Greenall
After a lengthy wait in the queue, Daniel carries his tray of pizza and chips over to the far side of Greenalls’ crowded canteen and deposits himself at the last empty table. Empty that is, but for Jerry.
Deep down, Daniel has always had a soft spot for Jerry. Life for Jerry is all calm waters, no surprises, no tidal-waves, no Tsunamis; nobody ever drowns. Of course his reputation for being boring is wholly justified; this is not someone to be stuck with in a lift, or to have to go with on holiday, or even – under any normal circumstances – to single out as a lunch partner. When Jerry’s head isn’t filled with the intricacies of casual labour line-management it is engrossed in the escalating price of beer and the Millwrights’ fortunes in the pool league. He isn’t even on the team. He seldom mentions his wife and children – hard to think that this man has a family, would once have dated, married, saved, house-purchased, fucked and fathered. Or that he’d ever studied, been trained, applied for promotions and beaten down rivals for jobs. He is just Jerry. Slightly overweight, balding, sartorially uninspired, middle-aged and quietly contented Jerry.
“I need some time off,” Daniel begins. “Compassionate leave.”
Jerry’s welcoming smile buckles slightly. His shirtfront catches a globule of ketchup as the sausage hovers before an open mouth. “Oh, sorry to hear that, mate,” he replies. Whether censored by diplomacy or cowardice, Jerry – as Daniel had known full well – is not about to ask prying questions.
“Do you reckon I’d still get paid?”
Jerry returns the speared morsel for the time being to his plate.
“I’m not sure, to be honest. Not really for me to say, Daniel.”
“I thought not. That’s why I need you to arrange for me to see Mr Greenall.”
Jerry’s smile makes its final exit. These days even a line-manager rarely gets to see Martin Greenall. Reclusive and eccentric by reputation, Greenall has lately become something of a company myth; for weeks now, all day-to-day affairs have been handled solely by his partner, Blakeley. The latest word from the floor would have it that Greenall, only too aware of the company’s rocky fortunes, has done a runner and left Blakeley to go down with the ship. No peace for the rumour machine: the one cog in this business that still has the teeth to turn with a vengeance. The inevitable suggestion to approach Blakeley instead is already forming on Jerry’s lips, but Daniel is quick to scotch it. He isn’t interested in speaking to Blakeley. It’s a matter that concerns a shared history between Greenall and his father.
Of course, were Martin Greenall any normal kind of uncle, Daniel would have been straight onto the phone to him the moment he’d heard the news about Alex. With any normal kind of uncle there would have followed much rejoicing and shedding of tears and no question at all over taking compassionate leave. But Martin Greenall has never been any ordinary kind of uncle. The two men have not spoken since the funeral. Daniel has no current address or phone number for him. He’s not even sure that Uncle Martin could still pick him out of a crowd.
The sausage now discarded, or maybe just forgotten, Jerry downs his knife and fork and rises to his feet with tray in hand.
“Of course I’ll ask,” he pledges, before sidling away. And he will too, Daniel knows that. Dull as dishwater he may be, but Jerry is a man who sticks to his word.
The glimmer of optimism sparked by the meeting steadily fades as Daniel’s day lurches from hour to hour. The more persuasively he argues the case for paid leave the less he can muster any trust in hearing back from Greenall. His uncle always was and always will be a complete shit.
On the way home, as promised, Daniel drops in at the hospital. Alex’s newly washed clothes are folded inside his holdall. The grisly receptionist checks her computer and directs him to Ward C, an open ward; she says there’s no need to check in from now on.
