They had been playing Rummy before the boys arrived. Lynn would have preferred Kaluki but they would have needed a third, and even with the simpler game, Emily was proving a faster master of numbers and probability. Lynn had never been a great one for games of chance, or maths. Her strength had always lain in sideways thinking, in analysis, creativity and blind faith. But suddenly, numbers that gave definitive answers were more appealing than they had been. They left no room for doubt, no space for what ifs. Plus, in Rummy, there was the opportunity to gamble, to risk everything. While Emily collected straights and pairs and flushes, Lynn, with equal skill, gathered spaces between them into which she wove questions about Emily’s childhood, about Rwanda.
The shock of seeing her curled up in the park the previous week had not quite left Lynn. Nor her words: She’s dead. At night, the image flashed before her, unsettling, but replacing at least visions of her own demise. Emily’s knuckles were healing and she’d regained her composure, that insurmountable, lip-curled restraint, but a knowledge had passed between the two women of darker things beneath bleeding skin. Lynn had not told her sons when Emily had failed to show up for work the morning after their trip to the shops. Nor had she complained to the agency. Instead, she had called Emily herself, three times before the phone was finally answered, and marshalled the girl back into the world of the waking. Without condemnation she had instructed Emily to return. And quietly, she had noticed the contriteness in the girl, the gratitude, the fresh nervousness and timidity. A bond of conspiracy flapped tantalisingly between them. But Lynn knew better than to start with the genocide. She asked Emily about what food they ate, about the dances they did, about the games played by children.
“But I am not a usual example,” said Emily, having been enticed ever so slowly into such a conversation. “I climbed trees with my brothers, and played football, and liked to be dirty, not like the other girls.”
“You were a tomboy,” nodded Lynn, understanding. “So was I.”
“You climbed trees?” asked Emily, smiling in amusement, looking up from her cards as if to draw the image.
“And once fell out of one. You see this arm?” Lynn raised her left arm, before conceding to a stab of pain in it. “I broke it in three places.”
Emily grinned wider. “I suppose it was strange for you then to have a boy so feminine.”
“Feminine?”
“John. Was he always so gentle? Was it a shock when you found out he was gay?”
“John is not gay,” said Lynn abruptly.
Emily looked up again from her cards. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Oh. Okay.”
“He’s sensitive, that’s all.”
“Okay.”
They both paused. Lynn threw a card away and Emily picked it up. “Rummy,” she said hesitantly, laying down the proof.
Of course on some level, Lynn had always known it. In the deepest crevices of her memory was a day, a year before Philip had died, when John was just 15, and he had tried to talk to her, to tell her, to have her listen. But before he could wade into the pain of the conversation that was back then written so frequently all over his face, she had hushed him up. With silly questions about what he wanted for his supper, and if he had done his homework, and yes she did know his friend Tony, and wasn’t he the boy whose mother had gone into a psychiatric hospital, and it was good of John to remain such a close friend to him in what must be a very confusing time. Philip had been in the next room and would have lectured John with Christian teachings about the sin of homosexuality. Which to some extent, Lynn had believed too.
So she had diverted the conversation, and thought she was sparing him. She pretended, later, that he had not been trying to tell her what she suspected. That with her omission she had helped him, guided him away from sin without having to judge it, or him, and unravel everything. She prayed that Luke and Philip wouldn’t notice and knew that they wouldn’t. She helped them not to and told herself again that there was nothing to see in the first place. Believed it. Ignored it. Ignored it. Ignored it.
“He’s sensitive,” Lynn said again.
“Okay,” confirmed Emily.
Of course that was the moment that the front door slammed and John’s voice sang up the stairs. It was past twelve but Emily had convinced Lynn that morning that it was acceptable for her to have lunch in bed, that in fact, it made it easier for her because Lynn’s medicine was upstairs anyway.
“Mother?” came John’s deep, soft tones. “Are you up there with the angel?”
