Your Father Sends His Love Read online

  STUART EVERS

  YOUR FATHER

  SENDS HIS LOVE

  STORIES

  W. W. Norton & Company

  Independent Publishers Since 1923

  New York • London

  L.I.B., C.V.E.

  CONTENTS

  LAKELANDS

  FREQUENCIES

  THESE ARE THE DAYS

  WINGS

  SOMETHING ELSE TO SAY

  SUNDOWNERS

  YOUR FATHER SENDS HIS LOVE

  CHARTER YEAR, 1972

  SWARM

  THIS IS NOT A TEST

  WHAT’S GOING ON OUTSIDE?

  LIVE FROM THE PALLADIUM

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  LAKELANDS

  The men were called to stop, to down tools, to come and listen. He heard and saw it from the crest of the hill, looking down onto the building site: the foreman’s fingers-in-mouth whistle, his waving of hands, the gradual hush of machinery. He watched his father, the last to stop and wipe hands; the last to join the gathering men in the gathering silence. This is how he remembers him: sweated clothes, a clumsy shuffle, apologetically tardy. A look on his face, worn often, of overwhelming concern. No sound of blade on brick, no cement churn, no excavation of earth. Just the quiet framing him.

  The son stood and with the stolen telephone took a photograph. He shot photograph after photograph; the shutter-sound following each rapid tap. His father was to the right of the foreman, still wiping his hands. The son focused on the foreman: his fatty face and stained teeth, a too-small hardhat on Irish curls. He talked slowly. He shook his head. Nothing he could do. The son moved the viewfinder to the workers, shot them in their questions and anger, then back to his father, still wiping his hands on the rag.

  The foreman finished his speech and the men disbanded: unhappy, angry. The son shot them fetching their belongings from the Portakabins, some no more than youths, lighting cigarettes, kicking the scrub, kicking the weeds. His father stayed where he was, looking up to the sky, down to the dirt. The son pinched the screen until his father’s face was in his hands. He took one last photograph and switched to video. Again his father looked up to the sky, down to the dirt. The son was still taping as his father made for the Portakabins. Men smoked and heaved holdalls over shoulders, called to one another, organized which pub, pointed their fingers at the foreman.

  When his father emerged he was clean and dressed in casual clothes; hair wet, a third darker, covering the grey. The foreman back-clapped him, the only one still there, saw him out and locked down the site.

  The boy took more photographs. The left-behind machines and materials. Plastic flapping in a soft breeze. The suggestion of houses. The ruins and scatter. He thought of the Marie Celeste. Her sailors gusted into the atmosphere, harvested by someone, something. The son took one last photograph, the wire-mesh fence up close to the phone’s lens, then went back to his bike and backpack, lay down and scrolled through the photographs. The son watched the site emptying then filling, emptying then filling, until it was time to head home.

  Remember this. Remember when. Always remember. In the period immediately before leaving a town, his father would briefly turn to the future, all his talk of how much better it would be somewhere else. But this was always short-lived. Within a week of arrival he would wind backwards. Remember when. Remember how small. Remember the smell. Remember the neighbour. Remember what I told you. His oilcloth face, age and weather blessed, smiling sometimes, always with that word on his lips.

  But since arriving in town the father had only looked forward. Even his long body and tightly compacted waist affected a progressive lean. A week after starting at the new site, he’d walked his son across town, through the park and a council estate to a large area of fenced-in scrubland. They’d walked the perimeter, calves cramping at the gradient. When they reached the crest of the hill, his father stopped.

  ‘Birdseye view,’ he said.

  Wasteland surrounded a man-made lake, its water furred with algae.

  ‘But don’t look at it as it is now,’ he said, ‘imagine what it will be like!’

  From the back pocket of his jeans he unfolded an artist’s impression of Lakelands. He handed it to his son and they looked over it, orienteering for the future.

