The Boy That Never Was (23 page)

‘But?’ he said, softly nudging her toward revealing to him what was really on her mind.

‘It was getting too much for Harry – the sleeplessness. I think … I think he was pushed to do something about it.’

‘Like what?’

Something sharp gathered in the pit of his stomach. It had a taste to it, acidic, like bile. The taste of an old anxiety stirring up again. He waited for her to continue. When she did, it was in a quiet voice, almost a whisper.

‘A couple of times, when I was working late and Harry had people over, well, those nights Dillon slept through. A deep, heavy sleep lasting well into the morning. I can’t tell you how unusual that is for him. At first, I thought that he had turned a corner, that he had finally grown out of his sleeplessness. But then …’

‘Then?’

She gave a defeated sigh and told him.

‘I found these pills down the side of the couch. Sleeping pills. He said they were Cozimo’s and they must have slipped out of his pocket.’

‘You think he had been giving Dillon sleeping pills?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice level, but a hoarseness crept into it, something akin to an enraged disbelief.

‘Maybe. Yes. When I confronted him about it, he denied it, of course, but I didn’t believe him. I was so furious.’

‘And the sleeping? How did he explain that?’ He was working hard now to keep the anger from his voice. What had once been mere dislike for Harry was now bubbling over into something darker and more dangerous.

‘He said Dillon was up late, playing games with the adults. That he had just exhausted himself, and we should be thankful. But it was just bullshit. You know what they’re like – Harry and Cozimo – when they get together. They probably thought it was harmless. No doubt they persuaded themselves that it would actually do Dillon good, or some such bullshit.’

‘So you threw him out?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did all this happen?’

She sighed again. ‘A couple of weeks ago.’

‘And what are you going to do now?’

‘I don’t know. I really don’t. Harry’s staying at Cozimo’s for now. He wants to come back. Swears he will do anything to make amends if I will just take him back.’

‘Are you going to?’

She gave out a sigh, long and weary, and he felt the indecision within her and also that she was tired of turning it over in her mind, fed up with the swinging doubts.

‘I don’t know. I really don’t. Anyhow,’ she continued, as if giving herself a shake, and he felt the closing down of that strand of conversation, ‘it isn’t your concern.’

She had started something, though. That one short conversation planted a seed of anger within him. He carried it around inside him that last night in New York, and when he awoke the next morning in his hotel bed, he found that the seed had swollen in size and had gathered heat in it. On the drive home, he thought about it, and the more he thought about it, the angrier he became. This guy, this jerk, doping his kid without any thought to the possible consequences, just so he could get a few hours to kick back with his friends and drink or smoke weed. It was reckless; no, it was downright criminal. When he thought of how he had kept vigil by Felix’s bed all those days and nights, listening to the
bleep bleep
of the machines that were keeping his son alive, all the tubes and bags hanging off his son’s small body, when he thought about that and then thought of Harry, his hands tightened around the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening with the strain of containing his indignant rage.

He and Eva didn’t speak throughout the long journey home. But when he pulled into the driveway and switched off the engine and felt the tension in his arms begin to ease, Eva said to him, ‘I can’t go inside.’

She was looking straight ahead at the darkened windows and the leafless creeper clinging to the walls of the house that had been their home for the last four years.

‘I can’t,’ she repeated, giving her head the slightest shake.

She was holding herself carefully. It was a bad day, and she was laid low by her sorrow. But now she broke her gaze away from the house and looked at him, and the voice she addressed him with was clear and sure. She told him that the house held too many reminders: Felix’s room, the toy box in the corner of the kitchen, the paintings on the fridge, his toothbrush in the bathroom. She couldn’t sweep a floor without unearthing some small piece of a toy or jigsaw to remind her of him. The remnants of his short life trailed into every corner of the house. Even if they were to clean out the place entirely, it would make no difference. His memory inhabited every room. She felt at times, when entering the house, that she could smell him. It was unbearable. They could not stay there.

‘Take me away from here,’ she told him. ‘I need you to take me someplace where I am not constantly reminded of him. Where I don’t turn a corner and still half-hope I will see him.’

