Falling For You (48 page)

I left Jack’s room by the same means which I entered it, closing the fire-door carefully behind me. I did not run. I walked out of there. My head was full of a clarity I have not known before, my whole body buzzing with a lightness, as if he had given me a blessing of some sort. I think maybe he had. It was as though, after all this time, Jack had given me permission to take up my life again. He had offered me some sort of truce, some sort of peace and I knew I wasn’t going to run anymore. But I still had one more thing to do before I earned it. One more thing.

As I arrived at Macrae Farm a few minutes ago, t
he key was still ensconced in its usual place behind the large flowerpot out front.  The burglar alarm was disarmed with the same code - my father’s first car registration. Nobody was in, my father’s jeep gone from the drive. Nobody here to greet me, the prodigal son returning at last, soaked to the bone because it had began to rain in earnest as I walked down here, frozen to my core. Hungry. Scared. Sad.

When I got in so easily I had a moment of hope back there that maybe my mother would be in the house after all and the men would be out. That I’d be able to see her for a few minutes alone, at least. Entering the hallway, I wanted to see her again. I wanted it so much it hurt but I got the picture pretty quickly that she wasn’t in.  Her coat wasn’t on the rack. Nobody’s was. The house was so quiet, so dark. Two of the older dogs had been left inside, off the chain. They sniffed around, curious for a bit, but then they slunk off. Dogs don’t bother me. They never have. So I stole up here like a thief in my own parent’s house, into my father’s room. The door has not been locked. He’s expecting no intrusion, no trouble, today. He’s not expecting me.

Walking in here now, into my father’s close and darkened study, it feels like walking back into yesterday. The black leather-topped desk, tidy and polished, still stands by the window. The photocopier and the fax machine still occupy the same corner. The curtains are the same heavy mustard-coloured drapes. He’s got the same ugly fake Georgian table-lamp sitting in the corner. The certificates and photos from Rob Macrae’s boxing days, signed and framed, are still hanging up there on the walls.

I see his father’s carriage clock has gone; he’s got one that doesn’t tick so loudly now. I go over and touch it, let the tips of my fingers run softly over its ornate lacquered top - not a speck of dust here anywhere - and then I catch my fingers back quickly, because everything in here is his, chosen by him, touched by him, placed here by his hand.

I do not want to have any part of it,
be
any part of it. I never have. I never will. I take in a gulp of breath now, had not realised that I had stopped breathing. My eyes dart back to the table-lamp in disgust.  He hit me with the metal end of that, once. The sight of it still there, when in my mind I have smashed it to pieces a thousand times, both enrages and upsets me. I look away quickly.

Nothing much has changed here, has it? There’s still that same fug in the air. The smell I associate with him; of his tobacco and his too-bright aftershave and all that thick furniture polish trying to cover up the smell he carries always on his fingers, the lingering taint of pig blood that ekes up from the slaughterhouse. The smell of it unearths memories that I have worked for years to bury; strips away all the years in which I have grown into a man, a decent man, doing a job that helps put people together, instead of tearing them apart.

I lean down now and pull open his under-desk drawer. It jams a little. Maybe he doesn’t use this one so much anymore. The gun is still in there. He really is a creature of habit.  I take it out and examine it, feel the weight of it in my hand. It’s a Colt 1908. The tiny picture of the dancing horse on the side always fascinated me as a child. I used to think it must be intended for shooting horses but we never had any of those on our farm. I’ve seen my father point this gun at his lackeys on more than one occasion, though. He used to terrify the life out of them.
A man’s fear is like a curse on him
, he used to say.
It’s the easiest way to control ‘em. Make him scared enough and a grown man will cry and beg like a baby, even the hardest of them.
I know he enjoyed that. I wonder if he’d enjoy it so much if he ever saw this thing pointing towards his own snout?

I tuck the colt into the waistband of my jeans, hidden under my top. If it comes to it, I intend to be prepared.

I am so focused in on the task that the buzz of my mobile phone going off all of a sudden feels like a drill-saw cutting into the space around me. Who the heck is it?

Who the hell is that now?
And what can they have to say that could possibly matter? I think; he was always on about installing CCTV in every room, wasn’t he, my dad? He could have been in the house all along, watching me from some hidden vantage-point. The thoughts that start coming in now, they’re all crazy, paranoid thoughts, but for the moment, my heart is pounding so hard I can’t think of any other explanation, nothing else will come in at all, just that he’s found me. He knows I’m here.
He knows
...

I wipe the thin band of sweat forming across my forehead with the back of my hand. Then I pick up.

 ‘Yes?’  

 ‘Hello, son.’

Son?
I don’t answer for a good few seconds. All I can think is;
my father’s got hold of my mobile number somehow. This is some kind of game on his part. He won’t just come in and face me; he needs me to be scared...  

