Snow Garden (12 page)

Henry waited for Debbie at the motorway service station. ‘They didn’t want to come,’ she said, squeezing past a Krispy Kreme Doughnut display case. The place was heaving with Christmas travellers. Conor and Owen trailed after Debbie like two shadows, one long and slow, one jumpy and small. Debbie extended her cheek mid-air. ‘I’m just warning you.’ To Henry’s surprise, she accepted his offer to buy refreshments and they crammed, all four of them, around a laminated table, with paper cups the size of vases and drinks that were an angry shade of orange.

‘Well,’ he said, because no one else was saying anything, they were just staring at their phones and scratching their heads. ‘Just like old times.’

‘Are you for real?’ said Debbie. She wore a dark lipstick, a colour he had never seen her use before, so that her mouth looked as though she’d eaten too many blackberries.

Was
he for real? Henry had no idea any more. What was real? In this particular instance, he was being nice, he was saying words for the sake of saying them, and maybe that was not real. Two years ago, when things were at their worst, he had seen motorbikes thundering up and down the hall stairs. He had seen them and heard them, he had smelt the acrid heat of exhaust fumes and petrol, and even though no one else had experienced motorbikes on the hall stairs, it had not made them any less real at the time. It had been terrifying.

‘You think I look funny,’ Debbie said.

‘I don’t,’ he said.

‘Then stop staring at my mouth.’

She had a new fluffy pink Christmas jumper that clung to her. It seemed to have a picture of a knitted squirrel on the front eating some sort of sequinny nut, but he didn’t like to peer too closely after what she’d said about her mouth.

‘Are you going straight from here to the airport?’ he asked.

Debbie didn’t reply. She just sucked expansively on her straw and waved her hand as if she were shooing him along.

He said, ‘Have you checked your flight? Only there were problems on Christmas Day. A baby was born at the airport.’ Conor grunted. Owen gave a smile. Debbie rolled her eyes.

‘The computers went down,’ she said. ‘There was a technical glitch.’

At another table a young woman greeted a man holding a child. He kissed her quickly and passed the child over like a package he’d been finding way too heavy. In the corner, four children wearing Santa hats ate burgers, whilst their parents stood on either side of the table, facing outwards. How many of these people were travelling together and how many were divorced, like himself and Debbie, exchanging children – the only thing left of their marriages – for Christmas?

‘I’ve got a turkey, boys,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow morning I thought we could do the full works. Presents under the tree. Christmas lunch …’ The boys glanced up briefly and then returned to their phones.

‘They only eat sausages,’ interrupted Debbie. ‘And pizza.’

‘I didn’t know they only ate sausages. When did that happen?’

‘When you ran off to find yourself. How’s that going?’

‘Well. You know …’

‘I haven’t a clue,’ she said.

Debbie smacked the lid down on her drink and pushed the cup to one side, and Henry couldn’t help feeling he was somewhere inside that cup, all set to be cleared away. ‘Are you ready?’ She slotted a piece of gum in her mouth and stood.

He walked at a short distance behind Debbie and the boys to her new car. Overhead the clouds shifted forward like huge flat plates, tipping one by one over the edge of the horizon. Cars were stuffed with suitcases and bedding and presents. When Debbie passed over the boys’ hold-all bags from the boot, she dropped them mid-air as if she couldn’t see Henry but expected him to be there nonetheless. He couldn’t help noticing her suitcase. ‘Sun and yoga,’ she’d said. Along with, ‘Be a father for once.’ He wondered if she was going alone or with friends, or maybe someone in particular.

‘Boys,’ she said. ‘I want a quick word with Henry. Go and wait by his car.’

Conor and Owen trundled to one side, reluctant to be out of hearing. Debbie stepped so close to Henry that he could smell the spearmint of her chewing gum. He looked at her hands in order to avoid staring at her sequinny jumper or her blackberry mouth. She seemed to be ripping a serviette into shreds. Her voice said very clearly into his left ear, ‘I am warning you. If you do one weird thing while I am away, I will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ he said. And then he said it again in case the first one didn’t sound big enough. ‘Yes. I understand.’

‘The boys say you keep promising snow.’

‘That’s only a joke, Debbie.’

She stopped chewing. She clenched her molars very tight. ‘Is it?’

‘Of course it is.’

‘You promise me you’re OK? You’re not seeing any weird shit?’

