Talking to the Dead

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘The doctor came.’

  ‘Did he ask us what happened?’

  ‘Of course not. We weren’t the ones who’d found Colin. We’d been asleep all night, just like we usually were.’

  ‘And you didn’t – you never said anything to them?’

  A tiny, sideways movement of Isabel’s head. She watches me intently.

  ‘Are you all right, Neen? You look awful.’

  ‘I’m – I don’t know. I don’t feel like me any more.’

  ‘It’s because it was a shock. You didn’t realize before. You never knew anything. I always knew you didn’t.’ She smiles fluently at me, offering me back my innocence. ‘You could never have pretended so well. You know how they say children bury memories deep down, if something terrible happens.’

  ‘I must have known. You can’t do something like that and not know it.’ I circle round the words that I can’t bring myself to say. A four-year-old girl, me, put a pillow over the head of a baby and pressed down until he was dead, and then she went back into her room and slept until morning. And never said anything about it, or did anything, or remembered anything. Why don’t my hands remember? Why don’t my fingers ache? He must have struggled.

  ‘You remember the games we used to play with our dolls?’ says Isabel. ‘They were always being ill and dying and having funerals and then coming back to life. You must have thought that would happen to Colin. You only did to him what you’d done to your doll lots of times. You didn’t really know what death was.’

  But I did. I went to the funeral and saw him come out in that little white box in our father’s arms. The lid was down, fastened down, and it would never be taken off. I understood that and I was afraid when I looked at my mother’s terrible face. I knew something about death.

  ‘Isabel.’ My voice scrapes. ‘Thank you.’

  Isabel’s eyes widen. ‘Thank you? What for?’

  ‘Not saying anything.’

  ‘I’ll never say anything. You can trust me, Neen.’

  I stare at her. The thought ripples in me that even if she did say something now, no one would believe her. There is no evidence, so it’s Isabel’s word against mine. Even my mother is firmly dead, and I think that only she could ever dare to put together the threads of such a story.

  ‘Go to bed,’ says Isabel. ‘Go to sleep, Neen. You look worn out.’

  My sister stares deep into my eyes. Her body is a column of calm and there is still a tiny half-smile on her face. All I’ve been thinking about since I got here is her weakness, her fragility, but now that is stripped away and it’s easy to see how strong she really is. She’s said nothing for twenty-five years. And not only that, she’s never changed towards me. I try to think what it must be like to take the hand of a four-year-old who’s killed her baby brother, and lead her back to bed. Without frightening me. And then taking away the pillow, and rearranging Colin to lie ‘as if he was asleep’.

  I wonder what would have happened if Isabel hadn’t thought so quickly? I would have had a different life, not my own life. What life I possess, I possess because Isabel’s given it to me. Isabel is my mother.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ says Isabel. ‘Go to sleep. We won’t ever talk about it again. It’ll be the same as it’s always been.’

  There’s a tiny sigh, a huff of breath from Antony’s cot.

  I sleep. I am by the sea, the wind blowing, the rage of gulls in my ears. We’re climbing cliffs, too high. The noise of the gulls changes into angry voices above my head. I am small and half-hidden in my mother’s skirt, standing in the cold blowing street while the adults talk over me.

  ‘I’ve said to myself many a time seeing your girl pass, she’s too young to be let out with that pram. If Jos Quick hadn’t made a grab for it your littl’un ud have been a goner.’

  My mother, cold, clipped. ‘It was an accident. She’s very sorry.’

  ‘I daresay. She was poking about there in the floats and nets, did you know that? Had her back to the pram though she’d gone and left it right on the edge of the pier with the brake off. Did she tell you that?’

  ‘Of course she did.’

  ‘She wants her backside tanned if you ask me. How old is she? Seven? Old enough to know better.’

  ‘It won’t happen again.’

  The voices change. They are gulls now, not women. One of them hurtles down the air towards me, braking just above my head. I feel its claws in my hair, tangling, dragging, lifting to carry me away with it to its carrion nest on the cliffs. I wake with an icy jolt to my watch showing 4.17. The dream is so clear that I put my hand to my hair. But the voices are fading already, becoming noise, not words. A few seconds after I come out of the dream it has dissolved.

