The Other Son (4 page)

Poor Robert, perhaps overly stressed by the cost of the wood, or more likely, simply no better at woodwork than he was at anything else, had repeatedly failed to dove-tail the corners correctly, and as he repeatedly cut them off and started again, his box had got smaller and smaller. By the time he was finished, it was not a toolbox he had made but a so-called jewellery box – a tiny, ugly, trinket box with inch thick walls and wonky corners that the daylight shone through.

Dad had raged about the cost and the waste, and Mum had tried to make the most of the situation. She had even fetched a pair of earrings to put in that shoddy little box – her attempt at calming everyone down.

In a chilling silence, they had begun to eat dinner, Alice nervously tapping one foot against the chair leg, silently pleading with her eyes, secretly begging Robert, opposite, to remain silent. Because that was the thing about Robert, that was the one thing he could always be counted upon to achieve without fail: once the eye of the storm had passed, when everything was done and dusted, when everyone was finally starting to relax again, Robert could and
would
produce the one phrase, seemingly precision engineered to make everything kick off again. Alice hated him for it. And she hated herself for hating him.

That night, the night of the jewellery box, once everything was calm again, once dinner had been eaten and the box had been moved to the kitchen counter behind her, no longer the centre of attention. Once their father had, for once without blows being administered, moved onto a different subject and their mother was serving up bowls of banana and custard (Alice’s favourite), Robert had piped up.

“We’re going to make picture frames next week,” he had said, brightly. “We have to take in a picture to frame and some lengths of special wood called beading.”

Their father had cleared his throat. The effort he was expending in order to ignore his idiot son was palpable.

“Do they sell beading at Johnson’s, Dad?” Robert had asked. “Can we get some?”

“I’ll give you beading,” their father had said, standing sharply enough to knock his chair over. “I’ll give you bloody woodwork, you cheeky little shit.”

“Don’t, please!” Mum had shrieked, moving between Robert and their father.

And Alice, hating Robert in that instant as much as she had ever hated him, had started to gulp down her bananas and custard, trying to get as much of it inside her as possible, trying to eat her favourite dessert before it was too late, before it ended up on the floor.

“Can you remember Lizzie’s kids’ names?” Ken asks her out of the blue.

Alice frowns. She had actually been having trouble even remembering Mike’s daughter’s name, let alone her
children’s names. “Lizzie?” she says. “Isn’t it Linda?”

“Oh, yes. You’re right. Linda. And the kids’ names?”

“Terry, Tim? Something with a T?” Alice offers. “Tom?”

“Yes, Tom and... Lucy maybe?”

“That’s it. But I doubt they’ll be there, Ken. They’re only four or five or something.”

“They’re at least ten.”

Alice frowns. “Really?”

It’s another cliché about getting older that’s always guaranteed to get the youngsters groaning, but yes, time really does go by faster as you get older. Alice remembers when she was a child, how the long hot summers seemed endless. Nowadays, it’s winter, summer, winter, summer, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And yes, it honestly does seem only yesterday morning that the kids were still living at home, Tim working conscientiously in the dining room on his homework, Matt clomping around in his Doctor Marten boots singing Smiths’ songs. She had felt terrified when Matt left home for college. Alice had always felt that the children’s presence somehow protected her, like a good luck charm. If Ken was capable of being angry and occasionally violent in front of the children (and he was) then what on earth would he be like once they were gone, once there weren’t even any witnesses to his rage? But Ken, in fact, became calmer once Matt left home, as if, perhaps like Robert, it was the kids’ presence that had been winding him up all along.

That’s not to say that Alice is happier now that the boys have gone. For most of her marriage, the children felt like the only reason she was staying. If she’s honest with herself, she has no real idea
why
she’s still here. At first it was because of her parents – they had wanted this so much. Once they had died she had convinced herself that she was staying for Tim’s and Matt’s benefit. After they had left home, the idea of grandchildren kept her going for a while – she had been so excited about their arrival. But now they’re seven and nine and she hardly even sees them – Christmas is not the only time that Natalya is frosty.

