The meeting between Gerald Redridge and Arthur Mansfield took place in the hospital garden on a cold but bright Wednesday afternoon. God knows how they managed a conversation. Here were two men, normally as silent as gateposts, sitting side by side on a wooden bench, having to address a subject that neither really wanted to address at all. I would’ve loved to have been there. Even just to count the words that passed between them. It couldn’t have been more than seventeen surely? I was stuck at school though and spent the afternoon staring out of dirty windows at empty playing fields and wondering what was happening two and a half miles away.
Mr McGrath had been visiting Jon’s granddad regularly and had already made him aware that it was impossible for Jon to live at the farmhouse any more. The legal side of things, whether or not Arthur and Edna Mansfield were ever officially Jon’s legal guardians, seemed to be a fact that nobody could trace, an issue that nobody was too certain about. But Mr McGrath said that, in a way, it didn’t really matter any more anyway. Neither of them were able to provide adequate care for Jon, so it had become irrelevant. Mr McGrath had already told Arthur about the idea, the possibility, that Jon could live with us and Jon himself had hinted something similar. So Dad wasn’t going in cold. Arthur Mansfield had been briefed. Dad was still nervous though and when he dropped me off at school he told me to wish him luck in telling a frail old man he’d come to take his grandson away.
The night before the meeting Dad asked Jon if there was anything his granddad particularly liked: was he partial to a particular brew of beer or brand of whisky? But that idea was quickly dismissed when Jon’s face turned from its usual white to a death white. It turns out that Arthur wouldn’t have drink in the house, had never had a drink in his life, and probably wouldn’t want to start now. Dad managed to calm Jon down; he promised he wouldn’t take any alcohol and it was agreed that it might be best to turn up empty-handed anyway.
I was impatient to know how the meeting had gone, but I had to wait until the end of school and endure the bus trip home and then the long walk down the lane to the house. I hurried inside and found Dad in the kitchen, nursing a coffee. He looked up, guilty, like I’d caught him skiving or something. He said that he’d tried to get on with some work when he’d got back from the hospital, but he hadn’t been able to settle to anything, he couldn’t stop his mind wandering. I bombarded him with questions but he waved me quiet and said if I gave him a second he would tell me what happened.
He made himself another coffee, I sat down, and he told me the conversation they’d had, sat on the wooden bench. Dad had done most of the talking and it went OK, he said. Sad, but OK. He told Arthur that they were neighbours and that Jon had been visiting us for a few months now. Arthur nodded. Dad said he was sorry, the situation they found themselves in was hard. It was horrible. He stopped talking as an old lady with two walking sticks approached. She passed slowly. Her tongue stuck out of the top left corner of her mouth. She was concentrating hard. Focused. They stared ahead until she passed. He’d grown fond of Jon, he said, and would like to help if he could. Arthur still didn’t respond and they sat in silence; Arthur occasionally looked up to the sky and the slow-moving clouds. Dad turned to him and asked if he knew about the idea, the thinking, that Jon could maybe live with us. Arthur nodded that he did and then, finally, he spoke. He asked if that meant Jon would be staying on the fell. Dad replied that yes, if it went ahead, it did mean that, for the foreseeable future at least. Arthur considered this and said that was good, that it would be good to be able to think of him up on the fell, in the fields, walking the lanes and tracks. They sat quietly then, watching people in varying states of health walking, wheeling and wobbling the circuit of the hospital garden. ‘And then I started blathering,’ Dad said. He said that it was to fill the silence more than anything; he couldn’t leave so soon, and they couldn’t just sit there in silence all afternoon.
He said he told him about the horse and the forest and dragging the pieces there, the toys he made and the markets he visited. He told him about me and Jon, how we were good mates. How good we were for each other. The odd couple.
‘And I told him about your mum. About how daft and beautiful she was. How much fun she got from being alive and knitting a scarf, or going on a trip to the seaside, something simple like that. I told him that her joy made me feel glad to be alive, made me enjoy everything more. And I told him what a good wife she was, and what a wonderful mum she was.’ He stopped. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so useless since she died, Luke.’
I shook my head.
‘I have been. What have I done? How have I helped you? Have I spoken to you about her? Checked how things are at the new school? Helped steer you through a difficult time? No, I’ve got pissed and built a bloody massive bloody wooden horse to shove in the corner of a forest.’
‘It’s bloody good though, Dad,’ I said.
He looked across at me. He considered. He nodded slowly and said, ‘It is good, at least there’s that.’