After Jonathan

Ruth always put more water in the kettle than she needed so that she was always ready for guests. It hardly ever happened, anyone turning up without a moment’s notice, but providence, it seemed, was on her side that day; for there was a knock on the door just after she flicked the kettle’s switch.

Ruth grabbed her stick and lumbered over to the front door. Standing on her tiptoes as best as her arthritic knees would allow, she peeked through the peep hole.

Her peep hole was different from the others in the building: her late husband had owned the building as well as lived and worked in it and as such she had been afforded certain luxuries. One was that when her eyesight began to fail her, as so much of her ageing body had over the last few decades, he had arranged for magnified glass to be installed in the peep hole. Now Ruth could see out into the hallway with perfect clarity. Well, near perfect clarity – she had left her glasses on the kitchen worktop, after all.

On the other side of the door was a young boy with cuts and scrapes in various stages of healing all over the visible parts of his body: his face and his arms and his hands. He was looking up at the peep hole, though Ruth knew that he couldn’t see her as she could see him, waiting for her to open the door.

She did.

“Come in, come in.” She stood out of the way and let the boy through. “I’ve just put the kettle on.”

“Thanks, great-grandma.” The boy made his way through the flat and flopped down on the sofa, taking up nearly the entire piece of furniture with his lanky frame.

Ruth got another mug out from the cupboard and began filling it with all the things that were already in her own: a tea bag and a spoonful of sugar. The milk would come later.

“What brings you here, David?” Ruth asked. The layout of the flat meant that she had her back to him while she worked on making their drinks – not that she would have been able to see him anyway, for he would have been hidden to her by the back of the sofa.

There was a shuffle of a t-shirt against faux leather upholstery: the shrug of not-quite-teenage shoulders.

“Wanted to talk.”

Ruth hummed as the kettle started to whistle. She began pouring the water into the mugs.

“Do your parents know where you are? Your brothers?”

David scoffed. “I’m supposed to be in the stock room.”

Ruth tutted as she reached for the teaspoon which she kept in a mug too small for a decent cup of tea on the worktop; there was still a little moisture in the bowl from her last cup of tea an hour ago. “Skiving off just to come and visit me?” Ruth squeezed the tea bags against the sides of the mugs. “Should I be flattered or appalled?”

Another shuffle as Ruth stirred milk into the mugs then picked them up with barely shaking hands and turned around to face the living room. David’s head was poking up from above the back of the sofa, pointed in Ruth’s direction.

“You’re not gonna tell on me, are you?”

Ruth laughed: a full and joyous sound that she had to curtail lest she spill tea on her linoleum kitchen floor. “Of course not!” Without her stick, her movements from the kitchen into the living room were slow and calculated. David rushed up and took one of the mugs from her.

“Thanks, dear.”

David mumbled a thanks in return as he made his way back to the sofa. He was more careful with his movements this time, sitting down gently rather than plopping his entire body onto the seats. Ruth settled herself down in the armchair which faced the sofa, one hand on the arm to steady herself on the descent.

“But...” Ruth shifted in the armchair to get more comfortable, then put her still-too-hot tea on the little table beside her. “This is an unusual and unexpected visit. Forgive the scepticism of my old age, but I can’t help but think you’d risk the wrath of your father for a quick chat and a cuppa. How long before someone notices you’re not in the shop?”

David stared at the brown liquid in his mug, hunched over so the rising steam wafted the wispier hairs of his fringe, the fingers of one hand curled around the handle and the other hand wrapped around the other side. After a few moments he shifted and Ruth thought that he might start talking, but he just hissed in pain a little and put his mug down on the floor, holding his palm out against the cooler air.

“Did you burn yourself?”

David shook his head, still looking down but now at the floor rather than in his mug. “I’m fine.”

Ruth pursed her lips. “Are you?”

David gulped and still did not look at his great-grandmother.

“I heard about what happened,” Ruth said, settling further back into the armchair. She rested her forearms against the armrests, so her wrists bent at the edges, her hands and fingers dangling over the edges. “That was very brave of you.”

David scoffed. “I only did it because my brothers said I couldn’t.”

“And you proved them wrong.”

A pause. “Yeah.”

“Are they going to press charges?”

David shook his head no. Little beads of condensation from the steam dripped off his fringe and onto his hands, which were now in his lap. “Nah, they wouldn’t dare. Besides, it was self-defence.”

Ruth nodded in agreement and paused, waiting for him to continue.

“It’s just...” David sighed. “Do you... do you miss Great Aunt Nae?”

Ruth blinked in surprise. “Of course, I do, why would you ask me that?”

David’s eyes widened and he twisted to face Ruth. As he did so, the side of his foot collided with his mug and tea, still steaming, spilled onto the floor.

“Oh, no! I’m so sorry!” David leaped up from his seat with a youthful vigour that Ruth could only just about remember and rushed into the kitchen. There was a tearing sound and David returned with a wad of kitchen paper. He sank to his knees beside the growing puddle, righted the mug, and got to work mopping up the mess. Ruth had barely had the chance to sit up properly in her seat.

