The Judas Scar (27 page)

‘Half that size,’ she said weakly.

So there they were, three silent people with paper hats gamely balanced on their heads, sitting in front of untouched Christmas pudding with foetus-friendly brandy-free butter slowly melting its sugary innocence over their best china plates. Harmony had tried to smile as he stood to clear the plates.

‘It will be a lot noisier next year, won’t it?’ she said to him and his mother. ‘I mean, with this little one.’ She patted her tummy. ‘And we’ll be with Soph’s lot too.’ She looked at him, her face falling for a second. ‘Maybe we should stay here if we’ve got the baby. We might prefer to be at home rather than at Sophie’s. God, how on earth will we all fit in?’

Will had walked away from the table with a disparaging snort. ‘For God’s sake, Harmony, the child isn’t born yet. Can’t we just enjoy this joyous Christmas without worrying about the next one?’

No wonder she couldn’t look at him.

The train pulled into Cambridge and he stood and took his holdall off the luggage rack. He loved Cambridge; it was full of glorious memories of him and Harmony in their youth. His mother and father had moved from their rectory outside Ely to the terraced house on the outskirts of town as soon as his father was diagnosed with colon cancer. His mother was heartbroken leaving the house and garden but his father showed no emotion whatsoever, though in fairness he had more pressing things on his mind. He had lived another two years, battling his illness with a stoic bravery that Will had begrudgingly admired. He’d been in and out of the oncology unit at Addenbrooke’s on what seemed to be a weekly basis. Chemo, radiotherapy, surgery – he’d had it all. Each time his mother would call to say it looked like the latest treatment had worked and the cancer was beaten, and each time Will had to muster the enthusiasm she needed to hear. It wasn’t that he’d wanted his father to die, more that he had an indifference to the inevitable.

Will got out of the taxi, paid, then walked up to his mother’s front door and rang the bell.

‘Hello, Will,’ she said, when she opened the door. She kissed both his cheeks and then peered behind him. ‘No Harmony?’

‘She’s up to her eyes with work at the moment, I’m hoping she’ll make it tomorrow. You look well.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I feel well.’ She lifted a hand to her greyed hair, cut as it always was in a neat bob with a blunt fringe. She seemed to have put some weight on, which suited her, he thought, and her face was less taut, less racked. She was dressed in a shirt, a pair of black trousers and a dusky pink sweater. ‘You look tired, though,’ she said.

He smiled at her honesty. As long as he could remember there’d never been any unnecessary bolstering; a spade was a spade and if you didn’t like spades then tough.

He followed her through to the kitchen and they sat at her small, cheap table with its white plastic top. Their old oak one had been too big to fit anywhere and been sold to a neighbour for £50 and four bottles of homemade quince wine. She passed Will a cup of tea in a commemorative mug that celebrated the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, their young, hopeful faces worn with time. He played his fingers over the smooth surface, fighting the urge to let go of the mug and watch it smash on the floor.

‘How have you been?’ he asked.

‘Busy.’

‘That’s good. What have you been up to?’

‘I’ve got a job.’

‘Really?’ he said. ‘That’s surprising.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘I suppose because you’ve never worked before and most people your age are retiring, not starting a career.’

She gave him a fleeting smile. ‘It’s hardly a career. I help out at a local café, tend their window boxes and a small patio garden they have at the back. You know, pick up leaves and weed, dead-head the roses. They give me a couple of pounds every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and I potter about for three or four hours.’ She took a sip of her tea. ‘It’s better than sitting around the house.’

‘If you enjoy it, that’s great,’ he said.

‘I do. One thing I’ve learned is that life is what you make of it. If you’re happy then you’ll make those around you happy. Too many people sit in the dark waiting for life to find them when they ought to be out finding life.’

‘That’s very wise,’ he said. ‘You’ve turned into a philosopher too.’

‘I’m old. It’s easy to see sense when you’re old. Harder when you’re young.’

‘I need a bit of wisdom. I’m making so many mistakes.’ He paused then reached for her hand. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t called you much.’

