I Do Not Sleep (21 page)

Had I really blamed Adam for Joey’s accident?

When our safe environment imploded and I lost my son, had I somehow, illogically, thought it was my husband’s fault? I didn’t think so. I stood up restlessly and began to walk up and down the beach. I thought back to that hideous day at the start of the Easter holidays when I had screamed in our Manchester garden as Ben told me what had happened. I tried to remember what I did next, the sequence of events. But everything was scrambled, a chaotic mess. Adam must have come home, and he must have called Danny, but all I really remember of that night were flashes of the journey down to the West Country, blurs of blackness on the motorway when I dozed off (Adam had got our family GP to come round and give me sleeping pills and tranquillisers before we left). When we arrived at Joey’s cottage, Ben was waiting for us. I remembered his white face, his trembling hands, but not what he said. Adam put me to bed, heavily dosed with pills. The next day, the next weeks, were hazy, without definition. I remembered vaguely talking to the police, the harbourmaster, and Ben. But I couldn’t recall the conversations, just as I had no memory of my mysterious walks along the cliff path to the island every day. But Adam must have known, surely? Why didn’t he stop me, or come with me? Why did he just let me wander round the coast on my own? What had we said to each other during those tortured days?

Adam failed to materialise on the beach, and eventually I got a taxi back to Polperro. I was miserable, and thought of calling Josie. Then I felt I couldn’t talk to her about Adam. I didn’t know her well enough. In fact there were no girlfriends I could discuss such an intimate problem with. My sanity for the past five years had depended on keeping my distance, on pretending everything was fine, including my marriage. If I told anyone we hadn’t had sex for five years, what would they say? They would know our marriage was a charade; that it had broken down. They would have breached my defences.

I sat on the porch for most of the afternoon, trying to read one of the piles of novels I’d brought with me from Coombe, but I couldn’t really concentrate. I drank tea at first, but soon succumbed to white wine; trying to numb myself, avoid the impact of Adam’s devastating accusation. People wandered past the house, up and down, heading into the village or going the other way, towards Talland beach. They smiled and waved, their dogs barked happily and their children yelled and screeched with laughter. I dutifully waved back, trying to find pleasure in these charming little families enjoying their summer break, but I felt glum and distant.

Later, I watched television with complete lack of interest. Impulsively I decided to walk to the Blue Peter. I wouldn’t know anyone there, except perhaps Queenie, and I wasn’t in the mood for conversation about Charmers, Looe Island or Joey. But Queenie could be a very entertaining gossip and I could certainly do with a laugh. I needed company, noise and laughter, and all the Blue Peter regulars were friendly. I would repress my normal shyness and try to have a good time.

Daylight was fading as I walked past the harbour, the bright colours of the fishing boats darkening into a uniform grey. But their prow lights were on, joining the moonlight reflected in the pewter waves, creating nautical jolliness even in the gathering gloom.

I pushed the pub door open; the place was thronged with fishermen and, of course, summer visitors, thrilled to be included in a genuinely nautical crowd. They liked local colour, the holidaymakers – who could blame them? The Blue Peter and its regulars provided as attractive an atmosphere as Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, while being totally, authentically, Cornish. Admittedly there were no animatronic sailors chasing local maidens and brandishing brimming jugs of ale while bellowing about the joys of a pirate’s life. But the laughter was real and raucous, and I stepped inside with a lighter step.

I saw Queenie straightaway, talking nineteen to the dozen as she served drinks with astonishing speed. I waved and she saw me, beckoning me to the bar, which was heaving as always. By the time I’d pushed my way through, she’d already made me a gin and tonic and she pointed towards a tiny corner table. The chairs had been grabbed by a couple of flushed young men, but just behind the table was a narrow window seat. I squeezed myself into it, and, after I’d people-watched for a while, Queenie, with extreme difficulty, managed to squash her round body next to mine.

‘I’m really glad you’re here,’ she said without preamble. ‘I was going to call you as soon as I got a break. Len’s in hospital.’

I stared at her. ‘Why?’ I asked with deep foreboding.

‘Pneumonia,’ said Queenie crisply. ‘I knew he shouldn’t have walked through that terrible storm to get to Hope’s place.’

I gawped at her. ‘What do you mean? You invited him.’

