The Moment You Were Gone (30 page)

‘There,' said Mildred May. ‘Shall I sing for you now?'

‘That would be a treat,' said Connor.

‘
Quid pro quo
. That's what I say. You gave us doughnuts.'

She stood up, scattering Billy from the tails of her vast coat, and turned so that she was facing him, ignoring the glances of passers-by, their sneers and sniggers. Placing one hand on her heart, she took a deep breath, opened
her mouth and began to sing. Her voice trembled and sometimes almost disappeared before returning louder than before; her eyes shone. Billy wailed at her side. She sang ‘My Bonny Lies Over The Ocean' and then ‘Foggy Foggy Dew'. She sang ‘Early One Morning' in a quavery, broken-backed high pitch, before looping round again to ‘My Bonny', her voice giving up by now. They were all in their own ways songs about absence and heartbreak. Connor gazed at her diminutive, rotund shape; her crinkled, battered face folded round the blue slits of her eyes, the puckered mouth in a choirboy's ‘O' of rapture. She lifted her dirty hands into the air and gazed past him, at some distant point only she could see. Perhaps she was on a stage, a young woman again with the world before her, or perhaps she was singing to her lost Danny boy. Perhaps she had never been a singer and never had a son, never had the life she'd lost.

When she finished, Connor clapped loudly and she gave a little bow. Behind them a group of teenage girls were giggling helplessly. Connor and Mildred May ignored them.

‘Thank you,' he said, standing up, taking both her hands in his and holding them there. ‘That was a great pleasure.'

‘We all have to spread what cheer we can,' she said. She was panting and there were red blotches on her cheek. ‘In this cold and ragged world.'

‘Indeed,' he said. ‘Can I come and visit you again?'

‘You'll find me and Billy here most days,' she said, ‘on and off. Don't wait to be invited.'

‘I won't, you can be sure of that.'

He bent down to kiss her on both pouchy cheeks. She lifted her hand and pushed his hair away from his forehead. ‘You'll do very nicely,' she said.

‘Will I?'

‘Of course. Won't he, Billy?'

Stefan was sitting in his kitchen under the naked bulb with a giant sandwich in front of him into which he had stuffed any ingredient he had found in his fridge: chorizo sausage past its sell-by date, mozzarella (ditto) and Cheddar, a few lettuce leaves, tomatoes, mayonnaise, pickle, mustard and some aged gherkins. But he had taken one vast, oozing bite out of it, then pushed it away for later. He was practising his knots. He had about twenty smooth, thin lengths of cream-coloured rope, whipped at the end to prevent fraying, and was tying them, one by one, into different shapes. He had started with the simplest, and they lay in a line beneath his sandwich: the overhand knot, the sheet knot, the figure-of-eight, the reef knot and the halyard. These he could almost do with his eyes shut; the challenge was to make them as pleasingly supple and symmetrical as possible. Now he was practising his bowline: he formed a loop a short distance from the end of the rope, passed the end through the loop as though making a half-hitch, then pulled it round the standing end and back through the loop. There, it was easily done and he laid it alongside the other knots.

He opened his can of beer and licked away the plug of foam before taking a warm gulp. The clove hitch, the two half-hitches, the sheepshank – he often had trouble with that one. A blackwall hitch and a rolling hitch and a
slippery hitch, a fisherman's knot and a fisherman's bend, a lariat loop, a lark's head. This was the way time ticked by. One by one, he laid them before him. A marlinspike and an intricate surgeon's knot. He finished with an improved blood knot, for which he used two very thin pieces of rope, almost string. He twisted the strands together ten or twelve times, separated the central twist, wriggled the two ends through the space, then tugged them sharply. He sighed in satisfaction at the neatness of the plait before him, then placed it carefully at the bottom of his grid of knots.

Picking up his sandwich with both hands to prevent its contents spilling everywhere, he opened his mouth as wide as possible, then took a determined bite. He swilled down a bit more beer and picked up the book he was reading, taking care not to spread grease over its pages. When Gaby read a book she would open it wide so that its spine cracked. You could always tell when she'd had a particular book – it would be scuffed and stained and its pages turned down to mark particular passages. She read books the way she ate meals, greedily and with avid attention. If he tried, he was sure that he could chart her life so far through images of her deep in a book: up a tree; sitting on the lawn with her legs apart and a novel propped on her knee; lying on sofas or snuggled into armchairs, every so often putting out a hand and feeling for a chocolate; at a table, her head cupped in her hands; in a bath, the steam softening the pages. She would lose herself while reading. You could call her name several times before she heard and looked up, as in a stupor, her eyes unfocused. He thought of his sister and frowned.
Something was bothering her. He wished she would tell him her troubles, not try to protect him.

