The Other Son Page 3

‘Dot says Matt’s just trying to find himself,’ Alice says, unsure even as she says it why she’s chosen this particular phrase to say out loud. ‘But I think it’s the opposite. I think he’s trying to lose himself.’

  ‘Dot should mind her own onions,’ Ken replies, misunderstanding entirely the context of Dot’s remark. And that’s Alice’s fault far more than it is Ken’s. She hadn’t, after all, provided any context.

  But Ken doesn’t like Dot much, that’s for sure. Dot is a busybody. She’s pernickety and sarcastic. She has an overactive thyroid which she claims explains much of her nervous disposition. But whatever the cause, she rubs Ken up the wrong way. Not that he has ever really approved of any of Alice’s friends. Even Lisa, her best friend all those years ago, he hated with a passion. Though that was probably Lisa’s fault, too. Lisa certainly hated Ken first. But what with Lisa moving to New Zealand, and Jenny Mayer dying; what with Jenny Parson now a full-blown alcoholic, that only leaves Dot. So no matter what Ken thinks, Alice isn’t going to give Dot up.

  Lisa has been gone over twenty years now and still Alice misses her. She was the friend Alice felt closest to, the only one who ever really laughed at her jokes. It was a shock when Lisa and Jim moved away, a shock to have to realise that your biggest, most important friendship just didn’t weigh that much in the grand scheme of things, not when balanced against a better lifestyle, a bigger house with a pool and a major promotion for Jim. It’s normal to lose friends over the course of a lifetime: you fall out with some, you grow apart from others. A few die, too. But to have someone just move to the other side of the world, well, that’s tough. And one thing’s for sure – it’s less and less easy to make new friends as you get older; there are so few opportunities for it.

  Still, she has Dot, thank God. Dot gets on with her own husband Martin about as well as Alice gets on with Ken, so it’s a relationship based largely on bitching. But bitching, it turns out, is a surprisingly solid basis for a friendship. At the thought of the things they say, at the conversations they have about their respective husbands, Alice snorts almost undetectably. Ken, usually so slow to pick up any kind of subtlety, catches this one immediately.

  ‘What?’ he asks.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ Alice says. ‘I was just thinking about those Christmas decorations in Tesco.’ When you have a tetchy husband, you develop coping mechanisms, such as always having an alibi at the ready.

  One time, a couple of years back, Alice had been telling Dot what a relief it was that Ken no longer wanted to have sex. Dot had been laughing, lapping it up, goading Alice to go further, to be funnier and ruder. Alice had said something about Ken’s wrinkly wiener – a phrase she had heard on an American sitcom – and Dot had spat her wine all over the dining table. But then they had heard a tiny voice coming seemingly from nowhere. ‘Hello, hello?’ it said. Alice finally traced the little voice to her new mobile phone in her handbag. It had somehow dialled home, had mysteriously and, under the circumstances, dangerously, called Ken.

  Terrified that he had overheard part of their conversation, and wracked with guilt, Alice had literally been trembling by the time she opened the front door that evening. But she had found Ken sober, calmly watching television. He had complained about the phone bill, of course. He had reminded her ‘for the thousandth time’ to lock the keyboard – whatever that meant. But that was it. She had got away with it. She was always very careful with her mobile after that.

  ‘Chinese tyres,’ Ken says, prompting Alice to look out of the side window at the lorry they’re overtaking. It says ‘Imperial Tyres’ on the side.

  ‘“Imperial” doesn’t sound very Chinese,’ Alice comments.

  ‘Well, it’s not meant to, is it? That’s the point. That’s why they do it,’ Ken says. ‘So you think they’re English.’

  ‘I suppose they did have an empire once.’

  ‘The Chinese?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Well, empire or not, their tyres are rubbish. Dangerous rubbish, at that.’

  ‘You just don’t like the fact that they’re cheaper than remoulds,’ Alice says. She’s heard Ken say this enough times to know that it’s true.

  ‘You’re right. I don’t,’ Ken says, ‘but they’re still rubbish. That Which magazine tested them all and the braking distances on the Chinky ones were terrible.’