Garrick listened. He looked into his wife’s clear grey eyes, and what he felt was relief. At last she had opened up to him, expressing a weakness that, until now, she had kept remote from him. A step had been taken, albeit a small one, towards mending what was broken between them. And what she wanted – what she needed from him – was within his gift. In that moment, he knew that it was the right thing – the only thing – to do.

He put his hand to her face and saw the shadow of the woman she had once been. He held her there in his gaze for
a moment. Then he slotted the key back into the ignition and slowly backed out of the driveway.

They went to London first. He had suggested Ireland, the country of her birth, where her mother still lived, but Eva had not wanted that. She wanted to lose herself in places where no one knew them, where no one knew of the tragedy they had suffered. Landing early one morning at Heathrow, he opened the travel pouch Eva habitually carried and felt a jolt of shock when he saw three passports there, not two. It unnerved him, caused a quiver of grief to pass through him, sudden and unexpected. Later, sitting in their hotel drinking bitter coffee, he felt drawn to ask the question: why was his wife still carrying the passport of their dead son? She looked at him then, her eyes rimmed with tiredness in the early-morning light, and when she spoke, her voice seemed laden with a kind of weary dread.

‘I couldn’t do it,’ she said quietly. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away or to leave it behind. Just the thought of taking his passport and separating it from ours, it seemed so … so final. So desperately final. I couldn’t.’

He looked down at the passports grouped together, the three of them fitting snugly together in the pouch.

‘I’m not ready for that yet,’ she said. ‘Please, Dave. Please, don’t ask me to.’

He said no more about it and put the pouch away.

After London, they went to Paris, then slowly began a meandering route south, down through the hills and valleys of central France to Provence and the Mediterranean. In the cities, they visited cathedrals and art galleries and palaces, staring at paintings, at stained glass windows, at statues lit from below by the flickering candles of faith. Miles and miles
they walked, their eyes and minds filling up with images of beauty and reverence and majesty. They drove through towns and villages and countrysides, past fields and forests and red tiled roofs and cobbled squares. They ate endless meals and drank countless cups of coffee and bottles of wine. They became expert at filling the silence with talk. The weather warmed, and they made their way across the Pyrenees, into Spain.

In Seville, they sat under the wide awning of a café on the Plaza del Triunfo, sipping beer and staring at the shoppers and tourists passing by. All morning Eva had been distracted, holding herself at a distance. She hadn’t spoken while they had taken their seats, while they’d waited for the girl to bring their drinks. She had sat, large sunglasses obscuring her face, as she kept her gaze fixed on the square and the activity it held. Now, as her slender fingers traced the shape of her glass, he saw that she was working herself up to something.

‘What?’ he asked, curious and wary, too, as he often was on the days when her grief was pulling her down.

‘I want to go there,’ she said. ‘To Tangier.’

She took off her sunglasses and regarded him directly, and he understood the purpose that lay there.

‘Why?’ he asked, although he knew already.

‘I want to go. I want to see what it is like, so that I can have some knowledge, some understanding of what held you there.’

He listened to those words, knowing that they were false. Behind her gaze lurked the shadow of an old accusation. Fearful as he was of going back there again, he did not attempt to cajole her from the idea. He needed to protect her, to do what he could to dispel her melancholy. That was what he had committed to. He drained his glass and returned
it to the table, nodding his agreement, his acquiescence. She put out her hand and touched his wrist.

Later that day, they booked their tickets, and before the week ended, they left Spain on a ferry bound for Tangier.

They arrived late in the afternoon, the sun beginning its languorous descent, and took a room in a hotel on the seafront. Eva had a blinding headache, so after they had checked in, he settled her in their room and made sure she had painkillers and enough water; then, leaving her to sleep, he slipped out into the early-evening sun.

