This Is How It Ends (16 page)

I
N HIS LITTLE ROOM
in the B&B, Bruno woke up in the grip of a nightmare. His heart was thumping so hard in his chest, he could almost hear it. He could barely breathe. He had to swallow hard to drive the rising fear back down his throat.

The curtains were drawn and the room was pitch-black. Bruno leaned over and turned on the bedside light. Falling heavily back onto the pillows, he looked around the room warily, as if he’d never seen it before. He had the sense that he had spent the past few hours wandering the house of his childhood. He was still in the fog of the dream.

A dream he has had before. He remembers it now, it’s a recurring nightmare. It comes maybe once a year, and every time it comes he recognizes it from before. But within an hour or two he will have forgotten it again, he will forget it utterly. The dream seems to possess this strange power, it can draw a cloak over itself. A dream that’s not like a dream at all, there’s no script to it. An insidious dream, it’s so lifelike that it always takes him a while to work out that it’s not real.

In the dream, his mother is still alive. She’s living in the nursing home. Bruno hasn’t been to visit her for years, nobody from the family has been to visit her. The staff at the nursing home wonder why no one ever comes to see her. His mother asks for them but still no one comes.

Bruno wakes up with a wave of horror breaking over him. Not since he used to wet the bed as a child has he had that feeling. The feeling that you’ve done something awful, something you weren’t even aware of doing, something you’ll never be able to fix.

When Bruno would wet the bed his mother would take him down to the bathroom and strip off his soaking pajamas. She would sponge him and pat him dry with a towel. He can still remember the sticky feeling of his skin as she dried him off. The comfort of the clean pajamas as he climbed into them. The relief of getting back into bed, a folded-up towel strategically placed to soak up the wet patch, a fresh sheet spread out over it. The joy of going back to sleep with a problem solved.

It’s that same feeling he has now when he finally convinces himself that the dream is not real. It takes him a while to work the argument through in his head. He has to think it through logically. His mother is dead, she’s been dead for five years now. When she was alive he went to see her every week. He visited her right up to the end.

He is not a bad person.

HE VISITED HER
every week. He just didn’t tell anyone about it, not even his girlfriend. Something she found impossible to understand. In Bruno’s opinion she refused to understand.

They weren’t married, they weren’t even living together. This was something they had decided at the very beginning, that there was to be no talk of marriage. They’d both been stung before.

He hadn’t intended to hide his mother’s existence from her. He just hadn’t told her about it. By the time she eventually found out, it had become a big thing. It wasn’t personal, that’s what he had tried to make her understand. It wasn’t about excluding anyone. It was an act of gallantry on his part. It was hard to explain.

“It’s not like I’ve been having an affair,” he had said.

But for some reason she seemed to think this was worse.

“I assumed she was dead! A reasonable assumption considering you only ever talked about her in the past tense. When you never mentioned visiting her, I think it was reasonable of me to assume that she was dead.”

He had been afraid that she would want to meet her, that’s why he hadn’t told her. He hadn’t wanted anyone to see her like that. The frightened eyes peeping out of the pale little face. The long wizened hands clutching at the bedsheets. The outsized knuckles, the surgical tape holding her wedding ring onto her long, bony fingers. He didn’t want to talk about that to anyone.

It wouldn’t be fair to her, bringing a stranger in to see her. Going through the fiction of an introduction, making an attempt at conversation around the bedside. He couldn’t bear to contemplate it.

He hadn’t actually intended to lie to her, but he could see that it amounted to the same thing. She took it personally. She thought it was about her. White with outrage, she stood up and walked out.

Bruno was shocked to find that he wasn’t even sorry.

BRUNO’S MOTHER WAS
German. Her family had moved to America before the war.

Bruno and his sisters were hardly aware of this side of them. Everybody they knew was Irish and they were Irish too. It always seemed as if their German blood held less sway than the Irish. It was as if the Irish genes were dominant. There was only one thing Bruno and his sisters got from their mother, and that was her soft brown eyes.

A quiet woman, people generally assumed that she was Irish too. Actually I’m from Germany, she would say. And people would express surprise. They would say they would never have guessed.

