Alain cradled his finger to his chest.
‘I bought a present for Jenny today,’ he said. ‘A Christmas present. And for you. May, what’s the matter with me? I was so thrown by the sight of you and that woman. I don’t even know her.’
Alain put his head into his hands, carefully holding his hurt finger away from the others.
‘She’s my friend, Alain, is that not OK?’ May said. ‘Am I not allowed to have friends, girlfriends to chat to and talk baby stuff? I didn’t tell you anything about her before because I know you get upset so easily, but it doesn’t make sense, Al, does it?’
May felt very brave. It was as if the two of them together were making her stronger, the baby and Helen, a team.
‘Come and sit with me in the living room. The others are out of the way. I’ll feed Jenny and we can play Scrabble, I’ll make a bandage for your finger, would that be good?’
‘Yes,’ said Alain, nodding. ‘I really am sorry, May.’
‘It’s fine,’ May said and for that moment it was. He was sorry, and he was a good dad, a good man underneath it all, and if she could just help him, be a fitting partner for him, he would get better. And Jenny needed a dad. Am I crazy, she wondered, thinking like this? Can things really get better? Could they stay like this? She filed the questions away to ponder on, and to ask Helen the next time she saw her.
‘We could have gone for tea in Binns together,’ Alain said. ‘You didn’t need to take Jenny to sit with a stranger. I would have come.’
Something in Alain’s voice made May push away her thoughts of Jenny and Helen and look up. He was muttering something to himself and staring towards the cot where Jenny slept. May realised that she had relaxed too quickly, and that things could still go terribly wrong. There was danger in him still for Jenny, and she would be mad to think otherwise. How had she ever thought that he wouldn’t threaten the welfare of this child he professed to love so much? She must have been crazy. She should have been more careful. May needed to think quickly.
‘I was going to ask if you’d like to come, next time,’ May said. ‘Helen is dying to meet you and they have some really nice cakes in there.’
‘Cakes?’ said Alain. ‘Cakes? Since when have we had the money to afford cakes from a fancy cafe? Do you even realise that I haven’t got a job yet? Did you even notice that the job at the Welsh Film Board, the one where I could have actually used my other language, Welsh, my special skill, did it even register with you that that chance has gone now?’
‘I know,’ said May. ‘It’s OK, the cakes were on the house because of Jenny; I know we’re hard up.’
Welsh, she was thinking, why do you speak Welsh anyway when you come from Sevenoaks, nowhere near Wales? Why are there so many odd and weird things about you that I don’t understand and am too afraid to ask?
‘Everything I do is for you and Jenny,’ Alain said. ‘I think of you all the time. There isn’t any me without you.’
He cried as he said the second part of the sentence, and covered his eyes, but May was sure that he had left a big enough gap between his fingers so that he could still see her.
May tried to work out whether she could get out, and if she did, where would she go? She couldn’t bear to admit to anyone what was going on. No one would believe her. And everyone else she knew here was part of a student world, she couldn’t tell them. There was Helen, but she had enough trouble without May turning up. More immediately, May was desperate to pick Jenny up and feed her. May’s breasts felt hot and hard, and she was worried that if they got too full Jenny would find it difficult to latch on. She sat down on the sofa and gestured to Alain to come and sit with her.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘I’m here, I love you.’
Alain reached under the little table next to the sofa and pulled out a carrier bag. All May’s muscles tensed despite her tiredness, coiled like an athlete on the starting block.
‘Here,’ Alain said, ‘I’m a terrible person, a rubbish husband and father, I know all that. But I got this for Jenny even though I’m sure she doesn’t want presents from such a no-hoper. No point waiting till Christmas.’
He reached into the carrier bag and May flinched. Thoughts of guns, knives and baseball bats raced through her mind as Alain pulled out a soft furry rabbit.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘for Jenny.’
‘Oh,’ said May, ‘she’s lovely.’
‘She?’ said Alain. ‘She? This rabbit is a boy rabbit, called Hitler.’
No, May thought, no, please. How could he turn something nice, a present for his baby, into something scary, a nightmare from a horror film? She knew she should keep quiet but she couldn’t.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said. ‘Why would you say that? Why would we want Jenny to associate a cuddly rabbit with something evil and nasty?’
‘Because it came from me, so it’s a bad bunny. An evil bunny,’ said Alain. ‘Two sides of the same coin, like me. It will teach her a valuable lesson about trust.’ He held the rabbit in front of his face and moved its head so that it seemed as if it was speaking. ‘Good bunny,’ Alain made the bunny do a little dance, ‘and bad bunny.’
Alain made the bunny punch him in the face. His head smacked against the wall. Before May could duck, Alain jumped to his feet and swung the rabbit at May with his fist behind it. It hit her full on the side of the head and for a moment the hallway tilted. When she looked up, the rabbit was in front of her face, its paws rubbing its eyes as if it was sad. May held her hand to her face, too shocked to cry. This was the worst time yet. She moved her tongue round her teeth, trying to feel if any were loose. Come on, May, she said to herself, you can’t pretend it isn’t happening any more. Think of Jenny. Pull yourself together.
‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ said Alain in a simpering little voice. ‘Poor old Hitler Rabbit, can’t get anything right.’
‘Alain, stop it,’ said May, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Just stop it now.’
He threw the rabbit to the side and stroked May’s throbbing cheek.
‘Can I hold Jenny?’ he said. He shook his head as if he was shaking out the madness.
The options raced through May’s head. Either she sat still, trusted him to calm down and cuddle his daughter properly, or she had to run, and run quickly. Both options had glaring deficiencies. May felt angry with the baby books she had read so carefully. She had been so thorough, as if she was studying for an exam. She could have given essay-style answers to questions about gestational diabetes or cleft palates but nowhere, nowhere in the books had they mentioned what to do when your husband hit you and gave the baby a rabbit called Hitler. She felt as though she couldn’t get enough oxygen.
‘Come on, Alain,’ May said. ‘Let’s stop this. I’m sorry, I’ll get her up, she needs feeding. Why don’t you put the rabbit away so that Jenny gets a surprise at Christmas?’ Does that sound sane, she thought, is that the right thing to say? Is there even a right thing to say? For a moment she felt so furious that she knew it would have been easy to kill Alain. I said sorry, she kept thinking, I said sorry, why would I do that? Why am I taking the blame?
‘Forgive me,’ said Alain. ‘Help me, May.’
CHAPTER NINE
January 2018
Lewisham
The decorations come down today. Twelfth night. None in my room, not like some of them here. They act like kids, glittery with excitement. There’s tinsel and holly everywhere in their rooms as if an edict had gone out that they had to use as much as possible, regardless of taste. I will say, though, it’s been nice to look at the holly in the dining room. Or I would if I had a voice. Makes a person feel normal, holly.
I never went along with that twelfth night stuff. Take ’em down on Boxing Day, that was me. I remember Jenny begging one year, please keep them up Mummy, I love to see the tree when I come downstairs in the morning. It’s like having a friend waiting to say hello to me in the living room, she said.
I told her straight, I said, friend o
r no friend, who has to hoover up the pine needles?
It’s funny how people change as they get older. I’m thinking now, did I have to be so damn bossy? Could I not have left the bloody old tree up for a little while, like everyone else? I liked a bit of order, that was the thing, always that feeling that if I let things slip, I couldn’t tell what would happen.
Jenny came last night and I tried to tell her I was sorry, about the tree. She claimed that she didn’t understand, said we had nice Christmases, reminded me of some stuff I’d forgotten like the time we made real authentic cookies to hang but the lower ones were all nibbled away by mice. I think she was being kind. She brought chocolates, the ones wrapped in shiny paper that hang on the tree. The kind I never remembered to get for her when she was younger.
Here you are, she said, I brought you these, off our tree at home. They always taste more Christmassy than other chocolate, I think it’s because they’ve been well hung. It’s OK, I tried to say, I’m off chocolate and I’m off Christmas too but I started coughing and that was that. I haven’t got a cough, not really but I do have trouble swallowing my saliva sometimes and that can make a person cough like a steam train.
I’ve brought you an iPad, she said, extra present. I was thinking that you’d be able to manage it, you only need to touch it and we’d be able to talk, you could watch TV and read on it and everything. I could show you my classroom.
I had a look.
Touch it like this, she kept saying, this is the password, this is where the BBC is, this is where my photos are.
Too much, I would have said if I could, take it away, I don’t want to learn anything new, it makes my head hurt. I could see she was upset but just looking at the thing in its nice bright red case made me nervous, like it was a test I had to take that I hadn’t revised for.
She left soon after that but this morning I started thinking about it and what I think is, I would not like to use the iPad ever again but I would like to eat one of those tree chocolates. I would like to see if it tastes of Jenny’s house, and Jenny’s life, and I would like to imagine it hanging there where it could see her and hear her talking. It will be strange to have something going through my intestines that has been with Jenny, I hope that doesn’t sound too creepy.
So I sit up and reach forward for the tray that slots over my bed. I’m still in bed, they haven’t come to get me dressed yet but I’m sure that’s where Jenny put them last night so it should be fine. It’s where everything important is kept, on a tray the width of a single bed, passport, photos, books, purse, everything. I have to rummage around a little, push a few things from one side to the other, knock my hairbrush on to the floor, that kind of thing. They’re not there. I can remember them clearly, a Mickey Mouse, a Bart Simpson and a fat Santa with coffee cream in his tummy. I lean over as far as I can without falling out of bed but they’re not on the floor either. I decide I need a systematic approach, so I take everything off the tray, Christmas cards, wrapping paper, other chocolates I was given for Christmas, all the things that gather if you’re a person who can’t get to drawers and shelves. I try to pile it up on the bed but of course I’m in the bed myself, so every time I move there is a bit of slippage and things fall on the floor. I can’t find the tree chocolates anywhere. I can’t and I absolutely know they were there, they were there last night for goodness sake. It’s not the kind of thing I would get wrong.
Of course Agnita comes in while I’m still looking and she sighs about all the stuff on the floor and I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I know that her back hurts her in the morning and I’m not a mean-hearted person. Stay away from the s words said the little man in the sparkly hat and I have been trying but pardon is not the same as sorry, not at all. So I try to say sorry and I try to explain to Agnita but the only word that comes out is chocolate and she doesn’t understand.
