Lynne Pemberton – Dancing With Shadows (страница 1)
LYNNE PEMBERTON
Contents
It was the last day of February, white and crisp, and very cold.
Jay’s face creased a little, it wasn’t a smile, more the effort of trying to put a date on the time he’d first met the dapper Englishman nicknamed ‘Hal’ because of his halitosis. Once, Jay had asked him what his real name was, suggesting that he use it instead of the derogatory reference to his breath. Hal had stuck his face in Jay’s, breathing heavily, emitting a smell like rotting meat. ‘So I’ve got bad breath; who cares?’
Shaking his head Jay wondered why it mattered, then told himself it didn’t; not any more. The nightmare was over, past, done;
He saw her before she saw him. Her back was turned towards him. She was stooped and clothed from head to foot in crow black. He wished she’d worn something bright; red would have been heart-warming, or meadow green. A narrow shaft of late winter sun, stark in its brilliance, glanced across the top of her head where the pale pinkness of her scalp could be seen shining through a sparse covering of granite-coloured hair.
Then she looked up. Her eyes were upon him, the same colour, or so they seemed in this light, as her hair. Yet as she came closer he could see they were blue; not the blue of the cornflowers he’d likened them to as a child, but a cold, milky shade, the brightness dulled by age. Jay stood very still, watching her approach. He couldn’t remember how old she was, seventy-one, seventy-two maybe? He tried to recall how old she’d been when she’d had him, almost forty-six years ago.
When she was a couple of feet away she stopped and, pulling herself up ramrod straight, looked directly into his eyes. There was no tenderness there, only searching, and in that instant he knew what he’d always known yet had never allowed himself to accept. She had never believed in him; but, worse, she’d never forgiven him. He hoped she wouldn’t want to hug him, to take him in her arms, to hold him close; not yet, he wasn’t ready. Jay needn’t have worried, her hands were pushed deep into her coat pockets, and she made no further move. Neither of them spoke.
Her face, he noticed, was a strange yellow colour, darker around her mouth and under her eyes. She looks sick he thought, picturing her weariness clinging to her stick limbs like moss to an ancient stone. But then he was older too, his once coal-black hair was threaded with silver, and lately he’d found white streaks in his pubic thatch. Deep lines etched from his nose to the corners of his mouth, and the crisscross tracery of fine lines around his eyes had nothing to do with laughter. He wished it had.
It was Jay who broke the silence. ‘Thanks for coming, Mom.’ The words came out flat like meat forced through a mincer.
A mist of breath rose, like smoke, out of her open mouth. ‘It was the least I could do, son, you ain’t got nobody else.’
He wanted to say that he had a few friends, decent men he’d met inside, who were either innocent, misguided, or just plain desperate when they’d offended. But he said nothing.
‘It sure is cold,’ she said, shuffling from side to side and pushing her hands even deeper into her pockets. She was wearing rubber-soled brown boots, the mass-produced type sold cheaply in supermarkets and discount stores across the country. They were down at heel. Jay knew she could afford new boots, but she was frugal, mean with herself, deriving immense pleasure from penny pinching. A sudden and unexpected image jumped into his mind: his mother was bent over the kitchen table, her lips muttering figures as she calculated the weekly household accounts. A lifetime of hardship, of scrimping and saving, of making do.
Her eyes had now darted to the building behind Jay. She stared long and hard, as if looking at something or someone in particular. ‘You want a last look?’
Rebecca repeated her question. ‘You want a parting look?’
Jay was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. ‘What do you think?’
No longer able to look at her son, Rebecca lowered her eyes. She couldn’t begin to articulate how she felt. She’d never been good with words, she’d left that to her fast-talking, no good husband. And now when she desperately needed to tell her son how sorry she was, she couldn’t find a way. She took a step closer to Jay, her face was impassive. ‘I think we should get the hell outta here.’
The drive to New York was a nightmare, the amount of traffic scary, and even more terrifying was Rebecca’s habit of looking directly at him when he spoke. Jay was convinced they were destined for a head-on collision. Having survived twenty-five years of imprisonment, he mused, how ironic if he were killed on his first day of freedom by his mother.
There wasn’t much to say to each other: no common bond; no shared interests; no memories. Well, none that Jay wanted to recall, and eventually mother and son settled into an uncomfortable silence that lasted for most of the journey. Both were relieved when she finally stopped the car in front of the Lowell Hotel. Jay glanced at the uniformed doorman, then at the discreet lobby, recalling his agent’s voice: