A Cupboard Full of Coats Page 14

  ‘Working on him alone was enough to cause middling upsets, can’t deny it. Used to upset me something rotten to begin with that them upsets ended with your mother getting hurt. But after a while, think I musta started getting used to it, or maybe I somehow got a taste for it, don’t know, but I took things to the next level, and that involved not just working him, but working her as well.

  ‘So I started in on her. Small piece of advice, that was all it took. Mention to Berris that seems her blouses getting tighter and tighter. Mention to her that Berris always boasting to his friend them ’bout the way she dress, the way she look, especially in the chest department. If you have it flaunt it, etcetera. Little things aimed at causing minor controversy. Nothing big, mixing into every whopper some little truth to keep things real. Knew things were working because it got to the point where I was sure Berris couldn’t sleep at night. Had him so wound up, looked like he pretty much wanted to fight the world and everyone in it one time.

  ‘And even that was drowned out by all sense when they came home late that night, talking about what kind of wedding they was gonna be having and Berris boasting about how he was gonna be a daddy. I was rocking and acting like I was just listening to me music, but inside I was eaten up, eaten up bad. Woulda still been all right if he hadda stopped there, but Berris being the kinda man he was couldn’t stop there, no. Had to go further, had to laugh and say the baby would finally give me a chance to be a real father, even if it was only a godfather.

  ‘ “But better a godfather than a jacket,” he said, and I wanted so bad to knock him down but I just smiled. Smiled and thought what I could say to this man, living in his perfect kingdom, with the perfect wife and daughter and no doubt a young prince on the way, perfect as a tale out of a storybook. I went too far and I should’ve stop myself, but it’s done now and that’s that. Can’t put the clock back, nor change anything that’s gone before. Went too far the night of the engagement party as well. Was laughing to myself as I rubbed up on her ’cos I knew Berris, with his lead-foot self, woulda been stiff-up somewhere, vex-face watching. Knew I was playing with fire but convinced myself that everything I did then was justified, all was right and above all else, Berris deserved it.

  ‘There’s only three times I knowed for sure I’d gone too far. Every other time felt like I had the right to do what I did. Now I don’t know. Feels like the one person who did deserve some comeuppance was me and I reckon I’m getting it now, reckon I’ll probably be getting it till they put me under as well. Maybe after. Like to think I’ll have done enough to join Mavis, but can’t be sure of that, no matter how much I do. I’m sure wherever she is she don’t have no worries, that the place she’s landed is filled with light. That’s the only place, the right place for someone like her who never did a living soul a scrap of harm.

  ‘Whereas me now, I’m trying hard to build up the merits. Trouble is, the place I’m starting is so low, there’s a whole heap I need to get hold of just to break even. I’m not even talking about getting ahead.

  ‘But I’m getting off the point again, rambling like an old man. What I’m trying to say in this long, winding roundabout way is this: the space between love and hate is small, very, very small indeed. And sometimes, a man can find hisself stuck there, like I did, and I tell you this much, you don’t have room to move or turn, and it ain’t exactly a menu, you don’t have no choice at all. Your mother staying with Berris was love. What Berris did to her was love. And what I did to them both, I did ’cos of love.’

  He had been making Guinness Punch, in the biggest pot I owned, an inherited one; mixing together the Guinness and whipped eggs, sugar, milk and Nutrament; grating in the cinnamon and nutmeg, lacing it heavily with rum. Methodically, using a tea towel folded in half, he crushed the ice placed inside it with a rolling pin. Slowly, he picked the pieces out and used them to fill the two glasses on the counter in front of him, then shook the remaining splinters off the tea towel into the sink.

  ‘Told myself for years all was Berris’ fault; everything I did was ’cos of him and the way he stay, but it wasn’t true, I accept that now. Comes a time when a man has to do some reckoning with hisself, raise his hand for all he own and say, Yep, I did that. Never used to think like that before, but lately…Let’s just say that’s changed.’

  ‘So what is it you’re doing? Putting things right?’

