MAGS CAME to see him, and sat at the end of his hospital bed eating the grapes she’d brought.
‘You were right, as usual,’ he said. She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘It wasn’t over.’
She broke into that big grin. ‘Well, you know what everyone’s saying now.’
‘What’s that?’
She rolled her eyes, as if to say you’re never going to believe this, but isn’t it obvious?
‘People think you started it. ’Cos of your conviction.’
‘You’re kidding me. I started a fire in my own home?’
‘That’s what they’re saying. You’ve got form, remember?’
‘My conviction? Do you know what my conviction is, Mags? My conviction is your village is mad. And I am being kind.’
‘Well, it’s only a few people. Anyway, what did happen? There are lots of other rumours. Mice at the wiring, that kind of thing.’
‘Some electrical fault, that’s what I’ve been told. Can mice do that?’
‘I don’t know. Anyway, you didn’t.’
There was something in her tone Robbie couldn’t quite get, some implication.
‘Are you thinking someone else did?’
‘Not someone.’
‘You think the fire happened because she ran through the village?’
‘Well, she did.’
‘You don’t think it was a freak accident?’
‘I don’t. You know it wasn’t.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do say so. Anyway, when’s your dad out?’
‘I don’t know.’ He thought about when he first saw him after the fire. It had been a bad fall. ‘It’ll be a while.’
‘Do you want to come and stay at ours if you’re out first?’
Robbie couldn’t think of anything worse than staying at Mags’s with her crazy mother.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’d be cool.’
*
When his dad emerged from hospital and came to pick him up and take him to their temporary home Robbie could have kissed him. In fact, he did. His dad looked surprised, then gave him the most enormous hug. He didn’t kiss him back, but he’d learn, thought Robbie. Things were going to be different, they really were.
His dad’s insurance meant they had a new place to stay in while the old house was repaired. It wasn’t too far away, but it was good to have a break from the village for a while. And as they slowly regained their strength in the new place, just the two of them, they both began to lose that sense of their past pressing down upon them. They were cautious with each other – but they both knew some threshold had been crossed, some new world entered, and though neither knew what was in it, they were glad to be there.
*
Then one day as his dad served up fish fingers and peas for dinner Robbie noticed he seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful.
‘Robbie,’ he said, taking a deep breath, as if he was trying to cure hiccups. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you something. That letter from your mum.’
‘Yes?’
‘What did it say?’
‘Do you want to read it?’
His dad looked eager and nervous at the same time.
‘Could I? I mean, would you?’
Robbie thought back. ‘I was right, wasn’t I, about why you hid it?’
His dad pulled a face. ‘Well, like I said, I was worried about what it might do to you, because I didn’t know what she’d written. I didn’t think I should open it myself. And, yes, of course you were right, of course I was scared. Petrified, if you want to know.’
His son shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not sure I want to show it to you, Dad. I don’t see why I should. You hid it from me.’
His dad nodded. ‘I know. And then we had a fight and I shouldn’t have talked to you like that. I’m sorry.’
‘Why did you put it in that book between the pages about the white hare?’
His dad’s head jerked up and he stared at Robbie in consternation. ‘Did I? How strange.’ His eyes narrowed, and his fingers traced patterns across his forehead as he tried to remember. Then he looked tentatively at Robbie. ‘There’s a legend about the white hare round here. You probably don’t know it. Maybe you do. Mags might have told you. She tells you everything, doesn’t she?’
‘Not everything. Just what she needs to.’
He looked at his son again, cradling his chin in his hand. ‘Did she tell you about that one?’
‘When a woman dies abandoned by her lover,’ Robbie intoned. ‘Yes.’ He let the silence reign between them. Then, ‘Dad?’
‘Yes?’
‘It wasn’t about you.’
His dad rolled his eyes and laughed, a little too loudly.
‘No, of course not. Well, let’s forget the letter. I shouldn’t have asked.’ He got up to clear the plates, trying unsuccessfully to whistle.
Robbie leaned back on his chair, put his hands behind his head, took a deep breath, righted himself, then went upstairs and returned with the letter in his hand.
‘Dad?’
‘Yes?’ His dad came out of the kitchen and saw what Robbie was holding.
‘You know you said you were frightened of what she might have written?’
His dad’s expression turned to wariness. ‘Yes?’
‘You needn’t have been.’
He laid it flat on the table, smoothing out the creases, and they read it together.
