The sky was almost black, and from the way the wind whirled the remains of leaves around on the front lawn – first one way, then the other, each time a little more frantic – I knew there was a storm coming.
I didn’t try to stop Robert going out, not that time. We’d had our chat and I told myself I should be willing to give him another chance.
When he’d gone, I found Kathryn standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for me.
‘What did you say to him?’
I didn’t respond.
‘He was out of here like a thunderbolt, whatever it was.’ She followed me down the hall. ‘What did you say to him, Howard?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Did you ask him about that new boy?’ She blew up into her fringe and waited for my answer.
‘Howard?’
‘All I wanted was to help him,’ I said, picking up my coat.
‘Kathryn not with you?’ Mum asked as she opened the door. She was still wearing her flowered tabard.
I shook my head and stepped into the familiar smell of cooked meat and furniture polish. ‘That’ll need doing again soon,’ I said, tapping the hallway wallpaper she’d chosen a few years ago. It was brown and stripy, which we’d thought wouldn’t go out of fashion. There was a patch of beige where the sun had shone too fiercely through the glass in the front door.
‘You’re very busy, though, Howard.’
We went into the kitchen and Mum untied her tabard. She hung it on the back of the door and pressed both sides of her hair, as if to straighten her head. ‘Shampoo and set tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting you.’ She cleared some newspapers from a chair. ‘It’s not often I have my son all to myself.’
‘I’ll make some tea,’ I said.
I reached for the caddy with the Chinese pattern. I’d loved playing with the empty tea caddy as a child, filling it with dominoes or marbles and wondering at their reflection on the shiny gold insides. That tin always seemed so much more precious than its contents.
‘Is Kathryn all right?’ Mum asked, spreading her hands out flat on the tablecloth.
‘Fine. She’s fine.’
‘Still working – ’
‘At the library. Yes.’
‘Good. That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘She likes it.’
‘It’s good for her to be busy. Now that Robert’s growing up.’
Steam from the kettle dampened my face. A slick of yellow fat lay on the milk I’d poured in both our cups.
We waited for the tea to brew.
‘Is there a reason for this visit, Howard?’
‘No reason.’
I could tell Mum was studying my face, so I looked away. A small silence grew.
‘Tea,’ I said.
Mum watched me pour.
‘I was looking at some old photos yesterday,’ I began.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes. There was one of me sitting on your garden bench. By the forsythia bush. I must have been about nine. It was funny. I hardly recognised myself.’
‘You were all frizzy hair and freckles then.’
I put the pot down. Rain had started to batter at the window, big drops of it running down and settling on the sill. The back door gave a rattle in the wind.
I brought our tea over to the table and sat down. ‘But I didn’t remember looking so, well, feminine,’ I said.
‘Oh, you weren’t girly,’ Mum said with a wave of her hand. ‘It’s just you looked a little different. And you were a bit – gentler than the other boys.’ She reached for the sugar and dropped a heaped teaspoon into her cup. ‘I remember one day you came home with a girl’s belt on! Lord knows where you got it.’ She blew on her tea and chuckled. ‘You can only have been four. Red it was, with a white buckle. You wouldn’t give it up for all the tea in China! I had to hide it from you, in the end.’ She shook the tin with the woven handle towards me. ‘Biscuit?’
I didn’t respond. I’d forgotten the details of the belt, but I did remember Mum taking it away. I’d cried to have it back, and she’d told me that people would think I was like a little girl, if I cried over such a silly thing as a belt. And I remembered that she’d held me by the arm, hard, and shaken me, the belt jiggling up and down in her other hand.
She chewed a digestive, then put her cup down. ‘Is something wrong, son?’
‘Then he is like me.’
‘Who is?’
‘Robert.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He’s like me.’
‘Of course he is! He’s your son all right.’
‘He’s a sissy, like his dad.’
‘What?’ Mum looked into my face. ‘What are you talking about?’
I fiddled with the handle of my teacup. ‘I was feminine.’
She let out a loud hoot. ‘But it wasn’t anything – anything serious – that thing with the girl’s belt. Of course not.’ She smiled for a moment. ‘I knew I didn’t have anything to worry about, with you.’ She pressed a hand, still warm from her teacup, onto mine. The skin on her knuckles was lumpy and white, as if it had been moulded in plasticine.
Her cuckoo clock chimed five. I realised my hands were aching again.
She stood up and began to rinse her cup in the sink, her thumb squeaking on the side of the china. ‘You haven’t touched your drink, Howard.’
I flexed my fingers. They were long and thin, hairless, freckled. Despite years of gardening, I’d never let myself have dirty fingernails. I wondered what was wrong with me.