The sandwich was too large, too messy and the bread was stale. Stefan left it and went into the sitting room, which also served as his study. Books were in heaps everywhere – he could never go into a shop without buying several; he pottered for hours in second-hand shops, rooting out forgotten volumes of essays or remaindered novels from before the war, and he never could bring himself to throw books away. There were piles of scrawled-upon leaves of lined paper on and around his desk. He reminded himself that he had essays to mark, emails to answer, journals to catch up on, a meeting to prepare for, a lecture to write and a paper he needed to research on radical religion in the Middle Ages. He lived much of his life in the past, in a world of words and ideas, and sometimes he wondered what it would be like to deal with people and objects, the mess of everyday life. He thought of Connor pressing his hands against a patient's stomach, or probing flesh for an area of pain. He thought of all his family looking after their children as babies, spooning gunk into a small mouth and wiping away drool with the corner of a bib, or changing a nappy, deftly gripping two ankles in one hand and lifting the squirming body, wiping the red, wrinkled bottom and smothering it with thick cold cream. He'd done it a few times, of course, especially with Ethan when Gaby was so ill, but he'd been horrified, incompetent and scared of his own size and clumsiness. Nancy had pushed him away. He could hear her voice now: ‘You're hopeless,' she'd said, laughing at him. ‘Let me do it.'

He knew that he was hopeless in many ways. He was vague and dreamy and the practical arrangements of his life floated out of his head, like so many dissolving clouds; he broke things and spilt things and forgot where he was supposed to be. He could tie knots and read charts and sail a boat round the point, avoiding jagged rocks, but he tripped over his shoelaces and lost his keys. He could read twelfth-century texts and understand the life of a miller in Somerset, but he couldn't understand the lives of his colleagues – their rivalries, affairs and subtle intrigues.

The phone rang, and it was Gaby. ‘Stefan? I didn't wake you, did I?'

‘Wake me? No. What time is it, anyway?'

‘Half past eleven.'

‘I thought it was about nine. Funny, these long dark evenings – you lose track of time. Well, I do. How are you? Are you all right?'

‘Fine – well, OK. There's something I want to talk to you about. Connor and I want to talk to you about, actually.'

‘All right, then.'

‘Not now, not on the phone. Do you want to come round to ours or shall we come to you?'

‘You mean tonight?'

‘No, it's not urgent like that. It's just – well, something.'

Stefan glanced round the room. He thought of his kitchen, in which the only calm spot was the grid of knots on the table.

‘I'll come to yours, shall I? When?'

‘Are you busy tomorrow evening?'

‘I have a feeling I am. There's a supper I was invited to. Hang on, let me look in my diary. Where's my diary? I can't find it. I was sure I put it – but hang on, let me have a look in my briefcase. Here we are. No, I can't do tomorrow, I'm afraid – though I could always make an excuse.'

‘No, you mustn't do that. How about the next day?'

‘Thursday? I think so. There's a word scrawled on that day but I can't for the life of me read it. What would it be? Persephone or something? No. Anyway, I'm sure I can come then.'

‘Seven o'clock?'

‘I might be a bit later. It says here I have to be in York that afternoon. Make it seven thirty.'

‘Seven thirty, then. We can have a bite to eat.'

‘Right.'

‘Stefan?'

‘Mm?'

‘I just want you to know that I love you very much.'

‘Oh – well, yes. Thank you. Um, you know that I –'

But she was gone.

18 November

When I got back today it was already dark. It gets dark so early now, and light so late. I hate it. I spent the train journey just sitting there, with my face pressed to the window, watching the sun sink, then disappear. The horizon was a kind of mauve and there was a very pale moon, like a stencil in the sky. I looked at the fields going past, the houses and the cars and the trees and the sudden canals and the footpaths snaking their way into the distance – and gradually it became dark. Once, a train going in the same direction drew level with mine, and for a few minutes it was as if both trains had come to a stop. I stared in through the lighted window of the other compartment and a girl of about my age was sitting reading a book. She looked up and saw me staring at her and for a moment our eyes locked and then she smiled, as if we were friends and would see each other again one day, and looked away again. It was really strange.

