Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel (39 page)

Mal’s demeanor beside me relaxes suddenly. “I just replayed what I said,” he says, “and now I can hear what a wanker I sounded like.
Sound
like. I abandoned you, I abandoned our son, and now I think two words are going to change everything. Make it better.”

“I suppose it’s a start,” I reply.

“No, it’s not. It’s pathetic.”

My eyes slip shut and I squeeze them tightly together as I massage my temples. “I said self-flagellation, not self-pity. Christ, Mal, do we have to do this now? Couldn’t it wait until some other critical moment when we should be talking about something deep and meaningful and then it all comes out how
sorry you are, how I’ve never managed to hate you properly, how our friendship forged so long ago in pain and joy is unbreakable, so I have, in my heart, already forgiven you? Can’t we just wait for all that to come up at the appropriate moment in the script rather than forcing it now?”

I feel his face soften in a wry smile. “I forget that you’re a psychologist and you don’t fall for the things people say as easily as they think you do.”

“It’s not from being a psychologist, it’s from knowing bullshit when I hear it.” I inhale; the salt in the sharp, cold air shoots through me, quick and delicious, tinglingly painful.

“I think about you every day,” he reveals. “And I think about him. Leo.” That’s the first time I have heard Mal say his son’s name. It sounds strange, unnatural somehow, because it’s the last part of his own name and he rarely says that. “Some days it gets so bad I want to jump in my car—even in the middle of the working day—and come down here and see you. Sometimes to watch you, sometimes to throw myself on your mercy.”

He is telling me that he didn’t live happily ever after having erased me as much as possible from his life. I—we—were there somewhere, niggling away at the back of his conscience. That sort of thing can weigh heavily on a person’s happiness. Their life.

“Nova, if at any point in my life up until eight years ago someone had told me that you and I wouldn’t talk every single day and we’d have a son that I never see, I’d have told them they were insane. How could we not—”

“Don’t say it like I had any choice in the matter. That you didn’t make a decision that I was forced into accepting.”

“OK, how could I ever do that—”

“Tell me why,” I interrupt as I turn to him. “Tell me why you did it. Because all this chat about thinking about me every day means nothing really. Tell me why.”

“I told you, we changed our minds.”

“That’s an excuse you came up with,” I say. “I need to know the
reason.
I have never known the reason and I need to know.”

His defenses come up in an instant: he sits up straighter, his body, once fluid, now rigid and poised to deflect an attack; his eyes as hard as brown diamonds, his face an unreadable mask.

Shaking my head, I glance away. “Until you can tell me why, the real reason, Malvolio, we have nothing to talk about on this matter.”

He is as still as the Sphinx, and as inscrutable, too. I did not come here for this. I came to escape the crazy thoughts, to ground myself in the motion of the sea and magnitude of the world. I did not come to not understand Mal all over again.

“This is where I first kissed my husband,” I say. “The last time we got back together, we had our first kiss here, down on the beach.” I stand.

The railings by the steps leading down to the pebble beach are cold under my hand as I move down the uneven, slick concrete steps. I hear Mal follow me, his footsteps crunching loudly over the dewy pebbles, following me to the water’s edge. “Amy was babysitting, and because he said we were going for a wild night on the town, she was going to stay over. We went for tapas down in the Laines—it’s the best tapas in Brighton, you should go there one day. Then we went to the Pier.” I grin as I am swept along in the memory and it unfolds in my mind like images on a cinema screen. All the colors were bright and wonderful, our soundtrack was laughter and familiarity. “Turns out dancing was on a dance machine. He fed coins into the machine and then challenged me to do it. I love dancing but it was so hard and I could hardly keep up. We were suddenly surrounded by a group of teenage girls, arms folded, all resting on one hip, like they do. With that look they get on their faces. That one that
says, ‘What are you doing, old woman, why aren’t you hiding your face in shame, what with you being so
old
?’ I kept at it until the machine ran out of money.

