Finding Arun (5 page)

Returning to the present, he fished in his pockets
for loose coins and, after paying the cashier through the small
window of the petrol station, set off on his way once more. He
continued along the quiet leafy streets past several sets of
traffic lights until the roads became narrow lanes that twisted
through the countryside, and the houses were larger and spaced
further apart. An old stone church loomed into view and on arriving
at its crumbling façade, Aaron walked alongside the moss-covered
walls until he reached a small plot of land at the rear. The
cemetery was tiny, but well kept, the grounds neatly manicured and
the graveside flowers constantly refreshed by those left behind. He
followed the paved path to a row of cherry trees at the back of the
plot, where a shiny new headstone formed of pink granite bore an
inscription that it pained him to read:

DR CATHERINE RUTHERFORD

1955–2012

BELOVED WIFE, MOTHER AND FRIEND

FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS

Tired from the long walk, Aaron seated himself at
the foot of the grave, oblivious to the dampness that was seeping
through his trousers from the dewy lawn. He stared impassively at
the headstone, silently mouthing the carefully carved words. They
were true; his mother was beloved and she would forever be in his
heart despite everything that he had discovered in the past few
days. But now there were new words too; hateful, spiteful words,
that sprung to mind whenever he allowed himself to think about her
for more than just a second.

Aaron had never felt so lonely or confused in his
life. He was grateful to Jez for listening to his woes, but the
simple truth was that he had no-one else to turn to. He had few
friends, even fewer that he trusted, and his only confidant lay six
feet below the ground on which he was sitting. He had learnt to be
comfortable in his own company and could usually resolve the
challenges that he faced on his own, but knowing that his mother
was there if he needed her had provided a source of comfort that he
had unwittingly come to rely upon. He was in desperate need of
someone to talk to; someone to guide him through the myriad
emotions that he felt and to help him decide what to do about
Kalpana, but there was no-one.

He arranged the lilies carefully beside the
headstone, brushing his fingers lightly over the engraving before
sitting back against his heels. In the stillness of the cemetery he
mulled over the same thoughts, again and again, with no reprieve.
The love and loyalty he felt towards his mother’s memory sharply
contrasted with his newfound resentment, and it made for a strange
feeling that he was exhausted trying to comprehend.

‘Why aren’t you here?’ he eventually cried out, his
voice shaky and uncertain.

The headstone maintained its silence.

‘I need you, Mum. I’m sorry that I didn’t make it
home in time, but you should have waited … just a little bit longer
… I was almost there. We could have talked … properly. I would have
believed you, I promise.’

Tears of frustration gathered in his eyes and he
began to weep openly, the words on the headstone becoming nothing
more than a pink blur. He buried his face in his hands, muffling
the sobs and sniffles that had become an undesirable daily ritual
until he felt a warmth on the back of his neck.

‘I believed her,’ said a soft, reassuring feminine
voice.

Aaron had been so lost in his own thoughts that he
hadn’t heard Aunt Ruby tiptoe into the cemetery behind him. In her
hands she held a small bouquet of orange lilies identical to the
bunch that Aaron had brought, and she smiled softly at him when he
turned to face her.

‘Where have you been, dear? We’ve been worried sick
about you,’ she said reproachfully.

Aaron wordlessly shrugged his shoulders and stared
guiltily at the ground. He didn’t care what Arthur thought, but he
hadn’t meant to worry Aunt Ruby.

‘Mind if I sit?’

Aunt Ruby took Aaron’s continued silence as a sign
of indifference and lowered herself down beside him, arranging the
pleats of her long skirt neatly over her chubby legs. Aaron turned
back to face the headstone and the pair sat together in silence,
sharing in the peace and serenity of the cemetery as the sun cast
its rays over them from between the trees.

After a time, Aunt Ruby reached forward and added
the flowers that she had brought alongside Aaron’s.

‘There we go. She would have loved these,
Aaron.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ve put a few bunches in the house too, to remind
us of her. Your father finds it comforting.’

Aaron remained mute. Aunt Ruby was trying her
hardest to engage him in conversation, but hadn’t seemed to grasp
that Arthur, his thoughts and feelings, were not topics that Aaron
was sympathetic to.

