Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,113
groaned as he reached toward a shard of china. “I’ll have to have Mabel rub some liniment on me after this. What with your mam spilling boiling hot gravy on my bloody privates, I feel like I’ve been through a war and not a Christmas dinner. Things always like this at your house?” He sounded jovial enough, but there was a prickly undertone.
“Only sometimes,” I said as I knelt down beside him and began gathering the shattered pieces of the cup.
“Mabel said your mam tried to knock herself off. Cut her wrists in the bath.”
“Yes,” I said softly. He had stopped picking up the pieces now, and I could feel his eyes on me.
“Carted her off to Delapole, didn’t they? Kept her in there awhile.”
I felt the color rise in my face. I hated that Frank had this information about my mother, and I felt a flare of anger at Mabel for telling him this shameful fact. Frank had no right to know. And he had no right to bring it up.
“Yeah, well, she’s always seemed like a bloody nutcase to me. No wonder your dad cleared off. Though God only knows why he put up with her until now. Those things tend to run in families, you know.”
I reached for the cracked-off curve of the cup handle that lay next to Frank’s knee. As I did, he put his hand on top of mine. I tried to pull away, but he pressed his hand down hard, pushing my palm against the sharp edge of the broken cup handle. I winced at the sudden burn of pain and looked into his face. He was still smiling, his narrowed eyes glinting like deep-set jewels. “Get off,” I said.
He pressed down harder. “So, are you a nutcase like your mother?”
“No.”
He held my hand down, and the cup handle’s serrated edge cut deeper into my skin. “Good, because I wouldn’t want to get myself too involved in a family full of crackpots. I mean, Mabel’s all right, but a man can’t be too careful. And that bloody mother of yours—”
“Let go,” I said, trying to pull my hand away again. But I was pinned. The world narrowed to the sharpness of the pain and Frank’s growling voice.
“Frigging humiliating, not to mention the real harm she could’ve done. I’ve never been one to put up easily with being made a fool of. But by a bitch like that, well—”
“Frank! Frank!” Mabel was shouting from the hallway. Within seconds, the kitchen door swung open. “Where’s that—For God’s sake, what are the two of you doing down there?”
As soon as he heard her voice, Frank let go of my hand to begin picking up pieces of broken china from the floor. “Oh, hello, love,” he said. “Jesse here was helping me pick up a cup and saucer I dropped. Silly butterfingers me.” He barked a throaty laugh.
“Well, me and Harry are still waiting for our tea.”
“I know, love. And I was just about to bring it in.” Frank reached up to grab the edge of the counter and slowly eased himself to standing. As he did so, he pressed a hand into his lower back. “I think I’ve done myself a right injury down there, I have.”
“Should take more care with the dishes, then, shouldn’t you? Men,” Mabel said, rolling her eyes at me. “They can’t even make a pot of tea without creating a bloody crisis. I say, love, what happened to you?”
I realized my hand was bleeding, the blood seeping across the bright shine of the new linoleum.
I looked up at Frank to see him staring at me, the skin at the edges of his eyes puckered and his eyelids fluttering slightly, as if he was trying to contain his rage. I thought of telling Mabel what he had done, but I felt the weight of that look. I didn’t want to provoke him into more meanness.
“It’s all right, Auntie Mabel,” I said, holding my palm upward so that the blood rolled in a thin stream over my wrist and down my arm. “It’s just a little cut. It will heal.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ALL THAT AFTERNOON, MABEL INSISTED THAT MY FATHER WOULD return soon, but as afternoon shifted rapidly into dusk she seemed to have doubts. “I just don’t know where he’s got to,” she said as she looked out the window at the last weak threads of sunlight shimmering at the western edges of the sky. “I mean, even the pubs aren’t open on Christmas