Emily glanced at her awkwardly. Lynn’s voice was no longer strong enough to shout back, so she cued Emily to do so. Unable still to shout in front of her, Emily scurried to the door and stuck her head around it so that John could see her from the stairs. “We’re in here,” she told him softly. “We’re having a day in bed. With Rummy.”
“With rum? Oh, but I brought brandy,” John winked appearing empty-handed. “How are you Angel?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“How is she?”
“I’ll leave you to spend some time,” said Emily. She followed John back into Lynn’s bedroom and glanced meaningfully at Lynn before picking up the tray of lunch and making for the door.
“Hello Mother,” breathed John, settling into the vacated chair next to her bed. “You look stunning.”
John was still sitting with Lynn, regaling her with the story of a botched performance the night before, when Luke arrived. Lynn supposed the lightness of John’s tone, or of his life – in comparison to the weight of helping Africa’s poor, and getting married, and looking after his mother – was grating to Luke. And perhaps this is what set them off. But it had been the same between them for a long time. When Philip had died and Luke had stepped so bravely and seamlessly into his shoes, John had still been tucked up in the bosom of childhood. Or so it must have appeared to Luke. John had had meals cooked for him, and school teachers to direct him, and did not seem to feel the need to take on any of their father’s responsibilities at church. Like Luke did. Of course Lynn saw with searing clarity now that John didn’t, because John couldn’t. But she had pretended too well for too long. And what Luke must have seen all those years ago was his younger brother spending more and more time away from home, with friends who they never met, at clubs they did not go to, leaving Lynn alone so that Luke felt he had to come back from university to keep her company at weekends.
Two years later, at the first chance John got, he moved out of home altogether into a student flat, even though he could have stayed at home with their widowed mother during his time at the drama school which was only 10 minutes away. After that, he had never returned really, or made the effort to include Lynn in his life, and Luke was infuriated by this. By the contrast between his flighty brother and the expectations he demanded of himself. Lynn made excuses for him. She had always made excuses for him, and though she knew this angered Luke further, she understood now why she did it. Her eldest son however, couldn’t comprehend the compelling force of culpability, and she could not explain it to him.
As they sat on either side of her bed, Luke and John bickered as usual, and looked to her to call the winner. Luke, who had raced over to see her on a lunch break from work and noted that John who had been free all morning, had only just arrived, preached Responsibility; John countered with Humility. There was a time when she would have knocked their heads together and been done with it, but the sound of their arguing made her so tired now, so wretchedly tired, and instead she closed her eyes. Their voices circled in a dizzying hum. In the end, it was Emily who silenced them.
“I heard shouts,” she said, sticking her head around the bedroom door. “All the way from the kitchen. Is everything okay Mrs Hunter?”
At once the boys quietened. It had never been acceptable for family grievances to be aired in public and this was one value on which they all continued to agree.
“It’s okay Angel,” John said brightly, smiling immediately. “Thank you, everything’s fine.”
“Mrs Hunter?”
Lynn appreciated that it was her opinion being sought and not that of her sons. “Thank you Emily. I’m fine,” she said, looking to her quiet, seated offspring. “They’re behaving themselves now.”
But then, Luke stood up. “Emily. Sorry, I wouldn’t usually leave these things to my brother but - I’ve been wanting to meet you for some time,” he said as he volunteered an outstretched hand. And as Emily shook it, it was impossible not to notice how stricken her face was, how suddenly hunched her posture, how her hand trembled then flew to flatten the fringe over her eye. Even Luke, so easily confident, flushed red against her awkwardness.
“Well you made quite an impression,” John teased as soon as the door was closed. “Got a way with the women have you Luke?”
“Be quiet,” Luke had retorted, pulling on his coat. But then paused, looking towards the door, then to his feet. Then to his mother. “You are okay with her mother, aren’t you?” he asked, fatigue or perhaps anxiousness dragging his voice into a whisper.
Lynn only flapped her hand.