Talking to the Dead

by Helen Dunmore

‘I could have given you anything,’ I say. ‘What if that was deadly nightshade?’

  ‘You wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing. Isabel’s asleep. They’ve moved the baby into the cot because the health visitor thought he’d sleep better.’

  I move away, down the row.

  ‘Come here.’

  ‘I’m picking raspberries for tomorrow.’

  ‘What are you wearing? I can’t see.’

  ‘My blue dress. The short one.’

  ‘I’ll help you.’

  He pushes after me down the hollow grassy passage between the raspberry canes. I want to run but I make myself keep still, feeling under the leaves for the slight furriness of the fruit. The berries are warmer than the leaves. He touches my arm but I twist and move on.

  ‘Nina.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He’s behind me, his hands running up my thighs under my dress. I lean back against him, opening my legs, aching.

  ‘Do you want another?’

  He opens his mouth and I push in raspberries. His hand is between my thighs, feeling for the opening of my vagina. He slides in a finger, two fingers. I turn my cheek against his arm. He’s changed from a white to a denim shirt and I know why. The glint of a white shirt carries a long way through the dusk.

  ‘You want it.’

  ‘You know I do.’

  ‘That’s what you came here for.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  He sighs, and we slide down. It’s damp here, between the canes, and dark. He’s kicking off his jeans, and I pull up my dress.

  ‘Not like that. Take all your clothes off like you did last time.’

  It’s a loose, short dress and it comes off easily. I roll it into a ball and toss it out of the way.

  ‘That’s better.’

  We lie lengthways between the canes, hot, slippery, naked.

  ‘Say what you said before.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Say we can always have a good fuck.’

  ‘I don’t need to. You know it already.’

  ‘But say it.’

  ‘We can always fuck.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘When we want.’

  ‘Now.’

  He lies underneath me. I ease myself down on to him slowly and we start to move. I’m on an endless staircase, going down, going nowhere.

  I fall asleep for a minute afterwards, a brief skim through sleep that’s snatched away as soon as it begins. Richard’s moving, rolling me away. He gets up and crawls down the canes into the open.

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘Looking for your dress.’

  I brush the earth off me and go out after him. He’s sweeping the ground with his hands, but every patch of shadow looks like something that’s fallen.

  ‘What if you don’t find it?’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  He scoops, pouncing. ‘Here it is.’

  There’s enough light for us to see each other’s pale nakedness. He lifts the dress and shakes it out. Then he crouches down with the dress between his hands.

  ‘What are you doing? Richard, what’re you doing with my dress?’

  I hear him strain and grunt and the soft cotton rips.

  ‘You’ve torn my dress.’

  He laughs, turns the dress round, rips it again.

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘You don’t mind. You don’t really mind.’

  ‘What did you do that for?’

  He kicks the dress away, stands up. ‘So you can’t go back in the house.’

  ‘I’ll tear up your bloody jeans then.’

  ‘You can’t. They’re too strong.’

  ‘You’ll find out.’

  We grapple, swaying. Suddenly I slip my hands down and squeeze his balls, hard.

  ‘Christ, Nina! That hurts.’

  ‘You don’t mind,’ I say; ‘you like me hurting you.’

  ‘I like everything you do,’ he says.

  ‘Isn’t that nice.’

  Wait a minute.’ He tenses, his body concentrating inwards the way men do while they check if they’re getting an erection or not.

  ‘No, not now you’ve ripped up my dress.’

  ‘I’ll get you another one.’

  ‘You won’t. I buy my own clothes.’

  ‘I want you to be naked.’

  ‘It’s dark. You can’t see me.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  I don’t often get to the point where I forget who I am. Where I end, where the other person begins. You have to go on for a long time and it’s not a matter of emotions, it’s a physical thing. I got there with Richard.

  We can’t go inside like this,’ I said later, ‘we smell of fucking.’

  ‘You could put on my shirt.’

  ‘That’d be worse than nothing, wouldn’t it? I know. Come on.’