Owen must have heard her swear because he crumpled his mouth to suggest he hadn’t.

‘I promise you I am not seeing anything weird or shitty. That was a long time ago, Debbie. My life these days is numbingly average.’

The boys were silent in the car. Henry could see Conor in the rear-view mirror, scratching his black mop of hair as he hunched over his phone. Owen sat with his anorak zipped all the way to the tip of his chin, and his small hands on his lap, gazing out of the window. It was only once they turned off the motorway that he said solemnly, ‘Hm. I don’t see any snow yet, Henry.’

Henry’s stomach gave a turn; and it still came as a shock that the boys no longer called him Dad, that since his breakdown they’d chosen to call him by his name, as if he were someone they’d met recently and needed to be polite to. ‘Well, you know,’ he said. ‘It might not … you know … it probably won’t …’

A sudden movement in the rear-view mirror caused him to stop speaking. It was Conor. The boy swiped his fringe from his eyes. His jaw was as firm and pale as a clenched fist. ‘Of course it won’t snow,’ he shouted and his voice splintered. ‘Every time we asked, you
promised
. Do you think we’re
kids
?’ It was the most comprehensive sentence he’d said in a year and he sounded like a man. A man-version of Debbie.

‘Actually, Henry,’ said Owen, ‘we like turkey as well as sausages.’ He tugged a small Tupperware box from his anorak pocket and snapped off the lid. ‘Also dried apricots,’ he said, beginning to suck on one. He scratched his head amply. ‘Did Mum say we have nits?’

‘She didn’t.’

‘We do.’

They fell silent again.

That night seemed to go on and on; from one thirty, when Henry put the turkey in the oven to slow-cook (he’d found a recipe online: twelve hours on a low heat, it said) and crept into his sleeping bag on the sofa, until five, when he at last allowed himself to get up and make coffee, he slept fitfully, stirring awake to open his eyes and look into the darkness, terrified of making a mistake with the boys, asking himself over and over how he would entertain them for five more days. Everything about the flat seemed different now that the boys were inside it. Even the air around him felt taut and fragile. The only thing that remained composed was the snow picture. The young woman waiting in her red coat.

Henry checked the bedroom, easing the door open just an inch or two, but the boys were still fast asleep – the sprawling mass of Conor in the lower bunk, the small sepulchre tidiness of Owen on top. When his sister had rung the night before to ask how things were going, he’d said, ‘Fine.’ He didn’t mention that Conor had been on his phone the whole evening or that Owen had expressed polite surprise that there was no bath in the flat, only a shower, or that when Henry hovered at the bedroom door to call goodnight neither of the boys seemed inclined to call it back. He closed the door gently, as if even that was in danger of fragmenting.

In the sitting room, Henry wriggled on his stomach beneath the tree and switched on the Christmas lights. He arranged the presents to make it look as if there were more of them, resting the two big ones, the sledges, at the back and the smaller computer games in front, and making sure the labels were clearly visible. He began a backward manoeuvre by shifting his weight from one elbow to the other, only somehow he must have knocked the wedge that was holding the tree erect because it gave a sudden sideways lurch as if it had been felled. Henry reached out to rescue it but it was like grabbing hold of a shrub of pins. The only way to steady it was to remain on all fours with it digging into his shoulders, as if he was giving it a piggyback, while he tried to work out what to do next.

‘What are you up to, Henry?’ From beneath the tree, Henry spied two small feet at the doorway. Pale and perfect as two blue stones.

‘Ah. I am fixing the tree, Owen.’

‘Mm, it does look wonky.’

‘Could you possibly pass me the wedge?’

‘I don’t see a wedge, Henry. I only see a piece of newspaper folded over and over and over.’

‘Yes, that is my wedge.’

‘I see.’ The feet pattered forward several paces, stopped and then advanced towards the tree. There was a pause during which Henry felt the tree grind its prickled weight from his left shoulder towards his right; it was like being embraced by a giant porcupine. A small hand emerged holding the newspaper, carefully refolded into its wedge shape, only somehow even neater, even more efficient.

‘Did it snow in the night?’ asked Owen, as Henry stood and brushed down his shoulders.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Maybe tomorrow?’

‘Well, now …’

‘I’ll take a look out of your window.’

