20

The telephone rang at twenty minutes past ten. Alone in the flat, Joyce was still in bed; she answered on the third ring.

The caller was Flora.

‘Ma?’ Joyce said. Her voice was dry. Too much wine before bed.

‘Surprised you, did I? Eddie have a good flight?’

‘It was fine, Ma.’

‘He has that daft phobia about flying.’

Joyce lit a cigarette – damned habit, why did she need it, especially when her throat was so dry? – and turned over on her back and looked up at the bedroom ceiling. She had a small unexpected flashback to her amphetamine days when the first thing she’d do on waking was drop a hit of speed and wait for it to fire her furnace just enough to get her out of bed and drive to school and babble at her pupils. Wordsworth this and Keats that and here’s what Coleridge wrote … And the pupils, most of them dull-faced and sullen and listening for the bell that would free them, sometimes asked questions that turned out to be jokes so old they had beards … Miss Mallon, what’s a Grecian Urn? Five quid a week, ha ha ha. By mid-afternoon she was always wilting; she’d go inside the staff bathroom and snap a tab in half and swallow it, saving the remainder for later. And so she got through her life, and her separation from Harry, riding the speed train through the hours of daylight and sometimes deep into the night too. She’d never loved Haskell, although she’d tried. She wept a lot back then, not because she missed Harry, but because she hadn’t been able to get the marriage to work, she’d tried, oh Christ she’d tried, but she was never capable of sustaining the illusion of a healthy marriage. For his part, Harry couldn’t come to terms with the fact that marriage wasn’t always the beautiful dream he wanted it to be. You weren’t always attractive and anxious to fuck. Your period was depressing, or you developed a cold sore at the corner of your lip, or you just drifted away into the private world of a book and you didn’t want Harry to follow, dragging his hard-on.

All that. The mathematics of matrimony. The downs were troughs of low pressure. And suddenly there were just too many of them, and Harry had become a burden she couldn’t carry and couldn’t learn to love.

‘Are you listening to me?’ Flora asked.

‘Of course I’m listening.’

‘So how are you bearing up?’ Flora asked.

‘That’s a tough one, Ma.’

‘I know, dear. I know. I’d come to the funeral but …’

‘It’s okay. I understand.’ Joyce thought, I dread the final goodbye. The ritual.

‘I should have phoned before this …’ Flora paused. ‘Sometimes I just don’t know what to say. Sometimes I feel so damn sorry for the way …’

‘It’s water under an old bridge, Ma.’

She tried to picture Flora in her tiny house on Long Island but all she could see were plants, a great forest of them. She remembered the afternoon five years ago when Flora had prepared a barbecue in her back yard and how the smell of burning meat had floated through the neighbourhood and dogs had begun barking everywhere. That was the day Joyce first realized her mother was shrinking with the passage of time. Becoming tiny, a little white-haired thing.

‘I try to let it go,’ Flora said. ‘It’s hard.’

Was she crying? Joyce wondered. Her voice sounded thin and quivery.

There was a long silence. ‘It must be good to have Eddie with you,’ Flora said eventually.

‘It’s great.’

‘Is there any news?’

‘No, Ma. Nothing.’

‘Is Eddie there … can I talk to him?’

‘You just missed him by about five minutes. He wanted to go into the city centre.’ She was going to tell the truth, but held it back. ‘He thought he’d buy some presents to take home with him. And I didn’t want to keep him company. I hate shops, all the crowds –’

‘You love shops. What are you talking about?’

‘I’ve changed,’ Joyce said.

‘Last time you were over here, you couldn’t wait for me to take you to Bloomingdale’s. We did Macy’s, and then all those funny little stores in the Village.’

‘I remember,’ Joyce said. ‘I suppose that was my last shopping rush. Where do you go after Bloomingdale’s anyway?’ Why was Flora really calling? She telephoned maybe twice a year and it was always small talk, and now and again a family story that had assumed the status of folklore, a tale to be repeated and handed down.

‘Joyce … he’s not getting, well, involved, is he?’

‘Involved, Ma? I’m not following you.’

‘Interfering … in the investigation.’

‘Is he acting the cop? Is that what you mean?’

‘I guess so.’

‘Ma, he’s not a wee boy you have to worry over all the time. He talked to the police. But he’s not out there trying to solve this crime, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

She thought: Of course Eddie’s involved. He might not admit it to himself just yet, but he’s definitely involved. The moment he stepped off the plane, he was involved. Somebody murdered his father: was he supposed to sit back and accept? And now he was at the crime scene with Chris because he’d asked to see it, he thought he might learn something, whatever. Because he couldn’t help himself.

She imagined that hideous slice of wasteland, Chris and Eddie studying the place, Eddie thinking he might unearth something the local gendarmes had missed, a spent shell, a discarded comb the criminal had dropped. Not in the real world.

‘If you want reassurance, Ma,’ she said, ‘I’ll get him to phone you.’

‘No, it’s okay … Have you seen Chris Caskie?’

‘Last night.’

‘How is he?’

Good question, Joyce thought. ‘Normally he’s his charming friendly self. Sometimes he broods.’

‘Meg’s been dead only six months.’

Joyce didn’t want to talk about Chris or Meg. Meg’s sickness. Sometimes she had the feeling that all human relationships ended in disaster.

Flora said, ‘I love you, Joyce. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Joyce said. ‘And I love you too.’

‘Keep in touch, sweetheart. And if you need me, I’m here.’ Flora made a kissing sound and hung up.

Joyce rose, went inside the kitchen in her underwear, drank cold water. She found an old tartan dressing gown hanging on the back of the door, and she put it on, then she brewed coffee and drank it standing at the table, her robe open, her small breasts warmed by sunlight coming through the window. She felt a vague arousal she attributed to the heat; certainly there was nothing else nearby to cause it.