Nine Lives, Page 4

Bending down he saw a curved piece of metal poking out from beneath an old mattress.

  ‘Good heavens! When did I last see you?’ And puffing and panting he struggled to rescue it.

  The sledge was a Christmas present for the boys back when they were still at junior school; but it hadn’t snowed until well into January that year. He’d promised them a morning on Griffin Hill. They’d wrap up, he said, and have contests about who could stay on longest or slide the furthest without using their hands. Then he’d bring them back home for hot chocolate and flapjacks.

  ‘Those were the days,’ he chuckled to himself, running his fingers over the dusty wood.

  Then a memory flashed into his mind, and it wasn’t about squealing children’s voices or steam rising from hot chocolate. It was the sound of two small voices pleading with him to stop watching television, because he’d promised and it would be warm and sunny the next day. ‘Please, Dad? Please!’

  But the boys had sledged on Griffin Hill, he was sure. Yes, Kyle ended up with pneumonia because they’d stayed out until after dark that night, squeezing the last minutes of fun out of the final hours of snowfall. He burped and his mouth was awash with acid. ‘So where was I?’ In front of the television, of course, watching the match that was so much more important than his own children. He’d watched to the very last kick, too, even though it was dark and cold and Sam was blackguarding him to go look for them. There was passion in their marriage then, all right.

  More spectral memories rose up in quick succession. All had the common denominators of the father denying a request and disappointment spreading over some and sometimes all the faces of his family. Until they stopped asking and left him alone. But even that he hadn’t noticed.

  Christian slumped down onto the sledge, feeling dizzy and nauseous. He looked around the walls and saw an inflatable ring he had never floated in, a cricket bat he had never struck a ball with, an easel he had never painted on.

  ‘Where have I been all my life?’

  Sam saw the disconsolate look on her husband’s face through the kitchen window, but looked away immediately. But then why shouldn’t she? Had he ever given a moment’s thought until now about how she felt, what she wanted? He and Sam had got married twenty-nine years ago, but the marriage had not lasted nearly that long. Mechanically applying gloss paint to the banister the thought had struck him whether he’d ever been ‘married’ in the deeper sense of the word at all. And as for being a father… He decided the rest of the painting could wait.

  ‘All right, boys?’ he asked brightly.

  They were on the settee, watching television. He did not consider them to be particularly close as brothers, but then hadn’t there been that thing about Kyle being bullied when he was eight? Yes, Sam said it was Jason who ‘sorted it out’. So maybe they were close then at least. But now? The ignorance about his sons’ relationship nagged at him like a boil between his buttocks.

  ‘We’re going soon,’ Kyle declared, not taking his eyes from the screen.

  ‘It’s all right. I wasn’t kicking you out.’ Though he would not have tried; they both contributed to the family budget now. ‘No, actually I wanted us to have a chat.’

  This time Jason turned to look at him. No longer a boy, he wore a jazzy shirt and a smart haircut, aftershave and a diamond ear stud. ‘About what?’

  ‘Oh, nothing in particular. I just fancied a chat, that’s all.’

  ‘All right, fine,’ Jason answered, turning back to the television.

  Just then Sam came in. ‘Stairs look lovely, Chris. Is it dry yet?’

  ‘Give it another hour, love. It’s gloss.’

  Kyle yawned and got up.

  ‘You off out?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I’m meeting the guys at the Wagon and Horses.’

  ‘Oh. Yer. Thursday, five-a-side. It’s been a quick week this one.’

  Not for me it hasn’t, Christian mused, watching events from the sidelines. Was Kyle any good at football? And who exactly were ‘the guys’?

  ‘I’m off, too,’ Jason sighed. He paused as he passed his mother, looking a little forlorn.

  ‘How’s that thing at work?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s getting better - bit by bit,’ he smiled. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  She squeezed his hand as he left the room, leaving Sam with her husband, the Anonymous spectator. This dialogue, this relationship they all had, it could not have sprung up overnight. It must always have been this way; yet he had never noticed. Why? He felt sick again, his breathing restricted and uncomfortable.

  ‘Sam,’ he blurted out. She stared back at him. ‘The boys…Kyle and Jason.’

  She sat next to him and picked up a magazine. ‘What about them?’

  ‘What do they like doing?’