“It’s fine, David.”

David, his back to Ruth and his body blocking the scene from her view, gave no reply.

A few moments later, he stood, one hand clutching the now sodden and slightly brown wad of kitchen paper and the other carefully holding the mug upright so the little bit of liquid still left would not spill as well, and the puddle was only a faint stain on the floor. David took the articles into the kitchen; Ruth heard the bin open and close, followed by the tiny chink of a mug against the worktop surface. When David came back into the living room, Ruth saw the wet patches on the knees of his jeans.

“I would offer you a clean pair,” she sighed, “but that would only evidence your truancy.”

David looked down at his knees, then shrugged. “It’ll dry.” He sat down again.

A moment passed in silence. David wrung his hands together in his lap as he looked over at Ruth, his dark eyes peering at her from between strands of his long fringe. Ruth took a tentative sip of her tea, waiting for him to say something, but it quickly became clear that he was not going to.

She shifted in the armchair, the palm of her free hand pressing against the soft but thinning furnishing of the chair’s arms as she sat up straight enough to put her feet flat on the floor.

“Why are you asking me about Great Aunt Nae?”

David looked away, down at his shoes, still wringing his hands.

“I just...” He paused. “I wanted to know…”

Ruth flicked her tongue across her lips, thinking. “You wanted to know if I miss her?”

David nodded, his hair bouncing atop his head which he did not raise to look at his great-grandmother.

Ruth sighed. If he wasn’t going to look at her, then she wasn’t going to look at him. She leaned back in the armchair and looked out of the window, hands curled around her mug, out across the estate. Almost directly opposite was another block of flats, externally identical to the one which held her own flat save for the few personalised touches some had put in their windows: little pieces of personality that were worth that little extra bit of natural light.

“Every morning I wake up,” she began, “and I think of your Great Aunt Nae. She was a kind woman. Looked after me and my sister when she was in the worst place she had ever been. I always appreciated her for that.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Ruth saw David move slightly, lifting his head to look at her. She kept looking out of the window; a bird flew by.

“And, of course, if it hadn’t been for her, I never would have met your great-grandfather. You would probably have never existed. Well, you definitely would have never existed.”

David hummed: a low, thoughtful sound.

Then, he turned on the sofa so that he was no longer angled toward Ruth. Instead, he was looking across the living room to the wall opposite the sofa.

That wall was mostly bare save for a notice board covered with bin schedules and council tax deadlines and other important documents; but there was also a picture of two women on there, a black and white photo featuring a much younger Ruth and another woman who had long since passed standing next to their respective suitcases, neither of which were big enough to fit a life in but that was all they had at the time.

‘Why do you both look so sad?’ David had asked back when he had only had the ability to ask questions for a few months and he still only just came up to Ruth’s hip.

She told him it was to do with the camera: they had to keep a pose still for long enough for the picture to be taken otherwise it would have been too fuzzy to make anything out and holding a smile for that amount of time was just uncomfortable. It was not the only lie she had ever told her great-grandson.

“Why did you go with her?” David’s voice was small, smaller than Ruth had ever heard it.

Ruth chuckled. “Why not?”

David moved again, looking back over at her, and Ruth could feel the intensity of his gaze from across the room. She turned from the window – from the very first pink touches of the sunset on the horizon just visible through the gaps in the high-rises and the terraces – and looked at David’s face. He had brushed his fringe out of his eyes and was bouncing one foot gently on the ground, so gently that it didn’t make a sound: just jostled him in the seat.

Ruth’s next, sarcastic, comment died in her throat.

She placed her mug back on the table next to her then turned back to David. Leaning forward, she pushed herself to the edge of her seat and reached out her hands to her great-grandson. David moved as well, until he was close enough for Ruth to clasp his youthful, calloused hands within her own wrinkled ones.

“Why are you asking me about Great Aunt Nae, David?”

David looked down again, down at his hands again, now encircled in the warm grip of his great-grandmother.

“It’s just...” he began, “I never met her. And... she seems so important to you. When you talk of her, you get this... look... on your face.”

Ruth smiled sadly, once again only able to see the top of David’s bowed head.

“The kind mum gets when she looks at dad. Just sadder.”

Ruth took in a deep breath and squeezed David’s hands a little tighter. “Now why would you come to me about this, David?”

David rubbed his thumb across the back of Ruth’s hand. “Something...” He cleared his throat. “Something that happened. Just... wanted to hear your side of it.”

Ruth waited for David to continue but her silence was only echoed by his own.

“David. David, look at me.”

It took a moment, but David lifted his head. His eyes were a little shiny and his bottom lip, pursed as it was against the top, was trembling ever-so-slightly in a way that would have been imperceptible had their faces not been so close together.

“You don’t have to put a name to it, you don’t have to tell me anything, but whatever it is, know that I understand.”

David flicked his gaze to the picture on the notice board again. Ruth looked over, too.

Across decades and generations, the eyes on the wall watched them, unmoving, unknowing – but Ruth knew all the same.