  But I’m not out of sleep yet. The dream has given way to another dream. My mother stays. She isn’t angry any more, but I can see her sitting on my bed, crossing her legs with a faint rasp of nylon. She must be going out somewhere, because for work she wears trousers and an overall and she smells of clay dust, not gardenia. It’s evening and I’m ready for bed, but Isabel hasn’t come upstairs yet. My legs are long now and my feet make a bump well down the bedclothes. I’m seven or eight. My mother looks at me and says, ‘I’ve always known I can leave my purse anywhere in the house and you and Isabel won’t touch it.’ And I nod, proud, enthralled with the idea of my own honesty. ‘Never mind, Nina,’ she says.

  ‘Never mind what?’

  ‘It was just –’ she looks carefully away, ‘just I thought I had more money than I found I had, when I came to pay the milkman.’

  ‘You must have spent it already.’

  ‘Yes, I must.’ She reaches over to the funny lock of hair which always flops over my face unless I stab it firmly with a kirbigrip. She strokes the hair back.

  ‘Is my hair nearly as long as Isabel’s?’ I ask.

  ‘Not quite.’ My mother is always truthful. Sometimes I think less truth would make our life more comfortable.

  ‘Is anything worrying you, Nina?’ asks my mother, suddenly, surprising me. This is not her sort of question.

  ‘No. Of course not.’ I make my eyes as honest as I can in the semi-dark.

  ‘I just thought that sometimes – it might be difficult for you, having Isabel – having an elder sister ahead of you all the time.’

  ‘You mean, because Isabel’s so good at everything.’

  ‘Not only that.’

  I try to think what my mother can possibly mean. Of course Isabel is better than me at school, but I’m used to that. Teachers remember Isabel all the way up the school and when I arrive in the class they’re ready for me. I’m haunted by the ghost of her perfect copying, and by the neat way her socks stay up. I have been shown pages of Isabel’s exercise books with her sums done so beautifully that the teacher has given her not only ten red stars but a silver rabbit to stick on to the book.

  ‘Because she’s got longer hair and everything?’

  ‘Mm. No. I just wondered if you wanted to do more things on your own. Without Isabel.’

  ‘I like being with Isabel.’

  ‘I know you do. But you like drawing and Isabel doesn’t.’

  ‘I always do drawing while Isabel’s busy.’

  ‘Yes. But you’re quite good at drawing. It won’t develop unless you work on it.’

  My mother sounds as if she’s talking to a grown-up, not me. I wriggle round in the bed. ‘You could give us lessons,’ I suggest. I know that my mother doesn’t mean Isabel and me, she means just me, but perversely I don’t want to acknowledge that Isabel can draw a vase of daisies and a cat watching a goldfish. And that’s that. People at school hang over her desk when she does them.

  ‘Isabel’s going to tea with Katie Trevose tomorrow. Why don’t you come then?’ She shifts her weight I know she’ll only ask me once, because that’s how my mother is. She never tries to persuade us.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Good.’ She pats my legs. I slide down in the bed, silent. Isab
el will be coming to bed in a minute. Will she be able to smell my treachery in the air?

  I am awake now. Really awake. I have got to think what to do. It’s later than I thought; I must have fallen asleep again. It’s ten to six and the room is light. I’m hungry.

  No one else is up yet, not even the baby. There’s nothing in the cupboards. Instant coffee, two packets of Weetabix, cheap jelly marmalade. Isabel grows her own vegetables, but she also has a freezer full of Mother’s Pride and beef sausages. I reach into the hollow china duck where keys are kept. Yes, Richard’s left his car keys.

  It’s nice to be back in a car, in its city smell of used-up air. I click on the radio, turn on the ignition and reverse carefully round the pond. As I come out on to the track I have the feeling I’m being watched. I keep on, driving faster than I should on the rough surface, not looking back.

  Town’s empty too. I park the car and walk down Wash Street towards the corner where I remember a bakery. I can smell it already, the warmth of new bread curling out into the grey streets. The grey is thinning to blue and it’ll be hot again, of course. It takes so little time to get used to a climate where the sun always shines.

