‘Yes, pet,’ Margaret said. She came across the space between them and put her hands on his upper arms. ‘Your – wel , Amy rang me this morning. Amy Rossiter. She rang to tel me that your father had a severe heart attack last night, and he was rushed into hospital and he died there.
Your father died last night.’
Scott gazed at her. He swal owed. He felt a lump in his throat of something intractable – could it be tears? – which would certainly prevent him from talking and might even prevent him from breathing. His father had left them when he, Scott, was fourteen. He had, up to then, felt a strangled but intense adoration for his father, especial y at those rare but treasured times when his father sat down at the piano with him, and listened and watched while he played. Of course, Richie could never listen or watch for long, he had to join in and then take over, but when he was beside him on the piano stool, Scott had been what he later believed to be as close to joy as an adolescent could get. In retrospect, Scott could not bear to think about that joy. It got engulfed by grief and fury and blind incomprehension. He blinked now, several times, hard. Then he swal owed again, and the lump dispersed sufficiently to al ow him to speak.
‘Died,’ Scott said.
‘Yes, pet.’
Scott removed himself gently from his mother’s grasp.
‘Amy rang you?’
‘She said,’ Margaret said, ‘she was ringing so that her mother wouldn’t have to.’
‘Charming.’
‘Wel , it’s brave,’ Margaret said, ‘if you think about it. She’l stil be wel in her teens.’
Scott took a step back. He shook his head.
‘So he’s dead.’
‘Yes.’
He shot a glance at his mother.
‘Are you OK?’
She said, ‘Wel , I’ve got through today and got what I wanted out of Bernie Harrison, so I suppose – wel , I suppose the news isn’t going to kil me.’
Scott moved forward and put his arms round his mother.
‘Sorry, Mam.’
‘Sorry?’ she said. ‘What’s there for
He said awkwardly, ‘Wel , it can’t happen now, can it, I mean, he can’t—’
‘I never hoped that,’ Margaret said. ‘Never.’ Her voice rose. ‘I never hoped that!’
Scott gave her a brief squeeze. She had never been helpful to hold.
‘OK, Mam.’
‘I’m tel ing you, Scott, I never hoped he’d come back to me.’
Scott let her go. He gestured.
‘Drink?’
Margaret glanced at the table.
‘I’m not drinking beer—’
‘I’ve got brandy,’ Scott said. ‘I bought some brandy for a recipe and never used it. Let me get you a brandy.’
‘Thank you,’ Margaret said.
‘Sit down, Mam.’
Margaret went slowly across to the black sofa. She picked up the DVD, regarded the cover unseeingly, and put it down on the coffee table among the scattered magazines and newspaper supplements. Then she sat down and leaned back into the huge canvas cushions and stared up into the gaunt and careful y restored rafters of the ceiling. She was suddenly and overwhelmingly very, very tired.
Scott came down the room from the kitchen end. He was carrying a beer bottle and a tumbler of brown liquid.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I don’t run to brandy bal oons.’
She turned her head slowly to look at him. Not as handsome as Richie, not as head-turning, but it was a better face, a less conscious face, and he’d got his father’s hair. Looking at him, she felt a rush of emotion, a rush of something that could end in tears if she’d been a crying woman. She patted the sofa next to her.
‘I’d drink it out of a jam jar,’ she said.
Scott sat down next to her. He held out the brandy.
‘Mam?’
‘Yes, pet,’ she said, heaving herself up to take the tumbler out of his hand.
‘Mam,’ Scott said, staring straight ahead, ‘Mam, do you think we should go to the funeral?’
