Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls - And Other Stories

Why didn’t she pack her bags? Was she dead already? Did the memory of that close-knit foursome at school seem less rosy now that there was a real possibility of her joining them? Or was it Bunny? He was funny, he was kind, he was grateful. For the first time in her life she had someone who needed her, and she couldn’t imagine sitting by the boating lake in Ally Pally or walking down Shaftesbury Avenue knowing she’d abandoned him to a life that was shrinking rapidly to a single room four hundred miles away.

Bunny liked her to read the paper out loud. He liked to beat her at chess and lose to her at Monopoly. They watched DVDs she picked up from the bargain box in Blockbuster. Often she would bring a cake, take a small piece for herself and make no comment as he worked his way through the rest. Sometimes she would go into the back garden to smoke and come back ten minutes later smelling of cigarettes. He yearned for her to lean over one day and push her dirty tongue into his mouth. Could you ask someone to do that kind of thing? Just as a favour? Because the thought of never being kissed again tore open a hole in his chest.

One evening when they were watching a documentary about Bletchley Park Bunny’s mother let herself in. She called out a casual hello, hung up her coat, came into the living room and said, “So we meet at last,” as if this were a surprise. “I don’t think Bunny has ever told me your name.”

“Leah.” She didn’t hold out her hand.

The two women swapped pleasantries for a couple of scratchy minutes then his mother said, “You bring him biscuits.”

“Sometimes,” said Leah.

“You know you’re killing him.”

“They’re just biscuits.”

“I’ve looked after my son for nearly thirty years.”

“You don’t like me coming here, do you?” said Leah. “You want him all to yourself.”

His mother straightened her back. “I just don’t want him spending his time with someone like you.”

Bunny knew he should intervene but he was not in the habit of telling either of them what they should or should not do, and in truth he was flattered to find himself being fought over.

“Someone like me?” said Leah. “What does that mean, precisely?”

Bunny had imagined this argument many times. He had always wanted Leah to win, but now that it was happening he wondered if his mother might be right after all. Leah was not his wife, not his girlfriend, not a part of his family. She could abandon him tomorrow.

His mother stepped close to Leah and said, quietly, “You little bitch. I’ve got your number.”

On the table beside the sofa there was a diorama of five British soldiers surrounding a crashed Messerschmitt, the dead pilot slumped forward in the smashed cockpit. Bunny had spent five weeks making it. His mother swept it off the table and walked out of the house, slamming the door behind her.

It was the end of summer, but instead of cool winds and rainy days a thick grey cloud settled over the town so that the air felt tepid and second-hand. Two children at the end of the street were killed by a police car chasing a stolen van. Nasir Iqbal and Javed Burrows. The rear wheels lost traction on the bend and the vehicle mounted the pavement knocking over a brick wall behind which the boys were playing cricket. He knew their names because they were painted on the street in big white letters. The driver of the car and his colleague were spirited away before the family and neighbours fully understood what had happened. The next police officers at the scene were greeted by a volley of stones and glass bottles and one of their cars was rolled onto its roof.

There was a small riot every evening for a fortnight. Through the curtains Bunny saw the blue lights of police vans and heard whoops and explosions which sounded to him more like people celebrating a victory than mourning a loss.

He decided that for the time being he wouldn’t leave the house. He did not want to find himself surrounded by an angry crowd in search of an easy target. But when the streets finally became calm once more he found he was still afraid. He told himself that he would go out when he felt stronger, but even as he was telling himself this he knew it wasn’t true.

She got back from work one Wednesday evening to find her father sitting at the dining table with his palms flat on the placemat in front of him as if he were engaged in a one-man séance. He was wearing his red V-neck jumper. He looked directly at her and said, “My trouble.”

“Your what?” said Leah.

“My trouble leg,” he said, slurring his words.

She assumed he was drunk but when she came closer she could see that the left-hand side of his face was sagging. She tried helping him to the sofa so that he could lie down but he couldn’t hold his own weight and she had to hoist him back onto the chair. He was unable to say how long he had been in this state.

The ambulance took twenty-five minutes to arrive. Her father seemed completely unbothered by the gravity of the situation. The paramedic slipped a line into the crook of his arm and held it down with a fat crucifix of white tape. The siren was on the whole way, a dreamy mismatch between the antiseptic calm and the speed with which they sliced through the world.

When they arrived at the hospital her father was partially blind and there were many words he could no longer say, Leah’s name being one of them. It was the length of time he had spent sitting at the table, so the doctor said. However long that was. After the golden hour the odds went through the floor. Leah wondered if he had realised that he was being offered a neat, uncomplicated exit and had decided to take it, because God forbid that he should ever find himself bedbound or incontinent or needing to be fed by someone else.

He had the second stroke just after midnight.

She sat in the hard glare of the relatives’ room looking at a shitty painting of a fishing boat and a lighthouse. It was the lack of justice which hurt most, the way his cowardice turned out to have been such a good game plan, the possibility that he had never really suffered.

She took a taxi back to the house but couldn’t sleep, repeatedly dropping off then crashing back into wakefulness convinced that her mother was in the room.

She rang in sick the following morning and went round to Bunny’s house. She wasn’t sure he understood but he held her while she cried and that was enough. She told him about the kittens. She told him how her mother had called her “a mistake” and “a disappointment.” She told him how her mother had made balls of lard and peanuts and hung them from strings outside the dining-room window in the winter for chaffinches and coal tits and robins. She told him how quickly the MS had progressed, how she wasn’t allowed into her mother’s bedroom during the final months, how her mother died and how Leah kept forgetting this because nothing in the house had changed.

Bunny said, “I hate my father. I haven’t seen him for twenty years. I have no idea what he looks like. But every time there’s a crowd on TV I find myself scanning the faces, looking for him.”