As I bounded up the stairs to Archie, who I could hear crying – clearly not as sleepy as I’d thought – I realized I was humming. ‘Raindrops on Roses’, Mum’s favourite. And cheesy though it was, The Sound of Music always came to me in moments of elation. Elation, I thought in some surprise, as I lifted my son from his cot. I twirled him round the room in my arms and he gurgled in astonished delight. I planted a resounding kiss on his flushed cheek. No, I would not be written off. Not yet, anyway. I would not sit quietly in partial shade. I would have a stab at the sunlight. I would trot up the road alongside Sam Hetherington, cheeks pink, lipstick gleaming, I would not be sweet Poppy Shilling who was slowly finding her feet; I’d be up and running. Galloping, even. I sailed out of the room with Archie in my arms. Even if I broke my bloody neck in the process.
20
I found my father in front of an old Elvis DVD, slumped on the exploding beige sofa, the one where you had to know where to sit to avoid the springs. A couple of bantam hens seemed to be watching too, from the top of the piano, where they roosted occasionally amongst elderly copies of the Racing Times. The two dogs lay across his lap. Dad was playing an acoustic air guitar, winsomely plucking at imaginary strings, crooning softly. As I came in the room he turned and I saw his florid cheeks were damp with tears.
‘It’s the bit where she tells him she can’t marry him because she’s dying of that dreadful disease and he sings “This is My Heaven”. The hula-hula girls are about to come on.’
‘Ah.’
I sank down beside him with a smile, shoving Mitch up a bit. I was still in my coat, but then coats were a necessity in Dad’s house; he was still in his. I’d seen this movie a million times, had grown up on it, along with all the other black and whites in Dad’s collection, but it still held a certain allure, and before long my eyes were filling too. We even swayed a bit and waved our hands along with the hula-hula girls at the end. As more tears rolled along with the credits, I wondered if they were for Elvis and his lost love or the way this house always made me feel: its cosy shambolic familiarity, the peeling paint, the clutter of tack and books and bottles, the terrible carpet and the terrible aching feeling I got whenever I came. The temptation to stick my thumb in my mouth and stay for ever, curled up with Dad watching old movies, Mum’s photo on the crowded sideboard smiling down at us. Safe. Surely most children feel like that when they’re little but then can’t wait to get away, achieve some distance. Most would surely hurtle from a place like this; so why, then, did I still feel some incredibly visceral, gravitational pull?
‘Right. Party’s over.’ Dad’s familiar way of drawing a veil over all things emotional. He got to his feet with an almighty sniff, pulling a red and white spotty hanky from his pocket and blowing his nose hard. ‘Important to get it all out, though, every now and again,’ he observed gruffly.
Important to have a good sob, was what he meant. About Mum. Which I knew we’d both been doing, the weepy movie giving us an excuse. At least I’d never have to do that to get over my more recent bereavement, I thought. In fact if I did get out a movie, it might well be Put Out the Flags.
‘Where are the kids?’ Dad asked, stuffing the hanky back in his pocket and helping himself to a tumbler of Famous Grouse to steady the nerves. Not the first of the day, I’d hazard, and it wasn’t even eleven o’clock.
‘With Jennie.’ I leaned my head back on the sofa and looked up at him. ‘I couldn’t take them back in the lorry, Dad. No belts.’
‘Oh.’ His face fell like a child’s, as I knew it would. He was disappointed. Couldn’t understand why, since I’d rattled around in that lorry unfettered, my children couldn’t. No matter how often I told him about laws and fines, not to mention terrible injuries, he still didn’t get it.
‘But you were perfectly OK,’ he’d say. ‘And I drive safely …’