I had imagined I would spend the journey thinking about the day I'd had, but I didn't. Instead, I remembered things from the past. Odd things that I hadn't even known I remembered, like sitting in the garden with a girl called Kelly from primary school, and pretending we were dentists and that bricks were faces; we spent hours poking at their surfaces with teaspoons, telling them they had to be brave. Or going swimming with Dad at the seaside; I don't know how old I was
but I do remember that he walked into the water backwards, holding my hands and the waves broke against his legs. Or being ill once with flu and lying in bed feeling hot and dizzy and very strange; the room seemed to be tipping and I kept thinking there were these slimy boulders shuddering on the floor. I had ulcers all over the inside of my mouth. Mum made soup and I had to suck it through a straw, and she kept telling me to drink lime cordial. I remember her hand against my burning forehead: cool and soft, smelling of soap and hand lotion.

I don't know why I'm telling you any of this. None of it matters to you, does it? Maybe I'm trying to say all that I felt after I left you, because you're receding and I'm empty of you, and scared, and trying to get you back. But you should know that now I've met you you're no longer in my head like you used to be. You're outside me, a real person, your own self, flesh and blood. My flesh and blood.

When we arrived at Stratford, I nearly didn't get off the train. I thought I could stay where I was and be taken north to all the places I've never been that are just names on the loudspeaker, and go on staring out of the window until we arrived at a destination. But of course I did get off; I always knew I would. I walked home from the station, even though Mum had said I should call her and she would collect me, no matter what the time. I didn't feel ready to say anything to her. I didn't want to describe the day or somehow find a way of giving it a meaning. I didn't know what its meaning was. I just wanted to sit huddled up on the sofa with a blanket round me and a mug of warm soup, and watch mindless TV and not say anything and not have anyone looking at me in a concerned kind of way, or every so often laying a hand on my knee.

Though the day had been sunny, the night was cold and calm. There wasn't any wind. Usually I don't notice things like that, but tonight it was so still and quiet it was as if I had stepped out of my normal world and into a black-and-white photograph – or not quite black-and-white: the moon, which had been so pale, was low and huge and a lovely yellow colour, like the kind of round yellow moon you draw when you're a child.

So, anyway, I walked home very slowly. Although it was quite dark, it wasn't really late, yet there was hardly anyone around. My footfalls echoed as I went. Goldie gets scared when we're walking at night and no one's about, but I don't mind it. I like the dark. It feels secret and protective. You can hide in it. You can wrap yourself up in it like a velvet cloak and feel safe. I stopped at the bottom of our road and looked up it. Everything that was so familiar also seemed strange.

When I got to the house I looked in at the front window and Mum was sitting on the sofa staring at the TV, which wasn't turned on. Just sitting and staring. I wanted to cry at her face, which was so sad. But she must have felt me there, because she turned towards me and I saw her expression change. She made herself be all cheery and calm, as if it was just another day and I was coming home from school or something – which is what I would have been doing, of course, if I hadn't been to see you. She stood up and tugged her skirt straight, then wiped her palms on it. I knew she had probably been sitting like that for hours, waiting for me to phone her. And I knew, too, that she would never tell me all the things she had been thinking while she was waiting like that. Goldie's mother tells her everything – about how her dad shouts at her when he's drunk, or how she was bullied at the office or how
she's worried about money and doesn't know what she's going to do. Goldie knows about the boyfriends her mother had before she met Goldie's father. She says her mother tries to treat her like a friend, when what she really wants is to be treated like a daughter – scolded and comforted and given rules she can keep or break. Mum never tells me stuff like that, or shares her worries with me. Now that I think of it, I've hardly ever seen her cry. She protects me, so when I saw her face tonight, it was like being given a glimpse of a whole other person.

She came to the door wearing her cheerful face and gave me a hug – but not one that went on too long or that would make me feel smothered. I knew she was being careful to behave exactly right, and she'd probably been planning it while she sat in front of the blank TV. Then she said that there was a ginger cake just out of the oven and would I like a cup of tea and a slice of it. I didn't have the heart to tell her I wasn't at all hungry, so I sat in the kitchen and she made tea and chatted about this and that so I didn't have to speak. Then she put the cake, which was still damp and warm from the oven, in front of me and poured me a mug of tea, and sat opposite me and said, ‘Do you want to tell me how it went, then?'

I didn't know what to say, where to begin. I prodded the cake and put a few crumbs in my mouth.

