Also Available by Bernard Taylor

  The Godsend

  Sweetheart, Sweetheart

  The Reaping

  The Moorstone Sickness

  The Comeback

  This Is Midnight

  Bernard Taylor

  MOTHER’S BOYS

  VALANCOURT BOOKS

  Dedication: For Brian and Ken

  Mother’s Boys by Bernard Taylor

  Originally published in Great Britain by Grafton in 1988

  First American edition published by St. Martin’s Press in 1988

  First Valancourt Books edition 2022

  Copyright © 1988 by Bernard Taylor

  Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia

  http://www.valancourtbooks.com

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.

  The Valancourt Books name and logo are federally registered trademarks of Valancourt Books, LLC. All rights reserved.

  ONE

  The bridge would soon be ready.

  On the little patch of waste ground behind the shed, the two young boys couldn’t be seen from the house. As Kester bent forward over the ground the bright sun shone on his light, sandy hair. It touched, too, the back of his suntanned neck and exposed the faint stain that rimmed the inner edge of his shirt collar. His eyes, the colour of the pale blue sky, were narrowed in concentration. His mouth was a tight, thin little line, his brow puckered. He was thirteen-and-a-half.

  With one end of the wire firmly attached to an upright stick, he drew it as taut as he could and wound the other end around the stick on the far side of the shallow pit. The pit, about two feet across, had been scooped out of the earth. The loose soil lay beside it in a little pile.

  ‘This’ll be okay.’

  This was merely an observation. When he had spoken he glanced up, his face coming out of the shadow, the sun catching on his freckled nose. Kneeling opposite him in the dry, dusty earth, his twelve-and-a-half-year-old brother Michael smiled and nodded in agreement. His hair was a little darker in tone than Kester’s – ­a sort of light mouse-brown – ­but his eyes were the same colour.

  The eyes of both boys were now lowered again to concentrate on the structure they had erected. From beside him, Kester took up a narrow piece of plywood and carefully propped it at a shallow angle against one of the uprights. ‘Almost there now.’ He reached down again, took up some scraps of newspaper, twisted them into small coils and placed them in the bottom of the pit.

  ‘The fuel . . .’

  He stretched out his hand and Michael put into it a few dry sticks and other bits of wood. Kester placed it all on top of the paper, then sat back on his heels, surveying the results of the work.

  ‘What d’you think?’ he asked.

  ‘I think it’s ready, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I reckon.’

  ‘Shall we start, then?’

  ‘Yes. Let’s have the prisoners.’

  Michael held out an old Maxwell House coffee jar and Kester took it and removed the lid. The writhing green shapes inside were the caterpillars which, a while before, the boys had picked off the cabbages. Their father had come down the garden path as they had been at work, and seeing them plucking the caterpillars from the cabbage leaves he had smiled his approval: ‘Good boys – ­that’s what I like to see.’

  Tipping the jar over the slanting strip of plywood, Kester shook out some of the caterpillars. Three or four of them fell onto the wood, while a further six or seven fell onto the earth. These Kester quickly picked up and placed on the plywood strip. Like those already there, they uncurled and then began to crawl away, some up and some down. Kester loosely set the lid back on the jar and placed the jar on the ground beside him.

  ‘Here.’

  At Michael’s voice, Kester took from his younger brother’s outstretched hand a long, needle-pointed thorn. He tested the point against his thumb, nodded, then bent towards the writhing caterpillars. He gave his attention first to those that were moving down the plywood slope, towards the earth. After turning them by means of the thorn, he then prodded them, jabbing their tails with the thorn’s point, forcing them to move upwards. ‘Go on, you little fuckers,’ he muttered. Michael, bending forward, eyes fixed on the moving caterpillars, nodded. ‘Little fuckers,’ he added.

  In a little while most of the caterpillars were grouped at the top of the plywood slope, a couple of them were actually on the stick, and another on the wire itself. Kester tipped the jar and more caterpillars fell onto the earth.

  When nearly all of them were on the plywood slope, Kester took a box of matches from his pocket. Then, placing a screw of paper at the foot of the slope, he struck a match and lit it.

  ‘Now – ­look at ’em go.’

  With the flame and the smoke below them, the caterpillars had begun to move quickly up the slope, the few that were too low and too slow quickly succumbing to the smoke and heat and falling off. In a very short time many of the caterpillars were strung out along the wire bridge, moving steadily across, away from the torment. When the wire was covered with the moving green shapes Kester lit the paper in the pit.

  As the flames leaped up the caterpillars writhed, their heads rearing. Then, before the boys’ watching eyes the bodies began to curl, turn brown and fall, one after another, into the furnace below.

  When all the caterpillars were dead, the boys sat back on their heels. Kester gave a little sigh, showing his dissatisfaction. It had all taken so little time, and it hadn’t been nearly as interesting as he had imagined it would be.

  The fire died. Kester got up, yanked apart the construction of the sticks and the wire and, using his feet, began to push the earth back into the hole. Michael helped him. When it was done they stamped down the soft earth with their shoes, flattening it.