  I pull him with me towards Isabel’s new apple trees. I feel the zinc bucket with my foot, see the faint shine of water.

  ‘Stand still. Now, whatever I do, don’t make a sound. Shut your eyes.’

  I can’t see if he shuts them or not. I bend, taking the weight of the heavy bucket with my thigh muscles. The water heaves up one side.

  ‘Bend down.’

  I stand very close to him, hoist up the bucket as high as I can and up-end it over us both, as slowly as I can so that water runs in a cold, steady stream over thighs and shoulders and breasts.

  ‘Wash me with it,’ I say, and keep on pouring while he lathers the water over me.

  ‘Wait a minute. Open your legs.’

  ‘I’ve had enough, Richard.’

  ‘I’m only going to wash you.’ He scoops a handful of water, washes my vulva as gently and quickly as a nurse. ‘Now you do me.’ I pass him the half-full bucket and then I wash his penis, his balls, the sweat and semen trapped in his hair.

  ‘There, you’re clean.’

  Richard dresses slowly, while I watch.

  ‘Come on, put this round you. You’ll get cold.’

  I put on his shirt, and button it. It’s long enough to cover my thighs and if I meet anyone, why should they guess it doesn’t belong to me?

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Eleven.’

  ‘Only eleven?’

  ‘Yes. Nina –’

  I can hear it in his voice, the talk that’s got to come.

  ‘I’m tired, Richard, I want to get to bed.’

  ‘I know. But there’s things we’ve got to sort out. I’m away tomorrow.’

  ‘I told you I don’t want to talk.’

  ‘Nina,’ he says, holding my wrists, ‘it’s not going to work like that. Fucking in the garden and nothing in the house. You’re kidding yourself. I know what your cervix feels like, for Christ’s sake. I’ve watched you pissing. I’m buggered if we’re not going to talk.’

  Cervix, I think briefly, impressed. As an index of intimacy not many men would think of that. There was that TV programme where blindfold men had to pin the clitoris on to a drawing of a woman’s fanny. Like pinning the tail on a donkey, only they weren’t as accurate. One got it right, more or less right, and came out tapping the side of his nose. Married man, he said. I love things like that. Then I remember that of course Richard knows about cervices. There was Isabel’s, opening up to give birth.

  ‘Then I’m going back to London,’ I say.

  He lets go of my wrists abruptly so my hands slap against my thighs and walks away a few feet. I wait. At last he says, in a dry, different voice, ‘You certainly are sisters, aren’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You give with one hand and you take back with the other.’

  I pull his shirt round me. ‘I’m going in.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  Edward’s waiting for me as I come through the kitchen door in the dark.

  ‘I thought you’d come this way,’ he says. All my blood runs back to my heart, then shocks u
p to my skin. Edward turns on the light and the room leaps out at me, too bright, too shiny, every surface as inquisitive as Margery Wilkinson’s eyes. I look down and see dark stains on the shirt I’m wearing, like blood. Raspberry juice. My legs are scratched too, and there’s dirt on them.

  ‘I knew already,’ says Edward. ‘I saw you this morning. Who do you think you are? You’re not in the Garden of fucking Eden, you know. I wish you could have seen yourself.’

  ‘Sex isn’t meant to be pretty for onlookers,’ I say. ‘You should know that. Or maybe you don’t, or Alex would’ve stayed more than an hour.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re Isabel’s sister.’

  ‘No, you’re right. I’m not at all like Isabel. I’m bad and she’s good, so bear it in mind.’

  I tell myself it doesn’t touch me, none of this touches me. It’s a game of bad tennis. But my back’s against the door and I’m out of breath.

  ‘How can you do this to her?’ he asks, and this time there’s no malice in it He simply wants to know. ‘She’s just had a baby. She’s been terribly ill. You know how vulnerable she is, or if you don’t you should do. Do you really not care about Isabel at all?’

  ‘You don’t have the right to ask me that.’

  And I know I’ve won. He looks away, flushing under his fine skin.

