by Kate Hamer
I knock softly on Mum’s door and call out. ‘Mum, are you awake yet?’ There’s no reply. She must still be sleeping. I take out the wash and put the sheets into the dryer and start another wash of towels and pillowcases. I make a bucket of soapy water and scour out the bathroom. In the living room the air is dry and fusty so I open the windows. No balcony moment for me yet, I decide. No distractions or one second of misguided pondering. Not even a cigarette; that can be much later when I finally feel satisfied that everything is done that can be done and Mum is comfortably tucked up with a cup of tea. I bash dust out of the sofa cushions; it billows in clouds that set me sneezing. I push the big square pouf thing close to it and fetch spare pillows and blankets to make a makeshift bed, a place where someone can lie and breathe in fresh air and glimpse the sky. I get the Hoover and vacuum every inch of carpet and the tops of the skirting boards that have accumulated a tube of felty dust along the ridge. In the hallway I hoover up all the little curled dried-out grey bodies of woodlice and they fly through the air into the mouth of the Hoover like they’re being called up to heaven by a higher force. I can’t help smiling at remembering how my friends and me called them ‘chuggy pigs’ when we were little and loved to dab at them with our fingers for the pleasure of seeing them roll into a ball, tight and hard as a bullet. Wipe the smile off your face, you silly bitch, I tell myself, you can smile later when this is all done. You can sit and grin stupidly to yourself for hours about insects if you like, but in the meantime get on with it. Just get the fuck on with it.
I coil the flex of the Hoover around the drum and stow it back in the cupboard. I give the cushions a final pat and check the room. Just a moment, I think, just one little moment of weakness before it all has to begin. I push through the doors onto the balcony, and down below it seems almost blurred with my vision being out of whack, with the feeling of a tide breaking over my head. I hold onto the rail, then fold helplessly until I’m sitting and the cold of the concrete strikes through my jeans. And before I know it I’m putting my hands together and I’m praying. I can’t believe it, I’m actually praying to the big wide blue sky. I’m asking for everything to be all right and for my mum not to have died in that room while I took my miserable-little-bitch hide to school for a few hours, too scared and too pathetic to face things. I vow that I will not waver again and that I will do whatever is necessary to protect what I love. There are no lengths to which I will not go.
Remember, Grace, I tell myself. You are a soldier now and you cannot shirk these things.
Then I stand and hitch up my jeans and go down the hall to Mum’s room and knock on the door once more. I’m terrified every time I do this, thinking she could be lying dead in there. Now the relief of seeing her with her eyes open surges through me.
‘Right, Mum?’ I ask.
She nods. She’s still angry with me for not calling the doctor, but she’ll have to get over that. She’s realised I took her mobile phone away and she’s angry about that too, but she’ll come to see it’s all for the best.
My own phone rings and I sigh when I see it’s Daniel. He came up yesterday after I’d left his flat and I wouldn’t let him in, and now he thinks it’s something he’s done, that I didn’t like the sex or I’m angry with him or something. I told him Mum was fine. I couldn’t let him in in case she started yelling like some kidnap victim or something.
I have to get rid of him so I answer.
‘Grace, I’m coming up to see you whether you like it or not. I know you’re there because I saw you coming in earlier on.’
The line goes dead and I run to our front door, sliding I’m going so fast. No way can I let him in. Absolutely no way. I put the chain on the door and stand behind it and wait.
He rings the bell in short sharp bursts, and when I open the door a crack his hand is raised as if he was about to start knocking too.
‘Grace, tell me what I’ve done and why you won’t let me in the flat. I’m frantic. Did you really have that bad a time?’
My heart turns over. No, no, no, no, I want to cry out. It was wonderful. I felt like I was dissolving and re-forming, over and over. But I think of Mum just down the hallway and how, if she hears his voice, everything could be lost.
‘It was all right,’ I hiss over the chain. ‘But you just have to leave me alone for a bit. Stop bothering me.’
And his face looks such a picture of misery I nearly fling off the chain and run into his arms.
