Another Mother's Son (5 page)

‘What's your problem?'

‘None. I don't have a problem. She might have been named after the saint. Actually there were two of them. Two St Teresas.'

‘I've only ever heard of Francis. St Francis of Assisi? Didn't he talk to birds, or something?'

I stare at him. ‘That's a totally different name. It doesn't sound the same. I'd never have muddled them up.'

‘You're nuts, Mum.'

I am convinced he is wrong. I did not misremember or mishear. Working with registers and documents, I know my Smiths from my Smythes. Ross is quite capable of saying names at random to keep me quiet. Maybe Dirk is not right either, though that would be unusually inventive on Ross's part.

‘Is it Dirk?' I ask.

‘Is what dirk?'

He is halfway up the stairs by then so I leave it. I wish I had not started on the topic. I should have asked about the dog. He is probably fond of the dog after all this time. I imagine Ross and Jude running over fields. Crews Hill is far enough out of London for fields. The boys sit with their backs to a hedge and smoke dope and the dog, in the open air, escapes intoxication. I want to know more about Frances – what she looks like. But none of the boys answers that kind of question. Randal, though he possesses some visual sense, tends to say ‘Normal' or ‘Short'. My father is not much use. Only my mother went in for detail.

AN HOUR LATER,
the doorbell rings. I switch on the hall light and walk along the passage. I open the door. A girl stands on the step.

‘Hello,' I say.

‘Hello.' The girl hangs back. ‘Is Ross in? He said to come round.'

‘Hi. Yes, he is. Come on in.'

The girl comes forward and onto the mat. Her head is down. When she looks up I see first a heart-shaped hairline, then her face. The girl wipes her feet. She is wearing heavy lace-up boots, jeans, a dark coat with a hood and a bulky woollen scarf that is wound several times round her neck.

‘I'm Lorna, his mum.'

The girl nods.

‘Ross's room is off the half landing. Follow the music.' I notice the discarded baked-bean tin and pick it up. The spoon rattles inside like coins in a charity collection box. I hold the tin, smiling foolishly as the girl strides up the stairs two steps at a time, with her outdoor clothes on. The house sighs and sags.

When the food is ready I go into the hall and call. Above my head, the bass beat continues. I eat. Every now and then, footsteps thud across the floor. In a small house there is no privacy and yet in any one room, behind a closed door, anything could be happening. It is like the workings of the brain. The family living area is the prefrontal cortex and the rooms upstairs are the amygdala where neurons growl and rattle their chains. On the worktop, the food cools. I help myself to crispy bits of chicken skin.

Ross slopes into the kitchen soon after half-past eight, the girl behind him.

‘There's chicken. Three-quarters of a bird. Some roast veg. Probably a bit cold by now but you can stick it in the microwave. Help yourselves. Guess who I saw in Grovelands Park coming back from Grandad's?' I say.

Ross ignores my question and begins to rummage in the fridge.

‘Mr Child,' I say. ‘He was sitting by the lake, looking soulful. Ross, can you get your head out of there. What are you looking for?'

‘Something to eat.'

I explain again and in more detail what the options are.

‘What did you do with my prawn balls?'

‘Threw them out.'

‘You can't do that. They were mine. There were two left.'

‘You should have eaten them last week. They don't keep.'

‘But I've only just remembered them.'

‘Tough.' I turn to the girl. ‘Sorry about the trivial level of conversation in this house.'

‘No worries,' the girl says.

‘I'm going to make toast, Jude. Brown or white?' Ross says.

‘You're Jude?' I say on a rising inflection.

‘Ye-es,' she says cautiously and glances at Ross for reassurance. ‘Who did your mum think I was?'

Her hair is as dark as pickled walnuts and she wears it part-shoved behind her ears. Her eyes turn down at the corners like teardrops on their sides. She is the same height as Ross; sturdy, in a lean way. In a howling gale, she will stand firm. She bears no resemblance to the parents of my imagination.

‘Sometimes I'm a bit dim. You live in Crews Hill, don't you, Jude? Tell me about it. I've never been there.'

Ross squirms. ‘We've come to get food. Don't make conversation.'

