How It Was

by Janet Ellis

  He leaned up on his elbows and smiled down at me. ‘Having a nice time?’ he said. I was as startled as if someone had shouted out in a library. It was going to be difficult to have a conversation at this point. ‘Do you want me to come?’ Adrian said.

  It was, I thought, a rather peculiar question. ‘Yes,’ I said. It turned out to be the right answer.

  ‘Sweet,’ he said afterwards, tracing my silvery stretch marks.

  The room was cold. I wished I could reach for the enormous, ungiving flowery bedcover beneath me but it would have been an awkward manoeuvre. Adrian lay unconcealed and unabashed. There was something celebratory in his unapologetic nakedness. Before I’d slept with anyone, which meant before I’d slept with Michael, I’d thought everything would happen remotely, as if you could step behind a screen while your body got on with it on the other side. Even with Philip, I’d found it extraordinary how very present you had to be. People always expected nurses to be matter-of-fact about being naked, that they’d have a kind of practical frankness that transcends any embarrassment. But despite seeing plenty of bare bodies of all shapes and sizes, I was still squeamish about my own.

  Adrian slid down and put his face between my legs. I didn’t want him to carry on being there if he didn’t want to, but it was impossible to tell him so. He wouldn’t have been able hear me, my legs were pressed to his head like earmuffs. I rested my hands gently on his head as if to convey to him that, if this was a mistake, I didn’t mind. After only a few seconds I discovered the absolute and entire purpose of what he was doing. I laced my fingers into his hair. I had several strands of it caught in my wedding ring afterwards.

  He turned away, removing the condom and putting it on the floor. ‘Better sort that before old Mrs Wiggy finds it,’ he said. ‘Shock her to death. I bet these rooms don’t see much action.’

  He had a mole in the centre of his back. Two strands of hair grew upwards from it, flicking a V at the world. I could see, as he could not, that they were grey.

  Chapter 74

  20 October

  Sweet Marion. I could taste the words in everything I ate. I could see them everywhere, as though they were solid objects. Sweet Marion. I watched her pouring tea, shaking the little strainer until it stopped dripping and I saw them falling into the cup. She looked out of the window when she was getting Eddie’s beaker and I could see them hanging from the trees. As she folded the tea cloth and hung it over the rail in front of the cooker, I thought they would fall out of it on to the floor. Eddie hadn’t come down for breakfast. She told me to go and get him, which was the first thing she’d said to me for ages. I thought she ought to say ‘please’ too, but I kept quiet.

  Eddie’s curtains were still pulled. He was lying on his bed, flicking the switch to change the pictures on his toy projector. The room was dark enough for the slides to show up on the ceiling; the little nightlight’s beam didn’t reach very far. I asked him what he was doing and called him a cretin as it was nearly time to leave for school. He looked up as Donald Duck gave way to Pluto. He said he didn’t want Mummy to go. I said it was only for a night, but I supposed he wasn’t very good at measuring time – a night must feel like a month to him. I told him we’d go to the stables after school but I made him promise absolutely one hundred per cent he wouldn’t tell Mummy or Daddy.

  I tore a page from the owl pad in the kitchen. I wrote a message with my left hand. The words crawled across the page as if they didn’t want to be there. I went up to her room and I put it in her case, tucked inside her silly shoes. Eddie hugged her as if she was going away for ever. She touched his head without concentrating as if she’d already left him.

  By the time we walked through the chalk pit after school, Eddie had forgotten how much he’d minded her leaving. He stood under the trees as the leaves fell, trying to catch one and make a wish. He kept jumping up and falling down until he was decorated with little twigs and bracken. His legs stuck out from his corduroy shorts like bleached chicken bones. He’d kept his school shoes on. I’d have to get the mud off them later or I’d be in trouble. Mum had asked a woman from the village to make our tea. She doesn’t really know us, or what we’re allowed to do, so when I said we were going out she hardly reacted. I told her we’d be back later, without saying when. As we walked into the stable yard, Eddie slipped his hand in mine. It was the first time anyone in my family had held my hand for a very long time.

