Mothers' Boys Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Margaret Forster

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The attack on fifteen-year-old Joe Kennedy was particularly squalid and vicious. Sheila Armstrong’s grandson Leo, usually a quiet, well-behaved boy, was found holding a knife. Harriet Kennedy cannot cope with her son’s continuing pain; Sheila, who reared Leo, cannot bear the lasting guilt. In a powerful and moving tale of suffering and forgiveness, the two women confront the complex range of emotions that motherhood entails.

  About the Author

  Margaret Forster is the author of many successful novels, including Lady’s Maid, Have the Men Had Enough? and The Memory Box, two memoirs, Hidden Lives and Precious Lives, and several acclaimed biographies, including Good Wives. Her most recent book is Diary of an Ordinary Woman.

  ALSO BY MARGARET FORSTER

  Fiction

  Dame’s Delight

  Georgy Girl

  The Bogeyman

  The Travels of Maudie Tipstaff

  The Park

  Miss Owen-Owen is At Home

  Fenella Phizackerley

  Mr Bone’s Retreat

  The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

  The Bride of Lowther Fell

  Marital Rites

  Private Papers

  Have the Men Had Enough?

  Lady’s Maid

  The Battle for Christabel

  Shadow Baby

  The Memory Box

  Mother Can You Hear Me?

  Diary of an Ordinary Woman

  Non-Fiction

  The Rash Adventurer:

  The Rise and Fall of Charles Edward Stuart

  William Makepeace Thackeray:

  Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman

  Significant Sisters:

  The Grassroots of Active Feminism 1838–1939

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Daphne du Maurier

  Hidden Lives

  Rich Desserts & Captain’s Thin:

  A Family & Their Times 1831–1931

  Precious Lives

  Good Wives:

  Mary, Fanny, Jennie & Me 1845–2001

  Poetry

  Selected Poems of

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Editor)

  For John and Marjorie,

  loyal Cumbrians

  who have never

  strayed far.

  Mothers’ Boys

  Margaret Forster

  Chapter One

  HARRIET BLAMED HERSELF, of course, as mothers always do. There were two dress rehearsals but she didn’t recognise either of them as such. If she had realised she was watching a prologue to the real drama, then everything might have gone differently, the parts could have been changed, the scenery shifted . . .

  But none of it was acting. All of it was real. Real. It was reality which had to be dealt with. For her, too, presumably. For her, his mother, whatever her name was. For both of them.

  *

  A sunny summer’s day. All of it happened on a sunny summer’s day, a day following on from a beautifully red sky the evening before, a happy evening, when, for once, there had been no quarrels, no tensions. She remembered – well, she remembered every tiny detail, the way they say you do – but she remembered particularly standing chopping parsley in front of the kitchen window. She wasn’t good at such jobs. Hadn’t the patience, hadn’t the desire to do it properly, as her sister did, knife flying backwards and forwards across the green heap until it was reduced to the finest moss. Her parsley stayed rough. She didn’t even have a proper knife, a broad-bladed knife, the sort one can hold at both ends and use to chop effectively. Her knife was short and had a serrated edge. Hopeless. She’d ended up just cutting the stalks off the parsley and half-heartedly slashing the rest. It didn’t matter. It was all just going to be sprinkled on top of the chicken and onions and mushrooms already in the wok. To make it look more attractive, to give it colour. Parsley and strips of red pepper. Pretty. It mattered more to her that food looked attractive than how it tasted.

  The table outside the window where she was standing certainly looked pretty. There was a PVC cloth on it, a design of red poppies on a black background, and the Spanish plates looked festive. Nobody except for herself much liked eating outside which she could never understand. What was the point of living almost in the country, of having a beautiful garden and views over a lake, if one did not relish them? She only had to see that the sky was blue, that the sun was still coming through the branches of the pear tree which stood close to the house, to usher everyone outside. Sometimes it was not really warm enough. One by one they’d all go back inside, once the food had been served, and she’d be left on her own, stubbornly eating outside, the food cold. But not that evening, the evening before, the evening of the red sky. The air was positively sultry, the shade of the tree welcome even at that hour. Sam smoked, and for once she was not irritated. He hardly smoked at all these days, only what he called ‘post-prandially’ and not always then. She’d never liked to admit it, but she had some admiration for his control. He loved to smoke, but, conceding the dangers, had cut . . .

  That wasn’t really what she remembered, all that stuff. It was just that she found it comforting to replay what was reassuring and harmless. The parsley, the tablecloth, the plates, Sam smoking – none of these details was important. Yet her memory droned over them so lovingly and she allowed it to. She could reconstruct the whole banal conversation of that evening, not that it was conversation, only the drifting words families push backwards and forwards to each other, words not formed into sentences or, if they were, not finished. The knife, though. That was not unimportant. The serrated-edged but sharp knife with the wooden handle. They never had their knives sharpened. Her father used to sharpen his on an old stone. Sam couldn’t do it, made jokes about his own lack of talent. Sometimes a man came to the door and she’d give him all the kitchen knives she could find and he’d sharpen them, but they never seemed much improved. Serrated knives were hard to sharpen in any case. Once, when one of the knives . . .

