The Mother (14 page)

There is a small shed at the top, more of a shack than a shed, an outhouse built from offcuts. I walk toward it, open the rickety door, and enter. There is nothing in here that speaks of vegetation, no seeds or tubers or protected plants or crates of veg. Just his chair and his tools leaning
against the wall, his rake and hoe and spade washed clean, a kettle on top of a small gas hob, some matches beside it, a tin containing tea bags, his cup, a spoon. I realize I am crying and I sit in his chair staring out through the single window overlooking this lifeless plot and try to understand just what he does all day, what it means, where this ends. He has downed tools, finished with everything, has nothing more. This is the handiwork of a man whose bags are packed and is ready to die.

I move my feet to stand and they touch something beneath the table, on the floor. I bend down, pick it up. It is a shoe box. My hands begin to shake. The act of lifting the lid is like the climax of a nightmare, the moment when horror is inevitable and, though you know it, there is nothing you can do to avoid it. Inside are a pair of football boots, Ryan's, size 11, embalmed in dark caked mud, the same ones I watched Lloydie throw out. I don't know where my head was during that time. Actually, I do know, I just don't like to go there; back to that time when Ryan's death was so new upon us and so raw, when I was consumed with rage with everyone and everything, and sought blame. Nipa brought them to the house about a month after, along with Ryan's sports bag and clothing and schoolbooks, when the forensics team had finished with them. Ryan's boots. The reason he went back. The reason he was caught alone and Tyson Manley was able to do what he did.

After Nipa left, Lloydie was sitting in the kitchen at the table, just holding them and crying. I was watching him and remembering the last time I had seen my son. Ryan's final morning had been no different from any other morning. You
imagine when something like what happened to Ryan happens, perhaps that day the sky was unusually dark, mayhap the cat was hissing, the birds quiet. But it was a normal morning, ordinary, mid-March, chilly though bright with new spring sun, and the only quiet that morning came from Ryan.

I thought he was still angry with me about Sweetie, that's what I put his silence down to. He was quiet and contemplative and I thought he was punishing me. After he finished breakfast, I stood up and kissed him goodbye. It was the kiss of a parent who feels both guilty and right. Isn't that what parenting is about, feeling guilty but right? Refusing the sweets they want because you're the adult and you know too many will result in cavities? With that kiss I was trying to appease, wanted him over her and back to normal, and he accepted my kiss but did not return it, merely said goodbye. Then, as he opened the front door, Lloydie shouted to him that his football boots were still in the hallway.

“Don't forget them,” he said.

And Ryan returned and packed them.

After Nipa left I watched Lloydie sobbing while crushing the boots against his chest and I was consumed with rage.

I said, “Those bloody boots! This would never have happened if you'd just kept your mouth shut!”

Then I walked out and went upstairs to the bedroom. I heard the front door open and I went to the window and watched as Lloydie threw those boots into the bin and slammed it shut. He must have returned and retrieved them afterward, has had them all this time, kept them hidden here in this sterile place. I don't touch them, can't. I replace the lid and put the box back under the table where I found it. I
brush sprinkles of mud from the table, erasing the evidence of my presence as a child might. Finally, I stand.

It is a strange walk home, fast and driven by panic, haste bringing me closer to a destination I am fearful of reaching. Uppermost in my mind is the conversation we had last night, the terrible words I said—yet more of them. I have to steel myself as I put the key into the lock and turn it, open the front door, step inside. He is not in any of the rooms downstairs. I go upstairs, check our bedroom, the bathroom, hesitate a moment before turning the doorknob of my son's room and open the door. Lloydie is lying on Ryan's bed, fully clothed, curled around Sheba, eyes closed. I walk over, stand beside him, hold my breath, and watch his chest to see the rise and fall of breath in this man from the life that I had in the Before, this man that I have failed as much as he has failed me. He stirs. Sheba awakens and stretches. His eyes flutter open and he sits up, surprised at first, then embarrassed to be discovered in here.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

I don't know what to say to him, where to begin. Instead I sit down on the edge of the bed bedside him and kiss his head. I cannot bring myself to mention the allotment. He has been going there every day, seven days a week, and he has made an effort to pretend it is for some purpose, presumably for my sake, to protect me from the barren horror of his day-to-day reality.

