by Kate Hamer
Despite the turmoil I’m certain that none of this shows on my face.
As Mr Jonasson passes me he taps his hand, once, lightly on my desk and the gesture is so fleeting but seems so freighted with meaning I feel I’m about to fall off my chair. It’s so thrillingly intimate, as if he’s marking me out, choosing me as he walks past. It’s almost nothing, like being touched by a moth’s wings, but it gives me a tiny taste of what it must feel like to collapse against him and be held up by strong, loving arms and have that warmth light me up, quieting there, safe and blissful.
He’s serious when he speaks. He holds the book open on one broad palm.
‘Now your first-year sixth-form exams are over, we will look properly at the text of this play that we will be studying fully next school year. We touched on it the other day …’
The day of the murder. The man who did it is now in custody. The funeral of the victim has been and that bloodied body lies cold in the ground, yet the red threads of that day are here. The open wound of the book in his hand, the writing inside sticking out like tendons and veins, just like the dead man’s must’ve done.
Mr Jonasson stops, pauses. I swear his eyes flick over to where I’m sitting. Yes! His gaze rests on me. ‘Phoebe, could you read out the plot summary on page eight?’
Again I feel like I’m going to fall off my chair. For one sick, dizzying moment my eyes are locked onto his blue gaze and I truly feel I won’t be able to read out a word. I scrabble through the textbook while everyone looks on, shuffling their feet restlessly.
‘Macbeth, a brave warrior, is told by three cunning witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. His wife, Lady Macbeth, eaten up by greed and ambition, is complicit in encouraging him to murder King Duncan and seize the throne. Soon suspicion surrounds him and he has to commit more atrocities to protect himself. The former brave warrior becomes a tyrant and he and his wife descend into a world of murder and madness.’
I take a deep breath.
Mr Jonasson nods. ‘Yes. It’s one of the darkest of all Shakespeare plays. Quickly, before the end of the lesson, consider these lines: “Stars, hide your fires, Let not light see my black and deep desires.” Macbeth thinks he is driving the action, but the seeds of those actions have been planted there by the witches. Yet in reality were those “black and deep desires” already in place, waiting to be ignited? More than anything it is a play about the mind. The mind, the play tells us, can do anything. It can see things that are not there. In the later stages of the story, after he has killed, Macbeth will see a dagger floating before him that he is compelled to follow. Lady Macbeth sees a spot of blood on her hand that, however much she tries to wash it away, she cannot rid herself of.’
Mr Jonasson pauses and looks towards the window and his eyes tighten against the light. He carries on.
‘Lady Macbeth’s suicide – as the York Notes call it – is “A final desperate act of the mind seeking to cleanse itself”—’
The bell pierces the room.
I gather my bag and linger while everybody else fights to get out of the door. It’s just the two of us now. Rowdy voices and footsteps ring out from the corridor.
‘Did you not bring your copy?’ asks Mr Jonasson.
So that’s all the palm-touching my desk was about. It was marking the gap where my copy of the play should’ve been, the place where nearly everyone else had their copies open on their desks. I am not chosen. My moth’s-wing fantasy is in tatters.
‘I’m sorry, I lost it. I must’ve dropped it on my way home.’
He snaps the book in his hand closed with one easy movement. ‘Take mine.’
‘That’s OK.’
He leans forward, smiling and proffering the book. I have little choice but to take the book and drop it in my bag.
‘Perhaps you could read it over the weekend?’ he suggests.
‘OK.’
His smile passes through me in a wave. ‘Lucky you. My Saturday always sees me at the library, nine-thirty sharp, trying to finish the endless task of a PhD. Then in penance for having a few hours to myself I have to wheel a trolley around Waitrose doing the weekly shop. Oh for the days of a whole weekend to read.’
I nod enthusiastically. Is it possible? Is he purposely telling me where he’ll be in the morning? My cheeks begin burning so I have to turn away abruptly with a garbled ‘Bye then’, cursing myself for not staying and hearing if there was anything else he was going to say.