He looks down and shoves his hands in his pockets. ‘Well, if that’s what you really want.’
‘It is,’ I say and close the door in his face.
18
Orla
I’m taken aback at how utterly glorious it is to see my father.
He breaks the tension in the house, like he’s slicing through those awkward plastic parcel bonds that need scissors, then, once cut, the contents that have been so tightly pressed together are finally given the relief of falling apart.
I can’t even worry about Mum telling him about my kiss with Eleanor. I’d been dreading the idea, thinking he’d reel away from me, horrified at his own daughter. But when he hugs me and I feel the warm rough texture of the wool of his jumper, I know that’ll never happen. He’ll sweep Mum’s concerns aside like raking glasses and cups from a table with his arm, and say, ‘So what?’ She’ll be soothed, say something like, ‘Oh well, you know how I worry when you’re away, Martin. I eat myself up with it. It’ll probably all blow over.’ Then she’ll giggle and smooth her hands over her new tight hairdo and give in to the relief of not having to take responsibility for anything any more.
Before dinner they have a couple of sherries, honey-coloured in tiny glasses with a splashy red rose printed on each one. Mum wears a big bouffanty skirt even though she’s cooking. She’s nervous about it; I can tell by the way she holds the tea towel in front of her, but she doesn’t want to spoil the look by wearing an apron. After she’s checked the contents of the oven Dad pulls her towards him. They stand like that for a few moments, then start swaying gently to a tune on the radio. I’m itchy with envy, even though the scene is a cheesy fifties movie. That word ‘movie’ triggers something in me and I remember Phoebe mocking me for saying it. ‘Only Americans say “movies”, Orla,’ she said, as if I was trying to be something other than she allowed me to be and I needed slapping down for it.
‘I’m off out,’ I announce to their entwined figures, and I’m out of the kitchen before they even have time to separate.
‘What about your dinner?’ I hear Mum calling, then Dad saying, ‘Leave her. Let her go,’ as I open the front door.
Outside, I let the tears spill off my face without even trying to hide them. They’ve got each other, I think. What have I got? Nothing. The girl I’m madly in love with simply sees me as amusing; she actually enjoys cutting into me and making me feel worthless. I have nobody and never will have. My desire at the wishing bowl will stay just that and will never be fulfilled. The swell of my self-pity feels almost pleasurable in its intensity, in the way I can give myself into it, the way it grows so it touches every part of me inside and there’s no room for everything else.
I skirt the town, past Brown’s Hotel where people stand outside in the sun, studying the menu, and down towards the Abbey square past the shops selling expensive chocolates and pottery for tourists. In the square, pigeons nod up and down, pecking at the crumbs people aren’t supposed to feed them, and a layer of steam hovers over the Roman Baths. People are dressed in summer colours; tourists wander with ice creams, some with more than one camera around their necks, which always puzzles me. Sun splashes across the climbing angels carved up the front of the Abbey, all fleeing upwards away from the hell of the boiling waters so close. I look at the dark mouth of the Abbey and shudder, remembering the time with Phoebe in there. God, she’s twisted me so hard I feel I’ll never untangle. I need something rapid and violent to happen to unwind me. If there was an earthquake now I swear I’d feel better. I crave a battle or
a stabbing. Instead, it’s people moving around like they’re on wheels, docilely licking ice creams or queuing up to have a cream tea in The Pump Room while a mime artist cavorts in front of them for coins.
‘Wotcha.’
I turn. ‘Oh hi.’ It’s Kai from school, his long leather coat pointing outwards like a skirt and nearly reaching the ground. He must be baking in it but somehow his skin remains pale and cool-looking, in contrast to his black eyebrows. I know I don’t sound enthusiastic to see him, but then I remember there was some bullying at school targeting him, and with everything that’s going on, I feel a blooming of sympathy. Besides, who else have I got to talk to?
I give what I hope is a warm smile and I feel my recent crying jag sting the creases under my eyes. ‘Where are you off to?’