  ‘S’too late for that. Only thing I can try to do is put the record straight.’

  ‘Well, you’ve done that.’

  Why hadn’t she told me?

  ‘I’m not finished,’ he said.

  Using the ladle he poured his concoction into the glasses till they were full, then picked them both up and handed one to me. I took it, raised it to my lips and filled my mouth.

  ‘I want you to forgive me,’ he said.

  Inside my mouth was a riot of flavour: savoury Guinness, creamy bitterness, aromatic spices, intense sweetness and, undercutting the lot, the alcohol’s fiery warmth. My tongue moved about the mixture slowly. Wallowing.

  I believed in honesty to a point and no further, as much honesty as a person needed to get to where and what they wanted, enough dishonesty to hide what should be kept private, like Family Business. Lemon was clearing up his past and his honesty was like bleach. He had been the Pied Piper, the music man. He’d set the tempo and they’d danced as he had mixed and changed the rhythm, then sat back to watch them pick up and follow the beat. And he wanted me to forgive him? I could not.

  And yet, I had my own skeletons. Instead of decomposing over time, they’d fossilized. He had his share of responsibility and I had mine. He had manipulated and he had schemed, but I was the one who had murdered.

  ‘I hardly know what use it is for me to say this, but I forgive you.’

  He had been watching me, but he looked away then, down to his own glass, which he raised quickly in cheers before knocking it back.

  ‘This is good,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks.’ His voice was thick with feeling.

  It was too much. Everything. I put down my glass and covered my face with my hands and began to cry. Inside me raged the anger of the betrayed, the shock of the doublecrossed. Lemon came over to where I sat, pulled me into his arms and, holding me close, rubbing my hair, asked, ‘What?’

  The words were so big I could hardly get them out, but I pushed.

  ‘How come she never told me she was pregnant?’

  9

  Over the next couple of months I came to feel like I’d been duped. She felt it too, my mum, though she did her best to try and style it out like everything happening was normal, and her and Berris were just fine and hunky-dory. But that man had tricked us good and proper, and I knew it.

  Those first few months he’d lived with us had all been some huge kind of act. Somehow, he’d kept all his aggression locked up tight where my mum wouldn’t spot it, concentrated on worming his way in so tight that now, not even a crowbar could shift him. Or maybe it was her taking him back that did it. Maybe after that first incident he thought that whatever he did she would always take him back and forgive him. Or maybe he’d just gotten the taste for it back, and I mean back. Him vexed, him angry, whatever it was inside him that made him want to hurt others, hurt her, that was his genuine character, how he was when he was relaxed, how he looked when you caught him in unguarded moments; that and not what we had seen at first was his true nature and I just knew, I don’t know how, but deep down inside, I knew he’d done this before to other women, that after months of pretending to be something and someone else, that after the first time, he’d gotten the taste back. And I was terrified.

  While he was at work she was home all day. As far as I could make out, she was at home doing nothing except thinking about him: shopping for him, cooking for him, moving the furniture around into different positions she thought would appeal to him; that was pretty much it. But to listen to him in his rages you’d think she’d been out on the prowl constantly for the attentions of other
men, that she was thinking of nothing else but attracting them, that her head was filled from morning till night with being with them, doing things with them. And Berris was obsessed with catching her at it.

  Sometimes he’d pop home unexpectedly in the middle of the day, or he’d get in from work hours before he’d told her his shift was ending, or he’d return home shortly after leaving for work saying he’d made a mistake and was actually off work that day. These things he appeared to me to do with the express intention of catching her red-handed.

  Only the day before he’d given her a rocketing slap. In front of me. Because his dinner wasn’t ready when he came in and she was wearing fishnet stockings, and she couldn’t explain quickly enough to his satisfaction why she was wearing them and was late cooking. I couldn’t even fathom a connection between the two things, they were that unrelated in my mind, but for that he’d split her lip. Though it was the first time he’d done it in front of me, it wasn’t the first time he’d busted her mouth.