  Alice watches as the truck indicates, then veers away from them, apparently taking its slippery Chinese tyres to rainy Blackburn. It’s funny, because she thinks she can smell the load it’s carrying from here, but it’s probably just her memory, it’s probably just because of the conversation and the fact that the odour of tyre rubber has permeated their entire lives.

  Even when Ken had a whole chain of Re-Tyre stores, even when he was spending all day in the offices towards the end, he still came home smelling of rubber, still sat down of an evening emanating that bitter, metallic smell of recycled tyre rubber. No, her first choice would not have been to marry a tyre remoulder, even if they are still here, fifty years later. Who would ever have guessed that they’d turn out to be quite so tenacious?

  It’s not that she hates Ken, per se. She’s so used to him that it’s hard to define quite where Ken ends and Alice begins these days. He just . . . irritates her, really. He irritates her the way certain aspects of herself irritate her. He annoys her the way her own brain annoys her when she can’t remember a word, the way her own hand annoys her when she discovers that it’s put the teabags in the freezer or her glasses in the fridge for no reason that she can identify.

  If she hates anything, she hates her marriage to Ken rather than Ken himself. She hates the opportunities, the life that marrying Ken precluded. She should have had a career, that’s the thing – that’s the real disappointment, her real mistake. She was clever; she knows she was. She was good with numbers and good with words. Her parents used to get her to do all the adding up in her head. She was the one who had to help Robert with his schoolwork. Yes, like Matt, she could have done so much more. That’s why his lack of ambition upsets her so much.

  Alice remembers their father drilling them at the kitchen table. ‘Alice!’ he would shout, ‘What’s seven plus nine plus twenty-three? Robert! What’s eleven plus nine take thirteen?’ And even as Alice was adding up her own numbers, she would be bracing herself for the slap, either across Robert’s hands should he dare to start counting on his fingers, or across the back of his head if (as usual) he gave the wrong answer. ‘Tuppence short of a shilling,’ that’s what people used to say about Robert. ‘A sandwich short of a picnic.’

  If they’d known how long he was going to be around, how transient his passage on the planet would be, then they might, just might, have been nicer to him. But they didn’t know, and the truth was that their parents’ generation had no idea whatsoever how to bring up a child with what these days they’d call special needs. Other than drilling him to be better and beating him when he failed, they were at a loss when faced with Robert’s unique brand of stupidity. Sometimes Alice managed to add up her own numbers and Robert’s numbers at the same time. On such occasions, she would announce her own answer while simultaneously indicating Robert’s answer discreetly on her fingers. But though she had explained the system often enough to him, he was rarely sharp enough, when placed under duress, to notice the unnatural splay of her hands.

  Poor Robert; he had never known when to shut up, never known how to avoid their father’s wrath. One time, he had been supposed to make a toolbox in woodwork lessons. He had gone with their father to the ironmongers for wood, and Dad had been so proud, so hopeful that for once here was something his son could actually succeed at, that he had purchased not the cheap pine specified by the school, but expensive sheets of sheer, beautiful mahogany. And that was always going to be a bad move.

  Poor Robert, perhaps overly stressed by the cost of the wood, or more likely, simply no better at woodwork than he was at anything else, had repeatedly failed to dovetail the corners correctly, and as
he repeatedly cut them off and started again, his box had got smaller and smaller. By the time he was finished, it was not a toolbox he had made but a so-called jewellery box – a tiny, ugly trinket box with inch-thick walls and wonky corners that the daylight shone through.

  Dad had raged about the cost and the waste, and Mum had tried to make the most of the situation. She had even fetched a pair of earrings to put in that shoddy little box – her attempt at calming everyone down.

  In a chilling silence, they’d begun to eat dinner, Alice nervously tapping one foot against the chair leg, silently pleading with her eyes, secretly begging Robert, opposite, to remain silent. Because that was the thing about Robert, that was the one thing he could always be counted upon to achieve without fail: once the eye of the storm had passed, when everything was done and dusted, when everyone was finally starting to relax again, Robert could and would produce the one phrase, seemingly precision-engineered, to make everything kick off again. Alice hated him for it. And she hated herself for hating him.

