Afterwards (8 page)

– This was the paper she chose for the hallway, and this for in here. That’s to be painted, of course. White with a hint of something. Here: cream, I’d call it. Same for the bedroom.

– And a new runner for the hall.

– Yes. We thought about carpet out there, but it’s the original tiling, so we decided to keep it that way.

– Yes. I would too.

– Yes?

He nodded at her briefly, approving. Most of the other houses on the street had new porches and double-glazing, but her grandfather had stubbornly resisted, preferring to maintain his woodwork and keep the stained-glass inserts at the top of the front door and bay windows. They were unique, Alice knew, because he’d often told her: no two the same on the street when the houses were built. He was still looking at the papers laid out before them, fingertips resting on the tabletop, blinking. Alice asked:

– Have you got any quotations yet?

– Only old ones, from last year. I’ll have to call them again.

– Maybe I could show them to Joseph anyway? He might know the companies, or at least he can tell you if their prices are reasonable.

Her grandfather pulled the relevant pieces of paper together for her, and started to clear the table again, but then stopped.

– I went to the DIY place last week but they don’t stock this wallpaper any more.

He pointed to the hallway pattern. Pale blue stripes on a cream background, and yellow in the border. Alice picked it up.

– We’ll be able to get something similar, I’m sure. I’ll ask Joseph for you. He’ll probably know of other places we can look.

She made her way home once the rain eased off, walked to the station under one of her gran’s umbrellas, though the weather wasn’t really bad enough to warrant it any more. Her grandad had opened it ready for her in the porch, and then she hadn’t liked to refuse. It had been an awkward goodbye altogether, prolonged by bag and brolly and jacket, her grandfather standing, silent, waiting to wave to her at the gate and then close the door.

They’d never spent time on their own together as adults: not used to it, and they were not much good at it. He’d had the table set and the kettle filled when she arrived, as he often did on Sundays now. Her mum said he was just looking forward to her visits, but Alice suspected he was impatient to get them over with. She’d been relieved to have something to talk about this time. When her grandad first mentioned the redecorating, she’d wondered if he was just making conversation, but he’d obviously been looking for wallpaper this week, so that was probably unfair.

She walked the rainy pavement and platform, tried to remember a time when it was better, a clue to how to change it, but all she could recall were Saturday morning trips to the library while her mum and gran went
shopping together. She was still in primary school then and her grandad would take her hand while they crossed the main road. He kept her library tickets in his wallet and gave them to her at the desk after she’d made her selections. He never chose books for her or with her, would walk the shelves with his hands folded at the small of his back while she went to Junior Fiction.

They didn’t talk to each other then either, but what should they have talked about, an eight-year-old girl, and a man already past his middle age? It wasn’t as though there was no love between them. He was never like the fathers she knew, the various dads of her friends at school. Older for one thing, more reserved, more formal, always wore suit trousers, leather shoes, never carried her on his shoulders or called her pet names, but then he wasn’t her father, so none of that mattered. Part of her always enjoyed it too: that he was unusual. Embarrassed and proud of him at the same time. She liked his arm swinging as he walked, the clipped, white hair at his neck, his smooth-soft ties hung on small wooden pegs in the wardrobe: so many patterns and they smelled of him too, the soap he used for shaving. On their library trips, he always dropped her hand again as soon as they got to the far kerb, it was true, but she liked the quick squeeze he gave her fingers before he let go.
Blink and you’ll miss them
: that’s what her mum said about Grandad’s fleeting displays of affection.

Her grandfather worked until she was in her teens: her last years at school, his last years tying his tie in the hallway mirror weekday mornings. He saved enough to retire a few years early, but until then, he commuted halfway across the city. Always caught an early train, and rarely came home before evening. While they lived at her grandparents’,Alice and her mum would eat most of their meals
with Gran, just the three of them. Breakfasts after Grandad left for work and often their suppers too, before he came home. They would talk about school and friends, and they’d have the radio on in the background while they ate in the kitchen. Alice loved her grandfather, but she always liked this better than the meals when he was home and their places were laid at the dining room table.

