Stella returned to the house mid-morning. The neighbour’s dog gave out with a coarse, unconvincing bark. The sun streamed through the windows and showed up the worn patches of the soft furnishings in the living room. It was Stella’s house now, and it surprised Magnus to see that she felt entirely at home. Maureen had not yet returned to Edinburgh. She was patient and attentive, and shadowed her sister’s every move in what Magnus saw as a religious way. Charlotte stayed in the Dooley house in Wicklow, preparing a big dinner.
There was no food for lunch. The cupboard was bare. Magnus went to the supermarket to buy groceries. He was in no hurry. He sat in the massage chair for a time without putting money in the slot, then he put a euro in the red plastic slot of a trolley and set about buying his mother her groceries.
Maureen was not there when he returned. Had they rowed, Magnus wondered?
‘Would you like a drink, Magnus?’ his mother asked. She was unusually meek.
‘No, thanks. Maureen’s gone for a walk?’ he asked casually.
‘She’s gone ahead to Charlotte,’ Stella answered. There was something like a sigh of admiration. Magnus didn’t want to spoil anything by asking why his aunt had left early. ‘Tell me about Florence.’ This was a robust instruction from Stella. She didn’t want to talk about the Dooleys.
Magnus was glad to speak on the subject. ‘She’s doing well. The time in the open clinic has helped enormously.’
‘Florence is a lot like me,’ she said. The statement was mystifying, but its meaning was clear. Stella was contrite, desiring to reconnect, then to carry on regardless. ‘I want to come to London soon to visit her. You and Florence,’ she corrected herself.
‘I’ll not impose.’
‘It won’t be an imposition.’
‘I can spend time with her.’
Magnus could see his mother getting more alarmed at her own words. ‘She’d like that.’
‘Go to the theatre together, and such.’
‘I’d like it, too. We’ll set a date.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want a drink?’ Stella asked.
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘I’m having a drink.’
‘You do that.’
‘I don’t know what I’ll do with all this stuff,’ she said, without looking around.
Magnus turned his head very slowly to the left, then to the right. He tilted his head slowly up, then down. There was no gravelly squelch. Though satisfying, this exercise told him nothing other than that, for now, there was no neck-grinding. There’d be more of this, he was thinking. Probably in the family bones: the Dooleys or the bloods. In future, he’d move his head with more caution. ‘You’ll think of something,’ he said presently.
‘You have his watch, I see.’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s money, you know. He left you something worthwhile.’
‘Yes. I know.’
‘I don’t need to tell you he was tight with money. Every penny a prisoner. Perhaps this is the pay-off.’
‘That’s generous of you, Stella. You’re getting soft in your old age.’
‘I was thinking I’d take a pebble from his grave, put it in my shoe. He tortured me when he was alive. I shouldn’t rob him of the pleasure now. What do you say?’
‘Romantic … you?’
She cackled with satisfaction. ‘Oh, all right.’
Magnus wanted to mark his parents getting together. It seemed proper under the circumstances, so he asked about it. Though she didn’t come out with it here, of her own volition Stella determined that love was beyond her. There had to be another arrangement: he would love her, and she would always be there, toughing it out until who knows what happened. Something good, perhaps. In this arrangement, Edwin would never be bitter. She’d see to that. They could relax and enjoy themselves. They would be safe and secure. They could have a life together, and who knows, who knows.
‘We were wildly attracted,’ Stella said. This came out of the blue. No, it came out of the fog of bereavement.
‘Were you? Really … ?’ She had not said as much before. Magnus wanted more.
‘But we began to fight, and we didn’t know why.’
‘On, come on ….’
She was launched now. It didn’t matter what her son said. She would finish. ‘We used to have sex to make up.’
This wasn’t shocking, but did he want to hear about it? Stella was perfectly relaxed, and more thoughtful than Magnus could have expected. ‘Then,’ she said, ‘we had you.’
‘Ah.’