Ward C proves to be one of those he’d seen opening straight onto the main corridor. Something about the way the patients are packed inside, languishing there in rows, makes him dread them suddenly. When his own turn comes he will do what cats do – slink off into a dark corner, close his eyes and breathe his last, not have medical science making some song and dance about it. He tries not to see them. But there is no avoiding the smell. Even above the odours of urine, disinfectant and boiled cabbage drifts their smell of despair. Despair at having entrusted their lives to the institution, at having had their self-esteem invaded by needles and drugs and scalpels and X-Rays, their dignity stripped and bundled into carrier bags and thrust into the arms of bewildered relatives, at seeing their humanity reduced to a whiteboard and clip-chart, seeing their name become a number. Despair in equal measure of dying and of living.
And there at the far end lies Alex, turned back by the Pearly Gatekeeper, forced now to suffer the same humiliations. Feeling all too conspicuous, Daniel crosses the threshold into the ward. A hundred eyes are turned on him – the damning eyes of the bedridden and their visitors into whose privacy he’s stepping, the pleading eyes of those who lie alone and unloved. He makes a point of looking straight ahead, targeting a section of blank wall above Alex’s bed. He inwardly counts footsteps. One, two, three… seven steps to three beds – twenty-eight steps, all told. Twelve beds each side. A patient for every year that has kept him and Alex apart. Only when he reaches the bedside does he allow his gaze to fall and rest upon his brother’s face. Alex stares straight back, the gaze of an animal caught in headlights. A look of awe, but no longer one of disbelief. Like one who has been waiting for a moment that he’s known would arrive. Daniel’s pledge to come for him has not been forgotten.
“It won’t be long now, Alex. Soon as they give us the all clear you’re out of here. I’ve even brought your clothes.”
Speaking comes more easily now. Alex is noticeably more responsive: small movements of his body, the tiniest jerk to the head – perhaps involuntary, his fingers twitching across the sheets. But it hasn’t yet become a welcoming response, not one of relief or joy. Maybe there are just too many facial muscles to which he still has no access. The few he does command – or perhaps they move of their own accord – only leave him looking traumatised.
“You’ve had it tough, I’m guessing.” Daniel drops the bag beside the bed and suddenly can’t think what to do with his hands. “Since your accident as a child, I mean. Something that’s kept you away from us? Mum and me, we were worried sick. All those years, Alex! Everyone believed you were dead. How can it have taken you so long to make contact?”
He isn’t really expecting words for a reply, but maybe something in the eyes at least, or a movement. Given all that Alex has put them through, it isn’t a lot to be asking. But Alex gives him nothing more. Not so much as a grunt of affirmation or understanding. Daniel reaches irritably for his bag.
“Okay, well, you’ll be explaining everything soon enough. The main thing for now is you came home.” And with the same promise that he’ll be back, Daniel pulls out the copper woollen jersey and grey jeans and lays them over the chair beside the bed. For now, he can do nothing more. He turns and creeps back towards the corridor; twenty-eight paces that feel like a hundred, tracked by forty-eight pleading eyes, two of which – Alex’s – burn like lasers into the back of his skull.
Back at the desk, after some phoning around and checking paperwork, the receptionist is able to confirm that Alex is down for discharge on the coming Monday. A list of questions has been stapled to one of the papers; Daniel spots Prentice’s name on the bottom. A grilling begins, an interrogation about what plans are in place for Alex’s onward care. Daniel is too tired to make trouble. He answers every question quietly and fully. Yes, he’s given Alex fresh clothes. Yes, he’ll come with the car. Yes, he can pay the deposit and sign for the wheelchair. Yes, there are proper provisions in place, including regular home visits from trained nursing staff. No, Alex will not be left unattended, even for short periods. Eventually she seems satisfied, taps something into her computer and lets him go.
Alone that evening, wit
h Gulnaz on nights till the weekend, Daniel decides to focus on the one thing over which he feels he has control – converting his flat into an invalid-friendly home. He wanders from room to room, trying to visualise the scale of the task. They’re on the ground floor, so no awkward stairs, no raised levels, a straight run of vinyl from the kitchen through to the hallway and bathroom. Easy enough. But the lounge and bedroom carpets are both potential trip hazards. The edges will need fixing down with gaffer tape.
