Home Fires (20 page)

As he walks towards the crest of the hill, he admonishes himself for being too harsh with her. He can understand why Caroline needs someone to be responsible for Max’s death, but he simply doesn’t believe that any one individual can answer that particular charge. Max died because he was in a war zone. Not only that, Andrew thinks, letting his breath unfurl against the sky, but he died because he chose to be in that war zone. He chose to join the army. He knew what he was getting into.

And yet, he can’t deny that Caroline has been getting better. Whatever he thinks of her obsessions, at least they have given her a reason to get up in the morning, a reason not to slouch around half-dressed and silent and unreachable. For that, he is grateful. He picks up pace again, hands clasped behind his back, head pushed forward in the direction of movement.

He walks up a steep stretch of hillside at a steady speed so that he does not feel the need to stop for a rest and start again. An experienced mountaineer had once told him this was the key to reaching the top: endurance rather than haste. The method worked, but he has to keep reminding himself not to sprint ahead; to have patience in the slow, almost geriatric steps he is taking.

Still, it gives him the chance to take in the view as he goes. He notices that almost all the leaves have been buffeted off the trees by the shrill wind and, when he looks up to gauge how many hours of daylight he has left, he is surprised to see the sky is veiled by a canopy of interwoven branches, like clasping fingers. Andrew has hardly paid any attention to the outside world over the last few months. It has all been internal: the careful mapping and charting of the tiniest change in grief’s gradient or contour.

As the ground begins to level out, there is a turn-off signposted to St Anne’s Well. A family of four, wearing brightly coloured waterproofs and matching climbing shoes, are consulting a map just where the pathway forks. Andrew keeps his head down, not wanting to be diverted, not wanting to have to acknowledge their presence, to nod his head and give an amiable ‘Hello’. Instead, he cuts through the trees to avoid the weekend crowds. He has done this walk hundreds of time before and he knows every dip and curve of the territory: he can loop past the Well, wend his way through this clump of trees and then rejoin the path further on when the tourists have thinned out.

For a few seconds, he experiences that simple gleam of satisfaction one gets when a minor, practical problem had been solved, but then his mind returns, as it always does, to Max. He remembers the last time he saw Max, when he had come down to Malvern for a couple of days’ leave before being sent to South Sudan. He had turned up late on the Friday night, blaming a delay on the motorway that meant his bus had been caught in traffic, and yet although the dinner was cold, although Caroline had been anxiously biting her nails for hours, although Andrew had tried repeatedly to call Max’s mobile without success, the sight of him on the front step, the familiar lopsided smile, shoulders hunched to get through the doorway, had made all of the nervous strain dissipate almost immediately.

‘Parents,’ he said, opening his arm wide in a deliberately grandiose gesture, letting his rucksack slip to the floor. ‘Great to see you.’ Caroline went straight to him, giving into his crushing hug.

‘Well, well well,’ said Andrew, not quite allowing himself to smile. ‘The prodigal son returns.’

Max laughed, then beckoned for his father to move closer. ‘Come on, Dad, there’s plenty of room in here.’

What was it about Max that meant all tension was defused with such ease? Why was it impossible ever to be cross with him?

They had stood there for several minutes, embracing, the three of them locked in place. It was Andrew who had broken it off first, patting Max on the back, embarrassed by how emotional he felt to see him.

‘Your supper is feeling rather sorry for itself?,?’ he said, lifting up Max’s bag and leading the way to the kitchen. ‘Still, it’ll be better than what you get on the base, I imagine.’

Max, his arm still around his mother, followed him down the hallway. ‘Anything that isn’t a pasta bake, a chicken fricassee or a beef stew will be fine with me,’ Max said. ‘I’ve become a man of simple tastes.’

