Caryl Phillips - In the Falling Snow

He remembers that it was a Monday. He came home from school an hour later than usual, for he had to stay behind for football practice. As he turned the corner at the end of the street, he saw Brenda on the doorstep talking with a small congregation of neighbours. They looked up and noticed him and, still in his football boots, he began to show off and he started happily to slip and slide from one smooth stone to the next. However, by the time he reached Brenda the neighbours had disappeared, and Brenda draped an arm around his narrow shoulders and ushered him inside. She didn’t waste time. ‘Listen love, your dad won’t be coming back for a while. He’s in hospital.’ He felt momentarily ashamed for he had almost forgotten the confusion of the previous night when the police had come and taken his father away.

‘Are we going to visit?’

Brenda ran her hand across the top of his head and assured him that they would visit. ‘Maybe over the weekend.’ However, when Saturday came she dressed him neatly in his school clothes, and combed his hair in silence, and he had a feeling that this wasn’t an ordinary hospital that they would be visiting.

The pair of them were finally escorted into the sterile visiting room, but his father didn’t recognise either of them, or if he did he pretended not to. His father sat stiffly in a chair by the window and stared out into the garden. He remembered that the man looked old, and that while his hair was still black he seemed to be growing a grey beard. He tried to see what he was looking at, but apart from a line of tall trees in the background that blocked the view, and an empty lawn in the foreground, there was nothing. Nobody playing or relaxing, no birds or animals, and he didn’t understand what the man was staring at. He and Brenda stood together, and she talked enthusiastically to his father, and asked him how he was, and if he needed anything, while the male nurse who had escorted them hovered impatiently by the door and began to tap his foot against the linoleum floor. After a few minutes, he felt the tears beginning to well up and he started to cry, although he was careful not to make a sound. Brenda pulled him closer to her side and looked down. ‘Okay, honey, don’t worry we’ll go now.’ His nose had started to run, and he didn’t have a handkerchief, but he didn’t want to wipe his nose on the sleeve of his school blazer. Brenda reached into her handbag and pulled out a small packet of tissues which she pushed into his hand. When they reached home he told her that he didn’t want to visit again, for this silent man didn’t know who he was. Brenda listened sympathetically, and tried hard to persuade him to accompany her on the Saturday excursion, but once they were settled in the new house eventually she too stopped visiting, which made him feel better about everything.

The man who knocked on their door on his thirteenth birthday was a stranger to him. He enjoyed living with Brenda, even though his friends at school thought it a bit odd, but he soon accustomed himself to telling everybody that his parents had gone back to the West Indies. According to his story, they wanted him to stay in England and get an education and so they had decided to leave him with a close family friend. Unfortunately, the sudden appearance of the cold-looking man standing at the door, who silently handed him a thirteenth birthday card in an envelope, and then a watch in a long, thin, transparent box, suddenly complicated his life. Brenda shouted through from the living room and asked who was at the door, but he just stared at the stranger and neither one of them said a word. ‘Well?’ shouted Brenda. He heard her walking towards him, and he turned as she stepped into the hallway. She had a half-washed saucepan in her hands.

‘Earl?’ The man said nothing in reply. ‘Bloody hell, why didn’t you tell me they were letting you out?’

‘I have to report to you?’

He looked at Brenda, then back at this man who was his father, and he realised that even after all these years there was still animosity between them.

‘Look, do you want to come in?’

‘I just want to wish my son a happy birthday and let him know that I want him living with me.’

‘Well, I’m not sure that this is the best time to be talking about all of this.’

‘And who are you to talk to me about my own son?’

Brenda sighed and gathered herself. ‘Earl, I am the woman who has clothed and fed Keith for the past five years.’

‘Well, if you didn’t lock me up then I’d have done my duty by him. I don’t have no desire to come into your place, but I’ll soon be back for my son.’

He watched as his father turned and strode down the short path to the pedestrian walkway before disappearing in the direction of the bus stop. He looked up at the sky, where the clouds were high and heavy with snow, and followed a flight of birds which dropped and fell, one after the other, as their leader banked and led them in the direction of a warmer climate for the winter. The birthday card and watch felt clammy in his hands. After what seemed like an age, Brenda slowly closed the door.

Annabelle came downstairs so quietly that he didn’t hear her. She startled him as she opened the living room door, and he rubbed his eyes and realised that he must have drifted off. She flopped down on to the sofa next to him and hooked one leg over both of his knees.

‘She’s gone to sleep, poor woman. She’s exhausted. Does she have any friends or family that can come over and maybe just keep her company? Besides you, that is.’

‘Well I imagine she’s got friends from the hairdresser’s.’

‘Hairdresser’s?’

‘I told you, she’s a hairdresser.’

‘Well there’s irony. You know she has no hair. She’s wearing a wig.’

He looked across at Annabelle. ‘I thought her hair looked strange.’

‘I know you’ve told me, but you used to spend weekends with her and the weekdays with your father, right?’

‘That was the arrangement they came to. He’s never forgiven her for having him sectioned in the mental hospital, but once he got custody he never tried to stop me seeing her.’

‘That’s good.’ Annabelle looked at him. ‘Well, it is good, isn’t it?’

‘So what do you want me to do, give him a medal?’

‘Well, from what you’ve told me she probably did the right thing getting him packed off to a hospital.’

‘Try telling him that.’ He unhooked her leg and stood up. ‘Are you hungry? I can see if there’s anything in the fridge.’

Annabelle shook her head. ‘Don’t bother, I’ve already looked. If you tell me where the shops are I’ll go and get something. When she wakes up I’m going to ask if she minds my taking a picture of her. She’s got an amazing face. And then I should probably get going.’

‘Don’t you want to stay the night?’

‘I wanted to meet Brenda and now I’ve met her. The two of you should be together. And you know, the sooner I get started on the summer the sooner it will be over. Then I can join you again. Make sense?’

He sat back down and leaned over and picked up both of her hands. He kissed the back of one, and then the other.

‘Thanks. I’m glad you’re here.’

The Wynton Marsalis CD comes to an abrupt end and for a moment he thinks about going back into the kitchen and slicing off another hunk of Gruyère. He has not eaten dinner, but the truth is he isn’t hungry. It is still mid-evening, so there is time to do more work on the book, or at least re-read his notes. He looks across at his neatly organised desk, but he does not leave the sofa. He reaches out a hand and picks up the remote for the television. The book can wait. That’s enough work for one day, and the truth is he doesn’t wish to be reminded of the library or the girl. Tomorrow morning he will get up early and resume work on the book. He won’t set the alarm, but if he goes to bed at a reasonable hour he should be able to make a timely start. That much he is sure of. He points the remote at the television set.