A love story
“Hospital parking’s a rip-off,” he said. “I mean, it’s not
as if anyone chooses to be there, is it.” He turned onto the main road and the
tyres hissed on the wet road. It was after nine but not quite dusk; it was June.
But it had rained all day.
“It’s a bit steep, £13.30 for eight hours.” His daughter
stretched. “Meant to go out for a vape at the hospital then things started
moving. You don’t like me to vape in the car, do you.”
“It’s all right today,” he said. “Open the window though.”
They said nothing for a while as they drove back into town.
The radio was on a news programme. An MP came on. He was talking about
migrants.
“Shut up, you stupid bigot,” her father said. “SHUT UP.” He
jabbed the touchscreen had but missed, and jabbed again and again until the
radio fell silent.
Paul E. Harney (1850-1915), White Chickens (1912)
The car wobbled.
“Dad. Dad,” she said. She turned to him and reached out her
hand. “Dad, are you all right?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’m all right, Jen. Don’t worry.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He frowned. For a minute or two he said nothing,
then:
“Have you ’phoned Steve?”
“No.” She looked at her watch. “I’ll call him when we get in
so I can talk to the boys before he puts them to bed.”
“You going to tell them? Or leave it till morning?”
“No, better now,” she said. “What was it she said, Dad?”
“When?”
“About an hour before. She didn’t say anything after that,
did she, just that last thing and she was sort of smiling as she said it and
you freaked a bit.”
“I don’t remember.” They drew into their street and turned
into the drive.
“It sounded like – well, I thought I heard ‘chickens’. I
don’t know why she’d say that.”
“The Cusacks have got a new car,” he said. “Just saw that. ’Bout
time.”
“Yes,” she said.
“They’d had that Nissan thing for ages.”
“Had they?” She saw her sister looking out of the
living-room window. “You want to tell Carrie? I can, if you like.”
“No, I’m her dad. I’d better.” He glanced down the street.
“Forgot, it’s bins tonight. Must put out the recycling.”
“Wait till it stops raining.”
“Yes.”
The front door opened as they hurried up the drive through
the rain. “She’s gone, hasn’t she,” said Carrie.
“Yes, about six,” said Jen. “We were with her. She never
really woke up after you left. She didn’t say anything – well, not much.” She frowned.
Then she shook out her umbrella then pulled the front door shut behind her.
“Shall I put the kettle on?”
“Would you, dear? I’d better put the bins out.”
“Sod the bins,” said Carrie.
“They’ll still need to go out,” he said.
“I forgot,” said Carrie. “The Council aren’t fussed if
you’re dead, are they. You still got to sort the recycling and put the fucking
bins out.”
“Carrie, I don’t think that’s helping much,” her sister
said.
“How can you be so fucking calm?” she yelled. “Nice cup of
tea and put the bins out, mustn’t grumble. For fuck’s sake! Fuck cancer. Fuck
cancer. Fuck cancer.” She put her hands to her face. “Christ, I’m sitting my
first A-level the day after tomorrow!”
“Fuck your A levels,” said Jen. “You selfish cow. Think of
Dad.”
“Shut your face.”
“That’s enough,” he said. “Don’t talk to each other like
that. Not now. Not ever, actually.
Jen, go and phone Steve if you want to. Carrie, come in
here.” He took her arm and pulled her into the living room. “We’re going to sit
down quietly, just for a minute, you and I, see? Then I’ll make some tea and we
can heat up some pizzas.”
They sat for a while without saying anything.
“Don’t worry about the A-levels,” he said eventually. “If
you stuff them up you can do a year at sixth-form college.”
“Won’t that cost a bit?”
“We’ll be all right.”
She looked at him. “Dad, you never tell us what you’re
thinking, do you?”
“What do you want me to tell you?” He had a very slight
smile.
“Anything. What’s going on in your heart. Your head. Mum
always did. You haven’t ever. You never talk about your mum and dad either. The
real ones I mean, not Gran and Grandad.”
Jen came down then. “It was OK,” she said. “They knew their
Nan was poorly. John was all right. Gordon sniffled a bit. Actually Steve did himself
but he sort of hid it. What happens now, Dad?”
“I’m going to put the bins out,” he said.
“No, silly, about Mum. Will there be an autopsy?”
“No, when someone’s been ill and dies in hospital, the coroner
won’t need one. But I’ll go to the hospital tomorrow, there are a few things to
sort out and I didn’t get her belongings. Then we can go to the Co-op together and
see about the funeral. You can help me choose the music and everything and you
can help me tell everyone, all right?”
They both nodded. He stood up.
