Beneath the Skin(35)
It was a time of indescribable agony. Two days had passed before he was called into the housemaster’s study. Two days of unbearable pain. He’d read and re-read the letter from his mother, the aroma of her perfume still there in his imagination, if not in the paper. We’re in the UK next weekend, first port of call being you, darling boy! We’ll see you on Saturday. Can’t wait. Love always, Mummy xxx.
He doesn’t know how his words to Rupert will come out, whether he’ll shout or cry. Or laugh, perhaps, as he did at school, with that protective bonhomie masking the grief. But Rupert is quiet, his fringe has fallen forward again and David is reprieved.
‘Hmm. Irritating parents. Well, that’s good news at least!’ he replies with a laugh, sitting down in the space Rupert has made. ‘I pronounce you a normal healthy fifteen-year-old lad.’
‘What’s all this about drugs then?’ he asks, suddenly aware that moments have passed and that Rupert is watching him.
‘Everyone does it. It’s only weed.’
‘Good point.’ He was in the minority at school by not smoking tobacco, cannabis or anything going. But that was only because it made him chesty and sport came first. ‘But that doesn’t mean you have to. Believe it or not, school work and exams do matter. Take it from me, Rupe, you do not want to have to re-sit those bastards!’
‘You said you weren’t going to give me an ear bashing.’
‘I lied,’ says David, giving Rupert a playful thump. ‘Just remember he’s a good bloke, your dad. A really good bloke. Come on, let’s put on the box and see if there’s some sport on Sky before your mum comes and inspects your transformation from devil to angel. Oh, and by the way you’d be doing me a favour if you acted the part too. You know, the odd civil word here, bit of revision there, maybe even an occasional thank you. Get the picture?’
‘Got it,’ Rupert replies looking towards the television screen. ‘I think the switch is on the side, Uncle Dave. Or you could ask Dad for the remote.’
Antonia is still trying to get to grips with Sylvia Plath’s poems, but even when she doesn’t really comprehend the words, she gets the gist, she understands the struggle, the desire to be something else. She’s read ‘Resolve’ ten, twenty times, maybe more tonight. Shyly and out loud to the listening walls of the lounge, but to no one else.
She’d started reading poetry after a conversation between Olivia and Helen at a dinner party a year or so ago. It was a debate about music and poetry. Olivia argued that music was poetry and Helen was dismissive, declaring poetry to be silly and pointless. Olivia disagreed, listing reasons why everyone should read it, specifying poems and poets who had influenced her life. Antonia had sat dumbly and listened, but it was the fervour in Olivia’s eyes, the passion of her argument which enthralled her. She had headed for the laptop to make an order as soon as they left, a feeling of anticipation in her chest until the slim collections arrived in the post.
David’s late, chatting to Charlie over a bottle of whisky, she supposes. So she hasn’t gone to bed, but lies on the sofa, covered in a soft blanket, Sylvia whispering softly in her ear as she waits for David’s call to collect and drive him home. But she’s fallen asleep and so suddenly, so deeply, that the dream is real. Her father is there and so is she, like a vicious, dancing cat. Scratching, hissing, spitting and goading him to hit her again. ‘Come on, Dad. Don’t be afraid just because I’m a big girl now. Hit me, insult me, show me how brave you really are.’
David slouches at the bar of the Royal Oak waiting for Misty to appear. She hasn’t replied to his texts but sometimes she’s busy. One of her kids might be visiting or Seamus might be at the table begging for home-cooked food. So he’s driven from Charlie’s home in Hale all the way to Withington. To do what, to say what, he doesn’t know.
He feels untouched by the three double whiskies he drank in a wine bar in Hale, nor by the pint of bitter he’s just downed. Nothing has dimmed since his confession to Charlie. Not the look on his face, not his anger, his lack of understanding or forgiveness. Nor Rupert’s confusion as he darted into the study, looking fearful and so very young. ‘Dad, what’s going on? You can’t say that. It’s Uncle Dave. Why does he have to get out of the house? It’s my house too. And Mum’s.’
‘David. David? Are you listening?’ he eventually hears through the whirl of whetted images. ‘You need to go home. How much have you had? I’ll call you a taxi.’
Misty’s there behind the bar, her tanned fingers spread wide on the bar top but her eyes not reaching his. Seamus’s bulk is a presence in the background.
‘I thought we could talk,’ David replies, his attempt at a whisper emerging too loudly.
‘Not tonight. Not any night soon.’ Misty glances over her shoulder. Seamus is pulling a pint, the frown seeming to puncture his usual plump friendly face. ‘People have been talking again, David. I’ll see you. Now off you go home.’
‘Fine to drive. Sober as a judge,’ he calls to Seamus with a wave as he stumbles from the pub. Then again as he catches his clown face in the car mirror. ‘I am as sober as a judge, Your Honour!’
He puts his keys into the ignition and heads the Land Rover down the A road towards home, not bothering with the seat belt.
Sober as a judge. It makes him laugh at first, the irony of the expression. Then eventually he cries. He weeps so much that he can’t see, but still he drives along the dark autumnal lanes towards his Cheshire home, wondering if it’s normal for a nearly forty-year-old man to miss his mother quite so much after so many years. Occasionally he can smell her perfume at the theatre or in the street, and it’s all he can do not to halt the passer-by, to clutch on to her and sink his face against her neck to inhale the aroma on living skin.