She didn’t speak German at home. It was only when they were brought to visit their grandparents that Bruno would hear German spoken. He remembers sitting on a footstool in that dark living room of theirs, watching his mother as she conversed. He remembers how he studied her face in the hope that he would be able to understand her, just by watching her. He remembers his horror when he realized that he had no idea what she was saying. He remembers the feeling of panic, the urge to jump up and scream at her. It was as if she had become another person, she wasn’t his mother anymore. It was only when they were safely back in the car and she was conversing exclusively in English again, only then would Bruno feel safe.

In her later years she reverted to the language of her birth. By the end it was all she spoke.

Every Monday evening after work Bruno would sit for an hour in the high-backed chair by her bed and he would listen to her speak in a whisper about people and places from long ago. He would sit there and listen to her without understanding, just as he used to listen as a little boy. But this time there was no anger, only amazement at the beautiful sounds coming out of her. He would close his eyes and listen to that lilting voice, those lovely sounds that made no sense. He would sit there and listen like it was music. And people say German is an ugly language! Bruno has never been able to understand that.

It was Schwäbisch that she spoke, strictly speaking. A beautiful sibilant dialect, the soft rhythms of it seeped into her English, giving her voice little upturns where you would least expect them. It was an accent that lent itself to a gentle certainty, which suited his mother’s personality perfectly.

All his life Bruno’s mother had told him that he would know love when he found it. And Bruno took that to mean that love would find him, that it would strike him down and there would be no mistaking it. For years, he went about his life expecting a bolt from the blue that never came.

As the years wore on, as one marriage after the other went to the wall, his mother’s certainty on the subject persisted. “You just haven’t met her yet,” she would say. When his mother spoke, the end of every sentence turned back on itself, as if words held no sway against eternal truths. “When you meet her, you will know her.”

Now at last Bruno thinks he understands what she meant.

The very first time he saw Addie, she was familiar to him. Even though he’d never seen her before, he felt like he knew her. It was as if he recognized her from before. Even now, when he looks at her face he feels that strange sense of familiarity. Her face is a face he knows.

Maybe it’s because we’re related, he thinks, taking the family photo out of his notebook and studying it again. Maybe that would explain it. He scans the faces for a resemblance to Addie, but he can’t see it. There’s nothing of her in these women.

The familiarity that he feels, it comes from the future, not from the past.

FUNNY HOW QUICKLY
you got used to sleeping with someone.

He kept reaching out to her in the bed. He kept waking up when he found that she wasn’t there.

The third time this happened he made a decision. He got up and threw on his clothes. Crept down the dark, creaking stairs of the B&B like a thief and slid back the latch on the front door, letting himself out into the freezing-cold night.

The sky was clear, with a crescent moon straight out of a fairy tale. The silvery sea creeping in over the beach. Bruno made a romantic figure, he was aware of that, making his way up the street in the dead of night, driven by love.

He didn’t want to knock on her door, afraid he would give her a fright. He was worried she wouldn’t wake up and he would wake her dad instead. So he crept around the side of the house to the bedroom window. Leaned up and tapped on it with a coin he happened to have in his pocket. No response. Tap, tap, tap. Suddenly, her face appeared behind the glass, pale and confused-looking. She was squinting. She must have had trouble seeing him out there in the dark.

“It’s me,” he hissed. “Let me in, will you, it’s freezin’ out here.”

He went back round the front to wait for her. When she opened the door he saw that she was wearing his Bruce Springsteen T-shirt. He was just about to tease her about it when she launched herself at him. She threw her arms around his neck, falling against him with all her weight. He had to take a step back to steady himself. He was touched that she was so glad to see him. Usually she was more reserved than this. He put his arms around her and hugged her to him.

She raised her face to whisper into his ear.

“I can’t remember the last time a boy threw stones at my window.”

“I missed you,” he said simply. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Taking his hand, she turned and led him into the flat.

HOVERING ON THE
edge of sleep, he confided his worst fear in her.

“Addie,” he said. “I need you to talk me off the ledge. I’m afraid McCain is going to win.”