She said: ‘You don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to. There's no way I want to pester you. As long as you know that I'm here if you feel like it. There's nothing you can't tell me, nothing that will offend me.' Then she got up, kissed my cheek, and started wiping all the surfaces in this busy way, although everything was perfectly clean. I fed the cake to George, who was under the table, and I'm sure Mum saw but
she didn't say anything, except ‘Why don't you have a long soak in the bath?'

I want to tell her everything, but how do you discuss your mother with your mother?

So I had a bath. I could smell something cooking from the bathroom. Tunafish bake – that's what I always asked for when I felt in need of comfort and that was what she was making now. Then I heard the front door open and shut again: Dad was home. I heard him and Mum talking together downstairs, and although I couldn't make out what they were saying, I knew they would be talking about me.

Later I went into the kitchen and said I couldn't talk about it yet, but that wasn't because I didn't want to – just because I felt so tired and empty that there wasn't anything inside me to say. I said it had been fine and that we would talk about it soon. And that I loved her very, very much and that she and Dad would always be my mother and father. Nothing would ever change that.

What is there to say?

That you have my face, my eyes, and when I look at you I can see me there? It sounds stupid and obvious but I've never had that feeling before, and it made me feel I'd missed something huge. I wanted to cry – not just for myself, but for Mum and Dad for even thinking that way, when they've tried to give me everything a parent can give a child. The one thing they couldn't give me was that primal sense of the self – the self that's handed down from generation to generation, continued, replicated. I grew up feeling unique and alone, a person who'd started from zero, and suddenly I saw that I was a link in a great chain, stretching back into the past and – if I have kids myself, which I hope I do – forward into the future. But
Mum and Dad weren't part of that. I was linked to you instead.

That you told me the whole story? I hadn't really expected you to, and I didn't even know if I wanted to hear exactly how I came about and why I was given away. But I asked, and you told me. You must have decided in advance what you were going to say, because you talked for what seemed like ages. You made what happened into a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. A friendship, a brief, guilt-ridden affair with the friend's husband, a parting – and me. That's what I came from, that intense and tragic mess, which damaged everyone: the friend, her husband, her brother, you. You were calm and factual and didn't try to appeal for my sympathy and I liked that: it was honourable and it showed you were thinking about me and not yourself. At the same time, it made me uncomfortable, because you were behaving the way a mother should, and I don't want to think of you as my mother.

That I have a father? I mean, of course I have a father somewhere, but on the birth certificate it said ‘Father Unknown' and I assumed I'd never find out who he was. But, again, I asked you and you told me. It was as simple as that. I have a name, an age, an occupation. I have an address and a phone number. I know about his life and also that he looks like me. Or I look like him. His hair, his brows, his expression. He knows about me now. He's waiting for me to get in touch.

That I have a half-brother? Oh, God, that makes me feel peculiar, half glad and half full of fear, I'm not sure why. You haven't seen him for eighteen and a half years. You don't even know if he remembers your name and he knows nothing of
me, but you think that one day soon he will. Poor thing. Poor all of you. Have I done wrong?

That I don't know what I thought of you? You were so cool and self-possessed when we met, but I thought that was maybe because you were being honourable, if that makes sense. In fact, that's the strongest impression I took away with me – that you had a kind of integrity and were someone that people would trust, even if they didn't particularly like you. That you wouldn't let people down but kept your word. That you said what you believed and didn't mind what people thought of you. A strong woman. A bit hard, maybe. A bit sad. But perhaps I'm inventing that because I know what you went through. I could see how it felt so painful for someone like you to behave like that, to betray your friend and your boyfriend in the way you did. You must have felt terrible.

What did you think of me? Did you realize I was so nervous I could hardly speak? My tummy turned to liquid and my tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth and my throat went dry as chalk. Did you know I wanted to hug you, hit you, run away? I wanted you to be proud of me, and I desperately wanted not to care. Did you see that I was trying not to cry? It wasn't anything you said in particular, it was everything. The sheer fact of us. I looked at my hands on the table and then at your hands and they were the same. I looked into your eyes and they were my eyes. I listened to your voice and it was telling me my story. I've been waiting for this moment for so long, for almost the whole of my life, and now it's come and I don't know what to do with it any more. I thought it would feel different from this.

It's half past three in the morning, the dead hours. I've been writing this for ages. My hand feels cramped and my fingers
are stained with ink. I've come to the end but I don't want to stop, because when I do I'm alone with myself and it's hours till morning and I don't know what to do. I can't sleep, not tonight. I don't want to dream.