‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘When was this taken?’
Don propped the photo up against the jug in the centre of the table. ‘About fifteen years ago.’ He drained the last of his coffee and leant back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.
‘See,’ he said, ‘I always thought I’d go long before Margaret. Otherwise I wouldn’t have said yes when she said she wanted the baby.’ Don’s eyes were closed, like he was picturing the event. I looked at my coffee and wondered if I’d be able to finish it. The silence lengthened.
‘I haven’t been a good father to him,’ Don said softly. ‘Didn’t know what to do in the first place. And that’s all fine if you’ve got a loving mother — don’t need the father so much then.’ He opened his eyes and looked at me. ‘Just like my old man.’ He swept one of his arms from behind his head like he was gesturing at something. ‘He was no damn good at it — he went to work and came home and we stayed out of his way.’ He let his hand find its way back behind his head. ‘I wasn’t as bad as that — I wanted to be more than that to Samson, but I wasn’t good at it. Couldn’t do the baby talk, found it embarrassing. Margaret used to say to me, He’s not a short adult, he’s a child. But I never saw the difference. And then when he got older, there was trouble with his attention span or something. Teachers were no good. I was no good. But his mother — she was good.’ He dropped his hands down and laid them on the table, carefully. They were old hands, older than the rest of him. One of his index fingers had a scar all the way down it as if it had been split open, and the nails were yellow, thick and horny. The tips of his fingers pointed in strange directions.
‘When she died Samson was sixteen. Where I’m from, that meant you were a man. I didn’t know what to do with him — I don’t know if he knew what to do with me either. We didn’t know what to say to each other without her.’ Don bit his bottom lip and held it there. I listened to the sound of us breathing. ‘When he started with the fires, I thought he was punishing me, but I thought I’d done nothing wrong, so what was there to punish? I never brutalised him. Not once. Never did to him the things my father would’ve.’
My mouth was dry, but I couldn’t wet it with the instantchino which was lukewarm now and sickly.
‘What did he set fire to?’
‘Cars at first. Then a barn. Then he had a go at the cottage while I was in it, but I came down in the night and found him sitting over the table with his head in his hands. He’d made a little bonfire in the corner of the room, and I say, What are you up to? And he says he wants the place burnt. And so I called the police after that. On my own boy, on our boy.’
Don looked far away.
‘What did the police do?’ I thought of the sergeant, gentle-eyed and useless.
‘They said did I want to press charges, and even the fella whose barn Sam set alight — he hadn’t pressed charges once I paid him back for it — even he said, the boy’s just troubled after his mother. But I pressed charges, and the boy went to borstal.’
I picked up my mug and drank the bad coffee just to have another movement, another noise in the room.
‘I had it in my head the place’d do him some good, some rules, some toughening — Margaret was never big on those things. She thought we should nurture his dream to be a guitar player.’ Don laughed. ‘He was dreadful at that, purely dreadful. He’s my son, I said; he’ll be a farmer.’
Outside the sun came out from behind a cloud, so that it was like someone had opened a curtain in the room. I could see Midge through the window, resting her head on her paws, looking out towards my sheep. ‘And after he’d gone, when it was just me alone in the house without him to worry about, I began to see what he meant.’
‘What did he mean?’
‘He meant to burn down the house, and I saw why.’
I nodded, but all I could think of was the water in the tap over the sink, and how I’d like to pour away the coffee and take down large gulps.
‘Memories?’ I said.
Don looked up like he’d forgotten I was there. He smiled. ‘Woke up in the night with Midge howling outside, looked out the window and there she was, Margaret, in her dressing gown, the only clothes I took for her to the hospice. She had her back to the house, walking towards the woods, but I could see it was her.’
I got up and poured away my coffee, rinsed my mug and filled it with water. I drank and listened as the water collected in my belly.
‘I went down and outside, and I ran out with Midge going berserk alongside me, and I chased to the spot I’d seen her, saw something go into the woods and I just stood there calling for her. But she never came back. I thought about burning the place down then. Couldn’t sleep for the fear she’d come back. Or wouldn’t come back.’
Don exhaled, rested his old head in his hand. ‘When Samson came out the borstal he didn’t come and see me. I ran into him in town a few times, took him for a drink, said sorry. But there’s things no amount of saying sorry’ll fix. He’s a gentle soul, really.’ He looked up at me. ‘He’d not do that to your sheep, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m sorry he gave you a scare, but if your sheep are being slaughtered, it’s an animal, it’s not my son, I promise you that.’
I gripped onto my mug and nodded. ‘I know it’s not him,’ I said. Don’s eyes were watery. ‘I’ve heard he sometimes camps in the woods, and I wanted to ask him if he’s seen anything.’
Don smiled. ‘He will have seen lots of things, though you have to pick your way between choosing what ones are real. I haven’t got the hang of that, and I don’t think I’ve got the time left in me to sort the real from the daydreams.’
‘He wants to see you — he was asking after you. That’s why he came to the cottage — he didn’t know you’d moved.’
‘He does know,’ Don said with a little shake of his head, ‘he just forgets things. Must be off his pills.’
I thought about the look on Samson’s face as he turned and walked into the dark.
‘Yep, afraid I turned my son loopy,’ Don said and clasped his old hands around his mug.
I stood up to leave, felt my fists clenching at my sides. Without warning one of my hands rested itself on Don’s shoulder, and I said, ‘I don’t think it’s your fault,’ and we stayed like that for an awkward moment. Don wiped an old wrist under his nose.
‘Come and I’ll give you this flounder this bloody woman gave me,’ he said, and got up to go to the fridge. ‘Me, I’ll be having a Lean Cuisine.’
18
The Aboriginal girl gets herself killed. Karen is smoking a Holiday and her hand is shaking. ‘I fucking told you, didn’t I?’ she says and she pours out a sloppy measure of Bi-Lo vodka into her mug of tea. There are rings of soot around her eyes. She gets this way sometimes. ‘Didn’t I fucking tell you they do it for anything?’
I take the bottle from her and pour some into my can of Coke.
‘Just makes it dangerous for the rest of us — giving these arseholes the idea in the first place, I mean fuck. No respect, no thought about the future. They don’t try to educate themselves, they don’t care where they’re livin’.’ She sucks hard on her Holiday. ‘Fuck, they don’t even care if they wake up in the morning. Well, that’s where it gets you’ — she slaps her thigh, hard — ‘throttled and fucked and stuffed in the back of a car.’ She drains her tea and starts to unscrew the bottle again, but midway through her face loses its hardness and crumples, her mouth bowing out at the sides like a child. ‘Christ,’ she says, though no tears come; she catches her breath and holds her palm to her chest. ‘She’s just a kid.’ A high-pitched sound escapes from somewhere deep in her throat and I take the bottle out of her hand, put my hand in its place and sit there until she can breathe again. She pulls it together with a long sniff and looks in silence at the space over my shoulder. ‘We’re not like that,’ she says. ‘We’ve got options — we’re smart. Right? RIGHT?’ She shouts a little and I nod. She swallows. ‘We’re not dependent on this. It’s a life choice.’ I nod after every statement. She looks at me. ‘You get the chance and you go,’ she says. ‘Opportunity is waiting around every corner.’ So is death, I think, but I don’t say it out loud.