The Other Son (24 page)

Tim had stroked the cricket bat. “Come on,” he had said. He had seemed to Matt to be as cold and fearless as a secret agent in a film. Matt had felt proud of his elder brother.

But despite his pride, he had found himself unable to follow him. He had found himself, to his shame,
literally
paralysed by fear. And so, when Tim reached the doorway and looked behind him for backup, he had seen his little brother still stuck on the landing, still peering through the bannisters.

“Matt!” he had said. “Come on!”

By then, though, it was already too late. Ken had spotted him and before Tim even turned back to face the room, Ken had ripped the cricket bat from his grasp and hurled it across the room. As it fell, it smashed Ken’s side table cleanly into two.

“You fancy a go as well, do you?” Ken had spat, kicking Tim’s legs from beneath him even as Alice launched herself at his back.

But Ken, drunk, had the power of ten men, and swatting at his wife – about as annoying to him as an insect – whilst kicking his son in the face, proved no challenge at all.

As for Matt, once he had seen how quickly his valiant older brother had fallen, he understood that he had nothing to contribute here. And so he had run, shaking, back to his bedroom. He had hidden, yet again, beneath the covers. He had put his fingers in his ears and had prayed, as ever, for the violence to remain downstairs. And when, momentarily, he had found the headspace for something other than his own safety, he had prayed that his brother and mother might, too, survive this night.

And they had survived. Sure, Tim had lost a tooth (he had an implant inserted when he hit thirty to hide the fact.) And Alice had broken a finger (it had healed a little crooked, but it still worked, she insisted, just fine). There had been psychological wounds too. Neither Alice nor Tim would ever attempt to stand up to Ken again. And Tim never quite seemed to look at Matt the same way either. That was fair enough, Matt reckoned. He was clearly a wimp to the core. He knew that now. He couldn’t be relied upon in a crisis. But yes, somehow all of them had survived. And wasn’t that the main thing?

“So why Raspberry?” Bruno asks, dragging Matt from his memories. “Where did that come from?”

“Ah!” Matt says. “Well, I told you I used to go to this pet shop, yeah?”

“In the Bullring?”

“Exactly. Well, more below it, but... Anyway, I used to look at the dogs and help clean the cages. So, the day we got my exam results, the day I knew I was going to get a dog – or
thought
I knew – I went down there.

“She had three eight-week-old puppies, just like this guy here.” He nods at Framboise. “Two of them were fighting. Just play-fighting the way puppies do. But the third one was on his own, and when I opened the cage, he came over to me.” Matt clears his throat before continuing. “He was lame. He had a dodgy back leg. Nothing serious, he could walk and everything, but he limped. And when I picked him up, he farted. And the woman – Janine, her name was – said,
‘Oh, he’s blown a raspberry!’”

“Huh,” Bruno says. “So you called him Raspberry.”

“I would have. But of course, I never got him.”

“Did you find out what happened to him?”

“Not really. I...” Matt’s voice fails him. He looks away, takes a deep breath, and then manages to continue, his voice wobbling. “I went back for a while to see him. His brothers vanished first, but Raspberry was still there. I guess people weren’t so keen on a limping dog...”

He starts to cry again, so Bruno stands then moves to his side. “Babe,” he says.

“It’s fine,” Matt replies, now laughing at his own silliness for crying. “I’m just being stupid.”

“You’re not,” Bruno says. “You’re being so cute, you have no idea.”

“Anyway, Janine said I could have him for half price. So I held onto the dream for a while. But in the end, to be honest, I just stopped going.”

“It upset you too much?”

“Exactly. It used to make me cry. But I’m sure someone took him. He was so cute.”

“And your father never relented.”

Matt laughs sourly. “No,” he breathes. “Ken never relented about anything.”

Bruno glances towards the bottom of the garden where Connie is sitting on the edge of her hammock rubbing her eyes. “Mom’s awake,” he says. “I’ll put some coffee on. D’you want some?”

Matt nods. He clears his throat again. “Sure,” he croaks. “That’d be nice.”

Matt does not sleep well that night. Framboise, at the foot of the bed, fidgets, waking him almost constantly. And even when he does get to sleep, Bruno prods him awake. “You were having a nightmare,” he tells him. “Are you OK?”

By the time he gets up in the morning, he has forgotten the content of his dreams. Only the tiredness and the bleary vision, only the sour taste of a tormented night remains.

