Things We Never Said Page 8

  He tries to think back to all the times he and Catherine discussed his parents. Though he can’t remember actually having reproached her in any way, there were times, he reckons, when he could perhaps have been a little more understanding. He could have apologised more often for his parents’ behaviour.

  The last tape message made him angry, specifically because he had wasted the entire Saturday visiting Cynthia at The Cedars. The message made him wish he hadn’t bothered. It had made him want to never bother again.

  But this familiar feeling puts him in conflict with himself. It pits the Sean who wants to be loyal to his dead wife against the Sean who feels obligated towards his parents no matter what they might have said or done. Lordy, those blood ties run deep.

  It’s just before three when Sean gets home, and though the sky is threatening, the rain has now stopped.

  On the doorstep, he finds a family-sized apple crumble. It’s wrapped in a plastic bag, which also contains a Post-it note from Maggie.

  Came to see you but you’re out! Which is a good thing! Eat this! Love Mags. xxx

  Sean lets himself into the house and peers into the empty refrigerator before heating up half of the apple crumble in the microwave. He had been intending to order a pizza, but he suddenly finds himself too hungry to wait.

  While he waits for the microwave to go ping, he pulls the box from the cupboard and retrieves the next envelope.

  Snapshot #9

  Polaroid, colour. Faded. An exhausted, shiny-faced woman holds a swaddled baby in her arms. The baby’s face is almost as pink and blotchy as the mother’s.

  ‘Huh,’ Sean says, fondly. He reaches out and runs the tip of his finger over April’s tiny head, as if, perhaps, he might once again feel the warmth of her newborn skin.

  He had been desperate to touch her, that was the thing. It had seemed as if only touching her skin would make the moment real.

  The labour had been difficult. Actually, he hadn’t known at the time whether this labour was more or less difficult than your ‘average’ labour, but certainly no one could, or ever did, describe Catherine’s labour as ‘easy’.

  She had screamed and screamed for hours. She had screamed blue bloody murder. She had begged him to make it stop, as if such a thing was somehow in his power. Was this not his fault, after all? She had cried that it was a mistake, that her mother was right, that she wasn’t ready for this, that she’d never be ready for this.

  All of this, the nurses assured him, was ‘normal’.

  Eventually, the screaming had stopped and his fear that Catherine was dying had been replaced by fear that something was wrong with the baby. Because this baby looked like no baby he had ever seen on television. This baby, covered in blood and blotches, looked like a baby from a horror film.

  The nurses told him that this too was normal, but he hadn’t been convinced.

  But as soon as she had cried, everything changed and he had switched from being scared to being desperate to touch her, just to confirm to himself that she was real. She had looked so much like a tiny, plastic dolly, albeit a tiny, plastic Halloween dolly.

  When he did get to hold her, a strange sense of pride had washed over him and the concept of ‘unconditional love’, which he had recently discussed with Alistair, suddenly made sense. He understood only then how you could love someone, how you could be proud of someone, simply because they were, simply because they existed. He had vowed, then, never to be like his own parents, whose love had always seemed entirely conditional on recent performance. He had promised himself that he would never allow himself to forget this feeling no matter who April became, no matter what she ended up doing, no matter what her life choices turned out to be.

  Alternating in waves with that sense of pride was fear. Because being a father felt like a whole different thing. It felt vast and terrifying. And in those moments of fear, everything his parents had said, everything Perry had said, seemed true. Because no, he wasn’t sure about this. And no, he wasn’t ready for this at all.

  A nurse had taken April from his arms and handed her back to Catherine then, and this had prompted Catherine to start crying. Her emotions would be all over the place for weeks to come, but they didn’t know that yet.

  As Catherine wept, her tears falling on baby April’s face, Sean had momentarily returned to his initial fears that something wasn’t right with the baby. Catherine had now, he thought, spotted it, too. It was the only explanation he could come up with for her looking and sounding so heartbroken.