  That night, the night of the jewellery box, once everything was calm again, once dinner had been eaten and the box had been moved to the kitchen counter behind her, no longer the centre of attention; once their father had, for once without blows being administered, moved on to a different subject and their mother was serving up bowls of banana and custard (Alice’s favourite), Robert had piped up.

  ‘We’re going to make picture frames next week,’ he had said brightly. ‘We have to take in a picture to frame and some lengths of special wood called beading.’

  Their father had cleared his throat. The effort he was expending in order to ignore his idiot son was palpable.

  ‘Do they sell beading at Johnson’s, Dad?’ Robert had asked. ‘Can we get some?’

  ‘I’ll give you beading,’ their father had said, standing sharply enough to knock his chair over. ‘I’ll give you bloody woodwork, you cheeky little shit.’

  ‘Don’t, please!’ Mum had shrieked, moving between Robert and their father.

  And Alice, hating Robert in that instant as much as she had ever hated him, had started to gulp down her bananas and custard, trying to get as much of it inside her as possible, trying to eat her favourite dessert before it was too late, before it ended up on the floor.

  ‘Can you remember Lizzie’s kids’ names?’ Ken now asks her out of the blue.

  Alice frowns. She had actually been having trouble even remembering Mike’s daughter’s name, let alone her children’s names. ‘Lizzie?’ she says. ‘Oh, do you mean Linda?’

  ‘Oh yes, you’re right – Linda. And the kids’ names?’

  ‘Terry, Tim? Something with a T?’ Alice offers. ‘Tom?’

  ‘Yes, Tom and . . . Lucy maybe?’

  ‘That’s it. But I doubt they’ll be there, Ken. They’re only four or five or something.’

  ‘They’re at least ten.’

  Alice frowns. ‘Really?’

  It’s another cliché about getting older that’s always guaranteed to get the youngsters groaning, but, yes, time really does go by faster as you get older. Alice remembers when she was a child, how the long hot summers seemed endless. Nowadays, it’s winter, summer, winter, summer, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And yes, it honestly does seem only yesterday morning that the kids were still living at home, Tim working conscientiously in the dining room on his homework, Matt clomping around in his Dr Martens boots singing The Smiths songs. She had felt terrified when Matt left home for college. Alice had always felt that the children’s presence somehow protected her, like a good luck charm. If Ken was capable of being angry and occasionally violent in front of the children (and he was), then what on earth would he be like once they were gone, once there were no longer any witnesses to his rage? But Ken, in fact, became calmer once Matt left home, as if, perhaps like Robert, it was the kids’ presence that had been winding him up all along.

  That’s not to say that Alice is happier now the boys have gone. For most of her marriage, the children felt like the only reason she was staying. If she’s honest with herself, she has no real idea why she’s still here. At first it was because of her parents – they’d wanted this so much. Once they had died she had convinced herself that she was staying for Tim’s and Matt’s benefit. After they had left home, the idea of grandchildren kept her going for a while – she had been so excited about their arrival. But now they’re seven and nine and she hardly even sees them – Christmas is not the only time that Natalya is frosty.

  She glances over at Ken and allows herself to ask the question: Why are you here, Alice?

  Could it really just be a bad habit, like biting fingernails? Is it really possible that she’s still here merely because she doesn’t have enough imagination to picture an alternative, because she doesn’t have enough courage to pursue anything different?

  Ken clicks on an indicator and starts to pull over into the exit lane.

  ‘Are we there?’ Alice asks, trying to catch a glimpse of the road sign they’re just passing.

  ‘Nearly,’ Ken says. ‘We just need to get across town now. I hope there’s not too much traffic.’ He shoots her a smile and Alice responds in kind before turning back to face the windscreen.

  She has, she realises, been lost in her thoughts. The rain has stopped and she has no idea when that happened. There are even glimpses of blue sky to the east.