‘You came along, and it was different.’
‘You should have split.’
‘It was better between us, and we didn’t know how or why.’
‘It must have been me.’ Here was more of that heavy irony, wasted.
‘Your father was going to call you Richard. I wouldn’t have it.’
‘Hector. You were going to call me Hector.’
‘We were not. Bloody awful name, Hector. Who told you that?’ She wasn’t looking for an answer.
‘You could have changed your lives, either of you. Both of you.’
‘He tried that,’ she said, tapping the rim of her glass with the back of an immaculately varnished nail.
‘You don’t learn, do you, Stella?’ Magnus said.
‘I’ve given that up,’ his mother replied moderately, and took a loving sip from her glass, draining it. She rose to her feet with her chin in the air. ‘Edwin taught me to swim,’ she said.
Her wistful smile took Magnus by surprise. ‘You never learnt when you were a child?’ She didn’t seem to hear his question or, at any rate, chose to ignore it.
‘In the sea,’ she added. ‘He insisted it be in the sea.’
Magnus had never swum with his mother. He’d seen her in a bathing suit, but never seen her swim. ‘You’ve given up the swimming, I take it?’
‘When I got pregnant with you, it helped.’ She let that hang in the air a while, as did he. ‘I’d be down to the baths to do my twenty lengths. It helped with the birth.’
What was Magnus to say? He wasn’t comfortable with talk about his birth. ‘Yes, well … it would.’
‘It was good of him to teach me to swim.’
‘And me.’
‘You never liked swimming, Magnus.’
‘No. That’s true.’
‘It’s important to know how to swim.’
‘Yes. Very.’ He let her drift from here. She wasn’t really engaging with him. The heart, temple of love and goodwill, centre of purpose, seat of courage, relied on liquid engineering. Stella went to the sideboard. She moved as though she was stepping across the sky on a set of railway sleepers. She was planning on having another Jameson, and went in search of what she called her ‘dilute’.
‘You were a difficult birth,’ she said distractedly.
‘But thank God for the exercising,’ Magnus put in on her behalf.
‘Still … ’ his mother gave out with the same wistful smile, ‘you came out.’
‘I don’t want another drink,’ Magnus said, continuing to be helpful. His mind, too, was drifting. A scene presented from early childhood: the family is on the way to Brittas Bay. He is in the back seat of the car; his father is driving; Stella is in the front passenger seat smoking her Piccadilly. It’s taking an eternity. That’s what happens in those rare moments when his parents appear to be content in each other’s company. Little Magnus has his sandals off, and the white socks he hates. He presses his bare feet into the back of the seat. ‘Are we there yet?’ he asks.
‘Not yet,’ Edwin says, in that soft, vague manner he uses with all children and dogs.
‘Soon,’ his mother adds.
‘Daddy, what will I do now?’ little Magnus asks. It’s a big question to ask, he knows.
‘Do nothing,’ his father advises easily. ‘Just daydream.’
Stella smiles at Edwin. It’s that same wistful smile.
‘OK,’ little Magnus replies. And he does. He commences to daydream.
‘How’s that job of yours?’ Stella asked so suddenly out of her glass, it seemed like an ambush.
‘Difficult.’
‘Get people round a piano, that’s my advice.’
‘Thank you, Stella. Now … Charlotte … ’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you speaking?’
‘We talk on scraps of paper.’
‘You must forgive her.’ Stella did not respond – and what could Magnus expect of her? ‘You can’t speak about this business. We acknowledge what has happened, and we put it behind us.’
His mother agreed it was best not to speak of it. Her resolve impressed him. ‘We’ve buried the hatchet,’ she said. Said it in a way that signalled that she knew precisely where the hatchet had been buried. This small miracle of judgement stopped Magnus dead with his prepared lecture.
‘Good,’ he said patiently.
‘I see what has happened,’ Stella said.
