‘It’s for your own good,’ Hazel explained once, as, after a flurry of whispering, they unhooked the ladder and slid it under Hazel’s bunk. So I lay awake, even until after their scuffling and giggling had stopped, too embarrassed to jump down, afraid that I would wet the bed and that my pee would drip through the mattress on to Hazel and Bridget below.
In the morning I walked Puddle-duck home. It was Mummy’s idea. She put his pyjamas and toothbrush in a carrier bag and helped him strap his hearing-aids on. She even combed his hair that was so greasy the comb-marks stayed in. It was half-past ten when we went round. We had had bacon and scrambled eggs and I had looked at the Giles cartoon in the Sunday Express like I did every Sunday. It was mid-morning in our house but in Wanda’s flat it was the crack of dawn. Puddle-duck shouted ‘Hello’ very loudly as we came in, but it was all dark and quiet. Eventually I heard a moan from behind Wanda’s door. ‘Hello,’ I called brightly, ‘I’ve just walked back with Vassily.’
The door opened and Wanda came out. She was wearing a green nylon baby-doll nightie, very short and completely transparent and her hair was a massive tangle. ‘What time do you call this?’ she said.
I looked at my watch. ‘Twenty to eleven.’
‘Oh. Oh well.’ She gave a rueful smile and went into the kitchen. I could see everything, all her bottom, even a little mole in the middle of one buttock. She put the kettle on, stretched and yawned. She smelled like a mouse cage and under her arms were ovals of coarse black stubble.
‘Coffee?’ she offered.
‘No thanks.’
‘Has he been good? Come here, little spook, did you miss me?’ She pulled him against her so that his face was only a film of green nylon away from her breasts and squeezed him energetically.
‘He’s been very good,’ I said. I was wondering if she’d heard us the day before, but she showed no sign.
‘I’m no good till I’ve had my fix,’ she said, stumbling over to fill the kettle and unscrew a jar of Nescafé. She licked her finger, dipped it in the jar and licked off the granules. She spooned some more into a jar and yawned again. Vassily wandered off.
‘We played Cluedo,’ I said, just for something to say.
‘Yeah?’
‘Well … Bye.’ There was too much flesh and human smell in Wanda’s kitchen for me. It made me blush, thinking of Puddle-duck so close to an as good as naked woman – even if it was his mother. I’d seen Mummy naked, drying herself after a bath or swimming, she was very open in that way, a way that Daddy frowned upon and called ‘Scandinavian’ as if that was a swear word. But Mummy’s body was shivery and neat and matter-of-fact. Somehow Wanda’s body, the bosoms, the bottom, the dark place under the rounded curve of her belly, made me think of Daddy running through the hall all wild and exposed. The thought of all the hairy, shadowy, purply, secret places, adult pulpiness and smells, made me feel hot and sick. I went home and straight up the ladder to the tree-house where I watched my neat and tidy ants.
11
Past four o’clock. Past the deepest hours of the night. Approaching the time when I will take Foxy her cup of tea. Assam with a drip of milk and one teaspoonful of sugar – to start her up as she says. Like Wanda with her Nescafé fix. And she will stretch and yawn and I will breathe in her adorable blend of sleepy and intimate smells. Approaching that time. I will wake her at seven – no six-thirty. I will cook breakfast for her, her favourite breakfast: fried mushrooms on toast with lemon juice and black pepper sprinkled on top. I will spoil her because she will be spoiling me, driving me all the way to my parents’ house when I could perfectly well drive myself. When we get there she won’t stay, not for more than a cup of tea. She will not wish to intrude on our family at such a time. I can just see, just hear, her saying it. How well I know her. And I will want to shout, But you are my family. If she was a man she would be, if we were married she would be. She would be my next-of-kin in the eyes of the law. Our eyes don’t count in this.
I clear away the glasses and plates. Quarter of a bottle of wine left. I retrieve the cork from under the table and force it back into the neck of the bottle. A sign that it is really morning – I will drink no more wine, my body has crossed the divide between late and early, greets the idea of alcohol with revulsion now, craves coffee instead. The kitchen floor gleams. That’s something good I’ve done tonight.