‘Lawrence?’ the voice comes again, and this time I know who it is. Dougie
.
Ah, God. The kindness I always hear in his voice does something to me inside; it opens me up a chink, reminds me of the person I am when I’m away from here. But I can’t afford to be that person right now. Not now, when I need to be strong. Not here.  ‘Everything okay, son?’  It is not okay. I swallow.

‘Sure.’

‘You’re at home, right now?’ He’s imagining me in some cosy domestic scene, I can picture it in the nostalgia in his voice. A bead of sweat trickles down from my forehead and onto my cheek. It itches like a mosquito walking across my skin and I want to swat it off. I want to stop this panicky sweating. I want to get back in control of my breathing again.

‘Yeah.’ I say at last. ‘… I’m at home.’  

I look around me, taking in my father’s old favourite picture of himself with a broken and bloodied nose the day he won his biggest fight. The last time I sat in here I was just a young lad and yet, ironically, I felt so much more up to the challenge of facing him, then. I used to come in and sit on his chair on occasion, whenever he was out. I used to let myself pretend. Let myself think about what it was that needed to be done.  How the day must surely come when I would be big enough and strong enough to square up to him. How the time would come when I no longer felt afraid at the thought of doing that.  And when I did... it would stop the fear I woke up with every morning, that each day might be my last; that he might, on a whim, decide to finish all three of us. Because none of us mattered to him, I knew that, we were only there to serve him.   Back then, my mind was beautifully clear. Now it is not. Back then, I thought that I would one day know how I might win this game. Now I know I cannot.

‘I’m at home,’ I say again, and I hear my old boss clear his throat. He was expecting to make a breakthrough today, he said. He’s going to tell me now that Herr Lober has come through for him and I need to fax those documents through, stat. Only I can’t fax any documents through. I have no sponsor. My mother isn’t here. I’ve been through the house, and by the looks of it, she’s been gone a few days. There are no signs of her presence anywhere.  No Christmas flowers in the dining room. No tree up. No special food in the fridge. I don’t know where she is but - she’s not here.

‘Lawrence,’ I can hear Dougie’s outbreath, the relief in him, all those hundreds of miles away. ‘Listen up lad. I’ve a confession to make.’

‘Yes?’  I almost want to laugh out loud when he says that.
He has a confession
?   

‘When I told you to go home… that I’d be able to send Sunny on through after you - you knew that was only ever a real long shot, right?’

‘What’s happened, Doug?’ I feel my heart sinking now; sinking into a long, cold bath which is freezing the heart out of me. ‘You were expecting good news today. You told me that earlier.’

‘I am going to be honest with you.’ Pause. ‘There was never any real chance that Sunny could get on that Aid Abroad flight…’

‘
What
?’ I push my hands through my hair, pacing the room now, my heart going faster. I can hear it, beating in my chest. ‘
Why
? And - in that case - why
did you send me back here?’  He’s lying, he’s got to be. I don’t know why. But he’s lying…

‘I sent you back because I thought I’d rather sell you a false promise than see a caring, talented guy like you flung pointlessly into a jail cell for a few years. I wanted you back home, Lawrence. I wanted you out of Jaffna. Convincing you we could save that boy was the only way I could persuade you to leave
.
’

I stare at the phone for a minute. Wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. ‘There was never any chance?’ I say it, and I know it’s true. This time he isn’t lying to me. ‘All that talk of Herr Lober…?’

‘Oh, it was true we applied to him, but there were so many protocols that needed following,
l
ad. If Sunny had been the heir apparent himself it’d have been a job to get him on that flight
.
’  

‘So … what’s happening to him?’

‘To Sunny?’ He gathers himself. ‘They needed to release his hospital bed yesterday. More urgent cases were coming in every day. It was decided he’d have to take his chances back in the camp.’

 ‘Pretty damn poor chances, Dougie.’ My voice is laced with disappointment. ‘You know full well what’ll happen to him out there.’

‘I know,’ he says faintly. He’s practically squirming with discomfort, at the deceit he’s laid on me. I’m so let down and disappointed with him I feel like hanging up right now. Except the fact is, I’ve been leading him up the garden path, too. There was precious little chance of me ever getting to my mother in time, persuading her…

‘I know what the implications were for Sunny. Once he was turfed out of hospital, the chances that sooner or later he’d be back, needing an amputation were almost a certainty. Up till this afternoon there was nothing I could do about it, except now …’ he breathes
.
‘
A
miracle has happened.’

A miracle. I close my eyes and press my thumb into my eye socket. What miracle? He’s grown another foot?

‘One of his relatives has come in for him. She spotted his photo hanging up on the fence, apparently. She didn’t recognise him from the lists we compile because they’d used the wrong surname for him. But she’s definitely a relative. We’ve had confirmation of it this afternoon
;
she’s his older sister, Lawrence.
‘His
sister
…?’

‘Arjuna said if you hadn’t paid for the fliers of Sunny then she’d never have known, could never have come forward
.
’

‘I didn’t pay for any fliers
.
’ I get out.