Crushed

by Kate Hamer

  A voice floats down from above. ‘Girls, what’s going on?’

  It’s Mum. She’s managed to get herself out of our front door somehow.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I mutter under my breath. ‘You two stay there,’ I say and vault up the flights of stairs.

  ‘Mum, honestly. How did you get out here? I hope you haven’t locked us out.’

  ‘I put the door on the latch. I wanted to see why they are taking so long.’

  ‘Rosa’s having a bit of an issue with the stairs. She’ll be fine.’

  ‘Rosa,’ Mum shouts down the stairs. ‘You can do it.’

  A weak, wavering voice comes back. ‘I’m not sure that I can, Jenny. I will try, though.’

  I dart back down, panting now. They haven’t moved an inch upwards.

  ‘Let me take your arm,’ I say to Rosa. I feel myself losing patience and I take a deep breath. ‘You can hang onto me on one side and Averill will take the other.’

  We manage another flight before Rosa sits down abruptly on the floor.

  ‘No. I just can’t, Grace. I’m sorry to let you down but I can’t. I’m so dizzy I think I’m going to faint. I can’t look.’ She puts her head in her hands so she doesn’t have to.

  There’s a burst of male voices from above us. It rings the building, bouncing floor by floor.

  I look up. ‘Mum. What’s going on up there?’

  Laughter peals down. ‘Mum? Look, let me see what’s happening.’

  I run up the stairs again, breathless now and cursing all the sneaky fags I’ve had out on the balcony. Nearly at the top, I stop for a breather and hear heavy footsteps. Then – I can hardly believe it – around the corner comes Mum, her wheelchair being carried between Marshall and Harry from the flat next door like they were handling nothing heavier than a shopping bag. Mum is grinning and laughing as she gets swung about. ‘Careful, boys,’ she says, although you can tell she doesn’t really mean it.

  I put my forehead onto the backs of my hands for a second and just lean there, forehead to the banister.

  When I look up she’s seen me. ‘Look, Grace. I’ll go down to them. Stuff the Battenberg. We can all go to Jolly’s.’

  ‘No worries, Mrs H. We’ll have you down there before you know it.’

  I follow them, my heart lurching at the way they are practically running round the corners, making her laugh as she tips from side to side.

  I have to heave up the stairs one last time to lock up, then I join them all outside.

  ‘Thanks, boys,’ says Mum.

  ‘No problem, Mrs H. Anytime. Cheers, Grace.’ Marshall and Harry make off into the day, bunching their puffa jackets up against the cold as a chill has interrupted the warm weather.

  ‘Honestly,’ I mutter, grabbing onto the handles of Mum’s wheelchair. ‘Come on then.’ I try not to contemplate the fact that we might have got her down, but fuck knows where Marshall and Harry are going and if they will be here to carry her back up.

  ‘Don’t be a spoilsport, Grace, you’ll put a downer on the day and it’s not often enough I get out,’ Mum says. I open my mouth to snap back but before I can she points. ‘Look, there’s Daniel.’

  The other two women’s heads whip round to look at Daniel crossing the grass with a bag of shopping under his arm. I feel the tips of my ears pinking.

  ‘Hi Grace,’ he says, smiling at me. He kissed me in the lift once and I nearly exploded. We’ve been sort of on and sort of off since then, but it’s difficult, like it feels too much. I pull up my hood and tug it across my cheeks.

  ‘Hey there.’ Today he doesn’t ask me anything; he only nods at us all and goes quickly inside. Maybe he’s going off me or got tired of waiting. Who could blame him?

  I turn and see Mum studying my face with that shrewd look of hers like she knows it all. ‘What?’ I say. ‘Stop it.’

  She twitches her shoulders in a shrug. ‘I know I’m not allowed opinions,’ she says.

  ‘Maybe you’ve got an opinion about how we’re going to get back upstairs,’ I flash back at her, but she ignores me and it occurs to me then to see if Daniel will be around later to help me with Mum, but he’s already disappeared up the stairwell. I might be just about able to manage the other side. I’m stronger than I look. I’ll buzz him and see when we get back. I sigh heavily and tell myself to stop mooning over him like a silly bitch. We wheel off, the three of them chirping to each other like birds about the murder. I glance back, right to the top where our flat is, with its balcony looking down over the other buildings, and contemplate the absolute fucking irony of living in the one and only tower block in the whole of this city.

