“What?” It was like he had changed midstream but without changing his tone, like I’d flipped over the telly channel and found the same actor in a different role.
“I told you in the car, didn’t I?” He was looking at me very closely now and I thought that if he started swaying his head from side to side, he’d be expecting me to start swaying too. “It was voice-mail,” he went on. “Becky sent me a voice-mail message. I was listening to it when you saw me.” I said nothing. He hadn’t been listening, he’d been talking. I’d heard him. It’s not forever, he’d said. And: It’ll stop again. I heard him talking to her, walking up and down the aisles of the food hall. And he hadn’t said anything to me in the car.
“Sounds crazy, eh?” he said. I nodded. “She left a lot of messages. Long ones. I got in the habit of talking back to them. Kept me sane when she was… ”
“Right,” I said. I hadn’t known my shoulders were hunched until I dropped them. “That makes sense then. You didn’t tell me though, you know. In the car.”
“I thought I did.” It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I was sure he hadn’t, and then it struck me what I was doing: I was arguing with him. Arguing, for God’s sake. At a time like this. What was wrong with me?
“I’m so, so sorry, Gus,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I just don’t know what to say.” I knew what I couldn’t say; I couldn’t segue straight to call me a taxi. “Have you eaten anything?” I asked him instead.
“I’d puke.”
“Or how about that dram?”
“I’d definitely puke,” he said. “I just want to go through and kiss the kids and then… if you didn’t mind, I’d really love to just sit for a bit. Sit by the fire.”
“Of course,” I said. “Call someone. I’ll get out of your way.”
“I meant with you. Talk, maybe.”
And again, I could hardly say no. “Except the kids are tucked up on the couch,” I said. “Sorry. I let them doze off with Toy Story.”
“Best thing,” he said. “Good thinking. I’ll lift them through now. Once they’re off, they’re like sacks of spuds-you could roll them along the beach and they’d never know.”
“I’ll put the kettle on.”
“Now, you’re talking,” said Gus, pausing in the door. “A good cup of tea. Milk and two sugars.” Not a drinker then. Just got that red skin from being Scottish, poor bastard.
I stood at the sink a long while with the kettle under the tap before I turned it on, staring at my reflection in the dark window. It all made sense. She phoned him a lot, he spoke back to her messages, he thought he’d told me, he hadn’t. I made a mistake, he got confused, we sorted it out. It all made perfect sense. Tied up tight. So why did I feel like every time I turned my back on it, a bit of it slithered free again? I shook my head.
Crazy night. It was up to me to be the together one.
I gave the fireplace a good look, waiting for him to come back, once the tea was made, and if it had been coal and firelighters, I’d have got a good blaze going to cheer things up-no fireplace at all is fine, but cold ash is like death in your living room, even at the best of times. Here, though, there was a basket of twigs and a basket of logs and no box of Zip in sight, so I just swept up the worst of the spilled ash with the wee broom from the brass set and sat down.
It was the first thing Gus did when he came through anyway, on auto. He knelt, screwed up paper, dumped a load of sticks on top, three logs balanced together like a teepee, set a match to it, and sat back into his armchair to lift his tea. There was a curl of smoke, a snap, and the flames started to flicker.
“Scouts?” I said.
He smiled, took a long draught of his tea, sat back with his head against the chair cover.
“Been doing it every day since I was twelve,” he said. “Getting sticks up the track, sawing lengths, splitting them, stacking them, lighting them, raking the ashes, spreading them under the rhubarb. Drove Becky nuts. She wanted a gas heating system. I wish… ”
“Twelve?” I said.
“I grew up here. Teenage years anyway. It’s my grandpa’s house. He left it to me. I thought it would be perfect for the kids, but Becky missed the town. I wish… ” he said again.
“So your Grandpa brought you up, did he?” Normally the kind of subject that’s best avoided but compared with Becky, I took it.
“Divorce,” he said. “Dad took off. Me and my mum and my brother came to stay with Dave. She met a new guy, moved in with him, took my brother. I stayed here. Moved out when we got married. Came back after he died.” He looked around himself at the fire brasses, the pipe rack on the mantelpiece, the print of highland cattle standing in a loch above it. That explained the walnut veneer and the Bakelite handles.
“You called your grandpa Dave?” I said, like I was competing against my personal best for dumb stuff to come out with.
“He was a dude,” said Gus. “Not what you’d think. He totally got my work. Supported me.”
“What do you do?” I said, hoping he wasn’t a strip-o-gram or a bailiff or something.
“I’m a sculptor,” he said. I must have looked surprised. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “You just seem dead… normal. Sorry.”
“I only wear my lavender smock and my velvet tammy when I’m in the studio,” he said.
“Right,” I said, letting him laugh at me.
“And Ruby and Dillon are really called-” he broke off, couldn’t think what to say.
“Iolanthe and… ”
“Tarquin!” he said. “Becky wanted to call him Porter.” I raised my eyebrows. “Her maiden name.” He finished his tea and set the cup down. “What am I going to tell him?”
I thought it over. “Same as Ruby,” I said. “Even if he doesn’t really get it. You need to tell them straight and answer all their questions. There’s books… ”
He was nodding, but his bottom lip had started to tremble. A tear fell, then another and then, for the first time, he really started to cry. Great big painful sobs. I went over, sat on the arm of his chair, and rubbed his back hard with the flat of my hand.
The flames were dying down by the time he stopped. Gulping and coughing, he sat up, leaned back, and let his head fall against the chair mat again. We were pressed close down our two sides.
“If there’s anything at all I can do,” I said. That useless thing folk say.
“There is,” he told me. “You can stay.”
Shit! What was I going to say now? Oh sorry, I didn’t mean it?
“Please, Jess,” he said. “It would mean a lot to me.”
I could hardly answer, try again with something smaller. “Of course,” I went for. “I can bunk down on the couch.”
“No,” he said. “I couldn’t ask you to do that. I put Ruby in my bed. You can have hers.”
I was on my feet before I knew it.
“I can’t!” I said. “I mean, I’m fine on the couch, honest. In case she wakes up and wants to go back to her own room.”
“You’re kidding!” he said. “She’d never sleep in her own bed if she had her way.” He peered at me. “What’s wrong, Jess?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Absolutely nothing. And even if there was, think I’d bother you about it now? Look, I really should get a taxi. I’ll call you tomorrow if you give me your number, but I really should go.”
“Tell me what’s wrong,” he said. “Jesus, you’re shaking. What’s got you this scared, eh?”
Seven
Which is how come I wound up telling my troubles to a guy I’d just met, who’d hours before ID’d his wife’s body after she’d killed herself after years of depression, which makes me the biggest spoilt selfish evil bitch that ever drew in breath to whine with.