  Stepping to the side, Kester looked down at the earth, brushed his palms together, rubbing off the dust, then looked around him. ‘What shall we do now?’ He sighed again. ‘I wish it were tomorrow already, and we were going to see Jude.’

  The following morning Kester sat in the front passenger seat of the car beside his father. The other children sat in the back, Daisy in between Michael and Ben. The latter sat on the right, his face to the window, gazing out. Like Kester and Michael, he wore a white shirt, blue jeans and trainers – ­which took him as close to his brothers as any likeness in appearance was possible. His eyes were of a deeper blue than theirs, his hair of a much darker brown and much finer in texture, and whereas their faces seemed, in his eyes, to be formed, his own seemed to him to be soft, plump and shapeless. At two months off his tenth birthday he was, too, a good deal shorter than they, and lacked as well their developing breadth, particularly that of Kester.

  Leaning slightly towards Ben, eight-year-old Daisy sat gazing through solemn brown eyes at the scenery that moved by the window. She wore a pale blue ribbon in her dark, shoulder-­length hair, and had put on her favourite dress. Trimmed with white piping, it was blue, with small flowers on it. It was getting a little small for her now, a little tight under the arms, added to which it could have done with a longer spell under the iron. She had insisted on wearing it, though, in spite of Robert’s suggestions to the contrary. On her lap she held a book of Hans Andersen’s stories, which Netta had given her the week before. Robert had told Daisy that she would have no chance to do any reading, but she had insisted.

  ‘Did you put on a clean shirt, Michael?’

  At the question, Michael looked up and saw his father’s eyes in the mirror, flick up from the road ahead and catch his own.

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘Good boy. And you, Kester?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘Good.’

  Robert was thirty-seven years old. He was a tall man; sitting in the car its ceiling cleared his head only by an inch or so. His dark hair – ­darker than Daisy’s – ­was beginning to thin at the crown. Although he hardly noticed the changes – ­they crept up so gradually – ­he was nevertheless very much aware of the advancing years. Still, things would be all right now. The children were his, and now he had Netta, too. Everything would be okay now. There had been a time, just over two years ago, when he had no idea what was going to happen, and he had had visions of losing the children to Judith, of being left alone, and remaining alone. And with those visions he had looked further ahead, seeing himself waking one day to realize that he was old, with the children grown up and making lives of their own, independent, after childhoods in which he’d played no real part. That wouldn’t happen now. There was nothing else that Judith could do to him.

  With Swindon and its surrounding villages behind them, the Citroën moved out onto the motorway. From the seat beside him came Kester’s voice: ‘Just over an hour and a half and we’ll be there.’ And then Michael’s voice murmuring in agreement: ‘Yes, about that.’

  It was strange how very close the two elder boys were. Robert had had brothers of his own, but they had not been as close as Kester and Michael. He could recall that, as a child, the differences in age between himself and his elder and younger brothers, though slight, had been enough to separate them. They had each of the
m chosen friends from outside – ­which was the way it had been in other families he had known. Only in their maturing had he and his brothers found any mutual closeness. With Kester and Michael, though, it was different. The year between them seemed to count as nothing. Ever since they had been very small they had spent all their time together – ­not seeking, and presumably not wanting, companionship from elsewhere.

  Moving his eyes briefly from the road, Robert glanced up into the mirror and looked at Michael’s reflection. How like Judith he was. Like Kester, too – ­the same pale blue eyes, the same short, blunt nose, the same narrow jaw, the same freckles.

  His eyes went back to the road, wary of the weekend drivers, idiots too fast or too slow, too reckless or too cautious for the good of themselves or anyone else. They were always there.

  ‘Will the sun keep shining, Daddy, d’you think?’ Daisy asked.

  He glanced up into the mirror and saw her slightly anxious expression. She didn’t want to be cooped up in Judith’s flat. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it looks as if it will.’

  It was just before eleven-thirty when Robert and the children arrived outside Judith’s home in Streatham in south London. She had taken a ground-floor flat in one of twin, purpose-built blocks in a quiet, tree-lined street. She had been there for just a few months now, following periods in a succession of furnished rooms. She was buying the lease of the flat on a mortgage, the deposit having come from the divorce settlement that Robert had made.

  Now, with the car pulled up before the neat front garden of the apartment building, the children piled out, first Kester and Michael and then Ben and Daisy. Trooping into the foyer they found Judith – ­who had been watching for them from the window – ­standing in her doorway, beaming at them her bright-­orange-lipped smile. The two elder boys cried out, ‘Jude! Oh, Jude!’ and ran to her. At their words Robert inwardly winced. He hated the way they called her by her given name, or its diminutive. Judith had long ago insisted, though.

  Now as they reached out to her she bent to them, wrapping her arms around them, smothering their faces with her kisses. Her expression was all happiness. Turning, Robert saw Daisy and Ben hanging back, waiting. And then Judith, almost as an afterthought, released Kester and Michael and held out her arms to the younger pair. They went to her, and she hugged them and kissed them. Then, raising her head, she said with a wide smile, ‘Oh, it’s so lovely to have all my children with me again!’

