Caryl Phillips - In the Falling Snow

At the start of Brenda’s final summer, he was able to introduce her to Annabelle, and the two of them spent time alone upstairs talking, although he never asked either one of them what it was they had talked about. After his girlfriend had taken her photograph, and left to catch the train south in order that she might begin her summer job at the Wiltshire Times , he took Brenda a cup of tea and sat on the edge of her bed.

‘Cancer, darling. Trust me, it’s a bugger.’ She laughed. ‘It’s even more stubborn than I am.’

He smiled weakly at her, but he remained too shocked to say anything in return.

‘Don’t look like that. I’m not going anywhere yet. It’ll take more than some stupid tumour to finish me off.’

‘Does my dad know?’

She laughed now, the kind of large expansive laugh that she always produced when she was at her happiest.

‘Let’s just say, I don’t think he’d be too interested, do you?’

For a moment he wanted to suggest that despite his own problems with the man, his father maybe wasn’t quite that heartless, but he didn’t want to argue. Brenda took his hand and demanded to know everything about Annabelle, and about university, and she pressed him about what he might do after finishing his degree, but his reeling mind was only able to half-concentrate on her words.

Six weeks later Brenda was dead. The funeral was a miserable affair, attended by a handful of her relatives, some of whom he had heard of but never met, and a small delegation of Brenda’s colleagues and clients from the hairdressing salon. Predictably, his father chose not to attend, and after the coffin had been lowered into the ground, and the priest had said his few words then closed his book, he made his way back to the train station and then back to university without bothering to visit his father. As his father sleeps on the sofa, the cup of tea on the floor having long gone cold, it frustrates him to think that the two of them have never had a proper conversation about the woman who became a second mother to him. He understands that his father’s unforgiving attitude towards Brenda has always been fed by his conviction that she betrayed him by calling the police to take him away, despite the fact that even he remembers that his father’s response to any disagreement was to strip half-naked or bury himself in a book. What else was Brenda supposed to do? Over the years his father’s negative feelings have, of course, been further informed by his stubborn belief that during his second stay in hospital Brenda habitually slept around, but this woman looked after him. It was Brenda herself who told him that when she went to see the doctor about the situation with her husband, the man suggested committing her husband and then having the child fostered, but Brenda remembered her promise to him and told the doctor to ‘fuck off’. Nobody was taking ‘her Keith’ from her. He leans forward and shakes his father gently by the shoulder and asks him if he is ready now to go up to bed. His father does not answer, he just gets to his feet and then sneezes. He passes his father a paper tissue, which he waves away, and then his father pulls a crumpled handkerchief from his back pocket and again he sneezes and noisily blows his nose into the handkerchief.

‘Do you want me to bring you anything upstairs? Another cup of tea, maybe?’

‘No, the walk finish me off, and I just need to get a little sleep then everything is going to be just fine, okay?’

He watches as his father begins to slowly drag himself upstairs. Eventually he hears the bedroom door slam shut, and then he turns up the volume on the television remote and tries not to think about his father’s predicament.

In the morning, he tells his father that he went to the cemetery and put flowers on Brenda’s grave. His father barely looks up from his Daily Mirror , he simply nods and continues to read.

‘Would you rather I hadn’t told you?’

His father puts down the newspaper and looks closely at him for some time before answering.

‘The truth is, I don’t care what you feel you must do about Brenda. It don’t have anything to do with me, and I don’t have no feelings for the woman.’

‘Brenda was like another mother. I can’t ignore her.’

‘Who is asking you to ignore her? You have a different relationship with the woman than I do, so you must do what you want to do.’

‘Don’t you ever think about her? I mean, she was your wife.’

His father folds his newspaper in half, and then in half again, but he keeps a tight grip on it. ‘I was working hard to make some money so that things can be better for all of us, but she don’t want to listen. She get a ring on her finger and then suddenly she have her own ideas. And then she gets rid of me, and takes you away, and when I get out the hospital and I hearing all kinds of things about her seeing other men and you think that this is decent or even respectful behaviour? I don’t see why a man, including this man, should have to put up with it.’ He tosses the Daily Mirror on to the table and shakes his head. ‘I’m grateful to Brenda for looking after you, and she did a good job and everything, but my wife is not supposed to be climbing into another man’s bed, do you understand? Anyhow, this is a long time ago, and I move on, and she move on, and that’s just how it is with big people. You learn to get on with your life and put both good and bad behind you. Anything else you want to know?’

He knows that he has to say something further for he fears that once his father closes this conversation it might never again be opened up.

‘Don’t you ever miss Brenda?’

‘A woman is supposed to look after her husband, not have the police come to his house and take him away.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Then what is your damn point?’

‘I’m not sure that I’ve got a point.’

His father shakes his head. ‘Women can say whatever they like, and do whatever they want to do, and they get away with it. And if you don’t know that by now then I feel sorry for you.’

‘I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.’

‘Boy, there’s no reason for you to get upset. I going down the centre for a while. You want to come and help out? Today they do form-filling and so forth.’

He looks quizzically at his father, who slowly climbs to his feet and picks up his pork-pie hat.

‘They fill out paperwork, and everyone helps. Paperwork for pension cards, bus pass, social security, passport, anything you can think of. They choose one day a week on which they can just get everybody together to do it. Maybe you can help instead of trying to bite off my blasted head about Saint Brenda.’

He says nothing in response to his father.

‘Well, you just going to stare at me?’

He sits with Baron, who has no idea what to do with the tax exemption form that he has filled in as best he can. He takes the pen from the older man and quickly checks the right boxes, and then pushes the form back in front of Baron for his signature.

‘Don’t bother with the date. I can fill that in.’

‘So I’m going to get some money from the people?’

‘I don’t know about that, but you shouldn’t be getting any more tax demands.’

‘I just throw them away anyhow.’

He dates the form and then hands it back to Baron, who tucks it into the torn and sellotaped pocket of his brown leather jacket.

‘Your father seem all right to you?’

‘The house is in a hell of a state.’

‘Your father is difficult like a mule, and lonely too. He long ago finished messing around with the ladies.’ Baron smiles a broad toothless grin. ‘All of us put those days behind us, but it’s not good for him sitting alone in the house. He can get a flatlet upstairs like the rest of us and at least we can keep each other company. He can even go back to pretending he’s still reading plenty of books and nobody will laugh at him like in the old days. I can make sure of that. What do you say? I always understand your father a little better when I see how he is around you.’