Memory of Love (9781101603024) (8 page)

10.

I don't know what I expected. I had never really given any thought to Ika's family or homelife. To me he had seemed like a solitaire with no connection to anything or anyone. Stupidly, I had never asked. And he had never volunteered any information.

The small weatherboard house sat on a piece of flat land covered in yellowed grass. It looked abandoned; there were no signs of life. No washing on the clothesline that slowly turned in the breeze. No flowers. No curtains: the windows were black holes. The section was unfenced, marked only by a shallow ditch along the unsealed road and a low hedge of dead macrocarpa on one side. I could see no other houses and no animals, so perhaps fences were superfluous here. George drove up and parked on the dry yellow grass near the house, beside half a dozen car carcasses in varying stages of decay. Two large mongrel dogs came running towards the car, furiously barking. We stayed in the car with the doors closed, waiting.

The woman who eventually emerged through the open front door was small and very thin. From where I was I couldn't judge her age, but she walked with a slight limp, or perhaps with exaggerated caution, as if she were in pain. She called the dogs and they withdrew reluctantly, whimpering.

‘How about you and I take a little drive? Leave the ladies to themselves for a little while?' George turned to Ika in the back seat.

Ika didn't reply, but made no effort to get out. I took this as a yes, as did George.

‘Thank you,' I said to him and stepped out of the car. I really meant it. ‘It shouldn't take very long.'

I had no idea how long it would take of course. Or what ‘it' really encompassed. I just felt I had to say something that sounded – well, normal.

I watched them drive off, leaving a slowly dissolving cloud of dust behind. The woman stayed where she was just outside the front door in the shade of the jutting roof. She had crossed her arms over her chest. It was easy to see she wasn't looking forward to this. Nor was I.

I introduced myself but she didn't offer her name.

Instead she interrupted me impatiently. ‘I know who you are.' She waved one hand dismissively.

Again, I felt the familiar pang of alienation. They knew me; I didn't know them. I wasn't one of them.

‘Can I come in?' I asked.

She cocked her head and looked at me briefly, making it clear that I mustn't take it as a given. She waited just long enough and then looked me straight in the eye for a fleeting moment. She had strangely pale blue-green eyes, set off against her light brown skin. Then she turned and walked back inside. I hesitated for a moment before I followed.

The house had no smell, and this somehow surprised me. It was bare and dry, void of signs of human life. The hallway was dark and completely empty – there were no pieces of furniture, no mats, not even rubbish. No shoes by the doorway. Nothing. Just a clean, worn strip of linoleum running the length of the narrow space. I could hear a TV or a radio from behind one of the closed doors but there was no sign of any other person in the house and there were no other sounds. The TV playing for nobody seemed to emphasise the feeling of forlornness that filled me the moment we drove up outside.

I followed the woman into the kitchen. It was very basic: a bench with a sink and stove. A worn, scratched fridge. Everything looked utterly clean, but the very cleanliness of the house was disturbing. It was aggressive, and it had nothing to do with comfort or care. She nodded for me to sit down on the one chair at the table, and I did. She went and got another chair from the corner and sat down opposite me. She said nothing but took out a pouch of tobacco. She rolled herself a cigarette, which she lit.

As she turned towards the window to exhale smoke I could see her face properly for the first time. Probably about my age. Over fifty. Too old to be Ika's mother, most likely. She had a strong face with regular features and those striking light blue-green eyes, but whatever beauty might once have been there was long gone.

‘I am here to talk about Mika,' I said. ‘I found him in the sea yesterday.'

She inhaled heavily and released the smoke through the corner of her mouth. She made no comment.

‘I think he was trying to kill himself,' I said, bending forwards across the table to emphasise my words. The Formica table was cool under my palms.

She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply and shook her head slowly. She still didn't speak.

‘I have got to know Mika a little since we first met last year,' I continued. ‘He comes to my house most weeks. On Thursdays. His choice. I don't know why Thursdays and I have never asked. But I appreciate his company very much and I am very fond of him.'

I paused briefly and she opened her eyes. She still said nothing.

‘But he has never told me anything about his home. And I have never asked. Perhaps I should have.'

She looked at me, sucking at her upper lip. Her lower jaw was virtually toothless. Then she rose abruptly and walked up to the window. She stood with her back to me.

‘I do what I can,' she said. ‘It's hard.'

I waited for her to continue.

‘There is something not right with him. Always was. No wonder, perhaps, considering. Might have been Lizzie's fault.' She paused for a moment. ‘Well, not her fault exactly. But she was in a bad way when she had him. Could've been the drugs. I don't know. But there was something wrong with him. Everything was wrong.'

She sucked on the cigarette and smoke lifted above her head and found its way out through the mesh covering the open window. She turned around and looked at me. It felt like an appraisal, as if she were judging my ability to absorb what she was about to say. How I would react. Her face was a dark shadow against the window behind.

‘It's not easy, you know. I can't be here all the time. I have a job in town. Then there are the twins, though I can't have them here right now. Not since Joe came back. Since the accident I've had to keep him here.'

Her tone of voice had changed. The words flowed more quickly, confidently. It felt as if what she was telling was practised. A prepared story – perhaps not for this purpose particularly but for more general use. And it was as if she were testing it on me. I felt distinctly uneasy.

‘Joe is not right in the head either. And he never will be. He's twenty-three, but in his head he's more like three. A big, strong, dangerous three-year-old. Him, I'm stuck with forever.'

She coughed, a deep scratchy sound that shook her thin frame.