  It’s a good bakery. I buy cheese bread and a wheel of fresh pizza in a white cardboard box, two French sticks and a sticky dark loaf with sunflower seeds in it. I buy a box of home-made shortbread, and five cream doughnuts. Susan, Richard, Edward, Nina. And Isabel. The assistant finds carrier bags and packs the stuff in. I add a pot of ginger chutney, and just then the first batch of croissants comes in on a stained metal tray and I buy twelve. I walk out, my arms, full, peering over bags and boxes. A man walking his dog smiles at me. ‘You’ve a family to feed all right,’ he says, and I nod and smile and imagine the person who might go home to the scrubbed wooden table and the Aga and the scrubbed blond children, and dump the parcels on the table saying breathlessly, ‘Now, darlings, don’t all grab at once…’

  I stow the bags and get into the car. The streets are clean and empty, and I drive on a rush of exhilaration, out of the town, accelerating on to the wide white road that curves past the bottom of the Downs. The sun is up and there are fresh blue shadows at the side of the road. Over the Downs the sky is shining and the car smells of bread and pizza. The radio’s playing ‘Turn your back on me’… and then a lorry grows huge in the driving mirror, all metal teeth so close up I think it’s going to hit until at the last moment it swings out. Its huge wheels thud the road alongside me, jouncing the car, taking up the whole road as a blind corner comes up fast. Its brakes hiss enormously but it keeps going, trundling beside me in a blind thunder of weight and speed. The moment stretches, the huge wheels churn in the window space beside me, so close I could put out my hand. But nothing happens. No car coming the other way, no moment where being alive explodes into what? Nothing happens. I hold the wheel tight The windows are wide open and I hear a bird sing in the hedge on my left. Then the lorry rocks in ahead of me, straightens, drives on. I am less than half a mile from the turn-off to the track.

  I turn off, and stop the car. The birds sing louder. I feel no different this morning from any other morning. It hasn’t sunk in, I tell myself. I am still living as if I don’t know the truth of what I am. The morning world is as new and shiny as it’s ever been. The track ahead of me bulges with cows’ backsides as they walk slowly, willingly, and I put the car into gear and drive behind, at their pace.

  Richard’s in the kitchen, giving the baby his bottle. I carry in all my bags and boxes, and kick the door shut. He looks at me, but says nothing. The baby is crumpled and tiny against his blue shirt. Richard looks up at me but his face is hard to read.

  ‘Breakfast,’ I say, dumping everything on the table.

  ‘Smells good.’

  ‘It’ll be good. The only thing I couldn’t get was coffee.’

  ‘There’s a jar in the cupboard.’

  ‘I’m sure there is. I’m talking about coffee.’

  ‘You’re a snob, did you know that? A food snob.’

  Our conversation is as tinny as an advert. I go over and stand close to him, and the baby looks up, but not at us. It occurs to me suddenly that you could do anything you liked in front of a baby. It frightens me to think of the power that comes with the birth of a child.

  ‘He’s drinking it.’

  ‘Of course he is,’ says Richard. ‘He’s already had two bottles in the night. I’m sorry to say it, but Susan’s mother was right. He was hungry.’

  ‘She’s a bitch.’

  ‘But sexy, don’t you think? Unlike Susan.’

  ‘Susan’s sexy.’

  ‘Not as sexy as you.’

  ‘Jesus, Richard, why are we having such a crap conversation at this time of the morning?’

  ‘I don’t know. I find it hard to know what to say to you.’

  I put croissants on to plates, find some raspberry jam in the cupboard, cut bread and get a clean pale slab of butter out of the fridge.

  ‘It’s nice watching you,’ says Richard. ‘You ran off last night.’

  ‘You were pushing me.’

  I watch his hand holding the bottle, his broad thumb under the nipple. I love how experienced he looks.

  ‘Were you watching me from the window this morning, when I drove off?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought someone was.’

  ‘Might have been Isabel. She didn’t sleep, that’s why I’m giving Ant here his bottles.’