‘Why don’t you come home, dear? He is sorry you
know. I’m sure that finding out about Kalpana like that must have
been a terrible shock for you, but it’s hit him hard too. He didn’t
think that he and Catherine kept any secrets from one another.’

‘Apparently it’s a family trait,’ retorted Aaron
bitterly.

‘That’s not very fair now dear, is it?’

‘
Fair
? What’s not fair is that I didn’t get to see my
mum before she died. What’s not fair is that my birth mum is alive
and nobody thought to tell me. You all knew, I don’t care if you
only just found out, you all knew and you didn’t tell me. That’s
what’s not fair.’

Aunt Ruby sighed in exasperation.

‘Aaron, your father didn’t lie to you on purpose;
you know that he didn’t. He didn’t believe what your mother had
said to him and there was no reason to until you showed him the
letters.’

‘But you said that you did believe her,’ Aaron
continued stubbornly.

‘I did, Aaron, but that’s beside the point.’

‘Is it? If you believed her, then why didn’t he?
They’ve been married for over thirty years!’

‘Because love is blind, Aaron. Sometimes it stops us
from seeing things as they really are; stops us from seeing things
that we don’t want to see.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Your mother was special; she touched so many lives
and she was quite a catch when she was younger. She could have had
anyone that she wanted and your father always felt lucky, maybe
even grateful, that she chose to spend her life with him. When you
love someone that much it’s hard to watch them waste away before
your eyes, to watch them become a mere shadow of the person that
they used to be. Arthur would never admit it, but he was struggling
to cope with it all. That’s the reason that I decided to come and
help.’

‘I still don’t get it,’ interjected Aaron huffily,
noticing for the first time that both Arthur and Aunt Ruby shared a
familial knack for long-winded storytelling.

Aunt Ruby ignored him and continued.

‘To Arthur, Catherine was like a superhero. She was
invincible and for her to get sick simply didn’t fit within his
ideologies. He had held her up on a pedestal so high, for such a
long time, that he was deliberately ignorant of her imperfections;
but I understand that your mother was human. She had her flaws and
like the rest of us she made mistakes. I believed her, but
unfortunately for Arthur, believing what she was saying, believing
that it was anything more than hallucinations brought on by her
medication, would have meant conceding that she wasn’t the person
that he had always believed her to be. It would have meant
accepting that she had kept something significant from him for all
these years and that perhaps he didn’t know her quite as well as he
had thought. I think it was just too much for him, too big on top
of everything else. Do you see?’

Aaron weighed Aunt Ruby’s words carefully in his
mind. Her argument was logical, but was it enough to justify
Arthur’s actions? Enough to justify why she had believed his
mother, when Arthur hadn’t, and enough to warrant forgiving him for
failing to keep the promise that he had made to his mother on her
deathbed?

‘You can’t blame him for everything, Aaron,’ said
Aunt Ruby after a while, as though reading his mind. ‘I know that
you and Arthur aren’t close, but you can’t keep using him as a
scapegoat for everything that you’re feeling. Your mother has to
take some responsibility too.’

Aaron let out a long sigh; he knew that she was
right. If it had not been for his mother’s actions and secrecy in
the first place, then they wouldn’t be having this conversation at
all.

‘Can I ask you something?’ he said finally, deftly
drawing a line under their debate.

‘Of course, dear. Anything, anything at all.’

‘Do you think that I should go and see Kalpana?’

‘I think that you should do whatever your heart
tells you to do, Aaron.’

‘But do you think that’s what she would’ve wanted?
Do you think that’s the reason that she wanted to tell me about
her? Or do you think she was just … scared? Just feeling guilty
right before she died?’

‘Catherine would have supported whatever decision
you made,’ answered Aunt Ruby tactfully.

‘I don’t know where she is. I mean, I know she’s in
India, but I don’t know where exactly.’

‘I know somebody who might know,’ answered Aunt
Ruby, cocking her head to one side and playfully elbowing her
nephew in the ribs.