“He’s not going to win,” said Addie, her voice slurred with sleep. “Obama’s going to win. I can feel it in my bones.”

Already the next sentence was forming in her head, but she didn’t say it.

Obama’s going to win, she was thinking. And you’re going to go back home.

With his arms wrapped tightly around her, and with that one thought in her head, she fell asleep.

H
E’S NOT GOING TO
win,” said Della with absolute certainty. “Obama’s going to win.”

They were sitting around Della’s kitchen table. They’d just finished eating. The clocks had gone back that morning, and outside the light was already fading. It was only four o’clock.

“I wish I shared your confidence,” said Bruno. “Maybe I’m just afraid to hope.”

“Well, take it from me,” said Della as she moved around the table clearing away the plates. She was wearing a gingham apron over a tight black dress. High heels, hair up, she was in fifties-housewife mode. She had insisted on cooking a leg of lamb, roast potatoes, all the trimmings. “We’d better put the best foot forward,” she’d told Simon. “You know, him being an American and all.”

All day she’d been excited about meeting him. Her mind had been racing. She had wanted to know did he read Philip Roth, Annie Proulx, Anne Tyler? What did he think of Joyce Carol Oates? She was dying to talk about the election.

“Obama has history on his side,” she was saying. “It’s Hillary I feel sorry for. It’s never going to happen for her.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked Bruno. “She might get a chance again. If McCain wins she can try in 2012.”

“No,” said Della, a note of exasperation in her voice, like a teacher trying to explain something to a child who just won’t understand. “McCain’s not going to win. Obama’s going to win. And Chelsea’s going to be the first woman president, I’ll bet you any amount of money. And poor Hillary will have been the wife of a president and the mother of a president. But never one herself.”

Bruno turned to Addie, smiling. “How does she know all this?”

“She doesn’t.”

“Often wrong, seldom in doubt,” said Simon in a slow drawl.

“Don’t mind them,” said Della, pulling a cigarette out of its box. “I’m a reader. It’s all about understanding narrative.”

THEY WERE DIFFERENT
from how he’d expected them to be. They were more vivid. Della, with her dark red lipstick and her honey-colored hair and Simon with his neatly ironed shirt and his gold-rimmed glasses, they were clearly defined people, the two of them.

Even the house was distinctive. It made an impression on you, from the glossy black door with the stained-glass panels to the chessboard tiles in the hall. The bright white of the woodwork and the deep yellow of the walls. As Bruno was led into the kitchen he noticed framed prints lining the passageway. He would have liked to study them but Della was leading him through and he had no choice but to follow.

“Watch your head,” she called back to him. He ducked just in time.

The kitchen was at the back of the house, a big open space with sliding doors onto the garden. It was Addie who had designed this extension. Bruno stood for a moment and looked around him, registering with respect the results of her work. What a wonderful thing it must be, he thought, to see your ideas turned into reality.

Framed paintings by the children covered one wall of the room, and a large laminated map of the world covered another. There were small plastic pegs sticking out of some of the countries. Bruno noticed one sticking out of New York and wondered, was that for him.

Below the map, a long wooden table was set for dinner. There were bright pink napkins twisted into the glasses, a wide bowl of pink and red roses set in the center of the table. Butter dishes, the surface of the butter smoothed over with a knife.

The girls had made place names. They’d decorated Bruno’s with the Stars and Stripes. Addie’s was adorned with love hearts. They were all giggling as they showed it to her, putting their hands up to their mouths and wriggling with suppressed laughter.

“You rats,” said Addie. “Just wait until you’re teenagers. I’ll get my own back on you.”

Even Lola had a place setting. They’d decorated it with paw prints and propped it beside a pudding bowl of water that had been placed on the floor.

Addie was proud of them as she made the introductions. Polite kids, for all their high spirits, they knew how to behave. “Nice to meet you, Bruno,” said Elsa very formally, her shoulders bunching in her shyness.

Bruno replied with equal formality. “Nice to meet you, Elsa.”

Once they’d all told him their names, he wanted to see if he could remember them. They crowded around him expectantly.

“Now, let me see,” he said, pointing at the nearest one. “You’re Tess.”