For a while, he walked along the front, the slightest breeze whispering in the air, the exercise going some way toward relaxing the ache that had attached itself to his upper back and shoulders. When he reached the American Steps, he veered off to the left, past the mosque, and found himself in the warren of half-familiar little streets that crowded around the back of the Petit Socco. Every corner he turned, every shop front and street reminded him of Robin. He felt dogged by nostalgia. Somewhere nearby was the building where his apartment had been. At each turn, he thought he would stumble across it, but each time he was disappointed. He couldn’t help but think about her, and this led him on to thoughts of the boy. Dangerous thoughts, for somehow they had become linked with his memories of Felix, and he shied away from them, afraid that they would lead him to unravel.

He had the half-formed notion of seeking out Cozimo, that wizened old man with the sharp eyes and wry sense of humour. He looked for Cozimo in a handful of places and eventually walked into a café near the Spanish Cathedral, where, sure enough, his old friend was holding court to a bunch of expats Garrick didn’t recognize. As he approached, he saw
the expression on Cozimo’s face change, surprise briefly flitting over his features before being chased away by a broad smile.

‘Garrick, my old friend,’ he said graciously, rising to beckon him with outstretched arms. ‘It has been too long.’

He stayed for an hour, not wanting to leave Eva alone for too long, and in that time they sat and talked about old times, and the creep of nostalgia made him melancholy. Cozimo was the same, and yet Garrick felt different. He recognized the change in himself and felt aged and weary. Where once he had enjoyed these smoke-filled surroundings and the lull of Cozimo’s endless anecdotes, louche and outrageous and fictitious as they were, on that night he saw the emptiness at the heart of it all. He looked at his old friend and beheld a sad old man, still spinning his yarns – a spider weaving his network of lies – and the hollowness of it all hit him. One thing he did learn: Harry and Robin were back together. He was not told, nor did he ask, about how they had patched things up. All he knew was that they were still living together in the apartment above Cozimo’s bookshop. Somehow the news disappointed him, and he walked back to his hotel feeling a little sad and depressed.

The next evening, after he and Eva had spent hours wandering around the medina, visiting the Church of St Andrew and the American Legation museum, Eva again declared her exhaustion, and for a second night, he left her in the hotel and went out alone to wander the narrow streets and alleyways, letting the sounds and smells of Tangier penetrate his senses. He found himself drawn to the street where Robin and Harry lived, and from a place in the shadows, he looked up at the lit windows of their apartment, watchful for movement, for the sight of a familiar silhouette, hoping to catch a glimpse … of
what? Of whom? Something had started inside him, and it was not just curiosity. It surprised him how much he was bothered by the news that she had taken Harry back. It infuriated him. How could she? After what he had done? The seed of anger inside Garrick glowed brightly all the time he stood there in the shadows, and on the long walk back to his hotel.

On the third night, he again left Eva alone, and this time he walked purposefully towards his destination. He knew now that he was going to confront them. The anger inside him had not gone away. Without having said a word to his wife, he made his way towards a confrontation – a revelation – his need of which he could barely understand himself, let alone try to explain to Eva. Darkness was falling, and the city seemed quieter than he remembered. The air had a strange quality to it, the stillness unnerving. His anger drew him on, although the night was advancing and his doubts lingered and the need to get back to the hotel and Eva was strong.

When he reached the bookshop, he found the door unlocked. He hesitated, then pushed through and entered. The smell of the place was familiar. The mustiness of those old books gathered in that dim space struck a match in his memory, and he thought of all the afternoons he had sat in here with Cozimo, drinking tea and smoking Turkish cigarettes and discussing art or philosophy or politics. He reached out and brought his fingertips to the spines of the books and thought back to that younger version of himself with a kind of fond regret. So much had changed in only a few years. Upstairs, Robin and Harry might be preparing dinner, or playing with their son, or painting, or resting. For a moment, he had a vision of what he was about to do. He was going to go upstairs and burst into their home, burst back into their lives and tear apart any peace they had found. For a fleeting moment, he caught a glimpse of what might happen, of how far he might go, how
much he might reveal, and a quiver of fear stopped him in his tracks, made him hold himself back, unsure. It was while he lingered there, in the back of the shop, riven with indecision, that he heard the sudden clamour of footsteps descending the stairs and he looked up to see Harry rush past to the doorway. Unnoticed, he stood in the shadows and watched Harry lock the door and hasten away, and then Garrick was alone.