Guilty One

24

Minnie was on her knees in the dirt, planting flowers in the front garden. She pressed the cuttings down and then knuckled the earth around them. She sat up when Carol-Ann and Daniel walked past, school bags hanging off their shoulders, school shirts hanging out of their trousers.

‘A’right, Min’?’ said Carol-Ann.

Minnie got up and walked towards them, dusting the dirt from her hands on her skirt.

‘How did it go then?’

‘A’right,’ said Danny, throwing his school bag down on the grass. ‘Another five next week though.’

‘But these went well,’ Minnie prompted, taking Blitz by the scruff of his neck to stop him sniffing at Carol-Ann. ‘You feel confident …’

‘Who knows,’ said Daniel. He was taller than she was now, but even though she looked up at him when he spoke somehow he still felt smaller. ‘It was OK. We’ll know soon enough.’

‘OK is good. Carol-Ann, are you staying for your tea, pet? It’s Friday, I bought some fish.’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘That’d be great, like, Min’.’

*

The pair fell on to the grass beside Minnie, chatting and teasing each other, as she continued with her planting. Daniel had changed out of his school clothes. Carol-Ann screamed as Daniel tickled her, and Minnie looked over at them both, smiling. They flopped back on to the grass. Carol-Ann rolled over and then threw her leg over Daniel. She leaned over his face, pinning each of his wrists to the grass.

‘Prisoner?’ he asked.

‘That’s right,’ she said, trying to tickle him as he glued his arms to his sides and swatted her hands away.

A white butterfly floated, blind and charming, over Daniel’s face. He watched its dizzy flight.

‘Hold still,’ cried Carol-Ann, suddenly. ‘It’s on your hair. I want to catch it. I’ll give it to you as a present.’

Daniel lay still, watching as Carol-Ann reached above his head and cupped her hands around the butterfly.

‘Enough!’ Minnie was standing above them, her voice raised.

Daniel was confused. He raised himself up on his elbows, and Carol-Ann, still astride him with her hands cupped around the butterfly, turned.

‘Let it go right now,’ said Minnie.

Carol-Ann opened her hands immediately. She climbed to her feet and put a hand on Minnie’s arm.

‘I’m sorry, Min’,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean to upset you, like.’

‘I’m sorry too,’ said Minnie, turning away, a hand on her forehead. ‘It’s just if you hold them, you can take the powder off their wings. They won’t be able to fly and they’ll die.’

Carol-Ann rubbed breadcrumbs on to the haddock, while Daniel cut the potatoes into thick chips, dropped them into the wire sieve and lowered them into the deep fat fryer. Minnie fed the animals and then they sat at the kitchen table, three spaces cleared amid the old newspapers and spaghetti jars. Daniel had just turned sixteen.

Carol-Ann would stay for dinner two or three nights a week. It was time for their GCSEs and Minnie had been fraught for weeks: asking him if he shouldn’t study first before going out to play football, buying him a new desk for his bedroom and telling him to take long baths to relax and go to bed early.

‘You don’t realise it and it won’t feel like it,’ she kept saying to him, biting her top lip between sentences, ‘but this is an important time. You’re at the doorway between one life and another. It’s your choice what you do, but I want you to go to university. I want you to have choices. I want you to see just what’s on offer.’

She helped him with his biology and chemistry and told him to eat more because it would feed his brain.

‘This is good, Minnie,’ said Carol-Ann, squeezing a spot of ketchup on to the corner of her plate. Blitz watched them intently, a thin string of saliva stretching from his lower jaw towards the floor.

‘Eat up then, love.’ She passed a chip to Blitz, who snapped it from her fingers, hungrily.

Daniel was eating with one elbow on the table and the fingers of his right hand in his hair.

‘So, basically, what you’re telling me is that it was no problem. There was nothing that you couldn’t do, and you had time to check it all through before you left?’

‘Aye, it were fine,’ he said, his mouth full and his gaze on the fresh flakes of fish on his fork.

‘What’s that, love?’ she said, brushing the hair out of his eyes with her left hand.

He sat up and pulled away from her gently. He didn’t like it when she touched him like that when his friends were here. When they were on their own, he would allow it.

‘I said it were fine,’ he said, not loud, but meeting her eyes this time.

‘Don’t look at me like that with your baby browns.’ She raised her eyes at Carol-Ann. ‘I was only asking, so I was.’ She smiled at him defiantly and gave another chip to the dog.

Later, after Carol-Ann had gone home, he got his books out again and sat at the big oak desk she had bought for him. She brought him hot chocolate and home-made treacle scones thick with butter for his supper.

‘Don’t work too much longer, love,’ she said, rubbing the space between his shoulder blades. ‘You don’t want to get overtired.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Will I run your bath now? Get a good soak and then come and talk to me.’

‘All right.’

‘I know you did well today.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just know. My Irish sixth sense. This is going to be the start of something great for you. You had some rough luck when you were little but this is you on your way.’ She made a fist and held it up to her face, smiling. ‘I can see you in a sharp suit one day. Maybe you’ll be in London, or maybe Paris or something, earning the big bucks. And I’ll come and visit you … Will you take me out for lunch?’

‘Aye, I suppose so. A slap-up lunch, anything you fancy.’

Minnie threw back her head and laughed. He liked her laugh. It bubbled up from her stomach. She put a hand on the desk to steady herself.

