Crustaceans (9 page)

SIXTEEN

I didn't follow Ruth down to London from college, not straight away. She said she needed a rest from me. She couldn't say for how long – perhaps a few weeks, maybe till Christmas. She would settle into her course, find lodgings, her bearings; and then we would talk. I didn't much mind. Relieved it wasn't the end, I returned to my grandmother's, to the familiar blankness of childhood, and slept again beneath my mother's framed photo, my name on a plaque on the door. Under the bed was my shoebox of snapshots. My school blazer still hung in the wardrobe, the same few pots remained on the window-ledge, but there was little to show for my time as a student – some more photos, my smoking, the graduation scroll that arrived in the post. I had upper second class honours. I took a job in a petrol station, six evenings a week.

Only my grandmother had altered. Tall and thin in my memory, brisk and perpetually busy, she walked now with a stoop, shuffling when she was tired, her legs thickly swollen. The central heating churned for much of the day, the air in the house was stifling, but still she complained of the cold and felt draughts in every room. She rarely went out. A neighbour did much of her shopping; a small man in a cap tended her garden, appeared and left without speaking; and on Tuesdays a woman called Mimi arrived with some magazines, always too busy, it seemed, to take off her coat, though she stayed for an hour and talked without pausing. There were few other visitors: my grandmother said she found them a nuisance. Loosening the ties on her apron, she sat for long periods with her eyes closed – not resting, she told me, but waiting. Her life had gone on for too long and she'd be glad when it ended. I supposed she was missing my grandfather, and eventually I asked her, but she shook her head and denied it, with a force that surprised me. And I hope I shan't be joining him either, she said. Forty-eight years was enough; we were never happy together. I didn't realise, I said. Good, she replied. Then wearily, settling back in her armchair: Good, I'm pleased. You weren't meant to.

But however tired she seemed, my grandmother insisted on doing for me all the things that she'd once done for him; she wouldn't allow me to help her. Breakfast was laid before I woke up, dinner prepared for twelve thirty. We ate together at the kitchen table – the oilcloth faded almost to white – and didn't talk much. My clothes were washed and ironed for Monday and my room smelled always of polish, fresh linen. In the mornings we read our newspapers; in the afternoons we sometimes looked at the television. When I wanted to smoke I went out to the garage.

My grandfather, too, had smoked roll-ups, the same brand as Ruth. I was seventeen when he'd died. He had collapsed in the garage – his workshop – a large wooden shed at the end of the garden. By then he no longer drove; his heart was too bad. The car was tented beneath a tarpaulin, its tyres almost flat. Bits of old bicycle hung from the rafters and walls. Dozens of tobacco tins were labelled for cotter pins, Allen keys, different-sized nails and screws. The tools on his workbench were pitted with rust, the windows too grimy to see through. My grandmother had found him one evening slumped over his vice – he was assembling a bike from spare parts. He used to make them for friends, to give to their grandchildren. He used to make bird-tables, too. There were still several stacked up outside.

At first I thought I might use the shed to make pots, and I cleared some space, then bought a bag of school stoneware from a craft-shop in town, but I took it no further. Instead I lifted one side of the tarpaulin and sat in the car, as I had done when I was small. It smelled of leather and oil, increasingly of ash, and sitting there at the wheel, smoking one cigarette after another, the mileage unchanging, I wrote long letters to Ruth. I couldn't phone her – she said that I mustn't; the calls came through to her landlady's kitchen – but often during the day I would find myself talking to her, whispering under my breath. In my letters I described these conversations in detail, and the gist of my dreams. I kept a tally of my errors at work, daily expecting the sack, and listed my grandmother's sayings and habits, and repeated Mimi's latest news, and reported each visit I made to my father's. I tried to make the letters amusing, I added cartoons, and of course I had no idea how boring Ruth found them, how few she read to the end. Her replies were less frequent, and much shorter.

