“There are other things you can do with the money, then. Travel, enjoy fine meals, indulge yourself for once.”
“I have no need for any of those things, they won’t bring me joy.” Only his father had brought her joy, and nothing would bring him back now. “I could visit you. Do you know where you will be?”
His mother had already arrived at the question he had been unable to answer for himself since he left Oxford, desperate to escape Fern and the wreckage she left behind. He had stopped by his room at Pembroke only long enough to put together a bag before fleeing to the train station, his body readyto break down in sobs as he pushed through throngs of students leaving town.Oxford was too full of her. In weeks, she had painted her memory over every inch of campus, and the memories were too much to bear, the potential of what they could have shared and how it all fell apart.
“I’m not certain yet, Mum,” he said. His mother had put too much sugar in his tea, as usual. He found he rather enjoyed the comfort at the moment. “My hope is still London, but I’m waiting to see if a recommendation will come through. It may not.”
Alex did not wait for a response to his letter to Lord Redborne, explaining why he would no longer be courting Rose and how he understood if the viscount would not provide a recommendation. Professor Whitehurst would certainly try to assist, but Alex had put too much hope in Lord Redborne’s connection to Strathmore. He had allowed Fern and her family to consume his entire future.
“If not London, what will you do?” His mother was kind to ignore the uncertainty in his voice. “Oxford still? Cambridge?”
“There’s no money to be had in an academic life.” During the long train journey north, passing fields and industrial towns, pastures and villages, he tried to envision his future and found it completely empty. He could see no purpose anymore, no reason for striving or achieving. What was the purpose of anything he had done? One woman had destroyed him, pulled his heart open and buried herself inside, then left him to make order from the broken pieces of his soul.
Of course he had considered what Fern said about being a teacher, especially since the School of Economics may not be an option. But had her suggestion all been part of her game, an effort to manipulate him? He could trust nothing she said. Everything was tainted now. “I may enjoy teaching, but it’s not what I planned.”
“Plans exist to be changed, Alex,” she said, passing her son a biscuit. “You’ve worked so hard to be in a position where you have choices.”
“I’m not the only one who worked, though.” Alex turned towards his mother, his shoulders slumped. “You and father gave up everything for me to go to school. You worked far harder than you should have so I never would have to. Until the day he died, he—”
Alex stopped when his voice broke.An apoplexy, the doctor had said when Alex rushed to his father’s bedside.Was your father under a lot of stress?He hadn’t replied. His mother didn’t speak, only stared out the window, watching as a pair of birds flitted about, picking branches for their nest, the home they built together.
“Your father loved providing for you,” she said, bringing him back to the present. “He spoke of you constantly. You were the driving force behind all his efforts. The shop was a success because he wanted to make it so, for you.”
“And I didn’t want it.”Ungrateful bastard.“He worked so hard to provide for me, and I didn’t want what he had to offer.”
“Of course you didn’t. We never expected you to take the shop. Once you went off to school, we knew you wouldn’t be back.” She refilled his cup and added two spoonfuls of sugar, fingers bent with the rheumatism that had plagued her for years now. “You were an inspiration for him, not a burden.”
Alex said nothing, turning his cup in his hands. The tea set had belonged to his family since childhood, and it graced nearly every one of his early memories. The cup he held had a tiny chip on the rim, reminding him of when he was gesturing wildly describing the antics of one of his schoolmates and sent it tumbling over on the table. He had been horrified to see the damage, but his father had merely laughed.It suits us better this way, it was too perfect otherwise.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been back much since…” Alex stumbled over his words. He hadn’t been back at all, had not yet set foot in the place where his father died. He set out for Oxford after the funeral and never looked back, hiring the caretaker and housekeeper by correspondence and seeing his mother only once, last Christmas, after sending her a train ticket to visit him.
“It must be hard for you to be back here,” Catherine mused. “All the memories…enough time has passed for me to view them fondly.”
Despite the passage of time, the memories were still too fresh, too raw. As though he had thrown a cover over them before burying himself in his work, and now had to face the emotional scars he had ignored for three years.
The business with Fern had left him too vulnerable, coupled with the loss of the safe and predictable outlet of his studies. Everything was on the surface like an exposed wound.
“I made up your room,” his mother said, standing and smoothing her skirts before clearing the tray. “Don’t rush to bed if you don’t wish to, but you look awfully tired.”
He smiled. She said it every time he visited. Perhaps it was true. “I think I would like to turn in early, thank you.”
They exchanged an embrace, and he trod the familiar stairs up to his bedroom. His mind was hazy, a whirling tempest of emotions and memories, pain and regrets. He expected to lie awake for hours, attempting to sort it all out. But when he closed his eyes, the world fell away, and his mind gave way to sleep.
It took a week for Alex to discover he did not miss his studies. For the first day or two, he was restless, feeling useless unless he had a book in his hands. His mother recognized his unease for what it was and instead of pressing him to talk, slapped a hammer in his hands and set him to work fixing up the door frame.
His father had taught him the basic skills needed to maintain a home, and every visit to Birmingham was met with conversations over some form of repair. Alex and his father could never verbalize their thoughts face to face,they needed some form of labor to act as conversational lubricant. His father’s absence loomed somehow larger when Alex worked, but he began to experience some closure, knowing his father would be proud of the man he had become.
When the frame was repaired and painted, Alex set his sights on the porch, then the roof shingles leaking in slow drips into the attic. He stopped falling asleep with a book in his hand, instead collapsing into bed, back aching, too weary to dwell on the real reason he was in Birmingham.
Two weeks after his arrival, his mother had new window boxes and raised garden beds. Three weeks had the front door restored to its brilliant daffodil yellow, and new matching shutters put in over the windows. Neighbors asked Mrs. Carroway if her caretaker was available to do work on their houses and he numbly obliged, grateful for the distraction.
Alex felt his relationship with his mother healing during his stay. Like the house, he had let it drift into benign neglect, knowing it was still standing but falling into disrepair. He told her about his studies and dissertation, and she proudly introduced him as an Oxford doctor when they went into town to shop or simply walk. She spoke of her friends and activities at church. They attended services on Sundays, and Alex found the rhythm and routine of sermons interspersed with prayers and hymns meditative and at times profound.
His mother had built a new world for herself, a circle of friends and confidants, a new rhythm to her life after losing her husband. She had not filled the void he left, but simply found new sources of strength. New people to serve as her family. He watched her with a deep sense of pride and more than a bit of envy. He could not imagine how he would ever survive the loss of Fern, how he could ever rebuild. Yet his mother had done so with grace and courage.
They shared memories of his father, his love of rare books and his perpetually ink-stained hands, his habit of enjoying a pipe and a glass of whisky after dinner. Of his unabashed love for his wife and son, his willingness to give everything he had to make their lives a bit easier.
He never mentioned Fern. He came close, on so many occasions, to baring his soul, sharing the pain of her betrayal. But his mother had felt enough pain to last her a lifetime. He did not need to burden her with any more.
