Road Ends (25 page)

In March 1968 Megan decided it was time she had a place of her own. She’d resigned herself to a bedsit; a bedroom-cum-living room with either its own kitchen or its own bathroom but not both. Annabelle and Peter paid her well but even so there was no way she could afford a flat of her own anywhere near the hotel; it was either a bedsit or sharing a flat with a group of others, as in Lansdown Terrace, and she wasn’t going to do that again.

She wasn’t in a rush and she was very picky, so it took a while—three months, in fact. In the end she saw it in the window of the newsagent’s where she bought Adam’s Matchbox cars, printed neatly on a postcard, stuck up alongside notices about lost cats and cleaning ladies: a bedsit with its own kitchen and a bathroom shared with just one other person. And the address was a ten-minute walk from the hotel.

The room was on the top floor of an old house, up under the eaves, so it was full of odd corners and sloping ceilings and there were a good many places where you couldn’t stand
upright, but that merely added to its charm in Megan’s view. It was painted a drab green but she would change that—the landlady seemed to have no objection. The kitchen, stretched along one wall and closed off from the rest of the room by means of a sliding door, contained all the essentials, including the smallest refrigerator Megan had ever seen. Its interior measured one cubic foot. Megan mentally measured it for milk, butter, orange juice, meat and cheese, and decided it would be fine. Perfect, in fact; no wasted space. She was delighted with it; she was delighted with everything. Even the shared bathroom was fine: it was clean, which was all she asked.

“I’ll take it,” she said to the landlady, a tired-looking woman with a small girl clinging to her knee.

“But Mummy, you
said,”
the child said. She had a well-practised whine that made the hairs on the back of Megan’s neck stand on end.

“All right, darling, in a minute,” her mother said. To Megan she said, “Oh good, I’m so glad.”

“But Mummy!”

“Who do I share the bathroom with?” Megan asked.

“Mummy, you
said
!” The little girl was hauling on her mother’s skirt.

Give me five minutes alone with that child, Megan thought. To the mother she said politely, “Do you live here too?” because much as she loved the room, if she had to listen to that whine it would be a deal-breaker.

“Yes, on the ground floor. The first floor is a flat and then the second and third each have two bedsits.”

Excellent, Megan thought. Two full floors of insulation should do it. “And who do I share the bathroom with?”

“Mummy, you said!”

Megan’s mouth went tight. Maybe not, she thought. Maybe I couldn’t even stand hearing it occasionally on the stairs.

Across the hall a door opened and a man came out. He gave the child a look of intense disapproval, then looked at Megan and smiled.

“Hello,” he said. “Are you taking the room next door?”

Megan looked at him. Looked again. “Yes,” she said decidedly. “Yes. I am.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Struan, March 1969

Sometimes I am tempted to move into the bank. Take up residence there rather than coming home to a fresh set of problems every night. An added bonus would be that the bank doesn’t smell; there’s a very unpleasant smell in this house. Initially it was just upstairs but now you can smell it in the living room too. Emily isn’t keeping up with the laundry—the towels in the bathroom haven’t been changed for a long time—but I don’t think that’s enough to account for it.

And then there are the everlasting problems with the boys. Yesterday evening when I got in there was a letter waiting from Ralph Robertson, the principal of the high school, asking Emily and me to come in and talk to him about Peter and Corey. I took it up to Emily to ask if she knew what it was about, but of course she didn’t, so I went down the hall and knocked on Peter and Corey’s door. They opened it a crack, looking furtive.

“I have here,” I said, pushing the door farther open, “a letter from your principal asking your mother and me to come in and talk to him about the two of you. What’s it about, do you suppose?”

They glanced quickly at each other and then at the floor, looking guilty of virtually any crime you’d care to suggest.

“Well?” I said when the silence showed no sign of coming to an end. I don’t know what it is about the two of them that makes my blood pressure rise so fast and so high. They are indescribably annoying. They give the impression that as far as they’re concerned you don’t exist, you’re just a hazard to be avoided, like a hole in the road.

“Dunno,” Peter said, studying his feet. Corey did likewise.

“Everything’s been going all right at school, then?” I said. “Neither of you is in any kind of trouble?”

Peter gave a minimal shrug. Corey did likewise.

I managed to simply turn and leave, which was an achievement. My father would have knocked them both across the room.

Just for the record, I did not want any of this. A home and a family, a job in a bank. It was the very last thing I wanted. I am not blaming Emily. I did blame her for a long time but I see now that she lost as much as I did. She proposed to me rather than the other way around, but she is not to blame for the fact that I said yes.

That phrase they use in a court of law—“The balance of his mind was disturbed”—sums it up very well. I married Emily while the balance of my mind was disturbed.