“I’ll put the bins out,” he said. “Hope Mrs Clotworthy
hasn’t parked her car right by the gate again. Makes it hard to get a wheelie
bin past. Bugger, it’s raining.” The door slammed behind him.
“It’s funny,” said Jen. “She muttered something. Last thing
she said. ’Bout 20 minutes before. And she was smiling and it seemed to – well,
it did something to Dad.”
“What did she say?”
“I couldn’t hear properly. Something about chickens.”
“Oh. I don’t know what that would be,” said Carrie. “Maybe
Dad’ll say. Jen, aren’t we supposed to be crying and wailing or something?”
“No, that’s foreigners, you moron. We’re English,” said her
sister. ”I mean, Dad wailing as he put the bins out. That’d freak out the
Clotworthies, eh.”
They looked at each other and started laughing.
“Go and heat up the fucking pizzas,” said Jen. Her sister
went into the kitchen.
“And Carrie?”
She turned back in the doorway, leaning on the door jamb.
“What.”
“Leave your door open when you go to bed so we can call to
each other if we want to. Like you did when you were little. OK?”
“OK.”
Their father came back in. “Bloody bins weigh a ton,” he
said.
*
No-one really wanted to talk. About 11 o’clock he said they
might as well go to bed. “You two go. I’ll watch the news and come up in a
minute.”
So they went. Jen heard her sister shifting and turning in
the next room but after a while she seemed to sleep, and Jen started to doze too.
Now and then she lay awake for a while and saw random snapshots in her head.
Just stupid things, really. Mum in Devon hugging Grandad’s collie, Mum in her
classroom singing to her 10-year-olds, Mum coming in from shopping and shaking
her umbrella.
She could hear the rain beating on the roof. About five a
thin gunmetal light seeped through the curtains. I shan’t sleep again, she
thought, and sat up; and realised she hadn’t heard her father come upstairs.
She had no dressing-gown, as she’d packed in a hurry when her father rang to
say it was nearly over. So she wrapped a spare blanket around her shoulders.
She peered into her sister’s room. The rhythmic breathing told her Carrie was
asleep. Her father’s room was empty. Uneasy, she went downstairs, treading
softly so as not to waken her sister.
The living-room curtains were not quite closed and the cold
new light had begun to clash with the soft warm lamp beside her father’s
armchair. He was sitting with a photo album on his lap, but he wasn’t looking
at it; his gaze was unfocused. As she came in he turned. “Did I make a noise?”
he asked. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“You didn’t wake me.”
She knelt down on the hearthrug in front of him.
“Don’t get cold,” he said.
“I’m all right.”
“Is Carrie asleep?”
“She is now. Don’t worry, Dad. She’s fine. I’m fine.”
He didn’t reply to this, so she said:
“Are you fine?”
“No.” He looked at her and smiled. “But I will be.”
He leaned forward and squeezed her shoulder.
“Can’t help feeling we should be doing a chant or
something,” she said. “To help her find her way over. Some cultures do that,
don’t they?”
“Chanting? Your mum would be in stitches.” He leaned back.
“You know what she said when I asked what music she wanted at her funeral?
Don’t fart about, she said. Toss me in the fire and go to the pub.”
She started laughing.
“In Oncology, when they said six months,” he went on. “I’m
sitting beside her wondering what on earth to say. ‘Oh. Better take my library
books back then,’ she says.”
She went on laughing, then didn’t. “Oh dear,” she said. “Oh
dear.”
“Don’t upset yourself,” he said.
For a few minutes neither spoke, then she said:
“You could tell us now.”
“Tell you what?”
“How. When. Because Gran and Grandad weren’t really your
parents, were they? They were Mum’s. But they weren’t really yours. I asked Mum
once. She said don’t be silly, that’d have made us brother and sister – we couldn’t
have married then, could we? She just said your own mum and dad were family but
they were dead. So I suppose they adopted Dad then, I said, and she didn’t
answer.” She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “It was so funny
because Mum was always so upfront about everything.”
“Yes,” he said. He seemed to be staring into the middle
distance.
“So what were your own mum and dad like? I mean, they were
my gran and grandad too, weren’t they.” She bit her lip. “Shouldn’t be asking
really. But now Mum’s gone – I mean, you might say now…”
“It was me who wouldn’t talk about it. Not Mum.” He put the photo
album down on the floor. “And when Gran and Grandad took me in, my real parents
were still alive. They lived into your lifetime, see. My father died when you
were quite small, but my mother died when you were twelve. You never met her.”
“They were alive and I never met them? Christ, Dad.” She
frowned. “Why?”
“I didn’t like them,” her father replied.
“Dad! Why?”
