Sleepless Nights (16 page)

I muttered something ever-so-faintly sarcastic about how Ellen was “a big-hearted girl,” but I don’t think Dave heard, he was too busy being smothered in a blanket of warm sympathy by Q and Tom (“Your poor mother…so terrible for you…what a tragedy…if there’s anything we can do…”). Feeling somewhat upstaged by them, I reached out for Dave’s hand and squeezed it sympathetically. He looked up at me, an expression of tenderness softening his face. I drew back my hand. “I really have got to get to my new job,” I explained. He stared out of the window at the vibrant green of the maples against the peacock-blue sky, then turned back. “I understand. What time do you start, then?”

“I should—well, I mean I think—I should probably go now-ish,” I explained, tying my hair up high into a ponytail. “I have to do ten hours a week, and we’d arranged that I’d visit today. Such a shame really—but you can sleep a bit, and when I get back we’ll go down to the beach.”

Dave nodded, and stood up too, picking his huge tatty green rucksack up off the floor. “Fine. Show me to our room, Jeanie, and I’ll get out of your hair,” he said, nodding politely at Tom and Q. I could hear them still clucking enthusiastically behind us (“Anything! Anything at all! Just let us know!”) as we walked through the hallway and up the stairs.

Dave, who seemed immune to the opulence of the furnishings in the gorgeous double room I presently introduced him to, settled down with a gusty sigh on the bed, yawned, and stretched himself fully out, muddy trainers flaking dirt all over the white counterpane. “Fantastic, I could do with a kip.” He yawned again. “It was a long flight, I’m absolutely shattered.” Then he rolled over to face me, stroking the pillow gently with one hand. “You
really
have to go now, love? Or do you want to—well, you know, take a nap with me first? God, I want you Jeanie, I can’t wait much longer…”

“Dave, that would be
lovely,”
I replied earnestly, “but I really
do
have to go—you know how it is—they’re all so fond of me—I don’t want to keep them—”

Dave sighed, rolled back over, and popped some tea-tree gum out of a silver foil packet from his jeans pocket. “All right, Jeanie,” he mouthed, through the hard gray square, “forget it. I understand. One day this week I’ll come with you to the old folks’ home, I reckon, but now I’ll just have a shower and get clean.” He kicked himself off the bed, opening the door into the dressing room. “I’ll unpack, you go off to your job, I’ll keep the bed warm for when you get back.” When I walked in a few steps behind him, he was in the middle of rifling through T-shirts and underwear; having found what he needed, he stood up, and started to strip off his clothes. In a second he was naked, standing unembarrassed before me, his travel-stained attire in a small heap before him.

Professor Mordaunt had begrudgingly given up my coursework, it seemed, because when I walked into the kitchen, Q silently handed
me an envelope in which I found a certificate telling me I’d been awarded a master’s degree by
Kingsbury College
(penned with enough curlicues to satisfy a sovereign). I felt very happy, very relieved, and very apprehensive. “It’s time to start applying for jobs,” I said slowly to Q, slipping the certificate back into its envelope, and she laughed.

“You’ve got to grow up sometime,” she said, scooping up Samuel, smiling with a hint of a challenge in her eye. “And if you ask me, love, quite honestly it’s about time.”

27

Q

I
mighta been a bit hasty.”

Kent Tyler was standing on the front porch, hands plunged in his pockets, a frown creasing his forehead. He was wearing a pressed button-down shirt with his jeans, but there was still something indefinably disreputable about him. “The other day, I mean.” He passed his hand anxiously over his head, smoothing down his wispy hair, and pulled awkwardly at his thinning ponytail.

“I’m sorry?”

“A bit hasty.” He coughed uncomfortably. “Y’know, when you visited me. Y’want the firm?”

Tom had come up behind me; I felt his warm hand in the small of my back as he stood over my shoulder. “Hello, Mr. Tyler. What can we do for you?”

As he caught sight of my husband, Kent licked his dry lips, then stretched them wide into an oddly misshapen smile. “I was just stopping by to say, y’know, that you passed the test. Congratulations. You did it. When can you start?”

The hand on my back tightened. “Uh—what?”

Kent did a strange sort of jiggly dance, staring down at his toes, and when he looked up his face had changed expression again. “The firm. You can have it. Whenever you want. Like, how about next week?”

