Anjali Joseph - The Living

After a while he sat next to me. Mum, can I go out and smoke?

Let’s go, I said.

Is that all right?

Well, what are we waiting for? I said. As though if we sat there long enough Dad would walk in. Everything would be normal. I’d lost track of what that was.

I went up to Mum. We’re off now, I said. I’ll come and see you. I’ll ring you before.

Alison looked disbelieving.

See you soon, Jason said to them. He squeezed Mum’s shoulder. Bye, Auntie Alison. He’s good at things like this. He manages to seem warm, without committing to anything. They all say he’s a lovely boy.

We walked home slowly. The afternoon was warm. The sun and the early start and not having eaten made me feel lightheaded. The hot pavement and the smells of petrol in the air and grass in the verges put me back in a summer twenty years ago, or more. Eating an ice lolly shaped like a spaceship sat on the parapet outside the shop, with Katie, both of us swinging our legs and frowning into the sun. The whole summer ahead of us, nothing to do except work and go out and think about boys.

Are you all right, Mum? said the boy next to me. He could have been a friend from long ago, and he looked suspiciously like the first boy I’d fallen in love with, but that part of my life was gone. I was too tired to put everything in order. Just the summer, and petrol, grass, hot air, the smell of disappointment, a disappointment you couldn’t explain.

That was horrible, wasn’t it? I said. He lit a cigarette, gave it to me, lit another for himself.

Let’s get ice cream on the way home, I said. Let’s sit in the garden. And let’s get a bottle of something.

He nodded.

When we were in the garden, him in his shorts, me in a really old summer dress, faded from blue to a washing-powder colour, and us halfway through a bottle of Cava that we’d bought in the Spar because it seemed like a special occasion moment and I quite fancied it, Jason said, Mum.

Yes, I said after a bit. I had my knackered straw hat over the top of my face and I was lying on my back on the rug.

I want to ask you some stuff about my dad.

Oh, I said.

I’ve been thinking about him, he said.

Right. I tried sitting up, and rolled on to my side instead. The light was bright behind Jason’s head. His voice was low and hummed with, something. Maybe he was worried I’d get angry.

What do you want to know? I said. You know I haven’t heard from him.

I know. That’s not it.

I waited. I sat up again and looked in my glass. I poured us both some more wine.

Jason crossed his feet at the ankles. He held one ankle with his hand. He looked up at me. Tell me about him, he said. What was he like?

What was he like?

He nodded and cleared his throat. Yeah, he said.

I don’t know what order to tell you, I said.

Tell me as you think of it. What was he like when you first knew each other?

I was just thinking about that, I said. I laughed. You know, for years in my mind he was a man. We were young, but he was the first man I was with, the first man I loved. You know.

A nod.

And now, I said, it’s so strange, because even though he was about your age when we — when I first knew him, he seems so much younger. And I do. Than you. I don’t know if it’s because I’m looking back, or we were just younger then, younger than people your age are now. Or what.

I put the hat on my head. The first thing I thought of when you asked what he was like was his bedroom, I said.

Jason looked appalled. I laughed. Not like that. But it was exactly like him. There was a mattress on the floor. A tape player. A desk. His portfolio case, with his drawings. There’d be tapes on the floor, and his sketchbook. And a hoodie on the back of the chair. His tobacco on the floor near the bed. A lamp. You know he smoked rollies, it wasn’t that cool to smoke rollies then.

He nodded.

Did I ever tell you the kinds of things he used to draw?

No.

Well, he had to draw stuff for his course. Art foundation. Buildings, portraits, studies, still lifes. But when he was at home listening to music he’d draw two things over and over. One was these drawings that were like dreams, and in them there’d be girls with long hair, and trees, and houses, and animals, but not animals you could recognise, all kind of melted into each other. I used to ask him what they were and once he said they’re maps of dreams. Maps of dreams. I loved being around someone who’d talk like that. It wasn’t exactly normal.

Grin from Jason; no comment. I wondered if he was pegging his mother as the kind of girl who fell for this sort of thing — bad drawings of unicorns and a bit of floaty music.

The other thing he used to draw a lot, over and over, was this tree next to his window, I said. It was an old house, up near Mousehold. Sash windows. There was a tree outside — I think it was a horse chestnut. The branches hung past the window, that was the view from the bed and he’d draw it quickly most days, some days spend ages, do it in watercolour or acrylic or whatever. He had this series of drawings and paintings of the view from the window. Leaves of different colours. He used to say this thing, a quotation, he said, Claire, Picasso said painting is like keeping a diary. He loved that.

I was enjoying talking about it. It surprised me.

One of the reasons I think about his room is that it really reminds me of him, I said. The things that were special about him. He did things a different way from other people I knew. I started plaiting three blades of grass to make a rope, tore one, and dropped it. Like, he had a mattress on the floor instead of a bed. Or he didn’t have much stuff. He could make something amazing out of very little.

I looked at my son. He was concentrating.

I think because they’d moved around so much, you know, the family, I went on. Because of his dad’s job. He was good at being self-contained, Pete. I’d never known anyone like that. He was patient, as well. He could be on his own a lot. He didn’t get bored. Um, what else? I asked myself. I saw Pete, around the first time he began to appear. I’d never really noticed him.

That’s another thing, I said. He was good-looking, your dad. You look a lot like him. He was tall like you, same colouring, you know that. He was a little thinner. His hair was a bit long, not super-long. Not like long. Maybe just around here. I waved at my neck. He wore those flannel shirts a lot of people wore. I never really noticed him before I knew him, maybe because he was new. He was good at fitting in without being noticed.

I looked into my son’s blue eyes.

And even though he was so good-looking, because he wasn’t one of the boys that was considered fit, he just didn’t really get noticed. It’s funny how that happens in school.

Jason nodded. Yeah, he said.

You know, I said, I bet it wouldn’t be that difficult to find him now. With the internet. Is that what you were thinking?

He cleared his throat. I’ve looked, he said. It’s a common name.

Yeah. Peter Stephenson.

But someone — a friend of mine — helped me look, he said. She found someone that might be him. I was going to write to that person and find out. There was a drawing, instead of a profile picture. It looked a bit like me. That’s what she noticed.

I drank what was left in my glass. When was this? I said.

Only in the last couple of months, really.

I see.

But I didn’t email him, Jason said. I don’t want to, yet. When — when you realised you were pregnant with me, what did he say?

I thought about it. I can’t really remember, Jason, I said. We were both really surprised, and then there was telling my parents. Everything became a nightmare. Nan said I could live with her. I can’t remember what Pete said he was going to do. I think there was talk of him getting a job. His parents were going to move again in a few months. He said something about the army. And he was the least likely person you could think of to join the army, honestly. There was that shop then, the same one that’s there now, the army recruiters.