Dragging a cushion off a chair, she wedged it under her bottom. At least the Aga was on. Leaning against the wall, she wondered what to do for the best. Right now this seemed to be what Julian wanted; for her to stay near.
The boy had been a bit odd over the past few months since his friends disappeared off the farm. But Julian was often moody, she knew that from his childhood. Snappy too, though that was unlike him. However, she did not overly concern herself. Julian had come through strange phases before. Anyway, she had enough of her own worries.
His yelps began to grate on her nerves. After a time, she could bear it no longer. ‘Julian,’ she said firmly, and though he did not look at her, his head vaguely swung in her direction. ‘I’ve got to get up, dear. I can’t stay here any longer.’
He seemed to accept this for as she struggled to her knees, he released her hand, the one he had been gripping. She hauled herself to her feet, then collapsed into a chair.
An hour passed. At times the boy keened and she was at a loss to know what to do. At other times, he was silent and she would peer down, careful not to get too close to whisper: ‘anything I can get you, dear?’ When would Seymour arrive to take over?
Someone with a head injury should not be given anything by mouth, she’d been told that. But surely the boy needed a drink, his lips so cracked? Slowly getting to her feet, she moved towards the sink. ‘I’m getting you a drink, Julian.’ Just a tiny bit of water in a glass couldn’t harm, surely? He drank it quickly and held out for more. ‘Later,’ she said, and sat again.
Another hour passed. In between sudden outbursts of wailing, he was definitely settling down, no longer gibbering to himself.
‘I’m going to fetch the ironing, love, might as well get on,’ she said, and she fetched the board and a basket of dry clothes. The smell of hot-pressed material began to pervade the room. It smelt cosy. She gave Julian a little more to drink and switched the radio on low.
Finally she saw that he had fallen asleep, his head jammed against the wall, his face slack. Blood had seeped through the bandage on his head. She noticed a graze on his jaw and a deep gash on the hand curled in his lap. It was nice to see the boy resting at last; she was pleased for him and for herself. She sat in a chair and nodded off.
She woke with a start when the front door was flung open.
Hurried footsteps could be heard coming down the hall.
‘Where is he?’ Seymour flung the question at her as he bashed through the door.
‘There’s no need to shout,’ she whispered. ‘He’s over here. He’s sleeping.’
‘I told you he shouldn’t sleep!’
‘You don’t tell me to do anything…’ she spit back.
Seymour knelt by his son and shook him. ‘Wake up, Julian. Are you alright? What happened in the car?’
Muted grunts in reply. Seymour turned to Mrs Morle.
‘Andrew says he found the car upside down in the field just along the lane, the driver door open and the engine running. He fetched a tractor and ropes and he’s towed the car back here. It’s a write-off. It’s a wonder that Julian survived.’ He turned back to his son. ‘Come on, Julian, sit up on the chair. There’s a good chap. Phone the doctor, Mrs Morle, will you?’
Later that afternoon, the GP made a house visit. She diagnosed mild concussion and said a few days’ rest should suffice. ‘Then tell him to come to the surgery for the appointment he missed,’ she added.
‘He had an appointment? What for?’ Seymour asked.
The GP raised her eyebrows and shook her head. ‘Perhaps you should ask your son.’
Some people harden as time passes; they become fixed in their views and their ventures. For Seymour, it was the opposite. Like a piece of unhewn stone, the years moulded him into a softer man, one former friends might not recognise. Empathy and forbearance, qualities suffocated in the chase for fame and fortune, flickered into life. If they were not the steadiest of flames, they burned.
Few do not struggle with the demands of parenthood, the wrestling between self and selflessness. Most accommodate its joys and delights. But for Seymour, it was not until he’d spent hours by the side of his almost-moribund form waiting for signs of sanity to return that he finally appreciated its lure. If there was one thing to commend mental illness, it was this: it awakened in Seymour a flagrant, untrammelled love for his son. Feelings he formerly judged in others as slavish adherence to social expectation, indulgent adoration or worse, biological determinism, now made sense.
Seymour fell in love with his son. There was no humiliation in being a laggard to the cause, he told himself; it was preferable to lifelong resistance. And if most parents stepped back as their children became adults and Seymour found himself moving in the opposite direction, so be it.
He was the same person, of course; sharp-tongued and easily bored. Not given to self-reflection, he sometimes thought back to that final fight with Amy. Her comments were, of course, inept and wide of the mark, the things a woman in the throes of rejection spits out. But as the years passed, he began to see her words contained more than an element of truth. If he was honest, they started to sting; they bit, they burrowed. At the same time, he was finding fashion models and celebrities more not less annoying. Demanding and petulant, requiring amounts of admiration and flattery it was exhausting to provide, he was feeling tainted. The day Julian was discharged from the psychiatric hospital for the second time, his mind was made up.