  5

  Orla

  There’s my Phoebe. I catch her figure striding across the square. Her long blue coat ripples around her tall figure. She’s chewing on what I can see is an orange. As she gets near she slings what’s left of it into a bin and stands in front of me licking her fingers.

  ‘You look lovely.’ I feel a bit breathless, like I always do when I’ve just said something real. It must’ve sounded stupid but she just stops licking and smiles, her lips shiny from the juice.

  ‘It’s my disguise.’

  I screw my eyes against the brightness, looking up at her. Often, I haven’t got a clue how to respond to what she says.

  She shoves her hands in her pockets and hunches forward.

  ‘What were you doing just now?’ She laughs but doesn’t take her eyes off my face. I know I won’t get away without answering. Sure enough: ‘I saw you before you saw me. You looked moonstruck, craning your neck up there.’ She cranks her head back so her dark hair falls away from her face as she looks up. It’s the same spot that I was fixating on but she doesn’t see what I see. The fall.

  She sits next to me on the bench and puts her arms around me and gives me a hug, then lays her cheek on my shoulder. ‘Come on, darling. What were you looking at? Tell Phoebe.’

  There are two small interconnected squares in the centre of Bath: this one, with the looming face of the Abbey; and the other, just a few steps away, surrounded by shops, the side of the Abbey and the old open-air Roman Baths complex, steam from its thermal spring hovering constantly above the wall. Whenever I’m waiting in this spot I always study the Jacob’s ladder carved up the front of the Abbey. The angels climbing it seem in such awful danger, clinging on for dear life like they might be flung crashing to the ground at any minute. They look in as much peril as if they were swinging on one of those ladders dangling from a helicopter. It makes me dizzy to see them holding on, desperately trying to make it to heaven, but I can’t rip my eyes away. I know that feeling. It captures something that I can’t put into words.

  I look down and see Phoebe’s face has changed. She’s seen someone behind me and she’s forgotten all about the cross-questioning and she pulls her arms away. The next thing a man dumps himself down next to her and the bench shakes. His parka wafts out the smell of cigarette smoke.

  She turns to him. ‘Paul! What happened when I was talking to you on the phone last time? Sounded like you were about to have a fight.’ She giggles a ridiculous baby’s giggle. I roll my eyes but so she can’t see me doing it.

  Paul scrunches a nostril and breathes in sharply on one side, shifting some mucous about. ‘Nah. Nothing like that. Just got a bit lively. You know, tasty.’

  ‘Ooooh. Exciting.’ Phoebe moves closer to him and they begin to speak in voices too low for me to catch.

  I study him over the back of Phoebe’s neck. His hair is cut in that boyish way close to his head and slicked down so you can see the paleness of his scalp in between. The boys who work in the garage that Dad takes his car to all have the same haircut. It reminds me of the feathers of a newborn chick, sparse and wet-looking from gel. The style is far too young for Paul. That and the fur around his parka hood fight against the groove that runs from his nose to the corner of his mouth and the thin tidal marks of lines around his eyes. His pale eyes flick up and down and sideways.


  He looks up and catches me staring. ‘Hey,’ he says, extending his hand across Phoebe towards me.

  I don’t want to touch it. It’s clean but thin and white, vulnerable, with fingertips that end in feminine points. The softness of it against his flinty eyes makes him seem more hard-edged somehow than if his hand was big and square and clasped mine in a rough handshake. I graze the tips of it and that feels feminine too, like I’m supposed to kiss it. The sensation makes my stomach squirm. I wonder if all this shows in my face.

  Phoebe says, ‘Orla, stop staring. It’s rude,’ so I suppose it must do. She’s laughing again and I truly hate her at this moment. She’s gone over to him and away from me without a second’s thought.

  ‘I’m not.’ I stand abruptly, sick of the thick intrigue swirling about them.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she says. ‘Honestly, what’s wrong with you? You can’t take a joke or what?’

