by Sam Hayes
‘I never nicked it!’ Gradin suddenly yells and explodes at the kitchen table, upturning it and sending cheese and bread and knives and glasses on to the floor. I jump back to avoid the knife from stabbing my foot but I don’t shout at Gradin. He’s had enough of that in his life.
Believing him is important. It doesn’t do to live a life stacked on lies. ‘If you say you didn’t take the money, then I believe you, Gradin. Will you help me clear up?’
And just like that I have them calibrated – their baseline reaction to accusation when they know they haven’t done anything wrong. There wasn’t any money in the tin in the first place.
By late afternoon, my finger is so sore that I can’t do anything with it. After Gradin’s emotional outburst, I really don’t want to leave the youngsters alone while I visit the GP, but I have no choice. I have an infection, and as much as I dislike doctors, I now need to see one. It all started last week with a splinter from the chicken house. I thought it would go away if I ignored it, but it hasn’t.
Witherly is a twenty-minute bus ride from Ely. They’re not for me any more, towns and cities – too much happening, too much going on, too many people getting on with their lives, with what they always planned to do. I might be clever walking a tightrope, but it’s never taken me anywhere.
The bus will drop me directly at the surgery on the city’s periphery. This I can manage. But keeping within the boundaries of my farm is what I strive for, and infected fingers are the kind of nuisance that throw me off course, make me wobble on my rope. For a moment, I understand completely why Gradin upturned the table.
As the bus plunders the patchwork of desolate fields, I recall the last time I saw my GP – Dr Dale, a fairly pleasant man in his sixties. It was a chest infection, years ago, and Julia insisted I make an appointment when I lost my voice. She was right to make me go, of course, and Dr Dale was right to fill me with antibiotics, but I can’t help wondering what would have happened if I’d overruled Julia. Would I have found my voice again?
As the bus rolls to a stop, I remind myself that this is only a quick visit to the surgery and nothing to worry about.
I stand alone on the pavement, perfectly still in the plume of diesel fumes as the bus rumbles away. I am doing the right thing.
At the surgery front desk, I receive a scowl from the receptionist when I reveal that I’ve made a short-notice appointment for such a trivial complaint. But it’s agony, I want to say, and filled with pus, but she only has eyes for the two dozen patients racked up and waiting to be seen before surgery ends at lunchtime.
‘Take a seat,’ she says, sighing, banging the computer keys.
I do as I’m told and take my book from my bag. I don’t like being idle, and time spent sitting in a waiting room needs to be filled.
It’s twenty minutes before the overhead display beeps and flashes my name to proceed to the blue room. My finger is on fire. Each consulting room door is colour-coded. I head for the correct sign, remembering that we are out of milk. I decide to walk to the shop around the corner before catching the bus home. As my hand reaches for the door handle, I think of Brenna and Gradin. I hope they’re being sensible. All these perfectly normal, everyday thoughts on the way down the long white corridor and it strikes me that perhaps the coloured doors match the type of illness. I go straight in without knocking.
I see not the bent frame of Dr Dale hunched over a stack of files, but another man tapping away at a computer. He doesn’t look up.
‘Take a seat and I’ll be with you in a moment.’
‘Thanks,’ I say in a whisper. Is it Dr Dale’s absence that has thrown me, or is it something else?
When he finally does give me his attention, when he slowly looks up and our eyes meet a thousand times over, the pain in my finger is nothing compared to the pain that reaches through my chest. Around me is a thick band of strapping pulled so tight that I can’t breathe, can’t speak. I want to scream but I can’t even open my mouth.
He is staring at me. Thirty years condense into a second. ‘How can I help you, Mrs . . .’ He hesitates for a moment, perhaps not sure if Mrs is correct. He swallows and allows a tiny frown, although I’m shaking too much to notice for certain. He glances at the computer screen, checks my name, and then, composing himself, stares right at me with his steely eyes on full beam. ‘. . . Miss Marshall?’ And there it is. The smile, the nose, the ears, the neck, the shoulders, the back, the legs, the hands, the everything.