Probably good that the apartment is always so warm. Sitting directly above the boiler room – a boiler churning out heat and hot water for all nine flats – it’s rare to have to turn on the heating. But he might have to get hold of a couple of fans – never a wise move to open the windows. Though the bars rule out another burglary, there’s the awful smell to contend with, the sole purpose of the high boundary wall being to keep fresh air out and the stench of rotting bins in.
Getting in and out of the building might be a sticking point. That bloody lobby and all its bicycles. Hard enough getting up the main step to the entrance door, never mind past the total logjam by the stairs. Well, tough. The owners will have to get rid of their bikes – or take them upstairs and block their own bloody corridors. Or do the decent thing like him and rent a garage unit across the road. He’ll leave notes for them all at the weekend.
Transport. The next hurdle. He has absolutely no idea how compact a folding wheelchair becomes, whether small enough to stash in the back of a Golf with its rear seats down. He’s seen those ludicrous Spaz Wagons, like double-decker Minis, like Postman Pat’s van. No way is he going to be seen driving anything like that around.
And so to the allocation of rooms. The sitting room can be Alex’s bedroom. It’ll need a bed-settee or similar. This weekend, he’ll pop down to that recycled furniture place in town. Daniel’s bedroom: strictly out of bounds – Jesus, the flat is small enough as it is. He’s going to need somewhere private. Maybe he can push the bed into the corner and make space for a couple of chairs and the telly. It certainly isn’t going to be perfect – for either of them. But sacrifices must be made. Twins don’t just abandon each other because it’s inconvenient to be together. Daniel isn’t going to see Alex left to rot in some care home on a diet of tranquillisers and bingo. Daniel will nurse him back to health – teach him to talk again, exercise his muscles and get him walking. A month, that is all it will take. And then the flat can be his once more. It’s what he plans to ask for: a month’s compassionate leave.
Exhausted from all the planning, Daniel fixes himself a coffee and sinks into the armchair. He tries hard to summon back the healthy Alex who’d sat opposite, to share a hot drink, or a beer, and have a laugh with. But it can’t be done. Only the immobile, dumbstruck Alex sits there. On second thoughts (wandering now through to the kitchen; this will be the exception that proves the rule), perhaps he’s being a tad optimistic (reaching into the wall cupboard; forgivable, under the circumstances). Better to ask for two months’ paid leave (the bottle in hand, out with the cork; definitely an alcohol-free day tomorrow), in order to give Alex the very best chance (his tumbler generously filled; maybe leave this one off the drinks tally – still another day to go before the next meeting and already over the week’s allowance).
Daniel considers. There could hardly be a worse moment for calling upon the goodwill of the boss if the garden centre really is failing as badly as everyone claims. But what did he have to lose? His job, by the sound of things – whether he pushed his luck or not. But once he hears that his long lost nephew is alive, surely even Greenall, bastard though he is, will want to cough up some kind of a donation. Daniel isn’t even asking for additional money, just his normal take-home pay. But then, Greenall is unlikely to believe him, or could start asking awkward questions – child abduction and all that – drag in the police. Daniel definitely does not want the filth sniffing about. He knows how they work. Even his distant past wouldn’t be safe. They’d find some way of getting their grubby hands on it, twisting it around to implicate him somehow in Alex’s accident. And almost certainly they’d find a reason to stop him taking Alex in.
The way ahead gradually becomes clearer: tell Uncle Martin about Alex in such a way that there is no mystery, only cause for jubilation. Bring Alex home and get him well enough to talk again. Then, and only then, if some grisly tale about his past does emerge, contact the law and hand the matter over to them like the good citizen that he is. This whisky really is clearing his head; the only time all week he’s had any true sense of where anything is leading. Justification indeed for this one lapse in the ‘Programme’. It’s enough to get him back onto his feet and at the kitchen cupboard again. Might as well give this particular branch of therapy his best double shot.
