Settling the Account (74 page)

David picked up the book of poetry that now
lay on the table, and turned it over idly in his hand, studying the
brown leather cover with its gold lettering. He had a very early
memory, made misty by distance, of his mother reading to him when
he had been too young to understand the words properly. Clearer
than the memory of the stories was the memory of what had always
ended the reading so abruptly: his father’s voice calling out from
the kitchen or the parlour, its harshness making her cringe,
ordering her to come out and wait on him.

In all his childhood memories, David could
only recollect two moods in his father: anger, or indifference.
David had always aimed at being ignored, and had usually managed
it. It was easy enough now that he had no reason to fear his father
for David to ignore him in his turn, but the sight of his mother
having to spend all day tending to the old man’s every need brought
back half-forgotten, brooding resentments.

She seemed so tranquil, her face smooth and
her eyes deep pools of calm as she worked away, pouring the pudding
mixture into a basin. She looked up to find David’s eyes on her,
and her mouth curved into a smile.

She leaned over and gave him one of her
quick, impulsive kisses, then passed him the almost-empty bowl and
its wooden spoon.

‘You can lick the bowl out if you like. I
missed having you to give the bowls to when you were away.’

David took it readily; hard work and an
eighteen-year-old body that had only recently finished growing gave
him a healthy appetite. He scraped away enthusiastically, but kept
his main attention on his mother, watching her move about the
room.

She was looking much better than she had
when he first came home, he thought, taking pleasure in the
knowledge that he had helped make her well again. She had looked
close to exhaustion then; now she was the mother he remembered from
years ago. And she was far too good to be spending her days waiting
on his father.

‘Why don’t you go out for a while, Ma?’ he
asked.

She gave a little laugh. ‘Dave, I’m in the
middle of getting dinner on! I’m not going to go rushing off
somewhere. Anyway, I don’t go out, you know that.’

‘Well, you should,’ David insisted. ‘Not
right now, but maybe tomorrow. I don’t like to see you stuck here
with the old man all the time.’

‘I don’t mind staying home, not now you’re
back. And I don’t mind looking after your father, either. He’s not
much trouble.’

‘But… it’s not right,’ David said,
struggling for the right words. ‘You’ll go funny in the head or
something, never getting away from him.’

He saw the protest on her lips, and pressed
on quickly. ‘Why don’t you go down and see Aunt Lizzie? You know,
Beth was saying when I was there the other day how she wished you’d
come down.’

She was slicing vegetables now, making neat
little movements with the knife that left a growing pile of slices.
‘Did she? That was nice of her. Tell Beth to come up and see us
here sometime.’

‘No, she wants you to go down there. She
said Aunt Lizzie’s been really grumpy lately, Beth thought you
might cheer her up.’

‘I don’t see that I’d be any better at that
than your Uncle Frank.’ She frowned suddenly. ‘Aunt Lizzie’s all
right, isn’t she? How did she seem to you?’

David shrugged. ‘She’s getting pretty fat,
but I think she’s about the same apart from that. I don’t know, I
suppose she might be a bit quieter than usual.’

‘She’s probably tired. Still, she’s got the
girls to help her, she should be all right. It’s a pity I can’t get
down there, though. I miss seeing her.’

‘You should, Ma,’ David pressed. ‘I know
Beth wants you to.’

‘Well, I just can’t. I can’t leave your
father on his own.’

‘Can’t you just forget about him for once?’
David said, frustration making him sound harsher than he had meant
to. ‘Aw, heck, I could look after him for you, come to that. One of
the kids could double you home from Aunt Lizzie’s, so you wouldn’t
be gone all that long.’

She shook her head and gave him a rather sad
smile. ‘It’s nice of you to offer, Davie. But I couldn’t leave him
with you.’

‘Why not? What’s he need doing that I
couldn’t do for him? I can fetch cups of tea and things.’

‘He’d get upset. He wouldn’t like to be left
with you.’

‘Too bloody bad about him, then. Tell him he
can just put up with it. You need a rest from him.’

‘It wouldn’t be fair on him.’ She put her
knife down and looked at him for a long moment before she spoke.
‘Remember what I told you the first day you came home? He’s scared
of you. Don’t you know that?’