  ‘There’s something missing in you,’ he says. I look at him but I can’t make myself angry with him, can’t make myself feel any of the emotions he expects and half-wants. He does love Isabel.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ I ask and, as I expect, he doesn’t answer.

  I move towards the door. I can go to Isabel now, asleep or not, before anyone else does. After all, I’m her sister.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The lamp is on, and Isabel is standing by the cot, sideways to me as I open the door. The drop bars are down. First I notice the big roses on her silk kimono, and then her head, bent, her whole body leaning down over the child. Her hand is on him, pressing him. It seems as if all her weight is going down on him.

  I open my dry mouth and my voice rasps in my throat. I see her, tall Isabel, her dark silky hair falling like bunches of grapes, her kimono brushing the floor. But I see another Isabel as well, half her height, in a cotton nightdress which comes down to her knees. This Isabel is braced, on tiptoe, leaning over the cot. Her hair is pushed back behind her ears and I can see her thin, intent face. She is pressing down on the baby’s back, pressing and pressing, pushing him into the mattress. I can see his weak purple legs thrashing but there’s no sound. His face is hidden in a muslin nappy. She hears me come in, she turns, she does not stop pushing the baby down. Her face is cold and hard, like a snake’s face, but her voice is a soft whisper.

  ‘He was crying. I’m getting him to sleep. Go back to our room.’

  And I go. I creep back on bare feet that are suddenly cold, across the lino to the big bed I share with Isabel. I climb in and wrap the sheets tightly round me and I lie in the dark I’ve made, shivering until I fall asleep. When I wake up it’s sunshine and morning and Isabel is on the floor, cross-legged, reading a book. She looks up and smiles at me.

  The image switches off. Tall Isabel, my sister with her baby, stands by the cot patting her baby’s back gently and rhythmically.

  ‘He’s got wind,’ she whispers. ‘He’s had awful colic this evening.’

  ‘Isabel.’ I can’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Colin. What happened? What happened to Colin?’

  But Isabel’s golden face is smooth, glinting with peace. Cautiously, so as not to wake the baby, she stands back. I see Antony’s perfect, sleeping face.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Nina? You know he died of cot-death. I can’t believe how you keep going on about it when I’ve just had Antony. I told Edward about it and he wanted to have a word with you but I told him not to.’

  She smiles. ‘Isn’t it wonderful when they’re asleep?’

  Waves of peaceful conspiracy wash over me, but this time I’m going to struggle. ‘Isabel, when I saw you there –’ No, that isn’t the way. ‘Isabel, the night Colin died. You must think back, it’s important.’

  ‘I remember it,’ says Isabel. Her clear blue eyes look back at me, and there’s a delicate frown cut into her forehead.

  ‘Were you in his room? Before I woke up?’

  ‘Was I in his room? What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, did you go into Colin’s room? Did you stand by his cot, just like that, like you were standing by Antony’s?’

  ‘Why do you think that?’ asks Isabel quickly.

  ‘I saw it just now. You were standing there in your nightdress, the rosy nightdress. You remember, yours was pink and mine was blue. You turned round and spoke to me. You told me you were just getting the baby to sleep. “Go back to our room,” that’s what you said.’

  ‘What do you mean, you saw it?’

  ‘I saw it. I remembered it. You know how I remember things in pictures.’

  She is silent, gazing back at me out of her untroubled face. But I know Isabel too well not to see the thoughts that race, flicker, dive and surface again. She takes a step towards me, and then another. Suddenly the rose silk of the kimono is round me, folding me in. Isabel is breathing hard, her breath working up into sobs. I pull away and see that there are tears on her face and more welling at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘Oh Nina. Oh Neen,’ she stammers, her fine hands clasping mine. ‘I thought you’d really forgotten. I thought you wouldn’t ever remember.’

  ‘But I do remember.’

  ‘Don’t, Neen. Don’t, don’t. Don’t remember. You were only four. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know what you were doing.’

  Her big eyes swim at me, her face yearning with pity for me. I step back.

  ‘What? What do you mean, Isabel? Of course it wasn’t my fault. How could it have been my fault?’