As I walk down the corridor I am again teetering. I still bask in the warmth, the intimate exchange of his smile, but the weight of the book drags at my shoulder. As if one copy wasn’t enough for me to deal with. Now they’ve doubled.
*
I lie awake all night, wondering what he meant, and as the birds start singing I’ve definitely decided that he told me exactly where he’d be deliberately. I will get up early to do my hair and get ready, and I will go to the library and meet him. If I leave the house early enough, I could even be back before anyone else is up, as they’ll be enjoying their Saturday morning lie-in and the tray with the papers and croissants and a dish of butter that they love so much on weekend mornings. It’s generally assumed that one must not leave the house without an interrogation as to the purpose, and leaving so early is bound to raise suspicion. Coming back, if I am discovered, then at least the deed will be done and it will be too late for her to stop me.
I must’ve slept for a few hours, but excitement wakes me up good and early. I sweep my hair in a top knot, arrange a few loose tendrils around my face, and take out the bits of make-up I’ve got and line them up on my bedside table. I don’t want it to look too obvious to him that I’ve dolled myself up, so I just elongate my eyes with a black eye pencil and content myself with rubbing a little Vaseline into my lips.
When I’m ready I crack open my door and listen. My bedroom is on the top floor so any escape entails getting past Mum and Dad’s room on the floor below. The house seems to sigh a little to itself but apart from that everything is quiet. I begin my creep along the corridor and stand, hesitating, at the top of the stairs that lead to the next floor. I wait there for so long that when the doorbell rings, the shock of it drills through me and for a moment I think I’m going to tumble down the flight of stairs and break my neck. I stand swaying, forcing my body to right itself, and down below I hear the bedroom door open and Mum emerging, grumbling sharply to herself. I can see her over the banister from above. She crosses the hallway below, tying the belt of her dusky pink velvet dressing gown tight around her waist. The skirt of it kicks out as she walks so she looks like a rose blooming then returning to bud over and over. This is terrible. The doorbell never rings on a Saturday morning. It’s like this is being done to thwart me on purpose. I lean forward, listening as she opens the door. There’s a muffled voice from outside and hers, rising in annoyance.
‘It is precisely because we don’t want to get up at the crack of dawn, because it’s the weekend, that we have the newspaper’ – she sounds out the next word – ‘del–iv–ered. If you’re going to ring the bell to ask which one we have, then we might as well make the journey to the newsagent’s ourselves …’
I can almost see her pursed mouth spitting out the words.
‘Emma. Who is it?’
Christ, Dad’s up now, padding down the stairs to find out what’s going on.
‘It’s this new child they’ve hired,’ Mum says, then turns back to the open door. ‘Surely you have a list, don’t you?’
There’s a fluting, garbled answer from outside and then Dad’s soothing voice intervenes. ‘Now then, Emma, I’m sure it won’t happen again. You go and get the coffee on and I’ll deal with this.’
I strain my ears to hear her marching into the kitchen and Dad being appeasing and kind on the doorstep and, when he knows Mum’s out of the way, sneaking the boy a fiver, saying it’s because it’s his first paper round, he’ll soon get the hang of things, but really I know it’s compensation for Mum being so h
orrible. Then Dad disappears into the kitchen too. The house falls silent again. I stand and time seems to dissolve. Once they’re back upstairs, wide awake, I will never summon the courage to get past their bedroom. I know I should seize my chance and slip out, but I’m paralysed.
Swiftly, before I can think about it further, I begin scurrying down the stairs. The back of the front door with its brass letterbox and thick layers of cream paint is in my sights when the kitchen door bursts open and, I can’t help it this time, I do actually cry out, and Mum and Dad both look up at me – Dad with his leather slippers as shiny as conkers, holding a tray with orange juice, coffee and the paper on it.
Mum says, ‘Phoebe, what on earth are you doing leaving the house at this hour in tarty make-up? Honestly, as if I haven’t had enough. Get back to your room at once. What a bloody morning, people ringing bells and creeping about.’
I’m frozen.