  ‘Oh, the usual: girls, cars, football.’ She wasn’t even looking at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘I mean, what do they want from life?’

  Sam looked up then and scowled. ‘You want them out, don’t you?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Christian stressed, bemused by her defensiveness. ‘It’s just that they’ve grown up so fast and I haven’t…’ He struggled to put his feelings into words. Sam did as little to help him as she could, flicking the glossy pages before her. ‘Sam, I’ve been thinking…about us, about the family…’

  Sam froze in mid-flick. ‘Don’t do this, Chris,’ she said in a hard, dark voice he had never heard before. ‘I can’t.’ As if she were a spirit speaking to him through the medium of a worn-out housewife.

  ‘What do you mean? Don’t do what?’

  ‘All this,’ she continued, her eyes fixed on the magazine, ‘reparation. ‘It’s not fair. I just can’t.’

  But he wanted, needed to reach her. ‘Sam, this lump…’

  ‘You said it was gone.’

  ‘Yes, but you and me - us - we’re still here.’ He moved closer, aching to hold her but Scared of her reaction - and also his own. ‘I know I’ve not been…Sam, I feel like I’ve been asleep for years but now I’m waking up.’ There, it was out. Only problem was, he seemed to have awoken into a new nightmare.

  Sam looked away. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ And a second later she was gone, her face a wooden facade, her exit a whorl of unspoken truths and buried frustrations.

  Well that could have gone better, a sarcastic inner voice mocked. He squeezed his eyes tight.

  ‘She’ll come around,’ he told the empty living room. But what if she didn’t?

  Christian went to work early on Mondays, the dependable breadwinner, did overtime, and his spare time he devoted to re-painting the hall, then the lounge, then the kitchen and bathroom. He put shelving up, took Sam to furniture stores, ordered a small skip and halved the contents of the garden shed. But still it made no difference. His family treated him exactly as they always had. He thought about having it out with them, but not knowing where to start, he sulked instead.

  His sleep remained fleeting and when he did drop off, usually around four in the morning, he would dream about Dr. Morgan and his ice lolly stick. Only they were not in the consulting room but the Cheever’s living room. Sam and the boys - now children again - were huddled in a corner whispering in intimate collusion, whilst Christian had his head draped over the back of the settee. Dr. Morgan raised his eyebrows, just as he had in real life, only this time he had found something. ‘There!’ he said, poking with his wooden probe. Fire erupted in Christian’s head and he screamed out in pain. ‘There!’ the consultant repeated, prodding more firmly. Christian struggled to escape but Dr. Morgan had his knee on his chest, pinning him down. ‘There!’ The pain was excruciating. He moaned to his wife and sons but they seemed not to hear him. They started laughing, huddling closer together; and the more he screamed and begged for help the more they laughed and huddled together.

  ‘Right there!’ Invariably Christian would awaken sweating, sitting upright in bed. Once he woke everyone up screaming. In desperation he redoubled his efforts around the home, setting his sights on a co
mplete re-landscaping of the back garden.

  He stopped sulking because no one was noticing; but they did not notice him giving it up either. Kyle and Jason turned down his invitations to go for a drink; and no, their rooms were just fine the way they were, thanks. There seemed to be no way forward; neither was there a way back. The tumour was gone but it had left a wound he could not have foreseen, an ugly disfigurement his family recoiled from. Yet they would not have wished him dead, either. He wondered if he was becoming depressed, and decided alcoholism would be preferable.

  Then one morning he noticed there was something pink in the toilet bowl among the toilet tissue when he stood up. He drew in a deep breath, recalling what Dr. Morgan had said about cancerous cells forming tumours elsewhere in the body. But it was only the beetroot from his salad of the night before, he remembered. He stared into the bowl for several seconds more, as if there were something more to see. But whatever it was his mind was keeping it a secret, so he flushed and went downstairs to announce his plans for the back garden.

  Sam was in the kitchen, washing up. Her hair was tied back but a rogue strand had escaped and fallen across her face. She wasn’t fifty yet, but she still looked tired, listless and disaffected, like a cleaner mechanically enduring overtime for the extra cash it would bring in. Was that what kept them together now, duty and convention? Or was it worse than that: did she do what she did simply because there was no viable alternative?

  He