Grace’s Day by William Wall

Author:William Wall [Wall, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788545464
Publisher: Head of Zeus

Ten

Father came home. Grace went back to London. It is an ordinary evening. I am alone in the kitchen thinking about Bill Langley and other sexual objects while ostensibly looking at the Radio Times. From the drawing room I hear canned laughter and Tommy Cooper saying Just li’ that. In there the heat generated by the TV set is stifling even with all the windows open. When the brassy jazz theme plays Maggie comes out to make tea.

Are you still moping in here, she says. Why don’t you go down to the club? You should go out.

I’m reading.

You’ll go blind in this light.

She turns on the kitchen light. Almost immediately there are tiny flies on the ceiling, moths drifting through the open window. Nature is frighteningly anxious to come indoors.

Honestly Jean, you’ll injure your eyes you know.

What’s wrong with Tom? Since he came back he’s spent most of his time in his study. He hardly even talks.

Her back is to me. She has spooned the tea in. Now she lifts the kettle and adds boiling water. Her hand is steady. She says nothing.

Maggie? What’s wrong with Tom?

Very quietly she says, I don’t know.

Then she turns around and takes a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her skirt. She lights one, sucks deep and exhales. Maggie gave up smoking when she married Tom. He doesn’t approve of the tobacco industry.

Tell me what happened between you and Grace.

Nothing. We went for walks. We talked.

Something happened.

Not that I noticed.

Her face is beginning to dissolve. Already what will be the lines of old age are pulling her features apart. Her cheek is slipping. Her eyes are bunching at the edges. Her mouth is inclining downwards. The suck lines that long-term smokers get. There are faint horizontal creases at her neck. She is too young to be growing old. It must be suffering.

She says, I don’t understand, Jean.

I don’t want to think about it. The world is already too painful. I remember my mother holding a mug of tea a long time ago, it seems, exactly at the cusp of desolation, that night waiting for Tom to come, for the boat to come with the people who would investigate the child’s death. Richard was sitting opposite, close to her, his hand on her thigh moving slowly up and down, it was meant to be a comforting movement, how repetition comforts. And over and over again she was saying, I don’t know how it happened, I don’t understand.

I make up my mind that in the dislocation of Maggie’s life and my father’s, if it came to that, I would again be on Tom’s side. Children are capable of such resolution although we believe they drift from one hapless parent to the next. They have the will to survive.

Whatever it is, I say, it’s nothing to do with me. Or Grace.

Never mind, Maggie says, Richard is coming down at the weekend. He always cheers daddy up.

When I think of Richard I always think of hands. Working ropes in the salt and sun, they were hard.

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