Queenie tried to shift her squashed body, and shook her head. ‘Well, I didn’t want to, not on a night like that. I knew he’d get drenched, and he’s an old man, you know. But when he heard you were there, he insisted I should arrange something.’

‘How ill is Len? And where is he?’

‘He’s in Derriford. They took him in an ambulance couple of hours ago. He gave the ward sister my telephone number and she called me.’ She looked shifty. ‘He’d told her about being caught in the storm and she was very cross. Said I ought to know better than to let a man as old as Len get wet through. I told her, I said, ‘Don’t you blame me, Sister. He was going to see a friend and he said it was urgent. I was merely acting as the go-between.’

Queenie took a sip of her wine. ‘He’s ninety-two,’ she continued. ‘Pneumonia’s about the worst thing an old man like him can get. Sister said he’s very weak right now, but not critical yet.’

I drained my gin and tonic and stood up. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and see him first thing tomorrow morning. Thanks for the drink, Queenie. I must get back.’

‘I’ll come with you in the morning, shall I?’ she said eagerly. ‘We can share a taxi.’

‘I don’t think so. Not tomorrow. He needs to talk to me. I should see him alone.’

And I left; Queenie looked crestfallen. When I reached the old blue door, I found my way blocked by a group of men in their forties, all pretty drunk. ‘Hello, love,’ slurred one beefy-looking bloke in a striped faux-matelot sweatshirt. ‘Fancy a drink?’

‘No thanks, I’ve just had one. I’m leaving,’ I said, trying to push my way past him.

‘Don’t leave, love, a pretty lady like you, all on your own. I’m on my own too, bloody wife’s left me.’ As he said that, his mates drunkenly cheered. The matelot leered at me. ‘Where’s your hubby, darling? Has he left you all alone? Shame. Come and have a drink with me and let’s talk about our shit spouses.’

The other drunks cheered again. I drew myself up, pushed through them and escaped down the steep stone steps. I walked quickly past the harbour, turning round to make sure I wasn’t being followed. The sozzled group of beery fools stood on the rocky stairs, still cheering my departure, one of them starting to sing.

‘When you walk, through the storm…’

They harmonised, heads close together, locked in devoted brotherly love.

At the end of the line came a befuddled crooning. Clearly the impromptu choir had forgotten the rest of the lyrics. They all had their arms around each other now, nodding their heads, triumphant when they finally got to the bit they all remembered, the bit everyone remembers. Suddenly, after a mish-mash of mumbling, they all looked up. Together, they raised their drooping heads, looked at the sky as if they were in church and roared with sentimental fervour:

‘YOU’LL NE-VER WALK, AAH-AAHLONE.’

I walked home slowly, thinking about men, thinking about Adam. And about Danny and Joey. How much had I really understood my sons? What did I know about their private lives, their deepest worries? If I’d had daughters, perhaps I would have automatically shared their emotions, their anxieties. But my boys were not like women. I loved them both to distraction, but their DNA made them incomprehensible to me. And Adam? Oh, Adam.

The Blue Peter and its melancholy drunks faded away into the hushed harbour; the sounds of life ever more noiseless as I slipped along the quiet lanes to Hope. Once back at the cottage, I went straight to bed. I would visit Len tomorrow, and face whatever it was he had to tell me. It had been a difficult day. I hoped I could sleep.

I did, for a while.

And then I remembered why Adam thought I was punishing him. It came like a bolt of thunder. I was dreaming about Edie; I was showing her round the fairy dell at the Talland Hotel. She was in my arms, and we stood beneath a shiny silver dragonfly floating under a bush. She was chuckling. She was also talking. ‘Nanamoll,’ she said, and my heart quickened with pleasure. It was the first time she had called me anything. Nanamoll was just about perfect. ‘Nanamoll, why is Poppa Adam so sad?’ she asked me.

‘I don’t know, baby. Is he sad?’

‘You know he is, Nanamoll. It’s because he thinks you don’t love him. You DO love him though, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do, sweetheart. Of course.’

‘Then why do you blame him for when my Uncle Joey was dead in his boat?’

‘Edie, I don’t. I really don’t.’

Edie looked at me gravely, and shook her head. ‘Don’t fib, Nanamoll. You do think Poppa made Joey deaded. You told me once, when I was a baby.’