She glances over at Ken and allows herself to ask the question:
Why are you here, Alice?

Could it really just be a bad habit, like biting fingernails? Is it really possible that she’s still here merely because she doesn’t have enough imagination to picture an alternative, because she doesn’t have enough courage to pursue anything different?

Ken clicks on an indicator and starts to pull over into the exit lane.

“Are we there?” Alice asks, trying to catch a glimpse of the road-sign they’re just passing.

“Nearly,” Ken says. “We just need to get across town now. I hope there’s not too much traffic.” He shoots her a smile and Alice responds in kind before turning back to face the windscreen.

She has, she realises, been lost in her thoughts. The rain has stopped and she has no idea when that happened. There are even glimpses of blue sky to the east.

The main reason, she decides, that she never left Ken, is that no one else ever seemed to believe in the possibility. Because yes, she had been serious about it a few times. She remembers telling Tim, perhaps ten years ago, perhaps much more – time does fly – that she was leaving his father. Tim had laughed. “You’ll
never
leave Dad,” he had predicted, and he had been right. Lisa, too, had said almost the same thing. “We all feel like that sometimes,” she had said, managing not to see the black eye behind the sunglasses even as she pretended that she, herself, had walked into a door. “Sometimes you just have to hang on in there until it gets better,” she had said.

If one, single person had ever responded with, “You’re right, you should get out,” or even better, “I’ll help you,” then Alice would have left – she knows that to be true. Only they didn’t. They had found it as impossible to imagine Alice leaving Ken as she did herself. And here she still is. With hindsight, it looks as though they were right. It looks as though they were all right, all along.

One part of Alice’s brain questions why the other part is pondering all of this today of all days. Because the truth is that things haven’t been that bad recently – their marriage has certainly known more challenging periods. In truth, they’ve progressively settled into a routine of old-age that one could almost call comfortable. There are few surprises, either good or bad, but the days aren’t unpleasant. Ken reads the paper and watches the football and Alice loses herself in her endless stream of novels. With the Kindle that Tim bought her (she had been struggling increasingly with the small print in paperbacks) she doesn’t even need to go shopping between books anymore. She just clicks and downloads the next recommendation and off she goes.

“She’s always got her nose in a book, Alice has,” Ken jokes, never pausing to wonder why, never stopping to think about the fact that even the grimmest of fictional realities feels like escape to her.

Alice thinks about the novel she’s reading right now – one of Dot’s suggestions. It hasn’t really been doing the trick, hasn’t quite been hitting the spot. The story – of a woman in a miserable marriage dreaming of escape – is a bit close to home, that’s the thing. But Alice will finish it when she gets back. She always finishes every book she starts if it’s humanly possible to do so, because until you get to the end, there’s still hope. Until you reach that final page, there’s still the possibility of sudden, unexpected,
thrilling
escape.

Alice supposes that the same principles apply to life. Until you get to the end, there’s still hope. It’s why we don’t give up on life until the very end, until life gives up on us.

“Oops... running on empty, now,” Ken says, tapping the flashing petrol sign on the dashboard.

“Why didn’t you fill up at the services?”

“Too expensive,” Ken says. “I’m not paying silly motorway prices. I’ll fill up at Asda round the corner from Mike’s.”

“If we make it that far.”

“We will. We’ll be fine.”

Running on empty.
Alice runs the phrase through her mind, because it kind of sums things up. She and Ken have been running on empty for years, and it’s amazing how far you can get just coasting along on a wing and a prayer, just rolling along on hope.

Her lot has been infinitely better than anything her parents had to live through. And what her grandparents (on her mother’s side) had to survive must have been horrific. So perhaps she’s done OK after all, considering... Her parents even had to pawn their wedding rings to pay for Granny Miriam’s funeral – imagine that! They never managed to save enough to redeem them, either. It became a standing – if rather sour – family joke. “Where are you off to, then?” her Dad would say. “Me?” Alice’s mum would reply. “Why, I thought I’d treat myself. I’m off to Herbert Brown’s to get me wedding ring back.” “Ooh, pick mine up while you’re there, would you?”

