Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

The post-mortem revealed a brain tumour.

David was thirty-one. Until this point in his life it had never even occurred to him that sooner or later his mother would die.

She left him money. It was strange. All these years of giving her everything he made, and here she was, giving it back. She’d never spent a penny of it. She’d been getting money from his father since the day he left. It was a strange, tumultuous realisation, to discover that his mother kept secrets from him. After a lifetime of steady, trustworthy reality, suddenly nothing was certain. He imagined the letters, the phone calls between them. Why wasn’t he told? Did she write longingly to his father, beg him to come home? When did they arrange for him to give her money every month? Was it agreed between them? As far as he knew, his dad had just disappeared. The idea that they carried on talking without telling him gutted him, arsehole to jugular.

The funeral was simple. A cremation. A restrained service attended by eight staunch old ladies who were friends he never knew his mother had and the three family members that he could find phone numbers for. A cousin he’d met twice. His great-uncle who arrived with his new Filipino wife and her two teenage sons, and his mother’s last surviving cousin, Irene, who came with her spaniel Samuel. Afterwards, at the wake, nobody said much to each other apart from the eight old ladies, who spoke quietly amongst themselves.

David watched these strangers in his house eating vol-au-vents and felt like it was happening on telly. He said goodbye at the end, cleaned up the glasses, put them away, took out the rubbish, boiled the kettle for a cup of tea and couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in another room, watching himself from behind glass.

Weeks passed. A month. He thought he was coping. People assured him he was. One evening he walked home from work, nothing unusual had happened that day, and as he let himself into the house he heard himself shout, ‘Only me, Mum,’ as he shut the door.

The silence that swallowed his words was so total he dropped in the hallway and lay face down on the floor. Suddenly crying. Retching and shaking and punching the carpet, punching the walls, sitting up briefly to breathe, shaking his head and punching his thighs. He lay there for hours. Crying and calming and crying again, howling, groaning, whimpering, until he dozed off. He slept there for a moment, could have been a minute or a second or an hour, and woke up with a feeling that someone had called to him from a long way away. He found himself there in that elusive waking moment before reality catches up. He could have been anywhere, at any time in his life. Until he blinked and saw the skirting board. The dark house. The night outside. The hallway was achingly quiet, he was on the floor and his face was cramped from crying, and the carpet was wet with snot and tears.

And then it was the meeting with the accountant, and coming home to his mother’s house, every corner full of her presence and full of her absence. He sat in his bedroom reminding himself that she wasn’t downstairs reading her books. It was the most desolate, confusing time of his entire life.

He sold the house and rented a new place, just for him. A one-bed flat, and he walked around it, cavalier, deciding what he would put where. More alive with every minute. And feeling guilty for it.

A few months after he’d moved in, Susan called him into the office. It was hot outside, and the air was full of other people’s sweat, evaporating off their skin as soon as they’d had the chance to exude it, and Susan’s breasts were lower down her body than usual. Hong hadn’t been in for a few days.

‘David love, I’m afraid it’s not good news. And you know how fond I am of you. We’ve worked together here the best part of two decades. Sixteen years. That’s longer than some people know their own families.’ David nodded, picked up some paperclips from the tray on the desk, fiddled with them. Susan’s eyes were damp. ‘And I really feel I’ve seen you grow, David. You’ve grown into a fine young man and it’s been a pleasure being around that growth, David. But look, times are not so great, as I’m sure you’ve gathered. People don’t have no call for going down the old high street optician’s that can’t, no way, compete with the successful chain stores that have got money for the advertising and the designer brands and the flash machines. And the rent is just going up and up, and as much as I’m sure that’s good for someone, it ain’t no good for us, is it, David?’

David was quiet, listening. He stood still, waiting for her to finish speaking. Nothing moved, he felt as if he could feel his hair growing.

‘I don’t understand what you mean, Susan.’ His face was soft-featured and attentive. No hint of irony in him. No sarcasm, everything said as he thought it, no nuance, no hidden meanings, there was never an underlying tension, never a hint of insincerity with David. Susan cleared her throat and looked at her knee.

‘Now, I don’t want to have to do this as much as you don’t want me to have to do this.’ A pause fell on them like a duvet across a bed. She was watching him closely. He didn’t flinch.

‘I’m sorry, Susan, I don’t understand,’ he said again patiently.

‘Come on, David.’ Susan got up from her chair and walked over to him, and for the first time in sixteen years she put her arm around his shoulder, her cheek close to his cheek. She smelt of cocoa butter and rice pudding and sanitising hand wash. ‘It’s over, David,’ she said sadly. ‘We’ve got to go. Bright Eyes is closing down.’

He had all the money from the sale of the house, but nothing was stable, he recognised nothing about his life. He was learning to cook, learning to wash his own pants. He was out of the only job he’d ever had. He was giddy on terror and joy.

It was a Tuesday. He called Susan on her home phone. ‘Hi, Susan, it’s David, I want to buy Bright Eyes.’

The deal went through. Bright Eyes was his.

He threw himself into it. A new coat of paint on the walls. A new sign above the door. He polished the display cases, arranged the new lines of designer specs by roundness of shape.

On opening morning he’d arrived at the shop just after dawn. No one else was around but him and the road sweepers, it was too early even for the market men. He stood and felt the weight of the keys in his hand. He fitted them in to the lock. Felt them click into place. He turned the key, opened the door and walked into his shop.

His.

Shop.

Our shop, Mum , he thought to himself, enjoying the smell: the lovely cleanness, not like a chemical, impersonal cleanness — but clean, like a safe place. Like somebody cared.

David hung his coat up and took off his scarf and stood there, with his hands in his trouser pockets, staring at the racks of spectacles and thinking of his mother with infinite affection. Regretting every dish he’d left on the side, every cup of tea he hadn’t thought to make her. And he began to talk to her.

‘Oh I don’t know, Mum,’ he said. ‘Silly old day, wasn’t it, really, yesterday? Not much we can do though, is there? About that?’

He didn’t say much that was important, he just chatted absent-mindedly to the frames as he walked the broom around the spotless floor, sweeping up nothing, over and over again.

Miriam’s hands are against his cheeks, they are cool and smell of cooking and soap.

‘Don’t worry, Dave,’ she says. ‘Think about the other day, how nervous you were about me meeting your Dale, but it was lovely, wasn’t it? We all got on fine.’

He nods. It is true. David had been nervous about Miriam meeting his only son because Dale has a tendency to be big and rude. But Miriam is right, as she always seems to be, they had all got on fine.