She blushed, shaking her head.

“No!” said her sister. “I’m Tess!”

“Forgive me, Tess.” He turned to the first one again. “That means you must be Stella.”

She nodded vigorously. “We all got our names from books,” she said. “My real name’s Estella. It’s from
Great Expectations
.”

“What a wonderful book to get your name from,” said Bruno. And Stella looked so pleased, she blushed again.

“I got my name from
Born Free
,” said Elsa. “Elsa the lioness.”

Bruno made a little bow with his head in respectful acknowledgment.

“Lisa’s the only one who didn’t get her name from a book,” said Stella excitedly. “She got her name from
The Simpsons
.”

“A sure sign that the culture is in decline,” muttered Simon.

But Bruno nodded reverently, his face very serious. It was only his eyes that were smiling.

Lisa was standing in front of him wearing a swimsuit over a pair of wool tights, her stubby little legs planted apart on the floor. She had a cloth swimming cap on her head, a pair of goggles strapped across her forehead. The goggles were so tight they were pulling her eyebrows out of shape. She was standing there staring at Bruno, and he realized she was waiting for him to say something.

Bruno took a deep breath.

“Lisa Simpson,” he said, “is one of the great characters of modern fiction. A truly heroic figure. You should consider yourself very lucky to be named after her.”

Lisa stared at him for a second, then turned and ran out of the kitchen.

“We let the kids choose her name,” said Della, setting a glass of wine down on the table in front of Bruno. “I don’t know what we were thinking.”

“Four kids in five years,” said Simon, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “Clearly, we weren’t thinking.”

Della raised her eyes up to heaven.

“Don’t mind him,” she said. “He’s exaggerating.”

DELLA STOOD OUT
in the garden while she smoked her cigarette. Through the open doors she could see them all sitting round the table. Simon had his back to her. He was tipping back in his chair, God, she wished he wouldn’t do that. Addie and Bruno were sitting side by side. He was leaning forward and speaking to Simon. He had his hand on Addie’s thigh.

She couldn’t hear what it was that he was saying. But she could see his face, the honest enthusiasm of him. She liked him already, she liked him very much. She was so relieved.

She pulled hard on her cigarette, drawing the smoke right down into her lungs. She was a bit over-revved, she was aware of that. She’d been talking too much. She was just anxious for it to go off OK, anxious for him to like her.

She turned and faced down towards the back of the garden. She needed this moment alone. Raising her face to the sky, she blew the smoke out in a slow stream. The trees against the back wall were in shadow, the evening closing in. The garden was a living thing in the darkness.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

She turned round and found Bruno standing at the open door, framed by the light in the kitchen.

“I thought I might take a cigarette from you, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” she said, rushing back towards the house. “I should have offered you one. How rude of me. It didn’t occur to me that you would be a smoker. Racial stereotyping, I apologize.”

“I gave up years ago,” he said. “Haven’t smoked in more than ten years.”

She was already taking two cigarettes out of the box. She was just about to hand him one, when she paused in midair.

“Are you sure you want to?” She felt suddenly responsible for him.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’m on vacation. It doesn’t count.”

A click in Della’s mind, a silent tutting. I hope that’s not your attitude towards Addie, she was thinking. She struck up the lighter. Bruno leaned forward to take the light and she studied his face in the glow of the flame.

“I feel like a crack dealer.” She watched him pull on the cigarette. He had his eyes closed to savor the hit.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I take full responsibility.”

I hope you do, she thought. I hope you do.

They stood there for a moment, smoking away without saying anything. Della was just starting to worry that it was turning into an awkward silence when Bruno spoke.

“You know Obama is a smoker,” he said.

“You’re joking me!”

“They’ve managed to keep it pretty quiet. No photographs. But he’s a smoker all right, Marlboro Red. Apparently he’s promised Michelle he’ll give up if he wins.”

“I can’t believe it! How could they keep that a secret?”

“He must smoke in the men’s room, no cameras. They’re afraid it will get out.”

“They’re right to be afraid. It’s bad enough that he’s black. If it gets out that he’s a smoker, he’ll never get elected.”