‘I'm casting my mind back in the hope of finding lost pronouns that will prove you deliberately led me astray over Jude's gender.'

‘What do you want to know about Crews Hill?' The girl does not return my smile.

‘Anything. What are the high points?'

‘It's normal.'

Jude squeezes into the gap between the table and the sink unit and sits down opposite me.

‘Ross, the toast.'

‘I know, Mum.' Ross is chiselling lumps out of the chicken with an ordinary knife.

‘It's smoking.'

‘OK.'

‘Use the skewer. Would you like something to drink, Jude? Juice? Water?'

‘Stop saying her name. It's really irritating me.'

‘Coffee, please. Cappuccino.'

‘I'll get it,' Ross says. ‘You don't have to hang around.' He means me.

‘Doigy, did you paint that cow?' Jude points to a picture sellotaped to the back of the dresser.

‘No,' Ross says. ‘Actually, it's an auroch. Ewan did it when he was four, allegedly.'

‘It's good,' Jude says. ‘I like children's art.'

I stand up. ‘Right. Shout if you need anything.'

I go through the doorway and along the passage. Ross and Jude keep silent as I ascend the stairs. They communicate wordlessly because there is no door to the kitchen. I wonder how they will achieve froth. The Bennet-Neerhoff kitchen, I assume, has a fancy coffee-making machine. I stand in front of the door to the loft room and remember the egg whisk, an old wire thing with a green handle. I stop myself from running back down to rummage through the drawers.

I knock gently and push the door. I peer in. Ewan is on the bed, turned on his side, under the duvet. I sense something provisional about his posture, as if he suddenly flung himself down and, as if to confirm this, he shifts. His right foot emerges, covered by a sock and edged by the leg of his jeans.

Sometimes there is an odd atmosphere around Ewan. It is like wobbling air above a hot engine; the light bent by patterns of air pockets at varying temperatures. Nothing relating to him seems quite stable, though his life, as far as I can read it, is one of utter monotony.

CAUTIOUSLY, I FEEL
under the front seat of the car, prodding between parts of the metal undercarriage that are sticky to the touch. Stones and grit. Hardened mud. Coins. Receipts and parking tickets. Rain drums on the roof. It is dark down here in the footwell, like the entrance to a coal chute. The ribbed rubber mat that protects the carpet is clogged with gravel, possibly from the drive of the Bennet-Neerhoffs' house. Gravel, once walked over, gets everywhere. I was hoping for a screwed-up ball of paper that once spread open would turn out to be the Performance Review 1 (PR1) appointments' sheet.

It is clearly important for parents to have an effective opportunity to monitor their son's or daughter's progress in their learning and development and for the students to be effectively supported from home in their studies and the whole thing strongly, clearly and effectively … http://www.LloydBarronAcademy.or/
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Perhaps Ross has it. One minute he was beside me, burdened by his physical presence as if it were a drag on his existence, or even a catastrophe, and the next –

I often marvel at the way my wholly material sons vanish.

I get up from the mat and sit back in the driver's seat. The school buildings are reflected in a surface sheen of water. Every window on every floor is bright with classroom lights. More cars arrive and swoosh to a stop in the marked bays of the car park. Two boys emerge through the sliding door of a camper van. Harry and Gervase Lupton who at the age of eleven were as alike as piglets but now distinguish themselves with hair gelled into differential peaks. I still can't tell them apart, though apparently it is easy and I must have defective eyesight because no one else talks about the twin thing anymore and I am stuck in some time-warp. I pick fragments of dirt from my nails.

When the downpour eases I lock the car and make my way along the line of 4x4 vehicles that have recently arrived and still give off engine heat. I cross the forecourt, dodging immense puddles. Two women are standing on the front steps of the main building, hoods up. They seem to be waiting as well as talking. As I approach, one of them raises her hand in a salute and I recognise Deborah Lupton, and the non-waving Ginny Lu, and realise that they are waiting for me. Even a brief conversation with these foolproof parents can make me feel as weak as an invalid. Exposed on the tarmac with nowhere to hide, I gesticulate, tap at my head, mime that I have left something in the car. I make signs that they should go on in. Deborah and Ginny love school life. They plunged into the mini-world of constraints, clatterings and smells, glad of a second immersion. They want something. Money or time for sponsored swims, the Christmas Charity Fayre, a sixth-form ski trip, a day trip to Belgium. As I retrace my steps between parked cars to complete the pathetic charade, I catch sight of a woman and her daughter staring at me through a windscreen. I repeat my little routine, though with less bravura, and smile weakly at their astonished faces.

