The Other Son (33 page)

By the time Bruno has returned with two doorstop sandwiches, Alice is hesitating about telling her story after all. Fuelled by rosé and the intimacy of the moment, it had seemed like a good idea, only now she’s not so sure.

“So,” Bruno says, sliding a plate towards her. “You were going to tell me your story.”

“Yes,” Alice says. “But I think I’ve changed my mind.”

“Oh, go on, Alice,” Bruno pleads. “I made you a sandwich and everything.”

“OK, I’m not sure how much of this...” Alice starts, hesitantly. “But, OK. Here goes. There was someone before Ken. I was... in love... perhaps. In a way.”

“You were, huh?”

“We used to go for long walks together. We liked the park. Joe wanted to become a gardener. I’m not sure if that ever came to pass or not.”

“You didn’t stay in contact?”

“No,” Alice laughs. “No, not at all.”

“But you think you were in love with this Joe?”

“As I say. In a way... It’s complicated. But we used to laugh a lot. Just silly stuff. We were still kids, really. But we used to have lots of silly ‘in’ jokes. Things only we understood. We used, for instance – and I still do this actually – but we used to make up these silly metaphors together. We would say that someone was as fat as a ferret. That was a favourite one. Or that someone was a thick as a fiddle. Or as difficult as a difficult Tuesday. I’m not sure that will make any sense to you. As I say, it was an in joke.”

Bruno nods enthusiastically. “Matt still does that,” he splutters, his mouth full of sandwich. “Sorry,” he mumbles, belatedly covering his mouth with one hand.

“Does he?” Alice asks. “Really?”

Bruno chews and swallows before continuing. “Yeah, Matt’s always saying things are as flat as a ferret. Or as pernickety as a pumpkin. Weird, funny stuff like that.”

Alice laughs. “Well, that
all
came from Joe. And it used to make us giggle so much...”

“Complicity,” Bruno says.

“I’m sorry?”

“You had complicity.”

“Yes, I suppose we did. We made each other laugh a lot, anyway.”

“But Matt doesn’t know about Joe, eh?”

“No. Nobody does.”

“I won’t tell him if you don’t want me to, don’t worry.”

Alice shrugs. “It’s all so long ago anyway,” she says. “It’s ancient history now.”

“So what happened? How did you end up with Ken?”

“Ah,” Alice says. “I’m not sure I can explain that. Not satisfactorily, I mean. Joe wasn’t right for me. It was just a silly crush, really. It was one of those blips that happen. Like a freak whirlwind that sweeps through. It was obvious to everyone that it wasn’t any kind of normal relationship. My parents were against us seeing each other, so...”

“Because?”

Alice sighs. “Joe wasn’t right,” she says. “Anyone could see that. And my father knew Ken’s father. He had his own business. He was successful. We were quite poor back then, so...”

“So, it was like an arranged marriage?”

“Almost,” Alice says, then, “Yes, pretty much.”

“And Joe didn’t fight for you?”

“No,” Alice says. “No, um, Joe knew as well as I did that it couldn’t work out.”

“But I don’t get why,” Bruno says. “If you loved each other.”

“Like I say,” Alice says. “It was a funny kind of relationship. Childish, perhaps. And it’s so long ago. It was a whole different time. The rules about what you could and couldn’t do were very different. I know this isn’t making much sense to you now, but...” Alice shrugs. “And Joe didn’t have a penny. And nor did we. And with our parents against us even being friends... Well, it was nigh-on impossible. It
was
impossible.”

Bruno is staring at Alice intently. It’s making her feel nervous.

“Anyway, I wasn’t
against
marrying Ken. Not at first, anyway. I mean, I got to stop work – I was doing shifts in a horrible soap factory. And Ken gave me Tim and Matt, after all.”

“Were you scared of the thing with Joe?” Bruno asks. “It sounds a bit like you were. When you say it was like a freak whirlwind and stuff.”

“In a way, yes,” Alice says. “In a way I hid from it all by marrying Ken, I suppose. I hid in my marriage, to a certain degree. Plus it’s all very well thinking you’re in love, but if you’re hungry and homeless... We were scared of poverty. People tend to forget that nowadays, but it is possible to be too hungry to be happy.”