“Your grandfather was a failed diplomat. Your grandmother
was a bitch.”
He said nothing more. After a few minutes she said:
“I wish you would tell me.”
“I suppose I should.” He nodded. “Make us some tea and I’ll
tell you.”
“All right.” She smiled, a little uncertain. “Would you like
something stronger than tea, Dad?”
“No.” He smiled back. “Bless you, no. There’s a lot to do
tomorrow. …Today now.”
She made them two mugs of strong tea, with plenty of sugar.
Then she pulled a pouffe over beside his armchair and sat down, hugging her
knees.
“I was 13,” he said. “It was that very hot summer.”
“1976,” she said.
“Yes. Except it was still early June and we didn’t know it’d
be like that. That was the day I met Mum for the first time. I was wearing a
grey suit that stank of vomit.”
“That must have impressed her,” said Jen. She frowned.
“Actually she burned it in the end. About three years later,
I suppose, when I was 16 and she was 14.” He rested his chin on his hands.
“That was when I started throwing furniture about and chucking things at
teachers and Gran and Grandad sent me to psychiatrists and everything and one
night she screamed He’s not mad, he’s unhappy then where’s that suit
I’m going to burn it we’re going to burn it and she made a fire in the
garden and we watched it burn and she held my hand.”
He stopped talking then.
“Why,” asked Jen, “were you wearing a suit that stank of
vomit?”
“I don’t think I want to say any more now,” he replied.
“Would you like to go to bed? Can you sleep?”
“No,” he said. “Sit with me.” And they sat in silence, and
he remembered.
*
It was a cloudless day in late spring and very warm. They’d
come up the long winding lane from the valley; Uncle Cliff must have seen the
car in the distance because he stood in front of the house, in the big yard,
with bits of farm machinery and the odd old motorbike to either side, all
things he was fixing for neighbours because that was how he got by. Aunt Phoebe
came out from her studio in the old conservatory at the back; she was wiping
her hands with a paint-stained rag. The car crawled towards them like a beetle
at first then resolved itself into Mr Gibb’s elderly Morris Oxford Traveller,
the green one in which he ran people into Chagford or Moretonhampstead and
sometimes picked up fares from Exeter St David’s.
“I don’t like this, Cliff.” She rubbed a stubborn patch of
blue paint on her thumb. “We don’t know what’s happened. What’s he done? We
don’t know the boy. What’s he done?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “The school didn’t say much on
the phone. Just that Steven was of poor character and they could not keep him.
It seems they telephoned my brother in Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur or wherever he
is in the East, and Donald said to send him here.”
“How nice of him,” said Phoebe. “I suppose Audrey didn’t
want him out there. He’d get in the way of all the servants.”
Cliff looked at the ground.
“But what about this boy?” she went on. “Is he violent or on
drugs or what? What about Chloe?”
“I told you, I only know what Donald told me.”
Donald had not known much more. He had taken a call from a
teacher named Bullock; the latter was tetchy and brief – he had had trouble
booking the call and had had to wait for some hours for it to come through. By
that time it was early morning in England. The connection was poor and it was
hard to talk through the echo on the line. The boy’s father had sounded vague
and bewildered.
“I suppose you must send him to my brother’s in the West
Country,” he said.
“We shall have to take him,” said Bullock, “and ensure that
his aunt and uncle take responsibility for him.” He sniffed.
“I suppose you had better,” said Donald, helpless. “They
live on a sort of farmstead thing. About 20 miles from Exeter.” He flipped
through his desk diary in search of the address.
“You must understand,” said Bullock. “We must think of the
school’s reputation. We shan’t want fuss or outside interest, and I am sure you
don’t either.”
Bullock ended the
call without ceremony and Donald looked, slightly puzzled, at the receiver
before lowering it into its cradle. He turned to his wife, who sat on the carved
hardwood sofa with her first pre-dinner gin; it had just been served and the
glass glistened with condensation. She was slim with short black hair and a
sharp face.
“What is going on?” She glared at her husband, who was
stroking his receding chin. “Why are they sending Steven to Cliff’s?”
“He is in trouble. They say he is of poor character.”
“Steven in trouble? The boy scarcely has any
character. He even looks like you.”
He turned so she did not see the flash of hatred in his
eyes.
“He stabbed another boy with a penknife,” he muttered. “It
seems the boy had been bullying him.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Diddums,” she said. “It’s a boarding
school for God’s sake. He should accept it.” She swallowed her gin. “Kwang!”
she called sharply.
The girl looked through the door into the dining-room. “Yes
Madam.”
“Another cold one.”
“Yes Madam. Madam?”