He shrugs. ‘I thought I’d go and see if the pet cemetery in Parade Gardens is still there. I used to go there all the time as a kid and for some reason I woke up thinking about it.’
He is clearly even more bored than me, but I try to look enthusiastic at the prospect of studying a dog’s grave. The alternative would be to slink back home and be a bit player in the cinematic garishness of my parents’ romance.
‘Oh yeah? A pet cemetery? I don’t remember that.’
‘Want to come?’
‘Why the hell not.’
Unless you have proof that you’re a Bath resident, you have to pay at a funny little booth at the entrance of the gardens. Kai has brought his and gallantly digs into his pocket and pays for me. It feels like the nicest thing that anyone’s done for me as far back as I can remember.
The Parade Gardens have always struck me as sterile. The grass is cut tight so in the summer you can see the soil beneath turning to dust. The planted-out displays are a sea of acid bright annuals – busy Lizzies or petunias. Strangely, it seems archaic and of a different era in a way that the Roman Baths don’t. A buttoned-up time when women in long skirts would take the air, leaning on their husbands’ arms, a troupe of white-clad children playing at their feet. Though maybe it was never like that. Perhaps people looked as dishevelled and generally confused about life as they do right now. There’s something about this place that makes me long for my little garden with its corners thick with spiders’ webs and the fruits of everything ripening and then falling rotten into the over-long grass. The sudden whiffs of sharp greenery or dry mouldering.
We range past picnicking kids pushing sandwiches into their mouths before going back to their football and head to the small stand of trees in the middle where Kai reckons the pet cemetery of his childhood was. All these familiar things; it seems odd to be here with Kai, walking the grey pathways by his side, his coat dipping to the ground on the inclines so that it scrapes on the floor. What am I doing? It’s like I’ve got a plan that I’m not aware of yet.
The scrub of trees looks impenetrable. Across the grass I notice a man with his wife and a clutch of kids watching us suspiciously.
‘Let’s go round the other side,’ I say.
We skirt around, looking for a way in.
‘Are you sure this is where you remember?’ I ask. The place looks like a knot that’s been tied up too tight to unpick.
‘I’m positive. There was a little pathway through it when I was a kid and all these cute little cat and doggy graves – Pal and Fido and shit like that. My sister used to pinch the flowers and lay them on the stones and work herself up into tears thinking of them. Look, that branch will bend back.’
His hand on the whip-like branch is surprisingly strong. He levers it back and an entrance into the knot opens up so quickly it feels like a fairy-tale moment, an ‘open sesame’ to a different world. I duck under his arm and he follows me, the branch whipping us tight shut inside behind him.
‘This is quite creepy, being in here and no one can see us.’ I feel hectic and giggly with the notion, the smell of dusty dead soil working into my eyes and up my nose. I can hear all the sounds of the park outside. The thwack of balls being kicked, parents calling for their kids, the buzz of cars from the road beyond. The bark is peeling off the slim trunks of the trees and I nervously begin stripping it off and crumbling the bits between my fingers.
‘What now?’ I ask.
‘I’m going to look for the graves. They might still be here as it’s all grown over like this. When things get forgotten about, people leave them alone.’
He drops down on his haunches and begins sweeping aside dead leaves with his hands.
‘Fuck me,’ he crows. ‘They’re still here. Look – I’ve found one.’
I lean over the tablet of stone he’s uncovered. ‘What does it say?’
‘“Our mate Chum.”’
‘Really?’ I feel stupidly excited at the discovery. ‘When did he die?’
‘I can’t see. That bit’s stuck in the ground. I don’t want to start digging it out in case Chum decides to bite me. I’m guessing a ghost dog is more vicious than a live one.’ He crawls underneath the tangle of branches. ‘I’m going to look for more.’
I hesitate for a moment and then drop to the ground and crawl after him. I feel like a kid again, like we’re playing a brilliant game that’ll go on and on until we’re exhausted.
