I'm sitting in the car, wearing my new, dark red converse trainers. They're
so new they still have perfect white soles - there’s not even a scuff. I'm
sitting in the car, because it's pissing it down with rain outside and I'm at
my little sister's football match.
The text I received from my Mum earlier in the morning went like this:
I am going to leave for Kate's football about 10. KO is 10:30. Can you get
here near 10?
Being the sister who liked warm duvets and Disney films on a Saturday
morning (rather than running around a cold wet football pitch in studs), I
didn't realise that KO meant 'kick off'. I also didn't realise from her text
that I'd be coming to watch the match, come rain or shine.
I peer out from the backseat window, raindrops smudge my picture of the
sodden muddy pitch containing a dozen fifteen year old girls and a football.
It is definitely more rain, than shine, I think as I hug my leather jacket
around me to keep warm. The zip broke ages ago, but I love the way the leather
is all worn out and snug. I can’t bear to throw it away.
My eyes run along the sodden side line of the pitch, scanning mothers in
anoraks and dads with huge multicoloured golfing umbrellas; all giving up their
Saturday morning to support their girls. There are a couple of women who have
bought deck chairs along. They hoick up their wellies and push their glasses
well and truly to the top of their noses (to avoid any drips falling from their
hoods); shuffling about to find the best spot. All of them are wearing suitable
shoes.
I spy my Mum, hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm, leaning on my
brother, who at twenty-four, is a good two feet taller than her. His hood is
up, and I can easily picture his expression from the way his arms fly up in the
air each time Kate runs for the ball. Even through glass window of the car, I
hear him yell
Time! Time! to my little sister across the pitch.
My sister is easy to spot; the one with a big white number 12 on her back.
She's also tall, and one of the only girls who seems completely unafraid of the
ball. I watch as she thunders into this tiny twig of a girl who instinctively
flits out the way just seconds before she might get squashed. I remember when I
was Kate's age. I'd been picked to play in
one lacrosse match for my
school's B Team. I hated every minute of it. My Dad had stood at the side line
yelling, "Get in there! Tackle her, come on!" I was a skinny little
thing, looking up at this gigantic girl lassoing her stick around her head and
thinking I'd rather be anywhere else in the world than on that cold, muddy
pitch, about to be whacked.
I'm feeling hungry as well as cold now. I fumble about in my huge handbag
for a moment, finding only the remnants of a crushed pack of Polo mints at the
bottom. I peel open the foil carefully, picking out the big pieces, popping
them in my mouth before dusting off the sticky crumbs that have fallen across
my lap.
Slightly more satisfied, I turn to look out across the field again, and
that's when everything stops.
There's a tiny, but familiar figure way across the field. I hadn't noticed
him at first. Well, he is wearing an anorak just like everybody else... I lean
up close to the glass, so my nose presses against it and it goes all steamy.
It's my Dad.
I know it's him for sure, because he's kicking a football around with a tiny
gangly person with no coat on, who is unmistakeably my littlest brother.
I look instinctively over to my Mum, wondering if she's seen him.
Mum must be having a fit that Henry has no coat on. After all, it is teaming
down with rain. I imagine her hissing something along the lines of,
"What's he doing allowing him to run about with no coat on in
this weather?"
I stare for a minute at the man I haven't known for eight years. Everything
about his stance and the way he moves is familiar, yet completely alien to me.
I watch as he kicks the football with his left foot, arms still clasped tightly
behind his back as if he either isn't able (or isn't willing) to let himself go
completely.
A long whistle blows. The girls, muddy and cold with flaming red cheeks run
over to the pile of jackets and water bottles splayed in a heap in the car
park. Sodden spectators begin to wander over to hear the manager's team talk at
half time, clearly relieved to be half way through and able to start moving
their toes again.
I begin to panic as I notice my Dad is also striding towards the car park. As
he gets close enough, Henry spies me peering out from the car, and gives me
half a wave, his hand shooting down quickly to his side in case my Dad sees him.
I don’t know what to do. I hop out the car, forgetting my perfectly white soled
converse trainers and land clumsily in the mud. One arm flies up instinctively
to protect me from the spitting rain, as all the court orders, injunctions,
tribunals and solicitors letters hang like clouds above my head.
Henry runs over and throws his arms around me. I love the way my little
brother smells; damp and Henryish.
When I look up and let him go, Dad is standing directly in front of me. I
don’t know where to look, or what to say. Instead, I scan his face, taking in
each new wrinkle that I hadn't remembered seeing before. Mum is busily fussing
over my sister, looking for her asthma puffer, doing anything rather than look directly
at him. My other brother, George is concentrating on his boots, arms crossed,
puffing his chest out to make himself look bigger. He doesn't need to, really.
Dad seems smaller than I remembered him. After an awkward minute nobody's spoken, so I croak a weak
‘hi’. When he replies, his eyes look pale and watery. His hair is greyer and he
seems somewhat frail. Maybe that's what fighting does to you.
My brother takes a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it, holding his
hand up to shelter it from the wind.
"Alright, George?" My Dad asks.
He nods his cigarette in response, his eyes still fixed on his boots.
As if it was the most normal thing in the world to be standing in a field in
the pissing rain with your ex wife and your estranged children, Dad then turns
to my Mum, and asks casually; "Do you remember Paul Duskin?"
I watch as Mum, the natural communicator of the two, hesitates, taken aback
by his casual tone. She grips her umbrella even more tightly to compose
herself, before rushing a very animated; "Oh, yes! Didn't he play for your
old football team? The tall guy?"
It isn't normal for my parents to even talk, let alone reminisce. Henry (clearly
not as dumbfounded as the rest of us by this rare exchange between our parents)
seems to have found a toy gun from the car and begins shooting foam pellets at
the girls huddled around their manager for the team talk.
I’m jumpy, nervous; I fiddle with the zip on my jacket and wait for
something to go wrong.
My Dad continues.
"Yep. Really great guy. A wife, nice family... Died last year."
"Oh no... How sad." Mum pipes up appropriately, her voice slightly
shrill.
He allows for a dramatic pause, which makes me wonder where he could
possibly be going with this.
"...Yes. He died from lung cancer...” Lowering his voice in disgust,
and nodding disapprovingly at my brother, he adds; “...from smoking."
My Mum winces. My eyes flit between my parents and my brother, who is
getting redder by the minute. He's picking at my brother. Picking where he
absolutely, one hundred percent shouldn't. I dig the white toe of my converse
into the mud, and wait for 'the scene' to happen.
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, there's loud
POP! followed by a dull
thud.
Everyone stops.
My Dad has taken the toy gun off of Henry and shot George square in the
chest.
My brother's lips curl up at the edges. He tries desperately to pin them
down. My Mum stifles a laugh.
And without the faintest warning, eight years of anger is dispelled across a
rainy football pitch. Because we could finally allow ourselves - for just a few
minutes - to forget.