After the split-second decision, he doesn’t miss a beat. His eyes slide into eager slices as if he has been waiting for this moment all his life. I half expect him to pat me on the back, shake my hand, peck my cheek.
I breathe – the only thing left for me to do. It takes all my courage, all my pride, all my strength not to run out of the surgery. I attempt a reply, calmly, as if I don’t know, as if I have no idea who he is, just so we can get this over with. Then I can go away, climb back up on to my tightrope and begin all over again. I want to tell him that my finger is sore – my finger is sore – but no words come out. Instead, I hold out my hand.
‘Let me take a look.’
Do not shake, I beg of my body, but it does and he has to hold my wrist steady.
‘Your finger is infected. How did it happen?’ He is so near. I can feel the heat from his body. Is that his jaw tightening as he touches me?
My mouth opens but there’s still silence. I want to tell him that a splinter from the chicken house snagged under my nail but the words catch in my throat. Not only is my finger filled with pus, but now my head is too and it’s crazed with fuzzy images of the chickens and the incessant rain and Gradin tipping over the table and the lake and . . .
The doctor smiles. His crooked tooth has been fixed. ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a minor infection. Not allergic to anything, are you?’ He laughs – perhaps nervously – and scans my notes. He wants to make me better. Honestly, I don’t think he knows what to say.
I shake my head.
Seconds later, a prescription is printed and he hands it to me.
‘Three a day for a week.’ He smiles again. He pauses, then opens his mouth to say something but shies away from it, dipping his head as if he can avoid everything that easily. ‘Bathe your finger in hot salty water and keep it elevated whenever you can.’ His voice becomes shaky, tense, his words tied up and strangled. He leans forward on his elbows. His face is close. ‘And no self-lancing,’ he instructs before grinning again, suddenly returning to easy-doctor mode. He reclines in his chair and clicks the computer screen on to his next patient.
He is as slick as that. As if he doesn’t know, as if he doesn’t recognise me, as if he’s never seen me before in his life. He is done with me.
As I leave, floating out of the consulting room, I see his name stuck on the door: Dr David Carlyle.
MURRAY
‘Dinner? You’re having dinner with your mother’s doctor?’ I weigh this up. Perhaps it’s not as bad as it sounds.
‘We’ll be discussing Mum. Other stuff. It’s not what you’re thinking. Really.’ Julia is standing, shivering, holding our children’s hands, not really wanting to pass them over, but she knows if she wants this dinner badly enough, she’s going to have to.
I can’t help the grin, a shake of my head. ‘Suddenly my boat’s not so bad, then?’ I like it that she needs me; I like it that there must be a remnant of trust. I don’t like it that she’s going out with another man.
‘Just keep them inside. I won’t be late.’
Julia is wearing a grey duffle coat and a pale pink mohair hat. I know that she has gloves to match but she isn’t wearing them. Her cheeks are pink, too; pools of excitement on her tired face.
‘What if we want to go out?’ I say snappily, and then wish I hadn’t.
‘Then don’t.’
‘But . . .’
‘Murray, for God’s sake. Just keep the children warm and happy for three hours while I have dinner. Is this such a big deal?’
‘You’re right. It’s no big deal. Going anywhere nice?’
Julia sighs with relief. She even smiles. ‘David recommended the Three Feathers in Burwell. Apparently their steaks are to die for.’ She bends down and kisses first Alex and then Flora. She signs that she is to stay inside the boat. Whatever Daddy says.
I do good steaks, I think. I could cook you steak. ‘Shall I keep them overnight? They’ll be asleep when you get back. It seems cruel to wake them.’
‘I’ll fetch them tonight. They can sleep in tomorrow. School’s not back until Monday.’
There is no use arguing with Julia. Not now we’re like this. It was once true that if I didn’t like the colour she wanted to paint the bedroom or wasn’t keen on the shirt she’d bought for me, I’d say so. Say it strongly, if I had to. Sometimes she would buckle over these wonderful, trivial, but most important issues. Sometimes she wouldn’t budge. Either way, we were still together.