‘You’re a card, so you are, but I’ll hold you to it.’

Again she wiped the hair back from his face and planted a wet kiss on his forehead. He smiled and pulled away from her again.

‘Your bath’ll be ready in ten minutes. You be sure and get finished by then, or it’ll get cold.’

Daniel listened as she made her way downstairs, the floorboards and banister protesting under her weight. Blitz barked once as she neared the foot of the stairs, irked that she should think to leave him for so long. He heard the living-room door creak shut and the muffled sound of the television making its way up through the floorboards. Outside it was still light and early summer birds were springing from tree to tree. A part of him still felt out of place: wanted the city with all its distrust and unassuming freedom. But at the same time, he felt at home with her.

It had been over three years since she had adopted him, and yes, he did feel different. He felt looked-after. It was this which was perhaps most strange to him. When he stopped fighting her, she had lavished him with care and attention. Even when she embarrassed him, kissing him in front of Carol-Ann or praising him to the other stallholders at the market, he felt warmed by her. She told him that she loved him, and he believed her.

In the bath, he let himself sink down so that his shoulders were under water. He was now five feet ten and a half, over half a foot taller than Minnie. He could no longer stretch out in the bath. He was too thin, though. He made a fist and pulled his forearm towards his face, so that he could inspect his bicep. In addition to his football training, he had started to do weights. The television became louder when the living-room door opened. He heard Minnie pad back and forth to the kitchen. The bathroom was steamy, although he had the window open three inches – enough for him to see out into the yard. The rowan was like a tendonous, skeletal hand stretching out of the earth against the night sky.

On the shelf in the bathroom was the butterfly, placed just to the side the way Minnie liked it. He wiped sweat off his face and watched the butterfly, imagining the small child placing it on the shelf. Daniel swallowed and then looked away.

He dried himself and dressed in tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt. He towelled his hair dry and pushed it off his face. It was getting long at the front. He wiped a hand across his jaw, inspecting it for signs of a beard. It was smooth and clean and hairless.

In the kitchen he made himself toast and poured a glass of milk, then went into the living room to sit with her.

‘Do you want some toast? I’ll make you some.’

‘No, love, I’m grand. Are you hungry again? You have a bottomless pit for a stomach, so you do. I wish I could eat like you.’

She tried to put her elbow on the edge of the armchair but missed and spilled some of her drink on to the floor.

‘There I go again,’ she said, dabbing the spill with the heel of her sock.

Daniel gave Blitz the last of his toast, then finished his milk as he listened to Minnie rant at the news. The Prime Minister, John Major, was talking about the potential for economic recovery.

‘Yer arse in parsley,’ Minnie railed at the screen. ‘They’ll not be satisfied ’till they have this country on its knees … God, I hated that woman, but he’s not much better.’

She wasn’t expecting an answer from Daniel and so he said nothing. He put a piece of coal on the fire.

‘How was your bath, love?’ she asked him, her cheeks wet as if with fresh tears. She leaned over the arm of her chair, a smile on her face and her eyes merry. ‘Did you get your work finished?’

‘Aye.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Are you all right?’ he asked her, seeing her wipe her face again.

‘I’m grand, love. I’m just incensed by the sight of that bloody man. Turn that news over. Turn it off. I can’t even stomach the sight of him.’

Daniel got up and changed the channel. It was sport and he glanced at her to see if she would allow it. Usually she would ask him to watch it on the black and white in the kitchen, or she would say yes but then lose patience. Tonight her eyes wavered before the screen, then closed for a long blink.

As Daniel sat down to watch the game, her eyes closed and her head twice bobbed down sharply, waking her. When her eyes began to close again, he got up and gently took the glass from her hand and carried it through to the kitchen. The dog wanted out and so he opened the back door. He washed up the dishes from dinner and wiped the portion of the kitchen table from which they had eaten.

When Blitz came back inside, Daniel locked up, closing the windows and bolting the back door. The dog settled into his basket, as the house warmed to Minnie’s snores.

In the living room her head was thrown back in the chair, the fingers of her right hand still reaching out to grasp the glass that Daniel had removed.

Daniel stood with his hands on his hips for a moment and sighed. He turned off the television and put the guard across the fire. He turned out the light beside her chair then took her hand and helped her forward until he could get an arm underneath her shoulder.

‘No, leave me, love, leave me,’ she protested.

But he lifted her up, put her arm over his shoulder and walked her, a hand by her waist, out of the living-room door and upstairs. Twice he had to stop and steady himself, one foot behind him on the lower step, when she leaned back into him, but he got her upstairs and then lowered her on to her bed, where she lay with her lips parted and her torso twisted so that her feet were on the floor.

Daniel knelt and unlaced her boots, slipped them off and then her big wool socks. He was always amazed by the smallness of her feet. He loosened her blouse and peeled the cardigan from her, then took the clasp from her hair, allowing her long grey curls to spill over the pillow.

He took her feet and slipped them under the covers, lifted her shoulders a little and centred her on the pillow, before pulling the quilt over her.

‘You’re a good lad,’ she whispered to him, when he was still leaning over her. Always she would do this: surprise him with her consciousness. ‘I love you, so I do.’

He tucked her in, and turned off the light.

‘G’night, Mam,’ he whispered, in the near dark.