“What?”
“When shall I serve the first course, Madam?”
“When I bloody well tell you to,” said Audrey.
“Yes, Madam,” said the girl, her face a mask. She withdrew.
“Do you really think you should have more than two gin
slings before dinner?” asked her husband.
“I might as well,” she said. “I mean, it’s not as if you’re
very exciting, are you?”
“You haven’t asked what is to become of your son,” he said
quietly.
“Oh, do shut up. Cliff and Phoebe can have him,” she said.
“Maybe they’ll even keep him. Phoebe can teach him to daub paint all over the
place and his uncle can teach him how to change tractor wheels. Better than
being second secretary in a minor embassy, like his bloody father.”
He did not reply but stood still, slightly stooped, in the
centre of the room. She could see a hint of a tear in one of his eyes and
smiled with grim satisfaction.
Back in England Bullock told the headmaster he would wait
for Matron to pack Steven’s trunk. “No,” said the headmaster. “Get him off the
premises now. She can send the trunk on. Make sure they agree to pay for its
carriage.” So Matron gave the boy a clean grey suit. They took a train from
Harrogate to Leeds and changed there for Birmingham New Street, where they
changed again for Exeter St Davids. It was very hot. Bullock got him some water
from the refreshment car, but said nothing unless he had to and followed him to
the toilet. He smoked and the smoke made Steven feel sick. At Exeter they found
Mr Gibb outside and the car rocked and rolled along the twisty B-road that led
from Exeter to Moretonhampstead and thence up onto the moors and the car swayed
once too often and Steven vomited over his best grey suit, aiming at his lap
lest he dirty the car seats.
Now he stood immobile outside the car. Cliff stood staring
back. Phoebe stood behind him.
“I have some papers for you to sign,” said Bullock.
They sat in the kitchen. Cliff agreed to be in loco
parentis until further notice. He signed another paper agreeing to pay for
the carriage of Steven’s effects, and was given another indemnifying the school
for anything Steven had done.
“I cannot sign that,” he said. “It has no legal force. That
is a matter for his parents.”
“No, you must sign,” said Bullock. “The School cannot take
responsibility.”
“I don’t see who else can,” said Cliff. He would not sign.
Steven stood stock-still outside, beside the car. In his
hand he clutched a sponge-bag with his toothbrush, soap and toothpaste. Phoebe
looked at him; he resembled his father, thin with a receding chin, a slight
stoop and glasses.
“Shouldn’t he have tea or something?” she asked. “Cliff, we
must find him clean clothes.”
“We haven’t got anything,” said Cliff. “I suppose an old
shirt and trousers of mine might do. I can get something in Chagford tomorrow.”
Bullock refused, with scant grace, an offer of tea and
departed with Mr Gibb. It occurred to Cliff that he would not meet Bullock again.
The thought did not displease him.
“So what are we to do with you,” he said to Steven.
“Would you like some tea, Steven?” asked Phoebe.
He looked at them but didn’t reply. He looked vaguely around
him at the yard, the machinery, the green fields beyond, rolling steeply down
into the valleys, and the bracken-clad moorland hills above with their granite
outcrops. The late afternoon sky was a deep blue. The sound of baaing came from
the sheep that dotted the fields and moorland. The three stood there for a
minute or so, no-one sure what to say.
In the distance a small figure approached, skipping; she had red hair and wore jeans and a tee shirt. She had a basket under one arm. In it there were eggs, covered with a cloth.
Skrrrrrrrrrr/Wikimedia Commons
“Henrietta’s laying!” she called out. “She’s laying again!
Look!” And she drew back the cloth to reveal the eggs below. Then she
stopped, and looked at Steven with interest.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
“Chloe, this is your cousin Steven,” said Phoebe. “He’s come
to stay with us for a while.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “How old are you, Steven?”
“He’s 13, darling,” said Cliff. “Two years older than you.”
“What happened to your clothes?” she asked.
The boy didn’t answer. “He was sick in the car,” said
Phoebe.
“Oh. I suppose that’s why he’s not very happy,” said the
girl. “You don’t look very happy, you know.”
Steven looked at her.
“Cheer up,” she said. “It’s fun here. Would you like to see
the chickens?” She gave the basket to her mother. “I’ll take him to see the
chickens.” She reached out for his hand and guided him down the hill away from
the house.
He came with her, but slowly. She looked at him.
“Don’t cry,” she said. “Everything will be all right. It’s nice here. Don’t cry. It’s all right. Come and see the chickens.”
Read more of Mike's short fiction: https://mikerobbinsnyc.blogspot.com/2025/11/short-fiction-from-mike-robbins.html
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