I tried to work out who Joe and Lizzie were. I assumed Lizzie was the woman's daughter and Joe her son. The twins must have been her younger children. And Mika her grandchild. Lizzie's son.

She stood up and went over to the sink where she stubbed out the cigarette. When she returned to the table and resumed her story the words were hesitant. Uncertain. She spoke quietly and kept her eyes on the table.

‘Lizzie was my oldest,' she said, as if she had read my thoughts. ‘Mika's mum, though all she ever did was give birth to him. And then she died. Obviously nobody had any idea who Mika's dad was. Considering the circumstances. And so I ended up stuck with him.'

She leaned backwards a little and looked at me with an odd expression. As if she were challenging me. Testing me. Then she carried on, more confident now.

‘Joe is my only son. Not that he has ever brought me much joy. And then he drove himself off the road two years ago. The doctors thought he was going to die. That might have been better. But he didn't. Nothing but trouble before the accident, but there was nothing wrong with his head then.'

She looked up at me and for a moment I felt that she was letting me in. For a fraction of a second it felt as if I caught a glimpse of this woman's most private inner self. And as I looked at her across the table I thought I saw her in a different light.

‘But you know now he's dangerous. I've had to face it. It's as if something has been destroyed inside him. Like what little control he had before is gone. I can't leave him alone with the other kids. Or with anybody, really. Sometimes I think it would be better if he was locked up. But they don't lock you up for being dangerous,' she said. ‘You have to do it, don't you? Murder someone. Rape someone. Just thinking about it isn't enough.'

She stopped and looked down on her hands, which lay folded on the table. She stretched out her fingers and held on to the edge of the table for a moment. I noticed that the nails were coarse and long, yellowed on the right hand. The fingers were bony with swollen joints. Her hands looked hard.

‘It's a terrible thing for a mother to say, I know. But I can't watch him all the time, can I?' She looked at me and her extraordinary eyes were wide open and very pale. ‘And if I try the best I can, that's all anybody can ask, isn't it? I do what I can, the way I can. Teach him the only way I know.'

What did she mean? And who was ‘he'? What did she expect me to say? Or do? I felt as if I were missing something. That there was an elusive aspect of her story that I couldn't catch.

She sat back a little and folded her arms across her chest.

‘And if it's sometimes too much, who's to say? Eh?'

Abruptly, everything I had prepared in my head dissolved. The camera with the photos of Ika stayed in my handbag. I had only one goal. I had to take him with me.

My heart was thumping so hard I had trouble hearing what she was saying.

‘I try to get the kid off to school before I go to work. But I can never be sure where he is off to. I don't know what's going on in his head. It's as if he's in his own world. I tell him to wait in town till I'm finished at work but he never does.'

She fingered the tobacco pouch on the table, but withdrew her hands and clasped them.

‘How old do you think I am?' she said suddenly with a crooked smile.

I didn't know what to say.

‘I'm forty-two.'

Again she looked straight at me with that strange expression, as if she were challenging me. But the effect was pale and weak, like a distant echo of a personality now almost lost.

‘Yes, I know how I look,' she said and smiled a thin smile that failed to reach her eyes. ‘But there is a guy I used to know. Joe's dad. Up north, he is now. He says he's willing to take me back. And he's willing to take Joe too. Says he can put him to work. Used to be a bit of a wild guy himself. Hard, you know. I have the scars – and pain – to prove it. But he's not a bad bloke really. I think he's settled down. And I think he can manage Joe. Says he'll let me have the twins come later, if things work out.'

She opened the pouch and rolled another cigarette.

‘But he won't have Mika,' she said, peering at me as she exhaled smoke. ‘Truth is, nobody can stand him. Nobody wants him. Nobody. Because there is something not right with him. Nobody wants broken things.'

I still couldn't think of anything to say.

‘It might not work out, but God knows I'd like to give it a go. I've got nothing here. But if I go I can't take Mika. And then they'll take him into care. And who would take him? I mean, they have all these normal children to choose from. Who would want him? Where would he end up?'

She paused and the kitchen went awkwardly quiet.

‘Plus I'd lose the benefit.'

Her eyes stared into space and she wiped her mouth with her hand. Then she turned to me and suddenly I could feel her despair. Sense the glimmer of hope of a future for herself fighting with the enormous burden of responsibility she had been dealt.

Then I heard myself speak.

‘If you want to try it out I could consider having Mika stay with me. Just for a while. Until you see how it goes. I mean, you may decide to come back. It would be more like a holiday. Just to see. And for now, we needn't involve the authorities. You can keep the benefit. Till we see how it works out.'

In the silence we sat looking at each other, both equally stunned, I think. It was not what I had come prepared to say. I could no longer remember what I had planned. And this wasn't what she had anticipated either, I could tell.

The woman opposite me seemed to have straightened up on her seat. She cupped her right elbow in her left hand as she moved the cigarette and exhaled smoke in one swift, elegant move. Then she screwed up her eyes and looked at me with an expression of suspicion.

‘Why?' she said finally.

‘Why what?'

‘Why would you do something like that?'

‘Well,' I said, hesitating for a moment, ‘like I said before, I have become fond of him. I live by myself not far from here. I only work occasionally, so I'm mostly at home. I am a . . .'

‘I know where you live. And I know where you work,' she puffed her cigarette impatiently. ‘But why would you want to take the kid?'

I struggled to find the words to explain to her what I couldn't quite understand myself.

‘I like having him around. He is company for me. And I enjoy teaching him music.'