In the morning comes the news he’s been waiting for. Jerry catches up with him in the toilets. They eye each other nervously in the mirror as Daniel continues to gulp water from the tap. His boss’s face reddens a little as he speaks, Daniel’s own remains ghostly white. Greenall’s response to Jerry’s approaches (via Blakeley) is that Daniel must submit his request – and the reasons behind it – in writing.
When he should be outside sweeping, Daniel sneaks off to ‘Garden Furniture’ with some of Jerry’s writing paper, sits at a picnic table and forces his mind to work. How to reformulate his case. He’d had it all rehearsed as a speech; each rise and fall, every acceleration and dramatic pause, the hand gestures, the face; when to be lightweight, when to let his voice break a little. But to capture all that on the page is going to be so much harder. Whether to go really formal: ‘To the managing director of Greenall and Blakeley Ltd. Dear Sir’, or lighten up; try for a little nepotism: ‘Hey, Uncle Martin, Daniel here. How’s it going?’
He battles with it for over an hour, until finally emerging with a splitting headache and a message that more or less does its job:
10/1/07
Dear Uncle Martin,
I know we haven’t corresponded for a long time, but I am writing to give you some totally amazing news. It’s about Alex. Like some weird miracle, he’s turned up – ALIVE! After all these years, completely out the blue. It turns out he wasn’t killed up on those cliffs. That’s why they never found him. I know it sounds incredible, I can hardly believe it myself. But we have no idea where he’s been all this time because he can’t tell us. We found him unconscious. He’s now in hospital – it looks like maybe a stroke or something. They plan to put him in a home, but I want to look after him and help him to talk and walk again. That’s why I need two months’ paid compassionate leave.
I’ve always appreciated you giving me this job. I know Mum did too. And I know you’ve always looked out for me here. I’d be so grateful for this one last favour.
Yours faithfully,
Daniel George
He squirms at the letter’s sycophantic tone, but he does like his ‘weird miracle’, and how the comma after it works to slow down the reader ready for the capitalised punch line – just how he’d planned to deliver it verbally. He screws up his eyes to push the pain aside and carefully re-writes the words in his best handwriting.
On the way out that evening he drops the note off at the customer service desk with strict instructions that it reach the boss first thing in the morning. He knows that time is running out. The hospital had said a week and it’s already Wednesday. Unless Greenall’s decision is received by the weekend he might have to throw a sickie and blow everyone’s goodwill.
The pain in his head rules out another visit to the hospital. The journey home plays out like a video game, with the world beyond the glass making all the running – Daniel himself can feel no sense of movement. Headlights, tail lights, traffic lights, street lights, house and shop lights: all just a blaze of shooting-stars, dissolving against a smudgy black, their points colliding on all sides and swimming before his eyes, stabbing at his optic nerve. The hubbub of rush hour is lost to his inner din of throbbing and pulsing. Afterwards, nothing of the journey stick
s in mind beyond nauseating light, sound and pain.
Home again now, no idea how he made it; a spray of letters across the lobby floor. He gathers them all up and pulls out those addressed to him, stuffing the rest into the nearest pigeonhole. In his present state he can barely read, let alone sort them.
The kettle is on before he’s even closed the door to the flat and removed his coat. The first mouthful of coffee washes down three Paracetamol. As the mug empties, as a second follows, as his temples are pressed between his wrists, so his eyes begin to clear, his mind to un-fog and his queasiness to settle. Ten more minutes with eyes closed, head in hands. Only then can he bring himself to take a second look at the mail on the table. A notification from his landlord of another hike in rent – the third in as many years, a credit card offer, various flyers, a desktop-published letter announcing he’s won thousands of Euros on the Spanish lottery – they all go straight into the bin. One letter remains. Familiar writing and no stamp. A cursory lick holds the flap by its tip. Inside he finds a single sheet of lined paper torn from a wire binder and folded into four, the same handwriting inside in blue biro. He opens it and groans. Of course, Gulnaz. It says she called round just before her shift to see how he was. They must have missed each other only by minutes, but it’s pointless phoning her now; her mobile is never turned on while she’s on duty. The letter asks about Alex, and about Daniel’s plans for the weekend. The words are caring and sensitive, and yet they leave him feeling unsettled. They give away nothing of her mind. They’ve not seen each other since that fractious parting at the hospital.
