by Kate Hamer
I take a moment for my breathing to slow down. ‘It’s OK,’ I shout back. ‘I said, I really don’t need anything.’
‘Listen, your mother’s been on the phone.’
So that’s it. A steady drip of dread begins to gather around my heart area.
‘She wanted to check you’d got here all right.’
I sit up. ‘OK.’
‘Listen, Phoebe. Let me see you. It’s odd shouting through the door like this.’
This is starting to remind me of the day of the murder, with me locked in the bathroom and my mother’s voice questioning me from the outside. I slide off the bed and open the door an inch. There’s her bulging eyes, catching the reflected light from my bedroom window as it slants through the shutters. Normally I would look at them and have warm feelings and think, lovely blind eyes, but in this instance I’m on alert, sniffing danger.
‘Dear, I’ve made us something to eat. Your mother said you didn’t have a thing before you left.’
So, she’s been after me, crawling down the telephone wires. I wonder whether she’s guessed what I’m up to. When I picture my mother I see her as an insect covered in a hundred long, long feelers all reaching out and tasting the air and the vibrations, ready to pick up any tiny thing amiss. But there wasn’t anything, I’m sure of it. I left it all perfect. The diary entry for today: ‘Cumulus clouds gather on the eastern edge of Bath, just on the horizon.’
I can’t feel any effect of the LSD yet but just the idea of it coursing through my bloodstream while I’m having a conversation with Bertha means I have to cling onto the door.
‘OK,’ I say. Not able to think of an excuse. ‘I’ll be down in a moment.’
We sit opposite each other at the dining table. The red cloth is chenille and feels soft on my knees. The clock tocks on the mantelpiece. She has cooked fish and a little mess of something that looks like ratatouille.
‘I hope you like it.’
I nod and pick up a flake of white fish on the end of my fork. ‘Thank you, Bertha.’
As I’m about to put a forkful in my mouth I have a terrible moment and have to put it back down on my plate. It’s only going to be a matter of time before she starts talking about the man being ripped open on Walcot Street. People can’t leave it alone. Every time it’s mentioned a klaxon goes off in my head. She’s bound to bring it up and I don’t think I could bear it if that dreadful wash of blood and guts came slippery-sliding into the refuge of Bertha’s house.
‘Don’t you like fish, dear?’ she asks, and then I realise Bertha would regard that subject as ‘not suitable for the table’. I’m safe.
‘Sorry, yes. It’s lovely.’
I look at her peering down at her plate, and I really look, like I’m seeing her anew. She’s so kind. There is the most beautiful cut glass of something she calls Crémant beside each plate that she says is better than Champagne. She’s got out her best napkins with birds patterned on them just for me. Paddle sleeps peacefully under the table. Guilt stirs in me at how I was thinking of her before. I wonder how many women over the centuries with faces like hers have been thought of as Baba Yaga, as hags exiled to forests or deserted moors or isolated caves, left alone to mutter and prophesy. I notice all the little things that she does to compensate for that face and it nearly splits my heart. The cardigan that sits over her flat chest is a deep berry colour and the wool is as fine and light as fleece caught on a bramble. The silk cuffs that show beneath the sleeves are immaculately laundered above her skinny hands. She wears a maroon scarf with yellow polka dots tied in a bow that is both elegant and would have taken time to get just so. I ache at the image of her doing that in the mirror.
‘Bertha,’ I say suddenly. ‘Do you mind being single?’
She smiles, as if to herself. ‘This is 2003, dear, not 1903. A woman living alone is nothing to remark on. Why do you ask?’
‘It’s just … I often think I’d like to live alone too and I was wondering what it’s like.’
She wipes her mouth with her bird napkin. ‘It has its compensations.’
I watch her calmly eating. Why have I never wondered about her before? I really don’t know much about her. ‘Bertha,’ I go on. ‘How long have you known my mother for?’
