She replied:
A beard, eh? Heavens! I can’t wait to see you with it. I bet you look swish… Our Darren’s been in another fight at school. Takes after his dad, obviously. Bellicose little bugger… I’m doing Tess of the d’Urbervilles with my fifth years this term, have you read it? Do you like Thomas Hardy? We’re doing Antony and Cleopatra too, and Keats. I love Keats, do you? ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty!’ … David and I are off out to see Star Wars with the twins at the weekend. I wish you were coming with us.
Phyllis’s letters were informal, chatty, but in them were flashes of the English teacher she was too. He read them over and over. On the page as in life, she flitted from subject to subject with a restlessness he’d noticed when they’d met. He had this same restlessness, he thought. He must have got it from her. He borrowed a book from the library: Poems of John Keats. He copied quotes from it into his letters, to please her.
He did not tell her he had kept their reunion secret from Margaret and Jack.
She did not ask.
The weeks passed. Every moment not spent talking to her, writing to her or reading her letters he endeavoured to fill with studies or trips to the pub. Drink helped. And though he told Phyllis all about his drunken antics with Adam and the boys up and down the Otley Road, he made no mention of her to them. But on such high-jinks nights in Woodies, the Three Horseshoes or the New Inn, Phyllis would be with him, there in his head and heart, laughing along in that way she had. In these moments a strange and secret happiness brought to his reticent lips a smile over which he had no control, and he felt himself unfold, thought he might one day wrap himself around life the way Adam did. One day.
Love is where the idle mind wanders.
And now he was here, at her door, bracing himself to meet his other family, the ‘mad family’ as she called them. He saw the coddled shape of her through the bevelled glass and felt his stomach lurch. She opened the door and smiled with such apparent delight that he found himself catching his breath. This delight was for him. It was because of him.
‘Christopher!’ She had already reached out for him, was already pulling him towards her. The cellophane rustled against his chest. He feared she might crush the flowers but she stood back and took them from him. ‘Love the beard! You look older – not sure I want that, eh? Just kidding. And you brought flowers! Aren’t you lovely?’
Lovely. ‘I…’
‘Come in, come in, we’re all here.’
Inside, he could hear the television, and then the door to the living room opened and a boy’s face appeared around the jamb. He grinned and disappeared. Christopher heard the television die, then came whispering, then a man stepped out, smiled and came towards him.
‘Christopher – pleased to meet you, lad. I’m David. Come in, come in, come and meet the troublemakers.’ He shook Christopher’s hand, his grip firm, his brown eyes not leaving his. He was clean-shaven, his dark brown hair long at the back, the front spiky as a sea urchin at the top of his wide forehead. Christopher estimated his age to be around thirty-five. ‘So glad you made it over. We’ve heard a lot about you. Honestly, I’m glad you’re here because I thought Phyl was going to explode, and I’d hate to have to clean that lot off the walls.’
Phyl. ‘Hello, David, pleased to—’
‘Give over.’ Phyllis had closed the front door and now ushered him further into the house. ‘Take no notice of him, Christopher. He’s a big bloody tease.’
Guided by Phyllis – Phyl – he followed David to where the twins were wrestling on the living-room floor.
‘Oi, you two, pack it in.’ David separated the boys and held their wriggling forms by the hand. He lifted the hand of one, like a referee announcing the winner of a boxing match. ‘This is Darren,’ he said. ‘He arrived first so is technically the oldest.’ He let Darren’s hand drop and lifted the other’s. ‘And this is Craig.’
Both were dark like their father, dressed identically in navy blue polo shirts and jeans that hovered around their ankles. At the waists, they both wore red-and-blue-striped elasticated belts with S-clip fasteners. David shook them by the arms so that they danced like puppets, making them both giggle. ‘Say hello then, you two.’
‘Hello then, you two,’ Darren said.
‘Cheeky bugger,’ said David.
‘Hello,’ said Craig and buried his head in his father’s belly.
Phyllis had been right. The boys didn’t look like her at all and the realisation made Christopher sigh with relief. He could see David in them though – in the line of their brow and eyes, the set of their mouths, especially now as they grinned and threw sideways glances at each other. Behind them, on the television, the Incredible Hulk smashed up an office in silence.
‘Pleased to meet you both.’ Christopher stepped forward for a handshake, hoping that was the right thing to do. One after the other and both still giggling, the boys took his hand and shook it rather limply. ‘Oh! I almost forgot, these are for you.’ He dug in his canvas army-surplus bag and took out the sweets.
‘Yes!’
In a flash, the goodies were swiped from his open palm.
‘Oi, you two,’ said David. ‘Don’t snatch! And say thank you to Christopher.’
‘Thank you to Christopher,’ said Darren, which earned him a cuff around the ear. ‘Ow!’
‘Thank you!’
‘Come into the kitchen, Christopher.’ Phyllis’s hand was on his shoulder. While David admonished the twins for their bad manners, she led him into the kitchen and gestured for him to sit at the table. ‘Let me get you a drink. Tea? Something stronger?’
‘Tea’s fine, thank you.’ He watched her walk over to the kettle by the window. She was wearing a dress this time; the soft plum-coloured fabric swung around her calves as she moved. She was so much younger than Margaret. Not like a mother at all. He wanted to talk to her all day, exhaust himself discovering all her mysteries until he knew her back to front and inside out. He should not, he felt, voice this thought aloud.
‘What’s this about tea?’ David had come into the kitchen. ‘We can’t be drinking bloody tea on a day like today, mate.’ He walked past Christopher to the fridge, opened it and pulled out a bottle of wine. ‘This is a big celebration. You don’t get to meet your grown-up stepson every day of the week, do you? Lambrusco. Can’t run to champers, I’m afraid, but at least this has bubbles. Do you like frizzy, Christopher? I’ve got some tins of Greenall’s or I’ve got larger. You name it.’
Christopher wondered which was the right answer, and whether David had said frizzy and larger on purpose. It was the kind of joke Adam might make, so he decided not to question it.
‘I like anything,’ he said. ‘Lager?’