  ‘Do you remember everything?’ she demands. She has the face of a compassionate judge.

  ‘Of course I do.’ But uncertainty runs round me like ice, taking me into a new climate. Through the fog and cold I’m beginning to see the bulk of Isabel’s truth, advancing like an iceberg to blot out my world.

  ‘You were only four,’ she explains. ‘You were jealous, of course you were. It was natural. That’s why I never made a fuss of Colin, or held him – you must remember that, Neen. Everyone thought it was strange, because I’d loved holding you when you were a baby. But I knew you hated it when I touched him. That’s why Mum didn’t go on breast-feeding him, because you were so jealous. She thought it’d make you feel better if he had bottles.’

  ‘You didn’t want to hold him,’ I say.

  ‘Of course I did. I always loved babies. Then that night, do you remember? – you got into trouble because you were jumping on the bed and making a noise and you woke him up. Mum was furious. I tried to make you feel better but I didn’t realize how upset you were really. Then we must have fallen asleep.’

  ‘But you were in the bedroom,’ I say. ‘You were leaning over his cot.’

  ‘Of course I was, but that was afterwards.’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘After I came in and found Colin. I’d heard you come back in the room and I thought you’d been to the toilet, but then I woke up properly and I knew you couldn’t have, because you were frightened of the cistern so you always woke me up to take you. So I thought something must be wrong. You were very cold so I wrapped you up in bed again. But you’d left the door open. I went to shut it and I saw Colin’s door was open as well. I went in and I found what you’d done. The pillow was still over his head.’ I stare at Isabel, unable to speak. ‘I knew they’d know it was you. Everyone’d said how jealous you were. I took off the pillow and turned him over and I knew he was dead because of the colour he’d gone. I arranged all the blankets again and put him so he looked as if he was asleep, facing the door. But when I turned round you were
there. You hadn’t gone back to sleep. I didn’t want to frighten you so I told you Colin had woken up and I was settling him. I didn’t want you to know what you’d done. I thought you’d never know. You might have forgotten it all in the morning.’

  I lick my lips. ‘I didn’t remember,’ I say in a crack of a voice.

  ‘I knew you didn’t. I could tell that in the morning. So after we’d played I pretended to go and see how Colin was. I wanted you not to think it had anything to do with you.’

  ‘Isabel.’ Fear, horror, admiration, disbelief fight in me. The iceberg slices the side of my ship, and I go down. But though I’m finished, Isabel doesn’t seem to know it, and her voice patters on. ‘That’s why I was ill. I had to keep it all in and not tell anyone. I couldn’t go to the funeral.’

  ‘You’ve never, then… You’ve never – told anyone?’

  ‘No,’ she says, holding my eyes, ‘of course not. I’ve never blamed you, Neen. I’ll never blame you for anything. I love you.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Nobody knows. Not Richard, not Edward. She hasn’t told anyone because it was too dangerous. I was her Neen, her baby. She thought they’d take me away if they knew.

  She loved me so much, I always knew that I always knew that Isabel loved me even more than our mother did, because she told me so. Often she walked me right to the end of Smeaton’s pier, when the tide was high and the fishing-boats were coming into harbour. We could look down through twenty feet of water that were as clear as jelly. If we fell we’d hang there like fruit in jelly. The wind blew, our hair flapped and she held my hand tight. The fall we might have fallen made my knees ache, but I was safe with Isabel. My mother would let her take me anywhere.

  ‘I’ve had to hide it all for so long. I’m sorry, Neen. I’m so, so sorry. If you hadn’t said anything I’d never have told you. But I swear I’ll never tell anyone else.’

  ‘Not even Richard?’

  ‘No.’

  And the evidence. She didn’t need to tell me what would have happened to the evidence. All dissolved now, vanished underground. Colin’s been buried so long. No one found any evidence then, and they never would now.

  ‘Did the police come?’ I ask. Isabel shakes her head so her hair gleams and ripples in the lamplight. Why am I thinking of how beautiful she is, now, when it’s the last thing that counts?