Afterwards (13 page)

– Funny. I didn’t think she was attractive at first, not really. I was getting better by that time, less tired, but there wasn’t much I could do until I was fully recovered. This young woman became a diversion, I suppose.

Joseph put down his fork because it was hard to eat when the old man wasn’t. David wasn’t looking at him, but it still felt rude, chewing while he was meant to be listening. The old man said he used to watch Isobel leaving for work from his seat on the veranda, remembered her wide hat and gloves, her round shoulders. The Sumners’ granddaughter stayed at the house for a weekend and Isobel taught her easy pieces on the baby grand in the drawing room. She spoke to the girl as they played and, from where David sat, he could hear Isobel’s accent, but not what she said. When she wasn’t working, she’d take the Sumners’ car into town, and would come back around lunchtime with a pile of library books tucked under her arm.

– Once at breakfast, I asked whether I might take the car to the library with her. I told her it was deadly boring, being a convalescent. And I thought, rightly as it turned out, if I asked her in public, she wouldn’t be able to refuse. I presumed I would need to make conversation, but once we were in the car she was rather candid.

David was smiling. About himself, it looked like: taken aback by the woman he went on to marry.

– While we were driving, she told me her husband had
fallen in love with someone else.
I suppose you’ve heard
. She said it was an occupational hazard out there. Or maybe just a hobby. That’s how she put it. Told me other people didn’t seem to mind so much.

Joseph watched the old man talking and thought: he should be telling Alice all this, not me. Her grandad’s eyes were still on the garden, and he was laughing at himself.

– I couldn’t look at her after she’d finished speaking. I remember all the houses passing outside the car window and I could name the mimosa and bougainvillea growing in the gardens, but I didn’t know how to continue the conversation. It was the cynicism, I think. And Isobel knew she’d shocked me. We didn’t speak much in the library, or on the way back to the house. She wasn’t at breakfast in the morning, but she came and found me later when I was downstairs, reading. Said she’d told me things I didn’t need to know and she was sorry. That surprised me too: I didn’t think she had to apologise.

Joseph could see the unfinished walls from where he was sitting. He couldn’t quite make out the clock, the light from the window was reflecting on the dial, and he didn’t want to crane his head round, be that obvious, but the afternoon was getting on. He was half-interested in what David had to say, but only half. The pictures and papers up in the attic had been more like it: Joseph didn’t know what had gone on in Kenya, thought he wouldn’t mind hearing about it. He liked the old guy, but most of this was just too personal. Remembering his dead wife. Saying how their library trips became regular and longer, and they would go and drink Italian
coffee in one of the city centre tearooms afterwards, or walk through the park to stretch out their time away from the house.

– We met in public mostly, so our conversations had to stay reasonably formal. Isobel told me she’d had fun there, in Kenya, the first few months, while she was still working. Most of the girls she’d applied with in Scotland had gone to Salisbury, but she’d made new friends quickly in Nairobi. There were always nights out being organised, and clubs to get involved in, but that all stopped after she got married, gave up nursing. Life was very different, not at all what she’d expected. Sounded very dull, actually, the way she described it, for the wives at least. Endless coffee mornings and nothing to talk about except each other. It might have been different if they’d had children. Isobel used to give music lessons, private classes, for something to do as much as anything. She told me she was supposed to decide to stay with her husband. It’s what both families wanted, and I believe he was willing.
But I’m afraid that’s not likely
. I remember the tone of voice exactly. Resolved. I admired her for it, she had to face a great deal of disapproval, but Isobel didn’t think the place was any good, Nairobi. The expat existence. She told me people would be watching us, of course. Speculating over their sheet music in our absence. Pink gins and loose tongues, that’s what she said. They would have started long ago, and there was nothing we could do to stop them now.

The old man broke off for a moment, and it looked to Joseph as though he’d lost his place.

– It did bother me, if I’m honest. I’m sure our romance was tame by Happy Valley standards, but I was very aware
of being a guest, for one thing. Not causing a scandal for the Sumners. I’d started to feel the curiosity, at those cocktail evenings. All eyes on us if we were there at the same time, hoping for a sensation. But she was beautiful to me by then, Isobel. I remember her in the park especially, under the flame trees, and the very British bandstand. In her white hat, with the wide brim. When we passed out of the shade, the holes in the weave let through bright spots of light. Like so many pin pricks of sun scattered across her cheeks.