Something in particular in her note rings oddly. Something one might write to a close friend who is going through a breakup; Platonic – not the sentiment of one lover to another. ‘There’s always a bed for you here if you need one,’ she’s put. He reads it over again. A bed. Gulnaz’s bed? With her in it? Or just a roof over his head? Does she not wish to sleep at his place any more then? Probably not; because of the cat allergy thing. And what’s all this, ‘If he needs one’? If he needs her, but not vice-versa, is that it? At first her letter angers him. He is all set to tear it up when a quite different meaning jumps off the page. Maybe she’s thinking about him organising the flat ready for Alex, and wants only to offer some temporary reprieve from the mess. All the same, she might have said, ‘Come over and keep me warm in bed any time you like.’ Ah, but of course she’s on nights. This is to offer her room to him in her absence. It must be that. He picks up the note and reads the sentence again. Now it’s the word ‘always’ that proves irksome. A long-term word. He’ll have the flat ready for Alex by Monday, and she’s only on nights till the end of the week.
Thursday comes – and hangs around like a bad smell. Having remorselessly tossed him from one crisis to another without letup since Christmas night, time, it seems, has suddenly exhausted itself and gone on strike. Getting through the day is like weaving a path through a freeze frame. Hour after hour he traipses from shop floor to conservatory, from garden area to café and back again, amid the statues of pensioners, stationary lines at checkouts, trolleys piled high with shrubs going nowhere, folks sat at tables staring into their teas but not drinking. And each time the clock tells him no, not hours. Minutes. That’s all. Only minutes since he’d made his last time check.
Thursday is Jerry’s day off, because he works Sundays. So there’s no-one to badger. The girl at customer service confirms that his note has gone to Greenall’s office. Has she seen him? No, only Blakeley. Tomorrow is Daniel’s last shift before the weekend. He gives Greenall an ultimatum. If no answer by lunch time tomorrow then he’ll break with protocol and march straight upstairs and, if absolutely necessary, appeal to Blakeley instead. Perhaps Greenall has talked about his past, has told Blakeley about Daniel – or even Alex, and with any luck, the more approachable Blakeley will be every bit as generous, if not more so.
The day brings no reply. Like everyone else, at five thirty Daniel is forced to fight his way out of the car park and lock horns with the ring-road traffic, merging nose-to-tail like the teeth of some giant zipper. He knows he should visit Gulnaz – or phone her at least – before she leaves home. A good brother would visit the hospital as well. But the traffic only nudges him homewards. All very well what he should be doing, but that takes no account of Alex’s non-communication or of yesterday’s note from Gulnaz that now makes him wary of speaking to her. Let Alex be alone for one more night. Let Gulnaz think him a little aloof. He can make it up to them both tomorrow. Things will return to normal next week when everything falls into place.