  Ant. He says it with casual affection, as if for the first time the baby’s a real person to him. And then he smiles down at the baby and says, ‘You’re doing all right on this stuff, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’ll take him,’ I say, and hold out my arms. ‘You can make the coffee.’

  Richard lifts the drowsy, wobbling baby. I take him, putting two fingers to support his neck. A burp of milk runs out of his mouth and he sneezes, and then falls asleep, hanging from my hands like a kitten. I ease him into the crook of my arm and stare down at him as Richard moves around the kitchen, taking mugs off hooks and filling the kettle. How light he is. How easy it would be to hurt him. But is being afraid of how easy it would be the same thing as wanting to do it? Layers of wanting and not wanting look into themselves like mirrors. I don’t want to hurt him, but I’m afraid of wanting to hurt him. Just one finger over his nostrils would do it. And there’s his pulse, bumping away in the tender centre of his head. It makes me dizzy to think how easy it would be to hurt him. He is curled in on himself, trusting the world to hold him because he has no other choice. I think of the children in the orphanage in Romania, reaching out for their drums and tambourines. They have no choice either. If any light shines, they have to turn towards it. But there’s an instinct, surely there’s an instinct that keeps us from doing a baby harm? Children burn with jealousy but they don’t do anything. Even a jealous, raging four-year-old can tell the difference between her brother and a doll. I was a child and innocent I never cut worms in half, or stamped on flies.

  But my dolls were always alive to me. They had moods and dreams. They could be hurt and then comforted. That was the magic power we had, me and Isabel. We were their parents and we were omnipotent. I’ve put out of my mind some of those games we played.

  ‘Richard.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you ever feel frightened, you know, when you’re holding him – in case you drop him?’

  ‘All the time. I’m glad to hear women do as well.’

  ‘But you get used to it.’

  ‘It doesn’t take long, does it? Look at you.’

  I look at myself. A young woman in her sister’s kitchen, holding her baby nephew while her brother-in-law makes coffee. The baby sleeps peacefully and the young woman’s fingers curl protectively around his head.

  ‘They’re tougher than you think, anyway,’ says Richard. ‘Isabel dropped him once and it didn’t seem to do much harm.’

  ‘God, did she really? When was that?’ I feel curiously relieved. If even Isabe
l –

  ‘Just after she got back from hospital. She was very shaky. I came in and there he was on the floor with poor Isabel on the floor too trying to pick him up. She was in a terrible state.’

  He planks a mug of coffee down in front of me.

  ‘Don’t put it there, Richard.’

  ‘It’s OK. He can’t grab stuff yet.’

  ‘I just keep thinking of things like the coffee spilling on his head.’

  ‘It won’t.’ But he moves the mug. ‘What you’re afraid of never happens,’ he says. ‘It’s the things you don’t think of that happen.’ Then he comes round behind me, pulls my head back, lets his fingers slide round my cheek, my jaw, my throat. He finds textures in me that were never there before.

  ‘Are you going out later?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The river.’

  ‘I’ll get you a croissant. Stay there.’

  I eat it with my eyes shut: the jam, the cold, salty butter, the warm dissolving layers of pastry. He feeds it into my mouth inch by inch and I eat it down to the crisp, burnt point.

  ‘I’ll come,’ he says. ‘What time?’

  ‘About three.’

  ‘You’ll be there.’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  You don’t know who you’re talking to, I think.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There is a way out to the water-meadows through the garden. It’s a little door cut into the side wall, covered with creepers. Hard to see if you’re not looking. It isn’t locked, and outside there are planks laid over what would be boggy ground in any summer but this. No water now, only pale, dry grass. I shut the door behind me, the door Isabel didn’t find the first time she came to her garden. Edward’s gone to London for the day. I should be there too, but I’m not going. I had two calls this morning about the Romanian job, one to fix dates, the other to sort out a meeting as soon as possible. I wanted to go. While I was talking into the phone I felt like a different person, quick and definite, someone who knew how to think her way around a project as well as how to take the pictures and do the drawings. They need to meet me soon. I have to plan how I’ll respond to what’s going on before it’s all happening in front of me in a foreign language.