He looked at David again, his eyes clear. But it's fine, he said. Your children grow into adults, and they leave, and they make a life of their own. It's the way the world turns, he said. He closed his eyes for a moment and eased out a loud slow breath. He lowered his head, rolled it from side to side, and looked up. But there's leaving and there's leaving, he said. You understand me? David nodded, and he knew from the look in Stewart's eyes that he hadn't meant to say all these things, and that when Eleanor asked him later what they'd been talking about he should say oh nothing much, he was just telling me about when you were small.
Ivy came back into the room, asking David if he wanted another mug of tea before he was on his way, and stopped for a moment, looking at him, looking at Stewart. Years later, David thought about the two of them in that kitchen and imagined them there when they were much younger, the children asleep in bed, both of them exhausted from a long day's work, sitting and talking while all around them wet sheets, hung from lines strung across the ceiling, steamed and dripped and swayed like storm-sodden sails; other people's laundry putting food on the table. And he imagined them sitting at that same table much later, the house empty around them, unspoken regrets and recriminations swept out of sight like crumbs from the table, silence blanketing the room, the two of them avoiding each other's eyes.
No, thank you very much, he said, standing up. That's enough tea for me, thank you Mrs Campbell. He smiled. I'll be on my way now, thank you. He glanced at Stewart briefly. Ivy stepped aside to let him pass, and he walked down the hallway and out into the sunshine, where Eleanor was waiting for him.
And as his visits became more frequent, their letters to each other became less guarded, their thoughts less veiled. They began to make half-serious suggestions about one day living not so far apart. They said that they missed each other, and thought about each other as they were going to sleep. They told each other more, much more, about their lives and their families and their secrets. And after he'd been there half a dozen times, and after they'd written maybe a hundred letters and postcards between them, she wrote this at the end of a short note she sent, almost as an afterthought, almost as if she thought he might not notice: You could come up again the weekend after next. My parents are away to Glasgow and Donald and Ros will be gone as well. You could come and stay at the house. If you'd like that.
He remembered thinking, on balance, that he probably would.
16 Birth Certificate, 17 March 1945
And this was the part of the story they would most want to hear, he thought. This was where they would quieten, and lean forward, and when he'd finished they'd say so that's how it was. You know, I always wondered.
I was sitting in Auntie Julia's room at the nursing home when it happened, he was going to start by saying. My mother had gone down the corridor to get cups of tea for the three of us, and even though she was gone for a long time she still managed to be back at just the right moment, nudging the door open with her foot as she carried the tray into the room. He imagined someone leaning towards him as he said it, as they realised what he was talking his way towards.
And this was the part of the story they would most want to hear, he thought. This was where they would quieten, and lean forward, and when he'd finished they'd say so that's how it was. You know, I always wondered.
I was sitting in Auntie Julia's room at the nursing home when it happened, he was going to start by saying. My mother had gone down the corridor to get cups of tea for the three of us, and even though she was gone for a long time she still managed to be back at just the right moment, nudging the door open with her foot as she carried the tray into the room. He imagined someone leaning towards him as he said it, as they realised what he was talking his way towards.
He could pinpoint the moment precisely. Julia with her cigarette held up beside her face, his mother nudging into the room. The window open and a woman zimmer-framing her slow way across the garden. The sound of television laughter coming from the main room, and an unanswered telephone ringing somewhere. The cymbelline shaking of the teacups as his mother gasped and put down the tray. And David not knowing where to look or what to say or whether to just stand and leave the room as quickly as he could.
It was a small room with a single bed, a pair of easy chairs, a side table, a wardrobe, and a large window that opened out on to the enclosed garden. His mother had helped Julia try to make it her own there were photographs on the wall, and one of her jewellery boxes on the side table, and flowers but it still had the feel of a hospital room. The bed was metal-framed, with rails that could be cranked up to keep her from falling to the floor. There was a button on the wall which would bring a member of staff running if it was pressed. There were charts medication, temperature, blood pressure, behaviour and although they were kept on a shelf in the wardrobe rather than clipped to the end of the bed, they were still there. And there was a distinct hospital odour lingering about the place, that clinging smell of endless cleaning. But it was still Julia's room, and she seemed comfortable enough to feel somehow at home there. Perhaps she thought it was a hotel, or a room in an absent-minded friend's house, a friend who seemed to have forgotten she was coming, or had even forgotten that she was there at all.