Then in October, one Sunday, my aunt Jeannie and Peter came over to see us. They sat side by side on the sofa, drinking tea from my grandmother's best china, and talked in raised voices – about the weather, their journey, our distant relations – whilst I listened, content to say nothing, from my grandfather's chair in the corner. My aunt, perfumed and buxom, glanced round at me often. Once she smiled and patted the arm-rest beside her. I stayed where I was. It was Peter's half-term – he was deputy head in a grammar school – and they were driving on later to visit some friends: a former colleague, he said, turning towards me, and his wife. I nodded. The wife was interesting, a teacher of physics but a painter as well. She'd exhibited locally. That's good, I said. Peter thought it a shame that the arts and sciences were usually such strangers, though of course the best science was creative, and many of the arts were grounded in science – ceramics for instance, as I would know. Yes, I said. Aunt Jeannie was watching me. Abruptly she got to her feet. Are these new, Paul? she said, and opened my grandmother's display case.

No, I said, frowning; you've seen them before. Solid-bottomed, as heavy as bricks, there were bits of my pottery all over the house – a few on every window-sill, a dozen or so on the floor of the porch, these two shelves here in the cabinet. At school I had built by hand – laboriously and diligently – crude imitations of the jugs and vases I'd found pictured in books or displayed on the walls of the art room, and which later I would learn to throw in a matter of minutes, though even at college I'd continued to produce little more than imitations, doggedly repeating myself, refining the same few forms to exhaustion, unable to move on until I was told to. And always I had to be told, usually by Ruth. My tutors had seemed to approve of me; technique, for them, was everything.

My aunt removed a cider jar from the cabinet and made a show of its weight, sinking her knees, then replaced it as carefully as a glass figurine. She turned the key in the lock and wiped her hands on her skirt. Well? she asked brightly. Well what? I said. Did you make anything at college, Paul? she said. I bit my lip. I left them behind, I said. She waited. They wouldn't fit in my rucksack, I added. But still she made no response, and finally I said she could look at the photos, though they weren't very interesting. All science and no art, I told Peter. Just go and fetch them, said Jeannie, and reluctantly I climbed the stairs to my bedroom. I opened a window and sat for a while on my bed, smoking a cigarette. I used one of my old pots as an ashtray.

But they're lovely, my aunt told me; aren't they, Peter? Yes, he agreed; very professional. I leant back on the wall and folded my arms. There were snapshots too of my flat, and my tutors, the other students on my course, and any number of Ruth. Jeannie examined these just as intently, and lingered for some time with the last. It had been taken the previous summer. There were freckles on the bridge of Ruth's nose. Jeannie said, She's a nice-looking girl, Paul; and I nodded. Mum? she said; don't you think so? My grandmother's breathing had changed – I thought she was drowsing – but now she opened her eyes and held out an arm. Jeannie passed her the photos. My grandmother set them down in her lap and clasped her hands over them. For some time she said nothing. Peter cleared his throat and suggested he might wait in the car, and I sensed then what was coming. It was time I moved on. I've asked Jeannie to speak to you, my grandmother said.

Later I walked with my aunt to the car. A grey mizzle hung over the street and we paused at the gate. She repeated all she had said, and hoped I wasn't upset. It wasn't that my grandmother didn't want me; and of course I wasn't a burden. But I had my whole life before me. This wasn't where I should be, not any more. Then squeezing my wrist she kissed me, a smell of tea on her breath, her cheeks and neck flushed, and quietly said, You'll think about it anyway? And I said that I would. I watched the car pull away. I turned and walked back to the house. My grandmother hadn't moved from her chair. Her hands were still clasped in her lap, my photos beneath them. Well, Paul, she said, not looking up; I am sorry. That's okay, I said. I was letting the draught in. I'll wash the cups, shall I? No, she told me; I'll do that. Okay, I said, and closed the door quietly between us.

I took my tobacco out to the garage. I tried talking to Ruth, tried composing a letter, but the words were all wrong; I couldn't picture her face, couldn't find the right tone. Instead I looked through my grandfather's drawers and cupboards, the boot of his car, under the seats. But there was nothing to find – nothing I hadn't already seen – and restless, I took down a bike-frame and sized a couple of wheels. I put them together and pumped up the tyres. I cycled out to the end of the street, as far as the shops, and then on past the tower blocks, my school and the graveyard. I had no purpose in mind, and continued along the main road to the old town and the cobbled streets that led to my father's. His door, I knew, wouldn't be locked. The house remained much as it was – inside the same shadows and spaces; familiar objects, furniture, noises – but it wasn't my place, and I knocked rather than let myself in. If he didn't answer, I'd turn and go back – the bike, I'd decided, could do with more work; it had no brakes or mudguards or lights, and only one gear. His footsteps slowly descended the stairs. When he opened the door he nodded, and coughed into his hand, and as I pushed the bike past him he said, One of your grandad's, Paul? Sort of, I answered, and went through to the kitchen. There was a smell of coffee and woodsmoke, clothes drying on the rack by the fire. I sat down at the table and listened for movement upstairs, but the house seemed to be empty.