The old man’s fingers shifted across the tabletop, a small movement, involuntary, caught up in the memory, Joseph didn’t think he was aware of it. David looked down at his teacup: undrunk, cold, he stirred it. He didn’t speak again, his eyes unclouding, back in the room. Joseph thought it was probably over now, but he’d wait until the old man moved. They’d clear the table soon and then he could get on. Another couple of minutes sitting with him now wouldn’t make much difference.

– Is he being alright to you, my Grandad?

– Made me lunch today.

– Did he?

Joseph could hear Alice smiling on the phone. She was having a fine time up at her mum’s: they’d been away, the two of them, walking on Swaledale, staying up at the old farm. She told Joseph about it when he called. Just in from her grandad’s and he was a bit tired, didn’t listen to it all properly, just liked hearing her talk for a while. About a ridgeway she drove past on the way back to York, and how they should go there when it got warmer again, camping in the spring, maybe, if he had some time off then. Joseph sat on the edge of the bed and rolled a cigarette, receiver jammed in against his shoulder. He wanted to tease Alice about the school photo her grandad had shown him, specs and messy hair, see if he could make her laugh. But he thought about it a bit too long and then couldn’t. She might want to know how he’d got to see it, the picture. Sitting up in the attic with David felt a bit difficult to explain down the phone, so he left it. Told her about the maps instead.

– Oh, I’d like to see those. My Gran would have used them too. Will you bring them with you?

– Yeah, course.

After she hung up, Joseph didn’t know why he couldn’t tell her.
Your Grandad was looking at old photos, showed me a couple
. But it was hard to feel that casual about it. He could see David sitting on the trunk in his neatly tied shoes. Polished leather, patterned with holes, narrow laces, well-kept soles. His trouser legs pulled up by his knees, the section of pale skin above the dark sock showing underneath, hairless and thin. Joseph knew he wouldn’t be able to tell Alice about today either. Lunch and maps, yes, but not what David told him after. The old man never asked him to keep it to himself, but Joseph thought he didn’t have to: it was all private, about his wife, that was obvious enough, and he’d tell Alice himself if he wanted her to know. It even annoyed Joseph a bit then. Being let in on someone’s secrets.
When you haven’t been asked
.

He thought about the old man and his tropical trees. All the schoolboy stuff David had told him yesterday too: deserts and mountains, bird’s-eye, pilot’s-eye views of snows and oceans, evenings by the radio with his dad’s atlas open on his knees. His small head must have been full of it, Joseph thought. But maybe the old man was aware of that too. Hard to say with him and the way he spoke about things, sometimes. When he said his dad was proud of him going to Rhodesia, or how he enjoyed being in Africa, it felt to Joseph like he was careful, choosing his words. Passing comment, or at least waiting to see if Joseph was going to. His son-in-law would, maybe. Alice too, in her way. Joseph remembered her out on the patio that evening, blinking about the barefoot servants. He thought her grandad must have noticed:
Alan would smile about that
. The old man acknowledged it himself, so she could keep quiet.

So maybe David was testing things out on him, but Joseph didn’t know why. When they were in the attic, Joseph had thought David was waiting for him to ask. Questions about the air force, maybe. Or tell him something about when he was in the army, even. Join in the conversation, swapping tales of Osnabrück and South Armagh for Norfolk and Nairobi. But it didn’t feel that way, not really. The old man talked, but always a bit like he was keeping his distance. Not expecting something in return in any case. And then this afternoon, it was all about Alice’s gran anyway, being in Nairobi with her, nothing to do with why he was out in Kenya in the first place. Joseph wasn’t even sure if David knew he’d been in the army, although it had occurred to him, up in the loft, that Alice might have told him.

But even if the old man didn’t know, or wasn’t waiting to be told, it was hard not to think about what it was like back then. Joseph couldn’t stop himself making the comparison. The whole evening alone at home, after he’d said goodbye to Alice and hung up the phone. Didn’t have photos to look at, but enough in his head, and the same thing kept coming back to him.