  He had tried to comfort her then, but she had laughed maniacally through her tears, insisting that she was fine.

  Even this, the nurse said, was normal. Nurses, it seemed, had different definitions for words like ‘normal’.

  ‘Go get yourself a hot chocolate from the machine at the end of the corridor,’ the nurse had told him. ‘Give us a chance to clean things up here, eh?’

  So Sean had done just that.

  On his return, he had peered through the window and seen the baby suckling on her sleeping mother’s breast, and in that moment yet another sensation had washed over him, a feeling so powerful that he can remember it vividly today – and as, looking at the photo, he does so, the hairs on the back of his neck bristle.

  He had felt himself disappear, that was the sensation. It was as if he had stepped outside himself and could see his life from an entirely different perspective.

  For his whole life, up until that point, had been about him. His only priority had been to work out what he wanted, what he was going to do to make himself happy.

  Sure, there had been moments, many moments even, during which he had acted to make those around him happy. No one had ever accused Sean of being selfish. But even those moments of supposed selflessness had, he suddenly saw, been motivated by the fact that doing whatever he was doing for whoever it was made him feel happy.

  At the moment he looked through that window, however, everything changed, and something, his ego perhaps, had temporarily vanished. The only thing that mattered henceforth was April: protecting April, providing for April, making sure April was happy and healthy and loved. The sensation of selflessness, of total devotion to another, come what may, was like nothing he had ever felt before.

  It hadn’t lasted, of course, but that was no small mercy, because who could survive with such intensity of emotion?

  But the sensation had returned from time to time – whenever April was ill, or twice when she went missing, and a few times when she ran towards traffic, or rolled out of a taxi in high heels, drunk, in her late teens. And in those moments he had remembered that she was the only thing that mattered, that protecting this child was his only reason for being on this planet.

  Cassette #9

  Hi Sean.

  April has just been to visit me – she has literally just left – which is why I dug this photo out. She told me that Ronan wants to have a baby! Has she told you that yet? If not, don’t say a word! I’m probably not supposed to tell.

  She’s such an amazing girl. I’m sure she must have her down moments, but she certainly doesn’t force them on anyone else. She’s always ‘up’, always buzzing around at full tilt.

  The idea of her having children is a strange one for me, because I sort of believed that she would never get around to it. I don’t know why I thought that, but I did. Anyway, she’s certainly considering it now, so you may end up a granddad yet.

  If it does happen, please don’t get all weepy about my missing out on it all. I can honestly tell you that I have never longed for grandchildren. Bringing up one child was hard enough, but looking after other people’s children has always struck me as a special kind of hell.

  Looking at the photo, the first thing I remembered was how worried you were that she might be born on April the 1st! Do you remember? You were totally obsessed about her being called an April fool by everyone. You even asked me if I could ‘hang on’ if she did want to come out on April the 1st. I think you believed that I just ha
d to keep my knees together and she’d stay in there.

  In the end she came, or rather was yanked out, at ten minutes to midnight and so was saved the ignominy of being an April fool.

  Do you know, I can’t for the life of me remember how she came to be called April! Isn’t that the strangest thing? I think all these drugs they give me are messing with my brain.

  I have some vague recollection that I was disappointed she’d been born in March as I wanted to call her April, and you said, ‘Let’s do it anyway.’ So perhaps it was as simple as that.

  Giving birth was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. It was far harder than all this chemotherapy lark, and this is, let’s face it, pretty bad. But giving birth was so painful, Sean. There are no words sufficient to describe that level of pain. I would guess, though, that if hitting your funny bone is a three and shutting your finger in the door is, say, a five, and if having your leg sawn off without anaesthetic would be a ten, then giving birth must be a fifteen. At least.

  People say you forget how bad it was but that’s rubbish – it’s just a lie people tell mothers-to-be to make them a little less scared. But they should be scared. It really is that bad.

