The Things I Know(32)

‘What does Mr Waleed have in his cage?’

Her eyes swept the outbuildings and Big Barn, as she tried to picture such a lack of space and rooms.

‘Things like rolled-up carpets, spare shoes and clothes, blankets, chairs, old beds, picture frames.’

‘It sounds interesting, like a flea market.’

‘It is interesting, but a bit sad too.’

‘Why sad?’

Grayson looked out over the grass that bent in the breeze which whipped over it. ‘There are garden tools, hoes, spades and trowels. Old-looking things with wooden handles and thin strips of faded paint, and some have clumps of mud and dirt encrusted on them. And I think about that soil, which Mr Waleed will never dig again, or likely never walk. Soil from somewhere far, far away, where it was possible for him to have a garden, a patch of outside space. And it makes me sad because I think how much better it would be for his little kids to have their laughter rising up higher and higher into a bright blue, sun-filled sky, rather than stopping short on the roughly plastered ceiling of the bedroom below mine.’

‘What’s in your storage cage?’ she asked softly, loving his kindness as she kicked her heel against the lawn.

Grayson looked down at his lace-up shoes, as if slightly ashamed and a little embarrassed to be making the confession. He gave a small cough to clear his throat and looped his long fringe from his eyes with his fingertip, tucking it behind his left ear.

‘I’m the only one who goes down there. It has my dad’s stuff in it,’ he whispered.

‘What stuff?’

‘Some of his books, some of his clothes.’ He took a breath and looked up, as if picturing each item catalogued in his mind. ‘His dark wedding suit, his narrow black tie for funerals, his soft woollen bathrobe with a gold rope belt, his box of cassettes. All written on in his tiny, neat script. He loved rock and roll.’

‘He did?’ Hitch said, smiling.

‘Yep, he really did. He told me once that it reminded him of his mum and dad and when he was younger. And when I was little, on a Sunday, he used to put his tapes on, just for a few hours. The whole flat came alive, jumping with the sound of Charlie Rich’s ‘Midnight Blues’ and Ray Harris’s ‘Lonely Wolf’. He and my mum used to dance, right there in the front room.’

Hitch tried and failed to picture Pops and her mum doing something similar.

‘That’s the only time I remember my mum being truly happy. The two of them hand in hand, bopping around the room. They’d push the coffee table to one side and stack the chairs to make space.’

‘What kind of dancing was it?’ Hitch leaned in, curious.

‘You know, like jiving, I suppose. Standing opposite each other with their arms outstretched and their hands gripped, and he’d pull her to him like rolling a rug and then push her away again, still holding tightly on to her hand.’

Hitch couldn’t help but picture herself and Grayson dancing in this way, beaming and breathless as she skipped and danced away from her man and then back to him, coming to rest briefly with her shoulder on his chest, her head beneath his chin, before the music upped tempo and off she would go again, wheeling back and forth. Bouncing on flexing knees and smiling, trotting and tripping in time and in sync, clicking their fingers and singing along with hearts beating fast, and her face flushed red, and the notes and fast beat filling the air with something that tasted like endless possibilities. And in her fantasy her bad foot was good and her fingers worked perfectly and her mouth was . . . her mouth was pretty.

‘I used to like watching them in secret from the doorway.’ He drew her from her imaginings. ‘I felt like I was part of the celebration and it helps now to remember that it wasn’t always gloomy. It wasn’t all uncomfortable silences, shifting feet and deep sighs. There were these pockets of happiness that shine in my memory even now, like bright jewels, precious and gleaming.’

‘It sounds like a happy house.’

‘Flat.’

‘Sorry, a happy flat.’

‘It was at times, but not very often.’

‘How old was he when he left?’ She wondered how someone went from a dancing, happy man to one who felt the need to leave his wife and son.

‘He was thirty-five.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you seen him since he went?’

‘No.’

The upturn in his chin and his double blink gave a hint to the hurt and anger that lay beneath this one word, offered so definitively.

‘I can’t imagine what that must be like.’

‘It’s shit,’ he said.

‘Would you like to see him?’

‘Oh.’ Grayson paused, as if surprised by the question. ‘Yes, yes, I think I would. Or at least I used to think that, but as time goes on I’m not so sure. I feel quite angry and so I don’t know if it would be the best thing to see him. I don’t know.’ He shook his head, as if the dilemma were too much to consider.

‘You must still miss him.’

He looked up thoughtfully. ‘I suppose it might be missing him, but it’s more like I have this empty feeling in my stomach and it came on the night he went and is still there now, so I’ve always assumed that only he can fill it and I’d like it to be gone. It stops me eating, it stops me from feeling warm and it’ – he moved his splayed fingers in the air – ‘it makes everything feel unsettled.’