  The main reason she never left Ken, she decides, is that no one else ever seemed to believe in the possibility. Because yes, she had been serious about it a few times. She remembers telling Tim, maybe ten years ago, maybe much more – time does fly – that she was leaving his father. Tim laughed. ‘You’ll never leave Dad,’ he predicted, and he was right.

  Lisa, too, said almost the same thing. ‘We all feel like that sometimes,’ she said, managing not to see the black eye behind the sunglasses even as Alice pretended that she herself had walked into a door. ‘Sometimes you just have to hang on in there until it gets better,’ she said.

  If one single person had ever responded with, ‘You’re right, you should get out,’ or even better, ‘I’ll help you,’ then Alice would have left – she knows that to be true. Only they didn’t. They’d found it as impossible to imagine Alice leaving Ken as she did herself. And here she still is. With hindsight, it looks as though they were right. It looks as though they were all right, all along.

  One part of Alice’s brain questions why the other part is pondering all this, today of all days. Because the truth is that things haven’t been that bad recently – their marriage has certainly known more challenging periods. In truth, they’ve progressively settled into a routine of old age that one could almost call comfortable. There are few surprises, good or bad, but the days are not unpleasant. Ken reads the paper and watches the football and Alice loses herself in her endless stream of novels. With the Kindle that Tim bought her (she had been struggling increasingly with the small print in paperbacks) she doesn’t even need to go shopping between books any more. She just clicks and downloads the next recommendation and off she goes.

  ‘She’s always got her nose in a book, Alice has,’ Ken jokes, never pausing to wonder why, never stopping to think about the fact that even the grimmest of fictional realities feels like escape to her.

  Alice thinks about the novel she’s reading right now – one of Dot’s suggestions. It hasn’t really been doing the trick, hasn’t quite been hitting the spot. The story – of a woman in a miserable marriage dreaming of escape – is a bit close to home, that’s the thing. But Alice will finish it when she gets back. She always finishes every book she starts if it’s humanly possible to do so, because until you get to the end, there’s still hope. Until you reach that final page, there’s still the possibility of sudden, unexpected, thrilling escape.

  Alice supposes that the same principles apply to life. Until you get to the end, there’s still hope. It’s why we don’t give up on life until the very end, until life gives up on us.

  ‘Oops . . . r
unning on empty now,’ Ken says, tapping the flashing petrol sign on the dashboard.

  ‘Why didn’t you fill up at the services?’

  ‘Too expensive,’ Ken says. ‘I’m not paying silly motorway prices. I’ll fill up at Asda round the corner from Mike’s.’

  ‘If we make it that far.’

  ‘We will. We’ll be fine.’

  Running on empty. Alice runs the phrase through her mind, because it kind of sums things up. She and Ken have been running on empty for years, and it’s amazing how far you can get just coasting along on a wing and a prayer, just rolling along on hope.

  Her lot has been infinitely better than anything her parents had to live through. And what her grandparents (on her mother’s side) had to survive must have been horrific. So perhaps she’s done OK after all, considering . . . Her parents even had to pawn their wedding rings to pay for Granny Miriam’s funeral – imagine that! They never managed to save enough to redeem them, either. It became a standing – if rather sour – family joke. ‘Where are you off to then?’ her dad would say. ‘Me?’ Alice’s mum would reply. ‘Why, I thought I’d treat myself. I’m off to Herbert Brown’s to get me wedding ring back.’ ‘Ooh, pick mine up while you’re there, would you?’

  Alice dreamt for years of recovering her parents’ rings for them. Long after they would have been melted down and turned into something else, she was still scheming to save enough money to get them back.

  Alice looks down at her hands and sees that her right hand is fiddling with her own wedding ring, twisting it around and around on her finger. Considering what could have been, she’s probably being ungrateful. She should probably make more effort to see the positives.

  She tries to list some of those now.

  They have two reliable cars, her little Nissan Micra and this one, the Mégane. They have a comfortable home and a fair stash of money in the bank, even if Ken won’t ever let them spend any of it.

  They have two healthy sons, though one of them is married to a crotchety Russian who won’t let her near, and the other is too busy losing himself on the Continent to come home for Christmas or even pick up the phone.