Second Best by David Cook

Author:David Cook [Cook, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: David Cook
Published: 2013-04-16T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Standing on the doorstep, I discovered to my surprise that I was very close to tears yet again, not because the woman so clearly-despised me, but because? all the while I had been listening to her, snatches of conversations and arguments with James had been replaying themselves inside my head. And what they had told me was that the woman knew far more about the boy who was to be my son than I did. There could be no reason for her to have made things up, or to have a grudge against Jamie. Her manner may have been gruff, but the expression in her eyes had been that of someone who had been very fond of him.

“Whatever happens don’t be afraid of James’ past,” Bernard had said, “ It can only harm you by harming him, and that’s most likely to happen if you ignore it and hope it will go away. Take it out, look at it, bring it into the present, and then put it back in the past where it belongs. Until you’ve done that -— both of you together —- James can’t explain himself to himself, can’t know his own value, can’t even be sure that he exists.”

I walked back towards the car, glancing around for a telephone box, since I had already convinced myself that the woman was right in every respect, and that Jamie would have taken off, and I suddenly realised that some of what I felt was fear, fear of the responsibility I was taking on, fear that I would be neither patient nor persistent enough to make any kind of go of it. Why kid myself? A solitary life spent in a village post-office, counting stamps and green giros and doing double-entry book-keeping was in no way a sufficient grounding for what lay ahead of me. Half of me actually wanted Jamie to have done his runner. Only then, I thought, only when he had been brought back, only when my mind, was clearer, would I be able to know the right questions to ask.

In fact the woman was both right and wrong. Wrong in that he was still sitting in the car just as I had left him, right in that, by not doing a runner he had managed to keep several moves ahead.

I set the car in motion, and drove without speaking, hoping the silence between us would eventually get to Jamie and force him to ask me what had been said. Perhaps this was the key to handling him; I must respond and not instigate, keep my pathetically mismatched set of cards held close to my chest, and let him do the bidding.

Five miles later, by which time the stillness in the seat beside me had become unbearable, it was I, as always, who spoke first.

“I’d half expected you not to be waiting for me.”

“That bad, was it?”

“What?”

“What she told you about me.”

“No. Not bad. She remembers you with . . well, she likes you. She was upset that you hadn’t wanted to see her.

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