Magnus was compelled to kiss her on the cheek. It was a kiss she graciously accepted. ‘It’s taken us a while, hasn’t it?’ he said.
‘Huh.’
Magnus smiled easily.
Stella rotated a hand in the air above her head. ‘You should take most of this stuff,’ she said.
‘I can’t.’
‘Don’t you want it?’
‘I can’t.’
‘I don’t want it.’ There was a brief pause. Then, ‘You should take some of it. It would be wrong not to. Do you want to make a list?’
‘No.’ What he would take was a private matter. He would inform her after he had taken what he wanted.
‘You’re right. Not today.’ There was another brief pause. ‘Such a clutter,’ she said, finally looking around. ‘I could talk to Noel. He might help you. Except, Noel’s a bit dead and alive.’
‘He might not want to get involved.’
‘He asked me if I wanted any of his wife’s clothes: the good pieces, of course.’ I’m sorry about her passing. I never did speak to him about that.’
‘He knows you’re sorry, I’m sure.’
‘I’d see her about. She made these faces: there were sudden hoots of laughter, exaggerated frowns ….’
‘Yes, well, she was a good-natured woman.’
‘It made me feel like I was in a pantomime.’
‘Now, Stella ….’
‘She had eczema.’
‘Please ….’
‘She might have used the cream, but I think she liked scratching. And now, she’s gone.’
‘Listen to yourself.’
‘I’m only saying ….’
‘Yes. Well, don’t.’ She was goading him, Magnus knew. She needed to do this sort of thing to signal that she really cared. The acute angles at which she dived at the world were as infuriating as ever.
Then, she said, ‘I was thinking about you and your father in America. He told me about it – eventually.’
‘It took him a while, did it?’ Edwin didn’t tell her much, if he told her anything at all, Magnus was thinking. That was their trip – his and his father’s. It was utterly personal. Man and boy.
She saw the furrows in his brow, and misread his expression. ‘I would have gone with him, but he wouldn’t have it. He thought I would interfere.’
‘He needed to go by himself.’
‘He took you.’
‘I didn’t interfere.’
‘Had I been asked ….’ She didn’t finish.
‘He told you about the bloods?’
She didn’t know what this meant. ‘The bloods?’
‘That’s what we called them,’ Magnus said triumphantly. ‘His mother and father.’
‘Oh, yes. He told me.’
‘He did? I don’t think so. It was a disaster, him meeting them. Did he tell you that?’ Magnus said this, even though he did not hold it to be true. It was some kind of failure, yes, but that was to be expected.
‘He’s right. I would have interfered.’
‘Never mind.’
‘When you went missing … I regret I wasn’t there for that. For your father finding you gone.’ There was a brief pause. She tightened her face. ‘He was never right after that.’
‘I said never mind, Stella.’
‘When he first found his mother, he should have written to her and left it at that. Your father wrote a good letter, as you know.’
‘He had to go. How could he resist?’
‘He should have talked to me.’
‘A letter … ?’ Magnus was indignant.
‘A letter or two, with a few photographs. And a card at Christmas.’
‘You’re a hard woman.’
‘That’s his mother you’re thinking of, Magnus.’
‘You’re saying you could have guided him – you?’
‘I could have interfered.’ Stella went upstairs. Returned a short time later. She produced two items. The first was the pale yellow blanket the baby, who would be called Edwin, had been swaddled in; the only object in the world that was both his and his birth parents’. Unfolding it, Magnus was struck by how small it was. Why did he expect it to be large enough to swaddle an adult?
‘Good as new,’ Stella observed, but there was no doubting the special power this soft rectangle of fabric held. Magnus’ jaw locked momentarily, and he smarted with emotion as he passed the blanket up through his fingers. ‘I’ll keep that,’ Stella said, in the same practical voice. Though she would not declare it here and now, she had kept it in a silk pillowcase for her grandchild. She had it stored along with other baby outfits she planned to give Florence.