‘It’s not just you,’ she said, matter-of-factly, withdrawing her hand and patting him. ‘I haven’t called either. I should have done. Especially since you and Harmony lost the baby.’ She paused. ‘How is she coping?’

‘We’re not having an easy time at the moment.’

‘Most marriages go through a rough patch or two at some stage. You just have to work through them. If you love each other most problems have solutions. Do you want to talk about it? Not that my advice would help. Advice is one of those gifts that should be given in moderation and generally ignored.’

He smiled ruefully. ‘Unless given in retrospect, when it always seems sensible.’

She nodded. ‘Indeed.’

‘Are you still missing Dad?’ He avoided her eyes as he asked the question.

‘Yes, very much. It’s miserable living alone and some days I wonder why the bloody hell I have to. But I try to fill my days so I’m not thinking about it too much. I’ve got this job, and I’ve started playing bridge again on Monday and Tuesday evenings. Then there’s the WI on Thursdays. They’re a very peculiar group of ladies but kind, and it keeps me off the streets, so to speak. There’s a horticultural society I’ve joined which meets once a month, and I’ve even been to a few of the lectures that the university runs, some of which have been extremely interesting.’

‘I’m impressed.’

‘Like I said, life won’t find you. I spent months sitting alone in this house, which I don’t really like, in one room, staring at the television and moping, then one day I just thought: how ridiculous to be wasting my time. That’s another thing you start to value as you get older, the time you have left.’ She smiled. ‘So in answer to your question, I’m feeling better about losing your father’s companionship, though I will always miss him.’

Will nodded. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do you wish you had a grandchild?’

‘Goodness, I can’t answer that. I wouldn’t presume to have an opinion on something like that. That’s between you and Harmony and has nothing to do with me.’

He nodded and looked down at the table. ‘Do you ever wish you hadn’t had me?’

‘Why on earth do you ask that?’ she said, shock in her voice.

‘I suppose I know I made things hard for you. I know my father fought with you about me and you had to intervene all the time.’ He sighed and rubbed his face. ‘I suppose looking back on it, having me must have been exhausting and difficult for you. I don’t remember making your life any fun.’

She leant forward and and patted his hand. He looked down at it – liver spotted, veiny, her thin gold wedding band dull with the years. ‘You were my life, William. You’re my child, the most important thing that has ever happened to me, the most wonderful gift. Life without you would have been unthinkable. And do you know what? Having said all I’ve just said about grasping opportunities and experiences, I would swap the rest of my life for just twenty-four hours with you as a baby in my arms, to smell you and kiss you and have you look up at me as if I was the most beautiful person in the world. That was quite simply the most magical time of my life.’

Will nodded. ‘I’m sorry I was such a shit to you.’

She laughed, a gentle peal of laughter that he realised he missed.

‘Gosh, you were at times. I’d look forward to you coming home from school so much, and then you’d shut yourself away in your room, your music so loud the walls shook. That ridiculous long hair of yours, too, that I know you only grew because it annoyed your father. And all those damn cigarette ends you threw into the guttering which I had to scoop out. But, you know, most of the time you were lovely.You were such a joyful child when you weren’t so full of angst. You made me laugh and I missed you so much when you were away at school.’

‘Why did you send me?’ he asked then. It sounded more like an accusation than he’d intended. ‘I mean, if you missed me, why did you send me away?’

‘It was hard with … ’ His mother stopped before finishing her sentence.

‘Go on.’

She hesitated as she tried to formulate her words. ‘It was hard with your father sometimes.’

‘He wasn’t a good man.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘I’m not.’

She sighed and looked at the ceiling as if trying to find the right words to use. ‘Your father,’ she began, then she hesitated. ‘Your father found it hard to show his emotions. He had a difficult time growing up. His father—’

‘I don’t care, Mum,’ Will said, interrupting her, as a wave of anger washed over him. ‘I don’t care what happened to him when he was a child. I don’t want to hear it. Lots of people have crap upbringings or have things happen to them as children and they don’t all turn out bad. You can’t make excuses for him.’

‘I can and I will,’ she said, her voice hardening. ‘He was my husband and I loved him.’ She got up and took their cups to the sink. She turned the tap on and started to wash them. Then she turned the tap off and stared out of the window over the garden. ‘You broke his heart, you know.’