  I had been led to believe that I could ask for an epidural at any point, but when I finally caved in, by the time I finally thought, Oh, fuck this all-natural lark, there were no anaesthetists available. They were dealing with a pile-up on the M6 or something and were up to their tits in mangled bodies (the nurses’ words, not mine). What a nightmare!

  So it was awful. Eight hours, as I recall, including two hours of screaming, horrendous, Friday the 13th horror-film pain.

  By the time April appeared, she had put me through so much that I hated her. I know you’re supposed to feel some instant, incredible bond with your offspring, but I didn’t, I hated her.

  I kept that to myself though, I think, and over a few days it passed and was replaced by a terrifying kind of love that changed my entire world vision, so that everything I could see, think or imagine came to represent nothing more, nothing less, than a series of dangers to April.

  I became terrified of cars and steps and injections and coughs. I became terrified of kettles and boiling saucepans and dogs and cats and nuclear accidents and just about anything else I could think of that might possibly, somehow, harm our child.

  Human babies are so pathetic, that’s the thing. I mean, I’ve seen wildlife documentaries, and caribou foals, or whatever they’re called, pop out ready to run away from wolves. They can literally sprint about a minute after being born.

  Whereas April . . . she was just this warm lump to be looked after; a dribbling, almost blind, hungry, screaming little bundle of needs, hoping to be protected by me from all of the dangers and all of the evil in the world. It felt absolutely terrifying.

  To say that my emotions were all mixed up would be an understatement. I hated her for hurting me, for scaring me, for depending on me, and yet I loved her for . . . I don’t know. Just for existing, I suppose.

  But if I’m honest, the overriding emotion those first days was definitely terror – terror that something would happen to her; terror that, for no reason, she would suddenly stop breathing. She just seemed so fragile. At times I couldn’t imagine how she’d make it through the next twenty-four hours. Even when April slept, I couldn’t, because I had to watch her breathing.

  I think the midwives and antenatal teachers are more honest about all of this, these days, but back then no one ever told me that I might feel upset, or scared or depressed. You were just supposed to get on with it all. And no matter how weepy and grumpy and unreasonable I may have been (and I know that the answer to that is ‘very’), know that I did my best to keep it all under control. Inside me, things were even worse than they looked on the outside, if you can imagine such a thing. Thank God you were there.

  At least one good thing came out of it all, though. Well, two, including April, obviously. All that fear taught me that I’d been right about you. Because you, my darling, were perfect. I think you must have been almost as scared as I was, but you remained calm and collected, you were reassuring and helpful and devoted at every step.

  People kept saying how much she looked like me, and that, I recall, really upset me. I so wanted someone to tell you that she looked like you.

  But even that didn’t seem to faze you. You just plodded on through, learning to change nappies and give a bottle, and somehow managing to put up with my crazy moods even as you cycled in and out to your courses at the poly. What with the studies and the homework and the part-time jobs, it’s amazing, looking back, how you managed to still be such a perfect dad. But you did. You were a keeper all right!

  It rains solidly for three days. It rains so hard and the sky is so dark that it doesn’t look like May at all. January would be more like it. January in Iceland, perhaps.

  Surprisingly, Sean doesn’t mind. Sunshine makes him feel guilty, as if sitting indoors feeling miserable is perhaps more acceptable during a downpour.

  Yet on Thursday morning, when Sean wakes up to blue skies and a miraculously warm breeze, his spirits unexpectedly lift.

  As he drives to work, the window open and the radio on, he feels better, he admits to himself, than he has in months. He even allows himself to sing along a little to an old Steely Dan song on the radio.

  He works enthusiastically all day. The windows and doors are finished on the retirement home, and he’s now landscaping the gardens – in a virtual way, of course. When a blackbird settles outside his office window and starts to chirp with gusto, he can almost convince himself that he’s there, inside his drawing, doing it with a shovel. He wonders if, just maybe, his grief is waning. He wonders if his fog of depression might be lifting.