What do you mean, she says, what do you mean, you want chocolate? Are you not able to see all of these?
She holds up the Christmas gift chocolates, the tiny bitter ones in a beautiful box. They have ingredients whose names don’t go with chocolate, like cardamom and black pepper. It’s not those I want, I try to tell her. And then she offers me the Mozart balls, big mouthfuls of marzipan and hazelnut that I used to buy for Jenny for a joke and now she buys for me. Neither of us like them. It’s a Christmas tradition, a habit.
You have them, I try to say to Agnita, you have them they need a good home and I try to push them towards her but my arm does the unexpected lunge thing again and it’s more like throwing them at her.
Calm down, she says, calm down now there’s no need to get angry like that and I’m not, I’m not angry like that or like anything else but I want the chocolates from Jenny’s tree and they’ve gone. Of course somewhere along the way I forgot to be careful, forgot that I hadn’t been to the toilet yet so I had an accident and although I’ve got plastic sheets I know that having an accident causes trouble. So I start crying.
It doesn’t matter, Agnita says, that’s what I’m here for, don’t worry. It can’t be what anyone is here for, I want to say, you deserve more than clearing up other people’s messes. She’s one of the kind ones. Really. And it’s not possible for her to understand about the Christmas tree ornaments, I don’t even understand it myself.
Kelly comes in then. It takes two of them to get me to the toilet, and then to strip the bed so that I can have clean sheets. I hope they don’t think I’m not appreciative. I try to do a bow, to show I’m thankful, but I don’t think anyone would recognise it.
Try and sit up, my dear, Agnita says and I wonder what it would be like to really be somebody’s dear. I lift my head up and it’s then that I see him. The man from the room opposite.
He’s in the doorway of my room, and he’s standing up. Standing up! I thought he was in a wheelchair, he certainly was last time I saw him. Seems to be he’s in and out of wheelchairs like other people are on and off buses. He needs to make up his mind. He waves at me, just a little wave of the fingers as if we were old friends. I don’t know you at all, I would like to say, please don’t do that. And who asked you to come in my room anyway, it’s my private property as far as I’m aware.
He’s clever though, because they couldn’t see him. The carers, I mean. He kept an eye on which way they were facing, and seemed to know when to slide to the right and when to slide to the left as if it was a little dance they were all engaged in. As they moved first one way and then another to help me get from the bed to the chair, he followed their movements and leaned that way too, to keep himself out of their eyeline. I would have told them he was there but I couldn’t get the words out.
By the time I’d been hoisted into my chair and washed down in the bathroom I was ready to go back to bed. So tired, I just wanted to sleep.
No bed for you, milady, Kelly says, we’d all like to have a little lie down mid-morning, wouldn’t we?
She smiles at Agnita over the top of my head and adds, depending who with, of course.
Agnita chuckles and I miss my voice terribly. I’d like to join in, I think, not to say anything vitally important but just to have a bit of company. Something that isn’t about whether I want a drink or a crap. A bit of banter, isn’t that what we all want? I can’t believe that I wasted all those years shutting my door and speaking to as few people as I could get away with. I could have had dinner parties, cooked spaghetti Bolognese and laughed with my guests about how obvious and retro my food was. I could have ordered in food from the Indian takeaway around the corner, it strikes me now that people wouldn’t have minded. They might have been pleased to come and sit round my table just for the company.
I thought about it, of course I did. I used to clip recipes from the Sunday papers, look in my local supermarket to see if they stocked some of the more unusual ingredients. I even set dates sometimes and planned things, but I never quite had the courage to go through with it. So damn difficult to decide who to invite. So difficult to know how to be.
They go eventually, Kelly and Agnita, go off giggling to the next poor sucker. I’m left in my chair, feeling clean but battered, as if I’ve been for a bracing walk along a windswept cliff. I open a book and try to read. I’m rereading Pride and Prejudice, because I don’t seem to be able to get the hang of anything new. The speech and language therapist thought it was best, so that my brain can get used to interpreting the written word on familiar territory, so to speak. Only I don’t seem to be able to make it out. The words blur and swim, it might be the font or the letter size or something. Perhaps I should try the big print books. I remember the old ladies borrowing the big print books when I worked in the library. We all used to laugh because most of them seemed to be cowboy novels but the poor old ladies were stuck with them. It’s not so funny now.
I’m thinking about cowboy novels and wondering if they have any women in them, cowgirls or love interest, it wouldn’t matter which, when I see a movement over by the door frame. I’d forgotten all about his tricks earlier on but I remember straight away when I see him. I don’t know if he’s been there all the time, or if he has, why. He surely can’t have been that desperate for a glimpse of flesh when my nightie rode up as I got in the hoist. Flesh on show is common as tinned peas in this place. St Barbara, patron saint of prisoners, miners and mathematicians. Specialising in lost causes, leave your dignity at the door. That should be the catchphrase. I start to chuckle at the thought of it written in neon over the door and I see that’s got him interested.
Hello, My Name is May Page 10