She frowns. ‘Go on. I’ve got my eye on you, you know. I found that powerful antiperspirant under your bed again and I’ve told you already it’s not healthy for a girl your age to be using products like that. Really, Peter, you must stop giving her money – see how she spends it? Plus, I found those tights the day you came home after that murder. They were buried in the bin, and they might have been ripped but there wasn’t a single period stain on them, and I will get to the bottom of what all that was about one day, so go.’
And it’s not her that makes me flee but Dad’s face, frowning slightly, looking puzzled, half opening his mouth and shutting it again, that makes me turn and run. I really did, I thought I’d buried those tights so deeply in the kitchen bin after I sneaked them out from under my mattress that they’d never be discovered. Upstairs I sit on the bed and cry all my make-up off in rage as I think of Mr Jonasson waiting for me. That and knowing I’ll have to go to school all sweaty and stinky like before, now she’s taken my Right Guard.
When Mum and Dad finally leave the house to buy some bits and pieces for their weekend trip to Oxford, I dash out behind them as soon as I think they will have cleared the street. By the time I reach the library I’m hot and uncomfortable and not at all how I wanted to be looking. Inside, I search every nook and cranny, desperate to see his blond head bent seriously over his papers, but there’s only people shuffling the pages of newspapers about and kids lumped on brightly coloured chairs, flicking over pages without bothering to read them. I could scream in frustration: he’s gone, and it’s her fault, I know it is. It’s almost like she arranged that paperboy deliberately.
I wander out and the sights and sounds of Bath busy with its Saturday morning strike me as the dullest thing I’ve ever seen. There’s only one thing left to do, and I know it’s not ideal but I head into Waitrose and eventually find him fitting plastic carrier bags of shopping into his trolley on the paid side of the till.
Something flashes in his eyes. ‘Phoebe, what are you doing here?’
Something about the way he says it and how his eyes cast around, seeing if anyone’s looking, as if this is embarrassing, gives me a crushed feeling in my chest and I try to smile but find I can only shrug and say, ‘I looked for you in the library,’ and then I feel even worse because even to my own ears my voice sounds flat and accusatory.
‘I’ve got to pack the shopping in the car,’ he says, and pushes the trolley round the corner. I really don’t know what he intends me to do so I trot behind him, feeling like an idiot, but all the same just needing some flicker from him, some resolution to this whole business or I can’t stand it. When he sees me getting in the lift with him I can’t read the look on his face but I take that as a good sign, and once we’re down in the underground car park he seems to calm down a bit. He finds his car and he starts unloading his trolley, with me handing him carrier bags one at a time. When he’s finished he slams the boot down and dusts his hands together as people do when a job is done.
‘Listen, Phoebe,’ he says, and he sounds a lot nicer now he’s over the shock of me appearing. ‘You are a promising student and I’d like to help you but we need to be together with the book. So thank you for the help with the shopping but the supermarket isn’t the place to do it, you know?’
He reaches over and squeezes my shoulder and somehow I manage to nod and say goodbye and wait until I’m stumbling out into the bright daylight for the tears to jab in the back of my eyelids, because I know now that I’ve been an absolute stupid child and his kind voice made it so much worse, and now my most fervent wish is that I could take this horrible morning and smash it to pieces.
*
By early evening, when I arrive at Bertha’s front door, I’m exhausted from the fits of emotion that have been going through me all day. I’ve been thinking about the way he squeezed my shoulder, though, and how perhaps that is something positive for me to hold onto. The way he did it – intimate – makes me more and more sure it is. It’s a relief to arrive at Bertha’s cool quiet house where Mum dumps me every time she and Dad go away, even though at seventeen I know it’s ridiculous they won’t allow me to stay at home on my own. It mystifies me how Bertha and Mum have stayed friends all these years. They have nothing in common at all. Maybe it’s because Bertha is single so Mum feels she can drop me off at a moment’s notice. It’s either that or Orla’s for the night and I’ve been palmed off on her family more times than I care to remember. Right now I can’t stand the thought of staying with Orla. It’s not just that I haven’t forgiven her by a long way for trying to drown me. It’s the girlish whispered confidences that form a hot condensation in the room. The suffocating night smell of her. I can’t help breathing it all in from my little truckle bed that’s been wheeled out from underneath hers for the occasion.
