He looked at May with such a pleading look that she was torn for a moment. If she kept quiet, they were much more likely to have a good evening. But there was something about keeping quiet, about pretending that everything was OK, that damaged some part of her.
‘It’s more than nonsense, Al,’ she said. ‘Look at me.’ May gestured to her hair and clothes, encrusted with sauce. ‘We’re a family now, we need to sort this out.’
‘I don’t know why, I don’t know why,’ Alain said. ‘I just feel so angry all the time, it’s not your fault, I’m so sorry.’
‘Hey,’ said May, ‘it’s OK, it’s OK, I’m here.’
She knelt on the floor next to him and put her arm round him.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘don’t worry, I love you.’
Do I? May thought, do I really?
‘I never knew my real mother,’ Alain said. ‘I think it’s had more of an effect on me than I wanted to admit.’
This was news to May. She realised how little she knew about her husband, about the Alain that had existed before she met him. He’d never mentioned this before, in fact his mother had come to their wedding. Or so May had thought.
‘Who was the woman who came to the wedding?’ asked May. ‘I thought she was your mum?’
‘Oh I call her Mum,’ said Alain. ‘I always have, she’s my father’s wife. My father was the village doctor, in a village in Wales. That’s why I chose Lampeter, when I went to university.’
At last, thought May, maybe we’re getting somewhere.
‘But my dad and his wife, my mum, couldn’t have children, in fact she was a perpetual invalid who took to her bed. So he had an affair, with a woman from the village. I think she was his cleaning woman. The woman got pregnant, and Mum offered to bring up the baby, and that was me. But she never loved me, which is understandable in the circumstances. And it’s just, just, sometimes when I see you with her, with Jenny, I just feel so jealous.’
It wasn’t everything, May thought, and it possibly wasn’t anything, but it was all she had. Only, the woman she had been introduced to at the wedding, she hadn’t been a perpetual invalid. Had she got better? She didn’t seem much like a doctor’s wife either, but May thought that would be more difficult to tell. She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Anything else seemed wrong on their first night in their new home, and surely, surely she could have handled it better. May knew she was partly to blame.
‘My darling,’ she said, ‘I’m so sorry, of course I love you too. We can make it OK.’
And she did want to make it OK, she really did. But it was so difficult to mean the words that she said. So difficult to stop the things that were niggling away at her, things she needed to think about, things that meant that she couldn’t completely trust him. Stop obsessing over the details, May, she thought, just take in the wider picture, the little bits and pieces don’t matter. But they do, another part of her thought, oh, they do.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ Alain said, blowing his nose. ‘I can feel it, there’s a reluctance. You with your happy childhood, happy little fat girl with her lovely teacher mummy.’
May jumped back slightly as if she had been slapped.
‘That’s not fair,’ she said. ‘That’s not fair at all. I do believe you. It’s just, it’s just I’m surprised, that’s all. I’m genuinely surprised. I’m so sorry to hear it and I’m so sorry for you, and I’m going to try never to let you feel left out again.’
‘But you believe me, don’t you? Say you believe me, say it or I won’t know. No one ever believed me when I was growing up, I was just the doctor’s bastard son, none of the other kids wanted to be my friend.’
Where is he now, this doctor, May thought, where is he? There was something else as well, something niggling at the corners of her fuzzy baby brain.
May didn’t get a chance to think it through properly until later, when she was sitting feeding Jenny in the quiet of the night. Alain had gone for a walk, to clear his head, he had said. May couldn’t help worrying. He wasn’t used to London like she was, and Pimlico had some very rough parts. It wasn’t a place where people wandered around taking night-time strolls, but there was no telling him anything like that.
She listened to the baby’s familiar sucking noises and tried to calm down so that the milk would keep flowing. Jenny had had enough interrupted feeds in her little lifetime. May tried to empty her head of everything except Jenny, just for a moment, and it was then that it came to her. The reason why she had been feeling so sceptical. Not only was Alain’s mother the oddest doctor’s wife she’d ever seen, a large, grubby woman with a cockney accent who had brought Jenny some stained nylon vests the only time she had seen her, but also there was the conversation they had had. May had been pregnant at the wedding, and she hadn’t made any attempt to cover it up.