Aaron smiled sarcastically in defeat. He would have
to go home eventually and although he didn’t much like the idea of
facing Arthur, he liked the idea of facing a barrage of questions
from Jez’s mother even less.

‘Okay, I’ll come home.’

Aunt Ruby wrapped her arms around her nephew in an
embrace laden with relief.

‘Everything’s going to be all right you know, Aaron.
You’ll see … I promise.’

AARON hung back in the driveway whilst Aunt Ruby
fumbled with her key in the door. He was still hesitant about
returning home; so much had occurred there in recent weeks that it
no longer felt like the safe haven that it used to and he genuinely
feared what might happen once he set foot inside. Oblivious to his
reluctance, Aunt Ruby quickly ushered him through the open door and
towards the kitchen, leaving him little time to examine his
anxieties any further. She had spent much of the journey home
remarking upon how much weight Aaron had lost and seemed determined
to feed him until he was no longer able to stand. His appetite had
not yet returned, but he was too mentally exhausted to argue and
proceeded towards the kitchen, bracing himself for a confrontation
with Arthur.

The daily newspaper lay open on the kitchen table
adjacent to a half-filled mug of coffee as he had expected, but to
his surprise Arthur was nowhere to be found. He instantly relaxed
at this happy discovery and taking a seat at the table, tried to
tune out Aunt Ruby’s incessant chatter while she rattled around the
kitchen preparing brunch. He was halfway through his meal when
Arthur finally reappeared, hovering in the kitchen doorway,
uncertain of the reception that he would receive. Dark circles had
formed around his eyes, evidence of the little sleep that he had
been able to manage since Aaron’s departure, and there was a
ghostly grey pallor about his skin. Aaron paused, his fork
dramatically suspended in mid-air, and Arthur seemed to search his
son’s face for signs of forgiveness, but it quickly became apparent
that Aaron was giving nothing away.

Aunt Ruby took charge and ushered Arthur into the
seat opposite Aaron. She returned to the counter to prepare a plate
for her brother and left Arthur staring hard at his son. Aaron
resumed his meal, rhythmically lifting forkfuls of food into his
mouth with great concentration to distract himself from the
intensity of Arthur’s gaze. He swallowed the final mouthful and
pushed his plate into the centre of the table, just when Aunt Ruby
was setting Arthur’s own plate down in front of him.

The old man looked from his son to his sister and
back again, seeming panicked that Aaron was going to leave the
table, but Aaron did not move. He met his father’s gaze, this time
noting how distressed and dishevelled the old man appeared,
compared to when he had left him a few days prior. He still bore a
huge amount of resentment towards him, but the truth was that, more
than anything else, he pitied Arthur. Arthur would have to live
with what he had done and his act of betrayal would forever remain
a blemish on his otherwise flawless dedication to his late
wife.

Aaron’s eyes softened as he continued to regard the
fragile man sat across from him; it was hard to remain stony-faced
in light of this realisation and it wasn’t his natural
demeanour.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘I went to Jez’s.’

Arthur winced visibly, unable to hide his
disdain.

‘You should have called. I called everyone that I
could think of; I was so worried.’

‘I didn’t really feel like speaking to you.’

‘Well then you could have texted.’

‘You don’t know how to text, Arthur.’

‘I do too.’

‘I just needed to be on my own for a bit.’

Arthur was silently contemplative for a few moments
before beginning the conversation that neither of them wanted to
have, but both knew was necessary.

‘I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you what your mother
asked me to,’ he blurted out before he could change his mind.

‘I know that you are,’ whispered Aaron quietly.

He glanced conspiratorially at Aunt Ruby who, having
seated herself between them for mediation, smiled back at him
encouragingly.

‘I’m sorry that she lied to you too, to both of us,
but I’m sure that she had her reasons.’

Aaron sighed, carefully considering Arthur’s words.
They were full of the same optimistic rationale that he himself had
been battling with; was Aunt Ruby right? Had love unknowingly
blinded and deceived both of them into thinking that Catherine was
infallible? Aaron remained sceptical despite the growing evidence,
but he found a certain solace in the knowledge that he was not
alone in his thinking and the ongoing respect for Catherine forged
an invisible bridge between him and Arthur once more.