Her train was late but the rain had stopped and Alice folded the umbrella, zipped it into a pocket of her rucksack. It was harsh, realising how little they knew of each other, how many years her gran had been compensating, providing ease and conversation. Alan said once that her grandfather just didn’t care enough about him to bother with talking. It had stung Alice, because she’d thought it might be true, and it did again now, thinking it might apply to her too. After they’d finished their tea, her grandad had washed while she dried and put away, everything familiar and in its own place. Alice wondered then if he found their silences companionable, or if he was just as uncomfortable. Looking at him, absorbed in his washing and rinsing, it had been impossible to tell. She was almost glad when the rain had let up, because it had given her a cue to go. Alice watched her train arriving, reminded herself he’d lost his wife and felt ashamed.

Alan didn’t get on with Grandad. They never argued, but they never really spoke either. Alice’s mum didn’t agree, but Alan insisted David didn’t like him:

– He acts like I’m not there. He does it with everyone who makes him uncomfortable.

– Don’t exaggerate.

– Even you sometimes.

Grandad was the only thing her mum and Alan ever rowed about, as far as Alice could tell. It was usually good-humoured, while she was around in any case, but serious enough, despite the smiles. Listening to them, Alice would often feel defensive like her mother, but usually thought Alan was right. He’d come to London for a conference once, a few years ago, and stayed at her grandparents’ on his last night, instead of the hotel. Alice cycled over early the next morning to see him, and found her grandfather and Alan at the breakfast table, absorbed in separate sections of the paper.

– He was already reading when I came down and I felt stupid just sitting there after your Gran went out to the shops.

Alice had walked with Alan to the station when it was time for him to leave, and she’d tried not to apologise for her grandfather, or find excuses: she’d been in on enough of Alan’s discussions with her mother to know that would only annoy him. Better just to let him laugh about it:

– It’s probably the best arrangement. We both keep schtum, we can’t piss each other off too much, can we?

That was how Alan dealt with it mostly, and Alice thought he didn’t have much option. Her mum agreed that Grandad could be standoffish, but she refused to see it as deliberate, or directed at Alan.

– It’s just his manner, love. I wouldn’t take it personally.

She was impassive, and while Alice found that reassuring in her mother, she knew it was just frustrating
for Alan. He teased his wife about her parents’ colonial past, because he knew that was the one way to get a rise out of her. Alice’s gran was from Fife, her grandad from London, but they were both in Nairobi when they met. She was a nurse, and had been recruited to Kenya after the war. He was an RAF pilot: had joined up in 1950 for his national service, and stayed on. He got posted to Africa twice in two years: first Rhodesia, as it was then, for training, and a few months later Kenya.

– Keeenya.

Alan would elongate the vowel and smile when his wife didn’t respond: David’s colonial intonation didn’t bother Alan, but he knew very well the effect it had on her. He said once he couldn’t understand her: so impervious to her father’s lack of grace, and yet so painfully aware of his occasional slip in pronunciation.

– That’s just the way your Dad learnt it. It doesn’t mean anything.

– I’m not dense, I know the way he comes across. Anyway, I’m not sure many Kenyans would agree with you about that.

– I’m sure most Kenyans have got more important things to worry about, no?

Alan usually knew when to stop: Alice’s mother would throw something at him, a sofa cushion, a newspaper, anything soft but big or noisy enough to make them both laugh. But Alice had been present a few times when teasing wasn’t enough. She’d spent a weekend up at the farm with them not long after Alan’s conference, and the silent breakfast with his father-in-law obviously still
irked. Alice remembered her mum and Alan debating Grandad while they were packing up the car to drive back to York:

– I never know what he’s thinking. Not just about me, about anything. I can’t be around someone like that for too long. It makes me nervous.

– Maybe that’s your problem then, not his?

– He’s such a stuffed shirt.

– Do you have to be so rude about my Dad?

Alan blinked at her. Then went on.

– I’m sorry, Sarah, but I think he’s rude. It’s arrogant to think you’re above conversation.

– You’ve got him all wrong.

– Well, he doesn’t give me much to go on. Maybe he should risk an argument with me. At least we’d get to know each other that way.