‘What’s he got to be scared of? I hate the
old bugger, but I wouldn’t knock him around or anything.’

She came back to the table and sat down
beside him. ‘Think about it, Davie. If you decided to be rough with
him—if you decided to get back at him for some of the hidings you
used to get—what could he do about it? He couldn’t do anything, and
he knows it.
I
know you wouldn’t hurt him, but he
doesn’t.’

‘Trust him to be a nuisance,’ David
grumbled. ‘Stupid old bugger.’

‘Stop it, David,’ Amy said, startling him
with the unfamiliar sharpness of her tone. ‘You shouldn’t talk
about him like that, you really shouldn’t. He’s your father.’

‘That’s not my fault.’

‘No,’ she agreed, suddenly sounding weary.
‘I suppose it’s mine.’

He had upset her; though he was not quite
sure how he had done it, he felt guilty nevertheless. ‘I’m sorry,
Ma.’

‘There’s no need for you to be. You’re
right, it’s not your fault.’

She stood up, moved back to the bench and
began attacking the vegetables again. David watched her, chewing at
his lip as he thought about what she had said.

It was becoming difficult for him to
associate the terrifying father of his childhood with the sick, old
man who spent most of the time shut away in his bedroom. Hard, too,
to sustain the resentment he had held within himself for so
long.

‘I suppose…’ he began, softer words hovering
on his lips.

Then his mother turned her head slightly,
part of her face falling into shadow. It was only a trick of the
light, that darkness down one side of her face that looked so
disconcertingly like a large bruise, but at the sight the old
bitterness seethed.

‘Why do you bother about him, Ma?’ he
demanded. ‘Why don’t you just leave the old bugger to look after
himself?’

She turned those huge, blue eyes of hers on
him, and David saw in them a plea for understanding. ‘Because he’s
old and sick, and he needs me,’ she said simply.

‘But the way he’s treated you!’

She looked at him almost blankly, as if she
could see no connection between the two things.

David got up and walked across the room to
her. ‘Listen, Ma. There’s things you don’t take any notice of when
you’re little—things you just forget. But what with me being away
all that time, it made me think about things. Made me remember them
again. I remember something that happened when I was really
little.’

He saw her puzzled expression change to one
of concern.

‘What thing?’ she asked. ‘What do you
remember?’

He ran a finger gently down her cheek,
noting the fine, fine lines at the corners of her eyes and the few
grey hairs just discernible above her forehead. ‘There was one time
your face was all black and blue. It was swollen up so bad I could
hardly tell it was you, and it seemed to be like that for ages. You
told Mal and me you’d fallen over, didn’t you? Why’d you tell us
that?’

‘I did,’ she said quietly. ‘I did fall
down.’ She gave what seemed meant to be a laugh, though there was
no humour in it. ‘It was a bit hard to stand up after what
happened.’

‘He beat you up, didn’t he? Not just like
those times he slapped you or gave you a bit of a shove. He really
got stuck into you—really knocked your face around. You know what?
When I figured out what he’d done, I wanted to kill him.’

He saw the pain in her face at the old
memories he had dredged up; saw, too, the way her hands slid down
her body to rest on her belly, and for the first time he realised
it might have been more than just her face that his father had
attacked.

‘What did he do to you?’ he demanded. ‘Where
did he hurt you, Ma?’

She gave a small shudder, as if hauled
abruptly back to the present by the sound of his voice. ‘It was a
long time ago. There’s no good in talking about those things
now.’

‘And then you wonder why I don’t want
anything to do with him. You want me to be
nice
to him.’ He
spat the word out as if it were an obscenity.

She put her hands on his arms and looked up
into his face. ‘He did those things to me, Davie, not to you. I’ve
forgiven him. Why can’t you?’

He could think of nothing useful to say.
Mumbling an excuse, he went outside and found himself enough work
to keep busy for what remained of the afternoon.

She was too soft, David told himself. To
think of her tiring herself out looking after the old man, and
refusing to leave the house for fear it might upset him. After what
he’d done to her! The memory of her ravaged face kept his
smouldering anger warm.