Alice dreamt for years of recovering her parents’ wedding rings for them. Long after they would have been melted down and turned into something else, she was still scheming to save enough money to get them back.

Alice looks down at her hands and sees that her right hand is fiddling with her own wedding ring, twisting it around and around on her finger. Considering what
could
have been, she’s probably being ungrateful. She should probably make more effort to see the positives.

She tries to list some of those now.

They have two reliable cars, her little Micra and this one, the Megane. They have a comfortable home and a fair little stash of money in the bank, even if Ken won’t ever let them spend any of it.

They have two healthy sons, though one of them is married to a crotchety Russian who won’t let her near, and the other is too busy losing himself on the continent to come home for Christmas or even pick up the phone.

If she keeps tagging negatives on the ends of her positives then this isn’t going to work, Alice reminds herself. She downloaded a book about positive thinking a few months back – it had been free on the Kindle – and not tagging negatives on the end of your positives is one of the few things she remembers. She tries again.

They have two, healthy, clever sons, and two gorgeous grandchildren. They’re in good health for their age, and they have a nice home and enough money to get by. She has never had to pawn her wedding ring, or anything else for that matter, and she has never once gone to bed hungry. She has a good friend in Dot. And... She chews the inside of her mouth as she tries to think of something else, anything else, and at that moment the sun finally breaks through the cloud cover.
There,
she thinks. She has all of this,
and
the sun’s come out.

“Almost there,” Ken says. “Good job too. I’m bursting for a pee.”

Alice glances at her watch. It’s a quarter to two. They might still arrive in time.

The house, which they have visited before, is a slightly pretentious, vaguely oversized new-build. It looks a little like those houses they have in American sitcoms. They park the car and walk to the shiny, blue, Downing-Street-style door. It’s opened by a woman wearing an apron. She’s holding a butter knife and a pot of
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter
not-quite-butter.

“Hello,” she says. “I’m Karen, the caterer. Are you here for the funeral?”

Ken nods. “We are. Sorry love, but can I use the loo?”

“It looks like we’re a bit late,” Alice says, glancing around at the empty rooms.

“They’ve just left,” Karen tells her. “But you’ll be fine. It’s not even half a mile away.”

“Can I give you a hand with sandwiches or something?” Alice asks. “There’s no reason why I have to–”

“No. Really, I’m fine,” Karen replies. “Jean will be happier if you go. She was worried about numbers... there aren’t... you know... as many as she had hoped.”

Once Karen has given Ken directions to the crematorium they walk briskly back to the car. Though the pavement is still wet from the recent rain, it’s turning into a bright, crisp day. The clouds are rapidly dissipating revealing a light, hazy blue sky. It’s somehow the perfect kind of weather for a funeral.

Once they are reseated in the car, Ken hesitates, his hand on the ignition key. “This isn’t going to look great, is it?” he asks.

“What?”

“Turning up in the middle of the bleedin’ funeral.”

“It’ll be fine,” Alice says, restraining the urge to remind Ken whose fault it is that they’re late. “She said it’s just five minutes away.”

“Yep. And it’s already five to,” Ken says.

“Just go, will you?” Alice prompts, nodding at the road ahead. “Or it
will
be too late.”

“You reckon? It’s not better to, you know...”

“No, Ken. It’s not. Go!”

Alice begins to feel emotional even as they are arriving in the crematorium car park. Outside the building, they pass between people gathering for the next funeral or perhaps, judging by the blurred mascara and the shiny cheeks, stragglers from the previous one. It seems to be something of a production line.

A very young man in a badly fitting suit greets them and leads them to the chapel where the service is already in progress.

Ken attempts to walk towards the front rows where the other mourners are clustered, but Alice grabs his wrist and tugs him forcefully to the nearest pews at the rear of the room. She knows the protocol for late arrivals at funerals and weddings and, despite what Ken may imagine, barging your way to the front isn’t part of it.