“I virtually fell off the platform, completely out of breath and all sweaty, and those teenage girls pounced on it. And, my God, they hammered that machine. Jumping and twisting and making a total show of me. They’d clearly been practicing and had all the routines worked out. I slunk away in shame. ‘It’s OK,’ Keith said as we left, ‘you obviously just dance to the beat of your own drum. It’s not that you’re past it at all.’ ” I narrow my eyes, like I did then. “I gave him a dead arm, cheeky bastard. We walked back along the seafront toward my place, until we got to here. This spot. And he tried to point out Orion’s Belt and Cassiopeia. He didn’t have a clue, and obviously didn’t think me having a name like Nova might mean I have a knowledge of the heavens. When I was doing my duty and putting him right, he kissed me. To shut me up.” I drift back to that moment. How wonderful it had felt. Being back in his arms. Being kissed by someone I liked, after all that time. “I knew that this was it. I was finally ready to get married, like he’d always wanted, and we’d raise Leo.

“Six months later, we had a small service—despite our long, drawn-out battle because he wanted to wear his Army uniform—and he sold his place in Shoreham and moved in with us. And we just got on with it. Our lives weren’t remarkable or overly exciting, but that was what I wanted. We had a normal, happy life.”

I turn to Mal; he is listening intently to what I am saying, although what he is thinking is a mystery. “It’s all gone. My life is all gone and I can’t work out why. I keep looking back over my life, even way back to before Leo was born, and I can’t work out where it all went so wrong. What I did to make this happen.”

“You didn’t do anything,” Mal says with quiet certainty.

“Then why is this happening?” I ask. “Why do I have to spend every moment wishing and hoping and wanting Leo to wake up and be OK? Why do I know if I don’t spend every second doing that—”

“It’ll be in that moment, that one tiny moment when you’re not using every part of your soul wanting it to be OK, that it goes even more wrong. That something already awful becomes unbearable. It’s in that moment that the world will collapse.”

“Your mum?”

He is agonized all of a sudden as he nods.

I used to think I knew how Mal felt about Aunt Mer, that I felt it, too. All those years of being around her, living with her problems, her highs and lows, made me think I was right there with Mal. That his pain was my pain. But I only shared a fraction of it, the most minuscule amount of it. I could leave it behind for a while, could go to sleep at night not worrying about Aunt Mer; Mal couldn’t. He had never been able to, he never could. She consumed his life.

Stephanie. Tall, blond, blue-eyed Stephanie. An image of her is suddenly in my mind. So vivid, so clear, it is almost as though she is standing beside Mal. The feeling of her is so strong, I can smell her sweet, heady perfume, I can hear the clank of her bangles, I can feel the sharp edges of her aura. She is on the beach with us. The wind is blowing her hair across her face, tugging at her clothes.

Being with her consumes him like taking care of Aunt Mer consumes him. Maybe I didn’t understand what not being able to have a baby had done to her. How it had shaped her. Maybe I shouldn’t sometimes hate her because maybe she isn’t simply troubled, maybe she is damaged. Maybe she has been hurt and she needs looking after, like Aunt Mer does. And
maybe
I
should stop being so understanding. She went out of her way to hurt me, she never liked me, she never tried to like me. Maybe all the times I have given her the benefit of the doubt should stop. They should always stop when someone sets out to deliberately harm you.

“She’s been so much better recently,” Mal says, and for a moment I think he means his wife. But he doesn’t, he means Aunt Mer. “There hasn’t been a major incident for years and years, but still, I cling on. Part of me believes that’s because I’ve been—how did you put it?—wishing and hoping and wanting so hard. It’s not simply the medication, the stability, the weekly trips to the psychiatrist; it’s me using every second to will for her to be OK.”

“I know,” I reply. “I know now, I mean. Except I’m not doing a very good job, am I? Leo’s not …” I can’t say it. I’ve said as much as I can to Mal, I can’t do it again. I can’t make it even more solid by repeating it. Because that would be saying I might one day have to live in a world without Leo.

Is there a world without Leo?

“Yes, there is,” Mal replies. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken that aloud. “But I don’t know if it’s one any of us will want to live in.”

Unbidden, the corners of my mouth turn downwards, the horror of that rips through me like a single, focused laser beam, cutting me in two. As the two sides of me start to fall apart, Mal is suddenly around me, holding me close, holding me up. He cradles my face in his large, warm hands, as though I am something precious, made from fragile glass that will shatter under even the slightest pressure.