  In the artist’s impression, the lake had been dredged and reconditioned, a narrow shoreline running beside it, stock-image couples taking an afternoon’s walk along the track. Stock-image families picnicked on the kidney-shaped grasslands, while stock-image dogs played ball with stock-image children. To the east of the lake, a stock-image man left the boathouse, sailboard under his arm, heading to join those already catching the breeze. Stock-image lapwings and stock-image grebes were added to cloudless, unraining skies; and in driveways stock-image residents unpacked groceries from their stock-image cars. Mostly though there were houses. Hundreds of them; brown-roofed and toy-like, all looking out over the lake.

  ‘Imagine it,’ his father said. ‘The two of us living here, by the water’s edge. Just imagine!’

  ‘I’m trying,’ the son said.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be great?’

  ‘Amazing,’ the son said.

  ‘There’s a deal,’ the father said. ‘The company are offering an amazing deal. Discounts. No money down. We could live here, if you wanted. We really could.’

  The son looked at his father, the way he gripped the artist’s impression.

  ‘I’d love that,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Really.’

  ‘I wanted to check. I wanted to be sure,’ he said. ‘Because you said you liked the school. But I just wanted to be sure. Honestly, these are the best houses I’ve ever seen. En-suite bathroom. Good-sized gardens. Look at them. Imagine living in one of those. Look at that view!’

  He grabbed the boy into a clinch. The boy could hear his father’s heart. His father laughed. He laughed all the way home, even when a summer squall quickly drenched them. They stopped off at a pub and drip-dried in the canopied beer garden.

  ‘This’ll be our local,’ he said. ‘We’ll come here and you can have your first pint. Legal pint, that is. Then we’ll walk home. Maybe we could start fishing. Night fishing. A camping stove. A tent to sleep in.’

  ‘That sounds great,’ he said to his father. ‘Just great.’

  When they got home, his father tacked the artist’s impression to the kitchen wall. It overlooked them as they sat at the table, each imagining the future as they ate breakfasts and dinners.

  The morning after the foreman had closed the site, his father stared at the stock images, eating cereal without concentration; drops of milk on the grey of his stubble.

  ‘I lost track of time,’ his father said, still looking at the wall. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘It’s not. I should have called.’

  He looked at the boy, saw his own young face. Shorter hair on the boy than him, though; run through with clippers.

  His father got up from the table and placed his bowl in the sink.

  ‘What did you get up to yesterday?’ he said.

  ‘Up to the rec,’ his son said. ‘We played football. It was like eighteen-a-side at one point. Some kid chipped his tooth and there was a bit of a fight. Jordan and me, we went down the town too. Sat in the park, watched the world go by.’

  ‘The girls go by?’

  The boy said nothing. A bow of the head.

  ‘Today?’ his father asked.

  ‘Jordan and me might go watch a film. There’s a whole load of us going.’

  ‘That a hint?’ His father smiled, took a note from his pocket and handed it over.

  ‘Thank you,’ the boy said. />
  ‘You’re welcome,’ his father said. ‘I can’t remember the last time I went to the pictures. I’d like to go some time. Perhaps we can go together one night?’

  ‘Won’t you be late?’ the boy said. ‘It’s twenty to.’

  ‘Yeah,’ his father said. ‘I should make a move.’ He stood.

  ‘See you later,’ his father said. ‘Love you.’

  Kiss. Kiss. Same as wherever. Whenever. Kiss. Kiss, on the cheek, on the crown of his head. And then gone.

  The boy looked down on the development. Around the foundations and shells of houses, heaved dirt settled in heaps. He took photographs. A video, five minutes or so. Hands held as still as he could, but with a tremble to the film. He watched it back while sitting cross-legged, sandwiches close to hand.

  He played the video four times. Midway through, a bird landed on the fencepost and looked around. Should have been a vulture, but instead a starling. A couple more joined it soon after, then left; their chattering just audible.

  He watched them fly away and was about to press play again when he noticed a woman standing beside him: grey-blonde hair, baggy jeans and a zipped-up fleece, looking over Lakelands. There was no lead, no dog snuffing the weeds and grass.