Will shook his head. That bastard didn’t have a heart to break, he thought.

‘You did. His heart and mine.’

‘How did I break your heart?’

She turned and looked at him. The fingers of one hand pulled at the sleeve of her sweater. She fixed her eyes on him, a diluted shade of blue, rheumy with age. ‘You should have made your peace with him before he died.’

‘What do you mean my peace with him?’

‘I mean exactly that.’

‘Is this why you’ve been angry with me?’

She didn’t answer him. Her face was steely, her eyes bore into his.

‘I just don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It was he who had the issues.

Why on earth was it up to me to try and make peace?’

‘Because he was dying. Because you needed to repair your relationship. Because it would have meant the world to him.’

Will laughed then, bitter laughter born from years of wishing that might be true, trying to get his father’s approval, desperate for his love. ‘That man never gave any signs that he cared about me in the slightest. He was cold and detached and went out of his way to crush any self-respect or confidence I might have had. You can’t mend that damage with a death-bed heart-to-heart or a meaningless final embrace. It doesn’t work that way. We had no relationship; there was nothing to repair.’

Will recalled the one or two trips that he and Harmony had made towards the end. His father lying in bed, frail with yellowed skin, the clinical paraphernalia that surrounded his bed making him even more remote than usual. Will had never told anyone, not even Harmony, how little he’d felt when he took the phone call from his mother saying he’d died. There wasn’t even an emotional release. Just nothingness.

The night of the funeral, a few hours after the last person had left the stuffy wake and the food and drink had been cleared away, the three of them sat in front of the fire, staring silently at the flames licking the pile of logs in the grate, eating beans on toast on their laps.

‘Why didn’t you tell him you loved him?’ his mother had said in a flat, monotone voice, the light of the flames dancing in the shadows on her face and reflecting in her grief-stricken eyes.

‘Because I didn’t.’

Will closed his eyes as he recalled the way she’d crumpled, the plate of beans on toast falling to the floor. Harmony had leapt to her side, her hand rubbing her back, his mother collapsed in frightening sobs that Will didn’t comprehend.

Will pushed thoughts of that night from his head and opened his eyes. ‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ he said. ‘It was nearly a year ago and there isn’t anything we can say to change what happened. He’s dead. I didn’t make my peace with him because whether you like it or not there was no peace to be made.’

‘He was your father.’

‘In blood maybe,’ Will said, doggedly clinging to the argument, ignoring the voice in his head that told him to tell her what she wanted to hear: that he regretted it, that he would have to live with his decision for the rest of his days, that he’d never forgive himself. Instead he ploughed on. ‘But in my book you have to earn the right to be a father. You need to earn respect, not demand it. You have to
be
a father.’

His mother crossed her arms and stared at him, her eyes prickling with angry tears. ‘You are a selfish, selfish boy,’ she said then.

Will opened his mouth to speak but she interrupted him.

‘Did you ever stop to think about how much it would have meant to me? I know how difficult he was – good God, I put up with enough of his rubbish myself. But he was dying.’ She reached for a roll of kitchen paper from the window ledge behind the sink and tore a piece off then pressed it against her eyes. ‘Did you ever think how I might be feeling? I wanted him to pass away having had some sort of reconciliation with my son. With you.’ She paused. ‘You’re right, it was difficult being in between you both, listening to your constant fighting, seeing so much hatred for him grow in your eyes. I hated it. It was exhausting. We don’t get to choose our parents. But we don’t get to choose our children either.’ She paused and balled the piece of kitchen roll and closed her fist around it. ‘Do you know what I used to wish for?’

Will looked at the floor and stayed silent.

‘I used to wish the three of us could just sit down in front of the fire and play a game of gin rummy like a normal family. That was it. Not much to ask, was it?’ She shook her head. ‘But you’re right. He’s dead and gone now. It’s done.’

His mother straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath. Will saw her battling with the regret and sadness that haunted her, trying desperately to conceal it. He stood and went over to her and then he put his arms around her and held her. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. You’re right. I didn’t think of you. I didn’t think of you at all.’