But the trouble was that it was difficult to
keep that memory fresh. Try as he might, it insisted on being
overcome by the picture of her face as it was now: tranquil, and
always full of kindness. She didn’t have it in her to be hard.

After what his father had done to her… she
had forgiven him. That was another picture he was having trouble
remembering: his father’s face contorted with rage. His father was
that frail old man in the bed now. The father he remembered would
never have sat and listened to poetry.

He caught her frowning anxiously when she
came back from feeding the old man, and she was quieter than usual
over dinner.

‘What’s wrong, Ma?’ David asked.

‘Oh, you’ll tell me I’m silly, but… well,
I’m a bit worried about your father. I like him to come and sit in
the parlour with us of an evening, but he doesn’t want to tonight.
He’s feeling low after he had that nasty turn this morning.’

‘Yes, you’re silly,’ David said with a grin,
hoping to raise an answering smile, but she seemed too preoccupied
to notice.

She took their empty plates to the bench
when they had finished their pudding; she stacked the dishes but
made no move to start washing them. ‘I’d better sit with him
tonight. I don’t want him in there by himself all the time. I can
do the dishes and sort out the bread later.’

‘You’ll have to stay up pretty late,’ David
said, but she was already walking towards the door.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said over her
shoulder. ‘I don’t have to get up as early as I do in summer.
There’s biscuits in the tins if you’re still hungry.’

Then she was gone, the room unpleasantly
empty without her. David helped himself to a selection of biscuits
and settled down to eat them, but there was not much pleasure in
eating alone.

He heard his mother’s voice, a gentle murmur
too soft for him to make out any words. What did she find to say to
the old man? Was she reading him poetry again?

She spent so much time looking after his
father; it seemed unfair that she should have to carry the whole
burden. David knew he would never be able to talk her into leaving
the house and having a rest from her work if it meant leaving his
father on his own.

Amy abruptly stopped speaking when David
came into the bedroom, looking up in surprise from the chair she
had pulled close to Charlie’s bedside. They both stared at David as
he stood in the doorway.

‘I… um… I thought you might like some
biscuits, Pa,’ he said awkwardly. The biscuits were crumbling a
little from being clenched in his hands, but he didn’t think his
father would notice.

‘That’s nice of you, Dave,’ Amy said. ‘Isn’t
that nice of him, Charlie? Would you like some?’

Charlie studied David suspiciously, clearly
unwilling to believe that his son would be offering him anything
out of pure affection. ‘What sort are they?’

‘The ones with jam in. There’s one of those
coconut ones, too. Here.’ He held out the biscuits, then realised
he would have to take them right up to the bed, since his father
could not get up by himself.

‘Bring them here,’ his mother said. She took
a biscuit from him and began breaking it into small pieces, which
she fed to his father one at a time, waiting for him to chew each
piece slowly. ‘Sit down,’ she urged. ‘Come and talk to us for a
bit.’

David saw the hope in her eyes, and he could
not reject it. He sat on the edge of the bed, looked at his father,
and tried to think of something to say.

‘I went around the cows this afternoon,’ he
said, snatching with relief at a subject they shared a concern in.
‘They look pretty good.’

Charlie grunted, and eyed David warily, but
he was unable to feign a lack of interest. ‘Got enough feed for
them?’

David nodded. ‘Yep, there’s still plenty of
hay. The grass isn’t bad for the time of year, either.’

‘How’s that one with the bit knocked off the
top of one horn? She was lame in a hind leg last time I saw
her.’

‘Which one’s that?’ David asked, puzzled.
The herd was not large, and he was sure there was no cow with a
damaged horn.

He felt Amy squeeze his arm, and saw her
lips form the word ‘pretend’. He nodded in sudden understanding:
his father had slipped back a few years. Charlie might have been
remembering a cow of ten, twenty or even thirty years before. ‘She
must be all right,’ he said with studied casualness. ‘None of them
look lame.’

‘Good.’ Charlie frowned in thought. ‘How
long till they calve?’

‘Another month or so.’ David hesitated,
then, encouraged by the gratitude he saw in his mother’s face,
plunged on. ‘I’ll have to get you to tell me what to do when the
calving starts. I’ve never done it by myself.’