  Oh, she was doing it again, caught herself doing it. The knife was a crucial memory but not all this rambling on about sharpening. The knife was important because the next day Joe took it. Without permission. It was a lovely sunny day – back again her mind’s eye went to the sun, the sky – and he and Frankie went off on their bikes with a picnic. Certainly, she knew they’d gone, that they were going, but she didn’t know about the knife. Or the melon. A very fine Charentais melon, at a perfect point of ripeness, sitting in the fridge, awaiting use, for dessert that evening. She’d slice it into moon-shaped slices and place it on a dark blue dish, the better to show the colour, and then have some strawberries and place those between the slices. But Joe took it, instead of an apple or banana, both more suited to the picnic of two twelve-year-old boys. He’d shouted from the kitchen could he take something for a picnic, he and Frankie were going off on their bikes. She’d been delighted. Bikes, picnics – it was what one wanted one’s children to do. She hadn’t banned the melon. She hadn’t even thought of it. And so she hadn’t thought of the knife either. She’d heard the cupboard doors bang, and the fridge, and h
ad actually smiled, thinking she knew Joe was swiping some of the strawberries. Well, there were plenty. Let him. He’d take the apple juice and some strawberries and crisps and biscuits if he could find them (she kept them hidden, they were for treats). No sandwiches. He’d be too lazy to make them. She’d heard him whistling and then the kitchen door slamming and she was happy. . .

  Happy. Happiness. That was what this was all about, remembering happiness, never so acute as before that first time, that warning she’d registered in some vague kind of way but not acted upon, if she could have done, if. He came back so slowly. Walked beside his bike, head down, face shielded. She’d thought he’d had an argument with Frankie. Not unusual. They were friends because they were both twelve and there were no other twelve-year-old boys in the same road. They went to the same school, were in the same class, they were even the same height and shared the same birthday month. But they were quite different in both temperament and ability, they had nothing in common beyond those surface similarities. Each tried so hard to get along with the other because each needed a friend. They’d go to see films together, they’d go swimming, watch a video, hang about together, but Harriet, unlike Frankie’s mother, had always seen how fragile the friendship was. Put brutally, Joe was too clever for Frankie. Frankie’s stupidity annoyed him. And Joe was not physical enough for Frankie to whom sport was everything.

  Joe put his bike away and came into the kitchen where she was just about to discover the disappearance of the wretched melon. She’d already decided she’d lost the knife, mislaid it, and was using another to slice bread. He looked shifty, more than frightened, somehow guilty. Not uncommon when he’d quarrelled with Frankie. So she said nothing, didn’t even ask how the picnic went. Then she heard him go upstairs and his door closed, quietly. A little surge of anxiety stirred in the pit of her stomach. What now? Always, with Joe, it was a case of what now. He was so volatile, could swing from boisterous happiness to utter gloom within five minutes and not always with any explanation. He’d rage and shout and scream and then be perfectly pleasant. His sudden changes of mood were bewildering. If he’d been a first-born child then she would have thought all this peculiar behaviour something to do with the way she had treated him, but he was second in the family and she had all the confidence of having brought up one other son. No, Joe was different, she’d always sensed it. He was, as one teacher had written on a report, ‘a law unto himself’.

  She hadn’t gone up after him. That was always fatal, with Joe. Impossible to ask the simple question, ‘What’s the matter?’ He hated that enquiry. He’d yell, ‘Nothing,’ and she might never find out what had happened, if anything had. So she finished slicing the bread and preparing the fish, and then she went to get the melon and strawberries . . .

  This was awful, this endless, endless going over of a not very significant episode which had happened years ago. She must stop it. She tried to concentrate very hard on the list in front of her. She had four suppliers to telephone within the next half-hour before she went home. She had a little shop in which she sold silk scarves and wall hangings and other artistic presents, most of them made by herself in the workshop behind. She needed more silk, more special dyes, more wood for framing. She could not afford to allow her head to fill with all this pointless reminiscing. Sam said it, was unhealthy. She’d asked him if he could truly, truly say he did not do it himself. He said, very firmly, with total conviction, that no, he did not. He wasn’t even tempted. The point was, said Sam, all that was history. It was over. The thing to do was to go forward. Otherwise they’d won. And he would not allow them to win. He absolutely would not. She, Harriet, was letting them win, permitting all these memories of before, and even worse of during, to obsess her. What good did it do, Sam asked, in a rage. It was a kind of torture she put herself through. She was a masochist, it was sick, how she carried on . . .

  But what he didn’t understand was the comfort of it. It was so soothing, remembering before, transporting herself out of this permanent misery. Sometimes, when she’d done it most successfully, she’d find herself smiling, such a feeling of lightness inside her. And even coming back to reality wasn’t as horrific as might be expected. She came back gradually, like rowing from a calm sea into the beginnings of choppy waves and, at first, no panic, not until the breakers began to crash around her and fear returned. Comfort, she needed that comfort, sometimes quite desperately. As she did today. She closed her eyes and told herself to indulge, to finish the melon-and-knife memory, but to do it quickly. Very well.