‘What if I’m asleep?’
Passed out, more like. We’re both thinking it.
‘Then I’ll knock loudly. Or I’ll rock the boat.’
‘There’s a programme on,’ I lie. ‘I’ll be awake.’
Julia slips her fingers from the children’s hands – I can see she is reluctant to leave them – and kisses them once again. ‘Thanks, Murray,’ she says and walks off down the towpath to the bridge at the junction where Burwell Lode meets the River Cam. Her car, I am assuming, will be parked nearby and she will scoot off to Burwell to meet Dr Nice.
‘Hey, kids,’ I say loudly, ‘fancy playing blindfold games on the roof of Alcatraz? With knives?’
Julia’s steps lose their purposeful beat for just a moment and then she resumes her pace until she is out of sight.
‘What’s Alcatraz?’ Alex asks.
‘My boat, dummy.’ I help him aboard.
‘Duh.Yeah, but what is it?’ At eleven, I can’t expect him to know.
‘A prison,’ I reply, and realise that’s exactly what it is.
I am five and a half years older than Julia. Not such a big deal; not when you’re our age. But as kids, I was angry that we were lifetimes apart.
I first fell in love with Julia when she was less than a week old. With her skin as delicate as the wing of a butterfly and her eyes barely able to focus, I kissed her tiny hand when no one was looking. Her fingers coiled around my bottom lip, and when I pulled away, her nail snagged my skin. As she sat propped precariously on my small lap, Julia had an impact on me for the first time.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t experienced babies and their ways. Six months earlier, I had acquired a baby sister of my own. It took me a few weeks to realise that the wrinkled, squawking creature that took up all of my mother’s time wasn’t a temporary glitch in our otherwise settled family life. No, Nadine was here to stay, and however hard I tried, I couldn’t get used to her. I preferred Julia.
But then if it wasn’t for Nadine’s arrival, I wouldn’t ever have known Julia. Babies brought people together, and even though my mother was slightly older than Mary Marshall, the two of them became firm friends. They had babies in common. They had time to spare; time to meet, share, play and compare, and over the years the Marshall household became my second home.
We didn’t stay long, that first visit. There were lots of people there besides us. And I remember thinking, why is the vicar here, consoling, passing between groups of visitors as if someone has died? Surely having a baby is a happy occasion? Beneath the smiles and coos delivered to baby Julia, there was a layer of sadness that even a five-year-old could detect.
Mary Marshall got lots of presents that day, mostly for Julia. Knitted hats, rag books, crocheted blankets, towelling baby suits and tiny vests. My mother gave her a stuffed rabbit and some cream in a pot. Both were home-made. But Mary Marshall sat coldly in a chair beside the fire – the chair that, as kids, we were always told not to sit in – and she hardly even acknowledged her baby.
The next time I fell in love with Julia was at Christmas. I’m not sure which one, but she was walking, just, so she would have been one, maybe two. Me, I was a big fat seven. I taught Julia the meaning of giving that season when I urged her to hand over all her sweets and let me play with her new toys. She protested at first, howling in her uncomfortable nappy, but then she watched in awe as I set out her painted blocks. I placed them in a crooked wall, letter side out, so they spelled our names. Julia and Murray locked together. She howled when they fell over. Why, every time that baby cried, did someone scoop her up and feed her or change her and take her away from me?
I remember that Mary Marshall didn’t go out much, if ever. Kids pick up on these things, file away meaningless slices of adult information until decades later, when they piece them back together. Mary had an illness, they said. A fear of open spaces, unfamiliar places, other people, strangers. People would come and sit with her in those early days, cajoling and laughing around her. Trying to bring her back to life, I overheard my mother say. But I understood perfectly why Mary didn’t want to go out: she had Julia.
