In the Falling Snow (15 page)

‘Maybe you’ll believe me now.’

‘I can get a minicab and be there in five minutes.’

He reaches for his jacket and pushes one arm into a sleeve. He switches the phone from one hand to the next and then wriggles the other arm into the jacket.

‘Jesus, it’s all right.’ He can hear the relief in Annabelle’s voice. ‘I can see him.’

‘What’s he doing?’

‘Nothing. He’s just with some kids on mountain bikes. Laurie’s sitting on a park bench.’

‘Just sitting by the Westway at this time of night?’ He slumps down on the sofa and waits for Annabelle to say something.

‘He’s seen me.’

‘Look, I can still get a minicab and meet you there. Or back at the house.’

‘Let’s just leave it for tonight. He seems okay.’

‘Okay? He’s totally out of order.’

‘He’s walking towards me.’

‘Let me talk to him.’

‘Look, I’m going now, Keith. You can talk to him when you come over tomorrow. But I mean it. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.’

The line goes dead, but he continues to hold the mobile to his ear. As long as he holds this pose there is still some communication between himself and Annabelle and their son. He just has to hold the pose.

HE STANDS BY
the gate to the school and studies the scruffy parade of boys trooping out with bags slung casually over one shoulder, ties flapping over the other, shoelaces undone, and hair uncombed. There is no point in his getting too judgmental for, although he would like to imagine otherwise, some part of him knows that he almost certainly looked just as unkempt when he was a sixth-former. And then he sees Laurie, loping across the playground by himself, the same pair of expensive oversized headphones jammed on to his head, and his body gently bobbing to the beat of the music. He knows that his son has seen him, but it is not until Laurie is only a few feet away that he reaches up and literally pulls the headphones down to his neck, and then he gives his father that upward nod that begins with his chin.

‘All right, Dad?’

He pats his son on the shoulder, then squeezes. ‘I’m fine, son. Just fine.’

He waits on the pavement outside the Cineplex for Laurie to
emerge
from the toilets. While they were watching the film it grew dark, and a little chilly, but for some reason the streetlights now seem unnaturally bright. He blinks hard, realising that he is having some difficulty adjusting his vision to the glare of the night, and he wonders if the many hours that he has recently spent at the computer screen have affected his eyes. He turns up the collar on his leather jacket and thinks that it might be best if they simply make a dash for Pizza Express. He had toyed with the idea of taking Laurie to a Greek or French restaurant, somewhere semi-formal so that at least the two of them might have somewhere quiet to talk, but a part of him knows that Laurie will regard any restaurant with cloth napkins and two forks as a pretentious dump. As he waits with the cluster of nervous smokers, he suspects that a longer walk to a proper restaurant would also irritate Laurie, whose patience seemed to be wearing thin for much of the second half of the Will Smith film. Not that there had been much choice, for it was either this, a cartoon featuring talking penguins, or an Italian art movie that looked a little bit too risqué, as he wasn’t ready to start watching bedroom scenes with his son. Predictably, the Will Smith film had been little more than a special-effect-laden action feature, with the obligatory light-skinned romance, and he sympathised with Laurie when he noticed him take out his mobile phone and furtively begin texting. As he glances at his watch, he imagines that his son is most likely in the toilets engaged in exactly the same type of clandestine communication.

Pizza Express turns out to be a good choice. Laurie asks for some extra breadsticks while he waits for his ‘special’ pizza, and he seems happy that his father is letting him drink a small bottle of Italian beer. ‘Thanks, Dad.’ He slops it quickly into the glass tumbler.

‘Does your mother let you drink beer? Or maybe wine. You know, with a meal.’

‘Are you losing it? She’d have a fit if she thought I was out boozing with you.’

‘Well you’re not exactly boozing, are you? Just a bottle of beer.’

‘But it’s more than she’s gonna let me have.’

‘Well, maybe she has her reasons for it.’ He looks at Laurie, who shrugs his shoulders and takes another gulp of his beer. ‘You know, she told me about you getting wasted last Christmas with your mates.’ Laurie lowers his eyes and swirls the beer in the glass. ‘Listen, it’s all well and good drinking too much, but the real problem isn’t the headache, or the puking, it’s the lines you cross because your judgement is off.’ Laurie looks up at him and he can see frustration in his son’s eyes. ‘The point is, it’s the things you do and say when you’ve been drinking that usually come back to haunt you, because they’re not always things that you mean. Am I making sense?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Listen, what’s done is done, but all I want to say is don’t disrespect your mother by coming in drunk, all right. She was pretty upset about what happened last Christmas.’