  Finally, when Joe had not come down for supper, nor replied when she shouted, she had gone up. His door was not locked (he had a bolt on the inside, a bolt he’d insisted on having, for privacy, when he was only eight years old, when it had seemed amusing). She went in. He was face downwards on his bed, his right hand hanging over the edge. She saw he had a cut on it, not a very big one, but bleeding. ‘Your hand,’ she had said, taking it. ‘What happened?’ And he had said . . .

  No, quickly, she reminded herself, no time, not today, for the full memory. So. He and Frankie had not gone up the river path, as he’d wanted to, but to the boring old park. It was crowded, since it was Saturday. They’d tried to find a quiet place, in the bushes at the foot of the slope near the bandstand. They’d drunk the apple juice and then he’d produced the melon. And the knife. He’d been just about to cut the melon when a man suddenly appeared and grabbed it. ‘What a lovely melon,’ he’d said, and, ‘Shall I be mother?’ And he’d snatched the knife and slashed into the melon, hacked at it until the seeds scattered and the juice spurted. He’d just gone on stabbing it and they’d watched, terrified, not a squeak of objection. Then he’d put a piece on the tip of the knife and held it out to Joe – ‘Open up, open up,’ he’d said, but Joe hadn’t opened his mouth and the man suddenly opened his own and stuck the knife into his own mouth, scraping the fruit off the blade and cutting his tongue. The blood dripped down his chin on to the horribly smashed up melon lying in the grass. He’d seen their expressions and laughed. ‘Blood,’ he’d said, ‘that’s what you boys like, eh? Bit of blood.’ Then he’d leaned forward and nicked Joe’s hand. Joe sprang to his feet and so did Frankie, but the man held the knife threateningly in front of them and warned them not to move. Then he drew a line down the inside of his own arm and threw the knife away and turned and went running off laughing . . .

  There. That was all. Over. She’d got it over. They’d phoned the police of course. So had other people. The man was a well-known nutter, said the police, not to worry, he’d be taken in again. But Joe did worry, about himself, about what he should have done instead of sitting there like a dummy. The man wasn’t even very big, and he and Frankie – two of them, to his one – weren’t in such an isolated place. The park was full of people within shouting distance. She’d tried to console him. Even Sam had said that keeping calm, as Joe had done, was the most sensible behaviour. ‘But I wasn’t calm!’ Joe had shouted. ‘I was scared, that’s all.’ And he’d gone on to imagine more terrifying scenarios in which he was even more helpless, the man more powerful, the knife used against him, his throat cut . . . For days, weeks, he’d been subdued and then, gradually, he seemed to shake himself out of his terror. Ah, this was the part of the memory, memory No. 1, which she loved, the bit she put herself through it for – everything went back to normal.

  She took a deep, deep breath. She lifted the telephone and began dialling. Briskly, she spoke to the first person on her list. That was enough for today. She rationed herself severely now: one memory only, and not played to the full, please. And she wondered, always, if his mother did the same.

  *

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Alan said, over and over, ‘makes no sense at all, that’s what gets me.’ But Sheila wondered. Maybe it did make sense, more than Alan had the wit to see. He thought if he claimed it didn’t make sense, what had happened, then it let him off scot-free. And it didn’t. At least she recognised that. None of them was innocent.
Leo was their grandson, more like their son, and his shame was theirs. Except he appeared to feel no shame, which was quite the worst part. If only he’d been visibly covered in shame, afterwards. But no. Dry-eyed. Calm-faced. He didn’t seem to take in what he’d done, the suffering he’d caused. She’d said to him, ‘You’ve broken my heart, you have,’ and he’d smiled slightly. Maybe only a silly smirk, the one he couldn’t control when he was embarrassed, but a smile all the same. She would have liked to cry, at that point, but no tears came. She thought over and over again how much she’d like to cry, to sob, to lose herself in tears, but then recollected that it was a decade or so since she’d done any such thing. And what Leo was supposed to have done was too awful for tears. Shock would have dried them up.

  Anger, now, was different. Anger had remained with her all her life. It never deserted her, could always be relied upon to come bubbling to the surface. Anger was her friend, she often felt. She’d reacted, when it happened, with anger inside herself, even if it didn’t show, anger towards that daft policeman. The very idea, as if her Leo could be guilty of such a thing. Monstrous. And then, confronted with the appalling evidence, anger against Leo himself. How dare he, how dare he. Not how dare he do it but how dare he involve her. It was not fair, but then having Leo at all was not fair, not something she’d wanted. Nor had Alan. He would have said no. It was impossible to say no, but he would have said it. He’d have found a way of dodging. Said, with truth, it was too far. Said it was none of their business – how stupid that would have been. Said it was up to John’s family to cope. In fact, that was his only real argument: it was up to John’s family, it had happened in John’s country, they were on the scene. He took no notice of another fact, that John’s ‘family’ didn’t exist as such. His mother was dead, his father had never remarried. He had no sisters and only one brother, a half-brother, whom Pat said John had seen only once in his life.