Page 48 of Things We Never Said
‘Right,’ Sean says. ‘Well, if I ever do tell her, I’ll let you know. But don’t get your hopes up. I think you’ll be disappointed.’ Sean turns onto his street and, finding a rare parking space right in front of the house, reverses into it. ‘Right. That’s me home, April. Do you want me to phone you back once I’m indoors?’
‘No,’ April says. ‘I need to go and buy some food before Ronan arrives. He’s coming over in a bit. We’re starting packing tonight.’
‘But you’re not moving for a month, right?’
‘No, but you know how I like to get things organised in advance, yeah?’
‘I do. You’re just like your mother on that one.’
‘Exactly like Mum,’ April says. ‘Are you OK, Dad? I didn’t even ask. Sorry.’
‘I’m fine,’ Sean says. ‘Go get your shopping. Talk soon.’
The phone call over, Sean remains in the car for a moment. He looks out at their lounge window and imagines Catherine pulling the curtains and looking back at him. She’d had a second sense about when he was parking outside, and he would often glance at the house and see her peering out, grinning at him.
He thinks about his conversation with April and worries again that he was unfair to his wife. In a way, it really is true that his attempts at excusing anyone’s bad behaviour had been a calming influence on the family. Sean has known families where the slightest of disagreements always mushroomed into the biggest of arguments, whereas in their family, even the most nuclear of disputes remained under wraps until eventually it dissipated, seemingly for the simple reason that no one was prepared to stoke the fire.
But he hadn’t known that his mother had been so directly offensive towards his wife, had he? Why had Catherine never told him? Why had he never asked? Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to know. Because what would he have done with that knowledge if he had known? Where would that have got him?
Snapshot #15
35mm format, colour. A young woman holds a toddler in her arms. She is standing in a shabbily furnished lounge, on a worn green carpet. From the window behind her, weak, cold daylight is filtering into the apartment.
The first memory to surface when Sean looks at the photo is an olfactory one. He remembers the smell of mould, which used to hit his nostrils every time he stepped indoors. He can remember the odour of the grubby carpet, too; the distant throb of the almost constant traffic roaring around Mitcham’s Corner behind the tall, red-brick wall that enclosed their tiny yard.
Following on from these comes, surprisingly, the memory of a taste. The taste of the cheesy, greasy, rather delicious pizzas they used to buy from the kebab shop opposite. And then happiness. Pride. Contentment.
For yes, Sean had felt happy in that apartment. They had their first ever home, just for the three of them. Sure, it was a bit dark, and, yes, the carpet smelt pretty terrible. But it was home, and he, Sean, was paying for it, without any help from anyone. And that simple fact had made him feel a whole new kind of pride, something primeval, perhaps. He had become the hunter of the family, bringing home the carcass, in the form of a pay cheque, that would feed, clothe and house the whole family.
Cassette #15
Hi Sean,
I’m not feeling very well today, so this may not end up being the longest of tapes. I’m praying that this queasiness indicates that I’m not in the placebo group after all, but, to be honest, it’s probably just the food here. It is pretty bad.
So, what do you think of this one? Our little flat on Mitcham’s Corner.
I had such a bad start in Cambridge, Sean. I’m sure I must have been hell to live with, so I apologise for that if it’s the case.
I was scared of the place, really. I was scared I wouldn’t fit in and scared I’d show you up. Everyone seemed polite and overeducated and a little too healthy and posh and happy, and I think all of this acted like a mirror to how I saw myself back then, to how I saw my own humble origins.
You, on the other hand, loved the place from the first day. I had never seen you so happy, so energetic, so positive about everything. So I did my best to put on an act. I think I was fairly convincing.
You’d get home from work of an evening and I’d describe the luscious day I had spent with April, when the truth was that I’d spent the entire day moping around that mouldy flat.
There were high points, like that Christmas, when we went out together and bought our first tree. April was so obsessed by the twinkly lights that we moved her cot so that she could stare at it while falling asleep. But, generally speaking, I was miserable.
That first winter, I took April down to see Mum a few times in Margate, I remember. I told you that it was because Mum was single again, that it was Mum who needed me, but in truth it was the other way around.
‘Tell ’im,’ Mum kept saying. ‘Tell ’im you ain’t ’appy. Tell ’im you wanna move.’ But I couldn’t burst your bubble. At least, I couldn’t burst it right away.
You were loving your job, you were loving the people you met through it, you were enjoying the projects they had you working on ... So I just sort of battened down the hatches and hoped that either things would get better for me, or you’d change your mind and decide to go somewhere else.
It wasn’t until the following summer that things changed, because it wasn’t until then that you felt secure enough in your new job to start socialising with the people there.
I was so scared I’d show you up that I kept making excuses to start with. I had a couple of headaches, I recall. I pretended April had a fever once or twice, too. But eventually I had to cave in.
Maggie, who you worked with and who I hadn’t yet met, had organised a picnic on the Cam. It was June, I think, or maybe even July.