  I look down. How I would love to be like her, all clean lines and pale skin against dark hair. She sprawls all over the bench, her legs apart. She’s so careless. If I had beauty like that I’d hold it carefully, polish it, not let it get kicked about and dirty like she does. Sometimes I think she doesn’t deserve it.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘This won’t take a minute and then we’ll do something nice. Go for coffee or an ice cream or something.’

  Stop it, I think. I’m not a little girl to be wheedled around with treats. It’s obvious I should leave but I’m rooted to the spot.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ Paul grins up at me. ‘You can be our lookout. We’re going into the church.’

  I can’t go now. It would be clear I’m running away like a frightened kid from whatever they’re up to. Tears prick in the back of my eyes and I turn so they can’t see. It’s the roller-coaster of being with her. One minute it’s all warmth and light and the next it’s like turning round and finding someone has left, even though her body is still standing there.

  ‘Come on then.’ I start cutting towards the shadowy mouth of the Abbey while they follow, giggling, behind me.

  I wait inside the arched entrance for them to catch up. Phoebe looks even more as if she were drawn with a flowing and precise pen now that she’s on the outside and I’m in the gloom. They swerve past the wooden ‘suggested donation’ box, giving it a wide birth, and Phoebe chucks me under the chin as she passes.

  ‘Follow us,’ she says. ‘It won’t take long.’

  I sit behind them on the plain wooden rows of chairs. The inside of the Abbey smells like gravestones. Their heads so close I feel like I’m some kind of witness or the priest at their wedding. I can’t wait to get out of here and shake the sense that I’m forever superfluous to everything, to the meat of things. That it’s always other people that have real relationships with each other and however much I grab for it, love will always be out of my reach. I focus furiously on the huge window ahead and the tears gather and make the colours of the stained glass starburst, then shatter. I wipe at the wetness, fingers sliding over my skin.

  I hadn’t planned to go out until Phoebe called and suggested we meet up. I went to tell Mum. She had the Radio Times in one hand and a pen in the other and was circling things to watch.

  ‘Some great old black-and-whites on this afternoon, and there’s that whole box of Charbonnel and Walker in the cupboard that’s hardly been touched,’ she called out in a sing-song voice, but then she looked up and realised I had my coat on, and I watched as she tried to keep the crushed look off her face. I saw her rallying, adjusting to the disappointment. I know it’ll be fine when Dad’s back from the rigs, but that’s still weeks away.

  ‘Off out?’ she said, smiling.

  I nodded, then hardened myself. ‘Yeah, see you later.’

  Now I can’t think of anything better than Rear Window or Odd Man Out flickering over me, my brothers’ voices ringing out somewhere far upstairs, as I wallow on the sofa and eat expensive chocolates from the box on the floor.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Paul passing something in his thin fingers to Phoebe. It flutters white before it disappears inside her coat. His face half turns for a moment.

  I’m pretty sure Paul glimpses the tears shining despite the dark and it makes me want to crack open his skull with its chick-like hair right here and now. If there was something heavy in my hands, like a crowbar, I think I would actually do it. The surge of violence through me dries up my tears. It feels good, healthy even. I wait it out until they’re done and we all emerge outside, blinking in the sharp light.

  Paul trots away quickly in a diagonal across the square.

  Phoebe links arms with me. ‘You are lovely,’ she says. ‘Putting up with him.’

  I jerk my arm away so fast it pulls her hand out of her pocket and walk swiftly into the adjoining square, but when I turn she’s followed me.

  ‘Steady on,’ she says mildly.

  ‘No. Sometimes it feels like I don’t know you.’

  She pauses, like she’s considering this. ‘Well, it’s true in a way. There’s lots of things you don’t know about me.’

  I don’t know if she means it or is deliberately being mysterious. I feel myself tense up again but I try to keep my voice light. ‘Like what? Relationships I don’t know about?’

  She must be talking about lovers. It’s true. She is so beautiful it’s bound to be true.

  She shrugs. ‘Well, it is a fact I get a lot of attention from men. It happens all the time.’

  My throat hardens. ‘Like who?’