‘This one’s like those bed-style graves,’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘Nooksie … Dooksie – something like that. I can’t quite see, it’s in a dark patch.’
His black leather coat looks like a giant insect case as he crawls in front of me. In the middle of the trees a space opens and he kneels up and looks back. His face is splashed with shadows but I can see the childlike glow in his eyes. The wide grin. I feel the same. The slights and minor and major humiliations and hurts of daily life seem a million miles away in this enchanted garden, which feels like a great dry nest that’s just for us, keeping us safe and apart from the world.
He sighs, then sits and then lies back and looks up into the dappled light above. Everything is silent for a long moment, until he breaks it. ‘I love it here.’
It’s so simple what he says, so heartfelt, my heart tips towards him. I remember his closed-up face at school. His boots, his long hair and black clothes, all like plates of an armour he has to construct every morning. Each day the configuration of T-shirts or jacket might differ but it’s all formed for the same purpose and has to be constantly remade and maintained. I crawl next to him and put my arms around him and pull him towards me. He doesn’t resist, nor does he move towards me. When I open my eyes there’s a tear trickling down the side of his nose.
‘Sad really, isn’t it? This is the first time I’ve been happy in about a year. Finding some crappy stuff I remember from being a kid. Dead animals. Pathetic.’
‘Sssh, it’s OK,’ I whisper and I pull him closer, brushing the black hair away from the whorl of his ear so I can whisper into it. ‘I love it too. I’m so glad you’ve shown me. Thank you – it’s magical like a storybook. It’s wonderful.’ Phoebe would love this place, I think, before resolving never to show it to her.
Kai smells of citrus shower gel and creamy shaving foam, and the shock of him being so near that I can catch his secret smells floods through me. Up close I can see the pinpoints of hair on his chin where he’s shaved them off this morning. Just the fact of his nearness moves me to an almost unbearable pitch. I kiss the side of his face, his eyelids; his brows are soft under my lips. I crave the closeness so much it’s hard to stop. He lies there letting me until I finally come to a halt. I open my eyes slowly and the greenish light has a quality to it that’s almost church-like. Cool and strangely coloured. The smell’s like that too, a damp mustiness that penetrates right to the back of the throat. It makes me feel almost stoned with its sense of thickened air, every stalk and leaf delineated. I prop myself on my elbows and everything gradually returns to its usual state. My eyes begin to be able to pick out what’s in the dense dark spots, branches tangling overhead. I start laughing, an hysterical choking sort of laugh.
‘What? What is it?’
I
can barely talk because of it so I just nod to past his head and he turns and sees the inscription and the tiny gravestone.
‘“Dec.30.1908,”’ he reads solemnly. ‘“Dear Little Fritz.”’
I roll over towards him, warm from the kisses. Something is coalescing in me. The wish at the wishing bowl and me yelling at Mum that I’d have a bloody baby if I wanted to, see if I couldn’t. That was the germ of it all, the wishing bowl day, that’s when it all started. It made me think about things that had been unsaid until that point. I’m reckless from the aridity of the day and of my life. If nothing counters it soon I’m going to die. To have somebody who is mine and mine alone. I can have a baby. Who’s to say I can’t? I won’t have anyone telling me I can’t. I can have Kai’s baby, and the want and need opens up in a raging ragged welter of pent-up feeling.
19
Phoebe
Hahahahahahaha.
The Beloved has gone.
Travelling, apparently, with a clutch of her friends from university. They intend to eschew the hedonistic delights of resorts – vulgar – and instead will be heading to the lesser travelled, and therefore better, parts of Italy, then Croatia, where they will absorb local cultures like a cluster of voracious amoebas as they move from town to town. According to The Beloved, these plans were half-hatched already when she came home from York and she simply neglected to confide them to anyone because she didn’t want to jinx the whole adventure by talking it out of existence. Both The Beloved and I know that to be untrue. We may be on opposite sides of the fence but we both know the value of needing to make a quick getaway. We’ve had a long and detailed training in it.