“Good,” said Mam.
Lawrence thinned his lips.
The truth had already been discovered, yet it was about to be revealed again, which made it something of a paradox: a secret that had already been told. Lawrence could sense Arthur gearing himself up to pass on what he’d heard at Asa’s. It hadn’t been pretty earlier; Asa had to hold him back: a father who had always been so proud of his grammar school son. But at least Lawrence had been allowed to say his piece. His dad had the courtesy to stay quiet most of the way home, too, perhaps understanding failure for the ugly subject it was: one of the hardest things a person ever has to face.
It was Mam who was the unpredictable one. She’d defend you in public but had no time for excuses behind closed doors. Once when Lawrence’s goalie gloves were stolen by one of the Champion lads from around the corner, she’d called round, given Cath Champion and her sons what for then come home and had a go at Lawrence for not standing up for himself. He was grounded in the ensuing argument, which was ironic, given that he was at that point giving an account of himself as she’d wanted him to in the first place. Irony was never one of Shell’s strong suits. Spite was. Later, Lawrence found his gloves with the tip of the pinkie snipped off each hand. He got his own back by taking the batteries from his mam’s alarm clock so she missed her appointment the next day at the doctor’s.
He watched her at the door connecting to the hallway. She held it open with her elbow and bothered at the wall-hooks, removing a large piece of cloth from her jacket, balling it up then dropping it in the waste paper basket by the minibar.
She held herself stiffly, brown curls unleashed and her forehead seeming to stick out plainly. Lawrence craned to see in the bin. There was a t-shirt there.
“Love, we’ve something to say,” said Arthur, his inflated face yet another thing to behold, so distended that it made Lawrence think of the grotesque cherub the Threndle House gargoyle had probably once been. With its dying fall, petrifying into stone.
“I said, Shell, me and the boy have news.”
Here we go. Lawrence had been over this moment many times, and whenever he got to the point where he told his mam none of this would have happened if it weren’t for her, that broad, adamant mouth dislocated and she devoured him.
He couldn’t move. He stared at where the rug used to be, the scrubbed boards, tessellating under the furniture, slot-complex, imperfect, up to the walls that penned them, the bone surface of…
“Can it not wait?” Shell was saying. “I’m tired.”
Yes!
“Well, love, not really, no.”
“Well I’m afraid it’ll have to. I’ve had a long day, been on my feet hours and…” Shell stopped. Lawrence didn’t know where to look. “I’m just done in, OK? I need to get my head down.”
She left the room dabbing at her eyes.
The door eased back ajar. When he was sure his mother was out of earshot, Lawrence asked what was up with her.
“How do you mean?” said Arthur.
“You didn’t see?”
“She’s tired, kid.”
“She were nearly in tears, Dad, I swear.”
“Get off wi’ you.”
“She were.”
Arthur hesitated, then went to the foot of the stairs. “Sure you’re all right, love?”
Mam yelled back that she was fine.
See, Arthur said, without words, adding as he re-fitted the mask. “Another of her moods.”
“Go see her, Dad.”
“Hark at you, trying to get rid.”
“Come on,” said Lawrence. “It’s not that.”
“You must think I came down wi’ the last shower, lad.”
“Honestly, go speak to her.”
“Give me one good reason why.”
“I just have done!”
Arthur’s single eye was kind of horrifying; the plastic of his mask picked out the ochre in its iris, giving the impression of some dreadfully revealed ulterior consciousness.
“It’s obvious,” said Lawrence. “She didn’t say anything when she saw us standing here like a pair of wedding ushers. She didn’t seem surprised.”
“Women, lad.” Arthur chuckled. “She weren’t bothered about my face neither.”
And nor were you, is what Lawrence supposed he didn’t say.
“Fine. What now? Can it not wait? She’ll only want to go down school when she hears.” Lawrence could picture his mam bursting through the swing doors at Fernside, through the cloakroom and up the steps to the foyer, demanding Grundy take her son back. It would never occur to her that Lawrence didn’t want to go back, that without school was the broader palette, and painting with it, Evie Swarsby. He was a man now. This was life.
Not that Arthur appeared convinced. Old jaw-face, a man smelling of booze when all he’d been on was tea. A nasty trick, using that padlock. It had made Lawrence miss his meeting with Evie. He’d resorted to climbing out of the window and nearly killed himself.
Course Evie was gone by the time he arrived at the tree cave. Ages he’d waited, listening to the helpless wood, starting at every movement, scratching Evie’s name against a rock because he was too weak to carve it properly into a tree. Scribbling it out in case she ever saw it.
As the crow flies he’d left for Threndle House. The day had boiled and a police van thundered by, as they seemed to more and more of late. Crisp white shirts and a motley pack of yowling dogs. “Pit’s that way,” one of them called out of the window as the van went by. He was pointing at a muddy puddle.
Then came the arrival of Asa’s car, red peril bursting into your line of sight. Lawrence was embarrassed about breaking down after being corralled in that alleyway, but you can’t fight cumulative tears, and he didn’t think Asa would tell anyone. He knew his father certainly wouldn’t.
Here was Arthur now. “You’re not getting out of this,” he said, as if that was the only thing on Lawrence’s mind.
“Maybe I’m not trying to, Dad. Maybe summat’s up with Mam and it’s obvious to anyone but a fucking sieve-head like you.”
Lawrence had the Swarsbys to thank for a direct comment like that. He and Arthur had shared their differences over the years, but Lawrence didn’t think he’d ever sworn at his father before. The eye in that mask had boggled wonderfully. A single finger had jabbed him in the chest.
Bastard should never have hit him. Lawrence stood outside the chipped door of his parents’ room and prepared to knock-on. He regretted what he’d said but was also thrilled by it.
Mam wasn’t asleep◦– Lawrence could hear her moving about in the room. He lifted his hand, belly scooped out with nerves, thumped the door and pushed it open without waiting for an answer.
His mam was standing at the end of the bed wearing only her bra and knickers. A bruise as dark as an oil slick spread up her thigh, a sheen of stubble emerged sternly from her armpits and, to Lawrence’s surprise, she had a torso that was far from doughy.
She whirled around. “Did I say come in?”
Lawrence stuttered sorry and backed out.
Minutes later she summoned him. He was leaning against the landing wall by then. He never knew his mam had varicose veins. They meandered from the summits of her ankles and weren’t far off in colour from the coal mark on his dad’s face.
The room smelled of air freshener and there was a swatter on the drawers, speckled with moth corpses. By Arthur’s side of the bed, unoccupied for weeks, was a Perspex framed picture of Lawrence as a boy, aged maybe seven, cracked from where it had been knocked on the floor and trodden on. The wardrobes were built into the wall and the curtains were drawn to keep out the summer. Mam’s hair had been tied back into an almost militant ponytail as she lay down, her face isolated against the canary-coloured bedding.