‘It’s bucketing down,’ Mum said, staring out of the window. ‘Perhaps you’d better stay. We can have our tea together. Do you want to phone Kathryn?’
When I didn’t reply, she came away from the window. ‘Howard?’ The plastic cushion on the kitchen chair gave out a puff of air as she sat down. She sighed. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you something. After your father died, people thought I might not be able to carry on. But I had you, and in a few years, if I’m honest, I barely missed him.’ She caught hold of my chin and looked me in the eye. ‘I hardly missed him, Howard, because you were my little man. No one could ever say you aren’t man enough. Not in my book.’
She put a hand on my shoulder and rubbed. A sob built in my chest, and I knew that if she embraced me my tears would fall. But she just let her hand rest on my shoulder.
‘Robert will be fine. You’ll see.’
I watched the rain hammer on the glass of the back door, and I pictured my beds turning to mud.
Later that week, I came home from work to the noise of a drill. The sound of a whirling blade biting into wood or plaster has always set my teeth on edge.
I followed the noise upstairs to Robert’s bedroom. I put my briefcase down and tapped Kathryn on the shoulder, but she didn’t stop drilling into his doorframe. Her cheeks were warm, her eyes bright with concentration. I was reminded of the look she’d had the day she leant out of our back bedroom window and let the poppy seeds fall to the ground.
I tapped her on the shoulder again. She stopped the drill but didn’t look at me. Instead, she stooped down to pick up a bronze bolt lock from the top of my toolbox, which was by her feet.
‘You could have just screwed that in,’ I said.
She shrugged and rummaged in my toolbox for screws. I thought of how her fingers would smell metallic when she was finished.
‘You’re early,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ she said. ‘I’m fixing Robert a lock on his door.’
I didn’t want to respond irrationally, so I took a few moments to remove my coat and hang it over the stair banister. ‘Why didn’t you ask me to do that?’ I said, loosening my tie.
‘Because you would have said no.’ She held a screw against the hole in the bolt and squinted.
‘That won’t do it,’ I said. ‘And you know there’s no need for him to have a lock.’ Getting angry, I told myself, would not help this situation. It would not help this situation at all. ‘When did he ask for a lock?’
Kathryn turned the screw. ‘It was my idea.’
‘What?’
‘He needs some privacy.’
‘He’s fifteen!’
‘Exactly.’ She wiggled the bolt over in its carriage. ‘It’s a bit stiff. Is there anything I can do about that?’
I stared at her and she raised her eyebrows back at me. ‘Well?’
‘Where is he, anyway?’ I demanded.
‘He’s gone to see about a job on the farm. Plucking turkeys. Christmas money. I said he could.’
‘With Luke?’
‘All the boys do it, Howard.’
I flexed my hands in my pockets and breathed out. And in again.
I took the screwdriver from her. ‘Let me do that,’ I said. I leant into it with all my weight and twisted the screw tight to.
Kathryn watched me in silence.
‘I’ll just test it.’ I stepped into his room, giving Kathryn a gentle push out into the hallway, and closed the door on her.
I slid the bolt over into its hole and stared at it. Kathryn had chipped the paint on the doorframe but hadn’t done a bad job, overall.
‘Is it working OK?’ I heard her call through the door.
I didn’t answer. I rested my forehead on the cool wood of his door. With one hand I gripped the bolt and pulled it out of its home, then pushed it back.
‘Is it sticking?’
I was aware of the marigold smell of his room again. The blank blueness of the walls and bedclothes. The brightly coloured bottles and tubes containing God knows what. The jewellery box for his earring on his chest of drawers.
‘Howard? Are you coming out?’ Kathryn rattled the door handle.
‘In a minute.’
Was he with Luke right now?
‘Howard?’
Champion emblazoned across his chest.
‘What are you doing in there?’
Sweater too tight.
‘Are you coming out?’
She had given them her blessing.
‘I’ve got to go to work,’ Kathryn called. It was Thursday. Late opening at the library. ‘I’ve got to go, Howard.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’
She waited for a moment, then said, ‘I’ll see you later, then. There’s a casserole in the oven. It should be ready about seven. Save me some.’
I listened to her footsteps on the stairs, and, after a minute, the front door slammed.
Where would I find a trace of him? I wondered. In the drawers of the table we’d bought from MFI for his homework? Underneath his denim-like valance sheet? In the wardrobe I’d once pasted with cut-out pictures of Sooty and Sweep? Then I noticed that, on his bedside table, he still had the model Somua tank I’d bought for him at the museum, years ago. I picked it up. Its wheels and gun were furred with dust. I weighed it in my hand, studying the blank face of the soldier sitting in the armoured turret. I decided to take it with me. I would have to keep it safe for him.
I unbolted the door.