And then, stuck in my dream, Edie twined around my neck, it all came back. I remembered everything. And I sat up in bed, reached for the bottle of water on my bedside table, took a long draught, closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the woven headboard, embroidered with sunny yellow boats sailing joyfully on an emerald green sea.

I remembered. And I thought, God forgive me.

We’d arrived in Polperro that terrible April evening and moved in to Ben and Joey’s rented cottage. The first night I was catatonic, drugged up to my eyeballs with tranquillisers and sleeping pills. I had a vague impression that the next day, I was completely assaulted by other people’s theories and explanations. I couldn’t understand any of them; the only emotion I felt was a compulsion to walk. So I did, I went off, ignoring Adam’s increasingly strident instructions to stay at the cottage. I wouldn’t even talk to him, I remember that. I was completely out of it, refusing to engage in any kind of discussion. I just left him, distraught as he was, stranded on the doorstep as I moved purposefully away, completely estranged from whatever my husband needed from me; totally immersed in the son who was calling me.

I don’t remember where I walked.

I do remember, shockingly, what happened later when I came back.

Somebody fed me, I don’t know who or with what. Eventually, someone put me to bed; I insisted on sleeping in Joey’s room, hugging his sweater and his scarf, wrapping my head in his pillow. Everything smelled of him; young, tough, athletic. His odour was full of life, packed with energy; my boy’s future filled the room with his essence, full of promise and adventure. His soul was so strong; if he’d been a candle, I could have lit it and watched him materialise in the glow.

I woke, sobbing. Adam was lying next to me on the bed, kissing my hair, stroking my face. I twisted away from him. I was furious that he was there, disturbing my deep communion with Joey. I wanted him to go; and I said what I had blotted out ever since. I told him that Joey’s accident was all his fault. I said that if only he hadn’t encouraged the boys to love sailing so much, Joe would still be here now. I told him, and this was a lie, that I’d heard him talking to Joey before he and Ben left for Cornwall; that I’d heard my son confide his worries about sailing to his dad. He had a feeling, he said. He thought that something bad might happen to him and Ben. He was thinking of calling the holiday off, but he was worried that Ben would think he was an idiot.

I told Adam that I’d heard him laugh Joey’s worries away, telling our son that he was being superstitious and silly. He and Ben were great sailors, really experienced. They would have a terrific holiday. These anxieties are normal, Adam said, but meaningless. The thing was to grasp the nettle, carpe diem, and get on with it.

The thing is, this wasn’t true. Joey had never discussed his sailing holiday with his father. It was I in whom Joey had confided his insecurities about the Easter break with Ben. I now remembered the conversation in crystal-clear detail; the words I’d banished from my head for five years, unable to allow myself to acknowledge that I, Joey’s mother, had dismissed his fears, and encouraged him to go on the holiday that took him away from me for ever. And until this night, I had erased it from my mind. Because if I remembered, I would have to accept that Joey’s fate was my own fault. And to have believed that would have destroyed me.

Joey’s worries were not just about sailing. Mumbling, reluctant, embarrassed, he told me that Ben was being ‘strange’. He wasn’t the same boy he used to be, said Joey. He was terribly moody; so ill-tempered at times that all Joe wanted was to get away from him. And he kept disappearing at night when a crowd of them, all university friends, were drinking together at the Red Lion in Withington. Ben was tense, restless and difficult. Joey said he wondered if his friend was taking drugs again.

This should have raised huge alarm bells in my head, but it didn’t. I’d worried about Ben for so long now; I’d been so relieved when Joey told me his friend was clean and sober; I couldn’t bear to think this boy, whom I should have mothered, and whom I had failed to mother because Adam wouldn’t let me, had screwed up his future because of a youthful experiment at university. I knew Joey wasn’t taking drugs. I didn’t feel that alarmed about Ben. So I told Joe to stop worrying. It was me, not Adam, who said laughingly that he should ‘carpe diem’. Ben was his best friend, they both loved sailing, and would watch out for each other. I told Joey it did him credit to worry about his friend, but he shouldn’t let these temporary glitches spoil their companionship. I stressed how wonderful Cornwall was, how important to keep our connection with it as a family and, so naively, I said that if Ben was in trouble, sailing in Polperro was the best place for him to heal.