Back to work again next morning. Even if Greenall had known about his ultimatum he couldn’t have cut it finer. The canteen is already shedding its lunchtime crowd and Daniel is due back on duty: mould and mildew removal from pots and troughs. He’s all set instead to cut through ‘Houseplants’ and take the stairs to his uncle’s office, when he spots him at the main entrance. The sight is unnerving. Daniel hasn’t seen him, even fleetingly, for well over a year. Reclusive and eccentric indeed. The man might have slept in his suit. He speaks to nobody, avoids the eyes of those who hail him, sets his sights to the floor and scurries forward in that funny old stoop of his. Ever since Daniel could remember, his uncle had been slightly deformed, with a gammy right leg. He’d always looked older than his years, but he seems to have aged another ten in twelve months. Greenall and his father were the same age – school friends: fifty-six or seven, but he looks seventy. Suddenly, Daniel doesn’t fancy his chances one bit with this withered, stand-offish old man. Greenall reaches his office and lurches inside. Daniel needs a way of holding his ground – to see if his uncle reappears. Fortunately, he’s accosted by a customer with a problem over a price reduction, the perfect excuse to hang about in sight of the stairs without having to stand idle. He pretends to struggle with the question, giving deliberately convoluted answers to draw out the exchange. ‘The reduction applies to the family-size only, except where superseded by the three-for two offer, unless of course you’re using your loyalty card…’ Then, with the poor shopper on the verge of surrender, the office door opens and Greenall is hobbling again, down the stairs and over to the customer service desk, with something, a memo or a letter, in his hand. Muttering a single word, he drops the object into a wire tray and is gone: ten minutes maximum; a day’s work for the top man in a toppling empire. Next thing Daniel knows, he is hearing his own name over the intercom.
“Sorry, got to go. Discount on the two litre bottles only, mate.” He pushes aside the dazed customer and is at the front desk in less than ten seconds. The girl hands him the letter with an inquisitive smile and Daniel too is out of there. Posh envelope, the name typed, not computer printed. Quality paper inside, typed again and signed by hand. The language is formal but not excessively so, the content concise and to the point. ‘A difficult economic climate… turbulent times… all hands needed on deck to ride out the storm.’ Daniel’s heart begins to sink. But… Greenall was so shocked and moved to hear about Alex that he visited him in hospital this morning to see the miracle for himself (bloody Nora!). After due consideration and discussion with his partner, Daniel is to be offered, ‘A month’s compassionate leave on half pay, subject to review in two weeks, depending on your brother’s progress.’ He hoped Daniel would understand that this was the best he could offer under the present circumstances, in order to remain fair to the rest of the employees. Signed, Martin J Greenall DCM.
Not the worst news. Not the worst. But, Christ, how’s he supposed to manage on half pay? He’s barely solvent as it is. An extra mouth to feed and so much still to buy. He remembers the rental demand in the bin. Money to find there too. There was that credit card offer, perhaps. No, no way – not another one – quickest pathway to ruin. Some additional part-time work then, just during the day to supplement his income. But if that got back to Greenall, he’d be in deepest shit. Benefits. Gulnaz had said something about grants. He will definitely ring her tonight before his session with Joan. W
hatever Gulnaz’s feelings have become towards him, she isn’t going to refuse him advice. If she starts her night shift at nine she’ll probably be up and about by half six.
He rallies a little. The letter isn’t what he’d been hoping for, but the prospect now lies ahead of a whole month unshackled from his stupid job. He has just three more hours to endure. Blasting the muck from those pots feels symbolic – a clean slate. Three hours of hard physical graft, the kind of work he likes best, and he’ll be a free man.
There is just time on the way home to pay a flying visit to the hospital and break the good news to Alex. The clock is against him; he needs to catch Gulnaz before she leaves and has to be at the drop-in centre for seven. Much to his annoyance, Alex is not on the ward when he arrives – being ‘attended to’ by the nurse, is all they will tell him. And there isn’t time to wait. When eventually he makes it back to the flat Daniel is straight on the phone to Gulnaz. But she can only give him a few minutes – he’d been wrong about her start time, and they do little more than make arrangements for Saturday; no chance to discuss his financial problems. Then, before he can so much as snatch a breath, it’s time to head off to the drop-in centre. The thought of seeing Joan again actually gives him a slight buzz. He does feel more in control with her than he had with that idiot Matt, and something of a connection too. But all the dashing about has racked up his nerves. A bit of Dutch courage to loosen his tongue and calm him down might be wise before setting out, just a tot, and certainly nothing with a smell to give him away.
He reaches for the vodka.
