Scene: Saturday, 25 March 1978 — The Return
Together, Robbie and Kizzy swung open the double doors to the garage. Inside was just one car: their Mother’s rarely used British green Morris Minor Traveller, the one with a wooden frame, tucked into one side of the garage with ample space left for whatever ‘tart trap’ their Mother called it that their father used to drive. She kept the space for his car as if he’d return. After six years that was unlikely.
Robbie and Kizzy were careful not to place the trunk over the oil patch on the concrete garage floor. The trunk and tuck box were redundant until he returned to boarding school in four weeks time, whether any of the items got washed or even aired out was another matter. He’d better go through his things before his Mum did, or worse, their Gran.
Robbie stepped into the hallway and paused at the stairs. Not because he was tired. But because it was part of the ritual of getting back after a term away.
“Checking for ghosts?” Kizzy asked lightly, watching from the kitchen doorway.
“Just seeing if the bannister still wobbles.”
“It does.” Kizzy quickly added, “Mum hasn’t replaced the carpet. And yes, the crack on the ceiling is still there. Someone had to keep the museum open.”
It saddened him that home lacked the lived in feeling he found around some of his friend’s houses. He noticed that the phone was still locked. A tiny brass padlock jammed into the “0”, key long since hidden in Mum’s sewing basket. Robbie checked the kitchen phone. Ditto.
Kizzy could see it: the quiet disappointment behind his eyes.
“Yep, the only phone you can ring out on is beside Mum’s bed.”
Just as well Robbie always briefed his friends to call him.
He always hoped something had changed with the house, something dramatic: a wall painted, a bookshelf moved. But the house, according to their mother, was waiting for their father’s imminent return – he wouldn’t. It reminded Robbie how particular their father had been; everything had to be just so. And the children had to behave in a prescribed way. Like dogs called to heel. Robbie asked about their older brother.
“Rick back yet?”
“Nope. Still in hospital. Back in a couple of days.”
Their older brother had been injured in a rugby game two months ago and was in a neckbrace,
Like much of the house, Robbie’s bedroom had been mothballed in his absence, held in stasis for his return.
“And Mum?”
“Asleep. Or reading. Or somewhere in the middle.”
Robbie nodded and turned into the lounge. He touched the back of the sofa like holy cloth, opened the piano lid and hit a single note. The middle C rang out, slightly flat.
He nodded. “Still broken.”
“Like everything else,” Kizzy muttered, not quite under her breath.
He turned. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged again. That new teenage shrug she’d perfected—nonchalant but loaded.
“Just that nothing changes here. Except me.”
He looked at her properly then. She knew what he saw: longer hair, different clothes, eyeliner—a girl who didn’t look like his twin anymore.
“You’ve… done something,” he said vaguely.
“It’s called growing up.”
Robbie squinted. “I was worried some of the boys on the bus would have noticed.”
She tilted her head, defiant. “Nobs, grots and public school boy pervs are not my type. You are the exception. I’ve been out. Seen people. While you were learning how to survive a Sedbergh scrum.”
“I take it this is more recent,” Kizzy said, nodding at his scarred lip. “Or was there a particularly brutal House rugby tournament?”
Robbie didn’t answer. Injuries, however acquired, weren’t something you made a fuss about.
“You’re different,” he said.
“Some of us change,” she replied. “And you—same old rituals. Sniff the carpet. Tap the piano. Open the cloakroom door to check if Narnia might still be hidden behind Dad’s old Barbour jacket. You always do that.”
“I was seeing if Dad’s old shotgun was still there.”
“Is it?”
He nodded. Then added, “Maybe I’m checking to see if I still belong.”
He went into the cloakroom, lifted the gun case with his right hand, laid it on the floor, undid the straps and buckles, and opened the lid. The smell rose immediately—distinct, private, familiar. The gun lay quiet in its groove, untouched since before the divorce.
Gun polish, years old, still clung to the felt like aftershave on an old coat. There was the dense warmth of worn leather, the dry sweetness of oiled walnut, and something else beneath it all—paraffin, maybe, or lanolin. A smell that spoke of discipline and silence, not violence. The smell of his father.
Robbie rubbed his chin, instinctively—recalling the man’s sandpaper cheek.