  Since the divorce Judith had kept up a regular contact with the children, seeing them about once a month, sometimes all four of them, but more often than not just the two elder boys. When all four visited, as on this Saturday, they would remain with their mother just for the day. When Kester and Michael went alone, however, they usually stayed the whole weekend; on occasions, in the summer or at Eastertime, spending a whole week with her. Whoever was going, though, and for whatever period of time, Robert would drive them up and bring them back home again. He hated the journey, but there was nothing else to be done. A few months before, with Judith promising to be at Paddington station to meet them, he had sent Kester and Michael by train. Judith hadn’t been at the station, however, and didn’t appear there for almost an hour after the boys’ arrival. Robert, hearing about it on their return to Swindon, had been furious; not that the boys had minded much about their mother’s late appearance; not in the least – ­to them it had been something of an adventure. Later, when Robert had tackled Judith about the episode, she had made lame excuses and then gone on to talk of it being good for the boys, it having taught them something in the way of initiative and survival. From then on, he determined, he would, as he had done in the past, drive them to London himself.

  ‘Right,’ Judith was saying now. ‘You children go on inside, will you? I’ll be there in a minute.’

  Obediently they went on into the flat. Judith watched them go, then turned back to Robert, her smile now a little uncertain. ‘Hello, Robert.’

  ‘Hello, Judith.’ The constraint, the awkwardness, was like a fog. He doubted now that it would ever be different. ‘How are you?’

  She nodded. ‘Oh, fine. And you?’

  ‘Yes, fine, thanks.’ He gave a shrug and took a half-step away. ‘Well . . .’

  ‘I suppose you’ve got to dash off again, have you? You never stay.’

  ‘No, well . . . There’s not a lot of point, is there?’ Then quickly he added, ‘Anyway, there are several things I have to get from the shops.’

  She smiled. ‘That’s convenient for you.’

  As they stood there facing one another he realized how his feelings towards her had changed. He had believed, at the time of the divorce and the custody hearings, that he would hate her for ever. But it had gone, that hatred. Now he felt just a mild sympathy. She was what she was; she would never change.

  ‘When d’you think you’ll be back?’ Judith asked.

  ‘When the children are ready to go, I guess. You tell me.’

  ‘I thought we might – ­have a little picnic . . .’

  ‘Good idea.’ He half turned, glancing at the sunny day beyond the translucent windows beside the foyer door. ‘It looks as if you’ve got the perfect weather for it.’

  ‘No, I mean – ­I was hoping you’d join us.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, will you?’

  ‘Aw, Judith, you don’t want me around. Besides, I thought I might – ­’

  ‘Please,’ she broke in. ‘It would be nice. And the children would like it so.’

  He hesitated for a few moments, and one moment too many. ‘Okay.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll try. What time?’

  ‘You’ll try.’ A faint smile, all sagacity, accompanied the note of resignation in her voice.

  ‘Yes, I will – ­really. What time?’

  ‘Well, we’re going to have lunch now and – ­listen, why don’t you come in and have lunch too?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’d better get going.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Well, then, shall we say – ­about three-thirty?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘If you’re not here we’ll go on down.’

  ‘To the common?’

  ‘Yes. Look for us round by the tennis courts.’

  Robert drove from Woodfield Avenue into a nearby street, parked, got out, and walked up to Streatham High Road. There he did some shopping and then went into a pub where he ordered half a pint of lager and some lunch – ­steak-and-kidney pie, potatoes and beans.

  Sitting at a corner table he slowly, mechanically, ate the dull food, making it last. A visit to the pub – ­it was often part of the pattern when he brought the children up to Judith’s for the day. Then, after this scratch lunch he would find something else to fill in the rest of the time before the children had to be picked up again. Often, usually during the cold, winter months he would kill the time by going to the pictures, or perhaps driving on into the West End to visit a gallery. At other times, in the summer, when the weather allowed, he would sit in the park and read, or work on the planning of his lessons for the coming week.

  He wondered briefly why, today, Judith wanted him to join her and the children on their picnic. The two of them could have little to say to one another after all that had happened. Still, he had more or less agreed now . . .

  On leaving the pub he went back to the car where he put the bags of shopping into the boot and took a paperback from the glove compartment. After locking the car he continued on down the street towards the common. It was still not three o’clock when he arrived and he found himself a quiet spot among the trees on the west side and there, sitting beneath a large oak, opened his book. He read for almost an hour, then got up, left the shelter of the trees and crossed over the road onto the main body of the common.

  As he made his way along the asphalt path towards the tennis courts he heard Daisy’s voice calling to him: ‘Daddy, Daddy, over here!’ and looking over to the left he saw her waving to him. As he walked over the grass towards her she ran to him and he swept her up in his arms, briefly holding her against him.