And I’ve learned some things about my father. The sitting-room feels too hot and stuffy. I gather up all the scraps of paper, all those tiny words. I carry them into the kitchen where the light is brighter, a horrible fluorescent tube that flickers and stutters for about five minutes when you switch it on so we leave it on all night. We’re always saying we’ll fix it but we never do. Never have, yet.
4.43 Planes overhead invisible … est canopy … big jobs, multi-eng … gue of lice … splits … ter filth … but … Vin … ch … ter
Oh it is useless. What can I make of it but splintered suffering? Suffering he wanted to forget. Why do it? Maybe my mother is right. Why rake over dying coals? Why waken the sleeping dogs? Why ransack the cupboards for skeletons? But … Vince mentioned again. Obviously a great friend. I think about my father’s friends that I met. Those he played golf with; those he played bridge with; people from work; people who came to dinner; people whose loud voices and cigarette smoke drifted up the stairs; people who patted our heads, mine and Hazel’s, and said, ‘Aren’t they different, Ralph. Chalk and cheese.’
detachment of Aust … and wash and … and teak I … orchids … ible variety … ugly chocolate brown … purple … fleshy and a mass of mauve…
I can’t look at this any more. He should have had it back. He should have had the choice. The dead man, the Reverend Priest, should have sent it back to him. I feel a spurt of anger that he lied to my father. Anger with his widow for sending what was left of the diary to Mummy instead of directly to him. Anger with Mummy for sending them to me instead of giving them to him. For not respecting Daddy enough to allow him to make his own choice. They were his memories, nobody else’s. And, inevitably, anger with myself for not taking action sooner, for putting it off until it was too late. Now he can never forgive his cowardly friend. Would he have forgiven, laughed it off, the disgusting fate of most of his diary? Would he have understood? I don’t know. I did not know him well enough to possibly know. What was in his head when he died? Why choose yesterday instead of today, tomorrow, this time next year? I wonder if these scraps, these scrubby bits of paper would have helped, would have saved him? When he stood on the chair, or the step-ladder, whatever he stood on, when he slipped his head through the noose – how did he know how to make a noose? I wouldn’t know how. When he kicked away the chair, when he felt the rope jerk and clench his throat, heard the clatter of the fallen chair, felt the pressure … what …?
No. I cannot. No. What shall I do? What shall I do?
My Daddy.
I need … I cannot … I must calm down. Must breathe. The kitchen floor is cool and clean beneath my feet. My feet are white, my nails are cut. The knees of my pyjamas are bagged. What will I wear tomorrow? Black? I often wear black anyway. There used to be rules, precise periods of mourning: two and a half years for a parent, three months for an aunt. Each period had its own uniform. Black crêpe and bombazine for deepest mourning, shading through heliotrope or grey for half-mourning. Black silk ribbons threaded through the hems of the drawers and petticoats of Victorian women. I bought a job lot once. Long white drawers with black ribbons. They sold well. Mourning drawers. I should have kept a pair back. It’s so free now. You can wear what the hell you like, yellow to a funeral, black to a wedding. Who will give a damn?
A tiny fragment drifts to the floor. There is no breeze. No movement. But it seems to pick itself up and flutter to the floor. Almost as if it has been selected by invisible fingers. Goose-pimples rise on my arms as I bend down for it. It is the scrappiest little bit of paper, eaten by ants or something until it is nothing but grubby lace. I strain my eyes but
there is no message there for me. I thought maybe … I cannot pick out a single whole word. Is that it then finally? No message.
I hope Mummy is asleep, and Hazel and Huw, though it makes me lonely to hope that. It’s as if they are on the other side. As if I am dead and they are alive or the other way round. But not forever. One day forever, but not yet. I hear the sound of an engine outside, a car starting up and my heart lifts. Someone is up and awake and off to work. Outside the window, the street is dark, the street-lamps flick on as I look, dull red brightening to orange. The glass is cold and soothing to my brow. At the door I put on a pair of Wellingtons, Foxy’s, too big for my cold bare feet, gritty inside. I open the door and go down the concrete steps on to the front path, in time to see the car disappear round the corner. I listen to the sound die away. There are lots of sounds – more weighty vehicles, juggernauts, on the distant motorway, the thin dreamy wail of a child. Several lights on in the flats opposite. Daft to imagine myself alone. I should get a computer and hitch myself up to the Internet – then I could connect with people in another time-zone, or form an insomniacs club in this one. Perhaps there is already one in existence, a network of bleary-eyed folk, having virtual sex, virtual relationships, living virtual lives all through the lonely night.