‘Ross not with you?' Mr Milner licks his thumb and shuffles through a pile of papers.

‘He
was
here. I drove him here. I've sent texts and left messages but …' My sentence tails off. ‘I see the silent film is on again. It's beautiful. I think I caught sight of Oliver, this time. They're just children, aren't they? Without a soundtrack of their voices they seem in some way doomed.'

Douglas Milner crosses his legs. His trousers fold into a kind of pouch at the crotch. He wears a purple shirt and a non-matching purple tie. Our chairs face each other. A third and fourth empty chair stand on either side. Underneath one of them is a small pool where someone placed a sopping umbrella.

‘Do you have your PR1 appointment schedule there?' He bypasses the dreamy small talk.

‘No. I'm doing this from memory.'

The suspended foot in a chunky shoe is an independent form of life. Two creases above the metatarsal bones are like the frown on the brow of a dog.

‘Ah well, never mind. Let's bring up the grid.' Mr Milner summons up Ross's maths marks on his tablet and begins to go through them. The content is familiar, the list of nit-picking complaints, reprised in a genial manner.

‘Good evening, Ms Parry.' A woman creeps up on me. ‘I'm Mary de Silva, head of RE, doubling up as events manager. I have your email about Year 12 work experience, thank you very much. Hang on, let's just find it. Oh, here it is. “Unfortunately, I work with members of the public who are not DBS checked. I am unable to offer work placement.” Yes, that's all absolutely fine but what I'm thinking is there's no reason at all why you shouldn't be one of our notable speakers this term. We don't have an archivist on the list and it would be a wonderful opportunity for the students to hear about …' Mary de Silva rattles through her pitch. Her head bobs as she scrolls down the screen. She is wearing a strange garment – a shrug, is it called? – made of red lace, over a drab, rather masculine dress.

‘Yes, you're so right about members of the public. Just the other day … No, I won't go into that. I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you over the speaking. It would simply be misleading for me to come and talk. There are no jobs in archiving.'

‘That shouldn't be a problem. I have the schedule here. I'll run the dates past you.'

I peel off my jumper and add it to the collection of clothes over my arm.

‘It's incredibly hot in here, isn't it? No. I mean it. Libraries and archives are being closed. Any data that isn't packed off to China for recycling will be dense-packed into DNA and dance on a pinhead. It would be much more useful if you got hold of someone from HR at Pret a Manger.'

‘I'll just run the dates past you,' Mary de Silva repeats. Her face takes on the complacent expression of an annoying soft toy.

As I approach Miss McKenna, Deborah Lupton cuts in front of me. ‘We need to have a word with you, Lorna. Have you seen Mr Child? Where is the wretched man? Don't run away without speaking to me.' She takes off the hiker's backpack she is wearing, plonks herself down in front of Miss McKenna and gestures at the chairs to her right and left. Harry and Gervase obediently sit on them.

I move over towards one of the tilting windows. I push it open, but not so far that the rain comes in, and stand with my back to the breeze. Mr and Mrs Lu are smiling away with Mrs Anstey. Their daughter, Grace Lu, smiling. Mrs Lupton with the twins. The Levines. Hunter is six foot; taller than his father. Each family in its own little island, grouped around a teacher, shares noses and chins and smiles. In films and the theatre, all children look adopted. Hamlet never takes after Gertrude. Reality is more uncanny. The carpet squares are covered in the damp footprints of uncanny people. Ross is nowhere to be seen. Jude is also absent. A photo-portrait of Sir Graham Lloyd-Barron hangs above the microwave oven.

Over by the lockers, people wait to see the head. Tony Goode does not teach anybody. He shows people round, sponsors and local worthies, and once, in a fit of temper, pinned Danny Gage against the wall and raged against him which was a sackable offence but hushed up by senior management.