Her mum didn’t respond, just shifted an awkward box from the boot to the back seat, and Alice wondered if she was swallowing something: the risk of this argument turning serious too great for her to take. Alan was quiet too, shoving their rucksacks over to make more room, and it seemed as though he might be regretting what he’d said, or at least how he’d said it. Her mum got into the driver’s seat, and Alice picked up the last of the bags from the path, finished packing the boot with Alan, in silent solidarity.
Hard to love someone if you don’t know much about them.
Her grandfather didn’t dislike Alan, she was sure of that: he could be just as offhand with her and her mother, but at least they knew he was fond of them too.

Joseph had been on that part of the coast a few times. His dad used to take him camping, just the two of them: places a train ride away at first, then further afield after they got the car. They never went away long, just a night or two, a weekend here or there. They didn’t have a stove or build a fire, just took sandwiches, ate pies and things from packets. Flew kites they made themselves and crashed them, got better at them over the years. His dad always had a can and a cigarette last thing, outside the tent when Joseph was meant to be asleep, and Joseph could remember listening to him, sitting quietly out in the dark, and the smell of it all too: night air, fag smoke, the earth underneath. They drove to the Kent beaches mainly, Herne Bay, Whitstable and Deal, because his dad liked the sea, but he took them to the Downs sometimes too, the High Weald. Joseph wasn’t sure he liked it there at first, missed the seaside towns, piers and arcades. But there were cliffs and woods as well as beaches, and chalk in the ground that came up with the tent pegs. The longest they were away was a week, when Joseph was about thirteen: the last proper trip they did together, too long probably, and Joseph was too old by then. Navigating while his dad drove them further every day, when all he wanted was to turn back and head for London again. He remembered making a box kite with his dad on the dunes at Rye. For auld lang syne, his dad said, and Joseph said nothing because he didn’t want a sentimental morning. But the kite was one of their better efforts, and Joseph remembered the beach
too, curving for what seemed like a day in either direction. It stuck with him anyway, the area, because he carried on going there after he left school. With his mates usually, car boot stacked with cans and plenty to smoke, but also on his own. Never the same place twice, and the further east the better: the wide flats of the Romney Marsh, all horizon and pylons, and the coast beyond Hastings, where it wasn’t crowded with towns any more. The cliffs gave way, the country behind was rough and the sands out there got longer and emptier. That was where he went after he left the army: a year or two later, when he couldn’t get it together, it seemed like the best place to go.

Days at a time out there, mostly. Turned into weeks when he was at his worst. No warning, no reason, but it was always the same routine: like everything was getting away from him and there was no way he could stop it. Could be anything that set him off, no way of knowing. Too much noise, too much talking, a car driven too fast past him, wrong words said on a bad day and that would be it. Job chucked, or he’d get the sack, or he’d be shouting at someone he’d never met before over nothing. Pints all over the bar, wet sleeves and faces. A supermarket full of people, shocked quiet and staring. Fighting too: when shouting didn’t do it, he’d start shoving and kicking. Had to have the rush of it sometimes, and the damage. Last one was a bloke he’d been working for and Joseph couldn’t remember what started it, just how vicious it got, and how glad he was when it was over. Winded, on the floor and frightened. Hauled up and pushed out onto the pavement. Hard to walk, but the pain got much worse later, after the adrenaline was gone again, sitting in the kitchen at Eve’s, with the bones in his face aching.

Mostly it was no drama, nothing that obvious. It was just like he couldn’t be staying so he’d be gone again. Not turning up for work or answering the phone. Trying to go as many days as he could without talking, no contact with anyone. Hard, because he didn’t have his own place then, and most of the time no money, so the only way to sort himself out was to go missing.

It took over everything sometimes and there wasn’t anywhere he could settle. Only a few days in any one place, if that. Friends’ houses, then friends of friends, sometimes hostels. He was in a place for veterans for over a week once and that was easy at first, familiar: the sharing and the three meals a day, all the army jargon and the black and blue humour. But the man in the next bed had screaming nightmares, and the dayroom was full of bitter talk about compensation and pensions. A lot of Gulf War blokes there, all of them angry, and it scared Joseph thinking he’d get to be like them.