Bruno sighs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I just can’t believe that Joe never came back for you. That you never heard from him again.”

Alice shuffles in her seat. “Joe lived right over the other side of town. They were slums, really. I never had any reason to go there. And once I was married, well... It was best to stay away.”

“Don’t you regret it, though?” Bruno asks, dipping his finger into the yellow wax of the candle. “I mean, you could have had a whole different life. Matt could have had a whole different family.”

“Matt wouldn’t have existed,” Alice says. “You can thank Ken for your boyfriend.”

“You don’t know that,” Bruno says. “Maybe he inherited everything from you. Maybe he would have been just the same. Who knows how that shit works.”

Alice sighs and shrugs.

“Have you ever tried to find him?” Bruno asks. “You can find most people on the Internet these days if you try. I could help you look. What was his surname?”

Bruno reaches for his phone and unlocks the screen, but, abruptly, Alice puts down her sandwich and stands.

“You know what?” she says. “I suddenly want to be on my own. Is that OK? Can I say that without upsetting you?”

Bruno looks concerned. “Have I hurt your feelings, Alice?”

“No, really,” Alice says. “You’ve been perfect. But I just suddenly want to be on my own. Is that OK? Can I do that?”

Bruno puts down his phone and raises his hands. “Sure, Alice,” he says. “Whatever.”

Alice does not go home. When she reaches the point where the track meets the tarmac, she turns right, and not left. She glances nervously up at the cabin in case Bruno is watching her. She feels as if what she’s doing, heading to the lake rather than the house, is somehow irresponsible, illicit, perhaps. She suspects that he would tell her off.

The official footpath, as opposed to the boys’ shortcut, zigzags up the side of a small green hill before weaving through the pine forest as it descends the other side.

It’s another beautiful moonlit evening, but Alice feels a little scared all the same. She has never thought to ask which animals roam amongst these trees. She hopes there’s nothing dangerous.

The air is still warm from the heat of the day, and the pine needles beneath her feet crunch and exude a gorgeous scent, a mixture of pine freshness and earthy decay. Here and there, fireflies drift erratically amongst the trees like floating, flashing garlands of light.

When she reaches the lake, she crosses the beach and sits on a rock. She stares out at the deep grey of the water and thinks about the fact that this lake is supposedly man-made.
At least we made something pretty for once,
she thinks.

As she starts to walk again, she thinks of Joe and remembers the impossibility of the times. Because, yes, Joe
had
fought for her. Joe had begged her not to marry Ken. She had even appeared on the night of the wedding. “Please don’t, Alice,” she had wept, over and over. “It’ll be the end of everything.”

“The end of what?” Alice had asked her. And Joe had been unable to reply. Because neither of them could name that thing which would be broken. Neither of them had any vocabulary to describe what they were feeling, or to envisage what might continue if only Alice did
not
marry Ken. There were no words for these things, back then.

“You could have had a different life,” she hears Bruno saying, and it’s so easy to say, yet so difficult to live. For how can you live something when you don’t even have a word for it?

“A crush,” her parents had called it. A silly, childhood crush. That was the best anyone had managed back then, vocabulary-wise. And how could Alice possibly choose a fragile, insubstantial “crush” on a girlfriend over the weight and heft of a marriage, of a family?

But it was no crush. It’s taken her a lifetime to admit it, but she knows this now. And perhaps she owes it to herself, owes it to Joe even, to build a different life for herself now. It’s all here, all apparently laid out for her.

Her son and Bruno, lovely Bruno, have shown her that something else is possible. A life without anger? A life without constantly striving for something else? A life of accepting, of coming to terms with the nature of one’s own desire, perhaps? A life with a smidgin of grace? Could it really be that simple?

Matt seems happy. Not smiley, laughing, sitcom happy, but content, deep-down, with his lot. And with Bruno waiting for him and the cabin to live in... with Jarvis at the foot of the bed and the warmest, most understanding, generous in-laws ever, who could blame him? Bruno, too, seems happy. For the child of a dead addict, he’s done well. He’s doing what he wants. He’s living where he wants. He’s with the person he loves.