He ate an enormous portion of shepherd’s pie and then went straight to bed, where he slept for thirteen hours straight until it was almost lunchtime the next day. Caroline and Andrew had spent the morning inventing pointless little tasks that would keep them in the house in case he emerged from his bedroom, both of them valiantly pretending not to be disappointed that they weren’t getting to spend more time with him. Andrew was better at the pretence than Caroline. He was acutely aware of the need not to put too much pressure on their only child, not to make him the unwilling recipient of all their neediness and expectation. But, by the time he woke up, there was not much they could do with the rest of the day apart from walk into town for tea.

They went to a hotel that Caroline particularly liked but which Andrew had always found a touch twee and stuffy. The best thing that could be said about it was the view, which stretched out beneath a long panoramic window at one end of the dining room: the twisting pathways of the town, lined with terraced houses along the green-brown slopes. The hotel had been built at the very edge of the valley, so that if you pressed your forehead against the window glass and looked down, you could imagine you were floating in space. This was something Max used to do as a child. He had never been scared.

On this particular day, they had taken the long route up to the hotel, tramping up a series of back roads that looped around the Malvern Priory before cutting through the graveyard. The ground was dotted with damp bits of confetti, pale pink and cream blotches stuck to the tarmac like multi-coloured pinheads pierced through a velvet cushion. One of the confetti pieces fixed itself to the edge of Andrew’s shoe and he was trying to shake it off without halting, so his attention was momentarily elsewhere when he noticed Max running away from the church towards the high street.

‘Max!’ Caroline called after him. ‘Wait!’

Andrew looked over. There were two men standing on the other side of the railings and one of them was gripping the other by his shirt collar. A blue car had been abandoned in the middle of the road, the door by the driver’s seat left open. One of the men – the one under attack – was wearing a grey suit and a loosened tie. He was trying to say something, but the other man kept shouting, his face red and sweaty and screwed up. At this distance, Andrew couldn’t make out what they were saying, beyond the occasional jarring snap of a swear word.

Max, running at full pelt, had almost reached the men. Caroline, lagging behind him, had stopped to recover her breath, bending over and resting her hands on her waist. As Andrew drew up alongside her, she pointed helplessly towards the unfolding scene. ‘Andrew,’ she panted. ‘Do something.’

He glanced towards the street. The suited man was shouting now, his voice loud enough that Andrew could hear him.

‘Get your hands off me,’ he was saying, but Andrew could tell, even from this distance, the pretence of his bravado. ‘I told you I didn’t see you.’

‘Yeah? That right, mate? You didn’t fucking see me when you pulled out like that in the middle of the fucking traffic?’

The red-faced man tightened his grip. He drew his right arm back behind his head and, swiftly, landed a punch square on the other man’s jaw. The man slumped and groaned. At just the moment that the attacker was going in for another, clenching his fist in readiness, Andrew saw Max climbing over the railings to get to the fight.

Andrew started to sprint. He could see, as he ran, that Max had placed himself between the two men, holding out his arms at full span to separate them. The red-faced man was trying to push forwards, his arms flailing. Andrew noticed Max’s lips moving but could not make out the words. By the time he got there, Max was saying ‘Cool it. The two of you. No need to fight.’

He had done something to his voice, Andrew noticed, so that it no longer sounded quite so well spoken. His accent had become rougher around the edges, the glottal stop more pronounced and yet what he was saying, the way he was saying it, seemed all at once infused with authority.

The red-faced man allowed his shoulders to slump. ‘This is none of your fucking business, mate,’ he said, but the power seemed to have gone out of him.

Max put his hand on the man’s arm. ‘Whatever you’re fighting about, it’s not worth a police record, is it?’

The man smirked, then disengaged himself. He shifted away from Max and walked back to his car. ‘Fucking pillock,’ he said, as he slid into the driving seat. He turned the key in the ignition and a thumping beat started up from the radio, drowning out the shriek of the engine. The blue car swung out into the road amidst a chorus of beeping horns, then sped up the high street.

‘All right?’ Max was saying to the man in the suit, who was touching his bruised jaw, his body slackened by shock. Max inspected the man’s face. ‘It doesn’t look like too much damage has been done, mate. But I’m sure it hurts like hell. Listen, is there anything we can do for you? Do you need us to call anyone or take you anywhere?’