  Horse’s heads hung over all the half doors and for a moment I saw them as Eddie did. They swung and shook and whinnied in constant motion. Eddie stood very close to me. I told him to wait out of sight while I went into the little office. Bo looked up, surprised to see me. He was always doing paperwork, I’ve no idea what sort. He said well I never, it’s Sarah. Long time no see. I had to chat to him for a while before I asked if I could saddle up, just for half an hour. He looked doubtful and said it’d be getting dark soon and winter draws on. Then he saw me pleading – I literally put my hands together as if I was praying – and he said I could, just for a while, as he was sure I knew what I was doing.

  I didn’t tell him I was planning to put Eddie on the pony. I wouldn’t have told him that I was heading to Rebel’s stall, either. I had to avoid her quick teeth and unpredictable hooves as I eased the halter over her ears and guided the bit into her mouth. Eddie watched from the doorway; he seemed to be shrinking every time she stomped and snorted. I swung the saddle on her back and adjusted the leathers for his small legs. I think if I’d asked him then if he still wanted to ride, he’d have said no. Even when I lifted him up and he struggled to find the stirrups with his kicking feet, even when I put the reins in his hands and took hold of the halter to set off, we could have stopped what we were doing. We might have done one or two circuits of the yard, perhaps, the pony’s hooves chinking loudly on the cobbles like a sound effect, then turned round. He’d have pretended to be disappointed. He’d have protested a bit. And I’d have cursed about the waste of my time and gone home smelling of the stables and put Eddie to bed unbroken. But a plan was a plan and I thought it was all happening as it should.

  Just outside the gate into the yard, the ponies always tremble and shiver as they remember the wide fields further on. I felt the pony twitch as she saw the lane extend. It was narrow, and I could only just fit alongside as I led her. I glanced up at Eddie. He said he was a cowboy, and held his legs out wide, then he dashed them as hard as he could against the pony’s side. I yelled at him to stop. The animal tried to move sideways, away from my restraining grip, jerking my arm hard as she tried to pull away. The sudden pain in my shoulder made me angry and fierce. I said do you want to ride her on your own, then? I shouted across the pony’s flailing head at him. Eddie looked down at me, scared but defiant. He said he really was a cowboy. I said I’d had enough and let go, thinking the lane itself would restrain her. Almost at once, she broke into a trot. Eddie half turned back to me, then he was jolted forward again as she picked up speed. He had no time to pull on the reins, even if he’d known what to do. I saw him trying to grab handfuls of her mane as he bounced on her back, leaving his seat as she trotted, rising higher each time. The gate to the field at the end of the lane is permanently ajar, it’s too rusty and twisted to open or close. The pony rounded the corner as if she had no one on her back at all. Eddie began to slip sideways. He fell as if in slow motion in contrast to the pony’s frantic gallop. Then he stopped sliding altogether and lay on the ground without moving.

  I couldn’t get to him fast enough. My shoes stuck to the ground as if they were magnetised and all the while I kept thinking that Eddie would get up and shake himself and laugh. Although I knew he wouldn’t, because the closer I got, the more still he seemed. The pony stood a little way off, her head down as she tugged at the grass. Eddie’s colours were all wrong. His face was white and his hair was red. There was too much blood outside his head. His little chest rose and fell, making his thin shirt tremble. His legs were bent at the knees and both his shoes had come off.
I could only see one of them. There was a noise, too: a really high, loud screaming. It was only when I could see someone running from the end of the lane that I realised it came from me.

  Chapter 75

  Eddie felt scared of Sarah when she was in this mood. She was cheeky to the village lady and kept making signs at him behind her back. He wasn’t really sure what they meant but he knew they weren’t polite. He’d forgotten his mother wouldn’t be there until he got home and the village lady stood in the kitchen instead. He’d felt tearful, but then Sarah reminded him about the riding, so he’d decided not to cry. It was getting late by the time they left the house. The way Sarah lied to the village lady about being allowed out made him feel as if she was cutting them adrift from safe moorings.