Henry watched his son pull back the corner of the curtain. Street lamps were on all over the city like a blanket of orange buttons and the sky glowed a dull neon. Owen didn’t believe in Father Christmas – Debbie had wanted the boys to know the truth when they were as young as five; the whole Christmas thing was a rip-off, she said – but it seemed Owen still believed in the magic of an overnight snowfall. The transformation, while he slept, of the world from ordinary to a perfect coating of ice. And so do I, thought Henry. I still want that too. I want the world to be bigger and more mysterious than it is.

Owen turned from the window. ‘No snow. Not today.’ A solid knot caught in Henry’s throat. Owen said, ‘I think something is burning in your kitchen, Henry.’

So the online recipe was wrong. The Christmas lunch was cooked and ready – actually it was more than cooked, it was incinerated – and it was not yet seven thirty in the morning. Henry carved off the blackened skin and wrapped what was left of the bird in foil. He could feel his back breaking into a sweat. He needed air.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Owen. He scanned Henry with a careful look, as if he were afraid bits of his father might fall off. It broke Henry’s heart.

He said, ‘We should wake Conor and go for a walk. There’s a nice park near here. It might be fun.’

‘No, thank you. We are too old for parks. But you go. I’ll wait.’

‘I can’t possibly leave you on your own.’

‘I’m eleven. Mum leaves us all the time.’ Owen lowered himself beside the tree with his knees tucked beneath his chin and his hands touching his feet. He gazed at the presents. ‘Four of them seem to be for me,’ he said. His mouth hoisted into a beautiful smile like the curve of a new moon.

It was just getting light. The streets were still empty, only bin bags collecting in piles. To the east, a silver light had crept into the sky, and buildings were beginning to take shape through the dark. Henry entered the park gates and made his way towards the bandstand. He walked because it would be less noisy than running, but his head wanted him to run. He had no idea why he’d lied to the boys about snow. Yes, it had started as a joke, but it had become a way of saying all sorts of other more complicated things like
I love you
and
I am sorry I messed up
and
I miss you.
Of all the promises to make, why had he chosen one he couldn’t possibly fulfil? He thought of those sledges wrapped under the Christmas tree and groaned out loud.

Henry was visited by one of those memories that prickle the skin. He saw himself as a child, asking his mother whether Father Christmas was real. He watched her pucker her mouth and stare at her shoes and admit briskly that no, he wasn’t. ‘What about the tooth fairy?’ he had asked a while later, still hopeful of a yes in that department. No, not the tooth fairy either. Jack Frost? (Did he seriously believe in Jack Frost? his mother laughed. Yes, he did. He had even seen pictures: a tall man dressed in white with a spike-frozen beard and fingers like claws.) The man in the moon? Was
he
real? ‘Get away with you,’ she’d said. What about God, then? he’d asked, feeling more and more shaky. Angels? Jesus? His mother reached for a cigarette and snapped her lighter. ‘Run along now,’ she said. ‘This is getting plain silly.’ It was like walls toppling down, first one truth and then another, until there was nothing left but grown-up wasteland. The world seemed an entirely more prosaic place and also one without any hope of salvation. Henry felt bereft. He had watched Bea open her Christmas stocking. ‘Isn’t Father Christmas
wonderful
?’ he’d asked, as if she alone held the cup of make-believe now and he might drink a little, if she would only let him. Bea had tossed him a scornful look. ‘Don’t you
know
?’ she’d said. ‘Father Christmas is not
real
. I saw his hat in my piano teacher’s car.’

Across the park, the large Georgian mansions with gardens that backed on to it stood moored like battle ships, their lights sparkling. They were so vast and beautiful and immovable; their certainty made Henry feel even more insubstantial. He imagined the people inside. All those clever, wealthy people, who never made mistakes, who never had breakdowns, or failed in their marriages, or lost touch with their sons. Henry crossed the grass and then walked around the pond, until he was standing only fifty metres from the gardens. He stopped.

At first he believed it was some kind of nasty joke. He turned to see if anyone was watching, but he was alone, not even a dog-walker in sight. Henry closed his eyes. He counted to twenty, calmly, and breathed deeply, just like it said in those books his sister was always giving him. He opened his eyes and wanted to shout. Where the other gardens showed barren black branches and scribbles of twigs, with barely a leaf in sight, there was one garden, just one, that was completely different. Henry looked up at the sky to check he was not mistaken, but no – the dawn was pale grey, a few rogue stars still shining, the moon no more than a muzzy smudge. Turning back to the garden, Henry felt a low flutter of dread.