The man shook his head. Then, after a pause, he said: ‘Thank you for . . . you know . . .’ His voice was slurred. Max grinned. ‘Don’t mention it. Guy was a nutter.’ The man nodded, then returned to his own car and drove off, the exhaust stuttering as he negotiated the steep hill start.

Andrew, unaware until this moment that he had been holding his breath, exhaled. He was still a few yards away from his son and he realised he had been standing there for several seconds, simply watching the drama unfold in front of him, unable to move or intervene. He walked towards Max now and called out his name.

‘Sorry, Dad,’ Max said, his shoulders relaxed as if nothing had happened. ‘We can go to tea now. No more hold-ups, I promise.’

‘Max,’ Andrew protested. ‘You could have been hurt.’ But he knew, as he said the words, that he was ashamed of himself, of his own weakness. It was Andrew’s natural inclination never to get involved in fights he did not understand. If he had passed two men in the street in the grip of a violent argument, Andrew would have stepped back and allowed someone else to sort it out. It was only now, watching his son, that he realised his own cowardice.

Caroline was running up behind them, arms folded across her chest to stop her cardigan from flapping open as she moved. ‘Max, sweetheart,’ she was saying, her breathing irregular.

‘It’s fine, Caroline,’ Andrew said. ‘He’s fine.’ But she went to Max and hugged him tightly to her. Max, reddening, did not put his arms around her. ‘Mum, honestly . . .’ He let his voice trail away. ‘Let’s go and eat some scones, shall we?’

‘What were you thinking?’ Caroline said, playfully slapping his chest. ‘God knows what could have happened. They’re not worth it, darling.’ She tried to regulate her voice so that it appeared light, breezy.

‘Come on,’ Andrew said, walking up and putting an arm around her, ‘Let’s get going.’ She kept looking at Max, her eyes shining. She did not move away from Andrew’s touch but she did not respond to it either. As they resumed their course towards the hotel, he saw that she had reached out to take her son’s hand but either Max didn’t see or he chose to ignore it.

After Max died, Andrew found that this incident kept rising in his mind, floating on the surface of his thoughts like pond-weed. Partly, it was because it had been the last time he had seen his son alive. But it was also that, looking back, Andrew realised it was then, seeing Max resolve the fight between those two men, that he finally understood what kind of a soldier he was. He had never previously realised that Max’s sense of injustice, of unfairness, was so sharply cultivated. But he saw, that day in the churchyard, that Max’s desire for right to prevail would override his own instinct towards self-preservation.

Was that recklessness or was it bravery? Andrew supposed it depended on the context. And, yes, there was also a touch of arrogance about it, of over-confidence: the idea that Max could step into a precarious situation and sort it out simply because he believed so strongly in himself, in his own honourable motivations. Was that a symptom of his youth? Would he have grown out of it if he’d had the chance?

All at once, Andrew is assailed by a desire to stop walking, to lie down on this patch of ground and go to sleep. He refuses to give into it and keeps moving forward, concentrating hard on the precise pattern of indentation left by his wellington boot sole on the mud. There is no point dwelling on those questions. What good would it possibly do to know the answers now?

The inside pocket of his Barbour vibrates and he fishes out his Blackberry, irritated that he had not remembered to switch it off. He thinks it will probably be a quote from the stonemasons for a memorial stone they have commissioned to be placed in the gardens of Max’s old school. It was Caroline’s idea but, like everything else these days, she had left it to Andrew to organise.

Yet when he looks at the screen, he sees it is not an email but a text he has received. The name flashes up immediately: Kate. Automatically, he feels a stirring in his chest without admitting to himself he knows the cause of it.

‘Hi Andrew,’ the message reads. ‘Thanks so much for a lovely drink last night. Next time, it’s on me.’ The message ends and he notices that there is a single, provocative kiss attached to the last sentence. He wonders briefly about replying and then, before he has time to change his mind, he erases the message and slips the Blackberry back into his pocket.