Chapter 17 #3
And if I walk into that kitchen and say I’m with someone, and they’re the sentence breaks.
Breaks before it starts. Because of the face my father would make.
Same face, same closing, fire door again.
And this time I’d be at the table and Sean Carrick would take his jacket and leave and there’d be nobody in the doorway to hold it because both sons would be on the other side of the door.
‘Ron.’
I look at Celyn, the knees, the feet. The t-shirt hem with the pulled thread.
‘You went somewhere,’ Celyn says.
‘Yeah.’
‘Your dad?’
I don’t answer, don’t need to. Celyn knows the shape of this, the outline. Not the inside.
‘It’s different,’ Celyn says. ‘My family and yours. My lot get it wrong in small ways. Pronouns. Questions. The Wikipedia page.’ A pause. ‘Your lot get it wrong in the one way that matters.’
I look at the telly. The darts. A bloke throws a perfect score and the crowd erupts and the sound is huge and stupid and I want to be in that room where the only thing that matters is whether a thing you threw lands where you aimed it.
‘In my house,’ I say. The words slow. ‘Love is. It’s a specific thing. It’s got conditions. You get the shape right, you get the love. You get the shape wrong and you get nothing.’
‘In Celyn’s house,’ Celyn says, the third person, deliberate, ‘love is the wrong shape. Always. But it’s there. Even when it says he. Even when it reads Wikipedia twice and still gets it wrong. It shows up with the wrong word and the right intent and that’s enough.’
‘Enough?’
‘Most days.’
Darts on the telly, crowd noise, Celyn’s feet on the sofa, cushion between us. I close the gap, put my hand on the knee. Celyn’s hand comes over mine: fingers, no polish, bare nails, the ring, the silver one, hand warm.
‘She’ll like you,’ Celyn says. ‘Mam. She likes anyone who’s useful.’
‘I can reach the top shelf.’
‘Exactly.’
The telly, the darts. The hand on the hand. The word, love, in the room. A kitchen in Snowdonia, a kitchen in Lewisham, a flat in Manchester. Two people on a sofa. One knows the word, the other one’s learning.
Rain, against the window, Manchester.
The rain’s heavier now, nobody going home early. Celyn’s still looking at the hand, the ring, the bare nails, like trying to read the skin.
‘You’re thinking about him again,’ Celyn says. Flat. Certain.
Fair. Can’t argue with fair.
‘What would you say to him,’ Celyn says. ‘If you could say anything.’
‘I dunno.’
‘Guess.’
I don’t want to guess. I want to not know, want to stay in the flat with the rain and the telly and the hand that just let go so Celyn could ask me a question I don’t have an answer to.
‘I’d say, he’s the one losing out.’ The words come wrong. They’re not the ones I was looking for. ‘I’m here. With you. Getting the tea cold. Watching shite darts. Having a life that’s, it’s not special. It’s just mine. And he’s the one who doesn’t get to be in it.’
Celyn shifts. Pulls the knees up again. Back to the small version.
‘But that doesn’t work either,’ I say. ‘Because the thing is, he’s lost Ewan for a year.
He’s not going to un-lose him just because I explain the profit margins to him like it’s a business transaction.
’ I drag a hand over my face. The stubble catches.
‘And I don’t know if he can be changed. I don’t know if the fire door opens again or if he just. Gets smaller.
Quieter. Tells himself a story about sons who made a choice to disappoint him. ’
The telly, the seventeen millimetres.
‘So you don’t say anything,’ Celyn says.
‘No. I don’t say anything. I come home. To here.
To you. To the flat that smells like burning hair gel from the barber downstairs and has a stain on the ceiling and is four metres from the toilet because the landlord’s a tight bastard.
’ I turn to look at Celyn. The knees. The t-shirt.
How the face looks when it’s just waiting.
‘I come home. And that’s the choice. Every time.
And the fire door stays closed and my father stays behind it and I get to have something.
So the loss isn’t, it’s not nothing. It’s just. Negotiated. ’
Celyn puts the hand back on the knee. Doesn’t squeeze, just sits there, warm.
‘The Welsh helps,’ Celyn says. ‘When Mam’s difficult. When the pronouns go wrong. I can go back to Welsh and I’m. I’m someone else for a bit. Something that doesn’t need translating.’
‘I don’t get that,’ I say. ‘I just get this. One language. The one that comes out wrong no matter what.’
‘You get me,’ Celyn says. ‘Which is also a language. Just, not the one you were born with.’
The rain, the hand.
‘Not sure I’m fluent yet,’ I say.
‘You’re getting there,’ Celyn says. ‘You’re getting there.’
And maybe that’s enough. The whole thing would be a father who opens a door.
Would be Ewan at a Christmas table. Would be a word I don’t have to un-hear.
But this. This is something. Celyn’s hand on the knee.
The rain hitting the glass. The flat that’s too small and too warm and the only place I know how to stay.
I squeeze the knee. Celyn squeezes back.
The squeeze back is the whole conversation.
The rain hits the glass in sheets. The darts on the wall. The Welsh still in the air between us, the shape of words I’ll never make right.
My hand on the knee. The squeeze back.
Don’t know.
Don’t move.