Free Another Mother's Son by Janet Davey

Randal’s. They are conservative about arrangements and act as a pack to thwart changes. There is an element of loyalty to me in their refusal but this is, I believe, subsidiary to their obstinacy. The first Christmas without Randal, I failed to put decorations up in the hall and living room and, as soon as the boys noticed, they questioned me belligerently. Randal had left at the beginning of the month: 6 December, the anniversary of the establishment of the Irish Free State. I get things astonishingly wrong. I try to adapt to my sons’ increasing years and put away childish things, sometimes with a pang and sometimes with a light heart, but I had to unearth the large red honeycomb paper bell, the paper chains made from gummed strips on a long-ago Sunday afternoon, the strings of silver stars, from the cardboard box marked ‘Brother’ that had once contained a printer. I dusted them off, got the stepladder out from under the stairs and suspended the bell from the central light fitting, draped the paper chains from nails that my father had banged into the architrave for that purpose, twisted the strings of silver stars over the fireplace and around the banister rail. The boys stayed in their rooms while I performed the neglected rite and afterwards said not a word. I could tell from their faces that they harboured hurt feelings and thought, not for the first time, that the distance between making amends and getting something right from the outset is immeasurable and that it might well be better to brazen things out because brazening confers a feeling of strength whereas reparation debilitates.
    Oliver has grown taller since October; he is also broader across the shoulders. He bears the invisible marks of a person who has got away and whose return will be temporary. He is a little more lordly than previously and a shade more polite. I remember a similar atmosphere of otherness around Ewan on his first vacation from university. The effect was stronger because he was the eldest and a pioneer. The burner was lit and the balloon lifting. Well, that’s Ewan on his way, I thought.
    Coming up to Pease Pottage, Oliver asks me to stop at the service station so that he can buy coffee. I dislike negotiating the interchange at Pease Pottage and feel sorry for anyone who lives there and has to grapple with it on a daily basis. From the A23 northbound, it is necessary to leave at J11, where the road becomes a motorway, turn right at the roundabout and immediately right again. I manage to do this in the correct order without being sucked onto the M23 or into the slipstream of a jumbo jet taking off at Gatwick airport. Aeroplanes fly low over the road there, stark and blackly three-dimensional against the sky – one-trick predators. I shall make thirty-six of these journeys. I totted them up. This is the fourth. I have now covered the permutations: down with Oliver, back alone, down alone, back with Oliver. Each is subtly different and the one I like least is back alone.
    For God’s sake, Lorna, Randal said when I rang to let him know Oliver’s dates. You don’t need to ferry him about. I said, I don’t ferry him about. I’m not that sort of mother. News to me, Randal said. Let him go on the train. Or by bus. Even better. The whole of humanity is at Victoria Coach Station. Let him learn. I did it for Ewan, I said. I can’t not do it for Oliver. Exactly, he said. Look where it got him. Think.
    Oliver returns with a lidded beaker and immediately the smell of coffee pervades the car. We set off again. After a few gulps, Oliver comes partly to life. He tells a funny story about a lab assistant and a flask of benzene and mentions the names of new friends. Following the burst of communication, he falls silent again. I tell him that Ross has a girlfriend, Jude.
    â€˜Ewan?’
    â€˜He’s the same,’ I say.

21
    I AM TRYING on a short, mainly green, tartan skirt in front of the bedroom