The second item was a letter from the local Garda sergeant wishing the abandoned child well for a full and happy life. The opening paragraph presented the sparse facts relating to the newborn being reported as found on the Sparlings’ doorstep early one September evening, wrapped in an infant’s blanket. Though it was not he, the sergeant, who was fully in charge of the investigation, he had made himself entirely acquainted with the facts, as he had great regard for the Sparling family, long of this parish and much respected.
There was another silence between them. Then, Magnus spoke again. ‘I drove out into the desert in that hired car. Isn’t that something?’
‘You were a little tyke.’
‘I told him about the Mojave Indians. Did he tell you about the Mojave?’
‘No.’
Magnus told his mother now about his rescue. About Hunter Dobbs, the cop. The gas-station man with broken teeth. The doctor at the police station. Stella was the perfect audience. She listened intently. She was proud of her son. She would have preferred it if his father was still alive, she supposed, in the way Edwin had all his life wished for his mother.
There was another silence, this one longer than the others. Magnus imagined his father in the heat of a Mediterranean afternoon, shuffling in the shade of his four trees; imagined him running cold water from the spout of the drinking fountain over his ancient hands, then leaning against a patch of jigsaw camouflage bark because he doesn’t want to sit until the other old men show up. Imagined Noel arriving with two takeaway coffees. Edwin sitting only when Noel sits.
‘You’ll have to help me here,’ his mother said. ‘It’s too much for me.’
‘Not today, Stella.’
She was already at the drinks cabinet. Magnus rose to his feet.
‘I’ll pour you a whiskey,’ she said.
‘No. Thank you. I’ll be back in a minute.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Out to the garage.’
‘There’s more rubbish there. You’ll need a plan.’
Magnus had already left the room. He took his father’s car keys from a drawer in the kitchen. In the garage, he sat into the car, looked at himself in the rearview mirror, bared his teeth. This made him think about his father brushing his teeth at his sink in the convalescent home. Brushing them thoroughly and in a precise manner, as he had always done. As he had patiently instructed Magnus to do. For a man of his generation, he had done well keeping all his teeth until the end; done well to keep up with developments in preservation and reconstruction.
Magnus pondered all that good dentistry now gone to waste. Those white fillings that replaced the mercury-laden composites. Those near-perfect crowns. Fossil-hunters weren’t interested.
Still. Mustn’t complain. That’s what his father would say.
Edwin had made arrangements for Magnus to get his car. He had typed a page of notes regarding the general maintenance and unique characteristics of his beloved vehicle. It was a formal note addressed to the common reader, but clearly intended for his son. He had put that sheet in the manual – which Magnus now found on the top of the dashboard.
He read the note, mumbled ‘Thank you’, and stared through the windscreen at the beaded glass panes in the old doors. The early-evening light made them a wonder. He looked between his legs at the pedals worn down by his father’s feet. He inhaled the car smell, adjusted the seat and the rearview mirror, got out and opened the garage doors. The old man had resisted changing these wooden doors for an aluminum up-and-over. He had taken good care of these doors. Magnus was glad to feel the familiar drag on each of them as he swung one, then the other. He dropped the securing bolts into their snug metal rings, sunk in the tar. Edwin had kept these clear of dirt and leaves with a bamboo stick.
Magnus got back in the car and drove. He left the garage doors open – something his father would never have done. He thought he heard his mother call his name, but she didn’t appear at a window, or come to the door before he had turned onto the road. Had she poured that drink for him in any case, as she was apt to do for Edwin, though he, too, had often refused? An occasional goodwill practice that had long taken the place of physical intimacy with her nearly murderous dark-horse, recently dead husband.
Maureen was at Charlotte’s house. Stella had already declined their invitation to spend the night under the one roof. Magnus had left his mother alone in the house. She was trying to kill off her dead husband. So far as Magnus could judge, she had made a good start. For his part, Edwin had, in his own manageable domestic way, sold his life as dearly as he could.