And Alice, too, has felt unexpected moments of happiness these last days, moments of
acute
happiness occasionally. There’s been no walking on eggs, no tiptoeing around other people’s delicate egos. There has been no worrying about dinner or traffic, no watching the horizon in case of sudden explosions of anger. Or violence.

Could she really just stay here?

A bird swoops across the lake – an owl, perhaps. The bird. The lake. The mountains. The stars. It’s stunningly beautiful here. It’s
heartbreakingly
beautiful here.

So yes, could she live here? Could she really just stay here? Can she perhaps, simply carry on like this? Or is this one of those crazy childhood crushes? Is the reality a return to rainy, grey King’s Heath? To frozen meals and economy lightbulbs? Can life, can change, really be this simple? It
feels
possible. It feels like a fog that kept everything in place is lifting revealing other roads winding off into the distance, roads she never even knew existed.

She’s not sure about the details, yet. She’s not sure how, or where she could live. Virginie will reclaim her house at some point, no doubt. But perhaps she could rent somewhere similar. Bruno had said, after all, that rents are cheap here. So perhaps she could. Perhaps she doesn’t need as much as she thought she did.

She could try to learn French, perhaps. She could get her
own
annoying cat. She could spend her evenings eating French cheese and baguettes with her e-reader propped up against a bottle of cheap rosé, couldn’t she? Perhaps she could get her pension sent here. Dot’s adviser guy would know. And if she could, then what more would she need? Her son and his partner don’t seem to need much, after all.

And Joe. Is it just madness to think that Bruno might really be able to find her after all these years, lurking somewhere in the depths of the Internet? The idea both terrifies and thrills her. Because what if Joe is dead? And what if she’s alive?

It takes Alice almost an hour to walk to the far end of the dam. She leans over the edge and watches water gushing from a vent into the distant river below. The air here is cool and moist.

She swipes at a mosquito then thinks she sees a fawn running through the trees and then doubts her own eyesight. And then finally, she turns and starts to head back.

As she passes in front of the cabin, she pauses to look up at the cosy orange glow from the windows. The light inside is flickering and she imagines Bruno on the sofa, watching TV with Jarvis beside him. He’ll be waiting for Matt to get home from his evening of washing dishes. Even that thought, tonight, of her son washing dishes, fails to provide its familiar pang of angst.
Someone has to wash the dishes,
she hears Bruno saying. And he’s right, of course. Someone
does
have to.

She pictures Matt coming home to Bruno and Jarvis and the flickering television screen. Happiness. It can be so simple. All you have to do is stay away from those who would ruin it for you. She’s
happy
that Matt’s with Bruno, she realises. And she’s shocked at herself for the realisation.

But it’s true. For the first time ever, Alice no longer needs to worry about her other son. Because her other son is no longer ‘other’ to her. And because Matt, her lovely Matt, has Bruno to look after him now. Bruno who is so big and strong and calm and kind. Her eyes are starting to mist, so she smiles through the tears and forces herself to walk on. Yes, Matt’s safe now. Matt’s happy, now.

As she reaches the edge of the hamlet a car comes into view. It squeals to a halt beside her and Matt looks up at her from the side window. “Mum!” he says.

Alice smiles gently at her son. He looks incredibly handsome tonight, smiling in the yellow of the streetlight. He looks, suddenly, like a man. When did that happen? Yes, it seems like only yesterday that he was pleading with them for a dog.

She wonders if her tears are showing in the lamplight, but resists the temptation to wipe them away. That would be a dead giveaway. “You’re early, aren’t you?” she says. “Or is it later than I thought?”

“It’s ten,” Matt says, glancing at the car clock. “There’s some fête thing happening in the next village. There were only three people in the restaurant so they sent me home. Any chance of a cuppa?”

“Wouldn’t you rather go home?” Alice asks.

“I will, but let’s have a cuppa first,” Matt says, putting the car back into gear and pulling over to the side of the road.

Back at Virginie’s house, Alice makes them both mugs of tea, then carries them out to the table in the courtyard. Paloma jumps onto Alice’s lap and she lets her remain there.

“You’re not getting over your cat aversion, are you?” Matt asks.

“I never really had an aversion,” Alice says. “I just don’t like them all over my worktops.”

“If you say so.”