  Superstitiously, he fears that even allowing himself to ask that question puts his good mood at risk. It’s as if hope is a ghost in the corner of his vision, a ghost he knows will vanish if he turns to look at it straight on. So he does his best not to wonder how long this will last, and hums the Steely Dan song in his head like a mantra, and concentrates himself fully on the task at hand. Incredibly, the mood lasts all day.

  His arrival at the house that evening feels dangerous and he hesitates, his key in the lock, as he imagines the cool, dark, silent interior. And then, feeling spooked, he withdraws the key and walks down to the river instead.

  It’s a gorgeous evening, and half of Cambridge seems to have had the same idea. The cycle paths are congested with parents on pushbikes and kids on trikes; the beer gardens of the pubs are packed solid with laughing, drinking students. Goodwill seems to float in the air, there for the taking.

  On his way home, Sean sits outside the Fort St George and eats a burger and chips – anything to put off his arrival at the house. Even this, eating alone, does not dent Sean’s day. An old, raggedy pigeon perches on a fence to his right and tips its head from side to side, so he isn’t quite alone, after all.

  Returning to the house, just as the sun is setting, does provide a significant challenge, but instead of submitting to it he’s able, this once, to analyse it. He considers, for the first time ever, that he may have to move, and imagines himself, almost with pleasure, in a modern, architect-designed bachelor flat somewhere. Perhaps he should buy a plot of land and design his own house – a long-forgotten dream.

  On waking the next morning, he lies in bed for a moment before he dares to ask himself the question: has the mood survived a night of dreams? Amazingly, he has woken feeling OK again. Frowning in surprise and silently apologising to Catherine for his good mood, he climbs from the bed, nods with relief and descends to the lounge where he puts an old Simple Minds album – New Gold Dream – on the new turntable before heading through to the kitchen to make breakfast.

  He very nearly makes it all the way to the weekend without being tripped up. But at ten to five that afternoon, as he is closing documents on his computer, the company secretary sidles up and leans on the top of his alcove.

  ‘H
i Sean,’ she says. ‘How are you?’

  Sean scratches his head. He’s tempted, he’s not sure why, to lie. But after a brief internal argument with himself, he says, ‘I’m fine, actually. I’m good.’

  ‘Oh!’ Jenny says.

  Does her surprise indicate reproach or is Sean being paranoid? Perhaps his first instinct to lie was the right one. Perhaps he’s not allowed to feel this good just yet.

  ‘Oh,’ Jenny says, a second time. ‘Well, that’s good. That’s great, Sean.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sean says, frowning. ‘Sorry, but did you want something specific? Because I was about to head off.’

  ‘Oh?’ Jenny says, glancing at her watch. ‘You’re usually such a night owl. Still, I suppose it is such a lovely weekend.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It can wait till Monday,’ Jenny says. ‘Not much longer, but it can wait till then.’

  ‘What can?’ Sean asks.

  ‘Oh, nothing important,’ Jenny says. ‘Just holidays. I need to slot your dates into the rota. Everyone else has done theirs. You’re the last one.’

  ‘Right,’ Sean says, trying not to think about the implications of this, trying desperately not to realise that this simple, stupid question has the power to demolish his upswing. ‘I’ll, um, give you the dates on Monday,’ he says, forcing a smile.

  ‘Great,’ Jenny says. ‘Um, well, have a good weekend.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Sean says.

  ‘And, erm, Sean,’ Jenny adds as she leaves. ‘It’s good to see you doing so well.’

  By the time the spinning wheel has vanished and Sean’s computer screen has gone blank, he’s no longer doing well. He’s wondering, instead, how to survive this weekend, how to make it through to Monday now that the subject of the next twelve months’ holidays has been launched, like a cruise missile, at his oh-so-fragile cheer.

  Because what, after all, could be more depressing than trying to work out when he wants to take five weeks of holiday? Five weeks to be spent alone. What could possibly be worse than deciding what he should do and where he should go? Is there even any possible destination that would not make him feel ten times more scared and one hundred times more vulnerable than he does right now?