She puts her fork down. ‘Well, let’s think. We met at college so it must be going on thirty years now.’ She smiles over her plate. ‘I wouldn’t say we were close friends and I hadn’t seen her for years so it was quite a surprise when she turned up on the doorstep with a baby in tow. She’d tracked me down somehow.’
Her tone of voice talking about my mother – there’s something about it I recognise and I go looking for what that is. Then I remember. There was a session with pussy-cat face where the new receptionist sent me up to the consulting room when I arrived. When I slipped inside the room it was empty but I could hear voices in the adjoining room, then someone crossing towards the door. They must’ve been holding the door handle because it was kind of jiggling up and down my side and I heard, clear as a bell, pussy-cat face saying, ‘Well, you know how it is. It feels like I can only do so much with Phoebe without treating her mother. I know one shouldn’t diagnose like this, but all I can say is Mum has the most obvious case of narcissistic personality disorder I’ve ever seen.’ And even though I know they’re supposed to be completely neutral, there was that same tone of dislike in her voice I’ve just heard in Bertha’s. Then the door opened and pussy-cat face swung into the room with a pile of files under her arm. Her face looked stricken, and furious. ‘I didn’t know you were there,’ she said. ‘Donna is new but I have told her that the clear procedure is for me to come down and fetch people for appointments.’
Donna’s going to get it, I thought, but I pretended like nothing had happened and I could see pussy-cat face begin telling herself I hadn’t heard.
At least the session gave me something to think about for a change. I pondered about it for weeks and looked up ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in a psychological textbook in the library, and to be fair it did all sound very much like the way Mum is, but the more I thought about it the weaker I felt. It was so complicated and what could I do about it anyway? The knowledge began to fade. At home everyone carries on as normal and Mum holds down a job and Dad seems to manage with her, so I began to wonder if pussy-cat face was mistaken. It’s only me that seems to feel so angry towards her, which is why the way Bertha said what she did is interesting to me. I wish I was a bit more with it so I could think about it clearly.
It makes me wonder if it’s possible – and this is the very first time I’ve thought this – that it’s actually me Bertha likes, and me she wants to keep up with. The idea is exciting and makes her seem even more endearing. I smile across the table at her and she smiles back with all her teeth.
Then I look behind her shoulder. The shadows behind the lamps and carefully dusted ornaments on the sideboard are growing knobbly. I have the sensation of time unravelling, out of control. When I look behind me the outside has grown dark at the panes of windows. ‘It seems to have gone dark so suddenly,’ I cry out before I can stop myself.
She wipes her mouth carefully. ‘Not really, dear.’
I look down and my plate is nearly empty and I can’t remember what any of it even tasted like. It’s only the fish bones left, beached to one side, and the plate strikes me as a miraculous and tiny treasure island. I’m transfixed as leftover smears and bits of food become sea vegetables and a miniature tide. I tear my eyes away.
‘I think it’s time I went to bed.’
I hold my breath and wait for her to react. I have no idea if my voice is normal. I could be shouting or whispering. I might not have said anything at all.
‘All right, dear. Let’s take the plates through.’
We carry the plates out to the kitchen and stack them in the dishwasher.
‘I’ll just come up and get my book,’ she says.
I follow behind her and as she climbs the stairs her legs stretch o
ut like paint running down paper. Each stair twitches, just once, as I put my foot on it.
She pauses with her hand on her bedroom door. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Yes, goodnight,’ I call out, as if I hadn’t a care in the world. ‘Sleep tight.’
‘You don’t need to shout, dear.’
I close the door behind me and relish drinking in the safeness of being in my bedroom. I open the wooden shutters and the window wider to the night. I breathe in the damp night air and look upwards, and it’s at that moment I nearly collapse with the beauty of it. It absolutely crushes me.
I fall to my knees.
When I first saw that tiny bee on my fingertip, I had no idea the power it held in its wings that were no bigger than grape pips. How it could show me that all along I’ve been half dead and what it feels like if the tombstone rolls off. How it could scratch the skin of the world right away to reveal the raw and unnatural beauty beneath. I want to feel like this forever. Great glassy tears run down my cheeks and sobs choke my throat as above me the stars cavort and whirl in a Van Gogh sky.