‘Is that the end of my lesson, then?’

‘You think this is a joke?’

His son stares at him, and then slowly, almost imperceptibly, he shakes his head.

‘No, I don’t think it’s a joke.’

‘Keep control, son. Keep it together. There are enough people out there trying to knock you out of your stride. Trust me, you don’t need to be helping them.’

Both pizzas seem too large for the plates. He understands that ‘value for money’ is supposed to be the special feature of Pizza Express although, to him, it looks like small plates are their real speciality. He watches as his son eats quickly, tearing at the pizza with his hands rather than cutting it neatly into slices, and he
realises
that there are some things that he cannot talk to Laurie about. It is probably too late.

‘So you have no idea of what you would like for a present after your exams?’

‘You mean after passing my exams, ’cause you’re not giving me anything if I fail them, right?’

‘You’ll pass. I’m not worried. I thought maybe a trip to the Caribbean.’

‘The Caribbean?’ Laurie pushes a particularly large piece of pizza into his mouth, and he speaks through the food as he chews. ‘Why there?’

‘What do you mean “why there?”? Your grandparents come from there. Are you saying you’re not interested?’

‘Whatever.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? You’re supposed to know something about where you come from. Or at least be curious. I’m not asking you to go and live there or anything, but at least just take a look. It’s the Caribbean, Laurie. How bad can it be?’

‘Well how come you’ve never been there if it’s so important?’

‘I suppose a part of me was waiting until you were old enough so we could go together.’

‘Your dad doesn’t want to know, does he?’

‘I’ve already explained to you. He’s very private about everything.’

‘Weirdo, more like. Sitting up there in that house by himself.’

‘Come on, that’s not fair.’

‘What’s not fair? Am I lying?’

He stares at his son and understands that, from his point of view, his grandfather must appear to be a somewhat eccentric man. However, this is not a topic he feels comfortable discussing with Laurie. The one time he took Laurie to meet him, his father simply sat and looked at his twelve-year-old grandson, before
abruptly
picking up his pork-pie hat and leaving for the pub without saying a word. Annabelle had warned him that she did not want their son to be as upset by his father as she had been on the one occasion that he had introduced her to him. After they had moved to London, the theatrical agency that Annabelle worked for had informed her that they had a play opening at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and asked her if she might be free to view it. When Annabelle told him that she would have to travel to the north, he realised that he could go with her and take this opportunity to introduce her and, if truth be told, reintroduce himself to his father after many years of estrangement. However, when he and Annabelle presented themselves at his father’s house, the stubborn older man retreated into a silence which resisted Annabelle’s quietly expressed appeals for there to be communication and, as she put it, ‘fence-mending’. On the train back to London, a pregnant Annabelle sat and stared out of the window with the occasional tear rolling down her face, and although he found this uncomfortable, it was better than the anger he had been expecting. By the time they reached London, Annabelle seemed to have pulled herself together again.

‘He’s your problem, Keith. You’ll have to sort things out between the two of you before he ever accepts me, so I’m going to make the effort not to take it personally. At least I tried, right?’ She looked across at him. ‘Right?’

He helped her down on to the platform, and then picked up both of their bags. ‘I know you tried, and I’m sorry. I told you he was out of order.’

Twelve years later, his father gave him and his son the same silent treatment when they stopped to see him after he had taken Laurie to visit the National Railway Museum in York. After looking at them both for some minutes, and then muttering something under his breath, his father simply picked up his hat
and
walked out of his own house. Laurie seemed to deal with the rejection better than Annabelle, but five years later, given the unpleasantness of the encounter, he can’t argue with his son’s description of his father as a ‘weirdo’. He watches as Laurie pushes the final piece of pizza into his mouth and then wipes his fingers on the crested serviette.

‘Well, this Caribbean trip isn’t about your grandfather, it’s about you and me.’

‘Yeah, I know, bonding. We had to write an essay about it in General Studies.’

‘Well? Are you interested or not?’

‘In bonding?’

‘In going to the Caribbean. Okay, bonding in the Caribbean, if that makes you feel better.’

‘All right then, we can check it out. But Grandma gave me some money, so I’m also going to Barcelona. It’ll be after the end of the season, but at least I’ll see the ground and maybe I’ll get to see them train.’

