He gave up drinking. Completely. He cleaned the flat, got his hair cut. Grace asked if she could meet the woman.
“Not yet.”
“She’s not married?” She didn’t want him to get hurt.
“No, it’s not that. She won’t go out with me. Not yet. But she will, I can tell she’s weakening.”
And eventually she must have weakened because when Grace called into the restaurant again he couldn’t stop grinning and he couldn’t sit still for a second.
“Has he been drinking?” she asked Rod. She liked Rod, who was Welsh and calm. She never found out how he ended up running this unlikely restaurant.
“No. He’s been like this all day. High as a kite.”
The woman was called Sue. She ran an office supplies business from a shop on the High Street. She was much younger than him. He saw her first when he walked past the shop and he went in on impulse and bought some typing paper and a bottle of Tippex.
“Best fiver I ever spent,” he said.
Grace looked at him anxiously, like a mother watching her child embark on a first romance. She hoped it would work out for him. She’d like to pass some of the responsibility for looking after him on to Sue.
Sue was small with sleek blond hair. She wore the sort of make-up which gave her skin the shine of porcelain. She was very lively, never still, always talking and smiling and waving her hands. She and Edmund talked about things in which Grace had little interest cinema, music, theatre. Grace wasn’t jealous it was quite a relief to spend more time in the Halifax library. She didn’t find the syllabus hard but she wanted to do well in the exams. When she did see her father he was excitable, happy, full of plans.
It was at this time that his mother died.
“So,” he said to Grace on one of her occasional visits to the restaurant, ‘ old bat’s finally gone.”
“Can I come with you to the funeral?”
He looked at her sharply. “I’m not going,” he said. And that was it.
He wouldn’t discuss it any more.
Grace was a bit disappointed. She still dreamed of meeting the family in the big house. Then she thought they must have offended her father very badly if he wouldn’t attend his mother’s funeral.
One Sunday in November, the day before the start of her mock exams, she received a phone call from her father. She had spent all day in the sisters’ library and Maureen and Frank were making a fuss of her. They said she’d been working too hard and she needed to relax. They were sitting in front of the television drinking tea. The bad boys were out.
Frank took the call. When he came back he was frowning.
“It’s your father,” he said. “Do you want to take it?”
“Of course, why not?”
“I’m sorry, pet. I think he’s been drinking.”
This was an understatement. Her father was raging drunk, just coherent enough for her to work out that Sue had dumped him. She wanted to rush round to the flat to see him but for once Frank put his foot down.
“Come on!” he said. “He’ll not even know you’re there, the state he’s in.”
“But he might be sick. Choke. People can die.” “I’ll go,” Frank said.
She realized for the first time what an unusually good man Frank was.
The night before he’d been up until midnight sitting in the police station with one of the boys who’d been caught brawling in the youth club. All day he’d been ferrying them around football training for one, the Halifax sisters for her. He always cooked lunch on Sundays to give Maureen a break. He looked exhausted but he was prepared to go out again. She went up to the chair where he was slumped, his feet in his slippers she gave him two Christmases ago, his sweatshirt splattered with cooking stains. She sat on the arm of the chair, put her arm round his shoulders and hugged him. It was the first intimate physical contact she’d had with another human being since she was five and trying to impress the foster parents that couldn’t love her. Frank knew this was an important moment but he didn’t say anything. He took her thin hand in his and squeezed it, then he got up to put on his shoes and find his car keys.
When he got back Maureen was in bed because she had to be up for the early shift the next day. Grace was waiting for him.
“How is he?”
“Well, he’s had a skinful, that’s for sure.” Frank was born in Liverpool and when he was tired he talked like a Scouser.
“But he is all right?”
“Oh aye, he’ll be fine. Right as rain in the morning. And yes, he has been sick down the toilet. I got him to bed and he’s fast asleep.”
“Frank?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks.” This time she just reached out and touched his arm. He understood, and smiled.
“Getaway,” he said. “Now off to bed. It’s an important day tomorrow.
Mo and me have never had a kid go away to college before.”
At first she thought this would be a drinking bout like many others her dad had been through. For a few days he’d be dead to the world then he’d emerge, sheepish and bedraggled, to apologize. She concentrated on her exams.
Three days later she called into the restaurant to find Rod doing the cooking.
“It’s Ed’s day off; he said. “He’s gone out.” She thought that was a good sign. At least her father wasn’t upstairs in the flat drinking whisky straight from the bottle. He’d never been a social drinker.
“Does that mean he’s back with Sue?”
Rod shrugged. She took that, optimistically, to mean that things were pretty much back to normal.
Then she saw him in the town. It was the last day of the exams and the Halifax sisters had invited her to a special tea to celebrate. She was walking down the High Street with a gang of girls. She’d tagged along because there was a question in the Chemistry paper she wanted to discuss, but they weren’t very interested. They were talking about a party one of the sixth formers was giving, to which most of them had been invited.
The High Street had been pedestrianized and paved with ornamental brick. Wrought iron seats had been placed, back to back, in the middle of the streets and there were tubs of plants and shrubs, long since dead and waiting to be cleared out for the winter. Her father was sitting alone on one of the benches. He was dirty, unshaven and he was crying. An empty bottle lay on its side under the bench and rolled occasionally when there was a strong gust of wind. At least the other girls, still talking about the party and which of them definitely looked old enough to get into the off-licence, didn’t notice him. And Edmund was too absorbed in his own grief to see her.
She walked straight past him and on to the street where the Halifax sisters lived. Before knocking on the door she composed herself.
Cynthia had prepared a magnificent tea with smoked salmon sandwiches, meringues and gingerbread. Grace exclaimed over it and ate everything they pressed on to her.
She didn’t visit her father for two days. How dare he ruin a day when she was supposed to be celebrating? Then she cracked, and went to see him after school. The town had been decorated for Christmas in a mean-spirited way, with a tall thin spruce lit by ugly white bulbs. On the door of the restaurant there was a wreath of real holly.
The restaurant was empty but Rod was behind the bar. He’d poured himself a brandy in a large round glass and seemed surprised, rather embarrassed to see her.
“Didn’t that social worker tell you?”
“What?”
“Edmund’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
“Look, I’m really sorry. I phoned her first thing yesterday.” There was a pause. “He’s in hospital.”
“What happened? An accident?”
“Nothing like that. Not that sort of accident.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s in St. Nick’s.”
St. Nicholas’ was the big loony-bin on the outskirts of the town.
Victorian gothic surrounded by 1930s villas. Everyone had heard of it.
In primary school it was the standard term of abuse. “You should be in St. Nick’s, you should.”
She didn’t know what to say. He came out from behind the bar.
“I’m really sorry,” he said again. “It wasn’t only the drink, you know. He was getting depressed and it wasn’t only Sue. His mother’s death hit him harder than he let on. I was afraid he’d do something daft. He needs time to sort himself out. I couldn’t cope. He needs professional help. Something more than I could give him anyway. More than you could too.”