  He feared she might change her mind just to upset him, so he kept his distance from her on the way to the stables, in case he provoked her by mistake. She was momentarily cross about him still wearing his school shoes but it only seemed to sharpen her purpose. In the yard, the horses threw their heads over the stable doors and looked straight at him, as if they were choosing him, not the other way round. It was only when she let go of him that Eddie realised he’d been holding Sarah’s hand.

  The hooves bothered him. They seemed at odds with the expression in the pony’s eyes, and out of their owner’s control. They stamped heavily, taking the pony two steps back and three steps forward, as Sarah buckled the halter and coaxed it out of the stall. He wished he could just be lifted straight on to the pony’s back, as easily as he placed the wide-legged man on his little plastic mount. The fact of the animal was much larger and wilder than the horse in his head. Sarah grunted as she hoisted him up. With a huge effort she pushed too hard and for a moment he lay face forward against the pony’s neck. When he righted himself and slid his muddy shoes into the stirrups, he felt as if all the pieces of him were properly joined up at last. His height on the pony was exactly the size he wanted to be. He could see the top of Sarah’s head and the beginning of the lane beyond the gate. When he gave the pony’s sides a tentative kick it picked up its speed in answer. This instant response was as gratifying as it was exciting. Sarah frowned up at him and tightened her grip on the reins. She’d have to let go when they got to the field.

  He held out both legs and brought his heels in hard. The pony’s squirmy, slow gait gave way to a hard, muscular acceleration. Sarah said she’d let go and he felt a surge of triumph. He turned round as the pony moved forward to make sure she wasn’t chasing him and then he lifted his arms because suddenly he wasn’t holding on to anything any more. He wanted to shout, but the air jumped in his lungs, making him pant instead. The warm, coarse hair under his hands and against his legs scratched him as he slid first forward then sideways. He heard the hooves, the fearsome hooves of all his nightmares, very loud and very close. He surrendered to his fall.

  Chapter 76

  ‘Fish and chips,’ Adrian said, rummaging in his holdall. ‘There’s got to be good fish and chips round here.’ He pulled a thick jumper over his head. It had leather patches at the elbows and a great deal of lumpy darning everywhere else.

  I laughed. ‘Don’t you want a new jumper?’ I said. For the first time, I saw a flicker of annoyance.

  ‘It’s what I wear,’ he said.

  I put the clothes I’d travelled in back on.

  It was chilly outside and we walked briskly towards the seafront. After a while, he put his arm round me. The street was deserted. The solitary boy behind the counter in the chippie only asked, ‘Sollenvingar?’ and didn’t respond to Adrian’s bonhomie or his comments about mushy peas. We went outside and found a bench. The wood was still slippery from the rainfall. There was an iodine smell and a distant rhythmic swish but I could only make out an indistinct blur where the land probably ended and the sea began. Pinned papers flapped from a noticeboard beside us. I got up to inspect it. They were the usual messages for a community, announcing church fairs and children’s outings.

  ‘Vernon House Open Day,’ I read aloud. ‘Oh, it’s tomorrow. Shall we go?’

  Adrian tipped the crisp ends of his chips into his mouth from the newspaper. ‘Why do all you women want to do things?’ he said. In the beat that followed, we both understood exactly and completely what he had said. ‘I just want to stay in Pansy with you,’ Adrian said. He stood up, wiping his hands on his jumper.

  He’s doing what he always does, I thought, about both the wiping and the women.

  ‘We’re like those little wooden ducks in the fairground, aren’t we?’ I said. ‘You fish us out and if you find the right number on us, you claim your prize.’

  Adrian looked at me as if he was struggling with something. He was trying not to laugh. He didn’t fight very hard. ‘Ducks,’ he said. ‘Have you got a number on your bum, then?’ he said. ‘Are you a good duck, Marion? I like a good duck.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said, ‘I wanted to try to tell you something important. Please don’t make me laugh.’

  He put his hands to my cheeks and lifted my face. ‘I hope I always do make you laugh,’ he said, in mock seriousness and with a terrible American accent. He kissed my forehead. ‘We’re not here in a “for ever together” kind of way. You know that, don’t you? That’s just not me, is it? Ask Aggie. Don’t flinch when I say her name,’ he said. ‘Aggie’s a fact. Michael’s a fact. But so’s this. And it’s fun, isn’t it?’ He spun me round and ran his hands over my skirt. ‘Let’s see, what number are you, then?’ he said. ‘Thought so. Your number’s come up.’