Contractor got killed. New RUC station being built and he was the plumber, meant to be going in to fit the toilets. Had a van load of cisterns, and they blew him up on his way there. IRA, INLA, one of them, some set of initials anyway, Joseph couldn’t remember. It was Republicans, and their bomb probably wasn’t meant to go off until the van was parked by the building.

Joseph’s patrol got there about ten minutes after it happened, had to wait for bomb disposal, seal off the area. Tyre shreds all over, van doors, coat sleeves and what
was left inside them. Took a while to work out there had been two in the van. Turned out it was his son who was with the plumber. Didn’t usually work together, but he’d been on the dole a while and his dad was probably paying him a bit, or a favour for a favour. Joseph could remember laughing. About the body parts: too many of them. And about someone having to make a phone call to ask if the plumber had a mate. That and the toilets all over the road, had them all creased up, even the Corporal. The plastic balls that float, to make the water stop running. They were everywhere you looked: bright blue and yellow at the side of the road, in the hedgerows.
Ballcocks
. Someone said that’s what they’re called and then they were off again, pissing themselves over ballcocks and body parts. Townsend was puking. One of the other soldiers. Kneeling on the verge, bulking his breakfast up into the grass and laughing.

Joseph put up the new wallpaper at David’s on Thursday. The old man made him a cup of tea when he arrived, but went out soon after he’d brought it in to him. Put his head round the door to say goodbye and then didn’t come home until the room was finished, and Joseph was packing up in the garage.

– You’ve done a fine job.

– I put all the furniture back where I remembered.

– Yes. It all looks very good. Thank you.

It was drizzling a bit, so the old man stood just inside the garage doors, nodding while Joseph got his things together.

– I hope the weather’s kinder to you up in Scotland. Joseph smiled. He’d thought at first David might invite him into the house, but the old man was just saying goodbye. In his awkward way.

Joseph smiled. He’d thought at first David might invite him into the house, but the old man was just saying goodbye. In his awkward way.

– I’ll see what jobs I’ve got on when we get home, give you a ring. Get the rest done in a oner if I can.

Not in the mood for a cup of tea and a story. The old guy could see that. Probably why he spent the day out too: left Joseph to get on with it. All the stations were playing crap today, so he’d turned the radio off for a
change. The old man’s garden backed onto empty playing fields, and there was a golf course at the end of the street. No through traffic, no buses or people on the road outside, and it all felt very still. Just the odd train passing, or a plane overhead, a few birds singing. Joseph didn’t stop for lunch, worked through the day and was glad of the quiet.

Over three years in the army and Joseph didn’t think he was ever, not ever, by himself. A fly wank in the bogs once in a while, or a sly fag maybe, but nothing else, not even alone at night to go to sleep. Six in a room over in Armagh. Not like any base he’d known before, more like a bunker. It had been the village police station once, before the army came, but Joseph only knew it covered in barbed wire and reinforced concrete. Thinking back, it was like the place had no windows: nothing that would leave them open to incoming mortars. Everything done together, washing, eating, working, cleaning, TV, pool table, bar. Knew each other’s smells and sounds better than their own. And all that talking: someone always mouthing off, always asking something, pissing themselves or whingeing all the bloody time. Joseph remembered walking corridors, trying hard to find a place where no one else was. Sat on the toilet and could hear the others cracking up about him, his slow bowels, but at least it was a small room just for him, for a while.

Always tired. Sixteen hours on, eight hours off and waking up all the time. Always too hot in his bunk, they kept the heating on constant, and Joseph woke at all hours, dry eyes and parched, tongue pasted to his
teeth, like a hangover without the drinking. Learnt to sleep when you could. Was a relief when you were sent to get your head down, but you could kip anywhere after a while, anytime you were waiting. If your patrol was on standby, even on quick reaction, sitting there in all your kit at thirty seconds’ notice, just close your eyes and you’d be dreaming. Mad things, twenty different stories and all in the space of seconds. People talking, noises outside your head making their way in: awake and asleep mixing together. A phone ringing somewhere in another room and in your dream you’d be patrolling, walking down the road and into a house to answer it. But there’s no phone when you get there, just an Irish family in the front room watching telly, all getting up and heading for the door when they see you and your rifle. Only it’s not them heading for the door, it’s your patrol called out and moving, and so you’re up and running too, outside sometimes before you were awake again.