hours trying to go back to sleep, I got up quietly and found Amanda busy in the kitchen. When she saw me, she pulled out a fruit salad she'd already made me.

‘I found you some raspberries this morning. I hope you like raspberries.' Her proud smile waned as she searched my face. ‘You look tired, Nate. That mattress is too small for the two of you. I need to speak to David. Leona needs a double bed now.'

While she spoke, I made myself a pot of coffee, and thought of how I could get her talking.

‘That'd be nice,' I answered. With a deep breath, I decided to ask her outright: ‘What you were telling me the other day, you know, about Leona not liking to talk about Jeffrey, don't you think that's changed now? That was a long time ago.'

She frowned and clasped her hands together.

‘Nate, that was a very hard time for us. Jeffrey… well, you knew him. He was my son. My only son, and there's not a day I don't think of him…' She brought her hands to her heart, and blinked hard. ‘But everyone grieves their own way, don't they?'

She studied me and her expression became all kindness.

‘Oh, Nate, it's not hurting you, is it? But we have to respect everyone, don't we? And Leona, she's put the whole episode behind her. That's how she dealt with it, and look at her, isn't she a beautiful girl? So we have to help her, don't we?' She shook her head as if she were coming out of a daze, and smiled in her no-nonsense way. ‘You know what you need? Vitamins. I'll make you some fresh juice. You like beetroot?'

***

There were two women in my life, and I could only keep them away from each other for so long. If it had to happen, I wanted it to be over lunch. It would be more manageable that way: my father would be at work, my mother would only have an hour to spare. And something could always come up: a last-minute appointment, an emergency phone call.

A waft of cookies came from the High Street side of the Covered Market. I waited for Leona in the same aisle in which I'd first asked her out, by the café's sign, in its flaking reds and blues. An old man was bundling tulips in the flower shop. When she came out, folding her apron into her bag, she smiled too – that broad smile that grew until I could see nothing else.

I spoke, I laughed, she smiled. Smiled as we talked, smiled as we rode our bikes, past Exeter and Jesus, and Balliol and St John's, and all the other saints that crowded around the Banbury Road, past the renovated neo-gothic façades and the 1960s concrete blocks they'd tried to conceal behind them. We were in front of the house, and I hadn't found a way to put the lunch off.

Too late: my mother had come out to greet us. I noticed make-up around her eyes for the first time since I'd come back. Leona extended a hand.

‘You don't remember me, do you?' my mother said. ‘I guess you were only small. You came once or twice with your mother to pick your brother up.'

‘She doesn't have the best of memories,' I said.

‘No, I remember,' Leona said.

As we walked in, Leona wandered down the corridor, her eyes on the family pictures above my grandmother's cabinet. With a sign, I took my mother aside.

‘Don't mention Jeffrey…'

I laid a hand on the wool of her brown jumper: my palm, my fingers seemed too large, too strong for her shoulders.

‘Oh, of course,' she said. When I let go of her, she added softly: ‘That must be hard for you.'

I winced and turned away.

Lunch was already on the kitchen table: a salad bowl full of greens, a closed pot letting out a hint of steam, poppy seeds lining the bread basket, all neatly arranged in the middle of three place settings.

‘So this is where you grew up?' Leona asked me.

‘No,' I said, embarrassed.

‘Oh,' she said.

My mother gave me a sharp glance.

‘In Hornsbury, Leona,' she said. ‘You know that.'

‘Ah, yes, of course.' Leona's brow aimed at the cupboards above the kitchen counters or at the crown moulding, I couldn't be sure. She pivoted on the balls of her feet and took the whole of the room in. ‘Mrs Dillingham?'

‘Liz, please, dear.'

‘Liz, can I help with anything?'

‘Thank you, dear, but it's all ready. Here, sit, sit. Let's eat while it's still hot.'

My mother took the seat at the head of the table, and gestured Leona to her left. With a serving spoon, she reached into the pot until we were all served, each with a slice of bread resting against our split-peas mash. Leona held her fork in hand, with a merry, hopeful expression, waiting for my mother, mirroring her movements. Their forks swooped, gathered and rose an instant from each other.

‘Nate tells me you're at university,' my mother said to Leona. ‘What are you studying?'

‘French. I just finished my first year.'

‘She's very good,' I hastened to add.

My mother glanced at me, a fleeting acknowledgement, and then turned her green eyes towards Leona.

‘Do you like it?'

Leona's cheeks creased with the smile she was keeping back. ‘I absolutely love it,' she said, and she gave way to her happiness.