‘Hope we’re not going to have to deliver it here,’ Alain’s mum had said. ‘I never even knew I was in labour with Al till his head popped out.’
May had managed to move the conversation quickly to something else, but she remembered it now. She could have been lying, obviously, but there was something about the way she said it that had a definite ring of truth to May. Why on earth would Alain pretend she was his adoptive mother?
‘Oh Jenny,’ May said into her daughter’s fluffy head, ‘we’re in a pretty pickle.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
February 2018
Lewisham
I have always liked February.
Jenny used to say, you’re the only grown-up I know who still loves their birthday month, but it isn’t that. I like it because no one else does. And because spring is hidden there with the hope of a better year to come. Not to mention that it’s short, too, over quickly and payday just around the corner.
The months and the seasons merge into each other in this place. I haven’t been here in spring and summer yet but I know nothing will change. They keep us all at the same temperature all year round, even now, in the snow. Like precious manuscripts, Jenny said. Bless her, nice try but more like a funeral parlour, I thought. So I know it’s February from the calendar, and I could make a good guess from looking out of the window, but I can’t feel it on my skin, and that seems like a loss. One of so many losses I can’t keep count.
Jackie pops in most mornings. She drops in like we’re neighbours in the real world, and for me that’s something to wake up for. She can even understand me sometimes. I managed to explain to her with a lot of mime and expressions that I miss reading the most, and she said that she loves to read aloud. She offered to read to me so we’re reading that one by Kazuo Ishiguro about the clones. She reads beautifully, she could get a job reading books aloud, she would honestly be great. I chose the book and I’m proud of it, it’s a good story. It’s set in a school for these people that aren’t real people because they’ve been cloned, they don’t have families or anything.
Seems just like here, I said to Jackie but that’s three s’s in a row right at the beginning of the sentence so I’m not sure she got it at all. It was good to say it, nonetheless.
Today is my birthday and I know Jackie doesn’t know but I still feel excited when it gets to ten o’clock. Maybe she will have found out somehow, or maybe Jenny told her but that hasn’t happened and she comes in her own sunny self as usual.
Good morning, good morning, the sun is coming back to join us after the winter hibernation, she says, in Finland they celebrate the return of the sun, did you know. Did I know, I think, of course I know, I know so many things I can’t tell you. Just for a moment I envy her and her long sentences so much I have to breathe deeply and let it go, or I’ll explode with longing. Breathe it out, that’s the way, they’re her sentences, not yours, May. Your own are living in your head at the moment and that’s better than living nowhere at all.
I’ve been to Finland, I try to say and there’s no s’s in that, none at all but she still can’t understand me. I went to Moomin land, it’s on an island in
the west of Finland. She gets part of that.
Moomins, Jackie says, I love the Moomins, they’re from Finland that’s right.
Do you know, she says, I don’t think this place is too bad at all. It reminds me of when I was at university, living in a hall of residence. She looks shy when she says this, sort of letting her long dreadlocks fall in front of her face as if they could shield her. Some of the people are really OK when you get to know them, she says and I see her glance towards the room across the corridor from me where that man lives. Snaggle-tooth Bill, I think, and I make a grimace but she’s away on a dream of her own.
Some people get out, she says to me, it doesn’t have to be true that you never get out. She blushes and it suits her.
I’m going to get out, May, she says.
I’m surprised at that. I don’t mean to start crying but there’s a tear or two escaping even while I’m thinking, you silly woman, of course you’re never going to get out of here, it’s a myth, the only way out of here is in a box.
Oh don’t cry May, she says and she gets a tissue from her cardigan pocket. I’ll come back and see you, she says and we both know that is a lie in so many ways but it’s still nice that she said it.