A gull sailed toward us, then sat down on the porch rail, moving its feet to get comfortable. It refolded its wings, twice, then put its head on one side and watched us with a bright, interested air.

“Mr. Tyler, that’s very kind of you,” Tom began carefully. “But I don’t think that we—I mean, I thought we made it quite clear that—”

“Look, what’s the problem?” Kent interjected sharply. “It’s a good firm, you know! A real strong one. Large client base. Good—pretty good—reputation. Offices all paid up for six months. Five months. Four months. Till next week, at least.”

“I’m sure they are, Mr. Tyler, but—”

“And you get to live here, in Connecticut!” He gestured broadly around the garden, at the house, and down toward the sea. The gull squawked a bit at Kent’s carelessly waving arms, left its perch protestingly, and settled a few feet farther off.

“Lovely views. Big houses, for cheap. Public schools. Fresh vegetables. Mmm! And—er—er—”

“Mr. Tyler, honestly, it’s not that…”

“I’m telling you—” (this with an emphatic bang on the house’s wood siding, which caused the gull to fly up with one final, agitated squawk and sail off into the blue)—“this is the good life, you
know? Recession-proof, in a way; people always need their local lawyer. And while running a firm (I’ll be honest) is a bit much for one old man, for a young couple it’s a dream. You take over my firm, you take on my—er—position in the community. You couldn’t get this kind of a client base if you were to set up on your own out here. No one would trust you. But if you take over my name, you’ll take on the trust. The trust, you see? I’ve been building it up for decades. “Course you might lose one or two of the clients, but mostly they won’t bother to look further afield, not in these times at least.”

He paused, panting a little from the exertion, his faded blue eyes struggling to focus as he looked from one to the other of us in the sunshine. “Mr. Tyler,” I said, taking him by his gnarled hand, smiling a smile I hoped was suitably gentle, “I’m sorry, we’re just not really country types, you see? We live in New York; that’s who we are. I mean—well, you can’t change that in a few months, can you? We’d need much more time. I’m so sorry…”

Kent pulled his hand roughly away. “What you talking about, you’re sorry?” he scoffed, thrusting out his chest. “I was going to offer you my firm because young Paul said you were to be trusted, but I’ve got guys up and down the coast
begging
me to let them take it on. Offering to pay me big bucks, too.” He slid his fingers together meaningfully. “I don’t
need
you; what, are you kidding me? I only put you people to the top of the pile ’cause Paul Dupont vouched for you. Otherwise you wouldn’t have stood a chance, I’m telling you. Not a
chance!”

And with that, he walked off down the steps to his old rusty two-tone pickup, chuckling loudly. He opened the big, heavy door, wincing as he did so.

“Listen—” I felt oddly compelled to continue the conversation and, pulling away from Tom, I walked down the steps after Kent—“we see the advantages, really we do, Mr. Tyler. But if you’re a town
person—well. And then there’s the job itself. When I compare what you do with what we do, it’s—it’s completely different, you know? Not—” I put out my hand in response to something in his face—“worse, or better; just different. Different kinds of cases, a different spectrum. And different clients.”

I hadn’t got it right even now; I was irritated with myself. Kent shrugged again. “Like I say, it makes no difference to me,” he replied coolly. “Don’t have to explain yourself.
I
don’t care.”

“But we—we really enjoyed meeting you!” I added helplessly (I could feel Tom rolling his eyes behind me on the deck). “And seeing the firm, learning about it. Your beautiful view. The way you are—part of everything—”

Kent shrugged impatiently; placing his foot carefully on the running board, he heaved himself up into his seat and switched on the engine. I stood back as he awkwardly pulled the door closed. “Seriously, it’s fine. Doesn’t matter at all,” he said, turning on the radio. Music blared out, twanging guitars and a man’s croaky voice filling the hot, still air. “See you around.” He nodded; I waved as the old truck chugged and spluttered off down the drive.

28

Jeanie

D
ave’s eyes were full of tears when I came into the bedroom. It was almost dark, and he had not switched on the lamp; he was sitting by the window, waiting for me.

I stared at him; he tried to smile, brushing the tears away with a shaking hand. “Just got a call from me dad,” he explained in a rough voice. “Mam’s taken a turn for the worse. Happened first thing this morning, just as I took off from Heathrow. Bloody ironic. As if she knew.”