DARLING ROBBIE,
If you are reading this, don’t be too sad. I have asked your dad to give this letter to you when I’m no longer here, and I’m afraid it seems as if that time is not so far away. You have always been the world to me, Robbie, and it breaks my heart not to see you grow up. I can’t help thinking about your future, and how I won’t be there for it. I won’t be there to help you when your own heart gets broken, or to make sure you do the right thing when you break someone else’s; I won’t be there when you get married, if you do, or help you with your children, if you have them. I won’t be there to show you the upside of down when things go wrong, however small, like if I buy you the wrong colour shirt on an impulse, or give you a friendship bracelet that embarrasses you, or large, like if you get divorced, or wreck a car, or worse. You could fail your exams, you could get fired from your job, you could do brilliantly (which of course I know you will). When you get angry (which you do, too much, I think, you’ll need to watch that) I won’t be there to calm you, when you lose faith in yourself I won’t be able to help you find it again. I won’t be able to help you find what books to read or films to see whatever age you are, and believe me I’d go on doing it, or what biscuits to eat when you feel like an indulgence or what herbs to put on roast lamb (rosemary, and lots of it; don’t bother with anything else). I won’t be there to tell you when you’ve done well, or hint, best as I can, that you could have done better.
Think of me, though, loving you constantly from afar, from wherever I am going. You’re a beautiful boy, Robbie, and I can’t make up my mind which bit of you I love most – that curling hair which you won’t let me stroke so I have to wait until you’re asleep, those long lashes, that lightning turn of speed, your soft skin, the way you blush when you get cross, your dark eyes which somehow have colours swimming in them, the way you sing to yourself around the house and we sometimes sang together, the scar on your knee that you got when you were small, the way your eyebrows meet when you’re concentrating, or the way your nose scrunches up when you don’t like something. You’ve got lots of attitude, Robbie, and I love that most of all, I think, but like your anger you’re going to have to learn to deal with it. See them both for what they are: wild horses you’ll have to tame to survive. That is my greatest wish for you, apart from the obvious, which is that you will be loved and admired and cherished by the world the way I know you should be.
And look after your dad. He’s a good man, most of the time, but he can be a bit hopeless. I know all about Sheila. I’m not against her, knowing what I know. I like her; she’s been a friend to me too. She has my blessing, and I have encouraged the two of them, which might surprise you (and your dad). Sharing the making of a child, who will have a whole life all the way from the beginning to the inevitable end, is an amazing thing, and that never goes away, and perhaps that’s part of it. Your dad is terrified of the future, of losing me, of being alone. But it is more important to me, Robbie, that you take care of each other. You will both need each other, and it won’t do any good to be bitter towards him, as I think you might be. Men need women (and sometimes vice versa), it’s as simple as that, and if it’s not me, or Sheila, it will be someone else. But fathers also need their sons, and sons do need their fathers.
Grow well and work hard and go on being the son to be proud of that I have always loved so very completely, my darling, darling boy.
All my love,
MUM
P.S. Ask your dad about the chime hours. You were always special.
It was hard to read however many times Robbie had read it since that evening in the church. His dad was not saying anything. Robbie put his arm gently across his shoulders.
‘She was wrong, though,’ said Robbie. ‘I wouldn’t have understood what she was saying. It’s better now than then. She wouldn’t have approved of the arson either, would she? Criminal conviction for her beloved son?’
*
‘I asked Mags about the chime hours,’ Robbie said later, when his dad had calmed down and Robbie had recovered from the shock of seeing him in tears. ‘It’s about when you’re born, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, yes, well, you were born between midnight and dawn on a Saturday morning, two o’clock I think it was, and I remembered this old superstition they have round here. Another one! If you’re born during the chime hours, when the monks used to ring their bells, you’re apparently supposed to have, what is it called, second sight. You can see things others can’t, parallel worlds, ghosts, all that sort of thing. A bit like the white hare.’ He stopped and frowned, and looked at Robbie thoughtfully. Then he smiled to himself. ‘We used to laugh about that. I don’t know why I remembered it. I think it was probably that old grandfather clock of ours chiming away in the dead of night.’
‘I sometimes think you remember more than you let on, Dad.’
‘Do you? I don’t think I do. What do I remember?’ He paused. ‘I remember you and I going to see films, Robbie. It’s a terribly long time since we did that. We should do it again.’
‘And fishing.’
‘Yes, oh, yes. Now, you know, Robbie, that’s a bit of an idea. I’ve still got my kit somewhere, it was in the shed, so the fire didn’t get to it. I might just go and dig it out again. It’ll need an overhaul, but then everything does every now and then. I don’t suppose you’d want to come with me nowadays, though?’
‘Well, you never know. I might. Now and then. If you let me off gardening.’
His dad nodded happily. ‘Good. Anyway. The chime hours. Well, that’s one thing you didn’t really need to know from that letter, isn’t it?’ He opened his eyes wide. ‘Some letter, all right.’
And he smiled again, this time at Robbie.
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