The Coroner (32 page)

    'While
the Head decides what to do, but you can take your exams. Mrs Thomas thinks we
can persuade him to let you stay, if you want to.'

    'Don't
know what I want.'

    Jenny
said, 'I'm not going to lecture you about drugs, after all the legal sort I've
taken over the years, but if you could tell me what was going on ... '

    She
waited for him while he stared into his empty coffee cup. 'Had some weed,
that's all.'

    'Where
d'you get it?'

    He
shrugged. 'A mate. What's it matter?'

    'Any
particular reason?'

    He
thought for a moment, then shook his head.

    'Was
it anything to do with the weekend? You know I'm sorry about all that.'

    'I
don't know . . . Don't know why I did it. Just felt like it.'

    She believed
him. But she also believed he wanted to escape the hell of having his father
pressuring him into becoming something he wasn't.

    'You
don't have to do what your dad says. It was easy for him, he always wanted to
be a doctor. It takes longer for some people to decide.'

    Ross,
silent, picked at the biscuit crumbs on the plate.

    'As
far as I'm concerned, you can decide to be what you like, when you like.'

    'A
dropout?'

    'Within
limits.' She attempted a smile but didn't get one back. 'Look, I meant what I
said about coming to stay here. I think it would be fun if you came here this
summer. You could think things through without any pressure.'

    'You
don't like Deborah much, do you?'

    'It's
nothing to do with her. I haven't had a proper place till now.'

    'Dad
didn't rate that bloke you brought either.'

    'Steve's
just a friend. He does the garden.'

    Ross
glanced at the ankle-high grass. 'Right.'

    'It's
true.'

    'I
don't care. At least he's not half your age.'

    'If I
was in a relationship with anyone, believe me, you'd be the first to know.'

    'Well,
if you do, try and keep the physical stuff out of sight - it's pretty gross
watching a fifty-year-old bloke groping—'

    'OK,
I get the picture.' She tried to wipe it from her mind. 'I know it's tough with
your dad and me, but you understand I always wanted to be with you, don't you?'

    Ross
looked down at the table. She sensed the wave of emotion that came over him.
'Yeah.'

    They
lapsed into silence, Jenny suddenly feeling very guilty, furious at herself for
cracking up when she did. Two more years and he would have been off to
university, ready to strike out on his own. After a while, she said, 'So will
you come at the end of term?'

    'If
you want.'

    'And
you'll promise me you won't smoke any more of this stuff?'

    'I
thought you weren't going to give me a lecture.'

    'I
wouldn't be much of a mother if I wasn't worried.'

    'It's
a bit late for that now. Damaged goods, aren't I?'

    She
looked at him, hurt, trying to decide if this was genuine or bravado and
wondering what she could ever do to make things better.

    They
both turned at the sound of a powerful engine roaring up the lane. David's BMW
7 Series pulled up behind Jenny's Golf. Ross flinched as he jumped out and
slammed the door.

    Jenny
said, 'I'll deal with him.'

    David
strode across the grass, still in his suit trousers, shirt and tie. Jenny got
up to face him, the moment she had been dreading all day. She'd prepared half a
dozen good lines to head him off, but couldn't recall a single one. 'Don't be
angry, David, we're working it out.'

    He
stopped next to the table, his face travelling through several different
emotions before settling on a strangulated reasonableness. 'I'd no intention of
getting angry. If things need talking about I always believe in doing it
rationally.' He looked Ross over, appraising him like a patient. 'Feeling a bit
lousy, I expect?'

    'He's
not too bad.'

    He
motioned to a chair. 'May I?'

    'Go
ahead.'

    David
took a seat next to Ross and opposite Jenny. The avuncular smile he affected
was unnerving. 'Quite a place you've got here. Certainly peaceful.'

    Jenny
regretted all the coffee she had drunk. Her nerves felt suddenly raw. 'I was
saying to Ross he might like to spend some time here in the summer.'

    'Why
not? Might do you some good to get out of town.'

    Ross
stared at the table.

    David
looked at him, recognizing familiar signs. 'We're not going to get to the bottom
of this unless you talk to us, matey.'

    Jenny
said, 'I think maybe we should give him a bit of time.'

    Ross
jumped up and flung down his chair. 'Why do you always talk about me like that?
I'm not a fucking child.' He stamped off across the grass, got into the back of
David's car and slammed the door.

    David
said, 'Just what I need. Six straight hours in theatre and I get a phone call
saying my son's a drug addict.'

    'He
smoked some dope. It's not the end of the world.'

    'It
could be the end of his education.'

    'Don't
be so melodramatic.'

    'What
do you suggest we do - nothing? He's not the only kid in the world to have
divorced parents.'

    'He's
sensitive.'

    'Tell
me about it.'

    'Why
doesn't he stay here for a few days?'

    'While
you're off at work.'

    'You're
at work, too.'

    'Deborah
can take some time off.' He got to his feet. 'She's got a sensible head on her
shoulders.'

    Jenny,
stung, said, 'I hope so. If our son's anything like his father—'

    'Don't
be so bloody childish.'