“I must have fallen asleep,” he says.

I kiss him again. It feels like I've read his private diaries behind his back and discovered in them something personal,
something so intimate it was never intended for me to see or know. And so I don't mention it, never will, just need to find a way to draw him back from the solitude and hopelessness of that place, into the light, where there is the chance for living things to survive and thrive and grow.

He says, “I don't know why I came in here.”

But I know. It was to find something of his old self, the old life that has gone, to try to restore something of that time, to be close not just to his spirit but to the Ryan we loved who lived, and the people we were during that time, who seem to have vanished with our son to leave a cocoa-colored empty space. I take off my coat, sit on the bed beside him, and instead of another chaste kiss, I kiss his lips, like I have done a thousand times, slowly, lingering, a lover's kiss. Immediately he stands, flustered, like someone who has found himself on the verge of intimacy with the wrong person. He runs his hands over the shock of his grief-bleached hair.

“I need to start dinner,” he says, “I'm sorry,” and leaves me with Sheba on the bed. It smells of Lloydie in here, of Ryan when he helped himself to his father's aftershave, like a delicious memory springboarding a current event. I am afraid to tell him about Sweetie, afraid to bring him face-to-face with what he is avoiding most. I don't know what to do for the best, whether pushing him too hard is likely to send him over the edge of the precipice he's so precariously balanced on. My ignorance as to how to best help him overwhelms me, makes me feel helpless, and in the end I do what has become habit now: nothing. I pour myself a drink and run a bath.

Don't discuss Ryan. Don't bring up the case. Don't talk about Sweetie. Don't mention the allotment. I talk about the dinner
Lloydie has cooked as we eat at the table in the kitchen. This is where the return lies, in normalcy, the doing of the things we used to do, in refusing to allow the cowardice of avoidance to set the terms. I talk about the food and we speak about Rose and Dan and I sit at the table with my husband and ignore his discomfort, the awkwardness that has become a feature of his body language when it's just us two alone. I'm sure he's relieved at the end of it when I finish and leave him downstairs, go up on my own to our bed.

I ring my mother, speak to Leah, then Quigg, and afterward call Lorna on her landline at home. She doesn't answer, and I have already started dialing her mobile number when it occurs to me she may be sleeping. I put the phone down. I don't want to wake her if she's having an early night. My life, this case, it's enough to knock the stuffing out of anyone. I put the TV in the bedroom on instead and stare at the colors while I wait for my regular nighttime combo to take effect.

The next morning, there is a cup of tea on the side and I take it downstairs and drink it, sipping slowly and watching Lloydie tidy the already clean counters, wipe out the spotless interior of the fridge. He does the tiny pile of washing-up hurriedly, then leaves before Nipa arrives, and I cannot think of where he's heading or I'll cry.

We are first into the public gallery as always, take our regular seats at the end of the front row. There is an air of excitement in the courtroom that is palpable and appears to have everyone, apart from the accused, in its grip. Even Ms. Manley appears to have been able to get out of bed when the alarm went off this morning. She is punctual for the first time,
alone, wearing her signature sunglasses, sitting on her customary seat at the farthest end of the front row.

The judge gives us another telling off before the case commences. He tells us if we cannot contain ourselves, if there are any further outbursts or disturbances, he will have the gallery cleared. Whereas normally the security guards merely pass in and out as needed, today, one of them remains inside the gallery once the case gets under way. I take this as a sign the judge means business, and hope Ms. Manley has noted this and behaves herself; while she probably visits many courts, attending lots of cases, so being chucked out of this one might not be such a big deal for her, this is the only one I've ever attended, and it is vitally important to me I see it through.