Back downstairs I noticed Tom, sitting in that damn chair. He has it partially turned towards the wall so as to block off the rest of the room. Either he doesn’t want to see us or he doesn’t want us to see him. Or both. I know the feeling. I considered suggesting that he come into my study so that we could try yet again to have a talk, but I was feeling too annoyed about the boys.

——

There was a time when I found it possible to talk to Tom. Him alone, of all the children. I remember having quite a long conversation when he was in his early teens about the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The cost in lives, whether the end justified the means, that sort of thing. It was the first time we’d had a proper discussion and I remember being impressed by the seriousness with which he considered all sides of the matter.

We had other discussions over the years. Not many, but one or two. In his final undergraduate year we had a talk about whether or not he should go on and do his master’s in aeronautical engineering. He was at the Institute for Aerospace Studies at the University of Toronto and wanted to do his MSc there. It was going to cost a fair bit of money and he asked rather tentatively if I would fund him. There was never the slightest risk of my saying no but I asked him a good many questions purely for the pleasure of hearing him talk about this great interest of his.

I wish I’d talked to him more. Not just then but earlier. The fact is, I didn’t know how to go about it and still don’t. You can’t just decide to have a conversation with someone, or at least I can’t. It’s easy at work because there’s always a point to the discussion, a reason for it. I have no trouble with that. Or with talking to Betty. Books provide the starting point there.

He did extremely well in his MSc—Tom, that is. Just over eighteen months ago, when he finished the course, which coincided more or less with the suicide of his friend, both Boeing and de Havilland contacted him via the university inviting him for interviews. Boeing is based in Seattle. Imagine being paid to go and work in Seattle.

He didn’t even reply to their letters. It made me almost sick with frustration. Still does.

I’ve taken to visiting the library in my lunch hour. I’m not in love with Betty, nothing so foolish. I like her and admire her and I enjoy our conversations very much and generally feel better for them, although today, in fact, I did not.

We’ve never talked about our families before but today she asked how Tom was. The difficulty was that I couldn’t think what to reply. Finally I said that he seemed to be having a hard time getting over the death of his friend and that I suspected he felt responsible in some way. I said he didn’t seem to want to talk about it and that I didn’t know what to do for the best. I told her I was considering kicking him out, purely for his own good.

Betty nodded, then asked what Emily thought about it. Another straightforward question but again I was stuck for an answer. I couldn’t very well say, “I haven’t asked her” without explaining why I hadn’t asked her, which would involve discussing Emily herself and her inability to focus on anything more than six inches from the end of her nose. Finally I said she was rather preoccupied with the new baby and Betty smiled in that particular way all women do at the mere mention of babies and asked how he was and what we were going to call him and so on and so forth, and we sailed safely into the calm waters of new babyhood.

Betty hasn’t had an easy life herself. She has just one child, who was born with some form of brain problem. I don’t know the details. Dr. Christopherson sent the boy down to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto but nothing could be done. He’s in his teens now and as far as I know isn’t a particular problem aside from the fact that he’ll never be able to fend for himself. So Betty is serving a life sentence, you might say. Though possibly she doesn’t see it that way. Her husband clearly did—he took off a long time ago.

As she’d brought up the subject of children, when we’d finished with babyhood I asked how her son was making out (by some miracle I managed to remember that his name is Owen).
She said he never varied much. There was a short pause while I tried to think what to say to that. Finally I said something about it not being easy.

“Oh well,” Betty said, with a smile. “Whoever said it would be? Never mind. Ever onward.”

Ever onward. I imagine that sums up her attitude to life. I find it admirable and rather shaming.

When I got home I went up to Emily’s room. She was talking to the baby while changing his diaper—I heard her as I opened the door, though she stopped when I came in. The baby was waving his arms and legs about like they do, his eyes fixed avidly on Emily’s face. He was naked and looked alarmingly small and vulnerable but at the same time entirely content. Emily glanced up when I came in and said hello as if she wasn’t entirely sure who I was.

“How are you both?” I said with an attempt at a smile, inclining my head at the baby.

“We’re fine,” she said cautiously. “We’re both very well. How are you?”

“I’m fine too,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

“Talk?” she said, looking alarmed. I tried not to let it irritate me.

“About Tom.”

“Oh.”

For some reason that seemed to relieve her. She pulled a tiny woollen undershirt over the baby’s—I must stop calling him that; his name is Dominic—over Dominic’s head and deftly eased him into a many-buttoned sack-type thing that contained his feet. I was reminded of Betty and her sleeping bag.

“You’ll have noticed Tom’s still here,” I said, though there was no guarantee of that. “It’s been more than eighteen months
since his friend died but he seems unable to get over it. At least I assume that’s at the root of the problem. I was wondering what we should do about it. He can’t just sit in the living room for the rest of his life.”