‘Hello, dear.’ As Bertha answers the door, she smiles at me, showing all her great white teeth, and her little dog Paddle skitters around her feet as usual. She’s ugly in a way that’s completely fascinating, like Baba Yaga in a book I had as a kid. It’s not only the enormous teeth but also the hair that straggles around her thin face and the flapping feet tied up into huge, flat lace-up shoes.
I love Bertha’s house for all the opposite reasons that I love mine. Going into her hallway feels like entering an underground tunnel. While our house is all dry and airy like a beehive, here there’s a delicious chill of ancient bricks and the cold strikes up into your shoes from the floor. It must be the place it’s built, low down; you can feel the presence of a water table close by. The colours are all rich reds and dark browns in the dimness. Absolutely nothing changes here. As usual, I tap the silk orchid on the heavy sideboard as I pass, sending it nodding madly. I let all the things I love about her house set off little explosions of pleasure under my skin. The glossy plants with polished leaves that seem to thrive despite the gloom. The clock that chimes the quarter hour. There’s glass panels in all the doors so nothing is closed off. It seems to go on for miles in every direction. It’s like being in the safest and most beautiful underground bunker.
‘I had dinner at home.’ I haven’t, but getting out of a meal has always been an advantage of coming here. ‘I’ll just take my stuff upstairs and read before bed,’ I say.
I lug my bag up to my room and dump it on the floor. I put my hand between the white sheets and feel the chill there, then sit on the bed and allow myself a moment of feeling completely joyful. Bertha never asks me anything about anything. Her eyesight is so terrible I think she can barely see me and I love that. I feel so happy being just a blur.
I take out the York Notes. It occurred to me today that if Mr Jonasson really is going to help me with English, then I don’t want to seem thick about it. Bringing the horrible play here seemed like too much, but I can at least read the notes so I will appear to know what I’m talking about.
I lie back on the hard pillow and open the book. I can hear Bertha downstairs and it makes me smile; I imagine her as a mole shuffling about all her corridors. I try and concentrate, I really do, but the beautiful summer sounds coming through the shutter
ed window and Bertha below, who always leaves me alone, have led me to a state of relaxation that’s so rare it’s approaching bliss. Then it occurs to me I could enhance that, and what an ideal place to do it – here where I’m left so totally alone – and my hand twitches towards my overnight bag, where the little plastic bag with the squares of blotting paper I bought from Paul has been tucked inside the lining ever since. I shake out my bag over the bed and the plastic bag falls on the white lace cotton duvet cover. Each piece of blotting paper has an image of a bee stamped on it. Paul is very specific about his images. The bee represents the soul, he says, and LSD sets the soul free. It’s an old-fashioned choice. Paul kind of prides himself on that, like he’s a curator of rare wines that only the discerning will ever know about. I’ve never been a very dedicated drug user like him. It’s been confined to spliffs and, two or three times, ecstasy. It’s not only the cost, but I’ve always been too worried about the effects being marked on my face, leading to interrogations of one kind or another. But the acid intrigues me because I feel it might have something to teach me, to open up places inside that exist but that I’m not yet aware of. Sometimes I feel so squeezed in this little world I have to inhabit, it’s like I’ve been stitched into it. For the moment I’ll have to be content with finding new worlds to explore inside myself. My heart squeezes as I carefully tear one piece of blotting paper down the middle with the tips of my fingers and put one half on my tongue.
I lean back, push in my ear buds and find some music with a droning chant on the shuffle, then wait.
I feel so safe here that when hammering on the bedroom door reaches through the music, it’s the equivalent of a bomb going off and I nearly fall off the bed. I tear out the ear buds. I hold them dangling from one hand in mid-air, frozen.
‘What is it?’ I call out finally.
‘Phoebe, I’ve made us something to eat.’ Bertha’s raspy voice makes the door panels vibrate. This is new, this interference. We usually leave each other completely alone. What’s happened? She’s chosen the worst possible time to change our habits.