Rosie Thomas - If My Father Loved Me

‘Time to go to sleep now.’

‘Lie down too.’

I slid under the duvet with her. She put her thumb in her mouth and began winding one of her curls round her forefinger. Lying there with my arms round her and her breath on my face, I felt some of the sadness melt away.

Downstairs again Penny was standing looking out of the window at the little backyard. Evelyn had put some tubs out there and there had been a spring display of daffodils.

‘She wants you to say goodnight. She’s nearly asleep.’

‘Do you want to stay and have a glass of wine?’

My own children would be waiting for me at home.

‘Thanks. Not tonight.’

‘See you tomorrow, then.’

I touched Penny’s shoulder. She was much shorter than me. She had always been squarely built and now, in her contentment, she was putting on weight.

I walked home along the canal towpath. The gates that gave access to it were locked at dusk, but the railings were easy to climb. Muggers and junkies hung out down there, especially in the thick darkness under the bridges, but tonight I wanted the silence and solitude of the path instead of threading the longer way through the busy streets. Lights were reflected as broken tenements of yellow and silver in the flat water, and dripping water echoed my footsteps. The city traffic sounded muffled; the rustle of rats clawing the litter in the rough grass on the land side was much louder. I walked briskly and saw no one.

Lola was on the phone. She mouthed ‘hello’ at me as I came in. When she hung up she said, ‘Mum, that was Ollie. I said I’d go and meet him and Sam for a drink, is that okay with you?’

She had stayed in with Jack, waiting for me to come back. Having her at home in university holidays had great benefits for me, although I tried not to take advantage of this too often. And I was glad that she felt like going out with her friends tonight. She had cried enough for Ted. I smiled at her. ‘Of course it is. Where is he?’

‘He said he was going to bed.’

‘Did he talk to you?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think he didn’t talk to you.’

‘Precisely.’

Lola and I have always discussed almost everything. Once she had forgiven me for leaving her father and got over the extremes of adolescent rebelliousness that followed it, that is. I feared sometimes that because I didn’t have a husband I admitted too many of my anxieties to her, but her response always was that she would rather know what affected me because whatever it was actually affected all three of us. Lola is always level-headed. In her case at least the cycle of family wrongness has been broken. And even her concern about Jack’s oddness wasn’t as deep as mine. ‘Sure, he’s kind of a weird kid. But not as weird as some, believe me. He’ll grow out of the bird thing, and the not talking. Probably when he gets a girlfriend.’

‘I’d just like him to have some friends, let alone a girl.’

‘Mum, he’s okay.’

She picked up her denim jacket now, with its badges and graffiti, and stitched-on bits of ribbon and braid. She was eager to get on her way. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’ So I didn’t share everything with her.

Lola whirled out of the house. I went upstairs, knocked softly on Jack’s door and, when there was no answer, turned the knob. Sometimes he bolted it but tonight it opened. The light was out and I could hear his breathing, although something told me he wasn’t asleep. ‘Jack?’

There was no answer.

Cassie’s room had been sweet with the innocence and trustingness of babyhood, but in here all I could pick up was the darkness of rejection.

‘Goodnight,’ I whispered.

He walked off up the road, very slowly, his bag slouched across his back and the soles of his trainers barely lifting off the pavement. At the corner he paused and looked right and left, but he never glanced over his shoulder to see if I was still standing in the doorway of the house. I watched until he turned left, in the direction of school, and plodded out of my sight. Only then did I go back inside and begin to put together my things for work.

I was shaking with the tension of the morning. It was the third day of the summer term and every morning so far Jack had refused to get out of bed. Then, when I finally hauled him out from under the covers, he refused to get dressed. He didn’t speak, let alone argue; once movement became unavoidable he just did everything very, very slowly.

‘Jack, you have to go to school. Everybody does. It’s a fact of life.’

He shrugged and turned away. While I stood over him, he had got as far as putting on his school shirt and it hung loose over his pyjama bottoms. I could see faint blue veins under the white skin of his chest and his vulnerability made me want to hold him, but I knew if I tried to touch him he would pull away.

‘Jack, we have to talk about this.’

‘ Talk ,’ he muttered finally, as if the mere suggestion exasperated him.

‘Yes, talk.’ I struggled to be patient and moderate. You could ache for him, for what he was going through, and at the same time irritation made you long to slap him. Hard.

‘Mum.’

‘Yes?’ I said eagerly.

‘Go away if you want me to get dressed.’

‘I’ll make you some toast. Would you like an egg?’

‘No.’

‘Downstairs in five minutes, please.’

Five minutes turned into fifteen. He ate his toast very slowly while I sat waiting.

‘You’re going to be late.’

‘Oh no .’

‘For God’s sake,’ I snapped, ‘what’s the matter with you? What’s wrong with school? If you won’t talk to me or anyone else how can we help you? What’s wrong?’

Jack fumbled with a knife, then dropped it with a clatter. He looked around the kitchen as if surveying his life, and then said out of a pinched mouth, ‘Everything.’

The bleakness of this was unbearable.

I remembered how it felt to be his age, at the mercy of the world and powerless to change anything. I tried to touch his hand but he pulled away as if my fingertips might burn him.

I took a breath. ‘Jack, listen. It just seems like everything, you know. It isn’t so bad. There are lots of things you enjoy and look forward to.’ Although if he had pressed me to name them, I couldn’t have got much beyond seagulls. ‘And you’ve got us, Lola and me, and your dad as well. If we try and work out what’s most wrong, I can help you.’ This sounded feeble, even to my own ears.

There was a small silence. Then he said flatly, ‘You?’

I understood that everything mostly meant his life in this house, with me and without his father.

It wasn’t that he didn’t see Tony: the three and a half weeks since Ted’s death had spanned the school Easter holidays and the two of them had been away together for three days’ fishing in Devon. Lola could have gone too, but she had preferred to stay in London. Once or twice a month Jack went over to Twickenham to spend a night with Tony and his second family, and there were weekday evenings too when he and Lola went out for pizza or a film with him. But that wasn’t the same as having a father who lived in the same house and didn’t have to portion out his time with such meticulous care.