A cat slinks up to me, its eyes collecting and refracting what little light there is into crazed gold. It rubs against my boots. I pick it up and snuggle my face in its cold fur but it struggles and I put it down. It stands for a moment beside me, its tail held very high. It reminds me of myself. It wants to be close but not to be held. I feel trapped with arms around me for more than a moment. Even Foxy’s arms. I cannot stay in them for long without feeling breathless. I try to remember my father’s arms around me. I don’t think they ever were though surely he must have held me as a baby. Sometimes there was the bristly whisky-scented brush of a kiss on the cheek, whisky-scented because he would have been drinking if he was moved to kiss me. And now his lips, his mouth, is dead. Bristles keep on growing after death and finger and toe-nails. My toe-nails are clipped, gathered and put in the bin. Dead bits of me. I want to wake Foxy. I can’t be alone any more. I’m frightened. It is homing in on me, settling like a swarm, not just the fact of Daddy’s death but the fact of death, of mortality. Mine.
I must stop thinking.
Foxy.
It is cold out here with a clean lemon line of dawn just starting to edge the roofs. The sky is punctured by a single star.
In bed. She grumbles a bit in her sleep when my cold feet brush against her, my cold knees nudging into the heat of the back of hers. I should not, I should leave her but my cold hands are desperate for her warmth. My face presses against her back, I move my hand on to her belly that has slid sideways with the gravity of sleep. I feel goose-pimples spread on her skin as my chill affects her, as I steal her warmth. I slide my hand up to her breast and feel the nipple pucker. I push my body closer. If I was a man I would enter her like this. How it must feel for a cold and lonely man to bury himself in a woman. Just now I can feel the weakness of a man, his penis tensed and shuddering, yearning towards completeness. I slide my hand between her legs. She is awake now. Not that she has given a sign, but the quality of her awareness has changed the minute tensions in her body. Her breathing is deeper. Her body grows hotter, she pushes her back against me, her bottom, and her heat floods me. Her live heat.
But one day she will be dead.
I cannot do it, touch her any more.
This is the morning after the day my father died.
One day the hand that absorbs her humidity will be only bones, she will be bones. I take my hand away and she gives a disgruntled sigh.
Foxy – Sybil to me then – came into Second Hand Rose to buy a hat for somebody’s wedding. It was years since I’d graduated and I was surprised she remembered me. We couldn’t find a hat to do her justice, but she tried on a lace blouse, stepped out of the changing-room to ask my opinion. The old-gold lace lit up her hair and skin, clung to and sculpted the shape of her breasts, the narrow curve of her waist so that I could hardly speak. She bought the blouse and returned next day to suggest a drink. I could only say, yes, but I was confused, quite terrified of her in a way. Did she mean just a drink? I thought she was amazing, so elegant, so bright. The welter of words that can trip off her tongue when she gets going, that spill from between her bright and smudgy lips. The slim elegance of her hands and feet, that make me feel peasant-like beside her. We shared a bottle of wine in a wine bar that’s gone now, knocked down to make way for a car-park. We shared a pizza, discovering a mutual passion for anchovies. All evening I was anxious and tantalised. I had never been with a woman before. Was this simply friendship or was it a prelude to something more? Surely the warm lingering looks she gave me; surely the way she touched my arm, my knee, my thigh; surely the husky intimate note in her laugh promised something more than simple friendship? But I did not know, did not want to make a fool of myself by misjudging her, misreading, in my usual clumsy way, the situation. All my lovers had been male. I’d never even considered sex with a woman. But this woman … And in the end when we kissed the taste of anchovies was strong in our mouths, the taste of anchovies and lipstick.
I kiss the back of her neck and her hair tickles my lips. Foxy, please don’t leave me.
‘Zelda?’ A question in her voice.
‘Sorry.’
‘Let me hold you.’
‘No … I’m getting up again. Sorry, sorry.’ She turns and I edge away from her heat, from her arms.
She sighs. ‘What time is it?’
‘Nearly five.’
‘No sleep? You must sleep, pumpkin, just a little.’
‘I can’t.’
She puts her hand on my arm. ‘You’re trembling.’ I let her hold me for a moment, then I pull away.
‘What have you been doing all night?’
‘Looking at my father’s … looking at some papers.’
‘What?’ Suddenly she is alert.
‘Bits of a diary, from Burma … or Thailand.’
‘From the war? You never …’
‘I wanted to wait till I saw him, but …’ and I start to cry. Not as if I’m crying. It’s as if I’m a conduit for someone else’s gulps, someone else’s hot salt tears. She plucks tissues from a box by the bed and wipes my eyes.
‘Oh Zel …’
I take a deep breath. ‘I’m all right.’
‘I’ll go and make some tea. Or coffee?’
‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘Well, whatever, I’m awake now. We’ll have some tea. It’s morning.’
I feel her get out of bed, the mattress springs up. I pull her warm pillow down to fill the space she’s left. Through my eyelashes I watch her putting on her dressing-gown, lifting her hair over the collar, tying the silky belt around her waist. She feels under the bed with her feet for her slippers. ‘Close your eyes,’ she says. She leans over and puts a cool finger-tip on each of my swollen eyelids. ‘I’ll bring you some tea in a minute.’
She goes out. My eyes won’t open, it’s as if she’s sealed them shut.
It’s morning she said.
The relief swallows me up.
And when I wake it’s light.
Foxy draws the curtains, sunshine floods across the bed. I squint against it. I’m stranded for a beat, don’t remember a thing. A blessed beat of peace. I’ve slept, it’s morning, Foxy’s here with a tray of toast and coffee. Cutting through the aroma of coffee, a cusp of orange, the scent of marmalade. A smile rises to meet the day, I feel rich, I have slept. And then it slams back. The weight of yesterday. My father is dead. And Foxy, this Foxy, with her hair swept up now, her silk shirt and her jeans, this lover of mine is going to leave me.
‘What time is it?’
‘Eight.’
‘Eight!’ I struggle to a sitting position.
‘You were sleeping so soundly … you needed it. I left you this long.’
‘Yes.�
� There is a cold, skinned-over cup of tea beside the bed. She picks it up. ‘See. Eat your breakfast now and I’ll run you a bath.’
I cannot let her leave the room until I know the worst. If I’m going to be dumped I want the pain of it now. I want all the pain to come together.
‘Foxy …’
‘Mmmm? Must put some water in the radiator, check the oil.’
‘Last night?’
‘Yep?’ She smooths her hair back, dips to look at herself in the dressing-table mirror.
‘Before … before you spoke to my mum …’
‘Mmmm?’ She turns.
‘Were you … were you going to end it?’
She pauses. It’s no good, she doesn’t answer fast enough.
‘Don’t worry.’ I force coffee past the lump in my throat.
‘No,’ she says, but it is too late. She studies my face for a moment and sits down on the edge of the bed. ‘No … I did want to talk but …’
‘Let’s talk then.’ My voice has gone very odd. It sounds hollow and echoey as if it is issuing from a cave.
‘Zelda, darling, not now.’
‘Why? Nothing’s changed since last night has it?’
‘Yes. You know it has.’ She fiddles with the silver filigree slide that holds her hair. I gave her that slide. She takes off her glasses and smiles at me. It seems to be a genuine smile. There are small red dents on each side of the bridge of her nose. ‘Things have changed. Something like a death … it does change things.’
‘But not how you feel.’
‘Yes, how you feel.’
‘No.’ I swallow some more coffee.
‘Yes.’ She rubs her hand against my duvet-muffled thigh. ‘It’s not static, Zelda, a relationship, you know that. It’s not the same two days in a row. I did want to talk to you yesterday, it’s true. But not to finish us, just to talk …’
‘About what then?’
‘But this has superseded that.’
‘What?’
She shrugs. ‘Look, we can talk on the journey if you want. I must get the car ready.’
Easy Peasy Page 9