They sat in silence for a while, Julia smoking one of her long menthol cigarettes and staring out of the window. He didn't know what to say. She'd always done the talking when he was growing up and it had been enough for him to listen, to say, really? or, what happened next? or occasionally, can you tell me about. .? but since moving into the home she had mostly just sat and waited to be spoken to. His mother was much better at doing what was needed, skating briskly over the cracks in the conversation, the inconsistencies and the repetition and the hard-to-understand, seeming to always find a way of stopping the whole thing sinking into the icy chill of who are you, and where's Laurence, and why haven't we had breakfast yet?
How are you feeling Julia? he asked eventually, not knowing what else to say.
Bored, she said sharply, turning to look at him. Bored, and tired. She stubbed her cigarette out in a glass ashtray and gestured at him to empty it. He leant across, and as he picked it up she whispered, loudly, the trouble is the other people staying here are a little sub-normal. He emptied the lipstick-tinged cigarette ends into the bin.
Really? he said.
Oh, yes, she said. Some of the things I hear about, you wouldn't believe your young ears, really. There's an old man out there, she said, haven't a clue who he is but they have to put plastic sheets on the furniture when he sits down, due to his tendency. She said tendency with pursed lips and a note of disgust, as though the word itself was somehow unhygienic, and she nodded delicately, to confirm what she was saying.
His tendency? David asked.
She leant towards him, mouthing the words: he wets himself if he laughs too much. She took another cigarette and lit it with a quick flourish. Not really my kind of people, David, she said.
He smiled and said no, I'm sure, and for a moment the Julia he'd grown up with was back there in the room. She turned to look out of the window and they both watched a young boy kicking a football up and down the garden path until a woman opened a window and told him to stop it. The boy sulked slowly back into the building, and when Julia turned to speak he could see that she'd already slipped back into vacancy and confusion.
She said, I wanted to go home but they wouldn't let me, can you believe that?
He tried to explain, gently, that there were reasons she couldn't go home just then but she didn't seem to hear. And that bloody lot in there are no good either, she said, pointing through the door to the main room where most of the other residents sat and watched television. Half of them are stone deaf, she said. He nodded. Mind you, that's often a result of the explosive impacts, she said, and the shock, you know, and suddenly she was talking about the war, talking as though the mist had cleared and she'd found herself twenty years younger, working in the hospital through years of air-raid sirens, walking home in the morning to find whole streets flattened, seeing doodlebugs droning their way through a bare blue sky.
They were all given cigarettes for Christmas and he kept on to his you see, she said. Sometimes even the bandages were in very short supply but we did what we could. Your mother used to get back from a shift exhausted and we'd just have time to eat together before it was my turn to go out, she said.
He wondered whether to interrupt her, to bring her carefully back out of her confusion or to let her just chatter on. He heard footsteps in the corridor and his mother nudged the door open with her foot.
Julia said and of course we never saw the poor girl again. He moved to clear a space on the table for the tea tray, stacking the magazines to one side, taking his mother's cardigan and laying it on the bed, putting the radio back on the shelf. Julia said Mary, wasn't it? His mother looked up at her. She was all for insisting that it only be for a few days, Julia said, but of course we never saw her again, she disappeared off the face of the earth. Very sad for the poor girl, she said, and she turned and looked him clearly in the eye. She said so when your mother asked me what to do, I said well Dorothy my dear, you'll have to keep the little darling now, won't you? She said you were such a lovely baby, and anyway we couldn't very well give you back, could we?
He sat back down, looking at Julia, looking at his mother, looking back at Julia, gripping the arms of his chair as if he was afraid he might fall to the floor. He heard his mother putting down the tray, the cups and saucers shaking against each other.
Oh Julia, she said.
The poor girl hadn't even left you with a name, so we chose David, after that actor, you know the one, what was his name? said Julia, and she looked up at his mother on this last question, smiling fondly, trying to remember, looking for help. His mother was holding both her hands up to her face, covering her mouth.
Oh Julia, she said.
They left soon afterwards, catching an earlier train than they'd planned, leaving Julia in her room, asking did I say something wrong? Dorothy did I say something wrong? They didn't even drink the teas, leaving them on the side table for a member of staff to clear away while they walked quickly and silently down the corridor. He heard his mother crying as they walked from the home to the tube station and he reached back to hand her a clean handkerchief from his pocket. She tried talking to him a few times, asking him to slow down as he paced through the tunnels at Whitechapel and Euston, and later, on the train, asking if they could talk, if she could explain, if he would at least say something. But he kept his face to the window and he didn't say a word, seeing nothing, hearing only the sound of Julia's voice, fragments of it repeating over and over again.