  I looked at the grey wasteland, fuzzy in the low light. The air was wet, as if the sea were evaporating, and my fringe stuck to my forehead. My fingers were still greasy. I wiped them on my skirt. I thought I probably wouldn’t wear that outfit again, anyway.

  Chapter 77

  20 October

  I wished it was just me and Eddie. I wished I could hold up my hands to time as if I was a lollipop lady stopping traffic, to let us go and leave everything behind. The running woman was getting closer and I could hear people coming up the lane behind us. I wanted to pick him up and take him away. I wished I could nurse him all by myself until he mended. Then we could live somewhere high up above the trees for the rest of our lives, looking down on everyone.

  Molly Spencer stood over Eddie at last; she was out of breath and nearly as pale as him. When she saw it was me, she looked as if she might change her mind. She told me to stop screaming. She said that noise didn’t help. She crouched down and felt his pulse; her fingers looked huge against his wrist. She wore a headscarf tied under her chin, like the Queen. She knelt beside him and her mackintosh fanned out around her like a train. She bossed people into calling an ambulance. She woke them up as if they’d been in suspended animation until she arrived. While we waited, the crowd around Eddie grew denser until I could hardly see him in the middle of it. Someone clopped the pony away and everyone formed a line to let her past, like a guard of honour. I could see Eddie’s other shoe lying near where she’d been cropping the grass and tried to retrieve it, but they wouldn’t let me through. A man told me to stand back, because a little boy was badly hurt.

  Molly Spencer caught my eye. She called me to come to her and I ducked under the man’s arm to reach her. She hugged me, so quickly that it hardly happened. She told someone to go back to the stables and telephone Daddy and tell him to go straight to the General. I didn’t know his number, only the name of where he worked. They kept saying what? speak up, but my voice didn’t work properly after the screaming. Molly Spencer said I could come on the bus with her. She said she’d got time, she wasn’t going anywhere else in a hurry.

  Eddie looked monstrously tiny on the hospital bed, his head bandaged in hundreds of layers like a broken toy. The room smelled of disinfectant and there was another thin, sickly-sweet smell laced through it, like when you can smell the toffee apples on the pier through the scent of the sea. People spoke about me in loud whispers that I think I was meant to hear. Things like She’s his
sister. Waiting for her parents. She was with him. Let’s leave her there for a minute. She came in alone. We’ll send her to the visitors’ room when her mum and dad get here. His eyes hadn’t opened. It was the opposite of that staring game where you dare each other to look away first. He was definitely winning at keeping still.

  I didn’t get up and run to Daddy when he arrived, because my sobbing seemed to stick me to the chair and also because he only glanced at me. He stroked Eddie’s hand, which looked plump and pink against the bobbly blue hospital blanket. There was a fat, white lump of dressing stuck on top. Daddy was still carrying his briefcase. He squeezed my shoulder. I said would Eddie be all right. He said he didn’t know. He said he hoped so. He sounded very formal. There was a nurse sitting beside Eddie; her little paper hat was stiff but her face was soft. I felt jealous of her because she knew what she was doing. She had an upside-down watch pinned to her apron. When the doctor came in, she jumped up at once and said good evening sir and stood against the wall. The doctor only spoke to Daddy. After that he said we should go and have some tea and they’d fetch us. He didn’t meet my eye.

  I don’t like tea, but I let Daddy pour me some. The urn in the visitors’ room was enormous and there were hundreds of chairs, but we were alone. The urn hissed and gurgled as if it had made a lot more effort than provide hot water for two tiny cups. Daddy leaned forward on his chair, rubbing his fists in his eyes. I was waiting for him to ask me what had happened. Why I hadn’t even bothered to find Eddie a hat. He might end up stupid like Tom Spencer and it would be my fault. Molly Spencer had left me at the desk downstairs; she seemed to shrink away from me as we got nearer the hospital. She hardly spoke on the bus, either. The last thing she said was that she hated hospitals, but she didn’t really say it to me.