Missing Joseph

He himself wasn’t smoking this morning. He had his pipe with him in case he found himself in the position of needing to do something with his hands, but so far he hadn’t brought it out of its leather pouch, although he could feel the weight of it tapping securely against his hip.

The day after any storm was generally glorious, and Brendan found this one as splendid as the previous night had been frightful. The air was still. The early sun laid down great blazes of crystal incandescence across the land. Frost rimed the tops of the drystone walls. Slate roofs wore a thick coating of snow. As he passed the first terraced house on his way into the village, he saw that someone had remembered the birds. Three sparrows were picking at a handful of toast crumbs outside a doorway, and while they eyed him warily as he passed by, hunger kept them from scattering into the trees.

He wished he’d thought to bring something with him. Toast, a slice of stale bread, an apple. It didn’t matter. Anything edible to offer the birds would have served as a marginally credible excuse for being out in the fi rst place. And he’d be needing an excuse when he returned home. In fact, it might be wise to start concocting one now as he walked.

He hadn’t thought of that earlier. Standing at the dining-room window, looking out beyond the garden to the vast white pasture that was part of the Townley-Young estate, he’d thought only of getting out, of tramping holes in the snow and driving his feet forward into a forever he could bear to live with.

His father-in-law had come to their bedroom at eight o’clock. Brendan had heard his military footsteps in the passage and had slid out of bed, freeing himself of the anchoring heaviness of his wife’s arm. In sleep, she’d thrown it diagonally across him so that her fingers rested in his groin. Under other circumstances he might have found this somnolent implication of intimacy quite erotic. As it was, he lay flaccid and mildly repelled and at the same time grateful that she was asleep. Her fingers wouldn’t be drifting coyly another inch to the left in the expectation of encountering what she deemed appropriate male morning arousal. She wouldn’t be demanding what he couldn’t give, pumping him furiously and waiting — agitated, anxious, then angry — for his body to respond. Tin-voiced accusations wouldn’t follow. Neither would the tearless weeping that screwed up her face and resounded through the corridors. As long as she slept, his body was his own and his spirit was free, so he slipped to the door at the sound of his father-in-law’s approach, and he cracked it open before Townley-Young could knock and awaken her.

His father-in-law was fully dressed, as usual. Brendan had never seen him otherwise. His tweeds, his shirt, his shoes, and his tie all made a careful statement about good breeding that Brendan knew he was supposed to understand and emulate. Everything he wore was just old enough to indicate the appropriate lack of interest in clothing that was inherent to the landed gentry. More than once Brendan had looked at his father-in-law and wondered idly how he managed the feat of maintaining an entire wardrobe that — from shirt to shoes — always looked at least ten years old, even when new.

Townley-Young gave a glance to Brendan’s woollen dressing gown and pursed his lips in silent disapproval at the messy bow Brendan had made when tying the belt. Manly men use square knots to keep their dressing gowns closed, his expression said, and the two tails falling from the waist are always perfectly even, you twit.

Brendan stepped into the corridor and shut the door behind him. “Still asleep,” he explained.

Townley-Young peered at the door’s panels as if he could see through them and make an evaluation of his daughter’s frame of mind. “Another rough night?” he asked.

That was certainly one way to put it, Brendan thought. He’d got home after eleven with the hope she’d be asleep, only to end up tussling with her beneath the covers in what went for marital relations between them. He’d been able to perform, thank God, because the room was dark and, during their biweekly nighttime encounters, she’d taken to whispering certain Anglo-Saxon pleasantries which he found allowed him to fantasize more freely. He wasn’t in bed with Becky on those nights. He chose his mate freely. He moaned and writhed beneath her and said, Oh God, oh yes, I love it, I love it to the image of Polly Yarkin.

Last night, however, Becky had been more aggressive than usual. Her ministrations possessed an aura of anger. She’d not accused or wept when he came into their bedroom smelling of gin and looking — he knew because he could not hide it — dejected and decidedly lovelorn. Instead, she’d wordlessly demanded retribution in the form she knew he wished least to make.