“I know,” said Bruno ruefully. He was holding the cigarette out in front of him, studying it as he exhaled.

“Personally,” he was saying, “I think it’s a good quality in a president, being a smoker. He might pause for a cigarette break before he presses the button.”

“Plus,” said Della, “I hope you don’t mind me saying so but he was just a little too virtuous for my liking. I much prefer him now I know he’s a smoker. Now he’s perfect.”

She was holding her cigarette right out to the side, as if it had nothing to do with her.

Bruno took one last, delicious pull on his. Then he bent down to the patio floor and stubbed it out in the grouting between the tiles. He straightened up, holding the squashed butt carefully between his thumb and index finger.

Della was watching him, smiling.

“Just throw it into the bushes,” she said. She tossed her own butt up and out with a flourish, then she turned to go back into the house.

“YOU’RE GETTING VERY
skinny,” she said to Addie as they were making the coffee. “You bitch,” she whispered, “it must be all that sex.”

Addie looked quickly over her shoulder to see if Bruno had heard, but he was deep in conversation with Simon.

“Well,” said Addie, sliding her glance back to Della. “What do you think?”

Della looked over at him for a minute as if she were seeing him for the first time. Then she turned back to her sister. Putting her arm around her, she leaned in close.

“I think he’s gorgeous, Ad, I think he’s really gorgeous.”

And she meant it. For the first time ever, she was able to say it and mean it.

Watching them together, you couldn’t quibble with it. They were perfect for each other. There was something innocent about them, their joy in each other, like childhood sweethearts. The way he looked at her, he was in love with her, no doubt in Della’s mind. And Addie was glowing. Della had never seen her like this before. She looked like she’d spent the whole day in the sun.

There’s no reason to worry, that’s what Della had to keep telling herself. There’s no reason why anything should go wrong. It’s just because she’s so happy, that’s why I’m nervous. I don’t want to see her disappointed again. I’m being overprotective, I’m worrying too much. But no matter how much she reasoned with herself, Della couldn’t escape the sick feeling she had in the pit of her stomach. Something was telling her, this was all going to end badly.

THE NEXT TIME THEY
went out for a fag, she decided she would say something.

The kids had all gone up to change into their pajamas and Simon had cracked open another bottle of wine. Sunday night, it was most unlike him to let his hair down like this. But he’d taken a great shine to Bruno, they’d bonded over Bruce Springsteen.

“Not you too,” Addie had said, groaning.

“Did you not know I was a Bruce fan?” asked Simon, amazed. “Slane Castle, 1985, been there, bought the T-shirt.”

Della was throwing her eyes up to heaven. “The only concert he’s ever been to.” She drew the shape of a square in the air with her two index fingers.

“I met him at a wedding,” she explained to Bruno as she handed him a cigarette outside. “I gave him half an ecstasy tablet and we ended up having sex in a broom closet. I came away with the mistaken impression that he was a bit of a wild man.” She laughed. “It’s the only wild thing he’s ever done in his life, apart from marrying me.”

She could just about make out that he was smiling.

They were sitting at the patio table, the tips of their cigarettes glowing in the darkness of the garden. The windows were big yellow squares of light against the black house.

“Bruno,” said Della, with sudden urgency. “I want you to be careful with her.”

She stopped for a moment to take a drag on her cigarette, blowing the smoke out again before going on. She knew she was out of order but she plowed on regardless.

“She’s fragile, you know. She’s been through a lot lately. I presume she told you?”

Bruno hesitated before answering. He felt disloyal talking out of school like this. He turned to look back through the glass doors into the house. He could see Addie sitting there at the kitchen table with one of Della’s kids on her lap. She was twirling the child’s hair in her hand. The other children were all sitting down at the table again, bathed in yellow light, their little faces glowing. A burst of laughter carried out through the open door.

Bruno had the sense that he and Della were out at sea, bobbing up and down on a boat in the darkness, looking in at the lights of the shore.

He turned back to face her.

“The baby thing,” he said. “She told me—”

Della cut him off as he was still speaking. She was anxious to get this said.

“It took a lot out of her, you know. She’s still a bit wobbly.”