  It was puffed and swollen the evening he gave her the black suede three-quarter-length coat, with a sheen like richest velvet and a black leather trim that might have been handstitched it was so delicate and divine. And her hip where he’d kicked her was livid with bruising that made it painful for her to stand when she first tried on the sheepskin: camelcoloured, with a deep-pile chocolate lining that pushed its way out and over into a dense plush collar that was soft and warm and luxurious. And he’d had to help her to put on the yellow leather box jacket, patiently standing behind her and holding the right side low enough for her to get her hand into the sleeve, because her mashed shoulder prevented her raising her arm, or even moving it much. Up until then I’d never even imagined you could get leather in colours like that: a pale yellow with the slightest tinge of green in it that reminded me of a fiery French mustard. Every one of those coats was so beautiful they made a person ache just to look at them. Truly ache.

  And the tears, the ones that had set us up the first time, the ones that had seemed so much like the real McCoy, that had made me feel sympathy when I should have felt fury, made her take him back when she should have banished him for ever – those crocodile tears were history. He no longer stormed out, or bawled, or looked ashamed or even sheepish when he did what he did, or when he gave her the coats afterwards. He would watch her as she struggled to smile despite the pain, watch her twirling and spinning inside them, as if every gift she’d ever been given in her life had followed on the tail of a roasting and she expected no different, and his own face would be set with a smile that was smug and satisfied; his eyes when they met mine were challenging, daring me to say a word.

  And Lemon came and spoke to her every time. With Berris and me she acted like everything was cool, nothing was going on that was ugly or crazy or way too wild for any mortal being to understand. For us she continued churning out those yummy platters of dishes marinated overnight and slowcooked over low heat for hours. But alone with Lemon she cried. After one of them had given me food or drink or sweets and banished me to my bedroom so they could get on with their talk without having to worry about the big ears of little donkeys. But I could always tell when she had been crying because she was like Sam. Maybe all people with high colour were like that when they cried; all red eyes and noses and blotchiness that made it impossible to pretend that they’d been doing anything else. In private with Lemon she cried, and sometimes just knowing that was enough to make me cry as well.

  But the evening of the day after the slap he gave her in front of me, I crept back downstairs and listened. I needed answers too. It felt like Berris was going further every time. He’d been hurting her in private. Now he’d progressed to doing it in front of me. What was left? Would he start knocking her down in public? Then what? I was scared because I couldn’t work out just where all of this was going to end. So I crept halfway back down the staircase in the darkness, sat on a step, pressed my face between the spindles of the banister, and listened to them.

  She sounded like a poor swimmer trying to speak while doing doggy paddle, talking too quickly, spluttering her words in gasps between wet breaths.

  ‘Tell me, tell me what I’m doing wrong,’ she said. As though what was happening was her fault, not his. As though maybe Berris was the victim.

  ‘It’s not you, it’s him,’ Lemon answered. ‘The way he is. Never had nobody to trust before and it takes time to learn that. You gotta give him time.’

  ‘ If he comes back…’

  ‘He’ll be back.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can take it.’

  ‘But you love him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you don’t have no choice,’ he said, and for a while

  all I heard was her crying.

  ‘I’m so scared,’ she said finally.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Of being alone.’

  There was a rustling noise, then I heard her blow her nose. It was his turn to be silent. I thought that, like me, he must have been digesting her fear of Berris not coming back, when what any sensible person should fear most was that he would. But when he answered, I realized he must have been thinking about something completely different.

  ‘Look at you. How could a woman like you be afraid of being alone? You think Berris is the only man alive who can see?’

  ‘But I was. For years. More than ten years. I can’t go back to that.’

  It felt funny hearing her describe her life with me as though I wasn’t in it. Funny hiding outside on the stairs, unseen, hearing her say that.

  ‘Because you love him?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was quiet for a bit. Then, ‘He’s all I have. I can’t go back to how it was before, being a single mum again, every decision mine, night after night with no company, just me on my own with the ticking clock. I’m not one of those women who don’t want to cook, who don’t want to listen. He tells me to do something and it’s done. But this? I can’t understand why it’s happening. Why is he doing it? Why?’