Not, I say, meaning that I’m not crying at all. I’m still trying with the dignity thing even though I’m wearing an adult nappy and talking like a fool.
I heard that, she says, clapping, I got that one clear as a bell. You’re getting better May, soon you’ll be able to take a turn reading the book out loud.
It isn’t true, of course it isn’t true, but it’s nice of her to say it. You only got it because of the context, I want to say, you wouldn’t have stood a chance if I’d said something more random. Or if I was having a bad day. No one can understand me then, even the thoughts inside my head are jumbled.
Why don’t we practise, she says, we could go over a few words until you’ve got them, and then surprise everyone.
It’s exciting and scary but I like it, I really want to do it. I imagine Jenny’s astonishment when I ask her a question in words she can understand. I imagine talking to Agnita and the others so that they know there’s more to me than bodily functions. I could be like that famous person who came back from a stroke, there could be inspirational radio programmes about me. This is turning out to be quite a birthday after all.
Yes please, I say, and there is spit to match my enthusiasm and my arm jerks along with the spit to show that it doesn’t want to be left out.
Jackie laughs. I think that’s a yes, she says, you’re on, we’ve got a deal. Let’s show ’em. What’s the first thing you want to say, what’s the magic phrase we can work on?
It’s funny but when she puts it like that I can’t quite think what I want to say. Everything, that’s what I want to say but that’s not helpful and if there’s one thing I want to be it’s helpful.
How are you, I try, and I make my face look quizzical to give an extra clue.
I’m not sure, Jackie says, this isn’t working too well, maybe we’re running before we can walk, let’s just relax and have fun, catch the words as they turn up.
Poem, I say, although I’m not sure it’s what I want. Wouldn’t fuck off and leave me alone be more useful? Most people would think so but not my Jackie. She’s so positive it’s bordering on insane most of the time.
Are you always this cheery, I try to ask and she says, whoa, let’s start with something simple, whatever you said then just went whooshing past my head.
Poem, I say. I say it slow and clear and try to keep the spitting under control. Po-em.
Great idea, Jackie says, poetry, that would be so nice. Old ones like us, we learned a lot of that in school, didn’t we? I don’t think that kids today do so much. Too busy reaching targets.
I nod to show I agree. It’s a proper grown-up conversation, and I think I’d agree with whatever she said.
I’m going to ask a question now, Jackie says, let’s see if this works. Who is your favourite poet?
I close my eyes so that I can concentrate on my answer. Names of poets dart around my head like firework trails but I can’t catch them, they’re flashes of light that don’t quite form into words. Normal after a stroke, apparently, but still maddening and scary. Think, May, I tell myself, who is that American woman? The one who wrote about death as if he was a person? I can almost get the quote but not quite, it’s slipping away. I can’t catch it.
She wrote about saying nothing, I know she did. About how sometimes saying nothing could be powerful. It’s not powerful for me, Emily. I can think the words, I can imagine them, and then my mouth opens and a stream of vowels come out. It’s unbearable. Why would anyone want to spend time with me?
Jackie looks blankly at me and my voweling growling so I think, let me listen to those wise words myself and stop trying to talk. I smile at Jackie to show her that it’s not a hostile silence and she smiles back. It’s like the sun coming out, her smile, worth anything to see it.
I’m going to find some funny poems, she says, there isn’t much to laugh at in here but we can look further afield, that’s the way.
She spends a moment or two looking at her phone and then just as quickly as that, reads me a poem about a teacher killing his whole class to teach them a lesson and she’s right, it is funny, we laugh and laugh and I wish I could keep the poem, remember it to show Jenny. It might make her laugh, and it would show her that I was thinking of her too, I sometimes think she doesn’t know how much I think of her when she isn’t with me. I decide to keep saying nothing.
A name flashes into my head, lit up like the West End lights. Emily Dickinson, that’s who it was I was trying to think of, and that name wouldn’t have come to me if I hadn’t kept quiet. I wish I could say it but instead I point to Jackie’s phone, to show her that I’d like another poem. I can’t believe she could just do that, find poems on her phone. Same age as me and using technology like that – I’d love to tell her how clever I think that is. I wonder if I should have tried harder with the iPad.