  ‘So what happened?’ she said. She sounded like a teacher, one of the many; soft voice, worn with caring and its lack.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Yesterday, they just stopped.’

  ‘I heard them take the equipment last night,’ she said. ‘Hell of a noise.’

  She made a quick puffing noise with her mouth. He went back to the screen, pressed play again.

  ‘I’ve seen you here before,’ she said. ‘I live up there’ – she thumbed back to the thin line of houses airbrushed from the artist’s impression – ‘and every morning I see you. Every afternoon. With your phone and your sandwiches.’

  He pressed stop on the video and took a photograph of the woman.

  ‘I thought you might know what had gone on,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know any more than you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I doubt that,’ she said. ‘I very much doubt that.’

  She kicked at something in the grass with her unbranded sports shoes.

  ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘If I knew, I’d say.’

  The woman looked like someone who had once worn too much make-up and now wore none at all. The kind of woman his father was always letting down; never quite living up to his first few months of promise.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said and began to walk home. He heard her stop, then walk back to him. She stood just behind, out of his range of vision.

  ‘Would you mind if I asked you a question?’ she said.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  ‘Why do you come here?’ she said. ‘I mean, young lad like you. Sitting here all day long. All day on your own?’

  He took another photograph of her; zoomed in close on her face. The photograph was pixelated, blurred as she moved her head. He looked at the screen. She was there in his hand.

  ‘To take photographs,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

  She looked down with eyes that sagged and a mouth unsure where it should settle. She nodded.

  ‘Can I see?’ she said.

  Years later, safe and snug in Luca’s arms, he lies in the quiet of the room, the two of them coiled in sheets. It is after midnight and the plates and pans are stacked in the kitchen sink, left for morning. They have eaten osso buco, made by Luca, Elliot as sous chef, in honour of Luca’s parents, flown in to visit. The flat is too small so the parents took a taxi to their hotel, kisses and fussing as they left. Luca dozes, too much wine with his dinner, unnecessary grappa. The wardrobe door is ajar; their clothes hang side by side, still a surprise. On the floor are their jeans, soft legs on hard wood.

  ‘Can you not sleep?’ Luca says.

  ‘I like your parents,’ Elliot says. ‘Your father especially. I can see where you get it from.’

  Like his father, Luca is a storyteller in several languages, a barroom flirt and centre of attention. His arms are hawserish, his body gym-built, protein-shook. But soft inside, so soft.

  ‘They liked you too,’ Luca says. ‘That’s what all the Italian was about. You.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Of course, what else?’

  Luca moves his arm over Elliot’s chest.

  ‘Sleep. It’s late.’

  ‘My father was more the silent type,’ Elliot says. ‘He would have struggled to get a word in edgeways tonight.’

  Luca looks up from his pillow, red-gilled and sour-smelling. Hairless legs and chest uncovered, his buzz cut and cheekbones move towards Elliot.

  ‘My father can be a bit much,’ Luca says. ‘He wasn’t always like he is now, you know. It took him time. After I told him I mean.’

  Elliot can feel the measure in Luca’s words, the care not to seem leading. He is grateful for this, though he feels the question beneath the calm. Others have been more explicit.

  ‘You have that faraway look,’ Luca says. ‘Guilty schoolboy look. Hand out; smack me now, sir, look.’

  Elliot puts his hand around his wrist, so thin now, better now, thin; hair too now, lots of hair on his body, worries once that there wasn’t enough, or too much, and now no longer a worry; his penis no longer a cause for concern too, all those nights of anguish and just a cock now, and he looks at Luca waiting. The bedroom is close and silent.

  What he wants to say is simple. He wants to say, ‘Luca, I am not a good man.’ But he does not. Luca will only disagree, count the ways he is good. Elliot would like to shock Luca, but cannot.

  Luca’s arm is on his chest, his eyes pale grey and attentive. He waits.

  ‘My father was a good man,’ Elliot says. ‘He was a good, good man.’

