A Terrible Kindness(28)
William smiles, puts the parcel on the bed, lifts the tray gently from her lap and sets it on the floor next to his.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he says, ‘I know, all you want for Christmas …’
‘… is you!’ she finishes, as she has done for as long as William can remember. ‘But never more true than this year. Oh well, best get this palaver out of the way.’ She pulls at the wrapping paper, feigning boredom. The paper rips to reveal the corner of a picture frame. The facade, also part of their ritual, is dropped as she quickly sweeps the paper aside and studies the photograph, scanning the sixteen ruff-necked boys in purple and white. He sees her eyes land on him, standing next to Martin, holding his music at just the right angle.
‘Go on then.’ He leans into her arm, nudging her with his elbow. ‘Say it.’
Still fixed on the photo, she leans back against his body. ‘I love it! I take back everything I said before – this is much better than you, any day.’
William’s present is a bike, waiting for him in the communal shed next to the allotments. His old one is still there, ridiculously small. He goes for a ride round the park at the end of the street while Evelyn starts lunch. He can only just reach the ground, so he’s a little nervous, but thinks by Easter he’ll have grown into it.
For the first few days at home William had woken at six, when Matron would have marched through the dorms with her bell. There is a particular pleasure simply lying there not having to get up, gazing at his bedroom, at the spindly bookshelf, the yellow and red spines of The Boys’ Book of Heroes, The Hardy Boys, The Famous Five and two bibles, one black and one red. William’s eyes rest for longest on the cowboys and Indians rampaging across his curtains. He was just nine when the exciting new fabric had replaced the yellow calico he’d known since birth. A giant, hanging story book, with the rangy sheriff striding out of a hotel, and to the left, two Red Indians looking up a mountain, one with leather tassels running the whole length of his outstretched arm, and the other balancing a long spear on his shoulder. Above them, a friendly-looking cowboy with a gun stands next to a carriage with white, billowy sides. The final image is of three cowboys, galloping towards William with pistols.
He has not forgotten the excitement of these curtains. They signalled a turning point, when his mum stopped looking sad all the time. He was still woken every night by her sobbing, which was so awful he worried that she might choke and die. But at least in the mornings she’d smile and do things like buy him cowboy and Indian curtains.
‘It’s called Hiiiigh Noooon!’ she said with a twangy drawl, pulling them across his window for the first time. They enjoyed westerns at the cinema, had already seen Gary Cooper in the film from which the images had come. The galloping cowboys on the curtains were probably heading down the mountain to kill the Indians, but it all looked friendly and jolly.
Lounging in bed, soaking in his familiar surroundings, has been pleasant. So has not standing over the bath for morning dips, or practising piano before breakfast. William often feels drowsy on sugar and so much warmth and comfort. He sloughed off the chorister boarder easily and settled back into his old self, eating as much as he wants, cuddling up on the sofa with Evelyn and a story book, even though he is too old. The knowledge of how happy he makes her, just by breathing and being close to her, drapes over his shoulders again like a warm, heavy cloak. There are moments, however, in their cosy flat when he feels a little trapped. When his mother’s loving eyes on his face are too much. Too caring. Too intense. There are moments when he misses the bracing discipline of his life in Cambridge; the independence of only thinking about himself, the busyness of not having a spare minute to lounge around and wonder what to do next. Late in the dark afternoons, his overfed body sometimes aches for the brisk walk through the college grounds and into his beautiful chapel.
22
He must have fallen asleep. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers have disappeared. Something else is on now, but he can’t work out what it is. Evelyn is in the kitchen. Without moving a muscle, he knows.
It’s Boxing Day, and as usual, Uncle Robert and Howard are coming for tea, and as a result, Evelyn is in a bad mood. He can tell by the chink of cutlery on ceramic, the slosh of water in a mixing bowl, the shriek of a baking tray being pulled from the oven.
William is never hungry when they have posh tea because he will have been in the kitchen, helping. It’s their joke. ‘William, can you help me with the washing up?’ Evelyn says, handing him a mixing bowl, or a whisk, or a spoon covered in something raw and sweet.
Sitting up on the sofa now, his bare feet touching the carpet, he feels guilty. If he’d wanted to, he could have been a real help this year, spreading the marge and fish paste, spearing the cheese and pineapple cubes with cocktail sticks, sprinkling the trifle with hundreds and thousands. But he didn’t want to be in the kitchen, wary of what Boxing Day does to his mum. He’s tired and irritable, and thinks how nice it would be if he could trust her to make Uncle Robert and Howard feel welcome. Instead of trying to jolly her along with jokes and helpfulness, William walks into the kitchen on the offensive.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes?’ She doesn’t turn from the sink where she’s scrubbing burned bits off the baking tray.
William sits at the stool in the corner. ‘Was there a memorial service for Dad?’