At my young age, I didn’t realise that being an unmarried mother wasn’t something you broadcast; that taking care of a fatherless baby carried particular stigma. Not even in 1977, when the entire country was dressed in red, white and blue and the summer was filled with street parties and fêtes, egg-and-spoon races and fancy-dress discos. Great Britain was celebrating; the people were happy. Then, amid the streamers and good spirit, the patriotism and first-day covers, someone said that Mary Marshall should have been ashamed of herself.
When Julia started at St Augustus Primary School, I was almost ready to move on to the local comprehensive. One year, that’s all I had, to teach her the ways of the playground. I remember her standing there, in the whitest of white socks pulled up on legs that took nearly two decades to gain any shape. She looked like an angel, a sad one. Her hair fell across her face and tears welled in her eyes. She was alone and she wanted her mother.
I started off across the playground. I didn’t care what my friends thought of me hanging out with a first-year girl. I wanted to protect her, scoop her up and take her back home where I knew she would be safe.
In the previous five years, Mary Marshall had somehow gathered herself together and become the perfect mother for her daughter. It was a long journey but a necessary one. Julia needed her mother as much as her mother needed Julia. They reared lambs together, sowed lettuce seeds with freezing fingers in January; they made ginger beer in the summer and served it up with ice and a sprig of mint when I visited. Mary and Julia’s café, they pretended. Julia rode a pony, a stocky Shetland called Alfie, and she laughed when I tried to ride him. My legs nearly touched the ground. More than a dozen summers, over a dozen winters, and packets and packets of memories. Mary Marshall – no wonder – had fallen right in love with Julia too.
A ball smacked her in the side of the head. I watched as Julia fought back the tears on her first day at school. Her chin quivered, her lips puckered and her eyes watered. I froze, halfway across the playground, so near and yet far enough away to be of no use at all. From that moment, I made a promise. I would never let anyone ever hurt Julia Marshall.
Yep, the kids are fine. The portable TV crackles a grainy picture at them and Flora isn’t even bothered that there aren’t any subtitles. They are watching a crime show; an investigation into an old murder case where they are exhuming bodies all over the place. I asked if they would prefer a cartoon.
I stand up and knock over my drink.
‘Sshh, Dad,’ Alex whines when I swear. ‘This is a good bit.’
Flora ha
s a little doll who’s buried under the cushions. She makes a fuss of digging about for it and then mothering it and cuddling it when she finds it. She pops it back in and does it all over again. It makes me wonder if she is copying what’s on the television. I flick the channel and ignore Alex when he yells out in protest.
‘Anybody for another drink?’ I ask, forgetting to sign at Flora. I pour another whisky. ‘Cheers, then, me old mate,’ I say when no one replies, and flop back on to the beanbag.
There’s only room for that and one small sofa inside Alcatraz. Built in 1972, she boasts a certain vintage appeal – mainly through the mustard curtains and the faux-wood interior. But her engine runs sweet and her body’s just about holding out. Alcatraz is now my home.
‘Are you all right, kids?’ I check again. If I can smell it on my own breath, Julia will. Not that I care, at this time of night, after this much whisky. I should care, I know that much, but the quantity inside me makes it impossible. Alex grudgingly confirms that they are fine and changes the channel back. I can see they are OK. They are six feet away. They are watching dead bodies on television and their father is drinking whisky. We are all OK.
But is Julia OK? I wonder, suddenly remembering where she is when I’ve spent all evening trying to forget. Is she leaning across a table, her face inches away from Dr Nice? Is he flashing a brilliant smile at her that outshines all of my smiles added together? Does Julia ask him about his career, what car he drives, where he takes his holidays? Does she notice that he’s a good deal older than her – and richer, able to provide everything that I couldn’t?
I stand up and pace across the beam of the boat, rocking it in the still water. ‘Definitely very much the wrong side of forty,’ I say, the realisation of my comparative youth some comfort. Then I laugh. ‘Even pushing fifty. What’s she doing going out with an older man?’ What, I wonder, as I drain the bottle into my tumbler, is wrong with me?