Border Crossing by Pat Barker Read Free Book Online

father there, horrifically used to doing it by then. His father sat hunched forward, dissociating himself from the chair. He only consented to be seen in it at all because in this village he was relatively unknown. He, who in his irascible way had preached patience to patients for years, never got used to the effects of his stroke, never accepted the damage, always turned his face away, even from those closest to him, to hide the disfiguring sneer. He wouldn’t adjust, wouldn’t accept that the changes were permanent, and he was right there, though death, not recovery, returned the wheelchair to the garage. Where it still was. Not because of any sentimental attachment, but because nobody had yet summoned up the energy to give it away.
    He slowed and turned right into the drive, and Tyger, his mother’s cat, came slowly across the lawn to greet him, white-tipped tail held aloft, rubbing his face against Tom’s ankle almost before he was out of the car. ‘Hello, there,’ he said, bending down to rub the backs of Tyger’s ears.
    His mother must have been waiting for the car. He saw her, blurred and tenuous through frosted glass, before he had time to press the bell. Opening the door, she started to cry, then stopped herself. He kissed her, and felt the scrumpled tissue of her cheek too soft against his lips. He didn’t like the way her flesh was sagging, knew it was too fast, that she was losing weight, probably neglecting herself, but he didn’t know what to do about it, or how to raise the topic without appearing to nag.
    ‘How are you, Mum?’
    ‘Not so bad.’
    It was always ‘not so bad’. He fully expected to hear those words from inside her coffin. Because of the heat – the bungalow’s picture windows turned any warm day into a scorcher – she was wearing a short-sleeved white t-shirt, and he saw how the flesh on her arms hung loose from the bone. She was still only sixty-two, but some people wither quickly in the absence of physical love, and he knew instinctively how good his parents’ love-making had been. It was one of the reasons why, as a teenager, he’d felt different from other kids. They thought of their parents as ‘past it’ – he knew he hadn’t reached it. (Still hadn’t, for that matter, and time was running out.)
    ‘I thought we’d just have a salad,’ she was saying. ‘It’s a bit warm, isn’t it, for anything hot?’
    He poured her the first of the two sherries she allowed herself before lunch, and himself a strong gin and tonic. They took their glasses out to the patio. Tyger jumped on to the table, squeezing his golden eyes shut several times in token of friendship, before losing interest in the proceedings altogether and going to sleep.
    The garden stretched out, not so much in front of them, as above them, for Tom’s father, in the last year of his life, had supervised the building of raised flower beds, beds he could reach from the wheelchair he refused to admit was permanent. ‘It’ll be easier for your mother’s back,’ he’d told Tom unblushingly, though then she’d suffered no more than the usual slight creaks of middle age.
    Now her arthritis was so bad, his mother was saying, the raised beds were a godsend. She got up, face tense with what she always referred to as ‘discomfort’, and showed him, with the trowel that lay always ready to hand, how easy it was for her to turn the soil Then, heavily, back to the chair, his father’s evasion turned into reality, and Tom found himself wondering how deep loyalty can go.
    It was mid September. The late roses were still at their best; her arms were scored with red scratches where the gloves didn’t reach. He knew she was dreading the winter, when there would be nothing, or little, to do, except on the afternoons she worked at the Community Centre.
    A year ago she’d been gearing herself up to face retirement. ‘You’ll keep busy,’ he’d said. ‘I bet six months after you retire you’ll be wondering how to