The judge reiterates what Quigg told me last night on the phone, that St. Clare has made an application for Sweetie to be treated as a hostile witness. I think about those two girls at the café, her terror when she saw them, and I feel sick. I'm desperate with the hope that her resolve has not weakened overnight and with the anticipation of listening to her evidence if it hasn't. But I am also scared, on her behalf, sick and scared. St. Clare will do everything he can to destroy her credibility as a witness, and once he's finished with her and she leaves this courtroom, her exit will mark the beginning of an entirely new set of problems. I told her she could make choices, and now that she has, I feel responsible for what is about to unfold.

When she is called to the stand, she steps inside the witness box nervously. She looks extremely tired, as though last night she managed hardly any sleep. She is wearing the same outfit she had on yesterday, but it is a little grubby, a bit more creased with wear, and I can't help but feel that her appear
ance makes worse what is already a position of serious disadvantage. The young man who was with Ms. Manley yesterday arrives. Ms. Manley moves her bag and he takes his seat beside her. He is wearing large designer sunglasses as well, and instead of support, he looks like part of her entourage.

St. Clare stands as he did with Kwame, hands buried deep in his pockets as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. He is immaculately dressed and shod, but looking a little worse for wear himself, probably from the liquor he was knocking back last night while trying to get his head around how exactly he was going to front this case. He reminds Sweetie that she is under oath and has sworn to tell the truth before he begins, speaking slowly and putting an emphasis on his words that leaves no doubt in anyone's mind he's of the opinion she's come to court with the full intention of lying her head off. She glares at St. Clare as a hostile witness might. I can't decide whether her anger is better than the nervousness it has replaced, but it appears to bolster her confidence. As St. Clare speaks, the resilience of the woman with the kinky afro seems to grow.

He begins by asking her about her relationship with Tyson. She has been seeing him for about three years.

“So the defendant has been your boyfriend continuously for all of that time?”

Sweetie answers, “I wouldn't exactly class him as a boyfriend.”

“May I ask what you
would
class him as?”

“We link up from time to time, that's it.”

“When you say you ‘link up,' you mean you meet specifically for intercourse with each other?” St. Clare says.

“Yeah.”

“Do you ever go out on dates, to the movies for example, or to restaurants for meals?”

“No.”

“So your entire relationship revolves around meeting for intercourse?”

“I s'pose.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yeah, yes.”

“Yesterday, you told the court that the reason you gave a statement to the police on March 19 stating that Mr. Manley arrived at your house on March 18 at 4 p.m. was because he had told you to lie about the time he arrived.”

“'S right.”

“That seems a rather unlikely thing to do for someone with whom you are not in a relationship.”

“Well, I never exactly had a choice.”

“Really? Would you tell the court why you felt you had no choice other than to take actions which could well be deemed to have perverted the course of justice?”

A pause, then, “I was scared.”

“Of what?”

Sweetie glances at Tyson Manley. “Him.”

“Of Mr. Manley?”

“Yeah.”

“At the time you made your statement, were you aware Mr. Manley was being questioned about a murder?”

“Yeah.”

“You were aware that a person found guilty of murder would likely be sentenced to a prison term?”

“Yeah.”

“And knowing this person you claim to be scared of might go to prison, you thought the best thing would be to lie and by so doing, ensure he remained free?”

“That weren't exactly how I thought about it.”

“Would you be so kind as to tell the court exactly how you did think about it?”

“I just . . . y'know . . . he told me what to say and I said it.”

“Even though he was not your boyfriend or someone with whom you were in a relationship?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you really expect the court to believe that?”

Sweetie's voice is raised as she replies, “Look, you're the one asking what happened! I'm just tryin'a tell you.”

St. Clare does not acknowledge her annoyance. His own tone is unchanged. “Miss Nelson, if, as you claim, you were afraid of Mr. Manley, would it not have made more sense for you to have said he was
not
with you, thus increasing the likelihood of his going to prison?”