“But, that’s the thing about all of this,” he says gently but urgently, “we survive. After each knockdown, each earth-shattering blow, we get up again. Even though we walk through hell, and we walk through hell, and we walk through hell, and it
feels like all we do is walk through hell, we do eventually make it to the other side. Scarred. Mostly broken. But we survive. And then we start to rebuild ourselves. We’re never the same, but we do rebuild ourselves. Because something like this is just another way in which we change. We all have to change.”

“I don’t want to change. I don’t want to walk through hell. I just want things to go back to how they were. I want him to be constantly asking his questions. I want him to wake me up and pester me to play on the computer. I want him to call me ‘Marm’ like he’s an American. I want him to tell me that I could be a better mummy but I’ll do for now. I just want things back how they were. I don’t need change. I don’t need hell.”

“I know, I know,” he whispers the whole time I am talking.

“I want my Leo back. Whole. Perfect. Just like he was.”

Mal’s eyes search mine, like I had been searching the dark horizon, desperately seeking something that would make everything all right, before he came here.

“Let me make love to you,” he says.

“
What?!
” I screech. His hands on my face aren’t a gentle comfort any longer and I push him violently away.

“Let me take you to bed, let me make love to you,” he repeats.

“
Are you on drugs?!
”

“No—”

“I haven’t let my husband touch me in God knows how long, why would I let you? You of all people. Is that why you came here? For sex? Because if it is, you can go straight back to London.”

“It wouldn’t be sex,” he says quickly and earnestly.

“Oh, really? What would it be, the inevitable joining of two souls cruelly separated, or something equally unique and beautiful?”

“No, no, it’s a way to forget. A coping mechanism. I used to
do it all the time—especially when I was in Australia. If I started to worry about what was going on at home, I would … I’m not proud of myself, but it was a way to forget. For a while, you feel something else, and unlike exercise or drinking, for a while the pain is gone but you’re not alone and you’re still conscious. It’s still there, it’s still waiting for you on the other side, but for a while you forget how to hurt about that thing. I still do it, I’m not proud of that fact, either, but it’s the truth. Sometimes doing that is the only thing that can stop the pain, even for a little while. Let me do that for you.”

I search his face, his eyes, explore his energy, and all I can feel is truth, sincerity. He means it. He is offering me the only thing he can to try to help. He wants to take my pain away in the only way he knows how.

For a moment, I waver. I want this to stop. I desperately want this agony and fear and the waiting to stop. I want respite, freedom from what has become my life: hospitals, medical journals, eyes wondering who I am. Being offered a few minutes of normality is tempting, like being offered thick-soled shoes while you’re walking on a path of broken glass. You’ll accept almost anything to stop the pain.

Are you crazy?
I ask myself, shaking my mind like I would shake my shoulders if I could. “Thank you, no,” I say. “No. All this is awful, but it’s the hand I’ve been dealt and I’m still playing it. Doing
that
will mean that I know everything is over. And it’s not. It’s far from over. Besides, Keith and I would do that for each other.”

“I’m sorry, it was a stupid thing to offer,” he says, “but I couldn’t think of anything else.… I was being selfish, too, I suppose, because that’s what I need right now. This is one of my worst nightmares. I’m going to lose someone I love even though
I only know him from the things my mum has told me. How come I turned into my dad without even trying?” He runs his hands through his hair, his whole body shaking as he does so. “I was offering for us both. Truly, I am my father—a completely selfish bastard.”

“Oi, Wacken,” I say, shoving him slightly with my shoulder. “I ain’t gonna shag you, so give it up, all right? And begging is highly unattractive.”

The sound of his laugh is steady and loud over the waves and the
schlink
of the pebbles moving over each other.

I startle him by slipping my hand into his, but after the momentary shock, he closes his fingers around mine, clamping us together. It feels so solid and safe, holding his hand, that one of the chains of anxiety belted around my chest loosens and I can breathe a little more.

“You want to know about Leo?” I ask him.

“Absolutely.”

We stand holding hands, watching the stars, looking at the white-foam-topped black sea while breathing in the saline air as I tell him everything I can about my most favorite person in the world.