“Oh Dave, I’m so sorry,” I said immediately, awkwardly kneeling beside him on the floor. “What’s happened?”

“Small stroke, they think. Left side of her face is frozen, and she’s not talking. Shit,” he went on, putting his head in his hands, “it’s back into hospital for her again, and you know what
that’s
like.”

Of course I did; I’d gone with Dave to visit his mam in hospital three months earler, when a fall and a hip fracture sent her into another sudden decline. The hospital building was about five miles from Dave’s house, a huge, squat, hideous block of concrete with endless extension blocks and an overflowing car park. We found Mam in one of those wards you have nightmares about, eight beds of old ladies moaning and sighing and screaming against a backdrop of searing whiteness. “Nil by mouth” read the large sign above Mam’s head, with “Mrs. Tickner” in blue marker pen. You could just see
the name “Mrs. Browning,” not quite rubbed out, underneath.

“Will it be the same place?” I whispered, and Dave nodded. “’Course; it’s the only hospital in thirty-five miles,” he said wanly. “Get them in, get them out, that’s the philosophy of that place. Whether they’re ready for it or not. Dead or alive. Well,
you
know; you remember from last time…”

I cast my mind back to that awful afternoon. Mam was lying by herself when we arrived, baffled, confused, and dirty; no one had cleaned her properly since she was admitted two days before (the niceties of hygiene and cosmetics were utterly beyond Dave’s dad). We set about her face with some aqueous cream from a big pot by her bedside, cleaned her teeth, and brushed out her matted hair as best we could. Then we changed her nightdress and tried to sit her up a bit higher on the pillows while Dave looked through the charts at the end of her bed. “Fuck the bastards, they
will
keep upping her dose of sedatives, anything to keep her quiet—they don’t give a shit if it’s actually
good
for her, wait until I find that fucking consultant,” he said angrily, and off he went. Soon afterward I heard him having a furious conversation with a doctor just outside the ward (“Mr. Tickner, I understand you have your mother’s interests at heart.” “Yes, I bloody do, unlike you, you stuck-up southern bastard.”), that ended reasonably well, from Dave’s perspective; they agreed to lower the sedation and try a night of continuous nursing care. “Don’t want to pay for the nurse, do they, they just want to give her some medicine that hushes her up, bloody hospital, bloody National Health, bloody government,” he muttered furiously, all the way home.

I reached now for Dave’s shoulder, thinking about poor Mam facing it all on her own without Dave by her side. “Is there anything I can do?”

Dave bit his lip. “It’s terrible timing,” he said, choking over a strange laugh. “Me here, and everything.

“Still,” he went on, brushing his eyes again, working very hard to grin, “Dad and m’sister say I should try to enjoy myself out here.
First holiday in a decade, y’know. If anything changes—anything serious—they’ll give me a ring. And I’ve only just got here, come halfway round the bloody world, I
can’t
go back just yet. Not yet. Jeanie…please…”

He reached out to me, his hands stretching across the space between us, trying to close the gap, to bring me into his warmth. I knew what he wanted; quite reasonable, when you think about it. But it had been such a long time; and now there was this pressure, I thought, that it should somehow be equal to the occasion. And no matter how hard I tried, it was as if two people were bumping uncomfortably up against each other just when it needed to be—well, special, I suppose; a moment of togetherness. I closed my eyes, and felt his weight move above me, his body that seemed both familiar and very, very strange. Try harder, I thought to myself. This is
Dave
. He’s suffering. Try harder.

29

Q

H
aven’t the women of your family
any
advice?” Tom asked miserably, in the cold hours of early morning, when my small family was stretched out in a damp mangled heap on the bed. “What’s the point of having all these sisters? Jeanie knows
nothing. And anyway, now that Dave’s here, she won’t be getting out of bed. You won’t speak to Alison. Honestly, I’m almost tempted to call my mother…”

“Don’t you dare,” I muttered furiously, and reluctantly, faced with this threat, I called my own mother, just after lunch. She’d been very busy with her yoga studio recently; she hadn’t had much space to think about me since she left to go back to England when Samuel was a week old. I dialed her number, feeling painfully hesitant.