When Matt looks out of the kitchen window, he sees Bruno in the garden playing with Framboise. The dog is trying to pull a stick from Bruno’s grasp. He smiles at the scene and then turns towards the kitchen. He needs coffee this morning.
Lots
of coffee.

When eventually he steps outside, Bruno and Framboise come to meet him. “You’re up,” Bruno says, reaching out to stroke Matt’s cheek. “You had a rough night, eh?”

“It was the dog, I think,” Matt says, crouching down to cup the puppy’s face in his hands. Addressing the dog, he adds, “You kept kicking me, didn’t you?”

“I think he was having dreams too,” Bruno says. “Those little legs were running like crazy. Do you remember
you
had a nightmare?”

Matt pushes out his lips. “Not really,” he says.

“I had to wake you up. You were shouting.”

“What was I saying?”

“Nothing comprehensible,” Bruno says. “Just noises.”

“It was about Mum, I think,” Matt says. “It’s maybe because she didn’t call. She always calls on birthdays. Birthdays and Christmas.”

“Maybe she lost your number.”

“Yeah. I expect that’s it. Can I use your mobile? It’s free to the UK, right?”

“Yep,” Bruno says. “Free and unlimited. It’s charging in the kitchen.”

After breakfast, Matt calls his parents’ landline but there’s no answer, just Alice’s familiar voice and the beep of the answer-phone. He doesn’t call Alice’s mobile, partly because he doesn’t know the number by heart and he can’t be bothered to get it from his own mobile, and partly because Alice so rarely answers the damned thing anyway.

“They’re out, so I’ll try again later,” he tells Bruno when he returns to the garden. “So what do you say we introduce Framboise to the lake?”

“Sorry, I’m working today,” Bruno says.

“God, it’s Monday! I forgot.”

“We can go tonight,” Bruno offers. “But I really want to work. I’ve got an idea.”

“No worries,” Matt says. “Framboise and I will be fine, won’t we ?”

Once he has showered and dressed, Matt crosses the garden to the shed where Bruno works. He leans in the window and sees Bruno pounding a lump of clay. “We’re off,” he says. “See you in a bit.”

Bruno raises one grey, slimy hand and gives him a wave.

As Matt leads the dog into the shadowy pine forest, he wonders what Alice will say when he tells her about the dog, then instantly decides not to tell her after all.
Better not to open old wounds,
he thinks, then, with a smile,
better to let sleeping dogs lie.

The puppy goes crazy at the smells of the forest floor, and runs left and right, his nose to the ground, as he snuffles through the massed pine needles. Because the lead snags constantly on fallen branches, Matt quickly unclips it to let the dog run free. But Framboise never strays far from Matt, not at least until he catches a glimpse of the lake, whereupon he starts to bound ahead. Resigning himself to the idea of a chilly, lifesaving swim, Matt runs after him, shouting, Framboise, Framboise! Ici!! He discovers that he hates shouting this name out loud. It makes him feel self conscious. Perhaps it will have to change.

When, out of breath, he reaches the lakeside beach, Matt finds the dog simply barking at the tiny waves as they break upon the shore. He starts, instead, to try to convince the dog
to
swim. He throws sticks into the lake, but the puppy just continues to bark from the water’s edge. “So, you’re no swimmer then!” he says. “Woof,” the dog replies.

When they get back to the house, Matt detours to avoid Bruno’s cabin. He doesn’t like anyone to see his work-in-progress.

Luckily, Bruno’s phone is still sitting on the kitchen counter, and this time Ken answers immediately. “Hello?”

“Hello. It’s Matt.”

“Matt!” Ken exclaims. “How the hell are you?
Where
the hell are you?” Ken’s voice sounds unlike himself, like a TV drama version of himself, like an actor, perhaps, playing Ken.

“I’m in France still,” Matt says, frowning. “In the Alps.”

“That sounds good. That sounds great,” Ken says, and again, those just aren’t quite the right words for Ken to use.

“It was my birthday yesterday,” Matt tells him. “Mum usually calls, so I thought I’d phone and check everything’s OK?”

“I remembered it was your birthday. I remembered yesterday morning, as soon as I got up,” Ken says. It’s almost certainly a lie. “I just couldn’t find your number.”

“Did you not get my postcards?” Matt asks.

“Of course we got them.”

“They all have the number on.”

“Yes, well, I couldn’t find them. I expect your mother tidied them away. Did you get anything nice?”

Matt rubs his tongue across his teeth before replying, “Yes. A dog,” he says. His tone, he realises, was more challenging – more aggressive – than he had intended. He’s met with silence.

