Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,176

a smile, slim and bright as the crescent of a brand-new moon, etched across her face. It had been four months since I’d last seen her, and when I heard my father’s car pulling into the driveway after picking her up, I was afraid I’d forgotten what she looked like. But the second she stepped out of the car, I realized that she was as familiar to me as the sound of my own voice, or the smell of my own skin. She looked different, though, as she made her way along the path to the front door—her face plumped up, her cheeks pinked with color, her movements measured rather than jagged and wild or painfully lethargic. Now her smile so wide that it made little fans of the creases around her eyes, I wondered if it was really possible that this most recent stay in Delapole might actually have done her good.

“She’s been in the hospital,” I said, keeping my voice low. And then, surprising myself, I added, “In Delapole.”

I saw a look flicker between the two of them, a little flame of knowledge that leaped within their eyes. I gripped the edges of my chair.

“Is she better?” Malcolm asked. “I don’t know.”

“She looks well, Jesse,” he said. “I bet she’s probably all right.”

“Yeah, she looks great,” Dizzy agreed.

They were both smiling at me, hopeful, buoyant. I felt them holding me up the way I’d always thought that friends might.

For a while, everyone focused on eating. There was the clatter of knives and forks on china, the chomping of jaws, the gulping down of tea. Then, after working his way through an enormous slab of pork pie, Granddad turned to Malcolm. “Play football, do you, lad?” he asked, leaning across the table and jabbing a fork in Malcolm’s direction.

“Only at school, but I’m not really interested in sports.”

“Not interested in sports?” Granddad said, as if Malcolm had just confessed to a murder. “Lad of your age? Not interested in sports?” Granddad looked around the table, apparently seeking affirmation of his outrage from the other guests. Next to Granddad, my father sighed and lifted his eyes skyward.

“Malcolm’s a very good swimmer,” I chirped.

Granddad huffed. “Swimming? That doesn’t count. I’m talking about real sports. The sort that develops the body and the character, that makes a boy into a man. See, my lad Brian, he was a terrific footie player. Mike here”—he stabbed his fork in my father’s direction—“he was like you, no interest, no skill in sports. Tell you the truth, don’t think he’s much of a swimmer, either, are you, Mike?”

My father didn’t bother to answer Granddad. Instead, he looked down at the table and his shoulders slumped forward, into his chest.

“But Brian, well, he was an athlete, he was. Best footie player you’re ever likely to see. Could do magic with that ball, he could. Aye,” Granddad said, nodding to himself. “You’ve never seen a footballer like our Brian.”

My father looked up and caught my eye. Then he turned to Malcolm, and looked back at me. As he did so, I noticed a muscle in his cheek twitch, a flicker of something in his eyes. Then, as if he’d come to a decision, he put his hands on the table and pushed himself up in his chair. “Dad,” he said, sitting straight, looking at Granddad across the table.

“If you got a chance to see Brian play,” Granddad continued, jabbing his fork in the air, apparently not hearing, “well, you’d understand what I was saying. See, he ran around that field like—”

“Dad,” my father bellowed. He lifted his hands and then slapped them down hard on the table, making the cups rattle in their saucers, the glasses jolt, and the cutlery bounce. Everyone was stunned into silence.

“What?” Granddad asked, his tone irritated.

“Brian’s been dead almost twenty years,” my father said.

“So?”

“So I’m just plain tired of hearing about how bloody wonderful he was. And I swear, if you extol the virtues of my dead brother once more in my presence, today or any other day, I will never, ever speak to you again. So either drop the subject now or I’ll drag you from that chair, drive you home, and you can spend the rest of your days staring at pictures of Saint bloody Brian.”

Granddad, at a loss for words for the first time I’d ever witnessed, let his mouth flap wide to gape at my father. After a couple of seconds, the hand holding his fork dropped loosely to