Kizzy’s face softened, but she didn’t move closer.
“Why did he leave it here?” she asked. “Does he not want any of his stuff at all?”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to let go. Maybe Mum doesn’t want to be rid of him either.”
He closed the case. The last time it had been raised was in anger—unloaded—when their father had chased a burglar down the street. When was that? Six, maybe seven years ago?
He nodded slowly, watching dust lift into a sunbeam slicing across the hall floor. Then he raised his left arm, stiff and aching.
“This might be broken. Or just a sprain. I’m going to need a lift to A&E. Do we wake Mum? Or call Grandpa?”
Kizzy didn’t answer. Just looked at his wrist and nodded toward the car.
“Catch,” she said, tossing him the keys.
“Mum’s asleep.”
“We’re not waking her.”
“We can’t just—”
He looked at the keys, then back at her. “You can’t drive.”
“Sure I can,” she said, already opening the garage door. “I do it all the time. How do you think I get up to the stables to muck out Boris. ”
“That’s not the same as—”
“I practised on the airfield at Eschot. I’m better than Rick, and he’s got a licence.”
Robbie followed her out, not so much agreeing as surrendering. The Morris Minor Traveller looked faintly ridiculous under the stark garage light, like an old dog waiting to be walked. Kizzy climbed in and adjusted the mirrors with nonchalance, as if she were off to fetch the Sunday papers.
“Does Grandpa know?” he asked, sliding in beside her with some difficulty—his left wrist braced and his top lip buzzing.
“He’d throw a fit, then drive me there himself.”
Kizzy started the engine with a grind and a cough. “This is quicker.”
They pulled out with a jolt. Robbie braced against the dashboard.
“Do you know where A&E is?”
“I’m not a complete idiot.”
The car rumbled through the sleeping streets. Gosforth looked washed out in the sodium orange of late evening. Shops shuttered.
The radio crackled to life—Radio 1, faint and tinny. T.Rex, or what was left of them.
“I was dancing when I was twelve…”
Kizzy tapped the wheel to the beat. Robbie rolled his eyes but didn’t stop her.
“You were right,” she said suddenly.
“About?”
“You have changed.”
She glanced at him. “So who did you hit ?”
He looked out the window. “I’m saying I came off a skateboard.”
They drove the last mile in silence, the car juddering slightly over a pothole as they turned into the hospital car park. Kizzy parked straight, switched off the engine, and looked over.
“Let me do the talking. You look like you’ve been shot.”
Later that day Robbie is home with a couple of unbecoming beige Steri-strips around his mouth as if he’s attacked himself with the razor, or overdone the spot squeezing. Meanwhile his wrist is now bound in a brace, not broken, but sprained.
Once upstairs Robbie finally gets out of his school clothes. His bedroom, with its single bed, desk by the window, and fitted wardrobe, was reminiscent of his cubicle back at school. There was a wooden frame around a single bed, a chair, a chest of drawers, and a free-standing wardrobe, which partially blocked his view from the window of that particular ‘posh prison,’ as he called it.
Nothing had changed at home; he always wished it would. He wandered down the top landing putting his head round every door: his brother’s room, Kizzy’s, the bathroom and shower room. The guest bedroom hadn’t had anyone in it for many years. It had a ‘never occupied’ smell to it. The smell of mothballs dominated if you opened the fitted cupboard doors. It was a nice room, better than his. Big enough to have a double bed, a larger desk, Robbie thought. Somewhere to have friends around. He’d asked his mum about it. Or he’d just move in.
The door to their parent’s room was ajar. His mum was still dozing. She could keep an eye on the world, in a way, noting the comings and goings between bedrooms and the bathroom, at least. He’d not bothered her earlier. Inclined to turn any molehill into a mountain she would have had every specialist in her addressed book taking at look at his injuries real and imagined.
He sat on the bed, and she stirred. She looked tired.
He hugged her.
She rubbed her finger along his mouth, gently pressing the orthodontic brace behind.
“Dentist Tuesday, that comes out. We’ll have your smile back?” She said.
Robbie couldn’t wait.
She takes an interest in the cuts around his face and has an idea.
“Could you do it with an electric razor? My Easter present?”
Robbie liked that idea. A trip to Boots in Eldon Square would do the job.
Leave a Reply