Joan seems genuinely pleased to see him. The session begins with everyone recounting their drinks total for the week. Few have been as successful as Daniel; the comments from some make it clear they suspect him of cheating. The anorexic punk, who declares his tally to be zero despite slurring his words in so doing, most certainly has been. This leads to a round-the-circle reflection on when the dependency on drink first began.
For Daniel, it was when he was twenty-one, the day of the funeral. Something else to lay at his mother’s door. Arrangements had been handled by his uncle Martin, Daniel himself being in no fit state after those final, long bedside vigils. The world that he’d known for ten years had just fallen apart. The moment it was clear that she was never coming home, his thieving, self-centred uncle had put the family house on the market. With his mum dead, and the house sale completed, suddenly Daniel had nowhere to live, nobody to look after, no job to go to, no qualifications of any worth. Beyond his uncle, and his aunt Eleanor from his father’s side, there wasn’t a soul at the funeral he recognised. He’d sat in the shadows during the service, endured words of condolence in silence, and throughout the gathering afterwards skulked around in the kitchen.
He leaves the account at that, but it sits with him as the group offer their stories of financial crises, bullying at work, extra-marital affairs, abused childhoods. Just one new acquaintance Daniel had made that afternoon of the funeral; patiently waiting, her slim neck and slender shoulders glinting amber from the sun through the window. Someone in the group is talking about love at first sight. Yes, Daniel might call it that. And a wild honeymoon to follow. But how imperceptibly that power balance had shifted, until the day he woke to discover that his love affair with drink had soured into an abusive marriage. And, like the middle-aged woman now relating her twenty year ordeal at the hands of her husband, he too had done nothing to break loose. In all that time, his body has never built up a resistance. If anything, the passing years have made his hangovers all the more crippling. Only his mindset has moved on; shedding the delusions that he could quit any time, leaving him resigned to the fact that the daily abuse was for life.
He’s struck by the parallels between everyone’s stories. Always the seeds of undoing seem to lie within the family. Joan sees this too, and uses it as her means to turn to their genograms.
In picking out the key branches of his own tree, Daniel feels a sudden compunction to reveal all about Alex’s fall and the miracle of his survival. But Joan has already latched onto the loss of his father and how it affected him as a child. He explains about his father’s naval career, that he was away for long periods, that he lost his life in the South Atlantic. He tells them how Alex and he looked forward to their father’s return, to his heroic tales and presents, fully intending to bring the story round to the tragedy up on the cliffs.
“But how do you think you reacted to his death?” she persists.
All eyes turn on Daniel. What? Hasn’t he just answered that? She should pay attention and not interrupt when people are pouring out their hearts. She’s murdered the moment. He can’t believe he’d been about to lay himself so open. Sorry, but enough said. Next question.
But her next question is the one that finally decks him. Ostensibly posed to the whole group, it might so easily have been a personal swipe, a punishment for refusing to play ball.
“Okay everyone. Looking now at your genograms, who would you say you take after most, your father or your mother?”
Eyes turn to laps and foreheads furrow.
“Daniel?”
“Definitely my father.”
She lets it go at that and moves on, but even in hearing the words, Daniel knows it to be a lie. His mother wasn’t strong like his father. Neither was Daniel. She was quiet and thoughtful. So was he. No wonder she’d always understood him so well. He often sensed that she favoured him over Alex:; always encouraging him – telling him he was the clever one. Cleverer than she was, maybe. His father had always insisted she was stupid. She and Daniel both. His father resented her middle-class background, criticised her for her blinkered view of the world, for knowing nothing about how nations grapple with nations. He mocked Daniel for his time-wasting, for the hours spent staring up at the stars and wondering how the universe came about. So there it is: in his mother’s image was Daniel made. It figures. He could aspire all he liked toward the noble qualities of his father, but he’d always default to this. No drop-in centre, no therapist and no understanding girlfriends would ever change that.