“I got a dog,” Matt says again, more softly. “A puppy.”

“A dog, eh?” Ken replies. “Well, there’s a thing.”

Matt sighs and shakes his head. He’s not sure what he expected. He’s not sure what he ever expects. Some meaningful comment, perhaps? An apology, maybe? An apology for everything that ever happened. “Is Mum there?” he asks.

“Um, no,” Ken says.

“Is she at the shops? Should I call back later?”

An overly long silence ensues until eventually, Matt prompts, “Dad? Are you still there?”

“Yes, son, I’m here.”

Matt pulls a face at the sound of the word ‘son.’ He can’t remember Ken ever having used it. “Is something wrong?”

“She’s, um, gone off, Matt. That’s the thing.”

Matt drops his left hand to the ground where Framboise immediately starts to lick it. “What do you mean,
she’s gone off
?”

Ken clears his throat. Matt can imagine him shuffling from side to side in his favourite chair. “She’s gone away for a bit, Matt.”

“Gone away?”

“And there’s no point asking me where, and there’s no point asking me why. You know what your mother’s like.”

Yes, I know what she’s like
, Matt thinks.
And she never goes anywhere.
“You had a fight?”

“Not really. She just went off. It’s that Dot’s fault.”

“Dot? What’s Dot got to do with it?”

“She left Martin,” Ken says. “And I think it gave your mother ideas.”

“Mum’s
left you?!”
Matt says.

“No! I didn’t say that. I said she’s gone off for a bit. Look, I have to go now, son. I’ve a meeting with the accountant. But do call again soon.”

The line clicks dead. Matt lowers Bruno’s phone from his ear and frowns at it. “Do call again soon?” he repeats in a silly voice.
“Do call again soon?!”

“You stay there,” he tells the dog. “I need to find Mum’s number.”

With an increasing sense of anxiety, Matt calls Alice’s number repeatedly. But it goes straight to voicemail every time.

Hunting through the contact list on his old mobile for numbers, he calls Dot’s house (no reply), then Tim’s landline (disconnected), then his mobile (voicemail), and finally Natalya. He has never felt particularly close to Tim’s Russian wife, she has always struck him as something of a cold fish, but at least she tends to answer her phone.

“Hello?” she says. “Who is?”

Matt exhales a sigh of relief. “Nat,” he says. “It’s Matt. Tim’s brother.”

“Oh! Matt! I see some foreign number and I worry who is it. You’re OK?”

“Yes.
I’m
OK. But I phoned Dad. What’s going on, Nat?”

“Ah yes,” Natalya replies. “Big dramas. Tim says she has lose the plot, but between you and me, I think she has made good decision.”

“Has she left him? Is that what’s happened?”

“Yes. He hits her. You know about this?”

“Oh. Um. Well, he used to. Not for years, but yes. Where is she?”

“She is with... oh. I forget. It’s a secret. If I tell you, you don’t tell Ken, OK? And you don’t tell Tim neither.”

“Of course not.”

“She’s with her friend, Dot. This is Dorothy, yes?”

“Yes.”

“For two weeks now, I think... yes... Monday. So it’s two weeks.”

“So this is serious,” Matt says. “Jesus.”

“I think it is. Her face... you know... It was not so good.”

“He hit her?”

“Yes! I tell you this.”

“I thought you meant... never mind.”

“He hits her, and I say, you must leave him Alice. But don’t tell Tim. He wants to stay neutral, he says. He thinks he is Switzerland.”

“No,” Matt says. “No, I won’t tell anyone. Is she OK though?”

“I’m sorry. This is all I know. She is with Dot. But you can call her. She has her mobile.”

“It’s not answering,” Matt explains. “I’ve been trying all morning.”

“Is probably just empty,” Natalya says. “She never charges. But keep to try. And don’t worry. I’m sure she is OK with Dot.”

Matt tries Alice’s number twice more but gets only the same result: voicemail. He finally leaves a message giving his own French mobile number, then plugs his own phone in to charge.

He paces back and forth across the kitchen floor a few times. He kneels down and buries his face in the warmth of the now sleeping puppy’s fur. But nothing can calm his nerves. He’s surprised by his own distress. He had lied to himself. He had told himself that he had distanced himself from Alice’s and Ken’s dramas. He had convinced himself that he was beyond their reach. But suddenly he wants to hide beneath the covers and put his fingers in his ears. Suddenly, he wants Tim to hit Ken with a cricket bat all over again.