  Three days later the woman stood beside him again, still dogless, wearing what looked like the same clothes.

  ‘Still here, then.’

  ‘Yes,’ Elliot said. ‘I have more photographs, would you like to see?’

  He scrolled through the images, back, back and handed her the phone. She was quick, did not take her time, and with this Elliot was disappointed. She passed back the phone.

  ‘I liked the other ones more,’ she said. ‘You have an eye for people.’

  ‘I wondered if you’d notice anything,’ he said. ‘It’s only something small. You know, like one of those spot-the-difference puzzles. Look again?’

  He put the phone back in her hand and stood behind her as she swiped. She finished the set and worked backwards. She pushed out her tongue in concentration, the way his father did while working a screwdriver.

  ‘What am I looking for?’ she said.

  ‘You’ll either see it or you won’t. It took me a few times before I noticed it. I don’t know how many times.’

  On the fourth run-through, she paused and swiped back, forward, back.

  ‘I think I see something,’ she said. ‘Is it this?’

  She zoomed in on one of the unfinished houses. Elliot nodded.

  ‘Well spotted,’ he said.

  ‘When you see it, it’s obvious,’ she said, swiping forward until the house was clearly three feet higher than it had been in the earlier image.

  ‘You’re quite the detective,’ she said.

  ‘My name’s Elliot,’ he said.

  ‘I’m Clare,’ she said.

  ‘It’s nice to meet you, Clare,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you came back. I wanted to say thank you.’

  The woman puffed out her cheeks.

  ‘Thank me for what?’

  ‘Last time you saw my photographs, you said I had a good eye. I should have said thank you.’

  ‘Well, you’re welcome,’ she said and laughed; a chirp, used for batting away the odd compliment. ‘I think you’re better with people. Those ones of the three builders were really something.’

  Elliot looked up at the woman. The conversations they m
ight have. She turned to the development, to Lakelands, and shook her head.

  ‘Well that didn’t take long,’ she said, nodding towards the site. Elliot turned to see five kids running between the bricks and foundations.

  ‘There’ll be an accident,’ she said. ‘You mark my words.’

  Elliot picked up the phone and began taking photographs.

  ‘Don’t you join them,’ she said. ‘Don’t you get yourself hurt.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he said.

  ‘See you around,’ she said.

  He heard the front door open then shut, and from his bedroom window looked down on his father, holdall on his back, hands inside his jacket, toe-cap boots dangled around his neck. The father stoop, the father shuffle. Elliot dressed and put on his trainers at the front door, decided against the bike. The streets were cool, sodium-lit, lamps behind curtains and blinds, no cars on the roads at this hour, a motorbike whine somewhere in the distance. They had lived in towns where there had been sirens at night, but this was not one of them. Remember the police cars? Remember the ambulances, all day and all night? Never heard anything like it, not even when your mum and me lived in Newcastle those years.

  Through the park he half ran, avoiding dog shit, a spray of vomit, a smashed bottle of something. The playground was in the process of being rebuilt, made safe; the bowls club was locked tight, graffiti ghosting beneath its recent paint job.

  On the council estate he kept his head down and turned the familiar streets. He thought of the woman on the hill, her voice’s knowing timbre as she passed back the phone. She knew. It was all there in the photographs. All those close-regarded arms and legs, strained neck muscles, strip-shirted boys with tattoos and smooth-hardened stomachs. (Many years later, when asked by yet another straight man how he’d finally come out, he’d just said it was the moment he showed a strange woman some of his photography.)

  Elliot breached the crest and looked down onto Lakelands. His father was working a plot close to the lake. He had a storm lamp set up, a board of mortar in his left hand and a trowel in the other. Elliot zoomed in on his father’s working face, its wild vacancy. The soft light, the scrape of the mortar, the laying of brick. He took hours. Sweated hours. The bricks stacking, flush and red. His father must have laid hundreds before sitting down against the wall and taking a can of beer from his holdall.