So it had indeed been a rough night, although not in the manner his father-in-law thought. He said, “A little discomfort,” and hoped Townley-Young would apply the description to his daughter.

“Right,” Townley-Young had said. “Well, at least we’ll be able to set her mind at rest. That should go far to making her more comfortable.”

He’d gone on to explain that the work at Cotes Hall would proceed without interruption at last. He gave the reasons why, but Brendan merely nodded and tried to look filled with anticipation while his life drained away like an ebbing tide.

Now as he approached Crofters Inn along the Lancaster Road he wondered why he had depended so much upon the Hall’s remaining unavailable to them. He was married to Becky, after all. He’d mucked up his life. Why did it seem a more permanent disaster if they had their own home?

He couldn’t have said. It was just that with the announcement of the Hall’s pending completion, he’d heard a door slam somewhere on his dreams of the future, as meaningless as those dreams had been. And with the door’s slamming, he felt claustrophobic. He needed out. If he couldn’t make an escape from the marriage, at least he could from the house. So out he went, into the frosty morning.

“Where you off to, Bren?” Josie Wragg was perched on top of one of the two stone pillars that gave way to the Crofters Inn car park. She had brushed it clear of snow and she was dangling her legs and looking as forlorn as Brendan felt. She was the word droop personified: in her spine, her arms, her legs, and her feet. Even her face looked heavy, with the skin pulled down round her mouth and eyes.

“Just a walk,” he said. And then he added because she looked so down-trodden and he knew exactly how that feeling throws one’s life into shadow, “Would you like to come along?”

“Can’t. These don’t work in the snow.”

These were the Wellingtons that she bounced upwards in his direction. They were enormous. They looked nearly twice the size of her feet. Over their tops at least three pairs of knee-socks were folded.

“Don’t you have some proper boots?”

She shook her head and pulled her knitted cap down to her eyebrows. “Mine’ve been too small since November, see, and if I tell Mum I need new ones, she’ll have a conniption. ‘When are you going to stop growing, Josephine Eugenia?’ You know. These’re Mr. Wragg’s. He doesn’t mind much.” She bounced her legs back against the frosty stones.

“Why do you call him Mr. Wragg?”

She was fumbling with a fresh packet of cigarettes, trying to rip off its cellophane wrapper with mittened fingers. Brendan crossed the road, took the packet from her, and did the honours, offering her a light. She smoked without answer, trying and failing to make a ring, blowing out steam as much as smoke.

“It’s pretend,” she finally said. “Stupid, I know. You don’t have to tell me. It makes Mum see red, but Mr. Wragg doesn’t care. If he’s not my real dad, I can pretend my mum had a big passion, see, and I’m the product of her fatal love. I pretend this bloke came to Winslough passing through on his way to wherever. He met Mum. They were crazy for each other but they couldn’t get married, of course, because Mum wouldn’t ever leave Lancashire. But he was the big love of her life and he set her on fire the way men are supposed to set women on fire. And I’m how she remembers him now.” Josie flicked ash in Brendan’s direction. “That’s why I call him Mr. Wragg. It’s dumb. I don’t know why I told you. I don’t know why I ever say anything to anyone. It’s always my fault, isn’t it, and everyone’s going to know it eventually. I natter too much.” Her lip trembled. She rubbed her fi nger beneath her nose and threw her cigarette down. It hissed gently in the snow.

“Nattering’s no crime, Josie.”

“Maggie Spence was my best mate, see. And now she’s gone. Mr. Wragg says she won’t probably be back. And she was in love with Nick. Did you know that? True love, it was. Now they won’t see each other again. I don’t think it’s fair.”

Brendan nodded. “Life’s that way, isn’t it?”

“And Pam’s been gated for forever because her mum caught her last night in the sitting room with Todd. Doing it. Right there. Her mum put on the lights and started screaming. It was just like a fi lm, Pam said. So there’s no one. No one special. It feels sort of hollow.