    Jenny
stood by the stream and listened to David's car going down the hill, feeling
his fury in every rise and fall of the engine, imagining Ross in the back,
numb, staring out of the window. Feeling trapped but too scared to stand up to
his father, preferring oblivion to taking him on. It was exactly how she had
felt when it had started to come unstuck. David had treated her like one of his
more neurotic patients. When she would break down or try to describe the frightening
sensations that seemed to come from nowhere, he would see her as a set of
symptoms to be suppressed. He never once asked about her deeper thoughts or
whether she was troubled by the past. He seemed only able to perceive life as a
series of straight lines. Any deviation had to be hammered out.

    There
was an unseasonal chill in the breeze, the air smelt of wet earth. It added to
her feeling of hopelessness. She was a failure as a mother and as an
individual; so caught up in her own tangle of problems she couldn't care for
her own son. When she dared look into the black heart of what lay inside her,
it felt as if something truly evil, an entity she could only describe as a
cancer, had taken hold. She felt it acutely this evening. Even the trees seemed
malignant. Her mind kept replaying images from a recurring nightmare: she stood
in the corner of a familiar, yet strangely off-kilter room in her childhood
home, a crack opened in the wall in the corner revealing a pitch-black,
terrifying secret space beyond that threatened to suck her in . . .

    She
walked back inside the house, trying to shake herself back to normality and
shed the feeling of impending doom.

    She
reached for the wine bottle but, still hung-over, set it down again. She tried
to cook but felt as if someone was watching her from outside the curtainless
window. A sound from upstairs was a ghost, the old woman who'd lived here
resenting her presence, moving her things. She picked up her pills but then
worried that she'd pass out and wake in the dead of night with the old woman
standing over her, smelling her fusty clothes and feeling her fury.

    Gripping
the kitchen counter, her heartbeat became footsteps on the boards in the
bedroom above her. They shuffled towards the stairs and started to descend,
both feet landing on a single tread before moving to the next. She turned to
the door, her eyes on the latch, waiting for it to rise. There was a creak in
the sitting room. She grabbed her car keys and fled out of the back door.

    Although
it was still June it was too cold for anyone to be sitting at the tables on the
veranda in front of the Apple Tree. Jenny came to the door of the public bar
and looked through the glass. The crowd was thinner than on her previous visit,
a handful of men standing, a few couples at tables. Steve was sitting up on a
stool, Annie coming to talk to him between serving customers. Jenny waited
there, too scared to go in or to go home alone. She kept checking through the
window, waiting for Annie to get distracted. It took an age. When eventually
she ducked into the kitchen, Jenny stepped inside the door, caught Steve's eye,
then stepped back out again. Hovering in the porch, waiting to see if he'd
come, she felt like a schoolgirl. Stupid.

    He
came out, fishing tobacco and papers from his denim jacket, most of his
attention on rolling a cigarette. She was sitting side on at one of the
picnic-style tables and, now he was here, she didn't know what to say.

    He
said, 'How are you doing?'

    'Sorry
to disturb your evening.'

    'I
needed a fix anyway.' He spread tobacco across the paper, rolled it with one
hand and licked it. 'They call it a free country. You try acting like it is -
they'll put you in jail so fast, your feet won't touch the ground.' He cupped
his hands and lit a match.

    Jenny
said, 'Haven't I heard that line before?'

    Steve
smiled. '
Easy Rider.''
He leaned back against the wooden rail and drew
in the sweet-smelling smoke. 'It's a good movie, but Peter Fonda always looked
like he'd brought a hairdresser along with him. Anyone who's worn a bike helmet
knows what it does to your style.'

    'I
always just thought he looked cute.'

    'I
guess he was, but it was Nicholson who stole the show. An alcoholic lawyer in a
sweat-stained suit wakes up in a cell, bribes his way out and takes off with
motorcycle hippies . . . Then gets kicked to death in his sleep by rednecks.'

    'The
man who dared to be different.'

    'Dangerous
thing to be.'

    Jenny
looked at him in his mud-stained cargoes and faded green shirt, hair hanging
down to his eyes, his expression saying he wasn't going to ask any questions,
it was up to her.

    She
said, 'I got scared in my house.'

    'Uh-huh.'

    She
sighed, wishing she didn't have to bore him with this. 'Ross got stoned at
school. I had to bring him home this afternoon. My husband came for him, you
can imagine ... I was in the kitchen by myself, and I started thinking there
was a ghost upstairs, it's crazy—'

    'What
kind of ghost?'

    'The
old woman who used to live there.'

    'Joan?
She wasn't the haunting kind.'

    'I
know it's all in my mind . . .'

    He
sucked on the cigarette. 'You've had a tough day. Anyone'd be jumpy.'

    'I
should go, stop bothering you.' She got up from the table and headed for the
small flight of steps which led down to the path.

    She
had reached the bottom when he said, 'Hey,' and came after her.

    She
turned around. He pushed the hair from his face, saying, 'You want me to come
and check the place over?'

    'I've
put you out enough already.'

    'You
pulled me off my stool to say that?'