8
Orla
Last Friday; the nature of evil.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Phoebe as she listened, rapt. A shaft of golden dust triangulated behind her profile as she tilted up her chin in concentration. When I did finally drag my eyes away, I watched Mr Jonasson to see if he was stealing looks at her or if what she told me is all in her imagination. Hard to say. I felt rocked by emotions I didn’t seem to have control over.
It seems we were all in a state that day. I found Grace outside smoking behind the bushes, crouched down, dripping tears onto the ground.
I asked her what the matter was and she went into a rant about what useless crap we were learning. ‘No one’s interested in what you really have to do to get by,’ she said. ‘My life has gone to shit and no one cares.’ Then she hugged her stomach with both arms. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ she said. ‘I think there goes my period starting too. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate without bleeding like a stuck pig once a month. I’m so disorganised. I knew it was going to start and I still didn’t put anything in my bag. Have you got anything?’
A group had emerged from the back door, Phoebe among them.
‘Hey,’ I called out to her. ‘Come over here.’
I didn’t suppose she had anything. It was just an excuse to engage with her. She let slip once that her mother won’t let her buy tampons. She’s supposed to always use pads. Whenever she comes round I always find a couple of my tampons missing from the box. I suspect she puts one in to sit at the dining table and lord it over her mother not knowing what’s inside her.
She turned and gave me a look so cold it went right down me to the soles of my feet. Was it that look that made me finally ask Eleanor for a drink? I think it might have been, and that’s why I’m here in this bar on a lazy sunny Sunday ordering two Manhattans. I have a flush of worry in case I’m asked for ID. It would spoil everything to go back to the table bringing apologetic explanations and two glasses slopping Coca-Cola over the rims. But it’s OK. There’s a certain heaviness, a chunkiness about me that I know makes me look older than I am. I guess I should give thanks for that today.
I grip the sides of the tray. The drinks in their long-stemmed glasses feel unstable as I pick my way over to where Eleanor’s sitting. She’s waiting, inserting her fingers into corkscrew curls of her hair. It’s almost Afro hair although it’s darkly blonde. It’s the only thing that stands out about her. The rest is pure pink-and-white Home Counties and screams horse riding, skiing, family holidays in Cornwall, brisk walks before a Sunday lunch. With her springing curls and her healthy skin she reminds me of a patch of fertile ground that life and growth practically jump out of.
She smiles as I approach. I wonder if this place is special enough. It’s a chain that does both food and drink or just drink, faux continental, with staff keeping their eyes on the clock for the end of their shifts. It does, however, have cosy booths and red glass in the windows that gives it a muted, intimate air, which is why I chose it for this encounter.
‘Lovely. Thanks, Orla,’ she says as she takes one of the glasses, the drink inside gritty with ice.
‘Did you want something to eat? I should’ve asked. I …’
She puts her hand over mine. It’s cold from the icy glass. ‘No, I’m not hungry. This is just right,’ she says, and to demonstrate the rightness of it she dips down and takes a sip without taking her eyes off me, as if to say, See, perfect. It’s a flirtatious gesture too, I’m well aware of that, and the knowledge sends jitters rippling through my diaphragm.
I nod and fumble with my own drink, letting bitter-tasting ice crystals slop into my mouth.
‘So, your school …’ she says.