My father was on a year's sabbatical then, officially a year, though he doubted he'd return to the college. His name, he felt sure, was enough now to sustain him; already most of his work was done to commission; and he'd anyway grown tired of the students, their concepts and notions, pretensions. They had no feel for materials; they had too much to say. He didn't know about Ruth, or her course, the installations and videos she was making. Like my habit of smoking, she was something I kept to myself, kept from him – as he rarely referred to my mother, or the fact that I'd chosen to live with my grandmother. Until that afternoon I'd never once heard him mention my grandad.

He searched the shelves for some cigarettes – there were packets all over the house – and carefully I said, You didn't like him that much, did you? My father gave a short laugh. Mickey? he said. No, Paul, not a lot. He took a light from the cooker and leant back on the worktop. He rubbed at his nose, his stubble, and gazed along the hall to my bike. Still, he said then, I expect your gran'll be missing him; they were together a long while. Not really, I answered; I don't think she liked him much either. No, my father exhaled, tapping his ash on the floor. Your grandad was a bit of a cunt, Paul; he wasn't a very nice man. I felt myself blushing and looked down at the table. I found my name etched into the wood, and I scratched at the varnish, the lines too deep to erase. Then quietly I said, And you weren't, I suppose? My father coughed. He spat in the sink. A cunt? he said. Oh, me too, he agreed; me too. I stared at him. To Mum? I said; or to me? He shrugged and breathed deeply, folded his arms on his chest. Both, he conceded at last; I wasn't much good, I know that. He turned his face to the window – my mother's trellis still there in the yard – and I wondered then if he was waiting, if finally he was ready to answer my questions, whatever I wanted to ask him. But that time, I realised, had gone now. There was nothing more I wanted to know – nothing else I wished to hear from him – and glancing up to the clock I said, I'd better be going, Dad; before it gets dark. My father showed no surprise. He coughed again and stubbed out his cigarette. Okay, Paul, he said; if you're sure. But there's dinner; I could drop you off in the van? I shook my head and pushed back my chair. At the steps to the hall I hesitated. I might be moving to London, I told him. My father looked at me steadily. That's good, Paul, he said, and I nodded, couldn't think what else to say. As I wheeled my bike to the door he drew another cigarette from his packet. He gave a brief wave from the kitchen, and didn't follow me out.

In the evening I dialled Ruth's number. It was her landlady who answered – elderly, Irish, impatient – and said she would fetch her, then shouted her name. Ruth's surprise became silence, a crackle on the line. You still there? I said. Yes, she replied; I'm here. I sat down at the foot of the stairs. How are you? I asked. Fine, she said; okay, I suppose. She took a long breath. What is it, Paul? she said. I stared into the living room, the glass-fronted display case. Upstairs my grandmother was snoring. Nothing really, I said; I just wanted to talk. There's nothing much happening here. My voice was shaking. Ruth didn't speak. I was thinking I might come down, I said; move down, I mean. I see, Ruth said. Is that alright? I asked her. Mm, she said. I pressed the receiver close to my ear. She'd be leaning into a wall, one hand would be cradling her elbow. I tried to imagine her smiling. Ruth? I asked. Sorry, she said; it's a bit awkward right now. To come down? I said. She paused. No, she said; not that. I waited. So how's the course going? I asked. I'll write, Ruth replied; in the morning. Alright, I said. I was shivering. If you're sure. I'd like that; it'd be good. And take care, I said. But the line was already dead.

A few days later a package arrived, a set of three keys on a cord of brown leather. They're keys, said the card. You don't have to take them, not if you don't want to, but I'd like you to have them … And then her name, nothing more.