Notes and overview for the week ahead, and a short creative writing assignment on ‘being close to someone’. Complete the drinks diary and add up the week’s units – something that might prove more awkward this time around.
Joan asks him to stay behind after the meeting. She looks up seriously from her papers and says quite openly, “I’m wondering if you’re ready for this yet.” Daniel stares at her and clutches the back of the nearest chair.
“What do you mean? What’s wrong? Aren’t I doing everything you’re asking me to? They’re really helpful, these sessions.” He’d believed he was doing so well. He just hopes she hasn’t smelled something on his breath.
“I feel you’re holding back,” she explains softly.
“Holding back?? No way.”
“And saying the things you think I need to hear.”
He’d clearly been less in control than he’d thought. “But I’ve got to come,” he protests. “I made someone a promise.”
Her seriousness melts into a look of sympathy. “I’m sorry,” she says, “but you have to understand, this will only work if you’re doing it for yourself.”
He scoffs and turns away, outwardly angry, inwardly cursing himself for being so utterly transparent. But next meeting he will show her. Tonight he will write such insightful notes. He will tussle again with all those questions and lay himself bare.
At three a.m., unable to sleep, he writes a short story about a blind boy who lives with his grandmother. Bullied by the other children in the neighbourhood, the boy saves all his affections and woes for his pet rabbit. The rabbit lives in a hutch in his garden, but each day after school the boy brings it in and sits it on his lap, until one day, when his gran is out, he becomes disorientated and treads on the rabbit and breaks its back. He and the rabbit had been close. Too close.
From the story, he turns straight to his notes. They’d better be bloody good ones if they?
??re to win Joan over again. Highly – what had she said? – ‘reflective’. Maybe he should start by putting the record straight. Okay, he’d made a mistake. He took after his mother, not his father. But he’d spent a lifetime trying to correct that fault. Surely that was worth something. But it was also crucial to answer the question about the impact of his father’s death. Why had he struggled so much with that one? It went deeper than feeling exposed in front of the group. He’d simply not known the answer. His father had always been the perfect hero. They’d grown up believing he was untouchable. Yes, that was it. His death must have been so devastating that Daniel was too stunned by the news to accept it. Like Alex thinking it was his boat. With their mother, now that was different. Daniel was so much older when she died, and the event so long awaited. He’d had months, years, to distance himself from the mortifying creature in his care, so that by the time the shrivelled impostor in that bed breathed her last he’d already let go of the person he could properly say was his mother. But then, he’d also felt her death more, because her weaknesses were so plain to see. She was flawed in life, so death had an easy way in – through the cracks.
Something like that.
He throws down his pen. Pretentious claptrap. And none of it accounted for the anger. When he’d walked again through those hospital corridors, when he’d retraced that bus journey, when Gulnaz had pressed him over his education, when the group had asked about his ‘untapped potential’, there was still so much fury burning him up inside. It’s always there, eating into him whenever he thinks of his mother. It isn’t just her illness and death, or the effect that had on him. He’d realised that well enough by now. He knows how hard she had worked at keeping the family together – even when their father was alive, never mind after he’d gone. Stupid, Father said she was – but she wasn’t stupid with money. She was the one who’d kept them fed and clothed and seen them off to school on time – he couldn’t rightly go on blaming her for getting ill. Nor was it true that she alone drove him to drink. His anger wasn’t really about these things.
No, it was about Alex. She was accountable: for having taken her eye off him on that Christmas walk. There could be no excuse for that. How could any mother be so irresponsible? With a nine-year-old? Alex’s terrible accident, it was all her doing. That was inarguably her fault. It made her a bad mother, a bad human being – by definition. Her own look of guilt, the one that makes him shudder to this day, it convicted her, condemned her to eternal damnation. And it probably had every bit as much to do with her death as the cancer.
He pulls out the pen from the folds of the sheets and writes in capital letters, THAT IS WHY, MOTHER, I CAN NEVER FORGIVE YOU.