OK, OK, she says, maybe you can join in soon, help me out. Just say something when you can, to get the feel of the words.
In a minute, I say, holding up a finger to show her what I mean.
I get it, she says, in a minute, huh? We’re cooking on gas. Listen to this, she says, and she reads me a poem about turkeys, be kind to your turkey this Christmas, and she reads it in a West Indian accent I haven’t heard her use before and she stands up, she’s moving around the room and saying that turkey poem like she is on a stage.
It’s marvellous, bravo, I call at the end. Something like bravo, anyway and she takes a bow and we’re both giggling like school girls when he walks in. Bill, the brazen one from across the way. Just walks in like he was invited, like I had issued an invitation to my room.
Did I hear Benjamin Zephaniah, he asks, that’s always been one of my favourites.
Oh, Jackie says, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.
Liar, I think, I bet you wanted to disturb him all the time. I bet you were only reading to me so that he would hear you. All my happiness has gone, vanished like a burst balloon. I remember with my whole body how it used to feel to be the one who didn’t cop off, the one walking home alone or worse, tagging along behind a couple. I felt like that right up until I married Alain and plenty of times since.
I’m miles away but I realise that he’s talking to me, Bill, trying to tell me something about what a good reading voice Jackie has, and how lucky I am that she is reading to me. I tune the words out and try to think where I saw that snaggle tooth last. He’s embarrassed, not used to being ignored I guess, so he does that head shaking thing, as if he still has long hair he has to get out of his eyes. He stands there, head on one side as if he has questions in his pocket to ask the world.
Perhaps he was a teacher in a school I worked in, I think, or a parent or a caretaker. Maybe he worked in my local library, or waited tables in a wine bar I went to with colleagues. I raise th
e palm of my good hand in a questioning way.
Sorry, merry May, he says, I’m going to need a few more lessons from the lovely Jackie before I can understand you.
You liar, I think, you got that one, I’m sure you did.
Jackie wasn’t looking but I’m damn sure Bill was.
May and I were working together, says Jackie, I’m really sorry Bill, we haven’t finished yet.
Oho, he says, shaking his head, both my ladies playing hard to get.
That really makes me mad. Both my ladies indeed. One, he doesn’t mean it, not at all, he’s just after her and in the most shameless way possible. Two, I would never be one of his ladies, even if he held a gun to my head and three, she’s worth ten of him. A hundred even. He can see that I’m getting mad and it amuses him, I can see the slight smile. If I wasn’t in this chair, if my arm worked properly, I would thump him so hard. He looks quite scrawny, I reckon I could easily get the better of him.
That’s enough of that sort of nonsense thank you Bill, says Jackie, come on now, back to your room please or find something else to do. We’re busy here.
Yes, I think, go on Jackie, you tell him, but when I look at her she’s laughing, she didn’t mean it at all, it’s a kind of game between them. I’m a kind of game between them.
He does stand up and leave though, and that’s a good result.
I’m sorry May, Jackie says, I didn’t mean for our time to be interrupted.
It’s not your fault, I try. Jackie listens close, her ear near to my mouth as I speak.
Nope, she says, sorry, I can’t get it.
The morning is spoiled. It won’t work any more, the funny poems won’t be funny and Jackie won’t be able to understand me and the whole thing is ruined. I’m trying not to cry. I don’t want her to know I’m upset. I don’t want her to think I’m a crazy old lady.
Oh I’m sorry, she says, I don’t want you to be sad, we can do it again, I’ll have a word with him.
No I say, and she gets that one, no, but the next bit is too complicated to say. Keep away from him he’s dangerous, I want to say, there’s something about him I can’t explain. I don’t think he’s who he says he is, there’s something about him. I try anyway but it’s no good at all.
Hello, My Name is May Page 13