‘Yes, it’s an odd little place.’ I laugh too loud. Bath is peppered with private schools but ours is the Oliver Twist among them. You can see it on open days with all the serious parents with burning eyes – leaning on sticks, some of them, because they had their kids so old. They’ve come for the tiny classes, the high-minded curriculum that includes Classics. They don’t care about cracked loo seats or the freezing draughts that whistle down the corridors. The contrast with where Eleanor goes makes me feel more unwieldy beside her. The privilege I’ve glimpsed has been astounding. It curtains them so completely that we can look in but they can’t look out. Everything about our school crumbles, drips, creaks. The head teacher limps and flaps her skirts around in her down-at-heel shoes. In the basement a fat cook toils in a boiling kitchen to serve up watery stews for lunch. The canteen itself doubles up as a classroom so the wooden desks feel silty when you run your fingers over them. They can only keep this school going by paring everything down and down. It’s a peculiar little institution for those with parents that want private education but can only afford a sliver of a fee, or for the delicate creatures whose parents worry they might be eaten alive in the state system. There are a few scholarships for deserving causes, like Grace. I’m sure there must be a story to each and every person who’s washed up there. Me: too sensitive for the ordinary school; crying with a kind of frantic fury if I was teased. Bullies made a beeline for me, deliciously sure of the response. Phoebe says she was thrown out of her last place when she was twelve, although she could just be making that up. Grace just knocked on the door one day. She’d seen people coming in and out and got curious. She said to them she wasn’t stretching her abilities where she was, though she told us afterwards she wanted to come here because it’s so close if she needs to pop home. Her boldness must’ve impressed them because they took her in. Lessons are strange, old-fashioned. There’s dictation that goes on until your hand cramps up.
I tell Eleanor where I live, wanting to serve up some normality in contrast to all that. Our home is all golden stone and climbing roses; a lovely rambling family house purchased by my dad’s hard graft on oil rigs. She’ll understand that.
‘I know it,’ she says, nibbling on a speared cherry that is nearly black.
‘The best bit is the garden. I kind of keep it myself. My parents aren’t interested so it’s mine really.’ I picture it now, waiting for me, and feel a little ache of homesickness. There’s something about being able to grow things. Last year I even scattered seed and grew bitter leaves that I picked and ate on slices of white bread and unsalted butter. ‘Orla’s weeds,’ my family teased, but I didn’t care. ‘I’ve got a few tools – I mean, a spade and some cutters – and I’m fixing it up. I can see exactly how I want it in my head.’ Then I’m off, talking about the bulbs I planted last autumn, seeing them pushing up through the ground. The clump of arum lilies I’ve been nurturing and the sculptural head I found in a second-hand shop and lugged home.
Even as I’m talking, I’m thinking, Is this a date? When I called her and asked if she wanted to meet, I thought at the time it would be obvious. But really, is it? After all, how normal is it for two girls to meet for a coffee or an illicit drink, then go off to gru
b around in the make-up counter for an hour, returning home later with sparkling stained fingers to parents demanding to know, ‘What have you done to your face?’ I’d hoped that the cocktails would signal something else, but who knows? It’s so complicated.
She also doesn’t look like someone who would hang around make-up counters.
I peter out talking about the garden. It was a stupid subject. Why would she be interested?
‘It sounds awesome.’ I try not to think she says it gamely but it silences me. ‘I’d like to see it,’ she says, staring right at me, her eyes not flinching away for a second.
I realise in a rush that’s why I went on about it so much. That that’s where I was leading her all along. I clear my throat. ‘Come back with me. The house is empty at the moment.’
I know my mother is out. She has a hair appointment, one of the rituals undertaken before Dad’s return, alongside the manicures, the picking out of a new dress and the rubbing in of creams like she has to shore something up that has desiccated in his absence. My two brothers have been dropped off to play at friends’ houses beforehand. I know all this because I carefully checked it out this morning.
I hold my breath. She stirs the slush of ice at the bottom of her glass with her straw, meddles her finger in the bubbles of condensation that have arranged themselves as neatly as polka dots on the outside.
‘OK.’
Behind her, the black-and-white-suited waiters flicker past the windows, giving the impression of the end loop of a film. The reddish light pouring through lends the room a sophisticated, erotic air. But despite the fact I felt myself colour with pleasure at her assent, I feel uncomfortable. I’m fully aware that Eleanor, with her sports-mad radiancy, is a kind of stand-in for something else, something I ache for and can’t have, something called Phoebe. My passions have only found a kind of ventriloquism in this other girl. Despite all that, I’m luring her back anyway and it makes me feel creepy, like a spider bringing its prey back to a web.