  When Lemon spoke, his voice was so low it was a strain for me to hear it. ‘Look at you with you crying and you bawling and you moaning and complaining. You think Berris want a woman to walk over? The man don’t need no doormat. You want respect you gotta earn it. Show him your own mind. Let him see you can do for youself. Let him know you’s not some kinda bups he’s dealing with.’

  She laughed, loud and disbelieving. ‘I think he’d probably kill me.’

  ‘Remember I known Berris his whole life. Don’t need no private investigator to tell me what he want. I heard it myself, straight from the horse’s mouth.’

  ‘Berris told you this himself?’

  ‘Would I lie?’

  ‘And you really think it’d work?’ For the first time during their discussion there was hope in her voice.

  ‘I know it will,’ he said.

  This time when she laughed it sounded like a proper laugh. ‘Look at me. I’m a mess. I think I need a cup of tea,’ she said.

  ‘Let me get it.’

  I stood up as the living-room door opened and Lemon stepped out into the hallway. He looked surprised to see me. I was styling it for dear life, like no way had I been earwigging, just coming down the stairs naturally, and he looked kind of puzzled, like he was trying to see through my act.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘I’m making hot drinks. You want one?’ he asked.

  ‘Please.’

  On his level now, I paused outside the living-room door.

  ‘Give you mum a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Come and keep me company.’

  In the kitchen, I sat at the table and watched him. The male equivalent of my mum. Everything he did was so graceful; the way he stood, the stretch of his legs as he reached into the cupboards above the sink, the line of his arm as he lifted the kettle, the way they folded across his chest as he leaned against the sink, watching me and waiting for the water to boil. Again, that crazy certainty; he knew everything I felt without me saying a single word.
Still, though, I said them, the words uppermost in my mind, the ones that had kept me awake the night before.

  ‘He’s going to kill her.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘he’s teaching her a lesson.’

  ‘What lesson?’

  ‘To respect him. It’s how we all came up: respect the teacher otherwise you get you arse cut, respect you grandmother or you aunty or you mother otherwise you get you arse cut; respect you man…It was a lesson in respect.’

  In the silence he put his hand against the kettle, felt its clammy coldness and, realizing his mistake, pressed the button, turning it on. I didn’t know what to say to that. It felt like ‘respect’ was the wrong word but I didn’t know what the right word was.

  ‘Is she gonna be okay?’ I asked.

  ‘Depends what you mean by okay,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s broke. Her face will heal.’

  ‘This time. But what about next time?’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ he said after a long pause. I waited for him to elaborate but he didn’t. He concentrated on the cups, putting the tea bags in, pouring the water, stirring. Finally he asked, ‘Sugar?’

  ‘Two,’ I answered.

  He was trying to change the subject, treating me like a child, like it was that easy to make me forget, to get me focused on sugar and sweeties instead of murder.

  ‘How do you know?’

  He sighed and stopped stirring. ‘Jinx, Berris is a very particular man and he likes things a very particular way. You mum just need to mind when he speak. If she can do that, she won’t have no problems with him.’

  He had just said the opposite of what I’d heard him saying to her and I was shocked. I wanted to say something, but didn’t know how to without exposing the fact that I’d been hiding on the stairs listening to them. Why would he have said such different things to the two of us? When I thought it through, knowing what I did about the type of person Berris was, what he’d told me made more sense. And almost im mediately, it came to me. I knew why he’d lied to her and I wondered how I’d missed it before. He liked them being together no more than I did. If my mum followed his advice it would make things worse, not better, possibly even break them up for good. For a second, looking at Lemon was like seeing my reflection. He and I were one and the same and we wanted the same thing. I felt that unidentifiable stirring in my lower belly again. He must have been such a sweet boy when he was young. He was, even for an old guy, one of the most attractive men I’d ever seen.