  ‘Like loads of them. Like that teacher for one – Mr Jonasson. He can’t take his eyes off me.’ She laughs.

  ‘What? For God’s sake. He’s way older than you.’

  Her face pinches up. ‘There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be interested in me.’ She tosses her hair. ‘I think that’s a very limiting way to think about adult relationships.’

  ‘I’m going home,’ I say. ‘I’ve got better things to do than listen to this.’

  ‘No you haven’t,’ she says, taking my arm again and changing gear like she’s always doing. ‘What are you going to do there?’

  And yes, the thought of the house, sweet with chocolate, a carnival of black and white from the TV screen playing over the walls, the clinging undertow of my mother’s heavy powdery perfume in every room, is horribly suffocating now. The charm of home that I’d felt in the church has been quickly murdered by the bright outdoor light.

  I sigh deeply. Give in. Like I always do.

  ‘I suppose we could go in there.’ I nod over to the Roman Baths. ‘It might be a laugh for old time’s sake. We were always being dragged around there as kids. D’you remember?’

  A line of Japanese tourists walk behind a yellow umbrella like they’re following the sun. They disappear round the corner to the pump house that was built on the side of the old baths for Jane Austen types to take the waters. Now, you can sit in The Pump Room and have a meal or tea accompanied by a trio of musicians on violin, cello and piano. You can taste the sulphurous water that gets pumped up from the outside into a drinking fountain and gaze out through the window onto the green waters of the old Roman Baths and imagine them all there, lounging about in their togas. My mother adores it. She puts on a best dress and runs her hands over the snowdrop-white tablecloths. Her excitement always makes me ache for her, her deference to the waiters and her sly excited glances over to me as we study the menu. She never takes the plenty at home for granted like I do. It makes me ashamed sometimes.

  ‘Maybe,’ says Phoebe. She tugs at the skin around her mouth with two fingers.

  It’s turning colder and the boiling sulphurous spring that feeds the baths forms an especially thick layer of steam, floating above the balustrade. You can smell it in the air, hot and wet, with a hint of deep middle-of-the-earth rottenness where it comes from. The breeze whips the steam over the wall from the baths that are open to the sky and into the square where we’re standing, and I feel it against my cheek and breathe in a deep whiff of i
ts dense wetness. There’s a sadness to it that chimes with blackened stone doorways and the angels clinging and falling. It’s Phoebe; I know that. She always gets me this way. With her, either I’m ecstatic or stiff with tension or just plain sad.

  ‘Yes.’ Phoebe brightens up and stops the picking at her mouth. ‘Of course I remember. There’s the big archway with the hole inside where all the hot water gushes up from the rock. Inside the archway it’s all bright red.’

  ‘It’s the iron.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The iron in the water makes it that colour. It’s a natural thing.’

  She frowns. ‘That’s not what it really is.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I remember seeing it as if it was actually hell in there. That’s the answer.’ She comes closer to me. ‘Perhaps Bath is actually built on top of hell and that’s why they’ve built all these teashops and museums over it to try and squash it down. What d’you think?’

  ‘I think you sound unhinged.’ I never know if she’s joking or not.

  She grabs my arm. ‘That’s what those angels you always stare at are doing. They’re trying to get away.’

  A curl of fear unfurls down my spine. How does she do it? I can’t seem to keep anything from her. ‘What angels?’

  She shakes her head at my feeble attempt at fakery, not bothering to contradict it.

  ‘Think about it and you’ll see.’

  And the trouble is, I do think and I do see. I remember the archway she was talking about, deep inside the baths complex, where inside the rock is red and folded and the stinking hot waters that feed the baths to this day burst out. Then there’s the angels scrambling up the front of the church and I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I will never look at them again without seeing them frantically escaping the hell right next to them. Before the Romans even, there was worshipping here – Neolithic people rolling around in the hot mud and thinking they were being blessed by gods. The air is thick with the centuries of it. There’s layer after layer. The hot spring has drawn us all here. The more you think about it, the more the chocolate shops and the tourist tat look like an evasion of the visceral truth. Those people can never know the power of this place that lies under their feet.