‘You’re telling me that you’d rather go to Spain, which is just around the corner, than go all the way across the Atlantic to the Caribbean?’

‘I told you, I can go to both.’

‘Do you want me to come with you to Barcelona?’

‘What for? You don’t like Barca. Anyhow, I’m going with some mates.’

‘No adults?’

‘You’re not worried about me, are you?’

‘Should I be?’

‘Get real, Dad. I’m nearly eighteen.’

As they step out of the Pizza Express he sees a group of boys idling on a low brick wall near the entrance to the Tesco Mini-Mart. For a moment he thinks about walking in the opposite
direction,
for he knows that it will be straightforward to get a cab in the next street, but Laurie seems to know the boys and he shouts.

‘Yo!’

He sees his son throw a quick hand signal that elicits a chorus of ‘Yo!’s from the loiterers, but he turns away from Laurie and squints anxiously down the street. He flags down a passing cab, for he wants to get away from these boys as quickly as possible. Laurie scampers over to join him, and as the cab moves off he wonders if he should ask his son if he is in a gang. However, if Laurie says ‘yes’ he is unsure of what advice he might offer him that wouldn’t just provoke his son’s ire and frustration, so he decides to say nothing. He turns slightly and looks out of the window at the heavy night traffic. So, Annabelle’s mother has given Laurie money to go to Spain. More likely that Annabelle has given him the money in the name of her mother, for he is sure that his mother-in-law’s dementia has reached a stage where she would not even recognise her grandson. It pains him that he is unable to offer his son another grandmother, or a proper relationship with his grandfather, for he doesn’t want Laurie to feel that should anything happen to him then Annabelle’s family are all that he has. In a sense, offering to take him to the Caribbean is his attempt to repair this imbalance, but if Laurie prefers to take his grandmother’s money and go to Barcelona with his mates, then he should be free to do so. He turns quickly and steals a glance at his son, who has slipped his headphones back into place and is once again bobbing his head to the music which leaks out from his bulbous earpieces. He wants to suggest to his son that conversation might be a good alternative to just cutting himself off in this way, but he decides to leave it. Both the trip to the cinema, and then the pizza, have been a success. At least they have talked, which is what he hoped for, and Annabelle can have
no
complaints. She can’t accuse him of not trying to bond with his son.

He registers the quizzical look on Annabelle’s face as she opens the door and stands to one side. Laurie squeezes past her, but he doesn’t bother to take off his headphones or greet his mother. His son half turns so that he faces him, but he doesn’t break stride.

‘See you, Dad. Thanks.’

He watches as Laurie bounces upstairs, easily taking two steps at a time, and when the tall young man eventually disappears from view he looks at Annabelle.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Jesus Christ, Keith. “What’s the matter?” How can you be so casual about everything. Her name’s Yvette, right?’

He shrugs his shoulders and makes it clear that she should continue.

‘There’s some kind of website with a blog on it and people are posting messages. Apparently she’s on antidepressants and is barely functioning. That’s what’s the matter. People are writing about you and her, and I hate to tell you this, but you’re not looking too clever.’

‘You’ve got to be joking.’

‘Do I look like I’m joking?’

‘Well what are they saying?’

‘I think you’d better read it for yourself.’

‘I don’t know anything about this website.’

‘Trust me, you will.’

‘But it’s ridiculous, we’re two single people who started to see each other and it ended, that’s all.’

‘You don’t get it, do you? You can’t win in these situations, and you do understand that somebody is going to send the link to Laurie, the same way they sent it to me.’

‘Who sent you the link?’

‘I’m buggered if I know, but somebody wanted to make sure that I saw it.’

He runs his hand quickly across his face, but he realises that he is not thinking clearly.

‘You think somebody’s trying to stitch me up?’

‘Yes, Sherlock, somebody’s trying to discredit you further than you’ve already discredited yourself. And it might not be Yvette, or whatever her name is. It’s a blog so anybody can sign in. It’s public space.’

‘Maybe I should speak to a lawyer and see if I can get it stopped.’

‘Well do me a favour, Keith, do
something
, will you? Before your son begins to dislike you too.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you don’t have a lot of friends on that blog.’

‘Including you, I take it.’

‘I’m not on the blog.’

He shakes his head. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘How was it tonight?’

‘How was what?’

‘Your time with Laurie. What do you think I mean?’

‘I had a good time with him. He’s changing, that’s all. Going through that moody “I’m a man” stuff. But we chatted, and it’s fine.’